The Vines (9 page)

Blake has no response to this. Finally he points to her pile of papers. “Your research?”

Nova chews her bottom lip for a second. He figures she wants to press him for Jane Percival’s last words. But he’s already given her an intimate look inside Caitlin’s home and deteriorating mental state. It’s quid pro quo time, and he isn’t budging.

“So Spring House allegedly burned down in 1850—”

“Wait a minute.
Allegedly?
Felix Delachaise got wasted and burned it down because he was broke. He couldn’t manage the fields. An entire cane crop died on him, and he lost his shirt. Didn’t his whole family die in the fire?”

“Allegedly. There are those who claim something else happened—something that had nothing to do with Delachaise and booze.”

“So, wait. The family survived?”

“No. I’m saying they might have been killed by something more than a fire.”

“OK . . . And who exactly believes this?”

“The slaves who fled that night.”

“I see. So you found them all on Facebook?”

She rolled her eyes. “Close. Dr. Taylor found them on the Internet, in a manner of speaking, that is. She’s one of my professors at LSU. She’s working with a couple other universities to create something called the Lost Voices Project. It’s the most extensive database on African American slaves ever built.”

“What is it? A list of names?”

“Oh, it’s
a lot
more than that. There’s a professor down in New Orleans, Gwendolyn Hall, she went into old slave auction records and put together an exhaustive list of slave names and identities. Dr. Taylor, she’s building on top of that kind of research. Only all sorts of information goes into the system. Slave narratives taken before and after the Civil War. Diary entries from plantation owners. Travel logs, newspaper reports from the period. All of it gets filtered through algorithms and computer software that work to assemble a complete reconstruction of every slave. I mean, even down to their physical appearances, their mannerisms, their speech patterns. The eventual goal is to have a database where you can actually sit there and have a conversation with a slave. But that’s years away.”

“Virtual slaves . . .”

“Virtual
ghosts
. Back from the dead. Folks whose lives were ignored and tossed aside in the history books. Now they’re coming back to life ’cause of the kind of computer software that tracks what you buy on the Internet.” Nova’s excitement over her professor’s vision has
her
excited, straight-backed, and talking with her hands. She catches herself with a quick but deep breath and forces her hands to her lap. “I mean . . . it’s in the early stages. But she let me use it anyway.”

“Use it . . . how?”

“I searched for Spring House.”

“And that’s how you found these slave narratives?”

“Yeah. They weren’t all in one place until a few months ago. This project has assembled old documents that were scattered in archives all over the world.”

“OK. And these slaves . . . what did they say?”

“They said the earth took Spring House,” Nova answers. “The
justice
of the earth.”

“Those were their words? The justice of the earth?”

She nods. “And they all mentioned one name. Virginie Lacroix.” The French pronunciation—
ver-jun-ee
—rolls effortlessly off her tongue.

“Was she related to Felix?”

“Nope. She was a slave. A slave who could talk to the soil.”

“What, like . . . voodoo?”

“No,” Nova says, with evident distaste for the cliché. “There’s no mention of Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices. No altars. No chickens getting their heads cut off. This is much more specific. She could make things
grow
. That’s what they said. And apparently . . . she could also make them die.”

“What?” Blake asks, incredulous.

“Seriously,” Nova says. “There was a story passed among the slaves, and it was in all the accounts that came back when I did the search. They knew about Virginie’s power, but the belief was that she didn’t have control over it. She could use it in short bursts here and there but nothing that could have freed her or caused an uprising. Anyway, Delachaise was a terrible manager. A lot of the plantation owners were. Spoiled little French brats who weren’t prepared for how labor-intensive cane harvesting was going to be. There wasn’t much turnaround time each year before the winter frosts came, and there was also the refinement process and all that. Anyway, to make up for how overwhelmed he was, Felix worked his slaves half to death. So Virginie showed him what she was capable of.”

“And . . . what? Killed him?”

“No, once he found her out, they made a deal. He asked her to make the cane grow faster. In exchange he’d add enough new slaves to lessen everyone’s workload. In other words, he promised to stop working everyone half to death if she’d use her magic on his fields.”

“Did she agree?”

“Sort of. Enough, at least, for her to grow the cane. But it sounds like he didn’t hold up his end of the bargain. Because the whole thing didn’t end well.”

“Justice of the earth . . .”

