Running Out of Night (13 page)

What would I do when I got the door open? Where could I go? Where were my real clothes, my sack and food, my lucky buckeye, and where were my old Hannah doll?

I slipped down the wall and set beside the door. Finally, I said aloud words my grandpa used to say to me. “Don’t be scairt, Sweet Girl, just get movin.”

The door made a small creakin sound when I pulled on the loop. I held my breath, pulled again, and it budged the tiniest bit. What if someone heard me tryin to get
out? I waited for a minute, put my ear against the door, and listened. No sounds. When I tugged again, the door moaned and opened a crack. I waited, then pulled harder. It opened an inch, then wider. I held the edge of the door with both my hands. One more jerk, and it opened full on to a solid brick wall.

I
f you hear a crow calling, it is a sure sign of death. Spit over your left and right shoulders and call out to the crows to fly away and take death with them
.

I
stood there starin at the wall like some kind of fool. Then I reached out and patted at it. It were real. Real and hard, and nary a crack nor sliver of light to show that there had ever been anything there but a wall.

I stopped, laid my ear against the bricks, and listened. Were someone movin acrost the floor on the other side?

I looked around the room for somethin, anythin to pick at the brick, but the closest thing to a tool were the horn spoon settin in the porridge bowl. I started for the spoon, then stopped. “Girl,” I said. “You could chip away at that brick wall for a year of Sundays and not get yerself out of here.”

“Yessum,” a deep voice whispered.

I swung round. The room were empty. My heart pounded.

“I must be goin out of my head,” I said, doubtin that I’d heard a real voice.

“Yessum, you must be goin out of your head,” the deep voice answered.

I shivered. Someone or somethin were in the room with me.

I turned in a slow circle, my eyes searchin everywhere but not wantin to find anythin.

“Am I dreamin again?” I asked.

No answer, just quiet.

I pinched myself hard on the arm.

“Ouch, I am not dreamin.”

Quiet.

“Where are you?” I asked, mad and scairt all twisted together inside me.

Quiet.

I shuffled slowly acrost the room, looked beside the bed, under the bed, and in the corners, but found nothin.

“Am I a prisoner?” I asked.

Quiet.

I looked up, down, held my breath, and waited for an answer, but the only sounds was the nearby
caw, caw, caw
in death calls of crows and the wind whistlin through the wooden slats high above me.

I spit over both shoulders and asked the crows to fly
away and take death with them. Were that voice a death sperrit come lookin for me?

What were happenin? Were I a prisoner? Where were Zenobia? Were she caught and a prisoner now too?

The thick heat of summer had turned the little room into an oven, and I felt all played out. I climbed onto the bed and curled up like my grandpa’s old Delia dog. I felt too scairt to close my eyes, but I must’ve closed them and dozed, because I woke to the sound of a dull clunk and somethin slidin and scrapin below me.

My heart thumped. I pushed myself up and looked around the darkenin room, but I were alone. My fist pressed against my mouth, as though I could hold all my courage inside.

Another clunk and one big dark hand appeared beside the bed, snaked up, twisted, and turned full round, almost like it had eyes and were searchin for me.

I pressed my fist harder against my lips, bit into it, and moved back against the wall to get as far from the hand as I could. It slipped down the side of the bed and disappeared.

The bed shook. Now two big hands come. They reached up and pulled at the edge of the mattress.

I heard a loud scream. The scream come from me.

W
hen someone calls your name, don’t answer until you know who is talking or you may end up doing the devil’s bidding
.

T
hem big hands let go and disappeared.

I rolled over, grabbed the thunder bucket from its place on the floor, and stood up on the saggin corn-husk mattress that crackled with my every move. Whatever, whoever were comin into the room would have a heavy stinkin surprise dropped on top of it.

A cool gust of air rushed in from somewhere below. My arms and legs turned rough as chicken skin, and my hair prickled. I looked around at empty.

“Lark,” someone hissed, “Lark.”

Were the trickster death sperrit callin me again?

“Lark, it’s me.”

I stood ready to drop the bucket.

“Lark, it’s me, Zenobia,” the voice whispered, but I didn’t believe it.

“How do I know it’s you and not the devil?” I asked.

“Who else call you Lark?”

The braided rug took on a life and slipped to the side of the table below me. I couldn’t believe what I were seein. A trapdoor slid full open. More cool air come into the room. Two big dark hands rose up again, reached for the mattress, and pulled at the edge of the bed. I took aim.

Up come the scarred face of the tall boy who had carried Zenobia away from me.

He looked at me. “Lark,” he said, “don’t you be droppin that bucket on me.”

He pulled hisself out of the trapdoor, rolled onto the floor, and set up.

He looked clean now and were dressed in real clothes, not the bloodstained filthy rags he’d worn the first time I seen him with the soul drivers.

I lowered the bucket and walked to the edge of the bed.

Seein his face peerin up at me, seein that he were a real boy and not a death sperrit made my stomach settle.

“There someone behind me that you be glad to see,” he said.

