Druidess Read online

  Contents

  Legacy Club Teaser

  Title

  Epigraph

  Chapter One: Caplata

  Chapter Two: Necromancy

  Chapter Three: Baron Samedi

  Chapter Four: Shaman

  Chapter Five: Zombie

  Chapter Six: A Familiar Spirit

  Chapter Seven: The Tree of Life

  Chapter Eight: Dispersed

  Chapter Nine: Choctaw

  Chapter Ten: The Wadsworth Legacy

  Chapter Eleven: Samhuinn

  Chapter Twelve: Convalesence

  Chapter Thirteen: Grave Encounters

  Chapter Fourteen: The Fomorian

  Chapter Fifteen: Vengenace

  Chapter Sixteen: The Bargain Redeemed

  Chapter Seventeen: Epilogue

  Free Book

  Review Request-Nook

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Coming Soon

  Copyright

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  Druidess

  A Wadsworth Legacy Story

  By

  Theophilus Monroe

  We cannot build the future by avenging the past... It is generally the trustful and optimistic people who can afford to retreat. The loveless and faithless ones are compelled by their pessimism to attack.

  - T.H. White, The Once and Future King

  Chapter One:

  Caplata

  The Campbell Plantation

  Near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 2014

  Joni…

  The sound of her own name startled the fourteen-year-old from her sleep. Was it a dream? Joni exhaled, nuzzling back into her pillow, pulling her sheets over her delicate frame.

  She’s coming, Joni…

  Joni sat up abruptly, disoriented. “Who’s there?” she shouted, tucking her long, golden curls behind her ears. Joni felt her heart pound, the void of silence which met her question only adding to her uneasiness. Joni slowly tossed her sheet aside and lowered her bare toes to the bedroom floor. She kicked aside her costume which she had left a crumpled mess on the floor. This year, she had dressed as Maleficent. After a long night of trick-or-treating, she had neglected to put away her costume properly.

  The better part of her hoped she had imagined the voice. It was a child’s voice. Had the voice sounded older she might not have been bold enough to seek it out.

  Joni… please…

  She paused a moment, certain now she had not imagined the youthful but troubled voice which called to her from somewhere on the first floor of the family’s plantation home. Joni made her way past her bedroom door, careful not to stub her toes in the dark. She tiptoed down the dimly lit stairway, clinging to the rail with both hands. Each step chilled her bare feet. She paused, three steps from the bottom. Each step upon the well-aged stairs produced a familiar creak. She carefully eased her way down the three final steps.

  “Is someone here?” Joni asked. Only a small part of her genuinely hoped for a response. She could hear the rumble of her father’s snore coming from her parents’ bedroom on the opposite end of the house.

  A shadow caught her eye. She turned, instinctively, as the form turned the corner, moving toward the kitchen. She couldn’t get her parents without walking straight through the room where the shadow had gone. She grabbed her father’s cane, left leaning in the corner of the foyer, just in case.

  Joni heard a sniffle, followed by a muffled cry, coming from the pantry. Setting the cane to the side, Joni pressed her left hand to the pantry door and took a deep breath.

  “You can come out,” Joni said, “I won’t hurt you.”

  The crying stopped.

  “It isn’t you I’m worried about, Joni…” The child spoke, now standing directly at Joni’s side.

  Joni gasped. “What, how did you… the pantry door is still shut…”

  The child extended a hand. As Joni reached to grasp it, her own grip passed directly through the young girl’s form. Joni gasped.

  “Do not be afraid,” the girl said. “I lived here, once. I knew your family.”

  Joni examined the girl’s appearance. She was a black girl, perhaps twelve or thirteen years old. Her frizzled hair was pulled back, partially in her bonnet, and her faded blue paisley dress reflected a time gone by. “Are you… a ghost?” Joni asked.

  The child hesitated and nodded. “Please don’t be afraid of me…”

  Joni had read the stories from one of her ancestor’s journals. Her great, great, great grandfather, Asbury Campbell had written of two missing slave girls who mysteriously disappeared from the plantation, one roughly this girl’s age and the other in her middle teens. The girls were sisters.

  “Isabelle?” Joni asked. “Is your name, Isabelle?”

  The child nodded.

  “And your sister? Messalina?”

  The child’s eyes widened in horror and she extended a hand toward Joni’s lips. “Hush. Do not speak the witch’s name.”

  “The witch?”

  “She’s a Caplata, dark Voodoo… just don’t speak her name aloud. She is coming.”

  “Coming, how? That was a long time ago…”

  “It’s my soul… she has imprisoned my soul in a talisman she now wears, she consumes my spirit to keep herself barely alive. But my spirit is fading. I’m using what little I have left to appear to you, to warn you. Her spirit has awakened. She is coming. She senses the magic in your veins, she hopes to return to the flesh, to drain your life and claim it as her own.”

  “She what? She wants to kill me?”

  “She doesn’t know you’re the one she seeks. She is only drawn to this place. Please, she doesn’t know I am here…” Isabelle’s image was fading, her form becoming more translucent, her voice sounding more distant, even though she stood in appearance no more than a foot from Joni.