“Three different narratives in the database said
something
came up and out of the earth and literally tore Spring House apart. The fire happened second. But whatever happened
first
—it was so goddamn bad, nobody cared when all the slaves took off for the swamp.”

“Something Virginie
made
come up out of the earth?”

“Or something she unleashed by mistake.”

Blake sits, thinking it over. Finally, still shaking his head, he says, “And we’re the first people to read this?”

“No. We’re just the first people not to dismiss it as the voodoo mumbo jumbo of a traumatized people.”

But she’s got more than words to present. The sketch she places in front of him is a pixelated scan of a crude ink drawing. The grand facade of Spring House is plainly visible in the background, but it’s not quite to scale with the clump of stick-figure slaves standing in the foreground next to a giant oak tree. One of their own is lassoed to its giant trunk in a manner that wouldn’t be possible in real life, given the tree’s size. The overseer’s whip has been caught in midair by a giant snake that’s unfurled from one of the branches overhead. But it has no eyes, no flickering, cartoonish tongue. But if it’s not a snake, then it has to be . . .

Blake knows this is the part where he should continue shaking his head in disbelief, dismissing the story as the childish folklore of a primitive and uneducated people. But he can no longer muster such a reaction, and so he sees Nova softening before him as she realizes she won’t have to mount a stronger defense of this incredible tale.

“So . . . ,” Nova finally says. “What did Jane Percival say?”

Blake knows his next words will amount to a kind of surrender, that much of what other people have regarded as his defining courage sprang from his belief that he had survived one of the worst blows life could deliver. But now, suddenly, the rules about what life can hurl at you have been suspended, and he hesitates, scared of what this could unleash. He knows, though, something has already been unleashed—both in 1850, and now it’s happening again for some reason—and if he stays silent, it will amount to a betrayal, of Nova and her father, whose lifework is Spring House and everything that rises from its soil.

“She said the vines are coming for us all.”

The eighteen-wheelers lumbering past outside seem hollow and insubstantial, their great tires skating across a line between air and earth that seems perilously in doubt. The waitress comes to refill their water glasses, but something about the tense energy coursing between the two of them causes her to recoil wordlessly, retreating behind the counter and shooting a hasty glance in their direction, as if she has mistaken the stunned silence between them for the calculation of armed robbers preparing to strike.

Then Nova’s cell phone rings, and she is digging in her backpack for it, and she’s
uh
-
huh
ing her way through what sound like pleasantries on the other end, and Blake is wondering if, just as the revelation that Santa Claus was a myth killed the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and a host of other childhood fantasies for him, this current revelation and its spreading, unavoidable implications are opening a doorway that will admit more than one impossible guest.

Then Nova shoots to her feet and cries, “What do you mean he went
back
there?”

19

The gas station is an island of light beside the two-lane blacktop. Caitlin turns into it at the last possible second, even though her BMW X5 has over half a tank, more than enough to get her to Spring House and back to New Orleans.

The attendant looks up from his magazine behind bulletproof glass, face shaded from the sodium-vapor lights by the bill of his John Deere baseball cap. When she goes to put her credit card into the reader, she sees that there isn’t one and is reminded that she’s not in Uptown, but several miles up the west bank of the river from Luling, where the population is sparse and one fuel-and-run could take away half a day’s business.

“Pay first,” comes the attendant’s voice through the speaker overhead.

Instead, Caitlin stands next to her shiny black SUV, the gas pump frozen in one hand. She figures she has only minutes left, so she opens the gas tank anyway and begins unscrewing the cap.

“Pay first, ma’am.”

Just then, the sedan that’s been following her for a half hour blows past the gas station. It’s hard to keep track of its continued speed in the darkness, but a few moments later she sees the sedan’s brake lights flash on, angry red eyes trailing away around the bend in the highway up ahead. Slowing. Calculating. Waiting?

“Pay f—”

“Fuck off!”
Caitlin roars. She’s staring at the attendant before she realizes she’s whirled on him. The undeniable astonishment in his expression at such full-voiced fury coming from so delicate a woman chases away any remorse she might feel over her outburst, replacing it with bone-deep satisfaction.

When she nods and smiles, the guy begins reaching for something under his desk, without taking his glazed eyes off her. Whether it’s a gun or an alarm button, she’s not sure. And now that she’s confirmed she’s still being followed, there’s no need for her to linger.

Fifteen minutes later she is traveling up River Road when the sedan’s headlights appear in her rearview mirror again.

20

“I’m not getting this,” Kyle Austin says.

