The publisher felt better after their talk. He knew the sheriff, and he knew his friend wouldn’t be part of something like that. And Bobby didn’t think Auguste Dauphin was involved either. Maybe he fell into the river on his way home, or he was sleeping it off with some whore from the Fleur de Lis. He’d turn up before long.
“This is where it gets interesting,” Landry told Ted.
They both returned to the publisher’s office, and Sheriff St. John told the woman to come with him so they could look for Auguste. “Maybe he just got drunk last night and couldn’t find his way home,” he suggested, and the newspaperman would later recall that she looked anxious when the sheriff took her by the arm and escorted her out the door.
“Nobody ever saw Auguste Dauphin or his wife again,” Landry said. “The newspaper guy smelled a rat, but the sheriff assured him nothing happened. He said the woman wouldn’t talk to him and he sent her home. Auguste and his wife had no kids and no close friends, so for weeks nobody checked on her. When someone finally did, she had vanished.
“Since the sheriff could have been the last person to see the woman alive, the publisher was convinced that Sheriff St. John was involved, but he didn’t pursue his concerns. Years later the sheriff moved away, and thanks to the newspaper publisher’s habit of keeping extensive notes about everything, they became the basis for his articles ten years later. In a way they were a confession, a testimony of regret that he did nothing.
“In the voicemail the girl mentioned Remembering Day, but I couldn’t find anything under that name. There’s a lot online about Billy Whistler, though. He’s first mentioned in 1880, soon after Asher burned. It’s one of those legends that gets crazier with each retelling. And the girl’s voicemail shows people think he exists today.
“Some people call him a swamp creature; others say he’s a rougarou — a legendary Cajun werewolf that roams the bayous at night. He snatches helpless females and drags them off to his lair, where he ravages and maims them. He got the name because people claimed when he was near they heard an eerie whistle like a whip-poor-will’s call.”
Although every Cajun kid had heard the rougarou legends, Landry didn’t believe the story about Billy Whistler. Most likely people who thought the cult was weird created a myth to make them scarier and more bizarre. There might be some basis for the story, but for Landry it sounded like a myth just like the rougarou.
Ted wasn’t so sure. “Are you forgetting the voicemail? The girl said Billy Whistler’s real.”
“She said a lot of things, Ted. My job involves finding the truth, not accepting an anonymous caller’s far-out claims without knowing what they’re based on. This could be a joke, or a sicko, or a grudge against the cult from a long time ago. I don’t know what it is, but you and I shouldn’t assume anything yet.”
“What’ll it take to make you a believer?” Ted wanted Landry to be as intrigued as he. He could insist Landry go to Abbeville, but he hoped he’d get fired up on his own.
Landry laughed and reminded him that he often got tips on so-called mysteries. Most of them ended up explainable or downright false. Only a few merited further investigation, and ninety percent of those didn’t make the final cut. The ones that did became segments in his ghost-hunting series.
“You don’t pay me to believe everything,” he added. “My job is to debunk the fakes and investigate the others. That said, there may be something to this story. Let’s look at the facts. We have a cryptic voicemail that seems to be a cry for help. The Sons of Jehovah cult was real, their town burned, and the legend of Billy Whistler began. What he has to do with Asher, I have no idea.
“Somebody torched Asher the same night Auguste Dauphin disappeared. His wife sought help but ended up in the hands of a man she believed was part of a plot. Then she mysteriously disappeared too. It sounds like a monumental cover-up that someone has perpetuated over generations. It’s almost too crazy to believe, but you know what, Ted? I agree with you. I need to go to Vermilion Parish. This may be a big hoax. If it’s just a story about some crazy men burning a town a long time ago, maybe at least I can build a human-interest segment for the evening news. But maybe — just maybe — we get lucky and the caller’s telling the truth.”
Landry explained that the big question mark was the story about Billy Whistler. “If he’s real — which I doubt — then it makes everything much more interesting, and we may have another Bayou Hauntings episode. I’d like to mull this over tonight and talk again in the morning.”
