Keeper of the Souls

Meridian, Mississippi

The mystical divide between good and evil was gossamer thin on August 2, 1964, exactly one month after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. Change was in the air, and the inherent danger that frequently accompanies it-a danger that would lurk inside the shadows where preternatural entities abide.

Thirty-one days after the ink dried on the historic document, Edgar DeLonge, Sheriff of Lauderdale County and a staunch White Knight of the Ku Klux Klan, was watching a reenactment of the signing on the evening news. The outspoken lawman was fuming over the images on the screen, when a drunken Neusome Krutchner arrived at his door with a vicious lie on his tongue.

Fueled by bigotry, a twisted sense of justice, and determined to ensure the Colored residents of his district didn't get any bright ideas about equality, DeLonge enlisted his deputy to exact Mississippi's special brand of violence on the François family, proud Black farmers who dared to hold their heads high in a land that sought to crush them.

But the sheriff and his deputy underestimated the matriarch of the François clan.

Elizabeth Anne François was no ordinary woman. Everyone in the close-knit community of Colored farmers knew she did spiritual work. Rumors that Elizabeth served the Loa with both hands, practicing good and evil medicine, were circulating on the wings of fear-filled whispers since she was a small child. àse, the eerie-looking one-eyed cat that always followed her around and never seemed to age, served as fodder for the gossips.

But only Oludumare, her ancestors, spirit guides, allies, and divinity knew about the soul snatching.

What awaited DeLonge and company was not submission, but a reckoning that would leave them embroiled in the spiritual maelstrom swirling around Elizabeth Anne François, one that would leave all and sundry with blood on their hands that no amount of soap and water could wash off.