Devil Dead

by Linda Ladd

  “Mary Lou lives about two miles down the road. She’s owns a business in Covington. I don’t think it’s her buying the blood. I think Adonis is confused about that.”

  Claire just stared at him, nonplussed. “So you believe her about all that crazy stuff. That whispering people come in the night and make her drain blood out of swamp critters. That what you’re sayin’, Novak?”

  “Yep. I’ve heard whispering in the bushes outside my windows, too. Never could catch anybody. Just thought it was restless spirits.”

  Uh-oh. Swamp living had gotten to him, too. “Does that mean you believe in ghosts and goblins?”

  “I believe there are things out here in these swamps that we don’t understand. This place has always had all those kinds of myths and legends and stories about evil spirits and monsters in the night.”

  “Well, I’m beginning to see why. Especially after having met Adonis. You sure she isn’t the one running these satanic rituals? She seems to fit the part. Not that she isn’t a sweet kid and all. You know, a bit eccentric maybe, but still endearing, in a Creature from the Black Lagoon sorta way.” Claire grinned, teasing—sorta.

  Novak paused then and just stared at the front of the girl’s deserted house. Claire looked, too. Adonis was nowhere in sight. Then he sighed, heavy and tired. “She’s messed up in the head because some guys broke into her house, killed her mother, and then dragged Adonis out into the swamp. They kept her out there for days, doing God only knows what to her. She was never quite right in the head after that. Always terrified out of her wits, to be truthful. I’ve been trying my best to help her.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I really am.” Claire looked back at the house. And yes, she felt two inches tall. Maybe even one inch tall. Poor kid. But, still, yikes. She chose her next words very carefully. “Well, that’s just terrible, poor kid. But don’t you think that, maybe, she might oughta be in a hospital getting some kind of therapy, or something? Isn’t it dangerous to leave her way out here, you know, with her running around and killing animals and collecting blood in coffee cans? I mean, think about it, Novak. That can’t be a healthy pastime for a young girl.”

  “She’s too frightened to go anywhere else, and nobody around here wanted to take her in, so she just stayed here in her own home. The neighbors didn’t want her to go into foster care, so we all watch out for her. I bring her food and give her enough money to survive. So does Mary Lou and the others. She doesn’t need much. But she’s never gonna leave that house again. I don’t think she can.”

  Well, okay. Didn’t seem like such a good solution to Claire, though, speaking from her own experience with mental patients and from hanging around with an ace psychiatrist. “Sorry. I didn’t know any of that. That’s very nice of you to help her that way. But, you know what, Novak? Black’s a helluva good shrink. Maybe he could do a house call out here? Something like that? I know he’d find her, well … interesting.”

  “Listen, she doesn’t need to be bothered. She’s just fine where she is. I just told you all this because I want you to know her backstory. Let’s go pay a call on Mary Lou Picard, just to make sure she doesn’t know anything that might help us. Then we’ll stop at my house and look around, since you’re probably already paying somebody to research everything about me anyway. Might as well show you myself because you’re gonna find out about me, come hell or high water.”

  So the guy was more astute than Claire figured. Harve was hard at work on Novak’s dossier at that very moment, true, no doubt about it, so he was right on about her keen interest in his reticence. “Okay, good deal, let’s do it. This whole day has been quite an eye-opening experience. Glad I tagged along.”

  Novak said something that sounded like hmmph, and then he started the truck and off they went, even deeper into the deep, deep, dark bayou swamp.

  Witch Way

  While Diana just stood on the bank and watched, the two other kids pulled off their shirts and shorts and kicked off their flip-flops, and she saw that they had on swimsuits underneath their clothes. The girl’s was itty bitty and barely even covered up her body. The boy’s suit was long and hung down to his knees, but he didn’t wear a shirt and he had lots of bulging muscles where Diana had just gotten her new breasts started. Diana watched them jump off the bank and into the water, and then they started laughing and splashing water at each other. Diana looked around to see if anyone was watching, or any gators were lurking about, but she was pretty sure nobody would come along. Sometimes the lady up the bayou came down this way fishing in her boat, but she had never seen anybody come out to this spot. It was where she came when she wanted to be alone to think about things and to get away from Bad Luna, but that was only now and then.

