Swamp Cabbage (The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles Book 6)

by Paisley Ray

  His comment bristled beneath my skin. How did he know where I was staying? Bigmouth Battle. He and Francine shared eyes, and I guessed that she’d told him about me, but she’d coached him to act nonchalant. This casual meeting gave me the I-was-being-set-up vibe.

  If that was his get-to-know-me-better line, the only significant other he’d be able to keep would be a cat. I couldn’t exactly leave after I’d just walked in, so I played along.

  “What do you mean haunted? We haven’t seen any ghosts.”

  His elbow knocked into Francine. “That’s not what Fran tells me.”

  Fran? Here it comes. He’s going to volunteer to spend the night to monitor the paranormal activity. “I’m not following.”

  “The Larkin property and the unincorporated portion of the island you’re staying on is known round here for being…” Campbell’s eyes swept over his shoulder to survey the door. When he turned back to face us, he said, “Cursed.”

  “Ha-ha. What a creative belly buster. Prank the northerner with scary stories and see if she freaks.” Raising my finger at a waiter, I ordered a BJ—a Bartel & Jaymes wine cooler. “It takes more than hearsay and tall tales to rattle me,” I said as I locked eyes with Francine, wondering if she’d mentioned the body hanging from the rafter. She picked up on my signal and gave me a piercing look and a quick, imperceptible shake of the head “don’t-go-there” acknowledgement.

  Campbell twiddled with the corners of a cocktail napkin. “I’m not joshing.” He plowed on, “A portion of Lady’s Island was settled by slaves. Some nasty shit went down. They say ancestors of the Gullah can be seen roaming those wetlands.”

  “Gullah?”

  He lowered his voice. “Descendants of Lowcountry slaves. There was a man whose story is famous around here.”

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Campbell waggled his eyebrows as the inflection of his voice rose and lowered. “Gullah Jack was a Methodist preacher slave and African conjurer. He aided a free black man in getting recruits, and together they planned a slave rebellion. Besides weapons, they provided the recruits with charms as protection against the buckra.”

  A waitress placed my BJ on the table, and Campbell put it on his tab.

  “Buckra?” I asked.

  “The whites,” Francine said.

  “Did you know about this?”

  “Before you came in, Campbell was asking about where I was staying, and when I mentioned the Larkin place, his face scrunched inward, all sourpuss as though he’d shoveled fresh manure.”

  The green glass bottle was cold, and as I raised its bottom toward the ceiling, condensation dribbled onto my lap. Unable to think of a better direction to divert the conversation, I asked him, “What happened?”

  “The slaves planned to kill the whites in Charleston, take the city, and use the ships in the port to escape to Haiti.”

  Campbell knew how to tell a story, lingering on words like “kill” and “escape.” The things he fed into our ears I figured he’d rehearsed on others, and I didn’t hold back my eyeball rolling.

  “It’s in the history books. Look up Denmark Vesey’s 1822 slave conspiracy.”

  “If Gullah Jack was such an important historical figure, why wasn’t it called his conspiracy?”

  “’Cause it was Vesey’s idea in the first place.”

  No matter how much time had passed, slavery was still a touchy subject and not a topic I’d ever discussed with Francine or anyone beside a history teacher, for that matter. I waited for her to become annoyed or offended, but she acted interested and clung to the words he spoke.

  “What does any of this have to do with the Larkin property?” I asked.

  Campbell took a long swallow, and Francine followed his lead. With bottle and glass resting on parted lips, their eyes connected.

  Under gritted teeth, I said, “Did you tell him what we saw in the shed?”

  Francine scanned the crowd. “Where did Delilah go? Her and me were going to swap recipes. Claims she makes a lobster hush puppy with cilantro sauce that’s to die for.”

  “You did!” Nothing like giving strangers the impression that we were losing our marbles.

  “Want my take?”

  No.

  “Gullah Jack, Denmark Vesey, and others were hanged for their part in the foiled plan.” The next words he spoke were barely above a whisper. “Fran and you peered into the past.”

  “You’re so full of shit.”

  “Enough,” Francine said. “All this talk will summon maudit diablo.”

