The Curse Of the House On Cypress Lane Omnibus

by Hunt, James

  Tombs crumbled under the weight of Owen’s sledgehammer, and the wake of disturbed dead widened behind him until all that was left was the mausoleum. Panting, he sprinted toward its gates.

  “GaaaaAHHH!” The throaty groan reached a crescendo along with the hammer’s highest arc and then crashed violently against the chain and lock. The face of the hammer ricocheted off the head of the lock and hit the ground with a heavy thud. Owen smacked the hammer against it repeatedly, and the rusted chain finally gave way.

  Owen’s hands were raw and red as he passed through the gates, the hammer’s head dragging behind him, scraping against the concrete floor.

  Inside, the air grew silent and still. The temperature dropped drastically and his footsteps echoed. The old stained glass windows beneath the ceiling filtered dirty light inside, giving it the aura that even on the brightest days, the mausoleum would always remain dark.

  A raised tomb, much like the ones outside, rested atop a concrete pedestal, covered with a thick slab of stone that sealed the dead inside, and hopefully, the amulet.

  A plaque rested at the tomb’s foot with an inscription. The name read Charles Toussaint V, born 1928, died 1988. Another phrase was written in what looked like Latin underneath. Mors Mihi Lucrum.

  Owen ran his fingertips over the inscription, unsure of its meaning, but then tightened his grip on the handle of his sledgehammer. His muscles burned as he lifted it and brought it down forcefully onto the tomb’s stone cover. The contact rattled his bones, but his grip remained steady. He lifted it again, swinging with the momentum from the weight of the hammer, his eyes locked onto the same spot from before and made contact.

  Another rattling crack ran through his arms and shoulders, but this time the concrete splintered. Owen swung again, bringing the tomb’s roof crumbling down over the coffin.

  Owen cleared the debris and then tugged at the coffin’s handle. With the casket finally out from beneath the stone, Owen hesitated to open it.

  A sudden and incomprehensible fear took hold of him. He imagined his son in the coffin, his eyes sunken in and his clothes tattered and torn like the corpses in the graves outside. Owen closed his eyes and in the same motion lifted the casket. He suddenly pulled in heavy breaths, unaware that he’d held his breath, his body aching for oxygen. He opened his eyes and looked down, a wave of relief flooding through him.

  An old man with his eyes closed and his arms folded over his chest slept undisturbed on the white plush cushions inside. A chain hung over his neck, its end clutched underneath Charles Toussaint V’s dead hands.

  Owen slowly reached for the corpse’s fingers, grimacing in disgust before he even made contact. He shuddered when his fingertips pressed against the wrinkled skin, the body cold and brittle.

  The bones were stiff, and the joints cracked painfully as Owen peeled the fingers of the left hand first that revealed the right hand clutched around the end of the necklace. The last crack of joints released the dead man’s grip and Owen stared down in confusion. The corpse clutched nothing but air, the pendulum at the end of the necklace no longer attached to the chain.

  “No,” Owen said, moving the man’s arms and checking down by his sides, feeling his pronounced ribs and hip bones, the body incredibly light from its decomposition. But after searching every inch inside, he found nothing.

  Owen retreated deeper into the mausoleum, sulking. The sunlight from the stained-glass windows faded, and he leaned against the cool concrete wall, the hammer on the ground to his right. A wind gusted through the mausoleum’s entrance, cold like a northeastern winter that bit at his bones. And with it was a stench of death.

  Thunder clapped overhead and a spittle of rain thudded against the roof. From the entrance, he saw the rain thicken and then lightening flashed.

  The downpour worsened, and Owen stared at the sheets of rain that moved in waves from the harsh wind that brought an occasional burst of icy water into the mausoleum. But outside in the storm Owen saw something. It was hunched over, struggling against the wind and rain.

  Owen moved closer to the entrance to get a better look. A frosty mist spritzed his face as neared the entrance. Lightning flashed again and Owen’s eyes widened in terror at the empty eye sockets of the skull stumbling toward him.

