The Prophet tgqs-3

by Amanda Stevens

  As I stood there watching helplessly, the dead bolt clicked, and the door flew back with a bang, allowing that wind from the other side to sweep in. My hair blew across my face and, as I peeled it away, I saw Darius Goodwine on the threshold. He looked the same as he had earlier, only now he wore several necklaces, including one that looked like a string of human teeth. In his right hand, he carried a wooden bowl and, in the left, an old leather pouch which he shook to produce a rattle.

  Into the bowl, he poured the contents of the pouch—bones, shells, pebbles, nuts and a few coins. Then he knelt and threw these items onto the floor. They formed a pattern which seemed to amuse him greatly.

  He looked up, topaz eyes gleaming. “Prepare yourself,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “A long journey.”

  “Where am I going?”

  He turned to stare out into the darkness, and I looked past him to where the dead had assembled in my garden. Their faces were painted a stark white, their bellies open and distended. Drawn by the light, black beetles with large, snapping pincers crawled from the autopsy gashes and scurried into the house. I spotted one scuttling into the cupboard where I kept Angus’s treats, and another dashed beneath the stove.

  Suddenly, his food bowl teemed with the insects, and he looked up at me with a piteous whimper. The beetles were crawling up his legs and moving down through his fur, attempting to burrow under his skin. He howled in pain, and I dropped to his side, picking them off one by one and flinging them toward the door.

  But dozens turned into hundreds. The floor blackened, and I could feel them on me now. They ran up my arms, into my hair and down the collar of my pajamas.

  I was still flailing when I woke up. Chest heaving, I flung the covers aside and leaped to my feet as I reached for the light. The bed was clear. My hair was clear. It had just been a dream.

  Or a visit from Darius Goodwine.

  I resolved myself to staying awake for the rest of the night. I even went back to my office and fetched Dr. Shaw’s book.

  But my eyes soon grew heavy, and I kept nodding off despite my best efforts. The last thing I remembered hearing was a tree limb scrape against the house. In my drowsy state, it sounded like someone running across the roof.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Zombie powder,” Temple said the next morning as she helped me unload my tools from the back of the SUV. Sometime after Devlin had left my house, he’d arranged to have the car delivered and then texted to let me know where I could find the key. I had to wonder if our conversation had precipitated the dream. In the light of day, it seemed impossible that Darius Goodwine had been able to invade my sleep.

  “Ground glass is a common component, along with datura,” Temple was saying. “The glass irritates the skin so that the poison is more quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.”

  “Zombies in Charleston?” I glanced at her in mock horror as I locked my car and deposited the key in my pocket. “Isn’t that more of a New Orleans thing?”

  “By way of Africa and Haiti. Traditionally, all we have to worry about around here are hags, haints and plat-eyes,” she said naming the holy trinity of Lowcountry legends.

  “Papa used to tell stories about plat-eyes that would curl your hair,” I said. “Boo hags, too. It got so I was afraid to close my eyes at night for fear one would slip into my room and steal my skin while I slept.” But for all my shivering under the covers back then, I’d never really believed in the mythical plat-eye creatures that supposedly gobbled up willful children, nor the hags that shed their own skin at night to inhabit another’s. But haint was a colloquialism for ghost, and I’d learned all too soon that they were real.

  “I can go you one better,” Temple said as we struck out through the weeds toward the cemetery gates. “I once dated a guy from Louisiana whose grandmother practiced voodoo. She claimed when she was a young woman that her brother had been turned into a zombie by a powerful priestess. He was pronounced dead by the local coroner and a funeral and burial ensued. Years later, the sister saw him in New Orleans with that same priestess. The woman had dug him up and kept him as a slave the whole time his family had thought him dead.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The last the sister knew, he was still with the priestess.”

  “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “Nothing the authorities could do. Nothing she could do, either, because the priestess was too powerful.”

  “But you don’t believe that, do you? Not you, Miss Skeptic.”

