Demon Key

by David Brookover

  Jackson mimicked the action. “You place the antidote under Teddi’s tongue like this, and she’s cured. Right?” he questioned, as if the native could understand him.

  Yokie regarded him strangely, and then broke into a wide smile. “Yeah, man.”

  Jackson gasped, and then chuckled. “Well, I’ll be damned. After all our time together, I wonder why I never sensed that you spoke English.”

  “Me think only in my language. I not trust white man . . . until you. You okay.”

  Jackson studied the medicinal ball in his palm.

  “No use all magic on your friend,” Yokie warned, gesturing at the waxy wad.

  The psychic frowned. “You mean you want me to save some of it?”

  Yokie nodded vehemently.

  “Why?”

  “You will know when time comes.”

  Jackson hoped he would. He stood and mopped the perspiration from his face with his shirtsleeve. “Thanks for the medicine and the advice. I guess I’ll be heading back to camp now. Good luck, friend.”

  Yokie shook his head curtly. “No. You come with me. Camp no more.”

  Jackson quickly gazed at the towering metal atrocities blighting the rainforest skyline. “What do you mean? The camp’s right over there,” he insisted.

  Yokie stroked his bronze chin as if searching for the right term. “Am . . .bush.” He spread both arms wide. “All dead.”

  Jackson dropped Teddi’s cure into a vial, sealed it with a few twists, and stuffed it into his pant’s pocket. He reached for his gun, but Yokie placed his hand atop Jackson’s.

  “Not necessary. Bad drug men gone. We go to river and wait for Holloway’s boat,” he said simply, and strode through the tall grass and reeds toward the river.

  Jackson started after Yokie, but suddenly he cried out and crumpled to the ground as a severe pain wracked his skull. The sunlight withered to night, which was rapidly supplanted by horrific visions. Violent, shocking images. Despite his agony, he endeavored to will them away, but they lingered, projecting horror after horror in his conscious mind.

  Eventually, Yokie’s insistent shaking halted the appalling revelations. Jackson blinked back to reality, and the acute pain abated.

  “You see things,” Yokie said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Terrible things,” Jackson nodded, as tears dribbled down his cheeks.

  “I see, too. Much death.”

  Jackson stared at Yokie through teary eyes, wondering how the medicine man managed to tap into his private psychic pipeline. “How . . .”

  “I no know,” the native replied quickly — too quickly. Jackson didn’t quite believe Yokie’s professed ignorance. “I no understand,” he claimed, and pointed at the lump in his companion’s pocket. “Medicine for woman in dream?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you better hurry back to white man’s world before too late.”

  Jackson bit his trembling lip. “That’s the understatement of the century.”

  Chapter 51

  The sooty clouds deepened at dusk, filling the corners of Teddi’s hospital room with raven shadows. The lighted monitors appeared brighter by contrast and cast a faint claret glow on her fixed expression. Thunder boomed in the distance, shivering the lone window casing. The room was deathly still between thunderclaps, like one of Poe’s infamous underground catacombs.

  In the hall outside her room, the assigned FBI agent dozed on and off in a well-worn chair that sagged beneath his meager weight. Agent Lance Robinson had spent last night with his mistress, Kerise, and sleeping was definitely not an option at her place. Although he considered himself to be in decent shape, his hamstrings were now crampy and his lower back ached like he’d carried a piano up four flights of stairs. He felt like a stallion that had been rode hard and put away wet, and babysitting Teddi McCoy in that damn broken-down chair wasn’t helping relieve his agony. Thank God, when he went home to his wife after his shift, he could catch some therapeutic winks. Her thighs were harder to pry apart these days than a pair of elevator doors with arthritic hands.

  Inside the room, lightning severed the imposing gloom, and suddenly Teddi’s eyes blinked several times. Her forehead crinkled, her tongue wet her parched lips, and her pupils drifted toward the IV attached to the back of her left hand. Her eyelids collapsed, and then slowly reopened. Her green pupils were now dancing yellow and crimson flames.

