A Life Without Fear

by Leo King

  Chime!

  Hands trembling, Sam unfurled the paper and looked at it. It had only three words on it.

  Chime!

  “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  Sam looked up slowly. She hadn’t just read those words, the radio had said them in a voice she hadn’t heard in twenty years.

  Chime!

  Vincent Castille.

  Sam whispered, “Father?”

  Outside, the rain had stopped. There was no thunder. There was no lightning. There was no wind. The air conditioning wasn’t blowing, but the house was very cold.

  Sam’s headache and dizziness were completely gone. But every single fiber of her being felt like something was wrong.

  “Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it wonderful, Sam?”

  Sam punched the side of her head several times. “This. Is. Not. Happening.”

  “You shouldn’t hit yourself like that, Sam. You’ll get hurt.”

  Sam broke into laughter, pulling herself to her feet. “That’s it, then. I’ve gone completely crazy. I’ve gone over the edge.”

  “Far from it, Sam. You have never been saner.”

  Leaning against the fireplace mantle, Sam covered her mouth as she continued to laugh morbidly. Then she noticed the photo of her and her father at City Park. Edward was a decomposed corpse. Little Samantha had sunken-in eyes that were bleeding, and a sharp, toothy grin, making the child look positively demonic.

  “Yeah. I’m in crazy land,” she said, turning away from the picture. She rubbed her eyes.

  “On the contrary,” replied Vincent. “This is not your world. This is the world between life and death. Isn’t it grand, Sam? Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Stop saying that!” Sam shouted at the radio.

  Rushing forward, she grabbed the radio from the table and pulled it out of the wall. “Because of you, I’ve lost my goddamn mind.” She threw it onto the floor. It cracked open. She stomped on the coils and tubes until they were pulverized.

  “Just shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

  She struggled to catch her breath, wrapping her arms around herself. She was shivering violently, from both the cold and fear. Then she heard a scratching sound coming from the record player as the needle moved into position and started playing.

  “Your confusion is understandable, Sam,” Vincent’s voice said through the record player. “But believe me. Your mind has opened to a new plane, to a place far beyond the mundane reality of the tired and trite world of the living.”

  Sam felt her knees get weak.

  The fireplace lit up in a pale green fire. The typewriter at her desk clanked, typing on its own.

  Sam, still holding onto herself, slowly walked toward the record player. Her lips trembled as she shook her head violently. “Shut up! All that bullshit about neuroscience and drugs that increase your brain power—I don’t care! You’re dead! And the dead stay dead. That’s reality!”

  “Is that so? And this is coming from someone who’s been convinced for over a week that she’s possessed?” Vincent sounded amused. “Then you need to read something, Sam. I think you’ll find it enlightening.”

  Sam’s advance toward the record player was halted by a large book falling down and opening up at her feet. She knew that book. She had taken it out when she, Richie, Michael, and Rodger had met in her house weeks ago.

  Modern Voodoo.

  Picking up the book, she saw a passage circled in red ink.

  Loa can influence minor aspects of the world when a priest or priestess commands them through a focus. The direct influence of a loa is always preceded by a tingling sensation down the host’s spine, signifying that the loa has attached itself to the host. These attachments are useful for brief tasks, giving the host physical power and enhanced perception. The strongest attachment, however, is a full possession. Possession requires a complex ritual that binds the loa to the host, creating a symbiotic relationship for an extended period of time. Possessions are much more powerful than standard attachments.

  Sam fell back, dropping the book. It landed with a thud as she struggled to catch her breath. “No way! No goddamn way!”

  It was one thing to suspect that she was possessed. It was one thing to place stock in voodoo, witchcraft, or even magic. However, it was an entirely different thing to suddenly be told that was the truth.

  “No way?” replied Vincent. “Think about it, Sam. How else would a blind woman be able to fight so well? How else would an aging detective like Rodger be able to save himself time and time again? How else would a normal man like Michael be able to run along a wall?”

