by Bryan Camp
He started to speak, to call on the flames that had destroyed a room full of ghouls, hoping it would be enough to save him without the boost of the pearl’s magic aiding his own, but a sudden twist of urgent pain in his gut stole his breath. Now? he thought. This is happening to me now?
Because until the cold, sharp agony retreated and came again and again, Jude mistook what was happening to him for a sudden, painful bowel affliction. Had thought he was about to crap his pants in the middle of a fight.
It wasn’t until he smelled the blood that Jude understood that he was being stabbed.
The strength trembled out of his legs, and he fell to the floor, barely noticing the impact, realizing what was happening to him now, his hands pressed tight against the sticky, hot fluid gushing from his abdomen. He gasped for air that wouldn’t come, strained with all his might toward some magic spell, some last-second rescue that he knew had to be coming. He tried to speak past a mouthful of blood—his own, not the mere taste that signaled the presence of a vampire—a gurgling froth that came with every failed breath.
It occurred to him that he’d done so many things wrong, that in the view of more than a few people, he deserved this.
And then, to his great surprise and against every effort to the contrary, Jude Dubuisson died.
Part Four
Chapter Sixteen
The soul must balance the weight of its heart against the feather of truth in order to pass into the realm beyond. Or it must cross a bridge as narrow as a knife’s edge, or brave a mountain pass where the mountains clash against one another, or it must pay the boatman to ferry it across the river, which is a river of blood, or of tears, or of waters of forgetting. Or it rides a horse that gallops across the ocean’s surface, or sails in a boat made of glass. Or it must descend into a frozen pit, or climb a vast mountain to the celestial spheres. It undertakes a journey that may last three days, or a year, or four, or that is outside of time entirely. The soul’s destination is a meadow, or a field, or a green lawn, or hunting grounds, or an island, or the first home of mankind, where the food is plentiful and disease does not exist and it is always summer. The valorous dead are carried from the field of battle to a great feast, the benevolent find themselves in a garden of eternal joy, and the wise become one with all. The sinful dead face their punishments in a maze, a lake of fire, or a dark and frozen cave, or they are returned to the world, given another birth, another life, another death, in which to redeem their mistakes. Or the dead are simply dead. Their bodies rot and join the soil and nurture the ecosystem that sustained them. Their energy returns to the universe, their elements the same as the living and dying stars. Death is the beginning of a journey, a doorway to another world, one part of an eternal cycle. It is never truly the end.
Jude stood out in the rain wearing his only suit and didn’t know where he was or why he was there. The rain shrouded the world around him as completely as if he were engulfed in fog, the noise of the city drowned out by the static roar of the wind, by the hiss of rainwater against hot concrete, the brick and neon of the buildings across the street almost invisible through the thick downpour, curtains of rain undulating like tall grass in the wind, like waves against the shore. He felt like he’d just been doing something incredibly important, but couldn’t remember what it was.
Jude reached for his cell phone, not even sure who he intended to call, but found his pockets empty. No keys, no wallet, no phone—nothing. Lightning flared, freezing the falling rain in its camera flash, and in that same instant thunder roared, the strike so close it shook Jude down to his bones. He checked his pockets again, patting himself down like a cliché of confusion.
An inarticulate dread began to creep through his thoughts. It occurred to him that, despite being soaked to the skin, he didn’t feel cold at all, didn’t feel the slightest discomfort from the driving wind. Maybe he was dreaming. What other explanation could there be for wandering around during a storm in a suit and tie with nothing in his pockets? He closed his eyes, willed himself awake, and opened them to the wind and the rain and the familiar shelter of a streetcar stop.
The ground trembled beneath him, a constant thunderous rumble, growing stronger instead of fading away. Light burned his eyes, not the flicker of lightning, but a steady shine. A rush of motion, a squeal of brakes, and an odd streetcar came to a halt in front of him, battered and worn like the archaic cars on the St. Charles line, but not green like the cars he’d ridden all his life. This one was painted a glossy black.
