Southern Comfort: Chandler's Story (The Southern Series Book 1)

by Shelley Stringer

  After the police left, Banton and John puttered around their rooms, then spent the afternoon going back and forth between their old apartment and our house, finishing their move and settling in. They insisted they didn’t need any help, so I decided to take a much needed nap since I hadn’t slept much the night before. I drifted off easily, the sun streaming in through the bay window like a friend. I was snuggled down in the coverlet and blankets which still smelled like my mother’s house, even after all this time. I woke about two hours later, rested, and roused enough to see my door close quietly. I knew Banton had been checking in on me.

  I spent most of the rest of the evening in my room, the keys on my laptop clicking away on my paper. Our trip next weekend would help me put the finishing touches on it, and it would be ready. I was nervous about this assignment, because it would be fifty percent of our semester grade for the course. As I was getting ready for bed later that evening, Banton knocked on my bedroom door. “Can I come in?”

  “Sure,” I motioned him in. “Are we sleeping together again?” I asked with a big grin on my face. Please say yes, you can’t sleep without me!

  “Oh!” My comment took him by surprise, and he grinned back. “No, I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure, anything.”

  “Would you mind sharing what you have so far on New Orleans voodoo? I mean, the research you have done for your paper so far?”

  “You’re welcome to see all of it. I can e-mail my notes to you, if you want. Why the sudden interest?”

  I’m just kind of intrigued by the stories Mr. Jackson was telling you, and our intruder last night, the similarities between how you described him, and the Somali pirates John and I saw…” he trailed off.

  “Okay. Are we still going to New Orleans?”

  “Yes. I’m looking forward to it. You can leave Friday morning, right? And call your cousin Constance. I’d like to meet her. It will be a good chance for you to get together.” His eyes almost twinkled, and the thought of a trip with him sent my heart into orbit.

  “Good night then, Andie. Sweet dreams.”

  “You too, Banton.”

  And then I tiptoed over to open the door about a third of the way. I peeked at Banton and John’s rooms, and their doors were the same. After last night, there would be no closed doors between any of us.

  * * *

  Sunlight streaming through the window woke me. I sat up, and glanced at the alarm clock beside the bed. Eight fifteen. I threw off the covers and ran to the closet to throw on some clothes. Thank goodness I’d taken a bath last night, making sure I bathed while the sun was still up. I never wanted to be in the bathroom again after dark. I pulled the first top and skirt I found off the hangers and threw them on, slipped on a pair of sandals, and grabbed a clip to catch my unruly hair up on top of my head. I grabbed my laptop bag out of the chair, and ran down the stairs and out the door. I noticed both of the guys’ trucks were already gone. They were on time.

  My first class started at 8:00, and I’d never make it on time to the second, but I was going to give it a try. As traffic crept along close to campus, I thought, what a great way to start the week, forgetting to set the alarm. I never overslept! But now that I was focused totally on tall, dark and dimpled, I was letting a lot of things get the better of me. I made a mental note to get back to the seriousness of college and a degree.

  After my last class, I walked across the quad to the student center to get a bite to eat. I didn’t cook a meal last evening, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday. Nearing the entrance, I spotted Banton in the parking lot beside his truck. I started to call to him and wave, and then I stopped cold in my tracks. A petite, beautiful, tan blonde with the prettiest thick hair ran across the parking spaces to him and threw herself into his arms, jumping up and wrapping her legs around him in an enormous hug. She squealed with delight, as he swung her around, and planted one of his famous kisses on the top of her head. He obviously adored her. My heart fell. The reality I had been building up in my head seemed to shatter into a million pieces in that moment. I stood frozen, watching them embrace. He ushered her to the passenger side of his truck, opened the door for her, and hurried back around to the driver’s side. He started it, and threw it in reverse as she leaned across the seat and kissed him on the cheek. I suddenly remembered I was standing like a stone, blocking the entrance to the building.

  No longer hungry, I returned back across the quad to my car. I got in and sat staring out the windshield for an hour or more, lost in thought. Why hadn’t it occurred to me I didn’t know anything about Banton? He could have a wife and kids somewhere, for all I knew. The only thing he had ever told me about himself was he was teaching part time at LSU, and he’d been an officer in the Navy. Really, that was it! This girl couldn’t be the sister he’d mentioned the first night. He’d said he had an older sister who had bought Beau for him, so he wouldn’t be lonely. This girl was definitely not older than him. Of course he had a whole other life besides me and John and our arrangement. I’d been so stupid! He only thought of me as a friend…the little new-to-town college girl who he needed to look after.

  I backed out of my space and angrily wiped tears from my eyes as I drove blindly. I reached the house, finding John’s pickup was parked out front. I was not in the mood to talk to anyone, I unlocked the front door and bounded up the staircase with my laptop and purse, and didn’t stop till I was in my room with the door closed. My chest ached, a familiar feeling like I had when I’d caught my last boyfriend in the act of cheating on me. I lay down across my bed, crying again, and thought angrily, He wasn’t even my boyfriend. He never led me to believe he would be! I sat up. angrily wiping my eyes, deciding to channel all the disappointment and anger into my work on my research.

