The Ancestors Read online

  Dad whirled, his eyes following his flashlight beam. Nothing visible but brush. Davie tried to help with his own flashlight, but his beam kept zigging into the treetops because he couldn’t hold his hand steady, especially with Neema pulling on him so hard.

  “Can’t see it . . .” Dad was whispering to himself. “I can’t fucking see it . . .”

  Davie remembered his audio journal: “Something just bit Neema,” he said. Neema wailed, hearing the horror repeated.

  “Davie, be quiet,” Dad said.

  But Davie couldn’t be quiet. He was screaming too.

  First, he felt a tug on the back of his raincoat. Then, something raked through clothes and skin on the back of his thigh, with the precision of knives. Davie had never known his body could feel so much pain. He fell to his knees, stunned by the fire in his nerves. As he fell, slimy water splashed his face.

  Not cold anymore. Warm.

  Inches in front of him, more water splashed, some of it stinging his eyes.

  The dog was probably staring him dead in the face.

  “IN FRONT OF ME!” Davie screamed, and Dad took a wild swing with his shovel at the air in front of Davie’s face. Dad only threw himself off-balance.

  But Dad’s second swing hit something. There was a ping sound, a watery thud, and the sound of an animal’s yelp. Dad stabbed the shovel down like a stake, and a shriek flew from the nothing under Dad’s shovel. A beast, invisible.

  “Is it dead?” Neema said.

  Dad jabbed his shovel into the land around him, and water splashed.

  “I hear that,” Dad said, amazed. “Jesus. I hear it.”

  “Why can’t-can’t we-we see it?” Neema stuttered, wrapped so hard around Davie that he could barely breathe. He screamed out again. The pain was truly dazzling.

  By then, all three of them might have been crying.

  “Okay,” Dad said, trying to find a place for it in his mind. “Okay. Okay. I know it’s here, but we can’t see the dog. We can’t see it. Okay.”

  “Is it dead?” Neema said again.

  Dad jabbed at the ground. More splashing. “I don’t know. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know if it’s dead. It’s not here. It’s not here.” Dad’s voice sounded far away, from California. Dad was fading too.

  Davie felt his father’s hands patting him, examining his injury. His father’s touch made him cry out again.

  “Davie? Listen to me.”

  Davie tried to listen, but Dad’s voice kept melting. Slipping under the world.

  Water splashed on Davie’s cheeks, and his eyes jolted open. Dad’s nose was nearly touching him. “Davie, I know you’re hurt, but you need to listen to me. Can you walk?”

  Davie tried to stand up, and the pain made him vomit. Dad patted his shoulder.

  “Davie, I can’t carry both of you. Do you hear me?” Dad said. His voice was shaky, almost pleading. “Neema’s ankle’s hurt, so she can’t walk. But I think you can.”

  “I can’t!” he said. The back of his thigh was on fire. “Dad, it hurts.”

  “I can’t leave you here. So that means we all have to go—now,” Dad said, breathing in his face. This time, Davie didn’t smell beer; he smelled his father’s perspiration, the smell of horsey rides and swinging from Dad’s arms in the back yard. The memories made Davie cry out, worse than the pain from his bite. Dad was panting. “This one time, Davie, I need you to grow up very fucking fast.”

  Davie gasped out a sob, but then he lost interest in crying. He was in pain in every way, but the pain wasn’t as bad as knowing the dog was still out there. They were in big trouble, and crying wasn’t going to change it.

  “I need a stick,” Davie said. He sniffed, and snot churned in his nose. “A weapon.”

  “Good boy.” Dad’s flashlight swept the forest floor, and the stick appeared as if by miracle. “Grab that one, fast. Then we’ll go back the way we came. Did you get enough for YouTube ?” Dad picked Neema up again.

  Davie tried to laugh, but it only came out like crying. He grabbed the fallen branch, which was thick, but not too thick for his palm. A perfect fit. It reminded him of the same stick he’d used when he saw the boys in the woods, already free of excess twigs and dead leaves. But it couldn’t be way out here. Could it? My magic staff, Davie thought, hopeful. Desperate.

