The Nostradamus Scrolls

by Preston William Child

  Agatha would never have used to push people so hard or be so aggressive with someone. She used to just accept when something didn't go the way she wanted, but she had learned over the years that it was an attitude like that that held her back from actually being able to accomplish her goals. You couldn't get anything done if you didn't push for what you wanted. She was going to get it, even if she had to start making threats.

  “I cannot know for certain, but there are some who have had much clearer visions than I have and some who have seen far more. Tell me...have you ever heard of Nostradamus?”

  10

  THE FALSE PREMONITIONS

  Purdue decided that to learn more about the location of the Nostradamus scrolls and whatever catacombs the Old Lady had been talking about, that Mama May might be able to give him some more insight. He didn't want it to be a long trip to New Orleans, and he considered sending Sam again as a proxy but decided against it. He should speak to her himself. Surprisingly, Julian offered to come with him, which naturally made Nina and Sam more nervous for Purdue's safety. They made their own offers to come, but Purdue told them that they should start researching the catacombs and see if they could find anything else, while he and Julian went to New Orleans. It might have been crazy, but he was of the mindset that if Julian wanted him dead, he would have done it by then.

  When he got to the fortune-teller's home, Julian waited outside. Purdue had gone there a number of times and was used to the routine. However, when he saw the frail fortune-teller this time, she looked more unsettled than usual.

  “I did not expect to see you again so soon, David Purdue,” Mama May said. “Especially after that friend of yours came here not long ago. I supposed that you had grown tired of me and wouldn't bother coming for a visit yourself.”

  “Clearly that's not the case,” Purdue said. “You remember when I had you try to see what people were coming after me for a while back.”

  “Of course,” Mama May said. “It was cloudy, yes. It was hard to see who they were.”

  “I'm hoping that things might have cleared up,” Purdue said. “The psychic forecast or whatnot, aye?”

  “We can certainly try to look,” Mama May said. He knew the drill. She would slice open his hand and hold it, and she would have her visions as he bled onto the table. His palm was still sore from the last time he was there.

  However, the psychic's front door opened, and Julian stepped in before they could begin. He had his hands in his pockets, looking at Mama May with some amusement.

  “You didn't tell me that the seer we were going to see was the illustrious Mama May herself,” Julian said, sounding strangely enthusiastic. Purdue wasn't even aware that Mama May was famous enough to be known to Julian. Or maybe Julian had spied on her when he and Purdue were at odds. “Isn't that interesting...”

  Mama May looked scared, more scared than Purdue had ever seen her. It looked like she recognized him just like he recognized her, which was odd. He didn't imagine Julian Corvus visiting the French Quarter. Maybe he had gone to Mama May just like Purdue had, in hopes of seeing the future. But the way she was looking at him didn't make him seem like some old customer.

  “You know Julian?”

  Mama May looked at Purdue hesitantly but didn't answer his question. Instead, she turned back to Julian anxiously and shook her head. “I am not seeing any new customers right now, so I am going to have to ask you to leave. What are you doing here?”

  “Helping a dear friend of mine,” Julian said with a little laugh. “Though that's not entirely true. Purdue and I aren't friends quite yet, but I think we will be. I think we can learn a whole lot from each other. For instance, someone as naive as him sometimes needs guidance, and I'm not talking about your kind of guidance, May. I am talking about real guidance. People like Purdue can't always see the world as it is. They are too content and happy to see whatever they want to. They don't always see the real picture right in front of their face.”

  Purdue felt more than a little insulted. For one, he hated that he was being talked about like he wasn't even there. He also hated—but wasn't entirely surprised—that Julian was speaking about him like he was nothing more than a child. Still, he couldn't be too mad at him, not when he was still so confused about how Julian Corvus and Mama May even knew each other.

  “For instance,” Julian continued. “Purdue has no idea about you, does he?”

  He was still acting like Purdue wasn't standing a few feet away from him.

  “No idea about what?” Purdue asked.

  Julian smirked, his cold eyes still fixated on Mama May. He flashed a glance at Purdue and looked to be relishing Purdue's ignorance at whatever this was. “So tell me, Mama May, would you like to be the one to tell him or shall I?”

  “Tell me what!?” Purdue snapped, demanding an answer. “Would one of you tell me just what the hell is going on here?”

  Julian looked at Mama May expectantly, waiting for whatever it was that he was talking to her about. Mama May just shook her head, refusing to speak up.

  “Oh, come on,” Julian said. “Talking is what you do, isn't it? You love to tell people all sorts of things, revealing all kinds of truths. That's what you are all about, right? That's what you do for a living. But you don't just share truths, no...you also give them some lies too. It all depends on what suits you in that moment. Go on. You know David Purdue. You have even given him some facts before. Give him one now. Tell him.”

  Mama May turned to Purdue. “I have no idea who this man is or what he is even talking about. This man is crazy and I would like him to leave.”

  Purdue didn't believe the old woman, not after the way she looked when Julian first showed up. If she didn't know who he was, then why did she look so terrified by the mere sight of him? It didn't make sense that he was a stranger to her. No, Mama May was very aware of who Julian Corvus was. He still wasn't sure how but he knew that there was some kind of history between them.

