The money came from a pool of oil that had been discovered on the south end of their property nearly sixteen years ago. It had been large enough to plop them into the lap of luxury for the rest of their lives. Instead, having always been frugal, Mom and Pop had only bought necessities, preferring to save a good portion of their new income for ‘a rainy day,’ which, of course, never came.
With no mortgage on the house, and interest checks coming in monthly, Angelle and I could have easily sat on our butts and grown fat and bitchy over the last couple of years. Fortunately, our grandparents had also left behind a work ethic that kept that from happening. The money did, however, provide us with the freedom to work at whatever we chose. For me, that meant freelancing as a columnist for three large Texas newspapers, one as far away as Dallas. The pay wasn’t all that great, but with money not being an issue, I reveled in the opportunity to work independently from home.For Angelle, it had meant earning a degree in education. Now she worked as a second grade teacher in south Louisiana, where she lived with her relatively new husband, Trevor. Angelle loved working with kids as much as I loved working with words.
Standing in the pantry, thinking about my sister, sent a wave of loneliness crashing over me, and I quickly grabbed a can of beef stew and got the hell out of there. There was a significant difference between living alone and being lonely. I’d always managed the former without a problem and fought my entire life to ignore the latter.
To brush away the last of that forlorn web, I shook the can of stew at Fritter. “You better damn sure appreciate this. Ten o’clock at night, and I’m feeding a rag-tag dog.”
Fritter jumped up, and at first I thought he was excited about the upcoming snack, but then he let out a sharp bark and stared at the telephone, ears peaking. In that instant, the phone rang.
I shot a look at the old beige box mounted on the wall. It had no caller ID, no answering machine, and its ring was shrill and always set my teeth on edge. Even worse, it summoned all the bats back to roost in my chest. I set the can of stew on the counter and took a step towards the phone, which sent the bats colliding into each other. Fritter began to paw the linoleum and howl, his snout raised to the ceiling. Between the scratching and howling, jangling and fluttering, I felt a sudden urge to run out of the house and never look back.
I wish I had.
CHAPTER TWO
Gritting my teeth, I marched over to the phone. “Quit being ridiculous,” I muttered to myself, then yelled at Fritter to shut up. He howled louder. I grabbed the receiver from the cradle and yelled into it, “Hold on!” then dropped the phone, scooped Fritter into my arms, and carried him outside. The mutt barked and wiggled, squirmed and howled, as if I was leading him to a torture chamber. By the time I got back to the phone, I was out of breath.
“What the hell is all that noise?” My sister, younger by two years and prettier by multiples of ten in my opinion, never missed an opportunity to get right to the point. We usually talked at least once a week, catching up on what was going on in one another’s lives. But the last time we’d spoken had been a couple of weeks ago, and even then the conversation had been short. The school year was rolling to an end, which usually meant Angelle's workload doubled, leaving her little time for leisurely chats.
“Just Fritter losing his shit. I had to put him outside.”
“Since when do you let him in the house?”
“I didn’t. He just kind of let himself in.”
Fritter was still howling, and he began to paddle the door with his paws. Right then, I had a sneaky suspicion that whatever he’d been trying to warn me about involved this call. The hair on my arms stood on end. If there was bad news coming, there was no use dancing around it. Just as soon cut to the chase. “What’s wrong?”
. “How . . . how did you know something was wrong?”
Since I’d never told my sister about the special connection between Fritter and me, I figured it best to tell a little white lie. Better that than have her think I had a few brain bulbs burning out. “I could just tell from your voice.” She let out a little sob, and my knees weakened. Jesus, something was wrong. I leaned against the wall. “Talk to me.”
Angelle sniffled and let out a shaky breath that I could hear even over Fritter’s howling. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Try the beginning.”
“That would take too long.” Another sniffle. “Dun, I need . . . I need your help. I need you to come out to Bayou Crow.”
My palms grew slick with sweat. “What’s the matter? Are you sick? Hurt?”
“No, not that. I really don’t want to get into everything over the phone. It would take too long and sound too . . .too weird. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here . . . if you’ll come.”
“Wait, I don’t understand. You need my help but can’t tell me why?”
“No . . .well, yeah, I can tell you the most important part—a couple of kids from my class are missing. An eight-year-old boy named Nicky Trahan, and a seven-year-old girl, Sarah Woodard. They’ve been gone for over twenty-four hours now, and people here are starting to think they’ve either drowned or got lost in the swamps.”
I frowned.“I can understand drowning with all the water out there and everything, but how does a seven and eight-year-old get lost in a swamp? It’s not like wondering off in the woods. You can’t just walk through a swamp, right?”
“Not really. But there is a good bit of land out there, though.”
“Okay, but don’t you have to get to that land by boat?”
“Yeah.”
“Did either of those kids know how to drive one?”
“I don’t think so. I mean they’re only seven and eight.”
“That’s my point, how would they have gotten out there?”
“Someone could’ve easily taken them.”
