Haunted: Dark Delicacies® III

by Del Howison

  “When the Man-Stars make their move, I’ll let you watch.”

  “What was that you just said?” asked the nauseated-looking one.

  “Oh.” Dominic didn’t turn round. “Just talking to the inner man, so to speak.”

  When Lippisch’s Man-Stars launched themselves on his three new “colleagues,” that’s when he turned to watch the one-sided struggle. As he did so, he found himself recalling the increasingly lonely hours at home; the pointless encounters with strangers in airport hotels; the click of the hotel room door, closing on a woman whose name he’d already forgotten. “Be sure you don’t injure the female,” he told the Man-Stars. “Dr. Lippisch has promised me a bride.” He smiled fondly. “A bride with brains.”

  Dominic began to laugh. A huge, hearty laugh that scared the birds from the trees. This, he knew, was the start of a beautiful new world.

  MIST ON THE BAYOU

  HEATHER GRAHAM

  MOSS DRAPED THE trees like crystalline spiderwebs, caught in the eerie glow of a full moon made misty by low-hanging clouds. The water appeared to be black, with an unearthly sheen just hovering above it; the air temperature had cooled, creating the fog.

  As the pontoon boat moved down the Pearl River, even I, who have known this area like the back of my hand since childhood, thought it was the perfect venue for a “Haunted Happening”—as the ghoulish, year-round attraction to which we were headed, Labelle Plantation, was being touted. It had opened last year, but closed right after Halloween. We’d had some trouble then in the city—folks coming down and disappearing—and though they might have moved on elsewhere, everyone was glad that Halloween was over. But that was last year, and this is now, and people have to make a living. Those who had come had spread the word about the fantastic haunted house created out of the old plantation on the bayou, and everyone had been on board to entice more tourism.

  In retrospect, no one had known just how good it would be, or that it would attract such a huge crowd.

  Now, the publicity the place had garnered was bringing people in by the hundreds, and thus the determination that it would stay open all year. And that was why I was aboard this first “midnight bayou” tour of the place. It could be reached by the road. It could also be reached by the river. Ben Perry, who owns the boats at the boat slips on the bayou, is one of my best friends. He’s been doing simple bayou tours for years. Ecology just isn’t as big as scaring the pants off people. Since I’ve been known for my “Myths and Legends” walks in the city, my old friend thought he needed me on his inaugural voyage for the event.

  I had just finished conducting a tour of the French Quarter, and there I was on a pontoon boat on a chilly night, dressed in my Victorian waistcoat and top hat. Not such a bad outfit for the walks—but strange when I was going to be hopping to the sandy beach area that fronted the plantation. Ah, well. I did have my Victorian boots on too.

  So up ahead was Labelle Plantation.

  A screech owl let out a mighty call, as if it had been paid to add to the eerie environment.

  A pretty brunette jumped and let out a little, “Eek.”

  Ben laughed, pleased. “Hey, we haven’t even gotten there yet,” he told her.

  Most folks around New Orleans and environs had thought for sure that the old plantation would be condemned, and that the Boudreaux brothers’ attempts to buy the place and set up shop would be denied. But apparently, despite years of neglect, a reputation for the truly horrid even among the legends in the realm, and a history that might be conceived as the epitome of evil, the structure had been deemed sound. The place had been repaired, reconstructed, and set up as a haunted house. A haunted history house, so they said—with every creepy possibility and nightmare thrown into the mix. Hell, if someone had so much as a thought a hundred years ago, it had to be history now, right? Anyway, the brothers decided that making a big creepy tourist attraction out of the place would be good for everyone. The economy just kept taking a beating because of the storms, even the country needed a good fix, and whatever works is what we need. That was the logic behind it all. I couldn’t argue that much; I was thirty, and I owned my own tour company. I only had two full-time employees now; once, I’d had ten.

