Wrapped in Black: Thirteen Tales of Witches and the Occult

by Jennifer L. Greene

  She shook her head.

  “I can’t believe I lost it like that. I mean, I just keep thinking about what happened back in Haiti; what you went through. And how I wanted to make you hurt so much. It doesn’t even seem real.”

  “Oh Landon,” she began with an aching voice. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No. It was. I can’t be off the hook for this-”

  “-I mean to say, you were not in control of yourself, like you said.”

  Landon sat up. “Aggie...come on. I mean, this is not... possession or that sort of thing. I know you believe in that. But I don’t.” Much as he would have liked absolution, he could not accept it. “And I can’t. I refuse to allow myself that excuse.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I’m calling Trudy first thing in the morning for an emergency session. I’m going to do whatever it takes -commit myself to a mental ward if I have to- to keep from ever hurting you again. I promise.”

  Looking at her back, he felt shunned.

  “Will you go with me?”

  Agnes rolled over. “Oh my baby. I can’t make you understand. I cannot go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Trudy does not understand either. This is not of your culture.”

  “But can’t you..?” Landon reached out and snatched her arm with quick urgency, frightening her. Realizing this, he released her. “Okay. Okay. I’ll just go. When you’re ready, we’ll go together.”

  She sat up, kissed him gently on the forehead, and said “My beautiful husband.”

  She turned away, leaving Landon once again to stare at her back in the darkness.

  “It was like, I suddenly resented the hell out of her--but I don’t know why. It wasn’t the humming, or the cable.” Landon sat on the far right edge of a large couch, holding a small figurine; a bloated, faceless female form. “I had a moment--I almost wished she hadn’t been my nurse after my accident. I wanted to make her pay for that.”

  The buxom therapist regarded Landon from across a mahogany coffee table, her hands primly clasped in her lap, any sense of judgment entirely absent from her soft features. “It’s understandable, given that your memories from before the accident are so hazy. A part of you feels your life is only a masquerade. That perhaps, Aggie took more control over it than she had right to.”

  He rolled the little goddess in his hands. “But...given what happened to her back in Haiti. I mean, imagine, having a man...kill himself over you. Surely, there must be moments when she feels responsible.”

  “Why should that affect you so negatively?” asked Trudy. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, but--it’s just so hard to conceive of a guy doing that. Like he was punishing her with his suicide. And now, I'm punishing her too. And all she did to me was--save me.”

  “Perhaps you’re beginning to see Aggie more as a mother figure than a lover. And it’s making you feel conflicted about what she truly is to you.”

  “...I don’t remember my mother,” lamented Landon.

  “Perhaps you feel that Aggie took her away from you, and took her place.”

  “I never wanted to hurt someone so much in all my life. And it scares me.”

  Trudy took a book from the desk behind her. “Let’s talk about some behavioral redirecting strategies.”

  “Yeah. Anything.” Landon stared at the statuette. “I can't hurt her again like that.”

  Landon went to the kitchen at Aggie’s somewhat subdued call, still pondering the session with Trudy. Aggie wordlessly placed a bowl of fragrant stew before him, opposite the arrangement of a dozen white roses he’d had sent to her at the hospital which now stood in a clay vase at the table’s center.

  “Smells great,” he said.

  Aggie smiled, as she began to scrub dishes. “Thank you.”

  “Aren’t you going to eat with me?”

  Aggie took a long moment before answering. “Yes. Just...let me finish here.”

  Landon stood and walked up behind her, easing his arms around her waist and cuddling against her neck. “Hey. I have an idea.”

  Agnes reached her hand back to rub his head affectionately.

  “Why don’t we go have some nice make up sex?” he said playfully.

  Agnes smiled, but it quickly faded. “I can’t.”

  “Hm? Why?”

  She turned to face him, but would not look in his eyes. “Right now, it just feels...wrong.”

  “Look, I know I crossed the line.” Landon needed and wanted her, and to love her, so much in that moment. “We have to put it behind us, Aggie. We have to keep loving each other, or else...”

