by J. D. Horn
“And me popping up in your mirror while you brushed your teeth would’ve helped with that?”
It felt like a storm cloud hung between them for a moment, but then they both burst out laughing.
“No, I reckon it wouldn’t have.” Lisette became aware that she could see the shelves through the lower half of her mother’s body. And there, only a few feet from where she stood, was the ruined flesh that had once been Vincent’s face. She wrapped her arms around herself, meager protection against the chill that ran down her spine. “I still think I might be ready to howl at the moon.”
“No, my girl, no. The whole world is going mad, but you have not. You have to believe that, or you’re never going to make it through what comes next.” Her mother’s image blinked out for a moment. “I need to show you something.” The words filled the air before her image was fully restored. “You still trust your mama?” she asked.
“Always,” Lisette said. “And forever.”
Her mother’s eyes twinkled, Lisette hoped with pride, as she held a hand out to her. Lisette hesitated. “Go on.”
Lisette reached out and took the hand, surprised to feel it was solid, warm. “How?” she began, confused that her mother’s hand hadn’t dissolved in her grasp. But then her eyes focused on her surroundings. The shop was gone, replaced by some swanky reception hall. She looked at her mother in wonder.
Her mother drew her into her arms, giving her a tight squeeze. Lisette wanted the moment to last forever, but her mother placed a kiss on her forehead and then released her. “We don’t have long here, my girl. And there’s a lot you have to learn.”
“What is this place?” Lisette asked.
“Well, there’s the place it appears to be, and then there’s the place it is.” As Soulange spoke, a man wearing a striped shirt and a straw hat appeared over her shoulder. The man doffed his hat, then raised a pistol to his temple. He pulled the trigger. Lisette gasped, but the man disappeared the next instant.
“He isn’t real, sweetie. At least not in the way you’re used to. Only the dreamer is real.” She motioned to a sofa—no, a divan—half hidden by shadow. A man with a thick mustache lay back on it, seemingly lost in a fitful dream.
A beautiful woman, naked except for a resplendent emerald necklace, appeared before them. “Lisette, my girl, Miss Lulu doesn’t pay you to stand around gaping,” the beauty said. Then she, too, blinked out of existence.
“Miss Lulu?” Lisette said.
“Lulu White, ma chère,” her mother said, wrapping an arm over her shoulders. “Mahogany Hall. Storyville. It was special to him. It was his last bastion in the living world. He has preserved its image here. Welcome, my girl, to the Dreaming Road, the space lost between dreaming and death.”
Her mother seemed at ease in this place, but then again her mama had a bit less to lose. Lisette glanced around the room, hoping that it lay a tad closer to dreaming than it did to death. “Who is this ‘he’ you’re talking about?” Lisette asked, then glanced over at the man on the divan. “That man?”
“No, that is only the dreamer. The latest dreamer. They come and go. Replaced like light bulbs when they burn out.” Her mother leaned in, whispering in her ear. “‘He’ is Babau Jean.”
In spite of everything, Lisette found herself turning to her mother in disbelief. “Babau Jean,” she said, laughing. She flashed back to sleepovers—standing before the mirror in a darkened bath, shining a flashlight up from beneath her chin. Her friends laughing and squealing behind the door, daring her to say his name for the third and damning time. “You’re telling me the bogeyman is real.”
“He’s real, except when he isn’t.”
“Yeah, you’re making a hell of a lot of sense.”
“You”—her mother looked down her nose at her—“had better watch your tone, missy. Now you need to shut your mouth and open your mind.” Lisette felt a sense of bereavement as her mother’s arms slid off her shoulders. But then her mama grasped her hand, and the pain went away. Her mother gave her a slight tug, leading her across the room to the formal painting of a man Lisette felt she should know.
Lisette reached up with her free hand, her finger hovering above the nameplate affixed to the portrait’s heavy frame. “Dr. Joseph Dupas,” she read the name aloud. The tinkling notes of a music box began to play a familiar, though nearly forgotten, tune at the mention of his name. “Beautiful Dreamer,” the name of the song came to her.
