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  SORROW CREEK

  by Christopher Fulbright & Angeline Hawkes

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  This book was previously published in limited hardcover and ebook editions by Delirium Books in 2012.

  Electronic Edition | Published by ND3 Press

  Copyright © 2014 by Fulbright & Hawkes

  All rights reserved.

  Dey be sayin’ you can hear da whispers of dead lovers afloatin’ on da breeze.

  It’s da warm embrace of life dat dey seek –

  But dey jest be wantin’ to pull you down widt dem into

  Old Sorrow Creek.

  1.

  The stench emanating from the cardboard box gagged her as she drew nearer to the old picnic table on which it sat. Cassandra Gautreaux covered her nose and mouth and fought the urge to retch. A cloud of black flies buzzed around the box, their droning loud in her ears. She knew the smell: the reek of death.

  She reached for the water-logged flaps that were criss-crossed to keep the box shut without the aid of tape. Hesitating, she turned to see if anyone was around the yard, perhaps near the creek bank or coming up the front drive. There was no one. Birds and insects chirped in the hot summer sun, but not loud enough to drown out that hideous and incessant buzz from the flies.

  Cassi grabbed two of the box flaps and yanked it open.

  “Oh god!” she shouted, and backed away. She bent over and vomited until there was nothing left but gold bile froth on the grass beneath her. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and stood up, resolved to deal with the situation.

  In the box was Shrimp, or rather the top half of Shrimp, Max’s schnauzer. Chunky bits of Shrimp’s innards littered the box’s bottom. Ragged lengths of bloody entrails hung from the mangled torso, sticking to the cardboard, the box fibers soaking up the crimson blood in uneven splotches beneath. Maggots writhed and wriggled in and out of the blackened guts, making the whole putrid mess look as though it was pulsing. The dog’s tongue drooped from an open mouth, but, thankfully, its dead eyes were shut.

  Cassi exhaled loudly. What in God’s name happened to the dog? A car accident? She looked toward the distant road and thought it plausible someone would guiltily place the remnants of the dog in a box where the presumed owner could find it. A gator? She looked toward the bayou, out past the dense trees and tendrils of Spanish moss. Since gators weren’t generally known for their box-packing skills, a human still had to be involved somehow.

  She looked at her wristwatch. “Shit.”

  She quickly closed the box. She had to get rid of this before Max got home and discovered the dog missing. It was better for Shrimp to just go missing than for Max to lay his eyes on the savaged body of his dog. Cassi was afraid of how Max would take it. It was too risky. He had worked too hard and come too far to be set back now. She was struck by a pang of guilt, but she only had his best interest at heart. Even so, she wasn’t sure she could lie. Maybe she’d wait until he’d come a little further along before she broke the news.

  Choking down the urge to vomit again, she grabbed the box. The swarm of flies followed, buzzing around her head, face and body. They buzzed in her ears, flew into her nostrils, against her eyes. She spat them from her mouth. Picking up the pace, she began to run toward the swamp’s edge.

  Getting as near the water as she dared, she threw the box in with all the strength she could muster. The box sailed through the air, the noisy flies with it, and landed with a splash in the watery grave. Cassi watched the box swirl in the sludgy water for a few minutes, brushing the hair from her face and the feeling of flies from her skin. The box tilted to one side as the cardboard absorbed more water. Slowly, it began to sink, air bubbles bursting around the collapsing sides. Finally, it slid below the water’s surface and the flies deserted their hopes for a feast.

  2.

  Max Gautreaux drove over the ruts and cracks of Great River Road toward his home of eight months. The battered fish in the greasy, translucent paper bag from G&B Seafood Restaurant slid around on the floorboard of his equally battered truck. His stomach rumbled with anticipation of a lunch overdue.

