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

by Heather Graham

  But she did dream.

  She was standing on the walkway to the Lexington House. The dormered windows stared at her like giant dark eyes. The wind had picked up, and she could feel an icy salt chill to it. As she stood there, despite the wind, a mist of fog seemed to settle and grow darker and darker, silver mist at first, and then gray…and darker gray.

  The house itself…could hold evil.

  But…

  Malachi Smith seemed so filled with light.

  Malachi wasn’t there. Someone else was. Something that had come, or something that had remained.

  She had to go into the house. The answers were there, somewhere, in the house.

  She started up the path. A figure began to form in the mist.

  It was that of a woman.

  The old, worn woman who still had eyes of gentle watery blue.

  Rebecca Nurse. Gentle, pious. Good.

  Trying to stop her.

  The specter of Rebecca Nurse held her hand up. “No,” she said. “No—for the lies will rip you apart.”

  “How will I know the lies, if I don’t find the truth?”

  “The children…they have fits. They listen to what they hear.”

  Jenna started to open her mouth to ask the specter more; she wasn’t able to do so. The dark eyes of the house suddenly seemed to explode, and liquid spilled from the dormered eyes, and then the eaves, and the door frame.

  Liquid rushing out to encompass her.

  And the liquid was blood.

  12

  Sam awoke with a strange sense of comfort, especially considering the fact that he was the kind to wake with every detail of his current case lined up in his mind.

  Then, of course, he realized he was draped in silky female flesh, and the thought was enough to achieve instant arousal. But he kept himself still, not wanting to wake her. He watched the sunset color of her hair splay over her shoulder and curl down her back; he felt the fall of her leg over his own and saw that her eyes remained closed, her breathing deep and even. He was tempted to pull her closer, as he had in the night when she’d suddenly wakened and felt like ice.

  It was nothing of course; she’d smiled and assured him that she woke easily, especially in old houses where things creaked and moaned and always seemed to go bump in the night.

  He’d told her that he knew how to make her forget bumps and creaks in the night, though he wasn’t sure at all about moans, which, of course, had made her moan and laugh. But she’d been glad to accept his kiss and roll into his arms and forget whatever had plagued her in the wonder of new love or sexual fascination or whatever she had found in him.

  He heard the second hand on the beside clock ticking, and he remained still, and for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d remained with a woman overnight, or brought her home and thought about breakfast in the morning. His last partner had been in South Beach, a bikini-clad blonde he’d met in one of the hotel clubs that brought the dancing out to the sand on Miami Beach. No thoughts of the future on either side. She was a bonds attorney from Ohio on vacation. And when she had propositioned him, she had assured him, “Half the women and all of the men are here just looking to get laid. Hey, it’s like breathing, you know.”

  Like breathing…

  In a way, yes, it was like breathing. But he felt something of awe that Jenna was there now, that the morning light was trickling in, catching the red of her hair and making it seem that a warm and surreal glow emanated from her and encompassed her. And he wondered what it would be like to wake every morning feeling like that, knowing the life and breath and vibrant beauty of such a woman beside him. So, high-powered, cutthroat Boston attorney meets Federal ghost buster/civil-servant, willing to put her life on the line for others, and working hard with a team of ghost busters/civil-servants who seem to have formed a working bond that extended into the kind of friendship that would bring them all to one another’s aid, and still have enough left over for those others they ran into along the way.

  His mom and dad would have loved that the girl they had known had become the woman now beside him.

  Maybe that was something he shouldn’t mention. He wouldn’t want her thinking he’d brought her home again so that the ghosts of his family might approve!

  He winced; he still wasn’t sure about ghosts. He knew that Jenna and the Krewe of Hunters seemed to have something—an ability to see beyond what was obvious. But he still wondered what tricks the mind could play, and if there wasn’t something in the psyche that triggered a memory, or if they had all somehow tapped into that vast percentage of the brain that scientists knew humankind had yet to figure out how to utilize.

  She stirred against him. Her eyes opened, as green as an endless field, and when she smiled at him, he forgot all thought. He didn’t whisper a word; he kissed her, and he made love to her, and she made love in turn.

  Like breathing.

  In this case, he thought, if you didn’t breathe, you died.

  * * *

  Jenna saw John Alden’s car as they drove up and parked on the sidewalk outside Lexington House. She looked again at the way the house stood, just up on its little rise, and she thought of the dream that had plagued her in the night.

  It was one of the fall days in New England that warned of the approaching winter. The sky was gray and overcast, and even on the rise before the Lexington House, they could feel the chill breeze that ripped the coastline of Massachusetts.

  She thought of how she often shook her head at the Puritans who had come to Massachusetts, seeking religious freedom but refusing to grant it to others. She thought of the people who had allowed the witchcraft scare to take root, and then she reminded herself that it had been a different time—in Europe, thousands upon thousands had been hanged or burned at the stake for doctrinal differences between versions of one religion.

  She found herself thinking of those Pilgrims who had come and died in the first harsh winter, and that perhaps they’d needed to be stubborn and rigid stock to have ever made their home in the wilds of the new colony, where the wind was as rugged as granite rocks and as brutal as the winter’s ice.

