Chapter Text
Sammie is crouching close to the ground, breathing heavy, deep. The sweat across his brow is cold, the heat even this far in the evening making it drip down his forehead, running down his neck and collecting on his collarbone. His feet are bare, sore, his bottoms of his legs a mess of bloody slits from running through the tall grass into the cotton, high above him now. He’s low down to the ground, his knees touching his stomach. In his ears he can hear his own heartbeat and is almost sure he can taste blood in his mouth. The moon is high and immediate, but to look at it makes his heart race faster. He closes his eyes, tightly. He begins to count, backwards then forwards again from ten. He does this again, and then again. His breathing is almost steady, the warm evening wind caressing his cheek. It is only a moment after he has convinced himself that he is again alone, that it is safe to rise from his place deep between the rows of cotton, when he hears the sound of feet crushing under dirt, the sound of his name carried across the wind.
Sammie.
Sammie.
Sammie.
Of course he wants to move, but he is utterly paralyzed. When this haint had first come to him, almost a year before, the confusion that ran through his body was as debilitating as his fear. It had been Christmas, the first without his cousins, his first with his guitar, the silver beauty that shined even in the darkness of pitch black evenings. That guitar which had caused him so much pain already, and so much joy. The look of disappointment in his father’s face when he reached his hand for the guitar instead of the family’s thick, golden-edged Bible was immediately washed away when his fingers began to move, when he opened his mouth and a voice that he didn’t recognize came out, suddenly his sorrows made into words that became a melody so heavy sometimes, afterwards, the rush of emotions made him sob. Never in front of his father; his mother had only caught him once, wiping away his tears while placing the guitar back under his bed for safe keeping, and despite the worries that ate her like they ate his father, she held him in his melancholy.
For the first time in his life he understood the true meaning of the blues, and suddenly that blue melancholia was everywhere he looked, a passionate, joyful sadness that felt like it was giving life to his very soul in a way the church choir hadn’t, no matter how much he tried. It was not a sadness that could be run from, but instead carved itself deep from the innards of his heart and out into his song. It was a sadness mixed up with happiness, the sort that you lived with, and that lived with you and every living thing that crossed your path. It was, immediately, addicting. The rush of emotions. The catharsis giving air to his lungs.
But that hadn’t been it, hadn’t been the only thing. There was no good without bad, and the bad had become so bad. Lately he tried not to sing at all. Not to move his fingers across the guitar’s strings, not even touching it, not even looking at it. Here was something that hurt him, avoiding it. All of that catharsis taken away from him, and deep inside he knew that he was getting stuffed up, full of emotions that had no way to leave his body. And he couldn’t cry, not like this. It felt wrong and even when he tried, nothing came of it. Without the guitar, without the music, he felt so alone.
Yet he was not alone. Soon after receiving the guitar, soon after running his hands over it for the first time and letting his voice bellow out from the deepest parts of his body, he realized something was with him. Following him, maybe, or attached to him. It was the music that had done it, he understood that much. This thing, sometimes it had a voice, a voice that would follow Sammie into his dreams at night and whisper to him about his music, about his transcendent music that could be nothing less than supernatural; Sammie would wake in the morning covered with sweat and holding little memory of that voice, that smooth, heavily accented voice, sounding something like some of the Irish peckerwoods who worked around the plantation and hated Negros more than they hated the man taking half their wages; but the voice was different than that, still. For a while it was only sometimes that the voice would haunt him, but as time went on it became constant, a companion on his shoulder any time he opened his mouth to a melody or tapped his foot to a beat. And for a while it was only a voice, a voice in his head, a voice in the passing wind.
No longer. Sammie keeps his eyes closed, wrapping his arms around his body. Wanting to move so badly, he cannot. The footsteps are coming closer though the voice still feels distant, like it is traveling from a world away. Sammie knows he is the only one who can hear it. Knows that when it wraps itself around his brain, it is only happening to him.
Sammie. One more time.
His body is moving before his brain realizes, bent over to hide himself through the rows of cotton. He figures it isn’t a good hiding place, that he’ll be seen no matter where he goes, but needs to try, needs to believe he can get away from this. For a moment, he does.
There is a sound behind him, a whooshing sound of air rising up to carry something within it. Sammie falls with a heavy weight on his back. He cries, cuts his leg on the sharp edge of a rock deeply embedded into the hard ground. The weight moves off his back and he feels a strong, rough hand pulling at his arm, raising him up to his feet.
“Sorry there lad, I came in a bit hot, didn’t I?”
The man is tall to Sammie, but not as tall as Sammie’s daddy. He’s white, pale even in the darkness, his skin washed out against the moonlight. His grin is sloppy, easy, his mouth hanging open with a bit of drool resting at its edge, wetting his lip. His hair is flat and wet looking. His eyes are, Sammie is sure, glowing red.
