by Melissa Good
The waiter smiled. “Good picks,” he said. “Drinks?”
“I guess I have to try the milk punch,” Dar said. “Ker?”
“I’ll try a Bluegrass sunset.” Kerry handed the menus back to the waiting server. “And some water, please.”
The waiter half bowed and disappeared.
“Do we need to make reservations for that ghost tour?” Kerry relaxed in her chair, regarding the busy restaurant contentedly. “And I thought you were going to get shrimp and grits?”
“Tomorrow.” Dar took her phone out. “Let me get reservations. I’m sure they’re packed tonight.” She looked up the number on the gizmo, then pressed it to dial. “I like these things. Wish the Internet was faster though.”
Kerry caught sight of a group of musicians outside. As the door opened to let in more diners the sounds of a saxophone blared inside, a background to the group of garishly dressed faux skeletons moving past. Way different than she’d expected, but in a good way. “This is cool.”
She took a sip of Dar’s milk punch when it arrived and licked her lips. “Bet these are popular.”
“Yes, the ladies really like them.” The waiter winked at her. “They go down easy.”
“Oh yes. I can see why a lot of people end up taking their shirts off in the street in that case.” Kerry settled back with her drink. “That’s very good.”
Dar sucked cautiously at her glass. “Hardly tastes like there’s alcohol in there,” she said as she hung up the phone. “We’re set for ten
p.m. We lucked out. They usually only go at eight.” “That’s why they’re dangerous.” Kerry pointed at the glass. “There’s a shot and a half of bourbon in that thing.”
Dar eyed it. “Only one for me then.” She put her gizmo away. “I don’t want a picture of me showing up somewhere with my shirt off in the streets of New Orleans.”
“Somehow I don’t think that would hurt sales any.” Kerry enjoyed the look of self deprecating exasperation on Dar’s face. “Hey, I’ve seen you with your shirt off.”
“Wench.” “Hehehe.”
IF ANYTHING, IT was even busier on the street when they emerged, making their way slowly through the crowds. Kerry put her hands into her jacket pockets. “That was awesome. But I’m stuffed.” She sighed. “Glad we’re on a walking tour now.”
“Me too,” Dar agreed. “They said to meet up at Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop.” She gazed reflectively down the street. “Two blocks from here.”
“Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop?” Kerry said. “Seriously?”
Dar nodded. “I’m sure there’ll be a shopping opportunity there. We could get a skull or something for my desk.”
“We could get your mom some crystals I bet,” Kerry countered. “No skull, hon. It’ll freak Maria out.” She tucked her hand inside Dar’s elbow again and slowed her pace, looking around at everything in the chaos they were walking through. “Do you believe in any of that magic stuff?”
“No,” Dar replied.
“Even after what happened with your dad?”
“No,” Dar repeated. “Do you really think the ghost of his daddy rose from the grave and was chased off by some demon?”
“Well, sweetie, he’s not an oogie boogie kinda guy, you know? If he said he saw creepy things like that, I’m inclined to think something happened,” Kerry said. “I can’t picture him making up a story like that.”
Dar sucked on the mint she’d taken from the restaurant in silence for a few minutes. “Well,” she cleared her throat, “he might have done that to avoid telling us what really might have happened to those guys who disappeared.”
Kerry digested that as they walked along, turning a corner and heading for where a group had already formed on the sidewalk outside a shop. “You mean maybe he did something to them?”
“He kinda makes up rules sometimes,” Dar said in an almost apologetic tone. “So I think he’d rather tell us about ghosts than he would about how he maybe took those guys out.”
“Oh,” Kerry said. “Huh. I never thought about that. I just never could imagine him lying to us in that kind of way.”
“I’m not saying he did,” Dar said. “It’s just possible, y’know?”
“Mm.”
“Or, what the hell. Maybe he did see ghosts.” Dar sighed. “I don’t know. But no, I don’t believe in that stuff. All that psychic mumbo jumbo just never rang true to me.”
