Nightmare (19 page)

MARCH 5TH

"We shouldn't stay here long," I said as we walked through the
white brick fence surrounding St. Louis Cemetery. It was already
after eleven, and streetlamps from out on the sidewalk were
the only source of light. It was a sultry New Orleans night, and
sounds of parties and general revelry met us from nearly all
sides.

Jordin looked at me teasingly, holding her usual video camera
in one hand and her digital voice recorder in the other. "Surely
you're not frightened by this place?"

I didn't share her humor. "This place? No. The vandals and
grave robbers and thugs who frequent it in the dark? Yes."

Jordin turned serious, almost alarmed. "Then why did we
come?"

"Because it's haunted."

"It's tiny," she complained. "Just one city block."

"Which is exactly why it has so much activity," I told her.
"There are more than a hundred thousand people buried here,
mostly in above-ground crypts. This tiny city block is a concentrated paranormal nexus."

Right on the edge of the French Quarter, St. Louis Cemetery
was one of three different graveyards in New Orleans to go by
that name. The one I'd selected was by far the smallest, but also
the oldest and most famous. It was filled with above-ground
granite tombs of wildly differing architectural styles and sizes.
All of them had once been white, but now most had faded to
gray thanks to decades of mold and mildew.

It was unlike any location we'd investigated yet, because it was
outdoors and completely open to the public. I'd already warned
Jordin on the drive in that there was no way to seal it off for our
investigation, which meant that we had to contend with sneaking around the above-ground burial vaults in the dark knowing
that any shadowy figures we might chase could very well turn
out to be flesh and blood.

"Come on," I said, leading the way into the interior.

"Where are we going?" Jordin asked.

"You asked me the other night about voodoo, so I want to
show you something. The most famous tomb here belongs to
Marie Laveau, a powerful and influential voodoo priestess who
lived in the 1800s. It's said that people saw her wandering the
streets of New Orleans after her death, and some claim to see
her still."

"Okay," Jordin said, playing along. "How come you seem
skeptical?"

"Marie Laveau was a genuine historical figure, and she really
was known as the Voodoo Queen. But does she haunt the cemetery? I've seen strange things happen here, but no more so in
front of Laveau's crypt than any other."

We arrived at the tomb, and I again noted that it was fairly
unremarkable, hardly the most beautiful or ornate in the graveyard. It was tall and narrow and white all over, with a bronze
plaque affixed to its bottom left corner identifying it as Laveau's
crypt.

"What's with all the junk?" Jordin asked.

Surrounding the tomb's base were "offerings" to Laveau-
beans, tiny statues, candles, and even coins. Much worse was the
graffiti covering the tomb; it was the same mark, over and over,
but in different colors and sizes. Three x's in a row, again and
again and again.

"Just a bit of local color," I replied. "Tourists ask for Laveau's
help with some great desire. The tradition says that if you knock
three times on the head of the crypt to wake her up, draw three
x's on the crypt, knock three times again, and state your wish,
she may grant it."

"That's ridiculous," Jordin said with an odd look on her
face. Almost like she knew it was absurd but wanted it to be
true.

"Is all this about your parents, Jordin?" I blurted out. I half
wished I hadn't and half wondered why I'd waited so long to say
it. "Just tell me, all right? I won't judge you."

She sighed, long and hard. "Yes, okay? Happy now? I want
to talk to my parents. That's it."

I couldn't help being curious. Her dogged determination to
touch the paranormal was something I had pondered again and
again since we'd met. But I wasn't so heartless as to touch upon
a painful subject with a person I hardly knew.

Until now. I don't know what made me ask it this night.
Something about her expression when I talked about Marie
Laveau granting wishes. In that moment, I just knew.

"It's probably impossible," I said quietly.

"I don't care!" she replied, tears swelling in her glassy eyes. "I
have to try. They died when I was thirteen. You don't know what
it's like, Maia.... I mean, have you ever lost anyone?"

I grimaced, trying to think. "I lost my grandmother a few
years back. But we weren't close. How did they die?" I tried not
to be indelicate, but she was finally talking about it, and I wasn't
going to miss the chance.

"Car crash. But you have to understand ... they died together.
I didn't lose just one of them, it was both, at the same time. My
mom and my dad, gone in an instant. Imagine just becoming a
teenager and finding yourself completely alone in the world. No
one to take care ofyou. The two constants in your life, snuffed out
during one of the most difficult stages of life. I'd give anything
to see them again, talk to them. Touch-"

Jordin's words were cut off midsentence when she let
out a sharp gasp. She raised her arm and pointed over my
shoulder.

I spun and looked, but saw nothing.

"What?" I asked. "What was it?"

"There was a shadow!" she whispered. "As soon as I looked
at it, it took off crazy-fast! That way!" She pointed farther up the row, and I stepped out into the open to get a better look. I
couldn't see anything moving.

"Are you sure it wasn't a person running by?"

"No, it was just a shadow!" she said, resolute. "It moved by
itself! Only it wasn't up against a wall or anything, it was right
out in the open!"

"Like it had its own mass and weight?"

She nodded eagerly.

"Show me," I urged her, and we ran.

I had a very good idea what we were probably chasing:
Jordin had seen a shadow person, a phenomenon I was well
acquainted with. They were, simply put, a form that ghosts
sometimes took when trying to manifest. Shadow people had
three-dimensional physics completely unlike real shadows and
moved independent of their surroundings. Some investigators
believed them to be demonic in origin, but I'd never seen proof
either way.

We looked left and right down the aisles and rows as we ran
toward the far end of the cemetery, but it was hard to make out
one shadow from another. If a shadow person wanted to disappear, it would be easy enough with all of the real shadows cast
by the crypts-some of which were well over ten feet tall.

