MIST ON THE BAYOU
HEATHER GRAHAM
MOSS DRAPED THE trees like crystalline spiderwebs, caught in the eerie glow of a full moon made misty by low-hanging clouds. The water appeared to be black, with an unearthly sheen just hovering above it; the air temperature had cooled, creating the fog.
As the pontoon boat moved down the Pearl River, even I, who have known this area like the back of my hand since childhood, thought it was the perfect venue for a “Haunted Happening”—as the ghoulish, year-round attraction to which we were headed, Labelle Plantation, was being touted. It had opened last year, but closed right after Halloween. We’d had some trouble then in the city—folks coming down and disappearing—and though they might have moved on elsewhere, everyone was glad that Halloween was over. But that was last year, and this is now, and people have to make a living. Those who had come had spread the word about the fantastic haunted house created out of the old plantation on the bayou, and everyone had been on board to entice more tourism.
In retrospect, no one had known just how good it would be, or that it would attract such a huge crowd.
Now, the publicity the place had garnered was bringing people in by the hundreds, and thus the determination that it would stay open all year. And that was why I was aboard this first “midnight bayou” tour of the place. It could be reached by the road. It could also be reached by the river. Ben Perry, who owns the boats at the boat slips on the bayou, is one of my best friends. He’s been doing simple bayou tours for years. Ecology just isn’t as big as scaring the pants off people. Since I’ve been known for my “Myths and Legends” walks in the city, my old friend thought he needed me on his inaugural voyage for the event.
I had just finished conducting a tour of the French Quarter, and there I was on a pontoon boat on a chilly night, dressed in my Victorian waistcoat and top hat. Not such a bad outfit for the walks—but strange when I was going to be hopping to the sandy beach area that fronted the plantation. Ah, well. I did have my Victorian boots on too.
So up ahead was Labelle Plantation.
A screech owl let out a mighty call, as if it had been paid to add to the eerie environment.
A pretty brunette jumped and let out a little, “Eek.”
Ben laughed, pleased. “Hey, we haven’t even gotten there yet,” he told her.
Most folks around New Orleans and environs had thought for sure that the old plantation would be condemned, and that the Boudreaux brothers’ attempts to buy the place and set up shop would be denied. But apparently, despite years of neglect, a reputation for the truly horrid even among the legends in the realm, and a history that might be conceived as the epitome of evil, the structure had been deemed sound. The place had been repaired, reconstructed, and set up as a haunted house. A haunted history house, so they said—with every creepy possibility and nightmare thrown into the mix. Hell, if someone had so much as a thought a hundred years ago, it had to be history now, right? Anyway, the brothers decided that making a big creepy tourist attraction out of the place would be good for everyone. The economy just kept taking a beating because of the storms, even the country needed a good fix, and whatever works is what we need. That was the logic behind it all. I couldn’t argue that much; I was thirty, and I owned my own tour company. I only had two full-time employees now; once, I’d had ten.
I had known Ted, Fred, and Jed—no kidding—Boudreaux since I was a kid. They were hell-raisers—the kind who had spent years shooting up beer cans in the bayou, talking tough, and looking like cast members out of Deliverance. Ted was my age. I knew him best—he was the one with the business expertise. Fred was the oldest—dangerously psychotic, in my opinion—while Jed had actually made it through eight years of college and a residency to come home as a doctor and was now a beloved GP.
With the motor purring, the boat moved slowly along, and those twenty folks aboard the pontoon kept a wary eye out. Gators slithered about in the night. There were “oohs” and “aahs” as they did so. They were mostly little guys, three and four feet, but their eyes glowed gold when caught in the lights, and there was something primeval about the way they moved. Ben was making a big deal out of them; I caught his gaze as he pointed out one of the creatures. He gave me a silent shrug: We all have to make a buck. So what if the little gators are ten times more scared of the people?
The screech owl was on our side; he let out another eerie shriek. In the brush that bordered the bayou, a wild pig rustled through the foliage. It couldn’t get much better.
I grinned at Ben in return. I wasn’t a native of this area just east of Slidell, not like Ben and the Boudreaux brothers. Ben had a degree in business; he’d actually spent a few years on Wall Street, but he loved the bayou too much, so he was back. I had been born just outside the French Quarter, and I’d lived there all my life, except for a stint up north for college—I had been a history major at Columbia, no less. But this was my home too. I knew all the stories; I had grown up with them. I knew all the crazy folk in town too—the harmless loonies, the true psychopaths; most of them were imported these days, and worse. I love all of this area, the French Quarter, the bayou, the Garden District, all of Orleans Parish and the parishes beyond. It’s my home; it’s where I belong.
