Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (35 page)

“Okay, you all know what to do,” he
said, turning to his men and rubbing his palms together as though he couldn’t
wait to get started. “Be careful down there.”

He thought of his wife and
children, and wished he were home with them right now.

***

Luke crept up the stairs. Ree
followed.

“L-u-k-e...” came the voice from
the bedroom. It was an excellent imitation of Jenny’s voice, he thought, right
down to the extra little emphasis on the
k
she’d used whenever she was
emotionally wrought.

“God be with us,” whispered Ree.

They reached the second-story
landing. Luke moved into the bedroom doorway and stopped. Ree bumped into him.
“Sorry,” she whispered.

Jenny was lying naked in the middle
of the bed with her knees bent and her feet flat on the mattress. She was
rubbing her distended belly with her hands and humming a lullaby. She turned her
head and fixed her dark eyes on Luke. “I’ve got something for you, honey,” she
said. “I carried it such a long way just to get it here. You’re going to love
it.”

“You...are...not...my...wife,” he
said, slowly and deliberately.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the
Jenny-thing. “Of course I’m your wife. And this is your son.” She cupped her
hands over the huge mound of her abdomen.

“My wife couldn’t have babies.”
Luke’s voice trembled with anger. “Whatever the hell you are, I want you out of
my house. Right now!”

“Oh, I think it’s time,” said the
imitation wife. She began to twist and writhe on the bed. “Yes, it’s coming!
It’s for you, Luke. It’s coming for you.”

“Stop it!” he shouted.

Ree pushed around him to see what
was happening. “Oh, my God,” she said when she saw the thing that looked like a
hugely pregnant Jenny Chaney with her thighs spread wide and dark fluid spewing
from the pink gash between them. A foul odor filled the room.

“Here he comes,” squealed the
gleeful apparition.

“Don’t look at this,” Ree told him.
“It’s an abomination before God.”

But he couldn’t look away. He and
Jenny had badly wanted a child, and his greatest regret was that his dear,
sweet Jenny had never been allowed to know the joys of motherhood before she
was taken from him.

The baby’s head crowned amid the
matted curls of pubic hair.

But it wasn’t the head of a newborn
human. It was hairless and pebbled like the skin of a serpent.

The birthing mother groaned and
grunted like a woman in the throes of a great orgasm.

“Luke,
do it
,” Ree said
sharply.

The thing’s head slid all the way
out, lubricated by bright red blood and some darker, noxious fluid. Tiny arms
popped out and began a paddling motion, as if the infant was swimming into the
world with the breaststroke.

“Kill it!” shouted Ree. “It’s
evil
.”

Luke slowly lifted the pistol from
its holster on his hip.

The thing being born slithered free
of its mother’s birth canal, kicking its webbed feet and working its lipless
mouth as though desperate for air. A long black tongue flicked from its mouth
as it rose up on its hands and feet and began to crawl toward the foot of the
fouled bed—and toward Luke.

“Luke!” shouted Ree. “Do it!”

He raised the pistol and pointed it
at the crawling beast, but he couldn’t bring himself to squeeze the trigger.
I
can’t kill a baby. What if I am its father?
Even as this irrational thought
ran through his mind, the humanoid alligator-skinned infant reached the foot of
the bed and leapt at him. With a surprisingly strong grip, it latched its
little arms around Luke’s left thigh and sank fangs into his flesh.

Luke reacted instinctively and
hammered the butt of the pistol on top of the baby’s blood-slicked head. The
creature relinquished its fanged grip on Luke’s thigh and emitted a mewling cry
as it grappled for a better hold with its talon-tipped fingers.

Ree screamed. Luke looked up to see
that the obscene replica of his dead wife had pulled Ree onto the bloody,
rumpled bed and was climbing on top of her. “Adulterer!” the Jenny-thing
bellowed as it opened its mouth impossibly wide, exposing long snake-like
fangs.

He delivered another hammer-blow to
the baby’s head, knocking it off his leg. It hit the floor with an ugly thump
and began to wail like a helpless human baby. Luke rushed to the side of the
bed, put the pistol’s muzzle against the naked woman’s temple and fired. The
thing shrieked as it dropped to the mattress beside Ree and began to thrash its
limbs in apparent agony and contorted its face into inhuman expressions. Black
liquid oozed from the bullet hole in the side of its head.

