The Binding (25 page)

Don’t do that, pleeeeeaaase.

Something was going to happen. It was going to happen soon and Charlie tried to open his eyes but they wouldn’t go and then the boy fell and the rope caught him with a jerk, making a ripping noise against his neck.

He swung there, turning, and Charlie couldn’t close his eyes
and now he didn’t want to see the boy’s face but here it came, around and back and around again, and his tongue was sticking out and the eyes were staring at Charlie.

Uncle Matt. Uncle Matt from the photo in the hallway.

The basement disappeared, and now it was a young blond woman, her back to him, wearing a red dress and black shoes with tall heels that his mommy always said were hard to walk on. She was sitting at a desk with a mirror propped on the back edge and things spread across it in a mess in front of her, as if she’d been pulling things out of the desk drawers looking for something. Yes, that was it, because two of the drawers were hanging open. The girl took a thick silver thing and held it up. It was a penknife like the one Mr. Roy, the janitor at school, had on his key chain. She slowly opened the blade, which winked in the light from the table lamp.

Please make it stop, I want it to . . .

The woman looked into the mirror and reached up with the knife. She turned the blade to the flat side and slid it along her neck like she was hot and the steel was cool on her skin and her eyes were wide now, like she was surprised, and her lips were saying something over and over. Then the blade turned and—
Oh, no, please no
—went into her neck, and Charlie watched as it sliced down and a spout of blood went rushing at the mirror.

No, please make it—

Aunt Stephanie, who was supposed to live in Georgia with the peaches.

A young boy, his own age, asleep and being carried from a car, its engine rumbling. The vehicle was old and heavy, the road covered with ice. Charlie couldn’t see who was carrying the boy, but he whimpered in his sleep and they were walking across the road and it was icy so they should watch out. There was a railing coming up; he could see it now and past it, all black and scary. The woman carried the boy toward the railing, then stopped a
few feet away, as if listening. Charlie watched the side of her face and it was the right side and the eye was black and staring, and suddenly he knew: this was Middy. Bad old Middy. Charlie’s heart seemed to thud against his rib cage so loud that surely Mrs. Finlay would come and he was very afraid now and wanted to wake up oh so much.

The wind howled and little funnels of snow came racing down out of the black and past the railing. Middy opened her mouth and made a horrible sound, like when you step on a dog’s foot by accident. Then she shook her head and rushed toward the railing, the boy limp in her arms, his bare feet hanging down over her limbs, and they must be very cold. Why didn’t she give him some socks? Why did she have him out so late—

Middy stumbled to the railing and she threw the boy into the funnels of snow, pushing him out from her chest as if he were hurting her, and the boy screamed once loud and scared as he went down, down, down into the darkness.

Middy turned and ran back to the car. She opened the driver’s side door, and Charlie saw a jumble of nightclothes, feet, and uncombed hair. There were more children, stacked like firewood on the backseat. But she bent down and reached into the car, and her big behind shook like a dog’s as she tried to pull the top body off the others, and Charlie tried to look away but the muscles in his neck were still stuck. And as Middy was fumbling in the backseat, pawing at the kids there, his eyes locked on the face of one of them—a girl, with a green nightgown with red flowers on it, almost like Christmas—because the girl was waking up, and Charlie watched as she wiped her eyes and then she saw Middy and the bridge railings and the girl’s mouth opened wide and she began to scream and Charlie screamed, too:

Middy, ppppppleeeeeeaaaaasse!

Suddenly, Middy and the road and the bridge vanished and Charlie’s eyes snapped open and he was kneeling on the floor.
The light above his head was on. His hands were trembling as he reached up to rub his face.

“Charlie?” came a voice from behind him, far away. It was Mrs. Finlay. “Are you all right?”

Charlie looked at the window, showing only the inside of the room and his reflection, pale, mouth open. The girl was gone. He could feel it.

Mrs. Finlay was pulling on his arm. He didn’t want to get up. Middy was in the hallway, and Charlie now knew what she’d done.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

R
amona Best was asleep on the living room couch. She was dreaming. Her lips were moving, and a whine of protest slipped out from between her lips.

