When the Reckoning Comes, page 21
“They are,” she said, as her head hovered over the tops of the stalks. “Although they’re moving slower. I guess they figure they have the time.”
“We need to get to the river.”
“They’re too close. There’s not enough distance between us and them. I think they’ll catch up to us before we get there.”
“What should we do?”
“Let’s just wait here a little bit more. If we’re lucky maybe they’ll turn back around.”
They both collapsed in the stalks to wait. Mira sat on the ground, her legs splayed out in front of her. Her calves burned, and she massaged the muscles and tendons, hoping the pressure would relieve some of the ache. She briefly stretched, pulling her arms in front of her body and turning her neck from side to side.
After a few minutes, Jesse grew restless and got up to look. “It’s dark,” he said as he peered a little more above the tobacco stalks to get a better view. “They must have stopped for some reason, maybe figuring out what direction to take? Wait, no—I see Phillip. He’s gone into the woods.”
Movement in the brush. A glimpse of white. Mira straightened, her attention drawn to what lay before her. Jesse hadn’t noticed. It was the woman in white. This time she was close enough that Mira could see her face. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders. She was dressed in a white nightgown that flowed past her knees. The fabric was worn, sheer, but it hadn’t been dirtied from the woods. There was something familiar about her. Mira could see it in her eyes, the round shape of them, and in the contours of her face. She knew this woman, felt a kinship with her, and believed she would help them get to safety.
“You’re Marceline, aren’t you?” Mira asked the woman. She didn’t answer. “I know you are. I see my eyes in yours. Can you help us? There are men after us. We’re trapped.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to get to the river,” Jesse said, not hearing Mira. “Phillip seems to be heading our way—”
The woman retreated farther into the brush. She motioned for Mira to follow. Mira crawled toward her but hesitated, realizing she was about to leave without Jesse.
“Jesse—” Mira began, but the woman stopped her, quickly put a finger to her mouth to let Mira know to be quiet. “We need him to come too,” Mira explained, but the woman shook her head.
Following the woman meant she would have to leave Jesse. She didn’t want to, but what if this was the way to save both of them? Fear told her to stay, but she had to know what the woman needed to show her. Jesse would understand, and she would find him again.
The woman grew impatient. Seeing Mira would not follow her, she left for the woods. This was Mira’s last chance; she had to go now or live with the regret of her inaction. Mira looked at Jesse one last time, waited until his back was turned, and slipped into the brush.
XXVI.
THE WOMAN DISAPPEARED as soon as Mira left Jesse. Mira called after her as she wandered through the woods, her voice barely above a whisper, too afraid the other men would hear.
She was alone, sweating, tired, and lost once again. She circled around, trying to find the path back to Jesse, but behind her was only darkness.
Above, the moon shone amidst the cloudless night sky, a moon that had once cast its light on the backs of her ancestors as they escaped for home, and she found a comfort in the thought. The same moon that had guided them would see her through.
She pushed the branches away from her face to find her way. The distant warbling hoots of barn owls echoed in the hollows of the trees. A subtle breeze came along, chilling the sweat on her skin. Mira continued, losing her sense of time the longer she went. She feared if she stopped she would give up altogether, collapsing on the ground and hiding until morning, but she’d hid her entire life. Enough now. Enough. She had to keep going, to find what the woman hoped to show her. She would not look away, whatever horror awaited. This time, she would not look away.
A fly buzzed in front of her face and she swatted at it. Another came. Another. The low buzz of their wings filled her ears. Another crawled on the back of her neck. She shook her head and waved her arms. The buzzing grew louder and Mira had to put her hands to her ears to block out the noise. The flies multiplied as Mira walked. She hurried, desperate to get away, moving fast until, at long last, the buzzing suddenly stopped.
Shadows moved in the distance. Jesse. She must be close to where she’d left him. Maybe he’d seen she’d gone and had started to look for her. She walked closer and the glow of a light appeared. Mira went toward it, and as her eyes adjusted she saw that the man wasn’t Jesse, but someone else, and Mira immediately ducked down in the grass.
