With closed eyes, she delights in every bite, craving more, scraping the rough core. Juice curdles her gut with each ravenous taste of the pulsating mass. Her teeth loosen on the skeletal pit, falling rotten from her mouth, oozing crimson seeds to her wrist. Retching with abdominal pain, she spits pulp from her mouth, tosses the peach, and clutches her growing, bloated belly as something wriggles and kicks inside. Somber hymns rise in masses behind the shrubbery with her groaning agony.
The girl’s gray phalanges worm through boughs, snatching and puncturing her wrist with poisonous fingernails. A crimson rash rises on her flesh, pulsing with pus, branching up her arm to scabs, hardening to woody shoots sprouting pink blossoms.
Whites of the girl’s coal-black eyes flood viscous tar, sockets glistening genesis of imageries.
Afraid to see, Simone squeezes her eyes shut.
“Open yo eyes. See my horror!” the girl demands as wretched voices rise, a piercing hymn in the dark.
“Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace,
The Devil’s Eden lies in waste.
A tainted harvest sinfully laced,
Corse sowed and reaped,
Reptilian chawed,
Rotted silt loam,
A charnel house,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace . . .”
Simone thrashes, rolling around the bed, moaning and squirming, springing upright with a scream. A shadow spirals from the ceiling then recedes into the candlelight’s lattice patterns. She twists her head around, searching the octagonal room for the wraith-like girl. Glancing at her arm and pushing her tongue against her teeth, she exhales in relief. Tartness coats her tongue, and her palm vibrates from the throbbing peach.
“Impossible. How could I feel and taste in a dream?”
She wipes her lips, brushes her tongue across her teeth, and swallows tart figments away. A spasm bites and grips her abdomen with moisture saturating her panties. She moans, presses her palm to her stomach, and whips the sheet from her body to find a blood-splotched sheet. “No, can’t be,” she mutters. Her monthly just ended two weeks ago and isn’t due until the end of June.
She rushes to the bathroom, examining her flesh-colored bikini briefs, spotted dark red, realizing the excruciating pain in her dream was cramping.
The bitter taste in her mouth nauseates. She opens her mouth, searching her teeth and tongue, then stops and laughs at her foolishness.
“It was just a dream,” she utters, spreading toothpaste on the brush, scrubbing her teeth and tongue, rinsing several times until clean peppermint suppresses the bitter aftertaste.
Loose rotting teeth.
The dream interpretation means death.
Ridiculous . . .
The images were just an assemblage in her unconscious mind of the Natchez assignment, the strange lyric, and Internet research, she thinks.
Scuzzy from travel grime, the clammy dream, and her monthly, she slips off her T-shirt and panties and hurries into the shower, washing remnants of Marseille, bloody peach figments, and her menses away.
Moments later, showered, lying on clean bedsheets, and staring at the ceiling, vivid images of the girl, the unfamiliar room, and the patio resurface. The grass felt real beneath her feet, the pulsing peach, a heart in her hand, the pit appeared human bones. The solemn hymn plays in her mind. She repeats the words several times, pulls the laptop from the table, and types the stanza up to the last line―”Rotted silt loam, / a charnel house.”
Silt loam . . .
The day she and her father walked along the Mississippi River, he’d said, “These banks are pure silt loam.” But what’s “charnel house”? She types the phrase into the browser, opening the Webster Dictionary definition. Her blood chills as she reads. “The charnel house is a place of violent death, a bone-house, ossuary, morgue.” At once, she closes the laptop. A rolling shudder tremors her body as though someone had doused her with ice water or, as Mom used to say, “someone just walked over your grave.”
Rotting teeth, now a morgue . . . If she were superstitious, she’d be worried.
Rolling onto her side, she glances out the window at a view that always soothes. But tonight, dark, ominous clouds over Manhattan’s skyline intensify her disquiet. She closes her eyes, then opens them swiftly as the girl’s bony face and hands infiltrate her mind. Pulling the sheet over her shoulder, she blanks the dream away with images of Marseille. She drifts to a place two stories high strung with bright string lights floating above a festive rooftop dinner. Soon, sleep carries her to Baton Rouge.
