Impossible hope rose in him and Max chuckled, an edge of hysteria building up inside him. Screw Coco, and Corinne, too. Maybe there was another way to get the answers he sought about Gabrielle. Maybe he could ask her himself.
The Third Moment was only three blocks from here, on the corner of Chartres and Ursulines. In fact, if he wasn't mistaken, he knew precisely which building that address and those words referred to.
He slipped the map into his back pocket and headed out of the park, past the black wrought-iron fence, and up to the corner of Chartres and St. Ann. He hesitated in the shadow of the cathedral, wondering if he would hear the Pere's Kyrie again. But that moment had passed. He felt its loss, and he wished there was music in the air to take its place. Once, he wouldn't have been able to leave Jackson Square without having heard a brass band playing, or at least a sax player on the corner blatting out something for the tourists. But in what was perhaps the most telling sign of the catastrophe that had befallen New Orleans, the musicians had fallen silent.
Max hurried up Chartres, long past the time when he could have appreciated the balconies on either side of the street. The little barbershop where a barrel-chested old Cajun had once cut his hair—reluctant to be pulled away from the chair on the stoop of his storefront—was boarded up, the brown water mark on the wood only a foot above ground level. GONETO TEXAShad been spray-painted on the boarding, and Max wondered what that old man would do in Texas, so far away from his culture and his city.
It took him only a few minutes to walk to the intersection marked on the map. He passed other people on the street, but not many. Some drove cars through the Quarter, looking as if they were on some kind of safari, afraid to get out but wanting to see the place, just the same. Max wanted to shout at them, direct them to Lakeview or the Lower Ninth, today's real New Orleans.
As he walked, it occurred to him how few police cars he'd seen since he'd arrived. He started wondering where the cops were now. GONE TO TEXASflashed across his mind again, and he frowned, unaccountably disturbed by the idea that New Orleans had been abandoned.
Stop, he told himself. Focus on your own ghosts.
And that was almost funny now. Almost.
When the white walls of the Ursuline Convent came into view, he quickened his step, flush with anticipation. At the end of this bizarre chase, like some kind of scavenger hunt for a city's memories, he'd find …what? Crazy Ray? Undoubtedly. Answers? He hoped so. He didn't know how many Moments the map was set to reveal, but he now wanted to locate them as quickly as he could.
The Old Ursuline Convent was the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley. Most of what lay behind those high white walls consisted of a massive L-shaped building, as white as the walls, with a simple black roof. There were smaller buildings on the convent grounds, but as he crossed Ursulines Avenue, he focused on the face of the convent itself, with its five third-floor gables and the peak above the entrance. He'd always loved this building. He should have expected it to be on the map, because it was a renowned source of local ghost stories, and now he was more curious than afraid. The map had shown him moments of transcendent magic, and he wondered what the convent's tale would be.
The gate on Chartres Street was closed, so he started down the sidewalk to a second gate, which opened into a lot at the rear of the building. But even as he approached, he could see that there would be no entry there, either.
Max stood on the sidewalk, staring over the gate at the rear of the building. For the first time, he wondered if he'd always been mistaken, and whether this might actually be the front entrance. He'd never been inside the walls, but the two sides looked very similar, except that the northwest side, facing the corner, had a courtyard he'd once seen when the gates were open.
Not that it mattered. He couldn't get inside and everything around him felt ordinary. No visions, no voices from the past, no rain. He pulled the map out of his back pocket, wondering if he'd misinterpreted the location, but when he unfolded it he had no doubt.
He refolded the map and clutched it in his hand, looking around. There might not be many cops around, but if he tried to climb the gate, and somebody saw him, New Or-leaneans weren't above taking the law into their own hands. Especially now. Someone would shoot him, or drag him down and beat him. It would be an idiotic risk.
No, he had to find out what the deal with the old convent was, when it would open, or if he could get someone to let him in. He had to find a bell or a buzzer, and a lie that would gain him entrance.
Max stepped up to the gate, searching for some means to communicate with those inside. He stood on his toes, and leaned one hand on the gate. At the moment of contact, his gut gave a lurch and his eyes fluttered. His fingertips felt cold and he fell heavily against the gate.
This is it. It's happening.
But as he blinked and his vision cleared, he realized there was no rain. He'd come to expect some kind of storm with every Moment on the map, but the pattern had been broken. The sunlight seemed to have dimmed, but it was still day, and the gate had not changed.
Then the cold sank its fingers deep into his bones, and he knew something had changed. Even in the dead of winter, it was rarely this cold in New Orleans.
A scream tore across the sky.
As Max searched for its source, from behind him he heard horses’ hooves on stone, and the rattle of wheels. For a beat he thought of the carriages that took tourists around the Quarter. But even as he turned, he knew what he would see.
A pair of horses drew a closed carriage made of gleaming black wood. On the high seat, the mustachioed driver wore clothes from another era. Along the street there came a handful of men and women in rough garb that Max placed in the 19th century. As another scream punctured the calm of the winter's day, they all began to rush toward the gate, talking amongst themselves in French, faces etched with worry as they stared over Max's head at the roof of the convent.
