He Who Walks in Shadow (16 page)

Then he did something entirely unexpected.

Guillaume leaned across the space between us and kissed me. I began to pull away, but his strong arms wrapped around my shoulders and would not let me escape. Not that I tried all that hard. I was feeling something I hadn’t thought possible again, things I hadn’t felt in a very long time.

It was electric. It was amazing. I had heard others speak about a “spark” between two people, but I had never felt it like that, not even with William. It was palpable, and if the cabin had been darkened, I think the fire between us would have provided enough light to read by.

The kiss might have gone on forever had I not regained some semblance of composure, some semblance of myself. I pushed him away, and this time he let me.

“But Margot…” I said.

Guillaume blushed slightly, and then he smiled so sweetly at me that I almost felt guilty for asking.

“Margot, she is a good friend, and a wonderful girl. But…” He gestured with his hand, palm up, and I understood.

“She’s clearly taken with you. Taken completely.”

He sighed, long and deep. “Yes. She is. But that I cannot help. In fact, I had told myself it wasn’t true for a very long time. But now, I suppose it can’t be denied.”

“No,” I said. “No, it cannot.”

“Look, there is nothing I can do about Margot, or how she feels. But I am not bound by that. She has been a dear friend to me when others were not to be found, and I treasure that more deeply than you can know. But still, there will always be a gulf between us. It’s different with you. When I saw you, the very first moment, I knew that we had met for a reason. I felt something, unlike anything I had ever felt before. It was fate that brought us together, no? Fate that led you to me so that I could help you find your father. And I won’t let anything, not even Margot, stand in the way of that.”

He leaned forward and cupped my chin in his hand, lifting my lips to his. I did not fight him this time. I let him have me—all of me. And for the first time since William died, I felt like a woman again.

Journal of Carter Weston

October 24, 1926

The legends regarding Nyarlathotep have always been of particular interest to me. It was his relationship to mankind that drew me, his antithesis to the Christ figure. For he was also a god who walked among men. But to destroy, not to save. Still, I found hope in that dependency, in that connection to humanity. If it were true that Nyarlathotep somehow needed men to accomplish whatever foul deeds he sought, then men could stand in the breech against him as well, even if we were always outnumbered by those who would do his bidding.

I witnessed them and their perversity only a few years ago. I’d attended a conference on ancient Sumerian religious cults at the Louisiana State University, in the city of Baton Rouge. The conference itself was a waste of time and money, but I did not leave empty handed. Not in the slightest. For there was another at the conference, one who did not belong. And yet he was the most important attendee of them all.

I met him in the bar of the Bellemont hotel. He wore a seersucker suit and white patent-leather shoes. But it wasn’t his clothes that drew me to him. It was the fact he was reading my second book,
Witch-cults of the Ancient World
. Still, I probably would have let him be, not wanting to draw attention to myself or waste either of our time. But it was not up to me, for he sought me out.

“Dr. Weston,” he said, extending his hand. “I had hoped you’d turn up here. I am Detective John Dubois, up from New Orleans for the conference. Two Sazeracs,” he said to the bartender. The man nodded and went to work. Dubois had an easy smile and an innate charm, the kind that made you trust him immediately. I had a sudden feeling that he was very good at extracting confessions. The bartender returned with two glasses of a frothy white liquid I did not recognize.

“To freedom.” He took a sip and then held a finger in the air. “I was hoping you would sign this,” he said, sliding the book in my direction. As I did, I asked him what would bring a New Orleans inspector of the police to such a conference.

“Interesting you should ask, professor, for that reason sits before me.” Dubois must have seen a hesitancy flash in my eyes, because he put a hand on my arm and laughed. “Oh, it’s nothing you’ve done, professor. Nothing at all. In fact, it’s something I wanted to do
for
you.” It was then he began to relay to me the story of many of the strange things he had seen on the job in Orleans Parish. It seemed that one of the cults I had written about in my book—ancient, yes, but certainly not dead—had found its way to the Crescent City.

