I Will Fear No Evil (Psalm 23 Mysteries Book 10) (2 page)

“Life altering,” she interjected.

“And you’re right, I’m the person you need to talk to, should talk to, and I just haven’t been ready to talk about any of it.”

“I know, and I’ve tried to be patient, but things can get pretty noisy in my head when I’ve just got myself to talk to,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.

He let go of the steering wheel with his right hand, and before she knew what he was going to do he had picked up her hand and kissed her fingers. Gently he set it back down and she felt a thrill of triumph when he put her hand back on his knee. What was the saying about victory being won in inches instead of miles?

She was content to let the rest of the ride pass in silence. As it turned out it was only a couple more minutes. Jeremiah turned onto a street that seemed vaguely familiar. All the houses were incredibly rundown, but none of them compared to the house at the end of the street. Weeds had overtaken the front yard and the glass panes in the windows were jagged and broken. There were steps leading up to the front porch and three were sagging, one was broken, and another was missing altogether.

The police cars parked outside were the only indication that there was life somewhere on the premises.

“Okay, this gets my vote for creepiest haunted house,” Cindy said. She was trying to joke, but something about the structure, its walls stained a dark color that was nearly black and two dormer windows on the third floor staring like eyes, made her blood run cold. Her stomach twisted and she had a sudden, overwhelming urge to stay in the car.

She felt embarrassed by her unreasoning terror. Here she had been talking to Jeremiah about how much she’d grown and changed from the terrified creature she had once been and not ten minutes later she wanted to cower in the car while he went into the spooky house without her.

Snap out of it
, she told herself sternly, as she pushed open the car door and forced herself to get out.

“This feels...wrong,” Jeremiah muttered.

“I couldn’t agree more,” she admitted.

She would have asked him if he was sure they were in the right place, but the police cars spoke for themselves. She even recognized Mark’s car, but it was empty. All the officers had to be inside.

She walked around the car and grabbed Jeremiah’s hand, trying to steady herself. He gave it a squeeze and together they started forward.

“Careful on these steps,” he warned, as he began testing the bottom one before putting his weight fully on it. It groaned but it held.

She followed him up the stairs, putting her feet where he had. Earlier in the car her heart had been pounding in excitement and now it was pounding in fear. She could feel sweat start to bead on her forehead and her stomach twisted, cramping harder.

This is not a good place
, she thought.

They made it up onto the porch and then crossed to the door which was gaping open and sagging slightly on its hinges.

“Hello?” Jeremiah called, clearly as unwilling to cross over the threshold as she was.

Hello.

Cindy jerked. “Did you hear that?” she asked. It had been faint, but close, like someone whispering in her ear.

Jeremiah shook his head, but he looked worried.

“Jeremiah?” she heard Mark call from inside a few seconds later.

She felt a bit of relief. At least he was here and okay, not swallowed up by the horrid house. She wiped the sweat off her forehead. The place was really getting to her. She had never liked desolate, abandoned places and this one was by far the creepiest she had ever seen.

She heard footsteps echoing inside and then saw a light bobbing up and down in the gloom. “Glad you could make it,” she heard Mark say.

A second later she saw him, holding a flashlight, and crossing a dusty, cobweb filled entryway toward them. He paused slightly when he saw her and glanced at Jeremiah.

“No pastors?”

“No pastors,” Jeremiah affirmed.

Mark let loose with a string of profanity unlike any she’d ever heard from him. They stepped back and made room for Mark to join them on the porch. She instantly noticed that he was drenched in sweat and his pupils were dilated.

“It’s not good in there,” he said tersely.

“You asked for religious expert opinions. Here we are,” Jeremiah said.

Mark wiped his forehead on his shirt sleeve. “Creepy house,” he muttered under his breath.

“What is going on here?” Cindy asked.

“I don’t know, that’s why I called,” Mark admitted. He stared at her intently. “There’s something...occult about all of this. Six months ago I wouldn’t have let you anywhere near that basement, but a lot has changed. If you can’t handle it, though, just say so.”

Cindy swallowed hard. It was a test of the new her and she didn’t want to fail. Nothing in her wanted to go into that house, but she didn’t want to let Jeremiah or herself down. “I’m okay,” she said, grateful that her voice at least sounded steady.

Jeremiah didn’t want Cindy to have to put on a brave face and go see whatever the detective had called them out to see. He wanted to shield her from whatever horror waited. But he respected her resolve and he knew that he should let her go if that was what she had wanted. He tried to calm himself down. This was just another homicide, even if it was in a creepy house. It had been a crazy morning, how much worse could it get?

Mark turned and led the way into the house. They followed close behind, Cindy still holding onto his hand. He could hear floorboards creaking above him and he glanced up.

“I’ve got officers sweeping the rest of the house,” Mark said as if sensing his sudden concern.

He led the way to the kitchen. Toward the back of it a door gaped open and he could see the start of a staircase heading down.

“Most California houses don’t have basements,” Cindy said.

“Yeah, well this isn’t most California houses,” Mark said grimly. “Stay close.”

There was no electricity so they descended the stairs with only Mark’s flashlight to guide them. Jeremiah kept swiveling his head, feeling like he was hearing soft noises, whispers that he couldn’t quite pin down.

As they neared the bottom of the stairs Jeremiah could see more light and at last he could tell that it was coming from electric lanterns that had been set up to cast light on the scene. The lanterns looked powerful, but their light seemed to be swallowed up almost instantly by darkness. There were deep shadows everywhere and the light couldn’t do enough to keep them at bay.

