The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

  Kind Dog always knew when the spirits were present. He’d stare, sniff the air, his tail drooping low.

  “I don’t see anyone,” she said. “Six dead. Including the priest. I should be doing something.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “More people dying. The wazimamoto growing stronger. What would you have me do, DuLac? What are my gifts for? Aren’t you always telling me this is my fa? My destiny?”

  “Agreed. But I love you and I’m frightened for you. Spiritually, physically, you’ve taken a beating.”

  “I’m strong enough. Help me do this.”

  “Come.”

  She followed DuLac down a narrow hallway to his altar room. It had been a small bedroom, perhaps for a maid, tucked in the farthest southeast corner of the house. Crossing the threshold, Marie could feel the room’s power.

  The altar honored Damballah, the father to all the gods. Catholic and voodoo gods coexisted in the New World. Acculturation. The Virgin statue stood beside Ezili. St. Peter and Legba were both painted in oil. Candles—red, white, and black—glowed, their flames licking toward the ceiling.

  Moonlight streamed through two windows. Enough light, yet light that blurred dimensions, without the sharp clarity of manufactured bulbs.

  DuLac gathered Agwé’s possessions. His sword and admiral’s hat. With chalk, he drew a large circle around them. “Inside here,” he said, “will be a sacred space. Inside here, you’ll be safe.

  “I’ve had dreams, too, Marie. I know Laveau is the one to help. Agwé’s sails point toward Damballah. The snake eating its own tail. I’ve seen it, in dreams. The gods are affronted by this monster. Only their cherished daughters—the Maries—can help.”

  He opened a cabinet. “Tafia, rum and molasses, to appease the Guédé.” He poured the brew into three cups. One for each of the death gods who dressed in top hats and tails. “Perhaps they’ll forgive our excursion into their realm.”

  “You think I’m right then.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Two nights ago, I had an urge—no, a compulsion—to bring the painting in here. There,” he pointed.

  Marie turned. On the wall was the painting, normally kept in DuLac’s parlor. Marie dressed in white, in all her glory, was possessed, conducting a ceremony in Cathedral Square. The St. Louis Cathedral was behind her, its crucifix outlined against the skyline.

  Marie touched her ancestress’s face. It was young, ecstatic, self-aware. She stroked the oil, feeling that the streams of color were vibrant and alive.

  “She’ll come, DuLac. I know she will.”

  “I’ll play the drum.”

  Marie selected two small bags of rice and beans from the altar. She stepped inside the chalk circle, stroked Agwé’s sword.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded. DuLac’s palms tapped the drums; the rhythm filled her with ease. Drumbeats resounded, as they had in Africa, across the continents, the Atlantic sea. Into the Gulf of Mexico, merging with the Mississippi.

  She sprinkled beans and rice along the outline of the circle. Then sat, centered in the circle, facing the altar. Legs crossed, her hands resting on her knees, she closed her eyes.

  Marie was too sore to dance; nonetheless, every sinew responded to the rhythm. The tap-tapping. Soft, then loud beats. Fingers stroking, palms snapping down on animal skins.

  “I haven’t purified myself.”

  “I don’t think it’ll matter.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Just make your prayer heartfelt. Here.” DuLac handed her tafia. She drank deeply.

  “More,” she said.

  DuLac refilled the cup. She drank, reclosed her eyes, focusing on the drums. The rhythm’s power to call the gods.

  “Help me,” she murmured. “Marie Laveau, help.”

  DuLac drummed insistently, chanting, “Not all accept the glory of the Maries. Not all accept that women hand sight down through the generations.”

  “I do,” said Marie. “I do.”

  Inhale, exhale.

  “Women hand sight down through the generations,” she repeated.

  Release self, inhibitions. Believe. Have faith. This was her mantra.

  “I believe,” she murmured. “I believe in the power of me. The power of Voudu gods gathering from Haiti, Africa, all the Americas.”

  Behind her eyelids, she could see another darkness. Gathering itself, readying to tunnel into her soul.

  The drums echoed, the sound rising, falling, like water upon a shore.

  Briefly, Marie opened her eyes. She could see DuLac, opening himself to glory, pounding the drums, calling with his hands and heart.

