House of Corruption (4 page)

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, came the soft voice in his brain.
Help me.

The wooden cross that served as the woman’s marker leaned to the right, slightly, but he dared not set it straight. He dared not move.

Help me.

The gravesite shifted. Dirt boiled to the surface, forced up by pale things like spiders grasping at the air. He felt the vibration beneath his feet. Scrabbling fingers became hands and the hands pulled free two willowy arms, and those arms pulled out of the ground until the dead woman’s face appeared.

Help me.

She gibbered out of her unclean womb, weeping without tears, gasping without breath. Free of the earth she stood upon her dirty, bare feet in her filthy burial dress. She looked at him—
blazes, but her black, dead eyes
—and while her left hand played with the ribbon between her breasts, her right hand slid down the pale curve of her throat. Two puckered, pale scars shone at the curve of her shoulder.

So cold.

She approached him. He could not move. Her fingers, sticky with rancid blood, flittered out against his face, along his shoulders.

I am so cold.

Hold me, Artémius.

She clutched his right hand and slid off his glove, the knuckles of her fingers snapping as she kneaded his palm. He could not move. He had loved this woman with all his heart, given everything of himself to her. Now she touched him with dead hands. Those hands once fed his longing and love for her; the memory of their private embraces now died as her dry lips pressed against his palm. He felt no warmth there. She pressed her mouth against his wrist, tongue sliding over his frozen sweat. He watched her, transfixed, as she licked his wrist clean.

Make me warm again.

Then she bit his wrist.

Savoy shuddered, opened his eyes.

His head leaned against the window of the train, the glass foggy from his moist breath. The lush, swampy flats of Louisiana rolled just outside, capped with low, grey clouds threatening to spill over. At his feet lay the sprawl of his notebook, dropped from his lap. When had he fallen asleep?

It had been a long time since he had dreamed about that night. He lifted the cuff at his left wrist to reveal six pale scars where that abomination had bit him. Close to twenty years now, and still the tokens of that night glared from his skin. They served to remind him when his faith, his purpose, his very name would change forever.

At the time, he could not tell his father of that experience, could not disrupt the tenuous reputation he had developed amongst the academia of Cambridge—his father a professor and his son, Artémius, a promising student. It was bad enough they endured the subtle prejudice against those of Jewish heritage, the anti-Semitic ravings in the newspapers. There was no need to bring shame and suspicion. Yet he wanted,
needed
to tell someone.

The only person who might give him a decent hearing was his mentor, Professor Ernst Stronheim. He considered the memory of Stronheim’s sitting room in Vienna, the fireplace banked and warm, the room thick with tobacco smoke and coffee and cinnamon. The two had talked much of the night as Savoy recounted his story—though he did not share his profound grief at Llona’s death, a woman whose life had briefly, passionately, intertwined with his own. Ernst may have suspected the affair, but said nothing.

When Savoy finished, he expected the professor would scoff, raise an eyebrow,
something
. Yet Stronheim spoke in his usual measured tone:

I believe you.

How?
Savoy asked.
How can the dead walk?

There are powers under Earth and Heaven older than God Himself
, Stronheim said with conviction.
When Mankind was granted dominion we were given free will, an intellect, and a curiosity.

To deliver such horrors?
Savoy countered.

We are allowed to wage war, to hurt, to defame, to be cruel. We are allowed to sacrifice and show compassion and serve others. We are allowed to open doors that should never be opened, to test the will of man. Some of these doors refuse to stay shut.

Why?

Perhaps God wants just men, like yourself, to manifest His power on Earth, to see if we have faith to overcome all things.

That last always surprised him. Ernst was never shy about his agnosticism. To a scholar like Savoy, at the crossroads of his religious and intellectual career, the idea made perfect sense. When the local priest had returned to Llona’s gravesite, concerned at Savoy’s absence, it had been his cross and prayer and splash of holy water that made the dead girl recoil in horror. Llona had been a gentle spirit, a Russian Orthodox, yet what crawled from the ground shrieked and profaned—it was no longer her, but something else. She had become something that had no power against the symbols of Christ.

