The Reaper's Game: A Dominic Grey Novella (The Dominic Grey Series)

by Layton Green

  “Any place else tonight?” he asked Viktor, watching the entrance to the bar as they drove away.

  “What would you suggest?” Viktor asked, though Grey sensed the professor already had a destination in mind.

  “It’s too late for witnesses. But it’s just the right time to visit the scene of the crime.”

  Viktor nodded in agreement, then turned towards the driver. “To the Charnel House.”

  – 3 –

  The desolate streets of the Warehouse District disappeared into darkness, pressed between rows of long brick buildings. The neighborhood seemed out of place in New Orleans, too urban, devoid of the hulking trees and chaotic vegetation that made the rest of the city feel like a living thing.

  The buildings thinned as Grey and Viktor neared the interstate overpass that marked the boundary with the Lower Garden District. Grey saw a column of people snaking towards a two-story mansion squatting on a murky, potholed street beneath the overpass. The old manor with broken windows and overgrown grounds looked abandoned—except for the hordes of people milling outside, and the giant neon sign advertising the attraction.

  The Charnel House.

  The driver let them off in front of the entrance. Grey strode to the front of the line. He asked the ticket taker, a pimply kid dressed as a zombie, for a manager. The kid took one look at Grey’s hard green eyes and Viktor’s seven-foot frame, then called over a burly man wearing jeans and a Freddy mask.

  “A little busy here,” the manager said.

  Viktor flashed his Interpol ID and told him they needed to view the scene of the crime.

  “You mean the D.A.’s murder?”

  “Was there another?”

  The manager shrugged. “You can wait until we close, or go with a tour. I can’t let you run around during business hours.”

  “The tour still goes by the murder scene?” Grey asked in surprise.

  “It stops there. Attendance doubled after it happened.” He chuckled. “Now it really is haunted.”

  “What time do you close?” Viktor asked.

  “Five a.m.”

  Grey and Viktor exchanged a glance. Why not, Grey’s expression said.

  “The tour, please,” Viktor said.

  The manager called over a young blond woman in a velvet dress with billowy sleeves. Red slash marks covered her wrists and neck, and she was wearing a pair of white contact lenses.

  “Greetings,” she said, in a wooden voice. Her hair was caught in a pin above her head, accentuating a long neck and striking cheekbones. “I died last night.”

  “Cut the act,” the manager said. “These guys are cops or something. Elaine was the tour guide during the murder,” he added, causing Grey’s eyebrows to lift.

  The visit might be more productive than he had thought.

  The manager asked Elaine to take them inside and answer any questions. Still moving as if in a trance, she bypassed the line and opened the door to the mansion. When it shut behind them, the clamor from outside ceased as if a soundproof curtain had dropped.

  A somber pipe organ played in the background as Elaine led them down a hallway and into a room with frayed red carpet, lit by standing candelabrum. A man in a three-piece suit, white face paint, and a bowler hat was recounting the history of the Charnel House to a dozen people sitting on church pews. Against the far wall, an open coffin showcased a corpse Grey would have sworn was real.

  Maybe it was, he mused. Were there laws against that?

  From listening to the monologue, Grey learned the room looked like the foyer to a derelict funeral parlor because that was exactly what it was. The “mortuary owner” claimed that after the parlor closed, a family of crazed murderers took up residence, kidnapped people off the streets of New Orleans, tortured them inside the mortuary, and embalmed them alive. Their disturbed spirits, of course, now haunted the mansion.

  The mortuary owner shuffled to a door behind the coffin and ushered the tour group through. Grey had never been to a haunted house, and the experience was even more surreal than he had imagined.

  Teenage girls screamed and clung to their boyfriends as a never-ending stream of costumed undead jumped out from concealed lairs and doorways. Ragged screams echoed down hallways, clawed hands clutched at the group as they passed, eyeballs floated in darkness. Though the makeup and special effects were disturbingly lifelike, the authenticity of the old funeral parlor itself, the cobwebs and moth-eaten drapes and the musty smell, was the most convincing part of the tour.

