[Criminally Insane 01.0] Bad Karma

by Douglas Clegg

  The girl gingerly stepped down into the ankle-deep water, shivering. Her mother followed; the girl helped guide her over the edge of the boat. The mother almost fell, but balanced herself against the girl.

  The boy at Agnes’ side said nothing, but when she walked, he stayed with her.

  Agnes grabbed two of the flares. She popped one of them, and a fizzing red flame struck at its tip. She handed this to the girl. “Use this like a candle,” she said. “If you try anything, I will kill your brother right in front of you. If you run off any path with your mother handcuffed to you, keep in mind, there are pits and chasms throughout these caves. You and your mother will both die if you don’t follow me exactly. Do you understand?”

  The little girl nodded slowly, tears in her eyes.

  Agnes lit her flare, also, and held it in the hand that was cuffed to the boy. She said to him, “You will do exactly what I say, won’t you?”

  The boy looked up at her, staring blankly. He nodded.

  “You saw what happened to your babysitter?”

  Again, Mark nodded. He was not even shivering. It was as if he had adapted to this situation. As if some mechanism within his unconscious mind had kicked in, shunting fear aside for the time being. As if survival at any cost were enough to keep him functioning.

  “She was very bad. She was vain. That means she thought the beauty of her face was more important than the gods. But I took that face from her. I bit it with my teeth.” Agnes leaned closer to Mark’s face. “I tasted her face. It was where she lived. Do you know where you live?”

  Mark said nothing, but he didn’t take his eyes off her.

  “You live in your heart, little boy. And that’s where I’ll go if I need to find you.” She stood up again. The girl’s face was red in the glow from the flare. “Be careful,” Agnes said, patiently. “Keep it away from your face. You might burn yourself.”

  She directed her captives to the cave’s entrance.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  The Bayrunner Westcoaster was docked at the short pier. Trey Campbell had to climb over a low chicken wire fence to get to it; the rental boat dock was closed after dark, unless one had a key. He squatted down beside it, stepping, crab-like, into its stern. He slid across to one of the seats. He checked the motor for gas—there was still plenty. It took him several minutes to get it started, and when he did, he stayed down low in the boat, in case one of the local cops was still out, watching the docks. He loosed the boat from its mooring.

  He drove the boat around the docks, going slowly so as not to bump any of the other resting boats. He steered it out into the bay, watching the shore to see if anyone followed him. The worst thing now would be if Oscar and his team of police followed him. Agnes would surely murder his family in that event. Only Trey knew that he held the key to stopping her.

  The sea was calm.

  Once he was out far enough from the town of Avalon, with its flickering lights, he noticed an incipient light across the sea, a greenish glow, as the waves crashed against rock and shoreline. He knew to keep the boat a good distance from the shore, because although part of the island was smooth with sand, there were outlaw rocks at sandbars just out in the bay, creating a fake reef. When the boat rounded the side of the island, to where Capilla Blanca rose up, he turned the motor off.

  It was a silent night.

  The night mist moved silently.

  Trey took the oars beneath the slats of the boat, and began slowly rowing towards the cavern’s mouth.

  Agnes Hatcher’s words echoed in his mind:

  My strategy.

  Then he thought: She thinks I’m Jack the Ripper. She believes we have to make things right together. That’s what she’s after. Not Mark or Terry or Carly. They’re just in the way.

  She has no strategy. It’s more haphazard than planned. Even her escape, it was pure dumb luck. It was Donna Howe being foolish and Rob Fallon being his ever-lovin’ sociopathic self. It wasn’t fate. These were random events, which she has made to look like part of a pattern. I was caught up in it because I was afraid. I wasn’t seeing it for what it was: the machine called the Gorgon just going where the wind took her, the easiest roads, the dumb luck of life. Her finding my vacation phone and address was coincidental to attacking Donna Howe. If Jim Anderson hadn’t passed that piece of paper to Donna, Agnes would probably be at his residence in Redlands. Not here. It’s all chance, and she’s relying on it while the cops are looking for logic and pattern.

  But her logic is nightmares.

  The answer to stopping her is within her own pathology.

  Becoming a nightmare.

  Becoming what she wants.

  An idea which seemed absurd and brilliant at the same time suddenly occurred to him, something he’d never really considered. Something about telling Mark his ‘As If’ philosophy.

  Trey Campbell was going to behave as if Agnes Hatcher’s pathology was real.

  He was going to become, for her, Jack The Ripper.

  He was going to give her what she wanted.

  He only hoped he wasn’t too late for his family.

  Rowing as fast as his heart and muscles would bear, he saw what he thought was the flash of a red flare just up at the shore, in the mouth of the cavern.

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  The flare lit the cave a brilliant red, outlining its recesses and sharply jutting rocks. Teresa walked carefully along the wet pebbles at the cave bottom. As she was about to step on what seemed a smoother surface, the psycho woman shouted at her, “Not that way!” Then, more calmly, “To the left, dear. See how it winds upwards. If you go straight ahead, we’ll wind up in a lagoon. Look, do you see the spiral of the path? It represents the journey home. Spiraling, spiraling.”

