Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels

by Susan Gabriel

  Queenie takes comfort in the fact that the Temple mansion is practically a fortress with its security alarms and locked gates. She also knows that most threats are simply that—threats. It is a bold move for a bully to actually take action on what they say. She sighs, too tired to entertain her fantasies. It takes forever for her to fall asleep, yet when she does, it is deep.

  The telephone rings several times before Queenie is awake enough to answer it. When she picks up the phone, she hears her mother’s voice: “Get out of the house, baby. Bad things be happening.”

  Queenie, in that fuzzy place between wakefulness and dreaming, keeps wondering which world is real. She opens one eye and glances at the digital clock by the bed. It is 4:34 in the morning.

  “You hear me, baby? You be in danger,” her mama says. “Get out of the house!”

  Old Sally’s frantic message finally breaks through the fuzziness. Queenie sits straight up and her eyes pop open like she’s just had a double espresso. It’s not just her in danger, but Rose and Max, too.

  “Mama, call the fire department!” Queenie tells her, before slamming down the phone.

  A crackling comes from downstairs that sounds like bacon frying. Hundreds of strips of bacon. The whole downstairs is the pan. Queenie sniffs and smells smoke. She remembers a recurring nightmare from her childhood where the same thing happened: a frantic call from her mother, the crackling fire, the desperate need to get out of the Temple house. She has an odd feeling of going through the same motions. The dream always ended before she got out, as though the real ending is being left up to her.

  Queenie stands and throws on her yellow bathrobe. She pauses long enough to wonder what she should take with her as she flees. She thinks of her dozens of journals, too heavy to carry out. Then her gaze falls on the framed photograph on her bedside table taken years before of a young Violet and Rose on the beach. Clutching it to her chest, she runs to her bedroom door. She unlatches it and then stops. Like she saw in a movie once, she touches the outside of the door to see if it’s hot. The door is cool to the touch so she opens it. Smoke wafts up the stairs. She coughs and pulls her bathrobe over her nose to keep out the smoke.

  Queenie makes her way to the bedroom where Rose and Max are staying. The smoke hasn’t reached here yet. Yelling their names, she bangs on their door. Max opens the door wearing boxer shorts and his cowboy hat.

  “Fire!” Queenie manages to yell, which sounds like something a prankster would yell in a crowded movie theater.

  Max turns and yells to Rose to wake up. Within seconds, they have thrown on clothes and shoes, as if they’ve practiced this scenario before. Then the three of them set out for the stairs. The darkness is illuminated with a nightlight of flames. In the shadows, Queenie sees someone fleeing downstairs. Fearing Violet may have returned to the house, she calls out. But the figure is too tall to be Violet. Whoever it is runs through the dining room and into the kitchen, disappearing so quickly Queenie wonders if she imagined it.

  The crackling of the fire increases as they descend the stairs. The flame’s intensity dwarfs any heat wave Savannah has ever experienced. The nightgown underneath her robe is soaked with sweat. They descend the spiral staircase and Queenie hesitates at the bottom, long enough for Max to yell out that they can’t stop.

  The inferno roars and swallows his words as soon as he shouts them. Rose’s eyes are wide with terror. Max takes both of them by the arms and leads them toward the door, yelling at them to keep moving. All of a sudden, dark smoke billows out of the kitchen. The door between the kitchen and dining room is now covered in flames crawling toward the ceiling. Queenie doesn’t see how anyone could have escaped through the wall of flames.

  “Shouldn’t we try to save something?” Queenie yells, but the flames swallow her words and no one hears her.

  Priceless artwork and antiques fill the house, as well as Temple memorabilia dating back to the Revolutionary war. She glances at the extinguished Civil War torch in the Temple foyer and wonders if the ghost of one of those Union soldiers—or perhaps General Sherman himself—has shown up to finish the job. She hears her mama’s voice tell her to keep going, to get out of the house. It’s like a secret passageway has opened between their minds and she’s hearing her mother’s thoughts. She tells Queenie to run and then orders Edward out of the house, too. Is Edward here? Could that be who she saw in the house?

