The Curse Of the House On Cypress Lane Omnibus

by Hunt, James

  Madame Crepaux kneeled, the black mass the size of a basketball and the light smaller than a golf ball. “What you feel is what I have felt for decades. Me and so many others. You have simply had a taste, Claire. Do not risk what you have left to save your husband now.”

  Madame Crepaux closed both hands and the black mass vanished, along with the light, and Claire collapsed to the floor. She gasped for air like she had been holding her breath. She saw her hands return to normal, the wrinkles and spots gone.

  “Please,” Claire said. “What happens to Owen?”

  Madame Crepaux’s expression softened, and it was here that Claire received the first glimpse of the old woman she’d met before. She reached out a hand and cupped Claire’s face. “Bacalou resides inside of your husband now and is controlling him as we speak. It is only a matter of time before the creature takes full control of your husband’s body, completing its transformation. It will then seek out the last remaining heir of Charles Toussaint and end the curse. Once that happens, your husband will die along with the creature.”

  Claire’s eyes watered, and she wiped her nose. “You knew that the creature would do that to him?”

  Madame Crepaux paused, and then, without remorse answered, “Yes.”

  “Then help me save him.”

  “There is one way, but it would take the life of another.” Madame Crepaux held Claire’s hands. “Can you live with that, Claire Cooley? Can you live with the knowledge that to save your husband’s life, another must die?”

  Claire tightened her grip on Madame Crepaux’s hands, and without any hesitation or fear of repercussions, she answered. “Yes.”

  5

  After Claire Cooley left her shop, Madame Crepaux vanished in a wisp of smoke before the deputy barged in after her. She was unsure what Claire said after she left, but it didn’t matter.

  The sun had nearly set outside, and Madame Crepaux traveled through the air faster than light and as sightless as a breeze. The power from Queen Samba’s gris-gris was immense, and she found herself latching tighter to its aura. It was intoxicating, and frightening. The deeper she entrenched herself in Queen Samba’s power, the harder it would be for her to let it go.

  Madame Crepaux felt the dark mark on her soul grow for every second that she possessed the Queen’s gris-gris, but it wouldn’t be much longer before Bacalou fulfilled its purpose.

  Lights flickered inside the halls of the hospital as she passed unnoticed by the staff. She sensed the death in every room, those struggling to break free from Baron Samedie’s hold. His dark cloud was everywhere, counting down until those withering lives would be his.

  The Queen’s gris-gris propelled her toward the rooms, the urge to heal powerful. But Madame Crepaux refused the call. She would let Baron Samedie take what was rightfully his.

  Madame Crepaux found Roger Templeton’s room. He lay on the bed, asleep, his mouth open and his breathing irregular. The machines attached to his chest and arms beeped in the same offbeat rhythm. The old man’s body was shutting down.

  She hovered over him, examining the sagging flesh that had once been young and viral, beaten down by the years of abuse that life dealt. He was an old man losing his mind. But she also knew he was a man who loved his family. And while Roger Templeton could not control or manage the disease that ravaged his mind, Bacalou could.

  Madame Crepaux gently touched Roger’s forehead, and the old man woke. He groaned, blinking as she took his hand, offering him a branch of strength.

  “You have been lost, Roger Templeton,” Madame Crepaux said. “Let me help you find your way.”

  The haze slowly lifted from Roger’s mind, and he took a dry swallow before he spoke. “I remember you.” He squinted, and suddenly his breathing quickened. “Owen, he’s—” He shut his eyes, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “The creature will kill him.” He opened them and squeezed Madame Crepaux’s hand back, his strength returning. “That can’t happen.”

  Madame Crepaux’s voice softened. “If you go down this path, you will lose everything. Your memories, yourself, your soul.” Her eyes flickered gold, like a temptress on the rocks. “There will be no peace for you in the next world.”

  “Whatever it takes,” Roger said eagerly.

  Crepaux nodded, and the stone around her neck glowed as she placed her hand on his chest.

