Catfish Lullaby Read online

  “Caleb, what—” His father’s eyes were red with exhaustion; insomnia often ate away his hours until late into the night. He’d probably only just gotten to sleep.

  “Archie Royce’s place is burning.” A sick thrill ran through Caleb. Hadn’t he wished that very thing?

  Coming awake all at once, his father reached for the phone on the nightstand, twisting the cord around as he gathered his shirt and boots, dressing as he talked. When he hung up, his expression was grim.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His father shook his head, throwing a flannel work shirt over his T-shirt, leaving his boots unlaced.

  “Gerry March says it’ll take him half an hour to rouse a crew and get over here. That’s bullshit.” A muscle in his father’s jaw twitched. “Archie’s got kids in there.”

  The words sparked guilt over the strange thrill Caleb had felt. Thoughts weren’t actions but still.

  “The fire won’t come over the trees.” His father moved toward the door. “If it does, you take the old truck down the road to Ginny Mason’s place, and you stay there. You hear?”

  “I want to help.” Caleb spoke before his brain had time to catch up with his mouth.

  His father stopped so abruptly Caleb almost crashed into him.

  Even if his father wasn’t Lewis’s sheriff, he’d still help Archie Royce, no matter what he thought of him. Because it was the right thing to do. Caleb knew he wasn’t really to blame just because he’d imagined a fire, but his father’s words and his own willingness to help still left him with a feeling of responsibility. Whatever the truth about Archie Royce might be, if he did have kids in there—Del aside—they didn’t deserve to die. Caleb stood straighter, adrenaline surging and mixing with his nerves as his father looked him over.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  As his father stepped outside, Caleb’s legs turned briefly to rubber; he hadn’t expected his father to agree. The truck’s engine roared, and headlights flooded the yard. Caleb hurried to catch up.

  Caleb’s chest remained tight as his father steered onto the main road. The night was silent. No wail of sirens. If their house had been the one burning, trucks would be on the way by now, but because it was Archie Royce’s place, Gerry March was content to make excuses and let it burn.

  The idea dug at Caleb. No one in Lewis ever took direct action against the Royces, but it seemed they wouldn’t take direct action to save them either. He scrabbled for purchase as his father turned hard, slewing the truck onto a barely visible drive. His teeth clicked together as the wheels jounced in worn ruts until his father brought the truck to a halt.

  Whip-thin trees framed the burning house. They looked sicker than the persimmon his father had cut down, leaning away as though trying to escape. But if the persimmon was any indication, the trees would be hell to cut down, even diseased. If the fire touched them, would they even burn?

  Despite being engulfed, Caleb could see the Royce house had once been grand. He and Mark had never been invited to joyride down the roads at night when other kids from school dared each other onto the property. Seeing the place now, Caleb was glad.

  His father climbed out of the truck, leaving the sharp sting of smoke to drift through the open door. Caleb opened his own door and went to stand by the hood.

  A beam popped deep in the house, and a section of roof collapsed, sending up a rush of sparks. Caleb lifted his shirt over his nose and mouth. The brightness made a hard backlight to shapes directly in front of the house—a junked car, the remains of a well, and closer to the house, an odd-shaped blot. It took Caleb’s eyes a moment to adjust, and even then, his mind didn’t want to agree. A girl, standing far too close to the flames.

  “Dad!”

  His father hoisted his own shirt over his nose and mouth as Caleb pointed. The air wavered, weirdly thick around the girl. It wasn’t just the heat rolling off the place; his father moved as though wading through waist-deep water. She didn’t react when his father reached her. When he took her by the shoulders, steering her toward the truck, she didn’t resist either.

  “Get a blanket from the back,” his father called, and Caleb hurried to obey.

  “Take care of her. I’m going to see if there’s anyone else.”

  His father wrapped the blanket around the girl’s shoulders and gave her a gentle nudge in Caleb’s direction. Caleb watched him walk back toward the flames. The girl’s attention remained fixed on the house. He couldn’t imagine watching everything he’d ever known burn—his bed, his baseball trophies, the picture of his mother and father and him as a baby sitting on a big striped blanket on the front lawn.

