Devil Dead

by Linda Ladd

  “Whose side are you on, anyway, Black?”

  “I’m on the side of not getting locked up.”

  “Okay, okay. Man, are these guys touchy, or what?”

  Surreptitiously and with her eyes on the French cop, Claire pulled her smartphone out of her pocket. She kept her voice low. “Distract him while I take a coupla pictures.”

  “That’s illegal, Claire, I’m telling you. And this guy does know a few words of English, so don’t get yourself in trouble.”

  “Novak said I’ve got to get used to blurring the lines doing private work, and you’re the one who recommended him. Bud and Zee would distract the guy for me. Novak would, too.”

  Black scowled. “Well, don’t get caught, for God’s sake.”

  After he turned his back on her and started chatting up the officer, Claire turned her back, too, in order to block her camera usage from the cranky guy. She snapped twenty or so photos from waist level. Then she pocketed the phone and stood back, observing the bloody scene with a professional eye. The body was lying on a narrow twin bed against the far wall. All the other furniture had been moved aside. There was an old-fashioned, corrugated washtub sitting beside the bed. It was full of dark red and congealed blood, almost up to the halfway point.

  Pierre Dubois was lying facedown and naked on the bed, his arms hanging down until his hands and forearms were submerged in the blood. The inside of both his arms had been cut in deep, wide grooves from wrist to elbow. In essence, it appeared that his body had been systematically drained. Vampires, anyone? LeStat, maybe? Edward? Vampire Bill or Erik Northman? Claire didn’t watch any of those shows, of course, but Zee Jackson did, and when she worked with him at Lafourche Parish, he told her every single detail of every single episode, and almost verbatim.

  There was a large puddle of congealed blood at one side of the tub with footprints leading across the scuffed wood floor to the door where Claire stood. Small ones that looked like a woman’s or maybe an adolescent male’s. Good God, some sick somebody had bathed in that poor guy’s blood, or at least, that was what it looked like to Claire. Man alive, this was about as gross as gross could get. A real live bloodbath and no exaggeration. Creeeepy. You betcha.

  Above the bed on the cracked whitewashed wall, there were lots of satanic symbols that looked suspiciously like the ones scrawled on the walls of the Devil Dead bar in the French Quarter and the Satan’s Favorite Things supernatural boutique. There was a crucifix hanging upside down as an added insult. Crap, crap, and more crap. Oh, yeah, this case now included a homicide investigation, and Black was gonna freak out that she was now involved in murder again. There were also etchings of rather well-rendered devilish stuff all over the ceiling and the floor, around the bloody tub, all of which glowed faintly because most of the curtains were shut tightly to block out the daylight. It didn’t look like the assault team had touched anything. That was good. Except for the booties, the French guys knew their stuff, she had to admit.

  Claire said, “Looks like he’s out of full rigor so this didn’t go down today or yesterday. I’d say at least three days. Maybe longer.”

  “Probably,” Black muttered tightly, apparently still having trouble about the dastardly homicide cropping up in her recently adopted less dangerous job, and thus more acceptable case of private detective following leads on a simple missing college kid.

  “I wonder if we could get a surveillance tape of them coming off the plane at the airport. Get a visual of this Sheila Pollento person who sat beside him on the plane. I still think that’s a fake name.”

  Black asked the officer for her, and Claire didn’t need a translation. The cop kept shaking his head no. Emphatically, too. The police would get the photo for themselves, of course, Black translated, but letting an American private detective, such as the lady, meaning her, see it was not in the cards. Never, never, and more never. Damn it. But if she got Russ Friedewald down in Lafourche Parish to request it, or her Missouri partner, Bud, or Sheriff Charlie Ramsay at the lake, they would most likely be friendlier and more cooperative to U.S. law enforcement requests, but then again, it was France. Despite D-day and that whole America-liberated-Paris-and-saved-France’s-bacon-in-World-War-II thing, French authorities were not known for their topnotch cooperation with American authorities, at least not lately. But they had sent General Lafayette and helped America win their Revolution against King George of England a good time back, so maybe it was now tit for tat. But maybe Claire would get lucky. It was worth a shot, and a shot she’d take as soon as they left the scene and she could dial up her friends still in law enforcement.