An herbal breeze infuses her nose. Brilliant yellow blossoms and baby-blue skies drift in her vision. Grass sweeps a cotton sundress outgrown years ago in a place she’d played as a child—a cluster of crabgrass, goldenrods, and wildflowers beyond her home. A familiar hum and squeak resonate nearby, drawing her gaze toward the dwelling ahead. She rises in disbelief, eyeing her humming mother swaying back and forth on the red-cedar porch swing.
“Mom?” Simone moves toward the yard calling, “Mom, you’re here!”
The humming and creaking cease as she rises from the swing, her favorite cherry-print dress furling upward past her ankles. An inscrutable smile brightens her face as she strolls through the cobalt door, summoning her with her hand.
Simone hastens forward, struggling to reach the receding porch as the lengthening yard drags the house afar with each stride. The ground dips, caving, oscillating beneath unsteady feet, threatening to pluck her underground as soil peaks and valleys, the home shrinking unreachable.
“Mom, wait!”
“Hurry, child. I don’t have much time,” Mom hollers through the door, miles away.
Breathless, sprinting toward the porch, she spreads her rubbery arms, curling her fingers around the doorframe, pulling, bounding inside screaming, “Mom, where are you!?”
“In here, Moni. Hurry now,” her sober tone rises.
Simone follows her voice and sweet aroma into the kitchen, startled by her loud hand clap. A cloud of flour disperses between them, hovering backward above her mother’s head, never falling, flowing in reverse motion as she utters strange words.
“Rebmemer tahw I dlot uoy.”
Drifting to the counter, Mom wipes flour on the scarlet apron, latticing narrow dough strips across sliced peaches, never lifting her gaze. Tears leak from her eyes, melting and glimmering on sugared spices. She carries the cobbler to the oven, the cloud above her head billowing behind her back. Cherries bounce and roll, changing and reassembling to peaches on the embroidered dress. From behind, her shoulders hitch in disjointed jerks with her peculiar expressions.
“Rebmemer tahw I dlot uoy.”
“Mom, I don’t understand.”
She turns, white flour clouds winging at her shoulder blades, her eyes glassy pools, mouth an open dark chasm spewing peach pits from a black, forked tongue splitting into three limbs licking around her chest. Petals bloom pale, magenta, flaming pink. She clutches her heart with a terror-stained face, wailing, “Senob deirub woleb s‘zehctan sffulb! Senob deirub woleb s‘zehctan sffulb! Senob deirub woleb s‘zehctan sffulb!”
Wild blossoms loop and absorb her bosom to foot.
Screaming and reaching through the floury mist, Simone swats at intoxicating posies, tugging arteriole branches, straining to free her blossomed figure. The kitchen shakes, stirring a cloud of powdery dust, elongating as blossoms shape to bony arms yanking her from reach.
“KooB fo wehttaM: retpahC neves: esreV neethgie,” she screams, a dwindling floral speck vanishing in the distance.
“Mommmmmm!” Simone calls out in her sleep, tears wetting her pillow as her mom’s figure withers in the dream.
Forsaken souls rise at harvest,
Imparting offerings of history’s horrors,
Oh, what bittersweet hymns of sorrow,
Below the bluffs of Natchez Trace.
Arrival
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Simone peers out the narrow cabin window of the Boei
ng 747 winging toward Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport, comforted at the nearness of her birthplace. On the last visit home, she and her father attended the Bayou Classic’s football game between Southern University’s Jaguars and Grambling State University’s Tigers. A momentous occasion for the Doucet family and the state of Louisiana around Thanksgiving, more so for her father as staff director of Southern University’s (SU) athletics department. In every respect he’s devoted, attending every game. The profound loss of his favorite cheerleader has stifled the exhilaration, but they will carry Lily in their hearts and minds at every Bayou Classic.
