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Shadowpath is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Last [Star] Light Studio

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This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming novel Silence in the Chapel by William Maxwell. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN-13:978-1-938692-91-8

For Nikki,

who said that every great adventure starts with a leap of faith.

CHAPTER 1: THE FOREVER DANCE

The clouds came out of the west, where the dead things go, and paused over the length of the sky, heavy with possibility. Slowly, they wrestled for supremacy, slamming together in futile displays of light and fury.

Below, in a single, simple room, in an ordinary house, water pooled on the floor in defiance of anything simple or ordinary. Then it dripped upward toward the ceiling, a sharp shock of thunder repealing itself into silence, followed by a terrible stillness in time and space.

From that hollowed-out moment stepped the Man. Piercing eyes set in a sharp, angled face swept the room. The Man’s stance and build was one of a lean fighter, a hunter, by experience if not by nature. The light scars that could be traced on his hands and face spoke to experience and the price he’d paid for those skills.

Out of habit, he identified things that could harm him, different meanings given to ordinary objects: needles left in a sewing basket (could be inserted into knees or eyes), a rocking chair (could be broken into clubs, shattering bones, rupturing internals), a glass frame cradling a family photo (could be shattered into a dozen slivers, opening veins, severing muscles).

The Man absently smoothed the wrinkles from his raincoat and offered a silent prayer to whatever forces might be watching. He extended his senses to the hallway, moving near-silently on the balls of his feet. Rain fell, covering the necessary evils of tiny sounds; the creak of a floorboard, the shift of an opening door. Smells permeated the hall—a meal of some kind: some kind of roasted meat, potatoes and, beneath that, a lingering taint of less wholesome fluids.

The Man’s jade eyes adjusted to the light, noting patterns scratched on the wall, arcane symbols in an ancient tongue, mathematical formulas only a madman could follow.

The dining room was an abattoir, neat cuts of meat carved off victims’ bellies and piled onto fine china, the remainder of the scene set to pure Rockwell: victims frozen in the act of enjoying a meal, clothes neatened and clean, implements sewn delicately to their hands, faces stitched up so smiles would stay in place. Where was the blood? The little girl’s arm was positioned like she was stealing a piece of cake.

The Man held back a storm of reaction, and that was when the attack came—sideways, from the kitchen: metal forks, skewers, simple tools hurled at lethal speeds. The Man ducked away from them and surged forward into the kitchen. His mistake—the tile floor was covered in crockery, every dish in the cabinets shattered, every glass crushed so the shards would jab into his boots; the Man cursed, backpedaled and pulled several of the larger bits out before finding another way outside.

With a fireplace poker in hand, his prey was on the front lawn, laughing, his face and expression an aged, warped reflection of the Man’s own. The prey beckoned him deeper into the rain. The Man stepped into shimmering droplets to close in; he was slower because of the mud, but that was good—his prey would be slower too.

Inside the prey’s reach, the Man accepted a cut to gain control of the poker. The two men circled each other, matching sets of green eyes weighing options. Like the samurai of legend, they ran scenarios through their imaginations. A kick to the knee? No. He would counter with a downward sweep, follow up blow to the left kidney. That was obvious. Hook to pull out the eyes? Just as risky. Wrist grabbed, snapped up, broken. They thought these through and more, two men, circling in the rain. Around them, the world narrowed in anticipation.

It was the Man who broke the spell, who darted in, testing. His older prey just gave him that smirk and drew back to counter…

And missed. The blow hit, hard enough to surprise, not hard enough to cripple. Where there would have—should have—been a follow-up strike, there was a shocked pause. The Man blinked, startled. He never got in a hit. He was outmatched by his prey and always had been. Then he smiled.

His prey was getting older, losing the edge. His prey’s self-assured smirk lost a little of its curl and a new surge of confidence buoyed the Man. There was a chance, however slim, that this time, he would win.

It was on, full press, with no quarter asked or given. The key to the prey’s survival was to keep that poker out of the action, to stay in close and not let the extra reach of the weapon come into play. For the Man, his ally was time. The longer they fought, the more tired the prey would become and with that, possibly, just possibly, the chance of a new mistake.

The prey fought ferociously, mouthing unheard prayers to a sky unleashing a curtain of water. The scenery turned surreal, flashes of crimson and sky blue splashing the landscape, until the Man realized that the lights heralded a new and very real danger from outside their circle.

A saying, an old saying, came to mind: Old age and trickery will always overcome youth and ambition.

There came a shout from the street. The Man’s attention diverted for a moment and the intensity of a spotlight blinded him. The prey faded into the shadows even as the Man raised the poker to protect his eyes. Realizing his mistake, the Man threw the weapon away just as a gunshot went wide, hitting the mud next to him. Quickly, he shouted surrender, allowing time for his eyes to adjust. The burst of rain stopped with the suddenness of a spigot shut off, leaving the Man visible and alone.

Two police cars, four men: one was focused on the house, his posture leading the Man to think someone had called the murder in; one was by the cars on the radio; the third focused on his partner; and the last one—the shooter—attended solely to the Man.

