Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror (5 page)

The black tongue curled around her thick lips. “I would prefer your eternal servitude.”

Mike ran.

Arctic wind shrieked in from behind the witch and tore the scarf from her head, allowing the long, thin braids to crack whip-like in the now frozen air. Icy mist rose from the ground. Zéphyrine’s eyes rolled back in her skull, white against the walnut skin as she stretched her bare, fleshy arms to the torn sky. A high, keening cry rose up as the earth lunged and snapped like a rabid dog on a leash. She released its chain. “My legion, the hunt is now.”

Mike’s dress shoes slipped on the moist dirt he’d se eagerly dug up. He panted and his body dripped cold sweat. He stumbled into another hole, hidden by the cemetery’s long grasses, and went down. He clawed at the ground as it retched and split open beneath him. Rot and decay tumbled into his mouth as he tried to scream. He spat, rubbed his tongue on his filth-crusted sleeve.

A skeletal hand closed around his ankle, the flesh on the bone slick with the ooze of decay. Mike stared as the remains of the skeleton pulled itself forward and opened a mouth teeming with bloated maggots.

“So warm,” it whispered.

Mike howled and kicked off the thing’s grip, scrambled to his feet and fled toward the open cemetery gate. He dodged the grasping hands emerging from the dirt. He risked a glance behind him. They were lumbering toward him, hundreds of them, stinking and leaking putrid gore. He ran harder, trying to outdistance the rotting corpses as they swayed to Zéphyrine’s eerie song.

Mike turned to see a milk-white form rise in his path and he could not avoid it. He ran through the spirit and gasped at the achy weakness it left. Hope of escape withered. More hazy forms emanated from the frosty slush, each taking a turn ripping away hunks of his soul. He wobbled, unable to keep his footing.

His steps faltered as the apparitions circled back for another pass, their banshee wails gluttonous and gleeful.

Legs leaden now, Mike sank deeper into the tortured soil. It was getting closer: the rattle of bone, the tattered mutterings… Above it all, the scent of wet ashes. He began to sob.

***

Anthony strolled into the diner and found Mike at a corner table hunched over a cup of steaming coffee. His navy suit jacket was grayed over with dust and his hair stood at odd angles. Mike pushed a thin strip of paper with an address scrawled on it across the table. Anthony looked around before he pocketed it. “Man, you look like hell.”

Heat waves always brought out the murderers. And the grip Mother Nature had on Charleston’s neck had everyone down for the count. I crushed out my cigarette before entering the interrogation room then rubbed the wine stain lipstick from my fingers. The ancient central air conditioning couldn’t keep up with the midday sun and the triple digit temperatures it dragged with it. The room was hotter than Satan’s bathwater.

A two-way mirror was the only break in the flat gray walls surrounding the metal table where a suspect slumped, his wrists shackled. The man’s eye had a split near the outer corner and while the gash wasn’t bleeding, the flesh surrounding it had already begun to darken.

“Tell me it wasn’t one of ours that did the shiner,” I said to the burly uniformed officer stationed in the corner by the door, his back to a wall.

Officer Butter shrugged. “Don’t think so.”

“Great,” I mumbled to myself. “Just what this case needs.” I tucked my white cotton blouse into my trousers then marched over to the table and addressed the man in the chair. “Good afternoon, Mister Byrd. My name is Gloria Jackson, and I’m the lead investigator on the Westbrook case. It’s come to my attention you were found with the victim’s wallet—”

An eggshell colored blob of mucus landed on the floor at my feet. When I looked up from the splatter, Byrd was grinning at me, spittle clinging to his lower lip. So it was going to be that sort of day. Even better. I straightened my glove and continued where I’d left off.

“—in your possession and copious amounts of her blood were found in your car. I’d like you to tell me something about that.”

“Fuck you.”

“We have a verbal statement from you, but on listening to it again, I don’t believe you’ve told us everything you know about this matter.”

Byrd sucked his teeth as he studied his reflection in the two-way mirror, but was otherwise silent.

