I visited the little boy’s grave. I prayed, though I don’t know why. It seemed like the right thing to do, after everything I’d seen. I wasn’t praying to anyone or anything in particular. I just hoped someone or something was listening. If there were dark gods, maybe there were light ones as well. I went back to my hotel. Turns out no one was looking for me. Not yet, anyway. Ollie figured I was off brooding somewhere, as much about my career as the rest. Marlene thought I was mad at her for not mentioning the whole work thing sooner. She thought I was ignoring her out of spite, which made her mad as well, so she ignored me in return.
I asked to leave my appointment early. There were some half-hearted attempts to get me to change my mind, but nobody really fought it. The day after I got home, I walked into Sowell’s office and told him I quit before he could open his mouth to fire me. Ollie and I spoke one last time on the phone. He said he didn’t know what was up with me but warned me to stay away from the chef. The way he said it, it was like he had personal experience, like he knew way more than he’d let on. After the call, on a whim, I sent him an email with all my data. I didn’t say much, just said that there seemed to be a pattern—something nonrandom—and it was my guess he’d find many more bodies if he was inclined to look, although by then I was sure the mushrooms had ceased flowering. There would only be decay. I’d be surprised if he did anything with it. But who knows.
I wrote my paper. Only the fourth yet on Mycena lucifera. I even gave a short talk at a local university. I didn’t lie. But I don’t feel like I told the truth, either. After stepping up to the lectern, I stood in front of my colleagues for a long moment, completely unable to speak. They looked so confused. And I realized how all those people must feel—the ones who’ve seen lake monsters or ghosts or been abducted by aliens.
Not crazy. Just alone.
Terribly, terrifyingly alone.
I tried to talk to Marlene about it, but she didn’t want to hear about the occult. No one does. Makes you seem crazy. She wanted to hear how I was going to pay the mortgage without a job. I said I’d figure something out. Mostly, though, I spent time with Mom. As much as I could. It’s funny how fast everything changes. I’d been so angry at her for so long. Yet, letting go of that took less than a moment. Knowing she was never likely to leave that hospital room—I dunno. She was still my moms.
After a couple weeks, she took a turn for the worse. When the doctors said the end was near, I finally got the nerve to ask the big question, the one I could never shake.
“Ma?” It came out like the bleat of a sheep.
She was lying in bed, doped up to her eyeballs, and she grunted through the haze.
“Can I ask you something?”
A nod.
“What happened to Bug?”
She shut her eyes and tried to shake it off.
I took her hand. Her eyes were closed. Minutes passed and I thought she was asleep. I bent over in my chair and rested my cheek on the bed. I’d been banished to the couch at home and hadn’t been sleeping well. I was tired.
I woke to her voice.
“They found him in the old church,” she said. “Behind your auntie’s house.”
I didn’t sit up. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t want to do anything that might make her change her mind. I stayed there, leaning over the bed covers, and listened.
She put her hand on my hair, like I was fourteen again and crying ’cuz my little brother was dead, crying ’cuz it turned out I was just another punk who couldn’t look after his family.
“Your brother was . . . He was naked. And the tips of his fingers was bloody. Worn to the bone. He’d done it to hisself. The inside of that big wood door was all scratched. And bloody.” I could hear her lips quiver with the word. “Like he was trying to dig his way out. From that place. Like he just wanted to get home to his mama. And he had these . . . marks all over his body. Like insect bites. All over. Long ones. Short ones. And some round ones, too.”
She paused.
“They said he died ’cuz he ain’t had no water. Like he was trapped in there for days and days. But Susan said he wasn’t gone but a afternoon. Otherwise she’d’a’ called. Right away. But the doctors said that couldn’t be ’cuz he was dehydrated already. He’d lost too much water.”
Another pause.
“Your uncle was the only one home at the time. So he got arrested. They couldn’t say he’d done nuthin. Just child endangerment. But your auntie swore it wasn’t true. He got probation. Lost his job. They lost the house. And she wouldn’t never talk to me again. None a’ them would. Like I done it. Like it was my fault for askin’ if he could stay there. Like it was my fault we had them boys shootin’ at us.”
I hadn’t thought about that, how Mom had lost more than her son. She’d lost the last of her family—including me. What was I by then but a punk teenager disappointed by everything she did?
