The Devil's Laughter Read online

  * * *

  Link and Anne worked that afternoon out in the barn, freeing those animals whose wounds had healed enough to permit it. Then Link shifted the remaining wounded and sick animals to a smaller concrete block building nearer the house and much safer from fire. His outside doghouse was made of concrete blocks, and the animals could be locked in cages and secured. If it came to it, he would put them all in the basement of his house for safety’s sake. He hooked up his trailer and told Anne he was taking the burro and the goats out of the parish to a vet’s, where he felt they would be safer.

  Link stayed on the back roads and was positive no one had followed him. Upon arriving, he told the vet that someone had threatened to kill the animals.

  The vet shook his head in disgust. “There are some sorry, no-count people in this world, Link.”

  More than you know, Link thought.

  He was back an hour before dark and went down into the basement, telling Paul and Jimmy to come along and help him tote some boxes back up the stairs. Paul knew what Link kept in his basement and he smiled at Jimmy as the young man stared openmouthed in astonishment.

  Link had ten thousand rounds of various types of ammunition stored in a vault in the basement, along with enough other materials of war to equip a platoon.

  “Does the sheriff know you have all this stuff out here, Link?” Jimmy asked.

  “No. Not yet, anyway. Just you and Paul. And Paul’s known for several years.”

  Jimmy looked at Paul. “And we roomed together at school and you never told me a thing about it. Where’d you get all this stuff, Link?”

  “Here and there. I believe in being prepared, Jimmy.”

  “No shit!”

  They were stacking some of the war materials in the den when the sound of a horn honking down by the gate reached them. Link, carrying a rifle, walked down to unlock the gates and let Cliff Sweeney in. He rode back to the house with the Bureau man, noticing that Cliff looked very tired, his eyes red-rimmed.

  Anne brought him a cup of coffee, which Cliff accepted gratefully. He sipped and sighed. “I drove up to Shreveport, to our offices,” he said. “They were surprised to see me and wanted to know why in the world I cut my vacation short. I tried to tell them I hadn’t been on any vacation; I’d been working, down here. It was . . . eerie. My words didn’t register with them. Nothing pertaining to this parish seemed to get through to them. But that is not possible! I beat on the desk. It went unnoticed. I shouted at them to wake up, to listen to me. They smiled at me and wanted to know how I planned to spend the rest of my vacation. I cursed them all for fools. They said they were glad to hear that I was enjoying myself so. I called them all mindless ninnies. They said they’d see me in three weeks. It was an incredible experience.

  “I went to the offices of the newspaper. I showed them my I.D. and was allowed to see the editor. I tried to explain to him what was taking place here in this parish. He asked me if I would care for some coffee and a Danish. I completely lost my faith and my temper and called the man a goddamn ignorant son of a bitch. He asked me if I took one sugar or two. He seemed quite upset about my refusal of his offer of coffee. I stopped at his secretary’s desk and said I wished it would stop raining. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The woman said she wished it would stop raining, too. She smiled at me. Then I told her she had a lump of dog poop on her nose. She said that was very nice and to please enjoy the rest of my vacation. I gave up and drove back down here.

  “What I witnessed this day is impossible. It is physically, emotionally, spiritually, and scientifically impossible. But it happened. To me. Personally. I cannot deny it. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. Shit!” He summed up his feelings.

  Betsy giggled.

  Chapter 18

  Link could find nothing in the box of books taken from the basement of the Garrison home to support his theory that Anne was somehow connected to what was occurring. Then, in the last book he read, he found this: William Bates ended the terror in Rothay Castle when he drove a stake through the heart of Peter Romaire and burned the body to char. But before he could seal the ashes in stone, they disappeared. The urn was never found.

  That was it. That was the only reference to Romaire in any of the books. Link walked to Anne’s bedroom and gently awakened her.

  “What is your father’s name, Anne?”

  “Huh?” She sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes. “William Bates.”

