Demon Walk

by Melissa Bowersock

  “Got it,” Lacey said. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Carmen wasn’t quite ready to end the call, but she seemed to struggle with what she wanted to say. “Uh, you know, if you two can… resolve this thing, at least in Pilar’s mind, so she doesn’t feel like she has to stay there… well, that would be a good thing. I’d like to see her in better conditions. Not alone.”

  Lacey softened. “I understand. Believe me, we’ll do everything we can.”

  “Okay.” She paused again. “Thanks.”

  “Sure thing.” Lacey keyed off the call. She knew Carmen wanted the best for her great-grandmother. It was just too bad that didn’t include believing in her.

  Well, she and Sam did. And now they had a clear path to possible solutions.

  With some trepidation, she dialed Sam’s number.

  “Lacey,” he said. He sounded not quite awake.

  “You up?” she asked with forced cheerfulness.

  “Sort of.” He yawned. “What’s up?”

  “Wanna go shopping for magic charms?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I got the details from Carmen.”

  “Okay, sure.” He yawned again. “When?”

  “I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes. Can you be ready?”

  “Bring coffee.”

  “You got it.”

  ~~~

  As they rolled south on the freeway, each with a grande Starbucks in hand, Lacey brought him up to date on her research. She was much more comfortable immersing herself in the work than in their relationship snarls. “I won’t get those death records until probably late in the week,” she said. “But what I might do on Monday is go down to the city offices, see if I can scare up some other old property records. If you’re sure this haunting goes back before Pilar’s house was built, there had to be something else there.”

  Sam nodded, carefully sipping his coffee. “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said.

  “Okay. Any idea what we’re looking for at this magic market?”

  “Mmm, not exactly,” he admitted. “Something to plug a hole to hell?”

  Lacey glanced over, a grim smile on her face. “How about some of that Gorilla Glue that expands to three times its size?”

  “Yeah, not exactly sure where we’d put it,” he said. “But we can nose around, see what’s out there.”

  Sam guided Lacey to the warehouse, reading her own directions back to her.

  “Abandoned?” she said, remembering Carmen’s description. “This thing looks like it should be condemned.”

  The warehouse was a rickety combination of wood and metal that sat on a lot of bare ground with a few sickly weeds. The original wood siding—gone to gray with the paint all peeled off—had been patched here and there with mismatched sections of metal, some flat, some corrugated and all rusty. There were no windows. A few cars were parked in the front lot and along the street. Lacey parked her red Rav4 next to a yellow-dotted-with-rust-spots 1950s pickup.

  “Carmen said the door was around the back,” she told Sam as they bailed out of the car. She very mindfully locked it.

  They walked around to the back. A single metal door stood slightly ajar. Sam pulled it open and walked in first. Lacey followed.

  The place was dim, and they both stopped just inside the door to let their eyes adjust to the low light. Lacey’s nostrils were immediately assailed with the pungent smells of greenstuff, herbs, sweat and animal droppings. There was a hum of voices, the squawk of chickens and the bleating of goats.

  All human sound stopped suddenly.

  Lacey stared around the cavernous building. Stalls lined both sides, haphazard constructions of plywood and junk metal, nailed or screwed or roped together in any way possible. The flat surfaces were covered with boxes and baskets of produce: lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, chilies and carrots. Lacey spied several types of roots displayed, but she couldn’t put a name to many of them.

  Mixed in among the produce were metal pans and trays, knives up to and including machetes, woven baskets, leather sandals, and boxes of video games. Lacey caught the smell of sizzling meat, and noticed puffs of smoke coming from a makeshift grill halfway down the row.

  She also noticed that almost every face in the building was watching them.

  “Come on,” Sam said in a low voice. He began to browse the displays, moving slowly down the row of stalls. Lacey followed, amazed at the multitude of things that crowded the tables. One stall had bananas, plantains… and boxes of socks. Another had onions, chilies, jalapeño peppers … and cell phone cases. It was a weird mash-up of a farmer’s market and a swap meet.

  Little by little, the conversations started again, the noise level picking up slightly as they moved further into the center of the building. Lacey made eye contact with several sellers; some smiled, but most did not.

  All righty, then, she thought. She could definitely tell when she wasn’t welcome. It occurred to her that she was the only white-skinned person in the building. Having her copper-skinned escort may have been her only saving grace.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked.

  “In the back corner,” she said, nodding in that direction. “She said to look for chickens.”

  The stall furthest down on the right side had chickens. Dead ones hanging from overhead beams; live ones in cages. There were several cartons of eggs displayed—brown, white and green. Next to them were long narrow baskets of chicken feet. No chickens, just the feet.

  Lacey gagged.

  “Look,” Sam said. He pointed out another basket, this one full of milagros. The small metal charms depicted people, animals, hearts, stars. Lacey dipped a hand in and let the milagros fall between her fingers.

