Ghouls Rush In

  I nodded immediately. “Yes.” I swallowed hard and made the decision that I would fight for Drake. In the same way that he had taken it upon himself to be my protector, now it was time to return the favor.

  “Then the answer is simple,” Ryan interjected, shaking his head like he’d heard enough. “She won’t live here anymore! She sells this house and she moves!”

  Christopher shook his head and chuckled mirthlessly as he paid attention to petting his dog. “The answer is not quite so easy, I’m afraid,” he said to Ryan.

  “I can’t move,” I answered at the same time. This house was a part of me and no matter how diseased it was, I wouldn’t flee with my tail between my legs. I would fight this negative power, if not for my own sake, then for Drake’s. Just as Drake had come to my defense, I needed and wanted to come to his.

  “The entity has targeted her, seeking her out for a purpose only known to it,” Christopher continued as he closed his eyes again and started to nod. “It senses a deep-seated connection between it and you,” he finished at last, opening his eyes as he focused on me.

  “A connection to me?” I repeated, completely failing to see how that could be. What was worse, the very idea made me feel sick to my stomach. “How is that even possible?”

  Christopher raised his left brow and cocked his head to the side. “You might be surprised.”

  “Then how do I find out what this connection is?” I continued.

  “Perhaps it is time to research your genealogy,” Christopher responded, his tone of voice and his general air one of boredom.

  “My genealogy?” I repeated, shaking my head. “I don’t even know where to start!”

  “I always suggest Ancestry.com to my clients, as the answers can usually be found there,” Christopher answered before he turned to face Ryan. He motioned for Ryan to hand him the black cape that still hung over Ryan’s arm. Ryan handed it to him, and Christopher simply shook his head and motioned to his back. He asked, “Would you kindly do the honors for me?”

  Ryan smiled and laid the cape across Christopher’s shoulders as the smaller, pudgier man started for the hallway. “I am beginning to tire, which means I must leave this place to ensure my safety.” He turned back toward me and cleared his throat. “Find the answers you require regarding your connection to this home and this malevolence,” he started. “When you have found the information you seek, I will instruct you on your next action.”

  I spent the next morning on my laptop at the neighborhood Starbucks. I hopped on Ancestry.com and started my search. After entering my first and last name, my age, and my e-mail address, I decided to skip the free trial and pay the twenty bucks for one month because I figured I’d probably need it. I mean, who knew how long this research would take me?

  I entered my mother’s full name, her date of birth, and her birthplace, then was prompted for information regarding my maternal grandfather that I didn’t have. Great, I was off to a wonderful start…I skipped that field and clicked “Enter” and was bombarded with a list of names that matched my mother’s. The first one had a little green leaf in the corner which was supposedly the closest match to my mother as far as the website was concerned, so I clicked it. And wouldn’t you know, it was right. I added my mother’s profile to my family tree and started a search on my grandmother.

  I didn’t get far. And I wasn’t very surprised. As far as my mother’s family went, I didn’t know much about them. All I did know was that my mom had left home at the age of seventeen, never to return again. She and her family weren’t close by any stretch of the imagination, which meant I knew next to nothing about any of them. I’d never even met my grandparents, but I did know my grandmother’s name was Esther and my mother, who had never married, carried the last name of Clark, so I figured Esther was Esther Clark.

  I entered as much into the space provided and the website returned a long list of what seemed like a million Esther Clarks. I clicked on the first few links but couldn’t make any associations with the information returned. Stumped for a few seconds, I then decided to do a search on someone I did have a bit of information on: my Great-Aunt Myra. From all the paperwork on the house, I remembered that Myra’s full name was Myra Jennings.

