Free Echoes in the Bayou by Ursula Dukes Page B

she
opened the door, a sudden burst of impossibl y
cold air blew out bringing dust and cobwebs with it. She stood in the doorway
for a minute and began having second thoughts. Maybe I should wait for Magnus . 
After about three minutes of debating with herself, she decided to go in. When
she crossed the threshold and entered the tiny room she was not met with fear,
but quite the opposite; an overwhelming feeling of sadness came over her. A
tarnished metal bed frame stood in the corner of the room and a decaying old mattress,
rolled up and tied with twine sat on top of it. A small wooden crate that was
covered in cobwebs stood at the base of the bed frame.
      As she moved closer to the bed frame, she stepped on a
loose floorboard. "This just keeps getting better and better," she
whispered cynically.  As she stood in the room looking for something to
lift the rotted floor board with she laughed at herself when she saw that she
was still holding the butter knife. She had been gripping it so tight in fact
that her fingers had begun to ache. There was no denying that she was
frightened, at that moment she hated Magnus for leaving her alone in the house.
    Her own
words echoed through her head. I'm here to do a job and I’ll also help with finding
any documentation…
    Sliding
the butter knife under the board, she found that
it too lifted quite easily. As she stuck the knife down into the dark hole she
stopped when it scraped upon something hard. "Probably a rock," she
mumbled. "Or with my luck, it's a goddamn skull."
    " Here goes nothing," she said and reached into the
hole. She let out a sigh of relief when she realized that the shape of the
object she was touching seemed to be square. "Thank god," she said
and gripped the object. As she was pulling the brown square out of the hole, a
large spider scurried across her hand.
    She
screamed and inadvertently threw the object, it landed on the floor along with
most of the dirt that had been buried on top of it. "Get a grip Ava,
geez." She scolded herself.
    Once she
regained her compos ure she crawled over to the
small object and realized that it was a book, a journal to be exact. As she
picked it up and examined it, she brushed away what dirt that was left and
noticed that years of mildew had caused some of the binding to wear away.
    She carefully
opened the delicate book and sat with her back against the wall and began
reading what was to be the most personal and intimate details of the life of a
slave girl named Celeste.Because of the
wear and tear, several of the pages had rotted away. But that didn’t stop Ava
from feeling an extreme connection to the young woman.  After reading
several entries, she was able to discern that her mother had left her the small
diary and it was to be given to her a few months shy of her sixteenth birthday.
Even though she was a slave in the big house, Celeste was treated quite
harshly, especially by her mistress, Amelia Montieu. And even more so after
Amelia had caught her son, Will smiling at the young woman. Ava immediately got
the sense that something was not right. The journal entries alone told nothing
of her wanting to run away, what they frequently spoke of was her seemingly
undying love for Will.
    She marveled at the fact that even after all these
years, the handwriting was so incredibly legible, it was as if the diary was
waiting to be found, waiting to be uncovered. "Waiting for me?" Ava
half questioned out loud.
    Now
wanting to wait any longer, she decided to leave the tiny room and call Magnus
and tell him of h er discovery. Just then, the
door leading to the pantry was slammed shut and locked from the outside.
             
    A putrid
smell invaded the small room and she found herself trying to fend off her
invisible attacker. The diary that she had kept a firm grip on was ripped from
her hands and thrown across the room; a sharp slap stung her face.  Ava
blindly reached out and swung violently into the air but she