by Brom
Isabel spun around, set angry eyes on Chet. “Shut your fool mouth,” she hissed. “That’s her daddy you’re talking about.”
Chet flinched, looked at the little girl. “Didn’t realize . . . hell, sorry.”
“Her name’s Lacy.”
The little girl didn’t turn around, didn’t even seem to hear, just stood there staring at the dead man. Isabel bent down and pulled the sheet up over his head. Krampus and the others stood at the door. No one spoke.
“She says he’s been dead a long while,” Isabel said. “Maybe four or five days. That’s what she was doing out there in the cold, trying to dig a grave for her daddy on account no one else would.”
“This one,” Krampus asked, pointing at the corpse. “The sickness? The meth?”
Chet nodded. “Yeah, body can only take so much, y’know. Probably enough chemicals in his veins that they won’t have to even bother with the embalming juice.”
Isabel took the little girl’s hand. “We need to get her someplace warm. Get her something to eat.”
“You planning on just taking someone’s kid?” Chet asked. “You sure you wanna be doing that?”
She looked at Krampus. “I ain’t leaving her here.”
Krampus nodded absently, his face unreadable, staring at the body.
Isabel kneeled down next to the girl. “You wanna come along with me? Get something to eat?”
The girl wiped her nose and nodded.
“Well, that’s all I need,” Isabel said, and led Lacy through the Belsnickels and out into the hall. The Belsnickels stood unsure, watching Krampus, waiting for his next move.
A shrill cry cut the silence, “Who the fuck are you?”
Jesse pushed out of the room, saw a silhouette back toward the kitchen blocking Isabel’s path. A woman, gaunt, with long, stringy hair, looking as close to death as a living person could, stood in front of the open basement door. She reeked of chemicals.
“What you doing here?” She spotted Lacy. “What you doing with my little girl? What the fuck are you doing? You get away from her, you hear me!”
Isabel let go of Lacy, grabbed the woman, and shoved her into the wall. Clutched her by the jaw, twisted her face, and forced her to look at her little girl. “Look at her. Look! Your little girl is starving to death. She’s got no shoes on. She’s so cold she can’t stop shivering. What kind of mother are you? Tell me, huh?”
The woman blinked. Her eyes filled with pain and horror. It was as though she was seeing her daughter clearly for the first time in a long while, and Jesse guessed she probably was.
Isabel let her go and she slid down to her knees. “Oh, sweetie,” the woman’s voice broke, she began to sob. “I’m so sorry. Let’s get you something to eat.” She reached for the girl with a boney hand that looked more like a claw. “C’mon . . . mama’s gonna fix you a grilled cheese. C’mon, shug.”
The little girl backed away, tried to hide behind Isabel.
The woman’s brow furrowed, her voice became taut. “Sweetie, come here . . . now.”
The little girl shook her head and stayed put.
The woman began to tremble, her face twisting into something miserable and grotesque. She saw Krampus, got a better look at the Belsnickels. Her eyes began to twitch, her lips to quiver. “Demons,” she whispered. “Someone has let demons into my house.” She stood, jabbed a finger at them, and shrieked, “Devils! Oh, God, save us! C’mere, baby, don’t let ’em touch you!”
She leapt forward, catching Isabel by surprise, shoved her backward. Isabel stumbled and fell over a clump of trash. The little girl tried to run, but the woman caught a handful of her hair, yanked her around, started to drag her away. Jesse dashed forward, caught the woman by the arm. Vernon was ready; he rushed up and dashed a pinch of sleeping sand directly into her face. The woman let out a shout, wiped at her eyes, losing hold of the child. Isabel gained her feet, snatched Lacy up, and hustled her down the hall, disappearing into the kitchen.
The woman stopped struggling for a moment, looked confused, sneezed, blinked, then caught sight of them again. “Devils!” she screamed and began slapping and clawing at Jesse. Vernon tossed more sand into her mouth and nose. She stumbled back, spitting and wiping at her face, sneezed again, and sat down hard on her ass. Even so, she still held on to consciousness, glaring at them as they passed.
“Damn,” Vernon said. “Did you see that? A whole handful and she’s still kicking.”
