A city of architectural charm and grace sweltering under oppressive summer heat and humidity, Charleston, South Carolina was first settled in 1670—then known as Charles Town. The peninsular city established in 1680 would seat the state capital until 1786, but history books would remember it as the place where the American Civil War began in 1861. The Battle of Fort Sumter, however, was mostly fought from James Island, Morris Island, Sullivan’s Island, and the surrounding waters at the outer edge of the Charleston Harbor. While Fort Sumter could be seen from the city’s Battery Wall at White Point, it was too far away.
One of the largest ports in the colonies, and at its height the largest and wealthiest city in the South, Charleston more importantly became the most common port by which African slaves were brought to the shores of North America, from the very foundation of Charles Town until import was Federally banned in 1808. Thereafter, Charleston remained committed to the domestic trade of the slaves upon which it had built its success. A ban on public auctions in 1856 only succeeded in moving the trade indoors, and the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 fell on deaf ears until the Union Army occupied the city in 1865 just months before the end of the Civil War.
During that time, the city had also been both hostess and victim to pirates such as Blackbeard during The Golden Years of Piracy, through roughly 1720. Following an epic battle in 1718 between Colonel William Rhett and the infamous “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet, forty-nine pirates were hung at White Point in a mass execution, including Bonnet.
In 1780, Charleston was occupied by the British Army during the American Revolution. They added the Provost Dungeon below The Exchange Building, and over the years the dungeon came to house prisoners of every kind, including slaves. Known in modern times as The Old Exchange Building, the main building had served many government functions, and was among the sites where the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788.
In its brief but tumultuous history, Charleston had also survived hellish plagues, powerful hurricanes, devastating fires, and a massive earthquake. As recently as 1989, the area had weathered a direct hit from Hurricane Hugo, a monstrous Category 4 storm, and its impact promised to linger for some time, yet.
The indomitable Holy City, so-called for its religious tolerance and many magnificent sanctuaries, persevered through thick and thin. Through hell and high water, the rise and fall and steadfastness of its people’s hopes and dreams were etched upon the city’s walls, often recounted in lore, legend, and numerous eerie ghost stories.
As for its roles in slavery and segregation, Charleston’s relationship with its own history was complicated, but more honest than one might expect. A majority of Bernard’s teachers were Black, and they covered the subject as a key component of not only local history, but the nation’s past. As they often said, you couldn’t move forward if you didn’t know where you’d been. The Lowcountry still had many hurdles to overcome, but in his experience most people were doing their best to move things in the right direction. In the past 3 years alone, he’d read several major works of classic African American literature in school, and attended a number of musical and theatrical productions by local Black performers.
After all, the city was also home to a strong arts culture, and one of the biggest performing arts festivals in the country: the seventeen-day Spoleto Festival, along with its local counterpart, Piccolo Spoleto.
Which brought him to his current dilemma.
Mireia had planned her vacation for the middle of Spoleto. Not that it would have been a bad thing, if they hadn't been in a hurry. The weather was still beautiful at this time of year, and the historic fences and facades of the city were hung with colorful flyers and banners announcing the many performances. But the crowds! It was Friday, and the press of people was so intense that, to his great irritation, Mireia had dropped him off at a stop light instead looking for a parking spot. He tried to convince her to pull through the valet section of the hotel they were staying in, but her patience had run out.
The air was humid and unseasonably cool, but at least it wasn’t going to rain—they wouldn’t have to worry about getting flooded out, or smothered by steamy wet pavement. Bernard was comfortable in a dark blue t-shirt, printed with the stark white silhouette of a Marlin sailfish arcing majestically over the open ocean—subtly suggestive of his growing desire to escape.
Despite the din and throng, he had no trouble finding his cousins, thanks to Jez.
“For the love of tacos, just pick one!”
Fifteen-year-old Jez Blackwood was short and played roller derby—which was the only team sport she hadn’t been banned from, yet. The brash upper pitches of her voice rang off the cavernous brick walls of the entrance to the City Market, below the iconic Greek Revivalist architecture of Market Hall.
“I don’t care which one! They’re all the same!
Her brother’s words were softer. Bernard only heard them because he knew what to expect: “You’re such a plebe, Jezzie. Leave me alone.”
Ruben was fourteen, and still shorter than most people, but his long blonde ponytail, buttoned off-white shirt, khaki shorts, and repurposed 1970s camera bag gave him an archaic sense of style that was hard to miss.
Bernard dragged his feet.
