SPIRITS OF THE BAYOU
Morgan Hannah MacDonald
Copyright © 2016 Morgan Hannah MacDonald
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to Debbie Snow. A woman whose love knows no bounds. She gives without a single thought to herself. A bright light that shines on those around her. She is simply amazing and I am fortunate to call her friend.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
About the Book
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I want to thank my amazing editors, Alyssa Palmer and Aemelia Manier, for making this manuscript shine. You each bring something unique to the table that undoubtedly enhances the finished product.
I want to thank Debbie Snow for another wonderful job proofreading this manuscript, especially during a particularly trying time. She’s a great detective who finds the things everyone else missed. I’d be lost without her.
I want to thank the newest member of my team, Paul Salvette of BB eBooks, for the great formatting job and being so easy to work with.
I want to thank my family for putting up with me during the crazy scramble to meet my deadlines with the barrage of challenges I faced this time around.
Last but not least, I’d like to thank my loyal readers. You are a lovely group and I truly appreciate you all.
EVIL HAS A FACE
Someone is taking the children of New Orleans. No bodies have been found. No ransom demands made. Poor or Rich. Black or White. Boy or Girl. The kidnapper does not play favorites.
PRAY
In this prequel to Spirits Among Us, nineteen year-old Jon-Luc Boudreaux is trying to manage his gift. He’s a psychic medium. In other words, he sees the dead. They appear to him as living, breathing people. At times, it’s hard to know the difference. One night he is visited by the ghost of a young girl named Charlotte. Her message is simple: Save the children.
THAT EVIL
Jon-Luc has no idea how to do that. He’s not a cop. He knows nothing about finding missing kids. He tries to ignore her, but Charlotte won’t leave him alone until he promises to help. Since her visits started, he’s had some very disturbing visions. When the signs begin to point toward Voodoo, he has no choice but to find an expert.
DOES NOT
Celestine Glapion is a Voodoo Priestess and a descendant of the great Marie Laveau. The minute Jon-Luc walks into her family’s shop, she remembers him, but he has no memory of her. So when Mama Arelia tells her she must help with this crisis, she’s reluctant to work side-by-side with Jon-Luc. But she’ll do anything for the sake of those innocent lives.
FIND YOU
Their journey takes them into the underbelly of New Orleans where dark magic lives. Jon-Luc escapes death not once, but twice, and still he pushes on. Knowing time is running out, the kidnapper speeds up the schedule. Now the children’s lives hang in the balance and only Jon-Luc holds the key to their survival. Can he rescue them in time?
Dear Readers,
This book takes place in 1988, before the internet was made available to the public. I must say that I couldn’t be the writer I am today without the use of the internet where I do the majority of my research.
Back then you had to do research at the library. Look for jobs in the classified ads in your local newspaper. And go into the place of business to fill out your application. My how things have changed.
This was also before everyone had a cell phone glued to their hands. If you needed to make a call, you had to find a phone booth or borrow someone’s landline, which of course was simply called a telephone. Back then, the only people who had mobile phones were those with money. They were the too large and heavy to fit in your pocket, they were carried in briefcases. Many were actually built into your car.
So when the caption at the beginning of a chapter reads Present Day, I’m talking about 1988.
Thank you for reading SPIRITS OF THE BAYOU. I hope you enjoy it.
Best wishes,
Morgan Hannah MacDonald
ONE
July 9, 1988
“Wake up, Jon-Luc!”
Jon-Luc Boudreaux opened his eyes to see a small child beckoning him from the doorway of his bedroom. She had a riot of blonde curls that cascaded past her shoulders and dark shadows under her sorrowful brown eyes. Her tattered grey dress was fashioned from another era.
If he had to guess, he’d say it was circa the 1800’s. It buttoned to her chin, the puffy sleeves were long, and a dirty white apron topped it off. The uniform was three sizes too large. Her tiny feet were bare.
“Come. You must save the children,” her tiny voice pleaded.
Luc blinked a couple of times. “Who are you?”
Her fists landed on her hips. “Charlotte Dubois.”
As if he should know, but he’d never seen her before. Had he? “I’m sorry, ma petite, but I have a big test tomorrow and I must get my sleep. Come back another time.” He closed his eyes.
The next thing he knew, he was no longer lying in front of the fan praying for winter. Instead, he found himself in the thicket of a bayou. The humidity was so dense he could hardly breathe. A heavy fog drifted lazily along the water. Spanish moss dripped from the trees and swayed ever so slightly.
Moonlight infiltrated the foliage above, casting eerie shadows. A chorus of frogs and crickets serenaded him. From a distance the sound would have been peaceful, but standing amongst them, the volume was deafening.
