Souls Collide: Book 1 of The Soul Wars

by J. D. Blackrose

  Finally, she walked the perimeter of the cottage. When she reached the back, she stopped and saw in the waves and valleys of the grounds what others might not, but she knew was there.

  The remnants of the slave pen.

  Nathan Beauchamp and his father and grandfather before him were masters of the slave trade. The pen had been thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, with two floors, made of logs bound with iron bars. The floors had been covered in straw, but the straw was never changed or cleaned so it was soaked in urine, feces, and blood. In the middle, on both floors, was a long iron post running the length of the room, to which slaves were shackled. Some were shackled so tight they couldn’t sit or lie down and were locked in a permanent upright position. Thousands of slaves made their way through this crowded, fetid, odorous pen. Men and women were separated, and if they cried out or protested, they were whipped. They stayed in this cruel structure until it was time for them to walk, still shackled, to the old St. Louis Hotel for auction.

  The Beauchamp’s wealth was made on the backs of these poor people, and the Rochons knew and approved. She carried this guilt with her every single day.

  It was their cries she heard at night down on this part of the grounds. It was their ghosts who haunted her dreams, and Adelaide would have done anything to avoid having to face them. Did Gaspard Bessette know a slave pen also existed on his land? It was the sale of human cattle that made the Leroux family wealthy. They traded human flesh as well as horse flesh, and they valued the horses more. The Leroux racetrack and their history of winners was a byproduct of the slave trade. The stud fees alone made them rich. It was why she couldn’t stand horse racing to this day.

  “Well, nothing for it. Must face this if I am to have any peace down here,” she said out loud. “If you choose to visit me this evening, please know that I feel your pain and am sorry that my family had anything to do with your suffering.”

  The ground shifted beneath her feet, making her unstable. She caught her breath as the darkness closed in and the temperature dropped. She hurried into the cottage and locked the door, all the time knowing that such flimsy barricades had no effect on the injured souls that still dwelled here. She headed to bed, shivering while sweating, shaking while resting, trying to hold back the onslaught she knew was to come.

  It came in the form of a ghost so fully realized that she thought she could touch him. He told her his story, forced her to witness the cruelty of that time. And as he recounted his tale, the scenes played for Adelaide like a movie where she was the star, so that each feeling, each emotion, each pain dug into her bones and mind, ensuring that she didn’t just see the movie, but felt it raw, unfiltered, and true.

  My name is Amos. I was married, not legal o’course, but in my heart, to Betsy. We were born into slavery in Virginia, but our master sole us, leaving our son and daughter, eight and five at the time, alone on the cotton plantation.

  My Betsy begged to keep the chirrin with her, but she was beatin’ for beggin’. She didna care. She lay on the floor, hands in supplication, promisin’ to be the best slave evah, if the chirren could come with us. Our master kicked her in the head, and I whispered to her to stop. The chirren were nearby and didn’t need to see their mama kilt. Two of the women slaves remainin’ behind hugged the kits and moved them away. We hoped they got taken care of.

  Adelaide’s chest heaved with the heaviness of their grief, almost crushing the breath out of her. It was her children left behind. She was abandoning them.

  We were shipped down hereah and kept in this pen ‘afore bein’ sole at auction. The first night the roof leaked bad and the rains almost drowned us. We couldna move, shackled to the bars like we were, and the only thing that kept me goin’ was knowing that Betsy was up floors helpin’ with the cookin’. I dinna wanna leave her, so I forced myself to stand, head above the water until my legs gave out.

  Adelaide’s legs quivered with the effort of trying to stand. Her lips moved with the Lord’s Prayer.

  After the rains came the skeeters, bit’en us every wheah and leavin’ us scratchin’ and itchin’. It was tons painful and most of us got sick from it and several died. We were fed bits o’bread, cornmeal mostly, but not enough. We were sick, wet and starvin’ and just waitin’ for the day when it was time to be sole again.

  The itching was unbearable, and she scratched herself all over, welts rising like flames. Her belly growled with hunger.

