“There is one, ain’t there?” asked Nina.
Connelly stared back and forth between them. “You know about the shiver-man?”
That surprised them. Their eyebrows rose up, crinkling the skin of their faces like butcher paper. They did not seem so dismissive anymore.
“Ah,” said Nina faintly, and nodded. “That one.”
“Who are you?” said Connelly.
“Oh, us?” Nina said, and laughed again. “We just three black bitches sitting by a river, minding our own.”
“We’re old,” said Dexy. “We just been around a while, sugar. We know a thing or two.”
“All of us,” said Nina.
“All of who? Who else is there?” asked Connelly.
Nina gestured to the shut door behind her. “Our sister, of course. She lies dreaming, as she always does. Always has. Best not to wake her. It’s what she likes.”
“And you… you know about the scarred man?”
“Everyone knows,” said Dexy. “Maybe they know in a part of them they don’t want to think is there. But they know. We just know a little more.”
Connelly shook his head. It was incomprehensible to have this happening, to have stumbled half dead from the jail and wandered here to be met by the same. Weeks ago he would have fought for a scrap of news of the gray man but now he seemed to dominate every patch of earth Connelly walked over.
“No, I-I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m going to go. I-I thank you for the dinner but I’ve had, I have had enough of this.”
“You won’t go,” said Dexy calmly.
“And why’s that?”
“Because you want to ask us questions. Because you want to know.”
He turned at the door and shook his head again. “No. No, not this, not again. Do you have any… Do you know what I’ve been through? Do you?”
“Yes,” said Nina.
“We got an idea, hon,” said Dexy.
“No you don’t!” he shouted. “Don’t you… Don’t you sit there and tell me that! Just don’t!”
There was a noise from the back of the house, a faint thud. Dexy and Nina looked at each other in fear and Nina stood to her feet. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Oh, Lord, he woke her up. Such noise, such
“There,” said Dexy. “I hope you’re happy.”
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you didn’t know. She’s just… crabby.” She looked balefully at him. “So you done yelling?”
Connelly shrugged, then nodded.
“Hm. You made up your mind, then? You staying or going?”
He watched her for a while, then slowly lowered himself back down to the floor.
“Good,” Dexy said. “That’s sensible. Very smart of you.”
“So what are you going to tell me?”
“What you need to know, I suppose. But give us a second. We ain’t all woke up yet. Here, let me get you your tea right quick.”
She shuffled off to the kitchen. Connelly sat before her chair and leaned back. He felt comfortable. It was the first time he had been warm since he had camped with the Hopkinses. He watched the flames dance and fight and thought about how mad this all was and soon abandoned that train of thought.
He listened to the fire and his eyelids grew heavy. There almost could have been words in its crackling.
He slept.
Someone touched him on his arm and he woke. Nina was standing over him.
“It’s time, boy,” she whispered.
He stood and followed her out the back. Night had fallen and with it a thick fog had crept down from the mountains, gathering around the bases of the trees. She led him through the maze of trunks until they came to a small clearing. In the center a gray mountain ash grew and before that was a small fire. Dexy sat across from it, a small stew cooking on its flames. As he sat she spooned a little into a bowl and took a bite with a tiny spoon.
“Good,” she said with a nod. “Nice and spicy. Good to keep the chill out. Care for some?”
Connelly took his share and it was warm and buttery. Nina sat on Dexy’s left, each of them on small stone seats, Connelly on the forest floor. To Dexy’s left was another stone seat, this one empty.
“Your sister’s not here,” he said.
“She’s here,” said Nina. “She just ain’t over there.”
Connelly shrugged. “So what are you? Witches?”
“Witches, no. Bitches, maybe,” said Nina, and she laughed.
“I already had my fortune told,” he said.
“And did it answer anything?”
“Not really.”
“Well, here’s your chance. Just give me a moment,” said Nina. “Need to wake things up a little.”
With stunning speed she reached into the fire and grabbed a fistful of burning coals and flung them up into the air. Connelly raised his arms to shield himself from their hot rain, but they did not fall. Instead their ascent slowed and they came to a stop, hovering above, and then each of the little sparks began to twitch and move, dancing like fireflies. They spun in little orbits and some left the clearing to explore the woods. Then it felt like the air grew close and nothing existed but the clearing. The trees seemed to grow taller and thicker, hiding the night sky until they were towering giants. It was as though they were in some primeval version of the world they lived in now, some original version whose wildness and savagery had slowly been worn down with age until it was the complacent time they called the present.
“Now it knows,” said Dexy softly, looking about. “We got the word out. Now it knows we going to ask, we got troubles on our mind and we going to ask it.”
“Ask who?” said Connelly.
“The night. Everything. Eat some more stew.”
He did. He coughed, as its spice seemed to have increased now. The forest’s colors seemed painfully bright, liquid browns and violent blacks, and once again the sisters no longer looked like people so much as carven statues.
“What’s in this stew?” he asked.
“Good shit,” said Nina, and grinned.
“Stuff from the earth’s heart,” Dexy said. “Bit of root, bit of mud. Bit of blood of things that live down there, things that listen. Earth knows everything. Bones under your feet, they know everything. You want to know the truth of things? You got to take a bit of the earth’s heart and put it in you. Then you ask.”
Nina was still grinning, now looking like some squat, wicked shaman, some priestess of rituals that happened far from the eyes of men. “So go on, little white boy,” she said. “Ask.”
Connelly looked at them a while and said, “Who is he? The shiver-man. You know him. Who is he?”
Dexy laughed. “You mean you traveled all this way and you don’t know?”
“The farther I go the less I understand.”
“You know,” said Nina. “Don’t be fooling yourself, little white boy. Everyone know who he is. You known all along.”
“You been in his wake all this time, so what’s he left behind?” said Dexy. “Each place you go to that he been, what’s there waiting? Why would he show up in the country in these famished times?” She chuckled, exasperated. “Boy, what has he marked you with and every other soul he meets?”
Connelly stared into the fire and thought. Thought about Molly, dancing and laughing. About Roonie and Jake and Ernie and every other soul lost along the road, and those blank, black eyes and the joyless grin.
