Shivaree (25 page)

“Tell me. Were you and Elijah supposed to marry today?”

It seemed impossible, but it was true. “Yes.”

“Then this here, this commotion,” he said without taking his eyes off the growing crowd, “is shivaree. And I think they’re coming for your Elijah.”

“What?”

“You need to get back inside,” he said, unhooking the keys to the cell from his belt loop and passing them to her. “Do your best to get Lucille and Elijah away from here. When you find a phone, you call the state patrol. You hear me?” He reached down and pulled his pistol from its holster. “I take it you know how to use one of these?” He held the gun out to her.

“Yes, but . . .”

“Good God, woman. For once in your life will you just do as you are told?”

Corinne shifted the heavy ring of keys to her left hand and tightened her grasp, taking the gun in her right hand. She tossed one last quick look at those who had gathered in the fog. They formed an advancing arc. Although she couldn’t see them, the way the noises carried and echoed told her that there were others behind the building as well. The ones she could see walked in a type of lockstep, stopping and advancing as if controlled by a single mind. Corinne gathered from their actions that she stood inside a constricting circle of which the jail served as the center point. She began to turn away and follow the sheriff’s orders when she heard him call out.

“Frank, boy,” the sheriff called, his voice coming out strained, high. “Mason? That you? What the hell happened to you, boy?” Frank Mason pushed forward to the front of the crowd. He moved awkwardly, lurching forward like he was being yanked along against his will. “I don’t know what you think y’all are up to, but you need to get out of here. Get all these folk out of here.”

As Corinne stood focused on Frank, a blur—a rush of wind—gyrated before her, then Bell, too, disappeared into the night. This time Corinne heard no cry, no wail, only a woman’s familiar laughter riding on a wave of the shivaree.

FIFTY-TWO

Corinne stumbled backward through the door, slamming it shut behind her. Lucille met her there and shoved the bolt in, locking the door into place. Their eyes met. Bolting the door was a hollow gesture, and both of them knew it. Corinne found herself cursing the station’s builders once again.

“What is wrong with this place? What is wrong with these people?” Corrine said, not really expecting an answer.

“It’s Mississippi,” Lucille responded all the same.

Corinne slid to the side of the window to see if she could spot the sheriff among the shuffling crowd. “It looks like the entire town has gone mad.” She turned back to Lucille and Elijah. “We have to get out of here.”

She sped to Elijah’s cell, fumbling through what seemed to be an infinite collection of nonfitting keys. The noise continued growing louder. Corinne knew the circle was tightening. A heavy stone shattered one of the windows, then all fell silent except for the sound of a woman’s laughter.

“Ruby.” Elijah’s voice reached out to her from behind the bars. He stood there, whiter than the fog itself, his hands clutched around the bars that held him. “I’d know her laugh anywhere.”

“That is not possible,” Corinne protested aloud. “It isn’t,” she repeated, but this time silently. She continued to work through the keys; finally one she must have tried a hundred times already slid into place.

“They closed her in a casket,” Elijah mumbled to himself. “Buried her with her mama.”

“And yet she’s still out there,” Lucille said, fixing them both in her terrified gaze. “She’s taken the rest of them. Everybody who done her wrong. And now she’s gonna come for us.”

Corrine focused on the task at hand, turning the key until the lock clanked. She grasped the bars and swung the door open, but Elijah didn’t move.

“Why, Lucille, you know I wouldn’t harm a hair on your head.”

Corinne turned back to the entrance. The door, in spite of having been locked, had slid silently open.

“Sweet Jesus!” Lucille exclaimed and fell back as Ruby floated in on a cloud of roiling fog. Until now, Corinne had never believed in magic or monsters, but all that had changed in an instant.

“You were like a mother to me,” Ruby continued as her feet lowered to the floor, making light contact. “You, on the other hand,” she said, approaching Corinne and tracing a cold finger along her cheek, then her jawline. “I’m afraid the Dunnes’ little tiff done ruined my special surprise for you. You two were supposed to be married by now. We were coming to serenade you outside your bridal chambers. Interrupt in the moments before you surrendered your precious maidenhead.” She laughed and feigned a wide-eyed surprise. “Or could it be you aren’t intact?” Her nose wrinkled up as she shook her head. “Naughty, naughty girl.

