Beneath the Black Moon (Root Sisters)

by Fine, Clara

  “What?” Cam’s grandmother barked. “Conform? Perform? Dance like a little trained monkey? Go out in front of all the guests and show what respectable, well-mannered old woman I am? Sorry. My days of pleasing the public are over. These days I only please myself.”

  “That much is obvious,” Aunt Beth said in one of the most sharply disapproving tones she ever used. “Don’t you even think about the girls? What about Cam? Helen?”

  “Don’t talk to me about Cam and Helen. They’re my granddaughters.”

  “And they’re my nieces,” Aunt Beth said, “and I don’t think you appreciate how precarious their position in society is right now.”

  “Oh lord,” Cam muttered, exchanging a glance with Mary, who looked amused. “Hello Grandmother. Hello Aunt Beth.”

  “Don’t interrupt Camilla,” her aunt snipped. “It’s most ill-mannered of you.”

  “Oh well, welcome to the family,” Daphne said loudly, “we specialize in ill-mannered.”

  At that, Aunt Beth could only throw up her hands and shoot Daphne a glare that could have killed a cat. The old woman retreated into the kitchen, leaving Aunt Beth and Cam staring at each other. Mary whispered something about the laundry and abandoned Cam to her aunt.

  “I am sorry you had to hear that, Camilla,” Aunt Beth said, reaching up to smooth her hair. “I do have good news, though.”

  “Really?” Good news sounded like a welcome change.

  “We have received an invitation to join a few other families on a visit to the Wickers plantation next week. Brent Anderson himself issued the invitation.”

  “Did he?” Cam managed, although this hardly fit her definition of good news. It was as though Brent was closing in for the kill.

  “Oh yes. In fact, he mentioned your name especially, Camilla.”

  “Really?” Cam said, in as sunny a tone as she could muster. “Wasn’t that kind of him?”

  Aunt Beth smiled. “He also expressed an interest in getting to know the rest of the family— but your father is otherwise engaged on that day. He is entertaining several families here, and your grandmother,” at that point Aunt Beth raised her voice so that Grandma would be able to hear her from inside of the kitchen. “Your grandmother has refused to attend.”

  “Well, won’t you and Helen be there?” Cam asked, trying to soothe her aunt’s ruffled feathers.

  “He is already acquainted with us,” Aunt Beth said.

  “Well,” Cam said, running out of patience. “There’s always Diana. I’m sure she’d love an outing.”

  “Oh, Cam,” Aunt Beth sniffed, and then she was marching back across the lawn, without another word. Cam waited until her Aunt had vanished into the house before she slipped into the kitchen to consult her grandmother.

  Caro beat her to it. “What’s this about the Anderson boy?” She asked before Cam had even closed the door behind her. “I hear he has invited you to his home.”

  “Me and Helen and Aunt Beth, apparently,” Cam said. “I’m sure it doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I’m not.” Grandma said. “Be careful Cam.”

  Cam sighed. “I have no intention of attending, anyway.”

  “No?” Grandma squinted. “Why not?”

  “Because he’s up to no good,” Cam answered readily. And because we kissed the other night and now I can’t face him ever again for as long as I live. “Aunt Beth can’t argue if I beg indisposition.”

  “My god, Cam,” her grandmother suddenly laughed. “You must be indisposed more often than any other woman in the county.”

  “Probably,” Cam said, echoing her grandmother’s laughter. Her mirth didn’t last long, however. Whether she was willing to admit it or not, part of her wanted desperately to accept Brent’s invitation.

  ***

  Cam expected to fall asleep as soon as she lay down, but for whatever reason rest eluded her. Her breathing was uneven and restless. Her heart beat too quickly. When she closed her eyes she was haunted by the notion that someone was watching her, but when she opened them there was only the portrait of her mother and the soft darkness of her room. She stared at the picture, noting as usual her resemblance to Solange, and tried to calm herself by following the curves of her mother's face and neck. The picture was the only reason she could remember what her mother looked like, but now when she pictured her mother she could only imagine Solange as she appeared in the portrait: young, no older than Cam, with her face lovely but impassive and her eyes dark and unreadable. Night after night Cam had tried to imagine her mother's face with different expressions, crinkled with laugh lines or warm with a smile. She hadn't once succeeded in picturing anything other than that wide-eyed stare immortalized in paper and black ink.

