Trace of Evil

by Alice Blanchard

  Natalie brushed past the chalky wall, turned the corner, and pushed through a door. Inside the laundry room was a bucket and mop on the floor, next to a container of bleach. There were greasy tools on top of the washing machine—an old wrench, a rusty screwdriver, a dark-stained hammer.

  She moved into the living room, where pale blocks of color dotted the walls where family pictures used to hang. It was chilly in here. The carpet’s padding was rotten beneath the old weave. A dusty red paper lantern dangled from the center of the ceiling, and the warped wooden shelves held an accumulation of mementos from long-ago family trips to the seashore.

  Natalie could hear movement upstairs. The floorboards creaked, and she stood very still, fighting an exquisite urge to flee. Let someone else handle it. Let somebody else be a hero. Like Joey used to say, Things start out easy, but they always get hard.

  But Natalie knew—it was time to push through the hardness.

  The place was so void of life, she felt like a ghost.

  The clang of old pipes. The clicking of the radiators.

  A china cabinet. A credenza. A musty old sofa. Quaint, prissy choices.

  The house was so old, it had baked for more than a hundred summers; it had frozen for a hundred winters; now it smelled of moldering husks and dead insects.

  A grandmotherly house. Outdated and creepy as hell.

  A pile of papers. She leafed through them. The handwriting was illegible. It looked like some sort of bizarre, rambling confession. On every page were hundreds of tiny, inscrutable words, along with drawings of birds, drawings of maps, hieroglyphics. Signs of hypergraphia.

  A loud burst of music came from upstairs, and Natalie shuddered. Everything slowed way down. Her feet became lead weights. Bass, drums, guitars, synthesizer. Edgy, mesmerizing music.

  The floorboards cracked overhead, and Natalie glanced up, her stomach contracting powerfully. A lone fly buzzed around her ears, and she brushed it away, then readjusted her grip on her gun. Her father once said, You have to look underneath. Sometimes worms crawl out. She sucked in her gut and dug deeper. She immersed herself in her father’s bravery and kept going.

  The parlor was the worst. Melting candlewax. Ceramic figurines flaked with dust. Elderberry-wine-stained doilies. Graffiti on the walls—satanic horns, 666, pentagrams. A fussiness to the décor. A fastidiousness combined with psychosis.

  An old sewing machine clutched an accordion of blue fabric, and the windowsills displayed a variety of dead insects. And then—the birds. Dead crows crudely preserved. Whoever the taxidermist was, he’d arranged the beady-eyed creatures into bizarre poses—crucifixions, mummifications, birds stuck with pins, wrapped in barbed wire, soaking in huge vats of liquid.

  Rain hammered the roof and bled down the windowpanes.

  Inside the bathroom, just off the front hall—an explosion of peach tiles. A square, utilitarian room. Natalie reached for the floral shower curtain and swept it aside.

  A bathtub ringed with rust or worse. A foul smell. Quicklime. The stench of acid attacking flesh. The coppery smell of blood.

  Now the footsteps thumped across the ceiling, and she looked up. Wooden drawers opened and closed. More footsteps. And then …

  Upstairs, a door creaked like the opening of a tomb.

  60

  Natalie waited at the bottom of the stairs and listened. Samuel hurried down the hallway. He opened a door. She could hear two voices now—one male, one female. The female was pleading. Samuel was gruff. A short discussion.

  Then silence.

  A wave of despair crashed over Natalie. The corners of everything were beginning to blur. She waited until Samuel had gone back to his room at the end of the hall and closed the door.

  The wooden stairs were narrow and slippery. The treads were worn to a dangerous smoothness. She was desperate not to make a sound. Every creak, every squeak, gave her pause.

  She finally made it to the top and faltered on the landing. There were four closed doors to chose from. Samuel’s room was down at the other end of the hall, loud music pounding behind the door.

  Natalie had three choices left. She reached for the nearest one. The metal knob had a ding in it. She swung the door open and stepped inside, aiming her gun at the shadows.

  The lights were off. The blinds were drawn. She let her eyes adjust to the darkness. A narrow bed. A recliner chair. Faded tulips on the wallpaper. A chipped rocking horse. Everything thick with dust.

