by Arden, Alys
“Hmm. I’m still surprised you came.”
“I have a plan, and it doesn’t involve staying.” She pointed to a small camera in the pocket of her blazer.
“In that case…” Ren snapped the twenty from her hand. “Bienvenue.” Even with the interruption, he didn’t skip a beat. “Listen up, folks, there are two alleyways on either side of the St. Louis Cathedral: one is named after a pirate and the other for a priest. Scientists from all around the world flock to one of them, and claim that it has one of the highest records of concentrated paranormal activity on the planet. Can you guess which?”
Everyone laughed.
“Of course, we New Orleanians do not need gadgets and gizmos to record noises and auras in order to know when we’re in a nexus of supernatural activity.” He looked directly at the blonde woman as he carefully articulated the last sentence. Her back straightened, and her face lit up. She loved it.
“This way!” He walked us around the church, where an illuminated statue of Jesus cast a fifty-foot shadow on the back of the Cathedral. I guess the Church thought Jesus deserved a generator?
I tried to gauge Isaac’s interest. Like everyone else, he was hanging onto Ren’s every word. I had to force back a smile as I watched his fully engrossed profile.
“Psst. Adele, come take a picture of me in front of the statue, but wait until some other people are behind me so it proves I was on the tour.”
“Come on, Désirée, it’s rude. I don’t want to distract Ren.”
“Oh, please, that statue of Jesus could start twerkin’ and Ren wouldn’t break character.”
She had a point. Plus, I wanted her to pick me up for school tomorrow. I sighed and grabbed the camera.
“Get close to the light so I don’t have to use the flash.” I hurried to frame the shot as the group walked behind her.
She held her extra-fake grin as the shutter took the long exposure. I returned her camera and begrudgingly hopped back to Isaac, who was watching me like a hawk. Ren began describing the ghost of Julie, who haunted the Bottom of the Cup Tearoom.
“Only in New Orleans,” I whispered to Isaac. He smiled.
Across the street from Café Orléans, Ren pointed out the luxurious Bourbon Orleans Hotel, explaining that it had once been an orphanage and was, to this day, haunted by children who had burned alive in a tragic fire. The possibility of little ghost children peeking through the curtains at us made me hurry Isaac along.
We walked another couple blocks and stopped on the corner of St. Ann and Royal Street. The moon shone over the corner building like a spotlight for us. The dark-green floor-to-ceiling shutters were latched closed, and wrought-iron balconies wrapped around the second and third floors of the maroon-colored, three-story residence.
“John and Wayne Carter were two brothers who seemed to be just your average men—”
The woman with the long, blonde hair let out a loud cackle and then quickly tried to calm herself. “Pardon moi,” she said and squeaked out another giggle.
Désirée mouthed the word “nutcase” to me. I suppressed a laugh and turned back to Isaac, who was staring hard at the woman, and then became nervous that the naysayer might make an appearance. Luckily, Isaac fell back with me as I dropped to the back of the group so others could gather close to Ren for the tale.
“By the way, you look really nice tonight,” he whispered close to my ear. Feeling his breath on my skin made my shoulders tingle.
The compliment caught me off guard. “You look, uh, clean,” I joked.
“Ha, ha. Some of us have to get our hands dirty while others go to fancy schools.”
“That’s not—”
Hands from behind wrapped around my eyes.
“Piacere! What’s going on here? Did our invitations to the festa get lost in the mail?” There was no way Niccolò would say something so cheesy, which left only one Italiano to suspect.
“Your hands are cold, Gabriel,” I guessed, spinning around to face him.
“How did you know it was me?” He kissed both of my cheeks and then moved out of the way so the younger Medici brother could do the same.
“Ciao,” Niccolò said, looking almost bashful.
“The tour has already begun,” said Ren.
Isaac smirked.
The blonde woman stared intensely at Niccolò. The way he stared back at her – it was like they were silently daring each other.
