“There are more things in your heaven and earth, Horatio.”
Marie wondered: Did Shakespeare learn of voodoo from the Moors?
* * *
It was just her and the girl.
DuLac was on duty; Reneaux, investigating Breezy’s. Marie had faith Reneaux would find some answers. She had to find some, too. Some answers would take a lifetime of searching. Some demanded more immediacy. What sense was there to be a doctor if she couldn’t heal? What sense to be connected to voodoo if she couldn’t wield its power?
For the girl, time was running out. She was motionless, seemingly oblivious to senses. Smells, sounds, touch. Did she dream?
She looked like Sleeping Beauty except for the wires and tubes extending from her arms, chest, bladder, and mouth.
“You’re not dead. You’re not dead,” Marie chanted like a mantra between the hushed whirs of machinery.
“Sure she is.” Allez entered the room, smooth, dressed in an elegant tuxedo.
“When did you become a doctor?”
“Some facts are obvious, immediately verifiable.”
“Severs has given us twenty-four hours.”
“Did he now?”
Marie heard a light scratch. The girl’s index finger moved once, twice. The nail lightly scratched the sheet.
Marie looked up at Allez. He’d heard it, and smiled, sardonically, as if he’d thrown down a gauntlet.
“You’re evil.”
“And you’re not?”
The question caught her off-guard. Of course, she wasn’t evil. She saved, not endangered lives. “You won’t find what you’re looking for here.”
“How do you know what I’m looking for?” He moved forward.
“Don’t touch her.”
“So protective. Why? You don’t know her.”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Your machines say she’s dead.”
Marie looked at the flat line, the lung machine expanding her ribs. She was a scientist. She wasn’t supposed to ignore data and facts. She knew that. But her intuition counseled something else.
“It was you who C-sectioned Marie-Claire. You, who allowed another to be autopsied. Why spare this one? Or are you looking not to murder another one?”
“I haven’t murdered anyone.”
“So you say.”
Marie swallowed a scream. She hadn’t thought herself capable or culpable for murder. And, yet, there was the probability that Marie-Claire had been alive just as the girl on the bed was alive. She’d cut layers of flesh, delivered a baby and let a suffering mother bleed to death.
She reached for her purse, where the journal was safely hidden. She felt comfort holding Laveau’s words close to her heart.
“So, you know who you be?”
Startled, she watched Allez step forward, seeming to drain the room’s air. “You’ve found the journal I left for you.”
“DuLac found it.”
“I let him find it,” he said, harshly. “I’ve been leaving clues for you all along. Didn’t you sense it?”
“Did you leave her?” She pointed at the girl.
“No,” said Allez. “She’s a betrayal. As were the others. I prefer the swamp.”
“So you’re not all-knowing, invincible.”
“Quiet.” His hands gripped the railing; the bed skittered on its wheels. “Laveau was a formidable rival. You’re an ignorant girl.”
“You believe in voodoo?”
“No. But I want to believe. My father believed voodoo was good for business, and it was. It kept the weak in line. But I want to prove that the divine exists. I’ve heard the legends—Marie walking on water, possessed by Damballah, rescuing victims from fever, prophesying the future. The journal proves Marie’s authenticity. Think, Marie. Think what it would mean to wield voodoo’s power.” Skin flushed, breath ragged, Allez appeared crazed. Obsessed.
His timbre dropped lower; he spoke softly, intensely: “I want to feel the spirits. Why else involve the DeLaCroixs? Now there’s you. All my life I’ve heard there was a Laveau descendant born with a caul, with the possibility of real magic.”
“You’re looking at the wrong person.”
“I don’t think so. The DeLaCroixs keep track of their descendants. There was an eyewitness to your birth. Hands that buried the caul.”
“You’re saying I’m related to the DeLaCroixs?”
“Your mother’s birth name?”
“Cross.”
He shrugged, his mouth twisted like a jester. “Of the cross. DeLaCroix. Marie Levant née Cross, 1948–1980. After Laveau, you were the first in four generations to have the caul.”
