Chapter 9

Darkness. Susan was not awake, yet she remained somehow aware of her surroundings, not necessarily her immediate physical surroundings, but the surroundings of the town, of Devonshire itself.

What a wicked place it was.

Wicked.

The word tickled her brain. This was Devonshire, plain old Devonshire, the place she had come to live so many years ago, but now it had become rancid and bitter, like fruit grown rotten on the vine.

She recalled how Devonshire had been when she first came to town, so vibrant, but even then there hung a shadow over it. It was small, but it was growing.

She didn’t understand it then, but within her she knew. Even then it was growing. The evil. Not long afterward the murders began. It was a symptom of that evil, of the growing mire that was Devonshire itself. What could it be?

It wasn’t only the murders that made this so obvious to her now. How high was the crime rate in town? How about the statistics of child abuse and violent crimes committed over the past five years? There hadn’t been a formal study, but she knew they had the records. The town government kept that information under lock and key. Didn’t want to look bad in front of the rest of the world. Susan couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t read the paper without seeing something horrible on the front page.

It had grown worse over the years.

It was as if a collective madness seeped into the town, a feverish sickness infesting them all, moving in so slowly, so gradually that nobody took notice of it. Something had planned this all along. It had bred a killing ground, surrounded itself with hatred for so long until it finally had its chance, and then it took one of them. And then another, and another, slowly at first, but now it was out, completely, and it would wait no longer. It was escalating to something terrible.

And there were the dark eyes before her, floating in the shadows, waiting for her. She felt them.

When Susan awoke screaming, the school nurse stood over her gripping a capsule of smelling salts beneath her nose. Mr. Palsgrove waited behind the nurse, puzzled and concerned. He squeezed her arm when she started screaming, not knowing why she would be acting like this. The tips of his fingernails dug into her skin.

"Ouch!" Her screams died away as rationality found its way back to her.

Mr. Palsgrove removed his hand and the nurse backed away.

"Are you all right?" he asked her. His body was tensed up, ready to grab her again if the need arose.

Susan shook the madness from her head. "I think so. I…don't know what came over me."

Mr. Palsgrove and the nurse backed away to give Susan some air.

"You passed out on stage in front of the school," Mr. Palsgrove said. "Do you remember that?"

Unfortunately, she did. She remembered looking out across the crowd and suddenly feeling woozy, and she told that to Mr. Palsgrove, but she didn't tell him about the sensations of evil she felt. That would only make matters worse, especially under the present circumstances.

"I'm sorry," Susan said after the mood had calmed. "I think I should go home for the day. I don't feel very well."

Mr. Palsgrove sighed with relief. "I think that's a wonderful idea, I mean…I think that would be very good for you. You don’t, um, think you’re…"

It took a moment for her to realize he meant to ask if she were pregnant. She chuckled.

“No, you have to go through the motions for that to happen. Anyway, I’ll just go home.”

Mr. Palsgrove offered to call her a cab, but Susan refused. She was fine enough to drive and she planned on going straight to bed when she got home. He acquiesced and let her pass, but not without a scrutinizing stare of worry that could have meant a number of things. Was she on drugs? Was she pregnant? Dear Lord, who would the father be? Wasn't she single? Perhaps she merely suffered from a horrible lack of poetic inspiration!

The drive home sobered her, but her stomached still railed inside her. It was as if she had swallowed a ball of grease that sloshed around her gut. A single thought entered her mind.

"Why is this happening to me?"

She drove down the main street passed the drug store, heading toward Washington. Parts of the downtown were decorated for Halloween. Fake spider webs and cute witches adorned the windows. It was still early, though gray. The sun toyed with the clouds, peeking in and out, but nothing promising. Perfect Halloween weather.

And then she saw her mother.

“What the...?”

She slammed the brakes. The car screeched to a halt in front of the library, coming to rest at a forty-five-degree angle pointing toward a lamppost that would have destroyed her front bumper if she hadn’t stopped. A librarian having a cigarette out front of the library shot up and craned her neck at the commotion.

Susan rubbed her eyes with her fists and looked again. There she was, Susan’s mother, standing in the middle of the road, thirty yards ahead. She wore her unmistakable flower print dress, the one Susan gave her as a birthday gift before heading off to college. It was the same dress they buried her in.