Whoever it was, he had paused to wipe the front of his brow with his shirt. He heard Mira’s rustling and stopped, flashed in her direction, but Mira hid her head between her arms and crouched into a ball to keep from being seen. When she looked up again, she saw the back of the man as he searched the brush, hunting.
“Celine? You out here?” someone whispered, their voice low but scratchy. “I know you’re there. I saw you. I’m going to find you sooner or later so come on out. Celine?”
A fox pattered through the woods. As it moved it made a series of barking noises followed by a howl. The man stopped. He followed the sound, jerking his body in one direction and then another. Soon enough, he turned around and she saw that the man was Phillip.
“Mira, what are you doing down there? Come on, get up.”
She hadn’t seen the gun at first, but as soon as he’d faced her she saw it in his hand. Mira stood up slowly. She was cautious of her movements, not wanting to startle him. He had the expression of a wild animal trapped in terror, and the cagey behavior of a man being hunted. His eyes, wide and bloodshot, twitched as he kept shifting his attention from her to the woods.
“I heard you calling for Celine,” Mira sputtered out, a reflexive response in the moment. Phillip’s eyes darted at her before turning to another sound he heard in the woods. He twitched again, his hands shaking as he held the gun.
“I saw her. Or, I thought I did. She had on her dress. She looked beautiful. All dressed in white. Glowing almost. I don’t understand. I had to make sure.”
“Phillip, Celine is dead.”
“No, she’s not. I saw her. Who did I see if it wasn’t her? She’s tormenting me. That’s what this is. She said she changed her mind about the wedding, didn’t want to marry me after all. She said she was leaving me. Said she wasn’t happy. Wasn’t happy.” He sputtered out the word, refusing to hide his contempt. “After all I’d done for her. I’d given her everything she wanted and she still wasn’t happy.”
“You’re the one who killed her,” Mira whispered, backing away in the shock of the realization. She would have screamed it if she could. Called him the monster that he was. Because of his money, Phillip had fashioned himself to believe he was a man unlike the rest, but he was just the same as them, ready to taste the blood of any who dared to believe they were better than him.
Phillip shook his head at her. “No, I— It was an accident, and she’s just hurt. She’s alive—I saw her. She’s out here somewhere. Playing a trick on me. She’s not— No, I saw her.”
“No one’s here, Phillip. Celine’s dead. You killed her,” Mira repeated.
“It was an accident,” Phillip shrieked. He quickly attempted to regain his composure but it was no use. Beads of sweat fell down his face, soaked his shirt collar. He wiped his face. “It’s not what you think. You have to know. Last night she came to visit me and said it was over. Said she’d tell people in the morning, but after she left she didn’t go back to her room. She came out to the woods. I followed her, wanting to see where she would go. I thought she was meeting someone. Maybe that boy. That had to be the reason. It was the only thing that made sense. I wanted to see who she would leave me for. When I found her, we argued. That’s all it was at first. I grabbed her arm and she tried pulling away, but I wanted to know where she was going. I asked her to tell me and she laughed again, and I hit her. Just once, but she—jerked back, tripped, fell. It was an accident, and I thought she was dead but she’s not. I saw her. She’s hiding in these woods. I’m going to find her. I couldn’t let her leave. Not without her telling me why I wasn’t enough. Why giving her everything wasn’t enough.”
“You killed Celine and you’re letting everyone think Jesse did it. You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
“Let me?” Phillip said, raising his eyebrows, and Mira understood her mistake. He gripped the gun. “You’re not going to let me do anything.”
Phillip’s fingers locked on the gun, his muscles tense. Mira saw his reddened knuckles. “Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly, emphatically. “Celine’s out here somewhere.” She knew there was no other way out of this, not anymore. Why wouldn’t Phillip shoot her and leave her for dead? What had she known of Phillip, after all, to make her think otherwise? She knew nothing of the man he was or was supposed to be, knew nothing of whatever terror he was capable of. All she knew was that she was alone in the woods, too afraid to scream because who knew what the mob would do if they found her.
