Chapter 19. MISSISSIPPI GOTHIC: A Substack Original Supernatural Southern Gothic Horror.
Small ghost town. Hidden secrets. Demons. Fallen angels. Root magic. And a woman who can see ghosts— Now forced to stop a crazed pastor from awakening a god.
Before you get started: I want to say thank you for joining me on my “Watch Me Draft a Novel” series. If you want to know more about the story I am drafting, check out this post here: Trigger Warnings. There you will find the introduction, glossary, inspiration photos, and trigger warnings. (please see the trigger warnings before reading) I want to add that this series is an 18+ adult fiction with spice. Enjoy.
Socials: @authoreanoble | E.A. Noble
© 2025 E.A. Noble, All Rights Reserved
Chapter 19:
Devil gon’ shout! Devil gon’ praise!
After I made sure Granny and Niecy were safely heading back home, Jamie and I took off out of the church parking lot in his car. Rain poured from a blue-black sky, pounding the pavement like fist. Lightning tore across the horizon, turning the world white for half a second before plunging it back into darkness. The road emptied fast. Cars disappeared down side streets, as Jamie turned to get on the highway, two cars were pulled over on the shoulder. The back of the front car was crumpled like foil. Hollow black holes from a ghost of a man met mine. Sirens from emergency vehicles blasted behind us, coloring the night in hues of blues and reds. I twisted in the passenger seat, looking out the window at the ghost as he wandered into traffic into a bright white light, calling him home. Jamie merged into oncoming traffic. I flipped back into my seat, Revvy on my mind.
“Are you sure Revvy is going to target GG?” Jamie stepped on the gas, passing slow moving vehicles.
“Yes, I’m sure. They’re using Revvy as their backup plan.”
“Fuck!”
“We need Haint Blue,” I said, trying to figure out ways I could stop my uncle. If he possesses an unborn child, it could run the risk of killing the mother.
Jamie barked out a dry laugh. “You think she’s gonna let us walk in her house and start painting her damn doors blue? What do we tell her? ‘Hey, your baby daddy came back from the grave and is trying to steal the life of your unborn child? But no worries, we have Haint Blue?’”
“I don’t know, Jamie,” I said. “But we can’t sit back and let this happen. I don’t want Jacobs, Odean, or any of them to use my uncle. We have to stop it”
“You’re starting to sound like a broken record, damn. Not even in death, a brother can rest without them trying to exploit us. Just puns in their sick-ass games.” Jamie veered left, speeding around another driver who forgot how to drive in rain.
“Slow down, you trying to kill us before we get there?” I said.
Jamie’s fist was tight around the wheel. He lightened up, reducing speed, but kept to the left lane. The window wipers flung rain away. On any other day, the rain was calming. I would be snuggled in my blankets, YuYu playing for the twelfth time in the background. Usually, Revvy’s kids come over on Sundays. Revvy Jr. tucked behind me, getting popcorn all in my sheets, but I let him. And his little brother at the foot of my bed, sitting in some awkward position that only kids could do. Just thinking about it was putting a crook in my neck.
If Revvy was alive, he would be terrorizing Granny in the kitchen while she cooked. Trying to taste the food as if he was a chef judging a cooking competition. By now, Granny would have taken off a shoe and thrown it at him, banning him from the kitchen.
A part of me believed that my uncle was still my uncle, even in his ant infested, rotting meat suit. His skin filled with pus and boils, miss-matched skin stabled to his body. Then the other part of me believes it’s too late. But if it’s too late for him, then it’s too late for me, for us, and it couldn’t be. This was not a game, playing gods with people’s lives.
“We gon’ need backup,” Jamie said. He tapped the radio button and the speakers crackled before a ringing filled the car.
“Jamie-bear.”
“Hey, my pooty tootie, snuggums wooty.”
I scrunched my nose and side-eyed him.
“What?” He bucked his eyes.
“How’s day?” Vex asked through the speakers.
“Not so good,”Jamie said. “We’re probably gonna need your help. Long story short, our dead uncle might go full boo hag tonight.”
“Location.”
I grabbed Jamie’s phone and texted pooty tootie, snuggums wooty the address.
