Part II

 

1.

They threw Gerald Harris into the high-walled pit for refusing sex with the colored woman. The Collectors had taken him as far as a well-lit opening in the tunnel. With tired grunts, they issued him forth, jabbing him with their shovels. At that point, the strange happenings of the last few hours took a decidedly stranger turn.

His night-blind eyes took in a vast nexus-like chamber. Tunnels led away from a central axis point like spokes on a wheel. Hands clamped onto his upper arms from either side.

One of his captors began to chuckle. Another tugged at his twisted waxed mustache, and it came away in one sticky clump, leaving an adhesive residue on his lip. The others followed suit, removing their mining gear and wiping away the coal black staining their skin with equally well-stained rags.

"Who… who are you?" Torches lined the chamber walls between each tunnel spoke. He looked back to the tunnel from which he entered. These men weren't The Collectors. All he saw were filthy men identical in appearance, with once grievous wounds now healing by the second.

"We need your expertise."

He couldn't believe he'd trusted these men to be the mythical Collectors. "Expertise?"

"You're a miner, right? Your name's Harris?"

Gerald looked at the man, found it odd hearing a voice so far below the sun's reach after spending silent hours crawling through the dark.

"Yeah. Gerald Harris. Aren't you… who are you?"

While two of the men started laughing, the other yanked Gerald around until their noses nearly touched. There was no trace of humor in this man's eyes. His spittle sprayed Gerald's face as he spoke. "What years?" The grip on his arm tightened.

Gerald looked around, confused, taking in the broader details of each man. Only then, with the greasy coal dust smeared halfway clean of their skin, did he see they were brothers, and triplets at that. Husky men with shit-brown tobacco juice staining their chins. Their breath smelled sickly sweet with tooth rot.

The man shook him. "What years? You deaf?"

"Years, what years?"

One of the laughers regained his composer. "My dumbass brother wants to know when you worked the mines."

"Oh gosh, '91 until closing. Thirty-six years."

"Eww boy, that's a long'un." The man spat juice to the floor, catching a dangling ribbon of saliva with the back of his hand. One of his brothers echoed him with his own spit glob a second later.

They loosened their grip. Gerald's arms tingled as the blood rushed back.

"Let's go. Time's wasting," one triplet said, laughing as if he'd just made a joke.

After traveling through a series of tunnels winding through ever-smaller chambers, they entered an unlit nook off a narrow tunnel. The triplets stopped.

The room was rank, saturated with the co-mingling scents of sweat, shit and sex.

"That's 'Wina over on that slab. You fuck her first before you join the rest."

Gerald didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't see anyone in the small chamber, and even so, he'd never do that with anyone but his wife.

He stepped back and bumped into a wall of farm-strong muscle. A hand shoved him forward.

Adjusting to the weak light, he saw the Negro girl's eyes. Then he noticed her pointed, sleek chin. Her shaved bald head. Her nude body. His confusion multiplied by the second. The Underground was supposed to be a holding ground for worthy whites, a gathering spot for those miners deserving salvation. Yet here was a Negro woman, nude, and they were expecting him to…

She didn't attempt to cover herself. Instead, she locked eyes with him, not afraid or ashamed or showing any trace of humility. Leaning back on her elbows, she spread her long legs. She seemed indifferent.

"Gotta take that girl. Go on." Another shove to his back.

A length of chain held her to the wall, the final hasp binding her neck. "No… I can't, I didn't know anything like this. No one ever told me--"

A punch to his shoulder blade both silenced him and threw him off balance. He fell to the ground in front of the girl. Piles of shit littered the floor all around her, morbid offerings laid at the feet of a perverse goddess.

Up close, a gray river trickled from between her legs. It seeped from the slab chaise to puddle on the floor. His hands were in it, cold and sticky between his fingers. He felt sick and ashamed.

"You fuck her, I don't care how or where or if you like it one iota. You fuck her."

"No. No, nonono…" Gerald pushed to his feet. The girl laughed at him contemptuously. He should have stayed with his family. He should have let his diseased lungs worsen, let the racking coughing fits tear him to pieces until he couldn't breath, until he drowned on his own coal-stained blood. But no. He had chosen the path of cowardice.

One of the triplets hunkered in a squat, placing a hand on Gerald's shoulder. "You ain't gonna do her?" He sounded like a father imploring a child to eat his vegetables. "You gonna have to. You can't join the others if you don't. You want to go on living don'tcha? It's the only way."

The man increased the pressure on his shoulder. Gerald tensed, but didn't move. He felt immobilized, sitting on the soiled ground, staring at the colored thighs, then higher, at the fleshy breasts. "I… I can't."

There was a momentary quiet, heavy with dread. He looked still higher, over the girl's pointed chin, to her eyes. They gleamed with glints of distant torchlight. She had been watching Gerald flounder at her feet, but now her gaze lifted over his shoulder.

One of the brothers stepped forward, grinding loose pebbles underfoot. Then a boot crashed against the back of Gerald's skull. In the blink before unconsciousness, the cavern flashed with unearthly blue light. The light touched everything, and everything it touched looked like a dead thing.

 

 

Face down, eyes closed, he knew he was alive when he woke to the lump at the base of his skull throbbing like a second heartbeat. When he moved to massage the wound, he heard an ear-piercing scream. It took him a second to realize it wasn't his own. Opening his eyes, he blinked; a solid stone wall was six inches from his nose.

The screaming intensified, multiplied. It was cheering. A crazed crowd. Elated fans? He couldn't imaging what could be so thrilling. He placed his hands palm-down on the stone floor, then worked himself up to his knees. Ten feet away, another wall. He looked in every direction. The wall enclosed him. He was in some kind of pit.

"Get to your feet, you piece of shit!" someone shouted above him, breaking through the other indistinguishable shouting. "Come on!"

A rock whipped through the air, just wide of his ear, cracking against the wall. Gerald hopped to his feet, his mind still scattered from being stomped unconscious, pain spreading from his skull down his neck and shoulders.

A ring of faces lined the top of the twelve-foot high walls. Shoulder to shoulder, men and women watched him in the pit. Then a trickle of wetness struck his shoulder.

Gerald blinked through the spray, stepping out of range.

"That'll wake you up now!" a man shouted, his fly open. He knew this man. Had worked the mines with him, had trained him. Buford Higgins. He'd been to Buford's wedding, to his funeral, too. But his eyes were different now. Intense, unhinged. The man was crazy.

Gerald wiped the piss from his face, stared at the man whom he once considered a friend. Buford shifted, was swallowed by the crowd. Another face just as mad took his place.

You want to go on living don'tcha?

He'd refused to have sex with the Negro woman.

You can't join the others if you don't.

This must be his punishment.

The crowd jostled, everyone trying to get a better look, their faces twisted with a frightening mixture of hatred and ecstasy. Backlit with torches, their shadows danced along the floor of the pit like gamboling giants.

More rocks flew, some as large as ripe peaches. One thunked against his temple and he staggered. Blood flowed into his ringing ear, down his neck. He swayed on his feet, defenseless, waiting for his end.

What's happening? His mind was nearly drowned out by the screaming throng.

Above the sound of the crowd, below the sound, came the tortured cry of a wounded beast. Somewhere close. Gerald pressed his back against the wall, his heart aching, beating out of control. Searching the dark reaches of the pit, he detected movement at the far side, swaddled in the dancing shadow-bodies of the people above. The beast emerged; nose, face, eyes becoming visible as it left the darkness for the center of the pit. Gray skin mottled with black bruising. Ragged hair splotched with raw bald patches, as if locks had been torn out at the roots. The nails had grown long and ridged with age. It was a dead woman, draped in blood-blackened rags, somehow moving, somehow coming for him.

Keeping his back to the wall, Gerald circled the pit, searching for an escape. A doorway, a tunnel, a handhold to pull himself higher and out of reach. Daubs of darkened blood stained the walls, but he saw no handholds. No way out.

"Stay put, you piece of shit! Fight like a man!"

"Cha-chaaa!" the dead woman grunted at him.

The woman, the thing, because she was no longer a woman so much as a monster, charged him, knife-like nails bared. He tried to lunge away, but the thing was surprisingly swift. It was on him in a second, deftly pinning him against the wall, forcing the air from his lungs. Its eyes were demented, maniacal, hungry; its drooling mouth inches away and closing.

Fighting all the gentlemanly wisdom his father had instilled in him, he lashed out with his fists. With the first meaty impact, the crowd's roar surged, became deafening. He struck the top of the thing's head, hard, repeatedly, to no avail. While it was much shorter than him, it was decidedly stronger. He couldn't get away. He kept at it, pummeling head, face, shoulders, back--he might as well have been punching a wall.

The thing pulled its head back, eyes rolling back to full whites, gray-tinged teeth exposed to the torch light.

"Cha-chaaaa!" The thing's grunts became a mantra. "Cha-cha-chaaachaaar!"

As the thing swept its mouth forward, ready to bite the meat of his throat, not only did the crowd increase in its frenzy, but he also recognized this beast for who it used to be.

Mabel Banyon. His former neighbor. A woman whose delicate skin once favored mild spring days, a woman as tranquil as a baby's contented sigh.

His mind flashed to Mabel's funeral--standing with Betty-Mae and his wife, Junior not yet born, and everyone's sadness such a weighty thing--but was quickly brought back to the present as Mabel Banyon's teeth ripped his shirtcollar and pierced his skin, bored down through his muscle, before clicking together somewhere deep inside his throat. He heard gristly chewing and a contented sigh, then all was silent.

 

 

2.

Someone was shaking Jimmy, but he didn't want to rise from the depths of sleep. Waking brought back the pain. Brought back to life his ruined flesh. He shoved away from the needling at his shoulder, rolling to his side on the cold stone slab. He wanted to remain here, unseen, just a lump in a corner of the old mining stables, not moving until long after they had forgotten about him and moved on to torment someone else. But the person shaking him was insistent, even if gentle in consideration of his wounds.

His captors were monsters. Could they be anything else but monsters? Cowering below ground. Beating him senseless. And the horrible things he'd heard. Joyful cries punctuated by tortured cries of pain. Beast-like growls followed by zealous applause.

"Mr. Jimmy, things are stirring up. You best be up and about. They're liable to get surly, they see you sleeping."

Jimmy groaned, his eyelids opening to slits. All he could see at first were the whites of Harold Barrow's eyes. In the darkness of the caverns, his charcoal skin was hard to detect. The old Negro looked concerned, not necessarily for Jimmy's well-being, but for the repercussions if Jimmy wasn't able to work yet. "Leave me alone, Harold."

"They'll get worse on you. They want you digging with me an' Benjamin."

"Let them get worse. Let them kill me. I don't care."

"But Mr. Jimmy, don't you know you can't die here? They bring you right up to where you think you can't take no more, then when you think you're gonna die, you only open your eyes again. Open your eyes to forever."

Jimmy eased to a sitting position. The faraway torches afforded little light at this distance. He could now make out Harold's face. His cheekbones were sharp, as if honed with a whetstone. His jaw line angled to a pointed chin covered in patchy white hair. His head was a mass of wiry whiteness, the hair unkempt, filthy.

"That so, Harold?" Jimmy touched the shackle rubbing the skin of his ankle. They were chained to the wall of a former stables that acted as their quarters. This section of the Underground overlapped with the old mines. The last of the cart mules left the stable long ago, but the ground was still littered with chaff dust and bits of hay, while the air carried a barn's pungent stench. A crust had formed around the ankle iron while Jimmy slept. It didn't take much walking for blood to lubricate the shackle.

The shackles bound their ankles with six feet of slack--enough length to allow them to walk in an awkward hobble in a small circle, to find a spot to squat and shit. When needed in another section of the Underground, their short lengths of chain were unlatched from the wall, and reattached to a waist-high cable lining the walls. Once attached to the cable system, they could move throughout the caverns as far as the cables permitted. Their rattling chains announced their presence long before anyone could see them. The monsters didn't want any surprises.

"You messing with me, Harold? Looking out for me; making sure I don't push them hard enough for them to go back on me, this time with their machetes?"

Harold didn't immediately answer. The old man stared into Jimmy's eyes, a chilling, angry look. He blinked several times, his expression softening in degrees. "These chains are like an umbilicus."

"A what?"

"Ain't you a farmer?"

"Yeah. Well, that's what my family does."

"You ever seen a calf birthed?"

"Plenty times."

"The umbilicus connects the calf to the momma."

"You mean the cord."

"That's right, the cord. Same as people and pigs and such. We got these chains on us, and we can't get away. If we could, God as my witness I would go this instant. Run off like a baby calf."

"What do you mean, Harold?"

"Oh, Mr. Jimmy, you'll see soon enough. You'll see so much you wish you wasn't born seeing."

A man walked along the narrow corridor leading from the main chamber to their stall at the end of the stable. Like a cavorting jester, his shadow danced in front of him on the uneven limestone wall. Hearing the approach, Harold stood quickly, looping a hand under Jimmy's armpit.

"That's trouble walking. Get up."

The man in charge of keeping order, a brute named Arthur Scully, had told Jimmy he expected him to work a full day alongside Harold and his son-in-law, Benjamin. Jimmy despised the prospects of forced labor, but what made it worse was the fact he'd been teamed up with the only Negroes he'd seen. Jimmy had seen Benjamin only once, when he first entered the cavern after swimming through the tunnel. He didn't notice right away--he had been surprised to distraction recognizing familiar faces from Coal Hollow in the gathering crowd--but Benjamin was chained to a wall, the wide meat of his back exposed. Not until Jimmy saw the lashing whip and heard the startling whip-crack did he realize he had ventured where he shouldn't. The crowd had engulfed Jimmy, and as they began to pummel him, George swam for his life toward the tunnel. They were whipping Benjamin even as Jimmy lost consciousness from the violent beating.

There was one other Negro prisoner, Harold's daughter, Edwina. They didn't put her to work along with her husband and father. They had certain other labors for her to attend to that kept her busy.

With Harold's help, Jimmy was able to stand.

"Rise and shine." Arthur Scully appeared from around a rock outcropping. His scalp was hairless and pink. His lips always seemed to quaver, as if he were verging on having a fit. A ham-sized fist swung at his side, an axe handle gripped in his clenched fingers.

Jimmy looked to Harold to see how the old man reacted to Scully. The Negro kept his eyes lowered, and his posture became more slight. His rough knit shirt hung on his lank shoulders. Jimmy tried to imitate the old Negro.

"Boy, you bring your new bitch with you and show him the ropes." He unlocked their chains from the wall, clamping the links over the cable, then relocked it. "You been at it awhile, that won't be no problem."

Scully swung the axe handle down on Jimmy, catching him in the lower back. He gave him one wallop, and then stood back, waiting for a response. Jimmy writhed on the floor, his breaths accompanied by a sharp, jagged pain.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Mornings, now on, you get one smack if you're good. Get your nose dirty, I'll club you 'til you ain't got any face left." Scully laughed, walking away.

"That Scully, he don't like you. That's for sure." Harold helped Jimmy again to stand.

"Bastard. I'm going to get him for that."

"You go on thinking that. Let's get going. Scully won't wait a minute before coming back swinging that axe handle."

Harold tried to aid him in walking, but he shrugged him off. He didn't want to owe anyone anything, especially a colored man.

Their chains rattled as they walked. Jimmy watched Harold pick up a shank of iron and pull it by hand, taking the pressure off his ankle. They passed a rough wooden door set inside a rocky face. A bloody handprint was smeared along the wall, still wet and dripping, as if someone had fought being put behind the barred door just minutes earlier. A chill seemed to pass through Harold as he saw it, but he quickly left the door behind without comment.

After long minutes of silence and near-dark, a low hallway opened off to their left. Harold quickened his pace, keeping his eyes keened ahead. Jimmy heard an animal-like grunting coming from a small, secluded room. He then glimpsed a man's white naked ass jouncing between two thin colored legs.

"Come on now, 'Wina! That's a girl, come on now!"

The girl's legs trembled as the man thrust into her. Jimmy's stomach clenched. He averted his gaze. Harold was staring back at him, his eyes haunted by sadness. Jimmy hurried next to the old man, leaving the unsettling sight behind.

"Harold--"

"Not a word Mr. Jimmy, not a word. I can't speak on it."

Jimmy kept his mouth shut. Harold slowed a bit, his bare feet scraping against the damp ground. They entered a high-ceilinged chamber, nearly running into a couple of men passing a bottle between them, taking long swigs. Upon seeing Jimmy and Harold, they looked disappointed. Jimmy figured that's where the line to Edwina started. Farther off, other men lounged on straw-padded seats cut into the limestone walls, drinking straight from hooch bottles and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. It smelled like a barn, but there were no animals around. Just unwashed, foul-smelling men, sharing dirty jokes and laughter.

"Those men are off-shift. They're the old miners."

"Is that why they're not chained like us?"

"Sure, sure. Me, Benjamin, Edwina, we slaves. And you? They don't know what to do with the likes of you." The old man laughed weakly. "Here, we go off this way to where the work is."

"What is this place, Harold?" Jimmy whispered, trying not to draw any attention. The limestone had been carved away and wasn't a natural formation like the chamber where he and George had been fishing for White Bane. It didn't look smooth, aged by the elements; it was raw, a picked scab, gouged and irritated.

"This is just a small meetin' area. Like a social club. They drink an' tell bawdy stories, and well… you know…" They left the men behind, entering a corridor in which Jimmy had to turn sideways in order to walk. The candlelight didn't reach far into the cleft in the rock, and they walked for a short while in near-darkness.

"Who are they? Why are they underground?"

"I remember when underground was a good word for a Negro--"

"Harold, please. I've seen people I recognize from town."

"Mr. Jimmy, many of them been here long as me. There's others, newer ones trickle in here and there. Women, children, too. Miners, miners' families. See, it gets to be when you been here so long you can't never leave. But if you come here and stay, well, you come and stay long as you like."

They exited the narrow hall, Jimmy still not understanding this place. Sitting high on a boulder, Scully noted their arrival, returning to whittling a hunk of wood with a long blade. His axe handle rested against his thighs, within easy reach.

The room dwarfed the chamber they had just seen. Benjamin was at the opposite side of the room across a clear pond, so far distant his features were hard to see. He swung a pickaxe in a smooth, measured arc, carving chips from the limestone wall he faced. Every few swings, the axe spit a shower of sparks. A group of unchained white men worked the other side of the vast space, taking their time, drinking and talking as much as laboring.

"This is the new place. They call it 'Paradise.' It's gonna replace that ol' gathering spot."

"Jesus, Harold, how long have you been working on this?" It was as big as a football field, torches lining the walls. Between the stone support columns, bonfires dotted the ground, illuminating the sprawling dimensions. Carved stone seats and tables filled the room. A trio of men harnessed to a heavy wooden cart heaved by them, carrying away the waste rock. To his surprise, Jimmy saw Dewy Piersal, the owner of the last bar in town, pulling at the lead. Dewy used to give him penny candy for sweeping out the bar on Sunday mornings. After his business closed, he'd supposedly died, some said by his own hand. That must have been eight years ago. Dewy nodded to him in recognition, then looked ahead, focused at his task.

"How long? Can't say for certain, Mr. Jimmy."

"Why not?"

"Can't say 'cause I don't know what date it is."

"It's the end of June."

"June. June, what year?"

"1934."

Harold grunted as if struck in the stomach. He picked up a pickaxe for himself and handed Jimmy a shovel. "Come with me. I'll show you what's what." Harold lifted the chain to relieve the pressure, then began walking along the cable-lined wall.

Jimmy followed, holding the shovel in one hand while carrying his chain with the other. "So how long's it been?"

"Mr. Jimmy, my arithmetic ain't too good."

"Well, when did they take you and your family?"

"Oh… 1851. August 1851. I don't recall the 'xact date."

