City of Masks

44

" You have to really find it in you," Cree repeated softly. She'd already said it five times in five different ways. "You can't fake it or force yourself to feel it. You've got to offer him a real window of escape. Encountering you has got to provide resolution for him, and that'll happen only when you provide yourself some resolution – when you really accept what happened and let go of it. The promise of that closure must be so real and attractive that it draws him toward you, and then your reality will war with his obsession. It'll show him his world is unreal. Does that make sense?"

Lila nodded minutely.

The three of them stood beneath a streetlight on Washington Avenue, looking across at the walls of Lafayette Cemetery. Behind them, the lush streets of the Garden District settled into the relative tranquillity of a Tuesday evening. Though the cemetery was closed now, Paul and Lila had prevailed upon its staff to open the gate for one after-hours visit to a family tomb; the Beauforte name still carried enough weight for such favors. Now the dark figure of a cemetery attendant waited behind the main gate. Beyond, the innumerable low roofs and gables of the crypts were tinted with sad twilight blue.

Lila looked pale in this light, her skin almost transparent, as if the blood she'd lost had not been restored to her. Her physical health was not bad, but the revelations of the past forty-eight hours had wrenched her open, exposing her past and her hidden self. Charmian had gone to the police, had confessed to killing Richard, and had told them why: because he'd killed her brother. And she'd explained that, too: the rape. Not trusting Cree to keep the deal, she'd also confessed to murdering Temp Chase when he attempted to blackmail her; she was right, it was an effective way to keep Guidry from any suspicion of Ron. The story would cause a fabulous scandal when Deelie's scoop hit the newsstands, the kind that cropped up in New Orleans only once every few years and helped preserve its exotic reputation: great names fallen low, the sordid underbelly of the aristocracy exposed, ancient secrets come to life.

Still, Lila looked determined. Knowing what had happened back then, who the boar-headed man was, had strengthened her. She admitted she was terrified by what they were about to do, yet she took Cree's word that within the cemetery gates lay the promise of closure and the beginning of healing.

If everything went as Cree hoped, anyway.

Paul appeared to waver between confusion about Cree, and, she hoped, shame for being a lying, deceiving son of a bitch. Also worry for his patient and distrust of tonight's enterprise – he had come along only because Lila had insisted.

And Cree – how did Cree feel? she wondered. For starters, she wished Edgar had made it here, as much for moral support as for gathering physical evidence on the boar-headed man. But when Joyce had spoken to him on Saturday, he'd told her he just couldn't make it, after all. Things were really heating up with the Gloucester ghost, he needed to extend his stay a few days. Ordinarily, Cree would have waited on the final phase until Ed had a shot at these ghosts, but remediation couldn't wait.

But more than anything else, she was scared for Lila. Hopeful for her, too. A little sick with apprehension at the prospect of what they were about to do.

For Cree, the most difficult decision of the last two days was whether Lila should begin with Bradford's ghost or Richard's. On one hand, she felt that if Lila came to Richard's ghost first, she'd emerge strengthened, cleansed of subconscious guilt – j u s t maybe strong enough to face down her uncle's monstrous revenant. But she worried that bringing Lila back to the house when the creature still roamed there would undo her before she got anywhere near the library. Anyway, before she went to the library, Lila needed to know, absolutely and at the deepest level, the truth of who her rapist had been. She had to purge any lingering subconscious accusation of her father if she were to meet him and accept the love he offered.

So maybe she should face Bradford first, conquer him, release him, to prove to herself that her father was not the guilty one. But Cree had no confidence she was strong enough to face the dark halls of Beauforte House, the spectral wereboar that hunted her there.

For most of the night, she had gone back and forth, agonizing. It had to unfold just right. If anything went wrong, Lila could emerge from the encounters crazy, permanently unbalanced, lost.

