by Lissa Kasey
“I can’t talk about the case with you. But we are exploring all angles.”
I stared at him for a minute, parsing the brother speak before I continued. “I didn’t see her. I don’t think Micah did either. Is she missing too?”
“No. She’s been questioned like you and Micah were. How about you focus on the job and Micah, and let me focus on the case?” Lukas stole a bite of toast from me.
“Jared said she took something from the grave. And he saw the darkness take Sarah from him.”
Lukas sighed. “Alex, stop.”
I frowned at him. He was the one who wanted me to stop pretending I didn’t see strange shit. Or was it something else?
“Whatever happened in that cemetery doesn’t need to be anything but a short memory for you. Okay?” Lukas said.
“But Jared and Sarah…”
“Are people you met.” He shook his head. “You and Micah are scary alike sometimes. You know that? Meeting people does not make you responsible for them. Not their actions or their fate. If they’d left the shop and gotten into a car accident, would you have felt responsible?”
“No. But I don’t feel responsible for them right now either. Just worried and trying to help,” I pointed out.
Lukas stared at me like he could see right through me.
“Okay, so I feel a little responsible. Plus Jared is a wreck and the cops are looking at him like he did something.”
“It’s standard procedure because most of the time it is the SO who has pulled some shit. It’s not even a one-off, Alex. Almost every case of domestic abuse that ends in murder is some guy claiming they’d never hurt so and so. Did Jared do something? We don’t know. The timeline is off, and we have them on video. We have Mary Lamont, self-proclaimed Voodoo Queen, leaving the cemetery before Jared came calling for help and the two of you ran up. We don’t have a body for Sarah, or any video indicating she left the cemetery. But you know what all that means?”
I shook my head.
“Of course you don’t. The police don’t either. But it’s our job to put the pieces together. Not yours.” He reached out and put his hand over mine. “How about you focus on healing instead of worrying about stuff you can’t do anything about?”
“Maybe if Micah and I talk to that Mary person? Maybe she’ll remember something else?”
“Maybe you’ll give yourself a heart attack from all this worry?”
“I’m fine,” I promised.
“Then focus on the job. Learn about the city. See if the pretty boy is someone you want to spend some time with. Let me deal with the trouble of New Orleans.”
“What if it’s paranormal?” I wondered. Lukas didn’t seem to be sensitive to it at all.
“What if it is? What would you do?” Lukas asked.
He was right. I didn’t know. Just because I could see something other people might not didn’t mean I had a way of proving it or even doing something about it.
“Exactly,” Lukas said, understanding my expression as only he really could. “Now relax. Learn about the city. And try to stay out of trouble. Yeah?”
I nodded, even if my brain was twirling a million miles a second with questions.
The tour began in Jackson Square right in front of the gate to the little park full of statues. We arrived a few minutes after eight and Micah pointed out some of the local food places in the area that were good. The crowd began to assemble by quarter to nine, phones out and walking shoes on. At least it felt like they were taking this seriously. Micah frowned over an arrival or two, whom I assumed were the reporters. But he checked them in with a smile and a welcome. I stood beside him in a shirt that read: ‘Ghost Security is more than fences around graveyards.’ It was bright purple with white text that glowed in the dark. It clung a little. When I tried it on, Micah had made appreciative sounds even though the color was a little intense for my normal tastes.
“When everyone is here, let me talk first, okay?” I said.
Micah gave me the side-eye. “Okay?”
“Trust me.”
He shrugged and continued greeting everyone. It was a big group. They fanned around us, a smattering of late teens, twenty-somethings, and all the way up to a couple with matching silver hair and a lifetime of likely well-earned wrinkles. Everyone looked a little nervous and excited. My focus was on Micah. He’d been clear during our walk-through that we had to keep the group moving, and occasionally pull the group back from wandering or asking off-topic questions that slowed the entire tour down.
Finally the last of them had arrived. I cleared my voice and waved my hands to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome everyone,” I said once they’d quieted down. “This is Micah, your tour guide and New Orleans haunted history guru,” I indicated to Micah. “I’m Alex and I’m security. You’ll notice we have a large group tonight, and I’ll ask that you try to keep your voices low so everyone can hear Micah speak as that’s why you’re all here. Stay with the group. We will be stopping at each location so you can ask questions and take pictures. The tour lasts about an hour and a half. We can’t promise you’ll see ghosts, but if you see me chasing something, maybe run the other way, eh?”
There was a nervous giggle from the crowd.
“Keep the questions and comments respectful and we are sure to have an entertaining adventure. Now let’s get started, okay?”
“Is it true one of the people on your tour went missing?” One of the men in the back asked. Micah tensed. I put a hand on his arm.
“Not true. She was not on our tour. Any further questions about last night’s incident will have to go through the police as it’s an ongoing investigation,” I said. “Now, we are all here for a tour, right?”
The crowd murmured its agreement. All eyes turned to Micah. He welcomed them and began the story about the Jackson Square ghosts. The night was overcast, but no rain or fog in sight, though the crowd searched the area for any sign of the four murdered men who were known to haunt the Square.
