Dead Ends

by JT Ellison

  She spits out the word and I feel it as strongly as if an arrow has been shot into my heart.

  “If everyone disappeared, where did they go?”

  She shakes her head, plays with the cord of her earbuds. “I don’t know. No one knows. The wind took them, that’s what the legend says. But that’s silly. Old wives’ tale. You have a good day. Be safe getting back up to Nashville, you hear?” She starts to jog away, but I yell, “Wait!”

  She stops, jogging in place.

  “If there aren’t any bodies, why is there a graveyard?”

  She shrugs. “Gotta honor the dead somehow. Besides,” and she grins, “you never know who might come along to tend it.”

  I try to make sense of this tale as I hurry back to the cabin. This is the second time that girl has said something about us that we haven’t shared, and I am damn good and ready to get out of here as quickly as possible. The bucolic pond has suddenly become alive and hateful, and I fear we are not safe.

  I shouldn’t have gone to the cave.

  We shouldn’t have gone into the house.

  My dreams are letting in something old, something evil, and I must stop it, I must stop them.

  They are watching. They are waiting.

  I round the last curve and realize the path has been washed out. I am forced to turn around, go back the way I came, toward the running girl and the graveyard. The idea fills me with so much dread I decide to cut across the marshy thicket, knowing if I head toward the sun I will run into the cabin.

  But I am disoriented, and as the reeds part in front of me, I realize I have gone in a circle and have ended up back at the cave.

  “Rebecca,” a gentle, mother’s voice calls, the words a whisper on the wind. “Come and see.”

  The rushes begin to move, the breeze settling in, the updraft from the valley below growing stronger. I am powerless against it. My feet move without my consent.

  The maw opens to welcome me back, and I begin to shake. I am inside now, deeper than before, the light flickering on my phone. The smell is different, rancid, wrong. I know it’s only mud kicked up by the storm, by the rain, by the wind, but something is stirring in my primordial brain, and I stumble. I go down hard, on both knees, falling forward into the muck.

  I land awkwardly. Something juts into my ribs, and the pain makes me lurch to the side.

  I see the faces then, the skulls, the mouths agape, the bones of their lost bodies white in the darkness.

  The family is here. The Atwood family is inside the cave. The rising water has unearthed their bones. The wind can’t get them anymore.

  I run until I can run no more. I am covered in mud and muck and the dust of a nearly century-old grave. I still have no real idea what happened in the cave, how I have manifested this horror, but if I can make it back to the lake, make it back to the girls, all will be forgiven. We will leave, and never come back.

  The girl is standing in the trees. She has approached silently, sneaking up behind me. When she steps from behind the trunk of the ash, I no longer see the modern running shorts and bra top, nor earbuds, but an odd black dress, a braid, the glint of silver eyeglasses, all in a blur because she scares me and I run. It’s the only reasonable thing to do, considering there is a strange woman approaching me. I run as fast as I can back toward the house. The girls will save me. The girls will shelter me.

  “You there. You. Girl. Stop! What are you doing? That woman needs help. What have you done? My God, is she…?”

  She stops her pursuit to stare into the lake. It’s a trick, my mind says. Keep running. But I look back once, in time to see her face clearly in the reflection of the lake light. Her face changes, brows coming together as if she’s just had a thought. It is shaded in blue.

  And then she smiles. And I feel the wind begin to stir beneath her hands.

  Shit. Oh, this is not good. Not good at all.

  I am fast but she runs me down easily, her feet pounding on the hard earth behind me, closer and closer, until I am down in the dirt on my knees, and she rolls on top of me, breathing heavily.

  “Stop fighting. This is your destiny. You have to come with me. Mother wants you.”

  On the ridge, I see her, standing, arms up, as if she is beckoning me home.

  “Catwood,” I whisper.

  Charlise smiles benevolently, and her words float down from the hill. “You are chosen. You are one of us.”

