Poison Tongue

by Nash Summers

  He looked at me like no one had ever looked at me before. Maybe like no one else ever would. I thought back to the night prior, finding him standing in the swamp, clothes plastered to his skin, the gun in the waistband of his jeans. His hand reaching out, taking the gun, pressing the barrel to his temple. “Monroe,” I said. “About last night.”

  He looked up at me, sunlight touching his face. “I’ve spent a lot of years hurting, Levi. But hurting you is breaking my heart.”

  “I had a dream last night. In it, Gran told me to read the back of her spell book that my mama has. I think there’s something in her book that’ll help us.”

  Monroe nodded. “As long as it’s nothing dangerous, I’m willing to give it a shot. But at the first sign of anything happening to you—”

  “Nothing bad will happen.”

  “You can’t promise me that, Levi.”

  “Well I am.”

  He sighed and closed his eyes. After a few moments of silence, he said, “I wish I could’ve met your gran.”

  “Me too,” I replied honestly. “She would’ve told me you were trouble.”

  Monroe grinned. “I could’ve told you that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss against his mouth. “But I think you might be worth it.”

  Chapter 17

  “I DON’T think this is a good idea,” Mama said.

  “We do not have another choice, Alta,” Ward replied.

  Monroe stood next to me. He stared at Ward as though if he stared hard enough, he’d be able to see straight through him.

  Mama sighed heavily. She rubbed her temples with her fingers and closed her eyes. “You’re probably right. I don’t like it. This spell book is powerful. Even your gran hated using it for anything, Levi.”

  “But she told me in my dream.”

  Silvi sat on the couch with Coin’s head in her lap. She petted him gently, quietly.

  Since the afternoon she went inside the Poirier house, Silvi had barely said a word. Mama insisted she felt better each day and was talking more as time went on, but I still had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  What she saw that day changed her. She’d never been afraid of anything before in her life. But now she had a hollow look in her eyes, something vacant, like a part of her was missing.

  I wanted to try releasing the curse on Monroe to save his soul, but at the same time I hoped it would free Silvi from the spell she was under.

  I tucked Gran’s spell book under my arm.

  “When are you going?” Mama asked.

  My gaze slid to the window. The sun was beginning to set, the darkness of night taking its place.

  “Soon. There’s a full moon tonight. Also, I was meaning to ask if we could borrow the large mirror from the bathroom.”

  “Borrow? You plan on bringing it back?”

  I smiled. “No.”

  She stood up from where she was seated on the sofa. When she walked over to me and took my hand in hers, I squeezed.

  “Of course, Levi.” Her voice was quiet. She turned to Monroe, her gaze landing somewhere on his face. “You take care of my boy, Poirier.”

  “I will. Always.”

  THE THREE of us left soon after: Ward, Monroe, and I. Monroe carried the mirror, refusing to let anyone else help him.

  My duffel bag was slung across my shoulder with my gran’s spell book inside. Hopefully I had everything we needed.

  I looked at Monroe. He had the large mirror propped up on his shoulder, his arm wrapped around it to hold it in place. A smile covered his face as he talked at Ward—not to Ward, because Ward was ignoring him.

  “So,” Monroe began awkwardly, glancing at Ward. “Do you… have a reflection?”

  Ward stared at him—hard.

  Monroe continued. “Or do you get burned in the sunlight? Do you have a daylight ring? Can you”—his voice continued in a whisper—“see dead people?”

  I burst out laughing, tears soon streaming down my face. Through the bleariness of my own tears, I was glad to see the corner of Ward’s lips faintly pulling upward. Monroe hadn’t noticed, which I knew was Ward’s intent.

  This plan had to work. It would work. I’d make sure of it.

  The Poirier house stood hulking and dark before us. No lights on in any of the rooms. The silence surrounding it was alarming.

  For some reason I thought—feared—that the spirit of Monroe’s aunt Germaine would be waiting for us on the front porch. Or in one of the darkened windows.

