Chapter 12
Frank and Del left the house of Loo’siana Slim for the last time. They drove away in silence, following the same route they had driven the day before. The incessant rain cast a gray pall over the road, the swamp and the shack, which remained shrouded in a thick fog.
As they approached the Mississippi heading Northeast toward the city, Del could barely see the bridge girders that would support them over the swollen river. The fog-mist swirled in tattered shrouds from beneath the bridge in a slow curl that rolled over the creeping line of traffic.
“Damn, must be some kinda’ jam up der,” Frank said.
Del continued staring out the window, not hearing him.
“You OK, honey? Watcha dwellin’ on?”
She worked to pull her mind out of a sluggish daydream—almost trancelike. Upon returning to Slim’s house she had felt a heavy weight descend upon her. Even though she had only met Slim the day before, she felt a profound sadness at his death. She felt a heaviness of heart that she couldn’t explain. An abnormal feeling of loneliness.
An old vision, or memory plagued her mind. She felt sick to her stomach, as if an old secret were about to be exposed. When she was young, she’d get this feeling when she was sent to see Sister Eulalie. Not understanding the rules at an early age, missing her family, and not knowing what her future held made her sick to her stomach a lot. But the thought of getting in trouble beyond that tore at her dream of ever having a normal life again. If she couldn’t stay out of trouble, no wonder no one wanted her. In the early days at the orphanage she thought the Sisters would all be like mothers to her, but that was not the case. She was happy when Sister Eulalie first took a special interest in her, considering she was the head nun, but she soon learned that the Sister had a sickness in her that could not easily be cast out. She’d said there was something unnatural in Del, vile, like Jimmy. Del said there was something unholy in Sister Eulalie.
“Del?”
She shook the feeling away as best as she could and looked at Frank.
“Do you believe in the Devil?”
Frank flinched in such surprise that a shower of cigar ash burst apart on his stomach as it was flipped from his cigar.
Slapping the sparks away, he said, “Course I do honey. What kinda question is dat?”
“Do you believe he talks to people?”
Eyeing her from the driver seat, he said, “Talks to people? Like you an’ me doing now? I don’t know—”
“In their heads, Frank. Do you think some people can hear him? Or… maybe are… tuned to listen for him?”
“Well now, I don’t know about dat, honey,” Frank said as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I ‘spect der are some people dat would like to think dey could call him up, ask a favor whenever. But if dey could, der’d have to be a terrible price paid, you know?”
Del continued looking out of the window, searching for something.
Finally, she said, “Ever since yesterday, I’ve had this sick feeling in my stomach. And I keep… seeing images of things… I think they’re old memories, but I can’t tell. Memories of a bunch of voices all talking or singing at once, but they’re all jumbled up.” She glanced over at Frank to read his reaction. “Either that or… or, someone’s trying to talk to me.” She laughed weakly.
Frank clinched the cigar in his teeth as he rubbed his chin. A deep puff sent a cloud of smoke around his head that mixed with the fog from the partially open window.
“Der’s lotsa strange things people doan understand. You kinda scoffed at em yesterday, and that’s fine if you doan believe. But,” he looked at her with a furrowed brow, “not believen’ doan make da bad things go away. And sometimes, it lets things creep in that aught’ena.”
Del looked back out the window and wondered what things had been let to creep into her life.
Chapter 13
A Wretched Mind
Hello? Are you still there?
* * *
Anyone? I pray you’ve not abandoned me…
* * *
Oh, how my wretched mind churns these twisted thoughts! I fear that I cannot go on. Such a dreadful pall lays over my soul, you unerstan’.
* * *
Yes! A terrible, dreadful pall has been let to creep into my life. What abysmal things are let to creep into our lives? Powerful and terrible, yeah...
* * *
Yes, I recall now how it happened… it was a voice. Such a terrible, awful thing that was done to me, my mind had quite blocked it from my memory; never to be thought on again.
* * *
That voice called to me from the dark, you unerstan’, yeah… called deep from the dark.
* * *
Then the voice spoke in my mind. From a black place… a black thing.
* * *
It was the Raven.
Chapter 14
In the dark of the night, Eddie Bartlett trudged through the drizzling mist and listened to the sounds float out of the French Quarter—the well-known jazz and blues music section of the old city.
The Crescent City’s music heritage had been built on the strife and hard living of the people who had moved through this area over the last one hundred and fifty years. The destitute and downtrodden; the scorned and the hopeless; all left their song upon the breath of the city, and the city sighed deeply.
Having left his broken guitar at the repair shop, promising to pay for the repair when his next non-existent check came in, he took the last few dollars in his pocket and bought the cheapest bottle of whiskey he could find.
He knew he would have a cranking headache in the morning, but tonight, being only a third into the bottle, he felt as if his luck may change.
Walking up St. Louis Street, he saw the old St. Louis Cemetery #1 loom in the murk. He knew from legend that the vault of Marie Laveau, the old Voodoo priestess, was somewhere inside. If he could find it, he might make an offering of part of his whiskey bottle and ask her for help with his life and music.
