The Lost Reflection Read online

  “DeFond feared the police were becoming suspicious of his activities and fled New Orleans in the late 1940s. His suspicions proved to be completely unfounded. It was not until his journal was uncovered in 1949 that the police considered him a suspect in the many disappearances that transpired over the previous decade. The police found not a trace of DeFond. It was as if he completely vanished, leaving no evidence of his brutal crimes other than the journal. His journal hinted he considered relocating to Chicago, but he was never again to be found.

  “In 1963, many years after the gruesome memories faded, the house eventually sold. But not one soul has ever endured living in it. ‘Haunted and cursed,’ all claimed it to be. In the end, the local real estate community realized it wasn’t worth the effort to attempt selling the house ever again.”

  Our guide inched closer and spoke softly as if keeping a well-guarded secret.

  “DeFond, as he perceived the police to be closing in, left one final entry in his journal before he vanished: ‘I cannot explain, nor do I expect forgiveness for the crimes I have committed. I know now I must leave, never to return. Do not chance to seek me out. You will not like what I have become.’ His final entry proved to be the most unsettling, alluding to the transformation of a troubled man, evolving to a being of pure evil.”

  Mystically, our guide’s words resounded wearily in the light breeze once more. They did not appear to come from anyone in our group, and certainly not from our guide, unless he was a gifted ventriloquist. Faintly, they wafted from the house and somberly passed overhead. I presumed everyone heard the hushed phrase repeated, “You will not like what I have become.”

  “Nice touch,” I remarked sarcastically, loud enough for our guide to overhear.

  Even with the staged theatrics, there was no doubt as to the truth of this story. I did not need Phillip to confirm the details. Confirmation came from some kind of déjà vu buried deep in my subconscious, affirming its validity. I felt connected, plugged in, as if this was part of my past. The connection was distressing, to say the least.

  Phillip had drifted away. Sure as the sun rises in the east, Captain Horndog was on the prowl. He was working a pair of babes fresh off the graduation party boat. Just as I was preparing to yank him away, our tour guide ended his Q and A session and we were on the move.

  Several blocks away the tour paused. Before us stood a harmless, L-shaped three-story building. A white-block exterior, topped with a slate roof, dormers, and hurricane shutters, the Old Ursuline Convent was our final stop. Completely unaware of its impending significance, I studied the innocuous structure that would forever change my life.

  Our guide resumed drilling deeply into historical details, how the Church played a role in a larger legendary myth that remains to this day the root of doubt and suspicion.

  “In the seventeen hundreds, malaria, various other diseases, and merely living in a city inhabited by pirates and criminals wreaked deadly havoc on the population. The Catholic Church took it upon itself to bring in young, impoverished, incarcerated women from France, with the intention of marrying the multitude of unscrupulous men residing in the city. These desperate women were to marry, bear children, and reverse a shrinking population.

  “The first ship, the Pelican, arrived in New Orleans transporting ten women for the repopulation project. All of their worldly belongings, clothing, and household items, gifts from the church, were packed in crates resembling caskets. The women were to be initially housed and educated at the convent before being introduced to the city’s finest gentlemen.

  “Within days of the ship’s arrival, residents began to vanish. Reported sightings of unfamiliar mysterious women roaming the streets at night cropped up frequently. The Casket Girls, as they became known, were blamed for the city’s latest misfortunes, yet not a single one was ever caught in the act. Believing these women were related to the evil doom descending, the priests of the Church were judged to be accountable for the deadly occurrences. In most unpleasant manners, they were ordered to remove the women and the caskets with all haste. In an effort to pacify the residents, hurricane shutters were installed on the third-floor dormitory windows of the convent, sealing in the new inhabitants and their caskets, until transport could be arranged. Rumors had it, the nails and the wooden shutters securing the dormers were blessed, then submerged in holy water. The purpose of keeping people out, or whatever in, remains unclear, but the fact remains the shutters have not been opened for over two hundred years, according to all historical accounts. To this day, the actual documentation of their arrival remains, but no evidence of their departure.”

