Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou (21 page)

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s not ‘nothing.’ What’s that smirk for?”

“Nothing. You just sound a little … jealous.”

I stopped walking. He noticed and stopped, too. “What is it?” he asked.

I looked around and started sniffing the air. “You smell that?”

He sniffed, too, and looked around, alarmed. “What?”

“You don’t smell that?”

“Smell what?!”

“The
ego
coming off of you!”

He started walking again. “C’mon, Leigh,” he said, very annoyed. I followed, victorious with my comeback. “Sulfur has something to do with it. I can feel it,” he murmured.

“Well, what else has to do with sulfur, besides brimstone?”

He laughed. “Sulphur, Louisiana.”

I stopped again. “Oh, my God!”

“I’m not falling for that again, Leigh.”

“No! When I drove back here from Cali, I stopped to spend the night in Lake Charles, on the Sulphur side. There was—I don’t know. There was this house. I had forgotten all about it. I dismissed it because it was crazy at the time. It’s still crazy. I—”

“What? What was it?”

“I had to take some side roads because there was so much traffic on I-10 because of the construction they were doing. Anyway, I went down one road and kind of got lost. I wound up on this dead end road that led to this old house with a small barn behind it. And … oh, God. Those weren’t rabbit cages. They were dove coops.”

“Do you remember the address?”

“You kidding? I don’t even remember the name of the road. I don’t even think it had a name.”

“Do you think you could find it again? Maybe if we looked at a map?”

“I don’t know. I was pretty lost.”

“Feel like taking a road trip?”

I hesitated, “You know, I could have been imagining—”

“What if it was real? What you felt—what you saw? Isn’t it worth it to find out who killed your family? Isn’t it worth it to protect Lyla?”

I nodded in defeat. “Let me call Clothilde and tell her I’ll be late for dinner.”

11

Identity

J
esus, that woman needs a cell phone!” I said, as Lucas and I made our way to Sulphur.

“Try her again later.”

“That was the third time I’ve tried.” I huffed and put my phone back in my pocket. We were on I-10 West, past Lake Charles.

“What was the exit you took?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I see it. It’s up ahead. You went right when you got off?”

“Yeah. Well, left from my direction, but yeah, take a right.” He took the right off of twenty-three, and we drove for several miles down a back road, and then turned right on another road and then a left, according to my memory. He had given me a map, and I was studying it, trying to remember which roads I took to wind up at the creepy, forgotten house.

The sun had set, but, as always with summer, there was plenty of light left. The roads were dry. Apparently the rain had skipped this part of Louisiana. “Okay,” I said after a few minutes. “Take another right up here, at Junction Thirteen.” We turned right, and I stared out the window, trying to remember that day, looking for any landmarks, but seeing nothing but a cotton field on one side and a sugar cane field on the other.

“Anything look familiar?”

“All of it and none of it,” I said, frustrated.

“That’s okay. Take your time.”

We passed up a small road on the left. I looked back at the map but couldn’t find the road anywhere on it. “Wait! Go back.” He stopped the truck and turned around. “Go slow.” He dropped down to twenty, and I peered out the window, looking for the narrow opening. “There it is!” He stopped the truck.

“You took that road? You sure?”

“Yes. But it’s not on the map.”

He took the map from me and looked it up and down. “Why in the hell would you take that road north, instead of continuing east like you were?”

“Because, smartass, I didn’t know I was going east!”

“Okay, okay. Calm down.” He handed me the map and turned right onto the single lane road and, soon, we came to a crossroads.

“Okay, stop,” I said. “I took a left here.” Lucas slowly shook his head. “Stop it! I told you I didn’t have a map on me at the time.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked over at me, and I did my best to show him how hurt and angry I was. “Really. I’m sorry. If this turns out to be what we’re looking for, well maybe it was a good thing you got lost out here.”

I crossed my arms and pouted some more as he turned left onto the potholed road, which eventually became a gravel road, which turned into a dirt road, filled with trenches. Here, he dropped down to seven miles-per-hour. I was starting to get a little car sick from all the bumps, but I didn’t complain.

“You were right. I don’t see any address here, not even a mailbox. And there’s nothing on the map at all,” he said, as we pulled up to the clearing where the house was. As soon as the house came into view, with the old rotted barn behind it and the dove coops, my stomach sank, and I wanted nothing more than to get away from it all. He drove closer to the house and parked there. He got out, but I hesitated. “You coming?” I nodded and got out, all the while watching the shadows on the side of the barn for any sudden movements.

Lucas walked up to the house, examined the dilapidated exterior, then walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer, but I could have told him that. He knocked again. Still nothing. “Hello!” he called out. “Police! Anyone home? I just have a few questions.” He peered into the window of the one-story structure.

“No one lives here,” I said. “Look at it! Everything’s gone to waste. The most you’ll get are squatters and crack dealers, but even they wouldn’t set up shop here. Nobody’s that crazy or desperate.” He ignored me and tried the door. It was unlocked. He looked at me and motioned for me to stay back. I was more than happy to oblige.

He pulled out his gun, did his cop thing and cautiously entered the dwelling. I leaned against the truck with my arms folded, chilly despite the early evening humidity. I turned my gaze to the barn, again seeing the rusted equipment in its dark womb. I turned away, looking at the dove coops, which didn’t seem all that scary, compared to the rest of the place. I went over to them, keeping one eye on the entrance to the barn at all times.