Kerry eyed her but said nothing, a brief smile appearing on her face.
Dar caught it. “Except for that stuff with us,” she said. “I’ll find a scientific reason for it sometime.” She had to chuckle, though, shrugging a little wryly. “But that’s not ghosts.”
“No, it isn’t.” Kerry pressed her head against Dar’s shoulder. “Let’s go see if NOLA can cough up some ghosts for us. Here we are.”
They slowed to a halt as they joined the group outside the voodoo shop, which was closed. Dar went to the window and peered inside curiously, since the guides were still getting their paperwork sorted out.
She studied the objects then gave a side glance at Kerry as she came up to join her. “Nice.”
“Oh. Dear.” Kerry’s brows contracted. “Huh. That’s some weird stuff, but hey, look. They do palm readings.” She took Dar’s hand in her own and turned it up most. “We could come back and get our fortunes told, right?”
“Sure,” Dar answered after a brief pause. “Or maybe get our Tarot cards read.” She pointed at the sign inside. “I’ve wondered over the years how many people have stopped in NOLA and gotten voodoo dolls for me.” Her eyes flashed with sudden humor. “I always imagined Jose’s inner office to have a picture of me on the back of the door filled with dart holes.”
“Or BB holes.” Kerry chuckled. “Didn’t seem to have done you much harm.”
Dar moved over to the guides to confirm their registration, leaving Kerry to peruse the window. She let her eyes run over the candles, incense, herbs, charms and trinkets. It seemed to be a veritable cornucopia of magic-inspired products including books and magazines she imagined were devoted to the practice.
A woman who was leaning against the wall turned to speak to her. “If you go in there, don’t take pictures and don’t ask questions about black magic. It pisses them off,” she said. “I went in there today and they threw this guy out because he opened one of those books.”
Kerry turned, leaned her shoulder against the window surface and folded her arms. “Not very customer centric, I guess.”
The woman shrugged. “Mostly tourists, I guess, so they get tired of it. I did get my palm read though and that was amazing.”
“Really? I was thinking of doing that tomorrow.”
The woman nodded emphatically. “It was probably eighty percent accurate. I was blown away. So weird. But I enjoyed it and my husband did, too. It’s our first time in New Orleans.”
“Ours, too,” Kerry said. “So far it’s been a lot of fun. We just got here tonight.”
“We came this morning. It’s our wedding anniversary.” The woman smiled. “Something different. Last year we went to Vegas.”
The woman was middle aged and about Kerry’s height, with curly brown hair. She was stockily built and had a knit pull-on cap on her head to ward off the night chill. “I can’t wait to see the ghosts. Some people take pictures of them.”
The husband came back over with Dar right behind him. “All right, Sarah, you ready?” He looked good humored about the tour. “Let’s go find you some spooks.”
The woman beamed at him and they moved off to get in line as the tour guides got ready to lead them off.
Dar and Kerry joined the queue and Dar put her hands behind her and rocked up and down a few times on the balls of her feet.
“Are you going to kill me?” Kerry asked, slipping one hand into Dar’s front pocket.
Dar chuckled. “Only if you keep me up all night yelling about ghosts.”
Kerry started forward as the group did. “You’ll have to fi
nd something else to distract me with then.”
KERRY FELT THAT it would likely seem far spookier on the tour if she couldn’t hear people partying a street or two over. The stories behind the so called haunted places were interesting, but she didn’t feel even a twinge of creepiness as they moved along from the Lalaurie Mansion to the next tale of the Octoroon Mistress.
The tour guides were dramatic and fun and everyone was having a good time, though. Kerry was standing in the front part of the circle around the guide, Dar behind her casually resting her arms on Kerry’s shoulders.
“That’s right ladies and gentlemen, up there on that ledge, only in the coldest nights, you can see a wispy figure of a naked woman.”
Kerry fastened her eyes attentively on the spot. “You think it’s cold enough?” she whispered to Dar.
