Jackal, page 28
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. ’Cause if you are, Grandma Abigail said, it’s only a matter of time until a fool gives you enough attention.”
SEVEN
Night.
Stars.
Breath.
I gasp so hard that my ribs burn with the effort. Only when I cough and roll to my side do I realize that I’m free of Doug’s grasp. I try to touch my neck. My limbs haven’t fully returned yet. My sight is back. I turn my head. I can’t believe what I see.
Kirsten is slumped against the bottom of a tree, like she’s been flung there. A pile of limbs. I can’t tell if any are broken, but she’s still breathing, very shallowly. Mel lies in a pool of blood so deep red it looks black. Doug is now on the ground far away from me, looking dazed. He grasps at the air, trying to right himself. Between all of us is a shadow.
The monster from my dreams.
This is no vision or mist. The ground sags under its weight. I just watch and breathe for a moment, letting myself recover.
“J—Ja—ack!” Doug sputters out. The creature rumbles the air with a growl that is clearly the parent of mine. It stands in front of me. Protecting me. I make my way to my knees, still coughing, wheezing, and uncertain if this beast is here to save me.
Looking at it, I see that, unlike the rhyme, it is indeed made of flesh. It reeks. Its fur is short. Worn. One of its erect ears is chewed away. Doug tries to approach “Jack” and its massive jaws snap at him. Doug staggers back. Meanwhile, I get to my feet. Though this beast has saved me, it is still a beast. All the stories about the woods and the monsters in the trees, they’re all true.
Jack shifts his weight. This time I stand my ground. Doug pulls the hunting knife back out as he faces off with it.
“I knew you were planning something.”
If a beast can, I see the thing thinking, processing. It turns to me. Milky eyes. White teeth. It’s an old thing, but it can still hurt me. I’m not afraid. I shouldn’t be. He saved me from Doug. It has been in my dreams.
“What do you want?” I ask him.
“You,” he says.
I study his shape. He is not a hound. He is not a wolf. Or a dog. He is a massive jackal. A scavenger. Made to feed on carrion flesh.
“What do you want?” I ask again.
“What a god needs.”
My mind races to put together what that could mean. Bringing up God leads me to worship. I turn to Doug.
“Have you been…feeding the girls’ hearts to Jack?” That would explain the ritualistic aspect of the murders. The regularity. Looking at Doug, he fits the definition of the killer in my mind. Hiding a dark nature. Coiled. Ready to strike. I saw the quick work he made of Nick. He wouldn’t be happy with one victim a year.
“After everything my father and I did for you, you pick her!” Doug yells.
“Picked me for what?” I ask.
If one calls your name, or the other tempts you off the path, you must ignore both, or face their wrath. That rhyme. Wrath easily means death. Destruction. What Doug did to the girls. What could be worse than that?
“To become a god,” Jack repeats. Reality feels all glitchy when he talks. The more I look at him, the more it feels like something I shouldn’t be doing. My head hurts. Something cold is crawling in behind my eyes.
Your eyes are bright. Like mine. Is this what happened to Farrah? She saw Jack and—looking at him I see the gaps in his form. His flesh slides around in the shadows of him. An internal structure remains. He has ribs. A heart of his own. It squeezes and releases at odd times. He has teeth and claws. He growls at Doug and I feel it. The dreams. My senses. If the monster is real, then this thing bit me. My mom was worried about bacteria in the wound. Now I worry it was something much worse.
“Liz.”
I hear Jack’s voice rattle deep inside me.
“Whatever he says, don’t listen!” Doug says.
Jack’s voice groans back in my ear. “You live like me. A shadow. Don’t you want more?”
I turn to face the great beast. I see teeth. Then his red mouth opens wide in a roar.
Snap!
I should be cut in half. Instead, I’m in darkness. A wet shadow. I’m inside Jack. The dark place Caroline spoke of. This must be it. Jack’s shadows race for my mouth, my nose, like in my dream. I can’t stop them. Cold and slick, they climb in through my seeking eyes and run down my throat to my heart. My eyes! This is exactly what it felt like when whatever was in Farrah crawled into me. This strange cold burn is also how my scar feels sometimes. These shadows have been gathering and growing in me almost all my life. After Farrah, my senses grew. Drinking dulled my resolve. No wonder I sleepwalked. The shadows wanted to come home.
