by Lea Nolan
A grinding metal sound churns inside the wall that reminds me of the spinning gears of a clock. With a click, the rotating stops and last bookcase pops away from the wall.
“What the…? Ugh!” Jacks words trail off as the brutal aroma of decaying flesh wafts into the room. He groans as he slaps his palm across his nose and mouth.
Cooper coughs then winces as he steps to the opening and pulls on the bookcase. “I think we found what we’re looking for.”
It swings open to reveal a secret, windowless room. The pent-up, fetid air from inside the compartment gushes out and disperses as it spills into the study, then drifts out the window.
I step inside. The stench is still strong enough to burn my throat. Like the crypt at the cemetery, the sparely furnished room is lined with stone and the air is cool. It’s a no-tech refrigerator no doubt intended to help preserve the flesh of the boo hag’s latest victim.
Aside from a small table, chair, and a bookcase filled with ancient ledgers, there’s a wooden stand in the middle of the room propping up Beau’s skin. The flesh husk is posed upright, his lifeless underarms and crotch supported by thick pegs that stick out from a board. Its hollow eyes, nose, and mouth are barren voids of doom.
Cooper swallows hard. “What do we do now?”
“Get it off there and dump salt down its throat,” I answer, dreading every moment.
Jack slaps his palms together. “Might as well get to it.” He strides to the skin and stares at it for a second, as if sizing up a math problem. Without waiting for me or Cooper, he slips his hand under Beau’s meaty left arm and flings it over the peg. The shoulder sags, pulling the skin suit off-kilter. Jack spins around to us, his face gray as he clasps the flaccid skin. “It’s not so bad. Kind of feels like a snake. A rotting snake, but if you can get past the stink, it’s tolerable.” It spills onto the floor in a gelatinous puddle. Splayed on its back, it’s vacant face stares up at the ceiling, its mouth a gaping hole.
Cooper kneels beside the pool of flaccid flesh. He stares at what once was his father for a long moment, then lifts his gaze to mine. His eyes are moist and tinged with pink. He extends his hand. “Give me the salt. I want to kill it.”
I yank off my messenger bag, flip open the flap, then pull out the three cartons of salt. I pop open the spout on the first and pass it to him. “Pour it into the mouth, then down past the neck, and into the body cavity. That should do the trick.”
Cooper takes the container, then leans to where the head lays. “Once I do this, my dad—or what I knew of him—will be gone forever.”
I nod. “That’s right. The boo hag won’t be able to slip back into the skin without being burned.”
Jack steps toward Cooper and grips his shoulder. “Your dad’s been gone for years. The guy you know was an impersonation. And a pretty bad one at that.”
Cooper nods as he peers at the husk. “Look what it did to him. It wasn’t enough to destroy his reputation, it desecrated his body, too. Well, that ends tonight. I’m not going to let it do anything more to my dad.” He grabs hold of what’s left of his father’s face. The cheeks jiggle and the neck ripples as he tugs on the mouth to stretch it open. Mashing his lips, Cooper tilts the container to Beau’s mouth and pours the white grains in a steady stream.
The pink flesh fizzles and pops.
Jack straddles the center of the skin suit’s midsection and strains to lift the chest, allowing Cooper better access to the rest of the cavity. Cooper empties the container, then reaches for the second.
The faint scent of charred meat floats up from the carcass.
Jack gags. “I think we’re cooking Beau.”
My stomach churns. “Ugh, gross.” I peek inside and see the areas that have been salted have already turned a dark gray and hardened like beef jerky. In a sense he’s right, but I think this is one of those situations that it’s best to downplay the obvious. “No, the salt is just drying out the skin. Try not to breathe.”
Jack nods and swallows hard. “Yeah, okay.”
When Cooper’s finally finished dumping the third container, he and Jack lay the skin back on the floor. It’s shriveled and withered and has shrunken in on itself.
Cooper steps back and takes in the desiccated slab of wrinkled flesh. “I’m officially an orphan.”
“You always have been. You just didn’t know it.” Jack’s voice is uncharacteristically solemn.
