Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  “Nell. What?”

  “Ummm. T. Laine tried to get in the pond. I didn’t. I held the baby and I didn’t get weirded out. I think I’m immune to the magical whatever-it-is that’s going on.”

  I could practically hear her mind ticking through the possibilities in the slice of silence between us. “That might keep your ass from getting fired. What do you want to do about it?”

  “I want to go talk to the contaminated people at the hospital. And if they can’t talk, then suss around a bit. See what I can learn.”

  There was more silence on the other end as JoJo worked things out. “You called me as second in command because Rick’s pissed at you and you think he’d say no just to put you in your place.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are sneaky. I like that in a woman. Go to the hospital. Talk to whoever will talk to you. Then go to their houses in the neighborhood and see what you can see. I’ll make it right with LaFleur.” The call ended. I put the cell on the seat of the truck and thought about what I was about to do. Then I pulled out and into traffic, heading to my next stop. When I remembered to breathe, I smelled pork, but it was a good smell. Far better than the stink of death that clung to me from the pond.

  * * *

  The location of the paranormal unit wasn’t listed anywhere on the website for the University of Tennessee Medical Center, and since I hadn’t made it there when I was a patient in the emergency department, I had no idea where it might be. I flashed my badge and ID to security at the main emergency entrance and was given printed directions to the paranormal unit, on the other side of the hospital campus.

  The paranormal unit wasn’t identified as such, for security precautions against paranormal haters and terrorists. It was half of a hallway, sectioned off from a cancer center, via locking doors and security cameras. I showed my ID, made sure my badge was visible, and asked questions that no one wanted to answer. Patient confidentiality, HIPAA rules, and hospital regs stymied me until someone banged on the windowed wall to a patient’s room and shouted that she wanted to talk to me. The nurse I was talking to ducked her head and said, “Sorry,” before she scuttled away like a dog with its tail between its legs.

  The woman in the room was dressed in a uni like PsyLED’s, and beyond her, partially visible behind a privacy curtain, was a patient in a bed. The window banger was a family member of one of the contaminated humans, I guessed. And ticked off, if the hammering and the nurse’s demeanor were any indication.

  Still pounding on the window as she stripped out of the white uni with its orange stripe, the woman left the room and caught my arm. I got just enough of a glimpse inside to see that the patient within was restrained to the bed and that she was restless, struggling weakly.

  The woman shook my arm. “What in God’s name are my family being held for?” she demanded, her voice hushed but carrying along the hallway.

  “Held?” The word sounded clueless, which I was. I wondered if she had been contaminated, some kind of magical psychotic break, and I pulled my arm free, backing away.

  “Under arrest?” she said, her voice rising. When I looked blank, she said, “In this hospital? Tied down? I’ve been trying all day to get my girls free and take them home to South Carolina, to a hospital where I can get some answers and decent treatment. They aren’t doing anything for my babies here.” She leaned in to me, her tear-filled eyes like daggers, and said, “I want them released to me right now, or charged for whatever crime they’re accused of committing.”

  I blinked and understood several things at once. One, no one had told the families about the paranormal part of the incident. They must be trying to keep it quiet. Two, I was the first person from PsyLED who had been on scene in the hospital. Three, we needed someone in authority to talk to the families, not me. Four, I shouldn’t have called JoJo. I should have asked Rick if it was okay for me to come here. And five, the media hadn’t figured out the sick families were connected to the goose pond deaths.

  “Oh,” I said, stalling. Needing verification, I asked, “No one has talked to you?”

  “No. Not to any of us family members. And we’re ready to go straight to the media if we don’t get answers soon.”

  “Ummm.” Soul. Soul was the spox, the spokesperson, the person who should be answering questions. But Soul had been attacked, had transformed and disappeared. I was pretty sure that Soul would have come here after the goose pond, but she had flown away, which wasn’t something I could say aloud. “No one’s under arrest.”

  “Then why—”

  “Quarantined.”

  That gave her pause. “For what?”

