Krewe of Hunters, Volume 1: Phantom Evil ; Heart of Evil ; Sacred Evil ; The Evil Inside

by Heather Graham

  “Then?” Will began.

  “I’m saying that no one goes to the basement alone. I’m saying that there may be some kind of—some kind of something in this house. I think that Angela is our catalyst, and that we need to watch out for her.” He stared at Angela. “And what did you see?”

  She looked straight at him. “Light and darkness. Shadows moving. Maybe my mind was playing tricks. They seemed to take the form of people. Something happened, but in truth? I don’t know exactly what.”

  “And you’re all right?” he pursued.

  “Absolutely fine,” she assured him.

  “So, what do you think?” Jenna asked him.

  “I think that we may well find strange phenomena in this house,” Angela said, looking at him earnestly. “There’s history here. History leads to many things—like skeletons in the ground in the basement. As many times as this house has been redone, I wouldn’t doubt that a psychotic killer like Madden C. Newton might have found a few other hiding places for his victims. There could be more skeletons to be found. Do unusual and unexplainable things happen? Yes. Did a ghost kill Regina Holloway? No. In my experience, spirits remain behind to help the living—not murder them. I think someone human had something to do with that. Does it all combine with the house? Perhaps. That’s why we’re here. We’re investigating. Any other questions?”

  They were all staring at him. It wasn’t with malice. They were eagerly awaiting his answer to Angela’s question.

  “No,” Jackson said. “No questions. We’ve barely brushed the surface here, but we have a great deal more to go on than we did when we got here. First, Senator Holloway, despite his squeaky-clean image and the fact that we believe he did love his wife, was most probably having an affair—one that was well covered up by his staff, if they were aware. A complete cover-up.”

  Angela stared back at him, surprised. It seemed he had almost forgotten what had gone on in the house, and what they had caught on film. His sudden turnabout was a little disconcerting.

  “The affair was most probably with his secretary,” Jackson continued. “We know that everyone pretty much hates Martin DuPre, and that Regina Holloway was standing between the chauffeur, Grable Haines, and a loan from the senator to pay his gambling debts—a loan that he has now received. And we know that the bodyguard, Blake Conroy, killed a man when he was young and has a sealed juvenile record. Oh, and it also looks as if the Church of Christ Arisen is one man’s method of acquiring young women as sex slaves. Was that person really Martin DuPre—or was the senator using Martin DuPre to get to young women? One way or another, the people around the senator are involved in the organizations he supposedly hates, and we need to find out how and why—if the senator is aware, or if he isn’t. Personally, I think the Church of Christ Arisen is a slimy cult created for a few men’s benefit, but how it could fit into a murder at this house is something I’m not beginning to see yet, nor do I see the Aryans finding a way to sneak into the house—or for having a motive for murder, but we won’t let them out of it yet, since those are the two main groups against the senator. There we stand. Putting it all together is what we’re here to do. And along that line—” he turned and stared at Angela “—you and I are going to dinner,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about the rest of us. We’ll just eat sandwiches,” Jenna said lightly. Jackson ignored her. He was still looking at Angela. He had been so matter-of-fact about the real and factual information he had acquired that day.

  He hadn’t denied them all, but neither had he seemed to take their findings as much that was important. They had something on film. They really had something on film, and she believed that even the most skeptical scientist of all time would have difficulty explaining it all away.

  “Something did happen, Jackson,” she said.

  He just nodded.

  He knew there was more, she thought. He knew.

  He intended to interrogate her, she was certain.

  “Dinner?” he asked politely.

  “You’re the boss,” she reminded him.

  “Good, we’ll head out fifteen minutes, say? I want to take a run by the museum on Royal Street, too—and see if they have anything on the house. And you,” he said, and turned at last to Jenna. “I think you might want to go out. You and Jake are just about as white as the newly driven snow. I noticed a billboard while we were out today. The Aryans are having a meeting in a rental hall over on Carondelet Street tonight. I think you two should attend.”

