The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Graverobbing Negress Seeks Employment ^{Eden Royce}

I pried apart the corpse’s lips, their slackness telling me she’d been dead more than two days, and worked the tip of my finger inside her mouth. It opened enough for me to wedge the funnel in, its tip clinking on her teeth. I tipped my porcelain-lined hip flask—metal was a no-no—to spill the tea into her mouth. She didn’t have to swallow; enough would make its way down for the magic to work. I leaned back from the shallow hole she lay in, my aged joints protesting something fierce, then recapped the hip flask before hiding it away with the funnel inside my stocking. Wasn’t nobody looking up these skirts.

Tonight was kind. The temperature along Charleston harbor had dropped, creating a soupy fog the moon couldn’t quite cut through. Enough light to see my way home, but too little to give busybodies a clear view. My ear was always open to the rustle of feet or the clop of hooves approaching, except I wouldn’t have to worry about avoiding carriages tonight—those horses’ eyes weren’t good in the dark no way. Even so, I looked around me as I crouched on the pile of fresh turned dirt next to her, waiting.

She stirred. A brief jolt like she’d been run through with a tease of lightning. When her eyes opened—the first thing they all did was open their eyes—they were just starting to turn milky. I took her hand and helped her rise from the pit she’d been thrown in.

“Come on, honey. Maybe in your next life, you’ll learn to pick better men.”

Her dress was ripped, exposing one small breast; her hem was stained stiff with blood and fluids. Did the best I could with arranging the little coils of her hair to cover the angry rope burns around her neck and the hole in her skull, ’cause tea don’t fix everything. I wrapped my cape around her narrow shoulders and leaned her back against a tree while I filled in the hole. Then we started walking, her with an awkward bow-legged hobble and me not much better.

Chilled wind blew in, clearing the dense blanket of fog, and I hurried our steps. A hurricane lantern burned in the back window of one of the little shotgun houses off Maple Street and we headed toward it, avoiding the backyards because of the dogs yowling, torn between the need to protect their territory and their fear of the dead. I tapped on the closed screened door with a ragtime rhythm and after some scrabbling and heated whispers, it opened.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus.” The woman inside, young-looking with old eyes, sagged against the uneven doorframe when she saw the pair of us. Her man stood behind, large and silent and watchful.

“You got a place for her to be?” I asked. The effect of the tea wouldn’t last forever and having a dead body lying around wasn’t good for no one, especially not Colored folk.

“Baby?” the woman asked.

The girl turned toward the voice. “I’m so sorry, Mama.” The words came out thickened and slow, pushed past the decaying tongue. The girl’s mama broke down, sobs wrenching from her throat as she pulled and tore at the scarf covering her head.

Her man came to her, took the woman and her daughter each by an arm and led them to a sturdy, homemade table. He set a kettle on the stove to boil, then slid my cape off the girl’s shoulders, folded it, then returned it to me. As he pressed coins into my hand, he said, “Reb Fielding got a special little place for her to rest in the St. Matthew graveyard now that she home.” His eyes skitted away from mine. “How long we got?”

I reared back to look at the sky. The moon hadn’t reached its high point yet, still a ways to go before sunrise. “Till day clean. ’Round five or six hours.”

“Thankee now.”

I nodded and headed off home. Cold was creeping in on the evening, and I pulled my cape tighter. Time for my own cup of tea.

The sandy-haired Negro boy gave me the signal. Casual-like, I turned to notice the street cart where it sat with its hand painted sign—P’nut Man & Hot Fried—and made my way over.

“How much for a lil bag?”

“Half penny, Miz Prosper.” He shook his head slightly as he said it and I knew there was news. “Got some hot fried that’s good today, though.”

“Please for some.”

I watched as he dropped a scoopful of chicken gizzards coated with seasoned corn meal into the hot grease and set the lid back on the cast iron kettle. Sun was blessing the day with warm breeze, but the heat coming off the cart felt good in my bones. He sold a couple steaming bags of boiled peanuts to some longshoremen, who clomped away to put in their time loading and unloading the ships, leaving empty brown shells sucked dry of briny juice to litter the walkway. The boy fished my hot fried out, sprinkled them with salt, then placed the crispy bits in newspaper, folded real careful-like. I handed him five pennies and he started to refuse, but I pressed them into palm. He looked at me with damp eyes and closed his fingers around the money, the back of his hand marked with scattered grease burns in circles and lines, a dark Morse Code on his light brown skin.

“Keep that. If you get the chance, you look out for me, hear?”

“Yas’m. Thank you, ma’am.”

