Grizzly Manor: One

A modern take on Wuthering Heights taking place outside of New Orleans.

The first time I stayed at Grizzly Manor, it was while doing research for my fourth novel, The Afterglow Enigma.  If I was going to write about time travel back to 1920s New Orleans, I surmised that I was going to have to visit the Big Easy and see what all the fuss was about for myself.  After all, countless gothic-novels, television series, movies about vampires, and voodoo, Bourbon Street had to be at least worth a visit. 

I was researching New Orleans, but in order to avoid the masses of exposed women in packs of bachelorette parties and frat brothers drunkenly boasting of the championship-winning LSU football team, I decided to stay out of the city.  The bed and breakfast I’d booked was about an hour outside of the Big Easy, a small town called Bayou Lafourche (pronounced La-Foosh, I learned after getting laughed at by locals half a dozen times), where all of the houses are elevated out of necessity, and most families are in the fishing business out of tradition. 

Its common knowledge that New Orleans is a pearl in the middle of a swamp, but I’m not sure I fully understood what that meant until my flight landed in Louis Armstrong International Airport at dusk.  The lights orange flickered against the purple sky, above the marshes like fireflies as we made our descent.  I picked up my car from the single rental service in the two-terminal airport and made my way out of New Orleans.

There is one important detail about the Big Easy which everyone I spoke to about my trip failed to mention.  I had heard of the gumbo, the hand grenades (not the weapon, but rather a toxic beverage with more alcohol then I’d care to guess), the First Church of the Patron Saint Drew Brees, but no one warned me about St. Louis Cemetery.  The city of New Orleans is not only built on a swamp, but its small airport is wrapped around one of the most vast and recognizable cemeteries of all time.  Up until I was leaving the airport, I had assumed that Interview With A Vampire was filmed in a studio.  I was wrong.  To get in or out of the airport, one must drive through this enormous graveyard.  As if this idea wasn’t eerie enough, since Louisiana is such depressed ground, bodies cannot be buried.  Rather, the departed are laid to rest in concrete mausoleums, above ground.  Perhaps I should have been aware of it already, but I wasn’t, and it was an unpleasant surprise, and I must admit that, even as a married mother of three, a woman far too old to be scared by things that go “bump” in the night, I drove out of New Orleans ill at east, glad to be leaving St. Louis 1 behind.

Despite the constant insisting from my three teenage sons, I am not as well-versed in popular culture as I should be.  To be fair, however, I’m certain that even if I was, I would still be unaware of Garrod “Grizz” Lee’s proprietorship of my chosen bed and breakfast, Grizzly Manor.  As I followed the voice of my GPS, which was thankfully soothing after my haunting route out of the Crescent City, I turned into a gravel drive of what must have been the one house in Bayou Lafourche not elevated on stilts.  Rather, Grizzly Manor sits atop a large hill, looking every bit the old, colonial house of Vincent Price films.  Night had fallen and a fog, not uncommon in the Bayou, had settled around the lower level of the hotel.  It took more than one reminder that I was not staying at the Bates Motel to get me out of the car.  Assuring myself that the jitters I was feeling were just residual from St. Louis, I shrugged my duffel over one shoulder and opened the front door of Grizzly Manor.

Author's Note

This is a modern re-telling of Wuthering Heights that takes place in various places around Louisiana. It was hard to work out because Wuthering Heights actually has a really odd narrative structure. Any and all comments are appreciated, and if you have questions or anything is unclear please don't be afraid to say so.