Evil Dark (3 page)

  A man sat in each chair. There was nothing remarkable about them – apart from the fact that they were both naked and bound firmly to the chairs with manacles at hands and feet.

  Not far from the chairs stood a cheap-looking table, its wood scarred and pitted. Someone had laid out a number of instruments there, including a small hammer, a corkscrew, a pair of needle-nose pliers, a blowtorch, and several different sizes of knives.

  A man's voice could be heard chanting, in a language that had been old when Christianity was young. This had been going on for several minutes. The men in the chairs sometimes looked outside the circle in the direction of the chanting, other times at each other. The one with dark hair looked confused. The other man was blond and clearly the more intelligent of the two, because he looked terrified.

  Then came the moment when the air in the middle of the pentagram seemed to shiver and ripple. The ripple grew, but never crossed the boundary of the circle. After a while, some thin white smoke began to issue from that shimmering column. Over the next minute, the color of the smoke went from white to gray, then from gray to black. The chanting continued throughout all of this.

  The column of smoke gradually took the form of a Class Two demon. I blinked. Class Twos are hard to summon, being near the top of the demon hierarchy. The wizard these people were using must've been pretty good.

  I'd encountered a Class Four the previous year that Karl had saved me from, and those things are so dumb they don't even have language – they're all appetite. Class Twos are different. They manifest an appearance that's almost human-looking, and they speak every language known to humankind, as well as their own tongue, developed over the millennia spent together in Hell.

  The demon looked in the direction the chanting had come from and spoke angrily in Demon, demanding to know who had dared to summon him.

  The voice from off-screen came back, firm and fearless. I listened for a bit, then whispered to Karl, "The wizard's threatening to lay a whole bunch of hurt on the demon if he doesn't obey the wizard's commands."

  Karl looked at me. "How the fuck do you know that?" he said softly.

  "I speak Demon. Sort of."

  I'd studied their bastard language off and on for over ten years, and was still a long way from fluent. But I figured understanding it might save my life one day – or, more important, my soul.

  The demon gave a piercing scream and doubled over. The wizard must have zapped him pretty good.

  When the hellspawn spoke again, it was more conciliatory – for a demon, that is. Then it bowed its head in acquiescence. The wizard had better hope the demon never got out of that circle, or he was going to be a long time dying – and death would only be the beginning.

  "The demon agreed to cooperate, and the wizard just told him to possess one of those guys in the chairs," I muttered so only Karl could hear.

  The dark-haired man went suddenly rigid. He threw his head back as if in great pain, the muscles and tendons in his skin standing out all over his body. This lasted for several seconds. Then, all at once, the man seemed to relax. He looked around the room, and the circle, as if seeing them for the first time. His facial expression was one he hadn't displayed before. It combined cunning and hatred in roughly equal proportions.

  Then the wizard's voice said a couple more words in Demon. He spoke sharply, as if giving a command, and that's exactly what he was doing. I swallowed. Things were about to get very ugly, I figured.

  The shackles holding the dark-haired man to the chair sprang open, as if by their own accord, and fell clattering to the floor.

  The dark-haired man walked slowly to the table and surveyed the instruments that had been lined up like a macabre smorgasbord. He turned and looked at the blond man, a terrible smile growing on his thin face. Then the dark-haired man picked up from the table the pair of pliers and the blowtorch. After taking a moment to make sure that the blowtorch was working, he walked over to the chair where the blond man sat chained, naked, and speechless with terror.

  What happened next went from zero to unspeakable in a very few seconds. Soon afterward, it went beyond unspeakable, to a level of horror that there are no words to describe.

  Twelve very long minutes later, the blond man gave one last, agonized scream and escaped into death. We sat there and watched him die.

 

Then somebody must've pressed Stop, because the screen went mercifully dark. A few seconds later, the lights came on.

  The nine people in the room sat in stunned silence, blinking in the sudden brightness. Then everybody started talking at once.

  There had been eleven people in the room when the lights were turned off. But there'd been enough residual glow from the big monitor for me to see two tough, experienced police officers quietly leave over the last few minutes, one with a hand clasped tightly over his mouth.

  I was glad nobody would know how close I came to being number three out the door.

  My partner Karl leaned toward me and said softly, "Sweet Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. And people say
vampires
are inhuman."

  "Well, strictly speaking, you
are
," I told him, just to be saying something.

  "You know what I mean, Stan."

  "Yeah, I do. And I'm not arguing with you, either."

  The two FBI agents walked to the front of the room and stood waiting for us to quiet down. They'd been introduced to us earlier, before the horror show started. Linda Thorwald was the senior agent, and she'd done most of the talking so far. She was average height and slim build, with the ice-blue eyes I always associate with Scandinavia. Her hair was jet black, and I wondered if she was a blonde who'd had it dyed to increase her chances of being taken seriously in the macho culture of the FBI. People have done stranger things, and for worse reasons.

  Her partner was a guy named Greer, who had big shoulders, brown hair, and a wide mustache that probably had J. Edgar Hoover spinning in his grave. He moved like an athlete, and I thought he might be one of the many former college jocks who find their way into law enforcement once it sinks in that they're not quite good enough for the pros.

  When the room was quiet, Thorwald said, "I regret that I had to subject all of you to that revolting exhibition of sadism and murder. If it's any consolation, I've seen more than one veteran FBI agent lose his lunch either during or immediately after a showing of this… supernatural snuff film."

  Snuff films are an urban legend, probably started by the same kind of tight-ass public moralists who used to rant about comic books destroying the nation's moral fiber. But the myth made its way into popular culture, and stayed there. There's been plenty of counterfeit ones made over the years, with sleazeballs using special makeup effects to rip off the pervs who think torture and murder are fun. These days, you can see stuff like that at your local multiplex. It's all fake, but I still wouldn't want to know anybody who was a fan. If I'm going to hang out with ghouls, I prefer the real kind – they can't help what they are.