  “We aren’t sure yet.”

  Her tears had dried and her eyes narrowed at me in such a way as to make me need to assure her. “We really, really don’t know yet, but that’s why you have to wear the special white suits when you’re in contact with any patient. Truly, they are getting the very best care available.” That last part might be a lie, because I had no idea if another hospital had better paranormal units and better paranormal specialists than UTMC. But at the moment, assurance was as important as breaking down facts about hospitals.

  Comforting people hadn’t been a part of the training in Spook School, but it was big part of life in the church. If she had been a churchwoman, I’d have given her a hug and led her to a private place to talk. Instead I said, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  She scratched her fingers through her hair, making it stand up in a faded reddish halo. “Child, I’d kill for a cup.” Then, as if hearing her own words to a law enforcement officer, she said, “Not really. I mean not literally.”

  I smiled at her and said, “I understood. Let’s go to the nearest hospital cafeteria or hospital coffee shop. My treat.”

  “Let me tell the others that I have someone to talk to. Just a sec.” The middle-aged woman knocked on one door and then another, talking in hushed tones to family members inside. Then she led the way to the coffee shop nearest, where I got us coffees and we introduced ourselves to each other.

  The woman’s name was Dougie Howell, pronounced Dug-ee, which was odd but kinda cool. Dougie downed the strong, cheap coffee like she had spent a week in a desert without liquids. She was the mother and grandmother of three of the patients, the grandmother-in-law of two others, and while her hair had dulled down to a strawberry-blondish gray, she still had the take-charge-and-fight-to-the-death qualities of some redheaded churchwomen I knew.

  Most important to me, she was willing to talk. Her daughter’s name was Alisha Henri, and though she didn’t look old enough to be a grandmother in the regular world, Dougie had granddaughters: Kirsten Harrell and Sharon Sayegh. All three had been in Alisha’s house, along with one’s partner and the other’s husband. From Dougie, I learned that her daughter and granddaughters had been hit hard by the . . . the whatever this was. The two others—the ones not blood related—were, oddly, already asymptomatic, mobile, coherent, and demanding release. Dougie’s girls were in bad shape, and I wondered if the blood relationship might allow something in the paranormal energies access to them. I had studied blood demons in Spook School. If that was what this was, it was going to be a nasty piece of work.

  I bought her a second cup while she adapted to being out of her daughter’s room and back in reality. Dougie looked tired and terrified, but was the kind of woman who went to battle when frightened, instead of going into hiding—a warrior instead of a rabbit. When I placed the second paper cup of fresh coffee in front of her, she asked, “What’s wrong with my girls? Why is PsyLED interested in them? Why are you here?”

  I sighed. I really wished I hadn’t shown up at the hospital. “I’m here because fools rush in where angels fear to tread?” I said, making it a question. “Honestly there are several agencies involved in the case and I don’t know what we’re looking for or what we’ll learn. Not yet. We’re trying to rule out everything ri
ght now, from bacterial infection to ancient aliens.”

  “There aren’t really ancient aliens, are there?” she asked, her mouth and tone trying for levity when there was nothing amusing about her situation at all.

  I turned my paper coffee cup in a circle on the table and said ruefully, “I hope not, but the world is so crazy it might make better sense if there were.” Dougie lifted her eyebrows at me and I grinned at her. “Sure. Ancient aliens. Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. And the chupacabra. Why not?”

  She chuckled. “All of those here in Knoxville? Aren’t we lucky.”

  I refrained from humming spooky music, a reaction that came from Spook School but would have been totally inappropriate. Instead I said, “Can you tell me about your daughter and granddaughters?”

