The Proctor Hall Horror

by Bill Thompson

  Henri wondered how to open it, and Doc said, “Let’s figure it out. If nothing else works, we can remove the panel.”

  Landry calculated that the kitchen lay just below, and he went there while Doc and Henri examined the panels. They’d searched the kitchen earlier, but he wondered if they had missed something. Their knocking upstairs seemed to be right above the pantry, so he started there. There were cans of food on the shelves that looked brand new, although the expiration dates were in the years prior to 2018, when the reporter found the house abandoned.

  The back of the pantry was a wood-paneled wall. He stepped into the tiny room to look more closely and jumped back when the back wall silently slid to the left. There stood Doc at the bottom of a narrow, steep stairway. He stepped out with Henri close behind.

  “Surprise!” Doc said. “A hidden staircase!”

  Not so, Henri said, suggesting the stairs were for household servants who weren’t allowed to use the main staircase. They were an easy way to access the bedrooms, and upon further examination, Henri found they continued up into a small attic room that was empty.

  Landry asked how they’d found the stairway. They had been ready to tear out the panel when Henri pointed out something. Each panel was bordered on four sides by decorative molding. On this one, the panel inside the trim was actually a door. When they found the right place to push, it swung inward, revealing the stairs.

  For Landry this discovery meant there could be other hidden areas that allowed people to move about unnoticed. Encouraged by their find, they rapped on panels for another hour before giving up and locking the house.

  It was dusk when they left Proctor Hall. As they drove away, they started a discussion on Michael’s murder and if it was related to the others. If one of them had turned to look through the rear window, he would have seen a solitary light move from room to room across the upper floor. Now that the strangers were gone, the house was theirs again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jack Blair stopped by Landry’s office the next morning to ask about his trip to Thibodaux. Once Landry’s unpaid assistant, Jack was now an investigative reporter for Channel Nine, and Landry was his boss. Jack had been keeping up with the goings-on at Proctor Hall, and he wanted news about the latest spirit contact.

  Landry explained the aborted seance, the jack-o’-lanterns and the word scrawled on the wall beside the mantel, adding, “This isn’t the work of some spirit. I want to find out who did this. The likely suspect is Noah Proctor, but he and his keepers abandoned the place years ago. What if someone else is making it appear Noah’s still at work? The poor guy may be guilty or innocent and alive or dead by now. As far as I know, people last saw him when the Slattery girl disappeared years ago.”

  Jack offered to search also, and Landry said he’d appreciate it. Jack’s forte was investigative research; he often turned up things others missed.

  “Tell me what you’re still looking for,” Jack said, and Landry named them off the top of his head.

  Was Noah still alive? If not, where was he buried, and his family too? Where did Ben and Agnes Trimble go? And what happened to Marguey Slattery?

  He laughed. “Holy crap. I should have volunteered to help earlier. Sounds like you have more questions than answers!”

  Landry called Julien Girard’s office at Tulane and left a voicemail. The woman who returned the call said Julien was ill and would be out for a few days. She promised to pass along the message, and fifteen minutes later Julien called. To Landry, his voice sounded strong for someone not feeling well.

  Julien said the pumpkin heads tormented him. He was taking a long weekend but would be back in the classroom on Monday. He asked if Landry had found anything interesting after they sent him back to New Orleans.

  Landry told him about the stairway, and then he asked if Julien had spoken with April. He admitted he hadn’t felt up to it, suggested Landry contact Marisol for an update, and gave him her email address.

  Marisol said April was still frazzled by the incident. “We’re meeting this afternoon to wrap up the report on Proctor Hall for Dr. Girard’s class,” she added. “Since April refuses to go back, I’m hoping what we’ve done is enough to snag the top grade. Since Dr. Girard himself was part of our research, I hope we get it.”

  Landry agreed no other team would have that edge. She promised to keep in touch, and then he called Henri to request a last-minute lunch to discuss what to do next.

  They met at Kingfish on Conti Street, one of their favorites. The hostess showed them to a quiet table in the back. When the wine came, Landry brought Henri current, asking, “What should we do next?”

  Henri said, “I understand why April says she won’t go back, but that’s unfortunate for our ends. I was hoping to find out what the Ouija board would tell us about that bedroom.”

  “I’ll ask Cate to talk to April.”

  Henri laughed. “You’re wasting your time, I’m afraid. She and I talked this morning. As much as I want answers, I worry if we can keep April safe too. The spirits warned April to stay away. If I coerced her into that room and something awful happened, it would devastate me. I daresay you agree with me.”

  “I do, but where does that leave us?”

  “Perhaps we enlist the services of a professional spiritualist, or try it ourselves.”

  “How do you find spirit mediums? Do they advertise online?”

