Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness

by Erik Schubach

  Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness

  By Erik Schubach

  Copyright © 2017 by Erik Schubach

  Self publishing

  P.O. Box 523

  Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

  Cover Photo © 2017 Branislav Ostojic / Dreamstime.com license

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-9985110-4-7

  Chapter 1 – Culture Shock

  I suddenly felt like a muskrat staring down a gator's maw as I whispered to myself, “Soc Au' Lait.” I was drowning in yuppies. A New Orleans girl like me was out of place here in Seattle. I wouldn't have been there if it weren't for the medical scholarship I was awarded at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the fact that I just had to get as far away from the Crescent City.

  I still don't remember applying for the Risner Scholarship, but I had filled out countless scholarship applications in my need to get out of New Orleans after I completed my pre-med at UNO. Odd things had started happening there. From what I could find, I was the first person to have been awarded this particular scholarship.

  I looked around the coffee shop, one of the seemingly thousand Starbucks that pretty much ringed the campus, keeping us students in a cage of caffeine and wifi. I chuckled since that was why I was there too, the free wifi. I had just finished my student orientation and wanted to go through all of the copious amounts of material they had heaped upon me before classes started on Monday.

  I stared at the scone I hadn't taken more than a bite from, wondering what self-respecting establishment didn't serve beignets. How I already missed those hot fried pastries. I closed my eyes and imagined the powdered sugar confections I practically mainlined back home. Here, it seemed, everyone mainlined something that vaguely tasted like coffee under all the fancy preparations. Black was the only way to drink it and properly appreciate it.

  Get with the program Adelaide, this is gonna be your home the next four years or more. I exhaled and looked at my iPad. I needed to get a cell phone, my stipend for living expenses included in the scholarship had looked extremely generous until I learned the realities of the astronomical cost of living in Seattle.

  I don't know how the other students do it. I wouldn't be able to get a side job if actual med school was any more hectic than pre-med was. I was just happy I had my own place, sort of, or I'd have to share a place with a couple roommates at the very least, just to afford rent.

  I typed up a quick email to MawMaw to let her know I survived the preliminaries and was fixin' to settle in at the place I found to stay.

  I looked up to a familiar face when a shadow crossed my table. It was the woman the University had given me a tour of campus, Shannon Kingston. She smiled at me, holding one of those paper cups which likely held some over-sweetened, frothed milk concoction that smelled passingly like coffee.

  The honey haired twenty something gave me that same welcoming smile she had when they called her into the admissions office to show me around. It was striking then, and it hadn't lost any of its genuine charm this time around.

  “Hi Adelaide, I see you've already found a fueling stop. You'll be seeing the coffee houses as your second home once classes begin. You'll have to have more coffee than blood in your veins, just to keep up.”

  She made a motion with her cup toward the table, and I rolled a hand palm up, accepting her request to join me, uttering a genuine, “Please.”

  She slid into the chair across from me, I tried not to look at the capris jeans which were almost painted onto her shapely legs.

  I quipped with a grin, “That frou-frou stuff can't really be qualified as coffee. You know that right?”

  She chuckled and took the lid off her cup with a cute, crooked grin on her face as she slid it toward me. I cocked an eyebrow appreciatively, there was actual coffee in it. I asked, “Black?”

  She nodded then slid it back to herself, closed her dark brown eyes, and inhaled the steam deeply. She shuddered like a junky getting her fix. It was pure pleasure on her face, and I had to blink then look away with a grin. I probably looked the same when I really needed a good cuppa.

  I hit send on my email app and looked back up to her. She seemed amused about something as she sipped at her coffee. Her tight pink tank top was a little distracting to me. These Seattle girls certainly dressed differently than us down in the bayou, not that it was a bad thing. I pushed my scone an inch toward her. “Scone-ish type thing?”

  She shook her head and quipped, “Too frou-frou for me. Thanks though.”

  I cocked an eyebrow in amusement at her firing my words back at me. “Nice.”

  She took another sip, watching me over the rim of her cup. “I try.”

  Then she added, “I keep catching a slight bit of an accent. Where are you from? We didn't get a chance to talk much. What with the whirlwind tour and all. There was too much to cover in too short of time.”

  I shrugged. “You're probably picking up on Cajun, a little French thrown in for good measure. All mixed up in a slurry.”

  She nodded, and her grin grew. “Ahhh... New Orleans?”

  I cringed. Back home I'd have called her a tourist and sent her to Bourbon Street where the rest of her touristy kind tend to congregate. But this was her city, so I went for tact as I shook my head sadly. “It isn't New Or-Leens. Orleans has three syllables. Pronounced Or-lee-uns. It never rhymes with jeans.”

  She pursed her lips, trying not to smile. I grinned sheepishly at her. “What? It's important, it's my home. Well, was my home.”

  She held up her coffee cup in a toast, and I held mine up, and she prompted, “Home.”

