by Hunt, James
Claire lifted her from the tub, focusing all her strength and coordination to not fall over as she rested Chloe on the bed. She brushed the matted and sweaty hair off her daughter’s forehead and cupped her face. “Chloe, listen, I’m going to get help, okay? I need you to stay here, and if someone comes back that isn’t me, I want you to hide.”
Chloe nodded in response, and Claire didn’t burden her already frightened daughter with overwhelming her with more details of stranger danger than she needed.
Night had fallen since she’d passed out, but a single parking lot light illuminated the police cruiser below and Claire extended her body over the railing off the balcony. “Help! Help me!”
The bodies in the squad car remained motionless. Claire hurried down the balcony, sprinting down the stairs, her voice hoarse and raw. “Help!” Her plea echoed through the night and she hurried down the staircase, her eyes locked onto the squad car below. The moment her feet touched the first floor, she broke out into a shambled sprint, her head still woozy from the vicious blow that knocked her unconscious.
Claire smacked her palm against the trunk of the police cruiser and pulled herself toward the window. She reached her hand for the shoulder of the deputy inside, but when she saw his face she jumped backward, her mouth agape with a breathless scream.
Thick mats of blood coated the heads of both officers, their bodies still held up by the seatbelts across their chests. She gagged from the putrid stench of blood and brain, turning away from the gruesome scene.
Claire spun around in the empty parking lot, the one street lamp burning a bright circle on the black pavement of the asphalt. All the windows in the motel were dark and empty, but the light in the front office still burned.
In a half limp, half walk, Claire stumbled toward the office with tears in her eyes. She searched the darkness, screaming Matt’s name, but each bloodcurdling cry was answered only with silence.
Claire pushed open the door to the front office, and her cry was cut short by the dark patch of blood splatter on the back wall, and the limp outstretched hand she saw lying back behind the counter. She retreated outside, hand on her mouth, the flesh around her eyes twitching in terror.
She sprinted up the steps toward the room. With the room turned upside down and sheets and clothes flung everywhere, Claire clinched her fists at her sides, searching for her purse. “Chloe, do you see—”
The phone rang near the door beneath a pile of clothes. She flung the blouses and shorts away and unearthed the cell phone and answered immediately. “Hello?”
“Claire!” Owen’s voice broke through clear and loud.
“Owen, Chuck has Matt!”
“What?”
Claire pursed her lips shut and then looked to Chloe, who was still crying on the bed. She took hold of her daughter’s hand and squeezed it tight. “What do we do?”
“Find the sheriff,” Owen answered. “Tell him to come to the house on Cypress Lane. Tell him I want to turn myself in for everything that’s happened.”
Claire shook her head. “But… It’s not true, right?” She clutched the phone tighter. “Owen, tell me it’s not true.”
A pause lingered before Owen answered. “Just tell him to come to the house. And you need to hurry. Do you have a car?”
Claire’s mind wandered to the blood-stained police cruiser out front. “No.”
“Tell the sheriff to send some deputies to pick you up,” Owen said. “Go to the sheriff’s station and stay there.”
Claire pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes. She scrunched her face in preparation for tears but kept them at bay. “Okay.”
“I love you, Claire.”
She teared up. “I love you too.” There was more she wanted to say, more she wanted to tell him, but she stopped herself. And with that, the call ended.
Claire lowered the phone, the few tears that fell suddenly multiplying like raindrops in a thunderstorm. Sobs rolled her shoulders forward and she buried her face in her palms, not looking up until she felt the heavy thump of Chloe on her leg as her daughter squeezed her tight.
Claire dropped to the floor and wrapped her arms around her little girl, and for a moment she let herself forget that she was a mother, a wife, and a daughter. In that moment she was afraid, and she had no idea what to do next.
“Mommy?” Chloe asked. “Mommy, are you okay?”
