The Voice of the Skulll

Dr. Barnes was finishing up the last of his notes for the day before heading home when he heard a knock at the front door. His first thought was that the receptionist had forgotten something and returned to retrieve it. His second was that his ex-wife had seen he was still at work and come by to give him some grief. Whoever it was must have been particularly motivated to come out in this weather. Rain had been pouring all day and it was cold as well, particularly cold for Savannah. He considered not answering it at all. He certainly wasn’t obligated to. But the thought of someone standing out there in this weather, even if it was his ex, moved him to go to the door. Something inside of him just couldn’t turn away someone in need. Dr. Barnes knew it was at once his greatest virtue and his greatest fault.

He opened the door just a crack and saw it was neither his receptionist nor his former wife. Instead, he found himself looking into the bloodshot eyes of one of the largest black men he’d ever seen.

“Sorry, sir, we’re already closed for the day,” the doctor told him.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said in a deep baritone southern drawl. “I just need a moment of your time. I never come to see a…psychiatrist before, but I got a problem and you’re the only one who can help. I just need a few minutes. That’s all.”

“I can probably fit you in tomorrow. Just show up here first thing in the morning and I’ll see you if I have a cancellation or I may can fit you in between appointments if I get a chance.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I ain’t looking to be no trouble, you understand. I just need to talk to you about a problem and it cain’t wait till the morning. I just need a few minutes of your time, Doctor. That’s all.

Dr. Barnes sighed. He didn’t know another psychiatrist in the city who would have seen the man and he realized he wouldn’t have either if he’d still been married. But there was nothing at home for him but a cold, lonely house and his ten-year old overweight housecat. As it was, he didn’t have it in him to turn the fellow away.

“Is it a matter of life or death?” he asked.

“It most assuredly is, sir. That’s a fact. I ain’t asking for charity, Doc. I got cash to give you.” He pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and showed it to him.

Dr. Barnes studied the man’s face carefully through the door. He considered himself an astute judge of character. Reading people was how he made his living after all. It was obvious from his bloodshot eyes and general shakiness that he was under genuine stress, but he didn’t have an air of menace about him in spite of his size. He seemed sincere, and must have been either too clueless or desperate to go through the proper channels. Helping people such as this was the reason he’d become a doctor. He realized that he couldn’t, in good conscience, turn him away.

“I’ll give you fifteen minutes,” Dr. Barnes told him, trying to keep a reluctant tone out of his voice.

He unlatched the door and the big man strode in. His size was amazing. He must have been at least six and a half feet tall and over four hundred pounds. The doctor cursed himself for a fool, letting such a giant into his office without another soul around.

“My name’s Jerome Williams,” the giant announced, shaking the doctor’s hand. “Thanks for seeing me. I didn’t know where else to turn.”

“Well come back to my office, and let’s talk,” Dr. Barnes said. He was a giant, but seemed amiable enough, the doctor noted. He noticed the man wore a bulky trench coat he could have hidden an arsenal under and his boots were covered with mud that he tracked on the velvet carpet all the way down the hall.

In his office, Jerome sat down on the leather couch across from the doctor’s desk. The couch groaned beneath his weight. It was then that Dr. Barnes noticed how truly disheveled the fellow was. The bulky coat was stained and dirty. His hair stood up in every direction and was littered with bits of dirt and straw. The knees of his overalls had been patched and re-patched half a dozen times and he exuded the sour aroma of body odor.

“So how can I help you?” Dr. Barnes asked.

Jerome shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable, obviously not accustomed to telling a stranger about his problems in spite of his insistence on seeing someone right away.

“What’s on your mind, Jerome?” the doctor prompted.

Jerome drew a deep breath and began to speak.

"I ain't never considered getting this kind of help before," he began “But I'm at my wit's end. I guess I'm really going crazy. I get this voice in my head and it...it just won’t shut up!" He punctuated his last word by pounding a giant fist against his thigh. Embarrassed, he checked the Doctor's reaction. Dr. Barnes, used to seeing patients react to their distress, only nodded for Jerome to continue.

"I'm sorry, Doc" he continued. "I just don't know what to do. Do you think you can help me or do I just need to check myself in the crazy house?"

