Tainted Harvest
Page 13
Six fireflies illuminate her arm, merging with her flesh. Simone warms and tingles as though a bright light explodes within, radiating through every cell of her body, flooding her heart with joy and laughter. She drops to her knees, radiant with Delphine’s powerful love for her family.
They’re together, again.
Not Again
Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport
Simone fastens her seatbelt and quickly types a text she’d meant to send before boarding the airplane, before Bridgette’s phone call obliterated the thought:
Parker, you’ve opened my eyes and heart with a purpose I’ve searched for for years. Thanks for the inspiration and gift. I’m honored to be a member of your family. I’ll see you in a month, cousin.
Simone rereads the text, presses send, and shuts off the mobile as the plane taxis onto the runway. When she closes her eyes, six fireflies glitter in her mind. Six . . . Delphine, Josie, Benoit, Jackson, Jonathan, and Sylvie, she affirms mentally. The gripping, miraculous spectral reunion kept her wired and awake till dawn. She left the garden, sat in the parlor, recounted events of the past weeks, and reaffirmed the earlier decision to freelance at Vocal magazine.
As she was curled in a plump parlor armchair, Parker's silent entry startled her from deep thought. He emerged with a glossy book, apologizing for the fright. Simone sat upright, eyes locked on the shiny hardcover design of a healthy blossoming peach tree beneath Magnolia Sunrise, splitting open the four-story Victorian floorboards. Offshoots bursts through the rooftop, launching shingles airborne and crashing to the ground. Many branches sprout twigs that extend and connect to larger limbs. Branches and branches of the Randolph family growing off the binding.
“What an amazing cover.”
“This is for you. The Randolph family tree I gift to descendants,” Parker had explained, placing the book in her hand and walking toward the dry bar. “Would you care for a glass of bourbon?”
The amber liquid evoked indulgent glasses of malbec she’d inhaled at the farewell-rooftop party in Marseille and the ensuing morning-after-splitting headache she endured racing to catch a flight. “I shouldn’t.”
“Just a glass. It’s your last night at Magnolia Sunrise. Let’s toast to family and new beginnings.”
She’d considered the short shot glass he held and conceded. “All right. A sip or two can’t hurt.”
They’d toast to family and new beginnings, down the whiskey in one gulp, and thumbed through many pages of relatives in the glossy book before he joined his wife upstairs, an hour later. As he bent over to hug her goodnight, she welcomed his embrace with a tighter squeeze than the first time they’d met in the yard. She remained in the comfy lounge chair long after Parker returned upstairs. The breadth of descendants he’d located kept her glued to the family tree until the first blush of morning peeped through the windows.
Groggy-eyed, daybreak yanked her from her heritage, upstairs to shower and dress for her early morning flight back to New York. She’d paused as she gathered her bags to leave for the airport, gazed at the blue walls, sloped ceiling, walk-in closet, and garden view beyond the window. Then a familiar, sweet scent gripped her as she walked toward the door and turned the knob. A fleeting question assailed her mind. Why escape the nursery, a prison, and return after death? Did she find eternal happiness reunited with her babies?
The rocking chair wobbled with that thought.
She released the doorknob, realizing the momentary impression was Delphine’s.
Straightaway the rocker had stilled.
Her gaze affixed to the cream seat-back cushion where she imagined Delphine sat.
The chair tilted back and forth once, an affirmative nod to her mental query.
She’d blinked and responded, “I understand,” as though Delphine expected her to do so.
Before she closed the door, she’d smiled and inhaled the evanescent sweetness. Sadness always strikes at the end of assignments and with farewells to new friends. But leaving Magnolia Sunrise, where her ancestry began, is bittersweet poignancy. However, Delphine exists inside her forever. She’s her blood—her past, present, and future. As she closed the door, it squeaked, and the lock clicked, evoking Delphine’s heartrending escape. She glanced at Parker’s bedroom door, then back at the nursery, and had imagined his unborn baby boy’s resounding whimpers throughout the corridor. Delphine will watch over the little one. Simone released the doorknob and hurried along the passageway, as Delphine had years ago.