“Let’s look for her,” Mira said soothingly.
She braced herself, ready to bolt the second he was distracted enough. She would run to whatever she was meant to find, but until that moment she stood frozen, her heart racing, her eyes refusing to blink lest it be a catalyst for Phillip to direct his rage. She counted—one, two, three, four—in the hope the counting would keep her steady.
The whispers returned, a slow build cresting into a cacophonous harmony. “Do you hear that?” Mira asked.
“Of course I hear it. The whispering—it won’t stop.”
Mira called to Phillip but he had stopped listening. His hands swatted at the air around him. “Get away from me! Get away! I can’t see!” he howled, but Mira couldn’t see anything, only Phillip as he scratched and clawed at his skin. His nails dug deep into his flesh, hard enough to draw blood, but he didn’t stop. He scratched at his eyes, pulled on his clothes, ripping the fabric, revealing his pale skin underneath. He scratched until reddened streaks marked his chest and arms, but still he wouldn’t stop.
In horror, Mira watched as Phillip continued to damage his body. Nothing he did seemed to be enough to stop whatever he believed was attacking him. He shouted again, but this time the words came out in a garbled gasp. Worn out from his efforts, Phillip fell to his knees, succumbing. He loosened the grip of his gun and it fired as it hit the ground.
Blood pooled around Phillip’s body as he lay silent and still. Far off, Mira heard the rumble of men as they gathered together and headed toward the sound of the shot.
XXVII.
JESSE FOUND MIRA shortly after he heard the shot. He stumbled to her from the brush and froze when he saw Phillip’s body. He turned his head when he first saw it, horrified, but looked again, as if to be sure of what his eyes showed him. Mira thought he was going to vomit as he leaned forward, but he put both hands on his knees. “What happened? I turned around and you were gone.”
The whispering had long since faded, ending as soon as Phillip hit the ground. The ghosts had come for him because he’d refused to see how his history, and his life, were just as entangled in the roots of this place as their own.
Mira thought of the woman. Marceline, her ancestor. Without her, she would never have known her story, the way in which she was tethered to this land. Also, without her she might never have known what Phillip had done to Celine.
“Marceline led me here.”
As Mira said her name, she felt the relief of a sigh as she called her into being. Speaking her name meant she was more than a specter, to say it meant she had existed, that like all of them she had been real. “Marceline wanted to show me,” Mira repeated, pointing to Phillip. “Phillip killed Celine.”
A splatter of Phillip’s blood had gotten on the front of her clothes. A drip of it fell down the side of her face and neck and she wiped it off in a panic.
“He did it. That’s why she went missing. He came out to the woods because Marceline let him see her, and he thought she was Celine. He was trying to finish what he started. He’d hoped to blame her murder on you.”
“Why?” Jesse asked, and his question hurt her heart. Why is the question we always ask, she thought, when we know what the answer is. They both knew why. Phillip understood the power his whiteness held and Jesse had been the easy target. Blame Jesse and everyone would believe it. Saying the lie would be enough to make it true. Phillip had done it for no other reason than he knew he could.
Both Jesse and Mira had spent their lives asking why, but it was a waste of a question. Instead of why, they needed to ask themselves what they should do.
“If they find us here they’ll think we both had something to do with this,” Jesse said weakly.
“There’s nowhere left to go. Maybe if we could get to the river—”
“Nothing’s at the river, Mira,” Jesse said in a mix of anger and desperation. “They’re coming, and once they find Phillip they’re going to think we murdered them both. All they’ll need to do is see it and be convinced. It doesn’t matter if it’s a lie. They’ll believe it and it’ll be enough. We can’t get out of this.”