  “You think working with me is a strange choice, Mr. Purdue?” Julian said. “You have no idea how odd it is that Mama May is a friend of yours. I guess you and the Old Lady have one thing in common. You are both friends with this charlatan.”

  “I am no charlatan!” Mama May snapped. “My visions are never promises. I have always made that very clear! You can say a lot of things about me over the years. I have heard it all, but a charlatan...I am nothing of the sort!”

  “Sure you are,” Julian said. “Some of your visions might be true, but you present them with a great deal of bias, don't you? You skew the truth to whatever point you want to make, to hell with what your so-called visions say.”

  Purdue was just trying to process everything that he was hearing, everything that he was learning from this heated conversation. Mama May couldn't have been friends with the Old Lady. That just wasn't possible. He remembered when she performed her ritual when he asked her about the Old Lady. She couldn't see much of anything; she could barely tell him anything at all...which would make sense if she was keeping the truth from him. She hadn't denied Julian's claims either.

  Purdue had gone to Mama May's numerous times now. She had given him her prophecies of his future, and some of those had even come in handy while others would have come in handy if he heeded them. She tried to warn him about Julian Corvus overthrowing his life when he first visited the fortune-teller, and later she tried to use her gifts of sight to see the Old Lady for him but had been unsuccessful. Still, she was someone that he could consider a colleague and a potential ally, and had even grown to trust the old psychic.

  So to hear that Mama May might be working against him, working with the Old Lady, came as something of a shock to Purdue.

  “Is it true?” Purdue asked, his mind still racing faster than he could keep up with. “Are you working with her? Are you friends with the Old Lady?”

  Mama May didn't answer for a long moment. The old, frail psychic just looked down to her feet. “That is not her name.”

  That was
an answer in itself and more than enough confirmation that Julian wasn't making things up. Purdue thought back to that man in the jungle, saying that the Old Lady knew everything about the future, which might have meant more than just the pages of the Nostradamus writings that she had. If she had Mama May in her back pocket, then she would have even more knowledge of the things to come. It also helped when her enemies, like Purdue, tried to learn more about her, since Mama May wouldn't give him any good information.”

  “I can't believe this. You are with them.”

  Mama May didn't look afraid anymore. She looked defensive, confrontational even.

  “There is no them, child. There is just destiny and the choices that will get us there. I have known you for a short time. I have known Agatha for decades. You were a customer...that is all. You were just a customer with a particularly interesting past. Agatha is not a customer. She is a dear old friend. It is not betrayal. I was never aligned with you. I told you what I saw...”

  “Aye, you sure did,” Purdue said with a roll of his eyes. “You just omitted the parts that we needed to hear. All to help your dear old friend.”

  “There is nothing that says that I have to share everything I see.”

  “It just seems like a fortune-teller should be honest about what she sees. Aye, there might not be any laws in place to make sure that happens, and I doubt that there are many regulations you all follow, but I think it should go without saying, if you are telling someone about the future, especially when it's not some 'who am I going to marry' shit, then you should be truthful about it. All that shit you were feeding me about the invisible enemy. The Old Lady wasn't invisible. You knew who you were looking at.”

  “Yes,” Mama May said. “But like I have already told you, my loyalty was to my friend, not to you. I told you as much as I could without incriminating her. That is what friends do, but I have helped you before Purdue. If you recall, I warned you about Julian Corvus. I told you that he would come and would bring you from rags to riches.”

  Purdue hadn't forgotten that. Those words had haunted him for quite some time when he was homeless, dirt poor, and without his friends, thanks to Julian. But just because Mama May had tried to use her visions to help him when they first met didn't excuse her lying to him during their future meetings.

  “Yet you ignored my warnings,” Mama May said. “You didn't heed my words, and you haven't learned from your mistake. Now you are working with him, someone who is a monster. My friend is not who you think she is. She is not nearly as bad as the man standing beside him. You let him out of that box, and now people are going to suffer for it. The 'old lady,' as you call her, is trying to make the world better. Julian would see it all burn.”

  “So what was your plan before I came in, May? Hm? Were you just going to tell Mr. Purdue your big story of the future again...then what? Send him on a wild goose chase? Lure him into a trap? I'm happy to open his eyes to the person that you really are.”

  “You are brave to speak to me,” Mama May said. “Look at you. An undying abomination. That is all you are now. You think you know everything, Julian Corvus. But you don't.”

  “I'm not the one who claims to be a seer of the future, am I? I don't know everything, especially about what's coming next, but there are some things I know for certain, especially about the past. When people in the Order of the Black Sun would tell stories about the Old Lady, they often talked about how she consorted with a psychic that would be able to warn her about premonitions ahead of time. Your name often came up. You better start owning up to the dealings you've made and the people you work with, or I will make sure that your end is much more violent than you could have possibly ever seen coming. I already planning on hurting one old lady. I have no problem hurting another.”