The Man let his shoulders slump, releasing the tension, showing he’d given up. The cop, in defense of his profession, never let his aim waver. But being only human his focus strayed to the others as they walked toward the house. That’s when the Man acted.

Escape was out of the question; assault was mandated. The Man hit the nearest officer first—the one going toward the house—and, with a single move, disarmed and pulled him in front of him, creating a human shield. The second officer was downed when the Man yanked out the billy-club his hostage carried and cracked it alongside the second cop's skull.

A shot pulled wide as the armed policeman tried desperately to miss the trapped officer. The Man didn’t give enough time for anyone else to react. Using the helpless officer as a shield, he rushed the lead shooter.

It was the mud that betrayed the Man; a chance step of a slippery boot on a paved road threw him off balance. The officers’ training kicked in and tasers bit into the Man’s flesh.

Then, the cops came at him—night sticks held in clenched fists, breath released in short angry puffs. The tasers lit him up, lightning arching across every nerve, and the night sticks fell with a crack.

He could hear the sound of thunder…

CHAPTER 2: DREAMS OF A WELL-ORDERED MIND

Elisabeth’s dreams were never kind.

Fleshless faces…

—pressing in

Half-birthed horrors mewling about

The agony of existence

The pain of separation

Of being other…

God, to be young and needing again.

Hating the pain.

Hating the fear

Wanting only to be loved…

†

Elisabeth woke to screaming. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t just her own voice.

Where the hell had she left the phone?

There it was, somehow under the damned nightstand. As she lunged for it, she could still make out the fading outline of nightmare faces. This wasn’t the first time this had happened, persistent faces pressing up against waking life; it wouldn’t be the last. Shaking off that last stray web of fear, she missed the opening greeting just by a beat.

“Who is this again?” she asked.

“Ha! Not awake then? Guess not. I can tell—tone of voice that is. You were such a jerk in the mornings. ’Course, I mean that in a good way, honey.” A close-clipped tone with a slightly southern accent…

Elisabeth’s mouth quirked up. “Hello, Susie.”

“That would be Detective Susan Forrester, Liz, if you want in on this one.” Elisabeth straightened up. Susie kept talking, “That’s right, my dear. We have a live one.”

Elisabeth frantically searched the night table for a pen, ripping a page out of her dream diary. “Details,” she replied and started to write.

†

Detective Mark Stewart wasn’t what you’d describe as handsome. A jaw a little too square and a hairline a little too thin. Most days, his offhand smile would soften that up, but today wasn’t one of those days.

His job was to sort through the worst of humanity and try to put some sense to their acts. Most of the time, he failed. It wasn’t that he didn’t catch folks. He did, regularly enough to get promoted and decorated every few years. It was when you had a little boy castrated because his dad wanted to “teach him a lesson” or a young woman violated with tin foil, that putting the perps in prison or seeing them executed didn’t seem to scratch the surface of the idea of justice.

Sometimes Mark prayed, just hoping that next time he could feel some of that closure he was supposed to be working for. He wanted the chance to be the hero, to stop the bad thing before it happened instead of playing the gruesome janitor to one abominable cleanup after the next.

Apparently, whatever forces ran the universe felt the fact that Mark still could smile was miracle enough. Because today was one of those very bad days.

The guy from the crime lab cleared his throat. “Detective?”

Mark rubbed his temples. “All right—give it to me again,” Mark suppressed the urge to curse. What the hell was this guy’s name? Ah… now he remembered. “Weasel. Starting with the part that goes ‘We’ve got no evidence,’”

“Weasel” was the nickname for one of the crime lab techs; greasy black hair, beady eyes, nasal voice and a flat forehead giving him more than a passing resemblance to his carnivorous namesake. He clutched a file on the suburban house murders and nervously brushed his bangs away from his eyes.

Weasel fervently hoped Mark wasn’t the type of man who’d shoot the messenger. “Well, we know he was there, sir. He was arrested on site and he doesn’t live anywhere nearby—we think.” Mark winced. Weasel kept going. “Nil on fingerprints; either he didn’t touch anything or wore gloves. We’re still looking for a hit on IAFIS. No hair or fibers on the scene that we’ve found yet… and no weapon.”

“Cops who answered the call saw him carrying a poker.”

“I’m sorry, Detective. It never made it into evidence.”

“What about the car mounts? The cameras must have caught something.”

“No sir… um… problem with the rain.”

Mark resisted the urge to throttle something. “And the tox screen was negative?”

“Yes sir.”

“Causing trouble, Weasel?” quipped a woman.

Mark looked up. Two women were coming down the hall. One of them was a short, stout, attractive redhead whose easy smile masked a biting temper: Detective Forrester from Vice. Her purpose in life was to push people hard: friend, family, or guy in an interrogation room. It was even more fun (for her, of course) when they pushed back.

