Chapter 3

Three hours later, I was staring at where my canvas had once been. “Well, just fuck!” I shouted. For days, I’d been struggling to find the right color combinations, and in the last few hours, they’d finally begun coming together. My fingers had flown across the canvas with the paintbrush and I’d watched the empty canvas fill with beautiful flowing lines and shapes. Now, I was staring in shock at the death of all I’d accomplished. In a blink of an eye, it was gone: burnt to a crisp.

“Shit!” I screamed, continuing to gaze at where the nonexistent canvas had once stood. Dammit, I knew better. I should have waited. A small burst of fire always followed the more powerful emanations. I’d learned that fact the hard way when I was younger, as I’d burned everything I’d touch.

Now, letting out a breath, I figured I ought to thank God all I’d lost was the one painting and not the whole damn collection. Though that being the case, I remained uncertain of whether I wanted to laugh, cry, or be pissed off at the very thing that had saved me. Yes, the little accident earlier had destroyed my recent work, the fact was though, if I hadn’t used the bigger emanation, I’d more likely be dead than dealing with this.

Which brought me back to square one and the fact something out there had tried to kill me. Whether it was stalking me, or the bayous didn’t matter, it had come looking for death, and luckily today, it had missed, but it was now unsatisfied.

A shudder shivered its way throughout my body as turning, I made my way to the kitchen. As I opened the freezer door of the refrigerator, I snagged the pint of ice-cream sitting huddled within the swirling mists of iciness inside. Afterward, pushing the door shut with my shoulder, I made my way over to snatch a spoon from the silverware drawer.

As I shoveled a spoonful of sin into my mouth, my eyes widened and I did a double-take at the carton in my hand when the flavors of chocolate, peanut butter, chunks of fudge brownie and gobs of cookie dough exploded on my tongue. Holy crap this shit was good.

Slipping another spoonful of the creamy, rich goodness between my lips, I savored the taste. All the same, and as was with anything you’d rather forget, this morning slithered into my mind, disrupting my moment of ice cream bliss. The stalking creature of demise? Declan? How did I explain any of it?

Shaking my head, I decided I didn’t have the answer, but it did fit right in with everything else I had recently been through. Recently?! Hell, the weird and unnatural had been my companion since I was born. What the fuck was this recently shit?

Ice cream carton in hand, I wandered the cabin, scraping the container clean before tossing it in the trash as I re-entered the small room I’d set up for my studio.

An hour later, standing in front of a partially finished portrait, I tipped my head to the left as I pensively stared at it. With a slight nod I reached out, and gave a gentle stroke, observing the delicate arch of an eyebrow, form.

Seconds later a satisfied smile gracing my lips, I reached out, preparing to finish the stroke when I gave a jerk as a bright flash of lightning lit the room, immediately followed by a huge clap of thunder.

In dismay I stared at my painting. At the thick, garish line that flowed through the deeply green eye I’d been painting—obscene in its dissection of the orb. With an irritated click of my tongue, I picked up the cloth that held paint thinner and reached forward, intending to wipe the offending line off, then repair the damaged eye. However, I’d no more touched the cloth to the painting, than the next furious display of mother nature’s temper plunged the room into darkness, ripping a scream loose from my throat.

As my eyes tried desperately to adjust to the eerie nothingness between the flashes of lightning, I began making my way toward the door, intending to go to the kitchen to get a lighter so I could light the candles spread throughout the cabin, and was half way across the room when I froze.

Breath catching and the fine hairs on the nape of my neck rising to attention, I sensed someone was in the room with me. The sensation reached out and wrapped its way around me, squeezing at my stomach until my guts were in a tight knot. Strange, funny little sounds emerged from me as fear entombed me within its caged walls.

Breaking out of the frozen state that had held me in suspended animation, the chill of dread climbed my spine like a monkey did a tree, and I bolted from the room. As I fled into the hallway, all I could think of was getting the hell away from the cabin. Even so, I came to a complete standstill as it dawned on me that whatever was in my home could possibly be far preferable to what might still be lurking outside of it.

