Sweet Tea and Sass

by Tegan Maher

  "Well yes, but—"

  "Then it either belongs to you or to somebody you knew."

  She squinted and rubbed her chin as I took a second look at the other items I'd pulled out of the box, then checked to see if there was anything else. At the very bottom, there was a small brass bell, a delicate silver hand mirror, and what looked like an earthen finger bowl wrapped in a brightly colored red scarf.

  "Hmm," she said. "Unfold that and hold it up so I can see it good."

  I did as she asked, and when I did, several small, white shards fell back into the box. I picked one up and dropped it like it was on fire when I realized it was a tiny bone.

  Maisey furrowed her brow in consternation. "You may be better off puttin' that stuff back in the box and not touchin' it."

  "What?" Dee asked, dropping the head back in the box and slamming the lid shut. "Why?"

  Maisey scratched her head and slid her gaze away from us, her lips pressed together.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. "Spill."

  "Ain't nothin' to spill, as you say. It's just ... there was a Creole girl worked for us back toward the end of the war. We never did have no truck with slavery. An honest man—or woman—got paid an honest day's wages no matter if they was black, white, pink, or purple. She heard through her cousin we was lookin' for help and moved here from New Orleans. Truth be told, I think she escaped from one of the plantations, but like I said, that wasn't no never mind to us."

  "Okay," I said, dragging the word out. "And she has what to do with this?"

  "Well, maybe nothin'. Or maybe somethin'. Dominga—that was her name—was a sweet girl, but odd."

  "Odd how?" Dee asked.

  "She was into that voodoo stuff and didn't make no bones about it. Most everybody loved her, but a few were scared of her."

  "Scared of her? Why?" Though I supposed it wasn't brain surgery to figure out. Back in those days, folks were superstitious and suspicious of things they didn't understand. A free black woman with an exotic accent and a mysterious, earth-based religion likely caused a bit of a ripple in certain circles.

  "For the obvious reasons. But she was a hard worker, and her healin' skills came in useful more than once. That girl had a concoction for everything, and most often, they worked." She rubbed her chin again and her eyes took on a faraway look. "Though it didn't pay to cross her. Like I said, she was a good girl, but once we caught one of our workers bein' mean to one of the house girls. She was a friend of Minga's. We fired him, and when he came to collect his pay, he was covered in hives. That wasn't the only time, either, but it's one that stands out."

  I'd never met her, but I liked her style. At least until I caught a glimpse of the box again. "So what's up with the shrunken head? What's she got to do with all this?"

  "Like I said, maybe nothin'. But she wore scarves like that, and I know she used a bell in some of her healin' because she used it when she was helpin' me birth my oldest." She raised her brows. "Now that boy was work right from conception all the way through his teenage years."

  "All right, I get all that," Dee said, "But what's with the head? And why would a box of her stuff be in the attic?"

  Her face became troubled. "She died here. Normally, belongings would have been divided amongst the other household folks, but I doubt anybody would have wanted to mess with her juju. She put it out there that she'd placed a spell on her stuff so nobody would steal it. I'm not one to listen to gossip, but rumor had it she killed her old master, which is why she shucked out of there and ran all the way to us. They said she trapped his soul so he couldn't avenge his death."

  I sighed. "I'm almost afraid to ask, but how did she supposedly do that?"

  Again, her gaze slid away from mine. "Uh, by shrinkin' his head and trappin’ him inside it."

  CHAPTER TWO

  "You gotta be kiddin' me!" Dee exclaimed, shoving the box away from her.

  Maisey shrugged. "I'm just tellin' you what the rumors said. If you ask me, it's a load of bull hockey. C'mon now. Don't tell me you buy into all that hoodoo stuff."

  She had a point. It's not that I didn't believe in some stuff, but trapping somebody's soul in their head by shrinkin' it was a little beyond what I was willing to swallow.

  I gave myself a mental shake, then reached across to nudge Dee on the shoulder.

  She gave a tiny laugh. "Of course not. It's just, with Halloween here, I guess the whole evil-spirits thing has a little more weight than it usually does."

