Four and Twenty Blackbirds (28 page)

Malachi's gun. The one I'd brought inside with me.

On the floor near the door. We saw it at the same moment. I shoved off from against the bed—the shack wasn't any bigger than a large bedroom and I could have cleared it in a single leap, if Avery hadn't grabbed my foot and yanked me out of the air.

I fell on my face and palms, kicking at him with everything I had left. But my hands were sticky-slippery, and I couldn't pull myself up or get any traction to escape. My fingers ached and my head ached and I was bleeding from places I couldn't even see without a mirror, and Avery had me like a fish on a hook.

Next to the gun, the door was open. As I flailed against my grandfather, who was reeling me in, one chunk of pants leg at a time, I saw the three ghosts outside. As one, they raised their heads as if they heard something approach.

Mae shook her head, her eyes wide.
She's coming, child. You must kill him now, before she reaches us, or it is too late.

Oh God. Mae was right. The shadows were so long they were steadily blending into darkness, and Lu would be dead in a moment if I didn't act. It couldn't end this way. I couldn't come so close only to blow it at the last second.

Lu was counting on me.

Dave was counting on me.

All those monks, or priests, or whatever they were, at that church in St. Augustine, they were counting on me too, whether they knew it or not.

Avery got his hands inside the waistband of my jeans and yanked me back, me still without the gun and him exerting one hundred and thirty years of accumulated strength against my fear. He thrust his hand down onto my neck and tacked me to the floor with his thumb and middle finger, pressing against my throat and completely cutting off my air. With his other hand he collected both of mine, holding them against the ground.

When you're not breathing, you don't struggle long and you don't struggle hard. My fingers flapped uselessly against his wrist. I felt my blood rise to my skin's surface, and my face went hot. I didn't close my eyes, but after a minute I couldn't see.

That's why I was confused when he let go. I was so confused that for a few seconds I just lay there, wondering why he wasn't hurting me anymore. Then, as my vision cleared, I was almost tempted to laugh.

Of all the unlikely heroes, Malachi had flung himself off the bed and onto Avery's back. His hands and feet were tied, but that only meant he couldn't let go of Avery's neck even if he wanted to.

Together they twirled and spun as Avery tried to shake him, and Malachi's bound wrists hung heavily at my grandfather's throat. His full weight (though it couldn't have been much) was dangling down Avery's back, pinned at his neck; Avery was wearing my cousin like an unwieldy cape.

While he was thus distracted I turned over, dragging myself to my hands and knees.

My head drooped down and my eyes were watery, but I could see the gun just a few feet away. One raw palm after another, I crawled towards it. Slowly. Painfully. One scraped knee after another I propelled my broken, bloody body to the one thing I prayed would save me. I clawed towards that damned gun like it was the Holy Grail.

It had to be.

If it wasn't, we were all dead.

I dropped one hand down onto it and it slipped around in my fingers. With both hands I picked the thing up and held it firm, then rose to my knees, aiming at the struggling duo. They were still waltzing about, Avery trying to shake Malachi, and Malachi determined to hang on.

I flipped the safety, pointed the barrel, pulled the trigger tight.

The first shot threw me backwards, almost out the door, but my shoulder landed up against the frame. I put one leg up on the wall to brace myself and fired again.

And again.

The rotating tussle of wrestling limbs jerked and jolted with each bullet.

I wasn't sure who I'd shot and I didn't care, not even a little bit. I just kept on shooting until the gun was empty—six shots, I guess, it was some kind of a big pistol and I think it was fully loaded when I began. All I really know about guns is where the safety usually is and which end's the dangerous one, but at the time that was all I needed.

When the chambers were empty, my ears were humming and both of my adversaries were down, splashed with gaping red holes. Twitching. Both alive, but both hurt.

I hauled myself to my feet, propping myself against the door and letting the gun hang at my side like an anchor at the end of my arm.

Malachi was struggling to pull himself off Avery, who had fallen beneath him. One bent arm at a time he pried himself loose, crawling off to the side and leaning with his back at the bed. He was bleeding from nearly as many places as I was, but none of them appeared critical except the freshly reopened wound on his chest, which had dampened the front of his shirt down to his navel.