  Wrong room. She gently closed the door behind her and faced the room across the hall. Her heart had parked itself in her throat. She opened the door and stepped inside.

  The lights were on. Bed, bureau, desk. A lamp in one corner cast a pale glow. Natalie shook her head, disgusted by the fetid, cloying odor of the room.

  Behind the bed, something stirred on the floor. She moved cautiously into the room. The poor woman was collared to the wall, her head wrapped entirely in duct tape. Mummified, except for a slit for her eyes and a slit for her mouth. She struggled to sit up. She wore a lavender track suit with white geometric patterns. Her bare feet had superficial cuts and sores on them. The wounds didn’t penetrate deeply. The bleeding had slowed, and the blood loss was not enough to cause shock.

  “I’m here to help,” Natalie whispered. “You’re going to be okay.”

  The victim’s bloodstained hands were splayed across the floor. Her swollen fingers looked like jointed sausages. The leather collar around her neck had left blisters on her skin. There were spots of dried blood on her tracksuit.

  The room was chilly. Natalie’s breath steamed ahead of her.

  Now the lights flickered. The music was so loud, the floorboards were vibrating to the bass line. Thud, thud, thud.

  Natalie knelt down beside the woman and made a quick assessment: She was dehydrated, had a rapid pulse and respirations, but otherwise appeared to be okay. She could survive this. Just as long as Natalie could get them out quickly and safely.

  “My name is Natalie,” she said. “I’m going to get you out of here, okay?”

  The woman struggled to speak. She attempted to sit up again, but collapsed in pain and muscle weakness. She curled up on the floor and looked at Natalie through the eye slits in the duct tape. Natalie could see her glinting terror and sat on her rising panic. Fear was contagious. Fear could be paralyzing.

  “Shh. He’s listening,” the woman hissed. “The Devil can hear you!”

  “Bunny?” Natalie breathed. “Is that you?”

  61

  Something stirred in the room down the hall. A rustle. A thump. Now a door cracked open, the music grew louder, and heavy footsteps pounded down the hallway.

  “Shh. Don’t move,” Natalie whispered to Bunny.

  She stood up and braced herself, aiming her gun at the door.

  The footsteps stopped just outside the door.

  Natalie tapped the base of her magazine with the heel of her hand to make sure it was fully seated before raising the gun to eye level. She placed her finger on the trigger and focused on the front sight.

  The doorknob turned slowly.

  “Go away!” Bunny shouted.

  The doorknob stopped turning.

  Natalie felt a numbness like sand trickling through her body as she steadied her aim and aligned the intended target in her front and rear sights.

  “Go away, or she’ll shoot you in the head!” Bunny cried.

  Natalie cringed and took a step forward, reaching for the door before Samuel could get away, but right at that instant, the door shot open as if a bulldozer had knocked it down, and Samuel burst into the room swinging a baseball bat. He knocked the weapon out of her hands, and her right wrist snapped as the gun misfired. He slammed the bat into her left shoulder, and the pain registered on her optic nerves. Cascades of white flashes. She cried out as she flew backward, gun skidding across the room and sliding under the night table. She landed hard on the floor, all the wind knocked out of her lungs.

  Samuel was naked from the waist
up. He wore jeans, no shoes, and a mask made out of a knotted pair of women’s pantyhose—the old-fashioned, polyester kind. You could see his eyes through a slit in the mask. His toes gripped the warped floorboards and a sheen of perspiration clung to his torso.

  Natalie cringed at the sight of his birthmark—a butterfly in midflight.

  “You? What are you doing here?” Samuel asked, his strange gaze flitting across her face.

  He seemed very far away, hovering somewhere on the edge of the universe. A hawk, circling high in the sky, looking down at her … waiting to snatch her life away.

  Natalie’s eyes burned. Her left shoulder throbbed. Her right hand felt broken. A gasp sprang from her solar plexus as she withstood the gravitational pull of fear.

  “Don’t hurt me!” The air became electrified with Bunny’s screams as she strained against her chains, trying to break free.

  Samuel turned toward his captive and raised the bat threateningly. “I asked you politely to stop screaming. Didn’t I?”