After a quick stop at the hardware store, we eventually pulled up to GG’s house. The storm had turned the neighborhood into a wind-swept mess. Debris tumbled into the gutters in front of GG’s yellow house. The door of the wire fence hung half open. Toys were scattered everywhere. A plastic truck upside down in a puddle surrounded by overgrown grass.
The house was small, white panels, a porch with a few steps broken. The lights were off. I glanced at the clock glowing on the dashboard.
3: 01 p.m.
Were we already too late?
Jamie must have thought the same. We looked at each other, unspoken words dangling in between us. He nodded, I nodded, and gripped the handle of the can of paint then opened the car door. We rushed up the porch steps, and knocked hard. We waited. My foot tapped against the warped boards.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Answer, answer, answer…”
Finally, shuffling footsteps approached from inside.
“Who the hell is it?” GG’s voice shouted on the other side.
I let out a breath. She’s okay. We weren’t too late. Tension eased out of my bones.
“It’s Ahunni and Jamie,” I called. “Revvy’s niece and nephew.”
Locks clacked, the door swung open, but stopped when the upper lock’s chain pulled taunt. GG peaked out, once confirming, she slammed the door shut and unlocked the rest of the door, swinging the door open. She stood there in her bonnet, bra, round belly and short shorts.
“What are y’all doing here?”
Jamie and I glanced at each other then back to her.
“I know this might sound crazy,” I said. “but I think you’re in danger.”
***
GG poured us tea while we sat at her kitchen table. The kitchen smelled like old grease, with a scent of lemon powder dusted in the air. I looked out of the cracked blinds from the kitchen’s window. The rain hadn’t let up yet. GG wobbled toward the cabinets to grab a box of crackers. Without looking at us she dunked one straight into her tea and popped it in her mouth.
“Y’all want some cheese crackers? She asked between bites. “Seen them folks eating these on that British cooking show. Looked good as hell. Been craving them daily.”
“No thank you,” I said, wrapping my cold hands around the hot mug.
“Now who’s trying to get me?”
I explained the best I could about Revvy. Boo hags. The baby. Leaving out the parts about a preacher in his buried god underneath Bullseye Lake. One step at a time. When I finished, GG had dunked nearly half the cracker sleeve into her tea. She leaned back, staring at us.
“So, y’all crazy?” she said, sitting the cookies down and rubbing her belly.
“I know it sounds that way,” I said. “But if you let us protect your house, you should be safe. Boo hags don’t like Haint Blue. We can paint your windows and door. Any entrances.”
Jamie chimed in. “Boo hags are nocturnal creatures. Haint Blue, salt, rice, stuff like that can keep them from crossing your threshold.”
“Right. When Granny found out I could see ghosts,” I added. “she made sure our whole house was fortified.”
Jamie added, “Bottle trees help too, but they don’t work on boo hags.”
GG’s belly looked like it was about to pop. It jumped. “Well, that was fun,” she said. “but my baby is taking a nap in the other room and he’ll be waking up any moment now. So, umm. Thanks, but I’m good.” She wobbled to the front of the door. “Y’all can leave now.”
“GG, please. We’re just trying to help you.”
“Y’all done helped me plenty.” She opened the door and pointed into the rain. “If I see some paranormal shit creeping through my window, I’ll call you.”
“I haven’t finished my tea,” Jamie said, sipping down piping hot chamomile.
“Baby, take the tea with you.” GG shoved us onto the porch. The door slammed shut.
Lock.
Lock.
Lock.
Jamie looked into the rain, “Honestly, that went as I expected minus the tea.”
***
Thirty minutes later, and a few streets over, the car pointing at GG’s house, the clouds had rolled in casting the neighborhood in a dark-grey blackness. I’ve bitten my nails down to the fat meat. I was tearing away another fingernail when Jamie pulled out a small box. The top read: Dryer Sheets. I remembered the square sheets from the first time I visited Nocious. Before Jamie could pull one out, I snatched the box from his hands, rolled down my window, and chucked the box into the street.
“What the fuck, bish!” Jamie yelled.
“You are not getting high on the job.” Rain water splashed onto my dress as I rolled the window back up.
“Do you know how much that cost?”
“I don’t care.”
“You owe me money,” Jamie’s right hand shook, his legs bouncing almost uncontrollably.
