Just as Jo started to break and run, she heard it: another slight squeak from the old gate at the front of the cemetery.
Her heart leapt into her throat as she retreated to the back wall and waited.
An instant after the gate squeaked, the strange man formed straight out of the fog; one minute nothing, the next minute, blue mirrored glasses glinted from the gloom; oversized eyes that saw everything.
The nun heard a noise over her shoulder and spun around quickly—still quite agile for her age—and saw the man at the front of a long row.
The cemetery was formed from long rows of crypts, with a few wide aisles that split the cemetery longways into sections. Several narrower aisles formed horizontal paths and crossed the cemetery in a confusing array of passages.
The nun and the strange man eyed one another. Jo couldn’t be sure, but thought she saw the man twist his head far to one side, as if cracking an old joint, then saw a shiver run through him as he appeared to fade in and out of her vision.
A trick of the fog, surely, she thought.
“Who are you?” the Sister said, trying to control her voice.
The man walked slowly toward her, but trailed outside an unseen circle; an imaginary force that seemed to emit from the nun. He turned right, down a small aisle, and walked out of sight, behind a crypt. They were thirty feet apart, but had several crypts in between them.
“Good evening, Josephine,” the man said. His voice floated across the mist and down the aisles in a staggered, disorienting manner, arriving in her ears at slightly different times. It had the effect of a strange echo, and she heard, “Josephine… …osephine… …osephine…” ripple across her mind.
“Thank you for calling me… …alling me… …thank you… …alling me.”
Jo’s stomach twisted and pushed into the back of her throat. A pungent smell of stress-sweat rose up out of her jacket and assaulted her nose. She felt dizzy. All she could do was lean against the cold wall and watch.
“So, you’ve come to trade, is that it Josephine? …osephine …osephine...
“I hope you’ve brought something good to trade… …something good to… …brought something… …good to trade…”
The man walked from around a crypt and into a slight open area in the middle of the cemetery that joined the aisle where the nun stood. Jo could now see the man and the nun—good versus evil—at the same time. Although, the thought crossed her mind, she wasn’t sure which was which.
He sniffed the air several times, took several more steps toward the nun, and sniffed again. The two circled each other like gunmen at the beginning of a duel.
Raising the cross from around her neck and holding it straight toward the man, she cawed again, “I said, who—”
The man raised his hand and silenced her. They were fifteen feet apart. He leaned forward precariously, and sniffed the air once more, then did a peculiar thing; he licked his lips.
A look of revulsion crossed over the nun’s face as her lips quivered in disgust. “I warn you,” the Crow said, “stay away from me or—”
The man took three graceful steps sideways: slow, deliberate, elegant steps to an unheard melody; a deadly dance hypnotic. He was cutting the angle between Jo and the Crow; Jo was nearly behind him now against the back wall of the cemetery, the Crow straight in front of him.
“Delightful!” he said as he stared at the cross, then broke into a distorted, toothy grin.
The nun swayed slightly, as if nearly fainting, then steadied herself, she had been holding her breath the last several seconds.
“What is this?” she croaked. Looking past the strange man, she glared at Jo. “What have you been doing out here with this… this man?” She took a few steps back.
“I say, that is a rather nasty rash you have there,” the man said, holding a crooked finger in the air. He stuck the finger into his mouth, tasting the air again. “Yes... quite a nasty rash indeed!” His head tilted wildly to the side.
The sister stole a glance at the front of her habit. “How did—” She glared at Jo, anger twisting her dark face. “You vile girl!” she blurted. “You lying, vile little girl! I don’t… I… Oh, you need a session! Yes, that’s what you need, a long session with a certain doctor I know! You and that wretched boy! I’ll send you both off to the asylum for the rest of your long, miserable lives!”
