Authors: Anne C. Petty
Lungs bursting, Ned opened his mouth and breathed water and, surprisingly, did not die. He pondered the fact, found it meaningless, and let it shed away. He let go of the Ancestor, and perceived her undulating body to be two serpents instead of one, twined and wrapped tightly around each other in an endless rippling coil, the spiral of life.
A roaring of mammoth waterfalls filled his ears and deafened his mind as the identity known as Ned ceased to be. He was a speck of sand deposited on an ancient beach, left to bleach in the unrelenting sun.
Ned opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of an old woman’s bedroom with the night stand lamp knocked over, hanging just inches from his face, shining in his eyes. He rolled over onto his stomach and lay still, waiting for the rolling, coasting sensation underneath him to subside. He felt vaguely seasick.
Lifting his head, he saw with relief that all was as it should be. The floor of Yula’s bedroom was firm under his hands, his clothing was dry, no voices in his head. Ned rolled onto his butt and sat staring at the floor. He considered the possibility that he’d just had the worst acid flashback of all time or that perhaps he had finally gone completely mad. Either way, he was not opening that notebook again for any amount of money. He picked it up by the corner and dropped it into the strongbox, which he closed with the tips of his fingers and put back in the drawer.
He pushed the drawer closed with his foot and went to sit on the edge of the bed, filled with despair. Maybe he should just end it all right here. His fingers strayed to the knife in his pocket, fondling the top of its sheathed blade. As he let his breath out, an infinite sadness swept over him, and he would have wept like Gloria, mourning for her lost place in the world, if he could have summoned the tears. But all he could do was sit on the bed with an ache in his throat and a constriction in his chest. Without thinking, Ned placed both palms over the spot and pressed them tightly against his body, just above the navel.
“Snake mother, protect me,” he whispered and closed his eyes. He lay back on the coverlet, listening to his breath, ragged at first, then smoothing out. At last, he slept.
Chapter 12
April 1965
Ned woke to timid knocking on the bedroom door. He sat up, realizing he’d slept in his clothes and then gradually remembering why. His body felt like it had been run over several times by a manure truck.
“Ned? Would you like to have breakfast?”
Ned dragged himself to the door and opened it a crack. Cecil, dressed in his uniform of a white shirt and black trousers, waited with hands clasped in front of his chest. He looked at Ned with some alarm, but didn’t ask whatever he was thinking. Ned knew he must have looked like all hell, but that was nothing compared to his current mental state.
“Are you hungry? I have to go check on some church property that got damaged in last night’s storm, and Estell has gone to walk Pearl to school, but there’s red-eye gravy and biscuits and coffee on the stove in the kitchen. Please go help yourself.”
Ned cleared his throat. “Thanks, I will. But how long are you gonna be gone? I got some new questions for you, and I can’t leave till I get answers.” Ned thought he saw a look of panic flash in Cecil Rider’s liquid brown eyes.
Cecil ducked his head. “I’ll come back as quick as I can,” he said, and hurried out the screen door.
Ned went to the kitchen, filled an empty plate, lit the gas under an aluminum coffee pot, and waited for steam to come out of the spout. Pouring a cup, he sat down at the table and finished his meal in just a few minutes. Sipping at the cup, he tried to untangle what he’d learned since coming back. Some of it was new to him, and some of it tallied with what he already knew. He knew, for example, that his father’s birthday was September 8, but he hadn’t known until now the actual year of birth. With that knowledge he was able to do the math and quickly figured out that his father had been forty-two when he’d disemboweled himself on his birthday with a fish-gutting knife. Ned had been five.
He’d known all too well about his father’s fits, and Cecil confirmed for him that Lacy had always been that way. Damaged from birth, it seemed, but born to whom? Someone whose farmhouse was crushed in a monster hurricane at the turn of the twentieth century. That was the most frustrating thing of all: knowing the site was probably somewhere in the county, but having no way to find it. Perhaps most mystifying, however, was how their child had come into the hands of Yula Rider, who was black, when clearly they weren’t. At least not entirely. Lacy was a mixture of something, but the components were anybody’s guess.
