by Rhodi Hawk
Ferrar kept his hand on Patrice’s shoulder, and it felt that if he were to remove it she might just sink to her knees. She couldn’t guess what was to become of Gil and Rosie. Couldn’t bear to lose Trigger, too.
Ferrar said, “And how do you know this—tar devil—will come?”
Trigger’s face went grim, his gaze steady on the flooring, and his voice retreating to barely above a whisper. “It’s here now.”
* * *
PATRICE WHEELED, HER HEART in her throat. She saw nothing. No creature made of tar.
But she was not in the briar. Not since they’d arrived at this place. Quick as she could, she receded.
“Wait, Trig,” she pleaded, but Trigger’s ghost was already loosening from his body and stepping forward.
She shut her eyes and dared the thorns to surge around her. The black coils, the eternal briar light.
Her river devil was there, grinning.
It took Patrice a moment, but then she saw the oil slick seeping upward between the floorboards. It smelled like sulphur. Trigger was facing it with his fists clenched. The black oil spread from the cracks to a wider circle, and to Patrice’s eye it sullied the pallet where Francois lay. That’s when the creature came into view. It entered in the same way the oil did, up from the floorboards as though rising from the bayou.
“Get back, Treese.” Trigger said.
“We have to stay together.”
“Get away from it!”
But Patrice moved fast. She threw herself into it. And then it had her.
forty-seven
LOUISIANA, NOW
DESPITE THE BRIAR LIGHT, Madeleine could no longer see very well. She resisted Gaston as he dragged her deeper into the swamped-out tree hollow, and she paid dearly in thornflies for her struggles. Her body went rigid and felt the sting, sting, stinging.
Gaston was pulling her down to the bottommost trough, which was deeper than it had at first seemed because the narrow gap widened as they slid down the slope to a great underground pool. She slackened and allowed him to pull her along.
He’s not trying to kill me, she told herself. Otherwise he wouldn’t have told me to hold my breath.
Now she was moving with him, not fighting and not being dragged.
He turned upward and they swam in the direction of the surface before making another hard turn into some kind of underwater tunnel. The walls still felt like the wood of the great cypress tree. She swam best she could along with him. The thornflies were following like sucker fish but they did not sting now. In fact, it occurred to her that she could see again. Briar light in the tunnel. Her fit of panic was what had made her vision go.
The path was narrowing again, and Madeleine’s strength was waning. How long had they been traveling in this direction? She should have been counting. There were limits to how long she could hold her breath even with the new ability. She should have taken a deep breath before going in.
Sting.
She tensed on the feel of it, and then let the pain pass through her. Her mind emptied itself of the thoughts. She needed to keep swimming, nothing else.
The tunnel opened wider.
Bones. Human remains. Before she knew what was happening she and Gaston were passing through them. Passing through them. Not over, not under; through. An ongoing expanse that littered the bottom of this section.
And Madeleine realized she was no longer able to move.
She drifted forward from pure momentum and then stopped. It might have been the lingering effects of the scratch poisons or maybe just good old-fashioned exhaustion, but she couldn’t so much as make a grip on the wood that surrounded her. Bubbles crawled from behind her ear and up her cheek. She waited, refusing to let panic grip her, even as she watched Gaston’s feet disappear ahead.
But the wood. She looked carefully above where the bones were piled. A relief pattern stood out, what looked like a plus sign with a circle in the upper right corner, and the circle had three dots in it. She recognized it as a hobo symbol but had no idea what it meant. Adjacent, there were carvings of four trees, and at the bottom right a circle with an arrow, which she did recognize as meaning “go this way.”
She looked behind her. More carvings. Even down here. They likely lined the entire passage.
Something hit her shoulder and she jumped. Gaston. He was unable to turn around but he moved his foot toward her hand, and she realized he wanted her to grab hold. She tried unsuccessfully to grasp his ankle, then used both her arms to clamp on and was able to form a strong enough grip. He moved forward down the passage again, dragging Madeleine behind him.
And then they were out, free of the wood without any sense of some kind of opening having been there. Just suddenly in open water. She couldn’t tell how far away the surface was. No light above.
The water swirled and pulled them in an unexpected current. Once again, Madeleine saw piles of bones. This time they were bones of all manner of creatures—man, gar, salamander, even molted shells of crustaceans—and unlike inside the tree, these were all cloaked in algae that wavered in the mild current. It covered the bones so completely they wouldn’t be discernible at all except for their skulls.
There were curtains of bubbles and she could tell by the way they moved that they were at the base of some kind of whirlpool. Not a strong one—no such thing existed in the rivers and bayous—but a persistent one. The bubbles swirled like thousands of tiny suns in a spiral galaxy.
Gaston had her hooked beneath the armpits now and was pulling her away from the vortex to where the current ran more gently, and then he pulled her up toward the surface.
* * *
MADELEINE OPENED HER MOUTH and took her first breath since having left Gaston’s tree. Above were stars and a waning crescent moon. She squinted at them, though her vision was lacking focus. Night sounds. It had been full daylight when they left Gaston’s cypress. She remembered the sun dappling the willow outhouse. The journey hadn’t been that long.
