“Let me ask you a question,” Denton said, tucking the handkerchief in his pocket. “When you first came here, did you feel any kind of connection to this place?”
“Connection?” I grimaced. “Not hardly. Why?”
“Your father’s name was Luther Cobb. He passed away a few weeks ago. At the time of your birth, he was a prominent criminal attorney from New York, but he was also a married man. Because of this, he needed to remain discreet about his affair. He had an arrangement with your mother, one that included keeping his true name from you. Not that any of that matters now, but upon his death, he wished the house and land to be given to you.”
My eyes widened. “This place?”
“Yes, he retained me because he needed someone in Louisiana who could handle the estate. I sent word to your mother when I received notice that your father had passed. One of the conditions of your parent’s arrangement was that your mother would stay in touch with me, to let your father know through me how you were doing, how you were getting along. When I spoke with her on the phone, she thought you’d be thrilled with a permanent place to call home. Pardon my saying this, Ms. Moore, but in speaking with your mother it sounds as if you all had it pretty rough. Moving around and so forth. Your mother couldn’t wait to surprise you.”
“She told me it was just a job." My eyes stung with tears. “If all this is true, then what about the real estate office?”
“They were just holding the keys for me, and I paid them to keep the place up. Guess they didn’t do such a great job.”
“That’s partly my fault,” Wolf said. “I’m the only one willing to come here since the place creeps everyone out. I was busy with other things and finally got around to it. I still have lots to do.”
“Looks like you got a good start, young man. You certainly have your work cut out for you. Most people who live ‘round the Bayou know the history here and I don’t blame them for not wanting to get too close. To be honest, I don’t like coming out here myself.”
“You’re sure about all this, Mr. Denton?” I asked.
The man nodded. “Sure as sunshine. You’ve heard the story of this place by now, I assume?”
I nodded. “Some general and his family were poisoned by one of their slaves.”
Mr. Denton’s face hardened. “Your father was the general’s great-great-grandson.”
My mouth dropped open. “How can that be? The general and the whole family died.”
“That’s the rumor, but one child, Jacob Cobb, survived and went to live with the general’s brother, Eleazor Cobb. He never returned to this place.” Denton reached into his pocket. “Here are the keys and copies of the will. My card is clipped to the will. The rest of the paperwork and details we can discuss later, when you’re feeling better.”
“Thank you,” I said, stunned.
Wolf stared at me in disbelief.
The lawyer rose heavily to his feet. “Good luck, and let me know if I can be of help to you.” He ambled to the cop car, tipped his hat to me and slammed the door closed. The police cruiser pulled away in a swirl of dust.
“Wow,” Wolf said. “So you’re the general’s granddaughter?”
“Don’t get too excited, there’s a lot of great, greats in there.”
“But still, its way cool. There’s a ton of pictures and stuff in our town museum. You’ll be famous! The Cobb family is legendary around here, and everyone thinks there’s no descendants.”
I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Excited to be a part of a real family, sure, but sad that everyone was gone, including a dad I never met. Guess he didn’t care to meet me. A thousand questions about my mystery father filled my mind, but I couldn’t think about him now. I had to find a way to break the curse and to survive. If mom was really gone for good, I’d be the only one left to take care for Benny. But still, no matter how I tried to concentrate on what to do next, images of a father I’d never meet haunted my mind and one glowing question.
Why would he give a place like this to a daughter he’d never even met?
We reached the rugged trail to Sassy’s house shortly before nightfall. Cicadas shrilled along the footpath. Unseen eyes stabbed into my neck as we hurried along. Every once in a while I'd stop and stare into the darkness, trying to figure out what or who lurked in shadows. Watching. Waiting. Hating.
Wolf urged me onward as a chilly evening breeze filtered through the cypress trees, sending long strands of ghostly moss trembling in the wind like the desperate arms of lost souls.
I stopped in front of the steps to the crooked shack and cocked my head. “What’s that noise?”
“What?”
