The pot of stew I had simmering on the stove began to boil over violently, though it had been cooking at a steady temperature for hours. And when she looked at me with those bottomless eyes, I felt as though she could see every secret sin I'd ever committed, every cruel thought I'd ever harbored. Deline's assigned duties were simple. Attend to Madame Lavo's personal needs, maintain her wardrobe, and assist with correspondence and social arrangements.
On the surface, she performed these tasks with flawless efficiency. Margarite's clothing was always immaculately pressed. Her hair was arranged in the latest fashions. Her rooms were kept spotless, but within a week, Margarite began to show signs of severe distress.
She stopped eating regular meals, complaining that food had lost its taste. She suffered from nightmares that left her screaming in the darkness, though she could never remember what she had dreamed. Dark circles appeared beneath her eyes. Her hands developed a tremor that no amount of laudanum could calm.
On the evening of May 22nd, exactly one week after Deline's arrival, Margarite confronted her husband in his study. According to testimony later provided by Moses, who was serving drinks that evening and overheard the conversation, Margarite was nearly hysterical. "She watches me, James. Constantly.
Even when I cannot see her, I can feel her eyes on me, and when she touches me, when she brushes my hair or fastens my dress, her fingers are ice cold, and I feel something draining from me, like she's pulling the life out through my skin." "You're being ridiculous," James replied, though Moses noted that his voice lacked conviction. "She's a servant doing her assigned tasks." "If you're unwell, I'll send for Dr. Bochamp."
"No doctor can help with this," Margarite hissed. "That woman is not what she appears. I see things in the mirror when she stands behind me. Shadows that move wrong, faces that aren't hers reflected where hers should be.
Last night, I woke to find her standing over my bed, just watching me in the darkness. When I cried out, she simply smiled and said, "I was checking to ensure you were resting comfortably, madam. But her eyes, God help me, James." Her eyes were glowing.
"Enough!" James slammed his hand on the desk. "I will not tolerate this hysteria. You will compose yourself or I'll have you confined to your rooms until you regain your senses."
Margarite stared at her husband for a long moment, and Moses later said that her expression shifted from fear to something like pity. "She has you already, doesn't she? I can see it in your face. The way your eyes linger on her."
"The way you find excuses to be in whatever room she's working in. You think you're developing an infatuation, but it's not desire, James. It's a hook being set, and you're too arrogant to realize you're already caught." She turned and left the study. 3 days later, Margarite Lavo was found dead at the bottom of the main staircase after a fatal fall.
The coroner ruled it an accidental fall, but Celeste's diary tells a different story. May 25th, 1854. Madame is dead. They say she fell, but I know better.
I was in the hallway when it happened. I saw Madame standing at the top of the stairs, and I saw Deline standing beside her. They were speaking in low voices. Then Madame screamed, not a scream of fear, but of realization, as though some terrible truth had just been revealed to her.
She stepped backward toward the stairs, and I swear on my mother's grave that I saw Deline make the slightest gesture with her hand, just a small movement of her fingers and Madame went over backward like she'd been pushed by an invisible force. I ran to help her, but she was already dead when I reached her, her eyes wide open, staring at nothing. Or maybe it's something only she could see in those final seconds. Deline came down the stairs slowly, her face showing appropriate concern, but when she passed me, she leaned close and whispered, "One account settled.
The balance shifts." I don't know what she meant, but I know I will never forget those words. The funeral was conducted with all the appropriate ceremony 3 days later. James Lavo played the role of grieving husband convincingly, though several attendees noted that his grief seemed more performative than genuine. What they did notice, and what caused considerable whispered speculation, was the way his eyes kept drifting to Deline, who stood among the house servants at the back of the gathering.
"He looked at her," wrote Father Benedict Rouso, the priest who conducted the service, in a letter to his bishop, "the way a drowning man looks at the surface of water he can no longer reach." With desperate longing mixed with the growing certainty of inevitable fate.
In the weeks following Margarite's death, changes at Bellamont Plantation became increasingly apparent to everyone who lived or worked there. James Lavo, previously a harsh but consistent master, became erratic and unpredictable. Some days he was seized with manic energy, riding his property for hours, shouting orders, demanding impossible standards from his field hands. Other days he would barely leave his study, sitting in the darkness for hours, his meals untouched outside his door.
But one constant remained, his attention to Deline. She had now been elevated from ladies maid to the unofficial mistress of the household. She gave orders to the other servants with James's full authority. She made decisions about menus, schedules, and household expenditures, and increasingly she was seen entering James' study in the evening and not emerging until dawn.
The other enslaved workers watched these developments with growing dread. In the quarters at night, away from the main house. They spoke in hushed voices about what was happening to their master. "He's being ridden," said old Ruth.
A woman who claimed her grandmother had been a powerful conjure woman in Haiti. "That's what we called it in the old country. They're spirits that attach themselves to the living, feeding on them slow, using them up like candles. Once they get their hooks deep enough, there ain't no way to pull free.
You just burn until there's nothing left but smoke and memory." Celeste's diary entries from this period become increasingly disturbed and disjointed, reflecting her deteriorating mental state as she witnessed the transformation of Bellamont. June 12th, 1854. Cannot sleep.