NOLA

by Alexie Aaron

  Burt played the tape.

  Thump swish thump. Thump swish thump.

  It took Miss Hodges a moment and she smiled. “It’s the sound of checking in books, stamping the dates inside. Looks like a woman. A large woman. Oh my, I think I know who it is! I’ll be right back,” she said, pushing away from the desk. She walked out of the office, her sensible shoes clicking on the polished wood floor. She stopped a few feet from the door and took something off the wall and returned with a framed painting.

  “This is Hilda Schultz. She was a large woman of German heritage. She worked tirelessly under the supervision of the head librarian Edward Miller. Hilda died years before I started here. She was a legend. She didn’t read too many words of English, but she enjoyed the library so much that when the depression came and they couldn’t pay her, she came anyway. Can you communicate with her? I know someone that speaks German fluently.”

  “Unfortunately, she’s what we call a residual haunt or an echo. The energy here plays a recording of her. She’s long gone, but her image and actions live on,” Mike explained.

  “That’s so beautiful,” Miss Hodges gushed. “Can I have a copy of this to show the others?”

  “We’ll make a copy for you,” Mike told her.

  “I hope that years from now my echo plays here,” she confessed. “I love this place.”

  “I have an unusual question. If your residue stayed here playing over and over again, what would you be doing?” Mike asked her.

  “I’d be reading to the children. I never get tired of that. To see their faces as you introduce Mother Goose or Dr. Seuss to them, well, it’s… It’s my high,” she said, happy with her description.

  ~

  Mia felt a headache coming on. She and Father Peter had been working for several hours. She turned to her partner on, as he was fond of calling it, the Heaven Express and saw that he, too, was looking rather ragged at the edges. They were moving towards the fairgrounds where they would meet up with the others.

  “I’m not a complainer, but I’m very tired,” she said, looking up at him.

  “Mia, I’m exhausted, and I’ve got a migraine.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ve been doing these walks for five years now, and each time I venture out, I forget how much it takes out of you.”

  “Most sensitives don’t have back-to-back crossings,” Mia commiserated. “We’ve had four crossings and Huff and Puff. By the way, what do you call the other demon, the tall one?”

  “Sticks. He looks like he belongs in a Tim Burton movie. Tell me about the demons you’ve encountered?”

  “There was one that was attached to a brave young man. This kind of demon can’t move on to another host unless the victim dies. Hagan had to endure intense pain, mental torture, and a jail sentence, all to stay alive. He knew if he had taken his own life, or been killed in another way, that the demon would move on to someone else. Hagan couldn’t bear the thought of another person having to deal with the strife this demon brought. And so he did everything he could in order to stay alive.”

  “Since we know that they can’t be killed, how was this conflict resolved?”

  “The young man’s health weakened, and the demon was ready. He forced Hagan to end his life so the demon could move on to where he could kill without hindrance. A guard got to Hagan in time, and he was hospitalized. A friend of mine, Angelo Michaels, brought in some demon specialists, and once the exorcism was completed, the demon was taken away in a metal coffin of some kind. I was told he would be trapped in there for an eternity. I didn’t ask where they took it, but I’m confident it won’t be set free to kill again.”

  “And the host?”

  “He opted to live out his jail sentence in the hope that he could help others he came in contact with. He was a very special person,” Mia said, remembering Hagan Fowler and his sacrifice.

  “My first demon was a nasty piece of work,” Father Peter said. “I was a young man fresh out of school, ready to take on the world. I was determined to be the first African-American Pope.”

  “Ambitious,” Mia commented.

  “Yes, and foolish. My ego was only surpassed by my stupidity. That’s when this happened.” He waved his arms around before patting his chest. “I used to be ordinary. I wasn’t observant or psychic. The only mind that I read was my own.”

  “I’d like to know what happened, but I respect your privacy if you don’t wish to tell me,” Mia prefaced.

