Dead to Her(100)

It was only as she peered more closely, to brush away a few lingering sickly flies, that she saw it, dark against dark. She picked it up. A ball. Black and lumpy as if made of mud dredged up from the bed of a stagnant river filled with rot. Not mud, she thought, rolling it around in her hands in horror. Earth and dirt and something else. What was that? She got back in the car and flicked on the light before recoiling in horror. Was that fur? Black fur? She rubbed the surface harder and looked at her fingers. A deep dark red. Blood and earth and fur bound together. There was something more, catching her eye. At first she thought it was strands of cotton bound around the revolting sphere, but as she picked one free she saw it was hair. Blond hair. Her hair.

Maybe Keisha was right. Maybe they were cursed.





61.

“Tell us about the boy.”

Keisha stared at the man across the table, her heart fluttering like a leaf caught in the storm outside.

“Auntie Ayo said I was cursed. She said there was no boy. She said I was seeing a ghost and I’d upset the spirits because I was a wicked little girl. She said I had to stop talking about him, otherwise the curse would never go. I had to forget about him.”

“You didn’t forget about him though, did you?”

“No,” she said quietly. “And look where I am now.”

“I don’t think you’re cursed, Keisha,” he said, and she wondered what someone like him could possibly know about it. He was a heavy-set man, old enough that the skin of his jaw hung in jowls, dragging him downward toward his grave. His aftershave was clean, not suffocating and floral like Billy’s. His accent was gruff and London, the words clipped and hard next to the sweet Savannah drawl, but oh, how she’d missed it. He was steady and sturdy and she doubted he dreamed. His name was Detective Sergeant Dexter.

“Tell us when you first saw him,” he said.

“He was a ghost in the night,” she said quietly, withdrawing back into her past, growing smaller as she remembered, the room around her fading. “I had just turned six. I remember because I didn’t have a birthday party. Uncle Yahuba’s cousin had come to visit and Auntie Ayo said I had to stay in my room and be quiet. I didn’t mind. I didn’t like him. He never smiled and he and Uncle Yahuba would get drunk on rum and talk until late. They sounded like tigers to me. One night I woke up upset. I’d been dreaming about my mother and it was the first time her face had been blurred and half-forgotten, and when I woke up I couldn’t picture her at all. It was the worst thing. I wanted to go to the sitting room and look at one of the old photos taken when they were all young that Auntie Ayo had on the wall. It wasn’t my mother’s face as I knew it, but it would be at least an image of her.”

It was strange how the memory she’d tried to repress for all these years came back so vividly. The damp smell of the house from having no central heating, only storage heaters that didn’t work well. The feel of the flock wallpaper under her fingers. The carpet beneath her bare feet swirling in garish patterns. “I was nervous—Auntie Ayo said I wasn’t allowed out of my room at night—she worked her best juju in the dark she said, and clients often came at midnight or later and wanted their privacy—and if I needed to pee there was a bucket in the corner of the room.” A black bucket that had stayed in Keisha’s room until she was thirteen and got her period. But by then, she would be fetching rum for the late-night visitors and taking their money while they waited; the bucket was no longer needed. She remembered how she’d felt when that had gone. Trusted. At last part of the family, even if there was no real love there.

“The house was silent and dark so I crept out, holding my breath until I was past the bedrooms and at the top of the stairs. I could hear Uncle Yahuba’s cousin snoring as I passed his door, but still I didn’t relax. I knew they’d beat me if I broke the rules. Uncle Yahuba liked to beat the devil out of me when I was wicked. Especially after the boy. I was halfway down the stairs when it happened.” Her breath caught with the clarity of the memory. The release of it.

“He just appeared in the corner of the downstairs hallway, stepping out of the deep shadows there. As if he’d walked through the wall. I nearly screamed but clutched my hand to my mouth and dropped to a crouch. He was small, I guess maybe my age, but not so tall as me, and he was so pale he glowed in the darkness. A ghost. He was a ghost, a spirit like Auntie Ayo would talk about. His skin was like a dead white man’s and even his tight curly hair was a snowy frosting on his head. He wore a white T-shirt and shorts even though it wasn’t warm and he had a burn scar up one arm. I stared at him, and he stared at me, and then he turned around and disappeared into the wall again.”

Dexter was scribbling notes down, although Keisha couldn’t see why any of it was important. “So this was the year 2004?” he asked, and Keisha nodded. “I guess so, if I was six.”

“And when is your birthday?”

“April fourth.”

Dexter paused. Another scribble. “How many times did you see the boy?”

“Seven. Over about a month, I guess. Not every night. Just now and then. I started to creep out to look for him when everyone was asleep. He never spoke and he never came up close, but we would just look at each other for a few moments before I’d run back to my room. The ghost boy in the walls, that’s what I thought of him as. I wondered why he always looked so sad. Sadder than me.” She paused. “I promised myself that I’d speak to him next time, but I never did. There was never a next time. And when I finally asked Auntie Ayo if she’d ever seen the ghost, she told me I was cursed.”