Southern Gods (26 page)

He paused, shifted in the bed, trying to make himself comfortable with his arm above his head. He looked like the boy again, and Sarah wanted to take his hand or brush the hair out of his eyes
.

She said, “How can you know you’ll ever be safe? That anyone will? Is that what you were thinking?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding relieved that she understood. He looked at her quizzically. “Yes. How can folks have families, fall in love—anything—if that music is out there, waiting to be played? It’s like any minute can be the last minute. The end of the world. How can someone find happiness like that?”

“I guess everybody lives like that, I mean… you never know. They always say you can get run over by a bus. But damned if I’ll just accept it. Or allow it to happen, if I can stop it. Nobody deserves that—for their life to end just because they heard a song. And then, to get back up, after they’re dead. To dance to somebody else’s… something else’s… tune.” He shuddered.

Ingram finished the story, telling them in a dead voice of the events at Ruby’s, of finding Early’s reanimated corpse and realizing it was Hastur.

The women were quiet, each looking at him with wide eyes.

Alice sniffed. “It’s pretty hard to stomach, to tell the truth. But there are some things in this world that just can’t be explained away.” She looked over at Sarah. “I always talked about my doodlebugs, and you never believed.” She looked down, smiled sadly, and then looked back up. “Rightly so, I guess. I ain’t got no doodlebugs. But my momma do, and my grandmame even more before her. Being born in Africa and brought over here as a slave, the magic was strong in her. I remember. She could heal the sick with her hands and find things that no one else could. I saw it with my own eyes. So I guess there ain’t any reason not to consider what this man said, even though it might not have happened exactly as he said.”

Tension seemed to flow from Ingram’s shoulders, and it looked to Sarah, for a moment, like he might cry.

“There’s something else,” Sarah said, lowering her voice. “What brought you here?”

“What do you mean? The river did.”

She shook her head, hair swinging. “No. How did the river know to bring you here?”

He looked dumbfounded. “It didn’t. It was just chance. A coincidence.”

“It’s just too much for coincidence. I want to know what brought you here because… if there is a… Pale Man out there and he has this song or sound of madness, then someone or something is working against him, through us. And I want to know what and who it is.”

She hesitated, not knowing how to go on. She sighed, squared her shoulders, then said, “There’s even more. I’ve found some books in the library, here, that have something to do with this.”

Alice drew a sharp breath. “What? In the library?” She looked as though she’d found a snake under her pillow.

Sarah nodded. “The book I’ve been translating. I took it, just today, to a priest.”

She told them about Andrez, about the
Opusculus Noctis
and the Prodigium.

“The thing is, I found another book in the library… a horrible, evil book. The illustrations are so… so… ghastly that once you’ve seen them, it’s like something changes in your mind. Like how you described Ramblin’ John’s song. Hearing it, or seeing these illustrations, unlocks something in you, an awareness like a door opening. These drawings are so simple and…
hideous…
you don’t have to know the language to know what it’s saying. About how to… I don’t know… raise up the dead. Bargain with devils.”

“In our library? Here? At the Big House?” Alice was incredulous. Sarah nodded slowly. She pulled the key out of her pocket, walked forward and unlocked the handcuffs.

He lowered his arm, slowly, wincing.

“I’m sorry, Bull. We had to be sure.”

“What? This isn’t a face you can trust?”

Sarah was quiet, taking his question seriously. Actually, it
was
a face she could trust. But she wasn’t going to tell him that. Her heart gave a lurch in her chest, and her cheeks burned.

“What about that goddamned book,” asked Alice. “You got to put that thing somewhere safe. What if Fisk got a hold of it?”

“It’s still there, on the desk. Father Andrez is coming. He’ll help us figure out what to do.”

Chapter 15

I
ngram awoke to the sound of crying children.

He thought a wounded animal shared the room with him. The wailing pierced his ears and made his head throb. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he realized the children were crying somewhere in the house.