  “I’m Caleb.” Introducing himself felt stupid given the situation, but if he could get her talking, maybe it would distract her. He lowered the shirt from his mouth. “What’s your name?”

  The girl ignored him. Caleb looked at her more closely. Smoke and ash streaked her pale skin. Out of nowhere, an odd thought struck Caleb like something coming up out of the swamp. He’d never heard of a woman living at Archie Royce’s place; the rumors said all his kids had different mothers who no one ever saw. What if the body his father had found in the swamp all those years ago was this girl’s mother?

  There was a thinness to her like hunger but deeper. Below the blanket, her feet were bare. She looked about his age, but it was hard to tell. She was at least a head shorter than him, but Caleb was tall for his age. His limbs had been called gangly, and hers had the same thinness but without the awkwardness of knobby elbows and knees that didn’t fit.

  She clutched something close against her body like she was afraid someone would take it. Caleb could just make out what looked like a figurine roughly the size of a baseball, carved from dark wood. Except when he looked closer, the wood took on a reddish hue, streaked with dark bands like smoke. And as he watched, the bands grew, staining the wood pure black. The reflected firelight must have been messing with his sight.

  He blinked, focusing on the girl’s face instead.

  “Are you okay?”

  Another stupid thing to say. Of course, she wasn’t. He touched her shoulder. She jerked away, startled, but finally turned to face him. Even though the firelight was behind her, her eyes seemed to glow for a moment, and a faint light shone from her skin too. Then the girl blinked, and her eyes were just a normal muddy green-brown. Except she wasn’t crying. That struck Caleb as odd. Her house was burning, and there were no tracks in the soot smearing her cheeks.

  “Hey . . .” Spooked, Caleb let the word trail.

  The girl pivoted on her bare heels, and for a moment, Caleb feared she would sprint back into the burning house. Instead she spat in the dirt at her feet. A sound like the one he’d heard the night his father pulled the bones from the swamp, a sound Caleb would never forget—sorrow and rage—split the air.

  Caleb’s skin prickled, but movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention. The smoke above the house shifted. As Caleb stared, it formed a face, impossible but distinct and inhuman. The night sky howled again, and beside him, the girl went rigid. Her fingers curled tight around the carving, her lips pulling back from her teeth. Then her head whipped around, a dog scenting deer.

  Caleb squinted, trying to see what she saw. A blot of darkness, like she’d been at first, but larger. A man stood near the side of the house, but there was something wrong about his shape.

  The girl lurched toward the fire. Instinctively Caleb threw his arms around her to hold her back. Her body hitched like a sob, but the noise that emerged was a keening cry. It was almost music, raw and laced with rage, and it made lightning crawl under Caleb’s skin.

  The sound went on, a contrast to the wet, red sound howling above the house. The girl’s throat worked, reminding Caleb of a pelican struggling with a fish. The noise coming out of her looked painful.

  She strained forward again, throwing him off balance.
They crashed to the ground, dust billowing around them, adding to the smoke and making Caleb cough. The girl was a knot of sinew, wild and thrashing. Caleb caught her wrists to keep her from hitting him.

  All at once, she went still, her breath shallow. Her eyes reflected the light from the house. Burning. Except the angle was wrong, the light behind her. Caleb let go of her wrists with a shout, her skin suddenly hot.

  The wail of sirens cut the night, far too late, and the girl slumped, the fight gone. Caleb scrambled to stand. Adrenaline shook him; it was a moment before he caught his breath, a moment longer before he could string together a coherent thought. He got his hands under the girl’s armpits and hauled her to her feet.

  “I couldn’t find anyone else.” Caleb’s father returned, his voice worn hollow as his expression.

  He frowned as though he couldn’t quite remember how Caleb and the girl had gotten there. As the fire engine finally pulled into the drive, his expression changed, going flint hard. Caleb watched his father stride toward the splash of red and white lights, ready to give Gerry March hell. When the girl spoke beside him, Caleb jumped.