  Bunny cowered with animal fright.

  Natalie scrambled for her gun, clawing across the floor and scooping it up, ignoring the pain in her right hand. She used her left hand to sight down the barrel, aiming her weapon center-mass. It took every ounce of strength she had left not to blow him away. “Drop the bat, Samuel,” she said, steadying her nerves. “Raise your hands where I can see them. Slowly.”

  He turned in silhouette, his head backlit by the corner lamp.

  “Raise your hands in the air,” she commanded. “Nice and easy.”

  He studied her through the eerie eyeholes of the pantyhose mask.

  “Drop the bat,” she demanded. “I don’t want to shoot you.” What a good liar. “Drop the bat and raise your hands—slowly.”

  He clutched the bat in both hands and shook his head. “You followed me here?”

  “Put it down,” she repeated. “Now.”

  His head swayed ever so slightly on his muscular neck. Breathing calmly, he told her, “You followed me here from the lake, and I’d like to know why.”

  She stuck to the script. “Put your hands in the air—now!”

  “How did you find out about this place? About me?”

  She swallowed hard and said, “Your birthmark.”

  He glanced at his arm.

  “You attacked me a long time ago in the woods. You had your T-shirt wrapped around your head so I couldn’t see your face. But I noticed the birthmark.”

  “Oh. Okay. I understand now,” he said in a measured way.

  She could detect her own rapid pulse in the slight pendulum of her aim.

  “I remember our date when you were in college. But I don’t remember attacking you in the woods. When was this? There’ve been so many,” he confessed. “It’s hard to keep track.”

  She felt the muscles of her hands twitching from the strain. She recalled what her father had told her about firing her weapon in the line of duty. It’s not bragging rights. It’s deeply troubling. Avoid it if at all possible. She blinked the sweat out of her eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Samuel said. “This is not going to end well.”

  “Drop the bat,” she insisted.

  His eyes were raked with sadness—or a perfect imitation of human emotion. “I was the one who pulled your sister out of the lake tonight. Did you know that? She was stuck in the weeds. I had to tug her legs out of the eelgrass, but then she popped up, and I had her. I looked into her eyes,” he said. “Have you ever done that, Natalie? Looked into their eyes?”

  Her trembling lips betrayed her revulsion and fright.

  “But you deal with dead bodies all the time in your line of work, don’t you? What are you afraid of?”

  “Get your hands in the air!” she shouted hoarsely.

  “We all think we’re going to live forever. Secretly, we all believe it.” His outline was beginning to waver. “But then, once you realize you’re going to die … once you accept your own mortality, that’s the instant you become your true self.”

  Natalie’s head filled with a crackling sound. Bright spots danced before her eyes. She was beginning to lose focus, his image snapping and shivering before her.

  “Should I tell you what happens? When I look in their eyes?”

  She felt like a bug you could flick away with your fingers.

  “Their expression begins to change,” Samuel said in a low, mesmerizing voice. “From dreaming to awake. From awake to terror. From terror to surrender. And as they take their last breath … they become who they truly are. The moment of transformation … is unimaginable.”

  Her sweaty finger twitched on the trigger. Her left hand was weaker than her right hand. Her aim was unsteady. She was afraid of him. It was obvious to both of them.

  “Your sister was alive when I pulled her out of the lake,” Samuel said in a trancelike cadence. “Her name was Grace, right? That’s an elegant name. She barely had a pulse when I pulled her out of the reeds, but she was still breathing … I cradled her in my arms and helped her move on. I’ve helped a lot of people move on. She said she wanted to die. Some people believe that, right before you die, the last thing you see remains on your retina. And so, I’m sure, the last thing your sister ever saw was me.”

  Shoot him now.

  “I helped her move on. I can help you move on, too, Natalie.”

  Shoot him now.

  “The last thing you’ll ever see,” he said, taking a step forward, “will be me.”

  She jerked the trigger. Once. Twice.

  Two startling flashes. Two explosive cracks.

  Samuel took both rounds in the chest. His eyes bulged with disbelief, like a boy on a roller-coaster ride. The bat dropped out of his hands and clattered to the floor.

