Chapter 61
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The number and variety of thanaturgic beings, artifacts, and wisdoms in the Endless Dark exceed current understanding in the same way the complexity of Earth’s vast oceans is beyond human knowledge.
—Secretary Beaumont, audit report to the Convocation of Schisms
. . . I’m finally at Ardells with my backpack and guitar, waiting for Mama.
Chuey and the wet-laundry metal crew are with me for support. I worry Mama isn’t coming, then the old Dodge pulls up . . .
“Jack,” said Church, as if from far away. “Jack, are you all right? My boy, the Ward hasn’t much time—”
. . . Mama sends her new family into Ardells and turns to me. From my backpack, I hand her the picture of us and the science fair certificate we won. I tell her we belong together, that we’re a good team . . .
“His sutures have torn away,” Lady cried. “He’s bleeding memory.
And the wound is getting too large to close—”
. . . Mama shakes her head. So, I hand her my Young Historian bell. I tell her I’m not like the rest of the family, that I’m not at risk anymore, that the librarian says I have a future . . .
“Hold on, Ese,” Chuey called. I could hear him dragging himself toward me through the hard ancient soil.
. . . Mama smiles at me, but it’s a sad smile. So, I pull out the candle from St. Frances and tell her that I pray every Sunday, that this meeting is God’s answer to my prayer, and that we have a chance to start over . . .
“Jack, can you find some music inside you this time?” I felt Church’s breath on my face. “Something to stanch the flow. Fight, my boy, fight!”
. . . Mama’s eyes tear up. I grab my guitar and sing the song I wrote for her. It’s not done; it needs a few more words. But it feels right. I sing to ask her not to go away again . . .
“I doubt this will hold.” Lady’s voice. “Pray God it does . . .” She stabbed my shadow with her needle.
. . . When I finish my song, I wait for Mama to wrap me in her arms. But she puts everything back into my backpack and opens her purse.
She pulls out a wad of money and puts it in my hand.
“ You’re a good boy, Jack. You’re just not my boy anymore.
I’m sorry. I needed a fresh start. One day I hope you’ ll come to understand.
” She’s crying openly now. I feel tears welling in my own eyes.
“I will always love you, Jack. But it’s different for me now.
I’m happy. And you need to find your own happiness.
” Tears are hot on my cheeks. I try to give her the money back, thinking that will somehow reverse this .
. . Mama hugs me, then walks toward Ardells.
“No, Mama, please, don’t go. I’m a good boy now.
” She opens the door and disappears inside.
“Mama . . .” I start to sob and drop the money on the sidewalk . . .
Lady plunged her needle into my shadow again, catching the flailing end of Essiene thread.
Six rough stitches and my wound was mostly closed.
Searing pain shot through my scar, but she’d at least stanched the flow.
My flesh felt suddenly heavy on my bones.
Sweat poured off my face, steaming and dripping on the frozen ground beneath me.
I didn’t know how to forgive Mama. Or even how to start. My third verse was as far away as ever. The words. The notes. Wembley wasn’t even a memory. And I still couldn’t move, didn’t really want to anymore.
So, I closed my eyes . . .
. . . Chuey is at my side. He puts his arm around me and says, “I think you had her right up until the end, man. But your voice sucks.” I laugh and cry at the same time. Chuey shakes me. “I got you, brother. And I have an idea for your chorus . . .”
I opened my eyes again. Nearby, the light of my lantern flickered against the ancient darkness.
Lady and Church were huddled over me, their eyebrows drawn together, their shoulders slumped.
They scooted back as Chuey crawled through some dead thistle and wrapped his heavy arm around my shoulder, rosary dangling from his fingers.
“I hated her for leaving, Chuey.” I shook my head. “I still do.”
Chuey put a hand on my back, leaned close to my ear, and in his terrible voice started to sing my third verse.
I lay there, dumbfounded at what I was hearing. The words sounded right. The notes sounded right. And Chuey, maybe because he knew my story, even gave it some feeling. “How?” I asked.
“You gave it to me, man.” Chuey gently shook me. “I can see it all. Hear it all. And it’s a hell of a thing for you to try and see her side of it in your own song.”
The problem was that, even hearing it now, I felt no forgiveness for Mama. Whatever change had taken place inside me at Wembley was more than just music and words. Without the memory itself . . . the large scar inside me still burned. I dropped my forehead to the frozen ground, all but done.
He gently shook me. “But Ese, that’s never been the best part.” He launched into the chorus. The fight chorus we’d shared since our library days, a declaration, despite all things, that we would stay close. For each other. Like brothers. Like family.
The sound settled inside me. For a sweet, beautiful moment far down at the bottom of history, all the other moments of my past went away. It was just me and Chuey, and that old familiar chorus. Tough and certain and defiant as hell.
I hadn’t even understood my own song. “I never stopped wanting her back. Made me blind to a lot of good things, didn’t it.”
Chuey managed a smile. “You think?”
On my wrist, I noted the simple bracelet given me by the child Emily. “I always knew you and the other guys had my back. But maybe I thought it was mostly about the music, not us actually being a family.”
“Ah, brother, music is family. Now, you gonna make me keep singin’ alone?”