  “It was a hard lesson in humility and in honor. I was sent to give last rights to a dying member of the parish…”

  Father Peter, oh how he loved the sound of his name. Called by God, sponsored to the Pontifical North American College by the dioceses of Baton Rouge, and ready to save the world, he walked with more than a spring in his step; he walked with a strut. He’d always known he was to serve God, but his ambition and political leanings were more than a vice, they were his downfall.

  Part of his education was to serve and learn from the priests who catered to the small villages and towns of Europe. Father Peter’s black skin was sometimes remarked upon by the parishioners in the villages in which he served, not in a negative way but more as a curiosity. Father Peter didn’t mind. He had faced the stares, returning them with kindness, and soon he was accepted and cherished. This should have humbled him, but unfortunately it only fed his ego.

  He was asked by his supervisory priest to visit a man who had been bedridden for the last few months and wasn’t expected to live much longer. Father Peter was to give the sacrament of Penance, Anointing of the Sick, and give him Holy Communion. It was a short walk from the parish house to the home of the afflicted. Murzilli’s wife, Luciana, was waiting for him at the door. Her hands were red from wringing them.

  “Father, he is much worse today. I’ve sent for the doctor.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Is he well enough to see me?”

  “Yes, he’s been asking for you, Father.”

  Father Peter followed her upstairs where the invalid lay propped up in bed. There was something different about the man since his last visit. Whether it was caused by fever or something else, he didn’t know, but there was a strange glint in the man’s eyes.

  “I hear you’re not feeling yourself, Carlo,” Father Peter said as he donned his stole.

  Carlo Murzilli, normally a talkative man, just glared and sat with his lips drawn tightly, his brows knitted in a frown.

  Father Peter waited for Carlo’s forgive me, Father, I have sinned. But Carlo said nothing.

  “Do you wish to confess your sins, Carlo?”

  Carlo didn’t respond.

  Father Peter feared the balance of Carlo’s mind might have been eaten away by the cancer that was claiming his body. He started the Prayer of the Penitent and Absolution. Carlo didn’t respond. Father Peter closed his book and made the decision to begin the Anointment of the Sick without a confession. He pulled out of his pocket the blessed olive oil and turned the bottle to collect some on the tip of his finger.

  Carlo shrieked!

  Luciana ran into the room. “Father Peter, what is going on?” she asked, her fear showing on her face.

  “I was just about to begin the Anointment of the Sick,” he said, holding out the blessed bottle of olive oil.

  “Keep that shit away from me!” Carlo demanded.

  “It’s just blessed oil. It won’t hurt you. See,” Father Peter demonstrated by dabbing a small amount on his hand.

  “I don’t want your oil, priest!”

  “Carlo, this is a holy Father you are talking to,” his wife scolded.

  “He’s a trickster full of lies,” Carlos claimed.

  “Sir, I assure you that I am an ordained priest…” Father Peter started.

  “You will not touch me with that sap from that unctuous bottle of lies.”

  “Signora, will you not calm your husband?”

  Carlos’s wife approached the bed. Carlos waved his arm, and the woman was thrown agai
nst the wall, landing with a sickening crackling of old brittle bones.

  Father Peter ran to the woman and managed to revive her before he carried her out of the room.

  “That’s not my Carlo,” she cried. “My Carlo would never lift a hand to me.”

  “I’m afraid you are right,” Father Peter said.

  A light knocking on the front door heralded the coming of the doctor. He walked in and saw the priest trying to administer to the broken woman.

  “Here, Father, let me do this. How did this happen?”

  Expecting to hear that the Signora had fallen down the stairs, the doctor was surprised to hear that she had been tossed against the wall by the invalid he had been administrating to. “Surely you are mistaken,” he said, looking from the woman to the priest and back again.

  “No, he is not the Carlos I married. He has been driven out of his own body by that thing in there,” she claimed. “I demand you exorcize him. Save my husband’s soul.”

  Father Peter was woefully unprepared for this. He walked over and picked up the phone, called the parish house, and asked to speak to his teacher Father Timothy.

