“Have a good day, Pastor,” Morley said. The clothes and especially the little black shoes the children wore reminded him of old silver plate photos of his grandparents. Everything about the pastor and his orphans seemed a little off.
He was only feet away from the veranda when the screen door banged open and a vision appeared that moved him to remove his Blue Jays baseball hat. A raven-haired woman who flashed him a smile descended and gave him a warm hug. “You don’t remember, do you?”
“I’m afraid not, Miss,” he replied.
“Susanne,” she said. “It is good to see you, Morley.”
“I’m sorry, it’s been, what? Thirty years?” he said, remembering her as a senior in high school. “Where did you get off to?”
“I returned to Italy after I graduated,” she said, leading him up the steps into the kitchen of the main house. “I moved to Spain for my husband then. He passed away a few years later, so I took turns living with different sisters.”
“What brings you back?”
“My niece, Miranda,” she replied. “I’ll be moving in with her for a while to see if I enjoy Canada enough to stay. I think I will, but it’s too soon to say. Who were you talking to on the path? I only heard your voice.”
“New Pastor coming back to town,” Morley replied. “He seemed a little strange, maybe from the old country too?”
“Only one Pastor has been here for cards this week,” she looked to a stout woman.
“Pastor Villaro,” the stout woman answered.
“Oh, it wasn’t him. He baptized all three of my kids, I’d know him,” Morley said. “This fellow looked like he’d just spent a month on a boat, pale, pretty thin.”
“He wasn’t invited,” said Allen as he came in through the side door. “Nothing to worry about though.” He had scratches on his face, and a well-stitched rip on his lip.
“What happened there?” Morley said.
“Nothing to worry about,” Allen said. “Here to help look for April?”
“Sure am, brought a couple friends with me, and Terry’s offered to bring everyone from the hardware store here to help if we need more people. Is Mister Sands here?”
“No,” Allen replied. “He’s not as worried as we are about this. We’re just about to head off to the Erikson farm. We bought their place four years ago when Old Yves passed away. You’re just in time.”
A young, well-built man with blonde hair came to the door, he looked anxious. “Ready to go?”
“Looks like we have enough volunteers, Scottie,” Allen said with a nod. “Thank your guys for me. I’ll ride in your pickup, I’m still not driving.”
“Wait,” Morley said. “The Erikson farm has been abandoned for what, twenty, thirty years? It’s got to be nine miles from here, why would she be there?”
“I don’t know, but I’ve got one of those hunches,” Allen said.
Morley knew not to question it. Allen and his father had helped him and other police officers more than once when people went missing, and the grave expression on his face told him that they would definitely find something.
They were joined on the road by a massive 1958 Edsel four door, its pointed rear fins only topped by the front – an oval front grill feature with paired headlamps. They arrived at the Erikson farm and Morley wasted no time in directing Patrick and Rick to check the few structures still standing. The barn had fallen down long before, leaving only a few small storage sheds and outhouses in various states of disrepair. That was, other than the main farmhouse.
Allen looked across the overgrown fields. The forest had been encroaching on the abandoned farm for at least two decades, and tall grass had grown in everywhere else. The farmhouse was a husk. Old and dilapidated when the Webbs bought the land, they had since removed glass and any fixtures from the inside. What was left overlooked the overgrown fields with hollow, dark windows.
“We should start there?” Morley said, pointing at the house and the two ramshackle sheds beside it.
“We’ll find that a car has come through behind the house,” Allen said, moving with long strides.
Morley followed him, a chill running down his spine as he glanced back towards a dark second floor window. The boards over the first floor windows and door looked intact, and he didn’t see evidence that anyone had gone towards the house at a glance. There was no trail pushed through the grass, or other signs. He still could have sworn that something moved in that upper floor window. “We should check the house,” he said.
“No,” Allen told him firmly. “Stick with the group.”
