Illusion Read online

  It was after eleven. The waning moon left the trees and the overlong grass on either side of the road in darkness, and the gray of Mary’s hair and the whites of her eyes were eerie glimmers as she darted looks from one cluster of shadows to another. Nerves had bowed her shoulders and aged her by a decade.

  The group passed the small, boxy Colesworth house, which was shuttered and quiet, and beyond it, the icehouse and kitchen that initially blocked the view of the overseer’s cabin. A few steps farther, the dig crew came into view, still laughing and talking in their camp chairs, though Berg was absent. A square bluish glow, like a laptop screen, from inside one of the brightly colored tents behind the cabin suggested he was working or researching as he’d promised.

  Having already witnessed Obadiah’s magic in action, Daphne ignored the dig crew, but Mary waved and then stopped abruptly when none of the dig crew waved back.

  “They can’t see you, remember, Gramma?” Daphne gestured over beneath the trees to the sheriff’s patrol car. “The police can’t see you, either.”

  “That’s not natural. Or right. I still say none of this is right,” Mary said. “And if something happens to us, who’s going to take care of Brit and Jackson?”

  Pru gave Mary’s arm a reassuring squeeze. At the same time, she leveled a fierce glance at Barrie, doing her best to seem brave when she was almost as scared as Mary was herself.

  The responsibility of what they were doing suddenly engulfed Barrie and made her shiver. It was one thing to trust that Obadiah would keep them safe. It was another to know that if anything went wrong, a big part, the biggest part, of the blame would fall squarely on her own shoulders. How could she bear it if someone—anyone—got hurt?

  Up ahead, Obadiah was already standing beside the excavation site, rocking impatiently on his feet. His eyes fastened on Mary and Daphne, drinking them in, but he was tense and his expression was shuttered, as if he was already anticipating their rejection.

  “Still can’t read him?” Kate jabbed a sharp elbow into her brother’s ribs. “Let me help you out. I think he wants Mary and Daphne to like him.”

  Eight’s jaw tightened. “Keep laughing, Frog. Let’s hope that you still think it’s funny an hour from now.”

  Not in the least apologetic or afraid, Kate skipped ahead. Barrie slipped her hand into Eight’s and squeezed his fingers. He could say what he wanted about being happy that his gift was weaker, but it had to feel strange to have Kate know more about what people wanted while he knew less than he ever had before.

  “Kate will get over showing off eventually,” Barrie said. “It just hasn’t all sunk in yet, so it still seems like an adventure to her.”

  “That’s what worries me. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a bad idea to get confirmation that Obadiah wants to protect his family more than he wants the gold, but you don’t know Kate like I do. She’s reckless, Bear. Even more than you are.” He brought the back of Barrie’s hand up to his lips, and she realized how much she had missed having him call her “Bear” with that softening in his voice. She had missed him, plain and simple.

  Near the yellow police tape by the excavation area, Mary stopped six feet from where Obadiah stood. He came forward, his hand outstretched, but she clamped her fists into her armpits, arms crossed over her chest, and he pulled up short with a small, defeated slump to his shoulders.

  Barrie wondered, how long had it been since he’d had a real family? Someone who cared about him? How long had he ever been able to stay in one place before people noticed that he wasn’t aging? How many wives or children had he put into caskets and lowered into the ground?

  “Stand a little closer to the police tape,” he said to Mary. “The spirits need to sense who you are. It’s important for them to know you’re family.”

  Mary wagged a finger at him, her hand veiny and very brave. “What do you mean ‘sense’? I said I’m not goin’ to put up with any voodoo.”

  “This isn’t voodoo. I’ll draw a cosmogram and stand in the center to control the spirits—”

  “See that right there?” Mary clutched at the small silver cross she wore on a chain around her neck. “Fact you need to control them ought to tell you this is a bad idea. The good Lord meant for the dead to stay dead, and you’re lookin’ for trouble askin’ them to come up out of their graves.”

  Seen side by side, there was a resemblance between her and Obadiah. The set of the lips, the arch of the eyebrows, the shape of the ears. The stubborn pride.