The smells of food, sweat, gasoline, and horses hung heavy in the air. Charleston’s streets were just barely wide enough for two lanes of traffic; and, in far too many cases, only one. It was a veritable labyrinth, traversed by pedestrians as often as cars, horse-drawn touring carriages, and the occasional bike taxi.
A small family walked by, and he caught wind of their conversation, “. . . I heard they sold slaves, here.”
He was glad for the distraction, and called out, “Actually, that’s a myth.”
“Really?” a woman asked, “But wasn’t this a market, even back then?”
The City Market was widely known as “The Slave Market,” and many believed that slaves had been sold here. Some locals claimed it had been a market for slaves to sell things at. Given everything he knew, Bernard doubted the story. It smacked of a rhetoric popularly pushed in the first half of the 20th Century, which suggested that slave masters had been somehow kind and merciful, and that slaves lived well. “It was different here,” he’d been told. “Slaves were treated better in Charleston.”
The mere idea of a person being sold in irons and tortured seven days a week, forced to surrender all autonomy, then being allowed some measure of independence to make money on “their own wares” every now and then—to even handle money at all—was insane to him.
He pointed down the street, toward the harbor, “Yeah, it was a market, but slaves were auctioned as property down by the harbor, closer to the docks, not sold next to the corn and tomatoes.”
A man responded, “I hadn’t thought about it that way!”
He was glad that he wouldn’t have to argue this case with some know-it-all who had the ‘truth’ on good faith from their forefathers. The way long-standing popular beliefs blended insidiously with real history in the South was enough to make anyone’s head spin.
They parted a few minutes later after the lingering banter of a typical Southern farewell.
Happy to have set the record straight for even just a few people, he moved on reluctantly toward the sound of Jez’s voice shrieking over the mass of people, “Just hurry up, would you? Uggghhhh.”
He checked his watch. Mireia had only been gone for fifteen minutes. They had three hours before they were supposed to take Ruben home.
Somewhere behind him, across the intersection in the Charleston Place Hotel’s glossy indoor mall, was Waldenbooks, its windows dominating the street corner with colorful rows of bestsellers and local lore. It made him wish Ruben was shopping for ghost stories. Then Bernard could be looking at something he enjoyed, while keeping an eye on both his cousins from across the store where he wouldn’t have to listen to this.
It didn’t have to be the bookstore. Anything with closed walls would do, so he could wander and look at something interesting.
The much-loved Market’s covered shopping corridor divided Market Street into North and South Market, sprawling beneath a partially closed area before becoming an open-air pedestrian market. From Church Street to State Street, foot traffic was divided by a wealth of artisan wares right down the middle and bordered on both sides. The longest section stretched between State and East Bay. Numerous shops and restaurants both sides, from start to finish.
In short: there were dozens of things Bernard knew he could be doing instead of listening to his cousins bicker. God knew, he’d rather be stuck in some uppity gentlemen’s shoe store on King Street with Ruben than this.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like art, but these had to be some of the blandest, most boring paintings he had ever seen. They belonged in the hands of a tourist, or in a beach house, or hotel bathroom; not on his cousin’s bedroom wall. Opposite the Mandala? He couldn’t see where else Ruben planned on putting it, and he couldn’t see anything the Market had to offer as ever achieving Feng Shui with that. Maybe something at the mineral shop down the street that sold worldly folk art, but not here.
As a small child, Ruben had enjoyed doing ordinary magic tricks, and everyone thought it was adorable. Then he seemed to grow out of the phase, and they thought it was over. To the dismay of all, and especially his Catholic parents, that was when he opened up with claims of abandoning the world of illusions for a better understanding of that mystical, hidden side of reality; or what he called “real magic.” His camera bag was full of tarot cards, pendulum, chakra stones, and various other odds and ends.
As much as Bernard loved to read fantasy, the concept of a “real deal” wasn’t something he was prepared absorb. He would have liked nothing less than to see his cousin go back to doing card and coin tricks, without hearing a word on psychic perception.
Jez let out a loud, echoing sigh, “You don’t physically know what you’re looking for, do you?”
“I’ll know when I see it,” her brother answered simply.
Bernard called out, “Do you have to be so loud?”
Groaning loudly, Jez turned away from him, and threw her hands up, seeing Bernard, “Oh, thank, GOD. Where in the world is Miri? Parking the car?”
Bernard checked his old Timex again. “She said she might be a while. Let’s get going.”
Ruben straightened from his inspection of a series of watercolor prints—classic sunny images of the popular homes along Rainbow Row—with a far-off, thoughtful look that everyone had learned to be wary of.
