Die Again (The Bayou Hauntings Book 6)

by Bill Thompson

  As bourbon and Coke swept through his body, he wondered if the kid was right. Maybe that woman was a ghost.

  I’m never going in there again. I’ll take rain and wind any night over what happened in that courtyard.

  He crawled back into his sleeping bag, slept a little and awoke with the dawn, wondering if it actually happened. He remembered snagging his jacket on the railing, and he examined it to find out if his bizarre dream was real.

  There was a jagged rip in his coat.

  It had happened. This wasn’t a dream. It was real.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Instead of feeling relaxed and refreshed after her trip to New Orleans, Tiffany returned to Los Angeles with a deep sense of foreboding. There had been no dreams as such since she returned; her nights were different now. Although scary, the dreams weren’t real. Even knowing they happened in New Orleans, it was still like reading fiction. Now when she slept, what she experienced was vastly different — and real.

  Ever since she returned, she'd been having flashbacks. Memories. Actual memories, but impossible ones. Long-ago memories of a place she’d never seen until last week.

  Most memories relate to pleasant things or bad ones, milestones or insignificant moments. Unlike a dream, a memory is almost tangible — a life event that happened. And now, instead of having nightmares about a building, Tiffany's mind played back memories about things that couldn't have happened.

  Until this week, Tiffany had never been to Louisiana, much less New Orleans. That night on the ghost tour marked the first time she had ever laid eyes on the building, yet it was as familiar as her apartment on Sunset Boulevard. She resisted going inside because she knew what lay behind that gate. She sensed that long dank corridor was a passageway to horror, and when the icy wind swept over her, it brought dark, evil recollections into her mind.

  Now she lay in bed every night watching a Netflix-like series playing in her mind. At first the new dreams — the "memories" — weren't scary like the ones before, but as she watched the episodes night after night, a subtle theme that was unhealthy for her sanity came to the forefront.

  Come back, it said. Not blatantly or directly, but subliminally. Telepathically.

  On the second night, she realized these "memories" happened long ago. She observed horse-drawn buggies, people wearing old-fashioned clothing, and unpaved, muddy narrow streets flanked by wooden sidewalks. It was a city; she could see two- and three-story buildings along the streets, but she didn't know where. The mundane experiences were boring, as if Tiffany were walking in the footsteps of someone else, doing all the normal things a person did in that day and age. If it had been on Netflix, she'd have long since clicked it off. But this was a compulsion.

  See the place you belong. Your destiny lies here.

  Soon other things became clear. First was the venue — New Orleans, but not the city she saw days before. This was a young city in a bygone era.

  A female younger by twenty years than Tiffany played the lead character in her drama. Dark-skinned and beautiful, the girl carried herself in a manner so haughty it contrasted sharply with her simple white dress. When she was awake, Tiffany wondered about the purpose of the “memories”. She shadowed a girl doing daily chores. These were memories — she was certain of that — but she wasn't that girl. She couldn't have been, because this happened centuries ago.

  Something niggled in her brain. Watch her. Learn from her. She resisted at first but once she realized she couldn’t stop the nightly episodes, she gave in.

  The "memories" didn't alarm her. They were more like a travelogue — watching a girl running errands, carrying laundry, doing chores, walking the same streets and seeing the same people. The routine varied from night to night, but the backdrop remained the same.

  Things changed on the fifth night after Tiffany had a tough day at work. It began with a reprimand from a supervisor she detested. As usual she kept her mouth shut and took the verbal abuse, but she couldn't concentrate, and it seemed five o'clock would never come. She went home, drank a couple of beers, nuked her dinner and turned in early.

  She fell asleep right away, and soon the nightly drama began. The woman walked down a street and came to a building — the building. A sign high on its façade said, LaPiere Building-1803.

  Without warning, the beautiful girl did something unusual. She turned, faced Tiffany and smiled. She held out her hand and said, Come inside with me.

  "I can't," Tiffany stammered. "Because...I'm not really there. I'm here, not where you are."

  Yes, you are where I am. Take my hand. The girl moved a step closer.

  Tiffany drew back, pulled her hand away and shouted, "Stay away from me!”

  Something — someone — laid a hand on her shoulder, startling her. She jerked her head up and opened her eyes.

  "Miss, are you all right? You were dreaming. Talking out loud."

  Tiffany was sitting in a chair. She looked to her right and left. There were people — lots of them, one sitting beside her. She heard snippets of conversations against the backdrop of a constant hum.

  "Are you okay?"

  Tiffany looked up at the person speaking. She wore a name tag. She was standing…

  ...in the aisle of an airplane. What the hell?

  Her confusion surprised the flight attendant.

  "It was a dream. I was having a dream, that's all."

  Tiffany turned to the person on her right — an elderly woman with an open Bible in her lap.

  "Where am I?"

  "You're on an airplane, honey. Don't you remember getting on the plane?"

  As hysteria swept over her, she cried, "This is crazy! What am I doing here?"

  The flight attendant put her hand on Tiffany's arm. "It's all right. Please stay calm. You were dreaming. You just need to wake up. We're on the way to New Orleans."

