The Devil's Laughter

by William W. Johnstone

  The priest again smiled. “You’re a very intelligent woman, Mrs. Brooks. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you studying me. Some consider me an expert on Satan worship, my dear.”

  “Those . . . people out there crawling around in the darkness,” Anne said. “They want me?”

  “That is not their primary objective.”

  “They could have kidnapped Billy and Betsy dozens of times,” Link said.

  “No,” the priest said. “Conditions have to be absolutely right for them to make such a move. The planets have to be aligned just so. The moon, the tides, a great many factors. Even we so-called experts don’t have all the answers. As I said before, we are dealing with the dead, Link. Those people out there” – he waved a hand at the damp darkness – “are expendables in the eyes of Satan. And Ol’ Scratch knows they’re going to die. It would be nice – in his eyes – if they could win this war; but he knows God won’t permit that. However, Satan does owe Lynette Jackson; she’s served him well for decades and he’s got to try to keep her around to help spread his evil.”

  “Decades?” Anne asked. “How old is the woman?”

  “Oh ... probably a hundred and seventy-five years old. Give or take a few years.”

  Both Anne and Link were speechless, staring at the priest through the darkness. Link said, “That’s impossible!”

  “I warned you about applying logic to this situation,” John said. “She’s a witch.”

  “Bullshit!” Link said.

  “I second that,” Anne said.

  The priest chuckled. “Anne, Lynette Jackson doesn’t fly around on a broom or sit by a bubbling cauldron making witches’ brew. She’s simply a woman who gave her heart and soul to the Dark One in exchange for eternal life. Her family in New Orleans knows what she is. They came to the Church years ago with proof. That’s why they disowned her.”

  “If this is true, why didn’t you tell us from the outset about it?” Link asked.

  “There is much I have not told either of you,” the priest said softly. “I will, when I think it’s time.”

  Link caught movement down near the gate and said, “Excuse me for a moment, please.” He pushed open the door and eased out into the very light, almost misty rain. He sighted in and squeezed the trigger twice. The figure by the gate stumbled once and fell to the ground. Link stepped back inside the closed-in porch.

  “Now!” a man screamed the word, and men began climbing over the gate and over the fence, rushing through the woods closest to the highway.

  “Give them everything you’ve got!” Link shouted. “Open fire. Now!”

  Link jammed the muzzle through an open porch window and let it bang. Father Lattier was carefully squeezing off rounds, and Anne had laid aside her shotgun and was using one of the spare Mini-14’s with a banana clip. She wasn’t hitting a whole lot of anything except air, but she was sure causing a lot of coven members to hug the ground and have second thoughts about this frontal assault.

  “Charge the fence, Link!” Anne screamed over the din of battle.

  “No!” he shouted. “Not yet. Let a few of them actually make it over the fence and into the yard before we do. You hear that, Tom?”

  “That’s ten-four, Link,” the young deputy shouted. “I understand.”

  “Die, you godless heathens!” Toby Belenger roared from the back porch. “Go live in the stinking arms of your dark master.” He jerked his Colt AR-15 to his shoulder and dropped an entire line of running devil worshipers. “Take that, you goddamned mother – ” He bit back the remainder of the oath, and several of the girls who were members of his church clapped their hands and cheered him on from their positions on the floor.

  Link and Anne fired almost point-blank into the chests and faces of those who had cleared the fence.

  “Now, Tom!” Link shouted. “Hit the fence.”

  High voltage surged through the line, past the hidden insulators, and turned the chain link fence into a death trap for those men and women who were already soaking wet from the rain. The juice was passed from one to another as they tried to free themselves but could not. Link, Father Lattier, Anne, and Tom fired into the jerking, screaming devil’s horde from the front, and Toby, Matt, Paul, and the others turned their guns on the electrically charged men and women.

  Link watched as those who were left alive ran back toward the road. “Cease firing!” he yelled. “Cease firing!”

  One by one, the guns fell silent.

  A few moans came from outside the compound.

