The Prophet

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Zombie powder,” Temple said the next morning as she helped me unload my tools from the back of the SUV. Sometime after Devlin had left my house, he’d arranged to have the car delivered and then texted to let me know where I could find the key. I had to wonder if our conversation had precipitated the dream. In the light of day, it seemed impossible that Darius Goodwine had been able to invade my sleep.

“Ground glass is a common component, along with datura,” Temple was saying. “The glass irritates the skin so that the poison is more quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.”

“Zombies in Charleston?” I glanced at her in mock horror as I locked my car and deposited the key in my pocket. “Isn’t that more of a New Orleans thing?”

“By way of Africa and Haiti. Traditionally, all we have to worry about around here are hags, haints and plat-eyes,” she said naming the holy trinity of Lowcountry legends.

“Papa used to tell stories about plat-eyes that would curl your hair,” I said. “Boo hags, too. It got so I was afraid to close my eyes at night for fear one would slip into my room and steal my skin while I slept.” But for all my shivering under the covers back then, I’d never really believed in the mythical plat-eye creatures that supposedly gobbled up willful children, nor the hags that shed their own skin at night to inhabit another’s. But haint was a colloquialism for ghost, and I’d learned all too soon that they were real.

“I can go you one better,” Temple said as we struck out through the weeds toward the cemetery gates. “I once dated a guy from Louisiana whose grandmother practiced voodoo. She claimed when she was a young woman that her brother had been turned into a zombie by a powerful priestess. He was pronounced dead by the local coroner and a funeral and burial ensued. Years later, the sister saw him in New Orleans with that same priestess. The woman had dug him up and kept him as a slave the whole time his family had thought him dead.”

“What happened to him?”

“The last the sister knew, he was still with the priestess.”

“Why didn’t she call the police?”

“Nothing the authorities could do. Nothing she could do, either, because the priestess was too powerful.”

“But you don’t believe that, do you? Not you, Miss Skeptic.”

“Of course I don’t believe it. The point is, she believed it. And the brother, too, apparently. As far as I’m concerned, voodoo, rootwork, conjure…all different names for the same con, and the stock-in-trade is mystery and persuasion. People want to believe they can obtain the seemingly unattainable, be it love or wealth or protection from their enemies by virtue of a few spells and incantations. That’s why they’ll spend their last dime on come-to-me potions and go-away-evil candles.” She paused while I unlocked the gates. “This man you told me about, this Darius Goodwine. It sounds to me like he’s trying to mess with your head. A sliver of doubt is all it takes for a particularly clever con artist to worm his way in.”

“But if he possesses no real power, how can he influence me?”

“Mind over matter. Just like all those mishaps we had with Ona Pearl Handy. She created a little doubt and we did the rest to ourselves. Call it the power of suggestion or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The mind has the ability to influence the body on a subconscious level. You know that.”

“The ground glass wasn’t just in my head, though. I saw the blood.”

“Yes, that it is disturbing,” she agreed. “Do you normally go outside barefoot? Enough so that it’s somewhat of a habit?”

“I don’t know about habit, but it’s not unusual.”

“He’d know that if he’s had someone watching you. For whatever reason, this man obviously views you as a threat. And now he’s looking to gain the upper hand.”

“What should I do?”

“If he’s a true believer, you could go to a root doctor and buy some protection. Mind over matter works both ways. But if he’s just a snake oil salesman, then the only thing you can do is be on guard. Keep your eyes and ears open. And for God’s sake, don’t walk around barefoot. If he does anything truly threatening, call the cops. Or Devlin. I have a feeling he’d be only too happy to take care of this guy for you.”

Yes, and that was perhaps my biggest fear of all. What Devlin had in store for Darius Goodwine.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning headstones, a tedious project that required hours upon hours of squatting and kneeling so my leg muscles had become quite developed over the years. This was not a job I ever recommended to amateurs because even the gentlest scrubbing could cause damage, particularly to older stones. With every cleaning, a portion of the surface was lost, so one needed to approach the project with conservation rather than restoration as the end goal.

Even in cemeteries where a water supply was readily available, I used non-ionic detergents only rarely, preferring instead the low-tech method of soft bristle brushes, sponges, scrapers and plenty of patience. I always started at the bottom and back of the stone to prevent streaking, and normally, once I became absorbed in the task, time would pass quickly. Today, I kept hauling out my phone to check the clock. Earlier, I’d placed a call to Tom Gerrity’s office and left a message. When he returned my call a few minutes later, I pretended to be a potential client in need of his services. If he recognized my name from our previous meeting, he didn’t let on. He would be out for most of the day, he said, but would return to the office late in the afternoon and suggested I drop by around six.

