by J-F. Dubeau
“Stephen!” William called out, the alcohol finally gone from his voice.
Inspector Stephen Crowley interrupted his assault on LaFrenière, shooting a look of red-hot fury toward Bergeron. The sheer force of his anger made William take a step back and raise his hands, palms out, in front of him.
“Calm down, Stephen,” he mumbled, the fear of being next in line to get his teeth knocked out sweating from each syllable.
At this point, Daniel had seen enough. He’d been witness to his father’s anger in the past. He’d watched Stephen put his fist through a wall after being unable to repair a lawn mower. Anger wasn’t the inspector’s favorite emotion, but he was often its victim and had sampled every flavor and shade of the feeling. Yet, in over a decade and a half, Dan had never seen his father succumb to his rage with such abandon. Never had he seen his old man lose control so thoroughly, nor beat a man so mercilessly.
Nothing was worth seeing his father like this. No revelation could erase seeing his hero fall this low.
CROWLEY
THAT STUPID CAVE.
Stephen Crowley’s mood was one of his blackest ever. Everyone had more or less legitimate reasons to be part of the Sandmen; he understood that. Bergeron, of course, had lost his daughter, but even predatory assholes like LaFrenière had motivations that made sense. The old man had seen his whole family, including both sons, taken by cancer, and he knew in his fetid old gut that his destiny would be no different. Archambeault was more vain, wanting the riches and security that came with power. He’d already had his wish granted simply by associating with the group, but once the eyes to greed were open, it was difficult to ever get them shut again.
Their motivations were understandable. What Crowley couldn’t comprehend was the lack of commitment. Everyone wanted their share of the pie, but it seemed that the hungrier each individual became, the more reluctant they were to put in the effort. They couldn’t possibly expect him to do all the heavy lifting and then simply collect at the end.
Were these the kind of people Stephen wanted in his camp? They were getting close to opening Pandora’s box, but what would happen then? Who would stand by him to corral the forces that would be unleashed? It was times like these he wished Dan would have joined the group. Maybe he should have been more forceful with the boy. Twisted his arm a little. That way he’d have at least one ally he could depend on. The Crowley boys.
Randy was another disappointment. The inspector loathed using the word, but there was genuine magic to what the medical examiner could do. Yet, when offered a place among the Sandmen, he barely hesitated before refusing. While Randy enjoyed a great position at the university and didn’t want for most earthly things, there were benefits to having friends like the Sandmen. Especially for someone who dabbled in practices best left out of the public eye.
No, instead Stephen had only himself to rely on for everything.
Before the meeting had concluded, Crowley stormed out of the church. He wanted to make sure they were the ones left to clean up. If they were all too afraid to get their hands dirty, the least they could do was put away all the paraphernalia from their ridiculous ritual. Crowley didn’t feel the slightest hint of guilt over having the rich and powerful of Saint-Ferdinand pick up after him, even if the group included grieving parents and sick old men. While they’d be in the comfort and security of the church, he had to deal with that goddamned cave.
Hopefully, his hunch was correct and the place was now deserted.
About a mile before he arrived at the Peterson farm, Crowley cut his headlights and slowed down. The lights to Harry Peterson’s barn were still on. The sick artist was awake and painting. Another one of the village’s disappointments. Someone who had the knowledge and experience that Crowley needed to complete his job but who selfishly chose not to share either. It was a well-known fact that Peterson had been part of the Saint-Ferdinand Craftsmen’s Association before the group disbanded years ago. He knew more about the history of the town than anyone else. The inspector had long suspected Harry of being the one behind the Craftsmen graffiti, but he couldn’t prove it.
It wasn’t the only thing that Crowley suspected him of either. It was probably no coincidence that Sam’s home and the stupid cave were at the edge of Peterson’s property.
Crowley drove his Explorer down the road that separated two of the farm’s unkempt fields. The path had been well trod over the past week, and a few more tire marks wouldn’t raise an eyebrow. The inspector parked near the line of yellow tape that delineated the crime scene. Reserving his anger in case he might need it, he climbed out of the SUV.
