Greek themes were prominent in Epicurus costuming, no doubt in observance of its namesake, the philosopher. Aside from the identification of his name with the pursuit of pleasure and the refinement of taste, Cree didn't know anything about Epicurus, and she suspected that most krewe members didn't either. But it gave license for lots of togas, beards, and dusty wigs. Here was a photo of Bradford wearing a toga and a crown of laurel, looking more Roman than Greek as he tipped his head to drink lustily from a flagon.
She moved on to the next file, "Epicurus 1955." This held more of the same and even included a small, sequined face mask pressed flat among the papers. Her fingers skipped through, piece by piece, impatient for the revelation that had to be here.
For the parades, all participants wore costumes appropriate to whatever theme had been chosen for the year, but for the private parties and balls leading up to Fat Tuesday, individuals wore widely diverse costumes. In the early sixties, the styles of Epicurus seemed to evolve: 1962 showed a preference for decadent movement figures like Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley. Later still, maybe as sixties trends caught up with the krewe, the costumes became more widely varied. There were a few hedonistic-looking psychedelic rock stars. Brad settled into a few years as a pirate, maybe Jean Laffite. Ron entered the scene as a ghastly child Nero, with toga and fiddle. Richard spent two years in the early sixties as some fat chef: a face mask with ballooning red cheeks, a towering mushroom hat, white clothes stuffed with pillows – presumably some icon of the pleasure principle.
From the materials here, she could see it was just as Paul had explained: A krewe was little more than a party club. You got together every year at Carnival to have parties and balls and parades, culminating in the extravagances of Fat Tuesday. Each year the krewe's activities were presided over by a king, chosen by the membership; from the records, Cree could see that Richard had been king of Epicurus several times. To be chosen krewe king was a mixed blessing, apparently, because along with the honor came the obligation to pay for everything: The files for years when Richard had been king included ledgers for the money he spent on lavish feasts, the best booze, exotic entertainments, and ostentatious decorations. One newspaper article suggested that though Rex and Comus were still the most prestigious krewes, Epicurus was the most expensive to belong to – due, apparently to the obligations of providing a truly epicurean standard of feasting and entertainment.
Cree came to the end of the second drawer and went on to the third. She leafed through 1967 and 1968, and then came up short. The back of the drawer was empty. The files from 1969 onward were missing.
Of course! she realized. Charmian would have taken them away before Lila moved back into the house. Cree knuckled her head, furious at her own stupidity. This had all been a waste of time. Of course Charmian would have been several steps ahead.
On the off chance there was something more to discover here, she retrieved the fireplace tools and went to work on the second cabinet. The locking mechanism of this one was more stubborn, and eventually she just broke away half of the top drawer. She ripped away the oak slab and shined her flashlight inside. It was empty. Knowing it was pointless, she reached inside anyway and managed to release the lower drawers. They were empty, too.
That the crucial years were missing half proved her guess, but half wasn't good enough.
In frustration, she almost pitched the poker across the room. Clearly she wasn't going to find records for the year she was really interested in. It would have been 1971, maybe 1972, she figured, when Lila had been raped by someone wearing a boar-head mask.
30
It was close to midnight by the time she turned off the lights and locked the storage room door. She headed down the hall, trying to loosen joints that had grown stiff with immobility and tension. The adrenaline high she'd maintained since her epiphany on Decatur Street had kept her tense enough to scream for more than three hours.
She'd made it all the way to the kitchen before she realized there was a sound in the house.
A voice, whimpering. Not weeping, but beyond weeping: the convulsive, involuntary utterances of an injured person. A woman's voice.
Lila! Cree ran down the dark central hall, following the sound, and stopped to listen again from the entry hail. It was clearer there, the sound of devastation. From upstairs.
Cree took the steps two at a time, turned at the landing, and came into the central room.
"Lila?" she called. She groped until she found the light switch and flipped it. The big room filled with the dull yellow of the chandelier, the doorways dark rectangles all around. "Lila, it's Cree. You shouldn't have come here. This isn't safe. We've got to get you out of here."
There was no answer, just the continuing squelched exclamations of misery. It was a wet sound of breathy exhalations and throaty vocalizations, ragged grunts and sobs, arrhythmic, constricted, forced. Hard to tell where it was coming from. Cree stopped to listen, and suddenly the awful quality of the whimpering suddenly made sense. Not an injured person. A person being injured, right now.
A woman being raped.
"Lila, where are you?" Cree shouted. She moved to the head of the hallway and thought the sound was louder here. Lila had to be in one of the rooms down the hall, the master bedroom or maybe the room she'd occupied as a child.
She ran down to the master bedroom, turned into it, slapped the light switch. No one. Now the whimpering seemed to come from behind: the other bedroom! She raced across the hall, flung open the door, and looked in. Nothing. No one.
The noise stopped.
Cree stood still again just outside the room, looking up and down the hall, confused. "Lila?"
The ceiling light in the central room went out, leaving it a cavern at the end of the hall.
"Lila?" she called toward the dark rectangle.
(‹ Lila?" an echo came back.
The voice sickened her. It was a parody of her voice, a man's voice straining to reach a woman's range. It was mocking her fear and concern, ridiculing her, taunting her.
At the end of the hall, thirty feet away, just where the lighted corridor met the shadow of the big room, down on the floor: two brown shoe tips.
Suddenly Cree felt him, all around, the gnarled malevolent affect lit with manic glee and lust. His mental weather closed around her suddenly and completely, suffocatingly close. It was a trap, she knew instantly, a reprise of a long-ago game of predation and terror. Without knowing it, she'd fallen into Lila's role.
And the anguished, injured whimpering – that had been a ghastly parody, too, the monster mimicking and belittling the sounds of his victim's suffering.
(‹ Lila?" the parody voice jeered again. u Lila?" Taunting her, savoring her terror.
Still frozen with horror, Cree could see now that there was something above the shoe tips: yes, the edge of coarse fabric, rising and falling with his breathing. And above that, at head height, something else. Glistening skin beneath coarse bristles. The side of his face.
The awful cheek moved. ^(‹ Lila?" The voice had changed subtly, not so much a sadistic parody any more. "Lila?" Now he seemed to be just calling the name of his victim, twisting the nuance so the implicit threat was clear.
Cree heard the name as if it were her own, and maybe it was, maybe she had become Lila to a sufficient degree that she could draw him as Lila did.
The bristles moved as he turned his head. And there was the snout, just visible around the corner, and then the snout inched forward until the mouth and then the eyes came around. The mouth was wet and red, and the eyes were bright and small and gleeful as they fixed her. The nostrils hissed with his excited breathing.