“She ain’t in here, but she’s close, boys! Spread out!” the white man with the black hat called to the other six men in his party. “Come on out here, Ettawa Maybee! We ain’t afraid of your magic—in fact, we spit on your magic! Get out here and take your punishment like a woman! We promise we’ll go easy on you!” The other men began laughing at that. Bastards! If she called out to them, they would drag her down and rape her a hundred ways before turning her over to the sheriff.
She kept real still. If she still had faith, she would have thanked God or her ancestors for keeping her safe thus far. She wore a dark green gown, which hid her well in the darkness. She’d removed her many rings and buried them in a bag in the forest. They wouldn’t see her unless she wanted them to, but the dogs—they could smell her. The men walked around and waved their torches up into the trees. One of them, the one who wore the black hat, began to yell up at her, although he couldn’t see her. “I’ll burn these trees down, Ettawa! Come down now! The dogs have told on you; they know you’re up there!” At that moment, Ettawa pulled out the kitten and removed her hand from its face. It began to cry and meow loudly.
“That’s a damn cat up in that tree! These damn fool dogs have treed a cat!”
Another fellow said, “Maybe it’s a trick. Maybe she’s up there anyway. Keep looking; we have to keep looking, deputy!”
At that moment, the kitten fell out of the tree and landed on the black hat. It screamed, and immediately the surrounding dogs took to baying and begging for it. “I think we’ve proven it’s a cat. Here, take the wretched thing or toss it to the dogs!”
“No, sir, don’t do that. My daughter wants a cat. I’ll take it home to her.”
“Let’s go check Gosling’s place. Maybe she went back there for some coins she forgot. I wouldn’t put it past her to rob a dead man.”
As they did that, Ettawa ran toward Simple’s shack, which was just a mile from her own. She didn’t know what she expected to find, but what she saw wasn’t it. Simple’s woman lay dead on the front porch; the flies were already licking her eyeballs. In her arms was a small dead baby. Another child, also dead, lay inside the doorway, and Ettawa could see Simple crying in the house.
He saw her but couldn’t speak for a minute or two. He was very near death now, and there was nothing she could do about it. Strychnine killed efficiently and always. Simple lay cattery wonky on his bed.
“Unjust…Ettawa…that curse…you will pay for that unjust curse…you murdered my sons and my wife. You kill me, Ettawa, and I never betrayed you. Unjust….”
“I want my son, Simple. I want Leo. Where is he?” She took his green face in her hands and shook it, but he couldn’t see her any longer. Simple had died, and his last word was “unjust.”
She knew what that meant if it was true, but she couldn’t think about that now. She’d done the deed and wouldn’t repent for it. And she’d do more to regain her son if necessary. Leo was her soul, her light! Without him, life wasn’t worth living.
Yes, she thought as she left the dead behind and walked toward the pier, she would do so much more than that. As she walked, she saw faces in her mind. Leo’s face appeared first, his sweet face, his white teeth and big smile. He’d be crying for her, looking for her, needing her. She had to find him! Ettawa let her hand rest on the knife in her belt. It was the one she’d used to menace Reverend Gosling, although his death had been an accident; she had stabbed Quincy, but he lived, by all accounts. She wasn’t through making him pay. He would pay for tossing her out of Red Hill; she would make him pay for marrying Madeline. He would pay for rejecting his only son, Leo, for the promise of white children with his white wife. Yes, he would pay. But where to strike?
Quincy Justice had no heart, not at all, but he did love his money. And that was where she intended to hit next. He’d had Simple or someone else free her barrels from the spring house and the docks, and now she would do the same to his.
She knew where Quincy let his barrels cool and season. Right on the Mobile River. She eased down quietly, and even though young men were working everywhere, she went completely undetected. She knew when to be still and how to hide in the shadows.
The wooden whiskey barrels were arranged in long rows and floated in the water. During the processing, the barrels went to a charring room and then to be filled and sealed. And then came the aging process, where the barrels would be kept cold. What better way to keep them cool than by placing them in the cold Mobile River? She shimmied down the long line of barrels, which plunged and surged beneath her as the waves moved the barrel lines willy-nilly.