“And you owe it to yourself to admit you have a problem.” I scanned his entire body.
“I don’t have a problem, bish. I have anxiety.”
“And doing drugs help?”
“It calms me.”
“And you’re going to look me in my Black ass face and tell me there aren’t other options that don’t involve hard drugs?”
“These aren’t hard drugs! I’m not no fiend.”
“You’re sure? Look at yourself.”
Jamie had placed his left hand over his right to stop from quaking. When he noticed, he took one deep breath, relaxed his shoulders, then exhaled.
“You wouldn’t understand—”
“Then tell me Jamie. You’ve been gone for over two years at university. At first, I didn’t think that would affect us. Then you stopped calling home as often, when I text you, you wouldn’t answer me until the following month, if at all. I chalked it up to you having fun, doing your own thing. I couldn’t be mad about it. You knew I was always here if you needed me. And then, you come home and I don’t know anything about you anymore. Your lover, your friends, it’s like I’ve lost you. I mean, I knew you did weed before, but like…what is going on Jamie?”
“Nothing, bish.”
“Nothing my ass. Tell me what’s up with you.”
Jamie turned his face to his window. Rain poured down the glass, making it hard to look through.
“Jamie, do I have to beg you to let me in?”
“No.” The word came out so softly I almost didn’t hear it.
The rain slammed on top of the roof of the car amplifying the silence between us.
I wanted Jamie to be okay. I look at him, his hands tucked between his thighs as if he’s pinning himself in place. This man was twice my size and yet, at this moment, he was small, the distance between us felt like a mile. I lost one uncle to gun violence and I’m losing my cousin to what? Drugs? Depression? Life? Even in the midst of fighting literal demons, the people I love keep slipping between my fingertips. How could I save the world when I couldn’t save the person sitting next to me?
After a while, thunder clapped in the distance, Jamie finally spoke. “You want to know how I met Vex?”
I didn’t know what this had to do with anything, but I didn’t want this life line to be snatched. “Yes.”
“I was on top of my dorm building roof about to jump.”
I sat up in my seat. Shoulders stiffening. What? Jump? When? What? What? What? I swallowed the questions attempting to push past my lips. My heart sped up, and I reached for my necklace that I knew wasn’t there. My hand rested at the empty spot.
Jamie continued to look down at the steering wheel.
“I had just got my grades for my second semester. Failed most of my classes. I guess I got caught up with college life. I was away from home for the first time. I mean, growing up in a small southern town. I mean, I ain’t never pretended to be gay, but I had to know how to fight. Every fucking day, it felt like. Finally, I moved to a place where it wasn’t a fist fight to be me. Nobody was trying to pray the gay away. Nobody tells me I’m a sin or what I’m attracted to is sinful. Bible thumping and shit. For a moment, I was able to be myself, so I thought.” Jamie sighed, then rested his head on the headrest. “You know, what’s wild.” His voice trembled while he chuckled. “I think I knew myself better when I was home fighting every damn body, because when I got far away, when I didn’t have to throw fist, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I started keeping up with the next Betty. Trying to fit in. I had a lot of sex. I mean damn, just booty cat all over the place. I used protection. Stayed getting my biannual.” Jamie finally looked at me with a half crooked smile.
His pink beard lushes against his brown skin. He didn’t start talking again until I gave him a head nod in approval.
“After all that, experiencing. I still felt a deep loneliness. I became a body, passing bodies through the night, experiencing bodies, but never connecting deeper with anybody. I found myself fighting a different type of fight. One I wasn’t prepared for. So, I did what I thought would get me through the next day. One pill here, a sniff there. Addiction felt like someone else’s problem, not mine. Soon, grades were tanking. Fake ass friend groups fell apart. I went numb and I couldn’t come home. Granny is so proud of me. I couldn’t disappoint her. Then you…I couldn’t.”
Jamie smoothed down his pants then balled the fabric into his fist. I reached over, placed my hand on the back of his.
“I’m here,” I said. “I’m listening.”
He shook his head. “It was bad, bish. I couldn’t see a way out of feeling like shit every day. Physical fist? Yes. But the mental ones? Emotional ones? I just wanted…to not fight no more. I’m tired of fighting, cousin.”