  "What she's trying to say,” I said, “is that we've spent the last three nights watching horror flicks in honor of the holiday, and last night's movie was The Conjuring."

  Confusion crossed Maisey's plump face. "What in tarnation is that?"

  Dee waved a dismissive hand. "A movie about an uber creepy doll."

  "All dolls are creepy," Maisey said, crinkling her nose. "Their eyes follow you, and the smug, knowing smiles they all wear ..." her silvery form rippled with a shiver.

  "Okay, we're not going to go into the psychopathology of your doll phobia right now," I said, "but this doll was legit creepy. It was a murderous conduit for evil."

  She shrugged. "I don't see how that makes it any different from every other doll, but I'll take your word for it."

  I was insanely curious to hear her reasoning behind that fear, but it would have to wait until I wasn't already a little freaked out. As it was, I'd locked the few dolls I still had from when I was a little girl in the closet the night before so I could go to bed without fear of them killing me in my sleep.

  "But you can see why the whole voodoo thing carries a little more weight than it usually would," Dee said. "Especially since there's a shrunken head involved."

  "I suppose," she said, "But if it makes you feel any better, Minga had serious mojo. If she locked a spirit in a head, I doubt she left any loopholes."

  The conversation had gone from surreal to absurd and back again, so when a knock sounded on the front door followed by a deep rich voice calling hello, I was even happier than normal for the interruption.

  Warmth rushed over me when Scout, our next-door neighbor and my sort-of boyfriend-like person, strode into the room.

  "Hey, ladies," he said, "Whatcha doin'? Miss Maisey, you're lookin' pretty as always."

  I shook my head as she blushed to her roots and preened. I swear, the woman was tough as nails ninety-nine percent of the time, but the minute he walked through the door, she turned into a schoolgirl. As far as she was concerned, the man walked on water.

  "Go on, now," she said, flapping a hand at him. "Strokin' an old woman's ego. Toni, get up outta that floor and get him somethin' to drink. And maybe a sandwich. It's almost lunchtime."

  Scout held up a brown, grease-splotched paper bag with Dee's logo on it. "Actually, I've got lunch for the three of us"—Bear eyed the bag and whined, and Scout rolled his eyes—"excuse me, the four of us, covered, but I’ll trade you for a glass of tea if you have any made."

  "Of course we have tea made," Dee said, pushing up from the floor. "Please tell me those are Monte Cristos."

  "These are Monte Cristos," he said, grinning. "And I'm not just saying that because you told me to. Jeremy sends his love."

  Jeremy was Dee's chef and right-hand man. He'd almost single-handedly turned the diner into a moneymaker by chucking the old liver-and-onions menu and replacing it with fresh, farm-to-table food that, especially when combined with Dee's dessert magic, brought people in from miles around.

  My stomach grumbled as I followed them to the kitchen and pulled three glasses from the cabinet while Dee fetched napkins.

  "You guys looked like you were havin' a heavy conversation when I walked in. Is everything okay?"

  "Fine," I said, pulling the tea jug from the fridge. "We were just talkin' about some silly rumors about a woman who used to work for Maisey, is all." I gave a dry laugh as I tipped the jug over the first glass. "They thought she was some sort of voodoo queen or something."

  I must have poured too fa
st because the half-full glass tipped over and fell right off the counter, shattering on the tile. I jumped back instinctively, but was too late. Sticky-sweet tea splattered against my bare legs and feet, splashed up the cabinets, and puddled around the shards of broken glass.

  "Don't move!" Dee barked. "Stand right where you're at and I'll grab your flip-flops. Otherwise you'll be pickin' glass out of your feet for a week."

  While she skipped over the mess to get them, Scout pulled several paper towels off the roll and began cleaning it up. I bent to help him, picking up the bigger pieces of glass so he could toss towels on top of the tea and the smaller shards.

  "I don't know what happened," I said. "I'm such a klutz."

  "No biggie," he replied, carefully swirling the towels around to gather as much of the broken glass as he could into one place. He gave me a wink and a smile. "It's not like you spilled the last glass."

