Zigzag

by Bill Pronzini

  “None whatsoever. That he was a practicing Satanist and I have some knowledge of the black arts is a macabre coincidence.”

  “About this revenant concept. Is such a spirit supposed to have physical powers? Could one, for instance, carry around an object such as the black host you found?”

  “I can’t answer that with any certainty, of course,” she said, “but I would think that it is possible. The powers of darkness are considerable, much stronger than we can possibly imagine. Physical objects surely can be made to materialize if not actually carried.”

  “How would a revenant go about harming a living person?”

  “There are a number of ways. One would be to haunt his victim openly, terrorize him until he sickens and dies.”

  “Like a voodoo curse is supposed to work?”

  “Yes, though without such trappings as pins and dolls.”

  Erskine said, “That wouldn’t have any effect on me. You have to believe in that kind of thing before it can harm you.”

  “Don’t be too sure, Peter.”

  “What are the other ways?” I asked.

  Marian Erskine gave another dry cough, reached over to pick up her glass and sip from it. “Cognac,” she said when she put it down. “I shouldn’t, but it steadies my nerves.”

  “Not too much,” he warned her. “You know what the doctor said—”

  “Damn the doctor!” she said with such sudden vehemence that it started her coughing again. “And don’t treat me like an invalid child; you know how I detest that.” She pushed his hand off her shoulder, helped herself to another sip of cognac. He backed off a step, looking hurt.

  I said to prompt her, “Other ways, Mrs. Erskine?”

  “Possession,” she said.

  “Possession. You mean the spirit enters the body of the victim, takes control of it?”

  “The victim, or someone else weak willed enough to do the spirit’s bidding. A temporary host, you see? Signified, perhaps, by the appearance of the devil’s symbol, a black host.”

  “If it’s the victim who’s possessed, then what? How would the spirit destroy him?”

  “Theft of the soul is the most diabolical method.”

  “… I don’t understand that.”

  “A basic tenet of black magic is the belief that the soul is not just the essence of life, but a literal indwelling object—a kind of homunculus that can be seized from within and then taken away. Once this happens, the mortal body collapses and soon withers and dies.”

  “Is there another method?”

  “A more immediate one, yes. By seizing control of the victim’s will, forcing him to destroy himself by his own hand.”

  Gruesome stuff, a mixture of primitive fear, skewed logic, and perverted religious doctrine. You couldn’t have paid me enough to buy into it for five seconds. Erskine, either, if he were pressed, judging from the dispassionate look he directed my way from his stance behind her chaise lounge. His wife claimed only academic interest in the black arts, and yet she seemed even paler now and her hand was unsteady as she lifted the decanter and splashed more cognac into her glass. If not a true believer, then close to it—and considerably disturbed by the events of the past few days.

  Erskine put a hand on her shoulder again. “Please, Marian, no more alcohol. It’s not good for your heart.”

  She ignored him. Down the new pour went, in two convulsive gulps. The cognac made her cough again, seemed to shorten her breath a little, but did nothing to improve her color.

  “Is there anything more you’d like to know?” she asked me. Irritation toward me in her voice now. “About evil spirits, black mass rituals, the Witches’ Sabbath, the signing of convenants with the devil—”

  “No. That’s not necessary. I’ve heard enough.”

  She seemed to realize she might have spoken too harshly; she pasted on a smile and said in a more even tone, “What I’ve told you hasn’t changed your mind, has it? About helping us?”

  In spite of my skepticism, the conversation had made me feel just a little uncomfortable. Out of my element in a case like this. Once again I had an impulse to back off and back out, but the pleading in Mrs. Erskine’s voice, the nervous tension in her body and veiled fear in her eyes, overrode my better judgment. The thing was, I felt sorry for her. And whatever was going on here had a rational, not a supernatural, explanation, and that I could deal with. Up to a point, anyway.

