anthology series and a wealth of hard-to-find publications from around the world.<\/span><\/p>\nIn today\u2019s post is one of the original stories from Phantom Constellations<\/em> titled “The Exorcist\u2019s Red-Haired Daughter.”<\/span><\/p>\nThe Exorcist\u2019s Red-Haired Daughter<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nThe French Quarter, New Orleans. 30 years ago.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nShe watches through the open door to the back room where she\u2019s sitting in the near dark. Long, straight, red hair. Bright primary no-question-at-all-it-is-dyed red. No color on anything in the entire Botanica even comes close.<\/span><\/p>\nHer mother, the witch who owns the place, rings up the stuff I\u2019ve placed on the counter. Tiny souvenir juju bags I\u2019ll take home as gifts for my dorm mates. A book on Chinese Astrology. A glass bottle of spell powder.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe guide book entry for the shop said the owner has a short fuse and little patience for tourists, which piqued my curiosity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOpen Roads, a fine choice,\u201d she says, with just a hint of a Southern drawl. \u201cBe careful what you open the doors to though. Before I pack it up, would you like instruction on how to use it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ve used spell powder before,\u201d I say. \u201cI like to put it in the hot wax I seal envelopes with, you know for special letters or just wishes and things I write and put away for myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThis apparently is the wrong answer because she looks offended. I sense a scolding is about to happen.<\/span><\/p>\nThrough the doorway I notice her daughter watching with devilish delight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe witch blows a strand of her jet-black bob of hair out of her face and points to a window propped open by a metal hammer.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI was about to say something very different, then I saw my hammer,\u201d she says. \u201cI bought it for putting in nails to hang herbs to dry on. It\u2019s meant to pound nails. It was created to build things. Yet, see how I\u2019m using it? I\u2019m not wrong. It\u2019s the perfect size and the only thing here strong enough to keep that old window from slamming down when the wind blows. Not every tool needs to be used as intended. Thank you for the unexpected lesson young man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d I say with a nervous smile.<\/span><\/p>\nAs she wraps the glass bottle of powder in brown paper the telephone in the back room rings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOne minute, please,\u201d she says to me then disappears through the doorway. I hear her answer and speak.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhich year are you?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s the witch\u2019s red-haired daughter. She\u2019s behind the counter across from me running her finger along the cover of the astrology book.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cPardon,\u201d is all I\u2019m able to say because she\u2019s so attractive.<\/span><\/p>\nI can\u2019t stop looking at her. She doesn\u2019t mind. She smiles. Tilts her head like she\u2019s posing.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYour birth year,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI think I\u2019m year of the dragon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh, we\u2019re not compatible,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe touches the top of my hand. Runs her finger up my forearm. It feels amazing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nRick and Michael are out getting sloppy on Bourbon Street and here I am with this beautiful girl.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cStay away from him,\u201d her mother commands as she stomps back to the counter.<\/span><\/p>\nShe gathers my items in one swoop and stuffs them in a bag.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHere, take your purchase. Time for you to leave my store, young man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe escorts me to the door and locks it behind me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI do not turn around until I\u2019m halfway down the street. The red-haired girl is there gazing out a second-floor window above the shop.<\/span><\/p>\nI want to wave but don\u2019t want any trouble with her mom.<\/span><\/p>\nI stop at the grocer on Dauphine Street, purchase a half of Muffaletta sandwich and head back to my room.<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nMy hotel\u2019s courtyard, an interior oasis framed by three story brick walls, has become a social scene. People are gathered around umbrella-covered tables happily drinking and smoking. The tiny rectangular pool is full to capacity with guests holding drinks in plastic cups above the water line. A man pushes through the glass doors of the pool house and goes into the adjacent changing room trying not to spill a bucket of ice fresh from the noisy old machine.<\/span><\/p>\nI rise above the sound of them celebrating the night as I climb the three flights of stairs to my room. The wooden floor is crooked and warped, anything on the floor will roll to one side. Exposed ancient wooden rafters run the length of the low ceiling. It\u2019s what Rick and Michael call French Quarter charm. I don\u2019t see the appeal. Even on our last day of our week here I still don\u2019t see their fascination with everything New Orleans.<\/span><\/p>\nThe phone rings. Speak of the devil, it\u2019s them at a pay phone on Bourbon Street drunkenly imploring me to come out and party. I tell them I\u2019m in for the night and I\u2019ll join them for breakfast before our flight tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\nI sit in the big bed, unwrap my sandwich, glad to be alone in the peace and quiet. I can\u2019t stop thinking of the red-haired girl. The way she ran her finger up my arm. It\u2019s been three years since Jackie went away to school and her parents made sure she broke up with me. One day on Spring Break when I was home at my parent\u2019s house, she came in through the bathroom window, like the Beatles song sort of, and was standing there waiting when I got out of the shower. I never saw her again after that and haven\u2019t been with anyone since.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe phone rings.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI told you fools no,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019m not coming out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cCome to the window,\u201d says a female voice.