  It didn't take long to clean up the mess, and I plopped down gratefully and dug into my sandwich. "Thanks for bringing this," I said, dragging a fry through my ranch dressing. We're gonna spend the afternoon decorating the lodge for the party."

  He shook his head. "I still can't believe this place has gone from a run-down heap to a place worthy of hosting the town's Halloween shindig in just a matter of a few months."

  "To be fair," Dee said around a mouthful of sandwich, "the whole run-down thing is part of the reason why folks are so eager to come. Half of them believe the lodge haunted."

  He huffed a breath out through his nose and shook his head. "What a crock. Some people will believe anything."

  I raised a brow at him.

  "What?" he said, obviously missing my point.

  Technically, they were right. The lodge was haunted by the ghost of its original owner.

  "Oh," he said, waving an onion ring. "That's different though. It's not like Maisey rattles around here moaning and knocking stuff over and writing cryptic, threatening messages in the steam on the bathroom mirror."

  The woman in question popped in right at that moment and had the grace to look abashed. "Actually, I did. That's why nobody would buy this place, which was the whole reason I did it."

  "No way!" Scout scoffed. "You wouldn't do that."

  "Oh, but she did," I said. "When Dee and I first started tearing the wallpaper off the walls, she made a huge fuss. Moaning and carryin' on, and she even knocked a huge garbage can full of rotten wallpaper over in her efforts to run us off."

  Scout had stopped eating and was glancing back and forth between a chagrined Maisey and us. "So what happened to change things?"

  "We ended up talking it out. I didn't have anywhere else to go. Leaving wasn't an option for either of us, so we had a come-to-Jesus meeting of the minds. Right, Maisey?"

  She nodded. "We did. And we've gotten along ever since."

  "Well, for the most part," I said. Since we were both strong-minded and opinionated, we did butt heads every once in a while, but we always worked it out. Since Dee was more apt to bend to Maisey's will, they didn't usually have any problems.

  "So are you gonna put on a show for the believers?" Scout asked.

  We hadn't really talked about that, but I could see the orneriness sneak into her eyes.

  "No, we are not," I said before she could get any ideas. "We're tryin' to draw people in, not scare them away."

  "I don't know," Dee said slowly. "Bein' haunted would give us somethin' most places around here don't have. You hear all sorts of stuff about plain-Jane B&Bs, then the names of 'em slip right outta your brain. But if we have a haunted lodge, we'd have a hook! Some folks pony up good cash just for the chance of catchin' sight of a spirit."

  Maisey snorted. "I don't know whether to be offended because you want to turn me into a sideshow or excited that I could earn the money to finish fixin' my rose garden."

  When she'd been alive, she'd had a show-stopping rose garden in the rear of the house, complete with a fountain, walking paths, a hundred different varieties of native and exotic roses, and a cozy little reading bench, all shaded by the graceful branches of ancient oaks draped in hanging moss.

  Time and neglect had ravaged it, but we were slowly bringing it back to its former glory. Maisey was right, though—we needed some major cash to redo the overgrown, time-worn brickwork and restore the crumbling fountain.

  "What do you think?" I asked Scout.

  He shrugged. "It's your lodge, but the idea does have some merit. Dee's right. B&Bs are a dime a dozen, and it's not like Mercy has much else besides the lake and the peace and quiet to recommend it. There are dozens of towns just like us just in Georgia alone."

  I glanced back and forth between them. Dee was expectant, and Scout was thoughtful.

  "What do you think?" I asked Maisey. She was, after all, gonna be the star attraction.

  "I think I'm in," she said with a decisive nod.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out through my cheeks. "Alrighty, then. We have ourselves a haunted lodge. Now let's decorate it and get this show on the road."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Halloween was tomorrow night, so we had to hustle. News—be it good or bad—travels fast in a small town, so even though we'd only decided three days ago to throw a party, word had already spread. We'd received several phone calls from folks willing to donate materials, bring food, or set up booths.

