by Lyla Payne
My lips twist as my finger hovers over Travis’s name. He might care, because he’ll get stuck investigating, but for reasons I can’t face right now, I leave him off the list.
Headed out to Anne’s old place with Millie and Aunt K. Meeting Dr. Rue and others. Will text after.
The phone starts dinging like crazy two seconds later, but I don’t open any of the messages. My friends mean well and I know they would come if I said we need them, but the truth is there’s nothing they can do. This is about my family, about Anne’s descendants. It started with her, and goddammit, it’s going to end with us.
I keep up fake, happy chatter on our way to pick up Aunt Karen, telling Amelia everything that happened since she’s been gone—that Leo and Mel are cleared, that Mama Lottie is gone, and that according to the people at the Gullah camp, there’s no curse on Beau’s family. I relay the end of the journals, thinking the bittersweet story will jar her brain loose from whatever’s grabbed hold of it, but none of it works.
Worry that’s been growing since the day I realized this curse would affect my cousin more immediately than it would me grows until it takes over everything else. What if it’s too late for Amelia, even if this ceremony works?
Having a panic attack while driving will be infinitely worse than the one I had while Beau was driving, so I try to focus on other things. My mind gropes for anything that might be of interest. “Brick was amazing getting Leo and Mel off and everything.”
My chest constricts when I realize I didn’t tell him about finding Amelia. I figure maybe Beau told him but there’s no way—if he knew, he would have come to the hospital, or the house, or at least called. I know he would have.
I want to text him right now, the guilt over letting him worry for any longer swamping me so hard I think about pulling over, but we’re on our way. I can’t stop.
Instead, I use the voice app on my phone to ask it to call him. Amelia doesn’t respond to his name, not when I say it the second time or Siri repeats it back. It doesn’t ring even once, his voicemail picking up immediately.
“Hey, Brick. It’s Graciela. Call me as soon as you get this if you want details, but I wanted to tell you Amelia’s okay.” I glance at her, my other hand gripping the steering wheel. “Well, she’s home, anyway. Okay. Bye.”
With a few minutes left before we get to Aunt Karen’s, I dial Beau.
“Hey, Gracie. How’s Amelia?” he asks after picking up on the first ring. It warms my heart that she’s the first thing he thinks of after everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. “I came by the hospital as soon as I heard, but y’all already left and then I had a meeting I couldn’t get out of. Where are you? Do you need anything? Do you want me to come along?”
“No, we’re okay.” I bite my lower lip at the white lie. “I was wondering if you told Brick that Amelia’s home. I just thought about it, and I feel awful for not calling him.”
“I left him a message but he’s…out of the country.”
“Out of the country?” I do a quick mental search for the last time I saw him and realize it’s been days. “Doing what?”
“Meeting with our private investigator.”
“Oh.” I know I should ask if there’s been any news or developments, but I don’t have the brain space. “As long as he knows. I left him a message, too.”
I turn the car into the driveway that goes around the back of Aunt Karen and Uncle Wally’s house in Charleston and see my aunt waiting on the porch. She’s wearing pants and a flowy designer top that hides her hips, and has topped it with a Hermès scarf. I shake my head, looking over toward Amelia to make a snide comment that sticks in my throat at her blank expression.
I reach over and cover her hand with mine, comforting myself in the fact that it’s as cold as ever. That’s normal. She’s in there. She has to be. “Everything’s going to be okay, Millie. Stay with me a couple more hours.”
Aunt Karen climbs in the backseat, a strange look on her face, as if she doesn’t know how to act if she can’t make a snide comment to her daughter about not giving up the front seat for her elders. A cloud of her perfume nearly chokes me, but rolling down the window isn’t worth the argument.
“Thanks for coming,” I say instead.
She huffs and puffs as she buckles her seat belt and doesn’t answer me.
