Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

“Yes’m.”

After he left, I sat there for about an hour, looking at the door until nightfall, the moon and stars lighting up my table. Then I filled my flask, tied the funnel to its neck, got my shovel, and left the house. The tea was still warm where it pressed against my inside thigh. I’d had a swig of it myself earlier and it erased the ache in my joints, gave me a bit more energy. The shovel I tied to the inside of my cape and it bounced silently against my generous bottom as I walked to where the marshland met the dirt.

Outta the corner of my eye, I could see Runnin’ Jack’s place edged up against the marsh, where fireflies dove in and around the reeds. Big ol’ house, but not much to look at with its peeling paint and flaking wood. Barn didn’t look much better. Splintered wheels and broken buggies dotted the backyard. All was quiet, save for the chorus of frog song, making me think this was just gonna be like any other cemetery visit.

Sorry to say it wasn’t.

I managed to find the poplar tree, with its white chalk mark slash pretty easy. It was sick, likely from the rot in the soul of the person who buried the dead here. I loosened my shovel from inside my cape and said a swift prayer that this was gonna be a cakewalk.

A patch of grass lifted away in one straight piece. Underneath, a layer of earth was loose, releasing the smell of rich soil. I scraped it away. Against the black dirt, white bone shined. The boy must have stopped here and run to his mama because the rest of the dig was into harder dirt, like the earth had to make up for the soft dank pluff mud of the marsh just feet away. Glad I didn’t have to come through that way. Charleston was famous for its pluff mud and even binyahs like me lost a shoe once or twice to its sucking hold.

I grunted as the shovel only broke through fingernail-sized bits of dirt at a time, making me use elbow grease I didn’t have. Hot and sweaty, I stopped for a moment, easing my back upright, taking big glugs of the cool air off the marsh. It held the sweetness of life and death, swampy and ocean cool. I lost myself in it and didn’t hear the footsteps approaching.

He tackled me from behind, holding my legs together, and sent me head first toward the base of the tree where it poked through the hard pack dirt. I kept from slamming my face into the gnarled roots of the poplar by twisting my body and taking the knock on my shoulder. The wind flew out of me and I rolled to my back, the shovel thudding to the ground. I heard Jack grab for it and toss it away. His weight felt like a stone where he had me pinned to the ground, pressing his man parts against me like we played night games. His face was weathered, pale skin drawn tight against his skull. Salt-and-pepper whiskers and a beat-up fishing hat covered most of what else I tried to see. But those rabbit gray eyes held me sure as his body.

“What’re you doing on my land?” He growled the question out and its scent reached me, swimming in tobacco and fish grease. His fumbled for something in his pants and my breath caught, but he just pulled out a revolving gun, the kind Army men tended to have. Satisfied I had seen it, he lay it against my belly.

There was something in his face that I knew. I couldn’t place it, but it was there. The shape of his brow, the line of grizzled hair running along his cheek? I saw it, felt it in my spirit. Knew it as sure as I could breathe. Breeze blew up off the marsh, shifting the clouds and letting more of the moon’s smile through to touch his pale face so close to mine. The answer called to me in a memory of blood.

“You a Negro,” I whispered.

“And you’re a witch. Facts neither one of us wants told.” He cocked the gun. “Now where’s that leave us, Miss Prosper?”

I eyed the oiled metal barrel, then frowned. “With you lettin’ me sit up off this cold ground.”

He thought about it, then sat back, freeing my legs. I shuffled to sit up, smoothing my long skirt down. He didn’t help, just watched me with them rabbit fur gray eyes and tapped the gun on his knee.

“Why’re you here?” he asked again.

“To do a job. You got a child buried out here, Mr. Jack and I—”

“You ain’t taking nothing from my property.”

“What? I’m talking about a child. His mama just want to bury him. That’s all.”

He shook his head.

“A boy someone lynched for looking sideways at a girl, that’s all. A Negro boy. Or don’t you care about your own people?”

His eyes stayed on mine and I shivered like ghosts was looking in my face. “I said you are not to take a thing off my property.”

Frustrated, I thumped the ground with my fists. I had nothing, no weapon, and I felt foolish for never thinking to bring one. Never needed to before. “It’s a dead, Jack, a dead! Why you wanna keep a dead here?”

He thought about my question, then he spat out a thick wad of wet tobacco. “Leave ’em be. No good comes of draggin’ up the past.”

As he sat on the cold ground looking down at me, I realized. Whispers said it was white men who had taken them children off over the years to God only knew what kinda fate. And it never occurred to me that someone might use that fact to hide his own sins.

Real fear took me then and I shook with it. “It was you. All this time.” When he didn’t say anything, I yelled. “Wasn’t it?”

“Whites kill coloreds all the time.” Jack worked a finger into his ear, digging. Wiped it clean on his dungarees. “Everybody knows that. I just had to make sure I picked the right ones; ones they woulda gotten to eventually. All I had to do was keep to myself and dig fast.”

I felt tears burn my eyes, run down my face in hot trails. “Why?” I choked on the word. The marsh grass shooshed in the still air.

He shrugged. “I can’t help killin’. I need it… like breathing.”

My heart flipped in my chest. I searched the ground for something, anything, to use to save my life. The tea running through my system would buy some time, but it wouldn’t heal me from gunshot. A flicker caught my eye and I saw the cutting edge of the shovel for a moment as the clouds passed over. Nestled against the marsh reeds, out of reach.

Jack got to his feet, towering over where I sat on the ground next to the half dug hole. He’d probably finish digging it and slide me in next to the dead.

“It keeps me calm. Helps me sleep.” Training the gun on me, he turned up first one shirt sleeve, then the other. “I plan to sleep well tonight.”

“You sho is, Mister Jack.” The voice came from behind him and as he spun around, the crack of a rifle followed.

His head flung back like he was about to offer up a prayer, but I knew that couldn’t be as I could see the sky through his skull. He swayed, crashed to the ground. Slow-like, his body fell back, meeting up with the trunk of the poplar.

I swung my head to see Francis Station lowering her husband’s rifle and my breath eased out of me. Her young boy, the one who had come to me earlier, stood behind her. They were both barefoot, feet covered in shiny brown pluff mud from the marsh up to the ankles.

“My boy told me you was coming tonight. I just… wanted to see.”

I didn’t ask why she thought she had to bring a gun, but I was grateful and I told her so. “Glad you came, honey. I ’preciate you.”

We both dug, me with the shovel and her with the hoe that the boy had brought along. Soon, we uncovered what was left of a reed-thin young man, once handsome from the way his bones and what was left of his dark skin came together. I tried to cover most of the rot with my cape, but she stopped me.

“No, I wanna see him. His pa… ain’t gone want to.”

“Alrighty.” No need to pull away the lips; they were mostly gone. I poured the tea through the exposed teeth, where it ran across and down into the space just before the jawbone hinged to the rest of the skull.