Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron (39 page)

It had taken virtually all of the Dean of Men’s powers of diplomacy to forestall a major racial incident. And an abrupt increase in Howard University’s endowment, courtesy of Nedeau’s mysteriously moneyed father, had saved Theotis from summary expulsion.

Now, Theotis Nedeau had been “delayed.”

Henley shivered a little as he ensconced his friend in an overstuffed chair in the living room. Then he poured two tumblers of bourbon.

“Are Emma and the boys here?” Nedeau asked.

“No,” Henley replied. “They’re staying with my in-laws in Dresden, north of here. They’ll be safe there.”

Nedeau nodded somberly. Silence fell between the two seated figures as they sipped their bourbon. They were a study in contrast. Nedeau was black as polished ebony. The immaculate dark suit he wore barely hid the mesomorphic lines of his physique. Henley was of a
café-au-lait
complexion, with a neatly trimmed mustache and carefully pomaded hair. There were lines of worry in his face and deep shadows smudged the skin beneath his eyes. His lounging suit, though expensively tailored, was unpressed.

More than a decade had passed since the former college roommates had seen each other. Even so, they had maintained a regular correspondence. It was Henley’s most recent letter, followed by an urgent telegram, that had brought Nedeau more than a thousand miles northward to Ontario….

Nedeau finished his drink, then began to talk in a flat, uninflected tone.

“I had some problems with directions,” he said. “Up to a point, the guards at the Niagara Falls border crossing were helpful—after I signed a statement swearing that I won’t remain in Canada longer than two weeks.”

Henley shook his head. He knew the intensity of Nedeau’s race pride, but it was no secret that the Canadian government officially discouraged “coloured immigration”. It wasn’t Nedeau’s pride that was at stake now, though.

“It wasn’t difficult to find my way to Toronto, where I wired you to let you know I was coming, and from there to Chatham,” Nedeau continued. “But I became confused a few miles west of Chatham. I saw a gas station on the side of the road, and pulled in to ask for directions. Before I could say anything, the attendant said, ‘We don’t serve your kind here.’ When I mentioned that I only wanted directions to Henleyville, he pulled a gun, flashed a deputy’s badge and forced me out of my car. He said he was going to arrest me for car theft.”

Nedeau’s fists clenched.

“He was disappointed to find that all my identification was in order—including my auto registration. But he wasn’t done. He asked what I wanted in Henleyville. I told him I intended to visit an old friend. When he asked who the friend was, I was tempted to tell him it was none of his concern. But I wanted to arrive here as quickly as I could. So, I mentioned your name. For a moment, I thought he was going to shoot me. Then, strangely enough, he gave me the directions and walked back into the station without another word.”

“That would be Lorne Cooder,” Henley murmured half to himself. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he paid us a visit tonight. Listen, Theotis, I’m sorry about….”

“Forget it,” Nedeau said.

His eyes wandered to the wall above an ornate mantelpiece. There was a large square of wallpaper several shades lighter than the surrounding area, as though a picture that had hung there for a long time had suddenly been removed.

“What happened to the portrait?” Nedeau asked.

Henley started violently. His eyes widened with something akin to terror as he looked at Nedeau. Then Henley remembered their many late-night conversations about his illustrious grandfather—Jeroboam Henley.

Jeroboam Henley was a slave who had escaped to the North of the United States, then assisted fellow runaways in fleeing to sanctuary in Canada via the network of abolitionists known as the “Underground Railroad”. Henley himself had finally emigrated from Ohio to Canada in protest against the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law by the U.S. Congress shortly before the start of the Civil War.

Settling in Ontario, Henley built a house and founded a self-contained community of ex-slaves. He had disdained the mass migration of blacks back to the U.S. when slavery was abolished there, and the diminished community he had founded eventually bore his name.

As Jeroboam Henley’s grandson, Jeremiah had been something of a celebrity even at Howard, a college replete with the scions of illustrious men of colour. He had told Nedeau of the large portrait of old Jeroboam—who had died before Jeremiah was born—that hung over the mantelpiece of the ancestral home. Thus, it was not surprising that Nedeau remembered it now.

