The Devil's Laughter Read online

  In the house, Ray said, “I’m going to station Steve and Tom out here for the rest of the night, Link. I want you to settle down, get a grip on yourself, and get a few hours’ rest. As soon as the press hears of this. . . action tonight, they’re going to be all over this parish.”

  “And that will drive the coven members deeper underground,” Link told him.

  “Unfortunately, you’re right. Any ideas on these monsters, Link?”

  “Somebody screwed up.”

  “That’s very interesting and not at all informative. Tell me something else.”

  “They made contact.”

  “Link, make sense, will you?”

  “The coven members actually succeeded in contacting the Dark One. Satan. The devil. The Prince of Darkness. That’s where these things that attacked the house came from.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ray!” Gerard shouted. “These things are turning to skull and bones.”

  Both Ray and Gerard hit the yard, running. They stopped by the fence. There was nothing left of the creature Link had shot except for a pile of wet bones and a grinning skull.

  “That skull looks familiar,” Link said.

  “What?” Ray almost shouted the word.

  “He’s right,” Sweeney said. “That large crack above the right eye socket. It’s identical to the skull we saw in the basement of the Garrison house. I believe it’s the same one.”

  “The same one!” Ray yelled. “That’s impossible.”

  “After tonight, I don’t know that anything is impossible,” Link replied. “What about the other creatures.”

  “There’s nothing left,” Steve said, walking up. “Just old bones and skulls.”

  Link stood up from his squat by the pile of bones. He stared at the sheriff. “Let’s check the Garrison place, Ray. We might as well be sure.”

  Ray sighed and rubbed his wet face. “Steve, you and Tom stay here and keep your eyes wide open for anything. And I mean anything.”

  “I’ll stay here, too,” Trooper Holt volunteered. “I’ll okay it with the Troop.”

  “I appreciate that, Dennis,” Gerard said.

  “Let’s go,” Ray said.

  * * *

  “Jesus God Almighty,” Ray said, standing in the cellar of the Garrison house.

  There was not one bone or skull left in the pile of dirt that had erupted out of the basement wall.

  Sweeney leaned up against a support post and stared in disbelief.

  “Gerard,” Ray said. “Get on the horn and get every deputy we can trust out to Link’s place. I want those bones guarded until the Bureau’s team gets here in a few hours. We’ve got pictures of both places, before and now, after. So we won’t look like total idiots. Not a word of this leaks, Gerard. You agree with that, Cliff?”

  “My Lord, yes.”

  “Warn the men that I’ll suspend the first one who opens his mouth. Jeff, how about you and Tom?”

  “I ain’t seen nothing, Ray. I do have to write a report. But I’m pretty sure the captain will go along with keeping a lid on this.”

  “We’ll lock up this house,” Ray said. “For all the good it’ll do,” he added.

  * * *

  “Are you putting me on?” the agent in charge of the FBI’s forensic team asked Sweeney.

  “I wish I were,” Cliff said. “Believe me, I wish I were.”

  The rain had stopped and the sky was clear and bright, the morning very cool. Ray had sent a deputy barreling to Shreveport with the film, for one-hour processing. The deputy was due back at any moment.

  “These are old bones,” another agent said.

  “I know that!” Sweeney popped at him. “I’m not an idiot.”

  The look in the newly arrived FBI man’s eyes subtly questioned that.

  “Just wait until the pictures come back,” Ray said. “Then you’ll see.”

  Link touched Sweeney’s arm and motioned him to one side. “What if there is nothing on the film?” he asked the man.

  “I ... I’m not following you.”

  “That myth – or maybe it isn’t – about vampires and werewolves and the like having no mirror image.”

  Quite out of character, Sweeney said, “Well, shit! I hadn’t thought of that. If there isn’t anything on that film, we’re all going to look like raving lunatics.”

  “Yeah,” Link said glumly.

  The deputy returned and reported to Ray. “The fellow at the processing lab said you wasted your money, Sheriff,” he said. “There ain’t nothing on the film. Nothing at all.”

