Dark & Disorderly

by Bernita Harris

  He hunched a shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of it.” That told me the curse stones were separate.

  I flattened my voice to a remote, ritual cadence. “I will haunt you, Nathan Strange. Every day and every night, every hour to your last and beyond it, in light or in dark, I will haunt you. No peace, Nathan.”

  I shifted my gaze to the other man. Cornett must have been the one to fix my car. Nathan wouldn’t have known how.

  “And you too, Cornett, you toad. And I’ll bring the others with me, others who have suffered at your hands—Phillip and old Mr. Pearson and Bobby Secord. All the hungry ghosts.”

  Upset them, I thought. Make them hesitate, make them think they were watched and judged. Risky, damned risky, but my only hope. Uncertain people doublethink themselves. Nervous people make mistakes.

  “And the women too,” I added in a sudden certainty of surmise. One or both of them had been at this game for a long time.

  I narrowed my eyes at Nathan. “One of them got away, didn’t she? I bet her name was Samantha. That’s why you wanted absolute, total exorcism of all apparitions. You were afraid the ghosts would tell. That’s why you married me. You thought I’d cooperate blindly and so make you safe. It wasn’t just the money, after all.”

  The men exchanged glances.

  “Charles,” Kevin asserted. “He’s recovered now. He has the books. He can fix her after, can’t he? So she can’t do that?”

  Nathan let out a breath and nodded. He smiled at me sourly. “Yes. An empty threat, Lil. You’re not the only person with power, not that it seems to do you much good now, hmm…? Our good friend can exorcise ghosts too. He will exorcise you.”

  “He’ll be a damned busy mage with so many. They will overwhelm him,” I said with dismissive authority. “And he doesn’t seem to be here at the moment. Are you sure he’s strong enough? The backlash when I disposed of your little trick must have hurt. It certainly seems to have hurt you.”

  “When we need him, he’ll come.”

  “That might be too late. I can call them now. To this room. I can call them in and they will come… The hungry ghosts.”

  I let my eyes go out of focus and raised my voice. “Are you sure they aren’t coming even now? Drifting through the windows, slipping through the door? Standing right behind you? You have no idea what the dead can do when they want vengeance!”

  They couldn’t help it. Both men shifted, darting glances around the room.

  “I don’t believe you,” Nathan said flatly. “You never did. You dispatched those goddamned spirits. You didn’t raise them. You said so.”

  “Power grows, Nathan, powers change. Didn’t you know?”

  The six bulbs in the chandelier went out, flickered, glowed slowly back on. It wasn’t me, but I liked it.

  “She’s just trying to spook us…” Nathan stopped and grimaced over his choice of words. “She’s playing for time. Better move her car.” Nathan reached in his pants pocket for my keys and tossed them to Cornett.

  A triple knock on the door froze both of them. I laughed again, softly. “Did I hear three knocks? A Death Messenger coming to call, wanting you?” Cornett crossed himself.

  “Your furnace crew? It must be,” Nathan said into the long silence. I didn’t think so.

  The triple knock repeated, harder this time, impatient.

  “Hadn’t you’d better see what they want and get rid of them?” Nathan’s fingers hesitated along my throat and slid upward. He cupped a scented hand lightly over my mouth, ready to pinch down and gag me. I let my head loll to one side. “Come on, man. What are you waiting for? They can see the lights. They know you’re here. I’ll keep her quiet.”

  Cornett hesitated, pawed through a drawer in the nightstand, hefted an automatic pistol and clicked off the safety.

  “Are you crazy? For a couple of workmen? You don’t want to show that cop gun. Give me that.” Nathan snatched at the automatic, laid the cold steel weight of it on my stomach like a stone. Cop gun. A memory teased and clicked in place. Johnny’s voice. Bobby’s gun.

  Nathan twisted around to watch Cornett pigeon-toe his way to the door and slide the chain. Just before Cornett opened the door a bare crack to peer around it, Nathan’s hand clamped down. I jerked my head sideways and screamed.

  My scream died.

  34.

