The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Read online

  “Bout time you woke up.” Boz sidled into the room with a covered plate in his hand. He crossed to the now-vacant breakfast table and set down the plate and two steaming mugs. “Sounded like you were bein gutted or rutted, couldn’t tell.”

  “Some of both,” Trace grunted, getting his knees under him. His side still hurt, and his neck and shoulders felt kinked. So much for sleeping on the floor to keep the haunts away.

  “I found out about our dead lady.” Boz flipped back the flour-sack towel over the plate and uncovered all sorts of good things: cornbread and ham and slices of fried grits.

  Trace limped to the table in his longjohns and took up one of the mugs. Coffee could save a man’s life, sometimes. “What about her?”

  “She owned this place, all right—had it passed down from her mama. Pair of ’em came up from N’Awleans when Miss Lisette was a girl. Miss Lisette run it by herself about three years after her mama died. Kitchen help says she was a good boss, paid fair, took care of her girls. Business was good. Then a year ago fall, this traveling carny comes through town, had one of those hocus-pocus men with it—what’re they called, when they put you to sleep, but they can still make you move around and stuff?”

  “Mesmerists.”

  “Yeah. Name o’ this one was Mereck. Foreigner. German, maybe.”

  Un Russe, whispered a voice near Trace’s ear.

  “Russian,” Trace said aloud, and reached for a slab of cornbread.

  “Anyway, he moves in here with Miss Lisette and the pair of them start up a Spiritualist racket—tellin fortunes, callin up the dead and such. Got to doin regular performances—even the respectable people in town comin to see the show. Fore long, the town preacher comes to visit, objectin to the ghost-raisin, but Miss Lisette has Mereck throw him out. Couple weeks later, she turns up dead and he turns up gone. They say he left her and she killed herself.”

  Mensonges, the voice whispered again, seductive and venomous. Lies.

  Trace shrugged, as if nagged by a mosquito. “McGillicuddy said that name. Last night. ‘Mustn’t keep Mr. Mereck waitin,’ or somethin like that.”

  “I remember.”

  “Reckon that’s the Master he was talkin about.”

  “What I thought, too, but the girls downstairs say they didn’t have much to do with each other. McGillicuddy was the bartender here, before Miss Lisette died. She didn’t leave no will, or if she did they lost it. McGillicuddy just kind of took over the place.”

  Trace tucked a piece of ham into his cheek and sucked the salt out of it. “Don’t like it. Don’t like any of it.”

  “Hell no. McGillicuddy finds out you ain’t workin for his boss, he’s liable to send those roughs of his after us. I know you don’t like leavin a job unfinished, but this…”

  “Don’t like bein lied to, either,” Trace said. “Even if McGillicuddy’s got this box, he don’t look willin to hand it over. Fellow acts like the devil’s lookin over his shoulder.”

  Boz snorted. “White folks is the devil. Don’t need no red sombitch with a hayfork. No offense to you or your former callin.”

  “None taken.” Trace cradled the coffee mug against his chest, pensive.

  “You reckon that’s why she wanted you?” Boz said.

  Trace looked at him. “How d’you mean?”

  “Well she sent us here to fetch somethin don’t belong to her, but she don’t tell you somebody else won’t wanna give it up. If she just picked any two idjits to ride down here and get a knife in their guts, I’d say she was stupid or mean—but Jameson said she came lookin for you special, so there’s got to be a reason why. Maybe cuz you’re Catholic? You reckon McGillicuddy’s got any respect for a former man of the cloth?”

  “I never was that.” This line of questioning was cutting dangerously close to bone. Trace shook his head and stood up. “Got to take a piss.”

  Miss DuPres had evidently believed in investing her money in her business: the bath-room upstairs had flush toilets and piped-in water. Trace had availed himself of the bathtub the night before, and went there now to do his morning duties.

