INDIANOLA, MS 1943
They left the service before the last hymn finished dying. The teens slipped sideways through the press of saints, through perfume and sweat and raised hands still trembling from the Spirit.
Outside, the night sat heavy and low, like it had been waiting. The church doors closed behind them, and Harry laughed loudly.
“Yes, Lawd!” he cooed into the night. He always did that—like noise could outrun consequences. Claudette shot him a look, half-warning, half-smile, and took his hand anyway.
The Moorish building crouched three blocks away, all arches and shadow, its tiled skin long since peeled and bruised. Folks said it used to be something important, but folks said a lot of things.
Inside, Claudette lit a lantern and showed him what she’d been hiding. Books were stacked carefully and high. Maps with hand-drawn borders. Orchard notes in a neat, slanted script—soil conditions, grafting marks, dates circled twice. Names that didn’t appear in any library Harry had ever seen.
“They didn’t want us knowing this,” she said, reverent. “Any of it. Ain’t that crazy? I’ve been reading about saints—OH! Wait ‘til I tell you about the forbidden peach farms—”
“Emhm, that’s nice,” Harry nodded, feigning interest. He was already leaning in, fingers finding her waist, tongue worrying a caramel candy.
“Girl,” he murmured, “we can read later—”
The door slammed open.
A White boy burst inside and slid under a table, breathing like an animal. Harry jumped back, and Claudette gasped.
“We should run,” Harry whispered.
Claudette shook her head, trying to sound brave and failing. “Can’t leave him. Might be hurt.”
Harry chuckled. “Good—”
“Hal!” Claudette struck his arm. “Go see if he needs our help!”
“You gone’ give me a kiss if I do?—”
She harshly whispered, “Dammit, Hal, I swear before God!—”
“Alright! Alright! Damn!” Harry reached into his pocket and pulled the straight razor free. The blade caught the limited, peach-tinted lantern light, thin and mean.
“Hello?” Harry called, voice cracking. He crouched, cautiously, the razor shaking as he lifted the tablecloth.
The boy came out sideways.
He crawled up the wall like gravity had lost interest in it, limbs stretching too long, joints bending the wrong way. Millipedes poured in and out of its skin like punctuation. Its eyes were blacked clean through, reflecting nothing.
It growled from the vaulted ceiling.
Claudette couldn’t scream. Neither could Harry. The razor slipped from his fingers and clattered uselessly.
BAM!!!
The shotgun went off once, and the sound punched the air flat. The creature fell hard, limbs collapsing into themselves, bugs scattering, and blood already darkening where it hit.
Smoke drifted.
A dark-skinned man stood in the doorway, shotgun resting easily in his hands. Black sunglasses. Black leather gloves. Calm like this wasn’t the first time tonight.
“Harold,” he said, without raising his voice. “Get your ass home.”
Harry swallowed. “Daddy, I—”
“I won’t repeat myself.”
Harry didn’t argue, sprinting out of the building.
After watching Harry disappear up the road, the man flicked a lighter open. The white flame steadied as he brought a cigarette to his lips. The smell of smoke cut sharply through the dust and mildew paper.
“Ain’t you supposed to be at church with your saved and sanctified daddy, Claudette?” he asked, almost gently.
Claudette bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Rabbit—” She caught herself. “Mr. Gathers.”
Something whispered behind the walls. Soft. Persistent.
She heard it. She stepped past him, fast, heart hammering. Outside, the night felt closer than it had before.
“Claudette…” The wind carried a voice that both Claudette and Rabbit flicked their heads toward.
“Hm?” Rabbit noticed Claudette’s attention to the same breeze. He smiled, shaking his head at the realization. “So you hear ‘em too, preacher girl?”
Ignoring him, Claudette’s stride increased.
“Girl,” Rabbit called.
She stopped. Conquering her fear, she turned and faced him. He exhaled smoke and smiled.
His mouth full of diamond teeth caught the lantern glow, bright as a warning, “You might get far, but you won’t get away.”
BARKSDALE ROYALE HOTEL · CHICAGO, IL 1963
The black Lincoln eased into the roundabout in front of the ivory white entrance overflowing with Victorian reliefs. Marble arches. Gold trim. Too many windows to trust.