She sighs, releasing unease that’s lingered from four nights of frightful dreams and dampened the elation she would have felt for the Natchez assignment. It’s been a month since she dreamt of her mother, and Simone had never experienced anything as horrific and bewildering as the alien words her mother had spewed. The angelic images floating around her body reassured Simone that her mother was in a heavenly place. But the peach pits rolling from her forked tongue were demonic. Resting her head on the seat, she wonders if images of the wraithlike girl were jumbled in with her mother’s dream? The contiguous nightmares can’t be a coincidence but must be connected. She shakes her head, positing that her mentioning her mother’s peach cobbler to Bridgette had triggered the dream.
A ray of setting sun splits her periphery. She rolls her head toward the airplane window, gazing at low clouds melting through swift aluminum wings. After four nights of disturbed sleep, the airplane’s drone and crystalline heavens lull her to a red-cedar porch swing on her family’s Arcadian-style home in Southdowns Baton Rouge.
Rosaceae vines twist and slither through red-cedar rails, copious flexing tendrils rocking the porch swing to and fro, catching the beginning and tail end of words echoing beside her. Creepers round their waist, an umbilical cord binding them in place. Resounding words elucidate as Mom reads a leaf of paper between bible pages on her lap, softly and solemnly intoning, "Forsaken souls rise at harvest, imparting offerings of history's horrors. Oh, what bittersweet hymns of sorrow, below the bluffs of Natchez Trace . . ." She lifts the testament to her heart, voice elevating: "book of Matthew, chapter seven, verse eighteen." She leans over, kisses her cheek, and whispers, "Moni, tell her story . . ." Vines snap from their waists, snatching her breath, affecting a guttural gasp.
The plane hits an air pocket, jolting Simone awake. She gasps, clutches her heart, and touches her cold cheek.
“Are you OK?” the furrowed-browed man beside her asks.
“Um, yes, fine, thank you . . . Just a dream.” She forces a smile and sits back in the seat, glancing out the window. The Book of Matthew: Chapter seven: Verse eighteen repeats in her mind. What is she trying to tell me? She’s not trying to prevent her from going to Natchez as her father assumed but guide her toward what she discovered.
The talk with her dad three days ago resurface, his tone elevated as she speaks of the dreams, the cryptic stanza, and the assignment in Natchez.
“Natchez, did you say Natchez, Mississippi?”
“Is something wrong?”
For an instant he grew quiet before replying, “Lily visited there right before . . . a month before she passed. Something rattled her in Natchez, but she refused to tell me what happened. She spoke of a poem her friend read to her. I believe it refers to the Devil’s Punchbowl.”
“What’s the Devil’s Punchbowl?”
“A forested basin below Natchez’s bluffs. I’ve heard horrible tales of that place, atrocities that should never have happened.”
“What happened?”
“I can’t discuss this at work. But the stanza you spoke is from Lily’s poem.”
“Do you have it, Dad?”
“It remains where your mother left it, and that’s where it will remain, between pages of her bible in the nightstand. We need to leave it be, Simone. I believe whatever happened to Lily in Natchez contributed to her heart attack. When she arrived back home, nightmares plagued her every sleepless night. She refused to go back to sleep, mumbling about those poor souls. Simone, there’s a reason you’re having these dreams. It sounds impossible, but your mother’s reaching out to you. Don’t ignore the dreams. I believe Lily wants to protect you from whatever she discovered in Natchez.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it best to leave it be. There wasn’t any reason to disturb you further. Simone, please don’t take the assignment?”
“I’m not turning down another paycheck. Besides, I’ve already accepted the job. Don’t worry. The B&B’s safe. Nothing will happen. Dad, why did Mom go to Natchez?”
“Her childhood friend Ella took ill. Lily was there for support until her family arrived.”
“Is she OK now?”
