Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Finally she died, but even then he did not quit hitting her. When he was done, there was little left of Luanna to be recognized. Everything was covered with mud and blood from the random chunks of flesh torn in the fray. Her face was nearly gone, and what remained was blue or black. It was only afterwards that it dawned on me that she went by "Lu," and I wondered if it was more than coincidence that women with this name could fight so hard.



Eventually Avery's rage was satiated and Luanna's hand was tied up in her own small cloth purse. Avery carried her to the same dark pool where he'd sunk her sister. I did not see Willa's body, and I did not see any horrific, bloody-mouthed alligators, but I could not help but notice the ominous floating eyes lurking quite close.



III



Still, I followed.



Avery hiked with half-hopping steps between the trees, along a path he must have known well to walk so quickly. He was going deeper, farther back into the wettest lands that could still be called land and not a sinking stretch of mud. All the way I watched his back, swaying and dipping to dodge the low limbs and the softer patches of earth. A second bag hung at his side, jostled by his shifting hipbone, containing a second hand that leaked blood through the soft fabric, staining his pants in short pendulum swipes of russet brown.



One to go.



"No, no, no, no, no," I murmured to myself, keeping time with Avery's expertly stomping feet. He was getting ahead of me, but not by much. I knew what must happen next and I chanted against it,no, no, no, no, no, but all the prayerful begging in the world can't change what has already passed. I'd like to say that nothing can, but a brief while ago I would have said that nothing could bring back the dead, and now my opinion on the matter was not nearly so certain as before.



I tailed Avery maybe half a mile to a wood-slat cabin, set on short stilts to keep it from sinking or flooding. Three crooked steps led up to a narrow porch and an open door that swung without a screen. Clattering, boiling sounds of cooking came from within, and a pungent, earthy odor steamed from the stovepipe chimney that leaned out from the wall. Avery kicked the excess mud and gore from his shoes against the bottom stair.



Avery? Mae called from within.



You got it all ready? He went up the steps and stood in the doorway for a minute before going in. He used the back of his foot to close the door.



I climbed the stairs behind him. They creaked and groaned beneath my weight. Surely this was no phantom place. A stray nail was solid enough to snag my shoe. But why didn't they see or hear me? I didn't understand, but I was too fascinated not to watch. I didn't let myself in; I stayed at the window like a cowardly peeping Tom.



Mae nodded. I got it all ready. Don't you smell it? Lord, but it's enough to clear out the swamp, it stinks so bad. Where's the girls?



Out there. He waved towards the door.



They not done getting their share yet?



No, they ain't. Where's my little one? You didn't let her go out alone, did you?



Mae's eyebrows came together just a tiny bit. She's right out back, playing with the frogs in the puddles. Once they started their croaking, there was no keeping her in here. She about drove me crazy, bouncing around calling out 'ribbit, ribbit,' until I sent her on out—



Avery put his hand on her cheek, and traced the curve of her face. Mae stopped talking. She touched his arm. I thought for a moment—that is, I tried to make myself believe—I thought they might kiss, and everything might be all right. Avery reached back behind her neck and firmly, but almost gently, he held her and kept her from falling backwards. She laughed and turned her back to him, thinking he meant to play.



I turned my back to the window, not wanting to see. Her frightened squeal, and her gurgling cry—I heard them, and this was enough. I heard her fall against the bed in the corner, and I heard the straw stuffing that made up the mattress crackle beneath her body as she thrashed against the fast falling knife.



And then everything was still. I waited for more, but no more came. Maybe as long as a full minute I stood there, back to the rough slat wall, panting as though it was my throat that had been slit with a rusty-edged knife. Something had changed in the swamp around me—something signaled a shift and a warning, and I braved the window's view once more. I couldn't see much of what I feared; Avery was facing the wall away from me, his back hunched over the bloody form on the bed. His elbow jerked furiously back and forth as he sawed off his third trophy.



I couldn't stand it.



I stepped aside and put my hands on the split-log rail of the porch to hang my head, fighting the dizziness and nausea that was creeping up my throat. My hair hung around my face in a wavy black curtain, one I did not care to part. I could not look through that window again or I would go more mad than my cousin, and with madness I could not save Lu or even myself. I'd seen enough.



Yes, now you've seen enough.



I raised my head just enough to see out from between layers of hair with one wet eye. They were all three there, Willa, Luanna, and Mae, standing before me in the damp overgrowth that passed for a front yard. They appeared the way I had always seen them before, dead and unhappy. Three furies, or three fates . . . the Gorgon sisters once beautiful, made into sad monsters.