  Ten minutes in, the guide stopped in front of a grandfather clock. The group eagerly crowded in. At the same time Grey remembered that Sebastian Gichaud had jumped out of a clock to murder the D.A., the front of the timepiece hinged open and a black-clad Grim Reaper popped out, scythe raised. The closest couple screamed and stumbled backwards.

  Truly, Grey thought, the owners of this place have no shame.

  What is it about human nature that makes us devour novels and movies about serial killers, crave macabre experiences like these?

  The guide shuffled off without a word. As the rest of the group hurried to follow, Grey took Elaine by the arm. A lit sconce down one of the hallways provided a dull red glow.

  “This is where it happened?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she intoned.

  “And you witnessed it?”

  “I remember nothing about my past life.”

  As she started down the hallway, Viktor said, “This isn’t a game.”

  She kept moving.

  “We’re not cops,” Grey said. “We need your help.”

  Still walking. “Then who are you?”

  “Sebastian’s family hired us. To see if we could help.”

  She finally stopped. “With what?” she asked bitterly.

  “With proving he wasn’t in his right mind.”

  Elaine shuffled her feet, then returned to the intersection and continued down a different corridor, curling a finger for them to follow. She stopped in front of an ornate bookcase, looked both ways, removed a hardbound copy of The Exorcist, and pulled an iron lever concealed behind the novel. The bookcase hinged open, revealing a stone staircase.

  “There’ll be another tour in three minutes,” she said, as another scream rattled through the house. “We can talk down here.”

  Grey noticed the rear of the bookcase was a foot of solid wood. He left it cracked open. Using their cell phones for illumination, Grey and Viktor followed Elaine to a landing at the bottom of the steps. A hallway stretched into the gloom on either side.

  Judging by the worn stone, Grey could tell the passage had been here long before the tour company. He thought the elevation of New Orleans was too low for basements, then remembered the stairs they had climbed to reach the front door.

  “Sebastian jumped out of the clock and cut that woman down in front of her family,” Elaine said. The woodenness had returned to her voice, but this time Grey didn’t think it was affected.

  “It was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” Elaine hugged her arms to her chest and cast a furtive glance into the darkness. “I hate this place now. If I didn’t need the money . . . .”

  “What happened after that?” Grey asked quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did he act? Did he run away, try to kill anyone else?

  She shuddered as she reached for the memory. “He dropped the scythe and grinned, then just stared at us like he was in a trance. It was all so creepy.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Everyone ran away, me included. The next time I saw him, the cops were leading him away in handcuffs.”

  “Did Sebastian say anything? Before or after the murder?”

  “No. Not even to me, which was really weird.”

  “Because you were the tour guide?”

  “Because we were seeing each other.”

  Viktor’s presence filled the small landing like a shadow in a closet. “You were together? For how long?”

  She pr
essed her lips together. “I’m not sure I should . . . .”

  “Like I said,” Grey said, “we’re here for Sebastian. The trial is around the corner. I think it’s safe to say that if we can’t help him, no one can.”

  After a pause, she gave a slow, miserable nod. “I was a Reaper, though I quit after the murder. I thought I knew death, liked death, but when I saw it for real . . . .”

  You’re still flirting with it, Grey thought, eying her costume.

  “We only went out a half-dozen times or so. I hadn’t seen him for a few days, not since he visited the prison. Which was strange because we all thought he’d come back and tell us all about it. But he didn’t. Not a word to anyone. And then after the murder . . . I shouted his name, but he didn’t respond. As if he didn’t even know me.”

  Grey and Viktor exchanged a glance.

  “Did you show him the secret chamber behind the clock?” Viktor asked.

  “No.” Her eyes slid upward. “The cops asked me that, too. I’m not sure they believed me.”

  “Then how did he find out about it?”

  “He must have seen it used before, though it’s tricky to open. I guess he snuck in during an earlier tour, figured it out, and stayed hidden.”