  I entered her name, estimated her date of birth, and then entered “New Orleans” into the search parameter. Then I clicked “Search.” My query returned another long list of names but the closest matches were at the top, so I clicked the first listing. It returned a census from 1940 and I clicked the link to find out more. I was taken to a page that listed other residents who were at the same address on the day the census was taken. They included Esther Jennings, my grandmother, who was listed at the time of the census as being eighteen years old; Myra, who was listed as being twelve years old; and Sarah Laumann Jennings, who was listed as being forty years old. I could only imagine that Sarah was both Myra and Esther’s mother. And for some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint, the name Sarah Laumann Jennings seemed familiar to me.

  I noticed in the upper right-hand corner of the page, I could click a link that would take me to a scanned copy of the census from 1920 so I did just that. It returned a handwritten document that was difficult to read. I scanned the myriad names scribbled down until I reached the line with the Jennings. Further studying it, I learned that Sarah was, indeed, the mother of Myra and Esther. Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be a head of household, aka a man, in the picture. Instead, there appeared a “D” as a line item next to Sarah’s name, which meant she had been divorced. The census also noted that Sarah apparently owned her home.

  I clicked the next census, which was from 1960, and learned that in that year, only Myra had lived with Sarah in the house I now called my own. According to the records of history, my grandmother, Esther, had married John Clark and had had my mother.

  “Sarah Laumann Jennings,” I said to myself, shaking my head as I tried to figure out why the name sounded so familiar to me. Maybe my mother had mentioned my great-grandmother in one of our very rare discussions about her side of the family?

  I opened another browser window and typed Sarah’s name into Google. What Google returned made my breath catch in my throat.

  “The Axeman and the unsolved murders that terrorized New Orleans,” I read. My heart now pounding in my chest, I clicked on the link and scanned the page until I reached Sarah’s name and came to learn that she’d indeed been one of the victims of the Axeman:

  Wednesday, September 3, 1919, marked the day a young woman, living alone, was attacked by the Axeman. The nineteen-year-old woman, named Sarah Laumann, was assaulted in her bed by a man wielding an axe. She sustained several head wounds but survived and recovered from her attack at Charity Hospital. She could offer no description of her attacker other than that he came in the dark and appeared as a dark and shadowy figure. A bloody axe was found in the grass just at the rear of Sarah’s back door.

  I took a deep breath and brought my eyes to the ceiling as I ran my hand through my hair and realized what this meant—I was related to one of the victims of the Axeman. Sarah Laumann had been my maternal great-grandmother and from what I could glean, she was also one of few survivors of the Axeman’s attacks.

  There was the connection Christopher had told me to find. But there was one piece to this puzzle that still didn’t make any sense to me—how Sarah Laumann had ended up purchasing Drake’s home. Figuring the Internet would lead me to my answer, I opened yet another new tab and entered my address as a search parameter.

  The first responses were mainly real estate–related sites offering house values and the like. Once I noticed a link purporting to be a listing of public property records, I clicked on it. The first line item referenced my taking over ownership of the house but previous to that, it appeared the house had only changed hands once before—in 1969, when it appeared Myra took over ownership from Sarah. But prior to that, there wasn’t any other information. I figured it was because the information predated the available public r
ecords. It was something that would probably require a trip to the courthouse.

  Instead, I returned to Ancestry.com and continued researching Sarah Laumann, learning that she died in 1969 at the age of sixty-nine. When my head started to ache from information overload, I turned the computer off and decided to give myself and my research a rest for the time being. What I really needed to do now was establish the connection between Drake and Sarah, and the easiest way to do that was to discuss the subject with Drake himself. But, of course, that would have to wait until later tonight when I went back to my house and went to sleep. Something that didn’t exactly fill me with the warm and fuzzies.

  “Drake!” I yelled his name as soon as I recognized my surroundings. I was in the dining room, only it was the way it had looked in 1919. I found myself alone and seated at the end of a long, rectangular wooden table. I immediately stood and started for the hallway, barely even registering the pain when I rammed my hip against one of the chair backs.

  The hallway was empty. An errant breeze fluttered the white gauze curtain that hung alongside the window at the end of the hall, exposing the pristine gardens below. But I wasn’t interested in any bygone view. I needed to find Drake.

