Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (6 page)

“I can’t take that, man.”

“Hell, I ain’t giving it to you.
I’m just letting you use it till this whole thing blows over. Go on, take it.
It’s got a full clip. Keep it in your truck. If somebody tries to fuck with
you, that oughta be enough to discourage ’em.”

Skeeter reluctantly accepted it.
“Thanks.”

“Now let’s see if your old man’s
home yet.”

***

They went up the back stairs and
entered through the rear door of the funeral home. They knew Skeeter’s dad was
home eating supper. As soon as they were inside, the acrid smell of embalming
fluid hit them full-force.  The prep room was in the rear of the building, and
the odor of the formaldehyde always seemed to collect there in the stairwell on
the first floor. The waxy scent of industrial-strength deodorizer added a
sickening sweetness to the unpleasant bouquet.

Joe Rob had seen bodies in the prep
room before and had even once been allowed to watch Skeeter’s father aspirate
the contents of a body’s abdominal cavity with a powerful suction device and
witness the entire embalming procedure. He’d been fascinated by the spectacle,
but the experience left him with a grim outlook on life and death and humanity.
“We’re all just big skin-bags of blood and stinking guts,” he had said to
Skeeter afterwards. “That’s what life boils down to.” Skeeter had responded
with “Duh,” in confirmation of what had been obvious to him for years, as the
undertaker’s son.

The most disturbing sight Joe Rob
had seen in the prep room was the body of a middle-aged man, post-autopsy.  The
opened and emptied chest cavity with the rib cage split down the middle had
looked like the hull of an Indian canoe. The top of the skull had been removed
with an electric saw and was wired back in place like a beanie cap.  Skeeter’s
dad had peeled the dead man’s scalp and face away from the skull and then
stretched it tightly back into place like an obscene mask. Sometimes when Joe
Rob looked at himself in a mirror, he would imagine his face being peeled away
from the bones of his grinning skull.

Skeeter flipped a light switch and
the back hallway leapt from darkness into somber light. He jerked his thumb at
the closed door marked PRIVATE. “Go ahead,” he said. “She’s in there.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I don’t want to see her. This is
your thing, not mine.”

“I don’t want to go in there by
myself,” said Joe Rob. “Come on, man.”

“She’s
dead
. She can’t hurt
you.”

“I know that. I just don’t want to
be in there alone with her. Humor me. All right?”

Skeeter sighed. “All right. You
want me to hold your frigging hand?”

“Fuck you, man. I’ll go by myself.”

“Don’t be an asshole.” Skeeter
turned the doorknob and flung open the door. It banged against the inner wall.
The light from the hallway reached into the cold, darkened room and made gloomy
shadows.

“You trying to wake the dead?” Joe
Rob whispered. He meant the comment to be humorous, but the would-be joke fell
flat and died a humorless death.

“There she is,” Skeeter said,
waving a finger at the sheet-draped body on the stainless-steel table in the
center of the room. “Do what you gotta do.”

Joe Rob stepped lightly across the
tile floor as if afraid a heavy tread would disturb the corpse’s rest. He stood
beside the table and Skeeter came to stand beside him. At the foot of the table
was a porcelain sink where the blood and other bodily fluids drained during the
exsanguination/aspiration process. The blood, Joe Rob recalled, was forced out
of the body by the infusion of embalming fluid—a neat and tidy procedure
compared to the vacuuming of the belly’s foul-smelling contents with the
sharp-pointed stainless-steel tube attached to a thin vacuum hose. He felt a
little queasy just remembering the way Mr. Partain had pierced the belly of
Silas Turner with the aspirator and moved it around inside the gut of the corpse
until all the stinking fluids had been vacuumed out and emptied into the sink.

Joe Rob broke out in a cold sweat.
He was about to tell Skeeter that he had changed his mind, that he didn’t want
to see the body of Jessica A. Lowell, when Skeeter reached down and peeled the
sheet away from the naked corpse.

With a sharp intake of breath, Joe
Rob took a step away from the dead girl. Her skin was waxy and incredibly
white. The small mounds of her breasts were peaked with puckered nipples of
bluish purple, and the auburn thatch of pubic hair was slightly darker than the
hair of her head. Her neck was propped on the rubber neck rest, her arms
resting by her sides. Her face was frozen in an expression Joe Rob could only
think of as peaceful. Without the grimacing and bizarre facial machinations of
psychotic agitation, she was actually pretty—and more youthful-looking.
Twenty-two or-three.

