Billy Whistler

by Bill Thompson

  Landry fingered the vial that hung on a chain around his neck. Once things began making sense, he wondered how to protect himself. An online search revealed the solution, but it wasn’t for sale anywhere.

  Living in New Orleans had its advantages. Oddities of all sorts were available in this unusual city. There was a voodoo shop on Bourbon Street where a man who called himself Zombie sold souvenirs to tourists. But a few months ago while exploring the French Quarter one Saturday afternoon, Landry had found the real thing. A faded wooden sign reading “Potions and such” hung from a dilapidated picket fence on Dumaine Street. He rang the bell that day, and an old black man answered the door, looked him up and down, and said, “You don’t need nothin’. Don’t come back ’til you does.”

  He had left, but later he came back, stood on the porch, and rang the bell again. Lace curtains parted and a pair of eyes stared at him. The curtains closed and the same man opened the door. He invited Landry into the strangest front room he’d ever seen. Only in the French Quarter. The room looked like a store, lined with shelves and tables packed with jars, vials and envelopes. On a table were a mortar and pestle and a scale.

  Embarrassed to say what he wanted, Landry said he wanted a joke for a friend.

  “It ain’t for no friend,” the old man said. “It’s for you, and you’re gonna need it.” From a dusty shelf he pulled an old glass jar filled with what looked like dried purple flowers. Using the mortar, he crushed them into tiny pieces and poured them into a glass vial with a stopper on one end and a metal plunger on the other. The ampule hung on a thin silver chain.

  “Wear it around your neck,” the man said. “When you’re ready to use it, you presses the button here. Aim it where it’s needed and them flowers fly out and do the trick.”

  As Landry put the chain around his neck, he asked himself what the hell he was doing. “Are you sure this stuff works?”

  “For a hunnerd bucks it ought to.” The old man laughed.

  The strangest part of the odd visit happened when he left, and the old proprietor walked with him out to the porch. As Landry reached the gate, he said, “Your secret’s safe with me, Mr. Landry.” Then he turned and went back inside.

  He decided not to mention his purchase to Cate. She’d think him crazy or scared, and it was a subject best left alone. But if something bad happened, the flowers might save his life. If they worked at all. Like Lee Alard said, lots of things were just tales.

  Landry finished lunch and returned to the studio to finish the taping. Back in his office later, he listened to a voicemail from Father Paul. No problems, the priest had said, but call when you can. He was glad his friend had added the preface; he had checked in with Callie just that morning and all was well at Beau Rivage. Regardless, this was no time to relax because Elder Johnson would still be looking for her.

  Father Paul and Landry had discussed asking Em to go to Asher with them. She’d been there and her observations might help. Her safety was their biggest concern, but if they kept everything quiet, they would be in and out of Asher undetected.

  The priest had good news. He’d talked at length with Em today. Although apprehensive, she agreed to go to Asher.

  “That’s great! But how will we get there? Clearly we can’t use Catfish again.”

  “For her safety, we’ll stay away from Abbeville and Perry entirely. We won’t go downriver this time; we’ll come up from the south. One of my parishioners lives down on Bayou Vermilion. He’s a crawfish farmer, and he uses an airboat to run his traps. I spoke to him right before I called you. He’ll take us to Asher.”

  “How much did you have to tell him?”

  “Nothing. I said a friend wanted to visit a ghost town. He’s a man of few words and even fewer questions.”

  “How can you be sure he won’t talk?”

  “He and his dog live in a house on the bayou south of Esther, and he sells live crawfish to the c-store over in Henry. He’s reclusive, so there’s no one for him to tell if he knew anything. My only concern is if he recognizes you. Even people in the sticks have TVs. Your being along might mean we have to come up with a few more answers, but we can deal with that when the time comes.”

  Landry wanted to go as soon as possible, but Father Paul cautioned against moving too fast. “It took a lot of patient coaxing to get her to this point. If it appears we’re in a hurry and she gets nervous, she might back off. We’ll say that we appreciate her help, but not make it a big deal.”

