A Dark Roux: A Novel, page 1
A Dark Roux
Blaine Daigle
A Dark Roux
By Blaine Daigle
Wicked House Publishing
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities, and incidents included in the story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Blaine Daigle
Interior Formatting by Joshua Marsella
All rights reserved. Copyright © 2023 Blaine Daigle
Contents
Black Water and Crushed Brick
1999 - The Place of Bones
2014 - The LeBeau House
First, You Make A Roux
Do You Believe In Monsters?
They Don’t Let You Forget
Fever Dreams
Homecoming
Summer of ‘99 (I)
How Far We’ve Come
The First Night
The House is Full of Them
Summer of 99 (II)
Too Many Ghosts
Chain
The Wake
The Second Night
Death and Rebirth
Summer of 99 (III)
Exposure Therapy
The Old River Church
Lightning Bugs
Summer of 99 (IV)
Voodoo
The Fall of The House of LeBeau
An Old Friend
Summer of 99 (V)
Confessions
Summer of 99 (VI)
Possible Grace
Summer of 99 (VII)
The Ritual
The Other Place
The Last Stand of Miranda LeBeau
No Different From Any of Them
Atonement
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Wicked House Publishing
For Dee and Hall, without whom I would have never enjoyed the little southern ghost stories that shaped my life so much.
And for my wife, Lyndie, without whom I would have never finished this book. Your love and dedication allowed this incredible dream to bloom.
Black Water and Crushed Brick
1999 - The Place of Bones
There is a place deep in the heart of Louisiana where the darkness of the bayou echoes with songs of alligators and bullfrogs, their voices captured in the hanging moss, never to escape—never to be heard by the world beyond the wetlands. A place where black water boils within the thick open veins of nature under the heat of the Louisiana moon. Where water moccasins slide through the waveless pools of algae, eyes large and yellow in the blackness of night. This world buzzes with the beating of paper-thin wings and nighttime feedings.
This is a world that time did not forget, but purposely left alone.
The bayou watches as it sings. It is a place that hides its dead deep within the soil before the dead become living again, a part of this world enslaved to a fading memory of original creation.
A lone snake moves through the water, sweeping wide serpentine curves in the dark of the night. It moves quickly, anxiously. Hyper-focused on the shore hidden in shadow. So focused it doesn’t see the glowing eyes floating up to it, only feels the water change as the gator opens its mouth and lunges. The heavy jaws snap down upon the snake’s long body, and a violent shake rips the animal in two. The piece of it that won’t be consumed floats to the bottom of the bayou to become food for scared little fish hiding in the murky depths.
There are two seasons in the bayou: death and rebirth. Along this line this world so delicately straddles that, more often than not, these two seasons merge into one.
On the far side of the bayou’s sight is a house built upon the paper bones of generations before. Large and proud, it sits below the setting sun.
Inside the house, a young girl slowly walks down a set of stairs. Her dark hair is tied back in a ponytail and her eyes are wide and green. A little boy, younger than the girl, waits for her at the base of the stairs.
He asks her where she is going, but she doesn’t answer. She just hugs him and asks him to promise. Promise he will stay awake and wait upstairs until she gets back. The little boy asks to come with her, but she shakes her head and asks for his promise again.
He looks back at her with hurt eyes and nods his head. He will wait for her until she returns.
The girl stands and moves out the front door; the boy watches her leave. She moves along the sugarcane down to the bayou.
The water awaits like a beast licking its lips.
Under night’s black shroud, Rhiannon LeBeau slid the wooden oar slow and careful into the bayou and pushed the pirogue through the still waters. The moon above was full but routinely covered by heavy clouds. When the clouds would move away, the lunar glow lit the blackness of the bayou enough to make out important landmarks.
These moments were fleeting and precious, for it was in these moments that the twelve-year-old girl would illustrate her mental map. A guide in the darkness. She had made this journey—this same path—so many times before, but the bayou never stayed the same. There always seemed to be some new bend, another bank, a cypress tree appearing fresh with new moss in a spot you’d have sworn was empty water just hours earlier.
She would take these notes of the bayou’s mood, file them away in her memory, and push along as the clouds overtook the moon and darkness reclaimed its grip on the world. The features faintly visible in those brief moments of moonlight became wide swaths of black paint; bright eyes glowed, piercing the veil of night as gators floated, unassuming, in a place that seemed to be alive with every sound and shimmer.
Rhiannon wiped her forehead, leaving her arm wet with the sweat that bled from every pore of her body. The saltiness dripped from her lip and onto her tongue as she spat into the water.
