Chapter 5

Johann “Adam” Lemp was born in 1798 in Germany. He arrived in the United States in 1836 and settled in St. Louis in 1838, opening a grocery store in downtown St. Louis. Besides typical groceries, Lemp also made his own beer, and by 1840 he focused solely on the brewing and sale of the beer, forming a company he named Western Brewery.

His light golden lager was a welcomed change from the darker beers that were sold at the time. Eventually sales became so strong that a larger storage space was needed to house the barrels of beer, and a cave in south St. Louis was used for this purpose because it provided natural refrigeration. Wagons were sent to the frozen river just a few blocks away to chip away ice and bring back to keep the caves at a constant temperature. These caves were under the very ground that Atman was now standing on outside the mansion.

Adam’s son William J. Lemp was born in Germany in 1836 and after completing his education at St. Louis University, he began work at the Western Brewery under his father. He soon left the company to form a partnership with another brewer. In 1862 Adam Lemp died, leading to William’s return to the Western Brewery as owner and operator. In 1864 he began a huge expansion of the brewery by building a larger warehouse above the lagering caves.

Soon, the Western Brewery was the largest brewery in St. Louis, brewing and bottling its beer in the same facility which was a rarity at that time and an example of William’s sense of innovation in business, particularly to meet a growing demand. William was also responsible for installing the first refrigeration machine in an American brewery, and he extended the idea to refrigerated railway cars. His beer soon became the first beer in the U.S. with a national reach. Lemp Beer would soon be sold worldwide.

In 1868, Jacob Feickert, William Lemp’s father-in-law, built a house right above the lagering caves. In 1876 William Lemp purchased it for his family, utilizing it as both a residence and as offices for the brewing company. While the home was already impressive, Lemp immediately began renovating and expanding the thirty-three room house into a Victorian showplace. From the mansion, a tunnel was built from the basement through the caves to the brewery. An underground theatre and swimming pools heated with hot water from the breweries were also built in the caves underground.

In 1892, the William J. Lemp Brewing Company was founded from the Western Brewery with William as President and William Jr. as Vice-President. William J. “Billy” Lemp, Jr. was born on August 13, 1867. Like his father, he went to St. Louis University and then studied the art of brewing. However it was Frederick Lemp, the fourth son born in 1873 who William Sr. was hoping to hand the company off to. But a myriad of health problems ended Frederick’s life on December 13, 1901 at the age of 28.

William Sr. was crushed by this and slowly deteriorated. On the morning of February 13, 1904 he shot himself in the head in his upstairs bedroom. After the death of his brother and father, Billy Lemp Jr. took over as president of the company in 1904. Inheriting the family business and a vast fortune, Billy and his wife immediately moved into the mansion and began spending the inheritance on clothing, carriages, servants, and art.

Billy was busy running the brewery during the day and pursuing all manner of decadent activities during the night. Holding lavish parties in the caves below the mansion, he would bring in numerous prostitutes for the “entertainment” of his friends. Enjoying the heated swimming pools and free flowing beer, his friends who attended were known to enjoy a high time in the earth below. Billy was quite arrogant and often ate and slept with a gun on the table or under his pillow. The divorce from his first wife in 1908 was highly publicized in the local papers.

By 1910, The Lemp Brewery was suffering. Billy’s reduced interest had decreased sales. Instead of keeping up with new brewery innovations, he let the brewery decline. He spent his time building a country home on the river, and also remodeled the family mansion. When Prohibition began in 1919, rather than keeping the brewery going, he simply gave up and shut the plant down without notice. Workers were not even told until they showed up one day for work and found the doors locked.

The individual family members were already extremely wealthy, and had no interest in maintaining the very business that had made them so rich. The beer trademark was sold to a friend. The brewery itself was eventually sold at auction to the International Shoe Company for just under 600,000 dollars although it was well worth seven million dollars before prohibition. These events depressed Billy. On December 13, 1922 he shot himself in the heart in his front office.

Atman had been fingering the key to the mansion in his gloved hand ever since the Cadillac brought him across the river. He unlocked the double doors and slowly pushed them open. He stepped inside the foyer and gazed up the main staircase, his eyes adjusting to the dark very quickly. The house was pitch black inside and quiet, but Atman could feel that it was indeed bustling with activity. He looked through the entrance to a room on his right and saw a beautiful grand fireplace on the far wall, and another through the entrance to the room on his left. The room to Atman’s left had been Billy’s office.

