Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou (28 page)

“Lyla!” I called, running toward the next room.

“Leigh! Wait!” Lucas ordered, but I went ahead anyway.

The next room was very dark, but with the light coming in from the kitchen, I was able to make out a bedroom that had a splintered wooden bed frame and a stained mattress stuffed with moss. There, in the corner, was a decayed body, little more than a pile of bones, under a black hat and old blue jeans. The skull rested on a bed of long, white hair.

“We need to burn those!” I said. “Hurry!” I pulled a ratty old blanket off the mattress.

“Lyla!” I called out again. We were quiet. I held my breath, straining to hear. There was no answer. I kneeled down near the body, and Lucas did the same. Together, we put the remains onto the blanket and bundled it up. Lucas carried the blanket and its contents into the kitchen and placed it on the floor. We heard the scream again.

“It’s coming from outside,” I said as I went to turn the knob on the door that led to the porch, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked!”

“Let me try.” He twisted and turned the knob every which way, but it didn’t give. “Back up,” he said, pointing his gun at the lock beneath the knob.

I turned around and gasped. My mother, wraithlike and ethereal, stood before me. “Help Lyla,” she said, her voice little more than a soft breeze through the moss on the Tupelos.

“What is it?” Lucas asked, alarmed.

“My mother.”

“Where?”

“Right in front of us. Don’t you see her?” The door opened before he could answer. I turned to see Ben and Cee Cee on the porch, worried. I turned back to my mother, but she was gone.

“She’s in the smokehouse!” said Cee Cee. “Y’all hurry!”

Lucas carried out the blanket with the body in it and set it down on the porch. The four of us ran out to the back of the cabin and up to the smokehouse. The door was open, waiting for us. I heard a scream again, louder this time. I ran in first, and the door was shut behind me before the others could follow me in. I turned to open the door, but it was locked. I heard Lucas banging on the other side.

“Leigh, get away from the door! I’m going to shoot the lock!” I backed up. He shot at the door. I heard him try to open it, but he couldn’t.

“Aunt Leigh!” I whirled around to see shriveled old meat hanging from panels of rotted wood. There was a table in the center of the room. On it were rusted knives and hooks. Near them was Lyla, strapped down to the table. I ran to her and tried to undo her straps.

“Where is he?” I asked her.

“I don’t know,” she whimpered.

The straps weren’t coming lose. I picked up the nearest sharp object, a rusted knife, to cut them. As soon as I touched it, I had a mental flash of my mother, lying on the floor of the cabin’s kitchen with this very knife in her abdomen. I dropped it as if it were a hot iron branding my palm.

“Aunt Leigh!”

I gathered my composure, picked up the knife and cut her out of the straps. I threw the knife down and helped her off the table. We ran to the door where I could hear Lucas and someone else, possibly Ben, trying to break down the door.

“Get us out of here!” I called to them.

I heard Cee Cee’s muffled voice on the other side. “Wait. Y’all stand back,” she said to them. Then she said something in French, but it was a dialect I didn’t recognize. Certainly not Cajun or Creole or even Parisian. Then the knob slowly turned and the door opened by itself. Lucas’ astonished face matched mine. “What did you do?” I asked Cee Cee as Lyla and I stepped out into the rain.

“I said an ancient French spell to open the door. Like an ‘open sesame.’ Now y’all get out of here! Let me and Ben take care of this.”

We all started running for the porch to get out of the rain. As we rounded the corner, we saw Clothilde and Jonathan under the shelter of the porch. “What are you doing here?” demanded Lucas, furiously, as we joined them on the porch.

“I didn’t come last time, and I lost my daughter. I’m not going to lose Leigh and Lyla, too! I came to help.”

“You had no right brining my son here!”

Jonathan ran up to Lucas and clung to his leg. “Daddy! Miss Clo said everyone’s going to stop the Dark Man!”

“I want to go home!” wailed Lyla.

