Sunrise broke through the last in a series of thunderstorms that had rumbled across southern Louisiana all night and sudden heat produced wisps of steam on the badly weathered Latham Highway near the village of Lafayetteville. Huge drops of water glistened on clumps of black willow and elderberry. Jungle-like swamps crowding roads that ran straight as strings through the Mississippi Delta served notice that nature was ever poised to re-take the land.

About two miles south of the town, the road passed a parking lot of crushed shell in front of a run down single-storey roadhouse in a rank field of rusted-out car hulks. A neon sign on a crumbling wood facade proclaimed the place "Christabel's". At night the sign, which sported burned-out sections, fizzed and spluttered and re-named the roadhouse "Christ el", but nobody cared enough to have it fixed. Hidden in a nearby elderberry thicket was a large, corroded metal cutout of a once-proud rooster, head back to crow at a morning sun that no longer shone on it, bearing the faded, blistered legend "Red Rooster Inn".

It had been decades since anyone had seen it and the name "Red Rooster" had been all but forgotten.

Inside Christabel's, Lusanne Linton, a plain black woman in a faded calico dress, cleaned up ashes and empty glasses. It had been as always. The same group of elderly whites with rheumy eyes and shaking hands, drinking til the first light of dawn filtered through dirty windows.

When they slept was a mystery, and why they spent each night in each other's silent company was a puzzle. For they seemed to have only two things in common: advanced age and an inability to remain alone in dead hours of night. The villagers had a name for them, a name that was never uttered in their presence, a name whispered in fear when lights went back on at Christabel's.

The Nailing Crew.

The few aged whites that were not on the crew never went to Christabel's, blacks would avert eyes and quicken steps past the roadhouse as midnight approached. Sleeping children would be checked by nervous parents who had, in their own childhoods, heard dreadful, whispered tales of the Crew. Doors would be barred from within and blinds pulled tight against the miasma of night. Everyone in Latham Parish knew things were abroad in darkness when the Nailing Crew gathered. When mist rose off reeking swamp and inky bayou and coiled like ghastly, wavering fingers, probing narrow streets where nobody dared walk. In each home, from stately mansion to one-room shack, votive lights burned and people huddled against darkness in their own souls, living only for the blessed glow of morning.

Heat mounted in the dingy building and sweat beaded Lusanne's upper lip. There would be little trade, just a few sharecroppers and farm workers. Everyone said Christabel's had to be an economic disaster, but somehow it stayed open year after year. Lusanne never asked owner Lafe le Coeur about money, partly because it had been many years since there'd been much point to conversations with le Coeur. She just went about her business and, with each nightfall, she would wash the last of the cheap dishes, turn off lights and the neon sign that read "Christ el", and carefully lock the door. Not that anyone other than the Crew would dream of entering as the witching hour drew near.

A half mile down the highway, carefully not looking at still, dark waters of Raffsmen's Bayou and Chirrun'sbend, she'd turn off and nearly run down a narrow, shell-covered roadway to her shack town cabin, to her little family and safety behind a double-bolted door marked with a crude white cross. Down the road and through oak, tupelo and cypress with their thick hangings of Spanish moss, mist would roll again along the black bayou. Air would turn clammy and cool.

In stillness, the Nailing Crew would arrive, man by man, at Christabel's. Lights and sign would go back on, but no weary travellers would pause for rest, no truckers would stop for a welcome coffee. From the witching hour, Christabel's belonged to The Nailing Crew. Until dawn broke over Raffsmen's Bayou and Chirrun'sbend, driving away mist and lurking horrors. Then the crew would break up, each man silently getting to his feet, perhaps unsteadily, perhaps bleary-eyed and slack-jawed if the night had been particularly long and fraught with memories. There would be shame on seamed faces as they fearfully opened the door to morning light and silently shuffled off about the business of running the parish.

As she cleaned ashtrays near the window, distastefully handling sheriff Jimmy Joe Elton's soggy cigar butts, Lusanne spotted an elderly black man trudging along the highway. Rusty screen door hinges squealed in protest as she leaned out and yelled "Youngjohn! Youngjohn Amos! You want a coffee?"

The man looked back with plaintive yearning, shook his head and continued on, dragging battered work boots too heavy for spindly old legs. Lusanne, knowing his destination, inhaled deeply in morning freshness. She caught the faint tang of bayou, heady scent of morning glories crawling in mountainous profusion over rusted barbed wire separating the shell-covered parking lot from field and cars and the overriding ripeness of lush vegetation along black waters of Raffsmen's and Chirruns'bend.

