by Penn Cassidy
I felt like an idiot. Of course Kalfou would know my grandmother. As an elder mambo, Grandma Anne was no stranger to communing with ancestral spirits and leading our people in rituals and prayers.
The spirits flowed through her like a vessel, and she was wizened enough to know what to do with them. It made sense that Kalfou—Theodore, could sense her in me. After all, I was her student, once upon a time.
“Christ!” I hissed, nearly leaping out of my skin as soft fur brushed my leg.
Then, as if materializing out of nowhere, Lafayette leapt into my lap, immediately twirling into a circle, then plopping down and making himself comfortable. I stared at the little black cat with wide eyes and my heart in my throat.
“You have to stop doing that.” Placing my palm over my racing heart, I shook off the shock of his sudden appearance and narrowed my eyes at Theodore.
“Between you, Lafayette, and Bael sneaking up on me, I’m going to have a stroke soon and join the grey faces in line at the fun house.”
I regretted it the moment I said it. What was I doing, talking to him like he was just another man? I was going to get myself killed…
“Is this a bad time, mon chérie?”
Jolting again, I twisted around to see none other than Bael St. Clair sitting casually on the front of the skiff, balancing precariously on the edge of it as if held up by willpower alone. He cast me a wink that made me feel uneasy and yet amused. I narrowed my eyes at the jerk who’d left me alone, trapped in the fun house.
He wore a bowler hat now, but his long blond hair still cascaded in silky strands over his shoulders, waving in the gentle, warm breeze. On anyone else, the outfit would have been absurd. On him, it was eccentric yet attractive.
I felt my irritation spike. He had time for a costume change, but not to save me when I was screaming for him?
“Theodore, why must you insist on hogging all her attention? What have I told you about sharing?” Bael purred. Then he looked at the little cat on my lap. “I don’t know why you bother with him, honestly. We all know I’m much more fun.”
I could practically feel Lafayette's eye roll. I petted his little black head absently, and he nuzzled his wet nose into me, purring gently.
“I’m not even going to try and figure out how you got here,” I said to Bael dryly. I was done trying to figure out the physics of him. “But why are we out in the swamp? Like I said already, if you’re planning on killing me, please just do it already and stop playing around.”
“This again?” Bael asked in exasperation. “Have I not assured you that you’re perfectly safe with me? You make me feel inadequate.”
He appeared in front of me, lounging with his back against the side of the boat, this time behind Theodore.
“Look around you, Moria,” said Theodore, gesturing to the dark swamp.
“Carefully.”
The skiff gently floated down the river, silently cutting through sheets of moss and reeds. It was a quiet night, save for a background chorus of crickets. The song was beautiful. There were thick trees on all sides of us, glittering with lightning bugs. Cypress and white oaks swayed, their branches dripping with Spanish moss.
A gentle fog rolled through them, making this place seem magical and surreal. It was warm too, the air thick with moisture. Little beads of sweat pooled on my skin, but it felt good. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at, but I didn’t dare peel my eyes away. I could feel Theodore and Bael watching me, studying me.
“Look harder,” Theodore said. His tone was gentle yet forceful, and the roughness of his deep baritone had me shifting in my seat.
I did look harder though. I peered through the trees so hard that eventually, I began to see shapes that didn’t belong there. They were fuzzy and grey like the fog, but they moved against the wind, pushing through the brush slowly.
There must have been hundreds of them, and it was insane that I’d missed them before. They were all different sizes and shapes. Some of them were thicker than others, and some were simply wisps of smoke.
They danced under the moonlight, not disturbing anything around them. The branches didn’t sway as they passed, nor did the reeds crunch under their weight.
“What are they?” I asked.
Beautiful, whatever they were.
Bael was suddenly beside me, draping a heavy arm over my shoulders. I felt his lips nuzzle into my hair, pressing against the shell of my ear.
“They're exactly what you think they are.”
“Ghosts…” I whispered.
