Unfinished Maine scene for Dougss
"What frightens you?
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?"
- Libba Bray
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Freelancer had tried to teach me to never be afraid.
She tried to remind me that I should never love another.
But I didn’t listen. I thought it was complete bullshit, just words my great aunt used to keep me from doing stupid stuff, which didn’t work. At all.
That didn’t stop her from trying, though. Pretty much everyone else had given up but she never did. Year after year, the same story, told more frequently when I started dating in high school. Well, maybe dating wasn’t the right word for it.
Conversations that always started out with a glass of sweet iced tea on her front porch, sitting on the third step, her cane by her side and her black skirt wrinkling at her knees and revealing stocking clad calves.
“And what’s this I hear about Katherine Neville, hmmm?” I open my mouth but she places her fingers to my lips. “Whatever lie you were going to come up with, don’t bother.”
“How the hell did you know?”
She smacks my shin with the cane. “Language.”
I figure this is not the time to mention that she swears like a sailor in at least two different languages.
She returns to her glass, drops of condensation running down the sides and onto her wrinkled hands. “I see everything, dear.”
I also figure that this is not the time to remind her that she is blind. She doesn’t listen when people point it out anyway; instead she just knocks whoever said it in the shin with her cane. That just may be the only benefit to going blind, I think. Getting to hit people with a cane and then claim that you had no idea they were there.
She took a gulp of the tea, licking her sugar coated lips and continued, “I know you care for her more than the others. And I know how many others there were, boy.” She tries for a stern look and almost pulls it off. But there is a mischievous aura around her that prevents her from actually making me feel guilty.
“Madame-”
She shook her stick at me. “Don’t you Madame me. You know exactly what I’m talking about. And how many times have I told you to call me Armande?”
“About as many times as I’ve told you not to call me boy.”
She mumbles something under her breath, and clears her throat. “Fine. Sawyer. You listen to me, and you listen good.”
“Armande,” I stress the syllables of her name, “I’ve heard this already.”
Another smack in the shins with the cane. I wouldn’t be surprised if my legs were covered in bruises in the morning.
“This is different.” She adopts a look of indignation. “In all the times we’ve sat here and drank ice tea and talked you have never felt this way about someone before. But you cannot,” she spits out the word, “You cannot fall in love. No matter what.”
“Because of the curse,” I repeat dully.
“Yes, because of the curse.” She frowns. “Maybe there is some hope for you yet, boy. Instead of wasting all that brainpower on getting high after school with those dirty little friends of yours.”
“Armande, I don’t-”
A shake of her head, and a rap of the cane. “Don’t bother.” She takes another sip of the tea. “It’s all because of the curse and your rotten to the core great -great-great uncle. My grandfather.” She grimaces. “He came to Louisiana from a village in France.”
“Beaune la Rolande,” I reply.
“Yes. And he left behind too many troubles to count. Debts, for the most part, money, and a debt he could never repay.” She lowers her voice, “A blood debt.”
“When he knocked up that weird chick.”
She shakes her head. “Not weird. She knew things. The way I know things.”
“Yeah, you know too much,” I mutter.
“Don’t get insolent with me, boy. She could see things that others couldn’t; feel what they felt, speak to those who passed on.”
I roll my eyes. “Bullshit.”
Another smack of the cane, and I growl in pain under my breath.
“He made her happy, and she loved him dearly. But that son of a bitch could never stay tied down, and that was his undoing- for all of us. He was engaged to someone else, you see. The daughter of the mayor himself- he had made himself a fine match, or so his parents said. And the damn boy could never keep his mouth shut, especially when he was drunk.” She turned her head towards me. “Like you.”
For the sake of my shins, I don’t comment on this.