9 Tales From Elsewhere 9

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  Jane saw Ernie sipping cocktails at the bar. Bruce talked with Carter at the grill. Each turned at her approach and waved and smiled and beckoned. And Mandy stood at the edge of the diving board, looking radiant and smiling and waving at Jane right before she dove.

  THE END.

  SNAKEBIT by Sasha Janel McBrayer

  From the unpaved parking lot, Minerva’s Diner glinted like a beacon. Best peach cobbler in Georgia. The coffee was also good, which served Special Agent Scott Perseus well. After a dozen car trips from D.C. to the tiny, rural town of Kisstheknee, Georgia, strong coffee had become worth its weight in gold.

  He stretched as he emerged from the rental car. The heat of the midday sun and rhythmical shrill of the cicada’s song had grown familiar by now, but there was also a sticky sense of anticipation buzzing on the humid air.

  Perseus felt closer to her than ever before. This could be the day, he thought.

  The little bell rang as he entered the diner. He removed his sunglasses and folded them into his shirt pocket. Two different patrons nodded his way and he felt obliged to return the gesture, first to the sun-burned farmer in overalls, and then to the husky woman wiping the leaky nose of one of her four, yellow-haired offspring.

  “Special Agent,” Miss Minerva said from behind the counter, a pot of black coffee in her hand and a bright red apron tied around her waist. “GO DAWGS!” was scrawled across it in white letters.

  Perseus liked Minerva. Her long, thick, gray hair obscured mirth and wisdom, which she doled out as easily as bottomless cups of Joe. He wanted to say something to make her smile, but on his left he noticed the figure of a man seated with his back to them. The figure tensed up like a fist at the moment Minerva greeted Perseus.

  “Miss Minerva,” Perseus said curtly. She was canny, the establishment’s owner, and Agent Perseus knew she would recognize that he was in work mode. He followed the long aisle of tables and sat down in front of the edgy guy. The man had removed his jacket, but he was sweating right through his crisply pressed shirt. He used a handkerchief to mop his neck as Perseus showed his badge.

  “I remember who you are,” the man said in his southern drawl. There was a large, brown, paper sack in the seat to the man’s left, in the chair that was wearing the man’s jacket.

  Perseus put away his credentials. “Good of you to finally set aside some time to talk with me Pastor McCauley.”

  Pastor McCauley busied himself by stirring low calorie sweetener into his tea. He was making a sticky mess. “Been busy,” he said, stammering about prison visits and needy parishioners.

  Perseus lifted a hand to silence him. He looked through him then, right through the Pastor’s eyes, the way only a manhunter can.

  Pastor McCauley grew suddenly still. “Go ahead,” he whispered. “Ask me your questions.”

  Perseus pulled the old Polaroid from his shirt pocket. He’d had the photograph so long now that it felt like something of his own. It was faded and turning to sepia. It showed a skinny teenager; a thin, rail of a woman. She had light colored hair and was looking away at something out of view.

  “I want to talk about her,” Perseus said.

  Pastor McCauley swallowed so hard that both his chins and the skin of his bald head shuddered.

  For Perseus, the pursuit had been too long, the longest of his career. He replaced the photo in the pocket over his heart. He felt so close to the end of his pursuit now that the deep well of his patience had gone dry.

  “You know her,” Perseus insisted. “You know her poison.”

  Pastor McCauley’s pale eyes widened and he took some gasps of tea before patting himself with the handkerchief again. His words lodged in his throat.

  “Snakes,” Agent Perseus said. “Your church uses them and so does she…”

  Miss Minerva ventured over silently, staying only long enough to drop down a mug and fill it with black. She looked down her long eyelashes at the detective from Quantico and then to the local man as quick as a cat. She noted the tense stalemate and flitted away.

  Perseus’s gaze never relented.

  “I didn’t know who she was at first. You gotta believe me.” Pastor McCauley said, looking warily to his left at the paper sack.

  Perseus felt the hairs on his arms bristle. “What’s in the bag, McCauley?”

  The pastor’s eyes tensed with fear. “She’s here.”

  Perseus dropped his hand onto the handle of his gun. “Where?” he barked. His eyes darted from side to side like ping pong balls.

