by J. D. Horn
The weakened bird let out a furious caw and began beating its wings. Its protector, Alice now understood, fought off the aggressor as the chained bird rose and escaped through a gaping hole that had earlier that evening encased a rose window. The two remaining crows pecked furiously at each other, the struggle only ending when the beak of the protector pierced one of the aggressor’s eyes. A wild screech accompanied the aggressor’s rise and escape through the same exit. Alice could feel Babau Jean’s growing rage as he ordered the creatures to return, but the final bird simply cocked its head and took to the air, its wingspan seeming to stretch the length of the limousine in which she’d arrived.
But who could really measure, in this space where two worlds had been brought together, the one bent over and folded into the other. The light of one world reflected in the other.
Those worlds were now prying themselves apart, though whether through magical volition or simply each world’s separate gravity, Alice couldn’t say. Only the monster was likely to know, and she nearly turned back to ask him.
An elderly woman, crying out in desperation, planted herself on her knees on the former church’s floor as she grasped at her husband’s hands. Alice recognized the woman as one half of the Silverbell Coven and could even see her ring. Her husband was suspended upside down above her. Only half of the gentleman remained visible, his legs hidden by a wall that didn’t belong to this space, but to the world that was rotating away from them. The man, whom Alice felt sure was already dead, jerked up, once, twice, a hungry force from the other world having latched onto him. A final tug, and the gentleman was torn in half, his lower body claimed by the other world, his torso falling toward his wife. She reared back in horror, and a glint from her ring glanced off the wall that had swallowed his lower extremities.
Alice wished she were strong enough to share the woman’s horror, but her own emotions had shut down. She watched with a detached, clinical eye as the woman went mad. Alice’s own cold reason offered distraction by suggesting a solution to the long-forgotten puzzle of Fleur’s shoe buckles and how they could have reflected a light shining in her aunt’s house in D.C. onto a wall in New Orleans. Alice wished she would have thought to ask her aunt. A shame, really, she hadn’t thought of it earlier. She was sure she’d never have another chance to pose the question.
The cries of the sole survivor of the Silverbell Coven were muffled by the dreamers who rose and formed a tightening circle around her. Alice tried to cry out. To tell them to leave the woman alone, but when she opened her mouth, a loud, cruel laugh pealed from between her lips. Babau Jean controlled her, she realized, had always controlled her. Her own magic had probably never been hers. It had most likely always been in his control. A thought turned in the back of her mind. Keeping her on Sinclair had been the one sure way to prevent both her and Babau Jean from making use of that magic.
She felt a flash of anger at the Silverbell woman, wishing her damned screams would stop. But her anger wasn’t hers. It was his. But still . . .
The dreamers backed away, dropping another set of torn limbs into the soup.
Blessed silence.
Then a voice, an all-too-familiar voice began singing in her ear. She knew the mask of Babau Jean had been removed, but she had no need to look back to recognize the voice’s owner. It would be easier if she didn’t turn. If she could imagine that mask were the monster’s true face.
The song, quiet at first, grew as the dreamers, both standing and kneeling before them, joined in. A simple melody, twining into harmony. A descant arose and floated above.
So much magic.
So much magic from the blood. A sea of floating relics from which to draw. Alice was too weak to resist. She breathed in the magic, that delicious, heady perfume.
She used the last of her resolve to clench her jaw, willing silence, but she never really had a chance. She never really had a choice. Her own voice, high and pristine, joined in. To her surprise, Babau Jean released her, knowing, she reckoned, that his power over her was absolute.
The dreamers, as one, stepped back toward the shadows at the edge of the room, the odd angles of their movement showing her that they were following the curvature of the Dreaming Road. Some, Alice faced dead-on. Others hovered somewhat below or above her.
In the space before her, a figure began to arise from beneath the surface of the now swirling blood sea, a head first, then shoulders and breasts. The woman’s features were obscured by a blood-reddened cascade of hair, but the necklace she’d first seen worn by the beauty of Mahogany Hall, the same necklace that Julia Prosper had been murdered in, now rested on the rising woman’s bosom.
Alice knew instinctively that this woman was not Julia Prosper.
The song grew louder, her own voice straining to be heard. And then came the sound of slamming doors.
Alice’s eyes told her that two women had entered the church, but her senses burned with the awareness that her eyes must be lying. An athletic blonde woman led an older, darker-skinned woman into the room, but Alice sensed neither of these women were in control. A flickering showed her that the blonde was merely an envelope, a vessel for a woman—no, a spirit—of great power. A different chant, one just as powerful as her own song, began, its strength offering Alice a spark of hope.
The dreamers’ song changed, weakened. The familiar voice that had been leading them lost its luster, turning into the sound of branches scraping a night window. Babau Jean was not all-powerful if he felt the need to hide from these women. With great satisfaction, Alice began to taste Babau Jean’s disquiet. It began as denial. Too much magic to be turned back. It turned to anger. That damned Simeon bitch will not stop us again. But it was only when the second woman stepped around the first and dipped her finger into the blood that Babau Jean’s angst changed to fear. The blonde woman stopped, a look of happy surprise spreading across her face, as the older woman began tracing her finger through the air, creating symbols that somehow hung in the very air itself.
