Del felt a strange power surge into her being.
Her skin tingled with it.
She was electric.
She focused on the swirling gray scene in front of her. Streams of color morphed and moved in and out of the image: fat, vague streams of color were pierced with spikes of a different hue; slowly turning clouds of color twisted and contorted; all indicating an image or thought or moment that was changing before her very eyes.
In her mind, she never saw Jimmy, but floated out of the secret window somehow. As far as she knew, only she and Jimmy knew about the secret exit, so she assumed he’d slipped out of the window the night before. This image had a slight red tinge around the outside, and looked as if it was aging quickly.
She floated into the alley—one that she knew very well—and saw a shadow pass down the street by the alley opening. She floated to follow the shadow.
Somewhere in the trance-dream she heard a spoken fragment, quiet da mouse, and her heart leapt.
Jimmy had gone this way! Why did he sneak out?
Her pulse climbed.
Her body tilted from side to side as she struggled to follow the invisible trail in her head. She felt like she was being sucked along by a magnetic wind; a dark gravity pulling her to a lifeless void. Suddenly a new image rose up before her; a cemetery loomed large and foreboding. She was overwhelmed with the smell of the dead—some for a hundred years or more—and felt phantom hands—long motionless—reach at her mind for attention.
She wanted to get away from this place of horror, but was certain Jimmy had gone this way, so she dove further into the dream-trance. Fleeting images shot past her like a movie reel out of control. She saw crypt after crypt, then a faint image of Jo flew by her.
She looked down and to her right and her mind-body rotated forward effortlessly. A new color caught her attention, and she looked further down, which was now up. She meant to stop and inspect that color-scene closer, but spun right past it, failing to stop as her legs floated over her head. As she spun forward, she looked back over her shoulder and to the left, and her gimbal-body spun faster in a twisting somersault way. Her crossed legs came around her side, then spun over her head. A wolf-dog came and went; she saw stars and people floating through them; Jo was hiding; the Crow was near! She looked left, then right, and caught a glimpse of something else, but it disappeared only to come flying past her feet again, then around the side of her head. Her head fell forward as her legs sped-up behind her, causing her head to fall forward even faster. A strange man and Jo; blurred lights; giant worms with mandibles; tiny blue lightning like a thousand filaments. She was spinning rapidly now. Her head was gaining weight, which caused her gimbal-body to spin and twist. The wolf-dog again; a man in space with sparkling eyes; a demon named Ali; the Crow. The colors of the scenes were a rainbow blur. Her stomach floated up into her throat, then sank into her right leg. This caused her to tilt sideways and spin in a new direction. She was spinning out of control and floating in all directions at once.
Suddenly, a loud voice bellowed laughter in her head and the deepest wave of dread settled over her. She’d never heard the sound before, but it was familiar nonetheless. The sound was of evil, and evil made the voice. Something had found her.
She tried to orient on the voice. She knew it was stationary because she could hear it come and go like cars passing on a freeway. A distant scream. A gibberish, mutant voice.
The bellow seemed to fuel her spin, causing her to accelerate; an unseen breath that blew her, tumbling into insanity. She felt her mind start to slip away.
She spun forever in all directions, helpless. She was bound and unbound at the same time. She struggled to stop, to call out, to wake up, as the bellowing voice held her suspended. She thought briefly of Jimmy and her inability to save him—she couldn’t even save herself. Her first time trancing and she slipped into a trap somehow—let herself get caught. She had no special power. She had nothing.
As she spun, she suddenly felt a new sensation, as if layers of her mind were being peeled back. Something, or someone, was stripping her mind naked, searching for something; a vulnerability.
She was helpless to the bellowing voice. It laughed and cajoled. Her mind was left exposed, naked for scrutiny and leering. That was the feeling she hated the most; the leering. Sister Eulalie leered at kids from time to time, including Del, but this was different. She suddenly felt exposed. The bellowing voice had violated her private thoughts, and was somehow leering at her, probing her essence, and it found her wanting.
