Kenneth Mark Hoover

The wind through the dead pecan trees masked any noise we made coming over the back wall. I went first, dropping onto the newly mown lawn. Chitter landed beside me, his breath shallow in his throat.

He nudged me, his face a pale blotch between his dark knit cap and black pullover. "So far so good, Jude."

I nodded. "Yeah,” I whispered. “Nobody's home."

He flashed a smile. "Piece of cake."

I agreed it sure looked that way. The antebellum house, creaking with age, had dark windows that glared down at the landscaped lawn like blank eyes. A narrow cobblestone path ran between the house and a private mausoleum: a dull grey marble structure cloistered by a tangled overgrowth of oleander and brown honeysuckle. Carved deep into the lintel of the mausoleum was a single word:

SKALLA

A sliver of moon rode the networked branches of an oak tree that crouched over the crypt. The cobblestone path was partially hidden by the paint-flecked lattice of an arbor. Chitter and I moved down the path towards the house. Dappled shadows from the morning glory and crepe myrtle growing over and around the arbor marbled our flesh.

We reached the screened porch and padded quietly to the back door. With a gloved hand Chitter tried the doorknob. The door opened noiselessly, its hinges well-oiled.

He looked at me in disbelief. "These idiots are just asking for it, Jude. Nice of them to make it easy for us."

I frowned. “Pretty odd they wouldn't even lock the door. No burglar alarms, either." I put my black leather pouch filled with burglar tools back in my shirt. They wouldn't be needed here. "Let's go."

I followed Chitter inside. He clicked on his penlight and swept it around a cluttered kitchen. Bags of onions and potatoes were on the counter. Bright silverware lay scattered on a dining table where someone had been busy polishing it.

"We'll grab that silver on the way out," I suggested.

Chitter's penlight stabbed deeper into the recesses of the house and picked out a padlocked door next to a pantry. I instinctively reached for my tools.

Chitter laid a restraining hand on my forearm. "Nah. Probably only leads to a root cellar or something. Let's keep going."

We stole farther into a foyer. A cherry wood escritoire and an ancient Zenith sat in forgotten corners of the room. In the middle of the foyer, with settees arranged as if to pay homage, was a polished Victrola with Sinatra's "Witchcraft" on the platter. Beside the Victrola, stacked with care, were more old 78 records.

"These will bring a good price at any antique shop," I observed. "They're all in mint condition."

Chitter went to the escritoire and rummaged around. He found papers regarding the everyday upkeep of the house, but no cash. He slid the drawers shut.

"Upstairs?" he whispered.

I nodded. "Guess so."

We ascended red carpeted stairs, our gloved hands sliding along an ormolu bannister. The bedrooms revealed nothing of importance until we found the master bedroom. We went through the dresser finding only pale pink blouses and burgundy skirts, all neatly folded. I parted the antique satin drapes from a French window and looked out over the five acre grounds--all that remained of the Skalla Plantation at the edge of the Garden District, now a historical home managed by the city of New Orleans. From this vantage point I could also see the silver sheen of the Mississippi River glinting under moonlight.

Chitter closed the last drawer in frustration. "Damn. There's nothing here."

"You're forgetting the silverware downstairs."

His face hardened. "I didn't come here for knives and forks."

I knew how he felt. This old historical home should have quite a few objets d'art we could fence. It was why we had chosen it above the other neighborhood houses in the first place.

It was also why he and I worked so well together. Chitter was in charge of most of the behind-the-scenes stuff: selling what we stole, casing new opportunities. My specialty was locks, and an ability to appraise works of art on the spot--a talent gleaned from my days as an art connoisseur before I moved to this more lucrative side of the business.

Chitter's impatient eyes ranged about the bedroom. "Jude, something doesn't seem right about this room. Notice it?"

"I do." I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. "There's a connecting bath through that door. No mirrors in there either."

His eyebrows crowded together. "That's pretty freakin' strange, wouldn't you say?"

I shrugged. "Takes all kinds. You know how these caretakers are when it comes to these old historical homes. You have to be a little warped to live alone in a drafty place like this anyway."

Still, I couldn't help but wonder if we had stumbled onto something unusual. But, even though my suspicious were aroused, I couldn't bring myself to take the next leap into fantasy. I mean, fairy tales had never been an integral part of my life.

Chitter stripped a pillowcase off a goose-down pillow. "For the silverware," he explained.

We moved down the hallway to a final door. We tried to open it, but this one was locked.

I went to work. It wasn't much of an obstacle. An ordinary skeleton key would have sufficed. Chitter pushed the door open and we slipped inside a huge room with expensive walnut paneling and a fancy slate-tiled floor.

"My God," said Chitter. "What a mother-lode."

I swallowed, overwhelmed.   "Christ."

The room was furnished with Louis XV furniture. And art. Hundreds of pieces of gleaming art all depicting the same woman.

She was frozen in various attitudes, timeless within the two-dimensional framework of acrylic, oil, egg-tempera, watercolor and the occasional chiaroscuro. She looked out at us from a score of paintings. They were like immortal shards of glass if you want to get poetic about it. Eternal, these objects would forever reflect her changeless beauty.

And that wasn't all. In each corner of the room stood a life-sized bust on a marble pedestal, each carved of wood, bronze, soapstone--and probably the most prized, obsidian. And sketches. Hundreds of sketches finished in charcoal, pencil, pastels, pen and ink, blanketed the walls.