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His sister set her hands on her hips, “What is it, now?”
He gently set a print back in its place and turned to them, “Remember what I said about that reading this morn—"
“Oh, you and your stupid, stupid cards!” she cried, and she rolled her eyes to Bernard, “He pulled the Death card this morning. Woo, I’m so scared.”
“I didn’t say it was scary!” he drew his hands into fists by his sides, “I’m just saying: be careful! It’s a sign of change, not danger. The other half of the reading—“
“I really don’t care,” she snapped brusquely as she walked away, “Let’s get this over with—it’s already eleven o’clock. We don’t have all day, you know.”
Ruben sighed in resignation as he followed her. “The inversed Seven of Wands represents defeat.”
On any other day, Bernard would have started window shopping while trying to keep up with his cousins, but given the morning he’d just had, even though Ruben’s strange tone made him want to go back to this normal mode of operations, he wanted to hear the rest of what was in those thrice-accursed magic cards.
He grabbed his cousin’s shoulder—faster and harder than he’d meant to, but effectively gaining Ruben’s attention. Clearing his throat, he murmured, “Sorry. I didn’t want you to run into that lady back there.”
Ruben regarded him for a moment, a cryptic expression flickering briefly across the boy’s face before he shrugged and carried on, casually, “The Tower represents sudden changes, which will undoubtedly result in drastic transformations—that's Death—but the reversed Seven of Wands suggests the potential for failure due to powerlessness. Perhaps the change brings too much too soon. No,” his tone grew distant, “that doesn't feel right. Extraneous factors. Like walls closing in.”
Ruben called his sister back and stopped to look at a stall of prints, still talking to Bernard while his fingers scrolled through a stack like a card file, “I pulled a fourth card, hoping it would clarify the reading. That turned out to be a mistake. I should have just left the cards alone.”
“Why? What was the fourth card?” What could be worse than failure?
Ruben paused, contemplative, “The World. But its meaning was unclear.”
Bernard felt his brows rise. “Don't you look at these cards every day?”
He got an eyeroll for that. “Yes, but the readings come as much from the cards as from intuition, and,” Ruben narrowed his eyes at a line drawing of the skeletal Cooper River Bridges, but his focus was somewhere past them, “all I saw was this gray cloud over the card. Its meaning remains to be seen. I've been doing this for two years and that's the strangest reading I've ever heard of.”
“Can't you just move the cards around or draw new ones?”
Ruben reached up and tapped Bernard’s head, “Intuition, Bern. You have to listen to what feels right.” Then he turned back to the prints, thoughtful. “Perhaps the meaning isn’t mine to discover.”
Bernard shook his head and shoved his hands in his pockets, trying to shake off the return of that icy block of lead in his lower back, “Sure it's not your own paranoia?”
Ruben looked up at him, green eyes meeting his own. “Sure you’re not projecting your own feelings onto me? If you don't believe me, then why do I sense so much fear from you? And why is it that, for once, you suddenly seem to believe me?”
Jez was ignoring them, until she realized her brother wasn’t look at prints. “Are you shopping or talking? Can we get this over with?”
Ruben dropped his voice, “Can you not feel the universe shifting around us? Or am I the only one who gets to be dizzy, as always. . . .”
Before Bernard could respond, Ruben patted his arm and moved on, smirking at his sister as he made some smart comment that was lost in the din of the crowds. They walked away, arguing as always, and Bernard followed along, casting a glance at his watch. When he looked up, he could have sworn someone was watching him, but the only change he noticed was a large black vulture sitting on a nearby building outside, watching the activities along South Market Street.
The Downtown Peninsula was like a dream. Its beauty, walkability, and wealth of good seafood made up for its blistering late summer climate and accursedly confusing, readily flooded streets. Aside from the narrow roads, it was really a shame that modern cities weren’t built this way. Beyond the Peninsula, areas like West Ashley were much like any other city in the country: covered in stretches of asphalt and purpose-built for car traffic.
They strolled past stall after stall of jewelry, artwork, textiles, souvenirs, and the occasional antiques. Ruben stopped at the occasional stall, seemingly aimless but supposedly with intention. Through it all, Bernard couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched, and not just because his cousins were acting still like children. Still, when he looked around, no one looked back.
As they stopped at another stall, Jez prodded him with her radio, “Have you heard from Mireia?”
He shook his head and looked down at his watch again. It was getting close to an hour.
Jez gripped her shoulder strap uneasily. “I thought she was parking her car?”
“Well,” the answer suddenly came to him, as he considered it aloud, “she did say something about possibly meeting with a friend. Something about her dorm situation for college.”
