Carolina Conjuring

by Alison Claire

  Carolina Conjuring

  Book Three

  Alison Claire

  Copyright © 2019 by Alison Claire

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Contents

  1. Emma

  2. Ezekiel… Then.

  3. Briar

  4. Emma

  5. Ella Mae Dixon and Ezekiel Indigo

  6. Briar

  7. Emma

  8. 3000 Years Ago

  9. Briar

  10. Emma

  11. Briar

  12. Emma

  13. Briar

  14. Emma

  15. Briar

  16. Emma

  17. Briar

  18. Emma

  19. Briar

  20. Emma

  21. Ezekiel

  22. Briar

  23. Emma

  24. Briar

  25. Emma

  26. Briar

  27. Emma

  28. Ezekiel

  29. Briar

  30. Emma

  31. Briar

  32. Emma

  33. Briar

  34. Emma

  35. Briar

  36. Emma

  37. Briar

  1 Emma

  My only experience with hail had been from reading about it. And it hadn’t been anything like the event I was witnessing now.

  The hailstones angrily pounded the ground around us. They hit with such force— as if an angry god were hurling them down from the clouds.

  Wind whipped through the trees, and although it was mid-afternoon, the heavy cloud cover made it look like dusk.

  Standing in a crumbling cemetery in a forgotten corner of Short Owl Island, surrounded by my extended family of Belles, including Dr. Ibis, Chantelle, Fiona, my twin Briar, Virginia, Josephine, and Calista, along with a handful of others I didn’t recognize— we attended the funeral service for Walter Evans.

  Virginia’s driver and friend, Walter had been the final victim of Zillah March’s long, murderous life; an unfortunate innocent caught in the war into which I’d found myself recently thrown as well.

  On a sunny afternoon, we’d driven out to Edisto Island, where we parked near a pier jutting out into St. Pierre Creek.

  Virginia and Calista led the way to a long, wooden boat bobbing in the water.

  Calista levitated the casket from the back of the Marshall’s Funeral Home hearse, driven by a man who seemed not at all surprised by what he was seeing.

  He remained with the vehicles while the rest of us boarded the boat, which Calista propelled silently out into the channel and across to the wild island.

  An old man met us at the shore of Short Owl Island with a wagon drawn by two horses, the kind you’d expect to take for a Halloween hayride. He, like the hearse driver, didn’t seem to find it at all unusual that the casket floated in the air at the whim of a slender girl who looked, and dressed, like the envy of supermodels everywhere.

  The casket containing Walter’s remains sat on a cart towed behind the wagon.

  We were quite a group. Virginia wore a black veil and flowing black dress that looked more suited for a state funeral than a burial among the kudzu and marshland in which we found ourselves.

  No one in the somber group spoke, the only sounds came from the snorting horses and the soft cooing of a baby held in the arms of a woman who sat across from Briar and me in the wagon, next to Aleta. She’d been introduced as Lendora, Walter’s grand-niece. She was a slight wisp of a girl, with large, dark eyes. Her baby was named Tyson. Tyson Walter.

  After a short, bumpy ride down a dirt road, we arrived at the ramshackle graveyard. Remnants of a wrought-iron fence appeared here and there around the cemetery. Scattered in haphazard fashion were two dozen marked graves, with many of the headstones in pieces or completely overgrown.

  Nailed to a live oak next to the gate hung a piece of wood with an open blue hand painted on it. Where the palm should have been sat instead a large, red eye.

  Briar made nervous eye contact with me as we passed the eerie sign.

  We wound between gravesites to reach Walter’s plot, and the only evidence that any humans had visited these graves in the past, oh, two centuries were coins stacked atop a few of the headstones.

  As if on cue, Aleta peeled away from our precession and set two silver dollars on the remains of a grave marker off to the side.

  When she noticed that I was watching her, she spoke directly into my mind.

  That grave belongs to a relative of mine. She’s been keeping me up at night, wanting to talk. I’ve paid her to leave me be for a while, so I can catch up on my sleep.

  She “said” it matter-of-factly, like paying ghosts was something everybody did.

  Not ghosts, silly, spirits. The spirits of your ancestors follow each of us around. You, too. You just have to know how to listen to them. But some of them can be awfully chatty, and you may wish you didn’t know how. Ghosts are altogether different.

  Improbably, a freshly-dug burial plot sat in the far corner, and we reached it as Aleta and I concluded our “conversation,” the casket traveling through the air behind us, courtesy of Calista.

  Virginia and Fiona embraced next to the open grave and Fiona wiped a tear from her own cheek. Dr. Ibis playfully scolded her. “No crying in the graveyard, child, you’ll grieve the spirit.” Fiona nodded and sniffled, holding back the tears.

  Chantelle, the incomparable chef who prepared our delicious meals, prayed as she swayed slowly from side to side. An older man who’d accompanied Lendora comforted her.

  Dr. Ibis spoke quietly with Aleta, and Josephine appeared suddenly in front of me, pressing her face into my shoulder. “I hate this so much,” she said as I wrapped my arms around her and Briar reached across to rub her back.

