by Riser Troy
‘You miss her, don’t you?’ Emily said. She was sitting across from Honoré, who was pretending to read a paper.
‘Mm. Who?’
‘Your mother,’ she said. ‘You’ve been out of sorts ever since the two of you spoke. Was she different, too? Not different bad, as our others were, but different?’
Honoré grunted. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There wasn’t time enough to tell. But just that little bit … It brought back a lot.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Emily asked.
Honoré shrugged. ‘Not much to talk about,’ he said. ‘I was 11. I’d had a nightmare – or at least that’s what I thought it was then – where I saw her murdered. And she was murdered.’ Absently, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his watch, his thumb caressing the dent left by Lechasseur’s blade. ‘I didn’t even give her a warning,’ he said. ‘I let her die.’
‘Honoré, you were a child,’ Emily said. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
Honoré fidgeted with the pocket watch, flipping the case open and closed, open and closed. He’d been hearing his grandmother’s voice a lot these past few days, as though she were trying to get a message through to him.
He lay the watch on the table, staring at it numbly, recalling the day he’d received it, the woman who’d raised him the rest of the way after that day of horror when his life had first stopped making sense.
‘We could change it,’ said Emily gently.
Honoré looked at the watch, a single tear running down his face.
Emily put her hand on his, and their eyes met.
London spun away from under them as time played itself backward, depositing them in a garbage-strewn alleyway. Metal steps led to a padlocked door, beside which a grimy, painted-over window let thin slivers of light escape through places where the paint had peeled or been scraped away.
‘Where are we?’ Emily asked, looking about for some clue. Honoré didn’t need to look – the smells from that street beyond, the clinging humidity that enveloped him like a second skin in the night, the innate, inexplicable feeling one has when coming back from a long travel and finally arriving home. And even as he knew where they were, he knew when – almost the exact hour. Numbly, like a zombie, he climbed the steps quietly, peered into an exposed corner of the window.
Inside, Honoré could see figures seated in wooden chairs. No, not just seated. Tied down, their wrists and ankles bound with rope to the thick wooden frames. Men and women, varying ages and builds, slumped or sleeping or dead.
‘This is the place, isn’t it?’ The whispered voice in Honoré’s ear startled him, and he nearly stumbled back down the steps. Emily had stealthily crept up beside him, and was surveying the scene inside, finding another porthole of light through which to spy.
He nodded, putting a finger to his lips.
There was a sudden additional light in the room as a door opened to reveal two figures. These were the men Honoré knew to be Wayne and John Carter: the so-called Vampires of New Orleans, home-grown students of Elizabeth Bathory and others who practiced blood sacrifice and worse for the sake of vainglorious superstition and the pursuit of magical power. They entered the room. Wayne Carter carried a bowl before him, carefully, like a sacrament. The other, John Carter, held a knife, the blade glinting as he caressed the handle in his palm. Calmly, they made their way to one of the prisoners in the room. Honoré’s pulse quickened as his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside and recognition set in. The captive they approached was Evangeline Lechasseur.
Emily must have realised this too, for she was suddenly making a move for the door. Honoré grabbed her about the waist, holding her back.
‘Honoré, what are you doing?’ she hissed.
‘Nothing,’ he said, with what he hoped sounded like conviction. With his grasp firm, he tried to peer through the window.
One of the men knelt before the chair while the other began to slowly carve a path up the woman’s forearm with the knife. The blood spurted into a channel cut into the arm of the chair, and then into the waiting bowl. Honoré winced as he heard his mother groan in pain. Emily struggled to get free, as Evangeline moaned again and her head fell to her chest. The men took the bowl and drank – first one, then the other – draining it as surely as they were draining the life from Evangeline. The macabre scene seemed to last for an age, as more and more blood pumped from Evangeline’s arm, until eventually the flow diminished to a trickle and the two men ceremoniously made their way back to the door through which they had entered.
Emily’s elbow suddenly caught Honoré in the ribs, driving the air from his lungs. He let her slip free. She again reached for the door, yanking at the padlock as the two men vanished into the depths of the building.
Honoré trembled. The vision of his mother’s death was just as he had always remembered it. Yet somehow being at the scene made it more real, more irrevocable.
A click, and Honoré turned to find the padlock opening in Emily’s hand. She learns fast, he thought, but could not reach her before she had pulled the door open and stepped inside. He followed her.
In the dim light, he could not immediately see where Emily had gone, and the stench of dried blood and decaying bodies made him gag and cover his nose and mouth with his hand.
‘Emily,’ he whispered into the darkness. ‘Emily!’
‘Jean-Henri?’ The voice was weak, barely a whisper. But Honoré recognised it. Slowly, he made his way over to where his mother was bound to the chair, and knelt by her.
‘Jean-Henri?’ She gave a thin, raspy cough. ‘It is you, isn’t it? I always knew you’d come back to me.’
