Stray Fears Read online

  Kade’s eyes moved from picture to picture, following my finger. A waitress wearing a Mills Diner t-shirt stopped at the booth, an order pad in hand, and he glanced up at her.

  “Are you two ready to order?” she asked.

  “I’ll have a double-bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries and a soda,” Kade told her before glancing toward me.

  “Same.”

  Her pen flew over the pad, and she left without another word.

  “Ok,” Kade said. “What’s the freaky part?”

  “Twenty-three years old.” I tapped the first picture. “Twenty-three.” I tapped the next. “Twenty-three. Twenty-three. Twenty-three. All of them twenty-three years old.” A little grin twisted one side of my mouth. “I thought Theresa Cannette was an outlier because the report said her age was twenty-four. After all the shit with . . . with Mason, I couldn’t sleep. I found the 1930 census. I did the math. She was fucking twenty-three years old, Kade. They just got it wrong on the report.”

  Kade let out a groan. “Why would someone want to kidnap and possibly kill twenty-three-year-old women?”

  I shook my head. “Hey, where’s the stuff on Elien?”

  Kade was off someplace else.

  “Kade, hey. The stuff on Elien Martel?”

  “There isn’t any stuff on Elien Martel.”

  I shook my head again. “He’s twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, lives in DuPage Parish. Boyfriend’s name is Richard. He drives a Lexus.”

  “You want to know how many Elien Martel’s I found in the state of Louisiana?”

  “I know there’s at least one.”

  “Three. One of them is ninety years old in a nursing home in Baton Rouge. One of them is forty-six and is currently fighting the good fight to get his workman’s comp claim processed in Lake Charles. The other is sixty-three, gayer than Cher, and operates the Purple Love Rhino Personal Pleasure Palace in a suburb of Alexandria.”

  “That’s probably him,” I said.

  Kade rolled his eyes.

  “I need that stuff on him, Kade.”

  “Ok, well, he doesn’t exist. Get me another name, and I’ll dig up whatever I can.”

  “Yeah,” I said, slumping down in the vinyl banquette. “Ok.”

  “Sorry, man.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I guess you’ll just have to get the check.”

  ELIEN (5)

  New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme was not the page turner that its title promised it would be. After my fourth attempt to get through a chapter on a myth about a great flood that sounded real shades-of-Noah’s-Ark, I switched over to Sneaky, Scary, Bump in the Night, which had cool illustrations and a kickass chapter on mummies and canopic jars, but didn’t give me any clues about a blue firefly monster native to Louisiana.

  When I finished Sneaky, Scary, Bump in the Night, I looked around for Kennedy. She’d gotten me this far—maybe I could hire her as a research assistant or something, with assistant being my very loose term for the person who did all the work and then gave me a nice, one-paragraph summary. But Kennedy was reading to a group of preschoolers, and when I tried to catch her attention by holding New Orleans and La Louisiane: Chorography, Ethnology, and the Native Episteme over my head, she gave me a dismissive wave and went back to reading.

  I picked up the gay vampire book—vampires were already kind of gay, but this one was uber gay—and read for a while. My brain kept going back to the monster. A part of my brain registered the way that sounded and pointed out, kindly, that there was no such thing as monsters and, even more kindly, I probably just needed Zahra to write me another scrip. But part of me wasn’t ready to let go. I had seen that blue light in Mason’s eyes. I had seen it drift out of his mouth after he had died. I had seen it in Ray’s apartment, and I had seen it in Ray’s eyes too. I had dreamed it in Gard’s eyes, and now I wondered if the dream was more than a dream. So much of what I remembered from that night was fractured. Classic symptom of PTSD: the inability to integrate sensory input, especially from the traumatic event. I remembered the creak of the boards. I remembered the smell of fried catfish. I remembered the cold air against my legs. But blue fire in Gard’s dead eyes? Christ, I didn’t know. It was in the dream, wasn’t it?

