Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (29 page)

Two ambulance attendants came up
the front steps bearing a stretcher. Alvin Snow came up to meet them and told
them that all the victims were dead and awaiting the coroner. He told them to
stand by in case they were needed to transport the bodies. Then he nodded to
Luke and went back to Elsie Royal’s room to finish taking her statement.

Boots slumped against the wall.

“You all right?” asked Luke.

“I’m just...” He shook his head,
unable for the moment to find the right words.

“Any idea where Corny went?”

“No suh. Lady back there pulled a
gun on him and the police came, so he run off. Wherever the Yawahoos told him
to go, that’s where he is. They ain’t done with him yet. They just be getting
started. Things gone get a whole lot worse before it’s all over.”

Another siren wailed outside. Luke
looked out the door and saw the squad car lurch to a stop. The flashing
emergency lights painted the night’s thick fog red and blue. Chief Keller
wrenched his big frame out of the blue-&-white and came quickly across the
front lawn. He touched a finger to his hat when he saw Luke in the doorway.

“I cain’t believe this shit,” he
said as he stomped onto the front porch. “Has the whole fucking town gone
nuts?” Then he saw Boots Birdwell and said, “Excuse my fucking French,
Reverend.”

Boots smiled, sheepish.

Keller saw the head on the floor
and jumped back in surprise. “God
damn
. That’s old John Henry, ain’t
it?”

“’Fraid so,” said Luke. He waited a
long moment for Keller’s shock to wear off some, then he said, “What’s the
plan, Bill?”

“We use Ev Tatum’s bloodhounds to
find the crazy sumbitch and we lock his ass up tight and put him in a straight
jacket. My God, what ever possessed the boy to do something like this?”

Luke and Boots exchanged glances.
“Well,” said Luke, “he sure ain’t in his right mind.”

“Hell, I always knew that boy was
trouble,” Keller said. “He shoulda been put away a long time ago. This never
shoulda happened.”

“You already talked to Tatum?”

“Yeah. He’s rounding up his dogs.
He’ll be here directly. How the hell did you get wind of this so fast, Luke?”

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told
you.”

“I’ll believe anything after this
shit.”

“You tell him, Boots,” Luke said.
“I don’t believe it my own damn self.”

“Never mind,” said Keller. “I ain’t
got time for tall tales right now. Bad as I hate to, I got to go see the rest
of the victims. Is that Snow back there?”

“Yeah. He’s talking to Elsie Royal
and that writer from Atlanta.” Luke could smell the blood-scent of the upstairs
slaughter. The odor mixed with the floured-biscuit-and-cold-grease smell
wafting up from the kitchen and the resultant aroma nearly turned his stomach.

“What about that geologist who’s
here about the sinkhole? He dead too?”

“I don’t know anything about that,”
said Luke.

“God A’mighty, I bet Snow ain’t
checked all the rooms. The city’s put him up here, room and board, while he
checks out the sinkhole. I was told he arrived this afternoon. Goolsby, that’s
his name.”

Luke glanced out the front door.
“Maybe that’s him,” he said with a nod toward the tall man coming up the front
steps.

Keller met the man in the doorway.
“Mr. Goolsby?”

“Yes?” Goolsby’s balding pate
wrinkled with expressive concern.

“I’m Chief Keller. And you’re one
lucky son of a buck. If you’d been here a little earlier, you’d be dead.”

“Pardon?”

“Have a seat out there on the
porch. We got a multiple homicide here and we’ll need to question you before
the night’s over.”

“My God,” said Goolsby. “I was at
the hotel talking to my crew chief. He came down early so we could get things
set up for tomorrow. He can verify my—”

“You’re not a suspect,” Keller told
him. “We know who did it. Just have a seat out there.”

The geologist nodded and walked as
if in a stupor to a rocking chair on the porch and sat down.

Keller turned to Luke and said,
“Don’t you want your old job back? I’m not sure I’m up to it anymore.”

“No thanks. But I’ll help out any way
I can in my auxiliary capacity.”