A thin stork of a man in ill-fitting clothes walked through Max and grabbed hold of the gate. Max felt that familiar disorientation pass over him, as if the world was about to slip away beneath him and send him sliding back to his own time.
I'm the ghost, he thought. That couldn't be, he wasn't dead, but he had never felt so insubstantial.
A third scream rent the air and sent spiders of fear dancing up the back of his neck. Max turned toward the convent again, just one spectator amongst a dozen gathered there, and at last he saw.
Two nuns stood precariously on the slanted roof, affixing ropes to two narrow chimneys. A third woman, older, leaned from a window below them, and it was she who had been screaming. There were red bloody gashes on her face.
Abruptly she was pulled inward and another face appeared at the window. She began to shout at the younger sisters up on the roof, commanding them in French to climb down.
Three more nuns climbed carelessly over the roof's ridge, all of them slight things, no more than girls, but instead of trying to rescue the others, they helped them secure the ropes to the chimneys.
And then all five of them began to sing.
A winter wind wrapped around Max and he hugged himself against the cold, but he did not take his eyes from those five young nuns. Just girls, he thought. And then he remembered the words that accompanied this moment on the map, and a terrible certainty gnawed at him.
Nuns who hadn't yet taken the vows to become full sisters were called “novices.”
“No,” he whispered.
The older nun screamed at them again from the window, and others filled the rest of the windows on the third floor, shouting and imploring them to climb down. The five novices ignored them, playing out the ropes that the first two had tied to the chimneys. Ropes that were now knotted around the first two girls’ throats.
“Jesus,” Max whispered. He lowered his gaze.
And then he shook his head. He couldn't just stand here. If this was magic, it was entirely different from the sort he'd seen thus far.
The novices ch
anted, crying out to God or whatever else might be listening. Max caught something about marking the city, or staining it, and the same refrain, over and over: “Por Mireault, por Mireault, por Mireault.”
He blocked the sound out and hurled himself against the gate. Leaping, he grabbed the top, scrambling with his feet and getting purchase, dragging himself up and nearly falling back. Instead he hurled himself over the gate, fell onto his hands and knees, then rolled.
He sprang up, barely feeling the sting of scraped, bloody palms.
Looking up at the roof, he could see a couple of older nuns carefully edging their way toward the novices.
The five girls stopped chanting. They covered their faces with their hands, some sort of ritual gesture, and then, as one, threw their arms wide.
“Por Mireault, le Tordu!” they cried.
Tordu?
Max froze. And in that moment, the two girls who'd tied the ropes around their own necks jumped from the roof's edge. They plummeted with a terrible weight, and when the ropes had played out, the novices were jerked up short, limbs flailing like marionettes, and a double-crack of snapping bones echoed off the walls that surrounded the convent.
The Ursuline sisters in their windows cried out in horror. The people at the gate screamed.
And then the three girls who'd aided the sacrifice of the others came together, joined hands, and stepped off the roof. There was no rope to shorten their fall. They hit the ground with a sickening crunch, falling in a tangle of limbs. One of them twitched, and then all were still.
Max's stomach convulsed and he fell to all fours. Like a dog, he threw up into the dirt, retching again and again, trying to draw a clean breath, mind churning even worse than his gut. It wasn't supposed to be like this. The magic of the earlier moments had been pure—a Native American ritual to end a hurricane, the power of faith keeping an enemy at bay with song and rain—but this was something else. This magic, whatever its intent, was hideous.
And if he'd gathered static from those other moments, what had attached itself to him from this?
His stomach heaved again but he fought it, taking long, slow breaths. Vision clearing, he glanced up at the convent.
The dead girls were gone.
“Shit,” Max hissed, forcing himself up. He staggered a bit, looked around, and he knew he was back. The vision had ended. The moment had passed. Off the map, he thought, and felt that edge of hysteria returning—
—because he was inside the walls of the convent. In his vision, or his haunting, or whatever kind of reality-shift it had been, he'd scaled the gate, and he must have done it for real.
Panicked, he ran back for the gate. He'd scraped his hands before, and they burned with pain as he grabbed the upper edge and dragged himself up.
When he landed on the other side he sprang to his feet immediately, looking around. From the other side of the gate he heard someone shouting after him, and he bolted, sprinting for Chartres Street. Around the corner he kept running, only stopping when his leg muscles began to burn and his chest tightened.
Even then, Max did not stop moving. Walking, he cut up St. Philip to Royal and took a left. The map crinkled in his back pocket. By now, the Third Moment would have faded and the fourth would have appeared, but his determination had faded along with it.
Right now he had no desire to know what the next Moment would bring.
Back at the hotel, Max paced his room. Every couple of minutes he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed Corinne's cell phone, and when she didn't answer, he dialed the home number she'd given him. Then he listened to that ring. The cell phone kicked over to voice mail, but the home number went unanswered, and in his mind he could see a phone on a kitchen counter just ringing and ringing into an empty house.
