There’s a ripe blackness that coats Snake’s Hollow, like night left her shawl over the entire town. It is thick, it is alive, and to breathe it in is to choke down thick snake smoke and the ripe red cayenne peppers left in rum at the peristyle, our voodoo house of worship, where the lwa, or spirits that guard us, descend Jacob’s Ladder from our spiritual motherland of Gineh, to dance with their human devotees.

Even the blackness frightens the lwa, and Bondye, or God. He hides his winking moon face tonight, and even his Pleiadean smile is veiled by ghoulish smoke.

Call the blackness an omen, call it wreaths of sin like dancing pines in a winter gale. Out of all the humans in my small Louisiana hometown, only I, my granmamma, and my best friend Pharah can see the curse of Snake’s Hollow between our three human pairs of simple countryfolk eyes.

The night is full of haints, the church bells toll on their own, and sometimes, you gotta feed the crossroads. That’s what the blackness brings – rougarou, zombies, haints, the Petro Nation – and they stay away because of the archangel Raphael and Papa Legba, the St. Peter of my ancestral lwa, approximate to the saints of Gineh – with the sweet Rada Island, the fiery Petro Nation, and the Scooby Doo Ghedeland - in Voodoo, always on the town’s edge, but someday, the monsters will come marching right on in. That I know for sure, that it’s only a matter of time before your shadows catch up with you, as stains cross generations down here in the swamps, and the sins of yesteryear are as thick and chalky as curdled milk.

Tonight I’m gonna meet them.

The blackness snakes across the woods like Spanish moss, then the ancient curse of Snake’s Hollow enters people’s dreams every night, and my God-fearing granmamma makes a sound in her sleep that could curdle new milk and skim the cream off the cows. When I was younger, barely in elementary school, my guardian angel Raphael would cover me with his old white wings and sing me to sleep in the tongue of angels, and the next day in church, Papa Leggie would have ten more lines on his bark whorl face. Legba and God, they’re poker buddies, or so Raff tells me.

I wonder if they gamble over which town’s turn it is to vanish into the blackness next.

Winter down here is chill and muggy, and maybe I’m riled up on Maya Angelou’s poetry that sweet momma loves to read to me before our dinner prayers, but I’m brave, and Raff is asleep on the roof, and not a soul is awake in this silly little town. They’re all tired out from church - my friends’ parents tried to get slices of salvation just like hot apple pie, and there clearly ain’t enough to go around, or the damn shadows wouldn’t be out here roiling dangerously and watching me.

At the end of Still I Rise tonight, momma says “Be brave, May Uriel Laveau, be strong, because this world will beat stubborn women down, and you aren’t worth anything if you aren’t stubborn as a mule and salt rich as the earth herself.” I wish I was like Storm in X-Men and could clear this place of the nightly darkness with my superpowers, but it’s more than just foul weather at play. Here, the daily hauntings of daylight creep alive as shadows across the weeping willows come evening, and the trees scream in the tongues of winds for release from the haints that climb them.

The blackness is in the bones of this town, fabled for Calf Springs that will heal and Snakes Springs that will curse, that old damned hanging ground. There are so many heroes in my comics and movies – Storm, Lando, Lieutenant Uhura, Nubia, Shuri, Finn, Black Panther, Vixen – and I got a cape and light-up plastic light saber from a few years ago from when I still used to play make believe. I put them on as a shield of sorts, full of sweet childhood memories, then crawl out the window, onto the gutter, and down the widow’s walk, and –

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Wings in my face, strong hands at my waist. I’m hauled from the widow’s walk back into my room like a little girl picking flowers by my stubborn guardian angel.

The archangel Raphael just popped up like a daisy from a grave at a funeral wake. Jack’s rabbit if he isn’t fast as a hare. I could have sworn I lulled him to sleep with some of momma’s oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. No one can see Raff except me and granmamma, the Laveau witches, and he’s been with me since birth. I love him, but he’s a pain in my butt sometimes. Well, that’s most of the time, now that I think about it.

His scarred face is all stern, and he sits me down on my bed, and dang it am I in for a talking.

“May! What did I tell you about going out at night? It’s too dangerous for you to even fathom! I didn’t raise you to lose you, girl.” His voice gets all gentle in the end, and he scratches his shaved curls. He looks at me as if I am a fragile dandelion blossom whose seeds could be blown to the wind with the slightest whisper of a breeze.

Perhaps there is a grain of truth to his fierce protection of me, after all – the Woman in White, my cursed great granmama Lailah, is always waiting. I take after that particular family ghost the most, after all.

I squint at Raff in the darkness of my room. He’s got skin brown as me, and I used to not believe that he was an angel when I was younger. I would say angels were only blonde women from the Hallmark Channel that played harps flying around the manger of baby Jesus, but Raff has a flaming sword and isn’t very good with babies. He thinks they’re cute and all, but he’s been a bachelor since Literal Day 1. You should see him with my best friend Pharah’s newborn sister Rosalie. He almost dropped her!

“You didn’t raise me to be a scaredy cat either, Raff. I’ve seen the Baron come down at fetes and watched my uncle get ridden by Ogou and swallow ghost peppers whole. There’s a magic to my town, and a curse of some kind that only I can see, and I’m going to save it. I won’t let Snake’s Hollow be another of Leggie’s bets. It’s not fair for God to play craps with Leggie over my own home town!”

“Legba isn’t trying to gamble Snake’s Hollow away, May,” Raff sighs, sitting gently down next to me. He runs a finger through my twin puffs and fixes a stray curl. “He’s trying to protect it. We all are, lwa and angel alike.”

The blackness exhales outside my window – it always comes at the stroke of 3:00 AM, the witching hour, then leaves by dawn, when the sun is coming up. The howls of the rougarou on the bayou can keep me awake all night when the curse grows thick enough. When the black magic breathes, it sounds like the whistle of a ghost train, and when it leaves, it’s like a tea kettle burning.

Raff makes the sign of the cross, only his fingers draw holy fire on the air, and the cross floats to me where it kisses my heart. Blessings from angels never hurt, but I don’t need his protection. I need his answers.

“You’re funny, Raff, you ain’t a proper man, and you’re not a good angel. Angels don’t lie, after all.”

Raff narrows his sunny yellow eyes, the irises of them an unearthly golden amber. They always remind me of dawn over a new age – an age of freedom. “What am I lying about?”

“Bets. The lwa make bets all the time. Leggie’s a trickster, after all. So am I – so I would know.”

Raff harrumphs, crossing his arms as he stakes his sword in the wood of my floor. “Legba loves you, May. He’s keeping the blackness away. We all are. Now go back to bed. You got school tomorrow.” He hugs me then takes off my cape and tries to tuck me in. I squirm and push him away, then squiggle back into my cape as a second blanket.

“I don’t need you pulling the blankets up to my chin Raff, I’m eleven, not seven. Anyways, this cape is my super shield – I need it to sleep well.”

Raff smiles like river pearls are in his mouth, then laughs. “Night, May-flower.” He climbs up onto the roof and soon I can hear him snoring like a foghorn.

I watch the blackness until dawn drives it out.

I never get much sleep here, where the whippoorwill moans, and the sparrow breaks her wings on Southern soil.

The night is alive in Snake’s Hollow.

In the dark, the Dead have names.