The shovel slipped Jimmy's grip, crashing to the floor. He couldn't believe his ears. When Scully shifted his weight in his perch, Jimmy quickly picked it up again.

Eighty-three years.

The methodical hammering of Benjamin's pickaxe echoed in Jimmy's head. They had imprisoned Harold and his family for eighty-three years. Looking at the hand-carved walls--unable to fathom the time and effort to do such work--he wondered if this really was hell.

Harold's words trundled through his head as steadily as the ringing clang of Benjamin's pickaxe:

You been here so long you can't never leave.

When you think you're gonna die, you only open your eyes again.

Open your eyes to forever…

Jimmy followed Harold's instructions, shoveling away the piles of chipped limestone, loading the waste rock into a wheeled cart. His back was hurting not even an hour later, adding to his miseries. Stretching out the kinks in his spine, his eyes rested on the cavern's ceiling. He imagined desperately clawing his fingers through the rock and clay and the layer of top soil above, imagined pushing back the earth, reaching the fields where he'd grown up, a land he thought he knew like the back of his hand. He wondered if his family was worried about him.

 

 

3.

A knowledgeable person could travel during daylight hours from one side of town to the other without once having sunlight touch their skin. Few people knew about the labyrinthine tunnels tying together certain of the town's buildings, and still fewer knew who first lent spade to earth to begin their construction. Some say Indians attuned to the functions of nature began digging with sticks and rough stone tools. In sparsely traveled tunnels the remains of ancient campfire could be found, if someone were inclined to search. In crannies of rock, sharp tools had been left where aboriginals once tread. Under layers of dust, broken bones and shattered skulls remained after a long ago hunt and feast. If someone were inclined to search--and no one in the know seemed to be the prying sort--the bones might be seen as human remains.

At the time of the town's charter, the people of Coal Hollow dedicated their lives to serve God. With their every word and action they devoted their energies to their savior. Coal Hollow soon became an abolitionist stronghold. In order to spread their word, local pamphleteers and newspapermen spun out essays to a national audience at a blurring rate. North to Chicago, east to Boston and New York, and south to whoever would listen. Their efforts fell on deaf ears. They soon found alternative methods to help those unfortunate souls forced into a servitude for someone other than their personal savior.

At the town's southernmost tip, the current owners of a deacon's former home, Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Boynton, woke every morning at dawn and took to their beds nightly at eight o'clock sharp. They slept, ate their meals and read the Saturday Evening Post without realizing their home once served as an entryway to a secret world. The Boyntons would listen to the Amos 'n' Andy radio show at 7:15 p.m. before settling into bed, all the while ignorant their home once played a pivotal role in the local abolitionist movement. The Boyntons, residents of Coal Hollow for thirty odd years, and soon to retire to their son's home in Kentucky, didn't know people once secretly gathered in their dirt floor cellar. Or the deacon would lead these residents in quiet prayer, everyone with their hands enjoined, their eyes dewed with love for their God. Or a runaway slave would often cower inside these prayer circles, usually marred by a master's brand or raised whip scars. After the preliminaries of prayer and food, they would lead the runaway to the safety of the tunnels, where the Underground's healing touch could work its wonder, until the time was right to continue on, farther North, to safer lands.

 

 

Beneath the cellar (where Mr. Boynton currently kept his workbench for tinkering with engines and such) a trapdoor remained hidden. From the Boyntons' cellar, a narrow passage led five hundred yards northeast to the Cloutiers' home. The Cloutiers didn't know about the secret wooden panel in their basement, or the cramped, unlit room behind it that was only big enough for someone to hide within if fearful for their life. The room had been empty of all but spider webs long before the Cloutiers emigrated from France in '02.

The hidden room in the Cloutier basement connected with the tunnel system, and somewhere in Claude Cloutier's north forty, the tunnel split in two. One shaft had collapsed farther north where the overhead traffic on Teetering Road had pummeled it for fifty years. Some people wondered why the road was in constant need of repair. Others knew the reason. They knew and they meant to keep the secret within their tightly held circle.

The surviving tunnel snaked toward downtown. The most frequently trafficked section of the labyrinth, the downtown tunnel had a spur leading away from the main tunnel. The spur--so low to the tunnel floor that most people would have to belly-crawl to traverse it--terminated at a natural gap in a limestone wall. Once inside the gap, the air grew cold. Cold as winter, no matter what time of year.

This was where Thea Calder and Ethan Cartwright passed through to enter the Underground.

After confronting Ethan outside her house, the founder of the Southern Outfitters led her down the alleyway to the icehouse. Once inside, they passed the shelves of perishables, the chunks of ice awaiting Cooper's cutting, and finally, the workbench on the backmost wall where George Banyon's body lay in stasis before his burial.

Beneath the workbench, hidden behind sealed crates filled with rocks, the gap opened up to the spur leading to the downtown tunnel. Thea and Ethan had crawled through one after the other, carefully replacing the crates behind them.

When they left the tunnel system and entered a large cavern, a burly man in bib overalls greeted them. He held a sawed off shotgun at belt level, ready to fire on anyone not permitted in the Underground.

"Morning, Boss."

"Actually, it's much closer to night than morning, Daryl," Ethan said to the watchman.

"Well, it's morning to me. Just had my breakfast, matter of fact."

"Was it good?" Ethan asked. His decomposition had advanced to the point that his lips looked ready to fall from his face.

"Oh, sure was, Boss. The women put out a good spread."

"I'll have to agree with you there. I've never been disappointed. Good thing Miss Calder is exempt from domestic tasks, or my opinion might just change."

Thea clucked as if offended and slapped Ethan on the shoulder. He was always teasing her about her cooking; it had become a game of sorts.

Daryl, keeping his eyes to the floor, acknowledged Thea. "Miss Calder." His nod of greeting deepened to a bow. She smiled innocently, but in truth, she relished the man's subservience.

Ethan clapped the man on the back. "Keep up the good work, Daryl."

Ethan's decomposition began to heal as soon as they left the tunnel system and entered the cavern. The rotting stench of his flesh abated, and the lesions in his face were knitting themselves back to normal. His gray pallor warmed to flesh tones as sinews and muscles reformed and refitted themselves. Stark white epidermis stretched across his healing muscles.

The large cavern, which Ethan considered their town square, was lit with bonfires and oil lamps. Although on a smaller scale, the Underground resembled a town. People offered goods and services, albeit without a single token of currency exchanged. Money was useless in the Underground. Everyone shared in a communal subsistence. At the first hint of capitalistic behavior, Ethan would crush those individuals responsible.

Clusters of people, both men and women, were quietly talking or playing cards. The majority were imbibing from their network of hooch stills in order to maintain the steady drunk that allowed them to remain halfway sane in their claustrophobic existence.

"They've done it again." Thea pointed out the blood splatters along the floor leading to the pit.

"Something must bind everyone who comes here" he said, looking away from the splatters. Only Thea could illicit such a guilty look from him.

Thea stopped, crossing her arms. "Did you force me to fuck that poor girl?" She tapped her foot in the sticky redness for effect.

"No, of course not."

"Would you have thrown me into the pit when I refused?"

"Thea, please. Not now."

"It's disgusting."

"Humans are disgusting." Ethan tried to hold her hand, but she shrugged him away.

"You can stop this."

"I said, not now, Thea." The look in his eye made Thea relent. She didn't take his hand as he wanted, but continued to walk by his side.

His jaw clenched, Ethan begged off the constant approach of people wanting his private ear, or those who wanted to say hello and good day. His hand, now not so much rotting meat as warm flesh and soft skin, took hold of Thea's arm and rushed them through the rabble.

Ethan Cartwright's accommodations were by far the most extravagant in the Underground. His quarters extended far into the hills and the dimensions would measure mansion-like above ground. He had a library, three bedrooms, a dining hall, and within the privacy of his two bathrooms, he had had flushable toilets installed. At the center of his expansive living room, a slow flow of water trickled into a man-made pond. He swam laps under candlelight almost everyday.

"I'm sorry about what I said. It's just… you have such command of your people. If you just told them to end it." She pressed a hand against the still-healing muscles of his chest.

"What am I to do, Thea? What can I do to change their lot?"

"It's boredom. That's all. That's why they throw people to the pit. That's why they drink hour after hour. They're bored and they have nothing to do."

"Again, I say, what am I to do?"

She said nothing, but ran her fingers through the fresh blond hair sprouting at his temples. She had no response because there was no cure for the depravity of the Underground. Could there be a more reasonable damnation? She had her reasons for coming here. Her skin became more taut and smoother upon her visits. Her hair more luxurious. When she looked in the mirror, she saw herself as young as the day she left for California.

After almost three years toiling in Hollywood, Thea reached her breaking point. A hack British director named Paul Hamilton-Hart attempted to convince her that a prominent speaking role in an upcoming movie was hers to have, if she could only find a way to persuade him into hiring her. It was a sign. Not a sign, but the sign. Directors reached for the casting couch card when an actress began showing her age. It was a sure way to sully her as she exited town, a worn hag lugging a battered suitcase.

Thea didn't consent. She had more self-worth than to demean herself to that level. She returned home jaded, weeping in her father's arms when she first saw him. He never voiced a single question about her stay in California, though she saw the words niggling at him. He didn't want to know. He was just happy to see her home and safe.

As Thea tried to get on with her life, working in her father's store, her mind would often drift to stories from her childhood. Tales of passages leading to an ageless respite. A place where time held no meaning. It took her several months to stumble across the access tunnel in the icehouse. When she found it, she felt foolish for having lived her entire life without knowing the Underground existed right below her feet. As she worked her way through the tunnels that first time, a group of watchmen captured her. They were on the verge of throwing her into the pit when Ethan stayed her execution. He took her into his life, and she accepted her role in his, even if at first her skin crawled at his touch.

Her attraction for him had grown since that day he saved her life. He hadn't pressured her as the Hollywood directors had. He always acted a gentleman; it was she who had to convince him to consummate their relationship. Ethan wasn't attractive in any standard sense of the word. But power transformed. It made the lame appear cunning, while the ugly became unique. It took her a long time to trust him. He could be quick-tempered and ruthless with his followers, but just as quickly he could surprise her with his tenderness. He was a man, and she had never met a man outside of her father who could be trusted, but over time, she had let her guard down around him.

"I want you to live with me. Don't return aboveground. Never leave this place," Ethan said. His lips met hers, and this time, she didn't hesitate. She returned the pressure of his lips in equal measure, holding him in her arms. She broke the embrace at just the right moment, when she had his full attention.

She paused, looking at this man who appeared to be not much older than herself, but who was in actuality the father of the oldest living person within Coal Hollow's town limits. His skin was so white the blue veins at his temples seemed to shift just below the surface--baby nightcrawlers floating in buttermilk. His eyes were pink with bloodshot.

A jagged purple scar started at his collarbone and terminated just above his groin. He never spoke of the wound other than to say he received it while fighting for the Army during the Second Seminole War. Sometimes he would cry out in his sleep. Thea would never try to wake him from his nightmare; instead, listening intently, she would try to learn more of her benefactor from the gibberish spilled from his dreaming mind. His dreams would reveal little, just snippets of barked orders, and distressing cries for mercy. He was a pitiful sight, thrashing in his sheets, batting away some unseen aggressor with his fists.

Though he convalesced long ago, the scar remained, so embedded in his flesh that even the powers of the Underground would never completely heal him.

She realized she hadn't responded; she had been staring off into the flame of an oil lamp. She looked up, Ethan waiting on her answer. "I can't do that."

"But I can't live without you. Just stay with me, Thea. It's what I want."

She ran her fingers through his hair. No one else would dare defy him. And she could, to an extent. "It's what I want, too. In time; we must be patient. You need me above. You need me to hear things, and I can't do that here."

Ethan looked at her with unguarded longing. He caressed her cheek. Judging his defeated expression, he knew she was right. "Okay. Until things die down. Until all of this business about those damn fool boys dies down."

Thea felt the warmth through Ethan's touch, and wondered for the thousandth time how such a place as the Underground could exist. A place where life and death were such flighty concepts.

Her mother's oft-spoken words caught her off guard:

Love makes you old, love blinds you and bends your will…

She kissed Ethan once more, and then left him standing by the doorway. She gave him a long-lashed wink as she crawled onto the bed. Ethan's hands were at his sides, fingers twitching, expectant. He looked so lost right now, a little boy. There was still something human looking back at her. She didn't want to admit her feelings were deepening. Becoming more than just convenience. Becoming real.

Love makes you old, love blinds you and bends your will, her mother would say, but sometimes… sometimes that's okay.

With deliberate slowness, she started to disrobe. She could do this now; feel comfortable with this, with Ethan. She opened her blouse and let it fall from her shoulders. She watched his eyes pan across breasts that would never sag, her slim hips and toned legs.

"I'll make certain no one will come to know this place." Ethan joined Thea in bed. "Then, I won't ever let you leave me."

Candlelight danced on his bleached-white skin as he kissed her neck. She ran her hands along his sides, then around to his shoulders, pulling him close. His skin should have decayed long ago, yet he gave off a heat that would one day consume her.

 

 

4.

Jacob shifted the pick-up into a lower gear, the engine grinding like a wounded animal. It lurched forward, smoothing out as they left the driveway, heading north. His mom didn't flinch when the truck caromed through an unforgiving pothole. Jimmy had taught his little brother how to drive a few years prior, thinking that another driver would come in handy around the farm. It had gotten to the point that his mom would head for the passenger side whenever they went for a drive. In his mom's eyes, he was becoming a man. Without Jimmy, she would still see him barely out of diapers.

Ellie sat between them, gripping her rag doll. His mom was scanning the road, the fields, anything within eyesight, searching for Jimmy.

The Bradshaws lived off a nameless dirt road a mile north of where Teetering Road forked from Main Street and downtown. If there was an upper crust in Coal Hollow society, the Bradshaws sat atop that crust. Louise's grandfather had been on the board of the Grendal Coal Company, and the money amassed in that capacity had stayed within Coal Hollow Township upon his retirement when the company moved away. Years ago they had allowed their surrounding fifty acres sprout to forest. Instead of a typical farmhouse, her grandfather had built a sprawling three-story Victorian, complete with intricately styled veranda and a steepled turret. Jacob thought the house looked more like a castle, totally out of place nestled in the woods growing from the unending prairie.

"You stay here with Ellie," his mom said when he made the slight left turn into the driveway. They passed through ornate iron gates and followed the tree-lined drive to the house.

"Mom--" he said, not sure how to argue his case. He wanted to hear the conversation with Louise, but he understood it would be easier to gather information if he wasn't around.

"Were you going to say something?" Her eyes narrowed.

"No. No ma'am."

"I didn't think so. This is important, Jacob. Louise might have information on Jimmy's whereabouts."

"Okay."

He slowed the truck to a stop, the creaky brakes whining the whole way. If the Bradshaws hadn't seen the truck pull up the drive, they would've heard it approach.

"Wish me luck," his mom said as she left the truck.

His mom knocked on the door. When Mrs. Bradshaw opened the door, she paused as if unsure as to what to do. After an unbearable moment, she gave his mom a stiff hug. While not as poor as the Fowlers, Jacob's family had never gotten along well with the Bradshaws, well, except for Jimmy, he supposed. His brother got on real well with Louise, probably too well after reading his journal.

His mom looked back at the truck before following Mrs. Bradshaw inside. Checking the house for movement, he saw people through a shear curtained window.

"What's Louise gonna know?" Ellie asked quietly. Her feet rested on the hump in the middle of the cab floor. Jacob had almost forgotten about her.

"She might know where Jimmy is." He kept his eyes on the window, hoping to see his mom or Louise. The Bradshaws were strict parents; he knew this from Jimmy's grumbling after coming home from visiting Louise. Her parents permitted them to meet on their porch. They would allow them to sit on the porch swing, but would often show up with cookies or glasses of sun tea. Her parents wouldn't let Louise get into the truck with Jimmy, and wouldn't even permit them to meet in town. Obviously, they had worked hard to get around her parents' rules.

"She don't know a thing. Jimmy came to our house, and he'n George went out alone."

"Louise might know something from earlier. We think he might've run off to the army."

"How could he run off if he came to our house? They both went missing at the same time."

"You don't know for sure if Jimmy came to your house. Do you?"

"No, I was asleep until Georgie took the gun from the wall."

Jacob looked away from the window and into Ellie's wide and watery eyes. When he had discovered Jimmy's journal, it seemed like the answer to their prayers. He hadn't taken the time to analyze the possibilities. Now, sitting with Ellie, he knew his mom was wasting her time. Even if Ellie was asleep until George woke her when he picked up the gun, it made no sense that Jimmy wouldn't be there.

"You know, whatever got Georgie, it got Jimmy, too."

Ellie's words cut to the bone. Jimmy wasn't safe and on his way to some boot camp. At best he was missing, at worst, dead. Jacob told his mom he would stay in the truck, but he had to hear what they were talking about. He just had to.

"You wait here." Jacob opened the door, hopped down, then eased it closed, not wanting to make any noise. He slinked up the dirt drive and then up the veranda steps. He got even lower, keeping under eyesight from the windows. The gauzy curtains blew in the slight breeze just above his head. He looked back to see Ellie gripping the edge of the truck's window, her watery eyes blinking with surprise.

Jacob heard his mom's voice through the open window.

"How old are you Louise?" his mom asked.

He couldn't hear the girl's response.

"Seventeen? That's old enough. I was fifteen when I married. Had Jimmy before I was your age. It's tough, but there's worse things in the world."

"Mrs. Fowler--" a man's voice said. Jacob assumed it was Mr. Bradshaw.

"I don't know what you're trying to get at. I know you must be a nervous wreck with Jimmy missing. I just don't know what you expect from my daughter."

"I just want to know if she thinks Jimmy ran off."

"Ran off?" Mr. Bradshaw asked.

"I have reason to believe Jimmy enlisted in the army."

"You think Louise might know something about this?"

"Why, yes."

"Our children might have courted, Mrs. Fowler, but they're still children. They talked socially, sure, but with supervision. I would never allow--"

"Dad?"

"Louise?" Her father sounded shocked at his daughter's interruption.

The girl spoke so softly Jacob could barely hear. "Mrs. Fowler, I… I think he did. He was saying something--the last time he was over for tea--he said he might enlist." Her voice periodically broke with emotion. "He said he wanted to get away from Coal Hollow. Said there was no future in such a small town."

"Fine. Mrs. Fowler, you have your answer. I'm sorry for you and your family. I hope you hear from Jimmy soon. I wouldn't have permitted Louise to associate with him unless I thought he was reputable."

"Okay, Mr. Bradshaw, I'll let you get back to your family." Her voice was strained and on edge. Jacob was surprised she'd given up so easily.

Jacob heard bustling as people rose from their chairs. He scurried back to the truck. Ellie had the driver's side door open and waiting for him. His mom exited the house, Mrs. Bradshaw watching her leave from the open door, her fingers fretting about the lace bodice of her dress.

"Ellie--"

"Don't worry, I won't say nothing." Her lips twisted at a sly angle. "Tell me about it later."

With a sigh, his mom hopped into the cab. "That man doesn't know a thing."

"Mr. Bradshaw?" Jacob asked.

"He doesn't think his daughter could have a sinful thought in her head. He had no idea what I was talking about, and her mother, well, she just stood back and stared at me like I was speaking French."

"Did Louise say anything?"

"No, not really, but she didn't have to open her mouth. I could see it in her face. She's going to have Jimmy's baby. I'm just wondering how long it'll take for her parents to notice."

"And Jimmy?"

"It's just like I suspected. As soon as adulthood stares him in the face, he runs off. Sheriff Bergman's looking into the Peoria enlistment office for me. If he doesn't get back to me soon, I'm going to go out there myself."

