Red, White, and Blood

by Christopher Farnsworth

  Right now, she had more pressing concerns. She had to find the Boogeyman. She had to interrupt the cycle.

  Helen still had access to the Shadow Company’s extensive computer archives—she’d installed a back door in the intranet when she was still among the living—so she had a basic outline of how the conflicts between Cade and the killer worked. The Boogeyman would kill, his actions written off as unrelated disappearances, mass hysteria or random violence until he amassed a body count high enough to draw the attention of the press and the people in the federal government trained to look out for these patterns. Then Cade would travel to his latest hunting ground, find him and kill him. The Boogeyman would return to the Other Side until his cultists could slaughter enough innocents in ritual fashion and bring him back. And the cycle would start again.

  Not even the cultists knew where or who the Boogeyman would become. Looking at the scattered, loosely affiliated network of Satanists, drug addicts, social rejects and sexual sadists, Helen found it hard to believe they’d been spawned from the same Order that once employed her. They were mostly amateurs, funded sporadically by wealthy burnouts who believed their money had elevated them above mere mortals or by criminals who believed they owed something to Satan. Helen found them all more than a little bit pathetic. If your master plan depends on a group of stoned teenagers chanting Led Zeppelin lyrics backward, she thought, then you seriously fucked up somewhere in the process.

  Still, she couldn’t deny their ability to inspire fear—or turn regular citizens into corpses. What they lacked in skill or intelligence or strategy, they made up in enthusiasm. Sure, they almost all got caught or ended up sacrificed on their own altars. But there was never any shortage of fresh recruits to take their place. Someone always believed he could get the best of a deal with the Devil.

  Helen put herself in the mind of a psychopathic killer (done) and mentally assembled what she knew from the archives. She tried to think illogically. Rather than killing for the most direct benefit, the Boogeyman killed to fulfill some obligation to whatever spawned him on the Other Side. When Helen had been with the Company, they used occult tech—as they called it—as a tool, a means to an end. They didn’t think of it as a duty or a contract with whatever made it work. It was a means to an end.

  But the Boogeyman was invested with power as an end in itself. He had to use it in a certain way. He had to follow a pattern—

  She sat up in the chair.

  Of course. It wouldn’t make sense. Not to anyone else. But it would to him.

  She opened her laptop and pulled up a map. She had the first two killings marked on the green expanse of the United States. She dragged the cursor between them, measuring the distance. A little junior high geometry to extrapolate the other distances and angles and she could draw the rest.

  It looked so obvious now.

  A PENTAGRAM.

  Inverted, as it was in the old rituals meant to pervert the magic Solomon used to command demons and protect his people from their evil. Most modern-day wannabes got all their info from the Internet and heavy-metal bands, so they all got the orientation wrong.

  But right at the center. Right where you’d put a demon if you wanted to summon it.

  Omaha, Nebraska.

  She grabbed her phone. Reyes answered instantly. “Get out your credit card,” she told him. “We need to charter a jet.”

  She hung up without waiting for his reply. Half of Helen’s face smiled. This might be easier than she thought.

  She knew she had no chance against Cade in a head-on confrontation. She’d tried that before. The bastard had walked away from a C-4 explosion and just kept on moving. She knew vampires were tough to kill, but Cade had to be part cockroach as well.

  However, her time with the Company taught her that there were other things that bumped in the night. And this one, in particular, was literally made to fight Cade.

  She’d like to believe the Boogeyman stood a chance against Cade. But experience had taught her otherwise. The Boogeyman simply wasn’t going to beat him.

  Not without a little help.

  This is the Zodiac speaking. I wish you a happy Christmas. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach out because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extremely difficult to keep in check I am afraid I will lose control again and take my ninth & possibly tenth victim. Please help me I am drowning.… Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer.

  —Letter from the Zodiac Killer, December 20, 1969

  AUGUST 24, 2012, OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA

  It was so easy. The part of him that was still human didn’t know it was going to be that easy.

  He’d picked his victim without much thought at all—probably because he kept telling himself she wouldn’t really be his victim. Right up to the point where he took out the blade, he kept telling himself it was nothing more than a dry run, to see how far he could go before backing away.

  But the part of him that was drowning in blackness knew that was just an excuse. A necessary excuse, so it let him believe it.

  He saw her at the hotel bar. She was in her early thirties, reasonably attractive but worn down by a day of airports and layovers. Still, she gave him a slight smile when he approached.

  The uniform helped. His mother had once told him that women love a man in uniform. It was true. Despite all that talk of feminism, they still wanted a big strong man to tell them what to do. They would trust anyone who gave them an order in the right tone of voice.

  They had a few more drinks. The alcohol hit her hard. He didn’t even feel it. It was like drinking water. His eyes remained sharp and clear while hers grew unfocused.

  He suggested returning to his room—he wasn’t actually staying at the hotel, but she didn’t know that. She nodded and slipped off the bar stool, nearly toppling when her heels hit the floor.

  He helped her along, and she didn’t object to his arm around her.

