"Ready?" Billy shook his head disbelievingly. "Do you mean he just . . . wanted to die? No, I don't believe that!"
She looked at him with a cool, level gaze. "He didn't fight it. He didn't want to. At the end he had the mind of a child, and as all children have faith, so did he."
"But . . . I . . . should've been here! You should've written me! I . . . didn't ... get to say good-bye! . . ."
"What would that have changed?" She shook her head and put a hand on his arm. A tear streaked down his cheek, and he let it fall. "You're here now," she said. "And though he is not, you'll always be John Creekmore's son, and he'll be in your child's blood as well. So is he really gone?"
Billy felt the restless wind pulling at him, heard it whispering around the pungent pines. It was true that his father lived within him, he knew, but still . . . separation was so hard to take. It was so hard not to miss someone, not to cry for him and mourn him; easy to look at death from a distance, more difficult to stare into its face. He already felt a world away from the carnival with its riotous noises and flashing lights; here on this bluff, framed by hills covered with woodland and overshadowed by gray sky, he seemed to stand at the center of a great silence. He ran his hands over the rough gravestone and remembered how his father's unshaven jaw had felt against his cheek. The world was spinning too fast! he thought; there were too many changes in the wind, and the summer of his childhood seemed lost in the past. For one thing he could be happy: before leaving Mobile yesterday morning, he'd called the hospital in Birmingham and had been told that Santha Tully was going to be all right.
"Winter's on the way," Ramona said. "It's going to be a cold one, too, from the way these pines have grown thick."
"I know." He looked at his mother. "I don't want to be like I am, Mom. I never asked for this. I don't want to see ghosts and the black aura, I want to be like everybody else. It's too hard this way; it's too . . . strange."
"Just as your father's in your blood," she replied, "so am I. No one ever said it would be easy. . . ."
"But no one ever gave me a choice, either."
"That's true. Because there can be no choice. Oh, you can live as a hermit and shut out the world, as I tried to do after you were born, but sooner or later there comes a knock at your door."
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and hunched over as a cold wind blew around him. Ramona put her arm around him. Her crying was done, but it almost broke her heart to see so much pain in her son. Still, she knew that pain sculpts the soul, molds the will, and would leave him standing stronger when he'd finally straightened up.
After another moment he wiped his eyes on his sleeve and said, "I'm all right. I didn't mean to . . . act like a baby."
"Let's walk," she told him, and together they went down the hill among the tombstones, heading toward the road. It was over two miles back to the house, but they were in no hurry.
"What do I do now?" Billy asked.
"I don't know. We'll see." She was silent for a few minutes as they walked, and Billy knew that something important was on her mind. They came to a place where a stream spoke over flat stones, and Ramona suddenly motioned for him to stop. She said, "My legs aren't what they used to be, I'll tell you. When I was a girl I could run this distance without breathing hard, and now already I'm hiccuping like a frog." She sat down on a rock that had people's initials scraped on it. He lay on his stomach in the grass, watching the pattern of water as it swirled over the stones. "There are things you need to know now," Ramona said. "I couldn't have told you while your father was living, though he was well aware of them too. I'm going to tell you, and then you'll have to make up your own mind about what to do."
"What things?"
She looked up, watching a squadron of crows fly across her field of vision. Off in the distance there was the faint reflection of sunlight off an airplane, climbing toward the clouds. "The world's changing so fast," she said, almost to herself. "People fighting in the streets, killing and hating each other; children trying to escape through God knows what kind of drugs; a war going on and on and on without clarity or point . . . these things are making me afraid, because evil's walking without fear, and it changes its shape and voice to gain its own greedy end. It's reaching out, wanting more and more. You saw it once before, a long time ago, in the smokehouse."
"The shape changer," Billy said.
"That's right. It was testing you, probing at you. It tested you again, at the carnival, but you were stronger than it took you to be."
"Have you ever seen it?"
"Oh yes. Several times." She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "It always taunted me and tried to trick me, but I saw through its tricks. I wouldn't let it get into my mind; I wouldn't let it make me doubt myself, or my abilities. But now my work's almost done, Billy. Now the shape changer sees no threat in me; it wants you, and it'll do everything it can to destroy you."
"But I'll be all right, won't I? As long as I don't let it into my mind?"
She paused, listening to the sound of wind through the trees. "The shape changer never gives up, Billy," she said quietly. "Never It's as old as time, and it knows the meaning of patience. It means to catch you unawares, in a weak moment. And I think it's most dangerous when it's feeding off the dead, like a beast gnawing on bones. It draws in a revenant's energy to make itself stronger. I wish I could tell you that I know the limits of the shape changer's powers, but I don't. Oh, there's so much you need to know, Billy!" She gazed at him for a moment. "But I can't teach you. Life will."
"Then I'll learn," he replied.
"You'll have to." Ramona sighed deeply. "This is what I have to tell you: you were not born into this world alone."
Billy frowned. "What?"
"You were one of two," she said, staring off at the trees. "You were born first, but behind you there was a second child. You were so close inside me that the doctor could only hear one heartbeat, and in those days the medical facilities weren't very good. So: there were two children, born in a pickup truck on the way to the hospital on a cold night in November. Both of you were born with cauls, a sure sign of spiritual powers. Yours covered your face. His . . . had torn loose, and he was gripping it in his hands. Even so young, something within your brother made him want to escape his Mystery Walk. You weren't identical twins, though; you had my coloring, while he looked more like his father."
Her eyes were dark pools as she gazed solemnly at Billy. "You see, your father and I were very poor. We could hardly feed ourselves, much less two more mouths. We were expecting one, and we had to choose. That was the most terrible decision of my life, son. There's ... a man named Tillman, who buys and sells babies. He bought your brother from us, and he promised to find him a good home." Her hands clenched into fists, and strain showed on her lined face. "It was ... the only thing we could do, and we both agonized over it so long. Your father was never the same after we went through with it. We had to choose, and we chose you. Do you understand?"
"I . . . think so." Billy recalled the woman at the tent revival, a long time ago, confessing the sin of selling her baby. God, how that moment must've pained his mother!
"For years I thought nothing would come of it," she said. "Your father and I often wondered what had happened to him, but you were our son and we wanted to give you our full love and attention. But then ... I saw him, and I knew from the first minute who he was. I knew that he might have a special power too, but that it might be different from yours . . . and I saw in his eyes that he was being used without knowing it. I saw him that summer night at the Falconer Crusade. He looks just like your father, but enough like Jimmy Jed Falconer to pass as his son."