Gaston jerked her upward in the water and slapped her face. “Stay awake!”
She tried to cough but what came out was mostly liquid, and it coursed through both her mouth and nose. She felt it sting her sinuses. Seemed impossible that she might have fallen asleep. Her chest contorted and spewed again, then made an actual cough. Her lungs burned.
“Lady, you still full capable of drowning even with briar gills,” Gaston said.
She looked at him but saw him only through ghosting spots of darkness. She was too weak, too tired. Behind him was what looked like some kind of a barge. She fought to keep her eyes open.
He pulled on her elbow. “Come on, now, I can drag you a little in the water but I can’t get you up out of it.”
She made herself cough, and in that way she stayed awake as Gaston dragged her toward the structure. Several rafts and pirogues were tethered along with the barge that was actually, upon closer inspection, a floating pier. Her jaw was shaking, shivering, as was her spine.
He took her arms and lifted them onto a wooden raft. “You got that? Hold onto it now. You got only one more heave-ho then you done. On a count a three, swing ya leg.”
Her body felt like it was made of lead. This was not leftover sleep from scratch poisons. She was ill. Seriously ill. Feverish.
“OK now, one…”
Gaston had his arm over the floating pier. He reached down and pulled her by the belt loop so that her legs were surface-level.
“… two…”
She closed her eyes and forced herself to concentrate on the one single movement she had to make.
“… three!”
She jerked her hips as hard as she could but she only managed a small lift. Gaston grabbed her leg and continued her momentum to force it up. She caught the lip of the raft with her foot.
“You got it, you got it. Lift yaself up.”
Madeleine squeezed with all her might, but she could go no further.
“Hold on.” Gaston pulled himself up onto the raft and grabbed h
er leg.
The raft started to tilt from the back and he had to lie flat to prevent it from flipping. This meant he could use only his upper body to pull her the rest of the way out, his hand hooked over her knee.
“Again. One, two, three.”
This time the rest of her body lurched out of the water. She lay flat, heaving, and he caught his breath, too, sitting with his elbows over his knees.
“God almighty, Miss Madeleine, y’ain’t makin it easy on me.” He made the kee-he-he sound, and despite herself, Madeleine smiled.
Her body was now shivering hard even though she was also sweating. She realized, too, that there were tears of exertion, not just water, rolling from her eyes. And yet she felt strangely giddy.
He said, “Awright, yer majesty, you just lie there on your puffy pillows while I drive this here carriage.”
She wanted to sass back but even if she could think of something witty her teeth were chattering too hard to speak. The raft was moving. Gaston propelled it with a pole.
Swamp trees ringed an area the size of a football field, and they were at the goal end where the pier jutted out. On the inside of the ring was a group of structures. Dozens of them. Most looked like houses up high on stilts. But then Gaston turned down between two of the houses and Madeleine could see storefronts deeper inside, where the passage between the houses formed an aquatic alley. It seemed to be an entire floating village.
Severin was seated on a rooftop near the entrance to the alley.
Gaston whispered, “Remember, we’re like ghosts.”
forty-eight
NEW ORLEANS, NOW
IN THE EARLY MORNING light, the room at the Motel 6 looked gray. Ethan hadn’t slept. Bo and Jasmine, however, slept with enthusiasm. Ethan had dared to swing back by Madeleine’s after the incident with Oran to collect Jasmine and get Bo’s clothes. The Motel 6 seemed an anonymous enough place. No frills, but it was cheap and clean and it allowed dogs, and for a few extra bucks he could get online. And that’s what he was doing now.
The Internet wasn’t helping, though, at least not directly. Looking up voodoo for Chloe’s hiding spell was a waste of time. Oh, there were plenty of spells out there. Each one either looked made up on the spot, or the same thing was copied and pasted from one source to the next. This was true of all the spells he came across—hiding, healing, revenge, wealth, seduction. Reading them only made Ethan feel all the more foolish.
Except.
There was something about the act of going about the rituals themselves. Things like collecting objects and tying them together into a gris-gris, or making a concoction to drink. Each individual step included methodical, focused attention. Any psychologist alive would consider that to be excellent therapy. This was a kind of active meditation.
There were countless studies that showed how regular prayer or meditation made for an excellent basis to regulate the brain’s electrical and chemical balances, and in doing so it reduced stress responses. Same with self-hypnosis. But most people didn’t have the patience or the control of attention to keep it up for long. Maybe a minute or two.
But this.
Doing these spells was like a kind of meditation that involved active body movement—kinesis—which of course would boost the neurological effect. And also it engaged the senses—the taste of a potion, the scent of herbs or even animals, sometimes the feel of a pinprick. Any repeated activity that engages all five senses is going to form super neurons. People looking to gain wealth may not know how to achieve it, but with this kind of neurotherapy, they would at least achieve a Jack Russell tenacity for it. And it created a new belief system. People who see themselves as incapable may change their thinking if they believe they have access to some kind of mystic power outside themselves.
He wondered if people like Madeleine somehow harnessed that kind of practice into a natural, ingrained adaptability. It helped to understand a little, but he needed much more than that if he was going to find her.
Jasmine sprang awake with a woof and ran to the door, sticking her nose in the jamb.
