Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Devil at Dusk - Installment Twenty Seven

Welcome everybody to installment twenty seven of Devil at Dusk!

After speaking with Ilya I was convinced that I had to try to track down Marguerite and to have her use her psychic abilities to help me out with trying to find out who our serial killer was. Since I pretty much did not have anyone else to call on about this matter I decided to just get in the car and drive on down to the bayou and ask around to try to find her.

So the next day I did just that, I got into my car and drove to Larose Louisiana. Larose was a very old and small town. I finally made it there and I stopped off at the first coffee shop I found. I walked in and took a seat at the lunch counter. The waitress came over to me; she wore a starched pink and white uniform with a name tag that said Marge on it. She was chewing on a piece of gum and had a pencil behind her ear. She pulled out her note pad and pencil and took my order. I was only there for a piece of pie, coffee and to get some information. I started to make some small talk with her and I noticed she was quite friendly. I had told her I was passing through on business but I had heard of a young gal by the name of Margarite that was a healer out in these parts. I told the waitress that I had been suffering from some horrible migraines for most of my life (I thought I had better use a pretext here instead of saying I needed a psychic to help me catch a serial killer). Marge says to me…ah yes, you are talking about the white witch’s granddaughter! She lives here in Larose out in the bayou just on the outskirts of town! I said oh I did not realize that was her moniker but I do believe we are referring to the same person. I asked Marge where does she live, how can I find her? I told her I was desperate to find something to help me with these horrible migraines! She said for me to follow this here main road west until I end up in the swap lands. She said that I will find a few shacks out there and a very small general store of sorts, Marge said Marguerite lived in a tiny shack that had been painted pink (her grandmere’s favorite color) many moons ago however now the paint had been pretty washed out looking after all these years. Marguerite and her grandmere’s house was located behind the general store.

I finished eating my pie and drinking my coffee, soon after that I settled my tab and thanked Marge very kindly for all of her help and information. I got back into my car and drove out to Marguerite’s house, sure enough there was the strange looking washed out pink shack. There was a young girl sitting on the front stoop, in a little patch of shade reading a book. She looked to be only just a mere teenager and she was very thin. She was wearing a clean but very thin cotton house dress that looked like it was from the 1930’s and she was barefoot with her feet in the dirt. Her skin was very pale white, her scalp was pink and her hair was also very light. Her hair was down to her waist and she had locks of matted coils of hair all over her head. She looked up at me as I was pulling into her driveway, she had pale violet colored eyes and that was when I realized she was an albino. Now I knew why people said she looked different than most people.

I got out of the car and said hello. I introduced myself and asked the girl if she was Marguerite, she said yes. I explained why I was there, that I was in dire need of her help. I needed her to use her psychic abilities to try to help me catch the serial killer that had been terrorizing the small town of Laurel Mississippi. I asked her if I could come inside to speak to both her and her grandmere. She said yes, I followed her inside the tiny house. Her grandmere was sitting in a rocking chair doing some knitting. Marguerite offered me a nice cool glass of sweet tea, I told her that would be lovely. She came back with three glasses, one for each of us. We sat and talked for hours, I learned that Marguerite was actually 23 years old even though she looked like a school girl. She was very tiny and thin, she got her stature from her grandmere. Her and her grandmere looked just alike, except her grandmere was much older and not an albino.

Marguerite told me she had been home schooled and had been in training to become a healer ever since she was a small child. She realized she had psychic abilities when she was about 14 years old. When I first approached Marguerite and her grandmere they were both very quiet and reserved because I was a stranger from another town. They were not really open to strangers for the most part. However I think they could see the fear and desperation in my eyes and how much I needed to capture the killer before he struck again! The clincher was when I explained how Bet my dearest friend in the whole wide world ended up at the mercy of this cruel savage beast! I felt so much guilt over not being able to protect her or to save her. I also had so much guilt because the serial killer was on the loose still and I had not been able to capture him yet. I did not express a single word of my guilt to Marguerite but she sat down close to me, took my both of my hands into her two tiny hands, then she looked me straight in the eyes and she said to me, you can let go all of your guilt now. She told me to let it wash away and to be healed. She told me to let go of my burdens that I had been carrying on my back all of these months and that it was not my fault, not a single bit of it.

I started to cry because she saw into my heart and knew my feelings. Those were the feelings that I had to hide every day from all other people. I had to hide them because I was supposed to be invincible, I was the investigator and I always had to be strong. However there I was sitting here crumbling in front of this tiny young gal who was so wise beyond her years. Marguerite tells me she will do whatever it takes to help me find the killer, even if that meant that she had to leave the bayou and her grandmere for a few days (she told me she needed to come to Laurel to see the evidence we had collected and to also see the places where the victim’s bodies had been found). Marguerite leaving the bayou for even just a few days was an incredible thing in itself because Marguerite had never left the bayou in her entire life except to go into town a couple times a year. She said she would get hold of her papa to come out and to take care of grandmere for a few days. So off we went to get her papa, he was not too far away.

Her papa followed us in a big old farm truck all the way back to the pink shack. When we came back grandmere Katherine Marie had made a giant pot of Etoufee’ with fresh vegetables, big juicy prawns and flavorful crawdad tails over rice for dinner. We sat down to eat the wonderful feast that Katherine Marie had prepared for us, during dinner I had explained to Marguerite’s papa how I needed Marguerite's help. He and Katherine Marie were both fine with me borrowing Marguerite for a few days because they could see it in my eyes how urgent and important it was. So that night Marguerite packed a small overnight bag and we traveled back to my cottage in Mississippi.

To be continued…..

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