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Part IV: Ghosts of the Past
"Oh, let's not get ahead of yourselves," said Anne, smiling despite herself, "Didn't you see? On the table?"
"What? The second glass? What does..." realization came over her, "Someone else was there, wasn't there?"
"And the lights were on when we got there," Anne nodded, "Someone was there before us. They may even have still been there."
She approached the car, "Now, don't get upset Ton..." she trailed off, "Tony?"
Peering in through the window, she blanched, "Er...Jamie," she turned back to her sister, "He's gone."
"Maybe she had a screw buddy. Lord knows she could use one," Jamie said, before noticing the twink was gone as well.
"You gotta be shitting me. Where did he go?!"
"I give one instruction. One!" Anne fretted, "What do I expect? Six years trying to get rich girls not to text during algebra, why should this be any..."
"Oh, there you are!"
Anne bit back a scream, whirling around in the street, "Where were you?"
Tony stood there, perched on one heel, a long-strapped bag slung over his shoulder, "Why? Missed me?"
"You almost gave us a panic attack," Jamie said, sighing in relief, before she noticed the bag.
"Where'd you get that?"
"Honey, I've been carrying this bag since you found me," Tony blinked, "God, what's with the heart attack?"
"You disappeared, is the heart attack," said Anne, "Where did you go?"
"Oh, well...you're not gonna believe it..."
***
10 MINUTES EARLIER
"So, I'm minding my own business, hanging out in the car, listening to my music..."
"Is love so fragillllle?" he belted out, one earbud dangling out of his ear, "And the heart so hooolllow..."
"And then I see this honest-to-God creeper just slipping out the back door of the house! Like, I didn't think that really happened...
"And I didn't want to follow him, not really, but I figured maybe it was this lady's husband, and I was kinda sick of being sidetracked at this point, so I thought, 'Well, Tone, you've got nothing to lose', and so I followed him. No, I didn't get a good look, but he definitely had some money. You could tell from the wingtips. Anyway, I think he was looking for his car, but he must've parked a ways away. And I'm following and I'm following, and you know what they say..."
"Ooooh...crap!" he cried, sprawled over onto the pavement.
"...don't run in heels. He didn't hear me though, or maybe he did, but he didn't care. He had that kind of energy. Anyway, he's gone. I'm alone, I tried to find him again, and I'm going down the block, and I'm not having any luck, and then..."
"Well, hello, little friend!"
"Jesus!"
"There was this guy."
A six foot tall alabaster-skinned man built like a ballet dancer, clad in a violet kimono, an emerald day hat with a yellow plume, and great glittery whorls painted on his face stood over him.
"I think he was a salesman."
"You look lost!"
"Er...I mean, I guess."
"Well, I know just the man to help you, ma petite!"
"...you do?"
"Beaucoup!"
"Did you, maybe, see this guy come by, he had this nice suit and these fancy shoes..."
"You should present yourself at the Palias de Galdamez!"
"He was really persuasive."
"He'll help you find what you're looking for, or my name isn't mine!"
"But, wait, what is your..."
But he was gone, leaving nothing but a whiff of perfume and the twinkle of glitter in the air.
"Left in a hurry, though."
***
"And that's what happened!" Tony declared, pleased as anything, "See, look, he gave me this card!"
He handed the square placard to Anne, who cocked an eyebrow in bemusement, "Dr. Galdamez's Palace of Peculiarities. I...I don't understand."
"Neither do I!" declared Tony gleefully.
Jamie shook her head in disbelief.
"That's got to be the strangest thing I've heard."
She looked at the card, and back to Anne, "Should we check it out?"
"I..." Anne began, "I'm not sure what one does at a Palace of Peculiarities."
"Well, it's in the neighborhood," he indicated the address on the card, "What, you never heard of it?"
"Never..." Anne turned to him, "And you're sure this wasn't the same man you were following?"
"He wasn't any man I'd ever seen ever," Tony shrugged, "I don't care what you say, I'm going. I've had my fill of dungeons."
"The convent was not a..." but Anne digressed, "Get in the car."