  I sailed down the hallway, feeling as if I were flying rather than running. The impact of my footsteps on the hardwood floors was loud and echoed through the house, reminding me that I was the only one in it. The first doorway I reached was the kitchen. Peering in, I saw it was empty, so I continued down the hall until I reached the next door. Pushing it open, I found a room full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stocked neatly with leather-bound volumes of what I assumed were the classics. In modern times, this was my laundry room. Somehow, I preferred it as a library.

  A lone ladder was attached to the bookshelf and stood at the far corner of the room. There was a fire blazing in the hearth, the smell of wood smoke and warm leather somehow comforting.

  “Bonjour, ma minette,” Drake said from where he reclined on a brown leather settee in the middle of the room. His voice sounded as stricken and exhausted as he looked. His head was propped up on a pillow and a dark-brown blanket covered the lower half of his legs, which were motionless. Blue plaid pajama pants peeked out from underneath a blanket that matched the navy blue of his loose-fitting robe. It did little to cover what I could see of a very well-defined chest, lightly peppered with dark-brown hair. When my wandering eyes returned to his face, I noticed he appeared to be suffering from the flu or something. But I was acutely aware that the reality was far worse than just a simple virus. As ridiculous as it sounded, his soul was in jeopardy, not his life.

  “Drake,” I said, choking on his name as I approached him. I kneeled down so our faces were level. “What’s happening to you?”

  He cleared his throat before taking a deep breath, which seemed to sap all his energy. “Je perds. I am losing,” he responded quickly, shaking his head as if he were angry over it.

  I reached for his hand, which felt ice-cold when I touched it. I massaged his fingers and smiled at him, hoping I could invigorate him and breathe some warmth back into his bluish countenance. “I won’t let this thing beat you,” I said with steely resolve, feeling my words echoing through me.

  Drake shook his head like he appreciated my enthusiasm but wasn’t buying it. Then he gave me a quick but pained smile before he eyed the ceiling and seemed to zone out. It was another few seconds before he spoke. “I still cannot see what this being, or thing, is,” he said slowly, but I could see the confusion in his eyes just as clearly as I heard it in his tone. “But it feels as if it grows stronger with each passing second.” He took another deep breath and fell silent for a few more seconds as if speaking took everything out of him. “And with each moment, I grow wearier, plus faible…weaker.”

  He turned toward me and smiled sadly again, his eyes empty orbs and his skin sallow and lifeless. His ordinarily thick, full head of hair took on a grayish hue except where it was wet from the sweat that beaded along his hairline. He seemed weak, frail, and small—nothing like the handsome, charismatic, and robust man I recognized from my dreams. I felt like I wanted to cry but held my tears in check, knowing they wouldn’t do either of us any good. Drake needed my strength, not my sadness.

  Even more alarming than Drake’s current condition was the time it had taken for him to get there. I just couldn’t understand how it happened so quickly! One night had passed since the last time I’d seen him, and even though he’d seemed tired, his condition in no way resembled the broken man lying before me now.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” I said, even though we both remained unconvinced. It just seemed a stupid thing to even think when everything was so far from being okay. “I found someone to cleanse the house,” I added quickly, hoping to imply the situation wasn’t exactly as bad as it seemed. And while Christopher the warlock never exactly agreed to cleanse the house and, actually, hadn’t agreed to do much of anything at all, I didn’t want Drake to know that. Besides, I had no one else but Christopher. He was my golden ticket, the only arrow in my quiver that could possibly defeat whatever this entity was. So, despite any reluctance on his part, Christopher would cleanse the house, as far as I was concerned.

  “Le sorcier…the warlock,” Drake said, breathing out shallowly. He nodded, and his eyes revealed some recognition. “He visited me, but I was too weak to interact with him.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head. “Did you see him?”

  Drake shook his head while recalling the event. “He existed merely as a strange voice, disembodied. Our connection was spotty at best so I couldn’t understand what he said or what his intentions were.”