  But not because of Nathan’s brutal, scrabbling fingers. The door smashed open, spinning Cornett against the wall. Two men burst through. Took positions on either side. In that fraction of time, I dug my heels and heaved my body. The automatic slid off my belly. Twisting my torso, I trapped it under my right hip. Nathan swore and clawed, both for the gun and at my throat.

  Two men. One wore black. One wore a uniform. One was Johnny Thresher. The other—Bobby Secord. The quick and the dead. Maybe I had summoned a ghost, after all.

  Yelling. A lot of yelling. A whirlpool of bodies. Johnny’s face, cold as death, grim as the grave. A shot—close, loud and shocking. The brutal pressure on my throat ceased. I smiled and closed my eyes and went away.

  Different fingers on my throat, pressing for a pulse. A breath heavily expelled. Hands checking me out. The smell of leather and darkness above me. The sudden release of my numbed arms, brought gently to my sides. Johnny Thresher. I heard his voice rolling like surf on a shore, though I couldn’t make out the words. I reveled in relief, exulted in it, floated in it, pain mere minor waves in the sea of my beatitude.

  The gasping sound of someone moaning disturbed my examination. I didn’t think it was me.

  I opened heavy lids. Johnny, at the foot of the bed, working on the thongs around my ankles with one hand while giving clipped orders into his cell phone—calling it in, calling for an ambulance, requesting immediate assistance. Nathan, mouth slack, brown eyes muddy with shock and barely conscious, sprawled in the armchair a few feet away, clutching a shoulder. Blood welled between his fingers. Nathan’s suave charm wouldn’t extricate him from this one. Cornett lay huddled and still by the door. Bobby—Bobby’s ghost—seemed to be gone. Maybe, in excess of desperation, I’d imagined him.

  My face hurt, my chest burned like fire, the gun dug into my buttock. I flexed throbbing fingers and carefully eased it out from under me—one weapon secured. But there had been a knife…

  I looked up in time to see Nathan lurch out of the chair like a zombie, with Cornett’s knife raised in a bloody fist.

  An invisible hand clasped to lift and guide mine.

  I shot him in the gut. My second shot, rising, missed the body mass and took him in the throat. My swollen paw lacked the strength to ride the recoil. No matter; he was already falling, punched down by Johnny’s heavier caliber. My third shot drilled the crown molding above the kitchen archway.

  The echoes died with Nathan. A bit of convulsive threshing. A gurgle. Silence like a wave submerged everything.

  I dropped the pistol and looked up at Johnny, lowering his gun from the classic stance. We stared at each other for an eon of time.

  “He shouldn’t have brought a knife to a gunfight,” I said, curled over sideways and began to cry. I could cry now. It was safe to cry now.

  The mattress dipped. Big hands turned my body, pulled my ruined top up over my bloody, naked breasts and lifted me carefully against him. Johnny cradled me while I sobbed and howled against his shirtfront.

  “It’s over, sweetheart.” His deep voice against my hair sounded oddly unsteady. “It’s all right now. You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you anymore. It’s over.”

  “How. Did. You. Find. Me?” The words emerged between long, shuddering gasps.

  “Chief Secord.”

  “By the door. I saw him. I told Nathan… I didn’t imagine?”

  “No. He was definitely here. His ghost, that is. He showed up beside me in the car. I was heading out to look for you. Said, Lillie needs us. Told me where to come. Without him I’d have got here too late. He stayed with me until I came through the door. Your front’s a bloody mess
, but the cuts aren’t deep. Did that sonofabitch hurt you in other places?”

  I pressed my cheek and jaw and winced. “They slapped me around. Look for me? I don’t understand.”

  “Rhoda called me about a DNA report, just faxed in. Last week she gave me some of the chief’s files she said might be of interest. He’d been trying to link your husband with a series of sporadic assaults on women over the years—and a murder or two in the region—but he never had enough to demand a DNA sample. I got a sample from hairs in his hairbrush at your house. Several case samples matched. When I learned Strange wasn’t at the River Road location any longer, I got uneasy. I started to check each of Cornett’s properties.”

  I digested this between hiccups. “So the files are why you wanted me to play dead after my car went in the creek?”