"I can tell you're upset about something right now," Dr. Barnes said. “But you’re going to have to tell me more about it before we can figure out what course of action we need to take. Just go ahead and talk freely. I’ll stop you if I need to clarify something. Tell me more about this voice in your head that you’re hearing.”

Jerome took a deep breath and continued more calmly than he had before. "Well, it started on the day I plowed up a skull in my cotton field about a month ago. The plow struck it and it went flying up in the air right there in front of my face. I wasn't sure what it was at first. I thought it was probably just a bone of some sort but then I got down off my tractor and picked it up and saw for sure. It was the skull of a man. I dug around some more and found a slew of other bones that looked liked like they must have belonged to a person. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know of anyone ever buried in my field. But I went inside holding that skull. I know I should have left it lying out there. I don’t rightly know why I decided to carry it in like that. I knew I needed to call the police and let them come take a look at it all, and that’s what I was intending to do up to the moment I picked up the phone. That’s when it talked in my head just as clear as I'm talking to you right now, Doc. It says, ‘Jerome, put down that phone!' It scared me so bad, I nearly peed my pants, but I put that phone down so hard I’m surprised it didn’t bust the table it was sitting on. As soon as I put it down, it speaks to me a little softer, like it was sharing a secret. It says, 'Jerome, we got a job to do and don't be thinking you're going to rest till it's done, boy! You understand me?' I took offense to being called boy. This ain’t the old days anymore, you know, but I got over my fright enough to think back to it. I says in my head, ‘what kind of job you talking about?' It says it cain't say right yet. It has to see if I'm deserving to do it first.

"About that time, I hear my wife, Betsy, come in the house. So I rushed back to the bedroom and sat it in my closet. I didn’t want her to see it. I cain’t rightly tell you why. I just knew it didn’t want her to find it right yet. It only wanted to deal with me. When I saw my wife, I tried to act like nothing in the world unusual had happened that day.

“I tried to forget all about that thing. I didn’t ever want to see it again. But I still didn’t call the police about the bones I’d found. I kept meaning to, but every time I’d think about doing it, I’d hear the echo of that skull’s voice in my head all over again. I tried to forget all about the thing and I did for about two weeks even though I kept waking up from the most awful nightmares you can imagine. That skull would talk to me in my dreams. It would tell me to do unspeakable things, but when I woke up I could not recall what its words had been. I never mentioned a word of it to my wife, but she knew something was amiss.

“One night, she woke me up in the middle of the night. ‘What are you dreaming about, Jerome?’ she asked me. ‘You’re over there muttering and moaning in your sleep and you’ve been acting real peculiar lately. You need to tell me what’s going on.’ But I didn’t tell her. I figured I would in my own time.

“But the next day, she found the skull in my closet. When I came in from the field, she was holding it even though the look on her face told me she thought it was about the most repulsive thing in the world. She also looked like she was scared to death. ‘Where did you find this?’ she asked. I lied to her. I told her I bought it at a novelty shop a long time ago. I said it wasn’t even a real skull. Just a realistic fake. She eyed me with a suspicion I haven’t known from her too much in our marriage. She says she ain’t never known me to lie to her and doesn’t why I would about this, but fake or not, she can feel the evil oozing out of it. She tells me to get rid of the thing right now and she’s going to watch while I do it. So I carried it to my truck and she came with me. We took it out to the dump some miles away. She watches me throw it far out in the garbage heap and seems satisfied enough as we drive back to the house. She says she never wants me to mention it again. Says we’re going to pretend like the whole episode never happened and I was fine with that. Let me tell you, Doc, I was just fine with never seeing that cursed thing again.”

Jerome paused in his story and was hesitant to continue.

"I assume that wasn’t the end of it," Dr. Barnes said. Jerome had been in his office twice his allotted time, but now the doctor found himself hooked. He wanted to see the story through to the end.

Jerome smacked his lips, looked down at the floor and expelled a great burst of air.

"No, it wasn’t,” he said. “The next morning Betsy wakes up screaming in the wee hours of the morning. She pushed me clean out of the bed. I’m a big man as you can see, and I never dreamed she had the strength. I hit the floor and woke up dazed and irritated. ‘What’s wrong with you, Betsy?’ I said. But the moment, I woke up, I knew it was me something was wrong with. I stank something awful. I was covered with slime and bits of garbage.

