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Six
What Legends Are Made Of
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
I know the history of this place. I know what happened here, I know the blood that was spilled and seeped into the ground, forever becoming a part of the Beauchamp plantation, staining it, imprinting the damnation into every grain of sand and each blade of grass.
I know about the Beauchamp curse.
You hear legends and folk tales and think it’s all just old wives tales that got exaggerated over the years, something to tell the children to make them behave. New Orleans is full of them. Ghost stories about haunted houses, warnings of voodoo spells and hexes. Every single home has wards and protection to keep out anything or anyone that would mean you harm.
The Beauchamp plantation has its own stories. One would think they were about two different places, one of a thriving plantation where bad luck seemed to visit its inhabitants frequently. The other had elements so bizarre, the stories seemed made up. They had to be. No normal person would behave that way.
However, the stories tell that a human was not responsible for the makings of the legends.
According to lore, hundreds of years ago in a hidden place at the edge of the swamps, the colored people gathered. Fires blazed in the dark and bones were beaten on skin-covered drums in a steady rhythm. They stripped from their clothing and tied loin cloths around themselves and weaved tiny bells strung together around their ankles. There was an altar, and on the altar was a box with particular carvings. Inside the box was a holy serpent, they say it was a python. Its name was Vodu, a Zombi. One by one, the people all went and laid their hand upon Vodu, pledging their loyalty to their serpent god, swearing to kill or die if need be. After they’d all sworn their devotion, a beautiful young woman was chosen to become the queen. She was placed atop the serpent’s box, where she danced and chanted. Her body began to shake and writhe. She flung her arms up into the night and her head rolled wildly upon her shoulders until a scream tore from her throat.
Invocations, curses, and sacred words poured from her lips. The serpent god had possessed her and accepted her as his oracle, his chosen one. The words she was chanting were not her own, but of the snakes. She was the vessel by which the power was being passed to all who were there, until everyone was writhing and chanting, until they’d all been possessed. They moved as one giant wave as the drum beat like a thunderous heartbeat in the black of the night.
The woman was first given the bowl of blood to drink from the animal that had been sacrificed, then it was passed to each person.
On one particular night, at one particular ceremony, the oracle had another offering for the holy serpent. She had hair clutched tightly in her grip which she flung into the fire, then anointed it with the blood of the sacrifice.
That was just before Bertrand Beauchamp’s family began to fall ill. A week before his wife died.
A week before Bertrand Beauchamp dragged the beautiful young slave woman from her room, the very room he’d visited her at often. Seven days before he’d beaten her unconscious near the bonfire the slaves had lit. When he burnt her alive.
The night the Beauchamp curse began.
That was then. This is now.
Some motherfucker came onto my property and did that to Dominique’s car. In broad fucking daylight.
It was all I could do to remain calm and not tear through the neighborhood looking for the sick fuck. I had to for her. She was terrified.
Not from the spray paint.
Because she was targeted. They sought her out, they obviously followed her here, and made their intentions known loud and clear in broad daylight. In broad fucking daylight at my house!
After the uniformed officers came by and searched the property, and the surrounding area, the crime scene investigators came and did what they do, took photographs and collected samples. Dominique’s car was towed to the station as evidence. I stood silently in the background and watched her as she worked. She couldn’t sit by and do nothing, regardless if she had a job to do or not. Even though she had been terrified when we found her car, she would not let that stop her. She was not going to sit back and not do anything. She was going to fight the bastard. I’m going to be right there with her.
The thing I found interesting was that Dominique didn’t seem to be focused on the same things as the other detectives. She took photographs and made notes of the symbols on the hood of her car. The others marked the indentations on the ground, footprints, tire tracks, hell, probably even the acorns and pinecones and anything else lying around the vicinity.
Not Dominique.
The only thing she had eyes for was the symbols.
It should strike me as strange, however, it doesn’t. Not knowing who her family is and where her blood comes from. The newspaper article had referred to her as an expert investigator. An expert on Voodoo? The occult? Magic? What does the sultry beauty know that makes her so important to this case, and so interesting to the perp?
Dominique is still a woman, alone, and some psycho has her on his radar. Which is why I drove her to the precinct.
However, the fact he chose the Beauchamp house to make his mark on Dominique is very peculiar.
Up until now, we believe, I believe, every move the perp made was methodical and with purpose. With these types of crimes, they always are.
So why did he choose to make his interest in Dominique known at my house? There’s a reason, a very powerful reason, at least to the perp.
There’s a link somewhere, some kind of connection, I just have to figure out what it is. Is it between me and Dominique? Between the Beauchamp house and her?
So many goddamn questions. But the walls don’t talk, and the ghosts hate any Beauchamp that walks on the face of the earth.
We need answers, and we need them now. We’re in a race of life, death, and torture, and we have no clue who we’re running from. With Mardi Gras coming, I think the grand finale is already planned, and the queen has been chosen.
They can’t fucking have her.
She’s mine.
