Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls (24 page)

 
          
“Where
is this place again?”

 
          
“West,”
said Ghost patiently. “You know. Like California, only not as far.”

 
          
Steve
lifted his middle finger, but the effort was too much for him, and he took
another swig of beer. “I’m supposed to go to work at four.”

 
          
“‘We’ll
be back by then. Come on, Steve. It might not be warm much longer.”

 
          
Steve
cast a suspicious look at Ghost. “You drank as much as I did. How come you
don’t have a hangover?”

 
          
Ghost
smiled. “
Miz
Catlin gave me a potion. Want some?”

 
          
One
of the four roads that led out of Missing Mile, Firehouse Street, crossed N.C.
42 a ways out of town. Steve turned the T-bird onto the highway and leaned out
the window, letting the wind rush past his face. The air smelled of the long
sweet death of summer and the gaudy return of autumn. Dandelions,
creekwater
,
woodsmoke
from an
early bonfire. Steve breathed them all in.

 
          
He
felt better now, had felt better ever since Ghost made him drink some
bittersweet anise-flavored liquid from a tiny blue bottle. Steve had heard all
the arguments against herbal medicine—it was dangerous, it was inaccurate, it
was better left to real scientists with real Ph.D.‘s—but growing up around
Ghost and
Miz
Deliverance, he had seen folk remedies
in action a hundred times over. They could be a damn sight more powerful than
anything available at the local pharmacy.

 
          
Ghost
had dug an old five-stringed guitar out of the T-bird’s trunk. He sprawled in
the backseat strumming random chords that sounded like crystal being smashed by
a rusty hammer, singing as loud as he could over the wind and the hum of the
tires on the road. “Sold in the market down in New
Orleeeeens
… I bet your momma was a voodoo queen …
owhoooo
, how
come you dance so
gooood
?”

 
          
Ghost’s
voice always reminded Steve of Hank Williams before the speed and the whiskey
got him, and in it Steve thought he could hear the beat of dusky blood and the
roar of the Mississippi. But he only said, “That’s not how that song goes.”

 
          
Under
Ghost’s enthusiastic fingers, the guitar strings protested, then succumbed and
sang their cacophonous song. The G-string pinged out a tiny death knell as it
snapped. Ghost sang more softly, mourning it. In the front seat Steve grinned,
shook his head, and pushed the speed up a notch. The sun was warm, and the road
rose and fell smoothly away, and they almost drove past the place before Ghost
stopped playing and said, “That’s it!”

 
          
Steve
slowed, looked around. “Where?”

 
          
Ghost
pointed at a little house set back from the road. It was painted green and sat
on a big lawn still speckled yellow and white with late dandelions. Out back,
Steve thought he saw the gleam of a pond. Sure enough, as he watched, a fat
white goose came around the house and marched up the porch steps. At the end of
the driveway, a carefully
stencilled
sign read:
CATLIN’S COUNTRY STORE. PICKLES, PIES, PRESERVES. CLOSED SUNDAYS

 
          
“No
way,” said Steve.

 
          
“Sure,
this is it. Go on up the drive.”

 
          
Steve
twisted around to look at Ghost. “You’re
tryin
’ to
tell me a witch owns this place?”

 
          
Ghost
looked hurt, “
Miz
Catlin’s not a witch. She was
friends with my grandmother. You think my grandmother was a witch?”

 
          
Steve
remained tactfully silent.

 
          
Ghost
scowled. “Well, anyway.
Miz
Catlin just knows about
medicine, that’s all.”

 
          
Steve
maneuvered the T-bird into a wide circle of gravel at the top of the driveway,
trying not to run over any of the chrysanthemums that nodded in the sun behind
a tiny white picket fence. As he got out, another goose pecked at the toe of
his boot, then flapped up onto the hood of the ear and fixed him with a baleful
eye.

 
          
“Stare
at him,” Ghost said. “They won’t bite you if you keep staring at them.”

 
          
Steve
backed away. “They bite?”

 
          
“Not
really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only lime geese are ever dangerous is
when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy who
almost got killed that way.

 
          
“By
geese?”

 
          
“Yeah,
there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and
stabbing at his ankles with their big o1’ beaks. He didn’t know you had to
stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a
fifty-foot cliff.”

 
          
“So
how come he didn’t die?”

 
          
“This
guy had wings,” said Ghost. “He flew away.”

 
          
Steve
sighed with the air of one long-suffering but patient.

 
          
“
Miz
Catlin?” Ghost said, putting his head around the screen
door. “You here,
Miz
Catlin? “GHOST-CHILD!”

 
          
A
tiny old lady came
barrelling
out of the store’s
dimness and launched herself into Ghost’s outstretched arms. Ghost lifted her
off the floor and hugged her hard, knocking her big flowered hat off. Steve
picked it up and held it awkwardly until
Miz
Catlin’s
little sneakered feet were on the floor again.

 
          
She
adjusted the hat over her long gray hair, smiling up at Ghost. “How the hell
did you ever get so big, child? You grow another inch every time I see you.”
She turned to Steve. “I was there when this kid saw his first light. My sister
Lexy
delivered him. I gave his mama a spoonful of mother-
wort
in wine, but there weren’t no need. He was the easiest
baby I ever seen. Once I pulled his
caul
off, he just
laid there and watched us all with them holy blue eyes. I gave him a decoction
of pomegranate rind for the runs once. Ate too many of my fresh green apples
and couldn’t stay off the pot for ten minutes at a time. He weren’t but this
high.”
Miz
Catlin held her hand a couple of feet off
the floor.