  “Turn off the fence,” Link said.

  “I got everything on videotape,” Linda Chavez called from the garage apartment. “Hope you don’t mind my borrowing your camera, Mr. Link?”

  Link smiled. “Now why didn’t I think of that?” he muttered. “Good, Linda,” he called. “Excellent. That’s damn good thinking on your part.”

  “Oh, God, help me!” a woman called from the fence. “Please, God, help me.”

  Link stared at Father Lattier’s face. It was like looking at stone. “Go to hell, woman,” the old priest said. “You made your choice.” He walked into the house for a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

  Link took his cassette-corder, put in a fresh tape and fresh batteries, and walked outside. He knelt down beside a man who had been shot in both legs, breaking them at the knees. Link didn’t know the man but his face was familiar. “You want help?” Link asked.

  “Oh ... please, God, yes,” the man gasped.

  Link punched the record button and tucked the recorder under the man’s coat. “From the top, buddy. How it started, who runs it, who is in it, who you have seen killed and tortured and by whom. The whole nine yards. Then you get some help, and not before.”

  “You’re a cold man, Donovan,” the wounded man said.

  Link smiled at him. “I’ve been called worse.”

  * * *

  Linda brought the camcorder down and videotaped, with sound, the confessions of a dozen coven members, while Link went to the sheriffs department unit and tried once more to call for outside help.

  He got through to several different sheriffs offices, but the replies were all the same. Just chitchat over the radio. That they were in trouble just didn’t register with those outside the parish.

  He called Gerard. “Yeah, I’m listening, Link,” the chief deputy said. “It’s crazy and I can’t explain it, but it’s happening. We beat back another attack, buddy. My front yard looks like Khe Sanh.”

  “You ought to see this place. You have a camcorder, Gerard?”

  “Not out here. But one of the kids musta used ten rolls of film from my 35mm. If we can just hold out, we got ’em, Link. Got ’em cold.”

  “Same here. And we’ve got dozens of confessions from the wounded.”

  “We did, too. But I don’t think it’s over. Gonna be a long night. Some of the kids had . . . uh ... some things to help get us through the remainder of the night... uh ... if you know what I mean.”

  Link was still laughing as he ten-foured and hooked the mike. Good ol’ straight-as-an-arrow-Gerard, speeding his ass off. He went inside for a cup of coffee, something to eat, and a hit of speed.

  The defenders left the dead where they had fallen.

  * * *

  “I want volunteers for a suicide charge,” Judge Britton said, looking down at the bedraggled bunch of coven members who had staggered back to the complex.

  To a person, they raised their hands.

  The judge smiled. “Good. You will all be rewarded for this. That is a promise from the master. Now, here is what we’ll do.”

  * * *

  Link put a scraper blade on his old John Deere tractor and started working on the drive, scraping out a pit as deep as he could dig it with the blade. When that was done, he put shovels in the hands of the males and told them to dig it deep. Then he got thin plywood and covered the gap, sprinkling dirt and bits of blacktop over that.

  “What do you think they’ll try now?” Anne asked.
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  “Suicide charge. It’s their only hope. They’ll try to blast us out. That’ll stop them in the drive.”

  “What about the woods?” Father Palombo asked, leaning on his shovel.

  “Tom will be with me in the woods,” Link replied. “He knows the placement of the booby traps. Those on the other side have made some desperate moves this night. That leads me to think they’re on some sort of deadline. I don’t know how that could be, but then I don’t know how any of this can be. Maybe if we make it through this night, we’re home free. That might be just wishful thinking, but it sure would be nice.”

  The rain had stopped and it was turning colder as a massive Arctic front moved through. Link looked at Linda. “Film as much of it as you can, Linda. Everybody get back to your places. Let’s get this over with.”

  Link and Tom changed into dry clothing and picked up their weapons, slipping into the woods near a spot where all the charges had blown and they would not be hit by any flying shrapnel. “Good luck,” Tom said, and they moved apart and settled in.

