The Devil in Canaan Parish

by Jackie Shemwell

  I felt a wave of despair and grief rip through me. I was sobbing and screaming as I ran over to the ledge to see if I could see Gabriel’s body, but when I looked over there was nothing but the violent rush of black water below.

  “Hush up now,” said the Sheriff. “Don’t keep carrying on like that, you’re giving me a headache! Hush up, I said!” he shouted, walking toward me. But I couldn’t stop screaming. I had stayed quiet for so long that to stop the flood of sadness that was coming out of me would be like trying to stop the raging waters of the Bayou Teche.

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “Shut up! Listen, I’ll take you home, you hear me? I’ll take you anywhere you want to go, just stop that screaming, would you?”

  He took another few steps toward me, reaching out his hand to grab my arm. At that instant I felt myself compelled forward by rage and fear. There was only one place I wanted to be now, and that was with Gabriel. I climbed up onto the ledge, and before the Sheriff could stop me, I jumped off into the water below.

  I don’t know how long I stayed under water. I felt myself hurtling forward, spinning and tumbling in the raging current. I saw nothing and heard nothing but the sound of the water churning and rushing through my ears. Time passed, minutes, hours, days. An eternity passed. I felt the water slowing down. I was drifting now, cradled and rocked gently. I was floating on my back. The water was soothing and warm. I felt safe and protected. I felt as though I could open my eyes, and when I did, I saw a glow ahead of me, coming from the side of the river bank, and heard voices, kind voices singing to me.

  The current slowed down even more, and I felt myself moving closer and closer to the light. I realized it was the glow of candles. I began to see them as separate orbs of lights and I counted them: one, two, three, four, five. I drew closer and closer to the candlelight, and the darkness began to drain away from around me. I began to make out the words of the song being sung to me from the riverbank:

  In the sweet, by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore . . .

  The next moment I had the sensation of strong arms lifting me up from the water. I opened my eyes and saw Gabriel’s smiling face close to mine. He pulled me out of the water and set me on my feet on the river bank. He left me there, and turned to an old woman who was holding a little baby in her arms. She handed the baby to him, and he took the baby in one hand and a candle in the other. The little baby girl was holding a candle too. She smiled up at me, giggling, shaking her curly black hair. Her skin was the color of caramel, and her eyes were gray-green like mine.

  I walked toward them for a moment, and my heart leapt at the sound of a voice that called me.

  “Tite Melee?”

  “Marraine!”

  It was her, even more beautiful than I remembered her. She held a gnarled hand out to me and I put mine in hers. She was so strong and gentle.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” came another voice. It was my grandmother, her white halo of hair floating around her pretty wrinkled face. She took my other hand in hers and I walked forward between the two pillars of my childhood. Each held a candle in one hand and pulled me along with the other. Gabriel and the baby girl followed along behind.

  Ahead in the distance, there was one more candle. We didn’t speak, but I knew that we were heading toward it with purpose. I felt excitement building in my chest, though I didn’t know why. As we got closer I saw that the candle was held by a woman – beautiful and tall, with blond hair, but with the same gray-green eyes that I shared with the baby girl. She seemed not much older than me. I had never seen her before, and yet there was something so familiar about her. I wanted to run to her, to put my arms around her neck and hold her tightly.

  She smiled at me, holding a lit candle in one hand and an unlit one in the other. As I approached, she held the wick of the one into the flame of the other, transferring the light over, and then she handed the brightly burning candle out to me.

  “Amy Lee,” she said. “I have been waiting a long time.”

  And with that, my mother laced her arm around my waist and led me away to eternity.

  THE END