“Betsy got out of bed and turned on the light. That’s when I saw that skull sitting right there on the night table next to my side of the bed. For a second, I thought it was laughing at me. Betsy’s eyes were wide and she was breathing fast and heavy. I’d never seen her like that. It scared me almost as much as finding myself covered in filth and seeing that skull there after I knew we’d taken it to the dump just that afternoon.

“ ‘I don’t know what’s going on here,’ Betsy said. ‘But I know how to fix it.’ She walked into the kitchen and came back with a hammer. ‘Let’s see if it can come back from this,’ she said. She was going to smash that skull into a million pieces, but before she could…something came over me, Doc. Something just came over me.”

Tears popped in Jerome’s eyes. He looked down and held his head in his hands. Dr. Barnes wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to continue. He reached for a Kleenex on his desk and handed it to the man who took it gratefully.

“Did you prevent her from destroying the skull?” he prompted.

With an act of will, Jerome gathered himself and took another deep breath.

"Yes. I guess that’s one way to put it. I prevented her alright. Doc, I swear I ain't never laid a hand on my wife in twenty-five years of marriage. She always said I was a gentle giant and that's why she loves me so much. She’s given me three children who’ve grown up to be fine people, and besides that she’s just the love of my life. But when she drew that hammer back to strike that skull, it was like a spell came over me. I saw myself grab her by the wrist and take that hammer away from her as easy as you might take candy from a baby. In my mind, I pictured smashing her skull with that hammer, but I shook that thought away. Instead, I pushed her with all my strength. She fell into the closet so hard it cracked in half when she hit it. She crashed right through it and fell on the floor inside the closet. When she stood up again, I could see she was bleeding from the back of her head and was mad as a banshee. My Betsy does have a temper at times, you understand, but I knew she was in new territory as soon as I looked in her eyes. She picks a high-heeled shoe off the floor and slings it at me. It hit me right in the mouth and I went to bleeding as bad as she was. Then she attacked me, pounding me with her fists. I just covered up and hoped she would get it out of her system after awhile. Finally, she gives me one final blow on the side of my head with her pocket pocketbook and ran out the door carrying a change of clothes.

“ ‘You keep that damn thing then,’ she said. ‘But you won’t keep me. You got the devil in you, Jerome and I’m leaving you with it.’ Then she was out the door and gone. It was only then that I saw I had that skull cradled in my arms, protecting it even as she cursed me for it. I ain’t seen her since, Doc. She’s staying with her mother I suspect. But I ain’t mustered the courage to try to find out. I know she ain’t got no use for me long as I still got that skull. I ain’t spoke to her nor no other soul until I come here tonight to speak to you.”

Jerome paused in his narrative and Dr. Barnes studied him carefully. He didn’t appear to be responding to internal stimuli nor did he seem disoriented or incoherent. Neither did he appear to have the racing thoughts, flight of ideas, or ideas of reference that were common to Bi-Polar patients in a manic phase. Although he was in a state of obvious distress, there was nothing about Jerome’s presentation that suggested to Dr. Barnes that he was anything but sane. He suspected there was a stressor in Jerome’s life he hadn’t disclosed yet, and the psychosis he was describing was his reaction to it. Whatever the man’s issues were, Dr. Barnes was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“Have you ever had an experience similar to this in your life, Jerome?” he asked.

“No, Doc. I certainly haven’t. I’ve been accused of being stubborn and a cheapskate before, but I ain’t never been crazy. Not till now at least.”

“I see.” The doctor thought for a moment. “Has the skull spoken to you since your wife has left you?” he asked.

”Yes, it has. That night after she left, I was sitting in bed wondering what I should do. On one hand, I hated that skull and wanted it gone, but at the same time I felt a loyalty to it I couldn’t account for. I knew I’d die to protect it if it came to that. Not to be crass, Doc. But that thing had me by the balls and I knew it. That’s what I was thinking when it speaks up in my head again clear as day. It says I’ve proven myself now. It says I got a job to do and now it knows I’m up for it.”

