Into the Abyss

Audrey

                She ran. Desperately.

Audrey Monet ran as fast as she could, heedless of the foliage, of the small branches that ripped against her flesh.

                Because he was close. So close.

                 A sound suddenly rang out in the air, horrifically loud, as if a pack of wolves had shouted to the moon in a macabre chorus.

                But the moon wasn’t out yet! The afternoon was drawing to a close; great clouds were sweeping through the heavens, but . . .

                Maybe the moon was beginning to rise, just behind the dark shadows of the clouds.

                And maybe it didn’t matter. 

                What he, the thing, the creature, the human monster, didn’t know was that she’d already written Angela, told her what she had seen and therefore suspected . . .

                They’d be searching! Searching for her, searching for the killer!

                But . . .

                Another horrific howling sound rent through the darkly misted air.

                Could they possibly reach her in this swamp area off the bayou in time?

*

Enter the Krewe

Angela

                Angela Hawkins Crow looked up to the sky.

                Well, of course, she’d known.

A storm was coming. And the afternoon was growing late. Great gray clouds billowed all around, darkening the earth. And here, in the wilderness area off Bayou St. John, the thick trees and brush seemed to reach out and capture the deep smoke color of the sky and the shadows and hug them close.

                She was so near the city!

                And yet, so very far away.

                It was always amazing to experience the change coming out to the swampy region by the bayou. Leaving the bustle and energy, the streets with historic architecture, restaurants, bars, music everywhere, with people moving about by the dozens, native to area, tourists . . .

                To come here. But then again . . .

                Once upon a time in history, there had been a frenzy of activity near the area where she now stood, developers had built an amusement park filled with rides, restaurants, and a casino, right on the ground of the old Spanish Fort, built from the ruins of the first French fort, but all changing through the decades—the centuries—because of water flow, to guard the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain, to create purified water . . .

                But that was the way of progress . . . and human needs and nature itself sometimes caused the rampage of human beings to take a step backward.

                Nature was great. She loved it.

                Just not today.  

                Because now she was in an area where nature had overtaken all, where the waters of the bayou created swamp land and thickets and trees and . . .

                Naturally, alligators. Snakes.

                But she wasn’t on the lookout for such real creatures.

                Not when a killer was once again carrying out his deeds as a Rougarou, the legendary bayou creature akin to a werewolf.

                “He’s out here,” Jackson said.

                She turned, noting that Jackson had left the airboat and was standing by her side; local law enforcement would join them shortly.

                But even with the idiot howling as if he could really turn himself into the form of a werewolf, they were in a tangle of that nature she usually loved that could hide someone forever.

                He slipped an arm around her shoulders, surveying their surroundings.

                “He doesn’t have Audrey; he wouldn’t still be pulling his ridiculous howling act if he had,” Jackson added.

                He was trying to be assuring. As he had the right to be. The Krewe of Hunters had dealt with a would-be Rougarou once before and done so successfully. Agents Andre Rousseau and Cheyenne Donegal, both from the area and as kids who had grown up with the legends, had taken the assignment. But the Krewe’s first case had been in New Orleans and Angela had fallen in love with the city. Thus, while the kids were at camp, she and Jackson happened to be here—so much for a vacation--when a friend on the local police force had called them, anxious and angry that such a ridiculous and horrendous thing was coming about again.

                A police boat had brought them quickly to the last location from which Audrey’s cell phone had pinged. K-9 officers would soon be out, but Angela had been too anxious to wait for the organization of a true man hunt; she and Jackson knew what they were dealing with—and worse. Audrey was the daughter of Congressman Andrew Monet, a truly good man who hailed from Broussard.

                And a man who had supported the creation of their unit of the bureau from the beginning. Audrey had often been in their offices, a sweet and beautiful young woman who loved visiting, but loved Louisiana as her home. They had dinner together two nights ago. Even then, Audrey hadn’t been her usual self. She’d had a bad breakup with the man she’d been seeing for almost a year, Antoine Moreau, and at first, she’d avoided discussing it with them, but then she’d started blurting out the truth. He’d become involved with something weird. No, it wasn’t voodoo—she had friends who practiced voodoo but not like in the movies. To those who practiced the true belief, you’d never harm another. And harm you did would come back on you threefold. He’d gotten into something creepy, and she didn’t understand what it was, but he started disappearing by dark, coming back strangely, talking about curses and other nonsense.