  Scout volunteered to drive around picking up tables and canopies for the covered dishes, pumpkin-carving contest, and other activities so Dee and I could string lights, carve pumpkins, and arrange hay bales.

  By late afternoon, the place looked great, but it had taken us twice as long to get it done as it normally would have. The lights kept flickering on and off, two of the hay bales busted open, and Dee had nearly fallen down the steps when the stepladder had broken. By that point, I was almost afraid to break out sharp objects to carve the pumpkins.

  "What the heck is going on?" I asked after I knocked a bag of candy off the table. "I mean, I'm always clumsy, but today has been ridiculous."

  Maisey, who'd spent the afternoon supervising—aka bossing us around—remained quiet. Normally, she'd have jumped at the chance to tease me, but when I glanced at her, she was chewing on her lip and looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  "What?" I asked, giving her the side-eye.

  "Nothin'," she replied, but it was obvious there was somethin'.

  "Don't tell me you're thinkin' about Dominga and that stupid head," Dee said.

  She scowled. "And why not? You have to admit, things haven't exactly been smooth sailing, and you did touch her stuff."

  I sighed. I wasn't usually superstitious, but she had a point. A little niggle of doubt crept into my head as I thought of the puff of air I thought I'd felt when I'd opened the box.

  "That's ridiculous," Dee said, but she didn't sound quite as sure as she had a moment before.

  The rumble of Scout's beat-up old truck coming up the drive broke the awkward silence, and we spent the next twenty minutes unloading the truck.

  "Do we wanna go ahead and set everything up?" he asked.

  I pulled up my weather app.

  "We may as well," I said. "There's no rain in the forecast, and that way, we can spend tomorrow cooking and taking care of last-minute details." Scout was going to man the grill since we were providing the meat, Dee was making cupcakes and other treats, and I was doing some sides. If other town events I'd attended were anything to go by, enough other people would bring food that we wouldn't have to worry about running out.

  Scout dropped the tailgate and we lugged out several tables and boxes, then began setting them up. We worked for a while without incident. I'd almost forgotten about the earlier instances of bad luck when one of the tables randomly collapsed, sending the box of decorations I'd placed on it flying.

  Dee and I glanced at each other, and I knew without asking that her mind had gone in the same direction mine had. Shaking it off, I picked the Styrofoam pumpkins and witch’s hats up and tossed them bac
k in the box while Scout righted the table.

  "That was weird," he said. "I'm sure I locked the legs in place."

  I sighed and pushed it from my head as we moved on.

  An hour later, we were almost finished. He and Dee were erecting the final canopy over the picnic tables. He climbed up on one of the bench seats to push the center locks into place and the board broke, sending him toppling. Unlike me, he was graceful and landed on his feet.

  Drawing his brows together, he bent over to inspect the board. "I just replaced that a couple weeks ago, but there must have been a flaw in the lumber."

  Dee and I shared another surreptitious glance, but neither of us was willing to confess that we were starting to think we'd been cursed. Thankfully, Maisey'd disappeared to wherever it was she went when she wasn't on our plane. I doubt she'd have kept her suspicions to herself.

  "It's no big deal, though," he continued, misinterpreting our expressions. "I bought extra boards, so I'll have this fixed in no time."

  I gave him a weak smile. "Thanks. You're awesome."

  We managed to make it through the rest of the evening without incident, but both of us were extra cautious. Scout had to go home to feed his horses and do his other chores, but waved off our offer to help.

  "Nah," he said, climbing into his truck. "You girls take care of whatever other small stuff there is left to do. I have a routine, and it only takes me an hour or so to get through it."

  Rather than risk burning the house down cooking supper, we opted to make hoagies using buns and lunchmeat we'd picked up for the party. When night fell without further incident, we'd mostly gotten over the creeps we'd had throughout the day. Still, we decided to go with a comedy rather than another horror flick.

  Halfway through the movie, thunder rumbled and lightning flashed so brightly that it lit up the portion of the porch visible through the window as if it were daylight.

  "I thought you said it wasn't gonna rain," Dee said, getting up to look outside.