“What was the job, Jerome?”

“That’s what I wanted to know, but it says it still cain’t say quite yet. First it wants to give me a History lesson. It wants me to know how it came to be in my cotton field in the first place. It says it would hate for me to do a job without understanding why it must be done. The next thing I knew I fell into a trance and when I came out of it I understood everything.

”You see, where my farm and my house is now used to be part of a big plantation. There was a family who used to own a lot of slaves who lived in that house. But the man and two of his sons died fighting for the Rebels in the Civil War, and his wife willed the land and the house to my great, great, great granddaddy when she died as a reward to nursing her for a lot of years when she was down and sick after the war. That was a fact I already knew. It’s why I bought the place to tell the truth. I played pro football for some years back in the 80s and made some good money. I drove by with my wife one day and saw it was up for sale and went right in and bought it. I liked the irony, you know? The ancestor of the slave living in the house of the owner.”

Something clicked in Dr. Barnes’ mind as he listened to the man. “Jerome, where exactly is your farm located?”

”It’s off Highway 80, Doc. About thirty miles south of Savannah. Winchester’s the closest town if you can call it a town, about ten miles away.”

“Jerome, that’s quite a coincidence. I believe that the woman that willed your house to your ancestor was my great-great-great grandmother. My mother told me that very story about how she willed her house and land to a former slave and how a great uproar resulted, racial relations being what they were in those days. But for some reason, the land came back again to my family for a time. There was a tragedy associated with that story too, but I can't quite recall what it was now."

"Is that right?” Jerome said, appearing surprised by the coincidence. It’s a small world isn’t it?”

“Yes it is, Jerome. A very small world."

”I’m familiar with the tragedy you’re trying to recall. In fact that was part of what the skull revealed to me in my vision that night. It happed to Alfred Williams. That was the fellow's name that got the land from your old grandma. That was in 1880. Well like you said, the white folks in the county raised all sorts of cane about it. They didn’t like the idea of a Negro being the largest landowner in Marion County. One night, some good ole' boys got liquored up and paid Alfred a visit. The man was getting along in years by then. He was close to seventy-five years old, but still pretty spry. What the good ole’ boys didn’t know that a lot of other folks did was that Alfred was known to have knowledge of the black arts. Black people from all over came to see him when they wanted certain things such as placing a curse on somebody who wronged them, or those who coveted a certain man or woman and had given up having them by fair means. They said he could help those in grief by allowing them to speak to their lost loved ones from the grave. Alfred would do about anything if the price was right and woe to those who declined to pay. Those were known to come to a bad end. People often remarked that he had a pleasant disposition for a fellow who’d committed so many awful deeds. Most folks left him alone because of that. There were rumors that he put a spell on your grandma. Lillian was her name you might recall. That's how they said he got her to will all his land to him even though she had a son she could have willed it to instead. The son was Russell Barnes. He’d only been a child when the war began. That’s how he’d avoided it, but he was a young man by the time his mother died. He was thought to be a good-for-nothing scoundrel who ignored his mother those years after the war when she lost her health being too busy drinking and chasing women. Other folks said Lillian and Alfred had lived like husband and wife for a time. Some even said Lillian called Alfred her one true love. That was why she left him so well off. That was considered quite sick in those days; a black man and a white woman, even if they was getting along in age like they was.

"Russell was the leader of the gang who came to see Alfred that night. They busted down the door when he wouldn't come out on his own and then they made to lynch him. Alfred put up quite a fight and managed to kill one of them with a butter knife. Stabbed him right through his eyeball. He broke another one's leg with a piece of pipe, but in the end there were just too many of them and he was too old. They dragged him to the place where my cotton field is now. But then it was a woods full of oak trees. They found one with a branch about the right height and tossed a rope over it with a noose on the other end. Russell spat in Alfred’s face as he was tied up there before they got the noose around his neck.

” ’What you going to do now you son of a bitch?' he said to him. 'It's what you get for screwing my mother and stealing my land. Did you really believe I’d sit by and watch an old nigger make himself at home on my land? I guess you got a different view of it now, huh?’

”Alfred just looked at him and said, ‘Son, the children shall pay for the sins of the father.'

