Water Witch (9 page)

“
What
?”

“I’m serious as a coronary. Dunny, it felt
like a man’s hands. Big hands.” Her words came faster now, a
tumbling avalanche. “They kept touching me, hurting me, only when I
was alone, though, alone and in here. But no matter where I went—in
the house, at school, the store, anywhere, I always felt like
someone was watching me. All the time. Then it started happening in
other places, the touching and pinching I mean. Once when I was
driving back home from the store. Scared me so bad, I damn near
wrecked the car.”

I sat, too stunned to speak, unable to absorb
what she was telling me.

“The very next day it happened at school,
when I was in the middle of teaching a class for heaven’s sake!”
Angelle got to her feet, wrapped her arms around her chest, and
began to pace. “Then when Sarah and Nicky went missing, it got
worse. The kids were gone, and the touching got worse . .
.
harder.
And . . . and it wasn’t just a man’s hands touching
me anymore. It felt like it was . . .it was a man’s . . .uh . . .”
She gave me a woeful look. “You know . . .”

I sat bolt upright. “Are you talking about a
man’s
dick?”

She nodded, a loud sob escaping her.

“Jesus, Gelle . . . Jesus . . .” My mind was
a whir of mush. Nothing seemed to make sense. “Have you told Trevor
any of this?”

“Oh, God, no. He’d think I’d flipped out,
like Poochie. Besides, what could he do anyway? You can’t see it.
There’s nothing to shoot at, hit, or kick. There’s just . .
.nothing. Nothing, but what I feel.”

I shook my head, perplexed. Beyond perplexed.
Angelle was one of the most levelheaded, straightforward people I
knew. Either this had to really be happening or the stress of a new
marriage, new job, and a new roommate had gotten to her. Then there
were the missing kids on top of it all. I felt like I’d walked into
a bad dream. The kind where nothing linked together to form a
complete story, just fragmented vignettes that circled around and
around in your head, never going anywhere, never making sense.

And one you felt sure you’d never wake
from.

CHAPTER TEN

Angelle stopped pacing long enough to study
me.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said, and
the worry and fear on her face damn near yanked my heart right out
of my chest.

I got to my feet, hurried over to her,
touched her shoulder.“No . . .no, I do believe you. I do, honest.
It’s just hard for me to wrap my brain around all of this, that’s
all.”

Her tears came faster. “Maybe . . . maybe
this will help.” She lifted her shirt, then the front of her bra
and revealed her breasts.

I gasped at the deep purple bruises covering
both breasts. Rage flared white-hot through me. Someone—something
had
touched
my sister—hurt her. Instinctively, I wanted to
hide her, protect her, beat up, kill whatever had defiled her.“My
God! How could Trevor not have seen this? You’re nothing but one
huge bruise!”

“He hasn’t seen them because, well . . .” She
pulled down her bra and lowered her shirt. “He hasn’t, you know,
touched me since Poochie moved in. It’s almost like we’ve become
roommates or something. He leaves to go to work at the plant early
in the morning, comes home after his shift only long enough to pick
up his skiff and head out to the basin to check on his crawfish
traps. By the time he gets back it’s real late, and he’s always so
exhausted . . . and angry.”

“Angry about what?”

She held up her hands, shrugged, then let her
arms drop to her sides. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t really have a
clue. He’ll start an argument over the stupidest things.” She
returned to her chair and slumped into it. Her face held the
weariness of an old woman exhausted with life. “That’s why I wanted
you to come so bad, Dunny.
Something
is here.” She waved her
hands about, indicating space in general. “I don’t know if it’s
just in this house, in this whole town, or in the swamp. I don’t
know if Poochie brought it with her when she moved in or if it’s
just coincidence that things started at the same time she got here.
All I know is it’s gotten worse since the kids disappeared, and
it’s hidden.” She looked me dead in the eye this time. “And you’re
good at finding things that are hidden.”

I blew out a breath, scrubbed my hands over
my face.“Yeah, but we’re talking about . . . what? Ghosts?”

She shrugged, then her body seemed to sag
with defeat.

