AT THE BONEYARD

Yakumo dreamed of fire, flood, and shipwrecks. Of an enormous cotton gin grinding black bodies like peppercorns. He dreamed of starless nights crowded by storms. He didn’t dream his wife or children. Even here, in his sleep, the cold clung to him in a wet, frigid webbing. He could feel his bones, the icy rage inside them, and a skittering aliveness beneath his skin, smaller bodies crowding his flesh. Vermin.

With some effort, he opened his eyes. He wasn’t sure which body he wore now, but a quick glance at his legs told him: He had none. Though he could feel his feet pressed bare against the stone floor, he saw nothing below his knee, and he felt suspended from above, seething in the dark air.

Claws scrabbled desperate at the back of his throat. Yakumo curved his back into a question mark and fought to swallow the creature. The rat was tenacious, though, and clawed its way into his mouth. He tasted its hair and fright against his rotten tongue. Its terror, its hatred. But it was him, wasn’t it? Some of him?

Yakumo spat the rat onto the dirty floor. It lay still for a moment, stunned. He stretched his cold darkness to wrap a black-on-black tentacle around the creature. It squealed as he thrust it back into its mouth and swallowed, savoring its struggle against the softness of his throat.

Gathering this piece of him back into himself ignited a small lightning storm in Yakumo’s haunted skull. The electricity there was black, and the rain fell sideways, and once again, he felt himself borne up and down by the waves of a darkened sea. He—

He’d dozed again. He looked down at the paper crumpled in his left hand and grinned a yellow grin. Ah. The letter. There was no way of knowing whether the rat he’d just swallowed had been the same one that brought him this document, but it mattered not at all. What mattered was that he had his letter, and there was nothing its intended receiver could do about it. Yakumo unfolded the paper and inhaled its contents. More of the sea, but this time he tasted salt sunlight along with the ink. And what was this flavor? Care? It filled his sinuses with a bittersweet vapor, created an ache in the bones of his face.

His gorge rose. A swell of vermin wriggled in his belly, trying to force its way up. He swallowed again, careful not to let it get too far this time. The earwigs, the roaches, the rats, the blowflies and maggots settled back inside him and, content, he crawled back onto his slab to wait for… he couldn’t remember what. Ah. Yes. The Old Man. Soon, he’d have a prisoner to interrogate, a means of rupturing this idiot eternity and finding his way out.

He gurgled a hateful laugh, then his mouth yawned like a grave. Koizumi Yakumo began to snore.

They could hear the music from the street. At first Perry thought Doctor Professor must be playing somewhere inside, that this was where his spirit must reside when he wasn’t playing around town. If that were true, though, wouldn’t his music be strongest of all right here? Perry liked the sound of the piano, the horns, the guitar, and the hoarse singing, but his body remained his own. He didn’t feel compelled to dance.

Besides, he realized as he listened more closely, it wasn’t just one song they heard. There were at least two others going on at the same time—one with saxophone and stand-up bass, and another with just brass and drums. A funeral, maybe? More than one? The front gate stood closed and, as with most cemeteries here in town, a high concrete-and-iron fence stretched all the way around the property. Perry was a little surprised to find the place shut tight. He guessed the grounds were closed to tourists.

“So what now?” he asked.

Peaches scratched her chin. “Guess I’ll throw y’all over.”

“Throw us over?”

“Yeah. I throw you over the wall.”

“You throw… really far, though,” Perry said. “How we do this without getting hurt?”

“Well,” Peaches said thoughtfully. “You be okay if I don’t put too much spin or nothing on you. And if you drop out of the throw before you hit the ground.”

“Drop…?”

“You know,” she said. “Like when you fall from real high, but you don’t wanna land too hard, so you fall into another fall lower down that’s slower? I do it all the time.”

“Why?” Perry said. “You can’t get hurt.”

“That ain’t—” Peaches sighed, exasperated. “Falling down too hard ain’t no fun, Perry. You know that.”

“But what you’re talking about… I don’t think normal people can do that. I don’t think Brendy and me can do that.”

“Ever tried?”

Perry just watched her, his mouth open. He knew exactly how things would go now. Peaches would convince him and Brendy to do this ridiculous thing, as she’d convinced them to do so many others, and in spite of everything Perry knew about the world, it would work, more or less. Perry might be slightly banged up if he failed to follow directions to the letter, but Peaches would never let her friends come to harm.

“Okay,” he said. “Throw me first.”

“Aight,” she said. “Now, to make sure you go where I want, I’m gonna have to spin you round, so you might feel kinda dizzy, okay? Just make sure you come outta that fall before you hit the ground, okay? Even if you come out too soon, that’ll be better than staying in the whole time, ya heard me?”

