Ring Shout(29)

All at once, something seizes me. I go down, my head smacking the floor. I see stars, then realize I’m moving. Someone got ahold of me, dragging me by my feet. I twist my head up in panic, thinking to find the centipede thing. But it’s a different monster.

They look like men. No, giants. There’s two of them, in long white robes. One has me by a six-fingered hand, pale skin stretched tight over bone. Remembering Chef’s knife at my waist, I fumble for it, get it in my fingers, and plunge it into that hand. Don’t even make a dent. But the one holding me turns a head about on a slender neck, and the fight drains out of me. No doubt about it—this is a Night Doctor.

The face looking at me is colorless and empty—no eyes or nose, no mouth even. Just wrinkled skin on a long head. A set of voices start in my ears, whispering like sliding knife blades. I go stiff, my body caught in ropes I can’t see as I’m hoisted atop a flat block of stone. All about me are Night Doctors, staring down with their no-faces. My eyes all I can move, and I roll them about, like a frightened animal in a trap.

Dr. Bisset walks into my vision, small next to these giants. “As you came here of your own will, my lords will hear your petition of bargain.” He leans in close. “But I cannot guarantee your leaving.”

I try to open my mouth to speak, but find it still shut.

“No need. My lords have their own ways of understanding.”

That whispering comes again. A whole lot of it. Can’t move my eyes no more or even blink. I stare straight up to where another block of stone is descending. It got silver things stuck to it—one like a scissor, another a curved knife, others with needles and hooked ends. They look like things from Molly’s laboratory. Like her dissecting table.

When the first cut comes to my belly, I’d scream if I could. The pain like nothing I ever felt, and the only thing in the world is that suffering. Those six-fingered hands pull me wide open, like they cleaning fowl. One reaches inside, lifting out something I think is my liver. They pass it bloody between them, running fingers along it, each bending to inspect in turn. Between my agony I can hear Dr. Bisset talking.

“My lords were the first practitioners of hepatoscopy, who taught it to the Babylonians and the priestesses of Saturn, to read the mysteries of the entrails. For it is here we keep our secrets hidden.”

In my head, memories flash—watching a mob hunt down colored folk in Elaine, Arkansas; Ku Kluxes rampaging down Greenwood in Tulsa; Sadie’s face gone still. My misery, my pain, served up to these monsters on a plate. They read it all, like some witch sorting through a gutted possum. They cut and take, pulling out my bladder and ropes of glistening intestines, until I’m screaming even with my mouth closed, singing to them all the misery I seen. Somehow I can hear it, echoing through their white halls until blackness takes me.

When I open my eyes I’m at my house, looking at the door hanging off its hinges. My belly is whole, and I’m not covered in tree blood. But it’s night. Always night.

“Interesting,” a voice comes.

I jump, turning to find Dr. Bisset, standing where he don’t belong.

“What you doing here?”

“Observing.”

“Is this in my head? Or is it real?”

He glances to me behind his blindfold. “Would it make a difference?”

I see he been around haints enough to take up their sideways talking.

“Did they send me here?”

“There’s something here my lords cannot see. Something you hold deep. It intrigues them. And that is rare.” He turns, walking inside the house, forcing me to follow. He goes straight for the hatch and I overtake him, grabbing his arm.

“No! Not this.”

But he pulls away, slippery as a fish, and throws open the secret door. His head cocks curious at the girl, before he offers a hand. I’m surprised when she takes it, climbing out the hole in a way she never would for me. She holding something—the silver hilt of my sword, with a jagged piece of black sticking out. So it’s broken here too.

Dr. Bisset bends to one knee. “You’ve been in here a long time.”

The girl nods. “It’s where she keeps me.”

“I don’t keep you nowhere!” I snap, anger bubbling up.

She looks at me, and the fear in her round eyes sets me back.

“Why do you stay down there?” Dr. Bisset asks.

“To hide from the monsters. The ones who came looking.”

“That was seven years ago!” I shout.

Dr. Bisset glances between us, and whatever he got under that blindfold put two and two together quick. “You look young for just seven years past,” he tells the girl.

“She keeps me this way. Think it’s easier to imagine me small.”

“Then let us sweep away all illusions.” Dr. Bisset waves a gloved hand, and the girl changes. She still in a nightshirt, but she’s eighteen now. And she looks more like me. Not quite the woman of twenty-five, but no denying who she’ll become.

“Now,” he says, looking between us. “Tell me about the monsters.”

When I don’t speak, she do.

“They come one night, while we sleeping. Men, wearing white sheets and hoods. Daddy open the door holding his shotgun, and they start quarreling. My brother, he say they look like ghosts. But I can see them proper. They ain’t men. They monsters. I try to tell mama, but my brother put me into the hatch.”