Come Alive (Experiment in Terror #7)

CHAPTER TWELVE

I stared at the body for a few moments, having a hard time soaking it all in, what just happened, when I heard Perry whimper from behind me.

I snapped out of it, ignoring the implausibility of what happened, and went to her. She was huddled against the wall where Tuffy G—or Tuffy G A.D.—had pinned her, ready to take a bite out of her, and she was shaking and crying. I put my hands on both sides of her shoulders and looked at her as closely as possible in the glow of the streetlights. Her eyes were wet with tears but she looked okay otherwise. Her beautiful neck was fine.

“You’re okay, baby,” I told her. “He didn’t get you.”

She shook her head, tears running down her face. “I don’t understand. He was dead. I saw him die.”

“We all saw him die. And now we saw him die again.”

“But why was he trying to hurt me? God, Dex, he was trying to bite me! I thought these weren’t the real undead!”

“I don’t know, but there’s something upstairs you need to see.”

“Does it involve candles?” Maximus asked.

I turned my head to look at him, keeping Perry firmly in my grasp. “Yes, why?”

He was looking toward the attic door. Smoke was beginning to filter out of it.

“Shit!” I yelled. Tuffy must have knocked them over on his way after me. “What do we do?”

“We get the f*ck out of here, right now,” he said, picking up his camera from the ground and giving it a quick once over. He’d thrown it pretty hard, but from what I saw, only the lens looked cracked.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the police or fire trucks?” Perry sniveled.

“No,” Maximus and I both said in unison. She nodded, understanding, and wiped her nose. Maximus wanted the NOPD as far away from us as possible and I wasn’t about to get our footage taken away from us again. Besides, between the three of us, we’d actually gotten something, I knew it.

Now the smoke was getting thicker and flames crackled at the top of the stairs, illuminating a slice of floor in the flickering light. If we stood around much longer, we’d be swallowed up fast.

“Let’s go,” I said, giving her shoulders a squeeze. “We have to run.”

At that, there was a thump from up above us. Something or someone in the attic.

She swallowed hard, her eyes searching the ceiling. “What else did you find up there?”

“I’ll tell you in the truck,” I said, pulling her. I didn’t see anyone else in the attic, except Tuffy. I hoped it was just the house starting to collapse on itself.

I picked up my camera, which had skittered across the ground, and we quickly hopped down the aging stairs, careful to sidestep the ones we’d broken. The fire grew louder behind us, and once we hit the main floor, I was met with the idea that the house might not let us leave at all.

I was about to warn Maximus about this, but he crossed through the front door to the porch easily and Perry and I followed. I glanced down at the door frame as I stepped over it, and noticed a thin line of salt. If I had the time to stop and investigate it, I felt like I’d discover it went all the way around the house.

Maximus was already at the truck and starting it, Perry was climbing in the front seat, her eyes begging me to run faster. I caught up and jumped in the back, looking up at the house as we pulled away in time to see flames spread along the roof.

The window in the attic shattered, the sound competing with the noisy truck as we roared off, and I wondered if it was the heat that caused it or if someone had broken the window, trying to escape. And if it were the latter, should I have felt relieved or not?

Maximus drove like a madman out of the neighborhood, all of us silent and breathing hard, pulses racing.

Perry turned around in her seat to look at me. “What happened upstairs, Dex? Where did he come from?”

“Aside from a fresh grave? I don’t know.” I explained to them what I saw in the attic, the circle of candles, the live snake pinned to the ground, the hanging chicken feet, then Tuffy G rising from the corner of the room, glassy-eyed and enraged. I left out the part about my mother. They would have thought I was nuts.

“I captured it all, I think. Until he started running at me and then I just ran like hell.”

“Leading him to me. My god, I thought I was done for,” she said with a shiver. “He was dead but he wasn’t dead. I saw him on the machine for just a second before I dropped it. He was orange-red, just like the rest of us.” She was still visibly upset but she was handling herself a lot better than I was. My gut was twisted up over the image of him manhandling her, over what depraved thing could have happened if Maximus and I hadn’t acted fast, while my brain was warped over what I’d witnessed in the attic, the candles, the animals, my mother, the pull of the house, the salt.

“This couldn’t have been an accident,” I said suddenly. “Someone knew we were going there.”

“No shit,” Maximus said dryly.

“Well if that’s what you’re thinking, then why aren’t we talking about it, huh?”

“I still think it’s Ambrosia,” Perry said stiffly.

Maximus’s eyes flew to the mirror to meet mine. I knew we were thinking the same thing, that Perry didn’t like Ambrosia, so of course she’d think that of her. But call it a gut feeling, I knew Ambrosia meant no harm.

