Trace of Evil

by Alice Blanchard

  “I picked out her casket today,” he cried, the sound of his pain reverberating. “I made funeral arrangements for my dead wife and baby. Where’s the justice? How am I supposed to deal with this? Nobody told me I’d feel this way.”

  “You need to get your head on straight,” she said firmly, afraid for him.

  He looked at her and broke down crying. He plopped down on the edge of the bed and cupped his wet face in his hands, shoulders shaking in agony. He took a deep breath and said, “She wanted to take the train to New York … she wanted to go check out the art galleries or the theater, but I never had time. Now I can’t stop thinking about all the things I should’ve done. I can’t switch off my mind,” he said, tears clinging to his eyelashes. “I feel so fucking alone.”

  “You aren’t alone.” Her nerves were raw. Natalie was afraid to leave him here with his weapons and paranoia. She tamped down her anxiety and said, “Is there anybody I can call? A family member or a friend?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can’t leave you alone like this. Who can I call?”

  A small silence passed between them.

  “My minister.”

  She took out her phone and called Reverend Grimsby, whom she’d met at one of the Buckners’ parties. The reverend promised to head over to the motel right away, and Natalie waited with Brandon until he arrived. An exhausted silence settled between them. Her stomach felt queasy. Moonlight glowed through the cabin windows.

  Brandon looked at his hands. “Thanks, Natalie.”

  “Stay out of trouble. Do what your attorney says, okay?”

  He glanced up. “I used to think she was as good as gold.”

  Natalie nodded.

  “Whenever I got suspicious, Daisy was always proving me wrong. Like for instance, just a few weeks ago, she was moody and quiet all afternoon … and then out of the blue, she tells me we’re out of milk and scoops up her car keys and takes off. But I noticed there was milk in the fridge. So I followed her across town, wondering what she was up to, you know? She drove to that bakery across town … Sweetie’s. You know the one? I parked down the street and observed her. She came out of Sweetie’s with a pink bakery box in her hands. I thought—this is odd. I had no idea what was going on. Long story short, she drove over to the Hadleys’ old farm, pulled into the driveway, and Bunny came out of the barn, and Daisy gave her the box. It was cupcakes. Bunny ate one while I watched them talking for a while. And I thought, my God, Daisy’s as good as gold.”

  Natalie frowned. “But why would she lie to you about that?”

  “I have no idea.” He shook his head. “I was just relieved she wasn’t cheating on me. What a clueless jerk I was, huh?”

  36

  Natalie hadn’t been out this way in quite some time. The Hadleys’ abandoned farmstead was located two miles past the Citgo station on Little Falls Road, just beyond the covered bridge. She pulled into the rutted driveway and parked next to the dilapidated barn. Ever since Caleb Hadley died of a heart attack twenty-five years ago, the farm had fallen into disrepair. After the widow moved in with her butcher son across town, she insisted on keeping the porch lights burning all night long, just as her husband had done for forty years. Her son grudgingly obliged, paying each month’s electric bill, while the widow claimed it kept the coyotes away. When she passed away eight years later, the lights were finally turned off for good.

  Now Natalie sat in her car, staring at the barn. The weather changed swiftly in the spring. Another rainstorm was kicking up, and scattered raindrops shimmered through the air. The barn’s great doors were padlocked shut, thick chains fused together with crusted orange rust. Once upon a time, a herd of cattle was housed inside but after Caleb died the widow sold them off. Somewhere out back, behind the weathered barn, was the spot where Willow had bled to death in the grass twenty years ago.

  According to the prosecution, Justin Fowler had lured Willow to the abandoned farm with the intention of killing her. His footprints were found at the scene, along with tire marks from his car. Police also found items of bloody clothing tossed in a dumpster two blocks away from Justin’s house. Willow’s blood was found on the pants and T-shirt that were positively identified as belonging to Justin. The murder weapon was never found—a steak knife, according to experts.