Atman could make out a figure in the dark sitting at a table beneath a grand painting of a woman dressed in lavender. He turned and walked into the room, approaching the figure at the table without fear.

“Hello, Billy.”

Chapter 4

The lullaby rocking of the train soothed Atman, but he could not sleep. He had not said good-bye to his father. Neither of them had told their families they were leaving. Atman knew they would easily be adopted into P.T.’s Traveling Circus. Phineas would be happy to hear he had accumulated two performers from his competition. There were lots of kids who ran away to join the circus, and the caravan of theatrics welcomed them. Cheap labor, asking only for food and shelter and a minute or two in the spotlight, came easy.

Atman crawled out of the hay and sat at the opening of the railway car to watch the bayou swamp pass by in the night as the train crept northward. He let his feet dangle over the edge since the train was moving so slow. He knew they’d pick up speed once they were out of the swamp. Alligators often took their time crossing the railroad tracks at night, and hitting a large one could derail the train.

As the train pushed along the banks, Atman could see splashing below as the gators scurried off the banks and back into the water for safety. He could not imagine the demise of someone falling off the train into the swamp, but he was not afraid. A hand gripped his shoulder from behind him. He reached up to caress it, knowing Phillipe had awakened.

“Where do you think we are going?” Phillipe asked.

“Memphis would be my guess.”

Phillipe sat down beside Atman to watch the world pass by. He kept his legs tucked underneath him instead of letting them fall over the side. He put his head on Atman’s shoulder, and Atman wrapped an arm around his waist to comfort him.

“Everything will be fine,” Atman assured him.

“I know. I’m not worried. I have you,” Phillipe said.

“And I have you,” Atman said.

Phillipe lifted his head to look into Atman’s eyes. “Would it frighten you if I told you I love you?”

“No,” Atman said, “I love you too. You are my only friend.”

“Mine too,” Phillipe said, “but I think I love you more than a friend.”

Atman was silent as he pondered what Phillipe had said. It didn’t scare him. After all, they had been inseparable for years now. They’d grown up together and often slept in the same bed together. They had comforted each other with the warmth of their bodies on cold nights, but never anything more. They didn’t know anything more outside of the gentle and innocent friendship they both provided for one another.

But as best friends often do, Atman and Phillipe could read each other’s minds. Both of them yearned for more. There would be no testing of boundaries, no taking their relationship one step further. Both of them were virgins and had never spent quality time with anyone else of interest nor of the opposite sex. Their worlds were one, and had never experienced heart ache before. So, it seemed only fitting for them to satisfy the sexual needs of one another. Now, both in their early twenties, their curious minds had finally overtaken them.

“Come. Lay down with me,” Atman said as he pulled Phillipe away from the doorway.

Atman lay down in the hay. Holding Phillipe’s hand, Atman pulled him down on top of him and wrapped his arms around Phillipe’s body. Their lips met like magnets. Soft wet bird pecks taught each of them how to kiss. Phillipe tried to concentrate on how his parents kissed one another. He opened his mouth and licked Atman’s pouty lips. Atman took Phillipe’s tongue into his mouth and gently sucked it.

Unlike fumbling teenagers, their naked bodies were not new to one another. They had bathed and swam together before, so there were no curious surprises. The shock came from the feeling of their naked bodies against one another like curvy puzzle pieces finding a perfect fit. Their erections poked one another like bumpy rocks under bare feet. Atman took their manhood into his hand and stroked them together. He gently squeezed them and took pleasure from the ecstasy he could see in Phillipe’s face, and from the pulsing of blood he could feel beneath the sensitive skin.

With their clothes for a pallet on top of the itchy hay, the breeze from the train picking up speed cooled their sticky bodies. They fell asleep naked wrapped in each other’s arms. Atman was correct. The train crossed through Mississippi in the early hours of morning and arrived in Memphis just after sunrise. Atman and Phillipe dressed and hid in the hay again while the circus performers stepped off to stretch their legs. He knew they had some time before they’d start unloading the train and sitting up camp on the riverbank. Atman peeked out and saw the Mississippi river. It looked the same here as it did in Louisiana, like an old familiar friend that had followed them.

