The Bad Box

by Harvey Click

  Agrippa was buried in Transylvania, where his raging spirit tormented the inhabitants with horrors and apparitions, which they attributed to their old bogeyman Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula. With the help of two ensorcelled peasants, Stonebrenner disinterred the mummy from a mountainside cave. Agrippa had been entombed for 42 years, and there was nothing left of him but dry leather stretched over bones. Stonebrenner’s confidence sank: even if this corpse could be revitalized, surely it would have suffered such extensive brain damage as to be useless.

  But he was mistaken. Agrippa was even more powerful than his legend. Not only did the seven words cause him to breathe again, but within days he was strong and alert. Agrippa took the name Charles Newman, and he and Stonebrenner (at that time known as Elden Becker) fled the complications of Europe and rented a house together in Boston.

  The next 23 years were the happiest of Stonebrenner’s life. Newman, apparently grateful to his rescuer, taught him more gnostic and Hermetic powers than Stonebrenner had imagined could exist. But perhaps even more importantly, the two Longevitals shared a friendship that seemed to Stonebrenner to deepen into love. From Newman, Stonebrenner learned the mysteries of love between two men, just as now he sought to learn from Angel the mysteries of love between man and woman.

  But a sorcerer who could weave such mighty illusions could also weave an illusion of love. One night in 1962, while Newman slept heavily from an overdose of opium, Stonebrenner sat up experimenting with telepathy and penetrated the sleeping man’s veil. What he discovered in Newman’s mind was not love at all, but the most abominable treachery. He saw what Newman planned to do with him. He saw the true motive behind Newman’s teaching.

  That night Stonebrenner wove a web of silence around his sleeping mentor so that he could gather his most valuable belongings without awakening the man. He hastily packed his vials of precious substances, his irreplaceable books, his hoard of gold, and he fled Boston and the monster who lived there.

  He drove to Ohio, thinking that the Midwest would be an unlikely place for Newman to search for him. He found the quiet town of Mount Vernon, a sleepy and obscure haystack to hide in. He was charmed by the New England ambiance, and when he found the big brick house with its watchtower and its caverns, he bought it at once.

  He had then focused all of his training toward one project: to weave a veil so impenetrable that even Newman wouldn’t be able to pierce it. Newman had taught him well, and for 11 years Elden Becker, now known as Isaac Stonebrenner, remained hidden in his Mount Vernon fortress. But they were tense and terrible years, each waking hour spent in fearful vigilance, countless hours of gazing from the watchtower even as he watched now, each hour seeming it might be the one when Newman would suddenly appear. Even worse than the fear was the sense of betrayal. The one man whom he had loved planned to bury him alive!

  How Newman had found him, Stonebrenner still didn’t know. One night as he sat sleeping in a chair, the monster was suddenly upon him, binding him with paralysis and then using two ensorcelled thugs to haul him out of the house to the tiny cemetery, where a coffin already awaited him beside a freshly dug grave.

  The horror that followed, Stonebrenner still couldn’t bear to contemplate: the years of suffocation and madness and despair. But it’s said that the greatest teachings learned by the greatest adepts are those that they teach themselves. There was truth in the saying, for even in the grave Stonebrenner continued to learn and grow more powerful.

  He sent his astral body to haunt the people who lived in the neighboring houses, trying to teach them the words that would revive him. But using an apparition to deliver even a single one of the seven words was as impossible as delivering a complicated computer program in a crude telegram. What he needed was someone trapped in his own horrible circumstance. Likeness is the crux of all sympathetic magic, and a likeness of circumstances might allow him to deliver his message.

  At last his chance arrived: two young grandchildren came to live with a stupid and depraved old man named Gus Dietrick. Stonebrenner penetrated Dietrick’s mind and found out his filthy secrets. Two of his own three children he had raped and murdered, and he lusted for the two grandchildren as he had for his own offspring.

