by Chanel Smith
“At least we know that he didn’t leave,” I said, trying to see the bright side to an otherwise useless evening.
Henry simply looked on in confused silence, his eyes wide with fright. He’d seen and even called out to a specter in the night and it was clear that he hadn’t really expected to do so. “I must say that I thought it was all a bit of a ruse, but now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes…” He never finished the thought, if he had even been able form it in his mind completely.
“So, why didn’t we see him in the dining room or in the house?” I asked Ellen.
“I’m not sure, maybe because the house was quiet and he skipped that part tonight?”
“Do you suppose the noise awakens him?” I was trying to find an answer for why we had missed him and I was grasping at any loose end that I could find.
“If that’s what awakens him, then why did he leave at roughly the same time tonight?”
I glanced at my watch. Given the estimated time that he had begun trashing the dining room the night before, he was actually fairly punctual, give or take five to ten minutes. I wasn’t exactly sure what time things had taken place the night before.
“Then he does have a schedule of sorts. Let’s assume that this is Archibald Bordeaux and he’s wandering out into the swamps every night to look for his wife. Where does he go and when does he come back?”
“Monty, he might never come back,” she said. “Not in the same way, I mean. If he stays out until dawn, he might just come back during the daylight. Spirits don’t work the same way that we do.”
“But the boat comes back,” I countered.
“I don’t know, Monty.” Ellen was frustrated. She was feeling the pressure of the time limit that had been placed on us to solve the case and she wasn’t thinking clearly. “I guess you’re right.”
“Do you want to wait until he comes back in?” I asked.
“There’s no guarantee that we’ll see him come in.”
“But when the boat comes back in…”
“Monty, we don’t even know that there’s actually a boat here during the day. Have you ever been down here to look during the daylight?”
“No, I haven’t, but it certainly looks real enough.”
“It could be a specter as well. I mean, how much attention have you really focused on the boat?”
“Quite a bit, actually. At least enough to identify it as a jon boat with a flat bow and stern.” Even as I said it, however, I wasn’t sure if I had seen a real boat or not.
“Well, you can hang around out here and wait for him and the boat to come back if you like, but I’m not really in the mood.” Frustrated, Ellen strode back toward the house. Her plan hadn’t worked out like she’d envisioned it, but it was still rather strange behavior for her.
As I watched her go, I wondered if there was something else besides the time pressure that was eating at her. Ellen had a tendency to keep a few things to herself and I wondered if she was doing that now. It wasn’t actually a secret that she was keeping, not in the sense that she had forgotten or was avoiding telling me something, but it was different altogether. I believed that sometimes Ellen had senses of things that bothered her, but they were beyond anything that she put into words; when that happened, she often became irritable. I hoped that we were seeing another one of those cases, because she was acting a little bit stranger than normal.
I looked at Henry, who was uncertain of which way to go, and started to chuckle. The dude had probably bitten off more than he could chew volunteering to hang out with us. “Come on, Henry,” I said, placing my hand on his shoulder and guiding him toward the house. “I think we’re probably finished for the night.”
Chapter Seven
“Henry tells me that our ghost did not come into the dining room last night, but simply got into a pirogue and poled off into the bayou.” LaBeaux was beaming as he spoke. “That is very good news! Where I certainly can’t tolerate a destructive spirit destroying my dining room and kitchen and terrifying my guests, a ghost outside adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the atmosphere. It seems that you’ve completed your task here.”
“You might be getting ahead of yourself, sir,” Ellen responded. “Spirits can be notional about things. We believe that he came from the house and went down to the dock. He is still here. He still inhabits the house and he still could become violent at any moment. Until we know for certain that he has gone to the light, we cannot say that the job is complete.”
“I see. I still have a restaurant to run here and I can’t afford having it closed. I paid too much money getting it ready.”
“Won’t the fact that a ghost is terrifying the guests scare them away?” I asked.
“This is New Orleans.” He laughed. “Ghost stories abound here. In fact, all of the finest restaurants have a story or even a true haunting. Personally, I’d prefer to just have the story. You are welcome to continue on here until you’re satisfied, but I must carry on.”
As he started to turn away, I remembered that I wanted to ask about the boat in the boathouse. “Mister LaBeaux?”
“Yes?” He turned back toward me.
“Is there a jon boat in the boathouse?”
“A jon boat?”
“A pirogue.”
“Mister Drew, there wasn’t a boat in the boathouse when I bought the place and neither have I put one there, nor, to my knowledge, has anyone else. Why are you interested in a boat? Are you planning on going out into the bayou yourself?”
“No. I have no interest in exploring the bayou. It’s nothing. Thank you.” I looked over at Ellen, who had an “I told you so” smirk on her face.
“That’s good. Legend has it that many people go off into the mist of the bayou and never return.” He laughed heartily and then continued on toward the kitchen.
“But it looked so real,” I replied, answering Ellen’s unspoken question.
“I’m going to go have a look for myself. One of the employees could have brought the boat in without LaBeaux’s knowledge.”
“Suit yourself.” She beamed.