  “No,” I said, “I haven’t changed my mind. But I can’t promise you results, Mrs. Erskine. It’s been a year since the accident and the Voks’ death and there’s not much to go on. All I can guarantee you is that I’ll do my best on your behalf.”

  “That is all we expect.”

  Erskine asked her if she wanted to go back to the house; she said no, she’d stay there a while longer. “Not with the cognac,” he said, and plucked the decanter off the table. She gave him a dark look but not an argument, and dismissed him, and me, by closing her eyes.

  He and I returned to the sunroom, where he wrote me a hefty retainer check that included, at his insistence, the $250 he’d promised me for the drive down and consultation. I asked him a few more questions while he was doing that, but the answers weren’t useful. He didn’t know where the Voks had lived. Or the name of the doctor who’d called with the dying man’s request. Or the name of the nurse who’d been in the room when the black host was passed and the vow made. And he couldn’t remember anything more about the friend or relative of the Voks who’d been there.

  On my way back to the city I mentally replayed the interviews with Erskine and his wife. The more I went over them, the more surreal they seemed. Devil cults. Black hosts. Soul-stealing evil spirits from beyond the grave. This was the twenty-first century, for God’s sake. Such things couldn’t possibly exist in the modern world.

  No, but evil sure as hell did. You had only to look at the media any day, every day, for proof of that. All kinds of evil, all kinds of noxious acts. Some of it had touched me before, in various ways. Hurt people I liked and respected, hurt me and those I loved.

  One other thing for certain: whatever I did for the Erskines, however far I went with an investigation, I would not let that happen again.

  5

  It was a little past five when the heavy freeway and city traffic finally allowed me to return to South Park and the agency offices. As per usual, Tamara was still at her desk; close of business to her, most days, was six at the earliest and sometimes seven or eight if she had enough work to keep her that long. Saturdays included, now that she was between male companions. As young as she was, fifty-to-sixty-hour weeks was a punishing schedule and potentially damaging to her health as well as her social life. I’d tried to convince her to ease off a little, to no avail. She was stubborn and ambitious and genuinely passionate about her job. Hell, I knew all about that kind of attitude. I’d been a workaholic myself back in the day.

  “How’d it go down in rich folks’ country?” she asked when I walked into her office. “Peter Erskine’s problem something for us?”

  “Not really, but I’m going to look into it anyway. Against my better judgment.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  “The problem, Erskine’s and his wife’s, is more than just strange. It’s plain crazy weird.”

  “Crazy weird how?”

  “You’re going to have as much trouble believing this as I did,” I said, and went on to give her a capsule rundown of the two interviews. Right: she had trouble believing it.

  “Oh, man! Devil worship? Some freakin’ zombie looking to steal somebody’s soul?”

  “Not a zombie, a so-called revenant. Evil spirit in human form.”

  “Whatever. Can’t tell me you bought any of that supernatural stuff.”

  “No, but whatever’s going on has got both of them spooked—no pun intended. Erskine’s the one being stalked, but she’s taking it the hardest.”

  “You think whoever’s pretending to be this Vok character is connected to the dev
il cult?”

  “That would seem to be the most logical explanation. If there is a devil cult.”

  “So why wait a year to carry out the deathbed vow? And why not just off him and get it over with, instead of skulking around at night pointing fingers and smelling like he just crawled out of a cemetery?”

  “Good questions. Mrs. Erskine thinks the delay has something to do with the anniversary of Vok’s death. Maybe. The skulking and the holding off … scare tactics, to let Erskine know he’s a marked man. Again, maybe.”

  “You really want to go ahead with an investigation, huh?”

  I laid Erskine’s retainer check on her desk. “Here’s one reason.”

  “But not the only one. You taught me never take on a case just for money unless there’s a financial need, and we’re so far in the black right now we’re heading into another tax bracket.”

  “Chalk it up to curiosity.”

  “Yeah, the morbid kind.”

