Excerpt The solution was simple: He would kill his sister. Simple, not easy. Marc kicked the documents to the side, causing them to tear beneath his foot as he cleared the wood floor. On it, he spread the quilt. A riot of triangles, squares, and circles, all in competing colors, filling his mind. He turned it over so the patterns faced the floor and the barren underside of fabric showed. The cloth now lay clean and white. He smoothed out the corners and upon it, began to disassemble his shotgun, neatly laying each black piece in a row. Marc and Madeleine had always protected each other before. In this way, he would protect her now. He checked the clock. The drive from New Orleans would take her about an hour. She’d be arriving soon. “Just tie her up” the other one said. “Hold her here for a while.” Marc hunched his shoulders. “Shut up.” He twisted the lid from the bottle and dabbed fluid onto cotton cloth. “Don’t you think this is a little extreme? Chrissake, talk to her first.” Marc did not respond, a habit he’d been striving to perfect. To be able to ignore, truly ignore—he wished he could do that. He focused on the tools in his hand and the motion of the cloth through the barrel. “I don’t get it. You electrocute somebody who doesn’t even die, and that bothers you. That you had a problem with. But you can kill your own sister and yourself, and that’s supposed to be poetic?” “Shut up, SHUT UP!” But no. To tell him to shut up was to acknowledge him. Marc forced it all out of his mind: the memory of the electrocution, the staring motifs in the records he’d read, all of it shoved to the side. The metallic scent of cleaning fluid bit at his nostrils. He ignored this. He ignored the chaos of papers, clothes, and dishes that lay strewn beyond the tidy island of the quilt. He tried to ignore the taunting speech, and the damn chattering of the birds and insects outside that never, ever ceased. Nothing existed but this moment. Marc removed even the tiniest speck of dust. The gentle movement of the cloth through the barrel. The way the parts lay cleanly organized. The trigger. The spring. The firing pin. “You’re pathetic, you know that? A stupid, sniveling—” The words tumbled away under a sudden thunder of music. Marc hadn’t moved toward the radio on the counter. Hadn’t even set down the barrel brush. A pinch in his mind, and the radio came on. But it didn’t help much. The words kept coming. “What makes you think she’s like you, anyway?” the other one said. God, those words, they kept coming. The radio hadn’t stopped it. The voice skipped past the filter of Marc’s ears and lodged inside his mind. “What if you’re wrong, Marc? Did you ever think of that? What if you’re wrong about her and you kill her?” Marc squeezed his eyes shut, increasing the sound of the radio until it reached maximum volume. Music crackled and vibrated throughout the sinew of the tiny house. But not enough. Like a swaying worm in an ear of corn, the other one’s words stood out, demanding to be noticed. Insisting to be heard. No use. “She’s your sister, Marc, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s got the same genes as you. She’s different.” Not different enough, Marc feared. He had to save her, spare her what he’d gone through—was going through now. One by one, Marc fit the pieces back together. He checked the clock. A full hour since he had called—plenty of time for Madeleine to get here. Adequate time to shake his resolve. He looked at his hands, shaking, capable of murder. Those hands were familiar with this process. Marc had sent twenty thousand volts through a man's body in an attempt to kill by electrocution. But he’d failed, and he didn’t even know whether that failure was a good thing or a bad thing. He’d grown so tired of the oil slick in his gut, this chronic uncertainty. Wanted to be clean of it. He’d washed out his truck, but no use. Even the very tools that had helped him build his livelihood as an electrician—honest tools, solid and otherwise devoted to constructive work—even they had become stained. God, he wished they could be clean again. Maddy would never know this chronic uncertainty. He would save her. He could spare her this. He would take her to the womb of the delta. They would lie down under the gray silken depths and give their bodies to the creatures of the swamp. Wrap themselves in the amniotic bath of Bayou Black, sleeping on the broad, soft bed of clay that lay beneath the forest. “This is stupid, Marc. Just tie her up.” Each part of the shotgun clicked into place until it once again formed a single unit. Marc stood, fingers trembling, and loaded the shells, half of them dropping into a drift of papers. He folded the quilt, allowing the geometric shapes to glare back into the room again. He checked the window. “Ah, Maddy,” he whispered. For all those years, they had sacrificed the creatures of Bayou Black to save them from hunger. Fish, crab, snakes. Growing up, Marc and Madeleine lived like orphans, and could not have survived without hunting and fishing. Now they would lay down their own lives for this cycle. They would take the boat out into the bayou, to a sacred place they once shared with a childhood friend. A special place. A secret place known only to them. He would end it for her first. He would spare her any fear. Then he would turn