  Sam fell to her knees by a curtained window, digging her fingernails into her flesh and trembling. She wasn’t getting a chance to process what she was hearing.

  “And do I even need to bring up the power you’ve possessed?” asked Vincent.

  A tapping sound caught Sam’s attention. It was coming from behind the curtain in front of her. Moving the curtain aside, she saw what looked like dozens of bony fingers tapping on the glass. A skeleton with many arms came into view, grinning lifelessly, its glowing eyes focusing on her.

  She closed the curtain and sank to her knees again. “That night… when I was five years old? Was that when… ?”

  Vincent cleared his throat. “My first great success, Sam, and my first great failure. After watching you collapse one day and fearing that you had inherited your mother’s heart condition, I called down a loa and bound it to your body. Possessing you, if you will. It gave your body a strength I never knew possible, but at a terrible cost.”

  “Marinette. You put Marinette inside of me.”

  “I did.”

  Sam needed to sit. Pulling herself along the desk to her chair, she asked, “What was the cost? What the hell did you do to me, you sick bastard?”

  “Mind your tongue, young lady,” Vincent said crossly. “The cost was that the loa Marinette lost awareness of who she was. She became a second you. Sam of Spades, I believe she called herself. The problem was the tkeeus, you see. We used too much and Marinette entered you too quickly. There were horrible side effects, like nightmares and delusions. I am sorry for that.”

  Sam reached her chair and sat down. “And Violet? What about Violet Patterson?”

  “Ah, yes, my favorite dog,” said Vincent. “When we called down Bwa-Chech to possess her, we used the correct amount of tkeeus. Therefore, Bwa-Chech was conscious of herself and was able to form a more complete bond. Sadly, Bwa-Chech’s awareness made her act as a parasite. Violet’s health was always frail after that.”

  Vincent chuckled. “Still, though, it made her a perfect assassin, don’t you think? Imagine that! Being blind, but having a loa physically guide you. Isn’t it wonderful, Sam?”

  “God sakes, shut up, you old snake,” Sam said, clawing again at her face. “Will you stop saying ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ already!” Her head didn’t hurt, but her stomach was in knots.

  It made sense, though. Marinette and Bwa-Chech, the hag sisters, despised each other. They each sought to kill the other as much as they sought to cause others pain.

  No wonder Violet and I were destined to fight…

  Sam looked down at the typewriter. It was typing “Isn’t it wonderful” over and over again. Covering her face, she sobbed, the feelings of confusion, anger, and frustration overwhelming her. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Why am I doing this to you?” asked Vincent. “Sam, I did all of this for you. Every torture. Every murder. I did it to grant your wish. I did it so that you could be free.”

  Sam looked up from behind her hands, her eyes narrowing. She felt confused. “What I wanted? You sick bastard! I never wanted you to torture or murder or kill anyone. How can this be what I wanted?”

  The needle on the record player hit the end. Quickly, the needle lifted and returned to the beginning.

  “Do you remember what I told you about how a person is most alive when they’re in pain?” Vincent asked.

  S
am nodded.

  “Life creates energy, Sam,” explained Vincent. “You cannot see it. You cannot touch it, but it’s there. Energy that can be manipulated. Energy that can be used. The agony I put my victims through created the energy I needed to perform an even greater ritual. This ritual was so complex it could not be completed while I was still alive. It required me to die and finish it here in the spirit world. But I needed someone alive to finish it for me.”

  Sam felt dizzy. It was almost too much for her to deal with. But as she sat there, a horrible thought came to her. Covering her face once more, Sam said, “Oh, my God… Dallas… his murders… everything that has happened…”

  “Exactly!” exclaimed Vincent’s voice. “Good, Sam. I am very proud of you. You see, even once I was dead, I needed more energy, more victims. So I chose Dallas to unwittingly carry on my work for me. It was easy. By murdering his mother before him, injecting him with heavy amounts of tkeeus, and burying him alive, I created the perfect future copycat killer.”

