The Forsaken (17 page)

“Well, when you find some, don’t be afraid to drop on by, yeah?” Eliam waited for his calm wit to settle in. “I’m only a man, Jude, not the Holy Ghost. But what I can give you, I will try to give. It’s the new case you’ve been assigned that’s got you twisted up, isn’t it?”

Jude was transparent. “I got a call about an hour ago.”

“That isn’t all that bizarre. Who was it?”

“I don’t know for sure. But I have an idea.”

“Victor?”

“How do you always do that?”

“Do what?”

“Know things. Know what I’m thinking.”

Eliam replied calmly, “The more time you spend here on this rock, the easier it is to learn the pattern of things. The way men think. Sixty years is a long time.”

“Well, you’re very good. And, yes,” Jude pushed out. “I believed it was Victor.”

“Believed? You used the past tense.”

“It’s probably nothing. I’m just a little confused. Maybe it was Morgan.”

“Are you referring to that vagabond who left you for dead?”

“I was so sure, Father. I was. The bodies we’ve found the last few days. It all seemed to point right to him. Victor, I mean. The way he killed, nobody could do that. Unless they’re working together?” Jude attempted to fit certain fragments into one another in his head. It wasn’t helping. “That phone call changed things.”

“Take a deep breath. It isn’t the end of the world. All you need to do is figure out the pattern. It’s a puzzle, nothing more.”

“Everything I’ve felt up until this point told me Victor was behind it. I mean, the evidence pointed right to him. No one could move like him. No one could kill in this precise manner, so I always returned to square one.”

“Sometimes things change when we least expect them to. You have many doubts now, but it doesn’t mean you weren’t on the right path.”

Jude nodded, his gaze wandering away from the priest. “I don’t know which way is up. The more I run through it all in my head, the more I question myself.”

“All men question themselves from time to time. Trust in the Lord and in yourself.”

“Me and him aren’t exactly on the best of terms.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jude replied lethargically. “Take a look at this, Father.” He pulled out a five-by-nine black and white photograph. A snapshot of one of the cadavers after examination.

“That symbol. Is that a cross imprinted in the victim’s skin?” Eliam muttered.

“Messed up, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it wouldn’t be the first time some psychotic murdered in the name of God.”

“What if Victor had an accomplice? What if he wasn’t the only one with these abilities? My God, it all sounds like science fiction, I know.”

“There are many realms beyond that which we can see and comprehend, Jude. I don’t think you’re insane, so it’s all right.”

“It’s not Morgan. It can’t be, right?”

“What makes you think it was your ex-partner?”

Jude hesitated. “My gut? The phone call. It’s so strange. Morgan stuck to the books when he did it. He killed in normal ways. Overdose, suffocation, stabbing. Stuff I see all the time. He was human. He wasn’t able to suck the life out of people like this. Dear God, maybe the chief was right. Maybe I am losing it, Father.”

“Relax, Jude.” Eliam said, staring once more at the photograph. “Suck the life out of people? Is that what this is? How disturbing.”

“Victor’s the only murderer I’ve ever tracked who could kill people the way this guy died. Not to mention the fact that this cross—” Jude pointed to the discreet formation on the victim’s flesh “—is imprinted inside the skin, burnt there, like a birthmark or something. There are no knife wounds of any kind or signs of tattoo ink. No blood, no scars.”

Eliam handed Jude the photograph and stroked the gray hair on his face. “So it is possible that two of your most wicked enemies are working together, as you suspected. My thought is either they are working together or somehow, in some way, Victor wasn’t the only one with this ability, as you call it. My question to you is this: Did you come to me for confirmation on your theory?”

Jude grabbed the photograph and looked away.

“I worry about you.” Eliam was pensive. “For now, let’s just forget whatever you’ve seen or heard. Put down the photograph and in your mind get rid of your police badge altogether. Look at this as Jude Foster, a man capable of putting an end to this evil. You are now a free agent looking for truth, for an answer. Think and know.”

Jude took a deep breath.

“Now tell me what you believe.”

“What kind of question is that? Are you trying to analyze my moral fiber at a time like this?”

“C’mon. I hope you would know me a little better than that. What does your spirit tell you?” Eliam lightly tapped Jude’s chest.

After his eyes roamed the high ceilings and carvings of the church, Jude felt them linger weakly on a statue of Mary and her infant child. So safe in those arms, the child was. Then his eyes found the stained windows where images of the Passion seemed to gruesomely reach out from the glass. He studied in a split second the child’s inevitable, inescapable fate. What he knew to be true and what he wanted to believe were now polar opposites. Two separate, irreconcilable things.

“Victor isn’t in this thing alone,” he finally said.

24

FLEEING ELIAM’S CHURCH, A
jolt of desperation surged through Jude’s entire being. A need to escape the present and once more navigate the clouded, black waters of his past.

The night his world shattered.

It was always coldest right before dawn. Jude abandoned his Chevelle and began the eight block journey toward the spot where he’d almost caught Morgan for good. Shot him but didn’t kill him. Once forgotten images sparked to life in his mind, disturbing snapshots of his ex-partner. That vile face stayed the same regardless of the way Jude’s subconscious re-imagined the jarring events.

Sprinting for five minutes was exhausting, but he managed to drag himself at last to the monstrous front gate, which led to the soul of one of God’s most desolate houses. It sat, isolated and alone—almost no light. Jude figured it was strange how quiet a place like a church could really be, with so much chaos and violence around it. These steps, this walkway, must’ve held so many memories. How many lives had stumbled in? How many hearts were dragged through the mud like his had been? Did mercy even remember? It was obvious that not only had the years weathered it, but drug lords and thieves and hopeless youths could no longer even stand its ruin.

As it was left, so now it existed.