  “Of course I don’t believe it. The point is, she believed it. And the brother, too, apparently. As far as I’m concerned, voodoo, rootwork, conjure…all different names for the same con, and the stock-in-trade is mystery and persuasion. People want to believe they can obtain the seemingly unattainable, be it love or wealth or protection from their enemies by virtue of a few spells and incantations. That’s why they’ll spend their last dime on come-to-me potions and go-away-evil candles.” She paused while I unlocked the gates. “This man you told me about, this Darius Goodwine. It sounds to me like he’s trying to mess with your head. A sliver of doubt is all it takes for a particularly clever con artist to worm his way in.”

  “But if he possesses no real power, how can he influence me?”

  “Mind over matter. Just like all those mishaps we had with Ona Pearl Handy. She created a little doubt and we did the rest to ourselves. Call it the power of suggestion or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mind has the ability to influence the body on a subconscious level. You know that.”

  “The ground glass wasn’t just in my head, though. I saw the blood.”

  “Yes, that it is disturbing,” she agreed. “Do you normally go outside barefoot? Enough so that it’s somewhat of a habit?”

  “I don’t know about habit, but it’s not unusual.”

  “He’d know that if he’s had someone watching you. For whatever reason, this man obviously views you as a threat. And now he’s looking to gain the upper hand.”

  “What should I do?”

  “If he’s a true believer, you could go to a root doctor and buy some protection. Mind over matter works both ways. But if he’s just a snake oil salesman, then the only thing you can do is be on guard. Keep your eyes and ears open. And for God’s sake, don’t walk around barefoot. If he does anything truly threatening, call the cops. Or Devlin. I have a feeling he’d be only too happy to take care of this guy for you.”

  Yes, and that was perhaps my biggest fear of all. What Devlin had in store for Darius Goodwine.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the day cleaning headstones, a tedious project that required hours upon hours of squatting and kneeling so my leg muscles had become quite developed over the years. This was not a job I ever recommended to amateurs because even the gentlest scrubbing could cause damage, particularly to older stones. With every cleaning, a portion of the surface was lost, so one needed to approach the project with conservation rather than restoration as the end goal.

  Even in cemeteries where a water supply was readily available, I used non-ionic detergents only rarely, preferring instead the low-tech method of soft bristle brushes, sponges, scrapers and plenty of patience. I always started at the bottom and back of the stone to prevent streaking, and normally, once I became absorbed in the task, time would pass quickly. Today, I kept hauling out my phone to check the clock. Earlier, I’d placed a call to Tom Gerrity’s office and left a message. When he returned my call a few minutes later, I pretended to be a potential client in need of his services. If he recognized my name from our previous meeting, he didn’t let on. He would be out for most of the day, he said, but would return to the office late in the afternoon and suggested I drop by around six.

  I had no idea what could be accomplished by such a visit or even what I would say to him once I got there. I couldn’t ask him outright what he had on Dr. Shaw, nor could I pretend to be a friend of the Fremont family looking to hire a priv
ate detective. Gerrity had seen me in his office last spring, so even if he hadn’t recognized my name, chances were he’d place me the moment I walked through the door. Then he’d remember my connection to Devlin, and given the animosity between the two—not to mention his possible association with Darius Goodwine—I couldn’t imagine he’d be all that cooperative.

  Moving to the face of the stone, I wet it with the pump sprayer I’d lugged from the car and scraped at the lichen as I ran through a dozen possible scenarios in my head, none of them particularly appealing. Maybe I just needed to trust in the universe, I decided. Have a little faith that Fremont had a reason for sending me to see Gerrity. He had once been called the Prophet, after all, and apparently, some of his soothsayer abilities had been retained after death. The blood he’d foretold on Isabel Perilloux’s hands came to mind, but this wasn’t about her. This was about Tom Gerrity. What was the worst that could happen if I went to see him? He’d throw me out? Hadn’t he basically done that the last time I’d gone to this office?