  Smoke billows across the high ceilings, unwilling to waste any time. The whole back of the house is already engulfed in flames. A smoky orange glow illuminates the contents of the house.

  Two thoughts occur almost simultaneously: How has the fire spread so quickly? And why haven’t the alarms gone off?

  They move now as if in slow motion. Everywhere they turn, there are more flames. The floor grows hotter under her bare feet. She wishes now she’d thought to grab a pair of shoes. Sweat drips into her eyes and stings. They pause in the foyer. The floor gets hotter, as though the cellar underneath her has turned into a furnace. Queenie sidesteps the embers that begin to pop and fly from the walls. With Max’s help they make their way to the front of the house and he flings open the heavy wooden front door. The moist air of the Georgia coastline fills her lungs as they run toward the street.

  “The dogs are in the carriage house,” Max yells over the noise of the flames. He runs in that direction as Queenie and Rose wait on the sidewalk in front of the house. Queenie puts an arm around Rose who appears stunned, as anyone would. She glances down the street for the black sedan, but it isn’t there.

  “I’m going to go next door and call the fire department,” Queenie says.

  Rose nods, her gaze transfixed on the burning Temple house.

  Since Queenie hasn’t run anywhere since Jimmy Carter was in office, her awkward jaunt across the street to the Bennett house takes her breath away. Pebbles stick to the bottom of her feet that she stops to brush away every few steps. Mister Bennett lives there with his new wife who moved in two years before. They are an American cliché. The new Mrs. Bennett is thirty years younger than her husband and used to dance in a chorus on Broadway. Soon after she moved in, Iris dismissed the woman as trailer trash and wrote a letter to the head of the historical district to insist that they weed out the riffraff. Queenie isn’t even sure what ‘riffraff’ is, but Iris would probably put her into the same category.

  From the looks of things, I’m homeless riffraff now, Queenie decides.

  As she pounds on the Bennett’s door, she remembers Edward’s pounding from weeks before. Was he the one who started the fire? Is Edward the type to burn down a house out of spite? She pounds on the door again and tries to remember if the Bennetts have had any secrets revealed about them. If so, they might slam the door in her face. She can’t remember. Maybe something about his first wife who was addicted to painkillers and went to the Betty Ford clinic? She realizes how silly secrets are when it comes to life and death issues like fires.

  The riffraff dancer answers the door in a red teddy that pushes her ample breasts toward heaven.

  Mercy, Queenie thinks, those things will have every heterosexual man in Savannah puckering up. Queenie has to remind herself not to stare.

  “Our house is on fire!” Queenie yells. She turns and points to the illuminated skyline. The teddy-clad dancer runs back inside and calls for her husband to telephone the fire department. Before Queenie has time to thank her, the first fire truck rounds the curve that her mama must have called.

  The teddy-clad dancer invites her inside. Queenie thanks her, but then explains that she has to check on Rose, Iris Temple’s estranged daughter who has moved back to Savannah with her cowboy husband and their two dogs. Sometimes when Queenie is stressed she gives too many details.

  “It would be helpful if you could call my daughter, Violet, and tell her what’s happening,” Queenie says to the new Mrs. Bennett. Queenie writes down the number on a piece of paper Mrs. Bennett provides.

  Violet will be heartbroken that her surprise inherita
nce is going up in flames. But what if the fire had broken out while they were all living there? Maybe not all of them would have gotten out.

  Sirens pierce the night air as red and white lights bounce 360 degrees around the square. Firemen jump off trucks and run with hoses toward the house. It is exhilarating, in a way, to watch such heroic actions. Flames climb the outside of the building like red wisteria vines. Within seconds, two of the dining room windows burst outward causing the firemen to duck and cover their heads. Just as another fire truck arrives, flames surge out of the broken windows like a dragon whose fury has been unleashed.

