by Eden Royce
“So, you think this woman can do it?” He frowned at the diner’s laminated menu and tossed it aside. That’s what he hated about the South, you couldn’t get good food here late at night. In New York, you could get any kind of food, any time of day—get anything, really—if you had the money to pay for it.
“Maybe.” Gabe chewed at his cuticles. A strip of dirt lay under his nails. When the waitress refilled his mug, he grasped it with both hands and held the white stoneware against his lips. “So warm.”
Gabe had been his link to the seedy side of the tracks when he visited his grandparents each summer, able to get liquor and cars, and girls who didn’t know better. In all things shady and south of the Mason-Dixon, Mike trusted him. “Look. If I’m gonna get involved in this kind of thing, it needs to work. And fast.”
“I hear you.”
“Thing I don’t get is how did Karen move all those accounts without me noticing? I wonder if she found out about…”
Gabe grimaced. “You didn’t exactly try to hide it.” His voice turned wistful. “You had it so good with her.”
“You don’t even understand.” The bell on the door tinkled and three squealing teenagers in shorts and flip-flops tumbled into the all-night grease bucket. Mike continued in a hard whisper. “Can this witch—”
“Mambo,” Gabe corrected, his breath like sour beer.
“What?”
“She is amambo, not a witch. A priestess, a vessel for—”
“Whatever you wanna call her. Can she bring Karen back?”
“I think so. You just have to pay.” Gabe pulled the wrinkled coat closer around his thin frame and shivered. “But I dunno how much it will be.”
Mike stood and threw a twenty on the Formica tabletop. “Go get yourself some rest, bro. And a shower. You reek.”
Back outside, Mike programmed the address into his car’s GPS. Gabe’s scribbling made the words look as though they read: 9 Mystery Rose.
“It’s ‘Road’. Damn drunk.” Mike relaxed into the plush interior of the midnight blue coupe as it slid through the half-lit streets. Litter danced macabre steps with the wind in the shadows of the abandoned buildings.
A silhouette darted in front of the car.
“Holy shit!” Mike stood on the brakes. A symphony of screeching tires and florid curses severed the silence. The hunched figure skittered away and faded from view.
Unable to locate address. The guidance system blinked, as if confused.
“Piece of crap. You had it a minute ago.” Mike pressed every button on the screen built into the dashboard, but the machine refused to respond. He looked around. No one in sight to ask.
A cloud shifted, leaving the moon exposed and brighter than the flickering streetlights. “There it is.”
Number nine crouched at the end of Mystery. A lonely lamp fought to illuminate the shop’s front window. Mike parked illegally, on the double yellow lines, sure no cop was anywhere near this place. He hopped out of the car and jogged the few steps to the storefront. He peered inside, and a fluttering movement made him jump back. The door opened and the sweet heat of oranges and chilies wafted onto the balmy air.
He walked into the shop, ducked under the bundles of dried herbs hung upside- down from the ceiling. One wall displayed amber bottles in various sizes, all without labels. A large crow swung on a stand in the corner, its black eye following him as he moved. A single white candle glowed next to the bird and Mike could see his reflection in its unblinking eye. He took a step back toward the entrance.
A nut-brown woman motioned him deeper into the murky room. Her skin, while no longer taut, remained unlined. Two salt-and-pepper plaits escaped from the patterned headscarf wrapped into dizzying spirals around her head.
“What can I do for you, mon fils?” She didn’t smile as she settled her stooped frame onto a stool next to an antique secretary’s desk covered with what looked like sheets of parchment.
“Um, yes. I was told to come here for—” Words failed him when he saw her slice the pad of her thumb and deposit a few drops of blood into a ceramic bowl. This shit was crazy. Even Karen wasn’t worth this. “Actually, I’m just looking.” Mike slid backward a step. Two.
Her rheumy eyes turned sharp and pinned him like an insect. “Everyone come here for something. You don’t find Zéphyrine less you need her.”
“My wife died and I was told you could…could…” He swallowed with difficulty. The woman seemed content to wait through his discomfort. “Bring her back to life. I need to talk to her one more time.”