They shouldn’t have been staying there, but the show had gone long, the crowd had screamed for encores, and Harry liked to feel like a king when he was sweaty and full of whiskey. His band—Brother Harry and the Rabbits—spilled out of the car like tired ghosts. Guitars on their backs, sweat halos on their collars. Still buzzed from the high of it all.
The band stumbled into the hotel lobby just before dawn, still slick with liquor, sweat, and smoke. Their laughter echoed too loudly for the chandeliered quiet. Bellboys looked up. No one said a thing.
They tore the Regal Theater down—three encores, two busted amps, and several preacher’s wives fainting in the front row.
Harry's shirt was unbuttoned, guitar case dangling from two fingers, a fat wad of bills stuffed into his back pocket.
Mercer walked beside him in a leather trench and stage lashes still clinging to the corners of her eyes.
“Damn, we killed that shit,” Mischeaux muttered, lighting a cigarette with fingers still trembling from his solo.
“We played Walk ‘Em Down, and the crowd lost their minds!” said Elridge, twirling his drumsticks. “Y’all saw that?”
“I saw it,” Harry laughed, pulling Mercer close with a hand on her hip. “They felt that.” He leaned in and kissed the side of her neck. “We blessed 'em tonight.”
Mercer smirked while smoothing her pixie cut. “Don’t you get to talking holy after playing them devil chords.”
They laughed while hugging and separating.
Mercer kissed Harry's cheek in the elevator. His neck. The corner of his mouth. He grinned and leaned into it.
Room 315, the massive suite, greeted them with air-conditioned silence. Velvet curtains. Ornate rug. Piano in the corner that nobody touched. They spilled inside like lovers drunk on themselves. Shoes kicked off. Jacket draped.
Harry closed the door with his foot while Mercer pressed him against it. He kissed her like he was performing. Fingers wandering. Shirt half-unbuttoned, sweat still warm on his chest. His hands slipped around her waist, hers into his collar.
“You smell like burnt sugar or trouble,” he whispered, burying his face in her neck.
Mercer chuckled. “You sayin’ that like I’m not both.”
“I’mma shower first,” he said between kisses. “Back in ten.”
Mercer grinned. “Bet you a twenty you fall asleep in there.”
Harry tossed his shirt and suit coat on the floor, disappearing into the steam.
Mercer wandered toward the gold-lettered room service menu while humming an old hymn, twisted slowly.
After opening the curtains on the massive window, she sighed, kicked off her heels, and flopped onto the edge of the bed.
A black envelope in Harry's welt pocket wrangled her attention away.
Not black like ink. Black like shadow. Like night trying to pass for paper.
She grabbed it and discovered her name was scrawled on the front in trembling cursive.
No return address. No postage. Bulging at one side.
Mercer hesitated, looking toward the bathroom. Steam rising.
She peeled the envelope open and found a letter, folded twice. Edges frayed like they had been handled too much.
The bulge was a windproof lighter, coat silvery-black alligator skin.
Mercer read it twice.
Then a third time.
The words were simple.
But they landed like teeth.
Whether you took him.
Or he went with you…
He doesn’t belong to you.
Bring him back to pay condolences to his father before the light takes you both.
Mercer retrieved the crystal ashtray from the nightstand, placing it in her lap while positioning the lighter and letter in her hands.
Mercer flicked the cap open. Spun the wheel.
CHICK.
CHICK.
FLOOM.
She lit the page and watched the white, unwavering flame eat it. The words curled, blackened, flaked. Smoke rose and twisted slowly.
“Mercer?” Harry stepped into the doorway, towel low on his hips, hair still wet.
Startled, she turned toward him with the letter glowing in the ashtray. He noticed the lighter in her hand. Concern commanded his face as he approached her, stepping into the birthing sunlight pouring through the open curtains.
He stopped.
Not like a man hesitating.
Like a machine seizing.
His body twitched. Veins swelled in his neck, and steam hissed from him. His skin blistered, then bubbled, then cracked like a mirror as daylight wrapped around him like a noose.
“Mercer?!” he cried, but his mouth was wrong. His voice came out gurgling, as if it were being dragged underwater.
His knees hit the carpet. Black smoke poured from his eye sockets. Fingers burst open, cartilage snapping like dry branches as the aggressive stench of roasting flesh filled the room.