Jacob was about to repeat what Ellie had mentioned, but his mom's expression stopped him short. She didn't look happy, but seemed somewhat relieved. He didn't want to hurt her or ruin what little hope she had. There wasn't much sense to Jimmy running off, even if Louise was pregnant. He had gone off somewhere with Ellie's brother, somewhere where they needed to tote around her father's over/under. Now, George was dead, Jimmy was missing. Jacob still had no answers.

 

 

5.

By Cooper's second day working for Henry Calder, he was relaxing to the routines of the store. For the most part, he knew where everything was kept and the job itself wasn't demanding. He could help a customer find an item, or track down a mop to clean up a mess. Only sharing his workplace with a corpse prevented him from relaxing completely. Each time he filled a wooden tote with stock to bring upstairs or when he had to cut a hunk of ice, he would make sure the folds of burlap hadn't shifted, that George Banyon was really and surely dead. Every time, at least to his own eyes, the burlap hadn't moved. Even so, it didn't get any easier.

After showing Cooper around the day before, Henry Calder had checked in on Cooper a couple times today, just to see if the place was still running and in one piece. Midmorning he had told him what a nice job he was doing, and then retreated to his study to smoke his pipe. He was surprised how quickly Calder handed over so much responsibility, but he wouldn't question his motives as long as it limited his time in the icehouse. From what Cooper could see, Thea wasn't much of a help to her father--he had seen her only briefly since he started--so Henry probably relished the idea of someone else making sure things ran smoothly.

Cooper was chasing cobwebs near the ceiling with a rag-topped broomstick. The jangling bells above the door made him turn with a start. The sun was hot, intensifying through the newly cleaned windows. A thin sheen of sweat coated his face.

"Hello, Coop." Sheriff Bergman removed his bowler cap. He wiped sweat from his brow. The thin strands of his hair belied his young face.

"Afternoon, Sheriff," Cooper said. "Can I help you?"

"Oh, just in for some browsing. Not much going on in my office. Needed to stretch my legs."

"Need anything, just let me know."

"Sure will."

Bergman lowered his eyes to the nearest shelf. Cooper raised the broomstick, disrupting a spider from its web. He squashed the pest at the seam of the wall and ceiling. The sheriff was two rows over, eyes still trained on whatever was in front of him, not seeing whatever it was.

"You sure I can't help you find anything?"

The sheriff's face strained with indecision. He swiped a damp kerchief across his face and along the back of his neck. "Well, I'm not sure. I've been meaning, well since George…" the sheriff stopped abruptly, as if he had run out of words.

To end an uncomfortable silence, Cooper cleared his throat. "Sheriff?"

"Has Hank showed you how to place catalog orders?"

"I've placed some already. Mostly odds and ends. What can I help you with?"

"George Banyon's going to be buried tomorrow. I know it won't ship near in time, but it's got me to wondering. I don't have my own bible. Coal Hollow doesn't have a rightful preacher of any sort, hasn't in years. Dr. Thompson is the closest thing we got to a holy man, so he does most the talking graveside, but the whole ordeal… it's got me thinking is all."

"How about I show you what's available." Cooper waved Bergman over to the counter near the cash register. A yellowed catalog was open from when he placed a fabric order for Mrs. Trumount just after he opened this morning. He swiveled the catalog on its lazy-susan until it faced him. Bergman walked over, still seeming sheepish as Cooper flipped through the voluminous catalog.

"Seems like you have this place down pat."

"Mr. Calder was kind enough to offer me this position; I'll do my best not to let him down."

"That's honorable enough."

Cooper waited for Bergman to strike. He couldn't shake the feeling the sheriff didn't just come in to order a bible. Flipping too far in the catalog, to an extensive button section, he flipped back until he found the right page. A total of five bibles descending in value.

"Here we go." Cooper swiveled the lazy-susan until the catalog was facing Bergman right side up.

It took the sheriff no more than two seconds to make his selection. "This one. This is it. How long will it take to get it?" He tapped his finger at the bottom, at a cheap pulp bible bound in a faux leather cover. Cooper wondered what nature of tragedy would hasten the sheriff to dole out money for real cowhide and gilt-edged pages.

"We can get that in, let's see, two-three weeks tops."

"Fine. Let's go with that."

Cooper started filling out the order form, and even with his eyes lowered to the order pad, he could sense Bergman had something else on his mind.

"Coop?"

He looked up from the order pad.

Here it comes, he thought. The transformation from a grieving, soul-searching small town sheriff, to spiteful brow-beater with an axe to grind.

"I just wanted you to know, Dr. Thompson's concluded the boy didn't die maliciously, at least not at the hands of another person. After examining the body, Doc thinks an animal done that to his face."

"An animal?"

"He said a boar could've done something like that, could've run him down. Nothing sharp caused the gash, like a blade or nothing like that. Doc says the boy probably ran into a clearing where an animal was protecting its young. He also said a rock's hard edge could've gashed him up pretty good. If something got George spooked enough, he might've fallen while running through the swamp, and with the force of the fall, and if he hit a rock just the right way…"

"So, you've personally come to tell me this?"

"I didn't mean no harm by what I said the other night. I was wrong. I never thought you did anything to that boy. I would've locked you up if I had. It's just that--"

Cooper cut him off with a waved hand. "It's all right Sheriff Bergman. I understand. You know your townsfolk. You didn't know me from Genghis Khan."

"Gingis-Can?"

"Never mind. Here's your receipt. By the way, how's Ellie?"

"She's a tough one. She's with Jane Fowler, which I think is for the best, even if Charles turns up." Cooper thought back to the night he came to Coal Hollow. He'd learned that Jane used to look after Bergman when he was a child, when she was no more than a child herself. Ellie would be in safe hands.

"So her father just up and disappeared?"

"Charles Banyon might as well just up and disappear for good, you ask me. He done nothing for those kids. If he could just put down the bottle for a while, sober up, the man has talents like nobody I seen."

"How's that?" Cooper asked, curious.

"Well, for one," Bergman said, pointing to the storefront window. "That rocker? It came from Charles Banyon's hand. He can't read, don't know numbers to make an accurate measure. It's all hand-tooled, built by sight without a single measurement. The man has a talent."

The sheriff tucked the order receipt inside his shirt pocket and replaced his sweaty bowler to his head. He nodded Cooper his thanks and made for the door.

Before leaving, Bergman said, "Problem with men with talents… seems like they always got equal parts weakness offsetting them using it."

 

 

 

6.

"I can't go," Ellie said quietly, her voice barely carrying in the humid night air. She could have been talking to herself.

Jacob's mom had set the girl up on the sofa in the living room, but during the first night under the Fowler's roof, Ellie had entered Jacob's bedroom, pulling a blanket in with her. As dawn neared, he'd tumbled over her as he got up to get a glass of water. She'd curled up in a ball on the floor, covered in the blanket despite the heat. She'd tried to apologize, but Jacob would have none of it. He drank his water, returned to his bed, and was soon back asleep.

This morning, after Jacob told his mom what had happened, she moved the mattress from Jimmy's bed to his bedroom floor. Jacob hadn't said a word about it. He wasn't crazy about Ellie sleeping in his room, but didn't see any harm in it either, at least for the short term.

"Did you say something?" Jacob asked sleepily. He wasn't tired, but didn't want to let on that he had been awake since he climbed into bed more than an hour earlier. He couldn't get his mind off things. Crazy things. Things that made him wonder about just about everyone he came across. If he didn't know his brother, then who could he know, who could he trust?

"I just can't go. The burial. I can't see them pouring dirt on Georgie."

He didn't know what to say. He couldn't see her face; only a narrow band of moonlight broke through the darkness of the room.

"I'm scared he's gonna be knocking to get out, and they'll still dump dirt on him. Or maybe he can still hear and feel everything, but can't do nothing about it. Can't even move to scratch an itch from his nose."

"Ellie--" He still didn't move, feeling helpless.

"I can't, Jacob. I can't go."

"Ellie, you do what you want," he said, hoping his words weren't a mistake. He paused to collect his thoughts before continuing, "You don't need to be there for George to know you love him. He's in heaven, and in heaven, they have a way of knowing what's in your heart."

She let out a shallow, hitching breath, as if she were about to cry. Without seeing her, he knew she gripped her rag doll desperately.

"I'll talk to my mom. I'm sure it'll be okay."

They were quiet for a while, and he could sense her relaxing. Her breathing became deeper, heading toward sleep.

Staring into the murky blackness of the ceiling, he listened to his own words still ringing through his head. If Jimmy was dead, then he was looking down on him from heaven right now, looking into Jacob's heart and seeing how much he missed him, and knowing that he loved him.

That's only If. If means jumping to conclusions. If doesn't mean a damn thing.

He shook his head, angry at himself for thinking the worst, for growing comfortable with it.

Ellie's small hand reached out from her lower mattress and squeezed his forearm, nearly startling a scream from him.

"Thanks, Jacob."

"It's okay, Ellie."

"Jacob?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you… can you be my brother?"

Emotion choked the words in his throat. "I'd be happy to."

Ellie didn't say any more, just squeezed his forearm again before pulling away. He could feel the trace heat left by her touch. Such a small hand, small as a doll's. He closed his eyes, shutting out the darkness of his bedroom, returning to the darkness of his thoughts. He flashed to the memory of George's body floating in the swamp muck and his mom clearing the debris from his face. He'd felt unexpected joy when it turned out the body hadn't been Jimmy. That momentary elation was now a pit of guilt eating away at him. Having Ellie sleep nearby sharpened his guilt. She was so young and alone. Someone had struck down the only responsible person in her life. No one deserved that. No one. He wouldn't wish that on his worst enemy. Not even a colored deserved that.

George Banyon was dead. Jimmy was missing. Missing, he reminded himself. Only missing. Missing just means he's not here. He's somewhere else. Somewhere safe. He had to believe it. Had to.

As Jacob's thoughts began to twist with sleep, he resolved to do whatever he could to find his brother. And though he wasn't crazy about Ellie sharing his room, he felt better knowing she was safe. And that he wasn't alone.

 

7.

Like every other night since entering town, Cooper retired to his bed above Calder's Mart, with a full stomach and a reassuring ceiling overhead. As he began to dream, it was as like every other night.

Running through the furrowed cornfield, his heart pounding, fearing capture, adrenaline stripping his nerves raw. Finding the house, THE house. Remembering to give the knock he didn't know he knew until his knuckles hit the door, and then waiting as whoever was playing the pipe organ stops, comes over to answer the door. The screech as it opens, and the old lady with the rheumy eyes allowing entry into her house. THE house.

She doesn't say a word, this stranger, his savior. She doesn't even look over her shoulder at him as she leads him down a narrow hall, down a flight of rickety stairs. On the landing, seeing his own reflection in a mirror, his skin uncommonly lost in shadow, slick with sweat. The old woman disappearing around a corner. His fingers touching his face, unbelieving, still staring at the reflection.

And remembering the old woman, hurrying to catch up to her farther down the hall. When he finds her, she smiles, her two remaining teeth telling of hard life and advancing age. Someone so put upon, living an inelegant life of burden, and still she offers her home to strangers.

She opens a door to a small, unlit room. Walks to the far corner. Feels along the wall, finds the hidden door, presses a fake panel, opens it. She smiles her two-toothed smile, and she gestures for him to enter the hidden room.

When he enters, only rejoice, his fear subdued, not gone, not forgotten. Simply pushed aside.

For inside this hidden room, his wife, his father-in-law, all he could ever hope for. Salvation.

 

 

Cooper woke, the sun at an odd angle, too high in the sky. He blinked, rubbed the crust from his eyes. He checked the time. Late morning. He had slept the night through. He jumped from bed, a plan corkscrewing through his brain, ending in an unwavering conclusion. That house. Horace Blankenship's old house. He couldn't remember much of his dream. Just that he had the urge to step inside the house, to take possession of it. The feeling was overwhelming, blocking all other thoughts.

Cooper cleaned up, and then left his rented room above Calder's Mart, heading straight for Harvard Square Bank.

 

 

8.

Jimmy tore a strip of fabric from his shirt and bound his bloody hands. He'd known hard work. His whole life had been hard work, his dad having died when he was three. Straight away, he'd started helping his mom around the farm. Jacob couldn't even waddle yet, but somehow, Jimmy knew from the moment their mom dried her tears that he would need to look after Jacob, and that his mom needed him, too. And he worked. Small chores at first. Cleaning up after himself. Taking his dishes to the sink. Making sure he didn't leave a mess. Soon enough, he starting sweeping the floors and feeding the animals. When he was old enough for school, he worked before and after class. He'd taken over much of the farm's responsibilities by the time he was eleven. Still, since taking up a shovel and pickaxe and working next to Benjamin and Harold, Jimmy had never worked so hard in his life. Had never come close.

His palms had no skin. Swinging a pickaxe and wielding a shovel for hours on end rubbed away his skin to nothing. They felt coated in liquid fire, as if lit kerosene had been poured into his open palms, left to sear and bubble.

The thought of returning to work chipping away at the "Paradise" was maddening. Knowing his captors had imprisoned Harold and his family for so long only made it worse. For the first time since entering the Underground he was both coherent and desperate enough to flirt with the idea of escape.

"Don't bind them so tight," Benjamin said from where he slumped along the floor nearby. It was the first time the younger of the two Negro men had initiated a conversation with him. Benjamin kept to himself, occasionally speaking with his father-in-law in muted tones, always after their work was through, always with a leery eye cast in Jimmy's direction.

"I have to stop the bleeding," he said, gritting his teeth.

"But you wake tomorrow, you gonna rip off whatever skin you got left." Benjamin's shoulders were thick with muscle and his rough cotton shirt was a tatters strewn across them like seaweed. Jimmy wasn't sure if the uncertain light was playing tricks, but looking at Benjamin's hands, he saw no sign of bleeding, only a hint of callusing. "You intend on stopping the bleeding, but in the end, you just bring yourself more grief. Trust me, the air down here has a peculiar way with injuries."

Jimmy loosened his makeshift bandage, just enough to get the tingling back to his numb fingers.

"What a white boy like you doing down here, Jimmy?" Benjamin shifted his weight closer, until he could speak without fear of anyone else overhearing. Jimmy wasn't used to a colored man speaking to him so openly, especially one he had never spoken to. Just being around colored people wasn't an everyday occurrence. Their kind tended to keep to the unincorporated village of Lewiston. It was an afterthought on the map five miles away, yet their populations rarely mingled. In the aboveground world that felt so far away, if he came across a colored person, he'd feel an adrenaline surge, not from fear of danger, but more from fear of the unknown.

He tested his bandages and found the pain lessening. "It's stupid." Jimmy was ashamed, not wanting to admit risking his life to chase after an old woman's folktale.

"What am I gonna do, laugh at your plight?" He shook his ankle enough to rattle his shackle.

"White Bane," Jimmy said quietly. "Ever hear of it?"

"That big old devil fish? Sure I have. Even down here you hear tales. Most times whites ignore you like you're not there, so you hear plenty. You were trying to make something of yourself going after that legend, weren't you?"

"I guess. We saw a light, me and my friend George. We went through a small tunnel. You know the rest."

"Big mistake, boy. White Bane could've gotten you before you even made the other side that tunnel. Tell you the truth, you might've been better off." Benjamin sighed and stretched his arms over his head.

"That was you, in the tunnel when they grabbed me, wasn't it?"

"I don't recall much what happened that day."

"What were you doing so far from the stables?"

"What do you think?" Benjamin said.

Was Benjamin trying to escape when they came through from the underground lake? Jimmy tucked the little nugget of information away for later consideration. Benjamin wasn't a happy man. No one would be under the circumstances. The only men who seemed happy were the former miners brought Underground and put to work in exchange for their immortality. It seemed like Benjamin's personality had a hard enough edge that he might be a valuable asset if Jimmy ever figured out a way out of here.

After a while, Jimmy spoke up. "You seen White Bane?"

"What do you think?" he repeated.

Their conversation lagged again. Benjamin reclined and a moment later closed his eyes. Jimmy thought he had gone to sleep. Only after his ears attuned to the cavern's quiet did Jimmy realize a couple of men had stumbled close to where they rested.

"Where that nigger girl at?" one man said, slurring thickly.

"Let's just get another bottle instead."

Jimmy feigned sleep, closing his eyes to slits. He could see Benjamin wince at the mentioning of his wife, a woman Jimmy had never seen within sight of her husband. While Scully allowed for the male slaves to rest after long hours of labor, Edwina never returned.

Thinking of Louise, and just how much he had let down both her and the baby, his stomach clenched like a fist. He couldn't have just acted responsibly. He had to go on one last adventure. Now he felt certain he'd never see the sun rise or set again.

"Oh lord, it's been too long," one drunk said, laughing. "Gonna get me that girl." The voices were louder, closer. Jimmy recognized one of them, but couldn't quite place it.

"That's what you get for drinking yourself 'til your willy ain't nothing more'n a keg-tap on your bladder."

"Yeah, well she gotta be somewhere 'round here."

"Gimme that bottle."

"Fine, here 'tis."

The two men entered the stables and stood staring straight at Jimmy.

The shock of seeing the two men, and recognizing one of them clear as day, forced his eyes wide. His hand went to his ankle shackle, tracing the chain tethered to the wall. The heady odor of mule shit and hay chaff intensified. Jimmy tried backing away, but the stables were a dead end. No place to hide.

"Why you little shit," Charles Banyon said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, coming to a drunken stasis somewhere in the middle. He gripped a bottle in his hand.

Jimmy gasped. He scrabbled back, not sure what to do, even less sure what George's father might do. Benjamin still hadn't moved. He could have been a dead man.

He found his voice. "Mr. Banyon, it's Jimmy, George's friend."

"You fucker… comin' down here…" Charles Banyon slurred, staggering forward, waving his index finger in the air. He grasped the stone wall and held on to it as he walked. His eyes glistened with anger. The bitter stench of his urine-drenched clothes filled the stable stall.

"Mr.--"

"Don't say nothin' boy." Banyon dropped the bottle and it shattered on the floor.

"But… George--"

"Goddamn bottle--"

"Mr.--"

"I ain't no mister. Shut your trap," Banyon snapped, looming over Jimmy.

Jimmy didn't say a word. He tried to plead with his eyes, tried to show Charles Banyon how much he wanted to leave this place. How much he wanted to live

He had to do something. Quickly.

"This is all your fault, boy. Now we can't let you go running 'round down here, then go back up top. Back to school. Talking. Spilling all to every open ear. This place ain't for kids, this place ain't." Charles Banyon teetered over, and for a moment, Jimmy thought the man was going to pass out. But as he leaned over, his hand came to rest on a rock the size of a summer-ripe cantaloupe. He shot a noxious breath from his nose, grimaced, and then hefted the rock. His face contorted to a sneer, slightly softened at the edges by his stupor.

"They went after George, Mr. Banyon, I don't know what happened, we were fishing, and then we came to this tunnel, and then they went after George. Please, Mr. Banyon!"

Banyon lifted the stone to shoulder-level, resting his hand near his collarbone. His expression didn't change with Jimmy's pleading. If anything, he seemed more focused, more clear-headed. "George. Why, George… he's dead."

Jimmy cowered away, his back scraping the stone wall, the shackle digging into the raw skin circling his ankle.

"No!" Jimmy flung his arms in front of his face.

"This ain't pretty. Can't have a soul speaking on this place." The melon-sized rock rolled at his finder tips. Drawing his arm forward, a bulky shadow swept through the corner of Jimmy's eye. The rock tipped from Banyon's grip, and the shadow descended on him, engulfing him, changing the rock's trajectory.

Jimmy saw the white spark of Benjamin's eyes as he held back Charles Banyon's arm. Banyon's friend leapt on Benjamin's back, pummeling him with wild, drunken swings. The rock fell through the air, glancing off the cavern's wall, ricocheting back, slamming into Jimmy's temple.

