Die Again (The Bayou Hauntings Book 6) Read online

  DIE AGAIN

  The Bayou Hauntings

  Book Six

  Bill Thompson

  Published by

  Ascendente Books

  Dallas, Texas

  This is a work of fiction. Where real people, events, businesses, organizations and locales appear, they are used fictitiously. All other elements of this novel are products of the author’s imagination. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal rights to publish all the materials in this book.

  Die Again: The Bayou Hauntings 6

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2020

  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 978-09992503-6-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Books by Bill Thompson

  The Bayou Hauntings

  CALLIE

  FORGOTTEN MEN

  THE NURSERY

  BILLY WHISTLER

  THE EXPERIMENTS

  DIE AGAIN

  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

  This book was written during an amazing, terrible time in world history. COVID-19, aka the coronavirus, changed everything in a matter of days. What had been routine became anything but, as the government ordered businesses to close and people to shelter in place.

  Masks and gloves became part of one’s attire when doing “essential” tasks like going to the market…or the liquor store. Many people halted all social interaction. We didn’t go to other peoples’ houses, we didn’t allow children or grandchildren into ours, and our hair grew long and gray as we stayed within our homes.

  As Die Again is released, the world is slowly opening up, hoping that a second round doesn’t happen while people are desperate to socialize and do “normal” things like eating out and shopping.

  Much will never be as it was. Establishments we’ve loved will not reopen, fist bumps may be the new handshakes, and it’s hard to imagine being at a football game or a crowded bar or in a rush-hour subway car.

  I dedicate this one to first responders and those who kept things running, from doctors, nurses and hospital workers to store clerks and stockers, long-haul truckers, farmers, scientists and a million others. Without them, all of this would be exponentially worse.

  My prayers are with the families of those who’ve lost the battle and others who will die before this is over. God be with you all.

  Thanks to Sally Hamilton, a good friend and reader of my books. One rainy morning she and TC accompanied Margie and me on a fact-finding mission in the French Quarter.

  We walked the streets where Landry Drake lives and works, and we saw the restaurants and bars he frequents. We also visited the block on Toulouse Street that became the setting for the haunted building in Die Again.

  Her insights aided my plot development and I appreciate her willingness to offer them. Sally, thanks for your support and friendship. Here’s to martinis after COVID-19.

  Have you ever had an odd feeling upon entering a place? A tingling down your back or hairs rising on your arms?

  Do you know how some places just feel haunted?

  Is it possible that spirits of the long-dead — or the undead — can inhabit a structure for hundreds of years?

  Is it possible such specters can be benevolent, friendly entities who are trapped somehow, unable to obtain release to move on, and instead are condemned to remain in a place they inhabited long ago?

  Surely there are such mysterious things. Haunted house tour guides speak of them kindly, describing how they appear in mirrors or on stairways, searching for lost loves or dead children or something else. We are told they mean no harm. They are friendly spirits.

  If you believe in ghosts at all, you accept that tormented apparitions also lurk in the dark places of some old houses. Perhaps they are doomed to experience horrific events night after night. They terrify the most jaded visitors, who see ghostly scenes from the past play out as if in a Netflix movie. These pitiful ghosts scare people but don’t harm them.

  Lastly, there are the malevolent ones, the phantoms who are doomed to relive unspeakable events of their own making. These creatures are evil to the core, and what they do in haunted structures isn’t part of a movie. They are as real as our lives are today.

  If a person unwittingly steps across a shadowy threshold and enters such a building, all bets are off. Whether he believes in ghosts doesn’t matter now, because he is in the realm of the undead. Before he leaves — if he leaves — he will be a believer.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Come in. Walk into the courtyard.

  Look over there. Take those stairs up to the balcony.

  No! I don’t want to go up there!

  But you must. It’s where you belong. You know you can’t resist. You must go up.

  As she walked to the wrought-iron stairs and stepped upon the first riser, horror and dread engulfed her mind. She knew what terrifying things awaited her at the top of the stairway. Yet she climbed, because she had no choice.

  Tiffany awoke in a cold sweat. As usual, she’d kicked the flimsy top sheet off, and the damp one on which she lay made her shiver. She covered herself with a blanket, flipped her sodden pillow and lay back. Her breath came in brief gasps as she recalled the nightmare that had plagued her mind a thousand times since childhood.

  It was always the same. Once her breathing returned to normal, she allowed her mind to replay the dream. When she was young, this part had terrified her, but at some point, she’d learned that she had to watch it one more time before she could sleep. It had become a ritual, but at least she was awake the second time. Somehow it made the situation a little less frightening.

