Mise en Abyme

[CastoffCaptain]

Saturday night tours were the worst.  
 
Generally, Cess Liddell loved her job.  She led ghost tours sprinkled with a liberal view of New Orleans history four nights a week, but Saturdays?  Party night, especially in the height of the tourist season.  She could count on at least three types of idiots to show up for the tours at any given time, but weekends tended to bring them out in force.  Tonight was no exception.  She was always able to ignore the skeptics; they tended to tip better, whether out of guilt for coming or guilt for disbelieving, and it made no nevermind to her even when they made the same smart-assed remarks every time. The inevitable family with the toddler out too late was a little more difficult to work around, especially this evening when the girl started screeching about the Red Man in the Lace Room on Basin Street.  That, at least, was good for business, especially when her parents stopped her from pointing at an empty corner and left the party early, but the drunks?
 
Cess couldn't stand them.  
 
There were four of them, and they'd made a shit-show of the first third of the tour until she'd shut them down hard with a sharp word and a slammed door for emphasis.  Unfortunately, it wasn't before she'd endured more than enough disgusting comments muttered in stage-whispers and one questionable brush-against in front of the Pharmacy Museum.  Now, as they were all gathered once again in the lobby of the former jazz club that now served as Ghosts After Dark's HQ, they were on the verge of getting rowdy again, and she was eager to speed things to an end.  
 
"All right, everyone, I want to thank you for sticking with me this far," she said, raising an arm ringed by bangles and leather bracelets in order to focus the group's attention on her, "and I hope you're having a good time.  I also hope y'all will email us any photos or soundbites of any ghostly activity like the ones I showed you tonight.  We'll put the best ones up on our website."   As though that was ever a problem with her tours; the spirits tended to be more than eager to show up in some form or another for her, especially on camera.  No less than three people had gotten results this evening, the best being a pair of elderly sisters who'd squealed with delight at the bright blur on their iPhone screen, pointing out the fact that the figure looked decidedly naked.  Well. They had been in what was once Lulu White's old brothel.  
 
It was there when she'd noticed him.  As the khakis-and-polos in groups of twos, threes, and fours had milled around in the high-ceilinged, dimly-lit rooms, snapping pictures and jumping out at one another from behind furniture, she'd finally gotten a good look at the lone man who'd trailed along with the rest of the crowd.  Something about him had seemed unusual, had kept her gaze easing back to him throughout the night.  There was something enigmatic in his tired eyes which made him hard to read.  It helped her to ignore the hot, heavy, terrifying atmosphere which had pressed down on her in the Lace Room, right before the kid had begun screaming.  It was that enigma-- plus his very, very maroon tie-- that caused her to seek him out once again here at the mid-tour break as she secretly slipped the keys to the front door behind the former liquor bar, right beside her phone.


"Bathrooms are up the stairs to the right, second floor.  Third floor's our offices, closed to the public.  Do not go past the barrier.  We've got ten minutes before we stop by the LaLaurie Mansion and then end at Lafitte's for a drink!  Oh, and make sure you say hi to bandleader Rufus if you see him.  He might've died in 1935, but he still likes to play a prank or two if you hang around in the shadows too long."


There'd be questions after, of course, stragglers who liked to share their own bumps-in-the-night stories, and probably one or two condescending remarks about those who believed.  With a sigh, Cess perched on a bar stool in front of the long, mottled mirror that reflected her tiredness, propped her chin in her palm, and glared at one of the drunken sots who threw a bleary-eyed wink at her. 
 
"Y'all need to go home," she whispered to the group in general.  
 
Softly, gently, as if it had been brushed by a moth's wing, the bell gave a tiny ding.  


Saturday night tours were the worst.   
   

 

[reverium]

Normally, Charles is not the type of guy who'd spend their Saturday night out on a tour.


Although it's difficult to explain what normal even means in a life that is anything but. Charles Bellamy has been accustomed to the strangeties of this world, be it blood-sucking vampires or the spirits of the dead—his career revolved around the latter, after all. If you'd have told him three weeks ago that he'd be sitting in a re-purposed jazz club for a ghost tour in New Orleans, he'd laugh and then seriously ask you if you needed an exorcism. 


Yet there he was, seated on the far end of the bar in a building meant to be the tourist agency's headquarters, staring lazily across the dim room. The cynics all held their place near the main entrance, indifferent expressions plastered to their faces. If they were attempting to mask their unease, they sure as hell weren't doing very well. Charles almost snorted when the one nearest to the stage squealed as a rodent skittered out from beneath the drum set, darting through her legs and disappearing behind the bar. Poor thing must have been frightened by the spirit Rufus.


Charles let out a heavy breath and his gaze drifted towards the rest of the crowd. Other than the adrenaline-junkies, it appeared that all the current night's patrons were here. All that's left was...


Across the counter was where the tour guide sat, facing away from his own spot on the bar. Cess Liddell, he remembered. The infamous name that belonged to the countless rumors he'd heard from the locals, praise and criticism surrounding the allegedly surreal tours she led. 


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