  Landry left it in the priest’s hands and said he was ready anytime, and the next Saturday, Father Paul met Val and Em in Lafayette. Em jumped in his car and they headed off. The plan was he’d call Val in the late afternoon and bring Em back to the same spot.

  Landry followed the priest’s directions and drove north on highway 333. At Bayou Road near Esther he turned east toward the river. He came to a house. Father Paul and Em stood in the yard, and nearby a man sat in an airboat, tinkering with its motor.

  Father Paul’s description of the old guy had been spot on. The rare times he talked, he stared at the ground and mumbled. He was painfully antisocial, and at last Father Paul put him out of his misery and boarded the boat for their trip. The noise from the huge fan would keep talk to a minimum, which suited the old fellow.

  The Erath merchant watched helplessly as the airboat pulled away from shore. Once they boarded the airboat, his hours of trailing them were over. He had no way to follow them further.

  He texted Elder Johnson and told him where he was and what had happened. The man also requested partial payment because he had diligently followed them. He returned to Erath and waited for a response that never came.

  Em and Landry sat in the middle of the boat and Father Paul rode in the bow. As the huge fan in the back began to propel them north, she asked Landry if he knew who Jesus was. He chuckled but stopped when he realized she meant it.

  “Sure. Pretty much everybody knows who Jesus is.”

  “I never heard of him until Father Paul told me. For us, Elder Johnson was kind of our Jesus. At least that’s what him and the deacons wanted people to think. But they’re wrong about that. Father Paul says a man can’t be god, and people shouldn’t worship a man. What do you think?”

  Landry nodded, and she said the reason she agreed to go to Asher was because Father Paul helped her understand that Elder Johnson and his men treated people — especially women — badly. He had told Em that if she took Landry to Asher and explained about it, perhaps Landry could help other cult members.

  She changed the subject. “Jesus loves the little children, and he says men and women are all the same,” she declared. “God named everything, even the fish and bugs, and Father Paul said my new name is Emily. Em for short!” She grinned and her enthusiasm about the priest and her new friend Jesus made him smile too.

  In a few minutes the fisherman headed towards the bank. Landry looked for other boats, but everything was quiet.

  The most important thing on today’s agenda was taking Em to the cemetery. He wanted to ask about people still being buried there. They left the old man with the boat, went through the town, and walked through the woods to the graveyard.

  She pointed out a mound of dirt with a flat stone on it. “This one’s from the last Remembering Day. Deacon Philip’s wife R died. They brought her body over in a wagon and they buried her during the night while everyone celebrated. That was when I came for Remembering Day, and I saw the whole thing.”

  The stone had crude etchings — a letter R and the year 2010. It was a sad memorial to the life of a person who wasn’t even allowed a name just because she was a woman. And the date confirmed that Remembering Day happened every ten years. The next one was less than a year away.

  He showed her the Savary graves he’d found last time, with the dates 2007 and 2009. “I knew them,” she said. “K Savary was a Strange One.” Landry recalled her words. Every family has one or two. They’re born that way — they’re not right.

  Landry noticed
something he’d missed earlier. Most graves lay undisturbed, the dirt smooth and rounded. This one was disrupted, its sod tossed here and there. A sunken depression lay where a body should be.

  “Why does this grave look so different?”

  Em stared at it but didn’t answer.

  Father Paul whispered, “Em, whose grave is that?”

  “A Strange One.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because the dirt’s all messed up.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they ain’t there. When they bury them, sometimes they ain’t quite dead.”

  Father Paul and Landry glanced at each other in astonishment while Em strolled through other graves.

  Landry opened his mouth to speak, but the priest put a hand on his arm. They had to be careful with her.

  “Em, what are you talking about?”

  “Sometimes they go into a state like being dead, but not exactly. They can be that way for days. After a while Elder Johnson decides they died and orders the deacons to bury ’em.”