  On and on my thoughts rambled as I continued to work. By the end of the day, I had been rewarded with several lovely inscriptions. As I rinsed away the grime from the final headstone, an anchor appeared, a symbol as old as the catacombs. In its straightforward interpretation, an anchor symbolized hope and steadfastness on the graves of sailors, but in olden times, it had often been used as a disguised cross to guide the devoted and the persecuted to secret meeting places. On this day, I found new significance in the symbol because it reminded me that something as innocuous as an anchor—or a songbird—could have hidden meaning.

  At four o’clock, I gathered up my tools and supplies, leaving the heavy water jugs behind so that I wouldn’t have to cart them back and forth. Temple had finished her survey of the exhumed graves and left mid-afternoon. Her job was done. From here on out, I’d be working in the cemetery alone. Maybe it was a blessing I had so many things occupying my thoughts these days. I had little time to brood about the past or worry about the perpetual pall that hung over Oak Grove Cemetery.

  Still, as I locked the gates and turned my back on the graveyard, I felt a little chill go through me. I didn’t glance over my shoulder but instead ran my gaze along the edge of the woods, searching for movement in the deep shade at the tree line. The sun hung low, but there was still plenty of daylight left. No reason in the world to be frightened, I told myself. And yet…I was.

  I tried to shake off the disquiet as I started down the overgrown path to the road. My imagination really was doing a number on me because at one point I could have sworn I heard footsteps behind me. Nothing was there, of course. It was too early for ghosts. Too early even for the shadow beings that stirred just before dusk.

  Storing my tools in the back of the SUV, I climbed behind the wheel and turned the ignition. Nothing happened except for a faint, ominous click. The battery was dead, which made no sense since it was fairly new.

  I popped the hood and checked the cables, then used one of my wooden scrapers to clear away the chalky corrosion around the posts. Sliding back in, I tried the ignition once more. The engine kicked over immediately, and with a sigh of relief, I hopped out to lower the hood. As I moved back around to the door, I saw that a beetle had climbed onto my shoe, and I bent down to examine it. Unlike the beetles from my dream, which were rounded and huge, this insect had a flattened body and a pale yellow platelike cover near the head.

  Goose bumps rose on my arms and at my nape as I shook it off. Until my dream the previous night, I wouldn’t have been disturbed by such a sight. Since childhood, I’d suffered from a mild case of arachnophobia, but insects never worried me, even the giant cockroaches—palmetto bugs—so prevalent along the southeastern coast. Now I had to wonder if the beetle was a warning or a sign. A creepy-crawly with a hidden meaning.

  I climbed back into the car and locked the doors as I scanned my surroundings. I told myself I was being ridiculous. Because of a nightmare, I now had a thing about beetles?

  But no rationale could convince me that the one crawling on my shoe had been an accident. I no longer believed in the randomness of the universe or the happenstance of everyday occurrences. Everything happened for a reason, and I was very much afraid this current synchronicity would be the death of me.

  Chapter Thirty

  I drove straight home and took Angus for a quick walk, then showered, dressed and headed out again. In a way, it was a relief to have a mission, because it kept me from stewing about that blasted beetle or, worse, worrying how Devlin intended to stop Darius Goodwine.

  He’d been adamant that his quarrel with Darius had nothing to do with Mariama, but I was hard-pressed to believe it. Darius and Mariama had been raised together as siblings by their grandmother, Essie, so they must have been close. According to Robert Fremont, there had been many in the community who considered Devlin taboo because of his race and background, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Darius was one of his detractors.

  Despite his impressive résumé in academia, he obviously identified closely with the magic and mystique of his heritage, going beyond Essie’s teachings as a local root doctor to study and practice with an African shaman in Gabon. By bringing gray dust back to Charleston, he’d placed himself on the wrong side of the law. As a cop’s wife, Mariama might have felt she had to make a choice.

  Of course, all of that was based on nothing more than wild conjecture, exhaustion and my overstimulated imagination. I reminded myself that time would be better spent on how to approach Tom Gerrity. As I fought my way through the rush hour traffic on Calhoun, I once again tried to decide what I would say to him. I needed a goal for this meeting, something a little more concrete than Fremont’s assertion that he felt very strongly about it.

