“Dat wasn’t no weather done dat.” Poochie propped a hand on her hip. “Dey don’t got not one cloud in de sky. Just a big full moon and de stars. De closest rain right now is prob’bly on de other side de world. It’s a ghos’ dat did dat.”
Trevor’s scrubbed a hand over his face. “Poochie, you know there’s no such thing as—”
“Oh, no, don’t you even go tellin’ me what dere is or dere’s not. I’m a whole bunch more years older den you. I wiped you butt and you snot when you was a little boy, remember? I t’ink I know what I’m talking about. I’m telling you, I was out to de prayer tree earlier before I come in here to cook, and I seen dem come into de house.”
“You saw what come into the house?” I asked, glancing over at Angelle. Her face had turned pale again.
“Dem ghos’. T’ree of dem. Slide right t’rough de bricks like dey was nothing but a screen door.”
“What…what did they look like?” Angelle asked quietly.
My heart thundered in my ears, anxious to hear Poochie’s answer.
“Y’all don’t get her started,” Trevor said. “Don’t encourage her. There’s no such thing as ghosts, and that’s the end of it.”
“Puh! You can make all de end of it you want, Mr. Big Britches, but what I’m telling you is de trut’. I was out dere by de prayer tree having me a little talk wit’ God ‘cause Him and me, we not been understandin’ each other too good lately. De las’ thing I told Him about was de shoes dat’s gone missing from de tree, den I saw de ghos’.”
“If there’s any shoes missing from that tree it’s probably because some bum came in off the street and took ‘em,” Trevor said.
“Yeah? Den how come dat bum was too stupid to grab de good pair? He took de ones all busted up and old.”
Trevor muttered something unintelligible and slouched in his seat.
“Dey was all gray-lookin’,” Poochie said, looking from me to Angelle, “and came from ‘cross de bayou, all de way up to de house. Dey float low to de ground, flat, like dey was laying down, you know? Dey had a head, some arms; dey legs look funny, though, kind of like a baseball bat, skinny like dat, and dey didn’t have no feet. Dat don’t make no sense, huh? If dey de ones stole de shoes, where dey gonna put ‘em if dey don’t got no feet? “ She paused for a moment, then shook her head as though to whip her thoughts back into line. “Anyways, like I said, dey come from de bayou to de house right after I talked to de good Lord. I said, “Show me de sign, God. Give me de answer for what’s going on ‘round dis place.” Dat’s when I saw dem, and dat’s how I know dey for real ghos’ ‘cause de answer came straight from de good Lord, and He don’t lie.”
“Would you just stop talking about stupid shit like that?” Trevor bellowed.
Poochie took a step towards him, her face turning bright red. “You t’ink you jus’ found a fancy way to tell me to shut up? Huh? Come on. Be a man. Tell me dat again straight to my face and see if I don’t pass you a slap on de other side of you face.”
Angelle held up a hand. “Y’all stop, please.”
Feeling like a voyeur in a PG-13 rated ménage à trois, I took off for the bathroom to get away from the fighting and to grimace in pain in peace. The ache in my finger was overwhelming. It was so cold it burned. Way beyond excruciating.
As I walked down the hallway, I could still hear Angelle, Poochie, and Trevor pitching words back and forth, all of them getting louder. A few feet ahead on the left, I saw the dim glow from the nightlight Angelle always left on in the bathroom. I couldn’t wait to get in there and close the door, shut out the anger from the kitchen, react to my pain in private. The intensity of it was evidently affecting my eyesight, too, because with every step I took, the glow from the nightlight seemed to grow brighter and brighter, then suddenly dim to near darkness. It did that twice, and was on the upswing to brightening again when something dark and oblong suddenly bolted out of the bathroom, then flashed across the hall into a bedroom. I rocked to a stop, heart thudding. Had I just seen that? It had happened so fast—optical illusion caused by a blink? Caused by the nightlight brightening—darkening? Bright—dark—dark, just like the form in the kitchen that smelled of musk—just like the shapes Poochie said she saw slipping into the house through the bricks. There was only one way for me to know for sure . . .
