All this time, she’d been focused on loss—losing a mother, not having a father or family. Fighting the loneliness of living in a stranger’s home. Her foster mother, Mrs. Harris, taking a belt to her back and arms for the pleasure of it. Her husband, elderly and impotent, slyly caressing her breasts and buttocks. As she grew, she learned to lock doors, escape the house, dress in oversized clothes. None of her trials compared with her mother’s.
Dead, undead.
She’d heard Mother’s voice floating out of El’s body.
It happened. It was real. She was a doctor. She’d seen miracles, amazing recoveries: a man overcoming the paralysis of a stroke; a blue baby beginning to breathe; a woman, infertile, delivering a child; a cancer patient outrunning death’s odds; and a baby alive inside a dead mother’s womb.
Dead, undead.
Doctor Mary, Marie Levant. A scientist. Rational. “Don’t get emotional,” Dr. Levant. Dr. Levant who dreamed about the past and the future, experienced visions, spoke with spirits, smelled, felt, and saw things unseen.
All things alive.
Poor Maman. Murdered. Dead, undead.
So there were two types of death, undeath—buried in a casket, deep underground; the second, a resurrected spirit still haunted by how she died.
The blood is alive.
Blood connecting her to her mother, Marie-Claire, and the baby. All the Maries. But it was ancestor Marie who’d swept inside her, who was strongest. Tough. It was this Marie who healed. This Marie who’d help her avenge her mother’s murder.
Kind Dog’s nose brushed her hand. She rubbed his head. The brown-eyed dog blinked. “Let’s solve mysteries.”
She stood. The floor held steady. One step, two. Kind Dog, as if trained to heel, kept in step beside her.
Voices, sibilant and murmuring, came from the kitchen. She looked back at the painting. All still. No shapes shifting. The woman was banana-colored. Thick brows, full lips. High cheekbones, perhaps from a native descendant (hadn’t some Louisianans mixed with Choctaws?). She had long, black hair; her body was rounded, curved. Her arms were open, inviting the supplicants, the frenzied dancers close. This was the “Queen” her mother had told tales about.
Marie crossed the hall. It was all new territory. Like a blind woman, she felt the wall. Kind Dog’s body brushed against her calves.
Someone else brushed past them both, calling her name, “Marie Levant. Marie Levant. Marie Levant née Marie Laveau.”
Marie Levant born Marie Laveau.
* * *
“The women . . . the young girls weren’t dead.”
Reneaux set down his whiskey glass; DuLac stopped stirring gumbo; El laid a deuce on her solitaire deck.
“Not possible,” El said.
“Everything’s possible,” said DuLac.
“But that child, Marie-Claire, was dead. Marie operated on her. Sliced through her abdomen and womb. All those girls were dead.”
Kind Dog sat. Marie looked at a weary DuLac. Reneaux pulled out his spiral pad. El stared at her cards as if she could prophesy.
“How do you know this, Marie?”
“I just know, Reneaux.”
“Here.” DuLac handed her a whiskey shot.
“Medically it’s impossible. I checked the women myself. I was there when my mother died. Except she wasn’t dead.” She clamped her mouth shut, swallowing bile. She remembered her knife slicing through skin.
“It could happen,” said DuLac. “I’ve never seen it. But old houngans telling about older houngans. Mainly in Haiti. Priestesses telling of perversions from the nineteenth, eighteenth centuries. They tell about deep trances. Trances where a soul loses its will.”
“Mind control?” asked Reneaux.
“Maybe. Maybe something else. I don’t know. I do know there are piles of dissertations in university libraries about folks, with no medical cause, believing they’re going to die, then dying. They call it voodoo but it’s not. Just plain evil. Hexes, voodoo dolls. Evil business. Such charms don’t have power, except in weak people’s minds.”
“Just great. Tell my Chief that evil is killing young girls.”
“’Tis true. Plenty sin in New Orleans.”
“Sin comes from evil,” caroled El.
