Long Night Moon (Bad Mojo Book 1) Read online

  LONG NIGHT MOON

  Bad Mojo Series, 1

  by Sharon A. Austin

  This is a work of fiction.

  Copyright 2014 Sharon A. Austin

  About This Book

  Moved by the success of her debut novel, twenty-six-year-old BJ Donovan of New Orleans, Louisiana can’t handle the thoughts of being a one-hit wonder and never feeling special ever again.

  Using her position as the executive chef and owner of a popular restaurant in the French Quarter to blend in with the community she embarks on a killing spree, by means of voodoo magic, and uses details of the murders to maintain her best-seller status with an upcoming episodic thriller series.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  WOLF MOON

  Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too.

  They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

  – Stephen King

  CHAPTER 1

  Virgil awoke late at night to find his wife gone. He kicked off cold and clammy bedcovers, box springs screeched when he got up. A steady breeze, weighed down with humidity, carried the vanilla-like fragrance of Joe-Pye weed and the barely audible sound of laughter through an open window.

  He stood behind fluttering white sheers and watched Marie trot across the back yard, her long black curls bouncing with each footfall. The opaque security light above the barn doors cast an eerie pallor through the limbs of an old elm draped with Spanish moss. He noticed her belly, in the narrow space between her shirt and shorts, seemed rounder than normal. He lazily scratched his ass, wondered what the hell she’s doing.

  A man stepped out of the shadows, and drew her into an embrace. They kissed for a moment, then entered the barn.

  Marie came back out. She turned her head side to side, looked up. Virgil leaned back without thinking.

  The man clasped her hand. “C’mere, baby.” He brought a shiny metal flask to his lips and took a long swig.

  She giggled again. “Gimme some.”

  “Sh! Not now.” He pulled her into the barn, loosely swung one door shut, the other already latched at the top.

  >+<|>+<

  Virgil slipped through the half closed door. Stood beneath the loft and listened to the rough’n ready sounds of raw lust. Glossy photos in his dog-eared girlie magazines flashed through his mind. He hiked the leather rifle strap onto his shoulder, gripped the sides of the wooden ladder. Slowly mounted the rungs; aware one always squeaks.

  He found them in a clearing behind short stacks of hay. Virgil recognized him. He was the same slick salesman who’d come sniffing around last April trying to sell them some kitcheny crap. He didn’t know if his wife got any. He’d left the house to spend the rest of the mild and sunny morning planting eggplants to be sold at the farmers market and to local chefs.

  A July heat wave made the guy come a-knocking again. Now he was a-rocking, in the hayloft, with a young wife and mamma. His face was nestled against her neck. He grunted mightily with each slow thrust. She flexed her leg muscles, gasped. “Bring it home, baby,” he told her.

  A metallic click.

  Marie froze. Her dark eyes and reddish complexion oddly reflected the lantern light. She tried to speak but couldn’t. Too late to warn her loverboy, anyway.

  He shot the salesman named Russell Something-or-other when he raised his head and looked over his shoulder. She screamed bloody murder. Virgil yanked her up off the floor, got a whiff of the man’s scent, resisted giving her the beating she damn well deserved.

  Shivering with fear, she used handfuls of hay to wipe the blood off of her. Watched Virgil load Russell’s body into the bed of his pickup truck. She looked at the back of the house through the open loft doors on the left side of the barn. Her gaze shifted from one upstairs window to the next. She thought she saw her four-year-old son, Bernie, rest his arms on the windowsill in his bedroom and stick his thumb in his mouth. Marie bowed her head and cried.

  Virgil drove through the field, toppling crops in his path. He put the body in a rowboat. Filled a feed sack with the man’s belongings, added a cinderblock, then tied the bag around Russell’s scrawny neck. Virgil thought he heard a small gasp. Tightened the rope. Using a pair of wire cutters he removed the guy’s wedding band with his finger still attached, and slung the bloody digit to the ground for the snapping turtles to fight over.

  He rowed to the middle of the bottomless pond where dark green scum floated on the surface and mosquitoes multiplied by the hundreds, and chucked the salesman in. Red-hot bolts of lightning clawed the black sky. A roar of thunder soon followed. Straight-line winds almost flipped his boat. Virgil returned to the water’s edge without delay.

  In the midst of a torrential downpour his truck got stuck in the mud. He made a mad dash through the field. Lightning revealed the salesman’s car parked in the shadow of a live oak tree.

  He jerked open the right door of the barn. Marie ran out screaming, waving her arms in the air, stringy hair covering her face. Crazy bitch looked and sounded like a banshee. His heart thumped erratically while his wet hands fumbled with the rusty iron slide bolt on the other door.

