Knuckles like a hammer on the door, flesh and bone on wood, and "You do exactly like I told you," Mr. Jube says. Glistening beads of sweat on his brow, sweat hanging like dew from the end of his nose. "Tomorrow mornin', I'll go into Milligan and buy you a whole bag of them green jellybeans." And Dancy nods her head, but he doesn't see, is already reaching for the doorknob with unsteady hands, and whoever it is out there knocks again, harder than before, and the door shudders on its hinges. She imagines that she's holding a crooked, long hickory stick and carefully draws the number 95 in the sand at the edge of the lake.
"Just hold your horses a goddamned minute," the old man croaks, the knob turning in his hand, and he opens the door.
And Dancy sees the eyes and forgets all about the numbers, 95 erased with the toe of her boot, smooth sand like brown sugar, and that's as far as she goes; there's nothing out there but the eyes, twin balls of the deepest, the most vivid blue she's ever seen or imagined, roiling, pupilless eyes that shine bright enough to blind and somehow give off no light whatsoever. Blue eyes bulging from the fabric of the night, and Mr. Jube takes a small, hesitant step backwards and looks down at the floor between his feet.
Don't you scream now, girl, Dancy thinks in the old man's voice. Don't you dare start screamin'. She tries to look away, look down like Mr. Jube did, tries to bow her head so there's nothing but her shoes and the floorboards, the spilled jellybeans, but she can't-not for all the tea in China, all the love of God-and her heart skips a beat as those blue eyes narrow down to suspicious, angry slits and glare past Mr. Jube directly at her.
"Who's she," the thing on the porch growls in a voice that is thunder and wildfire and the buzzing wings of poisonous red wasps. Movement in the darkness, and Dancy can see that there's more to it than the eyes, after all, that it's pointing towards her.
"She ain't no one," Mr. Jube says. "Least ways, no one you got to be concerned about."
"You know the rules," it growls, eyes swelling wide again, eyes big around as oranges, and the dark around them flutters for a moment and is still again.
"Yeah, I know she ain't supposed to be here. I know ain't nobody supposed to be here but me. But it just kinda happened, and there ain't no use worryin' over it now."
"Dancy," the thing purrs. "Dancy Flammarion," and the sudden, hot trickle down her thighs as she wets herself. She bites at her lower lip, bites hard until there's blood and it hurts too much to bite anymore, but she doesn't scream.
"She ain't gonna tell a single living soul what she's seein' here tonight," the old man says, and Dancy realizes that he's pleading for her life. "She knows better. She knows what would happen if she ever did."
"Does she?" it asks, blue eyes swirling, restless, disbelieving. "Does she know the rules?" But it stops pointing at her, and the jointed thing that isn't an arm melts back into the blackness.
"The day you were born," it says, and some of it flows across the threshold, sticky, tar-baby shreds of itself to lap about Mr. Jube's ankles. He takes a deep, hitching breath and stands absolutely still. "There were tears the day you were born, Dancy Flammarion. There are tears in your mother's heart every time she looks at you."
"I have the riddle," Mr. Jube says.
A black tendril wriggles noiselessly across the pine boards towards Dancy, its ragged tip end rising like the head of a coachwhip snake, serpent head pausing a few inches from her boots, and she smells dying fish and mud, peppermint and curdled milk.
"But who's going to cry the day you leave?" the thing at the door mutters in its thunderstorm, insect voice.
"You listenin'?" Mr. Jube says. "You know the rules. I only have to ask my riddle once."
The tendril hovers a moment longer near Dancy's left foot, indecisive, reluctant, and then it slips back across the floor, flows away and leaves behind a glistening slug trail on the rough wood.
"Then ask me, old man. Ask me quick, before I forget the rules and take what I please."
The black puddle around Mr. Jube's feet shivers like jelly, and "You ain't never gonna get this one," he says, glances back at Dancy, and there's the thinnest ghost of a smile on his lips. "When the sun's done flickered out and the seas freeze up hard as gravestones, you still ain't gonna get this one here."
"Ask me the riddle. Why does the crow fly in the woods? What kind of bushes do rabbits sit under when the rain comes?"
Mr. Jube raises his head and stares directly into those huge and bottomless blue eyes, and when he speaks, his voice is calm and sure.
"The man who made me, never used me. The man who bought me, never used me. The man who used me, never saw me."
A gust of cold and stinking air through the open doorway and the lantern on the table glows brighter for a moment, its small flame swelling, flickering against the chill, as the blackness uncoils from about Mr. Jube's ankles. Pouring itself backwards, slow as syrup, and the eyes narrow once more down to angry, hating slits.
"Maybe next time," Mr. Jube says, and he looks down at the cabin floor again. "I can tell you're gettin' smarter. I'm gonna shut the door now," and he does, easy as that, closes it gently, latch click, and they're alone. The old black man and the albino girl, and she doesn't say a word, waits until he turns his back on the night and whatever it hides, and he sits down across the table from her.
"You got blood on your face, child," he says. "Looks like you done bit a hole clean through your bottom lip. Just let me get my breath, and I'll see about it."
"I'm all right," Dancy says. "It don't hurt," not the truth but the pain seems small and far away. She stares at the checkerboard, the candy strewn at her feet, the kerosene lantern flame no larger or brighter than any lantern flame ought to be.
"You got your questions, too. I know that."
"What if it had known that riddle? What if it had guessed-"
"No," Mr. Jube says, interrupting her, and he shakes his head slowly and rubs at his beard. "I said I know you got questions. I didn't say I got answers. Hell, there ain't no answers for things like this, Dancy. That's just somethin' you gotta learn. Ain't everything in the world got a what and a why for the askin'."
"But it knew my name. It looked at me and knew my name."
"Well, you try not to think about that too much. It don't mean nothin'. It probably don't mean nothin' at all."
And outside the cabin by the lake at the end of Wampee Creek, the summer night mumbles uneasily to itself in the dark tongue of pines needles and cypress leaves, cricket whispers and the mournful call of owls. The waxing sliver of moon rises higher and casts a thin, pale glow across the water, and in a little while the surface of the pool has grown still and flat again, and the world rolls on towards morning.