  I gazed up to the slate roof and dormers. Two hundred years, never opened? I could only imagine the summertime temperatures pre-air conditioning. A convent filled with sweaty nuns? Either our guide was fabricating malicious anti-Catholic rhetoric, or . . .

  “In New Orleans, over the past two centuries, there have been numerous suspicious deaths involving savage attacks involving blood consumption. If an investigation led to the doors of the convent, the police were refused entry. The Old Ursuline Convent is Vatican property, thus sovereign ground impervious to search warrants.”

  Search warrants are for pussies I mused as the story continued.

  “Late in 1987, as a small group of psychology students from New York University were studying paranormal activities, the most recent recorded murders occurred. Two students were researching in the city library and stumbled across accounts of the convent. Although their research was to be specifically limited to spiritual activity in the Quarter, they decided to partake in an extracurricular surveillance on the last night of their trip.

  “Armed with a video camera to capture, as one myth foretold, the Casket Girls’ nightly departure from the convent, the two students filmed from the Beauregard-Keyes House across the street. Shortly after one in the morning, as their friends were unable to make contact, a search ensued. All that was found was the video camera, violently smashed into hundreds of pieces. Hours later, just after five in the morning, in the solitary beam of a police car spotlight beacon, the two coeds were found. Their naked bodies were painstakingly posed on the steps of the Chapel of the Bishops, the church adjacent to the convent. The bodies lay directly under a marble carving above the archway, in morbidly similar fashion. The carving was of two angels holding a chalice, the cup containing the blood of eternal life.”

  Above the door was the Latin inscription, which I read aloud. “HIC DOMUS DEI EST ET PORTA COELI.” Why I knew the English translation will remain a mystery, but I shared my newfound proficiency with the group. “Here is the House of God and the Doorway to Heaven,” I announced.

  “So you know your Latin,” our guide replied with irritation. “I was just about to cover that. Would you care to finish up here?”

  I held up an insincere apologetic hand. Unconsciously having just stolen a bit of our guide’s thunder, a smile crossed my face. With a roll of his eyes and a scoff, he continued.

  “The coroner’s report stated the women showed no sign of a struggle, induction of drugs, or blunt force trauma that would account for what he observed. The cause of death documented was directly attributed to identical lacerations in the victims’ backs between the left shoulder and the spine. The victims’ aortas had been manipulated to the incision. Approximately eighty percent of the victims’ blood volume was missing. This anomaly, he reported, was beyond medical explanation. In the most severe cases of severed arteries, the maximum blood loss is forty-two-to forty-five percent. A disturbing footnote in the autopsy report by the coroner stated that it appeared as if the victims allowed their attackers to kill them.

  “The police pressed the Church for access to the convent, but were continually denied. Unexplainably, several weeks into the investigation the case was ordered shut, a gag order issued to all parties involved. The case remains unsolved, and less than a handful of the people immediately involved with intimate knowledge exist. And of those individuals, not one has ever broken their silence. Why? Oddly enough, the physical evidence existing of vampirism has been reduced to imagination and conjecture.”

  Our tour guide rounded everyone back together tightly as he began to summarize our evening.

  “As I promised at the outset, you have been presented historical facts. Verifiable through police, court, and newspaper records. You must now decide for yourself. Do you believe vampires exist and continue to roam these very streets tonight?” His dramatic tone became noticeably softer, as if to keep his thoughts amongst our group alone, not loud enough for the ears of what might have been lurking behind the concrete walls of the convent.

  No doubt, I thought, something was hidden away, sheltered deep behind the forbidden walls.

  “This concludes our tour. I will now lead you back to Jackson Square where the tour originated. Thank you again for your time and attention. If you desire to meet any modern-day vampires, they congregate at the Chamber on Toulouse Street. It opens at midnight.” He pointed a crooked bone-white finger at the group. “I warn you this cult indulges in the consumption of blood and does not like outsiders. If you venture there, do so with caution. Do not go alone and do not presume they want to be your friend. Regrettably, those who have not heeded my warnings are incapable of explanation. Thank you again for your time,” our host said as he turned and briskly led us to Jackson Square.

