Deadlight Jack

by Mark Onspaugh

  Suddenly, he opened his shirt and peered at his chest.

  The spiral scar Dabo Muu had given him before going to fight the Faceless One was gone. He looked at Shay-Shay Moon.

  “You didn’t need that anymore. All it was doing was making it possible for him to keep track of you. He has a vile smell.”

  Grateful, Jimmy reached down and touched her gently, stroking her back like he would do with his cat, Jabbo. Shay-Shay Moon arched her back and sighed.

  They moved on, crossing through the most fetid and desolate areas of the swamp, and Jimmy wondered if they had actually crossed over into a “middle place,” a place in between the real world and the spirit world. These could be the most dangerous places of all, with the exception of the Land of the Dead, because everything in a middle place could harm a human, and many wanted to do so.

  He wondered about George and about Donny. He prayed to all the beings he could think of that they would not be too late.

  Chapter 28

  ATCHAFALAYA SWAMP, LOUISIANA

  Deadlight Jack had left Maison Lémieux, presumably to get them food.

  Those still alive, amended George. Although it was possible that…

  But that was a concept he really didn’t want to think about.

  Deadlight Jack promised a grand feast in celebration of George’s arrival, but Donny and his friend Trang told him that all they had eaten was old bread, some cans of beans, and some black-eyed peas and okra with a little bit of ham that was far too salty.

  He wondered if the old devil could just conjure up whatever they might want and thought he might. George thought his absences were calculated to give the children a bit of relief, a respite where they might start to hope again, a state of mind Deadlight Jack could crush with his mere return.

  George had gotten to know the living children as best as he could.

  Besides Donny and Trang, who was ten years old and from New Orleans, there were thirteen children.

  Kurt Sjurseth was the oldest and the weakest. Now fourteen, George learned from the others that Kurt had been with Deadlight Jack for five years. At first he had been a strong and brave young man from Lafayette. Now he was gaunt and unable to speak. When the group traveled on one of the Professor’s forays, Kurt and Amelynn stayed behind.

  Amelynn had been at Maison Lémieux for almost as long as Kurt. She had been a stout, athletic girl, but now she looked positively skeletal. She usually spent her time in the house staring into space, sometimes singing strange and tuneless little songs.

  Both Kurt and Amelynn were hard to focus on. This was no trick of the light but because they were slowly being consumed by Deadlight Jack’s fell magic, and one day they would join the ranks of the ghost children.

  Doug-Ray was a twelve-year-old white boy from Biloxi. George learned he had been abducted by Deadlight Jack three years ago, and he also was fading. It wasn’t something you could see directly, but if you looked at Doug-Ray peripherally, you knew he would be a ghost child within a few months.

  Lena was a ten-year-old Puerto Rican girl from New York. Her family had come to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, and she had gotten separated. Deadlight Jack had offered to take her to the police station and brought her to the Atchafalaya instead. That had been almost two years ago.

  Gail and Jeremy were white fraternal twins of eight from Reno. They had wandered away from a tour group through the Atchafalaya Nature Preserve. They had seen the will-o’-the-wisp and followed it, getting so turned around they were relieved when the man in the top hat showed up. That also had been two years ago.

  The Camp Happy Time kids were four Asian kids who clung tightly together. They didn’t seem to understand English and were afraid of everybody. The other kids called them that because they had been wearing camp tee shirts when they were first taken.

  Warren was a serious black kid with glasses from Jackson, Mississippi. Only nine, he had convinced himself he was lost in a computer game and would soon find his way out, or his mother would call him for dinner.

  Gina was also nine and from Gainesville, Florida. The others called her “Gretel” because she had been abducted with her brother, whom they called “Hansel.” He had fallen prey to one of the ghost gators and was now one of the ghost children. Now he eyed her hungrily from the pack of small wraiths and she got very little sleep.

  The last was Prue, who had run away from an abusive stepfather and gotten lost in the Atchafalaya. She had followed a light she saw, all the way to Maison Lémieux.