I back out of the driveway, holding my tongue about the outfit she chose. Now is not the time to piss her off, as easy and as stress-relieving as it would be. We drive in silence, which turns out to be good because it takes all of my concentration to remember how to get back to the Burleigh property. I make three wrong turns and am about to cry with frustration. The sun set an hour ago, and the moon is gaining ground in the sky.
“Are these people going to wait all night for us, Graciela, or do you have a plan other than driving around until we run out of gas?”
I grind my teeth, pulling over to the side of the road and yanking the map out of the glove box in the vain hope that Anne’s finger might have left some kind of impression on it. All I remember is a long lane of live oaks, which isn’t much to go on around these parts, and that she led me off the main drive and into a marshy copse of cypress and oak before the lights of the current home came into view.
Aunt Karen screams from the backseat, nearly making me pee myself. She even startles Amelia, who jerks so hard she bangs her elbow into the window and winces.
I whip around to find my aunt pressed up against the door in an attempt to avoid the imposing ghost of Anne Bonny on the opposite side of the car. Her foul, fishy stench overtakes Aunt Karen’s perfume and the stale scent of leftover food that refuses to lift out of my cushions.
“Wha-what is that? Who is she?” Aunt Karen is Aunt Karen, even when spooked, and the demanding condescension in her voice twists Anne’s lips into a silent snarl.
Easy enough to see why she’d never tried to get Aunt Karen’s help with all of this curse stuff, then.
“Um, Aunt Karen, this is Anne Bonny. Your ancestor.” I look at Anne, relief coursing through me. “You can help?”
She nods, motioning for the map still clenched between my fingers.
“Why does she smell like that? I thought you said she died a lady?”
I can’t help but roll my eyes at my aunt’s horror at finding out she’s descended from a pirate, even though I told her as much. Apparently she held onto the belief that Anne had changed into a lady when she returned from the high seas, even though it had been against her will.
“Um, I don’t know. Ghosts can appear however they like, I suppose, and this is what she likes. Leave her alone. She’s going to help us.”
Anne smiles at me, but I’d rather she didn’t. It looks awkward on her rugged features. She casts a worried glance toward Amelia next, one that slides down toward my cousin’s growing belly, and then she turns an inquisitive look back to me.
“She’s okay. The baby’s okay. We’re on our way to take care of this whole curse thing right now…if I can find your old house.” I pause, searching for a way to explain. “You know, where you buried the diary?”
The ghost brightens, sitting forward and opening the map on the console between the seats. Aunt Karen scoots further away, or tries to, but there’s nowhere to go. She ends up with her knee dangerously close to Anne’s and lifts a hand to cover her nose.
Anne ignores her, sliding her finger along the map and frowning. Then she pokes a spot, excitement lighting her face. Her red hair hangs in dirty ropes under her beat-up leather hat and her clothes are stained, but there’s no mistaking Anne’s beauty, no matter how hard she tries to hide it. Her eyes, emerald green, match my own, and Aunt Karen’s and Amelia’s. My mother and grandmother had the same ones, and when Anne looks into mine, I feel the strands that connect us. Gratitude flows through me, and I have to resist the urge to reach out and touch her—touching my ghosts is not a pleasant experience, and unless I discover some anti-aging effects of frozen bones, I plan to avoid it.
“Thank you,” I tell her instead, hoping she hears the depth of it. She nods, then settles back on her side of the car and folds her arms over her chest. “Oh, you’re coming with? Good. I might get lost again.”
Aunt Karen doesn’t look pleased by the development, but I don’t mind having Anne along, smell aside. I put the car back in drive and do not, in fact, get lost again before we pull off the main road leading to the new house on the old Burleigh lands.
“We have to walk from here,” I inform Aunt Karen, unbuckling my seat belt.
She follows suit and scrambles out of the car with the least amount of decorum I’ve seen her display ever. Once outside, she sucks in deep breaths of air and puts plenty of room between herself and the ghost. I wrestle Amelia loose, and once we’re all outside, reacquaint myself with the surroundings.