  “What can I do? Can I help you?”

  “It’s too late for me. But you must listen. You must protect yourself. There is a necklace, hidden in the floorboards of the old slave quarters. I wore it in my life to protect me from evil spirits. You must find it. It will dampen your magic, so she cannot sense that you are its source.”

  “My magic? I don’t have any…”

  “I do not have time to explain, but please, do as I say. You are too important, your destiny… she cannot have you.”

  “My destiny? I don’t know what that means…”

  “My sister believes she has captured my spirit, but as she weakens her hold on me is loosened too. I have touched the place of my eternal rest, a place beyond space and time, where they speak of your importance, they bid me to come to you with the last of my spirit, to warn you…”

  A loud crack startled Joni’s attentions. She felt something shake beneath her feet. Her eyes met Isabelle’s who looked back at her urgently.

  “It is her. Go, Joni. The necklace. She feels your power, she’s trying to find the source. You must not let her find you. Quick, do as I have told you… you must go… “

  Joni saw the ghost fade from her view as the floorboards continued to rumble. Joni grabbed a flashlight from the door and darted out the back door. She felt the high weeds brush against her legs as she attempted to make her way across the field in her bare feet. Joni turned to her rear. An ominous red glow illuminated the kitchen, where she had just recently encountered Isabelle’s ghost. Joni continued to run, turning repeatedly to see the crimson glow fade from one window to illumine the next. It moved with intention, guided by some kind of intelligence, as if it was searching for something… or someone. Messalina...she was here. A glowing orb, swirling with red energies, passed through the closed kitchen door.

  Joni ran harder as the mysterious orb targeted her location and began moving briskly across the field, floating above the blades of tall grass and weeds. The old slave quarters stood a hundred yards or more from the plantation house. Joni grabbed the door handle, but it wouldn’t budge. She thrust her shoulder against the thick, wooden door, but again she couldn’t get it to open. The orb drew closer to her position as Joni spotted a hole broken in the wall, just beneath where the roof of the old slave quarters met the sidewall.

  Joni clinched her teeth around her flashlight and grabbed onto the vines that had attached themselves to the old, stone wall. She suppressed a shriek as a thorn pierced the sole of her foot. Joni forced her frame through the narrow gap and tumbled to the floor of the old building.

  Joni coughed, reacting to the pungent smell of mildew and stale oil that filled the building. The floorboards. Isabelle said it was under the floorboards. She crawled around, navigating her way around old, defunct farm equipment that had been stored there. She tapped at the floors, clawing at the edges of the boards, hoping to find one… just one… that might be loose.

  She surveyed the floors with her flashlight. She saw one, in the far corner of the room, set a fraction of an inch above the rest. A chunk of wood was missing around the edge of the board. The shadows shifted in the room, a red glow now surrounding Joni’s own shape cast her shadow upon the near wall. The glow narrowed and easily passed through the same hole Joni had squeezed through moments earlier.

  Joni quickly scurried to the disconnected f
loorboard and pried her fingers into the gap at its edge. She reached in and grabbed something… she took the old piece of sinew, a burlap sack tied together and affixed to the string, and put it over her neck. Joni felt a tingle settle into her chest and a blinding green light consumed her vision.

  Joni tried to blink, but her eyes wouldn’t close. A green mass of energy escaped Joni’s form and assaulted the red orb. Joni inhaled deeply as the swirl of red and green energies filled her lungs. Joni exhaled so forcefully that her breath blew open the door of the quarters. She gripped the burlap sack, pressed firmly against her chest, and caught her breath.

  Joni gripped the jagged edge of a piece of defunct machinery and pulled herself to her feet. She stumbled a moment as pain shot up her leg from the wound on her sole. Joni looked all around as she limped her way across the yard and back to the kitchen door. What was that thing? If the ghost’s warning was correct, it must have had something to do with Messalina. But Joni was unsure where the green light had come from. These questions needed answers, but fueled by adrenaline all Joni could think of was making her way back home safely.

  * * * * *

  Joni hopped on one foot from the door and crawled up the stairs to her hallway bathroom. After wrapping her foot in gauze she limped her way back to bed. She rolled onto her left side, and then her right. She flipped onto her back and stared blankly at the ceiling. Her rapid pulse and short, quick, breaths kept her alert.

  What had just happened? A ghost, warning her of a Caplata… and somehow she had harnessed a power she didn’t understand. There was no sense trying to go back to sleep. Her mind was spinning out of control with theories, worries, and wonders. Joni slid out of her bed a second time and made her way back down the stairs to the library. She turned on a reading light and climbed the rolling ladder to a collection of old books stashed away on the top shelf. Joni appreciated the musky smell of old books. It was a familiar and comforting. She knew what she was looking for.

  Joni spotted the worn, cracked, brown leather cover of Asbury Campbell’s journal. She allowed her finger to trace the imprint of their family’s Celtic crest, set into the journal’s cover. It was a boar’s head, facing leftward, encircled by a belt and a buckle. The words, “NE OBLIVISCARIS,” which Joni had learned meant “Forget Not” were featured on the belt. Joni retrieved the book, descended from the ladder and curled up in the red-velvet antique couch that set against the library’s opposite wall. She had read the journal before and quickly turned to the entry she was looking for.