We made our way up Royal street, stopping at a few places to hear scary stories. The crowd snapped pictures of places, though I saw and felt nothing out of the ordinary. I kept to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the two guys I was pretty sure were reporters, and Micah. He was very engaging. His verbal story telling skills were intense as he projected his voice over the crowd, lowering or raising his tone with the story, even adding accented dialogue a time or two like a skilled audiobook narrator might.
I didn’t see or sense anything unusual until we got close to the Voodoo Museum. Micah had told me on our earlier tour that people used to be able to visit the museum and take part in mock rituals, but there had been a fire, and the Voodoo Society had been trying to raise enough funds to finish the repairs for quite some time. So in short, the building was vacant, and locked up tight. When we’d passed it earlier, I’d seen nothing and it sounded like a sad story of how capitalism milked everyone for every penny by asking for more and more permits. Now the building seemed to glow with some sort of eerie light.
I frowned at it and wondered if Micah felt anything.
He paused a few feet from the building, letting everyone gather around him, and glanced my way. Was he getting that bug feeling? I met his gaze and he nodded. Yes, he felt something. “This is, or was at least, the Voodoo Museum you probably heard of in your research of New Orleans,” he began.
I looked over the building trying to figure out if there was some scientific explanation for the building having a glow. Nothing close was lit with anything more than a streetlight. Nearby shops were closed. And I knew, because of Micah’s comments earlier in the day, that the power to the building was turned off. Yet all the windows flickered with a faint light, almost like a fire.
Nothing seemed to move within. I wondered if we should call someone and let them know? Or was it something only I was seeing? The group snapped lots of photos, but no one remarked on anything in particular. I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures myself of the windows a
nd the area where the top of the building met the skyline of the city, to see if later I would be able to distinguish any glow.
“Did you catch anything?” The woman nearest to me asked.
“Haven’t looked yet,” I told her honestly. “You?”
“Maybe?” She held up her phone and in the window near where Micah stood was some sort of hint of a face. Not a reflection obviously as no one was standing close enough for there to be a reflection. “I think the window is boarded up from the inside,” she continued. “Maybe it’s something on the wood?”
I glanced up at the window and didn’t see anything there other than the glow, but it was boarded up from the inside. A big piece of plywood on that side protecting the oversized window from either vandals or people trying to look inside.
“I don’t see anything now,” I told her and stepped up to the window. Micah shrugged when I threw him a questioning look, assuring me he was okay with the time we were making on the tour.
The glass was solid, thick, with a sun-resistant coating of some kind on the outside. I put my hand to the glass more to feel if anything was different about it, perhaps a texture or something that only came out in the photo. I heard phones snapping pictures around me, but didn’t see anything other than the faint glow. I stared into the dark pane for a minute, the palm of my hand pressed onto the glass, feeling nothing really, then heat radiating from the center of my hand and intensifying. I yanked my hand away and blinked at the glass. For a few seconds I almost felt like something was staring back at me. Nothing I could actually see, but more a presence I could sort of feel.
Micah put a hand on my arm, which made me step back into the street away from the ruins of the museum. “Ready to move on?” he asked.
I nodded, though the sense of something close ran through my nerves like a rush of anxiety irritating my skin. Maybe that was what Micah meant by bugs?
I returned to the back of the group and followed as we continued the tour. We stopped briefly near the intersection of Royal and Charters to listen to the infamous story about the Casket Girls who legend said were vampires. The monastery overlooked the area with an intimidating white tower, boasting closed off windows and a large fence keeping people out. Micah knew all the history and talked about the myth of the girls and how it had exploded in the seventies after an incident that he hadn’t been able to find real record of.
The third floor of the giant white convent in the distance looked still and normal to me, as it had on our initial tour, though most of the group took pictures.
“We’ll stop by the entrance to the convent on our way back to Jackson Square later. That is supposedly where the two investigators were found after they were eviscerated by the vampires,” Micah told the group. “Occasionally the convent holds tours inside. Though I have never seen the third floor. As far as I know it is still locked up.”
The rest of the tour went much the same way. I didn’t know how Micah kept all his facts straight. And no matter what questions were asked of him, he had an answer, even if it was simply to point them toward a historical reference website.
The brief stop we made at the LaLaurie Mansion made my gut ache. We weren’t even close, instead staring down at it from half a block away. Even through the barely lit streets I could see another tour gathered around on the sidewalk in front of the house. Micah told several very sad stories about victims and ghosts while everyone took pictures and listened raptly. I examined the windows in the distance. Looking for the smoke creatures. In the dark it looked black. No glow. No movement. Just lifeless.
I thought for a minute or two that maybe what I’d seen during the day was a fluke. But the longer we stood there while Micah answered questions, the more the pain in my gut intensified. Almost like the siren song of that day in the desert. Only I recognized it for what it was now, the call of death. Or as Micah had put it, doom.
When we finally moved on, I breathed a sigh of relief as the further we got from the house, the more the feeling eased. We didn’t see the dancing girl at Jared’s hotel, or barmaids at the Dauphine. The night was quiet enough, though if I never had to walk by the LaLaurie Mansion again it would be too soon.
