WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (63 page)

Oh, my Lawd in heavens. Git.  Git it away from me...git you…you beast.” Tessy skidded across the porch on her pink eyesore and leaned against the moaning freezer.  She shushed and shushed the bird, scared to death. 
Kernel d
id a few beast of burden struts.  It seemed
Tessy was a
n intruder he didn't recognize and she had hoarded in on his corn cob and he didn’t like it one bit. 

“Sonsabitches! Sonsabitches!” He said pecking the cob. Maw Sue laughed so hard she nearly choked on her snuff.

“Well I never…You, you and that, that bird need lessons on taming. It’s as wild as you.” Tessy huffed and snorted. She eyed her rod of justice sitting in the grass a few feet from the steps. She got up, adjusted her skirt,
lopped her horn hair to the top and marched down the steps like Jericho was around the corner.  She
scooped up her rod of justice and stormed off.

“Tessy…” Maw Sue said patting her heart. “Just so you know…God has always been in this house.
Right here.”  She pat her heart a few times.  “And you are the most gossiping woman I have ever met.  The only thing that needs taming is your tongue.” She gave Maw Sue a
bewildered stare, upturned her nose, crammed herself in her Ford four door and left in hail and brimstone.
For the first time, Tessy’s tongue was tied. 
Maw Sue fell out laughing and Kernel got a double helping of
corn cobs. 
And the best part—Tessy
never came back. 

Kernel died three years later. She found him lying on the dirt mound beneath the Catawba tree. It seemed he’d just fallen off the branch, right into his burial spot beside the cross of Morsel. I was only two years old when he was around so I don't remember him but Maw Sue keeps his memories alive by the stories she tells.

“I can’t eat corn without thinking of that stupid parrot.” Maw Sue said tearfully. “Man is responsible for the animals it tames, girls.” She said explaining the errors of man. “Someone tamed that parrot and either let it go carelessly or it flew away on its own, wanting to be free of a cage, I suspect. I mean, how would you like to live in a cage if you had wings and were meant to fly?” Maw Sue thought all creatures should be left in their wild state as God created them to be, including mankind. “And if that’s the case,” she said gritting her teeth, “I don’t blame it for escaping.” She ended her point by spitting on the ground like she always did. It was her period. Her exclamation mark. I loved hearing stories like this. 

When Maw Sue ran out of stories, I had to entertain myself. Pine Log wasn't
exactly the muse of festivity so I wandered the blackberry trail.  My hands were stained a bright purple but it
was a small price to pay for deliciousness. I picked the blackberries fresh off the vine, and threw them in a bowl of milk, with a tablespoon of sugar and had a feast. Mag was gone again, chasing money, or rich folk, and Lena was in her kitchen cave creating the latest and greatest new recipe from Betty Crocker. Dad was in the tinker shop overhauling a tractor motor. I guzzled a glass of water and headed to Maw Sue’s
to fiddle around outside. 
Maybe I could
conjure up another story or two from Maw Sue. 
I was halfway down the old dirt trail when I noticed an unfamiliar car parked in the driveway. 
What if Tessy had returned?
 I had only met her once at the church potluck supper but heard her throughout the entire sermon. If AMENS could get someone to Heaven, then Tessy has it down pat. Almost every sentence Preacher Lester spoke, Tessy would shout “Amen.” And sometimes, she’d be so filled with the Holy Spirit she’d jump up and lift her hand and scream, “Yess...Preach it Lawd, Preach it to the sinners. AMEN.” Maw Sue referred to this section of the church as the AMEN section.
She sat as far away from it as she could.  And a
ll she wanted Tessy to do was shut up so
she could hear the preacher but shutting Tessy up would be considered a miracle. 

Whose car is that?
  The closer I got, the more I could hear voices
spilling off the porch and a dark shadow emerged and walked down the steps. 
Oh. My. Gawd.
 I know that shadow. I know that voice. It was talking with Maw Sue.
How? When? Where?
The dark shadow was Ms. Blanche. 
What in tarnation is she doing here?
 I hadn’t been to the beauty shop in months. I also hadn’t mentioned a thing to her about Maw Sue being related. My vision recalled the hor
rible sightings of the Dresdens inside the shop.  I flinched and kept walking. 
I lifted my purples hands in a wave. I wondered what was going on. The house inside me was sti
rred up something awful. 

