The Case of the Disappearing Wife (standard:mystery, 1650 words)
Author: kendall thomas	Added: Feb 11 2002	Views/Reads: 3857/2609	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
"My wife disappears at this time every year. I want you to find out where she goes, McKay."

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

I studied her face in the gray, morning light.  She reminded me of Tippi
Hedren in The Birds:  beautiful, sensitive and intelligent. All held 
together by a serenity of expression that I found intriguing.  I 
couldn’t help but envy Lambert. 

A half an hour later I followed her back out onto Decatur and, dropping
back some, I saw her stop in the French Market where she bought a 
voodoo doll in one of the shops.   Then she turned north on St. Louis 
and after a few blocks entered a seedy section of town just beyond the 
Quarter.  And then to my astonishment she entered St. Louis Cemetery 
No. 1, a dangerous place to be alone even in the daytime because of 
muggers. 

There was no one about, so I stayed as far back as possible stopping to
pause and gaze around like a tourist, but I soon realized there was no 
need for caution, for she walked along swiftly as if  bent on an errand 
of great importance and never glanced back.   After a few minutes she 
came to a whitewashed tomb and stopped.  All about were centuries-old 
crumbling ruins of brick and stone.  Some with rusty iron fences.  Most 
were made in the shape of miniature houses.  Some were hung with 
trinkets and plastic flowers others had votive candles perched on them. 
 The one Mrs. Lambert had stopped in front of was a few feet taller 
than she.  There was a plaque next to a faux door, and the whitewashed 
stone was chalked with red X’s and pentagrams. 

She placed the doll on a low step at the base of the faux door, crossed
herself, then turned her body in a complete circle three times, then 
turned back around in the reverse direction three more times. 

She took a memo pad from her purse and scribbled something on it, then
tore off a slip and placed it underneath the doll. 

I made ready to step into a narrow alley between the two tombs next to
me should she turn in my direction; but she continued on down the walk 
until she came to a waist-high tomb of limestone and crumbling brick 
with an iron cross leaning precariously on top. And there she stood as 
immovable and as rigid as the statues of simpering angels and gargoyles 
all around us. 

Something distracted me for a moment.  The flapping of large wings.  A
raven perhaps.  I thought I caught a flash of blackness against the 
gray sky out of the corner of my eye.  But, whatever,  when I looked 
back, Mrs. Lambert was gone. 

I walked hurriedly to where she had been standing and looked out over
the surrounding, low-lying tombs.  I couldn’t see her anywhere.  
Nothing in the gray drizzle that dripped from the eaves.  She couldn’t 
have stepped between the nearby taller ones for they were joined 
tightly together. 

Where could she have gotten to, I wondered? 

Without being aware of doing so I glanced down at the faded inscription.
It read: 

Clarisse Beauchamp 

1830 -- 1855 

O mon cher Belzebuth, je t’adore! 

After a moment I walked back to the whitewashed tomb and reached under
the voodoo doll for the slip of paper she had written on.  I unfolded 
it.  It had already become soggy and the ink had begun to run, but the 
words were still legible:  “Give to me another year, I pray.  As 
always, your humble servant and devoted follower.” 

The inscription on the plaque was almost obscured by an overlay of X’s,
but I was able to make out that this was the resting place of Marie 
Laveau Glapion who had married a ‘free man’ by that name. 

The name Marie Laveau was familiar to me.   She was the infamous voodoo
queen who had lived in New Orleans throughout most of the nineteenth 
century.  A practitioner of the dark arts.  It was believed that she 
had had the power to bring the dead back to life.   Thus creating the 
legend of the zombie. 

It appeared that Mrs. Lambert was a follower of some voodoo cult and
that would explain her reluctance to reveal her disappearances every 
year to her husband.  He was a staid businessman and would surely frown 
on such nonsense. 

But who was Clarisse Beauchamp?  And why had Mrs. Lambert made such a
deliberate stop in front of her tomb?  Coincidence?  I didn’t think so. 
 There was something awful gnawing at the back of my mind.  I felt a 
sudden uneasiness as images of zombies lurking among these ancient 
ruins came to my mind as in all those grade B movies I had seen as a 
child.   I felt a chill at the back of my neck and without knowing how, 
I was  certain there was someone standing directly behind me, close 
enough to reach out and touch me.    Would it be Mrs. Lambert or only 
something that looked like Mrs. Lambert:  a face that was only a hollow 
shell? 

When I did manage to turn there was nothing there. 

I made some inquiries around the Quarter.  But I learned nothing that
would help me with my growing suspicion.   That is, until I entered the 
Voodoo Museum and happened to catch sight of an obscure, framed 
photograph hanging on the wall.  It was a daguerreotype of a beautiful, 
young woman -- the spitting image of Clarisse Lambert.  I turned to the 
matron, who happened to be passing, and asked her who the woman in the 
photo was. 

“Why that is Clarisse Beauchamp.  She was one of Marie Laveau’s most
ardent followers.  She died quite young and it is said that Marie 
Laveau loved her so much that she raised her from the dead.  There is 
an old legend that claims she returns every year to the tomb of Marie 
Laveau to be granted another year of life.” 

I called Harold Lambert later on that day and gave him my report:  that
his wife was in New Orleans seeing the sights and doing a bit of 
shopping.  As far as I could see there was nothing out of the ordinary 
going on.  No hanky-panky. 

How could I do otherwise?  I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that he
might be married to a woman who had died almost one-hundred and fifty 
years ago --  and within whose body was the soul of a zombie. 

fini 


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