by Ron Shiflet
“Yah. Seems like you’d be the most likely person to talk to about the local history of such things.”
“Because of my great-grandmomma? I’m afraid I can’t tell you much more than the tourist guides. About all I have from her are my last name and a few family stories. Anything more died with old Charlotte Leveau-Glapion a hundred years ago.”
I nodded. “Still, you may be able to help me. A herbalist’s shop probably gets quite a bit of…old fashioned customers, the kind who might have trouble buying supplies at more traditional outlets.”
She laughed a perfect tinkling melody. “You mean Vodoun? You think because I am a descendant of the legendary Bokor Marie Leveau that the old root-workers pay me homage?”
“Yah, I do.”
She smiled at me indulgently. “You are a funny old guy and you have good phone manners, so I will help you out. I myself know nothing. That voodoo doll, zombie crap is for the movies and for scaring tourists. But if you do have to have your head filled with that sort of thing, you might want to go talk to Sara Pike, down to the Mason’s Home. She’s about a thousand years old and knows all the old stories. She drinks crème de menthe, you bring her a bottle, she’ll talk your ear off.” She rose, and shook my hand. “You can find your way out, I imagine.”
“Yah. Thanks.” I reached for the door. “You know, fifty isn’t old,” I said over my shoulder.
She laughed again. “From where I’m sitting, it is.”
I brushed my way through the curtains and made my way to the front of the shop. As I passed the counter, Henri reached out and grabbed the sleeve of my coat. “Don’ believe her,” he hissed. “She evil wicked. Kill you dead with the eye, you cross her.”
“Not planning to, but thanks for the warning.” I pushed my way through the door into the gloomy late November afternoon.
“Every word the gospel, boy. Every word.” Sara Pike paused to take a sip from the tiny glass filled with green liquid. Every time she did so, her hand became steady and sure, a perfect delivery system between bottle and gullet. We were sitting across from each other in the visitor’s lounge at the big old Mason’s Home.
There was no doubt in my mind that Sara Pike had been a beautiful woman, twenty or thirty years before I was born. There was still plenty of evidence of that beauty in the way she held her head, in the fine bones that showed stark beneath her sunken cheeks and in her fine, smooth espresso-colored skin. The deep wrinkles that etched her face seemed like they had been placed there by a careful artist to express wisdom and dignity.
“That Presley boy, he used to come by and buy root charms from Miss Simone’s big momma, Elise. She had a daughter no natural man could turn away from. Make a church deacon snort like a peach orchard boar. Elvis, he divorced and alone, no wife to keep care of him and Lord knows he had an eye for women. One time, Elise down to Baton Rouge to see to her ailing sister, old Elvis come by for a charm and find the girl by herself. Even at the healthy size he’d gotten to he could still turn a girl’s head, and Missy finds herself for a weekend up to Graceland. Elise was furious when she found out but not nearly so blown up as when a few months later she notices Missy’s high belly.”
She nodded to me to refill her glass. In a little more than an hour she had more than half finished the fifth of mint liqueur. “Nine months after her Graceland visit, Missy dies in childbirth. Next day they find Elvis dead in the toilet, mysterious like. I ain’t saying they’s any connection, but it does beg the question.”
She took a dainty sip that still somehow managed to nearly empty the glass. “Nobody ever crossed Elise and was happy after. And Simone, she raised by her Big Momma. Look just like her. Talk like her too. Sings better, though.”
“What ever happened to Elise?”
“She passed, eight, ten years ago. Buried her with all the other Leveau-Glapion women, clear back to Charlotte, in the family crypt. Laid her next to Missy.”
“And where is the family crypt?” I reached across and re-filled her glass.
“It’s down to the August P. Belmont Cemetery, cross town.”
“Are you certain? The Belmont has been closed to new burial for nearly fifty years.”
She smiled thinly through her bright red lipstick, and winked. “There’s closed, and then there’s closed.”