  Since his arrest, Justin maintained his innocence despite the mountain of evidence against him, but the jury wasn’t buying it. He had no alibi for the time of death, and even more damning, Grace had verified at the trial that Willow had broken up with him on the day of the murder. Justin Fowler was sentenced to life in prison.

  Now Natalie grabbed her flashlight from the glove compartment and got out of the car. A stinging rain hit her in the face and streaked down her cheeks. The knee-high grass was wet. Soon her pant legs were soaked. The rain made pitter-patter sounds against her unprotected head, and the accompanying lightning strikes brought the landscape eerily to life, before plunging everything into murky darkness again.

  During the next intense lightning flash, she saw the old pentagram carved into the side of the barn—six feet across, an inverted five-pointed star inside a circle. A symbol of black magic. It had been there for as long as she could remember.

  Surrounding the barn was a muddy yard with a grain bin and a rusty wheelbarrow. The hay shed, where cattle had once found shelter from the rain, formed a bovine face in the gloom. Natalie’s flesh crawled as she trudged around the side of the building, which was propped up with long boards. The peeling paint revealed the weathered wood underneath, and she shuddered to think that the whole structure could come crashing down any second now.

  The relentless downpour flattened the wild grass as Natalie slogged past a broken-down tractor, dismantled for parts. Beyond the foggy overgrown fields were the ever-encroaching woods.

  She came to the back door of the barn and shone her flashlight inside. The milking room was divided into dozens of stanchions and rotting mangers where the cows used to feed. The metal stalls had gone to rust. The walls were covered in graffiti and the cement manure gutters were full of trash—fast-food containers, liquor bottles, condoms, rolling papers, just the usual party detritus.

  She walked into the main part of the barn and stood for a moment inhaling the pungent aroma of ancient hay bales and silage. She shone her light toward the thirty-foot ceiling. It was as quiet as feathers in here. The floor bowed dangerously. The rain was coming down hard, water seeping from the leaky ceiling and hitting stagnant puddles on the floor, every drop echoing. Drip, drip, drip.

  The place was full of a surreal trapped energy. She searched the clammy walls for her sister’s old pentagram—the one Natalie had seen years ago. Layers of curses, jealousies, and insults obscured the older graffiti. Generations of teenagers had made a pilgrimage to this barn to act out their aggressions and obsessions. Sext Madison for a good time. Caden is a skeevy fuckbud.

  She stood motionless with her chin raised.

  Life will fling everything it can at you, kiddo. Good or bad. You have to deal with it. You have to accept your losses.

  Truth was elusive. Love was fickle.

  All her questions had questions.

  The mystery circled in on itself, like a snake devouring its own tail.

  Natalie aimed her light against the weathered wall, then swung the beam slowly sideways—there. There it was. Prickles rose up on her body. She took a few steps forward and studied the old pentagram, half-hidden beneath decades of spray paint. Twenty-one years ago, Grace and her three best friends had added their names inside the points of the pentagram—Grace, Daisy, Lindsey, Bunny. Now Natalie studied the orderly penmanship, the uniform e’s and y’s.

  The skin of her temples pulsed with emotion as she traced the five-pointed star. She hadn’t seen it in years. How naïve we all were back then, she thought.

  Behind the barn was an overgrown field. It took Natalie a few minutes to locate the wooden stake that marked the site where her sister had died. There was
a pile of ancient offerings nearby—a soggy heap of withered bouquets, prayer cards, melted candles, and faded handmade signs. Many séances had taken place here. The local ghost hunters deemed it a portal into the spirit world.

  The site had an otherworldly feel, both solemn and surreal. Willow had been such a sweet, funny, and marvelously flawed human being—their mother’s favorite. Whereas Natalie’s father had showered all three girls with love and guidance, Deborah struggled to love them equally. She’d never planned on having more than one, and it was obvious she loved Willow the best. Willow knew how to make her happy, helping out with the chores and spending time with Deborah, gossiping and giggling while they made dinner together. Underlings Grace and Natalie couldn’t wait to get away from Deborah’s grasp and go play instead.

