“How do you know that?”
Jimmy shrugged. “Sometimes I just know things. Call it an occupational fringe benefit. Once Mansa has all of the bones gathered together, he is going to perform a ceremony to bring his former body back to life.”
“Can such things be done?”
Again Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Mansa’s spirit is very powerful, far more powerful than you or I will ever be. It’s so strong he’s almost a demon. If there is a way to raise his body again, then I’m quite sure that Mansa will know how to do it. But a ceremony like that is evil, and he will need to make a blood sacrifice. The blood of an innocent.”
Robert sucked in air. “Krissy.”
Jimmy Cypress nodded. “I feel your daughter is in great danger, and time is running out. Once Mansa has gathered together the things he will need for his ceremony, he will use your little girl to make his final sacrifice.”
“We have to stop him before it’s too late.”
“Can you walk on that ankle?”
“We’re talking about my little girl, I’ll fucking run on it if I have to.”
Jimmy opened up the cedar box and took out a small leather pouch fastened to a leather cord. He handed the pouch to Robert. “Here, put this on.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a medicine pouch. We’re going up against evil, and you can use all the help you can get.”
Robert slipped the cord over his head, allowing the pouch to hang in the center of his chest.
“Wear it under your shirt,” Jimmy instructed. “Wear it against you skin.”
Robert sniffed the pouch before slipping it under his shirt. “It stinks. What’s in it?”
“You don’t want to know.” Jimmy grinned. “Now, let’s go find your daughter.”
Chapter Twenty-four
The Blackwater Lounge had closed several hours earlier, but not all of the customers had gone home. Charlie McGee still sat at the bar, nursing a long-neck bottle of Budweiser. It was his fifth beer of the night, or maybe his sixth. Charlie was never very good at keeping track of how many beers he drank in an evening. Not that it mattered much one way or the other. He wasn’t married, so he didn’t have a wife to fuss at him about having too many beers. And he didn’t have a job, so he didn’t have to worry about getting up early in the morning to go to work.
The truth was Charlie didn’t have to worry about too many things anymore. He was in his mid-seventies, living on social security and the pension checks earned from working over twenty years as a newspaper reporter. The money wasn’t much, but then again he really didn’t need all that much. His mobile home was paid for, as was the old Ford pickup truck he drove. Even his beers were usually free, bought by Ross in exchange for him watching the bait and tackle shop, or the lounge, when such things were needed.
It was the promise of free beer that usually kept Charlie at the lounge later than he should be. Not that he had anywhere else to go. He could go home, but there was nothing to do there but drink a couple of more beers and watch the idiot box. There wasn’t much on television late at night that he liked watching, except for those commercials which featured sexy women asking you to call them.
Charlie smiled. He had always thought about calling one of those numbers, just to see what the women would say to him. Would they promise to smother him with kisses? Would they tell him what they were wearing, or what they weren’t wearing? Would they promise to make sweet love to him? Or would they somehow know he was seventy-three years old, and slam the phone in his ear? After all, there wasn’t much a seventy-three year old man could do with his penis, except get drunk and piss on his shoes. But would those women even care how old he was, as long as he was paying $4.95 per minute to talk to them?
Yep, Charlie had often thought about calling up one of those numbers, but he had never done so because he didn’t have a credit card. He didn’t have a phone either, which was another reason why he couldn’t make phone calls to sexy women who appeared on the television late at night.
He chuckled, took another drink of beer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“What are you laughing at, old man?” Ross called, appearing from the back room with a case of bottled beer. He set the case on the floor, and then slid open the door on the drop-box cooler. Checking to see how many bottles were left in the cooler’s first bin, he opened the case of beer and started restocking the cooler. Budweiser was the best seller, so it took up two bins in the cooler: one bin for bottles, the other for cans. After that came Miller, Miller Light, and an assortment of other brands. The last bin was reserved for imports, with Corona being the best seller of the foreign stuff.
Ross emptied the case, and looked up at Charlie. “I said, what are you laughing at?”
“You’ve got awfully big ears to hear me laughing in the back room.” Charlie grinned.
“Maybe you’re got an awfully big mouth,” Ross retaliated. “What are you doing, talking to yourself again? You know that’s a sign of being senile, don’t you?”
Charlie shook his head. “I wasn’t talking to myself. And I’m not getting senile! I was just thinking about some of those commercials they show on television late at night. You know, the ones with the pretty women in them who want you to call them.”
“The nine hundred numbers?”
“That’s the ones.”
“What about them?”
“I was just thinking about them, that’s all. Thought it might be fun to call one once. Wonder what they would do if they found out they were talking to an old-timer like me?”
Ross smiled. “They wouldn’t do nothing but keep you talking. That’s all. They don’t care how old you are, as long as you have money. Hell, some of those women who answer those calls are probably as old as you are. Maybe even older.”
“You don’t say?”
“I do say. The women you see on television aren’t the ones who take the calls. Those are just models they hire to do the commercials. The women you talk to aren’t beautiful, or sexy. And they probably wouldn’t fuck you, no matter how much money you have. Oh, they’ll talk dirty to you, just as long as you want them to talk to you. But it wouldn’t be much of a turn-on if you knew you were talking to a three-hundred-pound woman, with six kids, and two teeth missing.”
