Bedlam's Edge Read online

  “Seth!” said Mam, scandalized. “Manners!”

  “I seen ‘im,” said the dour-face woman, squinting harder. “I seen ‘im, with my own eyes. He come up outa the ground, with his purty face an’ his black heart an’ his black horse with eyes like fire. I didn’ see the pack, but I heerd it, under the ground, bayin’. An’ I wasn’t stickin’ around to see if they come up. I hightailed it outa there. Good thing, too, ‘cause next day, there weren’t nothin’ left of Cook Spinney but burned-out cabins.”

  Shocked silence. Into which Seth snorted.

  “So there, you jest said it, you ran, an’ you got out,” he declared. “Devil or man, you jest hightail it into them woods and find you a hidey-hole, and there you be. ‘Sides, you give me a good reason why the Devil’d bother with a place as hasn’t even got a name when there’s better pickin’s anywhere else?”

  That was plain good sense and it calmed them right down again.

  Even though he didn’t believe it himself. Because he knew about that Devil, or one like it. He’d heard about it from someone he trusted. It was the business about the horse with the eyes of fire and the pack baying underground that had told him the fool woman was speaking the truth. And he knew one thing more.

  That Devil was looking for a special kind of person. A person like his sister Cassie. If he got within a certain range of her, he’d know she was there, and he’d come a-looking for her.

  So when the gibble-gabble womenfolk had cleared out, and before the family went off to bed—he slept on the hearth and all the girls piled in the big bed with Mam now; it’d comforted all of ‘em after Pappy was gone—he made like a big yawn and said, “Mam, I reckon I need t’be gone all day t’morrow, an I reckon on takin’ Cassie with me.”

  She gave him a sharpish look. “And fer what call?”

  He blinked at her, slow and steady, and said, “‘Cause some tall tales got some truth in ‘em.”

  She went white, but nodded. “Stop an’ do them chickens on the way, then.”

  It wasn’t on the way, but he would. Because he was going to go see the Spirit Woman, and Mam knew it.

  And Mam knew that the Spirit Woman had the Power. Because Seth was the only one of the family who hadn’t grieved over Pappy. He’d already done his grieving, because the Spirit Woman had told him Pappy wasn’t coming back. That wasn’t all the Spirit Woman had told him over the years, but he didn’t tell most of it to Mam.

  He’d come across her when he was seven or eight. Or she’d come across him. Other folk had seen her, but she’d never talked to anyone but him, except to trade with ‘em, not like conversation. They tended to keep shut of her; she scared most of ‘em, with her long white dresses on a wraith-thin body, her white hair down to her ankles, but a smooth face like a young girl. Not a pretty face—too sharp-featured for pretty. People assumed she was white, but Seth had always reckoned her for Injun; she had the look, he thought, and Injuns were supposed to be good with spirits. She had a funny way of talking, too—you’d say it was high-falutin’, except she had no airs about her, just this feeling that she knew so much she couldn’t help soundin’ like a fancy schoolmarm. And she acted kind of like she just took everything in and weighed it all alike without judging it.

  She lived all by her lonesome in the swamp; Mam said she’d been there thirty, forty years. She’d come to a house to trade, now and then; always knew you had what she wanted, always had something you wanted or needed, so folks welcomed her for that. Otherwise, she kept herself to herself. Never came to church, but spoke respectful to the preacher, and he said she knew her Bible and spoke well of her, and that was enough for most folks.

  But she took a shine to Seth, and he to her. So she told him things, and he acted on ‘em, and the fact was, when he did, things came out all right. Well, except for things he couldn’t change, like Pappy never coming home.

  Early on, she’d showed him the way through the swamp to her little cabin. Fact is, she was the one who’d told him to hide the provisions and find hidey-holes for everybody. “Soldiers are probably not going to come—but there is a single thread in the weave-to-come that shows them in your hollow. So if they do arrive, be ready, leave just enough in the cabin that they’ll take it and not burn the place. And if you hear about a man on a coal-black horse with eyes of flame, or about people hearing dogs howl underground, you come to me quick. And bring Cassie. She has something he wants.”

