Aidez-moi, mes amis?

[icarus_chained]

I wish to post a test for a story I am writing, based on a dream I had years ago. The Green Lady. There is even a picture (bad) of her in my room. I wanted to write the story, but I need help with the voice. I wondered if you could help me?

In particular, those of you from Southern US, particularly Louisiana or the southern reaches of the Mississippi. At the minute, I think the voice is hovering somewhere between Louisiana bayou, Haitian vodoun, and the vampire myths of the Verdonnes in France. Maybe it will do, maybe I need to aim more in one direction or another. Maybe I'm off altogether. So if any of you could advise me on this, I would be grateful. *bows head*

The Lady of Belle Verte

 

Ah, mes petits! Welcome, welcome! You are here for the story, non? Come, sit. Be welcome.

My name is Antoine Juseque. I was born, oh, a long time ago. Well before you, my little ones, mes enfants. The world has turned and turned again, since I first saw the light of day and knew the sweet kiss of the air. And it will turn another time, before I leave. This much has been promised me, by the Baron himself, so I know sure it is true. But hush. You are not to know that.

You ask for a tale. A tale of demons, and loa, and the night-walkers who defy all natural order? Or perhaps a tale of passion, of love and blood and honour and battle? Or better yet ... perhaps both. Oui. Both indeed, for I know such a tale. A tale of terror and horror and blood. A tale of life and death, of love and decay, of a man and his lady. Oh, such a lady! Mais oui, you approve, I see. Yes. I will tell you this.

It was many years ago, though for such creatures as these that matters little. Many years gone, when I was young, and fresh to my service. Innocent, perhaps, if ever I could lay claim to that sweet state. Certainly inexperienced. Bah! It is always true. A man must live before he may learn, and in truth I had yet to live. I was an arrogant man, a follower of the Baron Le Croix, rich and fresh and solitary. Alone, always, back then, for I trusted no-one.

I came to the town of Belle Verte in search of the night-walkers, like many others. It was the most famous horror story in those days, the most heady test of nerves and virility. It was told, you see, that the township of Belle Verte had been plagued by Les Jeunes, the River Boys, creatures of corruption and decay to nauseate the strongest of stomachs. Fearsome, they were. Mounds of flesh, white and heaving, glister-pale in the moonlight. A sight to soil your eyes. But worse again, terrible, was the stench of them. The sweetrot, the smell of the dying river. It clung, that smell. Always. If they touched you, if they laid their clammy, corpulent hands upon you, you were marked until death by that stench. Men who were touched by their hands ... they did not die well. Rotted, they were. Touched inside by disease that melted their hearts to blood, turned their bones to water. Those men, they died in pools of their own selves, rotted from the inside out. A terrible death.

You make faces at me. You say, "He lies! There is no such creature, no such death!" But you are wrong, mes enfants. You are wrong. Les Jeunes were very real, and may be yet. It is hard to destroy a River Boy, for they are rotted already, dead already. Decay is their existence, and anywhere it flourishes, so too will they. And Belle Verte, she was a swamp town, settled where the great riverboat once sank, raised on the site in memory of her. River and bayou and town, they were all the one, all touched and threaded through with the rich miasma of life-death that characterises such places. The crossing places, such towns, and decay is never far away.

So. They were real. But if this is true, you ask me, if Les Jeunes were real and plagued the town, why did her people not leave? Why did others come, seeking such a death? A terrible death, with no glamour, no honour. Who would seek such a thing?

Ah, but we did not. Only madmen came seeking such things, though there were enough of them, it is true. But the rest of us, and the people of the town ... Les Jeunes drew eyes to Belle Verte, but there was more to the town, far more. A richer history, a more glamourous terror. The River Boys were news, this is so, but the true excitement came from elsewhere. It was rumoured, you see, that there were night-walkers in Belle Verte. It was rumoured that there were Vampyre.

And now you laugh. Out loud, you laugh at me. "Vampyres! Hah! Tell us another, Papa Juseque!" Bah! Attention!

The Vampyre exist. I know. I have hunted them, run from them. Even, once, been fed upon by them. See here? You see the scar? Oui. They are real, and deadly, and it was in search of them that I was drawn to Belle Verte. Young and fierce and thirsty for my revenge. I came for Vampyre, one of dozens, because Les Jeunes had woken an older evil in Belle Verte, challenged a deeper authority, and the townsfolk had declared it freely. This Vampyre, you see, the blood-sucking lady of the swamp and her dark lover ... she was their loa. Their protector. The Green Lady, they called her, La Belle Dame Verte, like the town, and her wrath would fall upon those who threatened her people. She would see their suffering, the pain of her supplicants, and she would cleanse the town of the creatures, wipe out Les Jeunes entirely.

And we, myself and the others, we meant to catch her doing so.