A cool wind, light as a zephyr, sprang up. It circled around the cat, ruffling the blood-caked fur, barely disturbing the
veves
Ava Ani had designed around the sacrifice. It rustled through Delice’s red silk skirts. Suddenly Delice’s mouth snapped shut, and her body shuddered convulsively. Then she was still and slowly turned her head toward Ava Ani, who bowed her head in fearful respect before the powerful
djabo
. A fierce, terrible beauty suffused Delice’s narrow face.
Delice spoke. ‘This cat pleases me. I will do as you ask. It will be my pleasure, oh, yes, indeed.’ Delice laughed, a merry sound in the darkness, and with a swirl of red skirts she was gone.
Ava Ani fled.
The rustle of silk was the only sound in the Maison DuPlessis that night. Something moved through the house like an avenging angel. When the sun came up, the Vieux Carré pulsed with screams, as more grotesque discoveries were made at the Maison DuPlessis.
Next to the well behind the house lay the bloody, disemboweled carcass of the DuPlessis’ cat. Fine flour had been carefully sprinkled around the body. In the ominous red early-morning light, flies were already thick and buzzing on the cat’s exposed organs and its sightless china-blue eyes.
Denis DuPlessis was found in his bed. His throat was slashed, his eyeballs cut out and placed neatly, side by side, on his tongue, which had been pulled from his mouth and down over his chin. His hands had been cleanly amputated at the wrists and lay on the gore-soaked coverlet, palms up as if in supplication.
Madame DuPlessis was also in bed with her throat cut, her nightgown pulled up around her waist, and the murder weapon sheathed to the hilt between her legs. It was a long, exquisitely sharp knife, of the kind used to cut sugar-cane. Blood had spattered and splashed all over the walls and the ceiling, making glistening black rivulets as the drops rolled toward the floor.
No one in the house had heard anything except the faint sibilance of silk on the parquet tiles and the oriental carpet. But under the stench of the house, the smell of hot pennies and vomit and sulfur, was the sweet fragrance of rose oil.
Ava Ani had been waiting. Delice arrived just at dawn, her dress stiff with blood, her eyes gleaming, her hands caked with gore. She had smiled broadly at Ava Ani.
‘It was pleasant indeed,
mambo
. Now I return the girl to you.’ Delice’s eyes rolled back, and she fell to the floor, a small, limp bundle.
Ava Ani picked her up and carried her to the fireplace. Even though the morning was stifling hot, a fire burned. In front of the fireplace there was a tub filled with the same scented water she had washed Delice with the night before. Ava Ani pulled off Delice’s red silk dress and threw it in the fire, where it smoldered then suddenly blazed with a bright blue-and-white flame.
Delice’s eyes opened again, and she found herself once more at Ava Ani’s. How had she gotten here from the DuPlessises’? The fire caught her eye. Delice thought the flames looked clean and pure, not smudgy and orange like usual. Then she saw the remnants of her dress burning in the fire. Why was Ava Ani burning her new dress?
It was a shame to burn that pretty red dress, but Delice could not find the words to protest.
Ava Ani bathed Delice again, and the water turned red as it ran down her thin body.
‘You see,
ma fille
. Erzulie came when Ava Ani called. Erzulie liked Madame’s fine Persian
chat
enough to ride you to justice. Yes, yes. It says in the Hebrew Bible, “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue.”’ She poured clean water over Delice’s head as she stood in the tub.
Delice blinked. She remembered nothing of a woman named Erzulie. And what was this about liking Henri? She opened her mouth to ask, but no sound came out. Her voice was gone.
Ava Ani saw Delice’s mouth open and close, like a fish’s. ‘You cannot speak. But I think you wish to know what has happened. The DuPlessises,
ils sonts morts
. Erzulie killed them in their beds as they slept the sleep of the damned. And you,
ma fille
, you made a fine
cheval
for her. She used your feet, your hands, to do what needed to be done.’ Ava Ani helped Delice step out of the tub and wrapped her in a length of white linen. She took Delice’s face in her hands and looked into her eyes.
‘You remember, do you not? Madame chased you onto the roof. She had a pistol, no? She pointed it at you, her hair all tumbling and looking like a devil from hell.’
Delice nodded. She was trembling. Her mind was so slow, her body so heavy. Her hands throbbed as though she had worked them very hard. Ava Ani’s eyes searched her face.
‘You ran,
petite fille
. You ran right off the roof and fell. Fell onto the stones in the courtyard. Fell hard.’
Delice finally understood. She was a
zombi
. Ava Ani had brought her back to life in order to avenge her own death. Her dark eyes widened in terror.
Now she was enslaved forever, mute and stupid. Ava Ani had stolen the blessed release of death that she had chosen for herself - the one thing she had been able to choose, denied her for eternity.
Delice tried to scream, but all she could do was breathe out a rusty croak. She tried to pull away from Ava Ani, but the
mambo
tightened her grip on Delice’s face and shook her head.
‘Your work is done here,
ma pauve
. I have no more need for you. Soon you will sing again. This time, with the angels.’ She began to chant low, swaying with the rhythm of the song. Delice swayed with her, her hands curled around Ava Ani’s wrists, her eyes shut. A white fog filled her mind, and she thought she heard singing.
‘
Mambo
Ava Ani?’
Ava Ani whirled, her white skirts flashing in the darkness. ‘Who wants to know?’ she replied, hiding her fear under anger.
‘Philippe LaPlace,’ came the response. ‘Why are you here? Did the . . . information I gave you not serve?’ Philippe came forth from behind a tomb.
