Book of Shadows

CHAPTER Thirty-seven

Lincoln, Massachusetts, was a rural town in Middlesex County, west of Boston. The brilliance of the autumn leaves on the trees lining the highway made the journey feel like driving into a painting. Red and gold and amber and orange leaves swirled across the road in front of the Cavalier, giving Garrett an uneasy stabbing reminder that Halloween was mere days away.
McKenna’s employee file contained a note that McKenna had not returned several phone calls made by the office manager to inquire after his whereabouts, and that there had been no machine to leave a message on. There still wasn’t, when Garrett tried the number himself. But according to the phone company the bills were still being paid, on auto-pay, as were the other utilities. His phone records would have to be subpoenaed for recent activity, but all indications were that McKenna was MIA.
Landauer drove, as Garrett was still shaky from the lingering effects of belladonna. They did not speak for some time, while Landauer navigated west out of the city and onto Highway 2.
As much as Garrett was trying not to think, the cattails along the side of the road kept reminding him of the crossed stalks of corn bound to the columns of Tanith’s store. He felt his face tighten and his gut roil with doubt, and he must have sighed or grunted because Landauer glanced over at him questioningly.
Garrett shook his head. “Maybe this is all wrong. Cabarrus is a con artist. The fraud conviction. You were right: she’s been trying to insert herself into the investigation from the start.”
Landauer was a beat slow in answering. “Except that we both know women don’t kill like that.”
“I’m not so sure.” Garrett’s words tasted as bitter as they sounded. “This isn’t an ordinary woman. These weird rituals she does. The drugs. These young ‘clients’ of hers, coming in for spells. There’s no telling . . .” He stopped, staring blankly out at the cattails. “I never had any clue what she was capable of.”
Landauer looked out the side window. After a moment he said, “You notice anything about me, last couple weeks?”
Garrett looked at him, not understanding.
Landauer waited. When Garrett said nothing, Land reached forward and slid open the ashtray in the dash. It was empty. It took Garrett a moment to register the significance.
Landauer met his eyes for a moment, looked back at the road. “When was the last time you saw me with a butt in my hand?”
Garrett’s mind raced wildly back through the last few days. But he’d seen Landauer with a cigarette, dozens . . .
No, he realized. Holding a cigarette. Not lighting it. Not smoking it.
“I haven’t had one since she walked into the office that day,” his partner said, not looking at him. “F*ck knows I’ve tried. I just can’t.”
Now Garrett forced his mind back to the day in the bull pen: Landauer taunting Tanith: “Show me. Put a spell on me . . .” Tanith pulling the dagger from her blouse and cutting her finger . . . Landauer licking her blood . . .
His partner was speaking again, his gaze fixed out the windshield. “I never thought anything could make me quit. Now, I don’t want it. Can’t do it. She says, ‘You’re done’—and I am.”
Garrett stared at his partner. “So what are you saying?”
“I’m sayin’ whatever she is, it’s not all bad.” He shrugged. “I’m never gonna repeat this to another living soul, but she mighta saved my life.” Then his face darkened. “If you ever say a word to Bette, so help me, I’ll kill you dead.”
Garrett sat back against the seat and looked out at the flashing autumn colors of the trees, a blur of reds and oranges and ambers, like fire, like flight.
The isolation of the town was an ominous factor, not a point in McKenna’s favor. A quaint Main Street gave way to old farm-style houses along a rural road with the distances between them growing larger and larger as the detectives drove on.
McKenna’s house was outside the limits of what there was of the town, which a green-and-white population sign put at 9463. Landauer turned off a paved road to follow a dirt road through a barrier of trees that opened into what used to be farmland. The partners squinted through autumn sun at the house, an old Cape with paint peeling off the clapboards, a sagging porch. A junked car rested on its rims in the yard, and wind rustled through the elms, sending leaves swirling down like golden rain. As the partners got out of the car, Garrett saw a sludgy pond off the side of the house, and a shed with weathered, unpainted siding and double doors padlocked together. There was no sign of the dark blue Camaro.
The grass around them was knee-high and Garrett found himself scanning for . . .
Burned footprints . . .
He shook off the image, wondering what he thought he was doing.
As the partners started up toward the house, no dogs barked to warn of their approach, and there were no signs of any other animals, or people, or a working car or other vehicle, either. Rumpled curtains were drawn at all the visible windows.
The porch steps creaked under Landauer’s bulk, a somehow ominous sound. He reached out for the doorbell. Surprisingly, the chime worked. The partners stood in the slight breeze as they waited in silence. Dry grass crackled in the fields around them. Garrett felt his stomach churn again, but it could have been the lingering effects of belladonna. The house didn’t feel occupied . . . and yet something was—
Landauer frowned, squinting at the dirty screen door. “What the . . . ?” Abruptly he reached forward and pulled open the screen, to reveal a brown-red handprint smudged on the wood door beside the knob, with lines and whorls of fingerprints.
