Nancy K. Duplechain - Dark Trilogy 01 - Dark Bayou (8 page)

I followed his 1992 blue Chevy pickup all the way to Snook’s Bar. I couldn’t believe he still had that truck. It was old when he drove it to pick me up for my junior cotillion and that was almost ten years ago. I had to hand it to Lucas. He wasn’t one for putting on airs. It was refreshing to see such practicality after living in L.A. for so long, where status symbols are valued over common sense.

We pulled into the little hole-in-the-wall that was Snook’s, located on the lower west side of Lafayette. I remembered Snook’s well. It was a bar Carrie and I used to frequent when we would get tired of the club scene and, like most local establishments, they were lax about checking IDs. It had a gravel parking lot and neon signs in the windows, advertising popular beer brands. I parked right behind Lucas’ truck and, as I turned off the ignition, he opened my door for me. This would take some getting used to. He helped me out and closed the door behind me.

We went into Snook’s, where he again held the door for me. Once inside, he bought me a beer and got one for himself, and then we found a booth in the corner. Willie Nelson’s, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” was playing on the old jukebox against the back wall. We sat in silence for awhile, sipping our beer and people-watching. There were a pair of pool tables, and I was soon mesmerized by the clacking of the balls as they crashed into each other.

“Do you think you’re back for good?” His words startled me, breaking my concentration on the billiards game a few feet from us. I looked at him and smiled a little sadly. At Carrie’s, it was nothing but small talk and a lot of reminiscing with everyone. I wasn’t prepared for anything deeper.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

He nodded and sipped from his beer. We were quiet again. I took the opportunity to change the subject. “What time do you have to be back for Jonathan?”

“Eleven. He’ll be sleeping, but Miss Celia told me to stay out late and have a good time.”

“When’s the last time you got to do that?”

He thought long about it and gave a dry laugh. “Not since I was in the Army.”

“Is he still having nightmares?”

Lucas suddenly looked uneasy, and I quickly regretted the question. He nodded slowly and put his beer down. “Not as often, but when he does have them, they’re worse.” He hesitated before continuing. “He says the Dark Man is getting closer. I try to tell him there is no Dark Man, but he just cries and says he’s real and that he’s getting closer. I ask him closer to what, but he just shakes his head and says he doesn’t know.” He smiled, embarrassed. I smiled, too, but it was to hide my fear.

“I know it’s probably just a kid having a recurring nightmare and all. And I know I was probably overreacting when I told you about the night of the accident, but Leigh, I …” he trailed off, trying to find the right words. “It probably wouldn’t bother me so much if …” Now he looked really uncomfortable. He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was eavesdropping. It looked like we were oblivious to the rest of the bar patrons. Willie Nelson left for the night and Crystal Gayle took over with, “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.” It seemed as though whoever programmed the jukebox had an affinity for blue eyes. Lucas turned back to me and had a hard time looking me in the eyes. He started to play with the label of his beer bottle and looked like he was chickening out.

“I promise I won’t laugh,” I said, secretly hoping that he wouldn’t tell me at all. I was already starting to shiver with the mention of the Dark Man.

He grinned sheepishly and his hazel eyes looked up at me. “I’d almost rather you laugh than think I was … weird, I guess.”

“Believe me, I’m a running contender for weirdo of the year. You’d have to be pretty special to compete with that.”

He grinned even wider and his eyes smoldered as they pierced me. I felt a blush coming on, and I tried my best to hide it. I took a sip from my beer and hoped he would look away. I was relieved when he glanced down at his bottle, where he was still playing with the label. “I’ve noticed some things at work, certain cases we’ve had in the last few months. Reports of … strange things happening?” He looked at me, gauging my reaction. I nodded once for him to continue. “David and I had to investigate some pretty unusual things in the last year, and they got progressively weirder with every case.”

He sipped from his beer, the label now in shreds, lying on the table. I could see he was waiting for my response. The only question I could think to ask—the only one that could naturally follow a lead in like this—was one I didn’t want to know the answer to. I made myself ask it anyway, if nothing else but to be polite. “What strange things?”

He looked over his shoulder again and then turned back. He gazed toward the pool tables and watched the light-hearted games for a moment, not really paying attention to them. It almost seemed as though he was looking past them. “Ghosts,” he said, softly, looking at me with eyes that were both serious and weary.

I took a longer sip this time. I put the bottle down, trying to compose my thoughts. He had no more label left to peel, so he distracted himself by pulling at the corner of a stack of napkins partially sticking out of the napkin dispenser at the end of the short table. After a moment, he got bored and picked up a bottle of Tabasco sauce and started turning it around in his hand, pretending to read the label, but unable to concentrate. After a minute, he murmured, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

I smiled politely at him and tried my best not to hurt his feelings. “It’s just very hard to believe in that kind of thing.”

We were quiet again and he returned his attention to the Tabasco sauce. I felt as awkward as he looked. He suddenly caught me off guard with his next question. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” He lifted his eyes from the bottle and looked at me with a little hope and caution in his gaze.

I thought for a moment how to phrase my answer so that I wouldn’t offend him. But I decided that the truth was better. “Lots of people believe that when we die, our souls continue on to some other place where we’ll see our loved ones again. It’s a nice thought, but during my time in med school, I’ve never seen some magical transition of a supposed soul leaving the body and moving on to some other plane of existence. I’ve seen a couple of people die on the table and I looked hard, too. I remember staring at their chests and eyes and hearts, looking for any kind of sign, maybe the torso lifting up briefly or some kind of mist or light or anything. Something. But I’ve never seen anything other than the end of a life. That’s all there is.”

