House of the Angels

Angel Manor, as the house had been dubbed by its founders, held and kept many secrets from the outside world. The place was old as time itself but had remained untouched by the city’s dark past. A past filled with death, murder and debaucheries that would have made every devout member of the local church recoil in horror. Even so, Angel Manor remained the last shred of purity in a bayou of sin.

Francis, a skinny little boy of only twenty with messy earthen brown curls cut close to his head, sat on the floor of the huge living room in the house with the full sun pouring in through the windows. A box containing various rocks, minerals, dusts and powders sat next to him displaying all its earthy glory. A leather-bound book bearing the emblem of the four elements was splayed open and propped up against the front of the ottoman, its pages beginning to yellow and the black ink fading with age.

Francis set up a small Bunsen burner on a small wooden table along with a series of beakers and a pair of chopsticks he had bought from a young Chinese man down by one of the hotels. This particular potion he had never made before, but time and again he had seen Sybilla do it. Day in and day out she encouraged Francis to practice should he ever need it. Now he finally had the chance to make the potion himself.

The potion called for several strange ingredients, all of which he had on hand. He took one ounce of lithium from his rock box and put them in the beaker, heating the rock until it melted into a liquid that seethed and bubbled, letting off a sickening stench that reminded Francis of rotten eggs. He pulled the collar of his dark grey t-shirt over his long, slender nose to keep himself from gagging.

The next thing he added to the beaker was a single bristly hair from a black Russian boar and the toenail from the left foot of a horny toad. Strength and vitality would be given to whoever drank such a potion and renewed their depleted energy.

Once those two had blended in, Francis added the reddish-brown powder from a vial no bigger than his pinky finger. When he sniffed it, it burned his nostrils and made tears well up in his hazel eyes. Black dragon chilies were long, shriveled and dark red in their whole form and hotter than hell to anyone who dared to eat them. When Francis had first tried one he could feel the flames burning his tongue and the roof of his mouth and for a moment thought he could breathe fire. This however hadn’t been the worst part. The worst part had been his tongue remaining numb for three more days. He stirred the contents of the beaker with the chopstick until everything had blended in. Now it was time to add the last vital ingredient of the potion.

Sybilla had always said that in order for this potion to work, he would need four whole teeth from a poisonous viper to ensure the potency. Francis carefully made sure all the poison was gone before dropping them into the beaker where they fizzed away into the liquid. For the final touch he added a small palmetto leaf from one of the garden trees, carefully placed with its sticky edges between the two chopsticks.

Francis brought the potion to a rolling boil and watched as its ugly color faded from reddish grey to a soft rose color. The rotten egg stink was soon replaced by the smell of freshly cut palmetto that was fresh as rain after a storm. Francis inhaled deeply, shutting his eyes to remember the scent of the palmetto after it rained. So far so good…Maybe a 50-50 chance the house won’t explode.

He waited until the beaker was cool enough to touch before taking it off the burner and looked at it with deep satisfaction. Hopefully Sybilla will approve…… at least nothing is on fire…. yet….

“Not bad for your first time,” Said a voice from the door.

Francis looked over his shoulder and, sure enough, there she was, the lady of the house, watching him with her cat-like smirk.

“I did exactly what you told me to do,” Francis explained. “I just hope it came out right.”

“We’ll find out child,” Sybilla said. “I’ll need you, Keith, and Rowena to come with me to put it to the test.”

“Where are we going?” Francis asked.

“Over to Bijou Square,” Sybilla replied. “Some rich lady’s got a daughter who’s been in a coma one minute and havin’ violent mood swings the next. Maybe that potion o’ yours will fix her.”

“Is she weak?”

“From the looks of it yes,” Sybilla answered. “Girl’s got no strength left in her.”

“Everything in here is supposed to revitalize her energy and the lithium should mellow her out.” Francis explained. “Are we going at night?”

“Oh, no child. We ain’t goin’ at night,” Sybilla corrected. “Gotta be in broad daylight. I suggest ya’ll dress proper.”

Sybilla left him to put away the potion in a mason jar and to clean up his mess. She went up to the second floor of the old house, the stairs creaking and clunking beneath her feet. She passed by door after door, each one bearing a sign or a symbol painted on the worn out doors, signs that read “Enter at Your Own Risk”, “Please don’t throw cigarette ends on the floor. The cockroaches are getting cancer”, and “Biohazard Area, Keep Out”. On some were also lewd and crude pictures drawn all over them, some that made her laugh and others that simply made her roll her eyes.

Sybilla approached the door to Keith’s room at the far end of the hall. She pounded on it hoping to be heard over the muffled sound of the loud music playing within on his homemade stereo. When Keith opened the door, the music became even louder.

“Turn that shit off!” Sybilla ordered as loudly as she could.

Keith did exactly as he was asked and shut off the stereo in his room. “What’s up?”

