PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES

Part V

By Meriades Rai

There are two kinds of night in New Orleans. There’s the brash neon and music and flesh of the city itself, where the streets reverberate to the duelling beats of gangsta rap and more traditional Zydeco, whilst tramps and hookers and tourists congregate on corners and in doorways, all seduced in their own secret way by the scent of desire which thickens the air like smoke. And then there’s the bayou, with its slums and unlit roads and lakes of shadowed glass, all still and silent but for the scream of cicadas and mosquitoes, a desert of damp heat and darkness and swamp stink.

Abandoning Melissa to deal with the police, the antithesis of gentlemanly conduct but regrettably unavoidable, I take my leave of the city and find myself engulfed in the otherNew Orleans in the space of a heartbeat, gunning my Mustang and sinking deep into the damp, velvety black.

The bayou is oppressive, deeply haunted with distant lights in amidst the trees where no lights should be, and faint sounds of misery and abject loneliness carried on the sluggish breeze. I’m known to be flippant about New Orleans’ many idiosyncrasies, however sick or sinister, but even I can’t help but be chilled by the emptiness out here. Breathe in the city and you get a lungful of crayfish and perfume and fried spices to mask the odour of death. Out here, the decay is pure, unseasoned. Nothing truly lives out here. It just starts to rot from the moment it’s born.

The LaCarriere mansion is south of the city, close to the bank of the Mississippi. It’s an abandoned property – or, at least, it should be – but there are plenty of homes round these parts where folks have no choice but to dwell. Families. I don’t know how they can stand it, but that’s the human survival instinct for you. People will put up with anything, all the disease and the hardship and the hearts punctured by needles of sorrow, and it’s just instinct; they don’t know why they don’t give in, they just don’t. Religion helps. It doesn’t stop them losing limbs to gators, or contracting all manner of illnesses that dissolve their guts from the inside out, or maybe waking up one morning and finding their child’s bed empty but for the pools of blood the night-killers left behind. But, hey. God helps them smile and clap every Sunday, and offer their thanks in prayer, so who I am to want to take that away from them?

The house is at the end of a dirt track. However black the highway I’ve just travelled was, this place should be blacker, but instead it’s lit by police officers with torches and then a half-dozen squad cars with flashing lights. Not exactly subtle. If this was a raid on a mob den, or a stakeout for grave-robbers, then any ne’er-do-wells in a five mile vicinity would’ve disappeared into the shadows like smoke by now. But whoever – or whatever – is holed up in this building, it’s not your ten-cent mobsters or bodysnatchers.

“Jericho Drumm?”

The man who speaks as I get out of the car is heavy-set, with a voice as thick as his arms and as black as his mood.

“I’m Jericho.”

“Name’s Jack Lynch, chief of police down in the West Quarter.”

I grimace. “Uh-huh. Washington one of yours?”

“Dawson? Yeah, he’s mine.” Lynch’s eyes narrow. “You pulled your voodoo shtick on him earlier today. Got different squid to fry now, but soon as this is over I’m gonna throw your magic ass in jail.”

“Is that what’s known as a charm offensive, Jack?”

“Call me Lynch,” says Lynch, and spits on the ground between us.

“Jericho?”

That’s a woman’s voice, and it comes from behind me. I turn and see Valencia Devereaux, my ex-wife, approaching at speed, her heels scrunching in the moist ground underfoot. With her long, dark hair threaded with beads, her bright eyes, and a body so sensual it should be framed, she’s just as beautiful as ever. But I know the contents even better than I do the wrapping, and if I had a choice between leaping into her arms right now, or those belonging to Lynch, I’d decide in favour of the latter. At least he’d dispose of me quickly.

“Hi, Val.”

She scowls at me, like I’ve just backed a Buick over her pet Chihuahua. “Why’d it take you so long to get here? Where were you when I called?”

“At a strip bar called The Cat Lick Club.”

Her eyes shoot wide, and I almost think she’s going to go one up on Lynch and spit in my face. “You disgust me,” she says, her voice admirably even.