  She liked to use French as a secret weapon for effect. She wasn’t scaring me with her eternal demon warning. The ways she toyed with Cajun linguistics made people gawk. I’d had two years of the language of love in high school. I’d thought French would aid me in future quests of romance. To date, it hasn’t.

  “It’s too late now,” Campbell said. “If you want to rid yourselves of those trapped in between, y’all need a house cleanse.”

  “Francine and I are neat freaks. No dust bunny can escape us.”

  Campbell laughed. “Not a house cleaning. A house cleanse. There’s a difference.”

  Digging in her pocket for a pen, she asked, “Do you know anyone? ’Cause the last thing we need is some amateur stirring up the spirits at our house or in the shed, for that matter.”

  I neared the bottom of my wine cooler. The alcohol wasn’t helping me tune into the wavelength these two rode. “Time out. Cleaning, cleanse? What are you two talking about?”

  “We need a medium.”

  My voice cracked. “Medium! As in psychic?”

  “Y’all are living right close to an acclaimed—”

  “No, absolutely not,” I said.

  Francine knew I had personal reasons for my prejudices about woo-woo mystical types, but she’d forgotten to activate her sensitivity force field. “What we saw was serious. Keep talking, Campbell; we need to call in the big guns.”

  Now she wanted to talk about it!

  “Psychics are not real. They play on your emotions. It’s all smoke and mirrors.”

  “Then it won’t do any harm. Now who do you know in this line of work? And do they come with references?” she asked him.

  “A woman I’ve heard about lives on Lady’s Island. Local Gullahs call her Rilda. She’s said to be a root doctor and spiritual healer.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Although he’s hot for me and clearly trying to impress, I don’t like this Campbell fellow. He puts ideas in Francine’s head and encourages her imagination.

  CHAPTER 5

  Kumbayah – Come By Here

  A fan I’d set in the window hummed as it drew in warm air. Something was burning. The scent reminded me of the incense used at the final commendation over a casket, only sweeter. It was early for Francine to be cooking. Then again, I didn’t really know what time it was. My skull pounded, and my eyelids refused to open. Breathing in the stale cigarette smoke that clung to my t-shirt, images from last night flashed in my head like a slide show. Everything was fine until Francine’s coworker, Campbell Blatt III, ordered mudslide shots. Sweet and chocolaty, they were like liquid candy bars that left the inside of my mouth light and fluffy. And like those bite-size chocolates, just one is never enough.

  I’d talked, a lot, and recalled snippets of my mouth spewing nonsense about my southern-fried experiences or, as I put them, A Yankee’s Perspective of the Do’s and Don’ts South of the Mason-Dixon. Like a wound up top, I’d spun a lengthy rant about the physiological differences between chiggers and no-see-ums before droning on how palmetto bugs were like flying tanks that clanked when they landed. Everyone who heard me must’ve thought I was an exterminator in the making. Bugs somehow evolved into a discussion of reptiles—an undesirable topic that I had experience with. In an attempt to stifle the memory, I sank my head under the pillow.

  Behind the monsoon headache that flooded my cranium, I wondered if I’d said anything about witnessing a one-eye gator snack on
my nemesis stalker, but I couldn’t recall if I’d unleashed that head dump. Crap! One thing I was sure about: Campbell was not on my list of likable people. I half thought he got me drunk on purpose, probably to test my northern stomach’s absorption capacity for fire water. If he had a crush on me, it was not mutual. Who names their kid after a brand of soup anyway?

  Car door slamming woke my curiosity, and as I worked my way up onto my elbows, I peered out the window, expecting to see Hodge’s Cavalier. Instead I spotted a sporty silver Nissan 300ZX heading away from the house. Before I could haul myself to the window, my bedroom door opened.

  “A lot of cleansing needs doing in here.” Francine was in the company of a middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf that matched her oversized knee-length shirtdress. Chunky beads strung around her neck knocked as she moved. Two sets of eyes stared at me. In an effort to contain the anger I felt over the early-morning intrusion, I avoided viewing any part of Francine, but found myself transfixed with the visitor’s face; more specifically, her eyes. One was brown and the other green. She held a black smoldering bowl and a feather. I somehow recognized the woman who blew smoke at me. She’d been walking by the water.