  That left the boy Donny told him was tasked with hauling bones who was forced to sleep outside as part of his punishment. George wanted to check on him, but his way was blocked by the nightmarish things that waited in the foyer. All of the children, with the exception of Donny, wore clothes Deadlight Jack had allowed them to scavenge from campsites and sometimes homes near the swamp. The children grew fast, and their life in the swamp soon reduced the toughest clothes to muddy, stinking rags.

  George wondered how long all of this had been going on and remembered Deadlight Jack’s talking about Maison Lémieux being built in 1700, and thought he might have been at this evil for at least that long. Then he thought of the big monster, who looked like something out of those dinosaur movies, and wondered if it was even longer.

  Probably just found each other, love at first sight, George thought.

  He wondered at their chances for escape. It would be difficult if it were just he and Donny—hell, it would have been difficult for just him.

  But he couldn’t leave those other kids behind. And it was useless rationalizing that they’d send help. Leaving those kids was a death sentence…Worse than that, really.

  If they were going to leave, best to do it now, while the thing in the top hat was gone. True, he might be watching, but it was worth a chance.

  The trouble was, Deadlight Jack had appointed a watchdog, some rotting horror he referred to as Herr Graff. In life Graff must have been immense, a tall man who would have weighed in excess of six hundred pounds and was plagued with boils. Now, in death, he looked like an enormous wax figure that was melting, much like the candles in the manor.

  Herr Graff sat in a gigantic tub that had been custom-made for him sometime after the Revolutionary War. He was slowly filling the tub as his body became more liquid than solid, and both his appearance and the vile odor he gave off would make even the most hardened of individuals turn away and retch.

  The tub’s claw feet had been outfitted with iron wheels and had been rolled into the library by Monsieur Lémieux and other members of the household staff. The wheels had squeaked loudly and the rotting floor had groaned under the weight of Herr Graff.

  “While I am gone,” Deadlight Jack had told them, “Herr Graff will watch the door for me. Isn’t he magnificent? He will be the first exhibit of my new museum: The Seven Deadly Sins. I wonder, George, if there will be a place for you…Perhaps pride?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” George had asked.

  “What, indeed!” Deadlight Jack had laughed. Then he had addressed the children, spreading his arms wide. “My dears! When I return we shall have a feast worthy of the kings and queens of Europe! No stale bread and beans today, my little ones. Thanks to the return of my lost boy George Watters, we will celebrate!” He waited a moment, then said, “Do you not applaud me, your benefactor?”

  The children obeyed, clapping their hands halfheartedly, even the Camp Happy Time kids, who seemed to understand whatever Deadlight Jack said.

  Deadlight Jack had bowed low, then manifested another rip in reality and stepped through, disappearing from their sight.

  Now George watched Herr Graff and wondered if they might sneak by him. Herr Graff was stuffing bacon into his mouth from a massive porcelain bowl. The aroma of bacon made George’s and the children’s mouths water, but Herr Graff was in no mood to share. He would occasionally look their way, his small, piggish eyes gleaming, his greasy mouth chewing openly, giving a glimpse of teeth that were small b
ut very sharp.

  As an experiment, George walked near the tub, careful not to get too close to the monstrous figure in the tub.

  Herr Graff eyed him as he ate.

  Is that bowl bottomless? George thought. I wonder if I could grab it from him, share with the kids…

  Herr Graff stopped eating and stared at George with porcine hostility.

  “Hey there, Elvis,” George said.

  Herr Graff let out a bellow, sounding much like a water buffalo George had seen on a nature show. The creature had been trapped in the mud near a watering hole and the crocodiles were closing in.

  In answer, the prehistoric creature bellowed in the foyer. No one trying to leave would get past that.

  George gave up on the notion, still salivating and wishing he could grab some of that juicy, fatty bacon.

  Probably bite me…I’d end up like him.

  George shuddered and went back to Donny and Trang.