  By the time that day came, I learned that Betsy wouldna be comin’ too. She was to stay heeah and work the shuga’ fields. I begged to stay and work the processin’ and that Sylvester Beauchamp, Nathan’s daddy, ‘lowed it since I was strong. The processin’ was damn terrible work, with insects everywheah and more rats than people. The frost came early one season and we stayed up four nights in a row tryin’ to save the crop.

  The rats crawled across her feet, and she slapped at the gnats in her eyes.

  While I was processin’ Betsy was workin’ the fields. I hardly saw her, but I done know where she was, so I’d look to the fields hopin’ to catch a glance of her. We could see each other as we passed in the evenin’, she to the women’s quartas’ and me to men’s. Someatimes we could almost touch hand, skatin’ fingertips over one anothas ‘afore someone saw.

  Betsy’s fingers brushed Adelaide’s, and she was consumed by an unbearable want.

  One night I caught sighta Betsy and couldna believe what I saw! My wife, my wife, had a iron colla on with three horns sticken’ outta it and a bell in each horn so you could heah her comin’ wherever she are. No hidin’. Her face was black ‘n blue, and I knew wannah must o’happened.

  The rage was barely banked. It rose up in her in a wave and pushed out all reason.

  I was fightin’ a mighty anger inside and was askin’ which one was it. Doncha ya know it was lil old’ Nathan Beauchamp hisself. Yeah, you got that right. Nathan decided to take advantage of my wife, and when she fought, she got beaten and punished with the colla. The colla was heavy and she couldna sleep with it so she grew weaker and weaker. I was tole to make peace wit it and be glad she didn’t get the mask with the muzzle, but I was watchin’ her die, and couldna stand by no longa.

  Grief. Sadness. Exquisite pain.

  When we passed in the evenin’ I broke the line and grabbed her, tryin’ to unhook the colla. I was pulled off and taken’ to the side o’ the house where I was whipped. I yelled bad things at them and they just kep’ goin’ at it. They marked my back so bad I couldna stand. I collapsed on the ground and otha slaves drug me to the slave house.

  The rage broke free and flowed like a dam released, accompanied by the crack of the whip in her ears and the bite of the whip on her back. She writhed with it, screaming aloud for them to stop.

  My wife was killed that night as punishment to me. She was suffocated. Her air cut off. She suffaed! She cried for me, I know, but I didna come. Afta that my heart was broken and I gave up. I died of infection from the whip marks on my back and they threw me in an unmarked grave and heah I’ve stayed, my anga growin’ for years now. And isn’t jus’ me. Theah are hundreds of us and we getting’ more powerful wit time. Soon, you’ll see.

  She was consumed by an unbearable anguish until she was spent, limp and focused on one thing. Justice.

  Adelaide’s head whipped to the right as a ghostly, yet impossibly physical, hand slapped her across the face. She could still feel the whip marks on her back. Somehow, she knew that she always would carry those scars.

  Amos disappeared.

  Adelaide, at age eighty, wet the bed.

  8

  Being a ghost, Nathan floated along unaware of time. When he died, he rose out of his body, drifted to a corner of the room and watched while the doctor pronounced him dead. He observed his own funeral preparations, tried to comfort his wife until he realized she couldn’t sense him, and after the hubbub was done, he…lingered. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do, and he got tired of watching generations pass, and he set about fading t
o almost nothing.

  Then Adelaide came, a member of the Rochon family, who were known for being sensitives. She brought the ghosts out of their slumber. He hadn’t realized others were lingering, too, including his father Sylvester, and Slinky, the field boss during his time. The biggest surprise was that his most trusted house servant, Martin, a free colored man from up north, lingered, too.

  He pondered why the four of them hadn’t moved on. He’d witnessed his wife’s crossing and his children’s, and countless others as they entered the Door, and yet, he’d never been drawn to the Door and didn’t believe Sylvester, Slinky, or Martin had either.

