The Black Cross

by Bill Thompson

"Yes, sir. Whatever you say!" She turned and gave her bottom a saucy bounce. Within seconds his clothes were on the bedroom floor, they were catching up on lost time, and for now his spine-chilling encounter with the girl was forgotten. So were the martini and his promise to call Oliver.

  Before bedtime he asked what she would have done if one of the two neighbors on their floor had happened to come out into the hall while she was waiting for him.

  "Smiled my ass off, I guess. It was worth the risk to see the look on your face. I was just hoping the doorman didn't come up with you to help with the luggage!"

  Exhausted, he was asleep within minutes and the next thing he saw was the morning sun streaming through their floor-to-ceiling windows.

  _____

  "Good morning, Nicole."

  "It's me, Oliver," Brian replied. "I'm using Nicole's phone until I can get a new one. Sorry I didn't call last night. I was pretty tired from the trip ..." He glanced across the living room at Nicole, who grinned and winked at him. "There's a lot that's happened since we spoke yesterday morning - you're not going to believe some of it. I'm going to do this chronologically even though some of it isn't as important as others. I want you to get the feel for what's transpired. But first I want to tell you something. I have the cross - the one the girl had in the cave."

  "You have the cross?" Brian could picture Oliver's face filled with astonishment. "How?"

  "Between you and me, I stole it out of her backpack while she was in the bathroom on the plane. It's in the vault at the store."

  "I'll be damned." That was the first time Brian could remember ever hearing Oliver Toussaint utter a curse word. "How on earth did you manage that?"

  "Their seats were in the row in front of me and their carry-ons were in the same bin as mine. When they boarded and she saw me, she addressed me by name. She knows who I am, where I live, and I'd bet money she knows I was in the cave watching her."

  You're exactly right, and that's very unfortunate. "She's a witch, pure and simple. Although she has minor powers, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about her doing any long-distance magic." He switched subjects to avoid more prevarication.

  Oliver was positively euphoric to learn Brian had the cross. After all these years, things were beginning to fall into place. Once he had it in his hands it would take only a moment to find out if it was authentic.

  "I'm going to fly to Dallas tomorrow and pick it up," he said to Brian's surprise.

  "Would you like me to bring it to you?"

  "Absolutely not. I've asked enough of you. You've been away from your work for days on my project, you've gotten yourself hurt, and you've even had some hair-raising escapades. If you can bring it to Love Field tomorrow, I'll exit security, meet you, go back through again and be back on the plane in no time."

  Brian agreed; as he continued the story, Oliver began looking up flights on Southwest's website. A few clicks later he was set.

  Brian related how he'd met up in the bar with Stanley Oblowski, the man he'd mentioned to Oliver during their earlier call, who along with his wife was part of the group. They had heard about the seminar from friends who recommended it. It was expensive, but they had the money and she wanted to do it, so they signed up.

  "Here's something interesting. He told me Eve said she and Marcel are from New Orleans. And he said he feared her. To tell the truth, she has me a little spooked too."

  You're right to be scared, Oliver thought.

  "We were sitting at the bar, having a conversation. Stanley suddenly stopped talking, stood up and walked out. Remember I said in the cave the people looked like zombies? That's how it was this time too. And then I noticed the girl. She was across the room and she'd been watching us. I think she has them all under some kind of hypnotic spell."

  "It's more than that ..."

  "No kidding. Listen to this - this is the bizarre part. Around midnight I heard sirens. I looked out and saw cops in the lobby. The next morning, I found out Stanley was dead. That's no coincidence. I think she killed him somehow. Do you think that's possible? What the hell's going on?"

  "Brian, as hard as it is to believe in the twenty-first century, the simple answer is, it's voodoo. Most people who think of voodoo envision a witch sticking pins into an effigy doll. But there's a mind-control aspect to it also. To use the vernacular, she put a hex on him in the bar and ordered him to leave."

