by Reinke, Sara
“Mamère couldn’t afford to take me anyplace like that—going to New Orleans or maybe Shreveport was as big a deal as things got in my house growing up. But I could look at those pictures and pretend anyway. When you don’t have a lot of friends as a kid, a good imagination is a damn close substitute sometimes.”
He could feel Tessa relaxing against him, the unhappy tension that had made her body tight in his embrace fading as he spoke. “So there was this boy named Gordon Maddox who used to always make fun of me, pick on me and fight because my clothes were all hand-me-downs, my family was poor and worse than that, we were Cajun, which was just about a half step up from being black back in those days in the bigoted deep south. Gordon Maddox was rich and golden, everybody’s all American, and even though he beat the shit out of me more times than I can count off the top of my head, a part of me still wanted him to like me.
“So one day when we were both in the library at the same time and he couldn’t get me in trouble by punching on me, he decides he’ll get me another way. He and his friends dare me to jerk my pants down in the library foyer, where the ceiling is high and the floor is polished granite, and say ‘Baldy Bertie! Baldy Bertie!’ And me, like a stupid salaud, agrees to do it.”
“You didn’t!” Tessa said with a laugh.
He chuckled against her hair. “I did. She was sitting behind the main counter, right past the foyer, where the big glass doors were propped open because of the heat. I dropped my britches right in front of her and yelled at the top of my lungs, my bare ass flapping in the breeze all the while. ‘Baldy Bertie! Baldy Bertie!’”
Tessa laughed again, the strain of tears almost fully gone now. “God, Rene.”
“Je sais,” Rene said. I know. “Trust me, pischouette. I know. To this day, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, or why I didn’t think Mamère would find out. She’d grown up in Thibodaux. She and Bertie had gone to school together. And it wasn’t like no one in that library knew me by sight, or how to get a hold of my grandmother.
“So I spent the rest of that afternoon just sort of fucking around, and by the time I get home, it’s nearly supper and Mamère’s back from work. She’s standing in the living room when I get home, and little do I know but she’s got her whippin’ belt off its hook in the kitchen and behind her back.
“‘So tell me, Rene,’ she says to me in that deep voice of hers with a French accent thick like roux. ‘How was your day? Did you have fun at the library?’
“‘Oh, oui,’ I said, and I have no idea the licking I am in for, the hide blistering that is waiting for me. To which she replies, ‘I just bet you did,’ and then she pulled out that belt and laid into me like my ass was a sinner and it was the second coming. The next day, she took off her lunch at the grocery to march me down to the library and have me apologize in person. I don’t recall ever calling her Baldy Bertie again…not until just now.”
He meant for her to get a giggle out of the story, as he did now in retrospect, but as soon as he finished, he realized. Jesus Christ, her husband likes to beat the shit out of her, and here I am with an anecdote whose punch line has me whipped upside the ass with a belt.
“I’m sorry, pischouette,” he said with a grimace. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I don’t know what I was…”
His voice faded as she rolled over to face him. “That’s all right, Rene. I know what you were trying to do. Your heart was in the right place…and it was kind of funny.” She reached up, stroking her hand against the side of his face gently. “I’m sorry your grandmother hit you.”
“She didn’t mean it out of spite,” he told her, feeling goofily obligated to try and explain, to assure Tessa that Odette LaCroix hadn’t been some belt-wielding abusive monster like Martin. “That’s the way things were back then, pischouette. There weren’t things like timeouts or getting grounded. And Mamère had enough on her mind without me making things harder. My granddaddy was a drunk and he didn’t do much but draw disability, so that left it up to Mamère to take care of things—the house, the laundry, the yard, me.”
“What about your mother?” Tessa asked.
“I never knew her, outside of her name—Cécile Marie LaCroix—and her face. She died when I was a baby, a car accident, but Mamere kept pictures of her all over the house, like it was a goddamn shrine. She used to tell me I looked like her, that I was headstrong and stubborn just like she’d been.”