  I had known Ted, Fred, and Jed—no kidding—Boudreaux since I was a kid. They were hell-raisers—the kind who had spent years shooting up beer cans in the bayou, talking tough, and looking like cast members out of Deliverance. Ted was my age. I knew him best—he was the one with the business expertise. Fred was the oldest—dangerously psychotic, in my opinion—while Jed had actually made it through eight years of college and a residency to come home as a doctor and was now a beloved GP.

  With the motor purring, the boat moved slowly along, and those twenty folks aboard the pontoon kept a wary eye out. Gators slithered about in the night. There were “oohs” and “aahs” as they did so. They were mostly little guys, three and four feet, but their eyes glowed gold when caught in the lights, and there was something primeval about the way they moved. Ben was making a big deal out of them; I caught his gaze as he pointed out one of the creatures. He gave me a silent shrug: We all have to make a buck. So what if the little gators are ten times more scared of the people?

  The screech owl was on our side; he let out another eerie shriek. In the brush that bordered the bayou, a wild pig rustled through the foliage. It couldn’t get much better.

  I grinned at Ben in return. I wasn’t a native of this area just east of Slidell, not like Ben and the Boudreaux brothers. Ben had a degree in business; he’d actually spent a few years on Wall Street, but he loved the bayou too much, so he was back. I had been born just outside the French Quarter, and I’d lived there all my life, except for a stint up north for college—I had been a history major at Columbia, no less. But this was my home too. I knew all the stories; I had grown up with them. I knew all the crazy folk in town too—the harmless loonies, the true psychopaths; most of them were imported these days, and worse. I love all of this area, the French Quarter, the bayou, the Garden District, all of Orleans Parish and the parishes beyond. It’s my home; it’s where I belong.

  “We’re coming up on the Labelle estate,” Ben announced to the tourists. “My friend Dan, from the Myths and Legends Walk, is going to give you the story on the old plantation. The truth, my friends, is far scarier and creepier than anything you’ll see tonight.”

  I winced and smiled at the girl who had been seated near him on the pontoon. She was a pretty thing, blond, with enormous blue eyes and a strange air of fragility. We’d talked for a few minutes earlier. I knew she was staying at one of the old B and Bs near Rampart Street.

  I found her fascinating. Most people on the tours came in a pack—or at least in twos and threes. They liked to hang on to one another as they walked through a creepy haunted house; guys loved for their girlfriends to be scared and grab them.

  The girl smiled back at me tentatively. It was strange. She was so pretty, so fragile, and yet she had a look of resolve about her—as if she could do this; she would do this. Something about her touched me. I wanted to assure her. Hell, I wanted to put an arm around her and protect her from all the evil in the world.

  But it was just a haunted house, and it sure didn’t seem as if there was anyone with her to whom she might have something to prove. She had come alone. Being alone on this tour was not good for the fainthearted. The Boudreaux brothers had done an entirely gruesome and ghastly workup on the place. The brothers created a maze that contained all kinds of wicked and evil tableaus from history and also from their imagination, which allowed the costumed actors to run around and scare the daylights out of everyone.

  “The truth, and nothing but the truth!” came a cry from the back of the pontoon. Great. The guy in the back was drunk. That happened when you picked up your tours on Bourbon Street. Lots of people had some kind of fortification. Most didn’t come plastered.

  “The truth,” I announced. I have a good voice for a tour director, something for which I a
m grateful, since I do love my company and telling all the wild stories about my homeland. I have a deep baritone that projects well—a damned good voice for ghost stories. But the story I was about to convey wasn’t paranormal. It was certainly about evil, but it wasn’t paranormal.