Chapter 3

Sitting in the car outside the mansion, Atman fingered the talisman, safely tucked under his ascot around his neck. His eyes were clinched shut. He would not let his eyes take him to those days spent with Phillipe. His mind constantly conjured up thoughts of Phillipe, but he only wanted to relive them as a memory in his head.

He opened the back door of the Cadillac and stepped out into the muggy Midwest air. Lingering steam clung to his face and hands like a sweaty-palmed child. With the house behind him, he turned to look at the car. Beads of rainwater on shiny black, Atman saw a thousand reflections of himself and inside him. 1946 was a damn good year.

No passenger cars had rolled off the assembly line since February, 1942. Instead, more than 50,000 Cadillac V8 engines and hydra-matic transmissions had been built and served with distinction in every theater of war. They emerged toughened and hardened to new standards of efficiency and dependability. According to Cadillac, their development during the war was far greater than what would have been possible during four peacetime years.

When peace returned, there was a high demand for new cars from all over the country. There were long waiting lists for the new Cadillac models. The first new, 1946 Cadillac came off the assembly line on October 17, 1945, less than two months after the last wartime tank. In appearance it was not much different from the Cadillac of 1942 that it had replaced. The front grille had six heavier bars, and new bumpers wrapped around the front and rear of the car. Also for the first time, the hood and trunk both displayed Cadillac’s famed “V” and crest. The name “CADILLAC” was spelled out in stubby, block letters on the front fenders.

Atman loved the Cadillac and had stolen it years ago to use for him and Phillipe to flee the circus forever. However, when the day came to leave, he’d be the only one in the car. It happened a few years after Joyce Heith died. Phineas Taylor collaborated with a man named Cameron Coup and together they started a circus called P.T.’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Circus and Hippodrome. Coup’s innovations were the circus train to transport the materials across the country from town to town.

The reluctant Pennsylvania Railroad provided the railroad cars for this venture. Coup’s method involved pulling wagons up a ramp located at one end of a string of flatcars and down the length of the train. He bridged the space between the cars with crossover plates. Coup also rented sleepers for the performers and musicians and coaches for the workers.

Coup had significant problems with this endeavor. The railroads did not have a uniform width and height for their cars, and brake wheels were mounted at the end sill of each car which obstructed the wagons as they rolled from car to car. These brake wheels had to be removed in order to load and unload the train, and then put back on before the train could move. With all the difficulty Coup was having with the Pennsylvania Railroad cars, he soon took the final step in developing the circus train. He contacted a Louisiana Railway company that built custom designed railroad cars for the circus.

So, when the circus traveled to New Orleans for an event, their 65 car, brightly painted new circus train with uniform flatcars, sleeping cars for the workers and performers, boxcars for extra storage, and palace cars for the livestock awaited them. The show could now travel 100 miles in a single night, avoid the smaller towns, and play only the larger cities which provided greater box office receipts. Coup had created the railroad circus that would go basically unchanged for the next 100 or so years. But it was on that train that Phillipe and Atman stowed away, leaving the Breschard family circus behind them forever.

They had gone in search of knowledge; they had questions Joyce had left unanswered. Still in their early twenties, both boys were very young at heart. They lived and breathed the circus, and knew not a day they had not spent together.

Phillipe was a lean flexible acrobat in his royal purple leotard which he often wore as a second skin beneath his street clothes. He had dirty brown straight hair clipped short to stay out of his eyes. His skin was pale with a milky smooth complexion. His legs and arms were not overly muscular, but they were hard as metal poles from his acrobatic training. His bright green eyes reminded Atman of a cat.

Atman had an hour glass figure with a tiny waist and broad shoulders. His dark Venezuelan skin and shoulder-length skillet black hair made him appear to be much older and more mature than Phillipe. He had huge arms and legs, the product of hard labor from having to feed and care for the wild animals and help raise the circus tents.

Atman could vividly remember their first night together on that circus train because he had relived that memory many times since he lost Phillipe. They had hid in an open train car filled with hay, burying themselves deep in the straw to sleep and to keep out of sight. The screeching brakes of the train, announcing the midnight arrival of the circus in some neighboring town, woke Atman from a deep sleep. Phillipe had nuzzled close to Atman for warmth. His hand was tucked under Atman’s shirt and gently wrapped around his waist. Atman liked the warm soft feel of Phillipe’s touch, and he left his hand there. With a bit of hesitation, Atman wrapped his own arm around Phillipe’s back and pulled him closer.

