The Gravedigger's Brawl

  “I feel so lost,” Ash whispered. He stopped short as he realized what he’d just said. I seek the lost. A shiver of panic ran through him, halted by Wyatt’s arms around him. “That’s what he told me, Wyatt.”

  “Who?”

  “The top hat. He said he sought the lost. Is that why he’s after me?”

  “No, Ash. No,” Wyatt murmured against his temple as he tightened his hold. “You’re not alone. You’re not lost. We’re all here with you. I’m here with you.”

  Ash nodded and met Wyatt’s clear blue eyes. They were so very different from the luminescent blue that haunted his dreams.

  Wyatt ran a hand through his hair as he looked down at him. Ash caught his breath just before Wyatt bent to press a kiss to his lips. It wasn’t heated or lustful like the others had been. There was something sweet and comforting about it, something that felt safe and familiar. Warmth stole through Ash’s body, and he hugged Wyatt’s neck and tugged him down to lay with him.

  “I’m here,” Wyatt whispered against his lips.

  “Thank you, Wyatt,” Ash said. He closed his eyes and let Wyatt’s presence chase away the doubts.

  Caleb came to check on them a short time later. He cleared his throat from the doorway. Wyatt raised his head and Ash forced his eyes open to look.

  “Need anything?” Caleb asked.

  “Is everyone still here?” Ash asked, a mixture of shame and guilt filtering through the fog.

  Caleb nodded. Ash sat up. “I should get up.”

  Wyatt sat with him, swinging his legs off the bed. “You want to see what we’ve found?”

  Ash nodded. He managed to roll himself out of bed and trudge to the outer rooms. Noah had deposited their finds on any hard surface he could manage. There weren’t enough places for all five of them to sit in the living room, so they gathered around the dining room table instead.

  “Turns out a little hard research on the LaLauries was all it took to find them,” Wyatt started as he settled down and frowned at all of the crap on the table. Ash propped his feet in Wyatt’s lap and stared at him blankly. “They fled New Orleans and went to Mobile, Alabama, where they took a ship headed for New York. The ship made two stops, one in Charleston, South Carolina, and one near Richmond because of some sort of mechanical difficulty. They were here overnight.”

  “That’s where the rumors started, then,” Ryan said, then bit into an apple. They all stared at him as it crunched, obscenely loud in the otherwise heavy silence. He looked around. “What?”

  “Calm yourself,” Caleb said gruffly. He looked back to Wyatt. “So. Richmond?”

  “Yeah. They went on to New York after the ship was fixed, stayed in a luxury hotel, went to the opera a few times,” Wyatt said in what Ash thought might be his lecturing voice. It was slower than his speaking voice, and deeper. It sent a thrill through Ash’s body despite how freaked out he was. “Then they sailed for France and lived out their lives just outside of Paris. Dr. Louis LaLaurie actually published his memoirs, the notes that he kept during his experimentation on his New Orleans slaves.” Wyatt’s lip curled. “It was used as a teaching manual for about fifty years.”

  “So much for justice,” Ash whispered.

  “He’s burning in Hell now, at least,” Caleb growled.

  “The doctor died in the 1850s, a wealthy and revered man,” Noah said with distaste. “Delphine LaLaurie died in the 1870s. When news of her death reached New Orleans, there was a celebration.”

  Caleb crossed his arms and frowned. “So, what’s this got to do with us?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Wyatt said, frustrated.

  Ryan groaned. “What the hell, man?”

  Noah looked to Ash. “We just wanted you to know what it’s not.”

  Ash nodded and gave him a weak smile. He knew Noah was terrified of the supernatural because he believed, and he knew Wyatt didn’t. The fact that they’d both spent most of the day doing this for him was enough.

  “But,” Wyatt said with a little more enthusiasm, “we did find some history that does pertain to you.”

  “Let’s have it,” Caleb said.

  “The original plot of land that Gravedigger’s sits on was used as a tavern, inn, and medical practice all rolled into one,” Wyatt said, going into his lecturing voice again. “It was built on the land of the French doctor I told you about, and he leased some of the space out for extra cash.”