  What I needed was a specialist. Like somebody who specialized in monsters, the way some scientists specialized in bugs or birds or whatever the hell else you could imagine. Even better, I needed someone who could get rid of this damn thing. Kind of like the ghostbusters. Combined with a pest exterminator.

  Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

  Setting aside the gay vampire book—the lucky bloodsucker was currently getting ferociously mounted by his vampire sire, along with getting a few languid poundings and masterly invasions, which might have been the title of a sci-fi special on TV—I pulled out my phone and searched for monster hunters. I mostly got books and a few cuckoo websites. Then I searched again for monster hunters real. That didn’t turn up much except for a few blogs praising a company called Critter Catchers. I found their website, and they actually looked legit. They sounded great, in fact, except that they were located in Parson’s Hollow, Pennsylvania.

  Ok. Maybe not my best idea.

  Except I did kind of feel like I was on the right track. Kennedy had looked at me kind of crazy when I’d asked about local monsters, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Encyclopedias and generic web searches were going to give me very general answers. What I needed was something specific. If this . . . thing had been in the area for a while, then someone, at some point, must have written something down.

  I did another search, this time for Louisiana folklore, and carried my books to a bench outside the library. Then I started making calls. The woman at the Louisiana Folklore Society hung up on me. The man at the Bayou Culture Collaborative treated me to every English swear word in the book, and quite a few French ones that I had to guess on. I worked my way down the list, hitting every historical and cultural-anthropological society (Kennedy would have been proud of my new vocabulary) I could find. The good news was that historical-cultural-anthropological societies didn’t exactly have their phones ringing off the hooks, so it was pretty easy to get through. The bad news was that one gentleman taught me the expression, I’ll fuck your face off and then shit down your mouth hole if you call here again. Which, it seemed to me, was an extreme response to a question about magic blue fireflies that came out of people’s mouths and sometimes made them commit murder.

  When I got through to a woman at New Orleans Ghost Tours and Beignets and Real Sweet Tea, I learned why.

  “It’s the voodoo, honey.”

  “No, this is about a firefly thing. Wait. Are you telling me this is voodoo?”

  “No.” She blew out a breath. “Honey, nothing is voodoo, not really. I’m saying you wouldn’t believe how many people call trying to figure out how to make a doll so they can stick a pin in their girlfriend’s hoohaw and that kind of thing. It’s just crazy. Doesn’t matter if you have the patience of a saint—you work in a Louisiana, anything to do with history, even a place like this one, and you’ll have crazies calling you until you’re ready to pull your hair out.”

  “But this is a legitimate call. I’m doing research.”

  “About a firefly thing.”

  “A blue firefly thing.”

  “That can make people chop each other up.”

  “Well, I don’t know. That’s the whole point of doing research. I’m trying to find out.”

  “Can’t help you, honey. My auntie had a touch of the sight, but all I can do is tell if water is fizzy or not.”

  “Can’t everyone do that?”

  “I mean before I drink it.”

  “Yeah, but you can see the bubbles.”

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  She disconnected before I finished both words.

  Th
e October day had warmed up considerably; grabbing my books, I moved down a few benches into the shade of a black oak that still had its leaves. The DuPage Parish Library was in a neighborhood known as Fogmile: stolidly middle class, clapboard-sided shotguns with neat lawns and ten-year-old sedans and plenty of minivans. A young couple pushed a stroller on the sidewalk opposite; it wasn’t until they got closer that I saw the teacup Yorkie where a baby should have been. I snapped a picture and sent it to Richard.

  He sent back a laughing emoji and, Glad you’re feeling better.

  Sorry about this morning. I love you.

  Thank you for saying that. I love you too. What do you want for dinner tonight?

  I grinned in spite of myself. That was Richard. Shrimp boil?

  Anything for you and then a kissy emoji.

  I sent a kiss back.

  My next search was for psychics. I limited myself to DuPage and St. Tammany. I didn’t want to drive into New Orleans, in the first place, and in the second, I didn’t want to have to deal with the fakes who catered to tourists. I caught the sound of that thought and recognized, again, how far I’d shifted in a few days; just a week before, I would have told anyone who asked that all psychics were fake. Now I was just worried about quality control.

