The Vampire (THE VAMPIRE Book 1) (87 page)

The fireworks alone were quite spectacular, just as James had promised, and the bonfire flames rose higher than Jason had expected to see. Altogether it was quite an event and the effect as seen from the river was incomparable. Jason was glad to be part of yet another fun and festive occasion, carried out Genier style; they seemed to prefer their own way of doing things and Jason had no complaint with any of it.

With a contented smile James watched Augere’s rapt attention as the fireworks went off. Jason was impressed at how captivated Augere seemed with the spectacle too.

Afterward Augere seemed reticent to mingle and stayed close to James and Allen. Jason met more of the Genier family, and a few of their employees. Everyone was upbeat and very much in a party mood. He was tired now but buoyed by all of the good cheer around him.

“You’re surviving admirably well!” Allen observed of Jason later, with a wide smile. “Although, you are looking rather tired. Not trying to burn the candle at both ends are you? Or are we wearing you down?” He laughed.

“Actually, I really do need some sleep,” Jason admitted. He stifled a yawn. He had been sleep deprived for a variety of reasons practically every night since their arrival.

“James is trying to talk Mr. Augere into staying until after New Year’s. I don’t think he shall succeed though.”

Jason nodded his relief.
Too much of a good thing
. “I can’t even think what day of the week it is. But—I think we are leaving—day after tomorrow, maybe?”

Allen nodded. “Still plenty of time to squeeze in a few more parties.” He laughed again. “We Geniers know how to overdo it.”

Jason shook his head, laughing also.

James approached Jason then and handed him a Southern Comfort and Coke: “One of your preferences, right?”

Jason gratefully accepted it. “Mr. Genier…I don’t know if it is appropriate to ask, but since so much of this is still new to me… I was wondering…did you take Mr. Augere—somewhere—the other night—where he could get—you know, what he needed?”

The question seemed to take James by surprise and he studied Jason for several moments before his reply. “Don’t worry; he won’t usually ask you to do that… He has managed quite well without any of us for a very long time.” James had misinterpreted Jason’s concern, his question being asked just out of curiosity. “I asked to go with him. He made me wait in the car. It is not something any of us is ever likely to see.”

Jason nodded.

“That’s good. Though the fact of it is fascinating to me, I doubt it is anything I am ready to see for myself yet either.”

A private car brought Jason and Augere back to the hotel by nearly 11 p.m., an early night compared to most of the past few days. As eager as he was for sleep, Jason was hoping to talk to Augere for a while, now that they were alone again. He had many questions.

“I’m going to stop at the bar, for one more drink before going to bed. Would you be interested in joining me?”

Augere gave him a blank look. Jason thought his own exhaustion was probably making him more forward than usual.

But to his surprise, Augere accepted with a nod.

Augere chose the darkest lit table, one in a corner under subdued lighting, and they each ordered brandy.

Jason glanced around the bar. There were only a half dozen other patrons, among them the two paranormal investigators he had met there the day before.

“Those two guys—over there.” Jason indicated, but Augere did not turn his head to look behind him. “I met them the other day. They investigate the paranormal and they are here precisely because this hotel is haunted.”

Augere seemed disinterested. Jason sipped his drink.

After several moments, Augere stated, “There is a fortune located right below this foundation.” He was gazing at a particular area of the floor.

“What do you mean? How could you know that?”

“Because I put it there. Cash. Jewelry. Deeds and monetary instruments.” He sighed.

“You…buried it?” Jason stared at him.

“Yes.”

“But—why—how—did you bury it in such a public place?” Jason glanced around them. “Won’t it be nearly impossible for you to get to it now?”

“That is the point.” Augere sighed again.

Jason considered this for a moment. “Oh—so it wasn’t—just recently then… But some time ago…? Was this building here then, or—was it just open land?”

“There was a convent here. I expected it to remain a going concern. One does not know what the future will bring. I did not know they would build a hotel here, did I.”

“But how do you know it is still there? When the old place was taken down or when the hotel was built, it could have been discovered and—”

“It is still there.” Augere nodded confidently.

