“No, I can’t watch them any longer, I’m sorry,” said Belladonna, checking her watch. “I have…an appointment. It’s important; I can’t miss it. Besides, we’re all out of bubbles.” She turned the plastic bottle upside down to illustrate. “You’ll just have to take them with you to Professor Leech’s place.”
August eyed his shoddy band of zombies, and his shoulders slumped.
“It shouldn’t be that difficult,” said Belladonna, moving to the small window by the closet. “As you say, it’s like they’re obsessed with you; they’ll follow you like puppy dogs.”
“That,” grumbled August, “is exactly the problem.”
“The courtyard’s empty.” Belladonna was peering downward. “There’s no one to see if you leave now. There’s a box of free tourist maps attached to the lamppost on the corner of Funeral Street.”
* * *
* * *
August was forced to concede that Belladonna had been correct. Wrangling the ungainly crew of zombies through the crowded streets of the Old Quarter was less difficult than he’d anticipated.
Despite the crush of Carnival revelers in the streets, his undead entourage had a remarkable capacity for remaining close to him. It was almost as if the boy acted like a zombie magnet. Moreover, the sheer number of merrymakers in costume—many of a ghoulish bent—rendered the zombies inconspicuous. Well, almost.
The group’s appearance was extreme, even for Carnival, and it did attract more than its fair share of enthusiastic reactions.
“Awesome costumes, dudes!”
“The undead RULE!”
“Party on, zombie friends!”
At one point, August and his zombies found themselves surrounded by a raucous but agreeable gaggle of flush-faced young people, cans installed on the sides of their drink-guzzler helmets, who whooped and chanted, “Jacques LeSalt, Jacques LeSalt, Jacques LeSalt!”
“Up here, Jacques!” they cried, multiple palms rising to high-five the bewildered but cooperative pirate zombie.
In the lee of a restaurant chalkboard sign, August stopped to get his bearings. He looked at Leech’s calling card. He glanced at the street signs attached to a nearby lamppost, then studied his map.
“It should be,” he muttered, “just around this corner. Come along. Wait! One, two”—he counted off the zombies with his finger—“three, four. Me. That’s only five; we’re one down. Where’s the miserable one?”
He glanced around, searching for the balding showgirl, and, above the crowds, spotted a flamboyant but scraggly feather headed into the open doorway of a townhouse on the opposite side of the street.
“Dang it,” said August. “Where’s she headed? Come on! Hurry, you guys! This way.”
But by the time August had herded the company through the milling pedestrians, the entrance was blocked by a group of well-fed tourists in Croissant City T-shirts. Several were devouring bright icy treats in paper cups, purchased—August assumed—from the store that occupied the building at street level named Jo-Jo’s Snow-Bombs.
“Ah, latecomers!” announced a familiar voice from somewhere near the townhouse door. “Well, I never! If it isn’t Claudette DuPont and her great-great-nephew, August.”
The well-fed tourists turned to look and, as they did so, created a line of vision.
“Oh! Hello, Mr. Saint-Cyr,” said August, nodding self-consciously to all the curious faces staring at the fluttery activity above his head. Claudette waved her amputated arm in greeting, and Cyril Saint-Cyr chortled with delight.
“Now that, folks,” he informed the tourists, “is how we do costumes in Croissant City! Well done, young lady.”
“Um,” explained August, “we’re looking…”
“For the home of Sad Celeste?” suggested Saint-Cyr loudly. “Well, friends, you have come to the right place. We are just commencing the tour.”
The gentleman raised a wooden paddle, much like one might use for table tennis, but with an extended handle and bearing faded letters reading “tour guide.”
“Folks, please finish up those tasty snow-bombs. It’s unseasonably warm today, and we wouldn’t want them melting all over the museum, would we? Now, if you can’t see me, just look out for this paddle.”
It was impossible, in terms of both physics and manners, for August and his entourage to push past the plug of tourists, so with little choice, they joined the tour.
