The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  Leon Tilden rolled up in his parish unit and got out. “You sure it was a person and not a deer, Jeff?”

  “Positive, Leon. I saw his face.” He thought about that. Strange face. Funny-looking eyes.

  “What’s the matter?” Leon asked.

  “I don’t know. But something is damn odd about this. I was running about fifty when that guy jumped out in front of me. I knocked him over the car. He landed on the trunk. I heard him hit, but there’s no dents. Nobody gets hit at fifty miles per hour and walks away from it. It’s just not . . . not possible.”

  Laughter came from the timber. Crazy laughter.

  Trooper and deputy looked at each other. Headlights sprang out of the darkness, coming from town. Gerard and Ray parked on the side of the road and walked up just as the wild laughter began again.

  “What the hell is that?” Ray asked.

  “We don’t know,” Jeff said. “It just started a few seconds before you drove up.”

  Something began moving around in the brush.

  “Sheriff’s department!” Gerard shouted. “Come on out of there.”

  A growl sprang from the timber and brush.

  “It’s a dog,” Leon said.

  “A laughing dog?” Ray looked at him. “Not damn likely.”

  Chuckling reached their ears. But it was a strange chuckling. Like nothing any of the men had ever heard before. It was . . .

  “Menacing,” Jeff said.

  “What?” Gerard cut his eyes to the trooper.

  “It’s got a menacing sound to it,” the trooper said.

  “Everybody back their cars around so the headlights are directed toward the timber,” Ray said. “Come on, let’s do it.”

  Headlights on high beam, the men got out and stared at the brush and timber. Dark shapes moved just out of range of the lights.

  “More than one,” Gerard said. “Whatever they are,” he added in a low voice.

  Jeff cut his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said,” the chief deputy replied.

  “You better talk to me,” the young trooper told him, remembering that he had thought the word something as well as someone.

  “Piggy.” The word drifted out of the headlight-illuminated woods. “Several piggies. Dead piggies.”

  Four hands went to the butts of guns. Four thumbs unsnapped the security straps, freeing their pistols. Eight feet took several steps back, closer to the security of their units.

  Laughter ripped through the night, the wild sounds coming from the woods.

  “I don’t see a damn thing funny about this,” Jeff said.

  “Nobody on this side is laughing,” the sheriff reminded him.

  The breeze picked up, the cold winds bringing with them a sour, putrid odor. The lawmen all knew that smell. Death. Rotting human flesh. And the smell was coming from the timber and brush.

  “Not yet, piggies,” the voice touched them. “Not yet.”

  The night grew quiet. The smell ceased its assault on their nostrils. The men listened to the rustling of feet in the brush. It gradually faded from their hearing.

  “They’re gone,” Gerard said.

  “They?” Jeff almost shouted the word.

  “You want to walk the ditches again?” Tom asked him.

  “What I want to do is go home,” the trooper said. “And get in bed and forget this crazy night ever happened.”

  “Let’s walk the ditches,” Gerard suggested. “I don’t think we’re gonna find anything, though.”

  “I hit a man,” Jeff said. “I knocked the bejesus out of him. I know I hit him. He flew over my car, bounced off the trunk, and hit the blacktop. I saw it and heard it. But there are no dents and no blood. Nobody gets up and walks away from that. It’s not possible.”

  The trooper and deputy caught the look that was exchanged between sheriff and chief deputy.

  “Leon, you and Jeff take this side of the road,” the sheriff said. “Me and Gerard will walk the other side. Stay close to each other.”

  “Just wait a minute,” Jeff said. “Just hold up. I saw the looks you and Gerard gave each other. Now you level with me, Sheriff. You tell me what the hell is going on around here.”

  “The supernatural.”

  “Say . . . what?”

  “Things and happenings that are beyond our control or understanding,” Gerard said.

  The trooper and the deputy looked around them at the darkness of the brush and timber on either side of the blacktop. They looked at each other, then they looked at Ray and Gerard.

