I know she’s talking about me, but I’m not ready to share those strange flashes with Honey yet.
“Did you know Mackey had a death warning?” I ask. “About Elora? The night she disappeared?” I shiver a little in the air-conditioning. “Death in the water.”
Honey sighs and pulls the blanket over me. “I heard about that,” she admits. “But a death warning is just that. It’s a warning. That’s all. It means death is close by. But it’s not a sure thing. Not always.”
I remember an old story about Mackey’s uncle knocking on the front door one morning to give Honey’s first husband, my grandfather, a death warning that had come to him over breakfast. Death from below, he’d told them. And sure enough, my grandfather had been bitten by a huge water moccasin that very afternoon while he was out hunting. He nearly died that night. But come morning, he was still hanging on. He ended up losing his big toe, but he didn’t lose his life. Not until a heart attack took him a couple years later. And nobody had warned him about that.
Honey’s hand is still in my hair. It’s making me so sleepy. I can hardly keep my eyes open, and an old nightmare comes creeping in around the edges of my consciousness.
“Do you remember anything about Dempsey Fontenot?”
Honey tucks the blanket around my shoulders. “Well, I never knew much about him, to tell you the truth. He lived way out there all alone. Kept to himself, mostly.” She pauses, like she’s trying to choose her words. Being careful. “He had some odd ways. There were stories . . .” She stops and smooths my hair again. “I don’t guess folks cared much for him, even before what happened.”
“Do you think he got Elora?” The words come out thick and sleep-coated. Heavy in my mouth. “Like he got Ember and Orli?”
“No. I don’t think so,” Honey says, and for a long while, there’s only the hum of the air conditioner in the window and the soft sound of Sweet-N-Low snoring beside me. By the time she adds the next part, I’m almost too far gone to hear it. “I don’t imagine poor Dempsey Fontenot ever got anybody.”
He hauls me up by my arm—like I’m a catfish
he’s pulling out of a pond—and I come roaring back to myself. I fight against him. I kick and I claw and I bite. I spit rain and mud and curse words. But he’s too strong, and there’s not enough life left in me. I’m choking. Fighting to breathe. Out of the water but still drowning.
6
When I wake up, the light coming in the windows is different. I’ve slept the whole afternoon. Which means I’ve missed lunch. And I’m starving.
I hear Honey humming to herself in the kitchen while she makes dinner. “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. She promises it won’t be long, so I head out front to the steps to wait.
Five thirty. The shuttle boat is blowing its horn for the final upriver trip of the day. The last of the tourists are heading back to Kinter, where they’ll climb into their cars and drive north to New Orleans for a night out on Bourbon Street.
At the river dock, right across from the bookstore, Sera and Sander are helping their mama pack her little bottles and charms into boxes. They finish loading everything into their boat, and Delphine wanders over to chat with one of the fishermen who’s just come back in for the day.
I wave to Sera and Sander, and they exchange one of those looks they have. Then Sera digs something out of her backpack, and they start in my direction. As soon as I see the artist’s sketchbook tucked under Sera’s arm, something that tastes like dread tickles at the back of my throat.
Sera and Sander are psychic artists. The dead communicate with them, like they do Honey. Only it’s different. The twins draw things. People. Places. Objects. Images that come into their heads out of nowhere.
A lot of weekends they sit out there on the dock with their mama, and for twenty bucks they’ll sketch the exact place your lost wedding ring is hiding, or a perfect spitting-image likeness of your dead son or your grandmother—people Sera and Sander have never even laid eyes on. I’ve seen folks clutch those drawings to their chests and sob. And when that happens, they always tip extra.
“We have something to show you,” Sera says, and the two of them join me on the steps. Sander does his best to give me a reassuring smile. “We didn’t say anything earlier because we haven’t told Hart yet. Or any of the others.”
“Okay,” I say, even though I don’t like the idea of keeping secrets. Especially from Hart.
Sera flips open the sketchbook, and I stare at the shape drawn in charcoal. “You recognize it?” she asks, and I nod.
“It’s the big black trunk from Honey’s shed.”
I haven’t seen it in years.
When we were little, we used to play magician. Hart would be the magic man, and Elora his beautiful assistant. The others would be our captive audience. And I’d be the one to climb inside the trunk, trying not to breathe while Elora covered me with a blanket to make me disappear.
Eventually, it was the trunk that disappeared, though, pushed into a back corner of the storage shed and covered over with a decade’s worth of junk and spiderwebs.
And now Elora’s disappeared.
And the trunk’s come back into my life. Almost like magic.
“I’m not sure what it means,” Sera says. “I’ve been trying to figure that out since I drew it. But I know it has something to do with Elora.”
“It could mean she ran away,” I say, and I feel a little hope surge through me. “Packed up and left.” I look up at Sera. “Right?”
Sera and Sander exchange another look. “Maybe,” Sera says. “But we don’t know that for sure.”
“Why haven’t you shown this to Hart?” I ask.
“Grey, you don’t know how low Hart’s been.” Sera gives her head a little shake, and that braid swings behind her back. “He feels responsible, I think. Like he should’ve been lookin’ out for Elora. That night.” Sander nods in agreement. “We didn’t want to get him all worked up when—”
“When you can’t say what it means.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I keep this?” I ask.