Chapter 2

Psychic Vampires are ancestors of the Jiang Shi of China. The Jiang Shi were said to be created when a person’s soul fails to leave the deceased’s body. In a zombie-like state, the Jiang Shi kill living creatures to absorb life essence from their victims. The influence of Western vampire stories added the blood-sucking aspect to the Chinese tale in modern times. In fact, Dracula is translated to Chinese as “blood-sucking jiāngshī” where the thirst of blood is explicitly emphasized because it is not a traditional trait of the Jiang Shi. So, much of the history of the psychic vampires has been lost, or overshadowed by their blood-sucking brothers.

Atman Sąsiuvinis was born into this world a healthy human boy on March 26th, in the year 1812. He was born into a family of circus performers in Caracas, Venezuela. Caracas is the capital of Venezuela and was destroyed that day by an earthquake. Born just six minutes into the quake, his mother would not survive the catastrophe. Fearing for their lives in the mayhem, his father snatched up his only child and fled to North America with a few of the other circus members.

They landed in Louisiana, just days after it had been admitted as the eighteenth U.S. state. Atman’s father and performer friends found work with the circus of Pepin and Breschard. Victor Pepin and Jean Baptiste Casmiere Breschard’s troupes built circus theatres from Montreal to New Orleans. The equestrian theatre company had arrived in the United States of America from Madrid, Spain in November of 1807. They toured the new country until 1815.

Pepin and Breschard are noted as having reintroduced the circus clown to America in 1807 after a number of years in which no circuses are documented as performing in the United States. Atman’s father became one of those circus clowns while raising his newborn son. Breshchard’s son, Phillipe, was born that same year. He and Atman would grow up together, and eventually become much more than best friends.

During the War of 1812, the British sent a force to conquer New Orleans. The Americans decisively defeated the British troops led by Sir Edward Pakenham in the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. As a principal port, New Orleans had a leading role in the slave trade, while at the same time having the most prosperous community of free persons of color in the South. Pepin and Breschard’s circus flourished because of slave labor.

The Breschards were brilliant and wealthy business people anyway, and while tending to their successful circus establishment in New Orleans they left the infant Phillipe in the care of a slave woman named Joice Heth. Since Atman was motherless and his father was engrossed in making a living for them as a performer, Jean Breschard agreed that it was a good idea to let the old Negro woman see after Atman as well. The two boys were such good playmates so there was no reason to separate them while their parents were working.

While Joyce watched after them, the boys performed as street acrobats together in New Orleans around 1823. Cajuns would tip the boys with shiny coins. After their performance, Joyce would take them to a market and let them buy peppermint or licorice pieces with their earnings. She took pleasure in watching the young boy’s innocent friendship blossoming. A strange love would congeal their hearts some day, and Joyce knew that. She could not change the future, but she could nurture it.

In 1834, Joyce suffered a stroke which left her blind and almost completely paralyzed. By then, Atman and Phillipe were in their early twenties and had joined the family circus putting their street talent to better use. Helpless and of no use to the Breschards, Joyce was sold to a man named Phineas Taylor. Phineas began his career as a showman with his purchase and exhibition of Joice, claimed by Phineas to have been the nurse of George Washington, and to be over a hundred and sixty years old. Joyce was only eighty years old, but because Phineas took such good care of the elderly woman, she entertained paying customers by singing an old hymn and telling stories of “Little George.”

While the word “Voodoo” is used to describe the Creole tradition of New Orleans, Vodou is used to describe the Haitian Vodou Tradition. Its roots are believed to be varied and include the Mina, Kabye, and Yoruba peoples of West Africa, from western Nigeria to eastern Ghana. In Benin, Vodun is the national religion. Joyce Heth’s family had lived in Benin until Englishmen raided their village and brought them to America against their will.

Bokors in the religion of vodou are sorcerers or houngan (priests) for hire who are said to ’serve the loa with both hands’, meaning they can both practice dark magic and benevolent magic. Their black magic includes the creation of zombies and the creation of ‘ouangas’, talismans that house spirits.

Joyce had long ago introduced her faith to the two young boys. She had no intention of converting them to the religion of the slaves. You had to be born into it, but she wanted to plant a seed in their tiny minds because she knew what the two boys would eventually become much later in life. She offered up her view only as protection, knowing they were too young to understand now. One day, she gave them each a necklace she had handmade for them.

