Chapter 22
Suddenly, I’m standing in a house full of antiques. All dark wood. The air around me is thick with incense, some heavy oil, like the kind used in Catholic rites and occasionally Wiccan rituals. The light is low. Only candles behind. In front of me, a bookcase filled with embellished hardbacks. I can’t read the words on the spines, either because they are faded with age or because they’re in languages I don’t recognize. The energy around the books is old. I can sense the remnants of life force left behind, but those who have touched these books before me lived and died long ago.
In places, the glass panes of the bookcase look melted or foggy, like the old windows in my mom’s house. As I peer through the panes, my gaze shifts from the spines of the rare books to the glass in front of me. I feel taller, as if I’m in high heels. I squint at the glass, not knowing exactly what it is I’m seeing, then realize I’m wearing a hooded robe, my face in shadow. A glimpse of movement behind me catches my eye. A reflection in the glass.
I’m whirling, losing my balance. Falling.
“Whoa!” Virgil catches my arm to pull me upright until I can steady myself on the fence. “Careful about keeping your balance. I wouldn’t want you to fall on the barbed wire.”
I drop to solid ground. The vision is gone, but I replay the scene in my head. I don’t own a robe like that. Not anymore. I burned my ritual wear the night before I sold my house, determined that I would make new sacred garments to represent a fresh start in a new town. I kept my ritual jewelry, but it’s still stashed in a small box in the trunk of my car.
“Laurie? Are you okay?”
Virgil climbs the fence quickly, swings one leg over, and then descends like an old pro. Not that I as a farm girl don’t have the talent for climbing fences, but I rarely do it in the middle of a vision. Same danger as astral projection while driving.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I guess I’m just used to stepping over rusty, broken-down fences instead of having to climb shiny new ones.” I try to make a joke of it, but it falls flat.
“Um, thanks? I’ve been working on re-fencing the property. I’ll take care of the fence between our land, too. Though, come to think of it, maybe I should plan for a couple of gates in these fences, if we’re going to be doing this often.”
“Doing this often?”
“Okay, so this wasn’t exactly what I intended. I thought you needed a break. I figured that your mom would be okay with staying with Pamela while I got you out of the house so you can get your feet in the grass. We’ve got a full moon coming up. Maybe in a couple of days, when it’s at its fullest, we can have a bonfire and—”
“In this heat? It may be September, but it’s still hot here.”
He shrugs. “I hadn’t thought of that. But don’t worry. I have skills that will keep you chilled and chill. You’ll see. Your mom can watch us roast marshmallows, and we can make her s’mores and hot chocolate, and then I can sit with her in the house and talk to her while you spend some time alone with the Nature spirits. I doubt you’ve had much freedom to do any workings while watching your mom full-time.”
He’s correct. I miss practicing my craft. Sure, I can do much of it in my head as any adept can, but it’s no replacement for communing with the land spirits or simply having the atmosphere to focus my energy and intentions to manifest what I need.
“So, this is the serious matter you needed to discuss? Where to build a bonfire?”
Serious enough matter to me after feeling spiritually deprived two months!
“Uh… no. I’ve had this surprise planned for several days. The serious matter I need to talk to you about is something that popped up today. Two matters, in fact. Someone’s tried to run me off the road twice this week.”
I spin to face Virgil. “Run you off the road how?”
“Like… run my car off the road. Both times they came up fast behind me and started tailgating me. They got close enough several times to tap my bumper, then pull back. Do you know if your cousins own a navy blue truck? Can’t be over two years old. Clean. No decals. I didn’t get a look at the tag.”
I shrug. “I have no idea what they drive, but it does sound like something they’d do for fun.”
Virgil lets me walk ahead as the path narrows into woods. “Alrighty then. I may need to borrow your bonfire to take care of matters.”
I’m positive I see a smirk at the corner of his mouth. Virgil has magick of his own to work.
“I can’t do anything to stop them. I already have a restraining order against them for my mom and me.”
“Nah. I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m quite capable of taking care of it myself. I just need to know who it is so that when I strike back, I don’t miss or involve someone who shouldn’t have to pay for their shenanigans.”
Curiosity has the best of me now. “We should… maybe work together. Like, do a working together.”
He turns to smile at me and clasps my hand in his. He gives my hand a little squeeze. “Let’s do it then. I’m curious to see how you practice, and I bet you’re curious to see how I practice.” Before I can nod, he adds, “It’s settled then. Two nights from now. Under a full moon. We’ll have a cookout with your mom and Dix and maybe Pamela as well, and then you and I can stay up late while Pamela sits with your mom.”
“You sure Pamela would do that on such short notice?”
