Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou

by Nancy K. Duplechain

  After another five miles, Lucas slowed again, and we made another right. A few yards away, the road ended into a large dirt parking area. Beyond the parking area was a beautiful lake, filled with Cypress and Tupelo trees covered in Spanish moss. Along the bank were a few boats and pirogues. I pulled up behind Lucas, who came to a stop in front of one of the boats. He got out, shutting the door behind him. I did the same and walked over to him. The sun was high in the sky now and the humidity was stifling.

  “Pretty,” I said, taking in the scene before me.

  “You don’t remember this place, do you?”

  I thought about it, but I couldn’t think long because the sun was too much of a distraction. “Come,” he said, and led me down to the bank where there was plenty of shade, and it instantly felt at least five degrees cooler. “You remember when David and I came out here with Michelle and Liv Fontenot?” My mouth hung open, remembering. Lucas laughed at me. “Yeah, I guess you remember now.”

  And I did. I remembered being thirteen. Carrie was visiting at our house and Lucas was visiting David. Carrie and I were eavesdropping on the boys, who were in David’s room with the door closed. They kept laughing and there was an air of excitement and secrecy oozing from his room. We overheard that they were taking their girlfriends to a lake somewhere out of town. We didn’t know why that was supposed to be a secret but that made us want to know more. We found out the date and time and then Carrie had called her cousin, Holli, who had just gotten her driver’s license, to follow the boys when they went on their date. Holli and her friend had picked us up that night, telling dad we were all going to a movie. We left the same time David and Lucas left the house to pick up their dates. Holli did a great job of being inconspicuous. We followed them all the way to the lake.

  The boys each took their girlfriend and a motorboat and went out to the middle of the lake. After they had gone, we snuck up to the bank and borrowed an old row boat. We rowed out toward the boys’ boats, careful to hide among the trees. It was very dark, but the moon reflecting off the lake made it easy to see their silhouettes in the distance. As we got closer to David’s boat, the girls started to giggle at David making out with his girlfriend who would, in a few short years, become his wife. I had no desire to see my seventeen-year-old brother doing anything like that, so I whined until we rowed over toward Lucas’ side of the lake.

  It was more difficult to navigate that side because of the large roots of the trees sticking up. As we got closer, we heard soft moaning, and we tried to stifle our giggles. We wanted to get closer, to actually see something, so we rowed further toward Lucas’ boat. Suddenly, our boat scraped up against a giant root, making a very noticeable screeching noise. We froze in terror. We then saw Lucas suddenly jump up in his boat. He was wearing his Lafayette High baseball cap and nothing else. We screamed in surprise and Lucas, startled, fell backwards into the water. That tipped off David, who revved up his boat and steered toward all the commotion. We frantically tried to row away, but the motorboat was too fast. David caught up to us just as Lucas, who was already swearing at us, pulled himself back into the boat. When David saw me, I thought he would never stop cursing. He ordered us to go home. We did and laughed all the way.

  “Lake Martin,” I reminisced.

  He chuckled. “Yeah.”

  “David was so mad at me that night.”

  “So was I. I would have strangled all of you girls if you were in arm’s reach. But after you left, we continued with our dates and, well, let’s just say the night ended on a good note.”

  I glanced at him, and his boyish grin made me laugh. “So, what are we doing here?”

  He shrugged. “Not sure. Just seemed like the best place to talk.”

  “We drove all the way out of town, down two long country roads, just to talk?”

  “It’s easy to talk here. No distractions. Besides, this is where I usually come on my day off.” He gestured to several boats along the bank. “I own a few of these boats that I rent out. I bring Jonathan out here a lot during the summer. He loves to go fishing. Sometimes, we just go out in the middle of the lake and relax after the sun sets.”

  “That sounds nice,” I said. He bent down and started pushing one of the boats into the water. “You really want to do this now?”

  He squinted up at the sun. “We can stay on the shady side.”

  That’s not what I meant, though. I wasn’t so much worried about the sun as I was about what he wanted to talk about. I felt a surge of panic at the thought of spilling my worried guts to him. I hadn’t been kidding when I told him I was up for weirdo of the year. He would ask me again why I was really back in Louisiana, and I didn’t want to be dishonest with him. I would tell him I was there for Lyla, but he would think I meant that I was there to take care of her and raise her. But I was really there to protect her from some monster with a pet bird. How would that sound? Pretty damned crazy, my mind taunted. I agreed with myself. Ghosts or no ghosts. I didn’t care what mysterious cases Lucas had to deal with at work. It still wouldn’t prepare him for my crazy dreams and impulses.