Jimmy had never known such darkness. Not even in this darkest pit of hell residing just below the surface of the town of Coal Hollow. As his brain hemorrhaged, the pressure building inside his skull, flashes of still-photo memories shimmered like stars during a summer night:

His mother's stoic profile as she gazes from her bedroom window, as always, searching for something not quite tangible.

Jacob's unabashed and goofy grin, his cheerful side guarded from watchful eyes.

The curve of Louise's breast, her peaked nipple, her brown eyes peering through her tousled blonde hair. Her cheek's warm glow, awash in expectation for their child.

His father, a fading memory nearly gone, a mere outline of angled cheekbones, waxed mustache, warm laughter.

The images were gone. In their place, only emptiness.

 

 

9.

Two hours was all it took from the time Cooper woke from his latest dream to walk into the Harvard Square Bank, inquire with Mr. Prescott about the ownership of the old Blankenship property, and leave the bank with a property title in hand.

He couldn't explain his feelings for the house. Luckily, Mr. Prescott didn't question his motives, either. If he had, Cooper didn't think he could speak about it without sounding crazy. For his life entire, his most impulsive act had been to start this trek in the first place with little more than his grandmother's dying words to drive him. Despite never having stepped foot inside the Blankenship home, he couldn't leave Coal Hollow without inquiring about the property. Once his query began, his obsession with the place only intensified. His desire for knowledge became desire to own it.

His father's voice, gruff and tired, wasn't welcoming when he answered Cooper's call from Prescott's office. Cooper began the conversation intending to explain that he wasn't coming home until autumn, perhaps not until the holidays. His father took the reins of their conversation in his controlling manner, firing off a string of questions, more an interrogation than discussion.

In the end, however, he agreed to wire Cooper the money for the property. It was Cooper's money from his Chicago bank account. His father was reluctant to send it, but he did.

With Prescott busying himself with the pretense of searching his file cabinet, Cooper turned the conversation in his favor. He raised his voice, breaking through his father's relentless questioning with one brief, yet biting, admonition:

"You lied to me, father. My whole life, you lied to me."

His words silenced his father and solidified his own determination. He would buy this house. He needed to. As the silence stretched, Cooper thought the line had gone dead, or his father had hung up on him. This was Cooper's only ammunition against his father, and he used it reluctantly. Speaking with a broken, defeated tone, he asked Cooper where he could find his pertinent banking information, and agreed to go to First Federal just as soon as he got off the phone.

Within an hour of his phone call home, he and Mr. Prescott had worked out the logistics of the title transfer. Mr. Prescott, dressed in an impeccable black suit, talked by phone with his counterpart at First Federal in Chicago. He secured the money transfer, following protocols Cooper knew little about. Cooper agreed to pay ten percent of the latent mortgage. He thought it was a great deal, a steal really, but Mr. Prescott wagered it was a beneficial deal for both parties. The property was untended, a wasteland with a nominal mortgage sitting dormant at the bank for decades. Having Cooper buy the land, even at a cut-rate deal, insured the land would be put to use, while the bank was able to cut away a mortgage taking up dead space on its balance sheet.

"We're done here, Mr. Cooper. You've signed your papers. We'll need to file some paperwork with the county, but otherwise, the property is yours."

"Great. Thanks for your help, and so quickly, too."

"Normally it takes longer for a property transaction, but I can see you want to get in before the weekend. Plus, I'm in a hurry." Prescott looked at his watch, and noting the time, blurted, "Oh, I really need to be going."

"Sorry to have kept you."

"George Banyon's funeral is in the morning, and I have to make sure my suit is pressed."

"I should let you get going then."

"Thanks, Mr. Cooper. When you get a chance, let me know how things are going with the house."

"Sure thing."

They shook hands as Mr. Prescott led Cooper through the front door. The banker locked the door, and hurried around the side of the building. Hurrying to prepare for the burial of the dead boy Cooper had found less than a week prior.

What the hell did I just do? he wondered, looking at the property title in his hands. All he had wanted was for someone to show him the house. All he wanted was to have a look around. Sate his curiosity. But the price closed the deal.

He shook his head. The store fronts seemed sleepy and slightly sad. What have I done? Cooper picked up his travel pack tucked under a bench outside the bank, lifting it to his shoulders. Walking past Magee's Barbershop, he glanced inside. Finding the place deserted, and continued on. He considered making an appearance at the cemetery the following morning, but thought better of it. He was a stranger, after all. Besides, other matters required his attention.

He held a brown envelope in his hand, the property title folded inside. Hopefully, he'd find answers inside the envelope as well. Answers to the yearning that had grown in him since he first saw the house, and possibly even answers to his journey as well. His yearning to be inside the old Blankenship home, now his home, only grew as he walked from town. He walked at a good clip down the dirt road for ten minutes until he stood at the mouth of the overgrown driveway.

His overgrown driveway.

Turning up the long driveway, fat rain drops began to pepper the brown envelope. His pack gnawing at his bones, his thoughts shifted to security, warmth, a roof over his head. He would need to speak with his boss sometime soon. He hadn't spoken to Hank about his new purchase, and he was hoping to continue with the job even though he would no longer need the room rental.

The rain didn't matter. Nothing mattered to him but entering the house. He looked up at a second story window, sensing a light from the corner of his eye. He saw a warm yellow glow, then blinked away the rain spattering his eyes. When he opened his eyes again, the pane was dark and slick with rain. The rain clouds shifted overhead. He chalked it up to a glare on the glass, a small respite in the cloudbank, the sun peeking through for a moment, nothing more.

He climbed the steps of the wrap-around porch. He wondered how he was going to get inside his new house, considering Mr. Prescott, in his haste to leave, couldn't find keys to give him. But he found the front door slightly ajar, as if someone might be expecting him, a slit of darkness at the corner of the frame. Had it warped open on its frame? He touched the door, gave it a small push. It opened smoothly, and the unmarred blanket of dust let him know there weren't any squatters around.

That's one problem down, he thought. How many to go?

Stepping through the door, he glimpsed a memory. Or maybe a slice of dream. The door opening slowly, this door, his door, an old lady with watery gray eyes and stooped shoulders welcoming him inside. Welcoming him in to security. Salvation.

His sense of déjà vu was strong as he closed the door. The rain intensified outside the porch's protection. Lightning flashed in the distance followed by a grumbling thunderclap. Weak sunlight cut across the floor, revealing thick dust, dangling cobwebs, and hallways splitting from the entrance room. He didn't see any furniture, only a pipe organ's profile near a window at the farthest corner of the house. Somehow the instrument didn't seem out of place tucked out here in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. It didn't surprise him one bit to find it exactly where it was.

Cooper inhaled deeply the long closed-in air. When he exhaled, the whole house seemed to follow suit.

 

 

Cooper had been mistaken. It hadn't been the sun peeking through the cloud canopy to glare against the window pane. He had seen a light. A warm halo emanating from the house's interior. Waiting for him. Waiting for him to come inside, set things in motion, set things right. The lantern extinguished itself when Cooper glanced its way. As he entered the house, it retreated from the window, into the shadows gathered at the room's corner. There its owner remained. Waiting.

 

 

10.

The shading wasn't right. The contrasting shadow hovering at the hollows of his cheeks far too dark.

Betty sat at the edge of her bed, a dull pencil held at an acute angle a quarter inch over the paper, waiting. As it had since she learned of George Banyon's death, her hand was shaking. She almost didn't notice it anymore, but she could see it reflected in her sketching. She just couldn't get it right. It was as if her mind had lost the ability to communicate with her hand.

Junior was her muse. He slept across from her in his bed, his eyes clenched shut, an occasional whimper slipping from his parched lips. But her sketch was not of him asleep, but rather of an earlier memory, the final moment before his life instantly changed. Scrapes and mud and gleaming white teeth. Tromping back from his boyhood escapades, enthralled with the feeling of living so free; the moment before their mother told him their father had died in his sleep.

He wasn't handling this well, her brother, Junior. Junior? He'd never be Gerald. Her father was Gerald, and he was alive. There was no reason to place such responsibility on a child.

Betty flexed her hand, trying to squeeze the shaking from the digits. If anything, it worsened.

For as long as she could remember she had kept a sketch pad nearby. She enjoyed landscapes, but the scope and scale were a bit daunting. Portraits were better, but sketching figures modeling her own clothing designs was her true joy. It would be her way to escape this place, or so she hoped. The first short scratch of lead to paper would transport her to a place where all women were glamorous. A place without want or loneliness. She hoped beyond hope to live her dream, to let her sketches pave the way to living that lifestyle. Problem was, who would notice her talents in Coal Hollow?

She flexed her hand again. It was troubling. How could she ever escape this place? No one would consider hiring a clothing designer with a palsied hand.

Junior shifted from his shoulder to his back. He opened his eyes, blinking twice. He looked around in confusion, but then rolled onto his stomach, slipping back into an uneasy sleep. Betty felt guilty for using him for inspiration (and not doing a good job at that), without his consent. She hugged a pillow across her lap, covering up the sketch pad, hugged it as if it were a loved one. Clutching the pillow made the shaking travel up her arms, until her whole body trembled.

Junior started snoring. Normally annoyed by the methodical ripsaw, she felt oddly comforted by it now.

She tossed the pillow aside and considered the sketch. The shading was too dark. While she had accurately rendered his boundless smile, and the scale of his limbs and torso was as close as she could master, the contrasting made Junior look cadaverous. The harsh detail of his arm muscles made him look skinless. Frozen in an anguish beyond recourse.

She couldn't tear the page out quickly enough. She crumpled it and threw it under her bed, out of eyesight. She shivered again, shivered so long it felt like she would never stop.

She kneeled on the floor, took one last look at the sketch pad, then banished it under the bed as well. She might never again toy with the idea of designing. Never dream of escape. Not as long as she couldn't hold a pencil steady.

Or perhaps her pencil revealed the truth. Junior wasn't damaged in any physical way, but he might as well be. The image she had drawn was of Junior on the cusp of an indelible emotional wounding. Below the surface of his skin, flowing through him like lifeblood itself--the last moment of his innocence. She had captured that instant, first in her memory, and just now in her sketch. Having been a party to the destruction of her brother's innocence, she abided the deception following in its wake. She couldn't cast aside her subconscious while tapping into her creative reservoirs. It wasn't possible. Sketching would often reveal what she least wanted to face.

Alone with the familiarity of his steady snoring, she could easily start to cry. But she didn't. She wouldn't let herself. What sense were tears now?

She held on to the only thoughts that seemed any comfort: He's alive. I'll see him again. When I do, he won't be sick. He'll laugh without coughing himself into a fit.

He's alive.

Repeating the phrase made it real, made it true.

Daddy's alive.

But she still felt like crying. Because her father wasn't the only person she missed. In a way, Junior and her father distracted from other matters.

She couldn't wish George alive and make it so.

She remembered earlier this summer, how nervous he had been standing on the river shore, dripping wet after climbing free of the clouded water. His shoulder sported a welted raspberry from crashing into the shallow river bottom after jumping from a rope strung from an overhanging tree branch.

She'd heard the rumors for weeks--since before school let out for summer--and had hoped the rumors were true.

Then it was finally happening.

Sitting, waiting, expectant, Betty closed her sketch pad before looking down from her perch on a high boulder.

"Hi, Betty." His voice cracked. His nervousness was charming.

Her heartbeat quickened, and she couldn't help laughing, both at his stupid stunt, and with the thrill of reaching the point of actual verbal communication.

George thought she had been laughing at him. He looked toward the other guys from class for a possible escape route, then wiped a droplet of water dangling from the tip of his nose.

Before he could run away, she spoke the first coherent thought to come to mind, "You're all wet."

"Yeah, well, what can I say?" he said, letting out a pent-up breath. "You should come in. It's nice."

"I'm not really dressed for it."

He looked disappointed. Practically devastated.

"Maybe tomorrow?" she offered.

"Okay. Tomorrow." His lips slanted into a grin, looking like he would say something else, something witty. Instead, he scampered off, bare feet slapping the rocky shore, right up to the swinging rope. Grabbing it in full stride, he flung himself into the air, letting out a whoop of joy. He splashed down, then jumped up with the spraying water. When George joined his friends wading in the shallow, Jimmy Fowler glanced her way before giving him a clap on the back.

She remembered the sun warming her skin and the familiar smoothness of the sketch pad under her fingertips, and not wanting anyone to see what she was working on. Before George had approached her, she'd been drawing the rocky shore. It had only been an excuse. Everyone knew she was artistic and wouldn't question her taking in the river's detail. The absence of certain details would be more telling than those she chose to include. To keep her longing private, George wasn't in the drawing. The landscape was a mere backdrop to consider at a later time, when she could add the detail of her memory. His squinty smile, his tan shoulders.

Their first interaction had been so simple, so flighty, yet when she got home that night, while trying to sleep, she considered the possibilities: Betty Harris Banyon,Betty-Mae Banyon. It had been all so silly. So naïve. Naïve, but still somehow genuine. And tomorrow, an event as genuine as life had to offer. A funeral. George Banyon's funeral. At that moment, it seemed like the worst thing in the world was that she never donned her swimsuit, never went splashing through the river at his side.

She wiped a single falling tear from her cheek and her memory drifted away like a dream. She noticed Junior had flipped again to his stomach. His snoring had quieted.

A new sound filled the void. Muffled voices. Coming from outside. Raspy, but ordered, like the chorus of a strange form of sentient insect.

Daddy's come home, she thought immediately. No, that's wrong, she corrected herself. Would never be right. Daddy's never coming home.

In her daydreaming her leg had fallen asleep. She rubbed life back into it, and then stood, warily looking out the window.

The moon was two days shy of full, hovering along the treeline like a glowing white face. The craters could be a crude mouth, a mere smudge of frown below hollow, downcast eyes--eyes that saw, just a second before Betty, people gathered at the family graveyard.

Junior was still asleep. Setting aside the distractions of Junior and her father and her fruitless longing for George Banyon, she stepped into her houseshoes. She opened the bedroom door as quietly as possible. The house was still. Her mom wouldn't be in her bedroom. She knew where she would find her.

The screen door screeched as she pulled it open, too loud. A chilling mist swept against her legs as she descended the stairs. The ground felt damp underfoot.

The mist carried the distant voices to her, amplifying the lowest tones of speech. She couldn't make out any words, just the weight of their mournful sadness.

Her every step drained her confidence. Still, her curiosity compelled her to keep moving. A steady breeze pressed the bare skin of her arms and legs like a firm hand. Goosebumps traced her spine and she wrapped her arms in front of her. Despite the unknown ahead, the darkness, the simple fact she could no longer be certain of anything that went on in this town, she hurried on through the mist.

She crouched the last twenty yards until she reached the property's edge. The voices separated, became distinct. The moon's luminescence touched the skin of the three people gathered around the newest grave.

A scream caught in her throat like a clenched fist. She wanted to cry out, but couldn't.

Her mother was weeping on Magee's shoulder, who in turn, looked terribly uncomfortable as he patted her back. Doctor Thompson held a closed book--possibly a bible--between his elbow and ribs. He was speaking over the open pit of her father's empty grave, his tone that of a preacher. A cheap pinewood casket sat next to the empty hole. Mismatched mounds filled the open casket--she could see just the crests of them--and in the moonlight they shimmered as if coated in wet paint or mud.

Thompson yelled into the grave, "We don't have all night." Hearing his tired, frail voice, Betty realized just how close she was to the grave, a grave she assumed was empty until now.

A mere twenty feet away. Her close proximity and the affect of the whitewashing moon left everyone in stark contrast to the dark backdrop of her Aunt Paulette's cornfield. Her mom looked wrung through and heartbroken as she continued to sob.

Dirt rained up from the hole, collecting on an already substantial pile. "I'm nearly done, just gimme a minute."

A minute went by, then another. Dirt flew from the deepening hole at alarming speed. It soon stopped and a shovel came flying out, clinking against a rock.

Fingers gripped the lip of the hole. The person grunted, pulling himself up and free. Betty uttered a noise like a strangled bird, unable to gain control of herself. She slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late.

Eyes darted her way. Her mom's. Dr. Thompson's. Magee's. The gravedigger's horrid black pustules set deeply in his gray-skinned death mask.

The man was rot and decay. Festering wounds seeped along his face, neck and naked shoulders. Pus and maggots fell in clumps like ladled stew from the cavernous hole in his cheeks. Something else twisted in the unnatural cavity. Black and sinuous. Creeping from between his ragged lips. A vile tongue lapping at his own ooze.

"Betty!" her mom cried, pulling free from Magee.

When Betty met her gaze she verged on fainting, but instead, she fell to her hands and knees, vomiting deeply, repeatedly, painfully.

Mom's involved in this? Something so horrible. How could she?

"Oh, my God, Betty! Why can't you just… stay out of it?" Her mom came to her side and rubbed her back with soothing circles as she would a flu-ridden child. "My poor girl." Tears made her voice watery.

But Betty wasn't soothed. Not one bit. "What," she gasped as the retching trailed off. She spit to clear the taste from her mouth. "What… what's going on?"

She looked from the pine coffin to the rotting man. Shock flashed across her face as if she were seeing him for the first time, as if it were possible to forget such a hideous sight. She fell to her rump and began pushing away with her feet. "No. Nonono! This isn't right. This isn't happening. This just isn't happening!"

The rotting man shambled toward her, leaving behind a slime trail of himself like a snail's path.

"Leave her alone, Scully! Don't you touch my daughter!"

"She's seen," the thing said.

"I've told her the truth."

"She knew that's her Daddy in a bunch'a pieces in that box?"

Betty gained her feet, and she couldn't help herself. Looking again at the coffin, she saw a denim work shirt that should've been pale blue from dozens of washings. But torn a dozen times over, now stained with gore that looked like spreading pitch in the moonlight. Shreds of fabric holding together shredded human meat.

She was going to be sick again, but swallowed hard. Swallowed right past the lump gathered in her throat.

"You don't need to put it so," her mom scolded the rotting man.

Betty had to get away, as far away from this place as possible. She no longer cared about her dreams of escaping to the high class fashion world, of champagne toasts with big band music ushering in the dawn. She no longer cared because she no longer harbored such hopes. She just needed to get away. Now.

Heading back toward the house, the shoe flew from her left foot in a comical arc. She didn't give it a second glance, and didn't turn around, even as her mom's cries became shrill, so shrill her voice cracked and she began to sob once again.

Her bare foot slapped the damp ground. She sprinted up the rise, into the shadows, fear straining her body to its limits. The noise from the graveyard drifted away with distance. The moon climbed out from behind a passing cloud. The pathway became visible.

In two split seconds birthed one after the other, Betty's eyes first acknowledged the animated carcass blocking her way, then a blade's cold bite piercing the skin low on her belly. It carved through muscle, violating her internal organs. Searing pain raced up her abdomen, spreading upward like the pressure of a pulled zipper. She heard the rush of fluids hitting the grass.

Her belly was split from pubic bone to sternum, her flesh rent by a foot-long blade, the warmth of her blood and organs splashing her legs and feet.She fell to her knees in her own filth, and the world seemed to shift on its axis, shifting as if to meet her falling head and lessen the impact of her collapse.

"Ethan! My girl. No, you can't, not my Betty…"

Her mom was somewhere far away, but her voice became louder as she ran up the path, closing in. Betty's senses beat a hasty retreat. For a brief instant she could smell the tang of her own blood, but then thankfully, it was gone.

Her mother's trembling fingers brushed her cheek.

Warm, so warm…

"Don't… don't try to speak, honey. It's, it's going to be okay. I'll fetch Dr. Thompson. He's right… he's right here."