Everything I’d found in the past had been
something tangible. Water, oil, Angelle’s cat, a misplaced locket,
thimble, a pocket watch, a wallet. Everything had been something I
could see and touch. How was I supposed to dowse for . . . for
what? Air? The first time I found water, the discovery came without
my focusing on it. It simply happened, like my extra finger had
taken charge of my brain to make me aware of its ability. Same
thing with the oil and with Pirate. And each occurrence had
produced a different sensation. Pain—extreme cold or heat—tingling
as if an electric current was running through my finger. But after
experiencing each new sensation for the first time, it never
returned on its own, only when I focused on what needed to be
found. What I’d felt near the swamp behind the Bloody Bucket was
definitely new. The only thing it had led me to, though, was fear
and pain. I didn’t have a clue as to what it meant to identify.

I leaned towards her and cupped my sister’s
chin with a hand so she had to look at me.“Has it touched you since
I’ve been here?”

“No. But I have a feeling it’s . . . I don’t
know . . . it feels like it’s waiting for something. Maybe waiting
for you to leave?”

“Then the sonofabitch is going to be waiting
a hell of a long time because I’m not leaving you until we figure
out what’s going on.” I pulled out the chair next to her and sat.
“God, Gelle, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me all this sooner. I
don’t know how you’ve carried this by yourself for so long. Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to worry
you, and I was afraid you’d think I was losing my shit or
something.” She picked up the soda, sipped a little, then fidgeted
with the can again. “And it’s not been all by myself all this time.
Last week I went to see Pastor Woodard and talked to him about
it.”

“You mean that preacher Poochie is always
calling crazy?”

“Yeah, Sarah’s uncle. I really don’t think
he’s crazy, though. He just really gets into what he does. You
know, that whole praise Jesus, halleluiah stuff. Being a preacher
and all, I thought he might be able to help. He did in a way, just
by listening. He even prayed over me, said I was under attack by
the devil and needed a lot of prayers. I went back to him a couple
of times after that, but his praying never made it stop. I haven’t
been back since Sarah disappeared. I’m sure the man’s under enough
stress.”

Sighing heavily, I got to my feet, walked
over to the sink, and looked out the window above it. Preachers and
demons, missing kids and swamps. It was as if I’d flown into some
creepy fantasy world desperate for a hero. The fact that I was the
only candidate for the position scared the hell out of me. I was as
baffled by this whole thing as my sister was and didn’t have a clue
how to help her.

I was focusing so hard on everything Angelle
had told me that it took a moment for me to realize that my eyes
had trained on something. A tree, at least fifteen feet high, stood
in the middle of the backyard. Its branches were filled with lush
green leaves—and shoes of various styles, sizes, and colors. I
remembered Poochie telling me about her prayer tree. How the shoes
on one side belonged to the living and the shoes on the other
belonged to the dead.
Could
she have brought a malevolent
spirit here with her? Could those shoes and the souls they
represented have thrown some preternatural scale off balance? Were
the shoes, the missing children, and Angelle being violated tied
together somehow?

My shoulders slumped under the weight of the
questions. They seemed ridiculous, too Twilight Zone-ish, and had
no answers. In truth, I felt as useless as a rosary in a Baptist
church.

“Dunny?”

I turned to my sister, the hush in her voice
sending a cold chill up my spine. Her face was as white as the
curtains on the window. She pointed to the archway that led to the
living room—and the dark gray, wavering shadow that floated past
the entrance.

There are only a few times in my life that I
actually remember doing a double-take. This was definitely one of
those times. Unfortunately, the quick second look produced no less
formidable results than the first. The shadow was tall and thick
with just enough form to identify it as a person—or something
resembling a person—a man from the size of it.Wide head, broad
torso, arms that held only the slightest outline. Its legs reminded
me of the smoke columns that had risen from the brush fire I’d
witnessed back home months ago. Vacillating and dense,
ever-moving.

Having crossed the archway, the form paused,
its uneven edges quivering as though struggling to maintain form.
Then it turned. Only in profile was I able to make out the outline
of a nose, thick lips, a jutting chin. I saw no eyes, only that
heavy silhouette that didn’t belong there.

