My latest, The Conjure Supper, is out today (October 28) from Evernight Publishing! Here's a taste of the story - if you want more, follow the link and note there will be more to follow!
Twelve years ago…
The fall rains came late that year and in southwest Missouri, and the Indian Summer lingered with warm days. Neither Annie nor her cousins Catie and Macy could remember a time when the autumn trees had been brighter or prettier, but when it began raining the day before Halloween, heavy showers knocked the remaining leaves from the trees and left them bare. On October 31st, gray clouds hung low, loaded with more rain, and temperatures dropped into the forties. The weathercasters predicted the first hard frost that night and hinted at a chance for sleet. With more than a little trepidation, the girls, all sixteen, peered out from the windows of Granny’s snug home.
“Should we still do it?” Catie asked. “I didn’t know it would rain.”
“It’s just weather,” Macy replied. “I think we should go ahead with our plans.”
“Let’s do it,” Annie said. “We have everything and we’ve practiced.”
“Granny won’t like it,” Catie said.
“She won’t know. She went to that harvest supper at church,” Annie told her. “We’ll go to my house before she gets back and she’ll figure we’re at home.”
The girls were daughters of Granny’s three sons, born the same year by coincidence. Annie was the oldest in her family, Catie the youngest, and Macy an only child. Each of their dads had built a house along the narrow, rutted lane that trailed from the main road and led to Granny’s home. Although her house was a mere forty years old, the family homestead still stood in a deep hollow closer to the creek. No one had lived it in since their great-grandparents, but it remained somewhat sound. A few of the windows had been broken and some swore the place was haunted, but the girls had played there from an early age.
“What if it is witchcraft?” Catie voice the question that each had wondered at various times. “The way Granny tells the stories, it probably is and it might be dangerous.”
As if she were home, each teen recalled the way Granny had described the conjure supper, something they planned to hold on this night.
“My own Granny, she who came from Kentucky, told me about the conjure suppers. Some call them a dumb supper, not because it’s not smart—though it ain’t—but because everything is done in silence. The way she told it, the supper was a way that girls used to try to find out who they would marry. It’s an old custom, one that goes back across the waters, old even when Granny’s ancestors came across from Cornwall,” Granny had told them, weaving a story on a night when the power was out due to storms. She told the tale by the light of an old coal oil lamp that cast shadows in the room. “You do everything backward, from cooking the cakes to setting the table. Then you sit at the table and light one candle. You have twice as many chairs as girls—that way when the husbands to be arrive at midnight, there’s a chair for them to sit down. If they come, they’ll sit by the one they’ll marry someday. They have to eat the little cakes for it to work, but no one can say a thing.”
“Does it work?” Annie had asked.
“Sure, it does. Granny’s mama and her sisters did it when they were girls. Three shadow men come in, and one was her daddy, so it was said. The other two, though, they wore Confederate gray and before they left, they kissed her sisters. Ain’t supposed to touch or kiss, and it proved bad luck cause her sisters later took sick with the typhoid and they died. But Great-Granny, she married the man she saw that night, raised up seven young ‘uns, and celebrated a good fifty years together before they died.”
“Wasn’t the Civil War long over with by then?” Macy questioned.
Granny nodded, lighting an unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarette, noteworthy because she only smoked when stressed. “It was by about thirty years or so but still they came. They were dead and they kissed the ones who died young. ’Twasn’t just by chance, neither. Maybe they claimed them as brides in some afterworld, in heaven or maybe hell.”
“Did you ever have one?” Catie asked.
Granny hooted, the sound dry and bitter. “Never had the courage to try it,” she told them. “Not after I heard the story about how Betty Jane Myers did it. She set out a handmade knife with a handle made from a deer antler. The man who sat beside her used it. Some years later, he showed up, a soldier out at the Army base, where the college is now. They fell in love right off, got married and had two kids. Then Betty Jane decided to tell him how they’d conjured him up and she showed him that knife. I reckon she thought he’d laugh or smile, but instead, he got mad. ‘So, it was you, then, you witch? That night I walked through hell,’ he told her.
“And he took that very knife and stabbed her, left her bleeding and near dead. She lived, though, but he had gone and she never saw him again. He took her babies with him, wherever he went to, and she was a broken woman after that. She died before she turned thirty-five years old, too.”
“So, you were too scared to try it?” Annie asked Granny.
“Too smart, I’d rather call it,” Granny said. “There’s things you ought not mess with, girls, things you’d best not conjure up.”
“But it worked out for Great-Granny, didn’t it?” Annie asked.
“You might say so but not for a lot of others.”
“I’d like to try it,” Annie said. She was twelve that year, maybe not as bright as she thought she was.
“You’d best not,” Granny said. “I’d tan your hide and if your daddy heard about such trifling with witch stuff. He’d have a fit. Promise me you won’t ever do it.”
But the lights had come back on, distracting them all and Annie never did.