  “C’mon, Diana, jump in!” cried the girl.

  “I can’t swim.”

  “I’ll teach you,” said the boy. “Just go ahead, jump in. It’s not deep, not up there close to the bank. You can stand up on the bottom.”

  Undecided at first, Diana hesitated, but that was true. Mommy had thrown her in right here once and she’d been able to wade out. Then she just did it. Jumped right in with all her clothes on. The water felt cool and good. It was hot today, and she was all sweaty. She wondered what they’d think if they knew she was a Wiccan and her mother was a Disciple of the Devil and knew Satan personally and bled Frankie and burned up his body. She didn’t think they’d like any of that very much. Probably wouldn’t want to be her friends, either. Then she wondered what regular people did when the moon was full.

  She had never ventured very far out into the water. She was scared of meeting up with those gators. When she reached the boy, he suddenly grabbed her, swooped her up in his arms, and spun around with her, as if she weighed nothing. The water surged out away from them in waves, and she laughed some at how it felt. He seemed very strong and more than capable of holding her up. She decided that she liked the way his arms felt. He was really cute. Kinda like the boys she saw in some of Luna’s magazines.

  “C’mon, now, Diana, you gotta relax. C’mon, just relax. You’re all tense and stuff. Can’t learn to swim if you’re that uptight. Just go limp. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  Trying to do that, she let him turn her over until she was facing down into the water. He had her around the waist and was moving her through the water like a boat and making her skirt float up all around her legs. He was very strong, stronger than anyone she’d ever met, stronger than Luna, even when she went crazy. “Go ahead, kick your feet, and move your arms like I was doing a minute ago.”

  So she tried to do what he said and was about to get the hang of it, when he suddenly had his hand up under her dress and was feeling around between her legs. She struggled to get loose at first, but then he whispered in her ear. “Don’t fight me. It’ll feel good. I promise. You’ll like it. Everybody likes it. You’ll see.”

  The other girl wasn’t watching them. She was wading out of the water. “C’mon, guys, let’s smoke some weed and get out the beer.”

  “In a sec,” he called out to her, but he kept on smiling at Diana. “You sure are a soft little piece of work,” he muttered, his fingers still feeling her. She was beginning to feel pretty good down there, too, just like he said she would, but she wasn’t sure why.

  “You shouldn’t be doin’ that. Why are you doin’ that?”

  “You’re pretty damn innocent, aren’t you? I bet you’re still a virgin.”

  “What’s a virgin?”

  “Whoa, man.” He laughed softly to himself. “You really are an innocent little thing, aren’t you? I think I like innocent ones better than I thought I would.”

  “Would you hurry it up and get out, guys! What are you doin’ out there, anyway?”

  So they did get out and dried off on some towels the kids had stuffed inside their backpacks. Diana sat down on the ground with them, and they lit up a little cigarette kinda thing. She watched them both take deep puffs, inhaling it and holding the smoke inside for a minute. When the
y handed it to her, she tried to do the same thing. The smoke burned her throat, but she tried not to show it. When she started coughing, the other two laughed at her.

  They stayed there a long time together, smoking and drinking cans of beer, and talking about that Tulane place. Each of them drank two cans of the beer, and it made Diana feel strange and sort of dizzy. When the afternoon lengthened, the other kids gathered up their things and took off down the trail that led out in the direction of the Sanctuary. She hoped they didn’t find it. Luna would be very mad if they went inside and touched her sacred things. After they’d walked off a ways, the boy turned and ran back to her and whispered in her ear, real quiet-like. “I’ll be back soon, and I’ll come alone next time. So we can swim together. You wait for me, okay? I’ll teach you all about being a virgin. But don’t tell anybody I’m comin’, okay? It’ll be our secret. You in? Promise?”

