Days of Little Texas (12 page)

My bedroom sits at the end of another long hall. The door is practically twice as tall as my head. If I propped it open, I could run straight down the hall right to my bed.

I drop my suitcase on the floor next to a dresser with a white bowl sitting on it. No TV. Out the window I can see double moons, one on the lake, the other shining through the limbs of a pin oak. Glisteny grass slopes all the way down to the water.

I’m not used to sleeping alone.

There’s a tall cupboard in the corner with a bunch of long dresses inside. I sweep them back, and I’m surprised to find a
little drum sitting behind them. I take the drum out and set it on my lap; it’s big around as a dinner plate and has red trim and years of smudges. I thump it with my knuckle; it makes a good strong
k’dump
sound.
Who used to play it?

I put the drum back and stretch out on top of the thick covers. The bed has four posts carved the way a honeysuckle vine will twist a dogwood trunk. It’s piled with little square pillows stitched with Bible verses in thick red thread:
ASK, AND IT SHALL BE GIVEN; CAST THY BREAD UPON THE WATERS
; and
DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING?

I kick my shoes off and watch the moon. I think how I know where we go after we die; the Bible spells it out plain.
But where is she?
Devil Hill rises across the water.

I get up and try to open the window, but it’s locked. Through the glass I can hear crickets sawing and toadfrogs peeping. I force myself to look out at the blackest parts of the dark. No other lights for miles.

We are alone here
.

I settle onto my knees in front of the bed and close my eyes.

“Dear heavenly Father, thank you for bringing us safely here. I ask that you watch over us in this house, and that you shower your anointing on the mission of our ministry. Please protect us as we go about your heavenly tasks, and especially watch over us in the night. Please look after the souls of the departed, especially Lucy, and clove her to your celestial bosom. Please send your heavenly angels to guide and watch
over and protect Lucy’s spirit and the loved ones she has left behind, and allow me the strength, the courage, and the understanding to learn what she means in my life. In the name of Jesus Christ I pray. Amen.”

I cut out the light and lay there feeling the half-moon shining down on me. Then I get lost in a sleep so dark I might as well be on the bottom of the ocean.

Long about two in the morning, something gets me up with a start.

K’dump, k’dump, k’dump
.

The room is all over cold, like a breeze is cutting across my bed. I glance at the window—it’s still shut tight. I swing my legs around, feeling for the wood floor. The bed is up so high, I can’t reach bottom without sliding over the side. The hardwood is cold to my toes.

I can hear them—footsteps creaking out in the hall, coming closer and closer to my door. A shiver wiggles up my back.

“Hello?” I say.

Nobody calls back, but the footsteps keep coming. Is something coming here just for me?

A big bang shakes the whole house, making my heart rattle. I don’t see how in the world the others haven’t woken up. But everything is quiet again outside my door. I wait, listening.

K’dump, k’dump, k’dump
.

I walk from the bed toward the door.

K’dump, k’dump, k’dump
.

Jesus Lord—the
sound isn’t coming from the hall, it’s coming from the cupboard in my room.
It’s the drum
. Something inside the cupboard is beating on that drum.

I rush to the bedroom door and wrench at the knob—it’s slippery in my sweaty hands, and I have trouble turning it. The drum sound behind me gets louder and louder—I can’t make myself turn around to see what’s back there—the devil has come for me.

I slap around for the light switch, wanting to scream.
Where is it?
I scratch and bang on the door, wrenching the knob this way and that, yelling and hollering loud as I can.
Why is nobody hearing me?
I stop, sucking in air, and in the middle of all the drumming I hear it—a big creaking noise behind me. I turn around….

The door to the cupboard is swinging open.

I yank the knob and give the bedroom door a big pull; it swings open to the hall, and a long slab of weak light slants into the room. The drum stops the moment the light touches the cupboard.

Dead silence. I dare to look behind me. Everything in the room—everything I can see in the light coming from the hall—looks like it did before. The long piece of light reaches clear over to the bed. I can see my shoes, my clothes hanging over the bedstead, the bedcovers jerked back. A pillow on the floor says blood of the lamb in bleeding red letters.

I grab up my pants and T-shirt and hightail it out into the hall, looking for Certain Certain’s door. That’s when I see it; something is at the end of the hall. It’s white and bunchy looking, almost like—
it is
—it’s a bedsheet hanging in the air.

But it’s not draped over somebody’s head like on Halloween; it’s laying on something, covering up a shape only a couple of feet high. I stop, the clothes drop out of my hands.
This is not happening. It can’t be happening
. But the shape is too solid. The sheet is draped over something rounded and low.

The white shape starts to move.

Sliding slow and straight up the hall toward me, a foot off the ground.

It’s floating
.

I beat the closest door I can find like a wild animal, hollering for Certain Certain. I beat on another one and another as the thing under the sheet gets closer and closer, cutting me off.

I make a sputtering sound and rush back into my room and slam the door shut.

No key and no way to lock the door. But what is a door to it? Nothing. Nothing at all.

I tear at the edges of the door with my fingers, feel the light switch at last, and turn it on.

Everything is just like it was. Not a single sound to be heard. Except my heart going like a piston.

I watch the crystal doorknob.

A scrabbling noise comes, moving down the sides of the door, fumbling and scratching.

The doorknob … it starts to turn. Clicks.
The door starts to open
.

I back away till I’m against the bed, grab the sheets behind me, and scrunch them up in my fingers.

I clamp my eyes and begin praying, praying harder than I’ve ever prayed before, stringing the words all out in a burst, “OhhelpmesweetblessedJesusGodmyLordprotectmeohsweet-JesusLordprotectmehelpmekeepmesafefromall—”

A new noise … I open my eyes just in time to see the bedroom door swing wide.