The airplane tilts sideways, pulling her attention back to the cramped plane cabin. The Mississippi River comes into view, snaking toward the coast. Two weeks ago, she’d searched along the riverbank for the infamous bowl-shaped gulch. Now, no longer interested in seeing the place many lost their lives, she swiftly pulls the shutter over the window. She was troubled when she arrived, but now she leaves with answers, a new purpose, and an ever-growing family. When the airplane levels, Simone reclines back in the seat, eyes closed, eager to nap.
Ten minutes asleep, she’s thrust into a fiery dream, inside a burning building, beneath smoking rubble. An airplane drone overhead. A whistle plummets from the sky, growing closer, shriller, cratering the ground with a rattling explosion nearby. Men and women scream. Children cry. Gunfire pops. Bullets whizz. Chaos grows around her. A blazing man and woman emerge through dense smoke, their frightful, painful roar vibrating the scorching air. Their eyes light on her, mouth agape.
“TELL OUR STORY!”
Their searing hands seize her shoulder, setting Simone aflame.
She screams, jolts upright, swatting phantom flames from her body, startling passengers and the flight attendant racing along the aisle toward her.
No, please, not again!
The End?
History books never mentioned me or my people. Yes, I’ve seen your world from which we came, that shaped our world, your world, and your children’s world, and will shape the world of their children to come. See my story; tell my story so that one day others will know and never forget it.
Tainted Harvest
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace,
The Devil’s Eden lies in waste.
A tainted harvest, sinfully laced,
Corse sowed and reaped,
Reptilian chawed, rotted silt loam,
A charnel house,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
Forsaken souls rise at harvest,
Imparting offerings of history’s horrors,
Oh, what bittersweet hymns of sorrow,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
Beware the crag on summer eves,
She arrives, aggrieved,
Arms replete with plummy treasures.
Oh, how tempting, succulent, sweet,
Yet, wicked to the pitted marrow.
One bite, she’ll reveal
A grim genesis of horrors,
Skeletal antiquity,
Deeply seeded,
Root-to-leaf fodder,
For the Devil’s harvest,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
When Sumter thundered, plantations shuttered,
Relented barbarous tricentennial bondage,
Jubilant cries of freedom followed,
‘til Union Armies hollered, halt,
Thwarting thousand’s glory walk.
Detained, rerouted, entrapped, encamped on banks,
Flesh and bone buried where they sank.
Oh, what spoilage stains the bowl-shaped gulch,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
A forsaken, veritable unwritten history,
A parable of tainted harvest,
Forbidden fruit,
Tacit townsfolk dare not savor,
Oh, what mystery,
Deep in the Devil’s Eden,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
Dear reader,
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Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I’d like to thank my family for their immeasurable love and encouragement.
Also, special thanks to my dear friend and fellow author, Lawrence E. Crockett, for suggesting and urging me to write this story. Like many, I knew nothing of the Devil’s Punchbowl until a conversation with him a year ago.
Thanks to Next Chapter Publishing, my Editor, Shire Brown, and Cover Designer, Matt Davies for their fantastic work.
Also, I'd like to thank my friends for their constant support and readers for reading my stories.
About the Author
E. Denise Billups is an author with a rare mixture of southern and northern charm. She was born in Monroeville, Alabama, and raised in New York City, where she has worked in finance and as a freelance columnist and currently resides. A multi-genre author of fiction, she has published four novels—Keepers of the Gate: Twilight Ends (Book 1), Kalorama Road, Chasing Victoria, and By Chance. She has also written several supernatural short stories, including Off the Grid, Ravine Lereux: Unearthing A Family Curse, The Playground, and Rebound. As an avid reader of magical realism, mystery, suspense, and supernatural novels, she was greatly influenced by authors in these genres.
Currently, she is working on book two of her trilogy, Twilight Ends, a paranormal historical fiction, and book two of Simone Ducet Series to be released in 2022.
E. Denise Billups
www.edenisebillups.com
Also by E. Denise Billups
Keepers of the Gate: Twilight Ends (Book 1)
Kalorama Road
By Chance
Chasing Victoria
Supernatural Short Stories
Ravine Lereux: Unearthing A Family Curse
Off the Grid
Rebound
The Playground