It was always the same. Once her breathing returned to normal, she allowed her mind to replay the dream. When she was young, this part had terrified her, but at some point, she’d learned that she had to watch it one more time before she could sleep. It had become a ritual, but at least she was awake the second time. Somehow it made the situation a little less frightening.
It was nighttime and Tiffany walked down an unfamiliar cobbled street, dark except for two beams of light from gas lamps that pierced the mist down the block. At the far end, the street dead-ended into a broad, busy thoroughfare. She could hear music — the thump-thump of a drum and a blaring trumpet. There were indistinct voices punctuated by high-pitched laughter and an occasional scream of delight. Now and then couples passed by her darkened street as they walked along the busy one. Something was different about them. They appeared to be in costume, but she was too far away to see details, and in the dream she never drew closer to them.
Her footsteps echoed on the stones of the narrow sidewalk as she came to a tall building on the right. It had three simple arched openings on the ground floor. Two contained boarded-up doors and the third an old slatted gate. On a second floor above the arches, five tall windows fronted a wrought-iron balcony. High above them on the roof were three small dormer windows. She peered through the slats and saw a long hallway filled with gloomy shadows.
A shiver of fear swept over Tiffany as she lay in bed, knowing what came next. She reached for the gate’s handle. It opened with a slow, mournful groan. She stepped over a threshold and crept past dark rooms down the corridor toward an archway opening into a courtyard. As she walked out, the clouds parted and moonbeams illuminated an ancient fountain. As was the style in New Orleans, the patio was surrounded by buildings. On a second-floor balcony stood a person — a beautiful dark-skinned girl dressed in white gossamer — who stared into a doorway where a tall woman stood.
As the girl turned toward the courtyard, Tiffany smiled at her but drew back in horror. Her face was twisted into a horrifying grimace — something between abject terror and resignation of her fate.
The woman stepped through the doorway behind the pale figure. She held something — perhaps a short crop or a riding whip.
“Elberta, get back in here!”
The girl held her hands to her face, her eyes wide with fear as the woman stepped out onto the balcony and without warning pushed the girl in the white dress over the railing.
Time slowed to a standstill in the dream. She watched the girl tumble headfirst toward the courtyard, her dress billowing in the air and her raven-black hair dancing around her face. Her body slammed into the stones less than a foot from where she stood. She knelt and took the girl’s hand as her filmy white negligee turned blood-red.
The dying girl looked into her face and whispered, “Because you know her sins, you are doomed to a death just like mine.”
With that malevolent pronouncement, the dream ended.
CHAPTER TWO
Inside a waterlogged box, Jack Blair adjusted his sleeping bag, tucking it in around his body as best he could. The recessed doorway provided little shelter as wintry wind drove a steady rain against the crate that was his home. A steady drip-drip from somewhere above splashed on the cardboard, penetrating to form rivulets on the old tarp that covered his sleeping bag. Even in a drunken stupor he couldn’t get much sleep.
Jack would have to find a new box tomorrow, and he hoped the dumpsters behind the stores on Canal Street would prove fruitful. If not, he’d sleep on the ground. He hated doing that in the winter, when the wind bit through his skimpy layers of clothing and the rain soaked everything. But he’d survive.
Through the howling wind and the annoying drips, he heard the voice.
Come over here and get warm.
No! I won’t do it!
There’s no rain inside. It’s dry and cozy. You can find a quiet corner and sleep out of the wind. No one will bother you.
Trying to stop the words from pounding inside his brain, Jack held his gloved hands to his ears. He swigged the last drops from a half-pint of strawberry vodka he’d bought after a day of panhandling outside the casino. The building bothered him more often now; he should find another place to sleep — another doorway on a different street. But he was a creature of habit with a life too far down the bottle to consider doing something different. And he wasn’t sure if he could move. Something — something unexplainable kept him here.
Sometimes he looked over at the building and it was different. There was a sign at the top that said LaPiere Building-1803. Then at other times, when he was closer to sober or maybe closer to dead drunk, the sign wasn’t there. His mind played tricks on him a lot. Maybe there wasn’t a sign at all.
It didn’t seem that long ago that the building across the street started calling to him. He couldn’t recall exactly when it started because the alcohol fogged his brain, blending reality with fantasy to the point he couldn’t ever be sure about anything. At first it had spoken maybe once a night. Now it rarely stopped.
Awhile back the building told him the gate was unlocked, and he stumbled over to see. He could have gone inside then, but he was afraid. That might have been a month ago, or maybe a year. Time made
