by Tim McGregor
A thud shook the ceiling over her head. Footsteps, the door banging shut. Voices, loud and angry. Noah was home.
When Billie turned back, the room was empty. Charles had fled.
Then it hissed into her ear, so close she felt its breath. A clamminess on her flesh as two tiny hands clutched her throat. Baby teeth clamping down on the super-sensitive skin of her neck, biting down hard.
Billie screamed and thrashed about to shake it off but it clung like a greasy lamprey to her neck. Shifting, slithering, gurgling. When she felt her own blood run hot down her neck, she bolted for the stairs.
~
“She’s bleeding.” Maya’s voice, whispered and alarmed.
Billie opened her eyes. Crumpled to her knees on the kitchen floor with no recollection of how she’d gotten there. Her neck burning with pain. Blood on her fingers.
“Serves the witch right,” said a male voice.
Billie looked behind her, the pain in her neck flashing hot as she turned around. Maya cowering in the doorway. Robin, pale with fear, rushing for the counter. Noah looked down at her with a metric ton of contempt. Another man, clad all in black, next to him, sharing the husband’s derision.
Robin swooped down to help Billie, a towel in her hand. Pressing it to the woman’s neck, Robin gasped. “What happened?”
“Leave her,” Noah barked.
“She’s bleeding!” Robin shot back. Clamping the towel over the wound, she spun to Billie again. “You need a doctor.”
“Wait.” Gripping a leg of the kitchen table for support, Billie pushed herself up. Legs wobbly, the mark on her neck stinging with the exertion. “How bad is it?”
“I can’t tell.” Robin pulled out a chair. “Sit down. Best to keep the pressure on that for now.”
Noah folded his arms, harsh eyes on his wife. “Why is she here?”
“She just wanted to help,” Robin said, reaching for another towel.
“I let her in.” Maya clung to the doorframe, eyes big with fear.
“It’s not her fault.” Billie pulled the wadded towel away from her neck, looked at the blood quickly before re-applying it. “I barged my way in.”
“You were told not to come back.” Noah’s teeth flashed with a snarl. He pulled out his phone. “That’s break-and-enter. I’m calling the cops.”
The other man touched Noah’s arm. He was tall, an imposing pillar of black that towered inside the kitchen. It was only now that Billie noticed the white collar at his throat.
“What’s your name?” said the cleric, his voice evenly tempered but deep with authority.
Raised in the church, her deference to a man of the cloth was instinctual. “Billie.”
“You are the psychic, yes?”
“She’s a fraud,” Noah spat. “A con artist.”
The man raised a hand to cool the husband, but kept his gaze on the interloper. “You were here before?”
Billie nodded. The two of them seemed oddly mirrored, clad in black as they were. Billie wondered, idly, what she would look like in the dog collar. She tried to match the sober coolness of the cleric’s gaze. “Who are you?”
“Reverend Reginald Joy. I’m helping Noah and his family with this…problem.”
She let the towel drop, looking at the blood staining the cloth. “That makes two of us.”
“No, it doesn’t.” The reverend scrutinized the woman in the chair. “You may mean well, but you are not helping this family in any way. In fact, you exacerbated the situation.”
“Have you dislodged this thing?” The question blurted out, anger bubbling up. “Have you helped them?”
“What is occurring within this house is serious. It’s not something to play at. Tell me, do you play with Ouija boards, too? Conduct seances?”
She kept mum, refusing to answer the stupid question.
“People like you are dangerous,” Reverend Joy declared. “Armed with some vague idea of the paranormal but no spirituality, you just charge in with your so-called sensitivities and your electro-magnetic ghost meters and your deluded sense of self-importance.”
In her peripheral vision, Billie saw Noah nod his head in smug agreement. Robin, at least, seemed conflicted. Maya was stone, eyes and ears open to everything.
Robin stepped in, a clean cloth in her hand. “Has the bleeding stopped?”