<\/span><\/p>\nI drop the receiver and go. I slide open the black out blinds revealing an alluring female form silhouetted by streetlight. Tall and thin, the hypnotic contour of a woman straight out of my dreams is there behind the diaphanous, sheer curtain.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI push the covering aside and open the window. The witch\u2019s red-haired daughter ducks to avoid hitting her head on the frame and climbs in.<\/span><\/p>\nI start to speak. I think I actually mumble a word or two about my ex and the bathroom window but she pushes me, then pushes me again sending me stumbling backwards onto the bed. She holds me down and kisses me forcefully.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI lied,\u201d she says, allowing me some air. \u201cI think we\u2019re very compatible. I was just trying to throw my mother off.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nShe kisses me again. A quick, playful kiss that ends with strong bite on my lip and her backing away.<\/span><\/p>\nShe lifts her shirt, takes it off, and throws it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cCan you imagine me with tattoos,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\nThe concave hollow of her belly is perfect alabaster white. The curve of her hip bone disappears under the top of her faded blue jeans.<\/span><\/p>\nShe wriggles free of them and jumps back onto the bed. Back on top of me. She\u2019s so tall she can place her palms on the ceiling. She grips the rafters, presses herself onto me and grinds and writhes and moans.<\/span><\/p>\nAt some point I realize the phone is ringing, then there is only the sound of her telling me how to feel, telling me what to do.<\/span><\/p>\nI do my best to comply then disappear into a haze of pleasure.<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nI wake and my first thought is, oh shit I\u2019ve missed my flight.<\/span><\/p>\nMy second thought is, oh no, she\u2019s not here.<\/span><\/p>\nI only see her clothes left strewn around the room.<\/span><\/p>\nI check the bathroom. Nothing. Then I notice a note stuck on the mirror above the sink.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI laugh. Such a clich\u00e9. Right out of every bad story and urban legend Rick and Michael ever told. At least its not in red lipstick.<\/span><\/p>\nStay in touch, okay? Write to me. Come back and visit anytime.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nI pack my bag. I gather her clothes and decide to put them in a drawer. I wait until the last minute to make sure she\u2019s not coming back then I go downstairs to check out and meet the guys for breakfast before our flight.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/i>#<\/span><\/p>\nBreakfast is beignets and coffee with chicory in the French Market.<\/span><\/p>\nRick and Michael are hung over as sin but it doesn\u2019t stop them from boasting about their so-called exploits last night. Except for the extreme amounts of alcohol and being on Bourbon Street, all are things I\u2019m sure didn\u2019t happen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThey wouldn\u2019t believe me even if I wanted to tell them about the red-haired girl, so I do not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nBack to school in upstate New York is the same old fraternity parties, and other parties, and crowded, loud bars. All of them microcosms populated with those looking to fill the holes in themselves with hedonism, or at least with something. At times the debauchery reaches Bourbon Street levels of abandon. I sense a dishonesty in Rick and Michael in their thinking that this level of inebriation is fun. Maybe it is a tacit acknowledgement that life is something one needs to be numb to, to endure and they are getting a head start. Getting so drunk like that is just\u2026 drifting. Letting the current of nothingness take you, nowhere. They\u2019re not alone, most everyone in this \u201cscene\u201d will graduate and drift in different ways, and on different currents into thoughtless, unconscious lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI receive a letter from my dear high school pal, Leon who is working in a cannery in Alaska, instead of college. We should all get a job on a cruise ship, together, his letter says. You know, sail the seas. See the world. This is the fastest, cheapest way to do it while we\u2019re still young.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI write my reply and seal my letter with wax and spell powder from the Botanica in the French Quarter. I can\u2019t help but think of the witch\u2019s daughter running her finger along my arm. Of how I felt seeing her at the window. Of her white, perfect skin when she lifted her shirt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWalking back from film class in the art building I decide to tell Rick about my encounter. His insight surprises me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cSex is real,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re young, maybe it\u2019s the only real thing we know about life right now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI decide to write to her. I seal my letter with wax and spell powder.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen I return home to my parent\u2019s house for the summer a reply is waiting for me. From her mother.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cStay away from her. Stay away from New Orleans,\u201d the letter reads. \u201cIn fact, never come back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nMy disappointment is muted by the whirl of summer. Beach parties. Chasing pretty girls. Late night conversations with Rick and Michael about photography and film. I have an awareness that times like these are not forever and on the other side of this our transition to adulthood is waiting.<\/span><\/p>\nThe last semesters of school and graduation and hopes and dreams and the mundane things life is built of eclipse my memories and fantasies of the red-haired girl.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMy friendships drown in the rise and falls of love and loss and in the fascination and despair of trying to bring artistic visions to life in a world not built for such things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nCurrents take us. Separate us. Scatter us to the winds and corners of the world, even those friends who are just next door become strangers. This is not just <\/span>my<\/span><\/i> life; this is the way life sometimes goes for us all.<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nNew Orleans, May 2023.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nI return to the French Quarter after so many years for the occasion of the opening night of the Cure\u2019s Songs of a Lost World tour. A gift to myself, an indulgence to my thirst for travel and in-person experiences after Covid times.