by Jan Eldredge
The wailing abruptly ceased, and the banshee floated into the front yard. Clad in a shapeless, drab-gray dress, the ghostly being hovered and bobbed in midair, peering upon Evangeline with anguished eyes. It peeled back its cracked lips and gave her a silent snarl.
Evangeline took a deep breath, quickly reviewing what she knew about bayou banshees. They almost always came from the cemetery at the ladies’ state penitentiary thirty miles up the road. These weren’t the restless ghosts of petty criminals; these spirits were the truly rotten ones, murderers of the innocent. They’d died behind bars, sometimes from illness, but mostly through injury. A few of them had been launched into the afterlife with the aid of Gruesome Gertie, Louisiana’s electric chair. Either way, their stained souls clung to this world, not wanting to face the consequences of their deeds, the consequences awaiting them on the other side.
While some people held the belief that every soul was met with forgiveness at the end of the road, Evangeline didn’t think so. She’d dealt with enough reluctant otherworldly beings to suspect that cruelty and viciousness on this side of life were not looked upon lightly on the other side.
The banshee whipped its head back. It let out a shriek, shattering a window at the rear of the house and sending glass tinkling to the ground. The desolate spirit gnashed its teeth and snatched at its wispy hair that wavered like cobweb strands in the wind. Up on the roof, the barred owl gave a startled hoot and flapped silently away.
Evangeline thrust the crust of bread and the palm full of salt toward the ghost. “Return to your place of rest, and wander from there no more.”
The banshee didn’t retreat. Evangeline hadn’t really expected it to. Though salt and bread were known to drive away evil spirits by absorbing their psychic energy, she found the two ingredients hardly ever worked. But Gran always insisted they be the first attempt, since both were cheap and plentiful.
The banshee turned away and flew onto the front porch. It swooped from one end to the other as though caught up in a powerful psychic current. It shrieked again, and the sound of breaking glass followed.
“Dang it!” Mrs. Arseneau would return fit to be tied if all her windows got shattered. Evangeline tossed the salt to one side and the bread to the other. A raccoon shot out of the bushes, snatched up the stale crust, and skittered away into the night.
Evangeline pulled a juniper twig and a silver bell from her satchel. She lit the stick and waved it with one hand while ringing the bell with her other. The piney-pungent odor and sharp jangling drifted through the heavy night air. She recited a quick incantation and again demanded the restless ghost return to its grave or cross to the other side.
Her efforts were met with another screech and another shattered window.
“Fine.” Evangeline set her jaw. “Let’s try something a bit more powerful, then.” She dropped the bell and twig and brought out the bottle of holy water from her stash of supplies.
The banshee froze, stopping in midwail. Its gaunt face twisted into an expression of terror. It rocketed off the porch and straight toward Evangeline, its spirit force plowing her down and nearly knocking her out of her priest-blessed, silver-tipped, alligator-skin boots.
The impact with the ground shot through Evangeline’s tailbone and raced up her spine, sending her eyes rolling back. “Blast it!” she rasped, climbing to her feet. But the banshee was gone, its wails trailing after it like smoke from an extinguished candle.
Evangeline returned the potent holy water to her satchel, brushed the dirt off the back of her jeans as best she could, then assessed the situation. A few broken windows, but overall, a job well done, the work of a bona fide haunt huntress. Even if that haunt huntress’ name hadn’t been included on the job request. She went to retrieve the juniper twig and silver bell and paused.
Something had drawn up behind her, its steady breaths rattling deep inside it.
Goose bumps skipped across her arms and raced down the back of her spine. Not wanting to, but not able to stop herself, she peered into one of the house’s unbroken front windows. A pair of yellow eyes reflected off the dark glass, yellow eyes staring out from the hairy black face of a four-legged beast standing no more than three yards behind her.
She didn’t know what the creature was, and she didn’t wait around to figure it out. She snatched her lantern and hightailed it up the steps and into the hundred-year-old house built by Mr. Arseneau’s great-great-granddaddy. She slammed the door behind her, sending it wobbling on its rain-rusted hinges. Heart booming, she scrabbled around the inside of her satchel, found the stick of chalk, and scratched a series of protection symbols onto the door’s wood panel.
