Chapter 21
Twenty-One
The women settled in chairs around the table, not touching the napkins in their disquieting shape.
Samson scooted the painting to the center, placing Erielle’s sketch on top of it.
Her hands shook as she poured out the tea into plastic cups because she hadn’t washed the glasses.
Sam was beside her in an instant, clearly reading her nerves, and helped her carry the cups to the table, careful not to disturb the napkins.
His mom’s fingers toyed with the edge of one of the napkins, smoothing it anxiously.
“Why don’t you start?” Marie said. “Tell us what has been going on in this house.”
Erielle glanced over at Sam, who leaned against the counter, his hand tight on his flimsy cup. He shrugged and gestured for her to go ahead.
Though there was a remaining chair for her, she didn’t sit down. She told the women of her dreams, of the picture moving on its own, of the whispers of her name.
“Then last night, Samson stayed over, because I’d been sleeping in my car,” she said, her face heating although nothing had happened between them.
“I was asleep, dreaming.” Her face heated because her dream had been about Samson, but she wasn’t going to reveal that.
“And suddenly I was cold, like I’d been plunged into a frozen lake.
I woke up, and she was standing over me. ”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Sam said, edging down the counter so she could see him, not just sense him behind her.
No, they hadn’t really talked about what exactly had happened last night, both still reeling. She shook her head, not wanting to veer off from her story.
“She said something, but I’m not sure what.” It had sounded like, “Not him.” But she didn’t want to go down that road, either. “I was too busy screaming and trying to get away.”
She had thrashed about, trying to get off the stupid air mattress, away from the apparition. If she closed her eyes, she could see the filmy skeletal face, the bony hand reaching from a tattered sleeve.
So she didn’t close her eyes. Instead, she watched the other women exchange looks before turning their attention back to her.
“And then Sam was there, and he went through her, or she went through him. She was trying to keep him from me, is all I know. We couldn’t get out the front door no matter what we did, so we ran to the back, and out of the house.”
Mrs. Guillory turned to Sam. “Is that how you remember it?”
“I was down here.” He gestured in the direction of the living room.
“I heard her scream and I ran up to help. Yes, I went through her, and like Erielle said, it was like being dumped in a frozen lake. Like, the whole thing. Vision got blurry, hearing was muffled. I felt like I couldn’t move, but I knew I had to.
So I did. I think it surprised her, because she didn’t immediately come after us. ”
“And you saw the same thing? The woman in a white dress?”
He swallowed, gaze sliding aside. “Yeah.” He nodded. “I saw her.”
Hattie set her cup down. “Have a seat, Samson.”
The only chair remaining was leaning against the far wall, the rung broken, so he hopped onto the counter instead.
“So Phantom Bayou was founded as a timber town,” Samson’s mother began once she saw he was settled.
“There was a mill and everything. Families moved in, men worked at the mill, made lots of money for the mill owners. There were some beautiful houses in town, in those days. The mayor and his family had this house built. And because they were the richest, well, they kept getting elected, generation after generation. The town was bigger then, but not big enough to produce prospective brides. So the young men of the Clarke family would go to New Orleans for their brides. Some of the brides were happy to leave the city. Some were not. The one you met last night was not.”
Erielle’s pulse picked up. “How do you know who it was?”
“How many ghosts do you think live in the house?” Hattie asked, setting her cup down and leveling a look at Erielle.
“I thought you probably would have met her when you were a child, but maybe not. Maybe she was protective of you. Or maybe…” Her voice trailed off.
“She hated being here, you know? Kind of like your mama and aunt. They wanted to be near the city, experiencing what other young girls did. The mayor’s wife, Millicent, wanted to be in the city, enjoying the money and privilege she had grown up with.
Word was that she had a lover there, but of course she and the mayor denied it. ”
“They had twins,” Marie picked up. ”Their parentage was in question, by those who suspected the lover in the city, but the mayor treated them as his own, was just as proud of them, though he had to know what the town was saying.
But apparently, privately, she begged him to let her go back to the city, back to her lover.
And when he didn’t, she killed the children. ”
”Oh my God!” Erielle slapped her hand over her mouth. She couldn’t imagine how deranged the woman had to be in order to do that. She didn’t want to know how, hoped the women wouldn’t tell her.