He didn't have the first clue where Corinne might be. She called the place in Lakeview her “aunt's house,” but the old woman had died, leaving it to Corinne. It had been ruined by the flood. So where was “home” now? Where was that endlessly ringing phone? Because Corinne knew more about old Ray than she was letting on, and she damn well knew more about Coco. When he'd asked about Tordu, she had told him to go back to Boston, and he could still hear the fear in her voice. Maybe she didn't know everything he wanted to know …but she had the keys.
Slamming the phone down again, Max went to the window. The shadows were lengthening. He hadn't realized how late it was, and he wondered how long he'd been pacing the room and trying to call Corinne. He leaned his forehead against the window and stared down into the street.
Dusk had begun to slink in and coalesce, and for a moment he thought the world flickered and shifted. But nothing had really changed. He had simply grown accustomed to a fluid reality, and the whole aura of post-Katrina New Orleans felt like somewhere unknown.
Corinne could be anywhere. He didn't know where to begin looking for her, and even if he did, he had no easy way to get around. She'd offered to drive him, and not having a car at his disposal made him feel trapped.
But he couldn't just pace.
He tried her phone numbers again. Still no luck. He fought the temptation to hurl the phone across the room, dropping the receiver gently into the cradle instead.
Max picked up the remote control and turned on the television. He lay back and surfed through local and national news clips, hotel information, pay-per-view, old sitcoms, HBO, and then clicked it off again. Closing his eyes, he steadied his breathing, trying to calm down. His skin prickled with the horrifying memory of those young novices plunging to their deaths, but worse were the sounds of their dying. He would remember that every time he closed his eyes.
The idea of touching the magic of this city had begun to intrigue him, even excite him. Now he understood how foolish that had been. Tragedy came with triumph, horror with glee. He'd let himself be drawn in, and now he felt the taint of darkness in his heart.
“Where the fuck are you?” he said through gritted teeth.
He opened his eyes. Corinne had shut him out. She was not going to answer his calls, or return his messages. He had to try something else. She and Gabrielle had relatives in New Orleans, so if he had to track down every Doucette in the city, he'd do that.
And sitting in this hotel room wouldn't get him anywhere.
Max pushed up off the bed, checked his pockets to be sure he had his wallet and room key, and went out the door. Riding down in the elevator, he bounced on his heels, still overloaded with nervous energy. He'd seen death today, and had it whisper in his ear as it held a knife to his throat. In his room, he'd been tempted to call his sister, tell her what had been going on, but she would only have freaked out and told him to get the hell back to Boston.
And she'd have been right to do so.
But he wasn't going anywhere, not yet. People were haunted far more often, it seemed to him, by what they hadn't done instead of things they had. Regrets. Omissions. If onlys. He would not allow those ghosts to find him.
The elevator doors slid open at the lobby and he strode to the front desk.
“Can I help you, sir?” asked the black woman behind the counter. Her name tag identified her as Audrey.
“Does the hotel have a business office?”
Audrey frowned. “Sure. But it closes at four o'clock. I'm sorry.”
Max ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. “Listen, I didn't bring a laptop because I didn't think I'd need it. But I need to get online desperately. Is there any way I could get in there? It's really important.”
Audrey gave him a sympathetic look. “Fires to put out, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Hang on,” she said, ducking through a doorway behind the counter.
She spoke quickly to someone there, and a moment later a man emerged, dark circles under his eyes suggesting that Katrina had left him with plenty of ghosts of his own.
“I've got it,” the man said.
“Thanks, Jaime,” Audrey said, and then she smiled at Max again. “Right this way,
sir.”
She led him out of the lobby into an alcove with several doors with glass inset windows. One bore a brass plate beside it with the words BUSINESS OFFICE, and Audrey fished a set of keys from her pocket and unlocked it for him. She turned on the light and gestured toward the computer. Silver fireworks exploded on the screen saver.
“Let me know if there's anything you need.”
Max looked at her. “Is there, I don't know, a time limit or anything? How do I pay?”
“Don't worry about it,” she said, her smile faltering a moment. “Just tell people, when you go home, that New Orleans is open for business.”
Audrey left him there.
As Max sat down at the computer, he realized that some of his nervous energy had dissipated. The woman's kindness had done that, and he was grateful. He needed focus, and that feeling of spiders crawling under his skin, and the urge to take off at a run, wouldn't do him any good.
He opened up the web browser and went to a white-pages search, typing in “Doucette” and “New Orleans.” Even as he did, he remembered Corinne saying something about the family evacuating, and wondered if any of them had come back. There were forty-two listings for “Doucette” in the city, including one for Corinne at the old Lakeview address. Many of the other addresses were probably ruined now as well. But he had to find the ones that still existed.
Max looked around and spotted a printer. He could just print up the list of Doucette phone numbers and start dialing, one by one.
As he glanced at the screen again, however, something else caught his eye. One of the menu options read Reverse Directory Search. He clicked on the link, opening a page that asked for a telephone number.
“Yes,” he whispered, fishing into his pocket for the paper on which he'd written Corinne's two phone numbers.
Her cell wouldn't do him any good, but that home number was a landline. He typed the ten digits into the box and clicked search. The browser seemed to slow down, and for a second he worried it would crash.
The Map of Moments Page 10