The streetcar’s doors folded open and Barren leaned out, raindrops splashing against his floral painted skull.
“Didn’t I tell you that you were about outta time?” he asked, his tone both rhetorical and scolding. “Now look at you.” He shook his head, a slow gesture that would have been grave if not for his mocking death’s-rictus grin. “Well, come on in before you catch your death. Again.”
Wavering flames danced in the glass and iron cages of antique gas lamps, lighting the interior of the streetcar with a gloomy, entombed sort of illumination. Thick cushions of molded leather covered the seats, the dark reds and browns of a coffin lining. The air smelled of candle wax and a pungent oil that almost hid the faint, lingering bite of bleach. One other passenger sat in the last row, face hidden by the shadow of a hat brim. Jude started toward the back, curious, but stopped when Barren, behind him, cleared his throat with exaggerated impatience.
“Where you think you going?” Barren asked. When Jude turned to face him, the voodoo loa had changed: his flower-decorated skull now naked, bleached white bone, his tuxedo replaced by wool robes. Ashen gray wings arched from his shoulders, almost brushing the streetcar’s ceiling. Torchlight seemed to reflect from somewhere deep within his eye sockets, his lipless mouth no longer a grin but a snarl.
Jude had no answer for him, could not find his voice. The music punctuated the silence and the space between them. Barren rubbed his thumb against the first two fingers of his hand. “Nobody rides for free,” he said, at last.
Jude searched his pockets again, knowing he would find them empty. Pants and coat both nothing but damp cloth. He opened his mouth, wanting to explain, but nothing came out. He struggled, like trying to find a word that had escaped the grasp of his mind, but it was as if speech itself had vanished, a vast gulf yawning between his thoughts and his tongue. Straining so hard that that he trembled, he managed only a wheeze, a gasp that might have only been the moan of the wind outside.
A strong hand grasped his shoulder, and the tension eased. A voice, heavy with a Haitian accent, spoke from behind him. “Leave the boy be,” it said. “He got enough to deal with, him. Don’t need to put up with your meanness, too, no.”
Jude turned and saw that the other passenger on the streetcar was Papa Legba, his mouth wrinkled into a smile, his body as gnarled and weathered as an oak root. This wasn’t the body of one of his houngan; this was his true face.
It was then that Jude began to realize—perhaps a little belatedly—that he was well and truly fucked. He opened his mouth to thank the voodoo god, but Legba frowned and shook his head.
“Won’t do you no good,” he said. “Not now.” He pointed to Barren. “You got to pay the fare. Everybody do.”
“How come it’s cruel when I say it?” Barren asked. “I said the same fucking thing.”
Legba frowned, all the lines on his face bending toward the floor. He kept his eyes on Jude but spoke to Barren. “It is how you talk, you know this. You are meant to guide them, but you delight in taunting them.”
“You just don’t know how to have fun anymore.”
In the periphery of Jude’s vision, Barren made a rude gesture, which Legba seemed to both notice and ignore. Their words seemed well-practiced, as though they had had this argument many times before, and they needed only to recite their lines. It was strange, seeing two gods bicker like an old married couple.
Outside, the storm pounded against the streetcar, the wind and the rain making it totter
back and forth like a drunk, like a ship on the high seas.
“Open your mouth,” Legba said. It took a moment for Jude to realize that the loa was speaking to him, but he saw no other option but to obey. Legba motioned for Jude to lean down, to lower his head to the wizened god’s level. When he did, Legba reached inside Jude’s mouth and touched his tongue. Legba’s fingers, warm and tasting of tobacco and rum, scooped the sensitive underside of Jude’s mouth and pulled something out. Jude hadn’t felt it there until Legba touched it, something hard and flat and round. The entire moment had an eerie echo in Jude’s memory like a parody—an inversion—of Communion.
“There it go,” Legba said, holding up the wet coin to Jude’s eyes: one of the doubloons from Dodge’s card game. Jude thought at first it would be the one that held his gift, but this one had a stylized tongue stamped into the metal. It took him a moment to recognize it as the wager that Legba had demanded. The loa pressed it into Jude’s palm. “Go on now. Pay the fare so we can be on our way.”
