I woke up in the middle of the night, sweating a little, but not knowing why. I knew I had had a dream, but not sure of what. It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly, but it made me uneasy. I went back to sleep seconds later and slept through the night, the dream I had now fading away with the night’s shadows, soon to be no more than a mist that would dissipate with the morning’s light.
I awoke to an overcast sky that blanketed most of Acadiana.
13
Penance
It was Saturday and, while Clothilde and Lyla attended Miss Ya’s funeral, I paid a visit to Carrie, who was delighted to see me, though she was cautious. “Everything okay?” she asked. I assured her that it was fine and what happened that night at her house would not happen again. “Ah. Good! I got a priest over here a couple of days ago to bless the house just in case.” I noticed a crucifix now hung in every room, even the bathroom.” I laughed but regretted it. I couldn’t blame her one bit for taking precautions, and it was something to think about when I went back to Los Angeles. Thinking about California brought a sadness to me, and it showed on my face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. We were in her living room, on the couch.
“I think it’s time for me to go back.”
She frowned deeply. “Nooooo! Why you wanna do that? Don’t you love me?” She gave me puppy dog eyes, and I smiled.
“Of course I do, it’s just that—I don’t know, Care. Too much has happened here, and I don’t know if I can handle being back. I thought I could, but—”
“You can handle it! I’ll make you handle it!” She put her fist up to show she’d sock me if I left. She let her clinched fist drop to her lap. “Don’t just stay for me. Miss Clothilde needs you and so does Lyla—and Lucas,” she finished with a tease. She noticed a shift in my eyes, and she picked up on something. She put her hands to her mouth, and her eyes got wide. “Oh, my GOD!”
“What?!”
“Oh, my God! You slept with him!” she said way too loudly.
“Carrie!”
“Oh, my God! I can’t—Oh, my GOD!”
“Stop it!”
“You did, right?”
I was silent for a split second.
“Oh, my God. You did. You slept with Lucas. Oh, my—”
“If you say ‘Oh, my God’ one more time, I’m going to knock you upside the head! We just slept. That’s all!”
She grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “How big is he?”
I let out a frustrated scream, got off the couch and marched into the kitchen, intent on walking out the door and driving away. She chased after me and caught my arm before I could get to the door. “Wait! I’m sorry. Leigh! C’mon. I’m sorry.” I stopped and looked at her, giving her my best angry face. She shut up for a second, and I eased up, standing in place. She looked at me and tried to stay composed, but broke out in a wicked half smile and said, quietly, “Seriously. How big is he?”
I opened the door, and she grabbed my free arm with both hands and pulled back so hard we both fell onto the linoleum. “Ow!” we said in unison.
“Damnit, Carrie! Let me go!”
She started laughing. “No! Not until you tell me!” I struggled to get up, but her grip was too strong, and she had leverage. “C’mon! Is it bigger than a bread box, or smaller than a waffle?”
I stopped struggling and glared at her like she was nuts. “A waffle?” That did it. We were both rolling on the floor laughing a second later. We laughed till there were tears streaming down our cheeks, and I remembered how good it felt to cry from laughter instead of grief. We were soon out of breath, both spread out on our backs, heads against the linoleum.
“I can’t remember the last time I laughed like that,” I said, out of breath.
“See? That’s why you need to stay here. I’m good for your soul.”
“Yes, you are,” I agreed.
“Okay, if you say all y’all did was sleep, then I promise I’ll believe you.”
“Thank you.”
“So, size inquiries aside, how was he?”
I took my time to answer and finally said, “Wonderful.”
Carrie sighed happily. “So why not stay?”
I was sad again. “Because I don’t know if we could ever be together. So much has happened in the last couple of weeks.”
She reached for my hand and held it. “So much more could happen. So many wonderful things could happen.”
I looked over at her and then at our linked hands and back at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but get that look out of your eye, ‘cause I don’t swing that way.” We laughed again, and she let go of my hand and sat up with a resolute look on her face.
“I’ve decided I’m not going to let you go.”
“That so?”
“Uh-huh. Even if I have to hack into your checking account so you can’t buy a plane or bus ticket out, or dismantle a thingy in your car’s engine so you can’t drive away, I’ll do it.”