The chief nodded gravely, then
started up the stairs. He stopped and looked back at Luke. “You hear about
Skeeter Partain?”

Luke shook his head. His stomach
clenched.

“He’s dead. Somebody sucked his
guts out with an embalming tool. James was there when it happened, down the
hall when he heard the racket. He says the boy must’ve killed himself, but I’m
damned if I see how anybody could do something like that. Boy’d have to be slap
out of his mind. Skeeter was a mite strange maybe, but not that crazy. You
reckon the Campbell kid coulda done it?”

“I don’t know why he would. They
were best buddies.”

Keller shrugged his big shoulders.
“I ain’t buying suicide just yet.” he continued up the stairs, mumbling
something that sounded like “Lord, give me strength.”

“Reckon it’d be okay for me to go
home now?” asked Boots. His eyes were bloodshot and rheumy.

“Yeah, go on,” said Luke. “They
know where to find you if they need you. If your friend Odessa gets any more
visions or anything like that, let us know.”

“I will.”

The gruesome death of Skeeter
Partain was more than Luke could handle now, with the blood-scent of the
upstairs slaughter still clinging to him, so he pushed it from his mind and
went out on the porch and sat in the rocker next to the geologist. “So you’re
here about our sinkhole,” he said.

“Yeah,” Goolsby affirmed. “Are you
a policeman?”

“Not any more. Retired. I just help
out when they need extra help.”

“What the hell happened here?”

“Old boy with a head injury went on
a rampage and killed some of the boarders. His aunt was the owner. Mattie
Weehunt?”

“Yes. I just met her this
afternoon. God, that’s awful.”

“Did you meet Cornelius?”

“No, I don’t think so. Is he the
one who did it?”

“That’s what they’re saying. He
fell off a ladder years ago and it damaged his thinker. I think they finally
had to put some kind of shunt in his brain. Never had any serious behavior
problems before. I always thought he was a pretty good old boy.”

“I guess you never really know.”

“Guess not.” Luke rocked slowly.
The creaking of the chair was somehow comforting, and it helped to settle his
nerves a little. He stared ahead into the night fog and remembered the last
time he’d seen Corny Weehunt. Corny had stumbled into the street, right in
front of Luke’s truck, running away from the sinkhole. Said he thought he’d
seen something coming out of the hole. Something chasing him. Luke had given
him a ride home. What had Corny been doing by the hole in the middle of the
night? He’d said he was keeping watch on the hole because something told him he
ought to. Was he hearing voices that night? Boots Birdwell said the evil
spirits were telling Corny to do things. Luke didn’t believe in evil spirits,
but he knew mentally disturbed people sometimes heard voices and that sometimes
those voices told them to do things. Corny could’ve been hearing voices that
night. Voices telling him to watch the sinkhole. That would explain why he was
shagging ass away from the big hole in the street.

Goolsby interrupted Luke’s musings.
“Do they know where Cornelius is?”

“Nope. They’re bringing in
bloodhounds to track him.” Luke abruptly stopped rocking. “You have caving
equipment with you, Mr. Goolsby? Headlamps and such?”

“Yeah. My personal equipment’s in
my van. My crew will be bringing theirs in the morning, along with the drilling
equipment.”

“How about your crew chief in the
hotel? He got his?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“How would you like to get an early
start on that hole?”

“What do you mean?” Goolsby’s
forehead wrinkled up again.

“I mean you and me go into that
sinkhole right now. I’ll borrow your chief’s headlamp. I got a notion Corny
just might be hiding down in that hole.”

“I...I’m not...I mean—”

“If he’s there, I can handle him. I
just need you to stand by and advise me, in case there are tunnels or caves
under there. I understand some of these things can be pretty extensive, and I
wouldn’t want to get lost down there.”

“That’s right, but—”

“I want to find that boy before the
search party does. Some of them old boys might get caught up in the spirit of
the hunt and shoot on sight. I’d hate for that to happen.”

“What makes you think he’s in the
hole?”