“Nice body,” Skeeter said. “Too bad
she was nuts.”

“Too bad she’s dead.”

“Yeah, that too. Let’s find where
the snake bit her.”

Skeeter bent close to the body and
began looking for fang marks. He checked her legs and ankles first. “There,” he
said, pointing to the discolored area of flesh just above her right ankle.
“That’s where it got her. Can’t really see the holes, but that dark patch there
is where the poison started killing off her cells. Necrosis.”

“Got her here too,” Joe Rob said,
pointing out the same discoloration on the edge of her right hand. “Probably a
defensive wound.”

“Yeah. That’s pretty good,
Sherlock. And after it bit her, she panicked and started running and that sped
the poison through her system. She was fucked from the get-go.”

“Never had a chance.”

“Seen enough?” asked Skeeter.

“Yeah. Just...give me a minute
alone with her.”

“Jeez, make up your mind will ya?
Hey, man, you ain’t into necrophilia are you?”

“What’s that?”

“Corpse fucking.”

“Fuck you, no. Just leave us
alone.”

“All right. Just don’t get all
weirded out.” Skeeter turned toward the door. “And cover her up when you’re
done.”

When Skeeter was out in the
hallway, Joe Rob touched the dead woman’s forehead, then stroked her hair. “I’m
sorry,” he whispered. “I only wanted to help you. I didn’t know....”

His voice broke in a sob. He
withdrew his hand from her hair, pulled the sheet over her, then walked away,
turning out the light as he left the room.

“Feel better now?” asked Skeeter.
He was leaning against the wall beneath a painting of a covered bridge.

“Not really.” He wiped the corner
of his eye.

Skeeter shrugged. “Life’s a bitch.”

“And then you die.”

Skeeter switched off the hall
lights and moved toward the back door. Joe Rob followed blindly through the
inky darkness, anxious now to be gone from this death-haunted place. The thick
carpet muffled their footsteps, but the old hardwood floor creaked and groaned
with their passage. The house seemed alive with ghostly murmurs.

Then the back door opened to the
sultry night, and Joe Rob felt as though he couldn’t get out of the
suffocating, creaking building fast enough. He hurried past Skeeter, bumping
him into the door frame, and stepped outside. He took several deep breaths to
clear the formaldehyde fumes from his lungs.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
demanded Skeeter.

“Nothing. I just had to get outta
there. Place was choking me.”

“You’re losing it, man.” Skeeter
shut and locked the back door.

They clattered down the back stairs
and piled into Skeeter’s truck, which was parked on the gravel drive in front
of the shut-up garage housing the two hearses. After three attempts, the
pickup’s engine finally turned over and rumbled to life.

“Gotta get this thing tuned up,”
Skeeter said. “Needs a new set of points bad.”

“Whadaya think she meant by ‘the
dark thing’?”

“What?”

“The girl. Jessica. That shit she
was saying about ‘the dark thing.’ Remember? First she said it knew where she
was. But after I shot Odell she said it didn’t want her. It wanted me.”

“Jesus, J.R. The bitch was
loony-tunes. Forget that shit. It don’t mean nothing.”

“I don’t know, man. I almost
believed her. I mean, sure she was crazy, but the way she said it, it was
real
.”

“Yeah, you’re losing it.”

“She pointed her finger at me and I
swear I could almost feel it. Like she was...directing it to me.”

“Feel what?”

“The dark thing! What the fuck ya
think?”

“I think whatever she had must’ve
been contagious, and you caught a bad case of it.” Skeeter grinned to let him
know he was joking. “Keep talking like that,
you’ll
end up in the
nuthouse.”

Joe Rob slumped in his seat as
Skeeter slammed the truck in gear and sped off, tires kicking up gravel.

“She spooked you,” Skeeter said.
“That’s what it is. You were already freaked out from shooting Odell, so when
she laid that crazy shit on you, it stuck. You just gotta shake it off.”

“I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”

“Fucking-A I’m right. What else
could it be?”

Joe Rob stared ahead through the
windshield at nothing as they wheeled onto 2nd Street and zoomed past the
police station.