His story was he’d picked up Dana Westbrook where she’s been hitchhiking off Interstate 26 near Monck’s Corner. He said that the girl had told him she was underage—although she didn’t look it—so he hadn’t tried anything. She was running away from home because her parents didn’t get her and she was going to be eighteen in a couple of months anyway.

Byrd had gone on to say the girl was unhurt when he picked her up and was fine when he’d dropped her off at the bus station in North Charleston, some thirty miles away. His explanation for the wallet? She’d left it and her purse under the seat of his car. He even had an explanation for the blood on his passenger seat: it was her menstrual blood. “She was bleedin’ like a cut pig,” he’d said, laughing. “I wouldn’t stick myself in that.”

For hours, he’s been questioned about her disappearance, but he hadn’t said any more. The arresting officers knew it was him…I knew it was him. I needed to find Dana, her parents and the entire city were waiting for news of her whereabouts. They hoped we could find her and bring her home safe.

From the amount of blood and its pattern arcing through the car, I was afraid we should be looking for a body, not for an injured teenager. But if we couldn’t get stronger evidence, most preferably Dana, we’d have to cut Byrd loose. I knew that and Byrd knew it too. He’d been on the streets and in the game long enough to know police procedure as well as I did.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what you know, Mr. Byrd?”

“I ain’t telling you jack squat.”

“That’s too bad,” I said as I sat at the table across from him. “I don’t usually brag, but at this moment I have a one hundred percent conviction rate and I’m pretty proud of it. Be a shame to break that streak now, don’t you think?” I opened my notebook, braced it with my left hand and scribbled down a few lines.

Disappearance of Dana Westbrook

Statement from Nathaniel Byrd

Nate Byrd frowned at my left hand, the black glove covering it fitting tightly enough for the leather to look shiny and oiled. Then he snorted. “Just one? Who are you, Michael Jackson?”

“Gloria Jackson,” I repeated. “No relation, though. Could never get that moonwalk thing down.” I clicked the pen closed and placed it next to the notepad. I passed both over to him. “We need your written statement, preferably your confession. Or Officer Butter here can record your verbal confession, if you’d prefer. Whether you believe it or not, I’m here to help you.”

“I don’t believe a word that comes outta your whore mouth.” He jerked on his chains as he attempted to stand up, but they held fast.

Officer Butter stepped forward from the corner of the interrogation room where he’d slouched after bringing Nate in. “Hey, hey! None of that.”

He turned his attention to the uniformed officer. “And why not? You boning her? I see.” Byrd looked me up and down as much as he was able to with me sitting on the other side of the metal table. “Too much woman for my taste, but the fat girls always have the big tits.” He giggled as if I’d tickled him.

My lips pinched tight and I knew I looked like my mother had when she’d caught me talking in church. When was that, last week? I nodded at Butter and he slipped his reflective sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on as I gave my final appeal. “This is your last chance to tell me what you know about the disappearance of Miss Dana Westbrook. If you continue to refuse my requests for information—”

Byrd reached out quick as a pickpocket and snatched my pen. Before I could move, he’d brought it down with all of his might—right through my hand. He looked triumphant until he noticed Butter hadn’t attempted to stop him or help me and I hadn’t screamed.

Also, there was no blood.

“I’m sorry you felt the need to do that, Mr. Byrd.” My voice was calm as before, no change in volume or timbre. I wedged the pen out of my left hand by rocking it back and forth with my right until it loosened enough for me to pull out. “Truly is a shame you decided not to cooperate. It would have been easier for both of us.”

Byrd swallowed, his eyes on my careful movements as I tugged on each finger of the leather glove, then removed it. I saw the revulsion on his face as my left hand appeared, stiff as a corpse’s. The brand new stigmata-like hole through its dry desiccated meat didn’t help matters. He tried to scoot his seat backward away from me but his gaze was fixated now. Light emanated from the hand, its gnarled digits cracking as I attempted to straighten the gray, withered flesh.

He moaned as his body twitched almost imperceptibly. Impressive, I thought. Most people can’t move even that much when they see the hand.

“Do you know what this does, Mr. Byrd?” His eyes moved frantically left and right—either saying no or looking in vain for an escape. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t have to find out.”