She resumed cleaning and setting up. She liked to get it right for what morning trade there'd be, even though old Lafe was a member of The Nailing Crew and hadn't made a single daytime appearance in all the time she'd worked there. Those sad old men, night after weary night.

In the quiet roadhouse, with motes of dust dancing in sun streaming through a filthy window and only soft ticking of an old wall clock to keep her company, Lusanne's skin pricked. It always did when her thoughts ran that way. And, as she always did when her thoughts ran that way, she crossed herself with a trembling hand.

Out on the now-broiling road Youngjohn, dressed in faded blue overalls with a red bandanna tied around his grizzled neck and sporting a battered straw hat, was shambling along, singing a little refrain under his breath. It was an old tune called 'Corrinna Corrinna', one that Mississippi John Hurt had done long before the winter of 1960 when some young upstart came out with a mainstream version. His good eye flicked nervously between the road, where there might be a basking snake, and the forbidding swamp.

There was something about that swamp that set Youngjohn's old legs quivering every time he passed by the moss-hung cypress forest and black waters choked by duckweed and hyacinth, but he couldn't force his foggy mind to recall what it was. A nervous look behind showed nothing but cracked patches of pavement here and there, greyed and baking, and long stretches of packed clay. Tiny puddles left by the storm were drying rapidly, tendrils of steam wisping across the road. In a faultless blue sky a few black birds circled where the Little Raftsmen's Bayou -- bridged by a crude log and packed earth structure -- flowed sluggishly into swamp headwaters. By the Children's Bend. Raffsmen's was what the villagers called the bayou. Raffsmen's and Chirrun'sbend. When they spoke of those things at all.

Few from Lafayetteville ever went into the swamp. For anything.

There were ancient pirogues pulled up near shacks along Raffsmen's, but they were consumed by dry rot and covered, like unused jetties that slumped into murky waters, with swamp grass, moss and ferns. Nobody ever put boats onto the bayou.

Despite smothering heat that made sweat trickle down his deeply seamed face, Youngjohn shuffled faster. He also sang 'Corrinna' a little louder -- but not so loud that he'd hear echoes -- until he came upon the all-too familiar red brick gateposts and partially overgrown driveway. The ancient wrought-iron arch looked like something from some dank, medieval prison and Youngjohn warily sniffed a humid morning breeze.

Muttering "Youngjohn don't need that nohow, nossuh. Nossuh," he shivered and turned towards Christabel's. A coffee with Lusanne, whose warm, throaty laugh could stir him even now, or maybe a snort of that likker the Crew probably left.

But there was the massive scorn granddaughter Sarah Lee Amos would heap on him if he didn't do his day's work.

Youngjohn took off his straw hat and, hauling a large red bandanna from dirty overalls, mopped sweat that was due to fear as much as to heat. Seeing the safety of Christabel's and the amber gleam of Lusanne's eyes, but driven by the thought of Sarah Lee, he slowly shuffled down the long drive, past the morning glory-covered charcoal stumps that had once been massive, multi-limbed trees, to Twenty Oaks -- the old Linton mansion. Prudence would be inside, as always, and she would probably give him some lemonade after he worked a bit, or maybe even a little whisky. Youngjohn licked his lips, but didn't pause at the mansion, since he always had to work up to it a little before he could tap on that door. Instead he went straight to the tool shed behind the old carriage house, and reached for the lawn mower. It wouldn't be a long job, since he only mowed grass immediately around the house. Prudence Linton was nearly blind and had never once, in far more years than Youngjohn Amos could hold in his foggy old mind, come outside.

Beyond a low rock wall that divided the back lawn from the farther grounds, grass grew thick and rank. What had once been a maze of carefully trimmed bushes was now a jungle some eight feet tall. In the front, Youngjohn would carefully mow as far as the first blackened stump. The rest he left to flourish through the hot Louisiana growing season.

He rubbed absently at his cheap glass eye as he noticed rusty clippers and a pair of tattered leather gloves on an oil-soaked table. How long had it been since he decided to hack away the blackberry brambles from the kitchen servant's door? The last time Charley Futch from the store complained? He'd show Sarah the man her grandfather still was. Just wait til he told her how he'd cleared the blackberries.