  The animated corpse snarled and rushed toward the mausoleum in a half sprint, half limp. Owen reached for the gate, slamming it shut as the corpse collided into the barricade, its bony fingers curled around the iron bars and its permanently exposed teeth snapping viciously.

  More corpses emerged from the rain, collecting at the rusted gate, reaching their mangled and decayed arms between the bars. Owen retreated deeper into the mausoleum, his eyes fixated on the terror outside when a sharp vise clamped down on his shoulder.

  Owen gasped and spun around to find Charles Toussaint V reaching for his neck with those cold, frail hands. In a knee-jerk reaction, Owen reached for the pistol still in his waistband and fired into the dead man’s stomach.

  The gunshot thundered worse than the storm, leaving Owen’s ears ringing. Charles stumbled a few steps before regaining his balance, and then quickly lunged forward once more. The clothes hung loosely off the decaying body and the trousers sagged at the waist, held up only by a pair of suspenders that clung to the thin shoulders.

  Owen fired again, the bullet impotent against the walking dead. He dropped the pistol and reached for the sledgehammer. He white-knuckled the sledgehammer’s handle and backpedaled in a circle around the coffin, avoiding the animalistic lunges of the dead as dying moans echoed between the claps of thunder outside.

  With enough space between them, Owen swung the hammer upwards in a high rising arc, the flat head of the ten-pound chunk of metal connecting flush underneath the zombie’s chin with a resounding pop as the head was separated from the top of the spinal cord. But even with the head gone, Charles’s body still walked aimlessly, its arms outstretched, clawing for Owen’s flesh.

  Owen looked to the gate still clustered with the dead and then sprinted toward it as fast and as hard as he could. He snatched the pistol off the floor on his sprint, then lowered his shoulder and shut his eyes as a sheet of icy rain and wind blasted him when he connected with the gate.

  The clustered bodies of the dead added resistance to the door, and Owen’s acceleration slowed to a strenuous push as the corpses clawed at his face and arms. The sharp ends of exposed finger bones drew blood along his right cheek and the left side of his neck.

  Owen twisted left and right at the waist, flinging the dead off him, swinging the hammer wildly and clumsily. The cold stung the fresh wounds, and Owen squinted to avoid the stinging pelts of rain in his eyes.

  The horde of the dead all turned toward him, their reanimated bodies awkward and cumbersome. A streak of lightning split the clouds above, and the harsh roll of thunder quickly followed. Owen turned from the horde and sprinted toward the swamp, but stopped after only a few steps.

  A black mass moved toward him on the ground, like rising swamp water, and Owen shook his head in confusion. Dozens of tiny fangs were exposed and he realized that the moving blackness were snakes slithering over the mud, snapping at his legs that churned in a panicked retreat.

  Caught between snakes and the dead, Owen abandoned the hammer and sprinted left into an open patch of swamp. Branches and long strands of hanging moss whipped wild and violent from the storm. After a while he glanced behind him, but the snakes and the dead were lost in the rain.

  The storm worsened, and the harsh sting of the icy raindrops slowed Owen to a walk as he stumbled blindly through the swamp. He turned right, thinking that was where the edge of the clearing was, and after what felt like an eternity he was rewarded with the sight of the house across the clearing.

  Wind flattened the tall grass and moved it back and forth like ocean waves in a violent squall. Owen clutched his arms, no longer able to feel the skin underneath his fingertips. His teeth chattered together and his blood flow slowed to an icy glaze.
His eyelids fluttered and consciousness grew elusive. Another flash of lightning lit up the swamp and a figure caught his eye, standing in the distance.

  At first Owen thought it was one of the corpses, but lightning flashed again and it revealed Bacalou. Its exposed teeth stretched wide across its mouth and those pair of black eyes stared through Owen’s soul.

  Owen trembled, clenching his fists together, stumbling forward with his eyes locked onto the creature’s lifeless stare. “Where is my son?” His voice was weak against the violent rage of the storm.

