Page 43 of Poison Wood

Natchitoches, Louisiana

Halloween Prank Goes Horribly Wrong at Local Boarding School.

An annual prank at Poison Wood Therapeutic Academy for Girls went horribly wrong this year. One of the senior girls, identified as Lisbeth Warrington, slipped while on an overhanging branch and fell twenty feet onto the spired iron fence surrounding the graveyard, impaling her upper body. She was air-lifted to the trauma one hospital in Riverbend where sources at the hospital say she is in a medically induced coma.

Every year students are escorted into the woods on Halloween night to an old graveyard on the property. Teachers bring a record player into the woods with a recording of the eerie tale about the school’s founder. While it’s playing, senior girls climbinto the branches of an old oak tree over the graveyard. At the right moment, they are cued by teachers to start shaking the branches to scare the younger girls. It’s a tradition that started at the school in the early 1950s and has continued ever since.

Neither the girl’s family nor the school’s headmaster could be reached for comment.

Chapter Eleven

Riverbend, Louisiana

Thursday, February 14, 2019

6:05 a.m. CST

I wake up to a strange sound. I reach for my bedside table in the dark, for the police scanner I sleep with next to my bed. But I don’t feel it. Then I realize I’m not in my king-size bed in Dallas; I’m in my childhood double bed in Riverbend.

I sit up, rub my eyes, and fumble for my phone, dimming the screen when I open it. The sound was a notification about a news conference, and when I see where, I’m up and moving for my suitcase before I get all the details.

My phone rings as I’m sliding into a pair of jeans.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dom says as if he’s looking over my shoulder.

“But I’m here Dom. I can be there in forty-five minutes.” I don’t bother to tell him I was going to that town today anyway. “I can just video. That’s it. I have a wireless mic. I’ll send it to Erin and Carl immediately.”

“You so much as say one word.”

“I won’t. I promise.”

I end the call and apply a few layers of makeup but not like I normally do. I throw on my yellow top and a navy blazer and grab myheels. I won’t be on camera today, but I’m not showing up without my armor on.

Light snow is falling outside the window as I walk into the warm kitchen with my laptop under my arm. It’s only a dusting, but that’s all it will take to shut the roads down. I need to get going.

The coffee maker is full, and something is already baking in the oven. Smells like biscuits and my stomach growls. Debby’s been busy this morning. The small television tucked into a corner on the countertop is on, and the local news is announcing schools in Caddo and Bossier Parishes will be closed today.

My father would build makeshift sleds on days like this, and we’d beg my mother to come with us to the hill behind the house, but she’d say she was too tired. After her fall from the horse, she was tired a lot. Possibly an excuse to avoid my father. She seemed to harbor resentment over him trying to make her something she wasn’t. But by avoiding him, she’d avoid me as well. Collateral damage.

The snow coming down this morning looks like it may stick, but unlike when I was a kid, I hope it doesn’t.

I pour a cup of coffee and sit at the breakfast table, hoping the caffeine will clear the cobwebs in my head. I set my laptop in front of me and open it. I stayed up until the wee hours, making lists and searching for phone numbers.

A sharp pain shoots through my head, and a flash of light zags across my vision. I shut my eyes and will it to stop.

“You okay?”

I jump and open my eyes. Debby is standing next to me, the dogs at her feet. The woman is like a mouse. She’s wearing her typical Wranglers, cowboy boots, and the ugliest sweatshirt I’ve ever seen. It’s pink, with pictures of cats hanging on tree limbs and airbrushed words that sayHang in there.

“You startled me,” I say, then follow it with “Do you have any pain relievers?”

She walks to a drawer under a small built-in desk and opens it. She pulls out a bottle of Advil and brings it to me. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

I push the cap open and swallow four with my coffee. “If you say so.”

Debby purses her lips but refrains from commenting. “I’m heading to the hospital in a minute. As long as this snow doesn’t get worse. What would you like for dinner tonight?”

I look up at her. “It’s six in the morning.”