“Ambrosia’s not capable of that,” Maximus told her. “She doesn’t have the power, she’s not even been initiated into the Societe La Belle Venus yet. She has years and years to go.”

“Who told you that?” she asked.

“Rose did.”

Perry crossed her arms in a huff. “You’re both thinking with your dicks.”

I nearly laughed. When didn’t I think with my dick? But there were better times to make jokes and this wasn’t one of them, not when a zombie nearly tried to munch on my girlfriend.

I exhaled and sat back, trying to calm myself and go over what had just happened, when I noticed we were passing the bed and breakfast.

I tapped Maximus on the shoulder. “Where are we going?”

He eyed me sternly in the mirror. “We’re going to get Rose. And then we’re going to see Maryse. I want some damn answers.”

***

Rose was visibly worried when we pulled her from her bar duties, enough that she didn’t mind leaving Nameless to one of her newer employees while she got in the truck with us and headed out to the bayou.

We told her everything from start to finish, but she was particularly interested in what I saw upstairs.

“What color were the candles?” she asked.

“Black. Some were red. But most were black.”

“Did they have names carved on them?”

I leaned my elbows onto my knees and eyed her as she drove, Maximus now riding shotgun. “Why yes, while this f*cking snake was dying a painful death in the middle of the room, the chicken feet were swaying in the imaginary breeze, and I saw a dead man rise from behind a full-length mirror that reflected nothing back, I decided I had enough time to pick up one of the candles and get a better look at it. I wanted to know if it was scented or not.” She stared at me blankly. “No, I never saw if there were names carved on them.”

“Did they look oily?”

I frowned, remembering that they had. “More so than normal. I thought maybe it was the wax.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It could be sacred oils. Maryse will tell us.”

Maryse might be behind all this, I wanted to say. I bit my lip and sat back. Perry wrapped her arm around mine.

Soon we were coasting down the bumpy dirt road lit only by Rose’s headlights. The dark trees and swamp water flew past us, and I could only imagine what we’d see if we swung the lights that way. Probably a sea of glowing eyes, watching our every move, waiting for the next bite.

Rose parked the truck beside Maryse’s house and tossed us the mosquito spray again. “Cover your mouths and noses and spray it in here. You’ll get eaten alive the minute you step out of the car.” While we coated ourselves with it, coughing at the toxicity, she pulled two flashlights out of the center console, keeping one for herself and giving me the other. “Don’t want you taking a wrong turn and stepping into the swamp.”

“Is there anything in this city that won’t try and take a bite out of you?” Perry mumbled as we got out of the truck. The whine of the insects was everywhere, buzzing dangerously close to my ears. Despite how badly I stank to them, I still felt a few of them stinging at my neck and arms.

We huddled after Rose, sticking tightly to the path, and walked up to the screened porch. Before we entered, she aimed her flashlight at the water. I was right. There were eyes in the water looking at us. There was also Ambrosia’s air boat. Perry made a grumbling sound at the sight and I patted her shoulder, hoping that would make her feel better somehow and fully knowing that it wouldn’t.

For her sake, I decided I’d try and look at Ambrosia through her eyes and try not to discount her as easily as I wanted to. It was hard trying to think like Perry and see her in a not-so-flattering light but I did it.

We walked inside the house; Rose didn’t even bother to knock.

“Hello?” she said as we stood in the foyer and I slowly shut the front door behind us. I heard things skittering about on the porch and didn’t want them running inside with us, whatever they were. I wondered if there was a rodent problem in these parts and if Voodoo priestesses ever used them for whatever rituals they did.

A cat meowed from the corner of the darkened living room, scaring the shit out of me again.

“It’s just Mojo,” Rose explained in a hush. She aimed her flashlight over to where the cat was and we all sucked in our breath in unison.

Maryse was sitting in an armchair, upright, eyes glinting as she stared at us. A black cat was in her arms. I was starting to think this was a bad idea, no matter how badly we wanted answers. Then I remembered Tuffy G going after Perry and I swallowed down my fear and stood my ground. >

“Maryse,” Rose said breathlessly, “you scared us.”

Suddenly the lamp beside Maryse switched on and the room was illuminated. It looked the same as before, except for Maryse’s more or less lifeless body and the squinty-eyed cat on her lap. Both of them took their time to glare at every single one of us.

Maryse sucked at her dentures. “I scared you? How do you think I feel with four nitwits walking into my house at midnight? A little warning would have been nice.”

“We’re sorry, Mambo,” Rose said, remembering the formality. “We’ve come here to talk to you about something very important. I know you don’t want to see us again but this is a matter of life or death.”