The rest of the afternoon was spent at the main branch of the public library, digging through the document section. The librarian was an online acquaintance, a fellow eBay enthusiast who had purchased a sealed carton of mid-sixties mouse ears from me. I learned very little that I didn’t know already, but was able to verify several items. Missy Leveau-Glapion hadn’t died the day before Elvis; it was a week earlier. Neither Missy’s nor Elise’s obituaries made mention of their burial site.
My investigation had led me back to the starting place, the August P. Belmont Memorial Cemetery. Gregory and I would have to finish our digging there. I flipped open my black Moto Razor and punched him up. I would meet him there in an hour.
I have been knocked out a time or two in my life. Every time before I have come to after, it has taken me several minutes to get my bearings. This time my eyes popped open and my mind was clear. My head hurt like hell but it was nothing compared to the psychic pain caused by what I saw in front of me.
I want to be clear here. I had carefully planned my visit to Memphis around not visiting Graceland. I especially never planned to be where I found myself now, in that extreme monument to overdone bad taste known popularly as the Jungle Room. I had imagined it to be stunningly bad but my imagination had failed utterly to anticipate its dreadful grandeur.
I seemed to be completely immobile, held up to the red pine paneling by my coat, which was carefully nailed to the wall. I tugged at it but the nails had been placed every two or three inches and the coat was made of very high-quality cloth. I was stuck.
My muddy boots rested on the lime green shag carpet. Directly across from me sat one of three or four matching chairs, upholstered in orange velvet with intricate, weirdly uncomfortable looking carved mahogany backs that stretched narrowly up nearly to the green leaf patterned ceiling. Everywhere there was something covered with either zebra striped fabric or leopard-patterned leather. I groaned in involuntary revulsion.
“I warned you not to meddle,” whispered the voice from the crypt. It came from the darkness near the heavy carved walnut bar on the other side of the room.
“Yeah, I’m funny that way. Hardheaded. Good thing, ‘cause your zombie’s love tap mighta killed me otherwise.”
“I have brought you here to your doom.”
“Yeah, I have a question about that. How’d you get me here, anyway?”
“My minions brought you here. I drove them in my van.”
I couldn’t help myself. The image of this unseen voice driving down Elvis Presley Boulevard with a hippy van load of zombies was just too much. I burst out laughing, gasped at the pain in my head, laughed some more.
“You mock at your peril.”
“No, Bub. I mock at your dialog. Sounds to me like you’ve been watching too many Saturday morning cartoons.”
“Enough! I thought that I might enslave you, but you are too…” the voice hesitated, searching for a word.
“Smart?” I offered.
“No! But soon you will be dead, and then I will have no trouble bringing you back as my servant. Kill him!” From each corner of the room a zombie stumbled forward toward me.
“Good thing this is a big room,” I said. “And a really good thing that like most ghosts you are stupid. Time and again you guys throw away the only advantage you have and let me use The One Thing That Always Works. Elvis. Aron. Presley.”
“Stupid? If I were stupid would I have all this?” There was a waving motion in the darkness by the bar.
“Well, you know, you don’t have all this. Elvis. Aron. Presley is the richest guy in the graveyard.” The zombies stumbled closer, the nearest one clutching a fireplace poker with a wildebeest horn handle.
“Naw, I don’t think so. The funniest part I can’t even tell you, ‘cause it would interfere with this. Elvis. Aron. Presley!”
All four zombies groaned and collapsed into stinking heaps of bone and rotten cloth. There was a cry from near the bar and a slight figure stumbled out of the darkness to fall face forward onto the nasty lime green shag. From where I was nailed to the wall I could just make out the white letters spelling “Alexander” against the blue of the Seahawks jersey.
Henri would be out for at least an hour. If I could work my way free before then I would load him and the remains of his minions into his van and take him home to his cousin. If not, and if Henri was unable to get his act together before then, we could always wait for security to find us in the morning. Not exactly optimal, as the sort of person who thrives in that profession seldom has a sense of humor about this sort of thing. I started rocking back and forth against my left sleeve, which seemed slightly looser.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand.” Gregory sipped from his chicory laced coffee.