Was she the reason for Niccolò’s early-morning stroll? Ugh. I tried to convince myself that what Niccolò Medici was doing at dawn was none of my business, but still… I wanted to know. Her stern expression faltered momentarily when Gabe smiled at her with a hint of glee. It was painfully obvious they all knew each other.
“Are you sure you can’t take just two more?” Gabe asked, approaching Ren with a couple of crisp bills. “We’re very generous tippers,” he added, looking him straight in the eyes.
“I’ve always had a hard time saying no to a handsome foreigner. D’accord, the more, the merrier.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Isaac scowl.
Niccolò turned to me and, no longer bashful, touched my face. “Your wound is finally healing.” He kept one eye on my cheek and the other on Isaac, as if he was some kind of abusive boyfriend – which wasn’t fair and certainly didn’t go unnoticed by Isaac.
“So little time, so much to see,” Ren yelled, scooping his arm towards Bourbon Street. “This way people, allons-y!” Isaac grabbed my arm and pulled me along as the group began to move again.
“So, Dee, are you still leaving, or do you need more pictures?”
Désirée must have noticed the bizarre exchange between the brothers and the woman, too, because she looked straight at the blonde, as if rising to the challenge. “Oh, I’m definitely going to need more pictures.” She wrapped her arm around Gabe and snapped a selfie. They looked like a pair of supermodels.
“I’m sure you all know that the Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, is the oldest neighborhood in New Orleans and was settled by Bienville in the year 1718. What you probably don’t know is that most of the buildings around you are not actually French. Two great fires in the eighteenth century destroyed nearly everything in the Quarter.
“Spain occupied the city at the time when the old square was rebuilt, so most of the buildings standing before you were constructed by the Spanish. There are only four original French structures remaining” – he looked straight at me and Désirée – “a Voodoo shop, a Creole cottage on Burgundy Street, the Ursuline Convent, and this former brothel.”
I had known our house was an original French cottage (there was even a plaque on the outside from the historic registry), but I had no idea it was one of only four.
“Wow, I can’t believe I’m working on one of those places,” Isaac whispered, nudging me.
“You might be thinking it’s curious that these four buildings survived all of these years, through the fires and the storms. Was it a coincidence? After all, what do a convent, a brothel, a Creole cottage and a Voodoo shop have in common? Of course, it wouldn’t have been a Voodoo shop back then…”
“Back then, that sort of thing wasn’t legal,” Désirée finished.
“That’s correct, Mademoiselle Borges. In the early seventeen hundreds, so soon after the height of American witchcraft hysteria, any shop selling magic fixin’s would’ve been illegal. It would’ve appeared to be just a cottage, except items may or may not have been sold out of a back room, and said items might have come with a little lagniappe. Gratis. But you would know more about that than li’l ole me.”
Désirée rolled her eyes as his accent thickened for the tourists, and then he hurried us along towards the house of New Orleans’s most famous murderess, Madame LaLaurie. I started to move forward with the group, but a tug at my sweater made me pause.
“Hey.” Niccolò’s hand lingered on my arm. “I just want to apologize for this morning.” Just the sound of his soft voice brought me back to our tangled embrace.
“For what?”
“For acting so weird. The truth is, my brother and I were out drinking, and we got into a little scuffle with some guys who were being foolish. I didn’t want you to think I was that kind of guy.”
“What kind of guy?” I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Are you cold?”
“N—” Before I could answer, he stripped off his black leather jacket and swept it around my shoulders.
“Grazie. Someone hit you?”
“Oh, Adele, don’t worry about Nicco,” Gabe answered, joining the conversation out of nowhere. “You should have seen the other guy.”
Niccolò rolled his eyes as Gabe tousled his hair.
“Why would someone hit you?” I asked. It was hard to imagine. Niccolò seemed like such the quiet guy in the corner. Gabe, on the other hand, I could totally see instigating a brawl.
“I could think of a couple reasons….” Isaac reappeared, Désirée in tow.
Niccolò’s jaw tightened.
“Don’t start, Isaac.” I could see Mr. Hyde coming out to play.
