“No,” she says. “I think…I think they all need to stay together.”
With the notebook tucked under her arm, Monica helps me stand. It’s hard and there’s a moment when I think I might pass out from the pain, but I power through. We leave the room and go to the back yard.
Outside, the sun is setting. The heat is still around but now when the wind ripples past, you can sense fall is around the corner. There is a sweet scent in the air from the neighbor’s honeysuckle vine. It’s on its last legs, knowing soon the weather will suffocate it until next spring.
Ahead of us is the fire pit. Jude built it with stones he dug up from the yard. It seems a fitting place to burn his legacy—the notebook.
Mom has prepared it for us. I told her what Monica and I had planned. She understands the importance of burning the notebook, of ridding the world of this last shred of Jude’s evil. I’m sure it’s a relief to her to know all our secrets will be safe soon. She even promised to be gone when Monica came over.
Monica lights the fire. It blazes up quickly, sending off lots of heat and small sparks, but neither of us backs away.
She tears out the picture of Simone crying and sticks it into the fire without preamble. The flames lick the edges curling the paper into charred cinders.
Then I toss the whole damn book in. The flames rise at our sacrifice, and I swear I can hear the journal hissing in protest as it burns, browning before turning to ash.
“There.” Monica takes my hand and lets out a slow breath. “That’s better.”
“Yes.”
She leans her head on my shoulder and I wrap my arm around her waist.
I will never have another love like Monica. I know this. It’s possible there will be other girls in my life, other women, just as it’s possible there will be other men in hers, but in this moment, on this day, it is clear to me.
We are one. We are the same. We may be bound by the monster in my family. Our families. But we love each other for who we are.
And at last, we have taken the first steps to freedom.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank the many people who have contributed to this book. Gina Lentz, Shana Bruce, and Pam Scott—you read it first and your comments were invaluable in shaping the direction of this story.
Thanks to my daughter, Emma, who always provides encouragement and support and quite honestly, makes me a better mom.
Thanks to my husband, Chuck. I would be nothing if you didn’t believe in me.
About the Author
Mary Ann Loesch has been a fine arts teacher for almost twenty years. She lives outside of Austin, Texas and is always looking for a great story to tell. Visit her at www.maryannloesch.com or find her at Twitter or Facebook.
Other Books by Mary Ann Loesch:
Nephilim
Bayou Myth
Bayou Scar
Enjoy this excerpt from Bayou Myth, Book One in the adventures of teenage voodoo queen, Joan Renault.
Bayou Myth
Chapter1
When I was born, Lester Renault, my papa, took one look at me and decided I was special—too special to have a name with no meaning. Since he and Momma were unclear what the special name should be, they settled on calling me Baby Girl Renault until they could make up their minds. That’s what it still says on my birth certificate, though I plan to legally change it when I turn eighteen in two years.
Papa should have called me different, not special. Special implies greatness, but different gives off the feeling of freakiness, which described me early on. A few weeks after my fifth birthday, I started to hear voices.
The world never treated me the same.
The warm March morning when my mother awoke to the song of the bayou bird and my life changed, she discovered her favorite silver bracelet missing. Momma considered the bracelet her lucky charm, claiming it contained good gris-gris passed down from my papa’s ancestors. A token of my father’s love for her, the snake shaped bracelet rarely left her arm, and the thought of it disappearing had Momma worked up good.
“Damn it all straight to hell!” No one could understand how a pretty, petite blond like Momma could have such a vulgar mouth. That day she took it easy, though and kept her swear words to a minimum. “Damn, damn, damn.”
“Momma,” I called. “What’s wrong?”
“Baby Girl.” She marched out of her room, the accusation already in her blue eyes. “Did you take my silver bracelet?”
“No, Momma.”
She squatted in front of me and touched my face. “Now, c’mon darlin’. Tell Momma the truth. Did you take the bracelet? I know how much you like it.”
“I swear I didn’t.”
