Shadows: A Bayou Magic Novel

by Kristen Proby

  “We’re staying there,” a man says, making me smile.

  “Someone on my tour always is.” I wink and lead them farther down the street, giving them little details about specific buildings. Not all of them are haunted, some of them are just interesting because of how old they are and what may or may not have taken place there once upon a time.

  The best part of the tour this evening is that there are no new shadows. Nothing different at all tonight, and that makes me happiest of all. The girls are truly at rest, and we’re ready to get on with our lives.

  To go back to normal. Whatever that is.

  “How do you know all this stuff?” a guy asks as we walk down the sidewalk. “Are you psychic or something?”

  “What would you say if I told you that I am psychic?”

  “I would say you’re full of shit,” he replies bluntly.

  “Well, I’ll just say this then, I went to college to study American history, with an emphasis on Creole history, here in Louisiana. I’m from the area, and I love the folklore here. Most everything I tell you on this tour can be verified in history books.”

  “Only most?” he asks.

  “Well, the rest of it depends on whether you believe in the paranormal or not, doesn’t it? No one can prove the existence of ghosts. Even spirits caught on film can usually be explained away. Double-exposure, reflections, weird lighting, that sort of thing. And, yes, people have their own experiences, but that’s just hearsay, right?”

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asks me.

  “Sugar, you can’t live in New Orleans and not believe in ghosts. They’re all over the place. So, yes, I do believe they exist.”

  “So, you’re saying spirits are just roaming around, trying to dick with all of us?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, not all ghosts are intelligent.”

  He blinks at me blankly.

  “There are theories that some spirits are caught in a loop. Like…an echo. They do the same things over and over again, whether someone is there to see it or not. They don’t know that anyone is there. They may not even know they’re dead. It’s like a recording.

  “And then there are spirits that do know they’re dead, and they haunt. Maybe they haunt a place or a thing or a person.”

  “Whoa.” He holds up a hand and stops walking. “A person?”

  “Sure, it’s happened. For whatever reason, a spirit attaches itself to a living person, and no matter where the person moves or where they go, the spirit goes with them.”

  “Creepy AF,” he says and grins at his friend, who’s been standing by, listening silently.

  “Now it’s time to talk about more dead people,” I say and wink as I stop in front of the LaLaurie mansion and reinforce my shields. Even though things have been routine on tonight’s tour, this is the one place that still makes me uneasy.

  Maybe because the woman who owned it—and still haunts it—was as evil as the man we just caught.

  Maybe more so.

  I’m only about thirty seconds into my speech about the mansion and its history when there is a loud pop and sparks fly everywhere from above.

  We all duck out of the way and look around in confusion. Are we being shot at? Did a bomb just go off somewhere?

  “The streetlight exploded!” someone exclaims, pointing to the light directly above me. I look up and, sure enough, smoke streams from where the bulb once was, and the filaments are still glowing from the explosion.

  That’s new.

  At least there’s no shadow hovering over it.

  “Wow, is everyone okay?” I ask the group, looking everyone over. “Did anyone get hurt?”

  “Just scared us,” someone said.

  “If that’s part of the show, it’s effective,” someone shouts, making me laugh.

  “No, that’s definitely not part of the show. That was a freebie, just for you guys. Okay, well, now that your heart rate is up, let’s talk about Madame LaLaurie…”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Death always went with the territory.”

  - Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker

  Just look at her down there, he thinks to himself as he floats above the streetlamp that he successfully blew up. She’s laughing and wandering through their city with her little group of idiots, who all want to know about the paranormal things that plague the French Quarter.

  He always understood that Brielle needed to make a living, and that sharing her gifts with others was an efficient way for her to do so.

  She does the best she can.

  But she’s capable of so much more.

  He didn’t realize that it would take him a while to figure out his new way of life. That he wouldn’t slip easily between his physical body to the spiritual one and carry on the way he was before.

  It seems there’s a learning curve.

  That displeases him. He’s been following Brielle all week, trying to communicate with her, but she can’t see him. Or, if she can, she’s ignoring him. That’s something he’ll have to punish her for later.

  But he’s chosen to trust that it’s not Brielle’s fault. He simply has to work harder. Which is fine. Hard work has always come easily to him. He enjoys it.

  He floats above the group as Brielle leads them through town. From his vantage point, he can see the other spirits she talks about, trapped in their own afterlives of torment.

  He doesn’t pity them. They earned what they got and where they are.

  Just as he did.

  But he’s not trapped, he controls his destiny. And as soon as he figures out some things, he’ll be right back on track.

  He watches as Brielle smiles and says goodbye to a customer. She’s so beautiful, his sweet girl.

  Don’t you worry, he thinks. You haven’t lost me, Brielle. I can’t wait to show you what I have in store. You’re going to be so happy. So excited. It won’t be long now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cash

  “It’s been a week,” I say to Asher as I sit across from him in his office. I just arrived, and I want some answers.

  And a conversation with a colleague.

  Something’s eating at me.

