Devil Dead (27 page)

After she had gotten all the books she needed on witchcraft and black magic as well as some leather hex bags to protect the both of them (with one extra one for Black), she picked out a pentagram poster with all the evil spells and symbols alongside explanations of what they supposedly meant, and other such banal favorite things of Satan. When they were done shopping, they stopped at a food court at a nearby mall and ordered two shrimp and mayo po'boy sandwiches and two extra-large Pepsis.

“Where to next?” Novak asked, wiping the corner of his mouth with a napkin. He actually had very good table manners, better than hers, even. Which wouldn't take much. Food was to eat, not pick at and hold politely while conversing. Apparently, Novak was now tired of watching her snarf up her meal and began to thumb through all her newly acquired devil books.

“I think I'll go in and work the late shift at Tit Tats tonight. I wanna listen and learn more about that Lydie gal. She's beginning to open up to me. I think she's scared of something. Just a feeling I got yesterday. Something's a little off about her,” said Claire.

“Probably scared of the customers.”

Claire jerked a look at him. “Hey, you just cracked a joke, I'm pretty sure. Oh my, I am super impressed now.”

“It wasn't a joke. I saw guys pawing at the girls when I was in there. So I'm gonna watch you tonight from the parking lot. I've got a bad feeling about you working there. It was a stupid idea.”

“Well, it was your stupid idea, Novak.”

“Yeah, I can have stupid ideas, just like anybody else. Something about this case is bothering me. Too many opposing leads. Too many bizarre people. You need to get the hell outta that place tonight. Just quit. You've got all you're gonna get outta those girls. If I were you, I wouldn't go in there tonight, at all. We can both surveil from the outside. Follow Lydie home. See where she lives.”

“Lydie was real close-mouthed about where she lives, which also triggered a red flag in my head. She's working tonight. I'll go in and give my notice, and then after I get off we'll follow her home. Good enough?”

“Black gonna show up again and whisk you away?”

“He's so busy with his patients that he can't come up for air. We're leaving for Paris early tomorrow morning, so he'll stay late at the clinic. So I'm free as a bird most of the night. We usually sleep on the plane, anyway.”

“He worries about you.”

“I guess he's got good cause. I run into bad people now and then.”

“Exactly. You need to quit that waitress job. Just sayin'. Do what you want.”

“Maybe after tonight.”

“Anybody ever tell you that you're stubborn, Morgan?”

“Nearly everyone, actually.”

They finished off their sandwiches, and he drove her home so she could get into her slutty Tit Tats uniform, which Black had threatened to burn after he saw it, especially if she wore it outside the bedroom. That was just his overprotectiveness and possessiveness boiling up again. Oh, well, after tonight she could kiss all her nasty outfits good-bye and tell Daddy a.k.a. Creep of the Universe where to shove his disgusting little job. At least, there was something she could look forward to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The nice man who had found Diana half dead on the side of the road had stayed all night with her at the Thibodaux hospital. He left for a while when she went to sleep, but then he came back later after she woke and placed a big Mickey Mouse doll on the pillow beside her bruised and scratched-up face. She held on to it tightly every time a doctor came in and made her lie still while he examined her. The man was there a lot at nighttime, too, and that's when he read comic books to her, with stories about Mickey and Minnie and Goofy and Donald Duck. That was the only time that she felt like she was okay. The rest of the time, she quivered and shivered and remembered all the bad things that had been done to her. She lived in terror and dread and despair.

The man also took her to her mommy's funeral, and then he took her home and stayed there with her for a couple of days. He brought her a little German shepherd puppy named Toby for her to hold, and she loved the little dog and held him close all the time. The big man never seemed to sleep much, but just sat alone in the living room and made sure that nobody bothered her. He told her that she could come live with him for a few days, if she wanted, that he could get her a private nurse, or he could take her to a place where she would be safe and secure. But she got hysterical at the mere thought of leaving her house and going anywhere that she'd never been before, so he just gave up, and nodded, and did not force her to do anything she didn't want to. He gave her a little cell phone and told her which button to push if she ever needed him, that he lived right down the road and would come quickly to help her.

When he finally had to go away and work, she wept after he left and curled into a ball in her bedroom closet. But it wasn't too long before she began to venture downstairs and look around the house. That's when she saw that he had cleaned up all the blood that had come out of her mommy and Spirit. All the furniture was back in place, as if nothing had ever happened. But she knew it had happened. She was afraid it would happen again.

So she took her bow and went hunting again and killed a squirrel to eat and a beaver to stuff and hung both carcasses on tree branches to drain the blood, just like her mommy had taught her. She needed to do things like that—things she knew how to do—things she had done before the demons came. She carried her little phone everywhere she went and always kept it close, but her hands still shook and she still had bad dreams and she was terrified all the time. She never went out to the Sanctuary again. She wished she could burn it down. But she was afraid to go anywhere near it.

The big man came often and brought her Milky Way bars and Happy Meals and groceries and little toys and gifts, and the older lady came up the bayou in her boat with homemade bread and homemade jam and honey and canned tomatoes and ears of corn and fresh green beans. The lady said she wanted to buy Diana's taxidermy projects and Diana agreed, but she didn't like giving away her work. Finally, she began to relax a little and not think about the terrible things that had happened to her. So she went to bed as soon as it got dark and got up as soon as it got light and she hunted and killed and prayed over and then stuffed her animals and looked forward to the man's weekly visits and the cute little toys and games he brought to her. Once he brought her a game of checkers and he taught her how to play with him, but she wasn't very good and couldn't remember how to keep score. She couldn't remember a lot of things, not after what the demons had done to her. Her mind was even harder to focus than it had been before they hurt her, and she mixed up things that were real and that were imagined and that came out of her terrible dreams.