  They were a pair. Outrageous in their power. And faith.

  “I believe,” she whispered, closing her eyes again. There was a continent inside the darkness. “I believe.

  “Legba, open the spirit gate.” She saw the spirit, bent, crippled, like an old man.

  She heard Agwé: “Blood blends with water.”

  She could feel his spirit filling her body. She took the point of Agwé’s sword, slicing his symbol into her palm. A line for a ship’s mast, another for a sail, another for the boat slicing the water.

  “I am yours,” she whispered.

  Blood drained down her wrist, between her fingers, onto the floor. Drums resounded.

  Blood speckled the floor.

  “Agwé? Come.”

  Blood rushed through her body. Her heart’s rhythm pumping blood like water crashing against the shore. A shore swirling with blue-green currents, seaweed, and fish.

  She was in a ship—reaching out of the water were skeletal hands, hands of the bones of people, Africans, who died during the Middle Passage. Agwé brandished his sword. Slicing through waves, thrusting at sea foam and kelp.

  A shape rose from the water—not bone, not flesh—a plume of smoke. Smoke that dispersed in the air, reassembled. Shaping its self into a man.

  Agwé stomped, his sword flailing.

  The shadow man grew taller, like a giant, until it seemed to walk on water, until it blocked Agwé’s ship from view. Blocked the full moon.

  “The wazimamoto. It comes from the sea,” Marie murmured.

  “We’ll send it back.” DuLac intensified his drumming. Boudom.

  Candle flames flickered high, elongating, sending up smoke, mimicking Marie’s spirit vision. The shadow figure grew, threatening to overtake the entire ocean, the horizon, the sky. Agwé had disappeared.

  “Say your name,” said DuLac.

  “Marie.”

  She pressed her bloodied hand to her heart. “Marie.” She felt an overwhelming desire to feed. She studied her palm. The wound was still bleeding. Her tongue flicked the salty blood. She sucked her palm as hard as a child at her mother’s breast. Like waves, the blood flowed out and back into her body. An endless loop, like the sea’s pulse.

  She heard Agwé: “Blood blends with water.” Heard another voice, more feminine: “Blood trumps water. Bloodlines. Nothing stronger. Je suis Marie.”

  And she knew in her soul it was Marie from the painting speaking. Marie, the feared and most revered Voodoo Queen. The great, most famous, infamous Marie.

  She felt her body tilting sideways. Some force gently pressing until her cheek rested on the floor. She focused on her open hand, bleeding, glowing with Agwé’s ship, drawn in blood. She could see all the other Maries. Her mother; Marie Laveau’s daughter; Marie Laveau. Laveau’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Membe, the African slave. A line of women stretching back to Eve.

  But Marie Laveau shone brighter than all the others—the New World voodooienne, healing, in touch with her feminine power. Doing good in the world. This was her mother—more than all the others. More than her birth mother. This Marie—the healer. Her truest ancestor.

  “Ask,” said DuLac. “Ask who, what it is.”

  The vision was fading.

  “No, don’t go. Please. I’m a healer, to
o.”

  The room became colder. Marie’s breath was smoke. The candles flamed higher.

  Marie Laveau’s spirit entered her, possessing.

  She remembered: dancing in Congo Square; walking on the waters of Lake Pontchartrain. Healing, ministering to the ill, the poor. Intimidating cruel masters, aiding escaped slaves. “Je suis Marie.” Haughty, arrogant, when she needed to be. Joyful in her power.

  “It’s here,” shouted DuLac. “The wazimamoto.”

  Marie stood, staring down the thing in the corner. Protecting her blood, bloodlines.

  The wazimamoto had cheekbones, brown eyes, hands that tapered from wrist to fingers. It wore clothes: a black suit and a cravat, sparkling black boots.

  “Hello, John,” Marie Laveau said.

  The shadow man opened its mouth and wailed. A sound between pain and rage.

  Marie Laveau stuck her bloodied hand, Agwé’s sign, where John’s heart should be. She felt the evil, yet she also felt how he was made evil. There was a rapid fluttering of images: a ship; slave shackles; branding; a ruthless whipping. Then John’s evil: strangling a free colored for money; beating a mulatto until she submitted to rape.