                That was when news of the first murder reached them.

A fisherman’s body had been found, mauled to pieces. And those pieces left so embedded in the muck by the bayou that there had been no hope of discovering what had really happened to him.

But!

It hadn’t been--rangers, police, forensic experts and medical personnel agreed--the work of a bayou alligator.

Rather, the body had been . . .

Bitten and chewed. As if it had been attacked by a giant dog or a . . .

Wolf.

And here, where the Cajun population was heavy in many surrounding areas, the work of the French loup-garou, changed through time and culture in the area to the term Rougarou.

A classic cautionary fairy tale for many kids in the area.

“He’s howling by day. He hasn’t read the legend well,” Jackson said. “It’s going to rain like hell, but it isn’t night yet.”

“Not true,” Angela said. “In the legends, the majority, if the Rougarou can’t convince someone to take his place in one-hundred and one days, he has to stay a Rougarou forever.”

“Then how would he slip into the city to find his victims?” Jackson asked. “Wait! That’s what’s going on. He found the fisherman on the bayou. But how did he get to Audrey? How did he get her out here?”

Angela shook her head. The text she’d gotten from Audrey had said, “911, Bayou St. John.”

“Jackson, I don’t know! Unless . . . unless it’s that man she was dating. Maybe whatever he got into was so frightening to her because it was some kind of a cult, a group pressing the legend, members convinced people can be cursed into being werewolves or . . . maybe he called her, and she cared enough still to come out and try to help him.”

Jackson was already on the phone, calling Detective Jaden Montrell, currently their key contact.

Montrell was already on his way out to them, but he could place a call that would find Audrey’s old beau—if he could be found in the city. At the least, they could track down the last time he’d been seen.

Would a man who had been in love with Audrey at one time, at the least, be ready to rip her to shreds.

“I can’t believe it’s Antoine, even if he has gone off the deep end,” Angela said. “But it could be someone who had seduced her out here by pretending to be him.”

“Possibly. And . . .” He broke off and looked at her. She almost smiled. Jackson was the same man she’d met almost fifteen years ago now, with who she had worked since that time, and married. The man who was steadfast as leader of the Krewe, and equally steadfast as a husband and father. And she knew what he was about to say.

“It doesn’t matter who it is if we don’t find him quickly?” she asked.

He nodded. He lowered his head for a minute; he had learned long ago that no matter what protective urges a man felt for his wife and mother of his children, she was an agent, trained in martial arts and a damned good shot.

“I’ll go toward the howl,” he said. “You didn’t happen to load up with silver bullets?”

“Do silver bullets kill a Rougarou?” she asked dryly. “I think we’ll do fine without them, though, of course, the creature is a Cajun form of a werewolf, but since we’re both convinced that he’s a man, we should be fine.”

“Don’t let it get behind you!” he commanded.

“Ditto!”

“I’ll circle around the trees to the south of the little bend there,” she told him. He nodded, pausing a second longer. “Maybe . . .”

“Maybe there’s someone out here who can help us?” she asked softly.

He nodded and told her, “I’m gone; I’m moving. We’ve got to find this thing. The darkness is coming on. Let’s pray they get here with the dogs first!”

As they started off in their opposite directions, they came to a dead halt, looking back at one another as another howling sound hit the air.

They gave each other brief nods and hurried on. The good thing was this . . .

If the man-creature was still howling, it wasn’t ripping a young woman to shreds. Audrey was still alive.

And she was out here, somewhere.

*

Jackson

He’d been here before, Jackson reminded himself.

There was something about New Orleans. Despite some of the situations that had brought him and Angela here before, there was just something about the city—and the environs. The history, the rich history of Spanish, French, and American supremacy, an atmosphere that was welcoming to many of the spirits who stayed behind for whatever reason, spirits who seemed grateful for the possibility of helping others.

At the moment though . . .

He was walking through a world of cypress trees and mangroves, all decked out with Spanish moss that was growing darker by the minute as the clouds covered the waning sun of the late afternoon. He moved over an area where a streamlet of water slithered around the roots of the mangroves and nearly stepped upon an alligator snapping turtle.

