I have to find Miss Josephine, and I have to get those answers. Whatever it takes.
But I hate it. I hate it all. The blackouts, the blood. The six-week gap in my memory, the things I can’t explain, the lies of omission to Maisie.
Who knew coming back from the dead could be so hard?
I pick myself up off the ground, take off my sweatshirt, and rip off my bloody T-shirt. I bury it shallowly under a pile of leaves and dirt, but it’s better than explaining another bloody shirt to Maisie.
I shrug my black hoodie back on, zip it up, and pull the hood over my head again. Thankfully, the dark color would hide the blood spots from a distance.
But what should I do about the deer? I look around, but short of digging a hole with my bare hands, my only option is to leave the deer here. At least it would feed more animals. But it doesn’t feel right.
I kneel by the deer and, feeling silly and rueful in equal measure, I say a quick little prayer thanking it for its sacrifice. “And I’m sorry,” I add, reaching out to close its eyes.
But the woods are a witness. They’re silent and wary, the trees shying away from me, and even the crunch of the leaves underfoot is muffled to uneasy whispers as I make my way back out.
I keep my eyes averted as I pass the neighbor’s house. There are some things ‘sorry’ can’t fix.
Had they found their dog the way I found the deer?
Remorse, shame, and bile rise up and suffocate me. Only the bile goes back down with a hard swallow.
But I don’t remember doing it. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t conscious for the deer killing either. It’s not my fault! Yet it is. My hands did it, whether I remember it or not.
Knee-jerk defensiveness wars with my guilt as I toss my bloody sweatshirt in the dumpster in the alley behind our house.
I have to own this, and I have to figure out how to fix it.
Because I’m sneaking in the back door of my own house, half naked, with blood-stained hands.
I’m scrubbing my skin raw, trying to get it clean. There’s blood and fur so far under my nails, I’m not sure I’ll ever get it all out. Did it matter much that it was animal blood?
If I hurt animals when I black out, what else might I do in that darkness?
I’m certain I don’t want to find out.
***
Maisie
When I get home, I open the door and see Grady pacing the kitchen like a caged animal.
“Hi, babe.”
But he doesn’t hear me. He’s staring at his feet as he marches across the floor, his hands gripped together behind his back.
I toss my keys in the dish my the door. The clashing sound draws his attention and he seems surprised to see me. And wary.
“Hi,” I repeat. “How was your day?”
“It was a day,” he says sourly, and goes to sit at the table, leg bouncing.
“What’s wrong?” He doesn’t answer. Great. His super good mood from earlier was unchanged.
Before, I would have confronted him about his mood. I would have lovingly pestered him until he told me what was bothering him. We would have talked it out. But that was before.
He’s angry, silent, except when he’s mad. He’s distant, edgy. He’s up all night, and when he does sleep, he wakes up yelling and sweating from nightmares.
I spent an anxious day at work, worrying about him, fighting the urge to sneak away and call him every break. Instead I just seemed like the crazy, anxious widow who can’t get herself together all day. And now I’m tired, exhausted from the pregnancy, and I don’t have it in me to push him to talk. I don’t have the energy to argue.
I start dinner, clanging dishes and pans as the food cooks and I stew. I’m tired of not being able to tell people my husband is alive. I’m tired of him looking so sick and doing nothing about it. I’m sick of his resistance to seeking help. I’m trying to understand what he’s going through, but I’m tired of his attitude about it. He says he wants answers, but I can’t tell that he’s doing very much to find them, and I’m tired of that, too.
I thought my husband had come back to me, but the guy at the table seems to be his paler, surlier twin. He’s secretive, subdued. There’s something going on that he’s not telling me, and I know it, and that makes it harder to trust that he’s telling the truth when he says he doesn’t remember where he’s been the last six weeks.
While I’ve been mourning, crying, dying, he was somewhere doing something, and yet he doesn’t remember?
Either he’s telling the truth, and he was hurt by someone and has amnesia, or he’s lying to my face. And right now, I’m just not sure which it is.
I set our food on the table and pull out my chair, resigned to a tense and silent dinner. But before the first bite enters my mouth, he speaks.
“I’m done resting. We need to talk to Biff.”
“Okay.” I study him, trying to let go of the sour feelings and thoughts I’d been having now that he’s opening up. “What’s changed?”
“I’ve been thinking—”
That much was obvious. He looked like he’d barely moved all day. But he also looks... better.
His hair is damp, his clothes are clean, and his eyes are bright and alert. His face has a tinge of pink that he’s been missing since he came back. He ticks some things off on his fingers, and I tune back in.
“I remember going back to work, and I remember being hurt. I have no memory of what happened after that, or between then and now.
But Biff is the one who identified me. He’s the one that called in my death. Only, I’m not dead. He’s got to be involved in my disappearance somehow, or at least know something that will help. We need to talk to him.”
“We can’t just walk up to your job site and ask him if he did something to you.”
“We can’t.”
“But I can.” I get it now.
He nods. “I need you to talk to Biff. Find out what you can about that day, or after, or anything at all.”
