by C. L. Bevill
“Some dream,” the same voice said quietly.
Jane looked over her shoulder, simultaneously wiping the drip of saliva from her face. The young man was mildly interested but kept glancing at the other people in the café. The lines of computer monitors on the tables were mostly occupied. The tapping of fingers on keyboards was the only sound to accompany them. The ghostly glare of the screens was the only light in the room and illuminated the features of the occupied individuals like a flashlight on a storyteller’s on a dark night around a dying campfire. It was an eerie, uncommonly silent place regardless of the presence of normally gregarious humans.
“Nightmare,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t really care,” the clerk said. He kept the level of his voice low as if they sat in a library. “The owner freaks if someone sleeps in here, though. ‘We’re not a hotel,’ he says, except he’s got this nasal voice that is so annoying.”
Jane nodded, nudged the mouse to wake up the computer screen, and went back to looking at the words there. She couldn’t concentrate with the young man looming over her shoulder, and finally, he walked on when someone a table over said, “Little help here?”
The dream. That stupid dream. Jane thought about it. She’d been dying, really dying. If she closed her eyes she thought she could probably taste the copper tang of blood in her mouth. It wasn’t me. That couldn’t have been me. She looked down at herself. She’d seen that there were very few scars on her. Her tummy wasn’t swollen with blood. There were no marks on her face where the man had repeatedly punched her face. The man in the dream definitely hadn’t been Raoul with the bald head and the neck tattoo. I’m not dead. I didn’t die. I must have been dreaming about someone else.
But that pendant, the one that was so similar to the one she’d jerked off the beast, what about that? Jane took it out of her pocket. Like her money, she kept it with her, even though it gave her goose bumps to touch its cold surface. It was a similar size to the one in her dream, but it was made from gold. No ominous red eyes stared at her insinuating a ghastly message she couldn’t interpret.
Both necklaces had been on a leather cord. One on a young man from a dream who seemingly had no humanity left in him. One had been on a monster, something called a Roux-Ga-Roux, a legend from the bayous. It had more humanity than the dream man. It had let her go when it could have struck her down. Why would an animal be wearing a medallion? Was it because a cord was more substantial and less likely to break? That didn’t really work, did it?
Jane put the pendant down on the table. She took a drink of her now-cold chocolate and grimaced. It didn’t taste as good when it was halfway gone to iciness. Her stomach grumbled that it was empty, but then she hadn’t eaten anything since Marinette had given her a banana at lunch, who knew how many hours earlier.
If I showed this, she pointed at the medallion on its broken thong, to Marinette, would she tell me another spooky tale from the bayou? A witch made the loup-garou and made him wear the medallion? Now that I snatched it from his neck, what happens?
Her eyes came up to the computer monitor. She nudged the mouse again. While she had contemplated the vastness of her naval the screen had gone to sleep again. Jane would have put her head back down on her arm, but she was afraid she would nod off again.
Jane looked at the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. The numbers at the bottom right said it was ten minutes after 8 p.m. Her head spun left toward the doors leading outside. All the windows and doors of the café were blacked out so people using the computers wouldn’t have to deal with the glare on the monitor’s screens. There was a little foyer in-between the door and another exterior door so the light wouldn’t be let in every time someone came or went.
She didn’t need to see what was out there or rather what was no longer out there. The sun had gone down while she slept. No, it went down since the clerk woke me up. Or, she sat up straight in the chair, just as he woke me up.
Jane looked around. No one paid her any mind. If she thought about it, she would have wondered if she was invisible. Practice at becoming neutral and bland paid off. She slumped her shoulders when she walked. She avoided eye contact when she could. It didn’t work all the time, but when she concentrated on it, she was like a light, shifting breeze that everyone took for granted.
Except there was one individual who seemed to live in the mistiness of her consciousness. Somehow she knew he wasn’t there, watching her from the blackness of the corners of the Internet café. Jane didn’t have any idea where he was. He’d spoken to her again, only hours before. The vagueness of the bits of the dream tickled her brain.
