Death And Darkness

by E. A. Copen

  Remy’s sudden cry pierced the silence of the night.

  The monster’s straw tongue recoiled, and it jerked its head toward the noise. Whatever pressure had been holding me down released. I surged out of the bed, swinging. My fist hit the monster’s face but sank in as if it were made of tar. The shadowy monster screeched and swiped at me. Black claws raked the side of my face. I pried my hand free and threw myself at it only to land face-first on the floor.

  There was no way I could’ve missed, not at that range. I turned over on my back, ready to continue the fight, but the monster was gone.

  Emma was up, though, her hand reaching for the bedside light. She’d frozen halfway through the motion to stare at me. “You okay?”

  That thing had been all about snacking on me until it heard Remy cry. I had to make sure she was safe.

  “Hold that thought!” I scrambled to my feet, ran to the guest room, and Remy’s crib.

  Remy lay on her back in the crib, trying to shove her fist in her mouth, her legs kicking and flailing.

  I let out a breath. She was okay. Just hungry. “Best timing ever, kid.” I picked her up.

  Emma came into the kitchen, shrugging on a fuzzy pink bathrobe while I was in the middle of heating a bottle for Remy. “Laz? Everything okay?”

  I debated not telling her what I’d seen. It sounded crazy even to me, and I raised the dead for a living. Could be what I saw wasn’t real. There was no physical evidence and after that first dream… It felt so real, watching my dead father dangle from the ceiling fan. Almost as real as wrestling with that…thing.

  I turned back to the bottle warming up in the tiny pan of water on the stove. “My dad died.”

  I don’t know why I said it. It just slipped out. It was the stress and the exhaustion. Emma didn’t need that on her plate, not with everything else she was dealing with.

  She blinked, suddenly more awake. “Oh, my God. When?”

  I shrugged. “Yesterday. I drove up to Angola today. Saw him for the first time in fifteen years. He looked…he just looked old.”

  Emma was suddenly beside me, her hand on my back. “Why didn’t you tell me? You must feel awful.”

  “That’s just the thing. I don’t feel anything.” I picked the bottle up, squirted a little bit of the formula on the inside of my wrist like I was supposed to, pushed it toward Remy’s mouth, and shambled to the rocking chair in the living room.

  Emma followed. I wished she wouldn’t look at me like that, like I was some sick puppy needing pity. That was the last thing I needed.

  She sighed, rubbed her hands over her legs, and sat on the edge of the sofa next to me. “You want to talk?”

  I shook my head. “Not about him. That asshole ruined half my life. Hurt Lydia. He doesn’t get to show up in my dreams and make me feel bad, not after all that.”

  “You had a nightmare?” Emma’s voice had a nervous edge to it.

  Nightmares. I looked down at Remy. Emma said she thought Remy was having them, and Emma had been having them too. Now me? I had enough experience in dream interpretation and magic to know that it couldn’t be coincidence, especially with what had just happened. If it’d happened at all.

  Whatever that thing was, if it was real, it had passed right over the salt circle as if it were nothing. That meant it wasn’t a spirit. If it was a demon, it had to be a powerful one. Could’ve been a god, but I’d never seen a god disappear like that. Of course, it could’ve just been part of the bad dream.

  I shifted Remy so my arm would stop falling asleep. “Hey, Emma? These nightmares you’ve been having, what are they like?”

  She blew out a breath through loose lips. “Hell, mostly. But not places I’d been or things I’d seen. Just the sounds. Smells. Shadows darting around on the walls. They feel so real.” She rubbed her forehead. “You know, Holzgreif said he was having nightmares too. Maybe the chief is right and it’s just the time of year. Lots of stress around the holidays.”

  “Holzgrief?”

  “Latest murder-suicide,” she explained. “He left a suicide note. Only one who did. He claimed he killed his family in a waking nightmare where he wasn’t in control of his own body, and when he regained control, he couldn’t live with what he’d done. Shit, I’m not supposed to be discussing details.” Emma rubbed her forehead.