  Teresa looked up at her mother’s face. It was covered, but she could tell by the way her mother was walking that she wanted Teresa to obey the orders. Not seeing her mother’s face was kind of scary for her; the handcuffs that bound them together hurt her wrists, too. But she knew her father would come, with the police, soon. She knew it would work out okay, just like it did on television shows like Rescue 911. Teresa had an opposing thought in her head, too. She thought that what happened to Jenny might happen to her. She tried not to let that thought control her.

  Teresa went to the left. She kept the flare as far out in front of her as possible. It was warm at its base. Too warm, as far as she was concerned. She didn’t like the way the fire sputtered at its tip, either. It wasn’t like a Fourth of July sparkler. It felt too warm, like it was going to eventually get so hot that she’d have to drop it. She didn’t want to be in the dark with the psycho woman.

  She glanced back at Mark, cuffed to the woman.

  Mark looked like he was somewhere else. His feet moved, and he stepped over rocks. But he didn’t seem to be in his eyes like normal.

  Teresa stepped up onto a rough, narrow path that quickly rose up from the wet pebbles. Before her, she saw the path rise and twist, like a staircase in a lighthouse. She hoped there were no wild animals living in it.

  She didn’t want to turn around and see the woman behind her. She didn’t want to ever have to look at that face again.

  She hoped everything would turn out all right.

  Teresa tugged at the handcuff to keep her mother away from the edge of the path.

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Agnes gave her own flare to the boy.

  She whispered, “Hold onto this. It’ll help us see. You can chase away all the shadows with it.” She showed him how to hold it. He was a beautiful boy. Just like his father. She wanted to hug him tight, because he had a spark of her lover in him. But she knew this wasn’t the time.

  Then, as she followed the girl and her mother up the winding path, she opened the police knapsack at her side. Remembering when she first spoke with Jack in this new incarnation, the walks through the garden, the chess games, the way she looked at him and knew…

  Agnes Hatcher left a trail for him. Each of th
e pieces was sacred, and he would follow them to their nest.

  He would follow them, and remember.

  The lightning flashed in her brain, and she saw:

  The oven was stuffed with rags. The oil jug, for the lamps upstairs, rested in the corner. The coppers had left after searching the place. They had run back to the dead woman in the street. The one with her body sliced open. The one whose blood tasted like warm metal.

  The locket was in her hands, open.

  The lock of hair.

  The picture.

  She looked at the oil lamp. She could hear the whistles outside, and the endless rain. Would it never stop? She went to the casement window, looking through the grate. The street was enshrouded with fog. The rain was not as heavy as it sounded against the room. It sounded like drums beating; but it was only spitting rain outside.

  She took the locket in her fist and crushed it, but it would not break. It only seemed to get warmer with her touch.

  The time was drawing near. She knew that she must act fast, or she would never have the chance. How could he betray her?

  A memory of being told a story as a little girl: of a witch pushed into a great oven and baked alive by merry children.

  Agnes stepped over to the oil lamp, lifting it up. Its glow was warm. Warmth enveloped her, suddenly. The locket in her hand was like fire. The lamp’s glow, so comforting.

  In the corner, the great oven.

  Lightning thrust its spear through her.

  She was in the motel in Las Cruces. He was peeling away the layers of her face. He was showing her that she wore a mask.

  “Do you see who you are?” he asked. “It takes several lifetimes for ordinary people to understand this. But I’m giving you a gift of sight. You see? Remember the past? Your life was different then, but it was your true self.”

  Red lightning cut across her vision like blood blinding her from her cut forehead.

  She was in the cave, and the boy handcuffed to her stared up at her with the eyes of one who knows.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Trey was up to his shoulders in the water, drawing his boat toward the shore. He had to stop the motor several yards from the ragged beach because the waves were getting slightly choppy. He was not a good enough seaman to ensure that he wouldn’t crash the rented boat on the rocks. He gradually found sure footing, and was able to bring the boat up to the narrow strip of beach, just beyond the rocks. He secured it as best he could, and then went over to the police transport boat. He found Erskine’s body, and a pool of blood in an aura around his neck and shoulders.

  Without hesitation, he reached into the dead man’s shoulder holster and withdrew a gun. It was a standard issue Smith & Wesson. From Trey’s limited knowledge of cops, he assumed that the dead officer had rarely if ever used the gun. But it would be fully loaded.

  Trey held it in his right hand. The idea of having to shoot it bothered him. Conflicting images rose in his mind:

  Shooting the old man who had been trying to break in to his house.

  Agnes Hatcher, bent over the psychiatrist at Darden, bits of his scalp between her teeth.

  He checked around the boat, and found a small flashlight. He flicked it on. The police radio was destroyed. His first impulse was to take this boat, go get the police, and come back. But, what if there was no time? What if there were only minutes left to help his children?

  I can’t risk it. I can’t sacrifice them to that madwoman.

  From within the cavern, he saw a spray of red light. It moved, casting enormous shadows across the hanging rocks.

  He waded through the tidal pool that would, within the next several minutes, be flooded.

  When he stepped over the smaller rocks, and across what seemed a lagoon within the cavern, he waved the flashlight beam about the cave.

