by Bill Bennett
‘She spooks easily,’ Lily replied flatly.
The two cops swapped a glance.
‘She spooks easily?’ This time Dougherty made the effort to swing around so she could look squarely at Lily. ‘Why would she get spooked if she didn’t know them, and they’d done nothing to her?’
‘Be sure to ask when you find her,’ Lily said, then folded her arms and looked out the window.
Dougherty stared at her a long moment before sitting back and swapping another glance with her partner.
They think I’m a pain in the ass, Lily thought, and I’ve only been in the car ten minutes. They have no idea how much worse I can get.
They turned off the bitumen and made their way into the valley, Ramirez driving slowly through a mist that swirled before them in a diaphanous dance. As they approached the farmhouse, Lily could see that the front door was wide open, and all the lights were on.
Her heart leapt. Her mom was home after all. She’d just fallen asleep and everything was fine. But then as they got closer, she saw that the truck was parked some distance from the house under a large maple tree that stood out front, the vehicle barely visible beneath a thick canopy of low hanging branches and leaves. Lily noticed that the driver’s door was open, and the cabin light was on.
There was something horribly wrong about this, Lily thought. Her mom never parked there. She always parked around the side of the house. And why would she leave the door open? It was as though she’d pulled up fast and rushed into the house, but never came back out again.
She had to be inside.
Ramirez pulled the patrol car up beside the maple tree, close to the truck. Lily immediately opened her door, bolted out, and ran to the farmhouse stairs. Dougherty tore after her, grabbed her roughly by the shoulder and swung her around. ‘Where are you going, miss?’
‘Get your hands off me!’ Lily screamed, and wrenched free. ‘I want to see if my mom’s inside!’
‘You’ll do no such thing. You’ll wait in the patrol car until we’ve had a look around.’
‘Why?’ Lily looked at her, furious. ‘It’s my home. I’m allowed to go into my own home!’
‘Lily,’ Ramirez said calmly, stepping up beside his partner. ‘It’s best you wait in the vehicle while we check the place out. You never know who might be inside. We won’t be long.’
He gently guided her back to the cruiser, opened the rear door and sat her back down.
Lily broiled as she watched the two officers climb the stairs, unholstering their handguns as they walked in. They began to go through the house, room by room, yelling out, ‘Mrs Lennox, SFPD. Are you there? Mrs Lennox?’
Morons, Lily thought. If she was there, don’t you think she’d have heard all the commotion and come out by now?
She looked over to the truck. Why park under the tree? Did she want to hide it? The tree was massive, with a dense covering of leaves. The truck would be invisible from even a short distance away, and if she’d been worried about being spotted from the air, well there’d be no chance it could be seen. She must have been in a real hurry, to leave the door open. Had she been chased? Or had she just wanted to rush inside to get that important ‘something’ which she’d referred to in her letter?
She got out of the police cruiser and walked over to the tree. It was dark in the shadows under the branches. Almost black. And it was like the temperature had dropped ten degrees. As she walked towards the truck she shivered uncontrollably; not from the cold, but because of the terrifying prospect that she would find blood inside the cabin. Her mother’s blood.
She took out her phone, used its bright flashlight to look inside. In the harsh white light of the phone, she peered around the cabin. There was no blood, no signs of violence, no bullet holes, nothing smashed or broken. Relieved, she turned off the light and closed the driver’s door. As she went to walk away something caught her eye at the rear of the truck. It seemed to glow an unearthly dull white in the dark. There was something disturbingly familiar about it. Lily approached slowly. As she got closer, she turned on her phone’s light again and immediately saw that it was just one of her mom’s old suitcases – a battered cream-coloured Samsonite, standing upright by the tailgate.
What’s it doing here? she wondered. It wasn’t her mother’s regular travel case, it was the one that contained all the precious things from her youth – photographs, important papers, memorabilia, that kind of thing. At least, that’s what Lily had always assumed, because she’d never actually seen inside. Angela had never opened it in her presence. In fact, Lily had never seen her open it at all.