“Mom?” she mouthed, but no voice emerged. She let her car coast over the curb and got out, staring into the middle of the street in disbelief.

The librarian, an elderly woman with nicotine-stained fingers, dropped her cigarette and rushed down the steps toward Susan.

“Are you all right, miss?” she asked. “You look like the devil’s got a hold of you.”

Susan eyed the librarian with surprise and the woozy feeling washed over her again.

“I, I’m fine I suppose,” she said, not believing a word of it, and she could tell the librarian felt the same way.

“Your face,” the librarian said. “It’s so pale. Are you sure you’re okay? Can I do anything for you?”

“No, I, no,” she stuttered and turned back to the street, expecting to see her mother there again, but no one was there.

She ran to the edge of the curb, then into the street, not even considering traffic. She spun in circles, trying to find her dead mother, trying to find any evidence of her sanity, which she was now coming to believe wasn’t entirely there. The librarian followed her, but didn’t dare enter the street.

“Miss!”

“What’s happening to me?” Susan asked into the air, not really to herself, but to God, or whatever might help her, even her mother.

She returned to her car and got in, followed by the strange stares of the old librarian. As she pulled away from the curb, she peered ahead at the road, concentrating as best she could on the drive ahead of her, thinking of one single goal: get home now. Her mind played tricks on her and she didn’t know why. Was it something she ate? Did someone slip a drug into her coffee this morning? It felt like she was drunk and that her car might drive off the side of a cliff any moment now.

It was all related. It had to be. The events this morning, the sudden feelings of sickness, the overwhelming craziness that overtook her. She mentally ran through everything she ate for breakfast. A half a piece of toast with strawberry jelly. Sure, maybe someone slipped into her home late in the evening, dropped a hallucinogenic into her jam, and maybe they even spiked the bread for good measure.

Sure, it could happen. Right.

As she pulled into her driveway, she found her eyes drawn to the Tucker home. Several cars were parked out front, relatives helping Mrs. Tucker get through this awful event. She thought to walk over to pay her condolences, but in her present condition, she didn’t dare. Maybe later when she wasn’t feeling so...out of touch with reality.

“Maybe all I need is something more substantial in my stomach.” She headed straight for the kitchen. She hardboiled two eggs and sat at the kitchen table. From here, she had a pleasant view of the front yard that she had forgotten about. She only wished she could enjoy it now.

The telephone rang. She moaned. It would be Mr. Palsgrove or someone else from the school checking up on her, making sure she got home in one piece. She wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, but she knew if she didn’t pick it up, they’d worry about her and send someone over.

She snatched up the phone. “Hi, this is Susan.”

Nothing. She expected to hear the soft and embarrassed voice of Mr. Palsgrove, but there came only dead air.

“Hello?”

Nothing.

“Is someone there? I’m going to hang up now.”

There came a whisper through the line, a mousy little thing, barely audible, though it sent a chill through her. Goosebumps dimpled her skin.

“What’s that? Who’s there?”

“...Suzie...”

Susan’s heart froze. She dropped the phone. It clacked against the linoleum. The tender voice still coming through the receiver.

“Suzie. Suzie. Suzie.”

It was her mother.

“What’s happening to me?” she cried, and mustered all of her strength to grab the phone and drop it back into its cradle.

She stumbled to the living room and fell to the edge of the couch, her face in her hands. It was as if a storm cloud opened over her, drawing her into its bleak darkness. She rocked back and forth, telling herself that none of this was really happening.

Then, without even having to look up into the room, she knew her mother was there, watching. Susan felt her. She smelled the scent of her, of the old perfume she wore that Susan used to steal dabs of as a little girl. It was maddening, how she wanted to look up and into the eyes of her mother, but also how afraid she felt this very moment.

Susan prayed. She prayed her mother would go away because she knew she couldn't face her, not like this. She wasn't ready. And then her mother was gone.

Heaving tears, Susan fell into the back of the couch, wondering what the hell could be happening in heaven to bring such madness down on the earth.

##

Harry felt like hell. His stomach lurched from indigestion and his head ached like somebody kicked it about a hundred times.

