Dead Easy

by Mark William Simmons

  This time it was worse.

  It was every childhood fear I'd ever had of the water and more. It felt as if there were unseen things squirming beneath the inky waters—along with something that ate sea monsters and submarines for breakfast.

  And the creeping impression that the axis of the world was subtly shifting, preparing to tilt reality over on its side and me into the nightmare beneath the surface of a barely sane world.

  By the time I reached the southern shore of the lake and headed into Metairie, I was drenched in sweat and practically singing the address over and over. Not at the top of our lungs, of course.

  But loud enough to keep the windows rolled up.

  Making landfall didn't ease my unease all that much. "Dry land" is a subjective term south of the estuary. Reading that New Orleans is largely built inside a bowl of levees and situated below sea level was an abstract concept until a little trip down for a convention a few years back. I was walking along a levee abutting the Mississippi River and looked up to see a freighter sailing majestically past.

  Some thirty feet above my head!

  Don't get me wrong, I like waterfront locations. Especially the kind where I can look down and out over the vista of a lake or river or ocean.

  Not so fond of the water being high enough to look down and out over me.

  So, Marie Laveau could relax. I had no desire to pick up real estate on her home turf. New Orleans is a nice enough place to visit, but an extended stay in an inside-out fishbowl doesn't appeal to my long-term peace of mind. The Big Easy makes me uneasy.

  I have a similar antipathy toward Southern California—don't blame me, that's San Andreas' fault . . .

  As I angled into the glare of the sunrise, I pulled down the car visor to shield my eyes. There was a vanity mirror clipped to the visor.

  And in the darkness behind me a pair of ancient, yellowed eyes swam into view!

  I shrieked a little.

  My reflexes or Volpea's?

  "Damn, Jefe!" exclaimed a familiar voice. "Dat you in dere? You one fine lookin' woman!"

  I tilted the mirror to be sure. Yep. Black top hat. White ceremonial paint forming a skull-like pattern over a midnight-dark face.

  The Baron. Loa of the Dead.

  Probably still pissed that some of his homeboys preferred my company to his.

  "Samedi. What a delightful surprise." My tone suggested just the opposite.

  All of my dealings with the Voudon Avatar of the Grave had been strained to this point. Aside from our vast theological differences, I had inadvertently "taken over his territory" while he and the other loa were bound and imprisoned by Elizabeth Báthory. And even though I was still sending him referrals on every animated corpse that shambled across my path, it would be just like him to rat me out to Laveau.

  He chuckled. "Oh man—can I say 'oh man'? You is so busted! Tryin' to sneak yo' lily white ass into the Queen's territory!"

  I shook my head. "Oh, this is so bad," I moaned.

  "Yes, it is," he agreed.

  "So bad . . . that the great Baron Samedi has been reduced to running errands for Marie Laveau," I continued.

  He stopped chuckling. "What?"

  "I mean, it's just sad and embarrassing."

  "What you talkin' 'bout?"

  "And she's even got you up pulling guard duty past cock's crow." I shook my head. "The least she could do is give you a badge or some kind of uniform. Like a rent-a-cop or something . . ."

  He was suddenly up front and sitting next to me on the passenger side. "The Baron works for no one!" he hissed through clenched teeth. "I am here to warn you!"

  "Warn me of what? That you're about to run and tattle on me to your boss lady?"

  He reached out and clutched Volpea's arm. The coldness of the tomb slid through muscle and sinew like winter ice down a canted roof. "Shut up and listen!" he hissed. "It's on account o' dat crazy-ass bitch I been searchin' the length of this state for yo aura since moonrise! Dere be things I gots to tell you!"

  "Do tell?" I said mildly. "Well, I would pull over and give you my full attention but I'm kind of on a compressed timetable, Mister Graves."

  "What you should be doing, Protestant Boy, is turning this hunk-a-junk around and skedaddling north as fast as you can. But since I know that you won't, I'm here to warn you. I only have a few minutes before de spell is used up an' I go back to de groun'."