  “Or else, what?”

  “No, I didn’t mean it like...a threat.”

  “Yes but, what did you mean?”

  “Just, that--communication is so important,” Landon tried, feeling trite and false again. “Especially after what I did, and I want to show you I love you and I can be gentle.”

  “Oh baby...you are a good man. And I do love you.”

  He could hear it in her voice, in her heartbeat, how she truly did ache for him. “So what’s the problem?”

  “It just....doesn’t feel right, right now.”

  “No?”

  Agnes shook her head, finally raising her gaze to him. Landon suddenly slapped her, spinning her around.

  “It’s not right, is it? Nothing is right.” Landon heard his voice through a filter of sheer hatred. “Because you’re a fucking cold hearted bitch.”

  Agnes turned back to face him, as if daring, tempting him to strike her again. And he did.

  “You’re in love with your guilt. Well fine. You are guilty, then.” He seized her hair and pulled her head back so far her skin stretched across her throat.

  “You’re a whore. And a fucking evil cunt. You drove that poor bastard to his death, didn't you? Whoring around.”

  He suddenly shoved her face toward the stove’s glowing eye, wavering just inches above.

  “Maybe you should be branded, then. Huh?” His voice burned with the very opposite of contrition.

  Agnes screamed, trying to push herself away. But Landon was too strong. He pushed harder, forced her ever closer.

  Agnes slowly relinquished her resistance, seeming to surrender. “...Yes...”

  Suddenly, Landon released her and stumbled backward, falling to the floor. He stared at her, then at his hands, his face flush with abject terror.

  “Oh God... Oh God, Agnes!”

  Agnes suddenly began to bawl violently, falling to her knees, first extending her hands toward him, then retracting them quickly to hold them against her abdomen.

  Landon scrambled backward on the floor, tears flowing in tiny rushing rivers, an agonized scream escaping his throat.

  He rose and ran from the room, even as Agnes reached for him, muttering “Oh baby...”

  Landon stumbled down the hallway and into the bathroom, nearly falling face-first into the mirrored medicine cabinet. He tore it open, and fumbled for his only salvation- a bottle of sleeping pills, prescribed to him after his accident, for nightmares.

  He slammed the cabinet shut and downed the pills, starving for them, for oblivion. Looking at his reflection, he punched it, filling the sink with an avalanche of silver shards, upon which his hand jetted blood.

  Agnes appeared at the door. “Oh no, baby!” Ever the lover and nurse, she went into automatic and set about taking care of him.

  She took gauze, ipecac, and alcohol from the medicine cabinet. “Hold on, baby!”

  In short order, Landon was kneeling over the commode, retching while Agnes wrapped the bandage around his hand, occasionally chanting in creole under her breath. “It’s gonna be all right baby ...gonna be all right,” she comforted.

  Landon raised his weary, bedraggled face to look at her. “And here you are, saving me again.”

  “Shhhh...just be still, baby.” She looked into the toilet, counting. “Looks like we got all those damned pills out.”

  She t
ouched his face tenderly, and he touched her hand.

  “You need rest,” she whispered.

  “I need...you...”

  Agnes helped him up. “Come on, sweetie.” She embraced him, helped him stand. “We both need a long rest.”

  She took him to the bedroom, and they clutched each other like otter pup littermates.

  Landon’s dreams, fitful and onerous initially, morphed over the course of the night into visionless perceptions of warmth and womb-like security. Even the usual gradual multiplying of sounds and light that signaled morning came muffled and remote to his mind for a while, until one insistent alien noise finally roused him--metal cutting into dirt. The sound of digging.

  Gasping, he rose head first into something hard and solid.

  “AAaaaaaaaaoooow fuck!” He cried, blinking at the brown surface just inches from his face.

  Faint sunlight touching him from his left side told him he was under the bed.

  Attempting to orient himself, Landon darted his gaze around at his tight predicament, his bandaged hand serving as a reminder of how the night had ended.