  Other baskets held herbs: garlic, basil, rosemary. More she couldn’t identify. A tinkling sound drew her eyes upward. Hanging from beams overhead—in between the dead chickens—were small round slabs of dark stone, polished to a high gloss. They clattered against each other in the breeze generated by a large box fan on the floor. For the first time Lacey noticed the many extension cords that snaked all around the stalls, leading to lights, fans, radios playing soft mariachi music.

  The entire time she and Sam were looking through the items for sale, a tall Hispanic man stood and stared at them. He was so thin as to be gaunt, his cheeks sunken in on his weathered brown face. He did not speak.

  Finally Sam met his eyes directly. He inclined his head slightly in a silent greeting; the man answered in kind, just barely dipping his chin. His eyes never left Sam’s; Lacey was not included in the exchange.

  “I need help,” Sam said quietly.

  The man did not respond. His dark eyes glittered at Sam without emotion.

  Sam waited. So did the man. “Speak English?” Sam asked finally.

  The man’s lips pulled back in a sneer. “Yes,” he hissed, drawing out the word. “I don’t sell to cops.”

  “Not cops,” Sam said. He held up his hands in a peace-making gesture. “I need help. Protection. Charms.”

  The man stood motionless, not making any sign that he might have heard. The two of them stared at each other silently.

  Jesus, Lacey thought. Can we get past the stare-down and get to business? But she didn’t speak.

  Finally the man relented. He unclasped his hands from behind his back and motioned toward the milagros.

  “Charms,” he said.

  Sam shook his head. “No. Stronger.”

  More staring. No blinking. Lacey wanted to shift her feet, relax her stance a little, but didn’t dare move.

  The man reached over and took one of the small polished slabs down. A hole was drilled in the top of the round, and fishing line was used to hang it. He handed it to Sam.

  Lacey craned to see without moving closer to Sam. The slice of stone was dark gray, but so shiny she could clearly see Sam’s reflection in it.

  “What is it?” she asked softly.

  The man’s eyes switched from Sam to her, just briefly, as if she were
a harmless bug, then returned to Sam.

  “Obsidian,” he said.

  Sam examined the stone mirror closely, then handed it back. “Stronger.”

  The man’s mouth thinned into an angry line. His eyes darted back and forth. Lacey guessed there was some heavy thinking going on.

  He reached down underneath the table and pulled out a thin, flat object of the same dark gray obsidian. He handed it to Sam, who held it flat in the palm of his hand so Lacey could see.

  A knife. The flaked business edge so sharp, it looked only paper thin. Sam tested the edge carefully with his thumb; it wouldn’t take much pressure to slice through the skin. The thing looked delicate, yet Lacey could imagine the quick, effortless bloodletting it could do.

  Sam pushed the knife back at the man. “Stronger.”

  The man huffed out a frustrated breath. He leaned both hands on the table and angled his head down toward the metal cages stacked beside the table.

  Lacey glanced down and let out a small squeak when she saw the chickens crowded in the cages. Red hens, black roosters with shiny, arched tail feathers. What the hell, she thought. Sacrifice a live chicken?

  Sam stared at the chickens. He wasn’t really considering that, was he?

  He returned his gaze to the man. “That’s all you got?” he asked quietly.

  The man crossed his arms over his chest and glared at Sam. Lacey thought he did a pretty good impression of a brick wall.

  Sam was still holding the knife, the man having ignored his attempt to give it back. Now he laid it on the table.

  “Gracias,” he said. He turned to go, catching Lacey’s elbow and turning her with him toward the door.

  Questions flooded her mind, but she held her tongue until they’d walked casually past the stalls and exited the building. Once they’d walked back to the car and climbed in, she released the breath she’d been holding.

  “Jesus,” she muttered, “what the hell was that? Some kind of pissing contest?”

  Sam laughed once without humor. “Yeah, sort of,” he said. “He was trying to find out how gullible I was. How much I knew—or didn’t know—about magic. About witchcraft.”

  Lacey started the car. “Well, how much do you know? Was he being straight with you?”

  “Pretty much. Not at first, though. He was trying to palm off the usual stuff first, stuff people readily recognize but that doesn’t have much power. By the time he got to the obsidian knife, he knew I was a player.”

  “And what about that?” Lacey asked as she wheeled the car out onto the street. “Was he suggesting we sacrifice a chicken?”

  “Yeah. Blood is powerful. Fresh blood, pumping from a still-beating heart, is best. You make a deal with the gods, you gotta offer something serious.”

  Lacey glanced at him. “But we’re not doing that, right?” she asked.

  He chuckled, then took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. “No, we’re not doing that. At least, not until we’ve tried a few other options first.”

  She glared at him.

  “Hey,” he said, “I need to pick the kids up at noon. How about we do that, then go grab us some burgers for lunch?”

  Lacey wasn’t sure if he was trying to throw her off the track with his offer or if he was just being sweet. Probably both. And it was working. She hadn’t seen his kids in a couple weeks. The idea of shrugging off the morning’s adventure and losing herself in burgers and school news was definitely appealing.

  “You’re on,” she told him. After a second, she added, “Burgers only. No chicken sandwiches.”

  He just laughed.