Jamie did so without hesitation.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Is that...Duke Ellington?" Anne asked as the car rolled up in front of the Palace of Peculiarities, a four story structure with a wide collonade in the front, a high terrace, and great sweeping lawns.
Sweeping jazz music was playing from the brightly lit windows of the house, and cars crowded the forecourt, in a perfect spiral around the marble basin of a glorious fountain that spewed...
"Wine?" Tony asked, wide-eyed.
"Marvelous," Anne cut the engine, "I suppose if we're kidnapped, we can't say we didn't know what we were getting to."
"I guess we should go in," Jamie said, shrugging.
Anne took a breath for fortitude, stepping out of the car.
They walked up the long, hedge-lined path to the wide marble steps. There were brass door knockers on the left and ride sides, respectively engraved...
Business and Pleasure.
"So..." Tony began, "Which are we?"
"I would say business. What about you, Anne?" Jamie turned back to her sister.
"Oh, but...but pleasure!" insisted Tony, "I haven't had pleasure in years!"
Anne gave him a look of abject look, sternly knocking the 'Business' side.
"Ooh!" called some voice from within, "Biz-a-nees comes a'knockin!"
"Oh, Merciful Virgin," breathed Anne.
The doors swung open to reveal a dainty, angular creature with a winged hat, a flowery kaftan straight out of the Golden Girls hanging off his shoulders.
"Visitors!" he gasped.
"Uh, yes," said Anne, "Is this the Palace of Peculi..."
"What's going on, Alphonse?" asked another attractive young man, this one wearing a Greek chiton with a tiara of gaudy false moonstones balanced at an awkward angle on his head.
"They're patients for the doctor!"
"Ooh, but do they patience for him?"
"I don't know, Francoise!" Alphonse turned to them, "Do ye?"
"Yes, we do!" declared Jamie.
"Entrez!" cried Alphonse, stepping aside.
The grand entry hall beyond the doors was crowded with men in strange costumes, and some in no costumes at all. Streamers and confetti poured out from some capacious space in the ceiling, never seeming to be exhausted. A scantily clad elderly man in a party ht hunched over a glorious, pure white grand piano, playing the music that echoed out onto the street.
"Oh my God..." began Tony, gawping at the raised dais above the dance floor, where a drag queen was tearing it up to Ellington's 'Take the A Train'. Everywhere they looked was a chorus of sight, sound and spectacle.
Anne found herself placing a hand over Tony's eyes, "What, exactly, is Dr. Galdamez a doctor of?"
Alphone smiled at her sweetly, "My sweet...are you a virgin?"
Anne blinked, scandalized.
"I thought so," he pirouetted on his heel, "Dr. Galdamez is all things and no things."
"Well, I hope he's closer to all than none."
"Right this way!" Alphonse swept off and up the grand stairs.
"What Twilight Zone BS have we stepped into?" asked Jamie, as she followed them up the stairs.
"You are in the veil between twilight and dawn, where possibility is limitless and is is never is not."
Some men skipped past them holding hands, singing in a foreign tongue.
"I think this is a sex club," said Tony in a voice of muted wonderment.
They reached a pair of grand doors on which were engraved a lurid depiction of Dionysus in a bacchanal, surrounded by satyrs (with requisite tremendous genitalia), tigers and nymps. The knobs were engraved fleur de lises.
Holding up a hand, Alphonse lowered his face into a tremendous brass trumpet protruding from the wall and cried out, "Strange wayfarers seek your aid, Your Eminence!"
There was a very long pause after this.
"Is..." Anne began, "I'm sorry, is anybody back there?"
At which point, delicate and delightsome flute music played from the other end.
"He begs your audience!" Alphonse threw the doors open...
Jamie's eyes widened at the sight before them.
Doctor Hector Alonzo Galdamez sat in his chair, dressed in his fine white panama suit, fanned by his dutiful attendants Pierre and Lorenzo. He rested his entrez flute beneath his chin, his fingers wrapping against it.