  “Cere.”

  “What?” Caleb stared at her.

  Her voice was smoke-rough, a croak. Light no longer burned in her eyes. Where they’d been muddy green-brown before, they now appeared green-grey like pale moss clinging to a stone.

  “Cere.” She fixed on him in a way that brought back the electric fizzing beneath his skin. Caleb let out a breath, realizing she’d finally offered him her name.

  Cere perched on the edge of a kitchen chair, hands wrapped around a mug of coffee she’d barely touched. She wore clothes one of the nurses at the hospital had found her—jeans and a ringer T-shirt with Lewis High’s bronco in maroon against white.

  “Cere’s going to stay with us for a while until things get sorted out.” Caleb’s father put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder.

  Caleb nodded, but his gaze kept sliding back to Cere. She’d barely acknowledged either of them, not that he could blame her.

  “Caleb.” His father shook him lightly. “Are you listening?”

  “Yessir.” The words slid out automatically.

  “Good. I have to go make some more calls.” There were shadows under his eyes.

  It had been a long night, from the fire to Deer Creek Hospital and back here. None of them had slept. Under the kitchen light, away from the smoke and fire, Caleb finally had a chance to get a good look at Cere. Her hair was an odd blonde that was almost silvery. The nurse had worked it into two thick braids that hung over her shoulders. Even for a white girl, she was pale, her wrists showing the faint blue blush of her veins. The pallor was offset by a shock of freckles scattered across her cheeks and nose like a constellation. On top of that, Caleb still couldn’t get a good fix on the color of her eyes, which seemed to shift constantly.

  Caleb poured himself a bowl of cereal. He placed the box close enough that Cere could reach it if she wanted and then sat at the far end of the table. Cere didn’t raise her head. From the far end of the hall, Caleb heard the murmur of his father’s voice. He’d been on the phone for hours, trying to track down any other members of Cere’s family, but the set of his jaw told Caleb everything he needed to know about how little enthusiasm he had for finding anyone with the last name Royce.

  Caleb took a bite of his cereal, finding it tasteless. Within the span of twenty-four hours, less, the world had been turned completely upside down. After Gerry March’s team had gotten the fire under control, they’d found Archie Royce’s remains in the burned-out shell of the house. Caleb had heard his father mention someone named Ellis who must be another of Cere’s brothers. He hadn’t heard anything about Del, and it wasn’t clear whether their bodies had been found or whether there’d been anyone else in the house.

  Cere kicked her heels against the rung of her chair, a restless drumming sound. Caleb abandoned his spoon. The one bite he’d taken already felt like a solid lump in his stomach.

  “Do you like baseball?” It was the only thing he could think to say.

  Cere raised her head. Ignoring her unsettling eyes, Caleb plowed on.

  “Our team was pretty good last year. We went all the way to regional finals. Then Coach Stevens left, and now we suck.”

  Anything to fill the silence. Cere didn’t blink. There was something wrong with her eyes beyond their shifting color. Subtle threads of gold bled into them from the edges. It made Caleb think of the black shadows on the lawn but in reverse.

  Caleb shoved his chair back, dumped the rest of his cereal into the sink. To his surprise, Cere followed him down the hall, a pale shadow. He was too stunned to close the door before she slipped past him into his room.

  “What are you—”

  Cere glanced over her shoulder, stilling him. Caleb held his breath as she trailed her fingers over the bedspread, taking in his books, his trophies, his bat and glove leaning against the closet door. Her hand rested on the photograph of him as a baby with his parents and something coiled tight inside him.

  He’d been so young when she died. The picture was the only way he could remember what his mother looked like. He would stare, trying to fix every feature in his mind—her hair carefully smoothed and curled, her skin several shades darker than his, but her eyes just like his own. When he looked at the picture, he could almost remember her laugh, the sound of her voice as she moved around the kitchen while he played on a blanket spread on the floor. Then it would slip again, and her face would blur. Those moments of forgetting were his own personal experience of loss. It was like remembering her death, even though he hadn’t fully experienced it at the time. If Cere damaged the picture . . .

