Evening birds trilled their last songs as Louise walked through the woods, struggling with the heavy basket in her arms. It wasn’t her first time carrying the feasting supplies across the yard, but she had never done it wearing an antique Civil War era gown. How did women wear these every day?
Young Louise took her time, fearful with every step that she’d trip on the hem hidden beneath her heavy bundle. She was grateful that the long skirts hid her trusty Vans. The old woman had said the dress was important. Even the old-fashioned curls in her hair had been necessary, but she’d said nothing about shoes.
Odie had said it was time. The stars had told her so. And Louise prepared as she was instructed, carrying the necessary ingredients through the old oak grove.
Copal smoke sweetly thickened the night air as Louise reached a break in the trees. In a private cemetery, the old woman walked among the tombstones, some of them so old the inscribed words were illegible. Wrinkled hands struck match after match, lighting candles as beacons. The old woman stopped at a last tombstone, where metal-framed photos had been set around the base. Louise watched the elder light the final rose-scented candles, nestled in a peppery marigold wreath. The candle flames flickered in the growing greylight.
Louise took a deep breath at the entrance. She was the youngest ever to be called to host the family feast, but she was ready. When she stepped through the gate, she stepped into the part she had trained to play. This year, she prayed, everything changes.
“Odie,” Louise dropped the heavy picnic basket on an empty table. “I have the pan de muerto.”
“You made it as instructed?” The old woman’s voice challenged.
“I followed your recipe to the letter,” Louise assured her, “though it was not the same as making it with you.”
“It takes me longer every year to set up this feast,” Odie exhaled sharply. Her bones cracked as she righted herself and stretched. “Besides, it’ll be your kitchen soon enough.” The woman named Ordelia turned. Her jaw unhinged softly. “Ghosts alive!”
“Do I look all right?” Louise kept the skirt low and gave a slow twirl.
“Beautiful.” Tears glistened in Ordelia’s eyes. She touched her heart. “You almost sent me into my next life. Like you stepped out of another era.”
Louise closed her eyes. She knew the old woman was seeing into another time. Odie was old enough to have known the original owner of the dress she wore. Louise scowled.
“That face won’t do,” the woman frowned.
“Then stop talking about dying,” Louise countered.
“Could be anytime now.” Ordelia shrugged, polishing a dining table carved from the first oak in the grove to fall by lightning strike.
Louise unfolded a black tablecloth, pursing her lips together. Odie is going to be around for many years yet, she muttered. Over the cloth they laid colorful settings of fuchsia, orange, and green. Each plate had a set of silverware as old as the cemetery itself. Louise laid candles out, lighting all but one black pillar.
Around them, colorful picnic quilts waited for the other invited guests. A small table near the wall was covered in warming catering trays. The heavy fragrances quickened her heart. Smoke grated against the back of her throat, and she coughed into a stream of incense.
“You have to be able to taste the air,” Ordelia reminded her. “If you cannot, the spirits cannot, and they will not come to feast.”
“Will our guest?” Louise wondered. She dug her thumbnail nervously into her fingertips. She would be the one to welcome him. The thought made her lightheaded, and she clutched the back of a chair.
“It is not just the food that will entice him,” Ordelia snorted, staring again at the dress. She had modernized it slightly for Louise’s body, taking the mulberry wool in, but the effect was stunning. She lowered the shoulders on the bodice a little more, her hands hesitating inches from Louise’s cheeks. “You don’t have to do this.”
Louise pressed a softened hand to her face. “I would do anything for you.”
“There’s no guarantee it will work,” Ordelia warned sadly.
And no guarantee I’ll make it through alive, Louise finished. She’d known that from the beginning. They both had.
“He will come,” she grinned breathlessly, adrenaline pulsing through her muscles. “He cannot refuse us.”
The old woman lashed out and slapped the feverish glint from Louise’s eye. Louise covered the sting with her hand, flushing angrily. “You hit me!”
“Keep your wits about you! That dog is dangerous.”
“But you said he can’t hurt us.”
“Not tonight. But don’t go looking at his pretty face and forgetting that tomorrow comes soon after today.” Ordelia glanced up at the darkening sky with sharp eyes. “Our guests will be on their way soon. It’s time.” She thrust a large clunky bottle into Louise’s hand and disappeared into the edges of dark.
