I nodded.
“You’ll need Father Ben and Miss Cee Cee to perform the ritual. Y’all can do that tonight.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Miss Ya is going to be buried tomorrow. There’s a rosary for her tonight at the funeral home. I’m going to take Lyla with me. She doesn’t need to see what y’all are doing and you don’t need me there for that.”
“They’re having the funeral so soon after she died?”
“She lived here all her life. Everyone she knew is in Abbeville. And she outlived all her children. All she had left was a nephew she hardly saw.” She took a deep breath and then added, “It’s a sad thing to outlive your children.” She got up and opened the screen door to the house and left me to myself.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Lucas as I got into my car. “Hello,” he answered.
“Hey. I know you’re working right now, but can you help me with something?”
“Is it about our problem?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Can it wait till I get off of work?”
“I hope so,” I sighed.
“I’ll call you when I’m done, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to put my vengeance aside for a few more hours. Besides, I reasoned with myself that it would be best to play grave-robbers if the cemetery was deserted. Early evening would be a good time to go. We said goodbye and hung up.
I went back into the house and saw Cee Cee hugging Clothilde. It was hard to control my desire to get everything over with. I spent the next few hours keeping Lyla busy while trying to not let on that anything was bothering me. She was a little sad about Miss Ya and watching television didn’t help. I decided we both needed busy work. After Cee Cee left, saying she would be at St. John’s with Father Ben until we were ready, Lyla and I went out to the garden to pick banana peppers while Clothilde took a nap.
“Is the man with the bird really going to get me?” I was startled at the newly-broken silence. We had been picking peppers for about ten minutes, each keeping to our own thoughts. I looked over at Lyla, who was mechanically picking the peppers, but she was gazing off into the distance. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and I noticed how slender her neck was. Her baby fat was almost all gone, and she would soon be a teenager. Looking at her now, I could easily see the woman she would become one day, and I was a little afraid that she would turn out like I did. A bitter coward, scared and angry at the world because it hurt her.
“I’m going to take care of that,” I assured her.
“But he could get me if he wanted to?” She was trying to keep her voice steady, but I could hear the fear in it. She was frightened and had every right to be.
“I won’t let him. It’ll be okay.” I lied and hated myself for it. She needed to hear it, but the truth was, I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had no idea if our plan would work, even though Cee Cee assured me it would. Lyla seemed somewhat satisfied with my answer, though I didn’t know if she believed me or not. I think sometimes, even if we know the truth, we still want the lie. We need the lie so that we can continue with our mundane lives, so we can go on with our routines. I know I lied to myself for years, and I was happy. Facing reality now was taking its toll on my psyche. Even though I could see the woman Lyla would become, she was still a child, still innocent in so many ways. The lie would suffice.
When Clothilde woke up, it was nearly 2:30, and Lyla and I had just finished pickling the peppers. “Sleep well?” I asked her while Lyla put the last jar of peppers in the fridge.
“It was good enough, I suppose,” she said as she walked into the kitchen. She sat and then rubbed her knees.
“You think maybe you should get those knees looked at?”
“It’s not that bad,” she lied. She glanced at the leftover jars and lids on the counter and the remains of the peppers. “Y’all didn’t have to do that.”
I shrugged. “Just keeping busy.”
“Pickling is fun,” said Lyla.
I rolled my eyes. “You need to go to camp or something next summer.”
Clothilde turned to me. “Did you and Lucas decide on anything?” She was being careful to not say too much in front of Lyla.
I nodded. “He’s going to meet me after work.”
“Are y’all going out on a date?” Lyla asked, excited.
“Not really. We just need to get something done. You going to be okay with Maw-maw Clo tonight?”
“Duh. Of course,” she said with a smart mouth.
“Duh, sorry,” I mocked. We laughed at each other, and Clothilde blew us off as children being children. After the peppers had been put away, Lyla and I played a couple of games of Monopoly and Apples to Apples while Clothilde stayed on the phone with her friends who knew Miss Ya. I was so wrapped up in the games that I was startled when my cell rang.
It was Lucas. He was ready.
12
An Undertaking
Lucas met me at the presently-deserted cemetery as the sun hung low in the sky. I had parked along side of the ditch that lined that side of the property. Staring out at the southeast corner, my eyes scanned the headstones, but I was too far away to read them. One of them looked particularly dark and isolated. Not one flower, fresh or rotted, from even one visitor adorned it, and, in my bones, I felt that was Savoy’s grave. I heard a door slam shut and then footsteps approach me.
He was quiet for a moment, but I could hear his breathing, which was always deep and rough when he was internally wrestling with a decision. “You know I could lose my job for this.”
