From a Whisper to a Scream

by Charles de Lint

  “Well, how do you get a loa?” Jim asked.

  “You do not get one,” Ti Beau said with just a slight irritation in her voice. “There are ceremonies and initiations to undergo before you invite a loa to possess you.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “I know what you are driving at,” she said, “but we have neither the time nor do you have the proper respect for you to invite a loa to come to you. Such a possession isn’t like a suit of clothes that you may take on or off, or experiment with in various styles.”

  “Still,” Jim began, but then the doorbell rang, interrupting them.

  At the door Jim found Cindy standing in the hallway.

  “Hi, Jim,” she said. “I hope we’re not bothering you. It’s just …”

  Her voice trailed off when she saw Ti Beau sitting on the sofa.

  “It’s not what you think,” Jim said at the quick flash of disappointment he saw in her eyes. “Her name’s Ti Beau and she’s just helping me with …”

  His own voice trailed off as he noticed Cindy’s companion. Ti Beau was also looking at the girl with the spiked black hair who stood behind Cindy.

  “This changes everything,” the mambo said softly.

  SEVENTEEN

  Angie still wasn’t home by the time Thomas returned to their apartment. He stood in the center of the living room, jacket in hand, and looked around himself as though seeing the familiar room for the first time. The apartment was a far cry from the reserve. The room’s lines were clean, the furnishings uncluttered. It held a mixture of old and new, glass and wood, leather sofa and a morris chair, high-end stereo and Angie’s old acoustic guitar, contemporary prints and native art.

  It was a far cry as well from most cops’ apartments he’d been in, and he wondered, not for the first time, how he’d come to be here. For all its seeming contradictions, the room exuded calm. But the weight of the Slasher case and the unspoken reproach in his brother’s eyes, combined with the drive back into the city, had brought all his tension back. He felt as if he were sleepwalking—stretched tight as a drawn bowstring and so beat he could barely keep to his feet. Did he even belong in a place like this?

  It was getting to be too much, he realized. The case, his brother’s need, the city. And Angie. It was so late. Where could she be at this time of night?

  Don’t think about it, he told himself. You’ll just make yourself more crazy.

  But it was hard.

  He didn’t think he’d get to sleep, but no sooner did his head hit the pillow than he was gone.

  When the alarm woke him next morning, Angie was lying next to him. He tried to get out of bed without waking her, but she turned to look at him with a sleepy gaze as soon as he shifted his weight.

  “Do you have to go?” she asked.

  Thomas nodded.

  She didn’t say anything, but then she didn’t have to. Normally they made time for each other—not because they felt they had to, but because they wanted to. It was what made the marriage work. They were friends as much as lovers.

  “I … I’m thinking of quitting,” Thomas said.

  Angie sat up against the headboard, pulling the sheets up around her. She still looked half-asleep.

  “The case?” she asked.

  Thomas shook his head. “No, the job.”

  That brought her completely awake. The surprise in her features mirrored Thomas’s own. He hadn’t known he was going to say that himself until the words came out—seemingly of their own accord.

  Angie put a hand on his arm. “Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I stayed late at Brenda’s because I was upset, but I should have come home and talked it out with you. I know what kind of pressure this case has been putting on you. It’s just—”

  “It’s not only because of us,” Thomas said.

  God knew he loved his job, but the more he thought of quitting, the more right it felt.

  “Though I think that’s a large part of it,” he went on. “I won’t deny it. It’s …” He sighed. “I don’t think I’m making the difference I thought I would. I thought that when I made detective it would change things, but it just seems to get worse. People are still dying out there. I see things on the job that I can’t believe people are capable of doing to each other, but it goes on, every day, day after day.”

  “But you and Frank …”

  “I know,” Thomas said. “We’ve got a damn good conviction record, but we’re not even scratching the surface.”

  “And if you weren’t there?” Angie asked.

  Thomas just shrugged. Did they really make that much of a difference? How much could just two cops, no matter how well-intentioned, really do?

