Haunted Mansion- Freddie the Bat

For any of you who are not readily familiar with the residents of Gracey Manor, George Gracey Jr. was the last in his family to claim power over the house. His lifelong friend and companion was Madam Leota D'Thave, a Gypsy witch and Medium that presides over her seance in the Mansion to this day.
Freddie's grave marker is found in the pet cemetery.

FREDDIE the Bat 1847

WE'LL MISS YOU

            This episode is horrible, shocking and terribly sad. It tells of innocence lost and rites of passage. Who can say how the public discovered it? For while two were there, only one survived. And she doesn’t share her secrets.    

Freddie was the childhood pet of Madam Leota. When he passed away, the 10-year-old girl seemed oddly happy, practically elated at the event. This alone helped to establish an aura of detached cruelty which followed throughout her life.

            In the cosmopolitan village of New Orleans it was not unusual to see French Aristocrats, British sailors, Spanish traders, Creole servants, slaves, drunks, priests and beggars all taking the afternoon sun together. In some paradoxical way it formed the city more than brick and mortar. Only in this place could a boy descended from French kings and English pirates fall in love with a girl of unknown heritage; the daughter of a witch.

            During the French Revolution New Orleans was in the hands of the Spanish Crown. Hundreds of wealthy landowners fled to the new world in hopes of avoiding Robespierre and his shiny toy. Among their number was a distant but known cousin to the King named Jean Bertrand de Burgundy. He and his entourage had left immediately upon the storming of the Bastille and wasted no time in establishing themselves in Louisiana. He was generous with his very considerable wealth, apart from lands, which made the Spanish much more welcoming than they might otherwise have been.

            Jean’s great-grandson, Frederic, was by all accounts a good boy. Born in America and loyal to this land, he was very different from his fathers. One part of his heritage he rejected above all others: preeminence. Freddie, as he called himself, refused to believe that his birth made him better than the next man. He endured countless beatings for playing with the sons of “ordinary” people. Perhaps this, and his natural stubbornness, was what led him to fall deeply in love with a certain Creole girl.

            At 13, Freddie was sensing the change to adulthood. He began to notice beautiful women and wonder about their secrets. One day he happened to be walking by Le Bat en Rouge, a shop in the darker corner of town. A tall, thin but already stunning young girl stood in its doorway. He had seen her many times about town and now he was possessed with the need to discover her.

            “Hello, what might your name be?”

            Her eyes lifted and resembled nothing less than a cobra about to strike. She coolly examined the young suitor before speaking, “My name’s Leota. I live here with my mother. She’s a powerful woman.”

            “Powerful? No woman is powerful.”

            “Oh, yes she is. Would you like to come in and see how great my mother is?”

            Freddie showed fear of nothing in that omnipotent way of young men.

            “Sure, I’m not scared.”

            The truth was that he felt plenty of fear, but the vision of this girl had filled his heart so that there was room for little else. In his deepest counsels he vowed to marry her someday. He boldly stepped forward, pushed open the door and strode through. The girl’s face hardened and a deadly whisper escaped her lips, “You will be”.

            The main room was filled with an extravagant mixture of art, natural history, trinkets and miscellanea. Everywhere the boy looked he could recognize, even with his limited knowledge, paraphernalia of the occult. Severed hands, bottles of eyeballs and dried weeds of numerous types hung from the ceiling. On the wall rested several paintings including a ship whose sails tore and mended before his eyes.

            “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to a large box in the far corner.

            “Oh, Mamma says that is special. It is the Cabinet of Choices. Nothing good comes from there.”

            As Freddie wandered the shop he became less confident and just a bit uneasy with this girl who had so taken his heart.

            “Tell me, Freddie, do you like ghost stories?”

            “Sure, I can spin a yarn with the best of them.”

            “Let me tell you a story…Once upon a time there was a woman. She had the power to control storms…” suddenly lightening cracked outside the window, “she could understand the animals,” a hoard of rats appeared from behind the wares while a raven cawed shrilly from its perch atop a human skull, “she could even take men’s souls.”

            A chill stole over Freddie’s heart and he began to look nervously for the door. Meanwhile, Leota began to stroke the failing body of a vampire bat, its huge eyes staring in eternal pain.

            “Mother once told me that only through strength could you get what you wanted. That weak and scared people served the powerful. And most of all, men were to be used and never trusted.”

            “I…I don’t think that’s right. Doesn’t everyone have the right to…?”

            “They have the rights WE give them Freddie.” A scowl crossed Leota’s face and she stamped her foot on the floor. “I’m not having fun anymore. Why can’t you just play the way I want? It’s time for you to go away.”

            A quick flip of her wrist and a beckoning gesture caused the lad to start. He clearly saw Leota’s hungry leer and flashing eyes before suddenly feeling the queerest sensation. His soul began to be crushed. Smaller and smaller it collapsed until, infinitesimal; he barely felt existence at all. It seemed as if a huge gash opened in the top of his head and the spirit of Frederic de Burgundy, heir to the Throne of France, lifted from its mortal coil. His freedom was short-lived.

            Immediately he was cast into the form of the dying bat. Freddie awoke with a shudder to the pronounced screaming of his own voice. But what a voice! A high sonic blast which echoed about the room and returned to him a thousand fold. He was stuffed into a body many times too small and utterly foreign. Wings! He had wings and was terrified of them. He tried to run but only flopped to the side and off the shelf. He flapped and struggled with this body which obeyed him little. “Daddy, I want my daddy!!” he cried but none could understand his pleas. None save the architect of this horror.

            “Are you scared now Freddie? Good.” Leota’s arrogant demeanor was a stark contrast to her cherubic face. “Stupid boy, I would never have married you. I have a much greater destiny. But, I must say thank you. You have helped me master this power. Momma says it will be very useful someday.”

            But Leota had not mastered the spell. Freddie died within a few short agonizing weeks. Every day he begged for his release until Leota simply shut him up in a closet and forgot all about him.

            Later, in her brief triumph of moving into the mansion, Leota memorialized her first victim by giving the bat a place in the pet cemetery. She marked his grave with 1847, the year she crossed the threshold and became powerful.