But he missed the creature and startled an egret that flew off into the sky.

He felt his phone buzzing in his pocket; it was set on “silent” lest it be heard by a would-be Rougarou. He answered it quickly and quietly, noting first that the call was coming from Detective Jaden Montrell. “We can’t find the man that Audrey had been dating; he’s not at his house and we went to his shop on Royal Street, but the night manager said he hadn’t seen him all day. Cops are combing the streets, but . . . honestly, he could be anywhere. There is one thing; we’re still about ten minutes out with a search party of six of our guys who know the region and their K-9 companions. But one of them told me there’s an old cabin out there, part of one of the amusement parks or something that was out there at one time. The storm is going to break really soon; your young woman or the killer just might seek shelter. I’m sending a “ping” for location to your phone.”

“Got it,” Jackson told him. “And—”

“Sent to Angela, too,” Jaden told him.

“Great. Thanks.”

They ended the call quickly and he smiled at himself. There was no more capable agent than his longtime partner and wife. She was a beautiful woman, tall, lithe, blond, and with stunning eyes. That sometimes worked to their advantage; sometimes the criminals they confronted underestimated her amazing abilities when it came to logic, investigation, computers and more--discerning a situation and to self-defense—physical, and through her ability to talk a suspect down.

He'd still wanted to be damned sure she knew every piece of information that anyone had. And she needed it fast, which Jaden had known.

Time might be everything.

But before he started to move again, he became aware of someone before him.

Someone . . . someone who had shed his mortal frame. A dead man stood before him, looking ahead, and frowning. Jackson hesitated; Jean Lafitte and his pirates had been known to frequent the area.

But this man hadn’t been a pirate. He was dressed in clothing that would suggest the seventeen-hundreds. His coat was a fine shade of brown wool; he was wearing knee breeches, silk stockings, and he appeared to be wearing a fine white wig with curls that fell to his shoulders.

He turned, as if startled, realizing a man in mortal form was behind him. And his face lightened up as he saw that Jackson was staring straight at him.     

But he whispered when he spoke.

“Monsieur—” the ghost began.

“I see you,” Jackson said, and he quickly apologized, “English, sir, s’il vous plait?” he asked hopefully.

The man shook his head but nodded. “These many years, mais oui, I will speak English,” he said, his tone equally soft. “You have come to help?”

“I hope to! Have you seen—”

“Yes, yes, out there, straight ahead. There is a woman, a poor young lass, so terrified, and after her . . . there is a man. A crazy man! He is wearing a coat that is heavily furred, and he stops on his chase to howl, and she runs, but he comes closer and closer to her and I’m so very afraid for her, but I have tried to swipe at the demon and keep him from her, and it is to no avail! The rain and the darkness are fast coming as well!”

“Thank you, merci, merci!” Jackson said, moving ahead of the spirit. The ghost of the man kept pace with him.

“I was no pirate, sir,” the running ghost breathed, “Alain Laurant is my name. You must know . . . I was just a townsman who, I admit, was grateful for the supplies Lafitte brought in . . . I met him out here. The man did me no ill! I died in the city . . . my heart gave out.”

“You are helping me now and I am grateful!” Jackson said as a branch slapped him hard against the chest. “How far, how far . . . ahead?

A bit. I think they are heading to a derelict structure . . . it was a workroom of sorts years ago, but there’s still a roof and soon the rain will begin.”

Would Audrey head to a place where she might be trapped?

Jackson didn’t know. With his new unearthly friend at his side, he tore through the trees, the rugged terrain, the mud pits . . . and he prayed he would be on time.

A howl broke through the wind again.

They had a chance. They had a chance if they could just move fast enough!

“Mon Dieu!” the ghost said suddenly.

“What is it?” Jackson asked, ducking a branch.

“I think . . . I think that there may be two . . . two somethings out here!”

*

Angela

She had thought that she loved nature. As night came on then, not so much!

Well, one thing, if their Rougarou needed the moon, he wasn’t going to get it tonight. The clouds were making the world around her all but black. And, of course, normally, she might be afraid of snakes, or the other creatures that might be scurrying for cover against the coming storm.

