Kat on a Hot Tin Airship (Kat Lightfoot Mysteries)

by Sam Stone

  I rinsed my hair, then climbed out of the water. Wrapped in a towel I paced the bathroom as I reminded myself that at least Maggie and Henry were happier, and that their relationship was back on track.

  Something was nagging in the back of my head. It was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. A feeling that I was missing something important. I had seen so many strange things since I had arrived here and I now found myself studying all the evidence again as the memories flicked through my mind like daguerreotype pictures of each scene.

  I revisited the times I’d seen the form of Callon: an ink-black figure that had dripped glutinous ichor, and had looked as though he had been severely burned. He had smelt charred too and that awful odour followed whenever he had appeared. Even Sally, when questioned about her experience, had mentioned something about the smell of extinguished candles on the air. I hadn’t thought it important at the time. Maybe it still wasn’t.

  A thought occurred to me. Perhaps we should set a trap for Callon this night. I needed to discuss this with Pepper and Martin.

  In the bedroom, I slipped my breeches, shirt and a short red jacket on. I could feel a chill in the air since the storm, and with wet hair I wasn’t sure if it would be wise to go outside without a coat of some sort.

  Then I strapped on my weapons even though I had no idea what I was going to do, but if my theory was right, then I would find Callon walking the Plantation and right now I was the only eligible female in the house.

  I opened up the curtains and slipped out onto the balcony. I was about to head to my colleagues’ room when I changed my mind and went in the other direction.

  I made my way silently down towards Maggie and Henry’s room and listened at the door. All was quiet inside, and no light bled from around the drapes. I only hoped that they were now coming to terms with their differences and would start living the life of happiness they both deserved. The thought of helping them, above everything else, made what I was about to do crucial and my resolve strengthened, even though I felt that familiar rush of excitement and anxiety that precipitated a confrontation of this magnitude.

  I walked back along the balcony towards Pepper and Martin’s room. I was about to knock on when I became aware of a presence behind me. I turned to find Orlando standing on the balcony outside my room.

  ‘Boy, am I glad to see you,’ I said. ‘I’ve been wondering where you got to. Listen you need to know …’

  As I spoke, Orlando’s features dissolved into the black mask of Callon and a powerful odour of charred flesh hit my nostrils.

  ‘You can’t win,’ I said. ‘We know everything now.’

  The black face split into a wide but hideous grin. White teeth gleamed between burnt and cracked lips.

  ‘The price wasn’t paid,’ rasped Callon and then his face sank, the image fading away into the shadows, and I found myself face to face with Maggie standing further down the balcony.

  ‘That wasn’t my brother …’ she gasped.

  ‘No, that thing resembled him closely, and now has decided to mimic him. If it can do that, it can be anyone. Maggie you can’t trust anyone now. Not until we have resolved this once and for all.’

  Maggie wrung her hands. ‘But what can you do? It’s a demon. We can’t fight it.’

  ‘There’s always a way to destroy a demon,’ I said. ‘You just need to learn their weaknesses. Then you use them to your own advantage.’

  ‘What weakness does this one have?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘I don’t know – yet. But at the moment it doesn’t seem to have the strength to maintain his disguises for long. Anyway, you need to go back to your room and stay with Henry. That’s the safest place for you right now.’

  Maggie nodded. I saw her shadow fall over the balustrade as I turned around to walk towards Pepper and Martin’s room.

  I stopped.

  Maggie also halted.

  There was very little light on the balcony, certainly not enough to cast a shadow. As I swivelled back to look at her, I found Maggie smiling.

  ‘Is something wrong, Kat?’

  ‘You’re … not Maggie …’ I said slowly.

  ‘Of course I am. At least, some of the time. She doesn’t know that though, poor girl.’

  ‘Callon.’

  ‘That is a name I have used in recent years,’ the voice that came from Maggie’s lips had dropped in timbre and was no longer female, even though it came from her vocal cords.’

  ‘How long have you been leaching on her?’ I asked.

  ‘Long enough,’ Callon-Maggie said.