Jude ducked beneath yards of surveillance thread. He didn’t fully comprehend what it was that kept pulling him closer. But here he was, standing before the unrelenting weight of what he’d left unfinished.

As his gaze scaled up the debilitating skeleton, he found remnants of the old, beautiful angels that looked as though they were guarding the city from on high. But they were crumbling and faded.

The first sensation to make itself welcome was a feeling that all of this—speaking to Eliam and coming here—could be a grave mistake. But that was the unbeliever in him. He was on the right path, wasn’t he? He’d followed the bread crumbs, the clues—his spirit, as the old priest had suggested. And it had led him here. At this precise moment. To set his mind at ease, he reached for his gun and opened one of the doors. If he was going to meet something nasty, he wasn’t about to meet it unprepared.

“No place like home,” Jude sighed.

Flickering lights spread over the stained-glass windows. They were broken. Jude moved forward. New memories flooded in. But he kept moving.

A strong and immediate gust of wind slammed the door behind him. Was it an omen? Was he trapped here to rot?

A cold chill snaked down his arms, gave him goose bumps.
Why did you come here?
his thoughts seemed to scream.

Rats scurried across the ground, looking for a late meal. As he rubbed his neck, removing a web caught in his hair, he finally lowered his weapon. The odds of finding a monster behind one of these walls seemed less likely now.

Light glowed and faded in a solitary room above the altar, intermittently at first, and then the ghost inside left it. Just then, a wooden plank unhinged from the roof and descended fast, whistling as it came down. The piece smacked hard enough on the floor to make his skin nearly leap off. Dust shot up as it hit, and Jude covered his eyes and nose, thinking he’d cough up a lung.

Jude finally reached the spiral staircase that could lead him higher. Closer still. Fearful yet unable to turn back, he prepared to climb it. His hand slid atop the filmy layer of icy, untouched metal. The surface was crumbling and dry. He looked down at his fingertips. In the darkness, he wasn’t able to identify it for certain. But the substance felt like old blood.

The moonlit steps guided him higher to the upper level. Familiar. This place was once a home before it was a place of worship. He couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps it was at one time used to hide tortured victims of unspeakable crimes. A sort of Auschwitz, where the depraved and menaces could hide their sins. But such thoughts were fleeting. There was no Hitler. There was no Lucifer. No walking skeletons. Just dust and memory.

Past images blanketed his subconscious in that moment, stronger than before. It was as if being here, in this room, recreated every haunting minute of the fight. Old memories resurrected the way his faith never fully could.

The echoing of footsteps seemed to turn him every which way. Called to him even, he swore. Jude listened around every corner for them, behind every wall. The way one might hear children’s laughter at a carnival but not know where it’s coming from.

“Get out of my freaking head!” Jude’s shriek ricocheted off the walls. But the footsteps drew nearer. More even than before. His neck twisted from side to side. There was running to the stairwell. No, there was climbing on the ceiling. Countless steps racing toward something, but he didn’t know what. Scratching steps. Loud steps. Needle steps. Or were they hiding in one of the rooms, the slight but known patter of feet on a cold floor, waiting to be discovered?

He pulled out a pocket flashlight. It wasn’t much, but it illuminated enough. For now.

“Who’s there?” he begged to know, the desperation clamoring out from his lungs.

Nothing.

“Who is it! Where are you!”

Still. Nothing.

“Come out of the dark!”

His command was lunacy. There was no coming out of the dark. The dark was all around him. It felt like suffocation or malnourishment. It dried the surface of his tongue, his lips sticking from the thirst.

“Answer me!” Jude froze. His heart dropped like lead. His blood filtered like snow inside his veins. He nudged his spine up against the tattered wall and exhaled. This was the exact spot. Ground zero. Mike’s team had left the stains. Perhaps the department just assumed it was better left this way. Maybe Mike had felt it too. The lingering. The numbing realization that all was not right in this house.

How did I survive?
Jude wondered, knowing the surgeons had him sprawled out on an operating table for several hours after the incident. One of his organs came from an unlucky college kid. Wrong place. Wrong time.

Like him.

But why’d he make it out with his life and the college kid didn’t?

Why did Morgan get away?

Jude scanned the area. These thoughts didn’t sound like his thoughts.

Oh, but they are. Maybe you’re more like the Devil Man than you thought. Maybe you’re more like all of them.

“Who!”

Silence.

So much evil seemed to have found solitude within this tormented haven. But where would they go to die?

Jude’s head suddenly spun when he heard the footsteps pick up. “Who’s there?” His request grew weaker the louder he screamed.

Again, the dark gave no reply. And he was beginning to believe he’d never find anyone here. But were these footsteps real? Was any of it?

Jude’s back slid down. His knees hinged and ached. He wanted to drop face first on the floor, to watch new sweat slip through these splintered wooden boards. But he leaned on the stiff surface instead, burying his head in trembling hands, the butt of his gun nudged against his forehead. “What am I doing here!” he screamed.

And then he wondered,
Am I losing my mind?

* * *

Wake up, Jude. You’re only…

… dreaming.

Still alive. Yes, that’s right.

If you call this living.

Wake up!

The voice inside his head was a rusty nail with nowhere to go but deeper. He could feel his eyes like loose mucus inside weary sockets.

You’re not dead, Jude.
The whisper had returned.

“I’m losing control. What’s happening to me? What is happening to me!”

Water drained from a cut in the ceiling. A minor wound but one that couldn’t heal. Between the sore flesh bled stinging drops of rain. There would be puddles soon. Possible collapse. Turning his head from side to side. Then tilting it from side to side. Repeat. Rewind. And again. The sweat moving between every crease was regret. It was Morgan’s face and the broken crosses he and Victor left behind.