FOURTEEN

“MY GRANDDADDY TOLD me this story lots of times and made me promise never to forget it.” Dorothy lifted a shaky finger. “Not to forget a single part —and never tell it to the wrong people.”

Betty smiled at Ray and me from the sofa. “Like I told you, Dot, I believe these two are the right people.”

I was definitely grateful that we were about to hear this, but Ray Anne looked so over-the-top happy, I thought she might start clapping. We hung on Dorothy’s every word.

She told us that Arthur was born in 1879 in a one-room shanty —kind of like a run-down shack —on Caldwell’s plantation in Masonville. My property, but I had yet to tell Betty that. “Master Caldwell bought and traded people like folks do nowadays with baseball cards.”

Had Dorothy’s statement not been so troubling, I might have smiled at her outdated analogy.

She described T. J. Caldwell as a bloodthirsty man with eight children —three ruthless daughters and five violent sons who treated black people like animals, barely providing for their most basic needs. “If the slaves got sick or hurt, it was a death sentence. Same if they tried to run.”

Dorothy’s shoulders hunched as she explained how Caldwell would make examples out of runaways, executing them and any family they’d left behind just for daring to try to live free.

Ray and I learned that, as a small boy, Arthur was put to work with his parents and siblings, doing hard physical labor from sunup to sundown, polishing shoes and saddles and whatever else needed to be shined —also cutting down trees and piling logs and doing every kind of chore related to Caldwell’s household and livestock. He wasn’t paid at all, obviously, and was just fed measly table scraps more suitable for hogs than humans. But like the others suffering under Caldwell’s tyranny, Arthur’s family saw no way out.

“Some of them got so beat down, they took their own lives,” Dorothy said.

Ray cut her eyes at me.

“But Arthur’s mama and daddy, they made up their minds to be strong for their children.”

Young Arthur couldn’t read or write and didn’t own a single book, but his mother knew some psalms by heart. Her words would soothe Arthur to sleep, even though he didn’t have a mattress or pillow or blanket.

The only break Arthur ever got from his hellish life was when he’d dare to sneak across Caldwell’s property on Saturday nights and meet up with a group of kids —maybe twenty of them —who gathered deep in the woods, “around a dry well,” Dorothy said.

Ray and I looked at each other, wide eyed.

“White kids came from neighboring farms, and black kids came from Caldwell’s place. They were good friends, those children —had none of that hate grown-ups had in their hearts.”

Eight-year-old Arthur and his little sister Pearl were among the youngest in the group, Dorothy explained. The black kids taught the white kids gospel songs while the white kids passed along leftovers from dinner and things like socks and medicated ointment when they could. Sometimes the kids would say prayers, but mainly they swapped stories and played around as friends, often dreaming up ways, however unrealistic, to stop Caldwell and his abuse.

Dorothy closed her eyes a moment and took a deep breath.

Then she explained how, one scorching day in July, Caldwell brought home several black children, all bound by chains to his horse-drawn wagon. They’d been forced to run for miles; to slip or faint meant getting dragged over unpaved roads. “Nothin’ new, except these little ones were all sick and starving —come straight from the African slave trade.” Ray Anne had to ask for a tissue when Dorothy told us the kids were too dehydrated even to cry.

Caldwell put ropes around the new arrivals’ necks and pulled them along like dogs, shoving them into a vile cage he kept on a concrete auction block not far from the Caldwell family cemetery. I shuddered at the thought that the graveyard might still be somewhere on my property. The cage was an iron-barred death trap designed to imprison human beings until they were sold to the highest bidder. The ones who survived, anyway. I’d known my ancestor Caldwell had been a monster, but this . . . I was speechless.

Caldwell gave the caged children nothing —no food or water —and no one dared risk trying to help them.

The next night, when the group of kids met up at the well in the woods, the plantation kids told their friends about the caged children and asked for help. The white kids handed over some morsels of food they’d brought, and Pearl hid them in her tattered apron. But the kids hadn’t brought anything to drink. “Those kids gathered round that bone-dry well and prayed for a miracle.” Dorothy sniffled, and her blind eyes swelled with moisture. “But nothing happened.”

She explained how some redheaded boy suggested they take Communion; the enslaved children had never done such a thing. The boy led them through the steps as well as a little kid could. They all pretended to eat bread and drink wine, saving the food they had while swallowing the only thing in their hands —air. “Then the kids prayed one more thing.” Dorothy looked down toward us even though she couldn’t see. “They said, ‘Lord, let Caldwell’s eyes be opened so he’ll finally see and regret the evil he’s doing to people.’”