“Make yourself presentable, Keith,” Sybilla told him. “You, me, Francis, and Rowena are goin to Bijou Square.”

“Isn’t that where all the rich people are?” Keith asked.

“No more questions. Go!” Sybilla ordered. “And wear something black so you look halfway decent.”

Keith rolled his eyes and shut the door as soon as Sybilla left.

Keith was a stick-thin thing with a crop of short, rough, black hair and a sarcastic streak to his personality. With a long, thin face solid blue and brown eyes, he had been left lightly tanned by endless days in the sun. At the age of seven he had wandered onto Anne and Sybilla’s doorstep, thin as a twig, half starved and barely able to stand on his knobby knees. Even at the age of twenty two, Keith still showed some of the evidence of that miserable early life but had fortunately turned out alright in the end.

As soon as he was ready, Keith strode to a door with chipped, light pink paint and a roughly painted, sticky red sun at the end of the hall. He knocked with the toe of his shoe and then opened the door when nobody answered.

“Hey Row!” He called out. “Rowena you in here?”

“I’ll be out in a sec’,” said a cheerful voice from the bathroom.

Keith rolled his eyes again. Why do girls always take forever in the bathroom?.... he thought as he sat on the edge of the old four-poster bed. Moments later, Rowena came strutting out of the bathroom with her pale blonde hair clinging to her shoulders and her sapphire blue eyes shining in the early afternoon light. A long cotton towel was wrapped around her slim frame but Keith had seen enough to know what secrets lay beneath.

“So what’s up?” Rowena asked as she slipped behind the Japanese silkscreen in one corner of the room.

“Sybilla says you, me and Frankie have to go to Bijou Square,” Keith explained. “Some rich lady’s daughter is weak and is having violent mood swings lately.”

“Jeez,” Rowena said as she flung her towel over the top of the silkscreen. “Did Frankie get a potion together?”

“He says he got it to cook properly but he’s not sure if it’ll actually work,” Keith replied. “Oh, and Sybilla says it’s best to wear something black.”

“In this heat?” Rowena said with disbelief. “She must be out of her mind if she wants us to wear black.”

“It’s her rule not mine,” Keith told her.

“OK, fine, I’ll dig out a black dress,” Rowena sighed.

When Rowena was ready, Keith was suddenly taken aback by how stunning she looked. Rowena wore her favorite black dress, cut off just above her knees with small capped sleeves covering her shoulders and a neckline low enough to preserve her modesty but one that still showed enough to make any boy on the streets stop and stare. Francis and Keith, on the other hand, both wore khaki cargo shorts and a black polo shirt to appear halfway decent when they walked into Bijou Square.

“Shall we go then?” Sybilla asked when the three had met her at the bottom of the stairs.

Keith, Francis, and Rowena followed her out of the house and began the long walk down St. Augustine Street; passing shops where all sorts of people were selling exotic foods, drinks, and clothing. In one of the open air shops, Francis noticed an elderly man selling bottles of absinthe in clear, skull shaped bottles that seemed to glow a menacing acid green. He remembered when he first smelled the foul thing and how horribly it had tasted when Anne had let him try it. He had been only fourteen…and stupid when he begged her to let him try it.

Just a few feet away from the absinthe vender was a beautiful Congolese woman selling her own brightly colored, hand-woven fabrics. Time and again Sybilla had come here to bargain and haggle with the woman over fabric for her clothes or for the house. Every time and without fail this woman provided her with the brightest eye catching patterns that only seemed to enhance Sybilla’s beauty.

On the other side of the street, beneath the shade of an old wrought-iron balcony, sat a group of musicians playing conga drums and Spanish guitars. Their rhythms were so beautiful and calming that Francis could almost breathe it in. Not far from them were a group of Cuban men and women placing offerings of tequila, food, and rosary beads at a shrine dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi, offering prayers for the dead and living alike, and for the protection of their livestock. Rowena could smell the strong scent of the tequila from across the streets, a scent that for some reason reminded her of Anne’s nail polish remover.

Keith took in the spicy scents that came from the street corner where a young Cajun couple were stirring a shrimp and rice dish in a big cooking pot. The river people here on Bayou St. Therese were famous for the spiciness of their meals, some so hot they would have stung the tongue of the devil himself. The dishes were overflowing with peppers, onions, rice, herbs, and full of spices both sweet and pungent. Sybilla had promised that if they were still hungry later they could stop and try some, but only when their job was done.

They continued their walk from St. Augustine to Congo Street. The old houses seemed to have been frozen in time and many people, particularly those of African, Cuban, French or Irish descent, chose to settle down and raise their families. The lilting laughter of children, mothers, and fathers could be heard from nearly every yard on the street, filling the air with their infectious din.