Claire wiped her eyes, nodding. “I’m fine, sweetheart.” She kissed Chloe’s cheek and then, with some effort, stood. She glanced down at her daughter, the five-year-old bundle of energy and art with her beautiful eyes and that inquisitive mind, and her strength returned.
Maybe Madame Crepaux had found someone to take Owen’s place? She shuddered at the thought of whatever poor soul she’d managed to get and for a brief moment was filled with regret, but the pain was the price to keep her family whole.
7
The windows of the house were dark, and remnants of police tape were strewn about the outside. No cars. No lights. Everything was still and dead, but Chuck knew that was where it would all end.
A whimper sounded behind him, and he spun around and hushed the boy who was bound and gagged in the mud. Chuck had knocked him unconscious at the motel, and he had started to wake.
Chuck thought about beating him back to unconsciousness, but he wanted the boy alert for when Owen saw him. He wanted Owen to live the fear of his son through his boy’s eyes.
Matt groaned through the dirty cloth rag. Mud speckled his cheeks, and the whites of his eyes shone brightly in the darkness. He rolled helplessly from side to side, tugging at the restraints on his wrists and ankles.
Chuck walked over and violently gripped the back of Matt’s head and exposed the pale and puffy flesh of his jugular. He gave Matt a look up and down, and then grimaced. “I saw kids like you at my school growing up. Boys with fathers who cared. I could smell it on them like cologne.” He gave another vicious tug at Matt’s scalp, and Matt winced from the harsh angle of his neck. “It only made them weak though. Out of all the things my father did to me, at least I can say he didn’t make me soft. Not like yours.”
Chuck slammed Matt’s head to the side and the boy smacked into the mud. His little chest heaved up and down in quick, panting breaths. Chuck stared at him in the sludge, rolling impotently from side to side.
“Daddy will come for you,” Chuck said. “And then he’ll watch you die.” He hunched over and placed his hands on his knees, his face reddening from the rush of blood pumping into his skull. “And when you die, it’ll be because your father let you. You hear me?” Chuck inched closer. “Your father let you die.”
Absentmindedly, Chuck reached for the empty space where his pendulum once resided. When he grabbed nothing but air, he dropped his hand to his side and snarled. With one hand, he snatched the back of Matt’s collar and dragged him through the mud, away from the house and deeper into the swamp. There was one more place he wanted to visit before the guests of honor arrived.
The trees thickened, the mud gave way to water, and the boy continued to struggle against the push the entire way. Chuck sent the tip of his boot into the boy’s side, which elicited a crack and a guttural cry into Matt’s dirty gag.
Sweat, mud, and swamp water speckled Chuck’s body as he dragged Matt through the mud and water until he finally arrived at his family’s gravesite. Moonlight brightened the headstones and the glass of the mausoleum.
Chuck tossed Matt near one of the graves, but the boy made nothing but gasping, wheezing noises. He looked on the brink of passing out again. “Don’t move.”
Chuck navigated the disrupted cemetery with hesitation, a place he hadn’t visited since he stole the amulet off his grandfather’s body. His father had told him that he didn’t need to wear it, but the closer the return of Bacalou crept to the twenty-five-year mark, the more nervous he grew.
It was anxiousness worse than anything he experienced as a child. He couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. He
thought of nothing except the doom of the creature whose sole purpose was to kill him.
For Chuck, the necklace represented the one constant protection in his life, which he found oddly symbolic. What should have been the job of his father instead was a glowing stone. Emotionless, cold, hard, and unyielding. But in those ways, it was exactly like his real father.
It was almost comical when Chuck thought about it. All of the time and energy he put into pining for his father’s affection and approval, and in the end it never added up to shit. And as he passed grave after open grave, he thought about the enormity of his family and all the people they’d killed throughout the years.
“We’re fighters, Charles, champions!” his father would say. “We don’t quit, we don’t stop, and we never run. We face whatever is down the road like men! The world loves to break men. It’s its favorite pastime. But the world will never break the Toussaints. You hear me, Charles? You come from a long line of tradition, and power, and success. Every Toussaint has done that, and god help me, I will do everything I can to make sure you’re not the last. Are you ready for such a future, Charles? Or will you crumble like so many weak-minded fools?”