  Phillip did not have to say a word—I knew the job. He wanted to know what was on the third floor of the convent. Hell, I wanted to know. I turned back and studied the ominous building shrouded in a ghostly haze as the tour paced away. I would even do this one for free, but I was not about to let Phillip get off that light. This one was going to cost him dearly.

  “So what did you think?” Phillip inquired with the a
nxiety of a schoolboy. “A bunch of BS?”

  I ignored his inquiry as our group paraded back to Jackson Square. I had a crooked smile on my face as I intentionally avoided replying to Phillip. I knew this would irk the hell out of him.

  “You probably think it’s all a big crock, and it might be, but it will sell a shitload of papers. I’ve already had my people researching every available fact, and as far as I can tell, everything on this tour, minus a few embellishments, is more or less true.”

  With the tour group gone, I turned away from the convent and placed my hand on his shoulder. The few minutes of quiet had given me time to reflect. “Let me tell you one thing, buddy boy, this is going to cost you more than you want to pay, and for what? If there is nothing inside, there is no story. Just a big fucking waste. If I do find something, I do not know how you’ll be able to use it. Think about it. Breaking in that convent goes way beyond a simple misdemeanor. How can you write a story admitting you were complacent in violating Vatican sovereign rights?”

  “See, that’s why I love you Brian, you’re always looking out for my best interest.” Phillip cut a reassuring used-car-salesman smile. The pitch was on. “For one thing, the story is a done deal, whether contents are verified or not. Urban legends are always a great sell. I plan to run this story just the way you heard it tonight and it will sell. Part one will run after you’ve completed a search of the property. If you find anything, that will be part two. If you don’t find a thing, the story will remain merely an urban legend, only now with national exposure. I will sell millions of papers and the Goonie tour gets thousands of new customers. Win-win for everyone. It will move right up in the annals with Big Foot and Nessie.”

  “Consider this, Phillip. All I have to do is break in, snap a few pictures, maybe snatch an artifact or two, and haul ass. Once the dust settles, I will be half a world away. You, on the other hand, are knowingly steering head-on into a shitstorm unlike anything you have ever sailed into. The Da Vinci Code—lethal monks and ancient societies guarding secrets of the Church . . .” I wasn’t fucking around, and Phillip knew it.

  Grabbing Phillip by both shoulders, I looked him squarely in the eye. “The job is going to cost you one million dollars. Once I deliver the goods, I am out of here. You will need an impenetrable cover story and a trail back to a fictional, but believable, source that will keep the goons off you.

  “I love you like the brother I never had Phillip. If the pressure gets too hot, and I believe it will, you could go to prison if you do not play this spot-on. And I will not let you sell me out for a pass. You do know what I am saying? Right?”

  “I do, and believe me, Brian, I would put a gun to my head before I would ever sell you out.”

  “Well I guess you will finally get the opportunity to grow a big, smelly, hairy set,” I said with a crooked smile. “I will start tomorrow. I want to see your plan to keep the heat off, to be sure this will not come back to burn me. Before I take the first step into that convent, I need to know how you plan to cover our tracks. Not that I doubt your ability to lie your ass off, but I want to check it out before there is no turning back.”

  “Deal,” Phillip said with a broad smile, hand extended to seal the pact. We shook on the agreement. “It’s time to celebrate,” Phillip declared as he placed his hand behind my shoulder and ushered me back in the direction of Jackson Square.

  We walked a few blocks and arrived at Bourbon Street. It was our usual custom to pound a few down once we had come to terms over a job.

  “Tell me where you want to meet. From this point on, it is best if we do not arrive at too many places together. We will be just a couple of guys that met in a bar.” I looked down Bourbon Street. “I am going this way. Call me.”

  “Hell, I don’t know any of the bars down here.”

  “Write this number down.” I pulled my TracFone out and flashed its number. Phillip jostled for a pen and a piece of paper. “Some newsman you are.” I reached in my pocket for a pen. “Do not call my other number ever again. Delete it from your phone. I suggest you pick up a TracFone as well. Once I start, our only contact will only be initiated by me.”