She had her knife in her mouth now as she came to the lead barrel. She removed the knife and began carefully cutting the rope that would break the intricate netting apart. She heard someone holler at her, but she would not be denied her chance at revenge. “This is for you, Leo!” she shouted as she made the last cut in the line. She fell into the water and swam to shore, uncaring what happened to her now. She got out of the way of the men who came to collect the barrels before they got lost floating down the Mobile River. She laughed at them openly because she knew how bad this would hurt Quincy Justice.
The barrels were collected with those long metal hooks, the ones the whiskey boys used to move the barrels around here at the dock, but one barrel sank into the deep water. The men cried out, jumping in to rescue the lost whiskey. She laughed as two men snatched her up and dragged her away. All the while, she laughed.
“You are mad. What you’ve done is—”
“Hush, Mark. Let Quincy have his moment.”
She laughed at their grave faces. How dare they assume to know anything about her? They were paid men, and not even good ones. Had Quincy taken men like these into his confidence?
“You will see your master now, Ettawa.”
The front doors of Red Hill opened, and they shoved her inside, the knife still in her belt. Had they forgotten it? Did they not remember that she had tried to kill him? That would be their mistake, then, for she would surely kill him now if he didn’t tell her where her son was. He had lied to her once already, promising her that Leo was in the spring house. The boy had not been there, the only trace of him a small pair of handcuffs and chains on the wet floor. Was he telling her he’d sold their son? In this cruel world, fathers could sell their unwanted black children if they chose to do so. Once, she would have never imagined that Quincy, her Quincy, would do such a thing. But that time was long gone.
“Take her upstairs, Mark, and watch her close.”
Shoving her every few feet just for his enjoyment, the second man led Ettawa to Quincy’s room. He lay in bed, looking paler than usual, blood leaking through the wound she’d planted in his flesh. That made her smile. And of course, his white angel stood by his side. Ettawa growled at her and felt for the knife. But it was gone! Somehow in the shuffle, it had been removed from her, and she hadn’t even noticed.
Her mother’s words came back to haunt her: “You’re always too confident, Ettawa.”
“I want my son, Justice. I want our son. Give me my son.”
He began to laugh darkly, and then he moaned in pain. Ettawa smiled at that.
Madeline brought him a cloth, but he pushed her away and leaned back against the pillow, sweating and pale.
“I knew you would come for him. You never could resist that boy. I think that’s the thing I liked the least about you, Ettawa. Once that kid came along, you had no time for me, for our dreams, our purposes. You gave up your power for that boy—oh, I see that surprises you. Of course I knew…” Coughing wracked his body. “It was easy to see. And now the thing you love so much has been murdered. By your own hand.”
“You have lost your mind, Quincy! What do you mean?”
“Oh, Ettawa, it is true. You have wounded me, my evil queen, but better still, you killed the only person you ever loved. With your own hands, you murdered the boy. You see,” he said as he began to laugh and cough, “I hid him in the barrel because I knew you wo
uld come here. I knew what you were going to do, and I don’t have the magical abilities you once had. I knew what you wanted, to hurt me. Well, now I’ve hurt you! You’ve lost your son. He is dead by your hand. And they will hang you for it, Ettawa. From the tallest tree, they will hang you.”
“Leo?” Ettawa began to quake, and she screamed. “You lie, you dog! Where is my son?” As she spoke, the man, Mark, along with a few others brought her her greatest wish. Just as Quincy said, Leo was dead, drowned by her own hands. She shook his frail, lifeless body. “Leo! Come back to me!” She held him until they dragged her away from him. “My son!” She wept as they pulled her away, leaving Leo on the floor of his father’s room.
As they did, she saw the spirit of Simple Touchard standing on the upstairs landing. He mouthed two words to her, “Unjust curse,” and pointed at her. He vanished, and she screamed until she could scream no more.