“The greatest witch New Orleans has ever known,” her mother said. “Though in truth he wasn’t a natural witch at all. He was a pharmacist. Or at least what passed for one back before the Civil War. The pharmacy he ran was not far from where Vèvè is now.”
“Yes, of course,” Lisette said, “I know the place.” She had passed by the establishment a million times or more. Waves of darkness seemed to emanate from the painting, and she felt a chill in her hand, as if that darkness were reaching for her. She stepped back, dropping her hand to her side.
“He used to carry on experiments. Some of them scientific, others occult. All of them evil. He hurt people. People who had no means of fighting back.”
Lisette stared into his dark, disinterested eyes, trying to understand how a man with such a bland expression could be capable of such acts. His features were utterly unremarkable. Forgettable, even. They seemed to flee her mind the second she looked away.
“Then came the war, and all its death,” her mother said. “’Course New Orleans fell early on and didn’t face the destruction a lot of other places did, but a lot of sons and husbands had gone and gotten themselves killed. Left behind a whole cotillion of brokenhearted women, they did, women who would do just about anything to forget their pain, and, lucky for him, the good doctor discovered a way to turn their pain into power.
“Back then they put opium in everything. Cough drops, baby formulas, even the products for a lady’s time.” She gave a curt nod. “You know what I mean.”
“You’re dead, mama. And I’m menopausal. You can say ‘period.’”
“Between the grieving and the drugs,” she said, ignoring Lisette, “the doctor’s patients started experiencing odd things, things that shouldn’t happen. Levitation. Apports. Apparitions. Keep in mind, these weren’t witches. They were just ordinary women. And just like any man would, Dupas first wrote it off as hysteria. Till one of his patient’s ‘hallucinations,’ a furry little creature with a human face and hands, followed him home. Then he realized he was onto something. He took one of the women, the one who seemed to experience the most intense activity. Started hypnotizing her before letting her slip all the way into her opium dreams. He figured out the connection between dreaming and magic, and how to change waking reality by carving his will deeply enough into the dreaming. It didn’t take long for him to figure out that by getting these women to actively participate, he could build up magical energy for his own use.
“He created a servitor spirit. This spirit, his ability was to mimic the men the women had lost. And that, my dear, was how Babau Jean was born. ’Course they didn’t know him as such. ‘The Beautiful Dreamer,’ they called him, after the song. In their dreaming, they could have back their husbands, their lost sons. And these women, they sunk everything they had into spending their whole damn lives in the dreaming.
“Then these women started dying. Some from the drugs. The stronger ones from age. And the government finally reined in the sale of opiates. Dupas himself, well, he died, too. From syphilis, they say. By any rights, the servitor he created should have faded away. But he kept going. Found his way along with the drug trade into Storyville. The working girls, they loved him. He could be any man they wanted, any lover they dreamed of.
“But then Storyville closed. Folks’ dreams turned to terror, to war. And the Beautiful Dreamer changed with them. Denied the sweet opium dreams of brokenhearted working girls and wealthy socialites, he learned to feed from darker fare. War and more war. New drugs. Psychedelics. He turned from an angel of light to a c
reature of nightmare. Here. In this place on the Dreaming Road he remembers what he used to be.”
“But I wasn’t dreaming,” Lisette objected. “If this is his happy place, then what in the hell was he doing wearing Vincent’s face, with his hands around my neck? And what is this damned book he’s looking for?”
“He’s found a way to walk in the waking world as well, not just in dreams. But in the waking world his impersonations require . . . a few props.”
Props, indeed. He’d taken Vincent’s identity. He must have taken Vincent’s life along with it. Lisette found herself wishing that just once she would’ve had the nerve to go to the man, the real man, not the monster masquerading as him, so they could make peace, real peace, with each other.
His family, the thought struck her. She’d have to tell the Marins. But would they believe her or would they think she’d just taken her time exacting revenge?
