Virginia Hamilton (17 page)

Yes! I can see that now,
Thomas traced.
Worse than any zoo!

“Oh, boy,” Levi said, like a moan.

There was utter quiet in which each of them sensed separately, probing the night with their different abilities. They had a moment to think about all they knew and had guessed and wondered about Dustland.

Whatever was here is gone now,” Mrs. Jefferson said. “But it haunts me—mercy, it haunts me still!”

With that, she put her arm through Dorian’s. Without another word, she and her son passed along Dayton Street to their home. Justice and her brothers quickly crossed to the Union Road, which dead-ended at their own house.

Soundlessly they came up on the dark lane leading to the house and passed beneath branches of an enormous cottonwood tree. It was the property’s sentinel, the tree which for many years Justice had called Cottonwoman.

Grand old woman, you! Sensing now that the tree would forever be her friend.

Take off that shawl, Cottonwoman. But keep your bonnet on. The night’s too warm for covers, and the rain may come again.

High up, the cottonwood tree caught the wind. Leaves whooshed and rustled, sounding to Justice as though the tree laughed heartily in agreement with her.

T
HEY EASED UP ON
the dark house and put their shoes back on. They stood there, unmoving, probing all the rooms. They did this not out of fear but from what was becoming habit. Since their visits to Dustland they’d become wary of houses, or doors that could close them in. Justice and her brothers distrusted all enclosures. However, they uncovered nothing sinister in their sweet old home. Their mom was revealed stretched out on the couch in the parlor in a dark blue nightgown and robe. Mrs. Douglass had folded her hands along the side of her face. Sound asleep, she looked relaxed, except for a slight frown caught in the curve of one eyebrow.

Mother. My pretty mommy, thought Justice.

She felt a pang of love to see her mother so.

If I could change things, I would change it all, Justice thought.

Mr. Douglass was also asleep. He had nodded off in his easy chair next to the couch. There was no evidence that he had been reading. The floor lamp at the side of the chair was not on. There were no newspapers fallen at his feet. He’d simply been sitting there for half the night. Perhaps thinking. Wondering if and when his children—what could he call them now?—would ever return.

Justice’s folks knew that when the three of them unexpectedly disappeared, they had gone to the future. No matter how incredible the idea seemed, they knew the truth of it. But this was the first time the three of them had been gone all day and night. Clearly, her folks had worried themselves sick.

With power of mind, Justice unlocked the front door and opened it. They walked easily within the house they loved.

The instant they crossed the threshold of the parlor, Mr. Douglass was wide awake and turning on the light behind him. He stared at his children, snagged his vision on Justice’s altering features and quickly looked down. The three of them stood attentive, calm, not saying anything until Levi crossed the room and shook his mother by the shoulder.

“Mom. Mom,” he said, “we’re home.”

Mrs. Douglass was a long moment coming awake. They watched as layers of sleep lifted from her. But all at once she recognized Levi. And shoved him away in revulsion. She caught herself, leaped up to make amends. She stepped on her gown, tripped and would have fallen if Mr. Douglass hadn’t been there in time to catch her.

She had seen Justice at the moment she stepped wrong. And it took Mr. Douglass and both his sons holding on to her to calm her.

Slowly, Justice came forward, keeping her face hidden behind her father’s back. She reached around, gently touched her mother’s hair.

“Sorry,” Justice mumbled. She couldn’t think to say more, so full was she with love, with regret. She stepped back away from them.

More than once she had thought about using the power they had to ease some of the pain of their parents’ having children like themselves. She knew well that, for her folks, her gift of extrasensory was a terrifying affliction. The fact that all of their children were afflicted with the same defect was almost beyond bearing. Often as not, Justice and her brothers responded to their folks like normal young people on the verge of growing up. They admired their parents greatly and had no will to use the power on them.

Now Justice did what she knew she must do—bring the terror into the open in the hope that with familiarity it would seem less horrible. She let be what she could not help becoming. The Watcher came into her eyes.