  He rubbed his face. His skin felt too tight—swollen from sleep—but he could’ve slept straight through the day and still not gotten enough.

  Angie was still regarding him, the worry plain in her eyes.

  “What happened last night?” she asked. “What did your brother say to you?”

  “It’s nothing John did or said.”

  He told her about his meeting with Whiteduck and his brother.

  “Then what is it?” Angie asked. “Did you change your mind?”

  “About being band chief? No. It’s just … I can’t put it into words, Angie. It’s like I’ve caught a kind of … of malaise.” It was an odd choice of a word for him, but it summed things up totally. “And now that it’s got hold of me, it won’t go away.”

  Angie started to say something, but then the phone rang. Thomas picked it up. His chest felt even tighter than before, as though subconsciously, he already knew it wasn’t going to be good.

  “We’ve got a problem,” his partner told him over the line. “The Slasher was out again last night.”

  “But that’s—”

  Impossible, Thomas had been about to say. Because the spirit could only manifest in this world on his death night.

  Jesus, he thought. Was he that wired into the things Papa Jo-el and his brother had been telling him?

  “That’s what?” Frank asked.

  “Nothing. Has the victim been IDed yet?”

  “Try victims,” Frank replied. “As in more than one. He killed three blacks in the Tombs last night: Papa Jo-el and a couple of his bodyguards—the Etienne brothers. Seems the Slasher caught them in the middle of some kind of ritual.”

  “How do they know it was the Slasher?”

  “Same MO. That woman in the ME’s office—what’s her name?”

  “Wilkes.”

  “Yeah. Wilkes said you’d know what she’s talking about. This has got to do with the perp getting stronger each time he kills, right?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  Frank made an affirmative grunt. “Looking at the body of the Wilson girl, I can see where she’s coming from.”

  “Where are you?” Thomas asked.

  “Home. The Loot’s going to meet us at the 9th—that’s your old stomping grounds, isn’t it?”

  His old stomping grounds, Thomas thought. The 9th Precinct included all those blighted lots and empty blocks of the Tombs. It was in there, smack in the middle of those dead lands, that he’d killed a man in the line of duty. It was funny, but he hadn’t thought about that in a long time. That the man had deserved to die had never made Thomas feel any better about it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “What was Papa Jo-el doing out there?”

  “Brewer says there was voodoo shit lying all around,” Frank said. He paused for a moment, then added. “Like I said, we’re supposed to meet him at the 9th. Do you want me to pick you up, or will you meet us there?”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  When he hung up, he found Angie looking at him in sympathy.

  “He struck again?” she asked. There was no need to say who “he” was.

  Thomas nodded. “In the Tombs this time. Three black men. One of them was a voodoo priest, the other two his bodyguards.” He rubbed his palms against his face, then look
ed at her. “Do you see what I mean? It just gets worse.”

  “You can’t just quit,” she told him. “That’s not who you are. See this thing through and then make your decision.”

  “I …”

  What could he tell her? Thomas thought. His head was filled with wild ideas: evil spirits and dead men seeking vengeance or whatever it was that the Slasher was after. But it was all just bullshit, wasn’t it?

  Seems the Slasher caught them in the middle of some kind of ritual.

  What the hell was that supposed to mean?

  There was voodoo shit lying all around.

  What was Papa Jo-el doing out in the Tombs at that time of night—calling up spirits? Is that what happened? Had he called up the Slasher’s spirit—maybe planning to deal with him as he’d intimated he could yesterday afternoon—only the whole deal backfired on him and he got killed instead?

  “Tom?”

  He focused on his name, using it to draw him out of the spinning eddies of stray thoughts that were starting to give him a sense of vertigo.

  “Are you all right?” Angie asked.

  No, he wasn’t even close to all right, but he found a weak smile and nodded. “Yeah. Just a little tired, that’s all. But I think you’re right; I have to see this thing through before I make any major decisions.”

