American Gothic by Michael Romkey

cobblestones with a rhythm that gave Peregrine an odd feeling in the hollow of his stomach, a strange sensation of weightlessness. The driver tugged at the reins, stopping beside Peregrine. He continued to stare straight ahead. The buggy was empty.
    “Excuse me,” Peregrine said.
    The driver kept his eyes forward as if in a trance.
    A voice from within silently commanded Peregrine to get into the buggy. He resisted, thinking that there was no rational reason for such an impulse.
    “Did she send you for me?” he said at last.
    Still the driver did not respond. Perhaps he was deaf. The horse stamped and shook its head.
    Peregrine put his hand on the door. He expected some reaction as he opened it, but the ancient driver gave no sign he was aware of Peregrine’s existence. Peregrine climbed in and sat back against the leather seat.
    “I am ready,” he said. “Take me to her.”
    The driver showed no sign that he had heard, yet he snapped the reins, and the buggy began to move, taking Peregrine further into the mystery.
    The hour was approaching midnight and few were still about.
    They drove up and down streets threading through the Garden District. If there was a destination, Peregrine could not divine it. Their course seemed to be entirely random, sometimes backtracking over the same streets they’d traveled earlier. Peregrine settled back into the comfortable leather and fell into a dreamy reverie, content to watch the passing scene and wait for whatever the night would bring him.
    The Lafayette Cemetery passed by on the left, the graveyard surrounded by a brick wall. Inside were the aboveground crypts, a walled neighborhood within a neighborhood where the residents were all dead.
    After a long while—Peregrine could not be sure how much time had elapsed—the carriage turned onto Chestnut Street and stopped in front of a house where a spirited party was going on despite the increasing lateness of the hour. Golden light filtered through the well-tended plants and trees partly screening the house from the street. Peregrine made out a square Italianate villa, with four columns upholding the gallery that divided the structure’s two stories, three crowning dormers barely visible from the street. Intricate ironwork prevented people from falling from the gallery, the same pattern repeated in the fence atop the low stone wall surrounding the property. Tall windows ran from floor to ceiling, each framed with black shutters that could be closed against the hurricanes that blew off the Gulf. Piano music spilled from the house, something by Beethoven, Peregrine thought as the music concluded to the sound of enthusiastic applause and a few cheers and cries of “bravo.”
    The elderly driver climbed down from his seat without bending his spine, his back stiff with age. He opened the carriage door for Peregrine.
    “Thank you,” Peregrine said.
    Not the faintest flicker of acknowledgment passed across the old man’s yellow eyes. The driver turned and climbed back into his seat, maintaining what might have been a religious vow of perpetual silence. As the carriage began to move away from Peregrine, a trill of female laughter came from within the house. There was something odd about the high-pitched laughter—a tone that was brittle and uncontrolled, hilarity bordering on the hysterical, mirth mingled with an equal measure of madness.
    Peregrine knew it then: he had found her.
    The iron gate closed behind him with a metallic rattle. Peregrine went up the stairs toward where a woman reclined in a wicker chaise longue on the porch near the entrance. She was young, curls of red hair framing a heart-shaped face. Her eyes were shut. She could have been asleep or dead. Peregrine thought about pushing back her hair to see her neck, but if he did and found wounds over her jugular vein, what would it really prove?
    A servant in livery opened the door.
    “Good evening,” Peregrine said. The man looked past him. “Is your mistress at