Landry said, “Without knowing his motive, it’s impossible to say. April told Marisol that night at the bar he wanted to talk, and we can hope that he abducted her to do just that. Whatever his plans, he’ll kill her if someone doesn’t find her first. He can’t afford to keep her alive after what he’s done.”
Later that afternoon, Landry accessed birth certificates in the state of Louisiana’s records database. He searched for the name Girard in Lafourche Parish and found Joseph and Mary, but not Julien or the brother he mentioned. A statewide search for Julien Girard turned up three, two in their eighties and one in his thirties. No matches there.
He had a crazy idea. What if Julien wasn’t who he claimed to be at all? He felt a tingle of excitement as he entered the name Julien Proctor in Lafourche Parish. The database churned and spit out Hiram, Susan, Noah and May Ellen — the ill-fated family, three of whom died in the massacre. But no Julien Proctor.
Jack hadn’t gotten back with information about the family burials, so he pulled up the Proctor death certificates. The same parish medical examiner signed each, and in the space for the place of burial were the words “family plot.”
Landry wasn’t aware of a cemetery at Proctor Hall, and he buzzed Jack to ask if he’d found anything about a plot there.
“No, and I’m sorry to report I don’t have your other answers either. This case has me baffled.”
Landry grinned. “That’s unlike you. Guess I gave you too much to handle.” Jack had a knack for finding things others missed, and it was rare for him to admit defeat.
“The less I discovered, the harder I dug,” he continued, “but nothing turned up. Something’s strange about all these people. If there’s a family plot, nobody I contacted knows where it is. Ben Trimble and his wife, Agnes — the caretakers who took Noah in after his release from the institution — are an enigma too. They were at the house in 1998 when Marguey Slattery disappeared, but by 2018 the two of them had vanished, along with Noah.
“Speaking of Marguey, I found nothing about her either. The only fact we know is that she disappeared. I think because it was sensational, the media called it an abduction when it might have been something else.
“Noah was around then, and everybody already considered him a murderer. Nobody considered alternatives — that Marguey might have run away or drowned in the bayou or been seized by a wild animal or a gator. All I know about her is nothing.”
Jack laughed at himself, saying his failure to find answers only created more questions. “My learning so little is unusual in itself. Lots of people disappeared over the years, but now everyone we look for is gone. The bodies of the Proctors are missing. The caretaker and his wife are gone. Noah and Marguey Slattery too. What happened to all of them, and is this all part of one gigantic puzzle?”
Landry thanked him for trying and leaned back in his chair to think. What if April’s disappearance had something to do with Proctor Hall too? What if it was the most recent unexplained mystery?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
By daybreak, there was a statewide alert for Julien’s silver Toyota Corolla. Every cop in every village in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi was on the lookout for a fifty-three-year-old white male with a ponytail and a black female aged twenty.
The alert came too late. Around two in the morning outside Lockport, the Corolla rolled down an embankment and slipped into Bayou Lafourche. It was plenty deep here — Julien knew that from the countless hours he’d spent as a boy fishing off this same bank.
As the car sank, he had a moment of regret. He liked that car, and it was just two years old and not yet paid off. But then he chuckled. From this point forward, like other things that had mattered once, the car and its monthly payments meant nothing now.
In one fleeting moment last night, Julien had crossed a point of no return. He left behind his facade — the well-crafted persona of a university professor. He took a bold step, made a choice, and traded one life for another.
For however many years or days or hours he had left, he would belong to the shadow world that had always inhabited his psyche. Before, he would visit it occasionally to experience its pleasures, but he always returned to the other life. Until now.
He walked a mile down the road, gratified that no cars passed him at this late hour. Inside a rickety old barn, he pulled back a tarp to uncover the Vespa he’d hidden earlier, headed west until he came to a familiar turnoff into a cane field, and drove to the cabin.
When he entered, he heard moans from the bedroom. She was just now waking up. The stuff he’d put in her beer knocked her out longer than he expected.
Her eyes displayed terror as she struggled against the plastic ties that secured her hands and feet. In this remote place he felt safe removing the gag from her mouth. She took deep, gasping breaths and tried to sit up. Julien observed every move with fascination. He’d never done something like this before, and he was interested to see how a person in such a situation reacted.
“You’ll never get away with this!”
He smiled, brought over a chair, and sat in front of her. “Get away with what, April? What’s my goal? Why did I bring you here? You don’t know what I’m after, so perhaps I already have gotten away with it.”
“Kidnappers get the death penalty, you bastard. You put something in my beer when I walked away to talk to Marisol. They’ll find you. The cops must be combing the area right now.”
