In this excerpt, Jabril Saleh is in his home state but an unfamiliar locale, investigating satanic voodoo ritual murders that may involve an old legend of the Louisiana swamps. In this scene, he's questioning a witness who gives swamp tours to tourists. Here goes....

The tour guide was ironically another Landry, and he was a relative of Mighty. He was a tad bit older by appearance, but Jabril never asked his age. “I got a lifetime in dis swamp and in de city,” began Willie Landry, who had insisted that Jabril call him Willie. “And I’ve never before seen most of what I’ve seen recently. I don’t tell this on my tours, but since you asked me I’ll answer you, young feller. See, I don’t rightly know what I saw running in my headlights, but I know I saw the head wasn’t human, and it was on two legs. It wasn’t even close to Halloween, either. It wasn’t no kind of costume party. On some of de cypress trees some of dese kids been painting symbols of devilment. I might have seen it four times since de hurricanes. Seen it on my tours, and I hope none of de tourists saw ‘em. I wouldn’t know if they summoned up a demon or not, but I just don’t believe in it. Satan ain’t never came to me before and I ain’t nevah seen a ghost anywhere at all. But I did have a prowler one time a few monts ago. You ever been to Louisiana in the summer time?”

“Grew up in them. Water can’t cool dat off,” Jabril nodded.

“So you know how the nighttime sounds out here, then. With the crickets and all. And you can imagine what would happen if you sleep t’rough dat every summer for as long as I have, then one summer night it all just stops.” The coincidence was that both Landries had been alerted by the same thing, silence.

“You’d stop sleeping and wake up.”

“And I kind of did, you know? Den I heard someone walking around my house right outside my bedroom window, and I woke up all de way. It was some kind of animal on four legs, and I thought it might have just been some possum or raccoon, but it wasn’t dat. When it was sniffing around my window, I figured it was just a dog. Den I saw a shadow on my curtains, and it was too tall for dat. I couldn’t make out much ‘cept it was tall, and I could hear it sniffing some more. Then it left de window, and tried my back door! I mean it jiggled the handle like a man! I ain’t no coward, but dat scared de hell out of me, sir.”

“Naturally,” Jabril sympathized.

“Well, someone outside said ‘Just knock and ask him if you can use de phone’, and then my neighbor’s dog behind my house started barking and growling and making a fuss. My neighbor turned on his light, and it or dey ran off. I just can’t imagine what ever it was that stopped all the crickets around from making any noise at all. I’ve seen possum tracks, dog tracks, you name it. But they never made everything get quiet. And even the way the noise came back was from the direction they left. They ran south, and the crickets’ noise came back in a wave from the north. My neighbor sure didn’t know what to make of it, either. He and his wife didn’t see who it was.”

“What about the tracks? Did you see any?”

“Oh yeah! I forgot! It was funny, man,” Willie chuckled. “See, there was only one track ‘cause the side of my house is almost all grass. Right by my back door, there was a track, and the prowler’s dog had stepped just where he had! Made it look like the dog track had a person’s heel!” Willie was laughing a full laugh now, amused by the coincidence of the human and canine foot prints.

“What kind of shoe tread did the human footprint have?” Jabril asked. Willie stopped laughing then and looked wide-eyed, but very serious as a realization came over his face.

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