Evil Returns

by Cave, Hugh

  He had reached the doorway. On the other side of the room, on the bed, Margal sat facing him with head erect, arms folded, eyes bright as stars.

  Whipping the knife into view from behind his back, Jumel raced forward. And stopped as though he had hurled himself against an invisible stone wall.

  Moaning, he sank to the floor. As the knife slid from his quivering fingers, he put his hands to his face and sobbed into them, whimpering for mercy.

  "He made me do it, master! I didn't want to! You must believe me! You must forgive me!"

  From the bed came a silent command, and he rose to his feet, sweating and shaking like one in the grip of malaria. The voice in his head was no longer that of the white man in the kitchen. It was that of the Haitian sorcerer confronting him. Margal was ordering him to stand aside, against the wall on his right. He must wait there in silence.

  Weak with terror, he stumbled to the wall and flattened himself against it.

  On the bed Margal was equally motionless, gazing with crimson eyes at the doorway.

  Presently Jumel heard an approaching sound of slow, mechanical footfalls. Into the room, like a zombie, trudged Brian Dawson.

  Dawson took four steps and stopped dead, held rigid by the sorcerer's gaze. It was clear to him that the bocor on the bed was about to punish him. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and he screamed.

  Never before in his life had he felt such pain as blazed at that moment inside his head. It was as though a lightning bolt had pierced his skull and set his brain on fire.

  His eyeballs were twice their normal size and bulging from their sockets, he was absolutely certain. They were melting and would in a moment be no more than streaks of slime crawling down his face.

  There was a noise in his ears so loud, so shrill, so unbearably high that it was cutting away his eardrums as surely as though a surgeon were slicing them out with a scalpel.

  His head was no longer a head at all—just a container for agony.

  No longer screaming, no long able to, he sank to the floor and lay there writhing like a stepped-on snake. Arms, legs, head, torso—every inch of him twitched and trembled in torment.

  Then, suddenly, the pain left him.

  "Stand up," the man on the bed commanded. Dawson was certain he could not obey, but he did. "Undress yourself."

  Again Dawson obeyed, dropping back onto the floor to remove his shoes and socks but, at some silent command, able to stand erect again when he was naked.

  "Now the knife," Margal said. "Jumel, hand him the knife."

  The mouse picked up the blade he had dropped and passed it to Dawson. Then he returned to the wall and watched, drenched with sweat but shivering. Would he be next?

  The man on the bed said coldly, "Place the point of the knife against your belly, M'sieu Dawson."

  Violently shaking but unable to utter a sound in protest, Dawson did so.

  "Now shall I command you to drive it home? You may answer me."

  "No," Dawson whimpered. "Please. . . no!"

  "Do you still imagine the pupil can become the master?"

  "No, no, master! Never!"

  A moment of nothingness passed. The man on the bed seemed to be weighing what he should do next. At that moment, in the living room, the telephone rang.

  Clarisse answered it. "Margal," she called, "it is for you. A man named Marcel Odiol, in Miami. The place called Little Haiti. He says he served you once."

  "I know him," Margal called back. "Come and carry me to the phone."

  While waiting for her, he looked at the others. "You, Jumel, may return to the kitchen. As for you, M'sieu Dawson, you would have destroyed me with the powers I gave you. So now you may kneel here naked and think about it, until I decide whether or not to have pity on you. If I do so decide, we will begin your training anew."

  The mouse scurried from the room. Brian Dawson shut his eyes and sank to his knees, moaning. The fat woman came into the room and, lifting Margal from the bed, carried him to the telephone. Handing him the instrument, she continued to hold him while he talked into it.

  "Marcel?"

  "Yes, master. I have something important to tell you, or I would not have dreamed of daring to call."

  "What is it?"

  "There is a man here in Miami, master, a white man named Forrest, who works in Haiti and is trying to find the little girl you brought from there. He knows you are at Elie Jumel's house, and where that is. I felt I should warn you."

  "A warning is not enough. Do you have something of his? You know what I refer to."