Tucking my left hand under my right arm, I realized I was still wearing the rubber gloves. I slipped them off, stuck them in the back pocket of my jeans, clamped my teeth together, then headed for the bedroom—praying nothing was in there.
As soon as I reached the room, I flipped on the light switch, squinted against the sudden brightness, and flinched as if expecting a blow. The pain in my finger didn’t intensify, but it didn’t decrease either, which meant. . . what?
A twin bed with a plush pink bedspread and metal side rails sat against the back wall. Beside it was a nightstand that held a pink plastic cup, a small wooden cross perched on a round base, and a tiny statue of an angel wielding a sword. On the other side of the room near a window was a narrow dresser with a framed eight by ten portrait propped on top of it. The photo was of Angelle and Trevor, she in a wedding dress, he in a tux. Taking in the cross and statue again, and knowing that neither my sister nor Trevor were overtly religious, I figured this had to be Poochie’s room. If something had come in here, it wasn’t in here now . . .unless it was hiding under the bed. And I wasn’t about to look and find out.
Despite the pain in my finger, I was too nervous now to lock myself away in the bathroom—especially after what I’d seen—or thought I’d seen, so I headed for the kitchen. Halfway down the hall, I heard the arguing still going on and made a quick detour into the living room, then out the front door and into the yard.
As soon as I got outside my finger began to warm up. Whatever had caused it to act up was obviously in the house—the toaster, the flickering lights, that racing shadow that may not have been a shadow at all. What the hell was going on here? If all of this was caused by some spirit—or three of them, as Poochie claimed, what the shit was I supposed to do about it? My finger might be alerting me to the dead, but that didn’t do me any good if there wasn’t a body involved. What was I supposed to do with air, smoke? Even if I could identify a spirit, how was I supposed to capture it? What the hell was I supposed to do with it?
Frustrated by too many questions and not one decent answer, I began pacing the front yard, my left hand tucked safely away in my pants’ pocket. The evening was warm; the air abuzz with mosquitoes. I swatted a couple away from my face, and in that movement my eye caught the glimmer of water about five hundred feet ahead. I walked towards it, saw the reflection of the moon on its flat gray surface, felt anticipation swell in my chest. So much craziness had gone on in the short time I’d been here that I hadn’t had time to get a bead on the kids. No matter the reason, it seemed utterly pathetic given they were one of the biggest reasons I’d come here in the first place. I might not know what to do with ghosts and ghouls, but I knew what to do with the missing, and it was time I did it. The only thing different in this situation versus anything else I’d ever hunted for was the swamp. I’d never worked through water before, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t. All I had to do was focus, maybe harder than usual, really zero in on those kids. I didn’t know what Sarah and Nicky looked like, but that truly didn’t matter. It wasn’t outward appearance my finger connected to; it was energy.
I walked to the edge of the water, glanced about to make sure the coast was clear, then pulled my left hand out of my pocket. It felt weird standing out here without my gloves, without my finger tucked into my palm. Hiding, I was always hiding. Throughout dinner, I’d kept my left hand hidden under the table, later it went into my pocket, then inside rubber gloves. Out in the open this way, I felt vulnerable, naked, like I’d literally stepped out into the world without a stitch of clothes on.
Gritting my teeth, I curled my left hand into a fist, then held it out at arm’s length. If this was going to b
e anything like at the Bloody Bucket, I was in for another serious round of ouch. But that’s why I was here, right? The kids. The kids and Angelle.
After glancing around once more to make sure no one was watching, I unlocked my fist and splayed my fingers, stretching them out wide. I closed my eyes and focused on Sarah first—that little girl, only seven years old—what it must have felt like to be that small and lost in such a big wilderness, in the dark—how afraid she must be. I did the same with Nicky—only eight years old. Then, without any conscious effort on my part, their energies merged in my mind, and those assumed fears became one huge, living, breathing terror. The power of it rolled over me in waves, cutting my breath.