Cecil had also acknowledged knowing his mother and had explained a little better how the couple had ended up in the swamplands, isolated from the rest of the community. His mother’s family was no mystery. They were the worst kind of trash and the few times she’d dragged him along to see them, he’d stayed out in the yard with the dogs. Seasonal laborers, they’d moved on long before Ned had made his own break for freedom.
Ned frowned. All of this was skirting around the main thing he wanted to know: what the fuck was this terrible seer’s curse he’d inherited from Lacy. Above all, though, he wanted to know how to make it stop.
The awful thing was, Ned knew he’d gotten the most important piece of the puzzle last night, although it scared the bejeezus out of him. He was going to have to question Cecil about the strongbox, which meant admitting he’d pilfered through the contents of Grandma Yula’s dresser.
Ned gulped the rest of his coffee and went back to the bedroom. His clothes from last night had dried, so he rolled them up, stuffed them into his pack, and pulled out clean socks. His desert boots were still a bit damp, but what the hell—it was wear them or go barefoot. With his pack squared away and ready to hit the road, Ned sat down to wait.
Before long, he heard the screen door bang and footsteps coming down the hall. Cecil appeared in the doorway, his dark face glistening with sweat.
“Everything okay?” Ned inquired, his tone neutral.
“Yes, thank the Lord. Lightning strike. The wood under the eaves was smoking when the fire department’s water tanker got there, but it got saved in time. The old church, I mean, not the new one.”
He came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed, folding his hands over one knee. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”
Ned jerked his head toward the dresser. “What’s in that strongbox in the bottom drawer and where did it come from?”
Cecil stared at the dresser. “How would you know about that?”
“Well, obviously, I looked.”
“Why?” The pastor’s voice was nearly a whisper.
“Because I’m a nosey bastard, and I want to know where I came from. No, I have to know.”
“There was no need to pry, Ned. I told you I would try to help you find out whatever we could about poor Lacy.”
Ned looked at him straight on, his thoughts murderous. “Is that notebook thing part of what was wrong with ‘poor Lacy’?”
“I don’t believe so. It never belonged to him.”
“But what is it?” Ned knew he was prying beyond all propriety now, but he didn’t much care; he could be as stubborn as a pit bull clamped onto somebody’s ankle if that’s what it took. That notebook had linked him to a bad place with creatures that seemed to think he should know something he didn’t.
“Where did you get it from?” He was unpleasantly familiar with backwoods spellcasting, and it occurred to him that maybe Granny Yula had been a swamp witch herself. Was the book hers?
The Reverend Rider sat for several moments without saying a word. Ned was prepared to wait him out, even if it took all day.
Cecil’s face became drawn and sad, and Ned feared he was about to cry right there in front of God and everybody. Instead he said, “The strongbox and its contents belonged to my father. He stole them from their original owner, a man named Cadjer Harrow, a foreigner with a questionable reputation who founded the church of which I am now pastor. Shortly before my father died, he wrote to me that he thought he was being haunted by the ghost of that man, for stealing the box and using the money many years later to finance the beautiful church building we enjoy now. Is that what you wanted to know?” He continued to stare at the drawer, as if he could see inside the strongbox.
“That must’ve been a shitload of bucks,” said Ned.
Cecil nodded. “He told me how much, but I forget. That was so long ago.”
“I didn’t take any of it,” Ned added.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Cecil said, finally looking up.
“Reverend, have you ever looked through that book?”
“It’s just church records, isn’t it? And some heathen-looking scrawls in the back.”
“Yeah, about those heathen scrawls. Have you ever touched ‘em?”
Cecil cocked his head, as if he hadn’t heard right. “No, I haven’t. Why?”
“Because I did and I ended up somewhere that’s not here, that’s why. Someplace with ghosts that seemed to think they know me and some horrible burned-up guy who was their prisoner.”
Cecil rose to his feet. He mopped at his forehead and neck with his handkerchief. “I never honestly believed my father’s story. I just assumed it was his guilty conscience making him imagine such … terrible things. But now I don’t know.” He bowed his head. “I don’t want to know.”
“Sorry, Rev, but I do.” Ned gripped the arms of the rocking chair. “Those snakeyes you thought you saw in the kitchen? I been seeing them all my life, if you really want to know. Oh, sorry, you don’t want to know. It’s not a fun trip; in fact, it makes me crazy. That’s why I came back, and you’ve helped me some, but not as much as I need.”