“I was gonna kill you,” she said smiling, her lip curling back to show an unnaturally sharp pair of canines. “Oh, yes, I was.” The words poured forth with a touch of glee. “But you done made me like you, what with the way you came stomping out there all on your own while the menfolk were in here pissing themselves. I think I might find a better use for you, darlin’.” She threw back her head and let loose a laugh that caused Corinne’s blood to run cold. Corinne shuddered as she noticed the blueness of the skin that stretched across Ruby’s otherwise lovely throat.

The weight of the gun in Corinne’s hand reminded her of its presence. Her hand ached to raise the pistol; her finger twitched at the thought of squeezing its trigger. Ruby’s blue flame eyes shot at her, all mirth gone from them. “I wouldn’t even think it,” she said, and then the gun fell from Corinne’s grasp. Ruby pinned her with her gaze. “And there went your last chance to for us to be friends.”

“Ruby,” Elijah called, causing this beautiful yet unholy creature to turn away. “How can it be?”

“Don’t ask how, my love, just be happy that it is.” Ruby glided toward him, her arms outstretched in a welcoming lover’s embrace, but Elijah stood frozen in place, looking at the cage’s door as if he were considering pulling it closed in an attempt to keep her out. “You are happy to see me, aren’t you, sweetheart?

“When I awoke,” she said, “all I wanted was to come to you, the one person who loved me. The one person who would be missing me. I wanted to tell you that I was fine. That we could still . . .” Ruby paused, the words seeming to fail her. “But I was so weak at first. I had to build my strength. I wanted to be whole, to be strong. Then I learned you were to be married. To this.” She shot a contemptuous glance back at Corinne, turning as if she planned to advance on her. But then she stopped and turned her face upward.

“I can feel it. I can feel Daddy waking.” She paused, seeming to listen to something that Corinne couldn’t hear. “Now he’s mine forever. And I will come to him every night, and I will hurt him. Just like he hurt me.”

She turned back to Elijah. “Your mama cheated me out of finishing her husband, but I’ve punished everyone else who came between us.” She lifted a few inches up off the ground as she spoke, gliding into the cell. “I’ve punished everyone who’s betrayed me. I’ve made them all pay. All except one. You.”

Her hand shot out and took hold of Elijah’s forearm. “I wanted to see if you would wed that woman. Or if you would walk away. But since the nuptials got interrupted, I’m going to give you one last chance, right here, right now,” she said. “One last chance to make the right choice. Tell me you love me”—she paused—“and you better tell me the truth, ’cause I know the difference between the real feeling and the infatuation this thing inside me uses to make people stand still when it’s hunting.”

Elijah’s lips moved without making a sound, as if he were waiting for the words to catch up with them. “Ruby.” Her name finally formed. “I don’t understand none of this. I don’t know how this could be happening. But of course I love you. I’ve only ever really loved you.” Corinne’s heart broke when she saw the look in his eyes. What he was saying was true. “There is no one else I could ever love like you. But I thought you were dead. I thought I’d lost you forever.” He placed his hand over her hand that held him. “I want to be with you. I do.” Corinne watched as a tear fell from his eye. “But there’s something you have to know.” His voice lowered. “I’m your brother. The Judge. He was my father.”

“Oh, darlin’.” Ruby’s voice curled through the air. “I know that. I’ve known it for years. I knew before I ever set my sights on you.” Ruby reached up with her free hand and placed it lovingly on Elijah’s cheek. “You know how much your daddy liked getting all liquored up. Once Dylan found him stumbling around outside Nola’s.” Her voice turned into a low purr. “Dylan liked hanging around there. Plenty of drunk, lonely men to take their pleasure in his pretty mouth.” She lowered her hand, a cruel twist to her lips. She was playing with him. Tormenting him even as she demanded his love. “Dylan said your daddy cried like a little girl when he told Dylan about you.” She released his arm, and took a step back, as if she wanted to get a better view of his reaction.

