A Twisted Ladder (55 page)

THEY RECOVERED ANITA’S BODY
the next day. But a week later, after a Thanksgiving spent with Ethan and his family, Daddy still hadn’t appeared. Nor had Severin. Madeleine had no idea what kept Severin away, but she guessed it helped to avoid stress or agitation. Easier said than done. Zenon was still at large, and reporters had been leaving lots of messages. Madeleine honored the sheriff’s request to keep quiet until the authorities could bring him into custody. Because Anita had disappeared in Texas and her body had been found in Louisiana, the FBI had gotten involved, and so Madeleine had to retell her story to their investigators and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Apparently, crossing state lines during a crime makes it a federal issue.

Madeleine had been grateful for the time off over Thanksgiving. The idea of working left her exhausted. She’d flatly refused to self-diagnose. Couldn’t connect her scientific mind to what she’d experienced.

She just wanted to talk to her father. She had to ask him about the briar. She wondered how long she could keep her secret before it swallowed her alive.

HAHNVILLE, 1922

T
O KEEP THE NONGAMBLING
patrons interested in buying drinks, Chloe had allowed some of the streetwalkers to come into the warehouse and mingle with the crowd. They danced the Charleston in their underclothes and entertained customers in the back room, and they paid a kickback based on the tips they earned.

With money springing from every corner of the warehouse on Magazine Street, worries over losing Terrefleurs had become little more than a lark. If the crop produced not a single sprig of cane next season it wouldn’t matter. Terrefleurs now provided a front for the New Orleans operations. If anyone were to ask, the function of the warehouse was to store and distribute cane; an odd explanation in that Terrefleurs was much closer to the sugar refineries than was Magazine Street, but an explanation nonetheless.

Chloe’s trips to Terrefleurs had become increasingly rare. Between the country heat and the needs of the children and plantation, Terrefleurs left Chloe feeling like a catfish gasping in the mud. She counted each moment before she could return to New Orleans.

As for Jacob’s part, he seemed to thrill at perusing New Orleans with Chloe. As if he relished the fact that he and Chloe were a spectacle in New Orleans, and people looked upon them with disdain. They did not like to see a white man and a black woman together, particularly among the gentler class, even if Jacob acted merely as a chaperone.

Jacob proclaimed to have had enough of the morality movement that had begun to seize the nation, nurturing laws such as the Volstead Act, and breeding activists such as the Ku Klux Klan who held public whippings for adulterers and gamblers. Ever since the day Rémi and Chloe wed, Jacob seemed to have undergone a transformation. He spent much of his time at Chloe’s warehouse and in other speakeasies throughout town, countering the morality movement, and preferring to champion the sinner’s cause—a much more exciting cause.

BAYOU BLACK, 2009

M
ADELEINE LAY GAZING AT
Severin. Ethan was sleeping, his breathing even, his body warm. His hand rested over Madeleine’s hip. When they’d made love she’d been able to forget. She’d thrown herself into the sensations of her body and had managed to escape the dread that had been closing in on her. But afterward, even though she’d exhausted her body, her mind had seemed to rebound, and it had turned back to that dread. Worries that Zenon would never be found. That he’d kill again. Sometime during the spin of those worries Severin had stolen back into her awareness.

Now, the little girl was standing in the doorway, staring. With her came a deepening of shadow. A stir beyond the corners.

Please go away
, Madeleine thought.

Severin said, “You could not send me away so easily, verily. No more than you could send away your bones.”

But what are you?

“I am you and you are we.”

Madeleine squeezed her eyes shut. No use. She saw Severin even more clearly through closed eyes: the detail of her nakedness, gray and grimy, and the tunnels of thorns that waited.

Severin spoke again, but when she did she was muttering in Madeleine’s own voice. A perfect facsimile. “Even if they catch him and bring him in, what’ll they say when they find out we’re crazy?”

Madeleine opened her eyes.

Severin was stepping toward her. She switched back to her own child’s voice as if to argue back. “Not a shade of worry in that! He will not answer for it. Who would come to find him where he hides? He understands the ways of the bramble!”

And faster in Madeleine’s voice: “He’ll kill again, I just know it!”

Shooting back in her own voice: “So he will! He begins with us now, so surely! He plans our death even as we wallow!”

HUSH!
The thought flew from Madeleine’s mind with near-tangible fabric.

Severin went quiet. But only for a moment.

Her eyes brightened and she renewed her argument, but this time she spoke with both voices simultaneously, louder and with mounting hysteria.

Madeleine stumbled from the bed.

Ethan sat up. “What’s wrong?”

But Severin was still shouting in two voices at once, and Madeleine could only look at him, blinking. His words seemed so lost behind Severin’s chaos. He had no idea what was happening and she felt sick and distant from him. And even as a sense of estrangement swept her, Severin added new threads to her arguments.

—What will Ethan say when he finds out . . .

—
Zenon thinks to come for us and send you through . . .

—
There’s no way I can hang onto
. . .

—
He will leave not nary a trace, not nary
. . .

—
Certain to find the tastes to our liking if only . . .

Madeleine whispered to Ethan, though she could barely focus on him. He was a distant ghost in the bramble now. But she pretended he was right there in front of her.

“It’s fine, Ethan,” she said, and she couldn’t even hear her own voice. “I’m going to get some water. Go back to sleep.”

She pulled on her bathrobe. It still smelled like smoke after many washings. She walked carefully toward the door, half-blind from the bramble that now choked the bedroom, hoping that Ethan was going back to sleep. Severin crawled along above her head and maintained the vigil. Other creatures shifted in there too.

Madeleine groped her way out into the flat. She saw tunnels of twisting vines across the walls and ceiling. The television and the couch were there. She looked where the kitchenette ought to be but couldn’t see it. She reached instead for the front door and stepped outside.

Fresh air. She switched the automatic mechanism so that she could not lock herself out, and sat down on the landing. A distant sound of night birds. She pressed her mind toward those sounds, listening past Severin’s cacophony, stubborn. Severin raged on a little but then seemed to tire, and she quieted. The bramble settled too. It lay still against the neighboring buildings on Magazine.

“All right,” Madeleine said aloud to the little girl. “Is it true that Zenon wants to kill us? I mean me?”

“Yes, so surely. He knows the practice to send the living through to the other side. You must gain this skill too and learn—”

“Severin. Listen to me. Can you tell me where he is?”

“Ah! He lies in the briar!”

Madeleine shook her head. “No. In the real world. The physical world. Can you tell me where he’s hiding?”

Severin grinned. “A little trip we take, across the thorns a little some. We shall see his hiding hole.”

HAHNVILLE, 1926

W
HEN SHE HEARD TATIE
Bernadette bustle out of the rear pantry, Marie-Rose pushed open the small door that concealed her within the cupboard. She peeped through the narrow crack and could see Tatie’s heavy form waddle out toward the steps to the cellar. She would now be busy bringing elderberries to the kitchen house for making jam, but Rose still had to be mindful of her brothers. If either of the twins learned of the secret niche, well, it would no longer be a secret.