“I burned it,” Jeremiah Henley said.

∇

Now, it was Nedeau’s turn to express shock, though for him that expression was limited to a raising of his brows followed by an intense, thoughtful gaze.

“Jeremiah,” he said, “I think you’d better swallow that drink of yours, pour yourself another, then start from the beginning. I won’t be able to help you until I know the whole story.”

Nodding jerkily, Henley complied. There was a tremor in his hands as he finished his first drink. When he finished the second, the trembling was gone.

“It began a few weeks ago,” he said. “No—even before that. I had trouble sleeping. And when I did sleep, I tossed and yelled so much that Emma took to going downstairs and sleeping on the couch. If it was nightmares, I couldn’t remember them. At least, not until
that night
….

“As usual, I couldn’t get to sleep. But I must have dozed off somehow, because the next thing I remember, I was sitting up in bed and Emma wasn’t there. I decided to go down to the living room to talk to her. I got out of bed, went down the hall…
but my feet wouldn’t let me go down the stairs!
I found myself walking past the children’s room, toward the walled-over end of the hall where the stairs to the attic are supposed to be. I tried to stop myself—I had always dreaded that part of the house since my father whipped me within an inch of my life just for asking about it—but my legs wouldn’t obey me.

“The closer I got to the end of the hall, the more fear I felt. My eyes were getting used to the dark, but I still wanted to put on the hall lights. I couldn’t stop myself from walking in a straight line toward the hidden attic stairs. I decided I must be dreaming—but never before had I known I was dreaming while the dream was still going on.

“When I got to the end of the hall, my hands—of their own accord—pressed against certain sections of the wall. Then the whole wall slid back, not making any sound at all! I’ll tell you, Theotis, I’ve never been more scared in my life than I was then—not even when those crackers chased us out of Virginia. I hadn’t even thought of that part of the house since the beating my father gave me. And now I was at the stairs, and my feet were carrying me up into that dark attic….

“Once I got up there, though, it wasn’t all that dark. There’s a big dormer window in the attic and there weren’t any shades to block the moonlight. The place was piled high with boxes, crates and trunks. There were black shadows between the piles. My feet carried me straight toward one of those shadows. I knelt down. My hands reached out. My fingers worked at the fastenings of a small chest I couldn’t see. I opened the lid of the chest, reached in and pulled out a thick, leather-bound book of some sort. I went to the light of the window and opened the book. By then, I was in control of my actions—and I knew I wasn’t dreaming.

“The moon was full. By its light, I could clearly see the writing in the book. It was a diary—my grandfather’s diary.”

Henley drew the back of one hand across his brow. The hand came away wet. Silently, Nedeau waited for him to continue.

“It was actually more of a record than a diary. My grandfather kept detailed listings of all the runaway slaves who passed through his ‘station’ on the Underground Railroad. There were scores of names. Everyone knows Jeroboam Henley helped many of his people to freedom.

“But some of the names were—
crossed out
. I didn’t know what that meant until I paged further through the book, and found a special section in the back. The names that had been crossed out earlier were repeated—with monetary values entered next to them. It was like a ledger.

“Suspicion dawned…a sickening suspicion that was confirmed as I read further and understood more fully. With each word I read, a part of me died.

“Not all of the runaways who came to my grandfather’s house in Ohio went on to Canada, Theotis. You know what that man was doing?
He was selling his own people to a plantation owner in Louisiana!
Not all of them, mind you. Just the ones who met the plantation owner’s specifications. They had to be native African, and by the 1850s, you couldn’t find many of those—so my grandfather said.

“He drugged their food, then tied them up and turned them over to the plantation owner’s Northern agent, who lived in the town under the guise of a freight operator. The whites paid my grandfather well and they kept his secret. They needed him. He was the only one, other than Harriet Tubman, that the runaways trusted implicitly—
damn him!

“There were hints in the diary that the plantation owner had some sort of hold over my grandfather. There were also suggestions that the slaves were used as sacrifices to some sort of god or devil named ‘Shub-Niggurath.’”

“I don’t like the sound of that name,” Nedeau interrupted.