  He knew why Miss Fairweather had sought him out. What he couldn’t figure was how. He’d told exactly seven people about his curse in the past eighteen years, and every one of them had died not long after. The most recent had been his father and stepmother, together with Trace’s wife, Dorie, and their unborn child. Cholera had taken them, but Trace knew in his heart that their deaths were on him, because he had broken the covenant he’d made with himself, to never again tell a living soul that he could see the dead ones.

  But evidently Miss Fairweather had not needed to be told. McGillicuddy had glimpsed what he was, because he had a hint of the Sight himself. So might not Miss Fairweather also…?

  He felt a sudden surge of hope, the old stupid conviction he’d thought was dead and buried, that finally, finally here was someone who knew the spirits were real and he wasn’t crazy … but the hope flickered and drowned in the cold of rising anger. He remembered the fervent look on her face, after he’d seen the spirit in her library. Damn right, she’d known about his curse. And she’d packed him off to deal with a murdering pimp and a vengeful ghost without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Trace stood before the bowl, unbuttoned his johnnies, and had just let loose a stream of water when a small voice asked, “Who are you?”

  Trace flinched. Hot piss pattered the floor, and then the whole flow dried up. “Damnation,” he breathed, and cautiously turned his head to see the little dead girl standing behind him. She held her doll by the hair and tilted her head curiously at him. The black pits of her eye sockets seemed to look into the back of her skull.

  “Vraiment, you are not Mereck’s man, n’est ce pas?” the little girl asked.

  He glanced at her again, from the corner of his eye. He knew, from reading far too many Spiritualist newspapers, that spirits were supposed to feed off the medium’s energy, and Trace had often suspected the same—he often felt a prickling along his neck and arms, as if there was an electrical storm in the air. This spirit was unusually forceful, summoning up a near-shameful caress of power along his skin, as if she knew exactly where to stroke. “I don’t know any Mereck. You run along, now.”

  “I do not have to leave. It is my house.”

  “Who are you, then?” He rebuttoned his johnnies, trying not to think about what he was talking to, figuring he’d go outside and finish his business behind the barn.

  “Je m’appelle Lisette DuPres, idiot.”

  Trace turned full around, but she was gone.

  He finished up in the bath-room, then went thoughtfully back to his room—her room. Boz was sitting by the fire, rubbing grease into his boots. Trace dressed without a word, got into his boots and vest, and then fetched his saddlebag from the hearth and opened it on the bed. He ran his hand down the side to retrieve the coil of leather he knew was there, drew out a wide cowhide gunbelt and holster that sheathed an army-model Colt.

  Boz said mildly, “Got an appointment I don’t know about?”

  Trace wrapped the holster and belt around his hips, cinched it snug. He didn’t usually walk around heeled this close to civilization, but folks were lying to him and this helped even the advantage. “I ain’t quite done here yet. I want to know Miss Fairweather’s stake in all this.”

  “Seems reasonable.”

  “You can come with me or not.” Trace swept up his heavy oilcloth coat and settled it over his shoulders. With the coat on, the gun wasn’t obvious, but he felt comforted by its weight, more anchored to reality.

  “Where you goin?”

  “Church,” Trace said sourly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The church was quite small. There were twelve rows of benches in the sanctuary. The tiny narthex at the front had barely enough room for Trace and Boz to crowd in and close the door.

  “Hello?” Trace called into the silence.

  There was no immediate answer, but a moment later a door opened be
hind the altar and a man stepped out, the same priest who had directed them to McGillicuddy’s the night before. He was about sixty, the perfect picture of a Christian pastor, lean and dignified, with a strong jaw and a thick white shock of hair. Trace took off his hat.

  “Well, good morning,” said the priest. “Did you find your lawyer?”

  “Found the man I was lookin for,” Trace said. “The lawyer bit was misrepresented. I wondered if you might tell me a little more about Lisette DuPres.”

  “Ah yes,” the priest said. “I wondered when you might come to inquire about her. Please, come join me.”

  They followed the man back through the narrow door behind the altar, to find a small living space. It had a stove and a table and chair. A bed was pushed against the corner, and books lined the wall across from the stove.