Within seconds, my extra finger reacted—violently. Burning, biting, like a firecracker had blown off the tip. Then the digit pulled itself up--up as if meaning to point to the sky, then it jerked over to the right, overlapping the two fingers beside it. Fire raced through the finger, down through my hand, my wrist, up my arm. I gasped from the intensity of it. I’d never felt anything like this before.
Heat normally came when I hunted for inanimate objects—keys, a watch, a hair brush. But this wasn’t normal heat. It was explosive, intense, and I didn’t understand it at all. The only thing that did make sense was the steady point of the finger. From where I stood, it was telling me to head east . . .
Despite the pain, I forced myself to calm, concentrate, clear my mind so I could understand and interpret what I was experiencing.
Time . . . something to do with time. . .
The more fierce the heat, the pain—the shorter the time. . . the less time we had to find the kids? The less time the kids had to live? Which was it? Both?
. . . shorter the time . . . shorter the time . . . I rolled the words over and over in my mind, concentrating hard on the kids, desperate for a clearer interpretation.
Suddenly, I heard the slight clearing of a throat, then, “I’d be careful with that if I were you.”
Startled, my eyes flew open, and I whirled about. A man was walking past me, already fifty or so feet away—a man wearing a black Stetson, a long black coat. Cherokee. How long had he . . . sonofabitch—my finger . . . he’d seen it!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I felt anesthetized, too stunned to move or speak as I watched Cherokee’s tall silhouette meld into the dark distance until there was no discerning his black coat from the cloak of night. He’d seen—seen me. Not even Angelle had ever witnessed my finger reacting with such intensity. What would he do? Who would he tell? Would I walk into town tomorrow morning and find every head turning my way, every expression screaming, “Freak!”? Or would it be like before, people following me everywhere, wanting, begging, nagging, never giving me a moment’s peace?
A sudden squeal of tires on pavement broke my train of worry, and I glanced towards the sound. It was Trevor’s truck, peeling down the highway in front of the house. Even with his boat in tow, he managed to pull smoke from the asphalt. Evidently, the tiff he’d been having with Angelle and Poochie hadn’t ended on a warm and fuzzy note. Great, something else to worry about. Tucking my left hand into my pocket, I headed back to the house, still trying to come to terms with the fact that I’d been seen.
When I walked into the kitchen, Poochie was rambling about the absurdity of men, while wiping down already clean countertops. Sometimes that’s what women do to work out anger or frustration, we wipe things, clean things, scrub things. Right now, Poochie looked angry enough to scrub somebody’s face off.
Angelle was sitting at the table, her head in her hands. She looked up as soon as I walked in. “You okay? Where’d you go?”
“Went for a walk.”
“You look . . .I don’t know . . . frazzled?” She peered at me intently, and I saw the questions in her eyes she obviously didn’t want to ask aloud. “Did something happen to you out there? Did you see . . . something?”
In that same momentary eye contact, I tried relaying my own message. “I’ll tell you later.” Then said audibly, “I’m fine.”
Her brow furrowed, and her eyes flickered to Poochie, then back to me. “Sorry you had to hear that big mess earlier.”
I gave her a half smile. “No worries.” I pulled out a chair and sat beside her at the table.
“If it was up to me,” Poochie said, tossing her dishtowel into the sink, then coming over to join us. “I’d take all dem men and put dem in one big trash pile ‘cause dat’s all dey good for. Or put dem all back in diapers ‘cause most de time dey act like babies anyway.”
“Trevor isn’t usually like that,” Angelle said. “He’s been putting in a lot of hours at the plant and with those new traps . . . he’s probably just really stressed out.”
Poochie harrumphed. “You can make all de excuses you want. I know you trying to be nice, but I know dat boy. Dat’s my grandson. I can say he’s a piece of shit when I need to, and right now I need to ‘cause he’s acting like a piece of shit.” With that, Poochie aimed her chin at me. “And you, you got you a man?”
Slightly taken aback by the question, I shrugged, then shook my head.
Poochie cocked her head, her eyes flashing with curiosity. “Mais, how come? You pretty and you smart. How come you don’t got a man?” Before I could answer, she stuck out a hand and wiggled it from side to side. “You one of dem . . . what you call dat? A lessbean?”
