Shivaree by J. D. Horn

the command with a curt nod and headed immediately toward the stairs. “I don’t want to sleep,” the Judge murmured into Wilson’s ear.
    “You need your rest. We’re putting you to bed so that you can get it.”
    “But the nightmares. I can’t stand them.”
    “They’re only dreams. They’ll pass.”
    The Judge grasped his upper arm, much more tightly than Wilson would have suspected his remaining strength could manage. “She comes to me, Wilson. Ruby comes to me, and her eyes are on fire. Blue like the center of a flame.”
    “That’s enough, Ovid. It’s only your illness working on your grief. Speak no more of it . . . to anyone.” Wilson assisted the much younger, but strangely aged man to the foot of the stairs, then helped him begin the arduous climb. Lucille met them at the head and, slinging the Judge’s arm over her shoulder, helped him the rest of the way to the foot of the bed.
    Once the Judge was sitting steadily enough, Wilson pulled Lucille aside. “The Judge seems to be suffering from anemia and exhaustion,” he said under his breath. He reached into his own wallet to pull out a five-dollar bill. “You get on down to the butcher and pick up some liver—chicken, beef, I don’t care what kind. Fry it up light so it’s still good and pink and get it up here as quick as you can.”
    She nodded and lowered her hand so that he could place the bill in it. “And Lucille,” he said as she was about to leave the room, “tell no one about the Judge’s condition. You hear me?”
    “Yes, sir.” She turned and hurried down the stairs. He heard the door close softly behind her.
    “Let’s get you undressed,” Wilson said, turning again toward his patient, who didn’t seem to have processed what was happening. He pulled off Ovid’s scarf and removed the man’s coat, revealing the dirty white shirt and gray pants he had on underneath it. “These things, too.” After helping Ovid out of the shirt, he shifted him so that he was lying flat on the bed, his head cradled in a pillow. That done, Wilson tugged off the patient’s pants, leaving him in nothing but an undershirt and briefs. Ovid’s right thigh was marked with a streak of dried blood, which he tried to hide with one hand.
    “Let me see it,” the doctor commanded, pushing his hand aside. The flesh on the thigh had been severely bruised. Wilson leaned in closer to investigate the wound. “Son,” he said with a whistle, “any idea how you got this?”
    Ovid closed his eyes tight and shook his head.

FIVE
    Death, everyone knew, was meant to be the end, but it wasn’t, at least not for Ruby. She was awake and aware. She felt both pleasure and pain. Only those things she’d previously counted as essential, breath and a steadily beating heart, had deserted her. Still all the old angers and attachments clung to her. She nursed the same wrongs. Ached over the same missed opportunities, felt shame over the same missteps, mistakes that now surely should no longer matter. No, the grave had brought her neither eternal rest nor release.
    At first, Ruby would have rather died out in California, her cold body incinerated—just as those who had infected her with the parasite had planned to do—to keep her from coming back. But she hadn’t died there. She’d been brought back to Mississippi, back to the Judge’s house, even though she’d sworn to herself she’d never spend another night under his roof.
    If her father had let her go, the nightmare would have ended, but he had seen her as his personal property, and there was no way he would have simply allowed her her freedom. So he had her transported home, where those ignorant of her condition had allowed her body to transition from the life into which she’d been born to this new tomb-born existence.
    It had almost felt like flying as the pallbearers lifted her casket up, and like being rocked in a bassinet as their uneven steps caused her body to sway inside the metal box. Even though