  He drove the salesman’s car to the front of the barn just as a strong gust of wind blew one of the flimsy wooden doors shut. “Dammit.” One by one, he carried two empty oil drums out of the barn and propped them against the doors to hold them open. Drove in, and parked behind a do-it-yourself pegboard wall holding an array of hand tools, hooks, and baling wire.

  He wouldn’t allow Marie to change clothes or to sleep in his bed, making her spend the night in the living room inste
ad. Lamplight threw a shadow on a cheap seascape hanging to one side on the wall. He leaned against the worn banister, listened to her tossing and turning on the couch. Virgil was tempted to put her out of her misery. Decided a bullet would be too swift. He needed to teach her a thing or two about faithfulness. Too bad he didn’t think of that before he shot her loverboy.

  >+<|>+<

  Marie knew it was only out of meanness when Virgil woke her up at five o’clock one dark and rainy morning to come and get the rest of her things out of his bedroom. About to bend down to scoop up the last pile of clothing in her drawer, he grasped a fistful of her long spiral curls and slung her onto the bed.

  She didn’t tell him she’s pregnant. Or about having frequent thoughts of murder-suicide.

  As the months passed and her stomach swelled to the size of a ripe watermelon she started wearing the long, baggy dresses she’d found in a trunk in the attic, where she’d also found a secret compartment inside of a closet. A place to run and hide.

  By her seventh month she couldn’t conceal her big belly anymore. She could under the dresses, but not…

  “Jeebus Christ, woman, you gettin’ fat?” Virgil asked in a drunken manner.

  She frowned. Is he that stupid?

  He propped himself up with his arms, and stared intently at her. She shrank back. He moved to her side. “Get the hell away from me.” He pressed his foot against her hip and shoved her off the bed.

  Marie bolted from the room.

  Lying on the couch, she listened to him pacing overhead. Every creak and squeak of the floorboards was deafening. Her teeth chattered. She balled her hands around the top of a wool blanket, tucked them under her chin. The house was very hot. She was freezing cold. Teardrops disappeared in her hair.

  Will this be the day that I die?

  “I hope so.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Near the end of December, under the luminous glow of a full long night moon, Marie went into labor. Virgil stood at the entrance of the living room with his hands on his hips, stared with morbid fascination as the pain worked its way up to her face. No sooner had she started making gross bodily noises than he turned and walked away. He clicked on the radio on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Fetched a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass from the cupboard.

  He intended to get rid of the kid, he believed wasn’t his, soon after it’s born. Thoughts of killing the thing with his bare hands, though, gave him the willies. More than that, he felt certain God would strike him deaf and blind if he outright murdered it. Bad, bad mojo. He couldn’t bury it alive anywhere on his property, either, knowing the Almighty would be watching.

  One thing he knew without a doubt, God truly approved of Marie’s punishment for committing adultery. The proof was in the abundant crop the Wentzel’s had that year.

  He sat at the table, gospel music bouncing off the walls, and filled the small glass.

  The first drink calmed him. Marie hadn’t fixed his dinner yet. Drinking on an empty stomach, the seventh shot of liquor made his head swim.

  As Virgil lifted the glass for the last time she screamed. His hand jerked, spilling brown liquid down the front of his faded blue and red flannel shirt. He slammed the glass down on the table, got to his feet after a couple of attempts, and stomped off toward the living room.

  It occurred to him he hadn’t seen his son for a while. “Bernie? Where y’at? Get your ass in here and help your damn mamma.”

  Virgil felt his blood pressure rising. He went to Marie. “What’s wrong with you, woman? You act like you’ve got a burr up your ass. You’ve had a kid before. You know what to do. Just squeeze the slimy thing outta ya same as any animal do. How hard can it be?” He angrily rubbed spittle off his chin, and returned to the kitchen.

  He knew when the end came he’d have to help her. He’d have to cut the cord. The very thought made his stomach queasy. He turned up the music, sat at the table, and downed another slug of whiskey. He was dizzy as hell, but at least he’d finally worked up the nerve to face the task when or if the time came, which he hoped would be nev—

  “Virrrgil. Anmwe mwen! Please, please help me.”

  He slapped his open hands to his unshaven face and dragged them down where they rested on his neck. “Shit.”

  >+<|>+<

  Marie lay on the couch with her head turned away from Virgil. “It’s a girl,” she’d heard him mutter before she passed out from heat and exhaustion.

  She awoke with a start. Her breathing had grown shallow and raspy. She wondered if she would bleed to death. She knew she and her baby belonged in the hospital. The delivery had been far more painful than she remembered with Bernie. Maybe because back then she was in a hospital. Bernard Jeffrey. An odd name. She didn’t know why she didn’t realize it when she saw the name typed below a picture of a porcelain boy doll in a magazine right next to a girl doll named Bonnie June.