Or maybe he'd just get Charlie to remark, sort of casually, that it was a good thing the blackberries had been cut back.

A shot of WD-40 loosened the shears and, clacking rusty blades, Youngjohn headed for the far rear corner of the kitchen, a separate structure of brick attached to the back of the main house. Blackberry vines that had once grown on a trellis were bushing out in every direction, hiding flagstone steps and all but the top of the heavy cypress door.

Youngjohn began clipping, gingerly throwing cuttings into the yard. After about a half hour he straightened his aching back and dug out a tin of Red Man tobacco. It was time for a chew and he was starting to regret tackling the job. It could have been put off, especially since old Charlie hadn't been complaining lately.

Youngjohn's mind wasn't clear enough to wonder why Charlie had not been complaining.

He'd managed to make a pretty fair dent in the patch. Good thing it wasn't the other one. There was something different about those vines. Youngjohn stuffed a plug in his cheek and peered around the corner at a luxuriant growth of blackberry vines sprawling from a three-foot clay mound heaped against the brick carriage house. Perhaps thorns were a little larger, leaves a deeper, richer green? The mound, extending some 15 feet, made Youngjohn's scalp prickle. He rubbed his glass eye again. Maybe it had something to do with his eye?

Well, enough woolgathering. He had a job to do.

Youngjohn was panting with exertion when he realized there was something leaning against the door. Heavy, callused hands gently pushed vines aside.

Stench hit him in a sweetish, putrid wave and the air was suddenly alive with iridescent green flies. Youngjohn stepped smartly away, but not before he'd seen grocery bags split open and liquefying under a seething carpet of maggots. A large box bearing the legend "Firth & Sons Waxworks (1903)" had disintegrated, spilling dozens of heavy, black candles.

Oh, Lordy, the bags and box had obviously been there a long time.

Charlie Futch always left groceries and those boxes of candles, shipped from New Orleans, and Prudence would take them in after he'd left. That way, only Youngjohn Amos ever actually saw her. And all he ever saw was a gnarled hand extending an uncommonly long way with a glass of frosted lemonade or, if he were really lucky, amber sippin' whisky. The withered arm was lined with knobbly blue veins and was nearly translucent with age under flaky parchment skin. There often was no evidence of clothing, making Youngjohn uneasily wonder if the skeletal old woman behind the door was naked.

After long minutes spent nervously shifting feet, Youngjohn took a deep breath and, ignoring scratching thorns, pushed the door. It moved only slightly. Bolted from the inside.

"Them'd be her foods, right enough," he muttered, poking with the shears.

A host of fat green-black flies swarmed again and Youngjohn backed away in disgust.

"Gonna tell me t'clean it, betcha," he said, trudging around to the spacious veranda. Boots clomped on well-worn boards that cried out for a new coat of grey paint and, halfway along, he began to tiptoe.

A fragmentary memory flitted through his mind.

Walking down this porch, straw hat clutched to chest. Being met at the door by a handsome young man with a flashing smile but sad eyes and that strange woman with the luminous gaze that looked right through a man. They were to be married, and would he hand-deliver... what? What had they given him? Another fragmentary picture. A pile of gold-embossed invitations to the wedding of Alvin Edward Linton and Miss Prudence Parenteau. He was surprised because he, along with the rest of Lafayetteville, always thought the man would marry the other woman. The one whose name had, for decades since, filled him with dark horror. The man had once been going to marrythat woman, not the wild, half-Creole Prudence Parenteau, daughter of a drunken Pearl River trapper and a mysterious woman said to have the sight.

Youngjohn paused at the massive front door overlooking twin lines of charcoal stumps along the driveway. Yet another fragmentary memory. Beautiful, twisted old oaks hung with Spanish moss, creating a canopy to shade shiny new 1927 cars. Groups of laughing young whites gathered around tables set out under awnings. Wearing a starched white jacket and carrying a silver tray of canapes. Music from a small orchestra brought in, someone had said, all the way from New Orleans.

On his right, lawn gave way to tall grass that all but hid remains of a low rock divider once shaded by a beautiful grove of magnolias. He could almost see them, branches laden with rich, green, waxy leaves and heavy white flowers. Just for a moment, he could see her in their shade, dressed in a slim red dress with polka dots and sporting a stylish white small-brimmed hat. It had not seemed that she was sad, despite having lost Alvin Edward Linton to Prudence Parenteau. She'd had a secretive, self-satisfied air, as though she considered herself well served.