  It was nighttime and Tiffany walked down an unfamiliar cobbled street, dark except for two beams of light from gas lamps that pierced the mist down the block. At the far end, the street dead-ended into a broad, busy thoroughfare. She could hear music — the thump-thump of a drum and a blaring trumpet. There were indistinct voices punctuated by high-pitched laughter and an occasional scream of delight. Now and then couples passed by her darkened street as they walked along the busy one. Something was different about them. They appeared to be in costume, but she was too far away to see details, and in the dream she never drew closer to them.

  Her footsteps echoed on the stones of the narrow sidewalk as she came to a tall building on the right. It had three simple arched openings on the ground floor. Two contained boarded-up doors and the third an old slatted gate. On a second floor above the arches, five tall windows fronted a wrought-iron balcony. High above them on the roof were three small dormer windows. She peered through the slats and saw a long hallway filled with gloomy shadows.

  A shiver of fear swept over Tiffany as she lay in bed, knowing what came next. She reached for the gate’s handle. It opened with a slow, mournful groan. She stepped over a thr
eshold and crept past dark rooms down the corridor toward an archway opening into a courtyard. As she walked out, the clouds parted and moonbeams illuminated an ancient fountain. As was the style in New Orleans, the patio was surrounded by buildings. On a second-floor balcony stood a person — a beautiful dark-skinned girl dressed in white gossamer — who stared into a doorway where a tall woman stood.

  As the girl turned toward the courtyard, Tiffany smiled at her but drew back in horror. Her face was twisted into a horrifying grimace — something between abject terror and resignation of her fate.

  The woman stepped through the doorway behind the pale figure. She held something — perhaps a short crop or a riding whip.

  “Elberta, get back in here!”

  The girl held her hands to her face, her eyes wide with fear as the woman stepped out onto the balcony and without warning pushed the girl in the white dress over the railing.

  Time slowed to a standstill in the dream. She watched the girl tumble headfirst toward the courtyard, her dress billowing in the air and her raven-black hair dancing around her face. Her body slammed into the stones less than a foot from where she stood. She knelt and took the girl’s hand as her filmy white negligee turned blood-red.

  The dying girl looked into her face and whispered, “Because you know her sins, you are doomed to a death just like mine.”

  With that malevolent pronouncement, the dream ended.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Inside a waterlogged box, Jack Blair adjusted his sleeping bag, tucking it in around his body as best he could. The recessed doorway provided little shelter as wintry wind drove a steady rain against the crate that was his home. A steady drip-drip from somewhere above splashed on the cardboard, penetrating to form rivulets on the old tarp that covered his sleeping bag. Even in a drunken stupor he couldn’t get much sleep.

  Jack would have to find a new box tomorrow, and he hoped the dumpsters behind the stores on Canal Street would prove fruitful. If not, he’d sleep on the ground. He hated doing that in the winter, when the wind bit through his skimpy layers of clothing and the rain soaked everything. But he’d survive.

  Through the howling wind and the annoying drips, he heard the voice.

  Come over here and get warm.

  No! I won’t do it!

  There’s no rain inside. It’s dry and cozy. You can find a quiet corner and sleep out of the wind. No one will bother you.

  Trying to stop the words from pounding inside his brain, Jack held his gloved hands to his ears. He swigged the last drops from a half-pint of strawberry vodka he’d bought after a day of panhandling outside the casino. The building bothered him more often now; he should find another place to sleep — another doorway on a different street. But he was a creature of habit with a life too far down the bottle to consider doing something different. And he wasn’t sure if he could move. Something — something unexplainable kept him here.

  Sometimes he looked over at the building and it was different. There was a sign at the top that said LaPiere Building-1803. Then at other times, when he was closer to sober or maybe closer to dead drunk, the sign wasn’t there. His mind played tricks on him a lot. Maybe there wasn’t a sign at all.

  It didn’t seem that long ago that the building across the street started calling to him. He couldn’t recall exactly when it started because the alcohol fogged his brain, blending reality with fantasy to the point he couldn’t ever be sure about anything. At first it had spoken maybe once a night. Now it rarely stopped.

  Awhile back the building told him the gate was unlocked, and he stumbled over to see. He could have gone inside then, but he was afraid. That might have been a month ago, or maybe a year. Time made no sense to him these days.

  But last night the siren called again, enticing him, swirling dry, warm thoughts through his mind on a nasty, rainy night like this one. That time the building played a video in his head to show him what lay behind that gate. A comfortable night’s sleep was as simple as crossing the street, going through the gate and walking down a long dark hallway flanked by rooms.

  One of those rooms is yours, Jack. Come on over and choose where you’ll sleep.

  That time he obeyed, and he sensed something wrong from the moment he stepped inside and closed the creaky gate behind him. The old building truly was dry and lots warmer than sleeping in a box. Everything was dark and quiet — there was no one else inside but him. Once he took a few steps down the darkened corridor and into a courtyard, he understood why.