Ethan frowned and rose from the desk. “Whatcha got, girl?”
He stepped to the window, keeping himself hidden, and parted the curtains just enough to get a look.
Outside, parked next to the Lexus, was Oran’s car.
Someone was in the driver’s seat. Someone who was not Oran.
* * *
THE CAR WAS IDLING. No telling how long it had been there. The driver had a disarray of gray hair and Ethan thought at first that it might be Chloe.
No. Not her. He backed away from the window.
“Bo,” he whispered, his hand on the boy’s shoulder.
Bo’s face went from slack to pinched, and he rolled away.
“Do you sense anything?” Ethan asked.
Bo gasped and bolted upright, suddenly wide awake, clicking.
Ethan clamped his hand over the boy’s mouth and whispered, “Don’t click!”
“It’s OK, it ain’t here,” Bo said, plain voice through Ethan’s fingers.
Ethan let go and exhaled. “Alright. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“Where you—”
“Just gonna be outside. You can holler if there’s an emergency, but only then, OK?”
“OK.”
“And you got Jazz here with you.”
Bo whistled, and Jazz hopped up on the bed and turned around, her back to the boy and facing the door.
Ethan stepped outside, reprimanding himself for not having a concealed-carry permit by now.
The driver looked vaguely familiar. She wore a dirty LSU tee-shirt and was staring off into nowhere. When Ethan approached she followed him with her eyes. And when he tapped on her window, she rolled it down. That’s when he recognized her.
“Alice.”
“The good doctor. Last time I saw you’s down by the river. Called the po-lice on me.”
“What are you doing here, Alice?”
“Truth, honey?” And she laughed, a sticky, toothless exhalation.
“Yes, the truth please.”
“You might oughtta sit down.”
Ethan looked back at the motel room, hands in pockets, resigning himself. He walked around to the passenger side and got in. It smelled like long-unwashed clothes with a backdrop of mothballs, the fusion of Alice’s world and Chloe’s.
“It’s a long story,” Alice said.
“What is?”
“All of it.”
“Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re doing here?”
“I came to kill you, Doc.”
And she turned and looked at him, like a parishioner who’d chosen to open the confession booth screen and face the father eye-to-eye. She was searching his face as though his opinion might lay out her entire future for her.
Ethan said, “Do you still intend to do that?”
“No sir?” A comforting reply but for the way she spoke it like a question.
“So why did you change your mind?”
“Just suddenly seemed like a stupid idea.”
“Well, that’s refreshing. And do you remember why you thought it was a good idea in the first place?”
“Yeah.”
She said nothing else for a moment. Ethan rolled down his window and the cross breeze carried through the vehicle. The faint odor of car exhaust came with it but it still felt refreshing.
She said, “I wanted you out of the way. You were in my goddamn way. Truth is, Doc, you piss me off.”
“I do?”
She frowned. “No. I don’t fuckin know.”
“I think I know. You wanna tell me how you got out of jail?”
She laughed again, a wet chuckle that ended in a cough. “They let me out.”
“The judge dismissed your case?”
“What? No. Ain’t even had a judge. The driver and the other guy, they just let me go. I’s bein transported in the van with all the deadbeats. And then the driver pulled over. And the other guard’
s like, ‘what the fuck are you doin?’”
Another laugh, and this time she turned and spat out the window before continuing. “And the driver’s all, ‘I’m gonna put this one free.’ And I’s sittin there in handcuffs and leg cuffs. I couldn’t hardly believe it. But then the other guard’s all, ‘OK.’ And he unlocks me and off I went.”
Her arms were dirty, her hands were dirty, her fingernails were black.
Ethan said, “OK. Tell me about the car.”
She looked at him, her mouth slack. “What car?”
“You know good and well, what car. This car!” He struck the dashboard with his fist, startling them both.
Her mouth was open, the sparse teeth gleaming, and her shoulders began to shake. He wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying. But then she let out a long, wailing sob.
“Just tell me, Alice.”
She spoke through puckered lips, her voice having gone higher and tighter. “I’s lookin for the other doctor. Doc LB, from St. Jo’s.”
“Why?”
“Cuz I … I thought … If I’m gonna be in charge, I needed her on my side. She gets stronger and I get way stronger. We gotta get rid of them rats, like the little blind boy.”
Her eyes had gone wild, and she fixed them in Ethan’s direction. “I do that and I can get all them devils following me. They forget about the old witch. They be following me! You know what that means?”
“No, tell me.”
But her expression had frozen, and then it crumpled, and she began to sob again. “It means I’m crazy, don’t it? I don’t know why I was thinkin that way. You gotta bring me back to the jail, Doc. Please, I … tell’m to keep me in there!”
“Where is Oran? The person who owns this car?”
She was shaking her head, her grimy hand over her eyes, tears staining her cheeks.
Ethan asked her, “Is he alive?”
“I think so.”
“Alice, listen to me. You gotta answer the question. There’s more to this you don’t know about, OK? Something bad’s got a hold of your head.”
“You mean it wasn’t me?”
“Not entirely. Something about you makes you an easy target. I think that may be why he keeps coming back for you.”