‘It served me very well,’ Ava Ani replied, her teeth clenched. She did not like this
bokor
-man of the Cochon Gris. But she could not be rude. She had come to him, filled with rage and grief for the victims of the DuPlessis. He had helped her in her plan to rid New Orleans of them and taught her the powerful dark
voudou
she would need to know. She knew Philippe was powerful, and he frightened her. Still, she did not care to be spied on. She turned away from him in order to place a linen-wrapped bundle into the tomb she had just opened.
‘So I heard,’ he said. A low chuckle echoed in the deep indigo shadows. ‘Erzulie is a creative one, is she not?’
Ava Ani shuddered. Philippe came forward and stood next to her. He ran his hand along the open edge of the tomb. ‘You sent the little girl back then?’ he asked. ‘Pity.’
‘Delice did all that was needed. I have no need for a
zombi
to do my bidding. She spent her life enslaved. No need for her to spend her death there too.’ Ava Ani rolled a length of red ribbon, scented with rose oil, into a small tight coil. She slipped it into the
gris-gris
bag she wore around her neck.
‘You are too soft, Ava Ani,’ scoffed Philippe. ‘Join with us in the Cochon Gris and find your true power.’
‘Non, merci,’
she replied, a bit tartly. Ava Ani leaned her weight against the stone slab. She pushed with every ounce of strength she had, and slowly the slab slid back into place, sealing the tomb. Delice again shared a dead-house with the corpses of the other DuPlessis slaves.
Ava Ani straightened up, wiping the sweat from her forehead. In the faint starlight she saw Philippe scowling at her. Her almond eyes narrowed, but she forced a smile.
‘Erzulie liked the fancy white
chat
I fixed for her,’ Ava Ani said sweetly. ‘
Mais oui
, she liked it very much. She said to me that she had never had such a fine gift.’ She watched Philippe’s shadowed face. A moment passed - and then a flash of white teeth answered her.
‘Very well,
mambo
. I see you made a friend of Erzulie. You go back to your little magic and I will go back to mine.’
‘C’est bon,’
Ava Ani said, but he was already gone. She turned back to the dead-house.
‘No more
voudou
,
ma fille
. Now only angel songs.’ She got down on her knees and fumbled around her neck. Under the
gris-gris
bag that hung between her breasts she found her rosary. She pulled the cross out from the neck of her dress and let her fingers slide along the warm, smooth ebony beads. ‘Now I pray to the Catholic gods for your eternal rest,
ma petite
.’ She knelt in front of the dead-house and crossed herself.
‘Hail
Marie
, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .’
THE WIND CRIES MARY
BY BRIAN KEENE
Even in death, she returns to visit me every night.
If time mattered any more, you’d be able to set your watch by her arrival. Mary shows up shortly after the sun goes down. She lumbers up our long, winding driveway, dragging her shattered right leg behind her like it’s a dog. I often wonder how she can still walk.
Of course, all the dead walk these days, but in Mary’s case, a shard of bone protrudes from her leg, just below the knee. The flesh around it is shiny and swollen - the color of lunch meat. The wound doesn’t even leak any more. I keep expecting her to fall over, for the bone to burst through the rest of the way, for her leg to come completely off. But it never happens.
Her abdomen has swollen, too. We were never able to have children, but death has provided her with a cruel pantomime of what pregnancy must be like. I dread what will happen when those gases trapped inside of her finally reach the breaking point. Her breasts have sunken, as have her cheekbones and eyes. Her summer dress hangs off her frame in tatters. It was one of my favorites - white cotton with a blue floral print. Simple yet elegant, just like Mary. Now it is anything but. Her long hair is no longer clean or brushed, and instead of smelling like honey-suckle shampoo, it now smells of leaves and dirt and is rife with insects. Her fingernails are filthy and cracked. She used to take so much pride in them. Her hands and face are caked with a dried brown substance. I tell myself that it is mud, but I know in my heart that it’s blood.
None of this matters to me. Her body may be changing, but Mary is still the woman I fell in love with. She is still the most beautiful woman I have ever known. She is still my wife, and I still love her. Death hasn’t taken that away. It has only made it stronger.
We had fifteen good years together. Death does not overcome those times. Her body may be rotting, but those memories do not decay. I am sure of this. Why else would she return here, night after night, and stare at the house, fumbling at the door and searching for a way in? It can’t be to feed. If it were, she would have given up by now, moved on to the new housing development a few miles up the road, where I am sure there are still plenty of families barricaded inside their homes, too scared or stupid to stay quiet for long. Easy pickings. I don’t know what she does during the day. Certainly it isn’t sleep. The dead never sleep. I assume she eats. Wanders, perhaps. But the question remains, Why does she return here night after night? Mary doesn’t know I’m in here. Of this, I am certain. Although she paws at the door and the boarded-up windows, she can’t see inside of our house. She can’t see me or hear me. So why does she return?
The answer is simple: she remembers. Maybe not in the way the living remember things, but somewhere, rooted deeply in whatever is left of her brain, there is some rudimentary attachment to this place. Perhaps she recognizes it as home. Maybe she just knows that this was a place where she was happy. A place where she once lived.
Mary hated me the first time we met. It was at a college party. She was an art major. I was studying business. I was a drunken frat boy, a young Republican in training, the next-generation spawn of the Reagan revolution. Mary was a liberal Democrat, involved in a number of volunteer social programs. When she walked into the party, a blonde and a brunette were feeding me a forty-ounce of Mickey’s through a makeshift beer bong. She glanced in our direction then turned away. I was instantly infatuated. Not love at first sight, but certainly lust. Love came later.