  “She’s coming, I mean,” Pastor McCauley said. “Here. To meet me.”

  Perseus nodded to the sack and drew his firearm. He pointed it down at the table.

  “It’s what she asked for,” Pastor McCauley said. “We only use them for worship. I didn’t know who she was at first. You gotta believe me.”

  “Show me,” Perseus demanded. “Do it slowly.”

  Pastor McCauley pulled a wooden box from the sack. It was topped with wire mesh. Inside slithered something slight and shiny. It was black as blood, emblazoned with bright, yellow bands. It was very small for such a dangerous thing.

  Perseus’s mind was spinning. They called her Medusa—the Medusa killer—because she used snake venom on her victims, all sorts of snake venom. Sometimes consultants from Ivy League colleges had to be flown out just to identify which types of snakes Medusa had used. She’d taken seventeen lives. None of the bodies ever showed any evidence of being snakebit. No bites. No needle marks.

  He had determined a long time ago that he would be the one to catch her. She was his Medusa.

  Pastor McCauley’s name appeared on Perseus’s list of locals to interview merely because the pastor knew serpents. The good pastor had been deft at avoiding questioning; however, until now.

  Perseus looked down at the little snake with its golden rings. Fortune was smiling on him. He could use this. He could try to trap her somehow.

  When he felt a different set of eyes watching; however, Perseus began to realize, time had run out.

  “Will wonders never cease,” she said.

  The female voice was sudden and deep; the southern twang prominent.

  Surely, Medusa was too smart to approach a law man holding a gun in his hand. Surely…

  Agent Perseus turned to look at her. She was just as skinny as she was in the faded photo resting in his breast pocket, though her supple, white skin had become deeply tanned and twenty years of sun and killing and tobacco had deeply wrinkled her eyes.

  Was she real?

  Perseus felt like he was outside of himself, as if he were watching himself in a stage play. He stared up at her and she was looking away, just as in the photo. How many hours had he gazed at the Polaroid, trying to decipher at what magical thing outside of the frame she might be looking? Right now she was smiling at Pastor McCauley.

  “Pastor,” she said. “How’re you? I see you brought my precious, just as you said you would. Thank you.”

  McCauley had turned to stone. His breathing was coming out in rasps.

  “Why don’t you scooch over, hun?” she bade him.

  McCauley looked at Perseus for permission and when the agent nodded, Pastor McCauley tumbled into the other chair, crushing the paper bag.

  When she folded delicately into his seat, they were eye to eye now, Perseus and Medusa. The irony of their names was not lost on the agent. Was their meeting written in the stars? Had the Fates intended it? Would stories be told about this day?

  Medusa picked up the snake box and squealed giddily. The sound helped Agent Perseus to find himself again.

  “Put it down,” he whispered, gesturing a little with his gun, but continuing to point the muzzle at the table.

  Medusa grinned, rapidly smacking the wooden box into McCauley’s belly. Perseus heard her slide the mesh lid opened just a pinch.

  “Put both your hands on the table,” Perseus said.

  Medusa feigned fear. “Agent Perseus, you’re so demanding.”

 
; Serial killers often had ways of learning the names of their pursuers. Perseus never flinched, but the idea that she knew him was a surprise.

  “Scott,” she said. “No need to shout. We’s old friends.” She held the box with her right hand and snaked her left underneath it to grab the glass and take a sip of the pastor’s tea. “Ooo-wee,” she bellowed, “Pastor, what you got in this here tea? That ain’t sugar.”

  “Your hands,” Perseus urged.

  “Oh no, darlin’, my hands is just fine where they at.”

  Perseus had his gun. Medusa had her snake. She’d slide that lid right off and let the golden-ringed viper bite the pastor if she didn’t get her way. If Perseus knew Medusa, the man would be dead in seconds.

  It was just then that Minerva came by to give her detective a warm up. She gasped and instinctively headed back from where she came.

  “Minerva, dial 9-1-1,” Perseus instructed, “And get everyone out of here, too. Everyone clear out!”

  Pastor McCauley flinched.