  When the forensics team reached the property with their white suits and gloves and breathing masks, Claire was allowed to stand at the door and watch them work. When they raised the man’s head, she saw that his mouth was taped shut with silver duct tape. So was his nose. And his throat was cut from ear to ear. Just to help hasten the blood flow, no doubt. Somebody was indeed handy with a filet knife and used to mutilating folks and didn’t mind using it for frightful, repulsive, and nonhumane crimes, either. She snapped another surreptitious photo, very thankful for the busy hubbub inside the room and that nobody was paying much attention to Black and her anymore. Mistake, that was, but oh, well. It worked for her. Admirably at that.

  After several hours at the bizarre murder scene, she and Black left the farmhouse and then drove to the Quinn estate. It was dark and deserted inside with no sign of recent habitation by a gone girl. After that dead end, they sat in the backseat of his limo, surrounded by a morose, contemplative, unhappy silence all the way back to his clinic. Things were a tad more complicated now, for sure, and they had a killer in their sights, one who might very well have bled out poor little Andrea Quinn in a bathtub and soaked to their black heart’s desire in her life blood, too. Man, she did not want to tell Jonas and Abigail Quinn about the bloody farmhouse or the bloody friend of their daughter’s lying in a bloody bathtub with his throat gaping a bloody good five inches wide. She sighed, big time and drawn out. Lot of sighing going on lately. Damn it all, anyway. Not a good day to be a new private eye, not good at all.

  Witch Way

  After Beelzebub and Lilith left her alone, Diana cowered in her room for three days, bloodstained, mute, and in shock, afraid to come out, afraid the boy and girl would return and make her do more horrible things. After a long time, she took a bath and scrubbed her skin clean, and then she went back and lay in her bed with the covers pulled up over her head. She just wanted her mommy to come back and take care of her; she just wanted to be a little girl again. She didn’t understand why they wanted to hurt her. She didn’t understand anything, anymore. She wished she could just die, but then she thought: What if they killed her? What if they killed Toby? She couldn’t let them hurt him. He was too little and helpless to fight back. He would just wag his tail and try to be friends, and then they would do terrible things to him.

  Then she heard wheels crunching on the gravel outside. She stiffened with dread and scrambled under her bed. They were coming back! Oh, no, they were coming back! Just like they said they would! She hid her face in her hands. Toby started whimpering because she was clutching him so tightly against her, and she shivered from head to toe, wishing he’d be quiet. Maybe then they’d leave.

  There was knock on her door, loud and insistent. She held her breath and waited. Maybe they’d go away, maybe they’d just go away and leave her alone. But it wasn’t them. It was the big man who was so kind to her, because he started yelling her real name and banging even harder on the door. Still, she was afraid, but he wouldn’t leave so she crawled out from under the bed and crept down the steps and peered out through the parlor curtains. He saw her and waved and called her name again.

  “Hey, there, kiddo, it’s just me.” He held up a sack in his hand. “I’ve got some McDonald’s and a coloring book and a new box of crayons. I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  Diana hesitated. The demons had told her not to talk to anybo
dy, not to open the door or go outside. They would hurt her again if she did. They would hurt the big man who was so gentle with her. So, she waited a minute just inside the door, but she could smell the french fries and cheeseburger and realized that she was very hungry. Still, she lingered there behind the door and listened to his soothing words.

  “You know I won’t hurt you, don’t you? I’m just trying to help, that’s all. I’m just checkin’ on you. But I’ll leave right now, if you want me to. I’ll just leave the food out here for you. That okay with you?”

  Diana didn’t really want him to go. They wouldn’t come if he was there. He was so big and strong and scary to look at. And the food smelled so good. So she opened the door, just a tiny little bit, and peeked out. The man smiled at her. He really did have a nice smile. He was pretty gentle, too, to be so big with all those thick and hard muscles.