  He moved to snatch the frame out of her hand as Cere turned her head without moving the rest of her body. It made Caleb think of a bird. Her eyes, the color of Spanish moss now, pinned him, and Caleb’s breath stuttered. The gold threads within her irises were unmistakable; they squirmed. She tapped the picture’s frame. Everything he’d been feeling uncoiled into guilt. His parents smiling, Caleb between them, a happy family. Even if he’d lost part of it, it must still be more than she’d ever had.

  Cere lowered her hand. She turned fully now, facing him. Her voice was still a smoke-rough whisper, every bit as startling as it had been last night.

  “I was born to end the world.”

  Caleb woke with his heart pounding, convinced the sky was on fire on the other side of the trees. But only stars shone above the pine and oak. Vents sighed with a sudden rush of chill from the air conditioning, and Caleb tugged his blanket higher. Fragments of a dream clung to him. A fat ball of flaming gold crawling into the sky and a great frog or a fish swallowing it whole. There had also been something with scales diving into muck and a woman walking between cypress knees. Her bare feet splashed in shallow water, and she cradled her swollen belly. She glowed.

  I was born to end the world.

  Even as the images faded, certainty clung to him that the woman in his dream was Cere but older, and the thing she carried in her belly wasn’t a child; it was something terrible, darkness and fire, a thing too big to wrap his mind around.

  Caleb pressed his ear to the wall dividing his room from Cere’s. He was startled to hear a faint murmur, what sounded like “please.” The wall under his ear felt hot, the skin of the house glowing like the woman in his dream. He jerked back but not before he heard her window sliding up.

  Caleb reached his own window just in time to see a shadow dart across the lawn. Cere. He knew he should tell his father, but at the same time, he couldn’t help thinking about the way Cere’s eyes squirmed with gold. If she chose to run away, that wasn’t his problem. Caleb tried to convince himself, tried to ignore the hammer of his pulse telling him otherwise. He pulled the covers over his head. He was still dreaming; he hadn’t seen anything at all.

  chapter two

  . . .
a preacher walking along the road met a devil. Or maybe he met another preacher. It’s not important. That’s not the point of the story. In fact, it isn’t really a story. It’s an excuse for two people to talk about different kinds of philosophy and religion and which one’s better. At the end, it turns into a story again. After all their good conversing and friendly debating, the preacher and the devil disagree, and the disagreement comes to blows. When they part ways, both of them bloodied, the preacher swears he’ll destroy the devil one day. Even if it takes him and his children and his children’s children to the end of the earth to do it.

  —Myths, History, and Legends from the Delta to the Bayou (Whippoorwill Press, 2016)

  ***

  N

  othing else was taken? Only . . . shit, yeah, that’s bad enough.”

  Caleb stopped in the kitchen doorway. His father’s back was turned, the phone trapped between his shoulder and his ear as he scribbled in a pocket-sized notepad.

  “Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” His father hung up, and it was too late to pretend he hadn’t overheard.

  “What happened?” Caleb wasn’t sure where to look, certain his father would read his guilt. Something bad had happened to Cere, or she’d done something bad. He should’ve woken his father when he saw her run away.

  “Someone broke into the morgue last night.” Caleb’s father rubbed a weary palm over his face. The words caught Caleb by surprise. “Probably kids on a stupid dare.”

  The same thing had happened a few years back; his father had arrested three Lewis High seniors trying to break into the morgue. But his father had said “broke into” not “attempted.” And something had been taken.

  Archie Royce’s body was in that morgue.

  “Damn. Cere sure makes a good cup of coffee.”

  “Huh?” Caleb started but shut his mouth.

  “She was up hours before you.” His father waved his mug toward the doorway, and Caleb turned to see Cere freshly dressed in clothes that actually fit. Maybe he had dreamed her running away after all.