  Hour after hour, Stonebrenner would whisper suggestions into the old man’s diseased brain. “Your grandchildren have been naughty,” he would say. “Bury them in the basement for a while. Teach them a lesson. Put them in boxes. Drill a few breathing holes in the lid so they won’t suffocate. Let them lie there and think about their badness. Put them in the bad box, the bad box!”

  At last Gus Dietrick began to do as he was told. And there in her box, while little Angel suffered the same horror as Stonebrenner, he would visit her as a friend, preparing her to receive the first word. But a child’s mind is a fragile thing, and Stonebrenner was impatient—he delivered the word before she was ready. A blood vessel burst in her brain, and when Gus opened her box he discovered that she was dead.

  Only one more chance: the boy. This time Stonebrenner didn’t dare to fail. He had to be patient and take his time. A plan came to him. While Darnell screamed and wept, Stonebrenner would whisper to him, “It’s Angel’s turn. Let Angel take over. She knows how to leave the box.”

  The terrified boy did as he was told; he created in his mind another personality, that of his dead sister, and this alternate personality, being emotionally more remote, was easier to mold and train. Stonebrenner worked carefully and slowly, becoming her friend, her beloved friend in the box, and at last he believed she was ready. He sent her the first word, and she received it.

  In that moment the first key of his rescue was established, and in that moment Angel became something more than a mere alternate personality. The word had given her an independent life. Stonebrenner needed for her to live and in time to grow stronger than Darnell. It was impossible to deliver more than one word directly to her, so he depended on her to find new name-bringers.

  The years that followed were endless in their uncertainty. He couldn’t even know for certain that Darnell Brook existed, much less Angel. Countless bouts of madness had brought him many delusions, and perhaps Darnell and Angel were also figments of his disintegrating mind. But this madness had proven to be reality, and here he stood, freed from the grave, staring out of his tower.

  Suddenly his radar-senses sounded an alarm. Someone coming from the south, looking for him. A minute later a car came into view. It slowed and turned into his driveway. There was only one person in the car, a black man, and for a moment Stonebrenner believed it was one of Newman’s minions.

  But as the man emerged from the car, Stonebrenner realized he had been mistaken. He knew how to smell a cop.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Sebastian Okpara would sooner stare into the barrel of a loaded gun than into the eyes of a rich person’s lawyer. At least with a gun, one had a chance. Stonebrenner’s enormous yard and magnificent house made him painfully aware of the flimsiness of his pretense for this visit. Out of his jurisdiction, without permission or knowledge of the department, he was here to snoop around on the basis of a young woman’s half-coherent tales of witchcraft. Not the sort of thing one wanted to explain to a review board under the high-power scrutiny of a rich man’s attorney.

  Fortunately he was alone. Okpara didn’t like his partner, Christina Child, and particularly didn’t like the bullying style she used when interviewing a suspect or a witness, and whenever possible he conducted his interviews alone. During every interview he tried to keep in mind one of the lessons his mother had taught him: Never let your manners slip. Okpara tried to show the same courtesy to prostitutes and heroin addicts that he showed to the mayor or the district attorney, and he hoped that politeness would serve him as well this morning as it usually had in the past.

  He knocked on the massive carved-oak front door and waited. The humid air was oppressive after his air-conditioned drive, and he touched his forehead with his handkerchief. The door was opened by a la
nky young man with sandy hair. The man said nothing, and Okpara noted his strange gaze and dilated pupils, much like Peter Bellman’s eyes, clearly indicative of drug abuse.

  Okpara showed his badge and said, “Is Jacob Stonebrenner here?”

  The young man just stood there staring, mouth gaping, as if not sure what he was looking at. Okpara looked past him into the large foyer and saw someone descending the stairs, a broad-shouldered man, perfectly bald, wearing a gray suit.

  When the man reached the light at the bottom of the stairs, Okpara sucked in his breath. He had never seen such a face on a living person, blue-gray and cadaverous with strange black eyes that reminded Okpara of eyes he had seen in the morgue.

  “You may return to your work, Eric,” the man said, his voice a strange harsh whisper, and the young drug addict shuffled slowly away into the back of the house. “I’m Jacob Stonebrenner.”