“That clinking sound? Can’t you hear it?”
Wolf listened, then nodded. “Spirit bottles.” He pointed at a row of oak trees standing guard near the front gate. Dozens of cobalt blue bottles dangled from the branches, jingling in the breeze. “Legend has it the bottles trap evil spirits inside, keeping them too dazzled by the play of light to escape, preferring to remain in the colorful prison, rather than trouble the world of the living.”
I studied the bottles. “Do you think it works?”
Wolf shrugged. “Some people say if you listen to the bottles, you can hear the spirits moan.”
“Maybe I should get some for the house,” I said.
Wolf opened the front gate. “It wouldn't hurt.”
A warm glow emanated from every window of Sassy’s old shack. We hiked up the rickety front steps, lonesome sounds of the swamp at our backs. Wolf gave me an encouraging smile and knocked on the door.
The whisper of feet shuffled from behind the heavy wood panel. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Wolf Bodine, Ms. Sassy. Sorry to bother you again.”
Sassy swung the door open. “Come in, and be quick about it.”
We hurried inside and Sassy stuck her head out, surveying the swamp. She shut the door, bolted it and motioned us to sit with her near the fire. “Did you find that skull? Did you do like I told you?”
I nodded. “It didn’t work.”
Sassy leaned forward, her eyes searching mine. “Tell me everything, child.”
I swallowed, but it did little good to help my dry and scratchy throat. I told her how I’d gone to sleep with the horrible thing under the bed, and how nothing had happened.
“Right before dawn,” I said. “I heard the skull calling to me. So I followed the voice upstairs to the master bedroom, where I’d put it the night before. All it said was that it wanted to be friends, then torture and kill me.”
“What did you do?”
“I think I fainted, because somehow I ended up on the floor.”
“That throat is gettin’ worse, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
Sassy hobbled to the fire. She grabbed a tattered potholder and removed a kettle from a hook over the flames. She poured boiling water into two mugs, added tea with cream and handed one to each of us.
Grateful for the soothing liquid, I carefully swallowed the hot tea. After taking several sips I continued. “When I woke up, it was morning. I thought the whole thing was over with and then something in the skull moved, and a cottonmouth slithered out and tried to bite me. Thankfully, Wolf killed it.”
Sassy’s eyes went round. “Lord, child, where’s the skull now?”
“I tossed it,” Wolf said. “Back into the swamp.”
“Oh—now you’ve gone and done it. She’s been insulted twice.”
Wolf set his cup down. “There’s more. We found out Dharma is related to the general.”
“I’m like a great-great-great-granddaughter or something,” I said.
Sassy exhaled a deep breath that smelled of willow. “Well, that explains her vengeance. You may be the granddaughter of the kindly general, but you’re also kin to the man who hanged her—Eleazor Cobb, the general’s brother. To her, blood is blood. There is no difference.”
“I’m getting worse. The pills the doctor gave me aren’t helping at all. I
totally believe what you’re telling me. I believe in the curse. I know it's real because I’ve seen too many things I can’t explain.” My voice cracked. I took another sip of the tea, letting it wash over my swollen tonsils, trying to focus my scattered thoughts.
Wolf plowed a hand through his hair. “What else can we do to break the curse? There has to be some other way.”
Sassy stared at the floor and took a deep breath. “Asking the one who cursed you to take it off is the usual way. But not in this case. She holds too much hatred and resentment, especially for anyone with the blood of a Cobb.” Sassy rubbed her chin. “There is one other way, but the odds are slim—even if you could find it.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “Find what?”
Sassy smoothed the wrinkles from the front of her sack dress. “Let me tell you a story my granny told me many years ago. The day Sabine was hanged, the other slaves took down all the mirrors in the house and painted them black. The ones they didn’t paint they either took to town or destroyed.”
“We saw one in the dining room,” Wolf said.
Sassy nodded. “They did this so her soul couldn’t enter into them. They believed that if a soul entered a mirror, that spirit could ground itself to one place for all eternity, haunting it and creating all sorts of havoc.