  He felt creepy in this place. Something sent chills down his spine like a sense of impending danger mixed with a dark foreboding. Something evil hid inside these walls.

  He saw almost nothing in the gloom, but Jack wasn’t afraid of the dark. He had spent so many nights sleeping in doorways that he considered the night his friend. When the sun rose, people judged and mocked, belittling those whose plights they didn’t understand, throwing quarters into an outstretched hand when their own pockets bulged with hundred-dollar bills. Only the night brought peace, an alcohol-fueled release from worry and pain, and hope for a night’s sleep without a nudge from a police officer telling him to move on. Or a building calling, beckoning, welcoming him.

  He crept down the hallway, peering into the rooms along the corridor and seeing broken furniture, trash and boxes. A tenant had abandoned the place after Katrina, someone told him. How long ago was that? Fifteen years? He couldn’t remember.

  As the sense of dread subsided and Jack thought about picking a room, his heart began beating wildly. There it was again — a sense of malevolence and hostility. It wasn’t the rooms themselves, but what lay within them.

  Something grasped his hands — not an actual thing, perhaps just a thought in his head — and guided him toward the courtyard. He wanted to resist — to run away — but his feet carried him out into the rain to a narrow wrought-iron stairway that ran up along a side wall.

  Walk up the stairs, Jack.

  No! Don’t go up there!

  Yes, Jack. Don’t be afraid.

  No! Don’t do it!

  Part of his mind struggled to pull him away, to take him back down the hallway, back to the reality of the street, but instead he climbed. In a moment he stood on an iron balcony above the courtyard, next to a frightened servant girl. A set of double doors behind her opened into darkness.

  Through his alcohol-induced fog, he saw her shrink back in fear. Something enormous — something huge and black, filled with horror and venom — was in the darkness. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. He felt its presence, its inherent evil, and as the black shape swept onto the balcony and threatened to engulf him, he shut his eyes and braced himself.

  Jack felt a sharp pain in his side, then another.

  Laughter. Voices. Someone saying, “Hey, mister, whatcha doin’ sleeping in that box?”

  He shook his head for a moment, groggily adjusting from the dream to the reality of some drunk kids kicking and taunting him. He grasped the long kitchen knife he kept by his side and crawled out of the box.

  One of the sneering kids called him a bum, but when he brandished the knife, they backed off and ran down toward Decatur. They always did; drunk kids were brave until it looked like they might get hurt.

  He crawled into the box, shook raindrops off the tarp, and climbed into his sleeping bag.

  It was a dream — a nightmare beyond imagination. The courtyard, the balcony, the hauntingly beautiful girl and the — the horrifying black thing — it was just a dream.

  As he struggled to settle his brain, he knew better. Everything had been so real, so terrifying and personal. It wasn’t a dream. He knew he played a part in the horrors over there, and that scared the living hell out of him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Landry Drake tracked Cate Adams’s inbound plane as he waited in the terminal. The flight from Houston’s Hobby Airport took less than an hour, and he couldn’t count the times he’d stood here waiting for Cate to arrive. He was always excited, f
illed with the anticipation that came with seeing her smile, spending a few days with her, and being together again as a couple. His travel schedule made it harder these days, but they both worked to carve out time for each other.

  He loved the Dixieland music that resounded through the cavernous hallway. It seemed fitting, since the airport bore the name of Louis Armstrong, the brilliant jazz musician and New Orleans native. With Mardi Gras just ten days away, the combo entertained arriving passengers with lively renditions of “When the Saints Go Marchin’ In” and “Dixie.”

  Several people in the terminal came over and asked for an autograph, and at first Landry complied with a smile. It came with the territory and it had been gratifying at the beginning. Now one or two requests were okay, but when people lined up, it bothered him. He moved against a wall where he was less visible.

  Their weekend together would be different this time. Usually they eschewed things the tourists did, and they avoided groups of people who might recognize him and monopolize what little time they had. This would be a change for them. Tonight the first of the Mardi Gras parades would roll down St. Charles Avenue and onto Canal Street. Others would follow for ten days, culminating with the Rex parade on Mardi Gras day. On Sunday he and Cate would be in a parade themselves, riding on a huge float and throwing beads into the crowds.

  He smiled at the thought. He’d been to parades before, even the biggest ones on Fat Tuesday itself, when millions of people lined the parade route shoulder to shoulder, pushing and shoving against metal barriers for the chance to grab a ten-cent strand of beads or a cheap plastic cup that some krewe member tossed from a float as it rolled by. But that was ten years ago, when he had been a twenty-year-old college student. Mardi Gras day was a holiday in the Crescent City, but at this stage in life mingling with drunken students and tourists didn’t sound fun at all.