  I totally absorbed myself in my online search about the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. I wasn’t sure what I was searching for. There were so many different accounts of what she could really do, and rumors about her powers, that it seemed I might be missing something.

  I clicked on a website containing more of a bibliography of information about her, both legend and fact. It talked about her charity work, and work with the sick during the yellow fever epidemic. Many thought she should be sainted for her work with the poor, and the prominence she gained as a free woman of color. Then there was another article referenced which made her out to be a heretic, more of a witch who practiced black magic. All accounts of her seemed to agree she was a woman of true beauty – that men, both black and white, sought after her. There were the stories of the gris-gris bags she was famous for, most notably the bags to encourage true love and romance.

  A hairdresser to the wealthy in white society, she was privy to the private goings-on of every wealthy family in New Orleans. There were stories of her dancing naked in the moonlight, by the river, with snakes. Those stories made me shudder. Then, there they were – the references I’d been looking for about the legend of her seeking out the people of the dead, vampires, to drink their blood and become immortal, eternally beautiful and young. The article went on to say this was a way to explain why she never seemed to age. Actually, the legend was her youngest daughter of fifteen children she bore, also named Marie, looked exactly like her mother at a young age, and took over her mother’s role as high priestess of the Creole voodoo followers, continuing the healing, prayers, and granting blessings for all who came to seek her mother’s powers. Her mother became a recluse, and people began to confuse the mother and the daughter, thus the confusion over her non-aging. Vampires…the dead ones…my search took a new turn. Suddenly, I remembered the name Mr. Jackson had used to describe the “dead ones with the green eyes.” Loogaroon, he’d said. I typed the word into my search engine. Only one website popped up, something entirely in French. Then it hit me…Other names for vampires, demons. I searched again, this time bringing up a website with many languages and folklore through the ages. Under a section for United States and Southern States, a reference �
�� to the Loogaroon. Connected with voodoo, the word had its roots in the French Loop Garou, which translated into “carnivore, night stalker, werewolf.” I shut my laptop and shuddered.

  Chapter Eleven

  My anger with Banton and his little blonde girlfriend worked into a full-blown fit of rebellion around 5:00 p.m. I’d heard John hammering away in the kitchen all afternoon, and had never even checked to see what he was working on. And he’d never come upstairs to check on me when I came home, either. I’d realized he was going out of his way to give me privacy and keep to himself while we got used to our new living arrangement. I glanced in his room as I came out of mine, and I had to say he was neat as a pin. My bed was unmade, and there were clothes scattered on the floor. His was perfectly made, and you could have bounced a quarter on the bed, a product of his perfect military training, I was sure. The rest of the room was perfect.

  I hurried down the stairs and around the corner down the hallway. Beau met me at the bottom of the stairs and followed me as I searched for John. He wasn’t in the kitchen, so I looked out the front door. His pickup was gone. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to do some investigating on my own, to see if I could figure out what the two of them kept from me two nights past. I went back to the kitchen door and out into the back courtyard. Beau followed close behind me, stopping to sniff now and again, hiking his leg at his favorite spots. I cautiously entered the greenhouse doors. They squeaked as I pushed them open, and a shard from a pane of broken glass slipped from its precarious perch on one of the ancient frames and crashed to the floor. I jumped.

  Okay, Andie, get a grip. This is silly. I continued on, around the tables and potting benches that had obviously held a multitude of plants in another lifetime. I wondered about the owners who had built the house – had the lady of the house loved plants so much that her adoring husband had this arboretum- like greenhouse built for her so she could enjoy her gardening year around? Had the owners employed a full-time gardener? Maybe they grew poinsettias in here at Christmastime to fill the big, grand house with color? I loved to speculate about the former owners of the property, and made a mental note to do a little research on the owners who built the house I’d grown to love. I hoped the family who lived here had been full of children and happiness. It was something I had begun to dream of.

  I pushed the thought from my head as I turned the corner at the back of the room. Partially hidden on the floor was a large rusty metal plate that seemed to cover an indention in the floor. Maybe it was a large drain – that would make sense, or maybe it was a well. There wouldn’t have been running water for the plants back then. I knelt and tried to pry the corner of the large piece of metal up. It wouldn’t budge. I stepped on it to cross to the other corner. It made a resounding deep, rippling noise like thunder. It reminded me of my theater/drama days when someone would stand backstage and shake a piece of tin back and forth to make the sound of thunder. It occurred to me then that it sounded hollow. I would have to come back out here with a crowbar to get it up, but I definitely wanted to know what was down there.

  I noticed as I turned to go back out that there was a large dark stain on the old stone floor – like oil or something had pooled there, and then dripped in a line out the front door. Hadn’t John told Banton there was “a lot of blood?” I shuddered. I returned to the yard and I suddenly remembered the other thing Banton had withheld that night – don’t tell her about what we found in the bushes, either.

