Whodunit

Chapter 23

He had no logical reason to be scared right now. The demon-infested girl was inside being held hostage by a gun to her skull. Desi knew better than to let her out of his sight.

Dmitri assured himself of this as he jogged to the shed in the backyard. Desi hadn't been kidding. The abyssal darkness almost swallowed Dmitri whole as he ran further and further away from the light that sifted through the patio doors. Not even the approaching dawn had lightened the sky.

Faded caution tape lingered in the outgrown bushes. The house had been fully renovated after Katrina, but the shed screamed nineteenth century slave quarters. If the Airbnb hosts really wanted to make a bang for their buck, they could fix the entire area up into an extra guest house. But he guessed they figured it was too far from the main house to make a difference. Long as the tourists didn't know they history of the house, they could get away with it.

Moss hung from the bottoms of the aged white panels like bats hanging upside down on a branch. Dust clung to the chinks and cracks in the wood like ravenous termites. All Desi's talk about ghosts helping him through the swamps, and Anisa swearing she saw Nubia when she'd been dead for minutes had him spooked. He braced himself and pushed open the jagged-edged door that had to be latched on to the hinges by the grace of a holier spirit. Emptiness filled the space aside from a few cobwebs and leftover renovation supplies. It stunk of stale air.

A squeak and the sound of something hitting the ground made him jump out his skin. He did a 180 and caught the glimpse of a train of a dull ivory dress. The hem dragged through the mud at an alarming rate. He dashed to the door to catch the culprit, but instead twisted his ankle as he stepped over the ledge. The small staircase had completely detached from the shed. He caught himself on the doorframe and hopped down the short distance, spraining his ankle even more.

On top of the staircase sat shackles and chains. The rotten, dirty chains reeked of rust and mold, but the metal seemed durable, nonetheless. Dmitri peeped up and around, expecting to see a ghost but he saw nothing in the moonless night. So, he snatched the chains and cuffs and ran towards the house.

#

"Ugh! You're hitting girls now, Desi! I thought you were better than the boys in your 'hood!" Anisa roared.

Desi tried to stand up from a harsh fall to the ground. Anisa threw out her palm and motioned at the wall. His body levitated and slung against the wall with intense force.

"Ah," he groaned as he slid into a weakened heap on the ground.

"Why won't you die?" the voice bellowed from the depths of Anisa's diaphragm, but the irregular, grating bass in the voice didn't belong to her.

Desi coughed. "I'm from the streets. It's hard to kill me."

Anisa's eye sockets seemed to bruise in the thin air, turning completely black. "Then, I guess I'll just have to snap your neck in two!"

She held her fingers up in a snapping position. Dmitri appeared from the back and tackled her into the glass coffee table before she could bend her knuckles. The tabled crushed under the weight of their bodies. Dmitri wrestled with her until she was face down in the glass, fighting shards from stabbing her eyes and spitting out the ones that'd already cut her lips.

"Get off me!" the demonic voice mixed with her sweet, airy one.

"Desi, come help!" Dmitri shouted as he pressed his knees into the nook of her back.

Desi scrambled to his feet. Meanwhile, Dmitri pulled her biceps behind her back and wrapped her wrist three times with the rusted chains. He tied them into an unbreakable knot while Desi held down her kicking feet.