  Viktor folded his arms. “Did you notice anything else odd about his behavior that night?”

  She bit her lip. “He was holding the scythe in his left hand.”

  “Sebastian was right-handed?” Grey guessed.

  She gave a slow, uneasy nod.

  As Grey filed away the nugget of information, a clicking sound broke the stillness of the landing.

  Elaine’s eyes flew up the staircase. “Hey!” she shouted. “We’re still down here!”

  She ran up the stairs with Grey and Viktor on her heels. When she reached the top and pushed on the rear of the bookcase, it didn’t budge. She kept shouting and pushing.

  “Automatic lock?” Grey asked.

  “It opens from this side, too. Someone must have jammed the lever.”

  Grey tried his cell phone. No signal. “What are the chances someone will hear us?”

  Elaine took a step back. “No one’s supposed to be using that hallway right now.”

  “Someone’s using it,” Grey muttered. He threw a few side kicks at the back of the bookcase, but it didn’t budge. He remembered how solid it had looked. “Is there another way out?”

  “There’s an emergency exit on the other side of the basement,” Elaine said. “It’s a maze, though. This was the ‘haunted dungeon’ before Katrina flooded it.”

  “Do you know your way through?”

  She shook her head, and Grey and Viktor exchanged another glance.

  – 4 –

  Grey aimed his cell phone light down the stairs and started walking, his other hand tense and ready at his side. They reached the bottom landing and chose the left-hand passage. Grey wasn’t worried about finding the exit; he was worried about whoever had locked them down there. Maybe it was a prank, maybe it was something more sinister.

  The smell of mildew rising off the carpet was overpowering. Grey swiped away cobwebs as he walked, and it was hard to distinguish the real webs from the fake ones.

  Lifelike skeletons in decomposing rags lined the corridor, hanging from manacles attached to the walls. The basement remained eerily quiet, and the passage spilled into a large room filled with blood-spattered instruments of torture.

  After an uneasy glance at the torture room, Grey led them through a door on their left, down a curving corridor lined with jail cells where dismembered mannequins leered at them from the darkness. The squeak of a rat finally broke the silence, causing Elaine to jump. Viktor had remained impassive throughout the journey.

  They entered a smaller chamber, this one lined with heavy red drapes and rows of coffins. The floor was strewn with skulls and severed heads. A section of the ceiling had collapsed, and when Grey aimed his light upwards, he illuminated the bottom of a rotting wood floor. He could probably tear it down if he had to.

  “What do you think?” Grey asked Viktor. Four corridors led out of the room. “Keep to the left?”

  The sound of male laughter echoed faintly down one of the hallways. Elaine jumped at the sound, then yelped when she stumbled against a bloody arm protruding from a coffin. “Sorry,” she mumbled, backing away from the grisly effigy.

  Another burst of faraway laughter. Viktor looked to Grey.

  “It doesn’t sound threatening,” Grey said. “Why don’t you and Elaine stay here while I check it out?”

  Viktor agreed, and Grey left the two of them concealed behind an overturned sarcophagus, in case of trouble. With his cell light pointed at his feet, Grey crept down the hallway in the direction of the sound. His guess was that some of the employees were having an off-duty party. But one never knew, and Grey’s lifetime of martial arts training and his stint in Marine Recon had left him a very cautious man.

  At the end of the corridor, a sliver of light appeared beneath a wooden door. Grey drew closer. The laughter tapered to male voices speaking Spanish, too rapid and faint for Grey to follow.

  He considered his options. He didn’t feel like wasting any more time, and whoever was on the other side of the door obviously knew a way out. His first assessment—off-duty employees—was probably right.

  He quietly tried the doorknob, wanting to preserve the element of surprise in case there was a situation. Unlocked. He pushed the door open, hands open and ready.

  The odor of marijuana and unwashed bodies hit Grey as soon as he stepped inside. He took in the scene with a glance. The room had a rough concrete floor and a low ceiling supported by cement pillars. Flickering candlelight spilled out of a trio of standing candelabra. Heaps of haunted house props littered the perimeter.