"My, oh my, oh my, do my eyes lie?" The doctor leaned forward, resting the flute on the table. "A sister, her sister lest your resemblance is a falsity, and a boy in sisterly apparel, all in search of truth, I imagine." He raised his hand, signaling his attendants to cease fanning. Doctor Galdamez rose to his feet and took his jeweled cane, sauntering around his desk.
"Unless you've come fo' the wining and dining," he smiled wide, revealing two gold incisors. "But then you would've knocked pleasure, yes? No, something serious concerns you. So serious, you enter my den, where the mortal intertwines with the ethereal, the flesh with the spirit..." Doctor Galdamez stood in front of the three visitors as Alphonse closed the doors behind them. "...and the normal with the peculiar." He tipped his panama hat and asked politely, "What can I do for you?"
Anne wasn't entirely sure how to respond to anything that had happened in the last ten minutes, much less to the question. Tony, however, spoke up, "Well, one of your beauty boys told me you could help someone who didn't know what they wanted. What, are you a shrink, or something?"
"You...are a doctor, yes?" asked Anne, "It's only, this..." she broke off, her eye settling not-at-all-subtly on Pierre's bulge, "...doesn't seem much like a...traditional medical practice."
"And How has this been kept a secret?" asked Jamie.
"Tradition scoffs at innovation, moan share," Dr. Galdamez purred to the sister, stroking her cheek as he brutally bastardized French. "You and your folk should know all to well." His eyes lit up as he turned to the other darling. "Not a matter of secrecy, girly. We make our presence known. It is you outsiders who choose to ignore the summons." And then to the boy, to whom he beamed somewhat perversely. "Of course, there are people who accept the call, as your friend has. Wise of him, for I sense you are in great need of my talents."
He twirled around, nearly striking the three of them with his cane. "Fortunately, you've come to the right place, as I have traversed the realm that lay in between the real and sir-real for years. I am steeped in knowledge of the normal, the paranormal..." Dr. Galdamez spun back round to face his guests. "...and the abnormal."
"Just so we're clear," said Tony, "This isn't, like, one of those...sex for shillings places, right?"
"No, of course not, this is the most legitimate office I've ever been in," said Anne brusquely, "So...you're one of those...supernatural doctors?"
"I didn't think that was a real thing!" said Tony, "Like, they just made them up for T.V shows and stuff," he gasped, "Oh my God, maybe it's a si..."
Anne headed him off, "May I ask just what credentials one needs to be certified in your...field?"
"A body of work, dear," Dr. Galdamez hummed. "And boy, do I have a body to show you." He clapped his hands. "Pierre!"
Pierre ran to his side.
"Please fetch me...the Blessed Beignet!"
"...what?"
Pierre scurried in pushing a cart with a platter covered by a buffet lid of sorts.
"I present to you my finest work in my years of studying the supernatural," Dr. Galdamez strolled behind the tray. "A Catholic institution way down south in Meh-HE-ko tried to make some bunuelo for a bake sale. We here in swampland know it as beignet. And much to their surprise, they saw a vision within the fried dough! A vision of..." He exhaled what sounded like an orgasmic sigh of relief. "...the Virgin Mary!" With that, Dr. Galdamez lifted the lid, displaying the Blessed Beignet in all its glory!
"I have studied this here beignet for near 15 years now," he explained, lifting the pastry delicately. "This, along with many other crusades into the paranormal, has built my career to what it is today. Now I ask you..." Dr. Galdmaez knelt down to the little boy and presented to him the beignet. "...do you see the Virgin, boy?"
Anne covered her mouth to suppress a retch, "...15 years?" she nodded, "Clearly."
Tony blinked at it, scrutinizing the withered pastry for some kind of clue, "Uh...no."
Dr. Galdamez twirled away from the boy. "Then you don't possess the power!" He placed the Blessed Beignet gently on the platter and covered it up once more. "Return this to the Hall of Mystery, Pierre. Make haste!" The doctor clapped and Pierre was off.
"Now, considering you in fact do not possess my powers, you've come, if not by your volition, by the power of DESTINY, to seek my aid," he sat back down in his chair and steeped his fingers together. "Speak, friends. What can I do for you?"