She and Jackson had taken opposite routes from where they started; if she kept moving quickly enough and he did the same, they would meet at a point on the opposite edge of the high land in the midst of the bayou rivulets. And, if she kept moving fast enough, they’d meet up right about the same time the troops arrived at the other end.

And then . . .

Well, at least they’d be together in the darkness and the rain. And when she’d glanced at her phone when the “ping” had arrived, it seemed she was near the derelict building Jaden had told them about.

But just as the thought struck her, she heard the howl again.

And this time, it seemed to have come from a place closer to her side of the routes they had taken.

But . . .

She suddenly went dead still, listening the best she could against the sound of the wind whipping harder through the trees and the brush.

Something, someone, was ahead of her, moving stealthily, or . . .

She heard a muffled sob.

She carefully moved forward again, passing an overgrown clump of wildflowers, moving through a puddle of mush and toward a new grove of cypress.

Then she heard it again. The soft sob, a sound  the issuer was trying desperately to control.

Then . . .

A startled scream.

Angela drew her Glock and moved forward, hoping to use the trees for cover until she reached the woman who had screamed.

Through the trees, she could dimly see the walls of something that was an old wooden structure, possibly part of the now gone entertainment area.

There was a pale glow of light illuminating it. A flashlight, candles burning, perhaps?

But as she saw the structure, she saw the movement. Something that appeared large was dragging someone else, backwards, toward the shelter.

There was so little light!

But she thought she saw something glinting . . . something at the woman’s throat.

A knife?

Did Rougarou’s now carry knives?

She was close enough. She took aim at what she thought—and hoped—to be the creature’s—or person’s—head.

“Stop!” she commanded. “Stop or I’ll shoot! Let her go immediately!”

She was answered with a howl, almost as if she was being laughed at.

“Audrey! Audrey is that you?” she asked.

“Help me!” the girl cried brokenly, and then she screamed again as the creature drew the blade harder against her.

“Whoever you are!” she snapped, “you are not a Rougarou. I don’t know what ridiculous thing you’ve gotten yourself into, but you’re not a Rougarou!”

Angela was startled by another voice. There was someone coming from the building, also appearing large in a fur garment.

“He is right now, but I’m going to be the Rougarou next! He’s bringing me my first kill so that I can take over for him!” the second man said. “A hundred days have gone by since his curse . . . but I have volunteered to be the Rougarou!”

“I will shoot you, too, just as easily!” Angela snapped. “Let her go right now.”

The man laughed. “You can’t kill a Rougarou with regular bullets!”

“Or really? Silver bullets, right? I mean, the Rougarou is just a werewolf, Cajun style, or as the French would say, a loup-garou?”

“Right, but I’m still a man right now and because of that—”

“Because of that I can kill you with any old bullet,” Angela told him.

Then, a burst of lightning tore through the forest, followed by a horrendous pound of thunder.

The rain began. Not gently, but in a deluge.

The one man whipped Audrey into his arms and moved so swiftly Angela didn’t dare fire; his friend was ahead of him, swiftly into the darkness, and, she knew, into the remnants of the old building.

She ran against the brutal sting of the rain and burst through the broken doorway.

The men were there. She had never met Audrey’s ex-boyfriend, but she assumed he was the one holding Audrey. And the knife, well . . .in the dim light emitting from a lantern that had been set on the floor she could see that it wasn’t a knife, per se, at all—the so called Rougarou was wearing fake metal talons . . .

All of them as sharp as knives.

“Which one of you wants to die first?” she asked.

But the second man laughed. “You’re not looking. I’m armed, too. The question here is, which one of you wants to die first?”

And he was. The way he had his hand at his side along with the sodden fur he was wearing had hidden the fact that he was carrying a gun.

She could shoot him first, of course. But seeing the other man’s crazed eyes, she knew he would draw one of his talons across Audrey’s throat.

And Audrey was looking at her so desperately, tears running down her cheeks. She was beyond terrified.

But Angela knew something that they didn’t, of course.

Jackson would be there any minute.

“Do you know how insane this is?” Angela asked. “You are men; you are not creatures. You’ve engaged in something completely ridiculous. Let her go now and I will do everything in my power to help you.”

“Please, please!” Audrey begged. “Please . . . Antoine, you said that you loved me, how can you be doing this to me?”

“The pack . . . I owe the pack my allegiance, my loyalty,” the man said.

