Southern Gods

SOUTHERN

GODS

JOHN HORNOR JACOBS

Night Shade Books

San Francisco

Southern Gods
© 2011 by John Hornor Jacobs

This edition of
Southern Gods
© 2011 by Night Shade Books

Cover art by Rodrigo Luff

Cover design by Claudia Noble

Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich

Edited by Ross E. Lockhart

All rights reserved

First Edition

Printed in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-59780-285-7

eISBN: 978-1-59780-353-3

Night Shade Books

Please visit us on the web at

http://www.nightshadebooks.com

For my father who told me the stories of Achilles and Odysseus

On the drive to Michigan, after midnight,

Sometime in 1979.

And for my mother, who let him.

‘As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,

They kill us for their sport.’

—William Shakespeare,
King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37

Prologue

1878, Rheinhart Plantation

T
he black thing walked from the forest and took the shape of a man. Wilhelm watched it through the window, from his sickbed.

At first the creature shuffled, a thing of gristle, all angular joints and thick sinew. It moved erratically, in a herky-jerky fashion that reminded the boy of a circus performance; each limb’s movement was prolonged, drawn out, as if for dramatic effect. The legs lifted, paused, wavered, and then placed themselves, each one moving independently of the others. It was hard to tell if its appendages ended in hands, or hooves, or claws. Even in the slanting afternoon light, its features were indistinct, blurry. The creature moved into the stubble of the empty field and stopped.

The boy thought it might be
wildschwein—
one of the vicious boars that foraged the dark wood and edges of fields—until the thing shifted. Its skin became mottled, rippled, and then faded back to black.

It rose. The black creature looked as though its spine had cracked and reorganized itself, and a man stood where the creature had. But it was still black. Still inhuman. And faceless.

It turned and looked at the boy.

How he knew it perceived him, the boy couldn’t say. The entity’s head remained featureless, like an ebony mannequin’s. Wilhelm’s breath caught in his chest and he could feel the impeding frenzy of coughs building. With it would come the blood, at first just flecking his lips, then a fine spray that would speckle his handkerchief, drip on his dressing gown, soil his linens.

Der Erlkönig
, he thought, remembering.

He had started coughing in the winter and never stopped. To ease the tightness in his chest, the Rheinhart servants began placing boiling pots of water in his room at night. The steam would fog the windows and in the morning, the boy would be able to hear the farm come to life around him: the clucking of the chickens, the braying of mules being harnessed, the screeches of peafowl, the clatter of pans and cutlery in the kitchen. But he would not be able to see it.

By spring, his mother moved him out of the room he shared with his brother and into the small bedroom at the back of the plantation house, near the sleeping porch. He’d cried and thrashed and tried to talk her out of it, but she stood pale-faced at the door, tears streaming down her cheeks, and shook her head. Wilhelm fought as the servants entered the room and began bundling his clothes; he swung his fists wildly, but he’d already lost enough strength to be easily winded. He hit one serving man’s back with his small, hard fists, but the man ignored him except to pull his shirt over his mouth and nose. His younger brother, Karl, watched from behind their mother’s skirts as the burly servant grasped Wilhelm’s arms, turned his face away, and drew the crying boy out of the room, down the hall and stairway, and firmly placed the boy in a vacant servant’s quarters, behind the kitchen. He cried then, and hated.

At night, he dreamt of killing his brother, and his mother, for banishing him. For abandoning him.

He grew weak and pale.

One morning his father had come to his new room, bundled Wilhelm in a blanket, and carried him through the house with a blank expression. The boy watched, partly bemused, as he passed through the house in his father’s arms, staring up at the vaulted ceilings and crystal chandeliers as they passed overhead in a strange procession. His father placed him in a harnessed carriage and drove east at a furious pace until they came to a wide, massive river.

They boarded a ferry, their horse nickering, the carriage swaying on its wheels. After an hour of stevedores straining against the Mississippi’s current, they gained the eastern shore. That evening they pulled into the courtyard of a beautiful building, a place strewn with light and laughter and fine gentlemen and ladies walking on the grass, the smoke from cigars wafting on the evening air like a warm memory. The sign read Gayoso House, although the building, to the boy’s eyes, seemed palatial.

“Where are we?” he had asked.

“Memphis.”

“But why?”

“Why? You mean why are we here?”

He nodded. His father jumped down from the carriage and handed the reins to a stable attendant. When his father lifted him, again, the gentlemen and ladies turned to look. Wilhelm felt his cheeks grow red. He coughed into the blanket as quietly as possible.

“Here,” said his father, handing him a handkerchief. “Cough into this. It’s very important.”

“Why are we here?”

“You’re sick.”

“I’m feeling better. I’ve stopped coughing. See?”

“Yes.” His father carried him across the lawn and into the hotel. He set Wilhelm down in an ornate chair in the lobby as he paid for a room. Then he lifted him again. The boy was growing accustomed to staring at ceilings.

That night, silent men came into his darkened bedroom and touched him with cold hands. With soft, papery voices, they asked him to cough and listened to his chest. They frowned and regarded him solemnly, eyes devoid of hope.