Another metal plaque was screwed into this building’s brick façade. It read “Old Quarter Historical Monument Number Thirty. The Sad Celeste House.”
A narrow interior staircase opened into a generous apartment above Jo-Jo’s Snow-Bombs. Sunlight passing through lace curtains scattered fragile shadows across the place, which, despite the ample furnishings, had an air of hush and abandonment. Velvet ropes suspended between short steel posts separated visitors from gleaming rosewood furnishings and delicate porcelain antiques.
“Above the mantel in the parlor,” announced Saint-Cyr, “hangs a portrait of the apartment’s prior resident: the lovely lady known as Sad Celeste.”
August gasped. The attractive young woman depicted in a feathered headdress was clearly his missing zombie (prior, that is, to having become one).
“This,” he hissed to Claudette, “was her house?”
“Miz Celeste,” Saint-Cyr continued, “was a dancer with the French Follies and, in her day, the greatest star of the Theatre Français. She was celebrated far and wide for her beauty and grace. Observe”—Saint-Cyr swept his paddle around the space—“the floral carpet, the pianoforte, the finest bone china dinnerware, all gifts from Celeste’s many rich and important admirers.”
August, keeping a watchful eye on the tour guide, peered discreetly behind settees and Japanese screens. Claudette ogled him expectantly, but August shrugged.
“I don’t see her anywhere,” he whispered. “Where could she have gone?”
“But such exquisite, expensive tokens could not buy the lady’s heart”—Saint-Cyr grew pensive and pressed the paddle to his chest—“for it was already given to another; to Batiste Baguette, a Frenchman of little fortune, and, sadly, a shiftless gambler.”
As they ascended a second staircase, Saint-Cyr’s commentary continued.
“Despite these obstacles, the pair seemed hopelessly in love and quite inseparable, until one day, the young man bid Celeste farewell, promising to soon return with a ring of betrothment.”
He crossed the third-floor landing, stopped before a closed door, and turned with a somber expression to his audience.
“The lady never laid eyes on her beau again.” He turned the knob.
Inside, the high-ceilinged room contained a dressing table littered with crystal jars and perfume bottles, a spindly bamboo washstand, and a slender four-poster bed, concealed on all sides by faded damask draperies.
“Decades later”—Saint-Cyr shook his head—“Batiste Baguette’s name was discovered on the passenger list of a gambling ship named the Lady Luck. Sadly, the craft was anything but lucky. One fateful day, several miles from here, its boilers exploded, and the Lady Luck sank. There were no survivors. Historians have since suggested that Batiste was on board that fateful day to win back the promised ring, which he had recently lost in a bet. But, ignorant of this”—Saint-Cyr sighed deeply—“Celeste believed herself forsaken; that her young man had tired of her and run off. Day after day, month after month, she pined out here”—Saint-Cyr crossed the room to indicate, beyond the French doors, a balcony suspended above the street—“weeping and lamenting so that the townsfolk came to name her Sad Celeste.”
Cyril Saint-Cyr, museum guide, crossed to the bed.
“The story ends,” he said with deep emotion, “one tragic morning, with a chambermaid discovering Celeste, cold as a pineapple Jell-O mold. She had wept herself to death, right here in this very bed.”
> With a theatrical gesture, Saint-Cyr swept back the damask draperies. Beyond them was not an unoccupied bed of crisply made-up linens, but rather, a blotchy, balding figure with skeleton hands who, startled by the sudden intrusion, snatched up the coverlet to conceal herself.
Saint-Cyr screamed.
The zombie screamed.
The tourists screamed.
The zombie screamed some more, a black cloud of flies escaping from her gaping, mottled mouth.
Saint-Cyr screamed some more.
The tourists screamed some more…and then they panicked.
One knocked over the washstand. One fell backward over a velvet rope. Crystal jars and perfume bottles crashed to the floor. One compact but seemingly powerful woman shoved Cyril Saint-Cyr face-first into a wall in a desperate attempt to escape the room.