“That’s some pep talk.” Louise’s full hands trembled. She returned to the entrance, her long skirt teasing the ground. She pulled energy up from the earth as she moved. It surged up through her muscles into her stomach and into her heart. The excess fluttered there, battering against bone.
In the iron gateway of the small family plot, Louise pulled the old cork from the rum bottle, gently swirling the liquor in the bottle. It’s aged, pungent perfume added to the sensory dance. Thick smoke took shadow forms as spirits stirred around her.
Louise stared into the spreading inky night, overwhelmed by all the fragrances. She let it wash over her body and shook it off, breathing deeply. She focused her thoughts on one figure, one form, and one name.
“There is a place for you at our family table tonight. I invite you in. I entice you to come with the last of my great-granddaddy’s secret stash, bought off a witch doctor’s back porch in Jamaica when he was young.” Louise heard whispers rising within the walls behind her. She tipped the bottle towards the ground. “Come, old man, or I’ll gift your share to the earth.”
“No need wasting good spirits on those who no longer have lips with which to taste it.” His voice was smoke lifting from the dirt. Louise gasped. Swirling shadows molded a formless shape, but it was a man who stepped into the light. His dark, unmarred skin stretched sleekly over the curves of his bones like silk. He was luminously beautiful, stepping forward into her silence as she fell into the glittering galaxies of his eyes. He grinned. “Just who are you calling Old Man?”
Louise blinked back into her body as a blush crept up her neck. She cursed inwardly, grateful for the sting still on her cheek. Odie was right. She gripped the dark rum. “Hello, Crossroads Man.”
“I’d be glad for a sip of that.” The man chewed on his lip from the other side of the gate.
“So you accept my invitation?” she pressed. The words were important.
“And whose invitation would I be accepting?”
“My name is Louisa Angeline.” Her voice strengthened with the sound of her birth name.
“Louisa Angeline,” he grinned. “How could I resist such a treat? I gladly accept.”
Louise poured the rum into two shot glasses pulled from a nearby column and thrust one at her guest. She thrilled to be face to face with such a being. He maintained eye contact with her as he took the offering, running his pinky finger along the outside of her hand. An electric shock shot down her spine, and she bit the inside of her cheek. Do not be fooled by his glamour.
The man rolled the shot glass across his bottom lip before tipping the heady rum back greedily. His eyelids fluttered, and he licked his lips, reaching for the second shot. Louise shook her head.
“The first one is for the Crossroads Man. The second one is for the spirits walking the world.” She set the shot glass on top of the column at the gate as he took a step closer to her. His breath smelled like jasmine and mushrooms and salted sea spray.
“Dinner is ready!” Ordelia yelled behind them as Louise jumped away. The man smiled wickedly. He held out his arm until Louise took it. She frowned internally. He knows his magic is palpable.
“A beautiful setting,” he intoned slyly as she pulled him towards the table. “Very intimate.”
“It’s a private cemetery,” Louise explained, taking her hand from his arm. Odie paced them in the shadows. It gave her comfort.
The Crossroads Man bent down to snag a pinch of dirt, which he touched to his tongue. “This land is old.”
“It’s very old.” Louise gestured to the finely carved black chair at the head of the table. “The place of honor belongs to you, Crossroads Man.” She hesitated. “Is there a better name I could call you? Anything I can think of seems to diminish you somehow.” And names are important.
His smile stretched to meet the starlight, as she hoped it might. He pulled smartly at the cuff of his old suit jacket, waiting to be seated. “For such flattery, you may call me whatever you wish. For tonight.”
“What about Frederick?” Louise asked, sweeping behind his chair. A small muscle twitched at his temple but smoothed quickly. She grinned, pulling the chair out. “No, not something so mundane as Frederick,” Louise slid the chair in beneath him with a flourish, leaning low, trying to sound more clever than she felt. “Welcome to our table, Shadow.” The dark man winked his delight, and the old woman snorted from the food table.
Louise turned her back and walked slowly to the other end of the table, scowling. Shadow? She might as well have named him Rumpelstiltskin.