“We’re coming up on the Labelle estate,” Ben announced to the tourists. “My friend Dan, from the Myths and Legends Walk, is going to give you the story on the old plantation. The truth, my friends, is far scarier and creepier than anything you’ll see tonight.”
I winced and smiled at the girl who had been seated near him on the pontoon. She was a pretty thing, blond, with enormous blue eyes and a strange air of fragility. We’d talked for a few minutes earlier. I knew she was staying at one of the old B and Bs near Rampart Street.
I found her fascinating. Most people on the tours came in a pack—or at least in twos and threes. They liked to hang on to one another as they walked through a creepy haunted house; guys loved for their girlfriends to be scared and grab them.
The girl smiled back at me tentatively. It was strange. She was so pretty, so fragile, and yet she had a look of resolve about her—as if she could do this; she would do this. Something about her touched me. I wanted to assure her. Hell, I wanted to put an arm around her and protect her from all the evil in the world.
But it was just a haunted house, and it sure didn’t seem as if there was anyone with her to whom she might have something to prove. She had come alone. Being alone on this tour was not good for the fainthearted. The Boudreaux brothers had done an entirely gruesome and ghastly workup on the place. The brothers created a maze that contained all kinds of wicked and evil tableaus from history and also from their imagination, which allowed the costumed actors to run around and scare the daylights out of everyone.
“The truth, and nothing but the truth!” came a cry from the back of the pontoon. Great. The guy in the back was drunk. That happened when you picked up your tours on Bourbon Street. Lots of people had some kind of fortification. Most didn’t come plastered.
“The truth,” I announced. I have a good voice for a tour director, something for which I am grateful, since I do love my company and telling all the wild stories about my homeland. I have a deep baritone that projects well—a damned good voice for ghost stories. But the story I was about to convey wasn’t paranormal. It was certainly about evil, but it wasn’t paranormal.
“The plantation was completed in eighteen fifty-nine by a wealthy French merchant,” I began. “He and his wife moved in, along with many of their servants. The wife was the descendant of one of the French Quarter’s famous octoroons, said to be a voodoo queen who didn’t recognize all the goodness that might be found in the spiritual sense of the religion. She had charmed a rich Frenchman, and thus gone on to be rich herself and produce rich descendants, such as Madame Labelle. All manner of visitors left the city of New Orleans to visit Labelle Plantation; many were never seen again, but as communications were not what they are now—no cell phones or e-mail, you know—their disappearances weren’t suspected to have been at the hands of the Labelle family. Strangely, many of their contemporaries had thought the Labelles were active in the Underground Railroad, so many slaves seemed to disappear from their homes. Although she entertained lavishly, was known for her incredible beauty, and seemed to be a powerhouse in society, folks were a little frightened of Madame. Then the Civil War rolled around. Soldiers were sent out to the plantation to find quarters and food; they didn’t return. When more soldiers were sent out, they didn’t return either. Finally, several companies of soldiers went out. Apparently, the Labelles knew they were coming. They fled. When the Yankee captain in charge searched the barn, he found dozens of men hanging from meat hooks; their throats had been slit and their blood had been collected in troughs. But there were worse discoveries to be made. There were bodies and body parts found buried throughout the house. Upstairs, in Madame’s boudoir, there was a massive wooden tub stained with blood. Bones had been utilized to make lamps, an altar, and other decorations. Shades and even a macabre quilt had been made from the skin of those she and her husband had murdered. She was practicing black magic more than voodoo; her blood sacrifices were necessary, according to the ancient Haitian text she had left behind.”
I paused. Even the drunk had grown quiet.
“Not even the Yankee commander would stay at the house, or take anything from the house. It was left empty. The war raged on. People said the place was haunted, and no one wanted to go near it. They heard screams of terror—which turned out to be real. Twenty people or so had been left to die, chained to walls in a root cellar at the rear of the property, beneath the slave quarters. Those people are long since gone, and the outbuildings have fallen to the ground. The root cellar has been filled. Only the house remains today.”
A gator slid into the water from the embankment, making a slithery sound. The drunk jumped.
Some girls laughed.