He smiled a little sadly then. “I’ve seen people die, too. Once in my arms, in fact. A seventeen-year-old girl who was hit by a drunk driver who sped off after the accident. I was the first one on the scene, before the ambulance even. I could see she wasn’t going to make it, so I just held her and tried to comfort her as best I could. I tried to ask her questions, like her name, where she went to school and all that. She didn’t answer any of them, but she kept looking behind me and pointing. There was nothing behind me except an empty field. Then she said, ‘Lucas.’ I told her that was my name. She said, ‘Robert says he’s proud of you.’”

A rush of chills came over me when I recognized his father’s name. Captain Robert Castille was killed trying to stop a domestic dispute when Lucas was twelve. Lucas looked like he was trying his hardest to fight back a couple of tears. “When she died in my arms,” he continued. “I didn’t see any light, either, but I didn’t really need to at that point.”

The clacking of the balls was suddenly too loud in the new silence between the two of us. The jukebox started to play “Your Picture,” by Johnnie Allan, a Swamp Pop favorite in our area. After a very long moment, I said, “What did you find? After you investigated the strange incidents that were going on?”

He put the bottle back next to the napkin dispenser. “Things that we couldn’t explain,” he said softly, as he looked down at his bottle.

“Specifically?”

He took a deep breath. “Back in October, there was a murder in that apartment complex behind the mall. It was a college girl. Her roommate was just coming home from U.L. When she got to the door, she heard her friend screaming. She hurried to unlock it, and she opened the door in time to witness her friend being thrown across the room by something she couldn’t see. She dropped her book sack and ran up to her friend, who was sprawled out on the kitchen floor. Her head was bashed in and her abdomen was ripped open. When she told us what happened, she couldn’t stop shaking. She had to excuse herself to the bathroom twice to throw up.” He looked away toward the pool tables again, waiting for my reaction.

“What makes you think she didn’t kill her roommate herself?”

He stayed focused on the balls being knocked into the holes. “We couldn’t find a murder weapon, and she had no motive. She had just come from cheerleading practice and there wasn’t a drop of blood on her uniform. And …” he stopped again, trying to find the right words. “And, when I looked into the mirror over the couch, I could have sworn I saw a shadow moving behind me. When I turned around, I didn’t see anything. And it was cold in there, too. Really cold. The central unit wasn’t on at the time, and the weather was still warm outside.” He looked back at me with weary eyes. He began to speak more freely now, faster. “And then in December, about two weeks before Christmas, we got a call about a guy who murdered his wife. When we got there, he was sobbing and still holding the axe. He said he didn’t want to, but … the bird made him do it.”

My mouth flew open, and my eyes got wide. He looked at me, alarmed. “You okay?”

I slowly nodded, lying. He reached his hand across the table and gently placed it on mine. “Leigh, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scare you with these … ghost stories.” Normally I would have goose bumps just by having his hand on mine, but I had them for a different reason this time.

“No, that’s okay. I asked,” I said, truly wishing I hadn’t asked. I was getting a little dizzy, and I was sure it wasn’t just the beer. I closed my eyes, trying to hold myself together. This alarmed Lucas even more.”

“I should take you home.”

I forced my eyes to open. I wanted to force a smile, but I knew it wouldn’t be believable. “It’s okay. I think the beer is just getting to me.”

He laughed unexpectedly and took his hand back. “If just one beer is getting to you, then you’ve been out of Louisiana way too long.” He leaned back in his seat, smiling.

I was able to smile back. “Well, I had one at the party,” I reminded him.

His laugh was like a gentle breeze, blowing away the cloud of tension and fear that surrounded us only moments before. His smile was radiant, and his hazel eyes again found mine. We were locked like that for a moment, both of us smiling. It just figured that something had to ruin the moment. That something came from behind us, a loud bang of wood against wood. We turned toward the pool tables, where the sound originated.

“Son of a BITCH!” said one of the pool players to another one. He was wearing an LSU T-shirt and khaki shorts. He was lean, but looked strong. He had his pool cue raised up in a threatening manner. He eyed the guy next to him, who was shorter than him by at least six inches. The shorter guy was wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt with a New Orleans Saints cap on his head. He had his arms stretched out with his palms turned up. They both looked like they were in their early twenties.

“Mais, whatcha gonna do?” said the shorter guy.

“Look! You gonna pay me. Don’t think you gonna leave ‘ere wit-out payin’ me. I won and you know it!”

“I ain’t payin’ no cheater.”

“I didn’t cheat!”

“Dat’s not what I saw.”

Now several men started to surround the two who were arguing. It quickly looked like they were all taking sides. There was a sort of electricity in the air, like the kind you feel before a storm hits. Lucas rolled his eyes and put down his beer. “Excuse me for a second,” he said to me. He eased out of the booth and casually walked over to the group.

“Problem, guys?” he asked from the other side of the pool table.

“Why the hell you wanna know?” said the tall one.

Lucas calmly pulled out his badge and flashed it to the men. In an instant, the group broke up and the ones who were taking sides quickly found something better to do. But the two who were arguing didn’t step down.

“He owes me money,” said the tall one, never taking his eyes off the short one.

“Owes you for what?” asked Lucas.

“For the game we just played.”

“Sir, do you mean to tell me you were gambling?”

The tall one whipped around to look at Lucas. “N-no,” he stammered. We weren’t gambling. W-we …” The short one snorted and the tall one glared at him.

“Well if you weren’t gambling, then there’s no reason to be upset,” said Lucas, smiling. “Why don’t y’all go home for the night?”