“It’s the crank,” Chet said. “She’s so jacked up, nothing’s gonna knock her out.”
They left the woman in the hall, passed through the kitchen and into the front room. The man, whoever he was, had not left the sofa. He had the blanket pulled up to his nose; his haunted eyes following them as they exited the house. They tromped down off the porch and rounded the house, caught up with Isabel in the yard. Isabel pulled the panda cap off her own head and tugged it down over Lacy’s. The little girl sobbed, pressing her face into Isabel’s shoulder.
Isabel turned as they approached, and all at once her eyes grew wide, she let out a cry, and Jesse caught sight of Lacy’s mother. She came running up behind them, seemed to appear out of nowhere. She clutched a shotgun and her eyes meant business. Before anyone could move, do more than shout, she leveled the weapon at Krampus and pulled the trigger—the blast deafening at such close quarters, echoing up and down the valley. The buckshot caught Krampus across the back of his left shoulder, spinning the Yule Lord around and knocking him to the ground.
The kick hammered the woman back a step. She straightened up and slid the action, ejecting the spent shell and loading a fresh one. She brought the barrel to bear, aiming for Krampus’s head. “Devil!” she shrieked. Makwa threw himself between the muzzle and Krampus. Another deafening boom and Makwa’s chest opened in a spray of blood and flesh. The big Shawnee hit the ground hard, tumbled to Krampus’s feet.
Krampus moved then, faster than Jesse thought possible. Before the woman could get another shell chambered, he was at her. He let loose a thunderous roar and swung; an upward thrust of his claws caught the woman in the lower bowels, ripping her wide open, and flipping her completely over. She slammed into the side of the house, spattering blood and gore across the vinyl siding. She landed in a heap, one leg twisted behind her back. She looked at the great wound running up her midsection, at the steam rising from her exposed entrails. She raised a hand and pointed at Krampus, tried to say something but couldn’t. Her arm fell, her eyes frozen on the Yule Lord.
Isabel covered the little girl’s eyes, picked her up, and walked quickly down the hill toward the sleigh.
Krampus stood, glaring at the dead woman, eyes aflame, chest heaving, great gusts of breath billowing from his nose and mouth in the winter air, his tail snapping back and forth. He stepped toward her, clenching and unclenching his clawed fingers as though about to tear her body to pieces, oblivious to the blood trickling down his back from the wounds peppering his shoulder. Makwa let out a weak moan and coughed, spat out a mouthful of blood. Krampus stopped, turned, his eyes found the big Shawnee and the fire left them, replaced by a profound sadness. “No,” he whispered.
Krampus came to Makwa, dropped to both knees. He stared at the terrible wound across the man’s chest, at the spreading pool of red melting into the snow. Makwa struggled to draw breath, taking in big gulps of air, a thin wheezing sound coming from his chest.
Krampus clasped the man’s hand between both of his, looked him directly in the eye. “Makwa, my bravest warrior.” His words were earnest and measured. “The great spirits call. It is time for you to go to them, to be honored for your loyalty and bravery. Mishe Moneto has gathered all your great fathers and they all await you with a magnificent feast. Go to them with your chin held high. Take your rightful place.”
Makwa’s eyes focused on something beyond Krampus. He nodded, and smiled. “I . . . see them, Lord Krampus.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “They . . . come. I see . . .” He said no more, his eyes froze
n on the heavens. The big Shawnee’s eyes slowly changed from orange to dark brown. The wind kicked up, a flurry of dry snow and corn husks spinning about them and then drifting away, across the field, disappearing into the forests.
Krampus smiled. “Makwa rides with his great fathers.” He slipped his arm beneath the big man, lifted him as though he weighed nothing, climbed to his feet, and headed to the sleigh.
Isabel awaited, the girl in her lap, her face pressed into Isabel’s shoulder, crying quietly. The Belsnickels took their places and Krampus handed the body off to Wipi and Nipi.
Krampus climbed aboard, gently popped the reins, and the goats tugged the sleigh into the air. It began to snow again, and no one spoke as they drifted silently over the hills and hollows back toward Goodhope.