the shotgun on himself while the creatures watched from the shadows. Together they would honor the cycle. ť Madeleine sped south toward Houma. She tried yet again to call her brother Marc, but he still wasn’t answering the phone. She felt a spark in her jaw and realized she’d been grinding her teeth. This is silly. He said he’s fine. The city shrank back into the haze, an occasional wink in her rear-view mirror, and the swamp-rimmed highway drew her deeper into the land of her childhood. She would tell her brother about the joke. Her mind flashed an image of Daddy Blank’s mischievous expression, and she smiled. Yes, she’d tell Marc about how their father had gotten her good. She'd just finished cooking herself supper when Marc had called, and she was about to abandon the meal and head for Houma. But as she was walking out, Daddy’d shown up, his bloodhound sense telling him he’d find couche-couche on the stove. Even more exasperating, he’d dragged along a new acquaintance he’d dug up from somewhere. “This is Ethan Manderleigh,” Daddy’d told her, and she’d flicked her gaze over him with restrained impatience. But she’d ladled up two plates of couche-couche with cane syrup, tucking in some steaming links of boudin, and set them on the kitchen table.. “I gotta head out,” she’d said, which was the stupidest thing she might have done. Telling Daddy you’re in a hurry was like showing a year’s bank statements to an RV salesman, and she’d seen his eyes alight at the opportunity to bait her. Too quick to alight, in fact. She resisted the urge to start in on him: Have you been taking your meds on time, Daddy? “Oh, we don’t want to keep ya,” Daddy’d said, but his devil-tail smile was already on the curve. “You don’t have any sweet tea in the fridge, do you darlin?” She didn’t, but it would only take but a minute to throw together. |
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She cut a look at Daddy’s new captive, Ethan Manderleigh, who fidgeted like a duke forced to share a farmer’s table. Like Maddy, he was dark-haired and approaching thirty. But while Madeleine’s eyes were blue, his were hazel, and Madeleine suspected the only blue in him would be found in his blood. Madeleine belonged to a family of mixed race, mulattos. Ethan looked the opposite: old money, purebred, New Orleans.
Daddy’d explained that Ethan had joined the committee for historic preservation, confirming Madeleine’s suspicion that he was another spoiled trust fund recipient. Tall, square-jawed, no doubt self-absorbed and stifling. Madeleine almost preferred when Daddy brought home street people.
But to his credit, Ethan Manderleigh seemed embarrassed at having intruded.
“It goes against my upbringing to take advantage of someone’s hospitality,” Ethan had said. “Come on, Daddy Blank, let me treat ya at Willie Mae’s. And then we can treat your daughter here another time.”
“It’s all right,” Maddy had said, second-guessing her terse judgments about him. “I’m just going to put out some sweet tea and then I’ll leave y’all to it.”
And that’s when she discovered a frog in the sugar bowl. Nearly broke the china when the thing leapt out at her.
Daddy’d guffawed and slapped his leg. She had no idea how he’d managed to slip a frog in there without her catching him. But once she regained composure, Madeleine gave in to a good laugh herself.
But poor Ethan, unaccustomed to Daddy Blank’s antics and unaware that Madeleine was the Mistress of Getting Even (and oh yes, she would get even), looked positively ashen—looked as though he feared Madeleine might swoon. Like she was some fainting belle that had never worn pigtails and caught frogs in the mud flats. The shock on his face, that appalled get-the-smelling-salts-and-begin-the-rites-of-contrition look of horror, had sent both Daddy Blank and Madeleine into shuddering, tear-streaked, belly-cramping hysterics.
Suddenly, jetting off to Houma seemed less urgent. And anyhow Marc had told her that everything was fine, that he just wanted to see her. Another twenty minutes couldn’t hurt. Bad manners to leave just now.
Daddy’d abused his chance to score a glass of sweet tea, but Maddy did pour some coca-cola for all of them, and even ladled herself a plate to eat alongside her father and the poor unsuspecting Ethan Manderleigh.
But as they’d finished their sausage and couche (and Maddy’d rinsed the wretched frog and put him outside by the courtyard pond), she grew antsy, and knew she shouldn’t keep her brother waiting. She’d thought to ask Daddy if he wanted to come along, but no:
Come alone, Marc had told her on the phone. And he’d sounded so strange.
Now she was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel, playing over in her mind how she would tell her brother about the stunt Daddy’d pulled with the frog, so that Marc could have a laugh too. He’d throw back his head and have a big old laugh. For some reason, it seemed ever so important to rehearse this scene in her mind, to perfect the process by which she would orchestrate her brother’s throwing back his head and having his big old laugh. With that image she could squash that strange dread that had slithered beneath the conversation when Marc had called. That odd crimp in his voice.
Everything OK? she’d asked him.
Oh, fine, baby. Just miss ya. Got something to tell ya. But it’s fine.