  What he did feel was something he now recognized as anxiety, a puzzling development. He had been confused by the feeling at first and was slow to realize what it was. The unsettled feeling took hold the day Adelaide talked to the Historical Society and hadn’t left, exhuming him from his sleep inch by inch until he was aware, mindful of his surroundings and the comings and goings of everyday life. Adelaide had moved out to allow the refurbishment to begin, and he was unhappy that he couldn’t keep an eye on her, but he was trapped within the house. His apprehension grew each passing moment, and it was creeping into fear. Sylvester, Martin, and Slinky felt the growing dread as well, and the four ghosts gathered in the kitchen, staring out the back window, watching for something they could not see.

  9

  Skeeter’s Tavern was full, men drinking draft beers with one another, clapping each other on the back, and laughing like everything was funny.

  She could smell the desperation that lay under the jovial facade, the frustration, the failures, and the violence. It was right there for the taking, shimmering under the surface of banal civility. The niceties of society spread a fragile layer over the seething mass of anger that roiled beneath.

  These men were angry at everyone. Their bosses, their former bosses, the fathers and mothers who raised them with high expectations. They hated with ferocity, and no one was spared, not even their children and wives.

  She drew on her power to keep her camouflage in place, throwing dark brown hair over her shoulder, loathing that she was six inches shorter than normal. But she was there to do some damage, and she wanted to take him by surprise. Walking in as a six-foot armed warrior wasn’t ambush material. It would have been satisfying but a tactical mistake. Kara didn’t make tactical mistakes.

  “Hey lovely lady,” slurred one of the men, a barrel-chested guy with a copper mustache. “You lookin’ for company? You must be in all that leather and your titties hanging out like that. What do they call that? A boob picker-up?” He shimmied his upper torso back and forth in the mistaken belief that he needed to illustrate what he meant.

  “A bustier.”

  “Whatever,” said the man, waving his hands in the air and swaying back and forth on his barstool. “I like it!”

  Another man, more gut than chest, spilled his beer on her feet. “You’re not her type, Bud. This lady is cla-ssssy. You can tell by them boots. No low-life woman can afford boots like that. Maybe she’s got a shuga daddy somewhere. But mebbe not. I don’t see anyone lookin’ after you, baby girl.”

  The man grabbed her by the waist and tried to pull her in for a kiss. Kara turned her back to avoid him, but he shoved her up against the bar and rubbed his crotch along her backside, flaunting nothing as he was so drunk an erection was impossible. Kara looked around and realized the other guys had moved on to new distractions, so she decided to take some action. She jabbed her head back into his nose, and he jumped back like a bear stung by honeybees, shaking his head as if to make sense of the situation. His nose bled down his shirt, and Kara was certain he’d have two black eyes.

  She used his confusion as an opportunity to drum the message home. She grabbed his crotch with her right hand and exerted pressure on his Adam’s apple with her left.

  She looked him in the eye and said, “Go. Away.”

  By this time, the bartender had rushed around the bar to push the man off her, but when he saw her handiwork, he looked her up and down and realized this was a woman who didn’t need help. The bartender had been around a long while. He knew Gaspard, not personally, but by reputation, and was perceptive enough to know this lady belonged to the Master.

  “Wh…what are you doing here, Miss…?”

  “Layla,” she said, using the name she’d chosen for that night.

  “Miss Layla. I believe you here for a specific reason. Wouldn’t see you in here normal-like. Does Mr. Bessette need something I can provide?” He swallowed hard and looked down at his feet, trying to keep his gaze from Kara’s chest.

  “Who’s the jerk-off cockroach that married a woman named Sarah and likes to beat on her and their four-year old son?”

  The bartender shrunk away from her but whispered, “That’d be Bobby, over there talking to the blonde. Look lady, I don’t want no trouble, so whatever your business with him, do it elsewhere, okay? Just make sure Mr. Bessette knows I helped you.”

  Kara gave him a cold stare. “Mr. Bessette expected you to help me. You’ve done no more than the minimum, which allows you to keep all of your body parts connected together.”

  The bartender stammered, shifting his eyes left and right to avoid her glare. “Fair enough. Understood. Uh…yeah, well, he’s over there.” He gestured his head toward a muscular gentleman in jeans and an old concert T-shirt, a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his left sleeve, then he scurried away.