  A waking nightmare? That piqued my interest. I could believe Emma would have nightmares, and even me. Hell, everybody had them sometimes. But a waking nightmare where a killer wasn’t in control of his own body? That sounded supernatural. “Tell me more.”

  Emma shot me a doubtful look, sleep still heavy in her eyes.

  “What’s it going to hurt?” I asked with a shrug. “Your department’s ready to dismiss this. You said so yourself. I’m not going to go blabbing to the media. And I think you know as well as I do that three murder-suicides in three weeks is weird. Maybe it’s my kind of weird.”

  She crossed her arms and considered me for a long moment, then slid into the sofa where she’d be more comfortable. “Not much to tell, really. There’s nothing connecting the three cases except the crimes themselves. Weapons were different in each case. Ages, race, incomes… If there’s something supernatural out there causing this, it doesn’t discriminate.”

  “Maybe there’s a connection you’re not seeing,” I suggested. “One a normal cop would miss.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged. “And normally, I’d sign off to get you into the morgue so you could raise their ghosts and talk to them, but Drake and Codey have been up my ass lately, scrutinizing everything. They’re not big on the supernatural. They think you’re a quack.”

  I quacked like a duck and pulled the half-empty bottle away from Remy, who’d fallen back asleep. She’d get a stomach ache and gas if I didn’t burp her, but burping her would wake her up. Couldn’t win. Guess I was waking her up for her own good. She whined when I put her to my shoulder but calmed right down when I patted her back.

  “Don’t you worry about Drake and Codey,” I told Emma. “They’ll get what’s coming to them. Why don’t we go out for coffee tomorrow and then hit the morgue?”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t.” Emma uncrossed her arms and rubbed the back of her head. “I’ve got family flying in for the holiday. Have to go to the airport and pick them up. They’re… Well, they’re sort of staying with me through the weekend.”

  “Oh.” Well, that put a damper on any holiday plans between us. Guess me and Remy were on our own for Thanksgiving.

  “I don’t want you to think you’re not welcome here for the holiday, Laz, it’s just…” She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “My family’s a little intense. Maybe too much to throw at you.”

  I laughed. “Em, I went to Hell. I can deal with being grilled by your folks. But I get it. Holidays are for family. I won’t intrude.”

  Something in her face changed. She went from worried back to that pity look from before. “I don’t want you to spend Thanksgiving alone.”

  “I won’t be alone. I’ve got Remy.” I pulled the kid away from my shoulder to find her drooling on herself and blowing a little snot bubble. Kids are gross.

  “That’s it. Now you have to come. I don’t want to hear any excuses. You’re coming.” Emma stood. “Well, since it looks like neither of us is getting any more sleep with all the nightmares going around, I’d better make some coffee. You can help me work on the seating arrangement for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  I cringed. Seating arrangements? Maybe I had bitten off more than I could chew.

  Chapter Four

  If I wanted to catch Nate at work, that meant getting to the morgue early. As in, at the crack of dawn, since he worked the overnight shift. You wouldn’t catch me hanging out with corpses overnight, but Nate seemed to enjoy his job. He’d be gone by nine, so if I didn’t want to deal with the day shift coroner—who I didn’t like—I had to get out of Emma’s before seven. The daycare didn’t open until nine, but Emma offered to watch her. Considering how
grumpy Remy had been with the staff, and how much it cost me per day to send her to daycare, I was happy to agree. Besides, that’d give me an excuse to drop by later and maybe meet her folks before the holiday.

  I pulled up to the morgue building about eight-fifteen on a gray November morning, two days before Thanksgiving. The place was dead. Only Nate’s car sat in the employee lot, so I’d gotten there before D.J., the day shift guy. If I didn’t take too long, I wouldn’t have to deal with him either, so win for me. I’d called ahead to let Nate know I was coming, but I still had to press the buzzer at the door for him to come let me in.

