FEVER DREAMS: A Bracken and Bledsoe Paranormal Mystery

by April Campbell Jones

  Katie gave me a dismissive look, but she hesitated at the end of the dock anyway, withdrew a fifty from her purse, torn it in half and gave one end to the boy. “Other end when we get back.”

  The boy nodded, took it without looking. He seemed to be watching the water around the boat, or maybe that was just my imagination.

  We walked the fifty or sixty feet of dock, out of bright sun into cooler cypress shade, and discovered more dock boards—these hammered together vertically—after a fashion—stretching to a tarpaper roof that looked grown into the overhead foliage. An off-angle door gradually revealed itself among fiddlesticks and strangler vines. The leaning shack looked angry, as if it resented sitting there on its drunken stilts above the dark water and below the tangle of vegetation, as though it were being squeezed the two. A tall man in a long great coat, arms folded, corncob pipe jutting under horny nose and hollow face met us just outside the door, leaning back patiently against the jamb, thread of smoke circling a big slouch hat like he’d just stepped off an old pulp cover of The Shadow.

  “What?” he demanded, voice all gravel and whiskey.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, “wrong address! We thought this was the White House!” Only I didn’t say that, didn’t say anything, just stood there beside Katie, who was holding the cat cage in her arms. Garbanzo hadn’t made mewl one during the entire trip; I was pretty sure he’d passed out from the oil fumes.

  “Is Mama Grace in?” Katie ventured respectfully.

  “No,” the man growled, “she’s down the block at the local salon getting a new perm.”

  Katie blinked, glanced at me.

  I felt abruptly insignificant in the very large and significant swamp stretching to all quarters around us as far as the eye could see.

  “We’ve come to see Mama Grace,” Katie ventured.

  The puffed stale smoke. “She yer Mama?”

  For the first time since we’d met, Katie didn’t appear to have a ready response.

  Somewhere in the ensuing silence, the man said: “She dead. Y’all git, now.”

  I took Katie’s arm, “That is a very sensible idea!” right on the tip of my tongue. Sensible but not the right thing to say to Katie Bracken, who only dug in her heels stubbornly, jerking her arm from me brusquely. “Look, mister. We’ve come a long distance to see her! Very long! All the way from Texas! We’re tired and we’re thirsty! We intend to see Mama Grace. Who’re you, her bouncer?”

  The man straightened an inch and I felt a wave of reproach but saw a crooked grin instead. “Bouncer. Pretty funny, are we?”

  Katie’s heels remained dug. I had the certain feeling there was a roundhouse kick behind those heels, years of ju-jitsu behind them.

  “To aim to see Mama Grace. To ask about the child.”

  Smart woman.

  If the man answered, “What child?” it would be an uphill battle. If he asked us to leave again it would look suspicious.

  Turned out he did neither. Only, “Cat stays on the porch.”

  I looked about me. There was a porch?

  * * *

  It was so dark in the shack it took another five minutes for my eyes to adjust to the scattered candlelight, a blessing considering I still hadn’t adjusted to whatever was making the smell. The first thing I saw, after we’d been seated at a little wooden table on what felt like constantly wobbling children’s chairs, were the alligator skulls. They appeared gradually, creeping out of the dark, ringing the black ceiling under festoons of cobwebs, bony heads hung upside down, glowing pale and grinning from the shadows, adorned with multi-colored bird feathers and dust-laden beads. The other…decorations…revealed themselves one at a time as my iris shrank: uneven dark wood shelves mostly, and mostly crammed end-to-end with every size bottle and jar known to man. Some held a reddish or, occasionally, a greenish-looking powder, others various colors and viscosities of liquid, some tall, some squat, all corked. The apothecary of Ed Guin. I began to look for signs of dangling human skin but saw none, only a few skinned and wrinkled animal hides. I’m almost sure they were animals. The smell came from a fat black rat hanging from a fat black hook in the fireplace, its fevered embers giving the rest of the shack a hellish orange patina. There were a couple of black alcoves, one of which may have held a bed or pallet; or maybe Mama Grace slept on the floor. Or standing up. Or hanging from the ceiling.

  The man removed his long coat and floppy hat and turned to the warble-luminous andirons and became a scarlet-and-amber Mama Grace--as both Katie and I had guessed by then.

  She gave us her bent backside for a good five minutes, poking at something murmuring liquidly in the iron pot.

