Chapter Four

Cora sat on a lightning-blasted tree stump, her chin cupped in her palms, elbows resting on her knees, staring into the stark blue sky. She stilled her thoughts and opened herself to both the world on this plane and the one that lay beyond it.

The Knowing could not be forced. It moved at its own volition, unbound by time, unbothered by her demands or will. It came in fits and starts, often silent as the seasons bled into one another, sometimes becoming years.

Then it returned like now, to snatch her relentlessly from her sleep with dark visions of blood and death, bathed in sweat and tangled in her bed sheets. Over the previous nights, visions of Clyde had been awakened, plaguing her. Something had changed.

By early morning, when the first rays of sunlight had touched her eyelids, she shot straight up in bed, aroused by the awareness that Clyde was growing worse. It sank into her, gripping her heart with a paralyzing jolt that left her panting, glad that Joe had already risen from the bed and she would not have to explain it. She dressed quickly and started breakfast for the family, eager for them to leave so that she could be about her business.

Cora stood up. The Knowing had beckoned her to these woods, lurking, following, seeking a trail of darkness that teased and enticed her to follow it. Moving, she stood behind the trunk of a giant oak, as thick around as three men standing side by side, alone in the deep grass. The trees surrounding it were burnt stumps struck by lightning like the one she had been resting on. Bush grass grew waist-high around this peculiar sentinel left standing amid the chaotic destruction of previous summer storms, effectively concealing her behind its girth. Her heart drummed rapidly, and she tried to take deep breaths to calm its racing while feelings of shame rolled through her. She had been derelict, rebelling against the Knowing, managing to convince herself that Clyde wasn’t part of the foreboding premonition given to her. Her empathy had hidden the clarity of her purpose from her path.

Early on, she had followed him off and on once he was big enough to walk through the woods unaccompanied. Fannie had let him wander, knowing that his paraparesis wouldn’t let him go too far. From a distance, she would probe him, sensing the edge of darkness that followed him . . . waiting . . . watching.

Over the years, she had observed no outward signs of the level of darkness she’d witnessed at his birth manifesting itself in him. Instead, there was only the persistent goldenrod aura of guilt and self-destruction permeating striations of darkness that always seemed to circulate around him. That, and a God-awful smell that seemed to cling to him. A smell that she had come to know as uniquely his own. She wondered how Fannie and the rest of them could bear to be around him in the closeness of that small shack.

She continued to delude herself that maybe her failure had not been a failure after all. Maybe the Knowing had been wrong. Maybe Clyde was just a mangled mess of a child born with lame legs and a peculiar face.

She studied his features intently. Taken individually, they showed a unique perfection: delicately shaped ears, thick yet finely arched eyebrows, skin like smooth dark chocolate, and a mop of curly hair. Yet, his wide mouth and full lips seldom smiled to display his small, even white teeth, and his large, protruding eyes disturbed it all. Taken together, the discordance of his appearance formed an unattractive whole.

Every now and then, she had heard whispered stories from town, like the one about Clyde and the mouse killing at his grandmother’s house a couple of years back. By the time the town was finished with the tale, it was a rat the size of a small house cat that he had killed and drank its blood. She put that story and the others down to the town gossip of people happy to see the misery of anyone other than themselves. As time passed, everything surrounding him and his birth had taken on the texture of a nightmare dream, which she pushed to the farthest parts of her memory.

Until today, when the Knowing’s urging became so intense that she’d felt it in her bones, she lifted a prayer that she was following her path, and now, that long-ago prophetic purpose would be revealed as truth.

She knew Clyde immediately when she saw him, that big man’s chest stuck to those little boy legs—and that smell, like skunk and sulfur. Looking at him, she shivered, a new and irrational fear that he was stronger than she was flowing through her blood, making her body shake until she feared she would lose control of her bladder. Cora took a deep breath, her muscles tightening as she stood to her full height.

She shook herself free of her fear and straightened her posture. No matter his look, she told herself, he was still a six-year-old boy. She was a woman grown and filled with the power of the Knowing.

Peering around the tree trunk where she hid, she could see that he was looking at something near his feet, the shadows cast by the leaves overhead momentarily hiding the expression on his face. He stood, straightening his body as much as his crooked limbs would allow, and stared toward the tree.

Cora drew back, making her body as small as she could, holding her breath, waiting. An awareness of the escalation of the darkness in him resonated in her soul, making her wonder if it would allow him to see her through the tree trunk or hear her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

He stared at the tree where she hid for a long moment, then turned his attention to whatever was on the ground. Cora adjusted her position, daring to peek around the tree again until she could see him clearly, the dappled spots of sunlight illuminating his face. His mouth was spread in a disarmingly wide smile.

She cringed, shrinking farther behind the tree. His smile did not touch those bulging eyes, yellow instead of white around the brown irises, rimmed with red and sitting beneath that wide nose spread across his face, conveying a look of pure gratification.

She stared at him. Her thoughts meandered, remembering his birth and how Fannie kept stroking the soft curls of his head, rubbing his misshapen skull. Even then, she had noticed the thick, black coils. She contemplated whether that thick mop of curls obscured a head still dented and sunken in. What a waste of good hair.