“Jesus, Poochie,” Angelle said, her head snapping to attention. “Dunny is not a lesbian.”
Poochie tsked. “You don’t gotta get you drawers all tied up you butt. I was just asking.”
I grinned, relieved that the conversation had turned down a less serious road for once. “It’s all right. I date men, Poochie. I just haven’t found one worth keeping is all.”
She nodded. “I know what you sayin’. Like I say, dey just babies dat never grow up.”
Angelle opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it, evidently changing her mind. Seeing that, I scooped up the conversation so Poochie wouldn’t zero in on her.
“Talking about men, I saw Cherokee outside a moment ago. That’s his name, right? The guy who wears the black cowboy hat and the long coat?”
“Yeah, dat’s Cherokee. Where you saw him like dat?”
“Out on the other end of the property, near the bayou.”
Poochie frowned. “Huh . . . I wonder what he was doin’ out here dis time of de day? He lives all de way down de Plaquemine highway, pas’ de big bridge. He makes a little pass into town every once in a while, goes eat at de Bucket, you know? But I don’t remember de last time I seen him come out dis way. What he was doin’ out dere?”
Folding my hands under the table, I quickly sorted through words I might be able to use that wouldn’t incriminate me or create a lie. “I don’t know. He just sort of showed up. Talked to me for a couple of seconds, then he was gone again.”
Poochie’s brows peaked. “He talked to you?”
“Well . . .yeah,” I said, a little surprised that she seemed surprised.
“Huh, dat’s something. Cherokee hardly don’t talk to nobody even when he knows dem. Stays to himself most de time; you know what I’m saying?”
“He’s a little weird if you ask me,” Angelle said. “Wearing black all the time. The only time he takes off that coat is in the dead of summer, and even then he still stays in black. It’s always so hot around here I don’t know how he stands it.”
“Dat’s not really too weird, no. Some people get cold all de way down to deir blood, so it’s hard for dem to warm up. Either dat or dat’s jus’ what de man likes to wear. From what I can see, he’s not too bad. Kind of nice in his own way, you know? At leas’ he’s not stupid like dat retarded Pork Chop over to de Bloody Bucket?”
“Is Cherokee from around here?” I asked.
“I don’t know much about him,” Angelle said with a shrug. “He’s been around here as long as I’ve been here. That’s about it.”
“Oh, dat man’s been here since he was a
baby,” Poochie said. “Sook tol’ me.”
“Is there anything Sook doesn’t tell you?” Angelle asked.
Poochie pursed her lips, glanced up for a moment as if contemplating the question, then said, “Non. Sook’s pretty good about dat. She tells me what I gotta know, about Cherokee, about a lot of people around dese parts.”
“What’d she say about Cherokee?” I asked.
“Dat his mama and daddy was quiet like him. His mama was part Cherokee, dat’s how he got his name. His daddy, I t’ink Sook said he was part Sioux or Chitamachi, I’m not too sure. Dey got a lotta injuns ‘round here. Sioux, Cherokee, Pawnee, all dat. Some of dem full, some of dem mix up wit’ de Cajun people.”
“Is Sook part Native American?” I asked, remembering the woman’s broad features.
“Non, Sook her, part her people’s from Mississippi, part’s from New Orleans. Dat’s how come she got a funny accent. Dem people from Mississippi, dey nice, yeah, but when you mix dem wit’ de people from here . . .it’s like puttin’ turnips in a gumbo. It might taste good, but it’s gonna look funny.”
I grinned, not sure I understood the reference, but getting a kick out of her own accent. Then something dawned on me from earlier. “Why does Trevor call you Poochie like everybody else? How come he doesn’t call you Grandma or Granny?”
Poochie crossed her arms over her large, sagging breasts. “Because I said so, dat’s why. I tol’ his mama and daddy de day he was born, have dat boy call me Poochie. I didn’t want no name like Grandma. Dat makes me sound like a old woman ready for de nursing home, and me, I was far from goin’ to de nursing home den. I’m still far from dat, you know?”
I nodded in agreement. I couldn’t see Poochie in a nursing home.
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