“He’s coming,” her mother said, her voice urgent. “This is his domain. I may not be able to defeat him here.”
Lisette froze, realizing she might not even live through this night to face the Marins.
“Follow me,” her mother said, and Lisette found herself standing before a door that hadn’t been there a moment before. Her mother grasped the handle, a horned devil with a lolling tongue, and opened it by pressing the tongue. She stepped through and held the door open. Lisette cast a glance back over her shoulder at the salon as a band struck up a jaunty tune. She caught a glimpse of men in evening dress pressing themselves against mostly naked women. “Come,” her mother said.
Lisette stepped over the threshold, and her mother closed the door behind her. The door shimmered and then disappeared without a trace. Lisette turned around to discover a darkened, significantly less pleasant world. Her feet were planted on a deserted dirt lane. Oaks and a handful of scraggly pines surrounded them. The moon hid her mother’s face, but light pollution from the west left only a scattering of stars to wink down. They were east of the city, she guessed. She turned a full circle, her heart sinking as recognition set in. “No,” she said. “No. No. No,” she said until the word choked her.
They stood at the end of Grunch Road.
“It’s all right, my girl. Nothing bad is gonna happen here. Not tonight, at least.” Her mother reached out for her, but her hand passed straight through her. “Back on this side of the veil.”
“So I can’t feel your touch here, but that dream creature can strangle me?”
Her mother took a few steps away, losing clarity and fading, merging with the shadows. “All the strange things you’ve ever heard about this place”—her voice came from the darkness—“are true. And the reason why is that good old Grunch Road is one of the points where the waking world connects to the Dreaming Road. That’s why we were here that night, Laure Marin and I. We came here to hide something.” Her mother fell silent, leaving nothing but the sound of the wind blowing through the trees.
“Mama?” Lisette called, fearing she’d already lost her mother again.
“I’m here, my girl. I’m here,” she said, her voice thin, whisper-like. “We came to hide a grimoire. An evil book that should’ve never been scratched into existence. The Book of the Unwinding.
“We tucked it between worlds, locking it in a state of flux, where it can be reached neither from the waking world nor the dreaming. From daylight or death. It’s simultaneously everywhere and nowhere.”
Lisette sensed Soulange was fading even further, but somehow she felt the waning was her mother’s own doing.
“What are you not telling me, Mama? That witch spoke of a blood lock.”
Another silence. Lisette heard a heavy truck rolling along on the nearby highway.
“Such a feat—bending, folding one reality over another, securing it—requires sacrifice.”
“You?”
“Yes,” the word came to her as if from a great distance. “And Laure. And Nicholas. And you.”
“What do you mean?”
“It took more than a simple blood lock,” she said.
“Simple.” Lisette balked at her words.
“Yes, simple,” she said, insisting on the word. “There’s no act simpler than brutality, and there’s no magic easier than the shedding of blood. Murder was the first act of magic.” A blur flitted before Lisette’s eyes, but failed to take full form.
“This took more than blood. The working called for a fourfold sacrifice. A loss of life. A loss of mind. A loss of fertility. A loss of love. Between us, Laure and I, we drew lots. I”—the voice came through with more determination—“was the luckier. I cannot imagine the hell Laure woke to. We were at peace with our own fates, but we had to involve our children. You were my only child. Laure had three, but she picked her eldest son Nicholas because he already had two sons. It didn’t seem such a great loss for him to become sterile.”
“But he has a daughter, too.”
“Does he?” her mother’s voice asked, though it was no question.
“I see,” Lisette said. “And the loss of love?” She laughed as she finished the question. “Here I thought you two were trying to plan our wedding. Not tear us apart.”
“You found love with Isadore.” Her mother’s figure flashed before her eyes, a burst of angry defensiveness bringing her momentarily back.
“Yes, Mama. After Isadore put me back together.”
“But you love him. You’ve been happy with him.” There was a pleading in her mother’s voice.
