Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels (13 page)

“Oh, that’s horrible that he did that,” Rose says. Tears sparkle in Rose’s eyes, but Old Sally has no time to capture them. “That would be my great-great grandfather?” Rose asks.

Old Sally nods and pulls a burlap doll from the pocket of her dress to show Rose, and begins again. “This spell requires a special root that can only be found deep in the swamps of southwest Georgia. The root is ground up and put inside this doll.”

Rose takes the doll and looks at it for a long time, and then sniffs it. “It smells like molasses and marsh water,” she says. Rose starts to pass it to Queenie who holds up a hand and says
no, thanks
.

“Every year I put new roots in the doll to keep the spell fresh,” Old Sally begins again. “This is a revenge spell, pure and simple. It makes any Temple sick to their stomach when they are being the master over people. That’s why you’ve never had a stomachache in your life, Rose, and why your mother has more than most.”

“I don’t think it ever occurred to Iris that life had anything to teach her,” Queenie says. “Or that she may be the cause of her own discomfort.”

“That be right,” Old Sally says.

The messages Old Sally has received from the other world confirm that Iris Temple’s time on this earth has ticked down to a matter of hours instead of days. For decades Old Sally has known that she would be present for Iris’s death. Her family and the Temple family have been entwined for generations like a sweet grass basket woven and bound tight enough to hold water. Old Sally’s family carries the secret elixir to cure the dark parts in the Temple’s history. Centuries have passed where Old Sally’s family has mingled with the Temple bloodline. Old Sally’s mother was a result of this mixing, as was Queenie.

The closer they get to Savannah, the more Old Sally feels pulled into the agitation of Iris Temple. It confirms that this crossing will not be an easy one. Some souls are ready to leave this earth and embrace the transition feeling their work is complete. Others fight it with everything they have. They are the ones who have unfinished business.

And if anyone has unfinished business
,
it be Iris Temple,
she tells herself
.

Within a mile of the Temple home, Iris’s edginess makes Old Sally clutch her cloth bag and pray for the strength she’ll need for the battle ahead. She hopes there is enough strength in her hundred-year-old body to do her part in the ritual.

When they enter the house through the kitchen door, the Temple spirits rush forward clamoring for Old Sally’s attention. In the center of the room she stops and waits. To Old Sally, the Temple ghosts are like youngsters that can’t sit still and get into mischief all the time. When she worked in the house she was always telling those ghosts to behave. They listened, for the most part. But now it seems those youngsters—with the help of the Temple secrets—have grown into something much older and darker.

“What is it, Mama?” Queenie asks. “You look frightened.”

“The spirits. They all riled up,” Old Sally says. Shadows dance in the room, but with no clear shapes. Old Sally points to a note on the kitchen table. “That be for you,” she says to Queenie.

Queenie reads the note from Violet aloud:

Dear Queenie
,

Edward was here again tonight. Creepy, as usual. There was a crowd at the gate earlier, too, but the police came and made them leave. I’ve gone home for the night, but Lynette is upstairs watching after Miss Temple. I hope all goes well. V.

Old Sally feels the imprint of Violet’s earlier distress. She is glad that her grandchild went home to be with Jack. Jack will never let anything bad happen to her. Like Rose, Violet is a special child, too, but in a different way. After Old Sally is gone, Violet will make sure the Gullah traditions don’t get lost. The safer she stays the better.

“Why was Edward here again?” Rose asks.

“Sometimes the spirits of the living get riled up with the spirits of the dead,” Old Sally says. “That’s why so much happens on a full moon. The veil is thinner between the two worlds.”

“I forgot there’s a full moon tonight,” Queenie says.

“A blessing and a curse,” Old Sally says. “There be no turning back now.”

The color leaves Rose’s face.

“You’ll feel better once your mother passes,” Old Sally says to her.
We all will,
she thinks. She squeezes a bit of reassurance into Rose’s hand.

Old Sally isn’t surprised that Edward has shown up three times today. Everything happens in threes right before a big change. He’s been waiting a long time for this moment. Once his mother is out of the way, Edward gets to do whatever he wants with the Temple estate. But Old Sally will have to deal with him later. For now, it is his mother that requires her full attention.