The woman with Detective Forrester looked like someone who didn’t care to be pushed around. She moved with the surety of someone in control. It was her eyes that did it, piercing blue, framed by brown hair in a manner that made her look poised and confident in an unimposing way. And based on the way she scanned the room, she had some self-defense training too, showing the kind of unconscious semi-paranoia that instruction offers. The face—her face—complemented her eyes, angular but not severe cheekbones, glasses lending a look of hungry intelligence and a powerful curiosity.

“That the ‘book lady’?” asked Mark.

“The ‘book lady’ it is,” Susan replied.

Elisabeth extended her hand. “Dr. Elisabeth Frost.”

“Detective Mark Stewart. Psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist. My clinical specialties are dissociative identity disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.”

“And then there’s the book.”

“Yes, Detective; and there’s the book.”

“All right. First question, doc, my tox-free suspect was showing speed and strength I’ve only seen in junkies. Thoughts?”

“Putting aside designer drugs, which I’m sure you’ve considered, some psychotics exhibit extra-normal strength under the right circumstances. Given the right conditions, the human body can move almost a half-ton.”

“All right. Then why don’t I get to play Superman once in a while?”

“It has to do with biomechanics. The more you lift, the more chance you have of ripping your muscles right off the bone. You might care about that but psychotics don’t. Their metabolisms tell them that pain’s not relevant. Or they don’t process the perception like you or I do."

Mark nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to Weasel. “Weasel, pictures.” Weasel handed several photos over to Elisabeth.

“And now we get to your other field of expertise. We found these symbols scattered all over the location, mostly starting with the murder scene but also stretching into a hallway and ending outside a sewing room,” said Mark. “The techs think he left them there as a deliberate trail—but to where? And why?

Elisabeth pointed to one of the sigils on the picture. “I saw something similar to this on a fresco in Paris. We’re looking at western tradition, probably Thelemic in nature.”

“Would you like to translate that from geek-speak?” Mark asked.

Elisabeth looked back at him. “We’re not talking about some wanna-be Satanist. This stuff requires serious study. Usually, we see it with chaos magicians.”

“‘Chaos’ magicians?” Weasel repeated.

Elisabeth lifted her glasses to rub at a corner of her eye. “They're people who force their will onto a ‘disordered, amoral universe.’ ‘Do what thou wilt’ is the only law they follow.”

“You’re talking about this as if it was real," Mark said.

“What? Sorry.” Elisabeth grinned and pushed her glasses back up on her nose. “Hazard of the profession. Since I write about occult crimes, sometimes I make the occult sound real. It’s a drama thing. But, no, Detective, as much as I would love to find the rhyme and reason behind the universe, no run-in with ‘real magicians,’ no consorting with demons, monsters or whatever; just plain old people doing strange, interesting and often obscene things.” Elisabeth turned back to the pictures. “What I have found is just how far people go to justify their beliefs, everything from blood libels in Europe to human sacrifices in Central America. History is full of atrocities committed in the hopes of answering the basic questions: Where did we come from; who are we; why are we here?”

Mark closed his eyes for a moment, as though that might help him better understand the situation. “So our perp is—what? Some sort of religious fanatic?”

“Could be. Is there a tape of the interrogation?”

“Haven’t done it yet. Doctor had to check him out first.”

“Can I observe?”

Mark shot a glance at Susie. “Her paperwork in order?”

True to form, Susie pushed back. “She's been a big help in the past, Mark,” she emphasized.

He looked back at Elisabeth. “I’ll save you a seat.”

CHAPTER 3: BETWEEN THE WORDS

Standing next to Susie in the observation room, Elisabeth allowed herself a small smirk. The interrogation room was old school; a two-way mirror and, on the other side, fluorescent lighting, flickering lazily across white stucco walls. A large, clean wooden table stood in the center of the room. The chairs were cracked metal and had “Return to Fr. M. K., St. Orione” painted on the back of them. Someone had tried to modernize the place by adding a video camera.

The center of attention was the Man. He was seated at the far end of the table, his presence unnerving, his stare intense. His hands had been bound behind him with the plastic cuffs used on PCP addicts. It didn’t seem to discomfort him in the slightest.

Detective Stewart was finishing the preliminary setup. Elisabeth took the opportunity to focus beyond the words, studying their interaction. Stewart was taking an indirect approach. Did the Man know where he was, what he was charged with, did he want a lawyer? He laid out some pictures of the victims, changing tactics, appealing smoothly to the Man’s conscience, to his civic sense of duty. Didn’t he want to talk about it?

As he spoke, Stewart presented some general details of the crime that he hadn’t discussed with Elisabeth—there were three deaths, an unusual amount of gore and decidedly psychotic but thorough preparation. At each step, the detective was encouraging, trying to draw the Man out. He was met with terse, noncommittal answers or silence.

Stewart tried a third tack, started talking about his own family, his mother and father. He wondered if the Man had a family. The Man’s forehead wrinkled, a reaction, though a subtle one; the Man didn’t like talking about family.

Mark took the cue and spoke about the dead again: mother, father, daughter. At the mention of them, a peculiar chill ran across Elisabeth. Then, something strange happened. The Man turned his attention toward the two-way mirror. He started mouthing something quietly.