  The newly arrived Bureau team looked at the blanks, looked at Sweeney, and packed up. “This will be in my report, of course,” the agent in charge told Cliff.

  “Well, put it in your damned report!” Cliff told him. “I know what I saw. We all saw it.”

  “You need a vacation, Sweeney,” he was told. “You need to take some time off. You’re working too hard.”

  Sweeney walked off to play with the animals. He was muttering to himself.

  “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” Ray said to Link. He walked over to the forensic team. “Are you guys going to take the bones with you?” he asked the FBI men.

  “That’s what we came down here to get.”

  “Stop by my office. I have descriptions of the murdered family and the missing couple waiting for you there.”

  “We’ll do what we can. See you boys.”

  “What next?” Link asked.

  “I’m almost afraid to find out.”

  * * *

  “I’m not angry about losing my commission, Sheriff,” Jack Matisse said. “I’m just a bit confused, is all.”

  “So am I,” Dick Marley said. “What have we done, Ray?”

  It had been the same all morning. Suspected coven members stopping by the sheriffs office to hand in their commission cards and to chat easily and without rancor with Ray and Gerard.

  “Too much danger of lawsuits,” Ray had told them all, holding his anger and frustration in check. “It’s happening all over the state.” He wasn’t lying about that last bit. Commissions were getting more difficult to obtain statewide. “It’s nothing personal, boys.”

  “It’s good to hear you say that, Ray,” Charlie Ford said. “There’s been so many wild rumors flying around about some sort of devil’s coven in the parish.” He laughed. “And you know what else is funny?” He wiped his eyes. “All three of us are supposed to be a part of it.”

  Jack and Nelson joined in the laughter. Ray smiled. “Yeah, boys. That’s hysterical, for a fact.”

  After they had left, Gerard came in and sat down. Both men were tired to the bone, their eyes red-rimmed from strain and fatigue. “I’m going to knock off early and carry my butt home for some sleep, Ray. You best do the same. This night just might turn out to be a real piss-cutter.”

  “Yeah. I was going to do that. Did I hear you right, just before those three laughing jackasses came in the office? Were you talking to Waldo on the phone?”

  “Yes. He gave me a message for you. He said, and I’m quoting: ’I quit. Tell that goddamn Ray Ingalls to take the badge he took from me and stick – ”

  Ray held up his hand. “I get the message. Now if we can just get Ed Westcott out of the department, we might have it clean.”

  “Sally’s on that list, too, Ray,” Gerard reminded him.

  “Yeah, damnit, I know it. I just can’t believe she’d – ” He waved his hand. “Who am I trying to kid? If Ed’s a part of it, so is she. She’s been bumping Ed for years.”

  “And Dick still doesn’t have a clue as to what’s going on.”

  “Dick has never had a clue about anything in his life, except for being the one person you could count on when something civic needs to be done. That’s what you get for being one of the nicest people in the community. Hell with it, Gerard. Let’s go home.”

  “I don’t like this, Link,” Tom Halbert said as Link unlocked the s
ide door of the Garrison house.

  “I don’t, either,” Jeff said. “This place spooks me.” He was off duty and in civilian clothes, but he was well armed.

  “I want that crate of old books from the basement,” Link told him. “I think the clue to everything is somewhere in those books and diaries and manuscripts.” He pushed open the door and stepped inside.

  At the closed basement door, Link said, “Tom, you stay up here and make damn sure this door stays open. Jeff, let’s go get the crate and come right back up and out of this house.”

  “You won’t have to repeat it, Link. You just better be as fast as I am coming up those stairs.”

  Chuckling at the young trooper’s words, Link turned on the basement lights and opened the door. The smell hit them hard. Link closed the door. “Jesus!” He coughed and tried to clear his head of the horrible stench.

  “And we all know that smell, don’t we?” Jeff asked.

  Tom looked at his watch. “We’ve had our naps. Ray and Gerard have been asleep about an hour.”

