by Ron Ripley
“They usually are,” Micky said bitterly, taking his notebook out of his pocket. “Now, can you describe what he looks like?”
The woman nodded and began to talk.
Micky wrote it all down, the thrill of the hunt building up within him as he thought of bringing the man in.
Or of shooting him down in the street.
Chapter 20: Hot and Uncomfortable
He hated the city. He had hated it for as long as he could remember, his parents making frequent trips to explore and search for their treasures.
The French Quarter, as far as Stefan was concerned, was the worst. It was filled with the pretentious and the annoying. What he found truly despicable was that there were a few individuals in the Quarter who knew what they were doing.
They were dangerous and reminded him of his parents. He was certain, in fact, that one of the voodoo priests had helped his father establish doors and sanctuaries for his traveling soul. If Stefan could find the priest, he would gut him and feed the man his own entrails.
With a sigh, Stefan pushed those thoughts back. He could mull over his ideas regarding vengeance against the man later on.
And if he’s already dead, Stefan thought, I’ll kill his family. Make certain those genes don’t get mixed into the rest of the genetic pool.
The idea of eradicating the priest’s line completely made Stefan smile and allowed him to focus on the task at hand.
For the last three hours, he had sat in an empty apartment. From the front window, he watched the door of the house directly across from him. It was a boring but necessary task. He needed to know how many people were in the house, and surveillance of the structure was the best way to complete that job.
Stefan shifted himself in the chair, took a drink of water and tried to relax the muscles in his shoulders.
As he did so, the front door of the house across the street opened, and a man walked out. The man looked haggard and worn, his fashionable clothes a little too big, as if he had lost weight, and too much of it too quickly. The man leaned heavily on a cane, and his free hand was bandaged, the arm kept in a sling.
Everything about the man screamed beaten, downtrodden, finished.
And that pleased Stefan.
Behind the man, standing in the doorway, was the person he sought.
Leanne Le Monde, friend to the unknown man who had captured the doll.
She was also the one who kept the possessed doll. Somewhere in her tidy home, there was a small place for Anne. Stefan was curious as to how they managed to contain the ghost, but he already intended to ask her the question.
He remembered her from when he and his parents would travel down to the French Quarter, and while that had occurred over twenty years before, Stefan remembered it well. The woman had advised his parents to stop their collecting, at least until Stefan was older. According to Leanne, the risk was tremendous.
They hadn’t listened, and a surge of anger swept over Stefan.
Perhaps if she had been more forceful, his mother, Nicole Korzh, wouldn’t have continued her mad collecting. Maybe she would have done more for him than feeding and clothing him.
Hatred drove Stefan up and out of the chair. With three long strides, he crossed the room, entered the hall, and went to the front door. He waited until there was no one on the street, and he exited the building.
Breathing angrily through his nose, Stefan crossed the street, climbed the curb and stalked up the walkway to Le Monde’s front door. He opened the screen door and knocked heavily on the wood.
When she didn’t respond, he hammered on the door with his fist.
“Hold on, hold on,” Leanne said through the door, her voice faint.
Stefan didn’t hold on.
Instead, he knocked harder.
“This is not going to end well,” Leanne snapped, her voice coming up to the other side of the door. “Do you hear me? It will not end well.”
The lock slid back, and the rattle of a chain was heard as she opened the door a few inches. Above her, the chain latch had been installed.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
Stefan kicked the door, snapping the chain and sending her stumbling back. When she didn’t fall, he sprang forward and punched the old woman in the face. Her eyes rolled up to reveal their whites as she fell to the floor.
She landed with a thud and Stefan turned away, closing the door and turning the deadbolt. He went to her, bound her arms and legs at the ankles and wrists, then stood up.
Now, Stefan thought, stepping over the woman’s prostrate form, if I were an old woman, where would I hide a haunted doll?
Without having conceived an answer, Stefan left the unconscious Leanne on the floor and began to whistle.
Chapter 21: No Safe Place
He sat on the floor, pressed between the refrigerator and the cabinet wall. One of the nurses sat across from him. She was pretty, with dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. Dark blue and red highlights stood out in the soft lights of the meeting room. She wore green eye shadow and had used eyeliner to elongate the shape of her eyes.
Tom didn’t know if she was tall, short, or medium. Her body shape was hidden beneath the shapelessness of her dark blue scrubs. He did notice that her feet were small, clad in new black and white Adidas sneakers with cat whiskers drawn on the toes.
“Tom,” she said in a soft, kind voice, “are you planning on coming out of there anytime soon?”
He swallowed, tried to speak, but his voice still wouldn’t respond. His shoulders slumped, and he shook his head.
“I need to you try and come out, Tom,” she said. “If you don’t, then we’re going to have to take you out of there, and I can tell you, no one here is going to like that. You wouldn’t like it either because I don’t know anyone that likes being grabbed and dragged out. The rest of the people in the ward aren’t going to like it because they’re going to go into lockdown until we can get you to a safe place. And to be honest, we’re not going to like it because we want to help you, Tom. We want you to get better.”
