I’m not into “paranormal” stuff. I teach science. But my wife? She eats it up. Ghost tours, Tarot, astrology memes, you name it. So when we went down to New Orleans for our tenth anniversary, I booked the damn voodoo tour just to make her happy. A walking night tour through the French Quarter, ending in some courtyard no one talks about on Yelp.
The guide’s name was “Papa Noire.” He wore this sharp black suit, red beads around his neck, and a top hat he never took off. I assumed he was just playing a character. He had a silver tongue, real smooth, told stories like he’d lived them. But I noticed early on that he never blinked. Not once. I kept checking.
He brought us to this courtyard behind a rusted iron gate. Said it wasn’t on maps anymore. It used to be a temple for an old Mambo who was wronged by a wealthy man. She cursed him and all his sons. And to this day, he said, if a man with the same kind of sin in his blood steps onto that soil… she knows.
I didn’t laugh when everyone else did.
He looked straight at me. Said, “Some blood betrays its owner, and some owners forget what they did.” His eyes were pale gray. Too pale. I remember thinking he must’ve had contacts in. Or cataracts.
That night, my dreams weren’t mine. I saw a swamp at night, full of animal bones. A woman standing knee-deep in water, eyes sewn shut, swaying. Her mouth opened wider than it should. She whispered in a language I didn’t understand, but I felt the meaning:
Confess. Or rot.
I woke up gasping. My wife was still asleep. But the TV was on. Static.
We never turned it on.
Over the next few days, things got worse. I’d find handprints on fogged mirrors. My phone would buzz with voicemails, empty, except for the sound of flies and whispering. One night, I looked in the hotel mirror and saw something stitched across my reflection’s lips.
I finally told my wife.
That’s when she broke down and asked, “Was it just once?” I didn’t even ask how she knew. I confessed. It was years ago. Drunk. I thought I buried it.
We left New Orleans early. Back home in Waldorf, I tried to move on. But it followed me.
Every mirror fogs when I walk by, even in the car. My students say I mumble in class, even when I think I’m silent. A neighbor’s dog won’t come near me anymore.
And sometimes, just before I fall asleep, I smell smoke and swamp water. I see her again. Standing in my hallway. Her eyes are still sewn shut. But now, she points at my chest.
Last night… I woke up with a needle on my pillow.
Still wet.