Evil Spirits

by Mark Lukens

  “I think I still need help,” David said. “My training with Joe Blackhorn, it was never finished.” He watched Begay, trying to figure out if he knew the truth.

  “What makes you think the Ancient Enemy is back?”

  David set his bottle of water down on the floor and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. He found the news article about the slaughtered villagers in Costa Rica and showed it to Begay.

  Begay slipped a pair of glasses on, perching them at the end of his nose as he studied the phone, taking several minutes to read the article. Then he looked at David. “Says here that a drug cartel killed these people.”

  “I think it was the Ancient Enemy.”

  “This is in Costa Rica. Is that where . . .?” He let his words die away.

  David only nodded. He wasn’t going to tell Begay exactly where in Costa Rica Cole and Stella lived now.

  “Look, David. I never knew where Cole and Stella took off to, and I never really wanted to know. I kept quiet about details like that because I knew neither one of them was guilty of the crimes they would eventually be charged with by the FBI. Even if I found out where they lived now, I would never tell anyone. Do you believe me?”

  David nodded. “I think they’re in danger. I think it’s back and it’s coming after them. After all of us.”

  Begay sat statue-still in his recliner for a moment and then he handed the phone back to David.

  “I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately,” David said as he shoved his phone back into his pants pocket.

  Begay waited for him to continue.

  “I’ve been having dreams of the ghost town, but in my dreams it’s the town it was back in the Old West—Hope’s End. I was in that town back then, when all of those people in that church were killed by the Ancient Enemy. I remember all of it. I remember everyone there.”

  “I wish I could help you,” Begay said in a soft voice. “But I’m not like Joe Blackhorn. You know that.”

  “I know. I just didn’t know where else to go.”

  Begay sat in his chair, silent for a long moment, and then he sighed like he had finally come to a decision about something. “I know someone. He’s not Joe Blackhorn, but then no one is. His name is Nez. Billy Nez.”

  David’s heart skipped a beat. “I knew a man named Billy Nez in Hope’s End.”

  Begay nodded. “Maybe that was his great grandfather. I could take you to see Billy tomorrow. I can’t promise he will see you or talk to you, or even be able to help you, but we could try.”

  “Yes,” David said. “I would like that.” And for the first time in the last few days he felt a little better.

  CHAPTER 11

  Palmer

  Denver, Colorado

  Palmer was back in his condo when he got the call from his ex-wife Teresa.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  This wasn’t exactly how he had wanted the call with her to begin. “Whoa,” he cooed. “Let’s calm down a little.”

  “You’ve got our daughter scared to death. She’s packing the kids up and taking a spontaneous vacation. She doesn’t even know where she’s going.”

  “If you’ll just listen to me for a second . . .”

  But Teresa wasn’t giving him a chance to explain. He’d left Teresa a voicemail before he’d made the call to Eliza, telling her that she needed to take the kids and get out of town for a little while, at least until they caught this serial killer. He knew he wasn’t supposed to reveal details about a crime scene without permission, especially now that he was a civilian, but he’d told Eliza that the killer had painted his last name on the wall in blood. Whoever this killer was (and now Palmer knew exactly what it was), he was sending a warning.

  “Oh my God, Dad,” Eliza had whispered into the phone earlier.

  “This killer’s a copycat,” he’d told Eliza. “He’s trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders, and apparently he’s threatening me.” It was a bit of a stretch, perhaps even a white lie, but he would say just about anything to get Eliza and the kids out of town.

  And now Teresa was on the phone and she was livid. “You’re not going to infect our child and our grandchildren with your paranoia, with your delusions of grandeur.” Teresa’s new husband Gary was a psychiatrist, hence Teresa’s habit of throwing around that kind of jargon.

  “Did Lizzy tell you what was at the crime scene?”

  Silence from Teresa for just a few seconds. “That could be anyone’s name. Palmer is a pretty common last name, you know.”

  “I can’t take any chances with this. I think you and Gary should leave, too. Just to be safe.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. And I’m going to try to talk some sense into our daughter. We can’t go running halfway across the country every time someone gets murdered.”

  “This is different. You know that.”

  “Yeah, you always think it’s different.”

  “I think this might be the same person, or people, responsible for the Dig Site Murders.”

  “The ones you never caught.”

  She had to get that little dig in. “Yes, the ones we never caught. This could be the same people doing this.”

  “I gotta go,” Teresa said.

  She was done arguing, and that’s how arguments ended with Teresa—when she couldn’t win or get her way, she was done talking, storming off. Her idea of arguing was to tell you what she thought, and then she wasn’t interested in hearing anyone else’s side of things. She liked to yell and scream, and then she liked to run away.

  Palmer hung up the phone. He was sure Teresa was calling Eliza right now, trying to talk some “sense” into her, as she had put it. But he hoped he had scared Eliza enough so that she wouldn’t change her plans. Eliza worked from home now and she could always take her work with her on a laptop if they had to stay away for a few weeks.

  He paced across the living room of his condo, the bare walls staring back at him. That craving for a drink was back. He licked his lips and he swore he could almost taste the alcohol on his tongue. He thought about going to the store to buy a six-pack of beer. But he knew he wouldn’t stick to beer for very long, soon enough it would lead to shots of liquor.