Avery was pushing himself up, lifting his chest off the floor and steadying himself on his elbows. A black, sticky puddle mucked up the boards beneath him, but I didn't trust it. His head was wobbling, but he was alive, and in a moment he would be on his feet. And I was out of bullets.

But the knife was beside the stove.

I stumbled towards it, almost falling when I picked it up.

"Eden, let me. . . ." Malachi insisted.

I ignored him and stood over Avery's trembling back. I lifted the knife high, trying not to wonder if I had enough strength to send it all the way through his neck. It was heavy, and it was sharp, but after all the trauma, were my arms enough to wield it?

He raised his head and one of his eyes met mine. The other was a vacant, gaping crater. Yellow fluid and black blood congealed around the sides of the wound, already healing from my lucky shot. But he was down, and he was beaten. He simply wasn't dead yet, and it was up to me to fix that oversight. My arms wilted a little, dropping the knife to my waist level.

"So you'd take me, then . . . just like that?" he said, voice halting and wet. "But you were here to help. I made you strong. I brought you here."

"You killed me once, and I came back—but it was never to help you."

I don't think he heard, or at least he was not listening to me but to something or someone far, far in the distance. "Then I misunderstood. For what it's worth, I never killed you. But now I know the way he wants it . . . and I agree to his terms. So take it—do it if you're going to." He stared back down at the floor, his head sinking between his shoulders.

He didn't have to tell me twice. I pulled the long knife up over my head and swung it down like an ax. It clicked between two of the vertebrae in his neck, splitting them neatly, and continued on through the muscles that held up his head, and the tubes that went to his stomach, and the pipes that serviced his lungs.

His body collapsed, sinking spread-eagled to the ground.

A great gust of hot air gasped out of the hole where his neck had been, but his head was still attached by some cartilage, meat, and skin. With renewed vigor I hacked viciously away at the last bits until his head rolled clear, jaw slack and yellowed teeth leering from pale gums, one brown eye glaring up and out of the skull.

The eye blinked twice before its light went out. His last words came slowly, his tongue stiffening with death. "Take my curse, child . . . and
live with it.
"

Then all of him—now both parts of him—withered and went still.

I opened my fingers to drop the knife. It stuck to my palm, lightly glued there by all the blood. I shook my wrist and it fell clattering down between his body and Malachi, whose head had rolled backwards against the bed. He'd either died or passed out again.

For a moment, I thought I might join him. My head was swimming with bubbles and stars, and my skin was tingling all over. Perhaps the shock of my injuries was wearing off and I was on the verge of feeling every cut, every sore. Perhaps I was dying. Perhaps . . . but then I put my hand to the knife wound at my breast and felt that it was dry. I peeked inside my shirt and saw that it had shrunk to a red, swollen line.

Already. How could that be?

Take my curse, and live with it.

Every passing moment I felt stronger, and drier, and less damaged. Oh, the room was still weaving back and forth, and I ached from every joint, but my bleeding had stopped, and the sharp immediacy of pain was fading. "Some curse," I said. "If this is the worst of it, I'm going to save a fortune in doctor's bills."

I surveyed the room. Malachi's eyes flitted but didn't open. So he was alive after all. Maybe. I waited for another flicker, but none followed. Then again, maybe not. I didn't much care. A pair of long, light curtains swayed around the window I'd broken with my head. I ripped them down and wadded them up, then dropped them on top of the stove. They ignited immediately. I watched with satisfaction as orangey flames sprouted and spread, eating the curtains and starting on the walls.

I picked up the knife again, and used it to fish some burning chunks of wood out of the stove. I scattered them around, watching them char the floor and ignite the rug by the bed. Then the bedspread caught, and the fire worked its way up to the pillows. Bed, walls, bits of floor all sparked into spreading heat. The shack was a hundred years old and not in the best state of repair. It would burn fast.

I stood in the middle of the increasingly warm room and surveyed my handiwork. Satisfied that the place would go completely up in smoke, I turned to leave.