“Hey! That’s a crock. No one bought it until now?” the drunk called, trying to regain a semblance of he-man fearlessness.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “A fellow named Sullivan bought it during the eighteen eighties. He died from a fall off the roof. It was vacant again until nineteen twenty. A family lived there. They moved out a year after they purchased the place, saying that the ghosts were shaking their children in the middle of the night. The little girl, according to police documents, was bruised and beaten.”
“Yeah, I can tell you what happened there,” one of the drunk’s more sober friends said. “I think they call it child molestation these days.”
“Maybe,” I agreed. “But the family moved on to Mobile, and there were no more incidents. I’m only telling you what really happened, or what was documented. The home was purchased by an American oil tycoon, but he never lived in it, and he lost it to taxes during the Depression. Another speculator bought it in the nineteen forties, but he was killed in World War II; the house went to taxes once again. A cultist bought it in the early seventies, but he and his harem drowned in the Mississippi—he was convinced that the aliens were due down to earth to pick him and his women up in their spacecraft. Since then, it’s been vacant.” I smiled. The blonde was staring at me. I remembered then, when Ben had taken her ticket, she’d said her name was Callie. She didn’t seem horrified by the truth—she had seemed more frightened earlier, but I still didn’t see her taking a casual, fun-but-super-scary trek through the old plantation.
“Oh, that’s just bull!” cried the drunk.
I could see Ben at the tiller, shaking his head. He was probably thinking about losing the drunk in the water. And maybe one of the young gators hanging around had a big hidden mama who might take a bite out of him.
That would be one mean lawsuit.
I shrugged at him. People often came to New Orleans just to get blitzed. Those of us who lived here didn’t have to be saints, but we usually knew how much to drink, or at least when it was appropriate to get wasted. I said, “You can check parish records, folks—I’m just telling the truth.”
I smiled again at the blonde. Callie.
She rolled her eyes. “Ass!” she said softly to me, indicating the drunk at the other end with a nod of her head. She shivered.
“Listen, they keep a snack bar opened in the second formal parlor. It’s to the left of the house after we enter,” I told her.
She looked at me gravely, then offered up a slow grimace. “Ghosts certainly didn’t perform any of the evil you just talked about,” she said. “Madame Labelle was a human monster. And the cultist was a psycho, and sadly, the girls with him were idiots.”
“So who actually owns the place now?” a thirtysomething fellow called out. He looked as if he had been a linebacker in college. He was there with his wife, a pretty redhead who had certainly been a cheerleader, and another young couple.
I laughed and couldn’t help looking at Callie again. I really liked her, everything about her. “Believe it or not, folks, and this is the absolute truth, it’s owned by Ted, Fred, and Jed—known as the Boudreaux brothers in these parts. Born and bred right here along the bayou. They saw a chance at a good income, and they took it.”
The ex-linebacker’s red-haired wife shivered. “You are making all this up! What bad taste to open a haunted house in such a terrible place.”
“Ma’am,” I assured her, “I am not making it up. Please, think about it, there are Lots of other places like this one. If you reserved a room, you know, you could spend the night in Fall River, Mass., where Lizzie Borden allegedly gave her stepmother forty whacks.”
“Ooh, creepy,” said another pretty brunette. She had a drawl—not Louisiana. Texas, I thought, and I’m pretty good at accents. She was with two friends, and they all seemed to be flirting with a few Wall Street types on vacation, who in turn looked to be happy to have the three flirting with them. “But, yes, you can stay there! I’ve heard that it’s true.”
Murmuring went up as the rest of the boat agreed; they all knew that what I had just said was true—they had watched the Travel Channel.
“Yeah,” the linebacker said. “And I saw on one of those shows that the Labelle Plantation was one of the spookiest haunted houses in the country!”
“There it is!” Ben announced. “And careful getting off, folks. This isn’t Disney World. We’re on a real pontoon boat, and that’s real Pearl River sand. The brush has been cleared off leading up to the plantation house, and there’s plenty of light, but still, be careful stepping on and off.”
The pontoon slid hard onto the sand, hitting an uneven area; the drunk had started to rise, and he toppled onto the linebacker. They might not have to worry about the fake blood in the house; the two men might come to blows before they got off the boat.
Stepping to the stem, I reached for the drunk’s arm and steered him from the linebacker.
“I got it, I got it,” the drunk grumbled.
The linebacker stared daggers at the fellow, looked at me, and held his peace.
I leapt off the pontoon, landing on the soft sand and hurrying around, swearing quietly as my boots hit the water. No real biggie; I’d clean ’em up later. I didn’t want Ben’s first evening on the river as a tour guide to the dynamo haunted house going sour.
“The footing is uneven here—everyone has to be careful,” I said, reaching for the first tourist.
Ben and I helped the rest of the bayou tourists off the boat. “We get to hear the skunk ape story on the way back, right?” one of the women asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Ben assured her. “You can head right on up the walk,” he added. “There will be a zombie or witch to greet you at the door, and Dan will be waiting at the snack and gift shop for you all when you get through. Bayou guests get to break the line!” he added.
I watched the group start up the walk for the house. People could come by car, but this really was the best way to see the place; plantations had been built near the water. Long ago, the river had been the way most folks traveled, so the grand entrance actually faced it.
The eerie mist still hovered above the water and seemed to encroach on the land. Not far up, though, the “ghost” lights were switched on; plenty of illumination, but in a strange shade of blue.
For a moment, the house was caught in that eerie glow of blue light and fog. It was majestic; a Colonial with wraparound porches and a grand entryway. The door stood open; it appeared for a moment as if the fog issued from the house. The mist seemed to swirl around the front door and weave in circles around it.
There were plenty of people in the house. The Boudreaux brothers were invested in it; Ted was a good businessman. He’d brought in professional designers to lay it out. Then he’d kept the costs low by hiring the slashers, victims, zombies, voodoo queens, movie monsters, and what have you from the ranks of our local college kids.
I realized that I was staring at the house, thinking that the mist made it appear to be really evil. Ben was doing the same. Our group had already gone up the foggy walk—and had disappeared into the house as if they, like the fog, had been swept in by a spectral force.
“So,” Ben said, a little anxiously, “it’s going to be good, right? These folks don’t mind paying the money for the boat trip over. It comes with good stories, real history, and bless those alligators!”
I didn’t answer him at first. The house was disturbing me. And I still felt a little “haunted” myself by the lovely Callie. I didn’t understand why she was doing this when she looked so scared. I found myself thinking back about the comment the other woman had made, about it being in bad taste to make a haunted house out of a place where so much terror had occurred. Ben was worried. Why not? Times had been hard.
“Sure, it all went great, will go great,” I told him. “Hey, I’m going to go on. I’ve heard about it, but I haven’t been through it. I’m worried about the blonde.”
“What blonde?” Ben asked.
“The one at the front of the boat.”
Ben shrugged. “Frankly, the only girls I really noticed were the three brunettes with the football players. They were from Texas.” He grinned broadly. “And one of them had a pair of jugs on her the size of Texas too.”
“She looked scared—Callie, the blonde. I’m going to try to catch up. It won’t be good if she has a panic attack, or something.”
Ben shrugged. “Go for it, dude. So, I like the jugs, you like the blondes. I’ll be here. Oh, hey.”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for coming tonight. I know you’re juggling your own stuff. But tonight, seemed important to have the best.”
“Sure. No problem,” I told him.
“No. I mean thank you. Really. Tonight, it had to be you out here.”
“Like I said, no problem at all, Ben.”
I strode up the path, hurrying to catch up. The haunted house was hotter than hell as a tourist attraction right now. Ben had made a deal to get his people in right away for the twenty bucks extra they paid to come by the bayou.
They had already been greeted by the zombie at the door. It was actually Darla Boudreaux, a cousin of Ted, Fred, and Jed. I told her hello, and she gave me a gooey kiss—she was wearing a lot of makeup. “Hey, you. Trying to catch up? Your group is already in the Egyptian gallery, screaming away. Our mummy jumps out of his sarcophagus.”
“Thanks, I’ll meet up with them,” I told her.
The lighting was done extremely well, the outside in the blue light that enhanced the fog, the inside hallways bathed in a crimson glow. The house was never so dark that you couldn’t see where you were going, but it was plenty dark enough to make you wonder just what was lurking around the next comer—indeed, just who or what was walking next to you.
There was a crowd ahead of me, not my crowd, trying to slow down so that the costumed monsters would jump out and scare them. I excused myself and made my way around them. It wasn’t difficult; I was in my tour clothing, so I looked like an employee.
The Egyptian room was first. The mummy started to scare a tourist but saw me and stopped. “Hey, Dan!”
