Ring Shout(36)

I stand up just as something jumps past me and I realize it’s one of the Klans. I look down to see more swarming and climbing up the platform. But they not coming for me or Chef. They running to the Grand Cyclops, leaping to meet her and getting sucked into that flesh, their bodies healing the damage.

“Shit!” Chef says.

She don’t get another word out as a tentacle whips out, hitting her full on to send her flying. I shout as she goes spinning into the night. Then a whole mass of tentacles rain down, tearing apart half the movie screen and smashing the platform, taking me and whoever else down in a shower of splintered wood.

The world goes spinning and it seems forever before it stops. I lift up from where I land, bruised all over, to crawl from beneath the debris. Lost my cap, and now I blink away rainwater looking for Chef. Michael George got to be here too. I make it to my knees, to find the Grand Cyclops waiting, raised to her full awful height. With the screen torn near to shreds, moving pictures reflect off her body—ghostly images of Klans riding horses across translucent flesh. She bends down, glaring with one mass of endless eyes burning with anger. No, that there’s hate.

You would deny us! Wound us! We will wipe you from this world!

I raise up, planting feet firm and lifting my sword.

“Well.” I pant slow. “Don’t take all day.”

But those mass of eyes not looking at me no more. Something else caught their attention. I turn to see a figure stepping sideways out of nothing, his body flat as paper before filling out into a brown-skinned man in an all-white suit and a matching bowler cocked to the side.

Dr. Bisset.

“You’re late.”





Notation 7:

When President Lincoln send out the emancipation, the stingy masters them didn’t want the slaves to learn about it. But slaves had they own ways of knowing. One named John, he raised up in the kitchen, and stole away how to read watching missus teach her young’uns. He come with a letter on the emancipation, and everybody in the cabins gather ’round as he read. That’s why we call this Shout Read ’em, John, Read ’em for the day he come to tell the people about they freedom!

—Interview with Uncle Will, age sixty-seven, transliterated from the Gullah by EK





NINE

Dr. Bisset stands there blindfolded, not a bit wet, like the rain afraid to touch him.

“There is no early or late with us,” he answers. “Just a matter of time.”

He definitely been around them haints too long. Wait—us?

The dead Angel Oak tree up and appears right behind him, branches going every which way across the mountaintop. Around it stand half a dozen figures, untouched as well by the rain and too tall to be men, with wrinkled skin for faces.

Night Doctors.

The Grand Cyclops roars, endless mouths gnashing teeth as she pushes past me to meet this threat. One of the Night Doctors lifts an arm to throw out a bone-white rope of chain with a curved hook. It latches onto her trunk, digging in and pulling. She brings down a thick tentacle, crushing the Night Doctor flat and throwing up chunks of stone. A second tentacle crushes another. My heart drops, thinking she killed them dead. But the two slide out from under the tentacles and stand back up, whole! Just like that! They lift arms to throw new chains, one hook catching the Grand Cyclops’s neck and another latching to a snarling mouth. More chains fly, each digging into her monstrous body. Something shimmery travels down those links to the Night Doctors that quivers their wrinkled faces, and I realize they feeding on her. Feeding on her hate, and the hate of all the people that make her up. It must hurt something fierce, because all those mouths scream. Not in rage no more, but pain. And fear.

She tries to pull free, scrambling back. But the Night Doctors already turned away, chains slung over their shoulders. Some Ku Kluxes shed their human skins, running to protect their god. But the Night Doctors swat them away one-handed or snap their necks like chickens. Them frightful beings never stop their stride, walking into the dead Angel Oak tree one by one. The Grand Cyclops is dragged along, caught like a fish even as she struggles to break free, dozens of human hands erupting from her body to grab hold at anything. But there’s only the smooth mountaintop, and those fleshy fingers skitter across stone and rainwater in vain.

When she reaches the tree its bleached-white trunk opens wide, like a gaping mouth. The Grand Cyclops’s tentacles lash at the branches, trying to tear off limbs, desperate as she sends out frightened shrieks. But it’s no use. That dead tree swallows her up, where the dissecting hall waits. Bet she not gon’ like that. Under my breath, I whisper Chef’s ditty:

Night Doctors, Night Doctors

You can cry and carry on.

But when they done dissectin’

Every bit of you is gone.

“A bargain kept,” Dr. Bisset’s voice comes. Then a pause. “On your left.”

It’s the only warning as a silver cleaver slices for my neck. I jump back, bringing up my sword in time to block it. Butcher Clyde. He wearing his true face now—eyes turned to orifices ringed with teeth, while more mouths howl under his wet robes, spitting their rage.

“You betrayed us! Ruined our plans!”

He so mad he not so much fighting as battering me with those cleavers. But they powerful strong, striking dazzling sparks off my sword.

“Going to kill you! Then eat you! Make you meat!”