That night changed everything. It marked the beginning of his conversion to Christianity as both scientist and priest, dedicated to manifest His glory by proving such terrible things did indeed exist. They existed, and they could be dispelled.

Some doors refuse to stay shut.

He paged through his leather-bound notebook, stuffed with handwritten notes, clipped newspaper articles, photographs, drawings—the collection of years of study. He removed a handwritten note from Stronheim’s hand. It had arrived a month earlier, addressed to Savoy’s apartment in Boston, stuffed in a weathered envelope with many foreign postmarks.

With faded ink and rushed handwriting, scribbled on a scrap of used vellum, Savoy had carefully examined every word:

Haec ego non multis, sed tibi.

Whited sepulchers beautiful outward, inside lie

dead men’s bones. Then Simon Peter having a sword

drew it ... Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy

sword into the sheath: The Cup which my Father

hath given me ...That ye may put difference between

unclean and clean...

Alea iacta est.

He still had no idea what it meant. If it indeed came from Ernst—and the handwriting seemed to be his—it had been written with urgency. Perhaps it was a sick joke at his expense? It very well might have come from one of his detractors at Cambridge.
Humiliate the Jew
, he thought, imagining their condescending voices.
The mad Catholic Jew who teaches lies
.

He wished he could contact his old mentor for guidance. Here he was, en route for New Orleans with a stack of clippings and apprehension, dreading a visit that he had made a half-dozen times since that night in Lisbon. Four years had passed, and in that time his relationship with Reynard LaCroix was clinical, if not pleasant. That terrible night had been shelved away in an unspoken covenant: to never speak of it again. He had not visited his charge in over a year.

Why not tell Reynard I am coming?

He paged through his notebook again until he found the clipping from the
New Orleans Advocate
, dated five days earlier. He made a point to have New Orleans newspapers delivered to him both in London and in Boston, to keep vigil until he ever found such a headline:

GRUESOME DEATH AT GRETNA RIVERSIDE!

Gretna, October 12– An unidentified woman’s mutilated body was found near Sutton’s Warehouse yesterday evening, and authorities declare she may have been attacked by one or more feral dogs roaming the south quarter.

“Wild animals are on the loose,” said Chief Constable Thornton of Jefferson Parish. “Until our capable officers can track these ferals down, mothers are strongly advised to keep nursery windows securely shut.”

Savoy replaced the clipping and blindly watched the bayou, its pools and drooping trees. The tension in his stomach grew tighter.

Please God
, he thought.
Not Renny
.

3

Reynard LaCroix stared fascinated, disgusted, unable to comprehend the two bodies lying beneath their spoiled white sheets. The corpses sprawled in that backwater alley like discarded decorations, grotesque puppets left to sag in the rain. He was equally surprised at the burly police inspector, Legrasse by name, blandly crouched beside the closest body in his longcoat and cap as if a regular witness to such horror. The inspector pulled down the sheet.

Reynard pressed a silk cloth against his nose and mouth.

Blazes, but his throat!

Reynard could not look at the man’s ruined face any longer; he focused on the tenement walls of pale brick and plaster, the grimy windows crawling higher and higher until he saw, clouded by wire and strung laundry, the pale gray of morning. He wished fresh air could find its way into that filthy place, but the rotten, greasy smell saturated the cobblestone and through his clothes. He wiped his face. Sweat beaded under his eyes, unclean.

“This your man?” Legrasse asked.

“Yes. Bill Tourney. Ran errands, but I did not—”

“Next of kin?”

“Wife and daughter. Do they know?”

Legrasse replaced the sheet. “He wasn’t a real good runner then, sir. We knew to contact you because he held correspondence addressed to your business, though he stank of gin. Lucky break, that, or we’d‘ve trouble identifying him. We’re also lucky t’ve found him so soon...after, I mean. Th’rats can make things tough if they’ve got on too long.”

