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  BILLY WHISTLER

  The Bayou Hauntings

  Book Four

  Bill Thompson

  Published by

  Ascendente Books

  Dallas, Texas

  This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and any reference to specific places or living persons is incidental. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal rights to publish all the materials in this book.

  Billy Whistler: The Bayou Hauntings 4

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2019

  V.1.0

  This book may not be reproduced, transmitted or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic or mechanical without the express written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by Ascendente Books

  ISBN 978-09992503-2-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Books by Bill Thompson

  The Bayou Hauntings

  CALLIE

  FORGOTTEN MEN

  THE NURSERY

  BILLY WHISTLER

  Brian Sadler Archaeological Mystery Series

  THE BETHLEHEM SCROLL

  ANCIENT: A SEARCH FOR THE LOST CITY

  OF THE MAYAS

  THE STRANGEST THING

  THE BONES IN THE PIT

  ORDER OF SUCCESSION

  THE BLACK CROSS

  TEMPLE

  Apocalyptic Fiction

  THE OUTCASTS

  The Crypt Trilogy

  THE RELIC OF THE KING

  THE CRYPT OF THE ANCIENTS

  GHOST TRAIN

  Middle Grade Fiction

  THE LEGEND OF GUNNERS COVE

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to the wonderful people of Abbeville, Louisiana. I visited Vermilion Parish doing research for this book, and fell in love with its Southern charm and beauty. Everywhere I turned, friendly people helped me. I got tips on haunted houses, unusual sites in the parish and whether Dupuy’s or Shuck’s had the best food. The jury’s still out on that one – I loved them both!

  Many of the places I visited when researching Billy Whistler resulted from conversations with Abbeville locals. I went to Perry, Bancker Grotto, Henry, Esther and the cemetery at Mouton Cove. I stopped to watch a crawfish farmer in an airboat running his traps and I saw a lot of the beautiful Vermilion River, which plays an important part in this story.

  Thanks to you wonderful people who helped me so much. I’ll be back — now that I’ve visited Vermilion Parish I can’t stay away!

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks go to Carolyn, Gretchen and Natalie at the Caldwell House, a wonderful old mansion I highly recommend for an overnight visit. While I was there, I also met Carolyn’s sassy and captivating granddaughter Ava. She and Carolyn have roles in this book.

  My research began in the parish court clerk’s office, where Nanette was a huge help. Tip is one of the security people at the courthouse, and I appreciate his patience as I went back and forth. They’re in the story too.

  Thanks to Lee and Brent, two local folks I was fortunate to sit beside at the bar at Shuck’s. They gave me insight about local lakes and Vermilion Bay. The man at the cultural center, whose name I’m sorry I failed to get, gave me lots of useful information about the town of Perry. Many others offered tips and advice.

  I also appreciate my old friend, former District Judge Tom Landrith, who furnished helpful legal information.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The night of May 26, 1880

  Abbeville, Vermilion Parish, Louisiana

  The Fleur de Lis Tavern faced Pere Megret Street near the river. It was a melting pot for the lower end of society — stevedores from the dock, former soldiers still grousing about a war the South should have won, free men of color, merchants, and a few females — working girls rotated in from Baton Rouge to serve the customers.

  As a clock chimed ten, five men gathered around a table in a storage room at the back of the tavern. On a mission, each slipped in through the rear door and crept along a dark hallway to the meeting place. If someone recognized them — and in this small town it could happen — their plans would be thwarted.

  The men were there to rid Vermilion Parish of a pestilence. For years a cult called the Sons of Jehovah had lived near the river south of Abbeville. They built a commune, which they called Asher, after a biblical king of that name. Even the word commune made the good Catholics of Abbeville blush. That word sounded like fornication, and people whispered that that sin — and a lot worse — was going on out there in the woods.

  The only practical way to get to Asher was by boat, and people snuck down there now and then to see what was going on. They reported hearing plenty of whooping and hollering, accompanied by loud hymn-singing ’til the wee hours. To some, it sounded just like the all-night revivals the Pentecostals held every year outside town, but no one dared suggest the sacrilege of a cult compared to legitimate prayer meetings that God-fearing Christians conducted.

  A courageous spy ventured down late one night and barely escaped with his life. As he rowed away, they spotted him and launched several boats. Only by hiding in the trees along the shoreline, he related later in his breathless account, did he escape capture and certain execution in some crazed ritual. Thank God he made it back to tell the others what was happening in that abominable hellhole. His report sounded awful: they seemed to all be drunk, jumping around, speaking in tongues, and all naked as a jaybird, and — this was the worst part — some of the naked ones were young girls not even developed yet.

  This was the last straw. From the pulpit next Sunday morning the town priest said they might call themselves the Sons of Jehovah, but Jehovah played no part in what those despicable sinners were doing. Sons of Lucifer was a more fitting name, and something must be done. God demanded it.

