I hurried back to the old Greenhill house, running through the cemetery and around the house, only to stop short at the scene playing out before me.
Timothy was there, white faced and hollering up at a second story window, tears streaking his cheeks. Behind him was a group of men in black coats, with shotguns and rifles in-hand. Heading them at the front, scowl on his face and big black hat on his head, was Noah Blackthorpe.
The reverend had brought his own posse.
“Joe! Come on out!” Timothy shouted at the house. “Come down and end this thing once and for all!” Only silence returned an answer.
“Timothy,” I greeted, the posse readying their weapons and tensing up when I approached but I showed them my empty hands. “What the hell is going on?”
Timothy’s eyes were red, his face bruised up and dirty. “Joe needs to give Boy back to the Blackthorpes. He’s got to do it, professor!” His voiced quivered on the last word and he took a moment to collect himself. He gestured to the men behind him. “They’re going to kill him if he doesn’t. I-I managed to convince them to give me a chance to talk him down before they do anythin’. But, professor, they don’t have much patience.”
“That’s right,” Noah Blackthorpe rumbled, sidling up to the conversation. “All I want is my son back. Once I have him safely in my possession, me and my boys will walk away from it all.”
I scoffed at that. “Just like you walked away last time?” I pointed a finger at the house. “Just like when your lot came here last time, seeking retribution against Joe, and you burned his house down?”
The reverend grunted. “I didn’t burn this house down. I put the fire that Joe had started out before it could consume the whole house. We tried to save this idiot’s family from their own failson.”
“As if I’m going to believe that.”
The reverend leaned in close, glancing between the two of us. “Well, bless your heart,” he said. “Timothy. Do you want to talk some sense into him?”
Timothy offered me an anxious look, his eyes all squeezed up like he was staring into the son, his jaw twitching. “It’s true, professor. All of it. Joe set fire to the house when they came knockin’ with the police after Leanne vanished. He told me all about it when he was real drunk. Said he wanted to take his whole family out.”
I had to close my mouth before I could speak. “Why would he do something like that?”
“Because he’s a fuck-up!” Noah thundered up at the house. “Always has been!”
“As it were, his grandpap was the only one who died,” Timothy muttered. “Joe killed his own grandpap, professor.”
I wanted to think about this, to sit down and have a breather and discuss what I had found in the ravine, but there was no time anymore. I needed to make a decision now or a lot of people were going to get hurt. “Look,” I said to them both. “Timothy and I will go in there, we’ll talk to Joe directly. Give us 10 minutes. If you just give us a chance, I’m confident we can talk him into giving up Tobias without resorting to violence.”
Noah Blackthorpe stroked his beard. “Fine, I’ll allow it, but it is your last chance. If you don’t come back with my son in five minutes—” he patted his weapon—“we’re comin’ in after you.”
We left him there out on the lawn, and Timothy and I entered the house. I was very aware of how Noah hadn’t reacted to my calling his son ‘Tobias’ instead of ‘Boy’. It all but confirmed the theory I had put together.
Joe was still upstairs, but had moved Boy to the room with Leanne’s drawings. The poor Blackthorpe son wasn’t tied up or gagged or anything but he seemed just as trapped as any other hostage. His eyes were squeezed shut, his hands clamped over his ears and he was curled up into a ball. Joe was crouched nearby, talking to him.
“My sister — Leanne — she was the prettiest little girl you ever seen,” Joe said to Boy. “The best-behaved kid, the smartest twelve year old. And so talented. These drawings on the walls, you know? Ain’t no one can draw like that ‘cept for her. She’s a miracle kid. The things she could have gone on to do if she had the chance to grow up. You’ve got to help me bring her back, Boy. Help me right my wrong!”
“You’ve got to stop this,” I said.
Joe gave us a look over his shoulder. “Oh,” he said. “The professor and the traitor.” He turned back to Boy. “A thousand, million problems can be solved if you just bring Leanne back to me. Go on, now. Work your magic.”
“He can’t bring her back, Joe. No one can bring people back from the dead. Let him return to this family and then no one else has to get hurt.”
“Garden Joe, you’ve got to give him back,” Timothy wailed.
“If you two don’t shut up and leave me in peace,” Joe muttered. “I have half a mind to turn my magic on you.” He pulled the wand from his pocket, duct-taped together where it had snapped in the bout at the Blackthorpe estate.
I took a couple steps into the musty room. “Let him go, Joe.”
Joe jumped up and spun around. “Look at him! He ain’t tied up or nothin! he can leave whenever he likes! Boy don’t want to go back to his family — they do nothin’ but abuse him, use his powers for evil purposes, exploit him!” He leveled his gaze at me. “Isn’t that what you talk about in your classes, professor? Exploitation of ‘bucolic Americans’?”
