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“Wa look’n fer Jules?” a voice trailed out from the back room.
“I’m handlin’, Pa,” the man in front of me yelled back without taking his eyes off me.
‘Thorn, how many people do you smell in this place?’
‘Rave, all I can smell is shit. Like literal shit, so I’m no help. And what the fuck did he say anyways? Is he speaking English?’
‘Creole. There are about 10,000 people that speak Louisiana Creole, and I just found two of them,’ I sighed.
Before I could say or do anything else, a whirling of a machine preceded a man in an electric wheelchair. A dark and worn handwoven quilt took up most of the wheelchair, leaving red slippers peeking out of the bottom, while a mop of wispy gray hair was combed over to hide his baldness. Sun spots and wrinkles littered his sun-kissed hand that was exposed to drive the wheelchair. He had a scarf that matched the quilt wrapped around his throat that only allowed his bulbous nose and hazy white eyes to peek out of his covering.
‘Shit. He’s blind.’
“Ain’t no blind, kid. Cataracts.”
‘Can he read our thoughts?’ I asked Thorn as I tried to keep from blushing.
‘Pfft. No, dipshit. You said that out loud,’ Thorn teased.
Kaye shuffled, and I caught her giving me a disapproving look.
Well shit! Give me a break; I thought my filter was in place.
“Uh...sorry. You just caught me off guard. I’m looking for?—”
“We ‘ear ye. Dat be me. Want ya want?’ The old man turned his chair to face me, his scarf dropping low enough to show the scowl on his face.
His intense, milky eyes gave me goosebumps, and I froze for a moment. Thankfully, Kaye didn’t have that problem.
“Hello, sir. We were hoping to get the exact location of Julia Brown’s old shack,” she spit out like a pro.
“Don’t wanna go there. Nothing but gators ’n ghosts,” the younger man said, leaning on the counter and giving her a leer.
What’s his problem with her?
As he leaned forward though, he did answer the question about what was under his overalls. He was as naked as the day he was born. Or, given the state of this place, he was grown in a petri dish. I felt like I needed to scrub off all of my skin just from standing in this place.
“Oh, we know. It’s the ghost we’re looking for. A couple of the locals said our best bet was to come here and ask for Jules Cormier and not the local bayou tours,” I said, raising my jaw in defiance and pulling the attention off of Kaye. These guys weren’t going to scare us off with ghost stories; that was our job, and ghost stories were what excited us. It’s what we lived for.
“Local tours won’t take ya near there, no ways. Just take yers money,” the man in the overalls spit out along with another wad of dip.
Eww.
Well, I’d obviously found Jules, but he didn’t look like he was in any shape to help me get to Julia Brown’s supposedly haunted shack out in the bayou.
‘What are you thinking, Thorn?’ I asked my bestie.
‘Maybe just ask him what he knows about her?’ Thorn advised me.
Hmm. He did have a point. I leaned on the counter and made a mental note to dry clean this jacket immediately when the sleeve hit something sticky. I couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
‘Being this close to the ground is unacceptable, Rave. Pick up a few gallons of bleach and stain remover when we leave here. I need a scrub-down stat!’
‘Believe me, the view up here isn’t much better.’
“So, does this mean you’ll take me out there?” I batted my eyes at the younger man.
“Don’t do tours,” he replied, and I felt Jules' eyes boring into me.