Outside, the front steps creaked. The porch boards groaned as thick claws clicked across them. The being stopped and dragged its nails along the other side of the rickety old door, surely leaving a row of gouges trailing down the surface.
At that moment Evangeline realized two things. Firstly, it was this yellow-eyed, hairy black creature, and not her use of the holy water, that had driven the banshee away. And secondly, this same creature was the one that had watched her from the graveyard. There was no doubt in her mind about this. She felt it in her gut.
She eyeballed her hastily sketched chalk symbols, then stepped back with a satisfied nod.
Out on the porch the creature raked its claws down the other side of the door again, but she wasn’t worried. “Go ahead and scratch all you want. Whatever you are.” Evangeline couldn’t help but smirk. “My chalk protection will hold against an evil being like you.” She sniffed the air, and her heart lifted even more. Was that pie? She raised her lantern and peered toward the kitchen. Yes. Yes, it was. And there it sat, right on the counter. Pecan instead of sweet potato, after all.
The thing clawed the door again. “You’re wasting your time, night creature!” She broke into a fully loaded grin. “I can wait here as long as it takes. Come daybreak, you’ll flee the sun’s rays and slink back to the shadows, just like your kind always do.”
In the kitchen across the room, the raccoon shimmied through the small window’s broken pane. With Evangeline’s stale piece of offering-bread still clutched in its mouth, it hopped down onto the counter. It waddled over to the pie, lowered its black nose to the syrupy sweet pecans, and sniffed.
“You get away from that! Shoo!” Evangeline stomped her boot.
The raccoon tossed the hard hunk of bread over its shoulder, sat up, and plunged both black paws through the center of the pie.
“Hey! That’s mine, you thieving vermin!” She dashed over as it scooped up two handfuls of gooey, nutty filling and shoved them into its mouth. Flaky, buttery crust crumbs rained down; a lone syrupy pecan plopped to the counter. With cheeks bulging, the masked bandit scrambled out the broken window, its bushy ringed tail disappearing into the night after it.
“Dang it!” Evangeline pounded her fist against the counter.
Out on the front porch, the graveyard creature threw itself against the door, hitting it with a boom and rattling it in its frame.
Evangeline cast a worried glance over her shoulder. “It’ll hold,” she reassured herself.
She set the lantern down and whipped her knife from the sheath on her leg, determined to cut away a small portion of pie the raccoon hadn’t defiled. She sank the blade into the nutty topping and had set about carving an irregular-shaped wedge when the thing outside threw itself at the door again, and this time the frame gave a loud crack.
Evangeline whirled around. One of the door’s rusty hinges popped off and clunked across the hardwood floor.
Muttering a curse, she grabbed her lantern and bolted away, down the short dark hallway and into Mr. and Mrs. Arseneau’s bedroom. She threw the door shut and twisted the lock.
From the front of the house came the sound of the door bursting inward and banging into the wall.
Evangeline turned and lifted the lantern, assessing her situation by the murky golden light.
In one corner sat the bed cove
red with Mrs. Arseneau’s hand-sewn patchwork quilt; her hand-sewn flowery-print curtains framed the room’s only window. Next to the huge fireplace rested a stack of wooden crates filled with Mr. Arseneau’s medicinal homemade root beer. Evangeline grimaced at the sight of them. She’d recently had the misfortune of sampling one of the sickly sweet noncarbonated drinks, and found it tasted nothing like the frosty cold bottles of Barq’s you could buy at Pichon’s General Store.
Out in the hallway, claws clicked slowly toward the bedroom and stopped outside it. A sniffing sounded between the door and its frame.
Evangeline rushed to the window and gave it an upward heave, but it didn’t budge. She gripped tighter and tried again, grunting with effort, but it had been sealed shut sash to sill by a hundred years’ worth of paint.
She was trapped good.
