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  NOLA

  A Haunted Series Novel by

  Alexie Aaron

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ~

  Copyright 2015 – Diane L. Fitch writing as Alexie Aaron

  ALSO BY ALEXIE AARON

  HAUNTED SERIES

  in order

  The Hauntings of Cold Creek Hollow

  Ghostly Attachments

  Sand Trap

  Darker than Dark

  The Garden

  Puzzle

  Old Bones

  Things that Go Bump in the Night

  Something Old

  The Middle House: Return to Cold Creek Hollow

  Renovation

  Mind Fray

  The Siege

  NOLA

  PEEPS LITE

  Eternal Maze 3.1

  Homecoming 3.2

  Checking Out 9.1

  Ice and Steel 9.2

  CIN FIN-LATHEN MYSTERIES

  Decomposing

  Death by Saxophone

  Discord

  Coming Soon: The Wages of Cin

  I dedicate this book to the people of New Orleans, Louisiana (NOLA).

  Thanks to the Bliss Cottage team, without them, the Haunted Series would not be, and to my readers who give me and Murphy a lot of joy.

  Table of Contents

  NOLA

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Alexie Aaron

  NOLA

  Sean Edwards was a man of extremes. He ate with gusto, drank like he had hollow legs, and exercised like he was a triathlete. Parties were just a jumping off point for the man in search of the ultimate thrill. With a little beer in his system, followed by several shots of eighty-proof whisky, he was halfway to becoming a god. Gods don’t play by the rules, and neither would Sean. This was what had brought him to New Orleans, Louisiana during Mardi Gras. This was why he stood surveying the parade from his vantage point on the roof of a crawfish joint.

  Sean looked down at the body-to-body filled streets. Drunk, breast-showing women shouted to the passing floats. The men ogled the vast display of flashing females, some taking blatant selfies with the daring ladies, sending the pictures out into the web. Eventually, they would be seen by the flashers and the last two tequila shots downed would be regretted. Some of the bead-seeking women were smart and wore papier-mâché masks. These colorful, wearable art pieces reminded Sean why he was there in the first place.

  Sean had gotten tired of being shoved and jostled as he moved, too slowly, towards his destination. He had had enough of the crush of the street, so he decided to climb up the building. The first balcony was filled with revelers, the second with lovers, but the roof of the Spanish-built building was empty.

  The tiles of the roof were still slick, coated with the moisture left by the afternoon rain. As long as he kept to the ridgeline, Sean managed enough traction to travel along with the parade. The drumbeats of the gangs of Indians fueled him. They pushed away any thoughts of danger and buried the knowledge that what he was about to do was illegal. He would not only arrive at the Crown-Livingston ball wearing a mask, but it would be the mask, the mask that was reputed to be worn by Grand Duke Alexei Romanov when he visited in 1872.

  The impossibility of the caper didn’t occur to Sean. The consequences of the crime, if he succeeded, didn’t deter him. He had decided he would destroy the evidence after the ball. Sean Edwards would be the last person on earth to wear, let alone touch, the now fragile, papier-mâché mask of Romanov’s. This knowledge would be enough to sate him for a while, just as the knowledge that he had slept in Lincoln’s bedroom, unsanctioned, right under the nose of the secret service, had.

  A trumpet blast followed by a bluesy riff from the street stopped his progression. He turned and inched his way to the edge of the roof to see who was playing. Was he famous? If so, Sean would steal the player’s trumpet. Why? Because he could. He didn’t think about the outrage or the hurt he may cause. All Sean thought about was himself.

  He quickly lost interest in the street performer and climbed back to the roof ridge. The immediate plan was that he would travel the roofs until the cross street where he would climb down, navigate the throng, and climb back up the next building. That was the plan. However, as Sean looked at the razor wire that was strung across the first balcony with contempt, he sought out plan B. He moved into the alley on the side of the building in search of another way up. He spotted a drainpipe. Upon closer examination of the pipe that ran down the side of the building, Sean discovered it had been greased. He supposed the owners had done this to stop drunken revelers from climbing up. He moved deeper into the dark recess and found no other way up to the roof. However, there were several locked, steel security doors. Although tempted, Sean decided that if the owners of the building went to the trouble of using razor wire and greasing the drainpipe, they no doubt had a security system in place. He hit the wall hard with his hand before retracing his steps to the street. He would have to endure the body odor of the crowd as he pushed his way towards his goal.

  An hour later, he ducked down the narrow alley that would bring him to the back of the building housing the Romanov mask. Here, a block off the parade route, the drainpipe was free of Vaseline. Sean climbed upwards, and as he shifted his weight onto the roof, he spied the latest edition to the private Cully Museum, a roof lantern. The original orangery topper had been retrofitted to the ceiling of the jewel room. This way, the jewels could be reflected in natural light, their elegance not depleted by the previous electric blubs. The present owners would probably put in gas lights if someone told them the jewels would look better in that kind of lighting.