  Like historical societies and people selling timeshares, most psychics didn’t seem to be overwhelmed with phone calls. The reactions I got to my question, though, were interesting.

  The first three—all of them using horrifying faux-Romani accents—promised they could tell me everything I wanted to know about blue fireflies if I gave them my credit card number, for only sixty-six cents per minute plus ten dollars for the connection fee. I wasn’t sure if the connection fee was imposed by the phone company or by the astral plane, but I declined.

  The fourth psychic hung up.

  I tried number five, six, and seven, and I got more offers from them to part the veil and probe the inner darkness, which sounded a lot like the treatment my gay vampire was getting.

  I went back to number four. Her name was Suzette Davis, which didn’t sound particularly psychic, and her psychic parlor was located half a mile away, just off the Quartier. I guessed a psychic parlor was probably pretty similar to a regular parlor but with more crystals and polyester, but I kept thinking about how she had hung up: no hesitation, no fumbling. Solid and definitive. I called again, and the phone rang until it went to a pre-recorded voicemail.

  So I walked half a mile, carrying my books.

  Suzette’s store was located on the second story of a strip mall that dated back to the 70s and had survived the Quartier’s purge and redevelopment. She was located above a Chinese take-out place, and the smell of eggrolls filled the staircase as I went up. From the landing at the top of the stairs came the sound of keys jingling and then hurried footsteps. A woman came into view, barreling toward me.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hi.”

  She froze.

  Suzette—if that’s who she was—had coppery ringlets, the color obviously out of a box, and hard eyes. She was wearing a track suit that had slipped a few inches, exposing the lacy waistband of her underwear. For a moment, she studied me, and then she slipped a vape pen out of her pocket and hit it twice. Some of the vapor slipped out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Well?” she said.

  “I called.”

  “Sorry, I’m closed.” She took a few steps, obviously trying to sidle past me.

  I moved into her path. “I just wanted to ask you a few questions about those firefly things. I’ll pay.”

  “Kid, you’re very pretty, but I’ve got pepper gel on my keyring, and I’ve got a knife. I will fuck you up if you don’t get out of my way.”

  “Ok, ok,” I said, moving down a few steps. Holding up my hands, I said, “You’re the only person who acted like they knew what I was talking about. Everybody else just wants to charge me sixty-six cents a minute to channel the Prince of Darkness.”

  “You’re serious? You’re really asking about this? It’s not some messed-up prank?”

  “I saw one come out of a guy’s mouth. He was dead, and he grabbed me. Another guy tried to shoot me. I saw one of these things with him, too.”

  “You want psychic advice? Here’s psychic advice: get on a fucking plane, or you’re dead.”

  She charged down the steps.

  “Please,” I said, getting into her path again, already preparing myself for the pepper spray. “Please, I think . . . I think this thing killed my parents, too.” I bit my lip, trying to hold back a crazy laugh, because hearing it out loud was ten times worse than skirting the edges of it in my brain. “Please.”

  Hitting the vape again, Suzette eyed me. When she pulled the pen away, she said, “Hands.”

  “What?”

  “Show me your hands.”

  I held them out.

  “Left one.”

  I offered it.

  She took it; her touch was dry, and she was shaking slightly as she ran a finger across my palm in one direction, then ran it again at a diagonal. When she released me, she let out a breath like she’d been running.

  “What’s going on?”

  “If I tell you, will you get out of my way?”

  “Yeah, whatever you want.”

  She held up three fingers. Her nail polish was chipped. “One: this thing, what you’re talking about. Here, it used to be called a hashok, the thing in the grass, but you can call it a vampire or tiyanak or a bantu or goddamn chupacabra. Pretty much every culture has a name for it, and even though the details might be a little different, it’s the same damn thing. Two: it feeds on human lives, especially on pain, and it’s always hungry. Three: if you’ve seen it, it wants you. So I’m going to stay with my sister, God help me, and I’m going to spend the next few weeks listening to holy rollers try to save my soul until this shitstorm clears. And if you’re smart, you’ll do exactly what I said. You get on a plane today, and you don’t come back. Now move your skinny ass.”

