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Every Foul Spirit PROLOGUE
PROLOGUEA FIGURE WALKSwith grim determination through the dark heart of a silent graveyard. Mindful of her surroundings, she searches, cloaked beneath a canopy of midnight clouds, for one marker in particular. She is young, still a girl really, barely twenty-one, yet she moves between the shadowy tombstones as though completely at home. As if this is where she has always belonged. Home amongst the bones.So, what am I told?She finds the marker she is looking for, the one she’s dreamed of in nightmares—WINTERMUTE—and kneels at the grave. She brushes debris away from the footstone: dried dead leaves, a condom wrapper, a willow tree seedpod.What lies under the ground becomes instantly aware, currents running through its decomposed husk. It tenses and listens for her, eye sockets agape. Its fleshless jaws widen to scream ...The young woman catches it in time. “Shhh,” she whispers. “I’m here. They wouldn’t let me out.”Lips gnashed and gone, finger bones worn awa
Every Foul Spirit 1
1POLICE WERE CALLINGhim “Mr. Vespers”, and the online muckraking sites, the Illinois rags, even a few of the bigger newspapers had followed suit: a serial killer who talked to his own variation of God, chanted psalms over his butchered victims before receding into the night.It’d begun with the disappearance of pets from yards, dogs mostly, going missing down around the South Reach Mids, the extreme southernmost fringes of town. Turning up tortured and lifeless afterward. Soon, this had progressed to children.Three kids dead so far and counting, two more of unknown whereabouts still.Katie Franklin had followed the story from within the walls of her prison at that time, the Ransom Mental Health Facility—formerly the Ransom Sanitarium for the Criminally Insane, back in the high old days of lunacy reform—where she found herself involuntarily committed by the state of Maine after her father’s tormented heart had finally given out on him. The headline floating there on the staf
Every Foul Spirit 2
2THE NEXT DAY, a stranger walked into Blackwater Valley’s redbrick Public Safety Building and straight up to the information desk. She was a long, tall young woman, this outsider, fair complexioned, and elegant despite being lanky, her irises pearly gray in color.Katie scanned the room as she entered, noting the many desks and computers; the dispatcher’s radio in a corner. She took stock of the people, probing their minds, their inner workings. She noticed one of the older deputies staring at her, checking out her rear end and firm thighs inside the faded denim jeans as she passed, the curve at the small of her bare back where her top had ridden up. The ribbon in her dark hair.“Chief Clemency’s office, please?” Katie asked the duty secretary, tugging the hem of her shirt below her waist again. “Name is Miss Franklin. He’s expecting me.”The lady looked her over, pressing an intercom button before her. “Just one moment.”A uniformed black man in his early to mid-fifties came out
Every Foul Spirit 3
3THE KILLER PUSHEDopen the cabinet doors and slinked down from the kitchen cupboard where he slept, then let himself out of his empty apartment into the night.The girl was in her mid-teens, young and pretty, blue-eyed, and worried because her friends had gone on and left her behind in the dark. That’s how the killer found her, and caught her: separated, and alone. In the dark.“Hey—” she said, raising her face up from her lighted phone screen.He grabbed her cinnamon hair and yanked her off the bike she was seated on, wrenching one of her arms right from its socket. When she began to scream in abrupt terror, twisting and struggling wildly, an initialed handkerchief emerged and was stuffed into her mouth. He crushed the smartphone underfoot. Pummeled her face until she sank back, dazed and bloodied from the blows.“ ... the sun knows it’s time for setting,” he chanted softly to some unseen presence. “Thou makest darkness, and it is night ... ”Mr. V
Every Foul Spirit 4
