Chapter Seven

With hands that trembled, Cora removed her hat as she listened to Joseph outside talking with their sons on the porch. The three of them sat in a semicircle of chairs she had arranged before leaving for the service. Their voices were quiet and subdued, affected by the emotions wrung out of them over the last two days since the discovery of Robert’s dead body in the woods.

Images of her and Joseph with the family at Emma’s house following the burial lingered. The offering of words to lift the spirits, knowing that none could, swam in her mind. An air of solemnity had hung in the room, pressing people into the depressions of the sofa cushions, the hot, dim corners of the room, and the cane bottoms of the chairs outside on the sagging porch. Whole hams, cakes, pies, and steaming pots of vegetables weighed down every available space in the kitchen and the dining room table as friends and relatives tried unsuccessfully to push food into their bodies to fill the hole that death had drilled into each of them.

Back home and alone for the moment, Cora picked up her journal, sat at the table, and began to write.

It feel like I’m losing my mind. I cain’t imagine what Emma feel like. My breath cut off just thinking about Daniel or David being dead. It ain’t natural burying your child. It happen, but it just don’t feel natural. Alls I can hear is the sound of Emma crying out for her dead baby like the sound of her voice could bring him back. And Jason just sitting there, staring at that casket, not moving, not a bit. It be like somebody just stuck him there and say, “Don’t you move.”

I was sitting in the back, trying hard to close off the noise of all them feelings around me, the air heavy as syrup, sweat dripping off my forehead, praying for Pastor Raleigh to hurry up. I closed my eyes for a minute, and when I open them back up, there be Robert, standing in the corner behind the pulpit.

Robert was looking right at me, dressed in his overalls he be wearing all the time, not the new suit his mama done bought him to be buried in. He lift one arm, and I can see the fingers on his hand is curled like he be holding something and he shaking his head no. I turns and follow to where his hand be pointing and look right at Clyde Henry, sitting next to his mama, swinging his feet, and, sweet God, it look like he smiling.

I keep waiting for Robert to fade away, but he don’t. He still standing there when they close that casket, and Miss Emma throw herself on top of it. She set that whole church up to hollering and screaming, and Fannie took Clyde out, her hands covering up his ears, and she pressing him to her side.

He look back to the front of the church at that casket and at Robert in the corner, and that smile get bigger. He look dead at me when they go past me. I smell that smell strong on him and lift my finger to rest it under my nose. He see the Knowing in my eyes. I look back to the corner, and Robert still there, watching us both.

Cora sighed and closed her journal, staring into the corner—just beyond the window curtains that stirred in the light breeze from the porch—where Robert stood.

Glancing surreptitiously through the window, she saw that everyone still sat with their bodies leaned forward. Joe reached out and squeezed Daniel’s shoulder as the boy wiped a tear from his cheek.

“Robert, was it Clyde?” Cora asked, whispering the words, speaking to the apparition, sure that no one was listening. “It be him what did it?”

Robert nodded, and she watched his body slowly lose shape and fade. Falling heavily into the rocking chair, she waited for this day to end and a new day to begin. The Knowing pressed upon her.

Clyde moved his head from side to side, rubbing his nose against the rough fabric of the overalls covering his raised knees. His constant presence in this spot in the dreamscape had formed a depression in the earth, the tall grass dead beneath him. He raised his eyes to stare at the sky overhead, tinted goldenrod and trimmed with green.

The ground and sky heaved as turbulent as his thoughts, guilt attempting to burrow inside. He sighed, his feelings in turmoil. The solitude of self was lost to him, even here in his dreams, and he felt tears welling in his eyes.

The righteous certainty he’d felt when he was executing his plan leaked from his pores, draining into the ground around him.

He listened for the sound of his mama’s words from the book of Job, “ruin for the wicked; disaster for those who do wrong.” He shook his head, confused. He needed to talk to Mama, be reassured that it was Robert who was wrong. The boy was evil, and he had brought his own damnation on himself.

The darkness rumbled in his chest, filling Clyde’s drifting thoughts, expanding in the spaces where doubt lingered. He closed his eyes, turning his ear inward, letting the dark soothe him, growing stronger. It whispered that Clyde was the judgment.