  Fingers tapping along with the music from the radio, Max turned onto a narrow road shaded from the hot sun by centuries-old oaks dripping with tendrils of Spanish moss. The road rose to a brick bridge that carried him across the creek from which the plantation home derived its name. Sorrow Creek Plantation had been purchased, sight unseen, at auction by he and Cassandra a year ago when his therapist suggested he “work with his hands” to reduce the stress of his position at LSU.

  He and Cassi worked nonstop during his hiatus, and Sorrow Creek Plantation was slowly looking more like a home and less like the dilapidated squatter’s pad they originally found.

  Max let the old truck coast down the road lined with rows of oaks until it crept around the Greek revival façade and slowly sputtered to a stop in front of the old carriage house. The moist air had not been kind to the old cypress boards. What once was painted brilliant white many years ago was now peeling silvered-gray, much like the hair at his temples. He chuckled and threw open the truck’s door. The old metal hinge grated and shrieked. Max looked around for Shrimp, his little black dog, but no yelping pooch appeared.

  “Shrimp! I’m home!” he shouted out into the yard where the schnauzer liked to play. He waited, but still no dog.

  Cassandra stepped onto the back porch, dishtowel in hand like someone in an old painting. “Qui c’est q’ca?”

  “Who else you know driving an old clunker like this one?” Max laughed. “I brought lunch.” He looked around. “You seen Shrimp?”

  “Aww, I already ate leftovers from dinner last night. You were so late that I--” Cassi’s words trailed off as she watched Max peer out into the yard looking for Shrimp. “No. I haven’t seen Shrimp since earlier this morning. You know how he likes to run!” She feigned a laugh.

  “Yeah, you’re right. He’s probably found an old bone or something.” Max turned his attention back to the bag in his hand. “About the time, I’m sorry, boo. I told you I was making groceries. Swung by Quik Stop Shop, before getting the fish and I ran into Marshall Curole.”

  Cassi groaned.

  “You know what a windbag he is. I tried politely to extradite myself from the conversation, but he followed me to the truck.” Max threw his hands up in a “what-are-you-gonna-do” gesture, the bag of fish rustling in his hand.

  Cassi laughed. “Maybe I can eat a piece. Smells good.” She held open the screen door for him as he came inside. The screen door was an obvious addition dating to the 1940s when the home had been chopped up into apartments. Those walls had been torn out in the 1980s, and the floor plan was in the process of being returned to its former glory when renovations came to a halt for unspecified reasons. The property sat derelict ever since, nature slowly reclaiming the land around the home until Cassandra read about it in an auction brochure.

  Max washed his hands in the sink and found a stack of paper plates in the cupboard. He shook the fish from the bag onto the plates and popped the filets into the microwave.

  “Want a soda?” Cassi asked.

  “Sounds good.” Max stopped the microw
ave to check on the sizzle factor of the fish, and then closed the door so it could resume cooking.

  “Anything exciting happen in town?”

  Max laughed.

  “What are you laughing about?”

  “Your word choice: ‘exciting’ and ‘town’ used in the same sentence.” Max was startled when the microwave beeped and Cassi gave him a sideways glance. He held up a finger, scowling. “Don’t start--”

  She sighed. Her mind wandered to the brutalized top half of Shrimp’s corpse and she could still hear the flies buzzing loudly in her ears. What she did was for the best. She smiled faintly. “If you’d take the damn pills you wouldn’t be so jumpy.” Cassi put a paper towel roll on the table to use as napkins and pulled out her chair.

  “I’m not having this conversation.” He walked across the spacious kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbing the ketchup. He scooped two forks from the drawer on the way to the table.

  Max unmistakably saw Cassi roll her eyes at him. He ignored the gesture and the urge to retort, retrieved the fish from the microwave, and plopped the greasy plate into the center of the table along with the flatware and ketchup. He sat across from his wife and scooted his chair around a little longer than necessary, hoping his attempts at conversation avoidance would be successful. Sometimes he found security in not making eye contact with her as if not engaging her would somehow cease mention of any of the issues plaguing him – and her.

