The Sisters: A Mystery of Good and Evil, Horror and Suspense (Book One of the Dark Forces Series)

by Don Sloan

  Chapter 17

  Nathan and Sarah were having breakfast when they heard sirens.

  “I wonder what that’s all about?” Sarah said between mouthfuls of buttered biscuits. “Must be something pretty drastic to bring out the Cape May EMS during this big storm.”

  “Yeah, and I thought we were the only ones on the beach,” Nathan said. He sipped his coffee.

  “Well, we can find out later when the storm lets up. I wonder which house Tipton is living in currently. Think the deeds records might show that?”

  “I don’t know. If they don’t, the clerk might know. Tipton’s been here a while and it’s a small town. Were you thinking of paying him a visit?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Couldn’t hurt. I want to ask him if he knew my Aunt Moira for one thing.”

  “I thought you were afraid of him.”

  “I am. But it’s funny; I think if he really wanted to do us harm he would have done so already. All we’ve seen so far are a bunch of cheap mind tricks.”

  Nathan gave her a rueful smile. “I’d give him more credit than that. He’s got some pretty powerful ability to control our thoughts and I wouldn’t underestimate him.”

  Sarah looked thoughtful. “You may be right. Still, it makes me mad, the way he’s covering up a mystery that must go back for years.”

  “Got a point there. All right. We’ll go find the old bastard and beard him in his den.”

  “What?

  “It’s an old Biblical expression, I think. It means we’ll try to corner him in his own house.”

  “Oh. Well, that may be easier said than done, but let’s give it a try.” She looked at Nathan and gave a sunny smile. “I feel like I’m in an old MacGyver episode.”

  Nathan laughed. “Yeah, one with a gothic horror twist. But we’ll figure it out if it kills us.”

  Sarah shivered. “Don’t say that."

  “You say you just came upstairs and the kids were gone and all this blood was everywhere?” The big detective looked down at a weeping Jay Warren, sitting on the parlor sofa. His hands were cuffed behind his back.

  The house was swarming with forensics people, most of them concentrating on the third floor bedrooms where the grisly carnage had been found. Dora Warren had been found in hysterics and carried off by medics in an ambulance through the raging snow storm.

  “I-I just don’t know what to say. I heard a commotion upstairs and came up to find the boys missing and all that blood everywhere. I don’t know what happened. I swear. I would never do anything to hurt my own kids!” Tears streamed down his face.

  The detective stared stonily at the man. He’d seen plenty of crime scenes in his time, but nothing to compare to the raw violence he had seen depicted in the bedrooms upstairs. What had this guy done with the kids’ bodies—chopped them up and flushed them down a toilet? A good lawyer would get him off without the bodies, though. It made him sick, just looking at the guy.

  “Come on. You’re going to jail” And he pulled Warren to his feet and toward the door.

  Chapter 18

  The night is one of infinite possibilities. Tipton has just closed the sale on the eleventh house on Ocean Avenue. The year is 2008. The deal has taken quite a long time to do because he hasn’t been able to find the owners. Finally, he has tracked them down in Abilene, Texas.

  The scene is a dusty cow pasture behind a sprawling ranch house. A large man who looks like Hoss Cartwright—right down to the ten-gallon hat—bends beside a water trough, holding the lead rope of a bawling heifer calf.

  “Good afternoon to ye, sir.”

  The man jumps, pulls himself upright, and drops the rope. “Who the hell are you and where did you come from?” the man says.

  “My name is Tipton, sir. Thomas Tipton. I flew in this morning and drove out to your ranch. Your wife said I might find you here, Mr. Smithfield, is it?

  The old rancher smiles slowly and extends a hand. “Yeah, that’s me. What can I do for you, Mr. Tipton?”

  “Well, sir, it’s more like what I can do for you, if you take my meaning, sir. I’d like to buy your house in Cape May, New Jersey.”

  Smithfield’s smile fades. “I’m afraid that’s not possible, Mr. Tipton.”

  “Why ever not, if I may ask?”

  “My great-grandmother left that house to me in her will with the proviso that it never be sold. We have to keep it in the family, to be passed on from generation to generation.”