Clyde wavered, panic shooting through him, loss setting an alarm in his soul. He had felt it before when he picked up the rock to bludgeon Robert, a rage that would not be satisfied until it had been obeyed. He sensed it changing him, pushing him to a place he could not return from.

The air around him thickened, the skies growing dimmer and an invisible wind picked up, flattening the tall grass. A prickling of fear flowed along his spine, forcing Clyde to sit upright, his head swiveling from left to right, surveying the dreamscape. In the distance, a body approached.

Cora felt herself moving toward Clyde, unable to stop, discerning that she was completely visible and vulnerable to him. She watched as his eyes locked on hers, drawn into the swirling darkness of his gaze.

“You,” he cried out, pushing himself into a standing position. He felt her emotions flying around her, a swirl of fear and anger. She knew. Knew what he had done to Robert. Knew about the darkness in him. Knew that he had to die. And he knew that he would have to kill her first.

In her bed, Cora shuddered, her thundering heartbeat slowing as the fingers of the dream released her from their tenuous grip. She gulped down a deep breath and shoved herself against the security of Joe’s body curled around her in the bed. Her mind settled itself into her surroundings, set free from the dreamscape. She allowed her breathing to synchronize with Joe’s. She stared through the bedroom window and waited for dawn.

Cora shuffled from the stove to the kitchen table, rubbing sleep from her eyes, watching Robert where he stood in the corner. His face remained somber, fear etched across his expression. She stirred the eggs, scooped them onto a plate, and then turned and poured Joe his coffee.

“What’s wrong, Cora? You done had that same hang-dog look since the funeral yesterday. I know it hit you hard, but talk to me,” his voice pleaded as his hand covered hers and squeezed.

“It ain’t nothing, Joe. I’m just feeling for Emma. You know I brought that boy into the world, then had to stand over him while they buried him,” she replied, gently extracting her hand and kissing his forehead, feeling his resistance. His eyes searched hers for answers that she could not provide. Finally, he lowered his head and began sipping his coffee.

“You didn’t sleep hardly none last night, huh?” he continued, his slow, syrupy voice tingling through her and tickling her insides in the way it always had.

“How you know? You was calling hogs every time I look your way,” she answered with a low chuckle.

“Because you was up reading the Bible when I got up. I just figured you didn’t sleep none. Is them dreams back?”

“It gon’ take me a bit to get over it. Just give me some time. That’s all I need. You don’t worry yourself none, Joe. I be all right,” she said, attempting to steer the conversation away from her dreams, the disturbance in her spirit playing across the background of her thoughts. “You needs to take David and Daniel and gets to working them fields, or we won’t have no crops this year.”

An enigmatic smile teased her lips but did not rise to her eyes. She reached for the Knowing, cloaked in Mi’s image. She allowed it to renew the strength of the light, letting it banish the flashing visions of death that had continued to chase her through the night.

Joe stood, slapping his battered hat against the leg of his jeans before placing it on his head. His eyes lingered on his wife a few minutes longer before shaking his head and leaving to meet Daniel and David in the fields. Cora followed him out to the yard, where she’d left the family laundry to soak, stopping at the large tin tub she had set up earlier that morning. She watched him until his figure was a small speck in the distance, then began the soothing and repetitive motion of washing the clothes.

Cora’s hands pushed the bunched fabric against the metal rungs of the washboard, up and down, then back again, the sun hot on her bent back as she leaned over the tin tub resting on a large tree stump in her yard. Plunging Joe’s shirt into the soapy water, she continued the process until she was satisfied that it was clean.

The details of the dream forced their way to take precedence as her hands continued to work automatically. Last night, everything had changed. The darkness had increased in Clyde, a magnitude of power that allowed him to see her and invade her mind.

Pulling the shirt from the tub, she twisted it in her powerful hands, wringing it until it was free of even the slightest residue of moisture. While she vacillated, divided against herself, and serving two masters, Clyde had succumbed to the darkness born in him.