Elijah’s face fell at the sound of her words. His gaze turned toward Corinne, his face burning red with shame. “You have to let them go,” he said, nodding toward Lucille and Corinne. “We can be together. I’ll do anything you want, but you have to leave them be. Lucille—she ain’t ever done a thing your daddy didn’t make her do.” He reached out and pulled Ruby into his arms. “And Corinne. You know she ain’t you. Hell, just look at her. But she’s a good person, and she helped saved my leg back in Korea. She never came between us. Not really.” He leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on Ruby’s lips. “She helped get me back to you.”

Ruby’s eyes flashed on Corinne. “Well, there you have it, sugar. You are one hell of a lucky girl. Elijah just bought you one final chance. Get out of here. Get out of Conroy,” she said and then turned her gaze toward Lucille. “Both of you. If either of you are here tomorrow at sunset, you won’t live to see another dawn.”

The world around them began to tremble as the sound of an enormous blast tore apart the night. For a moment Corinne struggled to pull the pieces of what was happening together into a rationally acceptable situation, but a sudden realization caused her to let all the nonaligning pieces tumble to the floor.

Ruby and Elijah were gone.

FIFTY-THREE

“
‘Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit . . .
’
” Raylene’s voice carried in the unnatural silence of the morning, all the way from the city hall steps throughout the streets of Conroy.

Corinne jumped at the sound of the words. Lucille patted her hand. “Looks like for once that crazy bitch is right,” Lucille said, and Corinne broke out laughing. Lucille only smiled at first, then she laughed, too.

Dawn found the two women huddled together outside the train station. It was the only place where they could wait together. By formal law, Lucille could not join Corinne in the white waiting room; unspoken law among the whites dictated that Corinne not join Lucille in the colored. They had one goal, and that was to get out of Conroy. They didn’t need any misstep preventing them from achieving that goal. But neither could they bear to separate, not after what they had witnessed together. Left alone, they would begin to question their sanity.

They were leaving Conroy with nothing other than the cash Corinne had concealed in her brassiere. Lucille had chosen to walk away from the meager belongings that remained at her own house, unwilling to risk that something might happen to prevent her from joining her babies up north. The words “As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return . . .” played in Lucille’s mind.

The ticket seller had refused to give Lucille a ticket without a hefty bribe, so Corinne had been forced to part with more than the regular cost of two tickets. If word of the Judge’s death hadn’t made it around the town, thanks to Corinne’s call to the undertaker, Lucille knew she would never have been allowed to board the train. But now she had her ticket in hand, and she would be, praise the Lord, leaving this place. Once they were safely away, Lucille would write the pastor. Warn him to warn the others.

Even though the sun had risen, the air remained chill and pungent now with the clinging scent left by the explosion at the pulp plant. News of the plant’s destruction was on the lips of all who passed.

The blast had been bigger than any faulty boiler could have caused, managing to take down a good part of the building. Fifteen men on the night shift were confirmed dead. Many others had been wounded or remained unaccounted for, including the Sleiger boys, who worked maintenance on the boiler and hadn’t been seen for a couple of days. Suspicion was falling on them, as many were of the opinion that the place looked like it had been purposely bombed. No one had been able to locate either Sheriff Bell or his deputy, so many of the townspeople worried that they had somehow been caught up in the event. All worried that the closure of the mill might sound Conroy’s death knell.

But none of this held any meaning for Lucille and Corinne anymore. They sat silently, letting the conjectures and consternations of those who passed them float by like the song of so many morning birds.

“He didn’t mean it, you know. Elijah, what he said. He just didn’t want her to hurt you.”

Corinne laughed, but this time there was no humor in the sound. “Oh, he meant it all right. Every word. I knew it, and that creature knew it. That’s why she let us go.” Corinne took Lucille’s hand. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what any of these people think about me. Including him.”

The shrill cry of a train whistle carried through the crisp morning air. “Won’t be long,” Lucille said to her new friend. “Train’s just a bit south of here.”