I was surprised he knew what I spoke about in my lectures but I had posted some of them online for the public to watch free of charge. This man had done research on me before calling me up for that first demonstration of his magic.
“You’re doing the same thing as his family then,” I said, taking another step. “You’re trying to exploit him for your own purpose. To bring your sister back.”
“It’s not the same!” Joe shouted, and both Timothy and Boy whimpered. “Not even close!” He grabbed one of Boy’s arms and held it up so I could see the bruises on it. “They beat him, keep him shackled to his bed. That’s how I found him! I’m the one that rescued him, cleaned him up and brought him here to keep him safe.”
“He’s not safe here. He needs to get out of this house, can’t you see?” I pointed to Boy, whose whimpers had turned to quiet vocalizations. “It’s killing him to be in here.”
A rifle shot cracked the air outside, the bullet smacking into the exterior. Timothy went to the window and looked out, keeping his head low. “He’s holdin’ up three fingers,” he said. “I think he means to say that we have three minutes left.”
“Hear that, Joe? That posse of men is going to rush in here in three minutes and kill you, then take Boy back home anyway. Everything you’re doing right now doesn’t matter, it’s just causing more pain.”
“Shut up!” Joe shouted. He gripped Boy by the scruff of his shirt and hefted him up into a sitting position. “Give me my sister back, Boy. I know you can do it, I know you got that powerful magic inside you!” Boy’s garbled vocalizations were getting faster, louder and more panicked.
Timothy fell to his knees beside Joe and Boy like he was praying to a martyr, scrabbling at Joe’s arm. “Please, for the love of God, give the kid up! Let’s get out of here — we can slip out the back and run off into town in my truck, come back when things are calm…” Wishful thinking. “I don’t want you to die, Joe, I can’t… You’re my only friend, Garden Joe!”
Joe released Boy and turned his full attention to Timothy. “You’ve been a good friend in all this, Timmy. I can’t thank you enough for always having my back, even when times were rough. I know you brought the Blackthorpes here because you’re all about that diplomatic method, always hopin’ for the best. That’s what makes you such a good person.”
“Joe…”
“You should leave before I do this.”
A rifle round shattered the window, sending a spray of glass across the room, the bullet embedding itself into the plaster ceiling. We all ducked.
Joe grabbed Boy by his hair and shook his head. “Bring her back, Boy! Bring Leanne back to me!” Timothy scrabbled backward at the sudden violence. “Bring her back, you no-good, belly-slappin’ fish of a man!” The ferocity in Joe’s voice matched the ferocity with which he shook Boy’s head, and Boy began screaming.
I went to Timothy. “We need to go.”
“No!”
I wrapped my arms around the scrawny man and dragged him out into the hallway, he was fighting me the whole way and we both had a good view into the room as we backed out of it. Boy pushed up against the wall, surrounded by drawings, Joe continuing to shake him, magical pool cue clenched between his knuckles. Boy’s whole body was vibrating, a hum emanating from within his chest.
Boy unhinged his jaw and opened wide. Slowly, disgustingly, a white, milky substance streamed from his throat. It was like a pale placenta, like he was giving birth through his mouth. That was the only look I got of it before both Timothy and I scrambled for the stairs and hurried our asses out of that house.
Maybe it was the look of terror on our faces, or our desperation to flee, or maybe it was just that our final minute was up, but the whole posse of Blackthorpe men rushed in behind us, cocking their weapons and getting ready for a fight. Timothy slipped on the grass and I skidded to a stop behind him. Right after the posse vanished inside, that thick, milky cloud creeped out from around the door, poured down over the walls from the second story windows and poked out of the chimney top. It wasn’t long before it had enveloped the entire house, hiding it from us as we watched from the lawn.
We watched and we waited. I had no conscious desire to view what would remain after the cloud had dispersed, what horrors would await us, but it was like I couldn’t look away. “Goddamn,” Timothy whispered, and I had to agree with him: God had damned this place. From the very start, whatever small interaction or perceived sleight that had set the Greenhills and Blackthorpes against each other for generations, no one but God could give them the run of bad luck they had been living with. When the farms or plantations or whatever business venture they had purchased this land for had failed, when the wars had come and hollowed out their families, when the coal mines had closed… it must have looked like God really had personally damned them.
And several moments later, when the cloud had cleared and the magic was over, not a thing remained.
It was all gone.
In the spot where the old house had stood was a patch of lawn, no different from the rest of it. I could see clearly where the headstones of the Greenhills poked out of the family cemetery behind where the house used to be.