  From the Bennett’s driveway, Queenie watches the scene in disbelief. She has always enjoyed fires in fireplaces. Fires with carefully confined blazes that take the moisture out of a room on the handful of cold days in Savannah when the temperature nears freezing. But this blaze is a different beast. It roars its power and jumps from one surface to the next while eating everything in its path. Yet miraculously, it stays contained to the Temple house. Multimillion dollar mansions on either side remain untouched.

  A small crowd gathers as Queenie rejoins Rose and Max a hundred yards away from the burning Temple home. Their two border collies, Lucy and Ethel, howl to the chorus of fire trucks. Queenie stands barefoot on the sidewalk, her feet aching from her flight across ash and ember. Flames shoot out of Iris’s bedroom window and stretch into the sky. For a split second Queenie sees the figure again in the window. She squints to make out who it is.

  “Did you see that?” she asks Rose.

  They stare at the window. “Maybe it’s a Temple ghost,” Rose says.

  “Or maybe it’s Edward,” Queenie says.

  “Edward?” Rose asks. “You think Edward might be in the house?”

  Rose runs to a nearby fireman. “I think my brother may be in there,” she calls to him over the noise of the fire and spraying hoses.

  With a look of alarm, the fireman runs to his superior. Both men study the flames. Seconds later the inferno explodes outward. Everyone cowers to avoid flying debris. The front of the house is now engulfed. The fire chief directs the hoses to address the latest surge and walks over to Rose and Queenie. “I’m sorry, but I can’t send my men in there. It’s just too dangerous,” he says.

  Rose and Queenie look back at the house.

  “What was Edward doing in there?” Rose asks her.

  Queenie tells her she doesn’t know.

  Meanwhile, a crowd has gathered in front of the house. Some of them are people she recognizes from protesting the secrets being released. At least they aren’t chanting while the house burns. She doubts any of them would have had the nerve to start the fire if it was arson.

  Max returns and holds Rose in his arms, two leashes in hand. The dogs are quiet now. Everyone is.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Old Sally

  “It be time,” Old Sally says. The dream woke her out of a sound sleep. In it, the ancestors told her that today is a day of reckoning. It is also the anniversary of Iris’s failed crossing. This told her that Iris may be trying to go again.

  Old Sally believe dreams are always a step or two ahead. Sure, they speak in riddles most of the time. But they are riddles that Old Sally takes the time to decipher. After more than a half century of listening to her dreams, Old Sally believes they have wisdom deep as a gold mine, but only if you take the time to dig out the gold. These days, they come to her crystal clear. She will make her own crossing soon enough.

  In this most recent dream, the Temple house was on fire. Edward wore his great grandfather’s Confederate uniform and set fire to the draperies in his mother’s room while all the Temple spirits urged him on. Iris laughed as the flames increased, as if this was the only way to take back her power. Edward acted out his mother’s bidding.

  Awake, her heart still races while she calls Queenie and then the fire department. Then she calls Kenny, the son of a friend of hers who lives nearby, to get a ride into Savannah.

  As she gets dressed, Old Sally remembers the night Iris died and how Iris cursed her as Old Sally tried to help with her transition. She’s been waiting to see how that curse plays out. Being on the other side, all mysteries are revealed, so Iris Temple knows the spells she’s put on her over the years. This knowledge, no doubt, fueled Iris’s need for getting even. Now it seems her revenge is to put Queenie in danger. The worst way to hurt a woman is to harm her children.

  Old Sally goes out the kitchen door and down the back stairs to wait for Kenny. The moon is so full it makes her eyes widen. Its power pulls the tide high, as the wave’s crash on the other side of the dunes. She’s seen many storms on this beach and a hurricane or two, but tonight feels much more dangerous. Old Sally asks again for their ancestors to intercede and keep Queenie, Rose and Max safe. Headlights turn off the main road, and she makes her way to the end of the walk.

  Kenny stops the car and runs to the passenger side to open the door for Old Sally. He is in his thirties now, but he was in some trouble as a teenager. Nothing that serious, but he stayed with Old Sally until he got his life back on track. Kenny is the color of night and is sweet as an angel if you treat him nice. He drives a bit reckless, and as soon as they take off, Old Sally grips the door. She puts up with Kenny’s driving because her child is in danger. It doesn’t matter that her child is in her sixties.

