Four and Twenty Blackbirds (Eden Moore 1)
Page 83
I opened my fingers to drop the knife. It stuck to my palm, lightly glued there by all the blood. I shook my wrist and it fell clattering down between his body and Malachi, whose head had rolled backwards against the bed. He'd either died or passed out again.
For a moment, I thought I might join him. My head was swimming with bubbles and stars, and my skin was tingling all over. Perhaps the shock of my injuries was wearing off and I was on the verge of feeling every cut, every sore. Perhaps I was dying. Perhaps . . . but then I put my hand to the knife wound at my breast and felt that it was dry. I peeked inside my shirt and saw that it had shrunk to a red, swollen line.
Already. How could that be?
Take my curse, and live with it.
Every passing moment I felt stronger, and drier, and less damaged. Oh, the room was still weaving back and forth, and I ached from every joint, but my bleeding had stopped, and the sharp immediacy of pain was fading. "Some curse," I said. "If this is the worst of it, I'm going to save a fortune in doctor's bills. "
I surveyed the room. Malachi's eyes flitted but didn't open. So he was alive after all. Maybe. I waited for another flicker, but none followed. Then again, maybe not. I didn't much care. A pair of long, light curtains swayed around the window I'd broken with my head. I ripped them down and wadded them up, then dropped them on top of the stove. They ignited immediately. I watched with satisfaction as orangey flames sprouted and spread, eating the curtains and starting on the walls.
I picked up the knife again, and used it to fish some burning chunks of wood out of the stove. I scattered them around, watching them char the floor and ignite the rug by the bed. Then the bedspread caught, and the fire worked its way up to the pillows. Bed, walls, bits of floor all sparked into spreading heat. The shack was a hundred years old and not in the best state of repair. It would burn fast.
I stood in the middle of the increasingly warm room and surveyed my handiwork. Satisfied that the place would go completely up in smoke, I turned to leave.
But Malachi was awake again. His wheedling voice whispered over the hungry crackling of the fire. "You . . . you can't leave me . . . here," he said, smoke choking his words and raising tears in his eyes—or maybe he was only afraid.
I hesitated in the doorway. "Why not?"
"I'm . . . sorry. About . . . all of it. I . . . " My cousin-brother coughed and tried to raise his head to an upright position. "I was wrong. Please . . . don't leave me. Help me. I'm sorry. Never . . . never again. "
A small thread of fire was working its way along the blanket towards Malachi's wobbly head. I watched as it approached him, devouring the cotton sheets and spitting them out as coal and ash. I could let it take him. I could leave him in the shack, and even if someone found out what I'd done, no one would care.
Self-defense. Ample precedent. I wouldn't even have to lie.
The flame sneaked up to his collar and singed it dark, then attacked his hair. He didn't feel it, or if he did, he lacked the strength to do anything about it.
Decisions, decisions. I sighed. It wasn't so difficult after all.
I stepped forward and patted at the flame with the back of my hand. Malachi dodged away, thinking that I was trying to hit him. "Stop it," I commanded. "You're on fire. Let me put it out. "
He looked at me with those huge, watery blue eyes, rimmed with red from the pain and smoke. For the first time I saw written on his face not maniacal certainty, but fear. Everything he'd spent his life believing had been wrong, and now he had nothing but . . . well, nothing but me, and the relationship we'd established thus far did not amount to much. But he was my brother. And he was going to die if I didn't do something.
I reached down and wrapped one of my arms behind him, under his armpits, and pulled him to his feet. "Come on. This place is going to go. " I guess I'm just not one to say "I don't care" and really mean it, even if I think I do.
He nodded and did his best to follow orders, flopping one foot down in front of the other in a pitiful attempt to walk. It was enough. We limped tog
ether onto the porch and down the stairs, and then into the yard.
Avery's house fell down behind us, spewing a burst of heat against our backs and collapsing into a pile of flaming rubble. We stumbled across the wet, thick yard where the women no longer stood, and we weakly began our way back towards the road. Except for the light of Avery's pyre, the swamp was dark.
I was just beginning to wonder how we'd find our way out when a bobbing white light charged forward at us from between the trees. "Eden? Eden, is that you? Are you all right? Dear God, it's taken me forever to find this place! I saw the fire through the trees, and dear sweet Baby Jesus—is that . . . ?"
"I'm fine, Harry," I cried back, though it was possibly something of an overstatement to use "fine" in such a context. "Yeah, it's Malachi. It's okay, though. "
My brother put his head down on my shoulder and lurched along beside me. "Thank you. I know . . . you didn't have to do . . . this for me. I mean . . . after all I did to you . . . and everything. "
"Aw, Malachi," I said, awkwardly patting his ribs with the arm that held him up. "It's okay. I was never very afraid of you anyway. "
12
Finis
I still see ghosts, but then again, I always saw ghosts. Now I see them more, that's all. And my dreams have settled down. Most of them are like Dali paintings, just like before this whole mess started. Well, except for that one dream. I had it just last night.
In it, I was very small, maybe five or six years old. I was back there, in the swamp at Highlands Hammock, and the day spilled bright through the leaves overhead. Not long before, it must have rained, for the yard behind the shack was made of mud. Teeny frogs hopped and croaked, bouncing on thin, springy legs between the puddles. I was enchanted by their shiny, bulgy eyes and bright skin.
The frogs liked me too.