  He smiled in a decidedly unfriendly manner, his yellow teeth long and so slender that there were ugly gaps between them. He stood blocking the doorway, his arms crossed in front of him, and his fingernails were shockingly yellow like his teeth and cracked. His dank odor reminded Okpara of a body recently found in the river.

  “I’m Detective Sebastian Okpara, Columbus Police Department. I regret disturbing you on a Sunday morning, but I was hoping I could ask you a few questions.”

  “Concerning what?”

  “Concerning the abandoned house just down the road. We are interested in knowing if you’ve noticed any unusual activity there, anyone coming or going.”

  “I’ve seen nothing,” Stonebrenner replied. He stood utterly motionless, a nerveless sentry who feared Okpara no more than a housefly. It was Okpara who fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot, dabbing his forehead with his handkerchief, trying to find something to do with his hands.

  “Not even teenagers?”

  “I said I’ve seen nothing. I’ve not been here long.”

  Stonebrenner’s stance appeared to soften, but Okpara believed it was the kind of feint a boxer displays right before he delivers a knockout punch. “Perhaps you’d like to come inside and have a cold drink,” he said.

  “Yes, please,” Okpara said. “I’ve always been interested in beautiful old homes.”

  Stonebrenner grinned sardonically and stepped aside, allowing Okpara to enter. All the doors facing the foyer were shut, as if the house was unwilling to give up any of its secrets. Stonebrenner opened one of them and ushered Okpara into a large living room.

  “I’ve not had a chance to bring down my furniture,” he said. “This trash belongs to the tenants. They wish to remain until the crops are harvested, and we’ve worked out an arrangement.”

  So the drugged-out young man was a farmer? What was he growing, Okpara wondered—opium poppies?

  Okpara admired a stone fireplace that covered much of one wall, its ornately carved mantle probably worth a months’ mortgage on Okpara’s small house. He wondered sadly how soon every valuable house in the country would be owned by drug dealers or the corrupt politicians who enabled them.

  He heard a sound behind him. A tall young woman with long blond hair and freckles had entered the room. She wore a soiled white nightgown that trailed the floor, transparent as gauze. Her eyes suggested that she too was wrapped in a narcotic dream, floating soundlessly in a world of her own.

  “This is Kathy Beers, one of my tenants,” Stonebrenner said.

  Kathy seemed not to notice Okpara as she drifted through a wide doorway into another living room like a spirit of the dead.

  Okpara tried to piece Sarah Temple’s story together with what he was witnessing. He knew that some producers and traffickers of narcotics were involved with Satanism, in the belief that occult rites would protect them from the authorities. He wondered how Darnell Brook might fit into this. The grisly murders he was suspected of committing had the look of Satanic ritual killings. Was it possible Brook was involved in a drug operation run by Stonebrenner? That could explain Peter Bellman’s erratic behavior after visiting Darnell. Possibly the FBI had been compiling the wrong profile on the killer all along.

  “A lovely fireplace,” Okpara murmured.

  “Perhaps you’d enjoy seeing more of the house,” Stonebrenner said.

  “Yes, please, if it’s no imposition.”

  Stonebrenner ushered him back to the foyer and shut the door on the cloud-wrapped young woman, who had wandered back into the front room. While Okpara gazed at the elegant staircase, he suddenly felt a crackling warmth on his temples, like an electric current. Stonebrenner, he realized, was standing behind him and touching the sides of his head. How very odd.

  A dizzy nausea swept through him, and he felt his legs lose their strength. Stonebrenner caught him and held him upright until the nausea subsided.

  “Thank you,” Okpara said. “It’s so hot today.” He reached weakly for his handkerchief and touched it to his forehead. “I feel better now.”

  “Would you like some water?” Stonebrenner asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  As he followed Stonebrenner down a hallway, Okpara had to grasp the wainscoting a few times because his legs felt so weak. This happened on a hot day sometimes, he thought, especially if he ate a sugary breakfast. He should mention it to his doctor; maybe he had a touch of hypoglycemia.

