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  Oh, holy crap.

  No problem. He doesn’t move. Only the head comes to life. He raises it like a sea monster, waking up, with long white hair streaming over his eyes and that beard streaming down onto his chest like he just surfaced, with the whole ocean dripping down his face. His mouth opens wide under all that hair, as if he’s trying to say something important but can’t get it out because he’s drowning in time and, fuck! I really don’t care.

  Then it all comes in on me: what Father is like, what it’s been like with him, all of it, the parts in my soul that hurt all the time and the outside parts that he hurt but never so you’d see a scar or a broken bone or anything to prove it. Hampton fucking Poulnot, I am done with you, so I look him dead in the eyes, or where I think his eyes are under all that hair.

  He might be trying to speak.

  Like I even care. I shrug him off and tramp on by and out of his house here and on Kraven island and anywhere else in the universe. I’m gone from this place and out of his life in this or any other kingdom, I am done with Father for good and all.

  I’m with Takeda now, although that may not be who he really is. Me and Rawson Steele are joining together to fight our way out of this dead hole and back to freedom, wherever that turns out to be, but still, but still …

  It’s weird.

  Our front door is standing wide open to the night, which makes me feel both better and worse about how Rawson Steele got in, so that’s Thing One.

  Did he pick the locks or does this mean that he is secretly one of Them and They let him in Father’s house to, like, do Their bidding, whoever They are?

  That’s Thing Two, and this is Thing Three: at this point, nobody from Kraven even knows whether there is a They. There’s no way of telling how many more Things I have to keep track of, or whether I’ll ever run out of Things that creep me out.

  Thing Four is another whether.

  I don’t know how long it’s been since we got dumped in this awful place, but fuck, I’m sick of not doing anything and not going anywhere, all trapped inside with the man …

  OK, the man I hate most in this or any other universe.

  Just then Father raises his arms to me; he could even be pleading, and that does it. I’m out of here. Takeda or Rawson Steele or tool of the dead white city, I could care less who I’m following into the freezing night.

  My main man came and cracked me out, like, a minute and a half before I totally lost it and murdered Father and the Power went Zot or whatever and I turned to stone. Scientists would dig us up a million years from now, Hydra Destroyer like a marble chess piece and his stony father propped up at that table forever, monuments to some unknown thing that nobody cares about.

  The cold air zaps me in the face. It’s so cold out that everything I was thinking, including all the whethers, blows clean out of my head. It’s like being unshelled, turned loose in the universe without a clue. Fuck Rawson Steele! He doesn’t treat me like we’re in this together. Not now that we’re outside. He doesn’t say X or Y to me, you know, instructions; he doesn’t, like, send up flags, you know: this way, to make me think he actually gives a crap if I follow or not. He just takes off and I light out after him. We’re on the run!

  I squeeze out “Wait up,” but it’s too little and too late for him to hear. He’s running along so far ahead that I have to drop into a crouch and go tearing after him, following him by ear, that fucking song that he’s whistling through his teeth.

  Together we cross the white city, me and the night stalker, leaning into the wind. The two of us run along like rats, streaking between the rows of Monopoly-board houses and down the creepy alleyways that take us along behind, avoiding the checkerboard spots where blinding streetlights mark off squares of night. We rush across the blank face of Wherever This Is under that totally fake full moon, tearing along like Steele knows where he’s going, and I wonder if we’ll ever get to Merrill’s house or if we are going to someplace better or different or, OK, worse.

  We run until a stitch stabs me in the ribs. I yelp and bend double but he doesn’t look back and I don’t know how to get home from where we are. No way am I stopping now. I just follow the tune, sticking close enough to see which turn he’ll take next, but every time I make a corner, cramping like to die, shit! He heads around the next. Then just when I see a chance to catch up, he pulls a hard right.

  I want to yell loud enough to bring Them down on us, Wait!

  But he trusts me— I think.