I knew he already did, like most of the other Coloreds ’round here. If they didn’t, I mighta been caught long ago. Even though most church-going Negroes claimed to be scared of me, saying what I did wasn’t natural, I eased their minds by returning their kin to them so they could rest on blessed ground. Whispers about me had been going around the city for years, in the parlors and in the paper mills, on the farms and in the ironworks. If you can find your dead, then you better next find Miss Prosper.

Most of my work was from lynchings—Negroes dragged off to their ends for talking back, for having a business that started to cut into the white man’s, or for having independence of mind. Sometimes an unwelcome suitor who after the fire of passion died, dug a shallow grave to hide his shame. Might think it gets easier over the years, but no.

Even though my customers welcomed their dead back, I could see their deeper thoughts—anybody messin’ with life and death can’t be right with God. Of course, I ain’t evil, but what most minds can’t get a grip on…they call the devil’s work. I don’t work for Old Scratch, though I expect I’ll meet him one day if talk makes things true.

I turned my attention to the paper as I walked away, popping a steaming hot gizzard in my mouth. The chewy meat split as it bit into it, letting a stream of rich juice coat my tongue. Searching for the line that spoke directly to me, I found the young man had kept it just out of reach of the grease splashes.

The word courthouse was run through with two lines, striking it out. Next to it, written in lead pencil was the word blacksmith’s. After reading, I rolled the rest of the chicken onto the marked paper, letting the grease cover up the pencil marks. Then I finished my lunch and headed home to make the Life Everlasting.

Big Mama taught me how to make the Life Everlasting when I was a girl. It was from a recipe brought over here from Senegal, or somewheres. Like their jollof rice became our red rice, the recipe changed from family to family until nobody really knew which one was the first. I’d heard her and my gran, both strong root ladies, talking about it when they was making other teas to keep away fellas the ladies didn’t want, to keep bosses sweet, to win at the numbers… But I’d had to prove myself time and time again before they would teach me this blend.

“Never use this ’less you have to, hear?” Big Mama told me before she lay out all what went in the tea. “Little glug, Prosper… Only little glugs ’til you’s sure how much to take. And make it weak at first.”

I still lay out the ingredients for the tea like she taught me that first day so long ago. What was it? Ninety years or so now? I wondered what they would think of me using their tea to move the dead. Shoot, maybe they already knew what I used it for.

It was getting harder to find everything now, but I found I could make small changes and have the tea work just fine. Long as I could get pepper berry and sun gold root, it’d be okay. The redbush tea leaves and kola nuts I grew myself.

I steeped everything in my clay pot, no metal could touch this blend, then left it to cool. Once I strained it through two layers of muslin, it would be ready. I stoked the flames in my fireplace to warm the room and keep my hands from shaking. I had to fill the jars careful-like, not wanting to waste a drop of my hard work.

A knock came on my door, gentle like it was scared, but firm like it had run outta choice. If they stood at my door, they likely had.

I opened the door to see a wide eyed boy, not more than eight or ten, on the step. He was breathing hard, musta been running like a bat outta torment. His high water pants with no socks told me all I needed to know.

“Come on in here now, chile.”

He was scared, and I couldn’t blame him. No idea what kinda stories he heard about me. But I knew what I looked like, right ’round forty or fifty some odd years old—old enough to command like a wise woman but spry enough to do the job. When the cold got in these bones, though, I felt every one a my hundred years. I never was pretty, but that was a blessing my mother had given me. Pretty women caught too many eyes. And hands.

The boy edged inside, keeping his hand on the doorknob. His eyes darted around like flies on road kill.

“You want something to eat? Drink?” He shook his head roughly. “Didn’t think so. Well, why you here? Crack ya teeth, son.”

“They foun’ my brother.”

“Who chile is you?”

“Francis Station, ma’am.”

I whistled long and low. Francis Station’s son had been missing for years, since Mayor Bradley found out his daughter had been sniffing around him. I can’t say he wasn’t sniffin’ too, but he shoulda known not to let nobody see them together. Heard some white man dragged him from behind one of them machines he used to work on at the paper mill and nobody seen him since.

“Where?” I asked.

“Out the marsh by Runnin’ Jack place. ’Neath that sick-looking poplar tree. I made a mark like they said I was to.”

I sat back in my chair. Dangerous. Jack ran numbers and liquor, but he wouldn’t stand for nobody on his property. I don’t know how the boy got out there and back, ’cause Jack tended to shoot first and never ask questions. They say not to trust crackers who live near Negroes. I had to hope I could get in and outta there quick and not let him catch me.