  “We asked him here to determine what the entity is,” I answered. “I think he can help us, Drake,” I finished with a heartfelt smile. I began stroking his hair and wiping the sweat from his forehead with the cuff of my shirt. “He’s not a voodoo priestess, but I bet he’s just as powerful. He’s a necromancer. He said I can help bring you back to health again.”

  Drake didn’t say anything and his expression was unreadable. “Was he able to connect with the entity?” he asked, turning to face me with sudden interest. “Could he see it? Did he know what it was?”

  I shook my head. “He said it was too dangerous for him to attempt reaching out to it. But he recognized its malevolence immediately.”

  “Does he know why it’s here or what it wants?” he continued, his interest obviously piqued.

  I cleared my throat because I knew Drake wouldn’t take my answer well. Even I still wasn’t taking it very well. “He says the entity wants me,” I finished, my voice dropping lower with resignation.

  Drake nodded as if he weren’t surprised, which worried me. Frowning, he settled his lifeless gaze on me. “I figured that part out too late, I’m afraid.” He shook his head and bit his lip. I could see his frustration and it was a difficult thing to watch. “I tried to protect you, ma minette, but I am afraid I’ve failed you.”

  “You haven’t failed me,” I said with watery eyes as I remembered him battling the entity when it was choking the life out of me. “You’ve kept me safe this whole time. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”

  He gripped my hand and stared at me, a sudden urgency in his expression. Maybe it was with the realization that he couldn’t keep me safe any longer, not when his vitality was fading so rapidly. “Il faut que vous quittiez cette maison! You need to leave this house,” he said, his eyes boring into mine. “Get as far away as you can.”

  I shook my head, remembering how Christopher said that it wouldn’t do any good. For whatever reason, this entity had its sights on me and I doubted it would care what zip code I lived in. And seeing how quickly it had drained Drake’s power and vivacity convinced me it could locate me wherever I tried to hide. I had a feeling the fact that Sarah Laumann was my great-grandmother had something to do with it.

  I smiled down at my friend and continued running my fing
ers through his hair, trying to console him. “I need you to hold on for me, Drake,” I said softly. Bringing my mouth to his forehead, I kissed him gently. I pulled away and saw his unbridled affection for me reflected in the chocolate of his irises. “I need you to resist it just for a little while longer,” I finished. But I already knew that waiting to see Christopher wasn’t an option. Drake was too far gone already. Time was of the essence and I had to act now.

  He simply nodded and smiled up at me as I wondered how much longer he could hold this thing off. “Ma minette, ma belle, my beautiful,” he whispered.

  But before I left Drake to visit Christopher, I needed some information. “I need to know if you were ever in contact with Sarah Laumann.”

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before nodding. “Oui. She was one of his victims,” he said in a far-off voice.

  “Yes, how did you know her?”

  “I was working on her case,” he answered immediately before taking another deep breath and finally opening his eyes. “She was so young. When I visited her at Charity Hospital to question her as to what had happened, she was so frightened she was barely able to speak. Her head was bandaged but the bandages did nothing to detract from the beauty of her face.”

  I swallowed hard as I started to guess where this conversation was headed. “Were you and my great, er, Sarah, involved?”

  He sighed and then nodded, glancing up at me briefly. “Pour un temps. For a time.” He cleared his throat and I could see the exhaustion beginning to build in his eyes. It was time for me to go.

  “I need you to wake me up now, Drake,” I said in a soft voice. “Wake me up.”

  I came to almost immediately. Sitting up with a start, I glanced around and found I was back in my bed, in my guest bedroom, in my house. I wiped my eyes as I pushed the duvet off and immediately turned to the task of getting dressed. I was more than sure that Christopher wouldn’t appreciate a phone call at midnight, but this was an emergency. I’d never seen Drake so infirm, so vacant and sickly. It scared the hell out of me.