Then one night as she lay in bed, eyes very heavy, almost asleep, and tired from her long hunt back in the swamp, she thought she heard a low voice. Her eyes flew open, and she lurched straight up in the bed, rigid with fear. It was very quiet, except for the buzz of crickets and cicadas and rustling of leaves. She must have been dreaming again. She lay back down, all tense and scared, and then she heard it again, floating on the breeze through her open bedroom window. Oh, no, it was the boy's voice. She recognized it at once.

“Weeee'reeee baccccck.”

Diana went stiff all over, every muscle turning to rock. The voice was low and growling and terrible. She felt as if she was going to faint from the wave of horror rising up the back of her throat. His voice came up through the window again. “Weee neeeeeed bloooood.”

She got down on her hands and knees and clasped her hands tightly together. “Oh, please, Moon Goddess, Horned God,” she prayed, her voice shaking so much she could barely speak. “Please keep them away from me, please save me, please help me, help me. They are evil, they are demons, they are gonna hurt me again.”

Then she backed into the farthest corner and watched the door to the hall, afraid to move, afraid that they would come upstairs and grab her and drag her out into the woods and do the unspeakable things to her. She could hear them outside now, getting the cans of blood she had collected out of the yard, moving around on the porch. She could hear them talking, their voices floating up to her. It sounded like it was the boy and girl again, the ones who had come that first time to swim in the bayou.

She knew it was the evil boy who took her and killed her mommy. She would never forget his voice, the way he whispered and taunted her fear. They had come back to get her again, to hold her down and hurt her. Terrified, she found the phone the man had given to her and pressed the button he'd told her to press, but nothing happened. There was no sound in it. Oh, God, no matter what she did, it just wouldn't work.

Then she heard the demons open the back door! Then she heard them walking through the parlor, and then the front hall, and then they were clomping up the steps. She held her breath and waited, frozen on her knees, afraid to breathe. But then they were right there in the room with her, and they flipped on the overhead light. She blinked in the sudden glare and screamed one long and terrible shriek of horror. But it was her tormentors. It was the boy with the big muscles who had held her down and hurt her so much.

“Hello, little darlin',” he said, standing over her with a great big smile on his face. Then the other girl came up behind him and grinned and waved at Diana. “'Member me, Diana. Glad to see us? Don't you worry now. We're gonna have some fun tonight. I promise you that.”

They came closer and squatted down right beside her. Diana shut her eyes and clamped her lips together. Then the man had his big hands all over her body, just like last time, lifting her up, throwing her on the bed. She didn't fight, couldn't, and just lay there under him, her mind not allowing thoughts to form. She felt herself slowly losing all grip on what was happening as he used her and abused her as he had done all those days out in the swamp, while his girlfriend stood by and watched and laughed at Diana's groans of misery.

After that, Diana began to feel nothing, think nothing, want nothing, nothing at all, her mind completely detaching and floating away to a safe place. She let it take her far, far away, where she was a little girl again and her mommy was not Bad Luna yet, back when Mommy held her on her lap and sang songs to her and read her books, and rocked her to sleep every night. She barely was aware when they took her downstairs, still naked and shivering, still mentally separated from them and whatever they intended to do to her. They dragged her between them out past the barn and down the swamp trail to the old Sanctuary, because she couldn't stand up, couldn't walk, and then they forced her into its dark depths. She looked around, shocked that the red and black and white and purple candles were lit and flaming as if her mother had prepared the altar, all the sacred pentacles glowing in the semidarkness.

“We're gonna borrow your little altar, darlin', for our Black Sabbath ceremony. Know what? After I saw this cool little setup you got here, I studied up on Devil worship and all that stuff. It's really cool. And then I found out that my girl here is really into that kinda kinky devil worship. So now my name's Beelzebub, and her name is Lilith. We really are demons now. You know what demons are, don't you, kid, you and your mother both did, didn't you? They are those scary creatures that come callin' in the night and do evil things and make human sacrifices to Satan. We're into black magic and death, darlin', and we're gonna do it way out here where nobody will ever think to look.”

The girl named Lilith grabbed her hair and jerked her head back. “You don't mind, do you, Diana? Better not, 'cause if you tell anybody, we will take that little puppy of yours and we'll cut out his heart and make you eat it, and then we'll slit your throat and cut out your heart while you watch and then hold it up in front of your eyes so you can see when it stops beatin'. Understand me? Do you understand?”

Diana did understand them but from a faraway distance inside her head, where she stood in a field of clover and swayed in the soft breeze and felt the sun on her face and played with Spirit and Toby. She nodded, her eyes wide and unblinking, and listened to them talk to each other.

The girl turned to the boy. “What's the matter with her?”

“Maybe she's in shock,” he answered. “My cousins and I really worked her over. But who cares? She's not gonna tell anybody. I'll cut her, just to show her that we mean business. Now hurry up, get her in that old tub sitting over there.”

So Diana felt them lift her up into the tub and force her to sit down. She did not struggle, just stared straight ahead, no longer terrified, no longer able to feel anything. She flinched when they began to pour something cold into the tub all over her. She came to herself enough to realize that they had the Folgers cans that she used to catch the blood from the animals she killed. They were pouring it on her, buckets of blood, so much of it that it came up and covered where her arms were crossed over her naked breasts.

Then she sat very still and watched them strip off all their clothes and dance around wildly in front of her, but she couldn't think straight, couldn't get her mind to focus on anything. Diana didn't want to see what they were going to do, so she looked away and forced her mind to go back to that meadow and the sun warming her skin, and somehow the big man was there, too, smiling kindly, holding out his arms, wanting to protect her. In her head she went into those arms and let him enclose her in the safety of his embrace and let the nice dream take her away from the barn, and the cruel couple who were tormenting her, and all the candles and glowing symbols and the blood, especially the blood.