Jason nodded uncertainly and then waited for Augere to say more on the subject. When there was no further comment, he began on a different topic.

“I wanted to ask you—about that little girl…how did you happen to encounter her?”

He shrugged. “I have seen her before.”

“What? You actually know her?”

He shook his head. “Not in any real sense. Only from having stayed here before. I have seen her at other times.”

“You have encountered the same—apparition, more than once?” It seemed incredible to him. Though not unheard of, it was still quite remarkable to encounter the same entity more than once.

“But—how does it happen? How are you able to just locate her—wait, are there others besides her?”

“It appears they are drawn to my energy. They seem to seek me…to try to help them I suppose.”

“They? Then you have seen others?”

Augere nodded.

“And I saw her for an amazing several minutes—that is almost unheard of. And you had already seen her, for, what? Maybe a few minutes before that…so that makes it even more amazing…” Jason paused to reflect. “An intelligent, full body apparition, purposefully interacting, for maybe more than five minutes…I can’t get over it. If only I could have seen her longer…”

Augere frowned. “She was starting to drain my energy. I had to make her leave. She was afraid to approach you herself. I believe she thought you were something, or someone other…”

“After only a few minutes she was already draining your energy?….well, yes, to be able to manifest for that long, I guess it probably would have taken a lot of energy. And she was focused…on ME…?”

Augere tilted his head slightly. “It was more than minutes.”

“Oh…Well, about how long then, approximately?”

“An hour, at least. Or quite a bit more, possibly.”

“You maintained contact…with that apparition…” Jason stared at him for several moments. “You were able to be in her presence, interacting with her—for more than an hour…? And then I only got to see her for maybe about two—three minutes.” He paused to reflect on the wonder of this, the potential of it. “And you said she was interested—in me? That she tried to approach me?” Jason stared at Augere, who nodded once. Now he was dismayed to realize he could have had more time to experience that phenomenon. “An hour? If this should ever happen again, I really need to have more notice—to have my camera ready at least, if possible. Anything like that I would want to experience for as long as I possibly could, and be able to capture some—”

“Now?”

“What? Do you mean—you can—you could see her now, or contact her—summon her—any time?—like right now?”

“She—perhaps not. Others, maybe. Though I prefer not to do so at all.”

“You can choose?” Jason didn’t think it was possible to be more surprised. “You mean you can just select one, to interact with?”

Augere sighed. “Not precisely. But sometimes, yes.”

“And are there others, besides her, right here in this hotel?”

“Yes.”

“What else have you seen here? Because I am completely fascinated by this.” As if sitting here with a vampire, having this discussion, was not amazing enough, Jason laughed to himself.

“On the third floor, in the opposite hall from our rooms…often there is a rather deranged presence. A woman who is not pleasant to encounter. I do not know why she frequents that area and I try to avoid it. She is quite disturbing. Then there are Confederate soldiers…”

Details of his comment caught Jason’s full attention. Could that woman possibly be the same spirit those guys had been hoping to see?

“Can I ask a big favor of you, Mr. Augere?”

“Uh oh.”

Jason laughed. “Did you just say what I thought you did? Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that expression before.”

“I find that since becoming acquainted with you, I have had to add it to my vocabulary.” His expression bore no hint of amusement.

Jason laughed again. “I see. It’s just that—you see those two guys over there?—the ones I mentioned already?”

Augere still took no glance in their direction.

“They have had no experiences here so far but are still hoping to. I could not tell them about my own personal encounter here, of course. But I wonder if maybe you could, somehow, summon that third floor apparition, or another one perhaps, and then just casually walk past them—me—us—so they uh, and me too, could just happen to see—”

Augere was already shaking his head and Jason did not hide his look of disappointment. “Why is it important to you?”

“It’s okay, really.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have asked something like that.”

“Is it for the sake of—those strangers?”

“It’s all right. Never mind. It was wrong of me to suggest it.” Jason sipped his brandy. There was no regret in asking, only in the negative response.