“Everybody in New Orleans believes in voodoo—most believe it’s evil, like the Hollywood garbage of ‘goats without horns,’ black folks sacrificing white babies. Or like the erotic, racist view of white masters believing slaves had loose morals, and voodoo was ‘night dancing,’ a prelude to sex. Only a few, like those who came tonight, believe in the real voodoo, the helping and the healing. White culture has denigrated African-based faiths until most modern folks want nothing to do with them. Tell your Chief it’s voodoo and he’ll quake in his shoes. But voodoo isn’t evil. Not the faith. People sin.”
Reneaux chewed on his pen. “You sure, Marie?”
“I’m sure.”
“Controlled? So thoroughly you’d allow yourself to be placed in a grave?”
“Zombies,” said El.
“Non,” said DuLac. “Only one zombi—Damballah, li Grand Zombi. He has the power of faith, possession. Damballah’s not evil.”
“So the movies are wrong,” drawled Reneaux, sarcastic. “Undead still sounds like zombies to me.”
DuLac shifted awkwardly. He slowly stirred okra, crayfish, simmering on the stove. “Not just from Haiti. From Laveau’s day. Laveau’s husband. She tells how he felt nothing.”
“If zombies are real, then I believe in vampires,” said El, sarcastic.
“Whoever heard of a black vampire?”
“Blade,” said El. “That Wesley Snipes man.”
“Naw,” Reneaux drawled, “don’t count. Blade’s half human.”
El laughed, high-pitched. DuLac shook his head. Reneaux chuckled, slapping his notebook on his thigh.
“Stop it. All of you. Just shut up.” Marie was furious. Dog growled. He stood in front of Marie, the hair on his spine upraised, his bandaged leg leaning awkwardly.
Reneaux stood, quickly patting the dog. “Settle down, Dog.” He gathered Marie in his arms. “We’re sorry. No harm,” he said. “No harm. Just some humor. Otherwise we’d all go crazy.” He kissed her brow.
“Consult an ancient book for an ancient evil.”
“What do you mean, DuLac?”
He shook his head. “Eat first. Else you won’t make it ’til morn.” He ladled stew.
“I’ll make coffee,” said El.
Reneaux encouraged Marie and Kind Dog to sit.
Way past midnight, the sky, a soft black, fireflies blinking in the night air, the four of them ate at the kitchen table. Drinking coffee with chicory and milk, spicing their gumbo with hot sauce, they worried in companionable silence. Kind Dog snored. His bandaged paw batted the air like he was dreaming.
* * *
“I’ve heard tell of a fish. Mentioned in a journal I have.”
“So it’s a drug,” said Reneaux.
“Non, evil, I told you,” snapped DuLac.
“Drugs can be evil.”
Marie heard Reneaux’s fury edged with bitterness.
He flipped open his notepad. “Doesn’t make sense. Women pregnant, made to appear dead. Why? Standard tests have been done. No known detectable poison. No known detectable anything. Except awash in pregnancy hormones. Like they’d been given huge doses. Not just pregnant. But very pregnant.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” asked Marie.
“You think it’s significant?”
“Might be.”
“How much of this is science fiction or science fact?” queried El.
“What do you think, Marie?” asked DuLac.
“The scientist in me says, ‘No’; this other part of me says, ‘Yes.’”
“Any tissue samples left?”
“The FBI has them. They’ve contacted Caribbean and African specialists in folk medicine.”
“Good, Reneaux.”
“And what abou
t the mark?” asked Marie. “The upside-down cross with a snake, sloped like a sideways S?”
“Means nothing as far as I can tell,” said Reneaux. “I’ve searched for the symbol everywhere. Santeria, Haitian Voudon, Candomblé, Rastafarian movements, even Catholic theology. The only connection I’ve found is to supposed Satanic groups, European-based, with the snake representing the Devil.”
“Religions from the African Diaspora all value the snake as knowledge, all-knowing, an infinity and fertility symbol. White Christians bemoan that a snake tempted Eve in the Garden. But in voodoo, the same myth is a cause for celebration. Snakes represent knowledge. ‘Knowing’ is what keeps you safe, strong. What good is Eden with ignorance?”
“Maybe its a red herring,” said Reneaux, “something to throw us off the scent?”
“From Mister Evil?”
“You think it’s a man, DuLac?” asked Marie.
“I do.”
