Chorus of Dust Read online

  It was my sister.

  All at once, the chorus ended. I opened my eyes to see that the demon had disappeared as well. I was not dead. The knife still pressed against my throat, but I realized as I pulled it away that it had left little more than a scratch. The serene void in sound that remained was so complete that my head swam and I fell back into the cotton.

  “Adem!” I looked up at Lalin’s shattered remains dancing their way through the heavens, and then Sam was standing over me. When she saw me look up at her and realized I was still alive, she leaned over and wrapped her arms around me.

  “Oh, thank God, I thought you were dead!” She kissed me on the cheek and then pressed her hand against the wound on my neck. “You’re bleeding, but only a little. I think you’ll be okay. Adem, what were you thinking?”

  As she fussed over me, my mind finally caught up with what was happening. “Sam, you’ve got to get out of here, it’ll kill you!” I sat up and looked around, waiting for the demon to strike.

  Sam shook her head. “I don’t understand. Who?”

  “The earth-demon!” I started to my feet, but my balance was shaky and I fell back down. My ears were still ringing. When I sat up again, Sam grabbed both of my elbows and leaned in to look me in the eyes.

  “Adem, stop.”

  “No, you don’t understand...”

  “There is no demon!” My head darted around, looking for the shadow to return. Sam held my face in her hands and turned it to look at her. “Adem, stop. Please.”

  “But…I…” Sam’s green eyes transfixed me.

  “Do you remember when you came home after your first year of college? You found out I was dating that guy from the video store. What was his name?”

  “What?” She stared back at me, waiting for an answer. “Um, yeah…Tony Wallace.”

  “Right, that was it, Tony. You warned me about him, how he was only trying to sleep with me. You remember? I couldn’t see it at the time. I was young and naive, and I couldn’t look at him objectively like you could. I didn’t realize until after he’d already broken my heart that you were right. I should have listened to you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Something is wrong with you,” she said. “I don’t know what you’ve been through these last several years, and I don’t think I want to know. But whatever it was, it changed you. You can’t see it because you’re caught up, you’re right in the middle of it all. I want to help you. When I got out of the car and saw you standing out here, I was terrified that I would be too late, that you’d do something stupid before I could get to you. You almost did, didn’t you?”

  I slumped over, arms crossed. “I don’t know. I wanted to help you. I was doing it for you.”

  “Like you were last night?” She looked at the knife still in my hand, and I immediately threw it to the ground in disgust.

  “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, Sam, that was an accident...”

  “It doesn’t matter now. I’m your sister. I’m not going to leave you. I said that yesterday, and I meant it.” She tapped a finger against my forehead. “Whatever wires are crossed up there, we’ll figure it out together, okay? Together.”

  Maybe she was right. What if this was all some kind of delusion that only I could see? What if there was no demon, no curse, no chorus? I looked at my sister’s gentle face, her freckled cheeks, and I knew I was safe here. Whatever was coming, she would be with me. I nodded, and Sam embraced me just like she had when we were little. The air around us remained quiet, and only the sound of a gentle breeze could be heard. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I was at peace.

  We both stood up and wiped ourselves off. Sam’s purse strap slipped off of her shoulder and it fell to the ground, her cell phone and makeup spilling out onto the dirt.

  “Ugh, I’m such a klutz,” Sam said, kneeling down to collect her things. She picked up the cell phone and paused to look at the notification screen. A small green indicator light blinked on and off. “Oh no, I forgot to turn the ringer back on. It says I have three messages. Did you call me?”

  I blinked. “You didn’t get my voicemail earlier?”

  “No, it’s been on silent all night.”

  “Then…how did you know I was out here?”

  Sam stopped collecting her makeup and set her purse on the ground. She furrowed her brow, deep in thought. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I don’t think I knew for sure it would be you, but I knew I needed to come back for something. Something important. It was like I was compelled to return, as if someone was calling me back to this place.”

  I froze at the realization of what she was telling me. My mind screamed at me to grab Sam and run, but it was too late. Quietly, the shadow seeped from the earth and rose up into the air, blocking out the full moon above. The painful chorus assaulted me in full force, and I wrapped my palms over my ears. I looked down and realized that Sam had done the same. She heard it, too. When the shadow passed over her, she stood up and turned around, a look of horror crossing her face as it shifted back into its true, monstrous form.

  “Sam!” I screamed. The demon’s smoky tendrils wrapped around her and lifted her up into the air out of my reach. She never cried out, never screamed. She only looked back at me, her frightened eyes pleading with me to make it stop. I couldn’t. There was a ripping sound, like a hunter tearing the skin from a deer carcass. It was pulling her apart. Her clothes tore, and her skin followed. The demon yanked her from both ends until it completely rent her in two. Her blood rained down on me. Organs splashed onto the ground nearby. The cotton all around me, no longer white, now glowed a deep crimson in the moonlight.

  The demon held the two halves of her body up for me to see, letting what was left of her remains drip down onto the earth around us. The chorus reached its absolute zenith, and I heard it emit a low, hideous laugh. I fell to my knees. It was over. I’d given the demon exactly what it wanted and then watched as it devoured her. All I could do was stare.

