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The man had been beaten. He didn’t seem any more dangerous than Samson. Bill couldn’t bring himself to move against the man. “No, sir.”
The man in the suit sighed heavily. “Have you ever heard of blind justice, Mr. Johnson?”
Bill nodded. The courthouse back home had a statue of the blindfolded lady. He’d seen it once on a trip to town.
“We are the blind eye of justice. Justice that happens out of sight. We are the sword, swift and sure.”
The beaten man at Bill’s feet didn’t speak English. He looked to Bill with a mix of weariness, fear, and contempt. The man spat at Bill’s feet.
“You see?” the man in the suit said, as if that were all the proof needed.
Bill took hold of the beaten man’s neck, and then a strange thing happened. It was as if Bill had been transported to a dream. He stood in a patch of land surrounded by a dark wood shrouded in mist. The trees didn’t look like any he knew. No Spanish moss or mesquite. These were giants with limbs thick as a working man’s arms that spread up and out into a tangled latticework of tinier branches clasped together like a prayerful man’s fingers. No leaves grew here that Bill could see. A snake slithered along a branch and plopped to the ground. Deep in the grainy mist, faces appeared—chalk-pale with deeply shadowed, unseeing eyes. Bill wanted to run, but where?
“Guillaume LeRoi Johnson.”
At the sound of his voice, Bill whirled around. There was a table and a deck of cards. Seated at the table was a strange creature, a thin gray man whose skin was as mottled as a moth’s wings. He wore a magnificent blue-black coat of oil-shine feathers, and on his head was a tall black hat. His long fingers ended in curved, yellowed fingernails caked in dirt, and Bill had a feeling of this man using those fingernails to dig himself out of a grave so deep it led to another world. The man in the hat shuffled a deck of tarot cards, cutting them into neat piles. His hands moved so fast it was like a bird’s wings fluttering.
“Guillaume LeRoi Johnson,” the man repeated. “Bastard son of rape, grandson of a slave mother and the master of the house. Born of violence and despair. Diviner.” And something about the way the man said it, slow and awestruck and menacing, goose-pimpled Bill’s skin. “Do you know who I am?”
Bill shook his head.
“I am also a bastard son. Born of this nation’s dreams and greed. Its idealism and its ignorance. Its hope and its violence. Would you like to be free of the shackles those men have placed upon you?”
“I surely would, sir. Yes, I would.”
The man in the hat smiled. “Make a bargain with me.”
Bill made the bargain under the yellow moonlight in that strange, dark forest where skeleton birds cawed toward the starless night. Where the dead watched and waited for you to fall.
When he came to, he was squeezing the broken neck of prisoner number twelve.
And then it was done. Again and again, he performed his duty without question. Men. Women. One as young as thirteen. Another as old as seventy. Each time took more of him with it. He was no longer Guillaume or Bill. He was no man. He was death. After one year, he looked forty. After two years, he barely recognized himself. His body ached like the devil. The skin of his hands was paper-thin and wrinkled. Veins popped up like tree roots. Two of his teeth rotted. Bill dug them out with his fingers and spat the bloody slivers into the sink. He hobbled to the mirror, but the reflection that greeted him was an old man’s.
And then his vision darkened and disappeared.
“What’s happening to me?” Bill asked. He begged for help. But there was nothing to be done. He was washed up and used. His talents gone for good.
“Thank you for your service to this country, Mr. Johnson. You’re free to go,” the Shadow Men said.
That was it. No money. No care for his blindness. Not even a medal. They left him on the side of the road like an unwanted dog.
Just like the man in the hat had promised, he was free of the Shadow Men. At a price.
And there was Memphis Campbell, walking around with his friends, not paying a price at all. Out there healing up white gangsters—yes, Bill had heard the rumors—but he wouldn’t even spare some for a friend. For one of his own. Every day, Bill swallowed down his bitterness. Now it came burning up inside him. To hell with Memphis Campbell.
While the house slept, Bill treaded carefully down the hall. He’d walked it so many times he could feel it. He was inside the boys’ room now—he knew by smell. He could hear Isaiah snoring. Carefully, he lowered his hand, placing it on the boy’s arm, hoping Isaiah would not wake. Easy, Bill. Easy, now, he said to himself, just like he used to say to Samson all those long years ago. But he couldn’t quite draw it out. Something wouldn’t let him. He wanted to howl. Rage. Tear something down. “Take,” he muttered. “Take, take, take.” The connection seized Bill like a pair of strong hands. Bill knew in his gut that wherever this was pulling him was a bad place. A feeling crawled over his skin like biting fire ants. And then a familiar face loomed before him.
“Hello, old friend,” the King of Crows said. His dark eyes were bottomless wells of terrors beyond imagining. They were in that forest again. The sick moon bled into the empty black night. When the King spoke, his razor-sharp teeth gleamed. “Do you think you can take what’s mine? You, of all people, should know better. Have you forgotten me so soon? I will colonize your soul with fear until, in your despair, you’ll think my yoke a boon. So you wish to see, do you? Very well. I shall grant your wish.”
Inside that world between worlds, the King of Crows raked his sharp fingernails across Bill’s face. Bill fell back as if burned, breaking the spell with Isaiah.
“My eyes!” he gasped. When he blinked, he saw terrible things: A husband slitting his wife’s throat. A band of white rangers taking the scalps of Indian children as they tried to run to safety. The hungry dead winking from a cornfield where they feasted on the mutilated carcass of a fly-ridden cow.
“Uncle Bill?” Isaiah said sleepily from his bed. “That you? Whatsa matter?”
Bill hurried from the room, tapping his way back to his own. He sat on the cot breathing heavily. He shut his eyes and the terrible scenes got worse—hangings and lynchings and men blown apart by war. So he stayed awake, fearing each blink until finally, by morning, the spell was done. Nothing permanent, then. Just a reminder of the King’s power. Of what he could do.
THE DEAD