What came immediately to mind was, Why? But I didn’t ask. The question was stupid. There were no real answers when it came to child abduction. Just sick assholes with personal agendas. “Gelle, I don’t—”
“B-15!”a woman shouted in the background from Angelle’s end of the line.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Poochie, Trevor’s grandma. She does that every once in a while, call Bingo numbers I mean. Not sure why.” Angelle lowered her voice. “She’s a sweetheart, but has always been a little off. Started getting worse over the last two, three weeks. You know, forgetting things, like taking her meds, leaving the stove on, stuff like that. Trevor thought it best to move her out here for a while.”
“You mean she’s living with you?”
“Yeah. She lived all the way out in St. Martinville, over an hour and a half away. It was hard keeping tabs on her from that distance. She doesn’t have any other immediate family but us, and Trevor isn’t ready to put her in a nursing home yet.”
“Man, that’s got to be tough, having her around all the time, huh? I mean you’ve only been married a little over a year. Isn’t that sort of still in the newlywed phase?”
“Yeah, well . . . you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do for family, right?”
I tsked. “No fair. That’s a set up if I’ve ever heard one.”
“Dunny, those kids . . .”
I knew what was coming and didn’t want to hear it. I wanted to go back to earlier, when opening a can of beef stew for a mangy mutt was my only concern. Right then, I almost wished for a tornado or to be driving around and have some pimply-face kid broadside my truck. Anything but what Angelle was about to ask.
“You have to come out here and help find them.”
I shook my head. “I can’t, and you know why. What about the police? Haven’t they been called in? Haven’t they sent out search parties?”
“Everyone’s been looking, neighbors, teachers, other students. Bayou Crow only has one cop, so they sent a couple of deputies from Iberville Parish Sheriff’s Department yesterday. Problem is they already had to pull them out this morning. Dunny, this town’s
so small; if those kids were around here, we’d have found them by now.”
“Not if someone grabbed them and hauled ass to another town.”
“Yeah, I thought of that, but there’s only one main road that runs in and out of Bayou Crow. People around here are too nosey to not have noticed a strange car trolling the street. Someone would have seen something—said something. The only logical place those kids could be is in the swamp. And if someone took them in there, and they manage to escape somehow, there’s no way they’re going to be able to find their way out by themselves. They’ll die out there, if they’re not dead already. It’s as simple as that, Dunny. You have to come. If anyone can find those babies, I know you can.”
“Shit,” I muttered, then trapped the phone between my right ear and shoulder and wiped the sweat from my palms on my jeans. Fritter was still pawing frantically, but at least his howling had stopped. I finally asked, “Did you tell anyone about me, about what I can do? Does anyone there know?”
“I haven’t said a word to anybody. Trevor doesn’t even know, and no one has to know. You can wear your gloves like always. I’ll just tell them you’re here visiting, then when we go out to look for the kids, I’ll make sure we’re alone. No one will find out, I swear. Dunny, you have to come.”
I sighed, suddenly feeling like the most exhausted thirty-three-year-old on the planet. No more fresh-dug potato and onion scents to comfort me. All I smelled now was trouble. “Gelle, I’ve never done it around a lot of water before. Even if I went out there, there’s no guarantee it’s going to work.”
“But that’s just it; at least you’d have tried. Remember all you did even without trying? The water at the Hughes’ place—the oil on Mom and Pop’s property? And Pirate
. . . don’t forget about Pirate.”
“I don’t—“
“Look, there’s a plane that leaves out of Midland at seven-thirty tomorrow morning. It connects in Houston, gets into Baton Rouge a little after eleven. I sent the link with all the flight information to your email address. You won’t have to worry about renting a car or getting directions here, I’ll pick you up. All you have to do is say you’ll come.”
Fritter gave a high-pitched yelp, and when I looked over at him, he slammed his body against the door, just as he’d done to my truck. The expression on his face, if a dog could have an expression, and this one certainly seemed capable, read, “Don’t even think about it!”
I didn’t want to think about it. But what choice did I have? In truth, it wasn’t so much a repeat of the past that I feared, as it was not finding those kids. Suppose I went out there and nothing happened? Eventually I’d have to leave Bayou Crow knowing I’d failed. I’d have to carry the weight, the guilt, the burden of those lost kids all the way back to Texas. I didn’t know if I could live with that. And truth be told, I did worry about people knowing my secret, as selfish as that felt under the circumstances. It had taken a long time to get my life on an even keel, to get people to forget about me and move onto some other freak. Going out there could bring everything back, everything I’d worked so hard to leave behind—everything that shoved loneliness front and center.
“Dunny?”
“Yeah, I’m here.”
:So . . . will you?”
“I’ll be there,” I said quietly, then hung up the phone, realizing only after I turned away from it that I hadn’t told my sister goodbye.
Feeling like the soles of my feet had been painted with Super Glue, I made my way from the kitchen into the living room and over to the large picture window that took up most of the east wall. Beyond the window, in the center of the front yard, stood a twenty-foot mesquite tree. Its thorny branches didn’t flow up and out like an oak or a pine. They were twisted and bent at awkward angles, refusing to conform to any standard horticultural symmetry. Pop had worked for years pruning, trimming, literally training the mesquite to be a tree. Left on its own, it would have grown to be little more than a scraggly border shrub, but under his care, it stood tall and birthed beautiful lavender flowers. If only I’d have fared as well under Pop’s care as that mesquite.