  “The girls are in town for a Thanksgiving vacation. My house is too small, so they stayed with Alisha, in their old bedrooms. We’re going to have Thanksgiving togeth—” She stopped, and appeared to be revising the big holiday plans. Her eyes filled with tears again, but she licked her lips, which were badly chapped, took a slow breath, and started over. “The plan was to have Thanksgiving dinner together at Alisha’s. The girls and their spouses got in yesterday evening. I saw them all over dessert, around seven last night. I went home about nine. There was a game on and the spouses had gone upstairs to watch. Alisha, Kirsten, and Sharon were still sitting at the kitchen table over a glass of wine.” Dougie was holding the cup of coffee like a lifeline, her eyes staring into a distance that was suddenly full of uncertainty.

  I said, “I’m on my way to Alisha’s house. Is there anything I should know? Anything you can tell me about what was going on with them in the hours before the . . . event?”

  “Warrant?”

  “The FBI probably already has one,” I said gently. “I’ll just be there to do a little paranormal scouting around.”

  “They’re in her house? Who? Alisha would hate that.”

  “Probably everyone. And just a word to the wise: the house will be a shambles when they finish.”

  Dougie heaved out a breath that sounded as if it had been held too long. “God. This is a nightmare.” She finished off the second cup of coffee and pushed herself away from the table. “Would you lock up when they’re done? And call me with what you find?”

  “I can call. Locking up depends on what’s happening when I leave the house. But I can promise to keep you in the loop to the best of my ability and security clearance level.”

  Dougie firmed her shoulders and said, “In other words, you may never know what the problem is, any more than I might.” I turned my palm up in a that’s-the-way-things-are-sometimes gesture. She rocked her head on her neck, communicating frustration and disappointment and a need to stretch or run or hit something. “Go do whatever you want. Just find me some answers, okay?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  * * *

  On the way, I called Rick and confessed that I had stopped at the hospital—with JoJo’s permission. He wasn’t happy, made some comments about me going behind his back, rodeoing again, but he ended up agreeing that I should go to Alisha’s house and “initiate a prelim eval. Occam just got there. Meet him. He has lead.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not just okay, Nell. This is your first case. You are not lead on this. Understand? You have special talents that make you important to PsyLED, but you are on probationary status. You work with a team, not solo. You will run things by me before you do them. Everything. By me.”

  I thought it through for a moment that stretched too long before saying, “Copy that. How’s Soul?”

  Rick made a hunh noise, followed by his own silence. “Follow orders.” He hung up.

  I wasn’t sure what point I had made, but it must have been a good one.

  * * *

  The neighborhood streets had been cordoned off to the public, the residents had been evacuated, and the media was out in force at the site of what was being called a “possible viral outbreak of unknown origin.” I had to park two blocks away, but managed to snag a parking spot near Occam’s sporty car. My old Chevy C10 looked out of place, and I dug in my glove box for the small ID card to set in my window to keep from being towed, and picked up the P 2.0. By the time I opened the door, Occam was there, with a quiet “Nell, sugar. This way.”

  He guided me away from the media vans and the telescopic lenses and the crowd of onlookers, between two houses, and along a back fence, to the house Rick had designated as Point A. I paused to check the GPS and knew it wasn’t Alisha’s home, and I almost followed Occam inside the one-story house, where he was already dressing in one of the antispell 3PE unis. But the house looked crowded and intense, full of law enforcement personnel: FBI CSI, PsyCSI, uniformed cops, plainclothes detectives, and special agents, all wanting to get a look at the scene. Car-wreck rubberneckers had nothing on law enforcement officers wanting to get in on something interesting.

  But the victims of the MED had been discovered in their yards. I motioned to Occam, pointing to myself and then in a circular motion around me, saying that I’d stay outside and look around. He motioned back, bending and placing his palm flat on the ground, then stood and gave me a thumbs-down with both hands, telling me not to put my hand on the ground for a read. I laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. He tossed a uni off the porch in my general direction and disappeared inside.

  With the uni draped over a shoulder and the P 2.0 under the same arm, I wandered. The lawn was uninteresting, with boring landscaping plants, recently trimmed and shaped, a fake wishing well, some half-hidden garden gnomes, and dozens of mums. There was also a floorless tent set up on the front lawn and inside were three techs, standing along the walls, each with a handheld psy-meter 1.0, each dressed in a white uni with the ugly orange stripe across the chest.