They were human in shape, but I couldn’t really tell them apart, save for their size. They moved about the trees smoothly and aimlessly, sometimes even passing right through the trunks and branches.
“Spirits,” Bael corrected. “Lost ones, at that.” Then he nudged my shoulder. “Gorgeous, aren’t they?”
I tossed him a wry look, though I couldn’t exactly say I disagreed. They were gorgeous, morbid but beautiful too. They also weren’t the strangest thing I’d seen in the past however many hours I’d been stuck here.
Hours or days? I had no idea anymore.
“I don’t understand. If those are spirits, then where the hell did you send those grey faces?” I’d seen them leap through those three mirrors with my own eyes, with Bael encouraging them. “What are the grey faces?”
Theodore was puffing on his pipe again, sitting on the bench seat in front of me. Now that he was out of my personal space it was easier to breathe.
The night air smelled like decayed leaves and swamp water, but it also smelled sweet, tinged with Theodore’s rich clove tobacco. His skin was almost as dark as the night around us, making his silver eyes glow like they were lit from within.
“I take it Bael showed you the crossing then.” His eyes flicked to the man in question.
“If you're talking about those mirrors in the fun house that swallowed up the grey faces, then yeah, I saw them. I saw the veves on them too, but I don’t recognize the signature.”
Bael whistled once, and Lafayette leapt from my lap and into his waiting arms. He grinned at Theodore as he stroked the cat lazily.
“Grey faces, how quaint.” His chuckle was low and amused. “Those grey faces are the souls of the recently deceased, and the mirrors are the crossing. A gateway, if you will.”
“Gateway to where, to heaven?” I wasn’t sure if I even believed in heaven, but I assumed there had to be something beyond the light at the end of the tunnel. “Some of them didn’t look very eager to go.”
In fact, their screams had been agonized.
“Oh, they weren't,” Bael said with a dark chuckle. “The crossing exists to judge a person according to their deeds in life and to send them where they deserve to go once that life is over. Where they end up is ultimately up to them. The souls you see there in the trees unfortunately didn’t make the cut in either direction. They’ll remain here until they eventually fade away forever.”
A chill washed over me that had nothing to do with the weather. I thought about that first woman back in the fun house and how she’d screamed. Her eyes had been filled with so much terror and dread that it made my stomach curdle even now.
Whatever she’d seen on the other side of that glass must have been a thing of nightmares. I wondered where she’d ended up.
“So if the mirrors are gateways, then what does that make you?” I asked Bael.
He’d been the one in charge as far as I knew, but if Theodore really was Met Kalfou, then he was supposed to be the gatekeeper.
“You ask a lot of questions,” said Theodore.
Smoke swirled in front of his glowing eyes. I was about to say something snarky but changed my mind at the last second.
“That’s good,” he added. “Smart of you.” All arguments died on my tongue at the unexpected compliment. “You obviously have no problem believing us.”
Was I not supposed to? He said it as if I were in any sort of position to deny the things I’d seen. I was a lot of t
hings—a coward, as of late, and a realist, but I was also a believer.
Down to my core, I knew whom I was looking at. I could feel his essence in my muscles and bones.
“I’m not in the habit of wallowing in denial. I'd be an idiot to try and deny any of this. I believe that you’re Met Kalfou.” Then I looked at Bael. “And you’re some kind of gatekeeper or something?”
He simply smiled, nodding for me to continue. Clearly, I was heading in the right direction.
“You're dead, like Elly is,” I said, studying him closer. “But you’re not like the grey faces. They’re so vacant, and you’re so…not.”
“Clever girl. You have us all figured out, don't you?” Bael drawled.
Yeah right, I was a regular Sherlock Holmes.
“I’m smart enough to know that if I want to get out of here, I’ll need your help to do it. I’m willing to accept the fact that this place exists, but I still need to find my way home.”
Bael’s words from earlier rang in my ears. What is it you’re in such a hurry to return to?