“What’s he saying?” Susie asked.

Elisabeth watched his lips. “Um… wait… ‘Ne respondeas stulto iuxta stult…’ damn it… oh! ‘Stultitiam…’”

“Wait. What language is that?”

“Latin,” Elisabeth replied. “Oh! I got it. ‘Ne respondeas stulto iuxta stultitiam suam ne efficiaris ei similis.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou be made like him. It’s from the Bible. Proverbs 26, um, verse 4 or 5, I think. I guess that means the interrogation isn’t going well?”

Susie grimaced. “I just want to know how the hell he knows someone back here speaks Latin.”

“He probably doesn’t. But he does know someone’s watching him.” Elisabeth quietly shifted her position. “That’s unnerving.”

“What?”

“Look at him. His eyes are directly on me. He’s tracking me.”

“Not sure that means anything, Liz. He might be good at spotting shadows.”

Stewart snapped his fingers, demanding attention. When that didn't work, he physically got between the Man and the mirror. Elisabeth turned back to Susie. “Can I talk to him?”

Susie hesitated, then looked back to Mark in the room, noting his increasing frustration. “No promises,” she replied. “But I’ll try.”

†

The first thing Elisabeth noticed about the Man was a strange scent: spicy, like citrus, with a feline musk. He had dark hair that hadn’t been cut in a while, stress lines around the eyes and mouth, some stubble showing a bit of premature graying. His clothes were ill-fitting thrift-store poor. “Homeless” was her first thought, probably due to mental illness.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Dr. Frost.” There was no response. She sat down at the table and spread out the pictures of the occult symbols they'd found at the murder scene. She kept her expression calm. “Did you write any of these?” The Man glanced down at them and then back up at Elisabeth. His stare made her feel small.

She shifted her eyes away from him and back to the photos. “I find this one interesting,” she said. “‘Eiecitque Adam et conlocavit ante paradisum voluptatis cherubin et flammeum gladium atque versatilem ad custodiendam viam ligni vitae.’ Latin, isn’t it? Genesis 3:24. It talks about the exile from Eden.” There was no direct response but the Man regarded her with more interest. “What really fascinated me, though, was this. You won’t find this in your standard Bible.” Elisabeth pushed her glasses back on her face and intoned the words, “Ol sonf vors g, gohó Iad Balt, lansh calz vonpho….”

“Sobra zol ror i ta nazpsad, graa ta maplprg,” the Man responded. “Casarm ohorela taba Pir; Soba ipam, lu ipamis.” Everyone in the room started at the sound. Clear, decisive and frighteningly direct.

“Who are you?” she asked and then mentally kicked herself. If she moved too fast, she would jeopardize the interview. The Man surprised her with a response. “Zir ar ds insi a rorors.”

Elisabeth took a breath. She had to slow herself down; her poise—what she presented to others—was more show than substance. When the adrenaline was flowing, when things got unpredictable, she was prone to act a little rashly. “That which walks in shadows,” she translated. “A ‘shadow-walker’?”

“As good a description as any.”

“And you want us to call you Shadow-Walker? Or do you have another name?” Elisabeth asked.

“Try this—case 98-16-A652, listed in the Gabriel County police files, precinct 17, under inactive.”

Mark nodded to Susan, who left the room. “Why’s that important?” Elisabeth asked.

The Man glared at her fiercely. “It was the first time I met him. When he killed my wife.”

“Him?” Elisabeth cocked her head.

The Man gave Elisabeth a thin-lipped smile. “The person you’re looking for: the murderer.”

“So you know him?” Mark asked gently.

“It doesn’t matter what I tell you. Even if I gave you details, introduced you to him, you couldn’t stop him.”

“Hell, if it doesn’t matter, then why not help us out?” said Mark.

The Man looked over at Mark. “Because I don’t want more blood on my hands.” His face twisted with contempt. “You don't understand what you're getting into. You can't understand. You’ll just end up getting killed.”

Mark shook his head. “I’ve heard the rhetoric before. The answer’s always the same. It’s my job—not yours.”

“Detective, have you ever seen somebody standing at a bus stop and looked again to find he's vanished? Or chased someone down a dead end to find they've gotten away?”

Mark had a flash of memory, a foot chase down an endless alley, a dead end with sheer walls and no doors or windows. He never found the suspect, never figured out how he’d eluded him. "What's your point?”

“The person you’re looking for,” the Man replied, “is a shadow, a mystery. You'll never stop him. You don’t have the ability.”

“A shadow.” Elisabeth seized on the word. “Is he a shadow-walker like you?”

“How do I explain this to you? You live in a world where things are supposed to make sense. But this isn’t one of those things.”

