Poison Tongue Read online

  A memory of the time I’d wandered into the swamp popped into my head. I was only a young boy then, but I hadn’t been able to help myself. I had wanted to touch the hanging reeds from the heavy tree branches, feel the muck and grime that floated on the surface of the water against my fingertips. I hadn’t known any better, hadn’t known to ignore the way that kind of evil called to my young heart. Because it did call to me, ever since before I could remember. It howled my name, and I so badly wanted to reply.

  The moment I had dipped my small hand into that black, black water, my vision went white. Static filled my ears, so high-pitched and piercing it had stung. It rang out a high-pitched howl like a tortured cry from a creature of hell. And then there was nothing. Nothing I could see, nothing I could hear, nothing I could smell or taste. But I felt it, that internal fullness, that heavy happiness. It was a desire like nothing else. More than an itch that had been scratched.

  I was whole. I was happy. I was in love with this new, endless darkness.

  The next thing I knew, I awoke on a dirt path a few hundred meters away from the bayou. My young body ached, my throat had been dry, and tears had pooled at the corners of my eyes.

  Ward’s worried face lingered above me. I blinked at him and asked, “What happened?”

  “Your body went slack the moment you touched the water. You doubled over, as though you were in pain,” Ward replied. “It was like you had become boneless.”

  I’d looked past Ward, into the cerulean-filtered sky. “I felt something.”

  “What did you feel?” he asked. Even then I’d known Ward wouldn’t ask me what I saw. Visions would lie to me, feelings would not.

  “Something wicked. Something dark. Something lovely.”

  His brow furrowed. “Then we must stay away from the swamp, Levi.”

  “It calls to me. Sometimes so loudly, it hurts. I ache for it. I ache to feel the depths of the water up to my waist, to stare into the black abyss on the other side.”

  “Never.” Ward grabbed my shoulders and pulled me up into a sitting position. His dark eyes searched mine for a promise I couldn’t ever give him. “Tell me never again, Levi. It is evil. It is wrong. I can feel it.”

  “But I want it, Ward,” I said in a shuddered breath. Even then I could hear it singing to me. “I want the darkness.”

  “You cannot want darkness, Levi. It will never want you back. It will slip through your fingers like mercury.”

  Since then, every time I’d heard the evil of the swamp waters calling to me, I’d remembered Ward’s words, remembered the look of terror in his eyes. As I grew older, I dreamed of it often, imagined what it would be like to submerge my body into those black waters, only to be lost with all the others.

  “Levi.” Ward brought me back to where we were walking down the path.

  “Yes?”

  He said nothing, only stared down at me. The concern he felt was written all over his face. He wasn’t trying to hide it from me. I could tell he wanted me to know he was worried about the dream I’d had.

  “It will be okay.”

  “I know,” he said. “I will never let anything happen to you.”

  MISS ANNAMAE’S shop was a small slit in the wall between the post office and one of the two grocery stores in town. The outside had large bay windows that were covered from the inside with black curtains. A glowing sign that read “Tarot” hung from the window and flashed bright pinks and yellows.

  When I pushed through the door, the robust smell of incense hit me like water beats against the ocean shore. It smelled floral and natural and so familiar it immediately put my mind at ease.

  The shelves were lined with glass jars, small boxes, and colorful knickknacks that I couldn’t have put a name to if I tried. At the end of the aisle was a barrel full of raw plants and herbs that were individually wrapped in clear plastic bags. A small, three-tiered table sat off to the side. On its top were varying sizes of large white and pink crystals and tiny blue rocks. The lights were dim, but the colorful vials and dolls hanging along the walls screamed loudly, even without needing the direct lighting. It was a small shop, but it was packed to the brim with anything and everything someone who practiced could want.

  “Levi,” a smooth, deep voice said from behind one of the aisles.

  I walked around a wooden barrel and slipped between two displays of small boxes with skulls on their labels.

  “Miss Annamae.” I stopped in front of the counter she leaned behind. She smiled at me when I said her name.

  She was a middle-aged woman with skin almost as dark as Ward’s. She and I were about the same height, but where I was slender, she was curvy. Her hair was curly and dyed a bright red color that somehow still looked natural, even though I knew it wasn’t. Her catlike eyes were lined with black makeup that made her light hazel eyes all the more striking.

  “I see you brought Ward with you,” she said with a twist of her lips.

  Ward only folded his thick arms across his chest.

  Without looking at them, Annamae drew tarot cards from a stack that sat atop the counter. Her long, teal fingernails gently scraped the top of each card before she either flipped it and laid it out on the counter, or discarded it unseen into another pile.

  “Would you like to know what your card is today, Levi?”

  “Not today,” I replied. “We’re here to buy some things.”

  “I know. But you should let me tell you your card for the day. I feel as though it will be… interesting.”

  My stomach twisted as it always did when Annamae wanted to read my cards.

  “No,” Ward said. “We do not have the time.”

  Annamae’s grin grew wider. “What’s the hurry?”

  “I had a dream,” I said. “My mama is worried. She thinks I need to do a cleanse.”

  “And you really think a simple cleansing is enough to help you?” she asked.

