Poison Tongue (3 page)

After that day I’d believed everything my gran told me, even the things that seemed like they were from her folktales. She told me to trust my gut, my instincts, my head, but never my eyes and never, ever my heart.

“I’ll go to the back and get the amulet. I have a special one in mind.” Annamae turned and walked through the curtain of beads that covered the door to the back of her store, her long, red skirt swishing behind her.

The door chimed. Two women, talking in hushed tones, walked through the front door. When they noticed me, they smiled. I dipped my chin in reply.

They went into the aisle that sold premade potions. That was usually the first aisle that people who were inexperienced in hoodoo or rituals went to. The rosemary leaves sat on a high shelf, tucked neatly into a small plastic jar with a screw-top lid.

As I collected the things I’d need for my cleansing, I couldn’t help but listen in on the conversation the two ladies were having in the aisle next to mine.

“Someone moved into the old Poirier house,” one lady whispered. “A dark-haired man from the city.”

“Who would be crazy enough to move into that house? It’s decrepit and unsafe. Does he know?”

“Well, Agatha ran into him just yesterday at the post office. She tried chatting with him to ask who he was, where he’d come from, and what he knows about the old Poirier house, but she said he looked like he hadn’t heard her at all. She said something’s off with him. She said he gave her chills.”

“Not many young folks move here by chance. Does he have family in town?”

“No one that I’m aware of. Agatha and I talked about it, and no one seems to know who he is or why he moved here of all places.”

“How odd! And he’s young, you say?”

“Agatha said he looks to be in his midtwenties. She tried asking him, but again, he seemed to not want to chat with her. Why move to a small town if you won’t even talk to the locals?”

“Levi,” Ward said quietly.

I jumped and spun toward him.

“You should not eavesdrop.”

I nodded and walked over to the counter. As I did, Annamae came out of the back room with a necklace in her hand. She set it down on the counter in front of me. By the pleased look on her face, you’d have thought she’d handed me the holy grail.

“This will do,” she said.

I took the necklace and held it up to the light. It was a purple amulet, shaped like a crystal, strung on a long, gold chain. It glistened and sparkled in the dim lighting. When I touched it, small fissures of electricity coursed across my skin.

“Do you like it?” She looked like the cat who caught the mouse.

“Yes.” Unable to hide my pleasure, I immediately slipped it over my head. It hung down to the middle of my chest. The weight of it against the fabric of my shirt brought a gentle comfort to my mind.

I paid Annamae for the supplies and the amulet that I couldn’t help but touch as Ward and I walked out of the store. I stared at it as we walked, watching how it sparkled even more brightly in the sunlight.

“It is a protection amulet,” Ward said.

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “I know.”

“It worries me that Annamae thinks you need a protection amulet.”

“Maybe she’s being cautious, Ward.”

“Miss Annamae is many things—cautious is not one of them.”

Across the street a young man and woman were deep in conversation, laughing and holding hands as they walked. They weren’t loud enough to be heard from where I was, but their beaming smiles said enough.

I couldn’t help but wonder what they talked about. Parties? Marriage? What to have for dinner? At times I found myself envious of people who’d never been touched by things otherworldly. Everyone outside my family remained oblivious to the supernatural things lurking in the shadows. They believed ghosts and evil and souls were things from Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales and Disney movies.

Even back in secondary school, I would listen to people my own age talk about their new iPhones, Taylor Swift’s newly released single, or the upcoming Tom Hardy movie—whoever that was. My mind was filled to the brim with incantations, spells to evict demons, and stories of ghosts Silvi had told me the night prior.

As I watched the young couple disappear around the corner, I wondered if the person the two women in Miss Annamae’s store had been talking about knew of things otherworldly. Why else would someone move into that house?

After a few shared minutes of silence between Ward and me, I said, “Ain’t you curious about who moved into the old Poirier house?”

“No.”

“Not even a little?”

“No.”