The necklaces were pieces of beaded leather with a small perfume bottle dangling from the boy’s necks. The bottle was entwined to the leather with copper wire and the top of the bottle was sealed with wax. A young Phillipe held his necklace up to the sun to peer inside the bottle. It looked as though it contained white smoke. Atman’s contained black smoke. She told them never to open them because there would be a day when the bottles would open themselves.

The curious boys refused to ever take their necklaces off, even long after Joyce had been sold. But years later, as Joyce promised, those bottles would eventually be opened. It was what was inside that would seal each of the friends’ fate.

Chapter 1

The passenger’s name is Sir Atman Sąsiuvinis. His current umbra is almost eighty years old, but his personage does not look a day over thirty. That’s because his human body died at that young age and he is now immortal. An umbra is a shadow, or soul, that inhabits Atman’s body. It’s a bit like reincarnation. The soul inside him is what sustains him. It is his life force.

Atman still has the mortal mind he possessed as a human. His personality does not change when his body inhabits a new soul. His mind just gains the memories and knowledge of the person who has died. Therefore, he is a man of great brilliance because he has possessed thousands of souls since he first became what he is now.

Historians have called him a soul eater, but Sir Atman prefers to be called a psychic vampire. Blood sustains the life of an ordinary vampire, but that vampire must end a life to obtain what it craves, what it needs. Atman’s kind even refers to those other vampires as Bloods. But what Atman needs comes after death, not just before it. It’s deeper than blood. It’s the soul and spirit of a human that leaves the body at death which he needs.

A blood-thirsty vampire needs warm juice fresh from a corpse immediately before the heart goes cold. Atman can wait for the vampire to finish before he feeds. It sounds a bit like he’s a vulture, able to feed on what the carnivorous vampire leaves behind. But his feeding process is far from brutal.

Atman does have fangs but they are not for feeding. Think of them as a defense mechanism. They allow him to blend in if Bloods are lurking about. But to feed, Atman need only stare deep into the blank and frozen eyes of the dead. The white light from his pupils connects with the shaken spirit inside and pulls it out. The soul enters his body and becomes him.

You would think Bloods could play host to Atman’s kind, but they see him more as a pest. Psychic vampires see themselves as being above the others. They don’t have to kill. They don’t have to be predators. They don’t need to feed as often. They need only wait. Somewhere, someone is always dying. So souls, both good and bad, are plentiful.

Atman does not have porcelain skin like the Bloods do. He does not have to avoid sunlight. Such luxuries anger the Bloods that are children of the night. How can an immortal be so lucky, but not have to fight in order to survive? Therefore, as you can imagine, a Blood is Atman’s worst enemy. They are the only thing that can kill him. No garlic. No sunlight. No stake through the heart or other folklore tales. A blood thirsty vampire can end Atman’s immortality forever.

Psychic vampires have one other advantage over the Bloods as well. Their reign of immortality can end at any time and they can be given back their impermanent existence. Yes, they can return to their human life form as they once were, at the very age at which it was taken from them.

Among Atman’s kind, this is a legend and he does not know any psychic vampire to have ever done it. It is very dangerous because the psychic vampire does not wake up a human with all of their knowledge and memory they had gained as an immortal. It will all be washed away, and they will wake upon the world as if they have been in a long coma suffering from memory loss.

It can end up being fatal even because a person from the 17th century waking upon a 21st century world would be lost. If they became a psychic vampire at the same age as Atman, they would be young and may still have many years to live but it would be as if a time machine had transported them from their era to the world today. And so, none of Atman’s kind are known to have ever taken that chance. They continue to walk the earth as they are. Their fate has been immortally sealed.

Waking up in the future may not be as bad. They could adapt and learn, possibly as a polar bear might if it somehow woke up in the rain forest. However, it is the key to the transformation that is much more deadly. To return to humankind, a psychic vampire must be bitten by a blood-thirsty vampire. The long historical conflict between the two vampires pretty much keeps this from ever happening, but the psychic vampire would have to completely and totally trust the Blood to perform such an attainment.

Returning to human life form is instant and happens so quickly the Blood would just be retracting its teeth from the silken flesh of what is now a human. In fact, the transformation is so fast that the vampire may even taste a drop of human blood before pulling away. It would be hot and fresh, like a newborn baby emerging from the womb.