I hear Jack sigh. He sounds relieved.
“What a world you’ve brought me.” Before I can try to understand, I notice my scar. He’s opened it. I can see inside of me. Slick red muscles, blue pulsing veins. In between my tight white tendons I see a piece of gleaming white. Where Jack bit me, one of his teeth nestled and merged with my flesh. It has been there, inside me, for fifteen years. Tendrils of shadow extend into my arm. Those I can feel. They push in. I try to fight them; I’m stopped by my dream. When I tried to rip the shadow out, I only succeeded in tearing myself. Powerless, I feel the cold enter.
My heart races.
It stops.
I press my free hand to my chest. I’m still breathing. Still existing. My sternum goes frosty under my touch. I reach into my shirt to be sure. My flesh feels like clay. I look out into the darkness for an explanation. Nothing.
Pain comes. My dead heart is looking for a way out of my body. I scream. No one and nothing hears me.
Then there is pulsing in my left hand. I look and I see a heart beating. It’s heavy. And strong. When it starts to race, I realize that it’s mine. Something else is in my chest, powering me now. I look at my heart. It looks normal, aside from the fact that it’s out of my chest. I turn it over in my hands.
I try to move around in the dark, but I can’t. How am I supposed to move in nothingness? Wait. I’ve done this. I’ve been doing this in my dreams. I think of the pain, the blood, and the mud, and it leads me right back to him.
The shadow in my apartment. The hound that has been chasing me. It’s been him all along.
“Why didn’t you help me?” I ask.
“Why didn’t you help Mel?” he counters.
“I tried! I couldn’t. I need to—” A sob takes the rest of my words. This creature has watched so many die and never intervened. “I need help!” My desperate cry rips my vocal cords.
“With only a piece of me, all I can do is watch,” he says. “You need all of me if you want my help.” In the dark, his voice feels vast and smooth. “I’ve learned much from all the hearts. I want to share them all with you.”
Before I can stop it, I feel my mind fill with the lives of all he’s eaten. My body vibrates with potential and wishes and dreams and promises. I feel Brittany’s hunger. Diana’s stories. Morgan’s beauty. Keisha’s change. And more, so many more. All these girls he consumed. What he took after Doug and his father killed them.
“I want to give you the tools. The power to shape this world how you see fit.”
I can barely speak. If my heart were in my chest, it would break. All those dreams and hopes. They’ve been sitting in him for years.
“You can get revenge now. No need to wait for justice.” Jack opens the shadows and I see Doug. Though injured, he searches for me in the dark. He’s nowhere near close. “You could snap his neck in your fist.”
I see Mel on the ground. She’s not moving. I search for the subtle flutter of her breath. I can’t focus. This is all wrong. I want everything to be right. To be good. Mel shouldn’t be out here. None of this should be happening. My mind starts to go numb with a feeling I haven’t experienced in years. Rage. Jack picks up on it and fills my chest with more of himself.
“Wait!” I say.
“Let all your anger give you power. Release it on the world. Don’t you want to be a god?”
My heart throbs in one hand and a feather of starlight appears in the other. My arms out at my sides, I realize the shape I’m making, the one Brittany was found in. I hold a heart and a feather. In this ritual of death, I’ve become the scales.
Anubis.
The god of lost souls.
Jack changes. He makes a shape to suit me: a man with the head of a jackal appears before me. Smiling. Baring his teeth. This is all wrong. Anubis lives in the stars, glossy history books, museums, and, most important, Egypt.
In Anubis, Jack shows me his heart. I know from Lucy he learned the power of belief. From Brittany he learned that flesh could fuel him. From Kayla he learned about finding the right partner. He got his inspiration from Diana’s histories. Keisha gave him the nerve.
