The Ghosts Of New Orleans (A PARANORMAL RESEARCH AND CONTAINMENT DIVISION (PRCD) CASE FILE) (20 page)

Sergeant Anderson and Eloise
entered the house through the broken French doors. The house was even darker
and more ominous with the storm outside. They both were wearing headband
flashlights and flipped them on as soon as they entered the house.

“We have to go up to the second
floor,” Eloise said, “I have to check the east wing.”

Sergeant Anderson nodded. “Yes
ma’am, the east wing.”

They walked together across the
ballroom floor and then crossed the hall.  Eloise looked down at the prints in
the dirt.  She saw the prints that she and Sally had made when they crossed the
floor, but also saw another set of much larger prints. 

“That’s odd,” she said, and then
she looked back at the prints that she and Sergeant Anderson had made. The
large prints were an identical match to the prints that Sergeant Anderson had
just made.

“What’s odd, ma’am,” Anderson asked.

“These tracks,” she said. “They
weren’t here that other day when Sally and I were here.”

Anderson
bent down and examined them. “They look like military issued boots, ma’am.
Could the Major have sent someone here after you left?”

Eloise nodded, “Of course, that’s
probably exactly what happened – thank you, Sergeant.”

They slowly climbed the stairs, Anderson following Eloise. Halfway up she stepped down on the next stair without looking
and felt it crack beneath her feet.  Before she could react, Anderson had
wrapped his bulky arms around her waist and lifted her to the next stair.

“You have to watch these stairs, ma’am,”
he said. “Dry rot sets in and you just don’t know where you’ll end up.”

“Thank you for your help,
Sergeant,” she said. “You probably just saved my life.”

“Be a shame for a fine specimen
like you to fall to your death,” Anderson commented.

Eloise froze for a moment, his
words sending a chill down her spine.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked,
walking up behind her. 

She turned and smiled again, “Yes, Sergeant,
just checking for dry rot.”

They finished climbing the stairs
and walked into the east wing.

“Sergeant, do you know anything
about knocking?” Eloise asked.

“Knocking, ma’am?”

“Yes, knocking on walls to see if
there are any secret passages.”

Anderson
nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I’ve found my share of secret passages in my day.”

Eloise smiled. “Great! You take the
south side and I’ll take the north side.  I’m looking for a leather bound
journal.  If you find something like that, just yell.”

“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but
don’t you think we should stick together, just in case Delphine tries to attack
you again?”

Why did Sergeant Anderson saying
Delphine’s name bother her, she wondered?  Once again, she felt there was
something there, just beyond her reach.  She shook her head and responded to
the Sergeant.

“No, I think we’re safe for now. 
Besides, my amulet will protect me from her.”

“Well, I’d prefer that you search
the south side, I’ll take the north.”

Eloise shook her head. “Sergeant,
if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were afraid to go over there by
yourself.  I want to take the north side; you take the south side, no arguing
Sergeant.”

Without waiting for a response,
Eloise walked into the first room on the north side of the east wing.  This
room seemed brighter than any of the rooms they had searched before.  She
turned around and realized that this room had windows instead of plywood.

“Well, this is nice,” she said
aloud, turning off her flashlight.

She started tapping on the walls,
hoping that she could distinguish the difference in sounds when she came across
a passageway or hidden vault.  She noted that the room had also been swept
clean and the drywall had been patched in several areas.  Along the east wall
there had been a lot of drywall resurfacing.  Eloise moved over to the east
wall and started tapping.  No sooner had she begun that she heard a hollow
wooden sound.

“Okay, that’s weird,” she said. She
knocked again and once again heard the hollow sound. She put her hands on her
hips and looked around the room.

“If there’s a secret passage, there
has to be a lever,” she said to herself.

She looked around the room, nothing
but flat drywall.  She moved to the small closet that was adjacent to the east
wall.  Instead of cobwebs, the closet was also swept out.  “Hmmmm, someone’s
been taking care of this area.”

She ran her hands along the shelves
above the closet clothing rod.  Nothing but dust.  She stepped inside the
closet and ran her hands above the door trim on the inside of the closet. Above
the right corner of the frame she felt a small metal lever. 

Taking a deep breath, she pulled on
the lever. The side of the closet opened up.

Eloise stopped. Should she call to
Sergeant Anderson?

She didn’t know what she would
discover on the other side of this door. She fingered the amulet for a moment. 
Considering Anderson’s reaction to her earlier request, he might keep her out
of the room until he could call for backup.  Well, repenting was always easier
than asking permission. She turned on her flashlight and stepped through the
doorway.

The light beam shone into the space
she had entered.  She could tell that the room beyond was very large, as if
someone had taken three bedrooms and knocked down the connecting walls.  She looked
down, the floor was tile rather than the carpet found throughout the rest of
the house. Eloise flashed the beam up and across the wall and found a light
switch.  She walked over and flipped the switch on.  She heard the soft
vibrations of a generator and then saw the flicker of fluorescent lights.

Eloise turned back to the room and
gasped aloud. The room was filled with modern day torture devices.  It was as
if Delphine had moved the insidious devices forward in some kind of bizarre
time machine.

Across from her was a shiny metal
table with thick leather bindings at each corner.  Eloise walked over and
examined it.  She could see traces of blood and scratch marks near the upper
bindings as if someone had driven their fingernails into the metal surface.

Suddenly, the body of a woman was
lying across the table.  Eloise gasped and stepped back.  The woman was naked
and her arms and legs were bound down.  She had long blonde hair and looked
like a teen-ager. Her mouth was taped shut and her body was covered with cuts
and bruises. 