The biggest problem was that Cree really had no idea how to alleviate the boar-headed phantom. How could they reach him? He was too intentional, physical, awful. And he was too simple – a powerful revenant existing in a very narrow band, with an almost one-dimensional affective complex. For the thousandth time, she puzzled over the absence of the perimortem experience in his manifestation. She knew his predations were a memory recalled intensely at the moment of death, but she'd never sensed the "umbilicus": He was almost completely devoid of any connection to the man's actual experience of dying. And it was under the duress of dying that each individual most fervently sought to settle his accounts, sought emotional refuge – and therefore was most vulnerable That's when he was most likely to allow a living being to intrude upon his perseverating universe. But Cree had never sensed the library beating in the boar-headed man. And if he felt any remorse, it was only a tiny, dark thing, a grain of ash.

But late last night, thinking through every step of the scenario yet again, an epiphany had come to her. A curtain had fallen away, her vision clearing so abruptly that at two A.M. she'd leapt out of the hotel bed. She had dressed and slipped away from the hotel and come here to Lafayette Cemetery. She'd slid between the iron rails of the gate and gone deep into the center of the city of the dead. It had taken a long time to find the right crypt, but her guess had proved correct.

Paul looked at Cree, a question and an accusation. She had not told him the specifics of what was to happen, only that this visit was necessary and that he damned well owed her this much faith after all she'd accomplished so far. Not to mention the little matter of his secret collusion with Charmian. She had refused to listen to his excuses, and she'd made no effort to hide her contempt: He was as deceitful as anyone else in this city of masks.

"What do you think, Lila?" Paul asked. "Are you really up for this?"

"I think so," Lila said. "I can try."

"You'll do fine," Cree assured her. She took her arm and went with her across the street, Paul following reluctantly.

The attendant swung the gate open to let them in, then closed it after them. " 'Bout how long?" he asked. "I got to stay on to close up after."

"It might be two or three hours," Cree told him. "I'm sorry to keep you late. We're very grateful."

He cheered up when Paul tipped him with a twenty. He nodded, checked his watch in a shaft of streetlight, and went to sit on a block of masonry to one side of the gate. Cree looked back to see him light up a cigarette, its tiny orange pulse the last beacon of the ordinary world beyond the cemetery walls.

Near the gate, the cemetery was arranged in major lanes lined with the little temples. Farther in, the lanes branched and wandered, narrowing, and the crypts stood closer together. In the dim light, the faux-marble surfaces took on a misty quality, rectangles and triangles pale against the night. Here and there, statues stood guard at crypt doors, patient and sorrowful.

There were a thousand faint ghosts of grieving here, the lingering feelings of the living who had come here to bid farewell to loved ones. But otherwise, it was a tranquil place, Cree felt. The densely clustered crypts blocked the noise of the city, broke its sounds on a million facets of masonry so that the wandering avenues were bathed in a soft white whisper. It smelled of old brick, old cement, and the faint, musty breath of vault interiors. The air was cool now, but when she passed close to crypts Cree could feel the glow of the heat they'd stored during the day.

They walked slowly on. Lila was gripping her arm hard. Paul still followed behind, saying nothing. Cree had instructed him to be quiet, not to voice his skepticism, to bring a flashlight but not to use it unless she told him to. It was crucial that they let Lila find her own way through this.

Near the center, they hesitated at an intersection of narrow paths. At first Cree wasn't sure she remembered the way, but finally she decided they needed to go left, and only a few steps farther brought them to the crypt. As befitted an old and prestigious family, it was larger than most, a Greek temple about the size of a prefab backyard storage shed. In front, two fluted pillars held up the roof of a shallow vestibule that cast the vault's cover into shadow. The back was wedged only a hand's width from neighboring crypts, the gaps between completely lightless.

"What do we do?" Lila whispered so quietly Cree could hear the pulse in her throat.

"We wait. Might as well sit." Cree gestured toward a squat urn to the left of the door. "You'll find him."

Lila sat, just a shadow within the shadow of the overhang. Barely more visible, Paul hung several paces back, shifting uneasily. When Cree had proposed this visit, he had warned her that New Orleans cemeteries were dangerous places at night, and not for supernatural reasons. The enclosed, labyrinthine little cities made good temporary lodging for homeless people and had become favored places for crack deals to be made, for junkies to cook heroin over candle flames and shoot up. Night in the cemeteries was too often a time of predation.

