Bump in the Night: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (Midlife Spirits Book 4) by H.P. Mallory

Author:H.P. Mallory [Mallory, H.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-18T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

I was swimming in darkness, but it felt balmy and warm. There was a bitter taste deep in the back of my throat that somehow reminded me of what I supposed soil would taste like. Heady and raw, I could only describe the flavor as rainwater after it drips off the branches of pine trees and soaks into the ground below.

Suddenly, the darkness was broken by the smallest speck of white dust. As I gazed at the speck, it grew larger, becoming an amorphous shape. Continuing its expansion, the former speck transformed into a torso with legs, arms, and a head. It began to increasingly resemble a man. The more I studied the strange entity, the more delineated he grew until I could recognize him. “I know you,” I said, but my voice sounded foreign and very odd, almost like I was talking underwater.

“’Course you do, baby!” the man replied as his skeletal face contorted into a smile. He was dressed in a black top hat and a matching tuxedo. The circles of his dark glasses kept rotating around and around. Staring at them, I nearly succumbed to the hypnotic cycling.

“Who are you again?” I asked when it became clear that I couldn’t remember his name.

The man laughed, but I couldn’t understand how that was possible because his mouth never moved. His mouth must have been good for something, however, because he was smoking a fat cigar, which his barely there lips clamped tightly. The cotton plugs sticking out of his nostrils completely threw me. “I’m the Loa o’ the dead,” the man said. “An’ you, mah pretty little creature, was ’sposed ta visit me in the land o’ the dead. We had us a deal or did ya already fergit it?”

“We had a deal?” I repeated, utterly lost. The man drew on his stubby cigar and the smoke poured out from behind his glasses, surrounding me in a smoky hug. I breathed in deeply, and relished the taste of the smoke as it filled me up with its warmth. Suddenly, I had an undeniable yearning and urge to touch the Loa, to know him. But before I had the chance, he began to fade right before my eyes, along with the smoke that emptied from behind his glasses. In fact, it looked as if the smoke itself was erasing him as it wafted and circled over him. The visual of a graveyard, with aboveground tombs reminiscent of Lafayette Cemetery, flashed into my mind.

“Ya needed mah protection, sweet baby,” the Loa’s voice continued even though he was nowhere to be seen anymore. “An’ if’n ya needs mah protection, ya gots ta pay tribute in mah own land.”

“The graveyard?” I inquired as his words began to make a little sense to me. “I know! You’re Baron Samedi,” I announced when it eventually dawned on me.

“An’ she hits it right on the nose!” he said with another laugh before unexpectedly blinking back into sight. He dropped his chin and looked at me over his dark lenses, and his eyes glowed white when he took another puff of his cigar.

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