Lightning bugs winked and blinked. The scent of decaying vegetation wafted through the air, not at all an unpleasant smell. It reminded him of playing pirates with his friends in the bayou near his old house. A warm breeze kicked up, and along with it came the odor of death.
Luc glanced down to see that all he had on were the boxers he’d worn to bed. He wiggled his toes in the mud, and then tried to walk, but his feet were stuck. As if they’d been super-glued to that very spot. A splash nearby had him jerking his head toward the sound. He searched the area for gators. This was no place to find yourself after dark.
Alligators and water moccasins were nocturnal creatures who fed at night. The venom of the snake was deadly and gators were strong and fast. Before you knew it, you could be grabbed, pulled into the water and drowned before being devoured or stashed for eating later.
A buzzing near his ear alerted Luc that a mosquito was p
reparing to feast. It landed on his arm and he slapped at it, but missed. The thing was the size of a blue heron and could probably have drained him of all his blood like a greedy vampire. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it was the biggest damn mosquito he’d ever seen. He had to find a way out of there before he was eaten alive in one way or the other.
The fact that Luc couldn’t move really freaked him out. As ridiculous as it sounded, he found comfort in little Charlotte’s hand in his. As if this waif could somehow save him should something go terribly wrong. He squeezed her hand and silently willed her to stay by his side.
His gaze ventured further out where he noticed children holding hands with their backs to him. Their feet hovered atop the mossy green water, the fog danced around their ankles. On the bizzaro scale from one to ten this dream ranked at twenty.
“Why are we here, ma petite?” he asked.
Her cherubic face turned up toward him. “You must save them, Jon-Luc.” Her finger pointed toward the spirits.
“From what?”
She cupped her hand to her mouth and he bent down to her level. “From the evil that keeps them here,” she whispered into his ear as if afraid of being overheard.
*
The alarm clock pealed and Luc quickly hit the snooze. Seven o’clock came way too soon. When the infernal thing blared for the second time, he reluctantly turned it off. He threw his legs over the side of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees.
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands; his lids were gritty like sandpaper. His extremities felt as if they were stuck in concrete, each movement was a major ordeal. He must be coming down with something. He stared down at the ground.
“What the fuck?” He shook his head and tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
His feet were covered in mud.
The dream came flooding back. His body quivered and the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention. He stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. In the shower, he searched his brain for a logical explanation as he scrubbed his feet. He absentmindedly scratched his shoulder. After the itch increased in intensity instead of subsiding, he realized it was a mosquito bite.
Luc stepped from the shower and dried off before wrapping the towel around his waist. He wiped the steam from the mirror and stared at his reflection. Several red welts appeared on his arms and chest; he turned to view his back only to find more mosquito bites. “Shit! This is not happening.”
Luc’s Cajun complexion tanned easily in the summer, which brought out his amber eyes. He’d had more than one woman tell him they were his best feature, while others liked his long dark hair. He didn’t care why they came around, just that they did.
He combed out his wet hair, then pulled it back and secured it in a ponytail in an effort to beat the stifling summer heat. As he made his way back down the hall toward his bedroom, the grandfather clock on the first floor chimed once. It was half-past the hour.
After he’d dressed for the day, he wrapped up the muddy sheets and threw them down the laundry chute. He’d deal with them later. He bounded down the back staircase to the kitchen where he spied Jake Spaulding sipping from a mug while he read the newspaper at the table.
Jake hailed from Texas, where his family owned a ranch. He’d come to live at the house not long after Luc arrived three years ago. Primarily to bring him up to speed on his schooling, but he also assisted him in dealing with his gift, or curse as Luc saw it. Although he had to admit since he’d come to understand it better, Luc didn’t hate it so much.
At nineteen, Luc was struggling to graduate high school. He had to retake a class in the summer because he’d failed. The administration was currently holding onto his diploma, awaiting the outcome.
“Morning. Ready for that test?” Jake’s head remained buried in the paper.
“No.” Luc poured himself a coffee. “Remind me again why we need Economics?”
“To gain an understanding of the processes that govern the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in an economy.”
Luc spun around and stared at his friend, whose face remained placid. “Are you shitting me?”
“Yes.” A huge grin swallowed Jake’s face. “It’s a sick joke the academics play. They love to torture the lowly high school students because they can. But it’s a prerequisite you need to get that coveted diploma, so suck it up.”
Luc leaned against the counter. “I know Frank wants me to go to college, but I don’t see the point. It’s not like I’m going to be a doctor or anything,” Luc grumbled.
