Nineteen

NADINE’S interpretation of the story of Evie Baxter and Cry Baby Creek put a curl in my toenails on a hot August day, but it wasn’t enough to derail my plans for that night. I wanted to tell Alice how Nadine had ended the story—how her version redeemed Selena Baxter and put the guilt on the preacherman. But Alice was on the touchy side about the horses and the barn. She didn’t approve of Nadine. Nadine had a way about her that set Alice’s teeth on edge and made her angry. Alice didn’t care to talk about it much—didn’t care to say Nadine’s name, actually. She just stayed away from the barn. When I pressed her for reasons, she said Nadine reminded her of some of her relatives who were mean.

Living with all of those brothers and sisters had given Alice a different appreciation of other people’s feelings. She was careful; she looked away when someone was exposed. She had a tender heart and it hurt her to see other people suffer. I guess with so many relatives poking and prying into her business, she valued keeping her private feelings private.

At the barn, feelings were examined, pulled apart. No one was spared. I don’t think Nadine realized how the tricks and things she played on me and Jamey and Greg might upset someone like Alice. The truth was, though, Nadine didn’t care. She was like that. It was what made her such a great rider.

Fear was Nadine’s specialty. She was always saying to confront fear and beat it back. When I was afraid of a jump, she’d raise the standard three more inches. Her logic was that if I was afraid of a three-three jump, then to jump three-six would show me three-three was nothing to fear.

Fear was an ally, she said. Fear kept a rider alert and safe. All good riders felt fear. They just didn’t give in to it. So she’d call Jamey Louise and Greg to watch as I jumped the brick wall with a rail set at three-six. They would witness whether I conquered fear or it conquered me. And Cammie and I would jump! And when we landed, I would feel the rush of victory over fear. Nadine would smile and in her eyes would be the look of a victor.

That was exactly the kind of scene that Alice hated. For her, fear and every other emotion were private. When she cried, she wanted no one to see. When she was afraid, she hated the idea of an audience, of a contest won—or lost—in public. She didn’t realize that Nadine’s way of confronting things was the way she’d learned on the national show circuit. There everything was public. Win or lose. Victory or defeat. She was a competitor.

I tried to smooth things over by inviting Alice to visit Nadine. I was surprised when she reluctantly accepted and agreed on a cloudless Wednesday. More than anything else, I wanted Alice to see how special Cammie was. I planned and planned. Mama Betts made a picnic lunch for us, and Nadine even promised to give Alice a lesson. I was going to pay for it with my work. Even Jamey Louise and Greg were excited by Alice’s pending arrival.

As it turned out, Alice didn’t have much chance to get to see the horses. Nadine had prepared her own special treat for Alice. She’d spent the entire summer training two barn rats to perform tricks. She’d taught one to eat out of her own mouth.

The first time I saw it, it made me feel a little queasy, but I caught on that Nadine did it just to see if she could unsettle someone. It was a test. And it was something Nadine liked to do in front of Greg.

There were two rats. One of the rats had been domesticated at one time, or so Nadine supposed because he was brown and white. She named him Charlie. The other rat was a grayish brown, and a little bigger than Charlie. He was Ernest. It was Charlie that Nadine had trained to walk up her chest while she reclined in the hay in the loft. First, Nadine would chew up some suitable food and then catch Charlie up and set him just about at her belly button. While she obligingly opened her mouth, the rat crawled up her chest until he put his feet on her chin and eased his head into her open mouth to eat off her tongue.

No matter how many times she did it, I watched in fascination. It was so grotesque that I couldn’t stop myself from looking. And even when I didn’t want to see it again, I looked.

On the day that Alice visited the barn, Nadine performed. I was hoping she wouldn’t, but I could see it in her foxy eyes the minute she saw Alice and Maebelle V. First she asked to hold the baby, and Alice hesitated longer than I’d ever seen her hesitate before giving Maebelle over. Nadine was small but strong, and she lifted Maebelle high in the air and made her laugh.

“Cute baby,” Nadine said, handing her back. “Let me show you mine.” And she led the way up into the loft.