  My face is in the water before I can draw a breath. The girl holds me there until I can see the small things crawling in the mud below, small silver fish come to explore my nose, my mouth, my eyes and ears. And then I am adrift. The fear and horror have fled. It is a beautiful place, green and gold and silver. I love looking at the microcosm. It is like the cave, but wet, and willowy.

  When I am fully relaxed, the girl helps me from the water, and together, side by side, we march up the hill to protect the land below.

  From a distance, I hear my friends, crying, calling, and one voice above the rest, Ellie, shrieking my name over and over, as if I am a lost dog.

  I glance back over my shoulder as we walk away.

  Ellie is pulling the body from the water.

  My body.

  Why did it have to be her who found me? She will never recover from this. She will always blame herself.

  My friends gather on the muddy bank, crooning my name, speaking as one, a chant being taken up by the hillside and the crickets and the birds and the frogs, and the wind catches the tune and whistles along. It starts as one word, then becomes another, one more sibilant, more cunning, more familiar to the fallow fields.

  “Rebecca Catwood, Rebecca Catwood, Rebecca Catwood.”

  Looking for the Lost

  Ariel Lawhon

  Phelipeaux Inlet

  An hour’s boat ride from New Orleans

  3:00 a.m. today

  Afterward, I thought of ways to save her. It’s an old man’s fantasy, you see. Going back. Playing what if. A way to keep yourself sane during the long unending years that follow losing a woman like that. But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you can’t go back. You can’t do things over. There is only, ever, right now.

  And in this particular moment I’m standing at the edge of a mass grave, at three in the morning, flanked by adolescent boys. I paid them to bring me here. Half up front and half when we’re back at the Orleans Marina. And if they aren’t stoned already, I’m certain they will be by lunchtime. Two hundred dollars goes a long way on Bourbon Street.

  As for me, I came here to find a body. But I can’t find the body until I find the burial manifest. And that will require a number of felonious acts, not the least of which includes breaking and entering. Thus the boys. Two of them. Carlos and Wyatt. Or Piss and Vinegar, as I came to think of them on our choppy ride up the Mississippi.

  “It’s dark as shit,” Piss says behind me.

  “It’s the middle of the night, dumbass.” Vinegar is scared, and that makes him loud. Brash. It also makes him dangerous, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  “Vinny,” I say, searching out his tall, arrogant form in the darkness. “I’m calling you Vinny from now on. Vinegar is a stupid name.”

  “My name’s Carlos,” Vinny says, and then turns to Piss. “Old man’s gone batshit crazy.”

  I’m not so old that I don’t enjoy the hint of fear in his voice—a stutter at the end of each hard consonant.

  Piss shrugs beside me. “Old man has the money. Who cares?”

  “Old man has a name,” I say.

  Neither of them asks.

  Baker. Henri Baker. Detective Henri Baker, thank-you-very-goddamn-much-for-asking.

  Vinny turns this way and that, peering into the varying shades of blackness, and asks, “Where we going?”

  “That way.” I point toward the deeper shadows. Beyond them lie a road and a church, a building filled with decaying shoes, and our destination: an abandoned chateau turned insane asylum turned records depository.

  Two thi
ngs I required of Piss: that he secure the motorboat, and that he bring the flashlights. He passes them out now, handing mine to me rather than tossing it like he does to Vinny. I resent this and I yank it out of his hand. Then I turn and lead the way, carefully skirting the open trench that lies to our right.

  I’ve grown accustomed to death over the last four decades, but still the bodies make me nervous. A row of coffins is stacked three deep and two wide at the bottom of the hole. Names are scrawled on the side of each pine box in the off chance that someone comes to claim them. They are covered, loosely, by sheets of plywood, waiting for a few more dearly departed to fill the trench so it can be covered over with the loamy soil. A work detail from the Louisiana State Penitentiary—or the Potter’s Navy, as they call themselves—won’t fill in the trench until it’s full, most likely tomorrow by the look of things.