“It is a little suspicious, isn’t it?” I ask between bites, the wheels turning. “Do you think Biff was the one who hurt you?”
I don’t want to consider it, and I can tell by Grady’s face he doesn’t want to, either.
He presses his lips together in a thin white line. “I don’t know what to think. If it was him, I can’t think of a single reason why he would.” His defeated shrug cracks my healing heart.
“I’ll do it.” I’d meant to talk to Biff at some point, if only to thank him for being a good boss, a good friend, and for doing the hard thing I hadn’t wanted to do—identifying my husband’s body.
The body of the husband who sat, whole and uninjured and definitely not dead, in front of me.
If Biff hurt my husband and caused this whole situation, we need to know. We need proof. We need justice.
And I just need to know what the hell is going on with my husband. Suddenly, I have much more energy. “Okay, we’ll go after dinner, see if we can catch him before he leaves for work.”
“I’m ready when you are.” He pushes his plate away.
“Aren’t you going to eat?”
“No, I’m not hungry. I ate while you were gone.” He drops his gaze, and guiltily adds, “I’m sorry.”
Sure, it was annoying to make him dinner if he wasn’t going to eat it, but I’m just so glad that he ate at all. “It’s okay. I’ll just wrap it and stick it in the fridge. You can eat it later, if you get hungry again.”
He nods, and I scrape a few more bites in my mouth before wrapping his plate and taking it to the refrigerator.
“What did you eat?” I ask, my head in the fridge, seeing his plates from earlier and struggling to fit it in there with the rest.
“Oh, just some meat.”
His voice sounds funny and I turn to look at him, but his back is to me as he puts on his jacket. I must’ve imagined it.
I’m getting on my own coat, Grady fidgeting by the door, when my phone rings.
I answer i
t without looking, without really thinking about it. “Hello?”
“Hi Maisie, it’s Krissy.”
“Who’s that—” Grady starts.
I flash a look at him and put a finger across my lips to silence him on impulse. It’s his sister. And he doesn’t want her to know he’s back yet, so he can’t be talking in the background.
“Hi Krissy. How are you?”
Understanding crosses Grady’s face, and then sadness a split-second before he turns away again.
Since Grady’s funeral, Krissy shows up about once a week to check on me. We’d have coffee, chat—cry—and then part ways. I can’t believe I forgot about our meetings. But to be fair, there had been a lot going on.
Husbands back from the dead and all that.
“I’m okay.” There’s a pause between her words that tells me she’s lying. “How are you?”
“I’m okay too,” I reply, trying to sound a bit more convincing than she did.
“Good, good.”
There’s a moment of awkward silence that reminds me that we weren’t really super close until lately.
“Would you mind if I stopped by in a little bit? I made something for you.”
“Um, sure. I’m heading out the door right now, but I should be back in about—” I shrug at Grady. I don’t know how long it will take to talk to Biff and be back in time to hide Grady in the bedroom, or convince him to see his sister. “Like two hours?” I guess.
“Okay, see you at seven. Bye Maisie.”
“Yep, see you then. Bye.” I press END and look at Grady. “Your sister will be here at seven.”
His lips tighten and he looks away. I don’t know why he’s so against telling his family, but it’s going to be a fight to get him to talk to her. But first, Biff. “Let’s go.”
I’m trying to decide where to park outside Grady’s work so that no one sees him when he suddenly yells, “Stop the car!”
I flash a look over at him as I smash the brakes and he’s gripping the handle hard as if he might jump out, staring out the window. “Are you remembering something? Are you having another panic attack?”
Why did I not consider that might happen? I have to help him.
Heart in my throat, I pull into a parking space and throw it in park. “Are you o—”
He’s out the door before I can even finish my sentence, striding toward a fine-dressed black woman on the sidewalk.
Chapter Eight
Grady
I’m holding on to my sanity by a thread as we drive by my work, anticipating...something. But not this. I tell Maisie to stop.
A short black woman in her mid-60’s, dressed neatly in purple clothes clean and pressed and nice. Her hair is hidden under an equally purple head wrap, but it looks like her. And she definitely doesn’t look homeless.
Could it be?
But it is, it has to be. One Ms. Josephine Delacroix is walking up the other side of the street, a pinched look on her face.
She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, hands clasped together, looking around as if she were waiting on something. Biff? Could she and my boss have worked together on the cover-up?
Time to find out.
In a few long strides, I’m across the street and heading up the sidewalk toward her. If Biff came out right now, I don’t know what I would do. Perhaps it was stupid to take this chance, but we’ve been looking for her since the beginning. I had questions that needed answers, now, and there would never be a better time to ask them with her here outside and Maisie out of earshot.
I’m ten feet from her when she notices me. And I didn’t really think she’d recognize me, but she does.
“I was wondering when I would see you again.”
That stops me in my tracks. She was expecting to see me again? She waves me forward, and I approach her more slowly.
“Come, you can’t be seen here.”
She steps forward, grabs my arm, and leads me across the street into the shadow of the building.
“Let’s see you.” She looks me over, and then pulls off my sunglasses and meets my eyes. She stares into them for a long second. Then she nods, apparently satisfied by whatever she saw, and slides them back on.