Ray Anne grabbed my hand, and we both squeezed.

According to Arthur’s account, right then, a sloshing sound began stirring under their feet. Shocked but excited, Arthur hopped up and turned the crank on the dry well —and up came a bucket full of water.

Arthur filled some glass bottles the kids had found discarded in the brush and vowed to come back soon with clay jugs to get more. He and Pearl ran as fast as they could go, ahead of the others, arriving at the plantation at sunrise and rushing to the cage. The children inside could barely lift their heads.

Little Pearl began handing out bits of food, but as Arthur extended a glass bottle of water, Caldwell’s oldest son —a strong and ruthless young man —rushed over and kicked Arthur in the side of the head. Arthur yelled for Pearl to run, but she refused to leave his side.

“So brave,” Ray Anne almost gasped.

Dorothy described how T. J. Caldwell came charging over on his horse, joined by three more of his sons. Together they snatched the food away from Pearl and devoured it themselves, laughing about how those who don’t work shouldn’t eat. Then Caldwell demanded that Arthur hand over the bottles of water, but the boy defied him, flat out refusing. That’s when Caldwell seized Pearl and Arthur, ready to punish them by the harshest of means.

Arthur and Pearl’s father came running, their mother too, and soon a crowd gathered —the slaves shouting and begging for Caldwell to relent, while Caldwell’s sons insisted he show no mercy.

Ray and I sat still as statues as Dorothy sighed, then folded her delicate arms into her chest. Betty stood and wrapped a throw blanket around her grandmother’s shoulders. “Arthur wouldn’t say exactly what happened next,” Betty explained. “Only that Caldwell doubled over in agony and collapsed to the ground.”

Both Ray and I knew exactly what had happened. T. J. Caldwell had to have drunk some of the well water. He’d probably ripped a bottle from Arthur and guzzled it down as a demented form of torture against the painfully thirsty caged children.

“Soon Caldwell started raging,” Dorothy said, “talking about beasts all round him. He begged for mercy and told his sons to let the slaves go free. But those boys wouldn’t do it.”

Betty took over for Dorothy, explaining how, during Caldwell’s rant, as the angry mob swelled, Arthur’s father managed to grab Arthur and tell him to run, to hide in the woods until it was safe to come back —if it ever was.

So that’s what Arthur did, even though it meant leaving his injured little sister behind.

Dorothy cleared her throat and attempted to sit up taller, but she kept her eyes closed. “When Arthur came back some few days after, most of the blacks were gone —others were dead, their battered bodies scattered round the property. Caldwell was lying dead in the dirt too. Folks said he fell dead the day Arthur left.” The water had killed him, no doubt. “And Arthur saw the monsters too. Roaming all round Caldwell’s land. Climbing up ’n’ down trees and in and out of the main house. Moving above his head in the air too.”

Arthur had obviously swallowed the water —either from one of the bottles or the well itself.

Dorothy pointed toward her house shoes. “He saw light shining round his feet, and those creatures didn’t come near him, but he saw Caldwell’s sons and daughters with chains and tails in their heads and shackles round their necks, gettin’ tortured by evil without them realizing.”

I’d already learned a lot, but this next part was key. Dorothy trembled as she told us that as Arthur spied on the scene, he saw Caldwell’s daughters do some kind of strange ritual around a bonfire, trampling chicken bones and splattering goats’ blood on the grass. He refused to ever speak of what he saw the young ladies do next.

“But Arthur said what he saw after that was almost as bad.” Dorothy clung to the quilted blanket draped around her. “A giant devil came down from the air and stood in the fire. Skin pale as death. Long, milk-white hair. Eyes filled with enough terror to make a grown man holler. And he brought lots more of those monsters with him.”

“His name’s Molek,” I said with certainty.

Dorothy glanced my way but kept going. “That wicked thing roared like a beast, and the rest of the evil spirits fell facedown around him and those women —those witches.”

“So . . .” I needed to process things out loud. “Creepers were drawn to the land because of all the hatred and violence and death. But Molek showed up and brought even more when Caldwell’s daughters did that weird bones-and-blood stuff.”

Betty nodded.