  * * *

  Once darkness fell, every rustle of wind or ripple of water sent a chill down Chuck’s back and froze him in his tracks. He waited for the fires to return, and he kept checking the flesh on his hands. He couldn’t push the memories of charred and blackened skin from his mind. He envisioned his whole body burning, reliving that pain over and over. He imagined what it would be like to burn like that forever, to never know the sweet relief of death.

  Was that what happened to the souls of the people that Bacalou killed? Did they burn forever? Could they always feel those flames melting their flesh and bones? The pain never numbing, always fresh and new? Chuck started to believe they could. Everyone had to answer for their crimes in this world. He supposed that was just part of his fate.

  Chuck trekked through the swampy brush alongside the highway out of town. Twice he saw a police car. But despite the wail of sirens and flashing blue lights, Chuck was surprised to find that he wasn’t scared. Compared to burning in hell for eternity, the prospect of a dry bed in a cell didn’t sound that bad.

  He’d figured that Nate would have spoken to the cops by now, and it was only a matter of time before they radioed air support to start scanning the swamps from above. It’d be harder to find him now that it was dark though.

  After a few hours of walking, the fatigue of the past two days had worn Chuck’s endurance down to a nub. He needed food. He needed rest.

  A small motel sat on the town’s outskirts. It wasn’t much farther, and he knew the owner didn’t mind taking in unsavory characters. His father had used the place for all his affairs, a piece of knowledge he learned after his father passed. He wasn’t sure if his mother knew. She probably did.

  It was funny, the things that ran through his mind on the walk from Nate’s. After such a traumatic and painful experience, he thought that he would look back and find all the fond memories of life: the time spent with this mother and grandmother, his youth before he discovered the curse, the fleeting moments of true happiness that he had with his first and second wives. But none of those memories replayed tonight.

  Instead, scars were opened and fresh blood welled up from the past. He saw only the creature, and his father’s scowl, and the way that his wives looked at him when he told them he was sterile. Arguments, pain, fear, hate, jealousy, they all flooded back in rogue waves.

  Was it that woman causing all of this? Could she now somehow reach into his mind and drudge up all the nasty black and dead things that swirled around in his past that he wished would stay buried?

  Charles Toussaint VII had come from a long line of villainous men. It was imbedded in his DNA, and no matter what mask he tried to wear to cover it up, or conceal it, somehow the bad always shone through. He could feel it in the way people looked at him. The whispers that carried through the factory and the town.

  The people here didn’t love his family, they needed his family. And because they were too lazy to find work elsewhere, they took the increasingly longer hours and stagnant pay in return. And with every day that passed, Chuck heard those whispers grow louder and those stares linger. Everyone wanted him dead, and he couldn’t blame them. His family had stood on the backs of others for so long now they forgot what decency looked like. But none of that mattered anymore. Nothing mattered.

  Chuck stared at the motel across the street as he remained tucked away in the brush off the side of the highway. He checked left and right, both lanes of traffic empty. The parking lot only had two cars in it, and the light was still on in the front office.

  A quick sprint across the road, and Chuck ducked inside. The clerk at the front desk didn’t look up from hi
s television screen. Sweating, sunburnt, and stinking of the swamp, he unzipped his duffel bag and removed a stack of twenties. “I need a room.”

  “Eighty bucks, and I need to see your ID.” The clerk sipped from a can of Miller Light, his eyes glued to the television screen.

  “How much for no ID.”

  The clerk peeled his eyes away from the screen and looked Chuck up and down. He sipped the beer again, and then slid off his stool and leaned into the front counter. “Cops were here a while ago.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Probably be coming back later too.”

  Chuck reached into the duffel and pulled another stack of twenties, then set both down on the counter. The two towers totaled one thousand dollars. “That enough to keep quiet?”

  The clerk thumbed the cash. “Might need a little more convincing.” He smiled. “You know, just to be on the safe side.”