At the end of a long day’s drive, her mom would always haul it into her motel room. She never left it in the truck, and rarely let it out of her sight. Lily had always assumed that this was just part of her paranoia – that after the death of her husband, she wanted to hold tight to all their memories which she kept in that suitcase.
But what if she’d been wrong all these years? What if that old scuffed-up plastic suitcase contained something else – the ‘something’ her mother had come back to collect?
Lily squatted down and tried to open it. There was a combination lock on both latches. She tried various numbers, the obvious ones first such as 111 and 000 and 999, then she tried both their birthdays. When that didn’t work she tried the street number of their old home in Seattle, then the numeric keypad value of ANG, GEL and even LIL. She tried everything she could think of, but the locks wouldn’t open.
‘What are you doing there, miss?’
She turned and squinted into the beam of Ramirez’s flashlight. She stood as he shifted his flashlight onto the suitcase.
‘Did you find anything?’ Lily quickly asked.
‘No. She was here, though. And it looked like she left in a hurry.’ Then, staring at the suitcase. ‘Whose is that?’
‘It’s my mom’s.’
‘What’s it doing here?’
‘Taking an evening stroll.’ Lily regretted saying it as soon as the words left her mouth. But she couldn’t stand dumb questions.
‘Miss, enough with the attitude, okay?’
Dougherty walked up. She too trained her powerful flashlight on the case. ‘What’s in it?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lily said, her voice suitably chastened.
‘Well, let’s take a look,’ Ramirez said, as he reached over to grab it.
‘No.’ Lily moved in front to block him.
Ramirez looked at Dougherty, then he bent slightly to Lily’s height. He smiled genially. ‘Lily, we’re not the bad guys here.’
‘It’s my mom’s personal stuff. You’ve got no right to open it.’
‘So you do know what’s inside,’ Dougherty said with a ‘gotcha’ smirk.
‘No, I don’t. But you can’t open it.’
Ramirez, now wearing rubber gloves, held up a syringe. ‘I found this on the ground over there,’ he said, nodding back towards the farmhouse. ‘Is your mother a user, Lily?’
Lily looked at the syringe with a reeling sense of dread. ‘No. She hates drugs. What’s that doing here?’
Ramirez handed the syringe to Dougherty who immediately bagged it. He turned back to Lily. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have a reason to abduct your mother?’
She recalled her mother’s letter: If I’m not back by 8, then it means they’ve taken me. She shook her head. ‘Of course not. Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘Well, that’s why we want to open the suitcase. There might be something inside that gives us a lead. If you’re going to be difficult about this, we’ll have to find a judge who’ll give us some paper. But quite frankly that’ll take twelve, eighteen hours minimum and right now, if you want your mom back, we need to work fast. Every minute counts.’
Lily paused. She’d seen enough cop shows on TV to know that the first few hours of an investigation while the trail was still hot were the most critical.
‘Okay then, go ahead,’ she said, and stepped aside. ‘But don
’t touch anything.’
Ramirez bent down to try the locks. ‘You know the combination?’
‘No. I tried some numbers but they didn’t work.’
Ramirez dialled in several obvious combinations, just as Lily had done, but the locks didn’t open. He pulled out a utility knife from a pouch on his belt, opened out the largest blade and tried to jemmy one of the latches. The blade snapped clean off.
‘Goddamnit,’ he said, standing up. He folded the remaining stub of the blade back into the knife and pouched it, annoyed. Then he pulled out his baton, hauled back then pounded both locks furiously. But still they didn’t budge.
‘Here, step back and let me try.’ Dougherty pulled out her handgun and levelled it at one of the locks.
‘No way!’ Lily said, rushing forward.
Ramirez grabbed her and held her back. Dougherty took careful aim and fired. She hit the lock, sparks flew, and the bullet ricocheted out into the night. Both cops looked at one another, puzzled, then at the Samsonite. The lock was unmarked.
