patricia

Her breath stopped in her throat. Her knuckles cramped around the magazines. She could not move. She felt Miss Mary’s eyes boring into the back of her neck. She felt Miss Mary standing behind the dining room door, staring madly through the crack, and then came a torrent of whispers.

he’s coming for the children, he’s taken the child, he’s taken my grandchild, he’s come for my grandchild, the nightwalking man, hoyt pickens suckles on the babies, on the sweet fat babies with their fat little legs, he’s dug in like a tick, he’s dug in like a tick and he’s sucking everything out of you patricia, he’s come for my grandchild, wake up patricia, wake up, the nightwalking man is in your house, he’s on my grandchild, wake up patricia, patricia wake up, wake up, wake up…

Dead words, a lunatic river of syllables hissing from between cold lips.

“Miss Mary?” Patricia said, but her tongue felt thick and her words were barely a whisper.

he’s the devil’s son the nightwalking man and he’s taking my grandchild, wake up wake up wake up, go to ursula, she has my photograph, it’s in her house, go to ursula…

“I can’t,” Patricia said, and this time she had enough strength to make her voice echo off the den walls.

The whispers stopped. Patricia turned and the crack in the door stood empty. She jumped at the sound of fingernails tapping, but it was only Ragtag getting up and trotting out of the room.

Patricia didn’t believe in ghosts. She had always considered Miss Mary’s kitchen-table magic something that might be interesting to a sociologist from a local college. When women she knew said Grandmama appeared in their dreams and told them where to find a lost wedding ring or that Cousin Eddie had just died, she got irritated. It wasn’t real.

But this was real. More real than anything she’d experienced over the past three years. Miss Mary had been in this room, standing behind the dining room door and whispering a warning that James Harris wanted her children, that James Harris wanted Blue. Ghosts weren’t real. But this was real.

She worried for a moment that she was confused again. Her judgment was thin ice and she hesitated to trust it. But this had been real. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure. After all, she was only a housewife. What else did she have to do?

wake up, patricia

“How?”

wake up, patricia

“How?”

go to ursula

“Who?”

ursula greene

CHAPTER 27

Patricia didn’t know her palms could sweat so much, but they left wet marks all over her steering wheel as she drove up Rifle Range Road toward Six Mile. She had sent Mrs. Greene Christmas cards, and the phone worked both ways, and maybe Mrs. Greene hadn’t wanted to see her, and maybe she was just respecting her personal space. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Sometimes you just didn’t talk to someone for a while. She wiped her palms on her slacks, one at a time, trying to get them dry.

Mrs. Greene probably wasn’t even home because it was the middle of the afternoon. She was probably at work. If her car isn’t in the driveway, I’ll just turn around and go home, she told herself, and felt a huge wave of relief at the decision.

Rifle Range Road had changed. The trees along the side of the road had been cut back and the shoulders were bare. A shining new black asphalt turnoff led past a green-and-white plywood sign bearing a picture of a nouveau plantation house and Gracious Cay—coming 1999—Paley Realty. Beyond it, the raw, yellow skeletons of Gracious Cay rose up from behind the few remaining trees.

Patricia turned onto the state road and began winding her way back to Six Mile. Houses sat empty; a few were missing doors, and most had For Sale signs in the front yard. No children played outside.

She found Grill Flame Road and rolled down it slowly until she emerged into Six Mile. Not much of it survived. A chain-link fence hugged the back of Mt. Zion A.M.E., and beyond it lay a massive dirt plain full of bright yellow earthmoving equipment and construction debris. The basketball courts had been plowed up, the surrounding forest thinned to an occasional tree, and all the trailers over by where Wanda Taylor had lived were gone. Only seven houses remained on this side of the church.

Mrs. Greene’s Toyota was in the drive.

Patricia parked and opened her car door and immediately her ears were assaulted by the high-pitched scream of table saws from Gracious Cay, the rumbling of trucks, the earsplitting clatter of bricks and bulldozers. The construction chaos staggered her for a moment and left her unable to think. Then she gathered herself and rang Mrs. Greene’s front bell.

