Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. I | ✓

Chapter 3: Feast

**

It was a horrible time to think of it, but I thought of it anyway: I thought of how normal my day was supposed to be.

Going to the mall, buying some clothes, getting something to eat, then returning home to spend time with Mama and work on one of my many manuscripts before falling asleep. That's what my day was supposed to be. It turned into delving deep into the dark, damp forests with my mama's novitiate to save Tia Valeria's ass; we didn't know who or what we were saving her from. We didn't even know if we could save her. But I had too much courage and too much confidence.

It was dark, to say the least. Very dark. The "hold my hand so I don't fall" type of dark. I envied the bugs and the lizards for their eyes; I envied the crickets and the owls, singing and talking freely because the night didn't scare them. The moonlight helped a bit, but I still regretted not bringing a flashlight.

I regretted a lot of shit at that point, to be honest.

"Do you have your phone?" I asked Imani. My eyes adjusted to make out Imani as just a dark figure by my side.

"No. Why?"

"Flashlight."

Imani sighed. "That's a good idea thought of too late. We've already walked too far from the car."

I wanted to mention that we didn't know where we were going either, but it wasn't the right moment. Imani was scared, and so was I; I was still unnerved from Tia Valeria's screaming that I heard in my head. Bringing up the fact that we had wandered into the forest with no sense of direction would make things worse.

We treaded another five minutes across the verdure. Imani stopped first and looked at the sky.

"Wait." She gripped my arm. "Listen."

I brought up my bat before listening to whatever was calling. It was faint, what I heard—the sound of someone yelling something incoherent. It was a male voice.

"It came from that way." Imani pointed north, down a slope into a dark abyss. "Past those trees."

"Past those trees? Down there?" I tried to subtly hint to her that heading down there wasn't smart, especially without light. But she didn't catch wind of it; she nodded and continued north, and I followed her. At that point, we were holding onto each other so tightly we were joined at the hip. Each step we took, we took together. Each tree we passed, we passed together. And each tremble we suffered, the other trembled a little harder. Due to the unprecedented circumstances, we were closer than we both thought we'd ever be. I didn't know if that was because we relied on each other surviving or on our own sole survival; was it selfless or selfish? I didn't know.

"We're nowhere near the Saint's Sector," I said to her.

"No, we're not. I am not familiar with this territory. Don't let your guard down."

I stopped to look at her, even though I could barely see her. "Territory?"

I always hoped that Imani could have answered my question. It would have made everything simpler if she would have just answered what she meant by 'territory,' saying it so severely like it was more than a noun. Imani never got the chance to answer me because the chanting started right after I asked. The loud, sadistic shout of the words 'burn the witch' over and over again came from lower down the moist gradient. And beyond a couple of longleaf pines is where we saw the dim specs of light blessing our eyes but not our angst.

Imani and I said absolutely nothing. We hid behind the closest tree we could find that gave us a good view but, we hoped, didn't give us away entirely. There were twenty to thirty men and women clustered together down there, chanting the same thing as before—burn the witch—along with other sayings that Imani nor I could understand. By a fire post was a man tied to a wooden cross propped up in the ground. He was completely naked and gagged, but he didn't look scared or weakened by his state. That was the most unsettling and frightening to see; that man wasn't fazed by being tied to that cross. He wasn't hurt, nor was he in physical pain; he had no physical ailments. He was just there. Tied up.