  I pressed the buzzer twice before a small-framed man with curly red hair and glasses pushed open the glass door. Nate Frieder reminded me of an older, Jewish Ron Weasley, the kind of person destined to play the role of the best friend. And he was good at it. Nate had helped me through plenty of tough spots over the last few months, and he was one of the few people in New Orleans I’d still trust with my life.

  He adjusted his glasses and held the door open wider. “Wow, you look awful. Did you get any sleep?”

  “Good of you to notice my dashing good looks.” I stepped past him and into the small public lobby. A couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs sat around on one side of a small counter with safety glass in front of it.

  “Tell me you’re losing sleep for a good reason, at least?” Nate closed the door and led me down the hall beside the counter to the elevator, where he stopped and tapped the button to go up.

  I shook my head and sighed. “I wish. Sometimes I think women attend special seminars on driving their boyfriends crazy.”

  “Give her some time, Laz. You’ve both been through Hell. Literally.”

  The elevator stopped, and the doors creaked open. We stepped in, and Nate hit the button to take us to the second floor.

  I leaned against the railing in the back of the car. “I’m all for taking things slow, especially after the last few shitty relationships I’ve had, but that doesn’t feel like what this is. I don’t know. Emma’s different. We’re different. I want to do things right, but I don’t know how.” I saw he was restraining a smile. “What?”

  “That serious, is it?” He looked at me and let the smile slip through.

  “Her family is in town for Thanksgiving. She wants me to come.”

  “Mm-hm. I remember my first holiday dinner with Leah’s family. Hanukkah, four years ago. Talk about a roast goose! I didn’t think I’d be able to sit for a week once they were done cooking mine. I don’t envy you a bit.”

  “Thanks,” I grumbled.

  The elevator door opened, and we stepped into a long, dark hallway. Soft carpet and thick walls ate the sound of our footsteps.

  “So, Emma told me you wanted the murder-suicides from yesterday,” Nate said, fumbling with his key card as we walked. “She didn’t say why. You think there’s something going on?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but in my world, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern.”

  “I thought so too.” He stopped in front of double glass doors and swiped his badge over the magnetic card reader.

  The doors slid open on a sterile exam room I’d been in a half-dozen times now, maybe more. Stainless steel doors on the other side of the room marked the fridge where samples were kept in clearly labeled glass jars before they went to be tested. Through the swinging doors on the left wall was cold storage where the bodies were actually kept. This close, I could feel each one of the recently deceased pulling on the edge of my psyche, begging to be noticed. There were seven bodies but only six shades, which meant one had been in there longer than seven days. Not surprising. If the family didn’t come to pick up the body, or if the family couldn’t be located, it would sit there until the coroner decided what to do with it.

  Just like my dad would sit in a refrigerated drawer up in Angola until I called someone to go get it. Then I’d have to make funeral preparations. Pick out coffins. Flowers. Songs. I didn’t want to do any of that. He didn’t deserve it.

  Nate grabbed a leather apron and slid it on before snapping on a hair net. “You want to see them all? Or do you just need one?”

  I frowned. “How many are there?”

  Nate squinted at a clipboard on the wall. “John Holtgrefe, age forty-three. Shirley Holzgrief, age thirty-seven. Jacob and Olivia, twins. They were eight. I’d just gotten through the interesting bits of John’s when you rang. He was the one the precinct was most interested in.”

  I felt sick thinking about him performing an autopsy on a pair of eight-year-old kids. “You have to do them all?”

  “I’m working over again. D.J.’s handling a couple of shootings, so I took this one. Why?” He tugged on a pair of blue gloves.

  I put my hands in my pockets and tried to ignore the harsh smell of cleansers burning the inside of my nose. “Just seems pointless. I thought everyone already knew what happened.”

  “It’s standard procedure with murders and suicides unless someone steps in to block the process.” He shrugged. “And there’s all kinds of things the cops didn’t know when they brought the bodies to me. Here, I’ll show you. Be right back.”

  Nate disappeared behind the swinging double doors and came back a short while later pushing a gurney covered with a blue sheet. A blue sheet he promptly removed without warning.