“Why not either? Or both? A woman and a man.”
“Marie, you’re thinking of the DeLaCroixs,” said Reneaux. “I’ve already been out to see them. Twice. Trail’s dead.”
“Still, the baby’s grandmother didn’t seem innocent. The mother sounded as if she was cruel.”
El patted Marie’s knee. “The baby’s fine.”
Marie’s chair screeched. Kind Dog scooted up awkwardly.
“You don’t understand. It’s not about the baby.”
None of them looked at her. Reneaux scribbled with his pencil; DuLac dipped another bread piece in the stew; and El hummed a tune in the back of her throat.
“I want to go home.”
“I’ll drive you.” Reneaux opened the screen door. Pink and a burnt orange were far off in the horizon.
Marie abruptly turned back. “You’ve known me.”
“Since you were a babe,” said DuLac.
“Who am I?”
“Isn’t it clear? Laveau’s descendent, a link in a long line of Voodoo Queens.”
“That’s what frightened my mother?”
“The corruption, the bastardization. Hard for voodoo to survive in the New World. She didn’t take time to understand the real voodoo. She didn’t feel the healing we felt tonight.”
“Healing? I didn’t help anyone.”
“Yourself.” DuLac gently cupped her face. “Since you were a child, you’ve been preparing. To be a healer. That’s what voodoo is—healing bodies, souls, and minds.”
“Then why am I ill?” she said harshly. “Sickened by everything I’ve seen and heard tonight?”
“You’ll thrive when you understand who you be. Wait.” He opened a side pantry door.
El tapped her nails on the table. “I’m not sure about zombies, but you’ve got to believe in what happened tonight. Reneaux, don’t say a word. You felt it, too.”
Reneaux closed his mouth.
“Do you believe, El?”
“Of course she believes,” said DuLac, shouting from the pantry, one side filled with shelves of canned goods, flour, and rice; the other side filled with oils, herbs, and roots, labeled in bottles. He reached for a book on the highest shelf. “Good and evil always battling. Whether folks be Catholic, Protestant, voodoo, don’t matter. Faith wins the fight. Do you believe, Marie? In what happened tonight? In you?”
DuLac stood tall and strong before her. He held the book as an offering.
Marie searched her heart. “Yes,” she said simply. “Yes.”
“Bon. This is for you.”
Journal of Louis DeLavier, 18—.
Marie gently clutched the book, feeling emotions welling through leather, paper, and ink.
“DeLavier loved Marie Laveau. He captured her story when she was dying. ’Cept Marie Laveau didn’t die, she was waiting. For you—”
Marie caressed the spine, the fragile pages.
“—a strong woman with a pure heart. Queen. Queen Laveau. Queen of the Old and the New. Voodoo Queen.”
THE END
Two Thousand and Five
The most feared evil in voodoo is a zombie. Resurrected, mindless, soulless bodies are controlled by a priest, an evil houngan.
Souls from resurrected bodies roam the earth in torment.
To prevent zombies, “Make sure your loved ones are indeed dead and their bodies do not go warm to the grave.”
—The Origins and History of the Voodoo Cults
(From Louis DeLavier’s journal)
eneaux had taken her home. She wanted to be alone. In her apartment with Kind Dog.
Her rooms had been searched and she felt violated. The sheets were scattered. Dresser drawers upturned. Underwear littered like small clues. Her medical jackets were ripped, piled on the closet floor. Advil floated in the toilet. A Tampax box had been shredded as if it might’ve held secret treasure, a miniature map. The kitchen smelled of ketchup and soured milk. Marie stepped gingerly over broken glass. The freezer door had been left open. Strawberry ice cream dripped on the floor. Foil packages of chicken were soft. She imagined rot inside the glittering wrap.
Reneaux righted a lamp, picked a pillow off the floor.
“Leave it.”
“You shouldn’t be here, Marie.”
“He won’t come back.” She knew it was true.
“I don’t like this.”
She kissed Reneaux, knowing he wanted to stay. But she needed to read the journal alone. Think on her mother’s death, alone. Quell her fears.
“Lock the door.”