  Diana felt some kind of little tingle go through her body. He was just so cute. She liked the way he looked. “Okay, I promise,” she whispered back, and then he ran off to catch up with the girl. She watched them until they disappeared in the heavy stand of cypress trees and undergrowth edging the bayou. Then she headed back to the house and made it home way before Luna came back from town with her birthday present, which turned out to be new arrows for her bow. Diana was very disappointed with her gift.

  Later that evening, well after dark, Diana sat inside the living room and listened to music on Luna’s radio and thought about the cute guy. She had watched out the windows until it got dark, hoping he would come back early, but then she decided he wasn’t coming back until tomorrow. She wondered if she should tell her mommy about him. But if she did, Luna would turn into Bad Luna, and she would probably punish Diana for talking to the two kids. So she decided to keep it to herself. She wanted him all to herself, anyways, just in case he did come back. He was that cute to look at.

  But later, after she had on her nightgown and just before she was getting ready to go up to bed, Spirit jumped up from where he was sleeping and started barking real loud and acting all upset. Diana stood up, too, concerned because nobody ever came to visit them so late at night. It might be the boy, and Luna was gonna see him if he came to the door. Before she could even look out the window, she heard footsteps clomping across the porch, and then, all of a sudden, the front door was kicked open. Three boys ran into the room. Her mother jumped up from where she was sleeping on the couch and started screaming and fighting with them.

  The boy Diana had met that afternoon headed straight for her. Spirit attacked him, and one of the other guys swung a baseball bat and hit her dog in the head. Diana screamed in horror as Spirit collapsed onto the floor and didn’t move. Then some of the guys jumped on her mother, holding her down and pulling up her robe while the other one helped hold her. Diana screamed and fought against the cute boy’s tight hold, but he was too strong.

  Luna was strong, too, though, and she scratched and fought and yelled for Satan and grabbed the knife out of the scabbard on her belt and slammed it into her attacker’s side. One of the others brought down the big bat on her head, and Diana screamed and screamed as they hit Luna again and again and then they dragged her mommy outside the front door. The boy dragged Diana out, too, and she could see her mommy’s blood smeared all across the floor and the porch steps.

  The boy started talking to her, the stale smell of beer on his breath. “C’mon, now, quit fighting me. You wanted this, you little tease. You let me feel you up. Time to pay the piper.” He got his arm around her neck from behind and cut off her air until she stopped struggling. He kept talking, right next to her ear. “We found that little devil-worshipping shrine of yours out there in the woods this afternoon. We saw all those bloodstains in that bathtub, so we know you and your mommy are into blood sacrifices. That’s right, isn’t it, Diana? You’ve been killing people out there. So you’re a bad girl, a very bad girl, and you need to be punished. And I’m gonna do the punishing, and then I’m gonna be the one puttin’ the blood in that bathtub. We’re gonna have our own little Black Sabbaths and you’re gonna do it with us. That okay with you, darlin’? And guess what else? This place of yours? It’s so far out here in the swamp that nobody will ever know we’re here. Nobody’s gonna hear you screamin’, either. And you are gonna be screamin’, trust me on that, darlin’ Diana.”

  Then he dragged her out across the backyard and far out past the barn. Then the other guys came running up behind them. They were laughing and shouting and all excited in the dark night, their flashlight beams darting around on the trees and undergrowth and making shadows jump and dance. She could see that they had Luna’s blood all over their hands. The boy threw her over his shoulder and ran with her down the trail that led to the Sanctuary.

  The boy and his buddies held her captive for four days. They started calling her their sex slave and used her for their pleasure over and over. By the time they dropped her off on the side of the road and headed back to New Orleans, she was filthy and bleeding and naked and all hope was gone forever. Somehow she crawled out onto the blacktopped road and lay there weeping quietly until a truck finally drove up and screeched to a stop in front of her.