  "But she couldn't have killed him. Come on. As you said, this is the twenty-first century."

  "Of course not. She couldn't have killed him; that's preposterous. But he could have gotten so scared he had a heart attack."

  The lies were the hardest part, but there was simply too much at stake. Certainly she had killed him, but he didn't want to disclose more than Brian could handle. All this was as unfortunate as it was necessary. For the hundredth time, he wished there had been a way to avoid involving his old friend, but he knew Brian would get it done. He wasn't afraid to take chances and things had gone perfectly because he had the cross. Now Oliver just had to keep the girl away from him. By now she knew he had taken the cross - who else could it have been? If she got to him, things could get bad very quickly.

  "It'd be really helpful if we knew who these people are. Could you pull strings with your friends in high places and find out their last names? It shouldn't be a problem since they just entered the country yesterday from Guatemala. They have to be in the Homeland Security records."

  Brian promised to make a call and report back. Oliver gave him the flight arrival information and told him he'd see Brian tomorrow at the airport.

  _____

  "White House operator," a crisp, professional voice answered. "How may I direct your call?"

  "This is Brian Sadler. May I speak to Cynthia Beal, please?"

  "One moment, Mr. Sadler."

  The president's personal assistant answered within seconds. "Good morning, Brian. What can I do for you?"

  There weren't a lot of people outside Washington who were on a first-name basis with President Harrison's closest aide. She had been with Harry for years, going back to the days when he was a senator from Oklahoma. She had become well acquainted with Nicole and Brian over the past few months as the couple planned their wedding and reception in the White House.

  "I have a request that's a little out of the ordinary. If it's not possible, I understand. I want to know the names of two passengers who were on a flight with me yesterday."

  The lady was a professional; she was unfazed by off-the-wall requests that often came from politicians who wanted something special from the president. She knew how to facilitate things while keeping them under the radar. "All you want is their names?"

  "If I could get addresses too, that would be great, but names would be a start. I'm working on something -"

  "No need to explain, Mr. Sadler. Please give me the information about your flight and let me make a call. I'll be back in touch."

  Within an hour he had a trove of information. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Yvette Frere and Marcel Frere lived at 1039 Chartres Street in New Orleans. Marcel was born in that city in 1929 while Yvette was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in 2000. She was a citizen of Haiti and carried a passport from that country. He had a Social Security number; she did not.

  Frere. It was a typical French last name, something he would have expected in New Orleans. But that name sounded familiar. Where had he heard it before?

  Brian also found Yvette's birth date puzzling. If she really was eighty-three years old, as she'd told her followers, then she clearly wasn't aging as normal people do. Having a passport would be an issue that had to be resolved every few years. The birth date in the document would reveal that she was older and older while in appearance she was still a young girl.

  Brian figured her Haitian nationality made things easy for her. Haiti was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and consequently almost anything could be arranged. Genuine passports and birth certificates issued by the governmen
t and duly recorded were neither hard to get nor that expensive. All one needed was some money and a willing government worker who could use that money.

  According to the birth date in the passport she presented yesterday, she was seventeen years old. She was so different - so much more poised, confident and mature - that he found it easy to believe she was older than the ten-year-old she appeared to be. So what was she - ten? Seventeen? Eighty-three? This made sense if she was telling the truth - she was growing older, but she wasn't aging physically. In looks she was still a little girl, not a postpubescent teenager of seventeen. She needed a new passport soon or she'd risk being detained by immigration authorities.

  He called Oliver back and told him what he'd learned. He could hear the excitement in his friend's voice. He presumed it would be about the girl's birth date, but Oliver's exuberance was driven by who they were and where they lived.

  "1039 Chartres Street? Let me get my map of the Quarter - if I'm right, that's a very interesting location indeed! Let me put down the phone for a moment." Brian could hear the rustle of paper and the muffled words of Oliver talking to himself. "Let's see - 1039 would be the corner of ... ah, yes! I thought so! Frere! Now let me find those records ..."