  “Let’s go take a look,” Link said. “Unless you want me to stay up here, Tom?”

  “Your commission’s just as good as mine,” Tom said. “Be my guest.”

  In the basement they found the source of the telltale odor: the naked and bloated body of a teenager, a white male, who had been savagely tortured. The body had no head, no hands, no feet. It looked as if they had been cut off with a chain saw or a very dull axe. And the body smelled worse than anything either man had ever before had the misfortune to sniff.

  “Help me get this crate up topsides and out to my Bronco,” Link said. “Then we’ll call this in.”

  The crate safely stowed, Link called the motel for Cliff Sweeney. The man had just gotten out of bed, showered, and was fixing his tie when the telephone rang in his room.

  “We have another body, Cliff,” Link told him. “I’m out at the Garrison place with Tom Halbert and Trooper Miller. I thought I’d let Ray and Gerard get another hour’s sleep before I broke the news to them.”

  “I’m glad you called me, Link. And listen. I don’t care if you carry a fifty caliber machine gun and strap a bazooka on each hip if it’ll help get this crap cleared up.”

  Link smiled and hung up. The Bureau man was coming around, for a fact.

  The three men waited outside in the cool air for Cliff Sweeney to arrive.

  When he got there, Cliff took a look and grimaced. He muttered something under his breath that sounded like cussing to Link. Then he got down on his knees and looked more closely at the body, studying it for a moment. “What would cause all those strange puncture wounds on the body, do you suppose?”

  All the men squatted down and stared at the numerous strange wounds on the body.

  “Barbed wire.” Link was the first to put it together.

  “Yes,” Cliff agreed. “I believe you’re right. This poor fellow was wrapped in barbed wire. And from the amount of dried blood, he was alive when they wrapped it around him. Can you even imagine the pain he must have endured.” He sighed. “What’s the connection? Barbed wire. The crown of thorns that was placed on the head of Jesus?”

  “I don’t know,” Link said. “Maybe.”

  Jeff stood up and brushed the dust off his jeans. “We got some sickos around here, for sure. And getting sicker. I’ll call this in to our people. The press is sure to come around now. Ray can’t sit on this much longer.”

  “I ...” Link broke his sentence off before the words could form on his tongue. Sudden panic filled him. He stared at the unguarded door above them, then lunged to his feet. But he was too late. The door slammed shut. All heard the dead bolts click into place.

  They were trapped.

  The lights went out, plunging the basement into a stinking darkness.

  And the haunting, taunting laughter began.

  Chapter 16

  “Ignore it,” Link said, with more confidence than he felt, as he inched his way to the stairs. He reached the landing and slipped the key into the top lock, turned it, then opened the second lock. He tried the knob. It turned in his hands and the door opened.

  “You people are entirely too careless,” the voice spoke. “This is not a fun game unless you try harder.”

  The men all stepped out of the basement, extremely glad to do so.

  “Show yourself,” Link challenged the voice.

  “Selves,” the voice corrected. “Four of us.”

  “Wonderful,” Link said. “What are you? Who are you? Where did you come from?”

  “Hell,” the voice said, deeper and more hollow-sounding.

  “What do you want?”

  “Only to do the bidding of those we serve.”

  “Satan?” the very shaky voice of Jeff Miller asked.

  “Our master did not call us out.”

  “The bastards did it,” Link muttered. “They broke through the veil and made contact with the other side. The dark side.”

  “You’re very astute,” the voice said. But it was a different voice. This was the voice of a woman and it came from the left side of the house.

  The men turned their heads in that direction.

  “What do those who called on you want?” Cliff asked.

  “My word, we don’t know.” This time the voice came from behind them.

  “The leaders of this coven don’t know, as yet, that they were successful in calling you out?” Link guessed.

  “Oh, you are an intelligent one.” Another voice, another direction. “This could be fun. Usually it’s something very trivial, like . . . uh ... sexual prowess or eternal life or something equally mundane.”

  “How could eternal life be considered mundane?” Cliff asked.

