VIII

Hosea’s grip on the mistress was iron-clad. She struggled against him, scratching at his bare chest and pounding his sides. He refused to let the woman kill herself on a foolish hunt in the woods, and threw her into Clyde’s trembling arms before she had a chance to step out the door.

“Keep her here,” Hosea said. He didn’t care that the master who had just whipped him a month ago was standing beside him. “Do not let her leave.” Clyde nodded, and held the woman as she collapsed.

Hosea slung his rifle over his back, taking one last look at the mantle before walking out into the darkness. The cold took the air from his lungs, and he could hear the woman cackling over the rolling hills. Her voice echoed between the trees, piercing his ears. She sounded everywhere, and nowhere, but he had watched her run to the west.

“Matthew, let’s go!” Emmett shouted behind him. He dragged the sick boy by the scruff of his neck, forcing the pistol into his palm as he limped along.

“Emmett,” Hosea started, “he’s not healthy.”

“That’s my son!” Emmett shouted back, cherry-faced with veins popping out of his neck. “My son!” He pulled the boy to the woods, who barely caught his feet in time to avoid rolling in the mud. Hosea turned his back to them as they ran between the trees, shouting for the youngest Landry. “Lee! Lee! Where are you?”

Hosea forced himself to walk. The tension in his legs begged him to move faster, but he knew there would be no good in a panicked rush. An injured body and a clouded mind—that’s what it would bring. He made his way to the barn, his head turning back and forth, careful to not be followed.

The two doors held a large plank across them. Emmett locked up every night before entering the house. Hosea strained to lift it, his back arching a little too far for comfort, and dropped it to his feet. He swung the door open wide.

Mo stood awake and at attention. His copper hair glinted in the sliver of moonlight and Hosea knew that he was ready. He grabbed a saddle from the tack room and approached the horse. He kept himself calm, walking slowly, and came up on the left side. He stroked Mo’s mane before laying a blanket across his back, and set the creaking saddle firmly on top. He reached under to pull the cinch through, and Mo snorted with annoyance.

He tightened it, and began to lead Mo out of the barn. He stopped after three steps and tightened it again, knowing the horse would expand his belly. Hosea grabbed the reins in his hand and stuck his foot in the stirrup, swinging himself over. He adjusted the rifle on his back and patted Mo on the neck as he began to sidestep. He pulled the reins and gripped them tight, and dug his heels into Mo’s sides. The horse went up on his back legs, and for a moment Hosea felt weightless, before bounding out of the barn and into the open fields.

Hosea caught the glint of Emmett and Matthew’s steel as they rushed deeper into the dead forest before charging south. Air flew past his face and he brought his body low. As he approached the woodline, he pulled back, sitting deep and clicking his tongue. Mo slowed to a canter, then to a trot, and a walk.

The woman’s laugh still echoed around him. It flowed through the trees in place of wind, ruffling leaves and hitting him with the stench of foul eggs and rotted flesh. He pulled the rifle from behind his back and laid it across his lap.

“Lee?” he called. He felt the hesitation in his own voice. The hoarseness of his throat was no illness, it was the fear of finding Lee alone. Hosea, the farmhand too old for farmwork, venturing into the woods alone for only the second time in his life. What a fool Malachi would think of him…

It would end nearly the same as the first, he was sure.

“Lee?” he called, a little louder. His own voice fought weakly against the groaning of the trees, and the snapping of twigs. His knees shook painfully against the horse, confusing Mo into a lurching trot and back into a walk. He tried twice to turn them around, enough that Hosea had to yank on the reins to pull the horse back. Mo snorted in disapproval, but followed instruction.

“Mommy!” Lee called. He was far, and the word barely touched Hosea’s ear before dissipating into nothingness.

“Mommy!” a voice mocked. High and womanly, but wrong. It sounded like Solm when he had pretended to be a woman at a border crossing. Too gravelly to be true, but convincing enough if the guard were drunk.

“Lee!” Hosea called, louder. He heard a rustling behind him and turned the horse around to empty lanes between the trees. A branch snapped to his left, and he raised his rifle, but there was nothing. “Lee!” he called, forcefully.

“Hosea!” While it echoed, he could tell the direction and dug his heels in once more. Mo took off, prancing between the thicket and Hosea had to duck as limbs whipped at his face. He gripped his weapon tight, pointing it forward until they burst through the treeline onto another farm.

A large barn stood in front of him, one he’d never seen before. A house lay next to it, with the same structure as the Landry’s, but there were no slave quarters. The fields were left barren and the barn itself looked to be painted over.

Hosea rode forward. His eyes jumped in their sockets and his trigger finger twitched. The horse’s ears flicked as he strafed from side to side. Hosea approached the barn and lay a finger on the clumpy paint. He pushed on it, and drew back with a bright red indent on his finger. He rode around the side, and saw the head of a ram above the sliding barn doors. Below that, with a big red line through it, read the word “Fletcher.”

“Hosea!” Lee shouted. The old man dismounted and stepped inside the barn. He held the rifle high, shifting it left and right as he walked through the open doorway. The invitation. To his left, Lee stood with his hands tied around a support beam, two scratches across his face and animal intestines surrounding his feet.

“She left,” he whimpered. “I don’t know where she is.” Hosea pulled a knife from the rack in the tack room and cut into the hemp twine binding the young master’s hands together. Lee tried to step forward but his feet were bound to the post. He began trying to kick the rope off. Hosea steadied him, and cut that as well.