  Willow had a wild side, to be sure, but around their mother, her demeanor became reserved and polite. She clasped her hands in her lap and smiled warmly as she listened to Deborah’s stories and asked for motherly advice. Willow used to wear the most colorful outfits—beaded jackets, pleated skirts, Nordic sweaters, Adidas track pants, Mary Janes, rhinestone earrings—that were outdated by the time Grace and Natalie inherited them. For a while, Willow’s palette had been monochromatic—black on black, with bloodred lips. She’d dabbled in witchcraft for a short time, but Deborah hated it. She’d done everything in her power to stop Willow from going down that road, and it worked. Willow’s flirtation with witchcraft hadn’t lasted a hair’s breadth of time, and soon she was back to her colorful outfits and carefree ways.

  Natalie had always assumed that Grace joined a coven to spite their mother. One day, during her sophomore year in high school, she changed her tidy purple bedroom into a Goth nightmare, painting the roller shades black and hanging up posters of The Craft, The Crow, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Grace caught hell that day. She was grounded for a week. No allowance for a month. She and Deborah screamed at each other in shrill, misunderstood voices, then withdrew to separate corners of the house and slammed the doors. In instances like this, Joey advised Natalie to give them a wide berth, and eventually all would be forgiven. But the rift between them never completely healed.

  Deborah Lockhart had once been formidable, a bastion of strength, a domestic warrior with boundless energy. Hurtling herself from one errand to the next—cooking, cleaning, marching the girls through their homework, doing the laundry, shopping for food, her grocery cart rattling noisily up and down the aisles. It was in Deborah’s nature to hurry things along—setting the table, clattering plates, banging cupboard doors. She would bump her elbows on the doorframes while rushing from room to room. She would whisk the teakettle off the back burner before it’d had a chance to whistle. She scooped the silverware out of its designated drawer and dropped it on the table, as if she were at war with the world for failing to provide her with the life she really wanted—not this domestic hellscape. But then, after Willow died, Deborah’s grief calcified in her bones and she became as brittle as a twig. Natalie and Grace had to move delicately around her after that, understanding that too much activity or emotional input could snap her in half. Deborah’s former strength was a mirage. Toward the end of her life, she became as faded as the pages of an old phone book.

  Thunder rumbled. A thick mist boiled across the fields like something out of a 1950s sci-fi flick, bleak and sodden. Natalie thought she saw something in the miasma. What was that? She headed across the overgrown field into the mist. Cattle used to graze here in the back pasture, but now everything was lush, green, tangled, and dense. Nature was reclaiming the land.

  In the next flash of lightning, she noticed something strange on the barbed wire fence that ran around the periphery of the pasture. She shined her light on one of the old fence posts—a dead crow tangled up in twine and fishing line, tortuously bound to the wooden post. A crow. Natalie felt as lifeless as a puppet.

  Her flashlight sputtered for a moment, and she shook it until it blinked on again, illuminating the ryegrass at her feet. She raised the beam and swung it down along the fence line. Nine dead crows in a row, bound to nine fence posts. Everything ground to an ugly halt. What had once been beautiful was dead. The birds had been here for quite a while. Nothing but feathers, beaks, and skulls.

  37

  Twenty minutes later, Luke was leaning against one of the department cars, a two-door hardtop, talking on his phone. Natalie watched him briefly as if he were a stranger—such a brooding, handsome guy in a gray suit. He hung up and smiled, then walked up to her like a waiter in a posh hotel and handed her a coffee.

  “Hey, thanks.” She took a sip and secured the lid.

  “You’re welcome.” They had their own shorthand. “Show me.”

  They moved across the field and stood in the wet weeds, studying the nine dead birds twisted up in twine and fishing line—a truly gruesome sight. Each crow had been bound tightly to its post—their heads pointing skyward, beaks open, fan-shaped tails pointing downward, iridescent black wings spread. It reminded Natalie of a crucifixion scene, played out in miniature, all the way down the fence line. These birds had been deliberately killed and posed in a shocking display for anyone to stumble across and wonder. There were no easy answers here. Only infinite shades of madness.