  The coffee I’d had for breakfast surged up my throat, leaving behind a burning acidic trail. I put my hand over my mouth to hold it in.

  John Holzgreif’s chest was wide open, half his insides already pulled out and placed into neatly labeled containers with their weights written on the label. The guy’s face was cut up too, across the forehead and down the side with an incision going right in front of his ear. It didn’t seem to bother Nate in the slightest.

  “The police told me they found him hanging from a ceiling fan in his bedroom,” Nate said.

  The description shocked me out of wanting to throw up. Exactly like I’d seen my father. Uncanny. It had to mean something. “He hung himself?”

  “After strangling the rest of his family with his bare hands.” Nate picked up one hand and turned it so I could see deep scratches on his wrists and lower arms. “I suspect the wife did this. Won’t know until I swab her fingernails though.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “Jesus, what kind of man strangles his wife and kids to death in their sleep?”

  “A very stressed man,” Nate said, lowering that hand and lifting the others. He pointed out the fingers. “Uneven fingernails. Found traces of them in his stomach along with ulcers. No food, but did find these.” He picked up a tiny bottle and held it up to the light.

  If I squinted, I could see a few scraps of colored plastic. “What are those?”

  “Sleeping pills. Not enough to be a fatal dose, but if I’m right, more than the prescribed dose. My guess is our John here was having a lot of trouble sleeping.”

  That lined up with what Emma said about the suicide note. “Did you see the note?”

  Nate shook his head. “I heard there was one, but I normally try not to hear as much as that. Impossible to be impartial once you hear the rumor mill.”

  I’d have to get a look at it if I could. Or I could do one better and talk to his shade directly, although the shade might not be good enough. While shades couldn’t lie, they were disconnected from their emotions, and this case’s motivations were steeped in emotions. I needed to know why. Then maybe I could put this aside and chalk it up to coincidence like everyone else seemed to do.

  “I’d like to raise his ghost for a few questions,” I told Nate.

  Nate put the bottle of pill casings down. “Why? I thought the police weren’t opening a full investigation? Open and shut is what I heard.”

  “They might not be,” I said, pushing up my sleeves, “but I am. Something about this doesn’t sit right with me, Nate. His suicide note supposedly mentioned nightmares. He claims to have killed his family while in a waking nightmare, totally not in control of his own a
ctions.”

  “Sounds like disassociation to me, especially considering all the other signs.” Nate pulled the sheet back over the body. “John likely suffered from an anxiety disorder and depression. Once I cut a cross-section of the brain to look at the amygdala, I’ll get a clearer picture. It’s often enlarged in cases like this. Doesn’t mean there’s anything supernatural going on.”

  “My father hanged himself in Angola day before yesterday.”

  Nate blinked. “What?”

  Before he could tell me how sorry he was, I forced myself to keep talking. “Remy’s been having nightmares. Emma, too. I’d dismiss it all as coincidence, but it feels like there are too many similarities. And I swear something came after me last night while I was sleeping.”

  “Something? Like a monstrous something?”

  I nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so terrified in my life. A waking nightmare is exactly how I would’ve described it too.”

  Nate looked down at John’s body, his eyebrows drawn together. “I’ll get the candles and chalk.”

  While Nate got the supplies for the summoning, I checked the time. We still had a half-hour before D.J. showed up unless he came in early, which meant it was unlikely I’d be interrupted. Just in case, I grabbed a roll of paper towels and taped a few sheets over the tiny windows on the door. It only locked from the outside, but a quick ward on the door would give us a little warning if he came close. D.J. was the normiest Norm I’d ever met, and he’d freak if he walked in on me performing a ritual in the morgue. Probably have me arrested. Nate would lose his job, and it’d be the scandal of the week in the papers. Yeah, D.J. walking in would be bad.

  I drew out the circle and stepped inside. “I need something that belonged to the deceased. Something that would’ve been in contact with his skin. Got anything?”