He sent Bucky out to question Garrett Tucker's neighbors, same old drill that went nowhere, but it was standard procedure and what the hell else was he supposed to do?

At this rate, he’d be fired any day now. He’d already been reamed by the mayor. He demanded on behalf of the people of Devonshire to know what the hell Harry was doing about all this and when the hell it was going to stop, because it didn't look good to have so many people dying in his town, and it sure as hell didn't help business when the surrounding towns ran around and calling it "Burnshire!"

The coroner hadn't done a formal investigation of the body, but his preliminary once-over said it was the same as the others, mysterious combustion accelerated by an unknown substance or source. The victims burned to death without causing damage to their surroundings, which made no sense considering the new evidence in Garrett Tucker's death. His family told the same story, that Garrett had been watching television with them when he walked into their guest bedroom. The door slammed behind him and they all heard the screaming. They all smelled him burning.

When Harry investigated the room and found Garrett’s body, crumpled up on the floor like a pile of burnt sausage, he found no evidence of damage to the floor, other than minor char marks left by the smoldering body itself. There was no damage to the rest of the room, not to the bed, not the walls, not the drapes, not the windowsill. It was as if he had burst into flames out of thin air. Spontaneous combustion.

When his phone rang, he almost didn't want to get it. He snatched it up, rubbing his temples with one massive hand.

"MacGreggor."

"Chief, you got to get down here right away. It's the VanAcres!" It was Calvin Weinstein, a bartenders from Smokey's Bar.

"Not today, Cal," Harry groaned. "I've got one whopper of a headache."

"Chief," Calvin whimpered. "It's something different this time."

Harry gritted his teeth. “I’ll be right there.”

This was turning out to be one hell of a Halloween.

He was out the door and at the bar in two minutes. Caution told him to have his weapon drawn when he entered. He slipped through the back door this time. No one would expect him to do that. The back door led through the kitchen, and he'd been back there before, though he wished he hadn't. Every now and then, a very rare every now and then, he would visit Smokey's for a Jack and Coke, and one such evening Smokey showed him some burglary damage at the back door. When he entered the kitchen, where the cooks whipped up burgers and fries and chili and all other sorts of grease-laden concoctions, Harry got a good look at how not to prepare a kitchen.

The stink of the grease wafted in sick waves, like heated asphalt, and the walls seemed to ooze with the stuff. It wasn’t any cleaner today. Rows of gallon-sized nacho cheese cans lined the left wall, with gallon-sized jalapeno pepper cans stacked on the right. Stacks of packaged condiments bulged from makeshift boxes on other shelves and Harry passed them quickly, holding his gun steadily in case any trouble shot out at him.

He eased open the swinging door that led into the main hallway of the bar. The women's restroom was on his left and he paused a moment, listening.

When he got far enough down the hallway, he found Calvin behind the bar, leaning against the counter. Mick VanAcre hunched over the bar, ankles draped around the leg of the stool, shoulders heaving. He was crying.

Harry came full into the bar now, and before he opened his mouth to ask what this was all about, he noticed Ruthie VanAcre lying on the ground near the jukebox, still. Her body lay twisted in a position that could only be achieved by a contortionist or the dead, and as far as he knew, Ruthie didn’t look like a flexible woman. Part-time stripper, maybe, but not a contortionist.

He put his gun back into its holster. Calvin saw him and a tremendous expression of relief washed over his face.

"Chief," he said, his voice trembling. "He finally did it. He killed Ruthie."

Harry bent down and put his fingers on Ruthie's neck, searching for a pulse. He found none, not that he needed it. She was already getting cold. He pulled a clumpy tuft of hair away from her forehead and exposed a long and bloody gash leading from the center of her scalp to the right side of her neck. The blood had soaked into her clothes and beneath her. It was bright red, straight from an exposed artery.

"What happened?"

Calvin circled the inside of the bar, side-glancing Mick with a nervous glare. Mick didn't move, except for the shuddering of his shoulders as he cried.

"They were doing shots," Calvin said. "Like always. They started fighting about something, I don't know what about because they always fight, you know, it was just normal. I mean normal. They always fight. This time it got worse. I went into the back to grab another bottle of Schnapps and I heard something smash out here."