He spoke to me in the dream, she realized. He tried to wake me up. I heard his words just before the clerk said something to me.
Rubbing at the corners of her temple, she focused harder. It didn’t help. She drained the remainder of the cold chocolate drink and threw the empty cup into the garbage container next to the desk. She folded her notebook up and put the pen into her pocket.
There was a bus pass in her other pocket. She would need it to make it back to the warehouse she was using as a place to sleep. But she was far from there, and she wasn’t sure how late the buses ran. Chances were good that she might have to walk part of the way.
Walk through deep darkness and morsels of night heavier than stone.
Jane exited Microsoft Explorer with a deft click of the mouse and sighed. Was I scared of the dark when I was a child? No, I don’t think I was. But I’m scared of the dark now. No, I’m not. I’m scared of what goes bump in the night.
Standing, she pushed her chair back and then headed for the door. The clerk smiled crookedly at her as if they were suddenly friends. She nodded at him and went through the first door. She hesitated at the second one. A pair of teenagers came through, and she unconsciously smiled at them. One eyed her speculatively and said, “Hey, baby.”
“Hey,” she said and went outside. Not invisible again. What do I have to do? Smear dirt on my face?
Outside it wasn’t all darkness and gloom. The skies in the west were still pink. Above her was indigo night with stars beginning to twinkle even with the light pollution of the large city that was New Orleans. Streetlights had come on and people wandered down the sidewalks. It wasn’t an empty avenue in the woods with the owls singing mournfully and the branches behind her creaking menacingly.
The bus stop was one block over.
Jane shivered despite the temperature still being in the seventies. She tried to ignore the mounting shadows and think about her search for her identity. She’d searched the name, Margot Alder, and found people with the same name who clearly weren’t her and weren’t connected to Louisiana. The name wasn’t particularly common and it made it easy for Jane to confirm that Dr. Millet was shady at best. Certainly, a woman as dangerous as he’d implied would have made some press, and since Jane wasn’t past thirty years old, the press wouldn’t be that old.
Either Margot didn’t exist, or the press had been extraordinarily low key.
Likewise, Dr. Millet wasn’t a real doctor. A recognized psychotherapist or psychiatrist would have licensure in the state where he practiced. The Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists didn’t recognize his name. She had checked all the categories just to be sure. He wasn’t a clinical psychologist or a social psychologist or a school psychologist or any of the various incarnations of psychologists.
She’d also searched for M.D.’s, just to be on the safe side. There were three Dr. Millets in the country that practiced psychiatry. One was a woman, and the other two were located in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Paranoid amnesiac: 1. Nameless pursuers: zip. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me, she told herself ironically.
The orderly named Philippe had it correct. There wasn’t a real Dr. Millet. There was someone who’d come to the hospital to collect her with Raoul in hand. If she’d complained to the hospital officials that Raoul had been the one att
acking her or transporting her with handcuffs, then she would have been dismissed as a paranoid schizophrenic who had been off her meds for too long.
Of course, Jane thought. I can trust the doctor at the hospital now? Maybe. Maybe not. The police didn’t seem inclined to do anything. No one was truly murdered, so where was the crime? There’s only a woman who claims to have forgotten everything and who hears a man’s voice in her head and who has people and things after her. No one recognizes her, and so what if some unknown people came to get her? Unknown people who lied about who they were and where they were from? Alfred Hitchcock, move the eff over because here’s the ultimate who-the-hell-did-what plot.
Jane paused halfway down the block. Who can I trust? Him. He tried to help me. People streamed around her. Hey, you! she thought in a hard manner.
There wasn’t an answer.
That’s not convenient, she decided. If he’s real, wouldn’t he answer me?
The bus stop was already occupied by a group of people. Most appeared as though they were on their way home from working in the Quarter. Businessmen, college students, and blue collar workers all mingled together waiting for public transportation.