  Chuck reluctantly slapped down another stack. The clerk stuffed the rest of the cash in his pockets and then reached for one of the keys in a drawer. He handed it over to Chuck. “Second floor. Room twenty-eight. Try and keep it the way you found it.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be hard.” Chuck snatched the key from the man’s fingers, and then quickly scurried up to the second floor and into his room.

  He tossed the duffel bag onto the mattress and the springs squeaked. Chuck went to the sink, passing a door on the inner room wall. It connected to the room next door, an old architectural element from the past.

  At the sink, he splashed water on his face. It dripped from his chin and nose as he stared in the mirror. It was a face he didn’t recognize, but one that he’d worn his entire life. It was his eyes that had changed the most. They were soulless.

  Chuck undressed and then climbed into the shower, washing away the grime of the swamp, though the stress sill clung to him like a second skin. He air-dried, and then sat on the end of the bed, naked, and reached for the pistol he’d brought with him.

  It had suddenly grown heavier on the trip here and he wondered what would happen if he killed himself before the creature got to him. Would he still burn? Would his soul still be damned? Or would the bullet not even matter? Could he not die until the creature killed him?

  Chuck turned the gun barrel to face him and stared down the empty black space within. He raised it to his temple and closed his eyes as metal touched flesh, then placed his finger on the trigger. His hand didn’t shake and his heart didn’t pound. The only thing his brain registered was the fact that there was a warm piece of metal against his skull and that his hand had placed it there.

  So what came next? Blackness? Fire? Pain? What did death really look like? What did it feel like? It was a question that couldn’t be answered until the final moment; just as you took that last step over the edge and your feet were no longer on solid ground. It was that moment just before free-fall, that blip of a tenth of a second. That was where the truth was found.

  Blue lights flashed outside the window, and Chuck turned his head toward the commotion, removing the pistol from his temple. He snuck to the window and saw the sheriff’s cruiser downstairs. Chuck cursed the clerk at the front, thinking that he’d sold him out.

  The deputies ascended the stairs, the lights on their cruiser still flashing in the parking lot, and then turned toward his room. He ducked behind the door, away from the window, as the deputies closed in. He raised the pistol, eyes locked on the door handle, ready for them to bust inside.

  The officer’s murmurs grew louder, and from the corner by the door, Chuck saw one of the officer’s shoulders. He tensed. A gunfight. Quick and dirty. It’d be better this way. No more waiting. No more fear. Just done.

  And then there were three knocks. But something was wrong. The noises weren’t coming from his door. They were coming from—

  “Mrs. Cooley, we’re sorry to bother you, but we need to speak with you for a moment. Can you step outside?”

  It couldn’t be. It had to be a different Cooley, a different woman. There was no way that he was sitting next door to the same family that he’d tried to kill. And that meant if the mother was inside that room, then so was the son.

  “What happened?” Mrs. Cooley asked.

  “We finally heard back from the sheriff,” one of the deputies answered. “Your husband attacked the group of officers transporting him to the courthouse and escaped.”

  “What? No, that’s… that’s not possible.”

  Chuck knew that if Owen was gone, then there was only one place that he’d go, and there was only one person that he’d be looking for.

  “The sheriff thinks he’ll try and contact you,” the second deputy spoke now. “If that happens, you need to let us know.”

  “Did he… did he hurt anyone?”

  “One of the deputies is in critical condition at the hospital.”

  Mrs. Cooley gasped, and the police mumbled a few more things that Chuck missed as he leaned away from the door.

  If Owen Cooley was still alive, if he had escaped and grown so violent that he was willing to kill another officer, then Chuck knew the man wanted only one thing.

  Revenge was a cruel beast. It twisted you into something that you weren’t, forced you into positions that you’d never find yourself otherwise. And that toxic potion had seeped into Owen Cooley’s veins. It pushed him beyond the limits of his reason and thought. And it brought a smile to Chuck’s face.