"Unless it moves again, I don't know that we'll ever find it,"
I whispered.

Jordin's eyes grew big as she exclaimed, "Ooh! Ooh! I almost
forgot!"

She pulled off her backpack and whipped something out of
it with great flourish and pride. I recognized it instantly.

"Nice!" I said with sincerity, and took the item as she offered
it to me.

"A little surprise I ordered a while ago and had shipped to
arrive to us this morning," Jordin said with a grin.

It was a thermal imaging camera. It worked just like a regular
video camera, only instead of recording what the human eye sees,
it recorded any and all sources of heat. It was shaped vaguely like
the handle of a gas pump, but with a shortened nozzle where the
camera's aperture was. Behind that, above the grip, was a generously sized screen that showed everything the camera picked
up. Red meant hot, blue meant cold, and there was a rainbow of
temperatures in between.

They were also terribly expensive, so much so that most amateur investigators couldn't afford them.

I'd worked with these devices before-my parents owned oneand found them invaluable. If there was a shadow person here,
the thermal imager would pick it up without a doubt.

I turned it on and did a slow sweep of our surroundings.
Unsurprisingly, the marble vaults all registered as dark bluecold and lifeless. This was a good thing if our friend should
return; it meant his red-hot outline would show up on the imager
in sharp contrast to his surroundings. There would be no missing him.

I held the thermal imager out in front of us, and we began
exploring the area. I kept my eyes glued to the screen while jordin
moved in front, guiding our path.

"Maia, do you believe in curses?" she asked, in a small-talk
tone of voice.

I felt a bit of whiplash. Just minutes ago Jordin had been angry
at me for figuring out her secret. Now she was making chitchat
about curses the way other girls talk about their favorite brand
of makeup. Was she for real?

And even though I wasn't looking at her, I noted how much
effort Jordin was expending trying to sound casual when she
asked the question.

"You mean like hexes and gypsies and stuff?"

Jordin paused, as if reconsidering this line of conversation.
Then she let out a breath. "Do you think it's possible for a person to be cursed? You said the other day that certain people can
attract ghosts."

I thought carefully about my response before giving it. "My
parents have met with clients who had above-average amounts of
encounters with the paranormal, who believed themselves cursed.
My dad doesn't put much stock in those kinds of superstitions,
preferring to find a scientific explanation for everything. I would
probably side with him on this."

"Because it isn't something ... scientifically verifiable?" she
probed. She continued walking in front of me, not making eye
contact.

"Why are we talking about curses, Jordin?"

She shook her head. "I used to know someone who thought
she was cursed, but it was a long time ago."

"Who?" I asked.

"Just an old friend."

I saw something on the thermal imager. "There, look!"

The outline of what looked like a man of above-average height
and normal build stood some fifty feet away, but there was no
way to tell if it was facing our direction or away from us. The
surroundings registered blue and black, but the shadow person
was a mixture of distinctly yellow and orange.

We both looked up. To the naked eye, there was nothing. The shadow person, if that's what it was, was camouflaged perfectly
by the graveyard's darkest crevices.

Jordin took another look at the viewer and launched into a
sprint toward the shadow person. I followed close behind, trying
my best to hold the thermal camera steady enough to see if the
figure moved. But it was too hard to run flat out and keep the
camera trained on one spot, and before I knew it, the figure was
no longer on my screen.

"Where'd it go?" I whispered as we pulled up at the spot where
it had been standing. I turned the camera 360 degrees, trying to
spot the shadow person again.

"I think I saw it go this way," Jordin said, pointing to the
right.

We turned down the aisle she indicated and followed at a walk
this time, catching our breath and taking the time to inspect each
side row on both sides of the aisle. If it was a real, living person
we saw on the camera, they were very good at hiding. If it was a
shadow person, they were even better.

By the time we reached the end of the row, I had a feeling
the apparition was gone for good. There had been no sign of it
by infrared, flashlight, or any other means. So we returned to
wandering the small courtyard aimlessly, hoping to get lucky
again.

Ten minutes later, Jordin tried making small talk once
more.

"So have you ever seen-" She stopped and I heard a sound
as if Jordin had tried to gasp but her lungs clenched halfway
through.

I spun and saw that Jordin was frozen, like a movie that had been paused. She wasn't twitching; she wasn't even breathing.
Her color had drained completely away.

All of this I took in instantly, and then I turned to follow
Jordin's line of sight off to the right. But I saw nothing save white
crypts in the darkness.

"What is it?" I whispered.

She gulped in a lungful of air. "I saw a face! But just a facethere was no body!"

I shivered.

I ran ahead of her and looked where she was looking. "Are
you sure?"

"Yes!" she shrieked. "It peeked out from behind that crypt.
Like it was hiding but wanted to get a look at us." She placed
a hand over her heart as if trying to force it to beat slower. Her
complexion was still alarmingly pale.

We ran to the crypt together and walked all the way around
it. There was no sign of whatever she had seen. I didn't catch
anything on the thermal camera, either.

"It's colder here," I whispered, my throat tight, my muscles
tensed.

She rotated slowly and nodded in agreement.

I looked at the objects in her hands. "Did you get it on
video?"

Jordin's eyebrows jumped a foot into the air. "Oooh,
maybe!"

She knelt to the ground and quickly rewound her recording. It only took a moment. She stood again and we watched
the replay together.

A chill ran down my spine as the image came up. The face
was tiny and barely visible in the dark, and would look a lot better on a larger screen whenever we got around to reviewing
the evidence, but it was there. It had a pale gray tint, and you
could only see about half of it-the other half was obscured in
shadow. But the eyes gave off a slightly yellow glow, and it was
unnerving.

"That doesn't look human," I observed, as burning bile slid
up my throat.

Jordin didn't reply.