Consumption, they called it, as they spoke with his father in hushed voices. His father’s face grew somber and even paler than before, and he glanced at Wilhelm and smiled at him, weakly.

Wilhelm’s breath came in short gasps, and his eyelids felt leaded and heavy. He closed his eyes.

When he awoke, it was still night and his father sat beside him, reading by lantern light.

“What are you reading?”

“A story.”

The boy fought the cough building in his chest. He didn’t want his father to pity him.

“Will you read to me?”

“It’s in German.”

“Memaw taught me some. I know a few words.”

“I’ll translate. How’s that?”

Wilhelm nodded and nestled further down into the bed.

“This is
Der Erlkönig
, a poem by a man named Göethe, written a long time ago. It’s a story about a father and his son, traveling home on horseback through a dark forest. The boy is sick, and the father is frantic to get him home. As they ride, the boy becomes delirious and sees a frightening man in the woods.”

His father began to read, haltingly at first. Sometimes he’d sound out the German and then translate.

My son, oh why do you look so afraid?

See Father, don’t you see the Elf king is there?

The Elf king, Elf king with crown and cloak?

My son, it’s a wisp of mist.

He paused. “How much of this do you understand, Wil?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Enough. It’s scary.”

His father smiled. “Very scary to me. And very sad. I’m sorry I never taught you how to speak or read German.” He rubbed his eyes. “I should stop. The ending might be too frightening for you right now.”

“No, it isn’t. I just don’t understand everything.”

“Let’s see if I can explain it.” His father shifted in his chair. “The man can’t see the elf king, only trees. The Erlkönig promises things to the dying boy, the love of his daughter, if only the boy will come with him. In the end, the boy dies. The poem doesn’t make it clear whether the boy is hallucinating the Erlkönig or if he’s really there, stealing away the child’s life.” He bowed his head for a moment, then pulled a pipe from his vest, packed it with tobacco, and lit it from a match. “I don’t know why I’m reading this to you at all. Maybe it was on my mind.”

“I thought elves and fairies were good. At least in all the stories Memaw read me they were.” Wilhelm coughed again, and his father looked at his pipe, turned, and set it down in a crystal ashtray.

“What is good?” his father asked. “In the old wives’ tales and stories they steal away children and raise them up to be kings and queens of distant lands. The grumpkins help cobblers mend shoes and find lost jewelry for young ladies. But those are children’s stories. The interesting thing about the Erlkönig is that he’s not some sweet little fairy. He’s a monster. And monsters make for good stories.” His father smiled wanly. He passed his hand over his eyes and yawned.

After a moment, his father took Wilhelm’s small hand in his warm large one and squeezed. Then, he lifted the book and continued reading. It was the last time the boy felt truly happy, lying in a Memphis hotel room as his father read to him about a dying boy.

But now, the creature—the awareness—cocked what passed for a head and stared at him. Wilhelm, at that moment, didn’t think monsters made for good stories at all.

The entity took several long, sweeping strides—seeming to flow across the field—and suddenly, it was at the window, filling the frame.

The boy gasped and then began to cough. He felt wetness on his lips. Blood.

When he regained control of his body, he realized it was cold now, with the upright man-thing peering in at him. The morning’s warmth had vanished, and Wilhelm shivered and tried his best to hold back another coughing fit. He felt blood dripping from his lower lip onto his dressing gown.

For long moments the boy and the thing matched gazes—watery blue eyes staring into an eyeless, blank face—and then the thing broke the gaze by stepping into the room. Through the window, through the wall, it was as if one second the creature stood outside and then as the boy blinked, it moved through glass and wall to loom above him at the foot of the bed.

I’m going to die
, thought the boy. Having lived for months with the terrible knowledge of his disease, the boy was strangely nonplussed by this realization.
Something ripped in my chest when I coughed and now my lungs are full of blood. I’m going to die now, and Death is here to collect me.

“What?” He hesitated, because the Death-thing did wear the shape of a man. He
could
be a man. “Who are you?” the boy asked.

The black figure stood absolutely still. For a moment the child thought it was just an illusion of shadows, the dying afternoon light playing strangely on the walls of his sick room. But then the thing cocked its head again and the illusion was broken.

I come before. I prepare the way
, it spoke directly into his mind.
I am the herald. All you know will pass.

The boy looked at the figure and began to tremble. He breathed, short quick breaths, chest tightening, and he could feel blood in the back of his throat, burbling and popping.

You are dying
.

The boy nodded. This thing spoke what everyone else ignored for so long. For an instant he was grateful to it for being honest, stating the situation so simply. His mother danced around the obvious for months and his brother, Karl, avoided him totally. His father was always traveling, taking grain or cotton to market. The serving woman who brought him food, emptied his chamber-pot, and washed his soiled linens, she wore a bandana around her face and couldn’t meet his eye. Even when he cried.

As he looked at the creature, he felt an overwhelming hatred for his family, those who had put him aside to die. And the burning feeling in his chest, the itch that would erupt into a frenzy of bloody coughing now, felt like a warm rage suffusing his being. His body was learning to hate.