Shivaree (5 page)

“Yes, sir.” She turned and hurried down the stairs. He heard the door close softly behind her.

“Let’s get you undressed,” Wilson said, turning again toward his patient, who didn’t seem to have processed what was happening. He pulled off Ovid’s scarf and removed the man’s coat, revealing the dirty white shirt and gray pants he had on underneath it. “These things, too.” After helping Ovid out of the shirt, he shifted him so that he was lying flat on the bed, his head cradled in a pillow. That done, Wilson tugged off the patient’s pants, leaving him in nothing but an undershirt and briefs. Ovid’s right thigh was marked with a streak of dried blood, which he tried to hide with one hand.

“Let me see it,” the doctor commanded, pushing his hand aside. The flesh on the thigh had been severely bruised. Wilson leaned in closer to investigate the wound. “Son,” he said with a whistle, “any idea how you got this?”

Ovid closed his eyes tight and shook his head.

FIVE

Death, everyone knew, was meant to be the end, but it wasn’t, at least not for Ruby. She was awake and aware. She felt both pleasure and pain. Only those things she’d previously counted as essential, breath and a steadily beating heart, had deserted her. Still all the old angers and attachments clung to her. She nursed the same wrongs. Ached over the same missed opportunities, felt shame over the same missteps, mistakes that now surely should no longer matter. No, the grave had brought her neither eternal rest nor release.

At first, Ruby would have rather died out in California, her cold body incinerated—just as those who had infected her with the parasite had planned to do—to keep her from coming back. But she hadn’t died there. She’d been brought back to Mississippi, back to the Judge’s house, even though she’d sworn to herself she’d never spend another night under his roof.

If her father had let her go, the nightmare would have ended, but he had seen her as his personal property, and there was no way he would have simply allowed her her freedom. So he had her transported home, where those ignorant of her condition had allowed her body to transition from the life into which she’d been born to this new tomb-born existence.

It had almost felt like flying as the pallbearers lifted her casket up, and like being rocked in a bassinet as their uneven steps caused her body to sway inside the metal box. Even though she was swaddled by padding and secured by steel, even after she’d felt them rest the coffin on the waiting bier, her hearing remained clear so that each voice reached her. Each tiny laugh. Each whispered expression of joy that she was now gone for good. Only Lucille’s voice, raised in song, carried tones of loss, of regret.

Hardest of all had been Elijah’s absence. She’d let her mind pick its way through the insincere platitudes, and all-too-sincere expressions of joy, trying to uncover a single utterance that might have belonged to Elijah. She imagined that he’d been too devastated to come, or perhaps that he’d taken his own life so that he could join her in whatever world awaited. She’d since learned that both suppositions had been laughably wrong. The thought of her naïveté led her to reach out and claw plaster from the wall beside her. The thing within her listened on, communicating through images the pleasure it took in her plans of vengeance.

It had seemed like an eternity before she felt the first tremor of movement play out along her fingers. She came to learn that it had actually only taken around three days from awaking in the funeral parlor to regaining full mobility. In between, she lay motionless in the dark, with nothing to comfort her other than the entity’s presence. Quickly she grew used to sharing her mind and body with it, coming to think of it less and less as a parasite, and more like a twin soul, a part of herself that had been missing, a partner in the devastation she was about to let loose on the place of her birth.

She had come to rely on its instincts, on its magic—for that was the only word she could think of to describe its abilities—that it seemed to delight in sharing with her. It freed her from the casket, and unlocked the gate of the mausoleum with only a touch. It showed her how to hide from the daylight, and how to feed off the blood of dumb and lumbering animals until together, they were strong enough and quick enough to take down a running man. When it led her to come to this house, she didn’t question it. She followed its tug without a single qualm.

This place seemed to have been created for her. While the houses of the living rejected her—a force she didn’t yet understand held her just beyond the threshold—the old Cooper home had wanted her, welcomed her. It called to her almost as if it were a radio station broadcasting on the same frequency into which she was tuned. The thing within her had heard the house’s call, and caused her to bound along, her feet rarely touching the earth as she tore through the wooded ravine that separated the cemetery from the edge of the farm, the fields long since fallow, where the house sat.

Nearby, the train tracks took a sharp turn to avoid the bend of the river. Trains had to slow at this point, so it had become a customary place for the dirty vagabonds who traveled in boxcars to jump on and off. This area proved prime hunting territory, as the hobos often traveled alone, and were sure never to be missed. No one would come looking for them, so there was no chance of discovery.

Kudzu vine, rapacious and never sleeping, had nearly swallowed the old Cooper house whole. The slanting wood structure would’ve long since disappeared from sight were it not for the teenagers of Conroy, who came, year after year, wave after wave, drawn at first by the thrill of visiting a place where multiple murders had taken place, then by the convenience of a spot where most adults who’d known the Coopers couldn’t bear to visit. For years, the teenagers had kept the front porch and entrance clear of the vine, but they’d stopped visiting the house since Ruby had claimed it, even if they themselves couldn’t quite say why.