FIFTY-FOUR

What with Frank up and disappearing, the Judge’s death, and the disaster at the mill, Nola felt like she had somehow survived the end of the world. News about the deaths at the mill intertwined with rumors about the Judge’s passing, spreading through the town before the milk could be delivered. As far as she knew, the whereabouts of the Judge’s body remained a mystery. Some unknown Yankee woman had called and reported the Judge’s death to the funeral home, but by the time they got their best hearse washed and over to his house, there wasn’t a soul there. Even his maid had flown the coop. A few folk were questioning whether the Judge was really gone, but Nola knew if he were still alive, sick or no, he’d never be able to resist presiding over the investigation into the explosion at the mill.

Conroy was a small town, which meant everyone was touched by the deaths at the plant. If an unforgiving God had chosen to punish Conroy for its sins, He couldn’t have picked a better place to strike. An impromptu wake hatched at Nola’s the moment she opened the door, and what with nearly everyone in Conroy out of work and wanting to raise a glass in someone’s memory, Nola had been on her feet from three in the afternoon until one-thirty in the morning. It’d been a hell of a night, and it was damned good to be home.

The Judge’s passing had been overshadowed in a way Nola knew he’d find most displeasing.
Full pomp and circumstance
, she thought as she reached behind herself to undo the zipper of her dress. The Judge would have wanted full pomp and circumstance to mark his passing. Now his death was just one of many, not so special anymore, and from the talk at the bar, not many would miss him. “Here’s to you,” she said with only a slight tone of sarcasm as she took a sip of her whiskey.

She usually hung around the bar long enough to count out the till and supervise cleanup. Not tonight, though. She’d headed right out at closing time. For all she knew, with the Judge gone and Sheriff Bell missing, the state police would be closing her down come daybreak anyway. No use wasting her time and energy until she knew how the chips were going to fall.

She undid her bra and let it fall to the floor. She turned to view herself in the mirror of her vanity. Tits were hanging a bit, not as high as they once were, but they looked as good as any woman her age could hope for. God, she envied those Hollywood starlets who filled the magazines at her hairdresser. Some of those damned bitches never seemed to age. She turned sideways to examine herself from that angle. Her stomach showed just a bit of padding, a softness Frank claimed to enjoy. She ran her hand down the length of her stomach, the thought of Frank causing her fingers to reach a bit lower. She’d miss that man all right.

She’d never see Frank again, of that she was certain. He’d plowed his car into a tree, killing Bayard, then skipped town to avoid the consequences. Bayard. No one had come to toast Bayard’s memory. Nola had hated the bastard, who’d scared her to death on a regular basis, but now that he was gone, she found it in her heart to toss back the last of her whiskey in his honor. She sat the glass on the vanity table, then went to the closet, pulling a clean nightgown from a hanger and slipping it over her head.

She crossed to her bed and reached down to extinguish the lamp on her nightstand, when a knock, unmistakably
his
knock, sounded on the front door. Her heart fluttered as she raced to answer it, but she remembered herself and slowed, taking her time to cross the darkened living room and find the door. She flipped the switch to illuminate the porch light, planning to give Frank holy hell for up and disappearing, before she let him take her into her room and lay her down.

She flung the door open, but the sight of him caused her words to catch in her throat. He stood there before her as moths flitted into his halo. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was only because she’d thought he was lost to her. She had always wanted him, for pleasure, for company, but she had never before realized how much she loved him. Her heart nearly broke at the sight of his oddly pale skin.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Were you hurt?” She paused, a little taken aback by a flicker of tiny blue specks dancing in his dark eyes. Something was different about him; something was strange. “Why are you dressed like that?” she asked, finally taking note of the police uniform he was wearing. Never in a million years would she have expected to see him dressed as an officer of the law.

He cocked his head and smiled at her, a delicious mischief in that smile spiking her desire. “Ain’t you heard? There’s a new sheriff in town.” He leaned toward her, placing a hand against the outside of the door frame. He was so close, and she wanted him so badly. “Come on, sugar, it’s getting late,” Frank said, his lids narrowing seductively. “You gonna invite me in or not?”