  He followed Stonebrenner into the large kitchen, and Okpara’s legs nearly buckled again when he saw what was lying on the counter. It was a human carcass, its arms removed and most of the skin peeled off the torso. The young farmer, wearing a bloody butcher’s apron, was busy sawing off one of the legs. In the second that it took for Okpara to see this, his hand had already pulled his Glock from its shoulder holster. Obviously Stonebrenner wouldn’t want him to leave alive after seeing this.

  “Freeze,” he said, aiming the gun at Stonebrenner.

  “No, you freeze,” Stonebrenner said. “And put your gun away. As you can see, there’s no need for it. We have already butchered one pig this morning and have no desire to butcher another.”

  Okpara saw that the human carcass in fact was a slaughtered hog. He put his gun away and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

  Stonebrenner grinned and said, “We make our own sausage here. It’s so much better than what you buy in the store, no preservatives or nitrates. Maybe you’d like me to send you some?”

  “That would be very nice,” Okpara said, pleased by Stonebrenner’s courtesy, and again he decided he should make an appointment with the doctor. Too much stress, too many long hours, and if one wasn’t careful one’s health could collapse. Stonebrenner gave him a glass of water, and he drank it gratefully.

  “You’re a dawdler, Eric,” Stonebrenner said. “You should have finished this job long ago.”

  The young man rudely ignored him and continued to saw the meat with a sullen expression. Such disrespect for his betters, Okpara thought. The young these days have no manners.

  He heard something behind him and turned to see a skinny pale woman coming into the kitchen. She wore a bathrobe and was utterly bald except for a few tufts of pale hair. She stared at him, and as Okpara stared back he suddenly realized that he was staring at Darnell Brook.

  “Detective, this is my daughter Jane,” Stonebrenner said. “I’m sorry to say she’s been ill with cancer, and the treatments have caused her to lose her hair.”

  Okpara smiled at her and said, “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

  “Are you feeling better, Jane?” Stonebrenner asked.

  “Much better,” she said. “In fact, I’ve never felt so good. But I’m very hungry.”

  “Fresh meat is what you need, my dear,” Stonebrenner said.

  For just one moment, Okpara saw him take a cleaver from the counter and lop off the carcass’s penis; and for just one moment he saw him grinding it in a hand-cranked meat grinder clamped to the counter, expelling strings of bloody human flesh onto a plate; and for just one moment he saw Darnell Brook devouring the horrid mess,
licking blood greedily from his lips as he chewed.

  But then in the next moment he saw Stonebrenner’s daughter delicately munching some very tasty-looking ground sausage. Such a caring father, Okpara thought, and he hoped Jane would recover from her cancer.

  “Well, there’s no point in my taking up any more of your time,” he said. “You’ve been very gracious. Here’s my card, and if you happen to see anything suspicious, please call me.”

  “Certainly,” Stonebrenner said with a smile.

  As Okpara drove back to Columbus, he wondered what had possessed Sarah Temple to manufacture such outrageous stories about a respectable man. It occurred to him that possibly Miss Temple’s role in this case was not so innocent as he had believed.

  Look at the facts, he thought. Miss Temple seemed to be at the center of everything. She admitted she was acquainted with Darnell Brook. Had they been involved together in a drug operation that performed Satanist ritual murders to protect them from the law, and then had she turned on him when the bodies were found?

  No doubt she had urged Paul Finney to visit Brook’s apartment, where he was murdered in one of their rituals. And then another man had been brutally disemboweled while Miss Temple was living with him. Her ex-boyfriend, a respectable professor whom she had viciously attacked with the help of another woman, a woman who possibly was also involved with the drug operation, was now behaving strangely and was unable to teach. Quite likely Professor Bellman was a victim of poisoning—perhaps he had learned about the drug operation and needed to be silenced. And now Miss Temple was shacked up with a man whose wife had been found hanged in his barn just a year ago.

  Yes, it all fit together. But why was she now spreading accusations against a respectable country gentleman? If all citizens were as decent as Jacob Stonebrenner, Okpara thought, our society would have no need for policemen.