The fire alarms sounded as Harry crawled forward and evaporated into a smear of vapor—one long, dissonant note—dissolving into sunlight.
Gone.
Minutes later, Mischeaux, Eldridge, and the rest of the band stood in the doorway. Silent.
Mischeaux crossed himself, mumbling a prayer as he stared at the ash-filled, black body shape burned into the carpet.
“Lord, have mercy,” Eldridge whispered.
Band members walked and ran away.
Red footprints led to Mercer.
She sat on the bathroom floor with soot-caked nails, hugging her knees.
The blue fluorescent light glowed along the edges of her beige, ash-covered skin and the broken mirror shards on the floor.
She tightly clenched the black lighter in her hand, blood oozing from her knuckles.
DUMA RAILROAD · INDIANOLA, MS
The train rattled through the Mississippi dark, iron wheels groaning over warped, rust-bitten rails. Fog draped the Delta land in a thick, low hush.
Inside the last passenger car—a gutted Pullman converted for U.S. Marshal transport—cigar smoke pooled against the curved ceiling, sweet and heavy, stitched with the scents of whiskey, gun oil, and sweat.
Marshal Greeley rested his boots on a wooden crate stamped “PROPERTY OF THE STATE,” his uniform coat unbuttoned, hat cocked to one side. His matchstick bounced as he chewed the corner with idle rhythm.
“You ever wonder,” he muttered, voice sanded with boredom and backwater grit, “why they call it a storage train when ain’t nobody storin’ nothin’ but peaches, cadavers, and bad luck?”
A few lazy chuckles rolled through the car.
Marshal DeWitt didn’t bother to lift his eyes from beneath his brim. “I wonder why I got paired with a man who talks too damn much.”
More laughter. The kind you hear at the edge of a long shift and a longer war. The kind that wasn’t for joy but to keep the spirits away.
Greeley leaned forward, brushing ash from his lap. “I’m serious, man. Y’all don’t feel it? The offness of this whole stretch. Every town we pass got dogs that don’t bark and folks that don’t blink. Real strange, even for White folks, you know?”
A marshal scoffed. “Shit. Here we go—”
Greeley continued with vigor, “Last week, a doctor in Jacksonville locked up a whole Nigger church for shoutin’ too hard—said they had ‘religious psychosis.’ Y’all heard about that? O-O-Or them red-handed Niggers down in the Carolinas?”
“It’s just a camera trick, Greeley—”
Greeley swiftly defended. “No different than them Polaroids turnin’ folks’ eyes red? Nah, Ralston. It’s like it’s catchin’ somethin’. Like the cameras know somethin’ our eyes don’t.”
Bigsby, the thickest man on the train with a voice like broken fence posts, grunted. “You been sniffin’ the crate glue again, Greeley?”
“Don’t need glue-huffin’ to see ‘weird’ when it’s walkin’ up your porch,” Greeley muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
He reached into his coat and pulled a Polaroid from his breast pocket—creased and curling.
It was of a police squad and a Black woman in handcuffs, standing in front of a bar two towns over.
Greeley passed it to DeWitt without a word.
DeWitt studied it. In the flash-washed image, everyone looked the same—except one woman.
The palms of her hands glowed red.
Greeley grinned confidently and pointed at her. “Not a trick of the light. Not red-eye flash. Red. Like-like-like-like taillights in a fog.”
DeWitt’s jaw twitched with growing discomfort as he stared longer at the woman’s hands.
Before anyone could speak—
CLANK.
The train lurched. Not a shudder or a dip. Steel screeched as the car jolted violently off-kilter. The world tilted.
Time shattered.
Iron shrieked across gravel and godless dirt. The passenger car jackknifed off the rails and slammed sideways. Men howled as they collided with crates, walls, and each other.
Glass burst. Wood cracked. Greeley’s boots went flying.
The Polaroid fluttered like a condemned prayer into the dark.
Then—silence.
The world hung in a crooked stillness, broken only by the popping of hot metal and the hiss of steam leaking into the night air.
The fog outside pressed against shattered windows like it was listening.
Inside, broken bodies lay tangled in the wreckage. Groans filled the smoking car. The men dragged themselves upright, hands instinctively finding their guns.