Even before the bodies were discovered, Finnegan’s property had been a depressing place to visit. Everything spoke to the man’s broken mind. The weird collection of appliances was eerie long before their purpose was found, and the lone trailer was a reminder of the miserable life Sam had lived every day.
Night did no favors to the trailer and the area around it. Even Crowley, whom Lieutenant Bélanger had once said was unacquainted with fear, found himself getting anxious as he walked through the property. He pushed his anxieties aside. The trick, he found, was to remain too angry to be afraid. Tonight, despite the creeping shadows, the inescapable stench of decay, and the ghosts of the events that had transpired here, there was more than enough rage to keep the terror at bay.
Without a clear path to the cave, Stephen had to take out the floodlights from the back of his vehicle and haul them all the way to the entrance. Each step of the journey allowed Crowley to stew in his anger anew, pushing away thoughts of the blood that had soaked the ground, and the powerful forces he was investigating. He’d need every ounce of courage available for what was to come.
Harsh light sprayed across the entrance to the cave, illuminating every detail, every crack in the rocks, and every branch of the dead oak tree that framed the entrance. It did nothing to remove the location’s ominous nature. Shadows were starker, and the cave itself became a black vortex that refused to give away anything about its contents.
Crowley felt his hairs stand on end. It wasn’t the nature of the cave but a coldness to the air around him that he simply couldn’t shake. As he was about to take his first step through the entrance, the second battery-operated floodlight in his hand, the inspector took a moment to stop. Holding his breath and closing his eyes, he tried to hear if there was any noise coming from within the cave. Rustling of leaves, movement, anything to give him a clue whether the thing he was seeking was still hidden inside. There was rustling in the trees and the hoot of a barn owl, but nothing from the black hole in the ground.
Crowley remembered how things had sounded when Bélanger had first found the cave. How, under the hot rays of the sun, the place had been completely silent, devoid of life, with an emptiness that did not belong to the forest. The sounds that were usually a source of fright for those who ventured into the woods at night were now like a comfortable blanket to the inspector. A reassurance that things were back to normal here.
Still, it took one last push of his willpower for Inspector Crowley to crouch down and walk through the low archway of dirt, roots, and rocks. The light from outside cut through the shadows, but the twists and turns of the shallow tunnel prevented it from digging too deep. After a few moments, he had to pull out his service flashlight to better navigate the cave.
The walls seemed oddly textured. There wasn’t much room to either side and none to stand. After a minute of squeezing through a bottleneck, the inspector was disgorged into what felt like a larger chamber. The beam of his flashlight seemed insufficient to the task, and he set the floodlight on the ground. The location was finally getting to his nerves, picking at his worries and teasing his imagination with shadows that looked like creatures but in the end were nothing. Fumbling in a way he’d never admit to another living soul, Crowley flipped the switch on the floodlight, illuminating the chamber by casting its beam toward the ceiling.
Considering what had, at one point, inhabit
ed this place, the inspector thought it would be desolate, dry, and sterile. Instead he was presented with a tableau of madness that could almost be considered beautiful.
The texture he’d seen on the walls was finally revealed to him in all its terrible glory. Every surface was covered in desiccated organic remains. An untrained eye, unfamiliar with the appearance of organs and broken bones, might have missed the subtlety, but to the inspector, the textures were obvious. Every inch of the cave had been decorated by a gruesome mural. The bas-relief of interwoven spirals and elegant curving patterns was sculpted from skulls, bone fragments, nearly fossilized viscera, and the leathery remnants of animal skin.
A voice from the back of Crowley’s mind cried for him to leave, but he stood rooted in place. Anger, fear—none of it compared to the awe he felt at the hypnotic patterns surrounding him.
