The Proctor Hall Horror

by Bill Thompson

  He stumbled down the porch steps, fell into the grass, and did a slow crab-walk across the yard toward the ruined blacksmith shop.

  On the back side of Proctor Hall, Phil and the cops moved the vehicles away from the house. When they regrouped, Landry asked who had Julien.

  “Shit!” Kanter said. “Shit, I had him, and in the craziness I left him. He’s still in the house! I’ve got to go back.”

  Landry grabbed his sleeve, but the cop pulled away and started running.

  Agnes walked down the hall and into the kitchen to turn off the gas flowing from the open burners. Her eyes stinging from the noxious fumes, she took a deep breath, ran across the room, and turned them off.

  At that precise, fateful moment, the lights came on inside Proctor Hall.

  The last moment of Agnes Girard’s life came when the ceiling light fixture illuminated, followed in milliseconds by a thunderous noise and a brilliant flash of light. The kitchen walls exploded outward, as did May Ellen’s haunted bedroom above it.

  On the opposite side of the house, Harry Kanter almost made it to the porch. Running full speed, the impact knocked him to the ground. Every window on this side exploded, sending shards of glass flying into the yard, and he drew his weapon as he wondered what happened.

  Within minutes the rainstorm had doused the flames, and by the time the Thibodaux Fire Department trucks arrived, a thick cloud of black smoke rose into the gray sky. From the back side where Landry and the others had parked, Proctor Hall appeared untouched except for its windows. The building was three-quarters intact. Only a corner of the bayou side had been ripped away; a gaping hole yawned where the kitchen and May Ellen’s bedroom once stood.

  In an instant Channel Nine’s crew was part of a major news event. The van they’d brought was equipped for remote feed, and soon they were broadcasting live footage from Proctor Hall with Landry Drake as the reporter.

  When a state arson investigator arrived, Doc told him about smelling natural gas and getting everyone out in the nick of time. But not quite everyone, they learned. A firefighter searching debris in the yard shouted, “There’s a body out here!” The corpse of an elderly woman, barefoot and wearing work clothes, lay in the wet grass a hundred feet from the house. She had been ejected so quickly that not even an eyebrow was singed. Landry felt certain this was Agnes Trimble, but until identification could be made, she would be called Jane Doe.

  Humidity hung in the air after the drenching rain, and fog shrouded the banks of Bayou Lafourche just a hundred yards away. Landry thought he saw something in the grass near the water — a pile of black rags, or maybe something that had swept up from the bayou in the storm.

  He ran across the lawn, stopping short when he saw movement. It looked like a pile of black clothes, but as he moved closer, a head popped up and he realized what he was seeing.

  A phantom was crouched on the ground, its black shroud hiding its face until Landry drew close and looked into the eye sockets of the skull that leered at him. There was something else — something on the ground under the specter’s shroud. As he moved closer, the phantom flew into the air, soared toward the bayou, and disappeared into the fog.

  “I need an EMT over here!” he yelled as he knelt beside the mangled body of Julien Girard.

  As the others gathered, the medical team brought their equipment and went to work. “Julien, can you hear me?” Landry said. As despicable as he was, no one deserved this.

  “Yesssss,” a hoarse growl issued from his bleeding throat. The creature had gouged hunks of flesh from his face. His cheekbones were visible, and just a flap of skin connected his nose to his face.

  “His blood pressure’s dropping fast,” a tech said. “I’ll call for a medivac.”

  “Julien, what happened?” Landry asked, holding his cold, clammy hand.

  “Tried to get to…blacksmith shop…remove chains…she crawled up out of the bayou…”

  “What was that thing?”

  “Mary…thought I killed her…guess she finally got me.”

  Mary Girard, his insane stepmother.

  The medical examiner walked back across the yard and shouted, “Who the hell moved the body?”

  Landry could barely see the man through the thick fog. “What are you talking about?”

  “The dead woman that was over here. Who moved the body?”

  Landry ran to where he stood. The indentation in the grass was unmistakable. The body had been there, but in the short time they’d tended to Julien, it had disappeared. They questioned everyone and searched the house and grounds, but no one would ever find Agnes Girard’s body.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Landry visited Julien in the hospital a few brief times. With his face swathed in bandages and under heavy sedation, the man wasn’t aware of the visits. Landry understood that; he came out of pity for the tormented man.

  Once Julien awoke, Lieutenant Kanter would post an officer outside his door. For now the man didn’t pose a flight risk. He started out in ICU, followed by a round of surgeries. A plastic surgeon reconstructed his damaged face and grafted skin where the phantom’s fingernails had torn away his flesh. He returned to ICU after that, and later to a regular room. Lengthy rehabilitation lay ahead.

  Kanter wanted to interview Julien as soon as possible. At last the doctors slowed down the sedatives and allowed a ten-minute visit twice a day. Kanter drove down from Baton Rouge for the first session and asked Detective Young to conduct the rest. That would save Kanter a lot of driving.

  Landry asked to attend the sessions and bring Phil to video them. Kanter had no issue with it, since the recording would act as a permanent record and allow him to watch the sessions he missed.