The cemetery was one of the oldest in New Orleans. Above-ground crypts, white as decaying bone, lay in repose in close, straight rows. The affluent lay in crypts of granite and marble, while flaking cement, peeling away from old brick walls, housed the less fortunate interred. Crosses and spires jutted up into the mist as lonely saints looked down upon the sinners.
Eddie wandered the rubble-choked alleys between crypts until he found one that was decorated with small trinkets and crude inscriptions on the sides. He sat down on a granite bench opposite the decaying crypt, took a large drink and closed his eyes. He felt particularly powerful right now, and was sure that his God-given gift of music was being felt by the spirits. He felt warm against the chilling mist and thought of how he could make the spirit of Marie Laveau hear him.
Along with the offering of a little whiskey—which he poured on the stoop of the crypt—he sang slowly into the night, watching the mist from his breath float away into the night.
“Black-girl / black-girl / don’t liiie to me / tell me wherrre’d you sleep last niiight.
“In the pines / in the pines / where the suuuun never shines / I shiverrred the whole night through.”
He took another long drink and closed his eyes, humming the tune under his breath.
Just as he was about to start another verse, he opened his eyes and watched his frozen breath float away from his body and merge with an eerie black mist that seemed to float against the prevailing wind. Tightening the grip on the bottle, he watched as the black mist became a bird, which now sat on top of the crypt he believed was the Voodoo priestess’s.
He blinked his eyes, but the bird remained sitting, sitting above the dead chamber door.
The bird—a raven, he thought—looked down at him with one black eye.
Is this the Voodoo priestess? he wondered. Is this how she travels back and forth from the land of the dead?
“Marie?” he said quietly.
The raven adjusted its position above the chamber door and
looked at him with the other black eye.
Thinking his introduction was too informal, Eddie said, “Voodoo priestess, Marie Laveau, help me please.”
The raven cocked its glistening head, pecked three times above the chamber door and said, “Ask.”
Eddie stared in amazement as he stood up. Had he really just heard the bird speak? A cold wind whipped through the cemetery, causing him to rock unsteadily. Oddly, the wind didn’t appear to ruffle the bird’s feathers at all.
The raven watched him patiently.
Eddie’s mind reeled. Ask? What should I ask for?
Ask for help, dude! Get your shit straight!
This could be a once-in-a-lifetime, genie-in-the-bottle sort of thing. He had to think quick. Don’t fuck it up, Eddie. You won’t get another chance like this.
You have the talent! Just get clean, that’s all you need!
Yeah, he could ask to get clean. Stop drinking. No more drugging. That’s what he should do. His fingers twisted around the neck of the bottle.
He should really do that.
But his drinking wasn’t his fault. His parents had really fucked him up. It was because of them that he was like this, anyway.
Ask for them to pay, Eddie. Make something happen to them first.
But then what? What do I do then?
He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, grinding gravel into dust, the way the question ground on his mind.
Ask to get clean. Forget the revenge crap.
Ask to get clean, but then what? Back to the same ol’ slog? Beatin’ the streets for a few bucks? Is that what he really wanted?
The raven watched him patiently.
Fuck dude, what are you doing? Ask for money, ask for fame, something! Don’t just stand there! You’re fucking up man! The bird’s gonna fly away!
Eddie took another swig from the bottle and grabbed his head, rubbing it hard. His eyes were wide and watery, searching the dark gloom for an answer.
Fame… money… revenge… fuck!
The raven twitched.
“A song!” blurted Eddie. “A song that will make me famous!”
The raven tilted its glossy head; an amused, knowing tilt of its head.
The raven croaked, “Sing.”
Eddie thought, Sing? Sing what? That’s what I—
The raven began...
I call to you, by way of chanting—lest a demon voice be ranting,
Ranting in my wretched mind to call you up from days of yore.
I summon you to evil deed, your voice as one my mind will heed,
Seeking someone sure to bleed, to right a wrong done to my core.
Use me spirit, just tonight, that I may open abGel’s door,
Just tonight, no less, no more.
* * *
Eddie didn’t miss a word.
Somewhere in the Jean Lafitte swamp, a body that had breathed its first ragged breath just hours before sat up. The skin had stopped bubbling and had settled into a brown, leathery covering. The bones and tendons, mismatched and broken, had mended into a frail skeleton. The large skin tags had popped free of the body, excising foreign objects embedded within, encapsulating them in soft bags of skin that hung from the body by long strings of sinew.
A strange man now existed where the inanimate body had been.
The fifolets that protected the body went through their own transformation, each one different depending on their needs, but they could not exist without the strange man, for they were of the same essence.
Disoriented and weak, the strange man bent over and tasted the putrid swamp soil. He breathed deeply, inhaling the ancient spores that floated heavily on the air. He remembered this place. Somewhere in a dream this place was known to him. Old images, some quite ancient, flooded his new mind.