I stood and walked around the table to stand behind him. Try as he might, he was frozen in place, gaze fixated straight ahead where my empty glove lay abandoned on the table. “If you’d revealed your secrets earlier, you may have been spared this. But you’ve kept them locked up in that little mind of yours. Shut behind a tiny little door. This,” I let the weight of my arm lay heavy on his shoulder. “Opens doors.”

As I rounded the desk once more, I let my arm slip from his shoulder and I dragged the thick nails of the hand across the table, leaving the tooth-aching noise of scratched metal in the air. Byrd’s eyes watered.

“You may not believe me, Mr. Byrd, but I feel sorry for you. I’m told this hurts.”

When I heard the soft click of the officer’s tape recorder, I placed the hand on Byrd’s head.

Frieda stood in the kitchen’s dull light with a chopping knife clutched in one hand. The dinner on the table lay untouched, ice-cold and bathing in congealing fat. Her cinnamon coloring disguised the angry flare of heat in her cheeks. Still, she knew yelling wouldn’t get her husband’s attention, so she forced a calm tone into her voice.

“Why aren’t you staying for dinner? I made your favorite.”

“I told you, I got to go out.” Henry came out of their bedroom, buttoning up his good shirt and tucking it into slacks she had taken her time to iron that morning.

“Out where? You can’t stop to eat dinner with your wife before you go? Give me some of your time?”

“Thought I just gave you some.” Henry laughed, his tongue grotesquely pink against his smooth ebony face. He waggled his long, limp penis at her before he tucked it back into his pants. 

“Good you put that away. I was going to lop it off.”

“You wasn’t gonna do that to this valuable piece of merchandise.” 

“I wanted to spend some time with you. Just us. Like we used to.” Tears threatened to fall from her maple syrup colored eyes.

“A man needs some time to hisself, baby. Told you that long time ago.”

“I know you did, but…”

He took a pick from his back pocket, a metal one with a balled up fist for a handle and ran it through his short, tight afro. In the hall mirror, he patted it with both palms to even out the ’do.

“You never said where you were going,” Frieda said.

“Goin’ out with the fellas. Relax and get a couple drinks.”

“You look mighty nice for a night out with Butch and them.” She put the knife down and wiped her hands on her apron. “You promised me no more sleeping around, Henry. Remember that?”

“I know, baby, I know. Don’t you worry ’bout nothing.” He kissed her cheek and grabbed a pork chop from the platter before heading for the door.

“When are you gonna be home?”

“Late, baby. Real late.”

***

Frieda parked the aging Chevy at the edge of the dirt road leading to the marsh. She sat in the driver’s seat with the window rolled down and breathed in the sulfurous scent of plough mud and sea grass. Although the marsh teemed with life, loneliness pressed in on her like an unwelcome suitor in the dark.

She walked along the water’s edge toward the small house nestled in the marsh’s protective embrace, unafraid in the blackness. The moon parted the dark in shifting layers as clouds crept across the Carolina sky. As the toe of her shoe hit the porch, the front door creaked open.

“Evening, Big Mama,” she said.

Big Mama stood just over six feet without shoes. Her husky frame held up a massive bosom and her hair, fluffy and cotton white, stood out against her dark skin.

“Lawd, Frieda. You here in the middle of the night? I know what this must be. Get on in here.” The Gullah accent, born on the coastal waterways of the Carolinas, was musical as it fell from her dark, unpainted lips.

Cool marsh breeze broke through the muggy night and the thin curtains fluttered. Frieda sat at the rough-hewn table in the middle of what served as the cabin’s kitchen and dining room while Big Mama bustled around in cabinets and muttered under her breath.  She returned to the table with two jelly jars filled with rose-colored liquid.

“Big Mama, I—”

“Drink this first.”  

The homemade liquid scorched her throat. She coughed, but the burning cleared her head. The swirling thoughts she’d brought to the cabin solidified into a concrete block of determination. She took another sip of the wine while her godmother eased into the chair opposite and lit a cheroot with a blue-tipped match, producing the sweet scents of tobacco and clove.