  He nodded. “I didn’t want to explain, not enough evidence, going by the rules. A mistake. I should have warned you anyway. Lillie, how in hell did you end up here? I thought you were headed home. Where did that Sig-Sauer come from?”

  Cop questions. I became aware of the raw stench of blood and guts. Cop time. I heard it in his voice and in the rise and fall of sirens wailing nearer. A mechanical banshee, but not for me. Thanks to Johnny and a ghost, not for me.

  “That work file you scoffed at in the laundromat. This address was supposed to have a nasty interactive. I thought the entity described was dangerous and should be removed. Immediately. I came to do it. Nathan counted on me coming after it. I fell for the trick. Cornett owns this place. They grabbed me in the hall outside, were waiting. Cornett had the handgun… Johnny, Cornett hasn’t moved.”

  “Because he’s dead. He folded after I shot Strange—the first time. No pulse when I went to cuff him. Heart attack? Who knows until the pathologist has a go.”

  Maybe death by ghost—there had been a hand guiding mine. “Please, I want to get off this bed. I don’t need to stay here on it, do I? So close to him?”

  For answer, Johnny slid an arm under my knees, gathered me up and carried me past Nathan’s body to the sofa beyond. I whimpered when he put me down, I didn’t want to let go of him. Prying my fingers from their clutch on his sleeve, he repeated, “It’s over, Lillie. Steady now. Hang tight. I’ll take care of everything. I’ll be right here. It’s over.”

  I wrapped my jacket and my arms over my front. “No. Not over. There’s a third man. A necromancer of some sort. It was a triumvirate. They called him Charles. Phillip’s zombie got away from him and attacked Chief Bobby. I think he lost control for a while when I destroyed the first Nathan-thing. Hurt him.” I shook my head. “Not over. No.”

  “Easy, Lillie. Let’s get you past this first. We’ll worry about this Charles character later.”

  The room became an eerie replica of the evening of the zombie attack. Uniforms, paramedics, questions, cameras. Even Sullivan. He steamed in, wearing a dirty beige trench coat and considerable attitude. Summoned the lead constable with a crooked finger. Sullivan scowled, first at Johnny, standing across the room by the bed with his back turned, and then at me on the sofa, while the PC thumbed though his notebook and made a report.

  Sullivan barreled over and planted himself in front of me, glowered down. “What have we here, Ms. St. Claire? A grubby little domestic manslaughter case is what we have. Not the sort of thing I want connected with Waredale PD. If it weren’t for your recent assistance to my detachment I’d have them cuff you and book you right now!”

  I struggled to my feet. Wished I hadn’t when my ankles wobbled and wanted to give way. I also wished that Sullivan would lay off the Caesar salad. Garlic hung in a noisome cloud between us.

  “That’s not a nice threat, Chief,” I said wearily, bracing myself on the sofa arm. “Seeing as how Sergeant Thresher released me from a set of restraints less than half an hour ago.”

  Sullivan’s voice climbed to a near bellow. “Your excuse for killing a man is that he slapped you around, wanted a little kinky sex? When this gets out to the media… You can probably consider your contract terminated, Ms. St. Claire. I’ll certainly recommend it be canceled.”

  I saw at once how he’d figured it. Keep the publicity as far away from the detachment—and himself—as possible. We couldn’t know until autopsy if my shots or Johnny’s killed Nathan, but I was civilian and Johnny was uniform. Maybe the bare bones of the situation Sullivan had just absorbed from the constable’s report would come across as a simple domestic.

  However, after everything, after all the soul-eating fear and helplessness of the past hour and the past days, I decided I didn’t need to tolerate a public browbeating by the likes of Sullivan. Contract be damned. Modesty be damned.

  “You stupid man,” I said. The room went quiet. I opened my jacket and peeled down my bloody top, baring my breasts just long enough so he could see the angry knife marks circling them. “Are you willing to dismiss this as foreplay for kinky sex?”

  Sullivan went brick red and spluttered. I had to give him high marks for looking away after his first hard stare.

  “The Police Services Board might have the final word on Ms. St. Claire’s contract,” said Johnny sharply, interposing a broad shoulder, “especially when they are fully informed of the facts and complexities of the case. You clearly are not, Acting Chief. As far as public reaction goes, the public don’t like to see a victim pilloried by the law for defending herself against a vicious attack when the law was unable to do so.”