  “And to the reason why we’re in business—helping people in trouble.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was a fourth reason that I’d admitted to myself on the drive back to the city, but that I would not tell Tamara, or Kerry when I got home, or anybody else. Boredom, plain and simple. Nearly all of my investigative work these days was done on the phone—insurance fraud claims, skip-traces, deadbeat dad jobs, employee background checks, arrangements for process serving. Routine, for the most part. And on the four or five days a week when I wasn’t in the office, I spent more time rattling around looking for things to occupy my time than I did enjoying myself; you can only do so much reading, and my collection of pulp magazines was about as complete as it was likely to get given what 1920s and 1930s issues of Black Mask and other rare titles were going for these days. Mostly I was okay with the semiretired lifestyle, but now and then it grew a little stale, made me feel out of touch and unneeded. This was one of those times.

  “So okay,” Tamara said. “You want me to run a backgrounder on this Vok character, right?”

  “Right. Him and his wife both. On the Erskines, too—anything that might have a bearing on this revenge thing.” We didn’t usually conduct background checks on clients without a compelling reason, but this was anything but an ordinary case. The more information I had, the better idea I would have of how to proceed.

  “What else?”

  I consulted my notes. Jake Runyon, Alex Chavez, and most other private operatives these days carry voice-activated devices to record client interviews, but I still use the old-fashioned method of writing down information in a private brand of shorthand. Truth is, I have an uneasy, need-hate relationship with modern technology. There’s no question that computers, Internet search engines, iPhones and iPads, and GPS systems are useful tools that make detective work and some aspects of life easier; but they’re also responsible for a considerable amount of negative change, chiefly the obliteration of personal privacy. The gadgets cluttering up my life are necessary sometimes, but I use them as sparingly as possible. Old habits are hard to break when a dinosaur like me gets into his so-called “golden years.”

  “Whatever you can pull up on the freeway accident that started all this,” I said in answer to Tamara’s question. “Also the name of the San Jose reporter who found out about the alleged devil worship connection and tried to interview the Erskines.”

  “That should be easy enough, if he worked for the Mercury News.”

  “Other IDs, too, if possible: the doctor who attended Vok, the nurse and the other man who were in the hospital room, and the person or persons who claimed the bodies of Vok and his wife.”

  “Not so easy. Hospital records are pretty hard to access without covert hacking.”

  “Do what you have to, within reason,” I said. “But I don’t want to know the specifics.”

  Tamara flashed me one of her sly grins. “Want me to get on this right away?”

  “Tomorrow morning’s soon enough. It’s five-thirty. Why don’t you knock off early for a change?”

  “No reason to. All that’s waiting for me in my flat is some leftover Chinese takeout and a bathroom that needs cleaning. Besides, I’ve got plenty of other work to do.”

  “Not overloading you, am I?”

  “Hah. Couldn’t if you tried. Only thing I’d rather do is screw, and I can’t even do that now that that asshole Horace and me busted up again. Or get next to Mr. V anymore. He went and died on me and I haven’t had a chance to replace him.”

  I sighed and beat a hasty retreat into my own office. I did not want to hear any more about Mr. V for vibrator, dead or alive. Tamara’s insistence on sharing intimate details about her sex life, or lack thereof, was one of her less than endearing traits.

  * * *

  I did not tell Kerry about my interviews with Peter and Marian Erskine. Most of the time I confided in her whenever a provocative new case had my attention, just as she confided in me when there were interesting developments at Bates and Carpenter, the ad agency where she was now a vice president in charge of several accounts. But not this case.

  It wasn’t that she would have openly disapproved of my decision to take it on, though she might have questioned the wisdom of it. It would have been an act of cruelty to bring disturbing topics like devil cults and black hosts and vengeful spirits into my home. It was one thing to deal with such matters professionally, where you could employ a certain amount of detachment, another to subject Kerry—and possibly my inquisitive fourteen-year-old adopted daughter, Emily—to any of the nasty details.