  She followed him into the bathroom and leaned against the doorjamb while he washed up.

  “You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “I’m always careful,” Thomas said. “Because I know I’ve got you to come home to.”

  She stepped closer and gave him a hug, ignoring the soap on his cheeks.

  “I was such a shit last night,” she said.

  Thomas held her close, wishing the day would just go away and leave them alone. But it wouldn’t. Out there, beyond the safe comfort of their apartment, shit happened. And he had to deal with it.

  Sighing, he gave her a final squeeze, then turned back to the sink.

  “I’ll get you some breakfast,” Angie said.

  Mickey Flynn wasn’t particularly happy about having to shift his bulk out of bed this early in the morning. He was even less happy with the crap Billy Ryan was trying to lay on him.

  They sat in the main suite of Mickey’s penthouse. The remains of Mickey’s breakfast lay on the glass coffee table between them. All Ryan had had was some coffee and about a hundred cigarettes.

  “So some jigs got themselves killed,” Mickey said. “What’s it to us?”

  “I’m telling you, Mickey, the thing that killed them wasn’t even fucking human.”

  Mickey studied his lieutenant with a touch of concern—not so much for Ryan himself, as for what it would mean to him if Ryan really was losing it. Ryan looked like he was wired: chain-smoking, twitching in his chair. What the fuck was he on anyway? And when did Ryan start sampling the merchandise?

  “You know what you sound like?” Mickey asked, keeping his voice mild.

  “I know what I fucking sound like,” Ryan said. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the one he was smoking, then crushed the butt in the ashtray. “I sound like a goddamn lunatic, is what I sound like. But I was there, Mickey. I saw it happen.”

  “Some … what do you call it? Some ghost killed Papa Jo-el and the Etienne brothers. He just stepped right up to them, cut ’em up, and then took off.”

  “Vanished.”

  “Don’t give me any of this fucking ‘vanished’ crap. Jesus, Billy. You sound so full of shit, I swear your eyes’re turning brown.”

  Those pale blue eyes Mickey had referred to narrowed dangerously.

  “Look,” Ryan said. “You asked me to look into this Slasher business, so that’s what I did. You don’t like what I found, what am I supposed to do?”

  Mickey shrugged expansively. “I’m just saying I find it hard to buy.” He paused, then leaned forward. “What the fuck are you on, Billy?”

  “That’s it?” Ryan said. “You think I’m popping pills, maybe doing a few too many lines?”

  “I think you’re fucked up, is what I think.”

  “You wanted me to deal with it, so—”

  Mickey cut him off. “So deal with it.”

  For a long moment the two men stared at each other. Slowly Ryan reached behind his back, under his jacket. When his hand came back out it was holding his .38. He pointed the weapon at Mickey.

  “Easy now,” Mickey said.

  Jesus, he thought. What a fucking way to start the day. First Ryan shows up, doped to the gills, and now he’s waving a piece around like he can scare me into believing his shit.

  “Give me the gun, Billy,” he added.

  He never thought for a moment that Billy would actually shoot. There just weren’t the percentages in it for Billy,

  The first bullet took him by surprise. It hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer, driving his hulk back into the couch. The pain was more than he thought it’d be, but then he’d always been on the firing end of a gun. He’d never been the victim.

  “Jes—” he began.

  The second bullet tore into his cheek, glanced off the bone and took out his right eye along with half the temple. He was dead before his enormous body rolled off the couch and thudded onto the floor.

  “You see?” Ryan said. “I’m dealing with it, Mickey.”

  He was breathing heavily. The whispering voice in his head whined like a buzz saw. He’d risen to his feet, swaying where he stood. He kept the muzzle of the .38 pointed at Mickey’s inert corpse for long minutes, then slowly lowered his arm. He sat down again. Laying the .38 down on the glass coffee table, he shook another cigarette free from the pack and lit it with a shaking hand.