“They wouldn’t be good at their jobs if they weren’t,” he replied. “Soon there will be roadblocks and house-to-house searches and everything in between. I can only imagine. If I had a television or my cell phone, I could follow the news. But now I have no use for either of those things. And we’re far, far away from anywhere they’ll be looking.”
“Give me some water.”
“Have you forgotten your manners? Even in a situation like ours, it’s only civil to be polite. Now ask me again.”
“Please. Please give me some water. I’m thirsty.”
He brought a bottle from the cooler, opened it, and held it to her lips as she drank. She looked into his eyes — this wasn’t the professor she’d had a beer with last night. His mannerisms, his inflections, and even his face had changed. This was someone else — a man with a purpose, the type of man she had hoped never to meet.
“What are you going to do to me?”
Julien smiled. “Don’t be afraid. It will only tax your strength. I apologize for binding your hands and feet, but I think we both agree it’s for the best. We don’t want them to find you until I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to show our friend Mr. Drake the Proctor Hall horror. He must be beside himself with questions that have no answers. I’ll give him everything he needs, and you will be an important part of that revelation.”
“I…I don’t understand.”
“But you will, I promise. Why don’t you try to rest now? I have things to do. I’ll be away for a while, but I’ll bring you something to eat when I return.”
As he knelt to put the cover over her mouth, she tried to bite his hand. He slapped her hard and then apologized. “I’m sorry, April. I don’t want to hurt you, and if you cooperate with me, the only hurting will be at the end.”
At the end? His words echoed in the room as she fought to breathe through her nose.
April understood. It would be the end of her twenty years on Earth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
In the two days since April’s abduction, lawmen had combed the area for the girl and the professor. They spent untold man-hours searching Proctor Hall, the plantation’s outbuildings, and the house in Lockport.
Officers tore apart April’s dorm room and, as expected, they found nothing helpful. They went to Julien’s house — the domicile of a messy bachelor, with clothes, books and papers carelessly tossed about. Investigators who found his computer noted the hard drive was missing. Although not proof, it was a sign that Julien had planned his disappearance.
While the cops looked for the missing persons, Landry, Cate, Henri and Jack sat in a cozy little bar called Patrick’s on Bienville Street.
“We already agreed to have another seance,” Landry said. “It has to happen as soon as possible. We may already be too late. Nothing else about Proctor Hall matters except April.”
Cate said, “So you think she’s in the house? How? The cops have been over every square inch of it. Isn’t another seance there just a waste of time?”
Landry’s theory was that Julien took April somewhere else. They needed to find the motive for why he took her. Whatever his connection to Proctor Hall, it played a part in the kidnapping. One thing was certain — Julien was no ordinary university professor, and the entities in the house might give them clues to help find her.
“We’re out of time. I want to do the seance tomorrow. Cate, see if your dad wants to come back over. I’ll get Phil to check out a van and meet us at I du Monde at eight.”
Doc couldn’t come; he’d spent too much time away from his busy practice, and Jack was busy too. The others grabbed coffee and beignets before piling into the van for the trip back to Lafourche Parish.
As they neared Thibodaux, Landry remembered he’d intended to buy a Ouija board. In the hubbub yesterday afternoon, it had slipped his mind.
“Friends in the paranormal business sometimes come in handy.” Henri laughed, patting his backpack. “I brought one just in case.” The pack was all Henri had this time; since they were short on time, he’d left his complicated gear at the office.
Landry, Cate and Henri unloaded the table and chairs and carried them into the sitting room while Phil set up his camera. They sat at the table and rested their fingers on the pointer.
Landry began with, “Is anybody home?” and Cate rolled her eyes.
“God, Landry. You’re not stopping by somebody’s house for tea. Henri, why don’t you be the communicator? At least you know something about it.”
After ten minutes of unsuccessful attempts, they decided they should have hired a medium. The DIY method just wasn’t working. Henri reached for the planchette to pack it away, and the moment his fingers touched it, the pointer moved.
D-A-N-G-E-R.
“Danger for whom?” Henri whispered, and the planchette spelled F-R-I-E-N-D.
“We think our friend April is in danger. Are you talking about her?”
YES
“Where is she?”
NOT HERE
“Does a man have her?”
YES DANGER
“We must save her. Do you know where she is?”
SHE WANTS APRIL
“Who? You said a man has her. That’s Julien, right?”
SHE WANTS APRIL DANGER
“Who is she?”
SHE IS BAD
Landry whispered, “Find out who the spirit is talking about.”
Even though no one asked a question, the pointer moved.
NOAH
“Is Noah going to hurt April?”
SHE IS BAD
Next he asked the question that would have been his first of the day if things hadn’t started off by veering in a different direction.