  She was squirting ketchup onto the fish, the bottle making that fart noise that sends kids into hysterics. He smiled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, chuckling, but his eyes wandered to the plastic squeeze bottle in her hands giving away the joke.

  She looked at the bottle in her hand. “Oh my god. You’re laughing about the bottle noise.”

  Max laughed.

  “You are such a child.” She put the ketchup bottle beside her plate.

  “It’s called a sense of humor. Ever since my ‘breakdown’,” he made quotation marks with his fingers, “you seem to have forgotten what one is.”

  She ignored him and ate her fish. An awkward silence developed between them, so all that was heard was the crunch of fish and their chewing.

  “What’s the plan for tomorrow?” he asked finally. He altered his tone so it felt a little less tense and more “nothing-is-wrong-look-I’m-talking-about-normal-things.”

  “Summer kitchen.” She licked her fingers. “I’ve pulled out the old paneling some fool installed in there. The original brick wall is visible now. Why people go and gunk up perfectly beautiful period décor and fixtures is beyond me.” She waved a fish plank a little as she expressed her exasperation.

  “Cool on the brick and I hear you on the gunking. I must have pulled four layers of shag carpet off the upstairs corner bedroom floor before revealing that original hardwood – which, was in perfect condition, leading me to wonder why the hell someone would want to cover it up in the first place.”

  Cassi laughed. “Crazy what people do to houses.”

  “Makes you wonder what they were thinking,” Max said.

  “Anyway, the summer kitchen. We need to haul the old stove from there. I think we’ll probably have to widen the doorframe to get it out. I haven’t measured it, but an eyeball estimate says it’s too big to fit.”

  “Hook the stove to the truck with a chain and pull it out?”

  She nodded. “My thoughts exactly.” She paused. “DVD tonight?”

  “To be or not to be?”

  Cassi groaned, but laughed. “Poor Hamlet. That joke just never gets old for you, does it?”

  “Hey, boo, that’s why they pay me the big bucks back at that place o’learnin’. I’m still rockin’ Shakespeare like it’s 1599.”

  “That’s how long you’ve been using that lame-ass joke. Seriously, I bet I can find about twenty students that will vouch for me.” Cassi smiled and stood, gathering the soiled plates.

  “Man,” Max laughed.

  3.

  The night air was damp, clinging to him like a warm perspiration-soaked t-shirt after a workout; however, the stench wafting off the bayou behind the house was far worse than any sweat he’d smelled in any dank gym. The land around Sorrow Creek Plantation was riddled with creeks running into the swampy bayou that drained into the Mississippi. On hot nights, like tonight, the water just plain stank. Normally it gave off a peaty, earthy aroma caused by centuries of decaying vegetation and humidity, but on sticky nights it smelled like rot and the sickly sweet stench of death rolled with the breeze. They kept the windows shut on nights like tonight.

  Max swirled the wine around in his glass as he walked along the creek bank in the “back yard” behind the house. He felt restless – pent up – and after they watched their DVD, Cassi suggested he go for a walk and look for Shrimp – who still had not come home. Stupid dog probably found himself a girl dog to hump.

  The moon was so bright it lit the yard like a white beacon, no lantern or flashlight required. Crickets and cicadas chirped noisily in the swamp as frogs joined in with a crescendo of croaks that lent bass notes to the bayou’s band.

  Max followed the creek beside the old cemetery that was little more than rusty iron and fallen trees now. The big marble crypt in the center beckoned with its cool stone steps and Max made his way through the overgrowth to sit in the shadows of death. He took another drink of his wine: nearly empty. The stick he used, the last time he was here, to dig dirt from the crypt’s chiseled letters was still laying on the step. He’d managed to clean out the lettering that night to read the odd caption there: Murdered for Love. An eerie inscription. He made another mental note to research the original plantation owners. So far, time and a long chore list had prevented any progress on the last mental note made about researching the topic.

