Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (36 page)

Outside a siren wailed as an
emergency vehicle blew past the church. Luke grew restless, anxious to meet the
dark enemy on the next field of battle. He leaned over to tell Ree he thought
they should slip out and go, but he saw that she appeared to be sleeping. He
leaned his ear close to her head and heard the slow, shallow breathing of a
sleeper.

“Shorty,” he whispered. She didn’t
stir.  “Shorty,” he said a little louder.

She woke with a start, her eyes wide
in apparent fright. “The hole!” she said.

People sitting near them looked
around, surprised by her sudden outburst.

“What?” Luke said, trying to keep
his voice down.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “I
saw
it. The whole street fell in. The town’s going to be swallowed up!”

Boots paused to look at them, then
went on with his sermon.

“We have to warn them,” Ree said.
She stood up and pulled Luke’s hand, urging him to follow. “It’s going to take
down the whole town.”

At that moment a lady sitting close
to a window pointed at the panes of glass (none of the windows of this modest
church were stained-glass) said, “Look at that! Help me, Jesus! It’s
black
!”

Heads turned, and stunned
worshipers verified the truth of the lady’s words.

Dark finger-like threads of mist
pressed against the windows as if trying to get in. The fog had turned
gray-black like dirty smoke, but there was no smell of burning. A fungoid
fragrance of mildew and river-rot stained the air inside the church.

Luke and Ree dashed out of the
church and into the swirling, black mists.

***

James Partain was alone in his
funeral home, waiting for word from the coroner’s office that his son’s body
was being released. James wanted to prepare Skeeter’s body for burial himself.
Usually, when a mortician’s close relative passes, the mortician is not
involved in the embalming procedure, but James was determined that his son’s
remains be treated with reverence and dignity, and the only way to be sure of
that was to do it himself. He would’ve trusted Charlie Taylor to do it, but
Charlie was still away on a fishing trip to Florida.

James sat at his desk and paged
through the family photo album he’d brought from home this morning. His wife
was sedated and her sister was there to comfort her, and for that James was
thankful. He didn’t care for his sister-in-law, but he just didn’t have it
within himself to comfort anyone now. Every time he looked at his wife, he felt
like crying; he could handle his own grief (just barely) but he couldn’t handle
his and Jean’s too. The loss of an only child is the hardest thing a parent
ever has to face, he was sure. He found a photo of Skeeter, age 3, wearing an
Atlanta Braves cap and flashing a heartbreakingly beautiful smile, so innocent
and trusting. His breath caught in the back of his throat and tears flooded his
raw eyes. “Oh, God,” he groaned and looked away from the old photo.

Dad?

James stiffened in his chair. He
slowly craned his head, straining his ears. Had he actually heard his son’s
voice? Now he heard nothing but the faint humming of the refrigeration unit in
the prep room.

Dad, I’m here.

“Skeeter?” He stood and rushed out
of his office and into the long hallway. “Where are you?” Even as he spoke the
words, he knew he hadn’t really heard his son’s voice. Such things were not possible.
He’d spent thirty years working with the dead and not once had he ever seen or
heard a ghost. His grieving mind was playing a devious trick. There was no
other possible explanation. Was there?

Here.
The voice seemed to be
coming from behind the closed door of the prep room—the room where Skeeter had
died.

James crossed the hall, turned the
doorknob and opened the door. The hinges creaked as the door swung wide. He
flipped on the wall switch and the overhead fluorescent flickered and came on.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary in the glaring light. There was no ghostly
figure of ectoplasm, nor any other sign of spectral life. James sighed. He was
disappointed that his son’s spirit wasn’t there to communicate with him, to
tell him his soul was safe. The last time James had been in this room, his
son’s corpse had been right there on the stainless steel table, his abdomen
horribly sunken and its bloody contents gurgling in the drain of the sink at
the foot of the table. He shuddered at the memory and tried to expunge it from
his mind.

