She Walks in Shadows(3)

The boy was camped out on the front steps of the house, under the shade of the trees. Just as she had feared. He had a paper in his hand and was copying from it onto the front steps with chalk, great circles and scrawls, dark head bent over his work, too intent to hear her approach.

She pounced, snatching up paper and chalk. The paper had circles and diagrams and calculations in her son’s neat hand. Strange meaning oozed from the signs. She crumpled the paper up and thrust it into her pocket. Her head pounded, and dark things crawled and snatched at the edges of her vision. “What have you done?” she whispered, appalled.

His white face looked up at her, the bony length of adulthood already breaking through the childish roundness; deep-set eyes, dark-ringed with lack of sleep, gazed, solemn and intent.

“I returned for the cat,” he said, with his peculiar, particular confidence. “I dreamed he came back and was waiting for me on the steps of our residence.”

“This is not our house,” she said softly, because to speak loudly would jar her head. “We can”t just do what we like here. You have made a dreadful mess. Oh, I’m ashamed.”

“It is Gramps’ abode,” he asserted.

“Do not use the word, ‘Gramps.’ It is common. Call him Grandfather,” she said. She reached out a hand to lift him. He evaded her grasp and ran up to the top of the steps. “Come down at once,” she snapped.

He turned to face the street. He filled his lungs.

“Niggerman!” he bawled.

A colored man was walking below. He snapped around as the boy called. His face was a mask, shadowed under the hat’s brim, concealing his true feelings.

Her son’s vulgarity gave her the impetus to climb the stairs. She dragged him back down.

“No gentleman would use that word,” she hissed. “You just apologize.” She looked up, but the man was gone.

“That was the cat’s name,” she said, too late, to empty air. “He didn’t mean —”

“Gramps gave the cat that name,” the boy said, unabashed.

“Your grandfather was not a gentleman. He made his own fortune and was never able to shake off his youthful habit of vulgar speech. I expect better from you,” she snapped.

She hauled her son away, walking too fast for him in this breathless heat.

“But Gramps will require his habitation when he returns,” the boy protested.

“Your Grandfather is not coming back. He has passed away. He is with the Lord.”

He gazed at her pityingly. “The idea of a benevolent all-knowing deity is but a pathetic illusion of the rabblement.”

He had taken to using archaic words he read in his grandfather’s 1828 Webster”s Dictionary. It was part of a long game he played at being an 18th-century gentleman. She normally took pride in his game, but now, she was filled with fury at his pedantic speech. She took a fresh grasp on the small, sweating hand and hurried.

That was when she realized she was muttering to herself, fists clenched, eyes staring and mouth square and wide. People took one look at her and crossed the street. She forced herself to calm down. Colors of strange shape and brightness blotched her vision. She forced herself to let go of her son’s hand.

She slowed her step, glanced down at her son, and smiled, willing to pretend there was nothing wrong. Unfortunately, he took her gesture as encouragement.

“Are you recomposed, Mother?” he inquired politely. “Remember I used to climb in the old tree above the family plot in the cemetery? I watched Gramps’ grave. I know Gramps is destitute of life. He is decomposed. That is a jest. He is eaten by worms. They have burrowed into his brain. It is riddled through and through with worms. I watched Father’s grave, too, pretending he was still alive and would try to claw his way out. But he never did. He’s dead, too, I expect. And the cat,” he finished.

Shock swelled in her throat. “I told you that cat ran off. Even a dumb brute had more sense than to stay with poor folk like us.”

“He drowned,” the boy said. “Poor old fellow. He is deceased.”

“Where did you hear that?” Had Lillian told him? Had she talked in her sleep?

“I saw it in my dream,” he said. “But I will bring them both back. With that paper you took. I saw the straight lines between the stars. I worked the calculations. If they follow the lines, they will come back, Gramps and the cat. They will undergo a rejuvenescence.”

She knelt and took his shoulders. “You stop this nonsense,” she said frightened.

“It is not nonsense. It is a real word. It means they will become young again,” the boy said, mistaking the source of her concern.

Now, the first odd thing about Joseph Curwen was that he did not seem to grow much older ….

She put her hand to his forehead. His father had babbled like this before they took him away, babbled in Butler Hospital for years as his brain and face rotted from within, not that she’d ever let the boy visit him.

His brow was hot to the touch and damp. His eyes were too bright, feverish, and sweat shone on his face. “There, look what you’ve done. You’ve brought on one of your nervous fits,” she said.

He couldn’t eat any supper. She put him in his truck bed in the tiny bedroom they shared. His hair was damp and his face shone. His too-bright eyes, unsleeping, bored into the roof overhead. She sat down beside him and watched him, bathing his forehead.