  Neither Ward nor I said anything in reply. She sighed and pulled all the cards back into one neat, little pile. She set them off to the side and leaned across the counter with her bright red curls falling in waves around her face. “All right. What do you need?”

  “Bay leaves,” I replied. “And pine needles, basil, rosemary. Cleansing soaps and herbal bath crystals.”

  She leaned away from the counter and looked me up and down. “You’ll need an amulet too. It won’t fix you, but it will help.”

  I nodded. I knew Annamae wouldn’t try to sell me something I didn’t need. Tourists? Sure. But my family had been coming to see her since we moved to this town when I was only young. When I was fourteen, she once tried to sell me a love potion. I’d guffawed and told her there was no such thing. She’d grinned wide and said I might be too smart for my own good. The next time I’d come in, she’d cut my purchases in half, telling me that I didn’t need most of the things I thought I did. Since then she’d been upfront and honest with me.

  Miss Annamae was a good person, if skeptical by nature. I knew this as fact. I could see her soul.

  “You have a gift, Levi,” my gran had said. It was the first time Gran had ever mentioned the oddness that surrounded me. I was in the fourth grade at the time and had barely understood the weight behind her words. Together we’d been sitting in a field watching the birds in the live oak trees as dusk began to overtake the sky.

  “When you look into a person’s eyes, you will see their soul. It will come as easily to you as breathing air.”

  It hadn’t been until years later that I fully understood what she’d meant. Even though I’d grown up in a house that practiced rituals, card readings, cleansings, spells, and hoodoo, the thought of looking into a person’s eyes and seeing their soul had baffled me. A soul wasn’t like a tarot card, an elixir, or a small bag of herbs and leaves that Mama held in her hand and chanted to. A soul wasn’t tangible. A soul wasn’t a living thing.

  And then there’d been a boy.

  I’d first seen him from across the secondary school parking lot. He
must’ve been the new kid that every other student in Malcome was talking about. There had been something off about him—something different and unusual. He was compelling to me in a way I hadn’t fully understood then. It hadn’t just been that he was attractive—it was deeper than that.

  “What’s your name?” In a burst I’d sprinted across the parking lot and stopped mere feet in front of him.

  His eyes were almost as dark as his henna-colored hair that hung low over his eyes. The dirty leather jacket he wore strained over his slim arm as he plucked the lit cigarette out of his mouth and leered at me.

  “Sterling.”

  And that had been when I’d seen it—his soul—in all of its transcendental beauty. It was the ocean: vast, huge, blue. Waves ripped and tore and thundered and crashed. I saw tsunamis that consumed everything in their path, waves that hugged so tightly they engulfed. Waters of unimaginable magnitudes and colors lived behind his eyes, straining to thrash free.

  Sterling had a soul. He had the most beautiful soul I’d ever seen. It was as alive as him and me, as alive as the look in his eyes and the beating of his heart. He was a good person, and I’d known it the moment I’d laid eyes on him. But his soul thundered too loudly. Those waves would rock too many boats. I knew that just as surely as I knew the sky was blue and that life was destined to be unfair.

  After that day I’d believed everything my gran told me, even the things that seemed like they were from her folktales. She told me to trust my gut, my instincts, my head, but never my eyes and never, ever my heart.

  “I’ll go to the back and get the amulet. I have a special one in mind.” Annamae turned and walked through the curtain of beads that covered the door to the back of her store, her long, red skirt swishing behind her.

  The door chimed. Two women, talking in hushed tones, walked through the front door. When they noticed me, they smiled. I dipped my chin in reply.

  They went into the aisle that sold premade potions. That was usually the first aisle that people who were inexperienced in hoodoo or rituals went to. The rosemary leaves sat on a high shelf, tucked neatly into a small plastic jar with a screw-top lid.

  As I collected the things I’d need for my cleansing, I couldn’t help but listen in on the conversation the two ladies were having in the aisle next to mine.

  “Someone moved into the old Poirier house,” one lady whispered. “A dark-haired man from the city.”

  “Who would be crazy enough to move into that house? It’s decrepit and unsafe. Does he know?”

  “Well, Agatha ran into him just yesterday at the post office. She tried chatting with him to ask who he was, where he’d come from, and what he knows about the old Poirier house, but she said he looked like he hadn’t heard her at all. She said something’s off with him. She said he gave her chills.”

  “Not many young folks move here by chance. Does he have family in town?”

  “No one that I’m aware of. Agatha and I talked about it, and no one seems to know who he is or why he moved here of all places.”

  “How odd! And he’s young, you say?”

  “Agatha said he looks to be in his midtwenties. She tried asking him, but again, he seemed to not want to chat with her. Why move to a small town if you won’t even talk to the locals?”

  “Levi,” Ward said quietly.

  I jumped and spun toward him.

  “You should not eavesdrop.”

  I nodded and walked over to the counter. As I did, Annamae came out of the back room with a necklace in her hand. She set it down on the counter in front of me. By the pleased look on her face, you’d have thought she’d handed me the holy grail.

  “This will do,” she said.