“Hey Ms. Blanche.”

“Heyy there Willodean.” She said in her chirpy beauty shop voice. She opened her car door and glanced up at Maw Sue. It was the adult version of eye talk that made me nervous. “Can you believe I got a day off from the haven of devils?”

“That’s good.” I said laughing. 
My fingers found air and pointed outward for answers. “How do ya’ll know each other again?” Maw Sue did an eye curl. Ms. Blanche did the same thing. Eye curls are suspicious.

“Oh—honey.” Ms. Blanche said flopping her hand in the air. “We go way back.”

“Sure do Willodean.” Maw Sue said. “Lordy, look at your hands. You been in them blackberries again? I told you to save some for the cobbler’s.”

“Yeah, I have but uhh…”

“Now tell Ms. Blanche bye so she can go and enjoy her day off.” Maw Sue said changing the subject.

“Lord yess, I’m gon’ work out in the yawd all day long.” She nodded her head and lowered herself into the front seat. “Might have me a swig of gin too.” She closed the door and leaned out the window. “Got some petunias to plant too.”

Maw Sue
looked caught up somewhere else. 
She was rubbing that red stone necklace like the dickens, pulling its long strand outward as if she could r
ip it off her neck and throw it. 
Seeing her and Ms. Blanche together made me uneasy. The house inside, buckled and popped, and the rooms ran together, seamlessly in screams and horrors. Shadow Amodgian's and Dresden’s stirred amnesty against me.
I felt as if the world I knew would just disengage and roll away. 

“Ke
ep your promise.” Maw Sue said.  She
upturned
her chin as if that was part of the promise. 
She glanced at me, then back at Ms. Blanche, then me, then back. She lifted her hand slightly, still latched onto the stone and almost said something, but stopped short. Her expression was dire, locked in a place I hadn't seen before. 
What promise?

“You know it.” Ms. Blanche waved again and backed out of the drive. Before she sped away I caught her eye glance. It was
dark and inky. 
I felt woozy and spellbound. Maw Sue had already went inside and left me standing there dumbfounded. She didn't want to talk to me that day, at all and kept telling me she was tired, and needed to sleep, and come back tomorrow. It was unlike Maw Sue to do that. I didn't understand what was happening. What is Ms. Blanche doing here and what was this promise? It drove me mad not to know their relationsh
ip, how they met, what it meant and why it stirred the house inside me, to go off its foundation. 

For a solid week afterward, all she did was rub that stupid stone. I was fl
at out tired of the red dragon eyeing me and her, and reaching its liquid hands outward all the time.  Maw Sue seemed preoccupied with it—more so than ever before. 
Rub the stone, sleep, rub the stone.
 This happened for a solid week, then fin
ally, she snapped out of it. She was still different so I watched her closely. 
The red dragon’s eye stared me down as
if it hated me asking questions and hanging around.  As the
days came and went, it changed in colors, from a deep dark red,
to a redder than red. 
So red, it looked black.

“Maw Sue. What is going on? Are yo
u sick? I'm worried about you.” 
I reached out to touch her wrinkled hands. She flinched a little. My heart grew heavy and
burdened.  “Willodean.”
She pa
used.  Her eyes spiraled as if she was dizzy.  When she got focus, she locked eyes on me, l
aser, sharp, dragon eyed serious. “The house inside me is
hard to get out of, here lately.  When I used to pull myself out, or avoid it all together, now, I can’t seem to do that. But I don’t want you to worry.” 

“What ca
n I do? I can help you can’t I?  I’ll make you some herbs, I’ll get your recipe book and make some potions to help you.  I’ll learn…I will.  I can do it.”  I jumped up to go to the kitchen but she grabbed my hand and sat me back down. 