  What I did do, after dinner, was boot up my laptop and conduct a little private Internet research into the history of Satanic worship—as much of it as I could stand to read. The practice had started among primitive peoples in all corners of the earth, I learned, a reverse worship engaged in when fertility rites failed and prayers to benign gods went unanswered. When that happened, some of those primitive races—ancient Babylonians and Druids, among others—appealed instead to the dark gods through virgin sacrifices and other blasphemies.

  From the Dark Ages onward, all sorts of sorcerers and sorceresses joined in the Sabbat, or Witches’ Sabbath, to perform black masses and attempt to summon demons and make covenants with Satan. Human life was cheap in those days, and in the centuries that followed; people vanished without much effort to find out what had happened to them, especially when members of the nobility indulged in the black arts—human monsters like the Marquis de Sade, Gilles de Rais, Madame de Montespan.

  There didn’t seem to be much doubt that devil worship continues to exist in these so-called enlightened times. Communicants, as they were called, were still being drawn into witch cults by the freedom to indulge in forbidden practices under the guise of ritual: sexual orgies, blood sacrifices, the black mass communion of drinking of real blood instead of consecrated wine, reading scripture backward, hanging crucifixes upside down. Crazy shit, as Tamara would have termed it. The communicants were of three general types: those who weren’t smart enough to know better, those who got a sick thrill out of sacrilegious ceremony, and those who were addicted to orgies and/or ritual killing. Which had Antanas Vok and his wife been? I wondered.

  By the time I quit reading, I was having some second thoughts about cashing Peter Erskine’s retainer check and going ahead with the investigation. This case was like nothing in my experience. Grotesque, disturbing. I could still see that damned black host, still feel it unclean in the palm of my hand—a genuine symbol of evil. It was as if it had left a permanent invisible stain. Ridiculous thought, brought on by too much imagination and heightened by my Catholic upbringing, but it lingered nonetheless.

  I wrestled with my feelings, and professionalism won. When I make a commitment, I honor it. I kept remembering the palpable tension and fear in Marian Erskine, too—fear for her husband’s life, fear of being at the mercy of unknown forces. The one sure way to dispel her superstitious concerns about revenants and the powers of darkness was to prove the threat huma
n by exposing the person or persons behind it.

  Still, I had the nagging thought that I’d gotten myself into something I didn’t completely understand and that one day, no matter what the outcome, I would come to regret it.

  6

  Tamara had already pulled up some of the information I’d requested when I arrived at the agency the next morning. It was only nine o’clock, so she must have come in early. She looked tired, her dark brown face drawn and the whites of her eyes streaked with faint red lines. Not getting enough sleep. And not eating much or well; she’d lost more weight recently than was good for a young woman with her large-boned body. Overwork, and the second difficult breakup with her cello-playing boyfriend, Horace Fields. But there was nothing I could say or do about it. She was as independent as they come. The only advice from me she’d take to heart was the professional kind, and sometimes only after an argument.

  “Not too much on the Voks—wife’s name Elza—or the accident that you don’t already know,” she told me. “The reporter is a dude named Lenihan, first name Joseph. Only he doesn’t and never did work for the Mercury News. Freelancer for any newspaper or other publication that’ll run one of his creature features.”

  “His what?”

  “Far-out stuff. You know, weird happenings, unexplained phenomena, that kind of thing.”

  “Sort of like Charles Fort.”

  “Who?”

  Young people today: no sense of history. “Never mind.”

  “Well, anyway,” Tamara said, “if he wrote up the hospital revenge incident, none of the mainstream print media would touch it. Might’ve gotten it into some supermarket sheet, but if so I couldn’t find a reference through any of the search engines.”

  “Potential legal problem even if real names weren’t used.”

  “Right. But the good news is that Lenihan also writes a creature-feature blog called ‘Oddments’ and he posted a long piece there. You can say pretty much anything you want online if you don’t cross the libel line. No names in the piece, but there’re enough details to ID what he’s writing about. You’ll see. I printed it out for you.”