  When Davie shifted his weight to his good leg, his injured leg screamed at him. He didn’t know how much he was bleeding, but he could feel the fabric of his jeans knotted up in his bloodied parts. Every movement was agony. Panic tangled his breaths in his lungs. Suddenly he was gasping.

  “Stay calm. We’re gonna get out of here, Davie. I promise. I’ll get you a doctor.”

  “Me too?” Neema whispered from the safety of Dad’s arms.

  “You too, Pumpkin. You ready, Davie?”

  Davie nodded, catching his breath, but his lips were shaking. He gripped his stick tightly with one hand, trained his flashlight ahead with the other. He couldn’t use Night Vision now—it limited his scope too much. He would have to trust his own eyes for the walk back to the fence.

  “Let’s go,” Dad said, just before they heard the barking behind them again.

  Angry barking. SPLASHSPLASH

  Davie just kept thinking No. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t fair.

  “I heard that,” Dad said, amazed and frightened. “I hear something coming.”

  “Run!” said a boy’s voice from ahead of them.

  “I heard that,” Dad said. His voice was dazed.

  They had no choice but to run; the boy’s urgent voice only confirmed their instincts. Dad’s feet made heavy splashes as he staggered under Neema’s extra weight. Tree trunks appeared suddenly in the beams from their flashlights, almost too late to avoid colliding with them, so running took all of Davie’s concentration—at first. Then he realized they were following the voices, keeping ahead of the dog’s splashing behind them, running the wrong way. The fence back to his grandparents’ house was behind them.

  Where were the ghosts taking them?

  Davie ventured a quick glance through Night Vision for a long view—and he saw a huge, looming structure up ahead and toward the right, blocking the moonlight.

  “A tobacco barn,” Davie said.

  He had never seen it in daylight. He doubted that it was real, but it was there. At the edge of the swamp. The Timmons boys crossed a swamp to lose the dog, Davie realized. He thought he said it aloud for his audio journal, but he was only whispering.

  “Come on, we’ll close the barn door,” the boy’s husky voice ahead said, full of reason.

  “The barn door!” Dad said. “We’ll close the door.”

  Consensus.

  The barking was getting closer again.

  Davie and his father must have caught up to the others, because the splashing of the ghost boys blended with theirs. He heard their sobs and whispers close to his ear. They were running together, all of them. Combined, their feet sounded like an army, and Davie hoped they were.

  Like Davie, they were crying and in pain. They understood. But still they ran.

  Davie thought his lungs would burst. The meat of his back thigh hurt so much that he was convinced it was falling apart, unfurling flesh with every twig he brushed against. He couldn’t tell the difference between his sobs and his hitching breaths, but he checked his Night Vision lens again. Part of his head was still working.

  Were they moving at all? The tobacco barn was too far. Too far. They wouldn’t make it, he realized. The barking behind them was gaining too fast. The dog was too loud, too close.

  They needed another plan.

  “We can’t . . . we can’t . . .” Davie wheezed.

  A shriek sounded, to Davie’s left. The bottom fell out of his world until he saw that neither Dad nor Neema was shrieking. Dad froze in his tracks, lowering Neema to the ground so he could wield his shovel as a weapon. Neema sobbed, clinging to their father’s legs, staring wide-eyed toward the place wh
ere the shrieking had come. Dad was wide-eyed too.

  Beside them, there was a frenzy of splashing in the water.

  “Ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts!”

  Davie didn’t know whose voice it was. It could be any of them.

  “Where is it?” Dad said, ready with his shovel.

  Davie looked through Night Vision and saw the whorls of water dancing about ten yards ahead of them. There was a great commotion. “There! By that stump!”

  Dad had only lunged ahead one step when a beast let out a terrible sound. For an instant, right before he blinked, Davie thought he saw water splash as if a boulder had just been tossed inside, framing the dead dog like a chalk drawing. The dog was big. He could have killed them.

  “I got it!” the oldest boy said.

  “Is it dead?”

  “It’s not dead!” Davie said. He had heard the dog felled three times and counting, but the dog always came back. Davie had learned that much. As soon as his legs started pumping again, he heard a splash behind him—and a sound like a shower as the dog shook off water.

