Dracula's Ghost - Afterimage: Interlude I
The Shotgun
Interlude I - The Shotgun
The nature of the change is indicated in the old fable of the temple of Zeus Lycaeus, which tells how he who tastes human flesh mixed up with the flesh of other victims will turn into a wolf. Even so the protector, who tastes human blood, and slays some and exiles others with or without law, who hints at abolition of debts and division of lands, must either perish or become a wolf—that is, a tyrant… having a mob entirely at his disposal, he is not restrained from shedding the blood of kinsmen; by the favorite method of false accusation he brings them into court and murders them, making the life of man to disappear, and with unholy tongue and lips tasting the blood of his fellow citizens; some he kills and others he banishes, at the same time hinting at the abolition of debts and partition of lands: and after this, what will be his destiny?
Plato, The Republic, Book VIII
It must be that old evil spirit, so deep down in the ground.
Robert Johnson, Me and the Devil Blues
I.
Metairie to New Orleans
1953
“Young lady, would you like me to tell your fortune?”
Evangeline Morris (she ceased to use her married name after discovering her husband’s bigamy) paused at the vegetable stand, sweltering in the summer heat. Dustin Thoreaux would disapprove of her speaking with a negro, but the vegetable stand was empty except for the old man and herself. Dustin claimed to work nights, but his only recent employment had been drinking whiskey, gambling at penny-ante poker games, and frequenting the whorehouses along the waterfront. They had been in Metairie for less than a month, the proud owners of ’39 Packard, a shotgun shack, and fifty thousand dollars that she did not dare to spend. The whole world, he assured her, lay at their feet, and since their return, he had blacked her eye and held a kitchen knife to her throat.
Evangeline had not seen him for three days.
“I can see your future in your palm,” he said. “Sometimes I go to the French Quarter and read for the tourists, ten cents each.”
“Do you see much?”
“Mostly, I see dimes going into my pocket,” he said, and she smiled in spite of herself. “But that’s all right because I put on a good show, and everybody goes away happy. Still, I do get a little flash every now and then. There’s lots of strange things in the world, for those with eyes to see.”
I need the car. Evangeline fished a pair of nickels from her purse and held out her hand. The old man mumbled, frowning a little, as his callused finger traced the lines of her palm. The business with the knife had done for her. They could have lived quiet lives in New England or the northwest, but the lure of home had drawn her husband (not my husband) like a fish on a line, and like a pair of convicts, they had gone over the wall only to end up at the family farmstead. She kept a shotgun for protection, its stock cut to the pistol grip and a scant twelve inches of barrel on the business end. I need the car, she thought again, or I will need the gun. During a brutal snowstorm in New Hampshire, he had finished an entire case of beer and a half-bottle of cheap vodka before his hands closed around her neck. Evangeline had been certain that he would kill her that night – if she failed to act soon, the bottle would get the better of him, and he would carve her up in a drunken rage.
"Hmm… Your mama and daddy are both dead?”
“Killed when I was a baby. We were living in St. Louis, and there was a tornado.”
“So much pain in life. What else? I smell flowers – roses? Roses are good. There’s powerful medicine there, good to ward off evil spirits. Hold on a minute –” The furrows beneath his eyes deepened as he traced the lines of her palm. “This is not so good. Do you know about the Rougarou?”
“You mean the wolf man? I saw him in the movies once.”
“No, that’s the story that white folks made up to scare children. I’m talking about the real thing, with the face of a man and the heart of a wolf. I look at your hand, and I see the Rougarou in your future.”
“Is that what you tell the tourists in the French Quarter?”
The old man held her gaze. Scary stories for children, she thought, but a worm of unease crawled across her skin. His touch lingered on her nerve endings as he returned the nickels to her palm.
“Listen to me,” he said. “In the evenings, you watch that no one follows you home, and you lock your door at night. Some folks say the Rougarou can be killed with silver, but if it comes to that, I would use fire. You want to be sure.”
“I need to get home.” She backed away, frightened by the old man’s sudden intensity. “My husband is waiting for me.”
“The truth is there, for those with eyes to see.” The old man frowned, staring at her with large brown eyes. “We both know your husband ain’t coming home.”