  She rolled over and tried to sleep without facing the portrait. For a few minutes her anxiety only grew. Then, as if sleep had snuck up and caught her body unawares, her eyelids slowly sank lower and lower until her eyelashes rested on her cheeks.

  For a time, there was only blackness in Cam's dreams, a dark fog.

  Then light pierced the darkness, the red-gold of a bloody sunset. Material, the rich, soft cloth of brightly colored gowns, whirled and twirled to the tune of an old song. Laughter and whispers hummed beneath the sound of the music, and Cam could smell cigars and crushed flowers.

  It is a beautiful evening.

  And a dangerous one. Before she sees the women, Cam can hear their voices and feel their anger. Most of all, she scents conjure in the air. Cam sees the aggressor first, a blue-eyed mad woman, with dark hair and very white skin. Cam hasn't seen Kat Varennes since she was a child, and has never been able to remember her face before. But because this is a dream she recognizes the rootworker immediately, from the insanity in her eyes and the violence her words promise.

  The other women is taller, quieter, and in danger. It is only when Solange turns away from Kat angrily that Cam recognizes her mother. For a moment, Kat and Solange might as well be the only ones in the room. The air is thick with Kat's threat and Solange's denial. Later people will whisper that they quarreled over a man, but this argument is about power, not lovers. The words that have passed between them are pure venom, and both women have the power to do exactly as they threaten.

  Solange will go home early, put her daughters to bed and force herself to forget the argument.

  Kat Varennes will not let go of her anger, and beneath the black moon she will seek revenge.

  This night has doomed them both.

  ***

  The darkness seems too beautiful to be sinister on the eve of the black moon, and Solange Johnson and her husband return late from a carriage ride together. Solange has none of the fear that her daughters will live with all of their lives. She is confident in her abilities and unsuspecting of any attack. She lets her husband go to the house ahead of her so that she can tend to the horses alone. Solange loves animals, just as Helen will.

  Mr. Johnson whistles as he walks and passes Sam on the path up to the house. They exchange a glance and nothing else passes between them. The black man walks slowly, enjoying the night as much as Solange is. Neither man notices as Mary, a skinny little girl in a faded nightdress, stumbles out of the kitchen. The beauty of the night isn't what draws her. She has woken from a terrible dream, and is stepping outside to assure herself that there is no fire.

  “You were only dreaming...”

  That is what Mary tells herself, but she has already begun to notice that her dreams are different, that they tell her more than she cares to know about what lies in store for all of them. She wraps shaking arms around herself and tries to forget her nightmare, breathing in the soft night air. The breeze washes against her face like the tide, once, twice, a third time. Then the tide changes.

  The wind that brings Kat Varenne’s evil conjure into their midst howls and whirls like a cyclone. Mary recognizes it from her dream, and she is frozen with fear as the wind reaches the carriage house. It rushes against the building and seems to vanish into it. There is a mom
ent of silence and everyone but Mary is still calm and oblivious. Then the flames come, springing to life not in one place, but in a complete ring around the carriage house, growing with each second and lapping hungrily against the building. Mary wants to scream, but she can hardly breathe. She struggles for a moment as Sam stares at the flames. He knows what they are, he can feel their evil essence, but doesn’t understand why a rootworker would burn down an empty building. It is only when Solange cries out, her voice high and piercing, terrified and pained, that he understands and springs into action. He races towards the carriage house, pulling off his coat as he runs. The fire is progressing unnaturally quickly, and the scent of the burning carriage house already fills the air. Mary finally finds her voice as Sam leaps through the flames, using his coat to beat them back, and screams out “FIRE!” as loudly as she possibly can. The panic in her little voice helps it carry, and her aunt Caro wakes immediately.

