“You want this arm to rot off, you damn fool? Stop it, ’fore I hit you back! Stop—”
The connection surged through Memphis quick and hard, like an electrical current. His body jerked twice. The back of his tongue tasted of iron. The street beyond blurred, grayed, then filled with light. The last thing Memphis saw was the drunk’s eyes going round as coins as he tried, but failed, to speak.
Memphis felt as if he were falling, and all around him was a sound like rushing water. His body settled, and he stood once more in that other, healing place that lay between this world and the next. He felt the press of spirits beside him. Their hands welcomed him back first, and then he saw them standing all around: vague shapes of ancestors draped in layers upon layers of cloth, reaching across oceans and generations, unknown yet so familiar. There was the soft, distant rhythm of drums and subdued singing. A warm breeze brought the smell of salt and heat-baked sand.
When their hands fell away, the shapes parted, and Memphis saw his mother in a coat of shiny blue-black feathers, waving at him through amber fields of sun-ripened wheat.
“Memphis. Son…” Her voice was raspy, her words slow, as if it took great effort to speak. “We h-haven’t much t-time.” She clutched her stomach as she gagged, vomiting up a small, feathery tuft. A thin stream of oily drool dripped from her lips. Her voice thinned to a croak. “Follow. The. Eye. Heal. The. Breach.”
Dark, roiling clouds massed on the horizon, blocking out the sun. Angry light crackled against the churning sky and pitchforked down into the earth. Ghosts appeared in those brief flashes; they swayed in the wheat like shimmering scarecrows. These dead bore no resemblance to the shadowy spirits who’d welcomed Memphis into the healing space. There was nothing benevolent or ancestral about these wraiths. Instead, there was something terrible and hungry about them, as if they could eat and eat and never be filled.
Another storm of lightning lit up the sky, and Memphis could see that it swirled around the man in the stovepipe hat. It balled in his palm. He seemed delighted by this. His laugh was everywhere at once. He extended a hand toward Memphis, and though he was far away, his face loomed large and close. “Mine,” the gray man said in a voice as old as time. He strode through the field toward Memphis, and the dead moved with him.
Memphis’s mother coughed and spasmed with some violent change. Her eyes widened as she fought to whisper one last word: “Run.”