Уолтер Мосли - Blue Light

“Do you believe in the devil, Joclyn?”

“I don’t know. I guess I do. I mean there sure is a lotta evil, and I cain’t see where it makes no real sense.”

“The devil is in me, girl. He’s in me.” Horace lifted his right hand and tapped the fingertips against his chest. “Right in here.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded but still looked unconvinced.

“Did you hear about what happened in the park in Berkeley yesterday?” he asked.

“You mean the killin’s?”

“Look in the bottom drawer, honey,” Horace said. “Look in the bottom drawer down there.”

Joclyn went to the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. She took out the bundle of clothes. Horace turned his head to watch as she unfurled the trench coat. She gasped when she saw the bloody jacket and pants, the shoes covered in dried gore. Then she looked up at him and slowly rerolled the parcel. She stood up with the armful and left without saying another word.

“Mr. Redstar. Are you awake?”

It was night again and Horace felt almost strong enough to sit up. Joclyn was sitting on the bed beside him.

“How are you?” she asked.

All day he had been dozing, coming awake at every sound, expecting the police to come. Horace thought that it would hurt Gray Man’s pride so much to be jailed that he might die, or kill himself, from the humiliation. But they hadn’t come.

“What happened?” he asked the girl.

“I burnt your clothes in the backyard. You don’t have to worry.”

“You what? Why?”

“You were just sick, Mr. Redstar. That’s all. But now you’re okay. I’ll take care of you. You don’t have to be scared. They said on the radio about them killin’s, but nobody knows what really happened. All I know is that you couldn’t have done it. You ain’t even strong enough to pick me up. You just got confused, Mr. Redstar. You just thought you did bad ’cause you was there an’ saw all that blood.” She had taken his hand in both of hers. She had dry hands, working hands.

Horace forgot about Gray Man for the first time since his resurrection. He was thinking that no one had ever loved him outside his mother and sister. He felt a tear run down to his nose. Joclyn, smiling, brushed it off with her hard fingertip.

“I ain’t gonna give you up, Mr. Redstar.”

At that moment Gray Man came awake deep down in Horace’s mind. He rose quickly to the surface, pushing Horace aside.

“Mr. Redstar?” Joclyn asked, seeing a change in his face.

Gray Man sat up and reached out for the girl.

Watch your little toy die, Horace , Gray Man thought. He put his hand on Joclyn’s neck and smiled.

No .

Gray Man’s smile turned to puzzlement.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Redstar?” Joclyn asked.

No .

Gray Man tried to increase his pressure but could not. Horace tried to make him put down his hand, but that too failed.

“Are you okay?” Joclyn wanted to know.

Let her be, devil , Horace cried.

Do you think you can order me?

I think that Joclyn’s a friend and I’ll fuck you up if you thinkin’ ’bout messin ’ around . Horace felt his mind inhabiting the same body as Gray Man. He knew that the devil was still weak, still recovering from his fight with the old lady. He was risking his own life by trying to kill the girl.

“I have to go,” Gray Man said to Joclyn.

“But you’re sick.”

“I have to go away for a while. I have to go but I’ll come back soon.” He took his hand away from her throat and smiled. “Go on now, let me get dressed.”

When she had gone Horace let out a shout of life in the chambers of the death master’s mind.

Nesta Vine returned to the Bay Area four days after the massacre in the park. She went back to her grandparents’ house and was met at the front door by a familiar-looking black woman, somewhere in her forties.

“Yes?” the small woman asked of the girl.

“Who are you?” Nesta asked.

“Renee Ferris.”

Renee Ferris, of course, Nesta thought. Renee was from a group of her mother’s cousins who lived down near La Jolla. She hadn’t seen Renee since she was a child. And Renee would never recognize her, because Nesta had become the image in the mirror. Taller and jet black with bigger feet. Her hair had taken on a coarse straw color and her eyes were bright amber. Her face, which was once round and sad, had lengthened and thinned.

“What are you doing here?” Nesta asked Renee.

“Say what, child? Who are you?”

“Oh,” Nesta said, remembering herself. “I’m sorry, ma’am. My name is Ebony, Nesta’s friend from Back East.”

“Oh. Oh.” Mrs. Ferris looked down the stairs and then up the street. “Is Nesta here?”

“No, ma’am. The last I heard from her she was in Korea. But she said that if I ever came to Oakland, I should look up her grandma and granddad,” the tall woman said.

Renee Ferris looked unaware into her cousin’s face and said, “My auntie, Mrs. Charm, died six months ago.”

Nesta couldn’t keep the tears out of her eyes. “What happened?”

“She was just old, child,” the cousin said. She put out her hand and touched the dark-skinned girl’s forearm. “Why don’t you come in for a while and rest.”

The house seemed smaller but smelled the same. Nesta walked in past the staircase, into the living room, where her grandfather sat in his pitted chrome wheelchair. He was looking out the window at the hummingbird feeder on the back porch.

Nesta saw the pair of green hummingbirds taking turns at the honey water spout. She knew their approximate weight in milligrams and the rate of speed at which their wings fluttered. But all she cared about was her grandfather’s eyes on them.

“Uncle,” Renee Ferris said. “This here is one of Nesta’s friends — Ebony.”

Lythe Charm had been an old man as far back as Nesta could remember. But his face was always like a child’s, inquisitive and ready to laugh. Now even his eyes were old and sad. Nesta thought of a senior citizens home she worked in for a few weeks outside of Boulder, Colorado. She worked there while attending a series of lectures on Shakespeare that were being given at the university.

The lectures were nothing compared to watching, hearing, and smelling the ever encroaching specter of death among the aged.

She’d sat one evening with an old woman dying from collapsing veins. Nesta was telling her a story that she’d heard in Selma, Alabama. A story about an Indian down there who, centuries before, had first brought snakes to the territory. It was a wild tale of stealth and intrigue, but in the end everything worked out all right. The snake found his hole near a cultivated field, and all the deer and rabbits steered clear from then on.

Somewhere during the story the old woman died. Nesta felt it like a sudden vacuum in the room. Somewhere things felt empty, and Nesta realized how much space the human soul inhabited.

She could feel the sadness in her grandfather’s soul.

“Hello, Mr. Charm,” Nesta said.

“You know my baby?” he asked, looking hard at the tall and beautiful woman.

“We traveled together around a whole lot of the world,” Nesta said. “I got to know her pretty well.”

“Where is she now?”

“In Korea,” Nesta lied, and then sat down on the corner of the sofa nearest her grandfather. “She told me a lot about you.”

“Oh?” The old man smiled. “What she say?”

“She talked about how much you liked blackberry tea—”

“I sure do.”

“— and about how when you were younger you drove two hundred and forty-six cattle across Texas on horseback and how you didn’t lose one of them.”