  He couldn’t do anything if Teresa managed to change Eliza’s mind, and that made him feel helpless. Eliza had said that Ted might not go with them, but he hoped Eliza and the kids would still go.

  Now Palmer had one more phone call to make. He’d been putting it off. He didn’t want to call Begay unless he was absolutely sure there was a problem. But now he was sure. Some of the things done to Harold and Marcie’s bodies couldn’t have been done by a human, just like Cardenelli had said.

  It was back, Palmer knew that as much as he’d ever known anything in his life.

  He went to a kitchen drawer and found the old address book where he had written Begay’s home phone and cell numbers down, along with his address in Iron Springs. It had been seven years since he had spoken to Begay. The captain could have moved. He could have changed his phone number. But at least this was a place to start.

  After dialing Begay’s cell phone number, Palmer paced back and forth in the kitchen. He had hoped never to see Begay again. He had hoped never to have to go down to New Mexico again.

  “Begay speaking.”

  For just a second Palmer couldn’t speak. Just hearing the sound of Begay’s deep voice brought back a rush of terrible memories . . . memories that he had tried for years to push into the darkest corners of his subconscious.

  “Hello?” Begay asked.

  “Uh . . . Captain Begay? It’s Agent Palmer with the FBI. I was down there seven years ago when—”

  “I remember who you are, Agent Palmer.”

  “Okay.” Palmer was stunned for a moment. Captain Begay sounded a little angry, but he didn’t sound surprised at all to be getting this phone call.

  “And it’s not Captain Begay anymore. I retired three years ago.”

  “Yeah, well it’s not Agent Palmer
anymore either. I’ve been retired since . . . since all of that stuff happened down there.”

  “You said you were going to retire,” Begay said. “In the hospital afterwards. You told me that you’d had enough and that you were going to retire.”

  Palmer remembered that now. He remembered Begay visiting him in the hospital, bringing some kind of potted cactus with him.

  Begay was silent now, but Palmer could hear his heavy breathing.

  “The reason I’m calling,” Palmer said, “I think it’s happening again.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “There’s been a copycat killer up here, some crackpot trying to re-create the Dig Site Murders.”

  “I heard.”

  “A couple was killed last night. An older couple. And this murder was different from the other ones. I don’t think this was the work of the copycat killer. I think this was . . .” Palmer’s words dried up; he didn’t want to say the name out loud.

  Begay was still silent, still breathing heavily into the phone. Palmer realized that Begay was going to make him say it.

  “I think it’s the Ancient Enemy,” Palmer finally said. “The way this couple was mutilated, the way their bodies were ripped apart, the way the pieces were arranged, it had to be the Ancient Enemy.”

  Begay still said nothing.

  “And there was one other thing at the latest crime scene, something that won’t be in any of the papers or on the news. My last name was written on the wall in the victims’ blood.”

  Begay let out a long sigh—it sounded like a rush of wind in the phone. “David came by to see me.”

  “David.”

  “He’s fifteen now. Tall and skinny. He believes it’s happening again, too.”

  “What did he say?” Palmer began pacing again. “Did he see anything?”

  “He said he felt it. And he showed me a news article he had saved on his phone.”

  “What kind of news article?”

  Begay hesitated for just a moment.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t reveal too many details about it right now,” Begay said. “But something about the news article convinced me.”

  “This is about Cole and Stella, isn’t it?” Palmer said. “I won’t go after them; I promised you and David that I wouldn’t do that. I’m not even an agent anymore, remember?”

  Begay sighed again. “The news article was about some murders, a mass murder that happened somewhere outside the United States. I’m sure you could eventually find out where it happened on your own if you wanted to.”

  Palmer decided not to press the issue about the news article anymore. “So what do we do?”

  “What can we do?”

  Palmer imagined the Ancient Enemy coming after him and his family. But then he thought about David. “You think that thing still wants someone to kill David for it?”

  “I’m sure it does.”

  “But it might be after all of us now. David, Cole, and Stella. Me. You. Our families.”

  “David seems to think Cole and Stella are in danger.”

  Palmer sighed. “Listen, I’d like to stay in contact with you. I know we’re not cops anymore, but if this is happening again we need to be ready.”

  “Yes.”

  “If this is really happening again, do you think David can stop it again? Do you think David got more powerful now that he’s been training to be a shaman?”

  “David stopped training with Joe Blackhorn several years ago. Joe Blackhorn is dead now.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that,” Palmer said. There was an awkward silence for a moment and then Palmer said, “Let me know if you hear anything else.”

  “I will,” Begay said and hung up.

  Palmer wasn’t so sure Begay would keep his word about that. He went to his laptop and did a quick search of mass murders around the world. A few minutes later he found a mass slaughter of a village in Costa Rica about twenty miles from the Pacific Ocean. The people had been hacked to death, the pieces of their bodies stacked up like little sculptures. The local police were blaming the deaths on a drug cartel, but Palmer saw the similarities to the Dig Site Murders, and now he knew where Cole and Stella were living.