Using no voice or gesture, she presented the power to their minds. Respectfully the Watcher revealed to them all that they had seen and done in Dustland, and what had happened in the Crossover. It made clear the presence of the Malevolence, the thing that had searched them out, here in the present.

It will come again, the Watcher informed. Mal has found its way and it will sweep. It will come. Mal comes to strike fear so that first unit will not return to Dustland. The first unit will return. The end of Dustland is only the beginning for first unit. I am the Watcher. I know.

The Watcher faded. Justice appeared both shapeless and all angles at once. In the artificial light, her eyes were too small, eyesockets too large. Her folks turned away every other moment, as if the Watcher’s light still glowed, hurting them. She knew it was the alteration that caused them to turn. They would imagine it greater than it was. And she thought of something that might make things easier for them.

“I’d change anyway when I was older,” she told them, sounding normal and young. “I mean, five years from now I wouldn’t look the same as I do today. I’d be taller and better developed. My face, my features would change on their own.” Of course, what she was saying was true.

“L-l-let her h-hair gr-gr-ow out,” Thomas told them, “annnd you-you w-on’t even n-n-notice how h-herrr nnneck has th-th-inned.” Pull it down around her cheeks, he thought, maybe get her some tinted glasses … some dark sunglasses.

He knew well that he could cloud the minds of outsiders so they saw Justice as normal. It was his parents he would protect from seeing her alter before their eyes.

They stayed in the room, all of them standing, for some time. Carefully, quietly, the children persuaded Mr. and Mrs. Douglass that, even with their power, much about them remained the same. Indeed, Thomas was still the wild and moody, thoughtless one.

My drums! Thomas thought suddenly. Man, I forgot all about them! Full of excitement, he remembered his drums were there in his room. Thomas was a master at the tympani and a fine drummer, too.

Levi remained the sensitive one. “I feel better today than I’ve felt for a long time,” he told them.

“Have you felt ill, then?” his father asked.

“No,” Levi lied, “I just feel very, very good now.

He was the one who liked most listening to symphony through the earphones of his hi-fi. He was most kind to Justice. But he would no longer write his poetry and stories in secret, he had decided. He would let Justice read them, if she liked.

The greatest change had come to Justice. The physical alteration, although subtle, was undeniable. And she appeared unaccountably taller, as tall as Thomas and Levi. She could not quite return to the carefree, energetic young person she had been only a month or two ago. Those seeing her were gripped by the intelligence in her eyes even when the Watcher wasn’t present. And yet there were moments when she acted just like a kid; walked and talked like a kid. These came when for hours she forgot about the future, when she was caught up again in the long, hot days of late summer in the town.

They cajoled their folks into accepting their condition. It was Mr. Douglass who managed best to put it aside. It was simple faith he had in them, in what he knew them to have been before their power; and he held on to that. He and his wife were powerless to assist them in whatever they must do to untangle themselves from their present dilemma.

Mr. Douglass let go of his anguish in the gesture of his hand smoothing back his hair. He had dark circles under his eyes. His wife was sobbing again into her hands. She did that often. He did, too. The tears would come to either one of them at any time with the suddenness of a dam breaking. He accepted the tears as a way of relieving the steady tension of their days. And he would have been comforted to know that the children also cried.

“You all must be starved,” he said to them.

Pieces of their family life seemed to fall into place.

“We’re about starved to death,” Levi said, and felt a ravaging hunger atop, his exhaustion. He stumbled over to sit in the easy chair his dad had just vacated.

Mrs. Douglass let her hands fall from her face. They could see that her eyes were dry. No more tears would come.

“We’ll get the bacon started,” Mr. Douglass said. He took his wife gently by the arm.

“Oh, boy!” Levi said. “Want some help?”

“No!” Mrs. Douglass said, too quickly, the first word she’d spoken. It was so like Lee to offer help faster than Justice or Tom-Tom. “I’ll make the eggs,” she managed, her voice hoarse and whispery.

“I’ll make pancakes!” Lee announced.

“No! No!”

What more was there to say? Mr. Douglass hurried her from the room. In a moment she was back. “You’ll have to be patient with me,” she said softly. She looked each one of them straight in the eyes, turned and left the room.