  “I killed you before, John. Do you remember my serpent?

  “Damballah,” she murmured.

  Conjured out of air, Damballah, a rainbow-colored snake, circled John, tightening, choking, until he began to disintegrate, losing clothes, features, torso, limbs. Until he disappeared.

  Marie Laveau stretched her arms wide. Relishing sensation, being inside a body. She swayed to the drums.

  “You are me, child,” she whispered inside Marie’s head. “Find John’s gris-gris, his secret of youth. The emblem from his tribe.

  “You are me. A woman of power. You can defeat John, as I did.

  “Look to the painting. It holds the blood tale.”

  Marie collapsed. DuLac cradled her. She felt she was drowning, pulled by an undertow of emotions emptying her out.

  “You’re safe. You’re safe,” DuLac kept repeating.

  The doorbell jangled. There was pounding on the door. “Doc? DuLac!”

  “Here, Parks,” shouted DuLac, helping Marie to sit.

  Parks was on the threshold, chest heaving. “Doc, you all right?”

  She nodded.

  “I found you gone,” he said, exasperated. “Roach called. I got here as soon as I could. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “What?” asked DuLac. “Another murder?”

  “Alafin’s dead. Another man, too.”

  DuLac sat back on his heels, his face drained. “I just spoke with him.”

  “Someone reported a murder. Officers found an old man dead. Professor Alafin, less than an hour ago. Bloodless.

  “I came looking for you and Marie, first at the apartment. Then here.”

  “DuLac, I think we could use a drink,” said Marie. “Plain rum.”

  “You’re hurt.” Parks took out his handkerchief, wrapping it around Marie’s hand. A bruise flowered on her face.

  “Let me get some ice,” said Parks.

  “No, stay. The wazimamoto was here. Must’ve come after the murders. It was more alive than ever.”

  “Here.” DuLac handed glasses all around. “It wore clothes. It must have some kind of lair. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. A barely visible mist, now almost a man.”

  “It drew on the organic substance we have in the lab. Feeding would have accelerated its growth.”

  “You did a ceremony,” said Parks, softly accusing.

  “Yes. Just me and DuLac,” said Marie. “I needed to understand a few things.”

  “Do you? Understand?”

  “Some. Look.” Marie drew Parks and DuLac to the painting. “This Marie, my anscestor, conducted ceremonies, blending Catholicism and voodoo into a powerful force against oppression. In the painting, hundreds—rich and poor, slave and free, black and white—watched Marie dancing with a snake, before a bonfire.

  “See that figure there?” In the background, the painting’s far-left corner, Marie pointed at an alleyway beside St. Louis Cathedral. “You almost don’t notice him.” An indistinct figure stood in the shadows watching Marie Laveau conduct her ceremony.

  “This is John. He discovered Marie Laveau. Wooed her from her grandmère. Introduced her to voodoo.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Parks.

  DuLac poured more rum for each of them. “Laveau’s mother was crucified. John did nothing to save her. The grandmother escaped, hiding her infant granddaughter in the bayou. Raising her Catholic.

  “Marie Laveau knew nothing about who she was.

  “When Marie reached puberty,” DuLac continued, “John seduced her away from her grandmother. Heritage and sex—a powerful combination.”

  “He manipulated her. Misused her power. Eventually, she killed him. Strangled him with a snake.” Marie shivered.

  “You’re cold,” said Parks, wrapping his coat around her.

  “Marie loved him. Hated him. He fathered her child,” said Marie.

  “That means,” said DuLac, draining his rum. “John is also your ancestor.”

  “Great-great-grandfather.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Parks. “Why try to hurt your descendant?”

  “Self-hatred,” answered DuLac. “Isn’t that what Alafin said was key?”

  “Jealously, too, at least according to Laveau’s journal. He hated his lack of power. Hated the matrilineal line of Maries. In Africa, he was a king’s son. Slavery stole his status. Self-respect. Everything.”

  “Part of the blame for voodoo’s poor reputation,” said DuLac, “is because of John. Voodoo, for him, meant trouncing enemies. Black, white, it didn’t matter.