  Yesterday, while the tour guide gave the group the history of the raised glass topper, Sean’s eyes had surveyed the five by eight foot skylight for a way into the museum. He stopped his gaze and focused in on the pane of glass that had been reengineered to open outwards to let out the hot air. Unfortunately, it had an obtrusive piece of screening covering the opening – engineered and fitted after a few sparrows had decided to enter the building and build nests amongst the display cabinets. This fine piece of metal would be the museum’s undoing.

  Sean, now, took out his box-cutter and sliced through the screen after lifting the window off its hinges. He pulled out his gear from the backpack he had left up there on his first scouting mission. He attached the static rope to the metal supports, testing the hold before sliding downwards into the room. He caught his pant leg on the metal edge and restrained himself from crying out as his leg was jabbed when the metal tore a hole in his pants.

  The jewel display cases were hooked into the alarm system at the insurer’s insistence. But the mask wasn’t. It had been overlooked as it contained no jewels.
The glass sequins had been dulled by time, and compared to the king’s ransom displayed across the room, the mask didn’t appear to have value. Although, as an artifact of Mardi Gras, it was priceless. Sean quickly dismantled the climate-controlled glass case and extracted the mask.

  He put it on. Glancing at the mirrored back of the case, he admired his royal visage. He kept the mask on and boldly walked past the security cameras and down the stairs. He looked out the barred windows at the solid mass of people moving along the front of the museum. “Nope, not getting out unnoticed that way,” he thought. He moved deeper into the employees only part of the museum’s bottom floor, hoping to find a back exit. He passed through a small lunch room and out into a small inner courtyard.

  He questioned himself about whether he had been through here on the tour. The guide had taken them through a courtyard, but it had been large and was rife with flowering foliage. This moonlit tile and brick courtyard served only as a place for the employees to smoke, away from the valuables and the customers. The standing ash pot was overfilled, and as a light breeze moved through, Sean’s sensitive nose was assaulted with the acrid smell of tobacco.

  In a hurry to leave, Sean twisted the knob of the nearest door and found it locked. He did the same to all the doors that opened to the small courtyard and found that even the door he had just come through had locked itself when he carelessly let it close. He started to panic, fearing he would be stuck there among the ashes until an employee who needed to relieve a nicotine urge, after the holiday, found him. He decided to see if he could force one of the older wooden doors. He took out his flip knife and succeeded in opening what unfortunately turned out to be a large supply closet. There would be no exit there. He backed out, mindful of the buckets and mops. He started to slam the door when a slice of moonlight penetrated the dark recess and glinted briefly off of something metallic. Sean looked closer and was rewarded with a ring of keys.

  The large steel circle contained many keys of various shapes and sizes. Not only were there keys to every locked door, but someone had labeled them. Sean worked his way around the ring until he found the one labeled “smoking room/red door.” He walked to the back door and opened it to find a set of ascending stairs. He backed out and thought a moment. The museum was comprised of several old houses. Perhaps one had to go up first and then down again to access an exit to the street behind. He shut the door behind him and started up the stairs. He drew out his small flashlight and used it as he moved up the dark staircase. After the steep climb, he found himself on a landing and was faced with three doors. Two of them were unlocked and led into the house. The third was padlocked.

  “Valuable things are kept behind padlocks,” he said, flipping through the keys until he found one that matched the lock. He unlocked the padlock and then inserted a skeleton key into the antique lock and twisted. He felt resistance as he turned the key. Age and rare use had caused the mechanism to seize. He withdrew the key and placed a well-aimed kick to the door. His hope was to jostle the lock enough to have the rust fall away. Sean put the key in and tried again. This time it opened, begrudgingly, screaming its outrage as metal met rusted metal.

  Sean pushed the door in and coughed as he almost choked on the dust-filled room. He took off the mask and pulled his sweaty tee upwards over his nose. The scent of his Old Spice body wash enveloped him. Anything had to be better than the musty smell of accumulated dust. He moved the beam of his flashlight around until he found a light switch. It was a push button affair. He pushed it and was rewarded with two bulbs popping over his head. He instinctively put an arm over his face to protect it from falling glass. After the old glass finished raining down on him, he was able to look up at the culprit, a small five-bulb chandelier. The other three bulbs held, so Sean shut off his flashlight. The yellow light did a decent enough job of pushing away the darkness.

  Sean found that he was in a bedroom, a very old bedroom. He could see the spot where the old French doors to the outside had been, was bricked up. The wall still held the remnants of the heavy curtains the last occupant of the room had used to block the morning light. The furnishings were dark and heavy, giving Sean the overwhelming feeling that a male once resided here. There was a desk tucked into a corner, backed by glass-fronted cabinets. Sean looked around the bedroom but nothing else interested him, so he made his way to the small office.