  “Mia, Father Timothy asked me to sit vigil while he contacted a priest with more experience in that type of situation. It took three days for the priest to travel there. In the meantime, I took over many of the chores of dealing with an invalid as Luciana had sustained a broken arm and two ribs when her husband hurled her against the wall. It was a humbling process. The district nurse had to teach me about bed pans and catheters. Any misconceptions I had about the ease of nursing had been erased in one afternoon.

  Father Francis arrived with an entourage. Two priests and four nuns descended upon the Murzilli household. Carlos was extracted from his room and taken away in a hired ambulance. I was curious but hung back. I was tired and dirty from the three days of taking care of the invalid. Father Francis looked me over and said, “It is time to finish what you started, Father Peter.”

  “I have no experience in… in… this.”

  “As they say in your country, no time like the present.”

  Mia looked at Father Peter and couldn’t help but see a haunted look ease into his arrogant features. She wanted to stop the memories. She reached out a hand and placed it on his arm. “I can’t imagine what you went through,” Mia said. “But perhaps now is not the time for the full story, my friend.”

  Her words acted like an analgesic for the painful memories. Father Peter seemed to shake off the horrors that had descended upon him. “For Carlos’s privacy, I’ll not go into the whole process, but to tell you, at one point, Carlos turned to me and spat, ‘May you be cursed with visions and voices for the rest of your life.’”

  “It is a curse, isn’t it?” Mia empathized, looking at her gloved hands.

  “In the beginning, I could not turn off the voices that filled my head. I learned to block them from the woman that taught Candy.”

  “Give me a moment to wrap my mind around the idea that a Voodoo priestess taught a Roman Catholic priest how to develop the mind reading abilities that you were cursed with by a demon.”

  “A humbling and enlightening process,” Father Peter informed her.

  “The visions, are they just the ability to see the undead?”

  “No, I see other things. It’s like the veil is more transparent to me. And on this side of the veil, people’s auras are blindingly vibrant. One thing that has come in handy is that I can see soul jumpers.”

  “Soul jumpers?” Mia asked.

  “Ghosts that inhabit the living. Using them…”

  “I’m sorry, I know what a soul jumper is, but how does seeing them help you?”

  “Quite often I will be presented with a child or young adult whose behavior has changed drastically. The first thing the parents think is that something has possessed their child. Very rarely is it a demon, Mia. Most times it’s hormones, but occasionally, it is a soul jumper. Rules are, if you are a ghost, you must ask your host before co-inhabitation begins. A ghost cannot just jump into the body and start reliving their life where they left off. This behavior is wrong and needs to be punished.”

  “So you turned this curse into a blessing,” Mia admired. “Good for you.”

  “It may have enriched me in certain areas, but it has barred me from my political aspirations. No Pope Peter in my future.”

  “That’s a shame,” Mia said honestly. “Still, look at the good you do.”

  Father Peter smiled. “Yes, I have that to console me.” He looked at his watch and looked at his map. “Come on, Mia, we have a couple of bar brawlers to take care of before we have to meet the others.”

  “I am kind of thirsty.”

  “Oh, Mia, stay thirsty. You don’t want to drink at this establishment. I doubt they ever wash a glass.”

  Mia’s face lit up. “You’re taking me to a dive!”

  “Don’t look so excited.”

  “I’ve never been in a dive. Well, there was Lucky’s, but that was more of a ghost bar,” she rambled.

  “I sense a story in that. Tell you what, when we can, let’s meet up for a weekend and share stories. Bring the family, and I’ll introduce you to my sister and hers. It will be not only enlightening but fun.”

  “I’d like that,” Mia said sincerely.

  “Then we’ll work it out. I’ll be honest with you, when I first met you, I feared you were a diva like your aunt, but instead I think I’ve found a sister by another mother.”

  “Let’s not talk mothers,” Mia said, “You wouldn’t believe who I ended up with.”