  “You feel okay? Your head hurt?”

  “No,” she lied, because it did hurt. It hurt ever since the demons hurt her and poured the blood on her.

  “Good. May I come in?”

  “No! It’s not allowed!”

  He just looked at her for a moment. “Okay. I don’t have to come in. How about coming out here with me?”

  “No! It’s not allowed!”

  Again, he was quiet. He looked around the porch and the yard and then back at her. “All right. If you’ll open the screen door, I’ll put the food inside for you, and then we’ll talk through the screen. Is that allowed?”

  The demons hadn’t said anything about that yet, so she nodded. She unlatched the door and stepped back away from it. He placed the book and crayons, and the sack of food and the great big soda with a straw in it just inside the door and then carefully closed it again.

  “See?” he said. “I’m not gonna come in. I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to be friends, that’s all. I want to come around and check on you. Make sure everything’s still all right. Is that okay? Can I do that?”

  She nodded again, but then she couldn’t resist the food anymore. She opened it and unwrapped the cheeseburger and gobbled it down as fast as she could. Then she got out the fries and began to stuff them hungrily into her mouth.

  “There’s some ketchup in there if you like it on your fries,” he told her. Then he kind of hunkered down outside the screen door and watched her eat. After a little while, he said, “I’m not gonna hurt you. You do know that, right?”

  She nodded and took a drink of the Coke he brought.

  Then he smiled. “Are you afraid of something? Somebody been here scarin’ you since I was out here the last time?”

  Diana shook her head quickly. Did he know? Would they find out that she was talking to him? And hurt her some more? Yes, they would, they would, they said they would always know what she did and who she talked to!

  “Okay, well, do you need anything? I can stop in now and then and bring you groceries if you tell me what you need. You don’t have to come out or anything. I’ll leave the supplies out here on the porch. But I’m not gonna hurt you. Even if you come out, or I come in, I won’t hurt you. You do understand that?”

  “Yes.” She knew he wouldn’t. But they would. They would know. They said they knew everything about her. They said they were watching and could see if she disobeyed the laws of their coven. “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome. Just remember, you are not alone. I’m just down the road, okay? If you turn south at the end of your driveway and walk that way, you can get to my house. I’m three mailboxes down, on the same side of the road. Can you remember that? Just walk down the road to my house and I’ll help you. If I’m not there, just go right in and wait for me. I always leave my door unlocked. Okay?”

  She nodded. She wanted to, she wanted to! She wanted to go with him now and be safe from the demons! But they’d find her! They’d hurt her! They’d kill Toby! They would! They would take her out to the Sanctuary again and pour blood on her and do awful things that hurt her so bad! Please, take me with you. Please stay here, she pleaded in her heart, but after a time, the nice man stood up and looked down at her through the screen door.

  “Okay, then. You still have that phone, right?”

  She nodded, afraid to say more.

  “All right. I’ll come back soon and bring you some food and other stuff. Is that okay?”

  She kept nodding. Please don’t go, please don’t go away.

  “Maybe you’ll come out next time. Get some fresh air and sunshine. What do you say?”

  “No, no, no, I can’t, I can’t! It’s not allowed!”

  “Okay, that’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I’ll never make you do anything that you don’t want to.”

  So he left her alone inside the door and got into his truck and drove away. She finished the meal and then she hid the box and the wrappers so the demons wouldn’t find them, and then she went up to her bedroom and shut the door and got under the bed and finally, after a very long time, she went back to sleep, holding the soft little puppy close inside her arms.

  The two demons came a week later in the middle of the night. They came in the back door and started yelling her name as loud as they could. Toby jumped up and started yipping, but she held his collar and told him to be very quiet or they’d hurt him, too. Then she went slowly to the steps and looked down into the front hall. They were at the bottom of the steps, and both of them were dressed in strange flowing black robes. The girl demon saw her and ran up, screaming and yelling and grabbing her nightgown and pulling her down the steps.