  As I left the greenhouse, Beau greeted me and followed me around the corner of the house to the side where the bathroom window was located. Thick oleander bushes grew up against the house. That’s creepy, I thought. I remembered a story about a slave using oleander as a poison, from when we’d toured the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. I made my way between the bushes and the house, and as I walked Beau started growling low in his chest. He pushed his way around me, and lunged into the bush. Something struck back at him, and I realized it was a snake, coiled, slowly writhing on the ground. On closer inspection, I noted there were two! I froze. No sudden movements, Andie. Red on yellow, kill a fellow. Red on black, won’t hurt Jack! The childhood ditty Constance and I used to chant when we were jumping rope came back to mind. I went cold. It was definitely red on yellow. Beau continued to lunge at the snakes, trying to protect me. I barked commands at him firmly. “Beau! Back! Get back.!” as I backed slowly out of the bushes.

  Then I heard John’s calm voice behind me, “Andie, give me your hand.” I put my hand out and turned my feet toward him, and suddenly I was jerked through the air and clear of the bushes. John moved quickly, grabbing Beau by the collar as I screamed, just as the snake struck his throat.

  “Andie, help me get him in the truck. He’s been bitten, there’s blood on his neck. We have to get him to the vet.” I ran down the side of the house to his pickup and opened the passenger door. After he pushed Beau in, I climbed in after him. John ran around and jumped in and started the ignition.

  “Damn, I don’t have my cell,” he swore.

  “Here, I have mine. Who do you want me to call?”

  “Call Banton. Have him meet us at the vet clinic on the toll road.”

  I dialed Banton’s number on my speed dial.

  “Hey, Andie, what’s up?”

  An hour ago, I would have said, “Nothing, you cheating, lying ass!” But I was too worried about Beau, forgetting my hurt and anger.

  “Banton, it’s an emergency. Beau’s been bitten by a coral snake, I think. John and I have him. Can you meet us at the vet clinic on the toll road?

  “I’m on my way.” He hung up.

  I looked down at Beau. He was lying down now, his massive paws hanging over the front of the seat into John’s cup holder. Then his breathing became labored. He rolled to the right toward me, and laid his head in my lap.

  “Hurry, John!” Tears welled up and spilled over down my cheeks. “We’re going to lose him!” I couldn’t bear the thought of losing this gentle giant. I’d become so attached to him in such a short time. And this was the second time he had tried to protect me and keep me from harm.

  We turned into the parking lot at the veterinary clinic on two wheels. John threw the pickup in park, opened his door, and grabbed Beau with both arms and carried him like a baby into the clinic. He didn’t even stop to turn the truck off. I turned the keys off in the ignition, and got out and locked the truck. I wiped my eyes with the back of my sleeve. I couldn’t see where I was going. Banton’s truck screeched up in the parking lot behind me, and he bounded out and ran to me on the sidewalk.

  “Chandler, where is he?” he asked breathlessly.

  “We just got here. His breathing was pretty labored. John just carried him in.” Banton put his hand on the small of my back as he had the other night, ushering me into the clinic waiting room.

  He spoke to the receptionist, “A man just came in here with a big dog…”

  “Right this way.” The young boy behind the counter showed us down a hallway and into a large surgery room. The vet, an elderly man in a white lab coat, was injecting Beau with a large syringe. His breathing was even more labored than before. I choked back a sob.

  “Is he going to make it, Doc?” Banton whispered. I looked at his face, and a large tear was rolling down his cheek.

  The doctor finished with the injection, immediately grabbed another full syringe, and began another injection. Another doctor entered the room, moved a machine closer to the table, and began an IV.

  The first doctor straightened and spoke for the first time. “We aren’t sure how many times he was bitten. Looks like more than once with all the blood. But he is a big dog, and he’s young. I’ve given him Benadryl, and mostly what dogs have is sort of a bad allergic reaction. I’m afraid that’s all we can do for him right now. He will sleep, and we’ve started an IV. The next couple of hours will tell. You can wait here, if you’d like. We’re a twenty-four hour clinic, and this is Dr. Powell. He takes over for me when I go home at
6:30.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much. We’ll stay with him, if that is okay.” Banton let out a sigh of relief.

  The young man who had shown us in brought some folding chairs to us so we could sit and watch Beau sleep. I noticed his breathing was easing up a bit, a good sign. The tears began to flow again unchecked as I felt relief wash over me. Banton noticed my reaction and came over to stand beside me.

  “Chandler, are you all right?” he asked in an alarmed voice, looking down at my skirt. I hadn’t noticed it before, but dark red stains from Beau’s snakebites were soaked into my skirt where his head had been in my lap.

  “I’m fine – I’m not hurt. It’s just where Beau laid his head in my lap. Banton, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t been snooping around outside, he wouldn’t have felt the need to protect me. I’m so sorry…” I choked back another sob.

  “It’s not your fault, Chandler. He roots out there in the yard all the time. It could have happened any night of the week. I’m just glad you weren’t bitten instead of him. I think snake bites are a little more serious for humans,” he murmured as he smiled, hugging me close to him, watching Beau sleep.

  We all sat down, and I suddenly remembered the girl who had been so cozy with Banton this afternoon. I moved away from him and crossed the room to watch from farther away.