“First, they fired him from the sawmill,” Mrs. Booker goes on, “even though the foreman said Sam was the best man he had. But the klukkers had a lot of power then. So Sam went back to hauling pulpwood, like his uncles. Dee went to work, too, at the dollar store. But she caught a lot of trouble there, from the other women. They were all jealous of her. The men wouldn’t leave Dee alone, either, white and black. Always trying to touch her and stir up trouble. Sam should have taken her back to Detroit right then, but he had too much pride. He didn’t like to back down, and back then that was usually a fatal condition for a black man in Mississippi.”

I can tell from Serenity’s gaze that she feels bonded to this woman in a way I never could.

“It was my fault, much as anybody’s,” she goes on. “If I’d told Sam to go, he probably would have. But I didn’t. I was selfish and wanted him close to me.”

Serenity says, “When did the demons come into the picture, Mrs. Booker?”

“Pretty soon after that. They took Sam and Dee right out their house one July night, just up the road from here. It happened so fast I didn’t even hear a dog bark. Turned out later they’d killed Sam’s dog. Cut its throat. Anyway, I didn’t know anything was wrong till dawn the next day, when poor Dee came stumbling up my steps in a bloody slip and nothing else. No shoes . . . nothing.”

Serenity is staring at the old woman with hypnotic intensity. “What happened to her?”

“The devils came in black masks and knocked Sam out. Then they loaded him and Dee into a panel truck and drove them to the edge of the Lusahatcha Swamp. The men blindfolded them and tied their hands. Then they put them in a boat. There was three, she said. Three boats. They set out through that damned swamp with lanterns on the bows, Sam and Dee in different boats. They trolled slow for a long time, and then they hit land. When they pulled off Dee’s blindfold, she saw a cypress tree bigger than any she’d ever seen before. She said one of the men showed her old rusted chains hanging down from one of the limbs. Said they’d been hanging there since slave times.”

In the pause that follows this statement, Serenity shudders.

“Sam had come to by that time, but his hands were tied, and he couldn’t do nothing. They started beating him. Dee screamed, but the devils just laughed. Said there wasn’t nobody to hear but snakes and alligators.”

“Were they still wearing masks at that time, Mrs. Booker?”