I tried to catch Alice’s eye and warn her, but she was intent on getting up the ladder safely with Maebelle V. in her little papoose. When we were in the loft, Greg came to stand by me, effectively blocking my chance of saying anything private to Alice.

“It’s the rats,” Greg whispered. I thought there was a hint of eagerness in his voice, but when I looked at him he was looking at Alice with concern. “Nadine, maybe Alice won’t like the rats.”

Nadine halted her search in the hay and looked at Greg. “How is it that you know so much about what Alice likes and dislikes, Greg? Would you like to tell us?”

When he didn’t answer, Nadine continued searching in the hay for several minutes before finding Charlie’s hiding place. It was odd, but the rat seemed to try to resist. He squirmed and struggled to get free of Nadine’s fingers, and then he quit. It was as if he fell under some spell. Once she placed him on her chest, he moved slowly up her ribs and between her breasts, one reluctant paw after the next, until he had both front feet on her chin and his hind feet on the pulse of her throat. Then his mostly white head would dart deep into her mouth and he would eat.

Alice gagged. Before I could say anything to help her, she climbed down the ladder and walked out into the sunshine. “Why does she do that?” she asked, rubbing her right eyebrow with the back of her hand. “She’s completely crazy, Bekkah. Rats carry all kinds of diseases.”

“It’s a test,” I whispered.

“What kind of test?” Hot color jumped beneath her freckled cheeks. “To see how much someone will put up with before they pick up their things and go home?” She was doing just that as she talked. “I know you love the horses, Bekkah, and I’m glad you get to ride, but that woman is sick in the head. I won’t be coming back here. I don’t like this place and I don’t like her.”

She walked out of the gate with Maebelle V. bobbing and waving on her back. She latched the gate carefully, picked up her bicycle by the chinaberry tree where I’d parked mine, and she rode home without ever looking back once. She’d never come back and visit, not even to watch me jump. I knew it would be pointless to try to explain it all to Alice. She didn’t understand that horse people were different.

So telling her about Nadine’s version of Cry Baby Creek would be foolish. Because Nadine had said it, Alice wouldn’t appreciate it. Besides, it was better to stay away from the legend if we were going to be sneaking around the old church in the dead of night. Of all the summer nights I’d gone down to the creek deliberately to hear the baby cry, I didn’t want this to be one when it happened.

I took great care to make sure everyone in the house thought I was asleep. Getting around Picket was a lot harder than the humans, and Alice and I had decided to take the dog with us as a safety measure. Since all of the Redeemers were in Hattiesburg, there’d be no danger to her. Besides, Picket was a very comforting presence in the dark, and even though Alice and I were old hands at sneaking out of the house on summer nights, going down to the creek to dig up a baby’s body was a little different.

When I could hear Mama Betts snoring over the sound of the attic fan, I slipped from the bed and hurried through the kitchen and out the door. I’d worn my shorts and T-shirt to bed, and my sneakers were on the screened porch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. Nobody else on Kali Oka would be awake. Alice and I could slip through the night like enchanted spirits.

Alice was waiting in the woods, her body unusually slender in the moonlight because she wasn’t encumbered with Maebelle V. We got our bicycles and kept to the woods for as long as we could before we were forced out into the road.

The night silvered the old fence posts and trees. There was a magical quality about the most familiar mailbox. Even the air seemed sweeter, more filled with scents and noises. I looked at Alice and she grinned as we pedaled our way to adventure. The joy of escape filled us with a wildness that made any risk worth taking. We were free in the night, without the rules of daytime, without the need to be the people we normally were.

I wondered about the creatures that claimed the darkness as their turf. The owl and cat. Daddy had told me that their golden eyes enabled them to see more than other animals. They were nocturnal. And by escaping the bounds of our houses, Alice and I had become like them. Nocturnal creatures filled with the night.

Nothing looked familiar in the strange light of the moon, yet I felt more normal with Alice on Kali Oka Road than I had since the beginning of summer. We passed under the branches of Mrs. Spooner’s most prized persimmon tree. In the moonlight the glossy leaves were black and silver, beautiful. Alice and I shared a glance, and a grin.