Fine. She would believe everything was fine. She’d stay overnight and they’d have a nice, long visit.
She pulled into the drive just as the sun was shooting slants across the bayou, just like the golden reeds that bent under the Gulf wind. Even before she switched off the truck’s motor she could hear Marc’s radio blaring from inside the tiny cottage. She made her way up the steps to the front door, centered under the peak of the plain hip roof above the porch.
She hesitated, looking back over her shoulder. Nothing behind her but the spread of the bayou. No sound but the muffled boom of the radio within the walls of the house, so loud she couldn’t even hear the creak of the porch swing as it fidgeted beside her in the breeze.
She knocked on the door.
She waited.She knocked again, then opened it.
“Marc?” she called, but her voice was swallowed by the music and the blackness within. The only glow came from the back, where the bathroom sat opposite the kitchen. She groped for a light switch or radio switch, and found the latter first, silencing that awful boom. And in this new-found quiet, visibility also improved, as if the radio had not only overtaken her ears but her eyes as well.
From the bathroom, she could hear the sound of the tub filling.
“Marc? You there? Daddy got me good!”
She picked her way in the darkness over littered odds and ends all over the floor.
“You’re gonna have to help me think of a way to get even. That sneak put a frog in my—good gracious, baby, when was the last time you cleaned up?”
She reached the kitchen and waved her fingertips along the wall until she found the light switch. “Marc? Did you hear me? I had to dump out all that sugar!”
The light came on with a click of her fingers.
Beyond the window sill, blackbirds called in alarm. Maddy blinked at the kitchen, trying to untangle her mind from what she saw. So many papers lay strewn about it looked like the library after the hurricane: records, books, newsprint. Most of it seemed old, and none of it had been treated with respect. Dirty dishes littered the sink and cemented themselves to the papers, while little caterpillars of mold floated in coffee mugs and forgotten cans of potted spaghetti. She picked up the nearest slip of something—what looked like an old will—and saw her surname written time and again:
Chloe LeBlanc.
Rémi LeBlanc.
Patrice LeBlanc.
She wondered who all those people were. Relatives, obviously, but beyond her grandparents she knew little of her LeBlanc ancestry.
She was about to call to her brother again, to ask him whether he’d hauled all this stuff down from the attic, but figured he couldn’t hear her or he’d have given a holler by now. She folded the will and looked at the counter, spotting one of the names, Chloe Le Blanc, penciled in Marc’s hand on the back of a torn envelope. He’d also written an address and phone number, along with yesterday’s date and the letters “LM,” Marc’s notation for “left message.”
The name Chloe sounded familiar; some distant relation, Maddy was sure, but she couldn’t place exactly where she’d heard it.
“Marc!” She called, louder this time, still scrutinizing the paper as she walked to the bathroom. She lifted her hand to rap on the door but stopped when she heard a splash at her sandals, and felt licks of tepid water between her toes.
She looked down.
A broad, half-inch-deep wave was stealing from the bathroom to the floorboards of the adjacent kitchen.
Her pulse began to buzz. Her breathing grew shallow, lips parting, and her mind finally pulled a curtain to the obvious: Something was very, very wrong.
She swung the bathroom door wide.
No sign of Marc. Crystal sickles of water were leaking over the rim of the tub. She took a tremulous step, stretching her chin to see into it. A small part of herself, the part that liked to jab needles of panic, half-expected to find him lying under the surface.
But no, the tub was too small.
But she did see something. She saw her brother’s electrical tools: a screwdriver, a stud finder, a level, other things. Even coils of wire. All heaped in dark reefs under clear ripples.
“Sacre bleu,” she breathed.
She lunged for the faucet, turning it off and then sidling backward with her wrists pinned to her chest. The sound of rushing bathwater disappeared to the gurgling overflow drain.
Her jaw muscle seized.
The water could not have been flowing very long. Probably made its first spill as she’d entered the kitchen. So where was Marc?
She searched the house, flipping on lights in every single room, calling her brother’s name. In the bedrooms, blankets had been draped over the curtains, as if guarding against the possibility that any ghost of light might filter through. Each corner confirmed that this was all so wrong. So very wrong.
She regarded the paper still clutched in her hand, the LeBlanc will, and returned to the kitchen. Beyond the sill, blackbirds ruffled their feathers to hasten the end of daylight.
She paused, not sure what to do, and lifted the scrap of envelope that bore Chloe LeBlanc’s name. As she did so, something rolled out from beneath it. It wobbled off the counter, and Madeleine tried to catch it before she even realized what it was, but she fumbled and it dropped. She reached down to pick it up. But when she saw it, identified what it was, her legs grew weak, her knees softening under her. She sank to the floor, kneeling before it.
A shotgun shell.
