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Synopsis

 

            The family Piccard, entrepreneurs of evil, cultists and kidnappers, dealers in prostitution, opium and abortion are driven      from the dark Cajun quarters of New Orleans in the 1930’s to a small Baptist town in Virginia. Dressed in the respectable guise of undertakers, their unbounded debauchery meets two determined sleuths that drive their five-decade dynasty of deception to a punishing and fatal finale.

 

            The searing anguish of abandonment at the needful age of eight haunts Julian Alain Piccard. His French mother of questionable virtue is hung for a crime she didn’t commit. Driven into the squalid back streets with nothing but a pocket watch to his name, he’s saved by a Creole smuggler and finds haven in the sinister world of Cajun voodoo. Cult, crime, sex and drugs become his revenge.

           

            Favored with imposing height and fierce good looks as he matures, he uses body and brain to terrorize, intimidate and extort. Of mixed race, he dominates the black and American Indian sub-cultures of the city. An intimate alliance with Azuba, a high priestess in the cult of Onantibi, paves a path to wealth and reckless extravagance.

           

            In New Orleans the passage from life was cause for celebration and Piccard’s fancy funeral parlors please and appease the grieving, but behind the black damask curtains he and his mistress sell opium, abortion and human flesh. Under aggressive suspicion by the law during the violent resurgence of white supremacy, they transplant their evil to the innocence and anonymity of East Avery, Virginia, fertile ground for fancy funerals and anti-Baptist perversion.

           

            Julian II, infused with the iniquities of his father continues the cult, the funerary business and the debauchery. Tragedy, suicide and murder leave Julian III motherless and alone with his father and grandfather. A disturbed teen, he creates chaos at Maxwell Military Institute until he collides with his nemesis and fellow cadet, a persistent police chief and three Irish mothers who ultimately bring an end to the Piccard legacy.

           

            The Beast with Red Cheeks takes the reader from New Orleans to Virginia, from ‘kanzo’ fire rituals, opium dens and fancy funeral parlors to mansions, military schools and murder. The novel blends genres, Southern Gothic, mystery and historical crime thriller and approximates 300 pages.

 

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PREFACE

            “How far down is Hell?” asked eight-year-old Julian. “Hell is underneath the mortuary,” whispered Athene, “and grandfather is the Devil.”

 

            The problem of evil has confounded prophets, philosophers, and scholars throughout recorded history. What drives humanity to the dark side? Why are human beings capable of boundless dimensions of depravity?

           

             In The Republic, Plato defined man’s all-consuming search for recognition and value as ‘thymos’, a Greek word with no commonly used English equivalent. Nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche concurred, calling ‘thymos’ the very essence of man. Debating the question of evil, Nietzsche proposed a hypothesis: when humans cannot validate their self-worth through acceptance and recognition by others, a primal and indefinable fear is ignited. ‘Thymos’ goes ungratified. Self-loathing smoulders. Anger and indignation fester. The soul crumbles and evil is their revenge.

 

            As a metaphor for this consequential disposition to wickedness, Nietzsche coined a telling phrase, ‘the beast with red cheeks.’ The wounded ‘beast’, stalking the labyrinth of life, shows no mercy and takes no prisoners.

 

            Three generations of the Piccard family carry the tragic strain. From vice-ridden New Orleans in 1906 to tobacco-rich southern Virginia in the thirties, they thrive in the shadows as morticians, pseudo-surgeons, opium dealers, abortionists, high priests in the cult of Onantibi and abductors of the innocent.

 

            Julian the Second tells his scorned and sole surviving son, “Evil is a she-devil, a brazen and bone hungry hussy. Nonetheless, she’s an irresistibly alluring mistress.” 

                                                                                                                                                                           

 

 

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           Chapter One

Sunday, November 19, 1972 Maxwell Military Institute Chastain, Virginia

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            It was becoming a familiar terror. Breath catches. Body shudders. Blood thrums, pulsing with pain where the straps held her wrists. Down the metal stairs. Twelve steps. The rhythmic tick-click of his boots along the tile floor. The slight hesitation before the key grinds into the lock of the steel door.

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             “Hmm-m-m-m.” The hum. His bizarre guttural, ghoulish drone. Menacing, maddening, terrifying.

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            A sliver of light. The whoosh of damp stale air replacing the stench of her own breath and body waste. His flashlight scanned her body. Eyes matted to slits, she struggled to open them. The scratch of the match on his boot. The flickering light of the kerosene lamp forced her to face the soul-chilling reality.

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            She knew. Her life was over.

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            Julian morphed into view beside her cot, the yellow flame reflecting in his black pupils. A sliver of a grin on his face. She could feel the heat radiating from his body. Hear the hum, always the grating discordant hum.

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           His pungent cologne overtook the foul space around her. She remembered the scent from the first time Jude had introduced them. Then it had smelled clean, elegant, expensive.

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            “I do like yer’ after-shave lotion or whatever ‘tis you’re wearin’,” she had said. Now it brought bile to her throat.

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            “From the House of Guerlain, it’s French, you know.” He shook his head, An arrogant smirk on his face. “Most likely, you don’t. It’s called ‘Habit Rouge’. Ma mère, my Mother, bought it for me in New York City.”

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            “I shoulda’ seen, shoulda’ known ya’ for the bastard y‘ere,” she thought.

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           “Hmm-m-m-m.” Julian leaned in close, his scent assaulting her nose. His breath smelled of a meaty lunch. His hum buzzed in her brain.