No question. Dried blood.
The partners looked at each other.
Landauer leaned forward and pounded on the door with a meaty fist. The hollow booming echoed in the house. “Mr. McKenna, this is the police.” There was still no stirring, no sound.
“McKenna’s missing . . .” Landauer pointed out. “Bloody handprint. Exigent circumstances. Reasonable suspicion of danger. I say we go in.”
Garrett nodded in agreement. Both men unsnapped the holsters of their weapons.
Landauer reached and grasped the doorknob. He frowned.
“What?” Garrett asked, tensing.
“Sticky,” Landauer said with a grimace. “And unlocked.” He turned the knob, pushed the door open.
They stared into the dark cave of the living room. Then, hands hovering beside their weapons, they stepped inside the door.
The room was dark from the drawn drapes, and there was a musty and slightly foul odor. A few pieces of sagging furniture, with empty beer cans and newspaper sections scattered beside the sofa on the old and dusty carpet. The air was tainted with the faint, sweet odor of rotting food.
There was a fireplace that looked like it was crumbling from the inside. Garrett was sure it was five kinds of fire hazard and he wouldn’t have lit it himself for any amount of money, but the still-pungent smell of wood smoke and the half-burned logs on the grate indicated it had been used recently.
“Mr. McKenna?” Landauer called again loudly, pro forma. “This is the Boston Police Department. Are you in the house, sir?”
No response.
As his eyes adjusted to the dark, Garrett scanned the walls, covered in faded flowery wallpaper. His immediate guess was that McKenna had inherited his parents’ home; the décor was circa 1940 with a few seventies’ touches, and none of it or the furniture were a man’s choices.
Garrett nudged Landauer and nodded up to the clock above the doorway to the kitchen. It was a round plastic battery-powered version and it was stopped, the thin red second hand frozen atop the longer hand with the big hands indicating 3:33. Landauer went strangely silent and just then Garrett realized the significance beyond the fact that no one had replaced the battery.
333.
Now Garrett stiffened, too.
The men fanned out, moving slowly. Garrett glanced through pocket doors into a front parlor stacked with accumulated junk: greasy tools, a small disassembled engine on a side table, a dinner table overflowing with newspapers and boxes. There was a hall extending to the back: bathroom and bedroom probably, and a set of stairs to the second floor. The kitchen was to the right, with a closed swinging door.
There was no sound and no feel of any presence besides their own in the house; they could both sense the emptiness, which diffused their tension somewhat. They both relaxed in the same moment, hands withdrawing from the vicinity of their firearms. They exchanged a glance in the dim room, then Landauer nodded toward the hall and moved into it, while Garrett pushed open the swinging kitchen door with the tip of his shoe.
It was as dark and dank as the rest of the house, with a rank, neglected odor. Garrett smelled stale, uncirculated air, garbage not taken out for weeks, long-dirty dishes, alcohol-laced sweat . . .
And something else. Something he didn’t want to think about, something naggingly familiar . . .
He was distracted from the thought by the faint sound of Landauer’s footsteps clumping from the second floor above him.
Garrett turned in the room, continuing his visual inventory. Dishes were piled in the sink, and the remnants of a meal were still on the table . . . several beer bottles, a fast-food bag, a petrifying half of some kind of burger in an open cardboard carton. There were two closed doors on the other side of the kitchen, one that led to the outside, and the other a solid door, probably to a cellar. (Garrett heard his father’s voice in his head: “Cella.”) Garrett glanced at the outside door, then moved toward the other. He reached for the doorknob . . . but hesitated before grasping the knob.
There was a counter to his right with a dish towel crumpled by the sink, and he reached for the towel and wrapped it around the doorknob. The knob twisted under his hand, and the door opened onto a black chasm.
Still using the towel, Garrett felt his hand along the wall beside him, searching for a light switch. He found the plate, but when he flicked it, there was only an empty click.
The hair on the back of his neck suddenly rose, as if he were being watched from—not the cellar below, but right behind him. He twisted to look back at the door—
There was no one.
Garrett steadied himself against the wall in the dark and felt in his pocket for the Maglite on his key chain.
He switched on the small, powerful beam and shone the light down into the darkness. The staircase plunged precipitously, with narrow steps of unfinished wood opening into a cavern of cellar.
Garrett stood on the top step for a moment, and deliberately stopped his breath, listening . . . listening . . .
Again, he had an overwhelming feeling of being watched from behind . . . but a glance over his shoulder revealed no one at his back.
And there was no sound, no stirring, and more importantly no feeling of life below.