  Brian heard him rustling papers for a moment and then he returned to the call. "Their last name was a dead giveaway, but I wanted to cross-reference the address to be sure I was right before I told you what I know."

  Brian asked, "Where have I heard that name - Frere?"

  "You heard it in my office the day after Mardi Gras. The desk in my office came from the Frere house. Grandfather bought it in 1967 from Henri Frere, who apparently died not long afterwards. He was a perfectionist, my grandfather, and he never threw anything away. Once he decided to keep the desk for himself, he put the bill of sale in the back of the left top drawer in a plastic sleeve, and it's been there ever since. I've glanced at it a thousand times. There are so many old houses in the French Quarter and my family's gallery bought and sold many a piece of furniture out of them. The Frere desk was just one more of those until you mentioned the girl and old man's names and address.

  "There's something I've been meaning to tell you, something that happened here while you were off getting injured in Guatemala that I forgot to mention in all the hubbub. Remember the old lady I saw in the Quarter? I finally saw her again and I followed her to the cemetery. I thought at first she was going to visit Marie Laveau's tomb, but she wasn't. Want to take a guess where she went?"

  "The Duplanchier tomb."

  "Exactly. I confronted her - I called her Justine Quantin, although I'm not sure that's who she really is. I asked if she was a Duplanchier and if the people buried there were her ancestors."

  "What did she do?"

  "She called me by name and said she'd given me a chance. She raised her finger, said something and I woke up in the ER."

  "You what? Did she hit you?"

  "She didn't lay a finger on me, except for the one she was pointing in my direction. She hexed me and knocked me out. The guard found me and called 911. I was fine once I woke up."

  "My God, Oliver! After what I witnessed in Guatemala, are you saying ... do you think this old woman is involved with voodoo like Eve Frere is?"

  You wouldn't believe me if I told you.

  "I don't know, Brian. I don't know what to believe right now. I've always been a pragmatist, but as I've said before, New Orleans is a strange place with strange inhabitants. My plan for now is to stay clear of her."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The three peculiar family members sat in the expansive, gloomy living room of the old house at 1039 Chartres Street. The huge hearth held dying embers from a fire. That half-light and the flickers of a dozen candles cast eerie shadows.

  Marcel and the ancient woman named Justine were seated closest to the fire, shawls wrapped around their legs against the dampness and cold of the chilly room. The child stood behind them, taking a long drag off a cigarette and sipping a gin and tonic.

  "Put more logs on the fire," the crone cackled to Eve, her words brimming with outrage. "Then perhaps you can explain why you defied my orders. You even involved Marcel in this, you stupid girl!"

  Put the logs on yourself, you hag. God, how she hated her mother. But she kept her thoughts to herself, added two sticks and stirred the embers until a flame tickled upwards.

  "There has to be someone new eventually," she replied at last. "You know that better than anyone. Until now we have kept things in the family, but there are none of us left. Instead of criticizing, you should thank me for making it happen. God knows you and Marcel are too decrepit to do it yourselves. From these strangers, there will emerge one who will continue our customs and keep them alive. I don't ever want to be as old as you, Mother. You've had too many years on this godforsaken planet. You should have died a long time ago."

  "Don't you wish? But this is the second group of people you have whisked off to Guatemala. You had no luck finding a successor last time." She began a hacking spell that lasted for over a minute. Any exertion - even simple conversation - was difficult for Justine these days. She could barely make it to the cemetery and back on Saturdays. Her time was growing short and she was very, very tired.

  "Water," she wheezed, raising her hand toward Eve. The girl paused a moment to prove who was in control, and then she brought a glass from the bar. Justine took a sip and the spasmodic cough stopped.

  Once she calmed down, Eve said caustically, "You've done a wonderful job keeping us off the subject, Mother, talking about how I shouldn't have given the elixir to the others. But now it's time to confess. I've asked you a dozen times and now you're going to answer. Where did you hide the cross?"

