The Casquette Girls (3 page)

It took me several blocks to realize that the very distinct line drawn across all the abandoned houses was an indicator of where the standing water had sat for days – the mark of the Storm.

Tears rolled down my face.

* * *

As the night sky drew in and the last slither of sun slipped behind the horizon, it became harder to see the horrific details, especially without the aid of working streetlights. It gave us a little peace – a peace that was abruptly interrupted by screeching tires when my father slammed on the brakes.

I lurched forward.

My seatbelt snapped against my chest, and my eyes smashed shut, awaiting impact. We swerved to a stop, and there was an aggressive smack to the hood of the car.

“Dammit!” my father yelled.

With short breaths, I opened my eyes and pushed his bracing hand from my chest.

“Did you see that?” he quickly asked.

“See what?”

“A silhouette? A guy who came out of nowhere?” He yanked up the emergency brake and opened his door.

“No! Dad—”

“Stay in the car,” he ordered. “And lock the doors.” He gently slammed the door behind him.

Instinct brought my fingers to his lock button, but I refused to press it with him outside. I unclipped my taut seatbelt and felt an immediate release when my lungs were able to fully expand.

The whole incident replayed in my mind. The screech. The thud to the hood. It hadn’t felt like we’d hit something – it felt like something had hi
t
u
s
.

Despite being only a few minutes from our house, I had the distinct feeling that we were trespassing.

My fingers tapped nervously on the door handle.

“Hello?” my father shouted out into the darkness.

I silenced my strumming fingers, and listened for a response.

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

The dead quiet made all the hairs on my arms shoot up. The tingle crawled up my neck to my scalp and clutched the back of my head. My father’s boots clicked against the pavement as he circled the car a couple of times, searching for the figure. Whoever it was seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

In the beam of the headlights, my father looked back at me and shrugged.

We drove away without finding a trace of evidence that anything had even occurred.

Eager to get home and assess the damage, I pushed the incident to the back of my mind, and the only noises for the remainder of the ride came from beneath the slow-moving tires as the rubber crunched over leaves, sticks, and glass from broken windows.

My heart pounded with anticipation by the time the car finally edged onto Esplanade Avenue, the border of the
Faubourg Marigny
and our neighborhood – the
Vieux Carré
. The historic French Quarter had burnt down to the ground in 1788 and again in 1794. Since then it’s drowned more times than anyone could count and has been a haven for eccentrics and freaks for more than three centuries. It’s a place where strange things have been known to happen, but locals have learned not to think twice about every little unexplainable detail; otherwise they’d go mad.

The enormous oak trees bent over both sides of the wide avenue, as if in agreement with the night sky to hide the current state of the gigantic old homes. I became relieved we had arrived by
only the light of the moon, so we didn’t have to take in all the damage at once.

Everything felt surreal – the scenery seemed familiar, but nothing looked the same.

With each turn, my anxiety levels rose higher. I wanted to jump out of the car to get a better view. I wanted to cry out, and then I wanted to cry. Instead, I sat perfectly still, was perfectly quiet, and looked straight ahead through the dusty windshield.

“Breathe,” said my father.

And I did.

* * *

“Home sweet home.” He pulled in front of the Creole cottage, which had been in the Le Moyne family ever since its construction in the mid-eighteenth century. The small flames in the gas lamps on either side of the entrance wished us welcome, but our home still felt strange, especially with the salmon-colored, floor-to-ceiling shutters now covered by long protective panels.

But it wasn’t just the storm boards that made things creepy. It wasn’t even the near total darkness. The most disturbing thing by far was the lack of noise, which normally would have drowned out the car’s rumbling engine.
Usually
the Big Easy never sleeps. In our part of town in particular, a mere two blocks from the nefarious Bourbon Street, any random night usually boasted a gamut of sounds from people gradually losing their inhibitions: broad-shouldered barkers in suits luring people into gentlemen’s clubs, middle-aged women belting out karaoke, frat boys hazing each other, underage teenagers squealing with mischievous delight, theatrical tour guides shouting out ghost stories, and jazz being pounded out of antique pianos.

Tonight, there was only the hum of our old car. My father cut the engine.

Silence.

The car door opened loudly, and I stood, stretching my legs. Chills crept up my spine when I realized there weren’t any other cars around. The historical commission enforced strict rules over maintaining the building façades
,
s
o
without the cars there was little to suggest we were even in modern times. My mind got lost in the fog and the gas lamps and the granite-stoned sidewalks, wondering if this was what the street had looked like three hundred years ago.

My head suddenly whipped as I thought I saw someone dash across the street. I squinted to focus better through the haze but didn’t see any movement.

“Get a grip,” I whispered to myself.

“We're gonna have to leave the car on the street,” my father said, pointing to the tree lying in the driveway on the other side of the iron gate.

“Well, I don’t think we have to worry about parking violations.”

“It’s not parking that I’m worried about,” he said. “Crime has been record high since the Storm. I need you to be extra careful.”

“I know, Dad. You already told me, like, ten times.”

“I’m serious, Adele. I will—”

“Dad! Please, don't threaten to send me back to Brigitte’s every time you need to emphasize the severity of this situation. I get it. Crime is up. I will keep my street-smart meter dialed up to level orange—”

“Adele, don’t call your mother Brigitte.”

