Water Witch (28 page)

With that, Olm tilted the bucket so only some
of the mud slopped into the hole. The boy’s head wiggled, his eyes
growing so wide they looked like two stained moons.

Another tilt of the bucket. The plop of more
mud. “
Ahna-hah-na-hey-nah-hey. Hey-nah-hey-nah-oonah-hey
.”
Though no one had ever told him a chant was required, Olm felt its
necessity. When one lay with a lover, one felt compelled to say, I
love you. To Olm, there was no difference. He was offering all, as
he would to a lover. This sacrifice—his hard work—his heart—his
soul—his voice—the fire. The raging fire, it crackled and popped,
its flames soaring ever higher. Surely it had to be sweet music to
Tirawa’s ear. How could it not?

He glanced at his watch.

Thirty seconds remaining.

Olm lifted the bucket once more, held it
steady, and counted backwards from thirty. As the numbers
decreased, something pricking at the back of his mind. Something
didn’t quite feel right . . .sound right. . .

Still holding the bucket steady, Olm counted
silently now. He listened carefully . . . past the crackle of the
fire . . .past the nocturnal noises of the swamp . . .then he heard
it. The sound of a boat motor.

And it was coming up on him fast.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The closer I got to land the farther my mouth
dropped. The fire I’d noticed earlier was no ordinary bonfire. It
was a mountainous inferno that appeared to consume everything
within reach, as if the entire island had been torched. The
orange-red flames didn’t just light up the night they shocked the
darkness from it.

I found myself so mesmerized by the height of
it, the roar and thunderous rumble from it, that I didn’t realize
until it was too late that I was barreling towards the island’s
bank, which was now only mere feet away. Instinctively, my right
foot sought a brake, my brain rolled its inner eye at the stupidity
of the gesture, and the boat slammed into the bank. In an instant,
the propellers ground to an abrupt halt in sludge and dirt, and I
went flying headfirst over Angelle, who was still lying on the
skiff’s floor, towards the bow. My right side caught the edge of
the bench seat, my head the aluminum abutment of the bow. White and
silver lights burst into a sparkling fireworks display before my
eyes.

Groaning, I waited until the fireworks
dissipated, then grabbed the side of the boat and struggled to my
feet. I held onto the skiff for a moment, catching my breath,
waited for my legs to stop shaking. I glanced over at Angelle,
clearly visible in the floodlight created by the fire. Although the
jolt from the boat’s impact had caused her body to slide sideways a
foot or two, she looked no worse for the wear. A quiet peacefulness
rested on her face, and I saw the gentle rise and fall of her
chest, her eyes moving left to right beneath her eyelids like she
was in the middle of a pleasant dream. Satisfied that she was okay
and feeling stability return to my legs, I stood up and took stock
of my surroundings.

As far as I could tell, the island was shaped
like a horseshoe, and I’d plowed into its south end. The fiery
monolith stood over a hundred feet ahead, and even from here, I
felt the intensity of its heat. The belly of the inferno consisted
of a pyramid of logs, which told me that this blaze was no
accident. Someone had purposely set it. But who would set up a
bonfire out in the middle of nowhere? A camper might build one to
cook, but certainly not one that big.

Dread began to grow and squirm in the pit of
my stomach, seep into my bones. The images of the two charred
bodies came to mind, but instead of seeing them as I had a short
time ago, both unidentifiable save for the name on the boat that
caused me to suspect one to be Trevor, the bodies belonged to
Angelle and me.

Shivering, I peered over at the fire, watched
it send giant gray clouds of smoke billowing, swirling, belching
towards the sky. I felt hypnotized by the size and power of it all,
the flames, the whirling, curling smoke. I had to force myself to
turn away from it.

With the motor dead and the skiff all but
cemented in mud, I didn’t have the option to turn tail and run. I
could either hunker down in the boat with Angelle or get out and
see if there were any answers to getting us out of here. With
Angelle needing medical attention, the decision was a
no-brainer.

I got out of the boat and walked tentatively
towards the fire, circling to the right. “Is anybody here? I need
help. My sister’s been hurt, and I need to get her to a
hospital.”

The only response was the crackle and pop of
wood roasting in the flames.

“Hello? Anybody?”

