I’m reposting chapter 7 of The Book of All Future Names because some readers have reported problems opening the page.  

    Let me tell you somethin about Necrotic Culver, that girl, she had a bee sting for a heart.  Hot, swollen, a fierce pain ya don’t dare touch for fear it will hurt worse than before.  But it weren’t so much that she felt it herself, more than those that tried to touch her heart pulled back with red welts all over theys ownselves. 

            She didn’t plot it out to be that way, but that’s the way it was all the sames.  That old voodoo man what raised her, if ya can call what he did raising a child, he saw that in her the first time he looked at them mismatched color eyes.  Saw a pain-full heart.  Saw a sewer of hurt and longing.  Saw an instrument for lost hopes and lowered expectations.  Saw just about everythin he could want to see in a girl of his own blood. 

            Standin there at the threshold (that’s like where a door is, but more if the door is open, just that spot you step over to go from one place to the next is a the threshold of the place), holdin that baby in his arms the first time, thinkin he ought ta just hand it right back to the biddy on his stoop, he saw the destruction in that girl and had hisself a thought.

            No, he didn’t little Necrotic back ta the biddy, he just kicked the door closed on her face and took the babe inside. 

            Now I already told you how he had that Hugo Cauldron fetch up the Book of All Future Names for him.  How he flipped the pages and found the name Necrotic Culver waitin for the baby.  An’ also I may have mentioned about another baby that comed to live in that dark, iron building, boy baby nursed up in a fish bowl, Shadding Lyttle. 

            Case you missed it, Shad was there that day too.  Standin right there in the room, got his sweepin broom in his hand, which is what he had in his hand anytime he didn’t have his mopping mop or his sponging sponge or his wiping wipe or his scrubbing scrub or any of the other tools of the cleaning trade he was plying there (plying means he was doing it.  Like to ply your trade is to work at your work, if ya  follow) at the command of the old voodoo man. 

            That boy Shad, you’d have thought that comin to term in a fish bowl, bein fed on voodoo man scraps, livin in a dark iron building full of dark goings in and such, you’d have thought such a boy would grow stunted and low, a scuttler (scuttle is something you do when you kinda creepy crawl to the side like.  See a crap walkin sideways, that’s a scuttle.  So a scuttler’s someone who scuttles.  Or so says I), a boy to hang at the walls in the dark places, of which there were lots in that building, out of sight and out of mind.  But it weren’t so.  Shadding Lyttle, he were tall and straight and comely (means good looking, hot, in the parlance of the kids.  An you got to know what parlance means you can go fetch your ownself a dictionary.  I got no time for every last little multisyllabic word out of my mouth.  And what I said before goes twice for multisyllabic.), more than that, he was bright and kind and strong, and, well, just a good damn boy is what he was. 

            Old voodoo man, he hated Shadding Lyttle.  Hated him like he hated grit between the layers of a grilled leek (it’s a kind of an onion), hated him like he hated when it was late at night and he couldn’t sleep an he just wanted it to be morning and every time he looked at the clock he swore an hour at least was gonna have passed, but it was never more than five minutes, hated that boy like you could only have expected him to hate the boy if the boy had done somethin personal like to him that no one knew about except him, and that includes the boy not knowin neither.  Which is what the case was as a matter of fact. 

            Just by bein born that boy had done something terrible to the old voodoo man, somethin the old voodoo man was like never to forgive or forget.

            No, I ain’t gonna say what it was.  You open a book to read it, do you skip first to all the secret good parts first?  Find out every little twist and turn in advance then go back and read the in-between parts?  I didn’t think so.

            Ya read a book in order, ya can listen to a story in order.

            So, there’s young Shadding Lyttle in the iron home of the old voodoo man, an there’s Necrotic Culver, a baby girl with a poison heart.

            An what’s the old voodoo man do?

            He turns to Shad, smile on his face, ugly smile on his face, as if any other kind of smile crossed his face ever (actually, truth to tell, there was a time he had a beautiful smile.  Before it got broke.  But that’s for later, too), turned to that boy with that baby girl in his arms and said, “You, young master Lyttle, come take the darling child.”

            An Shad did as he was told.  Did it happy and relieved.  Happy caused once he had that baby in his arms he knew he could maybe keep her safe.  Relieved because he thought the first place that baby might have gone was straight into Hugo Cauldron’s bubbling maw (it’s a mouth, but picture a big nasty one opened wide to swallow you whole).

            Holdin that baby girl himself, Shad, just not much more than a baby, he looked into those eyes, red and black, no doubt trouble spellin eyes, an he flat fell in.  Fell in deep, droppin, tumblin, lost, an not carin a damn.  When he come up out of those eyes, he’d of thought a month had passed at least, or a year, or ten, no tellin how long, didn’t leastways expect to find no time at all had passed.  Standin there dumbstruck (which means speechless), standin there wonderin at the new thing he was feelin.  Deep in his chest, an ache, a swellin ache, more like a burn really, a fierce hot pain like nothin he’d ever felt before.  A pain he’d go on feelin the rest of his born days.  A pain that would only be more painful when it was took away from him for a while in some later years.  Pain that hurt worse when it was gone than when it was there.

            Old voodoo man looked at Shad’s face, an he knew in an instant what the boy was feelin.  Yes he did.  How’d he know?  Cuz he’d felt it hisself.  Years before.  Now he only felt the pain of it bein gone.

            Old voodoo man laughed.  He let Shad hang on to that girl, let him take care of her, feed her, tuck her in nights, let that pain grow and fester and blister and swell.  Let that pain get big as all Shad’s insides. 

            All so it would hurt more when he took Necrotic away from him.

            What did Necrotic Culver feel in all this?  What was that little baby child thinkin?

            Mostly she was thinkin what baby childs think.  She was thinkin goo-goo and gah-gah.  But also, looking up at Shadding Lyttle, she was thinkin somethin else, she was thinkin, goo-goo, gah-gah, why’s my heart hurt so bad?

            Round bout right then’s when Riddle Afield showed hisself up. 

            Riddle Afield, about who this here chapter is named.

            But about who I ain’t gonna tell now.

            Cuz it’s gettin dark.

            An every fool knows you don’t talk on Ridde Afield when the dark’s come.

            Even a fool like me.

-c

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