She kept watching us, me especially, and then sighed. “I guess I was a little rude last time, wasn’t I? But you know how I get when I’m woken up from my nap. Now what is so urgent that this couldn’t wait until morning? You’re lucky I was just in a trance and not sleeping.”

“Sorry,” Rose apologized again, and it struck me how much she acted like a young girl when she was around the Mambo. The hardened, tough-as-nails Rose was gone. It was almost refreshing, except Rose’s strength in the situation probably would have put me more at ease.

“Where is Ambrosia?” Rose asked.

Maryse narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“Is she here?”

“Yes. She’s in her room sleeping.”

“I didn’t know she lived here all the time now.”

Maryse waved at her dismissively. “Good care is hard to come by. I teach Ambrosia and she takes care of me. I haven’t left the house in two years, you know?”

“Excuse me,” Perry said politely. “I’ve had to pee since New Orleans. Could I use your bathroom?”

Maryse eyed her with disdain but nodded down the hall. “Second door, child.”

Perry flashed her an apologetic smile and walked down the hall.

“Is there somewhere we could talk?” Rose asked.

“Is here not good enough?”

Rose shook her head but didn’t elaborate.

Maryse sighed and got out of her seat, the cat leaping to the ground. You could almost hear her bones creaking. Her long, scraggly grey hair hung around her skinny face. In the lamplight you could see just how sick and old she was. Her face was drawn and ashen, her mouth lined with a million wrinkles. Only her eyes remained sharp, even though they’d clouded over slightly, like an old dog’s who still knew a few tricks.

“Very well. Follow me.” She gingerly made her way to the hallway, back hunched over, and turned on the flickering overhead lights just as Perry was coming out the bathroom, looking flushed and up to no good. Maryse squinted at her again and we went down the hall, Perry tagging behind me.

“What is it?” I whispered at her. “Pee smell funny?”

She looked disappointed. “I wanted to see if Ambrosia really was in her room.” She nodded at the closed door beside Maryse’s bedroom. “She is. Sleeping.”

I felt strangely smug that Perry was wrong, because if Ambrosia was here the whole time, she probably hadn’t set up the Voodoo lab in the attic, which meant that was one suspect we could cross off the list.

Maryse opened a narrow door at the very end of the hall, one I had assumed was a linen closet, but it looked cavernous until she pulled on a hanging lightbulb and began to descend down a set of stairs.

“Aren’t we going underwater?” I whispered to Maximus, who was in front of me, but the stairs were only four feet deep and we found ourselves in a cellar of sorts.

A cellar of horrors.

The ground was sawdust, perhaps rock underneath, and the air was filled with a mix of competing smells—sweet and cloying, damp and musky, rich and smoky. The walls were painted red and filled with every imaginable Voodoo horror you could imagine. There were shrines in all corners of the room, statues covered in beads and jewelry, mounds of candles in every color, poppet dolls made of yarn and tribal-patterned cloths, tied together with string. There were skulls—humans and animals—hanging on the red-painted walls, along with various tribal masks. Mason jars filled with herbs, spices, and who knows what were lined up on shelves. If the veranda was the overstock room, this was where all the magic happened. Pun intended.

We were all silent, looking around us in awe, even Rose, who looked more respectful than anything else. I began to wonder how much Voodoo had rubbed off on her from being around the Mambo for so many years.

“Please take a seat,” Maryse said, and sat down in a high-backed leather chair, motioning to the three wicker chairs that sat across from a round, fortune-teller style table.

“I’ll stand,” Maximus volunteered, as if that made him a better man or something.

Maryse gave him a look, one I couldn’t read. She wasn’t impressed either way, and I wondered if she was going to start pointing at him in horror again and calling him mortal.

“Now, tell me Rose, what is it that is life and death and so magnificently important.” She crossed her bony white hands in front of her. Curiously, she had gold and silver rings on all of her hands with all sorts of gemstones. The weight of some of them looked like they’d break her fingers in two.

“Well,” Rose began, and then looked at Maximus. He launched into what happened at the bar last night, then into his side of things at the house, and paused when it came time to tell her what I saw. Then we finished it up with the zombie of Tuffy G coming after Perry, me beating him with a floor lamp, and him running straight out the window and falling to his death number two.

“Oh,” I added, “then I guess I knocked over the candles in the attic, because the attic went up in flames, and we all ran out of the house and pretty much came straight here. And to answer your question before you ask it, no I didn’t see any names on the candles.”

“What did the candles smell like?” she asked.

Was she kidding me?