Chapter Thirteen—Cassidy
When I finally picked myself up off the bathroom floor, I made for my cell phone. I called Sierra but wondered if I should have called Midas first. Oh well. This isn’t the time to get hung up on protocol. “Sierra, you won’t believe what happened to me. Leo was here! She killed him, but it was an accident—I mean, she didn’t know that she did it. I swear it was a freak thing, but she did kill Simple and his family and…”
“Whoa, girl. Calm down. Start slow and tell me what happened.”
“I don’t think I can go slowly, Sierra. Can I meet you somewhere? Maybe the GCP office? Is that okay?”
“Yeah, but I’m not there yet. It’s so early. You do know it’s like six thirty in the morning, right?” Sierra yawned in the phone.
“Oh my God! You mean I slept all night on the bathroom floor? Oh no! Leo! I swear that boy was in my bathtub, and now I understand. He drowned, and he wanted me to know about it. I can’t believe this, Sierra! I have so much to tell you.”
“You still have your key to the office?”
“Yes,” I said, rubbing my face with my hands. Was I awake, or was this a dream too?
“Head over. And for the love of everything holy, make some coffee. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Bye.” She hung up without asking me anything else.
True to her word, she met me at the office and immediately I began telling her what happened. She shoveled spoonfuls of sugar into her mug as I gave her every detail, from my bathroom experience to Ettawa climbing the barrels and cutting the ropes with her knife. When I got to Ettawa’s confrontation with Quincy, she could hardly believe it.
“What a bastard! He set her up, and she fell for it, hook, line, and sinker! She killed Leo, which was horrible, but according to what you saw, she’d killed quite a few people already.”
Just then, Midas came into the office still wearing his workout clothes. Man, that guy had a body! I reminded myself not to stare at his muscled biceps and toned legs.
“Who’s a bastard?”
The office phone rang, and Sierra headed for it with a frown. “Ugh, it’s too early for the phones to ring. We’ll tell you all about it in a minute.”
A few moments later, she hung up the phone. “That was Anne Cummings again, calling from the Dixie House Bed and Breakfast. She’s got a problem, and she needs you to help her. Her son is seeing an entity he calls the ‘Grumbly Man.’”
“Mark it a priority file. I’ll call Mrs. Cummings in a few minutes.”
More calmly now, I told Midas the whole thing, and he didn’t bat an eyelash.
“Okay, so we hit the cemetery archives today. I can get us in there for a few hours. Let’s look for grave markers from 1842 for boys that fit his age range…they might have him classified as either a John Doe or an Unknown Boy. Let’s make a list and then do some detective work. We have to find where they buried that child. I’ll change my clothes and call Mike Montgomery down there at Valhalla. Can y’all go this morning? Sounds like I need to check out this other location. Kids come first, especially living ones.”
As promised, Midas made the arrangements. We had access to the archives and a promise of whatever help we needed. One day, he’d have to tell me how he did this. Midas Demopolis knew everyone, apparently, and everyone liked him. I said as much to Sierra as he left the office ahead of us.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? He’s near about perfect, unless you’re a particular redhead I know. Present company excluded, of course.”
“Sara is still in the picture?”
“Trust me, you have nothing to worry about. Let’s get going. I texted Joshua and Bob; they want to come too. You ready?”
The sense of urgency I felt was growing by the minute. “Yes, I’m so ready. Let’s go.”
“Come on, doll.” When had she started calling me that? I didn’t mind, really, but I didn’t think of myself as a doll. Maybe a Raggedy Ann doll.
We arrived at Valhalla, and I was pleased as punch to see that Joshua was at least behaving politely to Sierra. He needed to, or I’d kick his butt. A young volunteer named Annie pointed us in the right direction and presented us with seemingly endless reams of data. Unfortunately, the old cemetery had nearly nothing relevant in their digital records, but Annie helped us start the search in their books.
