Disembodied Bones
Disembodied Bones
C.L. Bevill
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Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Caren L. Bevill
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Cover by Ronnell Porter
At http://www.wix.com/ronnelldporter/design
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The Present
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
About the Author
Other Novels by C.L. Bevill
Prologue
Twenty years ago
Chapter One
City of Unknown, Louisiana
Buried ever so deep,
Piled over with heavy stones,
Yet I will
Effortlessly dig up the disembodied bones.
What am I?
What am I? What am I? What am I? The thought bounced around in Leonie’s head like a mad Ping-Pong ball. She didn’t understand what the words meant. She didn’t have a clue, except that the words themselves were the clue. Buried ever so deep, piled over with heavy stones, yet I will effortlessly dig up the disembodied bones...
The very tip top of Leonie’s head reached only five feet. An ebony spill of hair cascaded to her waist, brushed into unruly submission by her mother that very morning. But she was thinking about something else very different. Her bow shaped lips were pursed in concentration; the lines between her eyes weaved a W in single-minded deliberation.
With a shrewd smile on his lined face, Sebastien Benoit gave Leonie the front page of the Shreveport Herald-Post. She didn’t pay any attention to the owner of the Unknown General Store. But he stared at her slight figure as she poured over the headlines. She was a little girl, whose skin barely covered her still developing bones, and who had all the attributes of the other lake families. She had asked prettily for the paper he’d already read, and politely handed everything back but the front page. Then she asked him if she could keep it.
Sebastien shrugged uncaringly. “Mais oui, p’tite. Else it goes in the trash and what good would come of it there?” But Leonie had already turned away.
Leonie Simoneaud was the daughter of Babette and Jacques Simoneaud. Jacques worked up to Shreveport most days, and Babette had a typing job in Natchitoches. Neither brought in enough income to have a babysitter for thirteen-year-old Leonie, but then she didn’t need one. A self-sufficient child, she borrowed books from anyone who had them to lend and promptly returned them in immaculate condition. She wandered the woods with other family children, learning almost every secret the local bayous held. Sometimes she came into the Unknown General Store with a few crumpled dollars and bought an R.C. cola and a moon pie. She stayed out of trouble and her actions hadn’t caused the family’s gossips to run rampant.
But on this day it was only the newspaper Leonie wanted, and since Sebastien had read it already, he gave it to her, encouraged that the child was quick enough to want to learn. Truth be told, it was a slow day for news anyway. Another space shuttle was being launched. The President was addressing the nation on some-such policy. A little boy in Shreveport had been taken from a mall the previous day by a stranger. There had been a violent car wreck on the freeway that had killed three people. All of which was contained on the front page that quiet Leonie held in her tiny little girl hands.
For a moment Sebastien wished he could read the girl’s mind. The people who lived on Twilight Lake were sometimes called Lake People. Some of the outside world knew that they were peculiar folk. They liked to keep to themselves. They liked to marry within the dozens of families that made up the area. They didn’t trust the people they called outsiders. But the Simoneauds had the best reason of all for that distrust, for it was Leonie’s own great-aunt, Lisette Simoneaud, who had suffered tremendously at the hands of outsiders. They had kidnapped Lisette decades before because of her gifts, family gifts of second sight, sometimes called veiled eyes. They had ill-used the beautiful young woman and when her lover, Varden Comeaux, had found her she was perched on death’s doorstep. And although Lisette’s lover had punished those responsible with a terrible rough justice, outsiders were still mistrusted and the family’s secrets kept close to the chest.
Leonie stood motionlessly in the air conditioned general store, her hands clenched on each side of the front page of the newspaper, her eyes rapt upon what she was reading.
Such a pretty young thing, thought Sebastien. Silken black hair tumbled deliciously down her back and normally her almond shaped gold eyes sparkled with humor. Her little cupid’s face hinted at the beauty she would become, clearly a challenger to the wondrous vision that Lisette Simoneaud had been. But she wore a tattered T-shirt. Ragged blue jeans covered her skinny legs. Her tennis shoes were ripped at the toes. However, she don’t have the gift. A shame, non?
Leonie looked up at the clock on the wall. It was a neon fish jumping out of the lake, seeking the freedom of the air and wind. Green hands proclaimed it was half past ten in the morning. It was a week before the summer solstice, school had been let out a full fourteen days before and children roamed the surrounding area like free range game, and Leonie was able to do as she liked, as long as she stayed out of trouble and did not speak with outsiders.
Leonie would break both rules on this particular day.
Through the window Sebastien Benoit’s blue truck was visible. Leonie didn’t know how to drive anything, much less a truck, even if Sebastien had been inclined to loan it to a thirteen-year-old girl. Glancing down at her dilapidated tennis shoes she knew probably would have to walk until she got out of Unknown, to avoid the locals that would promptly tell her parents that she was up to something.
