Beautiful Darkness

Inheritance

I stayed away from Ravenwood, like I promised. By morning, I didn't know where Lena was or where she was headed. I wondered if John and Ridley were with her.

The only thing I knew was Lena had waited all her life to take charge of her own destiny -- to find a way to Claim herself, in spite of the curse. I wasn't going to be the person to stand in her way now. And, as she pointed out, she wasn't going to let me.

Which left me with my own immediate destiny: to stay in bed all day feeling sorry for myself. Me and some comic books, anything but Aquaman.

Gatlin had planned otherwise.

The county fair meant a day of pageants and pies and a night of hooking up, if you were lucky. All Souls meant something else entirely. It was a tradition in Gatlin. Instead of spending the day in shorts and flip-flops at the fair, everyone in town spent all day at the graveyard in their Sunday best, paying their respects to their dead relatives and everyone else's. Forget the fact that All Souls Day was actually a Catholic holiday that took place in November. In Gatlin, we had our own way of doing things. So we turned it into our own day of remembrance, guilt, and general competition over who could pile the most plastic flowers and angels on our ancestors' graves.

Everyone turned out on All Souls: the Baptists, the Methodists, even the Evangelicals and the Pentecostals. It used to be that the only two people in town who didn't show up at the cemetery were Amma, who spent All Souls at her own family plot in Wader's Creek, and Macon Ravenwood. I wondered if those two had ever spent All Souls together, in the swamp with the Greats. I doubted it. I couldn't imagine Macon or the Greats appreciating plastic flowers.

I wondered if the Casters had their own version of All Souls, if Lena was somewhere feeling the same way I was feeling now. Like she wanted to crawl back into bed and hide until the day was over. Last year, I didn't make it to All Souls. It was too soon. The years before that, I spent the day standing over the graves of Wates I never knew or barely remembered.

But today I would be standing over the grave of someone I thought about every day. My mother.

Amma was in the kitchen in her good white blouse, the one with the lace collar, and her long blue skirt. She was clutching one of those tiny old-lady pocketbooks. "You best get on over to your aunts'." She pulled on the knot of my tie to straighten it. "You know how they get all worked up if you're late."

"Yes, ma'am." I grabbed the keys to my dad's car off the counter. I had dropped him off at the gates of His Garden of Perpetual Peace an hour ago. He wanted to spend some time alone with my mom.

"Wait a second."

I froze. I didn't want Amma to look into my eyes. I couldn't talk about Lena right now, and I didn't want her to try to get it out of me.

Amma rifled through her bag, pulling out something I couldn't see. She opened my hand, and the chain dropped into my palm. It was thin and gold, with a tiny bird hanging from the center. It was much smaller than the ones from Macon's funeral, but I recognized it right away. "It's a sparrow for your mamma." Amma's eyes were shiny, like the road after the rain. "To Casters, sparrows mean freedom, but to a Seer, they mean a safe journey. Sparrows are clever. They can travel a long ways, but they always find their way back home."

The knot was building in my throat. "I don't think my mom will be making any more journeys."

Amma wiped her eyes and snapped her purse shut. "Well, you're mighty sure a everythin', aren't you, Ethan Wate?"

When I pulled up the Sisters' gravel driveway and opened the car door, Lucille sat on the passenger's seat instead of jumping out. She knew where we were, and she knew she'd been exiled. I coaxed her out of the car, but she sat on the sidewalk where the cement and the grass met.

Thelma opened the door before I knocked. She looked right past me to the cat, crossing her arms. "Hey there, Lucille."

Lucille licked her paw lazily, then busied herself with sniffing her tail. She might as well have flipped Thelma off. "You comin' by to say you like Amma's biscuits better 'n mine?" Lucille was the only cat I knew who ate biscuits and gravy instead of cat food. She meowed, as if she had a few choice words on the subject.

Thelma turned to me. "Hey there, Sweet Meat. I heard ya pull up." She kissed me on the cheek, which always left bright pink lip prints no amount of sweaty palm could wipe off. "Ya all right?"

Everyone knew today wasn't going to be easy for me. "Yeah, I'm okay. Are the Sisters ready?"

Thelma put her hand on her hip. "Have those girls ever been ready for anything in their lives?" Thelma always called the Sisters girls, even though they were older than her, twice over.

A voice called from the living room. "Ethan? Is that you? Come on in here. We need ya ta take a look at somethin'."

There was no telling what that meant. They could be making casts out of The Stars and Stripes for a family of raccoons or planning Aunt Prue's fourth -- or was it fifth? -- wedding. Of course, there was a third possibility I hadn't considered, and it involved me.

"Come on in." Aunt Grace waved me in. "Mercy, give him some a them blue stickers." She was fanning herself with an old church program, most likely from one of their respective husbands' funerals. Since the Sisters never let anyone actually keep one at the service, they had plenty of them lying around the house.

"I'd get 'em for you myself, but I hafta be careful on account a my accident. I've got complications." It was the only thing she talked about since the county fair. Half the town knew she had fainted, but to hear Aunt Grace tell it, she had suffered a near-fatal complication that would keep Thelma, Aunt Prue, and Aunt Mercy scurrying to do her bidding until the end of her days.

