Doc didn’t understand. “How do you explain her lifelong obsession with a building in a place she’s never been? That can’t be from her childhood. It seems impossible to me.”
Little replied, “It would seem so, given what she told Landry, but that doesn’t mean there’s no explanation. That’s the brilliance of age-regression therapy. We can open the closed boxes in her mind and bring out things she doesn’t remember. You know better than I how patients can repress things until they’re forgotten. It’s a mechanism that allows us to erase traumatic events, things we’ve done or said that we wish we hadn’t, and so forth. I’ve taken thousands of patients back to a particular thing that’s behind a problem. We identify, we dissect, and we overcome. At least that’s my hope.”
While the psychologist was talking, Landry’s phone buzzed twice, both times from Cate. The first was a call, the second a text. “Call me ASAP!” Cate knew what time this conference call was, so he ignored the text for now.
Just then Doc interrupted, “Sorry, Dr. Little. Landry, I got a text from Cate. She needs you. Tiffany’s missing.”
“Tiffany, our subject?” Dr. Little asked. Landry said yes. Everyone agreed they’d speak later.
Cate was in the living room when he and Jack arrived. She chastised herself for sleeping in once again. When she awoke, she checked on Tiffany, but neither she, her clothes nor her phone were there.
“We all know where to look for her,” Landry said. “Come on — there’s no time to lose.”
They jogged through the Quarter. When they reached the building, Jack glanced across the street and mused, “It seems like a year since I was living over there.”
“You’ve come a long way,” Cate said, but Landry cautioned that it was still one day and one cautious step at a time. Jack understood.
The padlock and key lay on the sidewalk, and the gate stood wide open. “How did she get in?” Cate asked, and Landry told Cate about reading her text with the code number out loud to Tiffany.
“I just realized this is how she got in last time, and now she’s done it again. It’s my fault she’s in there!”
Shouts came from the courtyard as they raced down the corridor. There came a shrieking laugh followed by screams. They ran to the back and looked up. In the window a tall woman wearing a long black dress stood with her head high and one arm raised defiantly in the air. She seemed oblivious to their presence as she shouted, “You’re going to die, Elberta. You think I don’t know what you did with my husband? I’ll kill you, you little bitch!”
“Look at that!” Cate screamed as the figure in the window faded and someone else appeared. Now it was Tiffany standing with her arm outstretched. She roared, “You’re the one who should die, Madam! The devil lives within you!”
From somewhere high above came a piercing combination of moans, wails and pleas for mercy. The three of them stood in the courtyard, unable to move. From the attic at the top of the ancient building on Toulouse Street came the sounds of hell itself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
"Tiffany!" Landry shouted as she stepped away from the window to the darkness behind. "Come on!" he yelled to the others. "We have to go up there!"
"You go," Jack whispered. "I'll stay here."
"Jack, come with us! She needs help!"
"No, she doesn't. None of this is what it seems. I'll find her."
Landry stopped dead and turned to him. "What the hell are you talking about? I'm going up. If you're staying, call 911." He tossed over his phone, but Jack let it drop to the ground.
Something was wrong with Jack. He spoke without looking at them, and his words were a robotic monotone.
"There's no reason to call 911."
Cate said, "Jack, what's wrong? We have to help her!"
Jack had a strange look in his eyes. "It seems so, doesn't it? Appearances can be deceiving."
"Come on, Cate!" Landry yelled. They rushed into the building and ran from room to room, searching for a stairway.
They flew back into the courtyard. In the same monotone Jack said, "You weren't able to go upstairs."
"How did she get up there? You know, so tell us now!"
"She took the stairs, of course. How would anyone go up?"
"Jack, you're not making sense. There aren't any stairs."
"You're right about that." His voice was a singsong lilt now, and his head swayed to the left and right.
Cate shook him hard, but it didn't faze him.
Landry yelled, "Jack, listen to me. Where's the stairway to the second floor?"
"It's gone." He pointed to a brick side wall of the courtyard. "It used to be right over there. It went up to the balcony."
Landry thought about yesterday's lunch and his friend's description of a wrought-iron staircase leading to a balcony on the second floor, just as Jack was describing now.
"There's no balcony, Jack."
"But when everything you saw happened, there was."
Cate said, "Quit talking in riddles! We have to call 911!"
Landry said to Jack, "If you won't come with us, at least call for help. I have to find a way up there. She may be in trouble."
"Or she may not be."
"Come on, Cate! We're wasting time here." They left Jack standing beside the fountain.
Because the grimy windows allowed little light, the rooms were gloomy. Landry knew there was an entresol above the first floor, but in the old days people would have used the outside stairway to get to the second floor. Now there had to be another way.
They searched several rooms before finding a broom closet in what had once been the billiard hall's bar. It was filled with boxes, cans and debris,