“Yes.” She nodded in the darkness to once again invisible eyes. “Yes. I’ve been happy. I just wish I could’ve had a choice.”
“Do you think we wanted this? Any of this?” A pillar of blue flame shot up from the ground. “We had no choice.”
“No choice? Really? Tell me, Mama, was it worth it? Was it worth you and Laure giving up your lives, deserting your families just to hide some dime-store magic book from the bogeyman?”
“Yes,” her mother said, the flames burning even more brightly, illuminating the world around Lisette. Low to the ground, eyes glinted red in the light. Lisette feared they belonged to alligators until she realized they might belong to something worse. “But The Book of the Unwinding is no simple collection of magic tricks. And we didn’t give our lives to hide it from Babau Jean. We sacrificed everything to hide it from her daughter-in-law, Astrid.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“It’s a church,” Lucy said, sounding annoyed, as their limousine negotiated a turn up the narrow Bywater street.
Bywater was part of the “sliver by the river” that had, along with the Marigny, the Vieux Carré, and the Garden District, escaped most of the flood damage from Katrina. Alice could tell Lucy was feeling snappish, so she kept that bit of information to herself.
A line of cars, some even longer and more ostentatious than their own, snaked up the street, making progress slow. Each car seemed to be stopping directly in front of their destination; each guest seemed to want to take their sweet time alighting. On her own, Alice would have slipped out and walked the few blocks, but none of her fellow passengers made a move to disembark.
“Deconsecrated about a billion years ago,” Hugo replied.
“That’s what I mean. A deconsecrated church,” Lucy said. “Could they have found a more clichéd location?”
Alice wished her uncle had taken the car with them, though she was relieved that Nicholas had not. Vincent had texted Fleur to say he’d be arriving shortly. And no one, not even Daniel, had heard from Nicholas since he’d been relieved as head of the Chanticleers.
“And what’s up with all the Hollywood?” Lucy turned toward Alice, holding her cell phone out like an imaginary microphone. “Tell me, Miss Marin. Who”—she stretched the word out into a vocal fry—“are you wearing?” She winked. “You look pretty, by the way. Love the new hair.” For a moment, they seemed to bond, but it was fleeting. Lucy immediately turned her attention back to her phone.
“Celestin was small-town royalty,” Hugo said
, shifting, seemingly on the lookout for something. “The king is dead. Long live the king.”
“I wouldn’t look for too much symbolism in the choice of venue, honey,” Fleur said, giving her makeup a quick check in her compact mirror. Gold, square, studded, it had probably been a gift or a rescued castoff from Lucy. “Julia told me this was the space available on short notice. Something about a canceled wedding. With only a few days’ warning, she and Gabriel couldn’t be too picky.”
“Wow,” Hugo said, “aren’t you just falling right in line with the new regime?”
“I’m not ‘falling in line’ with anything. The whole thing is ridiculous, if you ask me. I don’t have a clue why Gabriel would have cared enough to spring a coup now.”
“He’s securing his place in history,” Alice said. It seemed so obvious. She leaned against her seat, the better to take in her angled view of the building’s battered twin towers, their silver-capped tops pinned to the night sky by searchlights. “He may have taken over a disintegrating kingdom, but he’ll be the last king.” Her own words almost triggered a memory—men playing poker, emeralds, sickly-sweet smoke—but it escaped her grasp the second she focused on it. Her forearms prickled up into gooseflesh.
“You okay?” Hugo asked.
She smiled and rubbed away the bumps. “Yes. Just a chill. The air-conditioning is on a bit high.”
“Well,” Fleur said, a worried look coming to her eyes, “I think this party is a good thing. People are nervous. With witches on a kind of power brownout, and with elders like Delphine being harvested for relics—”
“Yeah. About that. Have you two had ‘the talk’ yet?” Hugo said.
Fleur cast a nervous glance at Lucy, then flashed her eyes at Hugo. Drop it. The message was loud and clear.
He shook his head from side to side, his eyes comically wide. I’m not the one who brought it up.