Zéphyrine didn’t reply, but added a few spindly dried twigs to the blood in the bowl. No other sound moved in the hot shop except the rustling of bird’s wings. “Gabriel tell you this?”
Mike nodded, then spoke when the woman frowned. “Yes, ma’am.” He pulled his shirt collar away from his neck, then unfastened the top button.
“What else?”
“He said I had to pay you.”
“Always payment.”
Mike rocked back and forth on his heels while the woman continued to add pungent items from the drawers in the desk to the bowl, heedless of his impatience. Unused to waiting, he tamped down his budding frustration and surveyed the store. A bowl of pomegranates rested on a window ledge, their coarse skins dried and tight. Rolls of parchment similar to the ones on the antique desk were tied with twine and piled seven deep into wine racks. Drawn to the supple finish on a ring box covered in pale, soft leather on a side table, he reached for it.
“Don’t touch that.”
He yelped and spun around. The mambo, fists on her generous hips, stood toe to toe with him. The top of her head came up to his shoulder.
“How did your wife die?”
“She got sick and—”
“You killed her,” the woman interrupted.
Mike’s jaw dropped and he looked around him, as if he could locate a camera hidden among rows of incense cones and twirling dreamcatchers. “No, I didn’t! Of course not. I loved her.”
She flicked her tongue at him. Thick and black, it left the scent of wet ashes on the air. “I can taste your lie.” She advanced on him and he banged against the table behind him in an effort to retreat.
A high, weedy screech came from the box as it fell to the stone floor and cracked open. Thin, dark liquid seeped from the damaged corner. “I’m sorry.”
“La verité, Michael.” Her accent deepened; its richness covered him, mesmerized him, lulled his tongue to loosen. “I will hear only the truth.”
Mike’s vision swam and he swallowed hard, turning away from her searching eyes. “I never could keep a job, but I need money for my lifestyle. Clothes, cars, trips. I was drowning in debt when Karen came along, with her convertible and her trust fund. She spent a fortune on me.” His eyes locked with the crow’s unblinking gaze. “When we got married, it changed. She put me on an allowance. Said I was burning through her family’s money. Said I needed to be a man and get a job and stop bleeding her dry. That set me off.”
When the haze of truth lifted, he returned his eyes to Zéphyrine and she was nodding. “How long ago?”
“About three months.”
“And you want to know how she hide the money from you? Where it is now? So you don’t have to hit a lick at a snake for the rest of your days?” Her skinny plaits wiggled as she shook her head. “I never understand a man don’t want to work.”
“But I—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t matter. Don’t care.” Zéphyrine went back to the desk and poured the contents of the ceramic mortar into a woven pouch and secured it around her neck. “Payment is due when I do the work.”
“You don’t care that I killed her?”
“Judgment is not mine. Can you pay?”
What was the going rate for a resurrection? Gabe had said that it had cost him everything he owned, which wasn’t much—a few thousand dollars and probably his piece of shit car. Ten thou wouldn’t make a dent in Karen’s cash. They’d had clo
se to fifteen million the last time he peered over her shoulder at the summary statement from their accountant. He looked around the shop with a careful eye. Although with the state of this place, the witch woman—mango, mambo, who knew?—a couple of grand would be like winning the lottery.
“I’ll pay whatever. As long as you’re not wanting a pound of my flesh.” He quipped, hoping the only Shakespearean reference he knew wouldn’t become a portent of his fate.
She didn’t share the joke, didn’t even react, instead pointing to a dim corner. “I am not in the skin trade. Let us go.”
He took the shovel she indicated. There was no sign of the box, save for a smudged trail of dark liquid where it had fallen.
***
Mike followed the old woman as the full moon guided her through the cemetery. She navigated the weary tombstones with grace, making sure her steps never fell on a grave. The moon stopped and hovered over an unmarked section of the well-kept graveyard where the grass had just begun to grow in.
