Monstrous (Blood of Cain Book 1)

by J. L. Murray

  “Just drive, Romeo.”

  I smoothed my shirt, buttoning the flannel I’d found in Roo’s truck, pulling my hair back into a ponytail. I straightened and walked stiffly, trying to look more official. When the front door opened and a puffy-eyed man glared down at us, I whipped out Tommy Dekker's wallet and flashed his badge, closing it quickly before he got a good look at it.

  “State Police, sir,” I said, not even sure if that was a thing. “I know this is a difficult time, but do you mind if I ask you some questions?”

  “State Police?” he said slowly, the glare turning to confusion. “What do you want with me?”

  “Maybe it would be best if we spoke inside,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment of hesitation. He shook his head blearily. “Yeah, of course. Please, come in. Hey, Roo.”

  “Hey, Kev,” said Roo. “Just showing the nice detective around town.”

  “Sure,” he said, exhaustion tinging his voice. “Want some coffee?”

  Kevin Kroger's home was the picture of Helmsville perfection. He had high ceilings in his simple house that had probably been built with his own hands, and every spare inch was covered in an animal head or skin. There was a light fixture made of antlers. There was a shabby couch and a couple chairs in the living room, all facing a large flat screen television.

  “Sorry to trouble you,” I said, mimicking every cop I'd ever spoken to, “I know it's been a tough night for you.”

  Kev rubbed his face and I could hear his beard stubble rubbing roughly against the palm of his hand. “It doesn't seem real,” he said, his eyes watering. “I just can't believe it.”

  Roo and I sat down on the couch and Kev sat down slowly on a ratty recliner. He focused on me for a second before springing up again.

  “I'm sorry, I'll get you some coffee.”

  “No, that's not necessary,” I said. “Just have a seat, Mr. Kroger.” It felt strange to be so formal. I smiled at him in what I hoped was a reassuring way.

  He nodded, blinking his red-rimmed eyes. He looked at Roo, who looked sympathetic. Kroger looked so lost that it was almost enough to break even my heart. I didn't like this, talking to family. It made me feel dirty to lie to this man, cracked open and vulnerable as he was.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” I said, trying to make my voice as soft and sweet as possible.

  “I told the sheriff when he came out,” said Kev. “Did you talk to Joe?”

  “Sheriff Davis?” said Roo. I shot her a look and she shrugged.

  “I just want to get your firsthand impression,” I said. “I read the report, but I want to hear it from you so I can investigate.”

  “Investigate?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “It was an accident. That's what Joe said. A horrible accident. Jesus, I should have been here. I should have...what the hell was she doing out there in the middle of the night?”

  “They found her in the pond,” I said.

  Kev put his head in his hands. I took that as a yes.

  “Was your wife a drinker?” I said, bracing for a heated reaction. I got one.

  “Alyssa didn't even drink wine with dinner,” he said, standing up and starting to pace. “She didn't like beer and everything else made her sick. And before you ask, no, she did not do drugs. You people coming into my home–”

  “Okay, Mr. Kroger, I believe you,” I said.

  He stopped pacing and looked at me. “You do?”

  “Joe didn't believe you,” said Roo.

  “No,” he said, rubbing his face again. “He kept asking about her habits, hinting at things that just weren't true. My Alyssa wouldn't have gotten out of bed at midnight, gotten herself drunk, and walked out to the tiny-ass pond and drowned. And she sure as hell wouldn't commit suicide.”

  “Did Joe say that?” said Roo. Then, seeing my look, she said, “What? I'm just asking.”

  “Yeah, he damn well did say that. The son of a bitch. I had to send the twins to my mother's house. Mom, she can barely see for her cataracts, but I couldn't see the girls subjected to this. I can't imagine what people are going to say to them.”