Sammie takes a step back, almost falling into the cotton.
“Whoa, hold on there, it’s alright, relax, Sammie.”
The voice. The man doesn’t ask for Sammie’s name, he already knows it. The voice, the one who has been following him for a year. It was earlier that night when he’d heard this man’s voice again, deep within his subconscious, when he’d been unable to resist the guitar’s pull. And there the voice was, resting on his mind, but feeling closer than it ever had. Like it was ready to dig back into the hole in his heart where the emotions flowed through into music and scoop out what was left. It had scared him so badly he’d placed the guitar back under the bed and run out of the house, thinking perhaps distance would make safety for him. For a while he stayed outside, wandering between the small cabins and into the open fields until slowly neighbors disappeared with the sun. The voice was small in his mind but not nonexistent. He tried to focus on anything else, but there was nothing else. And as the sun set, it became louder, closer. Sammie felt like it had hands around his throat already, choking the song out of him.
When he saw the figure, distant in the open field, the edge of the sun sinking behind him, Sammie knew he should have run away when he could, when the voice first came to him. He knew he should have left the guitar.
But, no: he never thought that, not really. Never wanted it. The thought passed like a ship in his mind that he would never board. It was his father’s voice, telling him to leave it, to run. His father’s voice, laced with his own fear. What was this thing in the distance, this voice of a haint that had become a man in the shadow of darkness?
Now there it is; the voice, the man standing before him. He looks down on Sammie with stupid grin, shining eyes, drool frothing from his mouth. He says, “Sammie. don’t be scared Sammie,” in such a kind voice that the boy almost wonders whether he has overreacted; whether the thing that had been following him was no haint but an angel. An angel with glowing red eyes.
The man places his hand on Sammie’s shoulder and guides him down the long row, stepping slowly and carefully, his grip on Sammie’s shoulder firm but not tight.
Sammie says nothing, terror leaking as sweat from his pores, urine running down his legs as he walks. Hand on his shoulder, Sammie understands this creature is no angel. But the sound of his voice is so comforting, Sammie can’t keep it out of his head. His hand against Sammie’s shoulder burns.
“Your music is just beautiful,” the man says. They turn from one row into another, a slow dance. “I heard you from a long way away with that voice. Did you know that? That you had a voice that people can hear in far, far places? In places so different from this one, you wouldn’t even recognize them?
“I was born in Ireland, understand, and a long time ago too. Maybe I wouldn't recognize it either.” He laughs at his own joke, and Sammie doesn’t attempt to understand it. The man stops suddenly, tips his chin to the moon and closes his eyes, taking a deep, long breath. He looks down at Sammie and his eyes are crimson, his mouth watering. He looks into Sammie’s eyes and then down his body to the place where his leg had been slashed open by the rock, eyes glowing. “My name is Remmick,” the man says, his voice soft, taking back on that quality of distance as he lowers himself down to his knees, taking hold of terrified Sammie’s slashed leg, the edge of his long shirt reaching his knees, spattered with blood.
“I want to make music with you, Sammie,” Remmick says, holding tightly onto Sammie’s ankle. He flicks his tongue over his lips. He looks up at the boy with eyes sparkling, and Sammie thinks he can see the cosmos deep inside them, something as far away as Ireland or farther, churning with life.
Remmick pushes himself closer to Sammie’s leg, his face barely an inch from him and although he cannot see it over Remmick’s curved back, he feels the man’s tongue enter the wound, licking it lightly and then pushing his tongue further, creating a depth to the wound that had not been there before. For just a brief moment, the pain is electric. Sammie groans, unable to keep his voice down low. He hears birds fly off into the darkness and across the moon at the disturbance. Somewhere in the back of his mind is the embarrassment, a white man so close to his body after he’d pissed himself. A white man so close to his body.
The bite he doesn't feel. The pain of Remmick’s lapping at his wound he feels every bit of, every flick of Remmick's tongue, but the bite is nothing more than a moment of discomfort sandwiched in euphoria. Within seconds, Sammie was on the ground, his back landing flat and hard against the ground. He can hear Remmick, this haint, a demonic creature, tearing into his leg, but he feels nothing. His eyes are watering, tears running down his face, but he feels nothing, a fuzzy joy at the edge of his vision. He hears it, in his head. Music he knows and more that he doesn’t, the sound of a long distant past that has been living inside Remmick’s head for thousands of years, Sammie feeling very vibration. Then Remmick is on top of him, the weight of his body pinning him to the ground, the feeling of Remmick’s crotch pressing hard against his stomach a distraction from the haze. Sammie’s head falls back against the dusty ground. He can feel Remmick’s hand under his shirt, grasping at his thighs. Above him, the man smiles.
“You’ll see the sun again, I promise,” he says, pushing Sammie’s legs apart. “And we’re going to make beautiful music.”