“Does he bother you?” Eugene asked.
“No. Sometimes he goes away for days at a time, off to the bayou or someplace." She didn't sound particularly interested in where he went or what he did. "Either way, I'm used to pretending he’s not here.”
“Is that what Father Latimer does?”
She did pause then, and glanced sideways at Eugene as if sizing him up. Eugene was twelve and coltish, his limbs splayed at awkward angles as he grew into them. Mary Beth was a year younger, still round-faced with baby fat, her knees and fingers stained green from the garden, though she was careful to keep her dress spotless.
“No,” she finally said. “Father Latimer can’t see him.”
Eugene didn’t know what to make of that. “Is he a ghost?” Louisiana was teeming with ghosts; at twelve he knew all the stories. Mary Beth’s stranger didn’t look how he pictured them, but he inspired the same response: a cold, shivery feeling that ran up and down Eugene’s spine, like he was looking at something he wasn’t supposed to see.
“He’s a not a ghost,” Mary Beth said. “He’s very solid. You can touch him, if you want.”
Eugene shook his head and returned to his daisy chain. He didn’t want to touch the man. He didn’t even want to see his face.
“Mama says I shouldn’t talk about him,” she continued, “so you’ll have to keep him a secret.”
Like the rougarou curse. “What happens if I talk?” Eugene whispered, dry-mouthed.
But Mary Beth just shrugged. “Nothing much. Mama calls him my imaginary friend. He doesn’t mind us talking, but no one else will believe it. She says if I tell the priest about him, the church’ll try to drive him out like the devil.”
Eugene snuck a glance back over his shoulder. “Is he the devil?”
“Don’t know. I don’t like talking to the priest anyhow.” Mary Beth twisted the final flower stems together and placed the crown on her head, as primly as any imagined princess. “Mama says I need to go to confession every week so people don’t ask questions, but I don’t like it. Don’t tell anyone that, either. Apparently, it ain't right to spread rumors about a priest.”
Eugene never had anything as interesting as the devil to talk about in confession, but the thought of taking the stranger into the church made his stomach turn over and his palms itch. The man seemed misplaced enough in the courtyard, but in the church itself, in the quiet shadows of the confessional—there was something sacrilegious about it. The stranger didn’t belong anywhere near Christian ground.
“I won’t tell,” Eugene said.
An hour later his mother came to collect him, and as he rose and brushed the earth from his knees, he looked up at just the wrong moment and caught the stranger’s gaze across the yard. He froze, his heart flooded with some nameless, primal dread. The man leaned forward on the bench, his elbows on his knees, black suit sharp in the sun, and crooked his finger, beckoning Eugene closer. Eugene looked to his mother, but as Mary Beth had promised, she seemed to look right through the man. Eugene took a step back and reached for her hand. The man sat up straighter and seemed to laugh, a soundless smile on his lips. A cloud passed overhead, its shadow drifting over the garden, and when Eugene blinked, the man was gone.