I smiled, took a long, steadying breath, and together we sang our chorus—
When the silence of those you know should love you Steals your childhood days
When the only people who ever tried to hear you Lie cold and silent in their grave
When the promises that were once made to you Have all been traded and you’ve lost faith
Please know for every heartbreak deep inside you That I will be one who stays
We finished, letting the last words linger between us. Then Chuey whispered, “Westmont strong.”
“Damn straight,” I replied.
I nodded my thanks to Lady and Church. They were part of it, too.
The pain of burrowing into the past had shown me, memory by memory, that I may have lost my brothers, my dad, and Mama, too, but along the way I’d also found not just friends who’d back my play but another kind of family.
And I was going to stick this out for them, right to the bitter end.
Some thirty yards away, the Ward was still fending off the wraith. I picked up my lantern, grabbed my bow, and pushed myself to my feet.
“We’ve got to stop it,” I said, “but we still need it to renew her.
Lakshmi, can you give it another target?” She bolted right, into the darkness.
“I need to find its Rupture,” I said. “Do what you can to help me focus on that.”
They pulled their weapons, and we circled left to the wraith’s flank.
I played a hard, revelatory stroke. Amber light flared across the barren plain. Gleaming patterns of souls erupted in the wraith’s shadow, with occlusions too numerous to count.
The wraith screamed a shivering note that pulled at the sutures in my shadow, nearly dropping me back to the ground. Then it began whipping the Ward again with its black cords. Her luminosity flickered, dimmed, and she fell hard to the dirt.
“Leave her alone!” I screamed, my voice echoing across the desolate flats. The wraith whirled toward us, undulating, thrumming with deep, earthy tones.
Again, it boomed out a note, stronger this time.
The ground beneath our feet shook and whitened, deeper cracks spreading across it like a sunbaked dry pan.
Church’s and Lady’s bindings darkened. Chuey and I staggered.
Only Lakshmi stood firm, though she was breathing hard and now holding just one sword with both hands.
I regained my footing and pulled a hard, bracing stroke, driving it with thoughts of Lady’s foundlings and Church’s sense of propriety. They both straightened and raised their weapons.
The wraith reared back with its black whips, a deep note beginning to cycle up from inside it again, when a searing blue light erupted around us.
The Ward was back on her feet and shone brighter than before.
She lashed the wraith with her fiery whips, the cords ripping through the creature.
Its many-voiced howl gashed the earth below us again and we nearly fell.
The Ward, graceful and luminous, continued to flog the wraith with her amber threads, her many voices rising against its thundering chorus.
I stepped past my friends, set my feet, and pulled another revelatory stroke, lighting up the wraith’s shadow again.
I recalled Handel’s Musical Times newsletter and Messiah drafts, and focused those thoughts into the light flaring from my lantern.
Inside the wraith’s layered shadows, a shimmering pattern began to shine brighter than the rest—those “Moonlight Sonata”–like notes again—the same one I’d seen in Newgate Prison.
Handel screamed. “I am not only Messiah! I have an oeuvre of compositions your reductive world has carelessly ignored!”
The words emanated in dense waves from an immense scar at the center of his shadow. But before I could peer into it, the wraith let out a discordant scream that extinguished my lamp. It then whirled and charged the Ward, its giant form slamming her into the ground amidst streams of black smoke.
Lakshmi rushed in from the right and swiped at it with her tulwar. The wraith bucked and shot a shaft of darkness into her chest, knocking her back into a dead cypress tree.
The Ward clambered to her knees, arms hanging at her sides, struggling to lift her amber whips.
I shot an assault stroke into the wraith and screamed “Go!” to my friends.
They rushed ahead, striking at the massive black form.
Their weapons seemed useless, and it roared another booming chorus, driving them back across the plain like tumbleweeds.
I set myself against the rush of sound, clutching my lantern.
The Ward simply toppled to the ground and curled into a fetal position, her shine dimming as the wraith began again to rain down whip strikes on her.
In a panic, I recalled a phrase from Handel’s last manuscript of Messiah, a line that had never been sung. I drew breath and shouted the melody with all the strength of voice I had left.
The wraith went still. A cold breeze hissed across the ancient plain.
Then the wraith’s massive human form shifted and raced toward me over the cracked earth.
I shouted my ghost stone to life and raised my lantern and bow, but before I could play a stroke, it whipped a tendril of black vapor around me and held me bound.
I struggled, writhing and twisting, but the cord only tightened, and a moment later I was pulled inside Handel’s immense darkness.
A freezing pain tore through me, and I dropped my lantern. The wraith began probing my soul, winding tendrils of smoke down inside my wound. I could hardly move. A rush of images coursed through my mind—moments of my life. The wraith saw it all.
And inside it this time, it wasn’t just the promise of rest. Memories flashed through my mind that were not my own—sitting at a harpsichord, an itchy wig on my head; blowing into a trombone, the sting of cigarette smoke in my eyes; standing onstage at the Horse, but I’m singing Angela DuFresne’s song.
I know distantly that the wraith began with ugly memories, but the memories of those inside it—at least the ones I’m seeing—are so different from mine.
And the music is beautiful, powerful; I feel strong reliving it.
I want to keep reliving it. I wanted to keep being a part of all these new memories. Make them my own.
I decided to stay with them—
Then the shining edge of a blade slashes through me. I feel a stabbing pain and tumble onto the dirt.
Against the recoiling darkness of the wraith stood Cassius.