In an instant, I turned and began scurrying toward my bedroom. As I reached its entrance, I shoved at the partially closed door and shot across the room, diving onto my bed. Afterward, jerking the comforter over my body, I buried my head beneath my pillow as clenching my eyes shut, I listened to the chattering of my teeth as they matched the volume of my knocking knees.

The next morning I awoke as the sun began poking its golden mane above the horizon. Sleepy tendrils of orange and yellow crossed the sky before nosing their way through the window of my room.

Rolling over, I watched through tired eyes as the ribbons made their way across the hardwood floor, where with an unwavering destination in mind, they stretched and further awakened: determined to wash the room in their announcement of a new day as they crept toward where I lay.

A particularly persistent ribbon of yellow light climbed up onto the bed with me, then inching its way forward, it flirted with the folds of the sheet I was using for light covering. After a few minutes of systematically moving forward to where I lay, the ribbon bathed my face in its golden touch as the sun lightened and brightened the room with relentlessness.

With a groan, I shot the finger at the window where the sun’s rays were forcing their way through, before covering my head with my pillow, I tried in vain to blot out its radiant smile. But within a matter of seconds I was jerking my head out from beneath from the pillow; I’d begun suffocating within the insulated heat of my breath, the confined space around my head becoming too warm and stifling.

Another low, frustrated groan escaped me and giving up, I kicked off my covering, preparing to get up for the day, but stilled when the memory of the day before swam to mind. Something was in the wetland behind my home, something sinister that had seemed to seek out both Merrick and myself. Though I’d escaped its intent, Merrick hadn’t. I’d seen first hand what this being, creature...demon, whatever the hell it was, could do as I stood watching the empty air attack Merrick. And, like a scared school girl, I’d done nothing but watch him fight it. After one particular hard blow that flung him yards away from his assailant, Merrick had shouted at me to get the hell out of the marshes and to Leighton—the middle Guchereau brother—before I’d seen him go back after the thing, however, he was quickly lifted into the air and slammed against a tree, the thing taking Merrick’s life for its prize.

I’d never truly learned what it had been. It had held no shape, nor identifiable characteristics, and Leighton had been no help either, for he’d stubbornly refused to speak to me about it, no matter how many times I’d brought up my need to understand.

Shaking off my thoughts, I heaved a breath, then stood, wiping the crystallized bits of sleep from my eyes as I made my way to the bathroom.

A few minutes later, nagging bladder relieved, I stood facing my bathroom mirror as glancing at my features, I picked up my hairbrush and began tackling the kinks and knots the night had wrought.

When it finally fell in its normal smooth, silky curtain down my back, I fset aside the hairbrush and glanced at the t-shirt and sweats I was wearing. Being the lazy person I was, I decided against changing; I wasn’t going anywhere until later that evening, so why make more laundry than I had to for myself?

Exiting the bathroom, and then the bedroom, I padded my way down the hall, dropping the armload of laundry I’d gathered in front of the doorway to the laundry room, refusing to enter its interior and face the mud-coated clothing that lay atop the washer, just yet.

I continued my journey toward the kitchen, my taste buds already on alert as they anticipated the first sip of coffee for the day.

Entering through the doorway, I shuffled my way over to the counter and set about the simple task of preparing the dark, aromatic brew of ambrosia.

As I waited for the coffee pot’s final gurgling sighs of completion, I placed two pieces of bread into the toaster. When it popped up, having turned the warm golden brown I favored, I slathered both pieces with a liberal amount of butter and jelly, my stomach growling. With steam rising from my cup, and purple-coated toast in tow—one piece already missing a corner from my impatience—I made my way over to a window, where resting one butt cheek on the inner ledge of the window frame, I began eating my breakfast, enveloped within the already heated rays of the sun.

As I gnawed on the toast, my mind journeyed seven years into my past, back to when I’d first come into the Guchereau home.