  The barking started right away.

  “Run!”

  Davie no longer knew whose voice he heard. Dad scooped Neema up into his arms and followed Davie’s lead, racing toward the barn. Neema clung to Dad so she wouldn’t hit her head on tree branches, but Dad still had to run slowly with her in his arms. Too slow!

  The dog would catch them again. The dog always caught them.

  “Run!” the voice said ahead.

  Then, even worse, an urgent scream: “STOP!”

  But Davie couldn’t stop his legs in time. Suddenly, there was no ground beneath Davie’s feet. His feet plunged downward to nothingness, like stepping off of a sand bar at the beach.

  He was drowning in soft earth. Mud.

  Even before Davie fully realized he had fallen into some kind of hole—and a large one, since the earth yawning around him—he began scrabbling to try to pull himself out. His slide was slow, a taking-its-time kind of terror, and Davie screamed, grasping for a twig or a rock, anything to hold him above ground.

  “Be still!” Dad said. Davie had heard that same terror in Dad’s voice when Neema screamed, except now Dad’s voice was more hollowed out, like he was witnessing a death. He had dropped Neema just short of the hole, or they all might have fallen. “Davie, don’t move! Please don’t move, Davie.”

  As Dad reached for him—his hand still a good six inches off—something cracked beneath Davie, old damp wood aged beyond its time, and Davie plunged downward again. Suddenly, Dad’s hand was gone.

  Dad and Neema both yelled his name, as if they could will his fall to stop.

  Davie screamed and sobbed, panicked by the bitter taste of mud in his mouth. His legs jerked, kicking, and there was nothing but air beneath him. Below, there was a long fall. As mud slid down around him, gathering speed and resolve, Davie couldn’t understand why mud had risen to his chin and no farther. Or why he hadn’t fallen yet.

  He felt his clothes pinching at the nape of his neck, as if he was dangling on a hook. Something was holding him up from behind.

  The ghost?

  His jaw trembling, Davie turned around to see with his own eyes.

  A stubborn tree branch had snagged his raincoat, he saw from the corner of his eye. Grandma’s raincoat had saved him from falling.

  “I said be still,” Dad said, grabbing his arm. “It’s like a . . . well . . . or something. It’s a long drop down, Davie.”

  Davie last brave act that night was to train his Night Vision down to the hole below his dangling feet. He thought he saw the flare from the whites of a small boy’s eyes. No, two! Terrified eyes. Davie heard three boys yelling beneath him, and then only a horrible silence.

  They had fallen. All three boys had fallen, just like he, Neema, and Dad almost had.

  Davie could only breathe again once Dad had pulled him far clear of the hole, when he was sure all four limbs were on solid ground. He was afraid to walk anywhere, afraid of falling again. “You’re okay,” Dad said, stroking Davie with one arm and Neema with the other. Davie could hear his father’s heart thundering in his chest. “You’re okay. It’s all okay.”

  “Is it gone?” Neema said.

  Davie wondered if she was talking about the dog or the hole, or both. No barking, but it could be hiding. Waiting.

  “I don’t know,” Dad said. “We’re going to the barn. Where is it, Davie?”

  “What if it’s not real?” Davie said.

  “It’s real enough.”

  They were only forty yards away from the barn, but it was a long forty yards. Davie realized he didn’t hear splashing when he walked anymore. The barn was on dry land.

  By the time they got to the barn door, Davie’s body was drenched in perspiration. He felt like he was swimming in his clothes. But he helped Dad pry the barn door loose from its mooring, and they slammed the heavy door shut behind them. Dad used his shovel to lock it in place, since there was no other way to secure it.

  By then, Davie was lying on the barn floor, his face pressed against the scratchy wood. The barn smelled of sweet tobacco leaves, a smell that burned his throat. “The dogs chased them to the swamp,” Davie said. “They killed the dog. But they fell in a hole.”

  Dad barely heard him, too consumed with comforting Neema. As much as Davie craved comfort himself, he didn’t mind. He would have died to keep Neema safe. He still might.

  “Maybe a . . . storm cellar,” his father panted. “Maybe a well. Probably no way out.”