  Reverting to its undefined form, the shadow tossed the remains of my sister on the ground in front of me. The chorus faded away, and as quickly as it came, it was gone. Only death surrounded me now. I looked down at what was left of Sam, and the last thing I remember seeing was her frightened eyes staring blankly back up at me. I buckled over and vomited, and the world faded away.

  THE QUESTION

  Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.

  —William Samuel Johnson

  Adem remained quiet for a long time. He looked down at his hands splayed flat on the table in front of him. Ray glanced at his watch and noted that it was now pushing into mid-afternoon. It had been nearly five hours since he entered the prison that morning. All at once, exhaustion swept over him. He hadn’t realized how fatigued he had become listening to Adem’s story until this moment, and was quietly thankful that there would be no more to tell.

  Ray knew how the tale went from this point. When Adem awoke, he found himself surrounded by state and local police. Someone had driven by the farm and noticed a car pulled off the side of the road, its lights and engine still on, and investigated. They eventually discovered the grisly scene out in the field and called the authorities. The knife was found with Adem’s fingerprints and Sam’s blood all over it, and Adem was quickly indicted for the murder of his sister. The rest, of course, was history. Here they were.

  “Well?”

  Ray looked up to see Adem staring at him. “Well what?”

  “What do you think?” Adem asked. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  Ray shrugged. “I told you before, it doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Adem, not long ago, I made a promise to myself that I would never write again. Despite my better judgements, I’ve decided to break that promise. I’m going to give your story to the world, just like you gave it to me.
I can tell you right now, based on what I’ve heard today, you’ll have plenty of detractors. But you’ll have believers, too. I’ve done this enough to know that people are going to make up their own minds about what really happened. Trust me, before this is all over, you’ll have more people on your side than you can possibly imagine.”

  “I don’t care what they think,” Adem said, “I care what you think.”

  Ray rubbed a hand over the top of his head, then removed his glasses and set them on the table. “What do you want from me?” he asked, exasperated.

  Adem said nothing.

  “Okay, I’ll be honest with you, since I promised you that much. I think your sister was right. I think you have a mental disorder. Your mind created this elaborate story about the chorus and the demon, and when you killed your sister for whatever reason, it filled in all the details so that you wouldn’t have to live with the guilt.”

  “Dammit, Ray, why would I kill my sister? She meant everything to me. Just from a logical standpoint, you know it doesn’t make any sense.”

  “The ‘why’ isn’t all that important. I can name ten reasons off the top of my head, but it would be an exercise in futility at this point.” Ray scooted closer to the table. “Here’s the part that really bothers me, the puzzle I can’t seem to solve. It seems like your mind came up with a scenario far worse than the truth.”

  “I don’t understand...” Adem said.

  “This whole thing with the demon, about your family being cursed and everything. If all that were true, I frankly can’t think of a worse fate. It means that your ancestors and all of their descendants will forever remain under the heel of this malevolent being. All future generations of your family will suffer your same fate, and if they ever try to cut ties with that farm, then they’ll all perish and there will be no more generations after that. Just like what happened to the church when they sold the land. Isn’t that right?”

  Adem’s fists were clenched, his face red.

  Ray continued. “It’s an awful fate. If you simply murdered your sister, at least it ends with you. But if you’re right, if this thing is real, then all bets are off. Your bloodline will continue to suffer for as long as they walk the earth. Worst of all, you’re on death-row, which means that there isn’t a thing you can do about it. You’ll die in here, and that evil creature will go on tormenting your family until there is no one left. So my question is this. Why? Why would you want to believe in something like that?”

  “It’s all I have,” Adem whispered.

  “What?”

  Adem slammed his fists on the table and stood up. “It’s the only hope I have left!” The door opened up and two guards stepped inside, hands on their sidearms. Ray stood and held his hands out to the guards.

  “It’s okay, we’re okay.” He turned to Adem. “Right?” Adem shook his head and sat back down. Ray turned back to the guards. “We’re almost done. Just give us five more minutes.” The two men looked at each other, then hesitantly backed out of the room and closed the door. Ray sat down again. “What do you mean, Adem?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Maybe not, but you know I’ll listen.”

  Adem’s eyes glistened. “Before I came back home to the farm, I was finished. I’d given up on life, but I was terrified of death. Like I told Sam, I had nothing left to believe in, certainly not in God or anyone else. I was completely alone, utterly without hope. And then I saw the demon. I saw with my own eyes the proof that there are things beyond this life, beyond our understanding. Things that persist. As horrible as this curse is, it gives me hope, because now I know that evil spirits exist. That means there must be good spirits too, and a whole other supernatural world beyond this plane of existence. Maybe it even means that God exists. At the very least, now I have hope that death is not the end. I don’t have to be scared anymore.”

  Ray tried to think of what to say, but couldn’t. How does one respond to something like that? Thankfully he didn’t have to think for very long, as his phone rang at that moment. He pressed the answer key and held it up to his ear.

