A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT
When the doctor shut the latch on his black bag, a bolt of lightning split the night sky.
Am I making up the bolt of lightning? Maybe, possibly—I’ve been known to embellish—and this all took place a hundred years ago, so who’s to say? But it really was a dark and stormy night, and a child did lie lifeless on the bed in the damp basement room, and if the lightning wasn’t slashing it should have been. What happened that night happened, trust me on that if you trust me on anything, and this is how I imagine it.
The doctor mumbles something about the death certificate as he lifts the white sheet and covers the boy’s lifeless face. A kneeling young mother hugs her dead child, soaking the cloth that covers him with her tears. The mother’s two older sisters, the boy’s aunties, bustle around the room, showing the doctor out, stopping the clock, covering the mirror.
They’d had much practice, the aunties, in the rituals of death. The influenza outbreak was sweeping through the city like a scythe. Already, three of those who lived in the servants’ cottage had died and many others were deathly sick, including the boy’s mother. As the aunties went about their silent work, only the moans of the mother broke the quiet.
Her parents were buried in the home country of Ireland, gone. Her husband was overseas, gone to war. Her life had become her twelve-year-old son, her darling Keir, and now he was gone with the rest. Her hands caressed the sheet that covered his face as she whispered his name into unhearing ears. Until something stopped her sobs.
The sheet that covered her son’s face rose with the slightest bit of breath.
She pulled back as if from a ghost. “He’s alive,” she said.
“Oh, Caitlin,” said one of the aunties. “I’m sorry, but the doctor said—”
“The doctor was wrong, Erin,” said the mother. “My boy still breathes.” She pulled the sheet from his face. “Look.”
The other auntie took hold of a candle and brought the tiny flame to the boy’s open mouth. They stared at the candle, the three of them, watching for the flame to twitch, but saw nothing. Nothing. And then…
“I’ll run and get the doctor,” said Erin.
“Not him,” said the mother as she placed her hand on the boy’s cold cheeks, turned blue by the sickness. “I’ll not trust my boy to him again.”
The young mother started wrapping her boy, covering him not just with the sheet but with the thin gray blanket, too. “Can you ready the carriage, Rowan?”
The second auntie nodded. “I’ll have Grady do it. He’ll drive you, too, if he knows what’s good for him.”
“Where will he be driving you to, Caitlin?” said Erin, the oldest of the three sisters.
“Go, Rowan, run. There’s not much time.”
“Where are you taking him?” said Auntie Erin as Rowan rushed up the stairs.
“Where I should have taken him at the first.”
“If you care for that boy’s soul you won’t let her near him.”
“For now, sister,” said the young mother, “I’ll let the Lord care for his soul. I mean to care for his still-young life. Help me carry him.”
“I can’t. I won’t. It’s blasphemy.”
“Then step aside.” The young mother leaned over the bed, took hold of her son, and stood. She staggered under the load.
Her older sister, strong as a mule, snatched the boy from her as easily as if he’d been a loaf of bread.
The two sisters stared into each other’s eyes.
“I can’t have you dropping him into a puddle,” said Erin, “your fever as high as it is. Now let’s be going. Time’s a-wasting.”
The black carriage rushed forward through the rain-soaked night, rocking wildly as the horse strained under Grady’s whip. The three sisters inside the carriage held tightly to the barely breathing boy. The lightning flashed. The whip cracked. The horse snorted as it galloped ever forward.
This is my favorite part of the story, the wild carriage ride through the stormy night. I like to imagine myself sitting next to Grady on the driver’s bench as the carriage barrels through the corkscrew turns and past the brick church with the pointy steeple. I can feel the rain on my face, hear the thunder in my bones. I hold tight as the carriage leans wildly this way and that, almost teetering over before righting itself.
You know what they could have used in those days? Seat belts!