“It would take an odd type of person to move into a haunted house,” I said. Ward gave me a blank look. “It is haunted. I can feel it.”

“I believe you, Levi,” he said.

“So, what kind of a person would move to a town where he knows no one, plans to talk to no one, and chooses a decaying old house to live in?”

“Not the type of person you should associate with.”

I threw him a look. “Of course not. You know how I feel about the old Poirier house. The mere sight of it makes my bones ache and my guts knot. That house is a visual representation of the blackest kind of black, the darkest kind of dark. Evil things have happened there. It is where evil things still linger.”

The old Poirier house was located at the edge of town and backed right onto the marshlands. There was a dock in the back of the house that stretched out far into the swamp. The house’s windows were shattered, its paint chipping away. People had lived there once, but my mama told me something wicked happened behind that bright red door and the wooden exterior. She hadn’t needed to tell me. I could feel it in my bones. I think the townsfolk, those without a spiritual bone in their bodies, could feel it. It was a place where men became monsters and evil consumed the only light that house had ever known. I’d been too young to understand what that meant, and too young for Mama to tell me what happened in that house.

And I hadn’t asked again since.

Whoever had lived there moved out, leaving the large, dark house to sit on the end of the swamp and slowly crumble.

No one in town went near the old Poirier house, not only because it was out of the way and on the edge of town, but because, much like the swamp, there were tales of evil that lurked inside. Those tales scared away even the bravest of children and gave all reasonable adults a good excuse to go nowhere near it.

“Don’t worry.” An uneasy smile settled on my face. “The Poirier house is the last place I want to go.”

Ward looked at me, his dark eyes unblinking, his expression grave.

I wrapped my fingers around the amulet, squeezing it tightly. “I know, Ward. The darkness can never love me back.”

Chapter 3

FIVE NIGHTS
a week, I work at Mercy’s Diner, a small place near the center of town. Mercy’s is considered the watering hole by all the locals. While it may not be the fanciest place, it is still one of the most popular. It is a small building with a brick exterior but has big, bright windows on one side that let the light in first thing in the morning. The floor is wood paneled, but the table and chairs are all metal and plastic that are bolted to the floorboards. The inside walls are covered in old, black-and-white, framed pictures of the town and the people who lived there. It was a ritual that families would come in for a sixteenth-birthday party, and the entire family would have their picture taken and put up on the wall.

The owner was an older man named Hudson, who everyone simply called Hud. Hud liked to grunt most of his replies and steer clear of any eye contact. He was a big man who worked as the chef in the back. Every time I’d ever seen Hud, he wore a white apron and a blank expression on his face.

I liked working at Mercy’s, not only because the tips were generous and the atmosphere was light, but because I overheard stories of all kinds, people sharing personal secrets with one another, or sometimes with me. Or young people blustering about the boys and girls they had crushes on at school. Or who the new deputy in town was, or who was planning on moving out of town to try to make it in the big city as an actor.

I didn’t have a lot of friends in town, but I didn’t mind. It suited me fine to be a fly on the wall. There weren’t a lot of things I had to say to other people, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like to hear their stories. It just meant I preferred to keep my own stories to myself.

That evening when I got to Mercy’s, it was right before the dinner rush. I walked in through the back door, and Hud grunted at me without even looking up from where he was frying burgers.

“Hey,” I said in reply.

I grabbed my apron off the hook it hung from in the back room. As I pulled it over my head, Saddie walked in through the door carrying two trays full of plates on her forearms. It had always amazed me how she could manage to carry five piping-hot plates of food at once and manage not to drop any, especially since she was a few inches taller than me and the self-titled clumsy one.

“Levi, thank God, you’re here,” she said. Her face was flushed red and her forehead covered in sweat.

Saddie’s honey-colored hair hung neatly over her shoulder, the day of waiting tables both inside and outside the diner giving her a warm glow. The easy smile on her face was affectionate, and I could tell how grateful she was that my shift had begun.