  "You know I didn't take it. Your brother did." She turned to Marcel. His body was slumped forward in the armchair and he appeared to be asleep. "He stole it from me and gave it to you, Yvette. And its elixir has lasted all these years. Until now. Finally you get to experience what both of us have learned. Growing old is a painful thing, my child. And I wish nothing but hardship as you age." She smiled a cruel, toothless grin.

  God, this happened every time she tried to talk to her mother these days. "You're losing it. I'm not talking about fifty years ago. I know Marcel stole it from you, but that was a long time ago and you've harped on it forever. I'm talking about yesterday - last night when we came home, to be precise. I dropped my backpack in the living room. Sometime during the night, you took the cross out, didn't you? Where is it?" she yelled. "Can't you remember anything? Damn you, tell me where you hid it!"

  The ancient woman wished she knew. There was a time when she had remembered things well, but that time had long since passed. To tell the truth, she didn't recall taking the cross from Eve's backpack last night. She clearly remembered having it in 1962, back in the days when she made the elixir once a year. Back then she was already incredibly old, but thanks to the potion her body was that of a young lady in her thirties. Now she struggled to remember where that place was that she always hid the cross for safekeeping. She kept extra potion in there too. It was a perfect hiding place - a place that had something to do with Father - and every time she used the cross she hid it back there. Maybe she really had taken the cross out of Eve's pack, and maybe she'd put it in that old secret hiding place. She simply didn't remember anything about it.

  Her mind was playing cruel tricks these days. The truth was, she didn't even have the cross in 1962, although she thought she had. Marcel had stolen it from her years before and never gave his own mother another drop of the life-giving potion. He didn't take it himself; instead he gave it to his baby sister, Eve, to whom he was intensely devoted. He would have given his very life for that child, and in fact that was what he had done. He gave Eve the gift of almost perpetual youth and promised he'd always take care of her.

  Without the elixir, Justine had begun to age rapidly and her brain functions were dying now. Today her mind was ragged and frayed - crammed with half-finished sentences,
snippets of thoughts that couldn't be completed and forgotten strings and trails of things that might - or might not - have ever happened. She had no idea if she'd stolen the cross last night.

  Without it there could be no more elixir. Eve was the only person taking it, and she had divided her last vial among the tour participants in Guatemala, hoping one of them would sign up for eternal youth, demanding more and more potion until they were hooked. Eve had taken the cross with her and was going to make another batch when she got home. Now that it was missing, Eve would quickly begin to age. Within weeks there would be striking changes. In a few years her body would catch up with her true age and she would die. Without a successor, the tradition of voodoo brought here by her grandfather would end.

  Eve couldn't allow that to happen. Despite her brother Marcel's generosity in giving her the elixir instead of taking it himself, she was on her own now. Her decrepit mother couldn't help her. Marcel was so old he wasn't of much use either, but she had to have him because she looked like a ten-year-old girl. An old woman living in the body of a child had been a blessing, but now it was also a curse. She had to drag her eighty-seven-year-old brother everywhere with her.

  So be it. Whatever it took, it was up to Eve to ensure the tradition wasn't broken. She had to recruit a person to follow in her footsteps, but first she had to find the Black Cross and make more elixir. She ran to her room and searched her closet until she found a replica of the cross. Her grandfather had made them; he'd given her one of the three copies and she had no idea what he did with the rest. They didn't matter anyway; there was nothing special about them. She came back and stood by the old woman's chair.

  "Think, Mother!" She got down in Justine's face, shouting and shaking her by the shoulders. "Where the hell did you hide the damned cross?" She held the replica up and hissed, "Does this bring back memories? Does this make you recall where you hid it?"

  The crone looked up, a flash of recognition lighting up her rheumy eyes for a moment. "I hid more elixir long ago," she croaked.