“Fifteen years or so ago, when I was fresh on the force, we broke up one of their meetings out in the swamps, some thirty miles from the city. Middle of nowhere, kind of place that honest people don’t go if they can help it. Arrested a bunch of them, not that we could make the charges stick, even if we did believe that they were involved in some pretty nasty stuff. They left behind an artifact though, one I’m sure you are familiar with. The man in charge of my unit, Inspector Legrasse, spent the rest of his life trying to figure out just what he had.”

I was indeed familiar with the artifact. Professor George Angell of Brown University was a dear friend of mine, and he had related to me the very same story that Dubois was now telling. Of how the inspector had discovered an eldritch and untraceable idol—a grotesque, ancient stone statuette—and he had sought scholarly advice on the object and the cult that possessed it, much as Dubois was now seeking from me.

“I was under the impression, detective, that you had succeeded in driving the cultists out of the city.”

Dubois shook his head and scoffed. “Were it so, professor. New Orleans is not the kind of place that one can purge of such things. Oh, they’ve gone underground all right, but they are still there. Waiting. That’s why I became so interested in your particular area of expertise,” he said, gesturing to my book. “Obsessed, my wife says. But when you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, you come to believe that men, with the right motivation, are capable of just about anything. And as much as I’d like to believe it weren’t so, my eyes don’t lie to me.”

“So they are active again, you say?”

“They are. It took us a while to get a figure on it. They hide in plain sight, cover their tracks with voodoo and such. The voodoo is harmless enough. Ancestor worship, protective potions, that sort of thing. Mostly hocus-pocus and cheap tricks. But there’s one voodooeen who was different, one who had real power.”

“Laveau.”

He nodded once, throwing back the rest of his drink and ordering another with a nod at the bartender.

“Been dead thirty years at least, but they say she still walks the streets of the Old Quarter, still peddles her wares and her witchcraft. Still preaches her black masses. Sounds crazy, I know. But probably not to you, and certainly not to me.”

“And you think there’s more to this Laveau woman than voodoo?”

Dubois leaned back against the bar. “Tell me, professor. What do you know of the Ashmodai?” A grin flashed across his face as a shudder roiled through me. “That’s what I thought.”

The Ashmodai were, perhaps, the world’s first great religion. The fires of their worship had burned through Mesopotamia, down into Africa, and out into the Far East. Their adherents slaughtered men, women, and children by the thousands in Gaul and across the channel in ancient Britain, locking them in towering wooden figures formed in the shape of a man, before burning them to the ground. It is said that the empires of antiquity arose from the maddened cries of savaged peoples, inspired by desperate souls that begged for anyone to save them from the hordes of the Ashmodai. And while the Egyptians and Greeks and Babylonians struck heavy blows against the old faith, it wasn’t until the Roman Empire brought the sword and the cross to every known corner of the world that the flame of Asmodeus was extinguished.

And yet, even now, whispers of their continued workings float across the winds of time, and who can say that they ever truly disappeared?

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t believe that the Ashmodai have come to New Orleans?”

“You think they
are
dead, then? Truly dead?”

“Dead or not, there’s been not one recorded instance of their presence for 1,500 years.”

“But there have, haven’t there? The nameless cults that exist throughout the world? Maybe not so nameless after all.”

It was true that there were those who claimed that the ancient religions had not vanished but simply gone underground, disguising themselves in the garb of more modern faiths. I had seen evidence of such subterfuge, from the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which had spread from New England’s own Innsmouth to port cities around the world, to the Circle of the Crescent Moon, which had debased mosques throughout Indonesia.

“Even so,” I said, “it seems highly unlikely you would have them in Louisiana, no matter what you’ve seen.”

“Perhaps,” he said, staring down into his drink. “Maybe you should come with me to New Orleans, and we can find out together. We think we know where they meet, and I want you there when we break it up.”

“Me? But why?”

