The Devil's Touch (6 page)

"Joe!" he called. "See if the back door is locked."

"It ain't," Joe returned the shout.

Together, with Monty leading, the men entered the silent house. They noticed the electric coffee brewer, still on, a full pot of coffee. Strips of bacon laid out in an iron skillet, uncooked. A setting for one at the kitchen table, unused.

For the moment, the men went no further than the kitchen. Both of them experienced the hard sensation of something being very wrong.

"Take the house to the left, Joe," Monty said. "I'll check the one to the right. Ask if anyone saw Miss Mayberry today."

"Something awful wrong in town, Chief. And I mean the whole town."

"I know, Joe. You haven't mentioned to anybody about what Father Le Moyne saw last night, have you?"

"Not a word, Chief."

"O.K. Let's go."

"Yes, Chief," a lady said. "I saw her earlier this morning, out in the orchard, picking wildflowers. But that's the only time I saw her."

The lady could definitely use a good scrubbing, Monty thought. She smelled very bad. Come to think of it, Monty mused, a lot of folks around town the last three-four days have needed a good bath. Strange. Damn! that word again.

So the basket and the flowers did belong to Judith. But where was Judith?

And the smelly lady showed absolutely no interest in what had just transpired in the orchard. Strange. Crap! Come on, Monty—find another word.

"Ah—Mrs. Clemmings, you haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary this morning, have you?"

"Not a thing, Chief. I've been here all morning. Haven't seen a thing."

Somehow, her reply was not unexpected to Monty. "I see," he said slowly. "You didn't notice large groups of men, an ambulance, nothing like that?"

"Why—no, Chief," she said.

What was wrong with her eyes. They seemed so . . . so dull and lifeless.

"Thank you, Mrs. Clemmings. You've been very helpful." And for God's sake, lady, take a bath! You're a one-woman hog pen.

Monty walked slowly to the rear of the Mayberry house. The woman had seen or heard
nothing!
Four police and sheriffs department vehicles and one ambulance, and the woman had heard
nothing.
He knew she wasn't deaf; she had admitted being in the house all morning. So that left one alternative: she was lying.

But why?

He looked up to watch Joe walking slowly toward him, a very puzzled expression on his face. Monty felt he knew the reason for the puzzlement.

"Chief, either we got the most unobservant and deafest folks in all of northern New York State, or we got a bunch of bald-faced liars. Take your pick. And these folks are beginning to stink like polecats."

"I know what you mean, Joe. Nobody has seen or heard a thing. Strange." That word again. Monty made a mental note to avoid using it.

"Strange isn't the word I'd use, Chief."

"Oh?"

"Weird."

"Yes. That, too. Let's take a walk in the orchard before we prowl the house. I want to go over every inch of that old orchard."

"What are we looking for?" Monty glanced at the man. Joe was more than his assistant; the men were good friends. Joe was the oldest and most stable of all Monty's men. "I don't know, Joe. I just don't know."

In the rolling ambulance, beneath the blanket that covered her tortured and mangled body, Marie Fowler twitched her fingers. She opened her eyes. They were not the eyes of the living. They were dull, unfeeling, evil eyes of the undead.

Marie felt no pain. She was no longer of the living world. Her body had not yet been washed of the blood that streaked her marked nakedness, so no one among the police or the paramedics had noticed the tiny fang marks on her neck. They were her vaccination against almost everything pertaining to the human side of living.

Marie was weak. She had lost much blood, and her new form of unlife craved the hot, salty taste of fresh, living blood. She was fully cognizant of what had happened to her; fully aware of her new life-form. She harbored no ill will toward those that changed the direction of her human life, for in this form, she would know eternal life, barring no unforeseen difficulties, such as humans wielding pointed stakes or holy water.

She pushed the blanket from her and wrapped herself in a hospital gown. She looked around. The driver and his partner were chatting. Marie smiled; a grotesque grimace, exposing teeth that had become pointed. Her lips were chalk white, her tongue a swollen bright red.

She opened the partition.

The men turned around.

"Hello," Marie said.

The men began screaming.

"Father Le Moyne?" Sam asked when the door opened.

"Yes," the priest said.

"I'm Sam Balon. This is my wife, Nydia. May we come in? I'd—we'd like very much to talk with you."