I had no idea what could be accomplished by such a visit or even what I would say to him once I got there. I couldn’t ask him outright what he had on Dr. Shaw, nor could I pretend to be a friend of the Fremont family looking to hire a private detective. Gerrity had seen me in his office last spring, so even if he hadn’t recognized my name, chances were he’d place me the moment I walked through the door. Then he’d remember my connection to Devlin, and given the animosity between the two—not to mention his possible association with Darius Goodwine—I couldn’t imagine he’d be all that cooperative.

Moving to the face of the stone, I wet it with the pump sprayer I’d lugged from the car and scraped at the lichen as I ran through a dozen possible scenarios in my head, none of them particularly appealing. Maybe I just needed to trust in the universe, I decided. Have a little faith that Fremont had a reason for sending me to see Gerrity. He had once been called the Prophet, after all, and apparently, some of his soothsayer abilities had been retained after death. The blood he’d foretold on Isabel Perilloux’s hands came to mind, but this wasn’t about her. This was about Tom Gerrity. What was the worst that could happen if I went to see him? He’d throw me out? Hadn’t he basically done that the last time I’d gone to this office?

On and on my thoughts rambled as I continued to work. By the end of the day, I had been rewarded with several lovely inscriptions. As I rinsed away the grime from the final headstone, an anchor appeared, a symbol as old as the catacombs. In its straightforward interpretation, an anchor symbolized hope and steadfastness on the graves of sailors, but in olden times, it had often been used as a disguised cross to guide the devoted and the persecuted to secret meeting places. On this day, I found new significance in the symbol because it reminded me that something as innocuous as an anchor—or a songbird—could have hidden meaning.

At four o’clock, I gathered up my tools and supplies, leaving the heavy water jugs behind so that I wouldn’t have to cart them back and forth. Temple had finished her survey of the exhumed graves and left mid-afternoon. Her job was done. From here on out, I’d be working in the cemetery alone. Maybe it was a blessing I had so many things occupying my thoughts these days. I had little time to brood about the past or worry about the perpetual pall that hung over Oak Grove Cemetery.

Still, as I locked the gates and turned my back on the graveyard, I felt a little chill go through me. I didn’t glance over my shoulder but instead ran my gaze along the edge of the woods, searching for movement in the deep shade at the tree line. The sun hung low, but there was still plenty of daylight left. No reason in the world to be frightened, I told myself. And yet…I was.

I tried to shake off the disquiet as I started down the overgrown path to the road. My imagination really was doing a number on me because at one point I could have sworn I heard footsteps behind me. Nothing was there, of course. It was too early for ghosts. Too early even for the shadow beings that stirred just before dusk.

Storing my tools in the back of the SUV, I climbed behind the wheel and turned the ignition. Nothing happened except for a faint, ominous click. The battery was dead, which made no sense since it was fairly new.

I popped the hood and checked the cables, then used one of my wooden scrapers to clear away the chalky corrosion around the posts. Sliding back in, I tried the ignition once more. The engine kicked over immediately, and with a sigh of relief, I hopped out to lower the hood. As I moved back around to the door, I saw that a beetle had climbed onto my shoe, and I bent down to examine it. Unlike the beetles from my dream, which were rounded and huge, this insect had a flattened body and a pale yellow platelike cover near the head.

Goose bumps rose on my arms and at my nape as I shook it off. Until my dream the previous night, I wouldn’t have been disturbed by such a sight. Since childhood, I’d suffered from a mild case of arachnophobia, but insects never worried me, even the giant cockroaches—palmetto bugs—so prevalent along the southeastern coast. Now I had to wonder if the beetle was a warning or a sign. A creepy-crawly with a hidden meaning.

I climbed back into the car and locked the doors as I scanned my surroundings. I told myself I was being ridiculous. Because of a nightmare, I now had a thing about beetles?

But no rationale could convince me that the one crawling on my shoe had been an accident. I no longer believed in the randomness of the universe or the happenstance of everyday occurrences. Everything happened for a reason, and I was very much afraid this current synchronicity would be the death of me.