Where was my voice? I needed to ask her so many things, but here I was muted by the circumstances.
Everyone else thought I was dead, yet she was expecting me. That vaguely answered a question I needed more details to.
“Ms. Josephine, what happened that night at my work?”
She steps back and stares at me a moment. “You do not know?”
“I don’t know a damn thing,” I say, slashing the air with my arm. “I remember being hurt, I remember darkness, and I remember you singing. That’s it. And then there’s six weeks of my life missing.”
“Someone did hurt you,” she says, solemn. “I brought you back.”
“Brought me back? What do you mean? What did you do to me?” We’re both surprised by the way I growl the last question, and she takes a step back and puts her hands on her hips.
“I did you a favor.”
“I don’t consider this a favor,” I hiss, shooting my arms out wide.
She sniffs at me. “Do not be ungrateful. Would you rather have died? Permanently?”
“I didn’t know I had a choice in the matter. I didn’t have a choice.” I’m almost yelling, but I can’t seem to help it. My emotions are all over the place. Everything she’s saying just confirmed what I had been thinking, what I remembered. What I thought couldn’t possibly be true.
I’d died, and she’d brought me back. Somehow.
Her eyes narrow as she stares at me, lips pursed. Then she draws herself up to her full five feet and levels a finger at me. “You were kind to me. There are not enough kind people left in this world. For that, I gave you the gift of time. To find justice, to say goodbye. I consider your kindness repaid by giving you that time. Do not make me regret it.” She sounds just like my grandmother when she scolded me as a boy.
“I’m sorry.” The response is automatic and immediate. You didn’t mess with angry older women, or you were bound to be hit with a shoe. I slump against the brick facade of the building behind us. “Please... please tell me what you did. I need to know.”
“Your soul would not leave this world, so I cast a spell to revive your body.”
I gave her the side-eye. “You’re a witch.”
She scoffs, and straightens her purple head wrap. “I am not a witch, I am a priestess.”
I get it now. All the beads she’s wearing, the head wrap, the big, gold snake earrings.
“Voodoo,” I gasp. “Black magic.” I spin around and take a step away to breathe up into the sky. What the hell.
“Nonsense,” she says crisply.
I turn back to look at her in surprise.
“Vodou,” she says with a slightly different pronunciation, “is not anything like what the media portrays it to be.” She shakes her finger for emphasis. “Dark rituals and devil worship play no part in my magic. I am aided by the spirits, and a servant only of the Lord. Besides,” she huffs, “dark magic is Red, not Black. You can always tell by the eyes.” She gestures to her own.
Had that been why she wanted to see mine?
“So I died, and you brought me back to life?” She nods and goes to speak, but I continue. “Is that why I... Why I came back different?”
Whatever she was going to say dies on her lips, then her brows drop as she stares at me intently. “Different? What do you mean? Different how?”
“I’m hungry. All the time, yet I can’t eat any food. I only want to eat certain things.”
“I don’t see a problem with that,” she says, waving a hand, “just eat what you feel like eating.”
She’s not getting it, and I’m desperate. I just found out I really died and came back from the grave, and I’m not feeling at all sane right now. “Do you have any idea what I hunger for?” I snap my hand around one of her thin wrists. “I crave flesh,” I growl
, feeling her pulse surge beneath my fingers. It’s the first time I’ve admitted it to myself. Leaning forward, I sniff her neck and I smell the iron and the moisture under the skin. My mouth waters. I want to bite down so bad that my teeth ache.
I toss her hand away and turn around. Face in my hands, I breathe slowly, fighting to get the urge under control. What would happen if I had another one of those blackouts, right now, on the street in daylight? I can guess, and it terrifies, disgusts, and tempts me, all in equal measure.
“Bondye mwen! Your eyes! Ou se yon zonbi!”
I look back at her as she crosses herself. I didn’t understand everything she said, but one word really stood out: zonbi.
Zombie. I’m a freaking zombie.
Hearing it out loud is like a kick to the balls. I slide all the way down the wall until I’m sitting on the sidewalk, head in my hands.
Her shiny leather shoes appear at the edge of my vision. She stands there for a moment before she speaks. I don’t look up. “You are obviously not lost yet.”
She holds out her hand to help me up, and I take it. I’m physically stronger than her, but right now, all my muscles feel like jelly. She pulls me up to standing and brushes off my shoulders but I can’t meet her eyes for the shame flooding me.
“Kenbe la. It will be alright. I am here to help you.”
She takes a thin gold case out of her handbag, removes a card from it, and hands it to me. “Come to that address at seven this evening and I will help you.”
Flipping it in my hands, I glance at her, confused. “It’s blank.”
“Is it?” She smiles, winks at me, and then turns and walks away without looking back.
I flip the card over again, confused. But as I do, a brief flash of sunlight glances off of it. I move out of the shadows and tilt the card. Hidden in the flat matte of the white card are an address and a symbol, glossy and visible only in the light. The symbol is a bunch of lines and hatch marks around an ornate cross.
With a snake wrapped around it.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 21