“Who are you?”
ME
“Same person,” Cate murmured. “May Ellen Proctor.”
The planchette shot across the board so rapidly that they couldn’t keep their fingers on it. This time they weren’t driving the pointer. Something else was, and the letters came flying.
L-E-A-V-E-T-H-I-S-H-O-U-S-E
LEAVE THIS HOUSE, said the Ouija board not once, but three times.
“I don’t think we’re talking to May Ellen anymore,” Henri observed, putting his fingers back on the pointer.
He asked, “Tell me who you are.”
LEAVE OR DIE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Henri said, “Perhaps we should leave,” but Landry had a hunch and wanted a turn.
He put fingertips to the planchette and said, “I’m sorry to disturb you, Agnes, but our friend is in danger. You are Agnes Trimble, correct?”
LEAVE NOW
“We won’t leave without our friend April. Where is she?”
A dozen books flew from a shelf next to the fireplace and crashed onto the floor.
“She’s pissed,” Cate cried. “Henri, this is getting out of hand.”
DANGER
“Landry, stop it! We have to go!”
Landry shouted, “You know where Julien Girard is. I command you to tell me now!”
In seconds a cloud of thick smoke issued from the fireplace, engulfing them in an inky blackness so thick Landry couldn’t see the Ouija board that was mere inches from his face, much less the others in the room.
“Keep your fingers on the pointer!” Henri yelled. “This is a power play. Don’t let her win!”
The mist boiled around Landry as he pressed down hard with his fingertips. The planchette moved around the board, but in the dark no one could tell which letters it stopped on.
Henri moved his fingers around the board until he found the pointer. He touched it and said, “Leave us alone! We are not here to disturb you. We want Julien and April. Where are they?”
As quickly as it formed, the cloud sucked back into the fireplace in an enormous swirl of darkness. The room was as before, and the planchette moved.
G-O-N-E
“Where did they go? Are they on this property?”
GOODBYE
“Wait! Answer me!”
The board became quiet. The spirit had departed.
It frustrated Landry that the seance revealed almost nothing new. The spirit called a woman bad. Was she referring to Agnes Trimble, the caretaker’s wife who tossed the books out of the shelf. Everything else made no sense. The word GONE, for instance. Was that a reference to April or to someone else?
As they drove back, Landry said he wanted one last shot at Proctor Hall. He would drop the others in town, return to the house, and survey it from a safe distance for a few hours, in case something happened.
If Proctor Hall didn’t hold the answers they needed, at least it had played a part in everything they witnessed. Julien’s connection to the house was a mystery. They knew one thing — with every passing minute, April might be in more danger. She might already be dead, but until they had proof, Landry would keep trying to find her.
The others liked the stakeout idea, but when Landry said he’d do it solo, Henri and Cate balked. “Take someone with you,” they urged, and Phil volunteered. But Landry said he planned to observe, not engage. He’d stay out of sight and keep quiet. The fewer people, the better. He insisted on doing this one alone.
A half hour before sunset, Landry pulled his Jeep off the highway and parked it in an oak grove. He carried a backpack down the rutted lane and selected a spot in the trees a hundred yards from the house, with a good view of it and the road. As stars appeared in the cloudless sky, he set up a folding chair and a small camp table, popped a beer, and adjusted the light on his phone screen to low. Then he settled back to wait.
He knew this might be another bust, but he had run out of ideas. After three hours, a check-in text to Cate, and a thousand games of Solitaire, he heard a faint noise.
Off in the distance came the sound of an engine — a small one. At first it came from the highway, but then it was louder, and soon a Vespa scooter emerged from the lane. The driver — a person in dark clothing — parked by the house. He got off and removed his helmet. In the pale moonlight, Landry noticed the long black ponytail. The quarry had come, as Landry hoped. Julien Girard had arrived.
As Julien flipped on a flashlight, unlocked the door and entered, Landry ran across the yard to the nearest window and looked through it. The beam from Julien’s light revealed his whereabouts — first the music room and then down the hall to the kitchen. Then without warning he appeared in the room Landry was looking into. Just five feet away, he played the beam of light across the window seconds after Landry ducked.
W
hen Julien went upstairs, Landry crossed the porch, eased open the door, and crept inside. He heard footsteps and a muffled conversation.
Was someone else in the house? The place had been quiet for as long as he’d been watching, but that meant nothing. He crept up a few stairs, paused, and listened to two voices. One was Julien’s, and the other, a raspy, unfamiliar one, sounded female. They were arguing.
Julien said, “When will this stop? You ruined my career, and for what?”
The Proctor Hall Horror Page 12