Sons of Dust

by P. Dalton Updyke

  Lucien.

  The name popped into his mind unbidden, tightening his skin. He’d forgotten what they called their pretend apparition, just as he’d forgotten about the last time Bo and Katie used Ouija, Katie’s fingers lightly landing on the planchette and the triangle shooting across the board, landing on the Yes—

  Alex forced the image out of his head and walked on, breathing in the scent off the ocean, feeling the early morning mist on his face. He tried to tell himself that the story was just a story now, but twenty five years ago, it was believable that Lucien had tried to get Katie and Bo to free him. Sure it was believable – for a child. But they were adults now, and Alex understood more than most adults did: all the fairy tales were lies. Even the ones about heaven and hell. Especially those. There was no fire and brimstone and eternal damnation; the things that damned where the things that you could see.

  We’re too old for horror stories, Alex thought as he strode across the boulevard. Too damn old for this. So what did happen to Bo? What happened to that man on Katie’s street? They were killed by someone crazy; someone who didn’t realize that the stories about boogey men and vampires weren’t real. It didn’t have anything to do with them. Not with him, anyway. If the others wanted to indulge in childhood fantasies…

  The gate to the rectory swung open easily and Alex shut it behind him. The house rose above him, white clapboards, black shutters, the wide stone steps leading to what his house lady optimistically called the “piazza.”

  Mrs. Aubrey was here. Her car was parked under the red maple tree, the green metallic paint glittering in the sunshine. She was young, only thirty, with curly hair and an open smile. Her voice was like a little girl’s, high and sort of breathless. Alex was in no mood for Nan Aubrey. Nan Aubrey, in his personal opinion, was nuts. Not certifiable, but hedging that way. She came across as sweet and kind, the sort of woman to volunteer for everything, quick to raise her hand to say, “I’ll take care of that, Father.”

  But just under that sugar icing was a bitter, sour heart. Nan did mountains of work, only to play martyr, sighing heavily, rolling her eyes. At last week’s spaghetti supper, Alex overheard her saying, “—I’m sure Father will be pleased. Everyone helped, but I was the one who had the pleasure of doing all the shopping and cooking and now it looks like I’ll have the pleasure of cleaning up as well.”

  He was in no mood.

  Alex walked down the footpath, past the V that led to the rectory and the church, heading down to the cemetery. His head was pounding. He pushed open the gate to the cemetery and walked down the path. An hour among the headstones should give plenty of time for Nan Aubrey to give up and go home.

  As he stepped onto the familiar path, those words came to him again.

  Sons of dust.

  Alex slowed, then stopped. He put his head into his hands. Maybe grief wasn’t the explanation. Maybe Gina and Marcus and Vinny did believe.

  Sons of dust.

  The thing called them that. The thing in his nightmare. He started walking again, his thoughts in turmoil and saw something just ahead on the path, a scrap of cloth that looked like a blanket.

  Walking faster, Alex saw that the material was green and he instantly thought of the homeless woman who sometimes slept under the hedges. He thought her name was Darlene. As he got closer to the fragment of cloth, he began taking in other details: a strip of blanket, hung low on a branch, a square of fabric fluttering against a hedge. He moved forward, unaware that he had begun to run, his pulse racing. Scraps hung from branches, fluttered in the trees and now he saw that there were splashes on the path, crimson splatters that looked like—

  Alex pushed apart the hedges and looked into a nightmare.

  Blood drenched the ground around what remained of the body, vast amounts of blood, congealing in the sun. The blood wasn’t red, like in the movies, it was brick-colored, thick. Alex stared at the pools of it and then his frozen mind took in the rest: limbs torn away from the torso, bones splintered and gray, the skin at the end of the shattered arms looking oddly clean, like the flesh had been washed—

  Alex leaned over and vomited onto the path and even when he closed his eyes, he couldn’t block it out, couldn’t stop seeing the way the skin was puckered and white, so white, against the gray bone and brick colored gristle.

  He forced his eyes open and couldn’t see anything but a blur because his vision was watery, tears streamed down his cheeks. Alex wiped his face with a shaking hand.

  His instincts had been right. It was the homeless woman.

