Whodunit

Chapter 4

"The house is where? On what street?" Desi exclaimed from the backseat of Jordan's mother's Chevrolet Tahoe as the older boys drove him to work. Once again, the bass from Youngboy Never Broke Again's latest track banged through the speakers.

In the passenger seat, Dmitri looked down at Anisa's text on Jordan's cell phone. He hadn't had the chance to get his own since escaping and he had no desire to go home and find his old one.

"Anisa says it's off Myrtle Road. Wherever that is," Dmitri heaved his shoulders, not understanding why Desi was making such a big deal about the whereabouts of the Airbnb.

"You don't know Myrtle Road?" Desi leaned forward in his Jumbo Gumbo uniform, practically pressing his chest into the console.

"Man, hell nah." Jordan's fingers clinched the steering wheel. He exhaled, "No one else studies the geography of the city. If it's not in my 'hood, I don't give a fuck."

His little sister, Zaria, looked up from her iPad at the use of profanity. "Mama said you can't cuss around me."

"Is mama here?" Zaria began to protest, but Jordan kept going, "Nope. So, I make the rules and rule number one is Amahd Jordan can do whatever Amahd wants, especially when Amahd's driving and got your life in his hands."

Zaria slammed her back on the seat, making her beaded cornrows click-clack against each other. "Ugh, I'm telling when we get home."

Jordan turned the music up so loud it drained out all other sounds. Dmitri glared at him and turned the volume to a more reasonable high.

"Man, y'all trippin'," Desi started back. "It's only one house on Myrtle Road. That big house at the end of the street. The one that got to' up in Hurricane Katrina. Nobody has lived in it since. They say the old owners died in the hurricane because no one ever came to get them when the levee broke. The rescuers didn't know people actually lived on that road."

"Oh, yeah, they renovated that place last year. That bitch super live now." Jordan grinned. He couldn't wait to show off for Instagram and Snapchat. "I'm 'bout to flex hella hard for the 'gram and Snap. Niggas gon' be hating so bad."

Desi palmed his face and let out a sigh. "Son, that house is haunted."

"Haunted?" the other three passengers inquired all at once.

"Yes," Desi breathed, glad he had their attention. He sat back in his seat. "My sister says it was haunted before Katrina. It was built on an old slave plantation where some real dirty stuff happened back in the day."

"How would your sister know?" Zaria watched the boy with round eyes and her iPad tight in her small grip.

"Man," Desi started, "apparently her best friend's cousin's sister's niece told her best friend that her great-great-great-great grandpa used to be a slave there. Everybody that's lived there since the plantation owners died left just months after moving in because of all the ghosts and spooky stuff that happens."

"What kind of stuff supposedly happens?" Dmitri teased as the car cruised from lane to lane, only minutes away from the younger boy's workplace. "Do the doors close on their own? Do the lights flicker? Do you feel a cold breeze when the thermostat says seventy-five? What? What happens?"

He'd watched his fair share of Supernatural. Watching Sam and Dean haunt mystical demons, monsters, and ghouls was his guilty pleasure.

"Nah, worse," Desi said. Everyone fell silent waiting for him to prove his point. Youngboy Never Broke Again was the only one brave enough to speak. "Some people say they just be chillin' on the couch or around the house when they see themselves walk by out the corner of their eye. Like dressed the same way they are and looking exactly like them. Almost like their evil twin but it's really a ghost. Then, some people say they get woken out of their sleep by a whip and open their eyes to see a black figure standing over them holding one of those whips slave masters used to use to beat their slaves. They turn the light on and the figure disappears, but they look in the mirror and they have scars and welts from the lashes."