“What Henry done now?” The wicker chair creaked as Big Mama settled her bulk into it.

“Same old,” Frieda said, turning the jar in her hands, the light from the fire in the nearby iron stove filtering though the glass, causing the liquid inside to shimmer. “Cheating. Staying out all night. I’m tired of it.”

“Mmmph.” Rings of smoke dissolved in the air.

“I’m married. I shouldn’t have to bump around in that house alone all the time.”

“That why you got married? To never be alone?” Her snort forced smoke down from her wide nostrils like an enraged bull. “I got news for you, chile. Alone you come in this world and alone you go out. Nothing gone change that.”

“I got married because I love him. I just want him to love me back.”

“Henry love you in his own way.  But that ain’t the way you want, huh?”

“I can’t live like this,” Frieda’s whisper hung in the air. “Not anymore.”

Her godmother leaned forward and placed a weighty hand on her arm, her scent clean and sweet—peach wine and clothing starch. “You still a beautiful young woman. Find yourself somebody else. Don’t let no man be the death of you. Not like your daddy was to your momma.”

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t want another man. I made a promise before God and everybody and I will not leave Henry.”

Big Mama tapped ashes into a chipped china teacup. “He ain’t worth the heartache. You better off alone.”

“I don’t ever want to be alone again. I hate it.”

“Sure it ain’t his ding-a-ling you missin’?”

“That’s not the problem.” She turned away from Big Mama’s intense gaze.

“No shame in it, girl. You supposed to like going to bed with your husband. That what make him feel like a man. But it seem your man like going to everybody else bed.” A look of sympathy crossed the heavy woman’s face and her tone became gentle. “You can’t change him, Frieda. You married him that way.”

Henry had been late for their wedding. Big Mama and Francis, her fourth husband, had found him drunk in a motel room with a street girl. Only Francis’s cool head had kept Big Mama from killing Henry right then. She’d pulled a derringer from her bra and had leveled it at the naked couple. The girl had screamed, the crusty motel sheet held to her nudity, then she’d run for the door. 

As the girl passed by, Big Mama grabbed her arm and whispered something in her ear before letting her go hollering out into the sunset. Then she waited while Francis cleaned Henry up and they headed for the church. Frieda and Henry were married an hour later.

“I know I can’t change him,” Frieda admitted, unraveling the ends of the woven leather belt tied around her waist. “But you can.”

Big Mama extinguished the cigar and drained her wine, but said nothing.

Frieda rushed on. “You can fix it so he never strays from me again. You can put him in a jar or something. I’ve seen you work root. That’s why people are scared of you.”

Big Mama laughed, the sound a rich singsong echo. “They scared ’cause they think root worse than voodoo. Ain’t true. They both dangerous, in the right hand.” The chair groaned as Big Mama leaned back and looked at the ceiling of what had once been slave quarters. “Puttin’ his spirit in a jar don’t stop a man from cattin’ no ways. Only one thing can do that.”

“The Hag.”

“Right. And the Hag ain’t nothin’ to play with. Not even for me.”

“But you can do it.”

“Oh, I can do it. But I ain’t gonna.”

Frieda got up from her chair and knelt beside the woman who’d taken her in after her mother’s death and raised like her own daughter. “Please. I don’t what else to do.”

“What you need to do is leave well enough alone. Find a way to live your life outside of Henry.”

“I can’t. I need him.”

“You ain’t gonna let this go, huh?” The older woman shook her head and let a sigh escape. “Lawd, that man’s thing must jump up and do a dance inside you.” She fingered the damp, pulpy end of the cigar. “I can tell you this: if I send the Hag after him ain’t no telling what gone happen.”

“She’ll take that extra energy of his and leave barely enough for me.”

“That what supposed to happen. But I just call her. Ain’t no way to control her. She do as she please.” Big Mama’s pause lasted several loping heartbeats before she spoke again. “This ain’t for you. Go home. Pray on it. Accept your man for what he is or leave him.”

“I can’t do that.” Desperation grew in Frieda’s voice, making it higher pitched than usual. “Why won’t you do this for me? Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“More’n you know, gal. But sometime you must decide to be happy, even if you ain’t. Find a reason.”