She took the bus into the city and wandered the French Quarter, sweltering in the heat as she peered through the doorway of each bar and burlesque show. At the corner of Bourbon and Toulouse, Evangeline turned right and headed for the river. A sailor gave her a shy smile as she stopped at a café for lunch – she had considered packing her own food in a picnic basket and hiding the shotgun beneath her meal. Your mama and daddy are both dead? The old man had been perceptive, she had to give him that much, though there was little enough magic in his words. She had spent three years in an orphanage before marrying Dustin Thoreaux at eighteen (I didn’t marry him, she thought, he was already married when he met me), and to Evangeline, the three years between her grandmother’s death and her not-quite marriage lingered like a foul stench. The roses – there’s powerful medicine there, good to ward off evil spirits – were another odd touch. Three of them, unwatered and probably wilted by now, adorned the vase in her bedroom. She would need to throw them out when she returned home.
Do you know about the Rougarou? I look at your hand, and I see the Rougarou in your future.
The abandoned tobacco warehouse lay along the bank of the industrial canal and had been repurposed into an illicit gambling joint. The Packard was parked in the weeds, just beyond the edge of the gravel lot, and her first thought was that the damned fool should be more careful about leaving it untended for a thief to plunder. A thief such as me, for example. Evangeline kept a spare key in her purse, and she would take the last of their money before leaving out for Texas or California or New York – somewhere far away.
She noticed the smell even before she opened the door.
II.
Edinburgh
I need to be going, and soon, Rupert Holmes thought. He could point to no single thing that urged him forward, but Holmes understood that the forces that operate on the fringes of the umwelt, things in the air and beneath the earth which were called magic for lack of a better word, left traces on the visible world. There was magic in blood ties, in place (as Carfax Abbey and the old castle both proved) and in symmetry. It was amplified by pain and even more so, Holmes suspected, by love. Something dark had been afoot since the disappearance of Sarah Spencer (perhaps even earlier, Holmes admitted, but he had been busy fighting the war), and it was approaching its apogee.
He feared greatly for the woman’s safety.
III.
Metairie
You watch that no one follows you home, and you lock your door at night. Evangeline Morris avoided the bus route and walked in a wide loop, bypassing the French Quarter and wandering the paths of the city park. The wanderings doubled her walking distance, but each looping ramble through the empty streets and deserted paths allowed her to watch her backtrail. When she finally arrived home, the sun was low on the horizon. Safely indoors, she collapsed onto the bed and breathed deeply, willing herself not to scream – the walls were thin, and she wanted no one to know that she was home. The flowers, unwatered and neglected, regarded her silently from their ceramic vase in the doorway.
The Outfit had kept Dustin Thoreaux alive for as long as possible, drawing out his agony and using his mutilated body as a warning to other would-be thieves. The stumps of his hands and feet were caked nearly black with dried blood, and intestines, dried to leathery toughness, were draped about the car’s interior. Flies crawled about the empty eye sockets, moving lazily in the summer heat as they laid their eggs. She had backed away from the car, her newfound freedom forgotten, and the walk home had done little to bolster her courage. It would be easier to disappear without the dead weight of Dustin Thoreaux around her neck, but the memories – the smell, the empty sightless eyes, her own sick fear, overwhelmed her. The shotgun was hidden at the bottom of the cedar chest, concealed beneath a layer of neatly folded slips and blouses. She had paid ten dollars for the weapon in a Nashville hardware store, and Dustin had been incensed by the outlay of cash.
“What the hell you want a gun for? Don’t you trust your husband to protect you?”
“You can’t be home all the time. What if somebody comes when you’re out?”
She broke open the action, and the brass of a shotgun shell glinted in the light of the kerosene lantern. The money was stashed beneath a defunct railway station, a weed-choked outpost on the far side of the lake, and if she survived until morning, Evangeline would take the whole stash and board the next bus out of town. Just get the money, she thought, and you never have to set foot in Louisiana again. She just needed a little time to –
“You should be careful with that gun.” A hand seized her right arm. “Why don’t I take it so that no one gets shot?”
The intruder was rail-thin, and his bloodless cheeks and lips reminded her of a childhood neighbor who died of consumption, or an undertaker’s project who walked away in mid-funeral. Only the gray eyes, nearly shining in the flickering lamplight, seemed alive. The hand that encircled her arm was painfully strong, yet he had moved with uncanny stealth – she had heard no opening door, no window sash sliding upward. Like a wolf in the forest, she thought.
“Very good,” he said in an accent that she could not quite place. “Now, Miss Morris – I think I can call you that, since you and your departed husband were never married – let us talk.”
“Why? Are you from the vice squad?” She was still afraid, but an undercurrent of anger stirred beneath her fear. “You’re too late if you came to discuss good morals.”
“Oh, heavens no.” His eyes dance, as if he were enjoying a private joke. “I have other concerns, and your lack of character bothers me not at all.”
He nudged her away from the bed, then dropped the shotgun onto the mattress before releasing her arm. Evangeline Morris stared, dumbfounded, as he pulled a flask from his pocket and drank. A drop of dark liquid stained the corner of his mouth as he dropped the flask and drew a knife.
