The Map of Moments

by Christopher Golden

  Someone in the procession looked at him with sad, heavy eyes, then glanced at the face behind his shoulder and looked quickly away.

  “Yeah.” He scanned the street, desperate to set eyes on a cop.

  “You buyin’?”

  Max had no idea what he was talking about, but he nodded.

  “Keep walking and you'll find him.”

  “Which way?”

  The man pushed at Max, sending him stumbling into the street. “Just keep walking.”

  Max was tempted to turn around and ask more, but just because he no longer felt the touch on his back did not mean the threat was gone. So he walked, and as he crossed the road and mounted the opposite sidewalk, he heard laughter.

  He turned around, but several pedestrians had gathered on the corner he had just left. They looked toward the disappearing tail of the funeral, and any one of the men could have been his assailant.

  Max gasped, breathing deeply and slowly to try and settle his sprinting heart. Then he started walking again, passing shops and bars and restaurants, waiting for inspiration to strike.

  You buyin? the guy had asked. Drugs? Is that what Gabrielle had been mixed up in? It was frightening, and it might explain the way her family had turned their backs on her, but in a way there was also something anti-climactic about it. Gabrielle's mystery was growing in his mind, and something as prosaic as drugs just did not feel right.

  Keep walking, you'll find him. But where? And how, if he didn't even know what Coco looked like?

  He crossed an intersection and kept moving, staying on the same street, wondering what he'd do when he reached its end. Five minutes later he did, and he waited there for a while before turning around and walking back along the street. He browsed shop windows, then bought a coffee and sat on a wooden bench outside a café, watching the world go by. He stayed there for half an hour, thoughts slowly turning to that Second Moment once more. He could be at Jackson Square in fifteen minutes if he started walking now, and maybe—

  Someone sat down on the bench beside him, and he discovered what the unseen man had meant.

  Coco had found him.

  The man lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, relaxing back on the bench and not once looking at Max. His manner spoke of complete control.

  “What's your name?” Coco asked at last.

  “Max.”

  “And you want to buy something?”

  “Well…” Max trailed off, hit by a moment of indecision. If he pursued this false line, he could get into trouble. Maybe it was better just to ask outright.

  “Don't be shy,” Coco said, laughing softly. He had a smooth, coaxing voice, nothing like the gruffness of the man who'd pressed something into Max's back.

  “Should we be doing this out here?” Max asked. People walked up and down the street, cars passed by.

  Coco looked at him for the first time, and there was something about his eyes that shocked Max. They were intelligent, yet distant, as though he'd seen something somewhere else that was much more interesting than the here and now.

  “You afraid,” Coco said at last, and it was not a question.

  “I've had a bad couple of days,” Max said.

  Coco put his head back and laughed, and Max was conscious of a few faces turning their way. The man rocked on the bench, dropping his cigarette and seeming not to notice, and he had to wipe tears from his eyes. “Haven't we all?” he said, then laughed again.

  As Max waited for the laughter to subside, he had a chance to appraise him. Coco was smartly dressed, with hair cut close to the scalp, and a goatee. His skin was smooth and unmarred. He looked strong and fit. There was something chilling about him, but it was more in his manner than appearance.

  Max realized there and then that he did not want to fuck with Coco.

  “So, decided what you want yet, boy?” the man asked. Max found it strange being called “boy” by someone probably younger than him, but with Coco it seemed to fit. “Got stuff that'll make you see the whole world. Got stuff, it'll take the pain away, if pain's your worry. Got girls who'll suck the pain right outta you.”

  A drug dealer? A pimp? Surely not Gabrielle …surely not.

  “Gabrielle Doucette,” Max said.

  “Ah.” The last of Coco's smile filtered away. He withdrew another cigarette, lit it, and leaned back against the café wall, looking along the street past Max.

  “You didn't go to her funeral.”

  “She's dead?” Coco asked, his expression unchanging.

  Max was sure he knew the truth. Either that, or Coco was completely unconcerned. Yet there was opportunity here, he could sense that. A chance to find out more of Gabrielle's background, delve into those dark parts that even she had wanted to keep from him, and perhaps to know the woman as he had never known her before. Right then, that seemed so important. It was all part of the mystery that Max sensed nestled around him. And the thicker it grew, the more he wanted to solve it.

  “One of your hookers?” Max said, hating the idea, dreading the answer.

  “Gaby?” Coco smiled, and perhaps there was even a hint of sadness there. “You really think that, boy?”

  “No,” Max said.

  Coco nodded and smoked some more. Mention of Gabrielle had changed his whole manner, and Max thought it might be caution. Coco looked him up and down, a very frank appraisal that Max found uncomfortable.

  “Friend of hers?” the man said at last.

  Max nodded. A few more people were sitting outside the café now. It felt busy, but it did not feel safe. He wondered how much of that feeling grew from inside rather than without.

  “The people she hung around with…” Max said, trailing off, intending it as an opener rather than a question.

  But Coco's answer was instant. He flicked his cigarette into the street, stood, and pressed a flick-knife hard against Max's throat.