  “Why, I’ve not seen ye nor yer family in Cape May, I don’t believe.”

  “That’s true. I haven’t visited the old place in years. I have a caretaker who rents the place out short-term for me. We don’t much have any inclination to go up east. I’m sorry, Mr. Tipton, but the answer is no.”

  Tipton looks at the man and smiles pensively. “And I suppose if ye died, the same stipulation would pass to yer heirs?”

  The man gives him a hard look. “It would.”

  “Then I’ll not trouble ye any further. Good day to ye, Mr. Smithfield.” And with that Tipton turns and strolls out past the battered fence gate, leaving Smithfield staring after him with a clenched jaw.

  The same night a fatal fire savages the Smithfield ranch home, incinerating the man, his wife and his youngest daughter.

  It takes Tipton only a few days to track down all of Smithfield’s closest relatives. He simply attends the funeral and steals the guest book. He finds two older sons, three cousins and a nephew. They are scattered across the country, but that doesn’t matter. He has plenty of time to travel. Contesting the will takes longer, of course, and a lot of money, but the stakes are high and he eventually gets what he wants.

  The storm had returned in full force to Ocean Avenue, sending swirls of snow gusts into the already frosty faces of Nathan and Sarah as they fought their way along the sidewalk’s drifts.

  “Which house do you think he’s in?” yelled Sarah over the screaming winds.

  “Let’s try the one next to yours, where we found him yesterday by the elevator. He may not live there but it’s a good place to start,” Nathan yelled back. They turned onto the brick front walk leading to the house over the speakeasy and within a few minutes were standing on the house’s elaborate white wood front porch. Nathan knocked on the door three times. He tried the knob and it turned. The door swung open.

  “Think we should go in?” Nathan asked.

  “Might as well. If he’s here he’s probably deaf as a post and didn’t hear us knocking.”

  “My thoughts as well. Come on then. Let’s get in out of the cold.”

  But the house itself was also cold, although not as much as outside. The chill was palpable, however, and it gave Nathan goose bumps.

  “Mr. Tipton,” he called. “Are you here?”

  The silence was complete. They stepped into the dining room, which was furnished impeccably with a Chippendale table and chairs. Fine oil paintings hung on the walls, which were covered in a rich, light green fabric wallpaper. Dim daylight shone in through the sheer curtains on the floor-to-ceiling windows. They stepped through the dining room through a butler’s pantry and into the kitchen, which had been updated. It was commercial-grade now, with a huge side-by-side refrigerator and two large ovens. On the stove a cookpot was simmering.

  “What do you suppose that is?” Sarah asked, moving closer. She took the lid off the pot and looked inside, It was nearly boiling, whatever it was, and it was red, with thick, ropy tendrils of white running through it. She bent to smell it.

  “Ugh!” she cried. A putrid odor drifted from inside the pot up to her nose. She dropped the lid with a clatter and backed hurriedly away from the stove.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  Sarah made a face. “I don’t know and I don’t want to know.” Suddenly she wanted to throw up. She fought the urge and wrapped her arms more tightly around her body,

  “Come on. Let’s look around some more. The old man must be in here somewhere,” said Nathan.

  They moved from th
e kitchen past the door to the elevator where they had met Tipton a few days before. It was covered in brass plate and ornate wood molding. A red velvet rope was swagged across the elevator door.

  “Guess that’s to keep the riff-raff out,” Nathan said with a laugh as they hurried by into the broad hallway. They swung around the broad oak banister and started up the stairs. They had only gotten half-way up when they heard a familiar voice.

  “Welcome to my house again, young people.”

  At the head of the stairs stood Tipton. And behind, looming over him, was the dark shadow of a beastly horror.

  we haven’t had this much fun in years, have we, dear!

  no, darling. But remember the time we

  took the baby and put its head underwater for five minutes. That was fun, wasn’t it?

  yes, it was. And when her mother came into the bathroom to find out why there were no noises we

  let the creature loose in the middle of the pajama party! Well, those silly, shrieking girls couldn’t get away fast enough. And didn’t, of course. The shadow chased them all down and feasted on them, shaving the very skin from their bones. That was all that was left. The police didn’t know what to make of it. Made national news, that one did. Almost exposed us. They even brought in a medium to see if we were haunted, but we clammed up, tighter than little sister’s business, to coin a phrase.

  yes, darling, but one house almost opened up to the woman they brought in and we had to be harsh, didn’t we?

  yes, we did. Very harsh, indeed . . .

