Spookshow V: Half-Boys and Gypsy Girls, page 17
Thirty minutes later, Billie was ready to chuck the useless thing out the window. The Eye of Horus was little more than a gossip rag for some arcane inner circle of enthusiasts of the spiritualist movement at the turn of the century. There were a few essays on the use of the Tarot, water-witching and the existence of faeries, all written in dense, flowery language that only seemed to obscure their subjects rather than elucidate them. There were pieces on phrenology, palmistry and séances by practitioners of these subjects that were basically early advertorials. There was a review of a recent Houdini performance in Montreal and a review of a carnival sideshow called the Lesser Orphans of Cairo. The archaic language was giving her a headache and she wondered if she’d have better luck with the library books. Flipping through the rest of the chapbook, she found more of the same but the last two pages were letters to the editor. These were not as stuffy as the articles and a few missives were even gossipy, with one spiritualist accusing another of being a fraud. Juicy. The last letter in the column made her sit up when she spied a familiar name: Archibald Crump.
The letter was glowing praise from an admirer who had recently consulted with Crump in an effort to contact a deceased relative. Describing Crump as the real McCoy, the admirer stated that her mind had been put at ease after the spiritualist had contacted the spirit of her late mother to ensure that she approved of her recent engagement. The correspondent did, however, find Crump’s methods unusual, not the least of which was the inclusion of the little boy at the table. Explaining the child’s presence, Crump had reassured her that children, with their unbiased minds and pure hearts, were the ideal conduits for the spirit realm and not to be alarmed if the ghost of her dead mother spoke directly through the little boy.
Billie felt her heart double-thump with excitement. She read the letter a second time to hone in on the details. Crump used a child in his séance routine, a little boy. Could it be a coincidence or was it possible that the child described in the letter was in fact the Half-Boy? The tattered cap he wore in death was a hand-me-down from Archibald Crump.
She spun around in the chair and looked over the apartment. It was empty. She widened her senses, like a sonar ping, and swept the place. The boy was close, but remained hidden somewhere.
“Come out,” she said aloud. “I want to talk to you.”
Nothing stirred. If anything, the lad’s presence dissipated from her senses as if he’d slunk away.
She got to her feet, her muscles jittery with excitement at the possible connection she had unearthed. Had she finally tracked him down? Adding to the gleeful discovery was the odd inclusion of the paranormal, the boy’s use as a sort of intermediary between Crump and the spirit of this woman’s late mother. Was that more coincidence or did it hint at some hidden reason why the boy had been drawn to Billie in the first place?
Her phone went off before she could puzzle out any more. “Hello?” she said without checking the caller display.
“Bee? It’s Tammy. Can you come over here? It’s an emergency.”
“Emergency? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Kaitlin,” Tammy said, her voice tinted in panic. “She’s had some kind of fit.”
“Then, take her to the hospital. Is it her injury?”
“That’s what I thought too, but she’s says it’s not. It’s weird, Bee. Like, spooky weird. She didn’t even want me to call you.”
Billie covered her free ear, as if that would clarify what the other woman was saying. “What do you mean spooky weird?”
“Billie, please. Just get over here. Now!”
“Okay. I’m on my way.” Billie hung up, reached for her coat and ran for the door, but something in her peripheral vision made her stop.
It fluttered to the ground like a feather, but she couldn’t tell what it was at first. The apartment seemed the same until she noticed that the drawing of the Half-Boy rendered by the sketch artist was gone from the wall. It had been torn to pieces and lay scattered over her newly cleaned desk and the floor around it.
The boy was nowhere to be seen, but she could feel an echo of his presence in the room, faint and fading like he had just fled.
~
Detective Mockler sat with his feet propped up, fighting to keep his focus trained on the cramped typeset. Nestled against his lap was one of the oversized books, the second of the trio he had borrowed from the archive depository. All three volumes were due back tomorrow and he still had a long way to go, but his brain was fried from scouring the archaic records filed by the constabulary of a century ago.
A missile dropped from overhead like a bombing run, landing squarely on the book. Mockler flinched, catching the object before it tumbled from his lap. A crinkly paper bag, one corner damp with grease.
“Bombs away,” declared Odinbeck as he dropped into his chair. “Time for your three o’ clock jolt.”
Mockler lifted the bag as if it was dangerous. “What is it?”
“Quick pick-me-up,” Odinbeck said. He nodded at the massive book in his partner’s lap. “You still searching that?”
“Yup.” Mockler peered inside the bag to find a huge donut with a thick glaze of pink frosting. “Where did you find this?”
“New coffee place on John Street. I scoffed at the idea of gourmet donuts. Then, I tried one. Shazam.” Odinbeck reached over and took the giant book from Mockler. “Lemme see this thing.”
Removing the pastry from the bag, Mockler admired the decorative icing swirled into a flower and then he bit into it. Heaven.
“Here,” Odinbeck said, tossing two stapled pages at him. “Have a look at this.”
Mockler scanned the bold print. “The tox screen?” he asked, crumbs falling onto the paper. “On who?”
“Antler man.” Odinbeck wet a finger to turn the onionskin pages. “Our mysterious vic in the woods. They pumped that poor son of a bitch up with everything.”