  "The best I could do was some money from his pocket, master. A five-dollar bill he thought he was giving me for cigarettes."

  "Bring it to me."

  "Yes, yes."

  "At once, before he gets too close."

  "I will leave this minute, master. And—"

  "Yes, Marcel?"

  "You will remember this, in case I ever happen to displease you?"

  "Of course." Margal's mind was already at work on this unseen new problem, and his reply was mechanical. "Do I ever forget those who serve me well?"

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ken Forrest was waiting in the hotel lobby when the cab from the airport pulled up outside and Sandra Dawson got out of it. He hurried to her with his arms outstretched, and without a word she stepped into his embrace. Suddenly it was how it had been in the old days, before her marriage.

  He held her for a few seconds, then stepped back and looked at her. She seemed tired. The flight from Port-a-Prince was not all that long, but for days now she had faced the terrible realization that her daughter was in danger.

  Reaching for her single piece of luggage on the sidewalk, Ken said, "You'll want to freshen up before we start? It will be a fairly long ride." He had told her on the phone where he thought Merry was being held.

  "I need a bathroom."

  He took her arm and led her into the hotel, where the man at the desk eyed them without comment as they crossed the lobby to the stairs. The room the manager had given him was on the second floor. He walked her up to it to save waiting for what was probably the slowest elevator in the city.

  Inside the room, with the door shut, Sandy turned to face him again. "Have you called the police, Ken?"

  "No."

  "But why not? If you know where Merry is—"

  "I'll explain in the car," he said quietly. "Then if you want to call the police, we can."

  "Oh, my God," she whispered. "I want my baby back!"

  "In the car. You said you need the bathroom, Sandy."

  While she was gone he stood there beside her suitcase and looked at his watch. He had phoned her after his visit to Little Haiti. The time now was four-fifty. She had been lucky to get out of Port-au-Prince so fast. Perhaps the Embassy had helped her. But now what?

  The town of Gifford, where Merry was almost certainly being held, was how far from here? Say about three and a half to four hours over Interstate 95 and the Florida Turnpike. He had bought a good road map earlier and studied it. He had also located a Vero Beach directory at a phone company office and found in it the name supplied by the youth in Little Haiti. Elie Jumel lived at 21 Petrea Road.

  So they should arrive in Gifford about nine o'clock this evening. But he had no idea how large the town was, or where Petrea Road might be, or what their next step ought to be when they got there.

  Coming from the bathroom, Sandy said, "I'm ready, Ken." She touched his arm. "And I do thank you for what you're doing. Don't think I—"

  "Quiet, lady."

  "All right."

  "I have a rented car parked down the street." He picked up her suitcase. "And we'd better take this. We may be gone awhile."

  "What about you?"

  "I have a bag in the car."

  She had little to say until they were out of Coral Gables traffic and bound north on 1-95. Then, "How did you find out where she is, Ken? On the phone it only confused me."

  He told of his talk with the hotel manager and hi
s visit to Little Haiti.

  "But I don't understand why you haven't been to the police!"

  With an open road before them, Ken could afford to relax a little. "Sandy, the man and woman who brought your daughter here from Haiti are the two Labrousse told me about. Margal and the woman who looks after him."

  She made a quick, involuntary movement that he felt with his arm because she was sitting close to him. "The sorcerer?"

  "The bocor, yes. That's why I haven't gone to the police."

  "But—"

  "I considered it. Then I thought, if I told them what kind of man Margal is, would they take me seriously? Suppose they only phoned the police in Gifford to go to that house and see if Merry was there. If you'd talked to Labrousse in Port-au-Prince about Margal and his powers the way I did—" He took his gaze off the road long enough to look at her. "But if you think I'm wrong, and feel we ought to go to the police anyway—"

  She was tense and silent while they passed a noisy concrete truck. Then, "Ken, I don't know." There was a sob in her voice now as she, too, began to appreciate the complexities of the problem. "If the police can't do anything, what can we do?"