When we’d been in school together, we’d never spoken two words to one another. Now, we talked almost every day and relied on each other.

“Where else would I be?” I took the trays from her and began loading dishes into the dishwater.

She stretched, cracking her back. “Who knows. Off chasing witches, probably.”

I grinned at her. She grinned back.

Saddie was the only person outside of my family and Annamae whom I’d spoken with about some of the oddities of my family. But whereas Annamae took me seriously, Saddie always thought I was joking.

She turned and looked over her shoulder as the front door chimed. “We’d better get out there. It’s starting to pick up.”

“You got plans tonight?”

Saddie almost always had plans. Her catlike eyes and long, thin legs saw to that. She looked just like the typical girl next door, and even I couldn’t deny she was naturally beautiful.

“You know I don’t kiss and tell, Levi.”

I smiled as she turned and grabbed the coffeepot off the burner and made her way out front. I followed behind her, taking a stack of menus as I did, and walked to the front door to seat the small lineup of customers.

THE DINNER
rush passed quickly, almost without me even noticing. It was busy, even for a Friday night. The diner bustled, people talking loudly, laughing, enjoying their hot meals and cheap coffee. I joked along with them, talking with some of the local customers whom I knew more about than some folks knew their own families.

It wasn’t until Hud called out from the back that we’d only be taking orders for another half hour that I noticed how dark it had grown outside and how the diner had slowly cleared out. I walked behind the counter and leaned against it, looking at Saddie as she closed the cash register.

“You have a date tonight,” I said.

She turned to me. “How could you tell?”

“Lipstick, for one. You’re also smiling more than usual.”

“Hey, I’m always smiley. And bubbly.”

I said nothing, just slowly let the smile spread across my face. She laughed as she reached out with the towel that had been thrown over her shoulder, and she hit me with it.

The door chimed and immediately the diner fell silent.

It felt like the atmosphere changed, like night had fallen and had swallowed up all the light and ease in the room. Like a wild horse sprinting forward, the memory of my dream last night collided with me. It hit me so hard I almost stumbled backward.

The familiar twist of haze around my neck squeezed the air from my throat. That hard, unrelenting pressure forced itself against my skin. Purple swirls danced in front of my eyes, and blackness stretched far, so far, into nothing….

“Levi.”

I gasped.

“Hey!” Saddie stood in front of me, her hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

I blinked at her. My stomach was in knots. The nausea hit me harder than the memory of my dream. Droplets of sweat traveled down the back of my neck, along my spine.

“Yes,” I choked out.

My limbs weren’t working right. My body felt like I’d been dipped in molasses and hung out in the sun to dry. The air I sucked in was thick and scratched my throat. The edges of my vision were blurred as blackness seeped in.

“You look sick,” Saddie said. Her brows were low over her eyes, and her grip on my shoulders tightened.

“Something’s not right, Saddie.”

Right as she opened her mouth to speak, her gaze flickered to a place beyond my shoulder. Like a thick, corded rope had tied itself around me, I turned, slowly, to see what had caught her attention.

Snakes coiled themselves around his body—a blue one twining around his leg, a red-and-gold-flecked snake wrapped twice around his waist. The yellow end of a tail slipped out from just around his bicep, while a pair of ruby-red eyes glowed from beneath the darkness of his hair. A huge black snake slithered and hissed as it slinked around his neck. It ran its smooth body against his Adam’s apple, tightening, and then turned its yellow gaze on me.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I could only stare at the serpent as it wrapped itself around him, growing larger and longer until it became the darkness that surrounded him. It became a shadow, a part of him.

“Levi!”

I blinked again. Saddie stood in front of me, a frantic look in her eyes.

“Sorry.” I slipped from her grasp, unwilling and unable to meet her eyes. My heart slammed wildly. “It’s nothing.”

She stared at me for a few soundless moments. “It’s not nothing. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” I pulled myself up straighter and squared my shoulders, not wanting her to see how sick I felt, how terrified I was.