Black Magic Woman (Morris and Chastain Investigations)

by Justin Gustainis

  All of the vampires were focused on Hank now, and as they began to surge toward him, Morris made his move. One vampire was still between him and the Mustang, and Morris hit him with a stiff-arm that Jim Brown might have approved of. He thought there might be a few drops of holy water left in the deflated bubble glued to his palm, and the scream from the vampire told him he’d been right. Unhindered now, he yanked open the Mustang’s door, jumped behind the wheel, and quickly got the door closed and locked. He thought starting the engine might attract some of the undead’s attention, but they were too interested in the sight and smell of Hank Dexter’s fresh, pulsing blood to pay any notice.

  Seeing that he’d accomplished what he wanted, Hank gripped his bleeding wrist tightly and began to back toward the open door of Emma’s. The vampires started to follow, and that was when Mitch McConnell stepped forward.

  He held one of the chair legs in each hand, and as the vampires approached he brought them together before him in the form of a cross. He had seen a guy do something similar in one of those old Dracula movies on TV, and it had done the job then, driving the evil count back like an irresistible force. Mitch silently prayed to God and Sonny Jesus that it would have a similar effect this time, too.

  It worked just fine.

  The vampires frantically reversed course, cowering back before the power of the holy symbol Mitch held in his trembling hands. Their dismay and confusion gave Hank Dexter the chance to get back inside Emma’s, where he immediately began to apply to his arm the fishing line tourniquet he and Mitch had prepared a few minutes earlier.

  Across the street, Morris gunned the Mustang and sent it hurtling up Main Street in a spray of dust. The front bumper caught one of the vampires, a woman, and knocked her sprawling. But Morris only went fifty or sixty yards before jamming on his brakes, turning the wheel hard left as he did so. These actions, combined with the film of dust on the street, allowed the Mustang’s rear end to swing around 180 degrees in a perfect bootlegger’s turn that had the car facing back the way it had just come. Morris hit the gas again, then flicked the headlights on high beam.

  Earlier in the day, he had used the last of the black paint to paint a cross carefully on each of the car’s headlamps. This meant that turning on the lights sent two cross-shaped shadows wherever the car was pointed.

  Right now, it was pointed at the group of vampires in the middle of Main Street.

  Smoke and screams arose whenever the cruciform shadows touched one of the undead. Morris aimed the Mustang right for the center of the mob, and the vampires scattered like tenpins. He drove through them, past them, and on for a couple of blocks before repeating the rum-runner’s maneuver to turn the car around again. He let the car’s powerful motor idle while he surveyed the scene he had just left.

  The sidewalk in front of Emma’s was empty, which meant that Hank and Mitch were both safely inside, protected by the crosses painted on the cafe’s doors and windows. The vampires were milling around the street in apparent confusion. Since the Mustang’s headlights were still on, Morris didn’t think any of the vampires would be heading his way.

  Then he raised his gaze a little and beheld a sight he had viewed many times in his life, but never with such profound relief.

  Sunrise.

  The vampires became aware of the coming of dawn at about the same time and they immediately began to scramble around in a desperate search for shelter. But there was none to be had. Every door and window they approached bore a painted cross that barred their entry as effectively as steel bars.

  It was less than a minute before the vampires began to burn.

  The first to go up was a man in a mail carrier’s uniform, and even from two blocks away Morris could hear his screeches as the sun’s purifying rays turned him incandescent. The others followed soon afterward—first one, then another, then two more, and finally all of them were ablaze, rending the air with screams of pain and rage. The Master, far older and stronger, went last, staring up at the sky with his ruined eye sockets, unable to see the great glowing orb that was turning him into a torch.

  Then it was over.

  Morris drove slowly back the way he had come and parked in front of Emma’s. Up and down Main Street, people were starting to venture from their homes. They came out cautiously, a few at a time, the way folks will do after a tornado has passed through.

  As Morris got out of the Mustang, the door of Emma’s opened. Mitch came out first, followed by Hank, who now had strips of tablecloth tied tightly around his left wrist.

