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My drive took me straight up the coast. One quaint seaside village was pretty much the same as the next. Pastel houses stilted above the sand as if afraid to get their skirts wet.
All of them had names, like boats. Sol Mate. Blue Lobster. Sea Renity. Might as well call that one “Sea Rentity.” Most of these bungalows only saw people a few months of the year.
Atofo and his people probably never imagined the size and scale of what was to come.
Usually, I could relax cruising down remote highways and back roads, even in Bubonic. Today, the agitation of omens and prophecy wouldn’t give me any rest. I kept searching the sky for birds. Plenty of vultures. An osprey nesting in a bare tree. No more ravens. Was that good or bad?
As a teacher, Atofo was terrible. I’d survived a Criminal Justice degree at the University of Baltimore under some hardass professors. School had always come easy for me. I earned a strange respect in the old neighborhood because of it. They wanted to see somebody get out in the way we’re told things should work instead of in a coffin.
But being a shaman didn’t exactly involve taking notes and writing papers. Written words didn’t matter. Tests involved blood. The spirit. The training made me wish I’d learned even more lessons on the street.
Atofo’s approach to mentoring meant pushing his apprentice off the high dive. My first attempt to speak with the ancestors, he’d just opened up the voices buried only a few feet underneath us. If the Below wants to amputate your physical form, the spirits there want to sew themselves to your insides. They’d love nothing more than to hitch a ride, even only for a few days.
Most of Atofo’s people buried in the exhibit felt regret and remorse. They’d tied their fate to a childless god who had no mother connected to theirs. The Above denied them entry. But those who’d taken on the sacrament and Catholic rites with the proper respect, they were MIA from the gravesite. For them, the rites worked.
Religion. Magic. Thin lines.
An oncoming truck blared its horn. I swerved back into my lane in time to keep Bubonic’s side mirror attached. All those souls grasping, pulling at my insides...I shook the image free.
Staying alive was my goal now. Nearly killed while zoned out over a grave full of bodies, I tried not to think of where I’d end up. All this had surely affected my own spiritual journey.
Atofo says you get used to the chaos Below, eventually. Eventually. That dude’s four or five hundred years old.
But this was never about me being immortal. I’d go when the world was done with me, but I’d go fighting. All I wanted was to be certain I wasn’t leaving my son alone. He had my parents to look after him, but a boy needs a father. The longer it took for me to find a cure, the more damage done to him. If I took too long, I might as well have let the cancer eat away my insides.
“There is a cure,” Atofo once said. “Always a cure. But the cost, the cost is great.”
His people didn’t have a cure for me. Other tribes might, he speculated. He’d also told me about mortals who once took on death long, long ago and become something other than human. Every culture has those stories. Figuring out which was for real would be the hard part. That and not going too far.
But the deeper I went, the more likely I’d find a cure. Some magic transcends the Old and New World, originating in a place of deep time. Like the Primal Flame, the one from which all forges are lit.
Yeah, I was most definitely getting to know Araceli better when I got back to town. She had a spark of that traditional magic. All went well, I’d have the sword by lunch and be home before dark. Three more hours until I would reach the address in South Carolina on Wadmalaw Island. Me and the blacksmith-not-a-weaponsmith could talk more then. For now, I’d see what I could uncover on this latest job.
But I knew better than that. I knew these little tasks Mr. Kitterling assigned. I knew the damn omens I wanted to ignore. I knew my luck. Complications were part of the gig.
***
BUBONIC RUMBLED THROUGH a sandy intersection riddled with roots. I’d turned off the main highway half an hour ago onto a forest service road. Only midday, I felt a world away from the beach bungalows.
I rolled past abandoned houses strangled in the undergrowth. In places, gravel drives led into the woods only to end abruptly, the spiny forest having finished the job. Bent and gnarled oaks sprouted up behind shield walls of palms, moss hanging like those feelers at an automatic car wash. For sale signs dotted the roadside, many declaring a pending sale.
How outta your damn mind did somebody have to be to buy land out here?
I crunched to a stop on the other side of an intersection. A flicker of movement in the side mirror caught my eye. A stooped old man with leathery skin ambled behind Bubonic. He wore a faded orange shirt and high-waisted pants yanked damn near to his armpits by suspenders. Each step seemed like a chore as he probed the ground with a cane as gnarled as he was. How had I missed him on the side of the road?
Yet another perk of driving a hearse — the rearview had been made useless. I tried to track his shadow in the curtained center window but quickly lost sight. Cursing, I slipped the column shifter into park and stepped out onto the road.
Nobody there.
At the rate the old man had been hobbling, he couldn’t have crossed by now. I opened my spirit, but only just. You had to be cautious searching the Above and Below because you never know what you might let inside.