Perry felt something dark inside him waiting for an opening to pounce. He couldn’t tell whether it was the sort of doubt that should be swept aside or common-sense trepidation. Still, when Peaches was around, he felt like a better version of himself. “Right,” he said. “Okay.”

“Now gimme dem hands,” she said.

Perry held out his hands, and Peaches took him by the wrists. Could she feel his heartbeat?

“Don’t worry none,” she said.

“I ain’t worried,” Perry said—and it was mostly true.

“Good. But don’t hit nothing.”

“Don’t—? What?”

“Now, one… two… three!”

Perry thought she’d spin him the way he would have spun Brendy—with her legs hanging out behind her as she giggled through the air. Peaches’s movements were so fast, though, that before Perry knew it—quick-cut—she had let go and flung him into the air. He spun from his center, turning so fast that the sky and the ground blurred together. Perry panicked, grasping internally for his sense of gravity, willing himself into a different trajectory even as he feared he’d fall the wrong way.

He landed on his side, a little too hard, and rolled onto his back, breathing in short, shallow sips. He sat up swiftly, as if waking from a nightmare, and just breathed, realizing as he did that he could have hit a headstone or a vault on the way down. He jumped to his feet.

“Here I’m is!” he shouted.

“All right!” Peaches called. “Brendy coming over!”

“Waaaaaaaaaugh!” Brendy bellowed as she spun into the air above the cemetery lawn.

“Drop out!” Perry shouted. “Drop!”

Brendy’s arc wavered for a split second, and she seemed to stick against the baked-blue sky. Perry ran like a wide receiver, staring up at her, as she began to fall. He didn’t see the headstone standing in his way.

Perry hit the stone and squawked as he somersaulted over it to land flat on his back. He couldn’t see Brendy now. Had she fallen too fast? Was she—?

“Here I’m is.” Brendy stepped into view, grinning down at him. “Look at your face!”

Perry shook himself and rose to his feet just as Peaches came over. She landed in a crouch, her fingers spread in the grass before her. The landing, and even the twenty- or thirty-foot jump she’d taken over the wall, seemed to have cost her no effort at all. Quickly, she straightened.

“Good,” she said. “Only thing worried me is if onea y’all fell up insteada down. I can jump like a mug, but I can’t fly, so catching you woulda been a beast.”

Perry’s scalp tightened. “… What!”

Peaches giggled and stuck out her tongue at him.

Perry blushed and looked away, but something at the edge of his hearing caught his attention. He cocked his head, listening. “Wait. What happened to the music?”

The cemetery grounds smelled of turned earth, cut grass, and flowers, but no bird chirped, no bee buzzed, and no music played near or distant.

“It’s fine,” Peaches said. “It’s just we ain’t supposed to be here. That music for the dead folks.”

“They’s haints here?” Brendy asked. “Zombies?”

“If you woke up dead, whyinhell would you wanna hang around your grave?” Peaches asked. “Cemeteries is the least haunted places in town. Now, come on. We don’t wanna get caught.”

“Caught?” Perry asked. “Who by?”

“Don’t matter none,” she said. “Long as we don’t get caught.” She visored her left hand above her eyes, scanning the distance. “All right, then… thataway!”

Most Nolan cemeteries are full of vaults and mausolea, with banks of stacked drawers lining the walls. This one was less compact than most. Headstones and vaults stood up on the well-kept lawn with bouquets of flowers, votive candles, fetishes, and sometimes piles of hell notes set before them. Perry had learned all about hell notes in school. They were fake dollar bills—like Monopoly money, but with crazy denominations, $50,000 or $75,500—that dead folks used to conduct business. As they walked, Peaches stopped to grab notes off the lawn, so long as they lay far enough from a grave.

“Ain’t it bad luck to go picking those up?” Perry asked.

“Not if they don’t belong to nobody,” Peaches said.

“What you need them for?”

“Don’t never know when you gotta go to the Dead Side of Town.”

“There’s a dead side of town?” Perry said. “I mean, we got enough haints and zombies hanging round anyway.”

“Right,” Peaches said as she bent to snatch another bill. “But you ever go to East Nola?”

“Sure,” Perry said. “Sometimes, with my folks or Daddy Deke.”

“See?” Peaches said. “Y’all ain’t from there, but you go there anyhow.”

“So, it’s just a neighborhood?”

“A big one,” Peaches said. “Bigger than Central City and Mid-City together. I mean, think about it. There’s more dead people in town than live ones, right? They gotta live somewhere.”

Perry had no response to that.

Their destination was a stained white tomb with a peaked roof and a statue of a pelican sitting on top, its head hidden under its wing. The legend on the vault didn’t even seem like a proper name to Perry—not a Nolan one, anyway. The carving on the plaque read KOIZUMI YAKUMO. It looked older than the other graves, standing between two oaks that leaned together overhead, shading it from the sun. No other trees stood in the cemetery, and these ones had caused the ground to hump up like when you run your hands underneath a blanket. It had disturbed the headstones, causing them to lean like winos.