“Like I told you earlier, Pamela is a good friend of mine. Her grandmother was the first person I, um, walked home when I came back to this town and joined the local hospital system. She went through the same thing with her grandmother that you’re going through with your mom now. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“Is Pamela a—?”
“No, but she’s seen me work. She was there when I took care of her grandmother.”
“Then you’re not afraid she might out you?”
The woods thicken ahead of us. More cypresses now. The ground is damper, but not watery. I would guess that we’re getting closer to the swamp, except that I hear noise and trucks ahead. We must be closer to the highway.
Virgil hesitates as if he wants to answer me, but either can’t or fears something worse than Pamela talking about his esoteric activities. The noise in the distance grows louder.
“Are we near the highway on the other side of your house, Virgil? “
“You don’t know where you are? Before you and I took that ATV ride over to the swamp when you first came back home, how long had it been since you visited the swamp? “
I try to pretend that I don’t remember. “Oh, I don’t know. Years ago.”
“How many years ago?”
Virgil stops walking. He levels his gaze at me, seeing right through me, all the way to my secrets. My shields spike instinctively.
“Before my mom dumped all of her storage unit contents into the middle of it.”
It’s the truth. I’m not much for lying, whether about big things or insignificant, but I’m still not telling the whole truth. The last time I saw the swamp before this spring, I had been twelve years old and walking away from it. I’ve been on the periphery of it a few times, but never so far in that the ghost of Uncle Bobby might wake and call my name.
“Virgil, why are you asking me this?”
“Remember when I told you I had something serious to talk to you about, not just one thing but two? Well, aggressive drivers was one thing. The condition of the swamp is the other.”
My stomach twists. I feel like I’m going to throw up, like I’ve just been caught.
The noise coming from the swamp is louder. Virgil stops suddenly, holding up his palm. The tattoo on his wrist gleams in the dappled sunlight.
“Most of the swamp has dried out. Sure, there’s a puddle here or there, but it’s not like people remember from a few decades ago when it was more like a cypress lake and a lot of marsh around it.
“So that’s why you wanted to talk to me alone? Climate change in the bowels of Georgia? That was the serious matter you needed to discuss?”
He points at our feet. “The ground where we’re standing? This used to be part of the lake.” He stomps his boot to emphasize how solid the ground is, and how dry. “Notice how it looks like a clearing, but it isn’t. You don’t see a lot of oaks immediately where we are, or pines, but cypresses twelve to fifteen feet apart with cypress knees in between. The swamp might naturally have dried out over time, but this county has some pretty strict rules about dumping garbage in wetlands. Nothing may grow here, other than alligators and bullfrogs, and an occasional flying squirrel, but there’s a hefty fine. I knew that, sooner or later, somebody would stumble on it and report it. I was afraid that was gonna be burdensome for your mom and you. That’s why I called in some locals to clean out the swamp. Labor in exchange for scrap metal, and anything else they might find of use. I took care of getting the beetle-infested trees removed last month. Remember the paper I asked you to sign?”
I nod.
“Anyway, that’s all done. Nothing for you to worry about. Or your mom. But I was out here with the tree-cutting crew every day to make sure they didn’t wander off and find the mess your mom left in the swamp. So at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
I stare at Virgil expectantly. “So, if there’s nothing left to worry about… ”
He lowers his voice, even though there’s no apparent reason for it. “That’s not the highway. That’s the scrappers you hear now. When I checked in on them about two hours ago, they had already dug out about two dozen toaster ovens, a water heater, a range that looked like it might have gone out of use in the 1950s, half a dozen lawnmowers, and—geez, Laurie! What is it with you and that swamp? Every time I mention it you give me that look.”
I blink. “What look?”
“That one. Like you’re terrified, and—breathe, Laurie. Breathe!”
He grabs my shoulders to shake me before I realize that I haven’t inhaled in the last thirty seconds. I blink again and breathe deeply.
“Did something happen there?” When I say nothing, he shrugs in frustration. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. Not until you’re ready to, but we’ve got to talk about what else is in that swamp. If you—damn it, Laurie! There’s that look again.”
I shake myself. “Sorry. Sorry.”
What else is in that swamp is whatever remains of Bobby’s… remains… after roughly forty years. Bobby had died toward the center of the lake, at least a good sixty feet from where Mama dumped the contents of her storage units. With any luck, they’ll hit the last of the metal and not dig any further. I assume they’ll have metal detectors, but Bobby hadn’t had any metal on him that I could remember. Maybe a watch? His keys?
I force myself to breathe. “So, what did they find?”
“He thumbs his hand in the direction of the swamp. Or, more accurately, the direction of the garbage dump. There’s so little actual swamp left.
“Laurie, they hit something.”
Once again, I compel myself to take steady, even breaths so I don’t give myself away. They hit something, Virgil said.
