Alex Bledsoe - The Hum and the Shiver

“What you really want to see,” a voice said, “is this way.”

He turned. A beautiful young woman in desert-themed military clothes stood in the shade of a tree. Something about her was odd, and in a moment he spotted it: a gaping space in her side, as if her flesh had been scooped out with a giant ice cream dipper. She carried her helmet under the opposite arm, and her bangs fell into her eyes. Her skin was pale with death.

Before Don could respond, she nodded to one side. He turned and saw an old woman seated in a folding lawn chair, a guitar across her lap. Sun dappled across her as the branch shading her waved in the wind. She was heavyset, with black hair starting to turn gray. She said to him, “That’s your cousin, Sally Olds. Died in Iraq back in the first Gulf War. She was my great-grandniece.”

“Hi,” Don said. He knew who she had to be. “So you’re Grandma Benji.”

She strummed the guitar. “Darn tootin’. You’re close to the line on some things, and you and I need to talk before you step over it.” She looked up at Sally. “Y’all go on, I know you got things to do. Me and Don just need to chew the fat for a tic.”

Sally leaned down and kissed Grandma Benji on the cheek. The tatters of flesh and organs swayed with her movements. Then she was gone, although Don had not seen her actually leave. He said, “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“You know this is a dream, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But you think you’re really meeting me?”

He looked at her closely. There was a fixed quality to her that seemed at odds with the mutable details of everything else around him. “I figure it can’t hurt to be polite either way.”

She chortled. “Anyway, we need to talk about blood. You got more Tufa in you than you realize. It ain’t always about quantity: you can have a man ninety-five percent pureblood, but if that missing five percent is the part that lets him ride the wind, he ain’t a true Tufa. You know about riding the night wind?”

Don shook his head.

“You will, I reckon. I hope. One night you’ll go outside, look up at the sky, and either hear the hum or feel the shiver. If it’s the shiver… well, you’re still kin and I love you, but it means you’ll never be a real Tufa. If it’s the hum, though, you’ll feel the stirrin’ of your wings.”

“That sounds… dramatic.”

She ran a riff down the guitar neck, her fingers nimble and sure. “That ain’t what I want to straighten you out about, though. It’s which side you’re gonna be on.”

“Which side of what?”

“Most folks think the Tufa are one big family. We ain’t; we’re two. One’s no better than the other, and one can’t go on without the other; like you can’t have light without dark for it to show up against. Make sense?”

“Sure.”

“Rockhouse Hicks runs one side. Mandalay Harris runs the other. You know either of them?”

“Nope.”

“You will. I was one of Rockhouse’s family. I was with him since the night wind first blew us here. But he turned sour. He’s a mean, bitter fella, closing in on bein’ evil. I’d hate to see you get involved with him.”

“Then I’ll join up with the other one. Mandalay, you said his name was?”

“ Her name. But it ain’t that easy. You should have someone to guide you in this, but this is the best I can do. I hope you remember all this when you wake up.”

“I usually do.”

“I know.” She smiled. “Now, enough of this grim business. Let’s play a little.”

He was about to say he didn’t have his guitar, when he noticed it propped beside him. Smiling, he took it out and followed his dead grandmother as she counted them into “Wicked Polly.”

In the little frame house that counted as the church’s parsonage, Craig Chess tossed in the big bed. Normally he slept peacefully, but tonight nothing was peaceful. His mind seethed with things that seemed to come from some other subconscious, presenting him with images that he’d never even considered.

The visions were intense, brutal, and terrifying. Soldiers dying in the desert, limbs and organs blown apart. Something wet and meaty lay beside a fallen gun, coated with sand and already attracting flies. A man held the stump of his right hand with his left, while blood oozed between his fingers. Another man stood with his arms wrapped around his abdomen to keep inside what seemed determined to fall out.

Craig felt the concussion of each explosion, his teeth rattling despite his attempts to clench them. The scent of burning fuel and meat filled the air. He looked wildly around, uncertain which way to run, unable to tell where the attack originated.

Suddenly a hand took his. He turned and saw a soldier, a young woman, looking at him in sympathy. “It’s quieter this way,” she said, and he heard her clearly despite the roaring chaos. He followed her around the end of a shredded troop carrier, and suddenly they stood beside the old catfish pond on his uncle’s farm. As in most dreams, this transition was seamless and felt entirely reasonable.

“That’s better,” the woman said. She took off her helmet and shook her head. She had short black hair. “I have to tell you something.”

“Okay,” Craig said. He noticed that there was a huge chunk of flesh and bone missing from the woman’s side; the ends of ribs poked through the tattered edges of her uniform. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m dead,” she said easily. “But that’s not the important thing. You need to know about Bronwyn.”

“Bronwyn Hyatt?”

The woman nodded. “She’s going to face the biggest challenge of her life soon.”

“Worse than what happened in Iraq?”

“That was no challenge. She was a soldier, she was trained, and it was life or death. Decisions come easy that way. She survived, which was her purpose. What’s next will be much harder, and much more important.”

“Okay. What do I need to do?”

The woman tossed a stone across the water. It skipped several times. “To help her, you’ll have to question everything you believe, and find a way to resolve it. Contradictions will appear where you never saw them, and it’ll be easy to lose faith. But you can’t.”

“Never have,” he assured her.

“It’s never mattered this much. Bronwyn will need your help and, more important, your love.”

“My love ?”

The woman nodded. “It may seem far-fetched now. It won’t before long.”

“Okay,” he said again. Truthfully, in the dream it didn’t seem that far-fetched. He’d thought about her more than any other woman he’d ever known.

The woman stepped close. He could see the veins in her eyes, exploded with the impact of whatever killed her. “Be strong. Be honest. Be fearless.”

“No one is really fearless.”

“Sure they are. When they know they’re right. Be right.”

“That attitude tends to get preachers into trouble.”

“You are more than your job. The preacher doesn’t have to be right. Craig does.”

He was about to say okay again when he opened his eyes and saw his bedroom ceiling in the gray dawn light.

He dressed quickly and went outside, across the still-damp lawn and up the concrete steps to the church’s front door. The sanctuary first thing in the morning was the quietest, most relaxing place he knew, one of the few places he felt he could hear the whisper of God’s voice. He reached for the handle, then realized he’d forgotten the key. He sat on the porch rail and watched the sky lighten in the east, pondering the dream.

Bronwyn opened her eyes and smiled.

She stretched on the bed, feeling the sheets slide against her body. There was no pain now, just stiffness from muscles not yet restored to full strength. She sat up with a yawn and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She went to the dresser and dug out an overlarge T-shirt. She pulled it on and suddenly realized she had not even thought of grabbing her cane.