  Then, he saw something which made him catch his breath.

  He shined the light on the object that lay upon the slick path that led up from the water.

  It was a human heart.

  Beside it, one of Carly’s sandals.

  Trey Campbell felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of his head, and for a moment he thought he was falling.

  Instead, he was leaning across a woman’s body. Blood trickled from the edge of her neck. He looked up, and Agnes Hatcher was there—she looked different, but he knew her through the eyes. “The windows of the soul,” she said.

  He reached for her, and grasping her, brought her to him. Kissing her.

  Trey opened his eyes. He was standing on the path that led to the Monk’s Chamber. He felt dislocated, as if he’d briefly shared a vision with the Gorgon. She’s inside me now. I will find you, Agnes. I will keep you from hurting them.

  As he hiked the path that spiraled upwards, he came across other such finds. What might’ve been an eye, although it was all bloody. Several yards ahead on the path, a ragged patch of human skin, almost like sheer fabric. Don’t let this be my children. Don’t let this be Carly. Please, be safe. Please, Agnes, don’t hurt them.

  He wondered if he was too late. He moved as quickly as he could across the slick rock.

  He shined his flashlight up the trail.

  He knew where it led.

  His father had taken him there many times when he’d been a boy.

  The Monk’s Chamber. The Monk’s Well.

  Capilla Blanca.

  Whitechapel.

  Trey shouted, “Agnes!”

  The name echoed through the caverns, which to Trey now seemed like the spiraling chambers of a nautilus, all leading to the central place of destiny.

  Chapter Seventy

  The room was circular, with natural stone benches within its perimeter. A chasm was at its center, almost perfectly round, like a well without walls. However, there were several embedded rocks around its edges. The walls of the room were etched and shaded with pictures of Jesus and Mary. This made Teresa feel a little less scared. Graffiti, too, was sprayed and slashed across the white walls. Teresa began saying her prayers silently. She gripped her mother’s hand.

  Her mother gripped back, giving her a squeeze.

  It felt like a signal from her mother that they would be safe.

  Someone was yelling from below, almost like it was coming from the well that sat in the center of the room.

  “Do you hear him?” Agnes said, turning to the children. The flares lit the room with a pink glow, and the psycho woman seemed to be bathed in blood on her face. She had eyes like fire.

  The scream again, “Agnes!”

  Teresa recognized the voice. Daddy. She glanced at Mark, but he still stared straight ahead, through her.

  Agnes Hatcher grinned with blood-stained teeth. “It’s the intersection,” she said. “It’s the sacrifice time.”

  She grabbed Mark and brought him close to her bosom.

  She raised the fishing knife over his forehead.

  Close to his eyes. “Life for life,” she whispered.

  Teresa screamed, “No!”

  Her mother pulled Teresa behind her swiftly, and even with her hands confined, leapt forward.

  Carly could only see blackness through the face cover. She had said her prayers, and held onto her daughter’s wrist, even while the handcuffs had sawed against her own wrists. She had carefully followed her daughter up the trail, hoping that the police would come soon. Hoping that something would rescue them. Or something would help, some natural or supernatural agency. But no help had come.

  When she heard Trey’s voice, she thought he was near. But then, with Teresa’s crying out, she knew that something was happening. Something bad.

  Then, she heard a bleating sound from Mark.

  Carly lunged in the direction of Agnes Hatcher’s voice, keeping Teresa behind her. She had to make sure that nothing happened to her children.

  What she felt when she lunged was a cold blade digging deep into her rib cage.

  Agnes drew the knife out, and began cursing her, but Carly barely heard anything, and fel
t as though she might be blacking out.

  Teresa lay beside her mother. With her free hand, she tore off the face cover. She looked at her mother’s eyes. They were closed.

  Don’t be dead, Mommy. Please, don’t be dead.

  Ignoring the psycho woman who knelt over her with the knife, Teresa used her hands and teeth to tear off the rag tied around her mother’s mouth. “She has to breathe! You’re killing her!” Teresa said, turning to look at the psycho woman.

  Agnes Hatcher held onto Mark. She shivered when she saw the anger in the girl’s eyes. “Dying is good,” Agnes said, almost sweetly. “Hurting is good. It shows who you are on the inside.”

  Suddenly, Mark began crying. He tugged at the handcuff, but was held fast in Agnes' arms. She kissed the top of his head. “Don’t worry, little one. I’ll show you where your mother lived. Not in her heart. Not like you. She lived in the lower part of her body. She lived where she created you.”

  Agnes traced the knife down Carly’s body, down her stomach.

  She raised the knife slightly.

  “She lived where all whores live,” Agnes said.

  At that second, the sound of a gunshot rang through the caves.

  Bats by the hundreds swept downwards upon them. Teresa started screaming. She kept her face low, near her mother’s. The bats brushed across her hair, tangling it.

  The monk’s chamber became black with bats as they dived down among the children. Agnes flailed the knife in the air, as the bats slapped against her.

  The knife dropped from her hand, to the hard-packed dirt.

  When the bats had cleared, Agnes lay in a heap across Carly’s body.

  The shadow of a man stood at the entrance to the circular room.