Reynard took in a deep breath and tried not to retch. This was not the smell of death or sewage or decay, not anything rotting in that isolated hole, not quite. A random memory came, of fourth-year biology and the stuttering old professor who never remembered to set out the scalpels before class. His classroom reeked of formaldehyde and animal blood and lye and turpentine, if not saturated with it. Unclean. That was how the alley felt—unclean, stained with violence, stinking of booze and blood and putrefying fish and—

“Sir?”

Something else.

“Sir?”

“This is just...” Reynard exhaled. “Horrible.”

“The pulpits’ll ‘ave fodder for a month,” the inspector said, “more proof against public inebriation. You’ll be good to write a statement? Include his address and all that? We prefer to notify the family ourselves.”

“Of course. How did this happen?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?”

“Have you a theory?”

“Not proper to spread rumors,” Legrasse said. “Consider it your civic duty t’keep this out of the rags.” He motioned toward the alley exit. “Not had a proper breakfast myself. Seems a good day for a stiff one, if you take my meaning.”

“Yes,” Reynard said. “I think I do.”

Escorted out of the courtyard, Reynard pressed through a knot of policemen and onlookers at the alley entrance, the usual crowd who seemed to materialize from nowhere. A reporter from the
New Orleans Picayune
attempted an intrusive question, but Reynard pressed past him. He had always been sensitive to subtleties others did not, or chose not, notice—but it required selectivity. Most men could filter the mundane; Reynard heard every voice as he passed from the throng, smelled every scent, knew which among them were drunkards or wife-beaters or lied in their daily prayers. He could feel their emotions like oil over his skin.

Today he allowed himself to listen to the crowd, officers and gawkers alike. None could account for the brutal deaths of two ordinary men. Billfolds remained in the dead men’s pockets. Watches and keys, boots, wedding rings, pearl cufflinks on Bill, a gold tooth on the other—all untouched. He heard the whispered theories from those behind him:

Animal.

Dog.

Rabid dog.

Man-eaters!

The image of the dead men’s smiling throats thickened the taste in his mouth. Why did that ghastly smell linger? What would Bill’s wife and daughter think? He could imagine the bleaching of their cheeks as grief made them weep, the trembling of lips, the fingers clutching handkerchiefs as he offered his condolences. Would he sit beside them and cry and hold their hands, or would he glance at his shoes and wish they would stop bawling?

Bill Tourney is dead?

He stopped listening. He buried his hands into the deep pockets of his wool ulster, crossed the street and strode down the block, blending into pedestrian traffic. He walked three blocks up Butler until rain splattered his pale hair and down the nape of his neck. When the horse and driver of a covered hansom slowed against the banquette, he signaled it with a wave and climbed aboard.

“Parish constabulary,” he said. “Be quick.”

Images of dirty brick walls and slack mouths crowded his mind as the hansom raced him along. They fought to gain his attention as he gave his full account to an officer at the police station, and persisted when he returned to his hansom and continued along the river to New Orleans. He passed warehouses and smokestacks, sawtooth storehouses full of rice and cotton. The air tasted of refining sugar from the Filter House and the morning breath of thousands of chimneys. Perhaps no one would smell the alley on his clothes. Soon more hansoms and carriages and carts and coach-and-fours, the city’s routine, swallowed him up.

It was familiar territory. In the four years since returning to America, he struggled to restore order to his shattered life. The first stage renewed his late father’s business. Within two years he regained a measure of prosperity to LaCroix Brokerage. He expanded his influence as a commodities agent from river and Gulf shipping to the railroad, brokering trade with rail lines still months from completion. He soon bought out his partners and returned the business to complete family control. He did not consider himself the son of a carpetbagger; no, he was the promise of New Orleans made flesh, a French-born making good on the capitalist promise.