Her smile presented a challenge to me, but there was something even more sinister behind it. “Since when does a boss know everything that is going on at his business anyway?”
“So, go check.” She shrugged her shoulders and turned away.
Without a word, I continued on through the kitchen and out the back door. The moment the suffocating heat of the New Orleans’ swamp hit me, I realized what the more sinister part of her smirk was referring to. Wiping away the sweat that had instantly beaded up on my brow, however, I pressed forward across the lawn, determined to reach the boathouse, prove that there actually was a boat in there and then return with a photo on my cell phone to show to Ellen.
I might as well have been trudging through the desert sands and fighting for my life. The heat was very close to debilitating. I had spent nearly all of my life in sunny Southern California where the temperatures could hit triple digits, but it was a dry heat that was completely different and didn’t smell like a locker room towel all of the time. Besides, So Cal typically had a cooling breeze to come to the rescue. The air in the swamp seemed to drape itself over you as though it was too lazy to move and made you carry it about with you.
Once at the boathouse, I wasn’t interested in wasting time. I reached for the handle on the door, turned it and then came up short as I tugged to pull it open. It didn’t budge. With the new mystery that presented itself, I almost forgot the heavy heat that by that point had sweat pouring out of me like in some cartoon. I’m almost certain that I saw our ghost open this door.
I began to examine it more closely and discovered that there were at least ten 60d double head (coffin) nails around the edge of the door fastening it tightly to the jamb. It was a common practice in hurricane weather. The double head nails were used because they were easy to pull and use again. The heads were rusty, indicating that they had been there a while.
Though baffled, I was determin
ed to prove that the jon boat was real. From the dock, I was pretty sure that I could lean over far enough to look inside the opening where the boat exited the boathouse. All I needed was to see the bow or stern of the boat to have my proof. On a jon boat without a motor, one couldn’t tell which was which and it didn’t even matter.
Approaching the open end, I attempted to lean over, but discovered that I couldn’t lean quite far enough to see in. I suddenly had a bright idea. I didn’t need to be able to see in as long as I could snap a shot of it with my cell phone. Taking it out of my pocket, I touched the icon that brought up the camera function and got it ready. With my thumb on the button, I leaned as far as I could until my hand and the lens of the camera cleared the opening of the door and pressed the button.
My stretch set me off balance a little bit and as I attempted to straighten back up, I nearly tumbled off the dock and into the water. In the struggle, the cell phone fell out of my hand. In that instant, everything turned into slow motion as I saw the expensive phone tumbling toward the water. My fingers touched it several times causing it to spin, but it finally plopped like a heavy lure into the water. I watched the glowing screen disappear into the murky water, still trying to determine if I had, in fact, taken a photo of the boat.
Somewhat defeated, but still determined, I went to the garden shed and rummaged until I found a claw hammer, which is what I should have done in the first place; it would have saved my $600 phone from going into the drink. With the hammer in hand, I returned to the boathouse, pulled the nails and opened the door.
Sitting in the docking position of the boathouse was absolutely nothing. The boathouse itself wasn’t empty, however. As I stepped inside, a very large snake raised its head, opened its mouth and hissed at me. I wasn’t sure which of the two of us were more startled, but in exactly the same moment that I jumped back through the doorway, I heard a plop in the water inside the boathouse.
With my heart thundering in my chest, I hammered the nails back into place around the edge of the door, stopping to look around my feet and scan the ground all around as I did so. In the process, I only hit my thumb twice, which was a record for me. I quickly returned the hammer to the garden shed. Glancing up as I turned away from the shed, I saw Ellen’s smiling face looking down on me from a window in the dining room. She waved at me and I could tell that she was laughing. How much had she seen?
Though I avoided talking about my adventure at the boathouse, Ellen’s mood had picked up a great deal and I caught her smiling at me several times throughout the afternoon. After a shower to wash away the sweat that covered my body, and a change of clothing, I sat down with my laptop and tried to find the snake that I’d seen inside the boathouse. It didn’t take me long to discover a tan, brown and black snake with one feature that set it apart from all of the others, a very bright white mouth and throat, which, in reality, was the one feature that I remembered the most from the encounter. I’d very nearly walked right into one of the bayou’s most venomous and aggressive snakes: a cottonmouth.
Call it morbid curiosity or simply an obsession with death, I spent nearly 30 minutes watching videos of cottonmouths and other various snakes that might be encountered in the swamps. I had moved on to alligators when Ellen finally intervened and pulled me away to another task.
“Henry is here and we need to get set up for the evening,” she began.
“Any new strategy for tonight?”
“We want to talk to the ghost when he’s calm,” she replied. “But I’m also curious about his violent behavior. What causes that? I’m sort of torn between the two extremes. I mean, if this is Archibald Bordeaux still searching for his wife who disappeared in the swamp, it might be impossible to solve his problem. But if we can at least get him to leave off his aggressive behavior at the house, we’ll still have accomplished our mission, right?”
“You’re probably right, but I know you well enough to know that you won’t quit until he moves on to the light and can rest in peace. Is that why you’ve been acting so strange lately?”