Tears sprang from her eyes as she spun helplessly. She called out weakly for help, with both mind and voice, but no one heard. Her energy had been spent. The words flew away too quickly to be coherent. They sounded like partial words from a skipping record player, feeble syllables of madness.
As consciousness faded, the last thought to escape her mind was—Jimmy… And as her mind went blank, the last voice she heard was a loud bellowing laughter, then she was left helpless in the dark.
Chapter 47
Frank and Armand walked into the halfway house Thursday afternoon and instantly knew something was wrong. They had left the house the day before to gather their items for trapping the Gris-gris man, and had just arrived back. A palpable sense of gloom clouded the air.
Frank grabbed Armand’s arm and motioned for him to wait. He reached instinctively for his shoulder pistol, although he didn’t carry it regularly now, and briefly thought about retrieving it from his car. He scanned the room, then walked lightly down the hallway towards the back parlor.
Armand was surprised at the stealth the heavy man suddenly showed. The image of the bumbling, lovable man with cigar ashes on his shirt was gone; a deadly serious man now walked in his place.
As they approached the parlor, they heard a distressing sound. “Oh lawd, come back honey. You hear me? You got to come back!”
The men stepped through the door of the parlor and saw Mama Dedé hovering over a couch. Del was lying there, motionless.
“What happened?” Frank asked.
“She got stuck, Frank! Lawd help us, but she got stuck!” she said, dabbing Del’s forehead with a cloth. “Oh, what have I done? Too soon. It was just too soon.”
“Stuck? Stuck how?”
“She stuck in a trance,” she said. “When I left this mornin’ for errands, she must of went to trancin’ herself. I think she was looking for that Jimmy boy. Oh, lawd, what are we gonna do?”
“Looking for Jimmy?” Frank asked. “Why? What’s happened since yesterday?”
Mama Dedé quickly told the men about the visit from Henri that morning, the missing people from the orphanage, and how she found Del when she had returned.
“How do we get her out of the trance?” Armand asked. “Can’t we simply wake her up?”
“No, no. We cain’t force her awake. She won’t come back right. She got to get her mind free first.”
“Free? Free from what?” Armand asked.
“When you’re trancin’, your mind is tied up in seeing da visions, making your way through da scenes. It’s easy to get confused or lost. But it’s not bein’ lost that I’m worried about.”
“What else is there to worry about?” Armand asked.
“Trancin’ is like lookin’ at da outside of every house you can imagine. Each house has a whole lot of scenes and images of things that have already happened, happening now, or may gonna happen. Most times, seein’ the scenes is like lookin’ through a window. But sometimes… sometimes it’s like lookin’ through a door. If da door is open and you pass straight through, you may not be able to get back.”
“A door? To what?”
Mama Dedé dabbed at Del’s forehead, then fixed Armand with a cold stare. “The other sides.”
Frank and Armand exchanged concerned looks.
“Sides?” Armand asked.
The woman nodded in silent agreement.
Armand stood up and began a slow pace about the room, letting his mind
run free. He absently touched objects, but not as haphazardly as before. He was in deep controlled thought.
“Frank, you have your items, I suppose?” he asked into the room.
“Yep.”
“And I, mine,” he said, winding his mustache again. Still staring into space, he said, “Mama D, if we give you some time, you know, watch the house, watch over Del, do you think you can locate her? Do you think you can find where she’s gone?”
“I might be able to,” the woman said, wringing her hands. “I just got to!”
“How would you even start?”
“Remember, you can see scenes as well as da remnants of people who have been trancin’ around those scenes. I ‘spect if I land on a scene that Del was lookin’ at, I could tell that she’d been there.”
“Fascinating. And where do you think you’d look first?”
Without hesitation the woman said, “Da orphanage. She’s looking for Jimmy, so I think she’d start with da orphanage.”