Honoré didn’t know what to do. She was mistaking him for his runaway father. He placed his hand on his mother’s, felt the cold stickiness of her blood on his palm. ‘I came,’ he said.
She coughed again. ‘Our little Honoré – he looks so much like you,’ she said. ‘Go to him. Tell him his mama … loves him so much …’
Honoré’s eyes blurred and burned with tears. ‘I’ll tell him,’ he promised.
‘Loves him … so much …’ She wheezed once, her breath exhaling in a slow rattle. And then Honoré was alone.
‘I love you too, Mama,’ Honoré said. Gently, he reached up and stroked her cheek with his hand.
A throat was cleared gently behind him. He turned and found Emily standing behind him, her expression flat. ‘She’s dead, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nearly all of them are,’ Emily said. ‘I found one little girl still alive. I undid her ropes and let her go.’ She rounded on Honoré. ‘If that is quite all right with you?’
Taken aback, Honoré gave no reply, but searched Emily’s eyes for a clue as to how she was feeling.
Emily turned toward the door. ‘Find a way for us out of here,’ she said. ‘Now, please.’
Honoré took a last look at the peaceful face of his mother, kissed her quickly on the cheek, then followed Emily.
‘I simply do not understand,’ Emily said, when they finally arrived home. ‘We were there. We could have done something. Anything! She could still be alive, Honoré!’
Honoré shook his head. ‘Things happen for a reason,’ he said. ‘History cannot be –’
‘Nonsense,’ Emily broke in. There was a disdain in her voice that Honoré had never heard before. No, scratch that, he thought. He had heard it, and recently. Just not from this Emily. ‘That’s such rubbish, Honoré. Haven’t you been paying attention to anything we’ve done, or that has been done to us? For God’s sake, I’m from the future, marooned here in your present – I am not supposed to be here! Every breath I inhale and exhale changes history – my history. But you just can’t see it that way, because your own past is so much more concrete to you.’
Emily looked at Honoré standing silently in front of her and shook her head. She bundled up her coat and moved to
ward the door. There, she stopped and turned, standing sideways in the open doorway – half in, half out.
‘About what I said earlier? Remember? I was wrong,’ she said. Tears not yet fallen glistened in the corners of her eyes. ‘It was your fault. You did let her die. You just waited until now to do it.’
‘Emily, no, wait,’ Honoré said, but she wouldn’t be interrupted.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘this is the first time I’ve ever been glad not to be able to remember. Not to know. I’ve always thought that whatever is in my past must be something so terrible and so sad for me to have blocked it out so completely. But when we became –’ she nearly said ‘friends’ and caught herself ‘– acquainted – I somehow felt that if I ever did find some personal tragedy in my past, then you’d be there with me to set it right. To help. Because you cared. But now?’ Her voice cracked. She shook her head and the first tears tracked down her face. ‘Now I suppose I know better.’
She closed the door behind her with a quiet click of the latch, leaving Honoré alone in the wake of her anger. His mind was spinning, and he recalled how he had once felt after a hurricane had blown through New Orleans. He’d stood on the edge of Gran’maman Delecroix’s swamp and listened to the eerie silence blanketing the world, feeling very much alone. He felt very much alone right now, at this moment.
Honoré released the breath he had been holding. He had chosen not to share with Emily everything about that phone call in the other world. How could he have found the words to explain the flatness – the deadness – in the voice of the woman who could have been his mother? He never thought much of Heaven, and only a little of Hell; but given a choice between the two, he knew in his heart where the soul of Evangeline Lechasseur resided. What right did he have to change her history, to take her from the place she was supposed to be, meant to be, destined to be? And what right did he have to do the same to anyone else?
Honoré realised his knuckles were growing stiff from his hands being balled into fists. He unclenched them, flexed the circulation back into them and jammed them into his pockets. His fingers closed around his watch and he pulled it out. He caressed its surface with his thumb and then placed it on a shelf with the remainder of his things, the clutter of his life.
‘Mesi, Grandmaman,’ Honoré whispered, hoping that the wise old woman heard him, and understood, and approved.
[1] See Time Hunter: Deus Le Volt
[2] See Time Hunter: The Severed Man
[3]See Time Hunter: The Albino’s Dancer.
About The Authors
R J Carter is not the author of nearly as many things as he would like to be. He has written Alice’s Journey Beyond the Moon for Telos Publishing, and can frequently be found writing articles for an online entertainment magazine, The-Trades.com. He now lives near St Louis with his wife and cat, and can be reached at [email protected].
Troy Riser is an American artist who has also written several award-winning short stories. His short film script, Last Rights, is being produced in Spring 2006. The Sideways Door, co-written with R J Carter, is his first published novel. An online portfolio of his fine and commercial work is available at www.troyriser.com.
The Time Hunter Series