  He knew by the hand, lying right in front of him, resting on the shrub as if it had been flung there. Small bones jutted from the torn flesh. There was a ring on the index finger. A silver wedding ring.

  The sons of dust have freed a child of darkness…

  He heard the voice, as clear as if the thing was standing right behind him, whispering in his ear.

  He leaned over and vomited again. When he was through, he stumbled back the way he had come, his mind numb. It was Nan Aubrey who called the police, and for once, Alex appreciated her taking control.

  Chapter 17

  Gina

  She was glad Vinny volunteered to go with her, not that she’d tell him that. He talked non-stop as they walked to Spritzi’s, the corner grocery store. Gina didn’t hear much of what Vinny said. It didn’t matter. His voice was soothing, a gentle ramble that she could answer in single syllables while her mind wandered.

  Kate was scared. She hid it well, behind a cool façade, but Gina recognized the signs. And if Kate was scared, maybe it was all true. Maybe when they were kids, they did do something, let it loose and maybe it was loose again.

  “—so all of it. Don’t you think, Gina?”

  Gina could feel Vinny look at her and she blushed. “Yes. We should talk it all out.” She didn’t have to ask Vinny what it was they should talk out, because there was only one answer.

  Lucien.

  The name chilled her.

  “Soon as we get back,” Vinny said. “We’ll start at the beginning, talk about all of it.” They walked in silence for a full block and when they turned the corner at the end of Shurtliff Street, Vinny sighed. The Shurtliff School was a red brick building that resembled a prison more than an elementary school. An eight-foot-high spiked iron fence surrounded the school yard and the gate leading to the concrete walkway was chained and padlocked. “Remember when the yard was open all the time?” Vinny asked. She glanced up and saw that, like her, Vinny was staring at the school.

  “Back in the old days,” she replied.

  Vinny snorted. “Old days. Ancient history. And look at it now – they gotta lock up the basketball courts.”

  Gina didn’t answer. Spritzi’s store was two doors down. A bell over the door jangled as Gina stepped inside. She could never walk into Spritzi’s without feeling like a kid. The store was long, narrow. A glass counter ran the length, topping glass front display cases filled with deli meats, cheese, breads, home-baked pastries. The top of the counter was linked with jars of penny candy and at the end of the display case was a wooden barrel full of pickles. Behind the counter were the slush bins. Slush at Spritzi’s wasn’t the kind to come out of a convenience store. It was handmade shaved ice, paddle-turned into a creamy sugary mixture that melted on the tongue.

  Spritzi died when Gina was fourteen, but his wife, LeTetia, still operated the street-front store. LeTetia was eighty if she was a day, a tiny gnome of a woman. One hip was higher than the other and she walked on a tilt. Her hands were bigger than most men’s, with knobby knuckles and distended veins. Gina always found it hard to look at Leticia’s hands, because they didn’t come close to fitting the rest of her.

  “Frankenstein’s bride,” Bo’s voice whispered in her memory. “Doesn’t she look like she was put together from spare parts?”

  “Genie! How come you don’t come in here no more?” LeTetia said as she crab-walked from a room separated from the store by a curtain, her voice a ca
ckle.

  “I come in here all the time, LeTetia. You’re just never here.”

  “Stepping out with Max, I heard,” Vinny chimed in. He wagged his finger at the old woman. “And I thought you were an honorable woman, LeTetia. And here you are, keeping company with a dirty old snake like Max.”

  “Maxie, he no snake,” the old woman grinned, her dentures sliding down so that for an instant, Gina could see her gums. “He a fox.”

  Gina laughed and LeTetia stepped behind the counter, slapped both palms on the counter and got to business. “What I get for you? We just got in the Polish loaf, so fresh it sings. And the bread, out of the oven ten minutes ago. And you have to take the pickles and the--”

  “We’ll take the works,” Vinny said. “Just fill up a couple of bags and don’t be putting in any of that olive loaf. I hate that shit.”

  LeTetia clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Vincent Polowski – what your mama say, she hear you talk like that?”

  “Probably ‘shut the fuck up, Vinny.’”