DeWitt wiped a warm smear from his face—his blood, maybe. Someone else’s. Didn’t matter.
“Call out,” he rasped.
“Still breathin’,” Greeley coughed, sitting up, cradling a busted shoulder.
“Bigsby?”
“Ain’t dead yet.”
A few more voices answered.
Not enough.
The rest remained slumped and silent, their stillness heavy with finality.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Y’all hear that?” Greeley palmed his gun, looking out a broken window at the crate-disturbed cotton fields.
The remaining marshals drew their weapons with clockwork muscle memory, checking their revolvers and meticulously counting their bullets.
They weren’t sure who they were counting them for just yet.
Just that something was wrong.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Soft thuds in a trio continued and echoed through the car.
Not from the wreckage.
Not from the forest beyond.
From the door at the far end of the train car.
Rhythmic.
Measured.
Patient.
Greeley stiffened, revolver trembling just slightly. “DeWitt? What the fuck is in these crates?”
DeWitt didn’t answer, swallowing his fear.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Too even for animals. Too calm to be a call for help. Too eerie for either.
DeWitt stood, blood running down the side of his temple, shotgun raised.
The fog clung thick at the open windows now, muting even the insects.
“Lights out,” he whispered.
One by one, the lanterns were extinguished. The car fell into a deep, wholly black.
Muzzles pointed at the door.
“On three,” DeWitt mouthed.
They never got to three.
The marshals opened fire in a staccato of thunder, shots tearing into the door as splinters sprayed like bone chips.
Each flash from the muzzles lit up the car in broken frames.
The doorway flickered in stuttering glimpses.
Something was there.
No.
Many somethings.
The door burst open—and in those flickers, they saw them.
“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” DeWitt bellowed, lowering his shotgun.
The men looked at the bullet-peppered child bodies lying on the train car floor with their dead comrades.
Dry, pale green and grey skin, tight across knotted limbs. Animal pelt wrappings, scabbed cheeks, and long fingers like fish hooks.
Some faces looked melted; some cracked like ancient dolls.
“Dear God…” Greeley gasped.
“Call it in,” DeWitt commanded as he firmly trekked toward the broken doorway.
He froze as he looked outside.
In the distance beyond the ruined train, the sunflowers swayed—not to the wind, but to something else.
Something moving.
DeWitt saw them and steadily backed away.
The men saw.
The eyes.
Wide. Blackened eyes belonging to the scores of children standing in the tall grass and cotton fields.
Dozens.
Watching.
Waiting.
The children inside the car abruptly rocketed to standing positions with deep, bone-cracking snaps, resetting injuries.
Bullet wounds yawning open across their stretched skin—but blood-free.
Some still had decades-old buckshot buried in their flesh.
All of them moved in twitches—like film skipping forward too fast—and furiously filled the car.
They scurried across the damaged floors, walls, and ceiling. Elongated, scarred limbs attacked, writhing, clawing, and tearing through clothes and feeding on the marshals’ flesh.
Too many hands. Too many arms. Too many joints bending the wrong way.
The marshals, many overwhelmed before their fear allowed them to react, screamed as gunshots filled the night for several seconds.
Greeley watched as DeWitt went down under a swarm of tiny hands and snapping jaws.
Bigsby roared, firing his shotgun until they overtook him like flesh-colored floodwater.
Bright, fiery gunshots gradually lost the battle with the black night.
Silence reigned once again.
JONES FARM
Cotton fields waved and stretched under the before-dawn sky, tinted deep blue. The damp earth, old sweat, and the sharp bite of morning dew permeated the lazy breezes skipping over the workers and burlap sacks.
Willie’s eight-year-old fingers worked numbly through the bolls, her nails ragged from the never-ending pluck and pull. Her stiff dress, stitched from Gatormouth Peaches & Black Salt linen sacks, roughly rubbed the skin that her slip didn’t protect.
The cotton was dry this morning. It seemingly glowed around her dark coffee skin and felt crisp against her palms as she dropped each handful into the sack slung over her shoulder.
The breezes teased Willie’s twin, ribbon-bound, reverse braids that started from the nape of her back and draped over her face to her collar bones.
