Chapter 24
“This is nuts!” Chalice Brown told herself as she steered her sister’s older Chevrolet down the ruts of this narrow lane through the swampland.
The Impala jolted and rocked over the sparse gravel and potholes, then shimmied over an exposed root.
Worse yet, vines and limbs scraped the exterior, and the headlights caught in the eyes of a raccoon before it lumbered out of the way.
Why had she listened to her sister, Dorothea?
When had Dotty shown even the semblance of sanity?
And yet she’d been desperate, and here, far from her home in Detroit and while visiting Dotty, she’d caved on her sister’s harebrained scheme, taking over her appointment with some kook who claimed to predict the future out here in the middle of no-damned-where.
Oh, sure.
And there in the car’s headlights was the wooden gate with the no trespassing sign.
Just as Dotty had told her. She parked and wished she’d worn boots, as the ground was soggy here, and it would only get worse, as the fortune-teller or seer or high priestess or whatever she was only did her readings in the middle of the effing swamp.
Why oh why had she listened to Dotty?
Well, the answer was simple, really. She had to know.
Had to! Her life depended on it. At thirty-eight, she wasn’t getting any younger, and she wanted marriage and a child.
Hopefully before she crossed the Rubicon of Four-O, and time was getting short.
But how had she let Dotty talk her into this fiasco?
And at dusk? Wasn’t that the time when all those nasty nocturnal creatures like bats and possums and, God forbid, snakes came out?
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Chalice chastised herself as she felt in the pockets of her jacket for her phone, while trudging along an overgrown path. The flashlight app would come in handy as it got darker. And it would, she knew, feeling a little cold inside.
“This is a goddamned fool’s mission,” she said aloud as she swept her gaze from side to side. There were alligators in this part of the South and all kinds of snakes, like rattlers and cottonmouths and corals and, oh, good Lord, she didn’t know what else. But nothing good, she knew that much.
Just keep moving.
She walked through the thickets of cypress and pine, tupelo trees and thorny blackberries, and tried not to notice the Spanish moss that floated, ghostlike, from the huge branches of the live oaks surrounding a small clearing.
She wouldn’t let her imagination get the better of her, she told herself, as she noticed the cottage, if that’s what you’d call it, and several smaller buildings surrounding the open area.
All of the structures were dark, no light showing in any of the windows.
A rocker moved on the porch of the cottage, pushed by the wind that stole through the surrounding trees and caused the hairs on the back of Chalice’s neck to lift.
Just get on with this. Meet the fortune-teller, have her read your palm or look into a crystal ball or whatever, and get the hell out. You’ve come this far; no backing out now.
With more than a little trepidation, Chalice walked up to the door of the cottage and knocked sharply.
No answer.
“Hello?” she called, the sound of her own voice raising goose pimples on her skin.
She heard a few cackles and peeps from a small chicken coop, then answering low snorts and grunts near a long, low building that, she guessed, housed pigs.
Awesome.
Just freaking awesome.
A deserted pig and chicken farm in the near dark.
What the hell was she doing here?
She was about to turn around when she saw the faintest of lights past the shimmer of a waterline, and with the setting sun as a guide, she followed a well-worn path that led to the swamp’s edge.
Ancient-looking boards formed a rickety bridge that spanned the brackish water to a small island of sorts, where a hut had been constructed. She heard the swoop of bats and told herself to keep calm as she stepped onto the bridge.
Don’t go there. This is too weird.
So what if Jaiden never proposes?
Do you think talking to some witchy woman in the middle of the Georgia swamp is gonna change anything?
“No,” she said aloud, but continued to move forward. She hadn’t come all this way for nothing. She’d better just keep going. Finish what she started.
The old boards creaked under her weight, reminding her, like almost everything did, that she should lose twenty pounds—well, maybe thirty—but it wasn’t happening tonight as the last, dying rays of sunlight pierced the branches of the thick cypress and tupelo trees growing right out of the water.
She heard a splash and nearly jumped out of her skin, only to realize it was a fish that had risen to the surface, trying to feed on the myriad of insects that were flying and buzzing around her.