  Max leaned back, head pressed against the café's wall, but Coco came closer, and for a beat Max was sure the man was going to slit his throat there and then. He grunted, trying to call for help but unable to talk. He looked around, certain that someone must be seeing this, but everyone was looking away. People sat drinking coffee, smoking, walking past, driving slowly along the road, and not one of them seemed to be looking at him and Coco. Conversation was louder than ever …perhaps to drown out the sound of his imminent death.

  He looked up into Coco's face, just a few inches from his own. The man's eyes seemed to be searching deep. He looked all around Max's face, coming to rest on his eyes, his expression totally blank.

  “Tordu don't take kindly to people asking after them,” he said at last.

  “Tordu?”

  Coco pursed his lips and tensed his arms, and Max brought his hands up, terrified that this was his last moment on Earth.

  Coco batted his hands aside and pressed his nose against Max's. Max could smell his smoky breath, and beneath it something more spicy and exotic.

  The knife edge was cold against his throat. It was only them, and the rest of the world. No one interrupted, nothing was said, and Max had never felt so far from the heart of this city.

  “Your only warning,” Coco said. Then he stood slowly, folded the knife, lit another cigarette, stared at Max for a few more seconds, and walked away. Never once did he look around at the patrons of the café, or those people walking along the street, and he did not look back.

  Gasping, pressing his hands to his neck and dreading what he would feel, a sudden faintness blurred Max's vision and dried his throat. He leaned forward and checked his hands, but they were not bloodied. Breathing deeply, head between his knees, he looked down at one of Coco's crushed cigarettes.

  Tordu?

  When he sat up again, a few people were looking at him. “Did you see that?” he asked. But none of them had. Maybe in the wake of the storm they had become blind to violence and death, like Charlie, who'd walked around a dead woman on the sidewalk at Tulane for weeks. Or maybe, like Max, they were terrified.
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br />   Coco was gone, just as quickly as he had arrived. And in his wake he left even more mystery.

  I almost died just now, Max thought.

  He left the café, and that street, and the people who had seen but done nothing. The thought crossed his mind that he should tell the police, but he had no proof or witnesses, and it would be a waste of time.

  But who or what were the Tordu? Some kind of gang? That was a question for Corinne. She would not volunteer the information, but he had a feeling that if he found things out for himself, she'd be more than willing to talk about it. Maybe she needed to talk about it.

  And then, of course, there was Coco's warning…

  He walked until he found an old pay phone on the side wall of a convenience store. Digging in his pocket for some change, he racked his brain for Corinne's number. He'd called it often enough over the past couple of weeks, arranging his trip down here, and he cleared his mind and tried tapping it in.

  On the third try, he got it right.

  “Hey,” he said when she answered, “it's me.”

  “Max. Didn't think I'd hear from you again—today, at least. Meet your friends at Tulane?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “Corinne, what's Tordu?”

  Silence. Max shifted and the line crackled. “Corinne?”

  The silence continued. He was sure she was still there, but he heard nothing; no breathing, no heartbeat.

  “Corinne, I need to know—”

  “Go back to Boston, Max,” she said. “Really. If you ever listen to anything I say, listen to this: go back to Boston.” Then she hung up.

  Max dialed her number three more times, but she did not pick up.

  “Shit!” He banged down the receiver, looking around to see if anyone was watching him. He seemed to be alone in the busy street.

  Dropping the change back in his pocket, he felt Ray's map. He looked up at the clear sky and thought of rain coming from nowhere, and then he remembered the name of the Second Moment on the map: The Pere's Kyrie.

  He'd only come down here to say good-bye, to close the door on a part of his life that had left him scarred. Instead, with every passing moment he seemed to be opening more doors, and each one led into mystery.

  Max was sick of mysteries. He needed to stop asking politely for answers. He could still feel the point of Coco's knife on his throat, still hear the threat in that silky voice. It should have made him do just what Corinne recommended. Run back to Boston.

  Well, fuck that. Corinne obviously had some of the answers he was looking for, and she wasn't likely to cut his throat for asking. And if whatever he'd seen or witnessed yesterday was more than a drunken, drugged hallucination, there was one other mystery he could solve right now.

  Jackson Square was ten minutes away. He started walking.

  The Square was beautiful. He'd been here a few times with Gabrielle, sitting in the park and eating lunch, throwing down bread for the birds, staring at St. Louis Cathedral and wondering at the history of the place. It wasn't busy now— none of New Orleans was—but there were still a few people wandering through the circular park, eating from paper bags, smoking, staring at their feet.

  Even here Max saw the scars of Katrina in the boarded windows, broken trees, and the air of dejection that seemed to flow from the shops and restaurants around the Square. It felt like a place where the last parade had already marched by, and all that remained was the cleanup. Then God would put up the chairs, lock the doors, and turn out the lights forever.

  Max really hoped that didn't happen. A lot of people obviously still had faith in New Orleans. And maybe faith could be enough.

  He sat on a bench in the park and opened the map. The Moment was still there, and the box it was written in ended in a sharp point in front of the cathedral.

  Max looked up. There was nothing out of place here, no mysterious other-world where he would witness events from the past and taste the air of yesteryear. People walked back and forth before the cathedral steps, and nothing disturbed them.