This close, the Knowing informed the darkness of him upon her spirit, a simmering miasma of fear, hopelessness, and rage that absorbed portions of her light. It clouded her mind, radiating from him and suspending her in a trance.

Cora blinked rapidly, attempting to clear her thinking as Clyde moved farther away from her, his hands shoved in his pockets, his knees knocking together, whistling off-key.

She concentrated, reaching for her gift, desperate to correct the dark impurities circulating in her spirit. Searching, she found her light was pearl gray on the edges, pitted with spots of charcoal blackness. Sinking cross-legged on the ground, she rested her hands on her knees and began breathing deeply, in and then out, focusing on the dark spots. She centered her breathing and worked to purge the darkness she’d absorbed from him until it was gone.

Sighing loudly, she stood, stretching her limbs to ease the tension from her legs and shoulders, and moved farther from her hiding place, the long grass scratching against her calves.

She stepped forward, needing to know what he was looking at, what had caused that hideous grin to spread across his face. She began to chant under her breath, a deep certainty that she already knew what she would see taking firm possession in her mind as she walked.

She had reached the place where he had been, and though the smell had begun to dissipate, it lingered along with a light purple mist rising from the spot and marking it as Clyde’s territory. It wrapped itself around her ankles and traveled upward, freezing her face and severing her connection to nature as she stared down at the remains of a wild rabbit.

The small animal’s head was twisted, almost off its neck, its body crushed, bones sticking through the fur. Cora recoiled. He had done this. He had savagely killed the animal not for food but for sport. She had watched him smile over his kill, then leave it there to rot.

Leaning down, she touched the rabbit’s fur, the kill so recent that it hadn’t stiffened yet. Grabbing it by the ears, she dropped it into the bag hanging at her side and continued to trail behind Clyde as he made his way home.

She thought about how many deaths like this she had seen over the years, rejecting the truth the Knowing placed before her. It wasn’t Clyde. He was too young. She had assured herself that animals died all the time, victims of predators bigger and stronger than themselves. As she thought about it now, a flush of shame rushed up to color her cheeks for covering the travesty of his kill pattern with a thin veneer of denial. The slaughters were always close to Fannie’s, and there were far too many for it to be natural. No signs of teeth or claw had marred a single carcass.

As she walked, she collected several more remains. He seemed to be leaving her a trail to follow, mocking her, daring her to do something about it. She continued to stalk him with no clear plan, simply a determination to know the truth for herself.

Arriving at Fannie’s door, she stared at the gray boards that formed the frame around it, beaten down by sun and weather until it appeared soft. She had not been there since his birthing, fleeing from her impotence at his birth and allowing Fannie’s unspoken curse to reduce her to prey.

The place looked more dilapidated than she remembered, the structure and the land suffering the neglect of men. James Henry and the older boys had abandoned it long ago, moving to Rayville. The scuttlebutt shuttling through town was that Clyde was a danger to be around. James Henry, fearing the ass whopping the boy deserved or that one of his other boys would get hurt, kept them with him in town.

Fannie endured, struggling to make a living, taking in washing and baking bread that she sold in town. It allowed her to keep Clyde close to her. Cora thought about the youngest one, Simon, and if he might still be there. She shivered, imagining the horrors he could have been living with if he were.

Standing outside the door, breathing deeply, Cora gathered the light into herself, feeling it spread and push back the darkness. She brought her fist down sharply, banging against the door frame, feeling it shake and hoping it was the wood and not her trembling hand.

Fannie opened the door, brushing flour from her hands onto her apron as she pushed the screen door wide enough to fit her body, blocking Cora from coming inside and making it clear that she was not welcome. Cora glanced over Fannie’s head at Clyde sitting on a stool in the corner. He bowed his head, his hands twisting in his lap.

Fannie stared up at Cora, whose big body filled the small porch, blocking the sun behind her and dwarfing the woman in front of her. Cora’s nose wrinkled at the smell that had grown strong again, noting that Fannie didn’t seem affected by it.

“How you, Miss Cora? What bring you out this way?” She clapped her hands against her apron, flour floating in the air between them. “I don’t mean no rudeness to you, but you know you ain’t welcome here.”

Fannie didn’t move, forcing Cora to step back, craning her neck to look over Fannie’s head into the room. Snakes of darkness and deep purple writhed across the floor, drawn to Clyde.

“What you looking at my boy for?” Fannie hissed, raising up on her toes to further block Cora’s vision.

“I expect you knows what he is, Fannie. Ain’t no use in trying to hide from it. He just gon’ keep getting worse. The older he get, the worse it be. Somebody gon’ have to do something with him.”

“And who that somebody gon’ be, Miss Cora? You?” she demanded. “Is you come to kill him like you was gon’ do when he was born?” Fannie’s eyes bored into Cora, her words making the other woman flinch, the hard truth lashing into her. Had she not, in fact, come to do just that?