She backed away, praying these door hinges were stronger than the others. She bumped into the bed behind her, and a pale, long-fingered hand shot out from underneath. It grasped her booted ankle and yanked her foot out from under her.
Evangeline’s lantern went flying, and she crashed to the floor, her face smacking against the hard cypress planks as the lantern shattered.
A kerosene-fueled flame whooshed onto one of Mrs. Arseneau’s home-sewn curtains, licking its way up the flowery-print fabric as greedily as a raccoon gobbling pecan pie.
Before Evangeline could scramble even halfway to her feet, a second pale hand shot out and clutched her other ankle, sinking its claws deep enough to carve marks in the hide of her gator-skin boots.
“You’re gonna ruin my boots, blast you!”
The beast outside the bedroom door snarled.
The thing under the bed reeled her in. As it dragged her toward the darkness surrounding it, the last lines of Mrs. Arseneau’s message came back to her: There’s also a . . .
“Dag blam it!” Mrs. Arseneau hadn’t been talking about a payment-for-services pie. She meant they had a shadow croucher under their bed. Evangeline reached for her knife, but her hand brushed only an empty sheath. “Dag blam it again!” Her knife was in the kitchen, sticking out of the pecan pie.
Fingers of icy panic snatched at her heart, but there was no way she was going to let them grab ahold. She reminded herself of Gran’s words on the subject: Fear is a steel trap. It keeps you from moving forward. It binds up your courage as well as your smarts.
Evangeline took a deep breath and forced her anxiety down—a feat that sometimes proved to be as easy as shoving a pillow into a matchbox.
Gritting her teeth, she gave a hard yank and wrenched a foot free. She kicked the shadow croucher in its face, the silver tip of her boot impacting with a sizzle and singe.
The monster screeched and let go of her other ankle.
Evangeline pawed her way out from under the bed, scrambling across the floor like a daddy longlegs skating on water. As she glanced behind instead of ahead, her palm landed on a shard of lantern glass. Flesh split. Kerosene rushed into the wound, spreading like wildfire through a marsh. Wincing and cursing, she pulled the shard away. She balled her wounded hand into a fist and moved forward, doing her best not to leave bloody handprints in her wake. In the process, she crawled through a puddle of kerosene, soaking both knees of her jeans.
The fire devouring Mrs. Arseneau’s curtains crackled, sending out rolls of dark smoke. Evangeline coughed, and her eyes watered. The heat warmed her face.
The beast in the hallway gave a long howl and threw itself at the door with a loud whomp.
Evangeline peered under the bed. The glow from the flaming curtains cast just enough light for her to make out the shadow croucher’s features. A figure the size of a large child stared back at her through beady black eyes set in a ghostly-white snouted face. It hunkered on black hairy arms and legs beneath a hairy gray torso. A long, scaly tail lay curled alongside it like a pink snake. It opened its pale mouth wide, bared its needle-sharp fangs, and hissed.
“Hush your face!” Evangeline’s injured hand throbbed miserably, and her eyes stung from the smoke. She was in no mood for attitude, especially from a creature that had been stupid enough to feed from the tree of fear. “You’re the one who got yourself into this mess. You know better than to eat that poisonous fruit. And now look at you, grown just as large and out of control as fear itself.”
Gran’s words rose to mind again. Fear is a powerful poison. It turns peaceful beings into monsters, beasts that will strike first without even thinking.
“I would’ve expected such behavior from a gluttonous raccoon,” Evangeline continued, “but I always thought possums had more sense.”
The monster that had once been a standard-size possum snapped its pink tail and hissed again.
Evangeline sighed wearily. She could nag all day, but it wouldn’t get the shadow croucher out from under the bed. And she sure couldn’t drag it out, not without getting mauled in the process. Nor could she leave it there to claw at ankles and gnaw on toes in the night. Some shadow crouchers had been known to bite the toes right off any foot they found dangling.
Adding to her growing list of challenges was the problem of what to do with the monster once she did manage to get it out from under the bed. If only she’d packed a bottle of Gran’s taming tincture in her satchel, she could easily have calmed the creature right there where it hunkered, triggering the process that would slowly return it to its normal size and disposition.