Tossing it into the basket at her feet, she leaned back, fisting her hands into the small of her back, kneading and stretching the kinks that had knotted her muscles as she washed. She cursed the duplicity of her life. Raised in the church and nurtured in the spirit of the Knowing, she had walked a fine line, thinking she could keep them separate and equal in her heart. Catching movement in the trees from the corner of her eye, she lifted her hand to shade her vision, fully expecting to see Robert emerge from the trees.

“Joe, is that you?” she called, irritation coloring her voice. It would be just like him to have doubled back and try to sneak up and check on her. She had too much on her mind to play along with him today.

Nothing else stirred while her eyes scanned the sky, a clear blue, the color of truth. An unnatural silence descended around her, making her voice sound oddly loud. Something was wrong. No sounds of birds singing, no fluttering of wings, no buzz or whir of insects, no skittering of small animals over the brittle, sun-dried grass of the woodland floor marred the absolute stillness.

Lowering her hand and leaning over the tub again, Cora shook off the foreboding. She lifted another shirt, slamming it against the corrugated surface of her board, if for no other reason than to hear a sound beyond her own ragged breathing. Her eyes roamed around her surroundings, alighting briefly on each object. The faded wooden walls that formed the back of her house remained blank, with no shadows riding across the surfaces. Yellow curtains blew in and out of the open window of her kitchen as a slight breeze passed through the yard, cooling the sweat that dripped from her forehead.

Her hands lifted a polka-dotted shirt from the water, and she grimaced. She had always hated it. Some whimsical purchase of femininity with lace trimming the collar and cuffs meant for the woman her husband saw when he looked at her. It always made her feel that people were laughing behind her back at how silly she looked in it, the bright pink and white stretched across her broad shoulders. She’d worn it to church last Sunday, enduring the stares as Joseph beamed with delight, her arm held tightly in the bend of his elbow. Closing her eyes and squeezing the water from the fabric, she allowed her inner eye to search, amplifying her other senses.

A repugnant scent wafted toward her, causing Cora to sniff the air, her nose wrinkling in disgust. The odor drifted on a current of air, faint at first but growing stronger. It was the rot of death long in the ground, of moldy, desecrated flesh moving closer. She searched within herself frantically, pushing through the fog of her conflicting thoughts. Today, she would choose.

The Knowing flared, her light growing stronger and saturating her being. Mi’s face flickered in front of her, and Cora’s lips moved in gratitude. The light blazed, the fullness of her power aligned with the Knowing. Her God knew what she was. Had he not created her?

The Knowing intensified in her spirit, and the fear and conflict that had constantly gnawed at her diminished, evaporating into nothingness. She took a deep breath, stood tall, and leveled her shoulders.

Cora squinted into the trees that bordered their property, observing a figure drawing closer. She saw an aura pulsating around a form, light purple, deep purple, green, then black, rippling against the natural light of the sun until she could discern that it was Clyde. Emerging from the woods with his steady, shambling gait, he stopped some five yards away, the blistering sun glistening on the dark skin of his bare torso beneath his overalls.

The legs of his pants had been altered to accommodate the shortness of his lower limbs, while the larger size of the overalls barely contained the barrel chest and heavily muscled arms of his upper body. He was a cruel joke of creation, a broken man and child pulled apart and put back together. His massive head balanced on a short, squat neck.

Clyde’s dark eyes fixed on her, and his lips curled upward with that horrible smile, the same one she had seen at the funeral. It was the one that followed her into sleep and formed the substance of her nightmares; the one she had seen just before she had awakened in the quiet hours of the dark night.

Thick ebony ribbons of darkness flowed forward, a tsunami crashing over her, drawing on the residues of the darkness in her own soul. It beat against her light as she threw her hands up, bending under the attack and forcing her to the ground.

Cora collapsed and lay in a crumpled heap, her voluminous skirt pushed up to expose her thighs and her bare legs. Her arms and hands were still wet and soapy from the washtub of clothes that sat close to where she had fallen. She watched through lowered lids as Clyde moved closer, now no more than the length of her own body away from her. He stood with his hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans, whistling off-key as he stared down at her.