On the front steps of one of the houses sat an old grandmother, telling the flock of little children who had gathered around ghost stories of the bayou and of all the spirits that haunted the old houses. Next to the grandmother sat a young Cajun man and his wife held a chubby baby boy in their arms as they listened carefully to her chilling tales of the supernatural and the unexplained. On the sidewalk beneath a townhouse balcony, a group of thirteen-year-olds laughed and taunted each other during a rather intense game of cornhole.

“Keep up you three,” Sybilla urged. “We just have to cross Pelican Bridge and we’ll be there in no time.”

Pelican Bridge was a small wooden bridge that connected Bijou Square with Congo Street and linked one end of the bayou to the other. The bridge stood over a stretch of blue-green river that froze in a thin veil of algae covered ice in the chilly winters and always smelled of rotten vegetation. The wood it had been built from was so old that no one was allowed to go barefoot for fear of splinters. Rowena could tell that it had once been painted a steely green color, but now all that was left were the rough wooden planks all laced with rusty nails and patches of black mold.

Sybilla, Francis, Keith and Rowena at last crossed the bridge and entered the famed Bijou Square. The place had quite the reputation, earning its nickname as “The Jewel of Bayou St. Therese”. Of course the nickname hadn’t been wrong. Along its neatly cobbled streets stood brick houses with wrought-iron balconies, each held up by blindingly white Greek pillars and intricate ironwork. Ivy vines snaked their way up the sides of the houses and garden walls while tuberoses and jasmine grew in the neatly pruned gardens.

People here in Bijou Square tended to be arrogant, shallow, and even cold towards those who lived in places like St. Augustine Street. The self-made ladies here weren’t horrible, but it was the housewives that people tread cautiously around. Many of them could be very nasty towards those of the lower class and even towards each other. Sybilla preferred to give services to the self-made people of Bijou Square. They were much more grateful for it.

The four of them crossed the street and arrived at a house with a single wrought-iron door as its entrance. Sybilla could see through its intricate, lacy designs a richly dressed, heavy set lady, her eyes full of worry and fear

“Go away,” The woman hissed. “I beg you leave, for there is sickness in this house.”

“Madame, je m’appelle Sybille Le Vay.” Sybilla said calmly. “I have come to help.”

“Help?” the woman questioned. “What help could you possibly give?”

“Your maid told me your daughter was sick,” Sybilla explained. “I believe there is something we can do to for her.”

The woman hesitated for a moment but soon decided to let Sybilla and her companions in. “Very well then,” she said.

The old wrought-iron door creaked open and locked when it shut behind Francis. The woman, who had introduced herself as Madame Rochambeau, led them inside to the house where servants bustled about and tended to their chores.

As Madame Rochambeau showed them around the house, Francis could feel an odd presence all around him. A heavy feeling of death and despair nearly crushed him as he looked around with observant eyes. He could feel the presence radiating from the stairs, the garden, the dining rooms, and the bedrooms….nothing in this house went untouched by whatever was here.

“What do you see?” Sybilla asked him quietly as Madame Rochambeau led them upstairs to the second floor.

“I see death and despair,” Francis replied in a low whisper. “Something is here that shouldn’t be here.”

Sybilla raised her eyebrows and gave Francis a light nod. She soon began to feel the presence throughout the house and when they got to the bedroom on the second floor, Francis was afraid he wouldn’t be able to breathe. Every breath that escaped his chest hurt as though he were being squeezed in a vice.

“This is my daughter.” Madame Rochambeau explained to Sybilla. “Eugenie is her name.”

One look at the poor girl and Sybilla could see that she was close to death. Eugenie’s face was deathly pale, her eyes were shut and her lips had an odd blue tinge to them. She knew Eugenie was alive, but nonetheless she had to act fast if she wanted to save her.

“My companions and I must be alone with the girl.” Sybilla explained. “No one, not even the maids are to enter this room while we work Madame. Do you understand?”

“Oui.” Replied Madame Rochambeau. “But should you need anything I will offer to let someone attend to the need.”

“Merci Madame.” Sybilla said, thanking her politely.

Madame Rochambeau left them alone, quietly closing the door behind her and leaving Sybilla and the others to their work.

“Francis make sure the windows are locked.” Sybilla ordered.

Francis immediately did what was asked of him and locked the windows. Rowena pulled the silky drapes shut and Keith locked the bedroom door, sealing off the room so that nothing could escape or enter.

When Sybilla was sure the room was sealed, she opened up a small paper bag and pulled out a bundle of dried green leaves, all shriveled and dark from lack of water. She asked Francis for his cigarette lighter and with it she lit the top of the small bundle of leaves that began to smoke and smolder. The air grew thick and heavy with the sweet scent of the sage bundle as it burned down to its last stump.

As Sybilla faced each corner of the room and made the sign of the cross, Francis kept his eyes fixed on Eugenie who barely stirred from her slumber. When he shut his eyes, Francis saw something within Eugenie that horrified him. A creature with eyes like hellfire and skin as cold as stone with long, bony fingers and sharp claws was writhing and stirring within her, taking hold of Eugenie’s very soul.