He stared at the pair of open windows in the dilapidated house for a moment then nodded. His eyes never stopped scanning the way ahead, and as they came around the rear, he saw what Allen predicted. The grass overgrowing an old tractor trail had recently been pressed down. “Pat, Rick, over here.”
They rushed up to flank them on the left, looking through the grass and nearby tree line. Experience had taught Morley that it was easy to miss things in nearly hip-high grass. They followed the path of the car, and Morley shook his head. “Come and gone. It looks like whoever went in took the same path out, going a little off trail here,” he pointed to a length of the trail where the grass had been pressed down by tires in a half loop running off and on again. “By that old coal chute.”
“She’s up ahead,” Allen said, pointing to the end of the path, where the gutted husks of farm equipment occupied a yard with tall grass. His pace grew faster until he was running.
“Slow and careful,” Morley said as he struggled to keep up with the tall man and his younger companions. The words would fall on deaf ears, he knew, but he had to try. He also had a feeling that he was leaving something important behind at the rear of the old house.
“You guys see something up there?” asked Patrick, his speech slurred thanks to his missing top teeth.
“Nothing yet,” Morley replied, shouting over his shoulder. “Can you watch the house?”
“On it, Morley,” Rick said.
“I can hear her,” Scott, Allen’s nephew said, redoubling his pace into a reckless run.
The blonde youth disappeared behind an old rust covered tractor and immediately shouted something Morley couldn’t make out, then he screamed; “help!”
The world blurred past as Morley and the entire group, suddenly led by the longhaired, stocky Maxwell, broke into the circle of broken down farm machinery. Scott was cradling a girl in a filthy summer dress in his arms on the ground. Her fair hair was caked with crimson, the fingers on her left hand had been bashed into awkward angles, and Morley could not see her face.
His limited emergency medical training told him that he had to check her vitals, and keep her still, and that Scott had broken the second rule by pulling her partially into his lap.
He knelt down and could immediately see that she was still breathing. One of her eyes was closed, the lid and cheek caked in blood. Her other was open, a beautiful blue eye staring out of a ravaged face. Her lips had been cut away, and someone had sawed at her nose with a rough blade or unsteady hand from the bottom. Her smile had been replaced by a grimace of bloody teeth and gums.
Weak, raspy but sweet sounds came from her that were more animal than human. He interpreted them as expressions of relief, and sometimes she seemed to be trying to reassure Scottie, who kept telling her; “I’ve got you, you’re going to be okay.” She raised a still perfect hand and touched Scott’s face as though she was making sure he was really there.
He moved in, catching a fearful glance from her. “You remember me? I’m Mister Dell. You used to play with my girls, Celeste and Mary.”
She nodded at him and struggled to swallow.
“Don’t say anything, just let us take care of you,” he said. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the car now. He’s going to stay right beside you, aren’t you, Son?”
“I’ll never leave you,” Scottie said. “I’m right here.”
He gently picked her up, a task
that required so little effort, and couldn’t help but think of his children as he gently cradled her against his chest. It was his girl Celeste, who was born with blonde, almost white hair that became a thick mane of fair curls that kept coming to mind. Years on the police force allowed him to push those thoughts aside. He concentrated on every stride moving forward, watching the path ahead, supporting her head properly.
She stared up at him with the blue eye that wasn’t forced closed with blood and swelling. Everyone followed close behind, and Scottie kept up. As they drew close to the Edsel, April began to weep quietly. “Am I hurting you?” Morley asked.
She shook her head a little, her blue eye closed. He decided that whatever she was crying about wasn’t something he could act on there. He had to get her into a car and on the way to the hospital, where he was sure there would be many more tears.
Maxwell opened the back door, Scottie hurried inside and Morley gently put her onto the back seat, laying her head in his lap. “Keep her steady, don’t let her head roll from side to side, but don’t touch her injuries.”
Scottie nodded, clearing a lock of blood caked hair out of her face. “Yeah, I’ve got her.”