The young hostess smoothed the fabric where the bodice met her skirt, noting how Shadow’s gaze followed her fingertips across her hips. She smiled shyly and picked up a small wooden box. Beneath Shadow’s gaze, she felt far more naked than she did in her normal clothes. Exhaling, the girl born Louisa Angeline steadied her hands and pulled a match from the pewter box, striking the tip on the ornate handle.
“You are a mighty fire. Burn bright with me. Together we will tend the lighthouse to guide the ancestors home.” She stared into the small flame before lifting it to the wick of the unlit black candle at her end of the table. The candle flared to life, and the other lights in the cemetery flickered in unison. Louise stood on the bones of her family dead and pulled the echo of life up through the stone and earth, up through the soles of her shoes, up through her living bones, into her heart, and into her voice. She could feel Odie mirroring her from behind Shadow’s chair. A strange wind ate the flame that remained on the match. “May it be so.”
“May it be so,” Shadow echoed respectfully. “I deeply appreciate you inviting me to share in such an affair.”
“We’ve wanted to invite you for generations,” Louise smiled, her eyes shining. “It took us a while to collect the right ingredients—event, moon phase, recipes. It had to be perfect.”
“With a perfect hostess, Louisa?” Shadow leaned forward.
She shrugged, holding contact with his dark eyes. “I fit the dress.”
Ordelia stepped in from the dark, carrying a red platter covered with rich, steaming bread. She set it down beside Shadow. In close quarters, the braided bread’s rich aroma of cinnamon and anise overwhelmed the cloud of incense.
“It is tradition to offer the first piece of pan de muerto to the visiting spirits,” Ordelia smiled. She broke off a piece with whispered words of prayer before handing it to their guest.
“I assure you this offering is warmly received.” Shadow nodded to Ordelia and raised his eyes to Louise, lifting the bread to inhale its fragrance, “though I am far more than simple spirit.”
“Of that I am sure, Shadow.” Louise watched as he bit into the bread. With one zealous sweep of his long fingers, he folded the rest of it into his mouth. The young dark-haired woman relaxed back in her chair. At last the ruse is over. “Well?”
“It is the most flavorful bread I have ever received.” He reached for another piece. “Merci.”
“It’s the least we could do for you, Old Man,” Louise sat up straighter as the breeze spoke lowly in her ear. It was time. “Thank you for answering my summons.”
“Oh, so you summoned me now?” Shadow Man’s eyes twinkled with sharp little edges as he bit into the second piece of bread. “With your mighty powers? You invoked me, and now I have to do your bidding, is that it?”
“No. Of course not,” Louise assured him, counting the passing seconds quietly in her head. Both Louise and Ordelia watched as a veil fell over his gaze and an ashen cloud moved behind his eyes. His smooth brow furrowed. A strange crease broke the line of his face and the younger woman no longer thought him pretty. Louise could see the thing that lurked beneath the mask. She teased it. “Does it not please you?”
“No.” Shadow spat the bread out.
“You must not have gotten the recipe right,” Ordelia feigned confusion.
“I did! Let’s see, there’s milk and butter,” Louise tilted her head, counting the ingredients off with her fingers, “sugar, salt, yeast, water, eggs, flour, anise and cinnamon.” Shadow narrowed his eyes as she smiled. “And also basil, bay, nettle, rosemary, sage, mullein, nightshade and just a hint of asafoetida.”
“You dare feed me devil’s dung?!” Fire filled Shadow’s eyes. He tried to raise himself from the chair with a wild roar quickly eaten by the thick trunks of oak trees. He paled as his arms and legs refused his commands. Louise and Ordelia silently watched his futile struggle, enraging him further. His face contorted in fury as he attempted to lunge at them. All he managed was a light sweat. He was trapped to his chair.
“It worked.” Louise grinned at the old woman, pulling the shoulders of her bodice back up. “You were right about how much copal we’d need to burn to mask the smell.”
“Of course I was right,” Ordelia snickered. “I’ve been planning this my whole life.”
“What have you done?!” Spittle flew from Shadow’s mouth.
Louise pulled the wig off her head with an exaggerated flair, running her hands through her short pixie cut. “I invited you to feast with my family dead. And you accepted.”