“All right, chile.” The job in the paper had to wait. Had to hope they’d understand. “I’ll go, but—”

The boy held out his hand, stopping my words. Two Stella coins lay in his palm. “Mama said she know it ain’t safe, so she’ll pay you first. And two more when you get him.”

Sixteen dollars total. Christ rising. I took the coins and patted the boy on the shoulder. “You tell her I’mma go there tonight.”

“Yes’m.”

After he left, I sat there for about an hour, looking at the door until nightfall, the moon and stars lighting up my table. Then I filled my flask, tied the funnel to its neck, got my shovel, and left the house. The tea was still warm where it pressed against my inside thigh. I’d had a swig of it myself earlier and it erased the ache in my joints, gave me a bit more energy. The shovel I tied to the inside of my cape and it bounced silently against my generous bottom as I walked to where the marshland met the dirt.

Outta the corner of my eye, I could see Runnin’ Jack’s place edged up against the marsh, where fireflies dove in and around the reeds. Big ol’ house, but not much to look at with its peeling paint and flaking wood. Barn didn’t look much better. Splintered wheels and broken buggies dotted the backyard. All was quiet, save for the chorus of frog song, making me think this was just gonna be like any other cemetery visit.

Sorry to say it wasn’t.

I managed to find the poplar tree, with its white chalk mark slash pretty easy. It was sick, likely from the rot in the soul of the person who buried the dead here. I loosened my shovel from inside my cape and said a swift prayer that this was gonna be a cakewalk.

A patch of grass lifted away in one straight piece. Underneath, a layer of earth was loose, releasing the smell of rich soil. I scraped it away. Against the black dirt, white bone shined. The boy must have stopped here and run to his mama because the rest of the dig was into harder dirt, like the earth had to make up for the soft dank pluff mud of the marsh just feet away. Glad I didn’t have to come through that way. Charleston was famous for its pluff mud and even binyahs like me lost a shoe once or twice to its sucking hold.

I grunted as the shovel only broke through fingernail-sized bits of dirt at a time, making me use elbow grease I didn’t have. Hot and sweaty, I stopped for a moment, easing my back upright, taking big glugs of the cool air off the marsh. It held the sweetness of life and death, swampy and ocean cool. I lost myself in it and didn’t hear the footsteps approaching.

He tackled me from behind, holding my legs together, and sent me head first toward the base of the tree where it poked through the hard pack dirt. I kept from slamming my face into the gnarled roots of the poplar by twisting my body and taking the knock on my shoulder. The wind flew out of me and I rolled to my back, the shovel thudding to the ground. I heard Jack grab for it and toss it away. His weight felt like a stone where he had me pinned to the ground, pressing his man parts against me like we played night games. His face was weathered, pale skin drawn tight against his skull. Salt-and-pepper whiskers and a beat-up fishing hat covered most of what else I tried to see. But those rabbit gray eyes held me sure as his body.

“What’re you doing on my land?” He growled the question out and its scent reached me, swimming in tobacco and fish grease. His fumbled for something in his pants and my breath caught, but he just pulled out a revolving gun, the kind Army men tended to have. Satisfied I had seen it, he lay it against my belly.

There was something in his face that I knew. I couldn’t place it, but it was there. The shape of his brow, the line of grizzled hair running along his cheek? I saw it, felt it in my spirit. Knew it as sure as I could breathe. Breeze blew up off the marsh, shifting the clouds and letting more of the moon’s smile through to touch his pale face so close to mine. The answer called to me in a memory of blood.

“You a Negro,” I whispered.

“And you’re a witch. Facts neither one of us wants told.” He cocked the gun. “Now where’s that leave us, Miss Prosper?”

I eyed the oiled metal barrel, then frowned. “With you lettin’ me sit up off this cold ground.”

He thought about it, then sat back, freeing my legs. I shuffled to sit up, smoothing my long skirt down. He didn’t help, just watched me with them rabbit fur gray eyes and tapped the gun on his knee.

“Why’re you here?” he asked again.

“To do a job. You got a child buried out here, Mr. Jack and I—”

“You ain’t taking nothing from my property.”

“What? I’m talking about a child. His mama just want to bury him. That’s all.”

He shook his head.

“A boy someone lynched for looking sideways at a girl, that’s all. A Negro boy. Or don’t you care about your own people?”

His eyes stayed on mine and I shivered like ghosts was looking in my face. “I said you are not to take a thing off my property.”

Frustrated, I thumped the ground with my fists. I had nothing, no weapon, and I felt foolish for never thinking to bring one. Never needed to before. “It’s a dead, Jack, a dead! Why you wanna keep a dead here?”