Nothing happened, and she realized Mrs. Greene probably couldn’t hear her over the din, so she rapped on the window. No one was home. Maybe her car had broken down and she’d gotten a ride to work. Relief flooded Patricia and she turned and walked back to her Volvo.

The construction was so loud that she didn’t hear it the first time, but she heard it the second: “Mrs. Campbell.”

She turned and saw Mrs. Greene standing in the door to her house, hair in a wrap, wearing an oversized pink T-shirt and a pair of dungarees. Patricia’s stomach hollowed out and filled with foam.

“I thought—” Patricia began, then realized her words were lost under the construction noise. She walked over to Mrs. Greene. As she got closer she saw that she had a gray tinge to her skin, her eyes were crusted with sleep, and she had dandruff in the roots of her hair. “I thought nobody was home,” she shouted over the construction noise.

“I was taking a nap,” Mrs. Greene shouted back.

“That’s so nice,” Patricia shouted.

“I clean in the morning and I do overnight stocking at Walmart in the evening,” Mrs. Greene shouted. “Then I go right back to work in the morning.”

“Pardon?” Patricia said.

Mrs. Greene looked around, then looked into her house, then back at Patricia, and nodded sharply. “Come on,” she said.

She closed the door behind them, which cut the construction noise by half, but Patricia still heard the high, excited whine of a saw ripping through wood. The house looked the same except the Christmas lights were dark. It felt empty and smelled like sleep.

“How’re the children?” Mrs. Greene asked.

“They’re teenagers,” Patricia said. “You know how they are. How are yours?”

“Jesse and Aaron are still living with my sister up in Irmo,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Oh,” Patricia said. “Do you get to see them enough?”

“I’m their mother,” Mrs. Greene said. “Irmo is a two-hour drive. There is no enough.”

Patricia winced at a massive crashing bang from outside.

“Have you thought about moving?” she asked.

“Most people already have,” Mrs. Greene said. “But I’m not leaving my church.”

From outside came the beep-beep-beep of a truck backing up.

“Are you taking on any more houses?” Patricia asked. “I could use some help cleaning if you’re free.”

“I work for a service now,” Mrs. Greene said.

“That must be nice,” Patricia said.

Mrs. Greene shrugged.

“They’re big houses,” she said. “And the money’s good, but it used to be you’d talk to people all day long. The service doesn’t like you to speak to the owners. If you have a question they give you a portable phone and you call the manager and he calls the owners for you. But they pay on time and take out the taxes.”

Patricia took a deep breath.

“Do you mind if I sit?” she asked.

Something flashed across Mrs. Greene’s face—disgust, Patricia thought—but she gestured to the sofa, unable to escape the burden of hospitality. Patricia sat and Mrs. Greene lowered herself into her easy chair. Its arms were more worn than the last time Patricia had seen it.

“I wanted to come see you earlier,” Patricia said. “But things kept coming up.”

“Mm-hmm,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Do you think about Miss Mary much?” Patricia asked. She saw Mrs. Greene rearrange her hands. Their backs were covered with small, shiny scars. “I’ll always be grateful you were with her that night.”

“Mrs. Campbell, what do you want?” Mrs. Greene asked. “I’m tired.”

“I’m sorry,” Patricia said, and decided she would leave. She put her hands on the edge of the sofa to push herself up. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, especially when you’re resting before work. And I’m sorry I haven’t been out to see you earlier, only things have been so busy. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say hello. And I saw Miss Mary.”

A distant clatter of boards falling to the ground crashed through the window panes. Neither of them moved.

“Mrs. Campbell…,” Mrs. Green began.

“She told me you had a photograph,” Patricia said. “She said it was from a long time ago and you had it. So I came. She said it was about the children. I wouldn’t have bothered you if it was about anything else. But it’s the children.”

Mrs. Greene glared. Patricia felt like a fool.

“I wish,” Mrs. Greene said, “that you would get back in your car and drive home.”