“Wait,” Mark interrupted, “Shadows and mysteries—ghosts, really—you have to know that by itself, in a court of law, it means nothing.” He leaned forward, putting his hands firmly on the table. “You are the prime suspect in a triple homicide. At the very least, admitting to knowing the other killer makes you a possible accessory. Then there’s the incident with the officers at the scene. This makes it look bad for you, unless you give us something to work with…”

The Man laughed softly. “You think I don’t know your tactics, Detective? The ‘good cop.’ The ‘bad cop.’ You don’t have anything and you’re unprepared. Your case is prima facie, using facts not yet in evidence. Yes, I know the law. You will find a preponderance of evidence indicating that a second man was present, the man I was looking for, and that he alone was responsible for the murders. You’ll find it because he’s bragging to you; he’s telling you straight up that you’re not going to be able to catch him. Then I’ll be free and the chase will start again.”

Mark held back a jab of frustration. “There’s still the matter of assaulting an officer,” he responded, pulling away from the Man. “Resisting arrest. Attempted kidnapping.”

“We’ll see,” said the Man.

The door opened, and Susan returned with a printout. Mark took the papers and flipped through them with quick efficiency. “It’s Jack Harris, isn’t it? You could have saved us the trouble and cooperated at the outset. That way, we might have avoided the obstruction of justice charges I’m now filing.”

“Ah! You think you’re in charge now that you have more facts. Let me assure you, my file explains little in regards to my current situation or this case.”

"Then why did you bring it up?" Mark asked as he handed the paperwork over to Elisabeth. She skimmed through it. Jack Harris had been a lawyer, summa cum laude from an Ivy League law school, working for a national firm, transferred west on a promotion. On the way west, there had been an accident and his wife was killed. Harris reported it as a murder, despite a lack of corroborating evidence, and later suffered a nervous breakdown because of it. While still technically open, the police considered it a cold case, filed and forgotten.

Elisabeth took what she had and reassessed the man in front of her. This wasn’t a superman; not someone scary. This was someone suffering from a severe emotional disconnect after the death of a loved one. This was someone neurotic, rage-filled and arrogant, with a penchant for detachment (a trait that would have made him a great lawyer) that let him remain in control. Even his wife’s murderer may have been an invention to mitigate his culpability in her death. Now that she understood him, she could even sense a world-weariness about him. This wasn’t the first time he’d been on the other side of an interrogation table. The question remained, though: Was he delusional enough to kill someone?

The sole thing that didn’t fit—that was nagging her—was the occult connection. Why the obsession with esoteric religion? Where did that fit in? She needed more time and information to piece it all together.

“You’ve read about my breakdown?” Harris said. “And yes, I admit I had a breakdown. I even had a short stint in an institution. But I got better, much better.”

“You call this better?” quipped Mark.

“You have to understand, Detective,” Jack said vehemently, “none of you were doing anything about my wife. I had to stop him.”

Elisabeth noted the expected emotional response to Stewart’s questioning; Jack blamed the police. Elisabeth decided to force a confrontation, hoping it would lead him to open up and reveal more pertinent information. “Tell us, Mr. Harris, do you want that family to have died in vain, like your wife? Wouldn't your wife want you to cooperate with the authorities? Maybe we can help you find the killer."

There it was—a tell, a twitch that most wouldn’t have noticed if they weren’t watching for it. Part of Jack did feel responsible for his wife’s death, and he wanted to compensate for it. For a moment, Jack seemed poised to answer Elisabeth, but noting Mark’s attention, he returned to a stubborn silence.

Irritated, Mark turned away to compose himself. Susan was looking over the file on the murders. It was then that it happened.

Time sputtered and stalled. Jack held his hands in front of him. The handcuffs were off. They were clutched in his palm. His flesh rippled slowly from his fingertips to his arms like an unseen tide of maggots writhing and waiting to be freed. “You've got to understand,” Jack said in a hoarse voice. The arrogance and anger were gone from his face. Now there was just exhaustion and pain. The ripples on his arms glowed with a phosphorescent blue-green energy pulsing just underneath the flesh. “I'm barely holding it together as it is.” The lights in the room abruptly flickered and threatened to die. In the semi-gloom, Jack’s eyes flashed a deep, fathomless jade.

Elisabeth screamed.

Mark and Susan’s attention immediately came back. The glowing marks and eyes vanished but the handcuffs were still in Jack’s palm. Mark’s gun was instantly drawn. “Don’t move!” Mark shouted. “Hands on top of your head! Now!”

Jack smiled at the contradictory requests and then clasped his hands on his head. “How did he do that?” Susan whispered. “He’s not supposed to be able to do that!”

“Cuff him again,” Mark ordered.

“But—” Susan replied.

“Just do it!” Mark snapped. “We’ll sort it out later.”

Susan tossed the murder file on the table, pictures spilling out, then she went over to Jack, re-cuffed him, and pulled him to his feet. She yanked him toward the door.

Jack caught Elisabeth’s frantic stare and kept it. “You want to help me?” he said. “Do you really want to help me?!” Elisabeth’s only response was a noncommittal half-nod.

“Then get me out of here!” Jack hissed. Susan pulled him from the room. Elisabeth broke her contact with Jack, deliberately forcing her attention to the file on the table.

Everything turned upside down.