  On the morning of the first session, they waited outside the door while a nurse roused Julien and told him there were visitors. He recognized Landry and Phil, and he nodded when Landry reminded him Harry was a state cop.

  Landry asked how he felt, and Julien touched the bandages on his face. “It’s painful beyond belief. The doctors had a lot to fix. She ripped my face apart, and she’d have torn my body to shreds if someone hadn’t come. Perhaps that would have been best for everyone.”

  Kanter said with only ten minutes, the small talk must wait. Julien had been Mirandized earlier, but the cop read his rights again for the record.

  Kanter pulled a notepad from his pocket. “There are some loose ends about Proctor Hall I’d like to ask you about in what little time we have. I need as much information as you can provide. What happened to Marguey Slattery?”

  Julien spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Marguey. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ben and Agnes and Noah lived at Proctor Hall then. One day I drove over in the rain to see them. Noah sat on the stairs like he always did. My parents and I sat on the porch and talked. She fixed a pitcher of sweet tea. I will never forget my thought that this is how normal families interact. No insanity or killing or mayhem — just three people looking out toward the bayou in the rain.

  “Poor Marguey came along in her pirogue and tied up to a tree. Nobody said a word, but we saw the spirit materialize in the yard. That damned May Ellen Proctor waved to her. She floated down toward the bayou, and the girl in the boat screamed when she realized May Ellen was a ghost.

  “We ran down there and everything started happening. Agnes and Ben grabbed Marguey out of the boat and dragged her up to the house. She dropped her hat on the porch — that’s how her father realized later she’d been there. They took her inside and let Noah be blamed for her disappearance, just like at the massacre.”

  Kanter asked, “And you? What did you do while this kidnapping was underway?”

  A nurse entered the room. “Time’s up, I’m afraid,” she said. “Mr. Julien needs his rest now.”

  “Let him answer,” Kanter said, but the nurse wouldn’t budge.

  “A deal’s a deal. The doctor told you ten minutes twice a day. Time’s up. Now go.”

  “I’ll see you this afternoon,�
� Landry said as they walked toward the door.

  Julien croaked, “Lieutenant, I was as happy as they to have a new victim after all those years. I’m insane. There’s no cure for me. All that awaits me is eternity in hell.”

  “Why do you care about that bastard?” Kanter asked as they walked to the parking garage. “You treat him like he’s your friend.”

  “Even a monster deserves compassion. He’s still a human being. Imagine the conflict of living a lie for decades. He’s been a typical college professor on the outside and a demented madman within. I think confessing is cathartic for him, like a cleansing ritual. He’s not asking for forgiveness or understanding. He wants to tell someone his story before it’s too late.”

  Kanter left his list of questions with Landry, and in the afternoon session, Detective Young confirmed Mary Girard was the specter who attacked Julien at Proctor Hall.

  He said, “I told you she wanted to get to me. She wants revenge. When she attacked me, she whispered, ‘You threw me in the bayou while I was still alive.’ Do you understand what that means? I swear I wouldn’t have thrown her in there if I’d known she wasn’t dead. I saw the gators thrashing around. They killed Mary, not me.”

  “Any remorse?” the cop asked, and Julien shook his head.

  “I wish I weren’t like this. God knows I wanted to be normal. I didn’t want the woman who raised me to die like that. But am I sorry for what I did? No. I’ll do it again, given the chance. I’m beyond help. I’m beyond everything that’s decent.”

  “Where’s Agnes?” Julien asked, and Landry realized he hadn’t heard about the explosion. When he said Julien’s mother had died, the man muttered, “About time.” Landry said her body vanished soon after her death, and Julien suggested perhaps the ghostly Proctor family claimed her body.

  They learned that he faked Noah Proctor’s death certificate to protect his mother, Agnes. With Noah dead, she didn’t have to worry about anybody from social services or the mental health system checking up on him. After she killed Ben in 2014, she began keeping Noah in that upstairs cage that had been hers. Neither that nor anything else bothered Noah, but at last she had to leave.

  “Occasionally curious people came to see the haunted mansion. Agnes would hide, but some of them went inside, and luckily none was alone. She’d have killed again, but at her age, she couldn’t attack more than one. She created spooky sounds to scare off intruders, and fortunately for her, nobody ever went upstairs and found Noah.”

  Landry said, “But why keep Noah alive at all? It was a burden for her.”

  “Even in her eighties, she still had an insatiable desire for murder. Noah was her hole card. If the opportunity arose and she caught an unfortunate victim in Proctor Hall, she could bring Noah out, sit him back on the stairway, and let the police find him. Everyone in the parish would have thought Noah did it.”

  Their time ran out, and Landry offered to buy Shane a beer. Young returned to the precinct station, wrapped up a few things, and met Landry and Cate at Harry’s Corner on Dumaine. There are people who’ve interacted with cops enough to recognize one even in street clothes. When Young walked in, some guys at the bar held up their hands and yelled, “Raid! Down on the floor!” Everyone found that hilarious, including Shane.

