But the whistling didn’t stop, and she couldn’t pinpoint its source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. She raced down the right aisle, banging her leg against the armrest of a chair in the dark, but she didn’t stop. She threw herself against the closed theater doors only to discover that they were locked.
Where was the whistling coming from? She backed down the aisle, peering up into the balconies. A spotlight came on suddenly, blinding her. Blinking away the black spots, she turned and ran back toward the dressing rooms, the hollow song following her. Every door was open, and Theta inched her way down the long, ill-lit hallway, fearful that whoever was doing that whistling might leap out from behind any one of those doors. Theta was truly scared now. Beneath her gloves, her skin was very warm and itchy.
“No,” she whispered. “No.”
A sliver of light shone at the end of the hall; the stage door was ajar. She ran for it. Her fingers burned with unwelcome heat. The whistling was louder now. It seemed to come from right behind her. The work lights flickered and whiffed out as she passed. She tripped and skidded on her knees, wincing in pain. She placed a palm against the wall and felt the wood grow hot. Gasping, Theta pushed away and raced for the door. The door, the door, the door. The stage door, her means of escape. The stage door, which even now was swinging shut.
THE ONE WHO WORKS WITH BOTH HANDS
Memphis woke to a feeling that something wasn’t right. When he looked over and saw that Isaiah’s bed was empty, he was immediately up and moving quickly through the apartment, his heart racing. He checked the bathroom and the kitchen. Octavia snored in her bed, and Memphis did his best not to make noise so he wouldn’t wake her. He looked out the parlor windows and saw his pajama-clad brother standing in the cold in the garden. He raced to his brother’s side.
“Isaiah, what’re you doing?” Memphis shook the boy. Isaiah was cold to the touch.
“Talking to Gabriel.” Isaiah’s teeth chattered. His eyes had the fixed, unseeing quality of a trance. “Memphis, brother,” Isaiah whispered. “The storm is coming… the storm is coming….”
“Isaiah! Isaiah!” Memphis shook his brother hard.
“What in heaven’s name is going on?” Octavia had wandered out in her nightgown. “What are you doing outside in the middle of the night?”
“Isaiah’s having a nightmare. Come on now, Ice Man. Wake up!”
“The ninth offering was an offering of lust and sin….” Isaiah said. His eyes had rolled back in his head and his mouth twitched.
Octavia put a hand to her mouth in shock. “Oh, sweet Jesus. Memphis, help me get him inside.”
Together, they carried the shaking Isaiah inside and placed him on his bed. Octavia fell to her knees beside the bed and put one hand on his forehead and the other across her heart. “Get on your knees, Memphis John. Pray with me. We’re gonna pray the Devil out of this child.”
“There’s no devil in Isaiah!” Memphis growled.
“They’re coming, brother….” Isaiah whispered. His shaking had become more violent.
“Say it with me,” Octavia ordered. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”
Memphis watched the scene unfolding in the bedroom in horror. His best friend was dead. His brother was sick with visions. His mother lay in an early grave and haunted his sleep, and his father had left and was probably never coming back. Memphis was sick and tired of everything. He wanted to grab Theta and run away from it all.
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” Octavia prayed fervently. “He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul—Memphis John, where do you think you’re going?”
“Away from here!” Memphis shouted. He threw a coat on over his pajamas, shoved his sockless feet into his shoes, and tore out of the building, walking in an aimless fury. A fog had come up in the night. It hazed the street lamps and turned Harlem into a ghost town. Obscured by mist, the few people out on the streets were like laughing shades. Memphis turned away from them, walking uptown.
Why was this happening? What if Isaiah was sick, like their mother? They hadn’t known how bad things were with her until it was too late. Was this a warning? He remembered what Sister Walker had said about Isaiah being like a radio that picked up signals. What signals was Isaiah getting, and how could he make them stop?
He found himself in front of Trinity Cemetery. The open gate squeaked in the wind. Why was it open? A black cat slunk across the road, giving Memphis pause. “Go on! Git!” he hissed at it. Memphis shivered. It had gotten noticeably colder, though he couldn’t say why. It wasn’t wind. In fact, it was very still. Not a tree swaying. Not one rustle in the leaves. Gooseflesh tickled up Memphis’s arms and neck. He had the sudden thought that he should turn around, go home, and pull his covers up over his head.
“Caw!” Up in the branches of a barren tree, a crow sat watching him.
“Leave me alone!” Memphis howled at it.
In the graveyard, he saw the silhouette of a figure in the fog. The person wasn’t moving at all. He was just standing there.
“Memphis…”
The voice was a rasp, like the scuttling of dried leaves in a gutter. Memphis stood perfectly still except for the quaking of his knees. His breath came out in a foggy Morse code of fear. He tried to speak, but his tongue had gone very dry.
“Gabe?”
The figure beckoned. “Brother…”
The crow cawed again. Memphis began to laugh. He was losing his mind—that’s what was happening. He was trapped in some sort of nightmare and couldn’t wake up. With a feeling of fatality, he followed the figure deep into the foggy graveyard, until he came to the mausoleum where Gabe’s body had been hung like a broken angel. Now Gabe stood in the mist in his funeral suit. His skin was shiny and tight across his full face, and he shimmered around the edges, transient, phosphorescent, a deep-water fish swimming briefly through the shallows. Memphis was aware of a sound, like a ragged high note held on a trumpet. It rushed into Memphis’s ears and made his heart race. His knees gave and he fell to the ground, paralyzed. Above him, Gabe flickered, dreamlike, as if Memphis were seeing a cycle of Gabes passing through: His soulful-eyed friend. A laughing demon. A decaying death mask crawling with flies, eyes stitched shut, the tongue gone.
Gabe’s voice came out as a long, labored whisper, as if these were the last sounds he would ever make. “At the crossroads, you will have a choice, brother. Careful of the one who works with both hands. Don’t let the eye see you….”
Memphis’s entire body shook. The horn reached a pitch that made him want to scream. The fog swirled around Gabe, and the last thing Memphis heard before blacking out was Gabe’s faint warning: “The storm is coming…. All are needed….”
Sister Walker sat at her kitchen table in her robe, her hair tied in a scarf, an untouched cup of coffee in front of her, and listened to Memphis talk about his dead friend. She kept perfectly still as he spun out his frantic tale, which started with Isaiah’s trance and ended in Trinity Cemetery; she didn’t even move as he told her about how Gabe had issued a warning—“The storm is coming”—just before he vanished into the fog. When Memphis had finished, there was only the steady ticking of the kitchen clock and the first milky-blue light of dawn at the window.
Finally, Sister Walker spoke. “Memphis, I want you to listen to me very carefully: You’ve had a terrible shock. I don’t know what happened in that graveyard, but for the time being, I would like you to keep this between us. Tell no one—no one, do you understand me?”
Memphis was too tired to do anything other than nod.
“As for Isaiah, I’m going to stop working with him for a small while, till he’s better. When he comes over next time, we will work on his arithmetic, and nothing more.”
“Isaiah won’t like that,” Memphis said hollowly.