I nodded, never taking my eyes from the dark grave in the corner.
“You sure?” he asked. He meant if I was sure this was the right thing to do.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wanna tell me how you’re sure?”
“I can’t.”
He was quiet again, and I could tell it hurt him that I couldn’t share all my secrets with him yet, especially after last night. “If I help you with this, will you stay? In Acadiana?” He spoke gently and with so much hope in his voice that I felt like my heart could break at hearing it. I couldn’t bring myself to look at him now if I wanted to, though I felt his eyes on me, his body inches from mine.
“You’re doing this for Lyla,” I softly reminded him. And he was quiet again. We stood there for a few moments, on the edge of each other. I felt him wanting to say more, but he held onto that strong-and-silent man inside.
He walked away, and I heard the sound of metal against metal as he grabbed something from the bed of his truck. He joined me again and handed me a pair of work gloves, a shovel and a crowbar. He had another shovel and a body bag in his gloved hands. Together, we walked to the southeast corner, passing the graves of my family—my grandfather, mother, father, brother. I kept my eyes forward, intentionally not looking at their headstones, but feeling them watching me, stoic and solemn from their resting places. I’ll be with you soon, I whispered to them in my mind. And I thought that wasn’t such a bad thing, to be eternally at rest.
I was right about the dark grave. It read:
Walter M. Savoy
1930-1997
That was all there was to his epitaph. No terms of endearment about any contributions to humanity or what a loving son he was. I wanted to laugh stupidly at that thought, remembering what he did to his parents. I held my tongue as Lucas and I began our long, dirty job in silence.
It was about two hours later when we reached the embedded coffin. Lucas and I, sweaty, grimy and thoroughly exhausted, shared a look of dread. His eyes asked me once more if I really wanted to go through with this. I nodded wearily before we continued to unearth Savoy’s remains. We pried open the lid of the cheap pine box and—he’ll be grinning at you, and he’ll reach out with his withered hand and claw at your throat—the grotesque, dried, rotted corpse was before us. It looked as though not much was done to preserve the body, though all we could see was the face. He was not grinn
ing, as that annoying secret part of my psyche tried to convince me he would be. He looked like any other unpreserved body would after this many years.
“Get the bag,” I said, hoarsely. Together, we lifted Savoy from his resting place and put his body in the bag Lucas had taken from the coroner’s office. We hauled it back to his truck and put it in the bed, and I was glad he remembered to put on the camper top. I started to climb in the passenger seat of the cab, but he stopped me.
“No. Take your car,” he said.
“Why?”
“If I get pulled over for something, and they search my truck, I don’t want you to get busted, too.”
I wanted to cry and throw my arms around him and kiss him all at the same time. I wanted to tell him that he could go and that I would do it alone, that he didn’t have to protect me anymore. I wanted to tell him that I would stay here forever, and we would live happily ever after in our own warped little fairytale, but I knew it would be a lie. I knew I couldn’t stay, not after all of this. I was here to save Lyla. When she was safe, I would go back to—back to nothing.
I followed Lucas’ truck with my car. We met up with Cee Cee and Ben at St. John’s and, from there they followed us in Cee Cee’s car. Our three vehicles made up a morbid procession down I-10 West, all the way to Sulphur. It took us a couple of tries to remember the road we took to get to Savoy’s place. When we got there, twilight had come and gone, and we had little more than a sliver of moon and our headlights to guide us.
At its zenith, the fire blazed, stretching to lick the black sky. The heat enveloped us like it was hell’s own gravitational force. It gave off enough light to illuminate the entire yard and the house, yet somehow the barn remained shadowed, the light blocked by some unknown barrier. Long shadows seemed to ooze out of the rotting wood to pool around the light of the fire, too afraid to come into contact with it.
“Remove the body from the bag,” instructed Ben.
Lucas and I unzipped the body bag and pulled out the corpse, placing it in front of the fire Cee Cee said would be required for the ritual. She and Ben both kneeled next to the corpse. Ben took out some holy water and sprinkled it three times on Savoy’s remains. Cee Cee pulled some kind of powder from her satchel and sprinkled that over it, also three times. I held my mother’s locket to my chest and wanted nothing more than for all of this to be over. I wanted to go back to my life, in the world where everything made sense and there was no such thing as the boogie man.
“Lord God, we pray you take pity on this man. Forgive him his transgressions in his Earthly life. Savoy, though you have given up your mind and heart to Satan and turned your back against our ever-loving Father, we pray that your soul be absorbed into the white light of the Holy Spirit,” prayed Ben.
“Amen,” responded Cee Cee and Lucas. I remained quiet.