  In the middle of the room, three young, heavily tattooed Latino men were seated on wooden crates, playing cards on a low table. Ashtrays, bottles of tequila, a lighter, and a glass bong surrounded the cards. Behind them, overlooking the card game like some kind of macabre pit boss, was a wax statue of a skeleton woman draped in a tattered blue dress and festooned with costume jewelry and a bouquet of dead flowers.

  Grey knew at a glance these were not off-duty workers, even before one of them spotted Grey and rushed at him with a raised knife, spouting curses in Spanish. Normally Grey would have concentrated on stripping the weapon, but there were two more men to worry about. Grey stepped into the attack, brush-blocking the knife thrust away as he slipped inside. Using the attacker’s own momentum, Grey turned and swept him off his feet with a modified hip throw, tossing him violently across the room.

  The other two stumbled to their feet. Before they could coordinate an attack, Grey used the sole of his foot to kick the table into one of them, breaking bottles and causing chaos.

  The third man, a short, bull-necked man wearing a gold chain and a bandana, pulled a pistol. Before he could aim the gun, Grey rushed to close the gap, grabbing onto the wrist holding the gun. The Latino tried to jerk his hand back. Instead of fighting the movement, Grey let him retract his hand and then flipped the wrist over, bending it double at the joint.

  The thug bellowed in pain. “Hijo de puta!”

  Grey kicked his knee out as he ripped the weapon out of his grasp. His opponent crashed to the floor, and Grey pointed the gun at the other two men. “On the ground, by the skeleton! Now!”

  They did what he asked.

  “Hands behind your heads! Viktor, come in here!”

  Grey patted them down as he waited on Viktor. No more weapons. Which was odd, if this was a setup.

  Despite the fact that the men had attacked him and were probably criminals, Grey felt sorry for them. They were on the young side of thirty and obviously squatting, had probably never had a chance in life. Grey had barged into their squalid little hovel and disrupted their world.

  Still, they didn’t need to be pulling guns and knives on people.

  Especially someone like Grey.

 
The big thug curled on his side, moaning and holding his wrist.

  “You’ll be fine,” Grey said. “It’ll heal in a few weeks.”

  “What you want, ése? Who the hell are you?”

  Viktor entered the room with Elaine trailing behind him, her eyes wide. The professor barely glanced at the men. Instead, his gaze latched onto the skeletal figure in the middle of the room. “Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte.”

  “Come again?” Grey said. Now that he could take a longer look, he noticed a heap of cigarettes, beer bottles, and food wrappers piled onto a ragged sleeping bag laid out beneath the figure.

  Viktor leaned down to inspect the makeshift altar. “A Latin American folk saint, primarily Mexican. A syncretism between Mesoamerican and Catholic beliefs.”

  “Don’t touch her!” the smallest Latino growled.

  Viktor cocked his head towards the man. “I wouldn’t,” he murmured.

  “Sebastian kept an image of her in his room,” Elaine said slowly. “She’s a personification of death.”

  “Correct,” Viktor said. With a pointed look at Grey, he added, “Typically she carries a scythe.”

  Grey’s eyebrows rose. He stepped towards the larger thug. “Did you know we were coming?”

  “You think we stay here if we did? Who you with? NOPD?”

  “Were you here when the D.A. was murdered?” Grey asked.

  “Nah, man. We just set up a few months ago. You really gonna boot us, ése? From this dump?”

  Grey turned to Elaine, who was hugging her arms in a corner of the room. “Does the staff know people squat down here?”

  She looked frightened as she shook her head. Grey believed her.

  Keeping the gun trained on the men, Grey motioned for Viktor to join him a few feet away. “What’s going on here?” Grey said, in a low voice.

  “Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte is a cultural variation on the Grim Reaper.” Viktor pressed his lips together. “The problem is that the Bony Lady—as she is called—is virtually the patron saint of Mexican drug dealers. I know it sounds odd, but there are probably dozens of Santa Muerte shrines in New Orleans alone.”