  Calista looked unaffected, or perhaps lost in concentration, the casket hovering above the fresh hole in the ground.

  It was then that the sky darkened, and the wind picked up, furiously bending the trees around us.

  Trees which, incidentally, were filled with birds. Ravens, owls, vultures, and an assortment of feathered creatures who I was sure would never be so brazen to perch near so many people, and certainly not together, as some of them were natural predator and prey. But— asI was coming to terms with since arriving in Charleston— my idea of the “natural order” of things bore little resemblance to the reality in which the Belles dwelt.

  “A murder of crows,” Briar whispered to me. “Ironic and appropriate, no?”

  “A parliament of owls,” I countered. “And a committee of vultures. And yes, sadly, ironically, appropriate.”

  Dr. Ibis spoke to the assemblage and Calista gently lowered Walter to his final resting place. It was then that the hail started to fall. The air seemed charged with electricity.

  What I assumed was Calista’s powers shielded us from the icy stones, as they’d hit an invisible barrier a few feet above us and slide harmlessly to the ground.

  Dr. Ibis finished his remarks and Virginia stepped to the head of the grave. She gracefully removed one of her silk gloves, bent at the knees and lowered herself to the ground, where she picked up a handful of dirt.

  She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying, then inhaled deeply and held the breath.

  Josephine approached, offering her unique cure for emotional ailments, but Virginia raised a hand to politely rebuff the sweetest Belle.

  “Thank you, Josephine, but no, I need
to feel every bit of this pain.”

  Josephine nodded and retreated to her spot next to Briar.

  “As long as many of us have lived, we’ve experienced tragedy, both personal and on a grand scale,” Virginia said softly. “And we understand that this life, for most, is ephemeral. But losing someone like Walter is still the worst kind of pain. A man so selfless and honest, so loving and kind, diminishes each of us. We wish him a swift and easy journey to whatever treasures await him on the other side.”

  Dr. Ibis shuffled over and hugged Virginia, who walked over and stood next to Calista.

  Lendora stepped forward, holding tiny Tyson Walter in her arms.

  Dr. Ibis walked to the other side of the open grave, and after giving Walter’s grand-niece a reassuring nod, she carefully passed her infant son across the casket.

  As they completed the handoff, Briar grabbed my hand and squeezed. I held my breath until Dr. Ibis held the baby in his arms, cradling and rocking him.

  My first, fascinating experience with a Gullah funeral left me with a pile of questions I hoped I’d remember to ask Aleta the next time we had a quiet moment.

  But above all, I marveled at the softball-sized hail that littered the ground all over the island.

  Especially considering the blue sky I could see back over the mainland and skyline of Charleston herself.

  2 Ezekiel… Then.

  Under the light of a full moon, Ezekiel buried his brother— by himself, in a grave he’d dug with his bare hands, over the course of two mostly sleepless nights.

  He finished the job during a tempest that included the worst hailstorm in the history of Charleston, according to The Charleston Courier.

  Slaves on the Walker Plantation had experienced death before, whether due to overwork, malnutrition, disease, or just straightforward murder, usually at the hands of John Walker Jr. and they knew the score.

  Tools were to be employed for farm work only. The thought of a shovel, pickaxe, or hoe being damaged or broken while burying what John Walker Jr. considered livestock wasn’t something that was ever going to happen. Likewise, no daylight hours could be wasted on something as trivial as a funeral for a slave, even a father, mother, sister, or, in this case, beloved brother.

  The night watchman, known to the slaves as “Mister Hack,” was at least decent enough to allow something resembling a Christian burial; if it were up to John Walker Jr., bodies of deceased slaves would be burned.

  Cremation was inconceivable to the Gullah people of the barrier islands, so they were grateful for the small mercy shown by the night guard.

  With Mister Hack at some distance, astride a horse and armed with a pair of pistols and a bullwhip, Ezekiel walked through the darkness toward the tree where his brother’s lifeless body still swung.

  He’d considered cutting Emanuel down the previous evening, but he realized he’d only invite scavengers by leaving the body on the ground for the twenty-four more hours it would take him to complete his task.

  As heartbreaking as it was to watch the body swaying in the breeze from the branch while work continued the next day as if nothing had happened, it was preferable to letting the animals have an easy meal. He’d done his best to scare the vultures away throughout the day as they roosted on nearby branches to investigate the stench of death.

  The night after Emanuel died, Ezekiel trudged out to the woods, found a good spot, and began to dig. He cleared a patch of dirt, then used sticks and sharp rocks to get the hole going.

  After several sweaty hours, his back aching and fingers bleeding, he returned home to get a small bit of rest before the rooster signaled work was to begin anew in the fields.

  As he approached the tree on the second night, the wind began to whip through the branches and rain began to pelt the ground.

  Ezekiel ignored it.

  Mister Hack pulled his collar up against the wind and tugged his hat down tighter on his head, lest the wind carry it off.

  “Crazy nigger,” he muttered under his breath as he watched Ezekiel brave what was quickly becoming a maelstrom.