Folding the newspaper up carefully, Leonie turned back to Sebastien, coming up with the best pretext she had at the moment. “You know, I suddenly remembered that Papa forgot his lunch. Do you know anyone who’s going to Shreveport today, M’su Benoit?”
“Non, p’tite,” Sebastien replied solemnly, studying the child’s face before him. “But M’su Bergeron might know someone.” He pointed outside toward the dock. A hundred feet away, it had been built over a deep pool on the edge of the dark Twilight Lake. For the last twent
y years it had witnessed fishermen and tourists alike as they boarded various family vessels to earn a few extra dollars in the summer. “Best to catch him before he takes his charter out.”
“Merci,” Leonie said and hurried out the door.
Sebastien shook his head. It’s hard to trust a member of the family when a fella don’t have a clue what’s going on in her little brain.
Leonie quickly walked along the short dock. She approached Jean Bergeron, who was directing a group of tourists from Dallas onto his ship. He was a tall man with gray shot black hair and a friendly face that welcomed her advance with an amicable twinkle in his gold eyes.
“Put your gear aft,” Jean called cheerfully. He glanced down at Leonie and said in a low voice, “A moment, chère. These outsiders, they don’t know their aft from their ass.”
“Bonjour, Leonie,” said someone else, and Leonie turned to see a boy standing nearby. His black hair, gold eyes, and general appearance let one and all know he was a member of the family, and not only that, he was also Jean Bergeron’s son.
“Bonjour, Gabriel,” said Leonie, a ghost of a smile flitted across her restless features. She knew the younger boy well and knew he hadn’t a mean bone in all of his body. He didn’t bully those younger than he, and he didn’t tease Leonie that his gift had developed before hers, although he was two full years younger. “Glad to be out of school, n’est pas?”
“Oui, they were teaching us algebra,” Gabriel said and grimaced. “I get a headache from it even now.”
“Gabriel,” said Jean Bergeron. “Go show these silly men where to put their gear.” He lightly slapped his son on his back and turned to Leonie. She was becoming uneasily tense, a prickling of the skin started to walk its way up the bony part of her back, as if someone dragged a feather there. She didn’t know what it was. One moment she was enjoying the summer and all of the potential joys it held in the childhood ecstasy of freedom and the next her mind was polarized on something she couldn’t even begin to name. Someone needs me to help him. He needs me. “What is it you need, little Leonie?”
“I need to go to Shreveport, M’su,” Leonie said calmly, belying the disquiet she felt. She wanted to thrust her hands into her pockets to conceal the nervous shaking of her extremities. “I must…see my papa.”
Jean Bergeron frowned. He knew Jacques Simoneaud and knew that the other man worked in various construction sites around Shreveport. But he also knew that Leonie was a serious young woman and not given to foolish notions. Even at such a young age, the child had the common-sense of an old woman and the studious nature of a Rhodes Scholar. “Have you called your maman?”
“Oui,” Leonie lied. My second one in five minutes, she noted silently. She didn’t like to lie, but something inside her demanded its necessity. It screamed for her to get to Shreveport and to do it soon. What am I? What am I? What am I?
She struggled for composure while Jean contemplated his actions at a snail’s pace. She wanted to shriek at Jean and at the voice in her head: “I know I’m only thirteen! But he needs me! He needs me RIGHT NOW! And I don’t know what you are!” Leonie didn’t know where the unerring thoughts were coming from, only that the question repeated itself in her head like a broken record.
Jean paused in his thoughts to call out to the tourists on the ship, “Not on the upper deck, if you please, else it will fall into the lake and then what you do? Fish with your hands? He-he, I’d like to see that, me.”
“S’il vous plaît, M’su,” the young woman said. She wasn’t begging, but looking up at him with frank gold eyes and something else that touched his heart. Jean’s eyebrows drew together in a frown.
“What is so important, p’tite?” he asked her.
“It is important,” she said. Leonie hesitated for a split second. “It’s so important I can’t afford to take the time to convince you.”
And suddenly Jean knew that it was exactly that-so important that a little girl couldn’t find the right worlds to explain it to a skeptical adult. He abruptly called out to a man helping to load the ship with supplies for the long afternoon and evening of fishing. “Louis! I need you to do something else, mon ami.”
Louis shifted a cooler in his arms and shrugged. “What you need, Jean?”
Jean held out the keys to his own truck. “Take Leonie to Shreveport, cher. You take her to her father, oui? And don’t you let her out of your sight until she’s with her papa.”
