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She held the stick in front of Marty’s face and showed him his work. “You see this detail, the feathers on the owl?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marty said. “I like the feathers because they’re easy to carve.”

“Nothing easy about it, honey. Larry used to say the difference between a professional and an amateur is the amount of time they spend sanding. Any old fool can build a table, he would say. It’s the finishing that makes it professional. This is very well finished, Marty.”

“My Uncle Cooper used to say that, too. He always said we should spend most of our time sanding.”

“Well, my Larry and your Uncle Cooper got along well. I never understood why Cooper never came by after Loretta died, but who knows what’s in a man’s heart. It’s a black box to me, full of stones and briars and sharp things a woman has no right to fiddle with. Here’s your stick, honey.”

Marty took the handle and pointed it toward his house. “It’s not a stick. It’s a handle. For that knife in the yard.”

“The big knife?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Hmm. Well, that is one big handle for one big knife, honey. What on Earth are you going to do with something like that?”

Chapter 17
  At the Window

After they ate, Marty thanked Sadie’s mom for the bacon sandwich and looked at Sadie for a few wordless seconds, as if he were about to say something. Sadie saw the line of dirt around his ears and neck where he had batted away the filth with a fistful of water, but managed to shore it up in finger-streaked drifts that were shoved out of his line of vision. Everyone else could see the the places he had missed when he turned his head. It reminded Sadie of the way a dirt road looked after it was graded, with mounds snaking alongside the road.

“Thanks, Sadie,” Marty finally said. “My mom would have belted me good if she caught me with that knife and stuff. She’s mad at me.”

“Oh, honey,” Sadie’s mom said. She was standing beside Sadie, and she put a hand on Marty’s shoulder. “You just be careful with that knife, okay.” She paused, and Sadie thought she was going to say something else, but she didn’t.

“Yes, ma’am,” Marty said. “Thanks again for the sandwich. It was real good.”

Marty scooted under the railing along the ramp leading up to the back door, jogged around the van, and ran through the back yard. He ducked beneath the peach trees and slammed one foot into the hurricane fence. His left hand shot out and grabbed the top of the fence, and as the fence rebounded from the impact, he catapulted over the top and landed in the pasture. He ran slapping his knife handle from side-to-side to bat away the chest-high underbrush.

After he was gone, Sadie’s mom said to her, “He’s not a bad boy, Sadie. I prayed for him last night, you know.”

“You did?” Sadie asked.

She looked down at Sadie. “We all did. I brought it up in Bible study. They all know the Jamesons. Heck, Mrs. Macy dated Ricky before he died, back in high school before she was saved. She’s lucky to be alive. You know what they said to me? They said you were right.”

Sadie hugged her legs to her chin and said, “Really? About what?”

“About it being the Christian thing to help that boy. They said you were brave, and wise for your age. Come on, let’s go to your room and I’ll show you.”

Sadie’s mom didn’t wait for an answer, but grabbed the rear of the wheelchair and spun her around and routed her through the breakfast nook and the dining area. Sadie had brakes on the wheelchair, but she had no steel in her resolve, not like a person with legs and a rigid lock-kneed stance, hands on their hips standing akimbo like Superman flapping his cape atop the world almighty. Sadie couldn’t resist when she was pushed, but was delivered wherever she would go by whomever would push, as surely as any little rudderless raft was carried by the current.

Her mother wheeled her to her bedroom and stopped in front of the window, facing the Jameson house. She twisted the plastic stick that opened the blinds and said, “See that house over there, Sadie-love? That’s the devil’s house. There’s evil in there, Lord knows that’s true. Everyone agreed on that point last night. It didn’t used to be like that, but it is now. Those Jamesons brought evil into that house like a cloud of black dust. Look at it, baby. It looks different than it used to, doesn’t it?”

Sadie studied it a few seconds and then said, “They don’t mow the yard like Mr. Cooper used to.”

“That’s right. What else do you see?”

Sadie leaned forward and tried to remember what the house used to look like. “The shingles didn’t used to be so bad. And I don’t remember the windows being so dark.”

“Among other things, yeah, all that is true, baby. You know what else is in there?”

Sadie shook her head.

“I found two snakes in the back yard yesterday. They were just some little old rat snakes, but you know who takes the form of a snake, don’t you, honey?”

“Satan, Momma.”

“That’s right. We didn’t have snakes like that before. I don’t know the last time I saw a snake out here, not a big one like that. I’ve seen a few garden snakes and copperheads over the years, but these were good, healthy rat snakes. They were big around as your wrist. Can’t you feel it in that house over there? It’s like the place breathes evil now.