Ned got up and watched with some satisfaction as Cecil backed away. He couldn’t entirely hold back the urge to scare the old fucker, because he was scared shitless himself and it wasn’t so bad if you spread it around.
“What else can I do?” Cecil opened his palms.
“I need you to drive me somewhere.” Ned hoisted the strap of his pack over one shoulder and headed for the bedroom door.
He clomped down the hallway, his stride outpacing the smaller man, who followed at a safe distance.
“How far do you need to go? Estell’s liable to pitch a conniption if she comes home and nobody’s here.” Cecil hurried after him, down the porch steps and out to the old blue-and-white Ford Fairlane parked beside the house. Ned slid into the passenger seat, arms crossed tightly over his chest, eyes closed in a tight squint.
“Ned? Are you sick?” Cecil put a trembling brown hand on Ned’s shoulder.
Ned bit down on the pain flickering over his arms and chest. “Just start driving. I need to go back to where those guys found me, the ones that brought me to you way back then.”
“You mean the National Forest. That’s about fifteen miles west.”
“Yeah, if you wouldn’t mind.” Ned gave him a tight smile.
Cecil sat quietly for a moment, whether gathering his wits or praying for swift delivery of his passenger, Ned couldn’t tell. Then he put the key in the ignition and started the car.
They drove in silence, planted pines with their palmetto understory rolling by on both sides of the state highway, until they reached a fork that led off the paved highway onto a wide gravel and sand road used by the U.S. Forest Service. For about five miles it was well maintained, running straight as an arrow through sparse flatwoods of tall, thin slash pines and graceful fringe trees just coming into flower along the shoulders of the road. Their masses of drooping white petals like showers of snowdrops brought Ned an unexpected pang of nostalgia; they were an artifact from his childhood.
Soon they reached a narrow bridge on concrete pilings. It crossed steep banks containing barely a trickle of tea-colored river water, and beyond it the road forked again, with the left-hand branch becoming a two-run sandy track leading into the non-public area of the National Forest.
“You can let me off here,” said Ned.
Cecil brought the car to a stop just beyond the bridge. “Are you sure? You don’t look so good, son.”
“I’m all right. I gotta go back, is all.”
Ned opened the passenger door and got out. He slid his arms through both straps of his pack and hefted it into place on his back. “Thanks for everything, man, I really mean it.” He turned to walk away.
“I don’t feel right, just leaving you here,” Cecil called.
Ned started walking. The car cranked behind him, but not until he heard it heading away from him on the gravel road did he turn and look. He didn’t expect to ever see the Reverend Cecil Rider again, so there was no use asking him to wait.
The sun was cresting the treetops, heading toward noon. He trudged forward, watching its progress over the trees and keeping a lookout for the first of several landmarks.
This part of the trail unrolled in a fairly straight line through higher ground where sassafras, wild persimmons, dogwoods, and black cherry trees rubbed shoulders with the more common pines that stood knee-deep in gallberry bushes and bright green palmettos. Early spring wildflowers that Ned hadn’t seen in years carpeted the sandy ground and filled the shallow ditches on both sides of the trail.
After twenty minutes of steady walking, he spotted a grassy track to the right and beyond it a pinestraw-covered clearing. In its center stood a monument to the god of hunting: two ten-foot-high poles connected by a steel crossbeam with heavy-duty cable winches affixed to both uprights. Instructions for hoisting your carcass and disposing of the waste remains in large covered garbage containers nearby were posted on a tree. Ned stood on the spot where he’d been found so many years ago and tried to remember his rescue. He’d been told about it during his recuperation, but the memory of it was lost.
Satisfied that he was headed in the right direction, Ned went back to the sandy track and kept walking. He consulted Grant’s watch and guessed that it might be another forty-five minutes before he reached his second landmark, a stand of hardwoods, mostly oaks and maples, on the eastern side of the trail that reached higher and thicker than the surrounding woods. The center of this grove of ancient live oaks was where the house had stood. Further into the woods beyond the homesite, the ground dipped again, becoming a lowland swamp full of titi thickets and standing water where gator holes could swallow a man up to his waist.