  Now Natalie had to push through a membrane of surprise and shock in order to get to the other side, where she could assess the scene professionally. She stood studying the raw details, little beads of sweat trickling down her neck. Each of these poor, intelligent creatures had died an agonizing death—so tangled up in synthetic fishing line, zip ties, and heavy-duty twine that any attempts to free themselves would’ve made the situation worse. It was chilling.

  Crows were highly intelligent animals. They belonged to the Corvidae family of birds that included ravens and magpies. Some biologists referred to them as “feathered primates” because they were able to perform difficult tasks and make strategic decisions. They had remarkable memories.

  Natalie examined one of the bird carcasses with latex-gloved fingers—the glossy blue-black plumage, the reptilian eyes ringed with violet, the strong legs, and shiny black beak. A mature male crow.

  “How did he catch them?” Luke asked. “Did he shoot them?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m not finding any buckshot wounds. Probably snares or spring traps. That way, he could keep them alive for a while before deciding what to do with them.”

  Luke shuddered. “A disturbing thought.”

  “They’ve been dead for quite a while,” she went on. “And there are markings on these birds that don’t match their current bindings, which indicates he killed them somewhere else, then transported them here and staged the carcasses.”

  “Which would explain why nobody else reported them until now.”

  Natalie nodded. “He killed them someplace private, and then brought them here recently, posing them in a intentional pattern. He enjoys the theatricality of it.”

  “There’s a method to this sick fuck’s madness,” Luke muttered.

  Natalie could feel her heart hammering in her chest. She decided to throw it out there. “It’s obvious, right? Nine dead birds for the Missing Nine.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and nodded. “Maybe he’s sick of not reading about himself in the papers.”

  “So he’s boasting? Flaunting his achievement?”

  “It’s been out of the news for a couple of years now.”

  “Well, he’s got our attention now.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  She nodded. “This is definitely the work of a sociopath. Too elaborate for a teenager, I think.”

  “I agree.”

  “An adult sociopathic loner. This was methodically planned, which makes him an organized offender. Sadistic. Premeditated.” Her flashlight sputtered off again, and the darkness was unsettling. She shook it, and it blinked on, illuminating the dead crow in front of her, its beak frozen in midshriek. She lowered the light and shuddered.

  “Aren’t crow
s supposed to symbolize death?” Luke asked.

  “Death, catastrophe.”

  “So we can assume he’s into witchcraft?”

  Natalie shook her head. “Any true Wiccan would never sacrifice animals like this. They have a reverence for nature.”

  “Maybe he’s not a true Wiccan? Or maybe he’s a Satanist?”

  “Every time we look into rumors of satanic cults, we come up empty.”

  “Right. Because nobody’s going to admit to being a Satanist.”

  “Not to the police anyway.”

  Rumors of devil worship had been floating around for years. Just last May, there was talk of a satanic cult sacrificing people’s pets due to a three-month spate of animal disappearances. Missing cat and dog posters had popped up all over town. But a representative from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a statement clarifying that the local coyote population was responsible for killing people’s pets. He held a news conference and showed reporters definitive proof—a bag of coyote scat.

  “We can’t blame this one on coyotes,” Natalie mumbled.

  Luke shook his head. “No, we can’t.”

  “It feels like a warning. Like a threat to the entire town.”

  “Maybe he’s about to strike again?”

  The thought was too alarming to contemplate. She caught an erratic movement out of the corner of her eye, a convulsion of particles. Thwick, thwick, thwick. Bats traveling through the foggy air. More than a dozen police officers had been called to the scene, and now they were scouring the Hadley property, including the abandoned house and barn.

  “Hold on a second,” Natalie said, beaming her flashlight directly into the bird’s mouth. “I need some tweezers.” She rummaged around in her evidence kit, then leaned over the crow and used the tweezers to pull out a tiny scroll of paper that had been lodged in the bird’s throat. She carefully unfurled the scroll, while Luke held the flashlight steady for her.