Garrett relaxed a tad, and began the descent down the stairs, sweeping the small, concentrated beam of the Maglite ahead of him. The light picked up glimpses of the cellar: pale drapes of cobwebs on the ceiling beams . . . a peeling, noxious pipe that was surely asbestos . . . a malevolent old iron boiler the size of a refrigerator . . .
There was a packed earth floor below, and sagging wood shelves with rotting junk hanging on the stone walls around him. The beam fell on another wall and Garrett froze . . . at the sight of the triple triangle sigil painted large on the plaster, and thick scrawls of other words. Then he shifted the beam lower . . . and what he caught in the light took his breath away like a savage punch.
There was a crude narrow altar against the wall, draped in black cloth with fat black candles atop it and more triangle sigils painted just behind it. And in the center of the altar was a candleholder that he had only seen in a crude and disgusting sketch.
A Hand of Glory. Erin Carmody’s hand, a wizened claw, clutched around a black taper candle.
Garrett gasped, breathing in shallowly against the sudden recoil in his stomach.
The smell of earth was around him; that root-cellar smell . . . and again, something else . . .
Garrett shined the flashlight beam straight ahead. It took him a moment to register what he was seeing and then he staggered down the remaining few steps.
A triangle was traced on the floor in some phosphorescent powder . . .
And at the points of the triangle were three low stone pedestals, each holding a roundish basketball-sized lump that on some level Garrett recognized instantly, but was unable to admit to himself. But the smell was a dead giveaway.
Dead being the operative word.
The eyes were the next clue . . . filmed over, but unmistakable. The round lumps were human heads. Three heads, planted at three points of the triangle, long hair on two of them . . .
Garrett choked out some guttural version of a cry . . . it sounded harsh and inadequate in the cellar.
He barely had time to register details of the scene, the fat, burned-down candles surrounding each pedestal . . .
And then an enormous rushing and a hideous growl came from behind and above him, and something was barreling down the stairs, thumping on the thin wood. Garrett barely had time to spin before it was on him, a snarling, frothing hulk of a creature, with the horrible reeking smell of madness, raving in lunacy, inarticulate, bestial sounds. It smacked into him and threw him to the floor. Garrett fell backward and hit his head with a sharp crack on something hard and cold, a stone surface. For a moment he saw stars.
Then there was shrieking, and the huge foul thing was on top of him, mauling him, grappling, grasping his neck.
Garrett gasped for breath even as the alien sounds chilled his blood. The bulk on top of him was a good seventy pounds more than his own weight and there was more than ordinary heaviness, the weight of crazy.
Garrett suddenly went limp, made himself a dead weight, playing possum. His heart pounded out of control in his chest while he willed himself not to move . . . there was a horrible, suspended moment as his attacker paused, trying to gauge the change . . .
Garrett shoved his hand down his own leg and grabbed for his Glock, freeing it. But just before he squeezed down on the trigger, he hesitated—and instead jerked his arm up from between their bodies, up toward the ceiling, and slammed the metal weight of the weapon against his attacker’s head with a yell, hammering him over and over as the madman shrieked and screamed.
The last thing Garrett felt was warm and sticky blood running down his fingers, his palm, his wrist, as the bulk on top of him finally, thankfully, collapsed into a dead faint, knocking Garrett’s breath out as it pressed him hard into the stale and stinking earth.
What happened next was unclear.
His attacker stirred on top of him and Garrett shot back to consciousness with a jolt of lifesaving adrenaline. He thrashed on the dirt cellar floor to reach the plastic handcuffs clipped to his belt, and in a frantic race against time, he freed his hands to grasp the wrists of the body on top of him and wrest him into the cuffs.
Even as he did so, he was aware of something hideously, mortally askew. His attacker was reviving, starting to writhe and spit guttural obscenities, but the voice was horribly familiar, and the feel of the clothes he wore was terribly wrong; Garrett could sense the cut of a suit coat and matching trousers, and the size and shape of the man on top of him . . . too, too familiar.
Garrett pushed with all his strength to roll the body off him, and simultaneously rolled hard to his right in the dirt to get himself free. He scrambled up to his feet as his attacker began to rage, his shrieks echoing off the cellar walls and ceiling.
The cellar was black with just a splash of light from the beam of Garrett’s fallen Maglite.
Garrett lunged and grabbed for the Mag.
The rasping words of his attacker behind him chilled his blood: “Choronzon, acerbus et ingens! Te hoc ferto pectore flamman Choronzon—”
With his heart in his throat, Garrett spun and trained the flashlight beam on the man who lay cursing him, his rants stripping his throat.
The light illuminated a face hideously distorted by madness and hate. And even though Garrett had known what he would see, the sight chilled him as no other moment in his life.
The frothing monster was Landauer.