Page 46 of Stalked By Shadows

The tour began in Jackson Square right in front of the gate to the little park full of statues. We arrived a few minutes after eight and Micah pointed out some of the local food places in the area that were good. The crowd began to assemble by quarter to nine, phones out and walking shoes on. At least it felt like they were taking this seriously. Micah frowned over an arrival or two, whom I assumed were the reporters. But he checked them in with a smile and a welcome. I stood beside him in a shirt that read: ‘Ghost Security is more than fences around graveyards.’ It was bright purple with white text that glowed in the dark. It clung a little. When I tried it on, Micah had made appreciative sounds even though the color was a little intense for my normal tastes.

“When everyone is here, let me talk first, okay?” I said.

Micah gave me the side-eye. “Okay?”

“Trust me.”

He shrugged and continued greeting everyone. It was a big group. They fanned around us, a smattering of late teens, twenty-somethings, and all the way up to a couple with matching silver hair and a lifetime of likely well-earned wrinkles. Everyone looked a little nervous and excited. My focus was on Micah. He’d been clear during our walk-through that we had to keep the group moving, and occasionally pull the group back from wandering or asking off-topic questions that slowed the entire tour down.

Finally the last of them had arrived. I cleared my voice and waved my hands to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome everyone,” I said once they’d quieted down. “This is Micah, your tour guide and New Orleans haunted history guru,” I indicated to Micah. “I’m Alex and I’m security. You’ll notice we have a large group tonight, and I’ll ask that you try to keep your voices low so everyone can hear Micah speak as that’s why you’re all here. Stay with the group. We will be stopping at each location so you can ask questions and take pictures. The tour lasts about an hour and a half. We can’t promise you’ll see ghosts, but if you see me chasing something, maybe run the other way, eh?”

There was a nervous giggle from the crowd.

“Keep the questions and comments respectful and we are sure to have an entertaining adventure. Now let’s get started, okay?”

“Is it true one of the people on your tour went missing?” One of the men in the back asked. Micah tensed. I put a hand on his arm.

“Not true. She was not on our tour. Any further questions about last night’s incident will have to go through the police as it’s an ongoing investigation,” I said. “Now, we are all here for a tour, right?”

The crowd murmured its agreement. All eyes turned to Micah. He welcomed them and began the story about the Jackson Square ghosts. The night was overcast, but no rain or fog in sight, though the crowd searched the area for any sign of the four murdered men who were known to haunt the Square.

We made our way up Royal street, stopping at a few places to hear scary stories. The crowd snapped pictures of places, though I saw and felt nothing out of the ordinary. I kept to the back of the group, keeping an eye on the two guys I was pretty sure were reporters, and Micah. He was very engaging. His verbal story telling skills were intense as he projected his voice over the crowd, lowering or raising his tone with the story, even adding accented dialogue a time or two like a skilled audiobook narrator might.

I didn’t see or sense anything unusual until we got close to the Voodoo Museum. Micah had told me on our earlier tour that people used to be able to visit the museum and take part in mock rituals, but there had been a fire, and the Voodoo Society had been trying to raise enough funds to finish the repairs for quite some time. So in short, the building was vacant, and locked up tight. When we’d passed it earlier, I’d seen nothing and it sounded like a sad story of how capitalism milked everyone for every penny by asking for more and more permits. Now the building seemed to glow with some sort of eerie light.

I frowned at it and wondered if Micah felt anything.

He paused a few feet from the building, letting everyone gather around him, and glanced my way. Was he getting that bug feeling? I met his gaze and he nodded. Yes, he felt something. “This is, or was at least, the Voodoo Museum you probably heard of in your research of New Orleans,” he began.

I looked over the building trying to figure out if there was some scientific explanation for the building having a glow. Nothing close was lit with anything more than a streetlight. Nearby shops were closed. And I knew, because of Micah’s comments earlier in the day, that the power to the building was turned off. Yet all the windows flickered with a faint light, almost like a fire.

Nothing seemed to move within. I wondered if we should call someone and let them know? Or was it something only I was seeing? The group snapped lots of photos, but no one remarked on anything in particular. I pulled out my phone and snapped a few pictures myself of the windows and the area where the top of the building met the skyline of the city, to see if later I would be able to distinguish any glow.

“Did you catch anything?” The woman nearest to me asked.

“Haven’t looked yet,” I told her honestly. “You?”

“Maybe?” She held up her phone and in the window near where Micah stood was some sort of hint of a face. Not a reflection obviously as no one was standing close enough for there to be a reflection. “I think the window is boarded up from the inside,” she continued. “Maybe it’s something on the wood?”

I glanced up at the window and didn’t see anything there other than the glow, but itwasboarded up from the inside. A big piece of plywood on that side protecting the oversized window from either vandals or people trying to look inside.

“I don’t see anything now,” I told her and stepped up to the window. Micah shrugged when I threw him a questioning look, assuring me he was okay with the time we were making on the tour.

The glass was solid, thick, with a sun-resistant coating of some kind on the outside. I put my hand to the glass more to feel if anything was different about it, perhaps a texture or something that only came out in the photo. I heard phones snapping pictures around me, but didn’t see anything other than the faint glow. I stared into the dark pane for a minute, the palm of my hand pressed onto the glass, feeling nothing really, then heat radiating from the center of my hand and intensifying. I yanked my hand away and blinked at the glass. For a few seconds I almost felt like something was staring back at me. Nothing I could actually see, but more a presence I could sort of feel.

Micah put a hand on my arm, which made me step back into the street away from the ruins of the museum. “Ready to move on?” he asked.

I nodded, though the sense of something close ran through my nerves like a rush of anxiety irritating my skin. Maybe that was what Micah meant by bugs?

I returned to the back of the group and followed as we continued the tour. We stopped briefly near the intersection of Royal and Charters to listen to the infamous story about the Casket Girls who legend said were vampires. The monastery overlooked the area with an intimidating white tower, boasting closed off windows and a large fence keeping people out. Micah knew all the history and talked about the myth of the girls and how it had exploded in the seventies after an incident that he hadn’t been able to find real record of.

The third floor of the giant white convent in the distance looked still and normal to me, as it had on our initial tour, though most of the group took pictures.

“We’ll stop by the entrance to the convent on our way back to Jackson Square later. That is supposedly where the two investigators were found after they were eviscerated by the vampires,” Micah told the group. “Occasionally the convent holds tours inside. Though I have never seen the third floor. As far as I know it is still locked up.”

The rest of the tour went much the same way. I didn’t know how Micah kept all his facts straight. And no matter what questions were asked of him, he had an answer, even if it was simply to point them toward a historical reference website.

The brief stop we made at the LaLaurie Mansion made my gut ache. We weren’t even close, instead staring down at it from half a block away. Even through the barely lit streets I could see another tour gathered around on the sidewalk in front of the house. Micah told several very sad stories about victims and ghosts while everyone took pictures and listened raptly. I examined the windows in the distance. Looking for the smoke creatures. In the dark it looked black. No glow. No movement. Just lifeless.