Still no answer. I wasn’t sure if that was a
good or bad thing. I circled the circumference of the fire, which
was so big; it seemed to take forever to get to the other side.
There was definitely no need for a flashlight here. No need for the
moon. The flames did all the work, illuminating, defining every
branch, every blade of grass. As I drew closer, smoke whipped
across my face, curled up my nose.

“Is anybody here? Hello? Is any—Oh,
Jesus!
” A dead man tied to a tree, fifty feet away, if that,
damn near sent me into cardiac arrest, paralyzed my feet. The world
suddenly turned into a silent movie. I no longer heard the roar of
the fire. Even in my shock, I realized I felt nothing from my extra
finger, nothing cold to acknowledge the dead, which he most
certainly was.

His arms had been pulled backwards around the
trunk of the tree, his hands obviously tied behind it. His head was
slumped forward, his shirt and pants stained with volumes of blood,
which, judging from the knife protruding from the left side of his
chest, had come from his heart.

That knife . . .

Of all the things my eyes decided to settle
on in that moment, it chose the handle of the knife. Something
about it….

Without thinking, I stepped forward, drawn
closer to the dead man, to the knife. A red handled knife . . .
shaped like an exclamation point. My mouth went dry. I wanted to
call out to Angelle, remind her where we’d seen it, then remembered
she was back in the boat, unconscious. Remembered she hadn’t been
there to see it in the first place. She’d been sitting in the car,
eyes snapping with anger.

I was the one who’d seen that knife earlier
today. It had been stuck in a wooden cross at Woodard’s church. It
had
to be the same one because it was too oddly shaped for
it not to be. Even the policeman who’d pulled it out of the cross,
that Beeno guy, had mentioned how rare it was. The memory of that
incident jittered in my mind like faulty reel-to-reel film.

The knife . . .the church . . .the cop . . .
how he’d shaken the knife at Woodard . . . and something . . .
something else. . .

I was close enough now to the dead man to
reach out and touch him. Although his head hung chin to chest, a
sense of familiarity washed over me. I tilted my head slightly to
get the advantage of an angle and inched up a step . . . then
another. Who was this man?

Suddenly familiarity became horrid, absolute
recollection. I gasped, threw a hand over my mouth. The dead man
was Vern Nezat, Sook’s husband. “Oh, God,” I muttered through my
fingers. “God . . . Vern, no . . . not . . . Oh, God . . .

Someone must have fixed that faulty
reel-to-reel because sights and sounds abruptly flowed into one
smooth motion. The blood—the knife—the crackle, roar, pop, snap of
fire—flames rising, falling, undulating, giant steeples in a
perpetual state of rebuilding—dancing, whirling, billowing
smoke—all of it now an IMAX of terror with surround sound.

Amidst the horror, my ears latched onto a
new, odd sound, the
hrsshh, hrsshh, hrsshh
of someone
running through dry brush. And the sound was getting louder,
heading towards me. I peered tentatively over my shoulder, saw
nothing, then turned slowly, fearfully to my left, where it sounded
like the noise was coming from.

I saw no one running towards me, only a large
clearing a short distance away. It looked like a dirty moon with
two dark eyes set in the center. I squinted, took a step towards
it.

Dark eyes? Dark . . . Fuck!
Those
weren’t eyes at all. They looked like freshly dug graves with two
small heads poking up near the front of each. The sight took my
breath away. The kids? Sweet Jesus, the kids! But their heads
weren’t moving . . . Trembling, I inched closer.
Don’t let them
be dead . . .don’t—

The
hrsshh, hrsshh, hrsshh
sound was
suddenly louder than ever, and it was followed by a primal growl of
fury so loud, it stopped me dead in my tracks, sent every hair on
my arms, the back of my neck standing at attention. I whirled about
and saw a man racing towards me. Bare-chested, eyes wild and filled
with fury, teeth bared, arms raised with one hand wielding a
short-handled machete. He screamed something, but I couldn’t
understand him. Adrenaline sent my heart flying to my throat and my
pulse tripling in rate, but my brain wouldn’t command my legs to
move. It was too busy trying to figure out what was headed towards
me.