  Sam uncovered her face and stared blankly ahead. “But that was twenty years ago.”

  “Sam,” replied Vincent, “time has no meaning here. Even in your current location, which is between the living and spirit worlds, time has slowed to a crawl.”

  Sam looked up at the clock on the wall. Vincent was right. Since the world had gone crazy, the second hand had barely moved.

  “Of course,” said Vincent, “since Dallas was alive and had free will, I couldn’t force him to act. Yet I couldn’t have him deviating too far from my plan. I couldn’t even be sure he’d end up as a murderer. So that is where my loa came into the picture, to make sure Dallas did those things.”

  “Your loa?” asked Sam.

  “Yes,” replied Vincent. “My loa. I say ‘my loa’ because they work for me now. Just sending Dallas the occasional vision of a certain type of loa that resembled the old Knight Priory was enough. Soon, the poor boy had created his own intense fantasy involving his mother’s supposed ghost, an entire group of Knight Priory members, and… Ah, but he told you that little tale already. Point is, it was very convenient.”

  Sam felt sick.

  Vincent’s voice grew louder, more triumphant. “In the end, I just needed to nudge him to complete the ritual. He did the rest on his own. And when he killed the Aucoin girl, the ritual was complete.”

  Sam looked back down at her desk. She felt so tired, like all the will to move was bleeding out of her. Hearing how Vincent had managed to manipulate everything from beyond the grave was utterly disheartening.

  And for what? What was the point?

  Vincent continued. “And to keep events on track, I needed my loa to make sure certain things happened. Things that would give me all the energy I needed. But loa cannot influence the world of the living without a ritual, without someone using a focus. So I devised a way for a ritual to be performed without the person realizing it. Instead of the focus being something like a wand, it was something far more mundane.”

  Sam’s eyes widened.

  “Someone with a heart darkened by watching torture and murder. Someone who would unconsciously direct the loa to influence both events and people. Good little events, like helping someone run across a roof or aiding someone in escaping a deadly machine, and bad little events, like making a gun go off by accident or making a loose seatbelt come undone. Little things that would happen at the worst possible times and would cause great calamity. All I needed was someone macabre enough to give the loa those little, awful suggestions.”

  Sam’s eyes, puffy and red, continued to widen. She looked at where her notebook lay. She already knew the answer.

  “You, Sam,” said Vincent. “I bequeathed my focus unto you, the same focus I recorded the suffering of my victims with. And you used my focus well. You far exceeded my expectations.”

  Sam trembled, pieces of her mind starting to fall away like shards of broken glass. She looked over at an object. The object she had used to add little details to her story, such as escapes from death traps, adrenaline-fueled fights, and death-defying chases. The same object she had used to suggest how a fat accomplice, a junior detective, and her own uncle might die.

  The silver pen.

  Inhaling, she screamed as loud as she could. It was like she was exhaling her sanity.

  “Nooooo!”

  Grabbing her typewriter, Sam threw it across the study. With a loud crash, it smashed the record player into hundreds of pieces. Still screaming, she slammed her fists down on the desk over and over again.

  “It was me. I killed them all. I did this!” Her voice tore at her throat.

  Tears poured down her face. All those people: Fat Willie, Michael, Rodger. And who knows who else. Killed by her suggestions to the loa. If she had not used that pen, the situations where they had died might never have happened. Without realizing it, she had helped turn an already bad situation into something far worse.

  Vincent’s voice moved all around her. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Sam. After all, you are my precious princess, my darling daughter. You’re a Castille. We have always lived in darkness and worked in shadows. This pen is more than a focus. It is your legacy.”

  Sam lifted her leather chair, her increased strength making it easy, and slammed it against the back wall. With a roar of rage, she started breaking furniture, throwing loose items, flipping over her desk, and trashing her study.

  “Legacy! You call this a legacy? You possessed me with a loa when I was a child. You forced me to watch you torture my father to death. You gave me a pen that helps me kill people. And then you dropped me into this madness! You do all this, and you call it a legacy?”

