Dark Arts (24 page)

She nodded at him and struggled to
swallow.

“Don’t say anything, just let us take care
of you,” he said. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the
car now. He’s going to stay right beside you, aren’t you, Son?”

“I’ll never leave you,” Scottie said. “I’m
right here.”

He gently picked her up, a task that
required so little effort, and couldn’t help but think of his
children as he gently cradled her against his chest. It was his
girl Celeste, who was born with blonde, almost white hair that
became a thick mane of fair curls that kept coming to mind. Years
on the police force allowed him to push those thoughts aside. He
concentrated on every stride moving forward, watching the path
ahead, supporting her head properly.

She stared up at him with the blue eye that
wasn’t forced closed with blood and swelling. Everyone followed
close behind, and Scottie kept up. As they drew close to the Edsel,
April began to weep quietly. “Am I hurting you?” Morley asked.

She shook her head a little, her blue eye
closed. He decided that whatever she was crying about wasn’t
something he could act on there. He had to get her into a car and
on the way to the hospital, where he was sure there would be many
more tears.

Maxwell opened the back door, Scottie
hurried inside and Morley gently put her onto the back seat, laying
her head in his lap. “Keep her steady, don’t let her head roll from
side to side, but don’t touch her injuries.”

Scottie nodded, clearing a lock of blood
caked hair out of her face. “Yeah, I’ve got her.”

A young brunette woman carefully joined the
pair in the back seat, sliding under April’s legs. “We’ll take care
of her, thank you.”

He remembered delivering the news of
Miranda’s mother’s fatal car accident then, and nodded at her,
momentarily at a loss for words. Maxwell carefully closed the door
and got into the middle passenger seat. He was squeezed in by
Bernie in the driver’s seat and his father Allen on the passenger
side.

“Be careful,” Morely said.

“Thank you for your help,” Allen said before
closing the passenger door.

“Don’t worry about calling the police,”
Morley said. “I’ll call from your place, it’s the nearest phone.”
He watched the Edsel carefully turn around then head off down the
road at a fair pace.

“That’s the girl we’re here to find,” Rick
said as he caught up with him. “Who did that? All I see is blood
from here, what did they do?”

“That’s her, that’s little April,” Morley
said. “Someone cut on her, bad. We have a crazy in town, probably
brought in with that Gathering.”

“Do you think she’ll make it?”

“From the clotting, and how long she’s
probably been here like that, I give her fifty-fifty. Whoever did
that to her knows how to cut and not kill.”

The three of them stood there, surrounded by
the encroaching woodland and the sounds of crickets, buzzing
creatures of summer for long moments before anyone spoke.

“Ever see anything like that?” Patrick asked
quietly. He looked utterly dumbfounded, his stubble covered face a
stunned mask.

“No,” Morley said. “Go back up the road and
call the department. I have to check something out here.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Morley said, heading
back to his truck. “I’ll just hold down the fort here, make sure no
lookie-loos come around messing up the crime scene. You go
call.”

“All right,” Rick said.

Moments later his childhood friends were
gone, and he was returning to the rear of the farmhouse with a
crowbar in one hand and a handgun in the other. It was difficult to
keep his daughters out of his mind while he checked his revolver,
then approached the coal chute.

His mind played tricks on him. Instead of
little April, he kept seeing his daughter Celeste on the ground. He
moved the grass surrounding the trap door covering the coal chute
with his crowbar and found what he suspected he would, a broken
padlock.

He holstered his gun then pulled his
flashlight from his pocket before kicking the door up and open.
There were scratches on the inside of the chute, it looked as
though someone had recently slid down the four-foot shaft. Morley
turned his light off and allowed himself a moment’s hesitation. He
had the distinct feeling that the man who carved into April was
still there.

Those windows above had eyes, and they
enjoyed watching other people clean up. He would not let the
perpetrator get away. The grade of the blackened chute wasn’t
severe, so he carefully lowered himself down.

