The Dead Parade (9 page)

Oh my God, James thought. They’ve come for me… but how? Why?

It was obvious. His car was imbedded in someone’s house, and the car had a license plate, and the license plate defined the owner, and the owner was…

“
Shit!”

James squeezed the hand brakes and spun the bike around. Going home was not an option, at least not yet. So where could he go?

His first thought was Debra’s condo. That’s where he had spent most nights anyhow, but… no. He didn’t want to go there. Actually he
did
want to go there but that was beside the point.

He peddled a little slower.

Where am I going?

In front of him was Cortez Street. He turned onto it peddled hard as he could. The bike wobbled from side to side as it gained speed. Driveways, lawns, houses, and trees zipped by. Leaning back, he let the bicycle coast. He could hear the hum of the tires rolling over the pavement.

Where am I going, he wondered again. What do I need? What do I want?

One thing James needed was a restroom. The pressure inside him was mounting. But what else did he need, a weapon?

Johnny’s gun?

The idea of retrieving Johnny’s gun was intriguing. But returning to Johnny’s house didn’t seem like much fun. But, he thought, if I kill the demon everything could return to normal. James shook his head. Normal. Yeah right. Nothing would be normal after this. He peddled again; he coasted again. When everything was said and done James had some explaining to do. He had police to deal with and apologies to make. Not that saying ‘I’m sorry’ was an appropriate solution for causing a string of deaths. It wasn’t. But still, what alternatives were there?

He rode another block and came to his conclusion: he would return to Johnny’s house. Getting the gun was a good idea, he decided. Defending himself was a good idea. Having a destination was a good idea.

A plan had been set. He turned left on the next street.

36

There was a police cruiser and James failed to look at it. Had he looked, chances were, he would have panicked. His nerves were wound tighter then a drum core snare and the odds of him doing something incriminating were greater than he would like to admit. Luckily for James, he steered the bike to the side of the road and let the cruiser pass by. When it did the sirens didn’t spring to life. They stayed quiet. A moment later the car turned a corner and was gone.

I dodged a bullet, James thought. And he was right.

His description had been sent over the wire fifteen minutes earlier: James McGee. White male, 30’s, 5’ 10”, medium built, short brown hair, white dress shirt, black dress pants, black dress shoes, black tie, last seen fleeing 216 Tecumseh Street on foot, which is located at the corner of Tecumseh Street and Spalding. Suspect may/or may not be covered in dirt and ash, and may/or may not be showing signs of injury. It is not believed that the subject is armed, but he is considered dangerous. Approach with caution.

The description was meticulous. And yes, he had dodged a bullet. Had the two officers in the police cruiser not been bickering as they passed by, odds were, they would have noticed him. And arrested him.

James stood up on the bicycle and he pressed his weight against the pedals. The ground soared beneath him. The wind pushed against his face and chest. He zipped around a corner, pushing hard as he leaned over the handlebars. A bug hit his knuckles as he went over the roll on a hill; he felt his stomach lift into his chest. He had always liked that feeling; it reminded him of being on a rollercoaster. He kept peddling and his legs burned. He rolled over a sewer; the handlebars rattled and his feet threatened to slip from the pedals. He moved past a STOP sign that someone had vandalized. Now it said: STOP - EATING MEAT. Sitting on the curb not ten feet from the sign, three boys––all of them between five and seven years old––were wasting the day away. The boys stopped talking and watched James go. He offered them a fake smile. In return a boy with spiky hair tossed a rock at him and sneered.

James turned corners twice more and peddled for three minutes. Then he found himself on Tecumseh Street looking at police cars, an ambulance, and what he figured to be a car belonging to the coroner.

James stopped cold.

It was Johnny’s house. The authorities had the place enclosed, but why?

Suddenly, James remembered the gunshot. Somebody must have heard the gun go off and called the police. Or maybe it was the pizza. He ordered pizza and gave the operator his name and address. Did he leave Johnny’s door open? Did the pizza guy step inside?

Did reasons even matter?

James was the prime suspect in a string of deaths; nothing else was relevant. Maybe it was time to come clean.

James put a hand over his face and rode away from the scene. He turned a corner and disappeared from view. Then he felt his muscles tighten. The stress was getting to him.

No, he thought. Coming clean is a bad idea. The demon––

James slowed down and looked over his shoulder. The demon was gone.

Holy shit, he thought. I did it!

With animated eyes James pedaled hard. For the first time all day he was smiling; he felt like he was in charge again. The sensation sparked an idea designed to put him in an offensive position. It wasn’t a good idea. In fact, the idea was absolutely terrible.

He was going to Suzy’s house to get the shotgun.

* * *

And in the hospital room Mathew whispered, “No.”

But nobody heard a thing.

PART THREE:

BECOMING THE BEAST

37

James knocked two times, waited a few seconds and was about to knock again when he sensed déjà vu. He felt like he had done this before, and he had… at Johnny’s house. But this time things were different. For one, James didn’t look fresh; he looked haggard and beaten, like he had strolled through a war zone on the way over. And James didn’t feel the way he had this morning, numb. He felt energized, almost exhilarated.

As he waited, he noticed that Sue’s lawn needed to be cut and her shrubs needed to be groomed. He wondered if the backyard was loaded with junk. It probably was. Instead of knocking a third time James opened the door and stepped inside.

“
Hello?”

The house seemed to be deserted; he could hear flies buzzing and smell rotting meat. As he walked through the door he eyed the floor and the walls the same way Johnny had earlier. But there was nothing here this time, he hoped. And the house wasn’t cold; the August sun had turned the place into an oven.

