A Crying Shame (4 page)

Take a gun, Paul.”

He slowly turned in the foyer. Both of them heard the scratching, pawing sound in the front yard, audible over the rain.
A gun, Sis?”

Yes. Please, Paul? You brought an arsenal up here with you. You must have had some reason for doing that. And it would make me feel better knowing you're armed.”

He nodded his head in silent compliance.
All right.” That pawing sound was repeated. Both of them looked at the door; neither made mention of the strange noise. Paul went to a gun cabinet, pulling out a double-barreled twelve-gauge, breaking it down, loading it with three-inch magnums. Shotgun loaded, he went to the door. Wind and rain greeted the opening, the rain dampening the hall floor. The night yawned dark and wet past the now-lighted porch.

He looked back at his sister, standing with her arms folded under her breasts.
I'll be back in a minute,” he told her.

That was the last thing Paul Breaux ever said to his sister.

She nodded.
Be careful.”

She sat down in a chair, watching her brother close the door behind him, shutting out the sounds of the storm, muting them. She felt her skin prickle; it seemed to crawl with a life all its own. She rubbed her forearms. Dread, she guessed. Fear. Linda was not superstitious, was not afraid of the dark ... of graveyards. But she dimly remembered her visits to her grandmother, way down in the swamps of south Louisiana, years back, when she was but a small child. Her grandmother refused to live in New Orleans, choosing instead to stay at the old home place. Her
grandmere
used to tell her stories of the beasts that prowled the swamps and bayous; stories of the
catachmar,
the
loup-garou.

But, she sighed, that had been a long time ago. Her
grandmere
had been dead for years, and all those stories were just tales to frighten a child. Nonsense. She didn't really believe in all that.

Or did she?

A scream ripped the stormy night—a yowling sound. Not human. No human could make a sound like that.

She sat still and perfectly straight in the chair. Paul's shotgun boomed, shattering the darkness, the blast matching the thunder that rolled about the plantation house, on the edge of the Crying Swamp. The shotgun roared once, then again. Wind and rain whipped the house by the mysterious swamp, the largest swamp in all of north and north-central Louisiana. Thousands and thousands of acres. It was named the Crying Swamp because many people had heard strange noises coming from the moss-hung gloom, floating plaintively over the black water. A sobbing sound, echoing through the tall, huge, ancient cypress. And over the years, so the stories went, people had gone into the swamp ... and never returned. No trace of them ever found. No one to tell what had happened.

Paul screamed in pure anguish; Linda jumped to her feet, trembling in fear, her breathing shallow. Her skin felt cold and clammy. The shotgun came crashing through the big picture window. The heavy weapon had been bent double. It landed at her feet amid a shower of glass.

Paul!” she screamed.

A growl greeted her call.

She ran to the window; the wind lashed through the broken glass whipping the drapes, popping them as a blacksnake whip in the hands of a master. She jerked the drapes apart. A face and form out of hell stood on the porch, staring at her, slobbering a thick drool from animal lips.

She screamed, her frightened cry seeming to anger the creature. It reached for her, through the broken glass, its paw grabbing at her.

Linda jerked back, away from the awfulness she was seeing through unbelieving eyes. But she knew it was real ... true. She turned, in her haste banging her shin against a planter. Plants tumbled to the now-wet floor. Ignoring the pain in her shin, she ran in a panic down the hall to the office. She jerked open a drawer of the desk, her hands fumbling, sweaty, nervous. She pulled out a .32 automatic pistol. She could hear the ... whatever in the name of God it was ... beast ... snarling and pawing on the porch. She didn't know what to do; where to run; her legs felt useless, numb from fear. Her skin was cold-feeling, and the sweat that dripped from her face was sticky.

The beast howled in the stormy night, its cry the sound of the hunter who has cornered prey. There followed the sound of more glass breaking, shattering and falling to the floor.

The lights went out, plunging the room in the great old house into mind-chilling, nerve-screaming darkness. A hard rip of lightning, sulfurous in its charge, cut through the night.

That ... thing was in the house. Linda could sense its presence; could feel the evil slowly searching for her in the unfamiliar darkness of the mansion. She could hear it sniffing the humid air, and she could smell its awful odor as it tracked her through the house, following her female scent through the hall, past the guest bedrooms on the lower level of the plantation house, to the office. Its bare feet scratched the hardwood floor; its toenails clicked, then caught, pulling at the fabric of the carpeted office entrance. It stopped just inside the door.

Linda jacked a round into the pistol by rote; she had been trained well in the use of weapons.

What do you want?” she screamed the question.

Dear God—leave me alone!”