The preacher would not win over Lisa and Dixon Senior. They rose to stand alongside their son, oozing superiority and righteousness.
“Preacher, my son’s got news about Josephine Splitz and her kin which is of interest to this congregation,” said Dixon Goodwin Senior, a barrel-bellied man with a circlet of white hair and the same bristled baby face as his son. He planted his hands on his hips and revolved at the waist. “So I ask ya, folks. If my boy says what he’s got to tell ya is in keeping with the preacher’s sermon, shouldn’t the rest of us rightly hear it?”
“This is not the time or place to discuss disputes between individuals,” embarked Preacher Richards. He was immediately shot down.
“...Ain’t no matter between individuals. This is town talk.” Dixon Senior thrust a finger towards the back of the chapel. “This is about one of ‘em negresses and her pantry of potions in Jos Splitz’s workshop!”
There was a second expulsion of air from listeners’ lips. Ugly words were spoken under breath.
Dixon Senior rubbed a hand around his bald spot. “You seen it, ain’t you, son? And that ain’t all he seen? Tell ‘em about the giant maggot, a burrowing machine that sucks up all the water.”
Was she labouring under a brain-fever or were folk speaking in tongues? Carrie-Anne glanced back at Julie; the woman had the look of a startled jack rabbit and was working hard to push Wesley away. Carrie-Anne recognised why; when coloured folk were accused of something, only way to protect those they loved was by disassociation. Wesley didn’t get a bit of it though and kept wriggling his head up under his mother’s arm, all the while nervously flashing that broad smile of his as if he’d found it got him fuss before and he figured it might work now.
Carrie-Anne stood, her upper body bathed in the rich sunlight so that she was forced to squint against its brilliance. She tried to speak. Her throat clamped around her vocal cords.
“I am in no way a scientist, Mr and Mrs Goodwin, Dixon.” She nodded at each. “But it is my understanding that my aunt and her assistant, Mister Virgil Roberts, have been excavating below ground in a bid to find water and to understand what it is about the land beneath our feet which has left us in such dire straits.”
“Except, you ain’t in dire straights, are you, Miss Valentine? Not only have you water to feed the soil where you wanna, but a sorceress to raise them crops up with spilt rooster blood, devil’s weeds and every other kinda wickedness. ‘Use at midnight.’ That’s what I read, Miss Valentine. Written stark clear on a label it was. Use at the devil’s hour!”
Dixon’s expression was seven ways of wrong. And he wasn’t alone. More voices were cutting in.
“What a slave doin’ with her own store while we’re left to scrape around for seed and other provisions?”
“Always said Jos Splitz was lead-lined.”
“Heart of stone, that one.”
“Except when it comes to coloureds. Then she’s soft as marshmallow.”
“Coloureds with the know-how to mix magic? That’s a straight up sin. Ain’t no defending that.”
The eyes moved from Carrie-Anne to Julie. There was fragility in the air. One audible breath and the line between peace and pandemonium would be muddied.
“Exodus 22:18. Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,” said Lisa Goodwin, soft as the wind.
Carrie-Anne felt as if she was suffocating. So much white flesh crushed in around her like pulped pages from a bible.
“Enough with your accusations!” she spat. Her heart pulsed violently. Forcing her way past old Mrs Johnson, who shrunk into her desiccated bones, Carrie-Anne strode to the back of the chapel. Twice, a figure stepped into her way. Twice a voice told them to let her be. Through the smear of angry human shapes, she made out Samuel O’Ryan and George West. Good, honest men in a town awash with hokum.
She found Julie, fear and unshakeable knowledge etched into the lines of her face. Wesley was a phantom limb at his mother’s hip, arms encircling her.
Carrie-Anne reached out. The air inside the chapel turned shroud grey; she parted it with her hands like scissors slipping through silk. When her fingertips made contact with Julie’s wrist, she felt the housemaid shiver in spite of the tumbling waves of heat.
“Let’s go home, Julie.”
Out the corner of an eye, she saw a figure lurch from the back pew in a jilting motion. Cold dread poured down the inside of her ribs. She would not meet that vile stare. She would gather up Julie and Wesley to her side and she would walk with them out of chapel that day and deliver them safely home.
“Know what else I saw?” continued Dixon, a serpent at her back. “Last night, I was checking the grounds as is my employment when I find the workshop unlocked. Lotta fancy engine gear in that shack. This day and age, lotta folk in need of stealing such. So I slip inside. And I hear this ruckus. Any idea what I’m talking about, Miss Valentine?”
Eyes swirled towards her from every angle. The sun went in.
As Dixon went on with his sordid description, Carrie-Anne sensed the young men of Bromide wipe her from their palms like chaff. In a barren town, she had been the one sweet-smelling flower they could admire and dream of owning. Except now she was gone over. Another clean thing corrupted.
Their agitation was immediate. No insult was spared inside those hallowed walls. She was Jezebel, Salome, the Babylonian whore, and every other breed of temptress. But their anger was good. Anything to deflect attention from Julie.
Carrie-Anne made her way to the chapel door, Julie’s blistering handhold in hers, Wesley bundled into Julie’s folds... Only to find the exit was guarded by its own gargoyle of hunched flesh and mangled bone.
“About time the witches of Boar House paid their dues,” said Reg Wilhoit. His voice was a tar scrape, thickened over time. Hands that used to twist up inside her blouse and maul at her unformed breasts were pressing into and over one another, moulding the situation into his preferred shape.
“Move aside, Reg.” She concentrated her revulsion, taking strength from it.
“Time to pay, little lady.” A foul whisper. A forward shuffle on crumpled limbs.
“Stand away from the door.” Her eyesight blurred as a great hollow wind seemed to drag itself up beneath the underside of the chapel door and shriek past her ears. The sky is darkening, she thought, where I dreamt only of light. Far below the surface, her aunt and Virgil were crushing through the sand and rock in an effort to find fresh reserves of water, in an effort to save the lives of these nasty, vicious souls who would dig them out like louse and burn them for trying. Keep them below, she implored the subterranean world under their feet.
Reg teetered. He kept his sneer stitched in place.
Beneath her fingertips, in the creases of her palms, at the tender flesh of her lips, the baking air reverberated. Dust drifted out the corners and alcoves where it slept, leaving a soft grey charge in the atmosphere. Heat surged in at every chink in the chapel walls, gushing and churning and soaring all around her. Sweat bled from Carrie-Anne’s temples, and the dust, so much dust, roared like the battle cry of an archangel.
The latch snapped up on the chapel door suddenly. Someone pushed it open and Reg was elbowed aside in a rush of zigzagging steps.
A young man’s face appeared, cherry-toned by the midday heat.
“Preacher Richards!”
Carrie-Anne heard the preacher’s sombre acknowledgement, and through her black rage, the man’s hesitant explanation.
“Preacher, I hate to interrupt service but my daddy says I gotta tell ya there’s a dust cloud growing out to north and it’s a fierce un. Bigger than anything my daddy ever seen. Folk might need to get off home now, tie down what they need, forget what they don’t. There’s a helluva storm coming.”