A Grimoire Dark Page 5

  Won’t this ever stop? she thought as she splashed through inch-deep water laying over the road with nowhere to go.

  Several more trees had fallen through the night, and more neighborhoods were without power. The Treme area was typically the last to get services restored, but she was biking into better areas now and traffic was snarled here as well. People honked and shouted out of car windows and drove up on curves to get around. One person had tried to drive around a fallen branch and sunk their car up to the axles in the city park.

  Del detoured to the orphanage to have breakfast with Jimmy before heading to work. Josephine looked up with surprise as she walked in.

  “Del! What are you doing here?” Josephine looked over her shoulder through the interior double doors. “How’s the outside world?” she asked with lighted face. “Do any—”

  “I wanted to say hi to Jimmy before work. Why?”

  Stepping between Del and the entry doors, she smoothed her jacket sleeves and said in a low voice, “You probably shouldn’t go back there today, Del. Jimmy’s in trouble again.”

  “For what? The sisters know he’s just clumsy sometimes.

  “It’s not that. He’s in bad trouble this time. He’s been up all night singing some crazy song and he got all the young ones riled up and singing it with him. I tried to stop him but—”

  “A song?”

  “Sister Eulalie is whipping him in front of the class, but he won’t stop!”

  Del pushed through the doors that led to the waiting room and was opening the door to an interior hall as Josephine caught and pulled on her arm. Through a long hallway window, Del saw Jimmy standing in the middle of the cafeteria with his hands over his ears, crying as the sister yelled, “Stop that unholy singing right now, you vile boy!” She swatted him again.

  Jimmy cried and squeezed his head with his hands. Tears and snot ran down his face.

  “…da spit tay cat wit da mot’eatn ear. I can’t stop singing! I can’t stop! Aaaahhh…. Da mot’eatn ear, and da—”

  SWAT!

  “…baaaahhhhh, I can’t stop it. I CAN’T STOP IT! BAAAHHHHH…”

  At this, Sister Eulalie grabbed Jimmy by the collar and dragged him from the room.

  Del, watching through the cafeteria window, spun around and bumped into Josephine she was standing so close. “Oh my God! What was that about?”

  Josephine caught her breath, looked up at Del and smoothed the arms of her jacket again. “Del, I’ll be getting out soon you know, and—”

  Del shook her off and began stalking the room. “I swear, I’m going to get Jimmy out of this place one day, and when I do, I’m gonna report that old biddy!”

  Josephine watched in frustration as Del did not see her. A release of adrenaline suddenly fueled her words. “You know they’re not going to release Jimmy to you. Not while you’re in a halfway house, they ain’t! He’s never gonna be right anyway. Why do you care so much?” She bit her lip, regretting the last statement as soon as it left her mouth.

  Del’s eyes caught fire.

  Josephine hadn’t seen that look since the day Del caught them all dancing around Jimmy, taunting him. She remembered that it looked like two faces for a split second: one face, the angry young girl defending her only friend, the other face was of someone else, an older version of Del, weathered and wise, watching her life unfold from a distance. It was a terrifying sight that she never forgot. And she never teased Jimmy again.

  “Don’t ever…” Del clinched her jaw tight.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Josephine said. “I didn’t mean that. I just don’t know how—”

  “Just tell me what he said. Who taught him that song?” Del stormed back to the waiting room.

  “I don’t know,” Josephine said, following her. “But Del, it’s…” looking around the room, “creepy as hell.”

  Del wrinkled her face in question.

  Josephine leaned in. “I have the darn thing memorized ‘cause the kids were singing it half the night. It goes like this:

  * * *

  Say your prayers my sweet little dear,

  Loud and clear so God can hear,

  If you don’t, he’ll soon be near,

  The man with the cat with the moth-eaten ear.

  I’ll say my prayers and they’ll be clear,

  Loud enough for God to hear,

  The split-tail cat will run in fear,

  And the Gris-gris man he won’t come near.”

  * * *

  Josephine watched as a look of shock fell over Del’s face.

  “Who taught him that?” Del asked.

  “No one! At least, I’ve never heard it before. Creepy, isn’t it?”

  Del turned and looked out the window of the waiting room. The same window where Jimmy had patiently waited for his birthday to start. She watched the rain drizzle on, wondering what this meant and why these things always seemed to happen to Jimmy.

  Interrupting her thoughts, the sizzling crack of a transformer announced its own death seconds before the lights went out in the orphanage.

  Josephine jumped and ran to the dark cafeteria, where several little ones where already crying.

  Del thought back to all the nights she had cried silently in this place. After being brought here by a social worker—an old woman who smelled of failing kidneys and three-day-old wash—she’d fallen into a deep depression and didn’t speak to anyone for nearly a month. She only cried in the shower, so the sound of the running water would mask her sobs. After the first month, the nightmare of losing her parents was replaced by the harsh discipline of the nuns. She hadn’t known punishment could be meted out so easily.

  Her life would have gone on like that, sinking further into a darkness she felt deep inside herself, if Jimmy hadn’t arrived at the orphanage. When he arrived, he reminded her of a little mouse that had been dropped into a cruel maze; a maze of ideas and expectations that was built from rules he would never understand. She felt drawn to Jimmy from the very beginning and decided that she would help him learn the maze the best he could.