Cooper turns toward me, his eyes misty. “So now what?”
“We destroy the hag before it possesses you or finds another body to snatch before the sun rises,” I answer, sounding a whole lot more confident than I actually am. Because as easy as all that sounds, I actually don’t have the faintest clue how to pull any of it off.
“Awesome. What’s your plan of attack?” Jack asks.
I gnaw my bottom lip, considering whether to be totally honest. “Um, a trap? Ideally, if we could keep it captive until dawn, then the sunlight would fry it alive. We wouldn’t have to engage in any hand-to-hand combat.”
Jack smiles. “Bonus. I don’t want to have to stab that thing again if I can help it.”
Cooper hitches his brow. “Traps usually require bait.”
“Uh-huh,” I answer.
“So what’s the lure?” Cooper asks.
After all that’s happened, I’m surprised it’s not obvious to him by now.
Jack hitches a brow. “Seriously, dude? You.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Cooper sucks a chestful of air. “Fine. Where are we setting up my death trap?”
“Um…” I glance up at the shelves. My breath catches. Every single artifact flashes with bright yellow light. It’s as if it’s a display case of flares rather than discreet historical objects. I walk around the desk and stand before the cabinets, gawking at the show. Bathed in the intense light, each item takes on a different luster and a deeper significance.
These aren’t just things that were used here at the plantation. They’re possessions that belonged to the people who once lived here. My ears prickle and heat. The combs, fans, pocket watches, and other knickknacks on these shelves meant something to High Point Bluff’s residents. And they were collected by the boo hag, who has possessed every Master of the Plantation since the first, Edmund, died, inhabiting their bodies and hijacking their lives. A stinging sensation inches its way up the back of my scalp as realization dawns. These are trophies.
“What is it?” Jack and Cooper ask.
“Get a couple boxes. We need to bring these with us to the cemetery.”
After Jack and Cooper help me load up all the artifacts from the shelves, I grab a pen and clean sheet of paper from the printer on the desk and jot down a note.
So sorry about your skin. :( If you’re looking for Cooper you can find him and the Beaumont Ruby down at the cemetery. Happy hunting. :)
I hand it to Jack. “Leave this on top of the carcass. That should make our point.”
Jack races into the stone room and delivers the note. We sprint from the study and head toward the kitchen to the side exit. An idea pops in to my head.
I stop short and turn to Cooper. “Do you still have the mojo I made you?” I leave off the part where Taneea made him take it off because it clashed with the hideous new clothes she picked out.
“Yeah, it’s in my bedroom. Do you need it?”
I breathe a sigh of relief. “No. You will. Go grab it.”
He sets his box on the floor and then races down the hall and upstairs. A few seconds later he’s back, his chest heaving for air. “Are you sure it still works?” He extends the little white pouch toward me as his soft green-blue gaze searches mine.
I know what he’s really asking: does it still contain my love? I can’t help but wonder the same. I clasp the white pouch in my hand. It’s soft and worn from lying against Cooper’s skin for weeks. White energy warms my fingertips and dances up my arm. My skin tingles as joy and happiness swell in my chest, and my lips bend into a smile. “It’s still wo
rking. You should put it on now. You can never be too safe.”
Fifteen minutes later, after we stop at the caretaker’s cottage for a straw broom, Cooper pulls the golf cart up to the cemetery, the one place we aren’t supposed to be unsupervised, yet where we’ve managed to spend an awful lot of time. Instinct or my spirit guide or the green and white psychic beads on my collier kick in, drawing me deep into the graveyard. Though I don’t expect the boo hag to strike until we near Cooper’s birthday at midnight, we stick close, on high alert, squinting through the cloudy night and listening for any indication that our visitor has arrived early.
Jack sets his box on the ground, then props the old wooden doors of the crypt open and dashes inside. A second later he bolts out, the pirate’s dagger in his grip. He lifts it for us to see. “For cutting the kudzu.” The blade reflects the moon’s glow.