  They heard the bob truck coming from the north, then stop on the blacktop as other vehicles pulled in behind it. Car doors clunked and men slipped into the woods. The bob truck rolled on, stopping near Link’s gates and backing up into the old logging road across from his property. That would give them enough momentum to crash through the gates onto Link’s property.

  The rear of the truck is filled with explosives, Link thought. It’s going to be a hell of a bang when they fall into that trench.

  “Now!” a man shouted from the timber and the truck roared forward and the coven members in the woods charged toward Link’s house.

  One tripped a wire and the night air exploded, filled with maiming, killing shrapnel. Two men charged Link’s position and he gave them half a clip from the MAC-10. The dynamite they were carrying exploded, and the earth rocked as pieces of the devil worshipers were slung over an acre or more of timber.

  The truck crashed through the gates with a grinding, ripping sound and roared up the drive.

  Tom sighted in a running man carrying a bulky parcel and pulled the trigger. The man exploded in a ball of fire. That explosion knocked another coven member off his feet and his charge exploded. The woods rocked under the heavy charges.

  Link brought down another man just as the front tires of the bob truck dropped into the trench and the nose slammed into the ground, throwing those in the cab through the windshield. The truck exploded. A huge ball of fire shot into the night and the earth shook under Link’s feet.

  “We blowed the damn house up!” a man yelled, jumping to his feet.

  Link shot him, and another devil worshiper was blown into bits and chunks and pieces.

  Another wire was tripped and the woods shook as the charge blew. Link pulled the remote from his pocket and peered into the gloom. There. Movement. Four shapes rose up off the ground to stand not five feet from where Link had rigged a homemade Claymore.

  “You bastard!” one yelled in rage. Link assumed he was referring to him.

  “Here I am,” Link called, and pressed the button. The four shapes were blown into the arms of that dark and odious creature they had chosen to serve.

  Satan could have a great time trying to put all the pieces back together.

  Tom watched as two men tried to run back toward the road. He lifted his rifle and cut them down. They obviously had not been carrying any charges. Nothing exploded.

  The woods grew silent; flashes of light from the burning truck highlighted the gloom.

  “I don’t wanna play this game anymore,” a woman’s voice sprang from the damp darkness. “You lied to us. You told us nothing but lies. I’m gonna ask Jesus for forgiveness. I’m gonna pray to God Almighty. I’m – ”

  She blew up. Splashes of blood slopped against the timber and the ground.

  “What the hell? . . .” Tom called.

  “Satan has not abandoned them yet,” Link guessed. “They made a deal, and he’s going to see they carry through with their end of the bargain.”

  “You mean . . . the devil is here? Right now?” the deputy called.

  An odor unlike anything either of them had ever smelled before assaulted their nostrils and nearly sickened them.

  “My God, Link,” Tom called. “What is that smell?”

  “The fires of Hell,” Link replied.

  Chapter 10

  Father Lattier met the men at the back door. His face was grim and his eyes hard. “Come look at this,” he said. “We’ve had a visitor.” He led them to the room where Dave Bradley had been trussed up. “All the prisoners are the same way. Destroyed.”

  There was nothing left of the man except some rags of clothing, crumbling bones, and a terrible smell.

  Link shook his head in disgust. “You smelled that odor from the woods?”

  “Yes,” the priest replied. “We all did. Satan’s not giving up on this just yet. Obviously, Lynette Jackson has called on him for help. And he responded.”

  “This is not possible,” Mark Palombo blurted out. “This is ... this is ... illogical.” Then he realized what he was saying and closed his mouth.

  Miles ran into the room. “They’ve overrun Gerard’s place. Gerard and the others had to take to the countryside. Gerard said a dark, stinking fog covered his house and grounds. They couldn’t see anything. That’s when the coven members rushed them and drove them out of the house. They lost some people but don’t know how many ’cause they were separated after they left the house. Gerard’s walkie-talkie is not gonna last much longer. The batteries are about dead.”

