The skeletal man, just as unidentifiable, gave a phlegmy cough before he raised his hand and lifted the wrought iron ring on the door knocker and let it fall. It hit the wooden door with the hollow, ominous ring of a final heartbeat.
As the door swung open, the man faded from the nightmare. Maddie’s hand tightened; she clung to the older girl’s, and together they stepped over the threshold and through the doorway. They walked slowly forward and the space around them narrowed to become a blood red hallway. Flames licked the amber glass globes of flickering gas lamps evenly spaced along the hall. The girls’ shadows wavered and danced over a decadently expensive textured wall covering.
Maddie’s heart began to pound frantically. Heavily scented perfume weighed on the close air in the hall. She heard the sound of a door open and close. Now and again there came a throaty laugh, a moan, a cry.
Another man, different from the first but just as indistinguishable, suddenly appeared and came slowly toward the girls. Maddie’s blood ran cold. He was as tall as the first but not lanky. His crooked top hat reminded her of a sooty stovepipe. The tails of his black coat flapped behind him as he strode forward.
Maddie was ever aware of the child beside her. She felt the other girl’s panic, felt her stiffen, heard her cry out. Suddenly, the older girl’s hand was torn away, their hold broken.
The faceless child shouted, “No!” and tried to grab Maddie. Her cries were abruptly ended by the sound of a slap that cracked on the air between them.
Without warning, the man in the black coat hoisted Maddie to his shoulder. Handled with no more reverence than a bag of rice, she dangled from his shoulder, staring down at the whirling patterns of the red and gold carpeted floor. Her head began to swim. As the stranger scuttled along the crimson lined hallway carrying her away, the other girl started screaming again and so did Maddie.
She kept on screaming as darkness closed around her. She screamed until suffocating shadows that seemed to go on forever choked out the light and everything faded away but the sound of her own voice.
Now, her muffled cries broke the stillness on the bayou and filled the small cabin. Startled awake, no longer a child, Maddie Grande sat up drenched in perspiration and stared into the dark void around her. With the screams echoing in her head, she swung her legs over the edge of the mattress stuffed with moss and set her bare feet on the rough floorboards. She rose and stood for a moment beside her narrow cot listening to the creaks and groans of the cabin as the water lapped around the pilings. It was a comforting, familiar sound.
She padded across the room to where a tall pottery crock stood on a crooked shelf nailed to the side wall. Staring out of a window above the shelf, she reached for a ladle, dipped fresh water from the crock, and brought the ladle to her lips.
Outside the window, a scant spoonful of moonlight filtered down through the tall cypress trees making a wall of deep green that appeared jet black in the darkness. Draped with gray Spanish moss, the ghost forest towered over the swamp.
Maddie stared past her reflection in the wavering glass and out into the darkness, acutely aware that she was alone in the cabin, alone in the swamp. Yet she had no fear. She’d survived on the streets of New Orleans for as long as she could recall. Out here on the bayou, most of what she feared was of nature, not of men.
Besides, she was not frightened of death anymore. She had already lost those she held most dear. She had nothing left to lose.
She sighed, listened to the barely audible sound of slow moving water. She reached out, pressed her palm against the cool glass. Her own image stared back at her, illusive in the muted light. Thick brown hair with barely a hint of a wave tumbled past her shoulders. Eyes of nearly the same color as her hair stared back. There was just enough moonlight to reveal the small scar that parted the end of her right brow. How it came to be there, she had no memory.
As she turned, intent on returning to her cot, she heard the scrape of a wooden pirogue against one of the piers. Relieved, she let go another sigh. The twins were back.
She gave up going back to bed and fumbled with the oil lamp on the table in the middle of the room. It was one of the few pieces of furniture other than four mismatched wooden chairs and three cots. The golden glow from the lamp illuminated the interior, revealing the small, neatly kept side where Maddie slept. It was in stark contrast to the twins’ cots and the littered floor around them. Their side was a jumbled lair where the two of them had nests of clothing, old pieces of traps, and things they were “due to fix” or things they had “found.”
She heard footfalls against the dock outside and turned as the door opened. Lawrence walked in first. His blond hair caught the light. The freckles that spattered his face were golden red in the lamplight. His eyes were blue, shadowed by heavy lids that gave him the appearance of a young man who was constantly drowsy. Lawrence had always been thought of as slow witted, most likely because he was so accustomed to letting his twin brother, Terrance, think for him. He was so adept at sleepwalking through life, Lawrence rarely needed to think at all.
He nodded to Maddie and headed straight for a brown and white jug full of white lightning on the shelf of foodstuff. He hooked his forefinger through the ring on the neck, lifted the cork, and took a swig. Smacking his lips after a long swallow, he finally turned and smiled at her.
But when he glanced back toward the open doorway, he wore a look of concern.
“What are you doing up, Maddie?” As if it were an afterthought, he took another swig from the jug and then set it in the middle of the table where Terrance would find it waiting.