  "Go there. Make sure first that Merry is at Jumel's. Then talk to the police up there ourselves, face-to-face, tell them what's going on and what kind of man Margal is, so when they go to the house to get her, they'll be prepared." When she was silent, he looked at her again. "Well?"

  "I—suppose so." Then, after a pause, she added, "Oh, God, Ken, I hope we're not making a mistake!"

  "Going to the police too soon might be a bigger mistake, Sandy."

  For a while they continued to talk in starts and stops, with intervals of silence. The crowded interstate was behind them now, and after a stop at a toll booth they were headed north on the Turnpike. Suddenly, out of the blue, Sandy said, "Who is she, Ken?"

  "She?" Did Sandy think he had a girlfriend?

  "The woman Brian has been living with."

  "Oh." He felt an explosion of relief—small, perhaps, but real. They had been getting to know each other again, and nothing must get in the way of that. "Her name is Carmen Alvaranga."

  "I had a feeling. He slept with her before I married him."

  "You can't fault him for that, Sandy. She's attractive, Latin, very sexy-looking."

  "I fault him for leaving her."

  "What?"

  "It's because she's Latin and sexy that he walked out on her. Don't you see? Daddy, in Washington, would never have approved."

  "But did approve of you?"

  "Well, he came to the wedding. Long enough to say he'd been there, anyway." She made a face. "It's a little weird, isn't it? Daddy wouldn't have endorsed Carmen, who I understand comes from a really fine South- American family, but I was okay."

  "You were safe. Your father was an insurance executive. Your mother is now married to an attorney. Everybody's nice and respectable."

  "And no threat to dear Daddy's career."

  "Right. Never likely to embarrass him."

  Again they were silent. Traffic on the turnpike was light, and Ken pushed the rental to seventy. Strange, he thought. At this hour there should be more traffic.

  There was something a little queer about the road itself, too. He had been over it enough times to know it well—the curves, the stretches of pine trees, the golf courses and condo complexes crowding up to it here and there. But things seemed to be coming up in a different pattern now.

  He was probably a little tired, both mentally and physically. A lot had happened since his arrival in Miami: the talk with the hotel manager, his visit to Alvaranga's apartment and her account of how Brian Dawson had walked out without an explanation, his conversation in Little Haiti.

  Something about the Little Haiti session troubled him. That fellow with the piercing eyes—what was his name? Odiol?—hadn't said much, had he? Hadn't spoken at all, in fact, except to ask for a cigarette at the end, and then money to buy some.

  There had been something not quite right—even sinister—about brother Odiol.

  Oh, hell, drop it, he thought. Think of something pleasant, like being a student at Miami U. again, when this lovely thing beside you was yours and the two of you were in love. Or thought you were.

  He looked at his watch. Five minutes past eight. If he remembered the map right, they should be nearing Fort Pierce, where he must leave the turnpike and travel 1-95 again for the few miles that remained to the Vero Beach exit. It should be getting dark soon, too. What time did daylight end in Florida in August? Odd how you could forget such simple things.

  At his side Sandy slumped in a posture of sleep, her eyes shut. Tired, obviously. A long, hard day. This morning she had been in Port-au-Prince, talking to him on the phone.

  The road remained the same: a four-lane divided highway, all but deserted here, with clumps of pines and palmettos dotting flat green fields on both sides. But something was wrong. It was more like a dream road than a real one. Although the afternoon had been hot and dry, for the past half hour the car had been boring its way through patches of mist.

  There shouldn't be a mist in weather like this. What was going on here?

  Reluctantly he put a hand on Sandy's knee. "Hey. Wake up."

  She opened her eyes, sat up, looked out the window. "Where are we? Are we there?"

  "Not yet. It's only a little past eight. We should be close to Fort Pierce."

  "I don't know this part of the state." Frowning, she rubbed the sleep from her face. "Where is this fog coming from?"

  "I don't know."

  "I've been asleep. I'm sorry, Ken. I didn't mean—" The car suddenly entered a wall of mist that almost hid the road, and Sandy took in a sharp breath.

  "Ken, what is this weird fog? Has it been raining?"

  "No. No rain."