“Very well, then,” Armand said. “We’ll secure the house and start setting the trap.” Looking at Frank, he continued, “Are we still in agreement that the courtyard outside will suffice?”
Frank nodded slowly. “Yeah, it’ll do fine. Stone garden surrounded by servant houses. High fence surrounding da rest. Privacy. Once da fire gets set it should go fast, so once anyone see’s da flames, da deed should be done. Besides, da damn clouds is so thick, I doubt anyone will even notice.”
“Ok then,” Armand said, “we’ll arrange what we need. In the meantime,” looking at Mama D, “you find Del.”
An hour and a half later, the two men sat at an old wrought-iron table in the cobblestone courtyard behind the halfway house. As Frank had mentioned earlier, the halfway house—previously known as the Prudhomme House—had been grand in its day. Mimicking Armand’s own home, only on a smaller scale, the Prudhomme House had been built with modest-sized out-buildings; some had been used as servants’ quarters in the early days, and some had been converted to work sheds or garages.
The courtyard spanned the rectangular distance between the house and the outbuildings. Dead gardens spilled over the sides of stone planters that ringed the outside of the courtyard. A small grassy circle, ringed with smaller stone planters, pinpointed the center of the yard, which used to hold a large round table for outside family dinners. Now the grassy circle was a brown scar inside a larger moss-covered area of limestone paths.
Around the inside of the courtyard, between the stone planters and partially hidden by overgrowth, the men had carefully placed everything they thought they’d need to trap the Gris-gris man—at least for a few minutes—until the fire could be started. The plan was to lure the man into the courtyard, where any one of several traps would catch and hold him. They didn’t have access to a steal hog cage as Marie did when she dispatched him so many years ago, but several of Frank’s wolf traps had been set around the courtyard, staked down between the paver stones and covered with old gunny sacks.
In the center of the dead-grass area they had constructed a small wooden shrine to Dr. John—based on Armand’s research—that included a bundle of High John Root, a bottle of Absinthe and several chicken feet tied in a bundle. Neither man was sure if they were truly dealing with Dr. John, or the transformed spirit that had become the Gris-gris man, but felt the correlation was close enough that it may actually work.
Carefully hidden around the edge of the grass circle was a thin layer of red brick dust, designed to keep him held inside the ring. The circle was open towards the gate facing the road—through which they hoped he would enter—and would be the only way he could escape, assuming one of the wolf traps didn’t snare him, or he wasn’t interested in the offerings.
However, Frank and Armand didn’t plan on giving him much time to inspect the goods, and had several small coffee cans of gasoline placed all over the courtyard which they would light first, to block his exit, then to ultimately dispatch him entirely. The largest can of gas sat right beneath the offering table, and was tied to the others with a network of twine rope. Once alight, the rope would burn quickly, but not before one good pull would overturn several of the other cans spilling gas across the entire stone courtyard.
“You think you can really call him?” Frank said, mopping a mixture of sweat and mist from his brow.
“Yes, I believe I can,” Armand said. “I studied every volume I had on Dr. John last night. I feel like I have a very good understanding of what he is drawn to.”
Frank watched Armand absently twist his mustache.
“Or at least, what he was drawn to when he was… well, before, when he was still a man.”
“Whatchoo think he’ll look like?” Frank asked, admiring a new cigar. “Da Devil himself?”
Armand thought for a long moment. “I’m not sure, mon ami. Whatever it is, whatever… shape he has assumed, we should be careful to remember that it is pure evil beneath its surface.”
Frank nodded slowly as he lit his cigar.
“And you’ll be ready, yes?” Armand asked. “With your… you know, just in case?”
“Oh, what, dis?” Frank pulled his pistol from its shoulder holster. “Yeah, if it comes down to it, dis will stop him. But you think you really got to do da other thing? You gonna read from it?”
“Yes, mon ami,” Armand said. “As you say, if it comes down to it, and he isn’t attracted to the offerings or the other chants I’ve found, I’ll read from it. I’ll read the verses from the grimoires.”