  He moved to a spot just outside the police tape and pointed to the ground. “Just stand here so they can hear you. All you need to do is talk to them. Tell them how the curse has hurt you. Be specific. Talk about your daughter, how your grandchildren aren’t doing well—”

  “My grandchildren are fine,” Mary said, staying right where she was. “They’re all good children, and I’m takin’ care of them the same as I’ve done every single day of their lives.”

  “No one’s questioning that. You’ve done a great job with them,” Pru said, squeezing Mary’s shoulder.

  Barrie looked down the row of familiar faces: Pru, Mary, Daphne, Eight, and Kate, and it struck her that not having had close friends growing up, the word “familiar” had taken on a different meaning for her. A literal meaning. Her view of family was binary—family and not family, familiar and not familiar. Growing up, there had been only Mark and Lula. Now she had Pru, and Eight, and somehow without her having realized it, Mary and Daphne, Kate, and even Cassie had all snuck in. Family wasn’t finite. It was a rubber band with a limitless capacity to stretch.

  With a quick glance at the police car parked beneath the trees, Obadiah gestured again for them all to come forward. “Stay here within reach,” he said, eyeing Barrie with a silent message, “but don’t cross over the police tape or interrupt the ceremony. Understood?”

  “What kind of a ceremony?” Mary demanded, staying right where she stood.

  He sighed deeply. “I told you—it isn’t voodoo, and it isn’t wrong. Our family have been borrowers since back in Ayita’s time, using whatever we had and whatever worked. I’ve studied Cherokee and Native medicines, Bakongo, Buddhism, Taoism, Chinese traditional medicines, Wicca, Obeah, Santeria, and yes, a little voodoo, but—”

  “Cherokee?” Eight had been standing with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground, but now he looked up sharply.

  “Of course. Ayita was Cherokee. A good half of the slaves in the Carolinas were Native American back then, most of them women and children. Ayita knew the plants and the countryside—what to plant and when and where to plant it. But mostly she was a healer, a medicine woman, and we passed that down in the family and used it to survive.”

  Obadiah’s face had locked into stillness, all hint of expression wiped away as if he were speaking of a shopping list or of the weather, and somehow that made the meaning of the words stand out as sharply as if each one had fallen into the air like the long note of a bell. He was talking about children and women, people, being bought and sold because of their skills or talents or muscles. Like cattle or sheep. Beside Barrie, Eight squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back, because once again he’d been right. Ayita had been Cherokee, and a slave.

  How did they not teach any of these things in school?

  But Eight had guessed that either Ayita or Elijah had to have been Cherokee, or they wouldn’t have been able to communicate with the Fire Carrier to make the bargains. But in Mary’s family, that information had been lost in the fog of time, and everyone else on Watson Island had taken the story of the Fire Carrier at face value and never thought to examine it more closely.

  Standing with his back to them, Obadiah was silent, absorbing the strength he needed. Then, softly, he began to chant. Barrie nudged Pru and the others up to stand at the police tape where Obadiah wanted them, making sure that she herself and both the Beauforts stood close enough to give him a source of energy, as they’d earlier discussed.

  With a quick glance at the
police car parked beneath the trees, Obadiah climbed across the tape. Working quickly and still chanting softly, he drew a cosmogram on the broken ground beside the plastic sheeting that covered the brick roof of the buried chamber. When he had finished, he dusted the white clay powder from his hands. His thick dreadlocks brushed his shoulders as he tipped his head skyward, squinting at the moon. Then he began to chant more loudly, shuffling his feet as he moved counterclockwise around the outer circle of the cosmogram. While the movements were deliberate and small, there was a new spring in his step, a straightness to his back, a different set to his neck, a removal of all the small signs of age that Barrie had never considered before.

  Whenever he reached a point of the cross, he stopped and clapped multiple times in rhythm. Pru startled each time, and Daphne didn’t watch at all, but Kate kept edging closer, fascinated, until Eight grabbed her by the elbow and pulled her back to stand beside Mary, who stood with the cross she wore around her neck clutched tightly in her fingers.