He pointed to the far wall where shards of glass lay strewn along the ground.

"When I came back out they were off their stools and screaming at each other. I tried to calm ‘em down but they wouldn't listen. I'm telling you, I knew it was really bad for them. She was screaming at him about money or something, I don't even know what, and all of a sudden he takes a bottle and smashes it across her head. I mean, he'd never done that before, and they've been coming here for years, right? I don't know what came over him to do that. What do you think?"

Harry eyed Mick VanAcre who sat hunched over the bar, heaving. Harry thought to pull his gun again but Mick was in no condition to fight. He stepped passed the babbling Calvin and put his hand on Mick VanAcre's shoulder.

"Is that pretty much how it happened?" Harry asked.

Mick swiveled in his chair, tears pouring from his eyes. "I don't understand it. I…I just lost total control."

His face bore the glazed-over look of a madman considering the internals of his mind. Then, his gaze turned to his dead wife and he broke down again, succumbing to it all.

Harry called for an ambulance, and when they were gone he drove Mick to the station. He locked him up in where he promptly passed out. Harry watched him for a moment, considering the man.

What could bring someone like that to just kill his wife? Sure, they were drunks and fought all the time, and those arguments got pretty heated, but this? Anyone else might have believed Ruthie's death was the inevitable end to a tragic and messed up relationship, but Harry never saw it that way. Mick was a bastard and a scumbag, but he wasn't a murderer. At least he didn't used to be. That all changed now.

A lot of things had changed in Devonshire, Harry thought. And not just in the way every town changes over time. If you were to compare a town at one point to another point fifteen years later, sure, you'd see a lot of changes. Business would have come and gone, new homes and subdivisions would get added, kids start dressing funnier and piercing parts of their body the adults are afraid to even wash, and neighbors start to look a little heavier and a little balder. Devonshire had all of that, just like any town, but there was something even more here. Something deeper. Something more profound.

Harry wasn't any kind of philosopher, but he knew. There was something bad in this town, like a brown spot on a potato. You start picking away at the brown spot and you'll find it goes all the way to the center of the thing. The only problem was he couldn't find the spot. Sure, there were all sorts of symptoms, such as people like Mick VanAcre going over the edge and killing his wife, but that one thing remained out of reach: the cause.

He compared the Devonshire of today to the Devonshire when he first came to town. Things were simpler then and today was different in every expected respect, but there was something more. It was the people. The people were different. He pictured Pod People secretly replacing the denizens of his town with replicants. It was subtler though, and you wouldn't notice it if you didn't sit and think about it, really think about it. The people were a lot different.

He couldn't put his finger on any exact thing, but that was basically it. The people were different. They were…less friendly. Hell, you could say some of them were downright mean spirited toward each other, but most of all they were apathetic and indifferent to things except for people like the mayor who only seemed to care about the city’s cash flow. And there was the violence, too. How many violent crimes can one city stand? Especially one the size of Devonshire. Take away the psycho serial killer and you've still got one hell of a violent crime problem.

He found himself growing angry, wanting to call the idiot mayor and light a fire under his ass, but he fell back into his chair and calmed himself. Screaming at people never got you anywhere. In situations like these, it's best to just relax and not say anything until you can say it intelligently.

Devonshire had a lot of anger in it, that was it, an underlying bad temper that had begun to fester long ago and was beginning to manifest itself in its citizens. And now, the crazed killer was the culmination of that temper, of all that anger. Or was it? Perhaps it was the cause of it all.

Harry rubbed his temples. His head throbbed, and pondering the ills of Devonshire didn’t help. In fact, it made it worse. When Bucky came in, Harry told him he had a few things to take care of and left.

"You okay, Chief?" Bucky asked him after he recanted the affairs with the VanAcres.

"Fine, Bucky," he lied. "I'm just fine."

Harry drove home and lay down on the top of his bed, staring up at the ceiling. He had never been a quitter in his whole life, but part of him wanted to just get the hell out of town. Today. Just pack his bags and take a long ride south, to Texas maybe. They could always use men like him down that way. But he knew he'd never leave, not that way at least. Although he doubted he'd survive another election, he still didn't think he'd be leaving.