“I think if we see someone it has to be a ghost,” Dar said. “It’s too damn cold to be up there naked. Even piss ass drunk.”
“Can you just picture it?” the guide said. “As the moon rises over the building, as the mist comes up from the river...”
A gasp went up as motion was detected across the roof. For a brief moment a dark shape could be seen. Then it was gone.
“Did you see it?” the guide said, excitedly. “Anyone get a picture?” He moved over to look at one woman’s digital camera. “You did!”
“Mm,” Dar grumbled softly. “Did you see it?”
“I did,” Kerry admitted. “I’ve got no idea what it was. At this distance it could have been a cat for all I know, but I saw it. Did you?”
“I saw something.”
The excitement around the group was now electric. Many gathered around the woman with the camera, others shaded their eyes from the street lamps, peering up at the ceiling.
“The ghost is Julie,” the guide said. “She was an octoroon. Does anyone here know what that is?” He looked around but no one answered. “It’s someone who is one eighth black, seven eighths white. In the old days there were many of these women in New Orleans. Legend says they were very beautiful.”
Kerry listened with interest.
“These women were much desired by the Creoles and the Frenchmen who made their home in New Orleans, but because of their social status they could never marry.” The guide motioned them closer. “The Octoroon Julie fell in love with a Frenchman and very much wanted to marry him. But he refused her because of her status.”
“Prick,” Dar said softly, making Kerry smile.
“So one night the Frenchman thought he would put Julie’s love to the test. If she met the test he would think about marrying her. He brought many friends to his house and told her if she would take all her clothes off and wait for him on the roof, he would come get her and bring her down to introduce her to society. He never thought she would take the dare.”
The wind got colder all of a sudden. Dar lifted her head and her ears twitched as above the revelry she thought she heard a moan through the trees.
“But she did,” the guide said. “She went up on the roof, took off her clothes and stood up there waiting for her love to come meet her.”
“Ugh,” Kerry muttered.
“But he never did. He finally went to bed and was surprised not to find her there warming the sheets for him. So he rushed up onto the roof and there, in the cold, was her dead, frozen body.”
The crowd murmured.
“He died himself, several months later,” the guide said. “Many say of a broken heart.”
“Don’t have much sympathy for the guy,” Dar said quietly. “But it says something about how it was back then.”
“If they were that hung up about one eighth of someone’s blood I can only imagine how they would have felt about us,” Kerry responded. “Sheesh.”
“So often, today, those who work in that building say they hear Julie running around the top floor where her rooms were and hear her laughing. Also, they see the Frenchman in the garden, a sad and lonely figure,” the guide continued. “Of course the fact that a palm reading and tarot company owns the building probably makes the encounters all the more interesting.”
“And a good advertisement,” the middle aged woman’s husband commented.
“That, too,” the guide agreed with a cheerful smile. “Let’s move on to see the garden, shall we? Maybe we’ll see the Frenchman in there.” He led the way across the street toward the shadowed, gated space.
“Oh my gosh, this is so exciting!” Sarah said, reviewing her camera. “I can’t believe I got a picture of it!”
Kerry glanced up at Dar. “You’re not buying this, are you?”
Dar remained silent for a moment then she coughed a little. “There was something behind us back there.”
Kerry almost came to a halt, so surprised was she to hear that. “What?” She looked back the way they came and saw nothing more interesting than a lamppost. “What?”
Dar put her hand on Kerry’s back to keep her on the path. “There was something back there watching us. I felt it behind me.”
“Something like a stray dog or a cop or...” Kerry asked, hesitantly.
“I don’t know. I felt cold breath on my back,” Dar said with devastating calmness. “Sort of like in the condo when you stand in that spot outside the kitchen. Under the vent?”
Kerry looked behind them again and stared up at Dar, unable to come up with a response. “Uh.”
“Anyway,” Dar said. “Maybe I just imagined it all. Let’s go in there and see what we find.” She focused her attention on the crowd, which had filtered in through the wrought iron gates into the garden. “Maybe it was just a draft from between those two buildings.”