Eddie vibrated beyond capacity. He was a dense magnet pulling in a glorious song of sin and expelling long sighs of ecstasy to his master. He was a dark star with the gravity of a thousand suns. He was a black hole of sin, collecting everything that ever occurred, and once over the event horizon of his mind, he spewed out the tattered remnants of a dark humanity to all who would listen. Those remnants were fragment thoughts from his channel of sin that got mixed with other thoughts that radiated from the minds in the cemetery. These were all important, he felt. He had to collect them all as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t miss a note.
Sin Washing, vile, Sin Washing, Jo, Del, session, the wretched boy, washing, rash, faster girl, faster, Jo, Del, Del, the blank boy, Jo, washing, Del, Del, Del!
The strange man shook his head and waved an old hand in front of his face, as if swatting away a swarm of gnats. The flood of thoughts coming from Eddie had suddenly overwhelmed him, and he was only catching a portion of what Eddie was sending him. Sin Washing, Jo, …wretched rash, girl, …faster, Jo, Del, boy, wash… Del, Del…
Annoyed at the confusing swarm of thoughts, the strange man shut Eddie from his mind until he could finish his trade.
“Josephine, come forward,” the man said.
The Crow countered, “Josephine, you get back to your room this instant!”
The man held his hand out to his side and calmly said, “Josephine, if this is what you have brought to trade, step forward.”
The sister, still not realizing what was happening, watched as Jo walked to the side of the strange man.
“There is a price when making this type of trade, Josephine. Trading in sin is a tricky business, and requires a delicate balance. It is a scale that none can cheat. You will carry a small balance for making this trade, but alas, what is a small price to pay for getting your ultimate wish, eh?”
Jo looked at the man, swallowed hard with a dry throat, and nodded her head quietly.
“Do you give this sin freely in exchange for the undying love of Del?”
“Yes,” Jo said as she dropped an old washcloth into the man’s hand.
A puzzled look came over the Sister’s face as she saw the item; it looked vaguely familiar. Suddenly, a look of horror and understanding spread over her face; the washcloth. It was the washcloth that Jo had used during their last session. The nun felt a deep cold settle over her.
Suddenly, Jo caught a glimpse of movement to her left. The eyes of the beast glowed through the heavy mist; a ragged breath steamed the night air.
How long it had been there she didn’t know, but it was clearly on the hunt.
The beast stalked forward slowly, head low and forward, sniffing the air, eyes unwavering. A slow methodical movement expanded powerful lungs, the hair on the back of its thick neck stood in ragged spikes, a long trail of slobber hung from its jowls, long claws clicked against the cobblestone from behind thick pads.
The mutant Toth, still pinned to its back, appeared to smile from its red-bead mouth as its bead eyes stared out forever.
As the beast raised its head to look at the strange man, Jo noticed something hanging beneath its neck. Connected by a thick strip of leather—from what type of animal Jo couldn’t tell—a small doll hung. Smaller than a child’s doll, but larger than a Voodoo doll, the half-chewed doll of a red-headed woman hung sideways beneath the slobbering mouth; a plaything for a monstrosity. Its matted red hair was caked with mud, one multi-colored eye stuck open like a broken doll. Several toes appeared to have been chewed off.
Jo imagined for a brief second that the doll looked at her, pleading.
A scream formed in th
e nun’s chest, but before it could break forth, two loud barks and a wolfish howl from the beast froze the sounds in her throat.
With one powerful leap the beast covered half the distance between it and the nun and landed in a full sprint. She only had time to shuffle one foot backward, which snagged on an old brick, and in slow-motion she began a slow fall backwards.
As her other leg kicked into the air for balance, the skirt of her habit separated rudely in the air just as the beast landed between her feet and clamped onto her pelvis with the jaws of a demon. Her eyes flew open in embarrassed surprise before the pain of the bite registered in her brain. She was lifted off her feet by the powerful jaws as the first scream gurgled out of her throat. Anchored with powerful claws gripping the bricks, the beast held its prey high. The nun screamed a high-pitched sound of hell and grabbed the back of the beast’s head, trying to relieve the lightning of pain that shot up from her groin. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she gasped in another deep breath and let out a manic wail of sounds that caused her tongue to flop crazily out of her mouth, as if the beast had bitten it loose from within her stomach.
