Page 97 of Frankly, My Dear

Many candles glowed in a wide circle, throwing frightening shadows on the more than fifty people who jammed the small clearing, swaying to the beat of the mesmerizing drums. Rocking from side to side, the attendees appeared intoxicated, or under the influence of the hypnotizing ritual. A few of them were clearly white and some wore veils like theirs.

Iris drew them to the back of the circle where it was darker, and Selene shuddered with foreboding.

“Hear and come, oh grand zombi. Hear and come to work your magic,” a compelling male voice called out. Lightning struck suddenly, seeming to hit almost directly behind the makeshift altar. Through the vaporous bayou mists, Selene saw a black man and woman, presumably the voodoo priest, Papaloi, and the queen, Mamoloi.

The tall, majestic man with frizzy gray hair continued to chant, in some other language now, finally turning with significance toward his partner. The woman’s coal-black skin gleamed with perspiration as she reached into a wooden box on the ground and picked up a long, black snake.

A snake! Selene’s heart just about popped out of her chest.

Then the woman stepped atop the box and began to writhe, like the creature she coiled around her neck. The reptile slithered about her body—over her pointed breasts, around her waist, even up her parted legs under her gown, emerging at the neck.

The whole time, the woman undulated in a sexual parody. And the attendees watching her erotic dance partook of a large cup of drug-laced tafia that was passed around. Under its influence, they worked themselves into a mad dance, speaking in tongues, jerking their bodies, touching themselves intimately.

The voodoo king, who wore a robe covered with strange signs and a necklace of snake rattles, traced a large circle with a black substance, urging candidates to come forward for initiation. The priest tapped each of the kneeling initiates with a wooden paddle. Meanwhile, he intoned a rhythmic African chant, immediately taken up by the crowd, which seemed to be falling into a trance—some fainting, others in a frenzy, spinning around and tearing off their clothes, even biting their flesh in an orgasmic fever.

At the height of the ceremony, a squawking chicken was laid over a low table. The priest severed its head with one smooth stroke of a sharp blade and let the bird’s blood drip into a copper bowl.

The young Mamoloi put the snake back in the box and lifted her robe off her still undulating body. The priestess then dipped her fingertips into the blood, smearing the crimson fluid over her now nude body. Other celebrants, one by one, did the same, then paired off, male and female, and began to engage in sex, on the spot.

Revolted, Selene had seen enough.

Turning to Iris and Mrs. Baptiste, she noticed that their attention centered on a couple on the other side of the circle who were slipping surreptitiously into the edge of the wood. The white man, wearing a mask and a long black cape, was speaking forcefully to a short, veiled woman before him, pointing a finger in her face when she seemed to disagree with his orders. Finally he shoved her in the direction of the plantation house, and he turned back to the orgy surrounding them. No doubt, he intended to participate in the perverted sexual games.

Selene exchanged knowing looks with her two cohorts as a flash of bayou lightning illuminated the clearing for a brief second.

It was Victor and the “ghost.”

Iris motioned her head in the direction of the path they had followed from the house, and the three of them fell back into the darkness. When they were beyond hearing range of the voodoo revelers, Iris whispered hurriedly, “I will return to the big house…the short way along the bayou. You two follow after the ghost, but keep your distance. And make sure Victor does not come after you on the path.”

Selene and Mrs. Baptiste nodded.

“Follow our plan once you get to the house. Rufus is waiting in the appointed spot.” Then Iris disappeared into the murky forest.

The storm broke with a fury, soon drenching Selene and James’s mother, making them unable to see more than two feet in front of them. Selene kept darting fearful glances over her shoulder in case the voodoo orgy broke up early and Victor followed them. She was more afraid of Victor than any “spirit.”

By the time they got to the plantation, there was no sign of the ghost; so Selene and Mrs. Baptiste parted company, going to their previously designated spots for trapping the ghost. If it was Fleur, as Mrs. Baptiste suspected, Selene didn’t want her killed, and she’d made all her accomplices promise to use only minimal force in the capture. They wanted information from Fleur, not her death.

Mrs. Baptiste, looking like a wet, bedraggled cat, waited until one of James’s guards walked by on his rounds, then slunk through the kitchen door where Blossom awaited her with formidable weapons—brass soup ladles and a wooden apple-butter paddle. Selene heard the lock click into place behind Mrs. Baptiste, as planned.

Then she slipped around to the front. Rufus was stationed on the third floor near the sleeping quarters, with a rifle in case Victor showed up, and a huge swath of fish netting to throw over the “ghost.” Iris had gone to the fourth floor to guard Etienne.

It was Selene’s job to double check all the doors and windows, except for the central door on the second floor, so that the “ghost” wouldn’t be able to escape once surrounded. Selene’s sodden slippers squished noisily in the eerie silence. Satisfied that the second floor was secure, Selene was about to climb the stairs when she heard a faint rustling noise in the library, then saw a dim light under the closed door.

She peeled off her noisy shoes and tiptoed down the hallway, grabbing a closed parasol from the hall stand. With fringed umbrella raised, she rushed into the room, then stopped suddenly. By the light of a single candle, she could see the “ghost” pouring a white powder into James’s bottle of bourbon on a sideboard.

Poison?

With a gasp of surprise, the “ghost” dropped the packet of powder and pulled a dagger from its skirts, lifting the sharp blade overhead. But instead of storming toward Selene in assault, the veiled specter backed up warily. The hand holding the knife shook, and the fearsome “ghost” whimpered pitifully.

“Fleur, is that you?” Selene asked, lowering her parasol.

The hand shook even more and the “ghost” began to sob.

“Don’t be afraid, Fleur. I won’t hurt you. Just lower the knife, and we can talk.”

Selene stepped forward and took the knife out of Fleur’s trembling hand. Then she lifted the veil off her frightened face, steering her toward a chair. Meanwhile, Victor’s placée wept loudly into a dainty lace handkerchief, wailing, “Oh, Mam’zelle, I didn’t want to do it. Victor made me. Forgive me, forgive me. Oh, he will kill me now for failing.”

Just then Selene heard a loud crash below in the kitchen, followed by a male voice cursing. “Sacrebleu! What the hell is going on here? Why did you strike me with that soup ladle?”