" ‘Shut up and hang, nigger!’ Russell said. Then he put that noose over his neck himself and they yanked him off the ground. They watched the life strangled from him, drinking and laughing about it the whole time. They were a bit disappointed though because Alfred didn't even struggle. He just hung there and quit breathing after awhile glaring like Satan at Rusty the entire time. In hindsight, Rusty wished he'd taken the time to put a hood over his head. The way the man glared at him haunted his dreams for years afterward.

"Coincidentally, Russell settled down pretty good after that incident. He saw he wasn't living right and got good with God. Got married to a nice girl and a year to the day they lynched old Alfred, his wife gave birth to a healthy baby boy. It was a shame though that he never got to be a father to it. Within three hours of his son's birth, a blood vessel burst in Russell's head and he dropped dead right in the hospital waiting room. It was real tragic.

"Eventually, hard times got the better of the Barnes family's plantation even though Russell's widow made a good go of it for awhile. They had to sell it cheap and move out to the city to survive. She eventually married a businessman in Savannah.”

“That’s quite a tragic story,” Dr. Barnes said. “I’ve seen the name Russell Barnes in our family Bible, but I never knew about the lynching. So you’re telling me your skull has identified itself as belonging to your ancestor, Alfred Williams, who was rumored to be a voodoo doctor?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Barnes was thoughtful for a moment. “So you still haven’t told me the job the skull wished for you to do,” he said. “Where is this skull now by the way?”

“Why it’s right here, Doc.”

Jerome reached underneath his bulky coat and pulled out the much discussed skull. Dr. Barnes recoiled involuntarily when he saw it. He agreed with Betsy. The thing was evil. His heart jumped in his throat and sweat began to drip from his armpits. He tried to banish the superstition from his mind and tell himself it was just an average human skull, bleached with age. He’d certainly had a head full of teeth, the doctor noted. The thing made his skin crawl. There was no getting around it. For the first time since Jerome had come in, he wished he had turned the man away.

He realized Jerome had been speaking and he hadn’t heard a word he was saying.

”I’m sorry, Jerome,” he said. “I was distracted for a minute. I never did hear you tell me the job this skull wanted you to do.”

Jerome grew very still and quiet before he answered and Dr. Barnes felt the hair on the back of his neck rise up in alarm.

"Doc, this skull here reached out from the grave and got his revenge on Russell. If you look back at your own father and his before that, you might recall they came to tragic ends as well soon after they bore sons.”

It was true. Dr. Barnes own father had died in a car wreck as he rushed home from the office after his mother had told him she was going into labor. His father’s father had suffered a fatal stroke less than a day after his son was born. But Dr. Barnes himself had no sons.

“Yes they did, Jerome. It’s one of the reasons, truth be told, that my wife and I divorced. I did not want children because children have always seemed to be the death of the men in my family. I never told her that was the reason though. She would have dismissed it as superstition.”

They stared at each other in awkward silence for a moment like two poker players trying to read the other’s hand.

“You’ve told me a fascinating story, Jerome,” Dr. Barnes said. “But I don’t see how I can help you. I’m going to have to ask you to leave now.”

Jerome smiled sadly at him but made no move to leave. At that moment, Dr. Barnes heard the voice of the skull in his own mind.

The children shall pay for the deeds of the father! it said.

Dr. Barnes ran for the door, but Jerome caught him by the throat with a single hand. He lifted him off the floor and squeezed with all his strength. He was surprised by how easily a man’s windpipe could be crushed. The doctor clawed at his hand and tried to beat him away, but the blows fell impotently against Jerome’s bulk. Inside of the doctor’s dying brain, the skull laughed with demonic delight. When his life had ebbed away, Jerome dropped his lifeless body on the floor in front of the skull. The doctor's hand brushed it as he fell, streaking it with a stripe of blood.

Jerome stared at the scene for a moment, hating what he had done, but also aware that he’d had no choice in the matter. He looked at the skull beside him and breathed a sigh of relief. It no longer held him in its power. He shook his head in regret.

"Damn skull," he said aloud. "I hate that thing."

Glad to be rid of it, he left it gloating there and went to call his wife.