“You’re in quite a predicament, aren’t you? It’s sad, how the sins of the husband are visited on the wife, and those of the father – perhaps even the grandfather – on the daughter. But such is life, always capricious and frequently unfair.”
“I have the money. Tell New Orleans I’ll pay them back everything.”
“It’s too late for that,” he said, but the eyes regarded her, uncomprehending, for a heartbeat too long. He doesn’t know about the money.
Then he plans to murder you for no reason at all. Evangeline stumbled backward, and the ceramic pitcher shattered on the floor as she groped mindlessly – for a weapon, a means of escape – at the empty air as the intruder’s thumb caressed the edge of his blade. Her hand found the table, and the empty space occupied by the pitcher, and something pricked her finger.
She swept up the roses without thought or consideration, and blood dripped from her fingers as she raked the thorns across her would-be murderer’s face. A sweet floral aroma mixed with a whiff of smoke, as he cried out in pain, and the thorns left a row of bloodless scratches across his cheek. Evangeline sidestepped as he stumbled, and the eyes burned with barely suppressed rage as he grasped for her arm. He did not hesitate, even as she pressed the muzzle of the shotgun to his chest. The discharge was barely audible to her ears, a muffled thump as escaping gases from the shot expanded inside his chest cavity. The assailant fell, his spine severed and his heart and lungs destroyed, as she fled into the darkness, not looking behind to see what might follow.
She slept in the park that night and the next morning, Evangeline rented a room in a New Orleans flophouse. On the second morning, she took a bus to the outskirts of the city and caught a ride with a farmer, bouncing over the rutted path as the engine coughed and the truck rocked on its springs. The railway station was still there – in her addled state, Evangeline half-expected it to have burned or carried away by a great whirlwind – and sweat poured from her face as she pried the loose boards from the floor. She spent the third night in a proper motel.
On the fourth day, she returned to the house. Evangeline watched from a distance for intruders or police, and seeing no one, approached closer. The door stood ajar, and a faint odor permeated the house, the same smell that she remembered from the car. The windows had been closed when she left, and in the summer heat, the smell should have been unbearable. Perhaps the police carried away the body, she thought, but the house was undisturbed. She pushed open the bedroom door. The room was empty, and she stood at the threshold, not fully trusting her own senses. I blew his guts out right here, she thought, but now, even the blood was gone. No – not quite gone. On the far wall, someone had scrawled a message. Flies buzzed about the lettering, perhaps seeking a place to lay their eggs.
Another time.
IV.
New Orleans to Metairie
Rupert Holmes visited the empty lot where the car was found, and the breeze from the river carried a whiff of rot to his nostrils. Of cunning more than mortal, for his cunning is the growth of ages. He has the aids of necromancy, the divination of the dead, and all the dead that come nigh are for him to command. The words echoed in his mind, but he could not remember whether the memory was his own, a tidbit gleaned from Jonathan Harker, or that of Quincy Morris. Something very bad happened here.
He has the aids of necromancy, the divination of the dead – perhaps the darkest of dark arts. Holmes’s mind whispered that he was racing the clock to no avail, for a well-placed bullet would have been sufficient to upend their plans. It would be so easy to kill her, he thought, but if the death of Evangeline Morris could solve His problems, death was an easy escape if one was inclined to enjoy the suffering of one’s enemies. And he wants them to suffer. Holmes visited the backroom of a gambling house, an uninvited guest with no guarantee of leaving intact, and baffled the patrons with his utter lack of fear. He laid a newspaper on the table.
“Is this your handiwork?”
“Who wants to know?” A half-dozen gamblers, made men in Carlos Marcello’s New Orleans Outfit, gave him their hardest stares. “Are you police?”
“I was, but that was a long time ago.”
A pair of men stood to evict him, but Holmes made no move to leave. He could slaughter the roomful with ease, but Holmes preferred to handle things peacefully. He rattled off a series of numbers.
“Those are the first six numbers of a nine-digit bank account in Zurich. The Nazis used it during the war to stash looted wealth, which is currently unclaimed.”
“Then maybe we’ll skin you to get the last three numbers,” one said.
“You can try.” The bluster of Americans could be quite charming. “Now, the newspaper?”
The man behind the desk glanced at the newspaper and shrugged. Not our doing. Not our problem. Holmes had expected as much.
“Then perhaps you can help me locate his widow.”