The three of them visibly relaxed once she was gone. No need to talk. Thomas opened the corridor between his and Levi’s minds.

Let’s go to our room,
he traced to Lee.

I feel I could sleep for a year,
Lee traced back.

You mind if I drum?

It’ll be like music to my ears,
Lee traced.
Make all the rhythms you want to.

Thanks.

Justice,
Thomas traced,
we’re going in.

But don’t go to sleep,
she traced back.
Breakfast will be ready in a half-hour or so.

I was going to sleep,
Levi traced.
How could I forget that quick? I really must be tired.

You can sleep,
Thomas traced.
I’ll wake you.

I’m going, too,
Justice said, getting up.
Thomas, give me a knock when it’s time, will you?

She went to her room as the boys went to theirs, closing the door behind her. Seeing her dear room caused a sob to escape her. It was usually a mess from her hurry to be everywhere at once. But now it was neat as a pin. She grinned. Her mom had bought her a pile of new paperback books and had left them neatly by her pillow. Justice hugged the books to her. Oh, it would be great reading every one of them. Well, not in the daytime when there was so much to see and do. But at night; at night, reading them one after another, she thought.

If I want to stay up half the night, I will, too. And use the Watcher to read by.

That gave her the giggles. But she sobered quickly.

No. No, never play with the power. Use Levi’s flashlight to read by.

She fell asleep on top of the books. She slept until Levi poked his head in. Thomas hadn’t been decent enough to wake her after all.

“We’re at the table,” Levi told her. “Better hurry. Don’t even wash up.”

“But I have to,” she said. She rushed off to the bathroom, where she splashed handfuls of soapy water on her face and neck. Drying herself, she stared into the mirror at the Justice she had become. She looked carefully. It was so difficult for her to see the surface of things. But soon a view of her own changing was visible to her and not at all shocking. For she was aware of her changing within as well. She felt no imbalance, no alienness. That would mean that her mind was completely atuned to the alteration. And there were times now when she felt that her skin and muscle, her bone and marrow, encased her in a tube. She didn’t at all like the feeling. Less and less did she like the weight of herself.

Never bothered me once, she thought, until the time I was within the mind of the Bambnua. She was so heavy. And I was so
light.

She hurried out, through the parlor and down the hall to the kitchen, where all of them were seated. She plopped down between her mom and dad, the two boys across from them. She ignored Thomas, since he hadn’t waked her. She noted that they were eating in the kitchen rather than the dining room, the place they ate on special occasions. That was a good sign.

“Isn’t it funny to be having breakfast in the middle of the night?” she asked.

“Funnier than two fleas drowning in a buttercup,” her dad said amiably. “Now dig in. Don’t stand on ceremony, for you know how ceremony can’t stand to be stood on.”

“Ho!” giggled Justice, and served herself a pile of bacon and some scrambled eggs.

“Trying to make your plate disappear,” her dad said.

“Ummmm,” was about the only sound she could make with her mouth full. She quickly gobbled the eggs so she could fit pancakes with butter and syrup dripping all over them where the eggs had been.

“Oh, brother,” she finally was able to say, “I’m gonna faint at the sight!”

No one fainted, but it was not possible that three kids, even when two of them were teenagers, could eat so much so fast.

“Oh, my stomach,” Levi moaned, but he wouldn’t stop eating. None of them did, until every scrap of toast, of eggs and bacon and pancakes was gone.

Mr. Douglass looked stunned by their appetites. Mrs. Douglass was delighted at seeing her kids were as normal and as hungry as other kids. She made them more pancakes. They ate them while their folks drank coffee and picked at the toast Mrs. Douglass had just made.

You could sure see
they
hadn’t been on a long journey for a day and a night, Justice noted.

“We drank a whole quart of orange juice,” Justice said.

Justice and her brothers began talking about the journey. They speculated about it until one of them noticed that it was morning, that the sun was up to heat the day to sweltering again. Oh, fantastic July! With just your normal everyday 1980s dust in the air, along with birds and clouds and ninety degrees!