Sandman

by William W. Johnstone

  Painfully, he pulled the riot gun to his shoulder and blew Lisa’s head all over the filthy floor.

  Pumping another round into the chamber, the deputy ended the short evil lives of Sally Rees and Rex Grummen before a nurse ran up behind him and drove a pair of scissors into his neck. With a burbling scream of pain, he dropped to the floor, still holding onto the riot gun. Twisting, he shot the nurse in the stomach as life ebbed from him.

  The last thing he recalled was a strange voice saying, “Enter now, for thou art a good man.”

  The deputy died with a smile on his face.

  What was left of Lisa’s gang scattered, running for their lives, oblivious to Paul’s shrieked commands to return.

  * * *

  “Either they don’t know where we are, or they just don’t care anymore.” Leo offered these explanations for the hours of relative peace.

  “I wonder where Carla is?” Melissa asked. “I mean, they both busted out, didn’t they?”

  Leo held his tongue. He had encountered quite enough of those . . . things for one night. For one lifetime. And he didn’t know if he could take much more.

  But he had more horror to face. He was certain of that.

  “No more fires have been set,” Gomez pointed out. “And the others don’t appear to be spreading. It appears they’re burning out.”

  The priest lifted his arm to check the time. His watch was gone. He had lost it. “What time is it?”

  “Quarter to four,” Connie told him.

  Gomez laid his shotgun down on a table and went in search of the bathroom. He paused in the kitchen, by the back door. Thought he heard a whispering. He’d seen Linda leave the room moments before. Yes. He thought he recognized the voice. He opened the back door and stepped out into the night.

  He smiled. “Guess we both needed some fresh air,” he said.

  The last thing he would remember in this life was a swishing sound, a hot moment of very intense pain, and a saddened feeling that he had been betrayed.

  “Very disappointing, is it not?” He heard the voice speak to him as a peaceful blue filled him and he entered into his second life.

  His head and body were shoved over into the waters of the swimming pool.

  The long-bladed butcher knife was tossed over the fence, into the desert.

  A figure ran back to the house, slipped in through an open window at the rear. The window was silently closed and locked from the inside.

  * * *

  A state police helicopter did a fly-by of the town. The spotter took in the burning buildings, the bodies that littered the streets. He got the hell out of the area when bullets began zinging around him.

  “There’s a war going on down there!” the copter pilot yelled into his mike. “I don’t know who’s fighting who, but it’s bad.”

  “Get out of there!” Captain Madison ordered.

  He did not have to say it twice.

  Leo was sitting on the couch, sharpening stakes. One stake looked more like a spear.

  Hearing the copter circling, Peter ran out to his car, and radioed.

  “This is Deputy Peter Loneman. I’m with Sheriff Sandry and Mike Bambridge and several others. We’re safe for the moment. For obvious reasons, I can’t give you our location. Just listen to me. I don’t have time to repeat this.”

  Very briefly, Pete outlined the situation.

  Captain Madison, the head of the state police, and half-a-dozen sheriffs and deputies from surrounding counties listened, stunned and shaken, not knowing whether to believe the deputy or not.

  “I know Pete Loneman,” Wilson said. “He’s a good, solid, steady man.”

  “I don’t know him,” Madison said. “But I went through the academy with Burt Sandry. Get him on the horn to confirm this . . . situation.”

  It was confirmed.

  “Jesus!” Captain Madison whispered.

  “We’ve got to go in,” Wilson said.

  “Now wait a minute!” the commander of state police yelled. “Zombies! Walking dead people! Devils and demons! This is crazy!”

  “You saw Langston and Ned, didn’t you?” Madison asked him.

  The commander nodded his head wearily. “Yeah. OK, OK. I’ll call the governor and ask him to send in the nearest national guard unit. That’ll be in Tucson. It’s an infantry outfit, I think. We’ll have them cordon off the town; then we’ll go in. Wilson, you and your men will spearhead. Get geared up.”

  * * *

  Peter found the body of the priest half-submerged in the pool. It was light by then. After seven.

  Leo was sure, now, finally, who it was the power was to be passed to.

  And it sickened him.

  “You’re sure,” Mike asked him.

  “Yes. It’s logical, and I feel it in my heart.”

  “Then . . . this person will soon try to destroy the rest of us?” Peter asked.

  “No. I don’t think so. But the bloodlust got too strong. It became uncontrollable. Probably jealousy figured in, as well.”

  “Ah!” Mike nodded his head. “Now we’re getting on the same wavelength.”

  “I’ll alert those that need to know. Watch your backs.”

  Mike and Peter walked off. Leo looked around him. Then he walked about the house, speaking softly with the survivors.

  Peter was outside, in his unit, in contact with the state police. The national guard was in place. And the SWAT team, headed by Wilson, was getting ready to take off.