If he gets out, he doesn’t want to roam the world as a canine. He wants to be a god. The dog god. But he struggles to keep the form. He’s not Anubis yet. He’s still a jackal.
“How?” I ask.
“With you.”
Like Doug, he’s keeping the whole story from me. I pace through my clues. My abilities have been coming since I came home, so proximity is key. My speed, strength, sight, smell all have grown. When I fought back, he stopped. He can’t force me to take on this power, this transformation. In my dreams, being consumed by shadow was inevitable. If he could force me, he would. He’s weak. His flesh reeks. He’s risking everything to make this work.
“Mel is running out of time,” he whispers.
“Help me save her,” I beg.
“I can. But if I do, Doug will get away. He’ll run. There will never be justice.”
The thought alone makes my anger come back. It threatens to overcome me like a wave.
“Tell me how you want to make him hurt and I will say ‘yes.’ Always.”
A chill of recognition stops me from responding. I wanted to do it and Jack told me “yes.” All I had to do was listen. This is what Kirsten meant. Jack told her to hurt Mel. He said yes. He had her hurt Mel to manipulate me. I need to get away from him and I think I know how. If this darkness is just like my dreams. If pain and mud and blood led me here.
Keisha Woodson.
Her name sits in the center of my mind. I think of her hair gel. The gummy scent. That pulls away from his heavy presence. His need. The open cavern of him.
I understand. The Darkness is not to be feared, for it is full of possibilities. One moment I’m with Jack, the next I’m with Keisha’s heart. She is still in her jean shorts and tank top. Her box braids are fresh. On the edge of adulthood, but still a girl. She doesn’t speak. My back hunches in memory. But, when she looks at me with respect, something I never saw from her when she lived, I straighten up and walk toward her.
Keisha looks over her shoulder. I follow her gaze and see Brittany. Now whole, I recognize her from her picture. When I reach for her I see all the girls. I recognize some of them from their photos. Then there are the ones I don’t know. I weep at the sight of unknown faces. They all look up at me. Silent. Waiting. I feel myself wanting to crumble under their expectation, but I don’t. I stand taller.
The Dead know many things. They know the past with an enviable intimacy. They study the present with a focus I’m just beginning to understand.
I ask Keisha my question instead. “Why me?”
“Because you’re good.” She says the word the same way she did years ago. Like the insult it is. “If you were too angry, you’d overpower him. If you were too hateful, the world would overpower you,” Keisha continues.
Good.
Special.
Chosen.
I denied my pain. I cut away parts of myself. I made space for someone—something else. In pursuit of those words, I became the perfect vessel for a monster. I’m Black, but not like those Black people. I’m a woman, but not like other women. I’ve fractured myself as goodness demanded of me. I thought the only demon I had to face coming home was doubt. A shadow. What happens when the shadow gets sick of following the man? The answer is: It finds someone it can bend to its image. Jack will be the flesh and I the shadow. Doug and his father need a symbiotic ritual to keep them in check. I wouldn’t. I’m good.
“Once you let him in,” Keisha continues, “he knows you won’t fight. He’s seen the world through you. He’ll make you think you’re saving it while you feed him. Using your flesh as his vessel to acquire more. That is how he becomes a god.”
“He leaves the woods and enters the world,” I say. I can’t even imagine the fear to be had if he succeeds. All the girls look at me. If he gets out, how many others would join them? I can’t let this creature that has consumed our hearts get out. Jack says he learned from the hearts of the girls. That is a lie. It’s always been. Everything he’s done from the beginning has been in service of the emptiness inside him. Once a shadow, always a shadow.
“Do you want his gifts?” Keisha asks. The senses. The dreams. The strength. I think of my life. It’s mine and I won’t give it up.
“Can he hear us?” I ask.
“He trapped us here, but this place is ours. He stopped listening to us once he had our flesh. Will you give him yours?”
Cautious of Jack’s and my connection, I don’t respond. Instead, like I’ve done for years, I hide my feelings. But this time, instead of denying them to myself, I hide them from Jack.