“I was dealing with bloodthirsty zombie whores who were trying to kill me. So was the woman who had them created – and she had an Uzi.” I smile. “Still, it’s just selfish of me to be having fun whilst you’re waiting here to give me grief, right?”

“Tell him,” Lynch snaps, chewing vigorously on a wad of gum.

I look at Valencia. “Yeah, tell me.”

Valencia scowls, then points across at the LaCarriere house. It’s lurking back there amidst the trees, like a pregnant spider in its web, shrouded in a darkness that the torches and the lights of the squad cars are unable to penetrate.

“This afternoon, Captain Lynch received a call from concerned parents that their thirteen-year-old son, Wesley Robicheaux, was missing after entering this building on a dare,” Valencia tells me. “An officer was despatched, but he reported nothing out of place and the investigation moved on to questioning the other kids that Wesley was with. They all swore that Wesley had disappeared here.”

“The officer in attendance wouldn’t have seen anything he wasn’t allowed to see,” I state, flatly.

“Which is what I said when I found out,” Valencia agrees. “That’s why I made Lynch bring me here.”

I look at Lynch. He stares back at me so hard I think he has x-ray vision and that he’s appreciating my special Homer Simpson undershorts. “It’s a standard protection charm,” I tell him. “Commonly known as a glamour. An illusion that means any interloper – in this case, your officer – only sees what the glamour instructs his mind to see. He would’ve wandered around inside and spotted nothing out of the ordinary. No missing child – or whatever it was that had him. There could’ve been a tribe of aliens eating fried chicken wings in there, and he would’ve been none the wiser.”

“Voodoo,” Lynch says, grimacing like he’s found a grit bug in his chowder.

“Not necessarily,” I respond, “It can be any kind of magic. But I’m assuming that it’s voodoo in this case.”

“How come?”

“Because Val’s here. Because she’s called me here.” I gaze across at the mansion sorrowfully. “And because LaCarriere was the home of Marie LeVeau.”

Lynch grunts. “That’s what she said,” he sighs, pointing at Valencia. I smile humourlessly. Yeah, she would know all about Marie. Stands to reason. I’d probably told her the stories myself, late one night beneath a silver moon, curled up together like spoons on a night too warm for us to fall asleep; perhaps after I’d had her shivering like rain beneath my touch, or after she’d been softly licking maple and pecan ice cream off my skin. We were married before I became Brother Voodoo, but I’d held an interest in the subject long before then. So had she. But whereas I’d always been fascinated, perhaps because of my Haitian heritage, so she’d been repulsed, because of her Catholic leanings.

Valencia says, “When Lynch and I arrived, we tried to enter the house, but it wouldn’t let us. He called for back-up – and I phoned you. We’ve been waiting since then.”

I glance over at Valencia. “Sorry,” I say, evenly. “I was busy. And what do you mean, the house wouldn’t let you? A warding spell?”

Valencia raises an eyebrow. “I mean what I said,” she breathes. “The house wouldn’t let us.”

I purse my lips, then look back across twenty or thirty feet of dirt and undergrowth, towards the mansion. I regard it thoughtfully… then begin forward.

“I’m coming with you,” Valencia says.

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

I sigh. “Lynch?” I say. “If she moves, shoot her.”

Lynch grunts. “My pleasure,” he says, with a smile that I don’t witness but which is obvious enough.

“Jericho!” Valencia barks. “Don’t you dare leave me here! I can help you.”

“What’re you gonna do?” I mutter. “Exorcise the ghosts by bitching at them?”

“I heard that!”

I say nothing more, stalking on towards the house, aware that I’m cast fluorescent in the lights of the police cars and that over a dozen officers are standing around, watching me. Some of them know me. Some of them know of me. I don’t know how many of them like me, or have an opinion one way or another. But they’re all glad it’s me that’s approaching the house now and not them.