“Under false terms!” Shadow blackened.
Louise frowned. “No. I am Louisa Angeline. This is my family cemetery. This costume is as much a part of me as the one you wear. My friends call me Lou, but you can call me Louise.”
Shadow flailed embarrassingly against the magic holding him still, to no avail. His nostrils flared. “Witch!!”
“Everything I know my Gran taught me,” she said sweetly as Ordelia stepped beside her. “The pan de muerto is her special recipe.” She patted the old woman’s hand proudly. “I would like to introduce you to Ordelia Grace Lozier.”
“Lozier?” The man asked as the name tugged at a strange memory.
“I did not think to, after all this time, but I know your face,” Ordelia whispered, approaching him. There was no malice in her voice.
“What have you done to me?”
“We made you into a spirit magnet. The herbs in your gut are tethered to the herbs bundled beneath the chair you sit on, a chair those hands you borrow carved.” Ordelia’s eyes flashed. “The bones you wear remember this land. And that face is no longer yours to bear.”
“Bruja!” he spit.
“I am curandera, as is my granddaughter. We are healing this land, healing our family.”
Shadow shook his head. “Impossible.”
“I think you want to believe that,” Louise leaned across the table at their prisoner as Ordelia disappeared behind the central tombstone.
“You got one up on me,” Shadow chuckled uncomfortably. “I respect that. Okay, you win. I’ll be your djinn. What is it you would ask of me? It is yours, anything, if you set me free.”
“Like I can trust you.” Louise laughed.
“It’s not about trust. It’s about power.” He wilted in the chair. “And you have it.”
Louise stood uncertainly. Was there an easier answer? “Anything?”
“Ask what you will of me,” Shadow entreated. His eyes were wells of pain and suffering.
Another glamour. She wasn’t going to fall for it, but they’d worried needlessly. So this is the monster we’ve been hunting? What is so dangerous about a creature kept immobilized by a bundle of garden herbs?
“Louisa!” Ordelia exclaimed, slamming an old skull down hard on the table. Louise jumped away in confusion, staring at the hand that had been a half-inch away from touching his flesh. Shadow winked at her. “Foolish girl!”
Louise lifted her heavy skirt and crossed back to her grandmother with an apologetic frown. Her body felt strange, as if a thousand small leeches had been feeding from it. Ordelia dusted off the top of the skull with a bit of cloth, muttering under her breath.
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Shadow narrowed his eyes. Ordelia turned her backside to him, and raised an eyebrow at Louise.
“I warned you.”
“You did, Odie.”
“If I had been a year older and a minute longer retrieving this…” Ordelia shuddered. “That was it, the moment I was dreading. The moment I might have lost you.” She poked Louise hard in the ribs. “Don’t do that again.”
Louise nodded. “Are you ready, Gran?”
Tears glistened in Ordelia’s eyes. She had been training her whole life for one night of magic. And she had trained Louise. They each pulled out a small leather pouch they’d squirreled into their pockets.
“What are you doing?” Shadow demanded. He sounded miles away.
Louise stood, staring into her grandmother’s eyes. Her ancestress’ skull sat on the table between them. Louise breathed energy up from the earth as Odie breathed it down from the moon. With the next inhalation, they switched, taking hands. The moon energy pried at the edges of Louise’s body.
When she could no longer sense where she ended and her grandmother began, she emptied her pouch into her hand. Odie did the same. Louise held a clear crystal sphere, glittering with hundreds of thin, golden filaments. Ordelia’s orb was quartz with thick black crystals.
“Now is the time,” Louise chanted, sliding her golden crystal into the right socket of the skull. The flames around the cemetery grew brighter.
“The time is now,” Ordelia answered. Their guest struggled against his trap.
“You wouldn’t,” Shadow hissed. Ordelia held her black sphere up before the empty left socket. The crossroads man paled. “Wait!”
The side of Ordelia’s mouth curled up. “There will be no bargains tonight. You can leave that body willingly, or I will strip you from it one limb at a time.”
“You don’t want to do that.” Shadow’s grin was full of sharp teeth.
The old woman laughed. “Why not?”
“You would damage this vessel.”