“Everyone used to say that about me, too,” Tessa said, growing sorrowful again. “That I looked just like Grandmother Eleanor…acted like her, everything.” Her eyes clouded with tears and her bottom lip trembled. “Everything I thought about her has been a lie, Rene,” she whispered, tears creeping from the shelter of her lower eyelashes, rolling slowly down her cheeks. “Everything I felt about her…anything she ever told me…all of it lies.”
He wrapped his arm around her, drawing her near. “I’m sorry, pischouette,” he said softly, kissing her ear through her hair. “I’m sorry.”
She fell asleep in his arms and Rene dozed lightly, her hair soft and fragrant against his face. He had restless dreams of being back in Thibodaux, the LaCroix house again, just as he’d been only days earlier.
The dream was vivid, utterly convincing in its realism. Everything from the stale odor of stagnant dust in the air to the light crunch of plaster chips and grit beneath his shoe soles was just as it had been in person. He dreamed of walking down the front corridor toward the rear of the house, his eyes cutting easily through the heavy shadows of night that had settled through the shack’s darkened interior.
My pupils have dilated, he thought, even though he felt none of the other heightened awareness that typically came with the bloodlust. His pupils had spread wide; to anyone observing, it would have looked as if they’d swallowed every margin of space across his corneas, leaving his eyes smooth, featureless planes of black. In reality, this allowed for even the faintest hint of discernable light to be detected; to Rene, the world looked like it might have through night-vision goggles.
Where derelicts had pried loose the boards covering the bathroom windows, he saw a smear of moonlight against the gloom, enough to cast an eerie glow across the sprawled, fallen body of the man Tessa had killed. By now, the insects of the Louisiana bayou had found the bum’s corpse, as had rats; from the corner of his gaze, he saw several large ones scamper and scurry away, frightened by his encroaching footsteps.
He smelled the pungent, cloyingly sweet stink of decay and could see that the body was beginning to bloat slightly, baking in the stuffy, hot confines of the vacant house. He stood for a long moment, gazing down at the man, then turned and knelt beside the hole in the floor in which Tessa had discovered the Morin clan Tome.
The book had been in the secret alcove beneath the floor long enough to leave a faint, musty scent lingering in the narrow opening. Funny, Rene thought, as he reached down into the hole. I never noticed that smell before. Now it seemed somehow familiar to him—more than this, like something he’d been specifically searching for, a fragrance that had drawn him to that house, that place.
He felt something in the dusty, cobweb-lined opening and picked it up, pulling out an old photograph like one of the daguerreotypes they’d seen inside the Tome. Rene recognized the stern-faced man in the portrait; he’d been the principle subject in other photos.
Michel Morin.
The name whispered through Rene’s mind in a voice that was surprisingly unfamiliar to him. The feelings associated with those words were equally as surprising—a sudden, unexpected mixture of fondness and sorrow, as if seeing Michel’s image had brought his heart both pleasure and pain all at the same time. The only problem was, he couldn’t account for either emotion. Because I don’t know who in the hell Michel Morin was outside of a face in a photograph, a name in a book.
Yet in his mind, as if through memory, as plain as any of his own, he saw a young boy on a bright spring morning, standing beneath a grove of trees so that daylight dappled
through the new vernal foliage and against his face in splayed shadows.
Michel.
He saw the glint of sunshine off metal; a short-handled knife in the boy, Michel’s hand, and felt the sharp sting as the blade drew against his palm.
Strangely, looking down at his hands in the dim light of the house in Thibodaux, he could see a scar—a thin line bisecting his right palm at a crooked diagonal. Because I was too young to heal, he thought inexplicably, because the scar was part of the dream, nothing he’d ever seen before. Not all of the way, at least. When Michel cut me, it left a scar.
“Now we’re like brothers,” he remembered Michel saying as he cut open his own hand and pressed his palm against Rene’s, clasping fiercely. “Nothing will ever come between us. Not ever.”