  “The plantation was completed in eighteen fifty-nine by a wealthy French merchant,” I began. “He and his wife moved in, along with many of their servants. The wife was the descendant of one of the French Quarter’s famous octoroons, said to be a voodoo queen who didn’t recognize all the goodness that might be found in the spiritual sense of the religion. She had charmed a rich Frenchman, and thus gone on to be rich herself and produce rich descendants, such as Madame Labelle. All manner of visitors left the city of New Orleans to visit Labelle Plantation; many were never seen again, but as communications were not what they are now—no cell phones or e-mail, you know—their disappearances weren’t suspected to have been at the hands of the Labelle family. Strangely, many of their contemporaries had thought the Labelles were active in the Underground Railroad, so many slaves seemed to disappear from their homes. Although she entertained lavishly, was known for her incredible beauty, and seemed to be a powerhouse in society, folks were a little frightened of Madame. Then the Civil War rolled around. Soldiers were sent out to the plantation to find quarters and food; they didn’t return. When more soldiers were sent out, they didn’t return either. Finally, several companies of soldiers went out. Apparently, the Labelles knew they were coming. They fled. When the Yankee captain in charge searched the barn, he found dozens of men hanging from meat hooks; their throats had been slit and their blood had been collected in troughs. But there were worse discoveries to be made. There were bodies and body parts found buried throughout the house. Upstairs, in Madame’s boudoir, there was a massive wooden tub stained with blood. Bones had been utilized to make lamps, an altar, and other decorations. Shades and even a macabre quilt had been made from the skin of those she and her husband had murdered. She was practicing black magic more than voodoo; her blood sacrifices were necessary, according to the ancient Haitian text she had left behind.”

  I paused. Even the drunk had grown quiet.

  “Not even the Yankee commander would stay at the house, or take anything from the house. It was left empty. The war raged on. People said the place was haunted, and no one wanted to go near it. They heard screams of terror—which turned out to be real. Twenty people or so had been left to die, chained to walls in a root cellar at the rear of the property, beneath the slave quarters. Those people are long since gone, and the outbuildings have fallen to the ground. The root cellar has been filled. Only the house remains today.”

  A gator slid into the water from the embankment, making a slithery sound. The drunk jumped.

  Some girls laughed.

  “Hey! That’s a crock. No one bought it until now?” the drunk called, trying to regain a semblance of he-man fearlessness.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “A fellow named Sullivan bought it during the eighteen eighties. He died from a fall off the roof. It was vacant again until nineteen twenty. A family lived there. They moved out a year after they purchased the place, saying that the ghosts were shaking their children in the middle of the night. The little girl, according to police documents, was bruised and beaten.”

  “Yeah, I can tell you what happened there,” one of the drunk’s more sober friends said. “I think they call it child molestation these days.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed. “But the family moved on to Mobile, and there were no more incidents. I’m only telling you what really happened, or what was documented. The home was purchased by an American oil tycoon, but he never lived in it, and he lost it to taxes during the Depression. Another speculator bought it in the nineteen forties, but he was killed in World War II; the house went to taxes once again. A cultist bought it in the early seventies, but he and his harem drowned in the Mississippi—he was convinced that the aliens were due down to earth to pick him and his women up in their spacecraft. Since then, it’s been vacant.” I smiled. The blonde was staring at me. I remembered then, when Ben had taken her ticket, she’d said her name was Callie. She didn’t seem horrified by the truth—she had seemed more frightened earlier, but I still didn’t see her taking a casual, fun-but-super-scary trek through the old plantation.

  “Oh, that’s just bull!” cried the drunk.

  I could see Ben at the tiller, shaking his head. He was probably thinking about losing the drunk in the water. And maybe one of the young gators hanging around had a big hidden mama who might take a bite out of him.

  That would be one mean lawsuit.

  I shrugged at him. People often came to New Orleans just to get blitzed. Those of us who lived here didn’t have to be saints, but we usually knew how much to drink, or at least when it was appropriate to get wasted. I said, “You can check parish records, folks—I’m just telling the truth.”

  I smiled again at the blonde. Callie.

  She rolled her eyes. “Ass!” she said softly to me, indicating the drunk at the other end with a nod of her head. She shivered.

  “Listen, they keep a snack bar opened in the second formal parlor. It’s to the left of the house after we enter,” I told her.