“You must be talented because ‘thingys’ are very hard to dismantle. I hear you have to go to school for a couple of years to learn the internal workings of ‘thingys’.”
“Damn straight! I graduated top of my class in ‘thingy’ school. And I will put that knowledge to use to make you stay here.”
I smiled sadly at her. “I’ll see.”
“I swear. I’ll do those things.”
“I know,” I said, getting up. I helped her up, and we spent a wonderful afternoon pigging out on ice cream and watching chick flicks and talking about past sexual conquests.
Later that afternoon, Carrie forced me to watch When a Man Loves a Woman, to show me the power of what a man will do for a woman he loves. I must have rolled my eyes about a dozen times through the film, but she kept insisting that, like Andy Garcia, Lucas would do anything for me, even love me despite all of my faults. I was thankful when my phone rang, even though I didn’t recognize the number. I flipped it open “Hello?” I said, as Carrie put the DVD on pause.
“Hi, Leigh? This is Dr. Deville. I’m sorry to call you, but Father Ben gave me your number.”
“Really?” I knew I sounded very sarcastic, but I didn’t care. She didn’t exactly leave such a good impression on me. I rolled my eyes at Carrie and motioned to her that I was talking to someone obnoxious. She mouthed the words, “Want me to help?” I shook my head, no, and she went into the kitchen to leave me to my call.
“Yeah. Anyway,” she said. “I spoke to Detective Castille yesterday…”—I threw one hand up in exasperation—”…and I got him to share a few things with me about his case.”
Damnit, Lucas! I cursed him silently.
“He said that the two of you were looking into this guy, Walter Savoy,” she continued.
“Uh-huh,” I said, and I’m sure she could feel the aggravation coming off of me. “But we took care of the problem.”
“Yeah, that’s what Luc—Detective Castille told me, but I thought you would like to know that there was a Walter Savoy who used to be a professor here for a while, back in the eighties and early nineties.”
“So?”
“Well,” she started, and I could tell she was smirking. “He was a professor of French history. And, he also taught a philosophy class dealing with cults, and a couple of humanities classes, one on the paranormal and another called The Myths of Life, Death, and Rebirth.”
“Dr. Deville?”
“You can call me Gina. I don’t think I’m that much older than you are.”
“Gina? This is all very interesting, but we did take care of the problem. Now, thank you for—”
“I think you might be mistaken.” I was silent for a few seconds, and she continued. “I found out that Walter Savoy left behind boxes of research material in the basement of the library on campus. I was curious, so I went through them and found some things that excited me about rituals and the like. I called Father Ben, and he suggested that I call you.” She sounded displeased with the part about calling me.
&n
bsp; “How much has Father Ben told you?” I asked, carefully.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Let me put it this way. I’m not one of you, but I am honored to help whenever I can.” It looked like I was wrong about her. I supposed jealousy had gotten the best of me after all.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You’re more than welcome.”
“So you think we didn’t get rid of Savoy, then?”
“It’s possible there’s more here you need to look into. Would you like to come by the university today?”
“Why?”
“Because there’s too much for me to go through by myself, and Father Ben said he couldn’t come. I can’t possibly go over everything I’ve found on the phone.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “I’ll come over now.”
Gina told me to meet her on the first floor of the Edith Garland Dupré Library on campus, and then we hung up. I apologized to Carrie and told her it was time for me to go. She silently judged the look on my face and decided not to ask why I was leaving so soon, but she made me promise to come back and finish the movie. I reluctantly agreed and then got in my car, feeling ever the lunatic, and drove to U.L., wondering why I was doing this to myself again. For Lyla. Always for Lyla.
I parked in the pay lot behind Griffith Hall and strolled over to the library which was like my second home for several years. I met up with Gina on the first floor as instructed. Together, we took a set of stairs I never knew was there, down to the basement, which I had never seen. For a basement, it was well-lit with fluorescents and very organized with rows of shelves that had stacks of old, dusty manila folders. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn it was another floor of the library, and I thought that perhaps it had intended to be so at one time. She led me to a corner in the back that had stacks of boxes from former professors. Three of them belonged to Walter Savoy, PhD; French History. We moved the boxes to a large table that lined one of the walls.
“I didn’t know the library had a basement,” I said, placing the last box on the table.