‘What the hell?’ Ramirez said, in disbelief.
‘I hit it, right?’ Dougherty asked.
‘Yeah. Try again.’
Dougherty stepped in closer, raised her firearm again, lined up her shot and squeezed off a second round. Again the bullet hit the lock, again sparks flew, again the bullet ricocheted off, and again the lock didn’t open. The two cops stared, dumbfounded.
‘There’s not even a mark on the goddamn thing,’ Ramirez said, looking back at his partner.
Dougherty shook her head, confused. She holstered her weapon, staring at the suitcase as if it was something alien.
‘Okay, let’s take it back to town,’ Ramirez said.
He went to lift it but Lily heard a loud crick in his back and his face contorted in agony. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he shouted, hobbling away and clutching his lower spine. ‘I think I’ve done a disc. The goddamn thing weighs a ton.’
Lily remembered once trying to haul the Samsonite out of a motel room one morning while her mom was paying the bill, but it was too heavy. A neighbouring guest, a big strong man who looked like he was some kind of security guard, came over to help but he couldn’t shift it either. Then Angela walked up, grabbed the case effortlessly and carried it off. At the time Lily thought it was weird, one of many weird things involving her mom, but she hadn’t thought much about it since.
The two cops manoeuvred the suitcase to the back of the patrol car, then with considerable effort they hefted it into the trunk.
Ramirez turned to Lily, his face tight with pain. ‘Okay young lady, it’s back to Central for you.’
‘What? No way,’ Lily said, panicked. ‘I have to stay here. In case she comes back.’
‘Lily, this is now a crime scene,’ Dougherty said, an edge to her voice. ‘You can’t contaminate it. Plus you’ll need to be interviewed by a detective.’
Lily hesitated. If they swing some detectives onto it, she thought, they might find her mom quickly. ‘Okay then,’ she said.
They drove away down the same rutted dirt track Lily and her mom had driven on earlier that day, heading to the market as shafts of morning sunlight speared in through the dew-covered windscreen, chatting and laughing, looking forward to the market with such high hopes. It seemed so long ago. Like another lifetime. Lily turned and looked out the rear window at the farmhouse, shrouded in a mist glowing red from their tail-lights. She half expected to see her mom appear at the front door, waving at them to come back, yelling out that she’d fallen asleep and everything was okay.
But she didn’t appear.
Lily had a sudden overwhelming feeling that she would never see the farmhouse again, and that she was driving away from a life she would never return to. They rounded a bend and the farmhouse disappeared from view. She felt alone. Totally alone.
From a distant hilltop, Kritta watched through her binoculars as the cop car drove away from the farmhouse.
‘They took that suitcase,’ she said quietly to Bess, standing beside her. ‘Stupid of me. The woman came back to get it – there must be something real important inside.’
Bess shook her head. ‘Your job’s to get her and the girl, not their goddamn luggage.’
Kritta looked again through the glasses. She could see the silhouette of Lily sitting in the back of the patrol car as it slowly made its way down the dirt track to the front gate of the farm. Bess was right, of course, but if she delivered them both plus something extra, something vital that might be in that case, then not only would her life be spared, but she might also get advanced to the next level within the Golden Order. Right now though, she just needed the girl.
‘Come on,’ Kritta said, ‘long as they don’t put her into protective custody, we got a chance.’
They walked back to their bikes, then slowly threaded their way down the switchback, headlights off. Kritta watched the cruiser’s distant gun-barrel beams of light turn onto the road heading to the interstate. I’d better call the Hag, she thought. She’s not going to like this.
The Hag screeched into the phone. ‘What do you mean you don’t have her?’ She paced around her apartment, the lights of South Beach twinkling out beyond her balcony. Down below, a party around the pool had kicked up a gear, no doubt fuelled by fancy-coloured margaritas.
‘The cops got to her first,’ Kritta said quietly, her skin going cold.
‘Tell it to the Fallen Priest. Give him your pathetic little excuses. I would not wish to be you, little girl.’ The old woman slammed the phone back into the cradle.
