River of Bones (17 page)

Wolf stared at me in disbelief.

The lawyer rose heavily to his feet. “Good luck, and let me know if I can be of help to you.” He ambled to the cop car, tipped his hat to me and slammed the door closed. The police cruiser pulled away in a swirl of dust.

“Wow,” Wolf said. “So you're the general's granddaughter?”

“Don't get too excited, there's a lot of great, greats in there.”

“But still, its way cool. There's a ton of pictures and stuff in our town museum. You'll be famous! The Cobb family is legendary around here, and everyone thinks there's no descendants.”

I wasn't sure how to feel about it. Excited to be a part of a real family, sure, but sad that everyone was gone, including a dad I never met. Guess he didn't care to meet me. A thousand questions about my mystery father filled my mind, but I couldn't think about him now. I had to find a way to break the curse and to survive. If mom was really gone for good, I'd be the only one left to take care for Benny. But still, no matter how I tried to concentrate on what to do next, images of a father I'd never meet haunted my mind and one glowing question.

Why would he give a place like this to a daughter he'd never even met?

We reached the rugged trail to Sassy's house shortly before nightfall. Cicadas shrilled along the footpath. Unseen eyes stabbed into my neck as we hurried along. Every once in a while I'd stop and stare into the darkness, trying to figure out what or who lurked in shadows. Watching. Waiting. Hating.

Wolf urged me onward as a chilly evening breeze filtered through the cypress trees, sending long strands of ghostly moss trembling in the wind like the desperate arms of lost souls.

I stopped in front of the steps to the crooked shack and cocked my head. “What's that noise?”

“What?”

“That clinking sound? Can't you hear it?”

Wolf listened, then nodded. “Spirit bottles.” He pointed at a row of oak trees standing guard near the front gate. Dozens of cobalt blue bottles dangled from the branches, jingling in the breeze. “Legend has it the bottles trap evil spirits inside, keeping them too dazzled by the play of light to escape,
preferring to remain in the colorful prison, rather than trouble the world of the living.”

I studied the bottles. “Do you think it works?”

Wolf shrugged. “Some people say if you listen to the bottles, you can hear the spirits moan.”

“Maybe I should get some for the house,” I said.

Wolf opened the front gate. “It wouldn't hurt.”

A warm glow emanated from every window of Sassy's old shack. We hiked up the rickety front steps, lonesome sounds of the swamp at our backs. Wolf gave me an encouraging smile and knocked on the door.

The whisper of feet shuffled from behind the heavy wood panel. “Who's there?”

“It's Wolf Bodine, Ms. Sassy. Sorry to bother you again.”

Sassy swung the door open. “Come in, and be quick about it.”

We hurried inside and Sassy stuck her head out, surveying the swamp. She shut the door, bolted it and motioned us to sit with her near the fire. “Did you find that skull? Did you do like I told you?”

I nodded. “It didn't work.”

Sassy leaned forward, her eyes searching mine. “Tell me everything, child.”

I swallowed, but it did little good to help my dry and scratchy throat. I told her how I'd gone to sleep with the horrible thing under the bed, and how nothing had happened.

“Right before dawn,” I said. “I heard the skull calling to me. So I followed the voice upstairs to the master bedroom, where I'd put it the night before. All it said was that it wanted to be friends, then torture and kill me.”

“What did you do?”

“I think I fainted, because somehow I ended up on the floor.”

“That throat is gettin' worse, isn't it?”

I nodded.

Sassy hobbled to the fire. She grabbed a tattered potholder and removed a kettle from a hook over the flames. She poured boiling water into two mugs, added tea with cream and handed one to each of us.

Grateful for the soothing liquid, I carefully swallowed the hot tea. After taking several sips I continued. “When I woke up, it was morning. I thought the whole thing was over with and then something in the skull moved, and a cottonmouth slithered out and tried to bite me. Thankfully, Wolf killed it.”

Sassy's eyes went round. “Lord, child, where's the skull now?”

“I tossed it,” Wolf said. “Back into the swamp.”

“Oh—now you've gone and done it. She's been insulted twice.”

Wolf set his cup down. “There's more. We found out Dharma is related to the general.”

“I'm like a great-great-great-granddaughter or something,” I said.

Sassy exhaled a deep breath that smelled of willow. “Well, that explains her vengeance. You may be the granddaughter of the kindly general, but you're also kin to the man who hanged her—Eleazor Cobb, the general's brother. To her, blood is blood. There is no difference.”

“I'm getting worse. The pills the doctor gave me aren't helping at all. I totally believe what you're telling me. I believe in the curse. I know it's real because I've seen too many things I can't explain.” My voice cracked. I took another sip of the tea, letting it wash over my swollen tonsils, trying to focus my scattered thoughts.

Wolf plowed a hand through his hair. “What else can we do to break the curse? There has to be some other way.”

Sassy stared at the floor and took a deep breath. “Asking the one who cursed you to take it off is the usual way. But not in this case. She holds too much hatred and resentment, especially for anyone with the blood of a Cobb.” Sassy rubbed her chin. “There is one other way, but the odds are slim—even if you could find it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Find what?”

