Page 364 of Phobia

A man was sitting with his long legs spread apart, feet planted on the ground, and his wrists rested on his knees with a fat cigar wedged between his lips. He was focused on the stones below him, sitting so still like he was waiting for something to come alive in this land of the dead.

His attire was obscure for this time of night: dress coat and slacks. The shadow of the over-sized top hat on his head blocked me from seeing his full face. Yet, he somehow fit into his surroundings, dressed to attend a funeral.

Suddenly, he looked up to the dark sky, the foot of his cigar glowing.

I didn’t dare speak because something told me he wouldn’t take too well to being disturbed from his meditation or whatever it was that had entranced him.

Just before I was about to turn away, his coarse voice cut through the air.

“I’n’it rude to stare?” He didn’t speak the King’s French like I did. His dialect was pure Creole. A long history of smoking was evident in his husky tone. He didn’t turn to look at me, but he was well aware of my presence.

“I...um...sorry,” I stammered awkwardly. “I’ll just go.”

Just then, his neck rotated, allowing me to see his face, skin dark like the night. It was too dim to pinpoint his age, but he seemed to be in his mid-thirties. He wore no shirt under his coat, so I also had a prime view of the deep basin between his pectoral muscles, complimented by some sort of sharp pendant that tapered to a fine point hung around his neck by a dark string.

His strong features piqued my interest most—specifically his angular jaw and prominent nose. He pulled the cigar from between his full lips, which reminded me of the smooth flesh of a plum and twiddled it between his fingers.

He was sizing me up, too. His gaze started at my bare feet and traveled up my nightgown, lingering not so subtly on my bust. I felt a shiver down my spine as his eyes took me in. My fingers tightened on the shawl around my shoulders, covering my chest from his presumptuousness. The stranger grinned at my hint and moved onto to my face, settling on my messy blonde hair and fair skin. “Forgot y’er way home, kid?”

“I’m not lost.” My voice usually sat at a high register, but it sounded even higher since I was nervous.

“Ain’t too many little girls keen on spendin’ the night in a cemetery. I’d say yeh was lookin’ for trouble.” His deconstructed accent sounded more honest than that of any man I had ever heard before.

“I’m not a little girl,” I contested. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to defend myself, but I didn’t like being seen as a child by him. My mouth didn’t always match up with what my brain wished for it to say, so my tone came out blunter than intended.

He puffed his cigar. “That so?”

I lifted my chin. “I’m seventeen.”

“Seventeen and, oh, so clean,” he sang.

“What?”

“It’s a song, little girl,” he said with no regard for my obvious distaste of the epithet.

I gave up and tolerated the taunting. “How does it go? The song?” I sat down, my legs folded under me on the ground, a few feet away from him.

He chuckled. “I don’t reckon yeh would like my voice too much.”

I had always been told that my voice was irritating, so I was sure his singing couldn’t be any worse than mine. “I’m sure you’ll sound great.”

“Not as great as yeh would sound, little songbird.”

I looked at him, utterly bewildered.

“Y’er voice reminds me of a songbird. All bright and high.”

“Oh,” I breathed out, suddenly self-conscious of it. I had never been complimented on the way I spoke before, so I wasn’t quite sure how to accept his words.

“I don’t bite, yeh know.” The stranger nodded to the space between us. “Unless yeh want me to.” His lips fixed into a crooked smirk.

I rolled my eyes and huffed out a breath, which elicited another throaty chuckle from him. He seemed to laugh a lot. Maybe it was a nervous habit. I had lots of those, like avoiding eye contact when I felt scrutinized, which was all the time in Papa’s presence. But with this man, I didn’t feel like he was picking me apart. Rather, it was more like he was piecing all of me together to find the final picture—one that he was intrigued by.

“What are yeh running from, little songbird?” he asked.

“Who says I was running?”

He looked off into the distance. “Y’er in a graveyard well after dusk, talkin’ to a stranger. No one does that in their right mind. Either y’er crazy or y’er runnin’ from something.”