Page 82 of A Boy Called Lovesong

“Lovesong? That you?”

I stopped. There was a dim light inside the cabin, and through the open windows I could see shadows moving.

“Yeah, Hettie. It’s me,” Lovesong called back.

With a sing-song lilt in her voice, like a witch luring two kids into a gingerbread house, she cooed, “Come in, come in. I been waitin’ for you. I been waiting for you both.”

In a worried voice I leaned back to Lovesong. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I think so,” he whispered back.

“What happened to all your courage and conviction? Isn’t Jesus guiding you right now?”

“If I’m honest, I think Jesus stayed behind on this trip. This here is Hettie’s territory.”

“You tell me that now? And here I was, ready to start praying.” I sucked in a breath. “Well, we’ve come this far. No point turning back now.”

With a creak…

And a bow of the planks…

And a slip on the moss…

Ever so carefully I led Lovesong to the buckled, broken porch of the swamp shack.

I peered through the first open window and saw a shadow move like a spirit across the walls of the tiny cabin. The space was so cluttered, and my mind so tightly bound with fear and foreboding that I couldn’t take any of it in, at least not at first. Then the door to the cabin opened slowly, the rusted hinges creaking, and around the edges of the door frame came those spindly fingers once more, the nails uneven, some long, somesplit, all caked in dirt. They looked like the legs of a giant tarantula creeping around the door frame, and I froze.

“Lovesong, my Lovesong,” said the voice, grim yet lyrical, almost musical, like a demon attempting to sing a child’s lullaby. “You bring me a friend?”

Lovesong seemed much less afraid than me. Was it because he knew this creature, perhaps even trusted her? Or was it simply because he could not see what I could? “Yes, I’ve brought you a friend. A friend you seem intent on meeting.”

With those words, a muddy, hagged woman crept out through the door and onto the porch.

Instantly I recognized her as the intruder behind the curtains, but now in the dying light of day and the glow from the lanterns hanging on the porch, I saw how truly frightening she appeared. Her teeth were rotting, her eyes were wild, and her hair, clumped and matted and twisted in a large bundle atop her head, was filled with dead leaves and broken twigs and for a moment I could have sworn I saw a centipede crawling through the entwined locks. Her back was slightly hunched, her limbs long and scratched. Her feet were bare and calloused, her clothes were little more than rags, barely covering her bony body, and around her neck she wore a necklace of teeth. With a shimmer of relief, I noticed they were too pointed to be human. I could only guess they belonged to an alligator, or more probably,manyalligators.

She looked from me to Lovesong and back again, her black eyes so intense it felt as though they were piercing my soul. And then, with a grin and a cackle, she chanted, “You came to me. You came to me. You came to me, came to me,cametomecametomecametome!At last, someone listened.”

Swiftly she turned and plodded back into her cabin.

I looked at Lovesong. “Are you sure—”

“Follow her,” he said, cutting me off. “We need to follow her inside.”

“Oh fuck,” I breathed.

Cautiously I inched my way toward the door and hesitantly stepped inside the swamp shanty. It was possibly even more frightening than the woman who lived there. The walls were covered with hanging beads and feathers tied in clumps, strings of garlic and chillis and vegetable roots, tapestries made from rope and small animal bones, and even a stuffed alligator’s head. On a table to one side sat bowls of sea shells, cast iron keys and roughly stitched dolls sewn together with string and buttons, while precariously angled shelves contained countless jars and bottles, each labeled in large, scrawling handwriting—arnica flowers, bat’s head root, chicken feet, balm of Gilead tears, graveyard dirt, buckthorn, adder’s tongue, betel nut, anvil dust, milk thistle, cat’s claw, cramp bark, hemlock, knotweed, witch’s burr.

“What is all this?” I breathed, my voice barely audible, but loud enough for Lovesong to hear.

“Hoodoo,” he answered, his voice just as hushed. “This is the home of Hoodoo Hettie.”

“Looks more like a witch’s kitchen.”

“That’s exactly what Hoodoo is. It uses herbs, roots, metals, bones, things from the natural world to make spells and potions.”

“Heal you, protect you, save you,” said Hoodoo Hettie, rummaging through the broken drawers of a cabinet in a corner. “That be Hoodoo.”

As her busy hands fished things out of drawers and tapped their way along shelves like scampering crabs, her eyes darted back and forth, scanning her labeled jars before swiping several into her arms. She found matches, a bowl, and eventually a bottle of whiskey.

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