“All right, then,” Peaches said, and took a deep breath. “Y’all wait here.”

“No!” Brendy objected. “Take me with you!”

“That ain’t a good idea,” Peaches said. “Not all haints leave the boneyard when they wake up. This one… I hear this one ain’t the nicest.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t go, either,” Perry said.

“It’s okay,” Peaches said. “It’s broad daylight. Besides… I gotta go. I just—I just gotta. Wait for me.”

This was the first time Perry had heard Peaches express true need. Her tone told him that arguing would do no good and that if he and Brendy cared for her, they would do as she asked.

“Okay,” Perry said. “We’ll wait.”

“If I’m not back in half a hour, just go on home. I’ll catch y’all up later.”

“We’ll wait.”

Peaches wavered, but Perry held her gaze. Finally, she nodded. As she turned to leave them, Perry wondered how she’d get inside. Like most mausolea, the place had no proper door—just a carved stone slab where one would be. Peaches approached it and stared thoughtfully at it for a moment; then she knelt down and lifted it with one hand.

The structure was actually hollow inside. It wasn’t a mausoleum at all; it was a covering for a marble staircase that led down into a blackness so complete that the daylight fell right into it, illuminating nothing. Could Peaches see in the dark?

Brendy slid her arm around Perry’s waist and gave him a squeeze.

Peaches turned to look at them over her shoulder, her expression one of fearful resolve. She looked so small and pale against that blackness. She seemed ready to say something, but she turned away and closed the grave behind her.

“I don’t like this,” Brendy said.

“Me either,” Perry agreed.

“We shoulda gone with her. We shoulda. We her friends.”

“I know,” Perry said. “I know.”

Perry didn’t know how long they’d stood waiting for Peaches—he carried no watch—but he knew it had been longer than a half hour. For quite a while, he and Brendy had stood together, staring at the fake mausoleum. They’d stepped a few feet from the gravel walkway to sit in the grass and thumb-wrestle. Perry dominated his little sister for a few matches; then, when he feared she’d begin to lose interest, he let her win once or twice. She smack-talked him, telling him that a week from now she’d be bigger and stronger than Perry. So big and so strong that she could put him in her pocket and carry him around town.

“In a week, huh?”

“Not even a week,” she said with an exaggerated nod. “By next Tuesday!”

“Girl, you three feet tall.”

“Three feet six and one-quarter inches,” she said, enunciating carefully. “Dr. Balfour says I’m growing like a weed.”

“That’s stupid. Weeds are bad.”

“Weeds grow fast, dummy!”

“Hey, now.”

“Sorry. You ain’t a dummy, but this is stupid, sitting round here like this,” Brendy said. “We shoulda gone with Peaches and now she all under there and we don’t even know when she coming out. I hate waiting around.”

“I hate it as much as you.”

Brendy stuck her tongue out. “You just want Peaches to come back so you can think about hugging and kissing.”

“Why you gotta be saying stuff like that?”

“Cuz you love Peaches like monkeys love bananas.”

Unable to think what else to do, Perry stood up. He hated when Brendy talked like this, but he didn’t understand why it angered him so. He felt like giving her a good shove.

Hey, now. Hey.

Perry froze.

“Aw,” Brendy said. “Don’t say nothing.”

Hey, you kids.

Brendy stared up at Perry, wide-eyed, and shook her head once. She pressed her right forefinger against her lips.

A disturbance smudged the air before the mausoleum. It hung there like a graffiti tag, but it was much less solid, less distinct. Perry knew the haint would have been much clearer against the night. He also knew that because the hot Nolan sun still shone down on the day, the haint couldn’t see him or Brendy even as well as they could see it.

I know you here. Y’all holdin’ up the music.

Perry didn’t answer.

Y’all got no business messin’ round in here. Ya need to get the hell on.

“Why can’t y’all just go ahead and play?” Brendy asked.

“Brendy!” Perry snapped.

Now the spirit knew exactly where they were. It drifted closer, and as it passed through the shade from the trees above the mausoleum, Perry saw a blurry, indistinct version of a youngish man in a red-and-white suit.

Decent folks tryna sleep up in here.

“Listen, sir,” Perry said. “We’re sorry to disturb you, but we’re waiting for our friend. As soon as she comes out, we’ll go.”

Y’all don’t need to be messing round no boneyard.

“I know. But we came with her to make sure she be okay,” Perry said. “She down underneath that grave, and we’ll leave soon as she comes out.”

She what? Now I know you lying. Ain’t no way nobody could get down there.

“She’s real strong, sir. She just lifted it up and went on down.”

Boy, you out your damn mind? Real fear flashed bright in the disembodied voice. You know who buried down there?

“Nossir,” Perry said, his heart beating fast. “What should we do?”

