Kage Baker: Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key

John turned to stare at the rock again, its black spire lit by quick hectic flashes. He heard a ringing now, like a ship’s bell, tolling out through the storm. He heard voices wailing, praying, pleading in fear. And then the sound cut off, abruptly as though a door had closed to shut it out. At the same moment the ship appeared again.

It wasn’t as though it had fallen over sideways, to be hidden by the rearing waves. It flickered into existence there, all outlined in green fire. There were figures crawling up from under hatches, green and glowing. One by one they slid down the deck into the water; and the first one pulled the second after it into the depths, and the second pulled the third, because they were chained together.

“It’s a slave ship,” roared Sejanus. Another and another and another went into the furious sea, pulled out of sight by the weight of their chains. John found his face was wet with tears. There was no way to get out to them, no way to stop what was unfolding.

“For the love of God!” screamed Mrs. Waverly. “ Please —”

And then they were gone. The wreck blinked out again, between one heartbeat and the next. Green spume floated in the air around the rock. Another flash of lightning revealed nothing there, but wind gusted up from the beach and brought the melancholy chanting of voices.

John turned to Sejanus. “You seen it, didn’t you? You knew it was there!”

Sejanus backed away, shaking his head. “It wasn’t real. There’s things in our skulls that get out, and make shadows to scare us. Old stories. Memories. But they aren’t real! ”

There was a high-pitched scream. Mr. Tudeley was staring and pointing far down the beach. They turned and saw the green figures making their way ashore, crawling from the glowing waves, rising awkwardly to their chained feet. They lurched and shuffled as they came. They were only black in the flashes of lightning. The thunder sounded like drums now, rolling steady.

Mr. Tudeley turned and fled for the shelter, clutching at his hat; Mrs. Waverly was already gone. John grabbed Sejanus by the arm.

“What do we do, damn you?”

Sejanus shook his hand off. “Build up the fire!” he shouted. “Turn your back and stop believing in them. They got no power to harm us!”

“If you say so,” said John. He turned and hurried to the fire, that had been fanned by the relentless wind so that it had eaten through all the fuel they’d piled on it and was now low and blue, crawling over the bed of coals. Mr. Tudeley was crouched under the tree behind it, gulping down rum like water. Mrs. Waverly had crawled into the shelter and sat there huddled up, her eyes tight shut.

John threw down his crutch. He grabbed wood from their store and tossed it on, one log, another, two more, and sparks flew up against the black sky but no blaze caught. Craning his head back to follow the sparks’ flight, John saw the clouds churning above the island, like a maelstrom in the air. He looked down helplessly at the blue flames and the memory came unbidden from childhood:

All Hallow’s Eve, and he’d sat with his brothers and sisters around the fire, pushing hazelnuts in amongst the coals and raking them out when they’d popped. His dad and the uncles had sat on benches, passing the jug of cider back and forth, and his mum and the aunts came in from taking the cakes out of the oven in the yard. They weren’t allowed to sing, lest the neighbors hear; but they’d made merry anyhow; and then his grandam had sat and told a fearful story, all about a girl going out to weep on her lover’s grave. They’d listened in silence. The fire had fallen low and blue, the warmth had gone out of the room as Grandam spoke. Then the wind had risen suddenly and the yard-door flown open with a bang. John had looked up and seen a man standing there, only for a moment. Aunt Ella had screamed and screamed, then, crying that it was her Charlie who’d been drowned at sea…

But here and now the sand hissed, the palm fronds rattled like shot in the warm wind, and the crawling fire writhed among the coals, pink and blue and yellow, all colors from the salt in the driftwood. The palm trees all around bent and swayed like dancers. Sejanus was beside him, pitching more wood on the fire, but nothing could get it to blaze up. Smoke began to rise from its center, spiraling up to meet the whirling cloud above, a looming darkness even the flashes of lightning could not pierce. In desperation, John grabbed up his crutch and shoved it in amongst the coals.

“How are we not supposed to be afeared of this, mate?” he shouted at Sejanus.

“It’s just a storm!”

“But I seen—”

“Stop that!” Sejanus advanced on Mr. Tudeley, who was dipping and gulping from the rum barrel, dipping and gulping with his eyes closed. “You’ll kill your damn self!”

He struck the coconut shell from Mr. Tudeley’s hands. It went flying into the fire, and Mr. Tudeley seemed like to fly in after it. But as he started up with his eyes open, the rum sent the fire roaring high at last, an explosion of heat and light.

Mr. Tudeley staggered back. His hat blew off and landed in the fire.

There was an impact like thunder, but without sound. The wind stopped utterly.

Mr. Tudeley was jolted forward, as though someone had struck him across the shoulders. He regained his balance and lifted his head, slowly. Before this hour his eyes had been a rather watery blue: the eyes that regarded Sejanus now were black, rimmed in red.

“ Bandele ,” he said, in a voice not his own.

Sejanus drew himself up, scowling. “No Bandele here,” he said. “Bandele was a little shirttail slave boy. He watched his daddy shake that old rattle and offer up half his victuals, and pray till his throat cracked—all to an old piece of wood daubed up with paint. Old wood never answered him, never helped him, never did a damned thing but sit there!

“And I’m Sejanus Walker, for better or worse. I was born a slave, but I walked out of my master’s house on my own. You never helped me and you never helped my daddy. Chah! I’m not obliged to you for shite, whatever you are, and I don’t need you now!”

What had been Mr. Tudeley chuckled, a dry chuckle like a mild old man.

“Don’t you vent your temper on me, son,” it said. “I’m just the gatekeeper. You want a shouting match? There’s some here will be pleased to take you on.”

The red color in the eyes intensified, until they became balls of blood. The features writhed, the teeth drew back from the lips in wrath. The voice, when it came, boomed out a resonant bass.

“You ungrateful little cockroach! You think it’s easy, fool, finding a way to make that passage across the ocean? You think it’s easy, coming to a land where there’s already spirits, and they aren’t willing to make room? You think we weren’t weak as blocks of old wood, when we got across at last, with all the children scattered and frightened and forgetting us?

“ Damn you! Haven’t we walked beside you day and night, and come between you and harm a dozen times? Ha! You don’t need us, Bandele? So you say! But they do!”

The figure thrust out a pointing finger. John turned his head to see what it pointed at, and promptly wished he hadn’t; for the black wet dead stood in their ranks beyond the palisadoes, looking on melancholy. Some were naked and chained. Some were clothed in rags. Some were decently clad in shirts and trousers or gowns but just as dead, with grave-mould in their hair. One and all they held their arms out, in pitiful longing.

Sejanus glanced over his shoulder at them and froze. He couldn’t look away. John must, though, and so he saw the figure dip up rum in its two hands and mouth it, and spray it out across the fire. Flame shot out and reflected in the eyes of the dead. They looked hopeful, reaching for the warmth; but it faded and was gone.