He took a step closer, the malevolence of his gaze sending a chill through her as she struggled to sit up, seeking her voice. Forcing her mind to calmness, Cora oriented herself to where she was—still behind her house, on the hard-packed earth that was her yard. Her mind worked rapidly, forming and discarding plans. She crept closer to the tub, scooting, preparing to grab its edge, fling the water at him, and then using the empty tub to batter him.

“What you doing here, Clyde? Do your mama know you here?” She waited for him to draw closer, buying time. Her hands pushed down her skirt as she struggled to her feet, groping for the tub’s edge. She pushed herself forward until she was standing, using her height and size to intimidate him. Her blazing eyes never left his, the color shifting from gray to green.

“Naw,” he growled, his words slow with the effort to speak. She could see the frustration as his throat bulged, the words seeming to force their way out. “We both know why I be here.”

“You ain’t got no business here.” Cora inched forward with each word, giving up the idea of throwing the water. Her weight shifted to find balance. “You ain’t right, and you knows it. Your mama knows it too.”

“You remembers when you made her beat me. She b . . . beat me real bad.” The words were broken, starting and stopping. “She ain’t know nothing about them critters before you come waving them around.”

“I ain’t made her do nothing. That between you, her, and the Lord,” Cora said, baiting him with her words. Rolling her shoulders and moving her neck from side to side, she planted herself firmly in front of him. “You got a chance to go on back home, Clyde. It ain’t too late for you.” She blew air noisily between her lips, her hands rubbing up and down the fabric of her skirt to dry them.

Clyde continued moving forward with a speed that belied his size and stunted legs. He lunged forward into her, surprising her and knocking her off balance.

“Sweet Lord!” Cora screamed, her arms pinwheeling as she stumbled backward, attempting to keep herself from falling to the ground again.

“DON’T YOU SAY HIS NAME!” Clyde shouted so close spittle sprayed her face, his eyes rolling crazily in their sockets. He ground his teeth, his tongue catching on the words. “You. . . You the one wh-wh-what wants to kill me.” His lids blinked rapidly over his bulging eyes in confusion. Cora continued to back up and put space between them again, bringing herself closer to the back door of the house. Her mind raced as she regained her balance. She quickly glanced behind her, gauging the distance between her and the back door, turning to dash toward it.

“And I know you seen him,” Clyde sneered, his words freezing her in place. Her head swiveled to stare into his eyes. Death floated there in the dark, swirling mists.

Cora stopped moving away from him. Her feelings ranged across her features, betraying her thoughts and causing him to smile that hideous grimace again. Her head swam with the dizzying déjà vu of her recent dream where she had seen this death coming.

“What you talking about, Clyde?” she asked, straightening again to her full height and pushing her emotions away. He was close now, standing in her shadow. The odor emanated from him overwhelming her, thick in her lungs. She slowed her breathing to prevent gagging. It was the stink of death, like the smell of those lifeless carcasses she had discovered all those years ago left rotting in the woods and marked by his presence. The final dredges of the fear he imprinted drained from her.

He raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t finds no more, did you?” A sly look passed over his features, and Cora hesitated, letting his deception sink in.

“And I seen you in my dream,” he stammered. “I know you seen Robert when we was getting ready for the burying. He told you about me.”

“So what?” Cora said, her voice hardening, not flinching in the face of his declaration, denials, or failures, shrugging her shoulders. She could feel how his power had grown, the dark throbbing and pulsating as she slid her feet sideways over the hardpacked earth.

“We all got what us purposed to do. I done missed mine before. But you think a boy like you gon’ keep me from it this time?” Laughter barked from deep within her chest, deriding him, goading him into making a foolish decision, and giving her an advantage.

“You scared, ain’t you?” Clyde asked, inhaling deeply, his chest expanding. “You tryng to hide it deep down, but I c . . . can smells it on you.” He cut his eyes in the direction of the fields. “Ain’t nobody c-c-coming to save you, neither.”

“I ain’t needs no saving.” Her mind churned, then found its peace as she allowed the Knowing and the light to flow throughout her being, strengthening muscle, bone, and sinew with its power.