“So why am I even here?” I asked after nobody bothered to confirm or deny whether or not they would actually help me. “According to you, ‘the living cannot walk here,’ but I’m obviously not dead.”
“Obviously…” Bael said dryly. He and Theodore shared a weighted look.
Again, I got the distinct feeling that they didn’t like each other much. No… It wasn’t exactly dislike, but more a reluctant companionship. They tolerated each other, but in the end, they were on the same side. I was the stranger looking in through foggy glass, hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth behind it.
“What makes you assume you’re still alive?” Bael asked. He stroked Lafayette, who stared at me as if he, too, was waiting eagerly for my answer.
I wanted to laugh. How did I know I wasn’t dead? Well, for one, I could feel pain. A whole lot of it. And two, I wasn’t a grey face waiting in seemingly endless lines to fling myself through the gateway.
Before I could respond, Theodore said, “Your problem is that you assume you must be one or the other, that if you are no longer living, then it must mean that you're dead.”
“Can you stop talking in riddles?” I asked with a groan, raking my fingers through my hair. “You realize how crazy that sounds? I’m breathing and talking and thinking. I’m definitely not dead. I’m as alive as I’ve always been.”
“You woke up covered in blood, didn’t you?” Theodore asked, cutting off my rant. “The blood had to have come from somewhere.”
Still puffing on his pipe, he lounged back against the edge of the skiff lazily, as if this were the most normal conversation to be having. The spirits still danced in my peripheral vision. I said nothing.
“You’re not asking the right questions, Moria,” he said. “Walk me through the events that led you to my crossroads.”
His crossroads…
The boat continued to coast along the silent river, and at this point, I wasn’t sure how far away we were from the carnival. I hadn’t seen any houses or docks nearby, which was odd. I thought about the weirdest night of my life, trying to pick out details I might have overlooked.
“I already told you, but you won't listen. I was literally just standing there in my bedroom. It wasn't like I woke up out of a dream though, more like I’d been in the middle of doing something and then awareness just snapped into place. There was blood all over my dress and pooled on the floor, so I ran outside with this intense need to find Austin. He should have been home. I stumbled around Frenchman Street, but there were parades, so I couldn’t recognize anyone and nobody seemed to care that I was covered in blood. Actually, nobody even glanced at me…”
The more I thought about it, the weirder the whole thing was. My mind had been muddied and frantic, so at the time, I hadn’t been paying too much attention to individual people or even trying to talk to anyone, which in hindsight, I should have. I should have called 911 the second I’d looked down at my feet to see a pool of blood on the floor.
“I have this feeling,” I said, staring down at my hands. “Like I did something horrible. I think I might have done something to Austin.”
I’d fantasized about it enough times in the past two years. Enough times to feel guilty. He’d gone on a few business trips since we lost the baby, and I'd found myself wishing he’d get into some kind of accident and solve all my problems.
I was officially a shitty person ever for wishing something like that on anyone, but the more he put his hands on me, the less I cared.
But I remembered that feeling, as I wandered around my empty apartment, out onto the street, and through crowds of people. I remembered feeling panic and the absolute need to find him. It had been like everything depended on finding him.
“What makes you believe you’re capable of such a thing?” Bael asked. He slid a lock of my hair over one shoulder.
I scoffed, pulling back an inch. “He isn’t a good man. Not anymore. Not since…” I paused, swallowing thickly. I cleared my throat, refusing to finish that thought. “I’m capable of a lot when pushed to my breaking point.”
“And did he?” Theodore chimed in.
“Did he what?”
Meeting his eyes was a struggle now that I knew who and what he really was.
“Did Austin break you?”
Had he broken me? Is that what I was? Was I some broken woman who hadn’t been smart enough to get out while she still could?
You hear stories about women who stay with abusive men, hoping that one day, they’ll suddenly revert back to the person they’d fallen in love with. You hear about women who never make it out, and you scream at them to open their eyes. But it’s always different when you’re the one living it.