The remaining blue fifolet, now with one formed eye, shimmered in anticipation and coaxed the strange man on. Its transformation was stalled; there was not enough energy for them all, not yet.
The strange man reached out to the blue shimmering object—hardly thicker than the surrounding fog—and felt its pain. His weak hand stroked a lump of spirit-cloud that may be its head, for the half-formed eye hung there looking on in anticipation. Another extruding lump of the thing shivered on its own when the man’s hand passed through its essence. The shivering cloud-lump split from the main body of the blue fifolet and tried to exist on its own, only to fall lightly with a dead squish onto the swamp floor. The man coaxed the dead spirit back to the main form, where it was absorbed.
“Time…” the strange man said weakly. “I need to eat. Then you all will be restored anew.”
Chapter 15
Jimmy lay in bed very still, fingers clinched tightly together, quietly repeating his nighttime prayer over and over.
“Now I way, down to sweep, pway and pway fo Gawd to keep.
“Now I way, down to sweep, pway and pway fo Gawd to keep.”
Occasionally he would stop and listen to his stomach growl, but then he became afraid the bad song would jump back in his head, so he said his prayers again like the Sister told him. He whimpered lightly at the hunger pains of no dinner but covered his head so Sister Eulalie wouldn’t hear him.
The day had started with the terrible song he couldn’t get out of his head. He wasn’t sure where it had come from. Maybe the sandman had poured it in his ear when he was asleep the night before, but if he had, that was a mean trick to play, and Jimmy didn’t like mean tricks.
He’d thought that Del-bell was coming to have breakfast with him this morning, but maybe she forgot. If she had, she would have stopped the bad song from bouncing around in his head. Jimmy knew he wasn’t as smart as the other kids because of his condition, and maybe the song got stuck there because he had less in his head than the other kids, but still wished Del had been there.
He loved Del very much and was sad when she left him and the orphanage. She said that she wasn’t leaving him, but she left anyway. He wasn’t sure what would happen once he turned eighteen, where he would go, but Del had always told him not to worry about too many things at once.
You can’t think of too many things at once because it clogs up your head and the answers can’t get in, she would say.
Since he didn’t have many things in his head anyway, he didn’t think he had to worry about it getting clogged up, but Del was usually right.
Jimmy still slept in the same bed he always had. Even though he was older and taller now—well, not that much taller—he had never been moved out of the room with the younger kids. That was OK with him, though. They didn’t tease him as much as the older kids. At least most of them.
Jimmy lay there listening to his heartbeat, not realizing he was no longer repeating his prayer, when he heard the window in the coatroom creak.
He immediately thought it might be Del coming to see him.
The coatroom was off the back of the main sleeping area, a small closet where the kids hung their winter coats, rain slickers and kept their galoshes under a bench. It was also the one room that Del would sneak out of that the nuns hadn’t found.
The other windows, one in the bathroom and one in a spooky broom closet had been found, but the window in the coatroom had an inside shutter over it. Everyone had forgotten it was a window. Del found it because she was so smart.
Jimmy lay very still and listened as hard as he could. What if das Deh? Maybe she got stuck!
Jimmy tried to figure out what he should do.
Don’t get stuck, Deh!
That probably wouldn’t help, because Del couldn’t hear his thoughts.
I hep her! Hod on Deh, I hep you!
Jimmy lifted his head and looked around the room. Remembering what Del had told him before when they snuck out, he had to be quiet as a mouse.
Quiet da mouse, quiet da mouse, he thought as he snuck to the coat closet. Once inside, he giggled to himself at what a great mouse he made.
He moved the old coats from in front of the shutters.
No one remembered who the coats belonged to any longer, so they always hung in the same place, hiding the shutters that hid the window.
He then opened the shutters and looked out the window.
Whe’d she go? he wondered. She wasn’t stuck in the window after all.
He could barely see anything in the alley that ran the side of the orphanage. The old streetlamps at the ends of the alley barely cast their light to the middle.
Kneeling on the old bench, Jimmy pressed his face to the cold glass, just as he had done when waiting for Del, and strained his eyes left and right to see further down the alley. Not realizing it, he began to softly sing, “…da spit tay cat wit da mot’eatn ear.”
A large gust of wind heaved against the window, hitting it with debris from the alley right where his face pressed against it. Startled, Jimmy jerked back and fell off the bench.
He almost cried out, but the thought that Del might be in trouble kept him quiet.
He lay there listening for any stirring roommates, when he heard a strange tapping noise. Three quiet taps at the window.
Deh? he wondered. Dat you?
He crept back onto the bench and slowly raised his head to look out the window.
A fluttering shadow scared him, but he didn’t look away. Things were still scuttling down the alley as the wind continued to blow, but he thought he had seen a shape.
Bravely pressing his face to the window again, he saw another shadow flutter up to the garage roof across the alley. A brief flash of lightning, far in the distance, illuminated the object. A large shiny bird sat on the garage roof peering at Jimmy, its enhanced shadow darkening the orphanage window.
A Grimoire Dark Page 6