In the dream, Rene walked slowly toward the light of the bathroom in Thibodaux. He glanced down to find himself in a charcoal-gray sport coat and dress slacks, a button-down shirt and silk tie—clothes he’d never seen before, much less had packed to take with him. He tucked the picture of Michel Morin into the inside breast pocket of his jacket and watched light glint momentarily off a gold cuff link affixed to the juncture of his sleeve; a gold cube with the initials A. S. N. engraved atop.
Inside the bathroom, Rene approached the old porcelain sink, which listed against the crumbling wall, a battered medicine cabinet above it. With the moon’s glow all around him, he looked into the cracked surface of the mirror. To his shock, it wasn’t his own face reflected at him in the glass; rather it was someone older, a man who appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties, with a heavy sheaf of white hair that spilled down from the crown of his head, past his shoulders in a thick fall. His face was handsome, his features angular and somewhat familiar to Rene; his brows narrowed as he frowned into the mirror.
He sort of looks like Brandon, Rene thought, realizing who it was, what he was dreaming about. The Elders! Saint merde, that’s Brandon’s grandfather!
And in his mind, a flurry of sudden images struck: Michel Morin in boyhood, smiling as they had clutched their bloody hands together. Now we’re like brothers…Nothing will ever come between us. Not ever.
A woman who eerily resembled Tessa, with catlike eyes and heavy dark hair…
Eleanor.
I want this forever, she said, her voice haunting and melancholy. I want you forever. I’ll die if I marry him. I swear to you, Augustus, if I can’t be with you, I’ll steal a knife from the supper table and slash my own wrists with it…
Who are you, boy? Augustus Noble seethed inside Rene’s skull, his dark eyes spearing out from the reflection in the mirror. His voice was low and resonant, velveteen but menacing.
In his mind, Rene could hear the woman, Eleanor whispering to him, There is only one way. You know what to do. There’s only one way to change the will of the Tomes.
Rene saw fire; a bright, furious inferno whipping against the black, icy backdrop of a winter’s night. He saw the dim outline of walls, windows and chimneys against the ferocious blaze and realized it was a house burning. He could hear glass shattering, timbers crumbling, but above all of this, something horrific and shrill.
Screaming, he thought, as he simultaneously realized he could see the silhouetted forms of people through the windows, burning bodies dancing and flailing, throwing themselves past the heat-shattered panes in desperate attempts to escape. Because the doors are all blocked, he thought, even though there was no way he could have known this; no way at all. Jesus Christ, they blocked all the doors, trapped them inside. They’re burning them alive!
How did you get inside my head? Augustus snapped, and as the older Brethren sealed off his mind from Rene’s prying eyes, it felt like hundreds of doors flying shut all at once right in his face.
“Viens m’enculer!” Rene gasped sharply as he sat up in bed, his eyes flown wide. It took him a long, alarmed moment to realize where he was—who he was—and at last, he ran his fingers through his disheveled hair, pushing it back from his face. “Jesus,” he whispered, his voice shaky.
Tessa groaned softly. He looked down and stroked his hand against her shoulder to soothe her, hoping she stayed asleep. I’ll be hard pressed to explain to her why the hell I’m dreaming of her granddaddy otherwise, he thought. Because frankly, I don’t even know myself.
Once assured that Tessa was undisturbed, Rene eased himself out of bed. He drew a glass of water for himself at the sink and swallowed it in a single gulp. This was followed by another cup and then another, until at last he ran the side of his hand against his bottom lip to catch dribbles creeping down his chin. He looked at himself in the vanity mirror, his reflection in the dim glow of light from the adjacent bathroom.
Who are you, boy? Augustus Noble’s voice echoed in his mind, the images the house engulfed in flames, the terrified, agonized shrieks permeating the night replaying simultaneously. How did you get inside my head?
“Juste un rêve,” Rene told himself, closing his eyes and again shoving his hand through his hair. Just a dream.