“You don’t get to talk to the women in the commercials?” Charlie asked, disappointed.
“Nope,” Ross replied. “But why you worried about it? You don’t even have a phone.”
“I know, but I was thinking about sneaking back in here and calling them on your phone.”
Ross laughed. “Old man, you start calling nine hundred numbers on my phone and there will be hell to pay.”
“It was just a thought.” Charlie finished his beer, setting the empty bottle down on the bar. “You ever call one of those nine hundred numbers?”
“Nope. Never have. Mary would kill me if I called one of those numbers.”
“I bet it would be a real hoot.”
“Probably would.”
Ross reached down into the cooler and fished out a cold bottle of Budweiser. He opened the bottle and set it in front of Charlie. “Here, have another beer. I’ve got to finish stocking this cooler.” He grabbed the empty beer case and started toward the back room. “And leave my phone alone!”
Charlie picked up the full bottle of beer and took a sip. He should be going home, but he wasn’t in much of a hurry. And Ross didn’t mind him hanging around, because it gave him someone to talk to while he was cleaning up the place and restocking the cooler.
The drop-box cooler was almost empty, because there had been so many people at the fish camp the past few days: police officers, firemen, reporters, people just showing up to watch the show. Ross would be carrying twice as many cases of beer out of the back room. Charlie offered to help him, but it really was a one-man job. Two men would just get in each other’s way.
Charlie thought about how busy things had been lately. And he tho
ught about the little girl that was still missing. That was a damn shame; it had to be really tough on her parents. He didn’t think they were ever going to find that little girl. If they were going to find her, they would have done it already. He didn’t think she was anywhere around there to be found. Nope. That girl was somewhere else, long gone from Blackwater. Someone had taken her. She was either long gone, or she was dead. It was as simple as that.
He had just started to take another sip of beer when the lights when out, casting the room into darkness. “Hey! What the hell are you doing back there?”
“It wasn’t me,” Ross called back. “Must have blown a fuse.”
“Well, fix it.”
“I will. Give me a minute. I’ve got to find my flashlight first.”
The room wasn’t completely dark. There was a emergency-exit sign over the front door that ran off batteries in case of a power outage. The red letters of the sign marked the location of the door, so customers could find their way out. The sign also had two spotlights that were supposed to come on during a power failure, but those spotlights hadn’t worked in years. The local fire marshal didn’t know the spotlights didn’t work, so Ross had gotten by without having to replace the sign.
The letters of the exit sign cast a dim red glow over the front entrance. The letters would probably be brighter if Ross ever bothered to clean the sign. Years of dust and cigarette smoke had dulled the letters. Customers could still see the sign and could probably figure out how to get to the front door, but the room was pitch black when the power went out.
A crash sounded in the back room, and Ross said out loud, “Son of a bitch.”
“What you doing back there?” Charlie laughed, turning in the direction of the noise.
“Breaking my fool neck,” Ross answered. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Did you find a flashlight yet?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it.”
“Well, hurry up. I don’t like drinking in the dark.”
“If you don’t shut up you’ll be drinking your beer in the parking lot.”
Charlie laughed again. He started to take another drink of beer, but he suddenly felt a draft on the back of his neck. Turning on his bar stool to look toward the front entrance, he saw the door slowly inching closed.
The old man sat looking at the front door, not sure if he had really seen it move. The darkness and the beers could be playing tricks on him. The draft he had felt on his neck could only be caused by the door being opened, but no one had entered the bar. At least there was no one standing in the doorway. He glanced around the room, but didn’t see anyone in the darkness.
Maybe someone had opened the door, looked in, and closed it again. Maybe it was a deputy making the rounds, or one of those reporters. He were probably hoping to have a beer, but saw that the room was dark and figured the lounge was closed. Perhaps it was Mary who had opened the door. The electricity in her cabin might also be out, and she had come over to see how things were in the lounge.
“The least she could have done was say howdy,” Charlie said aloud. But Mary might not have seen him sitting there in the darkness.
Wondering if the whole camp had lost power, Charlie got up and made his way to the front door. He opened it and stepped outside. The camp was dark, but it usually was at nighttime. Ross knew that a lot of his campers liked looking at the night sky, so he burned as few lights as possible. There were no lights set on poles to distract from the stars, but he did keep a light burning in the bait and tackle shop at night. He also kept a yellow bug light burning above the door to his cabin, so people would know where to find him in case they needed anything. Those lights now burned as normal, so the whole camp was not without electricity.
The camp still had electricity, so that would mean that it wasn’t Mary who had opened the door. She was probably already asleep, and would have no reason to come to the lounge so late at night. If it wasn’t Mary, then who had opened the door?
Charlie looked around but didn’t see anyone. There were no strange vehicles parked in the parking lot, so that ruled out deputies or search team members. Even the last reporter had finally gone home. The wind must have opened the door. That sometimes happened if you didn’t close it tight. He had told Ross that he needed to get a new door, but Ross was slow about getting things fixed.
