Carlson gave her a moment to get acquainted with her new body. “When you died, it was 1881. You were eighty years old. It’s been a very, very long time since you could enjoy being a young woman.”
Katie--in her own mind--heard everything. She felt everything, every time Marie Laveau put her own hands all over some intimate part of her body. Her soul was fading away. She was still here, still herself, but she was buried so deeply that she wondered if she would ever see daylight with her own eyes again.
She wanted to scream. She needed to scream.
Instead, all she could do was watch.
“People still come to your grave,” Carlson told her. “They honor you with gifts. They ask for your blessings. You will forever be a part of this world. We will forever be in your debt.”
He knelt in front of her, and Katie tried to make her arms move, to reach out to strangle him. She wanted him to die, for what he was doing to her.
Her hand stretched out toward Carlson.
She smiled at him. She knelt down with him, and took his face in her hands.
No, she told herself. No don’t do this.
She kissed him, a slow and eager movement of Katie’s lips over his. Carlson responded to that embrace by putting his hands all over her. Her own hands did the same, roaming up and under his shirt, feeling the tight movement of his muscles as he leaned into her.
No, no, no! I will not do this!
Forget it, that voice in her head repeated to her.
It was like having a conversation with herself, where all she could do was listen.
Forget your life. Your life is mine now.
No, no, no, no...
Yes...
She felt the need for him begin to swell within her. The desire blossomed quickly and swept through her until it was all she could feel. The heat of it burned away her silent protests and then she was just floating along inside herself as she stripped off her clothes, and stripped off Carlson’s clothes, and pushed him down on the floor.
She was more forceful with him than she had ever been with a man. She was wild, and free, and she mounted him across his hips, teasing his throbbing manhood with mischievous touches of her slick heat until he was begging her to take him, ride him, use him however she wanted.
So she did.
Her body moved on him in ways that she could never have imagined. They both screamed in wordless songs that seemed like voodoo spells unto themselves. As if they were chanting to each other, and making the temperature lift higher, and higher--both inside, and out.
The climax knocked Katie into a spiral of warm, euphoric darkness. It was involuntary, and intense, and left her wanting to do it again.
She lost herself for a long time in the feeling of what had been done to her. Everything was slipping away. She wondered if she would become tatters of herself, like a shredded tapestry that could never be put together again.
She could feel herself, somewhere in here, circling around her own mind. If she could just--
Catch herself.
Somehow.
From eyes that weren’t really there anymore, Katie cried. She cried in ecstasy, and she cried in utter despair.
And, she cried in the grip of the overwhelming fear that quivered through her being.
For a time she drifted, recovering from the feelings and emotions that Carlson’s sex had filled her with. It was a minute, or twelve hours, or a year. There was no way of knowing how long. Time had no meaning in the place where she was.
Then her eyes opened, and she saw what Madame Laveau saw.
They weren’t in the basement anymore.
This was the first floor. This was the room where Carlson had killed Xavier.
Katie’s arms were outstretched, hands draping loosely at her wrists, chanting words she didn’t know through lips she couldn’t control.
Something was moving inside of her. A force like electrical energy. It ran through her veins and filtered through her fingers, through the air, layering over the bloody mess of Xavier’s body.
Magic. Black magic. This was voodoo.
Katie had never felt it before in her life but there was no doubting what this was. The voodoo queen riding her body was performing voodoo magic.
Somehow, she felt more herself now. She could almost feel herself distinct from Madame Laveau now.
The chanting grew louder. The magic crackled.
Xavier’s eyes opened.
Chapter 29
Xavier blinked, and moaned, and his body shook.
He’d been dead. Katie knew that for sure. The image of Carlson’s knife spurting through Xavier’s neck was sharp and clear.
Dead. He’d been dead.
Katie moved closer to the focus of her vision, still looking out through her own face. The candles still burned, which she thought was dangerous, and in the light she could see Xavier’s cold, blank eyes. They were a liquid gray. There was no life in them.
He wasn’t alive. He was still dead.
Katie stared, unable to do anything but watch as Madame Laveau animated a corpse.
Xavier stood with jerky, stiff movements. His joints popped. His one arm bent completely the wrong way before coming back around. The blood on his clothes and around his neck had turned black and crusty already.
When he was on his feet, he stood with his back hunched, one shoulder lower than the other, his mouth hanging open with bloody drool pouring out.
“The first of many,” Carlson said. His voice was receding in Katie’s hearing. Now that Madame Laveau wasn’t using her magic, her personality was becoming dominant again. She was losing herself.
Did Carlson say the first? Xavier was the first?
Yes, Madame Laveau said to her inside of her own mind. Voodoo will be respected again. I will make our faith respected. I will make it feared. I am Madame Laveau, and I am reborn.
This is my body! Katie screamed in her mind, the words silent and full of her fear and anger. This is mine! You don’t belong--ahh!
