The Shoe Tree: Tales of Aver Nes

Copyright © 2007, 2013 by David Westbrook

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-0-595-45699-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-0-595-90000-8 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 04/10/2013

Contents

Prologue

1 Invincible

2 The Marsh Light

3 The Witch in the Water

4 The Immortal Child

5 The Blind Ones

6 The Circle of Six

7 The Graveyard of the Restless Dead

8 The Shoe Tree

9 Mr. Black

10 Charlie

11 The Curse of Miss May

About the Author

To Jamel and Dewey, may you both rest in heaven.

Many times I almost found myself lost in the fog of Aver Nes, and I owe many people thanks for pulling me back: Stephanie Field for her endless patience and support throughout this entire journey; George and Susan Leubscher-Black for always offering inspiring advice; my wonderful mother Nevada and three beautiful sisters for always believing in my talent; my cousin Summer Wearren for telling me dozens of ghost stories at night when we were little; and George Nedeff and the entire editorial staff, whose gracious criticisms, hard work and continuous enthusiasm made the plot move and the characters come to life.

Special thanks to Southside High School, the Ball State University Athletic Department, and the city of Muncie, Indiana; your confidence in my abilities made it possible for me to write about the ghost stories we scared each other with as kids.

Prologue

There is a legend here—a legend of a spirit so black, so evil, so vicious that the locals will not speak her name in the swamp. That name is Miss May.

Fear of the ghost of Miss May has gripped the towns and swamplands of lower Louisiana for generations. She is more than just a ghost story here. If you are lost in the swamp and fog sets in, she and her circle of six will take you in the night. Or you might be lost forever in the fog if you do not find your way out by daylight.

There is a legend here, and you would do well to heed the warnings of the locals and swamp folk, or the banshee will get you too. You cannot hurt or outrun her. She will not tire or grow weary of her pursuit. Only the most foolish do not flee in terror at her approach. If you hear her ghastly wail, your death is near.

Say prayers if you like, but in her swamp it will not save your life or protect your soul. That is what the townspeople say.

A passage from the memoirs of a night watchman of the district of St. Roch reads, That black carriage is all we ever saw, always heading back into the swamps at dawn. She had come during the night. She stole them away right under our noses.

The Voodoo queens of old New Orleans will tell you, There is no greater evil here in New Orleans. No blacker death. The land is cursed with death and below sea level, because she wants it that way.

Politicians quarrel for power. True power lies in using fear and death to control the minds of men. No living man or simple war causes more of both than she. So says an excerpt from the diary of the wife of a rich aristocrat of the garden district.

It is fitting that such a vile woman, who thrives on death and suffering, should meet such a fate. If you need proof of creatures of nightmare, the fog she controls within the swamps of Aver Nes hides many horrors. The murderous creatures and restless dead there, coupled with the terrifying and agonized wail of the banshee, should you be unlucky enough to hear it, should be sufficient evidence that there are evils even scholars cannot explain. This is the statement of a noted professor of a prominent New Orleans university of the day.

In times of great despair, when the fever sets in, the plague ravages homes, and the floods bring death and suffering, Miss May comes to New Orleans.

Miss May is the matron of Aver Nes Orphanage. There is nothing quite as elegant as her combination of death, beauty, agony, and absolute terror. She is the Taker of Children, the Mistress of the Swamp, the Hoarder of Souls. Some even call her the wife of the devil himself.

But it was not always this way. There was a time when she was a woman of extraordinary giving and grace. It was a time of war and sickness when New Orleans was in great need.

In 1803, the fledgling US Senate brokered a deal with France for the sale of the territory of Louisiana. The French were desperate, so the land was cheap and doubled the size of the young United States.

There were many reasons they say the French were so eager to give up the land at such a price. Some say it was because of so much uninhabitable swampland. Some say it was the dire financial strain on the French coffers from war with the British. But the Old World folk say the French could not control the evils that had suddenly appeared and plagued the land. Stories of plague, vampires, and vengeful spirits kept many settlements in fear. The land, they say, was sour and cursed.

People could not even bury their dead in the water-saturated ground, and above-ground tombs began to accent every town and city.

The growing port city of New Orleans was the greatest of these. It came with many different cultures. New Orleans at that time still held the Old World influence. It held peasants and wealthy slave traders as well as the aristocracy with their old French money.

The slave trade brought a constant stream of diversity into the city’s growing population. The slave trade also brought with it many religions. One of them was Voodoo.

History has lead most to believe that Voodoo is merely chicken bones and hexes. If you have bad luck, a friend might say, She put the Voodoo on you, and laugh. Many people do not believe in such things until faced with times of great death and despair.

For New Orleans, such a time came with the yellow fever epidemic of the 1800s. Dozens of civilians died every day. Their dead bodies lined the streets. Entire areas of the distraught city were quarantined and abandoned.

In 1817, at the start of the epidemic, Agatha Iris May was born to a wealthy Creole businessman and his wife, Cora, a former slave from the island of Haiti, in what is now known as the French Quarter of New Orleans.

The family lived a life of excess. Agatha May was privileged in every sense of the word. She was a bright child, exceptionally perceptive, caring, and charismatic for her age. She also had several other peculiar talents.

It is said that at the age of five, she saved her mother from a speeding horse-drawn carriage. The driver did not see Agatha and her mother crossing the busy New Orleans street. As the carriage bore down on them, Agatha turned and stopped. She locked eyes with the horse.

The horse instantly reared up and flipped the entire carriage. It crashed with a loud thud mere feet from where the child and her mother stood. The horse was dead. A heart attack, they said.