  The penny was beginning to drop. Maggie was a conduit for this thing. It used her to link its soul to the real world, and while that link was intact, Callon could move around and search for ways in which to impregnate the women of the house with its half-breed spawn.

  ‘I have been pretty naive,’ I said. ‘I guess I didn’t see this coming at all. You’re nothing without her. You don’t even exist when she’s away from the Plantation.’

  ‘Perhaps …’ said the creature. ‘But you did me a great favour today.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘You’ve freed me. You broke the wards that were put on that room the night it was sealed.’

  I was surprised that the creature would even give me this knowledge if it was such an important thing but it didn’t take a genius to realise that he was merely enjoying gloating over his victory. I also knew that he was bluffing too. There were no wards on the room.

  ‘If that’s the case then you no longer need Maggie …’ I pointed out. ‘So why don’t you leave the poor girl in peace?’

  Callon threw back Maggie’s head and laughed through her mouth. It wasn’t a pretty or female sound. It was more like a death rattle, it caught in her throat and lurked there, before breaking out between her lips in a witch’s cackle.

  ‘Well, that’s where you will help me further,’ said Callon. ‘There is a small ritual that has to be performed to give me back my strength.’

  ‘I doubt anyone on this Plantation will help you with that,’ I said.

  Callon grimaced in a way that was supposed to be a grin. I studied Maggie’s body closely. Her eyes were wide. They darted around as though she were in a locked room trying to get out. He didn’t have full control over her after all.

  It was clear to me that Callon, despite his bravado, was still much weakened. Why that was I didn’t know. Somehow in the past he’d had the strength to take form and seduce both Big Momma and her younger sister. I suspected that the birth of Orlando had given him an even stronger foothold in the corporeal world. It must have been a tremendous blow when Isaac performed his ritual to remove the demon from Orlando.

  ‘It was,’ said Callon as though reading my thoughts. ‘But I’m not the bad guy in all of this. The Pollitts cheated me. They failed to pay the forfeit.’

  ‘But that was just one man,’ I pointed out. ‘Not the entire family. Not that I expect a demon like you to actual understand the idea of justice, or fair play …’

  Callon stopped trying to smile. ‘I am no demon.’

  ‘From where I’m standing you fit very well into that category.’

  Maggie doubled over clutching her stomach as though she were in tremendous pain. I hurried to her side, hoping that somewhere inside her she had the strength to dispel the demon that had taken hold.

  ‘Fight him, Maggie, no matter how much it hurts!’

  Callon laughed again and Maggie straightened up. ‘She can’t fight me. She never could. She’s as much my child as Orlando was before they ripped me outta him.’

  ‘Miss Maggie?’ said a voice behind her.

  Callon-Maggie spun around to see that Isaac had now joined us on the balcony.

  ‘Isaac,’ I warned. ‘It’s not Maggie right now. Callon has her.’

  Isaac ran his eyes over the head and shoulders of what looked to be Maggie and he took a step backwards.

  ‘That ain’t Callon in there …’ he said, his voice trembling.


  Callon-Maggie began to laugh again and that awful gravelly sound issued from Maggie’s body. It was like nails scratched on slate. The most grating sound and it vibrated in my soul as being pure and insane evil.

  ‘Daddy?’ said Isaac. ‘You inside this poor girl?’

  I thought for a moment that I had misheard Isaac. That what he said just couldn’t be true. Callon wasn’t, couldn’t be, Isaac’s father. How on earth was that even possible?

  ‘Daddy? It is you!’ he said again.

  Callon-Maggie glared at Isaac as though he was affronted that the old man before him could ever confuse his demon soul with that of an old, long dead, voodoo priest.

  ‘Whoever it is Isaac, we have to get him out of Maggie. Can you help?’

  Isaac stepped forward and began to chant in that strange language I had heard him use in the clearing. The demon stepped back and then Maggie’s body doubled over again and she groaned in pain, a sound that was more human than the awful laughter the creature had forced from Maggie’s mortal throat.