  “It really isn’t voodoo,” Eight said to reassure Mary, “or anything evil. I looked it up. All he’s doing is following the movement of the sun and the phases of human life, the past, the present, and the future—”

  “Child, don’t you think I know a ring-shout when I see one?” Mary tapped Eight on the arm. “I may not have known what it was when he talked about it, and I’ve never seen whatever he drew on the ground, but the movements and the sound are the same. The rhythm and the shuffle and the hope and despair.”

  Kate sidled closer. “What’s a ring-shout?”

  “It’s a dance.” Daphne moved to the very edge of the police tape, watching Obadiah even more sharply. “From church—from the praise houses. It goes back to slavery times.”

  Eight, looking guilt-ridden, exchanged a helpless look with Barrie, but Obadiah completed the seventh lap around the circle and stepped inside to stand at the center of the cross, bringing the chanting to a crescendo. Slowly he raised his hands.

  A thin mist rose through the plastic sheeting that covered the hole in the bricks of the roof, and, gathering itself, the mist coalesced into a dark mass that divided into two individual shapes. Each figure was backlit by the moonlight and tethered by a rope of fog that disappeared down into the chamber. The first was clearly a man, larger than the other, big-framed but with one shoulder held higher as if he’d been injured at some point and hadn’t healed properly. Beside him, the smaller shape, a woman, stood only as high as his chest. Her hair fell to her waist, and her eyes were almond-shaped above high cheekbones, but unlike Elijah’s, they weren’t weary—they were alive with rage. The very mist that formed her was slick and oily, as if it had been dipped in fury.

  “Talk fast,” Obadiah said to Mary across his shoulder. “They’re stronger than they were, and I won’t be able to hold them long.”

  Mary had brought the small silver cross to her lips, and she was mumbling against it, praying or reassuring herself, or both. She didn’t seem to hear Obadiah. She didn’t answer.

  “Talk!” Obadiah insisted.

  Shaking her head, Mary backed away. “This isn’t right. The good Lord didn’t mean us to pull the dead back for conversation.”

  “The Lord didn’t mean for us to be cursed, either,” Daphne snapped at her grandmother. “And they’re here now, so if you won’t talk to them, then they’re here for no reason.”

  “So you say something, Daphne.” Eight nodded encouragement.

  But as Daphne turned toward Ayita and Elijah, they watched her, and their figures began to writhe above the plastic sheeting, straining at the ropes of mist that held them bound in place. Their faces contorted in pain and fury, they pushed against the boundaries of their own shapes and the constraints of Obadiah’s magic.

  Obadiah’s shoulders trembled visibly.

  Daphne was still silent, and Eight looked back at Mary. “If you can’t speak to them, then could you pretend you’re only talking to me? Tell me what it’s been like with the curse. You’ve had to raise Daphne, Brit, and Jackson by yourself. There are always things going wrong. Didn’t you ever feel like it was too much? Like you couldn’t do it?”

  “There’s never been a day,” Mary said furiously, “that I haven’t felt lucky to get the chance to raise them!”

  Daphne put her hand on Mary’s arm. “That’s not helping, Gramma. Tell them how the curse hurts us. How the only thing their revenge is doing for us is making everything worse!”

  Elijah and Ayita surged forward and then rocked back again, straining at the tether that bound them to the grave. Each motion pushed them farther, as if the rope of magic that held them were stretching. Loosening. Obadiah’s upraised arms shook, and sweat ran in a rivulet down the side of his face.

  Eight clutched Mary’s elbow. “Mary, please. What do you want to say about the curse? There has to be something.”

  “Tell them about Brit and the trial study,” Barrie said.

  “You’re askin’ me to say that the curse is at the root of our problems, and how do I know what is and isn’t?” Mary snapped. “Don’t you think I know a dozen families whose luck is as bad as ours—or worse? This is wrong. I’m sorry, but it is. I thought I could help, but there’s no part of what we’re doin’ here that we’ve got any business doin’.”

  The forms of Elijah and Ayita had grown darker and more opaque. Obadiah’s chanting grew more desperate and rushed. Daphne started to talk about Brit’s condition, and about her mother, and about how hard Mary worked, about needing luck, and airfare, and hotel rooms. She talked about postponing college, and Jackson needing tutoring, and Crunch needing an attitude adjustment. She talked even though few of those things had any place in Ayita and Elijah’s world, and Barrie hated hearing it, in large part because she knew how much Mary had to hate hearing Daphne say it.