Nerving himself as always, Youngjohn called "Missus Linton" and gave a sharp tap with the tarnished old lion knocker, but instead of the door creaking open a crack for an emaciated, nearly-mummified arm, only a hollow echo answered.

Maybe she hadn't heard him. All those other times it was as though she'd been waiting like one of those trap-door spiders, but she was getting older. He knocked again and again heard only echoes in empty rooms.

A small cloud scudded plunged him into momentary gloom, bringing a cry of surprise and fear.

There was something wrong. He should run from this cursed place as fast as his legs could carry him. But he remained rooted to the spot.

He had to know.

Sweating more in fear than from heat, Youngjohn tried the door. The heavy, tarnished brass latch clicked and the door swung slowly open, throwing daylight in a stream of swirling silvery dust motes in to musty darkness. Mashing straw hat in trembling hands and tremulously calling "Misus Linton", he shuffled across the foyer.

He had almost reached the massive staircase when a nauseating stench sent his ancient heart crashing through the soles of battered work boots.

"Gawd a'mighty," he muttered. In the parlour, a small figure hunched in a rocking chair, facing a set of closed drapes. Prudence Linton had lived much of her adult life there, frequently easing heavy velvet drapes aside to peer like an evil mouse at the great world outside, but Youngjohn needed no more than his nose to tell him she would no longer keep her solitary vigil.

Ol' mist Savauge would want all the details. He was going to have to take a close look.

Prudence's face under a seething mass of maggots was horribly swollen with decomposition. Foul-smelling ichor leaked from what was left of distended eyes and mouth from which a swollen tongue protruded. Prudence Linton died as she had lived, quietly sitting in her chair, an archaic floral pattern quilt across her knees.

Youngjohn backed slowly out. He knew this meant serious trouble and muttered "bogeyman's gonna come". Why the bogeyman would come he wasn't sure, but he glanced wildly about, eyes rolling in fear. The old mansion was still and dark, the air hot, stale and musty, overlaid with the smell of rotting cadaver. But not just any cadaver. The earthly remains of a Voodoo priestess. Youngjohn had heard the stories. This woman had been in league with dark things. God only knew what she had been doing alone all these years in this terrible house. His hand shook almost uncontrollably as he crossed himself. There was a creak from above and Youngjohn started violently, heart fairly jumping from emaciated chest.

"Lordy," he whimpered, peering around in terror.

Bogeyman was comin'.

On the second floor? Was that what caused the noise?

No. From fetid depths of the swamp. Bogeyman would come slinkin' and grinnin' through that open front door.

He had to get out!

The old gardener left the parlour and turned right, shuffling quickly along a dark, narrow hall beside the main staircase and down several steps to the musty kitchen. Muttering "bogeyman's gonna come" over and over, he shambled around an old oak table dominating the room. With trembling hands he shot the bolt on the servant's door and pulled on the wrought iron handle. Rusted hinges resisted. Gasping, he hauled again and the door opened, barely enough to allow passage. Garbage pulped underfoot and a swarm of flies instantly enveloped him. Unconscious of flies and brambles that raked his skin, Youngjohn scrambled around the corner.

Past carriage house blackberries.

Youngjohn came to an abrupt halt as his eye fell on those vines growing from their sinister mound. In crystal morning air the berry patch stood out in brilliant relief, every leaf and spine absolutely perfect, as though painted by some cosmic Rembrandt.

Lordy, the vines were ranker and stronger than they had been even a few minutes before.

With a squeak of fright, Youngjohn took off. As he gained the driveway, he was aware of Prudence Linton's front door standing wide open and the thought of her vengeful spirit flapping after him from dark, musty recesses panicked him further.

He was halfway down the drive, sobbing with gathering terror, when another cloud plunged the land back into gloom. Charred stumps seemed to take on a life of their own and Youngjohn, blinded by sweat and panic, crashed through a feral hedge in an explosion of leaves, dust and insects that made him double over and sneeze violently all the way across fields to the old slave quarters road. There was another hedge lining the old road that was really just a gap between thickets of red maple and elderberry, and he burst though it in another shower of pollen and insect life. Moving at an arthritic double time, he hustled down the highway to Lafayetteville as fast as trembling legs would carry him. He was so upset that he remembered his errand all the way to the Upstate Mercantile and the Spartan office of banker Egbert Savauge.