He was wavering, Angela thought. She just had to keep talking.

“The pack?” she asked politely. “You have a pack, sir?”

“Shut up!” the other man raged. “I’ll go back to my first question—which one of you wants to die first?”

Angela smiled. And her smile was real.

She realized they weren’t alone in the cabin. It wasn’t Jackson; it was a spirit, the dignified looking spirit of a man who had died at about the age of fifty and been buried in the gentlemanly costume of the day. And he was nodding in a way that indicated that Jackson was just outside.

             “I’m very confused. You think you’re werewolves—or rougarous—but your fur is fake, your talons are fake . . . so how is anything about you real?” she asked.

                “Our hearts beat like the hearts of those who came before us!” the man snapped.

                “The witch cursed me!” Antoine said. “You are cursed into being a Rougarou. But then you join the pack and the pack has friends, such as my friend here, and we are able to break the bonds when another takes them on!”

                Angela knew he believed every word he was saying. 

                “I see. So where do we find this witch? Who is she?”

                “She has no name! She comes by night!” Antoine told them.

                “Comes where by night?” Angela asked.

                “To the alley . . . I was just walking through and . . . she came up to me . . . and she said that she needed a Rougarou and the next thing I knew I was in a dark house and—” Antoine began.

                “You don’t need to tell them anything!” the second man raged.

                “No, no, they must understand! I do love you, Audrey, and I will leave this world with you for a better one in the next!”

“Which one of you wants to die first?” the second man raged again.

“I don’t plan to die tonight at all!” Angela assured him.

*

It was a delicate situation.

Jackson was grateful to his newfound friend, be that friend a spirit.

It was exceptionally good, actually, that he was a spirit. He could walk right into the old derelict building and the only one who might see him would be Angela.

Rougarous didn’t legendarily have the ability to see the dead, so that was good.

And still, he carefully listened as she spoke, and he knew they did need to handle the situation perfectly lest Audrey become a victim—even in the candlelight, from his position in the rain by the broken doorway—he could see the so-called “talon” nails were as sharp as razors. There was already a fine red line at Audrey’s neck.

So, what was the play?

They had no time. The unknown man at Antoine’s side was growing restless. He meant it; he meant to kill the women one by one. But apparently, he wanted to kill them in werewolf fashion, and therefore, he wanted to disarm Angela.

And Jackson quickly realized he was right.

“Drop your weapon or my friend here will rake his nails right across her throat right in front of you and then you’ll die knowing  you caused her that death!” the man said.

Would Antoine really kill Audrey?

That was something Jackson didn’t know. They needed to get the knife away from the woman’s throat. And he could do it, of course, by taking aim for the man’s head from where he stood. Yet even then, one of the talons . . .

He didn’t need to debate the mental question for long.

Because Angela knew he was there.

She lowered her weapon; she didn’t drop it. She lowered it.

“Me first,” she said. “Oh, and when you release her, please watch out. There’s a ghost standing just to your left?”

              “What?” Antoine asked, his voice uneven, fear and uncertainty clouded his face. Well, the man had believed a witch had made him a Rougarou. Not such a stretch he might believe her, even if he didn’t have the rare genetics that allowed one to see the dead.

“There are no ghosts!” the second man shouted.

“Rougarous—but no ghosts?” Angela asked incredulously. “Come on, let her go, let her watch. I said me first!”

And as Antoine released Audrey, letting her sink to the floor, Jackson burst into the room faster than a gust of wind, bringing his Glock up against the would-be rougarou’s head, wrenching his unused weapon from his side. Angela took quick aim at Antoine, and he, too, fell to the floor, sobbing.

“You don’t understand, you don’t understand, I’ll be a Rougarou forever!” he cried.

“Antoine,” Angela said, stepping forward, reaching down to draw the hysterical Audrey into her arms. “You never were a rougarou.”

“Because I never made a kill—” Antoine began.

“I even had to do that for you!” the other man raged as Jackson used zip ties from his sodden pocket to cuff the man. “The pack, the pack will find you and kill you, the witch and the pack, they’ll take care of you!”

He had barely finished the words before the sounds of the storm were overcome by the barking of dogs.

Detective Jaden Montrell and his crew had arrived.