“Don’t touch her,” the Reverend warned, freezing the pregnant woman in her tracks. He sought Robin’s eyes before rotating slowly back to the woman in the chair. “The woman is toxic. I don’t want any of you to be infected with it.”
“Toxic?” Billie shook her head in disbelief. “Jesus Christ…”
The Reverend moved closer, his sheer height oppressive in the narrow kitchen. “You have unleashed something unholy in this house. On this poor family. To be fair, I don’t think that was your intention but the result is the same. Bad things follow you around, don’t they, Miss Culpepper? Bad luck, tragedy, pain? You’ve tracked it all through the house like mud on your boots.”
Billie rose quickly, the chair scraping back behind her. “I haven’t unleashed anything. What’s here was present before I arrived. And it’s not evil.” She looked at Robin and then Noah. “It’s just spirit. An angry one, a violent one, yes, but it’s not the devil.”
Robin ventured a question. “Who is it? Is it that man you mentioned?”
“What man?” Noah snapped.
“Don’t indulge her,” the reverend cautioned. “You’re just playing into what she wants.”
Billie’s teeth set, speaking through gritted jaws. “There was a death in this house fifty years ago. I thought the dead person here was this man, but it’s not. It’s someone else?”
Robin looked ready to collapse. “Then who is it?”
“Enough,” Reverend Joy spat, stepping away as if repelled by it all. “These are lies meant to confuse you. How would she know about a death on the property? Please.”
“There was a police report,” Billie said. “Pulled from the archives.”
“And do you have this police report?” he challenged.
Her head dipped a little. The photocopy was at home. She hadn’t thought to bring it with her.
Joy threw up his hands and then beseeched the homeowners. “Look, at best this woman is a fraud. At worst, she’s evil and her lies have clouded this issue enough. Noah, this isn’t my house and neither is it my place to eject the woman, but I strongly urge you to end this now.”
Noah glared at her. “Get out.” When his wife was about to say something, his look silenced her. Maya backed away into the corner.
Fraud. Evil. Deluded.
The words followed Billie down the hall as she retrieved her coat. Those terms were all too familiar and she realized that she was now repeating her mother’s life. The crazy psychic lady. Like mother, like daughter. Slipping into her boots, she opened the front door and called back as she went through.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help, Robin.”
Banging the door shut behind her, Billie stood on the porch and zipped her coat against the cold, feeling as wretched as a scolded child. It burned her insides how much she wanted to scream in that smug preacher’s face, furious at how he had gotten under her skin. Was it just the collar, the old Catholic kid in her kicking in, acquiescing any power? Or dignity, for that matter?
Caught up in her own festering anger, she didn’t notice the small figure crouched on the snowy porch rail watching her. Why was she surprised to see him? He always appeared when she was in distress. Today was no different.
“Hey,” she said, her heart already lifting. “Coming to the rescue again?”
Poor Tom said nothing. He looked over the house and then back to her. The blood from his severed stumps dotted the snow on the porch. Red blooms against the pristine white.
“I’m okay,” Billie said. “Just got my butt served to me by something nasty. That’s all.”
The door swung open again. Reverend Joy stepped outside, surprised to se
e her still there. His face hardened.
“Why are you still here?” He moved toward her, towering. Someone not unused to using his height to his advantage. “You are not wanted, Miss Culpepper. Take your deluded notions elsewhere.”
Tom scrambled closer along the rail, his small eyes brimming with hatred at the man in black.
“Wait, Tom!” Billie stepped between them, arms out. God knew what Poor Tom would do to the man if he thought she was being threatened.
Reverend Joy saw nothing, of course. “Who are you talking to?”
“Just shut your mouth, Reverend,” she said, moving to the steps. “For your own sake.”
His sneer was visceral. “Is this some trick? Some psychic mumbo-jumbo?”
She hurried down the snow crusted steps and marched away, silently beckoning to her friend before this escalated.
Let’s go home, Tom.