  A door slammed and then she saw the big man who brought her cookies and comic books. She was terrified to see him, afraid he would take her with him and hurt her the way the other boys had done. She rolled her body up into a tight ball and groaned and shook and shivered all over. But he was very gentle. He jerked off his denim jacket and put it over her, but she was so afraid that he was going to drag her back into the woods and hurt her some more. But he just squatted there in the road beside her with his hand on her back and spoke soft, soothing words. “You’re gonna be all right,” he kept saying to her. “You’re safe now. I won’t let anybody hurt you, I swear. You’re safe. The ambulance is comin’ and they’ll take good care of you.”

  But she couldn’t stop shaking and retching, and she knew she would never, ever be the same again. She was scared of the big man. She was scared of the ambulance that came roaring down the road with the sirens shrieking, and she was scared of the men who jumped out and tried to pick her up and put her on a gurney. She shook all over, screamed and cried and fought with them, until they got a needle and stabbed it into her arm and she quickly fell into the blessed darkness where she could not hear the laughter or feel the rough hands on her legs or have to do the terrible things she had been forced to do.

  Chapter Twelve

  Miss Mary Lou whatever the hell her name was lived just down the road from Adonis, also known as the Road to Perdition or Fantasyland, as Claire had come to think of it. To her relief, this time the next neighbor’s place looked halfway decent. There was a short entry road, neatly graveled and not awfully weed choked, which was the first good thing. Number two good thing: there were no dead mallards sitting around on the fence posts sans their brown-feathered bodies and orange-webbed feet. All of which were encouraging signs that Novak hadn’t taken her to the Land That Time Forgot. So far, and after riding around with Novak, she was even more satisfied living at Black’s little palace in the French Quarter, if indeed they were going to live in Louisiana for any length of time. As far as she was concerned, a home sweet home out in the dark bayous was now out of the running, and for nevermore, too.

  Unfortunately, on closer inspection, there did seem to be lots of stuffed critters posed around everywhere, and in a most creepy manner, too, which gave Mary Lou her first demerit: that is, all kinds of little tiny baby birds poised in flight with widespread wings going nowhere, not ever again, either. Yep, pitiful little stuffed sparrows sitting all in a row on the bannister, twelve in all and looking frighteningly lifelike, and how could one miss the rather large stuffed alligator on the roof over the front door, positioned to welcome visitors, no doubt. The large swamp fox sitting on the roof of a rusty old Buick Riviera parked in the side yard was a nice touch, too. Well, okay now. Strike three. You’re nuts, too, Mary Lou.

  “My,
my, Novak, stuffin’ critters seems to be the cat’s meow way down here in kill-it-dead-and-display-it-on-the-house land, right? I’ve never seen so many animals with glass eyes in my entire life. Your house decorated in Early Dead Things, too?”

  Novak hunched his shoulder and didn’t look all that insulted. In fact, he actually smiled a little. A very little. “Yep, Mary Lou’s an excellent taxidermist. Her mother was, too, before she died. She’s got a big shop back there in the woods. And she buys some of Adonis’s stuffed animals, just to help her out. You know, financially.”

  Well, at least he was talking now. “Maybe she’s the one who did that dog on Adonis’s porch? Please say yes.”

  “No, Addie does all her own pets. Always has. Nearly everybody down around here messes around with taxidermy now and again. Part of the culture.”

  “Right. That include you by any chance? And, oh yeah, remind me to hide Jules Verne when you come to our house for dinner. My little poodle is off limits, you hear me?”

  Novak smiled again but with only one side of his mouth. “I’m not into it, no. When something’s dead, I think it oughta stay dead and buried.”

  Well, hallelujah, and thank you so much, Claire told herself. Novak was mysterious enough without lifeless ex-puppies and -kittens sitting all around his living room. “Well, I must say in all seriousness that it’s all rather Norman Bates–ish around here.”

  “Nobody who isn’t weird or antisocial would ever live way out here.”

  Well, a hearty yes sir and back slap to that one. “So, you’re sayin’ you’re weird and/or antisocial?”

  He glanced over at her. “Most people think I’m weird. You do, don’t you?”

  Uh-oh, okay, how to answer, what to say without the hurt feelings and a sad, yes-I-am-too-normal look. “You fishin’ for compliments, Novak?”