  “The fake ones do, and that’s the problem. New Orleans is rife with people claiming to be voodoo queens or spiritualists or palm readers. They have tables set up all around Jackson Square. How we’d find a genuine spiritualist, I don’t know. I’ve never looked for one, but if you wish, I can make some enquiries.”

  They ordered lunch, and Landry asked him about trying it themselves, without a medium. How would that work?

  Henri said they needed four or five people familiar with Proctor Hall’s spirits. Those might be the two of them plus Cate, Doc, Julien and perhaps Marisol. They would attempt to contact a spirit just as April had done. Even without psychic powers, one of them might make something happen. After all, amateurs held Ouija board seances all the time.

  Landry agreed, but he still was skeptical a Ouija board was a conduit to the spirit world. Regardless, he suggested starting by themselves. If things didn’t work, they’d find a medium.

  They returned to Henri’s office after lunch and ran the idea by Cate, who said she had been waiting for the next shoe to drop. “You guys just can’t leave a bad thing alone,” she said, only half joking. “To answer your question, I think holding a seance ourselves is a waste of time since nobody’s clairvoyant, but I’m game to try. I’m just glad you both came to your senses enough to leave April out of it.”

  As Landry left for the studio, Cate called her father to arrange another visit to Proctor Hall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BUZZ ME WHEN YOU’RE BACK, read the sticky note stuck in the middle of Landry’s monitor. He smiled; not that long ago, Jack Blair had been a homeless person, and now he was an enthusiastic, productive member of WCCY-TV’s team.

  BACK, he messaged, and seconds later Jack appeared in his doorway.

  “Have you answered all my questions?” Landry asked with a grin.

  “In two hours? Give me a break, okay? I’m good, but not that good. I found out about Noah Proctor. According to the records on file in Baton Rouge, Noah Proctor was born in 1949 and died on the first of October 2003, aged fifty-four.”

  “Seems cut and dried,” Landry commented. “Where’s he buried?”

  “That’s where things get dicey. He died at an address in a town twenty-five miles south of Proctor Hall called Lockport. The cause of death was exposure.”

  “Exposure to what?”

  “First things first. I needed to find Frank Caparelli, the doctor who signed Noah’s death certificate. I wanted to ask the doctor what ‘exposure’ meant. His address in Lockport is on the death certificate, but I ran into a snag.”

&nb
sp; Landry waited, but Jack just smiled. This was a game he played when he had something interesting to reveal, and it was tiresome when Landry had other things going on.

  “Tell me, Jack. I have stuff to do. So do you.”

  “Dr. Caparelli doesn’t live in Lockport.”

  “So what? Did he move or die or what?”

  “Or what. The address on the death certificate doesn’t exist.”

  “Maybe someone wrote the wrong address.”

  “But the handwriting’s identical to the signature. Do you think the good doctor forgot the street and town where he lived? I checked the state database. No person by that name has ever lived in Lafourche Parish. In fact, no physician of any kind — MD, DO, chiropractor or witch doctor — named Frank Caparelli ever held a medical license in Louisiana.

  “Noah Proctor’s death certificate shows he’s buried in the Lockport cemetery, but that’s news to the people there. I spoke to the man who runs the place. Like everyone in the parish, he knows about Proctor Hall, but no Proctors are buried in Lockport.

  “Noah’s death certificate is a forgery, but it appears nobody picked it up. Back in 2003 somebody killed Noah off, so to speak. Sounds to me like he might be alive. Did you find out anything more?”

  “No, but I agree with you he might be alive. I suggest going to Lockport and talking to the people who live in the house. I’d do it for you, but I’m in the middle of a project for the boss.”

  “I’ll go. What’s the address, and who lives there?”

  Jack looked at his notes. “Yeah, I cross-checked the name and address. The place is on the west bank of Bayou Lafourche in Lockport. That would be Highway 1. Google Earth shows the house sits just feet from the water. The owners are Joseph and Mary, like in the Bible. Last name’s Girard.”

  Landry jerked his head up. “Their last name’s Girard? Are you sure?”

  Jack nodded and asked why that name was significant.

  Joseph and Mary Girard.

  Landry had a sick feeling in his gut. This was no coincidence. They had the same last name as the professor’s. It was an important discovery, but what it meant was a mystery.

  Landry got little sleep that night. He tossed and turned, wondering where to begin unraveling the mystery, how Noah was involved, and who Julien really was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It took just over an hour to drive from New Orleans to Lockport, a tiny town split down the middle by Bayou Lafourche. Highway 1 ran along the east side and 308 on the west. The occasional bridge allowed passage from one side of town to the other.

  Landry found the Girard house with no trouble. It was a small clapboard, and as Jack said, it sat feet from the riverbank. He wondered about erosion. If the bank eroded or the river overflowed its banks, every house along this stretch would either be in the bayou or flooded.