Her mom croaked as if struck. Through her failing consciousness, Betty heard more flesh ripping. Smooth cuts parting the living from the dying. A distressing, protracted sigh--either her own or her mother's--she could no longer tell. A weight hit the ground nearby and didn't stir.

Mom…

Betty's eyes dimmed. In the last of her vision she saw her murderer's pale skin, his arms veined with what looked like wriggling worms. His forearm flexed, twitching the knife at his side. A blood bead seeped from its tip to the grassy path. Her murderer turned toward her house and sleeping brother. Betty's vision shrank to a mere pinprick then winked out for good.

 

 

11.

Scully thought he was going to have to kill Dr. Thompson, but the old man just meekly curled up in the grass and cried. That was a good thing. His boss went up to the house to finish off the family, leaving Scully to keep an eye on things at the graveyard. He was weakening. Badly. He wasn't sure he could take down anyone, even an old man like Thompson.

Gonna fill that hole up good, he thought. Three bodies, no make that four, counting the boy up at the house.

Just when he was about to say a prayer of thanks for Thompson's tears, Magee took out a flask from his pocket. The old barber winced as he tipped it back and drained it, answering any doubts Scully had about Magee.

Good. No hassles from nobody.

"Why don'tcha get your sorry asses outta here?" Scully tried to sound threatening, but only succeeded in shredding something in his esophagus. It hurt like hell--the ripping and rotting and falling apart--but it couldn't be helped. Not until he returned to the Underground. That wouldn't happen until he and Ethan had this big old mess cleaned up. "Another loose end severed," his boss would say.

After long years of dormancy, Ethan was taking more risks lately. His boss would repeatedly implore that it was all for good reason--the consolidation of his power and the security of the Underground, above all things, the security of the Underground. While Scully thought those were valid reasons, he thought something else was spurring Ethan's risk taking. Thea Calder. Ethan wanted her to be with him, wanted to possess her like a golden trinket hanging about his neck. He would do anything to insure that no one would learn about their hidden lair. No, no one could learn the secret. No one could dare threaten his immortality, his eternal happiness.

Magee grabbed the doctor's elbow and helped him to stand. Neither one took their eyes off Scully.

"You have no right doing what you do!" Thompson yelled, spittle and tears flying off him. Waving his index finger at Scully, he stepped toward him.

"That hole's deep enough for another body, another two, you keep yapping." Scully hoped his tone didn't reveal how weak he felt. He picked up his shovel, then with effort, held it high like a brandished weapon. He hoped the men couldn't see the clean white of his arm bone gleaming through his rotten flesh.

Not much holdin' me together. He tried to laugh. His chance at humor couldn't hide the fact he was getting scared. He couldn't remember it ever getting this far.

Why'd Ethan have to go after the boy anyhow?

"Come on, Doc. Let's get home."

"It can't go on. Not like this," Thompson said, but his expression held defeat, not resolve. His shoulders slumped. He wasn't going to fight, and he wasn't going to say anything to cause any more bloodshed. Scully could see it in his eyes.

"Don't speak like that. Now, you know this is how it is. Let's just git while we still can."

"Magee, you have another bottle of the clear stuff?"

"Do fishes blow bubbles?"

Magee and Thompson staggered up the path, careful not to step in the bloody mess that used to be the Harris women.

Scully waited until they were gone, then fell to the ground. He wanted to simply sit and rest while waiting for Ethan, but was starting to lose control of his motor functions.

It was getting harder to breathe. He thought how funny it was to notice such a thing. He no longer needed to breathe, not up here aboveground, but his body continued to listen to instinct. His lungs sucked in air, acting out the motion of respiration. Something beat in his chest cavity, something that pushed and pulled a viscous fluid, something very unbloodlike.

Holding his eyelids closed, Scully focused on controlling the delicate muscles holding them in place. He didn't want the rotten membranes to tear. He hated that feeling; it was worse than paper cuts dipped in vinegar.

His mind flitted back five minutes, seeing that girl's insides emptied out like a tossed bucket of piss. Dead before she hit the ground.

The image sent him further back, to when he first saw Ethan laid up in a hospice bed tucked inside a crumbling Spanish mission on the edge of the Everglades, on the edge of the civilized world. Bandages bound his entire torso. Without them his insides would have spilled like that Harris girl's. He remembered the room stinking of spoiled meat, and searching for it until he realized the stench was coming from his friend. The Seminoles routed Ethan's company, cutting three dozen soldiers to ribbons, gutted stem to stern. Their ambush lived up to the Seminoles' savage reputation; added to it even. And there were niggers amongst them. Mixing nigger blood with savage. The thought had made him nauseous. Still did.

The mission's physician had sent a letter to an address he found in a stack of letters in Ethan's rucksack: his widowed mother in Pekin, Illinois. In no condition to travel the Mississippi to collect her incapacitated son or his putrefying remains, she asked Arthur Scully, Ethan's childhood friend, to go in her stead. He agreed, knowing she wouldn't want to see her son in either condition.

Entering the makeshift hospice, Scully saw mosquito netting shrouding Ethan's sick bed. Netting meant his friend wasn't dead. They wouldn't need to protect a corpse from mosquitoes. They clouded the outside material, while flies buzzed inside the shroud, having hatched from his wounds.

Ethan had been unconscious and feverish. Blisters rimmed his mouth, seeping, crusting. But he was alive.

Scully stepped through the netting and sat in a chair at Ethan's side, swatting the flies away. Taking in the severity and extent of his friend's wounds, and afraid to do anything more, he held his hand, waiting for his eyes to open.

A week later, Ethan woke from a frightful delirium in which he had raved about setting fires to scorch crops and flesh in equal measure, and the necessity to skin the conniving red skin, skin the treacherous black skin. Rid the earth of them. The last words of his delirium haunted Scully, and from that day on, he would often wake from his own nightmares with Ethan's words conjuring up the worst possible imagery.

A distant voice niggled his brain, shaking it free from memory's pull: "Scully. Scully, come on, Arthur, wake up."

Someone slapped his face, hard. Ethan. Ethan had returned from the house. A dull thud hit the ground nearby. The Harris boy. The job was done.

"We need to get you back. In a hurry." His friend lifted him, grunting with the effort as he threw him over his shoulder. "I didn't realize it was so bad. Digging the grave must've made it go faster. I told you it needn't be so deep."

Scully tried to speak but couldn't.

"Don't worry. Here we go. We're going home."

Arthur Scully's body was falling apart. Ethan's hands kept slipping through the muck that was all that remained of his flesh. "Just close your eyes, rest up." Scully didn't know his eyes had opened of their own accord. He could no longer feel his skin, could no longer see.

"I'll get you back safe, then come back to fill that hole you dug." Something from inside his skull was pressing down with the gravity of being carried upside down. The pressure built at his brow line, then found release as something gushed through his eye sockets and into his matted hair.

 

 

"We're going home," Ethan told Scully a few weeks after waking from his delirium.

"We didn't think you'd make it."

"But I did." Ethan grimaced as he stood from the hospice bed. His wound's dressing still needed frequent changing, and he wasn't up to full strength yet, but Ethan had an urge about him; he had to leave this place behind and move on. He no longer wanted to sleep in the bed where he had been expected to die.

They bought two seats in a cramped, rickety wagon from a group of trappers and merchants traveling from the Everglades to New Orleans. Sharing the wagon bed with curing skins pulled taut over wooden frames, the oppressive air smelled worse than Ethan's recovery room. Ethan was still too weak for them to travel on their own, and Scully didn't know the lay of the land, so despite the stench, the arrangement worked for the best. Once in New Orleans, they booked a cabin on a steamer heading back to Illinois, and they were soon on their way home.

Scully remembered the moment specifically. The first mention from Ethan about a venture that would change the course of their lives. Haze rose in indolent wisps from the Mississippi. They both leaned against the railing circling the deck of the steamer, watching the sunrise over the wooded Tennessee side of the river. Ethan leaned closer and in a conspirator's whisper said one word: "Expedition."

"Expedition?"

Ethan glanced around the deck, but it was early and few people strolled by.

"Private Abrahms, he died in the final Seminole raid, he used to go on about how he was going to trap once the fighting was done. He was going to trap live gators and bring them up north, sell them to carnivals and zoos. Once up North, he'd make his return trip home with rich old coots to do some of the trapping themselves. He'd set up cabins along the 'glade's shore, make them real fancy. The best liquor, the best whores, the best hunting and trapping. He'd go on and on like it'd be a damn resort."

"We don't know nothing about gators, Ethan. Don't they bite?"

"Not gators, nitwit. That's just where the seed of my idea came from. A jumping off point."

"You lost me."

"Ain't gators we're going for."

"What then?"

"Niggers. What else? We'll set up an outfitting company for rich southern folk. Some will hire us on to catch their runaways, and we'll track them and collect the bounties. Some will want to come along to bag a prize to bring home."

"Niggers… you know that sounds, well, is that legal?"

"If the right people get a take, anything's legal."

"Sounds like poaching to me."

"Exactly! That's the point. We bring in the Borland brothers for muscle, and with you and me on the business side, we'll be rich in no time."

 

 

That's how it all started. A conversation Ethan had with a entrepreneurial private now buried in an unmarked grave somewhere south of nowhere. Over ninety years ago. Now Scully's chest still fought to glean oxygen from his inhaled breath. His muscles fought the onslaught of rapid decay.

As Ethan carried his friend down the steps to the Harris's cellar, and while he dragged him through the damp, unlit tunnel carved by the Borland brothers in the guise of The Collectors, Arthur Scully's body continued to deteriorate. His mind had receded to the farthest reaches of his memory, to his earliest recollection--stumbling and falling as he learned to walk--when his flesh felt the Underground's delicate caress.

Ethan had saved him, saved his immortality. The Underground worked its wondered, knitting new flesh over putrefied, replacing the dead with something not quite. Scully gasped for air and held it deep in his rotting chest, then let out a laugh that sent oily, putrid tissue sputtering from between his healing lips.

"Let me down, old hos'. I got it from here."

"That was close. I didn't think you'd make it."

"Well, you were wrong."

They returned to the Underground, returned to immortality, with another loose end severed and Ethan one step closer to realizing his goal.

At the outset, they weren't expecting to kill the entire family. Just bury the old man. Give him peace, even though he'd turned down their offer of salvation. They were, after all, a respectable people. The wife would've held silent over the evening's events; but then the daughter came out, and judging her reaction, she wouldn't have kept silent on her own. So Ethan helped her along with that. Then the mother and son had to follow, falling like dominos.

"I best get back and take care of the boy."

 

 

12.

"Are you sure you two are okay here?" Jacob's mom pulled on her black bonnet, lifting the black veil back from her eyes. Her funeral dress was old. She had worn it twice since she buried her husband, each time after losing a parent.

"Yes, Ma'am. Georgie can see me from heaven right here," Ellie said. She seemed relieved not having to go to the service.

His mom leaned over to give her a hug. When she stood, she blinked through tears.

Jacob had woken early and explained to his mom that Ellie couldn't go, that attending her brother's burial would damage more than heal. His mom had argued that it was important for her to go to the funeral to give her a sense of closure. He refused to back down in Ellie's defense.

His mom knew what it was like burying a loved one. After briefly questioned Ellie, she relented.

"Okay. I'm leaving. Jacob, make sure you two eat come lunchtime."

"Yes, Ma'am."

She smiled sadly to both of them, then left.

Jacob went to the window overlooking the driveway and watched his mom climb into the faded black pickup. The engine roared, then she backed away, far more smoothly than Jacob could yet accomplish. Ellie joined him at the window. He parted the curtains, allowing her a better view.

"Your mom's sweet."

"I know."

Since it felt like the right thing to do, he put his hand on Ellie's shoulder, and together they watched the pickup disappear at the end of the drive as it took off down Teetering Road. "Are you hungry yet?"

"No, not really." Ellie left the window and sat on the sofa. She picked up her rag doll, holding it in the crook of her elbow.

"What should we do?"

"We can pick flowers for your mom and have them in water for when she gets home."

Ellie surprised Jacob with how she was dealing with the loss of her brother. After the initial trauma of seeing George's body, it seemed like her tears fell for two days straight. But now she seemed more concerned about his mother than her own pain. He assumed she was hiding her feelings, keeping busy enough so she didn't have time to think. Maybe she felt like she was imposing by staying with the Fowler's. He hoped she didn't feel like a burden, because she wasn't. He thought about telling her this, but couldn't find the right words. "She'd like seeing a bunch of flowers when she walks in. Where should we go?"

"Where the flowers are, silly." Ellie hopped off the sofa, her blonde braids swaying as she moved. She was out the front door before Jacob could react.

"Hold up." Jacob hurried out the door. "Wait for me."

A stiff breeze nudged the cottony white clouds across the horizon as if they were shifting islands. In short order, Ellie gathered a bouquet of flowers from the plants surrounding the house. She made Jacob put the flowers in a vase with water, and then place the white and blue blossoms in the kitchen where the sunlight would shine on them through the window.

But she wasn't finished. When he returned, she pointed to a patch of distant wildflowers barely visible in the distance.

"We should pick flowers she doesn't get a chance to see everyday. That would make it special."

They spent the next hour heading away from home, over grassy hills, through gaps in rickety fences bordering properties. Jacob tried to help, but Ellie was particular about which flowers she wanted picked. He found a cluster of yellow wildflowers in a pasture beyond their property. When he called her over, she gave the blossoms a cursory glance, and then furrowed her brow and shook her head. Obviously, he was missing something important in this chore, probably since he was a boy and would rather toss a baseball around than find the perfect flower.

He was getting hungry. Acting as Ellie's pack animal, with his arms full of flowers, he was more than ready to head back. Ellie was just ahead, keeping her eyes to the ground, but clearly no longer paying attention to the vegetation.

"Ellie, we should head back. Mom'll tan my hide if you haven't eaten by the time she gets home."

She kept walking, dropping all pretense of searching for flowers. She rushed down the next hill, momentarily out of view. As Jacob hastened to catch her, he realized where they were. Dropping the flowers, a plume of pollen tickled his nose.

"Ellie, I thought you said you didn't want to come here?"

Ellie looked over her shoulder at him. Before her, hidden away in a plateau between two grassy hills, Coal Hollow's dead slept their eternal sleep. The Edgewood Cemetery was the largest in the county. Jacob's father occupied a plot in the southern corner, a peaceful weeping willow shading his military headstone from the summer sun. As a family, they came once a month to clear brush and weeds away from the marker. They would each speak to him privately. When they would leave, Jacob always felt like his father had been listening.

"I don't wanna see him, can't see the box they put him in. But I also don't want people seeing me."

"You sure?" Jacob asked. If Ellie had schemed to get him this far from the house, he knew he wouldn't get her to go home without saying a final goodbye to her brother.

"Can't we just get a little closer?" she pleaded.

The fresh grave was close by, the newest plot in a cemetery dating back one hundred years. People dressed in black surrounded her brother's grave. A packed dirt parking area sat between them and the graves.

"Follow me. We'll use the trees for cover until we reach the parking lot, and then we'll stay behind the cars. Is that close enough?"

"Yeah. Just… Jacob, I don't wanna see."

"I'll make sure, and when we get closer, you'll hear the kind things they say about George. When we get close enough, you can close your eyes."

"Okay."

It felt wrong, as if they were doing something altogether disgraceful. Maybe his mom had been right and she just needed to have a sense of closure. They crept closer, staying low in the tall grass. The scent of newly turned earth weighed heavily in the air. The mourners graveside didn't stir, even when Jacob snapped a twig underfoot. They wouldn't be mindful of noise or aware of much of anything as long as they were burying one of their own.

They reached the parking lot, Ellie keeping close to his side. Keeping out of sight, they inched as close as they could without seeing too much or having anyone see them.

Jacob motioned for Ellie to stop where she was, and then he craned his neck around a truck he recognized as Sheriff Bergman's. They'd already lowered the casket into the ground and the ropes used to lower the casket were coiled next to the hole.

A crowd had gathered around Jasper Cartwright, who was reading from a worn bible. He read a passage he must've had memorized, since his vision was so poor and not getting any better. Jasper spoke about someone named Lazarus, about his death and his rising from the dead.

Imagining the dead rising from the ground, the decayed corpses aimlessly moving about, didn't lend any comfort in this trying time. Not borne to a religious family, he wondered about the significance of the story.

"Jacob?"

"Hmm?"

"Who's there?"

"Why, just about everyone. My mom, and Doc Thompson, Magee and Bo Tingsley, Mr. Prescott, the Calders, Arlen Polk, lots of people. Dozens."

"Is my dad there?"

"Sorry, no."

"Are they sad?" Though tense, the girl also seemed somewhat relieved.

"Yeah, they're all sad. They all loved George."

"Good. I mean, it's nice so many people showed up."

Jacob returned his attention to the gathering. People were shuffling their feet. Arlen Polk and Bo Tinglsey broke from the group and took up shovels from the loose dirt pile next to the hole in the ground. They waited next to the grave.

His mom was the first person to approach. She dropped a small white flower inside the grave. She paused, covered her face with a hanky and walked away. She was walking toward Jacob and Ellie's hiding spot.

"I think it's done. My mom's heading in this direction."

"Did she see us?"

"I don't think so, but our truck is just a couple rows over. We should go before someone does see us."

"Okay. Thanks for bringing me. I know George can see me from heaven, but I wasn't sure if he'd be in heaven yet, or if he doesn't take his wings and fly away until… they pour the dirt."

"I'm sorry you didn't get to hear any of the kind things they said about him."

"It's okay. I didn't come for them. I came for Georgie. I wanted to say goodbye."

The crowd dispersed, fanning out in a wide wave to their respective vehicles. "Wait, we can't just leave like this. There's no way we'd get out without being seen. That tree," he said, pointing out a burly tree at the edge of the parking lot. "We should hide over there until everyone's gone."

Ellie offered her hand and he took it. Together, they hurried to the gnarled oak tree. He held her in front of him, sandwiching her with the tree trunk. She trembled against his chest, but didn't cry.

"It's going to be okay," Jacob whispered.

"I don't want to be seen. I'd be too embarrassed."

Jacob glanced around the tree trunk. His mom was walking in their direction, rooting in her purse for her keys. Sheriff Bergman followed close behind, waving his hand as if she could possibly see out the back of her head.

"Jane? Jane Fowler? Got a second?" the sheriff called out.

Jacob shied back behind the tree. Ellie's needy, upturned gaze caught him off guard. He held his index finger against his lips and then chanced another look around the tree.

"Oh, Larry, I was hoping to talk to you," his mom said, drying the last of her tears.

"I heard back from Peoria."

"And?"

"The recruiting office has no record of a Jimmy Fowler come up that way. But that don't mean that's not where he's heading."

"He would've been there by now."

"He could've decided to go on to somewhere else. Another big town with a recruiting office. St. Louis, maybe. Or even Chicago. Might want more time to think things over before he signs up."

"I suppose. Can you keep trying, check in with Peoria again?"

"I sure will, Jane. I also wanted to thank you for starting up the collection for the headstone. The Bradshaw's came forward and footed the bill for the remaining balance. I'm not sure they would've done that without you starting it."

"At least he's next to Mabel. He was a great kid. No one deserved a nice resting spot more than him."

Bergman touched her shoulder. If he didn't look so uncomfortable with the gesture, Jacob might've said something and ruined their hiding spot. "We'll find your boy. If he run off like you think, he's probably just as scared to sign his name over to the Army as facing his family here."

"God, I hope so."

The sheriff tipped his cap, nodded grimly, and headed to his truck. His mom hopped into the pickup and quickly pulled away, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The other mourners broke up quickly, with but a few people remaining in a small circle, sharing tears and memories of George Banyon. As Louise Bradshaw cried on her mother's shoulder, her parents exchanged a puzzled look at her pronounced reaction. Watching the burial, Jacob figured, her thoughts of Jimmy's fate must've taken a darker edge.