  Turning his head, he spotted two feet--toes pointing at him. “Who’s there!?” His own voice was too loud in these close quarters; the echo made him realize he had a headache.

  He grabbed for the nearest foot; a severed appendage. No--only a slipper.

  He inched out from under the bed, ruffling dust wads from his hair, wondering how he had wound up there.

  The bed was empty and neatly made.

  “Aggie?”

  He reached for his Buzzards cap, but it was gone from the bedpost. For a moment, he feared his clothes might be gone as well. But when he opened the closet they were still there; moping headless ghosts.

  Landon hurriedly tucked in his shirt as he entered the kitchen, calling for Agnes. Apprehension crept along his spine; a centipede of fear searching for a spot to burrow its way inside. He picked up the telephone, dialed Trudy’s office and told the receptionist it was urgent that he speak to her. There was cold comfort in hearing the sincere apprehension in his voice that would surely convince her.

  He scratched at his bandaged wrist while he waited.

  Then: “Trudy Bennett here.” She might have been speaking through a mouthful of food.

  “Trudy! It’s Landon. Aggie’s gone!”

  It sounded like she swallowed. “Gone..?”

  “There was...we had a huge blowout last night,” Landon sputtered, on the verge of tears. “I...listen I can’t find her and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Did she leave a note? Are her things gone?”

  “No, but--something’s just...really...wrong here.”

  “That’s just...a feeling you have?”

  “Yeah, but... No, it’s more than that.”

  “Maybe you should just wait,” Trudy suggested. “She probably needs some time alo-”

  “-No, this is something more permanent. It’s...it feels like, like forever.” Landon gritted his teeth; that surely must have tested her well-practiced equanimity.

  “Landon, listen. This is not a good time for you to-”

  “-I have to find her. I have to talk to her.”

  “Landon, I strongly urge you to...”

  Much as he was settled on ignoring it, Landon still felt a desperate need to hear Trudy’s advice. “...To what?”

  He waited, listened. “…Hello?”

  Trudy was not there. Instead, Agnes’ monotonous humming trickled from the earpiece like a drop of acid.

  “...Aggie!?”

  The humming slipped seamlessly into the sound of digging.

  Landon stared at the phone for a moment, feeling more and more confined.

  He stepped out into an overcast day, the sun seemingly buried and smothering behind charcoal gray clouds. From the corner of the house, Shucky trotted, halting upon seeing his master.

  Landon regarded his best friend. “Where’d she go, Shucky?”

  Shucky began to growl.

  “Shucky?” Landon kept his voice low, non-threatening. “What’s wrong with you, boy?”

  Shucky barked once, his voice low like Landon’s--but decidedly more hostile, his fixed, primal gaze showing no signs of recognition. Landon considered scolding him -but then the lab attacked.

  Landon bolted for the gate and leapt over, just avoiding Shucky’s foamy teeth. He crashed on his hip and cried out, sure he had shattered it. Shucky raised hell as he scratched at the chain link fence separating him from his prey. Landon rolled away from the fence, hoping he could still stand, wondering if he would have to shout for help from a neighbor.

  How alarming this would surely seem; Shucky was known for his friendly nature. He had never been aggressive to even total strangers in the past.

  Landon pushed himself to his feet, surprised at how quickly the pain in his hip began to subside. He tried once more to talk soothingly to Shucky but his words were drowned by the furious barking. Landon went to the car, pursued to the fence corner by the enraged beast.

  He got in and started the car, his sense of urgency now all the greater in the face of Shucky’s behavior. He had backed almost halfway out of the driveway when a car barreled down the street, the driver seemingly ignoring him, almost crashing into him.

  Landon slammed on the brakes and bashed his horn. “Shit! Are you FUCKING BLIND!?”

  He stopped, closed his eyes, took a deep breath. “No...it’s my fault. This is exactly my problem.”

  He shook his head and resumed reversing. At the gate, Shucky leapt and paced, barking liking he had gone rabid.