Kerry latched onto her arm and collected her scattered wits. She edged into the garden and peered around, half expecting to see a tall spectral figure watching them from between the bushes.
The guide was speaking, relating some details about the life of the Frenchman but Kerry was convinced she kept seeing whispers of motion in her peripheral vision. As she realized that her heart started to beat faster.
Dar strolled along at her side, turning her head to look between the flowers. She reached out idly with her free hand to touch the petals stained gray by the night gloom.
A frog croaked to the left and Kerry almost jumped into Dar’s arms, bumping her abruptly and making her take a little hop. “Oh...sorry,” she muttered. “Stupid frog.”
Dar moved, shifting her hand off Kerry’s back as she draped her arm over her shoulders instead. “No problem, babe.” She looked up into the sky. “Was that a bat?”
“Are you trying to freak me out?” Kerry said after a pause.
“No,” Dar responded. “I really did think I saw one.”
Kerry looked up herself and sucked in a breath as a shadowy figure fluttered overhead, moving from one tree to another. “Oh!”
“Yeah, that’s what I saw,” Dar said. “That’s a bat, right? Not a bird?”
Kerry let her eyes drop and she jerked as her gaze fell on a translucent form with moonlight pouring through it, staring at them. “Ah!”
Then it was gone. “Did you see that?” she whispered to Dar.
Dar was half turned, her blue eyes grayish silver in the gloom. “I just saw some fog,” she said. “What did you see?”
Kerry looked back over and saw the fog, too. It was just a light mist, drifting between the bushes and she hesitated, now doubting what she herself saw. “Well.”
“So sometimes people walking in the garden encounter the Frenchman,” the guide said, enjoying the wide eyes of his audience. “He’s always dressed in a cutaway coat and a cravat. Let’s move on and see if we can find him.”
Did she see something? Or was her imagination just working in overdrive? Kerry tried to recall what she thought she’d seen, but the more she looked at the fog, the less she was convinced she’d seen anything at all. After a moment she relaxed and walked along with Dar after the group, most of whom were starting to huddle together.
The s
ounds of music got louder and as they reached the other end of the garden, the guide almost had to shout over it. Kerry looked behind her as they moved back into the street, but the garden was quiet, empty of anything but moonbeams and some fog.
But she felt strange. She took a breath and let it out, following Dar as they caught up to the back of the tour group on their way to the next station. Despite the empty trees she had the uncanny sensation that she was being watched. No matter how quickly she glanced around she couldn’t find a concrete set of eyes pointed in her direction.
“Ker?”
“Yeah.” Kerry cleared her throat and tucked her hand inside Dar’s elbow again. “Hon, next time just tell me to go find an ice cream parlor, okay?”
Dar chuckled.
“What in the hell was I thinking?”
Dar leaned over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Relax. Whatever comes out of the ether at you, I’ll take care of it, promise.”
Kerry was glad of the reassurance when the guide took them down a narrow lane between towering buildings. They stopped at one with a wrought iron balcony not too different from the one at their hotel. It was dark and the wind was chill. She kept hearing things being blown around behind her.
Leaves? She moved a bit closer to Dar. Sure. Leaves.
She heard a scuff and a crunch and she half turned to see a shadowy form that nearly made her guts come out of her ears before her brain sorted it out and she realized it was a dog. “Hey, looks like Chino.”
Dar turned her head and smiled. “It does,” she agreed. “Glad it wasn’t the Hound of the Baskervilles?”
Kerry cleared her throat and focused her attention forward. “Yes.”
Dar pulled her closer. “Chill, Ker, chill.”
Kerry sighed, as they came up to the back of the group who had stopped on the sidewalk. “I feel kind of like a dork.”
“So, we come to the tale of the Mad Butcher,” the guide began. “Many cities have a legend of a Mad Butcher, but here in New Orleans it takes on a different tune because of course, it also includes sausages and a mistress. So here we go.”