From the kitchen came the sound of the back door rattling on its hinges.

Ramona slept on, her eyes moving rapidly back and forth beneath the lids.

The door shuddered. A shadow blocked the light underneath it, and the handle jiggled. Something was slipped into the key of the lock, and the shadow shifted.

Ramona sat up with a start. She looked to the window and began to edge cautiously up from the chair. Then she heard a lock turning and her eyes went to the doorway to the kitchen.

The back door rattled, sharper this time. Ramona froze and drew a breath deep into her lungs.

Zuela. It had to be Zuela.

She walked quickly to the kitchen and up to the door.

“Who is it?” she said.

The voice came back instantly. “Michael fucking Jackson. Open the door, girl.”

Ramona closed her eyes, then turned the dead bolt and opened the door. Zuela came striding in. She was tall and regal, dressed in a thick Saks Fifth Avenue overcoat that she’d bought at T.J. Maxx in one of the great coups of her life. Her long and handsome face was done up, but lined with exhaustion behind the makeup. She had a broad beak of a nose, full lips, and luminous
brown eyes.

Zuela worked on the perfume counter of Saks Fifth Avenue, selling lotion and scents to rich American women and bargain-shopping Europeans. She shook her head at Ramona.

“You still up?”

Zuela flicked on the overhead light, then went to the kitchen counter and hoisted a plastic bag—it looked to be full of green plantains—up on the newly washed linoleum counter.

“Yep,” Ramona said.

“Mona! Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

Ramona shrugged. “I was in the living room.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Zuela went to the fridge and reached for one of the three bottles of wine—two red, one white—that stood next to it. She took down a wineglass and poured herself a full glass of red, the merlot chugging at the neck as she tilted it down. When it was nearly full to the brim, she set it down, put the cork back in, then came down and sat across from Ramona at the kitchen table.

“You enjoying your break?”

Ramona said nothing. She’d told Zuela that Wartham observed something she called Founder’s Day, a long weekend when they honored the Puritans who’d signed the deed creating the college on an old Shawnee settlement. Zuela didn’t use the Internet, and she was a little in awe of Wartham College, which she’d seen exactly once, when she dropped Ramona off, idling in the Altima amid the gleaming Range Rovers and Mercedes coupes that ferried the other girls to school for freshman orientation.

I’ll come back for your graduation
, she’d said then.
And you better make sure you’re up there on the stage with
aaaalllllllll
these white bitches.

Ramona could feel Zuela’s eyes boring into her now.

“It’s Saturday night, Ramona,” Zuela said.

“I know that.”

“When’s this Founder’s Day thing over with?”

Ramona shot her a
stay out of my business
look. “It went on all week,” she said.

“A day that goes on all week? My, my, those white folk can do anything up there, can’t they?”

Ramona glared at her. “Have I ever had a problem at Wartham?”

Zuela took a sip of wine, then shook her head slowly.

“Have I ever brought home one report with anything lower than a B-minus?”

“Unh-uh.”

“Then mind your affairs, thank you.”

Zuela’s eyes were heavy. “You haven’t left the house once since you got back. You haven’t called Girl or nobody. You’re up half the night—I can hear you watching TV on that computer. And if the circles under your eyes get any darker, they’re going to start calling you Raccoona.”

Ramona frowned.

“What happened, Ramona? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Ramona shook her head. “I told you to mind your business.”

“Honey, listen to me. You’re one semester away from graduating. First in your family. Baby, please don’t tell me you got messed up with some boy up there . . .”

Ramona sucked her teeth. It was just like Zuela to think the worst thing that could happen to a twenty-first-century college woman was to get herself pregnant. The woman was trapped in some 1950s idea of coeds and rampaging college quarterbacks. She had no idea. No one around here did.

She opened her mouth to reply, but Zuela held up a finger.

“Don’t get fresh,” Zuela said.

“My grades are fine. I will graduate. Can you just leave me alone?”

Zuela exhaled. “Tell me what’s wrong then. Are you involved
with one of those girls?”

Ramona rolled her eyes. The second worst thing that could happen to her in Zuela’s eyes would be a lesbian affair. “No, Zuela.”