“Those slaves, my granny included, tried to find every mirror. But they weren’t able to find the mirror the general had given her. She had it hidden away somewhere. So when she died, she was able to attach herself to this place, making all who came near suffer her wrath. If you can find her mirror and destroy it, you could break that curse. But the odds of finding it, like I said, are slim indeed.”
“It can’t be that hard,” I said. “It has to be somewhere in the house, right?”
Sassy shook her head. “I don’t know, child. She was very crafty. She most likely hid that mirror where no one would ever think to find it. My granny and her kind couldn’t find it, and they lived ‘round here their whole lives…”
“Maybe she hid it in the pond.” Wolf said.
“No, it won’t be in the swamp. An evil spirit attached to a mirror cannot cross or emerge from a body of water. It’s on that plantation somewhere. Someplace dry.”
“Do you know which room of the house was hers?” I asked.
Sassy shot me a strange look. “She may have been like kin to the general, but she was still a slave. She lived in one of the slave shacks. Even so, the general had it built with hardwood floors and solid walls with fancy wallpaper. It was a source of great contention amongst the other slaves who lived in shacks with dirt floors and leaky roofs. Sabine lived in splendor by comparison.”
“Come on, let’s go,” I said. “We need to find that mirror!”
“Wait,” Sassy said. “There is one more thing. This is very important, so listen up.” Burning logs snapped in the fireplace. Sassy lowered her voice. “You will know it’s the right mirror when you see her reflection in it. You’ll know it’s her, when you see her green turban and gold front tooth.”
Suddenly everything started to weave together. “Now it all makes sense,” I said. “It was Sabine in the family portrait we found in the ballroom, and it was her crawling out of the bog on the first night we got here.” I shivered. “She still wore that turban, even though it was rotting away and dripping with mud. Why would she still wear that gross thing?”
“She doesn’t have a choice,” Sassy said. “She’s forced to wear it, even in the spirit world, because she’s missing her ears.”
“What?” Wolf’s face twisted in disgust.
“Why?” I asked.
Sassy cleared her throat. “Sabine took great pleasure in spying on her fellow slaves, listening in at keyholes and reporting what she heard. She started extorting the slaves, even on different farms, stating that if they didn’t pay her fee, she’d tell on them. And if she couldn’t find them doing anything wrong, she’d make something up to tell to get them into trouble.”
“What good would that do?” Wolf asked. “Slaves couldn’t have much to pay with.”
“That was the point, as I see it. Even if they did pay, she still told on them. You see, it wasn’t the little trinkets she wanted. It was the pleasure of watching folks get beaten or whipped. Their suffering gave her power over her fellow slaves, the power of fear. That is until one day, when it all stopped.”
“The day she died?” I asked.
“Nope, it was the day she got her ears cut off. And it wasn’t by any master, either. It was done by slaves, who were tired of her tattlin’. It’s said some men caught her alone one night and cut them both off, clean as a whistle. From that day on, she wore a turban to cover up the scars.”
“She sang something to me,” I said. “In my vision. A song I couldn’t make out.”
Sassy shrugged. “Could have been any old song. My people had a lot of them.”
“It sounded so… evil.”
“Did it sound like this?” Sassy hummed a few bars.
“No, it was different, eerier and lower in pitch.”
“It might not have been a song at all, but a spell. Was it after that, that you saw the snake?”
“Yes.”
“Then that settles it. It was a song spell. If you hear it again, you be extra careful. Now you best be going before it gets any later. The swamp is no place to be at night. May the good Lord watch over you, child.”
“Thank you.” I extended my arm to shake Sassy’s hand.
She pulled me to her instead and hugged me tight. “Take care, child. You’re powerful sick, but you’re strong inside, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
Sassy pushed me away, tears gleaming in her eyes. “You come back if you need me, you hear? If you make it through the night.”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you know, child? Can’t you feel it?”
“Know what?” I asked.