Jez crossed her arms, “Well, is she parking her car or meeting with a friend? And why would that worry you?”
“I’m not worried!” he cried, alarmed.
“The hell you’re not!” Jez said, jabbing him in the chest with her finger, “You’re a terrible liar, Bernie! Where is she?”
He turned away uncomfortably, “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“I don’t! Really! I don’t know where she is! I just know she said to get started if she didn’t show up in twenty minutes! Maybe she’s checking into the room!”
She grabbed his wrist, shaking his watch at him, “Yeah? Well how long do you think that takes? It’s been almost an hour!”
Call the cops in an hour, Mireia had said. Bernard glanced nervously back toward the entrance. Then he dropped his voice, “Look, you two, she went to meet someone, and neither of us is sure what’s going on. She said if she wasn’t back in an hour to call the cops.”
His cousins both gawked at him.
“For fuck’s sake!” Jez shouted at him, drawing cries of dismay from several vendors and bystanders, “Why wouldn’t you tell us something like that from the start?”
“I told you it’s weird, okay?” Bernard said, “We’ll explain—I’ll tell you later, I swear.”
“You’re gonna tell me right now,” she snapped under her breath, shaking. Then she grabbed her brother’s wrist in her other hand, “Come on Rubie, let’s find someplace quieter than this.”
Ruben went along without complaint, quietly echoing her sentiments that Bernard should have told them the truth from the start.
Jez’s idea of “quiet” was outside, against the shaded wall facing North Market Street. A voice like hers would still echo against the brickwork.
“Talk,” she ordered, poking Bernard in the chest. Ruben stood with his arms folded in dismay.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I did,” he said, pushing her away. “It’s really weird, Jez. I’d have to show you. All I can tell you is she’s with some stranger down at the Marina.”
“You could have told me that!” she yelled, alarming him and gaining several glances from up and down the street.
“What part of this is quiet?” he demanded.
“She could be in danger!”
“Jez,” Bernard hissed, “He’s two feet tall and scaly!”
She froze, mid-retort, jaw dropping in shock. There was confusion on her face. Anger. Disgust. Doubt. Confusion again. Then she whispered, “What the fuck is Aunt Rhonna feeding you? Did you eat a bad oyster or something? You know they’re out of season.” She put a hand on his forehead, “You don’t seem sick.”
Ruben said quietly, “We should probably take him to the hospital, anyway.”
Bernard pushed her away again, patting her shoulder, “Mireia went to go leave it at the marina with some stranger I talked to on the phone. I told you you wouldn’t believe me.”
She turned to her brother and pushed him along toward the nearest shop, “Come on, let’s go call the cops . . . and an ambulance.”
“Yeah,” Bernard sighed, “Just please don’t tell them I said that, okay? This morning’s been weird enough.”
Ruben froze in his tracks, resisting his sister’s forceful shoving. “Maybe we should wait just a few more minutes.”
“No!” Jez cried, “She could be in danger!”
A voice called out from their radios all at once, “Are y’all doing this thing or not?”
Bernard turned, and breathed a sigh of relief when Mireia came running toward them up the sidewalk, her old lavender backpack bouncing along on her back.
Oh, thank God. he thought. “She’s alive.”
Mireia caught up to them easily, “What are you all doing out here? I thought we were shopping?”
“What’s in the bag?” Jez asked.
“What?” Mireia stared at her blankly, then slowly turned Bernard suspiciously, “What did you tell her?”
“Can we go to lunch or the hotel room first?” he asked.
Jez smirked, “Maybe, unless Bernie has food poisoning. What’s in the bag?”
Mireia glared at Bernard, “You swore you wouldn’t tell anyone.”
“He wanted to talk to her anyway!”
Jez added, “Don’t blame Bernie! It’s not his fault he’s a terrible liar! And easy to interrogate!”
Bernard started toward her, when a hand landed on his chest. Ruben put himself between them, setting his other hand on Jez’s shoulder. “Stop.”
The boy’s eyes were on the ground as he said, “Something really weird is going on, and you’re all making it worse. Can we finish what we came here for? I feel like I’m on a friggin’ rollercoaster. I just want to find what I came here for and go lay down. Whatever happens after that, you three can leave me out of it.”
Jez groaned, rolling her eyes. “You told me earlier you weren’t sick, so would you stop acting like the whole universe—”
“Is spinning and tilting like a carnival ride?” Ruben snapped, meeting her eyes with a sudden seriousness that caused her to step away from him. Then he looked at the Mireia. “There’s nothing in the bag, is there?”