  Elijah and Ayita pressed forward, and Obadiah fought to hold them back. It didn’t seem like he was winning. Grinding to a halt, Daphne turned back and looked at Mary. “Say something,” she said. “Help me. I don’t think they know about college and hotels and airfare. Tell them how things have changed, Gramma. If you can’t tell them anything else, tell them about defiance. Tell them about the ring-shout.”

  “Not defiance. Stories,” Mary said. “That’s what the ring-shout was. Folks telling tales from the Bible and parents passin’ on scraps of memory they’d learned from their parents and singin’ them out. Worshipping the God they were told to worship, but in their own way, out in the fields and the praise houses. The only thing defiant about that is the fact that you’re clingin’ to hope and dignity because it’s all you’ve got.” She scowled over at Ayita and Elijah. “You think what was done to you and Elijah was special? Murder is always wrong, doesn’t matter who does the killin’. Hurtin’ someone else is always wrong. Everyone’s got their burdens. The way the world is, we need faith and hope and joyful praise more than ever to get through. And that’s what the ring-shout was about. Gettin’ by and gettin’ through. You ask me, folks don’t do the ring-shout enough anymore.”

  Barrie’s eyes stung at the despair of anyone thinking that getting through was the best they could do. She reached for Eight, to take his hand.

  Obadiah screamed a warning. Ayita sprang toward him. He shouted words Barrie couldn’t understand, brought his hands together and pushed them downward, pushed as though forcing a physical object back into the ground.

  Ayita’s face contorted, elongated. Her mouth open in shock and fury, she tilted into Elijah, her form spilling into his and his spilling into hers as both were sucked back through the plastic sheeting, into the small hole between the bricks, and back into the buried chamber.

  Obadiah fell, landing with a thud in the dirt. The fabric of his suit puddled around him as if the flesh inside had shrunk again. His face was still and ancient.

  Eight vaulted over the police tape and ran toward him. Exactly what Obadiah had made them promise not to do.

  “No! Stop!” Barrie yelled. “You can’t go
where they can reach you!”

  Eight froze and then sprinted back, vaulting over the police tape with frustration and impotent fury in every bunched muscle. “So what do we do? We can’t leave Obadiah there. What if Ayita and Elijah drain his energy?”

  “They wouldn’t have brought him back if they’d wanted to do that.”

  “You don’t know that,” Eight said.

  “But if she’s right, if family is important to them,” Daphne said, “then Gramma and I can go and help. We’re family, too.” Her eyes were frightened slashes in her moonlit face, and probably because she knew Mary wouldn’t agree with her, she didn’t wait. Darting forward, she crossed the police tape and ran to where Obadiah lay on the ground, his body half in and half out of one of the partially dug squares of the excavation grid.

  Mary ran after her with a muffled cry and barreled through the tape. Pru and Kate darted forward, too, and Barrie, even though she knew better. Eight stepped in front of them, arms held out to keep them from crossing. By the time Mary reached Obadiah, Daphne had his shoulders off the ground and was dragging him away from the cosmogram and the plastic sheeting held down by scattered bricks.

  “Get his legs,” she said to her grandmother.

  Pru’s fingers dug into Barrie’s arm, and Eight stood bent low, almost like a runner at the beginning of a race. As soon as Daphne and Mary had dragged Obadiah back out of the area confined by the police tape, he took over.

  The spotlight on the police car switched on. Swiveling unsteadily over the excavation area, the light bathed the ground, then landed on the cast of shocked, scared, and guilty faces around Barrie. She stood blinking, blinded, as two car doors slammed closed and one of the deputies gave a shout.

  “Hey! What are y’all doing there? Put your hands up and freeze!”

  Barrie had gotten used to spirits and bindings and even men with guns. Getting caught by the cops was something new and somehow worse. Claws of panic tore her lungs, making it impossible to exhale as she pictured the cosmogram still drawn on the ground in chalk. She could already see the headline: WATSON HEIR DIES OF PANIC ATTACK AFTER PERFORMANCE OF SATANIC RITUAL.