Ashless Hollow was the name on a sign, for it was known locally as Sabbath Branch. The gloom of midday departed long before night. Cheerless dark marched over the fens and bogs, light of the sun expelled. Bloated fireflies blazed to leave tracers like slashes, but other light danced like candles. Corpse lights, townsfolk said, lit by spirits where the world was thin. Most avoid the stretch of woods. Whispers, like a sigh, slept under the chorus of the land, yet one strained to listen. Whippoorwill and crows kept court in the canopy above with their grave talk. Below, where the filthy waters gathered, frogs and toads cursed the miserable heat. Rancid sweat beaded on the flesh, hot and feverish. Intimate heat was feverish like an infection that never burned out. The worst, at least to Marie, was how it tainted the taste of each inhalation. Every mouthful of air burst with a miasma of sullen, drowned grave. It settled on the body, worked its way under the clothes. The trees guarded, encircled, and were solemn guards. Uncut, they had grown tall, impervious to time and decay.

All reached Ashless Hollow, though it loathed giving up anything interred inside. Waters from Lear Mountain swept filth from Hemlock Hurst to congeal in the mire. A baby doll was half buried in muck, hand outstretched to be saved. Marie's mind lingered on its dead gaze. She'd escaped the woods, swore to never return, yet she lied in her old bed. She kept her gaze from the window's glass, and the shift of figures trapped beyond. Up from beneath the house, the burble of water was like the last gasp of a drowned man.

Anything was better than the images that prowled the mind. Pieces of lives drudged on. Each came to her in a nonsensical puzzle. This soup of memories was slopped together, a prison of misery built by despair. Chunks floated to the surface of her mind.

She shook her head, though the mind returned to Eleanor, the name of the La Voison house. The only family to escape the Van Lear plantation, they'd sought this land. There were lines in the world, cracks in reality, and they were a powerful web work. At the center of one such catcher of power was the house. Eleanor, named for its architect, had been born into the focal power. Every board and every nail had been cut and set to precise geometrical angles.

Memory of Bethany's lessons upon the formulas was numerous yet clear. Marie shook her head to dispel the thoughts. A blessed void swept away strange words and stranger shapes.

Her clear mind found the voices. Under the forest's garbled murmur, whispers clung to the ear. Marie had fled this touch of madness. Flung through the filthy and decay words gibbered to be heard. Language of the lost, Bethany had said, and tried to soothe her daughter.

"No," Marie snapped at the room, and wished she'd never touched the book. Bethany had manipulated Tim into giving it to her, she was sure.

The book was passed down, mother to daughter, from before they came to the New World. It has moved with them to Africa. Every holder added to it, and mastered its teachings. Leather of the tome was human, ink tattooed on the pages. When Marie had asked where the fresher pages were harvested, Bethany had only stated sacrifice was intimate. Ancestral knowledge upon it was beyond this life.

Before Marie had run from Hemlock Hurst, she had opened the book. Bethany had been training her, she had realized later, and that Marie was to become the next La Voison to sail on the astral sea. Games, stories, and lessons had all been instruction. Ancestral knowledge was passed down from mother to daughter. All led to the day she took custody of the sum of the family knowledge.

Summoned by the thought a figure moved. She shot up, eyes wild. The house, Eleanor, had waited for her return, a deep voice insisted. No matter the distance traveled there was a piece of one left where they were reared. Dreams dragged Marie back, and the book waited for her. Heavy upon the table it set. She felt it, like a cold flame that was bitter on the skin. It insisted; invisible strings pulled at the mind, gentle yet relentless. Tim left the book in the kitchen, which weighted on her.

"No," she closed her eyes, and tried to will away the shades, "this is just a nightmare."

Any evidence was to be weighed. Marie loved the research in the field, library, or web. But, there were unusual incidents that defied explanation. The curse in the La Voison line was inescapable. Most purported supernatural acts were explainable. Some were so strange to defy logical minds, but were left to keep its mystery. Marie was interested in truth; however, only that lied in the boundaries of the sane. Her blood line was of no interest to her.

Heritage was a curious spirit, she felt. Through blood it is bound to the living. Somewhere between flesh and the land, the inherited sense of the world was almost invisible. It possessed all, left one prisoner. Freedom was a delusion, a farce that eased the burden of the chains carried. Until the shackles were gifted to the next generation, they ground them down. Marie had left, when Bethany had passed it on to her.

Fortune in the city was the lie she told herself. In her old bed, the truth was laid open to Marie's heart. La Voison curse, the madness, it was the catalyst that drove her to succeed. No choice but to overcome, the stories told lifted her out of that fate. Ever higher her skills, moxie, savvy, and intuition drove the eerie success. Never would she step inside Eleanor again, she'd sworn. Fate laughs at the idea of permanence.

Here in her bed, inside Eleanor, and on La Voison land, all attempts to escape were thwarted. The bitter laugh fought off sleep for a moment. Dark dreams took her, held then release. Nightmares and waking airs intertwined. Whispers woke her, lulled her.