She shrugged. She never talked about her nightmare. Her father never let her show any sign of weakness. Cowardice had always been ridiculed. Fears were not to be mentioned aloud, as if silence could wither them in their tracks.
She’d known the twins as brothers for as long as she could remember. Together, they worked the streets of New Orleans, growing up as street urchins in the back alleys. They knew how to pick pockets, work a crowd begging, how to steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. They ate from market stalls, slipping fruits and meats and baked goods into their grimy little hands without anyone being the wiser.
They’d been taught how to bite and scratch and escape the law and they embraced their lives of thievery even as they matured.
When Terrance decided they should move to the bayou she had welcomed the change. There was nothing left to keep her in the city. Nowhere she called home.
No one cared what she did or where she lived.
Where she lived? She almost laughed aloud at the idea. No one cared where she existed was more like it.
Lawrence shifted and turned away as he headed for his cot. He brushed the shirts and pants off, ignoring them as they fell to the floor. The cot sagged as he sat down.
“Where’s Terrance?” She glanced toward the open door. If it was left gaping long enough, a rat as big as a housecat could slip inside.
He shrugged. “Tying up his pirogue, I guess. He’ll be along any minute.”
She knew better than to ask where they’d been or what they’d been doing for the past three days. Even if they would tell her, the less she knew the better.
“Are you hungry?” She asked.
“I can hold ‘til mornin’.” He looked as if he were about to bed down for the night when they heard Terrance’s footsteps. Maddie turned and watched the second twin walk in.
Shock hit her in a mighty wave when she noticed the bundle cradled in his arms. She gave a gasp when she saw two small feet shod in ankle-high black leather shoes dangling from beneath the frayed hem of a gray Confederate Army issue blanket. The war had been over for nigh on to eight years and the blanket had definitely seen better days.
“What have you done?” She whispered, tearing her gaze away from the bundled child to meet Terrance’s eyes.
His eyes, identical to his brother’s except that they were cool and emotionless, narrowed in defiance as he dared her to criticize him. Ter
rance was the schemer, the planner.
“I’m lookin’ out for our future, that’s what.” He shot a glance at his brother seated on the edge of his sagging cot. “That’s more than I can say for some around here.”
He carried the bundle over to Maddie’s cot and gently laid his burden down near the wall. He gave the blanket a slight tug downward and Maddie found herself staring at a beautiful little girl with a head full of coiled brown ringlets. She was sound asleep and wearing a fur-lined red cape worth more than everything in the ramshackle cabin put together.
A twinge squeezed Maddie’s heart. Unable to speak, she ached to reach out and touch the child’s porcelain cheek so badly that she had to fist her hands in the folds of her skirt.
“Why?” She turned on Terrance, afraid there was only one explanation for the child’s presence. “You’re not thinking of starting a new tribe—”
Lawrence laughed from across the room. Maddie and Terrance, locked in a battle of wills, ignored him.
“Those days are over, Terrance. They died with Dexter,” she whispered.
Dexter Grande was their leader, their father, keeper, guide, and judge. He was the visionary, the glue who had held their tribe together, the one who “recruited” his band of children, the one who taught them to steal and how to survive on the streets.
“Some would look down on us,” Dexter would say, “but this is our way. We take from those who have. We are the have-nots of New Orleans and this is our due.”
But no one lives forever, especially in a city plagued by war and yellow fever. As Dexter Grande grew older, the young men of the tribe became harder to control and were told to leave. Apoplexy brought Dexter down at the ripe old age of sixty-five, and without him, what was left of their tribe quickly scattered.
“It worked for Dexter, why not me?” Terrance speculated. “Just ‘cause Dexter died doesn’t mean we can’t start a new tribe and run the same games.”
Maddie turned on him. “Look around. We don’t live in New Orleans anymore.”
She didn’t want to think about moving back to the city. For the most part the twins were never around and she was alone, which suited her just fine. There were no reminders of her own losses here, only the gentle, healing sound of the water lapping against the dock and the hush of the wind through the lacy cypress.
He was at the table now, lifting the jug to his lips. He took a couple of deep draughts, set the jug down, and swiped the back of his hand across his lips.
“Just because I haven’t started a new tribe yet, that don’t mean it might not happen sooner or later. Right now though, I’m thinking bigger than that.”
He nodded at the sleeping child on the cot. “Why should we waste time havin’ her dance for a dollar or two on the street when there’s real money to be had?”
“You tell me,” Lawrence said. It was one of his favorite sayings. Terrance always obliged.
Terrance’s eyes glittered, lit by greed. “One word. Reward. Easy money and lots of it from the look of her.”
Maddie’s heart still hadn’t settled. She didn’t know which would be worse, hiding the child until they could collect a reward or contemplating the start of a new tribe.
One thing she knew for certain, this was no orphaned street urchin needing shelter. This child belonged to someone wealthy. This child would be missed.
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