  She looked at the mirror on the mantle. Her own reflection, which appeared as the hag Marinette, grinned sadistically at her. Sam grabbed a nearby paperweight and threw it. The mirror shattered, shards tumbling through the air before slowing down. She watched as those shards reassembled into a construct—the face of the late Vincent Castille.

  She glared at Vincent. “You used to tell me how much you loved me. How can you love me and do all this to me?”

  Vincent looked away, then back. “Why, to grant your wish, of course.”

  “What wish?!”

  “To live a life without fear. A life without the fear of dying.”

  Sam stared as the glass shards fell to the ground. Shadows moved in on her. In her gut, she felt that Vincent had done something truly terrible.

  “Father. God help me. What did you do?” Sam asked.

  “It was the purpose of the ritual,” replied Vincent, his voice all around her. “I have bound Baron Samedi, King of the Loa, to me. The result is that Baron Samedi cannot dig your grave. No matter what injuries you sustain, no matter how ill you become, Sam, you can never die.”

  Sam fell to her knees and dry-heaved. Her stomach was empty. Her throat burned. Her body shook. “Are you serious? I can’t die? How is that granting my wish? No matter how much I suffer, I’ll never know peace? And won’t I grow old? What will you do when I’m a hundred? Two hundred?”

  Vincent shouted, “You’ve been given the gift of immortality, Sam. Who are you to question it? You can go out and live your life as you see fit without the fear of death. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Stop saying that! You’re crazy,” Sam said, wiping her mouth and trying to focus. The world was cold and terrifying. Nothing seemed real anymore. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  Vincent’s voice took on an indignant quality. “Crazy, am I? How did you survive the injuries from fighting Violet? How did you recover so quickly from your fight with Dallas? Think about it, Sam. You had a weak heart and I strengthened it. You had a limited life and I expanded it. You, my dear daughter, the only one I love, will live forever.”

  Sam felt her guts churn in agony. “No! I don’t want this. You have no idea how much pain I’ve suffered through. And to have that pain last forever? To be unable to die? Vincent! Please take this back. Undo this thing you’ve done. Let me die
now if that’s what it takes, but please do not do this to me!”

  “No,” replied Vincent. “I cannot undo this ritual. The Baron and I are bound together so long as I exist. And I will exist for a very long time.” His voice deepened. “And you, my princess, my daughter, are being very ungrateful.”

  Sam had stopped trembling. It was because of me that Vincent did all of these horrible things. All of this blood. All of this suffering. For me.

  Slowly, she got up. All of her dread, fear, sickness, and nausea were slowly being replaced with stern resolution. I’m done. No more deaths. No more suffering.

  “Good girl. No more whining and fighting. We will embark on this adventure together. This part of the spirit world is ruled by the voodoo loa, but the rest of the world… oh, Sam, the spirits are so different everywhere you go. It’s a beautiful world of so many dark wonders. And something is happening. Something big. You think I’m the only one? No, my daughter, this is only the beginning. With you directing my loa, we can accomplish so much—father and daughter.”

  “No.” Sam had a fierce look in her eyes.

  There was a very notable pause before Vincent replied, “What did you say?”

  “I said ‘no.’ I will not be party to this.” Sam’s voice choked with anger.

  Vincent’s voice turned cold as ice. “Oh, but you will, Sam. Don’t make me have Marinette overpower you. She has her memory back, and she wants to be in control again. She wants to feast on the suffering of others. And if you try my patience, I’ll let her play for as long as she wants. Maybe I’ll have her start with that new friend of yours, Dixie Olivier. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed. Big mistake. You will never threaten someone I care for again. Grabbing the silver pen, she headed down the hallway.

  “Just where do you think you’re going, daughter?” Vincent sounded increasingly agitated.

  “If you think you can take me that easily, go for it. I fought down Marinette once and I’ll do it again.”