  Caro runs to her little niece, at first thinking that the child is having another of her nightmares. She finds Mary’s bed empty and when she steps outside to look for the child, the blazing carriage house has turned night into day.

  All that follows passes in a blur. As every man on the plantation tries to fight the flames, Caro clutches the sobbing Mary and screams for her son. Mr. Johnson appears in his nightclothes, too shocked to be of any use, while Daphne runs for the carriage house and has to be restrained by three people.

  Two little girls in white run out onto the lawn. The elder is Diana, and she clutches the hand of a smaller, pudgier Cam. The young Cam has no idea what is happening, only that she has never seen such a big fire, but Diana screams and screams until she has no voice.

  With that, the vision rushed away, and the dreaming Cam found herself transported to another time and place.

  This vision begins in the kitchen as it looked fourteen years earlier. Caro and Daphne are both dressed in black, and it is impossible to say who looks more anguished. Or more determined. They create the poppet together, using the strongest conjure that either has ever harnessed. Alone, neither of them could have fought Kat Varennes, but together they will best her. They each take a needle, the longest and thickest on the plantation, and drive it into the body of the doll again and again, with more grief than reason.

  Across the county, Kat Varennes is brushing her hair in front of her mirror. She receives no warning, and there is a smile on her face when the first blade plunges straight through her rib cage. That first wound is all that is necessary to stop her heart, but not to appease the bereaved mothers. When the wounds finally stop coming, the dead woman slips sideways off her chair. The hairbrush falls from her hand, and there is still the ghost of a smile on her white lips as her fingers twitch a final time.

  Still locked inside of the vision, Cam cried out in terror and revulsion, thrashing and struggling against the horror that she was forced to witness.

  “Cam! Cammie!” The words pierce Cam’s dream as surely as the conjure sliced into Kat. “Wake up Cam!”

  And suddenly, Cam woke. She was drenched in sweat and her forehead was hot while her hands were cold. Someone clutched her shoulders, and she gasped in fear before she recognized the outline of her sister’s face in the darkness.

  “Helen?” She whispered.

  “It’s alright,” her little sister told her. “You’re safe, you had a bad dream.”

  Cam exhaled and then took a deep breath, still reeling from the vivid dream.

  “Not a dream,” she realized suddenly. “A vision.”

  “What?” Helen asked.

  “A vision, Helen. I had a vision.”

  “A vision? Like Mary?” Helen sounded shocked. “I didn’t know that you had those.”

  “I don’t,” Cam said. “I’ve never had one before.”

  “Are you sure that it wasn’t just a dream?” Helen asked.

  “Positive,” Cam said. She’d had nightmares before, plenty of them, and the difference was like night and day.

  “Some dreams can be very convincing,” Helen said.

  “I dreamt of mama, Helen,” Cam said, still breathing heavily. “I dreamt of Kat Varennes. I saw her face. I’d never remembered Kat’s face before, but I remembered it then. Helen, it was a vision.”

  “What about?”

  “Their deaths,” Cam said, keeping her voice low so that she couldn’t be overheard. “I dreamt of how they died. Exactly as it happened. My God. I saw everything that happened.” She shuddered, and Helen put an arm around her.

  “You already knew,” Helen said. They’d all learned when they were children that Kat Varennes had murdered Sam and Solange and that Caro and Grandma had killed her for it.

  “Knowing is one thing,” Cam said. “Seeing is a different matter.” She shivered again.

  “Should I stay?” Helen asked, sitting on the mattress beside her older sister.

  Cam opened her mouth to tell her sister to go back to bed, but before she got the words out an image of the dead gaze of Kat Varennes flashed in front of her eyes. Cam swallowed. “Maybe,” she admitted.

  Helen didn’t say anything else, but climbed into bed beside Cam. “Remember when I was little and I would climb in bed with you when I had nightmares?”

  Cam nodded. She lay back tentatively, but was still too frightened to close her eyes. “I remember. You also used to climb in with Aunt Beth though, didn’t you?”

  “Only until I was five,” Helen sighed. “Then she told me that I was quite old enough to brave a few nightmares. Also I was getting too big and starting to kick her at night.”