  Chapter 19

  February, 1964

  Special Agent Gus DeMarco of the Federal Bureau of Investigation picked up one of the bones—a woman’s femur, by the shape of it, he reckoned—and shook his head. He was wearing thin white cotton gloves in accordance with crime scene rules. But this was no ordinary crime scene, was it? He shook his head again and looked around the room at the blood-spattered walls and then at the piles of bones littered on the floor from here in the dining room, down the hallway and up the stairs into one of the bedrooms.

  “Ever see anything like this, Gus?”

  DeMarco put the bone back down where he had found it and turned to his partner Wayne “Smiley” O’Hare, also a federal agent.

  No,” said DeMarco. “This is about the worst I’ve ever seen. I can’t figure out who—or what—did this.”

  O’Hare smiled. “Thinkin’ a ghost might’ve done this, boyo?”

  “You got a better theory?” DeMarco snorted.

  O’Hare shrugged. “Guy—or guys—come in, find the girls. A whole sorority in the bedroom, in their nighties and underwear, one holds a gun on ‘em while the others take turns rapin’ ‘em. Then, to destroy the corpses, they use some kinda acid that melts the flesh off in the bathtubs, then they strew the bones all over the place to confuse us. And they’re wearin’ gloves like we are. Real sickos, these guys. In it for the thrills, maybe hopped up on somethin’. Anyway, that’s how I see it. And nobody hears the screamin’ ‘cause the windows are all closed ‘cause it’s cold outside.”

  DeMarco lights a cigarette. “Well, that’s one possible theory, but it’s a long shot. We have yet to pick up a fingerprint.”

  “Like I said, they used gloves. Even wiped their peckers with ‘em.” He pantomimed the action near his crotch for full effect.

  DeMarco frowned. “I still don’t like it. I’m calling in that woman while the scent is fresh.”

  Now it was O’Hare’s turn to frown. “That wacko from Queens? The ghost hunter. Or huntress?”

  “That’s the one. You’ve got to admit she helped in the Hunter case.”

  O’Hare grunted. “That was just blind shithouse luck, if you ask me. The body had to be in somebody’s trunk. She just happened to pick the right one.”

  “From two states away?”

  O’Hare grunted again. “Like I said: Blind luck. But bring her in, if you want. Me, I’m gonna do it the hard way and check for leads in this world and not some other.”

  DeMarco went into the kitchen and made a few phone calls.

  Sylvia Mildred Pinkerton showed up at the house on the shore dressed like a bag lady. She was not too tall and not too short, and carried an umbrella. She wore a hat pulled down low on her head and the overall effect was that she looked like a middle-aged Mary Poppins. But she wore a no-nonsense look and came into the Claymore house like a woman on a mission. She darted her eyes about the hallway as she shook hands with Special Agent DeMarco.

  The bones had been removed from the house, all but one complete skeleton—although the forensics specialist who left them said she could not be sure the bones were all from the same person. She estimated the victim had been a female, about age seventeen. Besides Pinkerton and DeMarco, they were alone in the big old house.

  “Give me the facts as you know them, Agent DeMarco,” said Ms. Pinkerton.

  “All right. The girls, 10 of them, had rented the place out for three days—a long weekend—from the owner, a Mr. Thomas Tipton. We’ve checked him out. Seems like he’s clean. An old man who neighbors say keeps pretty much to himself, but there’s no way he could have pulled this off. Besides, he has an air-tight alibi: he was playing bridge half the night with some other gents at his place a few blocks away.

  “Anyway, these girls were having a girly getaway and somehow the perpetrator—or perpetrators—got in through locked doors, did their work, and got out without leaving a trace. Or—“

  “—or it was something supernatural in origin, in which case you need my help. Very wise of you to call me in, Special Agent DeMarco. Very wise, indeed. I can feel a very strong presence lingering here. Very strong, indeed.