  “Where are the damn people of this town?” Suzanne shouted, her voice very nearly hysterical. But her face was not pale and her eyes showed no fear. No one noticed. “Why don’t they help us?”

  Anne grabbed the woman and shook her hard. “They don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “Now get a grip on yourself.” She slapped the younger woman on the face, rocking her head. “Suzanne!” she shouted.

  Suzanne’s eyes narrowed in anger as she leaned against the wall. “Sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I lost it for a minute. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I don’t know.”

  Guy took her hand and led her back up the hall to the basement door. “It’ll be all right, Suzanne,” the young reporter told her. “It’ll be all right. We’re safe here. Come on. Get some rest while it’s quiet.”

  “Did anybody get hit?” Link asked.

  No one had been hurt.

  Link stepped to the front and stepped out to his drive, walking down to the still-smoking truck. Or what was left of it. The truck must have been carrying hundreds of pounds of dynamite. There was nothing left except for a pile of tangled metal. One of the men in the front seat had broken his neck upon impacting with the driveway. The other one had been shot in the center of his chest.

  Father Lattier lifted his rifle. “Me,” he said. “With absolutely no regrets.”

  Link nodded his head. “Nothing to be sorry about.” He looked toward the smashed gates. “We got to do something about the gates.”

  “Park a vehicle across the drive,” Leon suggested. “That’ll do for the short term. Lord knows, we got enough cars and trucks out here.”

  “I’ll park the truck I borrowed,” Matt said. “And I’ll leave the keys on the floorboards so any of us can move it if it comes to that.”

  “Let’s load up and grab something to eat and get some rest,” Link suggested. “I thought after we broke this last attack, it would be over except for the mopping up.” He unknowingly reverted back to military jargon. “I wasn’t counting on them getting reinforcements.”

  “Especially of the type they received,” Tom added.

  Link looked toward the east and was surprised to see a faint silver glow in the skies. Then he realized that he was suddenly very tired. The effects from the hit of go-go he had swallowed had worn off. He walked slowly back up the drive. He had to get some sleep.

&
nbsp; He wondered how many of Gerard’s bunch had gone down for the final count.

  * * *

  Gerard sat in a wooded area and wrapped a handkerchief around his bloody upper left arm. The wound wasn’t serious, just painful. He had gotten separated from the others and was alone. Worry hit him hard. Not for himself, but for his wife, Carla. When that damn stinking fog had settled over the house like a shroud, reducing visibility down to nothing, and the coven members rushed in, the scene had turned to screaming, shooting, shouting, and panicked confusion. He didn’t know what had happened to Cliff Sweeney, Susan and her bunch, or anybody else.

  He did know that the unholy, unwashed, and stinking bastards and bitches who served Satan had torched his house after Gerard and the others were driven out. He had seen the flames and smelled the smoke.

  Gerard sat in the small ravine in the woods and got just plain old-fashioned, red-assed, bowed-up pissed off.

  “All right,” he muttered, checking his Ruger Mini-14 and making sure a round was in the slot. “Link was right. We should have taken the battle to you from the first.” He got to his boots and checked his new S&W 9mm. He had a rucksack filled with clips for both weapons. “No pity, no mercy, no surrender, and no prisoners, people. Your ass is grass, and Gerard Lucas is a great big lawn mower.”

  He moved out.

  * * *

  “You kids stay low and quiet,” Cliff told Susan and the others who had followed him through the swirling, stinking devil’s fog and to safety. The FBI man slipped through the brush and stopped at the edge of a clearing. He could see a house about five hundred yards away. There was no smoke coming from any of the chimneys, and a lot of wood had been cut and stacked in the side yard. He could see a pickup truck and a station wagon parked in the double carport.

  Cliff backtracked and stayed in the sparse timber and brush until he reached the back of the country home. He looked back at the kids and motioned for them to stay down. He ran across the clearing, expecting a shot at any moment. None came. He reached the back of the house and peeped into the kitchen. No sign of life could be seen.