  I stopped outside the door, leaned in, flipped my jacket open to show my badge and held up my ID. I said, “Hi. I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram, with PsyLED.”

  I stopped. I had never identified myself that way before. The words sent an electric thrill through me, and I grinned uncontrollably, too wide, too excited. I forced my mouth to neutral, ducked my head in embarrassment, and extended the device in my hand. “I have a psy-meter 2.0. Can I do a reading?”

  The responses were varied: “Holy shit, yes.” “Hi, Nell.” And “Thank God, I thought you guys would never get here. Where’s your uni?”

  I gave a quick shrug and pulled the uni out where they could see it. “Got one. I measured the goose pond. I wanted to measure the newest sites too.”

  “Goose pond,” a female tech repeated. “I hear there’s bodies there.”

  “Lots,” I said, instantly seeing the bodies in the pond. On the ground. My chest went tight for a moment. “It was pretty bad.” And I realized that I had put my feelings on hold, my thinking about the deaths on hold. Stuffed it all back into some dusky, nameless part of my mind, to deal with later. Much later. Not now.

  “Get dressed out and get in here,” she said. “I’m Karen Lynne, FBI CSI, and this is my partner, Amanda Gray. We’re dying to know what’s going on.”

  I lifted a hand in a half wave.

  The man said, “I’m Special Agent Kevin Riley, FBI. I’m not lead, but I’m the only one here who thinks the yard is just as important as the house.”

  “Of course it is,” I said, agreeing. “Lemme get outfitted.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t like it was portrayed on TV, all solemn and tense or, conversely, full of wisecracking. It was all about the evidence we had seen and cataloged, the tech we were using, and about the victims and what they had in common—which was nothing but the location and bloodlines. It was sharing info, which was unusual in law enforcement, because every agency and every well-established agent wanted the collar, wanted any arrest to be listed under their name and badge number, wanted to be the one on camera at a news conferen
ce. But it turned out that we were all newbies, probies, too excited being “on the job,” too eager learning and doing to hoard info and data. And because there were no bodies here, we were having too much fun. Not something that TV showed, that the job could be fun. And maybe I needed this after the pond and the hospital.

  I showed them the psy-meter 2.0, took readings in the tent and outside in the rest of the front yard, the driveway, and the backyard. I listened to the scuttlebutt that they had overheard from the agents inside. They told me about the violent scene inside that I hadn’t heard about until now. There were two bodies inside the house, two twentysomethings, probably killed by the father, who had been naked in the front yard, walking with the rest of his family, covered in blood spatter. The two young men had died from blunt force trauma. I was glad I was outside, not in the house with Occam.

  We chatted. I got help setting up a grid in the tent and a bigger one in the yard. I took measurements and they searched for physical evidence.

  Just before I finished working up the grounds, I noticed something about the landscaping that had escaped detection on first glance. Something on the plants.

  It was a coating of black mold, crawling up the exposed roots and larger stems of several well-pruned boxwoods, planted between the front porch and the evidence tent. The mold discoloration stopped there, but the shrubs didn’t look like they had been treated, so it was likely to spread. Oddly there was no evidence of mold on the boxwoods in the backyard or the other plants or trees in the yard. And it didn’t resemble black knot, slime flux, or sooty mold. It was slimy in places, with little antennae-like things in other places, and there were things like fruiting bodies lifting on the slick but pebbled surface. Maybe some form of fungal mycelia, not that I knew much about molds. I never got them like this on my land except on deadwood—fallen limbs or trees, decaying in the shadows. Molds were necessary in decay, and some symbiotic relationships that helped both plants, but there was no decay here, at least aboveground, and this didn’t look beneficial to the host plant. Fungal diseases can affect roots, leaves, needles, trunks, and vascular systems of living trees and shrubs. They were a sign that something else was amiss in the environment: the soil, or the water.