Patreon or PayPal Me keeps this site and its author alive. Thank you. |
Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 77: Brown 309
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 108
The Living Colors got off the trolley with their equipment, both musical and martial, and entered Jackson Square. On one side the statue of Andrew Jackson stood, and there was St. Louis Cathedral with its three towers. On either side of the square stood two one-block long four-story brick buildings. Filling the square were happy residents with many preparing to carol. Here and there other brass bands were busking for spare change. Happily, the Living Colors Dixieland Band would be up front, on the wooden stage, playing Silent Night and Pat-a-pan before others took over.
As he passed one group of buskers, they suddenly shifted from I Heard the Bells to Saints. Glancing back, he saw them looking his way. Turning about, he went and dropped a fifty cent piece into their hat. Their band was, like his, mixed race, but their equipment was far more ragged, and their playing had more enthusiasm than skill--but he recognized their banjo player as having been one of the musicians the other night at the music hall. He had been a solo act then, and now apparently he had taken Derek’s message to heart and formed a band.
His generosity brought on a ‘wave’ like at a football game. As he and the Living Colors walked the periphery of the crowded square to get to the front stage, various buskers seeing him approach would suddenly shift to Saints. Since he had paid one, he felt it necessary to pay the next. This led to the next doing it as well, and made paying the next more necessary. By the last, he was out of money--so Pierre pulled out a two dollar bill, and paid the last with a rueful smile. But it was very good publicity because by now everyone in the square was aware that the Living Colors Dixieland Gospel Band had arrived.
“Give that sax player a deuce?” Maurice asked incredulously.
“Smallest I had.” Pierre shrugged. Maurice gaped at him, and so did Lei He. Clearly, the notion of being rich enough that the smallest denomination one had in one’s wallet was a two dollar bill had rocked their world.
The band arrived at the front with a number of others they recognized. Alfonso was there without his piano.
“I am just emceeing tonight,” he explained. “Plus, I’ll sing with a couple carols in a choir.”
Four Black sisters, the group the Black Keys, were singing as well. An adult bell ringing group would be part of the event. An additional dozen acts would play.
“So this is early Christmas?” Lei He asked.
“No, it’s Yule,” Pierre corrected.
“Isn’t that just another name for Christmas?” Lei He persisted with a curious frown.
“No, it is a pagan festival. But we claim it for Christmas. Baptize it, as it were,” Pierre said. “The Church has a long tradition of doing so.” He nodded at St. Louis Cathedral.
A long blood-curdling scream came from a nearby street. This was followed by four quick pistol shots, and another pained scream followed by a yell.
“Curse you, you devil!” rang out before an object came flying up and out in a great arc from that direction to land in the midst of the crowd. The crowd leapt back from the object with oaths and screams, and Derek saw the once terrified head of a bearded man sans body.
“Alfonso, watch our gear,” Derek said, and leaving the trumpet case behind began running in the direction of the noise. The others followed, and he came to the street. All the lampposts were out, and he stalled, looking for the enemy. A man ran past him, pistol out, and suddenly halted.
“Rougarou,” he said, and opened fire. The bullets hit the white-haired being that loomed out of the dark, and did no damage to it. Before it reached the man, whom it towered over, Derek lunged and stabbed the creature in the chest with his knife. Its claws came down, its piggish snout open wide to bite, and Derek rolled clear to the right. The Rougarou followed him as he came to his feet, but then Derek saw Lei He come in and do a leg sweep, dumping the beast on the ground. Quickly Lei He got back to his feet, but he limped on his right leg.
“Its legs. Like kicking tree.”
Derek reached out with his telekinesis, hoping to grab the monster and keep him from going anywhere as he had seen Lauren do with her telekinetic rod years ago. His mind ran directly into some kind of defensive wall of rage, pain, spurts of anger, creating despair so black that it threatened to drown his soul, and he fell to his knees gasping in anguish. Pushing his head back up, he saw the gunman unload on the creature again to no effect other than to make the seven foot tall Rougarou snarl at him. Maurice yelled, brandishing a crude knife, and Pierre smoothly drew a derringer with mother of pearl handles, and fired. The booming shot and the gout of flame hit the creature, and it roared to the skies in pure pain before loping off.