I tell you what. Against my better damn judgment, I’ma go on down there and get your friend. When I bring her back, you get the hell outta this here cemetery, and don’t you never come back, ya heard me?

“Who down there with her?” Brendy demanded.

Nobody you need to worry bout.

The disturbance in the air began to fade. “Mister!” Perry called. “Hey, mister.”

What?

“Thanks for bringing her out. We worried.”

Brendy had made up a new dance, and she showed it to Perry as they waited. She spread her fingers and held both arms straight down at her sides. Then she went through a series of kicks and knee bends set to no particular rhythm. From time to time, she went up on her tiptoes and spun around, but she never moved her arms.

“See?” she said. “I call it the Jackson Avenue Jig.”

“I dunno,” Perry said. “I don’t think they be doing that one in the club anytime soon.”

“They will,” Brendy said. “And I’ll make a kapillion dollars.”

She lost interest in the dance and stood staring at the mausoleum. “Aw,” she said. “Nuts. Nuts!”

“What?”

“He been down there awhile.”

Perry schooled his expression. The worry in the old haint’s voice made his stomach ache, but he’d told Peaches they’d wait, and he couldn’t send Brendy along by herself. “It’s been maybe ten minutes,” he said. He hoped his tone was neutral.

“Ten minutes!” Brendy wailed.

“You making me crazy,” Perry said. “Just settle down and wait.”

“You owe me a dance,” Brendy said. “I danced you one, now you make one up.”

“We didn’t strike no deal,” Perry said. “I don’t owe you nothing.”

“Perry!” Brendy barked.

Perry heaved a sigh. “Fine. Here.” He crossed his legs behind him, bent his elbows at his sides, and flapped his hands out at his hips. He jerked his head forward, staring at Brendy with first one eye, then the other. He strutted a bit, jerking his upper half as he moved along, pecking the air with his face. Then he relaxed into a normal stance. “Know what I call that?”

“Pigeon-Pigeon!”

“I woulda called it just ‘The Pigeon,’ but that—”

Perry bit off the next word as the ground shuddered beneath him. When the tremor ceased, he stood still, waiting, his nerves on high alert.

A deep twang ran through the earth beneath his feet, and then the ground tilted hard. Perry lost his balance and would have fallen if the earth hadn’t righted itself immediately. As it was, he stumbled like a drunk.

Before he could shout his surprise, a loud crack sounded from the mausoleum. The front slab came off, fell hard into the walkway, and Peaches charged out, stiff-armed. “Run!”

Without a word, Perry snatched Brendy up and carried her as fast as he could. Peaches skidded to a halt before him, and he ran right into her. Without saying anything, she gathered Perry into her arms and carried him and Brendy both as she sprinted for the gate.

As they rushed through the cemetery, Perry twisted round to look behind them. A blot of darkness had spilled from the mausoleum. At first, it looked like fabric. Like the black ribbons from Mamaw’s funeral. But the fabric moved, questing blindly this way and that. A piece of the darkness reared up like a cobra, its tip sharpened to a point, and turned in their direction. It darted toward them, but they’d already moved too far, too fast, and the tendril dissolved in the daylight. As Perry watched, it retreated back into the mausoleum, and Perry imagined he heard a hollow growl of frustration from somewhere underground.

“Peaches!” he said. “What—?”

But he lost his voice as Peaches jumped the cemetery’s outer wall.

A split second later, she dropped lightly to the sidewalk outside and let her friends down to stand on their own. She leaned on her knees, breathing hard.

“What was that?” Perry asked. “What happened?”

“Stupid-ass stupid haints messing with my things.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My things is my things, and can’t no haints go messing with what’s mine.”

“Peaches!”

Peaches straightened. Perry hadn’t realized it before, but she hadn’t come out of the vault empty-handed. She held an envelope in her left hand. It read PEACHES in big ugly caps. She ignored Perry as she tore the envelope open and pulled its contents out. She held the paper in both hands, the envelope crumpled in her left, still breathing hard as she stared at it.

“What it says?” Brendy asked.

“Oh, uh-uh,” Peaches said. She turned the paper over. Neither side seemed to have been written on. “Somebody in trouble now,” she said. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!”

“Peaches,” Perry said. “Peaches, you gotta focus. Tell us what happened.”

“I’ma go back in. I’ma go back in, and that damn haint gonna give me what’s mine,” Peaches said.

“Go—? You can’t go back there,” Perry said. “You can’t. Peaches.”

“They stole my daddy’s letter, Perry,” she said. “They stole my daddy’s letter to me. They can’t—I can’t—I need it!” She shocked them both by bursting into tears. She stared at Perry for a moment, wide-eyed. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Perry asked.

“Don’t look!” she said.

“What? Hey,” Perry said.

“Don’t look at me!”

Peaches turned and ran.