I didn’t know if Ray Anne had come to the same conclusion as me, but I felt sure I knew the unspeakable thing Arthur had witnessed —the act that had drawn Molek to Masonville and incited his preoccupation with Caldwell’s property. It was the same unthinkable act that had drawn him to the land of Canaan thousands of years ago, like I’d read about in the Bible. But like Arthur, I didn’t want to bring it up.

We all stood, except Dorothy, and Ray Anne leaned in to Betty’s embrace. I felt like I might dry heave as I admitted, “The Caldwells were my ancestors. I own all that land now.”

Dorothy reached toward me, and I lowered to one knee in front of her, letting her take my hand and pat it. “You’ve got the chance to do right with that land now, young man.”

“She’s right,” Betty said. Then she added, “The Caldwells’ plantation home was eventually leveled. Now the high school sits in its place.”

Whoa. There really were no coincidences.

Ray Anne swayed back and forth, too keyed up to stand still. She pulled out the list of questions she’d brought. “Where do you think Molek has gone? We haven’t seen him since our senior year, but we don’t know where he went or when he’ll return.”

“I knew it.” Betty angled her face toward the heavens and smiled. “Think about it. The day that boy shot up the school, it was on every news channel across the nation. People of faith from coast to coast hit their knees, lifting up Masonville High, and some of us have never stopped. If Molek’s gone from Caldwell’s old land, it’s prayer that kicked him out.”

I had a ton of respect for Betty, and it couldn’t be denied that she had a lot of wisdom about spiritual things, but I wasn’t convinced she was right this time. Based on my father’s firsthand knowledge, Molek had left Masonville of his own volition to go hunt souls in Colorado.

Now wasn’t the time to explain where I’d gotten my intel, so all I said was, “Maybe Molek left on his own —you know, to tend to another one of his territories.”

“No, young man.” Betty furrowed her brow at me. “If you haven’t seen the reigning spirit of death at that school, you can be sure he’s trying everything to get back on that property —stalking and searching for any possible entrance point.”

“What do you mean?” Ray asked.

“A vulnerable soul or two with hearts consumed by darkness, who’ll call him back to the land.”

I actually took comfort in that. “We’re the only ones who even know his name, so that won’t be an issue.”

Betty patted my shoulder. “Things aren’t always so simple, young man.”

Exactly. She had no way of knowing I was getting inside information from a contact immersed in the supernatural realm.

That’s when Betty, Ray, and I noticed that Dorothy was holding her wobbly hand in the air, trying to get our attention. Her mouth was hanging open, like she’d gotten some shocking news.

“What is it, Dot?” Betty asked her.

“Did you just say that the spirit of death left this place?”

“Yes,” Ray Anne said.

Dorothy shrank even lower in her chair. “Betty? I need to talk to you. Alone.”

Ray Anne and I looked at each other. I could tell she wanted to hear what else Dorothy might have to say as much as I did, but we clearly weren’t invited.

Betty apologized for the abrupt good-bye and said she’d be in touch very soon. “And by the way —” She stopped Ray and me as we were headed out the door. “Arthur always warned that no one should seek out that well. I’ll never ask you where it is.”

We thanked her, and she hugged us both.

I walked Ray Anne to her car and opened the door for her as she fiddled with her keys, stalling. “That was a lot to take in, huh?” she said.

“Yeah. We should talk things through. Sometime soon, I mean.” Even though we were standing only a few feet from each other, it felt like there were miles between us. It wasn’t right. “You and me —we need each other, Ray Anne.”

She smiled —the sad kind of smile where a person wants to look happy but can’t. “I was about to say the same thing.”

I hugged her, wishing I could hang on forever. “I’m still committed to our mission,” I told her. “And to you.”

She nodded. “I needed to hear that.”

As she drove away, a tiny spark of hope flared in my heart —maybe our relationship could still get back to normal.

I got onto my bike, grateful that the answers Ray Anne and I had prayed for were finally coming to us. Arthur’s story was depressing and tragic, but also invigorating. It was like we were part of a legacy, not just lone rangers in our bizarre, extrasensory world.

I was back at my apartment, typing newly discovered facts into a notes app on my cell when I happened to pay attention to the time —nine minutes until midnight. And that’s when I remembered, 136 Sycamore Lane. Could I even get there in time?

I had no idea why my father had given me that address or what going there had to do with helping me win Ray back, but I typed it into my GPS, willing to check it out.

I pulled up at 12:03 a.m., killed my engine, and slid my helmet off.

No. Way.