Dad?

The hollow voice emanated behind
him.

He spun on his heels and looked out
into the dim hallway. He saw nothing, but he clearly heard his son’s voice
saying:
Dad, where are you? I can’t see.

“Skeeter, I’m right here. Where are
you?”

I don’t know. It’s too dark
here.

“Son...I love you.”

I love you, too, Dad
.
Skeeter’s voice faded as though he were being pulled away.

The fluorescent lights flickered
out.

James stood in the hallway,
listening to the dreadful silence.

 ***

“This can’t be good,” said Ree.
“Like it’s showing us how powerful it is. If it can turn fog black, it probably
can
swallow half the town.”

“How do you know it was another
vision and not just a bad dream?” Luke asked. He was driving as fast as the
poor visibility would allow—40 miles per hour.

“’Cause I wasn’t asleep. I was
resting my eyes and then I
saw
it. The ground was falling away and the
stores were falling into this giant hole like little toys. It was horrible.”

“The geological engineer and his crew
should be down in the hole now, drilling and looking for tunnels to see just
how much of the earth has been hollowed out under there. If they see that it’s
that bad, I’m sure they’ll alert everybody so the town can be evacuated.”

“No. It’s going to happen soon.
Like
now
.”

“But your vision of somebody trying
to kill you in the shop didn’t happen.”

“Not yet. That doesn’t mean it
won’t.”

Luke said, “All right, so what the
hell are we going to do? Tell everybody they have to stay out of town because
you had a vision? Not only would they ignore the warning, but they’d probably
try to have you put away.”

“We have to make them believe it.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, Luke. I’m open to
suggestions. If you’d try to help me instead of attacking me...”

“I’m not attacking you. I’m just
saying...”

“I know. I’m sorry. This whole
thing is so freaking insane, it’s...I just don’t know what the hell to do.”

He reached over and put his hand on
her thigh. “Easy, Shorty. We’ll think of something. We have to. Even if we have
to make something up.”

“A bomb!”

“Huh?”

“A bomb scare. We’ll say somebody’s
planted a big bomb downtown and they’ll have to evacuate the whole area since
nobody knows where it’s planted.”

Luke grinned. “You’re not only
beautiful, you’re brilliant, too.”

“No, but I can make up some clever
lies when I have to. I just hope we’re not too late. Can’t you go any faster?”

“Not if we want to stay on the
road. I can’t see ten feet in front of us in this black shit.”

 
***

George Taggert stood on the
sidewalk and watched the men in hard hats descend into the sinkhole. Otis
Dellums had been taken away in the back of an ambulance, and the
heavy-equipment operator had raised the slabs of asphalt out of he hole. George
had held his breath until that stage of the operation was done, still harboring
the irrational idea that the sinkhole was going to open up like a giant mouth
and eat all the stores on Main Street.

As he was about to walk back to his
store, he noticed that the fog was turning dark, as if a cloud of pollution had
sneaked in while he wasn’t looking. He’d seen similar clouds of dirty air on
the outskirts of Pittsburgh, back in the 60s, but there was no industrial
pollution here in Vinewood. Was this some freak weather phenomenon he didn’t
know about? It didn’t smell like industrial pollution. It smelled foul like
floodwater.

Then he saw the hearse careen
around the corner and clip a parking meter with its front bumper. “Crazy
bastard,” he said aloud. “You can’t drive like that in this fog.”

The hearse swung about and U-turned
off Main Street and disappeared in the dark mist. George went inside the
drugstore to get out of the foul-smelling fog.

Luke drove straight to the police
station, left Ree to wait in the truck, and went inside. Holly Stimson was at
her post, dabbing tears from her eyes with a tissue while communicating via
radio with dispatched mobile units and holding a telephone to her ear. She
glanced up at Luke, and he saw the deep hurt in her red-rimmed blue eyes. “Okay,
I will,” she said, then hung up the phone.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Craig Hemphill’s dead,” she said.
Her shoulders began to shake as she took ragged breaths. “I don’t know if I can
do this.”   