  “He’s a fat sumbitch, but he can see good,” Donny said, and Trang nodded. “Sorry, Granddaddy,” Donny said, realizing he had cursed.

  George shook his head. “You’re right, he is a sumbitch.”

  “A fat sumbitch,” Donny said, and the three of them stifled their laughter lest someone tell Deadlight Jack they weren’t suffering enough.

  Trang leaned forward and whispered, “I think I know a way we can sneak out.”

  George and Donny looked at her. She pointed to a chair near the fireplace. “There’s a big hole in the wall there. If you go through it, it takes you to a hall with a door that goes outside.”

  George looked at her, and she shrugged. “I did some exploring. I actually got out of the house a few weeks ago, but he caught me.”

  “Get the others. We’re going now,” George said.

  “Granddaddy, can’t we wait for the police?” Donny asked hopefully.

  “I don’t think they can find us, Donny. We have to help ourselves.”

  “If…if he catches us, he’ll be mad,” Donny said, on the verge of crying.

  George gently grabbed him by the shoulders. “We have to be brave and take a risk to get free, kiddo. I know you can be brave. You want to know how I know?”

  Donny nodded, his lower lip quivering.

  “Because I was terrified when I got here, and then I saw how brave you were, and I decided I was going to be brave, too.”

  “You did?” Donny looked at him, his eyes wide.

  George nodded. “You bet. Now, what do you say we get the others and blow this smelly old pop stand?”

  Donny nodded.

  Trang tugged on George’s shirt sleeve. He looked at her, and she pointed toward Herr Graff at the far end of the room.

  Their watchdog appeared to be asleep.

  George nodded to Trang and motioned toward the other kids.

  They were unable to get Doug-Ray or Gretel to come along. The Camp Happy Time kids only followed them to the fireplace, almost more out of curiosity, it seemed. When Trang pulled back the chair to reveal the hole in the rotted wall, the eldest of them said something low and urgent and they all retreated back to their couch, where they sat and pointedly looked away.

  That left Donny, Trang, Lena, Gail, Jeremy, and Warren, who thought this was a new videogame level. They followed Trang through the hole in the wall and George, bringing up the rear, pulled the chair back into place behind him.

  The hallway, which must have been a servants’ corridor to the kitchen and laundry, was dimly lit by various luminescent fungi clinging to the walls and ceiling. There were corpses in the corridor, but they were inanimate, although the fungi clinging to their mummified bodies did give them an unearthly glow.

  Trang looked at the other kids and said, “Don’t worry, these are dead-dead.”

  They followed, giving the glowing cadavers as wide a berth as possible.

  Donny grabbed George’s hand and whispered, “Be brave, Granddaddy.” George squeezed his hand and they followed the others.

  There were double doors on their left, but Trang avoided these, which would have just put them in another room inside. She came to a small door on the right at the end of the hall. It was covered over with cobwebs, and there was a spider with a bloated, spotted abdomen the size of a golf ball. It watched her with glittering eyes.

  Trang brought up her hand, wrapped in a length of rotted cloth, and crushed the thing with a move that was almost too quick to see.

  George was sure he could hear the thing shriek. By the way the kids winced, he figured he hadn’t imagined it.

  She cleared the cobwebs away and opened the door. It was supposed to swing out, and the hinges shrieked in protest.

  George stepped forward and helped her, and the door suddenly flew open, banging against the side of the house. In the still night, the sound was as loud as a rifle shot.

  They waited a moment, but there was nothing to indicate an alarm had been raised.

  The seven of them stepped out onto an expanse of cool grass. The various creepers and bushes of the swamp had not intruded here, and George wondered if the house was too unclean for any but the foulest things to take root here and thrive.

  He looked around, taking in their position. Every object was rendered dark against the silvered glow of the moon.

  He wondered where they might find a road, a campsite, or a ranger station.

  Maybe an airboat with a dozen box lunches aboard, he mused, though he didn’t have the slightest idea how to drive one.

