Reborn (16 page)

As I spun around, Justin stepped back with his hands in front of him. “Sorry, dude. I didn’t mean to spook you.”

“It’s okay. You didn’t,” I lied, giving a quick laugh.

His eyebrows came together. “Whatcha doin’ here, anyway?” He shuddered visibly. “This place gives me the creeps.”

“Oh, I… I saw the broken gate, and then…” I looked at the graves, then back to Justin.

“Well, you can spend the rest of your lunch in this bone yard if you want, but I’m gettin’ outa here before one of these creeps decides to join us, if you know what I mean.” He gave a nervous laugh, then walked on ahead, waiting a few paces away.

I looked down at the broken gate, part of another half that stood upright on the other side of the opening. I stooped and wrapped my fingers around an outside edge and pulled, straining the veins in my neck all the way down my arms, until finally the iron loosened from the ground, bringing up earth and surface roots on one corner. Its hinges expelled an eerie groan as I pushed the gate into place. The two halves, pointed on the tops, fit perfectly together. I lifted the iron latch attached to one half and pushed it into a bracket on the other, closing the opening for the first time in maybe a long time.

“Jesus, where’d you get that muscle anyway, steroids?” Justin said as we put our backs to the cemetery.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You know, pills.”

“I don’t take pills.”

“What line of work were you in before you came here?”

I wished I had a true answer for him. “Construction. Lifting rocks, mostly.” At least there was some truth to the tale I told.

Lunch filled the void that the apple I ate earlier didn’t.

I had one more window to work on—the one I’d been avoiding. After taking down the last two shutters from the kitchen window, I worked away from the others, on my tarp, near the balcony. I wasn’t long into my work when the afternoon grew unbearably hot—even in the shade. The breeze that had blown all morning had come to a sudden halt. At the same time, an unusual hush fell over the yard with such profound abruptness, it took my breath.

I put the paintbrush down and wiped sweat-soaked hair from my forehead. My heart beat a foreboding tune against my chest wall as I stood barely breathing, listening, waiting. Then it came; a muffled scream tore through the house, reaching me outside, freezing the breath in my lungs. Pulling myself together, I peeked around the side of the house. Dave and Justin worked away as if they heard nothing.

Another cry tore through the mansion and into the yard. With measured steps, I made my way up the balcony stairs to the front door, ripping the caution tape and stepping carefully over the broken deck boards. Beads of sweat trickled down my back, absorbed by my T-shirt. The front door squeaked when I opened it, making me cringe.

The air inside was thick with hostility… sweetened with the scent of a freshly baked peach pie. When I came to the hall mirror, I caught sight of the empty hook the whip had hung from last time I was there. My reflection hardly looked like me, with the week’s growth of beard and moustache. Shane, the new me, stared back.

Sounds of a woman whimpering came from the kitchen. Determined to help her, whoever she was, I bolted down the hallway and into the room. A man with his back to me cracked a whip over a woman’s slumped body. By the color of her dark skin and the tattered clothing she wore and her bare feet, I assumed she was the ghost of a slave of the estate. The older woman I’d seen there before, the woman I feared seeing today, looked on in sorrow. Near the hem of her tattered skirt, a pie lay splattered on the floor.

I rushed to the raging man and grabbed for his wrist, catching it as he pulled back to swing. Our right arms collided in a struggle for dominance over the other; the muscles in his bulged identically to mine. A vein on the back of his hand, curving over bone, matched mine exactly. But where black paint speckled mine, blood speckled his.

Although I couldn’t see the attacker’s face, I knew it was he—the darkness that first followed me through the forest behind the estate, and crept along the shed floor on my first night at Melba’s. He was the presence of all evil that assaulted me while I was awake, and in my dreams at night. And I wanted to kill him now with my bare hands, to inflict as much pain and humiliation upon his soulless body as he had done to his slaves, as the priestesses had done to him in his final hours. I wanted to make him suffer more.

Every muscle in my body strained as I fought to bring him down. Eventually, I worked an arm behind his back and administered a tight squeeze to his wrist, forcing him to drop the whip. I used my foot to hook his, hoping to trip him, but limb for limb, his strength matched mine.

As a roar bellowed from him, and he made a move to turn, the kitchen door flew open. The three people from the past vanished in front of me, causing me to fall into the cupboard.

“Whoa, you all right?” Dave asked, rushing to my side too late.

I had a feeling all he saw was me tripping and catching myself.

A grin lightened the worried look on his face. “First day with your new feet?” He laughed at his attempt of a joke.

I followed along, faking a quick laugh.

He stood where the toppled pie had been—probably the reason for the whipping—and glanced around.

“Man, this place has some history, what?”

He lifted a water bottle to the tap and filled it.

“Can’t beat the water here, though. Someone kept the well in good shape all these years.”

“Yeah, that’s what I needed, a drink,” I said, coming up with a quick excuse for being inside.

Dave guzzled a mouthful of water, and then left through the kitchen door.

I wanted to follow him, but I had to see something. Careful not to look into the hallway mirror, I glanced quickly at the wall beside it. The whip, looped three times, hung in its place on the hook. I hurried through the front door, shutting it behind me.

Outside, the chirping birds had returned, and a refreshing breeze mauled the blades of grass. To anyone else, the day might have been gorgeous. I just wanted it to end.

