Pandemonium broke out in the courtyard as the astonished onlookers reacted. A startled Dr. Little fell backwards out of his chair, and one of Phil’s cameramen fainted dead away, his camera clattering on the stones as he collapsed.
“Keep filming!” the director yelled to his men. “Quiet, everyone!”
The hypnotist righted his chair and sat beside her. Agitated, she held one hand in the air with a finger pointed at something only she could see. In a voice nothing like Tiffany’s, she shouted, “Get back, I tell you!”
“It’s all right, Tiffany,” he said, and she looked at him with fire in her eyes.
Her words carried a distinct Creole accent — the same accent Landry and Cate had heard from her lips at the coffee shop earlier.
“Tiffany? Who the hell you talking about? Ain’t no Tiffany here.”
“I’m sorry. Tell me your name.”
“Name’s Caprice. Name I took when I came here, anyways. Ain’t my real name, but to them folks it is.”
She’s a spunky thing, Landry thought. Much different from Tiffany.
“Where are you, Caprice?”
“Here. Why you asking me a stupid question like that? I’m here.”
“Here in the courtyard?”
She looked at him as though he was a simpleton. “Yassuh, right here in the courtyard.”
“Who else is here with you?”
“Nobody, now that he’s gone. She’s gonna kill that bastard sometime when she catch him messin’ around.”
“Who’s he?”
“You don’t know him? That’s the boss man. Massah Lucas.”
“Lucas LaPiere?”
“The very one. That bastard.”
“What did he do?”
“Try to mess with my body, that’s what. Same thing he do with all the house girls. Thinks he can have his way with everybody like he do with Elberta. He even tole me he’d lock me upstairs with the others if I didn’t pull up my dress.”
Aha! Landry flashed an OK sign to Dr. Little. That was their first solid connection. Elberta was Lucas LaPiere’s mistress, the girl who died with him here in this courtyard.
“Does Elberta let him do things to her?”
“Her? Whatever he want. She thinks herself high and mighty, that one. She thinks Massah Lucas gonna marry her someday. Just leave his money and his wife and run off with her. She a crazy girl, that one. They better be careful. They show out too much and Madam gonna put a stop to things.”
“Who is the woman you call Madam?”
“Massah Lucas’s wife, Prosperine. She meaner than a alligator, that one.”
Dr. Little paused, consulted his notes and ordered his subject to lie back on the recliner. “Caprice, I want you to move forward in your mind a little bit. Just a few days. Let’s go to February the second, 1832. It’s early. Seven in the morning. What are you doing?”
“The laundry, don’t you know. I’m washin’ the clothes. That’s my job in the mornin’s.”
Little made another note. Like Elberta, Caprice was a house servant and not a slave being held for a future auction.
They knew the day but not the exact time Prosperine killed her husband, so Dr. Little cautiously moved the hours forward to see what developed.
He went ahead two hours and then two more. Now it was ten.
“What’s happening now, Caprice?”
“Madam went to the square. They having a sale over there today. Massah Lucas and Elberta went scurryin’ upstairs the minute she left. They better watch out, all I got to say.”
One hour later, Madam LaPiere returned from the Place d’Armes. Caprice described her walking into the courtyard, looking up to the balcony and hearing voices through the open doors that led to her husband’s bedroom. Caprice was frightened; she had never seen Madam so angry. She ordered Caprice and another servant to go to their rooms while she sneaked up the wrought-iron stairway to the balcony.
“I didn’t obey Madam. I’m watchin’ through the window,” Caprice whispered. “She gonna git them good, she is. Here she go, right into the bedroom. Oh my God, the screamin’s somethin’ awful. I tole Elberta. I warned her. It’s her own fault, and that’s a fact.”
Without warning a dark cloud settled over the courtyard, and the film crew scrambled to adjust the lighting. Where the day had been warm and still, a stiff breeze now whipped down the corridor, turning the courtyard crisp and chilly. The guests looked at each other in surprise.
A foggy mist swept up from nowhere and blanketed everything in a thick haze. Through the vapor they saw a balcony that hadn’t been there before. Along a side wall a stairway ran from the balcony to the courtyard.
As a loud bang came from above, the already jittery observers cried out in alarm. The noise came from a bedroom door that someone tore open and slammed against a wall. The room behind it was dark.
Landry asked Dr. Little if he could see the balcony. He replied, “Yes. This has never happened to me before. It seems we’re viewing the same things she is.” He spoke to her in a soothing voice, asking her to remain calm and close her eyes. He called her Caprice, not Tiffany, and she obeyed his command.
Landry confirmed both his director and the guests could see things unfolding too. Everyone began talking at once, and the crew looked to their director for answers. Since Landry had asked the guests here, it meant Channel Nine was responsible for their safety. He asked Ted if it was okay to continue, and his boss asked the hypnotist.
“What’s your take on it, Doctor? In your opinion, is it safe to keep going?”
“I can’t guarantee anything. We’re in uncharted waters now, dealing with something far outside the realm of traditional hypnotherapy. The sudden change in the weather, the balcony and staircase that don’t exist — I have never even heard of a session
