Three old women sat on one side of a large, square table. They were dressed like gypsies, with long, flowing robes that draped down from their shoulders. Scarves were wrapped around their heads, with gray and white hair peeking out from under the colorful fabric. Large golden earrings dragged their flabby earlobes toward their shoulders, and their arms were lined with bracelets that clinked when they moved. They sat so close together that their robes folded into each other, so close that they almost looked like one wide, colorful body with three heads.
They looked intently across the table, but I couldn’t see that side of the room through the crack in the door. Someone was there, though. Their shadow, short and wide, draped itself across the table and toward the women. When the person spoke, it was a man’s voice. At first he muttered and grunted to himself, the words all jumbled together. But I could only see the three old women, and they stared at him as if trying to decide if they should stay or go.
Out of nowhere, the three old women interrupted him, quietly at first and then louder. They chanted words, but not English words, not old, dead words that can barely stand on their own two feet. No, the words they chanted were alive, words I couldn’t understand, words that had a fluttering, startling life of their own. Their words terrified me, but they also intrigued me. I was like a confused magnet, repelled and attracted all at once.
Part of me wanted to turn and run back out into the storm I had escaped from, back into the hair-trigger lightning and the thunder and the rain that had drenched me, but their words pulled me forward until I was braced against the frame, fighting to stay outside the room.
The lights in the building flickered, then went out.
Notes
1. “Marie Laveau Biography,” Biography Base, accessed December 12, 2017, http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Laveau_Marie.html.
2. Bill Guion, “Etienne de Boré Oak (Tree of Life),” 100 Oaks Project, July 8, 2010, https://100oaks.wordpress.com/2010/07/08/etienne-de-bore-oak-tree-of-life.
Shawn Smucker lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is the author of The Day the Angels Fell and The Edge of Over There, and you can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com.
BOOKS BY SHAWN SMUCKER
The Day the Angels Fell
The Edge of Over There
ShawnSmucker.com
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