  She knelt at the head of the disturbed grave and brushed dirt off the stone. When she looked at the inscription, she bounded up and almost fell.

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing.” That was a lie; her hands were shaking. She hugged herself so the men wouldn’t notice.

  Landry looked at the chiseled marks — BW 1883 — and pointed them out to the priest.

  “1883. That’s an old one,” Father Paul said.

  Anxious now, Em moved toward the path they’d come down. “Take me back. This place scares me.”

  Landry didn’t understand about this grave, but he could tell something was significant by the way she acted. He asked if she remembered the person, and she nodded.

  “Were you here when they buried him?”

  “No. That was a long time ago.”

  “Then how do you remember him?”

  The hair rose on his arms when she answered, “Because he’s still around. I seen him.”

  Landry noticed she had become agitated. “Please help me understand. Tell me how you can see a dead person.”

  She grimaced. “’Cause it’s him! It’s Billy Whistler! I don’t want to tell you anything more. You’re scaring me. You shouldn’t have made me come here!” She ran down the path into the forest and was out of sight in seconds.

  Father Paul called after her. “Em! Wait, Em! We’ll take you back right now. Don’t worry!”

  They ran down the trail to the shore, where the old man sat in his boat, whittling on a stick with a pocketknife.

  Father Paul yelled, “Did the girl come out a minute ago?”

  He shook his head. “Ain’t nobody come out of the woods except you two.”

  It had taken only a few minutes to run down the trail from the graveyard, so she couldn’t have gone far. They retraced their steps along the path, calling her name and pausing to listen, and they looked for signs of disturbance to indicate where she might have gone off into the woods. In minutes, she had vanished.

  Landry felt responsible. She hadn’t wanted to come, but for his own selfish motives — to learn more about the cult — she might be in danger.

  Wherever she was, one thing was certain. Her life was worth nothing if the cult got her back. They had to move quickly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Hysterical, Em ran along the narrow trail. She wanted to be far, far away from that graveyard. She would wait for Landry and Father Paul at the boat and make them take her back.

  Em gasped for breath as the trees seemed to close in around her. She tripped on a root and fell face-first on the hard-packed dirt. There was a smell — something pungent, nasty and familiar.

  A bony hand reached from the underbrush next to her and clapped itself over her mouth, stifling her scream. Another hand wrapped around her ankle and dragged her off the trail into the bushes seconds before Landry and Father Paul passed only two feet from them.

  The creature listened to their voices. They were at the river, but they’d return soon to search for the girl. She had fainted, which pleased him. Otherwise he would have shut her up himself. He crept out onto the path, swept away the drag marks, crawled back into the bushes and arranged them so no one would notice.

  He stood with his back hunched and his apelike arms almost dragging on the ground. He easily lifted her limp body and carried her deep into the woods to the safe place.

  He’d watched the whole time. He’d heard the airboat approaching, and he saw the three of them walk through Asher to the grave place. Without the power of deductive reasoning, he had only basic thoughts involving immediate wants or needs, but he remembered the girl. She was one of them. She had been afraid of him once, like all of them, and he was afraid of her too. He understood cause and effect: when his kind approached the others, the tall man would beat them. He had steered clear of her back at New Asher, but now she belonged to him.

  His eyes had gleamed when he’d watched her kneel to examine that one grave — his grave — and look at the stone. He didn’t know what it said, but when she ran away, he snatched her, and that pleased him. He possessed a clever instinct for survival, and he could hide things from the others — the ones who hated his kind — but now there was something special to hide. He’d caught one of them. His conquest made him salivate with pleasure, even though he had no idea what he was going to do with her. He was asexual, so he considered Em a prize he’d won. He couldn’t talk to her because his communication skills were almost nonexistent. He could speak perhaps twenty words in his guttural rasp. He wanted to look at her and touch her arm for now. He would kill her later.