Ted agreed, telling Landry he sure knew how to spin a story that got people’s attention.
Landry left the station around six. Although it wasn’t dark yet, he could already hear the tourists a block away on Bourbon — raucous laughter, cursing, horns honking, and a police whistle. Gotta love this town, he thought as he walked into Muriel’s on Jackson Square, a frequent stop on his way home. He found its bar a quiet refuge, something rare in the French Quarter. He ordered a vodka tonic, a dozen oysters and a bowl of seafood gumbo, and he chatted with the bartender until the food came.
During dinner he got an email from Ted. “After we talked, I found another interesting story,” it read. Attached was a 1921 article from the Abbeville newspaper headlined “Hunter Attacked by Rougarou.”
Landry was skeptical from the first because the article didn’t name the victim or witnesses. Names could be searched, relatives located, and stories confirmed. Otherwise you had just one more unverifiable tale.
Four men had been hunting one night in the woods in south Vermilion Parish. One became separated from his friends, and a creature he called a rougarou attacked him. Its body was contorted and hairy, and it had long arms and sharp fingernails. The hunter said he sliced the creature’s face and arm with his knife, escaping when his friends heard the clamor and came running, and the thing disappeared into the forest.
Landry wondered what kind of animal the hunter had encountered. The rougarous were a myth, so he figured the man saw a monkey. They weren’t indigenous to Louisiana, although people said they saw monkeys from time to time. Experts believed they were pets that either got away or had been released into the wild when they became difficult to handle. What the guy thought was a rougarou was probably just a large, aggressive monkey — perhaps one with rabies.
He would have dismissed the entire story except for one sentence. The woods at night were filled with noise as birds, insects and mammals made their rounds. But this hunter heard something different — the warble of a whip-poor-will mere seconds before the creature emerged from the darkness.
The articles from 1890 said Billy Whistler had a unique warble. Forty years later a hunter reported encountering a rougarou who had the same whistle.
Coincidence? Maybe.
The stress of the day’s work, the drinks and the dinner crept over him and he felt exhausted. He settled his tab, walked two blocks to his apartment on St. Philip Street, and was in bed by nine. Questions flooded his mind, and it took longer than usual to fall asleep.
He had a recurring dream, awakening him each time in a cold sweat. All he could remember was a corpse swinging from a noose in a tree.
And the eerie call of a whip-poor-will.
CHAPTER THREE
It was almost five when the dreams went away. He slept until a ringing sound jarred him awake. The phone. He popped one eye open, then the other. Rays of sunshine flooded his bedroom. He fumbled for the phone and saw Cate’s name — and the time.
Nine thirty! He hadn’t overslept in years. Work-wise it didn’t matter because Landry dictated his own schedule, but he prided himself on being among the first to arrive at the station each morning.
He managed a sleepy hello and Cate asked why he wasn’t at work. He explained and told her he’d call later. After a quick shower, he hurried over to the station.
The receptionist said Ted had been looking for him, and he stuck his head in the boss’s door.
“Morning.”
“Morning. Everything all r
ight? I’ve been worried. I don’t think I’ve ever beaten you to work, and I wondered if you’d already left for Abbeville.”
“I had a rough night. Thanks to that stuff you made me read, I couldn’t sleep!”
Ted laughed. “It got my attention too. So what’s the verdict? Is it yea or nay on Vermilion Parish?”
“The article you sent last night clinched it. I’m convinced the hunter saw the creature some call Billy Whistler. It happened forty years after Asher, but there’s too much similarity in the stories, so I vote a major yes on investigating this one. Now we need to find out who left the voicemail.”
“I listened to the message again this morning. She sounds scared, and she wants someone to come stop bad things that are happening. It could be a prank, but my gut says it’s real. She mentioned things that happened a century ago like they’re still going on today. Bizarre. If you go to Abbeville, you might find out who she is.”