  “Have a seat.” The priest gestured at the bed. “Coffee?”

  “Thanks,” Trace said. “So you knew Miss Lisette?”

  “I did.” The priest handed each of them a hot tin cup. “Her mother raised her in the faith. They were quite devout.”

  “And you let them attend here?” Boz said.

  The priest quirked a smile. “Our Lord ministered to prostitutes and lepers.”

  Trace wished his own priest had been as liberal-minded. “How old was Miss Lisette, when she died?”

  “Twenty, I believe. I never knew her exact age.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Very pretty, especially as a child. Black curly hair, green eyes, honey-colored skin. Her mother was an octoroon, and the Negro blood was apparent in Lisette if you knew to look for it.”

  “What happened to her?” Trace asked.

  The priest gave him an approving look, as if Trace had said something clever. “You’re not asking how she died. You’ve heard the story, then, of her supposed suicide? Her involvement with the man who called himself Mereck? The séances? Yes. What you may not have heard is that Lisette DuPres had heard voices from the beyond all her life.”

  Trace dropped his coffee cup. “Sh—Sorry, Father. Hands’re still cold.”

  “Not to worry.” The priest handed him a towel. “It isn’t a commonly known fact. Lisette didn’t share her gift with people, until Mr. Mereck came along to exploit it.”

  Trace, mopping, looked up at him sharply. “You call it a gift?”

  “Any natural ability is God-given; what else would it be? Of course, you’re thinking of the Scriptural injunction against consulting soothsayers—”

  “‘The soul that turneth after familiar spirits, to go whoring after them, I will set My face against him, and cut him off from his people.’” Trace did not try to keep the bitterness from his voice.

  “Ah, but, ‘to one man is given the word of wisdom; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy and discerning of spirits’…” The priest smiled and shrugged at Trace’s expression. “I prefer the New Testament outlook on things. And I’m not one to see the devil’s hand in every unexplained happenstance. The Lord makes mysteries, too.”

  Boz made a soft hrrumph, and the priest’s eyes shifted toward him. “Skepticism can be a gift, too, friend. I’d rather see more like you, accepting the world as it is, instead of turning to mesmerists or Spiritualists to lull them with platitudes and blind them with false promises. I always thought that was the more accurate interpretation of prostituting oneself to mediums,” the priest added musingly. “In Miss Lisette’s case it was certainly accurate.”

  “Er, what do you know about Lisette’s … gift?” Trace asked.

  “As a child she had many invisible companions. Her mother believed she was seeing angels. I spoke to the girl several times, and while I was never convinced her playmates were divine in origin, I found no mischief in her. In time she realized her ability frightened people and she stopped speaking of it. I never heard of her telling fortunes or consulting spirits for clients, until Mereck found her.” The priest paused, frowning into his coffee cup. “It sounds like cheap melodrama to say, but that Russian was the nearest thing to pure evil I’ve encountered in a man. And yet you’d be hard-pressed to put a finger on what it was about him … He had a courtly manner, a sort of noblesse oblige. And yet that very manner could seem threatening—as if the rest of us were little more than ants he might crush at a whim.

  “He moved into the saloon after only a few days in town, and they began inviting people to Spiritualist services. For a while they were all the rage. Several of the more prominent families in town—respectable wives, who previously would not acknowledge Miss Lisette—suddenly became devotees of hers.”

  “I guess you weren’t real chirked about that,” Boz put in.

  “I can’t say I was pleased to have that charlatan fleecing people, but I’ve seen his type before—they blow in, reap the low-hanging fruit, and then slink away in the dead of night. I can caution against them, but certain types will always be drawn to hand-flash and empty promises.”

  “Was Miss Lisette that type?” Trace asked.

  “I would not have thought so, but once he began exerting his influence over her, she stopped coming to services or to confession. For several months she was only seen in Mr. Mereck’s company, and near the end she never left the saloon. I began to hear rumors she was ill. A few weeks before her death, I took one of the deacons with me to the saloon, and insisted on seeing her.

