Poison Tongue

by Nash Summers

  This wasn’t about how much Germaine had hated Monroe.

  Germaine Poirier had been in love with her own brother.

  Chapter 14

  “HOW DO you think he will take it?” Ward asked.

  I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I think he’ll be happy that we finally know something.”

  After returning home from the sheriff’s station, I’d told Mama and Ward what I’d discovered. We’d decided to go through Monroe’s aunt’s journal one last time, this time more focused on what we were looking for.

  There had been another picture of him tucked into the back of the journal. It was small and we’d missed it the first time around. Again he sat on the dock, his toes in the water, his head back, laughing. The picture looked oddly intimate. It sent shivers down my spine.

  Dawning streams of orange sunlight illuminated the dark Poirier house like a lighthouse seen from the sea. Knowing what I knew now, the house made me even more uneasy than it had before. The things that I knew had been written on those walls. The spells, incantations, the blood curse. The house itself was soaked in evil, and I knew it wouldn’t be an easy thing to tell a person.

  Monroe’s long legs poked out from underneath the same shiny red car as before. He must’ve heard us approach because he pulled himself out. A hesitant expression crossed his face before he stood up and grabbed a cloth out of his pocket to wipe his hands.

  “Hey.” His voice was low, skeptical.

  “Hi,” I replied.

  “Ward,” Monroe added, nodding toward Ward. Ward did nothing but stare at him a moment, fold his arms across his chest, and look toward the sky.

  “It’s nice that you talk to Ward,” Silvi said. She began twirling her hair around one of her tiny fingers. “No one ever talks to him.”

  “Is he like that with everyone?” Monroe asked her.

  Silvi giggled. “No.”

  “Don’t I feel special.” The corner of his mouth tilted upward.

  “I’m going to go play with Coin.” Silvi let go of my hand. The three of us watched as she scampered over to the front porch. Coin’s ears perked up the moment he saw her. He gave an excited yowl as he jumped up, his long tail slapping against the wood.

  When she was comfortably seated on the steps with Coin, Monroe looked at me. “So, what brings you here?”

  “I found something out about your family. Well, your dad and your aunt, specifically.”

  “What did you find out?”

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure. And it might not be easy to hear.”

  He smiled sadly. “I don’t think anything in my life has been easy.”

  So I told him everything I’d found out. About going to the sheriff’s office, getting the files, rummaging through them, and what I’d come across. I told him what I thought had happened with his aunt, the hex she placed on his soul with her own suicide, and the obsession, even love, that his aunt Germaine had had for his father.

  His eyes never left my face as I told him about the terrifying pictures I’d seen of the crime scene, the picture of his father hanging above the fireplace mantle, how his aunt had come back to Malcome after the incident and lived there, and how quickly she’d made it to the Poirier house on the day of his dad’s death.

  I didn’t tell him that I speculated that his aunt might’ve been his mama’s murderer. I gave him the pieces and let him decide what to do with each of them.

  After spouting out every last bit of knowledge I had on his family and what had transpired years ago, I paused, waited. For a few pregnant moments, Monroe said nothing. After what felt like an eternity, he asked, “You did all that? For me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really do like me, huh?”

  “Don’t push it.”

  A flash of a grin, and then a confused expression. “How’d you get hold of all this information?”

  “I went to the sheriff’s office. I told you.”

  Monroe’s eyebrows rose. “And they just let you stroll in there and look over the case files?”

  My gaze fell to the ground, and I had to force myself to meet his eyes again. “I asked Sheriff Dawson personally.”

  His eyebrows rose even more. “And he just gave them to you?”

  “No.” I crossed my arms. “I had to stay at the station to look at them.”

  Monroe opened his mouth to say something but was immediately silenced by a deafeningly loud shriek behind us. The three of us turned. My heart skipped a beat to see the porch vacant of Coin and Silvi. The front door of the house was wide-open.

  I ran toward the front door before I’d even realized I was moving. The sound of Monroe’s and Ward’s footsteps thundered behind me.