A young brunette woman carefully joined the pair in the back seat, sliding under April’s legs. “We’ll take care of her, thank you.”
He remembered delivering the news of Miranda’s mother’s fatal car accident then, and nodded at her, momentarily at a loss for words. Maxwell carefully closed the door and got into the middle passenger seat. He was squeezed in by Bernie in the driver’s seat and his father Allen on the passenger side.
“Be careful,” Morely said.
“Thank you for your help,” Allen said before closing the passenger door.
“Don’t worry about calling the police,” Morley said. “I’ll call from your place, it’s the nearest phone.” He watched the Edsel carefully turn around then head off down the road at a fair pace.
“That’s the girl we’re here to find,” Rick said as he caught up with him. “Who did that? All I see is blood from here, what did they do?”
“That’s her, that’s little April,” Morley said. “Someone cut on her, bad. We have a crazy in town, probably brought in with that Gathering.”
“Do you think she’ll make it?”
“From the clotting, and how long she’s probably been here like that, I give her fifty-fifty. Whoever did that to her knows how to cut and not kill.”
The three of them stood there, surrounded by the encroaching woodland and the sounds of crickets, buzzing creatures of summer for long moments before anyone spoke.
“Ever see anything like that?” Patrick asked quietly. He looked utterly dumbfounded, his stubble covered face a stunned mask.
“No,” Morley said. “Go back up the road and call the department. I have to check something out here.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Morley said, heading back to his truck. “I’ll just hold down the fort here, make sure no lookie-loos come around messing up the crime scene. You go call.”
“All right,” Rick said.
Moments later his childhood friends were gone, and he was returning to the rear of the farmhouse with a crowbar in one hand and a handgun in the other. It was difficult to keep his daughters out of his mind while he checked his revolver, then approached the coal chute.
His mind played tricks on him. Instead of little April, he kept seeing his daughter Celeste on the ground. He moved the grass surrounding the trap door covering the coal chute with his crowbar and found what he suspected he would, a broken padlock.
He holstered his gun then pulled his flashlight from his pocket before kicking the door up and open. There were scratches on the inside of the chute, it looked as though someone had recently slid down the four-foot shaft. Morley turned his light off and allowed himself a moment’s hesitation. He had the distinct feeling that the man who carved into April was still there.
Those windows above had eyes, and they enjoyed watching other people clean up. He would not let the perpetrator get away. The grade of the blackened chute wasn’t severe, so he carefully lowered himself down.
A moment’s pause allowed his eyes to adjust to the light. Somewhere above there was a breach in a wall that was letting a little light through some of the floorboards. He had just enough to make out the furnace room.
The pot-bellied furnace for the house, made to burn coal or wood, dominated the room. With great care, Morley put his crowbar down at his feet and drew his pistol.
With the flashlight in one hand, and his pistol pointing forward, he moved on. There was nothing in the furnace room to see, he kept his light off until he came to the doorway. The next room was pitch black, there was no light getting in.
“Help me,” someone said, struggling to say the words as though there was a heavy weight on their chest.
Morley turned his flashlight on and saw a young man, perhaps twenty years of age with long dark hair. His breathing was labored, his chin rested on his chest as he stood. “He’s got me,” the boy said.
A slow sweep of his light revealed that he was standing beside a bare boards bench with an old ballpein hammer, pliers and some mismatched cutlery.
“Don’t move, Son,” Morley said, training his gun on the young man. He did his best to look around the basement to make sure there were no other threats while he kept his eye on his subject. “What’s your name?”
“Darren,” he wheezed.
“Are you alone here? Is there anyone else in the house?”
The young man struggled to say something but his voice was choked off as though someone was pulling on his vocal chords, turning his words into choking and gurgling. The noise continued as he started grinding his teeth so hard that it made Morley cringe. He could see the young man was struggling, in pain, but the grinding continued.