As the last mourners filtered away, Bo Tinsley and Arlen Polk alternated throwing dirt into the hole, consigning George Banyon's body to the earth. Forever.

They waited just a while longer, allowing the cemetery to clear out completely. "We should go now. Mom's already going to have a conniption when she beats us home."

"Jacob, Jimmy's not in Peoria."

"I know, I heard."

"He's not in Peoria. No one's found his body yet, either" Ellie said, pressing against him. "Jimmy's alive. I can feel it."

"I know." It felt weird admitting aloud, but he'd been harboring those very same thoughts. It felt like admitting he still believed in Santa Claus when all the evidence said just the opposite. "I feel it too."

"We can't go home, not if he's out there somewhere."

"But we've looked everywhere. Unless someone has him trapped in their house or something like that, I don't know where else to look."

"I don't either, but I know someone who might."

"Who's that?"

"Old Greta."

"Greta Hildaberg?" He hadn't thought about the crazy old lady in so long. Of course she could help.

"She knows everything."

"If we hurry and beat her home, we can ask my mom to drive us. That way she'll never know we left."

"You know she wouldn't go for that. She wants to believe Jimmy enlisted. Nothing will change her mind. We have to do this. On our own. We might not get another chance to talk to Greta."

"We better hurry then." He knew Ellie was right. His mom would just have to be angry. He took the girl's hand and they started back up the hill. As they went, he made sure to take the quickest route, trying to save as much time as possible. Not just because him mom would be angry for them not being home, but also because Jimmy might still be alive.

Sooty black clouds rolled in from the west, rolled right over their white puffy counterparts, moving quickly, carrying along fat raindrops. A storm was forming to wash the new grave, turning George's death shroud to mud.

 

 

13.

Cooper slept the night away curled on the floor in the shadow of the pipe organ. He dreamed his repetitive dreams--stronger now that he was inside the house--the repetitive anxiety of running for his life, the repetitive reverie of finding salvation. When he awoke, he was as calm as a lamb. He had slept late, and would've continued on if not for the driving rain rattling the windows.

Cooper spent yesterday going over the old Blankenship home with a fine-tooth comb. It was a disappointing tour. The more he explored, the more damage he discovered that he would need to address to make the home permanently livable. A roof leak in one of the bedrooms had moldered the wall plaster. The likely cause was the severe warping of the upper floor, which in turn weakened the wall structure and affected the soundness of the roof. He could trace the warping to the sinking foundation at the front of the house. Most likely, the foundation also caused the front porch to list and for its boards to weather badly. The more he explored, the more he pondered his sanity for such a hasty purchase. These repairs were not merely cosmetic, but major projects he felt incapable of tackling on his own. He might be better off simply tearing down the existing structure and starting over. But that wasn't the point, was it? He could build a new house just about anywhere. But he belonged in the old Blankenship house, warts and all. He felt it in his bones.

He didn't know what he had expected when he walked through the front door for the first time. Revelation, maybe? Perhaps nothing so grand, but he'd been hoping for some kind of change to overcome him. Some little something. Nothing changed for him. He was still the same man tramping the countryside, searching--searching and not find--some meaning to his life.

He yawned, stood slowly after sleeping for nearly twelve hours. Judging the unmarred expanse of dust covering every visible surface, no one had stepped foot inside the old Blankenship home in many years. Decades maybe. He ran his fingers across the organ's smooth wood. It fairly filled the small room. A framed daguerreotype sat atop the pipe organ. A stern-looking couple, still quite young, stared at him through the grime-coated glass. He picked up the frame and wiped it with his shirtsleeve. The picture and organ were his only clues that anyone had ever lived here.

"Reverend Horace and Mrs. Eunice Blankenship, I presume." His volume surprised him in the empty house. He looked around as if he might receive a stern look from an overbearing librarian, a look he doled out a dozen times a day in his former life. Reverend Blankenship wore a black woolen suit, a stiff white linen shirt beneath. His eyes were piercing and cold. Deep wrinkles creased his face, as if the passion of his convictions had weathered his skin like tidewater carving stone. Mrs. Blankenship wore a dark, simple dress, fitted down to her wrists and binding her up to her chin. She seemed both timid and subservient, yet still somehow strong. He wondered if she had started losing her teeth when the photo was taken.

It wasn't déjà vu he was feeling--he could no longer dismiss it with that mystical explanation. Everything inside the house seemed familiar, expected. That wasn't déjà vu. Dejà vu was about similarity of experience or surroundings. This was something else. Something stronger. Deeper.

He closed his eyes and could see Eunice as an old woman, as she appeared in his dreams. Her stooped and withered posture, the dark hair in the photo dulled to gray. She was there, just behind his closed eyelids, a stranger from another time he had never met. It was her. No doubt. The kind old woman was the same woman in the photo.

Adrenaline surged through him. He looked around again, expecting someone to be there. The room was empty.

"What do you want from me!" he shouted. Hearing himself call out to vacant air, Cooper felt both half-crazed and inexplicably energized. As the words left his lips, it was as if an unknown vault had opened inside himself. He was supposed to buy the Blankenship house, he knew now. They wanted him to. They demanded it of him.

A floorboard creaked in the front room--a small cubby area where Cooper pictured the Reverend reading religious tracts or Eunice knitting from homespun wool. A reciprocal creak sounded, as if a weight had been placed then quickly lifted from the floorboards. A footstep.

Another step followed, and then another three in rapid succession. Someone, or something, was charging through the front room, heading for the rear of the house.

He stepped into the hallway to confront the intruder (or perhaps host, he thought in the back of his mind). No one was there, at least no one visible. The footfalls intensified--he could feel them reverberate through the treads of his shoes.

Almost as soon as it started, the unsettling noise disappeared. As if the noise itself could unfurl a rush of air in his direction, a frigid gust washed over him. A second wave followed on the heels of the first, dosing him a second time with air the temperature of Hank Calder's icehouse. Goosebumps broke against his skin, but the cold air was gone. Gone just as quickly as the thunderous footsteps.

It took a moment for Cooper to catch his breath, and when he did, his lungs hitched in his chest. Okay. I'm here, and now I know you're here. But I still don't know why I'm here, he thought. He wondered if ghosts could read thoughts, then concluded that he might be a step or two beyond half-crazed at this point.

He looked at his shaking hands and noticed he still held the Blankenship family daguerreotype. On weak legs he walked to the organ and carefully returned the frame to its rightful place. After the burst of cold, the closed-in air felt stifling. He felt compelled to run through the empty house, flinging wide the doors as he went, opening the windows to let in a fresh, rain-cleansed breeze.

"One step at a time, folks," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "I'm here now. I'm not going anywhere." His heartbeat was slowing, but the jolt of adrenaline left him nauseous. "Let's just take this one step at a time. We'll figure this whole thing out. What do you say?"

The house gave no response. He felt like his feet would never leave their rooted position. But they did. He took one tentative step away from the backroom and the Blankenships' portrait. One step followed by another.

He came to the front cubby of a room, looking for any trace of the Blankenships. He found nothing. Not even the dust looked unsettled.

He wondered if he was hearing things. How could there be any other explanation? The Blankenships didn't call him here, didn't compel him to buy their home. Did they?

The sound of breaking glass pulled him away from pondering his own lucidity.

His initial thought was that he'd been caught. Someone had caught him sneaking through a house that wasn't his. His second thought was that Horace or Eunice were trying to communicate with him. The noise had come from upstairs. He bolted up the warped risers, hoping to catch them by surprise.

A bedroom window was spider webbed with cracks. The room was empty--more importantly, the room felt empty. After a moment's disappointment he looked through the window and saw a blond head bobbing out of sight. The rain obscured his view, and the dirty window made it almost impossible to make out any details. He pulled up hard on the window and managed to budge it open before the left side seized up.

He heard another unsettling noise, stone shattering stone.

Cursing under his breath, he forced the window open far enough to stick his head through. Lightning lit the dark afternoon. Thunder grumbled across the prairie. He saw Jacob Fowler, obviously in a foul mood, flinging stones at Cooper's new home. The boy stood in ankle-deep mud, apparently oblivious to the rain.

As Cooper craned further out the window, he could just make out a girl's mud-streaked shoes hanging over the edge of the wrap-around porch, safely out of reach of the rain.

Another rock smashed against the foundation.

"Hey! Knock it off!"

Jacob Fowler was so shocked that when he looked up he fell onto his back, still staring at the window. Realization set in. The boy recognized Cooper.

"Jacob, you wait right there. I'm coming down."

 

 

14.

"We gotta get outta this rain." Ellie's clothes clung to her skin, and her legs were splashed with mud. They had been walking toward Greta's for half an hour. If Jacob was uncertain of his hunger when they were picking flowers, then he was beyond certainty now. He would eat his own shoe if he didn't need it for walking.

"It was sunny when we left the house," he said defensively. The day had turned into such a mess, and not just because of the turn in weather. "We can take shelter at the Blankenship house. It's not far off."

"Not in there. It's haunted."

"It's not haunted."

"Sure it is. Ghosts walk the halls at night. The old reverend and his wife carry torches and read passages from the bible."

"If there's ghosts, which there aren't, why in the world would they do something like that?"

"Maybe it wasn't their time to die."

"There's no ghosts, 'cause they didn't die there, Ellie. They moved away, or didn't Greta tell you that part of the story? It's just abandoned. Besides, we aren't going in. We'll just duck under that big porch until this rain lets up some. We'll dry out in no time."

"Fine. As long as we don't step foot inside. But let's hurry, though. I'm getting cold." Lightning flashed across the darkening sky.

"We can head back."

"No, you're right. Let's try to wait it out under the porch. If we turn back now, your mom won't let us back out to talk to Greta. This is our only chance."

When they could see the ramshackle house, they ran up the driveway, splashing mud from the deepening puddles. Jacob's chest burned by the time they reached the house. He was surprised Ellie followed so close behind. She ran past him, all the way up the steps, only reining in her speed by grabbing the circular banister supporting the porch's roof.

"You're quick for a girl." Jacob leaned over with his hands on his knees.

"Well, you're slow for a boy."

Ellie sat at the edge of the porch, her muddy shoes dangling along its edge. The fabric of her rag doll had turned gray with wetness. It now looked cheaply made instead of merely quaint. "I'm hungry."

Bushes walled off the porch from the road. Ripe blackberries hung heavily from the leafy branches. Jacob plucked a wild berry and plopped it into his mouth. At first sour, the berry dissolved, becoming sweeter, making his stomach grumble. "Look, we've got food right here." Jacob plucked the fruit into his palm, eating half of his take. "Try some." He offered Ellie the other half.

She gobbled the berries, barely chewing. As if the proffered berries gave her a sudden burst of energy, she reached into the rain to pick her own. The rain didn't ease in the slightest as they ate all the berries within easy reach. Another wave of black clouds rolled in from the horizon and extended clear over the roof of the house.

Jacob felt helpless. He no longer wanted to ponder his brother's fate, or wonder what horrible agony he could be suffering this very instant. All he wanted was to stop thinking about anything bleak or depressing. Stepping into the mud, he came across a smooth, egg-shaped pebble. He kicked it loose with his sodden shoe and spotted a target. A large boulder peaking from a cover of tall grass. He picked up the stone and cocked his arm back past his ear, then threw with all of his tension and anger as he released the rock. It spun just high of the target, cutting through the grass, coming to a stop after colliding with a tree trunk deeper in the grass.

"She'll know we're okay," Ellie said softly.

"I'm sorry?" Jacob looked up from his search for a new throwing rock. Ellie once again sat on the top porch step. With her hunger sated, the fatigue had left her cheeks, replaced by crimson berry streaks.

"Your mom will know we're okay. We left the flowers in the kitchen. She'll see them and know we're okay."

"I hadn't thought about that." Even though his brother had disappeared without a trace, Jacob hadn't considered how his mom would feel if she came home from the funeral to find the house empty. His only concern had been trying to stay out of trouble. Now, considering how much his mom wanted to keep their family together and strong, he felt like an inconsiderate ass. "I hope you're right."

With some effort, he pulled an oblong rock from the mud. He spotted a new target: the metal coal chute door set in the foundation of the house. The rock slipped his grip as he whipped it through the air. It tilted end over end in a rainbow arc, hitting a second floor window.

"Jacob!"

"I didn't mean it. It slipped."

"Your gonna wake the ghosts."

"Ellie, I told you, there's no such thing." Ignoring Ellie's worry, possibly even spurred on by it, he snatched another rock from the muddy ground. The rain washed over him, running freely under his clothes, over his skin. He felt cold but refreshed. He aimed and fired. This time the trajectory, while truer, still missed the coal chute door, shattering against the stone foundation.

"Jacob!"

"All right, fine."

"Hey! Knock it off!" a voice called out from above.

Jacob's heart seemed to stutter as he looked up, certain he would see Reverend Blankenship staring sternly from the window, waving his bible through the air in condemnation.

Someone leaned at the waist from the window. Getting wet and angrier each passing second. Before Jacob could realize ghosts couldn't get wet--if they did indeed exist--he fell over on his back. He recognized the man--it was the hobo from the search party. Cooper something-or-other.

"Jacob, you wait right there. I'm coming down."

 

 

15.

Cooper was initially upset at the children when he brought them inside. Once they were out of the rain he had assured them that they were safe, and after Jacob Fowler had apologize about a dozen times for breaking the window, they began to relax. They stood shoulder to shoulder, dripping puddles onto the dusty floor. Besides being soaked through, their skin was pale and they looked strained as if from lack of sleep. With such a sorry sight standing before him, Cooper couldn't stay mad.

"Here, take these." Cooper handed them each a thin wool blanket from his pack. Rain had drenched him many times in his travels. He'd learned that even on a warm day, a heavy rain could leech the heat from a person's core.

"You know, I have some chore money saved. You can have it to fix that window."

"For the last time, Jacob, it's okay. I forgive you. The window was probably no good anyway, and I would've replaced it before winter. Now just dry up and get warm. I'll heat up some tea to chase the chill from your bones."

"Did you buy this house?" Ellie asked. Her lips were no longer blue-tinged, but purple, warming to pink. She kept looking around, as if expecting someone, or something, to jump out from hiding. He thought it might be a smart caution to bear. While he couldn't feel the Blankenships' presence, he couldn't discount his earlier encounter with them, either.

"Ellie--" Jacob touched her forearm, glaring at her.

"I sure did," Cooper said and then turned his attention to Jacob. "It's okay Jacob. I'm not a vagrant or criminal by any means. Actually, I used to be a librarian." Cooper couldn't help noticing Jacob raise his eyebrows dubiously. Cooper turned back to Ellie. "I was just passing through Coal Hollow on my way back to Chicago where my parents live, but once I saw this house, I just had to have it. Strange thing is, I was never looking to buy a house. I suppose if I hadn't seen it, I would've kept walking and would've never stopped in town."

Cooper broke open his pack and pulled out a bundle from a side pocket. Unfurling the campfire-stained fabric, he sorted the contents on the floor. He then poured water from his canteen into a coffee pot and then set up his tin can stove he had been using on the road. He flicked a match, and set the coffee pot on to boil.

Just short of nightfall a week after he took to the rails, Cooper had met an old tramp named Ju-Ju Bee. As they shared a campfire that night, Ju-Ju had sorted out Cooper's plight right away. Cooper had come down with a cold as soon as he left Chicago, and now it sat in his lungs, shortening his breath. He had lost weight and had little strength to make his own food. Nipping from a flask and laughing at some internal dialogue, Ju-Ju considered Cooper. The gray bristles of his beard had twisted as his face contorted into a smile. He didn't say anything for awhile, but he did set up the camp stove--a coffee can attached to a lantern's fuel belly--just as Cooper was now doing for these kids. That night, he made a savory chicken soup and strong tea that he shared with Cooper.

The tramp had mentioned his real name, Jerome. The other tramps called him Ju-Ju Bee, a nickname of a sort for Jew-bastard. He followed up right away in a low, defensive tone that if Cooper was uncomfortable with sharing a campfire with a Jew, then he could have it all for himself. And be lucky to wake in front of the dead embers, lucky enough to wake up at all with that flu deep in his chest.

"You can sit down, take a load off," Cooper said to the children as he prepared the tea.

They followed through as if he had given an order, sitting side by side on the floor, still not appearing altogether comfortable being alone with a stranger. Perhaps they even sensed Eunice nearby.

The night he met Ju-Ju, all Cooper had the energy to do was nod, his fatigue quickly catching up to him. Yeah, it was fine. He held no ill feelings toward Jews. None whatsoever. He remembered feeling lucky he hadn't come across a tramp with eyes for stealing his gear and a violent bent to his personality.

The coffee pot began to steam, and from his pack Cooper produced three dented tin cups. He checked them for cleanliness, handing the children the cleanest two and wiping the third with his shirttail. He dropped a tea bag in each cup and poured the steaming water. Ellie gripped the cup in her palms and brought it to her cheek, letting the steam warm her. Jacob, sipping too soon, winced at the heat. Cooper exhausted the stove flame and gathered his mess.

Ju-Ju had stayed with Cooper for a week, the whole time grumbling under his breath about not wanting to take up roots for fear of dying if he did. The old tramp nursed Cooper along until he could fend for himself, albeit with a nagging fatigue that felt like a fifty-pound burden on his shoulders.

During his recovery, Ju-Ju taught Cooper how to tramp. Starting out, Cooper knew next to nothing. Ju-Ju laughed at his naiveté, wondering aloud how Cooper had survived on his own, even for a week. The first thing Ju-Ju taught him was what to look for when choosing a freighter to catch, and the proper technique to employ as to not die a miserable death under the weight of the coal-burning beasts. He would then demonstrate next to a boulder near the campfire how to hide from the bulls. Ju-Ju had all sorts of distasteful tidbits to pass along about the bulls--the train conductors of the PN&E railway being the worst. They'd club a tramp to death with their batons before he could get a word out in defense.

Through his many stories, Cooper learned how to forage for food, how to stay as dry as possible, and how to cook on the go. After dinner one night, Cooper drifted off while staring into the campfire's hypnotic flames. As he slept, Ju-Ju snuck away, catching a freighter for parts unknown, his wanderlust compelling him to get on the go.

"Little muddy out to go for a stroll," Cooper said. The tea's warmth had pacified the children. The rain had eased in small degrees over the last few minutes.

Jacob brought the cup to his lips again, tempting a scalding of his tongue. The boy nodded. Ellie's cheeks had flushed with warmth. Cooper thought she might fall asleep if she weren't so suspicious of her surroundings. He looked at the camp stove Ju-Ju had left behind. He had used the re-made coffee can to cook numerous meals of bland mush or tasteless brown rice in the last year. His savior on that long ago night was a kind man, despite his rough exterior. He wished he could've said goodbye or at least thank him for saving his life.

Cooper was about to ask Jacob if they had been to the funeral. Certainly the kids had attended, but he wondered why they had wandered off. Instead, he said, "Are you going to say what you're doing out in this weather, or am I going to have to guess?"

Ellie still scanned the shadowy room. She spoke to Cooper in a whisper, "Old Greta."

"I'm sorry, I'm not familiar--"

"Ellie," Jacob cut in, hoping to quiet the girl. "He don't need to know."

"Come on, Jacob. Mr. Cooper's been nice to take us in, and you seem to like the tea just fine. There's no harm." She turned back to Cooper. "Greta knows things."

"From my experience, it's good to know things," he said and found himself smiling. Despite the circumstances, he couldn't resist Ellie's charm. She possessed an equal measure of innocence and intelligence.

"She knows things no one else knows."

Jacob set his tea aside, then stood. He walked to the window in quiet protest, his back to Ellie and Cooper.