Dead center of the crossroads I sensed a weakness between the worlds. Reality had frayed. Long ago or yesterday, hard to say. Layers and layers of fissures like a geological accretion.
You don’t have to be in the know to have heard about the power of crossroads. Charlie Daniels sang about a man who met a devil and played him for his soul. Before that, Robert Leroy Johnson called one up at a crossroads and became a legend — only one of those stories is true. Long before either, African rituals used crossroads to walk between worlds.
The Timucuan, like Atofo, hadn’t had much use for roads. So other than rumors and folk tales, this was magic I didn’t know. That thought excited me. These country sideroads often led to pockets of magic. Sometimes, even an actual practitioner.
A house slumped in the marsh further down the road. White paint peeled like dead skin. The entire roof slanted, shingles furry with moss. By some miracle, the porch still stood, held up by a single rotten timber. I almost wrote it off as abandoned, but on the porch sat the old man in a rocking chair, his deep brown, shriveled skin a perfect contrast to the crisply pressed but faded orange shirt.
I stared a little too long. He gave a lazy wave. I hopped in Bubonic and pulled up in front of his house.
“Hello there,” I said, climbing out of the driver’s seat.
“You ain’t done bring that carriage for me, have you?”
“No, sir, nothing like that.”
I expected a smile or a laugh to go with his little joke. Instead, he gave my answer a solemn nod and sank back into contemplation. This was for sure the same guy I’d just seen forty yards up the road. Only he couldn’t be sitting there relaxed and calm as can be unless the brother was Usain Bolt’s granddaddy.
“Didn’t I just see you?” I pointed toward the crossroads.
“May have.” The deep accent took me a second to catch on to. Reminded me something of the West Baltimore neighborhoods but fused with a backwoods twang, loose and sloppy. “What’d ya see?” he asked. I pointed and started to describe, well, him, while casually approaching. He interrupted with a shaky hand. “Best mind the grass.”
I gave him a puzzled look. This wasn’t no yard of the month. He was growing mostly weeds. Mowed, sure, maybe at the start of winter. The driveway reminded me of the crooked coastal islands on my road map, broken into slabs and surrounded by winding strips of wild growth.
Then I felt a twinge on the soles of my feet.
I stopped short. Everywhere my gaze fell across the yard shimmered like a distant horizon. From the tall grass, a dry rattle began. A vortex, lashing out and pinning me down. I had to take a step backward to break free. The envy of old men all up and down this coast, he’d constructed a spiritual warning to stay off his lawn.
Creating persistent magic across such a broad, open space was no easy feat. One reason thresholds were so useful was that they formed a choke point. Sprinkling salted earth wouldn’t defeat his complex ward. I could wade in and try to counter his magic, though clearly, he’d spent years perfecting and building this trap.
The man set his chair to rocking. “Well? Go on an tell me ‘bout him.”
“Him? Oh, yeah. Five-foot ten. Wore tan pants,” I gave him a raised eyebrow and swept my hand toward his pants. “Suspenders. Not saggin’ like us young-uns. That and a spiffy hat.”
He gave me a gap-toothed grin. “See his face? Notice anything strange ‘bout it?”
“I’m sure it was smug. But no.”
“It’d be in the eyes, it would.” His smile evaporated. “Don’t you leave by that road. You take the switch up yonder, past the cemetery. It’ll get you back out to the highway with no trouble.”
“Actually, I came here to find something.”
“Well, then you might just wanna drive back out through that there crossroads. You’ll find somethin’ alright.”
I took another look toward the intersection. I got the feeling I might not want to find what was back there. If I had to guess, it was whatever he’d felt the need to protect himself from.
“I’m looking for a place called Fenwick Hall.”
He set his chin bobbing, his mouth pensive. No answer came, just more rocking and nodding and I tried to see if maybe he’d dozed off.
“That’d be the plantation.” He tipped his hat and pointed a crooked finger. “Up the road a piece, turn by the old mill, go about another half mile. But you might just do yourself a favor and go on back the way you come.”
“Why’s that?”
“They ain’t friendly.”
“Well, neither am I.”
He smiled again, broad and yellowed. I slipped back behind the wheel and drove off.
I hadn’t been here more than an hour and this little side trip had started to pay off. This new source would be a puzzle to work out, for sure. Holding a conversation across his DMZ wouldn’t work. Something told me I’d need to draw him out or risk the crossing if I wanted anything useful.
I found myself backtracking on those omens. I wanted to doubt them, felt the need to question. In the roll of the dice though, what you want never truly enters the picture. Maybe the leads would come quickly, but magic — magic never came easy.