Darkness calls to darkness, horror to horror. Ruby once thought of houses as lifeless structures, nothing more than a joining of wood and stone and plaster. Void of personality and incapable of feeling or memory. She knew better now. She’d been drawn to this suffocated and decaying house, left so long without regular inhabitants, and stained, physically and psychically, by bloodshed. The Cooper family murders had taken place in a time before Ruby could remember, twenty or more years before, but the stains left by the slaughter, both mundane and mystical, were still there for anyone who cared to look. Before, Ruby had never cared to, but the thing within her seemed to relish the crimes it could still taste, nearly as fresh as the day they’d been committed. And the house tried again and again to speak to her, eager to replay its trauma.

Pay it the slightest attention and shadow would thicken, edges sharpen, and the image of Mr. Cooper would appear, limping and bleeding from where his wife had managed to stab him in the thigh before he ended her with his axe. The visions that arose didn’t match the timing of the sound that accompanied them; Ruby had many times watched Cooper’s lips moving, calling sweetly out to his children, long after she’d heard their terrified cries.

A few precious yards of the house’s entrance remained bare of the creeper vine, but growth over the rest of the place had been left unchecked. Ruby had ordered the boy Merle to see to it that the front window was boarded over, making it safe for her to visit the front of the house during the day. She could move freely through the rest of the place without further precaution. What little sunlight pierced the house’s other windows was dyed a dim bottle-green by the leaves of the knotted kudzu that had covered them over.

Ruby examined the blue pallor of her skin given an even more otherworldly sheen by the filtered viridescent sunshine. She could bear this sunlight; it didn’t scald her and send her fleeing for the closest source of cool and comforting shade. Ruby didn’t know why this light should be different from sunlight filtered by shades or curtain. That light still caused her skin to redden painfully within moments of exposure. Perhaps the plant fed on and absorbed the wholesome part of the light that was noxious to the thing inside her.

The thing to which she’d been joined relished the procession of images, turning its focus to the bloodshed again and again, like a child demanding to be told the same bedtime story night after night. Ruby, fascinated at first, now found the house’s reminiscences tiresome. She coaxed the thing within her to look away, knowing that the seemingly solid man, once ignored, would dissolve back into shadow. Besides, Cooper’s bloodshed only amounted to two tears in a bucket compared to the fate she’d planned for Conroy.

SIX

A horn sounded outside, and Ava Dunne removed her soiled apron, folding it to hide the blood from the chicken she’d just cut up, and laying it on the counter. She swatted away a fly that circled the dismembered bird. The horn sounded again. “All right, all right, I’m coming.” She smoothed her dress and headed toward the sound, the heels of her black flats clacking out a staccato beat on the newly laid linoleum. She pushed through the swinging kitchen door and headed down the Oriental runner that led to the front door.

She looked through the door’s window to see Charlie standing next to his red truck, one hand snaked in through the open window, preparing to honk the horn again. She opened the door wide, and reached up her right hand to touch her throat. “Charles Aarons, if I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times. This is a civilized household. I will not have you announcing your arrival as if you were Gabriel himself.” This was not the first impression she had hoped to make on her soon-to-be daughter-in-law. She turned her head slightly in the hope of seeing past the glare on Charlie’s windshield. After catching a glimpse of his passenger, she forced a smile to hide her disappointment. “A drab girl,” she thought. “A practical girl,” she rephrased it to sound better to her own mind. The young woman opened her own door and climbed out of the truck. This Corinne had a sturdy frame, she immediately noticed. “She’s no Ruby,” she thought, and then she breathed a quiet sigh of relief. “She’s no Ruby.”

“Welcome,” she said, opening her arms and stepping down the stairs off the porch. “Welcome.” Corinne placed the bag she’d been holding on the ground and after a few moments’ hesitation circled around and reached into the truck bed, tugging on the handle of a larger case. “Good heavens, Charles. You help her with those bags, and don’t make me tell you twice.” Charlie ran his hand down his beard, mumbling something under his breath as he did so. “Don’t you backtalk me.” She stepped off the final stair and crossed over to Corinne. “Welcome,” she said for the third time, realizing that she was at a loss for anything else to say.

Corinne matched Ava’s frozen smile with her own awkward grin. “Thank you.”

“I am so sorry that Elijah wasn’t able to meet you as he’d planned.”

“I understand,” Corinne said, showing no sign of hurt feelings or resentment. “A breech birth is difficult.”

“Well, yes, and he and Clay, my husband, Elijah’s father, have been with the poor mare since dawn.” The two women regarded each other nervously. “Come in,” Ava said remembering herself. “You must be exhausted after your trip. Perhaps you’d like something cool to drink, or maybe just a short lie down?”