  Kara rolled her neck, put a little sway in her hips, and approached the cockroach, letting a little desire seep out of her core and float its way toward him. He turned to her as quick as a boy smelling a fresh-baked apple pie cooling on the window sill. When he turned, Kara saw his left arm tattoo and had to fight not smack him right there and then. Who the hell puts a pig hugging a dancing beer bottle on their arm?

  The other arm was imprinted with a heart and the name Sarah. Maybe he wasn’t a complete douche. Kara felt a smidgeon of anger leave her body, but that smidgeon returned, with friends, when the cockroach held both hands out in a grabby-grabby motion and said, “Can I feel those?”

  “Maybe later, baby,” Kara purred, pulling at his arm and placing it around his waist. Kara looked at the blonde, who hadn’t taken the hint and loitered nearby. “Take a hike.” The blonde flounced off and found a new target.

  Kara could read the cockroach’s face like a dime-store novel. The cockroach couldn’t believe his luck. He was staring down at the most perfect set of boobies he’d ever seen, and a hot chick was begging for his attention. If he’d been sober, he may have recognized the warning signs of a situation going downhill fast, but as it was, his beer-addled brain couldn’t see past those luscious mounds of flesh. He was visualizing burying his head in between them when Kara leaned in and nipped his lower lip. He almost came right then.

  “Come with me, lover,” Kara said, guiding him off the stool and toward the back door. The other men in the bar hooted and hollered, some in admiration and a few in jealousy. The beer gut guy from earlier held ice to his face and clutched his draft, knuckles reddening with the force of his grip. His eyes never left them, and he stared hard until they walked out the door.

  “Hey gorgeous. I can’t take it no longer. Come here and let’s pull that thingee off of you and set those bambas free.”

  Kara winked and pulled him farther away toward the back of the parking lot. She doubted anyone would hear them, but she didn’t need to take chances.

  Cockroach stopped walking, bent over, and heaved. What sloshed down smelled foul, and what stayed on his clothes smelled worse. Kara rolled her eyes and decided to finish it.

  She grabbed him by the T-shirt and pulled him up in front of her, slamming him against a car. She wondered if a car alarm would go off and then looked at the piece of shit vehicle and realized it would be a blessing to whomever drove it if it got totaled.

  “Whatcha doin?” Cockroach asked. Kara slapped him.

  “I have a message for you. Are you lis
tening?”

  “Uh huh.” Kara slapped him again.

  “Sarah and your boy are off limits to you. You go near them again and you will regret it, I assure you.”

  “She’s my wife!”

  “Consider this your divorce notice.”

  “She can’t keep me from my son!”

  “She might not be able to, but I sure as fuck can, and I will make mincemeat out of you if you so much as look at either of them, much less raise a hand to them.”

  “It was the one time,” Cockroach whined.

  “One time too many.”

  Cockroach was sobering up and decided he’d be tough. He pushed Kara and held up his fists in a way that he thought was threatening. Kara yawned.

  “How’s a little thing like you going to stop me from getting to my family, bitch? You think ‘cause you’re hot you can tell me what to do? You can’t! I’ve got rights under the law and under God ‘cause it is the righteous way of things.” He swung his right fist, spitting vestiges of throw up in her face. Kara sidestepped.

  He followed with a ham-fisted punch with his other hand. She sidestepped again.

  Kara was delighted. She’d been hoping for this. When he punched a third time, she grabbed his fist and flipped his arm behind his back, pulling the arm up so there was maximum pressure on his shoulder. “I’m stronger than I look,” she hissed. “And I’ll dislocate your shoulder without a second thought if you don’t promise to stay away.”

  “Hey!” a big voice bellowed at her from halfway across the parking lot. Beer Gut and his cronies were there, six men in all, lumbering toward her like bulls.

  Kara grinned and yanked Cockroach’s arm up and out, dislocating the shoulder and breaking the wrist. He screamed, went down, and stayed there.

  Beer Gut barreled toward her but stopped dead when she let go of her camouflage and flashed into her full glory. She drew her sword and held the point at Beer Gut’s throat, the other men falling to their knees.