4AFTER GRABBING A late bite to eat with Palm Clemency and his daughter, Cimmeria, Katelyn returned to the New Look. She walked to her door with the folder of news cuttings under her arm, pausing to buy a soda from the vending machines.An old man was standing in the shadows of the motel office’s doorway, drinking coffee out of an almond-colored MOLINE, ILL. stoneware mug. He nodded at her.“Looks like I’ll be needing the room awhile longer, Mr. Pye,” Katie informed him.“No misters, young lady—just Pye,” said the old man, sipping his coffee. He winked. “Happy to have you. You’re the only paying guest in the whole place.” He lifted the cup toward her, his face all creased and wrinkly. “See you in the funnies.”Inside her locked room for the evening, Katie put her cell phone on its charger and opened her can of orange soda. She began going through the photocopies from the manila folder, sitting among their array on the bed, perusing articles that told where the bodies had been foun
Every Foul Spirit 5
5BLESSING ACRES CERTAINLY had changed a lot. Gone were the apple orchard and the small Pick-Your-Own pumpkin patch Katie remembered, and the Christmas tree grove. Also absent were most of the outbuildings, including the Petting Corral and its animals. Only the old lime-green farmhouse and great round barn remained, with a few tents here and there, surrounded on all sides now by sedge meadow and grazing pastures.After paying for parking next to the buses, Katie trudged up the lane past the BLESSING GRASSLANDSsign, the legs of her denim jeans tucked inside her faux leather knee-high boots. She rolled her head around, feeling the tightness in her neck muscles from sleeping in the chair the way she did last night and waking up so out of sorts.She could see an American Indian woman at the Welcoming Tent near the barn, black hair tied back from her dark, pretty face. When she got closer, Katie glimpsed a silver ring in her pierced lower lip and at once recognized the woman. Excit
Every Foul Spirit 6
6KATIE SAW THEIRhuge woolly heads coming over the rise, heard the loud, guttural noises they made as they charged across the open grazing plains. Three massive bison were nearing, dark brown in color, a gigantic bull and a pair of cows; four, really, including the smaller reddish calf tagging along. Katie noted their shaggy bulk as they ran, the short sharp horns.They all stopped abruptly in their tracks, stood unmoving, ghosts in the tallgrass, staring blankly, then one of them broke away from the rest—the giant bull whose rear half was a dirty white, Kate could see now, sable brown fur covering its head and mottling back over its humped shoulders. It came rumbling like a train across the rolling meadow land, leaving the others behind.“Miracle,” Katie breathed, her eyes dreamy-wide, her heart soaring.He was headed straight for them, she realized with some alarm. Right for the boundary fencing and the individuals this side of it. Katie stepped away from the group, who wer
Every Foul Spirit 7
7A BLUE TARP COVEREDthe cinnamon-haired girl’s body. Katie could see her shape, lying discarded there in the eroding drainage ditch. Coils of her hair, still attached to her head presumably, spilled out from under the tarp. A bicycle lay tipped over on the hill.“It’s Jilly Sweet’s little girl,” Clemency was saying as he led her down. “Woman from over at the café.” His face was strained, weary in the overcast light of day.“What’s going on, Chief?” It was Lou Garko, trailing after them. “What is she doing here?”“Keep the stragglers away please, Deputy. If you would.”“Who is this person? Why’s she—”Clemency spun on him. “Goddamnit, Lou, just keep everyone back. Do you understand?”They descended side by side. “This is bad, Katie Kate,” mumbled the chief, his voice grim. “I shouldn’t be doing this. You cannotbe here.”“I’m already here,” Katie said. “We can’t stop now.”Chief Clemency pulled on some tan Latex gloves and motioned for her to halt. “Stay there. Do n
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Every Foul Spirit EPILOGUE