We trudge on, wading farther into the cemetery to the section that abuts the salt marsh. The stones are draped with thick, winding vines, and the ground is a lush green carpet that’s hard to walk through. And since the sky is covered with thick gray clouds, only sporadic beams of moonlight shine through, bathing the hallowed ground in spooky shadows. The faster we find a safe place to build a fire, the better.
Clarissa’s grave is just ahead, near the pile of mullein torches we left stacked on the ground after we broke the Beaumont curse. An awesome idea flashes across my mind. I glance around, but this area is too crowded with graves to set up a boo hag trap.
A short distance away, on the bank above the marsh, we come upon an area with fewer gravestones. My scalp pricks, making me halt. “This is where we need to be. Let’s clear the area and find some wood for a fire.”
Jack hacks at the vines with the dagger while Cooper uses his pocketknife, a less superior, but adequate tool. I gather up the clippings, and with Cooper and Jack at my side, toss the discarded kudzu into the woods until we collect enough kindling and fallen tree branches for a decent fire. Within minutes, Jack has built a fire big enough to provide plenty of light.
I hold up one of the bundles from Clarissa’s grave, then flip the torch over and run my fingers over the spiky, reedy ends. “Miss Delia said boo hags are obsessed with counting things. Especially stuff with bristles. If we shove these into the ground with the tallow ends down, the boo hag will get stuck counting these until dawn. When the sun rises it’ll burn alive, and this nightmare will be over.”
Cooper scratches his head. “So, you’re not planning to do any magic?”
“Um, no? Even if I could use the mortar, the Psychic Vision was a drain. I don’t trust myself to have enough energy to work a spell.”
“But you took a nap,” Jack says.
I nod. “I’m not a hundred percent yet. I learned my lesson with trying to cheat hoodoo. Eventually I’ll build up enough resistance that it doesn’t bother me much, but I’m not there yet. It doesn’t matter, because Miss Delia’s spell book doesn’t contain any charms to kill a boo hag. All she ever told me was to salt the skin and then fry it alive in the sun.”
Their faces hang slack. They’re not convinced. Not by a long shot.
“Guys, trust me, okay? All we’ve got to do is keep the boo hag occupied for a few hours in the mullein cage. The sun has to rise. It always does.”
“What if it gets out and starts to suck Cooper?” Jack asks.
“It won’t. At least it shouldn’t. If it does…we’ll move to Plan B,” I say with all the confidence I can muster.
He snorts. “There is no Plan B. There’s barely a Plan A. But we’re in this together and we’re out of time, so let’s build a boo hag coop.”
A few minutes later, we’ve driven the twelve upside-down torches into the soft soil. They’re arranged in a circle like fence posts, each about a foot apart to give Cooper room to escape after we’ve captured the boo hag.
Cooper wiggles into the pen between the torches. “So I’m just supposed to sit in here? And do what?”
“Wait for midnight, I suppose.”
“And how do I lure it in here?” Hands on his hips, he turns around in the circle inspecting the torches.
“Trust me, I don’t think there’ll be any luring,” Jack says. “Even before we wrecked Beau’s skin, his body was on its last legs. The boo hag needs a fresh victim. It’s not going to wait for an invitation.”
“Jack’s right. You should hold on to this, too. Just in case.” I pass Cooper the broom.
He pulls out his cell phone to check the time, then sets his alarm. “Only ten minutes to go. Not too long to wait to die.” Gripping the wooden broom handle, he paces around the cage.
I frown. “Hey, you’re not going to die.”
He stops short and turns to me. “I know.” His lips twist into a faint smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. His gaze reveals everything he’s not saying: he’s humoring me by sitting in this cage, but on the inside, he’s sure he’s toast.
I reach between the mullein bundles and grasp the mojo out from under his T-shirt collar. “I’m serious. You’re wearing a powerful Protective Shield. It’s called that for a reason. As long as you’re wearing this you’re going to be fine.”
He wraps his hand around mine as his gaze searches my face. “Okay.” His fingers are warm and strong.
As much as I might like to stand here holding his hand all night, there’s work to be done. “I’ve only got a few minutes to figure out what do to with those artifacts we brought over from the Big House.”