“But that doesn’t mean everyone in the house is taken with the devil. I’m pretty sure his momma and daddy are, but I think there may be hope for little Marty. I don’t think he’s gone, not yet, and we prayed long and hard last night for his salvation. Look.”

Sadie’s mother pointed to the back of the Jameson house, where Marty appeared and peeked around the carport wall. He hugged the house until he was beneath the kitchen window. Marty stuck his hands above his head and bent his knees and shot upward. He grabbed the kitchen windowsill and hauled his chin to the lip and looked inside. He hung there a few seconds then moved to the bathroom window and then the bedroom window.

“What’s he doing, Momma?” Sadie asked.

“No idea, baby.”

Marty dropped from the bedroom window, turned, and faced Sadie and her mom. He must have seen them, because he lifted an arm and waved. Sadie finger-waved at him, but her mother didn’t move.

Marty stalked into the yard with high-steps, head down as he walked, apparently searching for the knife Sadie’s mom had tossed over the day before. He moved left and right to cover the area Sadie had pointed to earlier.

As they watched, a face appeared in the bedroom window of Marty’s house. It startled Sadie and must have startled her mother, too, because her mother said, “Oh, dear.”

The face disappeared, and after a few seconds, Sadie saw Marty’s mom round the corner of the carport. She stopped and looked at Marty. It wasn’t a normal sort of look, Sadie thought, but was a stare. It was a reptilian expression void of emotion, something Sadie had seen any number of times on the alligators along the Trinity River. The alligator’s massive and prehistoric head would swivel and the mouth would drop open, slightly, gathering breath into its primitive lungs. The eyes didn’t move but focused so intently on the subject that all the world faded around it. Sometimes Sadie thought she could whack the gator on the head and it wouldn’t move. It was as if the gator absorbed the vision into its walnut brain.

Sadie knew what came after that long stare. The thing after the stare was always the same, a burst of unimaginable energy followed by the takedown and death roll. She said, “Momma,” and her mother put a hand on her shoulder.

As Marty continued to search through the grass, Sadie saw something black streak down from the top of the house and swoop into Marty’s mother. It wasn’t a crow or a bat, but that’s where Sadie’s mind filed it, among birdlike things. It was the size of a child with wide-spanning wings that stretched three times its length. She glimpsed the thing and heard her mother gasp. It pierced Marty’s mother, shot upward, and disappeared.

Marty’s mom came to life and sprinted through the grass in long strides that seemed to carry her not on the ground, but on top of the knee-high grass like some floating object.

He didn’t see or hear his mother, but Marty dipped into the grass, straightened, and looked at Sadie and her mother in the window. He waved the massive Bowie knife at them. He smiled and lifted his arm in triumph.

Chapter 18
  Finding the Knife

To Marty, there was something spiritual about a knife that transcended the size and function of it. The knife is man’s first and most important tool, responsible for his rise above the beasts, and is perhaps the only modern instrument that primitive man might recognize and appreciate. Holding it somehow joins a man to those ancestors, and a wildness inside him is unleashed, a freedom known only to animals and lost to mankind when he shackled himself with civilization. Not even the wheel rivals the knife for mankind’s most important creation, and only the knife offers such precious freedom to those who wield it.

Marty waved the knife at Sadie and her mother, who stared at him from Sadie’s bedroom window. Her mother raised her hand to her mouth and Marty thought that was odd. He raised the knife to show them he found it. As he did so he felt something wrap around his waist and throw him to the ground.

He landed face-down in the grass with it on top of him. It slapped and clawed at the back of his head and raked away the skin on his neck. Marty wedged a knee into the ground and managed to turn enough to get his left arm between it and him, and he swiveled his head to face it.

What he saw resembled his mother, but was more animal than human. The thing wore his mother’s hair, but in wild unwashed strands that looked more like matted fur. Her face peeled away from her teeth with such force that Marty thought something incredible must be fighting to expel itself from her mouth. She raised her hand and brought it down on his forehead, and again on his cheek and the side of his neck.

“I’m sorry, Momma!” Marty said. He said it over and over, hoping the thing on top of him would frighten enough to become human.

Marty writhed and tried to turn out from under her, but she vice-gripped him between her thighs and wrapped her fingers around his throat. She squeezed so hard with her thighs and fingers that Marty felt a surge of pressure building behind his eyes as if she were trying to pop his head off like someone might squeeze the pit from a cherry.

She leaned close and spoke through her teeth, low so only Marty could hear. “Are you happy, you little shit? Are you happy?”

Marty tried to say he was sorry, but his lips found no air. Her hands around his throat tightened, and Marty felt the blood damming in his skull. The edges around his mother softened, and the sound of the freeway dulled into the monotonous drumbeats of his own heart, which now seemed to beat directly between his ears. He lost feeling in his arms and legs and was dimly aware of the color purple bleeding into the blue sky behind his mother.