  She charged past me, and the sound of her steps on the asphalt faded.

  Hashok, the thing in the grass.

  I caught an Uber home. The afternoon was sunny; heat radiated up from the drive, and I tasted gravel dust as my ride left. The house looked the way it always did: the fresh white paint, the picture windows, the rocking chairs on the porch. Home. This was home, and it was real, and I laughed because here, with just the sound of the Okhlili murmuring in my ears, the dreams and the craziness, Ray and Mason and Suzette in the stairwell, it all seemed like I’d been half-asleep and was finally waking up.

  When the breeze shifted, I smelled shit and rot.

  Something had died nearby. Animals came out of the bayou all the time, some of them injured, some of them old. They crossed the Okhlili and died on the lawn. It would upset Richard, so I opened the garage and left my books on the workbench and grabbed a shovel. I followed the stench, hoping it would be small. A swamp rabbit I could just toss back across the river. A fox. A squirrel.

  As I came around the house, something burst into motion. I barely caught a glimpse of it, white and thin and tall, crashing into the tree line and disappearing into the brush. A flock of crows startled up from the branches. And then I saw, on Richard’s manicured lawn, what was causing the smell. Entrails. Intestines. Yards of it. It took me a moment to recognize what it was because it had been stretched out in a strange pattern.

  And then I realized it wasn’t a pattern, at least, not the way I’d been thinking. It was my name. Elien. Spelled out in guts across the grass.

  DAG (6)

  In my bedroom, I spent hours going over the folder that Kade had given me. Nothing on Elien, unfortunately, but plenty of stuff on Mason—all of it bad. Kade had been telling the truth about the bank accounts. Mason hadn’t been rolling in money; neither of us was, which was one of the perks of being a public servant. Unlike me, however, Mason had managed his paychecks pretty well. He’d had a small ho
use, a decent car, and eight thousand dollars in a savings account. Up until last week, that was. Then he’d withdrawn it all in cash. Somehow, Kade had even gotten a video of the transaction from the bank’s security camera, and sure as hell, it was Mason standing at the teller’s window.

  I wanted to know where that money was.

  Another thing that bothered me was Mary Ann. Where was she in all of this? The pictures in the file Kade had given me had obviously been pulled from social media, and Kade had dated them and sorted them. The most recent one was from months ago, right after Mason had been shot. It showed them in the hospital, Mason still in a gown and propped up in bed, Mary Ann with her arm around his shoulders. Before Mason had been shot, they had lots of pictures together. Mary Ann, who had red hair and freckles, looked happy in all them. After the shooting, though, there was just the one. I thought of all the times Mason had told me Mary Ann had gone out of town to visit a relative. I thought of all the times I had to give a last-minute ride. I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out earlier.

  The pictures of the house surprised me too. Kade had obviously swung by the house as part of his investigation, and many of the photographs showed the interior. I didn’t want to know how Kade had gotten inside. I’d been to Mason’s house, of course. I’d been plenty of times, even after the shooting. I’d give him rides, and sometimes I’d go inside for a beer or to watch a game. But now I was realizing I’d only seen the stuff Mason wanted me to see. I’d noticed the front lawn got a little shaggy sometimes. I’d noticed that sometimes the dishes piled up in the sink, and sometimes he’d have some clothes lying around in the living room. I’d attributed all of that to a straight guy living by himself; I’d known Mason for a long time, and he’d never been a clean freak.

  But I hadn’t been in the backyard in months, and it looked like a disaster. Beer cans littered the ground below the deck. Weeds and grass grew knee high. The back rooms of the house, to judge by the photographs, were just as bad. Mason’s bedroom looked like a tornado had gone through it. The room he used as an office and guest room had huge holes in the walls and a long brown streak of something across the floor. It didn’t make any sense, and I couldn’t believe I had missed so many red flags.