  “What? Not me?” Whitney teased.

  “Apparently, he’s not sending me, either,” Will said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, your assignment will be really exciting,” Jackson teased in return.

  “Oh?” Will said, sounding dubious.

  “You’re going to go and watch the comings and goings at the Church of Christ Arisen.”

  “Isn’t that almost like sending us to the Aryans meeting? Can’t wait,” Whitney asked.

  Jackson grinned. “Almost, but not quite.” He turned away, obviously intending to head upstairs to his bedroom. He started down the hall to take the middle staircase, but came back. “Keep the cameras running. And remember, no one in the basement alone. And, for that matter, no one in the house alone. All right? Everyone with me?”

  They all nodded, and he started back down the hall, whistling.

  When he was gone, Whitney said, “I don’t care what living people might have been involved, there is something in this house.”

  Jenna spoke up suddenly. “I know what you saw, Angela. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen it in the hospital. I’ve seen the light. Somehow, you released a lot of those people. They’ve moved on. That’s what the light was. They’ve moved on to heaven or whatever one might call the phase we reach after we’ve died in this physical life.” She stopped, looking as if she was hesitant about seeing more.

  “I’d like a drink,” Will said. “Anyone with me?”

  They headed to the kitchen, Jake joining them. For a minute, they were all silent, except for Will, who was delving into the refrigerator and sorting out who wanted what. Angela was going to ask for iced tea, but she was uneasy about what had happened, and uneasy about going to dinner with Jackson. She opted for a beer, as did the others. She tried to sip it, and drained half the bottle in a single swallow.

  Jake was looking at her sympathetically. “Don’t look like that—kid,” he teased. “He’s really not out to put you through the nth degree.”

  “Huh?” she looked at him.

  “He’s following Martin DuPre,” Jake explained. “DuPre’s got some fancy dinner tonight.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s good,” she said.

  The five of them wound up gathering around the table; it was a nice moment—a strange moment of bonding. “Jenna, go on,” Angela said.

  She took a long swallow of her beer. “I had a patient one time, a really nice old man named Jeter Miller. He had cancer, and he was dying, but one day, he went into cardiac arrest. The doctors worked on him, but he died. I had been his nurse. He’d been such a nice old fellow and he might have had six months, maybe a year, to go—I was sorry. Well, I wound up in the hospital morgue with some paperwork the night of the day when he had died, and I happened to be alone in the fridge—that’s what we called the body storage—when he gripped my hand. I can tell you, I was so terrified that my scream came out as a squeak.” She paused, taking a deep breath.

  “He wasn’t really dead?” Will asked.

  “Oh, no. He was dead. And don’t stare at me like that. I don’t share this story often,” Jenna said.

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “I didn’t mean to stare at you in any way that wasn’t full of trust and sympathy, believe me.”

  “What then?” Angela prompted her.

  “He just wanted to talk to me. He said that his business partner had messed with his IV, bringing on the heart attack. The man had killed him to keep Jeter from telling his son—from whom he’d been estranged until recently—abou
t the will that left his half of the business to him. To make a long story short, there wouldn’t have been an autopsy because he was a stage-4 cancer patient and he had died in the hospital. I started making a squawk about the situation, there was an autopsy, and it was proven that the partner had poisoned the IV. I went back down to the morgue, thinking that I’d been crazy the first time, but that I was going to tell the corpse that everything was okay, and he thanked me with tears in his eyes, and told me that he’d just been waiting to thank me, and then…well, I saw light. I saw light the way that we saw it today. So, Angela, maybe by freeing Mr. Petti when you found his skeleton beneath the floor, you let them all go where they needed to be.”

  “Thank you,” Angela said. She reached across the table and squeezed Jenna’s hand.

  Jenna took another very long swallow of beer. “And now, you all think I’m crazy.”