Eloise felt sick as she watched the
woman scratch her nails across the surface of the table, like a trapped animal
trying to escape.  The woman’s eyes were filled with pain and fear.  She turned
and looked at Eloise, pleading for help. 

“How can I help you?” Eloise asked.
“What can I do?”

Without responding, the woman
slowly faded away. Eloise moved backwards, her hand cupped over her mouth and
tears streaming down her face. 

She bumped into something and
turned to see a stainless steel table with axles attached to each end. 
Attached to the axles were two sets of cables with bindings at the end. Eloise
eye’s widened as she touched the bindings – it was the modern version of the
rack, an ancient torture device that slowly pulled the victim apart.

Once again the body of a young
woman appeared in front of her, strapped to the cables.  Eloise gasped as she recognized
this one from the photo in the Missing Persons fax.  She had long black hair
and an olive complexion.  Eloise watched as the cables tightened and her body
was stretched on the rack. The girl’s mouth was also taped, but Eloise could
see by the anguish in her eyes and on her face that if she could hear the
spirit’s voice, the scream would have shattered her heart.

“Oh, God,” she prayed. “Let me help
her.”

Eloise reached up to the cables,
trying to loosen them and stop the pain, but her hands slipped through the
images before her. Once again, the girl turned and looked into Eloise’s eyes,
pleading for help.  Then she too faded away.

Eloise ineffectually wiped at the
tears streaming down her face. These were not images from the distant past,
there girls were recently murdered.  Could Delphine have the power to commit
murder and continue her inhumane legacy throughout the centuries?

Eloise looked around the room and
in the back corner she saw a device that looked like an upright sarcophagus.  Almost
against her will she was drawn to the device. The container was closed except
for a small door placed about five feet above the ground.  Eloise flipped the
latch that held the front panels together. The panels sprang apart so quickly
that Eloise had to jump back in order to avoid being hit by one side. Inside
the container 12-inch blades protruded at regular intervals from the sides
towards the middle of the unit. The blades were pointed in such a way that when
the container was closed, they would mesh tightly together.  At the bottom of
the inside of the container was a heavy steel mesh floor and underneath was a
metal container. Eloise realized that it was a modern day Iron Maiden.

“That’s where the blood goes,” said
a soft voice behind Eloise.

She turned and gasped at the sight
of a beautiful African-American woman whose body was riddled with stab wounds. 

“Oh, how could anyone do this to
you?” Eloise cried.

“I thought he was coming to help
me,” she whispered. “He was in a uniform and everything.  I thought he was
coming to help me.”

Tears slid down her cheeks.

“He? Who did this to you?” Eloise
asked.

The girl stared over Eloise’s
shoulder and her eyes widened in fear. “He did,” she whispered, “Please don’t
let him hurt me again.”

Eloise turned quickly and her heart
stopped for a moment as Sergeant Anderson walked toward her from the end of the
room.

“I called to you ma’am, and you
didn’t answer, so I got concerned.”

Eloise took a deep breath,
remembering that Sergeant Anderson could not see the spirit that had just
testified against him.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant, I was just
coming to get you,” she said. “I was just amazed at all of the equipment I just
found in this room.”

Sergeant Anderson’s gaze never left
Eloise’s eyes.

“So, ma’am, what do you think all
this equipment is for?” he asked.

Eloise shrugged, slowly moving away
from the sarcophagus.  “I can’t figure it out,” she lied, “Perhaps some kind of
medical equipment.”

Sergeant Anderson shook his head.
“Sorry, ma’am, but something tells me that you know a lot more than you’re
saying.”

He moved his burly body so he stood
between Eloise and the passageway.

Eloise smiled, “Sergeant, I really
don’t understand what you mean and we need to continue our search.  So, I
suggest that we move on.”

She moved briskly towards the exit,
trying to bluff her way out of the room. But before she could reach safety, she
was caught by the waist and lifted up into the air.  Eloise screamed, kicked
backwards and connected, her hiking boots striking a soft fleshy portion of the
Marine’s body.  The strong arms dropped her and she fell onto the floor as
Sergeant Anderson doubled over in pain. 

Eloise scrambled to her feet and
ran out of the passageway.  She stopped and flipped the lever closing the door
behind her, hoping that it would buy her a little time. She ran down the hall,
but rather than running down the stairs, she continued into the darkened west
wing.  She ran past all of the rooms she and Sally had examined only a few days
before, pausing to crack the doors open slightly.  Then she ran to the end of
the hall and searched desperately for the secret lever the little spirit had
used to open the secret panel.

Eloise turned towards the hall in
panic when she heard the sound of the passageway being opened on the other side
of the house.  She switched off her flashlight and prayed that the darkness of
the hall would hide her long enough to find the lever.  She moved her hands
quickly along the edge of the wall, searching for a knob or a lever. 

She heard his footsteps coming down
the hall, pausing for a moment at the staircase and then moving on into the
west wing.  The pounding of Eloise’s heart seemed louder to her than his
footsteps, but she forced herself to concentrate on finding the lever. She
heard him pause at the first bedroom and heard the door open wider. Then she
heard the crash of more plaster falling from the ceiling.

She almost smiled,
Good!
She
thought,
maybe it will knock him out.

But footsteps slowly coming up the
hallway proved that he was still intact.  Once again he paused outside a
bedroom and then opened the door and moved inside. 

Finally, Eloise found a small
button at the base of the wall.  She pressed it and the panel moved to the side
with the loud squeal of an un-oiled hinge.  As Sergeant Anderson exited the bedroom,
Eloise dove through the opening.