  “You comin’?” While I was lost in thought, he had pulled the boat into the water and was holding his hand out for me. I knew I wasn’t going to win. I didn’t want to see him get angry again. He was a good friend, and they seemed far and few between these days. I took his hand, and he steadied me as I climbed into the little motor boat. We sat and he started the motor, steering us around the lake, careful to avoid the big roots on the sides of the Cypresses and Tupelos.

  I had forgotten how truly beautiful South Louisiana waters can be, especially the swamps and bayous. If the moss-draped trees weren’t pleasing enough to the eye, there were beautiful and exotic-looking plants and flowers seeming to float on the surface of the murky water. Now and again, we would see a snake, lazily meandering through the shallow water. Turtles perched on fallen logs, warming themselves in the sun. We didn’t see any alligators today, but egrets and blue heron kept a silent watch from the trees and banks, every now and then stretching their great wings in the sun. These birds weren’t frightening. They were majestic. Of course, doves were always beautiful, but the Dark Man’s dove was terrifying because it did his bidding. It was a part of him somehow. I fought off a shudder and returned my focus to the tranquility of Lake Martin.

  We finally settled on one shady spot near the northeast bank. He let the motor die down and we sat in silence for a few minutes, taking in our peaceful surroundings. I suddenly remembered my dream last night. I found myself scanning the bank, looking for an old cabin with a front porch, but I didn’t see one. And it didn’t have the same feel here as I had in the dream. This couldn’t be the same lake that Lucas and I had escaped to after the Dark Man chased us. It all looked familiar, but that’s what dreams do. They take what you know and use that as reference points. After all, if these dreams were somehow prophecies—and I mentally snorted at the idea—how would I know what the geography of a place looked like if I had never been there before? After awhile, Lucas broke the silence.

  “So, you think you can answer my question from earlier?” He was polite, but adamant.

  I sighed and said, “I’m here for Lyla.” I hoped he’d let it go at that but knew he wouldn’t.

  “You’re taking her back to California with you, aren’t you?” He sounded worried. And I now understood why he wanted to know so badly. And I understood why he brought me out in the middle of a lake to talk about it. It was so I couldn’t run away. He was determined to get this over with.

  “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  He looked out at the lake and took a deep breath. “Jon and I would sure miss her. Clothilde, too, of course. I know you’re her godmother and her aunt, but I’m her godfather. Her family’s here. Her friends are here. I can’t stop you from taking her back with you, but I know she wouldn’t be happy there. I would be more than glad to take her.”

  I didn’t know whether to be offended or relieved. I couldn’t
believe he would think I would take Lyla away from him, from Clothilde and Jonathan. But it was a relief to know how much he loved her and what he would do for her. I cleared my throat. “I’m not taking her to California,” I said, trying to hide a smile. He looked confused.

  “Then what are you doing here?” The smile I was trying to hide went away.

  I sighed and decided to get it over with. “I’ve been having these … dreams. About Lyla. Someone’s after her in these dreams. I just feel like … something bad’s going to happen to her if I’m not here to protect her.”

  Lucas was silent, and I suddenly felt very uncomfortable. The heat and humidity were becoming too much. If he didn’t say something soon, I felt I would jump into the water and swim back to my car. He leaned back in the boat and put his hands behind his head. He looked up at the white clouds high up in the blue sky.

  “What kind of dreams?”

  I really didn’t want to go into detail, but I could tell he wasn’t going to let me get away with being vague. “Nightmares. About a man. About … the Dark Man. You know. The one Jonathan told you about. In my dreams, he looks like this man I met at the cemetery the day of the funeral.” I swallowed hard in my throat and licked my dry lips. “He was a skinny old man with white hair.” Lucas’ eyes flickered to me as I echoed the words Roger had spoken almost an hour ago. He returned his gaze to the clouds and didn’t talk for a minute. The silence was killing me. As I was mentally judging the swimming distance between the boat and my car, Lucas spoke.

  “Does he have a bird?”

  My eyes popped. “Yes,” I whispered.

  He sat up and looked me in the eyes. “Is it a black bird?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s a white dove, though.”

  He breathed deeply through his nose. “Jonathan said the Dark Man has a big black bird for a pet.”

  “Can we go back to your truck?”

  “Why?”

  “Because we need to open that package.”