I placed my left palm against the windowpane and spread out my fingers—all six of them. The extra digit had been there since birth. It had its own bone and was as flexible, if not more so, than my normal little finger. I never asked why my mother and father didn't have the appendage removed at birth. I just assumed it was because they didn’t have the money. By the time Mom and Pop could afford the surgery, which wasn’t long after the oil well began to produce, I was in my early teens and had become so accustomed to the thing by then, I feared losing it more than I did the ridicule and curious looks it brought from other people.
I was only eight when I learned to fold the extra digit into my palm or to wear gloves while out in public. Gloves were a bit of a hassle because I always had to get two pair, one a size larger than what I normally wore. That way I could mix the left larger with the right smaller so the extra finger would fit into the finger sleeve along with its sister. As closely as I tried matching them, however, the gloves still managed to draw attention. They were just too out of place in Cyler. It was rarely cold enough here, even in winter, to wear a heavy coat, much less gloves. And as if it wasn’t bad enough I had to hide the deformity, by the time I turned ten, I discovered the damned thing could do stuff.
The first time I found that out was on a Sunday afternoon, when Angelle and I had gone with Mom Pollock to visit Frieda Hughes, a neighbor. The entire time we were over there, Frieda whined about the number of drillers she’d brought out to her property in the last month and how not one of them had been able to find a freshwater well—and, oh, Lord what was she to do? While Frieda was in the throes of one of her famous pity parties, I grabbed Angelle, and we escaped to the backyard for a game of hide and seek. One minute I was giggling with anticipation of finding the perfect hiding place, and the next I was standing near an old tractor shed behind the Hughes’ house, grimacing in pain.
The extra finger had folded into my palm on its own. And it hurt as if someone had trapped it in the jaws of a clothespin. Angelle, who’d been the designated seeker at the time, found me with little effort. At first she’d laughed in triumph, then realized I wasn’t so stupid as to hide out in the open. When she asked why I was just standing there instead of playing the game, I meant to tell her it was because my finger was hurting so bad. Instead, I wound up saying, “Go get Mom Pollock. There’s a lot of water under here.” Then I pointed to the ground beneath my feet.
Two days later the same drillers who’d been out the previous week found a wide freshwater spring, sixty-feet below the ground on the very spot I’d predicted. Dowsing wasn’t an unusual occurrence in Cyler, only the known dowsers normally used forked willow branches or thin metal rods. No one had ever heard of a kid dowsing, much less a kid dowsing with a finger.
Word spread quickly after the Hughes' find, and Mom and Pop Pollock did their best to protect me from the clinging people, many coming as far away as New Mexico, all of them hounding me for help. No one could protect me, though, from the teasing at school. While other misfits were tagged with names like Four-Eyes, Fattie, Banana-nose, or Dumbo, I got stuck with Freak and Water Witch.
The worst of it came soon after I discovered oil on Mom and Pop's property. Although no one in the family had breathed a word about how the oil had been found, people immediately assumed I was responsible. Folks appeared in droves, begging me to search their land for black gold. It got so bad, we had to get an unlisted phone number, and Pop had to put a gate at the end of the driveway to keep people away.
Unfortunately, instead of growing tall and fruitful under Pop's care, like the mesquite, I shrank away from people. Their greed overwhelmed me. It still did. I was a freak that people tried to manipulate with lies and promises they never meant to keep. And that didn’t change once I became an adult. I was still a target for manipulation, especially from men. I’d been wined and dined by some of the best, on
ly to find out later that they meant to use my abilities for their own gain.
To make matters worse, I found out about five years ago that my finger’s talent extended beyond finding oil and water, lost lockets and misplaced keys. Back then, Angelle's yellow and black calico, Pirate, who’d been part of the family for years, went missing. I’d searched for that stupid cat, consciously focusing on it and trusting that my extra finger would find it. And, of course, it did. Instead of pulling into my palm and pinching like it had when I’d found the water, though, or stretching outward and aching like when I’d discovered the oil, it had grown limp and cold. By the time I located Pirate's headless, mauled body under a thicket a mile away from the house, my finger had felt encased in ice.
It was then I’d sworn Angelle to secrecy. If people went nuts over water and oil, what would they do if they knew I could locate other things, like dead bodies? Since my sister was the only one to witness my finding Pirate, I made her swear a solemn oath never to tell anyone about it, and she hadn’t. I’d also made her promise to never bring the matter up again, and she hadn't. Until now.
The thought of searching through a swamp for two missing children made me queasy and sent a litany of doubts tumbling through my mind. It wasn’t about searching through so much water. That had only been an excuse. What I feared most was failure. What if those kids were in the swamp and I couldn’t find them? Then again, what if they were in there and I did find them, only dead?And there was no telling what else my finger might dredge up from hiding in those dark, murky waters.
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