  “None of us, honey!” Whitney said, lifting her beer. “To us,” she said softly. “The ghost-files team. The Krewe of Hunters. Or, whatever they want to call us.”

  “The Krewe of Hunters? I like it,” Will grinned, lifting his beer bottle as well. “Indeed, to us. And a sworn promise. None of us will ever think the others are crazy, and we won’t be afraid that the others think we’re crazy. We all know that we’re delightfully different, and that’s that!”

  They clinked bottles.

  “What do we think about Jackson?” Jake asked. “What do we think he thinks?”

  “He thinks he’s boss,” Angela said.

  “He is the boss,” Jake punctuated his remark with a chug.

  “Technically, Adam Harrison is the boss,” Angela corrected.

  “Whatever, he’s in charge of the team,” Jake said.

  “He’s a good guy,” Will said. “And we shouldn’t be lying or hiding things from him. He isn’t saying that it can’t be—he’s just saying, prove it.”

  Angela stood up. “I’m going to get ready for dinner,” she said. “Have fun storming the castle, everyone.”

  She turned and started out of the room. Whitney tossed a cardboard coaster at her. “If it’s a really fancy place, bring us all doggie bags!”

  Angela turned back to her, laughing. “Okay, maybe I came out ahead tonight. Maybe not… Time will tell,” she said.

  She left them sitting in the kitchen, grateful for the friendships she seemed to be forging with them.

  Up in her room, she paused. The door that separated her room from Jackson’s was not closed tight, but it was closed. He evidently wanted his privacy.

  Prime time, Angela thought.

  Yes.

  Dusk descending again, and it was that time that Regina had died, and a time when it seemed that the past liked to replay, almost like a play, but sometimes, the characters changed the lines. She had to be crazy, she decided. She had been terrified in the basement that afternoon—it had just been for split seconds really. Then Will had come down, and the world had begun spinning back to normal again.

  What would have happened if she hadn’t left the basement?

  She didn’t know. She hadn’t been afraid of the manifestation she had seen that had appeared as the strange light in the film. Not at all. But she had felt that there had been something behind her. Something evil. Something ready to pounce on her.

  Ghosts didn’t pounce. They didn’t have much physical power. Ghosts did exist in this house. Maybe Jackson knew it, and maybe he was right that a real, living, flesh-and-blood human with strength had to be involved as well.

  She sat on the bed, half closing her eyes. “Annabelle? Percy?” she called softly.

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then, in her mind’s eye or in real life, the little boy appeared. A moment later, she saw his sister peeping out from behind him.

  They weren’t real. They weren’t solid. She could see the wall behind them.

  But they were there.

  “Please, miss, he’s a very bad man,” Percy said to her.

  “You mean Mr. Newton? Madden C. Newton. He was terribly cruel to you,” Angela said.

  Percy winced. He lowered his head, and then nodded. Then he looked up at her again. “But they keep coming. They come to this house, and something happens, because he gets into their minds, I think.”

  “He’s a very bad man,” Annabelle said, still clinging to her brother.

  “He was a bad man,” Angela said. “But you were very good children. There is a better place for you, where you can find your parents.”

  “No,” Percy said, looking at her gravely. “I have to stay. I tried to help the lady. But she didn’t see me, and she saw what they wanted her to see. She couldn’t hear me, but the bad man made pictures with the light, and she saw what he wanted her to see.”

  “Percy, I don’t understand. What bad man?”

  “He knows the house. He has come to the house. He came when the nice lady lived here. I wanted to help her. I tried to help her. She couldn’t see me. She saw what he wanted her to see,” Percy said.

  “Angela!” There was a tap on the dividing door. It opened, and Jackson was standing there, impossibly tall and lean and solid and alive.

  She looked at Percy and Annabelle, who faded away.

  She turned back to Jackson, worried that he would have heard her conversation and become certain that she talked to herself.

  But Jackson’s keen, dark blue eyes were riveted on the spot where the children had been standing.