Luke walked around her desk and put
his hand on her shoulder. There was nothing he could say to make her feel
better, so he just squeezed her shoulder and waited for her to regain her usual
business-like composure.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just...”

“I know,” he said softly. And he
did
know. He knew too well the helplessness you feel when the world around you is
rapidly going to hell and there seems to be nothing you can do about it. But
more importantly, Luke knew he didn’t have time to indulge in that depressing
helplessness. “Listen to me, Holly. We’ve got a job to do. That sinkhole is
ready to take down every store on Main Street and we have to keep everybody out
of the area. We need all available units to get the job done. Now get on the
radio and get them back here ASAP. Where’s the chief?”

“He’s...with Craig. He’s not in a
radio car, so you’ll have to call him on his cell phone.”

Holly gave him the number and he
called it. Keller answered. His voice was edged with anger.

“What happened to Craig?” Luke
asked.

“Something chewed his fucking face
off and ripped out his throat. What the hell kind of wild animal could do that?
And it looks like he was shot in the head. Jesus Christ, Luke, what the hell’s
going on? I—”

“Bill, we’ve got a bigger problem
right now. I have reason to believe that sinkhole is bigger than anybody
imagined and the downtown area is about to fall in.”

“What?! How the hell—”

“I don’t have time to explain. We
need all available manpower back here to keep the area clear. I want your okay
to have Holly call everybody back in.”

“You got it. Thank God it’s Sunday
morning.”

“Thanks, man.” Luke hung up and
turned to Holly and said, “Do it.”

***

“You’re sure about this, right?”
asked Luke as he started the truck.

“I
saw
it,” said Ree.

He backed onto the street, shifted
gears and sped around the corner toward Main. The black fog was beginning to
thin a little, and he hoped it was a sign that the dark thing was losing some
of its bite.

Goolsby’s van was parked ten yards
from the sinkhole, and a portable generator was sputtering on the hole’s rim. A
man in a yellow hard hat stood by the genny.

“I’ll be right back,” Luke said as
he hopped out of the truck. He ducked under the yellow tape and stepped to the
edge of the sinkhole. The metallic chatter of a drill rose from the hole and
echoed off the storefronts of Main Street. He told the man in the hard hat that
there was a bomb threat and that he had to pull his crew out immediately. The
man nodded, then descended a rope ladder into the hole to alert his team.

Two minutes later, Goolsby came up
the ladder, shut off the generator and turned to Luke. “This bomb threat is for
real?” he asked.

“Afraid so,” said Luke. “You have
to get your men out of there right now and vacate the area. By order of the
Chief of Police.”

“You guys got a lively little town
here,” Goolsby said, shaking his head. Then he turned to his co-worker and
said, “You heard the man, Bear. Bring ’em up.”

Bear went down the rope ladder,
moving quickly for a big man.

Luke asked, “What’d you find so
far?”

“Initial impression? I hope all
these shop owners have good insurance, because there’s a good chance they’re
going to lose their stores. Caverns and tunnels extend west and south. Not sure
how far yet, but based on what we’ve seen so far, the business district is a
potential disaster area. I’ll probably have to recommend condemning most of
it.”

Luke noticed Doc Taggert’s Pontiac
parked in front of the drugstore. “Shit,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“As soon as your guys come up, get
’em way out of town. I’ve got to clear the drugstore.”

Luke jogged back to his truck. Ree
rolled down the window to hear him say, “Doc Taggert’s in the drugstore. I’ll
get him out. You go ahead and drive my truck to your house. I’ll meet you there
after we get the area clear.”

“I’m not gonna leave you here,” she
said.

“Don’t argue with me, not now. I
want you away from this damn hole.”

“What about you? You think I can
just—”

“Dammit, Shorty, move your ass. I’m
not playing.”