Toth came to life and nearly flew off the needle that pinned it to the beast. The blast of hellish life that traveled out of the beast and up through the needle in its rectum excited the mutant body into motion. Its red-bead eyes stared wantonly under the nun’s skirt as its dead mouth mocked her screams.
The strange man burst into a long, bellowing laugh. With each breath he jammed his walking stick into the ground with delight, cracking the bricks and trembling the dead stone.
The beast shook its prey twice, causing a strange gaggle to emanate from her throat, then with another powerful leap, bounded off into the mist.
Toth swung wildly on the long needle, dead arms and legs flailing about in an uncoordinated mockery of the nuns own flailing limbs. As the unholy trinity bounded into the night, the last thing Jo heard before she fainted was a strange stream of gibberish floating back from the mutant, “...uunngghh, ttagaa bligh nagaa, Ngyihng! Ngyihng! Ngyihng!”
Chapter 46
Thursday
Henri Guillaume pulled up in front of the St. Augustine Transitional Home for Girls at 7:00 am. It had been a very long week already, and Thursday was starting off to be its worst day.
He ascended the steps, but before he could knock, Mama Dedé met him at the door.
“You were expecting me?” Henri said through the screen door.
The big woman eyed him as she sipped at her coffee. “No, but I can smell bacon a long ways away. And you,” pointing her cup at him, “smell like bacon.”
Flashing his badge through the screen, he smiled politely and asked, “May I come in for a minute? I have a few questions I need to ask one of your girls.”
“Who?” she asked, still blocking the door.
“Please, it’ll only take a minute. Del will want to hear dis, I think.”
“What?” Del said from the hall. “Who are you?”
“My name is Henri GeeOHM. I used to work with Frang,” he said, twisting the onyx ring on his little finger. “Something has happened at the orphanage. I wonder if you can—”
“What’s happened?” Del said. “Come in and tell me!”
Henri walked into the front room and looked around dismissively.
Mama Dedé eyed him suspiciously over the rim of her cup.
Henri told the women that three people had somehow gone missing from the orphanage last night: Sister Eulalie, Josephine and Jimmy. No bodies had been found, and no sign of foul-play had been detected. The police where at quite a loss. Henri knew—from the orphanage records—that Del had recently been discharged from the orphanage, and had visited there several times in the last week, visiting Jimmy, which is why he was at the halfway house.
“Jimmy’s missing?” Del said. “How can that be? He wouldn’t go out by himself. He doesn’t even know how to—”
Her mind flashed back to all the times she had helped him squirm out the back window of the coat closet, all the while Jimmy praising her for how smart she was. Her stomach turned sour with the realization that she may be partially to blame.
“Yes? How to what?” Henri asked.
“Nothing,” Del said. “The doors are locked at night. He couldn’t get out without someone’s help. The Crow must have done this.”
Henri waited.
“Sister Eulalie,” she said finally. “Some of the kids call her… the Crow. It’s just a nickname… but what’s being done to find Jimmy? Is there a search party? When will—”
“I see,” Henri said. “A nickname.” He looked around the room again, and after a long pause asked, “Have you seen Frang lately?”
Annoyed, Del said, “Well, just—”
“Who?” Mama Dedé interrupted. “Frang?”
With irritation Henri exaggerated the words: “Frangk Morgan. Have you seen him lately?”
Taking over the conversation, the large woman sipped her coffee slowly. “Oh, da ol’ Glapion detective?” she said. “I ain’t seen Frank in quite a while. A long while. Why?”
“It’s an internal matter,” Henri said. “Some evidence has been misplaced from a case he—”
Henri stopped, suddenly wondering why he was explaining himself to this woman. “Well, you call me if you hear from one of them, yes?” He handed a business card to Del.
“Yes, of course,” she said, grabbing the end of the card.