Ordelia’s hand dropped a centimeter. She blinked. “Lafayette Lozier is long dead.”
“Is he now?” Shadow met Ordelia’s narrowed eyes and held her challenge. “Does he not smile at you? Do his teeth not flash in your direction?”
“You lie.” There was angry anguish in her voice. The leaves on the oak trees stilled. The flames danced uncertainly. Louise grabbed onto the thread of the magic they meant to work, and the lights steadied.
“I do not,” Shadow smiled smugly. “Or I would not inhabit him still. Dead flesh is of no use to me. There’s another choice here.”
Ordelia clenched her eyes shut, her heart swelling. An hour ticked by in three agonizing seconds. “Thankfully,” she said, tears sliding across her cheeks, “it is not my decision to make.” Ordelia pushed the second crystal into the skull. A wind whipped up as all the candle flames in the cemetery danced left and centered again. The copal smoke thickened, creating a ring around them. She raised her voice. “Now is the time!”
“The deal is off the table.” Shadow’s eyes turned black and their blackness seemed to pulse and push the dark outside of his body and into the air around him. Louise quavered. She could no longer see the candles on the other side of where he sat—
“The time is now!” Louise yelled. The orbs in the skull began to glow with an eerie green light. The air in the cemetery shifted, and she could taste dust in every particle of it. A roaring like migrating cicadas filled the small field as a bellowing spirit knocked on the wind.
Louise gripped Odie’s hand. She pulled the energy up from the earth, like her grandmother had taught her. She pushed the energy through her body, into her arm and into her grandmother. Ordelia smiled beside her. The two women spoke in one voice.
“Rosella Marguerite Lozier! Beloved wife of Lafayette Frederick Lozier! We call you here to our table. We call you back to your bones. We call you here as judge against the creature that rides your husband’s flesh!”
A disembodied female voice thundered through the cemetery. <Jackal! Thief!> The eyes in the skull flickered. <Our family will feed you no more!>
“Feed me?” Shadow challenged. “I take only what is mine to take. That this land belongs to your family is only because of the bargain your husband struck with me. Willingly.” He glared at Louise, at where she held her grandmother’s hand, where they channeled energy into the ether. “He was about to lose everything. Lafayette stood where the hunting trail crossed the dirt road into town and bargained with me that this land would provide for his family for generations. It was a mutual agreement.”
<Liar!>
“You thought we wouldn’t find out,” Ordelia spat. “That we would never know, that we’d just think Lafayette slunk out on his family. But my daddy knew the truth.”
<You made a deal to claim him at the end of his life. His natural end.>
“But you didn’t wait,” Ordelia growled.
Louise watched as the devil man’s stolen face froze. The candlelight flickered like lightning around them, illuminating the hundred and thirty year-old skin. How many decades could the flesh slough off dead cells, rejuvenating them from beneath before what was left was no longer the person it had been?
“My great-great grandfather is tired, Shadow, and we are stronger than you,” Louise added.
His face wrenched itself into a threatening scowl. “I am older than the demons, daughter.”
“Not just me. I’m talking about generations of witches, on the night they can freely walk, beneath a blue moon. All of us.” Louise could feel them solidifying in the smoke behind her, their mouths moving in a shared prayer, and a shared focus.
The skull flickered. <Come to me, husband.>
“Are you certain, Grandmother?” Ordelia’s voice sounded small.
<I have seen what this one has done in my husband’s skin, generations of feeding from the weakest of the earth and watching their ruination. If Lafayette lives within, waking him now would be cruel. Now is the time.>
“The time is now,” a hundred voices answered, both dead and living. Shadow looked about wildly.
A deep bell tolled beyond the gate. Dozens of living men and women, old and young, uncles, and cousins, sisters and brothers, circled the cemetery, each holding a candle, adding light to the darkness and speaking the same long-learned prayer. Louise added her voice to the chorus, her tongue singing over the strange words. They were words of unbinding, of spirit separating from flesh. The devil man might not willingly leave the bones, but they would rescue Lafayette’s spirit from his prison.
They invoked his name and called to his blood with their own. The Crossroad Man’s tissue quivered, and he screamed. Louise extended the true invitation intended for the evening. She invited Lafayette Lozier to stay, and the man sleeping time away within Shadow responded.