When I reach the porch, I feel the air shimmer and thicken about me, and suddenly I can barely breathe. I lock my jaw and concentrate. I set my shoulders, steel my resolve. People say that fear isn’t a physical thing, and in one context they’d be right – but the reaction to fear is something else. That’s purely physical, with your heart twisting and tightening in your chest and your blood turning to acid, and your legs buckling beneath you like Reed Richards on a three-day bar-crawl. I’m no stranger to fear, but it’s typically in response to a specific stimulus. All I have here before my eyes is a dark, abandoned house, out in the bayou, on a warm night heavy with the kind of air pressure that occurs in the silent pause between one deluge of rain and another. Yet I’m as terrified as I’ve ever been, because I recognise what I’m up against in my very soul.

Something awful awaits me in the bowels of the LaCarriere mansion. But, worse than that, is the house itself.

Like Valencia intimated… it’s alive. I can feel it: pulsing, breathing. Hungering.

I step up onto the porch, pushing through a membrane of dark magic that clings slickly to my skin like mucus. I reach out, and turn the handle of the front door. The officer earlier today wouldn’t have encountered such resistance because, by this point, he was already lost inside the glamour. For me, I’m experiencing reality. Which means that whatever truly lies behind this door is what I’m going to see when I move inside.

The darkness beyond the entrance is hot and rich with the rancid stench of rot and death. I walk forward. Through the soupy shadows, through the webs, through the fear. One foot in front of the other.

I pass a door on my right. It stands ajar. In the room beyond, lit by a scattering of candles that have burned away to the quick, I see seven naked bodies suspended from hooks in the ceiling, like cattle carcasses in an abattoir. Six are of women, their limbs black and bloated with congealed blood and decomposition, their frontal torsos decorated with deep and vicious wounds. The seventh body is that of a child, a boy in his early teens. He’s very fresh. His body is withered almost to a husk, and his eyes are coming loose from their sockets, but the last of his blood is trickling weakly from bites to his legs and abdomen. Wesley Robicheaux, approximately eight hours dead. One of those hanging alongside him is inevitably going to be Francine Chevalier, whose disappearance saw me become involved in this whole, sorry business.

I glance at the wounds carved into the women’s chests. They’re runes. Ancient. Not pure voodoo, but a bastardisation, seemingly with a stronger African influence than normal. It’s a containment hex, one of the vilest casts in the canon. It preserves the soul in the dying body, causing the blood to flow slower than it otherwise would. It makes the death last longer. A malicious – or ignorant – bokor might favour such a spell, unaware of quite how much suffering their victim will have to endure… and they endure it in silence, for the larynx is one of the first of the bodily functions to become paralysed. This particular manifestation of the curse is even worse, however, because the angle and depth of these wounds suggest that they were self-inflicted. Casting a containment hex upon oneself more than doubles its potency, as most self-mutilation does, especially when the victim’s fevered carving results in suicide. Using voodoo sorceries, someone prompted Francine Chevalier and these other five women to kill themselves and debilitate their own souls through the use of these specific runes.

I glance downwards, then, and my heart spasms painfully in my chest. I was so entranced by the voodoo wounds that I only now notice that all six of the dead women are missing their hands. Their arms hang limply by their sides, ending in wrists that are brittle, blood-encrusted stumps. I’m swathed with a sudden sickness – the sickness of realisation. I now know what kind of ritual will be taking place in this unholy house tonight.

I leave the room swiftly, back out into the darkened passageway, and continue on.

My destination is an upstairs room, at the end of another long corridor. I know, because I can sense it; I’m drawn to it. I now tread in the footsteps of another who passed this way not long before. A woman. The woman who held Wesley Robicheaux down and bit into him again and again, drinking away his blood and tearing away strips of his tender flesh in her lust to burrow ever deeper.

I ascend the stairs. The darkness shifts and heaves around me, soughing with fetid breath. It would smile if it could. It knows that it will enjoy the taste of me when it swallows piece after piece of my dismembered corpse, like a hungry dog in a pit. That’s what’ll happen to me if I stay. I try to force the thought from my head, but it’s no good. I’m not strong enough. I could summon Daniel’s power to augment my own, but having already manifested twice today his strength has been exhausted. It’s just me now.

Drenched in sweat, I move along the passageway at the head of the stairs, the darkness surging about my ankles like a river of rats and spiders. I feel them biting at my skin, desperate for blood and bone.

I reach the door. And I open it.

