As the old woman spoke, Ramona looked at her son, examined his face in the firelight. She knew he'd be a fine-looking young man, handsome enough to knock the girls for a loop when he went to Fayette County High School; but what would his life be like? Shut off from other people? Feared and hated by the community, as both she and her mother had been? She recalled Sheriff Bromley's words, that things would never be the same for Billy again, and she felt an aching in her heart. He was growing up right now, in front of her eyes, though she knew that in following the Mystery Walk it was essential to keep part of childhood always within you as a shelter from the storm of the world, and also because a child's vision and understanding were most times better than a grown-up's hard, rational view of the world.
'. . . but usin' that talent right is harder still,' Rebekah was saying. 'You've got to think of yourself as a gate, Billy, on the edge between this world and the next. You've got to learn to open yourself up, and let those in need pass through. But you'll have to keep their fear and pain inside yourself, like a sponge soaks up water, so they can pass through with an unburdened soul. That's not an easy thing to do, and I can't help you learn it; that'll come from within you, when the time is right. And doing it once doesn't make the next time any simpler, either, but you'll find you can stand it. The first one is the worst, I guess, 'cause you don't know what to expect.'
'Does it hurt?'
'Kind of. Oh, not the same hurt like gettin' a shot at the doctor's office, or scrapin' your knee on a rock, but it hurts in here'—she touched the center of her chest— 'and in here'—and then her forehead. 'It's a hurt you'll inherit from those you're trying to help. And I won't say you'll be able to help all the time, either; some revenants just won't give up this world, maybe because they're too afraid to go on. If they were mean or crazy in life, they may try to do . . . worse things, like hurtin' people.' She felt his shoulders tense under her hands. 'Or, more rightly, they scare folks into hurtin' themselves, one way or another.'
Billy watched the wet leaves curl, blacken, and burn. He sat still trembling from seeing that awful boar-thing, and now he tried to puzzle out what his grandmother was saying. 'I thought when you passed on it was like going to sleep, and if you were good you went to Heaven. Isn't that right?'
'But what if you
'Like what?' He blew sweat off his upper lip; he was still very dizzy, and heard his grandmother's voice as if listening to crosscurrents of echoes from out of a dark, deep cave.
'I put mine into pottery,' Rebekah told him. 'Your mother put hers into her needlepoint. Your great- grandfather could sing up a storm in a hot tub on a Saturday night. That's up to you to find, when you have so much hurt inside you that you'll have to get rid of it or . . .' Her voice trailed off.
'Or what, Gram?' Billy prompted.
The old woman said softly, 'Or you could lose yourself in other people's pain. Several members of our family . . . lost themselves that way, and took their own lives out of despair A couple of them tried to escape their purpose in liquor and drugs. One of your uncles, a long way back, lost his mind and spent his life in an asylum. ...'
That hit him like a fist to the back of his head. Tears welled in his eyes; maybe he was already about to 'lose his mind,' he thought with numbed horror After all, hadn't he seen a smoke-eagle and a fire-serpent fighting right in front of him? Hadn't he seen something evil dressed up in his daddy's skin? He sobbed, and haltingly he told his grandmother and Ramona what he'd witnessed. They listened intently, and it seemed to him that his grandmother's eyes were as black as coals in her brown, seamed face.
When he was finished, Rebekah dipped her sweatband in a bucket of cool well-water she'd brought in and wiped his face. The water's chill in the stifling smokehouse heat sent a delicious shock through him, calming his feverish brain. 'They're pictures in your head, Billy. There'll be more before you're through. I think everybody has some eagle and some snake in them; they fight to pull your spirit high or drag it to the ground. The question is: which one do you let win, and at what price? The second thing you saw'—a shade seemed to pass before her face, like a thundercloud before the sun—'is what I warned you to watch for. You must've shown it you weren't afraid— but it won't give up so easily. Ramona, will you pass me that jug?' She unscrewed the sealed brown bottle Ramona had brought in with her and poured into the cup a thick dark liquid that smelled of sassafras and cinnamon.
'There may come a time, Billy,' Rebekah continued softly, 'when evil tries to crush you out, like someone snuffing a candle. It'll try to work on your weaknesses, to turn things around in your head so up is down and inside is out. I've seen that thing too, Billy—what looks like a wild boar—and it's so loathsome you can hardly bear to look at it. It used to taunt me in the night, when I was younger than your mother, and one morning not long ago I woke up to find all of my pottery shattered on the floor in the workshed. My house has caught fire before, for no reason at all. You remember that yellow mutt I had, named Chief? I never told you what really happened to him, but I found him scattered in the woods behind the house, like something had just torn him to pieces. That was the last dog I ever had. And what I mean to say is that the thing you saw—what my father used to call the 'shape changer' because it can take on any form it pleases—has been our enemy for a long, long time. Almost everyone in our family's seen it; it's a dangerous, sly beast, Billy, and it tries to hurt us through the people and things we care for. It probes for a weakness, and that's why we have to keep ourselves strong. If we don't, it could work on our mind—or maybe physically hurt us too.'
'What is it?' His voice had dropped to a frail whisper 'Is it the Devil, Gram?'
'I don't know. I just know it's very old, because even the first Choctaw spirit healers used to weave stories of the 'beast with skin of smoke.' There are tales of the shape changer going back hundreds of years—and some in our family, those who weren't strong enough to resist it, were either beguiled by its lies or torn to pieces by its hatred. You never know what it's planning, but it must sense a threat in you or it wouldn't have come to take a look at you.'
'Why, Gram? Why does it hate us?'
'Because it's a greedy beast that uses fear to make itself stronger. It feeds like a hog at a trough on the human emotions of despair, torment, and confusion; sometimes it traps revenants and won't let them break away from this world. It feeds on their souls, and if there's a Hell, I suppose that must be it. But when
'I don't know what to do!' he whispered.
'You have to believe in yourself, and in the Giver of Breath. You have to keep pressing forward, no matter what happens, and you can't turn away from your responsibility. If you do, you make a weak hole in yourself that the shape changer might try to reach into. The beast doesn't care about your mother or me anymore, Billy, because most of our work is done; it's you, the new blood, he's watching.'
'Can it
'I don't know,' she said, and thought of Chief's carcass scattered through the brush, pieces of him hanging from low tree branches as if he'd exploded from within.
'I want you to drink this, Billy. It'll help you sleep. We can talk more about it later ' She gave him the cup of liquid from the jug. Its inviting aroma drifted up to him. His head felt like a lead cannonball, his bones aching from the heat. He thought he could easily fall asleep without drinking this stuff, but he sipped at it anyway; it was pleasantly sweet, though just underneath the sugar was a musky taste, like the smell of wild mushrooms growing in a green, damp place.
'All of it,' Rebekah said. Billy drank it down. She smiled. 'That's very good.'
He smiled in return, through a mask of running sweat. The boar-thing was fading now, as all nightmares do in time. He stared into the embers, saw all the hundred variations of color between ale orange and dark violet, and his eyelids began to droop. The last thing he remembered seeing before the darkness closed in was the ceramic owl, watching over him from its smokehouse hook.
They left him lying on his back on the clay floor, the blanket wrapped around him like a heavy shroud. Outside, Rebekah locked the door. 'No need for us to look in on him again until morning.' She stretched, hearing her backbone creak. 'Seems to me he understood everything pretty much, but it's his confidence needs working on. We'll start again tomorrow night.'