Pain wracked her soul, like lightning shooting through her soul. Katie had never experienced anything so...so pure. This was complete agony, with no reprieve. Not until Madame Laveau took a breath with Katie’s lungs and settled her thoughts.
You won’t be here much longer, she said to Katie. You’re already fading away. Understand that I can end you at any moment, or I can choose to let you ride along with me and watch as the world is remade in my image. The choice is yours.
Katie tried to claw her way to the surface of her own body but her hands couldn’t find anything to grab hold of. There was no escape. This was insane. This was impossible. Voodoo wasn’t real. Zombies weren’t real. Madame Laveau couldn’t be making zombies! It had to be more of that powder stuff that Carlson had used on her. That must be it.
There was no such things as zombies.
Around her, Madame Laveau laughed. “Wait and see. The world will bow before me, or the world will suffer. My poor Xavier here is just the first of many servants loyal to their voodoo queen.”
He can’t be a zombie. You can’t just turn people into zombies.
Madame Laveau’s laughter was an eerie echo of Katie’s own voice. “People are zombies, Katie Pearson. They walk through this world with no care for themselves, no care for no one else. They wander through life and they go from moment to moment with no care what happens to no one. Heart as dead and cold as stone, they are. Everyone around you is already a zombie. I’m just gonna make their outsides match their insides. That’s all I be doing.”
Anger outweighed Katie’s fear for just an instant. How are you going to make more? she asked Madame Laveau. I don’t see a line of dead people waiting for you to cast your little voodoo spells. Do you? It’s not like you can use me. I’m not dead.
That laughter again. The laughter that was Katie’s, but not hers at the same time. “Are you sure?”
I’m not dead.
Laughter, pure and mean.
I’m not dead!
“Th
ink so?”
Yes.
“Hmm.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
“Well, Katie Pearson, did you ever think that maybe this be what Hell looks like?”
The cold realization of that landed like a physical slap against a body that she couldn’t feel.
She was a prisoner, in Hell.
Before too much longer, there would be nothing at all left of her.
“Besides, Katie Pearson, I don’t need your pitiful soul to create my adoring servants.” She shrugged, swirling Katie’s consciousness around with her own. “I have volunteers who want to become mine.”
She turned her attention to the doorway, bringing Katie’s attention that way as well.
A procession of men in hooded cloaks walked in, carrying candles, and chanting words of voodoo power.
Chapter 30
These were the men who had held Katie down on the floor in the basement, and performed their black magic on her. She saw their faces now, and the remaining pieces of her memories fell into place.
The house had guided her down there, knowing what she would find. This house, built on a foundation in a shadowy corner of New Orleans, where even the history had forgotten the events of centuries long past.
Under the city, in passages once used by French revolutionaries, lay the bones of the forgotten. The City of the Dead it was called. From the long trapped souls of the wounded, and the sick, and the unwanted who filtered into those tunnels to escape from society, voodoo queens like Madame Laveau drew their powers. The ground was seeped in the blood of the dead.
And now Madame Laveau was going to raise the dead and make them a gathering of animated corpses loyal to herself.
That was the story Carlson had told her while she lay in the darkness, on her back, helpless from whatever drug he had puffed into her face. She remembered breathing it in now. She understood why she felt like there were parts of that experience in the basement that were missing for her.
Carlson had made sure she wouldn’t remember.
Now that Madame Laveau had taken over her mind, she remembered it all clearly. She knew the insanity that was about to happen.
All she wanted was for it to stop.
She opened her mouth to scream.
“My friends,” Madame Laveau said through her lips. “You have come here to give yourselves to me. Remove your robes. Show yourselves. Set yourselves free to me.”
One by one, they did as she commanded. The robes slipped off over shoulders, and fell to the floor to pile themselves around the ankles of the faithful. Katie saw most of them were men, but two were women, and none of them were wearing anything. They didn’t seem to care. No one’s eyes wandered to their neighbor. The men stood flaccid, the women with their heads back and eyes only for Madame Laveau.
Or rather, only for Katie.
Her arms were lifted up, just as they had been before, hands held at the same angle as she started to chant those unknown words. Katie felt the power stirring through her again, from someplace deep inside that wasn’t any part of her. It coiled and flowed, dripping off her fingertips and cascading through the room.
And as Madame Laveau called on that power, Katie felt cracks forming in her prison that her mind could slip through.
It occurred to her that the more Madame Laveau had to draw on her powers, the less power she had over Katie.
Could she use that? Could that be her way out?
Around her, Laveau laughed maniacally. There is no way out for you. I will not give up my new body.
Pain shot through her like before, but maybe not as strong. Maybe Katie was on to something, after all.
She pushed against the barriers all around her, trying to slide back into her body like a set of clothes.
The pain pushed her back, and for a while she didn’t know if she was still here, or if she had been completely erased from existence.
Then she snapped back to herself. She was Katie Pearson again, held hostage by the loa of a dead voodoo queen, but definitely herself.