Still holding onto the other end, Henri tugged Del’s hand to bring her eyes to his. “Larouche? Your last name, it’s Larouche?”
“Uh… yes, that’s right. Why?”
Henri released the card and shrugged. “Sounds familiar, dat’s all. Have a nice day.”
After Henri left, Mama Dedé closed and locked the door and led Del by the hand to the kitchen.
Sitting at the table, she said, “Now listen, honey. I don’t know what happened to those people at da orphanage, but you stay clear of dat man. I—”
“But I have to go find Jimmy! He’s lost! He can’t stay out by himself. He—”
“Now just wait a minute. We got things to do. You gotta get your mind right for—”
“And why did he ask about Frank?”
“Well he—”
“And why did you lie to him about the last time we saw Frank?”
“Well I just—”
“Where is Frank, anyway?” Del asked. “He left yesterday afternoon, but hasn’t come back yet. And what do you think he meant about missing evidence?” Del thought back to the alligator teeth.
“I don’t know, but listen: I got to go out and get some things, you know, for—”
Del had already tuned out the current conversation, thinking about how to find Jimmy. “What? Oh, yes, for the… trap, right?”
“That’s right. Now don’t go out of da house. And don’t let no one in ‘til I get back, unless it’s Frank or Armand. You understand?”
Why is the captain looking for Frank? Del wondered.
“You understand?”
“What? Oh, yes. Lock the doors, blah, blah.”
“‘Blah, blah’?” Mama Dedé said. “Now listen here—”
“Oh, did I say that out loud?” Del said with a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry, I just—”
Mama Dedé was already up from the table.
“I’m runnin’ my errands. You stay put, Miss Blah Blah.”
Surprised amusement crossed Del’s face as she watched the woman leave.
As Mama Dedé shuffled down the hall, Del heard, “‘Blah, blah’ my black ass…” trail back at her.
As soon as Mama Dedé left the house, Del prepared the tea and went to the parlor room. If she couldn’t leave the house, she would find Jimmy another way. She would look for him by trancing.
Mama Dedé had told her that they needed to trance together several more times before Del could do it on her own, but this was an emergency. Besides, Del had done pretty well her first time—exceptionally well, in fact—so
this time would be no different.
The quicker she could find Jimmy, the quicker they could be finished with this Voodoo guy and she could go on with her life.
Even though it was early morning, she had to light several candles. The power was intermittingly going out, and currently it was off again.
She settled her mind and drank the strong tea. She recited the incantation from memory and felt her mind start to expand.
Just like before, she felt the room peel away from her. The walls and floor dissolved. She was suddenly floating in the middle of a bank of white clouds.
This time she noticed the faint colors more quickly; they are different scenes, Mama Dedé had told her. She had to look for different scenes. She wondered how she could find Jimmy in this endless dream-world, but if he was lost or in trouble, she would do whatever she needed to help him. Maybe I need to think of a scene that Jimmy would be in.
She thought of the orphanage.
The orphanage came to her mind in a broken vision; muted tones of gray gave her the sense of where she was, but there were strange flecks of red and blue around the images as well. She remembered Mama Dedé saying something about the red and blue colors, but didn’t recall what it meant. As she looked from one scene to the next, she felt her weightless body tilt and roll slightly according to where she was looking.
As she looked around—not with her eyes, but with the disorienting feeling of movement—she felt on the verge of doing a somersault, as if underwater. When she leaned back in her mind to follow a scene that was unfolding above her head, she felt her entire body tip backwards—as if she were a gimbal spinning on several axes—and she could see a different part of the cloud-image behind her. She noticed subtle color differences here as well, and somehow knew these were scenes she could go and inspect; scenes of what, she didn’t know.
She then thought herself to look at an image to her left and slightly down. Her weightless body pitched forward, and her crossed legs floated under and behind her, tipping her head forward. She was nearly upside down in her mind, but felt right-side up somehow. It was disorienting, but she thought she could control it.
A Grimoire Dark Page 21