“You knew Marie-Claire.”
“Even in the biblical sense. She wasn’t touched by the divine.”
“That’s why you killed her.”
“No, Marie. You forget. You killed her. I’ve been told her child was born with a caul. If you won’t help me believe in voodoo, then my child will.”
Marie slumped forward onto her arms crisscrossed on the bedrail. The world was unstable; the floor shifted like water; light provided little clarity.
Allez, the baby’s father. The baby, her cousin? Had she murdered another cousin, pulling life from her abdomen?
“Don’t set yourself against me, Marie. I have money. Influence. It makes much better sense for you to join me.”
“Join me.” Those were John’s words to Marie Laveau. Join him in corruption, undermining spirituality. In the end, Laveau had to kill him.
Allez’s face twisted. He was ugly, pursuing his passion. His hands shook the bedrail. “Don’t . . . set yourself . . . against me.”
Head up, Marie answered, “I will. I do.”
“Do you want to end up like her? Like Marie-Claire? Like your mother?”
“What do you know about my mother?”
His shadow elongated, draping the girl’s body, trailing halfway up the wall.
“I only have to say a word or lift my hand, nod my head and you’ll be wiped off the face of the earth. Twenty-four hours won’t do you any good.”
Marie studied the girl’s delicate hand, the slender fingers, translucent skin and blunt nails painted pink.
All the possibilities for a girl hadn’t changed—there were always men who believed that being men gave them the right to seduce, overpower, and harm. Beware to any good woman or man who tried to stop them.
Her mother had spent her entire life hiding from a man. Allez’s father? Then Allez? Marie knew there was no gain, no peace to living in fear.
Allez was weak. She must remember that. Why else would a grown man need to control innocents? He was insane, too. Intent on the divine when his soul lacked grace.
She had to be cunning. Use his pride against him. Her guilt, too. Allez was right. There was blood on her hands.
She hadn’t understood that the young women were still alive. One thing she understood from Laveau was that hatred was more effective turned outward than in. Revenge couldn’t resurrect, but it could ease the burden on one’s soul. New Testament Christians turned the other cheek. Voodoo was sometimes like the Old Testament, encouraging the need for warriors, for defending those unable to defend themselves. The Bible married the Old and the New. Just as voodoo married revenge and love.
Marie had no idea what she could do or what her powers were—she only knew she had to try to save the baby. Try to save as many women as she could.
She thought of all the harm and hurt this man had done; her mother, lungs struggling for air. Fury made her feverish like the landscape. Her mother hid; she’d take the stand her mother should have taken. As a doctor, she warned herself not to become too emotional; as a voodooienne, she’d take her fury and refine it to a blazing heat.
She looked up at Allez—a big man filling a too-small space, with a deadened heart.
She said softly, scornfully: “Don’t you know Maries never die?”
Allez’s anger was palpable, his face taut. His fist pummeled the girl’
s pillow, barely missing her face. He’d kill her and Marie without conscience.
Abruptly, Allez turned. “Twenty-four hours.” The door swung wildly on its hinge.
* * *
“Mon piti bébé. Fais dodo.” Marie caressed the girl’s cheek. “Your mother is worried about you. Let’s get you home. Tell her she’s going to be a grandmother.”
The girl opened her eyes.
Marie stepped back, shocked. Surely, it was a reflex. Maybe a sign her condition was improving? She was a doctor. “Heal.”
Marie leaned over the rail. No dilation. No amber pupils refracting light.
She leaned even closer.
There was a world inside the girl’s eyes. Images flickering like a movie screen. Pictures from a grand ball. Dozens upon dozens of pale-skinned girls, fans in their hands, dance cards dangling from their arms—all giggling, twirling, locked in the arms of men.
Servants and musicians were black and brown men dressed formally, yet stereotypically, with wide grins, white gloves, and shoes clicking like taps. The male dancers were all white—some young, most old; a few handsome, many well preserved. Some dragged on cigars, cigarettes; others sipped bourbon, brandy, assessing the girls as if they were cattle.
