“Don’t worry about Miss Caroline,” I try to reassure him. “She wants to help.”
He gasps for air to speak again, a wet breath. “She’s here.” His words a garbled slur from the blood. His eyes loll to the window.
Hairs on my neck prickle. I don’t think he’s talking about Miss Caroline anymore.
“You’ve lost too much blood. It’s got your thoughts all jumbled up. Just focus on me.”
Ellis tries to speak again, but when he does, he chokes on more blood.
The pungency of death clings tight to him. It’s now or never. I drag a wooden chair over to his bedside; it’s a wicked scrape across the floor. I pull his arm out from underneath the blanket and gently open his hand. Smoothly, I brush my hands over his shoulders and down the length of his arms. Caressing over him and then over me a few times, mixing the sounds of our souls, letting death know something more desirable is here, wanting it.
Ellis’s breathing is shallow now as he struggles. I do my best to tune it out and focus on the task.
I lean forward and poise my mouth over his open palm. The secret scriptures slip between my lips and over his skin. Talking to death. Luring it to me.
The gift my papaw passed on to me before he died. A gift to be passed to the opposite sex before I die, or it will be lost forever.
The temperature in the room drops to the icy cold of a winter’s night as death answers my call. Clouds of my breath puff as the words begin to draw death out of him. The frigid air burns my throat like taking a long drag off a harsh cigarette. It dries my words into a thin rasp.
The soft violin of Ellis’s soul grows stronger as it frees from death’s grasp. I hum my own soul-song, and it invites Ellis’s soul to join mine, so together we can expel death.
Our soul-songs dance alongside each other, his in my one hand, mine in the other.
Ready.
Then I clap, combining our two souls into one and boot death right out of him, then—a zinger of a vibration hits my teeth. Sharp and unexpected. It sends an electrical jolt through my entire body and knocks me out of my chair.
The sound of my soul-song and his crash, forming a disharmonious chaos, like two violins choking each other. I clamp my hands over my ears as it pierces my hearing. The squelching grates down my spine like nails on a chalkboard.
“What the hell?” The ringing in my ears slowly fades as the connection of souls is broken. As soon as they touched, it was like a static zap to my nervous system. That’s not how it’s supposed to go at all.
My throat clinches tight and starts to close up. I gag. With a harsh cough, I hack to clear it. A wad of phlegm clogs my throat. Up it comes and I spit into the tin cup. A translucent wad oozes down the side.
Not the black death-ooze my body usually makes.
What in the hell is going on?
Oh, shit! The weed. The beer. Could that be it? My gaze slips to the tin cup. Whiskey—or any alcohol—can’t be in the cup or ever before, but does that mean alcohol can’t be in me, either? This isn’t a situation I’ve ever been in.
I catch Ellis watching me with troubled eyes, so I fumble a smile. “It’s okay. Just a bad connection. We’ll try it again.” I ease back over to the bed.
Ellis’s eyes are barely slits as he struggles to keep them open. I push aside my worries and try harder. Seek deeper. Hum my hymnal more smoothly.
I trail my hands over my head, my face. Then over his head, his face. Then again over me. Over him. And again. Back and forth. As I reach out my soul to grasp ahold of his, a lightning bolt of electricity rips up my arms and jars my body into a paralytic freeze.
The ice of death causes the room to shrink, vacuuming itself back into Ellis’s body. His chest bucks up at the suddenness of it. His eyes widen with fear.
“Weatherly,” he croaks, my name a desperate plea. He grabs at my hands. He gasps once. Twice. A cragged noise that comes from his throat, then his eyes soften as they lose focus. His body relaxes into the bed.
“No! No, no, no. Wait.” I pull at Ellis’s limp shoulders; his head wobbles loosely.
A cold clammy hand grips my elbow and yanks me off him.
“You satanic whore!” Dr. York shoves me out of the way, mumbling something about the Devil’s work. He immediately starts to administer CPR.
The cold wash of his words lands home. I shrink into the corner so the doctor can attempt to perform the impossible. The frigid look on Miss Caroline’s face sends shame flaming up my cheeks.
Desperately, I offer, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” To each one of them. To Ellis. To the room.
Clumsily, I back away and collide into Grandmama. When she arrived, I don’t know. Her surly form blocks the doorway. Disgust, that’s what I read in that leathery, wrinkled face of hers. Her wiry gray hair cinched in a bun as rigid as her hate. Her foggy eyes search the room through sounds and movement, seeing only blurs of color and light, but assessing everything. She bares an open palm to me, and I place the tin cup in her hand. One sniff of the contents and her loathing deepens, nothing but worthless ooze that wouldn’t even sicken a child.
If drinking that beer kept me from saving Ellis, and Grandmama finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.
Grandmama grips my arm tight and ushers me from the bedroom as the doctor confirms what we all already know. Her fingers dig into my elbow from her angry grasp as she pushes me down the hall. My feet shuffle and stumble. I feel ten again. That childhood fear prickles the hairs on my skin.
With a quick shove out onto the front porch, she simply says, “Go home.” The battered screen door slaps against its frame, cracking the silence of the woods.
Bone Layer, who waits there, spares a glance long enough to realize Grandmama wasn’t speaking to him. He returns his focus on the stick he’s whittling.
Dr. York—a bony fellow with pale skin and arms covered in a carpet of dark hair—walks over to talk with Sheriff Johns, who is the very opposite in stature, as he’s getting out of his patrol car. The bloody towel the doc wrings between his fingers, as he cleans his hands, feels like damning evidence. He glares my way.
Satanic Whore, my mind whispers. It revels in repeating this.
Some believe my death-talking is a gift from God. Though nothing about me, or what I do, feels holy. Others deem it the work of the Devil. Yet, I never asked Satan for this burden.
It’s neither good nor evil. Taking the death from one and leaving it for another day is more like shuffling the cards and re-dealing them.
Except instead of God, Grandmama is the dealer.