  The town was very quiet. Overhead, in the clear blue of the sky, vultures were circling, eager to feast on the bloating bodies that lay in the streets.

  The next few hours were going to be rough.

  Mike had been watching the Kelly house. He called out, “That little devil-kid and some girl just walked into the place, big as brass.”

  Leo’s eyes found Janis’s.

  “It’s going to take two of us,” she said.

  “I know. Are you ready?”

  Connie sat on the couch, watching, listening.

  “I guess so, sir.”

  Leo handed her the shorter, sharpened stake, keeping the spearlike one for himself.

  “You’re going to have to kill Paul’s other self,” the girl reminded him.

  “Yes.”

  “You have to do that,” Janis pressed. “That’s the only way Paul can be killed.”

  “I know. Janis?”

  “I’m ready.”

  The man and the girl walked out the back of Leo’s place, heading for the Kelly house.

  They did not speak to one another on the short journey.

  At the back door, they paused.

  “Ready, Janis?”

  “I’m ready.”

  Leo pushed open the door. They could hear Paul laughing.

  They stepped into a tiny bit of Hell on earth.

  FOUR

  “Stupid fool!” Paul screamed at Leo. “You are so stupid you should be locked away.”

  With Janis to his right, Leo closed the door. He was aware that Janis was looking at him very strangely.

  Of course, he knew why Paul was calling him stupid. But he didn’t want to give that away to Janis. Not yet. He looked down at her and smiled.

  Her face was strained.

  Leo shifted his spearlike stake to his left hand, and put his right hand into his jacket pocket, to touch the vials of holy water the priest had given him moments before his head had been severed from his body.

  A yellow mist began to worm its way across the floor, gathered around Paul’s feet.

  “What’s the matter with your ugly brother, Paul?” Leo challenged. “That hideousness afraid of me?”

  “Don’t be stupidl” Paul spat the words at him.

  “Then tell him to join us. If he, or it, has the courage.”

  “You’ll regret those words!”

  Leo smiled at Paul as the boy’s other self began to materialize into its grotesque form.

  Paul pointed a finger at Leo. “You are going to
die, cop!”

  Leo twisted the cap off the vial, one-handed, while wondering where the girl who’d entered the house with Paul was.

  Paul grinned. “As a matter of fact, I think I’ll just let my brother have his way with you.”

  The demon stood beside him, slobbering and snarling at Leo. Leo took a step forward and hurled the contents of the vial onto the hideous creature.

  And Paul’s brother screamed in raw pain as the blessed water burned his ugliness. Smoking holes appeared in his skin. His howling fouled the air with stinking breath. The demon slapped at the smoking holes with its clawed hands.

  Leo stepped closer, shifting the spear, and drove it into the demon’s chest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Janis leap forward and impale her brother on her stake. Right where his heart was.

  Leo was sprayed with the gushing greenish yellow fluid that erupted from the demon’s mouth. Ignoring the filth, he jerked the stake out and drove it in, again and again. Until Janis’s voice stopped him.

  “He’s dead, Mister Leo. Both of them are dead. It’s over. ”

  Leo jerked the spear out of the creature’s chest and turned to face the girl. “Yeah. And I couldn’t have done it without you, Janis.”

  Then he hurled the spear at the pretty little blond girl.

  FIVE

  At one moment the spearheading SWAT team was having to fight their way ahead, inch by inch, then the people attacking them laid down their weapons and fell to the street, holding their heads, as if suffering from agonizing headaches.

  And the same thing was occurring all over the town. Wilson radioed for the others to come on in, but to be careful. “Something very weird is happening,” he said.

  “He thinks we don’t know that?” Captain Madison asked.

  Madison’s walkie-talkie crackled. He lifted it to his ear. “Yeah. Go on.”

  “Burt Sandry here, Tom. It’s over. The demons are dead. I don’t think you’re going to have any trouble getting to us. But come on. You’re gonna have to see this to believe it.”

  * * *

  Connie was crying, so were Linda and Mary Beth. Maggie had been handcuffed by Fifteen and stowed in the cage of his car.

  The Kelly house was filled to near capacity with cops.

  And Leo was sitting on the floor, just about drained.

  “That can’t be her!” Mike was saying, pointing to the old hag in stinking rags on the floor. “My God, she was so young and pretty.”

  “It’s her.” Leo’s voice was husky with exhaustion. “Took me awhile, but I finally figured it out.”

  “I don’t know that I could have done it,” Peter said. He could not take his eyes from the horrible-looking hag on the den floor.

  Connie looked like she was about to faint.

  Mary Beth led her outside and placed her in the back seat of a police car.

  Then Leo turned to the commander of state police. “Is it over?”

  “Not another shot fired. They just gave up and laid down in the street. Weirdest thing. None of them seem to remember anything that happened.”

  “Would you, if you were in their shoes?” Leo asked him.