  That had been Silvi’s scream. I’d never in my life heard her scream before, but I knew the sound of her voice. Nightmares rarely frightened me. Dark, ominous figures lurking in shadows were commonplace to me. But that sound of my little sister’s scream would haunt my nightmares until the end of my sanity or my dying breath. It was one of the few things in the world I feared.

  The moment I crossed the threshold of the front door, I turned and looked over my shoulder. I wasn’t surprised to see Monroe slip past me, but I was surprised to see Ward follow us inside. I knew it physically hurt him to be inside the Poirier house. The evil of it was too deeply rooted, too raw for him to bear. And when Ward hurt, I hurt.

  “They’re not in the living room,” Monroe shouted, bounding toward the staircase. I followed him, Ward at my back.

  When we reached the top of the staircase, we paused. Silvi pressed against the back wall closest to the top stair. Her tiny body was huddled into the corner, Coin at her side. She shook violently, tears streaming down her cheeks, an expression on her face that would join the sound of her scream in my nightmares. Coin barked viciously, wildly, like he had the first time seeing Ward.

  Both Silvi and Coin were staring toward the opposite end of the hallway.

  There, at the end, was nothing.

  “Silvi,” I said softly, crouching down next to her. She began sobbing harder then, wrapping her tiny arms around me as I sat beside her. “What’s wrong?”

  Between her hiccups and gasps of breath, she looked up at me, a question in her eyes. “Don’t you see her?”

  Again I craned my neck and looked down toward the end of the hallway.

  Empty.

  “No,” Monroe and I said in unison.

  Ward, however, said, “Yes.”

  Our gazes snapped toward him. “What is it?” I asked.

  “It is a woman.” His eyes remained focused toward the end of the hallway. And then he stepped in front of us, blocking our view. “Give me your hands.” He held out his hands toward Monroe and me.

  I immediately took his hand in mine, lacing our fingers together. After eyeing Ward uneasily for a moment, Monroe clasped Ward’s hand.

  “Close your eyes,” Ward instructed. I did what he’d asked. “Focus on me. Focus on my voice. Focus on the air and what you are feeling.”

  Moments of silence passed between us. The only sounds in the narrow hallway were Silvi’s soft sobs and Coin’s low growl.

  Ward pulled his hands back and stepped away from us. When I opened my eyes, the hallway was no longer empty.

  At the end stood a woman. The woman. The same woman I’d dreamed of. The one who shrieked uncontrollably, who bounded toward me and tried to touch me.

  She was infinitesimally more terrifying now, now that I was seeing her when awake. It was as though she’d crawled right out of my nightmare, situated herself into daylight, and grown from something that was two-dimensional into something otherworldly.

  Her posture was crooked—wrong, like her spine was twisted into an unnatural shape. Long, dark hair matted to the side of her head, slick, wet, full of mud and dirt and decaying pieces of flesh and bone. The hair covered her face. But her arms and legs were comprised of exposed tissue. She wore only a white gown frayed at
the bottom, discolored in places and covered in dirt and dripping wet onto the wooden floorboards. Her flesh was rotted through. Sections of bone and rotted flesh were visible even through the maggots crawling across the flesh she had left.

  The light at the end of the hallway flickered once, twice, and then off. Shadows cast across her body. She swayed side to side. A jagged bone stuck out from her shin. The sound of it crunching against the other half of broken bone as she swayed echoed through the hallway.

  None of us said a word. There were no words. Not for something like that.

  Suddenly her head snapped up, her neck crackling, popping. Some of her hair parted, exposing part of her face. Skin hung off her face like that of pig meat through a grinder. Flesh ripped, tore, falling off, landing with a thud on the floor. A bright blue eye stared at us. Ringed red in dried blood. Her eye locked on Monroe.

  She lurched forward, almost falling over herself to rush toward us. Her gait was unusual, awkward, wrong. Her left foot dragged behind her, her arms outstretched toward Monroe. Her long nails, almost black, curled like talons at the ends, and three of her fingers were missing on one hand.