He releases his grip. Without looking back, I drag my box near the fire to get a better look.
Jack brings me the other cartons. “So what do you think you’re supposed to do with this stuff?”
Surveying the collection, I sigh. “I’m not sure. My spirit guide made a big deal about me hauling it down here, but now she hasn’t given me any new clues.” I pull out a silver cup and hold it in the flickering light of the flames. Back at the Big House, when this and the other artifacts were glowing, I was sure there had to be something special about them, that they were trophies collected by the boo hag from all its victims. But now, I’m starting to wonder if that’s true. There are no flashes of light, no tingles in my fingers. Not even an inscription etched into the silver.
A screech shatters the cloudy night as a shock of red streaks out of the forest, whizzes past me, and lands in the cell with Cooper. A chorus of shrieks and yelps erupts in a mixture of human and otherworldly sounds that curdle my blood.
It’s the boo hag, red, slick and shining, trapped in a cage with Cooper. “You’re mine!” the boo hag howls.
I scream and nearly jump out of my own skin as I throw up my hands and launch the silver cup skyward. Time seems to slow and my vision tunnels, allowing me to capture every event that happens around me.
The cup somersaults in slow motion as it falls back to earth and then crashes into the fire. Flames engulf the metal, ferociously licking its surface.
A streak of yellow light explodes from a nearby grave and launches into the night sky like a Roman candle. High above the clearing, it bursts like fireworks. But rather than cascading to the ground, the shimmering flecks of yellow iridescence hover in the atmosphere, twinkling with radiant intensity. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
The boo hag squeals and flinches at the light, shielding its lidless eyes from its luster.
“The broom!” I shout to Cooper, realizing this is his opportunity to gain the upper hand and distract the boo hag into counting.
Cooper shoves the broom’s straw end in the boo hag’s face. “Hey, how many strands are there?”
Crouching under the glistening brilliance still floating above, the boo hag’s thin, rectangular head tilts toward the broom as its bulging eyes lock onto the bristles. It extends its three-fingered hands toward the broom. “Give it to me!”
Cooper backs away, guiding the boo hag to the center of the cage. He points the broom’s end to a mullein bundle. “Only if you promise to count these too.”
“Dude, that was a close one!” Jack slaps Cooper on the shoulder.
Cooper’s chest rises and falls as he gasps for breath. “I’ve got to admit I had my doubts, but man, you were right.”
I shake my head. “No. Miss Delia was right.”
We watch as the boo hag combs its three-fingered hands through the strands on the post. When it finishes, it hops to the next and begins its count again.
Cooper tilts his head back to look at the light hovering above the clearing. “Is that a spirit? It sparkles like my mom.”
“I think so. It shot out when I dropped the cup into the fire. Whatever it is, it scared the crap out of the boo hag.” I glance at the silver that’s still burning in the flame. Funny. I’d have guessed it might have begun to melt by now.
“What if you tossed in the rest?” Jack asks.
Just as I’m about to tell him that’s the dumbest idea ever, that one artifact sacrificed by accident is bad enough, but a hundred on purpose is unforgivable, I reconsider. If the boo hag is frightened, even pained by one stolen Beaumont spirit, what could happen if a hundred are released? The light could be bright enough to rival the sun and we might not have to wait until dawn. If we’re lucky, this horror show could be over in a few minutes.
“You’re a genius!” A surge of adrenaline shoots through my blood stream as I throw my arms around my brother and give him a hug.
“Of course I am. Why are you so surprised?” he asks.
But rather than answer him and stroke his ego, I dive toward the nearest box and start unloading items into the fire. “Help me!” I cry and point to the other two crates of artifacts.
One by one, the items drop into the fire, feeding the flames like a giant bellows. The graveyard explodes like a bank of fireworks at New Year’s Eve as yellow spirits leap from the soil and soar toward the heavens in a stunning pyrotechnics spectacle. The cemetery is bathed in bright, glowing light as spirits dash around and spin with joy as if released from a near-eternal confinement.