“Enough of this. My beer’s getting warm.” Charlie opened the door and stepped back inside. The bar was still dark, which meant Ross hadn’t found his flashlight yet. That, or he had found the flashlight, but hadn’t found the spare fuses.
“What’s the holdup?” Charlie called. “You on some kind of break?”
“Shut up, old man. I’m working on it.”
Charlie laughed and made his way back to his bar stool. He was about to reach for his beer when he noticed that the beer was no longer sitting on the bar. He turned and looked down the bar, figuring that he had just sat down on the wrong stool. But there was no beer bottle sitting anywhere on the bar, full or otherwise. He turned and looked back toward the front door, thinking he had set the bottle down on one of the tables on his way outside, but there wasn’t a bottle there either.
He started to call out to Ross when a peculiar noise got his undivided attention. It was the chunk-chunk sound of a glass bottle rolling across a hardwood floor. Looking down, he was surprised to see his full bottle of Budweiser roll across the floor in front of his feet, splashing beer on the floor as it passed.
“What the hell?” The bottle came to a stop a few feet beyond where he sat. He looked at the bottle, then turned his attention toward the opposite end of the room. Someone had rolled that bottle at him. Someone who could not be seen in the darkness.
“Who’s there?” Charlie called out, getting up off of his bar stool. There was no answer.
“Who did that?” He took a step forward and stopped, trying to see to the far end of the room. But the lounge was still dark, and the beers he had drank made his vision fuzzy. Not that he had the best eyesight to begin with; twenty years of newspaper work had taken its toll on his vision, and he wore glasses more often than not. There could be a dozen people standing at that end of the room and he would not be able to see them.
Someone had to be playing a joke on him. That was it, a joke. One of the regulars must have slipped inside the bar when he wasn’t looking, and was now trying to have a bit of fun at his expense. That must be it. One of his drinking buddies was trying to scare him to get a laugh. They were going to scare him, then make fun of him. Charlie didn’t like people making fun of him, and he wasn’t about to fall victim to any stupid joke.
“It’s not going to work. I’m not scared.” Charlie pulled a pair of prescription glasses out of his shirt pocket, hurrying to put them on. But even with the glasses, he still couldn’t see who was hiding from him.
“You’re wasting your time. I’m not afraid.” He called out to the darkness, but there was no reply. No snicker of laughter. Nothing. The old man took a few more steps forward, then stopped again.
It might have been a joke, but it was no longer funny. Maybe it was the alcohol talking, but he was starting to get a little nervous about the whole thing. His body broke out in a thin sheen of sweat, causing his shirt and pants to stick to him.
“Joe, is that you? John? Come on guys, you’ve had your laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha. Now quit fooling around and come out where I can see you.”
There was no response. No hardy laughter, followed by the appearance of his friends. Nothing but the darkness. He turned and looked toward the back of the building, wishing that Ross would hurry up and get the lights back on.
“Ross, have you found that flashlight yet?”
Charlie suddenly realized that there was no noise coming from the back room. Nor did he see the soft glow of a flashlight. That meant Ross had not found the flashlight he was looking for and had probably gone to his cabin to get one. It also meant that Charlie was alone in the lounge.
Not alone. Someone was in the l
ounge with him. Someone who liked to play scary games.
Charlie was suddenly afraid. The fear killed the beer buzz he had been enjoying only moments before, leaving a bitter metallic taste in his mouth. He didn’t think any of his drinking buddies were playing a trick on him. They all had wives and had gone home hours earlier. They also had jobs and would not be returning to do any more drinking. That meant someone else was in the lounge with him. Someone he didn’t know.
“This isn’t funny. If someone’s hiding there, you had better come out. I’ve got a gun.” He didn’t really have a gun, didn’t even have a pocketknife, but Ross kept a pistol somewhere behind the counter. “If you don’t come out I’ll shoot.”
Charlie thought that saying he had a gun might be a pretty good bluff, but he was apparently wrong. From the darkness in front of him came a laugh: a cruel, deep-pitched laugh that sounded more animal than human. The laugh grew louder, growing higher in pitch, until it sounded like the laughter of a child. It sounded like the laugh of a little girl, only there was something about it that was pure evil.
He took a step back and thought about running for the front door, but then he saw the eyes. Two bluish-green eyes beneath the table closest to him, glowing in the darkness like the eyes of an animal. The eyes watched him for a moment, then came toward him at a rush.
Charlie screamed in fear, something he had never done in his entire life. Before going to work for the newspaper, he had served several years in the army. He had seen combat in World War II, had even been wounded, but he had never screamed in fear. Never. But now he cried out in terror, for there was something about those eyes that scared the hell out of him.
As the eyes rushed toward him, Charlie got to see the body they were attached to. It was a small body, not much bigger than a child. As a matter of fact, it was a child: a little girl. It looked like the little girl everyone had been looking for, but there was something wrong about this little girl. Something very, very wrong.
Evil Whispers Page 21