For a moment, she continued to stare into my eyes, but I guess she saw something that made her realize I spoke the truth. She patted my curly head and smiled. “Alright then, Baby Girl, I believe you. Just keep an eye out for it.”
I left her and headed outside into the morning sun and my beloved bayou. Dangerous and beautiful at the same time, the swamp provided endless fodder for the imagination. I dashed through the cypress trees, following the call of the birds and the low song of the frogs. A little green snake slithered across the path, and I made a wish on it for good luck, heading deeper into the swamp, towards my tree.
The locals of Monte Parish, Louisiana called it the Old One, and it grew, gnarled and twisted, in a clearing just off the banks of Hera’s Swamp. Stretching impossibly high in my five year old mind, I believed it fell to the Old One to brush blue paint onto the sky. I loved the tree, and spent hours leaning against it, imagining simple little daydreams.
That’s where the voice first found me.
“Child.”
I turned, surprised someone snuck up on me without my noticing. But no one stood there. I looked the opposite direction, to Hera’s Swamp, only to find the same.
“Sweetheart,” the voice whispered again and the smallest of shivers ran down my back.
“Where you at?”
“Everywhere.” The soft Cajun lilt of a female voice surrounded me. “I am your Grandmere, the start of your young blood.”
My Grandmere? But that couldn’t be. Both my grandmothers were still alive and well. I stepped away from the tree, ready to run home.
“Don’t be frightened,” she soothed. “I’m here to guide you.”
“Guide me?”
“Yes. Check the hidey hole.”
I glanced at the fist sized hole at the base of the tree. Something shined inside it. With the fearlessness of a child, I thrust my hand inside, feeling a hard and cool object. The diamond eyes of Momma’s snake bracelet winked at me in the morning light as I pulled it out.
“But…how?” I asked.
“I took it.” Grandmere’s voice echoed in the clearing. “Time for us to meet.”
“Why?”
“Grandmere is to be your spirit guide.”
“I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. This is a good thing, a blessin’. You gonna do things ordinary folks can’t. People will call you the next great voodoo mambo, the high priestess.” To my right, the air moved a little. Turning to the spot, I willed whatever hid there to show itself.
“Ah. You are a powerful little thing already.” Grandmere chuckled. “Strong willed. I like that. You sure you’re ready to see me, girl?”
I nodded. The air turned a soft gold, and I could make out the image of a person standing before me. It strengthened, solidifying and bringing the relaxing smell of jasmine. I studied the girl. With skin a deeper brown than my own mixed tone and her hair tucked under a red scarf, she fascinated me. Two great gold earrings hung from her ear lobes. A white dress, cinched tightly in the middle with a cloth belt to show off her tiny waist, flowed down to her bare feet. She called herself my Grandmere, the Creole word for grandmother, but she didn’t look old as one with that title would be. No. This girl reminded me of my seventeen year old cousin, Cherise, young and vibrant, one with the Eart
h.
Her eyes held my gaze, and I wanted to bask in the deep hazel I saw there. Beautiful. She smiled, curving her plump lips into pure softness.
“Baby Girl, it’s my joy to finally meet you,” she said.
“You ain’t really my Grandmere, are you?”
“Oh yes, from many generations back. In my life time, over a century ago, folks called me Marie.”
“You’re too young to be a grandma. Grandmas are wrinkled and smell like old clothes. You look like you should be in the big kid’s school.”
“I’m taking the form you’ll be most comfortable with. As you age, I’ll age a little, too, Baby Girl.”
“That’s what my parents call me. I don’t got a real name yet.”
“After today, you will.”
“What’s gonna happen?”
“Everything.”
She stepped towards me, hands outstretched. I closed my eyes, expecting to feel coolness at her touch. Instead, heat slid into my skin, warming my blood, stirring something untouched. And that’s when the voices came.