EPILOGUETHE SLUMBERING MANawakens as he feels something enter him, penetrate his person. It violates him, takes his flesh in unbearable manners. He cries out horribly in the darkness as it works its way inside him, undoing everything, breaking him. Dooming him.I MUST HAVE THIS VESSEL, he hears its voice thunder in his ears, nearly splitting his skull in two.Vessel, the man thinks, not comprehending. Vessel?BODY.He is no longer alone. Whatever this is it is firmly within him. He hears its laughter ...Get out of me, the man thinks. He struggles wildly against it, panicking, and then he screams in torment as the char-blackened entity punishes him with excruciating inner pain, setting each nerve ending alight. The man shrieks and spasms, contorts in agony, until at last his struggling ceases and he has no will of his own left whatsoever.HEEL, PET.All is quiet once again.At length he gets up out of the bed and reels, unsteady on these borrowed legs. He st
Every Foul Spirit 12
12“HE’S GONE,”Katie said hoarsely into her cell phone. She sat inside her room at Pye’s New Look Motor Hotel, petting the German shepherd that lay on the bed with her.“Gone? That’s all?” said Palm Clemency on the other end.“Yes. He’s gone.” Gone to the dogs. Katie bit her lip, and cleared her scratchy throat. “He burned in the fire—Cornelius Prichard.”“And he was Vespers? Our killer.”“Yes.”“How do you know this?”“I just know it. Did you find the knife in the field?”“Yes.”Katie took a drink of orange soda and winced. “It’s his. Pritchard’s. He was the murderer, Chief.”“Why? Why’d he do it?”“That I don’t know.”“And he died in the fire that turned Shaw-Meredith House into cinders? How did it happen? Why there?”Katie said nothing for several seconds: “He’s gone, Chief.”Clemency exhaled. “So that’s it? That’s all I’m going to get?”“You have his knife, isn’t that enough?”“No. It is not.”“Well, it’ll have to do for now. Trust me.”There was a pause. “W
Every Foul Spirit 11
11KATIE CARESSED THE small keepsake on a black cord around her neck, the vial containing the last, vestigial ash remains of her dead mother. The feel of it calmed her. I’m flying, she thought as she approached the night-black structure, with its half-collapsed roof and its empty, gaping hole for an entrance. Look at me go.There were specters here. Poisoned. Foul. Insane.Having suffered and died so horrifically within, the ancestral house was theirs—or perhaps vice versa. She could see them in the shadows: a horde of malingering and tortured, crucified souls gathered around the passage, mocking her, anxious to welcome unwary guests into their midst.“Clear out,” Katie ordered them, limping forward, her hands balled into fists. “I’m coming through, so make way. Do not come near me.”They parted suddenly, fearful of her, drawing aside in lunatic tatters to clear a path.Candlelight was flickering inside.Katie invaded the rank, crawling darkness of Shaw-Meredith House. A fou
Every Foul Spirit 10
10“REBECCA AVENUE,” muttered Katie, straining her eyes in the dark. “Rebecca—where are you, Rebecca? You twat.”She searched for the street her car was parked on, limping along with Blondie in tow. A police car crept by on night patrol, and again she receded into the fog and waited, keeping the dog out of sight. Her legs almost gave out once but she steadied herself, spurring her battered muscles on, and continued walking.Finally there it was: the burnt-orange Dodge Avenger.She popped the locks with her key remote, letting Blondie hop up into the back seat. Katie slid into the front and sat a moment. In her fatigued state, she felt as if she could put the seat back and become unconscious right there. Instead, she drank from the bottle of spring water in her console holder, poured some into her cupped hand so the dog could drink also.Then she caught her own reflection in the rearview mirror.Digging through her glove compartment, Katie found wet wipes and some napkins and was
Every Foul Spirit 9
9ASTERS, AND LARKSPUR ... Katie kept her eyes on him as she walked backward into the field, moving slowly, thrusting out her bloody hands, and Pritchard hesitated.“No more stalling, witch,” he told her, advancing forward again.“You don’t know where you are, do you?” said Katie, gulping to get air into her lungs. She continued backing away, staggering deeper into the field. The abandoned bell tower rose from out of the fog behind her.“Witchbitch, witchbitch,” he tittered, grinning his spiderish grin. “Deviate from us.”“Do you?”Crickets chirred in the grass. Went silent.“No more, I said.”“Look ... killer of children. Killer of beasts.” Katie’s eyes were ablaze now. She stretched her crimson arms out at her sides, waggling her fingers gently upward, coaxing. Blood dripped and soaked into the earth.“Rise, my lambs. My darlings. Rise.”Cornelius Pritchard came ahead. Smiling. He heard something nearby, and then noticed the ghostly shapes surroundin