The man looked and sounded like a charging
animal, one unrestrained in its fury and focused on its prey. But
he
was
a man . . .someone I knew . . .my brain rapidly
sought and sorted. . .
The knife . . .the cop . . .the cop
shaking the knife at Woodard . . .the cop taking the knife with him
. . .taking the knife with him!
Sonofabitch, this wild man was
the cop from Bayou Crow, the one they called Beeno!
What the
fuck . . .

“You
bitch!
” Beano screamed, his legs
gathering speed.

Instinct sent me spinning on my heels, ready
to run. But I had no where to run to, no place to escape.
The
kids . . . Sarah . . . Nicky . . . the boat grounded, Angelle in
it, helpless . . .Vern . . .
I couldn’t just leave them here. .
.

I whirled back around to face Beeno—just as
he launched and dropped me in a flying tackle.

Breathless, I waited for a cutting blow from
the machete, but he must have dropped it because the next thing I
knew he was on top of me, pummeling my face, my chest, my arms, my
shoulders with his fists. I threw an arm up in defense, turned my
head from side to side to deflect the blows.

“You goddamn bitch!” He screamed, spittle
flying from his lips. His face was a red mask of hatred and rage,
his lips curled up like a feral beast. “You ruined it all!” He
grabbed me by hair, forced my head up, pointed skyward. “Do you see
that? Do you see that moon?
You fucking wasted it
. All my
hard work, gone!” He swung down hard with a fist, plowing it into
my right cheek. “ Tirawa will get revenge, you’ll see. He’ll get
revenge on my behalf.” Then he screamed something incoherent and
punched the top of my head. “You ruined it
!
Everything I’ve
done . . “

Suddenly his voice was lost to the roar of
the fire, which sounded like it had been amplified by a thousand
times. A rush of wind whirled about us—hot, so hot it made it hard
to breathe. Gray smoke gathered, pushed against me, got into my
eyes, my nose, my mouth. Hot—fire—smoke—dancing smoke and
flames.

Beeno slapped me again, again, and the sound
of his voice abruptly returned. “— manipulative, conniving, fucking
bitch! How dare you interfere!”

“Get the fuck off of me!” I screamed and
swung at him with both hands. He pinned them immediately, dropped
his right knee on my chest, nailing me to the ground. He threw my
arms out on either side of me, then immediately jabbed a fist into
my face, my nose. I heard something crunch, felt a blast of pain,
tasted blood in my mouth. I bucked beneath him, spat a bloody wad
of mucus on his chest. “Get off me!”

Beeno howled with laughter, then his lips
settled into a snarl, and he swung his right fist, catching me on
the ear. I felt his weight shift, like he was ready to stand, and
felt myself coil up inside, preparing to twist, roll out of his
reach. But he lifted up for only a second, and only to drop down
again with a scream of fury, his knee slamming into my chest. Then
his knee slid off, and he grabbed the front of my shirt in a fist,
started shouting something in a language I didn’t understand, had
never heard before.

I tried pulling into a ball . . . couldn’t
breathe . . .my vision blurred . . .
Gelle . . .Sarah . . .Nicky
. . .Gelle . .Sarah . . .
Their names became my mantra for
strength. I had to stay alive, had to remain conscious or God only
knew what this maniac might do to them. Air . . .needed air. It
felt like my lungs had been split open, like I was back in the
water, drowning, everything turning inky black.
Gelle . . .Sarah
. . .Beeno . . .

In that moment, Beeno threw a left hook,
catching me under the jaw. The world exploded into a million
stars.

From a distant place, I heard him howl, like
a wolf baying at the moon. Then he began to chant, his voice
hoarse, his tone furious and determined.
“Oonah-hahna-hahna-hey-nah-hey. Oonah-hanah-hanah-hey.”

Through eyes nearly swollen shut, I saw him
towering above me, one foot on my chest . . .gray smoke, curling,
whirling, dancing . . .flames . . . chanting, chanting that sounded
like it came from the bowels of the swamp. . .

“
Oonah-hahna-hahna-hey-nah-hey.
Oonah-hanah-hanah-hey
.”

I felt the weight of him leave my chest,
tried to roll . . . couldn’t move. Saw him lift his arms above his
head, the machete now glistening in his right hand. And as he
continued to scream unintelligible gibberish, the smoke surrounded
him, like ghostly shapes curling themselves about his body, flowing
into his ears, his nose, his mouth. Through his very pores, flowing
in and out.