Jane fit right in, although she knew she didn’t really fit in. She knew the next time she went to the Internet café she would look up telepathy and search for the meaning of what she was experiencing. She didn’t remember how she understood what she was undergoing was wrong. Only people who are truly delusional would go through something like this. She frowned to herself. I don’t feel truly delusional.
On the contrary, as Jane had gotten sufficient sleep, and the aches in her muscles had faded, she felt better and better. Seeing evidence on the computer monitor that a man had factitiously called himself a doctor and said erroneously she was a woman named Margot Alder made Jane feel justified.
There was evidence she wasn’t just a common nutjob.
“I’m an uncommon nutjob,” Jane muttered.
“Psychic readings?” a nearby woman asked the man standing next to Jane.
“No, thanks,” he said promptly. He was wearing a suit and reading Newsweek on his iPad.
“Madame Zorphea is always accurate,” the woman said arrogantly. “Soon you will have issues at your business that will tax you, oui.”
“I’m going to call the police on Madame Zorphea if she doesn’t leave me alone,” the suit said.
Madame Zorphea turned to Jane. “Five dollars for a reading. Ask the question you know you most want to hear the answer to.”
Jane looked at the so-called psychic. She was a woman in her forties. She might have been Hispanic or African American. It was difficult to tell. Her eyes were a café au lait brown and her skin the shade of aged ivory. She tried to affect the Cajun accent, but Jane didn’t think she was doing a very good job. Jane had heard too many of the real thing lately.
Madame Zorphea’s clothing didn’t really portray her as a psychic either. The well-washed t-shirt announced, “We got rid of the kids. The cat was allergic.” She supplemented the top with khaki cargo pants. The shoes were purple Crocs. However, she did have a vibrant red silk scarf wrapped around her hair and a single gold earring for effect.
That’s working as well as the fake Cajun accent.
The woman reached out and took Jane’s hand. Jane didn’t like that and jerked it back.
Madame Zorphea became like a statue. Her cream-filled eyes stared at Jane with something that looked like finely distilled horror. Slowly she brushed the hand that had touched Jane on her cargo pants as if she had touched something filthy. “Sorry,” she muttered.
Jane glanced around and found no one was paying attention again. She looked back at the psychic and saw the woman was backing up without looking away from Jane.
“Wait,” Jane said. “What did you feel?”
“Can’t feel things from some people,” the woman answered awkwardly. The Cajun accent had vanished. “Real hard-like. Sorry. Can’t do anything for you.” Abruptly she turned and walked away.
The man in the business suit said, “I’ve never seen one of them give up so easy.”
Jane looked after the woman. She was moving out, her stride lengthening. In a moment, Madame Zorphea would be sprinting. As if she’s afraid of something. Afraid of me?
“Of course, the street people are working hard since most people are a little reluctant to come out after all the large dog sightings,” the suit went on. “Big dogs. Right. Someone just adding a little more mystique to the Big Easy.”
Jane didn’t say anything to the man in the suit. She went after the psychic. She wanted an answer. If she had to pay the woman, she would.
The psychic cast a look over her shoulder, sighted Jane in hot pursuit, and began to speed up. It was the fastest she could go without running.
“Hey!” Jane yelled. “I just want to ask you a question!” The other woman didn’t slow down. “I’ll pay you!”
“You can pay me, sweetie,” a panhandler called as Jane swept past him.
The rush of the psychic made Jane all the more determined. She wanted to know what the woman had sensed or thought or seen or whatever it was that had happened.
The red scarf was visible as Madame Zorphea went under one of the ornate black streetlights and then she dashed sideways down a street. Jane plunged after her. She glanced up at a street sign and saw it was Basin Street.
The psychic dashed across the split four lane, passed a statue of Benito Juarez, and angled toward an odd gathering of small buildings. She threw a look over her shoulder at Jane and dived through a wrought iron gate.