  On the second floor, they stopped at a door. It wasn’t his room. It wasn’t anyone’s; it led to a corridor that led to a laundry room. But it looked like a hotel room, made to blend into the upscale decor. More important, it was out of the view of any of the security cameras—he’d checked the angles a few days earlier, when he was scouting this place, again telling himself it was just an exercise, just a little harmless playacting. Every man needed a hobby. Some guys played at Civil War reenactments. Others went on fishing trips. He just wanted to see if he could do it. It didn’t mean he really would do it.

  He shoved her roughly against the door and kissed her hard. She kissed him back, maybe a little hesitantly—maybe she began to sense something was off about this. About him.

  He knew he could walk away right now. She’d be confused, but alive. And no one would ever know.

  Standing there, he knew the time had come to make the choice. Then it happened so fast, it barely seemed like a choice at all.

  His fist came up and punched her in the temple like a piston had fired somewhere in his arm. The woman’s eyes rolled up into her skull, and he caught her as she fell. His body felt like it was moving automatically, his arms and legs working as if running through some prewritten software program.

  He moved quickly down the corridor, out the stairwell door, and down the stairs, carrying her as if she was still only drunk and stumbling. He kept up the charade for anyone who might step out of their rooms unexpectedly rather than any concern for the security cameras. The cameras were blacked out with spray paint. He didn’t expect the hotel’s security to notice until they ran the recordings.

  Something in his head promised him this was the only time he’d have to take measures like this. He didn’t know how he knew that. But he knew. After this, things would just work out on their own.

  His car waited by the stairwell exit on the back side of the hotel. There was no light in this corner of the parking lot—someone had smashed the overhead security lamp with a rock, and the other guests had avoide
d parking nearby.

  He tossed her into the backseat and drove away calmly. The human part of him was amazed at how calm he was, how relaxed. It was like he’d done this a thousand times before.

  The dark part of him just eased into the old familiar rhythms.

  He went to the spot he’d picked by the river. His breath fogged, but he didn’t feel the cold.

  She began to stir as he carried her roughly over the uneven ground. That was fine. He wanted her to be awake. He wanted her to see this coming.

  If he’d been honest with himself, he would have known there was no turning back now. He was looking at prison. Disgrace. Shame.

  But he wasn’t being honest with himself. That time was long gone. He kept telling himself this was only a test even as the dark heart in him quickened.

  If he’d been honest with himself, he would have admitted he was not even a little worried about prison.

  The woman was crying and gibbering in fear as he yanked her to her feet. She’d lost her shoes somewhere along the way. He noticed only because her feet were not touching the ground. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he’d dragged her up and now was holding her, one-handed, her coat and blouse bundled in his fist, dangling just a few inches off the ground.

  He knew he’d gotten stronger, but this was still a surprise. It was like she weighed nothing. He felt proud.

  He looked at her crying face, the snot and tears flowing down across her mouth like a toddler throwing a tantrum. It occurred to him that he couldn’t hear her. There was a buzzing in his ears that drowned out everything but a few words here and there. It made her look like a badly dubbed foreign film.

  He laughed at the thought.

  He had the blade in his other hand now. He’d concealed it in a special pocket in his coat, with a slit so he could simply reach inside and draw it out whenever he wanted.

  She screamed. At least he assumed she did, because her mouth was wide open and her head was pitched back.

  He didn’t care. There was no one around for miles. He’d picked the spot carefully. Back when this was only a game.

  Now he knew. Now he knew this was real. He was going to do it.

  And then it was done.

  The blade was still in his hand, but the fear was gone from her eyes. Everything was gone from her eyes. Warm blood flowed down his glove from the ugly gash in her throat. Her head lolled back at a steep angle, and he realized what he’d done.

  He had done it. It all happened so fast. She was dead.

  He had a brief moment of clarity as he realized this was the last step in a long process. Everything he had been before slipped away; inside himself, the last tethers to his humanity slipped and snapped, leaving him dangling over the edge of a great chasm.

  Just behind him, he could feel it. The new him. The one ready to take over now, to take full possession.

  But he knew it had been him, and no one else, who had taken the last step up to the cliff. He could have stopped himself from ever going this far. He could have stopped the other as well.

  Now it was too late. He felt a great sadness. Then there was a pressure behind him, propelling him down, down, down, into the dark, and he fell away forever. And with that, he was dead too. The black thing in his heart welled up and filled his veins and soaked into every fiber of his being.

  A moment later, he looked around with new eyes. He blinked away something and gazed at the fresh kill still in his hand.

  He dropped the corpse to the ground. The changes were already under way. Physically, he would start to get much, much stronger. He could already hear the life in the meadow by the river. The tiny movements of birds and animals waiting, hiding in fear. Fear of him.

  There was still something blurring his vision. He wiped his eyes and looked at the moisture. It took him a moment to recognize it.

  Tears.

  He would have laughed if he was capable of that anymore. But, like crying, that was something gone forever now.