  She knew she would’ve loved baby Bernie had she loved his father. The boy had become nothing but a constant source of irritation to her. Every time she saw his face, handsome though it was, it was still Virgil’s. She’d made his life every bit as miserable as his father had made hers. She watched all the time for him to do something wrong just so she’d have an excuse to punish him. She couldn’t lash out at Virgil so she directed her anger toward their son.

  Every once in a great while, though, the boy actually did something that pleased her. Not Virgil. Not ever.

  >+<|>+<

  Virgil peeked into the living room. Saw she’d fallen asleep again. With all the liquor he’d consumed, he wanted some sex. He crept closer to her. Colorful imagery of the birth of the nasty-looking tot flooded his mind. He shuddered.

  “Bleh!”

  He put the whiskey bottle in the pocket of his heavy winter jacket, picked up the thing wrapped in an old blanket, and headed out to his truck. Due to a rare southern Louisiana snowstorm he drove slowly over the curvy rural route until he reached the Catholic Church three miles away from his farm. He deposited the tiny bundle named Bonnie June on the doorstep at the rear of the building. The church had been his parent’s place of worship. As a boy he wasn’t interested in religion even though he was raised with a strict religious code. They beat him, on a regular basis, until he changed his mind.

  It never occurred to him murdering his wife’s lover was a sin. Getting rid of the baby was the only thing that would bring the fury of God down on him, right? Right!

  Halfway home, he made a U-turn and returned to the church.

  CHAPTER 3

  Virgil didn’t know whether or not he loved his son. Bernie was just there. He worked the boy as hard as he worked his mamma. There were no words of praise or any show of affection. His parent’s rules about childrearing were severe. He’d been the better for it. Three lashes across his bare ass every week, he also learned not to get caught anymore.

  Virgil pretended not to notice when Marie sent the boy to school—on his seventh birthday—wearing one of her dresses to punish him for not keeping his zipper pulled up. Or the times when she made him wear the dress while tied to the live oak tree near the road at the rear of the farm. She didn’t care it wasn’t his fault he’d outgrown his jeans or that his classmates taunted him. She decided his leaving the zipper down was a willful act of annoyance directed at her. Virgil kept his mouth shut. If the boy ended up getting his wires crossed the blame would be on her.

  By the age of five Bonnie began showing signs of being somewhat disturbed. One day when Virgil was in the hayloft he looked down and saw her standing still beneath the elm tree. She seemed mesmerized by the small homemade cloth doll she held in her hand. An unusually large raven landed on a branch above her. It cawed three times. Staring defiantly at the bird, she stabbed the doll once with a hatpin. Somewhere in the house Bernie screamed. Virgil stumbled backward and fell over a bale of hay. The bird flew off. He peered down at her again, and caught her tying a string to a beetle’s hind leg. She let it fly like a kite until its leg broke
off, then coolly hunted for another bug.

  Spiders were altogether different.

  Virgil listened as Bonnie cried and told her mamma one had bitten her after she’d been locked in the dark attic overnight, her punishment for peeing on the couch while looking at pictures of people wearing guns and badges in one of Bernie’s school library books. Marie couldn’t find a bite mark so she whipped the girl not only for lying but also for wetting her panties a second time, when she sat on the cushioned seat of an old rocker in the attic.

  Bonnie ran outside. She collected crickets in a jar. When the jar was filled to her satisfaction she bashed it against a tree trunk. Went wailing to her mamma again claiming, the jar fell down and brokened all the purdy widdle buggies.

  As Marie patted her on the head the kid looked at Virgil with such a wicked expression on her face his blood chilled in his veins. The kid never smiled. Cried a lot, but never smiled.

  >+<|>+<

  Marie was three weeks pregnant. Once again, God worked his magic. She miscarried. Her mind was so far gone now, though, she thought she’d given birth. To another girl. One to replace the crazy one the salesman ran off and left behind.

  Awakened by a nightmare, she stormed upstairs and demanded to know where Virgil had taken her daughter, Bonnie, many years ago.

  Her daughter? And the salesman’s, no doubt. Virgil let the thought sink in. Old anger issues resurfaced. The little spawn of Satan was the direct result of transgression and lust. And he’d been stuck raising her. He kicked off the top sheet, swung his legs off the bed.

  Marie put her hand over her open mouth, and backed away. Once she got in the hall she took off running so fast she hardly felt the wooden steps beneath her bare feet. She reached the bottom step by the time Virgil put a foot on the top one. She ran through the kitchen and out the back door. Her toes swept up strands of fallen Spanish moss. She lost precious time removing them.