  They haven't drunk that stuff from Ray's clay bottle, Max thought. But he shook his head, confused. In the cool light of day, and so soon after having his life threatened, yesterday was starting to seem even more like a dream.

  He folded the map, stood, and walked toward the cathedral.

  And he heard singing. He paused, head tilted to one side. Was there a service today? Nobody else seemed to be listening, and he walked on, realizing he must present an odd sight standing there in the afternoon sun.

  A dozen yards from the cathedral steps he stopped again. Two young women parted to walk around him, and one of them muttered something that made the other one laugh. Max turned to watch them go, and when the taller woman looked back, the smile dropped from her face.

  What does she see? Max thought. What is it about me that dries her laughter?

  He took another step—

  —and the rain struck him, driving him to his knees. Heavy and unrelenting, it battered him down to the rough stones that had been smooth a moment before. The rain, and the darkness…

  It was daytime in the Square, but nighttime for Max. His guts knotted and he felt sick, but he swallowed it down, tensing his muscles against the spate of cramps that twisted them up.

  Twisted …“Tordu” is French for “twisted”!

  The singing grew louder, a deep, beautiful tenor singing the Kyrie. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Another Moment. Another storm. Once again he had slipped into long ago. The Square here was old, less arranged, functional rather than beautified for tourists. And it was strange. Some of the buildings he recognized, yet even in the downpour they seemed newer, their stone not so weathered and the façades smoother.

  A priest stood before the cathedral, hands clasped before his chest as he sang that wonderful chant. The Father's Kyrie! Max thought. Before the priest, a group of people were gathered around six rough pine coffins that were lined up in front of the steps. On the steps themselves were the stinking, rotten remains of six human beings.

  The priest said something in thickly accented French that Max could not translate, and the people started trying to lift the remains. The bodies fell apart. They must have been here for a long time, lying rotting on these steps with no one removing them—like the bodies left all over New Orleans after Katrina; like Gabrielle in her attic—and Max could not understand why.

  Criminals? Heretics? Blasphemers?

  But the priest sang on, and the weeping people ignored the stench of the dead to nail their loved ones at last into their coffins.

  Shadows moved through the rain and flitted at the limits of Max's perception. They wore armor and carried weapons, but the downpour seemed to keep them at bay. And the rain, he realized, carried the priest's song. His words did not emerge from one place, but all around, coming at Max from left and right, up and down. Each splash of a raindrop was part of the priest's voice, and every touch of water on Max's head felt like a baptism into this man's complete and wonderful faith.

  “Who are you?” Max shouted, but nobody heard.

  He stood and started backing away. The rain and the voice followed.

  The priest and his funeral entourage walked away from the Square, passing out of view along an alley beside the cathedral. As darkness swallowed them, those armed shapes moved again, casting shadows on the rain that were washed away with another burst of that voice. They wanted to get at those coffins and the people who dared join the procession, but the Pere's Kyrie kept them out.

  The singing continued, as though every drop of rain was making a small part of the sound, lifting it and echoing it from the sodden ground.

  Max backed away some more, his clothes soaked through, and he wondered what song the rain would sing next.

  He was lying on the ground, and an old black woman knelt over him.

  “You okay, baby?” she asked.

  Max blinked up at the clear blue sky. The song was gone, but it echoed in his mind.<
br />
  “You shouted at me, asked who I am. Then you fell down. Sorry if I startled you. I'm no one, really.”

  Max sat up and looked around. The Square was real, this woman was real, and his clothes were dry once more.

  “Where's the rain gone?” he asked. “There was a storm.”

  “Sure was,” the old woman said. “Sure was. But we'll get by.” Then she stood slowly, groaning as her old joints creaked, and walked away.

  Max found his feet and staggered back to the park, dropping onto a bench. That was no dream, he thought. That was no hallucination. He wondered whether, if he approached those steps, he'd see it again. But then he remembered the map. And when he took it out and unfolded it, he was just in time to see the last traces of the Second Moment's ink fading away, and the first of the Third Moment appear.

  chapter

  6

  whatever Ray had given him should have been out of his system by now …unless whatever it had done to him was permanent. That thought scared Max, but not as much as the idea that magic had touched him. Magic was for fairy tales and kids. To Max, it meant card tricks and making coins appear out of thin air.

  But it was too late for denials, especially after what he'd seen, what he'd experienced. And he felt it now, too, like static in the air around him. Maybe that was why that woman had looked at him so strangely on the steps of the cathedral. Ray had said something about gathering the magic, and somehow that's what he was doing. Perhaps static was the right way to think about it, but eventually, static would build into a shock.

  Steadying his breath, he read the words of the Third Moment:

  The Third Moment:

  The Sacrifice of the Novices

  Mireault Marks the City

  February 13, 1823

  Nodding, he folded the map. He needed to see Corinne, talk to her, but after what he'd just experienced he could not just break away from Ray's map. If it was real, if these moments really were the magical history of New Orleans and he could witness and feel them, maybe the other things the old man had said were also true. Maybe crazy Ray hadn't been so crazy after all.