Marty summoned what was left of his consciousness and willed his hands into his mother’s chest, and he shoved her away with the last of his strength. He didn’t feel his limbs move, but they must have because she unlatched herself, stood and stumbled backward, holding her side.

“You little shit,” she said.

Marty barely heard her over the pounding heartbeats inside his ears. He lacked the strength to stand but managed to scoot a few feet away from her on his back.

She stayed facing Marty, holding her side, and backed toward the house. Her lips moved, but Marty didn’t hear what she said. It was unintelligible as far as he could tell, either that or his brain was so rattled that it had stopped converting words into thoughts. Right now the whole of Marty’s body was focused on one thing, and that was sucking breath through a bent esophagus, loading up some red blood cells, and pumping those cells up to the brain and back again.

Hunched, his mother rounded the side of the carport and disappeared into the house.

Marty sat up and tried to stand. He lost his balance and fell forward, and in doing so he dropped the Jim Bowie knife in the grass. He righted himself onto all-fours and looked down at it. There was blood along the edge and the top half of the blade.

Marty picked up the knife and dug around until he found the Bois D’Arc handle. He looked up at Sadie’s house, but neither of them were in the window. He wasn’t sure how much they had seen, but guessed if they were like everybody else they ducked inside the house at the first sign of his mother’s episode.

After he regained his balance, Marty walked through the yard to the mimosa tree. With some effort, he made it up the tree, onto the carport, and across the rooftop. He threw the knife and handle into the attic, and followed it with a wounded swing over the windowsill.

He left the east side window open, hoping that whatever was in the attic might see the open window and decide to stomp around somewhere else, and that it might air out the place.

Getting through the attic access was a combination of falling and climbing, and before he landed face-down on his bedroom floor, he skittered the knife ahead of him so he would not land on it and skewer himself. The floorboards raced up at him and there was a tremendous slap of flesh against wood, and then darkness.

Chapter 19
  Sadie

Sadie’s mom wheeled her around and away from the window so fast she nearly fell out of the chair. She leaned forward and then was slammed to the back of her chair as her mother shoved her through the bedroom doorway and into the formal dining area.

“Oh, my goodness,” her mother said. “Oh, my goodness. Shh, shh, hush honey, be quiet.” She knelt in front of Sadie and put her hands on Sadie’s cheeks and said, “It’s okay, honey. Oh, my goodness. Stay here, okay. Don’t move.”

She locked the wheelchair brakes as if that might keep Sadie from moving. As soon as her mother turned and jogged into Sadie’s bedroom, Sadie was already wheeling herself behind her. Her mother leaned into the blinds and looked outside, and after a few glances, turned to Sadie and said, “They’re not out there. I think I saw Marty on the rooftop.”

“He goes that way sometimes, Momma,” Sadie said.

“He goes what way? On the roof?”

“Yeah. I think that’s how he gets into the attic. I told you that already.”

“Okay, okay, shh, honey. Oh, my goodness.”

“His momma hits him, Momma. I told you he had a bloody nose the other day.”

“I know, shh, honey. I have to think.”

“Can you call the police?” Sadie asked.

“Shh.”

Sadie waited while her mother caught her breath. She was breathing hard, and as she looked out the window she tied and re-tied her ponytail, as if the excitement had loosened it, or maybe with the tightening of her hair she somehow primed her brain for calmer thoughts.

“Okay,” Sadie’s mom said. “Okay. I’ll call Sheriff Dansley. Maybe they can come out and take a look.”

Sadie’s mom walked around Sadie and skip-hopped to the kitchen, lifted the phone off the wall hanger and began dialing, but stopped. “What will I tell them? I didn’t see anything.”

“Tell them about his bloody nose, Momma.”

“We don’t know how he got it, and I didn’t see it anyway. Boys get bloodied all the time. He looked all right when I saw him on the roof just now. I don’t think she hurt him, not really.”

“Tell them to come look,” Sadie said.

“Okay, okay.”

“Tell them about the black angel, Momma, the one that dropped off the roof onto Marty’s momma.”

Sadie’s mother put her hand to her mouth and behind her palm said, “Oh my goodness. Oh God, Sadie, did you see that, too?”

“Yes, Momma. It had big wings.” Sadie held her arms apart in a wide arc.

Her mother started crying then, deep sobs of the sort Sadie hadn’t seen since they unplugged her father and cut out his beating heart and gave it to some woman in Houston. Her mother’s breath caught in her throat and she dropped the phone, turned to the kitchen sink and spit up something that was either snot or bile or a greenish mixture of the two. “You saw that, that
thing
?” she said to Sadie. “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, Sadie. Oh, dear God.”