Zéphyrine snorted in disgust. “You didn’t buy a stone for her?” A thin metal frame plunged into the ground held a piece of paper with a woman’s name written in with black marker.
“I didn’t have time. I was waiting until I had the money to do it right.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“Dig.”
Mike took off his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. Piles of earth grew higher behind him. His back throbbed, but thoughts of instant financial security drove the shovel deeper. Sweat poured from him. Fine-grained dirt abraded his face and arms. He was aching, ready to stop for a breather when he heard a metallic thud. A few more scrapes of the shovel and he forced the blade of the shovel into the corner of the casket and wedged it open.
Karen lay in the unlined casket, hands folded on top of her prim charcoal suit, her dusky skin ashen. Lank black hair rolled in waves past her shoulders.
Decomposition had yet to eat away all of her serene face, but the skin on her hands had tightened and shrunk them into claws. Zéphyrine leaned in and sprinkled the contents of the pouch onto the body as she murmured in a melodic French. “Réveille.”
Karen’s eyelids flipped open. A hazy film covered her no-longer-bright eyes, but the orbs rotated in their sockets until they found Mike’s cringing form.
Mike pressed against the back of the hole to reassure himself of an escape route. “K-Karen, honey?”
Her jaw opened with a pop and she struggled to sit up. Her right hand caressed her left, then wandered up to smooth her disheveled hair. “Where is…my ring?” Her voice was painful to hear, ragged and unused.
Terror sliced his flesh and crawled in. “I had to sell it. You were gone so fast.”
“What…do you…want?”
He thought of what he would do if Karen lunged at him. He could use the shovel. Or if he couldn’t get to it in time, he knew his hands fit around her neck.
“The dead do not breathe, Michael.” Zéphyrine said, her accented English crisp and dry.
Shit. He turned his attention back to his late wife. “Karen, I miss you. I can’t be with you, but I need to ask you a question.”
The corpse waited.
“Where did you move our money, baby? I went to settle up some bills and it was gone. Our accounts had barely enough for your funeral.” Sweat ran down his face, but he wouldn’t wipe it away, in case Karen mistook it for tears.
“I moved it… I thought you were…cheating. Stupid...”
“You know I’d never do that to you.”
Karen’s face contorted in a rictus smile. “Central Credit…Union. In my…maiden name.” She creaked her head to look at Zéphyrine. When she faced her husband again, the smile turned knowing and the wheezing was no more. It was the voice of disdain he’d hated so much that he’d choked it out of her. “Don’t worry, my love. We’ll be together soon.”
Mike slammed the coffin shut. As he clambered out of the dank hole, he could hear Karen’s cackling laughter. Free from the hole, he brushed dirt from his slacks and tried to catch his breath. “I’m getting as far away from this freak show as possible.”
“There is still the matter of my payment.”
“Right. When I get the money tomorrow, you’ll get paid.”
“Payment is due when I do the work.”
“Look, I don’t have it right now. You heard her; it’s in the bank. But I’ll get you your payment, I swear.”
“You already have it.”
She reached out to him and he knocked her hand away, then pulled out his wallet. “Here’s thirty bucks. That’s all I’ve got on me.”
The black tongue curled around her thick lips. “I would prefer your eternal servitude.”
Mike ran.
Arctic wind shrieked in from behind the witch and tore the scarf from her head, allowing the long, thin braids to crack whip-like in the now frozen air. Icy mist rose from the ground. Zéphyrine’s eyes rolled back in her skull, white against the walnut skin as she stretched her bare, fleshy arms to the torn sky. A high, keening cry rose up as the earth lunged and snapped like a rabid dog on a leash. She released its chain. “My legion, the hunt is now.”
Mike’s dress shoes slipped on the moist dirt he’d se eagerly dug up. He panted and his body dripped cold sweat. He stumbled into another hole, hidden by the cemetery’s long grasses, and went down. He clawed at the ground as it retched and split open beneath him. Rot and decay tumbled into his mouth as he tried to scream. He spat, rubbed his tongue on his filth-crusted sleeve.