But Malachi was awake again. His wheedling voice whispered over the hungry crackling of the fire. "You . . . you can't leave me . . . here," he said, smoke choking his words and raising tears in his eyes—or maybe he was only afraid.

I hesitated in the doorway. "Why not?"

"I'm . . . sorry. About . . . all of it. I . . ." My cousin-brother coughed and tried to raise his head to an upright position. "I was wrong. Please . . . don't leave me. Help me. I'm sorry. Never . . . never again."

A small thread of fire was working its way along the blanket towards Malachi's wobbly head. I watched as it approached him, devouring the cotton sheets and spitting them out as coal and ash. I could let it take him. I could leave him in the shack, and even if someone found out what I'd done, no one would care.

Self-defense. Ample precedent. I wouldn't even have to lie.

The flame sneaked up to his collar and singed it dark, then attacked his hair. He didn't feel it, or if he did, he lacked the strength to do anything about it.

Decisions, decisions. I sighed. It wasn't so difficult after all.

I stepped forward and patted at the flame with the back of my hand. Malachi dodged away, thinking that I was trying to hit him. "Stop it," I commanded. "You're on fire. Let me put it out."

He looked at me with those huge, watery blue eyes, rimmed with red from the pain and smoke. For the first time I saw written on his face not maniacal certainty, but fear. Everything he'd spent his life believing had been wrong, and now he had nothing but . . . well, nothing but
me,
and the relationship we'd established thus far did not amount to much. But he was my brother. And he was going to die if I didn't do something.

I reached down and wrapped one of my arms behind him, under his armpits, and pulled him to his feet. "Come on. This place is going to go." I guess I'm just not one to say "I don't care" and really mean it, even if I think I do.

He nodded and did his best to follow orders, flopping one foot down in front of the other in a pitiful attempt to walk. It was enough. We limped together onto the porch and down the stairs, and then into the yard.

Avery's house fell down behind us, spewing a burst of heat against our backs and collapsing into a pile of flaming rubble. We stumbled across the wet, thick yard where the women no longer stood, and we weakly began our way back towards the road. Except for the light of Avery's pyre, the swamp was dark.

I was just beginning to wonder how we'd find our way out when a bobbing white light charged forward at us from between the trees. "Eden? Eden, is that you? Are you all right? Dear God, it's taken me forever to find this place! I saw the fire through the trees, and
dear sweet Baby Jesus—is that . . . ?
"

"I'm fine, Harry," I cried back, though it was possibly something of an overstatement to use "fine" in such a context. "Yeah, it's Malachi. It's okay, though."

My brother put his head down on my shoulder and lurched along beside me. "Thank you. I know . . . you didn't have to do . . . this for me. I mean . . . after all I did to you . . . and everything."

"Aw, Malachi," I said, awkwardly patting his ribs with the arm that held him up. "It's okay. I was never very afraid of you anyway."

12
Finis

I still see ghosts, but then again, I always saw ghosts. Now I see them more, that's all. And my dreams have settled down. Most of them are like Dali paintings, just like before this whole mess started. Well, except for that one dream. I had it just last night.

In it, I was very small, maybe five or six years old. I was back there, in the swamp at Highlands Hammock, and the day spilled bright through the leaves overhead. Not long before, it must have rained, for the yard behind the shack was made of mud. Teeny frogs hopped and croaked, bouncing on thin, springy legs between the puddles. I was enchanted by their shiny, bulgy eyes and bright skin.

The frogs liked me too.

I picked them up gently and kissed them, seeking not princes but friends. I helped them climb out of mud-slick holes and put them back in the water if they roamed too far from the soft places. Sometimes, when the pools were filled with tadpoles, big black birds would lurk about like vultures, picking off the squirmy black babies for a quick snack.

I always chased the birds away from the ponds and puddles, determined to save my frog buddies; but then I climbed a tree and saw a nest filled with downy baby birds, chirruping with hunger, waiting for their parents to bring them food.

My mother smiled when I asked her—should I chase the birds or let the frogs get eaten? "Well," she said, "they all gotta eat. It'll balance out in the end, with or without you chasing 'em."