She looked up at the sky and saw the glow of the moon behind the clouds. It was nearly midnight. Her daddy was going to kill her. It was nothing more than an honest mistake, but even still, she could feel the slap of the belt across her legs, the finely grained leather wrapping itself against bare skin.
An honest mistake.
But that wasn’t really true. She knew where she had gone. The mistake was falling asleep and not waking up until well past the curfew. Her daddy would be mad at her for breaking it, but he would get over it. Besides, the curfew was for the town. The bayou had no curfew. It obeyed no laws, not even the natural ones.
But she had spent the day where she knew she wasn’t supposed to be. The old river church, nestled deep within the darkest heart of the bayou. That was what would bring the belt tonight. Not the trip, but the destination. And Rhiannon knew it.
Another quick stretch of moonlight cleared the veil. She looked and remembered. The wide stretch between two trees that reached high over the bayou, like two ancient beasts locked in an eternal struggle. Heavy moss hung from their limbs almost down to the water, a curtain between one world and the next. She was getting closer.
The black returned.
The July air was a hot and hungry breath against her neck. Her clothes were soaked through, drenched in her body’s desperate effort to cool itself.
Then she heard the sound, and her skin cooled.
A rattling, soft and quiet. Almost inaudible. It came from the trees. It came from all around her and sang through the moss.
She pulled the oar out of the water and laid it across her lap. The water shushed for a moment and was still again.
Stories had been told about this place, where the trees meet above and the bayou quiets. Terrible stories passed down from old trappers and fishermen who were as much a part of the bayou as the trees themselves. Stories of bones that would float up to the bayou’s black surface and scatter against the banks. Stories of how the music of the dead would carry through the thick, hot air.
Stories of the woman who stands among the floating dead, the birdcage in her hand filled with bones that seemed as alive as the bayou itself.
Rhiannon knew the stories but didn’t put much thought to them. Bones don’t float. Besides, she had been by this spot hundreds of times and had never heard or seen a thing.
But she had never been out this late. This hour when the world of man was driven by fear to beds of safety and comfort, while nature reclaimed what always belonged to her.
The bayou breathed differently now. A mist of breath atop the still water. A heavy pant from the trees that carried another sound through the sultry air.
She could hear them—the soft clacking of bones rattling against each other. Almost rhythmic in their pattern.
Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she pushed the oar back into the water and steered toward the moss. The bones clacked in the darkness, louder now. The surrounding water began to churn and bubble. Moonlight returned to clear the darkness, and her eyes opened wide in terror. Around her, white shapes rose to the water’s surface.
Bones. Bones everywhere, glowing in the moonlight.
She closed her eyes and pushed forward. Her hands ached with her grip.
She felt the moss brush against her cheek and opened her eyes as she passed through the curtain. The rattling ceased and died in the darkness, and the bayou was the bayou once again.
Rhiannon slid the pirogue up the mud and onto the bank. As she stepped out, her feet sank into mud, cool beneath the warm crust. She thought about staying there, for just a moment maybe. The cool mud calmed and soothed her calloused feet. But the moon above reminded her of her lateness, and she hadn’t left the clacking noise far enough behind her to feel safe. So, she moved on, the wet mud smacking in the darkness as it loosened its grip.
She could see the lights in the distance. The monstrous building sat surrounded by acres of sugarcane that backed up to the edge of the black bayou. The upstairs light was on, the light outside her room. There was no way she was getting out of this. The light may as well have been blood on her hands.
She reached out to her left, cracked off a stalk of sugarcane and broke it in half. She felt the sweet nectar drip from its veins as she gnawed and sucked against the grain.
If a beating awaited her, there was no need to rush home. Hell, the only thing pushing her forward anymore was the place beyond the curtain she’d just passed through. The place of bones.
Stupid. She’d been seeing things. It was late; she was tired, and her imagination was running wild. That’s all it was. Had to be. She had half a mind to get back in the pirogue and head right back out into the bayou, back to the old church. To a place where she felt wanted and welcome.
But the chill hadn’t left her. The things that cooled her even in the July heat, that clacking noise, those bones, that dread still flooded her insides with every thought. The images felt tattooed onto her eyes.
There was movement to the left of her. A rustling in the cane.
Rhiannon froze. Her eyes traced the tall stalks. In a few weeks, this whole field would be burned to the ground, its sweet smell lingering on the breeze. But now, the stalks were high, over her head, and the rotten stench of swamp choked her.
Inside those stalks, something was moving.
Coyote, maybe? They took people’s dogs sometimes, but they didn’t go after people. Well, they didn’t go after adults.
Something snapped a stalk, the crack echoing through the night.