The priest looked at the young couple. Good-looking young man, very beautiful young woman. He looked at them for a long moment. The moment he had dreaded had arrived. Thank God in human form. Father Le Moyne longed desperately to close the door to his small living quarters. Wanted to shut out the young couple. But he knew he could not do that.

"You're here to tell me the Devil is in Logandale." It was not a question.

"Yes, sir," Sam replied. "I've fought him before, just as my Dad did back in '58. We both beat him—in a manner of speaking—and I feel I can do it again."

Father Le Moyne's knees felt weak; made of rubber. He did not know if they would support his weight. He leaned against the door jamb for a few seconds. With a deep sigh, and an inner plea for forgiveness from the Lord for his doubts, Father Le Moyne straightened up and reluctantly waved the young couple inside.

When they were seated, Le Moyne said, "Have you heard about the poor Fowler girl?"

Sam and Nydia said they had not.

Le Moyne told them.

"I'm surprised the Beasts didn't eat her," Sam said. "Unless they have other plans for her."

Le Moyne could detect no fear or surprise in the young man's reply.

"The Beasts? Other plans?"

Sam leaned forward, Nydia holding onto his hand. "Father Le Moyne, I'm going to tell you a story that you are going to find very hard to believe."

"No," the priest said with an almost painful sigh. "I've known the Dark One was near; knew the time would come when I would have to face him."

"That time is here, Father," Nydia said. The priest closed his eyes. "Tell me your story, Mr. Balon."

"There's a hole in the ground over here," Joe called. "All covered over with brush. And God, does it stink."

Monty walked across the orchard to stand by Joe. His nose wrinkled at the foul odor coming from the hole in the earth. "Jesus H. Christ! What would cause a smell like that?"

"I ain't never smelled anything like that, Chief. And I worked in the mines down in Kentucky as a kid, 'fore my daddy moved us all up here. I thought I'd done smelled everything God could possibly put in the ground, but nothing like this here."

"I thought you were a native, Joe," Monty said with a smile.

"Sure you did. 'Way I talk? I think like a native, but I ain't. I was fifteen when my dad brung us up here. I've lived here forty years."

The men looked down into the dark hole. A glint of something metallic caught Monty's eyes. It gleamed from just inside the yawning hole. With Joe holding on to his ankles to keep him from tumbling into the darkness, Monty retrieved the piece of jewelry. An earring.

"You reckon that's Miss Mayberry's?" Joe asked.

"I'd bet on it. And I'd also bet the neighbors aren't going to tell us a thing."

"You and me both, Chief. Don't turn around, but there's a face at damn near every window back of us. We're being watched real close."

"What the hell is going on in this town, Joe?"

"I don't know, Chief. But I get the feeling it's—don't laugh at me, now—evil."

"That's as good a word as any, Joe. Did Miss Mayberry socialize much?"

Joe smiled. "I wouldn't want to say she was gettin' any on a regular basis, but she's been seein' that ol' boy owns the hardware store. Will Gibson."

"Let's go pay Mr. Gibson a visit."

"I'm ridin' with you, Chief."

The paramedics were found sitting in their ambulance, halfway between Logandale and Blaine. The body of Marie Fowler was not in the ambulance. Since the highway cop who found the ambulance and the dead men knew nothing of their mission, he did not find it odd no one was in the rear of the ambulance. He had looked, but the stretcher did not appear mussed. The paramedics' logbook was missing, so the highway cop could not check that. He did not call in to Clark County because the men were taking a short cut and were in McGray County when whatever happened to them occurred. It was an independently owned ambulance service, so the hospital at Blaine would know nothing of Marie Fowler.

But what did appear odd to the highway patrolman was the condition of the men. There was not a mark on either of them that he could see. But they were so pale-looking. It looked as though there was not a drop of blood left in either man. But there was no blood anywhere in or around the ambulance.

The highway cop stood looking at the men, a perplexed look on his face. He radioed the McGray County Sheriffs Department. They notified the coroner. But he and his small staff were up to their elbows doing an autopsy on an entire family that had been found dead in their van, parked on the edge of the park. The M.E. felt sure they had all died of carbon monoxide poisoning, but he still had to open them all up. And to complicate matters further, a lot of drugs had been discovered in the van. Of the recreational variety rather than medical type.