“Like Eau du Zombie. I don’t know.”

She pursed her wrinkled lips until they almost disappeared into her skin. I tried not to grimace. She got up and shuffled over to a shelf of oils and pulled one off of it. She popped the top and came over to me, holding it under my nose.

“Does this smell familiar?” she asked impatiently.

I breathed in. It did. That cloyingly sweet smell, like baby powder.

“Yeah, I guess it smelled like that. A bit more coppery though.”

“The blood from the poor snake,” Maryse said, sitting back down. “That was the copper smell. What was rubbed on all the candles was Follow Me Boy oil. Calamus root.”

“Follow Me Boy oil?” Perry asked incredulously.

“I was expecting something more sinister than that,” I added.

Maryse wasn’t amused. “It is called that because sex workers in the city would apply it in order to get ahead of the competition, so to speak. Every brothel had this for their ladies. It’s supposed to work on sexual attraction, but the key component is dominance and control. Most likely, those candles were probably meant for the deceased man.”

“Could the candles have been for any of us?” Perry asked.

She considered that. “It’s possible. But considering zombies have to be controlled by someone, I would think they were there to ensure he followed through. That said, it is interesting that they were black candles. We call them black devils. Usually, if you anoint a black devil with a commanding type of oil, you’re asking for revenge or retribution against someone. Or you’re just being a jerk.”

So either the zombie went after Perry on purpose because her name was on the candle, or the zombie’s name was on the candle, the person controlling him going after their own sort of revenge. It didn’t really matter since we would never find out, although Ambrosia and Tuffy did have history together. Perhaps she was after revenge.

The thought was ludicrous, the idea terribly elaborate. Still, because I knew Perry was thinking it, I decided to voice it out loud.

“Maryse, do you think it’s possible that Ambrosia could be involved in any of this?”

Perry smiled while Maximus let out an audible gasp. Maryse didn’t look too surprised, however.

“I can see how you’d think that, since she and I are closest to you. But in order to do what you say happened, what you’re suggesting, you have to be very powerful. Ambrosia hasn’t finished her training, she has years left before she’s considered a Mambo. To be frank with you, I don’t think she has it in her to do it, energy wise nor personality wise. She’s a sweet, kind girl.”

That was true all right. Very sweet, kind, beautiful. A flash of her smile, the feel of her skin.

Perry spoke up, snapping me out of it. “But what if she was working with someone else? Helping another Mambo behind your back?”

Maryse narrowed her eyes at the thought. “I hate to think that but I suppose it’s possible. I’ll keep an eye on her over the next while, how about that? Last thing I want is to be blindsided by my own pupil.”

“And what about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“Obviously you have the power to do all this, to raise the dead. You know we’re here and what we’re up to.”

“I suppose you would think the world revolves around you, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“These zombie rituals are nothing new in New Orleans, and even now, this has been apparently happening for some time before you got here. To think that they are now focused on you is absurd. And no, I am not the one behind it. Contrary to what everyone thinks of me, I am not a Bokor, I do not and have never used my skills for evil. I am a dying woman, as you can see, and I barely have any energy to keep on living. Doing any of those hoodoos would kill me instantly. The most I can do for myself right now is that.”

She nodded to a side table where a yarn poppet had a nail sticking out of it. An honest to God Voodoo doll.

“Who is that?” Maximus asked suspiciously.

“I don’t know who it is,” she said, folding her frail arms against herself. It was colder down in the cellar. “But it is a Nkondi. Traditionally, it is used to hunt down evil sorcerers or threats to the Voodoo community. Here I have used it to drive my illness back to the spellcaster, whoever he or she might be.”

“You believe your illness is a…a curse?” Perry asked.

Maryse nodded then focused her eyes on her. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I would love to talk to the two gentleman alone here.”

Maximus and I exchanged a worried look. What the hell did the Mambo want with us?

I guess Perry and Rose were thinking the same thing, because they were staring at her in confusion.

Maryse gestured to Rose. “Please, Rose, take your friend here and go upstairs and wait for us. Shut the door behind you and try not to wake Ambrosia.”

Rose and Perry slowly got out their chairs, Perry’s eyes wild with fear for me. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and a nod.

They reluctantly left the room. I could feel them glancing over their shoulder as they ascended the stairs until the cellar door closed behind them.

“So,” Maryse said, turning a wicked smile toward me. “Dex Foray. I suppose you’d like to find out who your friend here really is.”

Maximus stiffened, his eyes downcast. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. A thousand suspicions from thousands of moments clouded my head.

She continued, calmly staring at me, knowing she held all the cards. “And why of course you’re the exception.”