Chapter Fourteen
Dark Spirits
Dillard drove his cruiser up to the General’s compound and stopped, sat there with his engine idling, staring at the open gate while his wipers shoved the slush back and forth across his windshield. He couldn’t remember that gate ever being left open. There were no fresh tracks coming or going in the snow. “This ain’t right,” he said under his breath. He’d tried to call the General last night and most of the day, at least a dozen times now. It was getting near dark and still no answer. He’d even tried Chet—nothing. Dillard liked to run a tight ship, needed to know what was going on at all times, needed to be in control, and he sure as shit didn’t feel in control right now. Not with all the insanity that’d been going on around Goodhope the last couple of days.
He pulled into the compound and up behind Jesse’s truck. There were still plenty of vehicles, and again, judging by the snow, not a one of them had moved since last night. He didn’t like it, not one bit, because unless they were having a slumber party, they shouldn’t still be here. The bay doors were all down, but the side door hung open, been open, he could see a good dusting of snow piled up in the entranceway.
Dillard killed the engine. There’d be no calling in backup, not on this one, last thing he needed was Noel nosing about—raise too many questions. No, he was on his own. Dillard rubbed his eyes, his head still hurt. He hadn’t made it to bed until six that morning, running from one call to the next. When he finally did get to bed, he’d hardly slept, worrying over why the General hadn’t returned any of his calls. “Getting too old for this shit.” He pulled the coffee cup out of the holder. The coffee was cold and stale, but he drank it anyway, then got out of the cruiser and sloshed his way up to the door.
He pushed through the entranceway and hit the hall light. Tracks, at least three sets of brownish footprints, led out of the bay. He knew it was blood, was working hard to convince himself it was Jesse’s blood . . . that it had to be, because he didn’t want to consider the alternative. He tugged out his pistol, pushed off the safety, and followed the tracks to the steel door leading into the bay. He set his hand on the knob and gave it a turn, pushed it inward. It was dim, the only light coming from the red Christmas bulbs, but it was enough to see that the men lying around in heaps were not sleeping. He snatched his flashlight from his belt, clicked it on, and braced it snug beneath his revolver, keeping the gun trained on the beam as he searched the room.
His heart drummed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he whispered, swallowed, forced himself to hold steady. He’d seen plenty of death in his thirty years on the force; it wasn’t the blood that bothered him, it was the savagery of the carnage before him. These weren’t typical gangland-style murders, these men had been ripped to pieces, arms, legs, and guts strewn everywhere. The smell of the gore overwhelmed him. He coughed, gagged, pressed his nose into the crook of his arm, all while trying to look everywhere at once.
He found no sign of a living soul, heard nothing, and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he began to relax a notch. He guessed by the congealed blood that this carnage had taken place many hours ago, convinced himself that whoever had done this must be long gone. He scanned each body, searching for the General, peering into faces, some so badly mangled he couldn’t recognize them. He didn’t find the General—nor Jesse, for that matter—but he did find the chair Jesse must have been taped to, saw the sheared duct tape. Someone had cut him loose, someone had got him out of here. “How’d you do it, Jesse? How the hell did you pull this off?” His hands were shaking. Things were getting out of his control. Hell, they were out of his control. Dillard forced himself to take several deep breaths.
A light still shone from the upper floor in the General’s office. Dillard walked quickly across the bay and up the stairs. The door stood open. He peered in. This is wrong, everything about this is wrong. Nothing appeared touched, no rifled drawers, no damage to the safe, and he found no sign of the General, either. Dillard decided they’d probably taken the man with them—extortion perhaps, or maybe just for the pleasure of torturing him to death.
Tough titties for him, Dillard thought. Got my own problems. He glanced back down at the bodies. Like how the hell I’m ever gonna cover up this clusterfuck? Again, he felt his heart speed up, that pain in his chest. Wait. I’m overthinking it. Maybe I don’t need to cover anything up? Might just be the blessing I’ve been praying for. He nodded. Solve a lot of problems. Especially one big one by the name of Sampson Ulysses Boggs. Don’t have to worry about his erratic behavior no more, about him blowing everything and taking me down with him. And . . . and since every dumbshit he had working for him is laying down there with their guts torn out, there ain’t a soul left needing to be shut up. All I gotta do now is . . . shit . . . no. He shook his head. “Jesse. There’s that goddamn Jesse.” And Jesse will talk. Oh boy will Jesse talk. Tell them everything he knows about me and then some. Of course that’s assuming they bring him in alive. What are the chances of that? Dillard didn’t know, but he didn’t like loose ends. He liked things all tidied up, just like his color-coordinated Tupperware bowls—bowls on the shelf, lids in the lid drawer.