This was not done by the hands of men. Despite the terrible nature of the art confronting him, the inspector couldn’t help but get closer to it. With a hand trembling not out of fear but reverence, he touched the wall. For the first time since his eighteen-year search had begun, Stephen Crowley had a tangible link to his quarry.
VENUS
IT WAS A minor triumph, but well worth it.
The past two days had been difficult. Penny had been the easiest thing to manage, being reduced to little more than a zombie by her grief. It was devastating how little she would talk and how the strong, willful girl had given up her autonomy. Paul and Virginie had been as helpful as they knew how. Going back and forth between wanting to be of assistance and staying out of Venus’s way. Staying true to their parenting style, they didn’t interfere, but instead stocked the kitchen with the girls’ favorite snacks. Not that Penny would eat anything. To their credit, they had talked with Penny’s grandmother, who lived in Florida, and had worked out that the grieving girl could stay at the McKenzie house until things settled down.
It had also been up to Venus to go to the LaForest house to gather essentials for her friend. As expected, it was a painful visit. Every room in the house had a memory linked to it, like that time Mrs. LaForest had brought them brownies in Penny’s room while they were watching horror movies, or all the dinners they’d shared in the living room, sitting on the couch. Should Penny be allowed to keep the house and live there, it would be a difficult homecoming.
None of these things were the success Venus was so proud of, though. What she had accomplished reassured her that, although it would take some time and the road ahead was going to be difficult and painful for her friend, Penelope was going to be mostly okay. After hours of sitting with her in silence, listening to her cry, and attempting to come to terms with the unimaginable, after much begging and prodding on Venus’s part, she had finally succeeded in getting Penny to eat something.
Both girls had chatted calmly well into the night. Venus had tried her best to keep conversation topics away from the tragedy of the previous day, but they could only ignore the elephant in the room for so long. Inevitably, conversation returned to the subject of Penny’s mom: why she had to die and what would the orphaned girl do now. Eventually Venus’s friend went to sleep, drained by the tragedy.
Venus, however, was still very much awake. The recent events only served to fire up her brain with questions. Who was this “Chris Hagen”? Why had she been compelled to talk to him? Who had killed Mrs. LaForest? Having no way to find answers at two in the morning, Venus looked for a way to distract herself until she, too, was able to sleep.
She turned to her computer, browsing through web pages while petting Sherbet. Yet, after an hour of reading, and in spite of her friend’s snoring and Sherbet’s purring in her lap, Venus was still no closer to sleep.
She decided to take a look at the feed from the camera she’d installed in the shed. At this time of night, there shouldn’t be much going on. The mother bird would probably be covering her eggs and sleeping with one eye open for predators, Venus thought to herself as she switched the feed on.
Something was in the shed.
It was difficult to determine what she was seeing. Between the camera’s low resolution and the terrible lighting, the image quality wasn’t up to the task of properly rendering the interior of the shed. It was enough, however, to let Venus know that something was wrong.
In the middle of the empty room was a stain. A shadow that obscured the bird’s nest she had meant to observe. At first glance, it could have been a smudge on the lens or perhaps a compression error in the signal, but after double-checking the equipment, she knew that wasn’t it.
Even more disturbing was the mess around the shadow. Seeping from the darkness appeared to be a pool of dark liquid. It looked dreadfully familiar.
Venus leaned in, her nose almost touching the monitor, trying to get a better look. Suddenly the shadow turned, and she jumped back. Eyes. Glowing eyes had appeared inside the shed. Her heart raced. The eyes seemed to be staring directly into the lens, as if they knew she was watching.
Venus stared back, both petrified and fascinated. She observed for several minutes until it hit her. This was a prank. It had to be. André and his cronies were playing a sick joke on her. They had broken into her shed and messed with the lighting to create the play of shadows she was seeing. The eyes were probably LEDs or pocket flashlights. As for the liquid, that was the telltale sign. Whoever was trying to scare her had knocked over a can of paint or a bucket or something. It seemed a curiously elaborate plan, one too sophisticated for André to have come up with. In fact, none of her usual tormentors had the wit or skill to invent anything like this.