Reverend Joy grunted with relief as the charlatan ran away. Triumphant for the moment but this was a minor skirmish. He turned to go back inside when the snowball hit him square in the back of the head. Hard-packed and dense with ice, it carried the impact of a hardball.
The Reverend startled in pain and spun around quickly. There was no one there. The woman was long gone.
What happened next rattled him to his marrow. Later, when he thought of the incident, he would come to convince himself that he had simply slipped on the snowy floorboards of the porch. But in that moment, something colder than winter swept through his legs with the force of a freight train. His knees buckled under him and he folded like a house of cards, landing hard on the cold porch floor. The panic in his chest so severe that he feared he was having a heart attack.
Chapter 15
AMANDA TROY ARRIVED at the church on Emerald shortly before noon that Wednesday, after an intriguing phone call from someone named Joy. Pushing through the tall oak doors, she stepped into the church, her shoes clicking against the flagstone floor. Raised secular, she had always felt uneasy inside churches and was unsure of where to proceed. The place looked deserted.
“Hello?”
A figure stepped out from behind a screen at the north transept. A tall priest with broad shoulders and short cropped grey hair. He looked more like a football coach than a preacher.
“Thank you for coming,” he said, marching in quickly to greet her. “Reverend Joy.”
“Nice to meet you,” Amanda said, her hand completely swallowed in his huge fist. The bridge of his nose looked swollen. She’d ask about that later. “You said this was urgent.”
“I didn’t mean to be so mysterious on the phone.” He gestured to a pew. “But I’d rather talk in person.”
“I should have brought coffee,” she said. In fact, she had suggested meeting in a cafe but he had insisted it be here. Safer, he’d said. “So. You said this was important.”
Reverend Joy tugged at the cuff of his black shirt. “What do you know about a woman named Billie Culpepper?”
Not expecting that one. She had feared this was some sob story fund-raising thing. A waste of her time. “The psychic? I’m still trying to find out about her.”
“I saw your news piece about her. Is she really connected to these bizarre crimes?”
“As far as I can tell, but it’s all hearsay. Nothing concrete. And the sources are sketchy, to put it nicely.” She glanced at his face. Hardened, a touch of fear crinkling the corners of his eyes. “Why?”
“I have had a run-in with her. I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, if I may, I want to know what you think of her. What is she up to? Is she dangerous?”
“Maybe,” Amanda said. Her first instinct was to always keep her cards close to her chest but this man was a priest, not some rival reporter. “Disaster seems to follow her around. Or she’s the cause of it. I really don’t know yet.”
Joy folded his arms, rubbed the stubble on his jaw. “But you think she had something to do with that awful fire at the punchbowl. And that place called the Murder House?”
“I do. The fire at the gorge was a ritual performed by satanists, but Culpepper and one of her accomplices broke it up. The Murder House was the site of a number of unsolved homicides, all of which had heavy ritualistic aspects. My sources say she was the one who burned the place down last fall. On Halloween, no less.”
“I see. And who are these accomplices?”
Amanda Troy laid her leather gloves on the pew beside her but kept her coat zipped. It was cold inside the church. “One is an Englishman named John Gantry. The main suspect in the murder of a woman in England and another here. Both of those had similar occult elements, the pentagram stuff. Gantry was also fingered in the murder of a death metal musician named, get this, Crypto Death Machine. Big into the occult and devil worship, that one. That murder appears to have been a score being settled.”
The Reverend’s face took on a white pallor. “Is this Gantry person still on the loose?”
“He’s dead. Arrested during the aftermath of the musician’s death. He was killed while in prison, but his corpse vanished from the morgue the next day.”
“Good Lord,” Reverend Joy uttered. He shifted in his seat, unsettled. “And who is the psychic’s other accomplice?”
“Would you believe it’s a cop? Homicide detective. He’s used her on some of his cases. Oh, and they’re a couple, too.”
“She’s dating this detective?”