  But there was nothing. No one.

  “So.” Monroe turned toward Ward and me. “Where to?”

  “I wish I knew where exactly in the house she wrote the marks on the walls, or where she left something behind to anchor the curse.”

  “She left me behind. Ain’t that enough?”

  “According to Gran’s spell book, this kind of curse can be tied to a person and a place. I think in your case, that’s most likely. That’s probably why things are so hinky when you’re around the house.” I paused for a moment. “Or maybe it’s the swamp.”

  “What about the pier round back? That way it’s in between both.”

  “Yeah. That makes the most sense.”

  We walked around to the back of the house. With each step we took toward the swamp, a pebble in my stomach grew larger and larger. It weighed me down.

  “You okay?” Monroe set the mirror down against one of the wooden pillars on the edge of the pier and put his hand gently on my shoulder.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “Just feeling… off.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and I fell into him easily, like I’d fallen into the swamp waters so many times before. But where they were cold and smooth against my body, Monroe was warm, solid.

  “I won’t let anything hurt you, Levi,” he whispered into my hair.

  “That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

  “It’s what I’m afraid of most.” Monroe pulled away and smiled at me uneasily. “So, now what?”

  “We could call her.” Ward stood where the edge of the pier met the ground. He’d pulled the large mirror over and laid it down flat—half-on the pier, half-off, facing toward the sky.

  “Just go to the end of the pier and call her name?” Monroe asked.

  “Not exactly.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a small dagger. Its silver blade glistened in the brightening light of the moon. “Your blood should do the trick.”

  Monroe nodded. “The swamp.”

  “Exactly.”

  He took the dagger from me, switched it back and forth between his hands. “So what should we be expecting? This is starting to feel more like an exorcism than a ritual to break a curse.”

  “Maybe it’s a bit of both. We’re hoping that when you call her, your aunt Germaine’s… spirit will come to us. At that point we’ll read the incantation in Gran’s spell book and trap her in the mirror.”

  “Can she break free?”

  “I hope not. She’s strong. She might be able to. It depends on how strong her hold is to this world.”

  “To me, you mean.”

  “And to the house. The swamp.”

  After a moment, Monroe asked, “What do we do if it doesn’t work?”

  “It will work,” Ward replied.

  “It has to work,” I added.

  In the distance a coyote howled. I leaned back and looked up into the starlit sky. Ward came to stand next to me. He laced his fingers together with my own.

  Monroe walked to the edge of the dock, careful to step over the large mirror we’d placed on it. The muscles in his back shifted and moved as he reached out the palm of his hand, placed the dagger to it, and dragged it down. Droplets fell from his hand into the waters below the dock. His blood looked black in the darkness of the night.

  The wind picked up. The low-hanging vines of the trees over the water swayed uneasily in the growing breeze. The moon overhead seemed to flicker. The swamp water looked darker. An almost unbearab
le coldness began seeping deep into my bones, gnawing at my flesh from the inside out.

  I opened Gran’s notebook to the back and reread the passage one last time.

  “Levi,” Monroe called out.

  My gaze snapped up. Far, far out into the depths of the swamp, I could see a speckle of white against the black.

  Ward went over to the dock and stopped behind Monroe. “Stay with Levi. You will not be able to touch her.”

  Monroe nodded and ran back to my side. As Ward stood on the end of the dock, his back straight, his arms down by his sides, over his shoulder I watched her come toward us.

  She limped through the deep waters, her movements odd and off-kilter. She moved slowly at first but began to pick up speed when her eyes locked on Monroe. They remained locked on Monroe.

  The white gown she wore hung awkwardly off her brittle body. Pieces of flesh and skin fell from her face, her neck, her arms, and splashed below her into the water. Her wild hair, soaked through, half covered her rotting face. It was matted with twigs, a skeleton of a dead fish, broken pieces of skull fragments.

  We all stood there, transfixed, unable to process what we were witnessing. She looked like something out of the darkest places in hell, something that had crawled right out of a child’s worst nightmare.

