The Dead Debutante
No one ever even went near the ramshackle house on the Rue Dumaine. No one "normal," that is, especially at night. Once the sun went down in the French Quarter, it was said the ghosts of long ago came out to play. Antebellum debutantes, Confederate captains, and Reconstruction carpetbaggers were all seen by psychics and normal people alike. On that very street, in a house now covered by bougainvillea, before the War Between the States, lived the most fashionable debutante of the time, Jeanette Boudreaux.
The tourists in their mismatched T-shirts and shorts came from all over to tour her house; but no one, not even the tacky tourists, dared go to the room where her body was found. The legend said that on the night of her coming-out ball, Jeanette was found brutally strangled in her dressing room by her escort for the evening, Charles Laveau. It was also known by all people that Laveau was hanged for Jeanette's murder. His spirit walked the streets of the Quarter, muttering, "I was framed." The ghost of Jeanette haunted her house, ready to exact revenge on her actual murderer.
In one group of the tourists was a young teenage girl, around fourteen years of age. She was dressed in regulation tourist clothing, red shorts with a faded pink Hawaiian-print T-shirt. She had chestnut-brown hair and brown eyes, and she looked remarkably like the portrait of Jeanette's sister, Claire, hanging in the foyer. Lucinda's mother had even said, "Lucinda, you look a bunch like that there picture," in her Midwestern twang.
Lucinda, a very curious and bored girl, followed the rest of the tour into the kitchen, sulking and grumbling about the "stupid, stupid tour." Out of spite, she decided to stay in the kitchen when the rest of the tour left the room. Suffering from jet lag, she fell asleep within minutes after leaning against the antique stove.
She slept for a few hours; it was well after sundown when she awoke to the rumbling of thunder and the whistling of wind that signaled an approaching storm. After blinking and yawning a few times, she headed to the foyer to leave. Before she was within five feet of the door, the lock turned by itself, leaving her locked in a dark house.
Behind her, Lucinda heard a floorboard creak, and she whirled around in fear. Before her was a glowing, gleaming apparition clothed in a nineteenth-century dress of white. A horrible howl emerged from the blue-tinged lips. "Claire, you killed me."
Lucinda started gibbering and praying. "No, I'm not her. I'm Lucinda." She continued this even as the apparition's insanely strong hands clasped around her neck. As Lucinda breathed her final breath, the door unlocked and the sky cleared.
A tour guide found Lucinda the next morning. The guide was hysterical when she called the police and babbled about the body. Beneath an article about a pumpkin-growing contest on page seven, the Times-Picayune ran the story, "Ghost of Debutante Strangles Third Victim in Five Years."
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