I took her hand. I squeezed. I didn’t say anything. I just held on.
She had so much guilt. Under all that anger was her fear that it really was her fault for sending him there, for sending him away. She thought my uncle, the one-time skinhead, had “done things” to her baby. That’s what the police thought, too, when they hauled the man from his house in handcuffs. What other explanation was there? And Mom blamed herself for putting Bug there. All these years.
What the hell could I tell her? My dying mother. That ghosts and bogeymen were real? That there were different gods? That whatever killed Bug had a thousand eyes and that the only justice he’d ever get was if someone sent it back to whatever dark place it had slithered from?
I held my mother’s hand until the medication kicked in and she slept in earnest. I kissed her forehead. I rode the elevator down and sat on the steps at the back of the hospital, in front of the staff lot. I could see downtown Atlanta in the distance. Everything seemed so normal.
I wasn’t fair to her. I mean, she wasn’t a great mom. Pretty damn bad, actually. But I wasn’t fair. Bug wasn’t just her son. He was her baby. I was fourteen and doing everything I could to show what a man I was, how much I didn’t need her anymore. Bug was the only one who did. He was her joy. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have Marigold taken from me. Especially if they’d found her like that. Naked. Fingers worn bloody. I realized then that Granny Tuesday was right. Ain’t no good comes from knowing some things.
Science says the simple answer is usually the correct one, and I suppose when you’re dealing with pieces of things, with bits and components, that’s probably true. But in the category of human experience, truth often isn’t simple, even when the facts are. Truth—not the naming and measuring of things, but real Truth—can sometimes be terrible. Legitimately terrible. It isn’t a virtue, like wisdom or compassion. Truth is like Nature—neither good nor evil. It just is. It doesn’t care if it meets our expectations or not. It doesn’t care what we think of it. Like a great oblivious god, striding the universe, crushing worlds underfoot, it’s just as likely to strike us down as offer enlightenment.
I heard a flap and a squawk. I looked up and saw a white raven, like the one from the park, balancing itself, wings extended, on the branch of a nearby sapling, which still had the plastic tag from the nursery wrapped around a branch. The bird was looking at me, turning its head from side to side. I knew then that he was standing behind me, hands in his fantastic coat.
“How the hell did you get to Atlanta?” I said without turning.
“The bus,” he explained.
I heard the grate of a large engine. Sure enough, across the parking lot on the far side of the street was a small bus depot—so folks from all over could visit the specialists at the hospital. A Greyhound was just pulling away. I watched it go, and it occurred to me it was a little old to be in service, a round-sided silver job that looked like it had rolled out of the 1960s. As it took a corner, I caught the word “Crossroads” on the destination sign.
“Many interesting people on the bus,” he said.
He sat down on the step next to me with a groan. It was the most human thing I’d seen him do. He rested his elbows on his legs. I could see the marks on his palms. They were intricate.
“Little warm yet down here for a coat,” I said.
“It will be cold soon.”
“They’re predicting an unusually harsh winter this year.”
He nodded slowly. I heard the raven’s wings hit the air and saw its shadow move over us as it flew away. I watched it go.
“We didn’t stop them,” I said finally.
He took a moment to answer. “That’s how the world is, most of the time.”
Now it was my turn to nod. “It’s not over, though, is it?”
“No.”
“So what’s it gonna be? The end of the world or something like that?”
“Not the end,” he said softly. “Although people will wish it to be.”
As I let the implication of that flutter across my heart, he took a slim flash drive out of his pocket and held it to me.
“What’s that?” I asked without moving.
“If I were to offer you a second chance, would you be interested?”
The case was sheer black with a blue tech company logo etched on one side, like an infinity symbol. It looked like the tiny coffin the boy had been buried in.
I probably should have gone home right then. Called Marlene. Promised to do whatever it took. If I didn’t, wasn’t I just another punk taking the easy way out?
I thought about my daughter. Her smile. Her frizzy hair. I thought about my little brother, dying alone in an abandoned husk of a church. I thought about Etude’s question. In the car.
I’d hedged a little. Before.
I took the flash drive.
“Without hesitation,” I said.
FEAST OF SHADOWS is interactive
Read more about a real-life deadly fungus and the persistent veil of secrecy in public health.