  “Uh ... Sheriff,” Leon said, his breath making steam clouds in the cold night air. “Would you maybe like to go into a little more detail?”

  “We have an active coven working in this parish.”

  “I know that much,” Leon said. “You told me that.”

  “An active what?” Jeff asked.

  “A group of people that worship the devil.”

  “You’re shittin’ me,” the trooper said.

  “I wish,” Gerard told him.

  Jeff took off his smoky bear hat and scratched his head. “What has that got to do with what happened here tonight, the guy I hit? All those strange sounds coming from the timber?”

  “Maybe it has everything to do with it,” the sheriff said.

  Jeff plopped his hat back on his head, took a deep breath, and then started jumping up and down in the middle of the highway. “Will-somebody-please-for-Christsake-tell-me-what-the-hell-is-going-on?” he yelled.

  “Maybe they made contact?” Gerard said.

  “Who made contact?” Jeff asked. “And with who? Whom? Whatever.”

  “The devil,” Ray told him.

  Jeff stared at him. “The ... devil? You mean ... like from hell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah ... people, assuming I buy any of this . . . story. Tell me this: What’s the devil got to do with the guy who ran out in front of my car?”

  “Maybe he is ... not of this earth,” Gerard offered, the words harsh and bitter on his tongue.

  Without consciously knowing it, the men moved closer together as the night grew colder and darker. The breeze freshened as the rain clouds, which had been threatening all evening, became fuller and sank closer to the earth. The cold rain would start very soon.

  “Chief,” Leon said, his voice low, “what are you saying?”

  “Tell them.” The words seemed to be carried on the wind, coming out of the timber.

  But this time the voice came from the south side of the blacktop.

  Trooper Jeff Miller opened his car door and took out his sawed-off pump shotgun, shucking a round into the slot. “I ’bout had all I’m gonna take,” he said.

  “Stupid pig,” the voice called from the night.

  Now it came from east side, seeming to be only a few yards away from the knot of men.

  “Nothing moves like that,” Ray said. “Not that fast or silent. They’re all around us, boys.”

  “What is all around us?” Jeff asked nervously.

  “Get in the cars,” Ray said. “Do it. Right now. Let’s get the hell gone from this place.”

  Ten seconds later, the men were blasting through the chilly night, heading back toward town.

  Link awakened with a start. He looked around him. Two of his inside dogs were sitting by the side of the bed softly whining, the hair on their backs standing up. Kat was on top of the dresser, her teeth exposed in a horrible silent snarl.

  Link slipped out of bed and dressed quickly. He belted on his .45 and started for a rifle. He hesitated and instead chose a sawed-off pump shotgun. He walked across the hall and opened the door to Anne’s room.

  “Get up, Anne,” he whispered. He saw her jerk under the covers. “We’ve got troubles. Get up and get dressed. Keep the lights off.”

  He backed out of the bedroom and went to his war room, as he called the small storage area where he kept guns and ammo and other gear. He looped a shell belt filled with three-inc
h twelve-gauge magnum loads over a shoulder, then jacked a round into the slot and shoved another into the tube. Link looked out a window. Rain was softly falling, obscuring his vision. He saw something – it looked like a man, or at least it looked man-shaped – running toward the house, only about fifty feet from the fence. He stepped out onto the porch, opened the screen door, and sighted in the running shape for a second, then squeezed the trigger just as the misshapen thing jumped for the fence.

  The double-ought buckshot caught the body in the face and stopped its forward leap cold, flinging it back into the grass.

  A wild scream came from the woods, a scream of anger and hate and frustration.

  “Watch the back!” Link yelled. “Shoot anything that moves out there, Anne. Shoot to kill.”

  “Link!” Paul called from above the garage. “What is it?”

  “Get armed, Paul. There’s some things prowling the yard.”

  “Things, Link?” Anne called.

  “They’re not human, that’s for sure.”

  “Mother!” Betsy cried. “Something is trying to get in my room. It’s at the window! Mother!” she screamed.

