Free Southern Ruby by Belinda Alexandra

breeze playing in your hair. Most of the time these spirits are harmless but there are evil ones too — those who have performed grim and ghastly deeds in their earthly life and want to take you back into hell with them. That is why you must stick with me at all times.’ I touched the talisman of herbs I wore around my neck and affected a shiver.
    The man from New York shot a glance over his shoulder. He didn’t look so smug now. A woman from San Francisco giggled nervously, while the couple from Washington DC huddled closer to each other. I had them in my grasp.
    I walked towards Coliseum Street and the tourists hurried along behind me, no-one wanting to be left behind lest oneof ‘the strange shapes that float around the walls of Lafayette Cemetery’ tapped them on the shoulder and whispered to them, ‘as they are known to do’.
    Although it was the first tour I’d ever run, I made up supernatural experiences that had occurred on my earlier tours. I told them that once when I was walking with a group down Coliseum Street, a little girl joined the tourists and took the hand of one of the women. She bent down to ask the girl where she’d come from, but when the girl opened her mouth to speak water poured out of it. Then she faded away.
    â€˜Good Lord!’ cried a woman from Texas, gripping onto her husband’s arm.
    â€˜That was the ghost of a little girl who drowned in a pond when the Garden District was part of the Livaudais plantation,’ I told the group. ‘Some say she left the house and disappeared into the sugar cane, called by the spirits of slaves who’d been mistreated on the plantation and wanted their revenge.’
    I stroked my talisman again and this time the woman from New York swallowed hard. I could see that the group was entranced — except for two young men from Los Angeles. No matter how many stories I told about dim shapes, apparitions of men in Civil War uniforms, eerie violin music or mysterious carriages that disappeared at dawn, they didn’t look as fascinated as the others. They’re used to the dramatics of Hollywood , I thought.
    When we came to the last house on my schedule and the men still weren’t impressed by my story of the star-crossed lovers who had leaped from its roof and whose heart-wrenching death cries could still be heard on summer evenings, I was ready to admit defeat. Until a pretty Victorian mansion on Prytania Street caught my eye. On my tour, I’d deliberately chosen antebellum houses or ones that were falling into decay, but this house was immaculate and the garden was a magnificent display of spring roses, honeysuckle and day lilies in full bloom. Everyone is unnerved by a creepy house , I thought, but what could be scarier and more unexpected than an angry ghost inhabiting a home as pretty as this one? It occurred to me that the men from Los Angeles didn’t want to be scared, they wanted to be horrified. A story formed in my mind, drawing on Aunt Elva and Uncle Rex as characters. I brought my group to a stop.
    â€˜This is the last house on our tour,’ I said, lowering my voice to an ominous whisper. ‘A couple named Parkinson bought this beautiful home in 1897, but they were unhappily married. He was a kind, generous man, but she was the sort of woman who wouldn’t even spare a few pennies for a limbless Confederate veteran. The couple had a niece whose family had fallen on hard times and whose mother was sick. When the wife found out her husband had been giving this niece money to help with expenses, she became so enraged that she cut her husband’s throat while he lay sleeping, decapitating him.’
    The woman from San Francisco gasped. The others rolled their shoulders or rubbed their necks as if trying to resist prickly feelings of horror. I glanced at the two men from Los Angeles. One of them had his mouth wide open while the other shivered noticeably. I looked down at the