The darkness writhed around Clyde, pooling around his feet, swirling around his hands, and flowing from his mouth. Cora felt it nudge against her mind and shook her head to free herself before it could invade her and attach itself.

Cora’s arms lifted—elbows bent, the palms of her hands facing outward—as light exploded from her hands, blinding in its intensity. It shot forward at Clyde, slamming into his darkness and absorbing it.

She felt the Knowing and the light pressing, pushing, and bending the darkness, a smile spreading over her face. Her mind reveled at the prospect of victory. There would be no failure today. She would not relinquish. Her death was a worthy price to bring back the balance his destruction demanded.

And then, she felt her power being siphoned from her as the light flowed outward. Clyde bellowed, seeming to grow stronger as they fought, darkness against light.

“SINNER!” he thundered. His stuttering was gone, and his words flowed unobstructed, rolling off his tongue as though the impediment had never existed. Cora’s mouth twisted, and her eyes widened in disbelief as he inched forward, his darkness fragmenting her light. “WITCH!”

Images swam between them, and Cora saw him nestled in her hands, an infant straining to suck in air, his tiny fists waving ineffectively in the air. She saw one hand coming down toward his tiny face, hesitating for a fraction of a thought.

“HOW YOU DO THAT? HOW YOU GON’ KILL A LITTLE BABY?!” he screamed, his eyes rolling back in their sockets.

Her light melded into the darkness, sucking in the image with the light. He seemed to swell as he took her powers into himself.

“NO!” The words tore from Cora’s throat as Clyde threw himself forward, his large hands reaching through the darkness surrounding them. The weight of his body carried them both to the ground, where she landed flat on her back, the air whooshing from her lungs.

His big hands locked around her throat and silenced her screams while she fought to free her last words and thoughts. His body pressed down on hers, his hands continuing to squeeze. Her heels drummed on the ground as she twisted and bucked, trying to free herself, the pulsing light from her hands slowly ebbing.

“You is gon’ die.” She rasped her last words as he crushed the cartilage in her throat.

The image of Clyde swam in front of her eyes as Cora’s internal light began to dim with her vision. Her fists beat weakly at his arms, then tried feebly to pull his hands from her throat, flagging against his strength. Words no longer came from her. She felt failure and regret. She stared into his face, mottled purple beneath his dark skin, just like it was the day he was born. She saw the darkness writhing in his eyes, felt the snakes of power twitching beneath her own skin cease . . . and then she felt no more.

Feeling her body go limp beneath him, Clyde pushed himself into a standing position. Looking down at Cora, his heart thundering in his chest, his hands hanging loose at his sides, he let the rage funnel around him. He raised his foot and kicked her hard, listening for the crunch of bone.

Instead, his toe jammed against something unyielding within the tangles of her skirt. He leaned down, digging through the voluminous folds of fabric to find the pocket concealed there. He stared momentarily at the leather cover, worn soft over the years, then opened it.

His eyes darted rapidly across the tight, neat script as he flipped through the pages. His name appeared on almost every page, a chronicle of condemnation, damning his existence. He read until the words blurred before his eyes, swimming with tears. Slamming the book shut, he raised it over his head, prepared to hurl it to the ground, then stopped.

He pushed it into the large pocket in the front of his overalls. He would keep it. He would use it to learn what she knew, using it to take her power. He lifted his foot high, the dark energy flowing down his limb, and kicked Cora again. His foot connected solidly with her temple, ensuring she would not rise again. Finally, he felt the darkness receding, the rage satisfied, his vision clearing. They were safe from her.

Fannie sat on the small front porch of the shack she shared with Clyde, waving absently at the flies that buzzed around her head. It seemed to her that it was mighty hot for May, the sun blazing against her skin. She had made a fan from the pages of an old mail-order catalog, waving it back and forth in front of her face. It did little more than stir a slight breeze, giving her little relief. Still, it was better than the heat from baking bread in the oven. The thought of the five additional loaves needed for Clyde to make his deliveries to the general store in town melted her further into the chair.