There were individual cages stacked up in rows and columns. It was no wonder I confused them for rabbit cages from far away. But, seeing the white feathers still left behind in between the wire links, I was sure it was doves.
Could have been pigeons
, I told myself. But deep down, I knew what it really was.

“Leigh!” Lucas called from the door frame of the house. He didn’t sound alarmed.

I jerked my head up and saw him waving me over. “What?” I asked as I approached him.

“Come help me go through some of this stuff.” I hesitated. “I promise,” he assured me, “nothing that scary in here.” He gently took my hand and led me into the house.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of dust. The second thing I noticed was the clutter. There was junk everywhere. “Watch your step,” he warned. There were boxes and crates, old cracked furniture, piles of newspapers and magazines. I glanced at one newspaper on the top of one stack. The date was November 2, 1989. Besides the date, it was clear to see no one had lived here for a very long time. We made our way to the kitchen. The floor was pretty clear here, but the table was just as messy as the living room. On top of the mess was a drawer. Lucas let go of my hand and made a clearing on the table. Then he dumped out the contents of the drawer onto the table top. “Help me go through this stuff.”

“What is it?”

“Looks like pictures and personal documents. I’m looking for a name. I want to know who owns this place. Or who
did
own it.”

I started going through the pile with him, sorting pictures and receipts and discarding old batteries and ink pens and paperclips. The pictures were old, most of them black and white. One showed a man and woman with a boy of about six, posing, but not smiling. Another showed the boy, older, possibly eleven, with a deer he had killed. The way he grinned over the dead animal made me uneasy. It was the look in his eyes, like he had found his calling. I flipped the picture over, but there was nothing written there. Nor was there anything on the back of the other picture. I picked up another one, this one of the boy as a young man entering the Army, posing with some fellow soldiers. He looked very serious, but his friends all smiled. Nothing written there, either. “There are no names on any of these.”

“These either,” said Lucas. He put down a small pile of photos on a short stack of newspapers. I scooped them up and started flipping through them.

“Isn’t it strange that no one is smiling in any of these? The only one I saw smiling was the boy after he killed a deer. But all the rest—hey, look at this.” I picked up the newspaper that was under the pictures.

“What?”

“It’s that boy, the one who killed the deer.” It was a small picture at the bottom of the page. In it, the boy was standing next to some dove coops with doves in them. The caption read:
Walter Savoy, 13, of Sulphur, with his prize-winning doves. Annual 4-H show, 1943.
“It’s him. It has to be!”

“Hang onto that paper.” He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Hey, it’s Lucas,” he told the person on the other end. “Can you look up a name for me? Walter Savoy … Okay.” He cupped the phone with one hand. “Roger’s looking it up now,” he whispered to me.

While we waited, I went through some more photos. It seemed to be a steady progression of the boy’s life into adulthood until the pictures stopped when he looked to be in his thirties. “I don’t understand. Where are the pics of him as the old man I’ve been seeing?”

Lucas politely shushed me and went back to the phone. “Yeah. Whatcha got?” I saw him nodding and concentrating. While he and Roger conversed, I searched through the junk from the drawer and came across another picture. This one was of him, as the old man, standing in a barn. He was grinning the same way he had as a boy when he killed the deer. Beside him, hanging on a nail over a wooden workbench, was a locket with an intricate rose detail inlayed in gold. I threw down the picture and sprinted towards the barn. “Leigh! Wait!” was the last thing I heard before I made my way out of the cluttered living room and out the front door.

I ran into the dark, rotted barn and had to give my eyes a second to adjust. Once they did, I scanned the four walls, but it was still difficult to see. I stepped further in, walking slowly towards the back wall. The barn was bigger than I thought. I passed under the loft, and the smell of rotted hay was sickening. I rounded a corner and there, against the back wall, with scant light reflecting off of it, was my mother’s locket.

I slowly approached it, fear taking over my every move. My heart beat faster, and I fought to take any more than shallow breaths. It was too quiet in there, and anything could hear me breathing. I made it to the wall and carefully, gently, brushed away a cobweb blocking the workbench and retrieved the locket. With shaking hands, I opened it and saw the tiny pictures of my parents, young and full of life, inside.

I closed it and held it to my chest, my eyes watering, and took a step back. I turned around, and what I saw made me want to scream, but no sound came out of my throat. On the right, written on the adjacent wall, were the words,
and the sorcerers and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.
I recognized the words instantly as the same ones Dr. Deville quoted from the
Book of Revelation
. They looked like they were written in blood at one time. It wasn’t the words that made me want to scream in terror, but the two bodies that hung from the beams of the loft in front of me, the flesh almost completely gone from their bodies. They had been there a very, very long time. One was a man, the other a woman, and it was hard to tell, but they appeared to have been elderly at the time of their deaths. They had wasted away to practically nothing and their clothing had mostly slipped off their bodies. Their shoes were on the ground beneath them, long ago fallen from their shriveled feet. I recognized the woman’s dress. It was the same one the boy’s mother wore in one of the pictures.

“Oh, my God.” Lucas’s voice made me jump, and I turned to him, tears in my eyes. He hugged me and pulled out his phone again.