Experiment In Terror - Come Alive Part 14

"Dex, wake up." Perry was whispering harshly, trying to shake me awake.

I slowly opened my eyes, the room dark except for the streetlights that were being filtered in through the gauzy curtains.

"What is it?" Where was I? I sat up and looked around. Perry was beside me in bed, topless, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s glowing in the dim light. We were in New Orleans. The bed and breakfast.

"There's someone on our balcony, she says she wants to speak with you."

I shook my head, blinking fast, swallowing the terror. "What?"

I looked over to the French doors. There was a silhouette of a woman standing on the other side of them. The curtains billowed, a ghost dance.

Perry whispered in my ear. "She says she's going to take me with her, all the way to h.e.l.l."

I spun around to see what Perry meant by that but suddenly she was gone. I was alone in the bed. The woman wasn't on the balcony.

My teeth began chattering, my limbs turning to blocks of ice, holding me to the bed. The fear came so suddenly, so strongly, that I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't do anything.

I just knew that someone was in the room with me. It wasn't outside anymore.

It was in.

"Dex," Perry's small voice called out from the bathroom. "Dex, she's in the mirror."

I tried to call out to her, but my teeth were chattering too much.

"She says she'll give me the baby if I step through the mirror."

No! I tried to scream, but now my jaw was glued shut and my lungs were filling up with internal screams and fluid as cold as dead bones. Dirt began to fill the room, raining down from the ceiling.

"I have to go," Perry said, her voice just an echo. "I'm sorry, baby."

I blinked in my rage, and my mother stood at the edge of the bed, waist deep in the dirt that was rising around the bed like floodwaters. She picked some up in her hands. "I'm coming back for all of you, Declan."

Then she threw the dirt on my head, again and again and again, until it filled my mouth, my nose, my ears, and finally my eyes.

It was all over.

I was dead and buried.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Perry asked during breakfast, gently pushing my hair off my face.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I said right back to her, returning her suspicious look. "You're the one who had someone die right beside them last night."

"And you're the one who woke me up in the middle of the night, acting like you were dying. So that's two scares for me."

I looked around the breakfast dining room of the B&B. We were alone, drinking cup after cup of dark coffee and pulling apart flaky beignets, having gotten to breakfast just at the cut-off point. We were probably pushing our luck, but the breakfast server was sitting outside on the veranda and smoking away, not really caring.

"Well I'm fine, I just had a nightmare."

"How often do you dream about your mother?" she asked. I had to tell her what happened, everything except the baby part. But anyway, it was just a dream; it wasn't real. When things got real, then that's when they became something. This was just my overactive imagination coupled with my raging hormones. Weird s.h.i.t like this happened all the time.

"Not very often," I said truthfully.

"More after you saw her in the motel in Canada?"

I shrugged, hoping she'd drop it. "Doesn't seem like it. Hey, are you sure you're up for shooting tonight? I mean, after last night, I wouldn't be surprised if you wanted to back out of the whole thing."

She shook her head determinedly. "No, I'm good. I mean, I feel kind of icky, like...dirty. I don't know, I can't really explain it. I feel...tainted. Like that's going to stick in my head for a long time. But I feel okay otherwise. I'm not scared, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm just worried about you, kiddo. And frankly, we want you to be a little bit scared. Haunted house TV show, remember?"

She glared at me mockingly. "Still the s.a.d.i.s.t, aren't you? Like the time you made me climb the stairs in the lighthouse."

"I was just trying to look at your a.s.s," I admitted, stuffing the pastry in my mouth.

Maximus had left the B&B early, perhaps to visit Rose or stock up on more flannel shirts and pomade. He left a note but all it said was to meet him in the lobby at 7PM, so Perry and I decided to have a nice touristy day in the Big Easy together. Fluffy, s.e.xy fun between the bookends of death.

At least that was the plan. And we did follow through with it, for the most part. We took a ride in one of the red velvet lined, mule-drawn carriages. We had crawfish and b.l.o.o.d.y Mary's down by the river. We watched a few buskers in Pirates Alley and peered in people's yards in the Garden District. We took the streetcar (wasn't called Desire, but it did set Perry off on an endless-and terrible-Blanche DuBois impression). We got a bit sunburned and humored a couple of crazy drunks.