It would be quite appetizing and an easy meal for the vampire because the new human may be in a soporific state, not yet able to look upon the world with their human eyes. Death would likely be imminent, and be the best meal the vampire ever had. The hot blood of life at the moment of creation, that very moment of birth, is the freshest of all.

Sir Atman Sąsiuvinis has never met another psychic vampire willing to take that chance. He himself has never even given it thought. But someday very soon, he would.

Prologue

A torrent of harsh stinging rain fell from the cobalt sky. Mad rain. It beat the pavement like a slave master’s belt. Hot steam rose from the black streets with a hiss as streams of sky water cleaned the concrete, washing away dead leaves that were still clinging to spider webbed branches into the sewers below.

Stars shine through the cloudy heavens like holes punched in a coffee can lid. A glimpse of light from the outside world for a feeble creature trapped inside at the hands of a freckle-faced kid playing God. Thunder cracked the sky as if God had shaken the can.

The 1946 black Cadillac crossed the Eads Bridge just after midnight. It had not been raining on the Illinois side, and the car seemed to pass through a curtain of water as it approached the muddy Mississippi River. The backseat passenger looked down the river, watching the storm invade the sleepy dreaming city. The clear view from his window reminded him of a much tinier version of the city inside a snow globe a friend had sent him. He had committed its glass domed contents to memory, and was surprised to find the actual city skyline matched almost perfectly.

The Eads was flanked by the MLK bridge on one side and the Poplar Street Bridge on the other. The MLK was a cantilever truss bridge, like many of the bridges that cross this steamboat river from here to New Orleans. Ah, New Orleans, the place where the passenger had first set foot in this country so many years ago. The shape of the MLK reminded the passenger of The Golden Gate Bridge only it wasn’t as open. It’s trusses were thicker and heavier.

The Poplar Street Bridge was boring, and its name rightfully indicated it was just a street, a 20th century sign of an Urban Planner just trying to get traffic across the river quicker. Yet, the Eads and MLK still stayed bustling with automobiles because they offered a much better view. Like insects drawn to a street lamp, humans want to see pretty things.

The Eads was also a cantilever bridge but had no supportive obstructions blocking the passenger’s view. It was completely flat. A series of six arches underneath gave it support at both the east and west shorelines. Three broader arches suspended over the lazy dark water itself.

The passenger leaned forward to look down at the water. He tapped his temples with his index fingers and white light pierced through his eyeballs. It was as if there was a film projector behind his eyes and a roll of film was being threaded through the machine. He blinked his eyes in succession with the clicks of the film being wound around its reel, slow at first and then faster and faster as the sepia colored film came to life down on the river.

This inner projector was about to show him a homemade movie from 1875. Riverboat steam rolled up into the sky enveloping the bridge with white and gray puffy clouds. Mournful horns called out announcing the arrival of cotton, wheat, and beer. White steamboats with lattice-like guard rails and huge cylindrical smoke stacks trotted up and down the river, passing under the archways of the bridge with ease.

World’s Fair women with tight corsets and lace umbrellas were yet to saunter up and down the riverbank parks with dandy children licking lollipops at their sides. For now, sweaty Negroes in heavy clothing unloaded bags of flour at the docks. Horse drawn wagons, belonging to city shop keepers, lined the banks waiting for supplies and goods.

The silent movie faded and the white light disappeared with a blink as the Cadillac rolled into the state of Missouri and turned south. State of misery, the passenger thought to himself. Keeping to the river’s edge and just on the outskirts of downtown, the car cut through the heavy sheets of rain like a bullet.

Seventh Street turned into Broadway, and the skyscrapers of the city faded into the fog behind it. At Arsenal Street, just south of the downtown lights in a district called Soulard, the Cadillac was greeted by ghosts of old factories and warehouses. They too were clinging to the river’s edge like a port wasting away, waiting for a steamboat that would never come again.

The Cadillac turned left onto Lemp Avenue and soon arrived at its destination. Deminil Place. Once the home of a German families’ beer-brewing dynasty, the residential street lay still. The stinging rain subsided for a moment with perfect timing. Simple drops of rain plinked to the ground from the tree limbs and edges of buildings like a leaky faucet.

The black car came to a stop on the street, directly in front of the door to the mansion. The passenger did not turn his head to look out the window. He had seen the house in many a photograph and had also committed it to memory. It, too, loomed over his shoulder like a ghost of the river days. It was a ghost.

Ghosts. Exactly what the passenger had come for.