“I will. I promise.” One, two, three locks. Marie knew spirits could easily walk through wood. They’d entered her flesh, her soul; they’d entered her dreams. But she wanted to pretend privacy was possible.
Her medical bag had been emptied, kicked aside. Marie picked it up, grateful she’d had the foresight to add a false lining. She pulled out the velvet pouch, emptied the rosary, the Virgin images onto the bed. Her mother’s handwriting comforted her.
The scotch was half full. She took a swig from the bottle, laid the journal on the mattress beside Kind Dog. She swallowed another shot.
She could see Jacques, his long legs extending past the edge of the bed. He smiled at her, even patted Dog. “Chérie,” she heard him call. “Chérie.” Then he disappeared.
She opened the journal. The pages shimmered alive:
“A story should begin at the beginning. But in this story, the middle is the beginning. Everything spirals outward from the center. Lies, pain, and loss haunt the future as well as the past.
“Grandmére, my mother, my daughter, myself—we were all named Marie. This story is all of us. Be sure to write everything down, Louis.
“Voodoo is worth passing on.” Marie Laveau—1881.
Marie could almost see Laveau, old and dying, telling her story, passing it down through the generations, passing it to her.
From dawn to dusk, Marie read DeLavier’s journal. It was two confessions. DeLavier’s confession of love for Marie. How he adored her! Marie’s confession of how as a woman, as a priestess sometimes her power and will hadn’t been enough. She’d been the most feared woman in New Orleans and she’d been the most human. Frail, in her own way, and searching.
The yellowed pages were filled with complications. Marie understood white against black, rich against poor, men against women, good against evil. In the twenty-first century, discrimination hadn’t disappeared. She didn’t understand faith and miracles. Women walking on air. Sinners given salvation. A snake representing knowledge as good. Or Catholicism and voodoo blending as naturally as tea leaves with water. Mysteries abounded.
“Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter.”
Except in Laveau’s life, the line had been broken. Laveau’s grandmother (just like Marie’s mother) had hidden the faith. Misguided love had made the children vulnerable.
But now Marie understood that coming to New Orleans had been her fa, her fate. “Can’t escape fa,” the journal said.
On and on she read:
; She and Laveau were both orphans. She remembered the dream: a woman grown, strapped to a tree, scars crisscrossing her back. That had been Laveau’s mother—captured by whites, murdered during a ceremony. She remembered an old woman singing, “Guédé, Guédé, have mercy.” That was Laveau’s Grandmère; but it was also the Madame DeLaCroix at Breezy’s. Baby Marie’s grandmother.
Marie’s heart raced.
She, trembling, diving into thick, heady water, catfish brushing her thighs. That had to be Marie Laveau, her moment of triumph when she walked across Lake Pontchartrain, as if it were earth. Nonsense. Impossible. But the miracle was recorded in the journal, and in a newspaper clipping tucked in the journal’s pages.
What was the last part of her dreaming?
She, a mother, screaming, giving birth, as she, the babe, slipped out, swimming downstream in a rush of water, a bloodied, blue-red membrane covering her face.
Baby Marie had been born with a caul. She wasn’t the mother but she felt as though she was. If it hadn’t been for her, the baby would’ve died.
Kind Dog nuzzled her, curled up, warm, against her abdomen.
She lay back against the pillow. In her dream, she’d been everyone. The links—the generations collapsed across time. She sat up quickly, skipping ahead to the journal’s last chapter. Two hours before she died, Laveau repeated to DeLavier:
“Life is a spiral. The only protection is to become disembodied—to see the self as other. Immortal.
“The generations are overlapping. Women hand sight down through the generations.
“One generation will get it right.”
Was that her calling? To get it right?
Even Marie Laveau couldn’t save her loved ones. Her life had been filled with betrayal.
John, her nemesis, had manipulated her gifts to gain money and power. Killed her Grandmère.
As someone had killed her mother. Marie took another shot from the bottle.
She was at a crossroads. Frightened and strangely exhilarated.
What would her mother have wanted her to do? Hide? And if she hid, her life would be lonely and desperate.
She didn’t understand much about the voodoo faith. Yet voodoo taught that all things—animate, inanimate had spirit. All things were signs.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 34