“I’ve been acting strange?” She laughed. “I’m not the one who dropped my cell phone in the bayou.” Without another word, she turned and walked away from me. It was just like her to get in the last word and make it a very good one.
Chapter Eight
I’d never been overly fond of the French, though I didn’t exactly have a rational reason for it.
Like boathouses, however, nothing ever seemed to turn up good when the French were around. Henry wasn’t particularly bad or even annoying in any specific way, but something about his snobby demeanor simply rubbed me the wrong way most of the time. I’d gotten him ready to carry out our plan, but I had a gut feeling that something was going to go wrong from the very outset.
Ellen was torn between being in the house if and when the ghost made his violent entrance, and when he came to the dock to leave for his nighttime outing. We finally decided to divide and conquer. Since it was more likely that there would be better communication after the spirit had a chance to cool down a bit, she and Henry went to the docks at about ten minutes until 10:00 and I sat poised to watch all hell break loose in the dining room.
My intention, when the meal started, was to take things a bit slower so that I wouldn’t have that overstuffed feeling when it came time to chase Archie after dessert. I’d taken to calling our spirit Archie, though each time I did, I was treated to one of Ellen’s looks. As I was saying, my intention had been to be a bit more selective about my dining that evening; what I discovered, instead, was that I had neither the desire nor the willpower to resist the temptations that were laid in front of me. Therefore, when Ellen and Henry left to go to the boathouse, I was sitting rather uncomfortably in the dining room, sipping the strong coffee that seemed to be the only remedy for easing the tight discomfort of my engorged gut.
The band had stuck to smooth jazz throughout dinner, but, just like before, they kicked things up a notch as the diners began to sit back and grumble about being overly-full. Again, about halfway through the number, all hell broke loose. Being in a position to expect it, I was a little bit more detached from the scene than I had been on the first night and looked on with a great deal more curiosity than I had when I initially witnessed Archie’s violent outburst. I’m beginning to think that Archie doesn’t really appreciate jazz. As the thought entered my mind, I took out the EMF and started recording the energy levels.
I’d already planned to use the back stairway in order to go down into the kitchen. From experience, I knew that when the diners started rushing for the exit, the main stairs would be completely blocked and I’d be stuck. Knowing that Archie would go down to the kitchen and toss things around a bit before heading out to the dock, I took my time watching the needles on the EMF begin to become much more violent as I approached the kitchen. He’s a little quicker tonight. Already in the kitchen.
The banging of pots and pans as they flew about the empty kitchen; empty because the kitchen staff had gotten wise to the fact that when the noise in the dining room started, they were next in the path of hurricane Archie. Waiting a count to allow all of the pots and pans to land, I entered the kitchen and watched the back door open and close as Archie left the building.
Hurrying a bit, because Ellen was on the other end of the destination of the violent spirit, I hustled to the door and out onto the lawn. I could see Archie approaching the docks and the boathouse and could hear Ellen begin speaking to him and Henry quickly translating. I picked up my pace a bit in order to catch up to the action.
Before I made it to the dock, Archie screamed something that would have made even the most stoic of men soil their britches and then bull-rushed Henry and Ellen. Ellen, having the ability to sense and anticipate certain feelings and behaviors, dove out of the way and rolled to safety, but Henry took the full brunt of Archie’s charge and flew at least a dozen yards through the air before making an enormous splash into the murky water and disappearing from view.
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nbsp; I was actually pretty impressed with the force that Archie had behind his rush; I hadn’t seen anything nearly so powerful since the 2012 Rose Bowl. Once he’d dispatched Henry, I was afraid that he’d turn on Ellen, but he seemed to have satisfied his anger and turned toward the boathouse. Though I was rushing forward, the fact that he opened the door and walked right into the boathouse was not lost on me and I froze, knowing that what he had just done was completely impossible.
By the time I reached the dock, Henry had reappeared above the water and he was, perhaps, in an even fouler mood than Archie had been. With his cursing as he attempted to get his feet under him in the slippery mud of the bayou bottom, little more attention was being paid to the now morose spirit who, like he had every night for nearly two centuries, began to pole the pirogue out into the night.
At almost the same instant that we were hauling Henry out of the water and helping to get himself steady on solid ground, Archie disappeared through the Cypress trees and for the third time, we had accomplished nothing. Well, what I thought was nothing, anyway. What had resulted in silence the two previous nights, was anything but as Henry began his rebuke of Ellen and me.
“You people are out of your minds!” he shouted. “Ghost hunting and running around in the dark actually wanting to catch and speak to these… these demonic spirits! I could have been killed! You can find yourselves another translator. I am finished! Finished! Do you understand me?”
Ellen had the same effect on Henry that she seemed to have on agitated ghosts and she began speaking to him in a calming voice. “I am so sorry that happened to you. I did not expect him to react in that way. I can certainly understand how you feel.”
It took several minutes of fast talking on her part to bring Henry’s anger level down to something that was a bit more manageable, though I could almost swear that I could still see steam coming out of his ears as he settled onto the lawn and was doing a great deal less shouting when he responded to a statement of question.