  The three of them stood on the sidewalk staring out at the debris left in the street—the four dead cows, the pools of blood that were already starting to attract flies, and eighteen piles of ash that had once made up a colony of the undead.

  After a while Mitch said, “Anything special we oughta do with them ashes?”

  Morris thought for a moment. “You got a stream around here, or a creek—any kind of naturally running water?”

  Mitch nodded. “There’s a good-sized crick runs past the north edge of town.”

  “Put the ashes in there, then. Probably an unnecessary precaution, but it never hurts to be careful. You might say a prayer while you do it, too.”

  “I’d do that anyway, most likely,” Hank told him.

  “That was a brave thing you boys did, coming out there like that,” Morris said. “Saved my sorry ass, for sure.”

  Hank twitched one side of his mouth. “I don’t reckon a fella like you needs to talk much about brave. You got more guts than a pissed-off grizzly, Mister Morris.”

  Mitch was looking at Morris closely. “This ain’t your first rodeo, is it? You done this kind of thing before.”

  “Yeah,” Morris said, his voice sounding tired. “Yeah, I have. It’s part of my profession, you might say.”

  “How’s a fella end up doing this kind of thing for a living?” Mitch asked.

  “It’s kind of a family tradition,” Quincey Morris told him. He reached inside his jacket pocket, found his Ray-Bans, and put them on. “Now, we’ve got some cleaning up to do here—but first, Hank, we better get the local doc to look at that arm of yours. I expect you’re going to need some stitches, podner.”

  CHAPTER 2

  MAY IS A hot month in Texas, and Walter LaRue seemed grateful for the air conditioning in Quincey Morris’s office. “I was wondering about something,” he said, settling his bulk into the armchair across from Morris’s antique oak desk. “When you file your income tax, what do you put in the box marked ‘Occupation?’”

  “Actually, I have a fella who takes care of all that for me,” Morris said. The Southwest twang in his speech was slight but noticeable—at least it was to LaRue, who had lived all of his forty-two years well north of the Mason-Dixon line. “I tend to have a lot of deductions—travel, mostly—and trying to keep track of it makes my head hurt. Hell, it’s all I can do sometimes just rememberin’ to get receipts. But, to answer your question: on my tax guy’s advice, I use ‘Consultant.’”

  “Not ‘private investigator?’”

  Morris shook his head. “That’s a legal term, Mr. LaRue, and it’s got a specific meaning under the law. The state of Texas, like most places, has pretty stiff requirements for a private investigator’s license—you’ve got to show so many hours of law enforcement experience, and so on. I don’t qualify for the license—but then, I can’t say that I ever felt the need to.”

  “You don’t advertise in the Yellow Pages, either.” It was almost an accusation.

  Morris smiled without showing any teeth. “No, I sure don’t,” he said evenly. “I doubt the phone book people have a category that would fit me very well. But there’s quite a few folks out there in the world who know what I do. My clients mostly hear about me by word of mouth—as you did your own self. Or so I’m assuming.”

  Walter LaRue grunted softly in response. He was one of those big men who always seem untidy. His expensive gray suit had not known the touch of an iron for quite some ti
me, the custom-made white button-down shirt had a button missing from one of the collar points, and LaRue’s Hermes tie bore a small stain of what was almost certainly mustard. His hair, which was brown flecked with gray, was carelessly combed and unevenly parted.

  In contrast, the slender, thirtyish man seated behind the big desk was carefully groomed and neatly dressed. Quincey Morris’s black hair was combed back from his high forehead. His tropical-weight navy blue suit combined quality fabric with good tailoring. Although Morris didn’t really care much about clothing, four years at Princeton had given him conservative good taste in attire. So, every January 2nd, he spent an hour online with the current catalogs from Brooks Brothers and Joseph A. Banks, ordering whatever he thought he might need for the coming year.

  Quincey Morris may have been the only adult male Texan who had never owned a string tie.