He thought about my question, then he spat out a thick wad of wet tobacco. “Leave ’em be. No good comes of draggin’ up the past.”

As he sat on the cold ground looking down at me, I realized. Whispers said it was white men who had taken them children off over the years to God only knew what kinda fate. And it never occurred to me that someone might use that fact to hide his own sins.

Real fear took me then and I shook with it. “It was you. All this time.” When he didn’t say anything, I yelled. “Wasn’t it?”

“Whites kill coloreds all the time.” Jack worked a finger into his ear, digging. Wiped it clean on his dungarees. “Everybody knows that. I just had to make sure I picked the right ones; ones they woulda gotten to eventually. All I had to do was keep to myself and dig fast.”

I felt tears burn my eyes, run down my face in hot trails. “Why?” I choked on the word. The marsh grass shooshed in the still air.

He shrugged. “I can’t help killin’. I need it… like breathing.”

My heart flipped in my chest. I searched the ground for something, anything, to use to save my life. The tea running through my system would buy some time, but it wouldn’t heal me from gunshot. A flicker caught my eye and I saw the cutting edge of the shovel for a moment as the clouds passed over. Nestled against the marsh reeds, out of reach.

Jack got to his feet, towering over where I sat on the ground next to the half dug hole. He’d probably finish digging it and slide me in next to the dead.

“It keeps me calm. Helps me sleep.” Training the gun on me, he turned up first one shirt sleeve, then the other. “I plan to sleep well tonight.”

“You sho is, Mister Jack.” The voice came from behind him and as he spun around, the crack of a rifle followed.

His head flung back like he was about to offer up a prayer, but I knew that couldn’t be as I could see the sky through his skull. He swayed, crashed to the ground. Slow-like, his body fell back, meeting up with the trunk of the poplar.

I swung my head to see Francis Station lowering her husband’s rifle and my breath eased out of me. Her young boy, the one who had come to me earlier, stood behind her. They were both barefoot, feet covered in shiny brown pluff mud from the marsh up to the ankles.

“My boy told me you was coming tonight. I just… wanted to see.”

I didn’t ask why she thought she had to bring a gun, but I was grateful and I told her so. “Glad you came, honey. I ’preciate you.”

We both dug, me with the shovel and her with the hoe that the boy had brought along. Soon, we uncovered what was left of a reed-thin young man, once handsome from the way his bones and what was left of his dark skin came together. I tried to cover most of the rot with my cape, but she stopped me.

“No, I wanna see him. His pa… ain’t gone want to.”

“Alrighty.” No need to pull away the lips; they were mostly gone. I poured the tea through the exposed teeth, where it ran across and down into the space just before the jawbone hinged to the rest of the skull.

While we waited, she asked, “Can you make him whole? Just for a little while? It’s been…”—she cleared her throat—“a long time.”

“No, I can’t,” I said, grateful that tea can’t fix everything. I didn’t want that magic. “Spend this little time you have with him, then let him rest. That’s always my advice.”

She pressed her lips together, but nodded and I was sure she’d heed me. I turned to the rustling now coming from the makeshift grave. “Come on now. Time for you to get on home.”

I parted with the Station family at the top of their road, promising to show up at the services if I was able. I guzzled the rest of the Life Everlasting I’d made on my way home, hoping it would ease my aches and bruises. As I shuffled along, I was starting to wonder if I was up to whatever the job for the blacksmith was. How was I supposed to remove any more fragile items when I felt like one myself?

I chafed my fingers, the brief warmth fighting off the creeping chill of the hushed night. And how many was a “large number,” anyways? Ten? Twenty? Sure, I could brew up enough tea, but what about the cost to myself? Seeing my people broken up and beat down, tore and tattered made me weary. Forever after, I’d be wondering how many of ’em Jack killed, after giving in to that mad fever in his head. A few more empty streets brought me shuffling up to my doorstep. Never have I been so happy to see my little house, but it made my mind run on how many others was out there waiting to be found so they could catch they final little piece a home.

Once inside, I made myself a cup of Forty Winks tea to help me sleep. Something to calm my mind, help me stop thinking about this last job, what it meant to my peace and my future in this town. I breathed in the scent of magnolia bark and mulungu, and took a small sip. I shook myself at the taste—like perfume on dry roots—and said a silent prayer for God to guide my mind. All the while knowing I was gonna take that job, no matter how dangerous it was. I stayed up all night drinking that brew and staring out into the dark, because tea don’t fix everything.