“I’m doing it,” Annie told her cousins now. “I’ll do it alone if you two are chicken.”
“Why?” Catie asked.
“Because I’m curious.”
“So am I,” Macy said.
So, in the same way they had done many things over the years, sometimes dangerous, the three cousins gathered their supplies and hiked down to the old homestead house around eleven at night. They used flashlights to find their way along the path and to watch for snakes. Once there, they carried in their backpacks and lit candles on the front porch.
Their footsteps rang hollow and loud on the aged floorboards, which creaked and groaned. Most of the rooms held little furniture, but in the big kitchen, a round table large enough to seat eight people remained. So did the chairs.
Annie cleaned the table with baby wipes she brought along, then set the candle in the center. They put out a shaker of salt, then set the table with a dish at six places and silverware, laid out in reverse positions. Each of the girls did each task moving backward, which wasn’t as easy as it had sounded. They placed a cake on each plate. Without specific direction on what kind of cakes they should serve, they had decided on soul cakes, another old British tradition. More scone than cake, they were usually served on All Saints or All Souls. Since both days followed Halloween, Annie had deemed them ideal for their purpose. When they baked them, Macy had said they reminded her of the cinnamon raisin biscuits available at Hardee’s. They’d laughed then.
No one laughed now, and they were silent. They hadn’t spoken since they came down the path and wouldn’t until later. Each wore black jeans and black sweatshirt jackets. They’d pulled their hair back and pinned it up . Although they hadn’t had any idea how they should dress, black seemed appropriate.
As midnight drew near, they took seats at the table. The chairs were spaced out in pairs to make it simple to determine who sat with which one of them—if anyone came.
The rain had slackened earlier but now, as they waited without speaking, it pounded down on the old tin roof, loud and almost as if it heralded someone’s approach.
Annie listened and drew a deep breath. Although she’d wanted to do this, now she had some misgivings. The stale air in the old structure seemed to be thickening around her, and she felt as if she had to struggle for air. An invisible tension rippled through the room and she swore the fine hairs on her arms stood up with static electricity. It was far too late to bail, however, and so she sat, forcing herself to be still and quiet.
The antique grandfather clock in the front parlor, one that hadn’t worked in years and lacked the chains and pendulum to keep time, chimed out the midnight hour with twelve loud bongs. Annie counted them and shivered. Until now, she hadn’t known fear, but she tasted it, bitter and hard in her mouth.
As the last strike ended, the candle flame wavered in a sudden movement of air through the room. The back door swung open and struck the wall behind it with force. Three figures, little more than shadows, walked through it and approached the table as if driven. One by one, they chose a chair and sat down. As they did, the candlelight illuminated them.
The man who sat beside Macy had tousled blond hair, tawny and golden. A scruffy beard the same shade claimed his chin and climbed up his cheeks. His eyes were a vivid blue and his lips turned up in a smile. He reached toward Macy, but she drew back. He laughed without sound and picked up the soul cake, taking a bite.
Catie stared into the candle, as if hypnotized as a man took the chair next to her. His hair was the autumn hue of bronzed leaves, more red than gold, and he wore it long. His features were sharp, reminding Annie of a fox, intelligent yet somehow dangerous. His hands were well shaped with long fingers and he used them to lift a soul cake to his lips.
The last man was as dark as the others were fair, hair blacker than sin, eyes the same but with the face of an angel. He might well have been the handsomest man Annie could recall and when he sat beside her, something within her thrilled with recognition. He was hers and she knew it. His dark eyes met hers without blinking and in them, she saw he felt the same. Some strange passion kindled between them in the silent house, a pull as tangible as an ocean tide, and she steeled herself not to touch him. She ached to stroke him, to pull his mouth down to hers in a fiery kiss. He appeared to be tall and lean. Annie craved to be skin to skin with him. She watched as he ate the soul cake, one slow bite at a time. His eyes never left hers, and she quivered, knowing it, savoring it.
The blond man finished the cake and stood. He extended one hand and pulled Macy to her feet. Then he kissed her, his arms wrapped about her as their mouths fused together. No one spoke, but Annie sensed danger in the air. Her bones ached with the foreknowledge of doom, but she could not move to break them apart. And she shouldn’t, she thought, even if she could. Whatever was happening was beyond her control or ken.
Wind blew hard and swift through the open back door. He vanished into the darkness, the breeze extinguishing the candle. The fox-faced man with Catie bowed once, then he too disappeared as if he’d never been. Annie’s man came to his feet, but he didn’t hurry. He moved with an athletic grace. Although he didn’t try to touch her, he smiled at her in a powerful expression that claimed her heart, body, and soul.
“I will see you again,” he mouthed without sound. Then he folded his fingers to his lips and blew her a kiss. She sensed the impact of the invisible caress but before she could react, he, too, was gone.
https://www.evernightpublishing.com/the-conjure-supper-by-lee-ann-sontheimer-murphy
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