“Hey. Roger?” Roger Thompson worked for me part-time. I hadn’t had enough business lately to keep him on as full-time staffer. He was twenty-four, still a kid enough to really love dressing up as a mummy.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me. Cool place, huh?”
“Yeah, get back in. The next crowd is coming through.”
Roger lay back down, bringing the top of his sarcophagus along with him.
It was well done. The walls here, false walls as they were, had hieroglyphics covering them; it appeared to be a section of a tomb. A lifelike Cleopatra had eyes that followed me as I moved—I expected her to be real, she was so lifelike, but she wasn’t. A partially mummified cat screeched from its wrappings as if it were being buried alive, and the soundtrack was an eerie Egyptian theme.
The Egyptian area was followed by an old Celtic-slash-druid-slash-pagan arena, based on the bodies found in the bogs of England; a poor farmer was garroted, sacrificed to a harvest god. There were peat bog monsters running around there, scaring folks, along with a few druid priests.
I moved on. The Inquisition happened again here in Louisiana, complete with some really scary inquisitors. In a tableau where the French Revolution was reenacted, an actor lost his head over and over and over again. Fake blood spurted, and the floor was filled with it in the area surrounding the guillotine’s basket. A few girls were screaming their heads off as they passed through, jumping, knocking into each other. The Boudreaux brothers had done exceptionally well with the sound system; each new era of death, dismay, and torture brought in a new and very creepy soundtrack.
I don’t know why, but as I moved through the maze seeking my people, I felt a growing sense of restlessness. Something about the place just wasn’t quite … right. I told myself I was a fool. The sins of the past were not going to come back and make the walls of the old house come to life, seeking blood, or anything of the like. People just loved haunted houses. They loved to be scared. It was cool, and that was it.
Famous murderers followed the French Revolution; I was in a street where Jack the Ripper was roaming; the Countess Bathory—a gorgeous young girl in a mammoth wig—walked the maze, studying all the young women, as if seeking their blood. New Orleans’ own Madame LaLaurie wove through the thrill seekers as her husband performed mutilating surgery on an actress laid on a slab. The actress screamed and writhed, and it was a horrible sight.
I finally caught up with my own group; I saw the drunk and his pals. Seemed they were sobering up a little. Then, the Wall Street types, and the girls who had been flirting with them. We had come to another tableau; here, the onetime owners of the plantation were depicted. Madame Labelle was in an old-fashioned wooden bathtub; blood spilled everywhere around her. She lifted her bloody fingers and pointed out the women in the crowd. “Oh, do come over for dinner!” she said, licking her lips lasciviously.
“Move, move, let’s get on!” The linebacker’s red-haired wife urged. She was snuggled up against her husband’s back.
“Actress, honey, she’s an actress!” he murmured.
But even the linebacker seemed to be unnerved.
I skirted around them; I brushed against the wife, and she cried out, then smiled ruefully as she saw me. I grinned and excused myself, moving on.
In the next scene, Monsieur Labelle was torturing a victim, a beautiful young woman. He was in a nineteenth-century waistcoat, much like my own. His white cotton shirt was stained with blood. His victim was on a marble table, and he was leaning over her, deciding whether to draw blood from her wrists or her throat.
There was only one person in the area before the tableau: Callie. She was staring on with absolute horror.
I was about to reassure her; I saw that the actor playing Monsieur Labelle was none other than Fred Boudreaux. I didn’t recognize the girl on the table.
“It’s just a scene,” I told her, setting my hands on her shoulders.
The others were starting to fill in behind us.
Callie didn’t seem to know I was there. “No!” she cried. “No, stop him, stop him, it’s real!”
The young woman on the table let out a horrible shriek as the knife touched down on her shoulder. The linebacker, who was behind me, let out a nervous laugh.
The girl cried out again hysterically; she was naked beneath a sheet, and she was tied down with rope. She couldn’t move, but she thrashed about screaming. “Help me, help me! For the love of God, help me!”
I smelled the blood; I can definitely smell blood. I know the scent of it inside and out.
“It’s real, damn it, somebody help her, please, yes, for the love of God!” Callie shouted.
I leapt over the velvet ropes that separated the “guests” from the actors. Fred Boudreaux looked at me, stunned. Then he smiled.
I’d always known that the sucker was psychotic.
“You want some of the action, Dan, is that it?” he asked me softly. Then he wielded the knife in my direction. It was a period piece; an antique knife with a sharp blade. It gleamed in the red light. And it came down at me before I could move, slicing across my collarbone.