Sassy smoothed the wrinkles from the front of her sack dress. “Let me tell you a story my granny told me many years ago. The day Sabine was hanged, the other slaves took down all the mirrors in the house and painted them black. The ones they didn't paint they either took to town or destroyed.”

“We saw one in the dining room,” Wolf said.

Sassy nodded. “They did this so her soul couldn't enter into them. They believed that if a soul entered a mirror, that spirit could ground itself to one place for all eternity, haunting it and creating all sorts of havoc.

“Those slaves, my granny included, tried to find every mirror. But they weren't able to find the mirror the general had given her. She had it hidden away somewhere. So when she died, she was able to attach herself to this place, making all who came near suffer her wrath. If you can find her mirror and destroy it, you could break that curse. But the odds of finding it, like I said, are slim indeed.”

“It can't be that hard,” I said. “It has to be somewhere in the house, right?”

Sassy shook her head. “I don't know, child. She was very crafty. She most likely hid that mirror where no one would ever think to find it. My granny and her kind couldn't find it, and they lived ‘round here their whole lives…”

“Maybe she hid it in the pond.” Wolf said.

“No, it won't be in the swamp. An evil spirit attached to a mirror cannot cross or emerge from a body of water. It's on that plantation somewhere. Someplace dry.”

“Do you know which room of the house was hers?” I asked.

Sassy shot me a strange look. “She may have been like kin to the general, but she was still a slave. She lived in one of the slave shacks. Even so, the general had it built with hardwood floors and solid walls with fancy wallpaper. It was a source of great contention amongst the other slaves who lived in shacks with dirt floors and leaky roofs. Sabine lived in splendor by comparison.”

“Come on, let's go,” I said. “We need to find that mirror!”

“Wait,” Sassy said. “There is one more thing. This is very important, so listen up.” Burning logs snapped in the fireplace. Sassy lowered her voice. “You will know it's the right mirror when you see her reflection in it. You'll know it's her, when you see her green turban and gold front tooth.”

Suddenly everything started to weave together. “Now it all makes sense,” I said. “It was Sabine in the family portrait we found in the ballroom, and it was her crawling out of the bog on the first night we got here.” I shivered. “She still wore that turban, even though it was rotting away and dripping with mud. Why would she still wear that gross thing?”

“She doesn't have a choice,” Sassy said. “She's forced to wear it, even in the spirit world, because she's missing her ears.”

“What?” Wolf's face twisted in disgust.

“Why?” I asked.

Sassy cleared her throat. “Sabine took great pleasure in spying on her fellow slaves, listening in at keyholes and reporting what she heard. She started extorting the slaves, even on different farms, stating that if they didn't pay her fee, she'd tell on them. And if she couldn't find them doing anything wrong, she'd make something up to tell to get them into trouble.”

“What good would that do?” Wolf asked. “Slaves couldn't have much to pay with.”

“That was the point, as I see it. Even if they did pay, she still told on them. You see, it wasn't the little trinkets she wanted. It was the pleasure of watching folks get beaten or whipped. Their suffering gave her power over her fellow slaves, the power of fear. That is until one day, when it all stopped.”

“The day she died?” I asked.

“Nope, it was the day she got her ears cut off. And it wasn't by any master, either. It was done by slaves, who were tired of her tattlin'. It's said some men caught her alone one night and cut them both off, clean as a whistle. From that day on, she wore a turban to cover up the scars.”

“She sang something to me,” I said. “In my vision. A song I couldn't make out.”

Sassy shrugged. “Could have been any old song. My people had a lot of them.”

“It sounded so… evil.”

“Did it sound like this?” Sassy hummed a few bars.

“No, it was different, eerier and lower in pitch.”

“It might not have been a song at all, but a spell. Was it after that, that you saw the snake?”

“Yes.”

“Then that settles it. It was a song spell. If you hear it again, you be extra careful. Now you best be going before it gets any later. The swamp is no place to be at night. May the good Lord watch over you, child.”

“Thank you.” I extended my arm to shake Sassy's hand.

She pulled me to her instead and hugged me tight. “Take care, child. You're powerful sick, but you're strong inside, aren't you?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

Sassy pushed me away, tears gleaming in her eyes. “You come back if you need me, you hear? If you make it through the night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't you know, child? Can't you feel it?”

“Know what?” I asked.

Sassy's eyes filled with tears again. “You cannot outrun a curse. You have three nights to live through one, and this will be your fourth. Come sunrise, if you haven't found that mirror—you'll die.”

Panic strangled my soul—it was like something burst inside me, spilling waves of dread into my lungs, drowning me in terror. Wolf frowned, his lips moving, forming words I couldn't hear over the rush of blood flooding my ears. Somehow, I managed to swim to the surface and shake the terrible feeling. Wolf put his arm around my shoulders, guiding me away from Sassy's house. Gravel crunched beneath the soles of our feet as we hurried down the path and past the front gate. Behind us the spirit bottles clinked and chimed louder and louder in the wind like miniature alarm bells.

Chilly night air fanned over us as we reached the end of the trail. Wolf's truck loomed ahead. He kept a hand on my back as he opened the door and helped me in. I reached for my seatbelt, and then paused, letting my hand return to my lap. Why bother—why not just let go? I was doomed anyway. What good would a seatbelt do to stop something that was unstoppable?