The Mirk and Midnight Hour (33 page)

Even with only my dim moving circle of lantern light it was obvious how unkempt the place now was. Encroaching wild forest crawled ever closer to the buildings. The stables and sheds were misshapen blobs of creeper, while vines hung in dense curtains from the iron balconies and slithered up the house’s walls like long, spindly fingers.

Star stood still as I slid to the ground and tossed her reins over a hitching post. If only I could speak to Amenze first, but that was unlikely. My distrust of the VanZeldts, which had been driven out by the urgency of my mission, now cramped in my stomach as I climbed the front steps.
This is for Seeley
. I could do anything to save Seeley.

I firmly grasped the iron door knocker shaped like a pair of intertwined serpents and banged on the peeling front door. A patter of paint chips showered down onto the floorboards.

Please make him come
.

Crickets chirped; the cicadas’ song swelled and ebbed. From somewhere nearby came the soft, sleepy clucking and cooing of chickens and doves. I banged again. From deep within the recesses of the house I heard footsteps approach.

The door creaked open. There stood Dr. VanZeldt holding a lamp. He was dapper even at this time of night in his white suit minus the straw hat. He had beautiful, wavy silvery-white hair, and he cocked his head to one side and fixed me with a long stare through his thick glasses. A slow smile spread across his face.

“Miss Violet Dancey,” he said. “What an agreeable surprise. What brings you all the way out here? And so late at night.”

“We’re in desperate need of a doctor,” I blurted out. “My eight-year-old cousin has been poisoned. Please, will you come?”

His expression did not change as he tutted, “Terrible, terrible. Do you know the nature of the poison?”

I realized I hadn’t a clue as to that important fact and I shook my head helplessly.

“No matter. My methods will work for anything toxic to the body. Let me gather a few things. Did you come by—no, I see your horse. I will have Ahigbe and Uwa take me to your place by boat. I will get there ahead of you. Have I your permission to enter the house?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Our place is—”

“I know where you live. Scuppernong Farm. Run along, then, my dear, and don’t worry. The boy will survive.”

He closed the door in my face. Feeling almost anticlimactic and suddenly so weary that my legs turned liquid, I sank down onto
the steps. For just a moment I let the heavy lids drop over my eyes, then opened them. Nothing was over. I couldn’t let go yet. Still, I slumped frozen, unable to order my body to move.

Dr. VanZeldt had stirred the household. Lights began to shine. Beams shone from a nearby window onto the porch floor. From around the corner came the glow of a lantern, and out strode the bearded man—I later learned he was Ahigbe—hastening to one of the nearby outbuildings. He pushed open the door and I watched in fascination as something inside moved, writhed, undulated. I gasped. It wasn’t just one thing—it was a glass case of living snakes, many-colored and -patterned. The man entered the shed and kicked something roundish and pale out of the way as if it were a ball. It clattered in a dry, hard, brittle way. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be what it had seemed. A human skull.

Stomach, stop convulsing. Body, stop quivering
.

The doctor was going to save Seeley. He would. Nothing else mattered now.

I squared my shoulders, rose, clambered onto Star’s back, and galloped down the drive.

When I reached the farmhouse, several windows were alight. I met Sunny in the downstairs hall, carrying a glass of wine. She had donned a dark dress, and her chestnut locks hung long and loose down her back. Dark purplish shadows splotched below her eyes, but her green irises sparkled with a nervous intensity.

She squeezed my hand as she passed. “Oh, Vi-let, Seeley’s going to be all right. The doctor says so. He needs warm wine, so I raided
Dorian’s store and heated some up.” She gave a high-pitched giggle, tinged with hysteria, while tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. Why am I laughing? I guess because I’m so relieved.”

I moved swiftly past her up the stairs.

They had transferred Seeley into Rush’s bigger room. Dr. VanZeldt hunched over the bureau, grinding leaves with a mortar and pestle. Seeley lay on the bed with his mouth open, panting, his eyes rolled back in his head. Michael had pulled a chair up beside him, but he relinquished it to me now. I took my cousin’s limp, hot hand.