Blood spurted, but not as it might have. He’d been aiming for my jugular.
I flew at him, bringing us both down on the floor. I didn’t have a weapon; I used my fists and my teeth. Everyone around the two of us was screaming and shouting, crying for help. A lot of the folks thought it was all part of the haunted experience.
Some knew it wasn’t.
I was already on top of Fred; he hadn’t been able to kill me with his first stab, and he hadn’t been prepared for the force of the attack I made. Fred should have known better when he saw me; he should have known what he was up against. I’d managed to rip out half his throat with my teeth, and not even his feeble attempt to skewer me in the gut caused much damage. I was still stunned that he’d really gone so mad, that he’d actually made use of the house to vent his sickness and attempt a murder before an audience.
And yet, where else could you murder in plain sight and get away with it? Listen to a victim’s frantic and desperate screams, watch the blood flow, and have an audience screech and scream as well and then walk on by?
The linebacker knocked down the velvet rope. Great. Big help. I was already lying on top of Fred, and he didn’t have much throat left, and the blood was spurting insanely from him. I didn’t know if I had meant to kill him; I only knew that he had meant to kill me.
Chaos reigned. The linebacker held Fred down to help me, and he, too, became covered in blood. Someone went to help the girl who was tied to the table. People ran from the house, screaming, trampling one another. Ben had called the police. Cops were suddenly flooding through, bright lights were on, and eventually, the plantation emptied of tourists. The hysterical girl was not an actress; she had been one of the first to come through alone when Fred grabbed her. She gave a choppy version of events to one of the cops and was taken away in an ambulance. Finally, it was me, the linebacker, the cops, and Ted and Jed Boudreaux. They were horrified, claiming they’d known Fred was a little crazy, but in their wildest dreams, they had never imagined this. I’d gone to school with Ted, as I said. I believed him. He told the cops his brother believed the house was evil; he’d even believed evil could slip into people, but … well, everyone knew that the economy was in the dumps and … they’d needed to make a living.
It was three a.m. by the time I was able to leave. Ben had been waiting for me, trying to find out what the hell was happening at first, then just pacing the beach in a state of horrified anxiety. I couldn’t calm him down. We didn’t have any more “guests” for the boat. They’d all been taken back to their various hotels and B and Bs by the cops.
“Jesus,” he kept saying, sitting at the back of the boat. “Jesus.”
Neither of us noticed the alligators slipping now and then from the bank to the water.
The screech owl was still crying out, but the shrill and haunting sound just bounced off our ears.
“Jesus,” Ben said again as we finally got the boat back to the landing.
He looked at me then, shaking his head. “You saved that girl—he stabbed you. There’s blood all over you.”
“I’m all right. Ben, go to bed. No, drink yourself to sleep. There’s nothing else you can do now.”
“The cops …”
“I have to make an appearance and another statement in the morning,” I told him. “They’ve got the linebacker. They think he did most of the subduing—and that he killed Fred because he had to,” I assured him.
“Jesus,” Ben said. He blinked. He seemed to be past some of the shock. He shook his head. “I guess it’s true. Old Fred never knew that you were a vampire, huh? Hey—there’s no chance that he can come back, right?”
“I’ll see to it,” I assured him.
There were several of my kind living in New Orleans. I mean, where else did you go where you could act out all the time? I wasn’t a killer; I had never taken a life that didn’t need taking. These days, there were blood banks everywhere. We all knew each other, avoided each other, and kept a watch out for any of our kind who might show up in the city and ruin the good thing we had going.
I could live off the blood banks—as could the others. And when there was a shortage, well, we had prisons with some of the meanest rapists, killers, and child molesters in the country. If one of them committed suicide, most folks felt that it was good riddance.
“You always told me not to say anything to anyone,” Ben said. “Hell, when we were in school—wait, just how many times have you been through school?”
I shrugged. “Several.”
“I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, to have my best friend be a vampire. But you wouldn’t let me tell anyone, no matter how cool I thought it was. A good thing, huh? I mean, he might have killed your average guy, you know?”
“Yeah, thanks, Ben. Look, it’s thanks to you that no one else was killed tonight, right?”
He grinned sheepishly. “Not really, but I’ll take it.”
“Ben, go get some stiff drinks, and go to sleep,” I told him.
I had work to do.
Problem was, there were usually a lot of folks around a morgue. It wasn’t really an easy task to get into one.