  * * *

  Come morning, he and Cassie were both up before anybody but Mam; she didn’t rightly sleep all that good anymore, but there weren’t anything he could do about that. She put johnnycake and bacon and drippin’s inside both of ‘em, and sent ‘em off into the dawn and a light frost. Seth greeted the frost with a grin of pleasure, though Cassie made a face. Hard ground would mean they would leave no tracks.

  “Where we goin’, Seth?” Cassie asked him. She was dressed as he thought proper for the weather, a skirt over a pair of Pappy’s old trousers, her feet in four pairs of stockings stuffed into his old boots, Granddaddy’s coat, and Seth’s old hat tied down on her head with a knitted muffler. Smart girl, Cassie. Sixteen now, and not a bit feather-witted. No whining about there not bein’ any boys around for courtin’ like some of the others in the holler did. Not to be helped, anyway. Families ran to girls around their holler, for some reason, an’ anyway, all the menfolk that could’ve followed the drum when the Damnyankees got onto Georgia clay. There was a couple old men, the rest were all little boys, no older’n ten, and with a damnsight less sense than Seth’d had at their age.

  Afore the War, girls hereabouts had gone off to stay with kinfolk when they was old enough, so’s to find a young man. Now, well, it seemed safer stayin’ home.

  “We’re goin’ to Spirit Woman,” he said, and though her eyes got round, she looked more pleased than scared. “She to’d me that when I heerd tell of a man on a coal-black horse with eyes of fire I was to take you to her. I dunno no more’n that.”

  “She knows all kind of witchery, they say,” Cassie replied, thoughtfully, sticking her bare hands into her armpits to keep them warm. “You reckon she might teach me?”

  He jerked his head around, startled. “Why? What d’you wanta learn witchery for?”

  ”Good witchery,” she amended. “I dunno. Jest seems it’d be useful, like.”

  “Better not let Preacher or Mam hear you talkin’ like that,” he replied. “I don’t care, ‘cause Spirit Woman never did no body no harm that I ever saw, but Preacher don’t hold with witchery, and Mam holds by the Preacher.”

  She wrinkled her nose with scorn. “Think I dunno that? I got more sense’n that!”

  Secretly, he was pleased. He didn’t see where it would hurt Cassie any, and she was right, it might help. She’d always been the kind to keep herself to herself, so she’d keep her mouth shut about it.

  They tended the chickens, then doubled back, confusing the trail behind them with brush he tied to their coats, as well as with bundles of hay he tied over their shoes so they weren’t making human-type footprints. He was taking no chances. Not when the family’s survival hung on so narrow a margin of error.

  He felt more relaxed when they got past the edge of the swamp. No one came here, and even if they did, they’d have to know the safe way in. It wasn’t something you could follow, exactly. Part of it involved jumping from hummock to hummock of springy grass that didn’t take tracks, didn’t hold a scent, and didn’t stay pressed down for long. One hummock looked pretty much like another, but jump to the wrong one and you’d end up on a path that would dead-end somewhere you didn’t want to be.

  The swamp wasn’t less dangerous in winter; maybe it was more dangerous. If you fell in and got soaked, you might could die of cold before you could get somewhere you could make a fire to warm up and dry yourself out.

  Cassie was as sure-footed as a goat though, and he had no fears for her. He just took the path and depended on her to follow; she hiked her skirts up above her knees and tied t
hem there and did just that.

  Deep in the swamp, so far in that you could stand on the place and holler for all you were worth and nobody on the edge’d hear you, was Spirit Woman’s house. It was no cabin; it was a real plank house, though it was up on legs to keep it clear of the water. She had something like a porch built all around it, and she was standing there watching as they came into view. Seth wasn’t at all surprised; she was there every time he came to call. Maybe she heard him coming, maybe the birds in the swamp told her with their calls; maybe she had some other ways of knowing he was on the way. He’d never bothered to figure it out.

  He clambered up the ladder and Cassie followed, quiet, her eyes wide and round. “So. You’ve heard something of the man on the coal-black horse with eyes of flame,” she said, without so much as a “how’dye do.” “I feared as much. Come inside.”

  The house had a real, proper door too, that fit tight in the frame, and not a skin nor a piece of burlap hanging down in from the top. Seth eyed it askance, as he always did. He couldn’t for the life of him imagine how this lot had gotten lugged through the swamp, leave alone built here. Inside it was as neat as a pin, though the stuff that was lodged there wasn’t the kind of thing you’d look for in the houses of people he knew. There were bunches of dried plants hanging upside-down from the ceiling, shelves of brown bottles full of some sort of liquid, brown pottery jars with handwritten labels, and more odd paraphernalia than he could name. And he knew from experience that the critters perched—and hidden—in every nook and cranny were not stuffed.

  Cassie took it all in avidly. Spirit Woman settled them both in cane rocking chairs beside the very cheerful fire burning on the hearth, and handed them thick pottery mugs of tea.

  A cat jumped right into Cassie’s lap. That was all right, but he expected her to jump and shriek when an owl flew right down out of the rafters to land on the back of her chair.

  She didn’t, and it was his turn to feel his eyes go round.

  Spirit Woman just smiled, thinly. “And we don’t tell our little brother everything, do we, missy?”

  Cassie sniffed. “He already thinks he knows ev’rything, so why should I tell him?”

  Spirit Woman turned to Seth. “This is what the Dark Man wants. The maiden that sings the birds out of the trees, and the wild things into her hand. The girl that whispers a melody under her breath, and a quarrel is quickly mended. The child that is wise enough to hide what she is from the time she can toddle. He will know her when he sees her, and if he comes near enough, he will scent her out, just as I did.” She settled back in her chair, and steepled her hands together. “If he has come near enough that rumors of him have reached you, then he draws near enough to catch a tantalizing hint of her. Now. What do you intend to do about this?”

  * * *

  At first Seth had been angry that Spirit Woman hadn’t offered to hide Cassie, or to protect her in some way. It hadn’t seemed at all fair to him; wasn’t she a woman grown, and didn’t she have Powers?

  But he got over his mad pretty quick. She didn’t say so in as many words, but he got the notion that there was something keeping her from helping in that way. Maybe it was because she wasn’t strong enough. She didn’t say so, but he got the feeling she knew this Dark Man, and she didn’t reckon on him getting sight of her again. He could generally tell what people were feeling, though with Spirit Woman he didn’t have nearly as much luck as with most. But the more palaver that went on, the more sure he was that she was scared of that Dark Man, real scared, and didn’t want to come next or nigh him.

  Seth had learned a long time ago that you didn’t want to call a grown person on being scared of something. They just denied it, and it either made them angry with you or just plain shut them up. So he didn’t call Spirit Woman on this one, because he and Cassie needed to hear what she had to say about the Dark Man—who was, all skepticism aside, sounding more and more like, if not the Devil, certainly a Devil.

  He surely had a pack of hellhounds he could call on. And he had a posse of damned souls, what had to ride with him to hunt down whatever he set the hounds on.

  “He probably won’t call the Hunt on you, though,” Spirit Woman said, frowning with concentration. “He’s more likely to try and charm you into his hands, and only use the Hunt as a last resort. There’s too great a risk that you’d die at the fangs and hands of the Hunt before he could get there, and he wants you, girl. He wants you whole and unhurt.”

  Well, that was certainly cheerful hearing.

  But he had his weaknesses, did the Dark Man. And as Seth and Cassie heard about those, a plan began to form in his mind. Especially when she said that the Dark Man would probably try an indirect approach first, away from the holler, as far from where people lived as he could manage.

  Cassie, however, had other things on her mind than just dealing with the Dark Man. When Spirit Woman finally ran out of useful information, Cassie looked her square in the face, and said, “And you’ll be teachin’ me witchery after. Right?”

  To Seth’s amusement and Cassie’s chagrin, Spirit Woman just shrugged. “There’s nothing I can teach you, child, that you can learn. You use what you have already as naturally as breathing. You just keep on as you’re going. It’ll be slow learning, but that’s the best sort.”