“I can see that you’re having some kind of trouble, Son. If it’s drugs, if you took something, we can take care of you. Just step away from there. Come towards me slowly.” The sounds of Darren’s hoarse breathing and the loud grinding of teeth filled the room as the young man rocked slightly, his chin still down on his chest.
The smell of lighter fluid and burned hair came on a breeze from the darkness, and Morley did a quick scan of the rest of the room with his light. There was nothing but piled furniture to his right, all crammed against the wall. Up the middle was a path of blood leading to a closed door opposite. A table had been set beside the door, with some old jars on it.
The grinding and heavy breathing stopped suddenly, and Morley twitched his light back to focus on Darren, who was staring back at him, terrified. “Help me! He made me help him with my hands, but I couldn’t stop him. Neither of us could stop him!”
“Calm down, Son,” Morley said. “Is he still in the house?”
The flashlight went out, and fell out of his hand as though all the strength in his left arm was gone. His ribs felt as though someone was kneeling on them from the inside, and his heart began to race.
As though summoned from the memory of walking in on his first corpse, the stench of rot filled his nostrils. His feet felt heavy, and his arms slowly lowered down to his sides as though he was incapable of holding them up any longer. The pressure in his head continued to build, and then he felt someone else behind his own eyes.
It was worse than someone breathing down his neck, it was the feeling of being at the mercy of a thing that could remember April’s screams. The struggle of trying to keep her still after carving her lips away so he could tear out those beautiful blue eyes.
“Fight him!” Darren screamed. “Don’t let him all the way in!”
“Run,” Morley said as he felt his feet begin to scrape across the floor, under someone else’s control.
“He’s too powerful, he can take us both, he still has my friend,” Darren wept. “He doesn’t kill, I wish he’d kill, but he doesn’t kill.”
With a clumsy hand, Morley shoved his pistol back i
nto its holster at his waist. His slowly steadying gait brought him to the bench. Even his eyes were out of his control. His memory was invaded by the sensation of cutting April with a practiced hand. They’d find that she was missing an ear, and that every knuckle on one hand was carefully bashed, while the other was left untouched. It was in case she turned, and became a servant.
There had been more women than the thing in his body could remember, and he had his favorites. A tear rolled down Morley’s cheek as the beast that had taken him recollected several of his favorites. “Monster,” he managed to grind out of his throat.
“I am what Maxwell and people like him made me,” Darren said, his voice one part the young man’s, and one part a higher pitched, near frantic sound. The voices were in disharmony with each other, grating on the ear. “I was a man on a mission, to purify, to teach the ignorant few who peer into the veil and quest for its unnatural power, then I found a book while teaching an old man.” Morley could see the memory, Vernor Gold, a collector of rare books who had a selection of volumes that the Purifiers did not approve of. Death was his sentence, and it was carried out by Panos himself. An expertly held hook knife opened his belly, and old Vernor was forced to watch as his small intestine was drawn out, then he was left to bleed to death. “You see?” Darren continued. “A man about his business, then the Book of Doors told me that the real power is not in this life, that heaven is only open to those who are recognized in the next life by those they’ve done good for. I have been cheated, but the book had power that I could carry past the living flesh. Tricks. Tricks for cheating and correcting that my old family of Purifiers cannot understand.”
“Tossed you out,” Morley managed as he watched his hands grow more graceful by the moment.
“You aren’t supposed to see that,” Panos said from Darren’s mouth.
His right hand closed around the handle of the ballpein hammer and raised it. His left splayed itself out on the bench. “I will tell you why you’re going to die, because my young thrall is right: I do not kill unless you give me a reason. I am still a Purifier,” Panos said through Darren’s lips. The grin there had grown so large that the scant light was glinting off his teeth. “Maxwell must die, he knows more about the book than I do. His power is manifesting. It is unnatural. It is an offense to the order of life. You make it easy now. They will find your body here. Hang the cutting on you since it will be days before April will be able to speak again, a week at least before the others are found. The other explanations for her will be too outlandish for their little minds to explain or believe.”
Dark Arts Page 18