“Oh, no, I’m fine. The sleeper car on the train was quite comfortable. Especially after two years of sleeping on an army cot.”

Ava was surprised at how easily Corinne spoke of two years spent living in a war zone. Elijah still had nightmares. He tried to deny it, but Ava could hear his cries in the night. She always wanted to go to him when he was suffering, but Clay would never let her. Clay wanted their son to be tough, to deal with his problems like a man; funny since Clay himself tended to look for his courage in the bottom of a bottle. But Ava knew her place. She held her tongue, and did as her husband commanded.

“Leave it,” he’d say. “Elijah didn’t have to go.” That much she knew was true. He was the only son of a farm family. Going to war had been his choice.

“If anything, I’d really like to go assist with the foaling,” Corinne said, pulling Ava back to the present moment.

“Oh, dear, no,” Ava said, amazed by the very thought of it. “Animal husbandry is man’s work. You just come in and freshen up before the men return from the barn. Charlie,” she addressed the old man, “you put Miss Ford’s bags out on the back sleeping porch.” She turned to Corinne. “You will be much more comfortable there. It has been positively stifling around here over the last few days.”

Charlie made a struggle of lifting Corinne’s larger bag. “What’d you pack in here, bricks?” He staggered over to her and held out a hand for her second bag.

“No, I’ll take this one.” Corinne clutched the smaller bag tightly.

“That’s where she keeps the hooch,” Charlie said to Ava and laughed.

Ava shook her head, but her lips tipped up in a small smile. “I must apologize for Charlie. He is a good man. Deep down, at least.” Then her attention was captured by the unexpected sight of Conroy’s new police car—a Hudson Hornet, Clay had told her—pulling down the gravel drive.

“Is everything all right?” Corinne asked, turning to watch as the black-and-white came to a stop.

“Of course, dear.” She tried to smile reassuringly, but the police had never come to her door before. Sheriff Bell, a lean man in his fifties with a drooping gray mustache, exited the passenger’s side. His deputy, Rigby, had grown up with Elijah. Younger but thicker than his superior, Rigby climbed out and followed the sheriff a few respectful paces behind. “Good afternoon, ladies,” the sheriff said, tipping, but not removing, his hat.

“Sheriff,” Ava responded, the word teetering between an acknowledgment of his presence and a question as to why he had come.

“Your Elijah wouldn’t be around today, would he?”

“Why, yes, he’s in the barn with his father. This young lady here is his fiancée,” she added, not sure herself why she felt the need to explain Corinne’s presence.

“Congratulations, Miss,” the sheriff said, tipping his hat again in
Corinne’s direction.

“What seems to be the trouble, Sheriff?” Corinne asked. Ava blanched.
This girl was a bit too direct for her taste. She’d have to learn her place.

“Oh, no trouble at all. Nothing for you to worry about.” The right edge of the sheriff’s mustache raised up. Ava took it to be his version of a smile.

“Well, like I said,” Ava dove in before Corinne could overstep again, “my son is with his father in the barn. One of our mares is having a difficult foaling. They’ve been out attending her for quite some time. Poor thing must have finished delivering by now. I’m sure they’ll be back soon. You are more than welcome to wait inside, if you’d like, or . . .”

“Why do you want to see him?” Corinne interrupted.

Ava’s hand went up to her throat as she looked at the woman who was soon to be her daughter. “I am sure that if the sheriff wanted to share that with us, he would have done so without any prompting.” How had this girl been raised?

The sheriff chuckled and stroked his mustache. “Don’t worry, Miss. We were just wondering if he’d seen either of the Sleiger boys last night. They never came home, and their mama is worried about them. We wouldn’t make much of that,” he said, nodding toward his deputy, “other than the fact that they didn’t show up for work at the mill this morning either.”

“These are friends of Elijah?” Corinne asked, continuing to interrogate the sheriff. Ava felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment at Corinne’s forthrightness.

“Yes, ma’am,” the deputy spoke up. “Them three are as thick as thieves. Have been since they were knee-high to a grasshopper.”

“Strange that he never mentioned them . . .” Corinne began.

“Well, I am sure he wasn’t out with them last night,” Ava said. “I had him here working on the preparations for his betrothed’s arrival. He went to bed at half past nine.”

“All right, then,” the sheriff said. “We’ll leave you to it, but tell Elijah I’d like him to call me when he gets a moment. We’re gonna see if we can track down any of the Sleigers’ other buddies, but I should be back at the station around four or so.”

“I’ll let him know, Sheriff.”

“Ladies,” he responded and, with a wave of his hand, sent his deputy scurrying back to the patrol car. The deputy got into the driver’s seat and started up the car as soon as the sheriff was inside, nodding to them once before heading down the drive.

Ava looked back at Corinne. “Let’s get you settled, then.”