  There’d been a kind of gauze across his mind ever since he’d seen Papa Jo-el die. He didn’t know what he’d hoped to gain by coming to Mickey and telling him about what he’d seen. He’d known what Mickey’s reaction would be. Christ, someone came to him with a story like he had to tell and he’d be showing the poor fuck out the door, too.

  Except he knew that what he’d seen was real. And if it was real, then that changed everything. It meant you couldn’t trust anything to be the way you’d always expected it to be.

  The whisper in his mind seemed to be laughing at him.

  “Fuck you, too,” he said.

  All Mickey’d had to do was listen with a sympathetic ear. All Mickey’d had to do was treat him with a little respect—allow Ryan the benefit of the doubt—and he wouldn’t be dead. It was just that simple. Ryan knew he had to talk to someone about it—someone had to believe him—or he was going to go right out of his mind.

  He looked down at his boss’s corpse.

  What the fuck was he thinking? he thought. Mrs. Ryan’s boy was already a little too far gone as it was.

  He closed his eyes and all he could see was that … thing killing Papa Jo-el and his boys. They were physically dead, but there was a kind of death in him, too. An emptiness filled only by the sound of a midnight wind that whispered across the flat wasteland that his mind had become.

  He focused on Mickey’s corpse again and took a long drag from his cigarette.

  Okay, he told himself. You’re on the edge. Just stay cool. Don’t move, don’t step off.

  Whispering laughter woke a pain behind his eyes.

  The first thing to do was get rid of Mickey’s corpse. He’d cut it up into a hundred little pieces and scatter them all over hell and back again. No body, no crime.

  See, Mickey? I learned real quick.

  Then he was going back to the Tombs, going back with a fucking payload of weapons and see if he couldn’t shake that ghost down. Because he knew that if he didn’t, he was never going to get its fucking voice out of his head.

  Okay. Get rid of the body, load up a car with little bits of Mickey Flynn, all bite-sized and ready for the rats in the Tombs. Get himself some heavy artillery. And then what?

  Then he’d get himself some hoodoo worker to call that ghost up for him. Call it up and
get it the fuck out of his head.

  He finished his cigarette and smoked another. Finally he got up. He dragged Mickey’s body into the bathroom and manhandled the corpse into the tub. On the way to the kitchen for a butcher’s knife and the small saw he knew Mickey kept in a toolbox under the sink, he paused to look at the couch. Messy. He’d have to get rid of the cushions and carpet, too.

  He looked up at the ceiling. There was a bullet hole in it just above the sofa. He’d have to dig the slug out—and find the other one, which’d be in the sofa if it wasn’t still stuck in Mickey’s fat corpse.

  He pushed his palms against his temples, trying to stem the ache that was burning back in behind his eyes.

  Fuck this, he thought. Get moving. Get doing. Don’t even think about it.

  But the whole time he worked on Mickey’s body, all he could think of was that monster last night, that killing machine. And whispering in his head was a sound like a midnight wind, sharp and thin, a mean, cutting wind, whining through the city like it was looking for him.

  Viewing Papa Jo-el’s corpse before it was taken away, Thomas felt an unaccountable sympathy for the man. It wasn’t that Thomas had liked him—he hadn’t even respected the little houngan. But Papa Jo-el hadn’t deserved to die like this. Nobody deserved to die like this.

  Detectives from the 9th were in charge of the case. The police cruisers, ambulances, media vans, and the men and women who’d come in them were the only sign of movement or color in all the endless blocks of abandoned buildings and lots that surrounded the intersection where the bodies had been discovered. A slate gray sky that promised rain only added to the sense of desolation.

  Thomas found himself remembering another crime scene in the Tombs, some two years back. The circus was much the same—cops and media crawling all over everything; he was the one playing a different role then.

  It wasn’t a good memory.

  Thomas had assumed that Brewer would have Frank and him take over the investigation, but once they’d viewed the crime scene, the lieutenant took them aside, leaving the men from the 9th to continue the investigation on their own.

  “What do you think?” Brewer asked.