“Hey, Joe Rob?”

“What?”

“I got your dark thing hanging,”
said Skeeter, grabbing the crotch of his jeans.

Joe Rob tried to laugh, but what
came out was a garbled croak.

Luke set his gym bag on the stump
of a felled oak tree, unfolded his canvas-and-wood camp chair and sat down. The
night sky was thick with clouds, and the only light came from the windows of
the two-story farmhouse on the edge of scrubby bottomland, twenty yards away. 
A hot breeze soughed through the stand of scrub pine at his back and rustled
the foliage in the thicket in front of him.

He opened the bag, took out the
shotgun microphone and mounted it on its stand on top of the stump, then put on
the headset. He got out his night vision goggles and strapped the futuristic
face mask in place over his face. He activated both systems. First he adjusted
the eyepiece diopters, then he turned up the volume of the shotgun mike as he
shifted its aim toward one of the open windows of the Porch house. In his
earpiece he heard the tinny sound of television voices. He avoided looking at
the lighted windows; he scoped out the darkness in front of the house where the
two pickup trucks were parked, then he swept the gloomy space between the house
and the barn. The goggles returned good visuals, tinted an eerie green.
Satisfied that no one was skulking about outside, he switched off the goggles
and listened to the sounds.

He had purchased the equipment
through the Internet. The Russian-made goggles had cost him five hundred bucks,
and the shotgun mike had set him back two hundred. The way he figured it, the
high-tech spy equipment would prove to be a good investment if it helped him
finally nail Fate Porch and his boys for the murder of Monroe Shockley. As it
was, his snooping had already provided enough evidence to have Bill Keller
arrest Luther Porch for dealing marijuana, but a drug bust was not what he wanted.
He would take them down for murder and nothing less.

Sheet lightning flashed in the
distance. Lightning without thunder. Frogs and noisy insects sang their night
songs. Luke swatted at a mosquito buzzing around his ear. He wondered what Doc
would think if he knew he had been coming out here with his spy stuff three or
four nights a week for the last month.
He would think I was obsessed, trying
to fill a deep personal emptiness with my unauthorized surveillance. He’d
probably say something like, “You’re Captain Ahab and Fate Porch is your Moby
Dick.” And he would probably be right. But it won’t seem so crazy if I get that
son of a bitch on the business end of my harpoon.

He glanced at his watch: 9:25 P.M.

Luke had learned a lot about the
individual members of the Porch clan during his night watches. He knew that in
five minutes or so, Fate and his mother, Agnes Porch, would come out to sit on
the front porch, unless the old lady was under the weather, in which case Fate
would settle himself in the cane rocker and enjoy the cooling evening in
solitude like the Lord of the Manor. As often as not, his youngest boy, Cowboy,
would join him on the porch if there was nothing good on TV. Cowboy’s given
name was Lem, but his family called him Cowboy because he always wore a
Western-style hat on his shaved head and a pistol on his hip. He fancied
himself a quick-draw artist and was forever practicing his “greased lightning”
draw. On rare occasions, Odell would plunk his narrow butt in a front porch
rocker and chew the fat with Paw.  The elder son Luther was usually off
somewhere in his muscle car, most likely cruising the neighboring town of
Vidalia for easy women, as he considered himself a pussy hound. It was Luther
who did most of the dope dealing, but sometimes he would take Cowboy along to
ride shotgun, particularly if he expected trouble, or if he just wanted a show
of shooting-iron force. Cowboy was the most unstable one of the bunch, with a
hair-trigger temper and a voracious appetite for attention. Luke suspected that
any break in the case would come from Cowboy’s loose lips.

Right on schedule, Fate came out on
the front porch and sat in his rocker.  He fired up his pipe and commenced to
rock to and fro, the chair creaking beneath the weight of his big frame.

Five minutes later, Cowboy emerged
from the house and sat on the porch rail. He pushed up the front brim of his
hat. “When’s Luther coming back, Diddy?”

Luke adjusted the aim of the
shotgun mike, pointing it at the space between father and son.   

“I ’spect he’ll be home directly,”
Fate said.

“Reckon what he’s found out?”

“Have to wait and see.” Fate’s
voice was edged with irritation.

“You think them boys done something
to Odell?”   