  It wasn’t until she began screaming, her arms outstretched toward us, that I snapped out of the haze I was under. I started to read from my gran’s spell book. The words weren’t English, but I’d practiced them enough that I had almost memorized each syllable. Gran wrote that it was a long lost language that Hank, the witch doctor, had taught her.

  I recited each verse loudly and clearly, glancing up from time to time to look out into the swamp. But she didn’t stop—didn’t even stutter. It was as though she couldn’t hear me at all.

  My throat went dry. I finished the last passage and then began reading again from the beginning.

  “Levi,” Monroe whispered.

  I looked up. She was at the edge of the pier then, only a few steps away from where Ward stood. Her decaying hand reached out, slid its broken fingers in between two slats of wood, and pulled herself up.

  Ward reached out to grab her, but his hand slid right through.

  “Levi,” Monroe said again. Louder this time, his voice shaking. “It ain’t working.”

  I swallowed hard, continued reading the passage, yelling it out as Ward struggled to try to grab Monroe’s aunt’s body.

  “Stay back.” Monroe put his palms against my chest, pushed me back, and stepped in front of me.

  Ward called out my name. Germaine’s spirit sidestepped the mirror. Up close she was viler than anything I’d even imagined. What was left of her skin was gnarled and peeling off her bones. Rotting flesh was exposed to the open air, maggots and worms writhing inside. Teeth dangled from what was left of her black gums, her lower jaw attached to her skull only on one side.

  Monroe charged her. When he was only a few steps away from her, he fell to the ground, landing with a loud thud. He tried to sit up, but his body seemed to be pinned to the ground.

  Black snakes appeared out of the shadows. They wrapped around his limbs—his arms, his neck, his legs—holding, squeezing, pulling him toward the ground. They covered him entirely, dotting out the whiteness of his T-shirt, the denim of his jeans, until there was almost nothing I could see of him but his face and hands. He almost seemed to disappear into the darkness of the black snake scales and the shadows.

  “Watch.” Germaine’s voice carried through the air like a drum’s sound through an empty field. My stomach recoiled. I hunched forward, dropping Gran’s spell book on the ground. She outstretched her busted arm toward Monroe. “Watch as I take him from you. Watch. Like you took John from me.”

  Monroe went wild. He began screaming, thrashing on the ground. More snakes appeared from nothingness, covering him, holding him tighter through his struggles.

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach. My vision blurred. The agony in my gut was immeasurable. I couldn’t breathe—or I’d forgotten how. I’d never experienced anything so tremendous.

  Ward ran at her again but passed straight through. He staggered to a stop, turning toward me.

  “Run!” Ward bellowed. But I couldn’t. He didn’t understand that I was made of stone, my body planted into the earth like the roots of a tree.

  She stopped in front of me. I reached out to push her away, but she was smoke. Purple smoke. Tangible and intangible at the same moment. Touching her felt like my hand traveling through water. There was nothing solid I could grab. Nothing I could touch.

  Her laugh was shrill. “Pretty witch,” she said to me. The cadence of her voice twisted my stomach. A pained sob slipped from my lips.

  She smelled like swamp water and rot, but her touch was gentle. She ran her bony finger against my cheek. The moment her finger touched my skin, I pitched forward and threw up all over the ground. It looked like tar. Like swamp water. It was black and acidy. The smell stung my nose, and the vile taste burned my lips. It pooled on the ground beneath me, matte and colorless.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Tears poured down my cheeks from the corners of my eyes.

  The swamp felt different now. It did not call to me or try to lull me, drowsily, into its endless waters. Now it shrieked and burned, boiled like acid in my stomach. I wanted—needed—to be rid of it, to purge myself of the feel of it.

  With Germaine so close, the pull I’d felt toward the swamp shattered.

  Death stood near, waiting for me patiently.

  The sound of shattering glass echoed all around. It must’ve been the sound of the last thread of my life breaking into a million tiny shards.