As the stampeding footsteps receded down the stairs, the only people that remained in the disheveled space were August and his zombies. The boy, who in the chaos had been knocked to the floor, rose and dusted himself off, glaring with frustration at his undead companions.
Zombie Sad Celeste sniffled, peering over the coverlet with red-rimmed eyes and a thoroughly dejected expression. August, shaking his head with resignation, plonked himself on the edge of the bed.
“It’s…” He paused, searching for words. “It’s okay, Celeste,” he said, patting the thin bones of her skeletal hand. “I know this was your bedroom. But you don’t live here anymore. Technically, you don’t really live anywhere.”
Celeste heaved a ragged sigh.
“I’m sorry about Batiste Baguette,” August added gently.
Celeste lowered the coverlet.
“But at least,” August said, smiling, “you have me now. Let’s see about getting you to your real home, shall we?”
August pointed at a street sign formed from decorative painted tiles cemented into a wall.
“ ‘Treasure Alley,’ ” he read aloud. “This is it. Now, do we have everyone?”
The company quit the sunlight and hubbub of the busy avenue for the shade and quietude of a narrow street. Above them, the iron balconies on opposite sides of the lane were so close, one might easily have jumped from one to another. The quarters were so tight that when proceeding, August and the zombies were forced to skirt a cluster of empty tables and chairs outside the Gold Doubloon Café and navigate a series of potted palms that lined the alley.
On one side, wedged between taller buildings, was a single low-slung and crumbly cottage with crooked, peeling shutters. It had the feeling of a thing outgrown by its surroundings. The single window displayed a dusty, sun-faded array of jarred candles, creepy-looking dolls and figurines, and a human skeleton painted with rainbow colors. August observed an oval sign hanging from the eaves above him that read “Leech’s Camera Botanica.”
“ ‘Camera,’ ” the boy explained to Claudette, just in case she was interested, “is an old word for a room. I saw it on Are You a Dummy? A botanica is a place that sells herbs and stuff.”
A bell softly tinkled as August entered. The warm and claustrophobic interior could scarcely accommodate the living boy and his less-than-living companions. Jacques LeSalt’s moaning head was lost in the froth of dried plants and herbs that obscured the low ceiling, and August found himself bumped by awkward undead limbs into shelves packed with labeled jars and bottles of colorful powders and liquids.
To steady himself, the boy grabbed hold of a stand displaying books with titles such as Harnessing Magic in Talismans, Charms, and Amulets; Adder’s Tongue to Witch Grass: A Handbook of Conjure Roots; and Necromancy for the Total Beginner.
Suddenly, in the darkest corner of the store, the soft movement of a black curtain caught August’s eye, and a figure wearing a light, rumpled linen suit appeared.
“Professor Leech,” exclaimed August, “you might remember me from—”
“From Funeral Street,” Leech interrupted. “Orchid Malveau’s séance. How could I forget the face in the Oraculum’s apparition?”
But Leech scarcely looked at August, gazing instead beyond him, transfixed by the tattered characters at his rear.
“I had no idea why”—he irritably swatted aside a butterfly, as if it were an unexpected and unwelcome intruder—“the ball might offer up your image.” The light of a jar candle flickering near the cash register danced in the man’s bulbous, watery eyes.
“But the Oraculum’s power can be at times difficult to harness. Its visions are not always intended for the client. Sometimes they are meant for me.” He slowly rubbed his hands together. “And I wonder, in this case, if the ball has brought you to me”—Leech shot August an oily smile—“for a reason. Tell me, young man, why is it that you have sought me out?”
“Well, sir,” August ventured. “Do you know anything about zombies?”
“Why, naturally,” said the professor. “I’m a professor!”
He was squeezing himself around the gaggle of moldy visitors, eyeing them up and down at close quarters with unconcealed fascination. The zombies huddled together, disconcerted by the intimate inspection.
“Zombies,” explained Professor Leech, “are corpses that have been reanimated by the spirit—or soul if you prefer—they once housed, that spirit having been drawn back into the mortal world by the magnetic pull of a Go-Between. And it would appear”—Leech came to a stop before Jacques LeSalt—“that you have brought me some fine specimens.”