  Kev looked deflated, and wove his way back to the recliner. He looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, God. They're only seven.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said, feeling a twinge at the phrase. I thought of the wraith earlier and its peculiar behavior. What the hell had it wanted? Kev hunched over his hands and started to sob. Roo went over to him as I watched, putting her arm awkwardly around his heaving shoulders. I got up and walked out the door, making my way around the house. I saw the pond a little way off and walked toward it, looking at the ground. It was patchy grass, most of it starting to turn brown at the tips. There were brightly colored kiddie toys dotting the yard. A plastic slide, the color fading from weather. A couple of bicycles on their sides, rusty in places. A tiny playhouse made from the same material as the main house.

  There was a fence around the pond, made of round posts pounded into the ground and wrapped all around with chicken wire. When I reached it, I could see the wire was bent in one spot, as though someone had fallen onto it. Or been pushed. I stared at the pond. It was covered in bright green scum, except a small area next to the bent wire. Where she died.

  I turned away to see Roo coming toward me.

  “Well, he's a mess,” she said, still cheerful. She was an odd one. I couldn’t quite figure her out. She went from cheerful to tears to cheerful again. Takes all kinds, as my dad used to say.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “That where it happened?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Poor Alyssa.”

  “So was she one of the ones you were talking about?” I said. “The closet drinkers?”

  “Nah,” she said. “I haven't seen her drink except for an amaretto sour once a couple years back. She comes into the bar, but mostly to eat. She usually got a Coke.”

  “Anybody want to kill her?”

  “Everyone loved Alyssa,” she said. “I've never heard anyone say anything bad about her. And Kev in there adored her. Always talked about how great she was. Once I watched Ava Richey hit on him, but he was oblivious. Just kept telling her stories about his wife. He was probably the only truly happily married man I've ever met.”

  I nodded to the playhouse. “So two kids. What are they like?”

  Roo shrugged. “Like two kids. They're identical twins, which I used to think was kind of creepy. But they're cute. Funny. One of them wears her hair shorter than the other, so you can't really tell they're identical. I can't remember their names, maybe Kylie and Brenna? Cute girly names like that.”

  I walked around the pond, trying not to look at the spot devoid of algae. I stood in front of the playhouse, peering through the small door, which swung open on the hinges, swaying a little in the morning breeze. I saw movement for an instant before realizing it was a small mirror fixed to the wall. There was a pretend kitchen affixed with stickers and a plastic sink full of leaves and dirt. No doubt a station for making mud pies. I stood up and looked at Roo. She was looking at something just past my shoulder, squinting. I followed her gaze and noticed something hanging from the low eave of the little house. It was moving in the breeze.

  “What is that?” said Roo.

  I walked up and touched the object. It was a spiral of small twigs woven up with yarn to form a cone, holding a piece of elk antler, dried herbs, an old chunk of rotten meat.

  “Devil's nest,” I muttered to myself.

  “What?” said Roo. “What the hell is that?”

  “It's meant to trap evil spirits.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I tipped the cone to show her the pentagram on the bottom, made up of sticks and string. “Because I used to make these.”

  “I thought you were a preacher's daughter.”

  “I was,” I said. “But Beatrice took a liking to me and my sister.”

  “The witch?” She looked amused for a moment, before she seemed to catch herself.r />
  “She was...my friend,” I looked at the Devil's Nest. It still hurt to remember the day my mother discovered that our walkabouts in the woods were really visits to the old woman's cabin.

  It was hard to say when my mother changed. I'd remember things she said to me as a child, and wonder, was that her, or was that the thing she became? Maybe, in the end, there wasn’t any difference. Maybe she and my sister didn’t change at all. Maybe they were always monsters.

  “Let's go,” I said.

  “That's it? Just like that?”

  I was already walking back to the truck. Roo hurried to keep up.

  “There's nothing else here.”

  “So you're just giving up? That's bullshit!” She ran to stand in front of me, to block my way. “I don't care how much of a zombie weirdo you are, Alyssa didn't just fall into a pond, and she didn't kill herself.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Oh. You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you're not giving up?”