The big boy reached down and tugged and up come Zenobia, one arm all wound in strips of fabric and tucked into a sling.

I leapt from the bed, set the bucket on the floor, and wrapped my arms gently around her.

“Quiet,” he said. “We cain’t make no noise.”

Outside, the sound of thunder clapped and rattled the cup against the pitcher, and a steady, hard rain began to fall.

The boy slid the trapdoor closed and pulled the rocker close to us. Zenobia and me set side by side on the bed, holdin hands like we wouldn’t never let go. I felt like someone had lifted a huge rock off of me, like if I didn’t hold on to Zenobia I might float right up to the peak of the ceiling.

We all started to whisper, then we stopped, started up again at the same time, and laughed.

“You first, Lark,” Zenobia said. “What happen to you?”

“No, you first,” I said. “Last time I saw you he were carryin you into the woods, and I didn’t know if I would ever see you again.”

Zenobia let go of my hand and scooted acrost the mattress. She leant her back against the wall, her legs drawed up to her chest, her good arm wrapped round them.

“I cain’t right remember all the happenins,” she said. “First I thought I were dead, next you yank my arm and something big and heavy fall on me. Next I know he is helpin me”—Zenobia pointed to the boy—“and carryin me into the woods like a sack of cotton. Lark, this here’s Brightwell, you met him a few days ago, but not by name. He’s our friend.”

Brightwell nodded.

I looked him in the eye and said, “Thank you for savin Zenobia, but you near scairt me to death when you was talkin at me and tauntin me like a haint. I didn’t know who or what you was.”

Brightwell shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry, Lark. First when you was talkin I couldn’t help but tease you, but then, when you sounded scairt, I knowed I needed to get Zenobia.”

I forgave him right quick. And hadn’t he taken a beatin from them slave traders and never told them I were hidin right above them in the tree? I owed him somethin fierce.

Brightwell reached inside his shirt and tugged out my old Hannah doll. He passed her to me, and I held her to my heart.

“I never thought to see her again,” I said, chokin back my tears.

I glanced from him to Zenobia. “Why, she looks better than she’s ever looked.”

“Auntie Theodate nursed Brightwell, me, you, and Hannah,” Zenobia said. “Auntie takes care of peoples who need her help.”

“Who is Auntie Theodate?”

“Lark, you come to her house. You come here three nights ago when you was so sick you couldn’t hardly walk, but you found her, found us.” Zenobia swiped at a tear with the back of her good hand.

I set quiet for a minute and thought about that night,
but I couldn’t rightly remember what had made me come to Auntie’s house.

“Are we trapped here?” I asked.

“No, we safe, but it’s a long, long story we can talk about tomorrow with Auntie,” Brightwell said. “Auntie and some of her family showed me that there are good white folks. We got real friends here, and they has helped people north to a safe place. A free life.”

The night I had made my way here flashed into my memory. I had been sick, burnin up with fever.

“Lark, I told you to look for signs to a safe place. You done it. You follered the signs and found your way here,” Brightwell said.

I remembered stubbin my toe on a gravestone and then the yellow light from the two windows of the little cabin shinin out at me. I remembered holdin on to the pickets of a fence, one by one, hollyhocks like tall ghosts. I remembered a huge pot over a wicked orange fire.

I remembered Brightwell’s words afore he left with Zenobia: “Look for a sign.” Then I remembered the twig arrows and the lines of shiny white pebbles.

“Was it you left them signs for me?”

“Lark,” Brightwell said, “we slaves, we never tell most folk about the signs. Never tell a white folk. Ever. I were goin to leave you signs, but couldn’t set Zenobia down again and again. Hurt her too bad. I were tryin to sign you when Asa come up. He scare us at first, but he talk and we
knowed he would help us. He left you signs, and he made sure we got here safe and that you be safe.”

Thump, thump, thump
. Loud sounds came from somewhere below.

Brightwell raised his finger to his mouth. “The signal,” he whispered.

We didn’t move, just held hands, squeezin tighter and tighter as heavy steps come up toward us.

K
nock three times and call up the devil. Knock four times and chase him back
.

T
he thumpin stopped. Below us we could hear loud talkin and yellin, and the drawn-out yodel of a hound. Then we heard the sounds of tappin on the wall.

Loud talk again, and then heavy stompin. Tappin again, right close, from the wall at the foot of my bed.

Tap, tap, tap
. Then the sound and feel of someone walkin on the floorboards just the other side of the bricks.

I reached over to the table and knocked soundlessly four times to chase the evil away. As I pulled back my hand, my knuckle hit the side of the cup; it tipped and
rolled toward the edge of the table, and water spilt onto the floor. I caught the cup just afore it fell, but the water pooled, then disappeared into the crack between the floor and the trapdoor.

It turned quiet. So quiet that all I heard was the roarin inside my head. I held on to the cup with one hand, Brightwell with the other, and looked over at Zenobia. She had her eyes all squinched together, and sweat run down her forehead and along her nose. Brightwell stared straight ahead, never blinked, never moved; it were like he had fallen deep asleep with his eyes wide open.