  Vinny makes the sign of the cross as he passes the coffins, and my heart clenches. Suddenly June is beside me. I can feel her as I navigate all this death. I can almost see her long, thin fingers flutter across her chest as she tiptoes through this eerie place, praying for the dead. God, our father, your power brings us to birth. My beautiful wife—nothing more than ghost and memory. Your providence guides our lives, by your command we return to dust. Pronounces blessing on the nameless dead beneath my feet. Lord, those who die still live in your presence, their lives change but do not end. Petitions for all the souls known to God alone. May they rejoice in your kingdom, all our tears are washed away.

  If there’s a lonelier place on earth, I’ve never seen it. Phelipeaux Inlet is accessible only by water and boasts a population of twenty thousand: all of them dead. This is where New Orleans dumps her forgotten souls. The misfits are buried here. The drug addicts and prostitutes and runaways. Unclaimed. Abandoned. Misplaced. Don’t know what it means to sign papers for a “city burial” when you’re standing in the morgue, broke and desperate and trembling from the shock of identifying your loved one? This is it. Where they send the remains. You’ll never be able to lay flowers on the grave, however. Phelipeaux Inlet is not open to the public. As a matter of fact, admittance is forbidden without written permission from the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

  Trespassing.

  Add that to my list of crimes.

  Forty years ago, a body was found by divers beneath the pier at Orleans Marina. It was chained to a fifty-pound cinder block. Poor bastard sunk like a stone. And he might have stayed there forever—little more than bones and rotted clothing—if city planners hadn’t decided that the marina needed some beautification. The skeleton was intact. Male. Middle-aged. And completely unidentifiable. The only thing they could determine for sure was cause of death: blunt-force trauma to the head. The body was sent here in a burlap sack marked John Doe. And I will not leave this cemetery until I learn exactly where they buried him.

  I believe Phelipeaux Inlet to be the final resting place of the missing and long-assumed-dead gangster Bertrand Guidry. He’s the one stuffed in that burlap sack. I’m certain of it. I know the date of his death: June 14, 1977. I know the murder weapon: a cast iron skillet. And I know why my wife killed him.

  Shit.

  “Don’t do that!” I holler at Vinny. He’s kicking a short, white burial marker. There are no headstones in this cemetery, only steel posts stuck in the dirt like Burma Shave signs for the dead. This one reads 173 and it’s listing heavily to the side after Vinny’s repeated attacks.

  “Why do you care?” He stomps it again. In the beam from my flashlight I can see the soil around its base crumbling, showing the gnarled roots of a clump of grass.

  “Have a little respect for the dead.”

  “Fuck.” Kick. “The.” Kick. “Dead.” Kick. With every word Vinny smashes his boot against the post even harder.

  Vinny is young and arrogant, and his back is turned to me. When he lifts his foot to deliver another blow, I knock his other leg out from under him. He lands, hard, on his back. I’m quicker than I should be, what with the age and arthritis and a general case of I-don’t-give-a-shit-anymore. I’ve got one foot pressed against his head, shoving it to the ground, before he can even roll onto his side.

  The toe of my polished loafer digs into his temple. “You like that?” I ask.

  Vinny thrashes on the ground, and Piss just looks at me, stunned. “You like messing with the dead? Go ahead. There’s one about twelve inches beneath your mangy skull.”

  “Get the fuck off me, you fucking old man!”

  “Stop using that word. It’s rude.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I press harder.

  He screams, flailing his arms and legs. “Okay, I’ll stop. Shit. I’ll stop.”

  “Say, ‘Please.’”

  “Please.”

  “Say, ‘Please, Detective Baker.’”

  Both boys freeze. Piss takes a step backward and throws a look over my shoulder to where he dragged the boat onto the shore not long ago.

  “You’re a cop?” Vinny whines. “You didn’t say you were a cop!”

  “You didn’t ask. But since you’re curious, New Orleans PD. Retired. Does that bother you?”

  His head shakes beneath my foot. “No. Not at all.”

  “You want up?”

  “Yes, please.” He pauses and then adds, “Detective.”