  She sat rigidly upright in the bed with considerable effort, yanked the IV tubing from her hand, and plucked the taped monitor attachments from her skin. Frantic beeps and keening alarms splintered the ghostly stillness. Wide-eyed, Teddi slid from the bed, tested her weak knees, and limped across the small expanse to a position behind the door. The ill-fitting hospital gown slid off her shoulder, and she savagely ripped the annoying article from her body and tossed it onto the bed covers.

  Agent Robinson heard the cacophony of alarms inside McCoy’s room, and he reacted swiftly. He leaped from his chair, and ignoring the stabbing pains in his lower back, he pushed against the door and entered. In his eagerness, he left his gun holstered.

  McCoy’s bed was empty! Holding the door open, the agent fretfully glanced around the room. The alarms continued to sound, and the blinking lights looked like they were about to blow a fuse. But there was no sign of Teddi! How could that be? He had been on watch outside her door the entire evening!

  The assertive voices inside Teddi’s mind melded into a single spokesman — one that was not her own. She was faintly aware that she was no longer in control of her thoughts and actions, and instead she was relegated to a helpless spectator’s view from the cheap seats. She watched her hands slam the door hard into Lance Robinson, sending him crashing against the doorframe. Before he could recover, she grasped his neck and chin from behind in a vise grip, and twisted. The crisp snap of his neck sickened her, and she rapidly released his limp form. Footsteps pounded in the hallway.

  Teddi pivoted and sent the heel of her hand into the incredulous nurse’s nose as she entered. Her nose splintered immediately, and the fragments exploded into her brain. The woman’s dead body thumped to the floor, her shocked expression disappearing beneath a torrent of blood.

  Teddi dragged her body inside and closed the door. She scrubbed the sticky blood from her hands and dressed quickly. There was much to complete before morning. She gazed down at her victims without remorse. Anyone else who got in her way would receive the same treatment. Her mission was vital to the success of an ancient ritual.

  She cracked the door and checked the hallway in both directions. The passageway to the emergency stairwell was clear. Without contemplating her risk of discovery, Teddi strode briskly to the stairwell and descended the four flights to the ground floor. She ignored the rain and located the car she had been instructed to find in the visitor’s parking area. The keys were stuffed under the visor. She twisted the ignition key and drove slowly from the lot, not wishing to attract any attention.

  Three more people were destined to die tomorrow, Friday, and one of them was a friend. But again, there was no regret. Only ruthless determination.

  Chapter 52

  The kidnapper might need the women for some kind of sacrifice or ritual. If that’s the case, then why now? What’s so special about this time of year? Or what event has occurred to instigate the ritual?

  Dex’s mind revisited Teddi’s queries as he stood inside the mausoleum and stared at the ladder descending into the depths below. He listened to the muffled voices of Wilkerson’s FBI crime scene crew and chanced a look-see into the black opening cut in a stone rectangle that had been hidden beneath a sarcophagus-like casket. Light beams flickered like northern fireflies, but he couldn’t make out one damn detail.

  Frustrated, he stepped away and glanced across the creepy structure at a harness contraption that had been hidden behind a false wall. A steel arm swung out to the cut in the stone floor, and a series of well-maintained pulleys were welded to the arm. Gruesome blood splotches titivated a blac
k leather harness attached to the ropes threading the pulleys.

  Dex scowled. It didn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that Bo Swinson had used it to lower his victims into waiting jaws below. But why? And why now? Teddi’s inquisitive voice resurfaced. He fervently wished that she were here with him to help shed some light on her teeth-gnashing, pain-in-the-ass questions.

  He paced the rain-splashed area just inside the outer door. His memory flashed to the limestone cave that he and John had explored in the swamp. The drawing of the devastated Seminole villages and the Miccosukee Everglades creature filled his mind like a slideshow. He zeroed in on the strange-looking monster. A giant alligator with an eel tail and paddle legs and feet.