“What’s that?” I sniffed the warm aroma that rose from my mug with the steam. Otherlands is a funky-looking place but they have the best coffee in town.
“Was that really the ghost of Elvis?”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Over the last twenty years I have exorcised at least a dozen Elvis’s. Any one of them could have been the real one. Ghosts are stupid. Most of them never even know that the form they take has more to do with their own little psycho-dramas while they were still alive than with any sort of cosmic rules.”
“And saying their true name doesn’t really matter?”
“Naw, it matters, just as long as they believe it’s their true name.”
Gregory shook his head. “Don’t suppose I can use this in my next book?”
“Best not.” I downed the last of my cup, got up to leave. “Now that Henri has learned his lesson, I doubt he’ll be messing with any more Vodoun. Let the boy grow up in peace.” I looked out the plate glass windows at the street outside. A group of boys Henri’s age, one of them carrying a basketball, walked down the street on their way to Peabody Park.
“Early flight?”
I shook my head and scratched around the edge of the small square bandage that covered the gash there. “Dinner with Simone. I guess fifty isn’t all that old, after all.”
Gregory smiled. “Be careful. ‘She walks by, the dogs all cry, but the cats all purr.’”
I raised an eyebrow in query.
“‘Voodoo Queen Marie’. Old song by a band called the Holy Modal Rounders.
“But aren’t they all witches inside?” My attempt at a Brooklyn drawl was weak and nasal.
It was Gregory’s turn to look puzzled.
“Bugs Bunny. Old cartoon. ‘Bewitched Bunny’.”
Gregory grinned. “You watch yourself, boy.”
“Nothing but.” I walked coatless into the rain outside.
THE BEST GHOST TOUR IN SAVANNAH
MARK ALLAN GUNNELLS
“We’re gonna be late,” Mark said, checking his Scooby Doo watch again. Tiny ghosts floated across the face, the hands creeping toward 9:30.
“We’ll make it, I’m sure it’s just around the corner,” Kasey said, her eyes darting between the map in her hands and the street signs. They were currently walking down Lincoln, about to intersect with East Congress. “If either you or Robin want to take over navigation, I’ll gladly give up the map.”
Mark was more than happy to let Kasey play the role of unofficial leader of the trio. This was the first time in Savannah for all of them; it was well after dark; all the streets looked alike; and they’d already missed the first two walking tours they’d tried for.
It seemed a rocky start to their vacation, and yet Mark was certainly having the time of his life. It was different; it was exciting; it was fun. It was an adventure.
“I think this is it,” Kasey said as they turned left onto Congress. One of Savannah’s many squares lay ahead of them, little islands of nature and rest in the midst of the historic district. “And we’ve got one and a half minutes to spare.”
“Then why are we the only ones here?” Mark asked. Many tourists strolled the streets around the square but no group gathered for the start of a tour.
“This is Reynolds Square,” Robin said, indicating a sign at the square’s entrance. “The brochure said the tour started in Johnson Square.”
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Kasey said, unfolding the map and scrutinizing it once again. “I was positive this was it.”
“The streets move around,” Mark said with a certain amusement in his voice. “Just when we think we know where we’re going, these fuckin’ streets rearrange themselves.”
“You read too many horror novels,” Kasey said. “Okay, I’ve got it now. We’re in front of Reynolds Square on East Congress. Warren Square is two blocks to our right, which means Johnson Square is two blocks to our left.”
“Damn, how many squares does this town have?” Robin asked, adjusting the straps of the backpack she carried around like a beloved albatross.
“I’ll take Whoopi Goldberg to block,” Mark said as they headed off to the left.