  He sat blocking the entrance to the little cave and whistled as he watched her. Had he killed her? He hoped not. When she stirred at last, he gave her a grimacing, toothless smile. She opened her eyes wide, saw the thing sitting in front of her with its high, sloping forehead and wispy hair, and she realized what it was. She screamed and screamed until she passed out again, her brain drifting into merciful darkness.

  The cave muffled her screams and so the searchers a half mile away heard nothing.

  _____

  What had been a boat trip to Asher was now the search for a missing girl, and it was time to notify the authorities. Since they were in Vermilion Parish, they should call the sheriff, but Landry thought Junior wouldn’t help him, even to save a life.

  Calling the state police was his only other choice. Landry knew a lieutenant named Harry Kanter, with whom he had worked on another case. He got his friend on the line, and Kanter asked why he didn’t call the sheriff. Landry explained, but it didn’t work.

  Kanter said he couldn’t help unless Sheriff Conreco asked for it. “It’s his baby and there’s no way to keep him off it. If you’ve done nothing wrong, he can’t order you out of his parish or lock you up. He’s an officer like I am, sworn to uphold the law. Trust me on this one. There’s no way around it, and you’re wasting valuable time talking to me when you should already be on the horn to him.”

  Father Paul was the one who called. He explained what had happened and who was missing without mentioning Landry’s name. The dispatcher took his number and location, promising to send help as soon as possible. They hoped it wouldn’t be Junior.

  What Landry and Father Paul didn’t realize was that the sheriff had to come. There was too much at stake and they were getting close.

  They heard an outboard motor before the boat rounded the bend. The sheriff’s face looked grim as he steered the craft to shore and secured it next to the airboat, where the old crawfish farmer still sat whittling. Conreco and a deputy got out and walked to where Landry and Father Paul stood.

  Junior didn’t seem surprised to see him, but he spoke only to the priest, as if Landry didn’t exist. Father Paul explained why they came. They’d brought a girl to Asher who had escaped from the cult, hoping she could enlighten them about the graves. He told the sheriff what they had been doing when she got spooke
d and ran.

  “What’s your theory?” Conreco asked. “You said something on a grave made her upset. Did she run off and hide somewhere, waiting for you to leave?”

  Landry said that wasn’t it, and the sheriff’s glare revealed the rage inside him.

  “You shut your mouth, Mr. Drake. Don’t say a word. No high-powered lawyer’s going to claim I made you talk without counsel present. I’m playing this one by the books. And we might as well get to it. Deputy, cuff Mr. Drake here and read him his rights.”

  “What are you doing?” Father Paul asked. “He hasn’t done anything —”

  “Be careful, Father. Your words may be used against you too. Maybe you didn’t realize what he was up to, scheming to make up stories about Asher to put on his big TV show. He’s snuck around this parish long enough. I warned him. I warned both of you that day at the RiverFront. I let him off the other times, even when he stole a boat, but now I’ve got him dead to rights!” The sheriff folded his arms and threw a satisfied smirk Landry’s way.

  Landry stood with his hands cuffed in back. “What the hell are you talking about? What have I done?”

  “Kidnapping, for starters. A girl runs off and two grown men can’t find her five minutes later? Bullshit, gentlemen. If we find the girl dead, things are gonna go very badly for you. Possibly you too, Father. Make this easier for me and I might recommend leniency. Why don’t you just tell me what really happened? Little hanky-panky in the woods? Something like that? Little fun with a young one? I don’t blame you for that, but what happened then? Did things get out of hand?”

  He looked sympathetically at the priest. “Father, I’m hoping none of this involves you. If he brought you and the girl here and started doing bad things, tell me and you’re off the hook. I just want the facts.”

  “The facts?” Landry yelled. “You haven’t said anything factual yet. Why aren’t we out looking for the girl?”

  “Great idea, Mr. Drake. Why don’t you tell us where to begin?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY