Ivan had never felt the force that hit him, and he had definitely never traveled so fast in all of his life. Anes hit him with residual repulsive forces that Bernadette had used to handle Desperation, and though the forces were paltry, they were enough to send Ivan all the way from Bluffton to Charleston. Anes didn’t apply the repulsive force with any finesse, and if not for his own abilities, Ivan would have been severely injured as he skidded on his back and came to a rough landing amid a crowd of tourists at the historic market. There was chaos and police showed up as Ivan contained his green flame that had raged to save his life. He held his hands in front of him as he tried to stand in the rubble of the street. He had inadvertently caused a lot of damage and when he saw the deep hole he had left in the street, he fainted. Police kept people from approaching and when a helicopter landed shortly afterward, Ivan was taken for observation at the Medical University of South Carolina.
It happened again; Clay and Ivan separated. In the moment, Clay wanted to rage. He roared louder than he had ever mustered in the past. His aunt Bernadette was pushed back by the force and trees shook. He sounded like thunder issued from human vocal cords and Bernadette looked instinctively up for lightning and found nothing. Clay grew in size as well, and the more he yelled, the bigger he became. Bernadette saw him grow to almost double his normal size.
“Control yourself!” she screamed and used the repulsive force to levitate and position herself at his eye level, but at a safe distance. “This is the part where the dummy loses himself and forces his loved ones to break him. I have seen it before. Your mother died because of it.”
Clay wanted to be lost in his rage, he wanted to rip trees from their roots and jump into a nearby town to raze it to the ground, but Bernadette spoke to the part of him that was suddenly buried under his bitterness at the world for always finding ways to keep him from his love. She had invoked his mother, and the beast that his father became when he killed her by accident, and he heard it despite the volume of rage that filled his body and exploded out of him. He roared one last time and then came to normal size. Bernadette returned to the ground and then approached him tentatively.
“This is what she does, she finds a way to make you forget yourself and then you self destruct. But you a strong young man, nephew. Your grandaddy, your daddy, they thought their strength was in their fists and Anes just hyped them up while they turned off everybody that cared about them. You a better fighter than both of them put together, but you know what you fight for and it ain’t to prove nothing to nobody. It’s to protect the little bit of happiness you got left. You got to hold on to that, you got to remind yourself of that as long as you still size changing, or you will lose yourself and no one, not me, not that man you love, will be able to bring you back.”
Clay didn’t look at her as she talked, he breathed heavily while his chest heaved up and down and he stared into the distance. He heard every word and when she stopped talking, he nodded dutifully.
“We can undo this,” Bernadette said calmly. “But you got to trust me.”
“I do auntie,” Clay said and tears welled in his eyes. “You all I got left.”
“That ain’t true. Your sister cares about you. I wish I didn’t have to send her away, but I knew the day y’all rolled up in here it was gonna be trouble and she ain’t built for this. She ask about you every time she call. She would be here if not for me. And that man, Ivan, you know he ain’t gonna rest until he back with you. Frankly, I feel bad for that spider. You and Ivan are gonna make her regret ever messing with you. I can help you, I will help you.”
Bernadette suddenly rolled her eyes and sighed audibly. She was upset all of a sudden and Clay puzzled at her.
“I got to call my ex-husband,” she said when she noticed Clay’s confusion. “That’s who I learned all this from. And he know this stuff better than me. But we ain’t getting along right now and I might have to eat some crow to get to him to help. He thinks we cursed.”
Clay rolled his eyes, “Thinks?” he asked facetiously. “I knew I hated spiders for a reason.”
“You ain’t cursed nephew. If anything, you proof of what I always believed to be true. That if my daddy, if yours, was strong enough, then those powers y’all got could be a blessing for you and the world. And here you are, you been doing it. You saving people, not letting the anger get the best of you. It’s hard, it takes work, but you doing it. I guess they needed somebody to help them control it like you got.”
“It’s a lot auntie. I do my best, but then shit like this always happens. This is the third time I’ve been separated from Ivan, and it always has something to do with this power we have. The responsibility we feel. It’s a curse auntie.”
“Seem to me that if this the third time, then you and Ivan doing pretty good for yourself. Y’all found a way back before right? Why is this time so different?”
Clay smiled despite his sorrow.
Ivan regained consciousness in a hospital bed. He was alarmed, but instantly calmed when he noticed a familiar face sitting in the chair next to his bed.
“You’re awake!” Wendy said, excited that he was ok. “You’re all over the news, and I’ve been working here so when I heard they brought you, I used my limited connections to get in to see you. What’s going on? What happened earlier?”
“I’m sorry,” Ivan said. He was confused by the new information and by his surroundings. “I remember your face, I know you helped me during that Red Father thing, but what is your name?”
Wendy introduced herself and explained how she had contributed to the conflict to save Ivan when he was possessed and wreaking havoc in his neighborhood.