Frieda picked at her torn and ragged thumbnail. “Do you want me to pay you?”

“Don’t talk foolish. My advice is always free.”

“There’s other rootworkers out there.” She kept her tone even and non-threatening.

“So your mind is made up.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Big Mama ran her hand through her puffy curls. “When is your woman time?”

“It’s here now.”

The older woman gaped. “You mean to do this tonight?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Mercy, Jesus.” The fire sputtered and a length of wood crumbled to ash with
a
shoos
h
.  “No man ever the same after she done with him, you know.”

Frieda nodded, not trusting her voice to work around the sudden lump of fear in her throat.

The two women sat on the hardwood floor of the cabin with moonlight illuminating Big Mama’
s
mis en plac
e
for the ritual. Two piles of rock sea salt, a wad of Henry’s coarse hair tied with butcher’s twine and six blood smeared candles sat next to the refilled juice glasses.

“This your last chance, Frieda. Think this through.”

The younger woman’s face remained resolute. “I’m done thinking.”

Big Mama nodded and lit the first candle. Murky shadows danced to its flickering. When the final candle began to glow, she spoke. “Get me a hidin’ man.”

Frieda smoothed her shirtdress and tiptoed out to the marsh, her Keds squishing in the soft, dank mud. The moon was a smile in the darkness as she looked for a stalk of seagrass leaning heavily to the ground. Finding one, she crouched to complete her task, her feet sinking deeper into the cool, black muck. She plucked a conical shell from the crisp grass with two fingers and hurried back inside.

Big Mama placed the open end of the shell against her neck and hummed low in her throat. The hum filled the small room, vibrated across the floor to imbed itself in Frieda’s chest and infuse her limbs with its eerie, toneless rumble.

She pulled the shell away from her throat and Frieda saw a small, pale crab, stirred by the vibration, peek out of the shell. Big Mama yanked it from its home and pulled a switchblade, slick with sweat, from the depths of her bosom. In one motion, she opened the knife and skewered the frightened crustacean to the floor before it could scuttle away. Henry’s clump of hair covered the crab’s death throes. She took a gulp of the caustic wine, spat it on the gruesome pile and touched a candle to it. It flared up, burning bright, but not destroying the wooden floor, while Frieda’s voice joined the humming.

Wind came, strong through the curtains and the hovering shadows coalesced into a swirling ash grey mass.

“She here.  Be ready with the salt.”

The grey cloud moved around the calling space, stopping at each candle, before it slunk between the two women to examine its sacrifice. Satisfied, it slid over to Frieda and swayed like a cobra. She could feel its presence inside her mind, inside her chest and she gasped as it probed at her most tender heartaches. Crushing memories rushed to the surface of her psyche: Henry’s countless betrayals, looks of pity from the local women, and laughter from the men. Frieda’s heart seized. She gasped for breath as scabs, new and old, tore from each emotional wound. It delved deeper in its search, picking curiously, while tears grew behind Frieda’s fluttering eyelids. Her chest heaved and quivered with impending sobs.

“The salt. Throw the salt!” Big Mama yelled, breaking through the creature’s trance-inducing sway.

Frieda’s arm shook with the effort of tossing a small handful of salt over her left shoulder. While most of the jagged crystals found their way down the front of her dress, enough landed behind her to end the Hag’s internal quest. The smoky funnel whirled and spun with its newfound knowledge.

Brought to the surface once again, Frieda’s pain solidified into diamond hard resolve, but it eased enough for her to gasp her request before she dissolved into gut clenching sobs. “Make Henry stay with me.”

The whirlwind roiled with fervor, covering the wine-soaked crab carcass in its dervish. When it finally moved, only the switchblade remained. The coil of ash rose in the thick, muggy air and hovered above the women. One word came from the twisting center eye.

“Agreed.”

It extinguished each candle, then dissipated to leave the women surrounded by darkness and the scent of charred sulfur.

***

“Hey, Henry.”

“What’s happenin’, my man?” Henry’s palm met his friend’s in an intricate succession of slaps before he sat on the next barstool in the smoky lounge.