  “How is Brielle?” Asher asks.

  “She’s doing well, actually.” I rub the back of my neck and sigh. “She’s gone back to work and says nothing strange has happened. The spirits of the girls are gone. Millie and Daphne have gone home. Everything seems to be back to normal.”

  “And you don’t trust it,” he guesses correctly.

  “It’s ridiculous, but you’re right. I don’t trust it. Catching him or discovering who he was wasn’t an easy task, as you know. But then it was over and wrapped up so quickly it just seems…unfinished to me. Please tell me you found his body.”

  “We did,” Asher confirms, and I feel my stomach loosen for the first time in a month. “He crawled into a ruined shed about a quarter-mile from his house. He bled out there. We’re still waiting for an autopsy, but there was a huge amount of blood. As Sarah said, he was stabbed in the stomach.”

  “I’m surprised he made it a quarter of a mile. I wonder why he went that way instead of calling for help?”

  “You know why. There’s no way he could have called 911. He would have been caught.”

  “In which direction was the shed?” I ask. Asher reaches for a map, unrolls it on his desk, and we lean over it.

  “Here’s his house,” Asher says and points to a red dot. “This is where we found him.”

  “I think this is Brielle’s mother’s house,” I say, pointing to a property less than a mile away from the shed. “I wonder if he was headed there for help.”

  “Could be,” Asher says. “My men stopped by there and tried to ask questions.”

  I lean back in the chair. “I bet that went well.”

  “She’s crazy, Cash.”

  “I’m a licensed psychiatrist, and I can confirm that statement. She also killed her husband roughly twenty years ago.”

&
nbsp; The other man’s eyes narrow. “Come again?”

  “You heard me.” I stand and pace the office. “I don’t have proof, just the word of a crazy old woman and my girlfriend, who was only a teenager at the time.”

  “The house needs to be condemned. She needs to go to a mental hospital.”

  “I know.” I turn to look at him.

  “I’m reporting it to the proper authorities.”

  “Understood.”

  “Now, I have a whole slew of things to talk to you about regarding this case. I hope you don’t have any plans for a few hours.”

  “I’m all ears,” I reply as I return to my seat. “I have plenty to say, as well, but I’m anxious to hear what your team found in the house.”

  “More creepy shit than I like to think about,” he says, shaking his head. Asher looks bone-tired. “He kept meticulous journals, dating back to when he was young. And he stored them in chronological order.”

  “That was thoughtful of him.”

  “Everything in that house was spotless. Tidy. Precise.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Does it?”

  “Oh, absolutely. He thrived on control, and that included his home. Everything had a place. He was clearly a planner. The girls he took may have been random in the heat of the moment, but he knew when he would take them, and he had a very particular type. He planned what he would do to them. Most likely, he practiced the same techniques for many years.”

  “You’re right,” Asher confirms. “He was fifty-four years old when he died. The first journal dates back to when he was sixteen. That’s almost forty years of killing.”

  “Surely, he didn’t start with humans.”

  “Animals,” Asher says. “The family dog. A neighbor’s cat. It escalated from there. He documented names if he knew them, so we have lists of his victims. Many families will have answers to the disappearances of their loved ones because of this.”

  “That’s something, I guess. What else?”

  “My team has spent the better part of this past week poring through every journal. They took notes on what they read. We counted one hundred and seventy-four victims, starting with his mother when he was eighteen.”

  “Christ Jesus.”

  “Those are just the human victims. We didn’t count the animals, but there were a lot of those, as well. And, Cash, he wasn’t just after Brielle.”

  “I saw the shrines for her sisters. He was going after them, too.”

  “He’d already started.” Asher fishes out some photos and slaps them on the desk for me to see. “The eyeballs we found in that box? He said in a journal that he was collecting those for Daphne. Because she has the sight.”

  “There were almost a hundred eyes in that box. They’re with the ME to determine if they’re from ninety-six different victims, or if he took both eyes from each victim.”

  “He most likely took both,” I say and move to the next photo. “Is this blood?”

  “Thirty pints of it,” Asher confirms. “It said in his notes that he was collecting it for Millie, because she’s a kitchen witch, and he thought she could use it for potions.”

  “For fuck’s sake, what kind of potions could she make with human blood?”

  “I don’t even want to guess,” Asher says, sighing loudly. “He took the hair for Brielle, simply because he had a thing for her brunette hair. In his notes, he says that he didn’t think he could take anything to help her gift of seeing shadows, but he could make sure no other women had hair nice enough to rival hers.”

  “Sick fuck,” I whisper.

  “So, he had trophies for each of the girls. The blood and eyes, he said, were the practice toys he’d played with to get ready for the main show. But he’d mastered his craft for Brielle and was nearing the end of the show. He’d planned to take her next week.”

  My head whips up in surprise. “He had it planned?”

  “That shouldn’t surprise you.”

  I shake my head and try to detach from Brielle, remove myself as her lover, and think of this from a professional standpoint.