  Lexington House stood there as it had for centuries, weathered and worn and holding the secrets not so much of humanity and the past, but of the madness that could enter any man’s mind when he was brought to it—or when the feral instinct of the animal that remained in man brought about those emotions that were far from fine: fear, greed, envy, hatred and anger.

  Sam looked at her, frowning. “You’re sure you want to go in again? I can just show the place to Jackson and Angela.”

  “I have to go in again,” she told him.

  She smiled. She loved the way he looked at her. The first day, his eyes had been filled with so much mockery. Now they showed concern.

  “I want to go in again,” she amended.

  The door opened as if it were a great, greedy maw, ready to suck them in. John Alden walked out onto the porch.

  “Hey, you coming in, or what?” he called out to them.

  They crossed the street to the lawn and walked up the steps. Sam made the introductions, and John Alden peered at Angela and Jackson suspiciously.

  But Angela turned on the charm, pumping John’s hand and telling him how grateful they were to be allowed to assist Sam, and whatever John might have felt about any intrusion, he apparently decided to let go.

  “Glad you made it before we brought the cleaning crew in.” He winced apologetically. “Even here, even in fall, we’ve got to get ’em in when there’s this much blood, or the pests come on into the house, and the rats multiply and head on out to the whole neighborhood. We’ve got to move on a real cleanup. We’ve had the crime lab out. Prosecution has seen the place and defense has seen the place. Anyway, come on in, I can give you about a half an hour. Watch where you step, and what you touch.” He looked at Sam.

  They stepped into the house, entering the foyer together. Jenna found herself drawn back to the parlor and held
back when Jackson and Angela started upstairs with John. Sam stood in the hallway, watching her.

  She looked around the room and then closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, it seemed that an opaque quality had fallen over everything, as if she floated in a soaring motion back, and looked on from a distance. She was there, and she wasn’t there. She was watching from a strange distance that couldn’t be tallied by space but by time.

  A woman moved about the room. Her hair was brown and graying and tucked back in a severe knot at her nape. She dusted and straightened up. She was doing so when a young man came to the door. He leaned against the door frame, looking in. His face was lean and well shaped; his eyes were dark and should have been appealing, but they had a hollow and bitter look to them.

  The woman didn’t look up. “Soup in the kitchen, though you’re not deserving.”

  “Mother, I hope not,” the young man said. He was in a long, straight coat, vest and suspenders. The woman was in a long, flowered gown with a high neck. “Who the hell is deserving of week-old soup.”

  “You’re a lazy, no-good lie-about,” the woman said. “And the soup is fine. Fine for a lad who grew to be worthless.”

  “Like my sister? My sister, who dresses in twenty-year-old clothing, mends and darns socks and grows old since no man of substance will have her?” he asked softly.

  The woman looked at him. “You’re a greedy one, as well as a worthless one. Would that I’d never had such ingrates fall from my womb!”

  “Would that you never had,” he agreed. He straightened where he stood. His hands had been behind his back. He drew them forward, displaying the ax he held and hefted as he spoke. “Would that we’d never lived in this godforsaken house. Would that we’d had actual warmth in winter, that Father had allowed fires to burn, or that his heart had been open to more than a passion for hoarding at the expense of all else. Would that I’d not spent my days in the attic, imagining the insanity of Eli Lexington hacking his family to little bits and pieces.”

  The woman looked over at him, frowning. “You’re actually going to cut wood.”

  “No, Mother,” he said softly. “I’m not going to cut wood.”

  She didn’t start to scream until he walked toward her. Then, it was too late. His first strike was high and overhead and filled with passion and rage, and cleaved her skull so that her face seemed to fall apart in a burst of blood.

  And then he struck again and again. And when she lay dead, the young man sat down on the sofa, covered in her blood, and he waited. And in time, a tall man in a cap and shabby tweed coat walked in and made it into the parlor, where he saw the woman on the floor and his son drenched in blood.

  He started to shout; the young man, who had been all but immobile, leaped to his feet, and this time, the ax hit its target first in the throat, and the only sounds that were heard other than the sickening crunch of the ax were those of a man choking…until those sounds came no more, and the man lay dead on the floor, and the smell of blood was stringent and horrible on the air. The man with the ax just stood there. Then the door burst open and a young woman came rushing in. She might have been pretty, beautiful even. But her face was far too thin; she appeared tired and worn, like a faded rose.

  At the doorway, she surveyed the scene in horror.

  “I had to, Isabelle. I had to,” her brother said.

  “And we must move, and quickly now. Your clothes! We have to get rid of your clothing, and we must get away so that we were elsewhere when this thing happened. Come, Nathan, come. Oh, dear brother, what have you done?”

  The young man started to laugh.

  “Oh, Lexington, he loved his wife,

  So much he kept her near,

  Close as his sons, dear as his life;

  He chopped her up;

  He axed them, too, and then he kept them here.

  Duck, duck, wife!

  Duck, duck, life!

  You’re it! Oh, Isabelle! Now, I’m it!”

  “Nathan! Come! Now. Touch nothing, we’ll go out the back, to the cliff…I’ll get you new clothing…we’ll sink what you’re wearing, Father’s fishing weights are in the back…we must move quickly! Oh, dear baby brother, what have you done?”