August nodded, hurriedly explaining his predicament and the resulting urgency of locating a particular Go-Between known as the Zombie Stone.
“It was sold inadvertently to a local art gallery. Oh, and by the way,” August added, “it’s what my aunt Orchid is after too.”
Leech, fingering the buttons on the pirate’s coat, nodded sympathetically.
“Orfeo DuPont’s infamous Go-Between,” he said absently, “with which he controlled—and indeed created—the undead.”
“You know of it?” August was not entirely surprised, as everyone except August seemed already to be familiar with the famous fossil.
“This city, young man,” Leech chuckled, “delights in its darkest corners. Every other house in the Old Quarter boasts an iron plaque, claiming it to be haunted, or the site of a long-ago murder or some other bloody, lurid incident. Our most celebrated residents are ghosts and witches and”—he paused, considering the fidgety pirate—“the undead. Even an amateur historian would recognize Jacques LeSalt here.”
Leech gave Jacques a friendly poke.
“Tell us where your treasure’s buried, eh, Jacques?” The pirate shrank into the other zombies, whimpering, his head lolling loosely about.
“So”—Leech abruptly diverted his full attention to August—“you have not located this art gallery?”
“Its name,” explained August, “is something like Gallery Macaroni. Or Macramé.”
Leech’s brow arched with a flicker of something that looked like recognition. But it was quickly replaced by a frown.
“You’ve heard of it?” said August.
Leech shook his head.
“No. Sorry. I have not. But let us see what the Oraculum has to show us. How did these butterflies get in here?”
The ball-reading room was little more than a closet concealed behind the black velvet curtain at the rear of the botanica. The tight space accommodated only two chairs and a table, upon which sat the crystal ball of mesmerizing depth named the Oraculum. Leech sat, indicating that August should too. The zombies, unable to enter the tight space, clustered anxiously in the doorway, wrestling with the curtain and causing it to strain at the nails supporting it.
August glanced around at the black walls and a shelf crammed with seemingly unrelated objects: a crudely carved angel, an empty champagne bottle, a yellow jar candle bearing an image of the grim reaper.
Leech placed the sides of his hands on the scarlet tablecloth, palms facing the crystal ball. August traced his finger along the fabric’s curious pattern of dragons and chrysanthemums.
“The Oraculum,” began Leech, and again, his voice was quiet yet penetrating, “came before everything. The Oraculum sees worlds and times beyond this one. The Oraculum never lies.”
Dropping his head, Leech glared intently into the ball. His eyebrows knitted. His fists clenched. A vein in his wrist throbbed.
Gazing into the bottomless void at the center of the glass sphere, August again experienced a sense of vertigo.
Whisper, whisper.
“Here we go again,” thought the boy. And indeed, for a moment or two, the whispering gathered and intensified. But this time, the phenomenon was fleeting and abruptly passed. Whatever had been present was gone.
“Show us, great Oraculum,” Leech commanded, “where lieth the stone of zombies.”
Nothing happened.
“SHOW US!” the professor bellowed, causing August and the zombies to practically jump out of their skins.
Mists gathered, but they were thin and weak, less dense and animated than their showing at the séance. Leech’s eyes widened, reflecting the dull glow of the Oraculum.
“I see…,” the professor said slowly. “I see a metal path. A path across water. It’s a bridge. No. A pier. A floating dock where vessels may anchor.”
August peered more closely into the weak vapors.
“I don’t see anything at all,” he said.
“The secrets of the Oraculum”—Leech glared from under his eyebrows—“are not always revealed to the untrained eye.”
“Oh!” August nodded intelligently, as if this made perfect sense.
“I see a sign,” Leech continued, “in the form of a large seabird.”
“Do you,” August asked breathlessly, “recognize the place, sir?”
Leech looked grave.
“I do, young man. This is Pelican Wharf, and it is right here in Croissant City. The Oraculum never lies.”
The Zombie Stone Page 10