Through her eyes, she saw the seven naked, subservient followers of Madame Marie Laveau. They stood very still, all in a row, like sculpted nudes. Katie wasn’t sure they were moving a single muscle in their body. They certainly didn’t look like they were breathing.
It was their eyes that held her transfixed. Completely white, from corner to corner. At first she thought they had rolled back into their heads, but then she saw that the color had simply been leeched out of the irises, and the pupils were now the same uniform, murky white.
They were blind, yet they stared straight at her.
“You see?” Katie heard Marie Laveau crowing in triumph. “They follow, and I lead. They will encourage others to join, and soon all of New Orleans will be ours. And then, no one will stop me.”
Katie felt the world spin around her.
Carlson was there suddenly, catching her body as it began to topple. A dizzy spell that left a loud ringing noise sounding through her brain. Katie actually felt it. She felt Carlson’s arms around her. This was the first thing she had felt with her own body since this nightmare began and she clung to it like a rope thrown to a drowning person.
If she could feel her body again, then she could take control.
She pushed against Carlson’s chest, wanting to get away from him, wanting to run and never look back, but she was too weak, and the dizziness was getting worse, and now there was a voice clamoring in her mind and shouting, shouting, shouting.
It was her voice, but it was the words of Madame Laveau.
No! Not now. I was so close. So close! Give me back the world. Give me back my life!
Katie used the last of her strength to close that voice away, and push it down deep. This wasn’t over, but for now, she was still herself.
Carlson’s hand stroking her face was both comforting, and repulsive to her. “Shh,” he said. “It’s all right. You used too much, too fast. You need to get used to this new body. Shh. It’s all right.”
She tried to push herself free one last time before the world closed in on her and she blacked out to the sound of his cooing.
“It’s all right...it’s all right...”
Chapter 31
Katie creaked open one eye and examined her surroundings.
With a groan, she got out from under the blankets and sat on the edge of Carlson’s bed. She would have expected it to be old hat now, waking up in this man’s bed.
Only now, it wasn’t funny anymore.
She needed to get out of here. Right. Now.
Everything came back to her in a rush and she felt over her body with her own hands, just to make sure she could do it. This was her. It was just her, and nobody else was inside of her. She couldn’t hear Madame Laveau’s voice. She couldn’t feel a loa squirming inside. She was alone with herself again.
For the moment, she was alone in the room as well.
She was still in the jeans and shirt from before. She only had socks on her feet but she wasn’t going to wait to find out where he’d put her shoes. She didn’t need them. There were probably two dozen shoe stores in New Orleans, if not more.
She just wanted out.
At the door to the bedroom she stopped, and listened. There were no sounds. The apartment around her was quiet. From the way the sunlight was coming through the window she could tell it was about midday. The club downstairs would be empty.
If she was really, really lucky then Carlson had left her here alone.
She didn’t know what was real and what was made up in her memories of last night. Witchcraft. Voodoo. Zombies, for the love of God. How was she supposed to believe any of it? No sane person ever would.
Then again, sane people didn’t see ghosts like she did, or know that there really were more things in Heaven and Earth than anyone could ever imagine.
So maybe it wasn’t too crazy to think voodoo could be on that list, too.
Katie didn’t care anymore. Something was wrong here, and s
he wanted out. Of this apartment, of Carlson’s life, of this whole damned city.
She turned the knob, and yanked to open it.
It rattled against the lock, and nothing else.
No. Oh, no.
Katie twisted the lock on her side, first one way and then the other, but it stayed locked. The door wouldn’t open.
It couldn’t be locked from this side. Locks were meant to keep people out, not keep them in. She pulled, and tugged, until she realized how much noise she was making. Then she stopped, and stared at the doorknob.
If Carlson had built the lock to be locked from either side, that would explain it.
Or, if he slid the key in the outside handle and snapped it off. That was supposed to keep a door locked, wasn’t it? That’s what they always did on TV.
Maybe he had it braced from the outside, or maybe she was just too worked up to realize what she was doing wrong, or maybe a hundred different other maybes. None of that mattered. She had to go before Carlson came to check on her.
The window was the only other way out.
She rushed over and pushed the curtains aside. It was bright outside, just like she thought, but the window opened on the back of the building. There were no people out there. No one to hear her if she screamed, and no one to call the police.
The police! She searched in her back pockets, and then her front pockets, but there was no phone. All she had was the playing card that she’d picked up from the failed fortune teller reading. No help there.
It hadn’t been any help for Madam Parlander, either.
Pushing on the window’s sash did nothing. She looked for a lock but there wasn’t one. It should open. There was no reason why it shouldn’t open.
Then she saw the edges of the sill. In each corner, the head of a screw was nearly hidden under a thick layer of paint. The window was actually screwed shut.
She lowered her forehead down against a pane of glass. He’d thought of everything. No phone. No way out.
That wasn’t going to stop her. She’d find some way to free herself. Maybe if she just--
Sight Unseen Complete Series Box Set Page 93
