Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou (23 page)

“Don’t lose heart, my baby. There are other things I can do.”

“Like what?”

“Like this house. I’m sure you’ve seen that man’s bird flying around here. It can’t get in because I put salt and earth under the door mats and on the window sills and said a few words. And, I can heal people, but not nearly as good as you and your maw-maw. Y’all are like surgeons, and I’m more like a candy striper.” She laughed heartily at this.

“I can’t heal anyone.”

“Yet,” she corrected. “You will soon enough. That ability will come when it need to.”

“But I need it now. No telling when he’s coming for Lyla. It’s like he’s playing this sick waiting game, and I need to be prepared.”

“It’s your destiny, so it’ll happen.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m a little sick of everyone saying ‘destiny’ all the time. All this business about fate and things meant to be, but still having to make a choice—”

“Let me put it to you this way. Let’s say your destiny is to travel from New Orleans to Paris—which I’ve done by the way and, baby, if you ever do that, don’t fly coach!—but like I was saying, you going all that way. It’s your destiny. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. You’re going to do it. But how you going to do it? You could fly. Or swim. You could walk or crawl, but chère, you gonna do it and that’s all there is to it.”

She saw the disheartened look on my face and changed the subject, but I wished she hadn’t. “So, how are you and your gentleman friend getting along?” she asked with a knowing smile.

I could feel myself blushing heavily. “Um, we’re okay. He’s a good friend.”

She laughed. “Look like y’all are a little more than that!”

“What do you mean?”

“I know I’m getting to be an old lady, but I remember what young love feel like. And there was so much afterglow when I came in that it could power a rocket!”

I could feel my face hot and flushed, and, embarrassed, I turned away. “We didn’t do anything! But please don’t tell Maw-maw, anyway. She’ll just get mad and call me a gep again.”

“Hush, baby. I’m not telling her nothin’. She can be a bit ornery at times.”

“At
times
?”

She laughed again. “C’mon. I’ll help you clear the dishes.”

I got up, and as I bent down to gather the plates, my mom’s locket slipped out so that it was resting on the outside of my shirt. “In’t that pretty,” she said, touching it. “Look old. That belong to your maw-maw?”

“My mom,” I said, and she noticed my tone change immediately.

“What the matter, my baby?”

“I …” I started to choke up, tears pricking my eyes. Cee Cee put her hand on mine, and I set the dishes back down on the table. She motioned for me to sit, and I did.

“It’s okay, my baby. I know this is all overwhelming. I know it’s hard, and you worried about Lyla so much and having to deal with your brother and his wife dying not that long ago.”

I wiped away a tear that escaped from my eye. “It’s not just that. I recently found out about how my mother died. This was her locket. I found it yesterday at the Dark Man’s house.”

She looked at me, gravely. “How’d you find his house?”

“He left a clue with all the people he killed. Father Ben sent us to a friend of his at U. L., and she helped us identify this symbol thing.”

“Oh, he did, huh?” She sounded resentful.

I looked at her, my eyebrow raised. “What?”

“That man!”

“Who? Father Ben?”

She just shook her head.

“Please. What is it?”

She huffed. “I just wish he would’ve waited, is all.”

“Waited for what?”

She looked at me apologetically. “We—Ben and your maw-maw and I—had agreed that we didn’t want you to know the details of your momma’s death. We thought it would hurt you more than help you.”

“Too late. I had already seen the picture the other day.”

“What picture, chère?

“Lucas got a package with pictures of a bunch of people murdered. Mom’s picture was one of them, along with David’s and Michelle’s. Lyla’s picture was the last one.” I tried to stop a couple more tears from trickling down, but it was no use. “And Maw-maw already told me about the night Mom died. About how all of you went to that cabin in the bayou.”

“She did?” She huffed again.

“What? I wanted to know. I had a right to know.”

“I guess you did, but I’d rather you remember your momma alive and happy than seeing her like that.”

“Why would he send all those pictures to Lucas?”

Cee Cee shrugged.

As I twirled my mother’s locket between my fingers, all I could see was her lying in her own blood. Every emotion I felt after she died came flooding back, but I let the tears turn to anger. Suddenly, it felt like every cell in my body was on fire and the rage and frustration that I had last night before Lucas kissed me struck back with a vengeance. I looked at Cee Cee, and she seemed taken aback at the coldness of my voice. “How do we stop him?”

“We need to find him first. That’s the hard part when dealing with Les Foncés when they in spirit form.”

“How do we find him?”

“It’s not easy, but we will have to bring him to us.”

“How?”

She spoke cautiously. “We need to go to his home and burn his bones. That’ll bring him to us. The dead don’t like it when you mess with their bodies. Once he come, we pray for the white light to absolve him.”

“Where are his bones?”

She hesitated. “Southeast corner of the Bancker cemetery.”

Of course
, I thought, sarcastically.
Where else?
“I’ll call Lucas and see if he can meet me there.” I got up from my chair, but Cee Cee grabbed my hand.

“What you think you doin’?”

“Going to go get Savoy’s body and bring it to his house in Sulphur.”

She shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, chère.”