Rose and Queenie follow Old Sally through the dining room and into the foyer. She spent sixty years of her life working in this house and could walk through the rooms with her eyes closed and never run into anything. Her mother worked here before her, and her mother’s mother before that. As a girl, she explored it when the Temples weren’t around. In some ways, she knows the Temple house better than her own. She certainly cleaned it many times over. And though she hasn’t been here for twenty years, she hasn’t missed it one bit.

The ghost of the third Edward Temple stands halfway up the stairs as if waiting to greet her. Old Sally sees him clear as a sunny day, though Rose and Queenie don’t appear to. This is Queenie’s father. Wooden arms and legs used to hang on various hooks in his office in the Temple home. The sight of them always shocked Sally. Sometimes he would make the wooden limbs dance for her like he was a puppeteer and they were his puppets.

The second Edward Temple, in specter form, stands at the top of the stairs. A surgeon in the Civil War, he was said to have lost his mind as a result of the mountain of arms and legs he amputated. He still wears his officer’s uniform. Even as a ghost, his eyes are open wide, still witnessing the horror. Old Sally’s grandmother, Sadie, had a boy child by him who was sent away before the war to a plantation in Virginia. They never knew what happened to him and they never saw him again.

Old Sally’s family tree is so gnarled she can barely keep it straight herself. Patterns have played out for two hundred years, like they have all been puppets to the same puppeteer. In the past, she’s thought of their intertwined history as a Gullah spiritual with different verses.

But now it be time for a new song,
she tells herself.

For over three decades, Old Sally has known a change was coming that would end the dark pattern. The other world has sent messages foretelling the change for years, in dreams, tea leaves and inner knowing. All speak a language Old Sally understands. Yet the messages lately all point to danger.

The
Temple Book of Secrets
showing up makes sense, too. All sorts of darkness gets released before the light comes, that’s why people always say it’s darkest before the dawn. Old Sally caught sight of that old book many years ago. Before Edward the 3
rd
died, it was kept in a desk drawer in his office.

Once when it was laying on the top of his desk she looked inside. It was a fancy ledger, covered in leather, where each wealthy family had a page with a list of bad things they’d done. Pages filled with different inks made from different pens, the dates going back to when her Grandmother Sadie was a girl. Some families had died out or didn’t even live in Savannah any more. But there were others that still lived here.

Notations of who beat their wives or had mistresses. Notes about fathers who messed with their children. Heavy drinkers. Barren wives. Addicted sons and daughters. Slaves who disappeared. Illegitimate children. Secrets that even generations down the line make a family look bad. Old Sally had never seen anything like it.

It be like the devil keeping track of all his people’s evil deeds,
she thinks. Nothing at all about anything good.

Queenie offers a hand and Old Sally holds it as she climbs the spiral staircase. Rose follows a few steps behind. Old Sally rarely climbs steps anymore. Her house is on one level.

“White people just keep building up and up,” Old Sally says, “reaching for sky instead of earth.”
Makes no sense,
she thinks.

The second Edward Temple laughs like what she said is ridiculous. They don’t want her to succeed. They want Iris to stay with them. As long as Iris stays behind, the past has more power and keeps people down. She pauses and Queenie asks if she’s okay. She says she is.

“Are the spirits still active?” Rose asks.

Old Sally nods. “Like a fancy party where everyone is in attendance.”

The Edward Temples in the past were not especially mean men, but they chose women who carried their meanness for them.

“Is my father here?” Rose asks.

The question from Rose doesn’t surprise her. It broke Rose’s heart when her daddy died so young. Though feeling rushed, Old Sally turns and touches Rose’s cheek.

“Mister Oscar be a better man than several Temples combined,” Old Sally begins. “Your daddy’s ghost doesn’t hang out with the other Temples. He stays in his office on the main floor.”

Rose glances in that direction.

At the top of the stairs, Old Sally holds Queenie’s arm to steady herself. It feels like she’s walking into a strong wind. A wind that wants to steal her breath. The closer Old Sally gets to Iris’s room, the more Iris’s spirit shoves her away.