Louis shrugged. He put the cooler down on the ship and easily leapt the gap between boat and dock as he came to get the keys. He was a younger family member with a laissez faire attitude and a distant relative to Leonie. With dark hair brushed back from his broad forehead and cordial eyes, he glanced at Leonie with an affectionate smile. “Well, let’s go, sweetness. I could stop and rent some video tapes. You know my brother just got himself a brand spanking new DVD?”
Jean Bergeron watched the pair walk away and smoothed the hairs that were standing up on the back of his neck with a trembling hand. He didn’t know exactly what was up with Leonie, but he was beginning to suspect that her gifts were coming into play and that the entire family was going to hear about it before long. Perhaps in a loud manner that would have all of their heads aching with the pain of it.
•
Louis was singing loudly. Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias were singing backup, happily commemorating all the girls they’d had relationships with before. Louis’s uneven tenor drowned everything else out in the cab of the pickup truck.
Leonie sat on the other side, looking out the window, absently pulling the constrictive seatbelt away from her waist. She ignored Louis’s jagged rendition of the song and tried to decide how she was going to elude the man when she needed to go someplace by herself, someplace that Louis would never allow her to go. It was such a bad place and so reviled by the family that only one in the most extreme circumstances would dare it.
“Turn here,” she said, pointing. They had been on the road for about thirty minutes, just skirting the edge of Shreveport.
“Jean said Shreveport,” said Louis. His hand rhythmically thumped the steering wheel in accompaniment to the music. He looked at the road signs as he hit the turn signal.
“Papa’s not exactly in Shreveport today,” Leonie lied without pause. She crossed her little chest with a hand. He needed her. He needed her right away. He wasn’t harmed yet, but it wouldn’t be long.
What am I? What am I? What am I?
“I don’t know!”
“Huh?” said Louis. His singing abruptly ceased and he cast a concerned glance at her, even while trying to keep an eye on the road. “Don’t know what?”
“Just talking to myself,” she muttered. “I’m not sure exactly where, but I can find it.”
“Okay,” agreed Louis. It was a pleasant morning. He had a few bucks in his pocket and was driving Jean Bergeron’s truck. He was going to get paid for driving Leonie Simoneaud around and Mary Bois was going to go see a movie with him on Friday night. How can it be any better than that?
Billy Joel singing Uptown Girl followed Willie and Julio. Louis started belting that one out, cheerfully singing as loud as he could, pausing to encourage Leonie with, “Come on, chère. You know the words!”
Leonie frowned. They skirted the outskirts of Shreveport. The houses sat back from the country road on large plots of land. Some were small and tidy with corrals for dust covered ponies that grazed in the tall grass and avoided children like they were the plague. Other houses were large and had pools in the back and a separate garage for as many as three vehicles. Their hedges were shaped into well-formed balls and ovals that showed their high level of maintenance. Their yards were trimmed meticulously and vivid perennials of every color adorned their flower beds.
“What does your papa do out here?” Louis asked Leonie curiously. He knew Jacques did construction of all types, but there didn’t seem to be anything being constructed out on the country side of the largest city in northern Louisiana. “A h
ouse?”
Leonie nodded distractedly. Louis had slowed down, craning his neck. The homes were getting progressively more expensive. Single storied houses had become two and then three storied houses. Simple brick had developed into complicated patterns and winding brick-paved driveways had wrought-iron gates fraught with fancy designs. Some even had initials.
Louis pointed. “That one’s got a tower. Anh. What they do with a tower, p’tite? All they need is a moat and a fire-breathing dragon, oui?”
Leonie didn’t say anything. They were getting closer. It was a two-lane road, with driveways leading off either side to the expensive houses. The tension had spread to her shoulders and it felt as though someone had inserted rebar under her skin to stiffen her up.
“Your papa must have a big pricey project to work on here, non?” His voice lowered conspiratorially. “I hear these places have a toilette for every room. Every single room. My grandmaman says that indoor plumbing tempts the devil to come inside your house.”
Billy Joel had ceased singing about his uptown girl and an announcer came out to discuss recent events in the news. Leonie shivered as she perceived what the disc jockey was talking about. Then she said, “Stop here.”
“Here?” Louis looked around confusedly. “But there ain’t no construction ‘round here.”
“Here!” Leonie yelled at him.
Louis pulled over to the side of the road and sighed theatrically. “Jean ain’t gonna appreciate you playing games with me and with his truck, Leonie.”
Leonie was staring out her window. The very peaks of the house were just about the only thing visible from the road. There was the impression of red brick and large glass windows, sitting well back from the country road. Compared with the rest of the neighborhood and from what they could see through a mass of oaks and ash trees, it was twice as large as anything in the area. Brick columns with wrought iron fences bordered the road and the gate was securely locked with a shiny padlock and hefty chain that contrasted the blackened iron. It appeared as though no one was around and furthermore, someone didn’t want anyone to be around.