  7

  Lineage

  When we got in Lucas’ truck, it was a virtual oven. The heat blasted us as soon as we opened the doors, and he quickly put on the AC. We both stared at the package still on the armrest. I wanted to tear it open, to get it over with. Lucas was more patient. He gently picked it up and pulled the packaging tape off the sides. He dug into a corner with his finger and ripped along the seam in the middle. He hesitated slightly before opening the flaps. Inside was a manila envelope. Lucas tossed the empty box onto the dash and slowly opened the envelope as I held my breath. Inside were dozens of pictures. We eyed each other, baffled. He put the envelope on the armrest, and we stared at the first picture. It was a white man in his forties, balding with a nice smile.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  Lucas just shook his head. He flipped the picture down on top of the envelope. The next picture made us both gasp. It took me a second to realize it was the same man as in the first picture. In this one, he was on his back, naked, under water. His eyes were open in terror, frozen that way in death. His body was bloated and—

  Lucas quickly flipped that picture down on top of the previous one. The next picture was a young black man wearing a Lafayette High cap and gown in his graduation photo. The next one was of him, impaled by a tree in a very bad car accident. Lucas flipped to the next picture and the next and the next. Each was a before and after.

  “Damnit!” He said, stopping suddenly. I looked at him, waiting for him to tell me. “I took these pictures.”

  “What?”

  “Not the before pictures, but the ones …” he trailed off. “These were all crime scene investigations. I took them myself. They all happened in the last couple of years.” He flipped over another picture. “See?” I looked at it. It was a girl in a U.L. yearbook photo. “That’s the student I was telling you about.” He flipped to the next picture, and it pained him to see her with her head bashed in and her torso ripped open, just how he described her to me at the bar last night.

  “But why give these to you? How would he even get them in his possession?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, as he flipped through more pictures. I looked away, my stomach starting to churn. “Oh, my God,” he said, barely a whisper.

  “What?” I turned to him. He quickly moved to hide the last few pictures from me. But he didn’t move quickly enough. I glimpsed the photo in his hand; David, looking dashing in his police uniform. I reached out for the picture, but Lucas held the stack away from me. I snatched it, anyway.

  “Leigh,” he warned.

  I flipped over to the next picture. It was Michelle in her uniform; standard police picture.

  “Leigh. Don’t.”

  I slowly flipped over to the next picture. It was the car accident. I stared at it long and hard, barely able to breathe. My eyes started to water. Lucas quickly pulled the pictures away from me. I was holding on too tightly, so he only managed to pull the accident picture from the top. The next picture took me by surprise and I was truly bewildered. It didn’t seem to fit in with the others. By the order in which things were going, the next picture under this one should have been a gruesome one, a horrible crime or accident, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case. It couldn’t.

  I carefully lifted up the picture of my mother—the picture Dad took of her on our trip to Gulf Shores. Her hair was blonde and her smile warm and sunny. Around her neck was her cherished locket that contained pictures of her and Dad back when they were dating. I held my mother’s picture to my chest. The next one should have been her looking peaceful, the aneurysm taking her out instantly, no gory scene, just peace. But it was gory. It was enough to make me rock my head back onto the headrest. Lucas, alarmed, pulled the picture from me, along with the one under it, which was the last in the series.

  “Oh, Leigh. Honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t understand. She died of an aneurysm,” I said, mostly to myself. He was silent. He appeared to be just as dumbstruck as I was. And who wouldn’t be? You think someone died peacefully, only to come across hard evidence that contradicts that. Her body was a heap on an old, dirty wooden floor, a knife in her abdomen, blood pooling around her. It wasn’t so much the gruesome scene that was shocking. It was the expression on her face. I read true horror in her eyes. She was in agony, and she was terrified.

  I started breathing in and out too quickly. I felt myself starting to hyperventilate. Lucas put his hand on mine, and I grabbed it hard and squeezed. He let me. I concentrated on not passing out, and then I heard him gasp. I twisted toward him and looked down at the last picture in his hand. Lyla was in her dress clothes, smiling with a fake scene of a lake behind her, a bright yellow sun shining through the trees. It was her latest school photo.

  Clutching my mother’s picture to my chest, I hurried out the door, slamming it behind me.

  “Leigh!” he called from behind the wheel. “Let me lead,” he pleaded as I got into my car. He turned on the single police siren on the top of his truck. The light flashed, but no sound emitted. He raced out of the parking lot, and I followed. In no time, we were doing seventy down the country roads. When we got back to I-10, we climbed to eighty-five, speeding west. I blindly fished for my cell phone in the pocket of my jeans. I pulled it out and dialed Clothilde, careful to keep my eyes on the road as much as possible. The phone rang seven times, but no answer. I cursed and hung up. We got to her house about fifteen minutes later. We parked our vehicles in the front, by the pond, and ran into the house together.

  “Lyla!” I called.

  “Lyla! Jonathan!” called Lucas.