  And speaking of Robert Fremont, where was he? He’d told me he would be around if I needed him, so why hadn’t he materialized to help me devise a plan? He was the one with the expertise in this partnership, and yet, he’d offered very little in the way of guidance or advice.

  I’d never tried to summon a ghost—far from it—but now I focused my thoughts on Fremont, hoping the energy shift would pull him to me. I even said his name aloud three times but to no avail. Either he was unable to come through the veil or he was patently ignoring me, which made no sense because this whole investigation was his idea. He was the one who needed to move on.

  By the time I reached Gerrity’s street, I was thoroughly annoyed, although some of my irritation might have been due to nerves and lack of sleep. I drew a few calming breaths as I looked for a parking space.

  The shabby neighborhood had once been a quaint, residential haven, but developers had ruthlessly crushed many of the lovely old homes. Now squatty monstrosities of progress resided alongside the fading grace of Victorian-style houses with sagging verandas and long-neglected gardens.

  Gerrity’s office was located in an old, two-story clapboard that hadn’t seen a paint job in decades. I couldn’t find a space near the building, so I parked one block over and checked the clock. I was nearly half an hour early and decided I’d prefer to pass the time in my locked car rather than loiter in the dingy hallway outside his office.

  I settled in to wait, feeling a little drowsy in the sunshine streaming in through the windshield. I’d brought Dr. Shaw’s book with me and opened it to the bookmarked page. My eyes soon grew heavy, and I found myself reading the same passage over and over:

  Among the early root workers that lived in the Sea Islands and along the Georgia-Carolina coast, divination was a highly prized skill, along with dream interpretation and the ability to recognize omens in nature. With the onslaught of urbanization, omen-reading became a lost art, but foretelling remained strong, among the favored methods, reading tea leaves and “throwing the bones.” Candles were almost always used in divination rituals and sometimes a glass of water for scrying.

  I must have drifted off for a few minutes because my eyes flew open with a start. The book had fallen from my hands,
and as I leaned over to pick it up, I checked the time. I’d only been asleep for ten minutes or so, but I decided to go ahead and walk over to Gerrity’s office. The nap had revived me, and I now felt calmer about the meeting.

  The neighborhood was run-down, but despite recent events, I wasn’t overly concerned to be out alone. It was still daylight and traffic was heavy. Even so, I walked with my hands in the pockets of my jacket, fingers curled around phone and mace. I nodded to a few passersby on the street, but none of them seemed to notice me. That was a good thing, I decided. Blending in made me less vulnerable.

  As I rounded the corner to Gerrity’s street, I saw a car double-parked in front of his building. It pulled away as I approached, and the back window lowered. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw the gleam of topaz eyes in the gloom. Startled, I turned to track the car. It made the corner and disappeared.

  A tiny kernel of my earlier trepidation returned. I hadn’t actually seen anything, but my momentary panic proved just how on edge I was these days. I tried to shake off those lingering jitters as I entered the house.

  The once elegant foyer was much as I remembered it from my visit a few months ago. A couple of plastic lawn chairs had been added to the decor, and, if possible, the rug looked even grimier, the Venetian blinds droopier. I didn’t think a mop or dust cloth had touched the place in months. It had the musty odor of an attic, and as I climbed the stairs, I couldn’t help noticing how eerily silent the building seemed. I suspected most of the tiny offices stood vacant these days, and those businesses that remained had probably closed their doors at five.

  On the second floor, I headed all the way to the end of the hallway where Gerrity’s office was located. His door was closed, too, but it was just a few minutes before six, so it was possible he was already inside. I tapped on the door and waited for an answer. I heard what I thought was someone moving about, so I knocked a little harder, waited another minute or two and then tried the knob. It turned in my hand, and I opened the door, hovering on the threshold as I warily scanned the dim interior.