She watched listlessly as a figure materialized from the woods, moving along the rough track she and Clyde had trampled with their going and coming over the years. She squinted into the distance, anxiety worming into her thoughts until she recognized Clyde’s walk, his knees knocking together, giving him a side-to-side gait. She watched, observing how his head and shoulders drooped and his steps dragged.

Before he had completely crossed the dry brown earth that was their front yard and reached the bottom step, she shot out of the chair, her arms encircling him as much as the width of his body would allow.

“Clyde, what’s wrong, baby?” She took a step back, her voice escalating. “Did somebody bother you? I say, what’s wrong?”

Clyde stood a head taller than Fannie, his broad shoulders and chest dwarfing her in size, balancing on his truncated legs. As he looked down at her, she studied the features on the broad plane of his face. His mouth was wide, the lips full and pink, and stretched across the width of his features. His thick nostrils flared beneath the flat bridge of his nose that divided his bulging eyes. She saw a glimmer of joy and pleasure mixed with fear and remorse in those eyes.

“I’m gon’ ask you again. Why was you walking like that? You scaring me.”

Clyde hesitated, uncertainty flickering across his face for just an instant, filled with the self-loathing Cora’s words had implanted.

“Is I’m bad, Mama? I just did what I supposed to do. I makes a sinner pay.”

Fannie’s heart lurched, then fell with the pain of his words. Her eyes narrowed, her mouth pulling into a pout. She reached up, her palm cupped his cheek, and he leaned into her hand.

Clyde allowed her to lead him to the edge of the porch, where he perched on the rim, Fannie sitting back in her chair. His head rested in her lap, her hands tracing a pattern on his scalp.

“Tells me what done happened, Clyde. What make you think you bad?”

“The dream said she gon’ kill me. She a sinner.”

Fannie’s hand stopped, and she leaned back until she was rigidly aligned against the back of the chair. “I needs you to tell me what sinner, baby boy?”

Clyde grabbed her hand, pulling at her fingers, hungry for the soothing they offered as Fannie continued questioning him. “I thought we was gon’ talk about it if God was speaking to you again. You remembers?”

He nodded and began, “It was what the dream said, Mama. She come to my dream place, and I seen her. I seen in her head what she was gon’ do to me. Then . . .” He stopped, swallowing the words that threatened to choke him before he continued speaking. “He done put her right there in front of me, Mama, in a dream. Wasn’t nothing to do but his work. Why he tell me about her if it ain’t time?”

“But who, baby? Who was it?” Panic and worry began to build again as Fannie tried to sort out the truth from him, her eyes casting rapidly—wildly—as she searched his face. She took several deep breaths, not wanting to rush him but needing the truth.

“Was that witch, Miss Cora,” he spat, the poison of his hatred putrefying the air between them. “You know her, Mama?” Clyde’s eyes probed hers, eager for approval, judging the impact of each word as he spoke it. “It come to me in my dream last night. I knowed she was gon’ kill me.”

Fannie sighed, breath released from her like a slow-leaking balloon. She felt tension easing from each portion of her body along with the fear that had resided in her since his birth. Cora. Of course, it was Cora. All these years, she had lived in trepidation that somehow she would take Clyde away from her. She rolled her head around, then relaxed her shoulders, aware of taking the first long, deep breath since the day Clyde was born—when Cora told her he had to die.

Apprehension slid off her in waves. Grabbing Clyde more firmly, she clasped him to her chest, patting him on the back, great wrenching sobs shaking her body.

“Why you crying, Mama? Did I do bad . . .? Huh? Did I?” Clyde wailed, climbing to his knees and turning his face into her skirts. He felt the darkness beginning to churn, and he fought against it, hugging his mother tighter.

Fannie lifted his face, smiling through her tears, raining kisses on his forehead and cheeks. “Oh no, baby boy. You did just right.” Her fingers began the familiar salving dance, rounding his skull, sliding down both sides of his nose, her hands caressing his cheeks, and then starting again.

“Now you tell Mama what happened. Don’t leave out nothing.”

Clyde rested in Fannie’s embrace, the darkness receding for now while his mother made it right. It curled inward and waited.