A skeletal hand closed around his ankle, the flesh on the bone slick with the ooze of decay. Mike stared as the remains of the skeleton pulled itself forward and opened a mouth teeming with bloated maggots.
“So warm,” it whispered.
Mike howled and kicked off the thing’s grip, scrambled to his feet and fled toward the open cemetery gate. He dodged the grasping hands emerging from the dirt. He risked a glance behind him. They were lumbering toward him, hundreds of them, stinking and leaking putrid gore. He ran harder, trying to outdistance the rotting corpses as they swayed to Zéphyrine’s eerie song.
Mike turned to see a milk-white form rise in his path and he could not avoid it. He ran through the spirit and gasped at the achy weakness it left. Hope of escape withered. More hazy forms emanated from the frosty slush, each taking a turn ripping away hunks of his soul. He wobbled, unable to keep his footing.
His steps faltered as the apparitions circled back for another pass, their banshee wails gluttonous and gleeful.
Legs leaden now, Mike sank deeper into the tortured soil. It was getting closer: the rattle of bone, the tattered mutterings… Above it all, the scent of wet ashes. He began to sob.
***
Anthony strolled into the diner and found Mike at a corner table hunched over a cup of steaming coffee. His navy suit jacket was grayed over with dust and his hair stood at odd angles. Mike pushed a thin strip of paper with an address scrawled on it across the table. Anthony looked around before he pocketed it. “Man, you look like hell.”
Hand Of Glory
Heat waves always brought out the murderers. And the grip Mother Nature had on Charleston’s neck had everyone down for the count. I crushed out my cigarette before entering the interrogation room then rubbed the wine stain lipstick from my fingers. The ancient central air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the midday sun and the triple digit temperatures it dragged with it. The room was hotter than Satan’s bathwater.
A two-way mirror was the only break in the flat gray walls surrounding the metal table where a suspect slumped, his wrists shackled. The man’s eye had a split near the outer corner and while the gash wasn’t bleeding, the flesh surrounding it had already begun to darken.
“Tell me it wasn’t one of ours that did the shiner,” I said to the burly uniformed officer stationed in the corner by the door, his back to a wall.
Officer Butter shrugged. “Don’t think so.”
“Great,” I mumbled to myself. “Just w
hat this case needs.” I tucked my white cotton blouse into my trousers then marched over to the table and addressed the man in the chair. “Good afternoon, Mister Byrd. My name is Gloria Jackson, and I’m the lead investigator on the Westbrook case. It’s come to my attention you were found with the victim’s wallet—”
An eggshell colored blob of mucus landed on the floor at my feet. When I looked up from the splatter, Byrd was grinning at me, spittle clinging to his lower lip. So it was going to be that sort of day. Even better. I straightened my glove and continued where I’d left off.
“—in your possession and copious amounts of her blood were found in your car. I’d like you to tell me something about that.”
“Fuck you.”
“We have a verbal statement from you, but on listening to it again, I don’t believe you’ve told us everything you know about this matter.”
Byrd sucked his teeth as he studied his reflection in the two-way mirror, but was otherwise silent.
His story was he’d picked up Dana Westbrook where she’s been hitchhiking off Interstate 26 near Monck’s Corner. He said that the girl had told him she was underage—although she didn’t look it—so he hadn’t tried anything. She was running away from home because her parents didn’t get her and she was going to be eighteen in a couple of months anyway.
Byrd had gone on to say the girl was unhurt when he picked her up and was fine when he’d dropped her off at the bus station in North Charleston, some thirty miles away. His explanation for the wallet? She’d left it and her purse under the seat of his car. He even had an explanation for the blood on his passenger seat: it was her menstrual blood. “She was bleedin’ like a cut pig,” he’d said, laughing. “I wouldn’t stick myself in that.”
For hours, he’s been questioned about her disappearance, but he hadn’t said any more. The arresting officers knew it was him…I knew it was him. I needed to find Dana, her parents and the entire city were waiting for news of her whereabouts. They hoped we could find her and bring her home safe.