  "How sad," I said, still failing to articulate any tone of sincerity. "Feel free to fast forward past the social pleasantries and cut to the chase. What's up, Papa Doc?"

  The thing that looked like an emaciated black man, daubed with white paint and wearing a top hat and raggedy old tuxedo, stared out the window at the rising sun—a view that had to be even rarer for him than it had become for me.

  "First thing. Marie Laveau be crazy. She smart enough not to show too much of what really goin' on inside her head but she be well on de way to bat-shit insane!"

  I could've said "It takes one to know one" or "Isn't that a case of the pot calling the kettle black" but, if he was really on a limited timetable it was best to get on with it. "You're wasting your mojo, Topper: tell me something I don't know."

  The Baron shook his head back at me and I could hear the dry rasp of bone on bone beneath his parchment husk. "Jus' 'cause she crazy don't mean she not dangerous! She know most of what she doin' so dat's what make her crazy fo' sho."

  "That and the voices," I offered.

  "Dat's jus' it," he said, his yellowed, sunken eyes taking on a haunted look. "De voices is real! She not hearing voices 'cause she crazy—she crazy 'cause she hearing voices!"

  With a start I realized that the cocky Loa of the Dead was afraid. He had seemed remarkably self-possessed last year when set free from Lilith's imprisonment. But now fear was oozing from him like a sponge leaking vinegar.

  "Whose voices?" I asked, noting an edge of unease had suddenly crept into my own voice, as well.

  A variety of expressions crossed the loa's face as he struggled to answer. "There are things . . . ancient things . . . that dwell in the dark places . . ."

  "What?" I asked. "Like vampires and voodoo gods?"

  His head snapped around and he glared at me, at once angry and terrified. "It began here! Back in the very beginning! Before the first vampire made landfall! Before slaves from the West Indies arrived to practice the True Faith!"

  "Yeah, yeah, leave me a religious tract. You were saying about these voices? Something's really whispering in her ear?"

  "Some things! Ancient things! And a Great Old One!"

  "A great, old what?"

  "It be known by de many masks it has worn, in de many places it has gathered foul congregations." The Baron was whispering, now, glancing about as if we might be under some arcane surveillance. "It is the Black Man, worshipped by witches in England; the Faceless God and the Black Pharaoh, celebrated in Egyptian cults; feared as the Black Wind in Kenya and the Floating Horror in Haiti; the Dark One here in Louisiana; the Dweller in Darkness to the North, Mr. Skin to the West, and the Howler in the Night, Lord of the Desert, the Haunter of the Dark, and the Crawling Mist . . ." His voice trailed off. "I am starting to fade! I must tell you—"

  "A lot of fancy titles," I groused. "Any chance of getting a name and address?"

  "Nyarlathotep," the Baron answered in a creepy, new voice.

  It was deeper, older, and more terrible than anything I had ever heard come out of a human-shaped mouth before—and I've heard enough terrible things coming out of human mouths to give the Hell's Angels nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  "Pleased to meet you," he grinned, "hoped you'd guess my name . . ." His mouth didn't seem to match the words I was hearing. Furthermore, his lips and teeth were black: the Baron's physical form had undergone a subtle shift.

  In fact, his mouth no longer seemed to match his face except in coloration.

  "Sooo," I said, trying to steer for an exit ramp before the drive got any wiggier, "I guess I'm g
etting the whole ancient dude vibe: anyone quoting early Stones lyr—"

  He/it giggled like a lunatic Smurf. "Do you want to see something really scary?"

  "Actually, I'd like to finish the conversation with Baron Samedi which you so rudely interrupted." I was looking for a place to pull over and park. "So take a number and we can socialize when it's your turn."

  The thing wearing Baron Samedi's avatar turned its face away, saying, ". . . really, really scary . . . ?" and I went from looking for a parking place to scouting for a place to abandon the car while it was still rolling.

  The "Baron" turned back around and his face was gone.