  “I don’t do sitt’ns no more if that’s why ye come. If yer government people I already showed ‘em the papers prove I own the place.” A woman now, clearly, from the white straggle of stringy hair draping bony shoulders, to the long-nailed skeletal fingers stirring a pot with what looked like a length of bone but I preferred to think was a ladle. A ancient woman, but with same whisky gargle.

  “We’re citizens,” Katie said, hands folded primly atop the little table, pert figure constantly adjusting for the lean, “just like you.”

  Smart girl.

  “Citizens, huh?” She grunted disgust. “You ain’t nothin’ like me a’tall, and I don’t abide boot lickin.’ Kissin’ my skinny ass won’t git you a sittin, Miss-Prim-and-Proper!”

  …or, maybe not.

  Katie changed tact. Silence. Yes, smart girl. Cranky and mean, maybe, but Mama Grace was all alone out here on the dank ferns, and even a hermit, sooner or later, longs to talk to something besides the walls.

  “The black boy bring you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” from Katie.

  “How much?”

  “Two hundred.”

  Either an ancient throat being cleared or a cackle or both, I couldn’t tell. “Won’t see him again.”

  Katie and I exchanged looks, owl-eyed.

  “The answer to your question is ‘Yes.’ Now that’ll be ‘nuther hundred if you please.”

  Some of the owl went out of Katie’s eyes. “Which…question?”

  “All of ‘em! ‘Yes,’ yer a sinnin’, both of ye! “Yes,’ ye’ll probably burn in hell fer it! ‘Yes, I don’t approve! And ‘yes’, you’ll likely get away with it! Most folks is layin’ together out of wedlock these days! First sign of the crumble of civilization! I don’t choose to live amongst it! Don’t think a sittin’ with me will absolve ya of it!”

  Katie made that cute frown. “’Absolve’--?”

  “Ye deaf? Fer sleepin’ together outside the law of God. Think I don’t get couples like you all the time? And one of ye married ta boot! Ain’t that why you come here, seekin yer future, find out if ye’ll succeed in yer carnality?”

  Kate sat back in her leaning chair, nearly toppling herself. “They said in town you were prescient.”

  “Said what?”

  “We’re not sleeping together, Miss Grace.”

  “It’s Mama Grace!” the old woman spun on us, fiery of eye and snaggled of tooth, “and yer lyin!”

  How can I describe her face sans the shadowed brim of the hat? I can’t. You had to be there. Suffice to say it was not a pleasant aspect the old woman presented. The term “child traumatizing” comes to mind. I believe I may have suffered a mild coronary, soiled my own self in some way, possibly both apertures.

  If you really need a visual reference, I guess the old hag in Snow White would do. Got that image? Now, throw in a dollop of Freddie Kruger and a soupcon of advanced anal cancer and you’re close. I know it was just the weird light from the fire, but her face seemed to crawl, as if the maggots had arrived a day or so early.

  “We are not sleeping together!” Katie insisted stubbornly, fearlessly, while I remained rooted motionless in my little chair, fighting hard not to swallow my tongue.

  “I kin smell it on ya!” the witch sneered.

  “Well, you’re honker’s off!” Katie shot back. “Maybe you
should quit smoking that stuff!”

  The old hag descended on her, bent closer, pressed lantern eyes into Katie’s face as she leaned back bravely. “Ain’t pressin’ wicked flesh, eh?”

  “No!”

  The hoary face turned to me, breathed something stale and mostly dead.

  “Seriously,” I quaked, “I’m a virgin!”

  The old lady pulled back with a still-accusing but softening gaze. “Wal…yer thinkin’ about it, then!”

  “You can’t know that,” Katie defended, face flaming with fear or something else.

  The crone threw back her white traces and cackled good and long this time. “Oh, can’t I? Wal, who can then, missy—you?” She thrust her beak at us again, sniffed above the little table. Finally shook her head. “Nah. ‘Tain’t you, Miss Satin Pants…” She jabbed a bony finger at me.”…it’s him!”

  I blinked innocence. Me what?

  She hobbled forward and got right in my face. “Wal, say something! You denyin’ you got it?”

  She reminded me a little of my third grade teacher Mrs. Gruesome, whose real name was Grossman but nobody ever called her that.

  I turned to Katie, mouthed: got what?

  “Well, say something, ya dang doorknob!”