Sassy’s eyes filled with tears again. “You cannot outrun a curse. You have three nights to live through one, and this will be your fourth. Come sunrise, if you haven’t found that mirror—you’ll die.”
Panic strangled my soul—it was like something burst inside me, spilling waves of dread into my lungs, drowning me in terror. Wolf frowned, his lips moving, forming words I couldn’t hear over the rush of blood flooding my ears. Somehow, I managed to swim to the surface and shake the terrible feeling. Wolf put his arm around my shoulders, guiding me away from Sassy’s house. Gravel crunched beneath the soles of our feet as we hurried down the path and past the front gate. Behind us the spirit bottles clinked and chimed louder and louder in the wind like miniature alarm bells.
Chilly night air fanned over us as we reached the end of the trail. Wolf’s truck loomed ahead. He kept a hand on my back as he opened the door and helped me in. I reached for my seatbelt, and then paused, letting my hand return to my lap. Why bother—why not just let go? I was doomed anyway. What good would a seatbelt do to stop something that was unstoppable?
Wolf and I rode in silence, my mind swimming with horrible thoughts. What would happen to Benny? Would he ever know how much I had loved him?
“We’ll need flashlights, shovels and maybe some rope.” Wolf glanced at his watch then back at the road. “We have a few hours before dawn, but it’s going to be slow searching in the dark.” He jerked a thumb at the dash. “Check the glove box and see if I have an extra flashlight in there.”
Still numb from shock, I opened the dash, my fingers grazing cold steel and pulled the light out.
“I hope the batteries are still good,” Wolf said. “It’s a spare and I don’t use it that much.”
I clicked it on, gave it a good shake and a bright beam cut across the dark cab.
“I’ve got two shovels in the bed of the truck. I’m going to try to drive to the riverbank near the shacks. It’s boggy down there, so we’re gonna have to be careful. No wonder the general gave that land to Sabine. It’s almost useless—except for the
area where they built the slave quarters.”
Anger seared up my spine at the mention of her name, sending waves of heat into my cheeks—I couldn’t let Sabine win and I couldn’t let myself give up, no matter how sick or tired or frustrated I was. No matter what, I was determined to find the mirror and break the spell forever.
Wolf drove between the front gates of the mansion, weaving through brush and trees, getting as close as we could get to the shacks. Within minutes, the headlights fell upon the crude slave shacks.
Outside the gloomy night carried a wet chill like a damp sponge. A lonesome wind whooshed through a stand of cypress and oak trees, leaves rustled beneath our feet. We trudged through patches of thick briars prickling our skin and grass heavy with moisture. Cold, moist air brushed across my neck like a phantom’s breath. I tugged at the knot that held my hair in a bun, letting it loose to cascade down my back. Still, I shivered as we followed faint streams of moonlight.
A thin layer of wispy clouds crept across the sky, darkening the path. The tip of my foot struck something solid. I pitched forward, sprawling to the ground. I scrambled to my feet, palms covered in moss and dirt. I shined the flashlight onto the object.
A tombstone!
The light illuminated more stones. They leaned together, as if conspiring. Some were granite, cracked and covered with moss. Others were plain fieldstones with only a first name etched across the surface, sinking into the vine-covered soil. The wind died down as if holding its breath. Death surrounded us.
“I almost forgot about this place,” Wolf said. “It’s the old slave cemetery. Sure is a shame how no one takes care of it. He motioned me to follow with a wave of his hand. “Come on, the cabins are over here.” Dodging the headstones, we threaded through thick stands of thistles, wild rose bushes and pools of mud.
Wolf pointed his flashlight at the dilapidated cabins, crouching like predators in the dark, moldering into the soggy ground. Some were mere piles of boards and weeds while others had partially collapsed onto themselves. Only a few remained intact. The air was heavy with the decay of old, rotting wood. I cringed, imagining hairy spiders hiding in every crack and corner of the logs, feasting on the shrouded husks of their victims.
River of Bones Page 11