The pictures that had fallen out of the file onto the table, the photos of the victims she hadn’t seen, because Stewart had only shared a limited amount with her.

She saw them now.

My god, she thought, dear god…

He killed my family.

CHAPTER 4: THINGS BEST FORGOTTEN

Elisabeth threw herself out of the interrogation room and into the hall. There she hung onto a metal trashcan, trying hard not to vomit.

“Jesus,” Mark came out. “Jesus… you okay?” he asked her. “Okay. Stupid question. Listen, take deep breaths.”

She remembered apple pie with fruit picked fresh off the backyard tree, salmon steaks barbecuing on an old steel grill. She remembered being thrown in the air, laughing, ‘I’m too big!’ protesting like she did every time.

She was a child of the foster system, orphaned in an accident very young. A typical story: bounced from place to place for years, altered forever when she wound up with the Grace family in their simple, ordinary, wonderful suburban home.

“I know,” Mark said from outside her thoughts. “That was… well, pretty messed up, even for an interview. You saw the pictures, didn’t you? Those were pretty bad, even for a pro. You’ll be okay, though.”

Okay? Elisabeth bit her lip to stop replying out loud. She would never be okay again.

“Their names were Will and Elizabeth Grace,” Mark said.

Uncle Will and Aunt Beth, Elisabeth corrected him silently. They never pretended to be her parents; only people blessed to be her guardians for too short a time. Enough, though. It was… it had been enough. To help her feel like part of the family, Aunt Beth used to joke that Elisabeth had been named after her and that they’d been meant to find one another. “The girl?” Elisabeth asked. She choked back on the words and started again. “The girl was a foster child?”

Mark nodded, looking confused. “Andrea, age 13, in their custody about two years. How did you know?"

The answer was that Elisabeth knew the Graces. The Graces felt there were too many children already in the world. They had joined the system to help relieve a little bit of the suffering. Elisabeth debated telling him everything, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t open up right now or she’d completely come apart. Instead she leaned against the wall, letting its coolness seep into her.

“Facial features. Didn’t match the parents. Body shape either. Seemed like a logical guess.” What she said was true but certainly not the whole truth.

That’s when it hit her. This was no coincidence. She wrote a book on occult-themed crimes, did the occasional lecture on them too. Now the closest thing she had to family were dead in an occult-themed slaying. No coincidence.

Still, there was no reason she should be targeted for anything, no motivation. And why didn’t the cops already know about her connection? She kept an infrequent correspondence with the Graces and she thought Aunt Beth kept the letters. Uncle Will kept pictures of all their fosterlings. That would already be a part of the chain of evidence. Stewart didn’t strike her as being careless or stupid. He would have recognized her if he’d seen her picture. At least the crime tech—Weasel, was it?—would have mentioned it.

She needed to put these pieces together, stay in the loop, stay in control. That was it; that was her rationale. That would keep her sane. She’d search out the truth. If she had to tell Stewart about her connection, she’d tell him soon. She really would. Just not now.

“What was that stuff you said in there?” he pressed. “The non-English stuff.”

Elisabeth heard herself answer, relishing the fact that at least part of herself appeared coherent. “The first quote was in Latin, scrawled just outside the sewing room upstairs. It’s from...”

“Genesis 3:24,” interrupted Mark. “Right. Exiled from Eden.”

“Specifically,” Elisabeth retorted, seeking comfort in facts, “in the World Standard Bible, Genesis 3:24 reads: ‘So he drove out the man; and he placed Cherubs at the east of the garden of Eden, and the flame of a sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.’”

“Nice quote,” Mark replied. “But where’s the relevance? Does Mr. Harris think he’s ‘Adam?’ An angel? God?”

“I don’t know, Detective,” Elisabeth replied. “But I’ll find out.” She almost bit her tongue. Too eager. Too eager and Stewart might figure out something was wrong.

“The second quote—was that a Bible quote too?”

“No, it’s called ‘The First Call of the Aethyr’ and it’s from western ritual magic. What I said was ‘I reign over you, says the God of Justice.’ And Harris responded, ‘In power exalted above the firmaments of wrath; in Whose hands the sun is as a sword and the moon as a penetrating fire.’ Then he changed it some, and I don’t know why. What he said next comes in the middle of the First Call: ‘To Whom I made a law to govern the Holy Ones; whose beginning is not, nor end cannot be.’”

Mark scratched his head. “The last bit didn’t sound Latin. What was it? Greek?”

Elisabeth shook her head. “The First Call to the Aethyr was written in Enochian. It’s supposed to be—well, at least some people think it’s supposed to be—the language of the angels.”

“Oh great,” Stewart said. “Just what we need. A psychopath who talks to angels.”

Elisabeth pointed at the camera back in the interrogation room. “This was taped?” Mark nodded. “I need to see it,” she told him.

†

There was nothing but snow on the videotape.

“You’re kidding me.” Mark frowned.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” the tech replied. “It was good up to here.” Rewound, it showed Elisabeth talking to Jack. You won’t find this in your standard Bible. She said Ol sonf vors g… The tape went blank. Only the words remained, followed by Jack’s voice: gohó Iad Balt, lansh calz vonpho.