For the first time in a long time, I yearn for my imperfect, incomplete life. I’ve been so afraid of the story told about me. Now I know I need to tell it myself. For a moment, I rest in being who I am without needing to look through the eyes of anyone else. Seeing all their faces, I know what I must do.
This suffering must stop.
I look at the girls and I wonder about this place that is theirs. Is it Heaven or Hell? I believe it’s neither. It is a moment before the eternal. Only a fellow wandering soul can recognize another. Since I found the girls, they aren’t lost anymore. Jack trapped them. I can free them. Moving the dark itself, I seek the feeling of belonging and home. Something releases and blinding moonlight fills my eyes. I can’t see what’s beyond. I sense it. Peace. Warmth. Freedom. They move on, one by one. Keisha squeezes my hand. Then she too passes on. My time here is done. Space with the girls, though brief, is eternal.
I’m alone.
If I deny Jack, he’ll kill me and try again. If I accept, I lose myself.
If I can’t trust myself, then who?
I know that Jack and Doug are a pair of liars, but I can trust what I’ve learned about them. Doug wants what I have. Jack wants to get out. He thinks my anger is the key. I can use that.
I let my rage out. Like I thought, it pulls me right back to Jack.
“You let them go?” he growls.
He’s hoping to use my pain and doubts against me? All right. I let him in.
“You only need me now,” I say. “I accept.” The moment I do, Jack flows into me.
“I knew you would.”
The dark falls away. I’m standing in the forest. Doug is in front of me, knife drawn, waiting for the attack.
He begs. “Please don’t.” I call back the shadow that has kept him company all his life. Like the one I took from Farrah, it flows out of him with his tears. I call for the last one in Kirsten and it easily leaves her unconscious form. Now whole, every piece of the creature of the forest and I share one vessel. I have to try very hard to keep control.
“Kill him, Liz. For all of us,” Jack echoes in me. “For the Girls. For Melissa.”
My pain and my rage take over. More than strength, it is unpredictability. Before I can stop the impulse, I’m at Doug’s throat. The way he flinches tells me I’ve moved like a shadow, gone one moment and there the next. I wrap my hand around his neck and lift him high above me.
Unlike him, I’m firm but delicate. I’m doing my best to give him a window to see my weak spot. If he takes too long I’ll kill him. I need him to know that. I squeeze and feel the muscles in his neck shudder. I need him to be scared. If he’s scared, he’ll make the mistake I need him to make. I struggle against Jack’s power. He wants me to rip Doug apart. I know if I do, there is no justice coming, only revenge.
“Do it, Liz!” Jack starts to override my resolve. I grip Doug’s neck with my other hand. I lift him higher. Come on, Doug!
I feel immense pressure in my chest. He’s done it. Finally. I look down and see Doug’s knife sticking out of me, to the right of my heart. I take a hand off his neck, wrap it around his knee, and squeeze without restraint. My strength alarms me. The pop and following scream let me know I’ve dislocated it. I drop him. He falls to the ground in pain. I need him injured, so he doesn’t get away.
“You stupid girl,” Jack says. “You gave him a chance. Look at what happens when you have control. You are too kind. Let me.”
Before he can stop me, I grip the knife sticking out of my chest. This will hurt. I close my eyes and start to pull it out. The moment I do, I feel Jack fight me, trying to get my body to keep the blade in and the wound sealed.
“What are you doing!”
I keep pulling. I see blood and rot and shadow racing out of my chest. Good. If I’m so “special” Jack will do anything for me to live, including putting my heart back. When he parts my ribs, I see white with pain. When my chest feels warm again, I know it’s back. His tooth lunges out of me, replacing itself with my blood and muscle. After fifteen years, the piece of himself Jack put in me is finally gone.
Jack stands in front of me again. He looks like what he is. A jackal. A scavenger.
He growls. “Idiot! What have you done to yourself!”
I feel where the knife was in my chest. Just as I thought. Jack put me back together, just enough. It still hurts. I’m still bleeding. But I’m alive. He told me all his stories. He showed me his heart. I now know where his “hard-earned” flesh’s weakness is: between his well-spaced ribs. I grip Doug’s knife. I charge.