“Just a wild-ass hunch. But I’ve
been right before. What do you say? You game? We might save the young man’s
life.”

“I don’t know. It sounds awfully
dangerous. Vinewood’s not paying me to catch a fugitive. A mass killer.”

“Just let me use your headlamp.
I’ll go by myself.”

“Sure. You’re welcome to.” Goolsby
was obviously relieved that he wouldn’t have to go into the pit in search of a
killer. “I’ll get it. My van’s parked on the street.”

Luke followed Goolsby to the
street. The fog was beginning to thin a bit as night inched closer to dawn.
Luke went to his truck to get his pistol and holster from his glove box. As he
strapped the gun on his hip, he sent up a silent prayer to a God he wasn’t sure
he believed in.
Lord, please don’t make me have to shoot Corny Weehunt.

***

Shaken by the vision in the
bathroom mirror, Ree reached out her hand and tried to rub the blackened glass
clean, but the think murk would not rub off. It was as if the inky mist had
permanently clouded the
other
side of the glass—the darkside portal to
the world of the dead. Her guardian angel was gone, destroyed, and she was
vulnerable, naked and unprotected. She walked out of the bathroom and shut the
door, then she went to Luke’s closet, pulled one of his flannel shirts off the
hanger and put it on. She went downstairs to the kitchen and sat at the table
to smoke a cigarette. Her fingers shook as she brought the filter to her lips.
She sucked the smoke deep, taking small comfort from the taste of tobacco and
from the familiar feeling of smoke tickling her lungs.

She tried to make sense of what she
had seen in the mirror, but logic was a poor tool for dissecting supernatural
phenomena. She had to use her instincts and intuition. She exhaled a cloud of
smoke and watched it drift toward the ceiling. She relaxed a little and drifted
with it. She replayed her bathroom encounter with Beau and opened herself to
its ghostly nuances. Doing her best to keep her sense of horror in check, she
saw it through to its grisly end. Had Beau been trying to warn her of some
danger, or had he simply been horrified by his own demise. Her recent psychic
vision of the attacker with a blade had clearly been a warning. Had Beau sensed
or seen the same thing? Was he destroyed because he was trying to warn her? She
had felt the presence of evil, she was sure, but what was the intelligence
behind that evil? The Christian concept of Satan didn’t seem to fit what she’d
felt.
Okay. Go with impressions. Free-associate: Evil, black, billowing,
whispering, soul-killing, hungry, nebulous, spreading like a virus, like vines,
wild runners slithering, reaching, entwining, shroud-weaving, winding sheets
for binding the dead...

The cigarette slipped from the V of
her fingers and dropped in her lap. She snatched it up before it burned her
bare thigh. She jabbed the butt out in the ashtray, venting her frustration in
the small act of violence.

“Come home, Luke,” she said aloud.
“I need you.”

She got up, went to the fridge and
poured herself a small glass of milk.
Comfort food. Mother’s breast. Mother
dead and buried, same as Ben.

A dog barked. Hondo on the front
porch, barking. Was Luke coming up the drive? Milk slopped over the rim of the
glass and dribbled over her knuckles.

 She could feel it coming.
Something bad.

She was suddenly four years old,
seized by an impulse to hide in a closet and bury herself beneath the rough
fabric of her father’s overcoat.

