“Mom?” Dustin called from the kitchen.
Theresa glanced at the clock and saw that dinner was late. She dashed into the kitchen.
“What’s for dinner?” Dustin asked.
“Ravioli,” Theresa said. “Coming right up. I lost track of time.”
Dustin opened a cupboard door. “That’s okay, I can just have cereal.”
“Why, sure, that sounds great. Do you want ice cream with that?”
“Really?”
“No, not really.” Theresa whipped a dishrag off a hanger and snapped it in his direction. “Now get out of here and let me cook.”
Dustin left and the living room television snapped on.
Theresa got an empty feeling. This time, this moment, preparing dinner together, had been the part of the day she and Laura had shared. Dustin would be engrossed in television and they could let their hair down without an audience. They’d share a few minutes of girl talk while food simmered and filled the house with scents like garlic and rosemary, aromas that said “home”. It didn’t feel the same without Laura here. Why did Laura have to let her depression get so out of hand? Couldn’t she see what it was doing to all of them? Why did she have to make Theresa show tough love?
When dinner was ready, she set it out on the kitchen table. She wiped her hands on the dishcloth and tossed it near the sink. She entered the living room.
“Dustin?” The TV squawked, but the room was empty. “Dustin!”
“Right behind you, Mom.”
She whirled around and saw Dustin in the kitchen doorway. He’d looped around through the dining room.
“What are you doing in there?”
“The puzzle.”
“What puzzle?”
“The one you brought home,” Dustin said. “What does conflagration mean?”
Theresa returned to the dining room. The scraps of paper were arranged in the rough outline of a page. Several small sections were missing, but the page was nearly complete.
“Dustin, how did you do this?” she said in awe.
“It was just how I saw it,” he said, but Theresa didn’t process his answer. She was already engrossed in the page.
The longarex was a demon brought forth first by the Mayans, then by witches during the Spanish Colonial period in the Southwest and in Mexico. Called forth at the highest point above the horizon, it manifested in the form of a great bird, since it had to shield its naked skin from the light of day. After sundown, it shed the bird’s skin and flew off to hunt male prey, consuming the heart.
With enough power, the longarex could graduate to human quarry. The Mayans had fueled it with the sacrifice of captured slaves and then sent it out to decimate the ranks of opposing tribes’ warriors. Once released, only the destruction of the shed avian skin could guarantee the death of the longarex.
There was no question in Theresa’s mind that this was the creature in her visions. That anyone could willfully summon such a horrific thing was almost beyond comprehension. Once released, it would be like a biological weapon, an uncontrolled plague with no boundary but gender to check its destruction. Who would ever let such a thing loose?
Her heart skipped a beat. She’d seen the anger that would fuel the resurrection of the longarex at the women’s support meeting. That same spirit of vengeance that turned her away could gather enough followers to make this happen. Could the witchcraft rumors have been true?
“Mom?” Dustin said. “Dinner?”
“Coming.”
Theresa returned to the kitchen on autopilot. She poured two glasses of water and put them on the table. Dustin sat at his place.
“Ravioli!” Dustin dug in.
Theresa poked at the food on her plate. She remembered that the journal said a coven needed at least three witches. Aileen, Tammy and Janice certainly fit that bill. After the meeting, they were buttonholing the attendees like politicians. Tammy was disappointed when Theresa hadn’t jumped on the bandwagon. They were looking for like-minded women, probably trying to gather enough adherents to get whatever pseudospiritual mass the longarex needed to graduate to human prey.
A chill shivered down her spine. Having Galaxy Farm exposed as a haunted house was one thing. What town didn’t have a haunted house? But for Moultrie to host a coven of witches with this kind of a plan was almost unbelievable. Almost. Unless you had Theresa’s prophetic gift.
“Dustin, did you read that puzzle you put together?”
“Not really,” Dustin said with a slurp of ravioli. “I mostly just made the pieces match. The drawing was creepy.”
She gave a relieved sigh. At least she wouldn’t have to explain anything past conflagration.
“Can I go back to my show?” Dustin said. His plate was clean.
“Sure, go on.” Apparently, the ancient tale of demon-driven death hadn’t sunk in at all for her son. Thank God.
Dustin scampered off and left Theresa alone with the weight of her knowledge. All her life her gift of prescience had given her the ability to predict disaster, unaccompanied by the proof any normal person would need to believe it. At some point each time, enough hard evidence surfaced to tell the whole story, as long as whoever she shared it with could take the leap of faith about premonitions. Few could.
She could have counted on Laura. The two of them had experienced it all, and survived, at Galaxy Farm. Laura believed in Theresa’s gift and in the power of the supernatural. Or at least she had. After their blowup, who knew what she thought, or if in her depressed state she’d be reliable. Enlisting her was out of the question. She’d only clued Sam in on her ability today. He probably couldn’t make the leap from a premonition of a fire to a warning of witchcraft.
Theresa would have to do it alone, the way she always had. Witches were going to release the longarex and there would be fire and death, unless she stopped it.