Vashti had taken a defensive pose, as per her training, and so was closest; she ran after it. Maurice and Pierre were next. Lei He helped Derek to his feet, and the gunman looked at them.
“I’m coming. Let me reload.”
“Catch up with us,” Derek said, and he and Lei He ran off. As he ran, his body and mind recovered from the spiritual shock of contacting the aura of horror around the Rougarou. They came upon a young woman, her throat slashed, lying in the street. Unable to do anything for her, the two pushed on even faster. The others were not that far ahead, but the Rougarou had long legs and a smooth pace, and was able to keep ahead even as it darted at a fat businessman who tried to evade before getting gutted and his face bitten off. They gained a few feet then, and later a couple yards as a young man dodged once successfully before tripping and having his throat mangled. The Rougarou began to run faster, but those pursuing could see that it was now struggling. The problem was, they were struggling as well.
Derek handed his laser rifle and good dagger to Lei, and shifted down one size, and then another size down. As a spritish flyer he could outpace the Rougarou. He buzzed forward above the Rougarou’s line of sight as it occasionally looked back with a mocking, red-blooded fang display. From above it he shot a tiny arrow, and another, and another, but it did not do more than look up at him. Then it stumbled, and he shot again, and again, and it stopped, weaving back and forth, a half mile from where they started, just outside the French Quarter.
He quoted the Spritish Scripture he had before, and a black wave of horror hit him in the face, knocking him from the sky. Downed, he crawled to his feet, just in time to see Pierre put another derringer bullet into the creature.
Derek spoke again. “The King extended his shield, and it worked marvelously so that all the arrows of the foe and their venomous wrath fell not upon the righteous, but upon the wicked.” He then re-quoted his verse about how the Raptor was thrown into the lake, and drowned. This time, the Rougarou shuddered in great pain, and the remaining three fell on him, kicking, stabbing and slicing. Finally it ceased trying to fight back, and its body shifted, growing shorter. All stepped back, leaving their daggers, and saw an older Chinaman.
“I was the Rougarou. Thank you for releasing me. But the curse--” He coughed blood. “The curse. None of you can tell of the Rougarou, or that it was me, for the next year and a day, or the next time he rises, you will be the beast.” With that, the man died.
Panting for breath, they waited as Derek resumed his human form. Happily none of his bones had been broken, although they ached. That fall had been a near thing. A crowd of pursuers came on, and came up to them. Derek heard a charming, if painful, voice ring out, and focusing on the sound spotted his nemesis. Standing alongside him was another familiar face, Mayor Devault.
“See, it was as I told you,” Mister Scratch said with a deeply concerned look. “They ran down this street like madmen, killing everyone in their path. The Living Colors are murderers.” He turned to Derek, and winked. Turning back to the crowd, he spoke again. “The problem is, one of their number is a Beaufoy, and you know the Beaufoys, rich, good lawyers, there will be no justice.”
It was as if he could hear polyphonically the devil saying other words. “You know, there is a Black man among them, and if you let him go to trial, the Blacks will riot and burn.”
“A Creole woman. She will go and hide in the swamp with her Cajun kin, and escape justice like all those folk do.”
“Can’t trust a Chinaman. They all look alike. Probably have some innocent Chinaman forced to take his place, and let him off.”
Derek had had enough. He spoke loudly.
“We went with a brave man in a blue jacket. He is a witness.” There was a resulting murmur in the crowd, and one man with a bell in his hand spoke up.
“We saw at the mouth of the street, a headless man, a woman with a slashed throat, and a man in a blue jacket with a gun out with a bullet hole in his back.”
Derek struggled to put things together, but even as the crowd shouted louder, with some calling for lynching, he finally understood. The devil had his people scattered through the crowd. So when he heard Alfonso say, “Hey, this does not make sense. They were with me,” and one of the Black Keys, a beautiful lass with empty eyes, ‘accidentally’ bashed him on the head with her surprisingly heavy purse, and several of them kicked Alfonso as he was going down, it did not surprise him. The four sisters must have met the devil at a crossroads and made a deal, fame in exchange for their souls. Looking at the crowd, he could see a kind of madness glittering in their eyes, and he knew this was the time of madness promised to him by the Father of Lies.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #509: Character Challenges. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