The scene was reminiscent of a mythic, genteel plantation—masters bored with their wives searching for “harmless” fun; elder statesmen smugly believing young girls with even one drop of black blood owed them their charms.
Beneath the atmosphere of alcohol, raucous laughter, and intense stares was decadence, evil, and lust for virginal girls. Even the servants lacked conscience; all, except one. Marie recognized the jockey man from Breezy’s; he was leaning against a wall, his disgust barely veiled.
Another picture: Allez and Marie-Claire, unimaginably handsome together, linked arm in arm. Marie and Allez on a balcony, overlooking a room decorated like Eve’s garden. Then, there were quick snatches of history: Allez and Marie-Claire arguing; Marie-Claire slapping Allez; Marie-Claire running down the stairs. Marie-Claire lying dead, undead in a weeping woman’s arms.
The image changed. Violin bows falling and rising in three-quarter time. The room was a whirl of silk, lace, and satin. Girls floated in a sea of pastels. Men, in funeral black, their backs ramrod straight, spun and twirled the girls to slaughter.
To the far right was a staircase. A golden-haired gentleman, a small paunch protruding over a cummerbund, escorted a petite brunette upstairs. Fifteen? Sixteen? The girl wanted to keep dancing. But the man tugged, relentless: one hand, pushing against her waist; the other, pulling her right arm.
Was this the future?
The eyes closed.
“No, wait. Please.”
Eyelids fluttered, reopened.
The brunette girl was screaming, being dragged toward an altar. Allez tied her arms behind her back. A woman’s hands, nails bloody red, put something in the girl’s mouth; then pinched the girl’s nose and covered her mouth.
Dead. Undead.
“Where?”
The image panned outward. A three-storied mansion glowered white. Vines and moss strangled the columns and lattice trim. Huge willows, their branches hanging like teardrops, shrouded the east and west sides. The yellow moon was sliver-thin in a midnight sky.
Surrounding the house was bayou—marshy swamp, sluggish streams, inlets of blackish water covered with velvet moss. Overgrown, riotous trees grew out of earth and water. Thick underbrush and timber cast shadows where predators hid, crawled, slithered, and walked.
A woman with gold-hoop earrings, her hair wrapped in a red chignon, stood on the porch. Her hand upraised.
Marie saw a mirror of herself, older, her brow and mouth lines etched with deep lines.
“Dare you,” the woman seemed to say. “Dare you.”
A hoot owl screeched, sweeping up its prey without mercy.
NEVER ENDING
Two Thousand and Five
When the screaming began, no one, except Marie, had seen Marianne.
She looked like an aristo, though the guard who hurried her along called her “Negress”; “Nigger”; “Whore.” The guards waited for darkness before touching her.
Acts committed wordlessly—grunts, explosive breathing, terrified screams.
How many? Three, four, five? aggressive men laying claim to a delicate girl.
Marianne survived three nights.
—Marie Laveau speaking to Louis DeLavier
he ran down the steps to the ER. “DuLac. Allez is behind this.” DuLac was stripping his gloves and medical coat, cleaning up after an asthmatic attack.
“There’s another Quadroon Ball. Or there’s going to be.”
“You don’t know?”
“No. I only know I have to be there. Allez’s mad.”
“Someone will be hurt?”
“Yes. I’ve got to stop him.”
“Marie. Wait for the police.”
But she was already dashing, heading for the automatic doors. Barking, Kind Dog scooted up from beneath Sully’s chair.
“Stay, Kind Dog. Stay. Call Reneaux, Sully.” Doors slid open. There was a whoosh of humid air. A smell of sulfur and smog.
DuLac shouted, “Marie!”
Her keys in her hands, she jogged left toward her car. There was a bark, then Kind Dog leaping past her, across the driver’s seat, onto the passenger seat.
“No. You’ve got to go.”
Kind Dog cocked his head. Licked his bandage.
“You’ve hurt yourself.” Marie hugged him, stroking the length of his spine. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Kind Dog, patiently, let himself be held, then scooted face forward.
“All right, then. Let’s go. But you’d better stay safe.”
* * *
Marie had made this journey before. To Teché, bayou of snakes. From the journal, she now knew this had been Marie’s childhood home. But Marie and her Grandmére had lived in a stilt shack. Not an antebellum mansion.
Nonetheless, Marie knew she was part of this world. The landscape resonated in her soul. Teché. Home of the DeLaCroixs. Kind Dog’s old home. Baby Marie’s, too. She had an affinity for this world. An affinity built on fear, old ghosts, and newly discovered ancestors.
Every mile that drew her closer, she wanted to turn and motor back to the city. The landscape had frightened her once. Now she’d have to face the sights and sounds again, the menace that went bump in the night.
The highway gave way to dirt trails. The road was jarring; ruts made her spine shake and Kind Dog whimper. The overgrowth and trees became denser, highway light more remote. Fewer and fewer cars. Until none. Just the loneliness of a darkened road. Headlights capturing creatures scampering, owls diving for prey, bats gliding through air.
The air conditioner struggling with humidity, the Beetle’s wheels moved ten miles per hour. The moon played peek-a-boo and shadows elongated then disappeared.
She felt eyes were hidden in the trees. Someone—something—was watching her.
No one should be out on this forgotten road if they didn’t have to be.
She stopped at the roadside where she’d hit Dog, where her Beetle had been turned belly-up.
Sitting in the car, she and Dog, both panting, watching mist caught in the car beams, Marie couldn’t helping thinking “primeval.” How foolish she’d been not to wait for Reneaux. Did she think she could drive farther up the driveway and walk right in? And even if Allez’s men let her pass, what was she supposed to do? Demand they give up the girl?
Her head touched the steering wheel.
Her door was yanked open; startled, she screamed. Reneaux placed his hand over her mouth. “Sssh. Don’t you know you’re supposed to lock the doors?”
“You scared me.”
“I didn’t mean to. Besides, Kind Dog saw me. Move over.”
Kind Dog stepped gingerly to the back; Marie moved over to the passenger side. Reneaux slipped behind the wheel.
“I didn’t hear you
r car.”
“Parked a ways back.” He quickly kissed her. “You look tired, Doc. Not your usual composed self. You seen a ghost?”
“Are you trying to rile me?”
“You bet,” he drawled. “I’d rather you be mad at me than feeling bad.”
Marie hugged him, holding tightly, passionately.
“It’s all right.”
She wiped tears from her eyes. “Sure it is. Did you bring more police?”
“Chief didn’t believe me. Said no sense fighting crime that hadn’t happened. Or was a woman’s overwrought imagination.”
“It isn’t my imagination.”
“I know. Voodoo—mystical. Unexplainable.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do. But it is mystical. Unexplainable.” He turned off the headlights; the gnats and mosquitoes caught in the beams disappeared. The darkness was blanketing, thick.
“I have my own score to settle with Allez,” said Reneaux. “His father murdered my brother. Not directly, but without a doubt.”
“Is this what you tried to tell me?”
“Confession’s good for the soul.”
“I can’t absolve you.”
“I didn’t think you could. But I wanted—still want you to know everything about me.”
Marie inhaled. She couldn’t see Reneaux’s eyes, mouth. Only the cross glinting in his ear.
“Simple tale really. Sold crack. Thought helping my mother justified the crime. One Sunday, I was late with deliveries, sleeping off a hangover with a girl whose name I didn’t even know.
“Thirteen, Jean decided to help.” Reneaux stopped. Marie heard him pounding his fist into his thigh, beating back the pain.
“He was sweet, my little brother. Liked reading mysteries. Chester Himes. Raymond Chandler.
“He got robbed, his throat slit. An addict, one of my best clients—a hyped-up petty thief, never remembered the killing. Adding insult, Allez’s father wanted his lost profit. It was his dope I was dealing.
The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy Page 37