  Gina laughed while LeTetia waved an arm at Vinny and shook her head. Gina wandered away from the glass counter and picked up a wire shopping basket. A television was mounted on a shelf in the corner, over stacks of daily newspapers. Gina glanced up at it and then froze. She listened to the full report before walking back to Vinny on legs that were no longer steady. “We have to hurry back.” He turned to look at her and she could read the question in his eyes before he spoke it aloud. “There’s been another one.”

  Vinny’s eyes grew wide and then narrowed. “Where?”

  “St. Stand’s.”

  “How do you know?”

  Gina gestured over her shoulder toward the television and LeTetia clucked her tongue again. “Terrible,” the old woman muttered. “So many killings, so many bad people now. Just bad.” She paused, deli meat wrapped in white butcher paper in her large hand. “What this about now?”

  Gina didn’t answer and a moment later LeTetia gasped, “That Father Alex! On a TV!”

  Vinny mumbled something. It sounded like the name beating against the inside of her head.

  Lucien.

  Chapter 18

  Vinny

  They found Marcus and Kate in the dining room. Marcus was sitting at the end of the table, a Bible in front of him. Vinny had time to take in the tattered book and cups and saucers before Gina said, “Have you heard?”

  Marcus’s welcoming smile faded and Kate grew even paler.

  “Heard what?” Marcus asked.

  Vinny dumped the bags on the table and shoved his hands into his pockets so they wouldn’t see him trembling. “Another murder. At St. Stand’s. Alex found the body.”

  “Alex?” Kate whispered.

  “Maybe now he’ll believe this shit is real. Close to home like that, how could he not?” he looked around the room but no one else spoke. “I figure he’ll be here within a couple of hours. One thing about Alex: when the shit hits the fan, he wants to be around his friends. So I say we wait for Alex before hashing it all out.” He tried for a laugh, but it came out like a bark. “If we’re going to be talking about demons, it’d be good to have a priest in on the conversation.”

  **

  Kate made tea and coffee and they carried their cups into the living room so they could watch the news reports as they came in. There was little information available, but what there was, the reporters were putting together. The Hispanic reporter at Channel 5 went so far as to say the discovery, “marks the third time in almost as many days that a badly mutilated body has been found in Chelsea.”

  As daylight waned, the speculation grew. There was a serial killer loose, a modern Jack the Ripper. Vinny knew better and as he looked around the room, he saw the others did, too. Oh, there was serial killer loose alright, but it wasn’t human. The thing responsible didn’t have a mother and father to bitch about. It had—

  it had

  blue eyes and black hair

  Vinny closed his eyes and saw it again, tattooed on his retinas. It had blue eyes and black hair when they first saw it, but then Bo said something and Katie did something and they made it mad, and it screamed at them, screeched and changed into a horror with cloven hooves and yellow eyes, teeth that were jagged and sharp, talons at the tips of its fingers.

  Lucien.

  “-this just in,” the reporter said. He looked like a young, muscular version of Geraldo Rivera. “Yet another body, a fourth, has been found this morning in Chelsea. We have few details to report at this time, but do know that homicide has been called in at 121 Essex Street…”

  Gina, beside him on the couch, jumped and Vinny put his hand on her knee. She was shaking.

  “That’s your neighborhood, isn’t it, Gina?” Kate asked.

  Gina, her eyes glued to the television, nodded. “Across the street,” her voice was a trembling whisper. “My neighbor, Paul, he lives at 121 Essex.”

  They waited but the report offered little, noting only that the victim’s body had been found in “similar” condition.

  “He’s hitting close to all of us,” Marcus said. He was sitting on the other side of the room, in the shadow and Vinny couldn’t make out the expression his face. He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees.

  “It’s like it’s taunting us,” he said.

  “Maybe it isn’t Lucien.”

  “In the last 24 hours, a mutilated body was left in front of Kate’s house, at Alex’s church, and your home. If that’s not a sign, Gina, I don’t know what is.”

  An idea formed in Vinny’s mind and once there, refused to leave. He licked his lips. They were dry and chapped. “What if…” he stopped, and the others looked at him. “What if there are bodies that haven’t been found yet? What if he’s been in my neighborhood, too?”