“Ah, there you are, my dear,” the doctor said without turning. “I’m just making a concoction of mimosa leaves for the warm wine. The other girl is bringing—yes, there it is.”

A faint motion caught my eye. Uwa and Ahigbe stood near the window, in the shadows outside the candles’ glow, watching silently, impassive, like carved figures.

Dr. VanZeldt stirred mashed leaves into the wine. “Now, my boy,” he said, laying one arm under Seeley’s neck and raising him, “you must take this slowly. Slowly, but it is vital that you drink it down to the dregs. There is medicine in it that will cure what ails you, and you must swallow it down with the wine.”

Seeley was so weak that his head lolled back on the doctor’s arm and he made no motion to hold the glass. The doctor tipped it to his lips and the boy’s throat swelled sluggishly, painfully, as he swallowed.

When the last had been drunk, Dr. VanZeldt held out his hand toward Uwa and Ahigbe and said something in another language.

“I do wish they’d just speak English,” Sunny whispered from behind me. “They were jabbering on and on like that before you got here.”

The younger man knelt beside a covered basket I hadn’t noticed before.

“Now,” Dr. VanZeldt addressed Sunny and me, “I must warn you, since young ladies often have decided opinions against reptiles, that in that basket lies a serpent. It is a black mamba—highly venomous, but my two sons are impervious to the poison. Uwa will hold its head toward the boy and then carry it to every corner of the room. The snake will suck the toxin from the boy’s body and free his spirit. It is necessary for his recovery. You may leave the room if it bothers you unduly.”

Uwa opened the lid and pulled forth coil after coil of a sleek, olive-skinned serpent, which he wrapped around his arm. With his other hand he held it just behind its narrow head.

“Eww,” Sunny gasped, and fled out the door.

I remained firmly in my seat, grasping Seeley’s hand. My own hands were ice-cold. I could feel the blood throb in my fingertips.

The young man brought the serpent’s head to within a few inches of Seeley’s face. The snake’s mouth opened wide and it was pitch-black inside. Its forked tongue flicked out. I held back from thrusting myself between my cousin and the serpent, biting the inside of my mouth till it bled.

Uwa began a steady murmur in his strange, sibilant language as he passed the snake in a cross pattern over Seeley. An eerie ambience settled in the room. I squeezed Seeley’s hand tighter.

As the serpent was carried to the corners, Seeley began to shake
harder and harder until he was convulsing from the top of his head down to his toes and the headboard of the bed beat a violent staccato against the wall. He kicked the sheet from his body and his skinny legs thrashed. I stood and tried to wrap my arms around him to hold him down. I flashed a look back at the doctor. “Is this what he’s supposed—”

“Absolutely right, my dear. I could not ask for better. See, he is beginning to sweat it out.”

A flush spread over Seeley until he was bright red all over and the sweat beaded up and trickled. I would have dabbed him with a cool, damp cloth, but Dr. VanZeldt stopped me.

“No. Leave him.”

Tears streamed down my face from helplessness and worry. I began to softly sing Aunt Permilla’s lullaby. After I sang, “We’ll stop up the cracks and sew up the seams,” I broke off. It hurt too much that I hadn’t stopped up the cracks for Seeley. I had let in this awful thing.

Dr. VanZeldt sat in a chair on the other side of the bed while Uwa and Ahigbe stood in their dark corner. I was acutely conscious of their presence in spite of their silence and stillness. Uwa especially. Occasionally I would glance away from Seeley and find him watching me with an intent, probing gaze. Once he smiled, slowly, showing lots of long white teeth. I looked away quickly. When eventually the two left the room, taking their basket with them, I let out a low sigh of relief.

After what seemed hours the doctor touched my arm. “There is nothing more anyone can do. He will be resting peacefully by morning. I will sit with him. He will be perfectly safe. You go to your bed. Try to sleep.”

I shook my head but found myself rising and crossing to the door. I had to do as Dr. VanZeldt ordered.