“Into the fire,” said Ben, looking at Lucas and me. The whites of his eyes shimmered around his dark pupils, and it occurred to me how much those eyes could see, how they bared witness to my fate, could judge me for my future sins and, for a moment, this delegate of God frightened me. We lifted Savoy’s body and heaved it into the flames.
“Spirits! We pray you take this man to the other side. Take him with you so that he may not harm another soul on this Earth,” said Cee Cee, throwing more powder into the fire, causing more flames to spark. At that moment, a strong breeze picked up, swirling ash and embers all around us.
“Now, let us hold hands,” instructed Cee Cee. The four of us formed a circle and linked hands. Cee Cee led our prayer: “Savoy, may you be absorbed back into the white light.” Suddenly, a loud, agonizing scream surrounded us. It was nowhere, and it was everywhere.
“What happened?” I asked, panicked.
“Repeat the prayer eight times for a total of nine,” Cee Cee said calmly. She and Ben seemed as though the scream didn’t bother them, but Lucas and I kept looking over our shoulders. “May you be absorbed,” Cee Cee started, and the rest of us joined in. “Back into the white light.”
And then I saw him, the form of a man, consumed by a great swirl of shadows, floating above the fire. We repeated the prayer, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.
“And the sorcerers and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone!” he yelled to us, as his bones burned in the great fire near us. Then he began to repeat his words with more fury as the flames shot through him.
As we repeated the words for the sixth time, I suddenly saw several pairs of arms with no bodies attached reach out and start to pull and claw at Savoy, causing him more agony, and he screamed again and again. After we said the prayer for the ninth time, the disembodied arms dragged him away for good, leaving behind only his echoing shriek.
The wind calmed, and the fire came back down to a normal size, and its light now reached the barn, illuminating all the shadows that stayed hidden before. Ben and Cee Cee released our hands, but I held onto Lucas’ because I was shaking so badly. He put an arm around me, and I clung to him. “Is it over?” I asked.
Cee Cee nodded. “The spirits came and got him.”
“What did they do with him?” asked Lucas.
“They brought him to the light. To the other side. He won’t be a problem anymore.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“He’s gone,” said Ben. “Now help me put out the fire.”
***
It was after 11:00 P.M. when I got back to Clothilde’s. Lucas had followed me home and walked me to the door. Neither of us knew what to say for a moment. I suddenly reached out to him and hugged him fiercely. He held me just as tightly. “Thank you,” was all I could think to say, but it summed up all the gratitude I had for what he had done for me and for Lyla. He released his hug without a word and went back to his truck. I watched him drive away before I went inside and locked the door behind me.
The whole house was dark except for the light over the staircase and the nightlight at the top of the hall. I peeked in on Clothilde. She was sound asleep. I thought she would have stayed awake long enough to make sure we were alright. I supposed Cee Cee or Ben called her on the way back. Either that or Ben knew how it was going to turn out and told her ahead of time.
I forced myself to take a shower even though I was physically and mentally worn out. When I was done, I checked in on Lyla, who was sleeping peacefully, unaware of the unbelievable task I had performed only a couple hours before. I envied her for that, but I caught myself, thinking I wouldn’t want to be her at all. I lost my mother and father same as she did, but not at the same time, and I was an adult when Dad died. That was what did me in, what really made me leave Louisiana. When he died, I couldn’t handle facing the house where he and Mom no longer lived. I couldn’t handle living there by myself, in the silence that was so loud. I took off and left everything and everyone behind that reminded me of that silence. I hadn’t seen at the time that David and Clothilde were there for me and that life could go on with our little family. It was too hard to think about, and I was a coward. Looking at Lyla now, I admired her bravery and her innocence, but I didn’t envy her in the least. I could never be as brave as she was.
I closed the door and went to sleep in my bed. Before I drifted off, I wondered if there could be happily-ever-afters anymore. Did they ever exist? Not for you, I told myself before I closed my eyes, relieved to never see this horrid night again.
***
A flash of light.
The murky swamp disappeared and my mother was standing before me. We had just been in the boat, in front of the cabin that was in my last dream. Now, we stood in a very dark room. Everything around us was black, and all I saw was my mother. She was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her, though she was only a couple of inches from me.
“I can’t hear you!” I tried to tell her, but no sound came from my lips. She lit a match, and the soft glow dimly lit the room, which I recognized immediately as the one in the picture of her murder scene. She glan
ced down, and I followed her gaze. There, in the corner, was a photograph. It was the same one I saw when I was at Savoy’s house. He, as a young man in the army, next to a couple of army buddies. I turned back to my mother, but she was gone and, with it, the light. I was in total darkness, and I was suddenly aware of my heart beating very fast.
Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou Page 19