  A banshee scream pierced the hallway.

  “Jesus Christ!” Monroe bellowed. He grabbed Silvi and tossed her over his shoulder.

  I was stuck in place staring at the decrepit woman that lurched her way toward us. When she was only a few feet away, Monroe grabbed my arm and pulled me. I followed him down the stairs, almost tripping over my own feet. Ward was close behind me, his hand flat against my back, pushing me forward.

  When we stumbled outside into the evening sun, the world tilted. My stomach churned. My vision blurred.

  Something hit me hard on my knees. The ground.

  And then there was nothing but darkness.

  A HAZE covered my vision. I tried to open my eyes but found it impossible. My body ached, like the ground had opened up and tried to close around me, crushing my bones in the process. My stomach burned with acidity, and my head fluttered with thick smoke and fog.

  I could hear voices. Mama, Ward, Monroe. My mouth refused to form words. Lights danced behind my eyelids. Pretty patterns, unfamiliar sensations, hushed tones.

  I wondered then if that was what it was like to die. To close your eyes and see and hear and feel very little. To be at the edge of all the things that make you a living, breathing person. To stand near a wall of darkness and entertain the idea of slipping inside.

  Or was it like the swamp? Was death cool and warm in unison? Did it fill your lungs with liquefied dust and wrap you in a tight embrace of blackness? Did it sing to you the way it sang to me, or was that love, not death? I could no longer tell the difference. I wasn’t sure I’d ever known the difference. Could one exist without the other? Without death, what was the knowledge of those shared moments in such a short lifetime?

  Someone said my name. The voice echoed deep, comforting, familiar. Was it the voice of the swamp?

  And then I could think no more. I faded into darkness like the last trickle of sand in an hourglass.

  Chapter 15

  “OH, SWEETHEART,” my mama said with tears in her eyes.

  I had awoken not a moment sooner with her by my side. She grabbed my hand, kissed my forehead. Her heart was beating so quickly I could almost hear it.

  The ceiling above my head began to spin.

  “How are you feeling?” Mama asked, patting my hand. She stood next to my bed.

  “Sick,” I replied honestly. “Tired. What happened?”

  Sitting up quickly did nothing to help the unease in my stomach. My head was full of cotton, my mouth dry and raw.

  “You were sick,” Mama said. “Having wild, violent nightmares, thrashing about. You wouldn’t wake up. We had the doctor come look at you, but he said that there was nothing physically wrong.”

  “How many days?”

  “Just over two.”

  “How’s Silvi?”

  She paused for a second. “She’s really upset. Whatever she saw in that house…. It must’ve been terrifying.”

  “It was.” I scrubbed my hands over my face. “I think it was Monroe’s aunt, Germaine. Her spirit. It must still be haunting the swamp.”

  Mama grabbed a glass of water off the nightstand and handed it to me. I took it and finished the entire thing.

  “She’s sleeping now,” Mama said. “Finally. I’d say it best not to disturb her. She hasn’t slept at all since you fell ill. Now, wait here. I’m going to get you some more water and something to eat.” She stood up and left the room.

  When she left I scooted over to the side of my bed, which was pressed against the window. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool glass, breathing in deeply. Moonlight pressed against the leaves on the ground, reflected against the chrome on Silvi’s bicycle on the front porch. In the distance, the small town of Malcome slept quietly. A few lights were on in the houses near us. Upstairs bedroom windows glowed, while yard lights flickered when an animal ran past.

  My bedroom door creaked, and I didn’t have to open my eyes to know that it was Ward.

  “How do you feel?” he asked. He came to stand next to my bed, right where Mama had been standing.

  “Like something is wrong.”

  “I feel that way as well.”

  I turned toward him. “You feel it too? That tug on your heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then something is wrong.”

  “Silvi is asleep in her bed. I checked.”