Pushing back her glasses from the edge of her round nose, she said, “Our digital records don’t go back far enough for what you’re looking for, so you’ll have to research the old-fashioned way. If there is an unclaimed boy with unknown parents, he’s in these logs somewhere. Do you know his name?”
“Yes, it was Leo Justice. But he might not have been identified for the folks at the cemetery.”
“Well, this should get you started. Please let me know if you need anything else.”
“Will do, Annie. Thank you; you’ve been a big help.”
Joshua began separating logs into stacks, and he and Bob perused a few dusty tomes. Slowly, we began to create a list of grave marker locations for boys who had never been claimed by a relative during the time frame when Leo went missing in 1842. We decided we’d begin searching for the first ten, just in case Leo was in this group. My stomach was grumbling; we’d worked right on through lunch. Needless to say, we were dog tired. As soon as we stepped outside, we ran into Midas, who conveniently had bags of goodies.
“Thank God! I’m starving!” Joshua said with a grin. This was the happiest he’d been all day. We found a cast iron table and chairs and divided up the lunch. Each of us had a tasty Italian sub with french fries and a cold soda. It was so delicious I ate every bite. Between bites, we filled Midas in on what we’d discovered, which wasn’t a whole heck of a lot.
“Where’s the list?” he asked, and Joshua handed it to him. Midas took out his phone and snapped a picture. “Cassidy and I will take the last five, and you guys get the first five. If you find any clues, let me know immediately. I’m eager to wrap this investigation up…Mrs. Cummings at Dixie House has an interesting case that needs our attention.”
“Geesh, thanks for your concern, Demopolis. I guess I’m yesterday’s news, eh?”
“Whatever, McBride. I’m the one who chased you down the last time she went after you. So, let’s get busy. If at all possible, I’d like to be out of here before nightfall. This place is too active after sundown. Did the staff say anything about Ettawa or other ghosts?”
“We didn’t ask, but I agree about leaving early.” Bob wiped his chin with a thin white napkin. “That would make my daughter extremely happy—she’s ready to have me committed.”
We cleaned up our mess and tossed the garbage in a nearby trash can, and Midas said, “All right, the sooner we find the graves, the better. Remember, we may never know where Leo is buried, but it can’t hurt to use whatever tools we have to reach out. Let’s do some EVPs, take graveside EMF readings and do whatever else we can to verify Leo’s resting place.”
Sierra asked, “Even if we find him, how will Ettawa know that?” She glanced nervously at Joshua.
I answered, “Because Leo is near. I don’
t know why, but he’s curious. He wants to see her, but I’m not sure…”
“Not sure about what, Cassidy…”
“I’m not certain he forgives her.” The group got quiet at hearing that.
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Sierra said. Her voice was brave, but that was before the ghosts began rising.
Chapter Fourteen—Sierra
“Good Lord, these mosquitoes are the devil,” I complained as I swatted the evil biters from my face. “It just so happens that I’m allergic to these monsters.” I wiped a handful of dried leaves from the old gravestone but didn’t see a name. “Are you sure this is the right plot?” I waved the EMF detector around, but as expected, nothing happened.
“I think so,” Bob said as he spun the map around. “I mean, yes.”
Josh snapped, “You’re complaining about a few mosquitoes, and I’m being dragged through a cemetery by a dead voodoo queen. Way to think about yourself, Sierra Kay.”
Oh, Lord, keep me from killing my husband, I silently prayed as I slapped my face. Oh, that darn bug bite hurt. Biting my lower lip to keep myself from losing it, I put the digital recorder next to the forlorn-looking burial marker. “Sierra in Valhalla, Plot 83C. Leo? Are you here? Do you need help?” I waited a few seconds and then checked the audio file, but there was nothing to report. “Okay, Bob, you can check 83C off the list. I don’t think this is it.”
“How do you know it’s not? Are you even trying?” Joshua said as Bob awkwardly walked away, pretending to look at his unreliable drawing of the cemetery.
Haunted on the Gulf Coast (Gulf Coast Paranormal Trilogy Book 2) Page 9