The reins were yanked and the horse let out a terrified neigh as it reared in front of a granite arch with a name carved into the stone: LAVEAU. Normally the gate was locked tight, but on this night its iron wings were spread wide, as if it sensed the dark desperation of their mission.
Grady pulled the horse to the left and the carriage jolted forward, diving beneath the arch and onto the gravel drive. Lanterns swinging from the roof of the carriage gouged a path through the low, overhanging branches of a grove as the horse charged on. The carriage shook so hard within the canopy of darkness it was as if it was leaving this world and entering another.
The woods ended and something wide and fearsome shone dimly on the crest of the hill, something like a great curled dragon. A slash of lightning killed the illusion—it was not a dragon at all, just a large stone house with wings stretching on either side.
At the front entrance, the two aunties jumped into the rain, carrying young Keir to the large crimson door. The mother struggled to follow. Auntie Erin held the boy as Rowan lifted the knocker and slammed it down again and again.
The young mother, bent over at the waist, whispered, “Let us in. Save my boy.”
As if in response only to her plea, the door opened slowly. In the gap stood a skinny old man in black, with bony hands, long gray hair, and the blue face of a rotting corpse. Rowan gasped when she saw him and backed away from the door.
“We’ve come to see the Countess Laveau,” said Erin.
“You are not those we were expecting,” said the old man in a high-pitched warble.
“My son is fading,” said the young mother. “He is on the edge of death.”
The man, more bone than flesh, stared for a moment before he closed the door to them.
The wind and rain lashed their backs as they waited. There was nothing to be done but wait. And wait.
Finally the door opened again, and standing now beside the skinny blue man was a woman, tall and fierce, in a perfectly tailored man’s suit with jewels at the cuffs and a red scarf at her throat. Her skin was deep brown, her cheekbones were sharp, her black hair was wound like a living thing about her face. She took the boy’s rain-soaked face in her hands and raised his eyelids with her thumbs.
“Influenza?” asked the woman.
“The doctor already declared him dead,” said Erin. “But still he breathes.”
“How much they don’t know could fill libraries,” the woman said in a Caribbean accent.
“Please, Countess,” said the young mother, “save my boy.”
The countess looked at her as a bolt of lightning ignited the sky. In that instant the skull beneath the countess’s face glowed through her flesh. “You come to me even knowing the cost?”
“He is all I have. My boy. My Keir.”
“If we do save him, he can never leave this place,” said the countess. “If he lives, he will be bound to me for as long as he walks this earth.”
The young mother coughed and looked away. “I can’t let him die.”
“Do you agree to the terms?”
“Please.”
Just then the eldest of the aunties, the one still holding the boy, spoke. “Surely you’ll let our Caitlin see him if he lives. Surely you’ll allow a mother time to visit with her only child.”
The countess looked at Erin, then at Rowan, then at the mother, who was pleading with wet, red-rimmed eyes.
“Once a month, that is all,” said the countess. “On this same day each month she will be allowed a visit. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” said the mother. “I agree.”
Without another word, the Countess Laveau seized the boy from Erin’s arms, spun around, and carried him into the house. As the door slammed shut, the young mother collapsed, clutching at the ground as she cried out for her son.
The aunties were in the process of lifting their weeping sister from the wet stone when the door opened suddenly and the old man once again appeared before them. In one blue hand he held what looked like an irregular brown piece of paper, words scrawled upon it in red ink. With the other, he took from his jacket pocket a feather quill.
“Before you go, Caitlin McGoogan,” he said to the young mother, “you’ll need to sign.”
Even in the world of the supernatural, paperwork exists. Like your middle school permanent record, it follows you through the decades of your life, past your death, and then into the long beyond, where it is up to the Court of Uncommon Pleas to decide how it rules your fate.
And that’s where I come in.
Some girls play basketball. Some girls play the electric bass. Some girls dance like pogo sticks to punk rock and sleep with their headphones on. We all have our things.
My name is Elizabeth Webster and my thing is speaking for the dead.