 
          
The
little lady herself wasn’t much taller; the top of her flowered hat reached
about to Steve’s rib cage. Steve thought he remembered hearing this story
before, but he smiled at
Miz
Catlin. Ghost was
studying the ceiling, the rose-and-vine-patterned wallpaper, the jars of bright
penny candy on the shelves. He saw Steve looking at him and scuffed his toe on
the wooden floor.

 
          
Miz
Catlin disengaged herself from Ghost’s arms. “You and
your good-looking friend just come out to brighten up an old lady’s day, or you
need some medicine?”

 
          
“It’s
my wisdom teeth.”

 
          
“O
Lord. Let me see ‘
em
.” She peered into Ghost’s mouth,
prodded his gums with a wrinkled forefinger. “You’re lucky. Got a big mouth.
You won’t have to get ‘
em
pulled.

 
          
I’ll
make up that balm directly. You want to poke around in the back room like you
used to?”

 
          
A
crazy light came into Ghost’s eyes. “Shit, yeah! Steve, wait till you see
what’s back there.”

 
          
Miz
Catlin’s dried-apple face registered astonishment.
“This isn’t Steve? That skinny kid who used to hang around with you all the
time? Well, age surely made you handsome, Mister Steve Finn.” The old lady
stared at Steve with such frankness that he wanted to look away, but he thought
that might be rude. Finally
Miz
Catlin giggled like a
little girl and waved her hand at them. “Listen to me—I never could give up
flirtin
’.

 
          
Anyway,
you kids take a good look back there.” She indicated the contents of the front
room: baskets of hand-dipped candles, patchwork quilts, potpourris. “All this
stuff, it’s for the tourists. Back in the back—that’s my real stock.
Ghost’ll
show you. He knows.”

 
          
After
the white-painted, sun-dappled walls of the front room, the back of the store
seemed dark, the air heavy and oppressive. There was a scent of dry antiseptic
dust, of strange oily spirits. Of herbs. As Steve’s eyes got used to the light,
he realized that he and Ghost were standing in a room lined with thousands of
small boxes and bottles. There were shelves crammed with them, tall
glass-fronted cabinets displaying them, open drawers stuffed with them.

 
          
“It’s
all medicine,” Ghost said with reverence. “Antique patent medicine. New ones,
too. Herb remedies. The stock of a hundred old-time pharmacies.
Miz
Catlin’s got it all right here.”

 
          
He
stood in the middle of the room swaying gently from side to side, seeming to
take in the essence of the place. His hands hung limp at his sides.

 
          
Soon
Ghost’s eyes seemed to go transparent. Steve thought that if he looked close
enough he could see all the way through to the whorls of Ghost’s brain, to the
vaulted chamber of Ghost’s skull. The first time Steve had seen his friend go
into this state, when they were kids, it had alarmed him. He thought he was
either watching the start of an epileptic fit or Ghost was about to die on him.
Now he was used to it. Ghost was just getting real heavy into some mind-groove,
as their friend Terry might have put it. Other people thought hard, sometimes,
but Ghost
tranced
out. Steve watched him for a
moment, then shrugged and started exploring the room.

 
          
He
found big brown bottles with murky contents gone to powder, little bottles of
heavy blue and green glass, cardboard boxes whose corners had gone softly
ragged with age, their colors sifting down to the dusty wooden floor to mingle
with the cobwebs.

 
          
Tucked
into odd corners of the shelves were all manner of pharmaceutical curios: brass
weights and measures, stained mortars and pestles, a glass globe full of
brightly colored pills that looked like candy, a scale whose sign, YOUR WEIGHT
AND FORTUNE, was almost obscured by dust. A row of large amber bottles, all
marked in a flowing black script: ELIXIR

 
          
MALTO-PEPSIN,
AQ. ROSAE AND GLYC., HEXATONE. A drawer full of patent medicine bearing
once-bright labels of yellow and red and green, fabulous claims, long arcane
lists of ingredients. In a blue box stained with what must be rusty water
marks, DOCTOR
DeBARR’S
MANDRAKE BLOOD AND LIVER
PILLS. In a big bottle of pure white glass, NOAH’S LINIMENT—FOR ALL
CREATION—MAN OR BEAST.

 
          
“Come
and look at this stuff,” Steve told Ghost. “It’s got something in it called
uva
ursi
.

 
          
What
the hell is
uva
ursi
?”

 
          
Ghost
didn’t answer. He was still in the middle of the room swaying. “Aloes,” he said
softly. “Bear’s-foot root, elm bark, gentian, Jamaican ginger root…”

 
          
“Look
at this shit,” Steve said. “‘Powdered Nutgall Suppositories.’ Nice, huh?”

 
          
“Indian
rhubarb,
nux
vomica
,
quassia
chips,
asafoetida
,
peppermint…”

 
          
Steve
saw a little brown bottle on a high shelf. “‘Extract of Cannabis!’ He reached
for the bottle.