She stood still, her beaded eyes darting fast in the darkness, wondering if she should pay her a visit, do the job herself. But travel over such a long distance now took an enormous toll on her energetically. It would take her days to recover, and during that time she would be vulnerable to attack. She did not yet know what forces the woman or her daughter might enlist against them.
A man guffawed down by the pool. A couple of women piggy-squealed along with him. The Hag walked out onto the balcony, looked over the railing. A plumpish middle-aged man, an accountant who lived on the ninth floor, was dancing lewdly by the pool, taking off his Hawaiian shirt and pretending to do a striptease. The women found this hysterical.
The Hag extended her bony arm, crossed her skeletal forefinger and middle finger, and pointed at the man. She then muttered an ancient curse – eerie words from an old forgotten language. The accountant suddenly grabbed at his face. One side of his body went limp. He crumpled to the ground, gurgling, his tongue protruding, saliva dribbling from his stricken mouth, an eye bulging, a leg twitching uncontrollably.
‘Oh my God,’ one of the women screamed, rushing to him. ‘For God’s sake someone call 911! I think he’s had a stroke.’
Everyone crowded around, gawking, while the retrenched secretary in 807 went and turned off the music. A hush fell over the group as they helplessly watched the man convulsing on the wet terracotta pavers by the pool, like a flapping fish in its death throes.
‘Good,’ the Hag said, smiling as she walked back into her apartment. ‘Now I will get some peace and quiet.’
He cleaned the blood off the altar. He used an old watering can. The hose didn’t reach inside the broken church. He sloshed the can and the blood flowed down into the dirt at his feet, mixing with the seeped blood of past sacrificial offerings.
Tonight he would eat the heart of the lamb. He would eat it raw, washed down with some home-brewed ale, a legacy from the Old Country. Really though, he didn’t need to eat. These past several hundred years, he only ate to define the days, mark the seasons, celebrate Samhain. And of course every month he ate at midnight on the rise of the new moon, like tonight, to honour his Master and Mistress, the Two Evil, to seek His and Her beneficence.
On special ceremonial sabbats, he roamed wider and brought back a young virgin of either gender, whatever the occasion required. The power released with the thrust of his silver dagger would rush through him like an electric free
base highball. His body would shake and tremble with the ecstasy of it all, the dying screams of his fresh naked offering filling his head like the finest operatic aria, taking him to a place of true transcendence. At that flickering moment of death he knew that he was connected straight through to his Lord and Lady, who together would laugh at the insignificance of the gift from such a humble servant as he.
He bundled the carcass of the lamb into a large industrial plastic bag, loaded it into the back of his black Lincoln Navigator, sliced open an exit in his unseen cone and drove down the leaf-strewn track away from the church.
He liked the church, and the old weed-infested graveyard in which he could hold ceremonies. Hidden in tangled backwoods in the far mountains of Missouri, it was suitably remote. Few people came to the abandoned place of worship to bother him. And those that did puzzled over their GPS devices and looked at their maps where the church should have been, but wasn’t.
He dumped the bag over the side of the rickety wooden bridge. Watched it hit icy cold swirling waters way below. It would wash up on a bank further downstream and someone would find it and maybe they would inform the animal welfare do-gooders, but probably not. People around these parts just got on with their lives.
With the human sacrifices, he was much more careful with his disposals. He had built an incinerator out the back of the church, and that worked just fine. Ashes to ashes. And after all, it was only appropriate that his offerings be consumed by flames.
Soon after he had arrived, he’d constructed the unseen cone around the church. It had taken him weeks to find and prepare the right ingredients, to do the complicated spellwork, then to lay out his circle with a thousand dead beetles as decreed in his Book of Shadows. But once done, it afforded him shelter. The church and the graveyard and the incinerator could no longer be seen, not even from NSA surveillance satellites. And if any police or investigators ever came snooping around, all they would find was a wooded hill and an empty patch of ground where the church had once stood.