Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (45 page)

“I absolutely
can’t
, I won’t, tell that story twice. I’ll tell you and your father together. After your father reads this.”

“Don’t you want to look at it first? See what I said?”

“No. Call your father and then get dressed. I’ll wait for you in the car. We’ll go out or something while we wait for him to read it.”

“Feel like a movie?”

“No. Something quiet. I just want to sit. Now call your father.” He kissed the top of her head and dematerialized.

He answered on the first ring. It was probably the shortest conversation she’d ever had with her father in her life.

“Want to come over?”

“Be there in ten minutes,” he said, and hung up. Her intercom buzzed in nine minutes flat.

“I’m glad I didn’t get a call to bail you out of jail on a speedin’ charge,” she said dryly, as he walked in. She’d barely finished her quick shower and pulled on her jeans.

“I’m a doctor, remember? Medical emergency.”

“Right.”

“You by yourself?”

“Paul’s waiting for me in the car. We’ll be back in a few hours. After you’ve had a chance to read this.” She picked up the thick stack and handed it to him. “Make yourself at home. Got some light beer in the refrigerator but you’re probably going to want something stronger. I’ll call you before we come back.”

Dr. Knight flipped the folder open and glanced at the typed sheets.

“Paul’s novel?”

“It’s not a novel. It’s his story but every word’s true, so help me God. I started where I met him so you could sort of meet him with me. You read fast and it’s not medical jargon so you ought to move along pretty quick. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.

She walked out and Dr. Knight moved to an armchair and adjusted the lamp.

“Where to?” she asked Paul, getting into the car.

“I could not possibly care less.”

“Well, this looks to be a real fun evening,” she said, shifting into reverse and backing out of the garage.

* * *

The evening wasn’t as bad as Ria feared. They ended up at a local seafood restaurant and ran into Dennis Billings and his girlfriend Lori in the lobby. Ria made the introductions, pleased at the chance meeting. She expected great things from him, now that he’d declared independence from Justin Dinardo. Drug dealing was the least of Justin’s dangers, as far as Ria was concerned. The boy was a full-blown sociopath. He’d jumped bail and disappeared after Dennis, with Ria’s help, had turned state’s evidence. His disappearance worried her. Justin was dangerous. But Dennis was a different person, finally fulfilling the promise of the little boy who was the closest thing to a little brother she’d ever had. And Paul, who’d helped raise his little brother Joshua, had forgotten how much he enjoyed the company of teenagers.

“I’m so pleased to meet you, Miss Knight,” Lori confided breathlessly when they were all seated. “Dennis talks about you so much.”

“Thank you, Lori, but my name’s Ria.”

“Dennis, tell her,” Lori prodded.

“Tell her what?”

“Men!” Lori exclaimed in exasperation, and Ria smiled. “Dennis made the honor roll last week, Ria.”

“Dennis! I’m so proud!”

Dennis shrugged.

“I’m not. No excuse for not doing it before.”

“Better late than never.”

“But not good enough for what I want. I’ll make up for it in college, though. But I might need to bug you to help me, Ria. Like you taught me mythology when I was little, remember?”

“Your favorite was always Hercules. So what great mission have you picked in life?”

“I want to go to law school. So I can help somebody like you helped me. And I’m goin’ to make it through, too.”

“Damn straight you will,” Ria affirmed, feeling the stirrings of an emotion she recognized as surprisingly maternal. “By the time you get through, Johnny and I might even be able to afford an associate.”

She called her father before pulling out of the parking lot.

“Should we come home?”

“Give me another hour.”

“So you can have the men in white coats waiting for us?”

“Give me another hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

She clicked her phone closed and turned to Paul.

“Damn, I know he’s finished. Must be rereading some of it.” She shrugged. “Let’s cruise a while then.”

They drove slowly through the dark streets of
Macon
. An old, ragged car held together by threads of rust followed them, hanging two or three cars back. At the wheel of that car, stolen from the backstreets off
Martin Luther King Boulevard
, Justin Dinardo whistled cheerfully.

“Boy, shut up dat noise!” his companion ordered.

Justin complied immediately.

“Sorry,” he offered. “It’s just, I can’t believe how lucky this is. I mean, you want him, I want her.” No fool, Justin knew who’d masterminded traitor Dennis turning state’s evidence. And Cain had certainly been descriptive regarding what he’d like to do to the man.

“Slow down some,” Cain ordered. “Gettin’ too close.” Cain kept an eye on them frequently by hovering invisibly, of course, but he had to get some use of the new acolyte he’d tracked by following the spoor of the intruders who’d discovered his cave and pulled the stake from his ribs. In the main, Justin performed very well. Cain was satisfied with him and anyway, it wasn’t like he’d had a lot of choices to pick from. Besides, that constant hovering took a lot of concentration.

“They ain’t paying no attention.”

“I say slow down. Ain’t like we doan know where to find ‘em.”

“When?”

“When whut?”

“When are we going to find them?”

“Soon now. Real soon.”

* * *

Finally, Ria pulled back into her garage.

“Well, it’s now or never.” She slammed the car door. “I wonder if he’s made arrangements to check us into the psychiatric hospital yet.”

Dr. Knight watched stone-faced from the couch as they walked in.

“Prove it,” he said shortly.

Paul disappeared. Completely. Then he reappeared on the other side of the room and disappeared again. He materialized directly in front of Dr. Knight.

“Jesus Christ,” Dr. Knight said flatly.

“No, I’m afraid he didn’t have much to do with this,” Paul said dryly.