"If you're too scared," she had told him acidly, "then don't come." The look on his face had given her a pang, but he damned well deserved it.

The air turned gradually cooler. Cree stood until her legs tired and then sat cross-legged on the floor of the vestibule. Paul's shadow shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Lila was a mound of darkness that rocked ever so slightly from side to side.

Sometime later, Cree felt it coming: the impulse growing toward its eerie nascence. It began with a faint sense of movement and feeling that coalesced only inches away, on the other side of the vault cover.

Paul sensed it, too. His shadow froze, as if he were listening.

"I'm scared, Cree," Lila whispered.

Something moved audibly inside the crypt. It started as a faint scraping noise, like a rat gnawing, but it soon changed. Something larger shifted, making a rustle of cloth and then a faint, dull thump. Even knowing it was coming, Cree felt a feather drift up her spine.

"There's someone coming," Paul whispered urgently.

"Shhh."

"No, there's someone… this is no joke, Cree, these crack heads – "

"Paul, shut up!"

The shadow of Paul looked down one side of the crypt, saw nothing, then stepped to the other side. Then he mounted the apron and put one hand against the marble crypt cover. He snatched it away as if it had burned him. No doubt he felt the faint vibration in the marble. Afterward he stood motionless again, indecisive. Cree couldn't see his face, but she could hear his breath, a short, sharp panting.

Lila hadn't moved. Cree let herself fall into sync with the burgeoning manifestation in the crypt and felt Lila coming with her.

And they found him there.

He had just awakened in utter darkness, confused. At first it seemed that he couldn't open his eyes, but then he realized they were open, he had either gone blind or there was simply no light for them to register. A waterfall of pain originated in his head and poured down his neck and back. Something was wrong with him, he realized. He'd been hurt. It took a while to make sense of things, but he became aware he was lying on his back on a hard, smooth, slightly rounded surface. With an effort, he lifted one hand only to discover a coarse masonry ceiling just inches above him. The discovery shocked him and his whole body jerked reflexively. The movement caused him to slide to the right, down the slight incline of the curved surface. Abruptly he felt a gap beneath him, and he rolled partly into it.

He was wedged there in the dark, his forehead against rough stone, the back of his head against the thing he'd been lying on. One arm hung beneath him, his fingers trailing in some kind of rubble – dust and crumbly chunks and sharp pieces. An incomprehensible place.

The movement had caused savage arcs of pain to streak through his whole body, and with it the memory came suddenly to him: Richard had been beating him! He had fled the purpling face of his brother-in-law, cringing from and yet welcoming every explosion of pain as the poker struck. Now was some time after that, and he was somewhere dark and small and musty smelling.

The arm beneath his body could hardly move, but the other was free, and with his fingers he traced the surface behind him. Beneath a film of grit it felt smooth and metallic. Something was digging painfully into his back, and when his fingers found it he discovered it was carved in low-relief designs. A flange or fixture like a decorative fist gripping a pole or rail that felt like, it was, a handle!

It was the carrying rail on a coffin.

At the realization, Bradford's ghost ignited in sheer terror. The hand wedged beneath him scrabbled in the remains of his Lambert ancestors. His free hand clawed the wall and bloodied itself. He got it above him, past the end of the coffin, and found only more of the same: bricks with bulges of mortar between them.

Bradford screamed. He was in a crypt. Richard must have done this. Richard and that black witch Josephine had buried him alive.

A groan squeezed out of Lila, and Cree knew she was experiencing the ghost's terror. The silhouette of Paul had put its hands over its ears.

Bradford tried to pound on the wall. Somebody would hear the thumping. They'd let him out. But he found he was too weak to pound long. Two useless blows and his arm fell back against his side, muscles exhausted. The darkness swam in whorls of sick yellow light. He tried to inch himself forward or backward beneath the low ceiling but found he couldn't. He was wedged in the narrow gap between the coffin and the rough wall and he had no strength and he was damaged, badly damaged.