If Dotty hadn’t paid for her visit in advance, Chalice would never have come.
“You’ll love it,” Dotty had insisted. “I’m not kidding you. And you’ll love Madam Jeanne. She’s fantastic.”
“Madam,” Chalice had repeated. “Like the madam of a whorehouse?”
Dotty had laughed, throwing back her head. “Nothing quite so salacious.”
“Just weird as shit.” At that point, Chalice had taken a long puff off her e-cigarette and ignored her sister’s wrinkling of her nose.
“I’m telling you, she’s the real deal. Predicted I was gonna have a baby girl before I even knew I was pregnant with Marie!
And then there was the time I won the lottery—remember that thousand-dollar scratch-off ticket?
Well, Madam Jeanne had told me not three weeks before that I was gonna have some good luck!
And that I was coming into some money, and oh, right before Mama died, you know?
Maybe like a week or two before, Madam Jeanne said she sensed a dark cloud coming my way. ”
Chalice hadn’t bought it. “How can you, a woman of faith, a Christian, believe all that nonsense, Dorothea?” she’d asked using Dotty’s given name to add weight to the conversation.
“Because I think Madam Jeanne is touched by the hand of God,” Dotty had answered sincerely. “There are all kinds of things we can’t explain on this earth, Chalice, but we all know they’re God’s doing. He knows all.”
Chalice had let out a huge cloud of vapor, and for once Dotty hadn’t waved the mist away. “Is she God-fearing? Madam Jeanne, I mean.”
“I don’t know what she is, or what she calls herself.”
“A witch maybe?”
Dotty had shrugged. “She, like you and me, is one of God’s creations.”
And so here Chalice was, in the middle of the damned swamp and feeling as if she were playing the fool in one of Dotty’s ridiculous one-act plays, just as she had all through grade and high school.
Which was just plain crazy. You’d think that at thirty-eight she might have wised up, but oh-the-fuck-no.
As she edged closer, she eyed the hut, if that’s what you’d call it.
Maybe a shack? Or a shanty? Whatever kind of handmade hovel it was, it was decrepit, the boards loose and gray, knotholes and gaps in the plank walls showing.
In Chalice’s opinion, the hut seemed to be close to rotting completely away, soon to be swallowed by this ever-darkening swamp.
Not one light showed … no wait, there was a weak orange glow that she noticed through the holes in the siding, but rather than urge her on, the eerie light gave her pause and made her insides congeal a bit. All the while, a damned voice in her head whispered that she was walking into danger.
Maybe she should just bail. Backtrack. Drive Dorothea’s old Impala back to her, hand back the money Dotty had paid, and admit that she couldn’t go through with it. Her older sister would mock her, but she was used to that.
But, damn it, Chalice did want some insight into the future. To find some validation that the six years she’d spent with Jaiden were worthwhile, that they weren’t a lost cause.
“Hello?” she called out, her voice seeming to crawl over the water. “Anybody home?”
Of course not. This is not someone’s home.
At least she hoped not. This place was too small. Too unlivable.
“Hello? Mrs. … er, Madam Jeanne?” Why did she feel so foolish calling out the name? No one was around. No one could hear her. And maybe that was the problem.
This whole setup was weird, and her nerves were on edge, tightening with every step she took. She wasn’t easily frightened, but dusk in the swamp? Anyone would think twice. “I’m Chalice,” she said more loudly and cleared her throat. “My sister, Dotty … she made an appointment.”
The door to the place was just a dark space, like the opening to a tepee, the sides of the doorway slanted, and Chalice would have to bend to walk in. “Hello?” she said again and heard the tremor in her own voice. She smelled wood ash and cinnamon and eucalyptus.
She took out her phone. Turned on the flashlight app and stepped inside.
“Anyone here?” She swept the phone’s faint beam through the small space, where an altar was covered in candles that had burned down to nothing but pools of congealed wax.
There were crystals everywhere reflecting the flashlight’s beam, and in the center of the room a round fire pit, where a few glowing coals peeked from beneath charred logs.
And over some of the rocks, a pool of dark red.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Blood?
Oh. God.
A beam overhead creaked.