  Ash stared sightlessly for a long moment and then nodded as he tried to refocus. “And the Fossors?” he asked with a frown. “What have they got to do with it?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “There’s no record of any family named Fossor in the early twentieth century until they showed up in Richmond and bought the land. It’s possible they were immigrants who changed their surname, but there’s nothing on them. Don’t know where they came from or why. But I’ll get to that in a minute.”

  Noah broke in; it seemed the two of them were used to tag-team lecturing. “So far, we have a tentative timeline for the Gravedigger’s land. The original farmland was parceled up and sold to a Virginia newcomer, a doctor who was said to be from France. His name was DuBois.”

  Ash sat forward, eyes wide. “DuBois. So the legend got it partially right.”

  “It seems,” Noah said. “He opened up a practice from his home, and when that began to grow and prosper, he turned the original house into the tavern/inn/doctor’s office and moved his family to a larger home built further back on the land. By all accounts, the doctor and his wife were good people, well-respected, blah blah blah. They were here for roughly thirty years.”

  Wyatt flipped through one of the folders they’d brought. “When rumors of war started brewing, the doctor picked up his family and moved them back to France.”

  “Right. All but one son,” Noah stated as he pointed to a particular document. “This deeded the land from a Dr. Francois DuBois—”

  “Rhymey,” Ryan said.

  “Shut up, crab cake. From the doctor, to his son, Vincent.” Wyatt held up an old tintype of the son to show them.

  “Tall, thin, dark hair,” Ryan said as he peered at it. He looked at Ash critically. “Kind of like you.”

  “I hate you. Shut up,” Ash grunted, earning a chuckle from Ryan as he took another bite of his apple. “Why’d the son stay?” he asked Wyatt. “Watch over the land?”

  “Possibly. My feeling, though, from all these accounts and reading between the lines, is that the son was a bit of an outcast. His family was glad to leave him behind. As a young boy he hung around his father’s office and spied on the procedures he did. The records describe him as ‘touched.’ That’s pretty much—”

  “Polite way of saying batshit crazy,” Noah said.

  “Right,” Wyatt said. “He was intelligent, though, and charismatic, although he never courted any of the local daughters. General feeling seems to be that he may have been a repressed homosexual who turned violent in his youth because of his ‘confusion.’”

  “Why are you queers all so violent?” Ryan asked with mock sincerity.

  Ash snorted and kicked him under the table.

  “See!” Ryan cried, pointing at Ash.

  Wyatt huffed at them and shifted in his seat. “Anyway! By the time Vincent DuBois turned twenty-five, strangers, drifters, and the occasional visitor to town were known to be disappearing with frightening regularity. Rumors started about his involvement, but nothing was ever proven.”

  Ash swallowed hard. “Was he killing these people and then hiding them in that storeroom under the tavern?”

  Wyatt held his breath for a moment, then nodded. “From what I can tell, he killed them there, too. It was his own little doctor’s office, complete with all the tools his father had left behind.”

  “Sort of like LaLaurie after all,” Ryan said.

  “That’s just great,” Caleb said.

  “When the Civil War came along, it gave him a new outlet,” Wyatt continued. “Vincent DuBois rose all the way up to lieutenant colo
nel in the Confederate army before being demoted due to ‘cruel and unusual’ acts against both prisoners of war and his own men. I couldn’t find anything detailing what he’d done, specifically, except this reference in one infantryman’s diary that talks about an unnamed officer who he saw ‘engaged in unnatural acts’ with the dead bodies of enemy soldiers.”

  Noah grunted. “Ew.”

  “Oh, gross.”

  “Agreed,” Caleb said.

  Ash glanced at him and nodded, his lip curling in disgust.

  “Yeah,” Wyatt said. “After the war, his land was confiscated and he was sent to jail for a very long time. The court records of what exactly it was he did or was accused of have been lost or destroyed. I couldn’t find them anywhere.”

  “Damn,” Ryan said. “And I was so hoping to have more detailed nightmares tonight.”

  Noah held up his hand. “Word.”