Dogs and men were soaking, and the dogs were louder than a crash of thunder, but quickly under the control of their handlers.

It wasn’t going to be easy to thank his new friend that night, Jackson knew. The police who had come were great, quickly speaking with Audrey but letting her stay, terrified still, in Angela’s arms. One airboat would take the prisoners in; one would take Audrey and Angela and Jackson to the station where the inevitable paperwork would begin.

Along with the information they had gathered that night. There was someone in the city pretending to be a witch capable of cursing others to do her bidding by somehow getting them to believe legends and in evil. Among her flock, Jackson surmised, there would be those who believed in her stories, and those who just enjoyed the degradations pretending to believe might allow them.

He had a chance to look at his new friend, Alain Laurant.

“I love the city still!” the ghost said. “Tomorrow night; I will find you.”

“Where?” Jackson whispered.

The ghost grinned. “Where else?” he asked. “Lafitte’s!”

Jackson grinned and nodded, slipping an arm around Angela as she held the sobbing Audrey to her.

*

Angela

Detective Alain Montrell was organized and detailed. By the end of the night, although it was still hours into the storm, the paperwork was complete, the right charges were filed, and, as she had expected, Audrey had been asked out to meet Antoine; he had told her he’d been having problems and he thought that a walk in the bayou country with her would help him; he could explain everything that had been going on with him and how he could change things with her help.

She would spend the night at the hospital for observation and to see that the slender wounds at her throat were tended to.

The more that went on in the interrogation rooms, the more it became evident that the “second man,” who turned out to be a New Jersey transplant named Brad Kelsey, was guilty of the murder of the fisherman, proving to Antoine and the “pack” that he was the right candidate to become a true rougarou.

Antoine would wind up in a facility for the criminally insane.

And, perhaps, most importantly, the police would now know that they were on the lookout for a “witch” who struck in Pirate’s Alley when the tourists and artist had left for the day and only the lights from nearby bars and restaurants helped dispel the shadows.

It was long past midnight when they finished. The storm had abated.

And it was New Orleans, so, of course, the French Quarter was still going strong.

But Angela and Jackson were drenched and worn out and they headed for their hotel room. They took long, hot showers. And it was later still when they crawled into bed.

An old married couple! Angela thought.

But she smiled when Jackson turned to her, a light in his eyes. He was still one of the most striking men she had ever met, his Native American and European features so handsomely blended, and his face, when he looked at her then, still dignified, but mostly . . . well, he could be charming.

And so, she laughed; he reminded her that they were on vacation.

And they made love.

The next day, they enjoyed the city they loved so much. A few hours at the zoo, a few at the aquarium, a walk in Jackson Square, a stop at the World War II Museum . . . and a wander down Royal Street, popping bills into the cans of the various street musicians they enjoyed so much. 

But that night, they headed to Lafitte’s, considered one of the oldest buildings still standing in the Quarter, and while it most likely hadn’t been the Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, it was suspected by historians through the ages to have been a front for the Lafitte brothers when they sold their ill-gotten gains.

And as they had hoped, their newfound ghost friend arrived to join them at one of the outside tables.

“Bonsoir!” he told them, sliding next to Angela. “It is a true pleasure to meet you, Madame. I so admired your abilities to talk, to engage . . . to see me and know that you dared take chances because help was near!”

Angela grinned and told him, “Merci! The pleasure is mind, sir.”

It was easy to talk with the man; it simply appeared to others that she and Jackson were talking to one another.

He chatted with them about New Orleans, from the French founding of the city to the Spanish period and onward to the creation of the incredible, world-class World War II Museum. He was filled with warm humor when he told them how much he had loved it when David Bowie had filmed Cat People at the zoo, and how he still loved the music and the rhythm of the city and . . .

He grew serious.

“I thought . . . I thought last night that it was time I moved on,” he told them. “But then I listened and . . .”

“And?” Angela asked.

“Well, I won’t be leaving for a while. Not when there’s a witch in the city, drugging people, making them crazy . . . no. I will be here. Watching. Waiting. And then . . .”

He broke off, frowning.

“And then when I catch her, what do I do?” he asked, more to himself than to him. He looked at Angela and Jackson, arching a dignified brow.

And they smiled at one another.

Sure. They could hang around a bit.

After all, they really loved New Orleans.