The blonde swayed as the spirit that had been within her broke free and fell into the older woman. A bright light burst around them.
Babau Jean grasped Alice again. Did he plan to protect her from the women’s waxing power, or would he use her as a shield? As long as they defeated him, Alice did not care.
She looked out, past the bloodstained woman now struggling to rise before her, through the dreamers who began to push back even further, some disappearing cleanly, others in wispy black puffs. The strength of the magic she’d been caught up in began to falter as the dreamers fell away. Soon it was only Alice’s voice in duet with Babau Jean’s. The rising woman reached out toward him, then dissolved, falling in a shower of red drops.
Alice’s vision twisted. She felt herself being tugged backward. And then the world fell away.
THIRTY-TWO
The morning was warm and beautiful, the humidity, for once, merciful.
It was the Fourth of July. City Park should have been teeming with children, their laughter and cries filling the air. There should have been music coming from the open windows of passing cars, coming from the bandstand, tinny fading cacophonies leaking from the earbuds of passing joggers. But there were no children. There were no joggers. There was no music. There was no sound at all.
Except for the chirping of crickets.
Alice stopped and listened. It was the wrong time of day for crickets, but she guessed circadian rhythms meant nothing here on the Dreaming Road.
“You’ll get better at this,” Alice heard Babau Jean’s whispery voice. She turned to see him stepping out from the shade of an ancient oak. The mask no longer served any purpose, neither to frighten her nor to hide his identity. “Populating a world takes time,” he said. “It takes practice. But you’ll get the hang of it. The trick is not to try to make them into something. Just hand them a grain. Like an oyster with sand. Something to believe about themselves. Something to love. Or better yet, feel ashamed of. They’ll do the rest.”
&nb
sp; “Like Daniel,” she said.
“Like with any servitor spirit,” he said. “But you’ve come to know the truth, haven’t you, Alice? We’re all servitor spirits of a kind. The only difference between Daniel and us is that whatever created us thought it would be amusing to leave us bereft of a true purpose. To let us stumble around blindly until we—as if by magic—reveal ourselves. A rather cruel thing to do, I should say.”
“I’ve felt a force calling to me. Asking me to become,” she said, “though I’m not sure it’s any great creator. I think maybe it’s just a mirror held up before a mirror, a reflection convinced of its own consciousness.” She knelt and touched the petals of a white lily. They felt so real. The world around her seemed so solid. “I’ve largely ignored it, anyway. Just gave it enough not to give up on me.” She released the petal and stood. “I didn’t want it to give up on me. Not completely.” It felt good to be entirely honest. “Turns out I, too, am frightened of oblivion.”
“And why didn’t he give up on you, this creator of yours?”
She paused, considering his question. “Because it knew I was the key to understanding you.”
“And do you, my dear? Do you understand me?”
“I think so, though I am most curious about one thing. Something that probably doesn’t even matter in the grand scheme.”
“And what might that be? We’re here now, where no one can harm us, and I’m feeling generous. Go ahead and ask.”
She walked up to him and peeled off the bone-white mask, removing also its terrible bottomless eyes and threatening teeth. “Why his face?” She looked upon the smooth skin beneath it, the sparkling dark eyes with their thick lashes, the beautiful mouth, even more beautiful than that of Lucy’s friend. “Why Alcide Simeon’s face?”
“Why, indeed?” he said, his voice no longer the whisper of branches scraping a night window, but instead a warm baritone, a voice she reckoned must have belonged to the younger version of the sad old man she’d seen holding a silver trumpet. The sensuous lips curved up into a smile. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, but not here. Let me take you to our special place.”
Alice nodded. She no longer feared him. Not in the slightest. He had done his worst. He had done it long ago. He had become her father.
She offered the monster her hand, and he took it. Time and space meant nothing here on the Dreaming Road. The next instant, she stood outside “Flying Horses,” City Park’s century-old carousel. Babau Jean was gone, but she knew he was near. She watched as the carousel’s lights snapped on. She pushed through the turnstile and entered the pavilion.
“I do apologize,” he said, his voice seemingly coming from every direction at once, though she couldn’t see him. “In the common world, your favorite horse has been damaged. Lost a leg, it did. It seemed I should make a few modifications here to reflect the original’s form.”
Alice circled around until she found the horse. “They call them fliers,” she said. “The ones that move up and down.” She leaned against the carved animal, wrapping her arms around its neck. It was in her power to repair it, she knew. Perhaps she might, one day, if she couldn’t find a way out of here. But somehow she loved the horse all the more for its damage.
She heard a sound like a lever being thrown, followed by a grinding as metal teeth began to tug on the bands that would cause the carousel to turn. Her horse tugged up, out of her grasp. She placed one hand on its hindquarters, then began to walk around the rotating base.
A whistle from Babau Jean’s lips swelled into a faithful imitation of the carousel’s calliope. She knew the tune. “Over the Waves.” The tune had no words, at least as far as she knew, but she remembered singing it to herself as a small girl once. On that occasion, what seemed now a million years ago, he had joined in, adding his gruff and booming voice to her “la la la,” catching her by the hands, spinning in circles with her.