Neither of us could really blame the other for the intensity of our moods. Besides our home and possessions, we had no idea what the future had in store. School? Jobs? Displaced friends and loved ones? The death count was already in the thousands, and tens of thousands were still reported missing. There were too many
what-ifs
to think about.

“We'll get through this, Dad. We always do.” I gave his shoulder a little squeeze and then hopped the steps to hold the gate open. He followed up the stoop with my luggage.

The heavy bolt clicked as he turned the key. The original cedar door was temperamental on a good day, but after sitting still for two months in this humidity, it had swollen into its frame even more than usual.

“Okay, the moment of truth,” he said, leaning his shoulder against it. With one final shove, the door swung open.

The warm air lingered, and dampness wrapped around my skin as if we had entered a gym locker room. I flicked the light switch just to be certain. Nothing. We both reached for our phones. That feeling of peculiarity versus familiarity swept over me once again.

The total silence had crept into the house with us, but after sixteen years of hearing the pendulum swings of the old grandfather clock in the foyer, an impression of the sound was left burned in my mind. The phantom ticks became louder in my head as we crept through the foyer and into the living room. My father walked a few feet ahead of me with his makeshift flashlight thrust forward and his right arm extended over me in a protective stance. There had been countless reports of people breaking into homes and squatting in the less-flooded neighborhoods.

By the glow of our phones, nothing appeared to be out of place – not that either of us could remember exactly how we had left it.

No signs of water or mold. My father exhaled loudly.

“I’m going to get the hurricane box,” I said, already halfway through the dormant dining room when he yelled my name in protest. The thick, old walls muffled his voice.

Despite the long journey, I felt incredibly alert – my eyes darted back and forth like an animal’s as I surveyed each room – and, now that I was alone, I became very aware of the beating of my own heart. The deeper I moved into the house, the harder it pounded, until the beating reverberated in my ears.

When I entered the kitchen, I couldn't shake the feeling that something was very wrong. And yet everything seemed okay…

A delicate touch brushed my neck.

My hair lifted from my shoulders, sending waves of shivers down my back.

“Who’s there?” My body twisted around, and I ducked away.

A slow creak answered.

I spun towards the noise, dropping my phone in the process. I bent to find it on the tile floor, and when I rose, my head collided with something soft but solid, nearly knocking me back down.

“What the—?”

My hair yanked backwards.

“Who’s there?” I yelled, thrashing my head.

I screamed in pain when something small and sharp pierced the skin at the base of my neck and clawed all the way up to my cheekbone.

High-pitched screams assaulted me. Blood smeared from my neck to my face as I covered my ears, screaming back. I continued to flail wildly in the dark – the intruder’s wings flapped frantically in my face.

“Adele!”

“Dad! Kitchen!” My head jerked backwards again as my hair became entangled with the bird’s talons and ripped from my scalp.

“Get away!”

Each time its feathers touched my skin, a wave of shudders went down my spine, making my feet dance. My arms got scratched up shielding my face. I fell to my knees, ripping the last of my tangled hair free from the bird’s claws. Tears poured.

“Adele! Where are you?”

I crouched in a ball next to a cabinet as glassware began to fall from the counter and smash onto the tile floor around me.

“Down here!”

“What the hell?” he yelled over the ruckus, sliding onto the floor. “Are you okay?” He pulled me close.

His heart raced against his chest. In the illumination of his phone, I saw the crow’s giant black wings open and close, breaking everything they came into contact with.

He helped me up, then swiftly grabbed a broom from behind the refrigerator and shooed the trespasser out the kitchen door. I followed and slammed the door shut.

“Are you hurt?” He held the light of his phone up to my face. My hand and arm was covering the wound, but his eyes still bulged, causing me to look down. Red covered most of my right shoulder. I wiped more blood off my face with the back of my other hand.

“It looks worse than it is,” I lied, my throat raw from screaming. The wound throbbed, but I kept it covered so he would calm down. “All of this over a bird?” I tried to joke, fighting the tears.

He still clutched the broom in one hand and his lit phone in the other. I don't know if it was the anxiety, the weariness, or just how ridiculous we both must have looked, but I started laughing, and soon he did too.

He put the broom down and wrapped his arms around me. “Home sweet home.”

“Never a dull moment.” My voice was muffled into his shoulder. I squirmed trying not to get blood on his shirt. “Wait a second.” I raised my head. “That door must have been open.”

“What?”

“The kitchen door… I never opened it for the crow to fly out.”

He held his phone up to shine the light on the old brass doorknob. Someone had definitely smashed the lock to force the door open. He tapped the keypad on his phone three times and brought it to his ear.

“Dammit! No service.”

They had warned everyone not to come home ye
t
…

He gave up on the call, went to the pantry, and lifted out a large cardboard box onto the kitchen counter. I didn’t need my phone light to know it was appropriately labeled “Hurricane Box” in my six-year-old scribble. On the side, written in a range of green Crayola to Sharpie, was a list of every hurricane it had been used in, along with the date. We were pretty diligent about keeping it fully stocked because we weren't the type who evacuated every time bad weather brewed in the Atlantic.

He pulled out a robust first-aid kit.

I nervously removed my sticky fingers from the wound.

“Dammit, Adele!”

“What?”

“I’m taking you to the hospital.”