  He realized he’d smeared blood on his face. It seemed fitting. A baptism. A new beginning.

  “It’s nice to be back,” he said out loud.

  THE NEXT MORNING, safe at home, four hundred miles from the crime scene, he woke and looked at the ceiling. He knew it should look familiar—on an intellectual level, he realized it must have been the sight he’d been waking to for years now. But there was nothing familiar about it. It simply existed, like the body that served him as a shell.

  Memory was always a problem for him. There were remnants of conflicting histories lurking all through his skull: images of life as a boy at a summer camp, or as a janitor at an elementary school, or wrapped in a straitjacket in an institution somewhere. None of those past lives were particularly significant to him, however. He’d nested in too many places to count, finding a new one every time he came back. Their experiences sometimes got tangled with his own, surfacing at odd moments. But none of them made any difference in who he really was. At best, they were scenes on a decaying screen at an abandoned drive-in, fuzzy and filled with gaps, played by unknown actors who died and never returned for any sequels.

  He was born, not made. He was becoming. Rising up, like maggots through a corpse, chewing little pathways to the surface and breaking through the skin. And every time he was reborn, he woke up with the same need. It was simple, inarguable and always present. No matter where he was—or who he was—he needed to kill. And that was all he needed.

  But for the first time, he wanted something else. It scratched at the back of his mind with an almost physical insistence.

  He rose from the bed and walked to the kitchen. He needed food.

  Soon, he wouldn’t. Already he was stronger. Last night, he’d gripped the bathroom doorknob and crumpled it like a soda can. His tolerance for pain was increasing, too. He didn’t notice the cuts on his palm and fingers until he saw the trail of blood droplets following him around the house.

  In the kitchen, the pressure at the back of his skull increased. Some memory from all his previous incarnations nagged at him. There was an obstacle. Something that would keep him from his task. Something—someone—who wouldn’t let him do his job.

  Cade.

  With the name came the memories, and with the memories, the rage.

  Too many times, Cade had stopped him too soon. (It was always too soon. In truth, he never wanted to stop on his own.)

  He could start again, he knew, but Cade would come after him eventually. No matter how often they fought, it always ended the same way. Strong as he was, he’d never managed to kill the vampire. He had to face the truth: he probably never would.

  That grated on him for a long time. He realized he’d been standing with the fridge open. He took out milk and poured it on a bowl of cereal.

  He began to want something even more than he wanted to kill.

  Well, maybe not more. But just as much, certainly. This time, he wanted to hurt as well as to kill.

  He was tired of Cade’s interference. He used to see the vampire as nothing more than an obstacle. Now he wanted revenge. It was a novel sensation. He’d been driven after certain targets before, certain people, but this was different.

  He wanted Cade to pay. And he knew just how he would do it.

  It was right there on the front page of the newspaper his host had read only the day before. The President of the United States. The one thing in the world Cade was forced to care about.

  Just another weak bag of flesh. It was almost going to be too easy.

  He realized he’d been clutching the spoon so tightly he’d reopened the cuts on his hand. Blood dripped into his cereal bowl. The milk was bright red now.

  He kept eating.

  December 21, 1890

  Mystery Hill, New Hampshire

  Francis Tumblety’s eyes stung. Sweat rolled down his brow. He’d dressed in thick wool for the New Hampshire winter, and now his clothes were soaked. He was not accustomed to this type of physical effort. Walking up the hill in the dying l
ight had been hard enough. But killing the whore was far more work than he’d anticipated.

  To be honest, none of this was going as planned.

  He tried, once again, to wipe his hands clean of the blood. The knife had almost slipped from his fat fingers while he was wearing gloves, so he’d removed them before he stepped behind the woman and put the blade to her throat.

  It had all seemed much simpler in his mind. He was surprised when the blade encountered resistance, and then shocked when the whore turned and fought him despite the wound. He realized he’d never actually cut into a living human being, despite all the years he’d called himself “doctor.” She smacked a fist into his eye and he nearly fell over.

  He’d been forced to stab the woman again and again until she finally fell to the dirt floor of the cave. He didn’t mind that part. She was a disagreeable creature. They’d ridden in a warm, comfortable coach all the way here, him gagging on her unwashed scent while she complained ceaselessly. He’d left the details of procuring the whore to his brothers in the Order, but apparently he should have specified they find one who’d bathed recently. As far as she knew, she was being taken to a rich man’s party to be used and abused by his guests. She drank an entire bottle of brandy by herself and swore like a sailor when Tumblety informed her they’d have to walk up the hill from the road.

  But the location was crucial. Crowley had been very specific. “It must be a place of power,” the English magician had told him. “Otherwise, your ritual will fail.”

  Tumblety looked in his books of Indian lore and potions and found references to what was now called the Whateley Farm. The locals, however, called it Mystery Hill. Strange lights, eerie sounds, and a giant carved stone table, located in a room quarried from the rock. The Indians took no responsibility for it. They said it belonged to the “ones who came before” and shunned the place.