“And you weren’t watching?” Mark demanded.

“I… I had to go the bathroom. Burritos for lunch.” The tech tried a small smile.

Mark slapped his hand against a wall. “You think I find that funny?!” he snarled. “Jesus, this is going to look like shit at trial… Where are you going?”

The last comment was directed to Elisabeth, who was walking out. It had been too much, the interview, the family. The videotape had been an attempt to put…well, she wasn’t quite sure—a face on the insanity, perhaps? No… more of a verification of whether the things she'd seen—the arms rippling, the energy, the glowing eyes—had been real or not.

“I’m going home, Detective,” she said, amazed at how calm she sounded. “I’m going to try and sort it all out and then get back to you.”

Mark gave her a reply but she didn’t hear him. She managed to make it all the way out to the car before the tears came.

CHAPTER 5: SICK AT HEART

In her heart, Elisabeth remembered that scene in emotional movies, an iconic scene, where someone cries in the shower. And she always felt there was something pure about that moment, as if water alone could wash away pain.

Elisabeth stayed in the scalding-hot shower for a half an hour until the water gave up and turned bitter cold. She cried until she couldn’t make any more tears, until her throat felt raw. It didn’t lessen the pain at all.

She turned the water off and curled into a ball in the corner of her tub. She noticed stupid things: the little collections of sample-size beauty products from hotels: shampoos, conditioners, body lotions, shower caps crowding out the tiled space. The curtain, the towels she used, even the tissue, like the days of her life, everything here felt generic and impermanent.

Savagely, she tore through her little sets, destroying things, searching frantically for something to dull the ache. She settled on aspirin, took too many tablets and washed down the awful taste with tap water. Now clothed in a robe, she retreated to a favorite chair—perhaps the only distinctive thing in her entire apartment—and she sat until she felt like she could do something else. Then she used a remote control to dial up some music.

The benefit of diving into occult studies was that it put her in touch with dozens of different meditative methods, some actually useful. She took the best of them now and worked her way through each one—closing her eyes, chasing away conscious thoughts, occasionally murmuring an affirmation—until her body stopped shaking. The aspirin took the edge off the worst of her aches and gave her space to think.

The deaths of her family? Someone targeting her? Too big. Set it aside. Deal with something small.

The hallucination; take that apart first. A simple fact—one people don’t like to talk about—is that people hallucinate. They actually do it pretty often. The most benign version is that shape you think you see in the clouds; the runner-up is voices in the head. It gets odder when you see and hear things that don’t exist at all but again, perfectly normal, a result of your brain’s recognition software drifting slightly off base.

The end of normality comes when either it happens so often that you can’t distinguish reality from fantasy at all OR you start actively listening to those little voices that tell you Elvis wants you to kill your neighbor to get back his blue suede shoes. That’s probably a good time to call the men in the white coats.

Elisabeth considered the facts. She was amped on adrenaline, tired, coming out of a nightmare; she might have even caught a glimpse of the pictures in the file and not consciously recognized the people in them before Jack Harris seemingly shed his handcuffs. Combine all four stressors together…

Hallucination dismissed.

Now onto bigger things.

Don’t think about the bodies.

Jack Harris. What was the occult connection?

The Latin was easy. A number of wanna-be Satanists, the kind that populated most of her first book, used stock Latin phrases to make themselves feel smart. Nine times out of ten, these phrases were lifted wholesale from obscure movies, occult books, the Bible or the ever-present Internet.

Elisabeth’s own schooling in Thelema—the 20th century spiritualist philosophy founded by British writer Aleister Crowley—and chaos magick started with a “student of the dark arts” who tried to hit on her in a New Age store while she was doing research. He proved to be a fruitful source, pointing her in directions she would have never thought of. Unfortunately, when she turned down his puppyish advances, he poisoned her cat and had to go to jail. His pitiful attempts to claim “mystic powers” had only reinforced Elisabeth’s belief that people used “magic” to try to force their will on the world.

And with that in mind, she went back to Jack; he was a candidate for that kind of behavior. He had been deeply scarred by a loved one’s death. Latin would have come from law school and made the entry into “deeper” levels of the occult easier.

But why chaos magick and why Enochian? Was it really about “magic”? A number of the more esoteric Christian cults knew and used Enochian as well.

Why target her? Why target the Graces? No… not yet.

One specific crime came to mind. The Angel of Larkshire murders, 2007: the main suspect had convinced himself he was a “Watcher”, a divine being whose mission was to put “fallen angels” back into hell. As a ritualistic part of his crimes, he carved so-called angelic letters on his victims, usually women who were drug-users or prostitutes. Working with the police department at the time, Elisabeth had made his capture, interrogation and analysis the focus of her second book.

The so-called angelic language came out of the journals of a 16^th-century English court alchemist, John Dee, working with a spirit medium. The Larkshire killer had learned Enochian from a deranged family member, a Mason who loved obscure European history and claimed to be related to the alchemist himself.