Corny sat in the darkness and
hugged the blood-greased blade of the machete to his heart. The voices were
silent for now, but he knew they hadn’t deserted him. The little snake was
coiled up in a nook of his intestines, waiting—waiting for what? He was glad he
hadn’t killed Elsie Royal or Mr. Tilley, but he didn’t want the things behind
the voices to know it. That would make them mad and they would punish him. It
was bad enough he had to sit down here in this infernal darkness smelling the
blood and the foul stuff in his shorts. He could smell the wet darkness too.
And the dirt and asphalt and the motor oil on it, and the tiny bits of tire
tread flaked off all those tires rolling down Main Street, rain or shine, night
and day. Corny was at the heart of his town now. Its heartbeat was his
heartbeat and his heartbeat was thumping really loud and echoing off the dirt
walls of the pit and making the thick syrupy darkness beat in time to his
pulse. He could see it beating. The darkness was
alive
. He’d been right
all along. It was alive and it could think, probably better than he could
think, since his brain was broken and not much good for hard thinking anymore.
Well, that was all right. He didn’t have to do the thinking now. He only had to
do what they told him to do. Like he’d done back at the house. Chopping all
those people-vines, vine-people. Aunt Mattie, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Cone, Mr. Jones.
They were free now, weren’t they? Wasn’t that the whole idea? Free the souls.
But why had the shadows of the things behind the voices eaten Daddy’s soul?
That did happen, didn’t it? I saw it. I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t know. I just
did what they said. But you said you taught me better than that. Are those
things really—

Hush!
The voices chorused so
loud it made his head hurt and his ears ring deep inside his head.

“I’m sorry,” he squealed, holding
both hands to his head.

The snake uncoiled in his gut,
sending a new squirt of hot liquid into his shorts. The smell was awful. His
eyes watered.

Get up.

He obeyed and got to his feet. The
nasty liquid dribbled down the back of his leg. The voices told him to go
behind the slanting slab of asphalt. He didn’t understand how he was supposed
to do that, but he didn’t ask because he didn’t want to make them any madder.
He ducked into the cramped space behind the big hunk of street, and though it
was dark down there he could see a cave-like opening below the place where the
top of the slab rested against the side of the hole. He reckoned the
voice-things gave him the power to see in the dark, or maybe it was the black
snake that did it. He got on his hands and knees and crawled into the mouth of
the little cave, his hand still holding tight to the machete’s handle and
dragging it in the mud. He could see in the dark like a cat and what he saw
scared another squirt of nasty liquid out of him.

***

Luke put the hard hat with attached
headlamp on his head and clicked it on. A beam of light sprang from his head
and illuminated the fog in front of him and splashed on the broken rim of the
sinkhole.

“We’ll use heavy equipment to haul
those slabs out of there,” said Goolsby, “then my drilling crew will drop down
and start looking for tunnels or caves. From the looks of things so far, I’d
say there’s a good chance we’ll find some. It’s just a question of how far they
extend under there. I found a system of caverns in South Carolina one time that
ran on for nearly a mile. Fortunately, there was no town sitting on top of it.”

Luke nodded. His headlamp beam
moved up and down in front of him. “Can’t see anything from here. I want to
have a look behind that second piece of pavement. When you get a hunch, you’ve
got to play it. Especially when that’s all you’ve got.”

“Right,” said Goolsby, though his
face expressed uncertainty.

Luke climbed down onto the
twenty-foot-long chunk of asphalt and walked backward down its sharp incline,
bracing his hands on it as he descended into the hole. His light played on the
yellow centerline in front of his face and he wondered how many times he’d
driven over this hunk of Main Street. He had never been troubled by heights and
had never even considered that he might have a touch of vertigo, but as he
crab-walked backward down the asphalt, he experienced a light-headed
disorientation. His perception played tricks with his memory. He was a kid
again, playing some childish daredevil game in the middle of the street,
walking backwards on all fours, vulnerable to unseen threats from behind.
Darkness seemed to eat up his bobbing light; it closed around him like dark
water and all at once he grew afraid of drowning in the unnaturally thick
darkness. Nevertheless, he pressed on. His foot slipped and he fell forward
onto the slab and slid down to the bottom of the hole. His hard hat was knocked
askew, its light beaming off to the side. His feet splashed in the pool of
rainwater.

“You all right?” Goolsby called.

“Yeah.” Luke stood erect and
straightened the hat. The dizziness had passed.

The geologist tossed down a length
of robe. “It’s tied to a parking meter,” he said. “For when you’re ready to
climb out.”

“Thanks.” Luke moved to the uneven
wall of the hole behind the slab of fallen street. “There’s an opening here,”
he said. “Looks big enough to crawl into.”