"Help me!" he mouthed. He intended the words but had not enough breath to make them sound. "Help me!"

He pounded the wall for another few seconds and nearly blacked out from the exertion. Confusion took him, and he lost track of where he was or why. It had to do with Lila, he thought. Lila was an idea that was all pain. He had to do something for Lila, she was hurt. Somebody bad had hurt her. He had to get free to do something for Lila. Why? Then he remembered chasing her, and the giddy craziness of it, the way his anger and envy had risen and converged with his lust and that strange sadistic abandon, and how he'd let them go, let it go on. Breaking the boundaries was a thrill that fueled itself. In the boar mask he was a rutting animal, powerful and brutal and free, given power in all the ways his daily life deprived him of power. How good her fear of him felt, how supple her flesh when he forced himself on her, how exciting her struggles beneath him. Even in his pain and remorse, the memory was sharp and clear and spun out of him like a creature with its own separate life, savage and exultant.

Then it got distant and he forgot it again. A sharp tooth of mortar seemed to screw itself into the flesh of his forehead, and he couldn't pull away even a fraction of an inch.

"Charm? Charm!" he called, and this time his heard his voice work. Charm would always help, she had always helped. For a moment the thought of her gave him reassurance, but then he lost his place in time again. He kicked with his free leg and hit something hard. The crypt door. He kicked again, and that was all the strength he had.

The sound of Bradford's spectral shoe against the inch-thick marble door was clearly audible outside the crypt. Paul retreated several steps from the crypt, stumbling as he came off the apron, hands still over his ears, and despite her anger Cree felt a pang for him: His world, too, would come undone tonight.

Bradford's ghost scratched at the bricks with his free hand until he felt his nails come away and he became too weak to move any more. He lay there in the dark, mostly unconscious for a while.

When he awoke again, it was with a start. Something had changed.

The bricks he was wedged against had gotten warmer. The air he struggled to breathe was getting warm, too.

Cree fought to keep calm, knowing the agonies that would follow. The sun must have risen at that point, beginning its daily slow incineration of the occupants of the aboveground crypts of New Orleans. Inside, Bradford's ghost would relive the dying man's panic. His body would arch minutely as he began to be cooked alive. It would go on for some hours yet. It had been happening for almost thirty years.

Even in his wrath, Cree didn't think Richard would have intentionally condemned Bradford to this – surely he hadn't known Brad was still alive when he'd stuffed him in here.

She hoped Lila would intervene soon.

Cree could help, but Lila would need to find strength enough to offer him the window of escape. She had to enter his world dream and offer some promise of release.

Now the dying man was distilling down to his rudiments. There was regret – somewhere far away was a movie of memory that wouldn't stop, a wereboar taking its angry pleasure upon a girl. And Bradford hated the wereboar impulse. It lived in him like a huge tapeworm, fastened into his mind and feeding on him. It punished him. He wanted to be free of it.

You're dead, Bradford, he heard. The voice intruded on his solitary nightmare and startled him: Lila's voice! Go away now, it said. Just go away.

Cree looked at the dark shape of Lila. She was holding herself very still, but around her a dirty purple aura jittered.

Lila? the ghost thought. Its world became confused, and the presence of his victim, the source of his guilt, terrified him. The world of the crypt began to break up, unsustainable.

Cree held her breath, hoping Lila would find in herself what was needed.

"Go away, Bradford! Let yourself go away now!" Lila was saying it out loud. There was no forgiveness in her thought or her voice, but there was pity and there was acceptance. "You're dead. You're a long time ago. You're over with. The whole thing is over now."

The best thing she could manage to give him was to get over him. And it was just right, Cree realized.

It was all the window the tortured ghost needed. He fled from his nightmare in the crypt toward her hard pity and resignation. In the mind of the ghost, past and present clashed, irreconcilable. Lost, the ghost spun away. The boar-headed memory broke apart and became an echo of a memory of a dream and then just dust in a whorl of darkness, and even the walls of the crypt, oven hot now, weren't real. Nothing was.