  “Ah, ah, ah. Not you, Pastor,” Medusa said, silkily. In the space of a breath, her left hand was on around the back of McCauley’s neck.

  “Medusa,” Agent Perseus said. “This won’t end well.”

  “And you know this?” she asked. “You seen it? You a conjuror now? An oracle?”

  “Why don’t you let the pastor go, eh? He’s been a good boy after all.”

  “Why don’t you arrest me?” she asked. “Neither of the two of us are afraid of this here specimen. Ain’t that right, Pastor?”

  Agent Perseus didn’t care what McCauley’s religion was, or how he practiced it. He couldn’t risk letting him get bitten. He would not lose a hostage.

  “If you’re not gonna arrest me,” Medusa yelled, “We’re leavin’! Get up, Pastor.”

  The man stood and a quick poke to his ribs had him lumbering out from behind the table, embracing the snake box, which was still opened more than it should have been. Perseus could see movement inside. Arm in arm, Medusa led Pastor McCauley away, toward the front entrance. Perseus followed, weapon drawn.

  “Don’t do this,” he warned.

  “You wanna come find me, sweetheart? I’ll be waiting,” she said. “Come to the edge of the world, the entrance to the Underworld, the place pierced straight through by the bow of Hercules.”

  Riddles? She was an elegant killer. A magician one might say. But she never left riddles behind before. Of course, she’d never been cornered before either.

  “You’re not leaving,” Perseus said, following the woman, the pastor and the snake out of the door, catching it before it closed, the little bell ringing.

  The patrons and employees of the diner were gawking in a bunch outside, looking afraid and intrigued. Medusa could loose that snake on anyone of them. It would be chaos. Those yellow-haired kids, were they even wearing shoes?

  “Get out of here!” Agent Perseus shouted to the crowd, gesturing them backward.

  The sound of sirens pervaded the humid air. Back up, thought Perseus. He even started to smile. That is, right up until the point he was being told to freeze and drop his weapon.

  “I’m FBI,” he explained. He made the words, but no one heard them over Medusa’s hysterical shrieking. As far as the local cop was concerned, the unfamiliar gunman was harassing this local woman.

  Then it all went to hell.

  Medusa threw down the wooden box, hard, reducing it to splinters. The bystanders were screaming.

  The local cop fired one shot.

  Medusa fled toward the trees.

  Perseus was on the ground, red clay dust and sun in his eyes. His shoulder was wet. He would have pursued her, he would have forced his body back up again, but she was so very far away. He could see her hair catching the light in-between the pines and her eyes smiling back at him, but how on earth could she already be forty yards away?

  The last thing he saw was a pair of Tony Lama wingtip boots.

  Then he surrendered to the black.

  The dull buzz of the fluorescent lights was giving him a migraine. He couldn’t take any more pills. Half the recommended dose was sufficient to take the edge off the throbbing of his arm in the sling. The local anesthetic was wearing off, but anymore pills and his mind would be a swamp.

  Agent Perseus didn’t want that. He wanted to catch her.

  Now.

  He was leaning back in the squeaky chair when the police officer with the cowboy boots appeared and offered Perseus his hand for the shaking.

  The Federal Agent glared at it.

  Apologetically, the cop switched, offering his left instead. “I’m Cheze Thompson,” the cop said. “Sorry I shot you.”

  Reluctantly, Perseus shook with his own southpaw. “Special Agent Scott Perseus,” he replied. He noticed that the cop had the worn hand of a man who worked for a living. “It was a clean shot,” Perseus added. “Through and through. Made me drop my weapon,” he said. “And a lot better than being dead.”

  Officer Thompson smiled. His strawberry blonde mustache was almost white. Perseus deduced that the hair color might be the reason for such an unusual nickname. At least, he hoped it was a nickname.

  Perseus could see night gathering outside the station. Several black and whites pulled in at the same time.

  “Did we catch a break?” he asked.

  “Sort of… We caught the snake.”

  Perseus sighed loudly and began massaging his temple.

  “Look,” said Thompson, “I hear the last time you came a-calling, you didn’t exactly get any inter-office cooperation.” Cheze looked around for his captain and then leaned in conspiratorially. “Way I figure it, I owe you one. Since I can’t convince you to go home and get some rest, what say I lend a hand?”