  I saw the thing release her, the shadow poured like black smoke from her eyes, nose and mouth. Maggie fell backwards against the wall of the house. I could see the demon now, a filthy miasma that exuded from her, but stayed connected by an ethereal umbilical cord.

  I moved to go to her as she staggered, barely staying upright.

  ‘Don’t touch her none, Miss Kat,’ Isaac said. ‘She mighty dangerous right now.’

  He began to talk again in that guttural, high-pitched tongue and I knew he was addressing the thing that was attached to Maggie, trying to exorcise it from her. But as I watched I knew that Isaac’s words were of no use. This thing was resisting him and it was tearing Maggie apart in the process.

  Maggie’s mouth was open in a silent scream, her face a mask of contorted pain while her limbs twisted and turned at unnatural angles.

  ‘Stop it!’ I said. ‘You’re killing her!’

  By now Pepper, Martin and Henry had come from their rooms drawn by the noise. Henry tried to go to Maggie but Isaac held him back, issuing the same warning he had given to me. But the five of us fanned around her on the balcony, so that the demon couldn’t force her to run and she, and it, was cornered.

  ‘I can’t fight my daddy with the magic he gave me. He already knows all the tricks and loop holes,’ Isaac said. ‘I can’t hold it out of her for long, and I don’t know how to separate it completely – not without …’

  ‘It will take her with it …’ I said.

  ‘No!’ gasped Henry as he tried once more to reach for his wife.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, man!’ said Martin. ‘You’ll only make this worse!’

  ‘Does someone want to get us up to speed,’ Pepper said. ‘What’s this about Isaac’s father?’

  ‘Isaac thinks the demon is his father … I think …’ I said.

  ‘That’s my daddy in there, it ain’t no demon and I don’t knowed how this happen,’ Isaac said. ‘Daddy, let this poor girl go. What she gone done to you?’

  When faced with a demon possession my usual reaction was to kill the body the monster possessed. But only when I felt certain that the human soul couldn’t be saved. Those puzzle pieces were starting to fit again, this time in a way I found totally out of my comfort zone. If the demon was Isaac’s father, a whole load of new questions were raised that I wasn’t sure we would ever get answers to. The first one being, how the devil did this happen in the first place? The second, and most crucial of all, what could be done to put everything right?

  Isaac began to chant again. Maggie stopped writhing and stood upright, pressing herself against the wall as though she were trying to escape the words that came from the houngan’s lips.

  ‘I taught you well, son,’ she said. Then she closed her eyes and slumped to the floor.

  This time when Henry moved to help his wife, Isaac didn’t stop him.

  ‘Let’s get Miss Maggie back to her room,’ said Isaac.

  Pepper helped Henry lift her and they carried her back to her room and placed her on the bed.

  ‘What the devil is going on?’ asked Henry.

  Isaac was shaken up, his brow was beaded with sweat and he didn’t appear to be the confident character that I thought I had started to understand over the last few hours.

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ Pepper asked.

  ‘For now,’ Isaac said. ‘I used a sleeping spell weaved in with a binding spell. She tied for now. He can’t use her if’n she ain’t able to move.’

  Isaac was shaking so much I thought he would fall down. I took his arm and encouraged him down into a chair near the door.

  ‘How’d I not knowed dis?’ he said.

  ‘How could you? He hid. None of us even suspected Maggie to be connected, we just thought she was his target, not his conduit.’ I said. ‘Isaac, what do you think happened here?’

  ‘I don’t know Miss Kat. I don’t think I knows anything if I couldn’t even see my own daddy was that thing all this time.’

  ‘We know your father was involved in a ritual that separated Big Daddy from his demon-half. We know that your father disappeared after Master Pollitt failed to pay the forfeit. We know that Orlando was the son of this thing that calls itself Callon. We know that you performed the same ritual on him, as your father performed on Big Daddy,’ Martin said.

  ‘Summarising isn’t getting us anywhere,’ Pepper said. ‘We need to learn what happened to Isaac’s father, maybe then we will understand how he became Callon.’