"What do you want from me?" I asked, having half an idea but needing instructions.



Your mother-aunt will be dead at sunset, Mae said, nodding towards the sun. It had already fallen behind the trees and would soon be level with the horizon. I had light enough to see by, but not much more than that.



The energy that hit you, that was his call for her life.



It's gone to claim her.



If you kill him, the wave will wither before it reaches her.



I glanced sideways into the window at the hulking form, still looming and carving at Mae's corpse. "I can't kill him. I don't think I can even look at him."



But you will kill him. Or all is lost.



"What do I do?" I asked desperately, clutching the rail with my hands and forcing back a wad of rising vomit. The women remained immobile, stiff as statues except for the swaying of their garments, pulled at by a wind I couldn't feel, touched by a peculiar breeze that didn't brush anything around them.



Why ask us? Luanna finally shrugged. Go and make your own try if you want to save her.



Willa agreed. Go on, now. You've come this far. Would you kill her now by waiting? She who hesitates . . .



Yes, she who hesitates . . .



She who hesitates . . .



Once again I begged their aid, "What do I do?"



Mae shrugged as casually as if I'd asked her for the time and she had no watch. How should we know? As you've now seen, we failed. We would have stopped him if we could, but our try came too late. We were weak against him, because we loved him.



"I'm not strong enough."



You are. He's seen to that. He's given you everything you need. What did you think those draughts were for? Why do you think his old sister still lives? Oh yes, darling. You're plenty strong now.



I stood on the rickety porch, clawing at the rail that would give me splinters if I held it any harder. I still smelled the tangy, earthy cooking that spewed out steam and smoke from the stovepipe, and the sun was sinking even as I stood there.



I steeled myself, prepared for the worst, and looked in the window again. There was a familiar shape—no, not the same one, but with a smaller, thinner back—hunched over a form lying prostrate on the bed; and instead of bare black feet thrashing against the mattress, the prone legs now occupying that space were clad in muddy tennis shoes not so different from my own.



So this was the shift the woods had signaled. I was back in the real world, if in fact I'd ever left it.



I reached for the door and pushed it with my fingertips. It bounced inward with a squeaky jolt. The man at the bed stopped what he was doing. In one of his hands I saw a thick twine ropedangling. He was not cutting the body on the bed, he was restraining it. I was so relieved I took a deep breath.



From the kneeling, skinny body came a familiar voice. "You came in time. I knew you would." That voice was strong, and deep—it did not seem to match the wrinkled hands that held the rope. And I had heard it before, in my stranger dreams and lucid fears.



I started to reach backwards for my gun, but something made me reconsider. "Who are you? And what are you doing to . . . him?" Yeah, I did know those shoes. I knew those dirty jeans.



He laughed, low and mellow. "I'm not hurting him near so much as you did. Boy, but I knew I did right giving you the medicine. Of course, you're mine anyhow. I knew you'd be tough. But this one, he's the vessel. I won't be harming him. I need him." He spoke so smoothly, it was like being on drugs and listening to Barry White. Impossible for that voice to belong to those skinny arms, that bony back.



"Who are you?"



"You know who I am."



I argued, but my protest was a lie and we both knew it. "No. I don't."



"You do. But you're afraid. There's no need for it. I'd not harm you any sooner than I'd harm him." He twisted his neck just enough to see me with one brown eye, the whites gone yellow with age. "Naw, I'd not harm you none at all. You're here to help me."



"I'm . . . not. You're crazy. I'm not going to help you."



He nodded and his jowls flopped. "Oh yes, you are. You've come back to me. You know you're mine. You've always known. That's why you're here." He returned his attention to my poor cousin, wiggling and whimpering. He tightened one last knot.



"I'm here because you're trying to kill Lulu. And I mean to stop you." A slim, pale ray of light squeezed in past the gauzy burlap curtains. I had just a little time. A few minutes, maybe. I reached for the gun; I pulled it out from my pants but let it hang down at my side.



"There ain't no stopping what's already done."



"I've got until sundown."



"Maybe." He rose to his feet and faced me for the first time. He still stood with that aggressive confidence I'd seen in the visions. He stood like a man who knows something that you don't, and it's something that can make the difference between living and dying. "Maybe you do, and maybe you don't. But I do know you'll not kill me. I've lived too long to be taken by my own child."