  Dex stopped pacing, stood still for a short time, and then anxiously shifted his feet. Something didn’t add up. Why had someone destroyed the series of cave drawings? What historical event had been portrayed on the cave wall preceding the appearance of the creature in the Seminole tribe’s history? And, why had the defiler left the drawings of strange Miccosukee Everglades creature for him and John to find? He spat into the puddle at his feet. He had no idea. Maybe the FAU professor could earn her lunch and come up with one.

  The distant voices below grew louder.

  Dex retreated outside into the blowing rain and hid at the back of the mausoleum, while the eight FBI agents climbed up the ladder, stretched yellow crime scene tape across the doorway, and slammed the door shut. They conversed animatedly as they skirted the hillside tombstones on their way back to the pole barn.

  After they cleared the far knoll, Dex ducked under the spanning tape and entered the dark mausoleum. He closed the door, plucked the flashlight from his belt, and flicked it on. The place gave him the heebie-jeebies. He almost wished that Wilkerson was here with him. Almost.

  He eyed the ladder, gathered his nerve, and exhaled with a puff of his cheeks. He needed to take a look down there, and now was as good a time as any.

  His stomach knotted, and chills hopscotched along his spine as he descended down the ladder into the ominous black opening. When his foot finally touched down on the floor, he quickly played his light around the tunnel. Bile scorched his throat when he glimpsed the blood-soiled floor leading into the darkness to the left. God, that damn Swinson was a real monster!

  Monster.

  Something killed those women down here, and although Wilkerson and his band of idiots had escaped its wrath, Dex questioned whether he would be as lucky. It was true that the monster terrorizing the Everglades had abandoned this place, but what if it returned and found its next meal walking the tunnels with a damn flashlight advertising his presence? He swallowed hard but followed the bloody trail despite his jangled nerves and the dire warnings SOSed to his pigheaded brain.

  The dank air was oppressive, and the eerie shadows hovering at the fringes of his bobbing flashlight beam only heightened his trepidation. However, he was the chief of police, and if he didn’t investigate every lead, then who would? Broward County Sheriff Jim “Bulldog” Stark? What a joke. That political pussyfooter probably slept with a night light on.

  Dex plodded deeper into the tunnel. The silence was foreboding. Was he walking into a trap? Was the monster waiting around the next bend?

  Stop it! he chastised himself. Keep your shit together and your senses on full alert. Despite his mental pleas, his sordid memory recalled the trampled wooden walkway behind his house the night of Swinson’s ambush. Something big — no, huge — had done that. Could a big fish walk on land like that? He paused, studied the widening blood trail, and exhaled hard again. Yeah, maybe it could.

  Suddenly, the shadows exploded into a sea of blackness. Dex stopped and directed his beam into the vast gloom; the panning light sliver barely reached the far side of an enormous grotto and lake. The water’s surface was ice-calm and death black.

  The blood trail ended at the shore’s edge. Something must have dragged those women along the corridor into the lake. The big killer fish? Dex clucked his tongue, and the echo raced throughout the grotto. A single nearby splash broke the lake’s placid surface into spreading concentric ripples.

  Dex directed his light on the circles but saw nothing. Cold sweat blanketed his forehead. Something was out there. He sensed it now. Watching him. Sizing him up.

  Dex’s hand trembled as he drew his gun and clicked off the safety. If he was about to be bushwhacked, he planned to inflict a whole lotta damage on his attacker. But there were no more splashes, and he relaxed a little.

  Despite his trepidation, his curiosity dictated that he explore the grotto. He glanced quickly to his right. A narrow rocky outcropping, close to twenty feet wide, separated the lakeshore and the grotto wall. Not exactly a sandy beach or a lover’s lane, but it facilitated a stroll around the lake. If he wanted to.

  Yeah, why not. He’d come this far. Might as well take this idiocy to the limit!

  Dex surveyed the pathway in both directions and finally selected the one to his right. It wasn’t exactly a scientific decision. He merely tossed a coin in his mind, and it came up heads. Go right. He grasped his gun tighter. A fool’s errand.