She scooted behind the wheel.
“Fine! Never mind that I’ll worry myself sick about you. My feelings don’t
count.”

“Go. I’ll be all right.”

Ree started the engine, backed
around and laid rubber on the street as she drove off in anger.

Luke ran to the drugstore. The
stench of the black fog was getting stronger, though the fog itself was
definitely thinning.

Doc was in his glass cage, his
fingers tapping the keyboard in front of a computer monitor. He saw Luke and
raised a bushy brow.

“You’ve got to get out of here
right now,” Luke said. “The whole area’s unstable. This place could go down at
any moment.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Damn right. Let’s go.”

Doc exited his pill-laden lair. “I
had a feeling about that damned hole,” he said. “A premonition, I guess you’d
call it.”

“You’re not the only one.”

”Like a huge, hungry mouth that—”

“Doc,” said Luke as he grabbed his
friend’s elbow and urged him toward the door, “we can talk about it later.
Right now you have to get in your car and go home.”

“Those geologists work fast, huh?
Hell, they just went into the hole half an hour ago.”

“If anybody asks, there’s a bomb
threat. That’s why we’re evacuating downtown.”

“Bomb threat. What...?”

Then they were outside on the
sidewalk. Luke pushed him to his car.

“What the hell’s
really
going on, Luke? There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“I’ll tell you later. Now get
going. And don’t come back till I give you the okay.”

As Doc was sliding under the
steering wheel, he looked over Luke’s shoulder, his eyes got big, and he said,
“
Look
at that. What the hell...?”

Luke turned around.

The black fog was moving, though
there was no wind. From up and down the street, it was going toward one central
locus. Dark tendrils of mist were streaming toward the hole and swirling around
it like water circling a giant drain. Something was pulling it into the hole.

“That’s not natural,” Doc said. “I’ve
never seen anything like it.”

Luke turned back to the Pontiac and
slapped his hand on its roof. “Go!”

***

Ree was halfway to her house when
she decided she should turn around and drive to her shop on 3rd Street. Luke
wouldn’t like it, but he wasn’t around to complain. He was busy playing cop.
She had to know if Beau was completely lost to her, and the only way she knew
to find out was to go to the shop and see if she could call him up in the
vanity’s mirror. Her vision of the town falling into the earth hadn’t included
any stores of 3rd Street, so she was reasonably confident that she would be
safe from danger there. It was
her
vision, after all, and surely her
personal vision would’ve shown her own shop falling into the hole if that was
destined to happen.

She parked Luke’s pickup in front
of her store, grabbed the little brown bag containing her smokes, and strode to
the shop’s front door. She dug her keys from her jeans pocket and let herself
inside. The familiar smells of the shop were pleasantly soothing, especially
after being out in that stinking black fog. She turned the thermostat down to
take the damp heat from the air, then went to the back corner where the antique
vanity sat in partial shadow. She dragged a rocking chair up in front of the vanity’s
mirror and sat down.

I look like hell.

She brushed her hair with her
fingers and forced a smile onto her lips. She wasn’t pleased with the results.
The smile collapsed into a frown.

I look like a middle-aged gnome
with big tits.

She giggled at the thought. Her
face lit up with genuine amusement.

That’s a little better. Luke
must really love me to stick with me after seeing me at my worst. God bless
him.

She wanted another cigarette, but
she didn’t smoke because she was afraid smoking might keep Beau away—if he
still existed.

She set the chair to rocking,
hoping it would calm her enough to open her to the mystical plane where angels
and spirits dwelled. She closed her eyes. She saw the demon in the shape of
Jenny Chaney giving birth to a monster. She opened her eyes to make the ugly
vision go away.

Happy thoughts.

Banish all negativity.

She tried again, closing her eyes
and slowing her breath. She stopped rocking.

Better. No monsters, no demons,
no living-dead dogs.

“Beau?” she said softly. “If you
can hear me, make yourself known. I need to see you, to know you’re all right.”