“Sure,” Sera says, and she rips the page out and hands it to me. “There’s more, though.” She passes the sketchbook over to Sander, and he flips through until he finds what he’s looking for. Then he places the open book in my lap. “Sander did that one.”
I shiver when I see the bold pencil lines. Like someone walking over my grave, Elora would have said.
“This one is about Elora, too?” Sander nods and runs his fingers over the sketch.
The page is filled with a figure. The shape is human. Arms and legs. Normal enough. All except the face. That’s not normal at all. Because where the mouth and the eyes and the nose should be, there’s nothing. No features. And the more I stare at that emptiness, the more it scares me.
I flip the notebook closed.
“We don’t know what that one means, either,” Sera says, and she shoots another look at her brother. “But Manman thinks she does.”
“What does she say?” I hand the sketchbook back to Sera. I don’t want to hold it anymore.
“Étranger,” Sera tells me. “A stranger. Someone we don’t know.”
Fifty or so people live in the little houses that dot the boardwalk. That many again, roughly, out in the swamps nearby.
And I know every single one by sight. By name, too. And they all know me. There are no strangers here.
Not in La Cachette.
Delphine yells something in our direction. A Creole word. And the twins stand up. So I stand up, too. “We have to go,” Sera says.
“Thanks for sharing these with me,” I tell them.
Sera studies me for a second, then she asks, “You really don’t feel her at all?” The question throws me for a loop. I’m not ready to tell them about those flashes I’ve been having, so I shake my head. The twins stare at me w
ith two identical sets of amber-colored eyes.
“Your mama had deep power,” Sera starts. “Manman says—”
Delphine yells at them again. “Asteur!” And that word I know. It means now.
Sera yells back that they’re coming, then Sander hugs me goodbye and Sera leans close to whisper in my ear. “There’s bound to be some magic in you, Grey. You need to know that.”
Then the two of them hurry across to the dock and into the boat. That leaves me staring at the drawing in my hand and wondering what Sera meant. About my mother.
And about me.
Honey calls me in for dinner, so I fold up the sketch and slip it into my back pocket. She’s made my favorite. Fried catfish with dirty rice. Homemade pralines for dessert. Sweet-N-Low sits between our chairs, drooling in a puddle and hoping someone will drop something. And it all tastes like heaven, but I can’t enjoy the feast. Because I keep thinking about that big black trunk.
As soon as I help Honey clear the plates, I make an excuse to get away. It’s starting to get dark when I slip out the kitchen door and follow the short bit of boardwalk that leads to the little storage shed out back. It’s low tide, and I can smell the sickly sweet odor of exposed mud and rot.
The door to the shed is never locked—none of the doors in La Cachette are ever locked—so it opens right up when I turn the knob. There’s a bare light bulb in the ceiling, but when I pull the string, nothing happens. It must be burned out. I should’ve grabbed a flashlight. The sun isn’t all the way down yet, but there are no windows in the shed, so that just leaves the last of the gray light coming in the open door to see by.
I push my way through the junk and the cobwebs toward the back of the shed. The light is fading fast, and I can barely make out the writing on the cardboard boxes stacked shoulder high.
christmas decorations
camping gear
ouija boards
You know. The kind of stuff everybody keeps in storage.
I move the boxes one by one until I can see behind them, to the spot where the trunk should be. And I’m not surprised when it isn’t there.
“You huntin’ somethin’?” A deep voice echoes in the almost-dark just as a shape moves into the open doorway, blocking out the dying light.
I whirl around fast, knocking over one of the boxes and sending Christmas ornaments spilling across the dusty floor.
The shape in the doorway is huge and silhouetted against that little bit of light from outside, so I can’t make out any facial features. There’s just an empty nothingness.
Étranger. The stranger.
I take a step backward, pressing myself into the boxes behind me. Then there’s a flash of light. The smell of sulfur. A glimpse of dark red hair.
Case holds the lit match up near his face, and the featureless monster disappears.
He takes a step toward me, and that’s when I notice what he’s holding in one hand. It’s a long pole with four barbed prongs on the end. Sharp. Deadly. A frog gig. They’re illegal, but some people down here still use them for hunting in the shallows.
“Heard you was home,” he says. Then he looks around the shed and repeats his question. “Lookin’ for somethin’?” His eyes sweep the floor, searching the shadowy corners.
“No,” I lie. “Just putting something away. For Honey.” I bend down and scoop up the scattered ornaments. I don’t know why my hands are shaking.
Case is my friend.
The match goes out, and we’re left in the dark again.
“Case,” I say, and I try to make my voice sound even. Calm. But he doesn’t let me finish.
“I didn’t do it, Grey. Whatever dey told you I done—whatever Hart said—I never laid a goddamn hand on Elora.” There’s something hurt in his voice. Something real. Something that reminds me I’ve known Case my whole life. “Shit. I know ya know dat.” I hear his Cajun accent bleeding through. Rough as he can be, Case always sounds like music when he talks. There’s a long pause, then, “Jesus, Grey. I loved ’er.”