  I turned back to the yellow, wormy face. “Are you going to put us in the oven?”

  The old lady made a farting sound with her rubbery lips, turned with disgust and retreated to the fireplace. “I ain’t sayin’ Miss Britches there ain’t got some glow to her, I an’t sayin’ thet! But you, now—you’re the one’s all puffed up with the prescience. Didn’t think I knew what thet word met, did ye?”

  Was I? I didn’t recall any puffiness.

  “Skinny black kid?” from the hag, stirring. “Handsome as the Devil hisself? Smile out to here?”

  “The boy at the dock?” Katie asked. “Yes.”

  “And ye rented the motor from thet stubby, bow-legged sailor. Yeah. They’re in on it together, them two.”

  I thought of the torn-in-half fifty in the boy’s hand.

  The old woman hobbled to our table with two steaming cups of something from the black pot in what looked like hand-made leather cups. “How is it you two’re connected with the Robichou child? I know dang well ye weren’t here when she went missin’.”

  “How do you know that?” Katie asked.

  “Cause I know everybody round these parts, Miss Smarty Pants! Them that’s livin.’ And a few mebe thet ain’t!”

  She sat the cups together in the middle of the table, grabbed a black cane from beside a torn drapery wall and leaned on it like a vulture waiting.

  Katie reached for her cup. The cane slapped hard on her pale hand.

  “Ow! Damn!”

  “No sippin’ till you satisfy me! And no cursin’ in my house, thank-you! Now answer the question.”

  Katie pulled her hand back, rubbed at the knuckles. “Mrs. Robichou contacted me some weeks ago about her daughter…”

  “Why? Why you?”

  “I’ve done work in paranormal activity and—“

  “Good Christ, one of those.”

  Katie gave her a dirty look. “I’m a fully credited graduate of—“

  “What about you?”

  I looked up with surprise; was it my turn? I’d been studying the surrounding plank board walls, which were coming into relief now. More gator skulls, some human (party favors, I was sure), twine or rawhide strings of chicken feathers, small animal bones, colored rocks, more feathers. More bones. Lots of bones. Definitely a bone thing going on here.

  “Me? I’m…just along with Miss Bracken. Assisting her.”

  Beady red eyes studied me. “’Assisting’…”

  “Yes.”

  The beady eyes narrowed. “There’s somethin’ else! What is it?”

  I shrugged, abruptly cold under my sweat. “N-Nothing! Honest!”

  The old woman pursed her wrinkled lips, making the hawk’s nose dip. Finally a vague nod. “Awright, then. You kin drink, now.”

  We each picked up a leather cup. “What is this—“

  “Drink!”

  We both took a sip. Both wrinkled our noses. Katie gasped involuntarily.

  The gargled cackle. “Smooth, eh? That’s the whiskey! Made it muh-self!”

  “What’s the rest?” Katie coughed.

  “Oh, bit of honey, bit of swamp root, drop or two of turpentine for antisepsis…”

  I swallowed thickly, praying. “That all?”

  “Couple squirts of shoat piss.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Don’t bring His name into it, and finish that there cup! I ain’t got all day!”

  I breathed deep, jumped in.

  The last swallow I hardly tasted. Probably the Draino. “Will it hurt us?”

  “I’ll be one hundred and two come spring. Started drinkin’ that stuff when I got incurable throat cancer. Doctors gave me two months. That was two decades yonder. Him and his wife is dead. I’m standin’ here afore ye, all piss n’ vinegar!”

  I belched involuntarily, felt a burning in my nasal passages.

  The old woman nodded, “That’s jest the swamp root, let it steep a bit in yer gut.” Her table creaked as the old woman sat, stuck out a corpse-white hand. “That’ll be two hundred.”

  “You said a hundred before!” from Katie.

  “That was before I knew you had grit, and some true longin’. I don’t abide tourists.” She rattled her knuckles on the table. Katie drew a bill from her purse, pushed it across.

  “I only takes Visa.”

  When it was clear the crone wasn’t joshing, I reached for my wallet, handed her my card. She stuffed it in her deflated bosom, sat back and spread her claws to either side of her across the table. “All join hands now…”

  It was like gripping cool sticks of leather. The big yellow eyes lidded shut, the fallen breast rose an inch as she inhaled once deeply. “No talk now. No sound but my own, understood?”

  “Yes,” in tandem.