  He had seen them, she thought. He had seen the children!

  But he looked at her then and said casually, “Ready to go?”

  “I just need a minute to change my clothes,” she said, and closed the door between them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Angela walked along beside Jackson in silence, wondering just how they appeared to others, she so blond, and he so dark.

  It was a beautiful season to walk in the city of New Orleans. A night with a soft breeze and enough warmth to make that breeze like the soft, comfortable touch of a warm and gentle hand.

  But one of her favorite things about the city was the variety of people and colors to be found there, nationalities and backgrounds all mixed up to produce the most interesting and handsome human beings.

  She didn’t ask Jackson if he had seen the children in the room. If and when he wanted to say something to her, he would.

  He seemed distracted as they walked, and still, he looked at her now and then, as if he remembered she had been in a dangerous position, and the fact didn’t please him.

  “Jackson?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ve had strange experiences. I know you have. Anyone that Adam brought into this has had some kind of—strange experience.”

  He looked down at her. She thought that he would instantly deny her. But he didn’t. “Dreams,” he said. “But dreams may simply be projections of our minds, utilizing what we know and making sense out of it.”

  “All right. So…?”

  “All right—I’ll tell you this.” He looked pained for a minute. “I thought I saw one of my coworkers, Sally. She came to me in a dream and told me where the murderer was holed up. I made it there in time to save two lives, but found…well, that Sally had died. It shook me up pretty badly, but I know how Adam Harrison knew about it. He likely wondered how I’d gotten there, either through a brilliant burst of insight, or something that was paranormal. And I don’t know which myself at times, really.”

  “You’re still a skeptic.”

  He hesitated. “I believe in God, or a supreme being, and I believe our role in life is to live with kindness to others, and I believe monsters should be brought down. Maybe I do believe in something beyond, but I’ve also seen enough fakers, quacks, and criminals to remain a skeptic. Okay?”

  She lowered her head and smiled. It was actually quite a lot from him.

  “It was lovely of you to think of adding a trip to the museum on to dinner like this,” she said, her tone light.

  �
�I’m glad you think so.”

  They walked down Royal Street toward Canal until they reached the museum. Jackson swore softly. The museum would be closing in fifteen minutes, per a sign on the door.

  “We can come back,” Angela said.

  “Well, let’s see what we can see in fifteen minutes. At least, I’ll get an idea of what we might be looking for when someone can get back here. There’s a library of archives here somewhere that might give us something.”

  A pleasant woman in her mid-sixties with elegant silver hair and a sweet manner refused to take Jackson’s money for entrance. “You haven’t time to see much,” she said. She brightened. “But, hopefully we’ll whet your appetite. Oh, and the new exhibit is opening tomorrow, so I know you’ll want to come back.”

  “It doesn’t open until tomorrow?” Jackson asked her.

  The woman pointed to curtains in the back. “No, I’m sorry, we still have it all under wraps.”

  He nodded. “Of course.”

  “We have a lot on Madden C. Newton, the murderer,” she said. “And that house.” The woman shivered dramatically. “It’s downright scary. Creepy. And, in the news again!”

  “So there is a lot on the house?” Jackson asked.

  “And Madden C. Newton. We have his death warrant in the display.”

  “But we can’t peek tonight?” Jackson asked, giving her a charming smile.

  “I’m so sorry—they’re still finishing up, and they’ll be doing so tonight. But if you take a quick walk-through of the rest of the museum, you’ll see that we’ve arranged a chronological history of the city. The new exhibit will focus more on the past scandal, murderers and mayhem.”

  Jackson thanked her. There was only time to get the layout of the place, really. Angela appreciated all that she saw—the stories were told with various tableaux featuring historical characters, while there was reading material on the walls between each episode of history.

  Angela tried to pull back; she wanted to at least take a look at all of the tableaux. She felt as if she sped through history—nearly three hundred years in three hundred seconds.