  The cold, rubbery tentacle snaked over my right arm before I could make any sense of what I was seeing.

  But there was no sense.

  A red, monstrous pseudopod was writhing toward me and it came from the center of the dark ovoid that had replaced the Baron's head. It was growing from the empty space where his face should have been! Except there was nothing but a dark portal leading to some deep, secret darkness at the hind end of the universe!

  And as a blood-red tentacle—totally unlike anything octopoid or cephalopodan—came squirming out of the ancient dark, my mind began to gibber like a thorn tree filled with monkeys. It wasn't just horror that paralyzed me, thrilled me into a new level of shocked insensibility—it was the inability of my brain to reconcile what I was seeing with any reference point, biological, historical, mythical! My foot pushed the brake pedal to the floor only because my legs had gone rigid with shock. And I stared as the red serpentine rope of unnatural flesh slithered over our arm and brushed across my/Volpea's breasts!

  A second, minor shock buzzed through me and my left arm came up involuntarily. My left hand reached down and flung the tentacle aside so that it smacked against the windshield. "Watch the tits, Romeo!" Volpea's sleepy voice muttered from our slack lips. The tentacle slid down the inner surface of the windshield glass, leaving a streaky trail of mucus before rearing up like an offended cobra.

  In the meantime I was trying to open the driver's side door to beat a hasty retreat. The problem was I was trying to do it with my left arm which my host had just appropriated to fend off the monster with the cop-a-feel face.

 

  > . . . kinda girl . . . think I am . . . ?<

 

  > . . . <

  Somewhere inside our skull something started buzzing.

 

  > . . . <

  She was snoring!

  I tried to turn and use my right arm but the seatbelt caught me in midturn. Now I couldn't reach the door handle with my right or fend off snake-face with my left! And, so not helping, the sun began to angle through the windshield so I was half blinded, as well.

  "Wgah'nagl ftagn!" whispered the ancient voice as the crimson rope circled our neck, probing our right ear.

  Reaching up, I grabbed at the cable of tightening flesh but only succeeded in having our fingers trapped against our throat. The interior of the car seemed to dim and I coughed against the mounting pressure. "Yeah?" I choked, "Well ftagn you!"

  The pressure suddenly disappeared.

  As did the rope-faced monstrosity that had possessed the Baron.

  The spell permitting the Loa of the Dead to appear past cock's crow had finally expired.

  * * *

  History.

  Samedi had said something about "it" beginning here—whatever "it" was that he was trying to warn me about . . .

  Before the vampires.

  Before the voodoo.

  Which meant early history.

  So I thought about that after I recovered and resumed my drive toward St. Ann Street.

  You don't spend too many years living in Louisiana without learning something about its history. I was no expert but I did have a salient grasp of the basics.

  The Mississippi River was first—or should I say "officially"—discovered back in 1541 by the Spanish explorer, Hernando de Soto. Like so many things in history, however, it's not who got there first but who developed the real estate.

  One hundred and forty-one years later a Frenchman by the name of Robert de La Salle sailed down the Big Muddy for the first time and erected a cross somewhere near the city's present location, claiming the entire Louisiana territory for his boss, King Louis XIV. Both explorers would later be immortalized by having early motor cars named after them. Since the king didn't get around so much he would have to settle for lending his name to a line of furniture.

  The juxtaposition of river and seaport was too good to pass up forever—just another thirty-six years as the swamps were somewhat problematical. So the first French settlements on the Gulf Coast were established at Biloxi. Finally, in 1718, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, established a settlement on the lower Mississippi which he dubbed "New" Orleans. Three years later the French Quarter was laid out behind levees erected by the engineer Adrien de Pauger. The city began to prosper, Le Moyne probably heard fewer "Baptiste" jokes, and in 1723 the capital of the French colony was moved from Biloxi to New Orleans.

  Neither Le Moyne nor de Pauger has had an automobile named in their honor.