  The wide mouth and exposed teeth gave the impression that the creature was smiling, and it opened its jaws and released a throaty series of croaks, as if it was mocking him with laughter, and then it slowly dissolved into darkness.

  “No!” Owen stumbled forward, trying to force his body to move quicker, but the cold had transformed him into one of those corpses, and his brain struggled to command his body. “Give him back!” Owen broke into a sprint, his body hunched forward, everything numb and frozen. His foot caught a root and he smacked into the thick mud with a splat. When he lifted his face, the creature was gone.

  Mud fell from his chin and cheeks, and the rain subsided, morphing to a drizzle until the water shut off completely. Clouds parted overhead, and the sun returned along with a blast of humid heat that Owen welcomed with relief. He lay there in the mud for a while, letting his body thaw, and then finally pushed himself off the ground.

  Owen turned back to the house, and the world returned to normal. As he climbed back behind the wheel of the van a thought broke through the fatigue and stress of his mind. If the amulet wasn’t here, then that meant someone had already taken it. And he knew exactly who would have wanted to take it.

  8

  Sheriff Bellingham sat behind his desk, chin resting in his hand, and blinked at the statements he’d been staring at all morning given by Billy Rouche and Owen Cooley. He’d been staring at that report for the past hour and still couldn’t force himself to believe that what Mr. Cooley had said was real. He was a father who had just gone through something incredibly traumatic. The man had obviously made something up in his head for him to cope.

  Bellingham remembered a case from his days as a deputy where a young man had come back from the war in the Middle East. He was diagnosed with PTSD, but unfortunately didn’t seek out the proper care that he needed in order to help him cope with everything he’d seen in the battle. Instead, the man self-medicated with booze and drugs, and one night he stumbled down Main Street with a 9mm Smith and Wesson shooting at random cars and buildings

  There was an hour of negotiation between authorities and the gunman as they cornered him down a side street. And after that hour, Bellingham watched the man put the gun to his temple and in a knee-jerk reaction Bellingham fired his weapon, winging the suspect in the arm that dropped him to the pavement. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital where they managed to save the man’s life.

  Bellingham was publicly torn a new asshole for his actions by the sheriff at the time. But behind closed doors, Bellingham remembered how the sheriff had thanked him for what he did. If he hadn’t taken that shot, then the man would have died.

  “Sheriff?”

  Bellingham drifted out of the memory and saw his assistant in the doorway to his office. “Yeah?”

  “Sheriff Barker over in Vermilion Parish wants to know if you need them for the search party tomorrow, and if you do, how many?”

  “Yes, and whatever he can spare,” Bellingham answered.

  “Gotcha.”

  Veronica disappeared and Bellingham reclined in his seat, folding his hands behind his head, one on top of the other. The search for Jake Martin had turned up nothing. The dogs couldn’t catch a scent, and the trees grew so thick in those back waters that they couldn’t fit boats. They’d have to go in by foot, and even with the number of men that Bellingham was borrowing from across the state, he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to find him.

  Like a lot of the people in town, Jake came from a family that had been here for a long time. Bellingham knew that Jake had an uncle with some swamp houses out in the middle of god knows where from back in the twenties when they used to smuggle moonshine during Prohibition. Now they were used to drink and gamble, howling like animals under the hot summer moon.

  There was a lot of that in Ocoee, more than he liked to admit as the head of law and order in his parish. The swamp would always be full of rats. He just tried to make it so they didn’t scurry into town. But he had a feeling there might be one or two that had set up shop right under his nose.

  It was no secret that Bellingham’s predecessor was chummy with the Toussaints. Chuck’s father came into the station often and was a contributor to the previous sheriff’s re-election campaigns. And then when Bellingham ran, Chuck Toussaint wasn’t shy about filling the campaign coffers, a sly smile spread over his face as he did so, giving a wink as if there was an unspoken agreement between them.

  But Chuck Toussaint could cough up as much money as his pockets were willing to part with and it didn’t change Bellingham’s policy: everyone was equal on the scales of justice, and no amount of money could tip them one way or the next. It was a policy Bellingham shared with Chuck after his election, and the sheriff could have sworn he saw smoke spewing from Chuck’s ears.