  After several moments of fidgety silence, LaRue said, “This is kind of... weird for me. I mean, six months ago, if you’d asked me to predict what I’d be doing today, most likely I’d say that I’d be at my desk in Madison, Wisconsin, running my software design firm. Sitting in Austin consulting a parapsychologist would have been pretty damn low on my list of possibilities.”

  “I’m not one of them, either, Mr. LaRue,” Morris said patiently. “A parapsychologist—a real one, I mean, not one of the cranks or con artists—is a scientist, someone who studies the paranormal in an organized, controlled way. Now, I do try to keep up with the serious stuff as it’s published. That’s not hard to do, since there’s so little of it. But I don’t consider myself any kind of scientist.”

  “Then what are you?” LaRue asked with a frown.

  “I suppose you could call me an interventionist, if you need to put a name on it. Let’s say I’ve got a client who’s experiencing some difficulty that he thinks is due to some supernatural entity.” Morris shrugged. “That turns out to be the case, then sometimes I’m able to provide assistance.”

  “Only ‘sometimes?’”

  “Yep, afraid so. It all depends on the nature of the problem, and what the client expects in the way of a solution. For example, I’ve been asked more than once to raise the dead.”

  “Are you serious?”

  Another shrug. “The people who asked me were sure enough serious. But necromancy is not something that I practice—and I mean never. That kind of thing comes strictly under the heading of black magic. I don’t perform black magic, and I don’t mess around with those who do.”

  “So, what does that leave?” LaRue asked. “White magic? Do you perform that, whatever it is?”

  “I’ve got some very limited skills in that area, Mr. LaRue. But I have several associates whose expertise in that area is far greater than mine. I call upon them, from time to time.”

  “Maybe you should put ‘warlock’ on your tax forms,” LaRue suggested with a tiny smile.

  “That’d be wrong, too,” Morris said. “But maybe we’d be better off identifying your problem, Mr. LaRue. I assume you’re looking for some sort of... intervention?”

  “Yeah,” LaRue said, nodding slowly. “I guess that’s what I need, all right. If ‘intervention’ is a fancy way of saying, ‘help, and a lot of it, and right away,’ then it could be that’s just what I need.”

  Morris made a slight gesture. “Go on.”

  “There are these—these occurrences, these events that have been happening to my family the last three months. My wife and kids are terrified, and if I wasn’t such a big, tough he-man, I suppose I would be, too.” The second cousin of a smile appeared on LaRue’s haggard face, but only for a second. “And the thing is, it’s getting worse. It was puzzling at first, then annoying, but now I think it means us harm.”

  Morris kept silent but nodded his understanding.

  “There were little things, in the beginning,” LaRue said. “Objects falling over when nobody’s near them, a door closing by itself, stuff like that. You tell yourself that it’s just the vibrations from truck traffic, or a breeze getting in through cracks in the foundation. It’s easy to explain it away at first.”

  “But you’re not trying to explain it away any more,” Morris said quietly.

  “No, not for the last couple of weeks. Because now I’m pretty sure it, whatever it is, wants to kill us.”

  “Explain what you mean, please. Be as specific as you can.”

  “Well, one evening last week my wife and I were in the kitchen putting dinner together when our big carving knife jumped out of the rack and buried its point in the cutting board I’d just been using. If I hadn’t jerked away, it might’ve pinned my wrist right there, just like a pin through a bug in some kid’s science project.”

  “Dangerous, for sure,” Morris said, nodding. “And frightening. But not really life-threatening.”

  “No? Not life-threatening?” There was anger in LaRue’s voice now. “Then how about last Saturday night? My daughter Sarah, eight years old, was having her bath while my wife stood a few feet away in front of the mirror, using her hair dryer. She swears the dryer just flew out of her hand, sailed through the air, and splashed down into the bathtub, which, I might remind you, contained one little girl, surrounded by a whole bunch of water.” The voice was almost a snarl. “Is that life-threatening enough for you? Is it?”