  I repeated, then furrowed my brow as I pushed back my obstinate curls which kept flopping forward. The lack of humidity here has already made itself especially evident with my hair. “You're not a Seattle native? Where's home for you?”

  She settled back in her chair and said, “New York. Two syllables, just like it's spelled.”

  I had to smile at her. “Smart ass.”

  She saluted with her coffee and immediately shot back. “Guilty as charged.”

  God, why do the playful straight girls have to be so damn cute?

  I took the time to decompress and relax and chat with Shannon. I hadn't realized how tense I had become over the past few months and how much that was weighing down upon me. I had been thinking that I had been slowly going mad back home, seeing things that were not possible, experiencing some odd things. I just had to get out of there.

  My hand absently went up to rub the back of my neck as I pushed all of the emotional weight it all aside, and reveled in just being a normal girl in a new city. I almost yanked my hand away when it came into contact with my hair, remembering the drunken dream I had the night before had I started the long drive to Seattle.

  I hesitantly paused then touched the long loose curls of my hair and exhaled loudly. It was just hair. I smiled and realized that Shannon was staring at me. She must think me mad. I shrugged looking sheepish and lied, “I
thought there was something in my hair. There wasn't.”

  She tilted her head and grinned. “I love your curls, it must take forever to do that. I wish my hair would take a curl like that.”

  I cocked my head and looked at her incredulously. “They're natural. I can't get my hair to behave here in Seattle with the dry air here, it is driving me crazy. They are usually much tighter and easier to control.”

  She gave a silly look. “One... I hate you, that's just unfair, I'd kill for curls like that. And two, dry? This is Seattle you know. Rain like every other day.”

  I quipped back, having fun with our discussion though she had no clue what she was talking about. My hair has always been the bane of my existence, but now it didn't do what I wanted it to. “Rain and humidity are two separate things, lady. People walk to class here, back home you swam through the air to get anywhere.”

  She sat back in her chair and shook her head. “You say that almost fondly, isn't constant humidity sort of... I don't know, oppressive?”

  I shrugged and started to feel a little homesick as I explained. “Sort of, but to me, it is just, well it is just home.”

  She chuckled at that and inclined her head in acceptance of what I was trying to convey. “I can understand that, but I personally like air I can breathe without gills.”

  As I was shooting back, “You're from new York, is the air even brea...” there was a horrendous squealing of tires and a crunching sound outside.

  We got up with almost everyone else in the coffeehouse and went to the windows to see a man getting out of his truck and running to another man laying on the street in front of the truck, next to a mangled motorcycle.

  I heard multiple people including Shannon dialing 911, and saw others with no tact whatsoever recording the accident with their phones. Someone was hurt, and they were treating it like entertainment. What is happening to our world?

  I looked back to the accident and froze. No, not here too. I closed my eyes tightly wishing the scene to change. I opened them again and bit back a curse. There, standing on the street corner, watching the truck driver who looked to be checking the pulse of the motorcyclist, was a man dressed in identical black and purple leathers as the man who looked not to be breathing on the ground.

  The man looked so confused as he looked down at his hands and then his doppelganger laying in the street. I felt the rustling along my hairline, and it knocked me out of the panic that was squeezing me in its vice-like grip, causing my hands to feel as if they were freezing and my heart to beat painfully fast.

  I was. I was mad, wasn't I? It was the same man. I knew it even though I couldn't see the face of the man laying in the street.

  It was the same as what happened back in the cemeteries I lived next to just above the French Quarter back home. I saw a woman I thought to be the twin of one they were having an open procession for through the gates of the cemetery. I believed that right up until she started crying, biting her fist then running off in terror. Straight through the crypts and tombs, like a spirit.

  That was the first time. And I realized over time that nobody was seeing the crowds of people I saw in the cemeteries, even after hours.

  All of these wraiths seemed to call out to me, and I had an urge to go to them, to do something. Though I had no clue what use I could be to them, even if they were real. My episodes had just started happening a few months ago, and it has been scaring me. I don't want to believe that my sanity is slipping, nobody does now do they? I thought it was just the stress of pre-med.

  I got out. I thought that by starting fresh in a new city, I'd be ok. But maybe I needed professional help because heaven help me, I was drawn to this specter, and I didn’t know why. And it wasn't in a helpful manner this time, this man is... well was... I just have the feeling he was stained with something that corrupted his core.

  I felt my hair rustle again. I reached up hesitantly to feel the soft black downy feathers sprouting under the unruly curls. The same feathers I've imagined in my drunken stupors when I tried to drink away the visions.

  I swallowed hard. The pull was getting stronger, I knew I had to do something, but I didn't know what. Then I was pulled out of it when someone laid a hand on my arm.

  Shannon asked, “Adelaide? Are you ok, you went pale as a...” She stopped and gasped when she followed my gaze.