  Del sat in the feeble light of the window listening to the cries of the other children, wondering if this was a place of sanctuary or not. Either way, she felt certain she had to get Jimmy out of there.

  Somewhere in the swamps of the Jean Lafitte Preserve, something resembling a body slowly bubbled to the surface of the soft, rotten mud. It was constructed of bones and flesh; it had arms and legs and something like a head, but it was an abomination at its core. The skin was that of a thing born from the swamp, leathery brown and lumpy, as if years of scar tissue had grown over foreign objects under the skin’s surface. The thickness of the body was bloated in some areas and grotesquely caved in others, as if the organs had been poorly placed. The length of the body was indiscernible as the extremities appeared to melt away into the mud—or were still being formed from it.

  It was surrounded by three fifolets: a small blue one—writhing itself into the rough shape of a disfigured animal—shivered in ecstasy and hovered close to the body; the green one—having pushed the body up out of the mud—stretched out and slithered a long circle around it, then disappeared beneath the brackish water; the black one—devoid of all color—fluttered up to a low branch and waited.

  The beetles and ants did not molest the body, nor did any living thing come near it. The creatures of the swamp held their breath as the swamp itself sighed a low relief of having excised the hellish thing from its bowels.

  The skin, as if reacting to the putrid air, suddenly began to move.

  The blue fifolet shivered with excitement at the first sign of movement and floated down over the body, spreading itself out as if for protection. The skin, loose in some parts and stretched tight in others, undulated with life. The blistering skin never burst, but sometimes leaked a greasy substance where deep, dry-rot cracks existed. The black fifolet looked on from its low branch as one shiny black eye formed on its surface. The black eye watched the hellish scene, unbl
inking. The blue fifolet slunk off the body and writhed in ecstasy in the mud. It rolled over and over until a crude head formed from one end, and wisps of blue spirit formed a sort of antennae extrusion on the other end. The extrusion twitched in the dank air as if sensing its new surroundings.

  The skin bubbled and hissed for several minutes. A sense of internal organ movement was reflected in the single black eye that watched from above. Some skin bubbles pressed outward and formed large tags, filling quickly with pus. The oversized skin tags, when filled to capacity, popped free of the body and hung from its sides by tenuous strings of sinew.

  Suddenly, a violent gush of swamp water erupted from the body’s mouth, expelling a stinking mash of rotten flesh and organs. The putrid mash lay steaming on the cold swamp floor.

  Then the body pulled in its first ragged breath.

  Chapter 10

  Frank walked into his office shaking rain from his umbrella. Over the last two weeks, the cold drizzle had seeped into his core, and he felt a little stiffer each morning. He plopped down in his protesting chair and sat his cigar on the edge of an overflowing ashtray.

  The old radiator heater hissed and groaned in response to the chair’s complaints—two old mechanical friends complaining about the weather.

  He opened the day’s newspaper and read the headline:

  COFFINS, COFFINS, EVERYWHERE!

  The article described how a previously unknown Civil War-era cemetery had been found when four coffins had emerged from the murky depths and out of the saturated soil. The unfortunate residents, thrown from their final resting places—and in one case, scattered along a torrent of water—were found yesterday morning and were being attended by the local university historian and clergy.

  His eyes jumped to another article that stated the police department had received several reports of missing persons, and that if anyone had any information, to call the NOPD immediately.

  On the second page, below the fold, another article described an outbreak of strange rashes that were turning up across the city. Doctors theorized it was a bacterial rash due to an elevated mold count caused by the incessant rain. Citizens where encouraged to check for damp areas near windows and doors and use antiseptic cream until the rains cleared.

  Frank lit his cigar again and fingered the alligator tooth he’d found yesterday. He needed to report his findings to the captain, but still wasn’t sure what his report would contain. He doubted there would be much left of the body by now. There was hardly anything left of it yesterday.

  As he rolled the tooth between his fingers, the radiator hissed a warm lullaby; the rain beat a low melody; Frank had just closed his eyes to think when the phone rang.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Frang? It’s Henri GeeOHM.”

  “Cap’n, I was just getting ready to call you.”

  “Frang, what da hell happened out der?”

  “Well, you got a dead body, dat’s for sure. Did da recovery team get anything?”

  “It’s a damn massacre out der, da way I hear it. Why didn’t you call me first thing? An where’s da first body?”

  “Whoa, da first body?”

  “Yah Frang, dat’s what I’m tellin’ you. Da team couldn’t get der ‘til dis morning. When dey did, da grandson of da ol’ swamp man was runnin’ down da road screamin’. Dey took him back and da place was a horror show. Did you move anything?”

  “No, course not. Twern’t much left to move anyway after da ants and beetles had their fill. But what of dis first body business?”

  “Some ol’ swamp dweller. In a shack, Frang. He’s dead and da first body is gone. In fact, not much a da second body is left da way I hear. Some small chunks, lotsa blood, but a real problem wit da head I hear.”

  “OK, cap, I’ll head back out der, but I got a bad feeling about dis.” Frank slowly rolled the gator tooth over and over in his fingers.