“We should sneak out every night,” Alice said.

“Maybe we will.” We pumped in unison and moved down the road. Picket seemed caught up in the specialness of the night. She stayed right beside my bicycle, never straying to inspect a yard or to bounce among the briars in search of a rabbit.

We parked our bicycles and found the old shovel I’d hidden. Alice gripped it while I slipped Picket’s leash on her. I intended to let her run free just as soon as we made it to the cemetery.

“What if they left someone to guard the church?” Alice asked. We had both come to a stop standing in the road. Neither of us wanted to be the first to step into the cemetery.

I felt my resolve weakening, and I knew I had to do something or we’d both turn around for home. “They didn’t leave any guards. Greg said everyone had to go. There was some kind of vote to be taken.”

“They wouldn’t let the children vote.” Alice looked from the woods to the creek to the church to the cemetery. In the moonlight even her freckles were beautiful.

“They wouldn’t leave children here alone.” I grinned in the silvery moonlight. “We might corrupt them if they were left on their own.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Alice grinned too. “If not us, surely Jamey Louise.”

“Greg’s a lost cause. Jamey’s snatched his soul, and it’s going to take more than a little redeeming to save him from the jaws of hell.”

We giggled and together took the first step toward the creek. We simply could not think that we were going to dig up a dead baby. Not even a part of one. Our footsteps were steady as we topped the bridge over Cry Baby Creek. The water, slow because the summer rains of mid-August hadn’t arrived yet, gurgled below us. Even in the coolness of the night the water issued a tempting invitation. Maybe after we had our evidence we’d have time for a dip.

Alice must have been thinking the same thing because her steps slowed on the wooden bridge. We both looked over the side. In the moonlight the water was quicksilver.

“I’d forgotten how the creek sings,” Alice said.

The silence of the woods seemed to edge up closer on us. Only the creek made a sound. The hair on my arms trembled, and I tried to think of something to say to keep Alice from noticing how quiet it was.

“Maybe we should have invited Jamey Louise to come with us,” Alice said.

“Jamey? Why should we have?”

“Well, if something gets after us, we can both run faster than her, and we could leave her behind.” Alice giggled again.

She was teasing, but the idea of Jamey Louise as a human sacrifice wasn’t half bad. “Let’s go,” I urged, forcing myself to move forward. Together, with a shovel and my dog, we stepped onto the promised land of the Redeemers.

I had no problem remembering which grave. Although weeks had passed, the earth was still raw. We stood looking at the grave. At this distance the creek couldn’t be heard. There was only that complete, unnatural silence that made my body hair jerk and quiver.

“Want me to go first?” I asked Alice. We had to get going so we could get home.

She shook her head. “You go last. I don’t want to be the one who actually digs it up.”

I’d brought a knapsack and some old newspaper from the house to wrap it in when we finally got it. I didn’t think that was exactly the right thing, but it was the best I could manage without getting Mama Betts to asking all sorts of questions. I hadn’t told Alice about the newspapers, which were hidden in the knapsack that was stuffed in my bicycle basket. It was better if she didn’t think that far ahead. I didn’t want to spook her before we even got started, and the idea of carrying anything dead home in a knapsack would certainly upset her.

Alice put the shovel at the edge of the grave and rested a foot on it as she stared at me. “Ready?” Her glance darted to the woods, which seemed to have inched even closer to us.

“Go on.” I folded my arms across my chest. Picket sat at my side as if we were part of some religious service.

“You’re sure the Redeemers are gone?”

“Come on, Alice. I’m positive. Just get on with it.” My own nerves were jangling and it made me snappy.

Alice jumped on the shovel, and it went in the ground about three inches. The dirt only looked loose and easy to dig. Kali Oka was red clay and sand. Digging anywhere on it wasn’t easy, and especially since it hadn’t rained for at least two weeks. Alice set to work with all of her wiry strength while I walked around and brushed my fingers over the inscriptions of some of the older tombstones.