  Trang held up her right fist, her index finger raised. “Wait here,” she said.

  For a moment, George wondered if she was going to betray them to Deadlight Jack, then shook his head. The notion was ridiculous—being in this place was eroding his common sense.

  As if reading his thoughts, Donny patted his hand and said, “She’s okay, Granddaddy.”

  George smiled at him, and Donny smiled back. George could see Melissa in that smile as well as Maddy. It was a good smile.

  Trang came back, as silent as a shadow.

  “I wanted Ethan to come, but I think the Professor took him with him.”

  Donny shook his head in sympathy.

  George almost told them Foxfire’s real name, but what good would it do? Just further demoralize them, and they had a long way to go. “We’d better move,” he said.

  “This way,” Trang said, and led them to the left, away from the house.

  “How do you know where to go?” George asked Trang, dubious at following a nine-year-old.

  “My dad’s a scoutmaster,” she said proudly, “and all my brothers are scouts. They taught me.”

  That was good enough for George.

  They followed her through the swamp, and once they were about a mile from the house, George could feel his mood lighten. He saw the effect in the children, as well. Whatever pall hung over Maison Lémieux, they seemed well past it now.

  The air, which to George earlier had seemed acrid and overly warm, now seemed cool and positively redolent, full of jasmine, honeysuckle, and a dozen floral perfumes he couldn’t identify.

  They crossed a narrow and shallow waterway, and George’s loafers were lost in the viscous mud that claimed them. He soldiered on, his stocking feet soaked and caked with mud and smelling like the swamp.

  But he was free.

  He prayed they would get away, he prayed that Deadlight Jack wouldn’t find them, and that the air force would napalm the whole miserable square mile that contained Maison Lémieux.

  Kaboom and good riddance you top-hatted son of a bitch.

  They came upon an ancient cemetery, its canted stones leaning every which way like malformed teeth, and mausoleums that were slowly sinking into the swamp to eventually become like remnants of Atlantis under the Atchafalaya River.

  They all moved with confidence. In their previous lives, they all would have been terrified of a graveyard, but such a place seemed tame when contrasted with the gruesome things they had endured.

  They had been traveling a
good hour, and George was beginning to think they might make it. He grieved over the children who hadn’t come with them, but Trang could give the authorities a general idea of where the house was, and he convinced himself they would be recovered and reunited with their families.

  In the midst of the cemetery was a large sepulcher of the blackest onyx. At its top was a golden device of a crescent moon incised with an open eye. The pupil of the eye was a horizontal slit, like a goat’s, and wavy lines radiated from the eye like a sun.

  The sight of the building frightened George on a primal level, awakening in him some atavistic feeling of terror. He stopped, pulling Donny close to him.

  Only Donny seemed to share George’s sense of dread. He clung closely to George while the others drew closer to the structure.

  “No,” said George hoarsely, “come back!”

  They looked back, just as the door of the structure swung open. George had a glimpse of a golden eye, like that of a giant ram, then tentacles erupted from the mausoleum and began to coil around each of them.

  They all screamed, and George tried to keep Donny safe, but the loathsome arms were slick and much too strong. They roiled and writhed, their black surfaces mottled in purple and scarlet. The one that wrapped around George held him fast.

  The children disappeared inside the structure, and Donny was the last of them to go in.

  “Granddaddy, help me!” he screamed.

  George was dragged in, and the last thing he saw as the door shut was a gaping maw, filled with hundreds of sharp teeth and a multitude of stars.

  —

  George awoke inside Maison Lémieux, seated at a large banquet table set with fine china and silver, gleaming candelabras, and a fine white linen tablecloth and napkins.

  The children were seated around the table near him. Though their clothes were still ragged and mud-caked, they wore new party hats upon their heads. Like him, they were slowly rousing themselves.

  Dream? Vision? Hallucination? George didn’t know, but there was a feeling of authenticity to the experience, like it had been real, no matter how impossible or dreadful.