Mireia shook her head, “No. I left it at the Marina, and I hope I never see it again.”
Bernard gave a sigh of relief, “Thank God.”
“It’s real?” Jez asked. “What is it?”
“I’m not sure anymore,” she intoned wearily, “Some talking half-dead creature Bernie found on the beach this morning. I’m with Rubie. Let’s finish what we came here for so I can take him home, and I’ll explain everything over dinner.”
Jez’s features wrinkled in disgust. “Fine.”
Bernard noticed, however, that as they moved along, she put extra special effort into bothering her brother, who was now too cranky to deal with her. Wanting nothing to do with this newfound vigor in their relationship, Bernard and Mireia hung back to give them some distance, instead watching an elderly Gullah-Geechee woman sitting among her sweetgrass baskets, smiling as she worked the strands of grass, dark fingers elegantly threading it in around and out, in around and out. . . .
After a moment, Mireia bought a small set of sweetgrass coasters for her dorm room. While he waited for her, Bernard looked over a stand of baseball hats. A brown one with a black shark silhouette had caught his eye, as a nice compliment to his shirt.
Together, they moved along through the market, he with his customary casual stride, a soft smile on his tanned face. For now, things were as normal as he could hope for, and he was savoring that for all it was worth. Somewhere near the end of the shopping corridor, Ruben finally chose a large print of a shrimp boat at night, gleaming peacefully on a shining silver sea beneath a full moon. To Bernard’s surprise, it actually looked like it might fit the boy’s eclectic bedroom.
Jez thumped him on the back of the head, “We came all the way down here for a picture of a boat. I hope you’re happy.”
Ruben smiled slyly, “No, we came all the way down here for a painting of the moon.”
At first, Jez looked confused, until comprehension dawned on her face, “Dad’s going to kill you.”
“Jez! Please don’t tell him!” Ruben cried, clutching the paper parcel to his chest, “Please!!”
“I won’t, I won’t,” she reassured him, “Fiiiine. But you better hope he doesn’t figure it out.”
“It’s just a boat, after all, isn’t it,” Ruben said quietly, his fingers tightening on the brown craft paper bearing his prize.
Bernard was confused, “What’s the big deal?”
Ruben flushed, glancing at the floor, “In Celtic Wicca, the Goddess is represented by the moon. Dad doesn’t know about it, yet. He’s already banned witchcraft from the house, but he doesn’t necessarily know what it looks like without the usual tools. He’s lose his mind if he knew about this. Anyway . . . it’s not witchcraft if I’m not doing magic. It’s just another way of looking at the world. Wicca’s a system of beliefs; not necessarily the practices themselves.”
Jez put an arm across his shoulders, sighing, “He’s not going to see it that way.”
“Yeah . . . I’m aware.”
“Well,” Bernard said, “I’m glad to know you’re not just crazy.”
He was trying to be helpful, and the statement drew a laugh from his cousin, but there was a bitter edge to it.
“Oh, he’s still nuts!” Jez laughed.
Mireia glanced at her watch meaningfully, “At least he has your support. Your dad’s super cool, but you don’t want to anger him any more than I do. So as far as we know, Rubie bought a painting of a boat.”
Ruben added, “And then you took me home, and I never mention a talking dead creature from the beach this morning.”
Mireia froze solid, wide-eyed.
With a broad smile smugly plastered across his face, he said, “But what do I know? I’m the crazy one.”
Bernard walked past them, “It’s lunch time.”
“How—” Mireia stammered, “How can you talk about food?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, and turned on his heel to face them, “Anything’s better than this conversation! I just want to sit my happy half-blood ass at a table and ponder the super weird morning I had over a nice normal fried shrimp Po’ Boy and a glass of Diet Coke! If the shrimp talks back, I’m taking myself to the hospital, and if that creature shows up again, I really am going to call someone!”
Mireia set her hands on his shoulders, stopping him, “Look, Bernie: you have no idea. Let me take Rubie home, first, okay? You and Jez can go . . . take your stuff out of my car and go grab a sandwich at a coffee shop or something while I’m gone, and we’ll figure out dinner. We seriously need to talk, and it’s better if it’s not here, and he’s not here.”
He shrugged, “Okay,” then he pointed at the restaurant on the corner across from them, “Right here.”
For a moment, she studied the place, and then she nodded, “The crowds will work to our advantage if no one can hear us over the noise.”
Jez grabbed their arms, “Glad we’ve got that figured out! Let’s go. That sandwich is sounding great.”