  Landon had always had mixed feelings about his mother-in-law’s house. Located in a recessed corner of a neighborhood yet undiscovered by development zealots, where houses spaced out well apart from one another sat amid a good swath of surrounding forestry, it reflected Madame Tournier’s need, after decades of crowded living in a Haitian village, for a place to commune with nature.

  It was the very home where Agnes had spent her early teens and nursing school years, where the Bokor had tutored the increasingly Americanized child in the magical ways of her family for generations untold. Landon didn’t have trouble believing in voodoo, or vodou, as Aggie always corrected him. He just wasn’t comfortable with it. His kind, demure and submissive bride was high above him in a spiritual sense, and it seemed it would always be so.

  Landon parked at the edge of the yard and went to the cluttered, porch, both fascinated and somehow left ill at ease, as always, by its ancient decor.

  Carved humanoids, rendered in various woods, sizes and attitudes, regarded Landon from their stations around the porch while several sets of crude wind chimes rang with lazy monotony in the breeze.

  Crow feathers hung from an unidentifiable skull which itself hung from a rafter by horsehair twine.

  Landon pressed the doorbell. No answer.

  He looked in the window, shielding his eyes to peer past the darkness. “Agnes!? You in there!? Madame Tournier..?”

  Movement at the next window over. The shades shifted about minutely. He went to that window. “Agnes?”

  He squatted to try the window, finding that it slid up easily. He pushed it up just a couple of inches, along with the blinds-and was abruptly met with the angry face of a hissing Siamese.

  Landon fell back to his butt with a gasp, clutching at one of the statues. It tottered and fell, Landon managing to catch the heavy idol within inches of contact.

  A strong patois flavored call added another jolt to his taxed nerves. “Who is there!?”

  “Madame Tournier?” Landon struggled to a stand. “It’s me!”

  Wearing garden gloves and holding a trowel, she stared warily at Landon from beneath a floppy sun hat, realizing he must be little more than a writhing silhouette wrestling with one of her wooden doormen to her.

  Landon steadied the statue and stepped into the light. “It’s Landon.”

  “You.” Mme. Tournier, recognizing him, placed her dark hands on her am
ple hips. “Was not sure I would ever see you again.”

  “Oh. You know what happened...” Landon stumbled over his feet and his words. “I...look, I just want to talk to Agnes and apologize. I’m...I’m getting help, Mme. Tournier. I am. I want to make this right, and...and I want to heal...us.”

  Her expression was one of distance, impatience. Harsh, but less so than he had expected.

  “I totally get your doubt; I do.” He ventured a few steps toward her. “And you, more than anyone, know what it’s like to be an oppressed... look, is she here? Can you tell me that at least?”

  “She is not. Not right now.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “I have seen her all right.”

  “Can you please tell me where to find her?”

  “She has gone to see the doctor,” Mme. Tournier’s voice grew a few degrees colder. “About her injuries.”

  “Look, I’m...I’m sick over this. I just need to see her so badly. I need her!”

  Madame Tournier softened, her bearing that of the acclaimed healer of whom Agnes had told him legends. “You poor baby.”

  “Huh? No. No, I...don’t deserve your sympathy, Mme. Tournier. I’m a shitty, shitty human being. If I’m even-”

  “-You may bear this painful uncertainty for a very long time my son.” She stared at him for a moment with pity, then simply turned and walked back the way she had come.

  “Wh-where are...you..?” He followed her into her beloved backyard greenhouse, where she went about spritzing a row of azaleas.

  Landon watched her for a moment, waiting for some other tidbit of hope. But she was apparently resolved to staying out of her daughter’s business.

  “I’m starting to feel really...off center.” Landon said. “I think I’m losing it here.”

  “It’s not my place to guide you child. I wish I could.”

  “I just need to talk to Agnes.”

  Mme. Tournier turned to him, her expression deeply compassionate. She stared in his eyes for a long time, then went to a white rose bush and clipped one. “She loved you, you know.” She tied a black ribbon around the rose stem. “The first you.”

  “The first me? What does that mean”