“Miraculously, her health improved a day after your Mom arrived. I guess Lily’s healthy cooking healed her fast,” he’d supposed, chuckling. “She told me Ella's fridge and cabinets were bare, so she went to the farmers’ market in town. On her way back, she stopped alongside the road at a peach stand owned by an elderly gentleman who spoke in a strange dialect that sounded suspiciously like Gullah, an old slave dialect. She swore she’d never seen peaches so big and plump. When she asked which orchard grew the peaches, the man said they were the best peaches in Adams County and were grown behind his home. Lily couldn’t stop talking about that darn intoxicating cobbler she made for Ella. She said they devoured the entire dish in one night. That same evening, the frightful girl visited Lily with horrible images of the Devil’s Punchbowl. The dream plagued her until her death.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, BTR has cleared us for landing at Baton Rouge. Please be seated,” the pilot sounds from the speaker.
Simone positions the seat upright, buckles the seatbelt, and glances at the greenish-brown Mississippi River snaking through verdant cliffs, looking up and down the banks of Louisiana and Mississippi. Studying the outline, she tries to determine where the Devil’s Punchbowl lies before the river slips past her view. Gradually, the plane glides over squared, russet terrain, freeways, industrial sites, tree-bordered homes, descends, and then taxis across the runway.
Several minutes later, the flight attendant announces over the intercom, “Welcome to Baton Rouge,” the rest of her words muted by Simone’s incessant reflections as she gathers her carry-on bag, moves through the aisle, and deplanes in rote fashion, arriving at the baggage conveyor. Retrieving her Samsonite, she heads toward Hertz and moments later exits BTR airport, actions performed in a mental fog. Since the first dream, she felt something undefinable attached to her soul, woke with her, followed her into conscious and unconscious reality, occupying her thoughts with unknowable compulsions.
Even as she drives through Baton Rouge Central Business District, an urge compels her to detour to her nearby home in the Southdowns’ section and retrieve the poem from her mother’s Bible in the bedside table drawer. But she imagines her superstitious father has locked it up and thrown away the key. She needs to get to the B&B and finish the assignment before visiting home.
On US 84 West, a destination sign points toward Natchez. She realizes she’d seen the sign many times on this road, but it held no significance until now. Nothing much about Natchez ever crossed her path growing up except for the occasional calls from Ella, mom’s dearest friend, but she’d forgotten she lives in Natchez.
Ella . . .
She gave Mom the poem. Is she the poet? If not, she might know who wrote the verses. But she doesn’t have her number or address. Years ago, she’d overheard Mom mention that Ella worked for the Museum of African History in her town. “Hmm . . .” she mumbles, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She could call her at work or call dad for her number, but he’d see right through her inquiry.
Simone had no problem finding the museum’s telephone number on her cell phone browser. After several rings, a sluggish male voice answers, “Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture.”
“Hell
o, may I speak with Ella Davis?”
“Ella Davis?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t recognize the name. Do you want the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture?”
“Yes,” she states with a lifted brow. “She’s an employee.”
“There’s no Ella Davis at this museum.”
Simone twists her lips. “Are you sure?”
“I’d recognize the name.” His lethargic reply sounds as though the call staved off sleep or boredom.
“Ella Davis has been a museum employee for years. Can you check, please?”
“We have a small staff, but I’ll check the directory.” For a moment, paper rustles as he rifles through the employee register with a deep exhalation. “Nope,” he states with a final paper flutter. “I’m sorry, Miss. Ella Davis isn’t on the list.”
“She has to be. Can I talk to someone else?”
“Just a moment. I’ll connect you to the administrator.”
Finally, she thinks, irritated.
Seconds later, a woman answers, “Cindy Wright.”
“Hi, I hope you can help me. I’m looking for an employee, Ella Davis, but I was just informed she’s not on the employee roster.”
“Who am I speakin’ to?” the chary administrator asks.
“I’m a family friend of Mrs. Davis.”
“Ella retired a year ago.”
“She did? I didn’t know. Hmpf, well, that’s a snag in my plan. I’m only in town for a week and hoped to see her. Do you have her home number on file?”
“That’s private employee information. But you can reach Ella on Saturday at the museum. Since she retired, she volunteers once a week. Did you say your last name is Doucet?”
“I did.”
“Are you related to Lily and Roderick Doucet?”
“Yes,” Simone replies, startled to hear her parents’ name from a stranger. “I’m their daughter. Do you know my parents?”
Tainted Harvest Page 3