He walked through a near-empty living room and entered the kitchen. He found the refrigerator door wide open. On the counter he could see unwashed dishes piled next to a basket of bananas, which had melted into rot and decay. On the floor several bags of garbage had been stacked into a heap. A dead cat lay facing the corner. Dishes on the dinner table sat together with a stack of unopened mail. Flies crawled on top of everything.

He closed the refrigerator door, which was a big mistake. The flies became airborne and circled the room annoyingly. There must have been a thousand of them.

James walked down a hall and entered a bedroom. The room was completely empty.

Then he entered a bathroom and relieved himself. After washing his hands and face he checked another bedroom. The room had wall-to-wall furniture, reminiscent of Johnny’s backyard. He wondered why, and then it came to him: Johnny didn’t want to give the creature a place to hide. And either did Sue.

Shaking his head, James entered another bedroom.

He found Sue dead, as he knew she would be. The bullet had entered the temple on her right side and circled endlessly, never finding its way out. He wondered how it felt to have a bullet doing donuts inside your head as blood squirted into the air; he wondered how long she managed to keep on living.

James rubbed his eyes. Of course, Sue’s handgun was missing; Johnny had taken it. And the shotgun was nowhere in sight.

But James knew where to look; he had known all along.

It was time to check the basement.

38

James slid a hand along a dirty wall and found a light switch. After a single bulb came to life he walked down an old wooden staircase, eying the ridged shadows that cut the rooms into sections. Even with the light on the basement was dark. It was also damp and gloomy. The walls were an off yellow color. The ceiling was oppressively low, home to a long metal heating duct that weaved its way through the center of the room. As James followed the duct his stomach began to turn. The basement smelled like a nasty synthetic grade of cheese that had gone bad.

At the far side of the room was a door.

James approached it covering his mouth.

He clicked another switch and the glow of sixty-watts blanketed the room. He saw a workbench and some tools, a desk and a bookshelf, a small beer fridge and something that ran shivers up his spine. He stood very still, looking at three bodies lying next to each other on the floor. Each body was covered with a dirty a white sheet.

James couldn’t pull his eyes away. The sheets were game-show mystery boxes, the answers to all his questions.

He lifted the first sheet and found Sue’s sixty-year-old father.

The man had not been shot, but attacked. Half his face was missing. His skin color had changed from a warm coffee tan to a hard moldy black. His single eye was swollen and closed. His lips had been torn off. His mouth resembled a large wormhole of broken teeth, tattered gums, and a thick web that housed a sack of spiders.

James imagined the body sitting up and grinning as tiny white arachnids scurried from inside his throat. He imagined the corpse gurgling, “It’s not over. It’ll never be over. Not for you James, not for you.”

Feeling a moment of dizziness, James put the sheet over the corpse and placed a hand on a wall. A heavy spider scurried across his fingers.

He noticed a packet of shotgun shells sitting next to a pile of books. There were books on Voodoo (and Vodoun), books on Bokor, two on Haiti witchcraft, one on Nkisi and several loose articles printed in a language he didn’t recognize. He also spotted several seashells and cornhusks, an animal horn and a large hoof, which was turned upside down and stuffed with black soil.

James turned away. His eyes narrowed slightly.

The spider was crawling up his arm now; James knocked it to the floor.

He looked at the bodies again and felt disgusted. He imagined the swollen eyes of the dead opening. He imagined the bodies standing one at a time, like something from a vampire movie, with arms reaching and faces white.

But the faces under those sheets aren’t white, James reminded himself. They’re black and moldy. They’re covered with bugs.

A mouse scurried from one corner to another.

He followed the mouse with his eyes and noticed Suzy’s shotgun sitting on top of a wooden box, just beyond the bodies. The box itself was large: two feet by three feet. He didn’t notice it originally; the white sheets had overshadowed everything.

On the side of the box eccentric letters formed archaic words. They seemed antediluvian, like a bastardized version of Egyptian script. Below the mysterious markings in small faded letters were four words written in English: CONGO, BASIN, MINKISI and BAKISI. The words had been burned into the wood with an unskilled hand. He didn’t know what the words meant, but Congo—that was a river, wasn’t it?

He reached across the desk, picked up a pencil and wrote
Congo, Basin, Minkisi
and
Bakisi
on the back of an envelope. Then he stuffed the paper into his pocket, grabbed the shotgun and the shells and made for the exit.

39

James stood near the front door. He leaned the shotgun against a wall, placed the shells on the floor, pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Debra’s number.

The phone rang once.

“
Hello?”

“
Debra, it’s me.”

“
Oh.”

“
Don’t be mad.”

“
Why not? You called me a bitch, you remember that, don’t you?”

“
No. As a matter of fact, I don’t.”

“
Well you did.”

James shrugged. “Debra, listen to me. This is important, ‘kay? My brother is dead and Penny is dead. Johnny’s dead. And Sue’s dead too… in fact, her entire family is dead.”

“
What?”

“
Honest. I’m not kidding. I’d never make jokes like this. I couldn’t talk earlier ‘cause everything was going crazy.”

“
Joseph and Penny are dead? How?”

“
Car accident.”

“
And Johnny?”

“
He shot himself.”

“
Oh my God, why?”

“
I don’t know. Actually I do know, but I can’t explain it now.”

“
Why not?”

“
I just can’t, it’s a huge story that I don’t really understand. I’ll tell you everything I know later.”

“
Well… where the hell are you? Can you tell me that much?”