  He needs me, right? I rear up on my hind legs like a crippled centipede and follow, so crazy with keeping up that when he finally stops, I run up his heels like the biggest, dumbest kid in Special Ed.

  “Ow!” He whirls with his teeth bared and his eyes blazing. “Watch it!”

  My face goes to pieces, like, down around my neck. I thought we were friends. “Sorry.”

  “OK then.” He slams my shoulders with the heel of his hand and spins me around like this is urgent and I should know.

  We are standing in front of another blank white house.

  Shit, he marches me up the walk like a lead soldier, his right foot and left foot shoving mine, right, left, right. March. Hup. Two— what was he before we got dumped in this desert, Special Ops?

  I dig in. Like, What is this? Where are we, and why me? Anything could be behind that door. “What’s this about?”

  “You’ll see.” He’s like steel, marching me the distance that I don’t want to go. Reep. Fo. We stop just short of the pool of light on the front stoop. He points.

  Except for the peephole, the front door looks just like Father’s, like all the other front doors out here. “What do you want me to do?”

  He bends, harshing into my ear. “When she comes to the peephole, smile.” Then he shoves me into the light.

  It’s kind of awful. It’s so bright, the door is so just like every other door that I don’t get what I’m supposed to know. Where this is. Why I’m here. My friend Rawson and me, we ran all the way across the floor of crazy Wherever to get to this dead white house that I don’t know whose it is or whether he’s still my friend or why this is so important.

  “This is where I owe you a big one.” He’s all, like, man to man. Then he grins. “She’ll open up for you.”

  “Oh,” I say. I get it. “Oh.”

  I’m stopped stone dead and shivering outside my sister’s house. The phone. We’re here about his stupid phone and I’m scared shit that after all this, like it’s the wrong house and we get busted, or else it’s the right one, but she isn’t home. Or she won’t let me in. Unless it’s a trap. They’ll come to the door all right, but it won’t be her, it’s the devil or the Merganauts from Gaijin Samurai, fixing to drag me and Steele or Takeda and my whole team Koro Ishi straight to hell.

  “Be cool,” he says. “I’ve got your back.”

  I push the buzzer and nothing happens. I knock and nobody comes. I lean down and whistle two notes into the keyhole, like Mom used to whistle when it was OK for us to come out of our rooms for supper, never mind what Father just did to her. That should bring her. If that won’t do it, nothing will. Next to me, hanging in the shadows just outside the halogen glare, Rawson Steele waits it out, all intense and jittering.

  I call in the lowest tone you can use and actually call to a person. “Merrill, are you in there?” What if she is? What if she’s not? If I bang on the door and yell and that doesn’t get to her, then maybe at least It or They will come out and grab us so this can end.

  That would be something, right?

  Right?

  I ball up my fists and bang hard enough to bring out the dead or bring down the walls of Wherever This Is, and I hate that the fucking place doesn’t even have a fucking name. “I know you’re in there, Merrill Poulnot. Open the door, Mer. Answer the fucking door, I’m your fucking brother. Hurry up, Merrill Laneuville Poulnot. It’s me.”

  And she opens it so fast and whips me inside so slickly and slams it so hard that without Rawson Steele’s
knife— his knife!— laid in the crack it would have locked, but my big sister is hugging me so hard that she doesn’t even know it hurts. She’s all sobby and going, “Are you OK? What were you thinking, Ned Poulnot, you could have died running around out there in the cold, you could get hurt, or killed, oh God, Neddy, I’m so sorry I had to leave you behind,” she says, and I don’t know if she means now or back then when she was eighteen, but I know she gets it; she gets me, and she’s sorry as all hell.

  “The thing is, I had to, we had to … And we’re stuck in the houses where they put us, so it’s you and Father all over again, but he’s too far gone to hurt anybody now. Listen, when we get home…” She hugs me again. “Hey, I’m working on it. Ray and I have…” This is not making sense. Then it is. “It’s just taking too long!”

  And, fuck, we don’t either of us know if it’s been days or weeks.

