Dead to Her(103)

“Mama L was Elizabeth’s mother?” Marcie’s throat had dried. The little girl in the hand-me-downs. Elizabeth.

“Now, Elizabeth really was like Eleanor’s little sister. They adored each other. And poor Emmett of course, well, he was the reason Elizabeth and her mother had to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was very taken with Elizabeth. To be fair, she was very taken with him too. They were only children really, and it was harmless, but they were inseparable and it was enough to worry his parents. Not only because she had colored blood in her, although that would have been reason enough—as I said they were different times—but his parents already had their eyes on Virginia for Emmett and they shared their concerns with Eleanor’s father, and so Mama L was let go. She moved back to New Orleans, I believe. But Eleanor refused to be separated from Elizabeth for long, and as soon as she could, she called Elizabeth back and hired her as her assistant. I’m pretty sure she sent money to Mama L from time to time too.” She sighed. “They were such halcyon days when we were young and free.”

Marcie’s head was spinning and the world once again flipped and presented itself from a new angle. She pulled out her cell phone and tapped at the screen as if there were a message there. “Oh shoot,” she said. “I have to run. Something’s come up.” Iris already forgotten, she hurried out of the house and back to the car.

She sat inside for a moment, before googling for the last pieces of the puzzle, and then after collecting her thoughts, she started to drive. Her phone rang as she turned toward the hospital. Anderson. She canceled the call and turned off her cell. That could wait. If she was going to prison, she wanted to understand why.





64.

Keisha was so tired. They’d been talking all day and all she wanted to do was sleep.

“I don’t understand why you came all the way here to ask me about a ghost I saw as a child. A boy who was never there,” she said. Billy was half-dead, the American police thought she was part of it, and yet here they were still talking about something that was just her madness, asking for detail after detail until she was exhausted. As if she could remember it all, when she’d spent so long trying to forget. The questions about Auntie Ayo and Uncle Yahuba and his cousin were easier and she’d answered them as well as she could, but they’d been talking all day and she just wanted to sleep.

She’d been back in her cell for only an hour and now Dexter was here again. More questions no doubt. She didn’t care. She was too tired to be afraid anymore.

“I think the boy was there, Keisha.” Dexter reached down into his battered briefcase and pulled out a file. “In May of 2004, a boy’s torso was pulled from the Thames. Approximately six years of age, he’d been mutilated and his organs were missing. A day later an arm was also recovered. That arm had a burn scar running up it.” He opened the file and pushed a photograph across the table. It was a close-up, and Keisha almost gasped. It was the same scar, she knew it.

“You think I saw his ghost?” she asked, her voice trembling.

Dexter shook her head. “I think you saw him when he was alive. My colleagues in London have been searching your aunt and uncle’s home. They’ve found a doorway in the hallway wall by the corner. Leads to an old cellar. You have to look closely for the catch but it’s there. There is evidence that at least one child was kept there at some point. We think your aunt and uncle kept this boy in the cellar until they killed him. Perhaps others too.”

“No.” Keisha shook her head. “No. He was a ghost. He was so white, he was a ghost.”

“No.” Dexter’s rough voice was surprisingly gentle. “He just looked like a ghost to a little girl.”

He took another photo from his file and passed it over. “His name was Oliver Okimbe. His family had just moved from Nigeria to Yorkshire when he went missing.” He paused as Keisha, with shaking hands, took the picture from him. “They moved to England to keep him safe from witch doctors in Nigeria who wanted to kill him for his body parts. Sadly, your uncle’s cousin followed him and brought him to your auntie. Oliver wasn’t a ghost. He was an albino.”

Keisha looked down at the picture, and even as the image blurred with her tears, she knew it was him. The boy who wasn’t there. The tears fell heavy after that. Oliver Okimbe. A real live boy.

She’d never been cursed at all.





Part Four





65.

“I wondered if you’d find your way here,” Elizabeth said, not moving from her chair by William’s hospital bed. “I did hope you would. You’re a smart woman. And I would have hated all my planning to have gone to waste. I’ve been so looking forward to sharing everything with you.” She smiled, contained; a still, calm figure compared to Marcie’s fizzing energy. “Scratch the surface and history always wills out, isn’t that true?” she finished. “And history makes us who we are. As you’ve discovered.”

The room was quiet, only the hum of the machines feeding life to William. Marcie tossed the black ball from her trunk onto William’s bed, and she was sure she saw a maggot wriggle away as it landed on William’s legs. He didn’t seem to mind. “Iris’s cat?”

“He was dying. I didn’t hurt him. A conjure ball should be made with care and I’d been fond of Midge.” She shrugged. “Plus, Iris was a little too friendly to Keisha too soon. That would have hurt Eleanor’s feelings. So an eye for an eye, a hurt for a hurt.”