  “No,” I said. “There's just nothing else to find here. Unless the husband did it.”

  “He didn't.”

  “Then I have work to do.”

  “Sorry about calling you a zombie weirdo.” She was cheerful again. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around Delilah Rooney. She seemed to change every five minutes.

  “I've been called worse.”

  “So where to now?”

  I looked at her. She looked earnest now, blinking her big pretty eyes at me. I glanced back at the house. Kev Kroger was watching us through the window, his own eyes flat and dead.

  “I have to go see an old friend.” I tapped a Lucky out of the pack and lit it, blowing smoke into the air and watching it rise into the blue sky. It was cool now, but it would be hot by afternoon.

  “Great, I'll take you.”

  I didn't look at Roo when I replied. “I have to go alone. There's something private I need to talk to her about.”

  “Who, Beatrice? The old witch?”

  I didn't answer right away.

  “I don't think you quite understand what I told you last night,” I said, taking another drag. I blew it out through my nose. “I'm not a good person, Roo. I'm not someone you want to be around. People die when they get close to me.”

  “People are already dying.”

  I looked at her finally. She met my eyes with a steady glare. “I'll meet you at the bar, okay? But this is...personal. It's about my family.”

  I blinked at her, watching her face. I couldn't tell what she was thinking. I saw my father again, like it had happened yesterday, raising a hand that dripped with his own blood. I saw him raise his head, pain-filled eyes focused on me. I saw his trembling lips form the words:

  “Run, Frankie.”

  Roo looked down at her sneakers. “Do you think it's the same killers who, you know, hurt your dad?”

  “No,” I said. “It's impossible.”

  “Why?” Roo was frowning at me. I could see the pulse in her neck jumping. “Was it the witch? Is that why this devil thing is hanging here?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s because my father's killers don't live here anymore. And Beatrice isn't a killer.” I ground out my cigarette. My next words were spoken almost to myself, as if Roo wasn't even there. “She tried to save us.”

  chapter six

  B

  ack in my Charger and blissfully alone, I decided that I would have to keep Roo at arm's length. Sometimes, I found myself so desperate for human interaction, for a touch, for a conversation, I did things that weren't so good for the people around me. Call it selfishness or narcissism, call it loneliness, it was part of me. You can't fight who you are. I'd warned Roo that I wasn't good for her. The rest was out of my hands.

  I needed to see Beatrice, but I had a few stops to make along the way. I pulled down the overgrown dirt driveway, hearing the knapweed whack up against the underside of the car. I turned off the ignition and looked out at...nothing. A big field of nothing. Just a sign—George Sweeney Real Estate—pounded deep into the ground. I got out of the car and walked to the end of the drive. After a minute, three ravens joined me. They were quiet, as if they understood why I needed to be there.

  I stood where there used to be a parking lot, dusted in gravel, but the weeds had taken over with a vengeance. I stepped off the road and onto the tall green grass dotted with Indian Paintbrush blooms and the flowering purple of the knapweed. I took another step, my legs feeling as if they were filled with stones. Another step and another, forcing myself to look. I came to the edge where white concrete poked up through the grass. I reached to touch the crumbling concrete reverently.

  The steps of my dad's church. I lifted my eyes without wanting to, to look at the square of grass, a shade greener, where the church used to stand. I stepped over the remains of the foundation and walked up toward where the pulpit used to be, remembering how I used to touch every pew on my way past. I stopped just short of where my father used to stand, and sat in the grass where my family would sit, watching him sweat and work himself into a lather as he preached about sin and vice and fire and brimstone.

  What would he think of me now?

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture his face. I couldn't quite put the pieces together. I opened my eyes and looked around. I didn't know what happened here, whether it burned down because of transients or a forest fire or lightning. Could be anything. I touched the ground, placing my palm flat on the earth.

  “I'm sorry, Daddy,” I whispered. “I tried to run. But I wasn't fast enough.”