“I don’t know what happened, Wendy. This spider lady showed up and me and Clay had beat her, but then next thing I know I’m crashing a street in Charleston. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Wendy smiled sympathetically and put a hand on Ivan’s cheek. She was searching his body for the energies of spirits, curious if he was a victim of the conflict with cursed spirits she had encountered since arriving in the city. But there were no cursed spirit energies on him and Wendy wasn’t sure that she could help.
“Why don’t you call Clay and tell him where you are,” Wendy suggested, and when Ivan realized that his phone had shattered, she gave him hers.
Ivan dialed and when Clay answered, there was no sound from his end. “I think something’s wrong,” he said and handed the phone back to Wendy. She put it to her ear and was surprised when she heard Clay.
“It’s Wendy, the medium, I’m here with Ivan. He’s at MUSC in Charleston. I’ll let you speak with him.”
She handed Ivan the phone and again he was confused that he could hear nothing from the other end.
“Well he knows where you are,” Wendy said. “So when I mentioned my connections to the Institute in GA, some people here recognized the facility and they want me to facilitate your transfer. They’re thinking to send you to Dr. Eakran, he’s like the go to for weird stuff.”
“That alien that Alia was running from?” Ivan asked and he was noticeably concerned.
“Don’t worry, when you’re ready to go they’ll discharge you to me and you can stay at my house until Clay gets here. You’re not a prisoner Ivan, just something of a celebrity now. I’ll call my superior at the IBF to cover for you, confirm you arrived and all that business. But you don’t want to end up in the IBF basement and I won’t let that happen.”
“What happens there?” Ivan asked.
“I’ll know more soon, but I’ve been here for about a month now and there’s other things that require my attention.”
“Well, I’m ready to get out of here.”
Wendy smiled and soon the two arrived at the home where she was staying near the Stono River.
Later that night, Clay was pacing the first floor of Bernadette’s house and he could hear the conversation she had on the phone in the other room. She talked to her ex-husband, a man named Kyrie, and she sounded very upset with him.
“You know he’s there in Charleston?… No I haven’t seen it on the news! If I had I wouldn’t be asking you would I? So how do we lift the repulsion?… Trust me, the two of them together can handle Anes, we just have to get them back together. …I don’t care what Lorne have to say about it. …Well I can’t come there with Clay as long as they got this curse on them. Find Ivan and lift it and then we’ll be there. …Of course I don’t want to go to Charleston, that place is a death trap and you know it, but we have to get Ivan anyway and we might as well talk about facing that spider together. …Fine, I expect to hear from you tomorrow with good news.”
Bernadette stood before Clay to halt him in his pacing.
“You can calm down. We know where he is and Kyrie is on it. We can do more tomorrow, but for now, you need to relax.”
She led him outside to the backyard and they sat in chairs in the humid night. It wasn’t uncomfortable with the breeze that blew through, and soon Clay was able to relax as the fireflies dotted the night.
“You should know,” Bernadette said to him, “you and me are a lot alike. When I saw you and Ivan together it reminded me so much of me and Kyrie. We did some fighting together in Charleston a while back, but it didn’t last. I couldn’t stand to see that man in any kind of danger and when I thought he had been killed, I had to leave him because he wasn’t planning on giving it up for me. Kyrie and I have been married twice, and we divorced twice. There’s nobody in this world I love more than that man, and I was hoping if I left him, he would see how serious I was and how playing with those powers drove us apart. But you can’t tell a dummy nothing. He too busy saving the world.”
“That’s probably why you love him so much,” Clay said. “You know how happy he would be with you, but he do what he do because he have to. You call him a dummy, but you call me a dummy too and I know how much you love me.”
“Yeah yeah. He a dummy ’cause he won’t just be happy with me while the world is burning down all around us. He can’t do enough to make it better. If he could, you and Ivan wouldn’t be suffering now. It ain’t his fault, but it’s proof that he can only do so much.”
“That’s all we can do auntie, right? Give our best, take care of what is ours.”
Bernadette nodded silently.
“I been the dummy I know, but when you love somebody like I love Kyrie, watching them suffer hurts so much, and I done seen that man drug through hell and back.”
“Would you marry him again?” Clay asked. Even when she talked about the frustration Kyrie inspired in her, she smiled when she said his name and Clay knew that she was nostalgic for their past together.
“I’m sure that I will,” Bernadette said. “If he want to, if he can forgive me being selfish and wanting him all to myself.”
“If he’s smart, he will. And you ain’t selfish auntie. You just saw a lot of good men be beaten by things they couldn’t understand. I get that.”
The night was alive with the sounds of nature and the two sat silently in it. Clay was happy to have his aunt, he was happy to reconnect to the people who had made him. His worry for Ivan had mostly dissipated. His aunt Bernadette would take care of everything, he was sure of that.
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