"How so, Ellie?"

"Don't know, really, but she's got a way about her. She can tell you the weather for the day you were born, down to the color of the clouds and if the crickets started singing earlier than normal 'cause the spring rains held off for the night."

"Really?"

"Sure she can. Everyone around's seen her do it. Ain't that so, Jacob?"

The boy didn't move. Cooper saw his angular profile, his crossed arms, his solemn eyes trained out the window.

"You decided to visit Greta on a day when the whole of the summer's rainfall seems to be falling just this afternoon?"

Ellie didn't answer, but her expression darkened.

"Ellie, the rain's stopping. We catch a break, we'll make it to her house without any more trouble." Jacob removed the damp blanket from his shoulders, dropping it to his feet.

Ellie's eyes briefly held Cooper's before shying away. That half-lit second revealed the weight of her unguarded anguish, the longing for her brother.

"Let's go then." Ellie stood and handed him the empty cup. "Thanks for the tea, Mr. Cooper. It was a lifesaver."

Ellie met Jacob at the door, their wet footprints trailing across the dusty floor.

Cooper felt torn. Looking about the house, he saw all the repairs he needed to tend to, that he felt compelled to do. But more importantly, his thoughts returned to his hope that he might learn more about the Blankenships and what they wanted with him. But the children. Innocent, desperate, looking for answers from an old lady. An old lady "who knew things."

Jacob opened the door for Ellie and followed her out.

Cooper caught the door before it could close and called out as they stepped from the porch to the driveway's waiting puddles. "What's this Greta going to help you with?"

The children stopped walking. Jacob didn't turn, but Ellie did. "Someone killed Georgie. No one knows who, and no one knows where Jimmy's at, but both me and Jacob know he's still alive. If there's a person in the world who knows where Jimmy could be, it's Greta. She's gotta know." Ellie blinked through tears.

"Wait a second," Cooper said.

Jacob looked back, putting his hand on Ellie's shoulder. "Mr. Cooper, you can't stop us. What're you gonna do, carry us home?"

"No. I'm coming with you."

 

 

16.

"He's not going to last much longer," Dr. Thompson said six hundred feet below ground. He was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. His sleep had been spotty at best since the death of George Banyon. With the additional stress from the slaughter at the Harris farm last night, and then George's burial this morning, Thompson felt lucky to still be standing.

Ethan Cartwright was a thin white line gliding through the dark water of his private, hand-hewn pool. With machine-like precision he pulled against the cold water, acting as though he hadn't heard the doctor.

"Ethan? I need to know how you want me to proceed." He rubbed his arms. His bones hurt whenever he came to this place.

Ethan pumped his arm through a final fluid arc and reached for the pool's edge. "What do you recommend?"

"Your son is bed-ridden. He's an old man."

"Aren't we all these days?" He stood fully, the water falling from his naked body. If he stood still, he could pass for a statue extolling the virtues of perfect health. If you could ignore the purple scar bisecting his chest.

"He's going to die. I cannot be more serious. His heart is weak, terrible arthritis twists his limbs. He can't see well enough to make his way safely through his own town. He doesn't have long."

"Hand me that towel, would you?"

As Thompson handed him the towel, their eyes met.

"What would you have me do, Doctor? He won't step foot in the Underground. I cannot force him."

"Can't you? Like the others? Can't you send the Borland brothers?"

"If I brought him here, would I also chain him to a wall?"

"Go. Talk to him. Convince him."

"I understand your concern--growing up, my son was like an older brother. You would never see him suffer." Ethan dried his chest with a rough towel. His scar became a more menacing purple, savage and pronounced after swimming in the cold water. "But--"

"He's going to die," Thompson cut him off.

Ethan gritted his teeth, but something in his eyes softened. "Please leave. Now."

Thompson looked like he would continue arguing, but exhaustion weakened his resolve. He turned to leave. When he pulled the door shut behind him, Ethan was alone.

Soon he would be even more alone, having outlived his own son, a man lived to a ripe old age. He hadn't seen Jasper in… oh, he couldn't remember how long. Decades. But he loved him even though he never again wanted to see his own father.

After long minutes of internal conflict, Ethan called to the man guarding the door to his room. He asked him to fetch Leo Borland.

 

 

17.

The darkness lifted from his body. An insistent heat intensified within his heart, spreading outward, pulsing through his veins, reaching his extremities. The heat itched like the worst ever case of chiggers. Oh lord, Jimmy would rip through his skin to get at that itching. If only he could move.

That was the worst part. No feeling besides the itching. No ability to move. He concentrated, focusing his energy on his eyelids, at the thin cleft where the delicate membranes touched at the edges of his lashes, until a bundle of energy formed in the middle of his forehead like a clenched fist.

His eyelids fluttered.

"Jimmy, lie still. Don't try to move too much too soon." Close by, Harold Barrow's voice. Reassuring, yet scared.

What had happened to him?

He searched for his last memory, the last thing he remembered before…

Jimmy tried to speak, but words wouldn't form. The concentrated fist inside his forehead loosened and the energy cascaded throughout his body, sparking synapses awake. His lower lip trembled uncontrollably, letting loose a quiet whimper. He could taste his own exhaled breath floating languidly at the tip of his tongue. Stale and sour. Like a slab of steak sitting outside an icebox far too long.

All at once he took in a breath, and he realized he hadn't been breathing. The cold air caressed his lungs and the feeling was exhilarating, some kind of intoxicant. The breath rushed from his lungs in warm, fitful spasms. He was reluctant to let it go, as if the air itself were a friend leaving for an unknown length of time, not certain to ever return.

Until the next breath came. And another.

His chest heaved, his arms twitched, and then with all the effort he could harness, he flipped from his stationary position on his back, coming to rest on his right side. That same damned candlelight greeted him when his eyes fluttered open. Golden wisps flickering in the cavern's constant and subtly flowing breeze.

"You sure in a hurry to go on living." Harold sat on the cave floor by his side, stroking the white whiskers of his pointed chin.

Jimmy tried once more to speak, but all that came out was garbled and weak.

Hardened pools of blood pressed against his spine, at the back of his neck, in his calves. It ran liquidly again through his blood vessels, and as it flowed, it leveled off throughout the rest of his body. Blood sought the lowest point only when it stopped flowing, when the heart no longer pumped. He knew this from his experience on the farm when he would slaughter a milk cow past its prime. After slicing its neck--the beast hanging limply and quite dead from a barn rafter--the blood would gush from the wound, draining into a metal trough on the straw-strewn floor. If he didn't act quickly after dispatching the animal, its blood would pool at the lowest point until the distended tissues would verge on rupture, grown purple and hard.

"It's not pleasant, Mr. Jimmy, not at all. Take it easy while you adjust." Harold patted his hand, his touch warm against his ice-cold flesh. At least now he felt something.

Jimmy stopped struggling. He closed his eyes. He remembered Charles Banyon, drunk as all get out and with a drinking friend in tow, stumbling across the old mule stables where he and Benjamin had been resting. The drinking friend repeatedly bleating out, "Where that nigger girl at? Where she at? It's been too long."

He remembered feeling sorry for Benjamin. For Harold, too. Poor Edwina. And the hatred in Charles Banyon's eyes. Hatred brought on for reasons Jimmy didn't understand. Banyon coldly stating that George was dead. His best friend, Banyon's own son, was dead. Jimmy's lip trembled uncontrollably.

George is gone.

He remembered the melon-sized stone falling from Banyon's grip, knocked off course by Benjamin's foolish bravery. Ricocheting off the cave wall, but still connecting solidly with his skull. A sharp, bitter agony stabbing his skull. After that, only emptiness. Cold, cold emptiness.

Jimmy had died. Just as his best friend had died. But his friend was never coming back. Jimmy couldn't wrap his mind around what was happening to him. Was this hell? Purgatory? Was he now a ghost, a memory, a dream?

"Where's Benjamin?" he croaked painfully.

Harold spoke as if he hadn't heard Jimmy, or if he did, that it didn't matter enough for him to respond directly. "You know, I find myself thinking back on my times in the fields--"

"He saved my life. Where is he?" Jimmy cut in.

Harold continued on, "Tobacco season runs from--"

"Harold, where's Benjamin?" he said sharply. He still couldn't move much.

"I got an idea where he's at, Mr. Jimmy, an idea I just don't like at all." Harold paused, collecting his words. "After that man hurt you, they took Benjamin away. For a long time, he cried out… the things they musta done to him."

"Where, Harold?"

"Pretty sure the waste pit."

Jimmy could immediately picture what Harold meant. They dumped the waste rock from their digging into the gaping hole. It was a cold mouth that Harold opined led to Satan himself. A place where light can't live, where warmth never existed. Scully would torment Harold and Benjamin by threatening to dangle them into the pit, winched down by the slack of their own intestines. Lowered as low as their guts would allow and let Satan's breath frostbite them.

"He's not coming back. Not with the Paradise about completed. My boy's gone."

They'd tortured Benjamin for attempting to save him. Jimmy kept quiet, guilt sickening him.

"You know, when I close my eyes, I can't recall a setting sun no more. Can't remember a single thing about it."

Considering Harold's word, Jimmy thought of his father, buried when he was three. The memories best remembered were of pure emotion. Laughter and good humor. Not much more than that.

"Get's me thinking there ain't no God. No God would put any of His creatures--even the lowly--through nothing like what He done to my family.

"You wanna hear something funny? Benjamin--I never liked him too much, didn't like him courtin' after Edwina. He had book learning and was a house slave. That Joss Parkins, some say he a bit moony in the head… he had strange ideas. Raised at Parkins's plantation, Benjamin never worked a day in them fields. He learned reading and writing. Parkins thought he was doing himself a Christian duty. I never thought highly of no nigger going off kowtowing to no… well, he just wasn't right for my girl. But Benjamin, me and Edwina met up with him at a hideaway house where they're kind enough to help get you north on up to Canada, but 'course them bounty men, they catches up to us. Chases all the three of us down some tunnel into the ground. Benjamin, they killed him right off once they cornered us down underground. He fought with them, fought harder than any man before, you ask me. And they killed him dead. Then they had their way with Edwina, all of them, all of them nigger-haters had their turn… forcing me to watch the whole while. Full of bloodlust, they slit me and 'Wina's throats. We died, Mr. Jimmy. But next morning, wit' all that blood dried in black rivers on the floor, wit' all those bounty men sprawled out, passed out, Benjamin and me an' Edwina stirs awake just like you just did, and we all come to, all awake and alive.

"Seeing us rise like that, like some almighty spirits, them bounty men, and the townsfolk kind enough to help 'em find us, they just about seized up and died. They had no idea what to think. But in the end, they comes up with a solution. They up and stayed is what they did, us doing their bidding. Just like old times.

"That was the last day that was different than any the others that followed. They put us to work. You know what Mr. Jimmy? That boy I thought weren't no good for Edwina, he learned me reading. Sure enough, an old Nigger slave boy from Joss Parkins's tobacco plantation learned reading.

"Benjamin'd scratch letters on the floor, and I learnt them one by one, and soon I'm reading words. Now, after so long of practicing, I bet I read better 'an that Scully bastard."

Jimmy couldn't say much. His body could only manage simple commands. Move a finger, bend an wrist. Finally, he braced his elbows on the cold stone floor, levering himself into a sitting position. Sweat dripped from his forehead.

Pain and sweat and struggle. Dead people didn't have any of the three. Jimmy was somehow doing all three and ever more.

"But the funny thing ain't me learning to read. Funny thing is me learning I loved that boy. I loved Benjamin like my own blood, and I would've done anything for 'em. Now it's too late. He ain't coming back."

"Harold, I have family of my own. A brother, a mother. And I'm gonna be a father soon."

"If you can, forget 'em, Mr. Jimmy, that'd be the best thing for you to do to get on with things, you ask me. With them so close by, you'd go mad otherwise."

"I have to get out of here. My family needs me. Harold, you can help me, can't you?"

"No."

"Harold, please."

"I can't do that. Mr. Jimmy, don't you know it yet? You died. You're one of us now. That means you stay here or you're just as dead as your buddy George."

 

 

18.

The rain-soaked grass clung to their thighs as they broke from the muddied drive to cut across the back of the old Blankenship property. The rain had eased to a humid mist and the thunder had become a weakening echo. The haggard gray sky appeared to be catching its breath after taking a beating.

"We don't need your help, Mister," Jacob said.

"Don't think of it as me helping you. Maybe I just needed to get out of the house, see what the new neighborhood looks like."

At his side, Ellie looked up at him. "It's fine, Coop, really. Don't listen to him." Then she called to Jacob, who was a couple steps ahead and getting the worst of the wet grass. "You sure this is the way, Jacob?"

"It's over there, away from the road a stretch."

Before Cooper took to the rails, before its harsh miles whittled away his city-soft body and his beard sprouted into wild bristles, he worked at the Carnegie Library a few blocks from his family's home. Every morning he woke with the sun, pulled on a fresh suit and tie, and then ate a light breakfast of jam-slathered toast while savoring a cup of black coffee. He would head out the door, at ease with the world and his role within it.

Now, as he made his way through the back stretch of his new property, accompanying children fraught with worry over missing and murdered loved ones, he couldn't help marvel at how things could change in such a short period of time. Arriving early at the library, he'd gather the newspapers collecting at the door, bringing them inside. He'd open the window blinds, and as the morning sun bled through the dusty slats, he could imagine opening the library every day until his working days ended. Those quiet moments when he had the library to himself, when he could hear the slightest creak or sigh of a floorboard as he walked, he knew those times were over. His life had taken a different course.

"So, how's your mom doing?" He wanted to speak with the children, but their shared subject matter was limited. He didn't think it appropriate to bring up Ellie's dead brother. He had thought about Jane Fowler intermittently since he had first seen her on the night he discovered George Banyon's body. There was a hard edge to her, life having worn away any smooth angles.

"She's fine. Just a peach," Jacob said sourly.

As their clothes got heavier with rainwater, Cooper came to a conclusion long in coming: Jane Fowler was an attractive lady. While usually not a difficult conclusion at which to arrive, Jane was different. She didn't possess Thea Calder's starlet beauty. Jane's face was prematurely lined and somewhat plain. Her hair was dull and disorderly, while her eyes were cold and severe. But the way she walked, while assured and almost aggressive, was still graceful; he saw grace even with her nerves stripped raw during their search for Jimmy. She was authoritative, and controlling, but circumstance had forced her into that role. Thea Calder thrived in that environment. For Jane, it was a duty.

"Don't think being kind to us will in any way open her eyes to the likes of you."

"Jacob--" Ellie said, embarrassed.

He could only guess Jane's smile would sparkle in her eyes, reflecting outward, touching everything with a gentle hand. He could only guess, considering he had never seen her smile.

"I was just trying to be polite." He glanced at the boy and then looked at the field ahead, but he still felt Jacob's glare burning through him, ferreting out Cooper's intentions for his mom. Feeling threatened. Doubly threatened. Jane was both his parents.

For a boy to grow up without a father must have been a terrible thing to experience. Since Cooper's father had always worked exhausting hours, it had often felt like his mother had raised him alone. When his father was home, their interaction was limited to barked orders and submissive compliance. He never understood the man, could never figure out what he wanted from him. Cooper had tried to please him, but his efforts never seemed enough. He didn't approve of the way he dressed, the way he spoke, the career path he had chosen.

Some of Cooper's fondest childhood memories were the uncommon moments when his father would invite him to sit on his knee. In his gruff voice he would regale him with nostalgic tales from his youth, when he ran loose through the untamed docks of New York City. His gruffness would soften with wistfulness, but in hindsight, the stories were nothing more than cautionary tales intended to keep him focused and obedient. His father would emphasize his only reason for running loose through the docks--having angered sailors or half-drunken policemen chasing him--was that he had no mother to come home to. At this point in the tale, his father's voice would inevitably lose its softness, even its gruffness, becoming a dry rasp of a thing. His eyes would sheen over with tears. He would struggle to keep his emotions in check as he would once again tell the story about his mother. The same words spoken, unchanged in all his tellings, about how she had died in 1892, crushed under the weight of a faulty tenement wall. A victim of the overcrowded, wild metropolis.

But Cooper's father had lied. All of those times, all of those tellings, his fondest memories of his father, all lies.

"Cooper?" Ellie called out.

From the age when he still sat on his father's knee, until the fateful day when Cooper arrived home from work a mere year and a half ago, his father had lied.

"Hmm, yes?" he said dreamily.

"Are you okay?" Ellie asked, concerned. The sun had broken through the remnant gray cloud cover. Birds once again twittered away, happy for the storm's passing.

"Just thinking is all." He continued walking with Ellie at his shoulder, feeling a wet spider web break across his arm as they cleared a thatch of scrub trees. He wiped his arm clean against his shirt.

To this day, the memory was crystal clear. His father had been away to Philadelphia on business. After braving the snow-swept, congested street on the way home from the library, Cooper stomped the slush from his shoes on the doormat and pulled off his winter coat. He heard his father speaking in the parlor. A log snapped with moisture under a stoked fire. Quite distinctly, he remembered rubbing his palms together for warmth and thinking he would catch up with his father and enjoy the parlor's warmth. He remembered hoping he was in a good mood.

But when he entered the room, the new fire banked high behind the fireplace screen, Cooper found his father speaking quietly with an old woman seated in a wicker-backed wheelchair. Hunched over, white hair pulled back from her face, a constant tremor shook through her left side. When Cooper made eye contact with her, a smile swept over her whole countenance--not just her mouth--but in her eyes her smile gleamed, in her cheeks a healthy glow warmed her drawn cheekbones.

He was struck silent but managed to return her smile. Seeing a Negro woman in their home had thrown him for a loop.

"Father, a guest?"

"Yes, a guest. A very special guest."

Cooper approached the old woman, extending his hand. Her touch was bone-dry, her ashen skin cold against his palm. He could feel a slight tremor all the way through her right hand.

"I'm Theodore Cooper."

He could sense his father shifting anxiously from one foot to the other. It was foreign sounding coming from him. Unsure and nervous.

"Velma Fortune. Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

She held his hand firmly, almost desperately, much stronger than he expected. He was finally able to pull away, turning back to his father.

"Your trip went well, I hope."

"We finalized the new distribution contracts. The expansion should go as planned."

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, not absorbing any of it. "Well, I should get cleaned up. You know how dusty books can be. I'll let you get back to your guest."

"But son, she came to see you." His voice cracked under the weight of the last syllable.

Once again he met Velma's gaze, and for a moment, for just a fragment of a second, she looked familiar, recognizable. Then it was gone just as quickly.

"Theodore, this is your grandmother. She's come to live with us--"

"Cooper?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Ellie. Did you say something?"

"Yes. We're here," the girl said.

"Really?" Cooper asked, bemused, looking around the wooded surroundings. He didn't know where they were, but he was certain he didn't see a house. "Where might this fabled Greta be?"

Jacob laughed, not saying a word. He pointed at a sprawling tree ten feet from where they stood, hooking his finger skyward, waiting for Cooper's sightline to follow his gesture.

A spiral stairway encircled the tree trunk. A wide plank platform sat at the summit of the stairs thirty feet above the ground. The building's walls were tarpaper, and he could see the corner of a closed hinged door. All nestled neatly among the ancient tree branches as if a part of the tree itself. He caught a whiff of a familiar aroma. He couldn't quite place it, not in the strangeness of this place.

Ellie tugged on his sleeve before starting up the spiral stairway. "That's cornbread, Coop. Greta's famous for it. Come on. It smells fresh from the oven."

 

 

19.