"Stick them in the cooler," the M.E. told his assistant. "We'll get to them Monday or Tuesday. Damn this Saturday work."

The assistant took a look at the bodies of the paramedics. He had never seen anything quite like them. "So pale," he muttered. "Almost as if they had no blood in them."

"What'd you say, Max?"

"Oh—nothing."

"Come look at the liver on this guy," the M.E. said. "He must have consumed a quart of booze a day. Liver's hard as a piece of leather."

As Max dropped the sheet back over the ambulance driver, he did not notice the man's eyelids fluttering as new life rose to the surface.

"Yes," Will Gibson said, handing the earring back to the chief. "That belongs to Judith. Why are you asking me these questions, Chief Draper?"

"You've heard about Marie?"

"Yes. A terrible thing. Human animals roaming society. People who would do something like that should be shot on sight. But you don't think Judith had anything to do with the Fowler girl, do you?"

"Oh, no, Will. It's just we can't find Judith, and we want to talk to her. She might have seen something that would be of importance to the case."

But Will wasn't buying that. "Something's happened to her, hasn't it, Chief?"

"Will—" Joe said.

"No. Now you people level with me. If something has happened to Judith, I want to know. I have a right to know."

"All right, Will," Monty said. "We found this earring just inside the mouth of a hole on her property. In the orchard. I'm going to get a search team together; ask for volunteers. I—"

"I am a longtime spelunker, Chief. There is no one more qualified in this town. Let me get my gear together and I'll go down in the hole."

Monty sighed. But he knew the man was right. Will Gibson had crawled around every cave and hole in the ground he could find in the state of New York. "All right, Will. I'll meet you out there in half an hour. But I will insist upon you being attached to a rope and be in radio contact with me."

"Sometimes radios don't work down there, Chief. Not for any distance."

"Those are the terms of the deal, Will."

"All right, Chief. I have no objections to that."

Monty's car radio was squawking when the men returned to the police car. "Logandale One," Monty said. "Come in."

"Chief, what is your ten-twenty?"

"In front of the hardware store."

"Was that ambulance that took the Fowler girl into Blaine a hospital rig?"

"You mean belonging to the hospital?"

"Right."

"Negative. The independent service out of Aumsville. Don't know why Jenkins called that one."

"Ah—O.K., Chief. Can you ten-nineteen?"

"On my way."

"What the hell?" Joe muttered.

"Don't know. So let's go find out."

Father Le Moyne stood gazing out his living room window. He had heard all the young couple had told him, but he found it difficult to believe. He knew in his heart, though, it was true. He turned slowly. "Whitfield was where that giant meteor struck several years ago, destroying the entire town, killing everyone in it."

"That was not just a meteor, Father."

"Are you telling me—"

"It was the hand of God."

Le Moyne crossed himself, his eyes closed. "And the poor Fowler girl is a part of all this?"

"That poor Fowler girl, as you put it, Father, may now be a part of the living dead," Nydia said.

"I cannot accept that premise, Nydia," the priest spoke sharply. "I do not believe in vampires or zombies. Possession, of course. But it ends there."

"You're wrong, Father," Sam spoke bluntly. Another trait he had inherited from his father. "Would you like for us to show you?"

"I—" The priest hesitated.

"Why are you afraid, Father?" Nydia asked, tilting her head to one side, brushing back a strand of midnight hair that fell over one eye each time she did so.

The priest glanced at her. "Perhaps, Mrs. Balon, I know things about Satan you do not."

"I'm sure you do, Father. But I can assure you I have been on a much more intimate basis with the Devil's workers than you."

"How do you mean, child?"

Nydia met his gaze and said bluntly, "A warlock raped me."

* * *

Roma had won. She had managed to seduce young Sam—at the orders of Satan—thus guaranteeing a demon child would be born from Sam's seed. She had done so by trickery, placing Nydia in a state of suspending animation. Sam believed her dead.

Upon reentering Falcon House, Sam had followed the sound of sad funeral music. Upstairs, Nydia lay in a coffin. Weeping and sobbing people lined the room. They had—to a person—told Sam they wanted to accept Christ into their hearts, and turn their backs on the Devil. In his confused state, Sam believed them. He allowed Roma to set him on a couch, the witch beside him. He did not know her perfume was drugged with a powerful ancient aphrodisiac. He fell prey to its black power.