Anne’s already ten feet ahead, shifting her weight as though impatient for us to follow.
There are no other cars to be seen, and I wonder if the root doctor is blowing us off.
As though she read my mind, my aunt puts one hand on her hip and whirls on me. “Wait, if you didn’t know how to get here, how do these voodoo people know where to go?”
“They’re Gullah, not voodoo, and I told them the general area and the details about the curse. He said he could find it.” I shrug.
“This is a very strange group of people you’ve taken up with, Graciela.” She sniffs, then takes Amelia’s arm and starts to follow a ghost into the trees. “Very strange.”
“I think we’re using a sliding scale for that word these days,” I mutter, following her. It is weird that my Gullah root man is using some kind of divination to find the place where a curse originated. Whatever. As long as he gets here.
I hear the sound of drums before I see the group of people dancing around a bonfire. We’re pretty near where Anne buried her diary, but in the middle of the clearing instead of on the edge. I don’t see Anne anymore, but she never shows herself to people who aren’t family, and besides, after how voodoo affected her life, and her death, it’s hard to blame her for not wanting to stick around.
Aunt Karen and Amelia stop on the edge of the group, my aunt gaping while Amelia’s eyes seem to widen a bit. Everyone is dressed, thank goodness. There are probably a dozen practitioners—two are drumming, one is the root doctor, who stands over the fire and stares down at the hot coals, and the rest are dancing.
Dr. Rue sees me and beckons me over, and when I get closer, I see two cages holding a snake and a chicken. My stomach turns, remembering my conversation about animal sacrifice.
“We are ready to begin.” His eyes drift over his people, then to my family. “That is all?”
“Yes, only three of us. And the baby,” I add, as an afterthought. He counts as a person to me, of course, but I’m not sure for purposes of the curse.
“He will need to be included. Because of his link to his mother, it will not be complicated.”
“Okay…so what do we have to do?”
“You must only be open to the spirits and in tune with your soul.”
“Oh, is that all?”
Dr. Rue frowns at my sarcasm. “You are not practitioners. The Gullah ways are not in your blood, and without understanding, the spirits will neither help you nor protect you. We can do that. We will ask the light ones to come and untangle your blood from this curse, to free you from the sins of your ancestor.”
His words take a moment to sink in, and when they do, my stomach hurts. “What do you mean, free us? Like, you’re going to remove the bits of Anne from our blood? How?”
“There is no answer to how, only who. The spirits will help if we give the correct sacrifice and explain our desire to thwart the will of dark spirits on our world.” He pauses, looking into the flame. Without warning, he unlatches the cage containing the chicken and pulls it out, breaking its neck and tossing it into the flames in one fell swoop.
At least he killed it first. That’s something.
I try not to throw up, but I feel all of the blood drain out of my head. “Jesus.”
His head snaps up. “Jesus is Lord, but he will not assist us tonight.”
“You didn’t answer my question about Anne Bonny,” I remind him, trying to distract myself from the oddly enticing smell of the chicken.
“In order to unbind you and you family from the curse, we must remove the blood of the cursed. You understand?”
“But…she’s part of our DNA. Won’t we be different? What if something important changes?”
Dr. Rue studies me for a moment, then looks at the snake. When his gaze lifts back to my face, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don’t need a front-row seat for all of the animal sacrifices tonight.
“It was long ago. Only minuscule amounts of her remain with you now, and the curse blackens all that is good. It will not change you in ways worse than the curse will, should it remain in your blood.”
That much is true. I can’t imagine losing anything that would matter if Amelia and her baby can be okay.
I nod. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“You and your family will need to come and lie near the fire. You may hold hands. The dancers will surround you in a tight circle, and the ceremony will begin with a second sacrifice, after which I will invite the white saints to visit our circle and explain your plight. We hope that they will find our sacrifice worthy and our aim true, and agree that their help will bring balance back to this world.” He pauses, pursing his lips.
I get the feeling that there’s something more, something he’s not sure if he should say.