Chalice’s heart stilled.
“What the—?”
Fear shafting through her, she shined her flashlight up to the rafters, past the macabre skeletons and skulls of dead beasts to the roofline and the crossbeam high above.
Hanging from the timber was a body.
A woman.
Her head was at an odd angle, her eyes bulging, blood staining her long dress.
No!
Chalice screamed.
Panic shrieking through her body, she dropped her phone.
Then she was running, her feet pounding over the makeshift bridge, her heart pumping wildly. She clambered over the bridge, the image of the dead woman chasing her.
“Oh, God, oh, God, oh …” Gasping, she sped across the clearing to the path.
Breathing hard, she scrambled over brambles and vines, tripping once, then again before she got to the old Chevy.
What the hell? What the … She threw herself inside the car, switched on the engine, and rammed the gearshift into reverse.
Feeling as if Lucifer himself was chasing her, she pressed on the accelerator, the tires spinning, as she looked over her shoulder and expected some ghoul or axe murderer to leap out at her at any second.
Go. Go. Go!
What if someone was in the back seat?
She hadn’t checked.
Or the trunk?
She’d left the keys in the ignition. Anyone could have gotten in and—
“Oh, please Jesus, if you’re listening, help me,” she prayed aloud.
Pushing on the accelerator, she kept reversing, swerving, driving like a bat out of hell down the long driveway, looking over her shoulder, the car bouncing and shuddering in the rutted lane.
Branches scraped the doors and windows, tires hit rocks and potholes.
She didn’t let up, just backed through the gate, not slowing down as she reached the road.
There she jammed the gear into drive and hit the gas to fly down the highway, the engine rumbling, tires humming.
That woman!
That dead woman!
That effing dead woman!
Hanging like that, neck crooked, eyes bulging, blood draining from a hole in her neck!
Spooked out of her mind, Chalice took a corner too fast, and the car skidded into the oncoming lane, where a pickup, heading in the opposite direction, nearly collided with her. She cranked the Impala back into her lane as the driver of the truck laid on the horn and flipped her off.
She barely noticed, just kept driving.
Faster!
Faster!
For what seemed like miles.
“Help me, Lord Jesus,” she whispered, just as she spied a gas station at the next corner.
With an eye on the rearview mirror, as if she expected to see the monster who had hung that poor woman like an animal carcass in a slaughterhouse, she hit the brakes and squealed to a stop under the fuel-island canopy, slamming the car into park.
Without cutting the engine, she raced, stumbling into the mini-mart, where a pimple-faced kid in a uniform stared, gape-mouthed, at her.
“Call the police,” she ordered, breathless and panting, feeling as if she were jumping out of her own skin. “Call them.” When the kid didn’t move, she pounded the counter, making a jar of pickles jump, “Right now! Call them! 911.”
“But—”
“I said call them!” The kid, pale and staring at her as if she was out of her mind, backed up.
“Do it!” Chalice was frantic. “I just saw a dead woman! Hanging from a damned beam, in a hut out there in the swamp!” She gestured wildly to the tall windows that faced the gas pumps that were illuminated by the fluorescent lights and where Dotty’s scratched Impala idled.
She advanced on the kid and grabbed his shirt, bunching it in her fist. A plastic tag with the name Gary was pinned to his shirt.
“Listen, Gary, if you don’t call the goddamned police, I will.
” She dropped her death grip on his uniform, then spying the phone on the counter, snapped the receiver up.
The kid, terrified, backed up farther, probably to hit a security button or a camera or maybe to grab a pistol from under the cigarette counter.
She didn’t care. With shaking fingers, she punched out the number.
“Don’t even think about grabbing some kind of gun and shooting me,” she said, and the kid froze, eyes wide beneath a fringe of dark hair.
Chalice pointed to the vials of e-liquid near him with her free hand and motioned frantically at the vape juice.
“And, and give me two of those—the caramel-vanilla ones.”
“Wha—what size?”
“I don’t care! Any size! Do it!” Chalice ordered.
The kid jumped as the 911 operator answered, and Chalice sank to her knees.
Thank the ever-lovin’ Lord!