Del spun helplessly in her mind—a crazy-mad gimbal spinning out of control—for what seemed like an eternity. Somehow her mind had slipped—or was slipping—away from her, and she was unraveling. She felt the rough edges of her mind splinter off and fly away. She felt the spongy hemispheres being ground down, polished out of existence by the insanely spinning orb she had become. She was becoming invisible.
She couldn’t remember how long she’d been in this state, but knew that it hadn’t always been like this. She thought she remembered a past life, some of it good, some of it bad. She had parents once, she thought. Somehow, she felt their presence in the dark, or at least a remnant of them, but she didn’t know where she was, and she felt a lot of things. Not all of them were good.
She couldn’t remember how she got there. A faint dream of a vision showed her an old parlor room that somehow smelled familiar, but it was mixed with the black and white ghost of an orphanage and the smell of death. Although, what was smell in this nameless void anyway?
All she could think about was stopping. Somehow, she knew she had to stop spinning, but something was propelling her. The loud bellowing voice; the black death-wind was making her spin. She had to stop spinning before she flew apart completely.
“Fools!” Mama Dedé suddenly said from the back porch. “Lawd if we’re not lost and you fools are talkin’ nonsense!” She turned and solemnly walked back into the house.
Frank and Armand quickly joined her at the kitchen table where she had nearly fallen into a chair. Her face was ashen and sweaty, and she wrung her hands in dismay.
“What is it?” Frank said. “Did you find Del? What have you seen?”
Mama Dedé steadied herself and looked at each man separately. She suddenly buried her face in her hands as a large sob wracked her heavy bosom.
“Oh lawd, lawd… What have I done?”
“Please,” Armand said quickly, “the news. The suspense is unbearable.”
“I cain’t find her. She’s lost.”
“Lost? Surely you mean—”
Slapping her hands on the table, she said, “I said what I mean!”
Realizing her own anger would not help Del in any way, she shook her head and grabbed Armand’s hand, then reaching to Frank’s hand, she shook them both hard, squeezing them tightly. “I went looking for her right after we talked. I started with da orphanage and was able to find her right away.”
“Well, if you found her right away, then—”
Mama Dedé shook her head and silenced Armand. “She started there. I know because I could see her essence. She has an essence like no one I’ve seen before. But I still couldn’t find her.”
She released their hands and went to the counter by the coffee pot.
“Here, let me make some fresh,” Frank said.
Without responding, she opened the far cabinet door and pulled down an old bottle of Cognac and three small glasses. She poured herself a short dose and swallowed it quickly. She set the collection on the table, knowing that Frank would do the rest, then continued.
“I saw were she was,” she said. “I even saw where she went. At least for a little while. Then I heard it, but it was too late. I heard him laugh. A big, horrible laugh, far off. I tried to find Del in that scene, but she was gone.”
“Who are you talking about?” Armand said. “Who was laughing?”
“Da Gris-gris man,” she said. “I don’t know how I know, but I do. It was da Gris-gris man that caught Del in her trance.”
The two men looked at each other as fear spread across their faces. This was far beyond their ability to help.
“What can we do?” Armand asked. “There must be something we can do to help. You just need to guide us.”
She explained that after she’d found Del’s trail, she went looking for her, and that’s when she heard the laugh. Del should have been there somewhere, in one of the scenes, but Mama Dedé only found a trail of her.
“Wait, watchoo mean, only a trail?” Frank asked.
“Yes, fascinating,” Armand said. “What does her essence look like?”
Mama Dedé looked at Armand and thought for a moment. Her eyes told two stories.
“Silver droplets,” she said. “Da prettiest little silver droplets you ever saw. I never seen anyone leave hard shapes like that before. No, usually da color is so faint, you think it’s a trick of light, but not Del.”
The woman cast her eyes toward the table.
A Grimoire Dark Page 22