"No, no. Ethan's color's red, I told ya. Give him the red ones." Aunt Prue was scribbling madly on a yellow legal pad.

Aunt Mercy handed me a sheet of stickers with red dots on them. "Now Ethan, go 'round the livin' room and put one a these stickers underneath a the things you want. Go on now." She stared at me expectantly, as if she would be offended if I didn't slap one of them on her forehead.

"What are you talking about, Aunt Mercy?"

Aunt Grace pulled a framed photo of an old guy in a Confederate uniform off the wall. "This here's Gen'ral Robert Charles Tyler, last Rebel gen'ral killed in the War Between the States. Give me one a them stickers. This here'll be worth somethin'."

I had no idea what they were into and was afraid to ask. "We have to get going. Did you forget it was All Souls?"

Aunt Prue frowned. " 'Course we didn't forget. That's why we're gettin' our affairs in order."

"That's what the stickers are for. Everyone's got a color. Thelma's yella, you're red, your daddy's blue." Aunt Mercy paused, as if she had lost her train of thought.

Aunt Prue silenced her with a look. She didn't like being interrupted. "You put those little stickers on the bottom a the things you want. That way when we die, Thelma'll know exactly who gets what."

"It was on account a All Souls that we got ta thinkin' about it." Aunt Grace smiled proudly.

"I don't want anything, and none of you are dying." I dropped the sheet of stickers on the table.

"Ethan, Wade'll be here next month, and he's jus' as greedy as a fox in a henhouse. You need ta do your choosin' first." Wade was my Uncle Landis' illegitimate son, another person in my family who would never make it onto the Wate Family Tree.

There was really no point in arguing with the Sisters when they got like this. So I spent the next half hour putting little red stickers underneath unmatched dining room chairs and Civil War memorabilia, but I still had time to kill while I waited for the Sisters to pick out their hats for All Souls. Choosing the right hat was serious business, and most of the ladies in town had already been down to Charleston to do their shopping weeks ago. To see them walking up the hill, wearing everything from peacock feathers to freshly cut roses on their heads, you would think the ladies of Gatlin were going to a garden party instead of a graveyard.

The place was a mess. Aunt Prue must have made Thelma drag down every box from the attic, full of old clothes, quilts, and photo albums. I flipped through the pages of the album on top. Old pictures were taped onto the brown pages: Aunt Prue and her husbands, Aunt Mercy standing in front of her old house on Dove Street, my house, Wate's Landing, back when my granddad was a kid. I turned the last page, and another house stared back at me.

Ravenwood Manor.

But not the Ravenwood I knew. This was a Ravenwood fit for the Historical Society Registry. Cypress trees lined the walk leading up to the crisp white veranda. Every pillar, every shutter was freshly painted. There were no traces of the strangling overgrowth, the crooked stairs of Macon's Ravenwood. Underneath the photo, there was an inscription, carefully added in delicate handwriting.

Ravenwood Manor, 1865

I was staring at Abraham's Ravenwood.

"Whatcha got there?" Aunt Mercy shuffled in wearing the biggest, pinkest flamingo of a hat I'd ever seen. There was some kind of weird netting on the front, like a veil, topped with a very unrealistic bird perched in a pink nest. When she moved the slightest bit, the whole thing kind of flapped, as if it could fly right off her head. No, this wouldn't give Savannah and the cheer squad any ammo.

I tried not to look at the flapping bird. "It's an old photo album. It was sitting on the top of this box." I handed the album to her.

"Prudence Jane, bring me my spectacles!"

There was some banging around in the hall, and Aunt Prue appeared in the doorway in an equally large and disturbing hat. This one was black, with a wraparound veil that made Aunt Prue look like the mother of a mob boss at his funeral. "If you wore them 'round your neck, like I told ya ..."

Either Aunt Mercy had her hearing aid turned down or she was ignoring Aunt Prue. "Look what Ethan found." The book was still open to the same page. The Ravenwood of the past stared back at us.

"Lord 'ave mercy, look at that. The Devil's workshop if I ever saw it." The Sisters, and most of the old folks in Gatlin, were convinced Abraham Ravenwood made some kind of deal with the Devil to save Ravenwood Plantation from General Sherman's burning campaign of 1865, which had left every other plantation along the river in ashes. If the Sisters only knew how close it was to the truth.

"Ain't the only evil Abraham Ravenwood done." Aunt Prue backed away from the book.

"What do you mean?" Ninety percent of what the Sisters said was nonsense, but the other ten percent was worth hearing. The Sisters were the ones who had told me about my mysterious ancestor, Ethan Carter Wate, who died during the Civil War. Maybe they knew something about Abraham Ravenwood.

Aunt Prue shook her head. "No good can come from talkin' 'bout him."

But Aunt Mercy could never resist an opportunity to defy her older sister. "Our granddaddy used ta say Abraham Ravenwood played on the wrong side a right and wrong -- tempted fate. He was in league with the Devil all right, practicin' witchcraft, communin' with evil spirits."

"Mercy! You stop all that talk!"

"Stop what? Speakin' the truth?"