  “This is Ray.”

  “Ray-Ray, it’s Martha. I was just getting back to you about your request from earlier.” Ray looked across the table, confident that Adem couldn’t hear Martha’s side of the conversation.

  “Alright, what’d you find out?”

  “Nothing. No Lanston Conroy ever worked at LSU, and we couldn’t find anything about him in the Terrance public records. You sure you got the name right?”

  “Positive.”

  “Then he’s a ghost. Sorry Ray, I’ve got nothing else for you.”

  Ray rubbed his eyes. “Okay, thanks Martha.” He ended the call and then dropped the phone back into his pocket. He looked up to see Adem watching him, looking for any sign of confirmation. “You’re a pretty sharp fellow, so I’m sure you figured it out by now. That was my private investigation firm. I called earlier to check up on your friend, Professor Conroy.”

  “And?”

  Ray almost told him what Martha had found out, but caught himself. The man across the table reminded him of how his wife looked when Ray found out she’d been cheating on him. She was genuinely sorry, horrified that she’d hurt Ray so deeply, and her eyes pled for one more chance. Ray hadn’t given it to her, and the resulting devastation on her face still haunted his dreams.

  Adem wore that same look now, begging Ray to tell him that everything might yet turn out okay. He was obviously insane. Ray thought about the men at Eli’s Bar, how they kept giving Adem strange looks. Then there was the old blind man who likely didn’t exist, and the bookstore that was almost certainly nothing but an abandoned building. All of them were nothing but carefully constructed fantasies to help him cope with the terrible reality of what he had done. Ray wondered if he should destroy these delusions that gave Adem that last bit of hope, or even if he could. After all, Adem Comeaux was going to pay for his crimes, whether he believed he’d committed them or not. What difference did it make? Was it worth it to take that away from him?

  “What did she tell you?” Adem waited, his face straining in anticipation.

  “She, uh…she said he owned a bookstore in Terrance, just like you said. I’m driving over tomorrow morning to talk with him about what happened.”

  Adem shifted back into his seat and looked up at the ceiling. His eyes squeezed shut. “Thank you.” He stood and walked to the door where the guards entered and escorted him down the hallway. Ray didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t say anything.

  THE LEGACY

  As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.

  The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber

  Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.

  So one generation of men will grow while another dies.

  —Homer

  After nearly falling off of the dining room table twice, Winston finally walked out to the garage and brought in a proper stepladder with a handrail. Now that his balance felt more secure, he twisted the last two neutrals together and capped them off with a wire nut, then stuffed the bundle of wires up into the hole in the ceiling. All that was left was to mount the fan itself.

  Winston, lost in his work of replacing the tacky chandelier that once hung over the dining room table, realized he hadn’t checked on Sid for a long time. When he looked out the back patio door and didn’t initially see his son in the yard, he felt his pulse begin to quicken. He let the ceiling fan hang down by the wire connections and made his way down the ladder, but just as his feet touched the ground, he saw a blur race across the patio into the other side of the yard. Winston stopped and breathed, waiting for the adrenaline to work its way back out of his system.

  Sid ran back to the patio and pressed his face up against the window. Winston smiled and waived at him, and Sid pressed his mouth to the glass and blew. His cheeks puffed out, and Winston struggled to contain a laugh. Before he could reprimand his son, the boy
ran off to find his next adventure. With a contented sigh, Winston climbed the ladder and began to set the screws that secured the fan to the ceiling.

  He’d grown used to letting Sid play outside by himself, but it still made him nervous sometimes. His biggest concern was the cotton field. Even though Sid had never heard the full story of what happened to his mother, Winston didn’t want him going anywhere near that field.

  Sam. Even thinking about her still brought a sharp pain to his chest and a knot to his throat. Two years is a long time, but not long enough when it came to the love of his life. For her, it would never be long enough.

  Winston turned the last screw, and with a final glance at his handy work, he stepped down off the ladder and walked outside to the electrical box to turn the breaker back on. He closed it with a mechanical clunk, then walked inside and flipped on the light switch. The fan whirled to life, and Winston nodded with a satisfactory grunt. The fan would provide some much-needed air circulation to the great room, something previously achieved only by opening up the patio door on one end and the front door on the other. That was, assuming a breeze ever came, which seemed to happen less and less lately.

  Winston checked one more time on Sid and then walked over to the couch and sat down. He looked up above the television where a large picture of Sam hung on the wall. He tried not to look at it, but found that he couldn’t help himself. Would this pain ever go away?

  It hadn’t shown itself until after the trial, at least not in full force. After Sam’s murder, the only emotion Winston could bring himself to feel was anger. Anger at Sam for being there that night, anger at God for letting this happen to her, and anger at himself for the same reason. Most of all, he was angry with Adem. No, anger was not even the word to describe it. He was wrathful. He hated this man who had been her brother, who’d once been his best friend. He wanted Adem to die, to suffer the same way Sam had suffered. He wanted to inflict that punishment himself.