“From what I can tell. I think he’s covering for her.”
“Covering up what?”
“That’s the million dollar question.” Amanda looked out over the dim interior of the church. A twinkle of light from a clutch of votive candles at the feet of a statue. “Arson for one thing. Possibly murder in the Devil’s Punchbowl crime. The police found three bodies in the ashes.”
An odd sound escaped from the tall man on her right. He was tugging at his starched white collar, as if he needed air.
“Are you all right?”
“Just shocked,” he said. “That’s a lot to take in.”
It was an effort not to grin. Truth be told, Amanda Troy loved shocking people. It was so satisfying and the reverend was turning pale with it. “There’s more,” she added. “If you want to know.”
He took a breath, girding himself for more. “Yes. Please, go on.”
“Your turn.” This time, she grinned. “Why the interest in this Culpepper woman? Is she spooking the church crowd?”
“Just two of them,” Joy replied. “A young couple, with a daughter and another on the way. They’re going through a difficult time and this psychic is taking advantage of them.”
“How?”
“She’s convinced this couple that their home is haunted and only she can get rid of the ghost. I thought she was just a con artist, looking to fleece the poor family but now, I’m not sure what to think. She seems downright dangerous.”
The reporter produced a notepad and pen. “Can I have their names? I’d like to talk the couple, if I can.”
“Let me ask them first. They’ve been through enough at the moment.”
Amanda put the notepad down. “Try and convince them. This woman operates in the shadows. The more people who are willing to talk, the more she can be exposed for what she is.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
She paused before answering, a line worrying her flawless brow. “It’s more than just being a con artist. I don’t know if she’s some kind of occult hitman or what. Bottom line, she’s psychotic and dangerous.”
The lines in his face etched deeper. “Psychotic?”
“She had a real fucked up childhood, pardon my language. Her mom was abducted when she was eight, never seen again. She was also a psychic. Small town fortune-teller, you know the kind with the shop window? Her ex, meaning Billie Culpepper’s father, was always the suspect in her disappearance. Last year, Billie digs up the truth. She finds her father’s remains inside the Murder House. Then, out of the blue, her cop boyfriend digs up her mother’s bones in th
e ruins of a church out in the boonies.”
The smell of melted wax was heavy and pungent when it reached the reporter. She looked at the reverend. “Who wouldn’t be completely messed-up with a history like that?”
~
“I failed them,” Billie said. “Plain and simple.”
A Wednesday night shift at the Gunner’s Daughter, the bar halfway full but it was still early. The serious drinkers would start spilling in soon enough, warming up here before moving on for the night. The Gunner, as Billie sometimes called it, wasn’t really a destination bar, small as it was. It was a meeting place before shoving on elsewhere or it was the last stop on the way home. Like a train station for the socially mobile, no one stayed very long.
Twisting a peel of lemon into two whiskey sours, she slid the cocktails to the patrons at the far end of the bar and came back. “So,” she continued, “after being all but thrown out, I’m at a loss now. No idea what to do.”
Mockler sat hunched on the other side of the bar, nursing the pint she’d poured for him. Another evening of misaligned shifts, he stopped in after punching out while she was just starting her night. “But you had the man’s name, didn’t you? Charles somebody?”
“It’s not him.” Billie leaned her hip against the bar, tempering her voice. Loud enough to converse over the music from the vintage jukebox but hushed enough to keep from being overheard. “Whatever or whoever this thing is, it’s not the man who died at the bottom of the stairs.”
Mockler sipped his pint. He didn’t really want to talk about this, his day being crap as it was, but Billie clearly needed to talk it through. “Well, I guess we keep digging. Maybe I missed something in the records.”
“You’re pretty thorough,” she said. “Truth is, it might not be anyone who died there.”
His brow furrowed. “I thought that’s how it worked? People cling to the place where they died.”
“Not always. Sometimes they drift to a different place or get lost completely. Or they’re drawn to a certain home for whatever reason.”