“Neither do I!” Henley flared. “But it sure as hell didn’t bother my grandfather! All he could think about was the money the plantation owner paid him! Hell, he loved it! The greedy son of a bitch!”

Overcome with emotion, Henley held his face in his hands.

“Damn,” Nedeau said softly. “Jeremiah, I’m really sorry to hear that. You must have—”

“That’s not all of it!” Henley cried. “There was a final name on the list of the ones my grandfather betrayed. It was an African name…‘Gbomi’. He was a witch doctor of some kind, so my grandfather said. When this Gbomi realized he had been drugged, he called down a curse on my grandfather. My grandfather laughed as the African mumbled and slurred in his native tongue while being bound. He took his blood money from the plantation owner’s agent and thought no more about Gbomi—not until things began to happen at night in that Ohio town.

“Strange things…a black face appearing in people’s windows…cattle, sheep and dogs slaughtered mysteriously, horribly, drained of blood…splayed foot prints leading to my grandfather’s house….

“The town turned against my grandfather. The people were stirred up by an element which had always been opposed to his antislavery activities. The plantation owner and his agent soon let my grandfather know that he was of no further use to them. He panicked. He fled to Canada, using his opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law as a smokescreen. But he was really running from Gbomi.”

“When I finished with that damnable diary, my eyes were sore from the strain of reading by moonlight. I felt as betrayed as those slaves my grandfather sold. Then the anger came, driving everything else before it. I walked out of that attic. This time,
I
was the one controlling my actions. Enraged as I was, I still managed to step quietly, so as not to awaken my sons.

“I kept walking until I got to the living room. Emma was there, sleeping on the couch. There was a low fire in the fireplace. It got higher when I set my grandfather’s diary in the flames. Then I looked over to the mantel and saw his portrait. I took it down and put it in the fireplace, frame and all.

“By the time Emma woke up, both the diary and the portrait were nothing but ashes. Emma looked at the empty wall, then at the fireplace, then at me. And she ran sobbing from the room. She gathered up the boys and left. She thought I was crazy. Maybe I was that night. Maybe I still am….

“It was not long after that night that things began to happen here—things similar to the events that forced Jeroboam Henley out of Ohio. That’s why I need you, Theotis. You’re the only one who can help me. Don’t you see? He’s come back. By all that’s holy and unholy, Theotis,
he’s come back!
”

“Who?” Nedeau asked quietly.

Nonplussed, Henley cried, “What do you mean, ‘Who?’”

“Who do you think has come back?” Nedeau pressed. “Gbomi—or your grandfather?”

Before Henley could reply, a sudden crashing sound splintered the short silence. Both men sprang to their feet. The roar of a car motor faded in the distance as Henley and Nedeau rushed to the shattered front window. Henley bent to pick something up from the shards of glass, while Nedeau wrenched the front door open and raced outside. Only a few moments passed before he returned, his face set in a scowl of frustration.

“Couldn’t get the bastard’s licence number,” he muttered.

“I know who it is,” Henley said. “Remember, I said we’d get a visit from Lorne Cooder tonight.”

Nedeau looked at him. Never before had he heard such bitterness in his friend’s tone. Wordlessly, Henley handed Nedeau the red house brick that had been thrown through the window. There was a note attached:

NIGGER

Ifyourblackfriendhascometotakeyououtofheretellhimithadbetterbesoonerthanlater

The note bore no signature.

“It’s come to this,” Henley said. “My neighbours show their true colours at last—lily white. It was fine for us back in the old days, when the escaped slaves came up here and the Canadians took them in so that they could fling their ‘true adherence to the principles of freedom’ in the faces of the Americans. But when slavery was over, we became ‘niggers’ again. And when something goes wrong….”

“Whoever wrote that note was right in one sense,” Nedeau cut in.

“What do you mean?”

“We have no time to lose,” Nedeau said as he reached for the handle of one of his suitcases. “Let’s go.”

“Go where?” Henley asked numbly.

“Upstairs. To the attic.”

“After what you just heard about my grandfather, you’re still going to help me?”

“Do you think you’re to blame for what your grandfather did?”

Henley left the question unanswered.