A moment’s pause allowed his eyes to adjust
to the light. Somewhere above there was a breach in a wall that was
letting a little light through some of the floorboards. He had just
enough to make out the furnace room.

The pot-bellied furnace for the house, made
to burn coal or wood, dominated the room. With great care, Morley
put his crowbar down at his feet and drew his pistol.

With the flashlight in one hand, and his
pistol pointing forward, he moved on. There was nothing in the
furnace room to see, he kept his light off until he came to the
doorway. The next room was pitch black, there was no light getting
in.

“Help me,” someone said, struggling to say
the words as though there was a heavy weight on their chest.

Morley turned his flashlight on and saw a
young man, perhaps twenty years of age with long dark hair. His
breathing was labored, his chin rested on his chest as he stood.
“He’s got me,” the boy said.

A slow sweep of his light revealed that he
was standing beside a bare boards bench with an old ballpein
hammer, pliers and some mismatched cutlery.

“Don’t move, Son,” Morley said, training his
gun on the young man. He did his best to look around the basement
to make sure there were no other threats while he kept his eye on
his subject. “What’s your name?”

“Darren,” he wheezed.

“Are you alone here? Is there anyone else in
the house?”

The young man struggled to say something but
his voice was choked off as though someone was pulling on his vocal
chords, turning his words into choking and gurgling. The noise
continued as he started grinding his teeth so hard that it made
Morley cringe. He could see the young man was struggling, in pain,
but the grinding continued.

“I can see that you’re having some kind of
trouble, Son. If it’s drugs, if you took something, we can take
care of you. Just step away from there. Come towards me slowly.”
The sounds of Darren’s hoarse breathing and the loud grinding of
teeth filled the room as the young man rocked slightly, his chin
still down on his chest.

The smell of lighter fluid and burned hair
came on a breeze from the darkness, and Morley did a quick scan of
the rest of the room with his light. There was nothing but piled
furniture to his right, all crammed against the wall. Up the middle
was a path of blood leading to a closed door opposite. A table had
been set beside the door, with some old jars on it.

The grinding and heavy breathing stopped
suddenly, and Morley twitched his light back to focus on Darren,
who was staring back at him, terrified. “Help me! He made me help
him with my hands, but I couldn’t stop him. Neither of us could
stop him!”

“Calm down, Son,” Morley said. “Is he still
in the house?”

The flashlight went out, and fell out of his
hand as though all the strength in his left arm was gone. His ribs
felt as though someone was kneeling on them from the inside, and
his heart began to race.

As though summoned from the memory of
walking in on his first corpse, the stench of rot filled his
nostrils. His feet felt heavy, and his arms slowly lowered down to
his sides as though he was incapable of holding them up any longer.
The pressure in his head continued to build, and then he felt
someone else behind his own eyes.

It was worse than someone breathing down his
neck, it was the feeling of being at the mercy of a thing that
could remember April’s screams. The struggle of trying to keep her
still after carving her lips away so he could tear out those
beautiful blue eyes.

“Fight him!” Darren screamed. “Don’t let him
all the way in!”

“Run,” Morley said as he felt his feet begin
to scrape across the floor, under someone else’s control.

“He’s too powerful, he can take us both, he
still has my friend,” Darren wept. “He doesn’t kill, I wish he’d
kill, but he doesn’t kill.”

With a clumsy hand, Morley shoved his pistol
back into its holster at his waist. His slowly steadying gait
brought him to the bench. Even his eyes were out of his control.
His memory was invaded by the sensation of cutting April with a
practiced hand. They’d find that she was missing an ear, and that
every knuckle on one hand was carefully bashed, while the other was
left untouched. It was in case she turned, and became a
servant.

There had been more women than the thing in
his body could remember, and he had his favorites. A tear rolled
down Morley’s cheek as the beast that had taken him recollected
several of his favorites. “Monster,” he managed to grind out of his
throat.

