“And the first night,” I continued. “When I felt something in the alley.” I thought of the swirling, shaping black mass. The eyeshad been the cat’s, but the growing mass and the skittering had been—
“It was him,” she whispered.
“Where is he now?” Sekou asked.
“Don’t know. He wasn’t at the facility when Ada and I went there. The night he came to my house was the first I’d seen him in days.”
Lyle finished his drawing and pushed it toward Hailey on the table. It showed an arm with dark black lines zipping up and down the inside of it, where the veins would be. “This,” Lyle said, pointing to the lines. “Could you see this on his arm?”
Hailey started to touch the sheet of paper, tracing the black veins on the sketch halfway before snatching her finger back as if she’d been shocked. Or burned.
She looked wild-eyed at Lyle. “It was light at first. I thought it was just bruising. Then it kept getting darker and darker each day. Throughout the day. And he kept scratching at it, like he was allergic. I was afraid he’d gouge a hole out of his skin.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” Lyle said, pulling the pad back toward him. “That’s the hollowing.”
Sekou, Hailey, and I shared a look. “What’s the hollowing?” I asked.
Lyle settled in his chair. I could tell he was worried. Whatever he knew that we didn’t was affecting him. He hesitated, like he was weighing whether he should or shouldn’t speak.
“We should wait for Ama,” he said. “She should be the one to tell you.”
I spat out, “Only she won’t and she never will. So please,Sheriff Lyle, tell me what she won’t. I’ve known about adze, but she never mentionedthem. I have to know.”
He stroked his mustache, still thinking. Probably wondering how he’d let himself get roped into this when he’d chosen to leave the Isle to escape all of this. “You gotta think of it like a disease, or umm… an infection rather,” he said grimly. “Like the flesh-eating amoeba they found in that water park up in North Carolina a few summers back. Eats you from the inside out? ’Cept the hollowing burns away your humanity. Makes you one of those things like the one out back that came after you. Makes you that shell like you mentioned, hollowed out with nothing left.”
“Can it be cured?” Hailey looked up at Lyle hopefully.
“Only one person will know how to fix it.” He snuck an uneasy look at Hailey. “Ifthere’s a fix. It will be Ama’s elixir. It can do more than just prolong life and encourage good health. It might be able to reverse the hollowing.”
As if on cue, I felt the force of my grandmother’s presence as she arrived. There was no car. She hadn’t come by boat, meaning she’d transported herself as an adze, something she never did in the day. It was too easy to be spotted and much too dangerous. She’d chanced traveling by day for me.
And if we wanted answers, we’d have to open the door to get them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Airwhooshedthrough the room as Lyle opened the door, revealing my grandmother on the other side. My head jerked back when I saw her, looking not like the lady I left behind wrapped in African clothes of gold and black and a duke wrapped tightly around her head.
Nana Ama stood at the doorway taking us all in while Sheriff Lyle held it open for her, waiting. She finally stepped through, and the three of us petrified tree branches remained unmoving at the table. We were all still rightfully scared as hell about what Nana would say, what she’d do, now that we were back in her presence after disobeying her word and fleeing the Isle.
She assessed the room, her gaze going from left to right, landing on the each of us and staying there for a minute on Sekou. She pursed her lips down and turned in a disapproving manner to let him know that this was not what he should’ve done, following up behind me. Then she stared at Hailey with an inscrutable look. Her right eye kind of narrowed, like she was really trying to figureout who Hailey was and what the heck she wanted to do with her, but then she seemed to just give up.
The last look was for me. It told a whole story of grievances, and the disappointment emanating from my grandmother, in waves that nearly buckled me, almost made me fall back in my chair. She wanted to lay into me, but it was something she had never done. Her quiet storm of anger would just simmer until she decided what she really wanted to say.
“Lyle was my Abotisa, whom I chose as part of my sacred three, much like you, Sekou, and Naira,” Nana explained impatiently, breaking through silence and the mental conversations. Sekou and I shared an unconvinced look, waiting for her to claim it was all a joke, only Nana Ama rarely joked. “One of my sacred passed on to the Asamando, the spirit realm, many years before you were born. Elder James is my second, though much has changed about him.” She sighed resignedly. “But good Sheriff Lyle here. He remains so, even though he chose to leave the Isle for all of this.” She gestured to the unimpressive room around us, cutting her eyes at him. He flushed, his caramel-colored ears reddening. Still a sore spot, clearly, and I suspected something more.
Nana Ama spotted the drawing of the arm on the table and studied it closely.
Hailey asked softly, “Is there any way to reverse the effects?” She looked everywhere but at us.
“Perhaps. If the victim is not too far gone. But there isn’t much time. I can sense her now. She has been gaining strength. Where is it?”
Her?
Lyle pointed toward his backyard. “Around back in the shed.”
In the backyard, the abalsom lunged toward Nana Ama in a rush of blurred orange and disjointed arms and legs. Though its movements were uncoordinated, it was still quick. And no match for Nana. Her hands struck out rattlesnake quick and snatched it up between her palms like she was catching a giant mosquito. The abalsom snarled and snapped at her, its mouth foaming, its teeth a mangled mess. It tried clawing at her, but she held it at arm’s length, studying it intently as if it were a specimen in a petri dish.
Sekou and Hailey retreated from the action, having had their fill of killer zombies the night before. They clutched at each other, eyes wide and terrified. If we got out of this alive, I would tease them about this forever.
