Bayou's Lament: A Labyrinth of Souls Novel

Chapter One

She sat slumped on cold, metal stairs struggling for breath. With each labored inhale an old familiar scent filled her senses, the stagnant stench of decay. She sat between the fourth and fifth floors of her office building in a stairwell she’d traversed hundreds of times. Yet, she could not shake the feeling she’d been transported through a time warp back to her childhood and the nightmares it held.

Invisible rubber bands tightened and pulsed across her chest. Panic attacks had always walked hand in hand with her childhood memories. Memories she—Veya Marie St. James—had eradicated within the first year of leaving the place where they’d originated. The Island, the home of her birth, hidden deep within southern Louisiana’s swamplands. A land fed by layer upon layer of decomposing foliage and dead animals resulting in the odor now assaulting her senses.

Veya had been eighteen when she left the Island. She was now a thirty-nine-year-old woman with a nineteen-year-old daughter.

The sensation of having no control over her own body diminished with each breath, until she could sit upright without the fear of her chest being crushed by an unseen vice.

A panic attack after so many years. Why?

She searched the stairwell for the kid who’d just scared the hell out of her. It was a kid, wasn’t it? She’d been fumbling in her purse for her phone thinking she should call to check on her daughter, Triste. When she’d looked up, he’d been standing in her way, a four-foot tall black goblin with pointy ears, a tail, and red glowing slits for eyes. It’s the end of August, not October, she’d thought right before her phone fell from her hand, and her body began its well-tuned dance with the all-consuming panic. An affliction it had taken her months in therapy to overcome.

She called out, Where the hell are you, you little cretin? When no answer came, she wearily climbed the steps out of the stairwell, careful to avoid looking in its dark corners.

Costumes these days are too realistic.

The image of the kid with glistening red eyes followed her through her first appointment. Mrs. Branson was one of her many patients filled with delusional beliefs of their dead loved ones contacting, or even protecting them, from the great beyond.

Veya absently listened as the woman once again recounted her dead husband Norman’s many virtues. Her mind couldn’t let go of the incident in the stairwell, and it overlapped with the phone conversation she’d had with her daughter that morning.

"I’m fine Mom. Really. I promise I’ll be at my classes tomorrow. It’s my second year of college, no big deal to miss a few classes. I just need to lay low today, burrow in my gray and by tomorrow all will be bright and shiny." Even as Triste tried to reassure her, Veya knew her daughter was attempting to swallow tears when she’d spoken.

She cringed at Triste’s reference to gray, the euphemism, or code word they’d settled on when discussing Triste’s recent fog of depression. Her daughter had always been filled with such a positive energy, at times Veya thought she could actually feel happiness radiate from her body. But over the past months Triste had been invaded by a sadness Veya couldn’t comprehend.

When Triste said, Since I know you’re going to ask, yes I took my pill this morning, Veya knew her daughter wanted to cut the call short, so their conversation had ended before she could tell Triste that perhaps she should increase her dosage.

Mrs. Branson’s voice cut through Veya’s thoughts. Dr. St. James? I know your strong opinions on a world beyond the one we live in. But how do you explain Norman’s voice speaking to me clear as day when I put the necklace on?

Veya, pulled from her own thoughts, responded, Mrs. Branson, can you please repeat your question?

I’ve told you time and again to call me Delilah.

Sorry, but you’re Mrs. Branson to me. Chalk it up to my southern upbringing. It’s an unfortunate habit. I automatically refer to any female even slightly older as Miss or Missus. The very idea of anything from her childhood having sway over Veya as an adult twisted knots in her already nervous stomach. She said, Please continue, Delilah.

I was saying, I know why I started seeing you in the first place. To move beyond what you’ve diagnosed as my unhealthy beliefs after my husband’s death. But my finding the necklace can’t be a coincidence, can it? I’ve turned my house upside down since Norman’s death looking for it. Then on the one-year anniversary of his accident I find it hanging from the edge of the photo I keep of him on my nightstand!