  Maybe they had fallen and broken their necks right away. Or been buried alive. Maybe they had died waiting for someone to find them. And all the while, the town was going to hell because they were gone. Davie could only cry about the whole sad mess.

  The Timmons brothers never made it to the barn. They fell when the barn was just within sight. It wasn’t fair, after what they’d been through. It wasn’t fair.

  While Davie cried, Dad undressed him and Neema, examining their wounds by flashlight, washing them with bottled water. He looked relieved. There was blood, but the bleeding had already stopped. He divided the packet of Extra Strength Tylenol he kept in his wallet between them. The pain was still at a roar, but having a pill to take made him feel better.

  “You’re fine,” Dad promised them, and they hoped he wasn’t lying.

  The tobacco barn was cavernous. When Dad walked to the other side of the barn to make sure there were no other doors to lock, his absence seemed eternal. Davie thought he would faint waiting for his father to come back to their corner, where Dad had spread out their coats to make a cushion for them to rest. If Davie hadn’t been stroking Neema’s hair and telling her everything was fine, just like Dad, he might have started crying again.

  But his father did come back, and he brought good news.

  “We’re locked tight as a drum,” he said. “I checked every corner. Nothing’s getting in.”

  And that was that. By silent agreement, they knew they weren’t going to open the door until morning. Ghosts don’t like the light.

  They ate cheese and crackers and drank bottled water. They talked about favorite characters from television, movies, and books to keep from thinking about their world.

  That was when Davie heard it from the slats in the wooden wall, a foot from his ear:

  Snnnnffffff snnfff snnfffffff

  The dog was sniffing at the door.

  A loud bark woke Davie, a roaring in his ear. Daylight blinded him when he opened his eyes. He blinked, his limbs frozen by a sight so improbable that he forgot his pulsing pain: The towering tobacco barn around him was no more than a shell, most of the wall planks stripped away, its rooftop lost among the pines, its floor overgrown with generations of underbrush.

  A German shepherd’s face lunged toward Davie, pink tongue caressing sharp teeth.

  He’s followed us to daytime, Davie thought. That thought blanked out anything else that tried to come into his mind, until he c
ouldn’t remember where he was. Or who.

  Neema’s scream pulled Davie out of his trance.

  Davie let out his own yell, pinwheeling his arms as his only weapon against the dog.

  “Calm down, Davie!”

  “Son, it’s all right. Whoa there. Whoa.”

  “Neema, it’s Grandma! It’s all right.”

  “Can’t you see, Sheriff? They’re scared of the dogs.”

  Once the police tracking dogs were well out of sight, the world came back to Davie in slow bits and pieces. But it took a while.

  Davie’s next fully formed memory was sitting on a yellow police blanket slurping apple juice from a juice box; the best apple juice he’d ever tasted. Neema, slurping her own juice box across from him, was sharing the exact same feeling as she gazed at him. Both of them almost smiled. That was the first hint Davie felt that maybe they were all right. Maybe.

  Davie couldn’t hear what his father was saying to the sheriff over the hood of the sheriff’s huge SUV, the sheriff nodding and taking notes. Davie couldn’t imagine what kind of story Dad could tell someone who hadn’t been there.

  Davie gasped. He patted his side for this gear, but everything except his shirt had been stripped off by the paramedics. “My camera !” he said. More like a croak.

  Grandpa held his ghost kit high up in the air. “Got everything here, Davie. Just relax.” Grandpa was using his cane, Davie noticed. He had never seen him use his cane outside before.

  “Grandpa, it bit us,” Davie said. “Even though we couldn’t see it.”

  Grandpa nodded, gesturing for him to hush. “Shhhh. You just relax right now. No need to get excited. It’s gone now.”

  Grandma’s eyes were tired. Davie realized they both must have been up all night, worried sick when they never came back from the woods. Davie didn’t know how far they had traveled, but it had taken a long time to find them. Davie felt terrible for causing his grandparents the same awful suffering Isaiah and Essie Timmons had, even for a night.

  When Grandma stroked Davie’s head, he held her wrist tightly. “Grandma, I know what happened to the Timmons boys,” he whispered.