  Bellingham’s gut rumbled with unease at the way Chuck had answered his call earlier that morning. And while no names were dropped, Bellingham suspected that Chuck thought it was either Billy or Jake calling him back. That knowledge, combined with the fact that everyone involved worked with Chuck, made for an unsavory connection.

  “Veronica!” Bellingham drummed his fingers over the statements on his desk as Veronica poked her head inside. “I need any reports on file for Toussaint owned property. More specifically at the house on Cypress Lane.”

  “It’s in the computer, Sheriff,” Veronica said, gesturing to the unused laptop on top of the bookcase behind Bellingham.

  “Just the same, I’d like the paper copies.”

  Veronica rolled her eyes, unaware that he saw it, and returned a few minutes later with a single vanilla-colored folder. It drifted lazily to the top of his desk as she dropped it and stood in front of his desk, hands on her hips, head cocked to the side. “You know the department paid good money for that laptop. It’s more efficient.”

  “It can be hacked,” Bellingham said, staring at the one sheet of paper inside the folder.

  “That’s why we put a security system on it,” Veronica replied, leaning forward, her large hooped earrings swaying from her lobes. “You just don’t want to learn something new, because it scares you.”

  Bellingham frowned, but it was in reaction to the document in his hands. “This is it? This thing is twenty-five years old.”

  “You asked what we had on file,” Veronica said, turning back toward the door, then stopping and looking at the sheriff with a smirk on her face. “You want more, then you know where to find it.” She narrowed her eyes. “On the hacker machine.”

  Bellingham grimaced as she left, and then turned around to stare at the laptop underneath some of the case files he worked on last week. Reluctantly, he pulled the machine from its perch and rested it squarely on his desk. He opened it, then pressed the power button. A blurred image appeared on the screen and he reached for his glasses. He frowned at the two boxes labeled username and password.

  “Veronica!” Bellingham shouted. “What’s—”

  “First initial, then last name. Password’s your birthday.”

  Bellingham grunted and entered the information. He found the police database and searched the files for any more information on the property on Cypress Lane. The only consistency he found was that the property remained unoccupied. It wasn’t until earlier in the week that an application for residency was filed by the Cooley family, and Bellingham had to go back another twenty-five years to find another family that resided there when Chuck’s father ran the factory in town.


  The previous residents to the house was Donald Kieffer, his wife, and two children. He scrolled the old pages and compared it with his notes on the Cooley family and found a few similarities. Both families had two kids; one boy and one girl. Both worked for the Toussaint family. And there was a notification that the Kieffer’s left the house less than a week after they moved in, citing structural problems with the home as their reason for vacating. But when he went to look for a forwarding address, Bellingham found nothing.

  “Veronica!”

  The light patter of feet ended when Veronica poked her head around the corner, her eyebrow arched and staring at the phone on Bellingham’s desk. “You do know that device right there has the ability to connect us without the need for yelling across the station.”

  “Get Judge Harlow on the line for me,” Bellingham said, his concentration on the pair of reports in front of him. “I need to subpoena the factory for some records, and I also need you to find me a family that moved out of the Cypress Lane house twenty-five years ago.”

  Veronica shifted her body into the doorframe, her face scrunched together. “You want to subpoena the factory? Is something wrong?”

  Bellingham looked up from the computer. “Two of their employees kidnapped the child of another employee and then tried to kill the rest of the family. So yes, Veronica, something is wrong. Now, go on!” He shooed her away and she scurried back to her desk

  That uncomfortable feeling returned in Bellingham’s gut as he stared at the report that was signed off by the sheriff at the time. A sheriff that was awfully chummy with the Toussaint family.

  * * *

  A green layer of mossy film covered the top of the black swamp water, and Chuck waded through it carefully. Red, bloodshot lines filled the white space of his eyeballs as he glanced between trees and hanging moss, just waiting for Billy to jump out from behind one of them.