Inside, a tall, narrow room is filled with candles, reflected over and again in the dark mirrors that line the walls. In the centre of the room, spread-eagled on the wooden floor at the heart of a five-sided hex, is a statuesque woman, naked, with skin as white as snow and a sheen like polished marble. Her splayed arms and legs are rigid with tension, all muscle and sinew, and the tendons in her neck are corded with knots. Her head is thrown back with her tide of raven hair washing out across the bare floorboards like black treacle. Her eyes are wide and unseeing. Her jaw is stiff and stretched in silent scream. The woman’s body throbs to an almost imperceptible beat. Her pain must be beyond imagining.

She would move, but there are hands holding her down. Nothing else, just… hands. There are twelve of them in all; severed at the wrists, these are the appendages taken from the corpses of the dead women in the previous room. Here, dark magic makes them strong enough that four of them can lock about the woman’s wrists and ankles to anchor her in position whilst the other eight scurry about her body and complete their work. Each of these eight hold knives, you see; standard switchblades rather than anything more ceremonial, for it’s not the tools in this instance that’s important to the hideous task currently being undertaken. The essential aspect of all this concerns the hands using those blades to carve a series of intricate wounds into the captive woman’s naked limbs and torso. These hands belonged to victims of a containment curse that would’ve bound them to a specific master. The master – the weaver of the curse – now controls these hands as if they were extensions of her own body.

This is an ancient ritual that’s occurring here before my eyes. It involves the suppression of a living host, this albino woman, and preparing her for use – possession. Total possession, not like when an external force temporarily usurps control of a victim, as happens when Daniel’s spirit enters another’s body. This manner of possession involves the utter and irrevocable dislocation of a soul from its rightful abode so that this body can become a permanent host for a different spirit. It isn’t a voodoo rite that’s commonly practised, even in New Orleans, for it involves a number of bokor carving runic formulae simultaneously – and, even if one can gather together enough individuals of relevant experience, it’s practically impossible to co-ordinate their efforts to as precise a degree as is necessary for the enchantment to work.

Unless, of course, the ritual is executed by a singular sorcerer who is able to control eight blades – in eight hands – at once. In this instance, I suspect such a spell has every chance of success. Unless I can stop it.

I step forward into the room. And the woman standing in the shadow of the doorway off to my left sweeps towards me and plunges a hook-bladed dagger into my upper arm. She’s aiming for my throat, but I manage to twist at the last second. Even so, the sudden explosion of pain is like nothing I’ve ever felt.

I scream and crash backwards against a wall, my hand scrabbling instinctively at the hilt of the weapon imbedded just below my shoulder. The woman closes on me, cackling and crooning like a rabid beast, her golden eyes wild and her mouth cut wide in a hideous grin. Her fingers close about the dagger and I think she’s going to pull it free so that she might strike again… but instead, she flexes her wrist and twists with all her strength. I feel the blade turn a fraction inside me, and steel scrapes against bone. Let me correct my previous statement – what I’m experiencing now is pain like nothing I’ve ever felt. My scream becomes a shriek, and I flail my remaining good arm in defence. I instinctively curl my fingers into claws and rake my nails down the woman’s cheek. She hisses and snaps her head back, out of my reach. Her grip on the dagger loosens and I pull myself away… but the agony is excruciating, white hot, and after two steps I’ve already stumbled, sinking to my knees.

I glance up and see that the eight dismembered hands have ceased their mechanical mutilation of the albino woman’s body and are perched like tiny birds, their switchblades at the ready. They’re frozen, expectant for their next command. The woman who attacked me is the one controlling them, but to complete their work they require her full attention. Once she’s disposed of me, she’ll bid them to continue… but, whatever end result she’s hoping to achieve, I know that I can’t allow this to happen.

I hear the woman approach me from behind, and I roll away from her next attack, my damaged arm hanging limply by my side. I glance back over my shoulder, and I see her face clearly for the first time. Golden eyes, wicked smile, and dark hair threaded with colourful braids. I know her.

“Calypso!” I hiss. “I warned you what would happen if you ever set foot in my city again…”

“Your city, Jericho?” she says, obviously amused. “Our kind were here long before you slipped away from your in-breed island home and washed up along the coast. You left your brother back in Haiti – and he died there. Do I remember that correctly?”