He worked his mouth for a moment and finally found his voice. The words that came out were harsh and hurt his throat to speak. “No safe place,” he whispered.
She nodded.
“I know,” she said in a soft tone only slightly louder than his, “I know it feels that way right now. But there are safe places in this world. This is one of them. Please, Tom, come out and let’s get some food into you. Then you can meet with Dr. Schechter. You’ll love her. She’s fantastic. What do you say?”
Tom hesitated.
The nurse extended her hand, and he reached out for it, his own shaking horribly. She helped him to his feet, and for the first time, he noticed the other staff members who were off to either side. They visibly relaxed as he stepped out from between the wall and the refrigerator.
“Tom,” the nurse said, smiling, “my name’s Dale, and I’m going to help you to your room.”
“Dale,” Tom whispered.
“That’s right,” she said, guiding him out of the meeting room. Other patients stood or sat in large, heavy pieces of furniture. All watched him as he moved.
“Dale Evans,” Tom said, “and Roy Rogers.”
Dale laughed, nodding her head. “That’s right. Most people don’t know about her. How do you?”
“My mom told me,” Tom whispered, and he began to sob. “My mom.”
He collapsed to his knees and Dale wrapped an arm around his shoulders, letting him cry for his mother in the middle of the ward.
Chapter 22: Discovered and Recovered
Stefan held an ice pack to his hand, the knuckles throbbing from the blow he had delivered to Leanne Le Monde. Sitting in one of her chairs, Stefan looked down at the old woman. He had blindfolded her and bound her hands and feet. She had woken up several hours earlier, but remained silent.
He shifted his weight in the chair and watched as a muscle in her jaw twitched. A smile spread across his own face.
Stefan removed the ice pack, flexed his hand in the confines of the tight leather glove he wore, and nodded to himself. The pain had subsided, and he slipped the ice pack into his pocket. He had searched the entire house, from top to bottom, but he lacked the finesse of his parents when it came to the discovery of possessed items.
Torture, he realized, might soon be the only option he had left. While Stefan was not averse to the act, he didn’t appreciate the effort it took. Often it was for minimal gain since the subject eventually told him whatever they thought he wanted to hear.
He realized he would have to persuade her in another way, or else murder her outright and hope for the best.
“Hello, Leanne,” Stefan said, speaking for the first time since entering her house hours before.
She turned her head to face him and said in her southern drawl, “Hello.”
“I was wondering,” Stefan said, “if you would be so kind as to tell me where I might find Anne Le Morte.”
“I’d rather not, sir,” Leanne replied. “She is a rather despicable creature.”
Stefan nodded his agreement and said, “I don’t disagree. However, I find myself compelled to retrieve her.”
“Ah,” Leanne said, smiling with swollen lips, “you would be Korzh’s son.”
“I am indeed,” Stefan said, disliking the reminder of his heritage. “Now, as I said, I must take possession of Anne once more. My father is rather insistent upon that fact.”
The old woman chuckled, a sound like that of fingernails being drawn across rough sandpaper. “Mm, I’m sure. Your father was never one for patience. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for a child. Ivan Denisovich had large hands if I remember correctly. Were they as hard as they looked?”
Stefan ignored her and got to his feet. He glanced around uncomfortably. “Where is she?”
“Miss Le Morte?” Leanne asked. “Well, let me see, I’d like to tell you a riddle and have you solve it. However, you sound like a man who might break my fingers one by one, just to let me know you mean business. And I’ve been down that road before, young man. I’ll not go there again. You can find your darling in the spare bedroom.”
“I searched the bedrooms!” Stefan snapped, then forced himself to regain his composure.
“I’m sure you did,” Leanne said, nodding. “No matter how much you search, you won’t find it without me telling you. And, as I’ve said, I’ve been tortured before, Mr. Korzh. I don’t relish experiencing it again. No, what you need to do is go up the stairs and into my spare bedroom. Are you listening?”
“Yes,” he snarled.
“Good,” Leanne said, twisting on the floor. “Now, in the spare bedroom, you’ll see a chifferobe. I’m sure you pulled it away from the wall and all manner of nonsense. That’s not how you get to Miss Le Morte. Leave the chifferobe in its place and pull out the bottom drawer. Reach inside and find a switch on the left and push that down. You’ll hear a click, Mr. Korzh, then you can move the chifferobe. Part of the floor will move with the furniture then, and you will find your little darling. My advice is to leave her in the coffin until you are in the safety of your own home.”
Stefan looked down at the old, frail woman and knew that she was stronger than she appeared. Leaving her alive would be a decision, and he was running out of time. He had watched her home for most of the day, and the flow of guests had been steady. Someone would eventually arrive and force him to start a body count in New Orleans.
Without another word, Stefan drew a folding knife from his pocket and snapped open the blade.
Leanne tilted her head back, exposing her ancient neck for the bite of the steel.
Stefan didn’t keep her waiting.
As the blade bit deep into her thin flesh his hand twitched at the sound of a sudden scrape beneath his feet. Her hair slipped in his hand as he jerked the knife clear and he dropped her to the floor. Blood pulsed out onto the floor as the hair on the back of his neck stood up.