“One of you, please take Lyla and Jon and get them out of here. I have to stop that thing in there!” I said to them.

“You can’t do it alone,” said Ben. “We all have to work together! Now let’s hurry and start the fire.”

“It’s raining,” said Lucas. “You’ll never get it to light up.”

“We’ll do it here on the porch,” said Cee Cee. She reached into her purse and pulled out some lighter fluid and a box of matches. She doused one side of the porch and then the blanket. As soon as she lit the match, the front door flung itself open and a pair of giant, monstrous hands reached out and pulled me, Lucas, Jonathan and Lyla into the cabin, and the door slammed shut.

The last thing I heard was the four of us screaming. Now I heard nothing. I was sprawled out on a hard surface and the room was pitch black. It felt like I was the only thing occupying space here. I felt no other presence with me. All I heard was my own breathing. I was afraid to speak, afraid that if I made a sound, something I didn’t want to find me would.

“Lyla? Lucas? Jon?” I asked, cautiously. There was no answer. I didn’t even hear the rain on the roof.
Am I dead?
I wondered.
No. I’m not dead
. “Lyla? Jonathan? Luke?” My voice was flat, had no echo.

I shakily stood up, reached out for anything to hold onto and had to force my legs to balance; my equilibrium was off from not being able to see or hear. I had never been so terrified in all my life. The nothingness surrounded me, engulfed me in a continual state of the unknown. I could have been in outer space or in a coffin and wouldn’t have known the difference.

I heard a loud
bang
, and I looked behind me to see that a planet had exploded into a million stars.
I’m in outer space, after all.
I quickly sat back down on the hard surface beneath me.
Why does outer space have a floor?
Suddenly the floor gave out from under me.
I’m falling. Oh, God, I’m falling! Something’s spinning me around, and I’m falling. I’ll fall forever, through space and time.
As I fell, I thought I could hear Lyla and Jon crying from some other realm, a far off place that had no direction or destination.
It’s raining in outer space
, I thought stupidly. I could faintly hear the light rain outside and—
oh, God, what’s touching me? What’s touching my face? Get off of me!

“Leigh?!” I heard Lucas’ voice. I didn’t know why he was yelling at me or why my head hurt or why—

My eyes fluttered open. My head was reeling. I was so dizzy I felt like I could have thrown up. Through the dim light in the kitchen, I saw Lucas kneeling over me, touching my cheek. He looked so worried about me.

“You okay? You passed out for a second.”

Lyla and Jon were still crying. Jon was pressed up against Lucas. I sat up to comfort Lyla, but it was too fast. I felt that feeling like I was falling again and Lucas steadied me in his arms. “You hit your head against the stove. Not a lot of blood, though.”

“Lyla,” I called to her. She crawled over to me and hugged me tightly. She was shaking, and I squeezed her to me as hard as I could. The dizzy feeling was starting to wear off. “Can you open the door?” I asked Lucas.

“No. I tried to shoot the lock, but it won’t budge.” I motioned to him that I wanted to get up and he helped me, never taking his arms from me. Lyla rose with me and Jon with Lucas. Lyla stayed glued to my side, her arms around my hips.

The lantern flickered just then, and the shadows in the room flickered with it. I saw the shadows change suddenly, and they seemed to elongate, to swirl and move, looking like rivulets of black ink. “I’m seeing things. I think I need to lie down again,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” Lucas said quietly. “The shadows are moving.”

Lyla dug her face in my hip to keep from screaming out loud as the shadows rose from the floor and churned together to form one massive shadow with yellow eyes in the middle. I grabbed onto Lucas as he pulled Jon behind him, and he pointed his gun at the shadow, pulling the trigger. The bullet went through it and into the next room. The shadow temporarily turned into a flock of crows that filled the space around us, but quickly formed the shadow again.