“I gotta find that boy. Gotta get to him before someone else does. Gotta shut him up for good.” Dillard headed out, made it to the bottom of the stairs, and stopped, his face clouded. There’s two other complications, aren’t there? If they brought Jesse in alive and Linda and Abigail collaborated his story. Hell, even if they didn’t bring Jesse in. Linda could hang him. With the General gone, she might just come forward on her own. If they called in them Internal Affairs boys, he’d sure have a lot of explaining to do. He just couldn’t afford to have anyone raising suspicions, period. Can’t just make Linda and Abigail disappear, not that easy. No, he’d managed to get rid of one wife without raising a stink, but having two women mysteriously disappear from his life wouldn’t sit well with folks. Add a little girl to that and someone was bound to catch on.
Dillard’s eyes raced back and forth across all the carnage. “Fuck.” His chest began to tighten again. He found Ash staring at him, staring on and on without blinking, his mouth torn into something resembling a smile, not a mocking smile but the smile of someone who knows the answer to a riddle before you do. “What? What is—” Dillard’s mouth clamped shut. He nodded slowly. He got it, and it was a doozy. All at once he found himself smiling back.
“So, Ash, correct me if I’m wrong, but the last I heard was that Jesse’s running with a bunch of murderous maniacs. If, say, Linda and Abigail turned up dead, victims of a savage home invasion. People would have no problem believing that, would they? Whaddaya say, Ash? Makes perfect sense don’t you think? An estranged husband full of jealous rage.” Dillard nodded. “Then all I got to do is lead them to you and your dead pals here. Folks will make the connection real fast. Why, it’ll all fit together like a pretty puzzle. No one would suspect my hand in any of it. Nope, they’d be too busy feeling sorry for me.”
He slipped on his gloves and headed back down to the shop. He found a plastic bag and gathered a roll of duct tape, a knife, a few tools, and left, wiping down the doorknobs, careful to smear his boot tracks as he went, to clean the blood from his soles in the slush. He planned
on coming back, to be the one to call it in. Because it would be best for him to be the one that discovered the crime scene, the easiest way to explain any evidence he might’ve left behind. But it never hurt to be too careful, to keep things tidy, just like his Tupperware.
He opened the door on Jesse’s truck, popped the glove compartment, and added a few of Jesse’s things to the sack, some evidence to leave behind for the forensic team. He climbed back into his cruiser, got the engine running, sat there until the window defrosted, then drove off, heading for home.
IT WAS APPROACHING dusk when Jesse awoke. He sat up fast, surprised that he’d slept so long, so soundly. He found Isabel and Lacy sitting at a makeshift table with a bag of oranges, a lump of cheese, a jug of milk, and a few king-size biscuits before them. Lacy peeped out from beneath the panda cap, wearing a milk mustache and munching away on a biscuit. Jesse guessed Krampus must’ve snatched the food from someone’s kitchen using the sack, probably someone they’d visited. He wondered if by chance that someone had been lucky enough to witness Krampus’s disembodied arm plucking food off their counter. Jesse looked for Krampus, but saw only Chet and Vernon curled up on the pews, and the lame wolf over by the potbellied stove.
“They went to bury him,” Isabel said.
Jesse nodded and hoped that getting your chest blown wide-open wasn’t the only way out of this madness. He tugged his boots back on, feeling the deep ache in his hands. He wiggled his fingers. They were almost back to normal. He sucked in a deep breath, felt a twinge in his chest and back from the knife wound, but was breathing fine now. He noticed that his skin had grown darker, that as the healing effects of Krampus’s blood took hold, so, too, did the outward changes. He crawled to his feet and strolled over, noticing a pie pan full of bloody lead pellets sitting next to the stove. “They get ’em all out?”
“What?”
“The buckshot . . . from Krampus’s shoulder?”