Picket heard the noise first. She didn’t get up, she just shifted her weight so that she could turn her ears toward the creek. Since she didn’t bark or ruffle her fur, I didn’t think much about it. Probably a squirrel or something shuffling around in the underbrush attracting her attention.

Alice kept digging, hard-packed inch by inch. She had a little mound of red dirt beside a shallow hole. I knew I could dig faster because I was heavier, but she needed to dig. Her work preoccupied her.

Suddenly she stopped, shovel half lifted, and looked toward the woods. “Did you hear something?” she asked.

“Just the normal stuff. What do you suppose Maebelle V. is doing right now?” I had to keep talking. “I wish I had a flashlight so I could read these tombstones. Arly and I read them once, but he was in a hurry and wouldn’t let me really dwell on them. Some of them are so old that the writing is almost worn away.”

“Shussh!” Alice lowered the shovel and waved her hand at me. “Listen!”

But I didn’t want to. We were trespassing, surrounded by dead folks and robbing a grave. It wasn’t likely that we were going to hear anything we much wanted to hear, especially not from someone hiding in the woods.

“Alice,” I whispered, but all of her attention was focused just beyond the clearing of the cemetery in the woods.

“Some of these graves have verses, like poetry or Bible sayings. They’re really morbid, but some are beautiful. Mama Betts said the graves are much, much older than the church.”

Without taking her eyes off the woods, Alice lowered the shovel. Her right arm came up in a point. Not wanting to but unable to stop myself, I looked down her arm to the tip of her finger and into the woods. There was total blackness.

“I saw something move back in there,” she whispered.

“Don’t be silly.” I tried to be stern, but I ended on a giggle. “You think it’s a ghost?”

Alice giggled too. “I’d rather run up on a ghost than one of those Redeemers,” she said.

That struck me as pretty funny. “Yeah, those Redeemers are a lot scarier than any ghost.”

“They’re truly scary,” Alice said, laughing. “Remember when you called them zombies?”

I remembered. I glanced around the graves nearest us just to make sure nothing was peaking out to watch us. Alice picked up the shovel again.

“The ground’s a lot harder than I thought it would be,” I said. Alice answered with a grunt. It didn’t seem possible, but there was a root in her way. She was using the shovel to try to lever it up so we could chop it in half.

Picket had flopped down on her belly in some of the cool red dirt Alice had thrown out. Without any warning she rose slowly to her paws and growled deep in her throat. She was staring directly into the woods, and her hackles rose.

“What is it?” Alice asked. The shovel was under the root, and she was trying to pry it up.

“I don’t see anything.” I didn’t, but Picket’s behavior made my skin crawl with dread. I looked around the cemetery again, checking to be sure no bony fingers were scrabbling to get out of a grave.

“Maybe we should go home,” Alice said. “We can’t dig this up.”

I took the shovel and turned the conversation to the only thing I knew never failed to get Alice’s attention. “Do you think Maebelle thinks you’re her mother?”

Alice eyed the woods before she answered. “I might as well be.”

“Will you get married and have ten children?” The future had become almost a forbidden topic between us, but I broached it as I put the point of the shovel on the root and jumped on it with all of my weight. For a moment the root held, and then the blade sliced cleanly through it.

“Well, I doubt I’ll be going to Paris,” she answered. “I can promise you, though, that I won’t have ten children. It isn’t fair. Nobody gets enough of anything. There’s never any time. It’s not like with you, Bekkah. You’re special at your house, and what you want matters.” Alice took a seat on a big tombstone.

That painting of Paris with the woman in her red dress walking her poodle replaced the midnight splendor of the old cemetery for a moment. I could tell by the way Alice talked that she’d given up the idea of Paris. For one brief second I hated Kali Oka Road. I hated Paris. I dug with a vengeance.

I was about to jump on the shovel with my full weight when I heard the sound again. It came from the creek, and it was almost a laugh but maybe a sob.

“What was that?” Alice’s blue eyes were enormous in the moonlight. Her freckles had disappeared in the whiteness of her face.

“Something at the creek. Some raccoon or something.” It was nothing more than that. The entire time we’d been in the cemetery I’d felt as if someone had put salt under my skin. Alice and I both were making every sound into something terrifying.