  "Then what—"

  "I don't know," he repeated. "And you're right. It is weird."

  Afraid of running off the pavement, he slowed to forty. A horn blared behind them and a Cadillac sped past with its lights on. Oddly, the mist did not distort their beams. Ken turned his own lights on, muttering, "Damned fool wants to kill himself."

  Sandy glanced at him, obviously disturbed, perhaps even frightened. Leaning forward, she peered steadily through the windshield, then after a while, in a low voice, said, "Ken, are you sure this is the right road?"

  There hadn't been a sign of any kind for at least half an hour, Ken realized. Strange. There had been plenty of them before: Such-and-such an exit so far ahead. Exit speed so many miles an hour. Next exit such-and-such. Nothing like that lately.

  The car emerged from a tunnel of mist, and he concentrated on seeing a sign.

  None appeared.

  "Are you sure?" Sandy repeated, turning on the seat to stare at him. "Ken, I'm scared! I think something's happening to us!"

  He pulled off the road and stopped. Looked at the map, then at his watch. "Hon, we can't have taken a wrong turn." The hon was a word out of their past; he had almost always called her that. "We can't get lost, either," he insisted. "Every exit is marked, with a warning before you reach it. Just keep your eyes open for the Fort Pierce sign."

  But the one before Fort Pierce would have been Port St. Lucie, wouldn't it? And before that, Stuart? He didn't recall having seen those.

  Shaken, he drove on at forty, searching the side of the road for something to tell them where they were. And kept looking at his watch, as well. And finally, when his watch read 9:10 and the road was totally dark, and they should have reached the sought-for exit long ago . . . finally there was a sign of sorts.

  He stopped the car and stared, unbelieving, at a small, shabby, amateur sign in red letters on a dirty white background. No such advertising would ever be permitted on Florida's proud turnpike.

  DELLA'S MOTEL 1 MI.

  Clutching his arm, Sandy said with a sob, "Oh my God, Ken! We are lost!"

  "I must have turned off somewhere. But where? How?"

  "I told you. Something is happening
to us!"

  Margal, he thought, remembering what Captain Labrousse had said about the bocor's powers. And, yes, something was happening, at least to him. He who almost never had headaches was having one now that was making him want to bang his head against the wheel. Was making him sick to his stomach. Dizzy. Unable to think straight.

  "Look." His voice seemed slurred to him, as though he were drunk. "We can ask at this motel where we are, and get back on the right road. I'm sorry, hon."

  "It wasn't your fault."

  Margal, he thought again. He knows we're trying to reach him and is trying to stop us. No, it wasn't my fault. But if I'm stupid again, it will be.

  If only his head would stop pounding. Was Margal responsible for that, too?

  He drove on, more slowly now because he was unsure of his ability to handle the car. The road had changed completely. There was no longer a mist. But there was no four-lane divided highway either. This was a narrow strip of blacktop bounded by darkness.

  The headlights picked out a few stunted trees struggling to exist in tangles of knee-high brush. Then a rusty mailbox and an old, unpainted house. Beside the house stood five small cabins in a row, with a lighted Sign—DELLA'S MOTEL—on the roof of the middle one.

  A smaller sign by the driveway, with an arrow, supplied the information that the house itself was the motel office. He stopped the car in front of the door. "I'll try not to be long, hon. You'll be all right?"

  She nodded. But she was trembling, and her hands were clenched.

  He tried the door and found it locked. He knocked, waited, then knocked again more determinedly. When it opened at last, he found himself facing a stocky woman with pink plastic curlers in her hair, wearing a shabby green dress and worn-out sandals.

  Suspiciously she looked him over. "Yes?"

  "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm lost. Could you tell me where I am, please?"

  "Lost?" With the same frown of suspicion, she peered at the car. "You're just off of Eighty, on the road to Ortona."

  "I'm afraid I don't know where Ortona is."

  "'Taint surprisin', considerin' the size of it. Where'd you come from?"

  "Miami."

  "Well, let's see. You must've come up 27 to the lake and along 80."