He was six when his father delivered that rousing speech. And what he remembered most was not what his father had said, but the way he looked when he said it. The reddened cheeks, the wiry muscles, the veins bulging from his father’s neck. Out of everything, what he feared most was his own father.
Chuck stopped halfway to the mausoleum at one of the crumbled tombs. The headstone was new, as his father had only passed away a few years ago. He knew it was Owen that had done this damage, no doubt when he was searching for the pendulum. It must have been the old woman who told him about it. The man wasn’t smart enough to figure it out on his own. It was why he picked him in the first place.
His father’s coffin was exposed and Chuck had a fleeting impulse to open it. There was a part of him that wanted to see his father look weak. He was rarely sick, and even when he was, he pushed through it. In all the years he knew his father, Chuck never once saw him nap, ask for help, or help someone without getting something in return.
“Everything has a price, Charles. And it’s best that you are the one setting the cost. Time is money, Chuckie.”
Chuck stared down at the headstone, the engraved letters and dates still polished and clean, though a hint of green moss had started to form over the top.
“It’s over, Dad.” Despite the swirling pain in his gut, Chuck’s voice remained steady. It was easier to face his father when there wasn’t any chance for repercussions. He figured every man needed to repent to someone at the end, and he couldn’t think of anyone else but his father.
“Everything our family built is going to crumble. The house, the factory, the money, it’s all going away.” Chuck glanced to the mausoleum and the old grave that rested by its side where he knew Charles Toussaint I was buried. “I didn’t live up to the name. I didn’t live up to what you wanted me to be.” He turned back to his father’s headstone, tears streaming down his face. “I wasn’t the son you wanted. I know that.” His voice cracked and he wiped the snot from his upper lip. “But you should know that you weren’t the father I wanted. You were cold, and mean, and distant. Where you should have picked me up, you let me fall. Where you should have held my hand, you shoved me away. When you should have loved me, you gave me nothing but resentment.”
Chuck clenched his fists and he trembled. All the hate, all the anger, all the pain that he felt as a child returned tenfold. Those memories that he’d spent so much time repressing and trying to forget flooded back in spades.
Chuck kicked his father’s headstone, the heel of his shoe giving a muted thump against the dense concrete. He struck it again, harder. Then again, and again, and again, until a sharp pain radiated from his knee to his hip.
He hobbled back a few steps, tears still in his eyes, his cheeks red and wet, his hair glued to the front of his forehead in a smeared and sweaty mess. He raised his face to the sky, arms outstretched. “Can you hear me, Father? Do you see what’s become of your only son? Do you? Do you!”
But instead of his father’s roaring voice, instead of a flash of lightning or thunder answering him in the sky, there was only the light buzz of cicadas. There was no raising of the dead, no signals from the afterlife. Just like the fears of his childhood, he found the dead to be lifeless and final.
The tears dried, and a slow chuckle rolled from Chuck’s tongue. It started quiet and soft, nothing but the gentle gyration of his shoulders giving away his humor, and then the laughter roared into the night as the tears on his face dried.
“I’ll see you soon, Father,” Chuck said, wiping his nose with his dirty sleeve. He turned away from the tombs of his family and trudged back to where he left Matt Cooley. He picked the boy off the ground, who was still wheezing from the boot to the ribs, and carried him toward the house. The house where it all started. And the house where it would all end.
* * *
Bellingham rubbed the knobby knuckles of his arthritic hands. They hurt tonight. More than usual. A light tremor appeared in his left pinky finger, vibrating violently without his consent as he sat in a chair close to the nurse’s station on the operating wing of the hospital.
His deputy was still in surgery. It took them two hours to get back to the hospital after trudging back from that swamp. Luckily Deputy Hurt had the good sense to tag the location of the shack with GPS on his phone before they took off. They’d need to get back out there, analyze the body, make sure it matched up with what Owen Cooley was saying, which the sheriff thought it did.