Its eyes tear into me. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe—

She’s standing in front of me.

Lucy in the blue dress, Lucy right down to her sneakers. Her hair is not flat like before; it looks all ripply, like wet ribbons.

She stands stock-still in the doorway, like she expects to be invited in.

I jerk up a lamp from the bedside table, accidentally click it on, flooding the room with light. I hold it back of my head, like a pitcher fixing to hurl a fastball.

Lucy’s dress is smudged with long, muddy stripes. Her mouth is open, open so wide it makes her look like she’s screaming. Only there is no sound. I can see her jaw shuddering like she’s trying to close her mouth but can’t.

I’m clutching the lamp so fierce, my whole arm is going numb.

Her skin has a wet sheen to it. Her fist is clenched like a walnut. She raises one thin arm and points it direct at me, her fist comes open, and she spreads her fingers wide. A little
tump
sound as something small and hard hits the floor.

Then the big, heavy door slams shut by itself,
bam
, so hard it rocks the frame in its casing.

My heart whumps inside my ribs. I sit down on the bed, still clutching the lamp, trying to pour my mind back inside my head.

How can I make it to the next minute … the rest of the night? I can’t. I won’t survive this.

Suddenly I hear feet tromping up the hall, regular sounds flood back in: voices, nighttime noises, the peeping bugs outdoors; the cake bowl has been lifted. I can’t make my legs move, can’t even call out. The knob gives a turn, and the door is wrenched open. Certain Certain’s standing there.

“Hey, boy, what’s going on in here? Heard all the …”

He spies the upraised lamp. Up the hall I see the other bedroom doors banging open. Miss Wanda Joy in a purple bathrobe, Tee Barlow in shorts and a sleeveless shirt, even Sugar Tom, barefoot in his silvery pajamas.

“Hey, Lightning, it’s all right,” Certain Certain says. “Put the lamp down.” He comes into the room, walking slow. “Put it down, son. It’s all right. We’re all right here.”

I let my arm drop, and the lamp falls to the floor with a woody crash.

The others are coming into the room now, stopping just inside the door, looking sleepy and afraid. I wrap the blankets around myself to cover up.

“What happened?” Certain Certain says, touching my arm. “Haints scare you out of your clothes? We found these sitting outside….” He’s holding my pants and shirt. Then his smile freezes when he sees my face up close.

“I’m—I’m okay,” I say, quavering. “She—she was here again. Her. The girl.
Lucy
.”

Miss Wanda Joy comes over with Tee Barlow. Sugar Tom is rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

“Why didn’t you hear me?” I say. “Didn’t you hear the racket up and down the hall? And the drumming—that’s where it started, in the cupboard.”

Miss Wanda Joy walks over and pulls the cupboard door open. “Drumming?”

“This room used to be Faye’s aunt’s when she was a girl,” Tee Barlow says. “That’s her things in there. Nobody has messed with those things in years.”

Miss Wanda Joy gasps. She’s pulling something out of the back of the cupboard—it’s the drum, I can see the red trim.

It’s smashed in. The top of the drum is all ripped up and caved in. Just like claws have been at it.

“I can’t—I can’t sleep here tonight,” I whisper to Certain Certain. “Something’s trying to get at me—please—I’ll sleep on the floor in your room, anywhere.”

He nods at me. “I’ll see what we can do.” He drops my clothes on the bed.

“I believe it might be better if Little Texas were moved to a different room, where he could sleep with someone,” Miss Wanda Joy says, still holding the drum.

“No problem,” Tee Barlow says.

Tee Barlow and the others leave the room, everybody
except Miss Wanda Joy. She sits down on the bed next to me, making it creak. Puts her big hand on my shoulder.

“Could it be I was wrong,” she says, “thinking you were ready for this?”

“Ma’am?”

“This is just the beginning. Do you know what lengths Satan will go to to defeat the bearers of light?”

“But wait—if you had been here, you would’ve—”

“Were you
harmed
in any way? Or even touched?”

“But the drum—the drum—”

“Are you going to give Satan his victory without a fight?”

“No, ma’am, I—”

“Where would we be as Christians if we were to give up so easily?”

“You ought to know me better than that.”

“You said you were ready to grow up.” She shows just the barest traces of … a smile?

“I
am
ready. I’ve
been
ready. I just wasn’t expecting—”

“What? You are in a spiritual
war
, and you didn’t expect there to be skirmishes?”

“I don’t know—I just never believed—I never believed in ghosts before.”

“You have to see them for what they
are
. Satan’s messengers want you to believe they are the spirits of the departed. That is the way they undermine your faith.
Faith
is your protection, Little Texas.”

Certain Certain puts his head back in the doorway. “You coming?” he says to me.

I look at Miss Wanda Joy, feeling my jaw go hard. “Um. No, that’s all right. I’m okay now. I’m going to stay right here. Nothing is going to root me out of this room.”

“You sure, boy?”

“I’m sure. I’ll be more ready next time.”

“I’m only a couple of doors down. If’n you need me, just give out a holler.”

I did. And you didn’t come
.

“I will,” I say.

Miss Wanda Joy gets up to go. She puts the busted drum back in the cupboard and latches it shut. I follow her over to the doorway. The hall doesn’t look any different as she makes her way back to her room.

I won’t let her win. I won’t
.

But what
her
am I talking about?

I turn to head back to the bed.

“Ow!
”

I look down—it’s a little corner of brick about the size of a skipping stone, sharp under my foot. I pick it up, feeling its weight in my hand.

This is what she dropped
.

I’m holding something she
held
. I turn it over and see words written in square letters the color of gold: