by C. L. Bevill
Jane turned back. She would go back out to the street she came from and find that bus stop again before it was too late. She took a step and looked toward the streetlights that dotted Basin Street. Abruptly, something large and black moved in-between her and the lamps.
The great shape hunched over, as if it walked on all four legs. It moved sinuously, an animal used to being within its skin. The black form was indistinct, silhouetted by the distant streetlights. The echoing snarl rippled through the dozens of cemetery vaults toward her.
That wasn’t in my head. Roux-Ga-Roux.
Jane touched her pocket where the gold medallion was located before she realized what she was doing. The medallion wasn’t going to help her either. If some police officer happened by before her guts were strewn to the four winds, it would be a miracle. She would have been happy if a group of thugs happened by, committed to perfidy.
It didn’t do anything to me when it had me cornered before, she reasoned, but the fear eating at her couldn’t be tamped down. Jane wanted to run and run in the direction most opposite from the thing pacing a hundred feet from her. It vanished into the lines of tombs on one side, and she took a pace backward, forcing herself to move when her quaking limbs wanted to melt into the ground.
Then it talked to me. Janey girl, your wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead, no matter how much you try to work past that.
Jane froze as the black shape blocked out the lights again. This time it was closer. It was inching its way down the lines of tombs, using the shadows to conceal itself, coming closer to its prey.
Me.
Move, she implored herself. Move for the love of God.
The undulating growl resonating through the city of the dead crawled over Jane’s flesh, prodding her subtly. She felt herself swallow, but her saliva had dried up.
The figure moved to one side, vanishing into the other side of the narrow pathway.
Jane looked left and saw one of the taller tombs. She might be able to get on top. She could fix her foot on the wrought iron fence and avoid the arrow-shaped pickets. She could scramble up and stay on the top, out of its reach. She could scream for help. Someone might actually come.
The shape moved in front of the lights again. There wasn’t time for anyone to help her.
Jane turned and launched herself up the fence. The wrought iron was unstable and wobbled where it had been inset into cement. Her hand smashed against the side of the tomb and she cried out.
The warbling growl undulated outward again. It was closer. So much closer that she jerked in place. Her stomach plummeted.
Her other hand caught the brick wall lining the tomb and pulled. Two bricks pulled out, and she nearly overbalanced backward. The bricks hit the cement below with sharp pings that seemed so loud it could have ruptured her eardrums. Broken pieces splintered and scattered across the path.
Jane grabbed again and found a section that wasn’t unstable. The scraped hand found the bottom of the statuary of the tomb. The rounded edges didn’t offer much purchase. She placed one foot on top of the iron fence, in-between the sharp pickets, and stepped up. Then she glanced over her shoulder toward Basin Street.
It stood in the path not ten feet away. The beast’s brilliant eyes glittered at her, the only thing truly visible about it. The low rumble coming from it could have been a warning or annoyance. Jane couldn’t see much of its shape. She turned back and launched herself upward onto the top of the tomb, hoping it was strong enough to support her additional weight.
For a long moment in the endlessness of induced fear, Jane scrambled for purchase. Her muscles hadn’t quite propelled her enough to gain the access she needed. She was stuck in the middle. One hand stretched outward, seeking something, anything to help her.
The trilling yowl sounded again, as if it was right on her back, clawing paws about to snatch at her flesh.
One hand curled around the angel statue that guarded the tomb, and her leg shot over the peak of the tomb. The tomb was similar to a small house with a lightly angled roof. The elaborate parapet in front stuck up several feet more than the front and angled sharply into the sky. The angel statue towered over the middle, defying those who would debase the crypt. Jane nearly slid off the other side in her rush to attain safety, but her hand caught the base of the statue and stopped her overcorrection.
Panting, she twisted her head back and looked down into the blackness where the beast had been. All was shades of blackness concealing nearly everything. All she could hear for the moment was her own frenzied breathing. Yanking her feet from the sides, she perched on the peak of the tomb, holding onto the bottom of the angel. She hoped that the thing below her wasn’t clever enough to realize it could easily climb to the top of the tomb next to the one she was balanced upon. It would be a simple jump for the massive creature, and she would be nothing but an evening snack.
If that’s what it really wants.
The haunting howl came from just below where Jane was propped. It was almost an answer to her dismal thoughts.
Chasing me. Hunting me. Why hasn’t it come around the place where I sleep at night? Why haven’t I seen it since the night at the hospital?
The brick and mortar construction under her creaked ominously. Jane tried to still her movements, but she wanted to watch where the Roux-Ga-Roux was pacing. As her breathing settled into an even rhythm, she could hear the click-click-click of the animal’s claws on the cement below the crypt.
Jane checked the paths around them. She couldn’t see anyone or anything else. In a city of hundreds of thousands of people, there was only she and the Roux-Ga-Roux.
Crap, I could use a cell phone right now, Jane thought. Who am I going to call? The police? Animal control? I’d like to see their faces when they come tromping into the cemetery.
A whine sounded from below.
Didn’t like that, she thought. Doesn’t like it.
Jane frowned as she looked into the darkness. It doesn’t sound like a monster. It isn’t slavering at the base of the tomb trying to get to me, no matter what. It isn’t standing on its hind legs, reaching up to snare a limb.
Remember, she told herself. It talked to you.
“Hey,” she said gently. “I’m not going to hurt you. If I hurt you before I’m sorry.”
Silence.
“I don’t remember hurting you. I remember running away from you, and hey, you chased off Raoul from the hospital stairwell, so I owe you one.” Jane slipped a little and spent a harried moment solidifying her position.
There was a low snarl.
“Oh-kay,” she said. “Maybe you’re not a great conversationalist. Listen, I’ll be honest. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what you are, except the word Roux-Ga-Roux keeps coming to me, and that’s what that freaky Raoul called you.”
Another snarl.
Jane thought about it. “You don’t like Raoul.”
No snarl.
“Great. We’re communicating.” But I’m not getting off the tomb in the middle of the freaking night.
There was an anxious whine.
Jane frowned into the darkness. “I’m talking to something in the blackness in the middle of an antique cemetery. I’m not going to hurt you, but I’m not really in a trusting state of mind either.”
The beast began to pace. Claws clicking sounded on the cement below.
Shifting her body into a more comfortable position, Jane caught her breath as she saw the Roux-Ga-Roux move into a section of meager light. It was out of a movie. The scanty illumination revealed its form for an instant and exposed the mottled brown and gray fur she’d seen before. Its hooked back arched as it traversed the path. Its massive muscles tensed and relaxed as it fluidly advanced.
“Mexican standoff,” she muttered. “You’re not coming up. I’m not coming down until you tell me…what?” What could it possibly say that would make me feel safe?
There was another fretful whine as it slid into the shadows.
Then there w
as silence.
Jane waited. She couldn’t hear anything but the thunder of her heart. She was aware there were cars moving past a few hundred feet to the southeast of her position, but they seemed as noiseless as a patch of dead grass. Despite her proximity to a large number of people, there was no one who was going to hear her screams for help. Moreover, did she want the police asking her questions she couldn’t answer?
Tilting her head, Jane scanned the area carefully. Either the animal was gone or holding still in a deep blotch of darkness, waiting for her to make a move.
The memory that shot through her head was not unlike a bullet tearing through bone and brain matter. Once she had dealt with this animal before. The remembrance was like watching the perspective of a single person holding a camera. Everything happened to her as she watched it angle away.
Jane’s chest had felt close to implosion. Her lungs wouldn’t work any harder even had she begged them. The muscles in her legs burned as she pumped through black waters. One shoe was long gone, lost to the deep muck of the bayou. The bare foot sank into decades of detritus that had settled on the bottom. Tacky mud squeezed between her toes and attempted to pull her back into its depths. In the distance ahead of her, the branches cracked as something was scared away by the noises she made as she ran. The white-tailed deer and its companion leaped heartily away, keeping to the islands of the bayou. In the gloom, all that could be seen was their vividly bright white hindquarters.
Jane wanted to follow them. God, how she wanted to leap away, flying through the air with the propulsion of strong leg muscles designed for such feats, but she wasn’t a deer, and she wasn’t meant for what they did.
Instead, she struggled through the mire, every inch of her fraught with apprehension. It was behind her. It was going to hurt her. She had told it to hurt Jane.
The insistent cry from below her brought Jane back to the moment.
The eyes that glimmered up at her didn’t seem threatening.
Jane let a long-contained breath out. “You were in that bayou with me,” she said. “Chasing me.”
Carefully holding onto the statue, Jane shifted her position again. She reached into her pocket and took out the gold medallion.
The beast emitted a low snarl.
“I need some answers,” she said. “I know you can talk. Insane as it seems, you’re more than what you appear. Just like me. I can’t remember anything but snatches of fear and danger. I was in a swamp. I was running from something. The something was you. You attacked me in the stairwell at the hospital, but you didn’t attack Raoul.”
Another brief snarl. Jane couldn’t see the beast, but the sound indicated that it was still very much about. No longer immobile, it prowled the area around the tomb she was located upon.
“Why didn’t you attack Raoul? Why didn’t you finish me off?” Jane’s questions were dogged.
The snarl changed into a whine.
Jane held the medallion up. “Why were you wearing this? It broke off when we struggled. It caught in my fingers while I was trying to shove you away from the metal grate.”
Another whine.
Jane put the medallion away. She didn’t really want to touch it. The cold metal gave her a case of the screaming meanies. It was an unsettling feeling as if she was touching something half alive, something that had no reason to be living.
For a long time, Jane merely sat there, poised on the top of a tomb in a cemetery in one of the world’s most infamous cities. It didn’t seem like the Roux-Ga-Roux was going to attack her nor did it feel inclined to leave her alone. They held an uneasy détente and slowly, she relaxed.
Securing her arm about the statue, Jane sighed and rested her head against her arm. The night stretched away, waiting for something untenable to happen. She shut her eyes, wishing for anything.
I want…she thought, I want…I want him. The man who speaks in my head.
A wretched noise answered her desperate thoughts. The Roux-Ga-Roux’s tortured voice resonated upward. It said a single word. “J-jay-ane.”
Chapter 11
Good coffee should be black like the devil,
hot like hell, and sweet like a kiss.
– Hungarian proverb
Jane came awake with a little snort. For a brief instant in time, she thought she was falling but abruptly caught herself before she slid off the angled roof of the tomb. One of her arms was still wrapped around the angel statue. Pins and needles stabbed the limb that hadn’t moved for such a long period of time. Groggy and weary, she felt as though she had caught only a few bits of sleep, and her body had been battered by a vicious storm.
To the east the sun was starting its ascent. Gold brilliance peeped around the taller buildings of downtown New Orleans. The lighter-colored tombs mirrored the radiance of the flawless light, revealing their compact, clean designs and the countless rows of their counterparts.
Looking down, Jane didn’t see the monstrous shape of the Roux-Ga-Roux. Instead there was a group of young men staring up at her. It was a mixed group of men in their late teens. Three were Caucasian. Two were African American. One was Hispanic. They all bore similar expressions as they watched her. Jane was the first course on the menu.
“And you said cutting through St. Louis would be boring, man,” one man said as he stared at Jane.
“Well, my mama always told me there’s angels here,” another one said.
“I think she meant the ones on top of the crypts,” a third said.
“She be on top,” the first one responded.
“She can be on top of me,” another one laughed.
“I don’t suppose you’ve seen a very big…dog around here?” Jane asked. She scanned the area, hoping that insouciance would dissuade their interest. She would have demonstrated the immense size of the dog with her hands but she didn’t want to let go of the angel statue.
“Dog?”
“I ain’t seen nothing but rats,” another one said.
“I seen a nutria that was bigger than a whale’s nuts.” He laughed. “Tried to eat me.”
“She talking about that thing in the news?”
“The big dog be wandering around the Quarter but ain’t no one can catch it?”
“They say it’s a hell hound. My mama’s been getting more candles to burn, so it don’t come scratching at our door.”
“We ain’t seen nothing like that, lady,” the first one said. “Just pretty girls in the middle of St. Louis, almost wrapped up like a present for us.”
“Don’t we get to keep this gal?”
“We found her, right?”
Jane was suddenly glad she was still on top of the tomb. The group consisted of six young men, all dressed in jeans and t-shirts. None of them looked particularly charitable, and they weren’t gazing at her with avid curiosity but with fascinated voracity. They looked as if they had discovered a prize and didn’t have a clue what to do with it.
She couldn’t even think of anything wry and witty to get herself out of it.
“Leave her alone,” came another voice. The man stepped out from in-between two tombs and Jane blinked. For a moment she thought what was left of her brain cells had finally flown away from her. Buh-bye, little gray matter. Hello, straight jacket.
The tall man was almost certainly the same one she’d seen at the old house in the Quarter. He’d been standing in deep shadows watching her then, and she hadn’t seen as much of him. His hair was black, and its bluish highlights shown in the morning light. His shoulders were broad, and he had the muscles of a man who worked physically for a living. His face was beyond striking. The cheekbones reflected European ancestors with high, finely cut cheekbones. Obviously, his elegant patrician nose had never been broken in a fist fight.
His eyes, however, were what truly caught Jane’s attention. The sun was just right, casting a ray through the far away buildings and marking a path through the rows of crypts to him, and him alone. A nimbus of light around his figure revealed the worn t-shirt and
ragged jeans he wore.
The spearing beam of sunlight also made his eyes look as though they reflected the light back at all of them. Glorious gold eyes sparkled at them.
Jane’s breath caught in her chest. Those eyes were just like hers.
“What business of yours is it?” one young man said as he turned toward the intruder.
“We found her first,” another one said.
The black-haired man raised his gaze to Jane. “I think she’s had a hard enough night already,” he said. “Isn’t that right, p’tite fille?”
“She ain’t little, and she don’t have your ring on her finger,” another young man declared. He shifted to one side, settling his shoulders in a distinctly menacing fashion. He did a little bounce on the balls of his feet, preparing to fight for what he wanted.
The irony nearly made Jane giggle. Sure, it was okay to be a would-be rapist but only if the woman wasn’t wearing a wedding band. Gangstahs with ethics.
The black-haired man gazed at Jane for a moment longer, letting the young men know he wasn’t threatened by them. Nor did he seem to care why they were spreading out in a semi-circle to deal with the threat he presented to them.
“I’ll scream my bloody head off,” Jane suddenly said. “They’ll hear me by the French Market, I’ll scream so loud.”
One young man grimaced as he glanced back at Jane. “She looks like a screamer.”
“The po-po do be around this time of day,” another one said. “Drinking their café and eating their beignets over on Treme Street.”
“Shiiiit,” a third one said, “didn’t want to get het up anyway.”
Their vacillating expressions changed into indifferent derision. Jane realized they were backing down.
“Catch you later, my man,” the first one who’d spoken to the black-haired man.
“You too, baby,” another one said to Jane. He winked.