She saw him now, standing beside the carousel. She passed him, a youthful representation of Alcide Simeon’s face beaming up at her. She kept moving forward, speeding up each revolution. When she next saw him, he had donned the bone-white mask once more. But he was merely toying with her.
It ended in a heartbeat. The carousel stopped as if it had never begun spinning. The lights went dead. The music fell silent.
He had joined her up on the carousel. She could see him just a bit ahead, sitting in shadow on one of the fixed benches, the one he had always occupied in the common world, as he’d called it, whenever she had insisted he ride the carousel with her. He held up a hand and waved her forward. She walked, hearing the tap of her artificial shoes on the boards of the imaginary platform. It seemed so real, as real as any world she’d ever known.
Maybe it was.
She circled around him. Turned to face him.
“Celestin,” she said.
His onyx eyes glinted. He ran a hand through his thick silver hair. He patted the bench beside him. “Viens t’asseoir, ma chère.”
She slid beside him on the hard bench, keeping her eyes fixed forward. She would’ve preferred to look upon the face of Babau Jean than at her own grandfather’s—no, she reminded herself—her own father’s features.
“I loved her, you know, your mother Astrid,” he said. She risked a glance at him. His eyes were wide, sincere. “You should know, you were born of love.”
“I don’t think I care about that,” Alice said. “Even monstrous things are sometimes born of love.”
“You aren’t monstrous. You are far from monstrous. A bit reticent, perhaps, overly tentative, but you are my beloved daughter.” He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it back. “I know you don’t understand, but everything I’ve done, I’ve done to protect you.” He folded his hands on his lap. “And to protect your mother.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“Perhaps not entirely, but as true as it needs to be.”
She realized her eyes had adjusted to the enclosed pavilion’s shadows. Unreal eyes adapting themselves to an artificial darkness. Would she be able to remain cognizant that all around her was illusion, when her every sense vouched for the realness of this world? Or would that awareness fall away? Alice focused on her own dim features, reflected by a line of mirrors on the carousel’s center pole. “So why his face? Why did you steal Alcide Simeon’s face?”
Celestin’s laugh caused her to turn toward him. “Really? That is your greatest concern?”
“No,” she said, “just my first.”
“Bon,” he said with a shrug. “I stole nothing. That was your grandmother’s doing. Laure—not really your grandmother, of course, but I suspect due to a lifetime of conditioning, you’ll always think of her as such—she was in love with Alcide. Ironic, really, that Laure and Soulange came to be such close friends. But then again, they had a common enemy.”
“You.”
He answered with a cool smile. “Your great-grandparents—Laure’s parents—you must understand that it was a different time. Even if New Orleans had a long tradition of white men forming liaisons with women of color, the reverse was still a sticky issue. Laure’s parents would never have allowed a union between the two. So she married me instead. A man of her parents’ choosing. A man she never loved. Never even intended to love. She lay with me. She bore my children. But to satisfy her needs, she turned elsewhere.” He scanned her eyes, seemingly searching them for any glint of doubt. Alice forced herself to remain neutral, afraid that any display, of either trust or disbelief, might send the wrong signal. “It was your grandmother who sought out Babau Jean, and she who gave him her lover’s pretty face.”
“Her lover?”
“Yes. Alcide Simeon was her lover,” he said, then studied her as if considering what her understanding of that word might be. “Though never in the physical sense.” Alice decided his precision on that point sprung more from his own vanity than from any esteem for her grandmother. “A shame, really, the two never had it off together.” She could see a smi
rk form on his lips. “Perhaps if they had, she might’ve moved on. Instead, she romanticized him, ignoring any of the flesh-and-blood Alcide’s faults.” The smirk faded. “Alcide showing up at my funeral with his damned horn.” A snarl formed on his lips. “You’ve no idea how it burned when he played it. Just between you and me, I think the bastard almost had me, nearly ripped me out of Vincent’s skin, he did. But he’s weak. Always was. Never could finish anything unless he had a woman standing over him to make him.”
He turned and leaned in, his eyes wide with sincerity. She could smell peppermint on his breath. The same candies he had always shared with her in the common world—the candies she had accepted so as not to hurt his feelings, even though she detested peppermint. “I know it sounds fantastical, but it’s true. This is all true. You know of our mad pharmacist and his Beautiful Dreamer?”
She nodded. “I’ve read a few variations on the legend,” she said, her mind turning to the books she’d devoured on Sinclair about New Orleans folklore.
“Oh, the doctor’s creation was far more than a legend. Your grandmother and I learned of the creature right before our marriage. A casual conversation with a fellow partygoer about New Orleans and her oddities. Laure never spoke of the Beautiful Dreamer, but I saw the spark in her eyes. I knew all along what she was doing. I watched her. Followed her as she wandered the astral, searching for him. So I made sure she found him. Broken. Monstrous. Tragic. Cowering on the Dreaming Road in that very recreation of Magnolia Hall you visited. Sneaking out under the cover of darkness to feed on children’s fears.