  She moved her hand from my arm to cover her mouth then narrowed her eyes and started looking around, scanning the street before looking at her hand then my arm. Had she... had she, seen? Did she see the man standing over his own corpse like I had when she was touching me?

  I panicked as she started to reach for me again as she watched the paramedics arriving on the scene. I pulled back from her and said hoarsely, “I have to go.”

  Then without looking back, I made my way quickly out of the Starbucks. Shannon trailing behind asking, “Wait, did I see...”

  I spun on her and almost hissed in desperation, “Nothing, you saw nothing. I have to go.” I ignored her as I got into my old rust bucket of a green Geo Metro. I started it, the fold up tow bar in the front rattling as the car vibrated, and pulled out of the parking lot quickly, leaving a little rubber behind. I headed north to my new home for the next few years of my life as I tried to get my breathing under control.

  I watched Shannon in my rear view mirror as she just watched me go, looking as confused as I felt. Had she really seen what I had? Or was it wishful thinking. It meant that if she did, then I wasn't going crazy and that... was it worse if I wasn't? It would mean that what I have been experiencing is real.

  I quickly ran my fingers through my hair, feeling for the feathers I swear were there a minute ago, just to find nothing but hair and scalp. My hands were shaking. Lord, I needed a stiff drink.

  I got my breathing under control I concentrated on driving the speed limit back to my oh so luxury living quarters at the University Trailer Park. I was breathing normal and didn't feel the chill of shock anymore by the time I turned into the urban trailer park and pulled up to my old, beat to shit, 1973 Winnebago Indian motorhome.

  The difference between this trailer park and the one I lived in back home the French Quarter RV Resort was that this one wasn't just an old parking lot converted into a trailer park. I still had to snort at the Resort part of its name. This one had actual trees separating it from the rest of the neighborhood.

  That's something I noticed about Seattle. It seems that trees and wild blackberry bushes have seemed to fill in any place that isn't covered in concrete or asphalt. It felt almost organic to me, like how New Orleans sort of melts into the bayou on the fringes which weren't lined by Lake Pontchartrain on the north.

  It felt like nature had grudgingly accepted man's intrusion upon her domain and allowed a sort of natural balance, until some future day when she decides to reclaim the land for herself when she has outgrown her curiosity of man. That will be a day when nature reminds us all how fragile we really are, thinking we are untouchable in the steel and concrete world we have encased ourselves in.

  When I stopped the car, I just sat there a moment taking stock of myself and reassuring myself that I was ok. Then I dwelled on the fact that Shannon seemed to have seen what I had when she was touching me.

  My mind went to my MawMaw. She was an informal Voodoo priestess who ran an apothecary shop on Conti for the plague of tourists that infested our city. They bought all sorts of nonsense knick knacks from her. From voodoo dolls to good luck charms, she wasn't even above bilking them out of their cash if they were stupid enough to ask for a love spell. They had no idea what Voodoo was really about.

  If... if I wasn't going mad, would MawMaw know what was happening? She was always talking about spirituality with me and pushing me to learn more about it. She wasn't happy when I moved out and close to the cemeteries, she warned me that people like me weren't suited to live near the Cities of the Dead.

  That never made sense to me until just now. Had she somehow known? Known I saw things? Did she k
now something about all of this madness? She wasn't my real grandmother, but my grandmother's younger sister. She had taken my mother in when grandmother died when mom was three.

  I got out of the car and headed inside, I really really needed to buy a cell right away to speak to her and find out what she knows. I felt adverse to writing it all out in an email. Like it would leave a digital imprint of crazy on the world. Something that I couldn't take back.

  Nodding to myself, I wrapped the piece of wire around the bolt beside the doorknob. My high-tech door lock, since the latch on the door barely held the door shut anymore, let alone locked.

  I slid into one of the benches at the small fold down table and clasped my hands together and went through the day in my mind. I concentrated on the non-'living nightmare' parts, then eased myself into it, thinking analytically. There was definitely that same shock on Shannon's face when she touched me. She was looking outside like I had been. So she must have seen him too, to have reacted like that.

  Time got away from me as I just stared off into space, thinking about the ramifications of this. If something inexplicable was really going on here, then I wasn't losing it as I believed.

  I stood and moved over to the sink of the kitchenette across from the seating area and splashed some water on my face. Then looked around. There was nothing for it then. Just try to go on with my life knowing something preternatural is out there and accept it, or go mad like I feared, worrying about it. I needed to talk to MawMaw, she'd be able to lend some insight.

  I rested my hands on either side of the sink and stared into the little mirror I had mounted on the wall behind it. I looked a mess, I guess getting a scare will do that to a person. My eyes were bloodshot and darker than normal. I could barely tell where the normally dark brown iris ended and my pupils began, but there was an odd gold ring around them. I imagined it was brought on by the stress and increased blood flow brought on by the fight of flight stress.