  “Strong enough to kill all ten of the girls, dismember the corpses and strip the skin and other tissue clean off the bones?” DeMarco raised his eyebrows.

  Pinkerton put her index finger in her mouth and held it up, as though she wanted to test the wind in the house. She smiled for the first time since entering. “Yes, Mr. DeMarco, this case is beyond your reach. And may be beyond mine as well. But I will try.”

  The time was nearly midnight. Special Agent DeMarco and Sylvia Pinkerton sat across from each other at the rustic wooden table in the kitchen. A single candle burned in the center of the table. There were no other lights on in the house.

  DeMarco was not a religious man, and neither was he an atheist. He believed that there was a God spark in everyone that could be prayed directly to and called upon in times of need. No need to go to any established church, or have a savior intervene for you, even in prayer. All you had to do to find heaven was to open your eyes each day and experience it. And when you reached the end of your life, your God spark left your earthly body and went into kind of a holding area pending reincarnation into another body. Or maybe not. He hadn’t quite worked that part out for himself yet. He put his mental meanderings aside and paid attention to what Ms. Pinkerton was saying. She was not speaking to him, but to the old house itself. Her tone was friendly, even reverential.

  “I call upon you today to tell us your story, if you will. We are most anxious to hear it, and I can tell you are anxious to unburden yourself of it. Please share it with us, Sister.”

  Silence. Deep and brooding, like an in-drawn breath. DeMarco could feel the very hairs on his arms stand up and prickle, as though he had St. Elmo’s fire dancing up and down them.

  “You are not alone, Sister. I can feel the Others holding you back. No harm will come to you, I promise. Please tell us what we need to know. Play the story on the walls of this very kitchen and you will feel so much better.”

  And so She did, right down to the last detail. And then, the Others made the shadow take the policeman and the medium, too, leaving only a few bloody stains on the chairs to indicate they had ever been there.

  Chapter 20

  Sarah floated lightly on a cumulonimbus cloud high above New Orleans, Louisiana.

  This must be a dream-state, she thought muzzily. Then, she felt herse
lf slipping slowly through the filmy ribbons of thick vapor and, for what seemed like hours, she drifted down toward the bright lights of the city below. She wasn’t sure how she knew where she was headed. She just knew. With a very soft touch, like stepping off an escalator, she landed on a sidewalk teeming with people and noise. All around her were people, both coffee-colored and white, laughing and singing. On the street a parade with brightly colored floats was rolling by. Just to her right a young woman—possibly a college coed—suddenly drew up her sweatshirt, exposing full, well-rounded breasts to a trio of men draped over a white wrought iron balcony. They exploded in whistles and applause and rained down showers of sparkling beads on her. She quickly dropped her sweatshirt back down and began draping the necklaces over her head. She already wore dozens of them.

  Sarah made her way up the street, stepping around a man lying apparently passed out against a building, and stopped.

  “Excuse me,” she said to a woman passing by in a tight tee shirt and Levis. The woman turned. “Do you know what time it is and where I am?”

  The woman looked at Sarah curiously. She glanced at her diamond-encrusted Rolex. “It’s 12:03 a.m. and you’re in the French Quarter. That enough information for you?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” Sarah moved off down the street. She took off the down coat she had been wearing when they confronted Tipton and slung it over her shoulder. The weather was much milder here in the Crescent City, about sixty-two degrees and overcast. She heard Dixieland music coming from a bar announcing that it served something called Huge Ass beer. She decided to go in.

  Inside it was dim and smoky. The five-piece band—piano, upright bass, drums trombone and clarinet—were on her left on a small stage beside a long bar with a mirror and rows of liquor bottles reflected in the light pouring down from incandescent can lights positioned over the backbar. To her right the room was half empty but this did not discourage the band, which belted out The Sheik of Araby at a frenetic pace. She crossed over to the nearest table, pulled out a chair and sat down. She began tapping her foot to the music. Strangely, the illusion of being half a continent away from New Jersey didn’t bother Sarah. In fact, she was rather enjoying it.