“Save it for the fraternity house, boys,” Désirée put her arm around me and walked us back towards the crowd. “Don’t look back. Pretend you don’t care.”
“I don’t care.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“She’s beautiful and unforgiving,” Gabe yelled. “My favorite combination.”
I felt Désirée’s entire body smile, not that it showed on her face at all. He ran after us, put one arm around each of our shoulders, and broke us apart. Together, the three of us hurried to catch up with the rest of the tour. Désirée let out a genuine giggle.
We had missed nearly the entire story on le Comte de Saint-Germain. Something to do with a residence on the corner of Royal and Ursuline.
“And the next two tales bring us to the end of the tour.”
When I looked up from underneath Gabe’s arm, we were standing directly behind the old Ursuline Convent. My heart began to knock. Paranoid much? Gabe looked down at me as if he could hear the pounding.
I moved from underneath his arm to the familiar gate.
This time when the chills rushed up my spine, I simultaneously broke out into a sweat. I tightened Niccolò’s jacket around my torso and looked up at the convent attic – the window I had witnessed explode open was now completely bricked up, preventing even the moon’s beams coming and going.
Ren leapt onto the hood of a previously drowned car and paused for dramatic effect as he prepared himself for la grand finale.
“New Orleans came to be thanks to the real crème de la crème de la société Parisienne. And by that I mean the thieves, crooks and murderers. That’s right, folks, New Orleans started as a penal colony. These fine founding citizens were convicts from La Bastille who had been granted pardons by the King in exchange for building the grand capital of New France. So, early on, the city was a cesspool of scoundrels and scalawags, which means not much has changed since.” He winked and then took an exaggerated sip from his flask.
“These unruly Frenchmen survived hurricanes, indigenous swamp creatures, and the cannibalistic ways of certain native tribes, but how could a population of only men evolve into the society meant for such a fine city? They demanded, pleaded, and begged the King to send over women! Being a reasonable man, the King emptied the female correction houses and raked the streets for ladies of the night, who were then shipped to New France like a platter of beignets, though not nearly as sweet.
“Now, King Louis XIV was on a mission for La Nouvelle-Orléans to be the Paris of the New World. Propaganda was launched across France to arouse adventurous men to seek their fortunes in this new land of opportunity. In response, a new class of Frenchmen made the grueling journey across the Atlantic Ocean – only to find a giant swampland full of mosquitos, alligators, and serpents.
“Of course, it wasn’t long before they, too, demanded the King send ladies! Having already ridden the French streets of extra undesirables, King Louis scavenged hundreds of virtuous young French women from convents and orphanages to send to these opportunity-seekers. He gave the girls a small dowry and sent them on their merry way to marry the colonists and propagate the burgeoning city. The small chests, or cassettes, given to the woman to hold their wedding dresses looked very similar to caskets and earned them each the title la fille à la cassette, or simply, the casquette girls, as the locals say.”
“And what does the Ursuline Convent have to do with any of this?” asked a voice from the crowd.
“Excellent question! Now, for as much of this city’s soul is built on Hoodoo traditions, Native American spirits, and everything in between, the Catholics also dutifully staked their claim into the soggy soil of La Nouvelle-Orléans.And there was no better example of that sense of duty than the sisters from the Order of the Saint Ursula.
“The Ursuline nuns came to New Orleans with the duty of opening L’Hôpital des Pauvres de la Charité,or Charity Hospital, which is the second-oldest running hospital in the country – or at least it was before the Storm. But the sisters were not content to simply run the city’s only hospital, for their real mission was education. Before leaving France, they made a deal with the bishop: they would gladly make the perilous journey across the Atlantic to a bayou country full of savages and pirates, and tend to the sick, if – and only if – they were also allowed to open a school. And so they did on the property that stands before you, a school that served only girls –all girls, regardless of race, color or social class.
“It’s said that it was the Ursuline sisters who took in the casquette girls when each shipload from France docked in the French Quarter. They stored the girls’ cassettes in the convent attic for safekeeping, and then housed, educated, and chaperoned them until each was married off.