  “Yeah Frang, I tink you’re right. Keep dis between you and me for now. Only give your updates to me, no desk people.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And Frang: no reporters, eh? Dey’re sniffin’ all over da bones now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, no reporters,” Frank said just as Del walked through his office door.

  Hanging up the phone, Frank saw Del’s face and knew something had happened.

  “Del-bell, what’s wrong, honey?”

  Del paced the office floor and recounted what she had seen earlier that morning.

  “Yeah, I remember dat kid, Jimmy. Used to sneak out wit you sometimes, no?”

  “Only a few times. Just when it was warm, and the moon was big. He always wanted to see the moon.”

  “Dat what put him on da bad side of da Sister you tink? Cause you was always standin’ up fer him?”

  Del stopped her pacing and stared out the window at the rain. “Yeah, I suppose. That and because the Sister thinks he’s an abomination.” Del stared pacing again.

  “Come on honey, enough of dat. Let’s take a drive. I gotta follow up on yesterday’s thing. Cap’n just called and I’m afraid to say, but da ol’ man we spoke with, he’s dead too.”

  “What? How?” Del asked, confusion washing over her face.

  “Doan know. Killed in a bad way it sounds.”

  “Isn’t being dead bad enough?” she asked.

  “No, honey. Der’s far worse things than just bein’ dead.”

  Chapter 11

  Sharon Frobije finished her last Tarot card reading for the night, closed the door on her customer and sank in front of her makeup table and lit a cigarette. The flickering candles cast competing flames to the matchhead in the three-way mirror.

  Pulling off the Cleopatra wig and dropping her smock, she took the folded bills from within her bra and dropped the money on the table.

  It had been a good night, she thought. Her fortune telling was always generic enough to pass, but she had hit a couple of specific points, and a fortunately timed wind gust just as she had finished calling up the spirits earned her a few extra dollars in tips.

  Business had been good of late, probably due to the strange things that had been happening in the city, but certainly because of the deeply engrained superstitions of its people. Any time a bone was found, someone would come for a blessing; too much rain, a blessing; a bad turn of luck, a reading. And it went on and on.

  But that fortunate wind, that had really helped.

  Sharon walked to her front reading room; here her customers were greeted by the few old pieces of furniture she could afford. The walls were covered with drapes of silk and other material. Strange objects—some recently created by Sharon—adorned the shelves, and a séance table stood in the center of the room. She pulled an old book from a shelf, laid it on the table and opened it to a marked passage.

  This was the one book in her possession that she felt had some actual magical properties to it, although she had never fully deciphered how to read it. Having stolen it years ago from an elderly couple while working as a cleaning lady, the book had a false cover and appeared to be the remnants of multiple books pasted back together. Some of the pages were written in French-Creole and were utterly unreadable to her; other pages seemed to be fragments of hand-written spells and incantations, and other pages—partially—seemed to advertise the strange history and abilities of one Jean Montanee.

  Sharon smoothed back the old pages and read:

  * * *

  Of, or concerning Jean Montanee, circa 1850 —

  Jean Montanee (Montanet), a free Negro of the Senegal tribe, originating from the deep Congo, recently purchased a respectable lot of land bordering Bayou Road, north of the city.

  Easily recognizable by the ritual country marks and tattoos that adorn his face, he is considered by the native population as a priest of high standing in the Houdou religion, conjurer of the black arts and general healer.

  If services are required, do not petition favors directly. Leave an offering of Absinthe or High John root and knock three times on th
e Bone Gourd—

  There seemed to be more to the instructions, but those pages were lost from the book. She wondered where she may find more about this purported healer and wondered what, if anything, he had to do with her favorite passage in the book.

  She then flipped to another heavily worn section, and although having these well memorized, reread the handwritten lines:

  * * *

  Verset I

  Hellish spirit hear me clearly, grant you now full use or nearly,

  Of my soul for use and toiling, at the work of evil lore.

  This damned soul is ripe for taking; in its core with trembled shaking,

  Hunger-lust pang never slaking, begging at your ghostly door.

  Use me spirit, just tonight, that I may unlock Abgel’s door;

  Just tonight, no less, no more.

  * * *

  It was these lines that she used before important readings and tonight it had the desired effect. As soon as she had spoken the words, a heavy wind buffeted the house and creaked the timbers. Her customers were mesmerized the rest of the reading.

  As she finished reading the lines, a strong wind creaked the house again, blowing a branch tip against a windowpane. Crushing out her cigarette, she realized that the branch had been blowing against the window the entire time she was reading, but the sound had faded into the background. Now it was more incessant.

  Walking back to her bedroom to fix the offending branch, she stopped dead just inside the door. An ominous shadow lay upon the floor. Backlit from a ghostly lightning flash, silent in the distance, the shadow of a bird could be seen pecking at the floor.

  Following the long shadow to its origin, she watched as a large black bird pecked three times at the window pane, a tap-tap-tapping in the unholy rain, then stared at her with one glossy eye. The bird, a raven, stopped its tapping when she entered the room. It sat quietly and watched her as she stared back at it. Finally, it turned and flew off into the night.