He sat up and swung his legs off the bed, every bit of his body hurting. His bladder felt as if any moment it might burst. Very carefully, he put weight on his legs and found that they held, if not steadily. He moved to the bureau and searched the drawers. His shirt, pants, and underwear lay neatly laundered, folded, and mended, with tight stitches in the breast and sleeve. His jacket, shoes, and socks were missing. His keys, wallet, and a flattened package of Peter Stuyvesants sat on the bedside table.

Ingram’s head pounded. The wailing of the children sounded like sirens in an air-raid. He padded out into the hall on bare feet, tucking in his shirt. The house was tremendous, opulent and foreign. To Ingram it looked like the dark mahogany insides of some lost Southern dream, all scroll work, dark wood, rich paintings, and ornate carpets. Men in funny outfits stood in moody dark fields with oddly shaped dogs. Women and children posed in rigid clothes that looked elegant and uncomfortable.

Next to a painting of a chubby red-haired boy, Ingram noticed an open door and peered in. A bathroom. He shut the door and threw the latch. Cigarette dangling from his lip, he pissed for what seemed like an eternity. He shivered with the experience, and his back crackled. He flicked his butt into the toilet and flushed.

After washing his hands and examining his haggard appearance in the ornate mirror above the sink, Ingram left the bathroom and walked down the hall until he came to where the wall fell away on his left, leaving only a railing fifteen feet above a grand entryway, paneled and mirrored, possessing a massive oak door as the center piece. Stained-glass lilies and hydrangeas circled it, letting colored light permeate the room. A staircase circled down on the right, ending in a curlicue.

He walked down the staircase, his good hand firmly on the balustrade, holding himself steady. The sound of crying was fainter now, and he could hear the voices of women. He recognized Alice’s deep, melodious voice. Turning to his left at the base of the stairs, he walked under the gallery he’d emerged from only moments earlier, through a large dining room, and entered a kitchen smelling of biscuits and bacon and coffee. His stomach rumbled as he ducked his head going through the doorway.

With his entry, the crying stopped and five pair of eyes widened.

“Uh… hi. Is there something wrong?”

Franny’s lip began to quiver, and she turned to Sarah. “Mommy! The peafowl—something got to ’em! I think they ate ’em. Even ole Phemus.”

“Baby, I’m sure they’re all right. Maybe a weasel, or fox chased one, or got to a chicken or—”

Fisk turned toward her. “No! They’re dead. Blood in the grass everywhere, feathers all over the yard. Serious.” He put his hands on his waist and for a moment Ingram wanted to laugh; in the few hours he’d spent with her, Ingram had seen Alice do the exact same thing at least ten times. Lenora crossed her arms and looked at Sarah like it was her fault.

“He’s right,” Lenora said. “Something happened. We gotta go check on ’em, Miss Sarah.”

Alice shook her head. “Whatever happened to ’em, we all need some breakfast. Sit down at the table and we’ll eat.”

Fisk started to protest but Alice cut him off, saying, “Whatever got to the fowl, they gonna get ’em again? Huh? If they been got, they been got. We gonna eat breakfast and then go investigate. You hear me, Fisk?”

The boy scowled at Alice, his shoulders setting in an obstinate pose. Alice ignored him, and began dishing up food. Though the children glared at her and Sarah sullenly, they took their plates and began to eat.

Ingram asked, “Where are my shoes?”

Alice shuffled over, coffee pot in hand. She refilled his mug.

“You only had one when we found you. You must’ve lost the other at the…” She looked at the children. “The fracas. I’ll ask Reuben or Wilson if there’s somebody on the farm with feet as big as yours. Though I doubt it.”

As he ate, the children watched him keenly, eyes following his every move. After Ingram emptied his plate, he looked at it mournfully, and scraped up the last of the gravy with his fork. The children took the plates to the sink and moved to stand by the backdoor that led to the porch and yard.

“Momma, come on. We ate. Now
come on
,” Lenora demanded.

Ingram stood uneasily with Sarah. She said, “It’s okay, Bull. You don’t have to come. Why don’t you go back upstairs and get some rest?”

“I’ll tag along, just to see.” He lifted a bare foot. “They’re tough.”