“Goddamn it, boy. Stop pestering
me. Ain’t you got nothing better to do?”

“I’m just worried about him is all.
Ain’t like Odell to just go off like that and not tell nobody.”

Fate puffed his pipe and looked
around as if he’d heard something close by.   

“Gramaw says she fears the worst.
She says all the signs are real bad.”

Fate grunted. “She says a lot of
things. That don’t make it so.”

“But she read the bones. And they
ain’t hardly ever wrong.”

“Maw’s feeling poorly. Hell, she’s
old as dirt. I wouldn’t put too much stock in what she reads in them chicken
bones. Nor her tea leaves. Now Luther’s looking into it, and he’ll find out
what there is to find out. So you just forget about Maw’s talk of omens and
such. Ain’t none of that gonna tell us what happened to Odell.”

“Okay, Diddy. I’m just worried is
all.” Cowboy jumped down from the rail, spun around toward the front yard and
drew his pistol. “Tell you what, though. If we find out them boys done
something to Odell, I’m gonna put so much lead in ’em, it’ll take a Mack truck
to haul off their bodies.”

“You ain’t gonna do nothing unless
I tell you to. Don’t you forget that, Cowboy.”

“No, sir. I won’t.” He spun the
pistol on his finger, then holstered it with his usual flair for showmanship.

Luke’s full attention was riveted
on the two men, and he was hanging on their every word. Odell was obviously
missing, and the Porch clan suspected “them boys” of having something to do
with his disappearance. Whoever the “boys” were, this was certainly an
interesting development. He considered the possibility of catching the Porch
men in the act of committing new crimes, then cautioned himself not to count
chickens before eggs were laid.

From inside the house, the old lady
called out for Cowboy.

“Coming, Gramaw,” Cowboy yelled. He
went inside, the screen door slamming shut behind him.

A few minutes later, Luke heard the
rumble of an approaching vehicle. He looked to his right and focused his
attention on the driveway leading from the dirt road to the house. A moment
later a Firebird came speeding up the driveway and stopped in front of the
house. Luther Porch hopped out of the car and bounded up the front steps.

“Well?” Fate said.

“It’s the undertaker’s boy,” Luther
said. “I know where he lives, where he works and who he hangs out with.”

“Partain’s boy?”

“Yes sir. That’s the one. Works at
the grocery store.”

Luke thought,
Skeeter Partain?
What the hell’s he got to do with Odell?

Fate said something that was
garbled, and Luke inched forward, moving the shotgun mike closer.

“...not sure who he is,” Luther was
saying, “but I know what he drives. Be easy to find out. I’m pretty sure he was
the same one was with him at the dump.”

Fate sucked on his pipe, then said,
“I ’spect he’ll tell us anything we want to know.”

Cowboy came charging out onto the
porch. “Big brother! You nail the sumbitch?”

“I know where to find him,” said
Luther.

The old lady called again from
inside.

Fate stood up. “Let’s go tell Maw,
so she’ll stop that damn yelling.”

They went inside. Luke moved,
working his way around to the rear of the house where Gramaw’s second-story
bedroom window was opened to the night air. He stopped, crouched by the corner
of the smokehouse and aimed the mike up at the old lady’s window. All he could
hear was the drone of muffled voices. Finally, one voice rose shrilly above the
others, and Luke heard it clearly. The old lady said, “I had a vision, by God.
And the hand of darkness was upon him and the darkness took him down.”

Then a man’s voice, probably
Fate’s, responded incoherently.

Then the old woman once more,
shouting:
“‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord.”

***

Luke packed his gear in his gym bag
and hiked back to his truck. He drove home, wondering how Skeeter Partain might
be connected to the apparent disappearance of Odell Porch. The boy had seemed
awfully jumpy when Luke spoke with him in the produce department earlier in the
day. Was that a coincidence, or was Skeeter on pins and needles because of some
run-in with Odell? Or because he was hiding something? Some guilty knowledge?
But knowledge of
what
? Luke couldn’t fathom it; he needed more
information before he could piece together a reasonable scenario. And to get
it, he would have to prime Skeeter’s pump and get him talking.

It was 9:55 PM now. A little late
for a social call on a young man he hardly knew, but given the fact that Skeeter
Partain was under the dangerous scrutiny of Fate and his boys, Luke knew he had
to see Skeeter tonight, if he could find him. He wasn’t sure, but he thought
Skeeter still lived with his parents on Maple Circle.

