I entered her name, estimated her date of birth, and then entered “New Orleans” into the search parameter. Then I clicked “Search.” My query returned another long list of names but the closest matches were at the top, so I clicked the first listing. It returned a census from 1940 and I clicked the link to find out more. I was taken to a page that listed other residents who were at the same address on the day the census was taken. They included Esther Jennings, my grandmother, who was listed at the time of the census as being eighteen years old; Myra, who was listed as being twelve years old; and Sarah Laumann Jennings, who was listed as being forty years old. I could only imagine that Sarah was both Myra and Esther’s mother. And for some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint, the name Sarah Laumann Jennings seemed familiar to me.
I noticed in the upper right-hand corner of the page, I could click a link that would take me to a scanned copy of the census from 1920 so I did just that. It returned a handwritten document that was difficult to read. I scanned the myriad names scribbled down until I reached the line with the Jennings. Further studying it, I learned that Sarah was, indeed, the mother of Myra and Esther. Furthermore, there didn’t appear to be a head of household, aka a man, in the picture. Instead, there appeared a “D” as a line item next to Sarah’s name, which meant she had been divorced. The census also noted that Sarah apparently owned her home.
I clicked the next census, which was from 1960, and learned that in that year, only Myra had lived with Sarah in the house I now called my own. According to the records of history, my grandmother, Esther, had married John Clark and had had my mother.
“Sarah Laumann Jennings,” I said to myself, shaking my head as I tried to figure out why the name sounded so familiar to me. Maybe my mother had mentioned my great-grandmother in one of our very rare discussions about her side of the family?
I opened another browser window and typed Sarah’s name into Google. What Google returned made my breath catch in my throat.
“The Axeman and the unsolved murders that terrorized New Orleans,” I read. My heart now pounding in my chest, I clicked on the link and scanned the page until I reached Sarah’s name and came to learn that she’d indeed been one of the victims of the Axeman:
Wednesday, September 3, 1919, marked the day a young woman, living alone, was attacked by the Axeman. The nineteen-year-old woman, named Sarah Laumann, was assaulted in her bed by a man wielding an axe. She sustained several head wounds but survived and recovered from her attack at Charity Hospital. She could offer no description of her attacker other than that he came in the dark and appeared as a dark and shadowy figure. A bloody axe was found in the grass just at the rear of Sarah’s back door.
I took a deep breath and brought my eyes to the ceiling as I ran my hand through my hair and realized what this meant—I was related to one of the victims of the Axeman. Sarah Laumann had been my maternal great-grandmother and from what I could glean, she was also one of few survivors of the Axeman’s attacks.
There was the connection Christopher had told me to find. But there was one piece to this puzzle that still didn’t make any sense to me—how Sarah Laumann had ended up purchasing Drake’s home. Figuring the Internet would lead me to my answer, I opened yet another new tab and entered my address as a search parameter.
The first responses were mainly real estate–related sites offering house values and the like. Once I noticed a link purporting to be a listing of public property records, I clicked on it. The first line item referenced my taking over ownership of the house but previous to that, it appeared the house had only changed hands once before—in 1969, when it appeared Myra took over ownership from Sarah. But prior to that, there wasn’t any other information. I figured it was because the information predated the available public records. It was something that would probably require a trip to the courthouse.
Instead, I returned to Ancestry.com and continued researching Sarah Laumann, learning that she died in 1969 at the age of sixty-nine. When my head started to ache from information overload, I turned the computer off and decided to give myself and my research a rest for the time being. What I really needed to do now was establish the connection between Drake and Sarah, and the easiest way to do that was to discuss the subject with Drake himself. But, of course, that would have to wait until later tonight when I went back to my house and went to sleep. Something that didn’t exactly fill me with the warm and fuzzies.
“Drake!” I yelled his name as soon as I recognized my surroundings. I was in the dining room, only it was the way it had looked in 1919. I found myself alone and seated at the end of a long, rectangular wooden table. I immediately stood and started for the hallway, barely even registering the pain when I rammed my hip against one of the chair backs.
The hallway was empty. An errant breeze fluttered the white gauze curtain that hung alongside the window at the end of the hall, exposing the pristine gardens below. But I wasn’t interested in any bygone view. I needed to find Drake.
I sailed down the hallway, feeling as if I were flying rather than running. The impact of my footsteps on the hardwood floors was loud and echoed through the house, reminding me that I was the only one in it. The first doorway I reached was the kitchen. Peering in, I saw it was empty, so I continued down the hall until I reached the next door. Pushing it open, I found a room full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, stocked neatly with leather-bound volumes of what I assumed were the classics. In modern times, this was my laundry room. Somehow, I preferred it as a library.
A lone ladder was attached to the bookshelf and stood at the far corner of the room. There was a fire blazing in the hearth, the smell of wood smoke and warm leather somehow comforting.
“Bonjour, ma minette,” Drake said from where he reclined on a brown leather settee in the middle of the room. His voice sounded as stricken and exhausted as he looked. His head was propped up on a pillow and a dark-brown blanket covered the lower half of his legs, which were motionless. Blue plaid pajama pants peeked out from underneath a blanket that matched the navy blue of his loose-fitting robe. It did little to cover what I could see of a very well-defined chest, lightly peppered with dark-brown hair. When my wandering eyes returned to his face, I noticed he appeared to be suffering from the flu or something. But I was acutely aware that the reality was far worse than just a simple virus. As ridiculous as it sounded, his soul was in jeopardy, not his life.
“Drake,” I said, choking on his name as I approached him. I kneeled down so our faces were level. “What’s happening to you?”
He cleared his throat before taking a deep breath, which seemed to sap all his energy. “Je perds. I am losing,” he responded quickly, shaking his head as if he were angry over it.
I reached for his hand, which felt ice-cold when I touched it. I massaged his fingers and smiled at him, hoping I could invigorate him and breathe some warmth back into his bluish countenance. “I won’t let this thing beat you,” I said with steely resolve, feeling my words echoing through me.
Drake shook his head like he appreciated my enthusiasm but wasn’t buying it. Then he gave me a quick but pained smile before he eyed the ceiling and seemed to zone out. It was another few seconds before he spoke. “I still cannot see what this being, or thing, is,” he said slowly, but I could see the confusion in his eyes just as clearly as I heard it in his tone. “But it feels as if it grows stronger with each passing second.” He took another deep breath and fell silent for a few more seconds as if speaking took everything out of him. “And with each moment, I grow wearier, plus faible…weaker.”