  I took the necklace and held it up to the light. It was a purple amulet, shaped like a crystal, strung on a long, gold chain. It glistened and sparkled in the dim lighting. When I touched it, small fissures of electricity coursed across my skin.

  “Do you like it?” She looked like the cat who caught the mouse.

  “Yes.” Unable to hide my pleasure, I immediately slipped it over my head. It hung down to the middle of my chest. The weight of it against the fabric of my shirt brought a gentle comfort to my mind.

  I paid Annamae for the supplies and the amulet that I couldn’t help but touch as Ward and I walked out of the store. I stared at it as we walked, watching how it sparkled even more brightly in the sunlight.

  “It is a protection amulet,” Ward said.

  I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “I know.”

  “It worries me that Annamae thinks you need a protection amulet.”

  “Maybe she’s being cautious, Ward.”

  “Miss Annamae is many things—cautious is not one of them.”

  Across the street a young man and woman were deep in conversation, laughing and holding hands as they walked. They weren’t loud enough to be heard from where I was, but their beaming smiles said enough.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what they talked about. Parties? Marriage? What to have for dinner? At times I found myself envious of people who’d never been touched by things otherworldly. Everyone outside my family remained oblivious to the supernatural things lurking in the shadows. They believed ghosts and evil and souls were things from Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales and Disney movies.

  Even back in secondary school, I would listen to people my own age talk about their new iPhones, Taylor Swift’s newly released single, or the upcoming Tom Hardy movie—whoever that was. My mind was filled to the brim with incantations, spells to evict demons, and stories of ghosts Silvi had told me the night prior.

  As I watched the young couple disappear around the corner, I wondered if the person the two women in Miss Annamae’s store had been talking about knew of things otherworldly. Why else would someone move into that house?

  After a few shared minutes of silence between Ward and me, I said, “Ain’t you curious about who moved into the old Poirier house?”

  “No.”

  “Not even a little?”

  “No.”

  “It would take an odd type of person to move into a haunted house,” I said. Ward gave me a blank look. “It is haunted. I can feel it.”

  “I believe you, Levi,” he said.

  “So, what kind of a person would move to a town where he knows no one, plans to talk to no one, and chooses a decaying old house to live in?”

  “Not the type of person you should associate with.”

  I threw him a look. “Of course not. You know how I feel about the old Poirier house. The mere sight of it makes my bones ache and my guts knot. That house is a visual representation of the blackest kind of black, the darkest kind of dark. Evil things have happened there. It is where evil things still linger.”

  The old Poirier house was located at the edge of town and backed right onto the marshlands. There was a dock in the back of the house that stretched out far into the swamp. The house’s windows were shattered, its paint chipping away. People had lived there once, but my mama told me something wicked happened behind that bright red door and the wooden exterior. She hadn’t needed to tell me. I could feel it in my bones. I think the townsfolk, those without a spiritual bone in their bodies, could feel it. It was a place where men became monsters and evil consumed the only light that house had ever known. I’d been too young to understand what that meant, and too young for Mama to tell me what happened in that house.

  And I hadn’t asked again since.

  Whoever had lived there moved out, leaving the large, dark house to sit on the end of the swamp and slowly crumble.

  No one in town went near the old Poirier house, not only because it was out of the way and on the edge of town, but because, much like the swamp, there were tales of evil that lurked inside. Those tales scared away even the bravest of children and gave all reasonable adults a good excuse to go nowhere near it.

  “Don’t worry.” An uneasy smile settled on my face. “The Poirier house is the last place I want to go.”


  Ward looked at me, his dark eyes unblinking, his expression grave.

  I wrapped my fingers around the amulet, squeezing it tightly. “I know, Ward. The darkness can never love me back.”

  Chapter 3

  FIVE NIGHTS a week, I work at Mercy’s Diner, a small place near the center of town. Mercy’s is considered the watering hole by all the locals. While it may not be the fanciest place, it is still one of the most popular. It is a small building with a brick exterior but has big, bright windows on one side that let the light in first thing in the morning. The floor is wood paneled, but the table and chairs are all metal and plastic that are bolted to the floorboards. The inside walls are covered in old, black-and-white, framed pictures of the town and the people who lived there. It was a ritual that families would come in for a sixteenth-birthday party, and the entire family would have their picture taken and put up on the wall.

  The owner was an older man named Hudson, who everyone simply called Hud. Hud liked to grunt most of his replies and steer clear of any eye contact. He was a big man who worked as the chef in the back. Every time I’d ever seen Hud, he wore a white apron and a blank expression on his face.

  I liked working at Mercy’s, not only because the tips were generous and the atmosphere was light, but because I overheard stories of all kinds, people sharing personal secrets with one another, or sometimes with me. Or young people blustering about the boys and girls they had crushes on at school. Or who the new deputy in town was, or who was planning on moving out of town to try to make it in the big city as an actor.

  I didn’t have a lot of friends in town, but I didn’t mind. It suited me fine to be a fly on the wall. There weren’t a lot of things I had to say to other people, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like to hear their stories. It just meant I preferred to keep my own stories to myself.

  That evening when I got to Mercy’s, it was right before the dinner rush. I walked in through the back door, and Hud grunted at me without even looking up from where he was frying burgers.