“Your kind?” I repeat harshly, aware that my face is slick with sweat and that my breathing is ragged. “Which sorority are you referring to – the witches or the whores?”

Calypso spits and lunges for me. I angle my good shoulder towards her and flick an elbow at her throat, but she’s far too agile to be tagged by such a basic attack. This woman wasn’t just the lover of Sergei Kravinov, the man who called himself Kraven The Hunter – she was trained by him, in physical combat, and in the use of exotic herbs and potions to augment her own mystic leanings. She ducks beneath my blow, screeching like a banshee, and claws at my midriff. Her nails cut through the leather jacket I’m wearing as if it were rice paper, and proceeds to shred shirt and flesh alike. I grunt and fall backwards, crashing back to my knees.

Gasping for breath, I turn my head… and see that I’ve come to rest directly alongside the albino woman pinned to the floor by severed hands. She stares at me beseechingly, her black eyes brimming with pain, and fear – and hate.

“Help me,” she pleads, her tongue flickering about her lips. I glimpse her fangs, and detect the odour of blood upon her breath.

She killed Wesley Robicheaux. Calypso murdered six girls. These two are both fiends, and I would wish for nothing more than for both of them to be scoured from the face of the planet. But, as I lie here, preparing for another savage blow to rain down upon my unprotected back… I realise what I must do.

Calypso attacks. I could twist my upper body, deflecting most of the damage she is attempting to inflict, but that would take me away from the woman alongside me. Instead, I remain where I am, reaching out towards the albino. Calypso’s talons gouge ribbons of flesh from the length of my spine, and I scream, feeling my tattered shirt soak through with an instant gush of blood. I hear my crazed assailant cackle. But, in the mist of my anguish, I clasp the fingers about the bloody stump of a hand that, I know upon touching it, once belonged to Francine Chevalier. There’s irony for you. This hand is clenched tight about the albino woman’s left wrist, pinning it to the floorboards with the weight of dark magic. I pull, my muscles cording with exertion.

The severed hand loosens… and comes free.

“Yessss…” the captured woman hisses, her black eyes suddenly flaring. Her left hand snaps up and instantly travels to her opposite wrist, where she proceeds to wrench away the second of her macabre shackles with a guttural roar.

Calypso curses and darts forward, ignoring me now. I hear her spit out a new incantation, and see her weave her fingers in the wildly flickering candlelight. The albino woman screams – the eight hands bearing switchblades have gone to work once more, carving greedily into her white flesh with long, sharp strokes. I see the skin of her stomach and breast and upper thighs slice open with sudden rivulets of crimson… but it’s too late. Both her own hands are free. She rises up, contorting at the waist, her face a mask of rage.

Calypso shrieks and stumbles backwards. The albino woman is snatching and clasping at the hands attacking her, swatting them away like particularly sadistic insects.

And, all about me in the mirrored walls, I suddenly become aware of a third woman’s face, eyes wide with alarm. Through a haze of pain, I recognise Marie LeVeau. And, behind her, in the shadows… the darkness is taking shape. Not a human form, but instead something no mortal mind can truly comprehend. It’s the house. The house is rising.

The wounds to my shoulder and back are vicious, and debilitating. I can already feel myself swooning. I have strength enough only for one final play. I don’t hesitate.

I kick out with both my feet where I lay, planting the soles of my heavy boots firmly into the backs of Calypso’s calves. It’s not a particularly strong blow, but it’s enough to knock her off balance and send her stumbling forward, swooning at the knees… straight into the albino’s waiting arms.

“Nekra!” I hear Calypso gasp. “No! Please, wait – ”

“We could have been sisters,” the albino, Nekra, screeches. “But you brought me back to destroy my soul and give my body to another! Now it is you who are my sacrifice.”