  The sound of glass breaking ahead stopped their conversation. Mia ran forward and stopped as two water-bloated spirits were tossing each other in and out of the aptly named dive called Crusty’s.

  One of the bruisers had his fist around the neck of a very real beer bottle. The glass edges would do little to his combatant but could bring harm to a passerby, or a ghost huntress who got careless. She waited for Father Peter to catch up to her.

  A bit winded, he asked, “Were you a track star in school?”

  “No, just used to running away from things,” she answered. “So these are our brawlers. Do you have any idea how we separate them without hurting ourselves?”

  “Not a clue. Perhaps we have to take them on as a pair.”

  Mia nodded. She decided to walk by and get on the opposite side of them from the priest.

  Father Peter noticed the men stop and watch her as she walked by.

  “Hey, sweet thing, are you lost?” one of the toughs asked.

  Mia turned around and countered, “Gee, I thought it was you that was lost.”

  “Kind of snotty for a tourist,” the other ghost remarked.

  “What happened to the two of you? Did you get caught in the rain?” Mia asked heartlessly.

  The first ghost was so stunned with her callous comment that he dropped his bottle. It landed on the broken slab of what was once a sidewalk and broke into a mass of harmless pieces.

  “I’ll have you know that Bubba and I were the last two to be drinking in this establishment when the water rose.”

  “Your call to fame is that you were stupid enough to stick around drinking when you could have been saving yourselves or others,” Mia snapped. “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  Bubba looked duly chastised.

  “What are you fighting about?” Mia asked.

  “I said the floodwall around the lake would hold, and Bubba said it wouldn’t,” the ghost replied.

  “It didn’t, and that’s what got us killed,” Bubba pointed out.

  “Actually, gentleman,” Father Peter spoke up, drawing their attention, “It was the levees on the 17th Street and London Canals that broke, flooding the city. The flood surge never reached the top of Lake Pontchartrain’s levee. Four feet shy from topping the barrier. It was the faulty construction of the canals that caused all this, combined with the worst hurricane in Louisiana’s history.”

  The big b
ruiser turned to Bubba and patted his own chest, saying, “I was right.”

  Bubba’s face filled with anger, and he started for his drinking partner.

  “Wait!” Mia called out. “What the heck does it matter what killed the two of you? You’re both dead. Are you going to spend eternity fighting about it or head out and see what happened to your families?”

  “I ain’t got no family,” Bubba informed them. “And all here Charlie got’s, is an ex-wife in Baton Rouge.”

  “What about your mommas?” Mia asked.

  The two seemed stunned that anyone would bring up their mothers.

  “They’re long gone, missy smart pants,” Charlie said to Mia.

  “They’re waiting for you,” Father Peter said to get their attention. “They’re waiting for you in the light,” he specified.

  “Drunks don’t go to heaven,” Bubba blubbered.

  “They do if they’re repentant,” Father Peter assured him. “Confess your sins, and the light will come for you.”

  “But I ain’t no Catholic, neither is Charlie. We’re Baptist.”

  “I assure you it works the same way,” Father Peter said with authority.

  Bubba scratched his head and looked over at Charlie and asked, “Wadda you think?”

  “Sounds like hooey, but church hooey. I think I’ll give it a shot. I’m sorry for my drinkin’ ways and for knocking around my ex-wife when I was drunk.”

  “I’m sorry for lying, stealing, fighting, and taking the Lord’s name in vain. And for not going to church like I should,” Bubba added.

  Before Father Peter could give them absolution, the sky opened up, and Mia saw the priest shade his eyes. Mia had to defend herself from the draw of the light. She started to think how good it would be to rock her son to sleep, so Ted could finish a PEEPs invention. She saw the two bruisers depart. One had cried out for his mother before it was over. Mia stumbled over to the priest and turned him away from the light.

  “Thanks, Mia, I was unprepared for that.”

  “The light’s tricky that way,” she said. “Come on, we’re through, and I’m hungry.”