The French Market was our last stop, and very still in the darkness, an empty stretch of road with a few street lamps in the distance. I listened to the stories and chatter, watching the area. Movement caught my attention from near the end of the market area. We stood near the crossroads, street signs a few feet away, but I could only read one which said Gallatin. The long stretch of the Market that had been filled with vendors fading off into the darkness.
Down toward the end there seemed to be someone walking toward us. I blinked in that direction, trying to make out who it might be in the darkness. Was it someone who wanted to bug Micah for hosting a tour? I’d noticed he had taken a very different route from the handful of other tours we’d passed. Had any of them ended up in the Market?
I looked around at the group and wondered if anyone else had noticed. But they were all snapping pictures around and laughing lightly about prostitutes who could whip the asses of a bunch of stupid and likely very drunk sailors. I raised my own phone and took a few pictures of the group and the figure who ambled our way. The figure didn’t really get any closer.
Micah was still talking, so either he didn’t notice it or was ignoring it. And I didn’t feel anything. Nothing. Not a sense of doom or even anxiety, not until I realized I could see a hint of light filtering through the figure. Not a person, I thought, keeping it to myself. Human shaped with a defined head and shoulders, the bottom half a bit more unfocused. Could it have been the prostitute? What was her name? Red something? I’d missed half the story. Would have to ask Micah about it later. But the story ended and questions trailed off. The figure was gone.
“Thanks, everyone, for coming. If you have a chance, please post a review of our tour online,” Micah told them. “Does anyone need directions from here? I always feel like the Quarter, while very square, is somewhat confusing to newcomers.” The older couple approached him for help, while the rest of the group began to scatter, except the reporters.
I approached them. “Can I help you guys with something?”
“Did you guys really find a dead body on the tour last night?” One of them asked.
“We weren’t on a tour, and really weren’t involved at all. Perhaps your questions would be better directed toward the police, as I believe they are still investigating,” I said.
“Do you think Micah’s past might have something to do with it?” The other asked.
“Since we have nothing to do with the incident, I think that question is moot, right? It’s a bit like stumbling on a car crash. Just because we know how to drive doesn’t mean we were involved in the crash.” I used Lukas’s analogy hoping they’d go away. “I have the phone number for the detective in charge of the case if you’d like to speak to him directly, but neither Micah nor I have anything to give you.”
The men didn’t look happy with my answer.
“Would you like the number?” I repeated.
“No. They won’t give a statement to us anyway.”
I shrugged. “Guess you’re out of luck then. Have a good evening, gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the tour. Please refer your friends.” I made my way to Micah’s side as the rest of the group scattered, heading off in different directions.
“I hope that we’re done for the night,” I told Micah. “’Cause I’m tired.” I looked down at my feet. “Maybe I need better shoes.”
“I used to wear one of those fitness watches,” Micah said as we walked down Decatur toward the Square. “Some days I’d clock twenty kilometers. Used to come back this way every night and stop to get beignets, could eat two whole plates to myself. I think I overdid it since I don’t care for them much anymore.”
“Is it open all night?”
“Yes. Did you want to stop?”
“Nah. They were okay, but nothing to write home about.”
; “Do you want me to walk you home?” Micah asked. “So you don’t get lost?” He paused then added, “Or you can come home with me.”
My heart sped up a little. “I’m not sure what the right answer is here, though I do think I should walk you home at least.” I didn’t like the idea of him walking through his dark garden alone, even if whatever it was only showed up after three a.m.
“But would you find your way home if you did that?”
“Maybe?” I reached out and took his hand in mine, liking that he didn’t pull away. “Do you want me to go home?” I thought about that for a while when he didn’t answer. “If I go home, will you be working on some craft all night instead of sleeping?”
He shrugged. “I usually sleep a few hours. But I do have some ideas of stuff to make for you.”
“You’ve been hearing stuff nightly for the past few weeks.”
“Yes. It’s fine. I need to work on stuff anyway.”
I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of some cool new coat or costume. “You don’t have to make me anything.”
“No, but I have ideas. It’s easier to get them out sometimes instead of keeping them in.”
We walked a little further. Far enough that I was getting an idea of the area now. We’d have to make a choice on which way to turn soon. “If you’re okay with me hanging with you, maybe I could stay over. Pet your cat or something.” Man, was I awkward.
He laughed. “Jet loves you. He’s a great judge of character.”
“Doesn’t seem to like Tim much,” I said.
“I think it’s because Tim doesn’t like him. It’s like he senses it. Tim has never really been an animal person. I didn’t think I was either until Jet. No one really owns cats where I come from. It’s more like the neighborhood cat. Everyone feeds it and it comes and goes as it pleases. Can’t really do that here. It’s not safe for Jet and a lot of people are very cruel.”
That reminded me of the animal thing we’d seen in the cemetery. I didn’t want to think about it. I squeezed his hand and let him steer us toward his place. Despite being after eleven there were still a lot of people lingering. We walked by the shop and everything was closed and dark, the sign gone from the walk.