“Maybe you should wait for my crew
to get that out of there. If that falls on you—”

“Yeah, I know. I’m a greasy spot
under
the road. Nah, I’ll just go a little ways, see what I can see. If he’s in
there, I’ll see him.”

“Watch yourself down there. If you
do find a tunnel, don’t go far into it.”

Luke looked up at Goolsby, his headlamp’s
beam shining in the man’s face and making him shield his eyes. “If I’m not back
in ten minutes, go get the cops.” Then Luke got on his hands and knees and
crawled into the small opening behind the leaning tons of asphalt and into the
manhole-sized mouth of what appeared to be a tunnel. He inched forward, sweat
burning his eyes and clouding his vision. He smelled the wet, loamy scent of
broken earth and a hint of the fresh-blood odor he’d smelled at the boarding
house. Corny was here—somewhere ahead in the dark tunnel snaking deeper into
the earth.

He crawled on. The light hit what
appeared to be a dead-end, but as he moved farther ahead, he saw that the
little tunnel branched off to the left. He crawled toward the branch. The
blood-scent grew stronger.

“Corny?” he called. His voice sang
with a peculiar echo. “It’s Luke Chaney. I’m here to help you, Cornelius. I’m
not going to hurt you.”

He stopped moving and listened for
a response.

“Talk to me, son. Answer me if you
can.”

Silence.

“I’m coming in, Corny. I just want
to talk to you.” he reached the place where the tunnel branched to the left and
followed it. As he rounded the turn, the narrow passage opened into a small
cavern roughly the size of a pup tent. His shaft of light seemed to burn into
the limestone wall in front of him. He shifted his head to his right. The
light’s beam swept right and came to rest on Corny Weehunt’s pale face.

“You gone shoot me?” Corny asked
him. He was sitting with his back against the cavern’s wall, a machete in one
hand and something that looked like a hunk of bone resting on his lap.

“No, I’m not gonna shoot you. I
want to make sure nobody else shoots you. I want you to come with me now.
That’s the way it has to be.”

“I don’t think they’ll let me.”

Luke looked more closely at the
thing on Corny’s lap. It was the skull of an animal he couldn’t name. It was
larger than a cow’s skull; the top of the smooth cranium swept back from thick
ridges above close-set eye sockets and its wide jaws were lined with teeth as
big as a gator’s. Its overall shape made him think of a giant snake or even a
fairytale dragon. He shifted his gaze to Corny’s face. “Who won’t let you?”

“Them. The ones talking to me.”

“Did they tell you to kill those
people?” Luke sat back on his haunches, freeing his hand in case he had to draw
his pistol.

“Yeah.” His clothes were covered
with the blood of his victims, as was the handle of the machete. Its blade was
encrusted with clots of dirt.

“You know it was wrong, don’t you?
Killing your aunt and the others?”

“I reckon. But they don’t think so.
They said I was freeing souls.”

“They lied. You can’t believe what
they say. You understand me?”

“Yes suh.” Corny licked his lips,
capturing a speck of gore.

“What’s that thing in your lap?”

“Skull. They told me where it was.”
He pointed with the machete at a hole in the cavern’s floor. “See? I dug it
up.”

“What for?”

Corny shrugged. “They said to.”

“All right. Here’s what I want you
to do. Put down the machete, leave the skull and come out of here with me. I’ll
take you to a safe place where nothing can hurt you.”

Corny stared at him. His eyes gave
away nothing.

“Right now. Men are coming with
bloodhounds and guns. If you don’t come with me, they’ll probably kill you. Now
I’m backing out of here and I want you to follow me. Don’t listen to the
voices. Trust me, not them. Let’s go now.”

Luke began to crawl backward out of
the narrow tunnel, keeping his eyes on Corny. Weehunt let go of the machete,
lifted the alien skull off his lap and raised it over his head. Luke froze, then
reached for his gun. He thought Corny was going to attack him with the hunk of
bone, but what he did was pull it down over his head so that he was wearing it
like a bizarre Halloween mask, his big eyes looking out over the lower row of
teeth. Then he got on his hands and knees and began to crawl toward Luke,
watching him through the skull’s big eyeholes.

