“Something Virginie made come up out of the earth?”
“Or something she unleashed by mistake.”
Blake sits, thinking it over. Finally, still shaking his head, he says, “And we’re the first people to read this?”
“No. We’re just the first people not to dismiss it as the voodoo mumbo jumbo of a traumatized people.”
But she’s got more than words to present. The sketch she places in front of him is a pixelated scan of a crude ink drawing. The grand facade of Spring House is plainly visible in the background, but it’s not quite to scale with the clump of stick-figure slaves standing in the foreground next to a giant oak tree. One of their own is lassoed to its giant trunk in a manner that wouldn’t be possible in real life, given the tree’s size. The overseer’s whip has been caught in midair by a giant snake that’s unfurled from one of the branches overhead. But it has no eyes, no flickering, cartoonish tongue. But if it’s not a snake, then it has to be…
Blake knows this is the part where he should continue shaking his head in disbelief, dismissing the story as the childish folklore of a primitive and uneducated people. But he can no longer muster such a reaction, and so he sees Nova softening before him as she realizes she won’t have to mount a stronger defense of this incredible tale.
“So…,” Nova finally says. “What did Jane Percival say?”
Blake knows his next words will amount to a kind of surrender, that much of what other people have regarded as his defining courage sprang from his belief that he had survived one of the worst blows life could deliver. But now, suddenly, the rules about what life can hurl at you have been suspended, and he hesitates, scared of what this could unleash. He knows, though, something has already been unleashed—both in 1850, and now it’s happening again for some reason—and if he stays silent, it will amount to a betrayal, of Nova and her father, whose lifework is Spring House and everything that rises from its soil.
“She said the vines are coming for us all.”
The eighteen-wheelers lumbering past outside seem hollow and insubstantial, their great tires skating across a line between air and earth that seems perilously in doubt. The waitress comes to refill their water glasses, but something about the tense energy coursing between the two of them causes her to recoil wordlessly, retreating behind the counter and shooting a hasty glance in their direction, as if she has mistaken the stunned silence between them for the calculation of armed robbers preparing to strike.
Then Nova’s cell phone rings, and she is digging in her backpack for it, and she’s uh-huhing her way through what sound like pleasantries on the other end, and Blake is wondering if, just as the revelation that Santa Claus was a myth killed the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and a host of other childhood fantasies for him, this current revelation and its spreading, unavoidable implications are opening a doorway that will admit more than one impossible guest.
Then Nova shoots to her feet and cries, “What do you mean he went back there?”
19
The gas station is an island of light beside the two-lane blacktop. Caitlin turns into it at the last possible second, even though her BMW X5 has over half a tank, more than enough to get her to Spring House and back to New Orleans.
The attendant looks up from his magazine behind bulletproof glass, face shaded from the sodium-vapor lights by the bill of his John Deere baseball cap. When she goes to put her credit card into the reader, she sees that there isn’t one and is reminded that she’s not in Uptown, but several miles up the west bank of the river from Luling, where the population is sparse and one fuel-and-run could take away half a day’s business.
“Pay first,” comes the attendant’s voice through the speaker overhead.
Instead, Caitlin stands next to her shiny black SUV, the gas pump frozen in one hand. She figures she has only minutes left, so she opens the gas tank anyway and begins unscrewing the cap.
“Pay first, ma’am.”
Just then, the sedan that’s been following her for a half hour blows past the gas station. It’s hard to keep track of its continued speed in the darkness, but a few moments later she sees the sedan’s brake lights flash on, angry red eyes trailing away around the bend in the highway up ahead. Slowing. Calculating. Waiting?
“Pay f—”
“Fuck off!” Caitlin roars. She’s staring at the attendant before she realizes she’s whirled on him. The undeniable astonishment in his expression at such full-voiced fury coming from so delicate a woman chases away any remorse she might feel over her outburst, replacing it with bone-deep satisfaction.
When she nods and smiles, the guy begins reaching for something under his desk, without taking his glazed eyes off her. Whether it’s a gun or an alarm button, she’s not sure. And now that she’s confirmed she’s still being followed, there’s no need for her to linger.
Fifteen minutes later she is traveling up River Road when the sedan’s headlights appear in her rearview mirror again.
20
“I’m not getting this,” Kyle Austin says.
“Spring House, her plantation,” Mike says. “That’s where she’s headed.” Kyle is still sitting at Scott’s desk, watching the green-flared quadrants on the computer screen that show various angles on Caitlin Chaisson’s now-empty house.
Mike’s voice sounds tinny through the prepaid cell phone. Scott has given up trying to overhear, and now he’s headfirst in the kitchen pantry, probably getting ready to stress eat or make some kind of protein shake with five shots of bull adrenaline and a methamphetamine chaser.
“I mean, I don’t understand why you’re following her. The house on St. Charles is just sitting there, empty. Shouldn’t we make a play?”
“A play?”
“For the tape.”
“Yeah… but this might be more interesting.”
“Interesting. We’re going for interesting now. What does—”
“Don’t be such a little bitch, Austin. She’s on the move, alone, at one in the morning—”
“So what, man?”
“So rather than looking for a needle in a goddamn mansion, I could maybe see if she’s covering up something about her fucking husband that we could use to get the tape out of her. You get me?”
“We’re not detectives.”
“We’re not murderers either, but that’s what everyone will think if she ever wants them to.”
We’re not? Kyle thinks.
Across the apartment, Scott seems to have produced his own answer to the question needling Kyle’s brain. He hasn’t been rooting around in the pantry for protein powder or energy drinks. Instead, he’s set a giant gun case on the counter from which he has removed maybe the largest handgun Kyle has ever laid eyes on. It’s a 500 Smith & Wesson Magnum, so long it looks like it would be impossible to aim with one hand. Kyle’s seen videos of the things online blowing the shit out of cinderblocks with a single bullet. Handgun hunting, they call it.
Scott’s got a cocky half smile on his face until he sees the expression on Kyle’s.
“Story of my fucking life,” Mike growls. “Tell you what, how ’bout you kids just sit back and I’ll clean up the whole mess, and when I’m done I’ll bring you a pretty hat you can wear to church with the other ladies.”
Mike Simmons hangs up on him before he can answer, and then it’s just Kyle, Scott, and the cartoonishly large gun sitting on the kitchen counter like a prop from a comic book. And Kyle Austin thinks, Maybe you should be the one cleaning up the mess. You’re the one who whacked Fuller with the goddamn pipe.