Cate phoned during the meeting. He returned the call, but she didn’t pick up. As the office manager of her father’s busy psychiatric practice, she had little time to talk during the day, and he didn’t bother leaving a message. She’d call when she got time.
He and Catherine Adams had known each other for just over two years. They’d shared a harrowing experience being kidnapped in an abandoned insane asylum on the Bayou Teche. They’d seen supernatural forces at work up in St. Francisville, and she supported him when his job turned dangerous now and then.
She lived in Galveston, six hours from New Orleans by car but a quick flight, and they got together as often as they could. They had discussed sharing an apartment, but his schedule was hectic and unpredictable. He might find out tomorrow he had to be in the northern part of the state for a week. Or get invited to New York for a talk show interview the next morning.
Independent and in a job she loved, Cate nixed the idea of moving. Sitting alone in a French Quarter apartment waiting for her boyfriend to breeze into town for a night or two didn’t appeal to her. They lived in different places and so for now, meeting two or three times a month would be it. He’d fly to Galveston, or she’d come to New Orleans, or they’d meet somewhere fun like the beach. They thought about the future, but with Landry’s increasing fame and his passion for investigating the paranormal, it might not happen for some time.
Landry put the file and his notes into a satchel and walked home. He loaded the car, crossed the Mississippi River bridge and followed highway 90 through Jefferson Parish toward New Iberia. He crossed the bayou drawbridge at Delcambre and passed men on the side of the road selling shrimp and crawfish from coolers in the back of a beat-up pickup.
For a moment he wished he’d brought an ice chest, but then he laughed at himself. Like other singles, he never fixed a meal at home. As mouth-watering as it sounded, there was no way he’d be boiling a mess of crawfish for one.
I think I’ll surprise Cate sometime and throw a shrimp and crawfish boil.
Landry passed through Erath and soon came to the Abbeville city limits, where he turned off the highway toward the downtown historic district. When working on a story, he had a routine he followed in a new place. He always hit three places: the historical society, the newspaper, and the most well-established funeral home in town. Funeral directors knew more about people, places and history than anybody else.
There was something else in Abbeville that would be helpful. Being a parish seat, it had a courthouse. Parish courthouses were treasure troves of information — records that dated back to the early days, long before the Civil War.
Only twelve thousand people lived in Abbeville, but tourists often visited, and a nice cultural center sat on Magdalen Square near the old Saint Mary Magdalen Catholic Church. He spent half an hour there talking to a man who’d grown up in Perry, a town down the road that Landry intended to visit. The man said Perry had been the first parish seat and a bustling river town in the mid-1800s, with several blacksmith shops and even more bawdy houses. After a political battle long ago, Abbeville became the seat of Vermilion Parish, and Perry’s population dwindled to a few hundred.
“What can you tell me about Asher?” Landry asked, and the man smiled.
“I have to confess I recognized you when you walked through the door. And I said to myself, ‘Bet he’s here about Asher.’”
These days everyone recognized the ghost hunter, especially here in Cajun country, where several of his Bayou Hauntings episodes happened. When he came to a town, everybody asked why.
“Asher’s one reason I came, but it’s not the only one. Do you know much about it?”
The man offered nothing Landry hadn’t heard already, but he offered what turned out to be an important suggestion.
“Look up a guy in Perry named Lee Alard. He’s getting old, but I hear his mind’s still good, and he knows a lot about parish history. You’ll learn a lot but watch he doesn’t mix in a little bull with the truth!” The man looked up Alard’s number and Landry thanked him for the tip.
As he left, Landry asked about restaurants, and he named two places in town, on opposite sides of the river. The oldest, Dupuy’s, opened not long after the Civil War, and Shucks was its upstart rival. Locals adamantly preferred one or the other, and they’d argue over which had the most scrumptious char-grilled oysters, crawfish etouffee and okra gumbo.
“How about you?” Landry asked, and the man said hands-down he’d choose Dupuy’s. Don’t miss the oysters, he added. Landry left with his mouth watering, wondering if he should eat or keep working. He chose the latter.