“You should be grateful to have a wealthy benefactor who wants only the best for you,” Jake said sternly.
“Don’t get me wrong, I am. I’m just not smart like you guys.”
Jake folded the paper and set it aside. “Look, high school is bullshit-I get it-but you’re almost done. Believe me, college is a whole different ball game.”
“For you maybe. You already know what you want to do with the rest of your life. I don’t have a clue.”
“What’s up with you this morning? You’re whining like a little brat and you look like ten miles of rough road. Did you worry about the test all night? I told you, you’ll be fine. I grilled you intensely so you’d know this stuff.”
“No.” Luc scratched his chest through his shirt. “I mean, yeah, I had a hard time falling to sleep between the heat and stressing about the test. But then I had this really weird dream and now I feel like I was awake all night.”
Jake joined him at the counter and raised the coffee pot. “What kind of dream?” He refilled his mug.
“This little girl came to me, Charlotte something or other. She was about five years old and died somewhere in the 1800’s. Her dress was like a uniform, grey with a dirty white apron.”
“Like from a workhouse?” Jake said.
“What do you mean?” Luc got down a bowl and then opened the pantry.
“Have you ever heard of St. Ursula’s Orphan Asylum?”
“Sounds familiar.” Luc grabbed a box of cereal and filled his bowl.
Jake returned to the table. “I actually did a paper on it last year for one of my classes.”
Luc covered his cereal with milk before he joined his friend.
“In 1853, the worst outbreak of yellow fever hit New Orleans, killing over 8,000 people,” Jake explained. “This left a hell of a lot of orphans. Judah Touro, a rich philanthropist, bought and donated a plantation with a huge mansion and lots of slaves’ quarters, which he had refurbished because they weren’t much better than shacks. He convinced the bishop to have the Ursuline nuns run it. Although Jewish, he was known to give both to the Jewish and Christian communities.
“While he was alive, he visited the asylum often, bringing the children gifts of clothes, shoes and toys. Even after his death in 1854, Touro provided a healthy yearly stipend for the orphanage. Mother Superior Marie Madeline carried on Touro’s benevolence by never turning a child away from her doors.
“January of 1855, the bishop came for his annual visit and luncheon. He was told that Mother Superior Marie Madeline had contracted influenza and died. The bishop was angry and wanted to know why he hadn’t been informed? The acting Mother Superior Margaret Mary stated that she and the order had been overwhelmed taking care of so many children that their correspondence and records had fallen to the wayside. He insisted on speaking with the doctor who had seen to her during her illness, but they informed him that he was only visiting the area. There was no way to locate him.
“Suspicious, the bishop contacted every doctor within a fifty-mile radius to question them regarding the orphanage. He couldn’t find one who had been called out there during the past year. Knowing it was impossible that not one child had fallen ill during that time; he hired an investigator to look into St. Ursula Orphan Asylum. What he uncovered would make the most hardened men weep.
“The barn had been turned into a launderette where the children worked 15-hour days. Wh
ile the nuns ate lavish meals and lived in the mansion, the children were housed in the old slave quarters where they slept up to five in a bed. One of the buildings on the property was turned into a dungeon for unruly children.
“They were shackled by the ankles and sitting in their own filth, fed stale bread and beaten severely. Forty-six bodies were unearthed on the property. Besides the remains of the former Mother Superior, they found thirty-nine children and six nuns who reportedly refused to go along with the new rules enforced by Sister Margaret Mary.
“The children found working in the barn looked no better than scarecrows. Their eyes were sunken. They had rickets. They were filthy and their clothes hung loosely from loss of weight. Their skin was ghostly pale because they never saw the light of day. Their tiny hands were raw from scrubbing against grooved washboards and sitting in lye. In some cases, you could see clear down to the bones on their fingers.
“The taller children stood on stools stirring sheets with large wooden paddles in giant vats of boiling water. Their arms were badly burned from grazing the hot metal sides. Others used a flatiron; a heavy metal base with a handle kept hot on the fire to smooth out the sheets. These children suffered multiple burns as well.
“Anyway, the description you gave of the little girl’s uniform reminded me of an old photo I saw when I was doing my research.” Jake scooted back his chair. “Let me see if I can find my paper, I made a Xerox copy of the photo.”
While Jake ran up the servants’ stairs to his room, Luc finished eating.
Jake came back and plopped down in his chair. “I found it.” He started flipping pages. “Here it is.” He turned the page around for Luc to see.
The black and white photo showed a large group of children, all with their hands clasped before them. Not one of them smiled.
“Yup, that’s the dress she was wearing.” Luc continued to peruse the photo. “Holy shit.”
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