At 10:26, Luke rang the doorbell of
James Partain’s brick home. James came to the door in Bermuda shorts and an
Izod shirt, but somehow the man still managed to look like an undertaker.

“Evening, James,” Luke said. “Is
Skeeter home?”

“Skeeter? What do you want with
Skeeter?” Partain looked puzzled.

“I just need to talk to him a
minute.”

“Has he...I...I know this isn’t a
police matter, since you’re no longer a policeman. What’s this about, Luke?”

“It’s nothing you need to worry
about. I just want to talk to him. Privately.”

“I think he’s out back. He’s
bunking in the little house in the back yard. Come on, I’ll show you the way.”

Luke followed Partain through the
house and out the back door.

“The light’s on and his truck’s
here, so he should be inside,” Partain said. “He’s not in any kind of trouble,
is he, Luke?”

“No. It’s nothing like that,” Luke
answered, though he knew he was twisting the truth. Skeeter most likely
was
in trouble of some kind, but until Luke could learn more, there was no point in
alarming James with what, at this point, was only conjecture.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it,” James
said. “But I don’t mind telling you, this mysterious visit has me curious.”

Luke said, “Don’t worry, James.
It’s just something Skeeter might be able to help me with. It’s no big deal.
Really.”

James Partain walked back to his
house, and Luke knocked on the door of Skeeter’s cinder-block abode. The
muffled voices inside fell silent. Skeeter opened the door. A look of surprise
came into his face when he saw Luke.

“Hey, Skeeter. Mind if I come in?”

“Uh, no, no. Come on in.” Skeeter
glanced nervously over his shoulder at the Campbell boy, Joe Rob, who was
sitting at a card table, a can of soda at his elbow.

Luke stepped inside. “Evening, Joe
Rob.”

Joe Rob nodded, but said nothing.
He took a sip from his can of cola and averted his eyes.

“You’re wondering what the hell I’m
doing here,” said Luke, pulling up a metal folding chair and sitting at the
card table. “So I’ll tell you straight out. I have reason to believe Fate Porch
and his boys have taken an unhealthy interest in you, Skeeter. Maybe in you
too, Joe Rob.”

Luke watched both of them for a
reaction.

Skeeter’s eyes got big and his jaw
dropped.

Joe Rob’s face seemed to darken
with sullen anger.

“What makes you think so?” asked
Skeeter, sitting on the lower berth of the bunk bed.

“Well, I can’t really say right
now. But the point is, they’ve been watching you. And they seem to think you
might know something about Odell. Turns out he’s missing.”

“Why would I know anything about
that?” Skeeter’s voice shook as he spoke.

“I was hoping you could tell me,”
Luke said.

“I don’t have anything to do with
Odell...or any of ’em. They’re bad news.”

“Yes, they are. Which is exactly
why you need to tell me the truth. This could be a dangerous situation for you.
If you tell me what’s going on, I can probably help you with whatever it is.”

Skeeter looked askance at Joe Rob.
Joe Rob sat stone-faced, arms crossed over his chest.

Skeeter said, “I don’t
know
anything. Nothing’s going on that I know of.”

Luke drummed his fingers on the
rickety card table. He looked at Skeeter. He drummed harder, louder, building
to a nerve-wracking crescendo, capped off by banging the shank of his palm on
the table. Skeeter winced. Joe Rob stared at him through the narrow slits of
his eyes.  “Listen, boys,” Luke said, taking an ominous tone. “This is not a
game you want to be playing. These people will chew you up and shit you out the
other end if they even
think
you crossed them. That I promise you.”

Joe Rob uncrossed his arms. “We
don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,
Mister
Chaney.”

Luke pursed his lips, nodding.
“How’s your grandmother, Joe Rob?”

He shrugged, momentarily caught off
guard by Luke’s sudden change of tack. “Okay, I guess.”

“Give her my regards.” Luke stood
up. Looked at Skeeter. “You come to your senses, give me a call. I’m in the
book. But don’t wait too long. I don’t figure you’ve got that much time before
the manure hits the blower.”

He walked toward the door, then
turned and added, “And then it’ll be too late.”