  “You still want the rest of your money?”

  “Yes.”

  “You won’t get it until we’re back at the marina.”

  “Right,” Vinny says.

  “So no more problems?”

  “None.”

  I lift my foot and step away.

  Vinny scrambles to his feet, shoulders squared, and turns back to the boat. He gives me the one-fingered salute and shouts over his shoulder, “Fuck you, old man! I did my part. I got you here. Find me when you’re done.”

  Piss found the boat and brought the flashlights, but Vinny is the genius with maps. He’s the one who navigated the river and the estuaries and brought us to the inlet without a single wrong turn. I don’t need him for the next part. Let him sit and pout, for all I care.

  “This way,” I say to Piss and turn my flashlight toward the overgrown road that leads into the cypress forest. The trees look humanoid in the dark, with their bulbous trunks and fingerlike roots, as if they might stand up and start moving toward us at any moment. The air smells of moss and river and damp soil. It smells like the sweat of a teenage boy.

  Piss looks back toward the boat. Vinny sits in the prow, scowling at us. “What if he leaves without us?”

  “He won’t.”

  “But—”

  “He won’t.”

  “Whatever you say, old man. Now where are we going?”

  “To commit a felony.”

  Piss grins for the first time since we pulled ashore. There’s a gap between his front teeth wide enough to spit through, and I think this makes him look younger somehow. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I specialize in felonies.”

  I’d be lying if I said this surprised me. He’s the sort of kid I’d have enlisted as an informant if I was still on the force.

  It takes us less than ten minutes to hike across the quiet, overgrown inlet. We can see only as far as the beam of our flashlights will reach, but the road is clear enough. After a while we pass a redbrick chapel drowning in vines. It’s an empty nest of a building, front door boarded with plywood, stained-glass windows pitted by the straight aim of vandals. No one prays there anymore.

  And yet June would have loved it, would have insisted on stopping. Isn’t it sad? Isn’t it lovely? she would whisper, and grab my hand. She’d climb through one of the low windows to inhale the scent of decaying wood and damp stone, kneel before the altar, and breathe prayers—for me, perhaps. God knows I need them.

  My body aches, desperate for her phantom touch, the way she’d tug my earlobe between thumb and forefinger. Her cool hand at the base of my neck. Feet tucked between my calves as she slept. Anything. Everythi
ng. I miss the entirety of her. Forty years has not diminished this longing.

  We move on, and the chapel is soon hidden behind a bend in the road. It’s a bit lighter now, getting closer to dawn, and the vision of my wife evaporates. Her departure is like pulling the scab from an aging wound, one I pick constantly to keep the pain fresh.

  Another building comes into view—a workhouse where the female inmates of Bergeron Asylum were put to work re-soling shoes. I am told that the floor is piled with hundreds of rotting shoes, that it looks like a cobbler’s nightmare inside. But I don’t care about the workhouse tonight. I’m looking for the asylum itself, the former Bergeron Chateau. A century-old, three-story brick manor built to look like a sprawling home in the French countryside. It became an asylum when its owner, Sabine Bergeron, began seeing snakes on the walls. Until her death, she was the only patient. Afterward, her family realized they could make a fortune housing New Orleans’ psychotic upper crust. Then, decades later, the city bought the entire three-hundred-acre estate and turned it into a taxpayer-funded cemetery.

  Another bend in the road and the Chateau looms before us, dark and imposing. At one point the house was blocked by heavy, wrought-iron gates, but these have come loose from their posts and hang lopsided at either side of the driveway. Weeds have choked out the lawn, and vines cover much of the building.

  Once burials became the primary function of Phelipeaux Inlet, the Chateau fell into disrepair. It is, apparently, bad form to house the mentally ill in the same location they will most likely be buried after one too many shock treatments. I have elected not to tell Piss most of what has happened here over the years. Adolescent boys are famous for their lack of courage. So it is with complete ignorance that he struts down the driveway, up the crumbling steps, and picks the single padlock barring us from the Chateau.