  “She came into the barroom with Mereck following close behind. I was shocked at her appearance—Miss Lisette had always been a vibrant girl, but now she looked as if she was dying of some wasting illness. Her hair and clothes were loose and unkempt, like a madwoman’s, but she came skipping toward me like a little girl. She said I mustn’t worry about her, her spiritual training was well in hand and all the mysteries of the universe were being revealed to her … And then she tried to embrace me, in the most lascivious manner. The deacon and Mr. Mereck intervened, but as soon as the Russian touched her she fell away, clinging to him and laughing like a wanton.” The priest’s mouth pinched at the memory.

  Outside in the sanctuary, the front door creaked open and banged closed. Trace heard boots in the aisle, a cheery whistle, and then the rattle of the coal-hod.

  “Deacon Scanlon,” the priest explained.

  Trace nodded. “So Mereck killed her.”

  “I believe he did. But not with his own hands. She was found dead in her room, throat cut, razor in hand, and a good-bye note from Mereck on her breast. The servants swore she had quarreled with Mr. Mereck and he had departed from town at least a day before. Sheriff Brocius ruled it a suicide, and I can’t fault him for it. But I knew Miss Lisette for a number of years, and she was a bright, lively, pious girl. She would never have taken her own life.” He looked at Trace. “You know your Scripture. What does a mark on the wrist call to mind?”

  “‘I saw another beast coming up out of the earth,’” Trace said, without hesitation, “‘and he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and he causeth all to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads.’”

  “Yes,” said the priest. “That’s what I thought of, too.”

  Boz had been still for some minutes, but now shifted restively on the cot. “So where’s McGillicuddy fit into all this?”

  “I suspect Mereck deputized him to carry out the murder, with his reward being ownership of the saloon. Mereck made sure he was well away before her death, so no suspicion could fall on him.”

  “Why?” Boz insisted. “What’s in it for him? And what’s this box everybody’s so hot to have?”

  “I think,” the priest said, “evil men are like locusts. They can only stay and feed in one place for so long until the soil is barren to them, and they must move on or starve. But I think they leave seeds in the earth, to lay fallow until the land is again ripe for plunder.”

  Boz sucked his teeth. “Um-hm,” he said, and leaned forward to set his tin cup on the table. “Thanks for the visit, Padre, but I got to tend to my horse fore we rid
e out of here, so I’ll say good mornin.”

  “Hey,” Trace said, but Boz walked out through the narrow door into the sanctuary. Trace went after him. “Hey! Where you goin?”

  “Stables,” Boz said. “Figure on doin somethin useful.”

  “You don’t—” Trace began, but was interrupted by the man arranging hymnals on the front pew, who looked up at the two of them in affronted amazement.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” he said.

  “Just talkin with the Father, here, Deacon,” Trace said.

  “The pastor won’t be back until Thursday,” the deacon said. “That room is off-limits to—”

  “It’s all right,” Trace said, “he invited us.”

  “Who invited you?”

  “The priest,” Trace said patiently. “Father—what was his name?” He looked at Boz, but Boz was staring past him with a slack-jawed expression. Trace turned around.

  The room was empty. The bed slats were naked, the table clear, the stove cold. There was a damp place on the floor beside the bed, where Trace’s feet had rested.

  Trace blinked. And then an odd feeling of exultation swelled his chest, as if he’d just been absolved of all kinds of things. He glanced at Boz, whose eyes were showing the whites all around, like a spooked horse. “Older feller. Snow on top. Long and tall. Dignified-lookin.”

  “That’s Father Barrett,” the deacon said, looking likely to faint. “He died three months ago.”

  * * *

  “YOU ALL RIGHT?” Trace asked after a while, stirring the chaff on the barn floor with his boot heel.

  Boz lifted his head from between his knees. His face was darker than usual, from the blood running to his head, but it was an improvement over the ashy color he had been upon leaving the church. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Did you know that old fella was … was—”

  “Dead?”

  “—not real—when we went in there?”