  No one replied.

  “Jesus.” Vinny ran his fingers through his hair. “I bet there is. The son of a bitch is leaving a calling card for all of us.” He stood up suddenly and reached for his coat. “I have to go. I have to check it out, see if there’s--”

  “What, Vinny?” Kate asked. “A body? And if there is, what are you going to do about it? Call the police? And then what? Spend the next ten hours tied up with a homicide investigation?”

  “I could tell them what--”

  “Tell them what?” Gina spread her arms wide, helplessly. “You know who’s responsible for the murders and the killer is a demon named Lucien?”

  “Okay, it sounds crazy, but--”

  “It doesn’t just sound crazy,” Kate said. “It is.” She leaned forward in her chair, her hands gripped tightly “No one will believe you. No one. Hours will go by. And we’ll have wasted precious time.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Just… sit here and wait?”

  Kate nodded and when he turned to Gina, he saw that she was nodding, too, and all at once, the fight went out of him and he sat back down.

  “Alex should be here soon,” Marcus said tonelessly from the shadows.

  Chapter 19

  Kate

  Alex came to them as soon as he was done with the police and when he walked through the front door, the difference in him was visible. His shoulders sagged, his skin had taken on a gray cast, his eyes were dark and unreadable. He hadn’t shaved, stubble darkened his cheeks and chin. He wore a wrinkled blue button down shirt and khakis.

  No clerical collar.

  Kate rose from her chair and went to him. Wordlessly, she took him in her arms and held him. She could feel the tension in the coiled muscles of his arms. “It’s going to be all right, Alex. We’re all together now.”

  Her words broke something in him. He stiffened, and she could feel his shoulders heave with his effort to keep the emotion inside. He started to pull away, but then Gina was there and she put her arms around them both. Vinny was there a second later, and then Marcus put one arm around Vinny’s shoulders and the other around Kate’s. They stood like that, a circle, arms intertwined until Al
ex’s breathing evened and he lifted his head. He stepped back and the circle broke.

  “You were right,” his voice was hoarse, his eyes blank. “It is Lucien.”

  Kate’s skin broke out in gooseflesh. She lifted her chin and said with a calmness she didn’t feel, “It’s time we talked, but first, we have to eat.”

  **

  They sat in the parlor, chairs drawn close together, a fire burning in the fireplace. The remains of lunch littered the coffee table. Kate had thought no one would want food, but when she put down the platters, everyone took a plate and Lucien was on hold a little longer. Now they had eaten, Vinny had smoked a cigarette and the air in the room changed, became charged with expectation.

  It was time.

  Kate took a deep breath, aware of their eyes on her, their grim expressions of anticipation. “Do you remember the Ouija board?”

  They nodded, except for Alex, who was staring at her, his expression blank. “The first time Bo and I used the Ouija together, something happened. Somehow, we opened a…door, I guess is the best word, we opened something that allowed a spirit to come through. He told us his name was Lucien.”

  “It wasn’t a spirit,” Vinny interrupted. “It was a demon.”

  Kate didn’t answer Vinny directly. She looked at each of them in turn. Gina was pale, but strong. Marcus was steady, his jaw set. Alex wasn’t looking at her; he was staring down into his empty coffee cup.

  “When we were kids, Bo and I told you only a part of the story.” Alex lifted his eyes and locked gazes with Kate. “We told you we had opened this door and could talk to a ghost.”

  “He was chained to a dead woman,” Marcus said. “You told us he was trying to get you and Bo to unchain him, but you didn’t know how.”

  Gina nodded. “And then you asked us to help you. We came here with—“

  Kate held up a hand. “Before we get to that, I want to tell you the whole story, from the beginning. But first, I just want to say…” her voice faltered and her vision blurred. “I thought it was make believe. I wanted to believe it wasn’t real, that what happened was just a kid’s game of let’s pretend. When I moved away, I tried to put what happened out of my mind completely, and eventually, I managed to convince myself that none of it happened.” Kate leaned forward, desperately hoping they would understand. “I never thought it was real. I never believed Bo was in danger or that anything like this would ever, ever happen.”