I jerked my hand back. “Someone has to do something! You should have done this fourteen years ago. Now I have to finish it!”

Calmly, she said, “Let’s wait for Father Ben and your maw-maw.”

“Fine.
You
wait!” With that, I stormed off toward the living room and out the house. As soon as I opened the front door, I saw Clothilde and Lyla walking up the steps. The look on Clothilde’s face stopped me in my tracks. “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Miss Ya died,” she said, sadly, as she made it to the top step, out of breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I hugged her, and she took a seat in her rocking chair, rubbing her knees with her hands. Lyla looked up at me silently. I motioned for her to go inside so I could talk to Clothilde alone. She went in, and I sat in the chair next to the rocker. I reached out for her hand and remembered how, when I was a child, I use to marvel at all the lines and creases on her soft skin. Now, the creases were deeper, every line a story to be told from years gone by.

“She was my best friend,” she said with a choked voice.

I was very careful with what I asked her next. “I thought that you could heal her. Isn’t that what the gift is all about—what being a traiteur is all about?”

She took her time, and I felt as though I may have caused her more pain by saying what I did. “You’re not supposed to keep someone from God when God is calling them.”

“But, if you have the power to save them, isn’t that part of God’s plan?”

She sighed. “We’re not supposed to live forever. We all have a time when we’re supposed to go. It’s just the cards we’re dealt in life. Sometimes you have to know when to fight and when to let go.”

I stared out at the big pond, partially shaded by the oaks lining the sides. The grass on the lawn was still glistening from last night’s rain, and I smelled the honeysuckle from around the corner. A few honey bees lazily buzzed around the flowers in front of the porch. It was a summer morning like the ones I remembered from when I was a child, back when the world was safe, and I was protected from all the bad things in life.

Sometimes you have to know when to fight and when to let go
, my mind echoed. For a brief second, I thought about letting go of it all, of retreating and closing up inside a shell for the rest of my existence. But, feeling my mother’s locket around my neck and taking in the scene before me, I wanted Lyla to have as many summer mornings like this as she could. I fiercely wanted her to feel safe and grow to make her own choices and mistakes and to fall in love and go out on her own, a strong woman one day, stronger than I could ever be. She deserved that. It was my time to fight. If nothing else, but for her to experience life and all the good and bad that came with it.

“Maw-maw? Cee Cee told me how we can save Lyla. How we can save all of us.”

She regarded me with old, tired eyes, and I considered that she possibly didn’t have more than a year or so left to her life. Fresh tears formed in my eyes. “Lache pas la patate,” she said and winked at me. It made me smile, but it was a sad one.

“We have to go to his old house and burn his bones.”

“You know where he lives?”

“Yes. In Sulphur. I’ve seen the place before. When I was driving back to Louisiana.” I shuddered a little then, remembering what was written on the wall in the barn. “And you were right. It looks like he’s trying to cut off our end of the bloodline. And Cee Cee and Father Ben, too.”

She was quiet for a moment, lost in thought. “Do you know where he’s buried?”

I nodded.

“You’ll need Father Ben and Miss Cee Cee to perform the ritual. Y’all can do that tonight.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“Miss Ya is going to be buried tomorrow. There’s a rosary for her tonight at the funeral home. I’m going to take Lyla with me. She doesn’t need to see what y’all are doing and you don’t need me there for that.”

“They’re having the funeral so soon after she died?”

“She lived here all her life. Everyone she knew is in Abbeville. And she outlived all her children. All she had left was a nephew she hardly saw.” She took a deep breath and then added, “It’s a sad thing to outlive your children.” She got up and opened the screen door to the house and left me to myself.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Lucas as I got into my car. “Hello,” he answered.

“Hey. I know you’re working right now, but can you help me with something?”

“Is it about our problem?” he asked quietly.

“Yeah.”

“Can it wait till I get off of work?”

“I hope so,” I sighed.

“I’ll call you when I’m done, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to put my vengeance aside for a few more hours. Besides, I reasoned with myself that it would be best to play grave-robbers if the cemetery was deserted. Early evening would be a good time to go. We said goodbye and hung up.

I went back into the house and saw Cee Cee hugging Clothilde. It was hard to control my desire to get everything over with. I spent the next few hours keeping Lyla busy while trying to not let on that anything was bothering me. She was a little sad about Miss Ya and watching television didn’t help. I decided we both needed busy work. After Cee Cee left, saying she would be at St. John’s with Father Ben until we were ready, Lyla and I went out to the garden to pick banana peppers while Clothilde took a nap.

“Is the man with the bird really going to get me?” I was startled at the newly-broken silence. We had been picking peppers for about ten minutes, each keeping to our own thoughts. I looked over at Lyla, who was mechanically picking the peppers, but she was gazing off into the distance. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and I noticed how slender her neck was. Her baby fat was almost all gone, and she would soon be a teenager. Looking at her now, I could easily see the woman she would become one day, and I was a little afraid that she would turn out like I did. A bitter coward, scared and angry at the world because it hurt her.

“I’m going to take care of that,” I assured her.

“But he
could
get me if he wanted to?” She was trying to keep her voice steady, but I could hear the fear in it. She was frightened and had every right to be.