Barren—once again wearing the floral-painted skull and tuxedo—waited with his hand out. Jude couldn’t understand why Legba had given him the doubloon back when the game was still being played, but then he didn’t understand much of anything that was happening to him, just that he was alone on a streetcar with a couple of loa. He dropped the coin into Barren’s upturned glove. The skull-headed god looked down at it and chuckled, flicking the doubloon up to the back of his hand, where he walked it across his knuckles. “Slipping me the tongue on the first date,” he said, feigning the breathless drawl of a shocked southern belle, “and here I thought you were a gentleman.” He pivoted on his toes, giggling as he fell into the driver’s seat of the streetcar. He pulled a lever and the engine chugged to life, pounding beneath the floor like a clutching, struggling heart.
Legba pulled at Jude’s sleeve, turning him away from Barren and toward the back of the streetcar. “Leave this rooster to crow at his own foolishness,” he said. “There is much you must understand.” He led Jude down the rows of seats with slow and cautious footsteps as the car lurched down the tracks, buffeted by the storm. Legba sat and pulled one leg on top of the other, his ankle balanced on top of his knee. It was a surprisingly nimble gesture for one as old and frail as he appeared. He held out a hand to the seat next to him.
Barren, without turning his attention from the window in front of him, yelled over his shoulder, “Don’t listen to that old fart’s bullshit, Jude! This rooster up here got the biggest cock of all the loa. You ask anybody!”
Jude smiled, and beside him, Legba laughed. “He clever, I got to admit,” Legba said. He took a hand-carved wooden pipe from his coat pocket, chuckling and shaking his head as he knocked it against the heel of his polished dress shoe. “Least, he think he is.” From his vest pocket came a clump of dried leaf that he pressed into his pipe with a thumb. Jude stared, half hypnotized, half hoping Legba would produce the bottle of rum they’d shared at Dodge’s funeral. He couldn’t remember ever in his life wanting a drink as much as he did in that moment. The loa reached into the lantern swinging overhead and plucked a flame free as easily as stripping a leaf from a branch. He used it to light his pipe, taking short puffs on the stem until smoke rose from the bowl, smelling richly of a combination of tobacco leaf and ginger root.
The memory of sharing a drink with Legba at Dodge’s funeral sparked another memory in Jude, but as soon as it came to him, it vanished. He struggled to hold on to it, sure that the memory was somehow important, but his thoughts felt as elusive as his voice. Why couldn’t he remember how he’d gotten here? Why couldn’t he say anything?
Legba took the pipe from between his teeth with a quiet click, used it to point at Jude. “The thing you must understand,” he said, his words quiet and grave, “is that you have died.” Jude felt no surprise at these words. No sudden increase in his pulse, no rush of heat along his skin, no amusement at the silliness of the idea. Nothing. That probably wasn’t a good sign. “This is why you cannot speak,” Legba said. “Why you cannot remember where you were before you came to me. These things are difficult for the newly dead.”
Legba stared out the window as he spoke. Following Legba’s gaze, Jude saw that they were on the Riverfront line, hurtling between the levee wall and the river. The voodoo god waved a hand at the window, seeming to indicate the levee and the buildings peeking over it and everything else.
“Here, in this place, the dead have many choices. Many gods willing to guide them to the place at the end of their path. I have returned your token so that you have no obligation to me. So that you may believe the things I tell you, and trust that I seek no gain from your misfortunes.” Legba turned away from the window, his ancient eyes now boring into Jude. “From here on out, you may follow whichever course you choose. You may even stay, if it suits you. But if you choose any guidance save mine, you will be lost. I promise you this.”
The car squealed as the brakes caught, the gas lamps swinging so hard they nearly slammed into the roof. “First stop,” Barren yelled from the front. “Elysian Fields!”