  Perseus gave a tentative nod.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’,” Officer Thompson added. “What’s this backwater redneck with cotton for brains gonna do to help me? Well, how’s this for starters? Know why you ain’t been able to identify the girl in the only known photo of Medusa? I’ll tell you. No one ‘round here knew her name until now. Sarah. Jane. Rumple.”

  Perseus was dumbfounded. “What?” he asked.

  Cheze flipped through his notebook and found the page where he’d written the name. “Yep. How do you like that?” he asked.

  Perseus began to laugh, but he stopped when it hurt his arm. “How?”

  “There was a local farmer at the diner. He recognized your girl. Said Sarah Rumple wasn’t from Kisstheknee or anywhere in Bulloch County. According to him, she lives one county over in Effingham.”

  “Sounds like a dirty name for a pig,” Perseus said. Must have been the pill talking.

  “Usually I make the jokes around here,” replied Cheze. “Farmer also said he knew the girl, because his sister, God rest her, worked in the Effingham County orphanage.”

  “An orphan would fit the profile,” Perseus said.

  “I have a friend at the Effingham County Sherriff’s Department,” continued Cheze. “Now he ran a quick background check on the name and came up empty, but get this. We got a print off of a sticky cup of tea in the diner.”

  Perseus smiled.

  Cheze continued, “Unfortunately, this is where our good fortune ends. It came back as another girl. E. Curst? Apparently, another orphaned girl,” he said. “Removed from her home after her father was locked up for domestic abuse.”

  Perseus was shaking his head. Two names, a print and an old photo. No known addresses. He was back to square one. “Maybe I’ll visit that orphanage in the morning,” he said.

  “That’d be a neat trick,” said Cheze. “Burned down fifteen years ago.”

  Perseus leaned back in the seat again, closing his eyes.

  “I’ll forgive you for not being a great big ball of sunshine after getting shot and all,” said Cheze. “At least you know why so many of her victims were found here. She don’t crap where she eats,” he said.

  A silence developed, which ended when
Agent Perseus opened his eyes and noticed Officer Thompson scratching his head.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “You were pretty out of it when the doc went to work on your arm,” Cheze said. “Sounded like you were reciting a riddle.”

  Perseus adjusted the strap on his sling. “Just something Medusa said before you shot me,” he explained. “Some business about going to the place where Hercules left his arrow.”

  “Arrow?” Cheze said somberly. “Arrow or bow?” he asked.

  “Bow,” Perseus amended. “Why?”

  “Could be nothing,” Cheze said, popping into a chair and rolling it over to a computer. “Can you remember her exact words?”

  Perseus closed his eyes and thought hard. “The end of the world. The door to the Underworld. Something about being shot with the bow of Hercules. That’s all I remember.”

  Cheze hit enter and a photo of a rock formation appeared on the screen. It was fashioned of white rocks in the middle of a green field. It resembled a bow. “The Rock Bow. They call it an Effigy Mound. Hopewell Indians built it ages ago. It’s another county over. Could pass for the bow of Hercules, don’t you think?”

  Perseus could feel electricity biting across his skin again. “The bow points west.”

  “It does.”

  “Toward the Underworld, perhaps?”

  “Don’t know much about mythology, but the Wartten Hole is out that way.”

  “A hole?”

  Cheze grinned. “Local legend says it started as a sinkhole. Looks like a giant pond, but no one I know has ever seen the bottom.”

  “Sounds like Hades to me.”

  He refused to wait for the dawn. He’d wasted enough time getting his arm stitched up. If Hercules shot an arrow from the Rock Bow and his arrow pierced the earth, forming the Wartten Hole, the gateway to the Underworld, then this was indeed the best place for the monster Medusa to hide.

  Officer Thompson killed the headlights half way up the dirt road and then the pair of them slipped out of the vehicle to approach quietly, on foot.

  The Wartten Hole had been more of a public spot during Thompson’s early youth, but now it was part of the Shiherlis Farm. The Shiherlis family had once enjoyed a vast agricultural empire, but these days they’d whittled it down to keeping hogs and growing cane.