  “He spread the rumor of ‘goats without horns’—the supposed sacrifice of white babies. He ran a house of prostitution. Invested in slave ships. Ran auctions. A man who both hated and identified with the colonizers.”

  “Motive,” said Parks. “John used the Maries to serve his ambition.”

  “Enough motive to resurrect himself as a wazimamoto,” said DuLac. “Especially when a powerful new Voodoo Queen has been found.”

  “Do you think John knew Alafin?” asked Parks. “That would mean he has consciousness. Premeditation.” Parks swallowed rum. “Fucking bloodsucker.”

  “Back to its watery grave,” said DuLac. He poured more rum. “Bottoms up.”

  Parks looked around the room. The candles on the altar and floor, the array of black-and white-faced statues on the altar. A drawing of Damballah on the wall. The painting of Marie, her face lit by fire and moonlight.

  “John’s motive is revenge,” Parks said.

  “If he feeds on me, he’ll have the power he always wanted. Doubling the power generated from hatred.”

  “He’ll become a complete man, haunting the Quarter. Killing,” said DuLac.

  “Unbelievable,” said Parks. “No, I mean, I believe you both. I’ve just never been involved in something so horrible. I don’t know how to solve this. Capture a wazimamoto.”

  “I do,” said Marie. “But I need to find John’s gris-gris, his charm. An emblem he had from his tribe.”

  “How’re you going to do that?” asked Parks.

  “I don’t know yet.” She felt an overwhelming desire to see Marie-Claire.

  “How much time have we got?” asked DuLac.

  “Maybe a few days. If that. He’s been killing more frequently.”

  “Rest, Marie,” said DuLac. “Plenty of time to talk tomorrow. You’ve notified Alafin’s family?” he asked Parks.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be all right, DuLac?”

  “I want to drink myself into a stupor. Nine dead. My dear friend.”

  Sympathetically, Parks offered his hand; DuLac clung to it.

  Marie’s fingers grazed the painting. Down right, almost as an afterthought, the painter had brushed in musicians. Brass players. Another drummer. A quintet.
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br />   Marie crossed the threshold into the hall. She vaguely heard DuLac and Parks whispering.

  She felt soul weary. Sorrow for DuLac. All the many people dead.

  She walked out of DuLac’s ornate home, down the porch steps, to her car.

  “Let me drive you.”

  “No.”

  “Follow you.”

  “I’ll be fine, Parks. What were you and DuLac talking about?”

  “He wanted to know if I found Alafin’s tape recorder. I told him no.” His irises flared.

  “But you did. Find it. I can tell.”

  Parks grimaced. “No one should have to hear that tape.” He kissed her deeply, thoroughly. His hand gently stroked her breast.

  Marie sighed. “It feels good when you touch me.”

  “Let me touch you some more.”

  She clung to him, letting passion sweep over her. Aroused, Parks kissed her face, her neck. Part of her wanted him now. She’d unzip his pants. Let him enter her. It didn’t matter who saw.

  She leaned away. “Tomorrow, Parks. Let’s talk tomorrow.”

  “Talk?” He was the surfer boy again. Cocky. Sweet. Nibbling on her ear.

  “I want to be with my child tonight.”

  Instantly, his expression was serious.

  “I understand. I’ll come by tomorrow, around four. Take you and Marie-Claire to the Riverwalk. Dog, too. We can eat beignets and drink café au lait. Chocolate milk for Marie-Claire. Water for Dog.”

  “He likes beignets, too.”

  “Okay. A beignet for Dog. Two. A dozen for me, you, and Marie-Clarie.”

  Marie laughed. “Thank you, Parks.” Then her expression grew grave. She inhaled the damp mist. Rested her head on his chest.

  Parks hugged her, his hands sliding to her crotch. “Tomorrow, we can steal an hour? Can’t we?”

  “Afterward, we’ve got to get Marie-Claire out of town. Until it’s over, I can’t be near her. You’ll take her to DuLac?”

  “Agreed.” He kissed her brow. “I’m still going to follow you home.”

  She slid into her car. She waited a minute, watching through the rearview mirror, Parks getting into his patrol car. He flicked his lights.

  Marie turned on the engine. Almost midnight. It felt good. Knowing Parks was following her home.