“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” His neighbor, Julian St. James shouted, arms up. One hand was spread wide, the other held a small, fully intact, dark-blue jar sitting inside a handkerchief.
“Roan?” Santiago asked, making sure she was okay as he holstered his weapon.
“He scared theshitout of me,” his deputy shouted, rising from the ground, the side of her uniform now muddy. “I was circling back from the front yard, and this idiot just steps from behind a tree, smiling like a fucking psycho.”
“I thought you’d be as pleased to see me as I was pleased to see you, Deputy Gray,” St. James said smoothly. The man was cultured, more handsome than he had a right to be, and wealthy, and a good friend. “I was smiling because I was a man who could bring you a possible clue. I thought it would put me higher in your regard.”
“This is not one of your stupid crime thrillers, St. James,” Roan snapped, shaking mud from her hands. “It’s tampering with possible evidence, evidence that you probablyplanted.”
“No, my wild Roan. I walked over here to say hello and find out what was happening with Mrs. Willoby. I saw you going toward the woods and started to follow but something strange, like a phantom moving through the woods nearer to the house, shifted my attention. I walked over to that tree but no one was there, just this little bottle laying on its side. The whole thing, the phantom, this curiously clean jar, the tension I felt…I got lost in my imagination, thinking of ways I could use it all in a novel. Then I saw you and imagine?—”
“Julian, did any of the contents get on you?” Santiago interrupted.
“I may be overly imaginative, Stillwater, but I’m no amateur.” He held out the jar to Roan. For all his eccentricities and urban ways, Julian had a hardness about him that came out at unpredictable times. It’s why the folks in town didn’t fully trust him.
“Roan, get our gear. I know Deputy Hall went over the scene but now that we have us some possible evidence, we’re going to be as thorough as we can given the Willoby family’s early presence.”
“Did you find something in the house?” Roan asked, suspiciously.
He looked from Roan to St. James and back to Roan.
“Roger that, League,” Roan said. “I’ll go get the gear and try to get some of this mud off me. Don’t trust St. James, his story’s flimsy at best.”
Roan might not like St. James, but she wasn’t wrong. Julian’s story was thin. At best.
Santiago looked at his neighbor. Julian’s gaze followed Roan a little too pointedly.
“You might not believe me, Stillwater,” Julian said, watching Roan until she disappeared behind the back of the cruiser. “But I did see something moving near the tree. It’s the only place you’ll find any trace of my presence. Have Roan follow my tracks if you need proof of my comings and goings, but just know this, something feels off.”
His gaze settled back on Santiago.
“If you’re up to it, swing by after your shift, I have a few scenarios I want to run past you about the book.”
He nodded and Julian walked back toward the lake.
Santiago never had cause to wonder much beyond what he instinctually knew about Julian and what the other man chose to tell him. Now he wondered.
“Haunted you say?”
“For hundreds of years,” Derry said, sliding the nearly empty box of beignets to Lauren, who was sitting at Roan’s desk. Lauren shook her head. She’d probably gained five pounds in the less than twenty-four hours of being here.
“The house Mrs. Willoby died in was one of three built in 1863,” Ms. Audrey said from her desk. “Mind you, there’s been a number of renovations to that house over the decades, but the man who built the original with his own two hands was Ezekial Moor. He helped his friends Daniel Freeman, the sheriff’s ancestor who was a Black-Indian, half Chickasaw and half Black, along with Orlando St. James, Julian’s ancestor, build their homes. The three men had been friends before the civil war and had been recruited by the Union for their skills. The sheriff’s ancestor knew this mountain and the lowland areas like the back of his hand, and when the Union came calling, the price of their service was the land surrounding the lake. Back then Shrouded Lake was a wild untamed area, hard to get to and harder to live on. St. James’s ancestor, who was a scholar, drew up the agreement outlining that only their descendants could ever own the property. The three men were decreed the deeds for the lake area, but only if the Union won the war. Josiah St. James made sure the brotherhood’s achievements, their agreement with the government, their property ownership was all documented. If you go to the Shrouded Lake Memorial Museum, you can find all about the history of our town.”
“I don’t understand. Why did Ms. Willoby live in the Moor house if it could only go to their descendants? Was she a Moor?” Lauren asked, intrigued.
“They were massacred,” Derry blurted out.
Ms. Audrey nodded. “A day of celebration was turned into the bloodiest day in Shrouded Lake history. The whole family, generations in one household, was murdered up there. In the house, in the lake.”
“Part of the house was burned down too,” Derry added. “The Moor deed was lost, or destroyed, and without proof of ownership, it allowed anybody to purchase the house and the parcel of land. Which is why the massacre happened in the first place. The cultivated land was now valued by the ones who didn’t care about a bunch ofcoloredfolks having it then.”
“But there’s always a cost to evil, and the land, it remembers. Every person that has purchased that home since has died in terrifying ways. Every person who enters that lake not a blood descendant of the brotherhood dies in the water or dies soon after. That land up there don’t let people forget what happened up there.”
“What won’t it let be forgotten?”
“That its roots are buried as deep as the earth’s core, and those roots have fed off the blood and spirits of man. Now it’s a centuries old appetite for them.”
Lauren sat back in the chair, folded her arms over her chest, then raised a skeptical brow. She knew when she was being punked. Stereotypical small-town behavior; scare some unsuspecting stranger with local folklore.