The noise of them surrounded me. Cajoling. Sly. One voice brought me to tears with the deep sorrow imprinted into its tone. Another made me laugh with the joy it contained. I don’t know how many there were that first day, but I fell into the proverbial rabbit hole and never could pull myself out. Wonder consumed me, and a shift in my brain occurred, a change in its makeup that hadn’t been there before. I felt it as surely as I heard those voices.
And then they stopped. A trickle of sweat rolled down my face, slipping into my open mouth. The salty taste caused me to open my eyes, expecting to see Grandmere, but she’d gone. Only the bayou remained, untouched, unharmed. I stood, trying to steady myself and when I felt my strength come back, I ran.
“Momma!” I shouted when our house came in sight. “Momma!”
Something in my tone must have alerted her. She came onto the porch, the worry creasing her young face. I remember her hand brushed back a wisp of her soft blonde hair before she held out her arms and caught me in her embrace. I pressed against her, glad to be home.
“What’s this, Baby Girl? What’s wrong?”
I pulled back and held out the bracelet, watching her eyes widen as she took it. Taking a deep breath, I explained all that had happened to me in the bayou. Momma didn’t say a word the whole time, and I worried she didn’t believe me, that she thought I’d taken the bracelet after all. When I was done, her eyes were dark with thoughts I couldn’t comprehend.
“Joan.” I looked at her, not understanding the word that came from her mouth. Who was Joan? “Your name should be Joan.”
Joan? I rolled the word around my mouth. Joan.
“Yes.” She sat down on the porch steps. “You are my Joan, an old soul in a young body.”
“Why Joan?”
“It’s for Joan of Arc. She heard voices, too,” Momma said. “She was a strong person with stronger beliefs. A person with great courage.”
Great courage. I liked that. And I loved my Momma that day more than anything else in the world. Not once did she question my story or ever doubt me!
When Papa came home from work in the evening, Momma told him about my experience. His face turned sad as he heard the tale, and I thought I’d done something to upset him. Maybe he didn’t believe me.
“Papa, I’m telling the truth,” I said.
“I know you are, darlin’. I had a great aunt who had the same thing happen to her. Our family is no stranger to the calling of the voodoo laos or spirits.” He picked me up, leaning his dark head against my lighter one. “I had hoped you would be spared the gift though. It skips generations, and I wanted it to skip right on past us. Life isn’t easy for those chosen to be taken under Grandmere’s wing, Baby Girl.”
“Was she really our Grandmere?”
Papa put me down and walked into his bedroom, eventually returning with a small wooden box. Opening it, he rifled through some pictures before handing one to me.
“That’s her,” I said, shocked to see the woman in the bayou smiling at me from the old photo. “Marie.”
“Indeed,” Papa confirmed. “That is the great Marie Laveau, the most famed voodoo queen of the time. We are descendants of one of her sons.”
I gave the picture back to papa.
“You don’t want to keep it?”
I smiled and shook my head. No. I didn’t want to keep it, didn’t need to. I knew I would be seeing Marie again and again. She was to become my savior, as well as, the root of all the teasing and torment that shaped my young life.
What use did I have for a photograph?
***
Tonight I tried to pull the soft veil of sleep closer to me even as a storm rocked our house. Thunder rattled the windows of my bedroom, and summer rain pounded on the tin roof of the house louder than the beat of a tanbou drum. Lightning flashed, breaking up the darkness behind my closed eyelids as I tried to ignore the elements raging outside and slip deeper into the abyss of sleep. But Grandmere’s voice kept calling to me, keeping me aware of the storm and pulling me back from the edge of slumber.
“Joan. Joan, baby, wake up. You got work to do.”
I groaned but made myself sit up. The rain grew loud, again reminding me of the drums often heard drifting through the bayou late at night that were part of our voodoo rituals. The sound lulled and soothed most of the time, but tonight its sinister tone, snaked and twisted through my bedroom until my senses throbbed with its beat.
“Not tonight,” I muttered. “I’m too damn tired for a lesson. Let me sleep.”