  “Murdered for love,” Max said aloud. Who would put something like that on a crypt? Obviously Captain Beauregard Buford Terrebonne III had wound up on the wrong side of someone and got himself killed. Why his loved ones would choose to commemorate that occasion was the real mystery. He reached out to trace the inscription with his finger – when a blur of movement near the swamp’s edge caught his eye. He dropped his hand and stood to get a better view.

  A woman in a long dress flitted in and out of the cypress trees, gently brushing the moss from her path and hair. She seemed to be looking for something.

  The water’s edge was fraught with quicksand and snakes; he could see she was barefooted, her wet dress hitched around her thighs, clinging to her svelte body.

  “Miss?” he called to her, to warn her. She stopped, looking toward him. “You really shouldn’t be on the shore like that. It’s not safe. That whole stretch right there is all kinds of danger.”

  She giggled loud enough for him to hear. Max scowled. Giggles?

  “I’m bein’ serious now.” Dumb kid.

  She moved closer, her face reflecting the bright light from the moon. She was a beautiful shade of café au lait – what folks round these parts called mulatto even now in these P.C. times – here on the shores of the bayou where time and history collided, only to stand as still as the stagnant water that had borne witness to so many upheavals. Her long hair was tied back with a gauzy scarf. She moved still closer, her girlish laughter lilting on the breeze. She came so close that he could see her pert nipples straining the thin fabric of her dress, the ragged neckline plunging below her youthful cleavage.

  “Now, don’t make the misere! You shouldn’t be walking there, especially not barefooted--” or in whatever it is you’re wearing, but he didn’t say that aloud. “There’s snakes.”

  She threw back her lovely head and laughed, then ran behind a clump of cascading moss. The splash of footsteps greeted him next, only to be replaced with the chorus of frogs once more. She didn’t return.

  Max waited to see if she’d come back. He crept as close to the water’s edge as he dared in the dark, concerned that she had fallen into the water, got herself tangled
up, maybe drowned. But, he listened and nothing sounded amiss. Maybe she just ran off. He stared at his empty wine glass and turned back toward the house where the windows glowed through the blackness of night. He walked home, serenaded by the cicada that didn’t seem at all concerned about the flighty woman tempting the water’s edge.

  4.

  Cassi was seated before an antique vanity brushing her long auburn hair. She looked up when he entered the room. “Nice walk? Did you find Shrimp?”

  “No. No sign of him. Maybe he followed a car into town or down the road to the neighbor’s. I’ll look for him in the morning.” Max kicked off his muddy shoes, picked them up, and carried them to the bathroom. “Sorry about the mud in the house. I forgot to take off my shoes. I’ll clean up the mess in the morning.”

  Cassi eyed him suspiciously. “Something wrong? I mean, besides Shrimp gone missing?” she asked again.

  “Yeah, the frogs are really loud.” Max had a flat tone to his voice.

  Cassi laughed. “They’re always loud. They’re frogs. That’s what they do.”

  Max paused in the bathroom door. “I saw this girl out near the swamp’s edge. What a couyon.” He stared absently out the window.

  “What?”

  “I said I saw a girl walking, rather running, along the swamp’s edge.”

  “Like she was jogging?”

  Max shook his head. “No, more like--” he thought for a moment, “more like she was playing. You know how kids play hide-and-seek, in and out of the moss she’d go. Dancing like. Damnedest thing.”

  “Was she a little girl?” Cassi’s maternal side was showing. “Was there a kid playing by the swamp at night?”

  “No, no. Nineteen. Maybe twenty. Girl by our standards. She behaved like a girl-girl no matter her age. Maybe she wasn’t right in the head.”

  “Well, what was she doing out there? Little couyon! That’s just crazy!” Cassi put her brush on the gold filigree metal tray situated in the center of the vanity’s marble top. She unscrewed a lid from a jar of night cream.