Charles Banyon wanted to die. He had snapped like a twig when he saw the Fowler boy. Seeing him Underground had surprised him, had stoked his underlying anger into a heated rage. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd brought a rock down on the boy's head. Then the nigger landed a couple wallops with his huge fists. His buddy, Ogie McCoy, went off hollering, bringing back a group of men to pry him from his back. They pummeled the bastard, dragging him off to some dark corner Charles didn't want to know about. He'd heard the nigger screaming, but tried to block it out. He never desired to witness anything like that, or anything else that happened in the Underground, but he supposed unsavory sights were his price to pay.

His anger had gone, leaving in its wake a desperate sadness.

When he'd stumbled away from the wreckage of Jimmy Fowler's body, his skull was seeping blood. A lot of blood.

Yeah, he'd snapped; Jimmy was dead. Dead and damned.

Leaving the body behind, Charles had rushed to the hooch still and its flowing silvery oblivion. He'd filled an empty wine bottle with its liquid succor, and immediately commenced in emptying it down his gullet.

He didn't know when he started crying, or how he'd scraped his knees bloody. The bottle now nearly empty, the cave wall he leaned against seemed to spin a contorted whirl.

Regret. Mindless, aimless, stupid Goddamn regret. Smashing the Fowler boy's skull, just another regret in a lifetime of regret. He'd end it all; he lived and breathed to end it all, if only…

Mabel…

Jimmy Fowler would never leave this place, this eternal hell. He used to come over to the house all the time, even staying overnight when the boys were young. George still got along with Jimmy, HAD gotten along with him, he reminded himself. But his recent visits had been few and far between. George had been embarrassed of him, embarrassed of the booze-swilling bastard he had become. Elizabeth was not so much embarrassed as ashamed. Charles would see it boldly articulated in her face, unshielded by her youthful honesty. Mabel existed within Elizabeth. Whenever his daughter would cast her shamed eyes on him--her steadfast expression altogether too old for someone her age--he felt his wife staring at him through her eyes.

Mabel, let me be. Let me end this misery. This loneliness.

He tipped the bottle, emptying the last quarter of the bottle into his waiting mouth, the far-off candlelight setting the bottle aglow. The earth seemed to pitch beneath his feet, throwing him violently into a rock wall. The bottle shattered in his fist as he crashed, the glass fragments tearing deeply through skin and ligaments. Pain lanced his palm.

He closed his eyes, hoping to black out. Even if his eyes had remained open, madness would blind him, and if not madness, then burning self-hatred would certainly do the trick. He rubbed his slurred-numb and bloodied hand across his chin and wasn't surprised to find it coated in vomit.

 

 

He was staring at the doorway when he opened his eyes. The rough log door he had constructed by his own will and labor. A new bloody handprint was smeared along the edge, as if someone fought being placed on the other side. Behind the door a small cubby of a room. No lights, no water or food or anything else a living person would need to survive.

I've ruined everything. I can't do this without you.

He pressed his bristled cheek against the door, ran his fingers down the grain. He heard a stir from the other side. A low growl muted by the door's imposing thickness.

I was a coward. Couldn't bear to live when you didn't. I've done this to you.

He slumped to the floor, splinters digging into his face. The floor beneath him seemed to steady, the earth itself with its incessant spinning having slowed. His nausea, while still present, leveled off. He was sobering.

The growl intensified, becoming a howl. Her nails dug at the rough wood, seeking escape. He had done this. This madness, this cowardice.

"Ch-cha-chaaa," Mabel moaned, trying to articulate his name through her undead lips. She slammed against the door, repeatedly, rhythmically, a mocking heartbeat. Four inches of wood separated them. For all his good intention, it could have been a mile.

He didn't save her in time. Mabel died giving birth to Elizabeth. He could vividly remember the tension leaving her grip as he stood by her bedside. Her hot skin had cooled, and as it did, something slipped away from her. Her soul, her essence? Naming the sensation was pointless. She had died, yet he still brought her to the Underground, carrying her in his arms, her head lolling lifelessly, her birthing blood soaking his clothes. He had known about the tunnels. All his life the knowledge had been there, in the periphery of everyday, spoken about by his father and uncles, all of whom had toiled in the mines. He'd never given it a second thought, had never desired to seek the root of the mystery. Not until Mabel died. He had known about the Underground's powers and had brought her here and now she was this… this monster.

"Cha-Char-CHARLESss!" She pounded the door, shaking it within its frame, the wood vibrating against his cheek.

I'm so sorry, Mabel. He whimpered silently, his tears flowing thicker as he continued to sober.

She stopped pounding the door and gave off a slight whine. For a moment, she sounded real and human and so alive. Then from the other side, only silence.

She wriggled her fingers through the small gap under the door. Gray skin, filthy fingernails splintered at the tips, overly long, still growing after death. They flicked like curving miniature swords.

His hand trembled as he impulsively reached for her. He stopped short, an inch away.

He could feel his wounded hand healing, his torn skin and sliced ligaments reforming, his bloodied knees scabbing, scarring, becoming soft pink skin. The immutable persistence of the Underground.

Goddamn it. "I'm going to make this right, Mabel. I'm going to do whatever it takes."

Mabel's fingers twitched at the sound of his voice. She grunted, "CHAR!CHAR!CHAR!"

He touched her fingers. The tips of his met hers, and their coldness, their roughness, only solidified his resolve. While George was dead, his poor sweet boy, Mable lived on in the form of Elizabeth. He concentrated on the coldness of his undead wife's fingers, and promised himself he wouldn't let anything bad happen to his daughter. This time he would follow through. He could no longer turn a blind eye toward the child Mabel died giving birth to.

Unsteadily, he gained his feet. Looking at his clothes as if for the first time--the grime and vomit stained rags--he felt the shame often reflected in his daughter's eyes. This brought on a pain sharper than anything he'd ever felt before. Even worse than witnessing his wife's existence in the Underground.

"CHARRRR-LESSS!" Mabel cried from the other side of the door. Leaning on the cave walls for support, Charles Banyon stumbled his way through the tunnels--the cries of his undead wife haunting his every step--to the waiting daylight, and hopefully, to the forgiveness of his daughter.

 

 

20.

The home sat across two wide, buttressed limbs spreading parallel to the woods below. Cooper's stomach flipped as he looked down. They were nearly to Greta's door, thirty feet from the ground's safety. Cooper was afraid of heights. Ellie and Jacob were obviously not. They fairly capered up the rain-wet steps encircling the tree trunk.

Ellie knocked on Greta's door. When it opened, Cooper was disappointed when old Greta turned out to be no older than his own father. His mind had drawn her from the same palette as Eunice Blankenship: bowed by gravity and brittle with age, struggling through an unseen battle, fighting to live through one more day. Seeing her in the flesh, Greta held none of these characteristics.

"Children. You've brought a friend. Come in, come in."

"I hope we're not putting you out," Ellie said.

"Nonsense," Greta said, holding the door wide. Her face was broad and welcoming, her movements crisp, precise.

Cooper was the last inside. His head nearly touched the ceiling, and the spare furniture and kitchen appliances inside the one room catchall house seemed to be on a smaller than normal scale. With a familiarity of their surroundings, Ellie and Jacob took seats at a short table with four completed place settings. Greta was taking chilled milk from an icebox, while the children looked hungrily at the steaming bricks of cornbread on the plates set in front of them. Cooper sat, his knees bumping the table's underside. A wood burning cook stove was in one corner, still warming the squat home with its radiant heat. Chunks of corn textured the bread's surface. Melting sweet butter ran through the nooks and crannies in lavish rivers.

After pouring the milk, Greta replaced the glass pitcher to the icebox. She let out a contented sigh as she sat in the lone empty chair.

"Expecting company?" Cooper asked. He found it odd to see the table set for four. It looked like she had cut the cornbread even as they mounted the steps to her home.

"You must be Cooper." Greta stared at him, as if plumbing for knowledge.

"Cooper, Greta Hildaberg, Greta, Cooper," Ellie said, making a formal introduction.

Greta squeezed Ellie's hand. "I'm sorry for your loss, dear. I wish I could've warned him."

"Did you see anything before it happened?"

"No. If I had I would have done anything possible to bring about a different end."

Ellie seemed satisfied with Greta's answer. Cooper felt bad for the children so implicitly trusting an eccentric old lady living in a tree. He didn't trust what he might say, so he took a bite of cornbread. It tasted as good as it smelled.

"And Jimmy?" Jacob asked, his voice faltering.

"He's not in the army, is he? Me and Jacob know he's not, but no one listens to us."

"Do you know what happened to my brother? Where he is? Anything, please," Jacob pleaded.

"I wish I could close my eyes and see the answers written there. It simply doesn't work that way, child."

"Greta?" Jacob wiped away a single streaking tear.

"No, he's not in the army. I wish it were true." Greta frowned at her folded hands as if they had done her wrong. "You see, my visions, if that's what the townsfolk like to call them, well, they aren't my visions of the future at all. There's a peculiar trait in my family, going back, oh, I can't count the generations… but I do remember them. Every generation before me, I remember their memories. The memories of those who came before get passed on at the time of death like an inheritance."

"So your visions are of the past?" Ellie asked, confused.

"My family's memories go back a long time. From the time my ancestors were peasants in Europe, to even earlier generations, when they lived in barbaric tribes mixing with Orientals, Africans. The newest memories are the strongest, the most fully formed, of course. They get weaker the closer you get to the base of my family tree."

"But you've predicted the future. Like how Odette Fischer would win the pie contest last year with her secret recipe, her raisin custard. Or when you warned of Claude Cloutier having his heart attack while tilling his field," Jacob said.

"Sure, I know things about the future, but you have to understand, they aren't my visions. They're my mother's. She could see the future. She was the only person in all of my family's generations who not only saw the past and past lives, but the future and the coming generations. Upon her death, I inherited my mother's visions of the future."

Cooper had heard enough. "I'm sorry, but maybe I should step outside," Cooper said while standing. "I don't feel like I'm much help here."

"Cooper, you're a part of this. You might want to stick around."

"A part of this? So you're saying that I'm somehow connected to Jimmy Fowler's disappearance?"

Jacob looked accusingly at Cooper, as if the question had solidified his own conclusions.

"No, but you will be instrumental in what is to come."

"I'm sorry, but I don't believe a word you're saying. Kids, I think we should go now. This is a big waste of time."

"Greta, please go on," Ellie said quietly, as if she didn't want to offend Cooper for speaking up at all.

Greta closed her eyes in concentration. "There are places where even God won't go. The Blankenships learned this," she said, opening her eyes. She paused, letting out a sigh, looking at Cooper. "But it was too late for them to do anything about it. They were drawn in, consumed in darkness. When they were gone, God turned His back on Coal Hollow. From that day on, no man of God would step foot inside the town limits."

"Jimmy, my brother, do you know where he is, Greta?"

"I can't see that. Mom didn't know, didn't foresee this. But she did know he's somewhere close."

"Is he… is he…?"

"He's, more than anything, wanting to escape the hell he's a subject to."

There was a quick, familiar knock on the door, then Arlen Polk entered, carrying a wooden crate laden with groceries. He seemed surprised to see others sitting with Greta.

"Momma, I got your cooking things." He kept his eyes lowered. He could've just climbed from a coal bin. Black dust coated his skin. His greasy hair stuck out in weird spikes.

"Thank you, Arlen." Her son stood staring at Cooper. "You remember Mr. Cooper, right Arlen?"

"Yeah, Mom, I told you 'bout him. We found the, uh… we… went searching together that one night." He turned to Cooper. "I'd shake hands, but after the…" he said, then stopped as he looked at Ellie, "The uh… service, I went to my gopher hole. Then, I 'membered Mamma's cooking stuff, so I went to town."

"Such a good boy, always thinking of my well being," Greta said to Cooper, smiling. She turned back to Arlen. "Honey, we're about done here. Why don't you clean up, and by the time you get back, I'll have something on the stove for you."

"Sure, Momma." He went to his mother and kissed her cheek. She feigned a giggle at his quill-like beard, and then patted him on the head and shooed him away. Arlen moped as he went out the door and down the stairs.

"I'm sorry, but that's all I have to share. I wish I could be more precise. If I knew anything else, I would say so. There's an unpleasant undercurrent in this town. It will pull at you unexpectedly and drag you under its surface if you don't watch out. Just please be careful."

The children took this as their cue and headed for the door.

"Thanks, Greta." Ellie seemed disappointed in what Greta had told her, but still somewhat relieved.

"Cooper? Can I have a private word?"

Jacob waved goodbye to Greta and then closed the door, leaving them alone.

"I think you should be ashamed for what you're doing to those kids," Cooper said, doing his best to keep his voice from traveling too far.

"You're being unfair," she said whimsically. She seemed comfortable with someone questioning her abilities.

"You give a sense of hope when there isn't any."

"Because there is hope. I know it's hard to see, but the life of this town will soon shift. Daylight will swallow shadows. Shadows most people don't even see, or if they do, won't acknowledge for what they are. You, Mr. Cooper, are at the center of this change."

"You speak in riddles. People speak in riddles when they are trying to hide something."

"I speak the truth. My mother's truth."

"Why should I care what happens here?" He didn't believe his own words, because in some small way he did feel a connection with this town and the people he'd met. The kids waiting outside, Jane Fowler, Hank Calder, Magee, everyone… even the Blankenships--they were all good people.

"Because you already do. Otherwise, you wouldn't have bought that house. You wouldn't be protecting those kids when you think they might be in danger of whatever fate stole Jimmy Fowler from his family. Besides, most strangers wouldn't have waited a day to take leave after George's death. You're here, Mr. Cooper. You're invested."

"I don't want to hear any more of your runaround. You're just a lonely old lady luring people to your door with your jumbled talk. Right now, I'm going to walk those kids home. As soon as I see Jacob's mom, I'm going to let her know about everything, about how you are nothing but a snake charmer."

"What if I told you I know your secret?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

As if Cooper hadn't voiced his dissent, Greta continued: "You discovered your father's mother was a former slave, her son, your father, was born from relations with her master, and you didn't know about this until recently."

"How the hell--"

"This knowledge has left you confused about who you are and your role in society."

"I'm not going to listen to another--"

"Cooper, it's okay." Greta raised her hand to interrupt him. "I won't tell anyone. I just wanted to prove to you…"

Cooper didn't know what to say, and couldn't meet Greta's gaze. He turned quickly, and was out the door a moment later. He nearly bowled over the kids at the top of the stairs.

"Cooper?" Ellie asked. "Everything all right?"

The color left his face. Light-headedness washed over him. He hurried down the stairs, careful not to take in the imposing height, for then he would surely faint.

He reached the wooded ground, the children close on his heels. They passed Arlen as he returned from wherever he had cleaned up. His forehead and neck were still coal-black, but the skin above his scraggly beard was white, as were his hands. They were so white they appeared to have never touched sunlight.

"Bye bye," Arlen said. He seemed happy to have his mother to himself.

 

 

21.

They were quiet on the way home, each lost in their own thoughts. Most certain of the quickest route, Jacob had taken the lead. Ellie stayed by Cooper's side.

Cooper had accompanied the kids to Greta's house for one and only one reason. He feared for their safety. He never believed the story about Jimmy Fowler running off to the army, or that an animal had gored Ellie's brother to death. The pieces of the puzzle didn't fit that way. No, something terrible had happened, but he didn't know exactly what. He couldn't let the kids go off on their own with what his instincts were telling him.

He never expected to hear such things. Greta had caught him off guard, and before he could react, he felt exposed, verbally lashed. But that's not what happened. Not really. Upon reflection, the sting of her words softened. When the sting was entirely gone, he realized she hadn't attacked him at all. Greta had been right about everything she had said about his past. The sting was from the vulnerability he felt with a stranger knowing his secret.

Judging the children's reaction, they hadn't overheard the conversation. That was a relief. He didn't want to admit who he was, what he was. The only trouble he'd ever suffered over his appearance was when he had sprouted tall at thirteen, without the accompanying weight gain. For two years he had been scrawny and sickly looking. He eventually leveled off after the family doctor instructed his mom to make sure he got extra milk and butter in his diet. Those two years had been bad enough; he couldn't imagine the reactions and ridicule if the secret of his lineage became public knowledge.

His secret. How could Greta have known? No one knew but his own parents. His grandmother had lived at their town home until cancer sent her to her grave. Despite increasing doses of laudanum, pain taxed her frail body every minute of those three months. Little could be done for her. Cooper's mother lovingly attended to her needs during the day when he and his father were at work. At night, his father would hold vigil over her as she rapidly deteriorated, oftentimes reading the bible to her in his gruff voice. From his bedroom door, Cooper would listen for when his father took to his own bed, usually after midnight, and then he would go to Velma Fortune's bedside. He would hold her hand as they talked quietly.

"Arlen's a bastard," Jacob said matter-of-factly as they walked. He pulled back next to Cooper and Ellie. The boy didn't seem as angry after talking to Greta.

"Jacob, don't talk like that," Ellie said.

"But he is. I heard it from Jimmy. A shyster named Rubell Polk, he came to town selling potions and remedies from a beat up suitcase. He swept old Greta off her feet, and then snuck off not long after. She's never hidden it, neither."

Cooper nodded, choosing to ignore his gossip bait. "That was a brave thing for an unmarried woman to do."

"People think Arlen's a nitwit because he's a bastard."

"Jacob, please."

"I'm not making it up, Ellie. You've heard it yourself."

"Doesn't mean you gotta go off talking like that."

"Just making conversation."

They continued on in silence. After awhile Jacob's eyes darkened. Cooper could only guess where the boy's thoughts lingered. He had been through a lot lately.

They covered the next half-mile cutting across a sorghum cane field. The sun had dried the grass, all except for the twining roots. Cooper drifted back to his own thoughts. Velma Fortune's dying words haunted him:

Find yourself, child. Find out who you ought to be.

Since meeting his grandmother in his family's parlor, Cooper had been confused and conflicted. Before meeting Velma, he'd thought he knew his place in the world, but that had all changed. She'd sensed his confusion, though he'd never spoken of it. Then she used her final words in an attempt to comfort him. He couldn't imagine a more selfless gift.

In her short time at their home, they had grown close. Velma always had a story to tell or a small nugget of wisdom to pass on. His only wish would have been to meet her sooner.

After a solemn closed casket wake, they buried Velma in the family cemetery. By the end of that day, eager to be on his way, Cooper traded his funeral garb for traveling clothes. His preparations accelerated when Velma's condition took a turn for the worse. Everyone had known the end was near, but no one had spoken about it. She smiled weakly, revealing more than words ever could. The reunion of her family had given her closure.

The library board had been shocked when he announced his intentions of leaving. Without his asking, they had promised to hold a position for him, if he were ever inclined to return. Velma Fortune's grave was still fresh when he took to the road.

Jacob and Ellie seemed in more of a hurry than Cooper, so the way home went quickly. They left the sorghum field and returned to Teetering Road for the last stretch home. As they approached the Fowler's driveway, he considered what he had said to Greta, how he would tell Jane Fowler how Greta had plied the kids' innocence and insecurity with her lies. But he decided to hold his tongue. Telling Jane would undoubtedly send her over to Greta's house, and in the end, potentially expose his past. He had another reason for not telling Jane: maybe Greta hadn't fabricated a single thread to her story. With how quickly she had convinced Cooper of her abilities--and she had turned his disbelief around as easily as spinning a top--he couldn't deny the possibility. Maybe Jimmy was close by.

"Take care, Coop," Ellie said as they reached the driveway.

He waved to her and exchanged a nod of amiable acceptance with Jacob. When the front door closed behind them, he turned to walk to his new home. Differing thoughts fought for his complete attention:

His grandmother's dying words. The image of the Blankenships spiraling away, consumed in darkness. Wondering about his own motives for buying their abandoned home, and if they were even his motives to begin with. Most of all, he wondered about the Greta's insistence that he would help solve the mystery of Jimmy's disappearance.