“She loved you, too.”
Dammit.
I correct myself. “She loves you, too.”
“Bullshit.” Case shakes his head and leans against the doorframe. “Don’t play dat game, Grey.”
“What do you mean?”
He laughs, but it’s the kind of laugh that’s splintered around the edges. Like a thing that’s been dropped. Or stepped on. “Elora was in love, yeah, but it sure as shit wadn’t wit’ me.”
“Who?” It’s the only word I can choke out.
Case strikes another match, and for a second I see his eyes. They’re green, like mine, but in the match’s orange light, they glow hard and bright like the night shine of some nocturnal animal.
“No clue,” he says. “I figured if anybody was to know, it’d most likely be you.”
But I don’t have any idea, and right now, the fact that Elora might finally have been in love—really in love—and I didn’t know anything about it is just one more deep wound.
“How do you know there was somebody else?” I ask, and Case laughs again. Then he turns his head to spit behind him into the mud.
“Didn’t take a fuckin’ psychic to see it. Trust me.”
Suddenly I’m thinking back to last summer. How Elora started pushing me away, almost as soon as I got here. I was suffocating her, she said. She needed some space. Time alone. Things she’d never wanted before. At least, not from me. And I’d been angry. Hurt and ugly. So I’d latched on harder—refused to give her what she needed—instead of taking the time to figure out what might really be going on with her.
What if she’d been hiding a secret romance?
“I don’t know anything,” I tell Case. He blows out the last match, and darkness sweeps over his face again. “I need to get back inside. Honey’s waiting for me.”
Case steps out of the doorway, and I move to squeeze past him. But just as I’m about to step out onto the boardwalk, he grabs me by the arm and jerks me back. Hard. He moves like lightning, raising the frog gig and bringing it down with a stabbing motion in front of my feet. I gasp and try to pull away, but when Case lifts the gig, there’s just enough light to see a thick black snake squirming on the end of it.
“Whoa dere,” he says. “That’s a cottonmouth, sure.” And I recoil like I’ve been bitten. “Gotta be careful pokin’ round out here in da dark.” His voice is thick and slow as bayou mud. “Dat sucka nearly got ya.” Case shakes the dying snake off the gig into the long grass beside the boardwalk. “Careful where ya steppin’, chere.”
Chere. Pronounced like sha. It’s a Cajun word. A term of endearment. Like darlin’. Sweetie. Sugar pie. Nobody ever calls me “chere” in Arkansas. Only in La Cachette, and usually it makes me smile.
But not tonight.
“T-thanks,” I stammer. My heart is beating ninety miles an hour. I look back down at the boardwalk, and I can make out a trail of ooze and mud standing out against the fresh white paint. Marking the places where the snake has touched.
When I look back up, Case has vanished into the dark. Silently. Like he came.
I follow the boardwalk around the side of the house to sit on the front steps again. I can’t stop shaking, and I don’t want Honey to see me like this.
Across from me, on the dock, I catch another glimpse of dark red hair. Seems like Case didn’t go far. Now I’m more angry than scared. What gives him the right to come skulking around here trying to freak me out? It’s an asshole move.
“I know you’re over there,” I call out. The safety of the well-lit front steps is making me brave. “You planning on staying out here all night?”
Nobody calls back, but someone steps out from the shadows and into the light.
Dark red hair. But not Case.
It’s Wrynn, Case’s little sister.
Wrynn is nin
e, but she seems way younger. Scrawny and bug-eyed, she always looks startled. Like life has taken her by surprise.
“Comment ça va, Grey?” she says. How’s it going? A question that doesn’t need answering. She gives me a little wave with one hand. I wave back, and she hurries over to sit beside me on the steps. Like I invited her for tea.
Wrynn’s barefoot. She has on cutoff shorts and a ratty old camouflage T-shirt, probably a hand-me-down from one of her brothers. Her hair spills across her shoulders and down her back.
“I was catchin’ lightnin’ bugs,” she tells me, and she holds up a glowing jelly jar.
“Be careful running around out here without shoes on,” I warn her. “Case killed a cottonmouth out behind the house just now.”
Wrynn gives me a funny little smile.
“Case is out with Daddy. Huntin’ frogs with Ronnie and Odin way over at Lapman Pond. Won’t be back till mornin’.”
The fear I felt in the shed pricks at me again, and goose bumps pop up on the backs of my arms.
Case’s gift is bilocation. The ability to physically exist in two places at once. The ancient Greeks talked about it. And some of the Catholic saints were supposed to have been able to do it, too. It’s documented and everything.
Here in La Cachette, everybody knows that Case can do it. His grand-père—his daddy’s daddy—had the very same talent, they say. Elora used to swear she’d experienced it firsthand. She’d know for sure Case was at home asleep, but then she’d come sneaking out of a late-night party up in Kinter—always with some boy—and there’d be Case. Standing in the driveway. Pissed as the devil and real as anything.
It’s enough to make my head spin.
“Grey?” Wrynn’s voice is small and sad.
“Yeah?”
“You miss Elora?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “I miss her a whole lot.”
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 5