She stared, wiping her hand as if she’d been petting a rat. Her mind cramped over this thing on the floor, its tarnished brass tip the same color as the wood boards beneath it...that it had no more business lying there than a green plastic cigar...that it was not locked away in the closet.
Marc?
She closed her eyes, and saw herself as she was, kneeling on the kitchen floor of the Creole cottage.
But she saw her brother too. His form approached her silently from behind. And in his arms he carried—
She stopped breathing. She didn’t dare open her eyes.
She saw a tear’s glistening trail down his cheek. She watched him raise the shotgun.
She squeezed her eyes tighter and buried her face in her hands. She could feel him. Could hear the heart of her brother reaching for her. See the gun that formed a plane beginning at his shoulder and tapering to an end at her own skull. The idea that her brother would kill her refused to reconcile with any sense of reason. It just couldn’t be.
Still kneeling, she curled in tighter, waiting.
Waiting.
The blackbirds flew from their bough near the window.
And she knew that Marc was not in the kitchen with her; only in her mind.
She opened her eyes, turning to look over her shoulder and seeing no one there.
And then she saw the front door that still gaped, where those sideways reeds of golden light had already diffused to gray. The setting sun now offered no color, no shadow; only a withdrawal of light.
His presence lingered. She felt his need to turn the gun on himself, and his need to kill her. And his desperate, abject loneliness.
He was out there. Not in this house. Outside somewhere in Bayou Black.
She twisted her body to her feet, her legs sluggish as she made her way to the door. Gripping the jamb, she could see that the tiny skiff was not tethered at the boat slip.
She ran across the crabgrass to the bank. The bayou stretched in a broad mirror, reflecting double-ended trees slowly turning black. No boat nearby. Not on the water, not at the slip. The nearest craft would be at Jack and Lula’s.
She strode, then trotted the half-mile to their property, and pounded on their door. The evensong of frogs and crickets was just beginning to flutter.
“Jack! Lula!” Maddy called.
She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead. The yard was still but for the intermittent blaze of a firefly. Lula’s old white Caddy was gone, so Maddy knew they weren’t home. But she also knew where Jack kept the keys to his skiff.
She retrieved them, hands stupid and fumbling, and it occurred to her that she should have called Sherriff Cavanaugh for help. Too late now. She broke into an all-out run, feet quickening across grass and then thumping over the dock.
She climbed into Jack’s skiff, and as she untied the knot a snake unwound itself from the coil of rope and darted across to the other side, disappearing soundlessly into the bayou mirror.
It’s their time now.
She and Marc had always associated the snakes with twilight. She pulled the starter cord and moved the skiff into the bayou, remembering how she and her brother used to play with their friend Zenon who’d lived nearby. The children ruled the daylight, fishing or swimming in the steaming afternoons while the serpents coiled themselves into lazy piles on rocks, storing up reserved heat so they could hunt in the evening. When full darkness fell, the alligators would rule Bayou Black. But that in-between time, that colorless screen that wasn’t day and was not yet night, that belonged to the snakes.
The skiff rumbled through the smaller artery and turned into the broad shipping channel. Jack’s vessel was fast, but it still nodded through the swamplands with agonizing lethargy. It slurped and coughed, and finally rounded the bend and down a narrow waterway, and then an even narrower one.
The gray had receded, allowing black to steal forth, and Maddy snapped on the guide light. She knew where to find her brother. He'd be in that place where they always went when they needed to escape.
Perhaps when he saw her, Marc would lay that thing down and shake off whatever fog had consumed him, a fog that had in some way woven tendrils into her own lungs, enough to convince her that her brother was out here, in their secret cove of Bayou Black. Lying in wait. Waiting to die.
The skiff entered their shrouded burrow within the Cypress forest. She switched off the light. Better in the dark. No one sees anyone. Oh God, she didn’t want to see. Her brother was there. Her dear, sweet brother.
He was there.
She made a final turn. And she wanted to be wrong. God, how she wanted to be wrong, and wished for the comfort of that joke, that stupid joke she’d played on herself as she’d driven to Houma. Pretending she could make him laugh, throw back his head and have a big old laugh. That she herself might fall for the ridiculous joke that he was fine.
Crack!
She felt him now in the shotgun's orange burst. Felt his fear and anguish and fury, all reaching out to her in a moment of monstrous ecstasy. The darkness stole in around her, and eyes of the swamp creatures flashed in slivers of moon.
She touched her hair, half-expecting to find blood. But no; she was unharmed. She switched on the light.
Oh yes, she saw him there. Lying in wait, but no longer waiting to die.
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A Twisted Ladder by Rhodi Hawk won the 2007 International Thriller Writers Scholarship Award, and will be available through Tor / Forge books, a division of McMillan Press, in summer 2009.