There was something fouler in the house than Stefan Korzh, and a tendril of fear wrapped around his spine.
Closing the knife and thrusting it back into his pocket, Stefan hurried out of the house, leaving the old woman to bleed out on her parlor floor.
Chapter 23: An Unfortunate Disturbance
The door to his bedroom rattled, and Stefan snapped upright in his bed.
He was in the new house, alone with the dead. But that was nothing new. It had been, at times, a staple of his childhood.
Yet that had been in the old house, where his father and his father’s ghosts remained.
Stefan stared at the door, waiting to see if it would rattle again, and it did.
Anger pulsed through him as his adrenaline kicked in.
Standing up, he slid open the drawer of the bedside table. From it, he withdrew a small revolver. He eased the hammer back, took a deep breath, and stepped lightly across the floor.
With his hand on the cold metal of the doorknob, he gave it a sharp twist and jerked the door back, bringing the pistol up.
Only darkness greeted him.
The narrow hallway stretched out towards the bathroom at the far end, and there was nothing between him and the porcelain sink. The three doors on either side of the hall were all closed and locked.
From the first floor came the sound of someone in the kitchen and Stefan had a moment of anger, disgusted that his home had been broken into.
Moving forward on silent feet, he descended to the first floor, turned down the short hall that led to the kitchen and entered into the moonlit room with the weapon ready.
Yet the kitchen, like the upstairs hall, was empty.
Stefan turned to leave the room and paused. Slowly, he walked to the counter and looked down at the bottle of vodka.
He had put it away when he was done with it before bed.
“A pity I cannot drink it anymore, Stefanushka,” his father said behind him, and Stefan screamed in surprise and horror.
He spun around, the pistol leveled at his father’s incorporeal form.
His father grinned, a happy, dangerous expression that had once implied either punishment or a game of chess.
All of the old fears of his childhood welled up within Stefan and caused the pistol to tremble in his hands.
While Ivan Denisovich had been part of Stefan’s life, both pre- and postmortem, he had never seen his father as a ghost. The man looked much the same as he had in life, except there was a permanent trail of blood from both nostrils and from the left corner of his mouth.
Unable to stop himself from shaking, Stefan took a step back and gripped the edges of the countertop. With his upper body stabilized, Stefan looked at his father, tried to speak the question he so desperately wanted to ask and failed.
“You are wondering how I arrived here, Stefanushka?” his father asked, walking to the table and sitting down in the chair, a curious act to observe since his father lacked any solidity to his form.
“Yes,” Stefan answered, his surprise fading, replaced quickly with anger. “How are you here?”
His father chuckled and said, “You didn’t believe me when I told you I would not be trapped in that room.”
“No,” Stefan grumbled, “I didn’t.”
“Pour yourself some vodka, Stefanushka,” his father said, motioning towards the bottle. “I will wait.”
“Why are you here?” Stefan asked over his shoulder as he got himself a drink. He was relieved that all of the vodka went into the glass. Leaving the bottle on the counter, Stefan went to the table and sat down across from his father.
“I am here,” Ivan replied, his tone becoming harsh, “because I have not heard that you have made much progress in recovering the items you cast out from your protection.”
“I got Anne back,” Stefan snapped.
A wave of cold smashed into him and rocked him in the chair.
“Watch your mouth, boy,” his father said, voice rumbling. “I know you retrieved Anne, but tell me, how
will you get back the Marine?”
“Who?” Stefan asked, genuinely confused.
“Brown,” his father snapped. “The Marine.”
Stefan shook his head, and again the cold air struck him. He grabbed onto the table and kept himself upright.
“I don’t know!” Stefan yelled, and his father sighed.
“You are stupider than I can imagine at times, Stefanushka,” his father muttered. “The rifle, my son. The rifle.”
“What about it?” Stefan sulked. “The man is killing people with it. I read it in the news.”
“Yes,” his father agreed, “he is. But how long do you expect him to do that before he is caught? The police, they are not stupid, no matter what you may think. When they do take him, Stefanushka – and they will – how will you recover the weapon? Hmm? Have you thought of that?”
“No,” Stefan grumbled, “I hadn’t.”
“I thought not,” his father sighed. “I have a task for you. Bring Anne home. To our home. She is not to stay here.”
Before Stefan could protest his father’s demand, the man vanished, leaving Stefan cursing. In silence, he weighed the options in regards to the doll’s return. With Ivan Denisovich’s ability to reach out and appear within Stefan’s home, the possibility of additional physical violence in the new building was suddenly real. While bringing Anne back was a hideous idea, and one that caused him to grind his teeth in rage, it might be the only acceptable course of action until he could find a way to contain his father permanently.
Vengeance might have to wait, and Stefan seethed with fury. He drank his vodka in a single gulp, and considered the problem of his father’s constant interruptions.
Chapter 24: Walter and Brown, Sitting in a Tree
Walter adjusted himself in the crook of the tree, got as comfortable as he could, stretched out on the elm’s thick branch, and made certain he still had an excellent view of the road across the narrow valley.