  “Watch the front, Paul!” Link shouted. “Stay where you are, Anne. Stay put! I’ll take it.” He ran toward the smashing of glass and the screaming of the girl. Link kicked open the only partly closed door and pulled up short at the sight that greeted him.

  The thing that was trying to get inside the room appeared to be human – it had arms, legs, hands, and a head. The resemblance ended there. In the dimness of the night light, the creature looked as if it had stopped its evolution about midpoint in the Homo sapiens chain.

  It raised its head to stare at Link through the most evil-looking eyes he had ever seen. When the creature opened its mouth to snarl at him, it showed teeth that were fangs and its breath was foul enough to kill flies in flight.

  Link shot it three times, the buckshot very nearly blowing its head off. It fell backward, through the window frame and onto the wet yard.

  “Get in with your brother,” Link told the girl. “Move, honey.”

  He went to the phone and punched out the number of the sheriffs office. “This is Link Donovan. Get units out here to my place right now. I’m under attack. Shots have been fired. Move it, son.”

  He ran to his war room and rammed open a sliding panel built into the wall. He pulled a MAC-10, .45 caliber spitter from its pegs and slapped in a clip. He threw the shotgun shell bandoleer to the floor and grabbed a canvas pouch filled with full clips for the spitter.

  “Link!” Anne called. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know who’s coming out here from the S.O., Anne. I’ve got to open the gates for them.”

  “No!” she screamed at him.

  “I got no choice in the matter, Anne,” he called from the hall. “I’m going to cut on the outside floods just before I take off for the gates. It’ll light up the fenced-in compound like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”

  But Anne didn’t hear the last. She was blasting away with her shotgun, shooting as fast as she could pump. And she hit what she was shooting at. Another inhuman scream ripped the rainy night.

  “Link!” Paul called. “I see cop cars coming up the road.”

  “I’m gone, Anne,” Link called. He slid her his shotgun and shell belt up the hall. “Hold the fort, kid.”

  He hit the floodlight switch on his way out. The harsh lights lit up the area and clearly revealed the body of the ... thing Link had shot by the fence.

  Link opened the gate and waved at Paul. “Link!” the young man called. “Don’t go out there. Those . . . things are all over the place.”

  But Link was gone, running through the cold rain for the gates by the road. Something very large loomed up in front of him, its massive and hairy arms spread wide, the big fingers gnarled and grotesque-looking, with long clawlike nails. The thing snarled. Link never broke stride as he lifted the muzzle of the MAC-10 and gave the whatever-in-the-hell-it-was a short burst of .45 caliber slugs in the belly and chest. It flopped on the gravel and screamed.

  When Link reached the end of the drive and slid to a halt by the gates, he realized he had forgotten the damn keys to the gate-lock.

  He blew the lock off with a short burst and ejected that clip, slamming home and locking in another full clip and jacking a round into the chamber before he swung open the gates.

  “Get up to the house!” Link told Tom Halbert. “There are creatures in the yard.”

  “Creatures, Link?”

  “Move, goddamnit!” Link roared.

  Tom moved, floorboarding the unit, Steve Mallory right behind him in the second unit.

  Suddenly, Link felt very alone and vulnerable.

  He looked around him.

  “You won this one,” the voice came out of the rain and gloom.

  These things speak? Link thought, lifting the MAC-10 just as Ray and Gerard roared up and came to a halt, their headlights picking up Link, standing in the middle of the drive. Link waved them out. Cliff Sweeney got out of the back seat.

  “That’s an illegal weapon in your hands, Donovan,” the Bureau man said.

  “Fuck you, Sweeney,” Link told him.

  The voice howled with inhuman laughter.

  Cliff almost jumped out of his shoes. He reached inside his top coat and came out with a pistol.

  “In answer to your unspoken question, ex-spook,” the voice said, “they do not speak. But we do.”

  “He . . . it read my mind,” Link said.

  “Who is they and we?” Cliff asked.