“I am what Maxwell and people like him made
me,” Darren said, his voice one part the young man’s, and one part
a higher pitched, near frantic sound. The voices were in disharmony
with each other, grating on the ear. “I was a man on a mission, to
purify, to teach the ignorant few who peer into the veil and quest
for its unnatural power, then I found a book while teaching an old
man.” Morley could see the memory, Vernor Gold, a collector of rare
books who had a selection of volumes that the Purifiers did not
approve of. Death was his sentence, and it was carried out by Panos
himself. An expertly held hook knife opened his belly, and old
Vernor was forced to watch as his small intestine was drawn out,
then he was left to bleed to death. “You see?” Darren continued. “A
man about his business, then the Book of Doors told me that the
real power is not in this life, that heaven is only open to those
who are recognized in the next life by those they’ve done good for.
I have been cheated, but the book had power that I could carry past
the living flesh. Tricks. Tricks for cheating and correcting that
my old family of Purifiers cannot understand.”

“Tossed you out,” Morley managed as he
watched his hands grow more graceful by the moment.

“You aren’t supposed to see that,” Panos
said from Darren’s mouth.

His right hand closed around the handle of
the ballpein hammer and raised it. His left splayed itself out on
the bench. “I will tell you why you’re going to die, because my
young thrall is right: I do not kill unless you give me a reason. I
am still a Purifier,” Panos said through Darren’s lips. The grin
there had grown so large that the scant light was glinting off his
teeth. “Maxwell must die, he knows more about the book than I do.
His power is manifesting. It is unnatural. It is an offense to the
order of life. You make it easy now. They will find your body here.
Hang the cutting on you since it will be days before April will be
able to speak again, a week at least before the others are found.
The other explanations for her will be too outlandish for their
little minds to explain or believe.”

The hammer came down in the center of his
hand, breaking the skin and bone beneath. Morley made him miss his
knuckles, but still felt every bit of the pain. He was receding;
the pressure of Panos taking over was pushing him away from
awareness despite his fight to remain in control.

“You have two daughters,” Darren said with
relish. “I will visit them if you don’t let me take control. I’ll
do it in your flesh, so they can see their daddy’s face grinning at
them while I strip their belly flesh off layer by layer.”

Morley rallied against Panos’ presence and
managed to get enough control back to drop the hammer. It didn’t
last. “You can’t win.” Panos said in his own face.

Darren immediately returned his chin to his
chest, and began grinding his teeth. Panos was in full control. “I
am going to kill you now, with your own weapon. The hammer was a
test, a way to try to get you to take control one more time so I
could crush your spirit. Your soul won’t go far. The Dawn is near.
You will shoot yourself in the head, and they will believe you
slashed April until she can speak again.”

With natural grace, Morley drew his sidearm,
held it to his head, turned the safety off, and pulled the trigger.
At the last instant Morley forced the hand to jerk, sending the
barrel upwards. It was not enough. The bullet passed through his
head high, but only high enough to leave him conscious and bleeding
to death on the floor.

The pain was incredible, he could not move,
and the ringing in his ears was as bad as or worse than anything.
He didn’t recall falling, but could feel the warm blood against the
side of his face. Darren walked over, picked up the gun and looked
at him, shaking his head. The young man wiped the tears from his
face.

He could see it wasn’t him. The thing that
had ended him was inside Darren, he could see it in the boy’s eyes.
He desperately wanted to utter the only blessing he believed in at
the young man, but instead of saying ‘God help you,’ he only
managed to croak; “God.”

“You’ll see soon enough,” Panos said with
Darren’s lips. “He has left us all here and there, like a child who
has abandoned his ant farm in the back yard. Goodbye.”

“She is ruined!” Maxwell heard Steven Sands
howl. He was on his feet and out of the family waiting room before
anyone else. He knew the nurses allowed Scott to visit April after
she was stable, he didn’t know her father had arrived. Maxwell
didn’t realize that everyone else in the waiting room were right
behind him as he took the corner.