The house was little more than a ruin, a dilapidated shotgun shack with peeling whitewash. The front door hung crookedly on its hinges, and his keen nostrils detected a hint of putrefaction as he pushed his way inside. A residue of something stronger lingered in the air, and Holmes understood the truth – the same thing happened to him two decades prior. An impressive feat, to survive one’s own death. The realization gave him hope, for if his adversary had taken such a radical step, then in all likelihood, he had failed in his mission. When he had finished inside the house, he walked the road at the edge of the lake. The vegetable stand was gone, but the old man remained, and Holmes watched as he struggled with a load of kindling.
“Good afternoon, sir. Would you be interested in having your fortune told?”
“No thank you, but I’ll help with the firewood if you need it.”
The cabin was even smaller than the vacant abode of Evangeline Morris. The old man produced a bottle of bootleg whiskey, and Holmes gratefully accepted a drink.
“What can you tell me about the empty house at the far end of the road?” he asked, and the old man eyed him suspiciously. “I’m looking for a young woman – I was a friend of her uncle’s, and he left her a small endowment when he died. I’d really like to find her.”
“Well, here’s the thing, mister friend-of-her uncle. I haven’t seen nobody at that house for six months, and if I had, it wouldn’t be my business to pass it along, would it?”
“She got into some trouble, didn’t she?”
“Like I said, it ain’t my business.”
Rupert Holmes produced the newspaper, a six-month old copy of the Times-Picayune, from his coat. The front page photo showed two policemen in front of an old car, and the story called it a gangland slaying – the dead man was rumored to have absconded with money belonging to a local criminal syndicate. It was easy to believe, Holmes thought, if one did not smell the traces of dark enchantment that lingered around the crime scene.
“I think she’s in quite a bit of trouble,” Holmes said. “I want to help her, but I can’t do that if I can’t find her.”
“Let me see your palm.”
The finger traced the lines and mounts of his left and right palms and caressed the scar on Holmes’s index finger, an old wound caused by the slip of a penknife, and prodded a mole on the back of Holmes’s right hand. A spot known as a devil’s mark in the Middle Ages, Holmes thought. Satisfied, the old man poured more whiskey.
“Six months ago, she got on a bus to Houston. I’ve got a friend who works as a porter for Greyhound, and she left in a hurry – he said that she looked scared. I don’t know what happened to her after that.”
“And the blood inside the old house?” Holmes said. At this point, there was no reason for further pretense. “Can you tell me about that?”
“What do you know about the Rougarou?”
“I believe it’s what we call a lycanthrope where I’m from. People who sold their souls to the devil were given a belt of wolfskin, which they could use to carry out all sorts of bloody mischief.”
“That’s what most folks believe.” The old man took a sip of whiskey. “What really happens is the wolf ain’t out here –” he waved an arm in the air – “but inside. A bad man, not bad like a thief or killer, something even worse. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely,” Holmes said, though he thought the old man was being a little unfair – he quite liked wolves. “And the young lady was attacked by one of these things? A Rougarou?”
“Oh yes,” he whispered. “The husband was just sport. It’s her that he’s after.”
They had a final drink, and Rupert Holmes thanked the old man for his hospitality. She’s alive, he thought. Impressive of her to best such a creature.
“Thank you again for the help with the firewood,” the man said. “And I hope I haven’t done wrong by trusting you.”
“Of course you haven’t,” Holmes said, surprised. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you got more than a little Rougarou in yourself.”
V.
Houston, Texas
She rented a room at the edge of Buffalo Bayou, a two-dollar per week hotel near the shipyards and oil refineries. Evangeline Morris spent the first anxiety-ridden month eating little and passing the nighttime hours in the rundown bars that adjoined the Port of Houston. She bought a pistol to replace the lost shotgun, but it gave her little comfort. I killed him, but where did the body go? In the daylight, when she managed to sleep, Evangeline dreamed of her grandmother. Charlotte Morris called to her from a great distance, warning of danger in words that she could never quite remember in her waking hours.
One afternoon, sick and bleary-eyed from the previous night’s hangover, she stared into the mirror. I’m dying. Evangeline Morris noted her prominent cheekbones and the dark circles beneath her eyes. She lifted her shirt and traced the ridges beneath her breasts, where the ribs protruded. She tried to recall the previous night’s drunken conversation. “I’ll put dynamite in the crawlspace of the house, run a fuse through the floor, and if he comes back, I’ll blow the whole thing straight to hell.” She had little appetite that evening, but she fixed a can of soup and forced two slices of white bread down her throat. She sat in the living room as the sun went down, never leaving the couch until the radio broadcasts ceased. Finally, she lay awake on the bed, the pistol always within reach as she waited for sunset.
What if he finds me again?