Where had Jack Harris learned it? He was an educated man. He obviously knew the angelic script. More significantly, he spoke it as if it was an existing language. Perhaps he had a natural flair for languages or was well practiced. Given the extent of the occult material at the crime scene, Elisabeth suspected the latter.

So he was a well-practiced occultist. What did that mean? “Satanic” crimes trended more violent; other Western cults slipped more toward drug or sexual offenses. Even assuming he was committing ritualistic murders, why didn’t he call himself a demon or an angel? Why the obscure term “shadow-walker”? Why the “other” murderer?

Elisabeth threw the stereo remote across the room, cracking its case. She pressed her head into her hands. Stupid, stupid thoughts. She was running herself around in useless circles, avoiding what she was really seeing.

The blood, her family—herself. She didn’t have enough connection to what was happening now, just stuff from the past. If she really wanted to make those connections, there was only one thing to do.

She’d have to talk to Harris.

†

Jack wished he was dreaming.

He wasn’t, though. He didn’t dream anymore, not in the conventional sense. Because he couldn’t dream, he could feel them coming, the others, the ones who moved through the cracks in reality, drawn to his ever-present memories like worms to rich soil. The bars, the shape of this place, the constant attention that blocked his flow and prevented him from doing what he most wanted to do, to escape, to hunt again, to stop the man who had killed Diane. Those bars couldn’t stop the others.

It began with a smell—it always began with a smell; the aroma of rain mixed with the scent of a new car, leather bucket seats, fresh paint. That new car smell, the squeaks when he adjusted himself in the seat, the way the engine purred; she didn’t care about it but to him it was a sign of success, a sign he was going to take care of the person he loved the most—his wife.

It always started with those images: the smells, the sounds. It never stopped there.

Her hair—always her hair, the color of honey woven with hot coffee; straight and shining, it held her face in the softest of lights. That’s what Jack remembered the most about her—her hair.

They kept teasing him with bits of his memory—those little thieves of time: the car, the hair, sometimes he’d see a flash of her eyes—then darkness as the dead thing began searching for him. Whispers traced obscene scrawls across his consciousness. He would hear his name being called, feel rotting fingers caress the back of his neck in a parody of a touch he once knew intimately. He would feel her fetid breath cross his cheek. If only he had had the chance to say goodbye…

Unwanted, unbidden, he would remember it all.

Images, sharp, swift, clear: new car, rain outside, stealing a glance at her beautiful, beautiful hair, then a shout of desperate warning. Awareness jolted back to the road, the downed power line, sparks, writhing cables glowing a sea blue. He was there as well—the killer—lit by a halo of unholy electric fire.

In the darkness of his jail cell, Jack felt his whole body jerk with sudden, wrenching panic. He couldn’t help it; it was as involuntary as his reaction on that dreadful, rain-drenched night. There was a single moment of absolute clarity; he could tell you where his hands were on the wheel, the sound of both their breaths inhaling sharply, the feel of the heat from the car’s vents. The next word out of his wife’s mouth was “stop.” She didn’t have time to finish it.

It all dissolved into a rainbow jumble of images and pain. Blood on the windshield, a neck—his own?—snapped back, the sound, like thunder, when the car hit the downed pole. There was a moment of whiteness as the airbags went off and pain and the tap-tap-tap of rain and the click-click-clicking of an engine turning over.

Someone was running to the passenger side of the car. Diane, his wife, was pulled out first. The rescuer then moved around to Jack’s side. Jack heard another sound then, a strange sound he couldn’t wrap his head around. It was whistling. His “rescuer” was whistling.

Jack felt shock strike him, heard his heart beat frantically as he was pulled from the car.

Jack was placed a few feet outside, close to a cable that danced and strutted about like an epileptic serpent. He saw the man’s face, upside down from Jack’s point of view. “Don’t worry,” the man said. “It’s not your time.”

The man then went over to Diane and started arranging her unconscious body as though she were a puppet. As he did so, Diane started to stir, and he slapped her back into submission. “This one, though,” the man chuckled, “she might be a problem.”

Ever so gently, the man picked up Diane’s head and cradled it in his lap. Just as gently, he then placed a hand over her mouth and nose and sealed them shut.

Her eyes snapped open; there was a muffled scream but she was in little position to fight back. As he suffocated her, the man watched Jack’s desperate attempts to move with a proud smile. It seemed like forever before he took his hands off her face.

Jack noticed her lips were an odd shade of blue, cerulean, maybe, or indigo. Her tongue had swollen and stuck out of her mouth. She had bitten it because there were clear marks of her incisors and some blackish blood. Jack was a lawyer. He noticed details like that. He had loved her; he had loved her so much, and there she was but not her, a body now, a…

His thoughts were cut short. The man had leisurely wandered over to Jack and crouched by him. Still smiling, he slapped Jack hard. “Niis,” the man hissed. Jack shook his head. He didn’t understand. “Niis,” the man screamed. “NIIS!