“Opiate derivative, sodium pentothal,” Mockler said, reading out the bullet points. “Morphine? Jesus.”
Odinbeck ran his finger down the columns of type as he skimmed the page. “A real cocktail of stuff. Muscle relaxants, too. They had him doped to the gills. I hope the poor bastard didn’t feel any pain.”
“Anything rare in the mix?” Mockler asked, turning to the second page in the toxicology report. “Something we could focus on.”
“Not really. Everything coulda been lifted from cancer meds or bought on the street.” The older detective sat up, holding his finger in a certain place on the page. “What is it you’re looking for? A child’s death?”
“Yeah. A boy. Why?”
“Is this him?” Odinbeck wheeled his chair closer, keeping his finger cued to a certain passage. “Body of a child, washed up in the harbour. Possible boating accident. Legs missing from cadaver.”
Mockler blinked stupidly for a moment before snatching the massive tome back, his gaze laser-beaming on the text. He had squandered a day and a half scouring these pages to no effect only to have his partner track it down with a breezy effortlessness. He read the pertinent details a second time. A child, male, both legs severed at the upper thigh.
He almost ignored his phone when it lit up. He was curt answering it, annoyed at being disturbed now. “Mockler.”
“Ray?” Billie’s voice, something not right in her tone. “I need to see you.”
Sliding the giant book onto his desk, he pressed a finger on the passage so as to not lose his place. “Can it wait? I’m in the middle of something here.”
“No,” she said. There was no mistaking her tone. Stone cold gravitas. “I’m at Tammy’s. You need to get down here now. One oh-four Sherman South. Please.”
Slapping a sticky note onto the passage, he slammed the book close and tucked it under his arm. “I’m on my way.”
Chapter 22
“WHY DIDN’T YOU want to tell me?” Billie asked.
Kaitlin was on the sofa with her knees tucked up and a blanket around her shoulders. “You said you quit. You didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.” She shrugged. “I wanted to respect that.”
“Quit?” Tammy shifted her gaze to Billie. “Quit what? Being psychic?”
The glare in Tammy’s eyes was cold and Billie winced under it. She looked up at Kaitlin, shivering on the sofa. Her skin had taken on a waxy sheen and there was a red mark on her brow from where she had hit her head during the seizure. Hadn’t she been through enough already? “Kaitlin,” she said, reaching out for her hand. “I screwed up. Again. I shouldn’t have brushed you off when you wanted to talk. I should have listened to you.”
“I get it now,” Kaitlin said. “Believe me, I get it.”
Billie lowered her eyes, feeling unworthy of her friend’s grace. She seemed destined to forever make the wrong choices. The attempt to shut out the spookshow forever had been foolish, not to mention selfish. It had isolated Kaitlin and spurned the Half-Boy when both needed her. How could she have been so thoughtless?
She pushed away the suffocating remorse. There would be time to crucify herself over it later. Right now, something had happened and it was troubling. “Are you sure it was Owen?”
“Positive. It was like I was inside his head. I could feel everything he was feeling.” Kaitlin touched the spot on her cheek where she had felt the whip flay her skin. “It still hurts.”
“How is that possible?” Tammy interjected, looking at Billie. “I thought you were the one who’s psychic?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like there’s an instruction manual to this stuff.” Billie turned back to the woman shivering on the sofa. “Could you see where he was? Did anything look familiar?”
Kaitlin shook her head. “It was dark and cold. Like it was underground. That’s all I could see.”
The entry buzzer sounded and Tammy left the room to see who it was. Kaitlin went on. “He was in so much pain, Bee. I think they’re going to kill him.”
“He tried to kill you, Kaitlin.”
“That wasn’t him,” Kaitlin countered. “That awful woman was using him. Owen’s not a bad person. He’s just messed up.”
Tammy stepped back into the room. “Bee? Your boyfriend’s here.”
~
“Do you believe her?” Mockler asked.
Billie nodded her head. “Kaitlin has some ability. I’m not sure what exactly it is, but it’s real.”
They had stepped into the kitchen to talk quietly, while Tammy took care of their friend. The detective scratched his head, mulling over what he’d just been told. “So, Kaitlin has this seizure where she suddenly feels what this Owen kid is feeling?”
“Basically,” Billie said. “It’s a flash of empathy with the other person. Don’t ask me exactly how it works because I don’t know. But Kaitlin has a connection to certain people and when the other person experiences extreme pain or stress, it’s like it’s happening to her, too.”
“Even with a guy who tried to kill her?”
“They’d both been possessed by Evelyn Bourdain,” Billie suggested. “Maybe that was enough to bond them.”
“And she didn’t see the person attacking her? Or Owen, I mean?”
“She said it was too dark.”
Mockler leaned back against the counter, his face darkening. “Shit,” he muttered quietly.
“What is it?”
His eyes stayed on the floor. “Do you remember Owen’s friend, Justin?”
“How could I forget? They were both there at the Murder House.”
“He’s dead. He was found in the woods, tied to a tree stump and cut open in some kind of ritual.”