  A moment of silence ticked by. Mama walked back into the room, a glass of water in one hand, a plate of crackers in the other. Even though she couldn’t see the expression on my face, she asked, “What’s wrong, Levi?”

  “Where’s Monroe?”

  She set the glass and plate down on my bedside table. “He left about an hour ago. Barely left your side during these two days. He probably went home to rest.”

  In my heart I knew that wasn’t why he’d gone home. There was an unease lingering there, something that Ward felt too. I might’ve still had my soul, but Monroe had a piece, however big, of my heart.

  I pushed the covers off and stood.

  “I will come with you,” Ward said.

  “Where are you going?” Mama asked.

  “I’ll go alone. You stay here and keep an eye on Silvi. Please,” I said to Ward. To my mama, “Something is wrong with Monroe. I can feel it.”

  “Don’t go back inside that house, Levi,” Mama called out as I slipped past her. “And whatever you do, stay away from the swamp.”

  THE POIRIER house stood as a silent pillar against a black backdrop. Ominous and looming, it stole each of the stars out of the night sky.

  Before stepping foot on the front porch, I knew Monroe wasn’t in the house. Still, I knocked on the front door and waited. Silence filled the air. Frantically I knocked again, called out his name. Silence remained.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against the wood grain. Monroe wasn’t inside, and I knew exactly where he would be. In the back of my mind, hidden behind a forest of trees and a world of dark, watery depths, the swamp sang its love song to me. It was sweet and slow-paced, howling and soft. I could feel it in my heart, hear it in my head, feel it in my skin.

  The amulet around my neck felt hotter and heavier against my skin than it ever had before. It was as though everything good in the world was warning me against this house, telling me to flee.

  I walked down the front porch and around the side of the house. The dock looked surreal now that I knew Monroe’s father had stood in that very spot, smiling, happy as a young person, being photographed. The dock was older now, decaying and rotted in places, the wood old and wet and crumbling.

  I barely thought of where I was stepping when I stood on the end and peered into the distance. It was just as likely I could’ve put my entire leg through the thin boards, but I didn’t care—not then.

  The swamp spread wide and even before me. It remained still
, rippling, unmoving. And dark. Impossibly dark. Tall trees stood to the sides, their roots peeking up from beneath the surface of the water, their long, stringing vines hanging and dipping into the swamp.

  The world felt cold then. I wrapped my arms around myself, tried to shiver away the spoiled feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  My gaze finally landed on Monroe.

  He wore a white T-shirt and jeans that clung to his skin like they’d been melted on. They adhered to his skin, obviously soaked through from the swamp. Waist-deep in the water, all I could see was his back facing me, his large shoulders slumped, his head down. Dark strands of sooty hair lay across his forehead from where I could see his profile.

  And then I saw it.

  I leapt into the water and rushed toward him. The mud on the bottom of the swamp clung to me, wrapped around my shins and ankles and tried to pull me down, away, back.

  I called out his name, but he either couldn’t hear me or was ignoring me. I tried again, this time my voice catching in my throat. Tucked into the back of his jeans was a gun. The world slipped from under me as Monroe reached behind him, wrapped his fingers around the base, and pulled it out.

  This time I screamed his name at the top of my lungs. Still too far from me, still out of hand’s reach. I barreled toward him, my heart shooting up into my throat when I watched him press the barrel of the gun against his temple.

  As though the waters parted for me, I rushed him, slammed into his back, sent us both tumbling forward.

  Forward and down. Down. Down.

  Into the water.

  But as it wrapped around me, blanketed my body, my heart screamed for something else. It didn’t want these waters to fill my lungs and steal my breath and hold me close.

  My heart only wanted him.

  We breached the surface of the water at the same time and scrambled to stand. Water dripped down his face, his hair slick against the side of his head.

  “What the hell, Monroe!” I hated the unsteadiness of my own voice.

  He pushed his hair back from his face. His eyes were dark, wild. “Go home, Levi,” he said quietly.