Bobby?
“What did they hit, Virgil?” I whisper.
“Something big. It was bigger than they could get to with shovels and muscle. They were leaving to go rent some equipment to see if they could get around it but they left a couple of guys with shovels to see if they could dig around it and figure out what it is.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea what it could be. Anything that big, my mom wouldn’t be able to handle on her own. And I don’t know of anything at all that could meet that description.”
I rack my brain to think of what she might’ve had in the storage sheds. I’m also ridiculously relieved because if it’s that big, it’s not Bobby.
“I can’t think of anything,” I tell him again. “The biggest things that she had stored away were old mattresses, a wooden china cabinet that my dad built, and a silver-colored metal table from the 1950s. You know, like the kind you see in those 1950s diners and ice cream shops with red stools and black-and-white checkered floors?”
He motions for me to follow him. “No, this doesn’t fit any of those descriptions. It’s bigger than a table. Maybe a safe? A gun cabinet? Bigger than any china cabinet I’ve ever seen, too.”
The clearing, what used to be a lake, opens out into a larger clearing where dozens, maybe hundreds of appliances have been stacked in neat cubes or thrown onto the back of a low-bed trailer for hauling. If those appliances had been in the swamp for forty years, they probably would be deteriorated enough not to be worth much, but I know for a fact that they’ve been there only a few months. All the junk Mama filled up the remaining swamp with had been stored and dry in multiple sheds around the backyard and barn when I’d helped her do some clean-up after Daddy’s funeral.
I expect to see two to three men pulling scrap metal out of the ground, but instead there are probably thirty men, most of them standing around, pontificating on what two men with shovels are edging out of the dirt like clumsy archaeologists.
“JayJay!” Virgil calls out to the man known to strangers as “Joe Junior.” Intentionally outpacing me, Virgil races to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the lead scrapper. “I thought you said you were going into town to rent some better equipment, not to bring the whole town back with you. I told you to keep it quiet. I don’t want the EPA or law enforcement or county code enforcers or whoever out here disturbing Miss Emma.”
Behind Virgil, I stand very still and wait. Trying to make myself smaller, I call on some of my magick tricks that make me even more invisible than the typical woman over fifty in a throng of young men.
The scruffy-jawed man wearing a navy blue farm hat that advertises a local fertilizer store shrinks away from Virgil. “Sorry, Bubba. I didn’t say nothing to nobody except for the guy I borrowed a backhoe from. Cheaper than renting, you know? And then he told everybody around his place, and by the time I got the backhoe back here, well, this whole gaggle of good ol’ boys was waiting for me. Now you notice, Virgil, not a dadblamed one of them has picked up a shovel. Them boys just here to gawk.”
Virgil moans. “That’s what I’m afraid of. Gawking and gossiping.”
He shoots me a look over his shoulder. Virgil’s gaze is intense, causing chill bumps to appear on my arms. He’s a soft-spoken man of action, but I recognize the shift in his energy.
Shit’s about to get real.
“We need to disperse this crowd,” he says. “Now.”
The two men with shovels, both scruffy enough in jawline and looks to be JayJay’s brothers, continue tapping the ground around a square shape.
The air around us grows thick in my lungs. The energy crackles around me, crowding me, crowding everyone in sight. It feels like a hundred crayons trying to fit into a box meant for eight. Like the land spirits themselves are filling the empty spaces between every person ogling the square on the ground.
“Goddamn it,” the youngest scrapper says, suddenly agitated. “Could we get some help here, JayJay?” He pitches aside rocks and debris. He looks for a moment as if he’s about to toss the shovel toward the gathering crowd, but instead he throws it down and straightens, then kicks the ground before retrieving his shovel.
I feel the agitation as well. Like the humidity just soared, and we’re all trying to breathe through a hot, wet blanket.
Part of the square area has been scooped out. The dirt that had concealed the mysterious object is now scattered in a mound a few feet from where it once lay. Swamp mud—or what used to be swamp mud but is now just damp dirt—covers the square.
I can’t tell what it is.
Virgil raises his hands over his head and claps loudly. “OK, boys. Time to move on out. You’re all trespassing except for these three here who were hired to come in and move out some old freezers and stoves. Now the rest of you—”
A sheriff’s car pulls in directly behind the backhoe. Two men in tan uniforms and dark sunglasses step out.
Thunder cracks nearby as if in answer to Virgil’s clap. A single drop of water strikes my cheek as I lift my face to the darkening skies.
JayJay’s little brother curses and flings down his shovel a second time. The blade slides, squealing, across the square. When it finally lands, it has left a trail in the mud, revealing a long red line of decades-old paint.
Bobby’s car.
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