Had Austin broken me? Probably. So that was what I told Theodore, not bothering to hide that fact. I was broken. Whether it was beyond repair remained to be seen.
There were lights up ahead, glowing purple, red, and blue through the trees. Eventually, the dancing spirits tapered off, leaving only darkness and crickets. Lafayette rubbed up against me, providing what little comfort he could, and I couldn’t help but pet him back.
I frowned at the lights, feeling myself deflate a little. “I should have known,” I grumbled, not bothering to answer Theodore’s burning question.
The carnival loomed ahead, as if we’d made one gigantic circle, even though I couldn’t remember rounding any bends in the river. My glare was scathing, but Bael only grinned.
“Trying to leave us so soon?” He tsked, shaking his head. “And here I thought our hospitality was impeccable.” His fingers dragged down the length of my neck, caressing my collarbone.
“Enough, Bael,” Theodore said with a sigh.
He leaned against the edge of the skiff in a casual manner, legs spread and gaze riveted on me, but his eyes burned as Bael’s fingers continued to graze my skin.
“Let’s give the girl a rest while she takes in her new circumstances.”
“Stop treating me like a child,” I snapped.
My heart thundered. I shouldn’t be speaking into Met Kalfou this way. I was pretty sure he could kill me with a single thought. But I was done being pushed and pulled in all different directions.
A spark lit behind his silver eyes at the anger in my tone. It wasn’t a spark of rage, though, or even outrage. It might have been excitement.
He stared at me for a long moment in silence as we drifted closer to a rickety wooden dock that skirted the property line of the carnival. I could hear music now, and the bellowing of carneys as they called out to the grey faces who would never hear them. What was the damn point of it all?
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said finally. “All you have to do is say yes. After all, we’re all about choices here.”
I bristled. A deal with a vodou spirit couldn’t be anything good. Some might even say it was bad luck.
“Why would I ever make a deal with you?”
It was stupid to even cons
ider it. Spirits could be sneaky, and wording mattered, intention mattered. Not that I’d ever come face-to-face with an actual spirit, but I’d believed Grandma Anne when she told me to be careful.
He smiled. “You’re right to be afraid of me and would be foolish not to.”
“That’s the opposite of helpful.”
“Make a choice, Moria. I don’t often extend this sort of kindness and generosity, and I won’t be doing so again if you deny me.”
I thought about my options, carefully staring into his eyes, not looking away. It felt like we were locked in some sort of battle of wills, and I didn’t want to lose. He was offering me a deal. Good or bad, it was progress.
I wasn’t sure how much more I had left to lose at this point, and the fact remained that I was still here to be bartered with in the first place.
Theodore was a dangerous…man? Whatever he was, he was stronger than me in so many ways, and cunning. So was Bael. They were both powerful in their own way, and they were confident in that power—confident enough to toy with me.
I would be smart to make them into my allies, rather than provoke their wrath. In my culture, we’d always been warned to tread lightly around the spirits. They were to be respected, but still feared. Met Kalfou was no exception.
I still wasn’t sure what to make of Bael, but he had me curious. Maybe a little too curious if I were being honest with myself. His probing, sly looks had me more aware of every one of my movements than I had been in years. For all I knew, he was doing it on purpose.
Where did he come from? What was he exactly, and why did I seem to feel so comfortable around this ancient crossroads spirit?
I’d been sitting in silence for an uncomfortable amount of minutes, and it was time to give them an answer.
“What exactly are you proposing then?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest, chin raised.
Bael shifted in his seat, glancing excitedly between us. Theodore kept his expression neutral, but his eyes swirled with what I could only describe as starlight.
“I’ll assist you, but only if you agree to stay at my crossroads for one whole month.” I opened my mouth to object, but he held up a finger to stop me. “You’ll be given a place of your own to stay and every accommodation you require. But you must do this willingly. No attempts to escape. No lies or tricks. I’ll know if you do. There’s not a thing I am unaware of.”