  “Because these local coven members have yet to discover that they already have attained eternal life,” Link said. “In Hell. They did that when they turned their backs on God and swore to serve Satan.”

  “Maggie, this one is going to cause trouble.”

  “It will be interesting for a time, that’s all, Victor.”

  “You . . . things have names?” Tom asked.

  “Of course we have names. You think we went through life as you know it by answering to ’Hey, you?”

  “Wanda, see it?”

  “Oh, my, yes. How amusing. Come, we must go. Bye, all.”

  Tom’s knees were shaking so bad he had to sit down at the kitchen table. Jeff leaned against the stove. Link looked at Cliff. The Bureau man smiled and held out his hand. He had a mini-cassette recorder, and the tape was rolling.

  Gerard Lucas, Ray Ingalls, and Tom Halbert were there. The two Catholic priests, the Episcopal priest, and the Methodist and the Baptist minister were present. The two young Louisiana State Troopers were in attendance. Cliff Sweeney was sitting on the couch beside Anne and Link. Paul Morris was there. The kids were playing computer games in Link’s study.

  Cliff played the tape.

  “They’re very confident-sounding, aren’t they?” Bob Evans remarked.

  “Why shouldn’t they be?” Father Lattier replied. “What do they have to lose?”

  Methodist Dan Knox looked at Baptist Toby Belenger. Both men then looked at Link. Dan said, “So what do you propose doing?”

  “Me?” Link said. “Why ask me? I’m not running this show. Every time I come up with a suggestion it gets thrown back in my face.” He looked at Ray. “Have you told Dee anything about this?”

  The sheriff nodded his head. “Yeah. I suggested she take the kid we got left at home and go visit her sister in Vicksburg. She thought that was a bad idea.”

  “Same here,” Gerard said.

  “Maybe those . . . voices, demons, or whatever they might be are so confident because they’re sure they’ve got the whole town on their side,” Paul said. “Except us.”

  “That’s a thought,” Tom said.

  “Ridiculous,” the young Catholic priest said. “I heard a dozen or more confessions just a few hours ago.”

 
“So what?” Father Lattier said. “You don’t think people lie in the confessional? Get smart, Mark. I’ve had so many clearly obvious lies told to me over the years the words would fill volumes.”

  “I don’t think the entire town is against us,” Link said. “But I do think about four or five hundred people certainly are. I think the rest of the town doesn’t know what’s going on. Something puzzles me. Those . . . whatever they are – Satan’s helpers, demons, whatever – they were facing four of the opposition this afternoon at the Garrison house. Why didn’t they kill us and get us out of the way? That certainly would be to their advantage. But they didn’t. Why? Ray, they surrounded you and Gerard and Jeff and Leon out on the highway. Why didn’t they kill you all and get you out of their way? One of them had me cold down by the gate. But he, or she, or whatever didn’t do a thing. Except talk. Why? I’ll tell you what I think. And maybe I’m wrong. But here goes: I think those demons – let’s call them that – can make life pretty damned eerie for us. They can haunt us and spook us and cause strange things to happen to houses and vehicles and so forth. But I don’t think they can physically harm us. They would have done so already. But I do think they can cause other living people to harm us. They might be able to cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall and doors to open and close; they might be able to cause some bumps and bruises on us from flying objects. But they can’t kill us.”

  “Smart,” the woman’s voice bounced into the room. “I knew you’d be trouble.”

  Toby spilled coffee in his crotch, and Trooper Dennis Holt missed his mouth with a cigarette, dropped it, and did a juggling act.

  “Are you Wanda or Maggie?” Link asked.

  “Wanda, smart-ass.”

  Father Mark Palombo sat with his mouth hanging open.

  “Close your mouth, Zorro,” the voice said. “Before you eat a fly.”

  Father Lattier had an amused expression on his face as Mark quickly closed his mouth.

  “You think this is funny, you old fart?” Wanda asked him.

  “Are you speaking to me?” Father Lattier asked.