  “We’re trying,” my sister says, “and we still don’t know. We don’t know anything!” Then she buries my face in her belly and starts hugging and rocking, and whether or not she knows that Rawson Steele has blown into the room like a spirit on the wind, she’s crying to break my heart, “Oh, Neddy, I missed you so much!”

  15

  Hampton Poulnot

  When I die, reduce me to ash

  dig out the gold, it’s worth hard cash

  kick the rest out the door, baptize it with pee

  I know what you think of me

  Damn you, Dorcas Lanieuville, I wrote verse to please you, and now look. I loved you to hell, and you threw out generations of history like yesterday’s dead fish. You were bent on tearing down the family tree, so you called our daughter Merrill, ridiculous made-up name. I tried to forgive you, I did. “It means bright as the sea,” you said, putting your stamp on my baby like a curse. We tried, but you vanished from my life like a spirit on the wind, and that, I will never forgive. Now your righteous daughter and uptight Ray Powell— well, God damn you all.

  On Kraven, I was a leader! Ray Powell was my friend. Time passed. I drank and you ran and forgive me, I drank. I drank and worse things happened. I lost my temper all over again. Ray Powell turned my people against me; he did it with that smile, extorting promises I couldn’t keep, so he took me off the bench. For your own good, he said when he brought me down, but that’s not what he meant. He stole my power, but now.

  Listen, our Creator lifted me up! No prophecies this time, no burning bush to signify change. It just happened.

  We woke up here, set out like chess pieces on a white board without markings, shuddering in the murderous heat. I took it as a sign. My people delivered to me, diminished by the glare. Helpless and terrified, they turned to me. At last.

  For their sake, I raged at the elements. I ran; I thought they would follow as I cried to heaven, Explain! They were poised to follow me anywhere. The great screen overhead came to life, and like dumb animals they turned away from me, looking for answers up there on the screen.

  We watched and watched, but there were no answers up there, just TV.

  Now, we Poulnots ruled on Kraven island for too long for Hampton Poulnot IV to give up. Delroy Root stood by me; he was weeping. I seized on him and climbed, and he was glad. I rose up like Gabriel, trumpeting, Explain! We ran like angels, Explain, and in that one perfect moment all of Kraven island united behind me, even Ray Powell, every one of us bawling, “Explain.”

  I had the power; it was magnificent. I thought, This is my time. Until the unknown entity moved its huge hand. Overhead, the pictures died. Then, God! My people turned on me! Me, the new Moses, this close to leading them out of the desert.

  They blamed me.

  My people dragged me down. They fell on me like jackals and then, help me, help me Jesus. It wasn’t God, intervening. It was Ray Powell. He rose up all sacred and holy like the saints and popes, Ray Powell and Dorcas— Where did that come from? No!

  He and Merrill, your daughter, carried me away before I could … Dorcas? Is that you?

  What were you up to all those years ago, you and sanctimonious Ray Powell, so grand. Kind, you told me the night before you left, so kind, were you meeting in some big city, planning our ruination?

  Do you know what’s happened? Do you even care?

  Powell and that ingrate Merrill brought me to this white egg crate of a house, along with your perfidious son. My daughter and my best friend. Well, God. Damn. Them.

  You will rot in hell for this you … Dorcas, and it will serve you right. At the door to this white hell, you … Merrill! You told your baby brother, that child, “Keep an eye on him,” and shoved us inside. Imperious, with your “Ned will take care of you,” and then— as if I’d forgotten!— Powell put both hands on my shoulders, “You need time to regroup,” and pushed me backward into this room, saying exactly what he said last time, It’s for your own good.

  You said it with that same monstrous, kindly smile you smiled when you forced me out of the courthouse, Ray Powell. Like a father distracting a child with a little toy, you added, “You have a book to write,” you righteous prick.

  Now the boy is gone, he waltzed out with that stalking dagger Rawson Steele; the man tweaked my hair as though I’d ceased to exist.

  Well, I’ll show you.