But then I got restless and curious. I wanted to find an authentic Voodoo shop and do a little research of my own.

"So much for a happy fun date," Perry said as we peered into an in-your-face store, Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop on St. Peter Street.

"Well if this place can't tell us about zombies, I don't know what will," I noted, as I spied a sign in the display window among the figurines and potions that said, Come on in and shop for a spell.

We entered the store, surprised again, this time to see it quite busy and not with just tourists. It wasn't hard to see why: there were tons of statues among all the occult books and unnerving masks. It was a bit creepy having so many eyes on you, whether they were inanimate or not. I felt like nothing was inanimate in Voodoo culture.

There was an adjoining tobacco shop that was capturing Perry's interest, so I decided to nip it in the bud right there.

"Hey, I saw you have that cigarette last night," I warned her.

She shot me an annoyed look. "What are you, my dad?"

"No, I'm your concerned boyfriend who doesn't want you hooked on the stuff."

She looked up in exasperation. "Right, Dex."

"Hey, for every cigarette you smoke, I'm going to smoke one too."

"Now that's mature."

"Can I help you?" A mustached, bow-tie wearing, white guy with knee-high Doc Martens stopped right in front of us. He kinda looked like he was heading to a Marilyn Manson concert-in the 1920s-and got lost along the way.

"Can we help you?" I asked.

He smiled. "I work here. My name's Ezekiel. Let me know if you need any help with anything."

He turned, ready to go greet the next customers but I reached out and touched his arm lightly.

"Hey, uh, Ezekiel?"

He stopped and smiled pleasantly. I noticed he had weird markings tattooed up and down his neck. "Yes?"

"Hi." I nodded at Perry. "We're not from here."

"I figured."

"We're actually visiting friends...and she said she'd heard some rumors about some bad juju going on in the city."

"Bad juju?" he repeated. I had a feeling I was insulting him.

"Sorry," I quickly said, flashing him a smile. "I meant, bad...stuff. Regarding local Mambos. Some of them are raising zombies in the ghetto."

He raised his brows as far as they could go. "Mmmhmm?"

Perry spoke up. "We were wondering if you knew anything about that. We don't know much about your culture, so whatever you could tell us about what's real and what's not would be really, really helpful. We don't want to go around perpetuating a stereotype."

"Oh, thank G.o.d," Ezekiel said dryly. He sighed and gently fingered his mustache. "Look here, I've heard these rumors too, but they must be just that. There have always been priestesses who try and use the spirits for destruction instead of healing, pain instead of love. They're in every religion. But even though there are a few of them in the state at the moment, it doesn't mean they'd bother with zombie rituals. That's outdated, back to the old days when people owned slaves. That just doesn't exist anymore. Curses, hexes, those are way more plausible. The zombie rumors are probably just kids on bath salts, that's all. Everyone points the finger at Voodoo when the first weird thing happens in this town."

"You say there are a few of them at the moment, a few of the Bokors," I said. "Could you tell me their names?"

He looked shocked that I asked. "Of course I won't. I'm not a snitch. Voodoo has a karma aspect to it, you know. Now, if I can interest you in some books on Voodoo, you'll probably find them a lot more helpful."

"Is one of them Mambo Maryse?" Perry asked quickly.

We both watched as Ezekiel's eyes narrowed slightly. Then he smiled. "I have no comment on that."

He looked over my shoulder, making eye contact with a couple who had just entered the shop, and muttered, "Excuse me" while he went after them.

"Well, at least we know that's the truth; Mambo Maryse really isn't the most popular Mambo in town. Do you know what is the most popular Mambo?"

She nodded then shot me a sly grin. "You're two seconds from getting that song in my head again, aren't you?"

"A little bit of Perry in my life," I sang into her ear. "A little bit of Perry by my side."

I grabbed her hands and spun her around the aisle, narrowly missing knocking over a few Voodoo statues. Now that would have been bad juju.