Delilah caressed the oval hematite stone encircled by diamonds dangling from her neck and held it out for Veya to do the same while saying, Look, isn’t it beautiful?

Veya flinched, her heartbeat increased. She hoped her movement and apprehension at the sight of the stone hadn’t been noticed by Mrs. Branson. Clearing her throat, she spoke in her usual, analytical, monotone voice, Mrs.—excuse me, Delilah—while I understand a person’s desire to believe their dearly departed is shielding them from harm, I also understand the psychological damage they can suffer if they carry this belief to an extreme.

She looked at her notepad rather than watch the woman’s fingers still clasped around the stone.

But I know he was there. In the room when I found the necklace. I think he’s waiting for me to join him.

Veya suppressed her concern and wrote suicidal. What do you mean? Are you considering harming yourself Mrs. … Delilah?

The woman looked at her as though she were the delusional one. No, of course not. Why would you even think such a thing? I only meant, he’ll be waiting for me when the time comes. I … I think it’s protecting me. She again held out the necklace toward Veya.

Stones! What would Mrs. Branson think if she knew my history with stones, my Mother’s stones? Veya’s hand reached to move aside a phantom rawhide string rubbing against her skin. Even though it hadn’t been there since she’d been nine years old, at times she could still feel the rough leather scratching at the base of her skull, as though trying to burrow under her skin. No rawhide string. What she felt instead was the clasp of a silver chain holding the pendant she’d worn since her grandmamma’s death. Its presence gave her a sense of calm.

She shifted in her overstuffed chair. The irony of her next question was not completely lost to her. She asked, How can an object be protecting you? What proof do you have? The room had warmed.

Delilah sat up straighter. Her eyes widened and she spoke with a defiance-laced voice. I went to get the mail yesterday and a car barely missed me. I know you’ll think I’m … I heard a voice telling me to be careful. The voice was Norman’s.

Veya wrote, Research side effects of delusional meds in women over seventy. She said, Have you spoken to your housekeeper, asked if she discovered the necklace she knew you’d been searching for? Perhaps she placed it as a surprise for you?

Confusion etched Delilah’s face as she responded. No, I haven’t. Never even occurred to me.

Veya’s phone vibrated indicating the end of the session. Mrs. Branson stood. Veya didn’t. The woman’s newly found stone glinted inches from Veya’s face—toxic—pulling at her carefully buried memories. Her chest tightened and her anxiety escaped in caustic words aimed at her patient, Mrs. Branson don’t put your faith in a stone. I mean sentimental items. This supernatural power you’re giving this thing is an illusion that can be dangerous. I would advise against such thoughts for your continued mental health. I suggest you take the necklace off and move on with your life.

Mrs. Branson spoke in a whisper behind the hand clasped over her mouth in shock. Her other hand held the necklace. Delilah, remember?

Veya had never before spoken so harshly to a patient.

Yes, Delilah. My apologies. I may have presented my opinion in too severe a manner. She recovered her clinical tone and continued. I think given your current … well, we shouldn’t wait another month for your regularly scheduled session. On your way out, please ask Denise at reception to get you in next week.

Delilah’s red-rimmed eyes were narrow slits staring back at Veya as she left the room.

The rest of Veya’s day went as always, scheduled to the second with patients and compiling clinical papers for publication. Well known in her chosen field of Abnormal Psychology, she lived and breathed her work.

Dusk entered through her office window by the time she’d completed and emailed her latest study. The clinical trial contained a group of thirty volunteers, and served as the cornerstone of a behavioral therapy she’d created. Each of the participants had previously been diagnosed with various psychoses involving an acceptance of the supernatural. In each and every case she’d assisted the volunteer in re-patterning their irrational beliefs. She intended to use the process to develop a new method of therapy for future patients with similar belief patterns.