  ~~~

  The kids were excited to see Lacey and ride in the Rav4. The little SUV apparently had a much higher “cool factor” than Sam’s old truck.

  “Guess what I’m going to be for Halloween,” nine-year-old Kenzie said from the back seat.

  “Seat belts?” Lacey queried. She wouldn’t move the car until she heard two clicks, and the kids knew it.

  “A seat belt,” Daniel guffawed. Lacey saw him poke his sister’s side. “You have to be long, flat and gray,” he told her.

  “No, not a seat belt,” Kenzie groaned.

  Lacey heard the clicks and pulled out of the parking lot. “I don’t know,” she said to Kenzie. “A princess? An alien?”

  “A witch!” Kenzie said with a wicked grin.

  Lacey and Sam traded looks.

  “Oh, cool,” Lacey said with forced enthusiasm. “You got your costume already?”

  “Yeah. It’s all black, and Mom’s going to paint my face green. I’m gonna be scary.”

  In the rearview mirror, Lacey saw Kenzie sit up tall and stretch her hands out in claws. A shiver went up her spine.

  “What about you, Daniel?” she asked.

  “Eh, I don’t know if I’m going out,” the thirteen-year-old said. His voice was a combination of arrogant disdain and a hint of wistfulness.

  “Kid stuff, huh?” Lacey guessed. She caught Kenzie’s eyes in the mirror and winked. “You’ll miss out on all the candy, though.”

  “And you’re not getting any of mine,” Kenzie announced.

  Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, you’ve still got a couple weeks to think about it,” Lacey said. “So where are we going for lunch?”