“Most students don’t. They don’t keep any materials down here that anyone could use for a paper or research. What you see on the shelves are old files of the faculty and staff. For the last few years, they’ve been gradually storing all that information on computers. I only know about it because I worked here as an undergrad and that was my job, to come up and down the stairs everyday with new stacks of files and type them up on the database.”
I politely laughed. “I worked at the coffee house when I was an undergrad.”
She forced a well-mannered smile. “Well, then I’m sure you know how to make a fabulous espresso,” she said, and I detected a hint of loathing in her tone. Enough with the rivalry, I lectured myself. “Anyway,” she continued. “The boxes along the back wall are from faculty who have moved on with no forwarding address. Most of them died and had no relatives. One day, I think we’re just going to have a huge bon fire and get rid of all this junk, but until then, I think the university is too afraid of getting sued to throw anything out. Either that or they’re just a bunch of pack rats,” she muttered.
She opened the first box, pulled out a manila folder and placed it on the table. I took a seat and started going through the contents of the first folder while she pulled out a few more and some lose papers and placed them next to her seat. There was just a bunch of tests and answer keys in my folder. “Why did you say you thought we were mistaken when I told you we got rid of Savoy?”
“I’ll tell you in a second.” she muttered. I closed my folder and went onto the next one as she closed up the first box and started going through the second. She dug around for a moment and then said, “Ah! Here we go.” She took a seat next to me and set down a book called Demonology: A Study of Demons through the Eyes of Christianity. She placed a thick binder on top of the book and opened it up to show a bunch of typed pages, many of which contained scribbled notes in the margins.
“Okay. This is what hooked me when I started going through this stuff.” She turned to a marked off page, and my eyes were instantly drawn to the sketch of a demon, with a crow on one shoulder and a white dove on the other. “Father Ben had mentioned something about Savoy having pet birds.”
I read the caption underneath the sketch. “Raum: Great Earl of Hell.” I looked at her, puzzled.
Gina opened up the book on Demonology where she had marked off another page. She showed me the printed image of the sketch in the binder. She flipped the page to show another print, this one of a giant crow. “It says in this book that Raum is a crow that can change into human form.”
“So, Savoy was Raum? I’m not following you.”
She went back to the binder and turned the page, where there was a set of notes on exorcism, channeling and possession. On the left margin was scribbled: need bloodline to conjure. She let me read them and then turned the page again where there was a rough outline of a family tree that went on for several pages, ending with Savoy. “Okay, see where this branch of the tree ends with him?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Look above his name. There’s his mom and his dad. There’s one line coming down here for Walter Savoy, and then it looks like something’s been erased. Do you see it?” I looked closely and could barely make out where there was a second line coming down from his mother’s name. It did look like there was something there, but erased a long time ago.
“Yeah,” I said. “What are you trying to tell me?”
She reached into the third box and pulled out a picture album. She opened it and flipped through the pressed pictures all way to the back, where there were loose photos stuffed into the pockets. She took the loose ones out and started going through them. They looked pretty old, but were mostly colored photos of Savoy. When Lucas and I were going through the pictures at his house, they were all of him as a boy and a young man. These were of him apparently after he left the army and all the way up through his stay at the university. I shuddered as she flipped the pictures down, showing Savoy progressively aging until he looked more and more like the man who had haunted my dreams.
She stopped on one picture that was out of chronological order. It wasn’t colored like the recent ones. This one was the same one I had seen at his house. It was Savoy with his army buddies. Last night’s dream came to me in a flash, and I quickly snatched up the picture as soon as she set it down.
“You recognize this one?” she asked. I nodded.
“Flip it over,” she instructed. I did, and this one, unlike the duplicate at Savoy’s house, had writing on it:
Walter, on se ressemble comme deux couillons ici, mais ça m’a fait rire! Ça l’air que t’as besoin de rire aussi. Ça va être bon quand on se revoir quand je viens sur mon furlough. J’ai un frère! Ça je peux pas croire! On va se revoir bientôt.
Simon
“What does it say?” I asked.
“You don’t know Cajun French?” she asked, looking at me like I should be ashamed of myself.
I huffed. “What does it say?” I repeated and, from the look on my face, she apparently decided that she should keep her mouth shut about my language skills.
Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou Page 20