  “Julian!” Purdue snapped. “That's enough. We're not doing this like that.”

  This was Julian Corvus's way. It always had been. He had no qualms about unleashing sudden violence without a second thought. It seemed almost like an instinct for him, a need to inflict pain, especially if it helped forward his plans. If he wanted information from Mama May, he wasn't going to wait until she fessed up; he would pry it out of her even if she had to scream it out.

  “You see?” Mama May said. “You are working with a man who has nothing but cruel intentions in his heart. I do not even need to perform my ritual to see what will happen if you continue working with him. He will make your life hell in the end, just like he always has. This time, you should listen to me!”

  “I'm well aware of the kind of person Julian is,” Purdue said. It was his turn to talk about Julian like he wasn't there. “But we have an understanding at the moment. The Old Lady and I don't. She keeps trying to kill me and hurt my friends. I'm not going to let that happen, and I'm not going to let her learn more about the future.”

  “So you know what she is after,” Mama May said with some embarrassment. “Yes, my sight isn't quite enough for the things she has in mind. She needs something more concrete to go off of than just what I can see in a few drops of blood. I would take it personally, but she is right to do so. Nostradamus could see much more than I can. His writing will hold the key to the future of this world.”

  “I came here looking for your advice and for anything that I should be ready for. Turns out, you were exactly what I should have been ready for. All you are doing is proving how dangerous the Old Lady is. I appreciate that what you've shown me doesn't have to do with your visions. You've shown me that I don't know how large my enemy's influence is, and I shouldn't trust anyone. She could have been influencing all sorts of events before I knew she existed.”

  “She probably has been,” Julian said, walking up to Mama May. “I know it's not your style, Mr. Purdue, but would you like me to dispose of this spy? I can make sure that she never has any more visions of the future again because her future is going to be all black.”

  Mama May looked frightened again at the prospect of feeling Julian's wrath firsthand. Maybe she could see what he was going to do and knew that what was to come was pretty bleak. But as angry with her as Purdue was, he had no intention of just letting Julian butcher her like he probably planned to do. No, Mama May could be very helpful to them and learning more about the Old Lady.

  “No,” Purdue said. “She stays alive.”

  “Why?” Julian asked, looking disappointed. “Even if we try to interrogate her, she will just tell you more lies. We already know that she is willing to say whatever she can to help keep her crone of a friend out of harm's way.”

  “We don't need to kill her,” Purdue said firmly. “That's my decision. And I am the one calling the shots here. Not you.”

  Julian didn't look too thrilled by that, but that was part of their arrangement. Surprisingly, the former leader of the Black Sun was withholding his part of the arrangement. He was proving to be a valuable ally even though he needed to be reined in here and there. Julian stepped away from Mama May.

  “So, what do you suggest then?” Julian asked. “If we leave her here, she's bound to warn the Old Lady about our discovery.”

  “I suggest that we take her with us,” Purdue said. “That takes one of the Old Lady's assets off of the board, and there's one other place I need to make sure hasn't been corrupted by the Old Lady's influence.”

  Mama May looked at him curiously, but Purdue knew that she would know exactly where he was going soon enough. Julian was completely in the dark. He raised a brow.

  “Oh, is there? And where exactly is that?”

  “Don't worry,” Purdue said. “It's not far at all. It's right here in the French Quarter.”

  INTERLUDE: THE INEVITABILITY OF AGING

  Agatha woke up one morning and it suddenly occurred to her that her life was in its twilight years. Her hair had slowly lost its blonde shine and dimmed to a dull gray. Her once-smooth skin had sagged and developed wrinkles. Even her most simple of movements took so much more energy out of her. At least her mind was still full of energy a
nd vigor; that was all she needed.

  Still, old age had come much quicker than she hoped it would. There were things that she didn't regret not ever doing in her life. She didn't mind that she wasn't married, and she was incredibly glad that she never had to pump out any children. That was a relief that she would always be happy about for the rest of her life. It allowed her absolute freedom from any of those domestic tethers that tied most of the women her age down. Most of her fellow elderly ladies were grieving late husbands, spoiling their grandchildren, or constantly attending church. That wasn't the kind of woman Agatha would let herself become, no matter her age.

  Thankfully, she wasn't the only one that had suddenly found themselves in their later years. Her dear friend May was much older and frailer than Agatha usually pictured her. She wasn't the radiant beauty that she used to be—at least not on the outside—but her predictions were still given with such vigor and strength. Just like Agatha's mind, May's clairvoyant abilities hadn't dulled over time either. Most of the locals of New Orleans respected her as the paramount psychic to visit if you ever wanted to hear a fortune of the future. They referred to her as Mama May out of sheer respect for her wisdom.

  They both weren't the young women they used to be, but they were doing much better than many others would be at this late junction in life.

  Usually, Mama May was the one hosting visitors, but this time, for the first time, she came to Agatha. It was a strange position to find themselves in—something of a reversal—but it allowed their interaction to be much more casual than the usual underlying business that they had to attend to. This wasn't a customary ritual or anything like that, it was just a friendly chat between two old friends.