“That is not necessary.” She said.  “It’s more than that, and it’s hard to explain right now but I need you to know that I will take care of everything.  It will be worked out as it should be

My heart was heavy and whatever she was talking about made it worse.

“Maybe you just need to sleep. I’ll let you sleep, I promise I won’t bother you again.” 
Suddenly, my vision turned dark, darker than the lesser light kind of dark. Maw Sue's face turned pasty white and the particles invaded her wrinkles like water in a riverbed. Her eyes went blood red like the dragon stone and then slipped down the sockets as if falling into her skull, leaving the dreadful holes of horror, putrid and blackened,
caverns that seeped in and out with shadow Amogians. 
I let go
of her hand and fled backwards. 
It was a Dresden, exactly what I had seen
before, but it was Maw Sue.  So it didn’t make sense to me. 

I scooted on the floor until I was pressed against the wall by the front door. The shadows spiraled around her, whispering and spilling out words I didn't wan
t to hear.  I held my ears.  “No. This can't be happening.” 
The house inside me revolted in black terror
and shook me endlessly, head to toe. 
I ran out the front door and all the way home. I ran past Lena and straight to my bedroom. I grabbed the mirror bin from under my bed and fe
ll on top of it, praying for everything to go away. 

“Go away. Take it all away. God…I don't want the gifts, I don't want the curse. Take it AWAY.”

Lena walked in about that time, “Willodean, what is...”

“Get out! Get out! Get out!” I screamed in madness. She hyperventilated on impact and stormed out, shaken by my actions, my words, my
crazy. 
I must have stayed in my room for hours, until it grew dark out. I woke up on top of the mirror bin. My first thought was the red stone.

“That's it
.” 
I said out loud. It must be what is causing Maw Sue to go darkened, unable to snap out of it. It has to be. I looked at the clock. It was past seven thirty. Maw Sue would be asleep soon. She always took an assortment of tic-tacs before she went to bed to help her sleep. I made a plan. That evening when she drifted off to sleep in her bed, I slipped inside. It was creepy, way creepy inside her house, all dark and eerie. The sounds almost made me change my mind.

“Forward.” I heard the president scream. I gathered breathe and more nerve and tip-toed
inside until I was standing next to her bed in the pitch of dark.  I saw the candle on the nightstand, the one she always used in her face-the-dark ceremonies.  I began to think I should have done one myself, before I came, but it was too late for that.  I watched her take raspy breathes in and out and I thought of the shadows I saw streaming out of her eye sockets like ghosts from her past. 
I stood there for a long time, watching the red dragon eye of the stone leap out at me, mad and toxic like it wanted to take me away, out of Maw Sue’s reach, out of her loving arms, as if it wanted her all to itself. 
It was evil.
It had to be the evil that drove her to darkness. 

I have my own thoughts about that stupid stone, that's it’s likely the reason she’s crazy and I’m crazy. What if Aunt Raven had some kind of curse upon it
and where did it come from anyway? 
Maw Sue didn't know any better when she took it off her neck years ago. So it just passed the evil down, generation after another.
I never understood why Maw Sue said it soothed her soul, that part I don’t understand.  My fear was that it was trickery and making us all
insane.
And then it dawned on me. 
Maybe that’s why I was born. 
To stop it.
 Maybe that is the purpose Maw Sue had been hem-hawing about for years now, telling me I was a fighter, a pugnator and all that. 
This is what I have to do.
 
I will stop the madness.
 
I will take it. I will stop the curse.
That’s it. It has to be, Ms. Blanche, the visions, the necklace, all the old legends and stories, the connections. It all makes sense now. I stared back at the red stone defiantly so that it wouldn’t see my fear. I
couldn’t see in the dark, but I was positive I might have been sweating blood droplets.  My heart was in my throat. When I reached down to touch the stone—it leaped at me several times.  I had to fin-niggle the necklace very carefully around her neck to the clasp, and turned the stone upside down so that I couldn’t see its hard glare.  I unlatched the clasp and slipped it off.  The whole time it is alive and its wet bloody hand leap and try to latch on.  I was ready to get rid of it.