Jane pulled up when the streetlight in the grassy median of the split lane showed what the small buildings really were. It was one of New Orleans’ infamous cemeteries. The brass plaque said this one was St. Louis Cemetery #1. There were other words denoting its origins in 18th-century Louisiana, but she was focused on what else was out there.
There weren’t any lights within the cemetery. It was all blackness and a dearth of light. Shrouded statues of angels protruded into the skies like heavenly warriors. The iron crosses guarding the gates did little to prevent anyone from coming or going as they wished.
“I just wanted to ask a question!” Jane yelled after the woman. Madame Zorphea vanished into the city of the dead, slithering into fathomless blackness. Only the lighter colors of the unique tombs showed that there were obstructions in the gloom. Angels peered into the night, watching motionlessly.
“Can’t he’p you!” the woman yelled back. “You is cursed! Cursed wicked bad! Ain’t no one can he’p you!”
Chapter 10
Graves are of all sizes. – English proverb
Jane stared into the bleak night, into the cathedral of the dead. The aboveground vaults were miniature temples dedicated to the deceased. Constructed of brick and mortar, newer ones from cement and rebar, they varied as much as the individuals they protected. Marie Laveau, the notorious 19th-century Voodoo Queen, was reputedly buried within this very place. Devotees would leave X’s scrawled on her tomb for her undead blessing.
Cursed? What the hell? Jane looked around her. Suddenly the night was still and movement was conspicuously absent. Stupidly, she had run after the psychic, determined to get an answer, disregarding any danger to herself.
Besides the man named Raoul, there was the inherent danger of going in an area that was heavily crime ridden. Some of the most legendary cities of the dead in New Orleans were located next to ill-famed housing projects. Robbery was rampant here, even on holiest ground. Jane didn’t know where the information in her head was coming from, but she did know that sticking around the area was a bad idea, even in broad daylight.
Of course she went in after the psychic. “Just tell me what you mean!” Jane bellowed back and nothing answered.
At either side of her rows of crypts stretched away into the dusk. Tiny buildings were framed with wrought iron gates and adorned by ornate statuary in some cases. None were exactly the same. One vault w
as merely two steps high and had a rounded grave marker on one end. Another was a replica of a Greek temple, complete with columns and a goddess guarding the eternal remains. Her arms strained toward the gods, and her white eyes looked at nothingness. Platform tombs were massively constructed rectangles with a small door in front where the remains would be placed inside. The door doubled as the marker with the indecipherable words engraved there. The darkness was beginning to weigh heavily on the area, and Jane couldn’t have read the words even if she had felt like stopping to try.
Jane hesitated a hundred feet in. She stood next to a tomb with an iron fence. The fence was close to the front of the tomb and obviously erected in order to prevent any intrusion or vandalism. The sharp arrows on top of the fence would prevent most people from crawling into the close area. The great iron cross might perform a similar action for those who truly believed.
Many of the tombs had similar features, built by loved ones who wished their dearly departed to be safe, even in the time after death.
She cocked her head and listened.
Oddly there was no sound of passing cars or the noise coming from people passing on the street. It was a tremendous void of inactivity. There was Jane, and there were the hundreds of dead entombed there. Some of the tombs were barely standing, being so old that bricks had tumbled out. If some dead thing stepped out and tapped on her shoulder, she wouldn’t have been surprised.
This is really a city of the dead.
The response was a tremulous growl in her head.
Jane looked around. That was inside me. Not outside. Hello? Was the other one around her? Was he close enough to understand what was happening? Was he following her again, intent on his secrecy? Perhaps it was something else entirely.
She couldn’t help the bloom of fear that opened within her. He didn’t answer her. The psychic was undoubtedly long gone, having slipped out of the cemetery via a route Jane didn’t know about.
I’m going to kick Madame Zorphea in her little ESP-having ankle if I see her again. Then I’m going to hold her down and make her tell me what she meant about me being cursed, dammit. I’m tired of mysteries and secrets and curses…