As I painted the last shutter, I imagined the path Excalibur had taken me on, across the plantation, to the river, in our escape from the angry mob. Then my attention stuck on the mob, in particular, me bursting out of the ground. That memory made no sense.

The last thing I wanted to do that evening was leave my room at the motel. The temperature may have been a hundred degrees inside, with broken air conditioning, but my body and mind were both exhausted. I lay back on the pillow, with wet hair from the second shower that day, and waited for Justin’s knock.

As I stared up at a watermark on the ceiling, running over the day’s events in my head, he arrived, and he wasn’t alone. He’d brought a guy named Sean with him. The three of us took a bus downtown. Music played from Sean’s phone. People threw us annoyed glances. At one point, the bus driver asked him to turn the noise down, which only caused him to play it louder. Needless to say, I was relieved when that part of the journey ended.

Crowds of people littered the streets in this part of the city. Some, who Justin called hookers, sold their bodies. On both sides, signs flashed the names of clubs. Justin stopped in front of one place with a lit neon sign shaped like a fox above the open doors. Below the fox, in red lights, flashed
The Fox Den
.

Inside, the music was ten times louder than out on the street. My temples throbbed as we made our way through the crowd of dancers and into another room, a slightly less noisy area, filled with tables. The food odors made my mouth water, reminding me of how hungry I was.

Sean found us a table and sat, picking up three large plastic cards decorated with pictures of food and handing them to us. As I searched the list on mine, I also scanned the other tables to see what people ate.

I was concentrating on the menu when a soft-spoken girl came to take our order. I recognized the voice and lifted my head. Her face lit up when our gazes met. She pointed the end of her pen at me.

“I saw you on the bus this morning.” The lighting caught the jewel on her tooth when she smiled. “My name’s Nadine.”

“I’m… Shane.” I took something out of my shirt pocket and handed it to her. “You left this behind.”

“Oh, my shifts. Thanks.”

It was impossible to ignore Justin and Sean gawking at her, while she focused all her attention on me.

“I noticed you had a Savannah State University keychain,” I said, anxious to get the information I longed for.

“Oh, yeah.” She shifted from one high-heeled-foot to the other. “I’m taking some courses there.” She threw her gaze across the room. “This place is just a job to pay the student loan, you know?”

I smiled at her, knowingly. “I was wondering; do you know someone named Desiree McClinton?”

Her grin widened. “Yeah, I know Desi. We take a class together.” She cocked her head to one side, looking slightly confused. “Why?”

“She’s a friend of mine, and I’m looking for her.”

“Oh.” The small word oozed of disappointment. “She works at a coffee shop on College Street, right down past the university.” Giving me a tight-lipped smile, she lowered her gaze to the notepad she held, then turned her attention to the others.

During our short conversation, I grew to feel sorry for Nadine. She looked too young to be dressed the way she was. A pair of skimpy, faded, denim shorts covered little, exposing the round bottoms of her behind, while her nipples pushed against the thin fabric of the tight T-shirt she wore, ripped off under her breasts, exposing her entire stomach. My gaze fell to the dangling jewel pierced through her bellybutton, to the snap on her shorts, which lay open. Justin and Sean looked on like starving animals and she was their prey. I wanted to cover her up, protect her from men like them. It was then I noticed all the girls taking orders and working behind the bar dressed in the same alluring fashion. Was that how Desiree dressed at her job? I wondered.

Nadine asked if we were ready to order. I let the others order first, then copied. She threw me a smile before leaving.

“Earth to Shane.” A huge grin followed Justin’s comment. “Dude, you got a serious eye grope going on.”

“What? No—”
Eye grope?
What exactly did that mean? “The girl should put some clothing on.”

Justin and Sean laughed through their smirks. I guessed they thought I was joking.

“Or take some off,” Sean said, still laughing.

The meal wasn’t like anything I’d ever eaten. Mouth-watering flavors exploded on my tongue with every bite of the double burger, wrapped in cheese, crisp bacon, and dripping with fragrant onions. The fries, which I smothered in ketchup because the others did, tasted similar to Melba’s fried potatoes, making me long to be sitting at her kitchen table and not in the middle of this mayhem.

Nadine came back to our table just as we finished eating. “Can I get you boys anything else?”

“What else are you offering?” Sean asked out of the corner of his mouth. The two men gave her curious but sly glares.

“That’ll be everything,” I said relieving her of her service, before any more lewd remarks were thrown her way by my over-heated companions.

Sean cocked his head and watched Nadine walk away.

Justin sat back in his chair patting his newly bulging stomach. “You ready for the Red Room, Shane?”

Whatever that was, I wanted no part of it. I had other plans. “No, thank you. I think I’ll get going.” I gave them the first excuse I thought of. “First day on the new job, you know?”

“That sucks, man,” Sean said.

I stood, casting a shadow over the table. “Maybe next time. Nice meeting you, Sean. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Justin.”

“Okay, dude,” Justin yelled above the music as I walked away. “But you’re gonna miss the strip…”

The rest of his words were lost in the loud music as I rushed through the crowd and back out on the street.

Neon signs and streetlights lit up this part of Savannah like a lightning storm at night. After declining an offer from a hooker, and a good deal on drugs, I found someone who pointed me in the direction of the bus stop that would take me to Savannah State.