Pear Tree Hill was the highest hill outside of town, coincidentally near the Petty place. If the three witches were going to summon the longarex, that would be the location. She’d start her investigation there to see if it held any ritual’s remnants. Then she’d know if the longarex was already here, or if she had more time. Tomorrow night, the town would be enthralled at Donkey Day, and she’d have less chance of being discovered. She could drop Dustin off at the Princess Day Care event and get some answers, perhaps enough hard evidence to get the Sheriff Sam on her side.
The idea of teaming up with Sam sent a chill up her spine, this time a good one.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Laura startled at the unexpected knock on her apartment door. Eight thirty was late for visitors, especially unannounced. Actually, any visitor to her new apartment was odd. She checked through the peephole and saw Dalton.
Her first reaction of happy surprise was quickly tempered by her sense of professionalism. She could rationalize the dinner they’d shared, a meeting in a public place. But this was her home, such as it was. There was a line that had to be drawn before her job became compromised. She would have to define that line. She opened the door, security chain in place.
Dalton flashed an apologetic smile. A little breeze rolled in from the hallway. Her resolve to send him packing melted. She realized he was harmless and she was paranoid. She needed to loosen up.
Dalton raised a bottle of wine from behind his back. “On the way home I found this splendid white wine. I bought myself a bottle. Then I thought about how wonderful you were, helping me with Luther, and realized you deserved one as well.”
A faraway voice screamed a warning in Laura’s head to close the door.
“How nice of you,” she said. She disconnected the security chain. “Come on in.”
Seconds after Laura passed out on the couch, Dalton was up and at work. The mild sedative in the wine would be good for over an hour, but he didn’t have time to waste. If it hadn’t been for that sense of urgency, he’d most certainly have detoured to take sexual advantage of the situation. She wouldn’t remember it.
He found her
schoolbag by the door. A chilling moment of dread materialized as he realized she might have left her laptop at work. He opened the bag, and to his immense relief, the laptop was inside. He popped it open on the kitchen counter and fired it up. He pulled the skimmer from his pocket and plugged it in.
As soon as the machine booted up, the green light on the skimmer flashed. The Moultrie Elementary website popped up. Laura’s ID and password populated the prompt boxes. The screen switched over to the student records access screen.
“Shit, yeah,” Dalton whispered.
Dalton didn’t look at Luther’s. He knew the boy didn’t meet the criteria and he didn’t need school records to confirm it. He started at the top of the list. Abernathy, Abigail.
Click.
One by one he studied the records of the third grade class, occasionally copying a name and some attributes on a notepad beside him.
Forty minutes later he called up a chat room—TalkinBoutIt.com—WWS6607 was online, as expected. He sent an IM.
Participants identified. He typed in four names.
An answer returned. Good consort match?
One perfect, he typed. Dustin Grissom.
Laura woke up on the couch. The lights were on. She sat up and her head spun like a pinwheel. She tried to remember how she got here. She came home from work, was going to make dinner. There was a knock at the door…Dalton!
She stood up and had to grab the back of the recliner for support.
“Dalton?” she called.
No answer. She thanked God. Asleep while a man roamed her house wasn’t her idea of a good time.
The last waking hour of her life came back into focus. Dalton brought wine. She invited him in. Invited him in? What was she thinking? Her memory was cloudy, as if everything she remembered was through a thin, gauzy veil. Had they shared wine? She ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth and tasted a stale tang. What would possess her to do that? She barely knew this guy and they were alone drinking in her apartment? If Theresa had done that Laura would have made Theresa get her head examined.
For some reason, the details of their conversation were little more than frustratingly muffled whispers.
Panic ripped through her and cleared her head like a stiff breeze. She checked her clothes. Blessedly, she was fully dressed. Whatever happened tonight, at least the worst had not.
She searched her apartment. No wine. No dirty glasses. No hint remained that Dalton had been here, except for the front door’s unlocked security chain. He couldn’t lock it on the way out. He didn’t leave a note. None of this made sense.
She remembered she had his card in her schoolbag. She went to the hallway and froze as she saw her bag on the floor. It was turned around the opposite way than she had left it. Every day she slid it off her right shoulder and onto the ground, outer side against the wall. The bag was turned around. She snatched it off the floor and laid it on the kitchen table.
She unzipped it and checked for important items like her laptop, school keys and her school ID. Everything seemed to be there. She reached in to check her ID and brushed the laptop’s base. It was warm. She’d shut it off hours ago, but it was warm. That son of a bitch had used her computer.
She felt sucker punched. Instead of being physically raped, had this bastard professionally raped her, accessed school information through her laptop?
She popped the laptop open and powered it up. The process seemed to take twice as long as usual. When the icons populated, she clicked on the Moultrie Elementary symbol. The website popped up and she dashed through her log-in sequence, terrified of what the first message would be. It flashed up and her heart fell.
Welcome, Laura, you last logged on from this computer at 8:17 p.m.
“Damn it!” She sure as hell didn’t log on at eight seventeen. She hadn’t logged on to the records database since…since she’d done it for Dalton!