  CHAPTER 12

  Stella

  Costa Rica

  Stella didn’t sleep well through the night, and neither did Cole. She finally fell asleep, but then she woke up well after midnight from a dream.

  In the dream, she was in the ghost town in Arizona where David had finally defeated the Ancient Enemy. But it wasn’t a ghost town anymore; it was an Old West town in the 1890s, and she was in a saloon. She was herself in the dream, but she was also someone else at the same time; she just wasn’t sure who she was. She saw David in the dream and he looked the same as he had when he was eight years old, but everyone else were strangers to her, yet at the same time it felt like she recognized them, like she knew them somehow. There was an Irishman who owned the saloon. There was a tall, thin man from Sweden. A Mexican gunfighter stood at the bar with his back to her; he was a young man, but a dangerous man. An older Navajo man sat at the back table with a bowl of stew in front of him. His head was lowered, and the brim of his black hat hid much of his face. The person who grabbed her attention the most was a marshal, a tall and muscular man, a man hardened by the Arizona weather and the work he’d done for years, chasing down bounties. He stared at her from across the saloon like he knew her. And she knew him—she was sure of it. Nothing scary was happening in the saloon, but Stella still felt a sense of dread, like something terrible was outside and it was coming for them.

  She snapped awake and lay there in bed for a while. After Cole had finally fallen into a deep sleep, Stella eased out of bed and left the room. Her back was hurting a little from lying in bed too long, she needed to get up and move around. Her muscles had that achy feeling she got when she didn’t get a good night’s sleep. She was still tired but not too groggy; in fact, her mind was overly active right now, but she couldn’t keep tossing and turning in bed, keeping Cole awake. He needed his sleep, too.

  It felt better to be awake and moving through their dark home. She turned on a light in the kitchen and started some coffee. The tile floor was cool on her feet and everything was quiet, with only the buzz of the night insects outside.

  As she stood there she began to believe that Cole was right about what she’d seen in the jungle. At best it had been her imagination; at worst it was someone stalking them, perhaps planning to rob them. But she was beginning to believe more and more that it hadn’t been Jim Whitefeather standing in the jungle; it had been some kind of hallucination.

  Again, she felt like all of her recovery had been set back to nearly the beginning. She wasn’t sure why she was suddenly so afraid of the Ancient Enemy again. Their first year down here had been horrible, she’d felt like a junkie fighting through withdrawals. But little by little, day by day, month by month, it had gotten better. Even though she knew that the memories and trauma would always be there, at least she could live a normal life again.

  Still, as a scientist, it bothered her that these fears had come back so strongly and suddenly. Had something triggered it? Maybe being out in the jungle and so far from civilization had triggered it. But no, she’d been doing that for over a year now. And she hadn’t been alone; Maria and the rest of her team had been with her. And she’d had her gun with her.

  Cole’s other theory was that she’d really seen a man in the jungle, and she had projected Jim Whitefeather’s image onto that man. Perhaps when something startling happened, her mind went instantly to the worst trauma she’d ever suffered—the Ancient Enemy. Cole was still worried that some men were stalking their dig site and planning to rob them. He had Stella so worried about it yesterday afternoon that she had called Maria to make sure she was okay. She’d gotten no answer from Maria so she left her a message on her voicemail. She would call her again soon.

  Somebody poking around to rob them wasn’t good, b
ut it was a natural danger, one they could fight. It was still much better than the Ancient Enemy being back.

  The coffee was ready. She just wanted to drink a few sips of hot coffee and try to relax, think about things rationally. What she’d seen in the jungle had just been a—

  Stella’s heart jumped, her eyes darting to the kitchen window. Something had moved out there, a shadow racing by. She swatted at the light switch, turning the kitchen light off and plunging the room into darkness. She opened a bottom drawer and pulled out a 9mm that Cole kept in there. Her heart was still pounding and she could barely catch her breath.

  No noises from outside now. She crept to the kitchen window over the sink and looked out onto the side yard. There was a path beside their house and then a wall of jungle beyond that. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness again, but she couldn’t see anyone moving around out there.

  The doors and windows were all locked; she and Cole had checked all of them several times before going to bed.

  But the Ancient Enemy can still get in if it wants to, her mind whispered. She felt a panicky vulnerability because David wasn’t here. David had been the only one who could protect them, and she had also gained strength from protecting him, a mother’s courage. Now she and Cole were vulnerable, there was nothing to stop the Ancient Enemy and whatever horrors it was bringing.

  She needed to calm down and try to think rationally again. There was nothing outside that she could see. The movement in the kitchen window could have been a reflection of her movement in the kitchen, something she’d caught out of the corner of her eye. She was still more tired than she wanted to admit even though she felt wide awake right now.

  Little by little she began to relax. She was just jumpy and she had worked herself up into a near-frenzy. She would drink a little coffee, maybe even stay up until dawn.

  Stella jumped and spun away from the window. There was a noise in the living room; it was a thumping sound like someone had just bumped into the coffee table. She imagined Jim Whitefeather in their living room, his body badly decomposed after seven years, but still somehow partially preserved enough by the Ancient Enemy. She imagined the dead man stumbling around, feeling his way along because his eyes had been gouged out so long ago.