Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 9 -

After the rain storm had passed, New Orleans was plunged into a week of sticky, humid warmth. The damp roads seemed to never fully dry, but became a thick mud that clung to our shoes and was tracked throughout the Doll House. I suffered greatly in my room for refusing to tie back my curtains and allow a cross breeze, so the air became stagnant and vile, as did my mood. My clients were subjected to the worst of me that week. I found myself particularly drawn to use of the cane - not unlike what Damian had used on me, damn him.

October ushered in the Jazz City's famous Halloween Festival, when folks from all over the state would come for a haunted night of ghosts and revelry. There was another name for New Orleans besides its musical claim to fame: the City of the Dead, for here we had more graves than living, and it seemed every other corner was home to a cemetery. Suddenly everyone had become a voodoo queen, a medium, or a spiritualist. Every bar was haunted and every street corner had seen a murder; or at least, that was what the flood of tourists would be told, as they arrived daily by steamboat, train, and flying machine. Street vendors began selling masks of wood and metals for children to wear, and carved pumpkins and gourds adorned porches and balconies.

The preacher in Lily Dale used to warn against works of devilry at this time of year, saying that witches and demons were on the hunt, eager to scoop up naughty children and eat them. My father forbade Halloween celebration of any kind. He, my mother and I would spend the night in prayer, gathered around the fireplace listening to hymns on the crackling old radio.

In Mary Jeffries' Doll House, it was just another excuse to indulge Mary's over-the-top sense of decoration.

Every window and step was lined with a misshapen gourd carved out and lit with a candle. Lucky silver spoons were hung over the doors and tinkled as we came and went. When Mary sent us out to stand along the street and usher in clients, she made us wear the silly molded brass masks in the shape of dogs, cats, and ghoulish things. Nearly every day she had some excited thing to say about the impending festival, how every one of us was to be there dressed in our best, ready to seduce. The other women said it was the most profitable night of the year, save for Mardi Gras.

I wanted to feel excited for the impending influx of eager, submissive men. But I could not get Damian off my mind. That easy way he had laughed - infuriating, maddening, utterly intoxicating - his voice, the way he had moved and spoken with such confidence. It was unbearably irritating to think of him. After what he'd seen, I never wanted to lay eyes upon him again. I was afraid that somehow, someway, he knew about them: the voices. I was afraid that somehow he could sense they were there even though they could not be seen.

I had hoped that I had begun to bring them under control - that perhaps, following their strange silence after my session with Damian, that I had turned over a new leaf in being able to manage them. For several days, they spoke quietly or not at all. I felt almost normal. Almost free.

But they, it seemed, were far from done with me. And they did not like being silenced.

I had not crawled into my bed that night until the clock in Mary's office chimed three, ringing softly throughout the house. The night was uncomfortably warm, but blessedly drier than it had been in a week. Still, I went against my better judgement and left my windows cracked before throwing myself naked upon my blankets and plunging into a vague and tumultuous sleep.

I thought I had slept for hours. When I began to stir, I believed I would be opening my eyes to the dim glow of morning beneath my curtains. But as my eyes dragged open, a cold feeling of dread clenched itself within my ribs. Something was not right.

I sat up slowly and the old mattress creaked, setting my ears tingling. The room was so dark I could barely see my own legs curled on the bed before me. My breath felt unusually hot as it billowed from my mouth. Goosebumps prickled over my bare legs.

It was...cold?

Something had awakened me, I was certain. I sniffed, and found a peculiar smell in the air. Was it ash? Smoke? Was something burning? I sleepily considered that perhaps a vagrant had started a fire to keep warm in the alleyway below. After all, it was so...frigidly...cold...

I had to shut the windows. The urge was sudden, far beyond merely the desire to keep the strange cold out. As I looked around my small room, the number of windows - merely four of them, two in each wall - seemed overwhelming. They seemed to stretch out from me, vague shapes in the darkness from which the low howling of wind seeped forth. The idea of stepping out of bed was frightening. I peered over the edge of the mattress, glaring suspiciously at the wood floor. Some deep, primal instinct told me to be silent, to move slowly, to be alert. But it was only my bedroom: my plain, empty bedroom in Storyville, with nothing outside except the same normal streets...

Right?

My bare toes curled the moment they touched the icy cold floor. The old boards creaked, and I paused a moment to listen. All I could hear was the sound of the wind outside.

I rushed the the nearest window first, slamming it down and locking it. I did not dare even to move aside the curtain, but reached around it to close the window, my heart pounding the whole while. I went to the next one and did the same, and the next. The sooner I was in bed the better, the sooner I would be safe...

But safe from what? I could not explain my fear. I felt irrational.

Then I came to the last window.

I reached around the curtain, expecting to encounter the glass pane and wooden frame and slam it down. Instead my hands found nothing, and in my hurry and surprise I fell forward, face first into the curtain, and tumbled through the window. I began to scream, believing I was about to plunge three floors down to become a crumpled heap on the dirt below. But I did not fall far. I landed in something slightly squishy and wet, with tendrils that slithered over my naked flesh...

Shuddering, I pulled the curtain off my head.

I was sitting in tall, damp grass. The earth was dark and damp beneath me, my legs sinking into it. Mist hung thick in the air, so that as I stood and gazed around in utter confusion, all I could see was an endless expanse of gray. The window was gone, the Doll House was gone. Storyville was gone.

But I knew these fields. I knew this gently swaying, gray-green grass. I knew this early morning mist.

It was Lily Dale.

A/N: Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday, and I really wish we had an awesome festival for it where I live!

For a good representation of what Samara's voices are like, I would suggest listening to ambiance tracks for the game Hellblade, or the first track of its OST, "Psych."