House of the Angels

“This oughtta clear out any evil spirits from this room.” Sybilla said as she went about Dan’s room with her small stone dish full of smokey incense. “Last thing anybody wants is a room full of spirits with bad intentions.”

“Sybilla this stuff is giving me a headache.” Kyle croaked. “Could you just let me rest?”

“Kyle you’ve been breathin’ this stuff in since you was an itty bitty, ya’ll ain’t getting’ a damn headache.” She told him in her matter of fact manner.

Kyle laughed a little. The incense did him good most days but he still felt weak and all he wanted was sleep…. and maybe Eve to keep him company.

“How ya feelin’ baby boy?” Sybilla asked, seating herself on the edge of Dan’s bed. “Any better?”

“I still feel sick.” Kyle answered.

Sybilla felt his forehead which was cold and clammy beneath her hand. “It’s blood loss sickness.” She concluded. “Ya’ll lost so much blood when Sally took your wings that your body’s havin’ a hard time replacing it. You feelin delirious at all?”

“A little.” Kyle answered. “I keep having weird dreams when I sleep.”

“Fever dreams are common when this happens.” Sybilla explained. “Did you notice anything strange about’em?”

“I keep seeing a man,” Kyle told her, blinking his eyes to try and stay awake. “Every time I sleep.”

“Who child?” Sybilla asked again. “Who do you see? Tell me what does he look like?”

“He’s black.” Kyle rasped. “With long dreadlocks and smokes a pipe. White paint on his face that looks like a skull.”

Sybilla gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Papa.” She muttered.

“Who?” Kyle asked weakly.

“Papa Legba.” Sybilla said. “A loa……the keeper of the crossroads between humanity and the voodoo gods.”

Kyle was ill at ease, wondering why a Haitian voodoo spirit was being seen in his fever dreams. It was true that Kyle was a master at clairvoyance but communicating with those who were not on earth was something he hadn’t been able to do before. It was all strange to him, so strange that it made him feel a bit queasy.

“Is he bad?” Kyle asked warily.

“Oh no child.” Sybilla assured him. “Not unless a bad priest or priestess corrupts the spirit.”

“Then why am I having these dreams?” Kyle pondered as he strained to sit up.

“I’ve found that people who have visions of Papa Legba only have’em when he wants to warn humanity of danger.” Sybilla explained. “Usually people gotta reach out to him first, but in dire times he’ll give’em the warnin’ himself.”

Kyle was about to say something when they both heard the front door shut downstairs. Alex, Dylan and Grey all came upstairs into the room, each one carrying either papers or the box full of stuff from the archives.

“The hell is all this?” Sybilla questioned.

“We’re about to explain.” Grey answered. “Alex can you and Dylan help me move Dan’s desk?”

The three of them pulled Dan’s desk from its place against the wall and dragged it to the center of the room where they laid out large copies of the blueprints and the box as well as the McFaye diary. “Ya’ll should know you ain’t supposed to take stuff out of the archives.”

“Yeah well, we pulled a few strings and the librarian was kind enough to let us make copies of these blueprints.” Alex explained.

“Alright,” Sybilla said, her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face. “Tell me what’cha got.”

“You know about the Lafayette Asylum right?” Alex enquired.

“Mmmhmm.” Sybilla hummed. “Everybody in the entire state knows about it.”

“Well Grey dug up a few things in his research that you should know.”

“Just tell me what the hell you found.” Sybilla told him impatiently.

Grey stepped forward and began his explanation of what he had found in his research.

“Everyone I’m sure knows about the horrors that took place in Lafayette Asylum.” He began. “I don’t need to explain that do I?”

Everyone shook their heads, even Kyle who seemed to be nodding off, his head turned to listen to Grey with his left hand resting on his chest.

“So not only did I uncover some pretty horrifying stuff about the place,” Grey continued. “I also uncovered some odd pieces of information that people probably haven’t noticed before.”

He turned to the first page of the blueprints and the journal entry dated June 23rd, 1901.

“It says in this passage that the floors of the asylum are all in a weird order.” He informed Sybilla and the others. “Instead of the first floor being in the basement level and going up in that order, the ninth level is in the basement and the first floor is on the topmost level of the building.”

Sybilla leaned in for a closer look. Grey was right. Instead of the top floor being on the bottom and the ninth floor being at the top of the building, it was the exact opposite.

“My God the boy is right.” She concluded. “What else did you find out?”

“Well we know from this diary that Donella McFaye was a reporter in Baton Rouge at the time and came down to Bayou St Therese after she was approached by a nun named Sister Eunice O’Leary.” Grey explained. “Sister Eunice worked at Lafayette and hated the way the patients were treated, so she thought that by sneaking in a news reporter in disguise, she’d be able to expose the place.”

“We also found out that Donella later discovered through copies of their records that many of these people were sent there against their will, or were wrongly found to be insane.” Alex added.

Sybilla flipped through the McFaye journal, glazing over a few details here and there. She couldn’t imagine being in such a place full of nightmarish happenings.

“So the structure,” she enquired. “Did they do this on purpose? Or was it just some….some sort of coincidence?”

Grey shook his head. “They did it completely on purpose.” He answered.

Sybilla’s eyebrows arched with curiosity. “Now why the hell would they have done that?”

Dylan slammed a copy of “The Divine Comedy” onto the tabletop and startled Sybilla who picked it up and began rifling through the text. A knowing smirk played with her ruby colored lips as she glanced back and forth from the text to the journal entry.

“Got’cha.” She muttered. “Looks like somebody wanted this place to resemble Dante’s Inferno.”

“From what we read in those records one of the doctors did just that.” Grey explained further. “After Doctor Beaufort, the hospital’s founder died in 1841, another one took over.”

“Doctor Maximilien Blanchard.” Alex said, noting one of the records. “He was the one who was in charge until his untimely death about fifteen years later. But during those fifteen years he thought that he was in charge of the fates of the people who were confined to Lafayette.”

“He had an obsessive notion that these poor people needed to be punished instead of helped.” Dylan added. “Pretty much every head doctor at Lafayette from that day forward followed the example of Doctor Blanchard.”

Sybilla shook her head mournfully, thinking about the frightening details that Alex, Grey and Dylan had dug up in their search. “So what does this have to do with Sally?” she questioned.

“We think that she might be hiding out there.” Grey answered. “I can’t say for sure, but I think that’s where she’s hiding.”

“Well ya’ll better be sure.” Sybilla insisted. “I ain’t gonna risk knockin’ on the devil’s door and havin’ somebody fallin’ into a trap again.”

“We’ll be sure.” Grey said. “Just give us some time and we’ll figure out a way to do it.”

“And no usin’ the divining spells either.” Sybilla reminded them.

The three of them gathered everything up and left Sybilla alone with Kyle, weary and tired from their explanation. If what they had found out about the Caulfields was true, then the situation was graver than they thought.

“Are we gonna be ok Sybilla?” Kyle asked.

“We will.” She said, gently grasping his clammy hand. “But don’t worry about that now. Just rest.”

“Sybilla…..”

“Rest Kyle.”

Kyle knew he couldn’t fight the pull of sleep anymore. As soon as Sybilla left the room, he closed his eyes and let it all wash over him.