Luke fired a second shot
point-blank into the Jenny-thing’s forehead, and its thrashing ceased, its
unbearable shrieking reduced to hissing whimpers.

Ree rolled off the bed and landed
on her feet. She pointed to the floor behind Luke, and he turned to see the
hideous infant slithering toward him. Without hesitation, he aimed his gun and
shot the thing in the head. The tiny monster twitched and flopped about like a
fish on dry land, then convulsed one last time before falling still.

“Jesus Christ, deliver me,” said
Ree, steadying herself against the wall. “I never...”

“Me neither,” said Luke.

Then the bodies of the monstrous
mother and child began to melt where they lay. Flesh and bone liquefied,
converted by some otherworldly alchemical process into a bubbling, tarry
substance with a stench so strong it drove Ree and Luke from the room.

They embraced at the top of the
stairs. Ree buried her face in his chest. She began to tremble and shake, and
Luke thought she was crying till she looked up at him and he saw she was
laughing with tears in her eyes.

“Evil bitch messed with the wrong
ones that time,” she said.

Luke tried to laugh, but what came
out of his mouth sounded like a strangled hiccup. “We got ’em, all right,” he
said, “but I’m not sure it’s over yet.”

“You think...?”

“I think we probably pissed it off
real good.”

“Tough noogies,” she said. “I’m
pissed off too. I’m ready for the next round.”

“Give ’em hell, Shorty.” Now Luke
did laugh.

***

“This is a fucking nightmare,” said
Chief Keller, leaning his elbows on his desk and resting his forehead on the
palms of his big hands. “An evil fucking nightmare.”

He was alone in his cramped office,
talking to himself, telling himself what he already knew—and what the whole
town would soon know. Citizens were dying right and left, dropping like
soldiers on a bloody battlefield, and he—the chief of fucking police—was
powerless to stop it. Or understand it. What the hell was going on? People were
killing each other, people were seeing walking—
driving
—corpses. The
whole damn town had flipped its fucking lid. “And I’m supposed to keep the lid
on it? Cut me a break. Jesus.”

He popped four tabs of aspirin into
his mouth and washed them down with cold coffee filmed over with creamy scum. “Ughhh.
Holly!” he shouted loud enough to be heard by the dispatcher in the next room.
“Did the state police call back yet?”

Holly Stimson appeared in the
doorway. “Sorry, Chief,” she said. “Not yet.”

“Call ’em again and see what the
hell’s the hold-up. We’re dying here.”

“Uh, I just got a report of an
abandoned squad car with its emergency flashers on, out on the Vidalia highway.
And I can’t raise Hemphill on the radio.”

“Christ!” He slammed his fist onto
his desktop. “All right. I’ll run out there myself. Nobody else is available.
If the state boys call, tell ’em again we’ve secured the scene of the chain-saw
murder and we’re waiting on
them
.”

He grabbed his hat and stomped out
of the office and went outside to his civilian vehicle, actually his wife’s
Chevy Malibu, because all the cruisers were already taken. He prayed to God
that Craig Hemphill hadn’t met with foul play, but in his heart he was afraid
that was exactly what had happened.

That was how fucking nightmares
always went. From bad to worse.

***

Luke saw the oncoming vehicle and
yanked the wheel to the right to avoid a head-on collision. The black hearse
whipped past, riding the road’s broken centerline.

“Jesus, who the hell’s driving that
thing?” he said as he narrowly avoided the ditch on the right side of the
blacktop. “Didn’t even have their fog lights on.”

Ree used the ember of her cigarette
to light a new one, then tossed the smoked butt out the window. “Some frigging
idiot,” she said, exhaling smoke. “Wish this fog would lift. Gives me the willies.
You think it could have something to do with...this whole mess?”

“I don’t know. I’d believe most
anything after what we just saw back at the house.”

“Me too. There’s no telling what’s
creeping around in that fog. Or anywhere else, for that matter. The damned
thing seems able to pop up anywhere it pleases.”

“Yeah. I guess we know now what
your guardian angel meant when he warned you about darkness gathering me. And
we know the dark can bite.”

“How
is
your leg?” she
asked. “Does it hurt much?”

“Nah. I just hope it’s not infected
with...you know, anything bad.”

“Well, you poured enough Clorox on
it to burn out any kind of bug.”

“I hope so.”