  "New Orleans? What the hell are you talking about? I just went to bed. How can I be on an airplane?" Bile began to rise in her throat as a panic attack began.

  "Get me out of here! I can’t go to New Orleans! Something bad will happen to me there!"

  Another flight attendant arrived and asked the woman next to Tiffany to change seats. She complied, told Tiffany she hoped she was better soon, and a nice-looking guy slipped into the vacant seat.

  He smiled and flipped open a card case that held a gold badge. "My name's Tom. Tom Morrison. I'm a federal air marshal. Is everything okay?"

  "Yes," she lied, knowing if she continued on this path, things could get complicated. She fought to control her raging emotions. "I have no memory of going to the airport or getting on a plane. I might have been sleepwalking or something. I guess I had to buy a ticket and get a boarding pass, but I don't remember any of that."

  The flight attendant handed him a clipboard. Morrison looked at it and said, "You bought a ticket online and presented your boarding pass on your iPhone at LAX. The plane left at fifteen minutes past midnight, and we're scheduled to land in New Orleans at 5:37 a.m. However, that all depends on you."

  "I’m not sure what you mean."

  "We land in just over an hour. If you're not well and I decide the safety of you and other passengers could be in danger, I'll order the pilot to land at the nearest airport. Local authorities will take you into custody until they can sort out what's up with you, and a hundred and eighty-seven passengers will be pissed off. Then again if you feel up to it, I'll ride the rest of the way beside you and keep you company. It's your call."

  She took a deep breath and mustered a confident voice. "I'll be fine. I had some kind of episode — a memory loss or something. I remember everything now." That last part was a blatant lie, but she figured if she didn't say it, she might end up in a straightjacket when they landed.

  He smiled. "Sounds good. I'm right here, so if you need something, just holler." Tiffany smiled back and thought how under different circumstances she would like to have known Tom Morrison better.

  She didn’t dare sleep; instead she forced c
almness through her being and closed her eyes. Once she was on the ground, she would think about all this.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Landry and Channel Nine’s lead cameraman Phil Vandegriff sat under the canopy at Café du Monde, as was their routine most mornings. Phil had shared most of Landry’s paranormal experiences, and the two had become fast friends over the years.

  As usual, the popular coffee house was crowded, and Phil groused about how tourists coming for Carnival made it hard to get around.

  “Two more days,” Landry said. “Tomorrow’s Mardi Gras. Forty-eight hours from now this place will be a ghost town.” Phil said it couldn’t come too soon for him.

  As they shared a plate of beignets dusted with powdered sugar and cups of steaming black chicory coffee, Landry got a call from the station’s receptionist, who passed along the message that a Tiffany Bertrand had called, said it was urgent she speak with Landry and left her number. He didn’t recall her name but returned the call, listened a moment and gave her directions to meet him.

  “That was strange,” he said to Phil, explaining how he knew Tiffany. “She claims she flew here this morning but doesn’t remember how or why. I’m the only person here she knows, so she called the station. She says she needs help.”

  “Lots of tourists get drunk on the plane and can’t remember where they are,” Phil snorted, and Landry commented that he seemed to be on a tourist-bashing binge these days.

  She arrived fifteen minutes later. Over doughnuts and coffee, she told them about her bizarre experience on the plane. “When we landed, I took a sick day from work and called your station. I’m going to book a flight home this afternoon, but in the meantime, please help me figure out what’s going on in my head.”

  He remembered the dreams she had mentioned, but now they had become memories of things she couldn’t know about. Intrigued, he suggested they go to the station and talk further.

  As they walked down the quaint streets of the French Quarter, she remarked about how much fun she and her friend Kayla had had the last time, up until the moment when she saw the building.

  They walked along Chartres Street near Jackson Square and she looked into the quaint shops. She paused in front of a little gallery called Art in Bloom. Most of the paintings inside were floral designs — bouquets, vases filled with tulips and daisies — but some were New Orleans street scenes. The one prominently displayed in the window depicted the courtyard of the building. Not only was the fountain there, but a tall woman in a black dress who stood on the balcony. Her harsh features and grim countenance were unsettling.

  Tiffany stifled a scream.

  “What is it?”

  “Look in that store window. Right there! It’s no coincidence this stuff is happening to me, and I’m terrified!”

  Landry understood. The subject of the painting was the building on Toulouse.

  They stepped inside and found a pleasant woman named Larisa, who owned the gallery and had created the picture in the window.

  Tiffany said, “Please tell me about the painting in the window. It’s a building on Toulouse Street.

  “You’re correct. I often paint old buildings in the Quarter.”

  Landry said, “But you painted the courtyard, and that’s impossible. The building’s been vacant since Katrina, and the balcony’s been gone for decades. How could you have painted that scene without seeing it?”

  “That’s my most unusual painting,” Larisa answered. “Sometimes I paint scenes from the past — streets in the Quarter in the days of the horse and buggy, Jackson Square when it was Place d’Armes – things like that. Much of my inspiration comes from old photographs.”

  “Why do you say this one is your most unusual?”