  If Owen was going to come after him, then Chuck wanted to make sure that their meeting would be memorable. And everything he needed for that to happen was next door.

  6

  Claire lingered on the balcony for a moment as the deputies returned to their car. She noticed that they stayed in the parking lot as she tried to wrap her head around what they’d told her.

  After her interaction with Madame Crepaux, Claire knew that the cause of Owen’s escape was more of the creature’s doing than his own. But she didn’t share that information with the police. What good would it do?

  Sorry to tell you officer, but my husband has actually been possessed by the same creature that took my son and is currently hunting down one of your murder suspects to end a two-hundred-year-old curse on a family that killed an ancient Voodoo queen.

  Claire steadied herself on the rail of the balcony, took a breath, and then walked back into the room. Chloe sprinted around the carpet in her bare feet, humming to herself as Matt sat in a chair and flicked through the limited number of TV channels with the remote.

  Chloe knocked on the locked door that connected to the room next door. “Hello? Anybody home?”

  “Chloe, stop.” Claire snapped sharper than she intended, and Chloe sheepishly stepped away from the door. “I’m sorry. It’s just… just try and be quiet for a minute, okay?”

  “Do you want me to turn off the TV?” Matt asked.

  “No, that’s fine, sweetheart.”

  Claire took a seat on the edge of the bed, and she twirled the wedding band around her finger. The diamond was small, but high quality. When Owen proposed, he nearly dropped it, he was shaking so much. She’d never seen him so nervous before in her life. He looked as if his whole future hinged on her answer, but she never told him that her world hinged on him asking.

  She wished she could reach out to him, let him hear her voice. If she had the chance, she knew she could break through the creature’s hold and reach him.

  Chloe knocked on the door again, and Claire jumped from the noise. “Chloe, I said—”

  A knock answered back. All three of them looked to the door. The springs of the mattress squeaked in relief as Claire stood. “Sorry!”

  Another knock.

  “It’s my daughter,” Claire said. “She won’t do it again. I’m—”

  Three more knocks in fast succession cut her off, and Claire’s frustration went from simmer to boil. She stomped toward the door, the knocking continuous now, unlocked it, and swung it open. “Listen, if you just—”

  The gun barrel poked through first. Her eyes w
ent to the face of the man that held it. Chuck pressed his fingers to his lips as Claire gawked in stunned silence.

  “Scream, and I kill everyone in this room,” Chuck said, then looked down toward the kids who’d huddled together in the chair, Matt shoving his little sister behind him. Claire sidestepped to the left, slowly, blocking Chuck’s line of sight to her children.

  “The police are downstairs,” Claire said, her voice shaking. “You try anything and—”

  “They’ll arrest me?” Chuck asked, now all the way in the room now. “Take me away to jail? Charge me for murder?” He cocked his head sideways. “You and I both know I have bigger things to worry about than the boys in blue downstairs.” He took an aggressive step forward, and Claire shuddered. “Sit. Down.”

  Claire slowly complied, inching as close to her children as she could in the chair next to her, and reached out her arm to grab hold of Matt’s hand.

  Chuck paced the room, the gun trained on the kids now as he walked to the front door and made sure the chain lock was set. He peeked out the window and then shook his head. “Out of all the places for you to come. Out of all the places for me to hide. What are the chances?”

  “It’s over,” Claire said. “Hurting us won’t help you anymore now.”

  “Help me?” Chuck asked, then chuckled. “Nothing can help me, Claire. There isn’t a spell, or incantation that I can speak, there isn’t a lawyer that can bail me out of this, and there isn’t a human being on this planet that can undo what’s transpired over the past few days.” He stepped closer. “But I’ve accepted my fate. I’ve come to terms with my future. Have you?”

  Claire watched the pistol in Chuck’s hand. It didn’t waver, or flinch, it was steady as a rock, and just beneath the cool calm expression on Chuck’s face, Claire could see the reflection of madness in the pools of black in his eyes.