  There have been some serial killers who took video of their victims to jerk off over between kills, but that was for their own private use. If by "snuff film" you mean a commercially available product depicting actual murder, then there's no such thing.

  Or rather, there wasn't. Until now.

  "I wanted you all to see that video," Thorwald said, "because it's important that you understand what we're up against, and what the stakes are. Copies of that DVD have surfaced within the last month in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and, uh–" She turned to her partner.

  "Baltimore," he said.

  "—and Baltimore," she went on. "But the Bureau has been interested in this case for longer than a month. Quite a bit longer."

  Thorwald took a step forward. "You know that expression, 'I've got good news and bad news'? Well, I'm afraid I don't have any good news to offer you today. Instead, I bring bad news, and worse news. Brian?"

  I could almost see the two of them rehearsing this act in their hotel room last night. The whole thing had a stagy quality that was getting on my nerves. Of course, after what I'd just witnessed, my nerves were pretty damn edgy already.

  "The bad news," Greer said, "Is that what you just saw isn't the first video depicting this kind of torture-murder. I mean, one apparently carried out by a demon that's been conjured and then allowed to 'possess' an innocent party."

  That must've been the dark-haired man we'd just seen. He hadn't done all those awful things to the blond guy – the demon who'd taken him over had done them, using his body as an instrument.

  "In fact, it's the fourth one," Greer said. "Same M.O. every time, with the same… gruesome result. All that varies is the technique, and the victim."

  The technique varied. I guess that's why whoever was running the show had put out a selection of torture devices for the hellspawn to use. Nothing like variety.

  Thorwald took over again. "The going price for one of these videos in the illicit-smut underground is one thousand dollars. To give you some perspective, you can buy one of a four yearold girl being raped for about three hundred." A look of disgust passed over her face, the first genuine expression I'd seen there. "Presumably, each one of the DVDs has sold well enough to keep those producing them in business. The economies of scale are pretty good, from their perspective. Once you've recorded the master, you can burn copies for less than a buck apiece. There's no way to know how many have been put into circulation. And no reason to think these people are going to stop doing it. That, as I said, is the bad news. But, as far as you officers are concerned, there is worse news." She paused for effect, and I wondered if she'd learned that at the FBI Academy, or in some college speech class. Maybe she'd been on the debate team – she was the type.

  "We have been unable to establish the location where these atrocities were made," Thorwald said. "As with the one you just saw, what's visible onscreen doesn't give us much to go on. However, based on new information, we now have reason to believe that at least one of these DVDs was shot right here in Scranton."

 

Then she stood there, looking at us. I don't know what kind of a reaction she expected. If she was looking for gasps of surprise, she was talking to the wrong crowd. Most of us hadn't gasped since we found out the awful truth about Santa Claus.

  Finally, Carmela Aquilina – one of the two female detectives on the Supe Squad – said, "If you're waiting for someone to feed you the next line, then I'll do it. What's this 'new information'?"

  "One of the victims has been identified," Thorwald said. "A Bureau agent, who viewed the videos, recognized his cousin, who lives –
lived
– in Scranton. The cousin's name was Edward Hudzinski."

  I noticed that a couple of the detectives threw quick glances my way, as if expecting a reaction. There's lots of Polacks living in the Scranton area, and we don't all know each other. We don't all hang out together, either, and some of us can't even dance the fucking polka – at least,
I
sure as hell can't. Hudzinski's name meant nothing to me. But I pitied the poor bastard, whoever he was, if he had died like the guy we'd just watched on video.

  I guess Greer figured it was his turn again. "Needless to say, we didn't take the ID on faith. Instead, we queried our Scranton field office about Mister Hudzinski. They checked with Scranton PD and found that he'd been reported missing last April. There had been no suspicious circumstances about his disappearance, so it was treated as a routine missing persons case."

  "Are you saying that the Department should have handled it differently?" That was my boss, Lieutenant McGuire. His voice, while polite, had some snap to it. Although he'll kick the ass of any cop under his command who fucks up, he doesn't like criticism from outsiders – even outsiders with Federal badges.

  "Not at all," Greer said. "Based on the information available to you, I'd say the response was entirely appropriate. But now there's this new information, so a different response seems indicated. And this unit seems the most suitable one to carry it out."

  "What is it you expect us to do?" a detective sitting down front asked.

  "The answer to that should come from Lieutenant McGuire," Thorwald said. "Agent Greer and I would not presume to tell you officers how to handle a case like this. Our work at Quantico's Behavioral Science Unit involves tracking down serial killers – of the human variety. We're not experienced in matters involving the… supernatural." She managed to keep most of the distaste she felt out of her voice.

  "We've requested temporary assignment to the Bureau's Scranton field office," Greer said. "We'll be available for consultation, and we want to monitor the investigation closely – without getting in the way, of course."

  Of course. Until the time came to make an arrest. Then the Feebies would be right there, claiming jurisdiction as well as the newspaper headlines. Well, they could have their fucking headlines. I wanted the sick bastards who were behind this video operation. As long as they went down, I didn't give a shit who put them there.

  After Thorwald and Greer left to go clean their weapons, or whatever it is that Feebies do in their free time, McGuire gave us our assignments.

  "Work your snitches, all of you," he said. "If one of these murders was committed here, the odds are good that they all were. The perps have no reason that I can see to travel all over the place, just to grab victims who're anonymous on the videos, anyway."

  "Why here, I wonder," Karl said, loud enough for McGuire to hear.

  "We'll know that when we nail the bastards," he said. "Maybe the wizard who's doing the summoning is based here. God knows there's no shortage of them in the Wyoming Valley."