For a moment Dubois was silent, but then he picked up the book that I had signed for him and pointed to it. “Because, professor. I’ve read your book, and I’ve read a lot of others, too. I know more than just about anyone out there about this stuff,” he said, gesturing to the hallway where the conference-goers were gathered. “Call it obsession if you want, but I’ve learned that knowledge is power. And that’s why you need to be involved. The Old Ones want chaos, and they thrive on ignorance. If we’re going after them in the shadows, then we gotta shine the light of truth on them. That’s what you do. ‘Cause there can be no faith without seeing truth, and faith is what we need now more than ever.”

I didn’t need convincing. If even half of what Dubois believed had solid foundation, then the trip to New Orleans was well worth the cost in time and money. In the end, I was not to be disappointed.

* * *

The conference still had a day to go, but I was no longer interested in presentations and scholarly theories. Dubois and I were on the next train to New Orleans, watching the swamps speed by as he relayed what had brought him to Baton Rouge in the first place.

“We found her,” he said, “in the cellar of an abandoned tavern on the outskirts of the city. It wasn’t a pretty sight, professor. Not a pretty sight at all. Never seen anything like it. She was split, all the way down her body. Naked, of course. Most of her organs had been taken out and placed around the chamber, some burnt in front of crude alters. To what god, I don’t know and don’t care to find out. Coroner said she was alive through most of it.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Well, nothing, at the time. But we were able to track down a name based on a locket that we found under one of the chairs in the cellar. Probably got ripped off when they were getting her ready. Her name was Janet Barboux, seventeen years old. Her father was a sailor, in and out of New Orleans most times. We’ve been unable to locate him, but we also can’t find a speck of proof that he’s aboard any of the ships that have left port in the last month. Sad to say, he’s our prime suspect.”

“His own daughter?”

The inspector shook his head, but not in denial. “Terrible thing, isn’t it? Anyway, once we focused on Barboux, we were able to track down some of his less reputable associates. One of them, a man named Joe—doesn’t have a last name that we can find—has a reputation around town as being mentally unstable. Spent some time up at East Louisiana, and they probably should have kept him there. He denied any involvement at first, of course, but we were able to break him. Can’t say I’m altogether proud of our methods, but desperate times, right?”

“And what did he say?”

“Claimed he fell into some tough straits. Lost his job, needed money. Someone from his church said they could help. Said they belonged to something special, something that would change his life. They called themselves the
pòt an lò
, creole for the Golden Gate. Things turned for him. He had money in his pocket for the first time in his life. After about a year, they told him the time was right, that the stars had come round. Told him that a sacrifice was needed, the spilling of blood on the death of the moon.”

“I assume there was a promise attached to this sacrifice as well?”

“Indeed, there was. If done correctly, the sacrifice opened a doorway on the coming of the next full moon. A gate through which might pass what he called the
bondye wa
, apparently some kind of ancient demon, a messenger of some sort.” I must have blanched then, for a shadow of understanding passed over the face of Dubois. “You know of what he speaks? This makes sense to you?”

“I have heard the legends,” I mumbled.

“In any event,” he said, “the full moon is tonight. With the assistance of this Joe, we were able to track the cult to its heart. A place called La Salle. I’m not surprised. La Salle has quite a reputation, the sort of place that kids make up ghost stories about and old folks shun. It was one of the first permanent settlements in the territory, and would have been the capital, or so they say. The Catholic Diocese built this enormous cathedral in the center of town. Something else to see. But then the floods came. Some people say it was an Indian curse, that the settlers had disturbed old magic better left alone. But whatever the truth, the intentions of the townsfolk, no matter how grand, couldn’t stand against the rising waters. Before long, the whole place was a ghost town. It’s been that way ever since.”

“And that is where we are going?”

“It is. Tonight. My men will meet us at the train station.”

We rode in silence then, nothing but the sound of the engine and steel wheels on steel rails to interrupt our thoughts.

* * *

The inspector’s men were waiting for us at the station, just as he said. There were ten of them, strong men with hard faces that I hoped reflected their hearts. The sun already hung low in the western sky.