"What the hell is this?" asked Chitter. "Talk about being in love with yourself."

I barely heard him. I was standing before the white marble fireplace, staring up at an oil on canvas portrait that was the room's centerpiece.

The woman portrayed there stood in profile with an open decolletage and lavender powder on her face, hands and arms. If I remembered correctly, it was a cosmetic adopted by only the most brazen of women, a long time ago.

A long time ago.

"We'll have to come back with an entire crew." Chitter's eyes were wide with greed at the riches he foresaw on our horizon. "I want to hire a truck and a couple more fellows. Retain a quality fence, too. We'll come back next week and clean this place out. Jude?"

The skin on my face was cold and tight as I stared at the gilt-framed portrait above the fireplace. "Chitter, if this is authentic, what's hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art?" He looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Frankly, I wasn't sure that I hadn't.

"What are you babbling about?"

"This oil painting. How would it have been painted? At night, by gaslight, would be my only guess. In John Singer Sargent's fifth-floor studio on the rue Notre Dame des Champs."

Chitter stared at me, open-mouthed.

"Around the late 1800s," I explained.

"Wow. All these paintings are that old?"

"No, they're not." I grabbed his arm, pulled him away from the oil painting towards a watercolor propped on an easel.

I pointed angrily. "What's that on her wrist?"

"A watch."

"What make, genius?"

He bent for a closer look; the detail was exquisite. "Looks like a jeweled electronic Boliva." His eyes narrowed. "No, Jude. It ain't possible."

"Think about it. This room wouldn't be a question of vanity, but of necessity. She wouldn't cast any reflection, and she can't be photographed. This is the only way she can physically see herself as others perceive her, and endure what she has become. Forever changeless. Being a reclusive caretaker of an old mansion is also great cover, I would think."

Chitter's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. “What exactly are you getting at?"

"Whenever this lady stares at these sketches, portraits, busts, she knows she truly exists. She's not some shambling, supernatural ghost. She would know she has substance and form," my voice dropped low, "despite the quiet lies of looking glasses and still ponds."

We both stared at the portrait. I whispered: "She would view these works of art and say to herself: 'I am substantial. I am somebody. I exist.'" Chitter was fast losing his nerve. He said unsteadily, "Let's get out of here. Now."

"I think you're right. Come on."

We didn't bother locking door. I raced downstairs, Chitter crowding me from behind. When we reached the kitchen he realized he still had the satin pillowcase clutched in one hand.

"Damn. Damn. Damn."

"Forget it," I said. "We're never coming back anyway." I started for the back door and stopped, frozen.

Chitter's voice cracked with fear as he bumped into me from behind. "What's wrong, Jude?"

I pointed at the open cellar door. Chitter's face went white when he realized that whatever had been locked in that cellar was now free.

"Run, Chitter!" I screamed.

I banged the kitchen door open just as a cold blanket of air enveloped us in that dark, cluttered kitchen. I can't explain what it felt like other than a malevolent pressure wave emanating from the darkest recesses of the house. I heard Chitter give a muffled yelp but I was already out the door and running across the lawn for my life.

The cold shroud of air reached through me, around me, into me, and I felt something inside me tug a little and come loose, snaking back into the house where Chitter was hopelessly trapped.

Where there came the broken scream of an animal in pain. A human animal.

I clambered over the security wall, skinning my face in the process. I fell on the other side and twisted my knee. Grimacing, I hobbled to our car parked under the violet shadows of a cypress tree sighing in the night breeze.

Fumbling for my keys I cranked the engine and drove, trying to forget that shuddering animal scream that had emanated from inside the house.

Find a pay phone. Hurry. I pulled under the bright fluorescent lights of a Tank-N-Tummy and dug frantically in my jeans for change. I dialed with a stabbing forefinger, pressing the receiver so hard to my ear it hurt.

A tinny voice answered after the second ring. "New Orleans Police Department."

I swallowed, my mouth cotton-dry. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. And, again, that little tug inside my chest drew tighter, a windlass drawing an invisible cord between me and that antebellum mansion in the Garden District.

"Hello? Can I help you?"

I hung up and lighted a cigarette. I got less smoke into my lungs than I would have liked because of my trembling hands.

She took something from me.

I don't know how she did it. Lit a psychic flame in her mind maybe and reached into me to pinch a little bit of me out. Call it my soul, call it anything you like. But she had it, and it couldn't exist in two places at once.

I got back inside my car and drove back to the mansion. My mind screamed at me to rethink what I was doing, but I couldn't help myself. No matter what happened, I needed that part of me back again.

With each passing moment the tension in my chest lessened. I parked at the curb and got out. The windows of the quiet mansion were still dark. The wind still drove through the pecan trees.

My heart pounding, I went up to the front door and rang the doorbell. After an interminable wait that couldn't have been more than a few seconds, it opened. Behind her, huddled in the dark, I heard Chitter weeping in fear like a lost child. Strains of Sinatra's 'Witchcraft' played scratchily in the background.

"I'm back," I told her.

The woman in black with the lavender powder on her face and arms pressed her cold hand against my bruised cheek and smiled.

"Come in, Jude," she said, softly.

I stepped over the threshold, and into the darkness that awaited.

--End--