  “Good point. Yeah, I see what you mean.” He looked at the dead hag on the floor. “About the little girl, Mr. Corigliano . . . ?”

  Leo nodded. “Stanford—Inspector Willingston—suspected her all along. I just didn’t buy it. I ...”

  His eyes caught something behind the back-yard fence; something that should not be there. He looked at Mike and pointed. “Mounds of sand out there, Mike. Could it be?”

  Belline and his colleagues moved swiftly, Belline saying, “We’ll take samples—carefully, this time— and check to be sure.”

  “You were saying, Mr. Corigliano?” Captain Madison prompted.

  “What finally convinced me was the death of Father Gomez. The murderer had to be someone much shorter than he was. From the angle of the cut. And left-handed. That pretty well narrowed it down.”

  A trooper entered the house and whispered something in Captain Madison’s ear. Madison grimaced. To the group: “Four naked bodies have just been found outside of town. They’ve been identified as those of a couple who owned a large ranch in the county, and your missing cop and his wife, Mary. All four are dead.”

  “Drive stakes into their hearts and burn the bodies,” Leo said.

  “Now, see here, Mr. Corigliano!” the top gun of the state police protested.

  “Just do what I tell you, you windbag!” Leo roared.

  Madison nodded at Wilson. The SWAT leader nodded in return and, with Peter beside him, left the house. They had some stake-driving to do.

  “Carla Weaver?” Burt asked, tossing out the question to anyone.

  “No sign of her.”

  “What are you going to do with Ned?” top gun asked Captain Madison.

  “That’s up to you,” Madison fired back. “But bear in mind that he’s one of . . . them.”

  Top gun nodded wearily. “I’ll order it done right now.”

  “We have creatures in the hospital,” Fifteen reminded them.

  Leo pointed to the blanket-covered body of Mark. “Somebody, get that body out of here so Mrs. Kelly won’t have to look at it. Hasn’t she been through enough without that?”

  The body was swiftly removed.

  “How about other pockets of defenders in the town?” Matt asked. He had recovered some of his bluster.

  “Who are you?” Captain Madison asked.

  “Matt Maguire, a member of the press. Now answer my question.”

  Madison had twenty-five years in on the force. His retirement papers had already been okayed. He smiled, then did something he’d wanted to do for twenty-five years. He hit a smart-ass reporter right smack in the mouth, knocking him cold.

  The other cops in the room applauded.

  Madison took a bow.

  Then Leo stood up. He ached in every bone and muscle, but he headed outside. He had to see a woman and try to explain the death of a little girl.

  SIX

  One Week Later.

  Leo sat between his two favorite women. Connie on his left, Janis on his right. A big bowl of hot popcorn on the coffee table.

  Leo hugged them both, pulling them close.

  “You did think it was me for a time, didn’t you, Mister Leo?” Janis asked, munching on popcorn.

  “Yes, I did, honey. And I’m sorry about that.”

  “Let’s talk it out, Leo,” Connie said, reaching across him and grabbing a handful of popcorn. “How did you put it all together?”

  “Well, something was always happening to the other girls, but never to Melissa. She just got a little eager, that’s all. She was the one with the book, and it just seemed like she was always around. I got suspicious. And when Gomez was killed . . . well, Melissa was the only left-handed person in the house that night. Besides, I saw her look at the priest, and read it right.”

  “By eager, you mean she was so impatient she just had to see Paul die?” Connie asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m glad it’s over,” Janis said.

  But all three of them knew it wasn’t.

  Too many people were still missing. The reporters, Marta and Jeff and Harrison. Old Jake. Some of Lisa’s gang were still on the loose—somewhere. And Maggie had hanged herself in the jail, but her body had vanished.

  There were still too many loose ends for Leo to feel comfortable.

  The people in the town, those who had taken Paul’s side, all maintained their innocence. Something had taken control of them, they said.

  Yeah. Sure.

  Connie stood up and stretched. “Well, it’s going to be a big day tomorrow. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Time for bed, Janis.”

  She stood up and looked back at Leo. “You’re staying here tonight, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll be right here, honey,” he assured her.

  The girl went off to bed.

  Connie met his eyes. “It’s J
anis they want, isn’t it, Leo? Now damn it, don’t lie to me.”

  “Yeah. That’s what Father Gomez told me about an hour before he was killed.”

  “That’s why you’re in such a hurry for us to leave, right?”

  “Yeah. We’re going on a long trip, Connie. Maybe for a year. I’m a rich man, I can afford it. We’ll hire tutors for Janis. Then we’ll settle up in Westchester.”

  “And hope for the best?”

  He didn’t reply.

  Something pecked on the windows of the house, something that blew out of the desert.

  “It’s just sand, Connie,” Leo said. “Relax. It’s just grains of sand.”

  Look for these other horrifying tales from William W. Johnstone.

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