  “Always planning in advance,” Phillip observed as he scribbled the number.

  “That is why I am still alive, Phillip, and plan to remain that way.” Taking a few steps to the south, I stopped in my tracks and turned. “Phillip, have you taken the time to consider whatever is on the third floor was not meant to be disturbed, something far more secretive than a vampire story?”

  “Such as?” Phillip asked as he was still struggling to write the number on a crumbled piece of paper.

  “I don’t know, Holy Grail, Arc of the Covenant, something like that.”

  “Talk about a far stretch of the imagination, I’ll bet my last dollar you find two-hundred-year-old vampires before you find any of that mythical crap. You have seen way too many Indiana Jones movies my friend.”

  “Understand this, Phillip, I really do not care whether you believe Christ was the son of God, or was just an ordinary prophet, but I believe He existed. The cup of Christ, Moses, Ten Commandments, Mount Sinai, the remnants of the tablets, the Holy Crusades were not a myth. Do not readily dismiss history. I believe it is quite possible the Catholic Church might just be in possession of these items. If you had them, where would you hide them? Probably a safe place, far away from suspicion. Somewhere like a convent in New Orleans?”

  Phillip started to speak, but could not assimilate his thoughts. He raised his index finger to gesture, his lips searching for vocabulary, but remained momentarily befuddled.

  “Let’s just say for argument’s sake you are not completely off your rocker, this time. Let’s say you do find a cup or an artifact to that effect. You bring me something of that magnitude, and I’ll pay you ten times the amount we agreed on. How does that that float your boat, or should I say . . . Arc?”

  “Stealing holy artifacts will put me on an express train to Hell. I’m probably headed there anyway, but I was hoping at a slow, maybe even reversible pace.”

  “Come on, Brian. You won’t be doing anything more unholy than the Catholics have already done and are still doing. If there are some mystical scrolls or cups or whatever in the convent, how do you think they got there in the first place? The Church stole them from somebody else, that’s how. I don’t think the popes who conquered Babylon went to Hell. And, if they did, you’ll be in damn good company.”

  “Speaking of good company, make sure you find a place with really cold beer.” Turning away, I smiled at the image, me and the popes . . . just hanging out.

  CHAPTER 7

  PHILLIP INSTRUCTED ME to meet him at the Bourbon Street Blues Company, several blocks up the street from Lafitte’s, where I was having a beer. I glanced around the dimly lit bar one last time and bid adieu. Nestled amongst quiet residential homes drawing near the end of the French Quarter, Lafitte’s was a far cry from the mayhem ahead. Within several blocks the street was ablaze with partygoers reveling in the music, alcohol, and a sexual-frenzied atmosphere that permeated the night. Throngs of people were gathered beneath the balconies scattered above the various bars, continuing the nightly tradition of earning one’s Mardi Gras beads even though it was nowhere near Mardi Gras. Practice till you get it perfect; you have to love the commitment of these people.

  Looking up to the balcony observing the methodology of the bead chuckers, I spied Phillip leaning over a rail. Oblivious to my approach, with a fistful of beads, he was attempting to entice any willing, attractive female to eagerly fulfill her end of the traditional obligation. A small line was formed below the balcony of decadence. A muscle-headed bouncer nodded in the direction of the line as he chatted with a small group of pectoral-mesmerized girls. I played ignorant to his innuendos and continued toward him.

  “Sorry, but you’ll have to wait in the line with everyone else, chief,” he instructed as he pointed with a sneer of superiority. “We’re filled to capacity. Got a killer band tonight. Might be as long as an hour or so.”

  I slid my hand into my pocket and grabbed the pre-rolled hundreds I habitually kept on call. I conspicuously peeled off two bills and leaned a little closer to his ear. “I am supposed to meet my cousins Benjamin and Franklin here. I am running a little late as you probably might guess.” I placed one hand on his shoulder and then discretely slid a couple of bills into his right hand while shaking it.