The Covenant by Jeff Crook Page A

In that time, families would lose two or three children before the age of ten. For slaves it was even higher. Men would go through two, three, sometimes four wives.”
    â€œIt ain’t never a good idea to build a house over a well.” Trey was still stuck on whatever was bothering him about the house. “Sometimes a well can be a kind of gate into the spirit world, or hell, whatever you want to call it.”
    Deacon said, “I’ve been all over this house a hundred times and I’ve never seen any sign of a tunnel or a well.”
    â€œPreacher, they is things about this house you won’t see if you go over it a thousand times, not unless you got eyes to see them. I can find hidden things with my dowsing rods. And Jackie here can see them with her nekkid eyes.”
    I couldn’t tell what Deacon was thinking behind his sunglasses, couldn’t see if he was looking at me or had even heard what Trey had said. I hoped not. It would only remind him about that day on the levee. But he was looking at something quite far away.
    Trey cleared his throat and said, “Well, them lines ain’t gonna paint theyselves.”
    Deacon smiled and shook his hand. “Thank you for your help. I’ll only keep you from your work another moment. A minute ago, you said the first thing you found was water. Then you found the tunnel. What else did you find?”
    Trey shifted uncomfortably, his small hand gripped tightly in Deacon’s paw. “I can’t say for sure,” he mumbled.
    â€œWhat can you say for sure?”
    Trey started to spit, then thought better of it. He shifted his wad of tobacco to his other cheek. “I’ll tell you this, preacher. I wouldn’t walk them woods after dark, not for any money.”
    Deacon nodded, released him and strolled off in the other direction, smiling and mumbling to himself. “I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfortest me.” Soon he was pulled in a hundred directions by his people, all demanding his attention. Trey hurried back to his work, vanishing into the crowd without a backward glance at me.
    It seemed everybody was looking for something they couldn’t find. I wondered if I could find someone to help me move my equipment into the house.

 
    14
    I SET UP MY LIGHTS AND TRIPOD in the foyer. The tiny old Vietnamese man I’d seen earlier helped me string a power cord into the house from the circus camp. I shot everything, every inch of wall as high as eye level, with closer studies of any bit of trim or ornamentation I could find. Dust sifted down the whole time, workers moved in and out of my frame as though I wasn’t there, shifting furniture, bringing in lumber and stacking it along the walls, forcing me to pause, move, set up again and repeat the same shots. I must have worked three hours just covering two walls and not once did I see the preacher.
    When I started, I hadn’t the first clue what I was supposed to be doing. After those first three hours, I didn’t feel much smarter, but at least I had some shots to show for my time and maybe get a little bit of an advance on my pay.
    It must have been siesta time, because they had stopped working on the roof. I only noticed because the blizzard of dust had changed to more of a flurry, with occasional sleets of loose plaster. I shook the rubble from my shoulders and continued to shoot. Other than the clicking of the camera’s shutter, the silence went on and on, and I found myself stopping more and more often to listen to it.
    I had put Deiter’s earlier warning and Trey’s half-spoken fears from my mind. Very little about the dead could frighten me anymore. I’d been seeing what you would call ghosts for most of my life. I hadn’t always dealt with them very well—in fact, they’d nearly killed me more than once. Not directly. Just their being there, visible, but only to me. It wasn’t