Her face turned a burning red and she felt like pounding Dalton into the ground. He’d used her to get into the school records. If anyone found out, she’d be fired and lose her teaching license. She dumped her bag on the desk and pawed through the pile of contents until she found Dalton’s business card. She flipped it over to his cell number written on the back. She grabbed her smartphone and practically cracked the screen as she furiously dialed.
She went straight to voice mail.
“This is Dalton and Luther. Leave us a message.”
She had to stop herself from throwing the phone. Oh, she had a message to leave, all right.
“Dalton, you jackass,” she said, “I don’t know what you pulled to get in my apartment and what happened to me while you were here—”
She paused as she realized this recorded message was about to be a permanent record, a record that might find its way into court if anyone found out that she’d let him get into school records.
“—but I know what you did. And you’d better call me about it right the hell now!”
She hung up, livid. How could she have let herself get so compromised? Something was disarming about Dalton, but not in a good way. It wasn’t his looks or personality. In retrospect, those were average, at best. It was like something surrounded him that infected her as soon as he got close. In fact, as soon as she opened the front door, she started acting stupid. Just like when she let him talk her into accessing the record at school, or when she didn’t flinch as he slid beside her during dinner at Chapman’s.
She knew being disarmed wouldn’t be a problem the next time she saw him. He’d be lucky if she didn’t tear his head off at first sight.
She noticed she’d had a missed call from the sheriff’s department during her drug-induced blackout. The accompanying message was from Sheriff Barnsdale himself, asking her to return his call as soon as possible. She began a list of reasons he would call: more questions about Sheriff Mears’s death, problems with the Galaxy Farm property, illegal surveillance bug at the Petty place, trespassing, harassing call to Child Services. Discussions about any of those items with the police was the last thing she needed right now. She deleted the message.
Whatever the sheriff wanted to talk about would have to wait.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The next day, Laura reminded herself not to make the son suffer for the sins of the father. The children came above everything. But she was curious about Luther’s upcoming reaction to her when he came for tutoring. The old Triple S would clue her in right away if his level of comfort in the class had changed and whether his father had made any mention of going out last night to see Ms. Locke.
Luther’s 12:45 appointment came and went. Laura stood in the doorway and checked the empty hall. She wondered if yet another scheduled schoolwide event had trumped education. Then she remembered. The Donkey Day school assembly was today. Had anyone reminded her? Of course not.
In honor of the traditional celebration of the burro, every school had an assembly to get the kids psyched up for the event. The mayor’s office wanted a few thousand kids pestering their parents to buy admission tickets and shell out for deep-fried cupcakes. Stoking that enthusiasm took effort. The days when kids had groomed the family donkey and entered it in feats of strength were long gone. Everything most of these kids knew about equines they’d absorbed watching Shrek’s sidekick.
Laura went down to the assembly at the gym. She took a spot in the lee of the bleachers. Marginally interested children gave indifferent attention to the demonstration at center court. A man in overalls and a straw hat stroked the neck of a donkey standing on a gray-canvas drop cloth. He spoke about how donkeys and mules had built the country in its early years and provided the power before engines were invented.
The donkey raised its tail and dropped a steaming load of manure. Half of it missed the tarp and hit the polished hardwood floor with a splat.
Nothing is funnier in an elementary school than defecation. Twittering laughter burst out throughout the stands. Then the earthy smell hit the first few rows of kids. They responded like
it was a poison gas attack, shrieking and pulling their shirts up over their noses.
Coach Coburn, all official in red shorts and white polo shirt, ran out with a wide shovel in hand, a knight bound to rescue his polished princess of a floor. Years of lacrosse practice finally found a use as he scooped up the poop on the run. This accomplishment only inspired a fresh round of screams and laughter. The assembly’s educational aspirations evaporated.
Laura looked across the gym and found Luther’s class, which she still thought of as her own, no matter what nepotism had wrought. She wanted to catch his eye, give him a look to let him know that she missed their time together and hadn’t forgotten him. She scanned each row of children, but didn’t find his face. She double-checked. He wasn’t there.
She got that bad feeling, the one that manifested when all the pieces didn’t fit, or all the pieces fit the wrong way. She looped around the outside of the gym and came up behind the other set of bleachers. Britney Rutledge, Laura’s replacement, stood back there, well out of her children’s line of sight. She wore a shapeless pair of jeans and a loose gray shirt that did nothing to flatter her round figure. She looked like she was seventeen years old.
While Britney’s shirking of her chaperone duties irked Laura, Britney’s companion truly ground Laura’s gears. Patrice stood beside Britney in animated conversation, no doubt dispensing tips on how to best avoid work. Patrice saw Laura before Britney did and sprouted a catty grin.
“Look, it’s Laura,” Patrice said, all fake Southern hospitality. Apparently, she didn’t spit full venom in front of the granddaughter of a school board member. “Out of her little room to help the teachers at the assembly.”
It was all Laura could do to keep from hauling off and hitting the bitch. As if Laura wasn’t more of a teacher on her first day than Patrice had been on her best…
“Aren’t those two boys in the second row in your class, Patrice?” Laura asked. “The two picking each other’s noses?”
Dark Vengeance Page 13