  Lacey was always amazed at how readily the kids fell back into the comfortable pattern of the four of them as a family. The end of Sam and Lacey’s short-lived experiment living together had dismayed them for a time, but now they seemed perfectly okay with the on-again, off-again relationship, as Lacey had been before Sam suggested moving forward. Thank God kids are so resilient, Lacey thought. They bounced back quickly from anything that was thrown at them. Quicker than she did. For their sake, she shoved the issue onto a back burner in her mind.

  Back at Sam’s apartment, burgers in hand, the four made a picnic lunch around the coffee table.

  “You know what we should do tonight?” Kenzie said.

  “What?” Sam asked.

  “We should make a blanket fort and turn off all the lights and tell ghost stories. That would be fun.”

  Sam, next to Lacey on the couch, arched an eyebrow at her. “Sounds good to me,” he said softly. “Wanna share my blanket fort tonight?”

  Lacey’s breath caught in her throat, but when she looked into his dark eyes, she realized he was not pushing. If anything, he was offering an olive branch. His eyes sparkled and his mouth looked soft and inviting. He had that look that made her toes curl. “I could do that,” she said with a smile. She stretched up to kiss him and seal the deal.

  “Yea!” Kenzie said, clapping.

  Daniel looked away in embarrassment. “Yuck!”

  Sam and Lacey both laughed.

  ~~~

  NINE

  Monday morning Lacey took her time making sure she had all her notes and research regarding Pilar’s property before she left for San Juan Capistrano again. She’d printed out a copy of the 1888 land grant, as well as all the more current property records. She knew she’d get further with the Planning and Zoning Department if they could see she’d done her homework.

  She arrived at the city office a little after ten; past the early morning crush, but before the pre-lunch slowdown. She made her case to an administrative assistant named Dorothy Simpson.

  “I’m a private investigator doing some research into this property here,” she said, passing the land grant across the counter. “What records might you have about anything built on that property?”

  Dorothy, a slender black woman with kind eyes, listened patiently. “Hmm,” she said, checking the legal description. “We’ve got some old plat books from 1901. Hang on just a moment and let me see what I can find.”

  Feeling hopeful, Lacey parked on a chair in the waiting area and looked around. The city building was clearly modern with linoleum floors and dropped ceilings. She wondered if they had a back archive full of dusty old books. The mission, after all, was found
ed in 1776. Lots of history hereabouts.

  Dorothy had only been gone about fifteen minutes when Lacey heard her heels tapping the floor on her return. She jumped to her feet and met the woman back at the counter.

  “Here we go,” Dorothy said as she laid the heavy book on the counter. The book was leather-clad and oversized, its pages somewhere between legal-sized and tabloid. Dorothy opened the cover carefully and paged through. Lacey, much as she would have liked to take charge, let Dorothy scan the range and township numbers at the corners of the pages.

  Those pages, Lacey could see, were heavy paper, and the plat diagrams were all hand-drawn, of course.

  “Do you have a lot of older stuff like this that’s not digitized?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Dorothy said. “We have an intern that was working on that over the summer, but of course she’s back in school now. I’m afraid it’s a low priority, and very time-consuming.”

  Lacey could imagine. What Dorothy didn’t say, but Lacey guessed, was that the budget for preserving such archives was very low, as well. Most city officials were more concerned with the future than the past.

  “Ah,” Dorothy said suddenly. She smoothed the page and double-checked the number against her note, then turned the book around on the counter so Lacey could see it right side up.

  “This is El Camino Real Street,” she said, pointing out the narrow road. “Here’s the mission on this side, and your property is here, across the street.”

  Lacey stared down at the faint drawing and tried to reconcile it in her mind with the current Google map she’d printed out.

  “Is this… a building?” she asked, pointing to a square set back from the road.

  Dorothy looked closer. “Yes. See the double lines around the outside? That designates a building, probably a house. Back here,” and Dorothy tapped another, smaller square behind, “is probably a stable or a barn. No double lines on that one.”

  Lacey looked closer. So Guillermo had a house. Where was it compared to Pilar’s?