There are many tales of Agatha seemingly cheating death as child. The wealth and influence of her father made it so that no one dared call her a witch. Her exceptional intellect and beauty, even as a child, helped her to blend perfectly with the aristocracy of the time.

On her eleventh birthday, her father took with the fever. He died within weeks, and Agatha’s mother, concerned for their finances and the risk of Agatha or herself falling ill, moved them from their elegant home in the city to a large plantation deep in the swamps outside the small Catholic town of Godbury, which was rumored to be uninfected by the fever.

In the years that followed, Agatha’s mother began to teach her the religion of her heritage. It was at the age of thirteen that she was introduced to the Voodoo religion for the first time.

Cora was reluctant to teach hoodoo to her young daughter. She had seen the child’s apparent control over death. Then a strange thing happened one day. While Cora was teaching Agatha a binding spell near a large bald cypress tree in a secluded courtyard behind the mansion, Agatha grew frustrated with her in ability to master the tongue of the incantation.

In anger, she spoke a forbidden hoodoo word and touched the tree. Suddenly, as if she had willed it, all the leaves and Spanish moss on the tree began to wilt and die. They fell to the ground, bathing the young girl in a shower of black leaves. Even the trunk of the tree cracked and hardened as the very bark broke away and fell to the ground.

Her mother just smiled at her and said, Now you see the real hoodoo, and it is strong in you. You will one day have to maintain the fog when I am gone or too weak to do so. And when it is time, you too will pass it on. The orphanage must always have a matron. At the time, Agatha did not understand her mother’s words.

By the age of fifteen, Agatha had evolved to fully practicing hoodoo magic. Cora sought to protect herself, her daughter, and any other orphaned child who sought to take refuge in the swamp mansion she called Aver Nes. She wished to use her hoodoo incantations away from the prying eyes of the city people, who might have labeled her a witch, and teach them to her only child.

Hoodoo is a practiced magic developed over time from the religion Voodoo, although one does not require the other. Where Voodoo is of a religion, hoodoo incorporates dark spells and incantations based on strong Catholic beliefs and island folklore.

Agatha May and her mother spent many days traveling into the city in search of survivors and orphaned children to fill the rooms of the sprawling swamp mansion. They wanted to use their remaining wealth to help all that they could.

Over the years, Aver Nes became a well-known orphanage. Nestled away in the deepest, most inaccessible part of the swamp, Aver Nes was protected from the fever by its isolation and perhaps by the rituals Agatha and her mother performed almost daily to keep the land pure.

The swamp mansion began to bustle with life and children. Almost all the orphans came from poor families or were the children of slaves who had died from the epidemic. Many came without clothing or shoes and were near death or starving.

Agatha and her mother gave selflessly of their wealth to clothe and feed the orphans they encountered. And as the fever turned to plague, the number they encountered grew.

Soon Agatha and her mother had to hire hands and staff to work the land and help oversee the growing number of orphaned children they brought home each week.

They brought to Aver Nes the neediest souls they could find in the city, choosing only those who had lost their families to the fever or war. The first person they hired was known only as Mr. Black. He was the field hand and the Mays’ most loyal servant. A former slave, he was the only tenant of Aver Nes of unmixed African descent.

Agatha stumbled upon Mr. Black in an empty house with a gun in his mouth and the stiff corpse of his daughter at his feet. She had been taken by the fever—his only child, his only reason to live. He took to Agatha as a daughter.

Mr. Black was often seen clearing the swamp grass from the grounds with his huge scythe. He was a tall, brooding man with dark eyes and skin. He rarely spoke. But he was a favorite among the children, who often followed him around the bayou while he hunted gator and any other dangerous animal that threatened the orphanage.

The second staff member to come to Aver Nes was Tessa. Tessa was a Creole and Native American mixed school teacher who had fallen into despair from all the death that had befallen the city and the loss of her only child. She was a beautiful woman and the envy of many of the great beauties of the time.

A young Agatha found Tessa in the lower Ninth Ward rocking her daughter, who had been dead from the fever for days. Agatha convinced her mother to bring Tessa home as a teacher for the children, knowing that being surrounded by so many orphans to care for might bring some hope back into Tessa’s life. Tessa enjoyed reading and teaching lessons to the children in clearings along the water in the swamp.

Tessa was also popular among the boy orphans, because she would kiss them on the cheek if they did well in their studies. Tessa was known in the orphanage for her radiant green eyes and long flowing red hair, which she refused to cut upon coming to Aver Nes.

The third hired hand invited to Aver Nes was Moody. Moody was a former slave who had made his living tracking game for port traders. He liked to hunt at night and was known by his lantern, which he took with him everywhere.

Agatha and her mother found him drunk and suicidal after the loss of his wife and five children to the fever. He agreed to come to Aver Nes to help provide for the growing number of mouths to feed.

The final member of the house staff was Mr. Wicker. Mr. Wicker had been a lifelong butler of one of the oldest and richest families in all of New Orleans, but when his master took ill with the fever, he was left with nowhere to go.

Cora found him living in a house in the city, still going about his daily routine as a butler even though his master and his wife had long passed. He still maintained their corpses neatly in their beds and protected the home from looters and vagrants. That kind of devotion inspired Cora, so she brought him to be the butler of Aver Nes. He was never far away from her or Agatha.

Eventually, Cora grew sick. Many trips into the fever infested cities and towns had finally taken their toll. She passed away when Agatha was in her early twenties, leaving her as the matron of the orphanage.

Agatha May was inconsolable. It was then that she took the name Miss May in honor of her mother and instructed everyone to address her as such. She then turned to a reclusive existence and dived deep into the powers of hoodoo.

Days went by without anyone in Aver Nes seeing Miss May. Save for the sound of her low chanting