As I lay on my bed in my own room, fully dressed, rigid beneath the sheets, I heard the doctor’s voice as if in a dream.

“And Raphtah came down from the stars, from the constellation the Greeks called Draco, in the form of a man. He found the Family among all the world, and they were beautiful to look upon, as precious gems among drab pebbles. They fell upon their knees and worshiped him, and they were called Children of Raphtah. He taught them his ways so that if they had wished, they might have been rulers among men, but they did not wish. They desired only to be left alone. He taught them the sacred dances—those of joy and those of mourning. Those of worship. He taught them the use of herbs. Herbs that heal and herbs that harm. Potions of forgetfulness and tinctures of remembrance. Others knew these same secrets, but only the outer edges, not the fullness. He taught them to drink the venom of serpents, that they might dream dreams and see visions and be impervious to the sword. He showed them his true self, his glorious self, his scales gleaming like gold, like rubies. Then he told them, ‘I must leave, but if the time is right, if there is great need, you may call me back. You must dance the sacred dance and sing the Words. You must make the sacrifices, not out of cruelty, but necessity.…’ ”

What sort of tale was he telling my cousin? I dragged myself down the hall to Seeley’s bedside. “I can’t sleep,” I said to Dr. VanZeldt. “Please try to get some rest yourself. I’ll stay with him.”

“As you wish,” the doctor said, cleaning his glasses. I was surprised to see that without the lenses his eyes were actually small and
squinting. “I shan’t leave the house yet. I will be just outside if you need me.” He went out and shut the door.

I owed him Seeley’s life, yet I couldn’t trust that man. The business with the snake was so disturbing, and his story had been so peculiar. I couldn’t rid myself of the idea that I had made a deal with the devil, that there was a bond between us now that I did not want.

The room was turning gray with dawn when Seeley gave a sigh and his eyes fluttered open. The sweating had ceased.

“Violet,” he whispered.

I jerked forward. “Yes, my squidlet.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“I know. It’ll get better.”

“It was poison, wasn’t it?”

“Why do you think so?” I licked my lips carefully.

“I heard that man—that man with the pink face—talking about it.”

There was no point in lying. “Yes, it was.”

“Was it Dorian?” His face had no expression.

“I can’t—Seeley, I don’t—”

“It’s all right, Violet. It was him, wasn’t it? Back before we came here, after my parents died, I could tell he wanted to hurt me. Because he wants Panola.” Although he made the statement flatly, his forehead puckered in bewilderment. “How could he hate me so much? He must always have hated me.” After a long pause he said wistfully, “I wish I had a real brother.”

I flinched at the pain in my heart. At that moment I could have strangled Dorian with my bare hands. Or, better yet, fed him poison, drop by measured, burning drop.

“Seeley, my darling, Dorian is—there’s something terribly wrong
inside him, something missing. But he’ll never be allowed near you again. I’ll make sure of that. You mustn’t be afraid. The world is actually full of good people. I know it doesn’t seem that way when you’re surrounded by war and death and you had the bad luck to have Dorian Rushton as a cousin, but such cruelty, such evil, and such selfishness are rare. And for the rest of my life I want to show you what fine people there really are and how loved and precious you are.”

“Was it in my honey milk? I thought it tasted funny.”

“Yes. If it tasted funny, why did you drink it?”

“Because I thought it tasted funny since
she
made it, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. So did she want to kill me too?” His mouth was tightly drawn and gave his face an old look. Tears welled in his eyes.

“No, no,” I said quickly. “Sunny didn’t know anything about it. She didn’t know what she was giving you.” I lied. I had to lie. “Now close your eyes again and I’m going to tell you the story of the amazing adventure that came about when Heath Blackstock threw up all over his hideout.”

Seeley gave a feeble grin. “I’ll tell Thomas on you.”

“Thomas has been through enough with battles and wounds that he knows even heroes vomit sometimes.”

I had just begun the story when I paused mid-sentence. A soft click sounded from out in the hall. I sensed a watchfulness, a listening, coming from behind the closed door.