Bellingham sat, hunched over. The past few days had worn him down. But what sucked the life out of him most was the fact that so much of it could have been prevented if he’d just listened to Owen Cooley in the first place.
Deputy Hurt saw the same thing that he did when Owen turned into that… thing. But how in the hell was he supposed to convince a judge what happened when there were two dead bodies involved? And if Lacroix didn’t survive the operating table, that slim chance of Owen Cooley maintaining his freedom would drop to zero.
“Sheriff?” The nurse at the station poked her head up from her computer, her hand covering the mouthpiece of her phone. “You’ve got a call from one of your deputies.”
Bellingham’s knees cracked as he stood and hobbled over. A few flecks of dried mud broke off from his pant legs, and he grabbed the phone. “This is Bellingham.”
“Sheriff, I’ve got Claire Cooley here with me.”
Bellingham grunted. “Put her on.”
“Um, Sheriff?” The deputy grunted and then cleared his throat. “There’s more.”
Without thinking about it, Bellingham grabbed hold of the edge of the nurse’s desk for support. Whatever more he was about to hear wasn’t good.
“The deputies you had watch over Mrs. Cooley were killed. Shot through the head in their squad car.”
Color drained from Bellingham’s cheeks, and his elbow thumped loudly on the desk as he stopped himself from falling. The floor spun, and he saw the nurse’s lips move as she stood to check on him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying.
“Sheriff?”
“It was Chuck?” Bellingham asked, closing his eyes.
“Yes, sir.”
A sickness formed like a pin-sized needle in the middle of his gut, and Bellingham reached for it absentmindedly. “Put Claire on.”
Muffled voices and the sound of hands filtered through the speaker until Claire’s voice sounded in his ear. “Sheriff, you have to get to the house.”
“Are you all right?” Bellingham asked. It was the father in him. The woman was just about the same age as his oldest. And god knew that would have been his first question if he was speaking to his own daughter.
“He took Matt,” Claire said. “You have to get to the house, Sheriff.”
Bellingham shook his head and stepped away from the desk, stretching the cord of the pho
ne. A sense of strength was returning, action and purpose pulling him from the pits of weakness. “On Cypress?”
“Owen will be there, and I know that’s where Chuck is going.”
“Why?”
“Chuck kept talking about how he was going to finish this, how he was going to make it to the end of the line. Sheriff, please.” The strength cracked along with her voice. “Please, my family… we’ve been through enough.”
“Claire—”
“You believe us, right?” Claire asked, a hopeful desperation in her tone. “After what you’ve seen, after everything that’s happened, you have to believe us. We’re not crazy, we’re not making this up, we’re telling the truth.”
“It doesn’t matter if I believe you. Once this goes to court, we need something more than just black magic and what we said we saw. We need evidence.”
“And you’ll find it at the house,” Claire replied. “But you have to go now. You have to hurry. Please, Sheriff. I’m begging you.”
Bellingham looked to the clock. It was almost midnight. It’d been nearly two days since he’d slept. It was too long for a man his age. But the finish line was up ahead. He just needed to dig a little deeper. “All right, Claire. I’ll take my men, but I want you and your daughter at the station. And that’s not negotiable.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Put the deputy back on.” Bellingham waited for the shuffle to happen over the phone and after he relayed the instructions to the deputy about what he wanted, he hung up. He tapped his forefinger on the nurse’s desk. He turned to look at her, and her eyes were big and wide like a full moon. It made her look younger. That type of hopeful fear always made people look younger. Unless you were already old, like he was. “I want to know about Deputy Lacroix’s status the moment he’s out of surgery, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” Bellingham’s boots clicked against the tile on his way out, and he grabbed the rest of his deputies in the waiting room. He left only one behind to monitor the situation with Lacroix. As he walked, more mud from the trek through the swamp speckled that white tile, leaving a trail of dirt.