  Despite the legendary French fondness for eating frogs and snails, life in the early colony was neither easy nor consistently successful. We are, after all, talking about living in the middle of a swamp. A very big swamp. Surrounded by many other swamps. The climate was subtropical with all of the disadvantages of weather, temperature, humidity, rot, insects, protozoa, wildlife.

  And the natives were usually restless.

  Guerrilla warfare is grim enough when the aborigines have had a century or more to adapt to the contested landscape. When that landscape is thousands of miles of swamps, bogs, sloughs, mires, and fens, the only workable strategy is to huddle together and keep building earthen walls, hoping they keep the darkness and the Others out as well as the water. When the stories began to circulate that not all of those Others might be human, it was not entirely the typical Eurocentric racism of its day.

  There were things in the swamps that even the natives feared and loathed.

  Chalk it up to the superstitions of unenlightened times but then, once upon a time I would have laughed at the idea of elves or fish people or Mesoamerican bat-demons.

  Not laughing so much these days.

  And lest we still trust the larger part of American folklore to weak-minded simpletons, there's an old pioneer saying: "The cowards never started and the weak died along the way." The first French colonists certainly weren't sissies so you can't chalk up three hundred years of superstitious gossip to Gallic timidity in a strange land.

  Following a pattern that would later be subsumed by the Botany Bay enterprise on the other side of the globe, the population was bolstered by deported criminals and prostitutes. This solved the overcrowded French penal system and added to certain colonists' incentives when the first eighty-eight women arrived from Gay Paree. The fact that their previous address—La Salpêtrière—was a Paris "house of correction" may have enhanced their status rather than diminishing it.

  Six years later another boatload of women arrived. These were the Ursuline Sisters, a Dominican order, who established convents—the second of which is still standing and may be toured even today (though it is no longer used according to its original purposes). The original Salpêtrière "sisters" doubtless established some devotional houses of their own—The House of the Rising Sun is still celebrated in story and song—though it is unlikely that any of the original structures still exist. Still, "congregants" continue to be served in a wide variety of locations and formats even today.

  The Big Easy began to hit its stride in the mid 1700s as it finally found a way to deal with French restrictions on trade with England, Spain, Mexico, Florida, and the West Indies. It decided to ignore the rules. Trade grew as a result. The once pristine Mississippi River was choked with traffic carrying goods in and out of the city as well as its growing
seaport. Too bad the French were about to lose their lease.

  The Seven Years War was a dust-up between all of the major European powers that ended in 1763 when Louis the XV—also known for a line of settees and bric-a-brac furnishings—signed the Treaty of Paris. This seemed to end France's ambitions in the New World and Louis, no slouch in the assets management department, slipped the Louisiana deeds under the table to his cousin, Charles III.

  What seemed like a good idea at the management level didn't go over so well with the tenants, however. Chuck was the king of Spain and the French colonists weren't so keen on having a new landlord even if he was considered "family." The new governor for the colony was turned around and sent packing upon his arrival. The success of this rebellion was short-lived, however, as Spanish General Alexander O'Reilly (really!) showed up with twenty-four warships, two thousand troops, fifty pieces of artillery, and a big ole can of whupass. Executing the six ringleaders of the insurgence, he guaranteed the haunting of the future U.S. Mint and total establishment of Spanish rule.

  For three more decades.

  Say what you will about the Spanish, at least they had a better grasp on the concept of a free-market economy. They relaxed trade restrictions with other countries which caused the average businessman to prosper and the black marketeers to consider signing up for career change seminars back in Sicily.

  A lot of people chalked up what happened next to an accident. Maybe. But you've got to wonder how a single fire can burn down more than 850 buildings in a swamp, surrounded by water on three sides and more swamp on the fourth. If the Good Friday fire of 1788 wasn't the result of covert urban planning, it had the same result. Not only were most of the French-style structures lost, the Spanish rulers enacted zoning laws mandating that all future buildings of more than one story would have to be constructed of brick. This led to a decided "Mediterranean" period for the architecture of the region.