  “Rachael there is prone to incidents and altercations. If she didn’t have bad luck, she wouldn’t have any luck at all. Blow some extra smoke in her direction.”

  “Francine! I’m asleep.”

  “You don’t look like you’re sleeping.”

  My head drummed, and self-consciously I tugged the sheet up over my bare legs to cover my panties and t-shirt. Unlike me, Francine was dressed. Face beaming, her hair done and makeup freshly applied, she glowed as though she’d been awake for hours.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked.

  The stranger walked the perimeter of the room. Waving a feather over the smoking bowl, she stopped to snoop at items on the dresser before scattering some mustard-colored dust from her pocket under the windows. “Angelica powder. Be takin’ care of da roots in order to heal da tree, eh.”

  “I just vacuumed!”

  “Oona hoona needs protection.”

  I glared at Francine. “Don’t we all. Some more than others.”

  In The Bern, I had inhaled things besides cigarettes. “Please tell me that’s not happy grass.” After I spoke, I reconsidered. Maybe some herbal remedy would make all this seem normal.

  “Rilda here comes from a long line of healers. A distant cousin of the famed Dr. Buzzard, she has impressive conjure experience.”

  “I dash away your boo hag.”

  I pushed a hand through my hair. “Did I agree to this…consultation…last night? ’Cause I’m having trouble remembering what I did and didn’t say.”

  “It’s not like anyone forced you to drink all those shots.”

  A dry tickle scratched at the back of my throat, and things swished in the lower realm of my intestinal tract. “How many did I drink?”

  “At least a half dozen.”

  “How many did you drink?”

  “When I saw you going down Drunkard’s Alley, I refrained from over imbibing.”

  “Hold on. Weren’t you the one leading the conga line into the kitchen?”

  The smoke-blowing stranger rested in a tailor’s chair beneath a portrait of a wounded Confederate soldier, a white woman, and a slave. I’d stared at the painting every morning. The signature I thought to be that of the Civil War artist Julian Scott. It was the most interesting painting in the house. Slipping off her shoes, she closed her eyes and released a series of low hums. “Gullah Jack be strong in this corner.”

  “Watch the smoke near the painting. It’ll dull the paints.”

  Unbothered by the humming sounds, as though it were a perfectly normal occurrence in the company of complete strangers, Francine busied herself by lifting blinds and opening windows. “After talking to Campbell, I decided to get us some backup. Rilda’s the Gullah root doctor he told us about.”

  “Root doctor? Francine, I’m not cutting down that swamp tree, so forget it.”

  “Take no more on your heels than you can kick off with da toes. I be ridding y’all of plat-eye.”

  “Plat-eye? Is that like a pink eye thing you can get from drinking one too many?”

  “It’s a kind of evil spirit. Like a hag,” Francine said.

  Enough with the insults. Swinging my legs out of bed, I grabbed a robe from a nearby high-back rattan rocking chair.

  “Rilda is a neighbor. Lives a mile or so down the dirt land. Campbell and I found her place this morning. I told her all ’bout you. And we figured out what the problem is.”

  “We all have burdens,” I said, meeting Francine’s eyes.

  “Don’t you be evil-eyeing me when I’m helping us out of a situation.”

  Closing my eyes, I worked hard to make the chaos subside. When I opened them, the two women, who stood in opposite corners, were watching me. The morning heat that swept in off the marshland began to outweigh the cool night air, and before the day had begun, I felt worn down. Relenting to the two, I settled on a corner of the unmade four-poster bed and wiped the underside of my tacky hands on the cotton sheet. “What is a root doctor, and what problem, exactly, is Rilda ridding us of?”

  Uncrossing her arms, Francine smiled. “We got ourselves one of two things. Either a boo hag, which can be removed easily enough; placing a broom or a bottle tree on the front porch will do it. But if we got—”

  “Gullah Jack,” Rilda rolled off her tongue.

  Was I still drunk? Possibly. “Whoa there, the smoke’s gone to your head,” I said and moved toward the doorway.