It was already past 9:30 so the trio quickened their pace. Up ahead, Mark could see another square, a large phallic stone monument thrusting up from its center. He exchanged a high-five with Robin when he saw the sign announcing they were entering Johnson Square.
His joy abated somewhat when he noticed this square was also deserted. The three wandered over to a bench near the center of the park and sat down.
“Where the hell is everybody?” Kasey said. “This is the right place.”
“Maybe the tour started already,” Robin said, rubbing her feet.
“We’re only ten minutes late,” Mark said, looking down the nearby streets. “You’d think they’d still be close.”
“Maybe no one else showed up for the tour,” Robin said, “and the guide left.”
“Well, shit,” Kasey said. “We’ve been walking around for an hour and missed all three tours. How pathetic is that?”
“Oh, come on,” Mark said. He was sitting in the middle and placed an arm around both of his friends. “We’ve still had a good time, took our own little tour of Savannah.”
“Yeah, and my feet are killing me,” Robin said. “These shoes were a mistake. How ‘bout we head back to the car?”
All three got very quiet, and Mark could see that they were all thinking the same thing. Kasey was the first to give voice to it.
“Did anyone happen to pay attention to where we parked the car?”
Of course, Mark knew they hadn’t. They’d been running late to catch the first tour at 8:30 and had found it nearly impossible to find a parking space. Kasey had finally spotted one, risking an illegal U-turn to secure it, and they’d rushed into the historic district without bothering to check what street they’d parked on.
Mark threw his head back and yelled at the intersecting branches above them, “We’re never getting back to the motel!”
“Excuse me; are you here for the ghost tour?”
The voice was low and gentle, coming from behind them. Mark turned to find a man in his early to mid-thirties, light brown hair—a little too long and curling at the ends—large brown eyes and a pouty mouth. He wore a plain white T-shirt with khaki pants and sneakers. His skin was pale, luminous in the darkness.
“Yes,” Kasey said. “We thought we missed it.”
“Not at all,” the stranger said, a small smile touching his lips. “I’m just running late is all. Got unavoidably detained. I was afraid everyone would have left.”
“We were actually just about to leave,” Mark said. “Luckily, we were too tired to get off the bench.”
“I hope you’re not too tired,” the st
ranger said, his smile widening. “If you’re going to go on this tour, you’ve got more walking to do. My name is Jonah, and I’m your guide through the spirited streets of Savannah this evening.”
Jonah did not offer his hand, but he did bow slightly, and his manner immediately put Mark at ease.
“So Jonah,” Mark said, “you don’t mind giving a tour for just the three of us?”
“Oh, no. Why, I once gave a tour to just one tourist. It was probably the best tour I’ve ever given. No children crying for their parents to carry them, no lovebirds in the back loudly sucking face, no stragglers forcing the rest of the group to slow our pace. Just me and this charming older gentleman who was enraptured with everything I had to say.”
“I know the feeling,” Kasey said with a bright smile. “Are you a native of Savannah?”
“Can’t claim that honor,” Jonah said. “Moved here about twelve years ago. I’ve been giving tours for ten years, and specifically ghost tours for five. I love this city. It’s a great place to live, the kind of city you’d hope to die in. And if the subjects of my tour are any indication, even the dead can’t bring themselves to leave this place.”
“Well, we gonna see any ghosts tonight, you think?” Mark asked.
Jonah said nothing for a moment, one corner of his mouth turned up in a secretive smile, his eyes twinkling with an amused mischief. “You never know,” he said finally. “The spirits of Savannah are all around us; you might just glimpse one or two if you keep your eyes peeled and your minds open.”
“Okay then, let’s go glimpse some ghosts,” Mark said, clapping his hands like a small child. This was just his thing, ghosts and goblins and horror tales; that was the stuff that got his blood pumping.
“So, it’s thirteen dollars a piece, right?” Kasey asked, digging her wallet out of her purse.
“Don’t worry about that now,” Jonah said, holding up a hand. “We’ll fool with money after the tour.”