  And not another thing would she say on the subject, which relieved Seth a good bit. He did not particularly want Cassie coming out here into the swamp all the time, because that would for certain sure mark her as suspicious with the neighbors, and what they tolerated in Spirit Woman they would not countenance in Cassie. But on top of that, he needed all the hands he could muster just to make sure things kept going as well as they had when Pappy was still alive, and he couldn’t spare her. Galivanting around with Spirit Woman half the day would make it hard to get all the chores done, come spring.

  “You’re as armed as I can make you,” Spirit Woman said decisively. “And I cannot see the future around you, so the rest is up to you.”

  Seth gave her a sour look, but he said nothing. It seemed a hard thing to him that this grown woman, who presumably had some sort of witch-power, should leave a boy and a half-growed girl to fend for themselves against a Devil. But he knew better than to protest. Things were what they were, and he’d learned by now that protesting never changed them.

  Instead, he got to his feet, made a polite farewell—because if he and Cassie made it through this thing, or if the Devil never came here at all, he’d want to keep up his acquaintance with Spirit Woman—and he pulled a reluctant Cassie away.

  By this time, it was well after noon. Spirit Woman had fed them—she was never behindhand with her hospitality, at least—but there were still chores to do, and a short time to do them in.

  Seth knew when he got home, there was going to be a good long thinking spell in front of him, too.

  If that Devil came here, he and Cassie were going to have to be smart, clever, and lucky. The first two he could control, and as for the third, well, he reckoned the Carpenter family was about overdue for some good luck they didn’t have to make for themselves.

  But it turned out that Cassie hadn’t been just sitting there like a frog on a log. She must have been thinking the whole time Spirit Woman had been talking. The moment they got on firm ground and didn’t have to think about jumping from hummock to hummock, she pulled on Seth’s sleeve.

  “I got me some ideas,” she said. “‘Cause if the Dark Man comes, I ain’t gonna sit there and wait fer you to come rescue me.”

  Seth heaved a mighty sigh of relief at that, because—well, because you never did know exactly what a girl was going to take into her head to think. And though Cassie had never shown any evidence in the past that she was the kind of critter that reckoned she needed cosseting, once a girl started looking womanly—which Cassie did, certain-sure—you just didn’t know what notions she was going to take up.

  “Well then,” he said. “We don’t want Mam to get next or nigh this business, so let’s
get it settled afore we get home.”

  * * *

  “Plan” was a little too elaborate a word for what he and Cassie came up with. Having a “plan” implied that they had some idea of when and where this Dark Man was going to show, and were going to be able to take the high ground against him in advance. In fact, they didn’t even know if he was coming, much less when and where. All they could really do was to arm themselves with what their own limited resources would afford, and stick fairly close together.

  And Cassie could stop singing, or even humming under her breath. Because that, evidently, was what was going to bring the Dark Man down on them. Cassie, according to Spirit Woman, had a power, and it came out through music. Spirit Woman called it “shine,” which was news to Seth, since he’d always thought that “shine” was what the men used to make in their stills in the woods, before corn got too dear to waste on liquor-making. Whatever, that was what the Dark Man was after, and that was why he wanted Cassie unhurt.

  So as long as Cassie wasn’t singing, the Dark Man might not even know she was there. One small problem, of course, was that everyone in the holler knew that Cassie had a way of easing hurts, mending quarrels, lifting the black despair that made ropes and knives and cold, cold rivers look so attractive to a woman who looked ahead and saw nothing more in her life but loneliness, bitter hard work, and pain… .

  And Cassie couldn’t help but want to make those things better. Especially the black despair. Because suicide was a terrible sin, but worse yet was leaving behind a passel of raggedy kids to bring themselves up alone. And every home in the holler already had all the mouths it could possibly feed.

  So she couldn’t quit her singing altogether. And Seth just couldn’t harden his heart enough to yell at her for it. And so, they waited.

  No further news, either of Damnyankees or the Dark Man, came to the holler. The Preacher, a circuit-rider who only made it in once in every four Sundays, had nothing of note to tell. Not that he would have spread any tales of a Devil serving the Damnyankees; preaching about the Devil in Hell where his proper place was, now that was one thing and rightly following the Lord’s Way, but telling tales of a Devil on a black horse in the here and now, well, that was superstitious and gossip, and the Lord allegedly abhorred both superstition and gossip together.