  “The records go on to say that Vincent DuBois was released from prison ten years later for his ‘exemplary behavior and gentlemanly conduct while incarcerated.’ He immediately went back to his family’s land, which was no longer his, remember, and set fire to every building on the property, save for one. Five people were killed, either caught in the fires or trying to put them out. Vincent was found in the one building he didn’t destroy, the old tavern. He was rumored to have been found on a rumpled sheet, bleeding from a self-inflicted wound in his neck.”

  “The tavern was his sanctuary,” Ash said distantly. “He didn’t want to sully it.”

  Wyatt stared at him for a moment, then nodded. “The tavern was condemned and then destroyed within the year. The town promptly forgot about the embarrassment and swept the story under the rug. Over thirty years later, the land was parceled up, the lot was bought by the Fossors, and the house was built.”

  Ash frowned at Wyatt. “Is that the end of it?”

  “Not really,” Wyatt said. “There have been three deaths on the property that mirror the death of Vincent DuBois almost exactly.”

  “Murders?” Ash asked.

  “Suicides.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Three that we’ve found. 1924, 1949, and 1976. All the victims were young men in their late twenties to early thirties, dark hair, around six foot, and slight of build.”

  “Like me.”

  Wyatt nodded. “I’ve got the pictures of the—”

  “I don’t want to see those,” Ash whispered. “I don’t get the connection.”

  Wyatt blinked at him and then glanced at his copied articles as if they should be self-explanatory. “If you’d look at the photos, you’d be able to see how similar they are.”

  “Then explain it, ’cause I’m not looking at pictures of dead guys who look like me.”

  Wyatt nodded. “Right. Sorry.”

  With a sigh, Ash looked down at the papers spread across the table. “Who were they?”

  Wyatt looked less sure of himself after Ash had snapped at him. He’d come a long way from the shy curator who’d stepped through the door of Gravedigger’s a week and a half ago, but Ash wasn’t the only one who needed a little coddling right now. He reached out and patted Wyatt’s knee.

  Wyatt took a deep breath and shuffled his papers. “The first victim was the Fossors’ youngest grandson. By all reports he was a stand-up guy, well liked. Battled with what appears to be depression. The most popular rumors of the day involved him and a boarding school classmate.”

  “Sounds like he was a queer who managed not to turn into a sadist,” Caleb said, glaring at Ryan almost playfully.

  “Right.” Wyatt looked between them, probably still not used to the antagonistic way they played off each other. “His death was ruled a murder, and the case was never solved despite all the money the Fossors threw around trying to find the killer. The Fossors lost everything shortly after that when the Great Depression hit. Their house was sold, and then sold again less than a year later halfway through a restoration because the family who’d bought it swore it was haunted and wanted nothing to do with it. By the time of the second death in the late forties, the house had been cut up into apartments.”

  “Like every other house in the area during the Depression and after the War,” Ryan offered.

  “The 1949 death was ruled a suicide,” Wyatt said. “He was a soldier. He came home from the war traumatized, having lost his best friend to a sniper round. The rumors, again, said that he and the other young man had actually been lovers. People thought it was just the last straw for him after what he’d seen in the European theater. No one knew about or remembered the earlier death in the same house, so they didn’t connect it.”

  “So what do you propose is the soldier’s connection?” Ash asked.

  “The way he died, his appearance, his location, and his rumored sexual orientation.”

  “Well that’s not shaky at all,” Ryan said.

  Wyatt shrugged, unapologetic. “I’m stretching my mind here to ponder the fact that a vengeful ghost is popping up every few decades and killing people, okay? Work with me.”

  Ash stood up and paced away a few steps, a frown furrowing his brow. “Ghosts don’t kill people,” he said, trying to convince himself.

  “Then why are you afraid of him?” Wyatt asked. Ash turned around and glared at him. Wyatt just shrugged.

  “So, what, you propose that these men were all killed by a ghost?” Noah demanded.

  “No. Okay? No. I’m just saying, here are the facts. Make of them what you will.”

  “Lay it out for me,” Ash said, watching Wyatt and Noah with a frown. They were fighting, he could tell that much. He wasn’t sure why, though. Wyatt peered up at him.