  “Spirit of Amy Robichou taken from this earthly plane at the tender age of eight human years, we ask your permission to join and break bread with us at our humble table. We are sympathetic at heart and offer succor and friendship. Speak to us now, youngin,’ or give us some sign at yer convenience.”

  Silence.

  Somewhere a loon called across the marshes; that sound that can lift the hairs on your nape.

  “Rega flexus mur,” Mama Grace intoned. “Com sabon tore umbre.”

  Silence.

  The short table scrapped my knees, the hard chair ached my butt.

  The old woman’s hand seemed to grow colder in mine.

  I sneaked a look at Katie but she sat reverently bowed, as if in prayer.

  Then, without any noticeable breeze I could discern, the shack candles wavered and danced…winked out. The glowing remains of carbuncles in the stone hearth seemed to dim.

  The old lady’s head went back.

  And the voice that issued from the turkey throat was neither whisky, gargled nor entirely hers…

  “…it is late…must be after midnight on a hot summer’s night. I can hear the frogs mating through the crack in the bedroom window. It’s very bright. Full moon. Everything glows like them black-and-white movies down to the Roxy. Someone near the garden, I hear footsteps. Mamma plantin’ moon ‘taters? Comin’ closer. Someone at the window now. Mus be brother Roger, comin’ in late and drunk. Got his bedrooms mixed up. ‘Roger you got the wrong winder!’ but he don’t listen…comes to my bed. How tall he’s got, big shouldered. Maybe he ain’t Roger, can’t see him clearly. ‘What in tarnation you doin’? Git yer hand off my mouth, it stinks of gin!’

  He don’t listen. Picks me up, carries me like a feather to the window and I’m too tired to fight…gin stink making me so sleepy…if it is gin. Sound of crickets in the yard now mixed with frogs, must be near the swamp. Don’t he know the cottonmouths hunt at night? Where we goin, Mister? Why ain’t none of Pappa’s dogs bark
in’?”

  “…now I’m back in bed…musta been dreamin.’ No…not bed, a cushion or divan. Mamma git a new divan? No…no a car seat--back seat of a car…can hear the motor runnin…feel it movin.’ I know this car, think I know this car. Think. The man’s put somethin’ across my eyes…blind man’s bluff like at Sissy Watkins’ party…funny smells, familiar but…this ain’t no back seat! I’m all alone in the dark! In the trunk!”

  “…think I slept a spell. Now someone’s taking me out, liftin’ me from the trunk…least wise I think Roger? not sure…not sure it was ever Roger…”

  …lost some time there. In another trunk. No…a little box. Cramped. No, not a box, a closet, someone’s closet. Voices…deep voices outside the door but…who? Can’t hear enuf to identify no one…”

  …more time lost. I know ‘cause my legs are all cramped and achy and I’ve soiled myself. Can’t seem to wake up, why is that? If this is Roger having a joke it isn’t funny, Roger. Face all hot…sweatin’ little tickles on my cheeks. Or tears. I been cryin’…I been cryin’…I been’…”

  Nighttime again…the swamp again, bullfrogs, wet grass. Someone carryin’ me. Still can’t see, blindfold. Awful thirsty. Terrible thirst, like snakeskin in my throat. Someone lifting me again…here we go, back in the trunk. Slam! Dark. Driving. Bumpity-bump. Swamp smell stronger…gotta be deep in the glades. Stopping now, good—my bottom’s sore. But legs feel better. Someone takin’ me outta the trunk…someone with a familiar smell…family smell? Ow. That hurts. Binding my hands, binding them tight behind me. I have to pee again. I’m getting tired of this. Wait ‘till Pa finds out. Binding my ankles too. Hey, that’s hurts, that’s too tight! This ain’t how you play the game!”

  …lost more time there. Smell of saw grass and cypress. Jammies wet from the dew. But I can move my feet…cords loose at my feet! If I keep kicking…”

  …I’m up! Standin,’ sore all over. Nothing but frog sounds. Run! The smart thing is to run, even blindfold! But I been chewin’ at that an it’s comin’ loose too! There--fallin’ down around my neck! Still can’t see much, just darkness out here in the glades, outlines of trees. Sound of my own bare feet runnin.’ Feel the sawgrass nippin’ ‘em Someone shouting behind me now. Don’t answer, don’t dare answer! Run! Faster! If only I cud get my hands loose!”