  Lightning flashed angrily in the sky, and a crack echoed across the field as one of the older trees on the edge of the woods, close to where Emanuel swung, succumbed to the wind and crashed to the ground.

  “Hellfire and tarnation!” Mister Hack exclaimed. He could only imagine how furious John Walker Jr. would be at the time it would take to remove such a massive trunk from the arable land.

  Ezekiel’s focus was such that neither the impact of the tree, nor the hail and rain pounding down around him, distracted him in the least.

  He marched onward and arrived at the base of the tree, improbably as it was, bone dry but for perspiration.

  Neither the rain nor the hail had touched him, although he hadn’t noticed his apparently impossible good fortune at dodging everything the clouds above had thrown at him.

  Mister Hack, struggling to keep his horse from bolting to the barn to take cover, was certain that his eyes were playing tricks on him. Or, maybe he’d just had too much rum before he started his patrol.

  To his amazement, he’d watched, as best he could through the darkness and across the distance, hailstones and sheets of rain divert before ever touching Ezekiel.

  To steady his nerves, Mister Hack withdrew the flask from his saddlebag and felt the burn as the Barbadian rum coated his throat.

  Old Man Walker was a teetotaler, and expected the same of those in his employ, but Junior sent Mister Hack into Charleston regularly for spirits.

  Ezekiel stared up at his brother’s body and shook. His fists clenched and tears streaming down his face, he swore revenge on the Walkers and every other evil bastard who’d played any part in the lynching of Emanuel. Standing by and doing nothing while it happened was just as bad as slipping on the noose, in Ezekiel’s opinion.

  Ezekiel could “hear” the deep, German-accented voice of Mister Hack in his mind, across the field. The vile N-word playing ad nauseum as it seemed to from all the white folks on the plantation.

  Despite arms and legs made heavy by a heart that felt like an anvil in his chest, Ezekiel scaled the tree, just as his sister, Aleta, and Annabel Walker had two days before.

  Shimmying out onto the branch, Ezekiel worked the knot loose. He’d have preferred someone standing on the ground to help lower his brother gently, but he was alone and would do the best he could.

  He still had work to do on the grave, but he knew how painful the digging had been the previous night, and he feared he’d lack the strength to get his brother down if he waited until he was finished. He also knew that being able to see and touch Emanuel would give him all the inspiration he needed to complete his task.

  Awkwardly straddling the branch, Ezekiel took the rope firmly in his right hand with all his might, straining to support the weight at the end of the rope without falling to the ground himself.

  When it came free, he braced himself and dug his bare feet painfully into the rough bark.

  Just then, something magical happened.

  Emanuel not only didn’t pull Ezekiel out of the tree with him, he didn’t fall at all.

  The body hovered in the air, and in disbelief Ezekiel let go of the rope. It spooled on the wet ground below the brothers, but Emanuel stayed right where he was, in limbo betwixt branch and ground.

  “Lawd Gawd!” Ezekiel exclaimed. His unblinking eyes widened as he stared at his brother’s body.

  Taking great care not to break whatever spell held his brother aloft, Ezekiel slowly eased his way back to the trunk and down to the ground. His gaze remained locked on Emanuel.

  He crept over to his brother, reaching up to touch his foot. He didn’t know what to expect, but when he made contact, he felt a… connection. Emanuel’s thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams, and entire life experience filled Ezekiel’s mind, and with his brain on temporary overload, he collapsed to the ground and his brother’s corpse crashed to the ground next to him. Ezekiel’s broken concentration also allowe
d the storm in, and he was quickly soaked to the bone, not to mention battered by hailstones.

  He recoiled from Emanuel’s remains in shock, pushing his back up against the tree trunk in a panic. Ezekiel curled into a ball and wept, allowing himself tears for the first time since he watched the macabre dance Emanuel performed as the last bit of life left his body.

  Mister Hack urged his mount across the field and shouted at Ezekiel over the thunder and wind.

  “Either bury him or get back inside, boy! If you get sick out here in this storm, John Junior will take a strap to my back for letting your shiftless ass sit out here getting rained on for no good reason.”

  Ezekiel looked up at the dark-haired man atop the gray horse. All slaves learned early on that defiance would never be tolerated, but Ezekiel’s anger couldn’t be disguised.

  With his face screwed up in disgust, he rose to his feet, eyes locked on Mister Hack’s.

  “Don’t force my hand, boy,” he urged, taking up his whip and letting the business end fall to the ground as he worked his grip on the handle.

  “You ain’t nebbuh gon’ hit nobody ever again,” Ezekiel hissed.

  That whip, and all the others like it that had rent so much flesh from so many on the Walker Plantation, had inspired years of nightmares for Ezekiel.

  No more.

  Mister Hack raised his arm to strike a blow, shouting to be heard. “Damn it boy, I don’t know what’s gotten into your nigger mind, but I promise you I know how to fix it!”

  Instead of slicing through the air and into Ezekiel, however, the whip stopped in mid-air and moved slowly from side, like a cobra under a snake charmer’s spell.