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           He spoke just above a whisper. “Hmm, lovely Zephyr, my too-ra, loo-ra lassie. Hush now, don’t you cry.” Julian smiled and kissed two white-gloved fingers. He touched them gently to the duct tape covering her mouth. Zephyr shivered. She strained to pull away from his touch. Matted auburn curls fell across her face. Julian sifted the tendrils between his thumb and forefinger as he would a sliver of fine silk, and then tucked the hair behind her ear. He hummed as he stroked her cheek.

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          “Such good bones you have, Zephyr McClane. Ma mere said that high cheek bones created an aristocratic profile.” He smiled again. “She said I had perfect bones.”

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              Julian was in parade dress. “Aye, dear Lord God, has to be Sunday,” she realized. “I’ve been here three days a’ready?”

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             He stepped into the shadows. Shrouded beyond the halo of the flickering kerosene lamp, she watched as he placed his saber on a metal table. He unsheathed his gloves, finger by finger, unhooked his belt and the red sash from his waist and laid everything beside the saber. He methodically unbuttoned each fancy brass button, removed his jacket, folded the braid and buttons within, and placed it neatly on top of the pile. He put on a blood-stained lab coat slowly, reverently, as if he were a priest donning vestments for Sunday service.

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            “Dear God in heaven, I’m missin’ holy Mass, Auntie Moira will be sick with worry and the wee one just born…” Zephyr’s mind whipped back to that Sunday dinner table in Dublin last March, the scents and sounds of her very pregnant Mum, chain-smoking Da, and two younger brothers squabbling on the floor. “Aye, t’was Colin or Dylan had the soggy nappie? Mor’n likely, Dylan.” A sweet, fleeting memory.

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            Turnips had been gurgling on the wood stove. She hated turnips. Potatoes were already cooling in a bowl on the table. Four small yellow apples on the sideboard. Mum had let her have one whole apple for herself that day.

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            “Zephyr, me darlin’,” her father had started. “Yer’ Auntie Moira and husband in America have written back t’us. They’ll be so glad ta’ have ‘ya, special with their first baby comin’.” He reached across the table and tenderly cupped her chin in his scratchy hand. “Zephyr, me girl, you’ll have the good life, the schoolin’, all the things I canna’ give ya’ here.”

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            “No, Da,” she had cried out. She jumped from the chair to embrace her mother. “No. Nay, I canna’ go. Ma, tell ‘im. With the babe comin’, the boys. I-I won’t…”

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            “Poor Da.” She prayed, “God’n heaven, help me Mum, me Da through the agony. They thought they was doin’ the best fer’ me. Mary Mother of God, take me to yer’ lovin’ arms.” She began, “Our Father, who art in heav’n, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…” She fainted.

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           The first cut brought her back. Her half-defiant eyes, no longer capable of tears, stared at him, following his ministrations, his touch, the pressure on her thigh. Her skin, cold, clammy like the seeping walls of her tomb, felt the bite of the scalpel. Held to the cot by restraints across her shoulders and her hips, she no longer fought against the cruelty of his invasion of her body, her soul. Once he began, it was a matter of minutes. She welcomed the pain.

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            Her mind screamed. “I want ta’ die. Please God, please I’m beggin’ Ya’, let me die now.”

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        Humming louder, Julian began repeating the bizarre liturgy she didn’t understand. “Bez-e-li, Bez-e-li, Bez-e-li.” Julian made multiple small incisions on the inside of her upper thigh, drawing his cryptic ‘vévé’, the sacred symbols of Onantibi. She couldn’t lift her head, so she had never seen the shapes he was cutting. She knew they were short strokes and curves. She knew they cut through her skin. After several incisions, he sprinkled a yellow powder and dabbed them with a blood-spattered cloth. Her blood.

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          Julian paused for a moment to check the clear bag of fluid suspended from a bent coat hanger dangling from the ceiling. He flicked the tubing twice with his index finger, checked the needle skewered into her right wrist, and then completed his last three cuts.

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            “Bez-e-li, gran lwa, aksepte kado mwen, tifi vyè. Ban mwen libète [1].” He repeated the incantation over and over. Softer. Slower. He swabbed the cuts and dropped the bloody rag to the floor. From under the cot he brought up a bottle of cloud gray fluid. He uncorked the bottle, released the clamp at the top of the plastic bag and emptied the contents into it.

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           “We all have to make sacrifices, Zephyr. You. Me.” He leaned over her, his face inches from hers. He whispered, “And Jude.” At the mention of his name, she blinked once, tears pooling in the red-rimmed sockets of her eyes.

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           “My preparations have been meticulous, my dear Irish rose.” Julian grinned. The IV connected to her right arm was no longer filled with saline, a life-sustaining liquid. The bulging sac held formaldehyde laced with arsenic, the juice of death.

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          “Lovely Zephyr, I must leave early today.” He removed the lab coat and began the ritual of redressing. Jacket, buttons, sash, saber, and one glove. He stepped into the light and peered into her despairing eyes, now barely open, clotted with mucus. “Do not weep, sweet lassie.” He turned away, and then turned back, “It won’t be long, dear Zephyr, soon you will be in Niflheim [2], cradled in the arms of Morpheus [3], and I will, at last, be free."

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              Redressed and saber in hand, he snuffed the lamp wick with his ungloved hand as he sent her a final, fatal kiss with the other.

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1 Kreyol language of Haiti. “Bezeli, greatest god, accept my gift, virgin girl. Give me freedom.”

2 Niflheim - In Norse mythology, one of the Nine Worlds and the homeland of primordial darkness, cold, mist and ice.

3 Morpheus was the God of Dreams. He could appear in dreams of mortals in any form.