  “You did kick,” Cam whispered. “I remember that.”

  They reminisced for a few more minutes, both of them purposefully avoiding any further mention of Cam’s dream. Cam had finally worked up the courage to try to fall back to sleep when Helen’s tone changed.

  “Cammie?”

  “Hm?”

  “Do you… Do you believe what they say about mama?”

  Cam’s eyes opened, and suddenly she was no longer sleepy. “What do they say?” She asked, as if she didn’t already know, as if the whispers didn’t torment her.

  “You know.” Helen said flatly. “That she took lovers. That she wore red to every party and danced with all of the married men. That she used to go on long walks with James Smith and not return till after dark. That one night Mrs. Laurel came home and found mama-”

  Cam sat up suddenly. She was alarmed by the way Helen’s voice had grown higher and more distressed as she repeated each rumor. “You’ve been listening to Hadley, haven’t you?” She said, turning to her sister in the dark.

  “Is it possible to avoid listening to Hadley?”

  “I manage,” Cam said firmly, lying down again. “For heaven’s sake, Helen, don’t listen to that. You’ll go mad.”

  Helen hesitated. “Alright,” she said finally, sighing deeply. No one said anything for a few minutes, but Helen stirred restlessly. Cam had almost drifted off to sleep when Helen spoke again.

  “But do you think it’s true, Cam?”

  Cam didn’t open her eyes, but an image of her mother’s portrait flashed behind her eyelids. “Would it matter?” She asked her sister. “Would you miss her less?”

  “I don’t miss her at all,” Helen said, and she sounded close to tears. “I never knew her, how could I?”

  “You can still miss her,” Cam said.

  “Hm,” Helen murmured, but whether in agreement or dissent Cam couldn’t tell. She didn’t ask Cam anything else, and within a few minutes they were both

  sleeping, this time peacefully.

  Chapter Seven

  Genteel Southern lady or not, Cam was fairly certain that if she begged indisposition one more time, her aunt would— politely— murder her. Still, even the threat of domestic violence was not enough to make her go downstairs.

  There was quite a bit of activity on the lawn at the moment. Her father was entertaining several families— including Marianne and her parents, unfortunate
ly. Brent had come over to pick up Cam, Helen and Elizabeth, and he had remained a few minutes to talk to Cam’s father and some of his guests. Either that or he was waiting for Cam to come down.

  Which was not going to happen.

  Just the thought of being in a confined space with Brent was enough to make her heart race. She could handle Aunt Beth. It was Brent she didn’t want to face. She had never known anything quite like the burning, all-consuming fire that burned in her blood when she was around him. She had to remind herself, frequently, that it was her family he was interested in. Her family, her history, and all of the secrets that were meant never to be told. She wasn’t really all that important. And the kiss—

  Well, the kiss was really quite impossible to explain. It was just a spur of the moment thing. Something that neither of them had planned or even enjoyed very much (no, not even a little bit, Cam insisted to herself). So, she wasn’t going to go down. It was that simple. She couldn’t afford to become so unwound over a man.

  Cam sat on the edge of her bed, taking the time, out of boredom, to attractively arrange her taffeta skirts around her until she was seated so gracefully that even her Aunt Beth would have been impressed. Cam sucked in her stomach and held the pose, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She tilted her head so that her curls fell attractively over one shoulder, but her face was turning pink and her mouth was puckered with the effort of holding her breath.

  I look like a fool.

  Cam sighed and the breath she had held came rushing out. She stretched her legs out in front of her, which wasn’t easy given the weight of her skirts, and wished that she were an avid reader like Helen. She could vaguely remember listening to her mother read stories as a child, but since then she hadn’t been able to sit still long enough to enjoy a book. Grandma liked to say that she had been born with “restless feet.”

  Today it wasn’t just her feet that were restless. Her mind was going around and around in meaningless circles, and she couldn’t seem to find any peace.

  “Oh, damn it,” she said finally, and made her way to her bedroom window. “Just a peek,” she told herself firmly.