  Cate listened as they discussed the interview with Julien. In her mind, the man had no conscience. Insanity was a catchall word for many flaws, and poor Julien — who declared himself insane — had inherited more than his share of bizarre amorality. Doomed from birth, it surprised Landry how resigned about his fate he appeared to be.

  That evening Landry got a call from the duty nurse, who advised them they couldn’t meet with Julien tomorrow. He’d developed a low-grade fever and his heart rate was elevated, and the doctor had put him on antibiotics and a sedative to let him sleep.

  After he texted Detective Young to cancel the meeting, Cate reminded him that tomorrow demolition would begin at Proctor Hall. With the house damaged beyond repair, her father had hired a demolition firm. Forensic experts from the state police would work beside the wrecking crew as they removed walls, floors and ceilings.

  Since Landry had committed to attending Julien’s interviews, he had to miss the demolition. With free time now, he was excited to go along.

  “I’ll call Phil and have him come record everything,” he said. “And Henri. We should ask Henri too.”

  She smiled. “We already have. You’re not the only organized one in this household. Phil and Henri will be there too.”

  “What would I do without you?” he quipped.

  “Lord only knows. I wonder that myself sometimes.”

  Hours later, Julien called Landry’s direct line at WCCY-TV and left a voicemail. In a weak voice, his words came between gasps for air. Julien could have reached Landry on his cell, but as Landry and Cate listened, they realized he wanted to make a statement instead of having a conversation.

  “I want to explain about April. It was wrong to abduct her, but I did it for the right reasons. I needed someone to confide in. The things I had done ate me up inside, and with her psychic abilities, I believed we had a connection. Agnes would kill April to keep me from telling her things, so I hid her at the cabin in Lockport. Mother would have found her at Proctor Hall. I hope you can understand that not everything I’ve done in my miserable life was bad. I wanted to save her life.”

  In Cate’s opinion, the statement was a pathetic attempt to justify a kidnapping. It was the last straw for her. She had no more empathy for this monster.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  The next morning Landry, Cate and Phil drove to Thibodaux. On the way he called the hospital and spoke to a nurse who advised him Julien was now in ICU. When Landry asked what had happened, she said she couldn’t release patient information, although Lieutenant Kanter had called earlier. “Since Mr. Girard’s a prisoner, I gave him a patient update. You might check with him.”

  Kanter said Julien’s temperature had spiked during the night. He had so much difficulty breathing that he had been put into an induced coma and was on a ventilator. His doctor believed he had sepsis.

  “He may have given us all we’ll get,” Kanter said. Landry said he was going back to the house, and Kanter asked him to check in. His own men would be there, but he wanted Landry’s point of view on the situation.

  Landry played Julien’s voicemail for Phil. He agreed with their conclusion last night. It sounded like a last-ditch attempt by a desperate man to clear his name if not his conscience. Cate wished she could find something decent about the man, but after hearing his confessions, she had no room in her heart for his protestations.

  When they arrived at Proctor Hall, they found two state police crime scene vans parked next to a beautifully restored red 1990 Jaguar XJ6. Landry smiled. Henri had brought his baby out for a drive. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.

  Several trucks and machines marked “Christian Brothers Demolition” sat in the yard, and a team of men and women in hard hats waited for instructions. They had examined the structure and determined parts of the second floor were unsafe because of the blast. Starting with the kitchen, they would move through the house, striving to maintain structural integrity until it was time to bring the place down. The medical examiner’s people would work alongside the demo team.

  A few days earlier, movers had cleaned out the house. They moved all the furniture and personal items to a warehouse Doc owned in Metairie so someone could examine them. The house had plenty of secrets, and Landry hoped perhaps even the furnishings might give up something interesting.

  Cate gave the order to begin, and what had been a peaceful scene became a beehive of activity. The medical team and the workers climbed up from the yard into the ruined kitchen. Phil donned a hard hat and joined them while Landry, Cate and Henri watched from the yard a few feet away. The workers tossed lumber into a pile in the grass, where a crane with a huge metal scoop would transfer it to a dump trailer.

 
They made quick work of the kitchen because it was just a shell. Nothing interesting turned up in what remained of its walls and floors.

  The demolition crew moved to the downstairs hall, signaled that things seemed structurally sound, and the show moved inside. Landry and the others entered the house through the back door and watched from the far end of the hall as the men took crowbars to the wall panels and worked their way down the halls, ripping them off. Nothing lay behind them except the rough-hewn studs and crude insulation used in 1910 when Mason Proctor built the house.

  The first discovery came when they removed the walls that covered the underside of the staircase. One of the inlaid panels proved to be a door. Henri moved closer for a look, showing the others how a latch would release when someone pressed a certain place. Boxes containing handwritten ledgers filled the tight space.

  Landry hoped they would reveal secrets about the house and its occupants, but they served a more monotonous purpose. As the crew removed dozens of boxes, Landry selected two from the 1920s at random and found meticulous entries that chronicled the sugar mill’s daily operations.