  “You’re right. It shouldn’t. And now that I think about it, it doesn’t surprise me. What was the last entry in the journal?”

  “Here.”

  He flips to the last page of the journal and passes it to me.

  April 23,

  She came to me. Finally! I’ve heard her in the room of fun, talking to the girls, and hoped that she’d come to me, and she finally did. She saw everything. I’ve kept the house spotless in hopes that she’d arrive soon. She seemed very pleased and didn’t even mind when I touched her. I don’t think it occurred to her that I could touch her during her dream-walking.

  Brielle and the others always underestimated me. They didn’t know that I understood their gifts. That I share them. I could teach them so much! And I will, very soon.

  Just a few more days, and Brielle will be here. In our home. I have to finish playing with the other toys first, but that won’t take long. I have a couple more experiments to run on them before I feel comfortable using the techniques on my Brielle. I want to give her the best experience of her life. I want to provide her with things that no one else ever has.

  It’s going to be so beautiful!

  I toss the book on the desk and swallow hard.

  “When will the autopsy be done?”

  “Sometime this week,” Asher says. “The morgue’s been a little busy the past few weeks.”

  “Yeah. What happens to him when it’s done?”

  “Well, this is where it gets weird.”

  “This is where it gets weird?”

  He pulls out another document and passes it to me. “That’s his will. He left everything to Brielle and her sisters.”

  My eyes scan it. “He had it done through an attorney and everything.”

  “He wasn’t a stupid man. An evil one, but not stupid.”

  “So now they own the property and all of his personal effects.”

  “Yes, and as next of kin, they get to decide what to do with his remains.”

  “Well, that’s pretty fucked-up, Asher.”

  “Oh, trust me. This is the weirdest case of my career, and like I told you before, I’ve seen some shit. This rivals some of the most extreme serial killer cases I’ve heard of.”

  “Same here, and I’ve also seen some shit. But there’s something that I can’t put my finger on that tells me this isn’t entirely over.”

  “He’s on ice in the morgue,” Asher reminds me. “It’s pretty much over.”

  “Yeah.” I stare at all of the evidence on Asher’s desk. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. How in the hell am I going to tell the girls that the sick fuck who wanted them all tortured and dead left all of his worldly possessions to them?”

  “I can tell them,” Asher offers.

  “No, it should come from me.” I sigh again and stand. “How soon do you need to know what they want to do with his remains?”

  “No rush at all.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch.”

  I’m on my way out of the police station when my phone rings.

  “Hey, Felicia. How’s it going over there?”

  “Well, we’re at the ER,” Felicia says. I can tell she’s trying to sound like nothing’s wrong, but something’s wrong. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I thought you should know.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I just didn’t like the sound of your mom’s breathing. She says it’s nothing, that she always wheezes like that, but she didn’t sound this way when I arrived. So, I brought her in just to get checked out.”

  “Good idea. Please keep me posted. I need to call Andy. I haven’t talked to him in a few days.”

  “You’ve been a little busy,” she replies kindly. “But he’d like to hear from you. I think he’s getting a little lonely without me.”

  “I’ll get in touch with him today. Thanks, Felicia.”

  “You’re welcome. Talk soon.”

/>   Before I can put my phone into my pocket, my brother calls.

  “Did you just talk to my wife?” he asks after I answer.

  “Just hung up with her.”

  “I’m worried about Mom. The last time she had pneumonia, she almost died.”

  “We don’t know that she has pneumonia. She could have allergies.”

  “Yeah.” I can hear the strain in my brother’s voice. “You’re right.”

  “Why don’t I come by and take you out to lunch? Are you free?”

  “I have some time.”

  “I’m still at the police station. I’m sitting on the steps out front.”

  “Be right there.”

  He hangs up, and I shoot Brielle a text.

  Me: Hey, babe. Gonna grab lunch with Andy. Need anything?

  I grin when I see the dots bounce as she replies.

  Brielle: Have fun! I don’t need anything. I’m at Daphne’s store, having lunch with the sisters.

  Me: I’ll text when I’m done.

  I’ve never been to Daphne’s store. We always meet at either Brielle’s apartment or Witches Brew, but Brielle told me that Daphne owns an antique shop.

  I bet there are a lot of antiques in New Orleans.

  “I didn’t know you were still working on the case,” Andy says as he approaches.

  I stand and join him on the sidewalk. “Yeah, there are still things to tie up. That man was on a level of evil I’ve never seen before.”

  “I’m glad you were here to help with it,” Andy says. “I don’t know how you do what you do. I think it would drive me insane.”

  “I put the cases in boxes,” I say as we walk into a restaurant nearby. We’re quickly shown to a table. “I have to compartmentalize it all. Because you’re right, it messes with you. The last case, losing Carlson—”

  “Which was not your fault.”

  “That one got under my skin. And, frankly, you wouldn’t be human if they didn’t get under your skin a little bit. But you have to put it all in boxes, or it will consume you.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to make a relationship with Brielle work.”