  The date of the entry happened by chance to be the same date of the night just passed.

  October 31, 1853

  What is it of this peculiar day that always portents something ominous, beyond rational explanation? Two of our slave girls went missing this evening. I first dismissed it as child’s play. Though the slaves are perhaps more superstitious about this day than a sensible person should be.

  As nightfall arrived and all sunlight was nearly gone, I was overcome with worry. I sent for anyone I could think of to aid in the search. Many members of First Presbyterian arrived, along with Sheriff Hunt. We formed a chain and searched the woods. One of the elders stumbled across a locket, covered in blood. He brought it to me, it was Isabelle’s locket. The one I had given her just days ago. A little further into the woods a goat’s corpse was found, its throat having been slit.

  Sheriff Hunt believed the goat was never meant to be found. Instead, its blood was intended to sway us into thinking that the girl had been killed, perhaps by a wild animal. It’s a tactic, he told me, that the Underground Railroad has employed to set many slave owners off their path.

  Knowing Isabelle, though, and how quickly she had taken to me I find it hard to believe she would flee. Not unless her sister had encouraged it.

  I found upon Messalina’s bed the very same book I had discovered in her possession days before. It was placed on its face, keeping the book open to a particular page. I could not read the strange markings that adorned the page, but the clear image of a goat in old woodcut form seemed too striking a coincidence to dismiss.

  The loss of these girls pains me greatly. I was beginning to think of the younger girl as if she were my very own daughter. I still held out hope for the older sister. I should speak to the minister. Perhaps he will have words to soothe my wounded heart.

  -Asbury Campbell

  A book… that’s right. Joni remembered reading something about it. She flipped to the next page in Asbury’s journal and continued to read.

  November 1, 1853

  It was supposed to be the day of All Saints, but today’s happenings render it more like a day of demons.

  A Choctaw Shaman arrived today unannounced. Thundershield was the only name he offered. I had written the Choctaw some weeks ago, in hopes that someone amongst the Indian tribe might be able to make sense of the book Messalina possessed.

  Had he made it here a day sooner, perhaps we could have averted tragedy.

  His countenance was grim from the moment I greeted him at the door, and he grew even more troubled when I showed him Messalina’s book. He questioned me, time and again, about the girl’s origins. I told him what I could, but I could tell from his expression that my answers dissatisfied him.

  He wished to see the girl, but I was forced to tell him of yesterday’s tragedy. The goat, he agreed, was no ruse. The locket, he said, we were likely not meant to discover. The young Isabelle he told me had become child sacrifice.

  This was not information I was prepared to accept. Still, I pressed him further. A sacrifice unto whom, I bid him tell me. To the Loa of the Dead, Baron Samedi, sometimes called Papa Ghede, he said. I pressed him for more information. Amongst the Bokors, practitioners of red magic, a perversion of Haitian voodoo and Indian magic, this Baron Samedi is said to possess authority over the spirits of the dead. The spell was crafted to exorcise the soul of the sacrificed child, to transfer it temporarily to the goat, and from there into a fetish or object whereby the elder girl might draw upon the power of her sister’s spirit and wield it for some other purpose.

  I hardly believed my ears. This was witchcraft, and worse. Dear God, what evil did I welcome into our home! I coddled the devil and introduced her to my only son. Dear God! Spare us of this evil!

  I bid thee, Dearest Lord, to send thy Holy Angels that they might guard us against this wickedness. I pray unto thee to rescue the soul of my dearest Isabelle, and redeem her from her sister’s devilish clutches. Amen.

  -Asbury Campbell

  Joni closed the journal, gripping it tightly with both hands. This entry was chilling, even when Joni had read it the first time. Now that she knew her ancestor’s account was true it turned her stomach into knots. Joni tucked the journal under her arm and returned to her room. She probably wouldn’t be able sleep tonight, but something about being wrapped in blankets provided something of a comfort. Joni switched on the lamp beside her bedside, opened the journal to where she had left off, and continued to read.

  Chapter Two:

  Necromancy

  The first thing Messalina felt was the crushing weight of earth on her frame. Sinew and flesh returned to her bones. She clung to the locket as her spirit, and the energies she had harnessed from the Campbell heir, reinvigorated her body.

  Finally…

  For more than a century the Caplata had rested, guarding her entrapped sister’s soul in hopes of someday restoring her life’s place in the world. Only on this night, when the veil between earth and Samhuinn is thin, could she draw upon the ancient tree’s power and project her astral form.

  As an astral spirit, she could not see or hear, but she could feel. She could sense spirits attuned to the primordial mystic realms. She knew that the Campbell line was key. The ancient energies persisted in their blood. It was only a matter of time before one of them might show their hand and allow her to harness their power.

  She clung to the locket and tried to call to her sister’s spirit. Isabelle?

  She received no reply.

  Her mind screamed, ISABELLE!