He sat down heavily in an armchair in the corner of the small room. While here, he rolled up the leg of his jeans, fished his portable recharging cables from his bag and plugged his prosthetic knee into the nearest wall outlet. He glanced around the room uneasily, as much to convince himself that he was alone there, no Elders within sight or to be sensed, as to make sure Tessa was asleep. Yes, they’d made love, and yes, she’d seen not only the leg, but him without it, but still, that incessant insecurity remained.
He leaned over the side of the chair and grabbed the TV remote off the bedside table. Thumbing the volume nearly to silence, he turned on the television and channel-surfed until he found CNN. He didn’t plan on paying any attention to the persistent drone of the newscaster, but the chatter would fill the vacant silence in the room and soothe the lingering unease he still felt following the dream. However, the news item up for discussion caught his attention immediately.
“…a bizarre incident in which a flock of birds apparently attacked a crowd of patrons in a riverfront nightclub…” the anchorwoman was saying. Rene held out the remote, leaning forward as he turned up the volume. “Police in that city are still looking for suspects after two men were found dead at the scene following this same incident. The body of local attorney Jude Hannam was discovered mutilated and partially drained of blood…”
“Viens m’enculer,” Rene whispered, the dream of Augustus Noble all but forgotten. He knew who Jude Hannam was—Lina’s ex-boyfriend. He’d been murdered by Tessa and Brandon’s lunatic older brother, Caine Noble, on the same night that Lina had shot and killed Caine.
“Police are also seeking the public’s help in identifying another man dead at the same scene. Described as a white male in his mid-to late twenties, the victim was approximately five feet, nine inches tall and one hundred and ninety pounds. He had been badly beaten and shot four times, including once to the head. While there are currently no suspects in either death, investigators are actively looking for one of their own, a missing officer named Angelina Jones, who apparently visited the club while on duty just prior to the bird attack.”
An image of Lina in uniform flashed on screen. Oh, shit, Rene thought.
“Jones disappeared after entering Apathy, a series of neighboring nightclubs built inside three river barges. She was once romantically linked to Hannam and the two had been seen arguing the day before the incident at a wedding reception. Ballistic tests are ongoing to see if Jones’s gun fired the fatal shots in the second Apathy slaying.”
Oh, shit, he thought again.
The broadcast went on to the next news item, something about a mother of four from rural Wisconsin who had been reported missing earlier in the week. Rene thumbed the remote again, switching the television off.
“Oh, my God,” Tessa said from the bed, and he turned in surprise to find her sitting up, blinking sleepily at the darkened TV. She turned to Rene, her expression stricken. “It made the news way out here?”
“Sure looks that way, oui, pischouette,” he replied, adding to himself, We might be in big fucking trouble.
“What are we going to do?” Tessa asked, all wide and frightened eyes as she crawled out of bed, reaching for her nearby socks and shoes. “We need to go and wake up Brandon and Lina. We need to tell them about this. We should—”
“No, pischouette.” He held up his hand. “Hold the reins. Let’s not panic here.”
“Not panic?” She blinked at him like he’d just pulled off the cap of his skull and flashed her a peek at his gray matter. “The police are looking for Lina!”
“Police halfway across the country from here are looking for Lina. It’s nothing we need to worry about until the morning, I’m telling you. Let them sleep.”
“That was the national news, not something from halfway across the country,” Tessa argued. “We—”
“Tessa, listen to me. Those cable news outlets pick up shit like that all the time, little bits to fill the dead air in the middle of the night,” Rene said. “Nobody saw it besides us night owls and chronic insomniacs and hell, even we don’t pay much attention to that kind of thing.”
At least here’s hoping no one else does, he thought.
“I’m sorry I woke you and got you all upset,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll leave it off.”
“No.” She glanced around the room almost uncertainly, rubbing her hands against her arms as if chilled. “I had a bad dream, anyway. I think I’ll sit up for a while, too, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Looks like bad dreams are going around tonight, he thought, adding aloud, “You want to talk about it?”