"Don't you drag the truth inta this house!" Aunt Prue was flustered.

Aunt Mercy looked me straight in the eye. "But the Devil turned on him after Abraham had done his biddin', and when the Devil was done with him, Abraham wasn't even a man anymore. He was somethin' else."

As far as the Sisters were concerned, every evil deed, deception, or criminal act was the work of the Devil, and I wasn't going to try to convince them otherwise. Because after what I'd seen Abraham Ravenwood do, I knew he was more than evil. I also knew it had nothing to do with the Devil.

"Now you're tellin' tales, Mercy Lynne, and you best quit before the Good Lord strikes you down here in this house, on All Souls, a all days. And I don't want ta get hit by a stray bolt." Aunt Prue whacked Aunt Mercy's chair with her cane.

"You don't think this boy knows 'bout the strange goin's on in Gatlin?" Aunt Grace appeared in the doorway in her own nightmarishly lavender hat. Before I was born, someone made the mistake of telling Aunt Grace lavender was her color, and nearly everything she wore had been disproving it ever since. "No use in tryin' ta put the milk back in the jug after it's spilt."

Aunt Prue banged her cane on the floor. They were speaking in riddles, like Amma, which meant they knew something. Maybe they didn't know there were Casters wandering around in the Tunnels below their house, but they knew something.

"Some messes can be cleaned up easier than others. I don't want any part a this one." Aunt Prue pushed past Aunt Grace as she left the room. "This ain't a day ta be speakin' ill a the dead."

Aunt Grace shuffled over toward us. I took her elbow and guided her to the couch. Aunt Mercy waited for the tapping of Aunt Prue's cane to echo down the hall. "Is she gone? I don't have my hearin' aid turned up."

Aunt Grace nodded. "I think so."

The two of them leaned in as if they were about to give me launch codes for nuclear missiles. "If I tell ya somethin', you promise not ta tell your daddy? 'Cause if you do, we're bound ta end up in the Home for sure." She was referring to the Summerville Assisted Seniors House -- the seventh circle of hell, as far as the Sisters were concerned.

Aunt Grace nodded in agreement.

"What is it? I won't say anything to my dad. I promise."

"Prudence Jane's wrong." Aunt Mercy dropped her voice to a whisper. "Abraham Ravenwood's still around, sure as I'm sittin' here today."

I wanted to say they were crazy. Two ancient, senile old ladies claiming to see a man, or what most people thought was a man, no one had seen for a hundred years. "What do you mean, still around?"

"I saw him with my own eyes, last year. Behind the church, a all places!" Aunt Mercy fanned herself with her handkerchief, as if she might faint from the thought of it. "After church on Tuesdays, we wait for Thelma out in front, on account a she has ta teach Bible study down the way at First Methodist. Anyhow, I let Harlon James out from inside my pocketbook so he could stretch his little legs -- you know Prudence Jane makes me carry him. But soon as I set him down, he ran 'round the back a the church."

"You know that dog can't mind ta save his life." Aunt Grace shook her head.

Aunt Mercy glanced at the door before continuing. "Well, I had ta follow him because you know how Prudence Jane is 'bout that dog. So I went 'round back and jus' when I turned the corner ta holler for Harlon James, I saw it. Abraham Ravenwood's ghost. Out in the cemet'ry behind the church. Those progressives at the Round Church in Charleston got one thing right." Folks in Charleston said the Round Church was built that way so the Devil couldn't hide in the corners. I never pointed out the obvious, that the Devil usually had no problem marching right down the middle aisle, as far as some of our local congregations were concerned.

"I saw him, too," Aunt Grace whispered. "And I know it was him, 'cause his picture's on the wall down at the Historical Society, where I play rummy with the girls. Right up there in the Founders Circle, on account a the Ravenwoods bein' the first ones in Gatlin. Abraham Ravenwood, plain as day."

Aunt Mercy shushed her sister. With Aunt Prue out of the room, it was her turn to call the shots. "It was him, all right. He was out there with Silas Ravenwood's boy. Not Macon -- the other one, Phinehas." I remembered the name from the Ravenwood Family Tree. Hunting Phinehas Ravenwood.

"You mean Hunting?"

"Nobody called that boy by his given name. They all called him Phinehas. It's from the Bible. You know what it means?" She paused dramatically. "Serpent's tongue."

For a second, I held my breath.

"There was no mistakin' that man's ghost. As the Good Lord as my witness, we cleared outta there faster than a cat with its tail on fire. Now, Lord knows I couldn't move like that these days. Not since my complications ..."

The Sisters were crazy, but their brand was usually based in crazy history. There was no way of knowing what version of the truth they were telling, but it was usually a version. Any version of this story was dangerous. I couldn't figure it out, but if I had learned anything this year, it was that sooner or later I was going to have to.

Lucille meowed, scratching at the screen door. Guess she'd heard enough. Harlon James growled from under the couch. For the first time, I wondered what the two of them had seen, hanging around this house for so long.

But not every dog was Boo Radley. Sometimes a dog was just a dog. Sometimes a cat was just a cat. Still, I opened the screen door and stuck a red sticker on Lucille's head.