  Perhaps the spy’s account had been true, or maybe he invented it to get the ball rolling. True or not, from then on the festering issue of Asher was all people talked about. Men from the cult were easily identifiable in their black suits and tall stovepipe hats. When they came to town to buy supplies, people glared at them and crossed the street to avoid passing too close. Some shopkeepers ordered the men to leave, saying their kind wasn’t welcome. Over evening meals, wives asked husbands why no one did anything, and at last five men decided it was time.

  They came from very different backgrounds, and only something like the outrage at Asher would bring them together. Besides being in their thirties and Abbeville natives, they had just one thing in common — each of them was a regular at the Fleur de Lis, and each was outspoken about his disgust over the Sons of Jehovah.

  Frank Cocheron made his living cutting and selling timber. He hired a crew to fell the trees, used a team and wagon to transport logs to the dock at Perry, and sold his load to merchants who hauled the logs in boats down to the Gulf. Frank worked long hours doing backbreaking work and lived in a shack down by the river. The only he spent was on his sole frivolity, drinking whisky at the Fleur de Lis every evening.

  David Hebert served as Abbeville’s first and only funeral director, and his business was picking up, even though many people still preferred to hold services at home. He and his wife lived in a nice two-story house and were well off in comparison to most.

  Bobby St. John was the parish sheriff by day and a regular at the Fleur de Lis by night. He drank too much, and as a result he was always broke. That infuriated his wife, who struggled to raise four children with no help from Bobby.

  Simon Navarro did a little of this and a little of
that. He was a smuggler and rumrunner on the Vermilion River, a frequent patron of the ladies of the night, and a hard-drinking renegade. He was at the bar every night and often ended up on the sidewalk outside when his mouth and the liquor ended him in a punch-throwing brawl.

  Auguste Dauphin worked in one of Perry’s many blacksmith shops. Street-smart and handy, he carried a chip on his shoulder. Auguste blamed the world for his situation, his lack of formal education, and most anything else that dealt misfortune to him. He was strong and his black beard and mustache gave him a fierce countenance. When Simon Navarro got in a fight at the Fleur de Lis, Auguste always jumped in too. He didn’t care who won — he just loved to fight, bully and push people around. His father had died in a tavern gunfight when Auguste was a little boy. He left him an 1844 ten-dollar gold coin with the initials AWD carved into it, and Auguste carried it in his pocket. He called it his lucky piece, although it had brought no luck to father or son.

  The proprietor allowed the men to use his storeroom for their clandestine meetings. He knew what they were up to, but he didn’t ask questions. There was a blasphemous scourge in the parish, and maybe they’d fix it. The priest had said God wanted this done, and that made it all right.

  After too many drinks one evening, they agreed on a plan. Over the next few days things came together, and at the stroke of midnight on May 26 — tonight — they would settle things in Asher.

  The five sat in the back room, knocking back shot after shot to bolster their courage. The night before at eleven, Simon had taken his boat down to Asher. He’d watched and listened and found everything dark and quiet, and that was what they needed to know. Folks went to bed before midnight in Asher.

  When the clock struck twelve, they raised their glasses in a final toast, walked down to the river, and loaded several canisters of gasoline onto two boats. They pulled away from the dock and the mission was underway. Although there had been plenty of alcohol already, each carried more whisky to fortify himself for the task that lay ahead. They swigged from their flasks and sat in silence as the boats floated down the Vermilion, the only sound the swish-swishing of their oars.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Present Day

  After a quick lunch at one of his favorite French Quarter restaurants, a place called Kingfish, Landry Drake walked to Royal, took a right, and entered the studios of Channel Nine — WCCY, the Voice of the Crescent City.

  He went to his office, tossed his jacket in a chair, and noticed a sticky note atop a stack of papers sitting in the middle of his desk.

  Check this out and get with me. I skimmed it and it looks right up your alley. There’s a voicemail you should hear too. Ted

  Ted Carpenter had been the station manager for four years. During that time, Landry’s investigative reporting segments had propelled Channel Nine into the national spotlight. The suits at Triboro Media in Chattanooga who owned WCCY-TV made what became a very profitable decision. They aired the Bayou Hauntings series on the company’s twelve other stations. His ghost-hunting activities fascinated the public, and the popular show became a national sensation. Wherever Landry went these days, people recognized him.

  Ted lived vicariously through Landry, passing along things he read or saw online that might lead to a story. The stuff he gave Landry today was a six-week series that ran in the Abbeville Meridional newspaper in May and June 1890. The first article was entitled “Vermilion’s Dirty Little Secret: Murder, Mystery and Mayhem in Asher.” Another title read “The Curious Tale of Billy Whistler: Myth or Reality?”

  He procrastinated. Whenever he glanced at the pile of articles, he wondered if he would waste a lot of time wading through them. When he left for lunch, Ted caught him in the lobby.

  “I haven’t heard from you. Did you see what I left on your desk?”

  Landry promised he’d get into it after lunch. “Those articles are from 1890,” he added. “Is there something in particular I should focus on?”

  “I got a voicemail, a strange one that made me nervous. Because of it, I searched the web and found what I left you. I skimmed through parts of it and sent it right over to you.”