  “Hello, slave, come on, we’ve got something for you to do.”

  They dragged her out to the Sanctuary, and when she went in, she saw that there was another girl inside. She was dressed in the same kind of black robe, too. She was standing there in the candlelight. She had short black hair that was parted down the middle and big brown eyes that looked shocked and scared when they pulled Diana inside. Diana didn’t know what to think. What was happening? What were they going to do to her this time?

  “This is Prudence, slave girl. She’s one of us. She’s our demon in training. You will do what she says, too. Do you understand me?”

  Diana nodded, but she didn’t want to. She saw they had the buckets of blood that she had been draining from animals for them, just like they had commanded her the last time they came in the dark of night.

  “Okay, then, time to meet our new sacrifice.” Lilith moved to the back of the barn and pulled out another girl. She was bound with tape and she struggled so much that the girl dropped her down on the dirt floor. Beelzebub ran up and hit the bound girl, hard enough to knock her out. Then he grabbed her up and propped her against the wall and came back to Diana.

  “Okay, slave, you get to do the honors.” He got out a long knife and pulled Diana over to the unconscious girl. “See her? Well, guess what? We need her blood for your bath and you’re gonna get it for us. You understand me? You’re gonna take this knife and stick it in her throat right here.” He pointed to the side of the unconscious girl’s neck.

  “No, stop,” the new demon in training named Prudence cried out. “I don’t wanna do this. I didn’t sign up for anything like this. This is sick. This is murder. I’m gettin’ outta here!”

  Beelzebub turned so fast that Prudence didn’t have time to move. He grabbed her, slammed her back into the wall, and then he yelled in her face. “Really? Really, Pru? You don’t wanna do this? Well, then you can be the Sacrificial Lamb tonight and I’ll make the slave do you, instead. How’s that, you stupid slut? You think we’ll let you go back now so you can blab about this all over campus? You thinkin’ about tellin’ on us? That what you gonna do?”

  Diana watched them, scared out of her wits, but then the girl named Pru started crying and shaking all over and said she’d do whatever he wanted and promised him that she wouldn’t tell anybody, and then the other two demons laughed at the way she fell on her knees and begged for mercy. Beelzebub turned back to Diana. “Okay, get the brat back over he
re.”

  Lilith dragged Diana over to him, and he got behind her and pushed her up in front of the Sacrificial Lamb. The other girl’s eyes were still closed tight, and Diana shut hers, too.

  “Okay, now,” the boy demon said, “here’s the knife. Do it, do it now, or I’ll call my cousins and we’ll take you back out in the swamp and do whatever we want with you. You know what’s gonna happen then. You remember those nights we had so much fun, don’t you?”

  Diana shook her head, but he forced her right hand around the knife and held it there tightly under his own big hand. He was so strong, though, he was so strong. Then while she struggled to get away from him, he brought her hand up with the blade in it and then just stabbed it down hard into the girl’s throat. Diana screamed in horror and tried to get away as blood spurted out in a gush and hit her in the face. The boy demon knocked her to the ground and quickly put a bucket under the stream of blood. That’s when Diana fainted dead away and didn’t know what happened anymore.

  But later, when she woke up, she was alone. She sat propped up in the tub of blood in total darkness. She scrambled out, shivering. Outside, the night was black and silent, except for the full moon filtering in through the trees surrounding the house. In the distance, where Luna had kept the fire pit for burning their trash and the offal from their kills, she saw a huge fire blazing red and orange with leaping flames and the silhouettes of the three demons dancing around it like wild creatures in the night.

  Terrified that they’d come for her next, she ran back to the house and up to her room. Toby was there, tied to the bedpost, and she freed him and gathered him up into her arms and wept hard into his soft white fur. She didn’t understand all this stuff. She didn’t understand why it was happening to her. She wanted her mommy to come back. She missed Luna. After a while, she stopped crying and went into the bathroom and took a shower and washed the blood from her hair and off her skin. When she came out, the fire beside the bayou was still burning but the demons had gone back to hell.