The Knowing pressed the truth into Cora, a swirl of blue coloring her thoughts. There was no other solution. She could no longer deceive herself that the Knowing misspoke. Clyde wasn’t just sin ugly with some strange ways. He was his father’s darkness incarnate. He needed to die.

Wrenching open the bag hanging beside her, she looked down at the visible truth it contained, one Fannie could not deny. Using one hand to hold it open, she allowed Fannie to see the grizzly carcasses within, the blood staining the sides of the bag.

Fannie’s eyes rounded in horror, staring back and forth from the contents of the bag and back up at Cora. She reached out and snatched the bag, catching Cora off guard with the sudden movement, wrestling it from her shoulder. Cora stumbled backward as Fannie stepped back behind the screen, into the house, and slammed the door in her face, leaving her blinking outside.

Regaining herself, Cora moved to the side of the house and stood beneath the only window of the shack, a few feet from the door. Stretching her neck upward, she peered inside, grateful for her height. Fannie’s back was to her. Clyde was still crouched down on his stool, his eyes searching the floor. Their voices carried clearly to her as Fannie shook the bag in front of him.

“Did you do this, Clyde?” Fannie asked, shaking the bag. “Look at me! Did you do this?”

Clyde pulled himself in tighter, his knees pulled up to his chest, his bowed head resting on them. The darkness swirled around him, twisting vapors slithering across the packed dirt. Lifting his head, Cora felt his stare drilling into her just before dark mists shot across the room toward the window where she stood.

Falling backward, arms flailing, she landed on her butt, the darkness piercing the walls. Clyde, she realized, had grown stronger than she had perceived, apparently able to manipulate and utilize the darkness.

The dark Knowing swirled over her until it covered her completely. She felt it pushing down her throat, making her gag, tasting it like the rot of desecrated flesh. She pulled her light, sucking it from deep inside and blasting it outward into the darkness, straining against its power.

In the distant woods behind her, a light flared, flashing toward her, causing the darkness to retreat. Coughing and spitting, Cora staggered to her feet and began running toward it, her long legs churning and eating up the distance.

As the woods closed in around her, Cora slowed her pace until she was walking, her whole body slumping in defeat. Reaching the light hovering in the trees, she watched as the brilliant orb transfigured into a human form before her, startled as she recognized the face.

“Mi?” Cora whispered, her lower lip trembling while tears pooled in her eyes, causing the image to waver in front of her.

“How many times you gon’ run?” Mi’s voice demanded, steeled with the rod of discipline so familiar to Cora that she ducked, anticipating a flick to the lobe of her ear.

The image flickered, becoming distorted, and then became her grandmother again. She felt the acidic burn of her shame pulsing through her blood with each heartbeat. The truth was affirmed, yet she had run, not fighting the darkness but fleeing it.

“I done taught you better.” The voice she remembered as Mi resounded around her, clipped and strident.

Cora’s head lowered, avoiding looking directly into Mi’s deep black eyes. Mi drifted forward, her feet not bending a blade of grass. Her wrinkled fingers settled beneath Cora’s chin and lifted it, forcing her to look at her.

“Why you leave me?” Cora sputtered. “It been so long.”

“Child, you know I ain’t of this world no more.”

Cora stared as Mi’s features bled in and out, flickering in the air, the Knowing embodied in her familiar form. Questions raced through her mind as she tried to sort out what she wanted to say. Ideally, she wanted direction, a plan, a surety of action that left no room for doubt, and the strength to execute it as opposed to the uncertainty that made her waver.

“I know the truth now, but I still don’t know if I can do it.”

Mi’s features hardened. “Stop all that crying and whining before I take a switch to you.”

Cora felt a chuckle of disparagement climbing upward in her throat, then—remembering her grandmother’s quick backhand—smothered it before it could escape.

The darkness had bent her light, fractured it, and she had run like a whipped dog. Her thoughts rolled over one another as she remembered the darkness swirling across the room to reach for her and the other thing she had seen when Clyde locked his gaze with hers. In his eyes, she had seen her death coming.

“You done always had a head hard as a rock, but you gon’ do what you was told.” Mi’s words reverberated inside her brain before the apparition stretched upward, the light elongating her form until she towered over Cora. “He your mirror, and he wasn’t never meant to be in this world with you. He the opposite of everything you is,” she chided. “He ain’t supposed to be.”

Regardless of what physical form the Knowing took, she felt inadequate for the task. The dark Knowing was growing within him. Reaching down, Mi lay one hand on Cora’s forehead, allowing her radiance to flow around the edges of her granddaughter’s brain.

“Balance!” reverberated in Cora’s mind.

“You knows the truth now. The Knowing strong in you.” The brilliance of the light expanded, filling the air around her, then seeping into her pores. “Now you ain’t fighting it no more. It be all right.” The last words echoed, floating disembodied as Mi’s form dissipated into the air. “You ain’t gon’ fail.”

Cora struggled to hold onto the images of her grandmother, of the words, of the Knowing, of her purpose. As it faded, her last thoughts melted with it. She found herself alone, staring at Fannie’s house, visible in the distance, still double-minded.