  But then there was heat at my back. And screaming. My name. Monroe’s name. A warm hand pressed against my back.

  Monroe knelt next to me, breathing hard, covered in red hairline cuts. Squinting into the brightness, I glanced over my shoulder. The Poirier house was engulfed in flames. Red, orange, angry whiplashes of flame dancing beneath a chorus of gray, billowing smoke. The fire grew higher and higher, spreading so quickly as it reached up for the sky.

  Dumbly I said, “Your home.”

  “It’s just a fucking house,” Monroe replied.

  “You lit it on fire?”

  “Should’ve done it the moment I laid eyes on it.”

  Another demonic wail pierced through the tension. We turned to see Ward struggling with Germaine’s decaying spirit. She thrashed wildly as Ward tried to pull her back toward the pier. The hair on one side of her head was pulled back, exposing an opening to nothing but the dark cavity of her busted skull.

  Monroe shot up and ran over to him. He grabbed her around the waist and helped Ward pull her back. Unintelligible screams filled the air. Screams, and the sounds of her bones snapping.

  “To the mirror!” Ward yelled.

  I stood up uneasily, my legs weak, then ran behind them to the pier. The mirror was heavy and all my strength felt like it had been siphoned out of me. But I managed to grab the mirror on the edge and lift it up.

  Ward and Monroe muscled her back toward it. I held it still with every last ounce of my strength.

  The moment they stopped in front of the mirror, she turned and looked at herself. Her gnarled face reflected her as she once had been. Young, beautiful, with raven-black hair and dark eyes. That second she was distracted by her own reflection was all Ward needed to shove her headfirst into the mirror. She stumbled forward through it. The sounds of her shrieking continued, but it sounded as though she were underwater or far away through a field of smog.

  Monroe and Ward grabbed the sides of the mirror as I slipped around to the front. Germaine began hammering her bloody fist against the glass, trying to escape.

  “The fire,” I croaked. My throat was raw from the bile.

  Together we dragged the mirror along the ground toward the house. I struggled to hold it up. Its corners pierced deep into the mud and dirt as we pulled.

  We
stopped when the nearness to the fire became almost unbearable. Flames danced right before us. The entire Poirier house was lit up now. It would be seen from every place in town.

  “We’ve got this.” Monroe reached out and squeezed my hand once. I let go, immediately falling to my knees right where I’d stood.

  Monroe and Ward hoisted up the mirror. Lines of blood dripped down Monroe’s arms from where the glass bit into his fingers. Monroe counted to three, and then together they lifted the glass mirror up above their heads and tossed it into the fire.

  “YOU CERTAINLY have some bad luck,” Sheriff Dawson said.

  Monroe tilted his head toward me, winked, and said, “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Dawson snorted but said nothing else.

  The Poirier house catching fire had woken almost the entire town of Malcome. Everyone came out from their houses in the middle of the night to wander over to the bayou and watch the old house grumble under the weight of the elements.

  By the time the volunteer firemen arrived at the house, there was nothing they could do but stand with the rest of the townsfolk and watch the flames take over the house. The fire chief had come over to Monroe, put his hand on Monroe’s shoulder, and said he was sorry there was nothing they could do. Monroe had only shrugged and said he was happy that no one was hurt.

  Sheriff Dawson came to take our statements. Monroe and I agreed that telling him we were trying to banish his dead aunt who’d left a curse on his soul probably wasn’t the best idea. Instead we told him we were out back when a candle he’d left on in the house had fallen over. He’d given us both a look that indicated he didn’t believe a word we said, but still said nothing—just wrote down our statements on a tiny pad of paper.

  Saddie came by with her mama. She’d thrown her arms around me first and then, tentatively, around Monroe.

  “I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said. “When my mama told me about the fire and your name was mentioned, my heart just about leapt out of my chest.”

  “Saddie.” Monroe rested his hand on her arm. “I’m sorry about how things worked out. If I could go back and change the way I handled it, I would.”