“As things go in New Orleans, scandal struck when the first marriage proposal was accepted, for when the sisters went to fetch the girl’s cassette they discovered, to everyone’s dismay, that it was empty. No dowry from the King. No wedding dress. Nothin’ but cobwebs. Every cassette in their care had been emptied.”
Ren switched to an unidentifiable Eastern European accent.
“Legend has it that the casquette girls had smuggled strigoi across the ocean in those casket boxes, and these vampires had been sleeping in the attic during the day and running amuck at night, feeding on anyone they fancied. New Orleans was the perfect cover. Between the crime and the disease, death rates were already astronomical. Who would bat an eye when another dead body turned up? Who was going to notice another missing ex-con or prostitute?”
I began to wrap and unwrap my chain around my fingers.
Blue eyes. Dead, blue eyes.
Ren looked around the silent crowd. “And that’s the story of how the vampires came to New Orleans. To America.”
“Riveting,” said Gabe, looking at the blonde, who seemed oddly somber.
“So what’s the deal with that attic window?” I blurted.
The group turned to see who had spoken.
“I’m so glad you asked, m’lady. If you walk around the French Quarter, you will quickly find that every set of attic windows is permanently latched open. Can anybody guess why?”
“Because of the heat,” Niccolò answered dryly.
“Exactly correct, my fair-faced friend! It gets hotter than Hell here in southern Louisiana, and in the early eighteenth century there was no central air. Since heat rises, the attics were the hottest rooms in these Creole cottages, and they were also where the children often slept. The shutters on the attic windows were kept permanently latched open out of fear they’d swing shut in the middle of the night, leaving the dreaming youngsters to cook to death.
“However, as you can see, the attic windows of the Ursuline Convent are all latchedshut. Legend says that when the empty cassettes were found, the Ursulines contrived a plan in the name of the Lord and went to work. Nine thousand nails were sent from the papacy in Rome, after being blessed by the Po
pe himself, to secure the shutters of the attic windows. They closed up the attic completely to protect their convent and the citizens of New Orleans from the attic’s deviant denizens.”
The blonde’s eyes lit with excitement. “Ha! Like za Catholic Church could imprison a clan of vampires!” she said with conviction.
Was her accent French?
Désirée slowly walked to the convent gate and peered through the iron posts. “I agree with blondie. It sounds like there was more going on here than the work of the Lord.”
“Well, honey, you know that in the Big Easy, there’s always more than meets the eye.”
He gave us a minute to take it all in.
A history of strange or unusual happenstances flooded my head. My pulse began to race as I thought about every shadow, every creak, every unexplainable occurrence I had never given a second thought to before. Désirée also seemed to be processing something buried in her subconscious. Maybe she was thinking the same thing? After all, we were the only two who had been born in this town where the debate between fact and fiction is grayer than the newsprint it’s read from.
“As you can see, a shutter is missing from one of the windows. I have it on good authority that it fell off only a week ago… and yet somehow, even in this time of chaos, the archdiocese managed to brick up the window right away. Whatever could cause such urgency when there are people to feed, houses to rebuild?” Ren slowly scanned the crowd. “I don’t know the answers, I just tell the stories.”
Violent chills spread throughout my entire body until my teeth began to chatter uncontrollably.
Breathe.
“Hey, are you okay?” asked Isaac. “You look even paler than usual.”
I nodded, unable to move my eyes from the attic window.
“You’re trembling.” He put his arm around me.
On the verge of a claustrophobic fit, I quickly stepped away from him and followed Ren as he moved halfway down the block.
“Another version of the story claims that the vampires were able to move through the windows at night. Barely more than a decade ago, a college-aged couple came to town from California, with the brilliant plan to make a documentary on our extracurricular nightlife. A little home video. Capture footage of anyone who came or went from the attic windows at night. They set up their cameras and camped out in front of St. Mary’s Church, which used to be the chapel of the Ursuline Convent. The next morning, their bodies were discovered… drained of eighty percent of their blood. On their tapes, nothing but static. There was no evidence of—”