Every Foul Spirit 8
8KATIE SAT IN her car on the darkened road, holding the hand-stained glass fragment in her lap. Her thumb hovered over the darkest of the etchings upon it, the rose with black-red petals. Crucian Crowe.She longed to touch it, stroke its surface, and to feel the climbing roses shimmering and warming to her caress ... but she hesitated, knowing it would bring them forth, snatching them from their home inside the ancient glass——The Rosarium Glass, world unto itself, sustained by its own garden’s bewitchments, and by the illusive ones partaking of its magic who might or might not be immortals.Katie stopped herself, and wrapped the piece of rose glass within its coarse red buckram again, slid it under the front seat of the Avenger. She got out and locked up the Dodge with her key remote, left the car there with its alarm light blinking. Started walking.She wasn’t even sure where she was—the street sign read Rebecca Avenue.Leaves were moving in the night wind. The
Every Foul Spirit 7
7A BLUE TARP COVEREDthe cinnamon-haired girl’s body. Katie could see her shape, lying discarded there in the eroding drainage ditch. Coils of her hair, still attached to her head presumably, spilled out from under the tarp. A bicycle lay tipped over on the hill.“It’s Jilly Sweet’s little girl,” Clemency was saying as he led her down. “Woman from over at the café.” His face was strained, weary in the overcast light of day.“What’s going on, Chief?” It was Lou Garko, trailing after them. “What is she doing here?”“Keep the stragglers away please, Deputy. If you would.”“Who is this person? Why’s she—”Clemency spun on him. “Goddamnit, Lou, just keep everyone back. Do you understand?”They descended side by side. “This is bad, Katie Kate,” mumbled the chief, his voice grim. “I shouldn’t be doing this. You cannotbe here.”“I’m already here,” Katie said. “We can’t stop now.”Chief Clemency pulled on some tan Latex gloves and motioned for her to halt. “Stay there. Do n
Every Foul Spirit 6
6KATIE SAW THEIRhuge woolly heads coming over the rise, heard the loud, guttural noises they made as they charged across the open grazing plains. Three massive bison were nearing, dark brown in color, a gigantic bull and a pair of cows; four, really, including the smaller reddish calf tagging along. Katie noted their shaggy bulk as they ran, the short sharp horns.They all stopped abruptly in their tracks, stood unmoving, ghosts in the tallgrass, staring blankly, then one of them broke away from the rest—the giant bull whose rear half was a dirty white, Kate could see now, sable brown fur covering its head and mottling back over its humped shoulders. It came rumbling like a train across the rolling meadow land, leaving the others behind.“Miracle,” Katie breathed, her eyes dreamy-wide, her heart soaring.He was headed straight for them, she realized with some alarm. Right for the boundary fencing and the individuals this side of it. Katie stepped away from the group, who wer
Every Foul Spirit 5
5BLESSING ACRES CERTAINLY had changed a lot. Gone were the apple orchard and the small Pick-Your-Own pumpkin patch Katie remembered, and the Christmas tree grove. Also absent were most of the outbuildings, including the Petting Corral and its animals. Only the old lime-green farmhouse and great round barn remained, with a few tents here and there, surrounded on all sides now by sedge meadow and grazing pastures.After paying for parking next to the buses, Katie trudged up the lane past the BLESSING GRASSLANDSsign, the legs of her denim jeans tucked inside her faux leather knee-high boots. She rolled her head around, feeling the tightness in her neck muscles from sleeping in the chair the way she did last night and waking up so out of sorts.She could see an American Indian woman at the Welcoming Tent near the barn, black hair tied back from her dark, pretty face. When she got closer, Katie glimpsed a silver ring in her pierced lower lip and at once recognized the woman. Excit