  “Bye, piggies, bye, spook,” the voice said. The bushes rattled and Link gave them a full clip. The voice laughed. “You can’t kill me with that,” it informed them all. “I’m already dead!”

  The wild laughter gradually faded into the rain and the gloom.

  Chapter 15

  “Merciful God in Heaven,” Cliff said, kneeling down beside the body of the creature in the gravel of the drive and inspecting it in the glare of headlights. “What is this thing?”

  “Why don’t we drag one of the coven members out here and have him tell us?” Link suggested.

  “You think he or she would just willingly volunteer that information?” Ray asked. His face was ashen at the sight of the dead, stinking creature.

  “Give me five minutes with them and I guarantee you they’ll be more than happy to talk,” Link said.

  Sweeney slowly stood up and faced Link in the cold rain. Tom was on the porch with Anne and the kids. Steve was with Paul, on the outside landing leading to his apartment. “Let me tell you something, Donovan. Let me make this very clear. This is not some clandestine Company operation in a poor developing nation. There will be no torturing of people as long as I have anything to say about it. I – ”

  “Shut up, Sweeney!” Link told him. “Now you listen to me. I have never physically tortured another being – human or animal – in my life. Up until now. You bear this in mind, if you can somehow fit it in among all the legalistic bullshit you have buried in your noggin: I’ve been attacked twice in one night. First by some humanoid types that people like you claim have constitutional rights, and now by some sort of creature the likes of which none of us have ever seen before. And bet on this: Both attacks have something to do with that devil’s coven operating in this parish....”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” the Bureau man said.

  “Shut up, goddamn you, shut up!” Link shouted at him.

  Neither Ray nor Gerard had ever seen Link’s full temper explode. They both had a hunch he was near the erupting point.

  Ray said, “Settle down, Link. Please. For me. For Anne and the kids, if not for yourself . . .”

  More patrol cars pulled in. State Troopers Miller and Holt. They got out and looked at the dead thing by the drive. “Holy shit!” Miller said.

  Link spun away from the group and walked back toward the house, his back stiff with anger. Link Donovan, a very dangerous
man with a lit fuse that was rapidly burning toward explosion.

  Ray turned to Sweeney and let the FBI man know exactly how he felt and where he stood. “Link was attacked by these ... whatever the hell they are, doing his best to protect Anne and the kids and himself, and the first thing out of your self-righteous mouth is condemnation of the weapon he used to do it. What the hell is it with you, Sweeney?”

  “A fully automatic weapon in the hands of an unlicensed civilian is illegal,” Cliff said. “And it is my duty to – ”

  “Fuck off, Sweeney,” the sheriff told him, and walked toward the house to join his deputies and to assess the damage done by the attacking creatures. “Get pictures of these things, Gerard,” he called over his shoulder. “And see if any are still alive. Sweeney might want to read them their rights.” He looked down at a dead thing and shuddered. Ugliest damn creature he had ever seen.

  Jeff Miller laughed at Ray’s parting remark and Sweeney gave him a dirty look.

  “A dozen good guys in the Bureau in this part of the state and we get the only jerk in the bunch,” Holt said.

  “I’ll see that your captain hears of this,” Sweeney told him.

  Holt gave him the phone number of the Troop and then told him where to put it. Sideways.

  The two troopers walked off, their yellow slickers shiny in the still-falling rain.

  “I suppose you’re going to turn Link in for that weapon?” Gerard said.

  “It will be in my report,” Sweeney told him.

  “Wonderful,” the chief deputy said. He walked to his car and opened the trunk, taking out a 35mm camera. He yelled at Steve. “Get your camera and get some shots of those things inside the fence, Steve. And don’t touch any of the . . . whatever the hell they are.”

  Sweeney looked around him. He was standing by himself in the drive. He suddenly felt very much alone. Sweeney was no coward; he’d been in several shoot-outs and a dozen very bad situations, and had conducted himself well and bravely. But only a fool would not be wary on a night like this. And Sweeney was no fool. Walking as calmly as possible, he moved toward the lighted compound. He successfully fought the urge to whistle.