Thunder snapped closer now. Tears trickled down his face. Jamie swiped them away.
“Chile, anyways,” he said. “I went to the top of my dorm’s roof. I was thinking about it. I didn’t think I would do it. But I thought, how easy it would be. You know. To stop the pain? As I looked down, my view was toward the back alley, a portal opened up and out spilled a big ass beast. You know at first, I was like…let me get the hell outta here. If I was gon’ die, it definitely wouldn’t be by nobody trying to eat my ass up.”
“I mean…” I said, with a playful smirk.
Jamie burst out laughing. “See yo mind always in the gutter.”
We chuckled.
“But nah, when I saw Vex, that Black instinct to run just vanished. He was hurting. His blood was this purple-ish color pouring from his side. I climbed down. Before I knew it, I was at his side. It took me some maneuvering, but I had him in my bed, trying to fix him. He was losing blood so fast, I tried everything to stop it.”
Jamie gripped my hand. “I never needed someone to live more than that moment. I didn’t want to fail again, Ahunni. I…”
Jamie tilted his chin up, as if that would prevent the tears pouring down his face.
I was on him, wrapping my arms around his neck, pulling my cousin into me. He poured himself into my shoulders as rain hammered against the roof, as lightning flashed, and more thunder followed, this time so close that the car rocked.
“I love you,” I said, squeezing him tight. We both have been so lonely. If only we could have just called, picked up the phone, and said I’m here, maybe it wouldn’t have gotten so far. All this time, I thought he was strong, able to handle his own. But even giants need a place to rest. I wish I could’ve been there when he needed me the most. But I am here now. I squeezed him until he was finished crying.
There was a loud thump, then the car shook.
“Jamie!” Vex called. His face pressed up against the window shield.
I jumped. Vex was in transition. Half-beast, half-man, all hair.
“Open,” he said.
Jamie unlocked the car door. Vex through open the drivers side, crawling into Jamie’s lap. His body pressing up against the car horn. His huge palms covered Jamie’s cheeks.
“You leak,” Vex said, studying his face. “She burn you? She die?”
“What!” I said.
“No.” Jamie laughed.
“That’s not funny, bruh. I didn’t burn my cousin. Weirdo.”
Vex body pressed up against the horn again. I attempted to push Vex off of Jamie and out the car door.
“You are waking up the entire neighborhood,” I said.
Vex licked Jamie’s tears.
“Okay, can y’all get a damn room!” I gave up and crossed my arms.
After some time, Jamie and Vex were balled up in the backseat. Jamie rested on Vex’s chest, fast asleep with a little smile on his lips.
Vex, on the other hand, was staring daggers at me.
I stared back before turning around in my seat. Okay, we started on the bad side of things. I almost burned him to a crisp, but did he die though? Geeze, let it go.
The rain turned into a drizzle. Regardless, I’m happy my cousin found Vex. He wasn’t alone, not anymore. Not ever again.
Chapter Question: Who’s your favorite cousin? Have you spoke to them lately? Call them.
Chapter 19’s song: Scary (feat. Rico Nansty) by Megan Thee Stallion.
I chose this song because, come on. Jamie would be jamming to this. LOL
Schedule Release & Author Commentary:
Chapter 20 releases July 22nd, 2026
Heads up. Chapter 20 is the last free chapter. Afterwards it will be for my paid subscribers only. Your paid subscription helps an Indie author to not only keep the lights on, but for human art, human writing, and it goes toward developmental work as well as copy/line editing. I want to update Mississippi Gothic’s cover to a full spread, and that will cost $500 dollars. Your subscriptions help me with that. If you can afford five bucks a month or $50 a year, I truly appreciate.
Thank you!
Lastley, in order for me to finish before my move date, which is July, I didn’t do a full copy/line edit. If there is anything that stood out too much or a sentence that was too clunky, please point it out so I can update.
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Stuck in a conference and won’t get to read until Sunday. (tears)
This is soooooooooooooooo good. Your characters are funny as hell, they are alive and tangible. It moves, the characters sound like actual people, the humor feels culturally specific rather than manufactured, and the family grief beneath the supernatural plot gives the chapter emotional substance. I was never bored. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!