“It might hurt,” he continues. “It is not easy, drawing blackness from blood. Much like the venom from a snake, it must be sucked free.”
My head gets lighter, but I only nod. “We can handle it.”
I’m not sure Amelia will even feel it at this point, and he did say it wouldn’t hurt the baby any more than it hurts the rest of us. Aunt Karen can holler all she wants, but deep inside, I know she won’t. She’s too proud.
He nods, and I stand there awkwardly for another second wondering if I should thank him before deciding against it. Let’s see if all of this pomp and circumstance works first.
“What did he say?” Aunt Karen asks, her nerves showing in how tight she’s gripping Millie’s arm when I get back to them.
“He said we have to come lie near the fire. They’re going to surround us, and then he’s going to kill a snake and ask the spirits for their help.” I wonder how much to tell her about what else is going to happen, about the spirits sucking the blackness out of our veins or whatever, and decide against most of it. “He said it might be uncomfortable. If it works.”
Tears fill her eyes, surprising me. “I don’t care about that, Graciela, and I don’t care what they have to do. I want my daughter back, do you understand?”
I nod, trying and failing to swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s what I want, too.”
She straightens her shoulders and nods, my stern Aunt Karen again in the blink of an eye. I nod back, take a deep breath, and stand on the other side of my cousin. Together, the three of us walk over to the fire.
With Amelia still between us, we sit on the damp ground, then settle onto our backs. The chanting begins, and I hear the hiss of the fire grow louder. Dancers draw tighter and tighter around us until they obscure all but a sliver of moonlight and stars from my vision. The words don’t make sense, if they are even words, and ecstasy glows in the sweat on their frantic faces.
The sound of Dr. Rue’s voice, steady and booming through the clearing, finds its way over the top and between them, but the words slur together in my mind. I shut my eyes tight, wanting all of this to be over but, more than anything else, wanting to know that it worked.
“Spirits of light, we ask that you assist us this night to bring balance back to the world. Darkness has lived, safe inside this family for too many years, and we need your help to send it back where it belongs!”
Sparks fly i
nto the sky from the fire, as though someone poured accelerant on it.
Amelia’s fingers lie inside mine, limp and cold, but they seize the same moment the pain hits me. It’s inside me and everywhere else, and my eyes fly open in shock. Above us are wispy clouds, swaying and tumbling in a breeze I can’t feel so close to the earth. The ground grumbles, as though upset, under my shoulder blades, and the pain gets worse.
“Be gone, dark ones! You do not belong here! Your presence is due to unnatural things!” Dr. Rue bellows, his words fading at the ends because of the unbearable agony inside me.
My cousin cries out, and I squeeze my eyes shut, biting my lip to suppress a groan. It feels as though my muscles are tearing away from my bones, as if my blood is trying to crawl through my skin. It gets worse, then worse again until there’s no way to stop my moan. Amelia lets go of my hand and curls her arms around her belly, turning on her side into the fetal position. Aunt Karen is screaming, but no one is stopping.
Not the dancers, whose gyrations and singing only increase.
Not Dr. Rue, whose voice gets louder and more insistent. “Take the darkness from inside them, suck it out like the poison it is! Leave that cursed ancestor in someone else’s grave, lest she be discovered and her transgression piled on another!”
He keeps talking, and alongside the pain, sorrow opens inside me like a deep well. Anne. He means Anne, that she won’t be a part of us, that she’ll be all alone. The bone-deep, ripping agony in my body slices violent and fresh, and I scream, sure it’s going to tear me in half. Then I feel the sweet, caressing hands of darkness reach up from the depths to make it go away.
My last thought isn’t my own somehow. It’s Anne, and she says that all she wants is for the boy to live. Nothing else matters.
I wake up to the feeling of dew on my face, and an all-over dampness that racks my body with the kind of shivers that can only be thwarted with the hottest of baths. I wonder what happened to my quilt, or why I let Amelia talk me into keeping the damn windows open.