A knock at his door interrupted his thoughts. He trudged downstairs, opened the door expecting to find Bucky Fasbinder with more bad news that he was afraid to call with, but it wasn't Bucky. No one was there.

Harry stepped out onto the stoop and looked around the yard a bit, listening quietly for any sign of anyone, but no one was there. He spun back into the house and closed the door, chalking it up to children playing ding dong ditch, or whatever they were calling it nowadays. Pretty brave kids, hitting on his house. Moments later he learned it wasn't kids knocking at his door.

At first he felt something odd, like something wasn't right in the living room. It was as if the air had grown stale and things had been tossed out of place. He listened again, not for the voices of children but for anything, any sign of reality that would take away the eerie notions leaping about in his brain.

He wasn't sure what made him do it, but he cleared his throat and spoke out into the empty room.

"Is anyone there?"

The temperature dropped about twenty degrees in an instant. Gooseflesh rose up on his arms. The air seemed to be sucked straight from the room. He grew lightheaded and if he was anyone else he might have passed out. He grabbed hold of the television set for balance, fighting to shake it off.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Harry…." It was a soft voice, oozing from the wall, or the ether, because there sure as hell wasn't anyone in the room. He knew that for a fact.

"What the hell is going on here?"

A shadow took form in the center of his living room, a three dimensional one, a ball of darkness spinning out of some fabric of nowhere. He wanted to run away from it but found he couldn't. The shadow elongated and took form, amorphous at first, but then saw it was definitely a person becoming more and more real.

The air grew even colder. He'd never seen anything like this. There had been a lot of that going on in town lately, unusual first-time experiences. He stared into the shadow form and saw it more clearly. It was definitely a person, a smaller one, five-foot-two or three, dark complexion, long hair.

A woman certainly, yes.

Who?

With horror, he realized who it was. He tumbled backward, taking the television stand with him. The screen cracked in half when it hit the floor. The muscles in his face lost all strength and his jaw dropped with a weak thud.

"Oh my God," he managed to say before the thing in his living room took finished form.

Before him stood Rosa Martinez, a woman he could never forget, especially because she was dead. It was the worst case of his life, the reason he left the city in the first place and came to Devonshire. She had been murdered by her deranged husband, crucified in her own living room, and gutted. Harry found her pinned to the wall with a series of nails, propped up with two by fours and a broken broom handle, dripping with blood.

She stood there now in his living room, emotionless, looking as much like a ghost as anything, not transparent like the movies always show. She was real but also somehow…not real. This was the only way Harry could describe it. It didn't feel real, though he knew it was.

Surreal.

His imagination wouldn't shake him, but it wouldn't let him deny the fact that a dead woman named Rosa Martinez stood in his living room. The gaping wounds from her mock crucifixion dripped fresh from her body. The gashes through her wrists where her insane husband hammered her to the wall looked fresh and the blood still soaked her clothing.

Memories from that day so long ago inundated him.

"What's going on?" Harry said through quivering lips.

Rosa Martinez reached her hand to him. Her mouth opened to speak. Her voice, a voice he never got to hear before, was soothing and melodic.

“An evil has sprung here,” she said. “It has been here for a long time, like a dark seed sown in the black soil, and it has been growing. Now it is ready to bloom.”

She leaned forward and his skin went cold as she whispered in his ear. She told him a name and he shuddered.

“It can’t be.”

Then, as suddenly as she had come, she disappeared.

Harry waited a long time, uncertain what to do. When he was sure the spirit was gone, he shot up and waved his hands around in the area where she had been, feeling the air for…whatever. Nothing.

What was this? First of all, it was insane. That was the hardest thing to rationalize. A dead woman suddenly materialized in his living room. All right, that was something to think about, wasn’t it?

He went to his kitchen and poured himself a drink. He needed booze. He slammed half the glass, filled it up again with straight bourbon and went back to the living room.

"Relax," he told himself. "Get a hold of yourself. There's a reason for this. There has to be."

He slugged down the rest of his bourbon. The familiar heat soothed his veins.

In light of everything else happening in Devonshire, Harry thought, this wasn't as amazing as it might have been somewhere else in some other town in some other life.