  “They can hang me, Isabelle. They can hang me. Better death than the life we were living!”

  “Come!” Isabelle urged, and at last, he seemed able to move.

  Jenna stood frozen, the scent of the blood almost overwhelming her. The image of bits and pieces and flecks of flesh all around her was horrifying, and she felt as if her knees were composed of nothing but water.

  The mist receded. She felt as if she was whisked back in time, and then thought she was going to fall….

  She didn’t. Sam was holding her, looking down into her eyes with grave concern.

  “I’m getting you out of here. I don’t give a damn what you say.”

  He half lifted her and strode, carrying and dragging her, out to the hallway, the foyer and then outside.

  He set her down on the porch, and sat beside her.

  “Jenna?”

  She took a deep breath. Out here, the blood of the distant past and the more recent past was all washed away by the breeze that came in from the water, cleansing the sins of time.

  She was no longer dizzy. She managed a weak smile and set her hand on his.

  “I’m okay, Sam.”

  “I know, I know. It’s what you do. Maybe it comes at too high a price.”

  Her smile steadied; he hadn’t even asked her yet what she had seen.

  “No, because, as you can see, I’m fine now. I just wish…”

  “What?”

  “I can’t seem to bring my vision to the right century.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I saw the Braden family. They weren’t nice people, Sam. I mean, of course, no one out there deserves to be murdered, but I believe that the parents were pretty horrible to their children. The son did do it. And his sister knew, but she was the one who helped him get out of the house and clean up, and she probably swore for him at the trial that he wasn’t in the house when it happened.”

  Before Sam could answer, they heard footsteps on the stair. John Alden came out to the porch and looked curiously at Sam and Jenna. “You done?”

  “Yes, thanks, John,” Sam said.

  “Almost!” Jenna said. She jumped back to her feet.

  Sam caught her hand. “Don’t do this to yourself,” he said softly.

  She looked down and saw something dark and disturbed in his eyes. She couldn’t allow him to stop her.

  “I have to go back in, Sam. I have to try,” she said, and walked back into the parlor. She stared about the room. She closed her eyes and thought about the recent past. She tried to imagine the more current murders—and a figure in a costume that resembled that of the horned god coming in to commit murder. She waited and she opened her eyes.

  But the mist wouldn’t come.

  She saw the chalk markings and the blood stains, just like anyone else would.

  And she saw no more.

  Jackson and Angela came and stood in the hallway for a moment, and then came into the parlor. Angela stood very still while Jackson looked at the chalk marks and the blood spray and moved carefully about the room, as if he tried to imagine exactly how the killings had taken place.

  Sam stood in the doorway, his expression stony.

  Jackson looked over at him and, behind him, at John Alden, who stood just a foot or so behind Sam. “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re ready?” John asked.

  “Yes, thank you,” Jackson repeated.

  They all exited the house. Jenna and her group waited while John locked the house and replaced the crime-scene tape.

  When John joined them on the lawn, Sam asked him, “What about the lab report on the costume?”

  “Hopefully, I’ll get it back today.”

  “As soon as possible would be great,” Sam said.

  “
Sam, damn it, you know that I can’t give it priority. It’s a costume you took off a kid, and it may or may not have anything to do with anything.”

  “I know, John, thanks,” Sam said. “Still, sooner would be better.”

  “Damn it, Sam. I’m doing my best here, huh? And that’s good, considering I’m starting to think you’re almost as crazy as the kid.”

  “Ah, but think of it this way. When we get to court, you’ll have done your job backward and forward, the prosecution will love you if all this investigation’s nothing and just proves the case against him is as airtight as you say,” Sam told him.

  Muttering, John waved to the others and headed down to his car.

  When he was gone, Jackson looked at Jenna. “Well?”

  She shook her head. “I can tell you about Eli Lexington and the Braden family, but I’ve gotten nothing on Abraham Smith. Angela?”

  “I saw a little girl, and I believe she died of typhoid sometime in the eighteenth century,” Angela said apologetically.

  Sam stared at them both.

  “I’ve got some work to do,” he said. “Alibis. We have to start cracking alibis.”

  “We can give Jake a call, and he can do a lot of computer and phone work, at least with the members of the Old Meeting House.”

  “Contact him for me, will you, then? I have legal papers…I’ll leave you all at Jamie’s house. I’ll be in contact soon.”

  He was leaving her though, and just as she felt like someone literally reached into her chest and squeezed her heart.

  “Good idea,” she said lightly. “We’ll get going on a chart, trying to trace the movements of everyone involved.”

  Sam agreed and drove them to Jamie’s house. He seemed to step on the gas when he drove away.

  * * *

  Sam sat at his desk, trying to work. He scribbled out scenarios for the courtroom, assuming he wasn’t able to prove that Malachi Smith was covered in blood because he’d loved his parents. He scribbled out a dramatic scene in which they had discovered enough evidence to at least prove that there might have been another killer, and he imagined his voice ringing in the courtroom as he introduced the facts that might save his client. Of course, the prosecution would fight him tooth and nail, and…