She dips her head then, lips furrowed, and sinks her teeth into Calypso’s face. Not her throat, as a vampire might, but her face. Her fangs puncture one of her victim’s glowing golden eyes, then travel down and feast about her nose and mouth in some twisted kiss. Calypso screams, but her howl is muffled; she writhes, but Nekra’s arms are wrapped tight about her, pinioning her. The albino bites, and bites again, tearing savagely, like a wild beast. I see Calypso’s face come apart under the onslaught, shreds of red, glistening flesh peeling away to reveal the pulsing meat of her exposed tongue and the odd glint of white bone about the curve of her jaw.

Calypso shrieks. Nekra feeds.

In the mirrors, Marie LeVeau is wailing silently… and then, her reflection turns, in and upon itself over and again. Her eyes widen as she sees the darkness loom behind her. The house. The House of Shadows.

She tries to pull away… but she’s already trapped in the world of other, the world from which she wished to escape using Nekra’s body. A world that the House also inhabits. It’s been hunting Marie for so long. Now, there is no way for her to escape.

The shadows swallow her whole, just as Nekra gnaws and tears at Calypso, whose body is now spasming fitfully in her grasp and whose screams have become pitiful, agonised whimpers.

My head is getting heavy, so I lay it back upon the floor. The candlelight is too bright, so I allow my eyes to close. The darkness is warm and welcoming.

I fade away. But, just before I go, I hear her voice – the albino woman, whispering close to my ear.

“Consider this to be repayment of a debt,” she says to me. “I will do for you what you have done for me. I shall save you from this accursed place. But I know your hatred, houngan. I can feel it. You would destroy me if you could. Be warned – if you try to hunt me down in days and nights to come, I shall eat that living heart, and the hearts of all those you love. I must visit revenge upon those who have wronged me, and that revenge will be savage and bloody. Do not place yourself in my path.”

If she says more, I do not hear it. After this…

…there is only silence.

New Orleans is like no other city in America. Perhaps like no other city on Earth. The water line is so high here that we can’t bury our dead underground, else their decomposing remains are liable to rise to the surface during heavy storms. Instead we inter them in tombs and mausoleums, and thus New Orleans is filled with mile upon mile of cemeteries, laden with edifices of rainwashed stone and marble. There isn’t always peace and beauty here amongst the departed, especially not for someone like me.

But today I’m here for Melissa, and I’m trying to forget that the dead don’t always stay dead. Instead, I’m attempting to convince myself that Francine Chevalier, as her remains are finally laid to rest, is now destined to find her way in a better world than this. The triumph of hope over experience. Even after all I’ve seen in my lifetime, I must still have faith in… something.

“How are you feeling?” Melissa asks me, softly.

I smile, but smiling makes me wince, so I stop. My back feels like it’s been rubbed down with sandpaper, doused in vinegar and then set on fire. So, that’s much better than yesterday at least.

“Thank you for coming today.”

I look down at her, into her wide, brown eyes, and as always she steals my breath away.

“I wanted to,” I reply.

The skies are dark overhead, and we’re both wrapped up against the kind of chill that works its way into your bones and seems like it will never let you free ever again. I get a lot of that.

She says, “I need some time.”

I nod.

“But after I’m done… I’d like to see you again.”

I smile, despite the pain. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” I stare into her eyes. “I’d like that, too.”

We stay together for a few minutes, shivering in the cold wind, in the shadow of Francine Chevalier’s memorial. Then, Melissa squeezes my hand, kisses me softly on the cheek, and walks away.

I haven’t told her about what happened, that I saw an image of her long-dead ancestor. I’m going to keep that to myself awhile. Perhaps forever. I know a lot of secrets, so this one will be in good company.

It’ll rain again soon. Of course. I think of Francine, and I think of Wesley Robicheaux. South of the city, on the banks of the Mississippi, there’s a clearing amidst the cypresses and the cattails where an old, abandoned plantation house used to stand. Wesley died there. I almost followed him. Four nights ago, that house disappeared, as if it had never existed. Now there’s only swamp and shadows. Wherever the House of Shadows has gone now, it has taken its mysteries – and victims – with it. But it’ll be back. The victims too. They always come back.

On cue, a slow, steady rain begins to fall. New Orleans rain. The worst kind there is.

I pull the collar of my coat up about my ears, turn away, and take my leave.