So when I saw a bird get a frog, I closed my eyes and remembered the baby birds and how they'd all gotta eat. And this was how it was bound to be, whether or not I was there to interfere. But in the meantime, I played with the frogs in the backyard, and I loved them while I had them. And I was always careful not to step on them, even though they were sometimes hard to see out there in the grass.

I crouched down and poked at one, pushing it onto my open fingers. Its little throat inflated and it let out a happy gribbit.

"Hello, froggie."

Behind me, up in the cabin, something splintered and broke. It sounded like someone was falling. I scrunched my forehead and listened closer. No, there wasn't anything. All was quiet. Mother was cooking. She must have dropped something.

My froggie's throat swelled again and it started its hoarse song. I held him up to my face and felt his whispering breath. They usually didn't let me hold them so long. It was the neatest thing I'd ever seen. I wanted to share it with my momma. I stood slowly, making sure not to disturb the frog prince and his music. I covered him with my other hand, cupping him carefully so that his singing echoed around in my palm.

With cautious steps, I made my way back to the house.

Gotta show Momma.

I shifted my eyes from my hands to the ground. Gotta walk easy. It took me five full minutes to get to the front of the house.

One step. Took it so soft it didn't even creak.

Two steps. Didn't make a sound on that one either. I stared at my hands, then stared at the ground. I stared at my feet. Lifted them again . . . so slow. Stared at the top stair of the porch. Stepped up onto it without a sound.

I held out the frog and lifted my head, prepared to announce my wonderful new pal—and stopped myself. My father was there. His back was to the door. My mother was on the bed. She wasn't moving. Her arm was hanging down, almost touching the floor. A long trail of red spilled down it, dripping from her middle finger to form a small puddle on the floor.

Another drop fell with a little splash.

And another. And another.

My father was doing something to her—something I couldn't see. His arm was cranking back and forth, and the one-roomed home was filled with the sounds of uneven sawing, the rubbing of sharp metal teeth across something solid but wet.

The little fellow in my hand chose exactly this moment to speak.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

Gribbit.

My father stopped what he was doing. He turned. And I saw . . . and I saw . . . I saw what he was doing. I saw Momma's right hand hanging by a sliver of skin. I saw the white bones poking through the red, shredded flesh. I saw her eyes gone up in her head, and her mouth open and her skin going pale and gray. And my father had done this to her.

And he had seen me.

I took one step back.

"Now, pretty one . . . now . . ."

I took another step back.

"Miabella."

Without taking my eyes away from my father's, I squatted down and put the frog on the edge of the porch. It hopped down and disappeared into the weeds.

"Miabella," he said again.

But by then I was already running.

My little legs pumped hard, and fast, and my bare feet did not even notice the twigs and roots they stomped across. I was always barefoot, and the naked ground did not intimidate me. It did not slow me.

Footsteps pounded hard behind me, drawing closer until I took a turn through a more narrow place, a place where the trees grew closer together. A place where the ground was soggier, and then downright wet. I was splashing and ducking, and he was not keeping up. I didn't know where I was going, but my father couldn't catch me, and that was all that mattered.

"Miabella? Miabella!
Miabella!
" He was crying louder, but his voice was growing more distant. I was losing him. I was getting away.

And then I was falling.

Falling through water, so black and thick that when I opened my eyes I saw nothing. My feet could not feel the bottom below, and my hands could not find the air above. At first I went wild and thrashed, fighting to find which way might be up, even if it meant my father was there. But the water was all mud, and creeping things were swimming about. I felt small, webbed toes shove off against my arm and was less afraid. No, not afraid at all.

My father was above, covered with my mother's blood.

I had gone below, with the creeping things, and the hopping things. It was better there. The frogs would care for me, as I had cared for them. They would keep me safe here in the mud, where I played with them when the sun was warm and the grass was tall.

They would . . . sing me to sleep in this new . . . in this new, thick darkness. They . . . would watch over me. They would . . . protect me. The frogs were my keepers, and they would keep me . . . from harm. Yes. Everything . . . was going to be . . . fine. The frogs would help me.

Or perhaps the

. . . birds.