He felt Cindy clutch his hand tighter and he could hear her breathing. It was shallow, frightened sounding. When they made it down to the basement floor he felt a sick wrenching sensation in his gut. He could smell something, powerful, pungent. It wasn’t blood, but he couldn’t identify the smell. It gave him the overwhelming feeling of danger and he silently cursed himself for having left his gun in his office at the synagogue. He hadn’t wanted to risk one of the church pastors seeing him carrying it.

“Something bad happened here,” Cindy whispered, and he was inclined to agree with her.

Mark walked a bit farther and they followed until they could see what it was he was shining his flashlight on. He felt Cindy jerk to a stop and gasp. She started to shake as he just stared at the body on the ground.

It was a young woman, probably about twenty, if that. She had ritualistic markings all over her body. She was dead, eyes fixed and staring in a terror that communicated itself to him. There were no signs of physical trauma to the body, though, no obvious causes of death. Her arms were straight out at her sides, wrists bound by ropes which were secured at the other ends by a stake in the ground. Her legs were also bound and angled away from each other. Her entire body had been positioned and laid out in exact lines on top of the bloody pentagram she was staked out on top of.

“I was wrong,” Jeremiah said softly to himself. “This is crazier.”

2

Cindy wanted out of that basement badly. The hair on her neck and arms was all standing on end, and the sick feeling inside her stomach that she’d had outside the house intensified tenfold. This whole place was unnatural. Evil. The dark, the cold, and a faint, unpleasant odor all urged her to leave this place and never look back.

“What killed her?” Jeremiah asked softly.

The devil
, Cindy thought, but managed not to say out loud.

“We won’t know until the coroner can examine her. As you can tell there are no obvious signs of injury. It could be we’re looking at poison or something like that.”

Cindy didn’t believe it. She should. She knew she should. It was logical, it made sense. The problem was, nothing else about what she was seeing and feeling made any sense. Her stomach cramped even harder, causing her to involuntarily bend over slightly which just brought her that much closer to the body.

Jeremiah stepped forward, and it took all of her strength to let go of his hand. Slowly he knelt down next to the body, head moving back and forth as he took in all the details.

An upside down pentagram was drawn in what looked like marker on the woman’s forehead. That was the only symbol that she recognized.

“Some of these symbols are Hebrew. Others are from long dead cultures,” Jeremiah said.

“How come you recognize some of the older ones?” Mark asked.

Jeremiah grimaced. “I had an...associate...who preferred using archaic means of communication.”

“I knew both your careers would come in handy,” Mark said quietly.

Cindy couldn’t pry her eyes off the woman’s body. Underneath the fear that she was feeling there was another emotion stirring. Anger. Someone had done something terrible to this woman, and it was clear she had died in terror.

Suddenly she felt a chill dance down her spine and she spun around, sure that she had heard a footstep behind her in the dark. There was no one there. At least, no one that she could see. The sick feeling in her gut intensified and she realized that she had started shaking uncontrollably.

“Can we get out of here?” She barely managed to get the words out around the sudden tightness in her throat. She couldn’t breathe and it was almost as though she could feel fingers closing around her neck, squeezing, cutting off more and more of her air.

She took a step back toward the stairs as she heard her own breaths coming as ragged gasps. Her head was starting to swim, and she knew that she had to get out of there.

Something doesn’t want us here
, the thought came unbidden into her mind.

She saw Mark twist around suddenly as though he, too, heard something. His hand was on the gun under his jacket, and when he turned back the dim light reflected off the sweat that was coating his forehead.

Cindy took another step toward the stairs, hoping that it would make her feel better. Instead of the pressure on her throat easing up it only seemed to get worse. Her fingertips were tingling and her gasping breaths sounded thunderously loud in the dark.

Mark jerked around again, this time half-pulling his gun from his holster. She could hear Jeremiah muttering something to himself in Hebrew as he continued to stare at the body.

The room was beginning to swim before her eyes, and Cindy realized she was about to collapse. She tried to say something, to warn Jeremiah and Mark. They weren’t alone, she could feel it. Something was watching them, and it didn’t want them there.

Leave.

The words hung in the air, the faintest whisper of sound.

Cindy turned and grabbed the handrail. She hauled herself up five quick steps before the world began to tilt in front of her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. Her legs wouldn’t do what she told them to do, and without knowing how it had happened she found herself tumbling backward.

She landed hard on her back on the cement floor, her feet caught up on the first step. She tried to grab her throat, but her arms wouldn’t move. She tried to yell for help, but not even a whisper escaped her lips. She had lost feeling in her legs and everything was going black when she felt arms around her.

Jeremiah. She knew it was him even though she couldn’t see him in the gathering darkness. He would protect her. She was safe. Still she knew that she had to do what she could to stay conscious.

A moment later she could feel herself being bounced around as they raced up the stairs. She could hear them creaking and groaning and for one terrible moment she thought they were going to crash through them. The wood held, though, and soon they were running through the house, then out onto the porch, then they were by the car.

She heard someone shouting, but she didn’t think it was Jeremiah. The pressure on her throat was beginning to ease up and relief surged through her. They were out of the hideous house. Everything was going to be fine.

Someone came over and after a moment she realized it was a paramedic. She hadn’t realized there were any there at the house. Jeremiah put her down on the ground, and the other man bent over her and began to examine her.