  I buttoned up my jacket with shaky fingers. “Further,” Johnny continued, his voice like sandpaper, “there are certain protocols to be followed involving federal agents before any charges are laid in respect to this present case. Besides myself, Ms. St. Claire is entitled to that courtesy. Just so you are aware.”

  The sub-vocals between the two were as clear as if they had been spoken aloud: Sullivan’s fucking interfering federals and Johnny’s fuck with me and you’re shit.

  Some poor sod blundered against the row of sheet metal conduits in the hallway and toppled them like dominoes. The horrendous clatter broke the palpable tension between the two men and gave them a convenient excuse to lower their hackles and quit the confrontation—probably to everyone’s disappointment.

  “Am I under arrest or not?” I asked, after the cursing and relieved catcalls died down.

  “No,” said Sullivan, to a point above and beyond me. “If you’ve already given your information, you’re free to go. I’d advise you to go to Emerg. Keep yourselves available.” He stalked away.

  Someone moved and I could see Nathan’s body. My voice came out high and breathy, like a child’s. “I want…I want to go away from here.”

  “We go,” said Johnny. His arm came around my waist and urged me past the blurry faces toward the door.

  I made it under the yellow tape and as far as the drive before an image of Nathan’s grinning face struck in a numbing flashback. My knees gave out. Johnny scooped me up before I hit the pavement. “Sorry,” I mumbled into his shoulder. “Nathan took my keys. He gave them to Cornett. They’re still back there with the bodies.”

  “No problem. We can see about getting them for you tomorrow. You’re in no condition to drive tonight, Lillie.”

  “But I want to go home.”

  “I intend to take you home. We have to talk.”

  He carried me down the drive, past the slowly revolving lights of a multitude of emergency vehicles, past the looming hulk of the dumpster to where his SUV stood crossways in the drive, front doors wide open.

  The streetlights still shone in the mist like a row of corpse candles. But not for me. Thanks to Johnny Thresher, not for me.

  35.

  Dumbarton, a faintly phosphorescent black shadow, stood waiting on the porch when we arrived. Johnny unlocked the door with Nathan’s key. I stayed limp in the passenger seat and watched the oblongs of light strike from the windows as he checked out the house room by room. When he returned and despite my faint and feeble assertions that I could walk, he carried me in
and laid me in the old leather recliner. Dumbarton followed, stiff-legged, hair raised, sniffing at Johnny’s heels and growling. I wondered if there was blood on Johnny’s boots.

  The house felt different, less uneasy, less watchful, less shadowed. I wondered how long that would last. Nathan was truly dead this time, but he would haunt me if he could. Dumbarton nosed my hand, whined and then stretched out at the foot of my chair with his head on his paws, watching. What that meant I wasn’t sure. And I had no idea why Dumbarton had come in again to a lighted house. It wasn’t over. There was a third man, the question of curse stones and God alone knew what else out there waiting in the dark.

  Johnny pulled the drapes against the black mirrors of the windows. Made me coffee. Made me drink it. Brought in a first aid kid, much larger and more complete than mine, from his SUV and set to work. Bathed the burning, ugly slashes with antiseptic and applied gauze and tape.

  In a kind of spent, boneless lassitude, I lay there and let him do it. Any qualms about modesty were ridiculous in the circumstances and, half-naked or not, I wasn’t a sight to turn anybody on. Nathan had made sure of that. I was glad Johnny had not demanded I go to the hospital. I watched his hard face and the muscle that twitched along his jaw and the white set of his nice mouth as he worked. I tried my best to blot out my memory of Nathan’s evil smile with Johnny’s face.

  “That fucking bastard,” he said when he finished. “That sick sonofabitch bastard. Lillie, I’m sorry I didn’t get there soon enough to stop him.”

  Maybe Johnny Thresher wasn’t such a hard case, after all. Not all the time. I didn’t know this man with the implacable face—and yet I did. He might as well have To Serve and Protect tattooed on his forehead.

  “He planned to cut them off, I think. But you came,” I said. “I didn’t think anyone would come.”