  The cabinets were old, the wood dry. Time had caused one to lean. Because of this, Sean was afraid to open the doors, fearing the breakage that would occur. He used his flashlight to check out some of the first edition books shelved there. Sean had read a few of them in his military school days. The stories of courage and war no longer interested him, so he moved on to the next cabinet. There he found more of the same. Disappointed, he backtracked, looking for something that had caught his eye on his first perusal. Jammed in between cabinets was a wooden case the size of a hatbox.

  He bent down and studied the box. He found a few crude carvings on the side of the case. Sean found himself running his fingers along the carvings, caressing the cuttings as if they were a woman. He reached forward and tried to pull out the box, but humidity and the leaning cabinet had all but sealed it there. It took several tugs, but the box was freed. Standing up, Sean looked for a place to examine the case. Balancing the large box on his hip, he mindlessly pushed the contents of the desk to the ground to make way for his prize. He fumbled at the latches and broke one in his haste to open it. The box’s hinges groaned as he pulled the lid up.

  Inside, he found a circular shaped object encased in a black velvet bag that fit snuggly in the custom made case. Sean settled himself down before he lifted the bag out, untied it, and looked inside.

  “A fucking bowl! Who the fuck puts a salad bowl in a case like this?” Sean asked the empty room. He drew out the large wood bowl and held it to the light. He could see carvings on the exterior of the bowl similar to what had been on the wooden case. He turned it around and saw that the inside of the bowl was made of something shiny. He set it down and ran his hand along the smooth, mother of pearl inlay. “Ouch!” he cried as a sharp bit of shell nicked his index finger. He shook his finger, not noticing a few drops had fallen into the bowl, staining the brilliant white interior. The inside of the bowl had a luminous quality to it. “I bet if it gets wet, it’s beautiful.” He set the bowl down and drew out the water bottle he had tucked into his back pocket. He untwisted the cap and poured the spring water into the large bowl, rubbing the sides at the same time. He poured the accumulated water out on the carpet, uncaring of the destruction he was causing to the old wool fibers. All he suddenly seemed to care about was this bowl.

  He moved the case to the bed and set the bowl on top of the desk, this time with reverence. He needed more light. He searched the desk and found some tinned matches. On the bedside table, there was an old oil lamp. Sean trimmed the wick and, after a few tries, lit the lamp. He replaced the glass chimney and brought it over to the desk.

  The bowl was magnificent. It reflected the light, especially where there were still a few droplets of water. Sean emptied the rest of his water bottle into the bowl. The half cup of liquid glowed as it pooled on the bottom. Sean jiggled the bowl, causing the water to swirl. He set it down and looked down into it. As the water calmed, he saw features of a man form. At first, Sean was startled at the face looking back at him. “Fucking hell, it’s just me,” he scolded himself. He walked over and picked up the Mardi Gras mask and put it on. He strutted his way back to the bowl and looked down into it. Reflected in the water was the King of the Parade. The purple of the Romanovs was so vibrant in the reflected pool that Sean backed away. He pulled the mask off and turned it around and looked at it. The faded glass sequins barely had any color left. He put it on again and looked back into the bowl. Back was the regal purple, the spectacular green, and the sparkly gold. All of it seemed too heavy to be contained on the papier-mâché mask.

  Sean took off the mask and looked at the bowl. It was now three-qua
rters full of water. Where had the water come from? He picked up the discarded plastic bottle and looked from it to the bowl. Even if the bottle had been full, it would have taken him four bottles to fill half of the bowl. He looked down into the bowl once again. The water no longer reflected his image. The image reflected was horrible. It was a man whose face held no skin. The eyes were Sean’s, but the face? Sean raised a hand to his cheek, and as he touched it, he left a burning print. He pulled his hand away and saw that it was full of thick red goo. Not thinking, Sean plunged his hand into the water, oblivious that it had overfilled the bowl and was dripping on the desktop. He next plunged his burning face into the water in an attempt to cool it. He drew up for air and pulled his tee off and blotted the wetness away. Once again, Sean looked into the bowl and saw his face staring back at him. He shook his head, trying to clear it. As he shook, another face formed in the water overlaying Sean’s reflection. It was Sean but not Sean. It was an older, wiser version of the man. Sean stopped and stared at the man for a moment and asked, “Father, what are you doing here?”

  The man continued looking up at Sean. Two hands appeared on either side of the head and moved upwards out of the water. As the hands hit the air, they lost color and became transparent. They lowered again out of sight. The reflected face moved up out of the water until his proud nose and lips broke free of the liquid. The man murmured something. Sean, although horrified, lowered his head, turning his face away to hear the man better.

  The hands shot up out of the bowl and gripped the sides of Sean’s head and turned him sharply, first, to face the submerged face and then hard to the left to break Sean’s neck. As the would-be-king-of-the-ball’s body fell away from the desk towards the floor, the watery hands kept hold of the soul of Sean Edwards, ripping it from his body and pulling it, kicking and screaming, into the pool. The water bubbled for a while. Purple, green and gold lights danced upon the surface. When the bubbling stopped, water seemed to have drained out of the bowl. All that was left was the original half cup of spring water that Sean had poured.