Hattie nodded once. “But I guess she immediately felt remorse, because then she found herself some rope and walked up the stairs. Hung herself in the attic.”
Erielle shuddered.
“The mayor found the infants, but couldn’t find her for the longest time, because she’d locked herself in there.
So he was deranged with grief, and was certain she’d gone to the city to her lover.
And then he found her, days later, hanging in the attic in the middle of a bayou summer.
I’ll let your imagination work that out. ”
Erielle forced her imagination away from the image. Nope. She would not picture it.
“He left town after that, and while others tried to live in the house, no one lasted too long, until your grandparents.”
“I wonder why they could manage it.”
Hattie studied her, unreadable. “Do you not know?”
“I don’t. I…” She had so many questions. She wasn’t sure if she should tell Hattie about the painting, the journal, the etched symbols, the hidden room. “Was my grandmother—did she know protection charms?”
“That’s what these are.” Allison tapped the napkins.
“And the book? The journal? What do these symbols mean?”
“They’re Theban,” Allison said. “The witch alphabet.”
Erielle felt all the blood rush from her head. Honestly, she would have thought it had all left her body if she hadn’t known that was impossible.
“My grandmother…was…” No, she couldn’t say it. “My grandmother knew the witch alphabet?”
Hattie held her gaze, as if trying to press the knowledge into her brain. “We all do.”
“You all know…how to read that, and what it means, and how to do protections and…” What else did they know how to do? “Do you know how to get rid of ghosts?”
“Well, ah. It may be a little tricky,” Marie said. “Your grandmother, she was the one who learned how to, if not get rid of Millicent, she knew how to bind her, somehow. We have to hope what she did is written down in here.” She lifted the journal and dropped it back to the table.
Erielle noticed the napkins didn’t so much as ruffle with the movement.
“When were you going to tell me this?” She looked at Allison, trying to keep the accusation from her tone but she’d tamped down her frustration long enough.
Allison held her gaze, but spoke softly. “We needed to meet, and we needed to see what you knew, and what was happening.”
“But…you haven’t lived here that long. You didn’t know my grandmother.”
“Not…personally. I met her online a few years ago. She’s why I moved to Phantom Bayou. I knew what the…culture was like here.”
“My grandmother. Online.”
“Your grandmother was very wise and sought after,” Samson’s mother said. “She’d learned a lot when she researched all of this.” She waved a hand to indicate the house. “People asked her for help.”
“But…no. I would have known. Why did she never tell me? Does my mother know? My aunt?”
“They may. Angeline didn’t have to hide like some of us.” Samson’s mom looked down at her bag on her lap.
The preacher’s wife. Of course. “Pastor Guillory doesn’t know?”
She drew back her chin. “He knew. He forbade me to practice any more. Forbade me to even meet with these ladies.” She held her son’s gaze. “He can’t know I’m here now.”
Erielle wanted to look at Sam, to see his reaction, but at the same time, this seemed to be a personal plea between him and his mom.
“He tried to get me to move out of town when I opened my shop,” Allison said. “She told me he told her he didn’t want her tempted to return to that way of life.”
Erielle rested her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. “Let me see if I have this right. You are all witches, and my grandmother was part of your group because she lived in a haunted house.”
“In a haunted bayou,” Marie added.
“Right. Right. Right.” No, her brain couldn’t wrap around all of this. She rubbed her thumbs against her temples, as if that would press the reality into her brain. “And that room back there? Her workroom?”
“And we’d meet in there on occasion.”
“So how did you become interested in it?” She asked the question generally, but of course they wouldn’t answer unless she went one by one. “Marie?”
The woman looked over at Leslie. “We were young and rebellious. I told you about the ghost I saw, the boy who’d been missing since 1972.
One night, we went back to the swamp, looking for him, and everything went sideways.
” Marie looked at her hands on the table a long moment as she gathered herself to speak again.
“It was bad. And after the dust cleared, your grandmother sought us out, at great risk to herself. I don’t think a lot of people in town knew what she did.
She told us she’d teach us to take care of ourselves, and she did. ”
“And my…did my grandfather know? Was that…room a part of the house when they got it, or did they add it?”