  The place needed work. The front porch roof sagged where a post had fallen, and the house hadn’t seen paint in years. In the front yard a refrigerator lay on its side, and an old pickup with no wheels sat on blocks. Tall grass grew around the chassis, an indicator of how long it had sat there.

  As Landry walked toward the house, the only sounds were the buzzing chirps of crickets and laughter coming from two boys fishing thirty feet away along the bayou. He tested the porch steps before using them, walked to a screen door, and knocked. He called Joseph’s name, but no one answered.

  He walked to the back, rapped on the door, and shouted, “Mr. Girard! Joseph. Mary. Is anybody home?”

  “Nobody lives there, mister.” The kids who’d been fishing stood in the yard now. “Those people have been gone a while.”

  “How long?” he asked, and the boy said he wasn’t exactly sure. It could be a year.

  “Where did they go?”

  “You the law?” the other one asked. “Why are you asking so many questions? Did they do something bad?”

  Landry smiled. “I’m not the law. I’m a friend and I came to see them.”

  “Didn’t know they had any friends,” one boy said to the other. “Did you?”

  “Nope. Nobody comes around here ’cept that guy that checks on things sometimes. He isn’t here long. Just goes in the house for a few minutes and leaves.”

  “Can you tell me what he looks like?”

  “I dunno. Old guy with a ponytail. He drives a silver car.”

  “Toyota,” the other boy said. “A Toyota Corolla, like my old man’s.”

  Old guy with a ponytail. Silver Corolla. They’re describing Julien Girard.

  “How often does he come?”

  “Every few weeks, I guess. He hasn’t come in a while.”

  “If I give you my number, would you call me next time you see him?”

  “We don’t have a phone, mister. You sure you ain’t the law?”

  No amount of assurance would convince the boys. In a close-knit community, even the kids looked out for their own. He gave them each a dollar and said, “Go buy yourself something fun.”

  “I’m gettin’ night crawlers,” one said. “We’ve been fishin’ with bologna, but the fish figured that out. You put a worm on there, they’ll stand in line to get on that hook!”

  Landry drove to the cemetery and found the older man who’d spoken to Jack earlier. He reiterated that the record book showed no Proctors in the cemetery’s two-hundred-year history.

  “What about Girard? Do you have any of them?”

  “Girard. They came to Lafourche Parish in the late eighteen hundreds. They’re all buried in a family plot at the Catholic cemetery in Thibodaux. May I ask why you’re interested in the Girards? Since I’ve lived in this parish for seventy years, perhaps I can help you.”

  “I hoped to find Joseph and Mary Girard, but it looks like they haven’t lived in the house for some time. Two boys said a man sometimes comes to check on things. Any idea where the Girards are these days?”

  “No, but I heard tell they moved away. The man who comes — that’s their nephew Julien.”

  His pulse quickened. “Julien Girard?”

  “Yes. He teaches school somewhere. They considered him their son. They raised him his whole life, from when he was a little baby.”

  “Who were his parents?”

  “Relatives from somewhere. People look after their own in these parts.”

  “You’re sure they aren’t his actual parents? He has their last name.”

  “Like I say, they raised him like their own, since he even had their last name.”

  Landry drove to the St. Joseph Cemetery in Thibodaux, found the Girard plot, and saw a dozen markers. The most recent burials had happened over twenty years ago. He found no Proctors here either. The solution to this enigma wouldn’t be that simple.

  As he drove back to New Orleans, he plotted his next move. The next time Julien came to Lockport, the boys would tell him someone in a Jeep Grand Cherokee came around asking a lot of questions. If Julien was up to something, he’d raise his guard and concoct a plausible story. If he hurried, he could surprise Julien and catch him unawares.

  He got off the interstate at the Tulane University exit. He’d stop by Hebert Hall and drop in on Julien.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Julien smiled as Landry opened his office door. “What a surprise! To what do I owe the honor? Come in and take a seat if you can find one.”

  Like the proverbial absent-minded professor, Julien had a cluttered office. Stacks of books and yellow pads rose from every empty space. Julien moved some journals from a chair to the floor and motioned for Landry to sit.

  “What’s up? More news on Proctor Hall?”

  “No, something else. I drove over to Lockport today.”

  Landry watched Julien’s reaction. He shifted in his chair and said, “Really? What on earth took you to that tiny place?”

  “Do you know it?”

  He smiled. “Sure. I grew up in Lockport, and I lived there until I left for college.”

  “Did you know Joseph and Mary Girard?”r />
  “Sure. They’re my parents. What’s this about, Landry? Is something wrong?”

  He claims they’re his parents. “Where are they now?”

  Julien became wary. “Why all the questions? Did you go there to see them? What’s going on?”

  “They don’t live there now, and you go there sometimes to check on the house. Where are they?”