  “I left there around midnight, and everything was quiet,” Kenny says.

  Kenny is out of work right now and agreed to keep an eye on Queenie and Violet after Old Sally saw in the tea leaves that Edward and Iris might try to hurt them.

  “This not be your fault, Kenny,” Old Sally says. “Bigger forces at work.”

  The world blurs by Old Sally’s window as they ride in silence. That’s what it’s like to get this old, she thinks. You look up one day and your whole life has rushed past so fast you barely caught a glimpse of what’s passing. Then before you know it, you’re at the end of your life and wondering how you got there.

  Old Sally shivers with the awareness that Queenie and Rose are still in danger.

  “Can you get there any faster?” Old Sally asks Kenny.

  “Are you sure?” he asks.

  Old Sally nods.

  “Well, hang onto the Jesus bar,” he tells her.

  “The what?” Old Sally asks.

  “The handle above the door. You hold it and say, Oh, Jesus!” Kenny laughs.

  “You was always a cut-up, Kenny, even when you was a little boy.” She grips the handle, thinking I’ll take all the help I can get. Then as Kenny accelerates, she closes her eyes.

  When the car finally comes to a stop, Old Sally opens her eyes again and waits for her stomach to catch up. A block away, the Temple house is in flames. The sight makes her want to close her eyes again, but she reminds herself that sometimes total destruction is the only hope for things to change.

  Kenny comes around and opens her door. Ash flies through the air and is all she can smell. When Old Sally gets out of the car, she realizes how tired she is. Not just from being up in the middle of the night, but from all the years of battling the dark side of the Temple family. She is ready for this to be over. It started this time last year when all those secrets got released. It was the beginning of getting power over the darkness.

  Her heart pounds as she finally sees her daughter. Queenie crosses the street and walks into Old Sally’s arms. Old Sally hangs on tighter than she usually would. Only she knows how close she came to losing her daughter.

  “Are you okay, baby?” Old Sally asks.

  “I’ve been better,” Queenie says. “It looks like I don’t have anywhere to live anymore.”

  “You know you can always live with me,” Old Sally says.

  “At sixty, moving back in with my hundred-year-old mother isn’t that appealing.” Queenie’s laugh dies quickly like an ember shooting from the house.

  While Queenie holds her arm, Old Sally watches the fire.

  “A dream woke me up,” Old S
ally says. “I saw the flames, and I saw you and Rose and Max still in the house. I be so frightened,” she adds. “I thought the Temples had finally won.”

  “They almost did,” Queenie says. “But I don’t think Edward was as lucky.”

  Old Sally looks up at the burning house.

  Sacrifices are often required before things can change, she thinks. She lost her daughter Maya way too young. Now there is Edward.

  “Shame on you, Iris, for poisoning your son and creating this mess,” she says aloud. Iris poisoned Edward with bitterness just like she tried to poison Rose. But unfortunately, Edward liked the poison.

  Old Sally turns away from the fire. The way she sees it, all those years when Rose was out of the picture, Edward was glad. It meant more for him. But when he heard that Rose was coming back, he plotted on how to get his way. Just like he cut off a piece of Rose’s finger when she was a little girl, he thought nothing of cutting her out of the picture forever.

  Yesterday, Old Sally spent all day putting together another protection spell for Rose on her return to Savannah, using the tears she collected when Rose came to visit her at the beach. She renewed a protection spell on Violet, too, since Edward already came after her once when she was young.

  There was another Edward, Queenie’s father, who Old Sally wasn’t strong enough to resist, so she got pulled into history repeating itself, as did Queenie. But Violet was unwilling to go down that road. Old Sally is proud of her granddaughter for that. She may be the strongest of Old Sally’s line yet.

  “I want to see Rose,” Old Sally says.

  Queenie helps her cross the street. “Mama, who brought you here?” Queenie asks, glancing back at the black sedan.