Mesmerized, I took a step towards it, and my
dowsing finger immediately grew cold. I didn’t need the warning
from the digit to know I was facing the dead. I felt it to my very
core—that and something else. Angelle had said she hadn’t seen
anything during the times she’d been violated, but something in the
way the shadow moved, the way its outline undulated, the way its
center, its bulk wavered, was almost sensual in nature. This
had
to be it—what had been hurting her, molesting her.

“Don’t . . .” Angelle’s whisper came through
desperate, urgent and probably louder than she’d intended. I
ignored her, keeping my eyes locked on the shadow, which was only
about fifty or sixty feet away. If it was looking at us, planned
anything, I wanted to make sure the bastard kept its attention on
me.

“Dunny, please,no . . .”

The form turned once more. It wavered, then
narrowed and elongated, making itself taller, and as it did, I
caught the heavy scent of musk and sweat—like that of a man who’d
worked in the sun all day.

Heart clobbering the wall of my chest, I took
another step towards it. It was then I realized fear had a taste.
Rusty pennies. My mouth salivated with the tang and bitterness of
it.

“Wh-what do you want?” I asked it, my voice
sounding rusty as well. Something thunked to my left, and I shot a
glance towards the noise. Angelle was on her feet, staring
wild-eyed from me to the shadow, the soda can she’d had on the
table now lying on its side, glubbing Coke across the blue and
white-checkered tablecloth. The chill around my finger abruptly
turned to sub zero, and I clinched my teeth from the pain. I
noticed tears slip down my sister’s cheeks, then a strangled
gurgling sound came out of her mouth. She wasn’t looking at me when
she did it, though. She was looking at
it.

Reluctantly, I turned back towards the dark
figure. My finger going cold had always meant I was getting close
to something dead. When it got
fucking
cold, that meant I
was literally within inches of the dead, damn near on top of it in
fact . . . or it was on top of me—like this one was now.

In the time it had taken me to notice tears
and a spilled Coke, the thing had moved closer and had done so
without sound. It stood only a couple feet away from me now, and
although it was closer, its features were no more defined than they
had been when it floated near the archway. A mass of dark,
translucent smoke. My breath caught, and I stumbled back a step. It
immediately closed the extra distance I’d created.

“ . . . no, please . . .” I heard Angelle
begging, crying, but it sounded like she was in another room—in
another house—in another town or state. I wanted to look over at
her, make sure she was okay, but couldn’t take my eyes off the . .
. the thing pulsing in front of me.

It drew closer . . . I couldn’t move.

Drew closer still.

I squeezed my eyes shut, like a kid in a
thunderstorm, terrified of what might appear in the next flash of
lightning. Only I had closed mine too late. The monster was already
here. A block of ice the size of a mountain seemed to hang from my
finger. I cradled it blindly, heard my sister whimper, was suddenly
awash in the aroma of musk and sweat and something pungent I
couldn’t identify. It radiated an energy that felt raw and feral,
and I feared breathing lest its smoky substance, its essence find
its way inside me, up through my nostrils, my mouth, into my
soul.

Time seemed to fold in on itself as I stood
there, waiting . . . waiting for what I wasn’t sure. Teetering on
flight or fight, I cracked my eyelids open to thin slits and saw it
reach for me. A long, thick-fingered hand, much denser than the
rest of its form, stretched, throbbed, undulated towards my face.
Then its thick lips parted, and it let out a sound—the sound of
crying children.

CHAPTERELEVEN

Poochie Blackledge leaned against the wall in
the hallway of her grandson’s house, closed her eyes, and listened
intently to the voices coming from the living room a few feet away.
Something had happened to Angelle and Dunny while she’d been away.
She knew it, felt it as sure as she felt they were up to something
now.A little over an hour ago, when they’d picked her up at the
Bloody Bucket, both had been too quiet. Even worse, neither had
said a word even after she’d told them about the fight at the pier
between Pork Chop and Beeno.