Whoever was behind it, they had Venus’s attention. She stood, dumping poor Sherbet onto the floor and walking downstairs to the back door. The cat followed in her footsteps, still offended at being dropped.
The night was dark, lacking a moon or the streetlights of larger communities. The only source of illumination came from the shed itself. The soft white glow of the camera’s light emanated from the various cracks in the wall and the small window in the door.
Venus walked as calmly as she could, her bare feet leaving footprints in the wet grass. She was too preoccupied to enjoy the feeling of it between her toes.
When she stepped into the shed, Venus realized that part of the reason for the terrible image quality on her monitor was that the lighting was even worse than she’d assumed. The brilliance of the bright bulb she had installed seemed to be obscured, as if a black veil had been thrown over the whole shed.
Something shuffled in the corner. A soft rustling, like cloth being dragged on the floor in an empty room. She jumped and spun around, her left foot stepping in something wet. Eyes wide and pupils dilated, she looked into the darkness . . . and the darkness looked back at her. The glowing eyes. She had their full attention. They were not LEDs. This was no prank.
Venus stumbled back, trying to make her way through the doorway of the shed and into the night, but something caught her attention. On the wall opposite the shadow was something new. A spiral pattern, artistically laid out. It looked like a cross between an arabesque and the spiral of a nautilus shell. Beautiful in its complexity, the mural was painstakingly drawn with intricate details and curves that pleased the eye and soothed the mind. However, the realization of what glistening and wet materials were used in the creation of this art slowly sank in. Venus was disgusted. There were eggshells, delicate skulls, and the occasional tiny feathers in the mural. Ingredients taken from the eggs and their fetal contents. Bone, viscera, and blood. Such was the media used to create the enthralling mural.
As she was deciding between screaming and running away, the door to the shed slammed shut. Venus slipped and fell against the wall. The whole shed shook under the impact. She sat for a moment, staring at her left foot. The toes were darkened by a thick liquid. She wiggled them, feeling a stickiness that she remembered from many a skinned knee and scraped elbow.
The shadow crept closer to her, and Venus tried backing up farther against the wall. If she c
ould have somehow squeezed between the boards, she would have done it. Anything to be out of the presence of whatever these eyes belonged to.
Suddenly the shadow stopped, as if it had run up against some invisible wall. It writhed and swirled like smoke caught in the wind, yet refused to disperse. At the edge of her hearing, Venus could barely perceive screams of fury, strong in their anger but dim, as if coming from inside a grave. The shadow focused its eyes on her once more, and the screams vanished. For a tense moment, she considered that perhaps she had indeed fallen asleep upstairs and was now having a nightmare.
Then it spoke.
The voice that came out of the shade was like nothing Venus had heard before. Both beautiful and terrible at once, it could be compared to a heavenly chorus chanting from within a cave inhabited by a hundred thousand bats. It echoed majestically, while tearing at the soul with voracious hunger.
“Release me.” The demand writhed in the young girl’s mind, more like burrowing worms of thought than sound in her ears.
The shadow lashed out once again, and Venus pulled her legs in to get out of its reach. Through the fear, she tried to identify her attacker. If she couldn’t figure out its name or recognize its face, at least she wanted to know what it was. So far, all she could come up with was blood and shadows.
The creature, whatever it was, seemed to have given up on reaching her physically. It swirled slowly in the darkness, shapes existing only on the very edge of perception. Dancing over the line between something seen and something imagined.
The two of them stayed that way for several minutes, each minute stretching on forever. It gave Venus time to think. Occasionally a wet crack would echo from the darkness, breaking the silence and making her jump. The eyes would look around, the stare from them raising the hairs on the back of her neck like nails on a chalkboard. The more she looked at the thing, the smaller she felt. This wasn’t the feeling of being in the presence of a predator; it was something greater, more humbling.