A crash followed by a string of swears cut through the still air and drifted to my ears. What in the hell were they up to? Easing through the damp moss and fallen oak leaves, I made my way to the far back corner of the cemetery, close to the river; I followed their voices silently. I probably knew every single headstone at Bonaventure — my friends and I used to camp out here on a regular basis back in the day. Sick, I know, but true. Smoking joints while jumping headstones wasn’t my proudest moment in life, but neither was having sex against one. For the record, I gave up joints and grave jumping a few years back. Sex I still had, just not against headstones. As I crept closer, I dodged and toed my way around pinecones and cockleburs, pushing aside the long hanks of Spanish moss that dangled from the branches. Finally, beneath the shadows and moonlight, the boys came into view, and I stared, dumbstruck, as Seth and his pals disappeared into an old crypt.
That explained the crash. Damn — even I’d never done that, and I’d done a lot of crazy crap. But knowing what I knew from the Gullah? Hell and double no. I couldn’t believe Seth was going along with it. The name on that particular crypt was ancient; the words were nearly sanded flat with the stone, the rest covered by sap, moss, and age. Couldn’t read but maybe one or two letters at best. Preacher — a well-respected Gullah elder, herbalist, and conjurer, as well as a practiced hoodooist — had been a grandfather figure to me and Seth since Mom’s death.