After calling Triste several times with no response and leaving numerous please call me, no matter how late messages, she left her office. The morning’s panic in the stairwell shadowed her worry over Triste. Where had her sunny, smiling daughter disappeared to, and who was the nineteen-year-old woman of gloom masquerading in her stead?

Every instinct Veya possessed told her to go to her daughter’s apartment to check on her wellbeing. But she knew Triste hated her overprotective interferences. Unable to shake her apprehension, she reached for the comfort of statistical reassurance. The latest regimen of meds combined with talk and behavioral therapies were working. Until the morning’s conversation, Veya hadn’t heard the melancholy in her daughter’s voice for several weeks. A minor setback, a small increase in Triste’s meds and she’ll be back on track.

Pleased to have another clinical study complete she decided not to go to her empty home, but instead to treat herself to dinner out.

She chose the elevator as opposed to her normal routine of taking the stairs. Looking down at her sensible brown work flats and wishing she’d put a pair of heels in her car, a glint on the carpeted floor caught her eye. For a stuttered heartbeat she thought Mrs. Branson had lost the stone in her necklace. Repulsed, she kicked the offending thing with the tip of her shoe only to find it was an empty candy wrapper. Still, a shiver of cold fingers draped themselves around her neck as she left the elevator and walked briskly to her car.

She’d decided on Italian by the time she exited the underground garage. Madonna’s Like a Prayer blasted from the radio. She changed the station. Thinking of Mrs. Branson, she spoke to the radio, Sorry Madonna, but life is not a mystery. Life is what you make of it. Work hard, plan ahead.

She flipped the car’s visor down to check her makeup in its mirror. Her shoulder length, bottle-dyed—because her natural black hair made her see her mother every time she looked in a mirror—blond hair and blue eyes were a sharp contrast to the photo of a curly, red-headed, green-eyed, two-year-old Triste attached to the visor. When she flipped the visor back up the photo fell from the clip and onto the passenger’s seat. Triste.

Her daughter had been the only thing not planned in Veya’s life. Two years after leaving home for college, a brief affair with her English Lit professor had created Triste. He’d been recently divorced and everything she’d always dreamed of in a man: intelligent, gorgeous,_ and of course, logical. Unfortunately, his brain also led him to believe it perfectly reasonable to sleep with other young, naïve, willing female students in his classes.

Had to make up for lost time, he’d told her. By the time she realized she was pregnant, he’d been fired and she never tried to find him.

The idea of running back to the place she’d left, her family, the Island, had never entered her mind. Guilt at times plagued her. Triste knew nothing of her grandparents or her Aunt Brin, Veya’s younger sister and only living sibling. All Triste knew about her mother’s family history was that she’d grown up in Louisiana and had no living family she cared to stay in contact with. Once, Triste had overheard a phone conversation between Veya and Brin. Veya told her daughter Brin was an old high school acquaintance, nothing more. Her lies weighed heavy, but she convinced herself she was doing what was best, protecting Triste. When her daughter tried to pry more from her, she filled the gaps with stories of moving to Oregon and their early years together, mother and daughter on their own.

Triste knew only Ashland as home. Veya accomplished what she wanted for herself, for her daughter. They had a stable, normal life.

The radio blasted, Born on the Bayou. She turned the irritating lyrics off and drove in silence to Martino’s, her favorite Italian restaurant.

Hey ya, Veya. Daniel the bartender winked at her as she entered. She asked to be seated outside overlooking the city’s main street. Daniel came out to take her order.

Hi, Daniel. The usual please. She spoke from behind the menu. As he left she pondered. Why, why did I agree to go out with him and why did I sleep with him on our first date? She smiled, because there had been no sleeping. Why is he here? It’s his night off. For over a month she’d avoided his requests for another date using excuses about work.

He returned saying, So ya got a night off? Ya sure are lookin’ mighty fine ta night, darlin’. To avoid looking at him, she watched the passersby on the street below headed to the Shakespeare Festival. But when his spice laden cologne mixed with the smell of