Rhiannon took a quick step away from the cane. She could see it now. The tops of the stalks moving, swaying. Almost dancing.
Towards her.
Her breathing escalated. She told her feet to move, but they were stuck in the cool mud. From the fields behind her came another loud crack, and a shock swam down her spine and snapped her body into action.
Rhiannon found her nerve and took off in a dead sprint, bare feet leaving the mud of the bank and finding the hard ground of the fields. She ran as hard and as fast as she could.
From both sides came the crashing sounds of pursuit.
She could see it now. Fifty yards ahead, looming like a ghost. The two-story white house that seemed to glow in the darkness; the porch held up by columns as old as the South. Against the black of night, the LeBeau house stood in ancestral majesty.
Her feet pushed harder. The cracks got louder.
Thirty yards. She couldn’t breathe. The air was too thick.
Twenty yards. The crashing was feet away now, right at the edge of the cane.
Ten yards. Her feet left the dirt and found the bricks of the stairs leading up to the front door.
In two steps, she cleared the last stretch. She grabbed the doorknob and threw the old door open, launching herself into the house and slamming the door behind her.
She collapsed on the hardwood floor, dripping with sweat and mud as she gulped the precious cool air inside the house, bringing life back to her tired body.
Opening her eyes, she expected to turn to her right, into the study, and see her father sitting in his favorite chair, waiting for her. Not her mother. Miranda went to bed too early to be bothered with sneaking children. But certainly, her father would be awake and waiting. Belt in hand. Scorn on his face.
But the chair sat empty, and the house was quiet. The only sound was a soft, faint creaking coming from somewhere she could not pinpoint.
Rhiannon smiled and closed her eyes, laughing to herself. She had done it. Nobody knew. Even blowing through the door hadn’t seemed to disturb anything. The LeBeau house sat, a quiet, sleeping thing.
She just had to be as quiet as possible going up the stairs. She’d shower in the morning. Tonight, she’d just wipe herself down with a wet rag and get to her room. She’d sleep in a quiet, cool bed. Far away from bayous and bones and sugarcane.
She turned and was startled by the sudden appearance of her brother.
Of course, she thought. I asked him to wait.
And he had. Here he was, still awake. Standing in his too-tight pajamas, his hair a mess from an earlier bath. But he was downstairs. She’d wanted him to stay upstairs just in case their father got mad. But that was a moot point now. It was just the two of them.
“Hey, buddy,” she said. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
The boy didn’t say anything. His dark eyes stared upward as his small, frail shoulders shook. His lips quivered, as though desperately trying to form some response.
“Rhett, are you okay?”
His lips continued shaking, a choppy D sound bouncing out before, finally, a word.
“Daddy?”
Rhiannon followed his gaze upward. To the balcony overhead. To her room, where she’d expected to find comfort and serenity after a harrowing night.
A sudden paralysis took over, and her mouth became dry as chalk at the sight before her.
Hanging from the balcony was her father, Patrick LeBeau. A noose was tied tightly around his neck, his eyes open and bloodshot.
Swinging.
The LeBeau house creaked softly under his weight.
2014 - The LeBeau House
Miranda LeBeau walked quietly through the silent house at the end of Sugarcane Road. Her bare feet were cold against the hardwood beneath them. Colder than they had any reason to be in August. A chill set into her skin that belied the hot Louisiana night. There wasn’t much heat in the LeBeau House. Hadn’t been for many, many years. Not since that summer and the horrible events that began with the death of her husband and ended with the abandonment of her children.
For fifteen years the house had been silent, echoing only with Miranda’s footsteps as she moved through it like a memory. The walls had cracked beneath the heavy weight of time.
Miranda moved through the living room toward the staircase, cutting through stripes of moonlight which cut through the house’s shadows.
The room was full of furniture nobody had used in decades. Only the sitting chair at the far end of the room, old, worn, and sagging, had been used at all. The rest of the room was filled with the detritus of a once-full home. Far from a happy home, but full, nonetheless.
She climbed the stairs and emerged in the long corridor that led past four doors. The first two, a bathroom and a hobby room, sat vacant of any life. The only time she’d been in either was to run the shower for a minute or two to keep the pipes active. The hobby room may as well have been stuffed behind a locked door.
It was the two doors at the far end of the hall that brought tears. On one side, Rhett’s bedroom. On the other, Rhiannon’s. These doors had never been opened. Not since the summer of ‘99. Not since she’d abandoned the last two pieces of her soul while she stayed behind to rot in this cold house.
Tonight, she opened the doors. She went through the rooms with her duster. Her vacuum. She cleaned and scrubbed away the lonely age.