Luke didn’t pull his pistol. Corny
followed him out without resistance; that was the main thing. He’d deal with
the skull-mask later. Right now he was thankful he hadn’t had to shoot the
crazy kid.

***

When he put the skull over his
head, the magic happened. The darkness inside the skull went all through his
body like a million ants tickling his insides. It was like something out of a
comic book, the way it made him feel. It made him strong like a superhero.
Powerful. Fearless.
Invincible
—that was the word. Luke Chaney had scared
him with his talk of bloodhounds and men with guns, but now Corny knew nothing
could hurt him. The voices
hadn’t
lied to him. Chaney was the liar.
Chaney was trying to trick him. When he’d first crawled into the tunnel where
the skull was buried, Corny had seen the blob of darkness quivering there over
its grave and it had scared him half to death. But then the voices told him not
to be afraid. The darkness didn’t want to hurt him. It wanted to help him.  It
wanted to give him a gift. All he had to do was dig it up. So he used the
machete to dig up the skull, but just when he was about to put it on his head,
Chaney had come in calling his name and talking his bullshit, and at first
Corny had almost believed the man. But now he knew better. Now he knew they
wanted Luke Chaney dead because Chaney was a bad man, a murderer. And they
wanted Corny to do the killing. He knew he could do it. Killing was easy. He
knew that now. It was easy and in some ways fun. It felt good, sort of like
beating off, but better. Spanking the monkey, choking the chicken, pounding the
pud—you had to do that under the covers, but killing people you did out in the
open. You didn’t have to hide to do it. People didn’t like what you were doing
but you killed them. Tough shit. Who were they gonna tell? Nobody when they
were dead.

The skull slipped, blocking his
vision while he was crawling out of the tunnel. He reached up and adjusted it
so he could see again. There was Chaney, out of the tunnel now, standing by the
edge of the asphalt with his hand resting on the butt of his gun, watching him.
Yeah, Chaney was afraid. He didn’t understand what was happening inside the
magic skull. Corny didn’t understand all of it, but he knew the dark stuff had
lived inside the skull a long time ago, back when men still lived in caves and
worshiped gods nobody remembered now. Back when the things men called dragons
lived in the earth and men wore animal skins and furs for warmth. Corny was
seeing pictures in his brain of that long-ago time. The skull was showing him
things nobody alive now had ever seen. Things ordinary folks wouldn’t believe.
It was almost more than he could hold in his mind, but because his brain was
like nobody else’s brain, he was able to see it all and understand some of it.
He understood that the living darkness moved easily through the earth like
water passing through a giant sponge. It traveled under ground, covering miles
in a matter of seconds, going wherever it wanted to go and nobody even knew it
was down here. But he had known. He’d known it before the voices came into him,
before Seemoan the snake had crawled inside him. He was special. That was why the
voices had chosen him, why the old, old darkness had jumped into him to show
him its secrets. Like God the Bearded Father had chosen Jesus as his Son, the
dark thing had picked Corny as its human kin. He was connected to it now. He
could feel it flying through the ground, going a lot of different places all at
the same time, reaching up like big huge fingers to touch anybody it wanted to
use. It made him dizzy to think about it, but he had to think about it because
he was
feeling
it. He was there. In all those places the dark thing was.
He was there in the house with the dog barking on the porch. Bark, bark, bark,
rroof, rooooff. The dog didn’t like the dark fingers that were coming out of
the ground to grab him. Neither did the old naked black woman sitting in the
circle with her candles and her prayers. She was so scared she shit all over
herself when the black fingers came up through the floor to reach in and grab
her old heart and crush it. There was no limit to what the dark thing could do.
It had already scared up a lot of ghosts and made the dead walk its earth.
Corny didn’t like seeing the ghosts, not since he’d seen those shadows eat the
ghost of his daddy, but he knew they were there and that they were as real as
he was.