“What are you?!” He questioned.

The creature turned to face him with its ugly yellow eyes. Its fangs were bared and a deep growl escaped its throat. “Get out!” it bellowed.

When Francis snapped back, his eyes widened with fear and his heart pounded against his ribcage. Fast, ragged breaths escaped his lungs and his head spun wildly as he regained his senses.

“What did you see?” Sybilla questioned when she saw him stumble. “Mon fils what did you see?”

Francis felt his knees growing weak as he steadied himself against the bedpost. He could feel the earth spinning beneath his feet and a terrible, heavy dread closing in on him.

“Stealer.” He half whispered.

“What?”

“A stealer has her.”

Sybilla fixed her gaze upon Eugenie. If Francis was right, she would have to act fast.

“Keith,” Sybilla said. “Fetch me a jar and some salt from my bag.”

Keith fetched a clay jar from a burlap bag that Sybilla carried with her and a small jar of salt that had been blessed by a priest from the local church.

Sybilla poured half of the salt into the jar and using the rest she laid out lines upon the floor, strange and intricate while a few appeared to be in the shape of a cross.

The candles on Eugenie’s nightstand suddenly flickered to life and Eugenie began to toss her head from side to side, gasping and yelping as though she were being drowned. Her eyes became more alert and focused on Sybilla, angry and flaring, flashing like dark blue sparks.

“Get out!” Sybilla commanded when Eugenie glared at her. “You are not wanted here!”

“This is my domain.” Growled the deep voice that did not belong to Eugenie.

“Your domain is in hell.” Snarled Sybilla. “Slave of the devil!”

Eugenie bolted up from her bed and lunged for Sybilla who tackled her to the floor, holding her by the wrists and struggling to keep her pinned. Eugenie screamed and writhed with all her might, roaring like and animal as Keith, Rowena and Francis helped pin her to the floor.

“I cast you back into hell where you belong wicked creature!” Sybilla shrieked before pouring a small amount of salt on the girl’s forehead. Eugenie shrieked like a banshee before the wicked spirit flew from her mouth and Keith caught the swirling black form in the jar, sealing it shut until Sybilla could formally send it back to where it had come from.

The anger that had once been in Eugenie’s eyes had suddenly gone away. She looked much healthier and her voice had become sweet as a bird’s when she spoke. Francis could feel the air in the room becoming much lighter as the evil was drawn out.

“I’ll have Eve take care of this as soon as we get home.” Sybilla said, shaking up the mason jar where the creature snarled and snapped.

A loud knock at the door startled them out of their wits. Madame Rochambeau entered only moments later with her husband and a small retinue of servants.

“Ma Cherie!” she exclaimed as she hugged Eugenie. “My child!”

Sybilla was gladdened to see Eugenie’s much improved state and Madame’s gratitude for what they had just done.

“My good woman, to whom do I owe the gratitude?” asked Monsieur Rochambeau.

“Sybilla Le Vay my good sir.” Sybilla replied with a light nod. “And my companions.”

“I cannot express how grateful my wife and I are for what you’ve done.” Monsieur stated. “I don’t wish to see you walk away without some sort of reward.”

“How much of a reward?”

“Fifty thousand dollars in cash.” Answered Monsieur. “Up front.”

Sybilla raised her eyebrows with great curiosity. “That does sound tempting.” She hummed. “How about the fifty thousand and a bottle of your best cognac?”

Monsieur Rochambeau was famed throughout both Bijou Square and throughout all of Bayou St. Therese for his collection of rare and expensive wines and liquors. His private stock was envied by those who could never hope to obtain them.

“My cognac?” he gaped. “Why Madame I won’t hear of it.”

“Shall I up the ante?”

Monsieur Rochambeau was reluctant but eventually he had had enough of the bargaining. He gave Sybilla the cognac and the fifty thousand dollars before sending her on her way.

On the walk back home Keith noticed a rather impressive looking house at the end of the street. Everything was black, the windows, the bricks and the wrought-iron rails and gates with their sharp spikes jutting up from the tops. The yard was overgrown with swamp weeds, grasses and decaying mangroves while a huge cast iron dog’s head baring its fangs adorned the front of the gates. There was something foreboding and unfriendly about this place…and it was digging deep into his bones.

“Hey Sybilla,” he said. “What is that place? Back that way?”

“That mon cher,” Sybilla said. “Is Mason Noir. The Black House.”

“Who lives there?” Rowena asked.

“Devils.” Sybilla spat. “Depraved folk who have no place in this society.”

They kept walking down the streets, away from Bijou Square and back towards St. Augustine Street. Still, Keith began to wonder what kind of secrets Mason Noir held and who really lived there.