After we left the Voodoo store, feeling no better or worse about the whole zombie situation, we headed back to the B&B, grabbing a quick bite of dinner at a nearby cafe. I voiced my suspicions to Perry about Maryse being behind the walking dead.

"Well, that's pretty obvious," she noted over her piping hot jambalaya that I kept stealing bites from. "She's shunned from the community, apparently for becoming a bad apple. But that Ezekiel dude did say that there were others."

"Since we have Maryse in front of us though, shouldn't we start with that?"

Her forehead scrunched. "I thought you just wanted to film the haunted house and get out of here."

"I do," I told her quickly, feeling like we were one bad joke away from turning into s...o...b.. Doo. "Really. It's just bugging me."

"It's bugging me too," she said. "I'd like to poke around a bit more, though obviously Maryse doesn't want anything to do with us."

"Ambrosia could probably help," I said, and got glared at. "What? She did say she'd help us with anything."

Perry's eyes narrowed even more. "What if Ambrosia's the one behind all of this?"

I scoffed at her. "She's an apprentice; she's not even a priestess Mambo person. And does she look like she'd try and raise the dead?"

"Yes. She does."

You're just jealous, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to start a fight, though I knew that's why Perry was saying that stuff.

"Even if it were her," I said, trying to placate Perry, "the question would be why?"

"To prove herself."

"But why?"

"To show how powerful she is."

"Kiddo," I said deliberately, "I think you're grasping at straws here."

"Straws are all we ever have." She shoved a forkful of chorizo in her mouth.

I reached over and put my hand on hers. "Not true. We've got this haunted house tonight. We'll go there and film the s.h.i.t out of it. Scare ourselves silly. Leave with a pretty f.u.c.kawesome show. Sound good?"

She exhaled sharply through her nose, then nodded and continued eating.

"Take a left down here," Perry said to Maximus as she squinted at the Google Map on her phone.

He was behind the wheel, me in shotgun, Perry in the back. We were allowed to borrow Rose's truck for the expedition, which was a lot cheaper than a rental car, while Rose had to work at her bar. I wished Rose were with us-not only did she know her way around the city better than Maximus, but she would have diffused the awkward tension between the three of us. Thank G.o.d Perry still had no idea what Maximus had warned me about, otherwise the whole thing would have probably been called off. I didn't even know how I was managing with everything. The only thing that kept me from wanting to kill him was trying to remind myself that he was crazy jealous of us, and I had to just pity him instead.

The neighborhood we were driving in was creepy as f.u.c.k. Half the people looked like zombies already, just sitting on their porches in the dark, watching our truck rumble past. Every second house looked abandoned, with giant red X's spray painted on them, a haunting reminder of the damage that Katrina had caused. Curiously, some of those houses had people in them, too scared or too stubborn to paint over the markings.

Just as I was about to suggest we head back to the safety of the touristy areas, Perry pointed up ahead at a large, looming house. "There," she said, "that should be it."

We pulled up in front of it and got out of the truck. Yeah. This place was definitely haunted.

I'd never been to Disneyland, but from the way Perry was eyeing it, mouth slightly agape, I had to a.s.sume it looked like it belonged there. It was too perfect. It was three-stories high with an attic on top, all grey with peeling layers of faded paint, maybe once yellow or cream. The porch wrapped around it completely, and cracked white pillars stood on either side of the wide stairs, supporting the iron-trimmed overhang. On the first floor, all the windows were boarded up while the ones on the rest of the floors were either cracked or broken. The house was completely dark, except for the attic window. I couldn't tell if there was a little bit of light coming from there or the gla.s.s was reflecting the streetlights below.

I nodded up at it. "Do you see that?"

"Yeah," said Perry, her voice quivering a bit. I guess this was already turning out to be more intense than we planned. "Maybe there are some squatters still inside. Are you sure this is safe?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I couldn't tell you." I looked to Maximus. "So what's the plan, boss?" I asked derisively. The wind began to pick up, a hot breeze that rustled the live oak and weeping willows that lined the house's yard, obscuring most of the place from the road. Shadowy shapes danced before us.