The maniacal laughter of a crow rose up and roared out from the dark specter, which now formed the silhouette of a man. The outline of black lips parted and billowed forth, “
The sorcerers and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone
!” The silhouette reached out its arm toward Lyla and me. It was a liquid shadow, inking its way toward us. I pushed back against the door, pulling Lyla to me. Lucas shot at it again and the bullet passed through it again. And now it was Savoy in front of us, surrounded by a swirl of thick shadows. Lucas fired again, but the bullets were useless.

I reached behind me for the door, but the knob was still locked. Savoy smiled at us with that evil grin. “Great day for a burial,” he said, and laughed, again sounding like a crow. I shrunk back against the window. Behind me, I was aware of an orange glow. I glanced out the window to see the other side of the porch in flames.
If Savoy doesn’t kill us first, Cee Cee will
. I saw Ben and Cee Cee off to the side, sprinkling holy water and powder onto the corpse.

A loud noise returned my attention to the kitchen, where Lucas had just thrown the little table at Savoy, but nothing would stop him. The shadows surrounding him swirled out and wrapped around Lucas’ neck, choking him. I pulled Jon to me, to protect him and at the same time, I tried to help Lucas, to pull the shadows away from him, but it was like trying to grab air.

“Leave us alone!” I shouted. The shadows reached out for me and for Lyla, who screamed as the shadow arms lifted her off of the ground. Just then, the shadows and Savoy exploded with a tremendous force. We were all knocked to the floor, and I saw the walls give out.

Before the building collapsed on us, the last thing I saw was Lucas reaching out for Jonathan, but unable to get him in time. The last thing I heard was Lyla screaming. Soon, the darkness blinded me, and I suddenly felt an immense pressure threatening to crush my lungs. Behind the pain, I could feel Lyla pressed against my side, her breathing shallow. I wanted to ask her if she was okay. I wanted to call out for Lucas and Jonathan, but I couldn’t breathe, much less speak.

“Jon!” I heard Lucas yell next to me. His voice was strained, and I had a feeling he was trapped just as I was. “Leigh? Lyla? Jonathan, answer me!” His breathing was labored.

“I’m here,” I managed to breathe out, and it felt like whatever was pinning me sunk deeper into my chest.

“Jon!” Lucas cried out again, and I could hear the tears forming in his voice.

I then heard boards being thrown about on the other side of the rubble. Suddenly, the pressure on my chest was relieved as a sliver of indigo twilight came into my vision. As the sliver got bigger, the weight got smaller and now rain was slanting in. I still couldn’t speak but for a different reason.

Standing before us, with nearly an entire roof held in his little boy hands high over his head, was Jonathan, smiling proudly. My mouth gaped open as I struggled to regulate my breathing. I vaguely noticed that Ben, Cee Cee and Clothilde didn’t look surprised at all.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Lucas, staring at his six-year-old son who was ridden with Down Syndrome.

“Did I do a good job, Daddy?” beamed Jonathan as he hurled the roof off to the side and out of the way.

I quickly remembered Lyla. I turned to see her unconscious, hardly breathing and bleeding from her head. “Oh, God!” My medical training instincts took over, and I started checking her vitals. Her pulse was slow and dropping.

Lucas crawled beside me. In the corner of my eye, I saw Clothilde walking over the rubble to get to us. Ben helped her, and she kneeled down beside us, grimacing in pain from her knees. She put one hand on Lyla’s head and grabbed my hand with her other. In a second, it felt as though there was a small fire in the middle of my chest. It grew hotter and hotter, and I felt the air being sucked through my lungs, except I could still breathe. The heat moved through my arms and to my hands. They became very hot, and I felt Clothilde’s hand and Lyla’s skin rise in temperature. Clothilde closed her eyes and whispered something too low for me to hear.

All was quiet for a few seconds, the rain the only sound. Then Lyla opened her eyes, her breathing returned to normal, and I felt her pulse grow stronger between my fingers. At that moment, Clothilde collapsed before me. I went to her, checked her breathing and pulse. She was alive, but unconscious.