She opened her eyes and looked into
the mirror. Her lonely reflection stared back at her with haunted eyes.

“Please, come to me, Beau.
Please.
”

Something stirred below the murky
surface of the glass. It was like something swimming just below the surface of
a calm lake, but she couldn’t yet make out what it might be. “Beau?”

A vague outline formed within the
hazy darkness. Head, shoulders, a face.

“Talk to me, Beau. Help me.”

Ree’s ears began to ring with a
high-pitched whine. A sharp pain bore in behind her eyes. From the ringing
whine came a deeper sound, a bassoon-like voice speaking just above a whisper
:
Dark fire of the dragon.

Beau’s face appeared as a smear of
light in the dark glass.

His disembodied voice spoke again
in Ree’s head:
Wicked spirits loosed it on the world and now it runs amok.
You see the smoke but not the fire.

“I don’t understand,” she said.
“What does it mean?”

The whiteness of her guardian
angel’s face flared briefly then faded to utter darkness.

His fading drawl seemed to cross
vast space to reach her one final time
. The dragon’s fire will burn you but
you must not smoke.

Then he was gone.

And the only sounds were the
humming of the air-conditioner and the thumping of her heart.

***

As in many small towns, most stores
in Vinewood’s downtown business district remained closed on Sundays, and this
made the evacuation of the area relatively easy. Still, every shop had to be
checked to ensure that no one was inside doing inventory, setting up new
displays or doing janitorial work. The main problem was that the local churches
were just now letting out, and the streets would be crawling with vehicles
carrying families home to Sunday dinner or to the few restaurants just opening
for business. The police moved quickly to block off streets, check the downtown
stores and hustle churchgoers out of the immediate area without starting a
panic. Most of the citizens were kept well away from Main Street, so they never
saw the black smoke-like mists swirling above the sinkhole before being sucked
down into it.

Luke kept a wary eye on the
cloud-eating hole as he moved from door to door down Main Street, making sure
the stores were indeed empty. He caught himself hoping that the street and its
shops would collapse into the earth so that he would not be making a fool out
of himself with his claim that the town was about to go down. He chastised
himself for this selfish thought. Better to be called Chicken Little than to
see his hometown destroyed, he reasoned. He went on checking shop doors. Fanny
Crandle was in her dress shop, putting out a new shipment of fall fashions, and
Luke told her she had to get the hell out of there. She balked at first, but
when he mentioned a bomb, she vacated the establishment as if the Devil himself
were right behind her.

Alvin Snow was working the other
side of the street, banging on doors with his baton. He paused, pointed at the
black mists spiraling into the sinkhole and called to Luke: “What the hell’s
making it do that?”

“Damned if I know,” Luke answered.
“Just hurry up!”

“Ten-four, good buddy.”

At that moment the big siren high
over the fire station began to sound its warning as it did whenever a tornado
had been reported. Though he hated that anxiety-producing wail, Luke was glad
someone had thought to activate it. He had the feeling that time was running
out, that he was going to be swallowed up when the earth’s crust gave way.

He accelerated his pace, virtually
running now from door to door, and always keeping an eye on the dark mists
swirling into the hole. It occurred to him that when the last of the black
fingers of mist were sucked into the hole, the collapse would begin. And once
begun, nothing could stop it. Like a Tinkertoy town, all the stores and
sidewalks would crack and crumble into the earthen void.

A police cruiser was crawling the
streets, its driver (Luke thought it sounded like part-timer Ty Belson) using
the vehicle’s loudspeaker to announce the immediate evacuation of the downtown
area.

When Luke reached the lower part of
Main where a residential section was intermingled with the business district,
he knocked on the doors and urged the residents to get in their cars and drive
to the high school auditorium to await the all-clear. Because the Islamic
terrorists’ attacks on America were still fresh in everyone’s minds, no one
hesitated. People moved quickly. There was simply no time to panic.