“We have to go,” he whispered. “It’s not safe for you here.”

“Where’s mother?” Lee asked. He had dropped his voice, trying to sound like his brother.

“Mistress Caroline is back at the house. Your brother and father are combing the woods. Get atop the horse.”

“Hosea—”

“Now, Lee.”

The boy startled at Hosea’s insistence. He turned to the front of the barn and hesitated, eyes fixed on the open doorway as though something stood just beyond it—something Hosea could not yet see.

“Hosea…” Lee whispered, voice trembling now, stripped of its borrowed bravado. “She said you’d come.”

A cold weight settled into Hosea’s gut. He stepped closer, placing a firm hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“What did she say to you?” he asked.

Lee swallowed. His eyes flickered to the rafters, then to the dark corners where the night glare did not reach. He clutched Hosea’s pant leg.

“She said she was hungry,” he moaned.

Hosea felt it then. A cold pressure on his ears. A tingle rolling up his spine, and pinpricks in his feet. He could sense her, somewhere above. He heard her feet against the rafters, catching glimpses of pale legs swinging from the beams.

And there she was. Standing in front of them. She stood nearly motionless, with her familiar hunched back, as Hosea pulled the young boy behind him. The woman raised her arm, lifted her finger, and pulled him forward. He took a single step before Lee grabbed his leg once again.

And then she was in his head.

“Freedom is right across the line, Hosea. Right across the line.” He shook his head. She took a step back, and he followed. “Freedom is right across the line.”

“Hosea?” Lee called, but it was distant.

“Which line?” Hosea asked her.

“Freedom is right across the line, Hosea. You know it is.” She took another step back, and Hosea stepped forward.

“I know it is, but which line?”

She stepped around the edge of the barn, out of sight. Hosea chased after her, rounding the corner. “Which line?” he shouted, but she wasn’t there.

“Freedom is right across the line, Hosea.” Her voice resounded in his head, but he knew where she was instinctively. He glared back into the barn and found the woman with her arm wrapped around Lee. Her hand held a warped blade, curved from hilt to tip, and she pressed it against the boy’s neck. “You know which line.”

Hosea raised his rifle, and through the black mass of hair he could see the discolored teeth. He laid his finger on the trigger and brought the stock to his shoulder.

“Right across the line, Hosea. I can have him, or I can have you. Freedom is right across the line.”

Hosea squeezed the trigger. Heat blasted backward, scorching the hair along his shoulders. Smoke erupted from the barrel of his rifle and his ears rang. A panel at the back of the barn cracked. He gripped the forestock and ran to Lee, swinging the weapon down and letting it crash into the woman. He grabbed Lee by the arm and pulled.

Lee resisted. He slipped his wrist through Hosea’s sweat-slicked grip and lunged for the knife that was just at his throat. He grasped it tightly, interlocking his fingers around the handle, and as the woman regained herself on the floor he plunged the curved blade into her hand.

She shrieked. Hosea pushed Lee ahead, toward the main road. He turned to pull Mo’s reins and watched as the woman clawed her way up the support beam she’d tied Lee to and disappeared into the darkness above. He began to run with Mo’s reins in his hands, and the horse neighed as he began to gallop. Hosea jumped, pulling himself into the saddle as the horse picked up speed.

He approached Lee with increasing anxiety, trying to slow down. He pulled hard on the reins and sat himself firmly on Mo’s back, but the horse refused. Hosea leaned over and grabbed Lee by the back of his shirt, and using what remained of his strength he hoisted the boy in front of him, and told him to lean low and close his eyes.

Hosea was tempted to do the same, but as the horse approached the main road he tried to turn the other way. Hosea gripped Mo’s sides tight, sat tall and leaned back. He pulled, and prayed he wouldn’t break the horse’s legs.

Mo reared, fell, and walked in circles. Hosea looked toward home, and found the woman standing in the middle of the road. Her arm was held high, and her finger waved him forward. Her laugh erupted again—soft and sweet, then suddenly vicious—as she began to walk in a circle around them. Slowly, she seemed to ripple with the motion of the air itself, moving closer with every subtle twitch of her hand, mocking his own.

Lee shifted away, peering through half-open eyelids, ready to swing his legs off and run.

“Don’t,” Hosea whispered. “She’s playing with us.”

The woman crouched suddenly, impossibly low, and sprang forward, just past the edge of Mo’s vision. The horse shied, spinning in a tight circle, hooves skidding against the dirt and Hosea’s stomach lurched.

The woman’s laugh echoed across the empty fields. She raised a hand, as if plucking them like fruit, then dropped it, making a shuffling, almost gliding sound toward the woods. She was everywhere, and nowhere, circling, teasing, testing. Hosea’s grip on the reins tightened until his knuckles ached.

BANG!

The shot rang through the empty night. The woman lurched back, screaming. Her head bent along her back with a snap, and crunched as she pulled it back into place. Hosea looked back toward the barn and found the glint of Emmett’s rifle once again, with Matthew just behind him holding another. The boy had his hands on his knees, shaking.

Hosea didn’t wait. He turned Mo back toward home. He tried to push Lee’s head to the side so he wouldn’t see his father, but the boy ducked under his arm and pushed it away. He looked up to Hosea, and back to his father, blinking away the mist. He gripped Hosea’s arm, and settled his eyes forward on the road. Before Hosea had the chance, he felt Lee digging his heels into Mo.