Augere was silent for several moments.

“It does not quite work like that.”

“If you can’t do it—then it’s okay. Really.”

“It is that important.” More statement than question.

“I just wanted to see—more of that realm—and to have my experience validated somehow. To be able to share that experience—if I couldn’t tell anyone about the other, at least I could see—something—with someone else present—and maybe at the same time capture something, on film—”

Augere shook his head. “It is not some parlor trick.”

“It’s okay. I understand. I’m sorry.”

They sat in awkward silence for several minutes.

Augere lifted his glass and slowly downed the rest of his brandy. Then he stood abruptly. “Come to the third floor in thirty minutes. It will be very quick so you must be ready. I will do it this once. And I will
not
be photographed.”

“Understood.” Jason nodded enthusiastically. As soon Augere left, Jason approached the two men. They were so engrossed in their own conversation they hadn’t noticed him in the bar. They looked up quickly and seemed a little surprised to see him.

“Observed any interesting activity yet?” Jason asked them.

They shook their heads. “May I join you?” He took a seat. “I’ve been asking around and apparently the activity is more likely to occur”—he took a glance at one of the men’s wrist watches—“from around 11:30 to two or so in the morning, for some reason. I was just about to go and hang out on the third floor for a while after I stop at the room to get my cameras. Any interest in joining me?”

Both men shrugged and then agreed. “Why not? We don’t ever drink before doing an actual investigation of course,” one of them said, as he finished off his gin and tonic. “But there is no harm in having a causal look around.”

“You never know.” Jason shrugged. If he managed to pull this off it was going to be absolutely memorable.
For all of us
.

A short while later they met on the third floor. Jason had his cameras ready and the two men were setting up some of their more basic equipment. There was no sign of Augere. At precisely midnight, Augere came walking casually down the corridor and turned the corner where the three of them were waiting. He slowly walked toward them without so much as a glance at any of them or any acknowledgement of their presence. Jason was straining to catch any sign of an apparition near Augere. The other two were focused more on their equipment than on the man who was just then walking within several feet of them. Augere briskly picked up the pace toward a stairwell at the opposite end of the corridor, and Jason gasped loudly and pointed past Augere’s head. “Look!” he said in a loud whisper.

The two men all but pushed past Augere to catch photos of what Jason saw: the upper torso of a woman floating in the air several feet behind Augere. Her long dark hair was slowly streaming in all directions from her head, as if she was submerged underwater. Her face wore a haunted, tormented look and her wild, dark, desperate eyes were deep wells of sadness. There was no sign those sunken eyes possessed any vision; no indication of any intelligence present. Yet her arms were outstretched, in Augere’s direction, as if in supplication; a pleading from the depths of hopelessness. All of her features were as hideously clear as they were horrifying. She wore an old fashioned antebellum type dress of a shiny grey material on the visible portion of her body. She was transparent and the image of her torso was already quickly fading as the three took photos in rapid succession. In the space of only a minute or two she had clearly appeared and then all trace of her vanished, as had Augere by then, down the stairwell.

“Wow! I can hardly believe it! Did you see that? That was absolutely amazing! I think we got some great evidence, finally!” The three of them talked excitedly all at once about what they had witnessed. They each had captured a mostly grey vaporous shape. In at least one of each of their digital photos there appeared to be the dark haunted eyes they had seen. Nothing else they had captured was as sharp and clear as what they had actually seen with their own eyes, however. Even so the important thing was: they had all witnessed it. And they all concurred on the exact details of what they had witnessed. Jason had seen his second human looking apparition ever. He was breathing fast with a shaky restless exhilaration. The whole brief experience had been astounding. And all thanks to Augere.

The two men said they wanted to remain in the hallway the rest of the night, hoping to catch more evidence. Jason expressed how exhausted he was, which was true, and he headed off to bed, wishing them a good night and thanking them for joining him. They promised to keep in touch. Jason suspected the show was truly over. The master of ceremonies had concluded the performance when he had entered the stairwell.