She stole a glance at her mother.
Claudette picked with the same steady rhythm as always—never slowing, never complaining. Her thin khaki dress hung loose on her lean, five-foot frame, but her back never bent too far.
“Willie,” a faint voice in the distance made her look up.
At the far end of the cotton row, a boy stood watching her.
His skin was pale—or at least, he must’ve been once beneath all the dirt caked onto it. He was barefoot, his soles blackened by the fields, and his dingy, patched-up overalls hung loose on his bony shoulders.
Willie’s breath lowered at the sight of his arms.
Too long. Swinging. Hanging.
His blacked-out eyes, empty and vast, locked onto hers.
His skin moved—not from sweat, not from the breeze—but from something underneath.
Centipede-like beads skittered beneath his flesh, darting in wavy patterns from his cheeks to his neck, down to his hands, and back.
A shiver gripped Willie’s spine.
She wanted to look away.
She couldn’t.
She should’ve screamed. Should’ve said something—anything.
“Don’t you short me, Walters!” Mr. Jones’ deep, rattling voice cut the quiet air.
Willie startled, her gaze snapping toward the commotion.
Burly Mr. and Mrs. Jones squared up against Mr. Walters near the wooden weigh station.
Mr. Walters—fat-bellied and red-faced—held up his hands, a slick smirk pulling at his lips like he enjoyed the fight brewing.
“You misweighin’ again,” Mrs. Jones spoke through her teeth and stepped forward.
Mr. Jones angrily pointed. “It ain’t enough to steal our land and homes, huh? Y’all want us to care to it for ya’ for free, too! A damn shame!”
Mr. Walters chuckled. “Now, now, I ain’t stolen nothin’. Law’s law, and y’all didn’t pay your taxes—”
“We paid them taxes THREE gotdamn times!” Mrs. Jones spat. “The law ain’t for us, and you damn well know it.”
The other pickers gradually stopped working.
A waiting silence.
A fearful silence.
Claudette, still beside Willie, kept picking.
“Keep your hands movin’, Mae,” she murmured low. “Don’t give them jokers a reason to even look in our direction.”
“What do we say when we need to focus?”
“Yes, Lawd,” Willie nodded.
“That’s right,” Claudette smiled faintly. “You keep on workin’ and before you know it, we’ll be home doing the Cant’cha Don’tcha.”
“I ain't walkin’ away this time, Walters,” Mr. Jones said. “You fix that scale before you get broke with it!”
Walters sighed, feigning disappointment. He pulled out a folded slip of paper.
“You’re already on my list,” he said smoothly.
“Maybe I let Herensmythe know y’all gettin’ too riled up out here.”
A threat.
Not a subtle one.
Mrs. Jones grabbed her husband’s arm, breath quickening.
“Willie Mae,” the voice beckoned again.
Willie turned back toward the field.
The boy—
Gone.
Her eyes searched the quiet cotton.
Only fog. Grass. A crooked metal post.
Rusted. Vine-wrapped. Leaning like it had been watching too long.
Willie had passed it a thousand times.
Never noticed it like this.
Something about it felt… left behind.
The way it sat—quiet, waiting—just like the boy.
Her stomach twisted.
The boy had vanished.
But he hadn’t left.
GATHERS HOUSE
Claudette briskly walked toward the well-kept red brick ranch-style home with Willie close behind.
“Kurobō’s up there again,” Willie smiled, pointing to the sugar-white pitbull lying on the roof.
“Just like clockwork,” Claudette chuckled.
They climbed the porch steps.
Claudette patted her pockets.
“Dammit, I stay leavin’ those damn keys on the dresser.”
Willie grinned.
She pulled thin metal picks from her pocket.
“Can I?”
“Gone ’head.”
Willie worked the lock quickly.
Click.
“No more learnin’ hoodlum shit from SpaceMan,” Claudette muttered.
“It’s science,” Willie said quietly.
Claudette stormed inside. “Lord, give me strength!”
Scrap was stretched on the couch.
“You found some, or you still lookin’?”
Claudette flung a towel.
“That ain’t funny, Scrappy!”
Scrap sat up lazily. “Ain’t no use in both’ us bein’ tired.”
Willie lingered at the door.
This was normal.
This was home.