  “Where you going?”

  “To get a cup of coffee.”

  As I sauntered down the stairs, Francine and Rilda’s conversation drifted behind my back. “She thinks she’s smart, but can be a bit thick.”

  “Da Rachael. She ain’t southern.”

  “Um-hmm. That’s part of her problem.”

  “I can hear you!” I shouted as I maneuvered a can opener around the coffee can.

  Feet creaked the floorboards as the two finished their walk-through upstairs. By the time they settled onto stools around the narrow kitchen island, I’d poured a cup. “Rachael, listen here. When these parts were backwoods, they didn’t have access to proper doctors. Living in isolation, the Geechee had to be self-reliant to survive.”

  “Geechee?” Was Francine making up words? Backwoods? Hello!

  Francine’s eyes were intent, and she spoke slowly. “Descendants from the enslaved people of Sierra Leone. Rilda comes from a long line of healers.”

  “Okay, I get it. But a boo hag? This isn’t Halloween.”

  “You need ta git that nasty ol’ hag outta here or it’ll cause nothin’ but strife.”

  When Rilda spoke, it took a few moments for me to process her words. I poured two additional mugs of coffee and joined them. “The only unusual sighting was that first night, and you and I agreed it was some kind of optical illusion. We haven’t had any trouble since.”

  “Haven’t you noticed all the things that go on the fritz around here?”

  I scooped a generous tablespoon full of sugar and poured cream into my cup. “It’s an old plantation house.”

  “Every time Hodge makes a repair, it breaks again.”

  Rilda opened up an oversized handmade purse fastened with a tasseled drawstring. The outside was a tropical floral print and the inside, purple velvet. From the wide-open top she began removing hand-labeled plastic tubes of incense powder and lined them up. “I got da fix for you. Mojo bag.” She removed a purple glass marble. “Protection from corrupt fools,” she said and dug her hand back inside.

  “I don’t think we have a hag problem,” I said.

  Rilda pursed her lips. “If it’s Gullah Jack, dat’s bad.”

  I had a wealth of disturbing knowledge regarding men and whisky named Jack and didn’t like wherever this conversation was headed.

  “What do ya mean?” Francine asked.

 
“He was a conjurer too. Smart. Some say the best.”

  I began to laugh, but Francine and Rilda grew wide eyes and stared at one another all serious. A knock on the screen porch door gave us all a startle.

  “Who’s there?” Francine called.

  “Probably Hodge.” Although he normally announced himself.

  Walking through the kitchen, my feet froze. I had to be imagining the sight on the porch beyond the screen door.

  “What are you two doing here?”

  From outstretched arms, a voice I recognized said, “Rachael, give your mother a hug.”

  NOTE TO SELF

  Francine has befriended the lively culture and characters of Lady’s Island. Yay for me, NOT!

  I’m too old and too experienced to believe in the mumbo jumbo Rilda is feeding us. Will use my southern manners: nod, act interested, then ignore all the nonsense she slices up.

  Mom and Betts showing up without notice. Forget the body in the shed. Now I have a more serious problem. I must be cursed.

  CHAPTER 6

  Shut My Mouth

  “Rachael, don’t stand there twiddling your thumbs, invite your mama and that Betts inside,” Francine said.

  The main house was on a point with a large front porch overlooking the marsh and the creek that eventually fed into the Port Royal Sound. Beyond, off to the left and back some couple of hundred feet, was a cottage where Hodge bunked. To the right, a winding path beneath the canopy of trees led to “the shed,” where neither Francine nor I had ventured since that first night. On the backside of the house facing the driveway was a carport where I parked my Volkswagen. Past the carport between the shed and the cottage, the property was thick with uncleared vegetation, and the forest floor was littered with fallen tree trunks.

  “Mom? How did you know where I was staying?”

  She wiped the soles of her canvas slip-ons across the doormat. “Rachael, this is the South. Everybody knows everybody’s business. I heard through a client of ours who’s an acquaintance of Mr. Larkin’s travel agent that he’d be hiring a summer intern to run things while he was overseas. Imagine my surprise when she mentioned Rachael O’Brien.”