  It took time for gravity to tug a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound human being to the ground. Samuel dropped to one knee, and then to the other. There was a terrible thud as he landed on his face, blood pooling from his chest and soaking into the threadbare rug.

  Bunny screamed and tried to get away, the heavy chain clanking.

  Natalie rolled the body over and felt for a pulse.

  Samuel was staring at her, guzzling for air. The bullets had pierced his vital organs. Soon, his body would no longer be able to regulate the flow of blood to his brain. It would pool inside his sick and evil mind, starved for oxygen.

  She rested her fingers on his throat.

  A weak pulse.

  He blinked the blood out of his eyelashes and said, “Look at me.”

  She drew back, repulsed beyond belief, her body shaking with resistance.

  Samuel sucked in a breath. “Look into my eyes, Natalie.”

  A shudder ran through her. She shook her head and fought off a current of fear.

  But he was relentless. “Look into my eyes. Go on. I dare you.”

  The temptation created a dull ache in her heart. She peered into his eyes, feeling something instant and powerful. His irises twisted like flies caught in a spiderweb. What she saw was nothing. A chilly force. A swirling emptiness. Whatever stared back at her wasn’t human. It spun slowly on the edge of the known universe like a lone, barren planet.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. She drew back.

  Words formed bloody bubbles on his lips. “What did you see?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  He stared at her like a possessed man. The raccoon. The stick. The boy with the butterfly birthmark. The memory was as organic as a jellyfish, alive and breathing liquidly, filling all the crevices of her consciousness with its poisonous tentacles.

  He took his last breath without making a sound, shoulders jerking spasmodically, as if he had the hiccups. Then his body sagged and went perfectly still.

  She touched his throat. No pulse.

  Finally, it was over.

  Dead. He was dead.

  His blood pooled onto the floor and soaked into the rug.

  Time slowed to a stop. Reality crumbled away.

 
Fury gripped her. She tried to shake him awake. “I saw nothing!” She dropped his head on the floor and could barely breathe, she was so full of outrage. She wanted to kill him all over again. She wanted to smash him to bits.

  A horrible stillness descended.

  The last thing he ever saw was her image carved on his retina.

  She tried to find a path back to sanity.

  The air grew dense and cold inside the room.

  Sirens. A snap back to reality. Luke must’ve tracked her phone.

  She stood up, grabbed a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it around Bunny’s quivering shoulders.

  Bunny reeled away. “He was gonna feed me to the crows!”

  Through the window, Natalie saw red and blue lights strobing across the surrounding woods. Two officers got out of their cruiser and approached the house, signaling silently to each other. Luke had found her. She tried rearranging her thoughts in order, but it was useless.

  Natalie felt like someone else. Crossing the line could do that to a person. She’d helped countless victims of car accidents, fires, rapes, and robberies. She’d seen how shock could rob people of their senses. Psychological trauma could cripple you.

  She turned to face the dead body on the floor. Samuel’s eyes were open, glazed and untroubled. Everything was broken inside her. She took a deep breath and began to cry.

  EPILOGUE

  By June, the TV crews were gone. The media circus had left town, and life had returned to normal.

  Every night, Natalie secured the doors and windows before heading upstairs to bed. She checked to make sure her off-duty .45 was locked and loaded before slipping it into the creaky top drawer of her colonial nightstand. As soon as her head hit the pillow, she would relive those last few painful moments over again. In her dreams, she stretched out her arms and grabbed hold of her sister, trying to prevent the horrific from happening. In her dreams, Grace always jumped, no matter what, diving headlong into the silky water and swimming away like a fish, her golden hair coiling around her head. Scissor kicks and then long smooth strokes.

  Ellie spent the next few months undergoing multiple operations to treat her injuries at the Albany burn unit, but her long-term prognosis was excellent. In July, she went to live with her father in Manhattan, and Natalie kept in touch with her daily. Whenever they spoke on the phone, Ellie’s voice would rise, excitable and soft, as she relayed her new life with Dad. All was well. She was loved and in therapy. They rarely spoke about Grace, but when they did they did so in confused, hurt whispers.