“Well, all right, let’s have the rest of it. I’ve always wondered how my granddaddy managed to get himself killed by an irate white man. And Ria?”

“Yes, Daddy?”

“You’re right. I want something a hell of a lot stronger than beer. Fix me a drink, please.”

She mixed drinks for everyone and settled onto her other couch facing her father. Paul paced restlessly around the room. She patted the seat beside her.

“Paul?”

He sat down and took her hand.

“I don’t know how to start. How to begin. So much of it, you see, I don’t even know firsthand, just from Sadie and Joshua. ‘Cause I wasn’t ever around in the daytime. And after all this time, it hurts like it happened yesterday. I just can’t—how to—you have no idea how much I loved my brother.”

“I think that’s pretty obvious from the first part,” Dr. Knight observed.

“No, not really, that doesn’t even begin to explain it. Because over the years, when he was a man, our relationship changed. Completely. He didn’t need me anymore, not really, but I needed him. He was my
connection
, you see. With normal life. He was my best friend. He lived the rest of his life trying to atone for that summer of 1888. And no man was
ever
more truly his brother’s keeper.”

Chapter Six

A man emerged from the turbulent events of the summer of 1888 instead of a boy. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger and the young man striding briskly across the grounds of
Rose
Arbor
Cemetery
in the summer dusk of June 18, 1892 was a strong man.

His skin still glowed with the creaminess of café au lait. His eyes were still large and lustrous. He was still a mulatto, a mixture of his remarkable white father, Dr. Everett Devlin, and his beyond remarkable black mother, Sadie. He’d finally figured out how remarkable they both were. The resentment of his youth for his mixed heritage and the confusing social limbo it cast him into had long passed. His height stopped an inch short of six feet, and his slender frame had expanded and filled out with manhood. His name was Joshua Devlin, and he was home. He increased his stride and laughed suddenly at the stray thought wandering across his mind.

“A nigger in a cemetery at sunset!” he thought. “What would the white folks say?”

The intense formal education his brother had begun upon his return from medical school in
Scotland
was now well-supplemented by the four years Joshua had spent in
Boston
. At this point in his life, even his thought patterns followed white idiom and he had to make a conscious resolution to shift back into the flowing, hybrid lilt between white and black speech used by his mother. For a few days, at least. Until his personal master plan could be implemented.

He approached the doors of the large marble structure, so much larger than any other that stood in the bounds of the cemetery, and glanced swiftly around. No one. He opened the door and stepped in. He frowned.

The top of the coffin was open. Again. Paul didn’t appreciate the protective covering the casket offered. Well, no matter. He was home for good now. He’d take care of his brother whether Paul wanted him to or not.

Paul’s hand twitched and Joshua moved closer.

“Joshua!”

Paul stood and pulled his little brother into a bear hug.

“Oh, it’s good to be home, Paul!”

“I remember the feeling. At least you’re not heading out for school again like I did, all the way to
Europe
.”

“Hell, no! I’m scared to leave you alone that long! Did you close that casket lid
one time
since I been gone?”

“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” said Paul. “No, I didn’t and I don’t intend to, and I thought new preachers watched their language.” He’d never tried to explain how suffocating it felt to wake under the closed lid. How dark darkness could be. Joshua carried enough guilt. No reason to inflict any more.

“Then I guess I’ll just trot out here every day at dawn and close it myself! Paul, show a little sense! What if somebody opened the mausoleum?”

“Now, this might surprise you, little brother, but in Rose Arbor not too many folks come knocking on the doors demanding entrance.”

“Really? From what I heard, folks just dying to get in,” Joshua quipped. Paul laughed at the bad joke.

The brothers headed to the riverbank to sit and talk.

“You disappointed in me?” Joshua asked.

“Josh!”

“Well, all that work, all that time. I know you expected to get another doctor out of the effort. So did Papa, by the end.”

“All that effort was to make sure you could make the life you wanted for yourself, little brother. I didn’t have any expectations for me. Hope I never made you think I did.”

Joshua did just fine exerting pressure on himself, any outside pressure would have been wasted. In his months away from home, Joshua struggled with nightmares. Something good had to come from Cain’s reign of blood and hate, but he couldn’t see what. Cain possessed abnormal power, power enabling him to mold his followers into slaves. There were many men, though, who held petty power, and Joshua, now always on the alert, spotted them everywhere. They moved through the poorer, uneducated classes, ensnaring both black and white, taking their money with promises of great changes, easy lives, luxuries such as the rich folks enjoyed. People were easily led. Usually to the slaughter.

But what if? An idea germinated in Joshua’s fertile mind from seeds sown years before by Everett Devlin. The power of education. Many confidence men, possessing not a tenth of Cain’s charisma, used the trappings of religion to hook their marks. Cain had been the ultimate master, using homemade drugs to bind his followers close so they barely noticed the shift in his preaching from love to hate, accepted the blood sacrifices as natural, the sexual orgies as their right. Suppose a different sort of confidence man, one seeking a higher goal, used religion as his hook to pull his catch closer and closer to another great good? Education.

Joshua examined the idea from every angle. He wasn’t and never would be conventionally religious. No one who’d plunged headfirst into the worlds on worlds ringing this world at seventeen could be. His mother’s twin Tamara, powerful Mambo, priestess of the Sweet Loa of the Rata, champion of the light, had made a believer out of him. Without her, Cain might have won.

Still, like his mother and his Aunt Tamara, he had no trouble at all with the concept of God. There was good and there was evil. There was God and there was Satan. They were merely made up of many parts.