When Old Sally enters the bedroom, Iris Temple laughs from the in-between world. She will not go to the other side without a fight. The forces are stronger than Old Sally expected. Her head lowered, she pauses and asks Queenie and Rose to give her a moment to think. Her mind races like a general putting together a plan before going into battle where the enemy is twice as big as anticipated. All the crossings she attended have been tame compared to this wildness.

Queenie and Rose both carry Temple blood and will be useful in their fight. But based on Iris’s resistance, Old Sally needs more help than she thought. She debates whether to call Violet, but it seems her granddaughter has dealt with dark forces enough for one night. Another presence in the room calls for her attention, and Old Sally raises her head. A large white woman in a nurse’s uniform stands next to the bed. In that instant, Old Sally knows this stranger is the additional help she needs.

Lynette smiles at Old Sally like somehow she recognizes what they will do together. Her ancestors have chosen her. A hard-earned kindness surrounds her, as someone strong enough to overthrow the dark and claim the light.

As Old Sally approaches Iris’s bed, she senses Iris gathering strength in the in-between world. Being back in the Temple house is giving Iris power. For the longest time, Old Sally thought everyone heard voices from the spirit world. The first time dead people talked to her she was still a girl and thought she was making up the voices in her head. But the older she got, the more she realized that she could communicate with people in the spirit world. What she didn’t realize is people in a coma are in this in-between world, too. She thinks of it like a waiting room where people are waiting to be called. Except it isn’t a room, it’s a way of being.

A conversation commences between Old Sally and Iris that no one else can hear.

I’m here to help you transition,
Iris.

I’m not ready to go,
Iris says.
I need to set something right.

The spirit world think you be ready now,
Old Sally says.

You and your stupid voodoo magic,
Iris says.
You’re nothing but a fake.

Then how am I talking to you?
Old Sally asks.

Iris pauses like Old Sally may have a point.
What’s she doing here?
Iris asks, her words aimed at Rose.

Old Sally glances at Rose who has regained some of the color in her face.
She’s come to say goodbye to you.

It’s just like her to crawl back on her hands and knees,
Iris says.
All she wants is my money.

A noxious odor fills the room, revealing to Old Sally that her spell is still at work.

You did this to me, didn’t you,
Iris says to Old Sally.

You did it to yourself,
Old Sally says.

Shut up, old woman.
Iris laughs.

Within seconds, Iris’s smugness changes to weeping, now a helpless child. Whenever a spirit is threatened it takes on many disguises.

You don’t fool me,
Old Sally says.

Come close and comfort me,
Iris says, in-between bouts of crying.

But Old Sally refuses to fall for Iris’s trick. This childlike part is the most dangerous. It will do anything to get its way. Not stopping until it wraps its arms around Old Sally’s neck and chokes the life out of her.

Lynette pulls a chair close to the bed and encourages Old Sally to take a seat. Old Sally thanks her, sits and places her cloth bag on her lap. The room is quiet except for the sound of the machines.

“Mama, do you need anything?” Queenie asks from behind her.

“A glass of water, please,” Old Sally says. “And a clove of garlic from the kitchen,” she adds.

Queenie leaves for the kitchen and Old Sally turns to Rose, “Gather me a piece of your mother’s hair.”

She pulls a pair of kitchen shears from her bag and hands them to Rose who walks over to her mother. Rose’s hand shakes as she holds the scissors.

“You can do it, Rose,” Old Sally says. “Your mother needs your help.”

I don’t want her touching me.
Iris says.
She deserted me.

While ignoring Iris, Old Sally encourages Rose to cut her mother’s hair.

Iris screams at Rose and forbids her to touch her.

Unable to hear her mother’s pleas, Rose clips a small strand of hair and then gives the scissors and the hair back to Old Sally. Old Sally thanks her, not letting on at how much her mother is cursing Rose in the spirit world.

From her bag, Old Sally pulls out a small black iron bowl that looks like a miniature cauldron. She places the hair inside, along with ingredients she gathered earlier that day. In the background, Iris pleads, sobs, and then insults everyone in the room.