  He stared hard along his chosen path, stalling. If he procrastinated much longer, he’d wimp out, drive home, and down a few cold ones. He grinned. That sounded a helluva lot better than investigating this death lake and its spine-chilling inhabitant.

  Dex sighed. He had climbed down here to find some answers, and he really shouldn’t quit before he’d even looked for some. He forced his right foot forward, hoping his left wouldn’t follow and he could go home. Unfortunately, it stepped forward, too.

  Dex glanced wistfully at the tunnel entrance that led back to the ladder and safety above, and then, armed only with a handgun and flashlight, he headed deeper into the lair of an unknown man-eater. His weapon wouldn’t amount to jack-shit if he actually encountered the large monster, but it gave him a temporary warm and fuzzy feeling to combat his burgeoning fear. Just what in tarnation was out there?

  Nobody knew he was down in the grotto, and if something happened to him, the authorities wouldn’t know where to search. It was a rookie mistake, but what the hell . . .

  At least it wasn’t raining.

  Chapter 53

  Art Holloway and the FBI boat appeared near the camp just before another gray sunset. Tropical rain fell in buckets and nearly obscured the boat from view, but Yokie saw it. The Indian medicine man waved bundles of tall yellow grass like a maniac to attract Holloway’s attention. The agent guided the heavily damaged craft to the bank where the two quickly climbed aboard.

  Art Holloway, Sam Desmond, and Jeff Malloy looked as haggard as Jackson felt.

  “Did you get the antidote for your girl in Florida?” Art asked, but his weary voice suggested that his question was merely conversational. He wasn’t fishing for a long-winded answer.

  Jackson patted the bulge from his pant’s pocket and simply replied, “Yep.” Then he told the agents that their camp had been attacked. There were no survivors.

  “Did you actually witness it?” Malloy demanded.

  “No. Yokie saw it . . . sort of.”

  “What the hell’s that mean?” Desmond shot back.

  “Psychic vision.”

  Holloway glanced at his cynical team. “Bullshit. We’re going to take a look for ourselves.”

  Despite his fatigue, Holloway deftly docked the boat alongside the DEA dock. The three agents armed themselves with automatic weapons, bounded onto the dock with newly found energy, and disappeared up the path to the campsite. Yokie held Jackson back.

  “No good. Just bodies and flies.”

  Jackson was suddenly suspicious. Was Yokie telling him the truth, or did he have an ulterior motive for preventing his return to the camp?

  Within minutes, Art reappeared, flushed from the exertion. “It’s just as Yokie described,” he panted, blinking back the raindrops. “But the jeep’s there, and I can take you back to that airstrip where I picked you up. The Blackh
awk should be waiting.”

  “Can’t you radio them to be sure?” Jackson asked.

  “I wish. Most of the communications gear’s been stolen, and what was left behind was smashed to pieces.”

  “Shit!”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll have to chance it, Art. I’ve got to get back to Florida right away,” he replied anxiously.

  Holloway’s eyes narrowed as he appraised the psychic. “Something brewing?”

  “Death,” he sighed. “And in bunches.”

  The Blackhawk was waiting at the jungle airstrip, and the pilot wasted no time flying Jackson out of that tropical hellhole. He’d had enough of the rain, heat, and bugs.

  The Harrier was fueled and flight ready when the Blackhawk landed at the airbase outside of Paramaribo, Suriname. The Blackhawk pilot had radioed ahead and made the arrangements for Jackson’s hasty return to Florida.

  As Jackson fastened his harness inside the Harrier cockpit, his stanch veneer withered. An old familiar childhood anxiety crept into his consciousness — one that had almost caused him to be admitted into an adolescent psych hospital at the tender age of thirteen. He grimaced behind his oxygen mask as the nearly forgotten pain rent his emotions. Tears rimmed his eyes as he recalled the tragic details.

  He was only eleven when he kissed his parents goodbye at the New Orleans airport before they departed for their second honeymoon trip to Hawaii. After watching the plane ascend from the runway, he and his kindly Aunt Edith left the terminal and ambled in the warm breezes to her car parked in the short-term lot.