I hit the shovel hard, and it slipped through the heavy earth. I turned a big shovelful of red dirt out beside the grave.

“Be careful,” Alice cautioned. “They didn’t put it in a coffin or anything. We don’t want to cut it in half.”

I moved out a little farther, making the grave wider.

A low wail came from the creek. It started out soft and mournful, then reached up higher on the register of horror to qualify as something that tightened the skin on my neck.

Alice abandoned her seat and edged toward me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her body in the sudden chill. Picket rose to a sitting position, ears alert and pricked toward Cry Baby Creek. That was when we heard the infant. At first it was a wail of anger, the shock of cold water on a little warm body. The baby’s protest came just after the sound of something small striking the water.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

“Bekkah! It’s the baby! It’s Evie!”

Alice’s hand gripped my arm and her fingers dug deep. I didn’t care. At least Alice’s punishing fingers were real. What I saw at the edge of the woods was not. It couldn’t be. Picket saw it, though. She stood up, and the hair on her back ruffled as a low growl rumbled in her throat.

“My God,” Alice whispered.

Dark hair streaming about her face and shoulders, a woman stepped out of the woods to stand on the edge of the clearing. She held out her hands in supplication to us. “My baby,” she cried. “Please don’t hurt my baby.”

Alice’s body jerked twice, and I grabbed her wrist with my hand. It felt like she was going to either run away or explode. “Be still!” I whispered.

“Oh, my God,” Alice moaned. She jerked against my grip. “I want to go home.” But the woman blocked our way to the bridge. My heart was pounding in my ears so loudly I could barely hear.

“Please,” the woman moaned. “Help me save my little baby.” She started forward. She wore a white dress that was soaked in what looked to be blood.

Alice screamed, a loud, terrified wail that sliced clean through me. I felt as if I’d been electrified. Picket lunged forward, her teeth bared and a savage snarl coming from deep inside her.

The woman faded back among the trees. “Help me,” she moaned as she disappeared into the trees. “Oh, God, someone please help me.”

She was gone.

The sound of a baby crying came from the creek. It was pitiful, the sound of doom.

“The baby!” Alice wailed. She started toward the creek automatically and then stopped. “What are we going to do?”

I held her arm. “No! Don’t look! It’s a trick. There’s no baby. It’s a ghost. That baby’s been dead for ten years.” I was staring at the place in the woods where the woman had disappeared. I had never been so afraid in my entire life. The one thing I knew for certain was that I wasn’t going near that creek. I didn’t want to see what might be waiting down there for us. What might look back.

We stood for several minutes, too afraid to move at all. My grip on Alice was clammy with sweat. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the woods, yet I had to check around the cemetery. I had to be certain all of the graves were still secure.

“What are we going to do?” Alice said, tears in her voice.

“We should go home,” I said.

The baby’s cries came from under the bridge.

“No!” Alice backed away from me. She looked from the bridge to the woods. “I’m not setting foot on the bridge.”

“Maybe we can cross the creek down a little ways from here.” I didn’t care which way we went, I only wanted to get home.

“No!” Alice’s rejection of that plan was sharp.

“We have to go home!” I insisted as sharply.

A loud and horrible scream came from the woods. “No! Oh, please, God, save me and my little baby.”

In the ringing silence that followed, Alice stepped back from me. “I’m not going near that creek.” She gave up her search of the woods long enough to look directly at me. The baby cried, this time weaker and more pitiful. “No matter what you say, Bekkah, I’m not going near that creek. I’ll die here first.”

She meant it. I’d left her once at Cry Baby Creek. I wouldn’t do it again. Not even a ghost could make me. “Okay,” I said. There was no way I was going to spend the rest of the night in a cemetery waiting for something to crawl out of a grave. “We can stay in the church. Just until daybreak.”

Alice nodded slowly. Arms brushing, we backed our way across the clearing to the front door and pushed it open. Stale air rushed out at us, the smell of the grammar school on the first day. We walked in together, Picket at our side.