Water Witch (14 page)

“So you’ve said . . . again,” Angelle
mumbled.

Trevor shook his head. “All kinds of crazy
people in this world, Poochie.” He picked up the plate he’d filled
and emptied twice, got up from the table and walked over to the
sink. “Doesn’t make sense that somebody’d throw away a perfectly
good cow.”

“Dat’s what I’m sayin’,” Poochie said.
“Imagine all de good barbeque we could’ve got outta dat?”

Trevor grinned, set his plate inside the
sink, then walked back to the table, rubbing his belly. Watching
him, I couldn’t help but wonder, as I did during Thanksgiving, when
they’d visited me in Cyler, and as I did on their wedding day, what
spark of passion my sister had caught from this man. Ever since she
was little, Angelle had buzzed with life, so curious about
everything, wanting to touch and learn and be everywhere at the
same time. Trevor on the other hand reminded me of a plow horse,
steady and reliable, not easily excited by much. In the looks
department, Angelle carried the same height and slender build I
did, but her heart-shaped face and flashing brown eyes were
exquisite and never failed to turn a man’s head. Trevor was of
average weight and height, as well, only with light brown hair and
eyes. He’d fit into an average slot, along with every other average
Joe, in any place America. If ever there was a case of opposites
attracting, those two were it. I didn’t understand it, but then
again, I didn’t need to.

“Plant’s short-handed again,” Trevor said to
Angelle as he settled back into his seat. “I’ll be pulling the
eleven to seven tonight.”

Angelle frowned. “You’ve been here over an
hour and a half and you’re just telling me that now?”

“Since when does it matter when I tell
you?”

Glancing down at her plate, Angelle picked at
a grain of rice with her fork.

“Poo-yi,” Poochie said, then got up from the
table, collected her plate and glass, and brought both over to the
sink.

Feeling a bit of steam rise between Angelle
and Trevor, I took Poochie’s cue and silently excused myself from
the table. After picking up Angelle’s plate, I carried it over to
the sink, then went back for my own dirty dishes. It was awkward
clearing a table with one hand stuck nonchalantly in your pocket,
like doing so was natural. Natural for a one-armed paper-hanger
maybe . . .On my second trip back from the table, I spied a pair of
yellow rubber gloves near the sink, grabbed them and quickly put
them on. There. Anonymity.

As Trevor kept pressing Angelle for an
answer, Poochie came up beside me, rolled her eyes, then plugged
the drain in the sink with a stopper and turned on the faucet.I
shook my head and mouthed, “Let me, please.” She’d done the
cooking; I wanted to do the dishes. Besides, it would distract me
from the argument that was brewing at the table. Poochie nodded,
then reached for a dry dishcloth and pantomimed that she’d dry.

With our roles established, Poochie and I
went to work. Behind us, the tension grew thicker than the roux
that had been in the shrimp stew.

Trevor let out a heavy sigh. “If that’s all
it takes to upset you, then this should really piss you off . .
.I’m taking Bullet and leaving in a few minutes to check traps
before my shift. I’ve got fifty of them down on the west end of
Point Coupee Lake and put out seventy-five more at Flat’s Cut.
Those are both new areas, so I need to make sure nobody’s out there
messing with those traps. Make sure beavers haven’t gotten to the
bait.”

Angelle cleared her throat, and I knew that
was her way of trying to maintain composure. I didn’t know what a
Bullet was, but if it had anything to do with checking crawfish
traps, there was a good chance it resembled a boat. It so, that
meant our plans were fucked, and she didn’t want to over react to
the news. I glanced over my shoulder towards her, and sure enough,
there was frustration etched all over my sister’s face.

“Why should taking your boat out piss me
off?” she said. “You’re always checking traps. Are you . . .did you
plan on bringing it back before you go to work?”

“No,” Trevor said, leaning back in his chair.
“Too much crap. It’ll be easier to load the boat back on the
trailer and haul it to the plant with me.”

I chewed my bottom lip as I washed the last
glass. Bullet was indeed a boat—a boat we wouldn’t have—which meant
we’d have no way to go look for the kids.

“So do you have to work the night shift
tomorrow night, too?” Angelle asked, the question sliced with
sarcastic overtones.

“What the hell’s your problem?” Trevor
asked.

“I’m just asking.”
“I don’t know what shifts I’ll be working tomorrow. Like I said,
they’re short-handed at the plant, and I’m going to go work when
they tell me to work. Damn, Gelle, you know we’ve got bills to pay,
a mortgage on this house. What do you want me to do when the
foreman calls? Tell him, “Wait, I’ve got to check with my wife to
make sure it’s okay for me to work that shift? I mean, goddamn!”
Trevor shoved himself away from the table and got to his feet.

Poochie and I took turns peeking over at them
from the sink. I wished there were more dishes to wash.

“I never said you had to do that.” Angelle
tossed the napkin she’d been mauling in her fists onto the
table.

“Then what’s with the forty goddamn
questions?”

“I was just asking!” Angelle voice clipped up
an octave and about two more decibels. “What the shit’s wrong with
a wife asking her husband when he’s going to be working?”
I found myself mesmerized by the argument. It was like getting
caught up in a soap opera. The plot might be predictable and the
acting bad, but you managed to get hooked on it anyway. I had to
force myself to turn away again and act like I wasn’t listening. I
wiped down the counter, even though it was spotless—and that’s when
I saw the toaster on the counter near the refrigerator slide over
about five inches—on its own. In the next second, my extra finger
turned to ice, just like it had earlier today. Cold meant dead.
Somehow that had to be tied to whatever made the toaster move
because the rest of the people in this room were very much
alive.

The lights overhead flickered, and Poochie
let out a little gasp. “Good Lord be wit’ us.”

I couldn’t help but say a silent prayer that
whatever god Poochie believed in had heard her.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Probably just some weather stirring up,”
Trevor said, glancing up at the flickering light. “Best get out the
flashlight and candles just in case the lights go out for good. You
know how it is around here, a mouse pisses and Bayou Crow loses
power.” For someone who’d just been barking words out at his wife,
his voice seemed carefully controlled as he spoke to Poochie.

“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.