  “Because that scene came to me in a dream, one so vivid I’ll never be able to forget it. I felt compelled to paint it. You speak as though you’ve been inside the building. Is my painting anywhere close to reality?”

  “Close?” Tiffany said. “From my standpoint, it’s spot-on. I dream about the building too. I see the balcony, even though it isn’t there today. And I see the woman. You captured her features and even her demeanor. What you painted isn’t the courtyard today — it’s the one I see in my dreams from a long time ago.”

  They spoke a few more minutes and left. Tiffany said the experience was unnerving.

  “It was quite a coincidence,” Landry agreed, but she shook her head.

  “That was no coincidence. Something in that building is taking control of my mind. Seeing that painting was no coincidence. It’s part of a pattern. I dream, I think about it in the daytime, and now I even see it when I’m walking around. It scares the hell out of me.”

  At the station she took time to book a flight home. When she finished, she grumbled, “Do you know how much it costs to book a one-way ticket departing on the same day? I’m told I did it last night, and now I just had to do it again. I’ve spent more than a thousand dollars in the past twenty-four hours, and for what, I don’t have a clue. All I know is that I’ll be paying my credit card off in installments for a while.”

  Landry had observed her from the moment she joined them at the coffee shop. She was emotional, sometimes on the verge of tears, and often her words flowed in an unintelligible torrent. She vacillated between fear, distress, confusion and anger.

  He appreciated her frustration. If she was telling the truth, something disturbing was happening inside her mind. On her first trip to New Orleans she discovered a building she’d dreamed about for years. She went home and saw flashbacks of someone else’s life long ago. Then she returned with no idea why.

  They talked for an hour, and Landry offered to buy her lunch and drop her at the airport later that afternoon. He wanted more time to dig into her interesting story, and with no place else to go anyway, she agreed.

  As they walked down Royal toward the restaurant, he asked if she minded taking a stroll down Toulouse Street before lunch.

  “The street from my dreams,” she said with a little shudder. “I’ll go but tell me why.”

  “It’s the reason you came back. Nothing else makes sense. You board a plane in a trance, you arrive at a place you’ve visited only once, and your only tie to New Orleans is the building. The dreams have changed now, but the scenery, the people in period costume and the horse-drawn carriages — it sounds like everything’s happening here in the French Quarter. Does that make sense?”

  “Make sense? That’s a poor choice of words for my situation,” she said with a rueful smile. “Nothing makes sense, but you could be right.” In her nocturnal strolls — the ones her brain called memories — she didn’t recognize where she was. Last night things changed. Just before she woke up on the plane, she had stood in front of the LaPiere building.

  As they approached, she said, “Oh God, that’s it. On the ghost tour it was too dark to see much, but now I recognize it. The buildings on this block are different because...you know, because we’re seeing them today. These buildings are really, really old. I recognize them because the girl from my memories walks along this street every day. These same buildings were here then, whenever then was.”

  “If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you find out when then was.”

  She beamed with delight. “Really? You’re interested in my story?”

  Landry sighed. Now that his shows were so successful, people sometimes mistook his words of encouragement. “I’m willing to help you. There’s something odd about this building. It’s too early to speculate about what’s going on, but now let’s work on trying to solve your problem.”

  As they came closer, she grabbed his hand. A thought of Cate flashed through Landry’s mind, but she’d forgive him for consoling a terrified woman two decades older. Or maybe she wouldn’t.

  “LaPiere. It’s the LaPiere Building,” she said.

  Now Landry was startled. “How...how could you have known that?”

  “From my memory trip last night. The girl and I stood right here. It
’s gone now, but there was a sign way up there. It said LaPiere Building-1803.”

  If true, that could pinpoint something he hadn’t been able to find – the date Lucas LaPiere built the structure.

  He’d been investigating the paranormal long enough to know that people sometimes made up stories to get attention. She didn’t seem like one of those, but it was clear she had mental issues. Come up with a sign for the building that names the owner and pegs the date, and you’re one step closer to becoming a TV personality. Maybe that’s what all this was about.

  “You should know something about me. This business has turned me into a skeptic. I can’t accept anything as fact until I’ve confirmed it. What you just told me rings true. This was Lucas LaPiere’s building, and he built it sometime between 1798 and 1805, when land records show a three-story building was here.”

  “Meaning the date on the sign could be right — “

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you looked at the same land record I did, you could have made up the sign.”

  She glared at him. “You don’t believe me? I’ve been through living hell with these goddamn dreams for years, and you think I’m lying? What motive do I have? Why would I want to research land records on some damned building I never heard of?”

  “Calm down, Tiffany. I didn’t say you’re lying. I have to do things in sequence. Confirmation comes first; acceptance as truth comes second. Don’t take it personally.”

  “Explain to me how you confirm something from a dream — a memory.”

  “Through independent verification. Dreams can be powerful magnets that draw us toward something familiar or into a world of make-believe. I want to believe your story. If you’re right, that building across the street plays a significant role in your life. You claim not to understand, and I’ll help try to find out. But first I want to verify there used to be a sign.”

  A voice came from behind them. “I’ll confirm it for you. She’s telling the truth. There was a sign.”