  “At the time of the third death, the press thought it was a copycat of the first, which someone managed to unearth for the sensationalism of it. But later, forensics proved that the man killed himself.” They all stared at Wyatt with blank expressions. He continued. “There were no ligature marks, no signs of struggle. He just set the sheet up, laid down, and stabbed himself in the neck. It took him a long time to bleed out and he never even tried to get help. The press got a hold of it and someone investigated the initial murder and found the same things. In most suicides, there are signs that the person hesitated, had second thoughts or shied away from inflicting the killing blow. Not the case with any of these. All three cases are nearly identical: an otherwise healthy, sane, intelligent young man just up and offs himself for no apparent reason.”

  “With the exception of the soldier,” Ryan said.

  Wyatt shrugged. “His motive was just rumor and conjecture.”

  “You’re implying the ghost of Vincent DuBois drove them to it.” Ash could hardly force the question from his locked throat.

  Wyatt shrugged again. “You said he told you he was seeking the lost. Maybe he considered himself lost, and he saw himself in these men.” He bit his lip. “Maybe he sees himself in you.”

  “Wyatt!” Noah shouted. “What the hell, man?”

  “I see myself in you. Worst pickup line ever,” Ryan grumbled.

  Ash looked between them uncertainly and licked his lips. “Are you saying this to humor me? Because you think it’s what I want to hear?”

  “Is it?” Wyatt asked.

  Ash breathed in deeply. “Maybe.”

  Noah leaned closer. “You want to hear that a homicidal ghost is after you?”

  Ash frowned. “Not when you put it that way.” He turned to Wyatt. “You’re not making it up?”

  Wyatt gestured to the array of historical documents laid out as proof and shook his head. He met Ash’s eyes, looking a little scared, but not breaking eye contact.

  “I guess . . . I appreciate the thought?” Ash finally said. “But now I’m even more freaked out, okay? What do you propose we do?”

  “You can’t go on like this,” Caleb said.

  Ash glared at him and crossed his arms, but he knew Caleb was right.

  Wyatt reached for Ash’s hand. “Let me call the people who wor
ked with us to set up the exhibition.”

  “What people?”

  “We did a lot of consulting with local ghost hunting societies,” Noah said. “Exorcists, ghost . . . purgers, whatever they’re called.

  Wyatt nodded and smiled at Ash. Ash remembered him talking about the several groups he’d contacted, including an affiliate of the Atlantic Paranormal Society and a Wiccan spiritualist.

  Ash hung his head and tried to come to terms with whether he should be embarrassed or relieved. Even if it was all bullshit and Wyatt was just humoring him, it wouldn’t hurt anything. If it was real, though, if there really was some homicidal ghost after him because he had curly dark hair and liked men, he wanted help. But this was too much. It was ridiculous. “No.”

  “Ash.”

  “I said no, okay? I’m not a fucking sideshow.”

  “That’s not what we’re saying. We’re just looking out for your peace of mind.”

  Ash closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He could still see the milky blue of the apparition’s eyes, and it sent shivers down his spine. “Fine,” he said after taking a minute or two to simply breathe.

  Wyatt stood to retrieve his phone from his satchel. As he dialed, Noah looked around at the others and smirked. “Is this an appropriate time for a ‘who you gonna call’ joke?”

  Caleb rolled his eyes and tossed a napkin at Noah’s face. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty, lad, or I’d have to kick you out of bed.”

  “I’m bendy too.”

  “Aye, you are that,” Caleb said with a laugh.

  Ash covered his face and retreated to his bedroom before any further mental images could embed in his mind.

  Wyatt wasn’t sure what to expect from the people he called to come to the bar. They were a Wiccan group of spiritualists who helped people with possible hauntings and houses that needed spiritual cleansing.

  The members he’d spoken to had seemed nice enough, and surprisingly normal and reasonable when Wyatt expressed his doubts about the whole thing. They arrived at Gravedigger’s the next Sunday, the first day the bar had been closed down and empty since they’d made their plans. Four of them showed up and greeted Wyatt and the others, requesting they not be given any information about what had been happening until after they had completed their tour of the tavern.