It was like none of it had ever existed in the first place.
We stared stupidly at nothing until Timothy finally broke the silence. “I cut myself on some of that… some of that glass from the winda’.” He held a hand up and I watched blood leave from a cut and dribble down his arm.
With nothing else to do, with no Blackthorpes or Greenhills around, the two of us walked back to the trailers and our vehicles in silence. If the Blackthorpe posse had taken their own vehicles, well, they weren’t there anymore. I stood at the door of my Prius and Timothy stood at the door of his truck and we just looked at each other. I didn’t know if I was supposed to say goodbye in this moment or if we were meant to drive away and never speak about this again.
The rumble of a struggling engine caught our attention and we peered off down the dirt driveway. A little moped with a large rider was coming up that road, spitting out dust behind it, zipping along at a brisk 12 MPH. Aunty Sunflower drove up and pulled alongside, lifted her helmet off, gave each of us a discerning look and said “Now, what the hell happened?”
I didn’t know what to say.
So I got in my car and drove away.
I have done nothing but wonder at the consequences of that day. It’s very difficult for me to explain to you the mechanics or reasoning behind the magic because I don’t understand it myself. The occult is my specialty, yes, but I’m no wizard like Garden Joe, I’m just an anthropologist. I do know that taking Tobias into that burned out husk of a house was probably the worst thing Joe could’ve done. As far as I can tell, Joe shook Boy so hard and so long that he scared him into altering reality on a larger scale than ever before. He unmade everything that caused him pain: his father, his family, the old house where he had once played with Leanne. Even Garden Joe himself. I suspected that the skeleton I had found in the ravine would be gone as well, and perhaps even the strange thing the Greenhill cousins had been turned into too.
The truth is, there’s no scenario in which Boy could have brought Leanne back. Even if he possessed the capability, would his shame and guilt ever let him fix the thing he had done?
* * *
I need to wrap this up quickly, I’m meeting with an old friend tonight, but perhaps you would like to know what happened to me in the years since?
I left town, quit my job, tenure be damned. I move back up north and bought a parcel of land somewhere rural. It wasn’t big but it was large enough to put a prefab home on it, and the line of trees around it offered some privacy from the highway. I lived off my savings for a couple of months before I went into town and got a job teaching at the public school. They were surprised a person with my level of accreditation would be interested in working for such low pay, but I didn’t need much to live off now. I spent most of my free time drinking, or scoring pot. Over the years my clothing became ratty and started falling apart at the seams, so I got more at Goodwill. I let my beard and hair grow out, and I didn’t care so much that it made me look homeless.
And then, one night just recently, someone knocked on my door. I’m unaccustomed to visitors these days, so even though it wasn’t that late I was still suspicious. I gripped the cold plastic of my Mossberg Patriot and opened the door just a crack.
“Well, heaven-sent!” Garden Joe said, big smile on his face. A couple of the gaps in his teeth had been replaced with gold inserts. “You are a hard one to track down, professor!”
I was so stunned I couldn’t say a word, I just mindlessly pulled the door open and let him in. Joe sauntered in like he had been here a thousand times before, and I took in the sight of this new man before me. He had replaced his mullet with a much more stylish and modern slick-back cut. He had on a finely-pressed navy blue suit… with a tie, for God’s sake.
But perhaps most notably, the man had two working arms.
“Fine place ya got here,” he said, looking around. I was embarrassed by the mess my home was in but Joe didn’t seem to mind, he sat at the kitchen table then clasped his fingers together and cracked eight knuckles at once. He gave me a wink. “Are you goin’ to offer me a beer, or what?”
I went to the fridge and pulled two silver cans out of it, passing him one and cracking my own.
We can end the story here — just two people chatting about the one crazy event that connected them — and it would be a satisfying end for you, I think. Joe had come up in the world somewhat, had maybe pushed past his demons and gone on to finally do some good. Had reconnected with his friends and family. He was the one that encouraged me to write this whole thing out, come to terms with it all, start my own healing process.
But if that doesn’t sit right with you because you think there’s too many holes in it, and you’re curious to hear his side of what happened, well, he did tell me all about it. He even let me record his side of the story.
I may destroy that recording, or one day if I'm feeling up to it I’ll transcribe it, let him tell everything to you from his point of view with none of my influence (I’ll fix some of the dropped ‘G’s though).
And when the day comes that I feel well enough to post this transcription, do keep in mind: you read it at your own peril. I will not be held responsible for any kind of distress it may cause you. You will have to take the story at face value and figure out what it means for yourself.
I will not clarify anything.
I will not try to make you feel better about it.
Don’t try to find me.
God save us all.
— The Professor