The Crossroads Man began to convulse in his chair. The deep molecules of the tissue holding him dislodged him vehemently. Something tickled at her skin, and Louise laughed. He was reaching tethers out to the mob of descendants, seeking a new anchor, but he could not touch them. Louise smiled, drawing a worn leather bag out from inside her bodice. Ordelia grinned wickedly exposing her own leather warding bag.
His eyes widened in fright. Every person in the dark wore one as well. He couldn’t touch any of them. He was lost. If he passed too much time without form, he risked becoming a true shadow; it was hard for ether to remember flesh. The old woman’s face told him she knew that already.
“Lafayette Frederick Lozier.” Half of the chorus in the cemetery began to chant his name.
“Cross over,” the other half chanted in turn.
“Lafayette Frederick Lozier.”
“Cross over.”
Louise and Ordelia joined in the cry, their eyes turning a brilliant green. “Cross over!”
And their ancestor did. After millennia of walking the earth with borrowed feet, Crossroads Man’s eyes narrowed in unwilling defeat. He threw the head he wore back and opened it wide.
Darkness crawled out, slowly, stretching like a long-slumbering cat as it mixed with the air. It recoiled from the lingering copal smoke, twisting and bending as it welled up from the mouth of the well-dressed man. It’s only safe escape was up, far from hope of human habitation. The dark cloud fled to the sky with a roar, taking the essence of its host with it.
The Lozier descendants slowed their chanting until their voices stilled. Ordelia’s younger siblings and their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren entered the cemetery, candles flickering in the All Hallows dark. They filled the cemetery, standing among the returning spirits, gathering around the table and watched as time tripped backwards over itself. The body of their ancestor decayed and shriveled until only mummified remains sat in the chair. A murky light hovered over the table, approaching the skull, floating closer to where Louise and Ordelia stood.
“Grandpa Lafayette?” Ordelia was awestruck.
The light enveloped the skull and changed its hue to match the glowing orbs. Louise could see how dank it was, still, compared to the other spirits that stood with them. She could see the weight of what he had seen. Even if the others couldn’t see past their wonder, she could see it.
Her great-great grandmother Rosella Lozier’s voice sighed around them one last time. <Bury my husband with me and let us rest.>
Ordelia bent to kiss the top of the skull, tears rolling silently down her cheeks. “It was good to hear your voice again.” She removed the golden sphere from the socket. “Be at rest.”
“Be at peace,” everyone responded. The eyes ceased glowing.
Louise bent forward and kissed the cool bone. Her tears wet the relic. She pulled the crystal from the skull. “Be at rest.”
“Be at peace,” everyone said. The candles winked and flickered as the air exhaled. The green light floated up, dissipating into the star light.
Louise closed her eyes, pushing the energy in her chest down through her body, down into the earth. She sent back what she no longer needed. Beside her Odie did the same, careful not to release too much or their muscles would feel like they’d been stretched through a wringer.
Family swept forward to remove the tainted bread from the table, producing a second fragrantly spiced loaf containing far fewer ingredients. Great-Uncle Frederick poked one of his grandsons to remove the herb bundles from under the chair.
“Louisa.” Odie waited, holding the platter of unbroken bread out towards her. Louise floated across the grass and broke off the first offering. She laid it on the plate set before the true guest of honor. She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand lightly, touching him for the first and last time. He was perfectly preserved.
One by one the living each broke off a bit and laid it on the plate before Lafayette, as Great-Uncle Frederick stood before the monolith and began his yearly recitation of the names of the dead buried in the cemetery. His son Nicholas picked up his mandolin and plucked out a cheerful tune beneath the names.
Other instruments joined in as the names faded. The small space filled with laughter and the spirits danced among them. Louise felt a breeze tickle the hairs around her neck, and she smiled.
“Welcome home, Grandfather Lafee.”
Sarah Lyn Eaton is a writer fond of magical realism and dystopias. She has previously published the stories “The White Sisters” in What Follows and “Hold the Door” in The Northlore Series, Volume 1: Folkore, as well as “Jar of Pickles” in the anthology One Thousand Words for War.