The Prophet

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Watch the signs, gal. And mind the time.

I pondered Essie’s cryptic message all the way back to the cemetery. The signs could be interpreted as the synchronicities and meaningful coincidences that had been plaguing me since that first night in Clementine’s garden. But had I missed other signs? And how was I to mind the time?

The root be both light and daa’k. Tek care who you trus’.

Maybe she did know that Darius was back. Maybe that vague caution was her way of warning me about him.

My head swirled, and I could feel the onslaught of a headache. All those obscure warnings and signs and dreams crowded to the forefront of my brain, making me long for a time when I’d had nothing more pressing than the avoidance of ghosts. Those days were gone forever, I feared. Papa’s rules had been shattered and my sanctuary invaded, but I couldn’t afford to dwell on any of that at the moment. If there was any hope for my future peace of mind, it lay in finding Shani’s ghost and helping her move on.

Once again, I passed through the lichgate and made my way to her grave, where I sat on the ground to await dusk. I did this with no small measure of trepidation. Not all graveyards were haunted, as evidenced by the lack of spirits in Oak Grove. But I felt certain that, despite the elaborate precautions taken before and after burials in this little community, come twilight, Chedathy would be rife with entities.

It was very quiet there beside Shani’s grave. So silent, in fact, that I could hear the distant murmur of voices. As the sun slipped beneath the treetops, a group of men with shovels left the cemetery. I assumed they’d been there to dig Mr. Fremont’s grave, and that made me think of Robert’s final resting place forty miles north of Charleston in Coffeeville Cemetery.

According to Tamira, he’d been buried there so that his spirit would be free of Mariama. But even with miles between them, he hadn’t been able to rest. What was distance and time behind the veil? Besides, it wasn’t Mariama who disturbed Robert’s sleep. He couldn’t rest until his killer was found and brought to justice.

At sunset, the temperature dropped, and I started to shiver. I sat with my legs drawn up, chin resting on knees as the day came to a quiet end and dusk crept in from the marshes. The glow on the horizon began to fade, and in the rising wind, the dead leaves sounded like tiny clappers. There was a strange rhythm to the sound. A stirring of energy that made my heart quicken.

A chant came to me then, the singsong of a child’s nursery rhyme. I lifted my head to listen.

I got up to follow the chant through the cemetery. It wasn’t Shani who summoned me, though. The voice was older and more earthly, without the metallic echo from the other side. But hearing the nursery rhyme in Chedathy Cemetery, of all places, most definitely meant something. One of those signs both Clementine and Essie had told me to watch out for.

As I neared the spot where Tamira had taken me earlier, I moved cautiously, easing myself behind the same tree from which she’d spied on Robert and Mariama. I listened to the disturbing little song for a moment longer before chancing a peek around the trunk.

Rhapsody sat on the ground poking through an old tin box as she sang. On the ground around her was an assortment of bagged roots and tiny jars of powders and herbs. Slipping one of the vials into her jacket pocket, she returned everything else and closed the lid. Then she stood and shoved the box into a hole in the tree as far as her arm could reach.

She scurried off then but not toward home. Instead, she headed toward the back of the cemetery where I’d parked my car. I was torn between following her and investigating the contents of that tin box. I wasn’t particularly proud of myself for spying on a child, but the fact that she had been singing the nursery rhyme Shani had used to lure me into Clementine’s garden surely meant something. It was a clue. Perhaps even a message from the ghost child.

I hurried to the tree and thrust my arm into the hole as far as I could reach until I felt the cool metal against my fingers. Then, box in hand, I knelt on the ground and opened the lid, gasping in shock at the contents. I was no expert in weapons, but I felt certain that I’d located Devlin’s .38. How it had come to be in Rhapsody’s possession, I couldn’t imagine. Surely she hadn’t somehow been involved in his murder. She was just a girl. Daunted by my findings, I closed the lid and returned the container to the tree hole. Then I went in search of Rhapsody.

Twilight had deepened, but the moon had not yet risen. I could spot her slight silhouette now and then weaving in and out of the trees. In the distance came an eerie chanting and the seductive rhythm of a drum.

Leaving Chedathy, Rhapsody jumped the ditch and crossed the road to disappear into the woods. I waited a moment, then followed.

The forest was very dark. I could no longer catch even a glimpse of the girl. Instead, I followed those drumbeats through thick curtains of ivy and Spanish moss. The ground softened as I neared the marshes, and the air thickened with brine, smoke and a scent I couldn’t identify.

The singing grew louder as the trees gave way to a clearing. A crowd had gathered, pounding the ground with sticks and poles to create a frantic tempo. Inside the clearing, dancers moved counterclockwise around the circle, stomping and clapping to the beat, sometimes shouting when the spirit moved them.

It was a joyous celebration, and I shouldn’t have felt in the least threatened, but I did. Not by the ritual or the pounding of the sticks or the dancers, but by something else that lurked in those woods. I could feel the decadent chill of approaching spirits. I had no idea if they were being drawn by the ritual or by me. A little of both, I suspected, because the synergy generated by the ceremony was astounding.

Maybe that relentless rhythm had somehow hypnotized me. Maybe that was why I didn’t see the tall shadow until he was almost upon me.

I heard the nightingale a split second before a fine, shimmering dust settled over me. I tried to hold my breath, but already I could feel the powder tingling on my skin, and when I finally gasped for air, I tasted the bitterness of an alkaloid on my tongue.

My heartbeat slowed as my movements became sluggish. I felt no pain or fear. Instead, I was cocooned in a dreamy tranquility that reached all the way down to my core. My ears buzzed with a myriad of noises. If I listened closely, I could separate them from the pounding and singing. Up in the tree, the trill of the nightingale. Farther away, the sound of deep laughter. I even heard Essie calling for Rhapsody.

The sounds were real and not imagined. I wasn’t hallucinating or tripping. I must have entered some altered state because, as I floated upward, I saw my body on the ground.