But even as I spoke, my groggy mind registered my physical body did still sleep. When I turned to look back at the pillow, I could see myself, my caramel colored skin cocooned in the white bed sheets, curly brown hair sticking out in messy tufts. A snore ripped out from open mouth.
How disgusting! Well, at least I wasn’t drooling…much.
Grandmere stood at the foot of the bed, her hazel eyes impatient, further clueing me in to the fact that I’d left reality behind and now tripped along the astral dream ether separating this dimension from the next. I’ll tell you a little secret about myself…in my waking hours as a sixteen year old girl who can’t escape the freak flag flying over her head, picking up the little details is not my forte. Ninety percent of the time I am a victim of social ineptness. I can never remember what dress someone wore, who was dating who at our small high school, (not that I really gave a damn, anyway) or even what color of Converse my friend Dave had on two days ago. (Black, I think. Or were they red?) Keep your head down. That’s my motto. Hopefully, everyone will just leave you be.
But in these out of body dream trips…everything is as clear as my mother’s fancy Waterford crystal. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is real and what is dream.
Grandmere gestured for me to get up, and then faded away, leaving only the scent of her jasmine perfume behind. My bare feet slid to the cold wood floor. I grabbed my blue fleece robe, yanking it on over the black shorts and stretched out T-shirt I wore. Even if I was dreaming, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t feel the wind and rain. The mind is a powerful tool even when you’re sleepin.’
Pouting, I went down stairs and pulled open the front door, knowing Grandmere would be waiting outside. Sure enough, her white dress billowed in the breeze as she stood sentry at the edge of our lawn. A gust of wind pushed past the front door, scattering the papers on the hallway end table.
“Get movin’.” Grandmere’s words cut through the storm’s force. “Something’s wrong. We got to hurry.”
“We got to sleep,” I muttered. Experience had taught me the consequence of disobeying her though. Her chosen form may have been one of a teenage girl, but she carried a power that was ancient and commanding. I slipped into the gardening shoes Momma always left by the door. My feet sank into the soft earth when I crossed the lawn. Mud squished its way into the shoes, warming my toes, while rain dripped into my eyes and mouth, tasting mossy like the underbelly of the
swamp.
I knew where we were headed, would’ve known the way blindfolded to the Old One.
When I caught up, Grandmere stood at the outskirts of the clearing where the Old One grew, its twisted arms illuminated by lightning. I joined her, grateful for the shelter the trees provided from the wind and rain. Her serious hazel eyes, studied mine before she pointed to the massive cypress. “I’m afraid we are too late.”
A little boy in Star Wars pajamas stood shivering in front of the Old One, his hair plastered to his head from the rain. What on earth? What Cajun yahoo was stupid enough to let a kid wander out in the bayou during a storm? But then I remembered…it was a dream. Anything could happen in a dream. And this was typical of Grandmere. Everything must have a higher purpose or provide a learning opportunity in some way. She was as good as Oprah when came to teaching life’s lessons.
“What’s going on, Grandmere?” She didn’t answer, but stared at the boy, her body tense and worried.
He squatted down, tilting his head to the side before reaching into the hidey hole in the middle of the trunk. Lightening lit the night sky, striking the branches several feet above the boy’s head. A jagged crack zig zagged down the trunk, causing Grandmere to gasp, but the boy didn’t look up or remove his hand. The wind, the rain, the lightening—none of that mattered as he reached further into the dark hole.
The boy cried out, and his body jerked against the tree. He tried to withdraw his hand from the hole, but something held on, sucking in his entire arm. I heard a crunch, and the boy screamed. Shocked and paralyzed by an awful fascination, I couldn’t take my eyes from the sight of the pulsing fist-sized hole slowly sucking the boy in. It reminded me of one those inflatable jump houses they have at birthday parties, except this one went in reverse. Instead of air being pushed in, it was sucked out, compressing the boy’s body. The agonizing sound of bones cracking grew louder as his torso slurped into the tree.
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