<\/span><\/p>\nWill it capture the sense of community lacking in my life? Probably not. Will it alter where I\u2019ve found myself, alone at the end of a trajectory I always feared?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nNo. Of course not.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen I heard Robert Smith sing the lyric, \u201c\u2026it\u2019s all gone\u2026\u201d I felt it. I felt him. I believed despite the successes and luxuries in his life that he knew the same kind of loss as me. The same loneliness after relationships and breakups, after careers and dead ends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSometimes people self-destruct. Instead of facing down their problems and working out their issues, they implode. And all that is left for the people who were in their life, the people who trusted them, who gave all to them, is the empty space where a relationship had been. This is the story of my life. Its not unique and it is no longer tragic, it just\u2026 is.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe freedom to pick up and go on a trip like this is a small consolation. One I would trade for a life of picket fences and happily ever after without question.<\/span><\/p>\nI arrive at the hotel Rick and Michael and I stayed in decades ago a couple of days before the show, to give New Orleans another go; to try and find my connection with the city of art and music and spirit like so many artists before me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe young clerk at the front desk is strange in all the wrong ways. His stand offish-ness and reserved demeanor is a rarity for New Orleans, and makes me feel uncomfortable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI decide to take my bag to my room myself. I roll my luggage out of the blessed air-conditioned lobby into the courtyard. I\u2019m greeted with the soft echo of gurgling water from two small fountains, new additions since I was here last. The brick wall of my building is covered with ivy. The pool house has been freshly painted white. There are vending machines, microwaves, and a sleek new ice machine. White venetian blinds, tilted open to let in light, hang in a new large glass window of the changing room.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDespite the facelift it hasn\u2019t changed much in the decades since the night the red-haired-girl came to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI was thinner. I had more stamina then. I moved through the world more on instinct than by thought. I remember life having spontaneity and passion to it that I yearn for now, a certain magic and unpredictability I wish I could have again, even if just long enough to capture a fleeting instance of it in a photograph.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI put my bag in my room, cool off with a shower and change then take myself out for a meal at a place on Jackson Square.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cJust one?\u201d my waitress asks.<\/span><\/p>\nShe\u2019s tall and thin and clad in all black. A tattoo of a snake on her lower leg wraps up and around and continues onto the part of her thigh beneath her skirt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cHere for the show?\u201d she asks.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh, yeah. Saint Robert,\u201d I say. \u201cI forgot I was wearing my shirt. You going to the concert?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNo, not me. I gotta work.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s something genuine and vulnerable about the way she says it. I notice the lines not covered by the make up around her eyes. How her hands are the kind that know hard work. At first, I thought she was half my age.<\/span><\/p>\nIs it possible she is <\/span>her? <\/span><\/i>All grown up now and we have met again, here in the Quarter?<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cDo I know you,\u201d I say. \u201cI mean have we met before? A long, long time ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cWhere might that be,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, here,\u201d I say. \u201cI mean I was once here when I was just a stupid kid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cOh, I just moved here. I don\u2019t think so,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\nI fear I\u2019ve made her uncomfortable and I regret it. She was just being professionally friendly and hoping for a decent tip like anyone would.<\/span><\/p>\nFor a second I think I will compliment her tattoo but I decide the kindness I can give her is to not say anything.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cReady to order?\u201d she asks.<\/span><\/p>\nMy meal of shrimp and grits is delicious and the rest of our interactions are with pleasant smiles and no more conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n#<\/span><\/p>\nI walk back to my room carrying a bag with beignets and a gift can of coffee and chicory from Caf\u00e9 Dumond. As I climb the stairs, I realize I have no one to gift the coffee to.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI fall asleep with my clothes on and the bag next to me on the big bed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI wake sometime in the quiet of night and glance through my window at the courtyard. It\u2019s so tranquil\u2014 the perfect place to enjoy my desert alone and in peace.<\/span><\/p>\nI plug my phone in to charge, grab one of the clove cigarettes I\u2019ve brought for the concert, and go back down the stairs into the humid night and murmur of the fountains.<\/span><\/p>\nI park myself at one of the round picnic tables with the sun umbrella still up and I realize I\u2019m not alone. Someone\u2019s in the pool.<\/span><\/p>\nA woman rises from the shallow end, water dripping from her naked form. She\u2019s tall and fit. A tattoo of a serpent is wrapped around her left leg. It winds up her torso, with its head on the bottom of her neck just where the line of her straight, black hair ends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nShe\u2019s facing the pool house but I can swear she\u2019s my waitress from dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n
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Phantom Constellations<\/em> is Daniel Braum\u2019s fifth full short story\u00a0<\/span>collection of dark, strange tales, exploring the metamorphic tension between the supernatural and\u00a0<\/span>the psychological, out now in trade paperback and eBook from Cemetery Dance Publications<\/a>. Each of these stories, set in locations around the corner and around the world, evokes the Twilight Zone sense of the unreal and that mysterious, unsettling ambiguity found in <\/span>classic weird and horror fiction.<\/span><\/p>\n