  Morris held up a hand, palm forward. “Please, Mr. LaRue, I wasn’t trivializing your concern for your family’s safety.” His voice was calm, soothing. “I tend to categorize paranormal events, and sometimes I think out loud. I meant no offense.”

  LaRue took a couple of audible deep breaths. “No, listen, it’s not you, I’m sorry. I’m just on edge a lot these days. Not your fault.”

  “Your daughter, was she—”

  “No, she wasn’t electrocuted. The hair dryer’s got a short cord—maybe they make ’em deliberately short, I don’t know—so just before reaching the tub it yanked its own plug out of the wall. Hell, Sarah was hardly upset by it at all, just surprised. That is, until her mother became hysterical, and I really can’t say that I blame her.”

  Morris scratched his chin. “Any other incidents since the one involving the hair dryer?”

  “No. At least, not since the last time I called home, which was...” LaRue checked his watch, “about forty-five minutes ago.” He spent several seconds examining the nail on his right index finger, as if he found it the most fascinating object in the world. Then he sighed, a sound that seemed to come from the cellar of his soul. “But I figure it’s only a matter of time until it happens again, and that could be the one that kills my daughter. Or my son, who’s five. Or my wife. Or me.”

  LaRue’s face twisted, and Morris was sure he was going to cry—an understandable reaction, all things considered. But the big man reestablished control quickly. He spent some time staring at the pattern in the carpet before he said, without looking up, “Please help us.” The voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “Please.”

  “Of course,” Morris said. “Of course I will. Are you flying home today?”

  “Yeah, I want to get back as soon as I can. My flight leaves at 6:40 this evening.”

  “All right, then.” Morris stood and came around the desk. “I’ve got preparations to make here, but I’ll fly out tomorrow morning. Depending on the connections, I expect to be in Madison sometime in the afternoon. I want to spend some time in your home, with your family. I’ll probably pester you with a lot of questions, and I’ll need to see the rooms where these incidents have occurred. Then we’ll figure out what needs to be done.”

  He placed his hand on Walter LaRue’s big shoulder and squeezed, just for a moment. “And then we’ll go and do it.”

  As Morris walked him to the door, Walter LaRue said, “There’s one more thing I’ve been meaning to ask you. No big deal, just something I’ve been kicking around in my head while I try not to think about what could be happening at home.”

  “What’s that, podner?” Morris said absently, as if part of his mind were elsewher
e.

  “I was a Computer Sci major in college—I know, big surprise—but they make you do a certain number of credits in Humanities as part of that stupid General Education stuff. So I took this course in Gothic Literature. Seemed more interesting than most of the other choices they had.”

  “Uh-huh.” Morris knew what was coming now; it had happened before.

  “Well, one of the books we had to read was Dracula, which I ended up liking more than I thought I would. Thing is, there was a character in there, one of the guys who helped hunt Dracula down and kill him. I guess this fella was supposed to be from Texas.” LaRue was looking at him intently now. “And, you know, I’m pretty sure his name was Quincey Morris.”

  Morris’s mouth formed a small, wry smile. “Yep, that’s true. That was his name.”

  “So, what gives? I’m no English professor, but I understand the difference between fiction and what’s real. This guy in the book was a made-up character, just like Dracula, or Van Helsing, or any of the rest of them, right?”

  “Many folks would call him that, no doubt about it,” Morris said. Neither his face nor his voice held much expression.

  “But what about you? What would you call him?”

  “Me? I’d call him my great-grandpa,” Morris said. “Now, y’all have a safe trip home, and I’ll see you in Madison tomorrow.” Then politely, but firmly, he ushered LaRue out of his office and closed the door.

  BY 8:30 THE next morning, Quincey Morris had almost finished the preparations for his trip north. He had made airline reservations, arranged to have the mail and lawn taken care of, and brought the cage containing his only pet, a hamster named Carnacki, over to a neighborhood kid who would take good care of him. He had then packed a suitcase with clothing, several books, and a thick file marked “Poltergeists.”