“Spring House, her plantation,” Mike says. “That’s where she’s headed.” Kyle is still sitting at Scott’s desk, watching the green-flared quadrants on the computer screen that show various angles on Caitlin Chaisson’s now-empty house.

Mike’s voice sounds tinny through the prepaid cell phone. Scott has given up trying to overhear, and now he’s headfirst in the kitchen pantry, probably getting ready to stress eat or make some kind of protein shake with five shots of bull adrenaline and a methamphetamine chaser.

“I mean, I don’t understand why you’re following her. The house on St. Charles is just sitting there, empty. Shouldn’t we make a play?”

“A play?”

“For the
tape
.”

“Yeah . . . but this might be more interesting.”

“
Interesting.
We’re going for interesting now. What does—”

“Don’t be such a little bitch, Austin. She’s on the move,
alone
, at one in the morning—”

“So what, man?”

“So rather than looking for a needle in a goddamn
mansion
, I could maybe see if she’s covering up something about her fucking husband that we could use to get the tape out of her. You get me?”

“We’re not detectives.”

“We’re not murderers either, but that’s what everyone will think if she ever wants them to.”

We’re not?
Kyle thinks.

Across the apartment, Scott seems to have produced his own answer to the question needling Kyle’s brain. He hasn’t been rooting around in the pantry for protein powder or energy drinks. Instead, he’s set a giant gun case on the counter from which he has removed maybe the largest handgun Kyle has ever laid eyes on. It’s a 500 Smith & Wesson Magnum, so long it looks like it would be impossible to aim with one hand. Kyle’s seen videos of the things online blowing the shit out of cinderblocks with a single bullet.
Handgun hunting,
they call it.

Scott’s got a cocky half smile on his face until he sees the expression on Kyle’s.

“Story of my fucking life,” Mike growls. “Tell you what, how ’bout you kids just sit back and I’ll clean up the whole mess, and when I’m done I’ll bring you a pretty hat you can wear to church with the other ladies.”

Mike Simmons hangs up on him before he can answer, and then it’s just Kyle, Scott, and the cartoonishly large gun sitting on the kitchen counter like a prop from a comic book. And Kyle Austin thinks,
Maybe you
should
be the one cleaning up the mess. You’re the one who whacked Fuller with the goddamn pipe.

Scott’s expression is suddenly pale and distant, and for a second Kyle is afraid he’s about to be punished with an ass-whipping for not being visibly excited about Scott’s insanely large firearm. But Scott is staring past Kyle, at the computer screen and its night-vision views of Caitlin Chaisson’s mansion. And then Scott is walking slowly across the apartment, and when Kyle sees the giant handgun left all by itself on the kitchen counter, he has a mad urge to dash for it, as if it might be snatched up and wielded against them by a mentally imbalanced ghost.

“What the . . . ?” Scott finally whispers. And Kyle is forced to turn his attention away from the abandoned gun to the computer screen.

What he sees there at first appears to be a trick of shadows until he realizes there’s only one concrete, physical explanation. One glass wall of the second-floor solarium is either gone or mostly shattered. He can’t see the broken glass, but he can see the clouds of insects now swirling freely through the solarium’s interior like a compact tornado. The cloud looks three times larger than he first thought. It looks like the bugs have knocked over some sort of appliance that’s now short-circuiting. The whole scene looks like a miniature version of a transformer gearing up to blow in a violent thunderstorm. In the split second before each pulse of light overpowers the night-vision lens with sickening intensity, Kyle glimpses a density of insects to rival the clouds of Formosan termites that used to shut down Zephyrs baseball games when he was a kid.

“Did they—did those bugs . . . ?”

“Yeah,” Kyle says. “I think they broke the goddamn window.”

The next flash is fierce, far larger than the ones before, so bright Scott leaps back from the computer screen, one arm going up to shield his eyes. But Kyle can’t force himself to look away, because there was a shape to this explosion of light that the other pulses lacked, a brilliant, brief silhouette of a form that looked halfway human as it made its way through the tumbles of hovering insects like a propulsion of fierce white dye.

But the image is so brief Kyle is able to dismiss it as a trick of the eye. What he can’t dismiss is the gaping, jagged hole in the solarium’s glass wall that the flash illuminated in full for the first time. And now the clouds of insects are streaming through it and taking to the night sky, so many of them it looks as if they weren’t just filling up the solarium but the entire house.