  ‘I was getting to that,’ said Martin. ‘We know that both Big Daddy and Orlando were born twinned with sisters. In each case none of the girls were suspected of having any demon blood. But it appears now that Maggie is somehow attached to this thing. It’s been feeding off her energy, using her to ground itself in this reality.’

  ‘Yes …’ I sighed. ‘So?’

  ‘Every time Maggie was absent, so was this thing …?’ Martin asked looking directly at Isaac.

  ‘Yes,’ Isaac nodded.

  ‘It was always with her. And she was never its intended victim. She was being used to give it access. It’s like a … leech. Instead of feeding on her blood, it was feeding on her soul,’ Martin said.

  ‘Does this mean that something is also attached to Big Daddy’s sister?’ I asked trying to follow Martin’s line of thinking.

  ‘I think it unlikely. I think this wasn’t supposed to happen. I suspect that the demon who fathered Big Daddy is long gone. It probably passed through, somehow seduced his pregnant mother, Lacey, leaving it’s nephilim child to find a home in this world. The intervention of your father, Isaac, changed the process that was supposed to happen. Then, there was the unpaid sacrifice for the magic used … Have you ever had a situation like that occur before?’

  ‘Nobody is dumb enough to not pay. I never seen anything go wrong before, but my daddy said there would be consequences. Masser Pollitt was cursed for it, no doubt.’

  ‘Well, it’s time to find out the truth from the only person likely to know,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ asked Pepper. ‘Master Pollitt and his wife are long dead.’

  ‘Yes. But Big Daddy knew something. He was pretty upset about us uncovering his old bedroom. And I don’t think it was just because of the damage we did either.’

  21

  A pale glow of artificial light brightened the end of the corridor on the right wing. The light was coming from the room we had uncovered.

  Carrying a lamp to light our way, I led Martin and Pepper past our rooms and down towards the opening.

  As we reached the new doorway, the light inside grew brighter. I paused at the threshold, recalling the previous times I had crossed it, not in this world, but into some other and the small boy, whose demon-half was caught there. A child that didn’t seem to me to be deserving of his fate.

  ‘This is where it happened,’ said Big Daddy from inside the room.

  He was sitting on the edge of the bed gazing around the dusty room like a s
leep-walker who had just woken to find himself in the middle of a real-life nightmare.

  The three of us stepped inside.

  Big Daddy looked a broken man. His complexion – no longer the ruddy cheerful, slightly plump man he had seemed when we arrived – was gaunt and yellowed. He looked sick, and I felt that tremendous guilt again. What right had we to come into their lives and completely destroy them with our curiosity? Surely the Pollitts were dealing with their haunting, even if it hadn’t been effectively?

  I quickly realised this was all silly and unnecessary remorse however. Maggie and Henry had been suffering and now that we knew that Callon was controlling Maggie, the situation had become untenable. We had to finish whatever it was that we started.

  Now Big Daddy sat before us studying his trembling hands, and I felt a sense of anticipation as I waited for the explanation that would finally solve this mystery – the last piece being placed in the most difficult and challenging puzzle we had ever been faced with.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘This is where I died,’ said Big Daddy. ‘This is where they ripped me apart, and put me back together again.’

  ‘We know about the ritual,’ Martin said.

  ‘What we don’t know,’ I said, ‘is what happened to Isaac’s father.’

  Big Daddy glanced up sharply. ‘What does this have to do with him?’

  ‘It has everything to do with him,’ I said. ‘I’ll explain why, but you need to tell us the truth.’

  Big Daddy shrugged. ‘You said you know of the ritual. What do you want me to tell you? How it hurt so much I thought I was dying? How I felt every rip and tear as they prised it from my soul? How that by removing the Darkness they left me as only half a man, always feeling like part of me was missing? How, even though I knew this, I subjected my son Orlando to the same pain?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was perhaps not the right thing to do, but the demon in you was potentially evil. It could have hurt those around you. You tried to drown your sister, and later Orlando did the same. I don’t see what choice your father had, or that you had for that matter. You couldn’t leave Orlando that way, could you?’