  I was going to visit our old property, but someone else moved onto the land. A double wide trailer was set where my little house used to stand. Before I burned it down. I could see some kids playing tag back where our horses used to graze. Right on the spot the police had found my father. The kids stopped running to point at the black birds circling them in the sky. I backed the car out as quick as I could, telling myself I was tearing up from allergies.

  But I'm pretty sure my allergies died when I did.

  My final stop was a few miles down the road, not far by Helmsville standards. I pulled in, noting the mailbox, rusty and crooked. The drive was packed dirt, tufts of grass growing in the middle, and bumpy and rutted from driving on it when it was soft. It wound a good ways down and around a hilly curve. I stopped the car in front of a shack, devil's nests hanging all along the low-hanging roof. In a pen behind the house, I knew, milk goats were kept. The herb garden was on the other side.

  I got out of the car and the front door opened. An ancient woman stepped out, her hair wild and wispy white trailing behind her. She wore a wool poncho, moving like a woman half her age. She was holding a shotgun.

  “Hey, Beatrice.”

  She stared at me for a long moment, her eyes crinkling in the sun.

  “It's about goddamn time,” she said. “I see you still have your birds.” A raven landed on the roof behind Bea's head and squawked noisily.

  “Nothing I can do about that,” I said. “Only company I can seem to keep around.”

  “Arson,” said Beatrice, pulling small jam jars out of her cupboard. She turned her head to look over her shoulder at me. “I suppose she thought that was appropriate, given the circumstances.”

  “My mom burned down the church?” I said. I was sitting at a small scrubbed table in Beatrice's tiny cabin. There were herbs strung across the ceiling with twine, books stacked in every spare bit of floor and surface, and baskets of sticks and odd-smelling substances. The little wood stove was stacked with a pile of old books, topped by a teacup with a ring of mold on the surface. It felt like home.

  Beatrice was rifling through a low cupboard before triumphantly coming up with a bottle. “Ha! I knew I had something.”

  “It's okay,” I said. “I'm not even thirsty. What is that, anyway?”

  She shrugged. “Port, I think. I won it in a card game a few years back.” She took a long swig.”

  “
What kind of card game?” I said. “You won a bottle of port?”

  “Still drinks,” she said, smiling, displaying a few missing teeth.

  “Beatrice, how did you know it was me?”

  “I'm not stupid, girl,” she said, pouring the ruby liquid in the jars. “I get the paper. You've been all over the news.”

  “Right,” I said. “But you know I'm...”

  “Dead?” she said, meeting my eyes. “Interesting, isn't it?” As she set the glasses on the table, I could see her eyes sparkling with excitement. She pushed a glass in front of me. “Just when you think you know the way of things, the world throws you a curve ball. Dead, alive, doesn't matter. You're here now, and you're going to help me stop them.”

  “Stop who?” I remembered the devil's nest at the Krogers' house. “Did you go see Alyssa Kroger?”

  She snorted, pushing white hair out of her eyes. “She came to see me first. Knew something was wrong. I gave her that devil's trap, it's true. But I told her why it wouldn't work.” Beatrice took another long draw from her glass, wrinkling her nose.

  “Why wouldn't it work?”

  She leaned forward, meeting my eyes. “Not strong enough. What was after her knew how to get to her, and no twigs and herbs were going to stop it.”

  I took a drink of the port. It was god-awful.

  “She hung it from her kids' playhouse.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “I know.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “You're not caught up yet, are you Frances?” She was watching me. “What happened to you? Did you really die? Or was it a trick?”

  “I didn't ask for it, if that's what you mean,” I said. I lifted my shirt to show her my scar. She nodded, impressed. “I don't know why I'm still alive. But I'm here. They send me places. And this time, they said it was important. They said it was something only I could do.”

  “Who sends you places?” she said, watching me with her hawkish eyes.

  “I don't know,” I said. I tipped the jar back and swallowed the rest of my drink, setting the glass down on the table. “But they're going to give me redemption.”