“I don’t know if this is real or not,” he said out loud to the room that still didn’t feel quite empty, “but if it is, there’s something terrible about to go down around here.”

He took his gun and headed for the door, ready to find out for himself if the apparition was telling the truth about who their killer was.

##

Stanley Gruber made it until after seven in the evening before he lost control and burst out of his house like a man insane. He was afraid and he couldn’t control the dire thoughts roiling through his mind.

How did those kids know about her? What if they told other people about her? He considered this then thought, What did it matter if they told? She could kill them as easily as she killed the other ones in town, couldn’t she? But if everyone knew, would she have to kill them all? Could she? Then what would be the point of being here at all? She’d have to leave for certain then. Should I tell her? What if I tell her? Will she kill me like she said she would? Force me to experience that hell again? But what if she has no idea about it and the information winds up helping her in some way? What if she rewards me for it?

That stuck in his mind. What if she rewarded him? Sweat poured forth with anticipated pleasure.

But fear took over again. Quickly. If those kids knew about her, what else could they know? Maybe if they knew that, they knew how to kill her.

This threw Gruber into a frenzy. He hurried to his car and tore down the street. Halfway to the main avenue, he slowed to the speed limit and gripped the wheel. He took deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

Get a grip, man. If you get pulled over by the pigs, they’re gonna take you in and you won’t be able to help her. If you look desperate, they’ll know something’s up.

He drove a few blocks and turned on Main Street, then finally to her block. How many times had he passed it on the way to work, thinking of turning toward her, fighting himself every damned day against it? Now here he was, doing it finally, going to her at the risk of his own life. He didn’t care. He was convinced he was doing the right thing. He was going to help her, maybe even save her. The potential rewards were very much worth the risks.

He passed the church and found dozens, if not hundreds, of cars lined along the street. The parking lot was jammed. Hordes of people were streaming inside, nearly running one another over. A part of his mind wondered what could be going on at the church at this time of night, but he had more important things to think about. He had to get to her.

He passed her house, turned at the next corner, and parked a few blocks away to avoid any suspicion. It was dark now and he didn’t think anyone would see him. He found her car in the driveway. Thank God! His heart nearly exploded with anticipation.

He tapped meekly at her front door, and when it opened, she made no expression. He thought maybe there would be surprise, or at the very least a flare of anger, but no. She simply stepped back and allowed him to pass within.

Once inside, he fell to his knees, quivering. It was as if his bones had liquefied.

“Please…I’m sorry for coming here,” he sobbed, “but they know about you. They know!”

“Is that so?” Her beautiful voice, so sing-song, like manna.

“Yes, some kids came to me and asked me about you.”

Stanley dared raise his timid gaze and watched her eyes grow dark. A dim hint of a smile overtook her lips.

“Everyone will know about me tonight, my love. Did you know that?”

Stanley shrunk from her, dumb. “I…don’t understand…”

“It’s time now. My wait is over. It is time to step away from this body for good and take what I need from this place.”

His chin quivered. Her words crawled in and out of his ears. The desperation of the last six months rushed into him. “Where have you been? Why haven’t you come to see me in so long? I…I…”

“Shhhh.” So beautiful. She placed her gentle finger to her lips. She smiled, and to Stanley, it looked genuinely kind. “You don’t have to worry anymore, my love. I couldn’t have done this without you, and it’s time I repay you for everything you’ve done. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh God, yes.” His smile threated to rip his face in half and he shook with barely contained glee. “Do you want me to tell you about the kids who came to me today?”

She set her hand to his mouth and shook her head. “Not to worry,” she said. “I’ll know in a short moment.”

She leaned over him. Her breath scuttled along his cheek. He shook with the anticipation of pleasure, of heaven. It was coming. The reward was coming.

She kneeled and reached her arms around him. Her fingers clasped together behind his back and she drew him into her. He squealed with giddiness.

Thank you, thank you…

And then came the pain, searing, ripping his soul to shreds. He began to scream. And scream and scream…

In the moments it took for her to consume him completely, an eternity passed for Stanley Gruber. In the end, his pain was infinite…and she knew everything she needed to know.