“What?” She took a step back, as if distance would render his statement sensible. “Are you sure it was him? When did it happen?”
“Eight days ago. We positively identified him.”
She shook her head, still trying to make sense of it. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know if it has anything to do with you or what happened at that house. It looks like something else.” Mockler rubbed his eyes. “You’d been through enough already. I wasn’t going to tell you about it unless I knew for certain it had something to do with you.”
“He was killed in some ritual,” she fumed. “How could it not?”
“You told me that the Bourdain woman was gone after the house went up in flames and the whole place was bulldozed. You said she was gone.”
“She is gone,” Billie said. “I’m sure of it.”
“Then, there’s something else going on. Who knows what else those two were into.”
“But you still should have told me. After all this? Jesus.”
“You’re right.” He sighed, shoulders stooping. “I didn’t want to burden you with it if I didn’t have to. You said you wanted to put all of this behind you.”
Billie held her tongue. She understood what he was saying, but it didn’t extinguish the ire souring her guts. She took a breath and said, “For the record, I don’t want you to protect me or shield me from things, but I do need you to be open with me. About everything. Okay?”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Good.” Billie reached for her coat. “Now, show me where this happened.”
“What?”
“The crime scene. I want to see the place where Justin died.” She cut off his protest before he uttered a word. “No arguments. Let’s go.”
~
The lights of the city were left behind as they drove the dark country roads to a place called Crooks Hollow. The quaint houses gave way to the occasional farm in the distance and then they too faded until there was only the yellow stripe of the road lit up in the headlights.
“Take the wheel,” he said.
“Why?” she asked in surprise.
“Just hold it steady for a second.”
Billie gripped the steering wheel as Mockler reached behind to find his suitcase in the backseat. Sliding back into position, he rifled through its contents without taking the wheel.
Keeping the car on course from the passenger side was awkward, especially at the speed they were travelling. “Uh, do you want to pull over so we can change places?”
“I got it,” he said, taking the steering wheel again. He held out a manila folder. “Here. You may as well see all of it.”
Opening the folder, Billie slid out the crime scene photos. Unprepared, she turned away for a moment before steeling her gut and looking back. It was impossible not to wince at the sight of the body lashed to the tree or the bloody wounds up and down his skin. It looked as if he’d been attacked with a wire brush. “What did they do to his head?”
“Those are deer antlers. They were drilled into his skull.” He watched her grimace at the horror of it. “They also carved symbols into his flesh. There’s photographs of them in there.”
Billie’s stomach churned at the images, but she kept flipping through the pictures until she found the snapshots he referred to. “That poor man.”
“He was doped up on a lot of stuff, including morphine. He may not have felt much pain when they did that to him. Do you recognize any of those?”
“No,” she said. “None of these look familiar.”
“I compared these markings to the glyphs found at the Murder House. None of them matched. I don’t think there’s a correlation.”
Billie squared up the loose photographs and closed the folder. “So, whoever did this to Justin has nothing to do with the Murder House? It’s just a coincidence?”
“I’m not so sure. These two guys were obsessed with the paranormal. They may have encountered the perpetrators through that, exactly the same way they got mixed up with the Bourdain woman.” He slowed the car, keeping an eye out for a landmark in the darkness of the trees. “Gantry once told me that there’s an occult underground operating in the city. Not amateur stuff like these two kids but wealthy, well-connected people who operated some kind of network.”
“He told me that, too, but Gantry said a lot of weird things.” She slid the folder back into the bag. “Do you think this underground network is involved here?”
“It’s just a guess at this point. One of many.” He drove on, crawling the car along. “Keep your eyes peeled for a sign that says Crooks Hollow Mill.”
A bank of trees hemmed both sides of the dark road like a fortress wall. The only light came from the vehicle’s headlights, the only sound that of the tires grinding slowly over the cracked asphalt.
“I think I found the boy,” he said. “Your friend.”
Billie turned quickly. “Oh my God, so did I.” She had almost forgotten about it in the chaos. “What did you find?”
“A small note in the police archives, dated 1906. The body of a child washed up in the harbour. Both legs were missing from the thigh down.”
“That has to be him,” she said, thrilled at the find. “What else did it say? Was there a name?”
“No, that was it. Just the discovery of the body.”
Billie’s brow furrowed. “That’s it? The police find a dead child and that’s it?”
“It may have gotten lost in the chaos,” he said. “The body was found on November22, the day after a huge riot in the city. A lot of people got hurt that night, some of them died.”
“I remember seeing something about a strike.”
“It was bloody. With the rail workers on strike, the city called in police forces from all over the area to break up the crowds. A sheriff actually read the Riot Act and then everything blew up. It was brutal. I think the boy found in the harbour was just added to the casualty list and not investigated properly.”
“Did he drown?”
“The report didn’t say. It’s possible he could have had some accident and then fallen into the water. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.”
“It must be him,” said Billie. “The severed legs, the date occurring just a few years after the date on the penny in his pocket.”
Mockler kept scanning the wall of trees. “What did you find?”
“A reference in an old booklet. It mentions Archibald Crump’s séances, and how he used a small boy as part of his act.”
