A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli Page A

out a muffled cry, the sheets twisting tightly around her lithe body, each flawless curve shown off. “I can’t stand much more of this, Thomas. I can feel the demons out there, roving about.”
    “It’ll pass in another day or two.”
    “Storms like this one don’t just leave on their own, you’ve got to do something to run it off. It’s a storm of souls, the granny ladies say. The dead want back in and they’ve brought all the sins of the people along with them. Mama would know what to do.”
    “Do you want to visit her? I’ll take you in the morning.”
    “I ain’t going out there.” She speaks in a way that makes it sound like the rains, and what’s in them, have come specifically for her or for me. “Can’t you feel how badly it wants us?”
    “Us?
    “All of us.”
    We can’t call her mother because Velma Coots doesn’t have a phone. That’s uncommon even in Potts County, but not unheard of. “It’s late, Dodi, try to sleep. Maybe by morning this will have blown over.”
    “You have to go, Thomas.”
    “What?”
    “You gotta go.”
    “Where?”
    “To see Mama and find out what to do.”
    I pull the blankets around us. “If there’s really something that could be done, wouldn’t she be doing it already?”
    “She might need some help. Mama’s strong in her ways but she can’t protect all of Kingdom Come by her lonesome. It’s been a labor for her so far, and it’s getting worse.”
    I don’t sneer and I don’t question. If I chose to scoff and dispute what goes on in Potts County I’d never stop, and I’d wind up like my father. “The other conjure women can join her.”
    Branches scratch at the shingles, wood clapping on wood. It’s a familiar sound, and one I like, but Dodi snaps up as if a child killer is just outside. Sweat courses down her neck, dappling my legs. Her fear is intoxicating and erotic but also sobering. I want to take her roughly but a detached terror is filling the room. I wonder what’s going on between Sarah and my brothers, and if they can feel this too. Or whether they all sleep blithely and dream of each other. I think I hear talking.
    Dodi moves forward across my chest, the wet sheet drawing unpleasantly over us now. Beads of sweat hang off her nipples. I want her desperately, and I don’t want her at all.
    “Maybe it’s got to do with that little gal from the flat rock, and what happened there,” she says. “Or what hasn’t happened yet and still needs to be done.”
    “What do you mean?”
    I’ve always known that Velma Coots didn’t give Dodi to me in payment for fixing a goddamn roof and digging screw worms out of a couple of sick cows. There was another agenda to the transaction. There usually is. When Dodi looks at me in this fashion, I remember once more it’s true, and I realize she’s actually here to spy on me for some reason. There’s genuine panic in her flitting eyes, and the last piece of the masquerade slips from her as she trembles in my arms. I can see the purpose, but not the objective.
    “What’s your mother want from me?” I ask.
    “You got power, Thomas, more than any of the granny witches. More than all of them. There’s power in names and it was your family that named this town. In one way, you
are
the town, and we’re you.”
    “Dodi, I think you’re getting a little carried away here—”
    But she isn’t. I hold her on the bed for a long while until her head droops and her breathing eases. Her skin dries with strange outlines of salt streaks. She falls asleep to the muted whispers of Sarah and Jonah down the hall. I let her slide from me and cover her with a blanket.
    I take the truck into town, driving carefully along the flooded roads. I’ve got to stop several times in order to shift debris so I can ride by. When I get to Velma Coots’s shack she’s standing in her doorway, glowering at the folds of swarming rain, waiting for me.
    “’Bout time you got here,” she says. “Was starting to think you