  THINGS TO DO

  First: gather forces to find and confront the authorities here, and I will do it, but first!

  A. Regain control. Let my people dispose of Ray Powell.

  No! First:

  A. Regain my people’s trust. They must follow without question.

  a. Make them see every God. Damned. Thing I did for them, so they’ll keep the faith!

  It was Ray Powell who turned my people against me. Ray Powell shut me inside this box and locked me in, and they won’t come and they don’t send messages and they never visit, not even Merrill. The image of her mother and … Don’t. b. What’s b?

  b. Make a Plan and lay it out for them, so they’ll stop thinking what they’re thinking and believe in me again.

  Second:

  Thank God the boy is gone, he and that sleek weasel; he came slinking into our town just before, what was he doing there, why is he here— he and my ungrateful little …

  Et tu, motherfucker, the next time I lay hands on you …

  I saw you leaving, Edward LaMar Poulnot, you and your friend the Antichrist. You cheeky bastard, you didn’t even bother to sneak, but if you think I don’t have the power to stop you, then God damn your eyes. You didn’t escape. I let you go. It was a conscious decision, and I am damn glad to get shut of you. I need the space, and now. Now …

  When I die, and you turn me to ash …

  Stop that! No verse, not now, not when I …

  Second …

  Dear God, I don’t know what Second is.

  Understand, I am Hampton Calhoun Poulnot of the Poulnot family out of Charleston and Kraven island and nobody takes that away from me! I will go forth, and my people will rise up! With my people at my back I will find Ray Powell and lock Ray Powell in this antiseptic cell and see how he likes it. Then my people and I will march out and get Them or It or He who extracted us and dumped us here, we will get out of this place and I will get even, no matter who or what I have to destroy.

  Although this is no Egypt and much is uncertain, I am, by God, their leader, and if I need to prove it all over again, I will. Without distractions, without the incessant chatter of the boy, badgering, cajoling, threatening me:— Eat this, Father.— Father, do that!— Father, can I …

  Like Moses, I need solitude to think.

  When I die, reduce me to ash …

  Agh! Where did that come from? Dorcas, poetry I used to write for you, for all the good that did. Now, go away. Like Moses in the desert, I know my time has come, but unlike Moses, I don’t have forty years! Are my people unfaithful? Were you? Leave me alone!

  Stop. We were put here in the great white nothing for a purpose, and I will not move until I have divined it.

  You who put me here,
listen!

  I was in charge! Now look. Moses and his people made it out of the desert by the grace of God, but if Ray Powell could bring me down, who’s to say whether or not there is a God, or whether He caused this or if He is watching or whose side He is on, and if He or It or They.…

  Don’t! About the explanations, there will be no explanations. Focus on the plan.

  My list. Must. Make. List.

  First No. Second …

  And once it’s done, sift my ashes for gold …

  Damn you, damnable, mealymouthed, shiteating verse drifting in like the perfume in the handkerchief that Dorcas left behind. His people complained but they followed Moses, unlike my egregious, whining malcontents.

  Every great leader has moments of doubt, but this …

  Look at us, honest Carolinians all, born of good families, set down in the desert like so many objects, rearranged to please the eye. Unless we’re livestock, waiting for the the butcher’s axe.

  God it’s quiet. Guilt rushes in to fill the space.

  When I die, sift my ashes for gold.

  No, forgiveness can’t be bought or sold …

  Dorcas, not now, I have things to do. But at this great distance, after all this time, certain things I did rise up and congeal in my throat: the past lodges like a clot— can’t cough it up, can’t make it go down. Must think, I have to think, but you entered the space like an invading army, filling me with … If I knew, I would put it away, but vengeful God, you have raised Dorcas Lanieuville, and I can’t.

  … but gold pulled from ash can be melted down

  “Don’t!”

  What do you want from me, Dorcas? Presents, after all the presents you refused? Apologies? Why should I apologize? You’re the one who ran out on us. After everything I did for you.

  God I need a drink.

  Even Moses had bad days, right?