  She looked at me gravely, then offered up a slow grimace. “Ghosts certainly didn’t perform any of the evil you just talked about,” she said. “Madame Labelle was a human monster. And the cultist was a psycho, and sadly, the girls with him were idiots.”

  “So who actually owns the place now?” a thirtysomething fellow called out. He looked as if he had been a linebacker in college. He was there with his wife, a pretty redhead who had certainly been a cheerleader, and another young couple.

  I laughed and couldn’t help looking at Callie again. I really liked her, everything about her. “Believe it or not, folks, and this is the absolute truth, it’s owned by Ted, Fred, and Jed—known as the Boudreaux brothers in these parts. Born and bred right here along the bayou. They saw a chance at a good income, and they took it.”

  The ex-linebacker’s red-haired wife shivered. “You are making all this up! What bad taste to open a haunted house in such a terrible place.”

  “Ma’am,” I assured her, “I am not making it up. Please, think about it, there are Lots of other places like this one. If you reserved a room, you know, you could spend the night in Fall River, Mass., where Lizzie Borden allegedly gave her stepmother forty whacks.”

  “Ooh, creepy,” said another pretty brunette. She had a drawl—not Louisiana. Texas, I thought, and I’m pretty good at accents. She was with two friends, and they all seemed to be flirting with a few Wall Street types on vacation, who in turn looked to be happy to have the three flirting with them. “But, yes, you can stay there! I’ve heard that it’s true.”

  Murmuring went up as the rest of the boat agreed; they all knew that what I had just said was true—they had watched the Travel Channel.

  “Yeah,” the linebacker said. “And I saw on one of those shows that the Labelle Plantation was one of the spookiest haunted houses in the country!”

  “There it is!” Ben announced. “And careful getting off, folks. This isn’t Disney World. We’re on a real pontoon boat, and that’s real Pearl River sand. The brush has been cleared off leading up to the plantation house, and there’s plenty of light, but still, be careful stepping on and off.”

  The pontoon slid hard onto the sand, hitting an uneven area; the drunk had started to rise, and he toppled onto the linebacker. They might not have to worry about the fake blood in the house; the two men might come to blows before they got off the boat.

  Stepping to the stem, I reached for the drunk’s arm and steered him from the linebacker.

  “I got it, I got it,” the drunk grumbled.

  The linebacker stared daggers at the fellow, looked at me, and held his peace.

  I leapt off the pontoon, landing on the soft sand and hurrying around, swearing quietly as my boots hit the water. No real biggie;
I’d clean ’em up later. I didn’t want Ben’s first evening on the river as a tour guide to the dynamo haunted house going sour.

  “The footing is uneven here—everyone has to be careful,” I said, reaching for the first tourist.

  Ben and I helped the rest of the bayou tourists off the boat. “We get to hear the skunk ape story on the way back, right?” one of the women asked.

  “Oh, yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Ben assured her. “You can head right on up the walk,” he added. “There will be a zombie or witch to greet you at the door, and Dan will be waiting at the snack and gift shop for you all when you get through. Bayou guests get to break the line!” he added.

  I watched the group start up the walk for the house. People could come by car, but this really was the best way to see the place; plantations had been built near the water. Long ago, the river had been the way most folks traveled, so the grand entrance actually faced it.

  The eerie mist still hovered above the water and seemed to encroach on the land. Not far up, though, the “ghost” lights were switched on; plenty of illumination, but in a strange shade of blue.

  For a moment, the house was caught in that eerie glow of blue light and fog. It was majestic; a Colonial with wraparound porches and a grand entryway. The door stood open; it appeared for a moment as if the fog issued from the house. The mist seemed to swirl around the front door and weave in circles around it.

  There were plenty of people in the house. The Boudreaux brothers were invested in it; Ted was a good businessman. He’d brought in professional designers to lay it out. Then he’d kept the costs low by hiring the slashers, victims, zombies, voodoo queens, movie monsters, and what have you from the ranks of our local college kids.