  “Who left the voicemail?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t leave her name or a number. Usually people who call a TV station want publicity, but this one’s different. I think she’s scared. If you have a minute, let me play it for you before you go out.”

  He heard a young voice — maybe a teenaged girl — who spoke in the same syrupy drawl as Landry. She was an Acadian — a south Louisiana Cajun — and seemingly uneducated.

  You don’t know me, but there’s bad stuff going on over here in Vermilion Parish, and somebody has to check it out. Look up the story of Billy Whistler. It ain’t a made-up tale, and the cult ain’t gone. Somebody still dies at Asher every Remembering Day. I’m dead too if they find out I called you, but it has to stop.

  Landry listened a second time and asked Ted’s opinion about what the girl said.

  “Read the stuff I left you. I just glanced at it, but on the first few pages I saw references to Asher and a cult called the Sons of Jehovah.”

  “Yeah, and I glanced at a title about Billy Whistler. What’s that about? It’s a story from 1890. What’s happening today that’s part of something that old?”

  “Maybe nothing, but I can’t get that girl’s voice out of my head. Do you agree she sounded scared? I want you to read that stuff, tell me what you think, and let me know if you should go up there and look around.”

  Landry agreed it was a thought-provoking message, but he thought Ted was moving too fast. His boss hadn’t read the document, yet he was eager for Landry to go check things out. That wasn’t the way the world of paranormal investigation worked. Every lead required hours of research and most of them ended up worthless. But none of that mattered this time. His boss asked him to read it, so he would.

  And he had to admit something about this sounded interesting.

  He changed his mind about eating out, picked up lunch, and ate at his desk. He dove into the material, taking notes and pausing now and then to search the web. He finished around five, drained after hours of research. What he learned raised more questions than answers, and the voicemail made things even more perplexing. He printed off his notes and walked to Ted’s office.

  Ted leaned into his desk, eager to hear what Landry learned. He said, “Give me a one-word summary.”

  “Puzzling. If the voicemail’s true, a bunch of renegades from Abbeville started something in 1880 that’s still simmering today.”

  “Excellent! Tell me everything — not just the facts but your thoughts and ideas. Give me the investigative angle.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his desk like a dog about to get a treat.

  Landry glanced at his notes. “The article is a tenth-anniversary piece recalling an event that happened the night of May 26, 1880. The Sons of Jehovah was a cult that appeared in Vermilion Parish around 1840. They bought land and built a commune on the Vermilion River south of Abbeville. They called it Asher.

  “That night in 1880 some men burned the town to the ground. There were rumors that they murdered seven cult members, but there’s no proof of that. One thing’s for sure — the cult left their town and never returned. Maybe they disappeared, or integrated into the population, or something else happened to them. It’s a mystery.

  “The writer titled the article Vermilion’s dirty little secret because the perpetrators were never caught, and anyone who knew anything kept his mouth shut. The writer relied on rumor as much as fact because that’s all he had. Since he was a lifelong resident of Abbeville, he knew the stories as well as anyone, and that helped him build a credible account.

  “One rumor was that the perpetrators lived in Abbeville, but even today no one knows for sure. The Abbeville possibility came about because the morning after the fire, a woman appeared at the office of the Abbeville newspaper — the same paper that published the articles ten years later — and reported her thirty-fou
r-year-old husband missing. She spoke to the publisher, who also owned the paper, and said Auguste Dauphin had gone to the Fleur de Lis tavern on Pere Megret Street the previous evening around ten. He told his wife he had something important to do, and said he’d be home before daybreak, but he never returned.”

  The publisher said she was in the wrong place; she should be talking to the sheriff.

  She shook her head and explained that her husband had been out late several nights recently. When confronted, he said he was meeting with men like him who wanted to “take care of things in Asher.”

  “Sheriff St. John was one of those men,” she confided. “I can’t go to him because I think he’s involved.”

  The publisher faced a dilemma. He’d learned something this morning, and from this conversation, he was certain she hadn’t heard it yet. Someone had burned Asher to the ground last night. Without a doubt the woman’s husband was involved, and this might end up being a huge story. But he wasn’t about to get mixed up in a missing person case, or get crosswise with his good friend the sheriff. Regardless of the woman’s concern, and despite the chance for a scoop, this was a matter for the law.

  He told Mrs. Dauphin he would help and asked her to wait in his office for a few minutes. He walked a block to the sheriff’s office and repeated the woman’s conversation to Bobby St. John. The sheriff also knew about the fire at Asher overnight.

  “Bobby, this sounds crazy, but she believes you’re involved somehow,” he said, and the sheriff chuckled and shook his head.

  “You and I both know Auguste,” St. John said. “He drinks too much, and he talks big when he does. He doesn’t have the guts to do something like that. I’m going down to Asher today, and I imagine I’ll find those crazy Sons of Jehovah burned their own town and picked up stakes to go somewhere else. If you ask me, I hope it’s way far from this parish. I don’t need ’em.”