I was noted by one of the cops when I arrived; I told him that one of the other fellows had been questioning me, I couldn’t remember his name, but he’d asked me to hang around. It wasn’t until the coroner and the cops started talking about the events in the reception chamber that I was able to slip back and get into the coolers.
Fred was on the table, missing half his throat. But when I looked down at him, his eyes popped open. I was just in time.
“You freak! I always knew you were a flipping freak!” he told me. Then he started to laugh. “So now … now, I’m immortal, right? Oh, Danny Boy, you’ve given me exactly what I always wanted. I can kill and kill and kill … and eat and eat and eat—until I don’t die!” he gloated.
He started to rise.
“No way, asshole,” I told him. The good thing about a morgue is that you can usually find a good scalpel. And, as you can imagine, I’m pretty damned strong.
For most people, it’s really a task to cut off a human head. A burly murderer actually has to work really hard at a decapitation.
But I’m good. Before he could begin to rise, I’d reached down, pinned him, and worked the scalpel.
I left him with his head cleanly severed. I went back to the reception area, where no one seemed to notice that I had been gone. In fact, Jeff Major, a homicide detective, looked at me and set a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, Dan, I’ll get you home.”
In the morning, there was only one thing left to do. I had to find Callie.
I went to the B and B where she had told me she was staying. I knew old Mrs. Llewellyn who ran the place; she greeted me with hugs and a kiss on the cheek. The events of the previous night were the talk of the day. The story was on all the news stations, AOL, Yahoo, and so on.
I was glad that the linebacker was happy to take the credit for bringing down the psycho. But Mrs. Llewellyn knew that I had been the first over the velvet rope.
When she finished gushing over me, I told her I was looking for Callie.
She groaned. “Not you, too!” she said with dismay. “What, is this going to start it all up again about that runaway?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked her.
“Last year, the cops were all over this place. Don’t you remember? There were a few girls who were reported missing. I had rented a room to a young girl named Callie Davenport. But she checked out of here, packed up her car, and left.”
“What?”
“Dan, she wasn’t anywhere near here this year.”
“But I saw her last night. She was on the boat. She was the one who started screaming, letting everyone know that it wasn’t just a scene, that Fred Boudreaux was attempting to murder a girl right in front of our eyes.”
Mrs. Llewellyn shook her head and smoothed her silver hair behind her ears. “Dan, if Callie Davenport is your Callie, then she’s back in town, she isn’t missing, and she’s staying somewhere else. Dan! I wouldn’t lie to you, you know that!”
No, she wouldn’t.
I went back out to see Ben. He’d taken my advice and started drinking. It was morning, but he was still drinking. He’d be all right; he’d just need a day to pull himself together.
What I wanted was his list of reservations.
He gave it to me. And I found her name. Callie Davenport. She had her local address listed as Mrs. Llewellyn’s B and B.
“Did she say anything to you?” I asked Ben, puzzled.
“Bro, I never even saw the chick you’re talking about,” he said. “I told you, I was into the girls with the huge hooters.”
My fault; I had told him to drink. I wasn’t going to get anything out of him.
I called Jeff Major at the police department. I didn’t tell him that I’d seen Callie; I just asked him about folks who’d supposedly disappeared from the area a year ago. I rather vaguely suggested that they might want to find out if anything had gone down the year before.
I waited.
They found Callie—and another three missing girls—in the ruins of the root cellar in the back of the plantation, slashed to pieces and mostly decayed.
When I heard the news, I decided to drink also. Vampires can; we only need blood so often, and I sure as hell do enjoy a double malt scotch.
So I took Ben’s boat out to the “beach,” Pearl River’s sandy beach where we had been the night before. The same place where the night is eerie as all hell and gators slip and slither in the water. The place where the screech owls cry out, and the brush rustles while the mist rises into a fog when the water temperature is higher than that of the air.
By day, I could hear the traffic going by on the highway just beyond the bank and the strip of trees and foliage.
I sat there, with my scotch.
She found me.
She sat down beside me, and she didn’t speak. She set a hand gently on my thigh. She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she told me.
I looked at her. “Can’t you stay?” I asked her huskily. My heart was sinking as I did so. I had to joke. “I do believe in mixed marriage, you know.”
And she laughed. “It would have been nice,” she told me.
She stood. I didn’t. She smiled as she walked away. Toward the light. Oh, yeah, toward the light of the sun.
Then she was gone, just a wisp of fog that didn’t belong by day.