Ree looked at her watch. “It’s just
past eleven. Let’s go to church.”

Luke looked at her to see if she
was serious. “I thought you wanted to go to the shop and look for Beau.”

“That can wait. Mr. Birdwell said
he was preaching at the Church of the Holy Savior. We can be there in about ten
minutes.”

“I don’t think I can sit through a
sermon just now. I’m too wound up to sit still.”

“But Birdwell said we need to keep
our faith strong. I have a feeling that his sermon today will be especially
meaningful. We could use a booster, don’t you think?”

“I’ve got faith in this.” He
touched the gun on his hip. “This is what saved our asses back there.”

“Was it? Who’s to say it
wouldn’t’ve had any effect if we didn’t have faith in good over evil? Please,
Luke, I have a strong feeling that we should be there to hear Boots. I can’t
explain it, but I’ve learned to trust my intuition when it hits me like a ton
of bricks. Like now.”

“All right. I guess I’ll put my
faith in you.”

Twelve minutes later Luke took off
his pistol and put it in the glove box, then they entered the white-clapboard
Church of the Holy Savior to the sound of the choir singing a rousing hymn Luke
didn’t recognize. The members of the all-black congregation were clapping their
hands in time to the up-tempo hymn. Ree pointed to a vacant spot on a back-row
pew, and they made their way to it and sat down. Several dark faces greeted
them with warm smiles and welcoming nods and didn’t seem offended that the
white visitors weren’t dressed in Sunday-best attire. They smiled back and
settled into the hard seat. The hymn ended and a rotund minister got up and
made announcements, then introduced Brother Birdwell as the guest speaker.

Looking dapper in his dark suit and
white tie, Boots stood behind the podium, smiled and let his eyes roam over the
congregation. When his eyes came to rest on Luke and Ree, they widened a
little, and then his smile got bigger. “I thank you all for having me back,” he
said. “It’s such a pleasure to look out on all these beautiful faces and know
you’re all here because you love the Lord and the Lord loves you. And I want to
extend a special welcome to our visitors who’ve come to join us in worship and
Christian fellowship. Thank y’all for being here. God bless.”

He paused and seemed to be
gathering his thoughts, then he said, “My heart is heavy this morning, brothers
and sisters. Heavy with the loss of a lady who gave her life fightin’the forces
of darkness. Lotta you knew Sister Odessa Nell.”

There were gasps and various
exclamations of lament from the congregation.

“That’s right,” Boots proceeded.
“She passed in the wee hours of this morning, and I’m here to tell you that she
went out fightin’ the way she did her whole life. Her fight is over now, and I
know she’s with Jesus. We’ve lost a soldier for the Lord, but for everyone who
falls, ten will take their place, following the example of people like Odessa
Nell. Our fight goes on. The evil is still among us, and we are not in Heaven
with Jesus, not yet. But I promise you this: Jesus is here with
you
.”

Cries of “Amen” and “Praise God”
rose from the congregation.

In spite of his reluctance in
coming here and his innate skepticism concerning organized religion, Luke was
getting caught up in the religious fervor. It was very much like a high-school
pep rally, except that the opponent was Satan rather than a rival school. And
from his conversations with Boots and his own recent experiences with the
supernatural, Luke knew Satan was not just a boogeyman used for frightening
people into the arms of the Lord but a personification of Evil in all its many
forms, including the damned thing that was invading the town of Vinewood.

He reached over, took Ree’s hand
and held it, his big mitt enveloping her dainty fingers. She place her other
hand over his knuckles and squeezed. He felt a twinge of regret that he had
inadvertently involved her in Agnes Porch’s vengeance curse—if that was what
this was all about—and he swore to himself and to God (if He really
did
exist) that he would not let her be further harmed by this dark, evil thing. He
would give his life to protect her, not because he thought of himself as a
hero, but because he loved her.

Boots Birdwell went on with his
eulogy, using Odessa Nell as an example for all to follow. “I know,” Boots
said, “that some of you are thinking: How can you be singing praises of an old
woman who never came to church? Well, brothers and sisters, Miz Odessa was
smart enough to know that the whole world is a church. I knew the woman for
more than fifty years, and I’m here to tell you, she was the finest spiritual
leader I’ve known. She saw the Lord in the lowliest sinner and in the wickedest
places. She knew that God
is
everywhere.”