The 1890 article Ted had shown him ran in the Abbeville Meridional, a newspaper which still existed. He went to their office and learned the paper’s microfiche records resided at the public library but could be accessed online. That was helpful; searching online later would save time today.
Landry stopped for lunch at 1:30 because he couldn’t stop thinking about those oysters. Abbeville’s downtown area was compact, and people walked everywhere. He parked on the north side of the courthouse — his next destination — and walked through the square to Dupuy’s. The place was busy, and he opted for a seat at the crowded bar. Over the years, he found bars were the best places to learn information. He could talk to other patrons instead of sitting alone and wasting an opportunity.
The bar occupied the middle of a large room with tables along one side. He took a seat next to a man in his forties who was washing down a plate of alligator bites with a Crying Eagle Louisiana Lager. The man said the best things on the menu were the crab cakes and the oysters. In a few minutes Landry had a beer, and soon a plate of oysters de ville arrived, followed by the flakiest, lightest and most delicious crab cakes he’d ever tasted. He left with a full stomach, a little more local lore about Billy Whistler, and a serious doubt that Shucks could outdo the experience here. Dupuy’s was fun, boisterous and full of locals who obviously loved this place. He knew he’d be back, but he also had to try their rival, Shuck’s.
He had to keep moving; it was after three and he had two stops left — the courthouse and the funeral home. But there was also Lee Alard. Since he was here, he should try to meet the man. He called, spoke to a caregiver named Ruby, and arranged a meeting for tomorrow morning. The courthouse closed in just over an hour; he’d knock it out and catch the funeral home on his next trip.
It was clear already that he’d be back to this quaint town. Everyone he talked to had a theory about Asher, and a few knew the Billy Whistler legend. He’d spend more time with the locals, and perhaps even learn the identity of the scared girl who left the voicemail.
Parish courthouses held scores of records, often dating back to its original settlers. But in many parishes, pre-Civil War records didn’t exist today. When Union troops marched through towns in Louisiana, they often torched important buildings and destroyed priceless history. Landry had looked up this courthouse and discovered good news and bad. After surviving the War, it burned in 1885. He was looking for earlier records, and he hoped some still e
xisted.
With its six white columns facing Magdalen Square to the west, the beautiful Greek revival building resembled an antebellum mansion. The entrance was on the north side under a beautiful New Orleans-style wrought-iron balcony. He passed through a metal detector, and a friendly officer named Tip directed him down the hall to the parish clerk of court’s office.
As he walked to a counter, a friendly lady in her sixties rose from her desk and gave him a beaming smile that showed he’d been recognized. She stuck out her hand and said, “Grace Vincent, Mr. Drake. Welcome to Vermilion Parish. Ladies, look here! We have a celebrity in the house!”
Her colleagues came forward, eager to meet him and listen as she asked what brought him to Abbeville.
They all talked at once. “We’re big fans, and we talk about your show all the time. Are you going to put us on television? Are you working on a story?”
He laughed. This happened so often he’d stopped keeping count. He said yes, he was here on assignment, but most things he investigated didn’t end up on TV. He thanked them for being fans and asked Grace if he might see the record books for the town of Asher.
Grace gave a sly wink and whispered, “If you’re looking into the Sons of Jehovah incident, you’ll be disappointed. That whole thing — someone burning Asher and all — was swept under the rug in the eighteen hundreds. Even now people call it Vermilion’s best-kept secret.”
“Surely there will be death records. From what I hear, people died that night. Aren’t those records available?”
She shook her head. “Those people were different — a cult — and they kept to themselves. I’ve never seen a single thing from Asher, but then again, I’ve never looked either. I’ll show you where to look so you can see what’s there. Oh, and there’s one more problem. Our courthouse burned down in 1885. We still have what records they saved from before then, but it’s not a lot. Some are complete and others just fragments.”
Billy Whistler Page 2