Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga Read Online Free PDF Page B

suddenly raised her arms, the
sleeves of her mourning weeds fanning out like raven's wings. A
tattered black lace mantilla covered her face, which shone through
white as the moon through cloud cover, except for where the eyes
belonged, where two black holes glistened as if with tears. Juli
leaned forward to see into her face, but the other musicians shrank
back slightly. They'd all had lots of dealings with ghosts in the
last few years, but none quite so—ghostly—as this one. The banjo
grew louder, and the woman's specter grew more agitated.
    Juli was pleased at the way Willie handled
it. He began to sing softly in Spanish.
     
    "Ay de mi, llorona, llorona,
    Llorona de ayer y hoy;
    Ayer maravilla fui, llorona,
    Y ahora ni la sombra soy."
     
    The winged arms swooped back down to the
apparition's sides and clasped at her chest before one hand made
the sign of the cross. Juli felt a sense of satisfaction from the
ghost, a melancholy pleasure at being acknowledged. Whatever La
Llorona's reasons for drowning her child, Juli couldn't help but
feel that if she had known the circumstances back in those days
when life could so easily be pure hell for a lone woman, much less
one with an unsanctioned infant, she would have found the ghost
more pitiable than fearsome.
    The two glistening black eyeholes turned
toward her for a split second as if in response; then in a tornado
of black tattered dress and lace, the specter whirled and melted
into the river.
    "Oh, yeah," Brose said. "I seen 'em do that
before. That time after Anna Mae's festival when we was chasin'
Willie and y'all in Gussie's station wagon cross-country? The rest
of us was in Faron's van, and I was drivin' while everybody slept?
The highway flooded out, and damned if one of those ghosts we saw
on that trip didn't warn us all by goin' into the water and
drownin' hisself again just so I'd know it was deep out there."
    "All of those ghosts were warning spirits,"
Anna Mae said. "But everything I've read about ghosts says they're
not supposed to be able to cross running water."
    But the ghost was halfway across, and from
about mid-knee up she was still deeper blackness against the
shining black water.
    "Around here in the summer the Rio Grande
don't usually run so deep you'd drown, less you laid down in it,"
Willie said.
    The ghost glided farther out and was covered
to the hips when she let out a long banshee wail. Willie shone his
flashlight into the water.
    The light bounced off wriggling, snapping
forms clinging to the black robes and dripping from the sleeves and
mantilla.
    Willie whistled low, the flashlight
jiggling. Juli saw that his hands were shaking.
    "Shee-ee-ee-it," Brose said. "Lookit them
cottonmouths. We ain't crossin' here tonight or no time soon."
    The specter, still squirming with snakes,
turned, stared at them as if dripping snakes was the most natural
thing in the world, and ponderously began wading back.
    Juli and the others stumbled away from
the riverbanks as the ghost emerged from the water. La llorona began crying again,
moaning and twisting her hands, coils of snake twining around her
bone white fingers like grave worms. Thunder cracked in the west.
Llorona strained toward them, the snakes slithering away from the
bottom of her gown in all directions. She was still trying to warn
them, but Juli wondered if the ghost knew that coming any closer
with all those snakes was apt to do more harm than good. She
supposed ghosts got out of touch with such mortal considerations,
having been dead themselves for so long. As the ghost advanced a
step, Juli and the others retreated farther from the banks, trying
to stay ahead of not only the ghost but the hissing
snakes.
    The hissing was suddenly augmented by
another hiss—that of rain washing down on the desert. The hiss grew
rapidly louder and harder until it turned into a roar. The ghost
and her snakes had chased the musicians perhaps twenty yards back
from the riverbank when all of a sudden the roar got very