Zuela gave her a hooded, doubtful look. “What then?”

Ramona caught her aunt’s gaze and held it. Zuela’s eyebrows went up, and she took another draw on the merlot.

Should I or shouldn’t I?
Ramona thought. She wanted badly to tell someone, just to speak the words out loud and see how they sounded. Zuela was crafty and practical, but prone to becoming excited. Ramona didn’t know if it was worth the risk.

Finally, Ramona spoke.

“Zuela?” she said, softening her tone.

“Yes, baby?”

“Have you ever seen someone who died?”

Zuela’s eyes had been mellowed by the wine. A smile spread across her face. “Shoooo. Seen someone who died? I’ve been to a million wakes.”

Ramona rolled her eyes. “See someone in your dreams, Zuela. Someone who’s passed.”

Zuela made a
tch
noise. “Well, of course, Mona. I dream about your mother all the time.”

“What does she do?”

“Do?”

“Is she trying to . . . tell you something?”

“
Tell
me something? Like what?”

“Like anything. Like warning you or . . . asking for help.”

Zuela clucked, swirling the wine in her glass. “No, baby. They’re just memories, things we did together. Why? Who’s coming to you?”

Ramona ran her fingernail along the chrome edge of the table where it met the top. “A student. A friend of mine. She was murdered.”

Zuela drew in a breath. “And she’s coming to see you in
dreams?”

“Yes,” Ramona said, blinking. She couldn’t hold it in any longer. Zuela’s eyes were getting bigger as she watched Ramona, and a look of fear twitched across her face. “And I think . . . outside my dreams, too.”

Ramona looked over and saw that questions of pregnancy and lesbian affairs had been wiped clean away from Zuela’s mind.

“You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

Zuela’s face was now contorted into a kind of avid horror. “Well, you better tell her to stay away from you.”

Don’t you think I tried that?
Ramona thought.
Why do you think I haven’t slept in three nights?

“I can’t control—”

Zuela’s hand closed over Ramona’s wrist with shocking strength. “You don’t mess around with this stuff. If this is really happening, you . . . tell . . . her . . . to go away. Do you hear me, Ramona?”

Ramona looked at her. She felt something give way in her. “What if she won’t?” she whispered.

Zuela shot up straight out of the chair. “What does this friend of yours tell you in these dreams?” she asked loudly.

“She asks me to help her. I . . . I don’t think she knows that she’s dead.” She looked up at Zuela. “Other times, she’s different.”

“Different how?”

Ramona closed her eyes. The sleep man was coming for her. She couldn’t hold out any longer. Her head felt as heavy as a boulder.

“Ramona!”

Ramona snapped her head up and focused on Zuela. “Her eyes are black. And I can feel . . .”

“What?”

“That she wants me dead, too.”

Zuela reached down and put both her palms on the flat of the table. Her eyes were closed suddenly, the lids trembling. Her lips seemed to mumble something. She looked as if she were ready to collapse.

Oh God, why did I tell her?
Ramona thought.

Zuela seemed to be gathering her strength. The cords on her wrists stood out as her body weight pressed onto them. Finally, she opened her eyes. “Hold on. You hold on right there,” she said in a husky voice.

Zuela turned and dashed out of the room. Ramona watched her go, a question on her lips. She heard a closet door slam, and thirty seconds later Zuela was back, holding a thick, fraying paperback book in her hand. “Maybe it’s in here, Ramona. Maybe it says something.” There was a look of crazy hopefulness in her eyes.

Ramona read the title:
The Dream Book
. The old paperback that had told them that cousin Stacy was going to have twins that time she dreamt of seeing a waterfall, and that Marcella shouldn’t take the plane to France, the one that nearly crashed. It was like a second Bible in the Best family.

Ramona slumped back in her chair. She stared at Zuela, her lids half lowered. “
The Dream Book
? Are you
kidding
me, Zuela? This is not going to be in there. They don’t have a section on the undead. Do you understand me? I saw her when she was supposed to be
dead
 . . .”

The vision of Margaret Post beckoning her on the quad came back to Ramona and her throat closed. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.