The party spilled out of the large house and into the well-manicured lawn, a black-tie affair. The revelers outside, whispering pairs or bullshitting groups, seemed unconcerned with the storm raging just beyond the borders of the house and its grounds, as though certain the wind and the rain knew better than to bother them. Every light in the wide two-story house burned, a warm glow emanating from the windows and the open front door. From that door wafted sounds of joy and laughter and jazz and conversation, all mixed together in one energetic murmur. As Jude walked out of the rain, through the high stone gates, and onto the gravel path that wound a lazy meander to the porch, a warm summer breeze blew into his face, sweet with the scent of magnolia blossoms and fresh clipped grass.
He’d been here before. Not the sprawling plantation house, but the end of Elysian Fields Avenue, the edges of the Quarter and the neighborhood called the Marigny. Any other time he’d walked down this street, from the streetcar to one of the bars on Esplanade or to catch the Krewe du Vieux parade that ran through the Quarter, this had looked like nothing more than an intersection and a tiny neutral ground, a thin strip of grass and a couple of spindly trees. He stood for a moment, amazed that something like this had been hidden from him. He wondered what other wonders he might have walked past, unknowing.
Papa Legba leaned on a cane beside him, the colors of his suit muted, as though he had stepped out of a poorly developed photograph. “Come then,” he said, “you may as well have a look around.” They followed the walkway toward the house, the god limping, Jude strolling with his hands in his pockets. Their steps fell on gravel with brittle crunches, an ashen dust rising in their wake. None of the party guests stopped them, or questioned them, or seemed to even notice them. Jude helped Legba up the steps to the porch and followed him inside.
The interior of the house matched the outside: wealth and extravagance, charm and mirth. The doorway led into a huge, crowded ballroom, floors of dark wood polished to a mirror’s shine, twin staircases sweeping along each end of the room to the landing above. Satin curtains hung in heavy drapes from each of the windows, smooth and dark as an expensive red wine. Gray plaster covered the walls, artfully crumbling in places to reveal the red brick beneath.
The chandelier hanging from the ceiling was not the glittering thing of crystal and light that Jude expected, but a massive bronze sculpture: seven winged figures holding trumpets to their lips, flames crackling within the bells of the instruments. Jude couldn’t be sure, but one of them could have been Hē. Other statues decorated the room; plaster men and women leaning out of the walls, arms lifted over their heads in exaltation or prayer and marble cherubs at the base of each stairwell. Above them all, on the landing, a band played a slow, mournful song that Jude thought he knew but couldn’t place. The singer had a bluesy twang to his voice, somehow very familiar. Jude didn’t recognize him until he smiled, a lopsided, boyish grin.
&nb
sp; Tommy.
“Yes, the devil is a busy man,” Tommy sang, “boy look like he always stay on my trail. But it don’t matter what I try, the devil he gets right in my way.”
The swarm of guests swayed to the music, moved by the sound but not quite dancing. They laughed and talked and drank, the men wearing suits or tuxedos, the women in elegant gowns from a variety of time periods, here a simple piece of slinky fabric, there a construction of lace and volumes of fabric. Save for a few exceptional riots of color that proved the rule, everyone wore black or white or some combination of the two. The scene had a patina of antiquity about it like an antebellum ball, but unlike that era, the divide between guest and servant was not a line between black and white. Jude searched the crowd—the drinking, laughing, arguing, smoking, kissing, seething crowd—and saw skin colors of every shade, everyone enjoying the party. There seemed to be only drinkers, only feasters, no one to mix the drinks, no one to serve the food. Curious, Jude made his way to the back of the ballroom, creeping along the wall as he went.
It was only when he reached the far side of the room that he noticed that Legba had stayed behind, leaning on his cane.
The hallway beyond the ballroom was dark, like a tunnel underground, the noise of the celebration behind him muted to a dull pounding. As Jude’s eyes adjusted, he saw slivers of light along the floor at regular intervals, closed doors, private parties. The lights winked out, one by one, as Jude approached. He came to the end of the hallway where he faced a final door, the glow beneath this one shining brightly enough that he could make out the red paint that covered it. He felt like he should know it, but the thought flickered away when he tried to grasp it.