Outside, the dew of the yard held silvered paths, tracks made by the feet of children, punctuated by the entrails of peafowl arranged in strange and bloody piles. Littered among the gory configurations were feathers decorating the grass in bloody streamers. Not the work of weasels, or any other predator Ingram had ever heard of. Except one. Man.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Sarah came to stand beside him, her face pale and blank. Franny stood with them, making wet, heart-broken sounds.

Ingram looked at the little girl in wonder. He squatted on his hams next to her, like a farmer inspecting a crop.

“Hey. Hey.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, then tried patting. She turned to him, her eyes huge.

“It’s okay, everything’s gonna be just fine.” He looked up at Sarah, and she had the same stricken expression as Franny.

Goddamn, this is a hard lesson. For her. For me.

Sarah cleared her throat. “I need to take her back inside the house. Away from this.”

Fisk ran between piles of guts and feathers, pointing and exclaiming. Lenora stood beside Alice, arms crossed on her chest, her face furious.

“Hey, look!” Fisk called. “Ole Phemus is right here! Ain’t much left of him.”

“Fisk! Lenora!” Sarah called. “I’m going back inside with Franny. You two come with me.” Alice looked at Sarah, nodding approval.

Fisk ignored her. “Looks like Ole Phemus finally met his match. They put his head right here with tail feathers all around it.” The boy looked up, toward some of the farm’s outlying houses. “I wonder if—”

He ran toward the chicken coop.

Ingram, trying not to step in the gore with bare feet, moved over to where Fisk had stood. A decapitated peacock head looked up at him with a milky eye. Tail feathers lay arrayed around the head as if in mockery of how the peacock had appeared in life.

A voice said, “Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus.”

Ingram turned to see a child dressed as a priest walking delicately through the carnage.

Sarah scooped up Franny in her arms and pressed the girl’s head to her chest.

“Father Andrez,” she said, rubbing Franny’s back. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s… things have happened,” she said. “Since we talked.”

The priest surveyed the grounds. He shook his head.

“I see,” he said slowly. “But what, exactly, has happened? This doesn’t look good.”

Ingram, watching his feet, walked over to where they stood. The priest looked up at him as he approached.

“This is Bull Ingram, Father,” Sarah said. “He’s wrapped up in…” She motioned at the world around her, the yard, the house, the sky. “All of this. We need to talk.”

Franny raised her head from Sarah’s shoulder. “Mommy! The birds. Why the birds?” She began to cry again.

Andrez looked around, frowning. He patted Franny’s knee, and pursed his lips.

“This is a very good question.” He walked forward a few paces, looking at the dead birds. He stood over the disembodied head of Phemus, then looked up.

At first Ingram though he was looking at the sun, the early morning light casting long shadows in the dewy grass. But then he realized the priest looked at the house. A window. As best he could tell, the window from his room.

“Where are the books?” The priest turned to face Sarah, holding his hands together in a pose like praying yet pointing downward. Very grave, for such a small man.

“Inside, locked in the library.”

Fisk ran back, his feet making long silvery streaks in the grass.

“All the chickens are just fine. Eggs, hens, and the rooster too. All fine. Looks like what they wanted was peafowl. Maybe just ole Phemus here.” He paused, wiping his hands on his britches. “Maybe the hens just got in the way.” He looked at Andrez. “Who’s he?”

Alice looked as though she wanted to slap the boy’s head. She walked toward him, but he danced away.

“Fisk, go get Reuben, tell him to come to the Big House,” Alice said. “I’ve got a chore for him.”

The boy dashed away, between the out buildings and across the fallow stubble of corn to the field shop, where Reuben ran the daily workings of the farm.

Inside, Alice poured more coffee, then told the children to put on their bathing suits. “We’re going to Old River Lake. It’s still warm enough. Gonna let the big folk talk while we have a little fun.” She pulled a loaf of soft, sliced white bread out of the pantry, untwisted its wrapping, and laid out twelve pairs of slices. From the ice-box, she took a pound rind of bologna, sliced yellow cheese, mustard, mayonnaise, peanut butter, and jelly and began to make sandwiches, wrapping them in waxed paper. “Sarah, will you take some breakfast up to your momma for me? And her sip this afternoon?”