Mira pictured the men joined together. The pounding of their footsteps grew. They licked their lips in anticipation, spittle dripping from their mouths as they jeered. They moved in lockstep, aligned with a sole interest. Their heavy steps thundered. Their hunt had been the end all along, the culmination of what was always meant to be, but Mira held to the belief that there was another possibility. She could see the lights flashing bright between the trees, growing larger as the men closed in on them. These men had a reason for their violence now. Celine was gone. Dead. In the end that’s all that mattered. All it took. A white woman dead and gone. Her body lying host to the insects of the woods. These men would want justice, or revenge, and they wanted to be the ones to inflict it.
The men came closer, close enough for Mira to hear their calls.
“This won’t end,” Jesse said softly. “I’ve got to meet them.”
“What? No. They’ll kill you. That’s how it’ll end. They’ll string you up.”
“I know.”
“We need to find a way to lead them to the river. It’s the only way.”
“There is no other way. Never has been. I’m tired, Mira. Aren’t you? I’m tired of all this. I can’t do this anymore.”
Weariness had aged him, but it had also changed who he was. Gone was the boy, bashful and sincere over the things he loved. The one who was self-conscious, yet daring when he needed to be, like how he’d been the one to stick up for Celine and Mira when they were kids. He was someone who knew what he deserved, and what he deserved was a better world than this.
The boy Mira had known was still there underneath, and he’d come back to her; they just had to survive the night. Not only this one but every one after, and maybe in the midst of that, they could find a way to live.
Mira reached for his hand and clasped it. His skin felt hot. She wanted him to hold on to her for just a little longer. A little longer and maybe they would be saved.
“We just have to keep going. We have a chance.”
“No, Mira. We don’t.”
“We have to try,” she said.
“Even if we get out, even if we make it somehow, they’ll come for me anyway. They already think I killed Celine, and this is their proof. It’ll be like with Mr. Loomis. They’ll lock me up. I can’t go through it again. I can’t. They’re never going to stop. No matter what I do they’re never going to stop. At least if I meet them it’ll be my choice. That’s got to count for something.”
“You’re giving up.”
“It’s not giving up. I’m the one they want, so at least if I go, then maybe I can distract them and you can get out of here. Get out of this place and never come back. Promise me you’ll do that. Go and don’t look back.”
“No, I won’t do it. I won’t. We’re together now, don’t you see? It won’t be like before.”
“It’s not your fault what happened, or mine. It’s just—I don’t know. It’s the world. You got to let me go, Mira. Who knows, maybe I’ll make it,” he said, and he released her hand.
He smiled one last time, content in his decision, and his face showed the glimmer of the boy she’d once known—confident and optimistic, someone who believed in what could be instead of what was.
“Jesse,” Mira whispered, but before she could say anything else, could plead with him to wait a little longer, he bolted.
“I’m here,” he shouted at the air before veering in the direction of the river. He ran, screaming, hoping the noise would get their attention and they’d start after him, making way for Mira to get out of the fields and off the property for good.
“I see him! There he is!”
The mob followed Jesse. They chased after him in their wild fury, their anger fueling them onward. It looked to be a crowd of fifty, if not more. Many carried rifles, their hands raising them high in the air as they trampled through the grass. Others held a hand on their hip as they ran, ready at any moment to aim their gun and shoot. They carried stolen lanterns taken from the plantation to light their way.
As they ran toward Jesse, one managed to get ahead of the rest, and when he’d gained enough speed, when at any moment he’d have finally caught up to Jesse, he stopped in his tracks. His hand pulled the pistol from his hip’s holster. He fired a series of reckless shots, not even trying to aim, believing he’d get his target.
The others behind him suddenly stopped too, each of them aiming and firing.
Bullets rattled in the air, one after the other. Pop, pop, pop. Like firecrackers Mira couldn’t see. Jesse ran faster, hoping with speed he’d escape the bullets, but there were too many. Pop, pop, pop, they continued, and down Jesse went, falling, falling, and as his body collided with the dirt, Mira heard their clamoring cheers.