The beast in the hallway threw itself at the door again.
The air was growing thicker with black smoke. She coughed and waved her hand in front of her. The fire would soon jump from the drapes, hit the spilled kerosene, and race through the room.
She tried to focus. A real haunt huntress would know what to do. And she was a haunt huntress. Just not yet officially.
She thought for a moment.
The first order of business was getting the fire put out. That much was clear. Another Gran-ism came to her. Improvise. Use what you know, and use what you’ve got.
Evangeline fumbled around inside her nearly empty satchel, past the stick of chalk, the box of matches, and the vial containing the tuft of black hair she’d picked off the oak tree. Her fingers closed around the bottle of holy water. It wasn’t nearly enough to douse the flames. She needed a plan.
She glanced around the room, and her eyes settled on the crates of Mr. Arseneau’s medicinal root beer.
She found her plan.
As soon as she could get the fire doused, she’d deal with the monster under the bed. Then she’d face down the creature in the hallway. She had her work cut out for her. That was for sure. She’d be busier than a cat covering scat on a marble floor.
The graveyard beast uttered a desolate wail and clawed at the door.
Evangeline cast an uneasy glance in its direction. Eventually, it would scratch its way clean through. But she couldn’t worry about that right now. She climbed to her feet and rushed toward the stash of root beer. She pulled down a crate, popped open the ceramic swing-top caps, and lugged the case to the window.
Pouring and sloshing bottle after bottle onto the flames, she extinguished the curtains, quickly reducing them to a set of soggy, steaming rags.
The odor of smoke, kerosene, and sugary-sweet root beer saturated the air. At least she’d managed to put out the fire, but she’d also put out the room’s only source of light.
Shuffling and hissing, and driven by fear, the shadow croucher dragged itself out from under the bed. By now it would know enough to avoid her silver toe tips. This time when it attacked, no doubt it’d make sure to do so above her boots.
Her heart was thumping hard enough to quiver her eyeballs. She focused her thoughts, narrowing in on a solution to the problem creeping across the floor toward her.
If she could trap it, bundle it up in a blanket, she could bring it home. Then she and Gran could calm it and release it back into the swamp. It wasn’t much of a plan, but she had to try. She certainly couldn’t leave it in its current form, f
ree to go on a toe-mauling rampage.
The shadow croucher hissed, its claws ticking against the cypress floorboards as it crawled closer.
Evangeline backed away, fumbling through her satchel.
The beast outside the door snarled low and deep and menacing.
She pulled out her matches and struck one. The tiny flame shed enough illumination to guide her to the fireplace and the kerosene lamp perched on its mantel.
The creature in the hallway threw itself at the door. The frame shuddered; it wouldn’t hold much longer.
Evangeline lit the lamp’s wick, and it blazed into a small golden light.
The shadow croucher drew back, hissing and shielding its face with its long-fingered hands.
“Now, you just sit right there and don’t move.” Keeping her eyes on the shadow croucher, Evangeline began to ease Mrs. Arseneau’s handmade quilt from the bed.
The monster shot past her. It dove into the fireplace and scrambled up the brick walls of the chimney.
“No!” She ripped the quilt away and lunged after the creature, throwing the blanket and her arms around its back end.
It struggled and hissed. One of its rear legs popped free from her grasp, striking her face and slicing a gash down her left cheek. If there was pain, she didn’t notice it. The shadow croucher wiggled the rest of the way free and clambered up the chimney. It escaped onto the roof, down to the yard, and into the night.
Evangeline cursed. She rushed to the window, pushed the root beer–drenched tatters aside, and peered out.
Beneath the moonlight, the shadow croucher scuttled away on all fours, gnashing its teeth and swishing its snaky pink tail behind it. It disappeared into the nearby trees and foliage.
Scowling, Evangeline rapped her knuckles against the window pane. “You can’t get away from Evangeline Clement! I’m not finished with you! I am a haunt huntress! And don’t you forget it!”