  “And he was named for – ”

  “Oh, William is an old family name. All the way back to England. His side of the Bates family came over here just after the Boston Tea Party, I think. Some very distant relatives of ours still own a castle in England, I think. I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “Rothay Castle?”

  “Why ... yes. That’s it. How-”

  He turned on the lamp by the bed and handed her the book, pointing out the entry.

  She read it, reread it, then lifted her eyes to his. “But. . . what has any of this” – she thumped the book – “have to do with me now?”

  “I don’t know. Revenge maybe. They – for want of a better word – got you here for some reason. What was your mother’s maiden name, Anne?”

  “Keyes.”

  “And your grandmother’s maiden name?”

  “Wilson.”

  “And her mother’s maiden name?”

  “Oh. I’m going to have to think about that. Golly. What was it?” She paled as it came to her. “Jackson,” she whispered. “And her first husband, who was killed... oh dear Jesus . . . he was killed here in Louisiana... was a Garrison.”

  “Bingo,” Link said.

  * * *

  “Here it is,” Ray said, carefully turning the pages of the old Sheriffs Department record book. “Way back in the eighteen hundreds. Winston Jackson killed W.E. Garrison and was found guilty and hanged for it. Right here in this parish.”

  “I wonder where they were buried?”

  “God only knows, Link. You know how many tiny cemeteries there are out in the woods. Some logger or farmer is always finding one.”

  Link walked to the window and looked out at the street. With the exception of almost no one walking or driving around town, it seemed normal. It looked normal. But the air was filled with tension. He turned around to face Ray and Gerard.

  “So Anne was found and enticed back here. For what?” Revenge? Or is it her kids they want? And for what? Sacrifice? To offer them up to the devil? And what does barbed wire have to do with it?“

  “You know,” Gerard said. “I just remembered something. I was reading a western book the other day. When barbed wire first came out, some cowboys called it the devil’s hatband. They really hated the stuff. A connection, maybe?”

  “How did Jackson kill Garrison?” Link asked.

  “Damned if I know,” Ray said. “Let’s see if we can find it in the records.”

  “Oh, hell, Ray!” Gerard said. “All that old crap got thrown away long before we ever hung on a badge, remember?”

  Ray slammed a big hand on the desk. “Yeah. When Ellis Jackson was sheriff.”

  Link dialed the newspaper office. Suzanne answered the phone. “Where’s Jenny?” Link asked.

  “Link,” Suzanne whispered, “what’s going on in this town? Jenny quit and moved in with George and his wife. I hear it’s orgy time over there at their house. And they don’t bathe anymore, Link. They all stink. It’s disgusting.”

  “How is Guy acting?”

  “He’s okay. We’ve talked about this ... whatever is going on.”

  “You busy right now?”

  “No. I don’t even know whether we’re putting out a paper this week. I don’t think so. It’s eerie, Link.”

  He gave her the dates of the trial. “See if you have those issues on microfilm, Suzie. Find out how that man was murdered and call me at the sheriffs office, okay?”

  “I’ll get right on it. It won’t take long.”

  It took about fiv
e minutes. “He was killed by choking, Link,” she told him. “Jackson looped a piece of barbed wire around the man’s throat and strangled him.”

  * * *

  Link met with the two reporters in the parking lot of the supermarket. He leveled with them, leaving nothing out. At first they wore smiles. But the smiles quickly faded. When Link finished, he pointed toward the supermarket.

  “Go on in and do some shopping. Take several deep breaths. And be sure to look in the back. There might be some heavy screwing going on. Among other things.”

  They didn’t stay long. When they returned, their expressions were the same: disgust and revulsion. They climbed back into the Bronco.

  “Smells like a cesspool in there,” Guy said. “The clerks and the shoppers are filthy. The meat is rotting. Somebody turned off the coolers in the frozen food section. Everything has spoiled. It’s disgusting!”

  “We looked in the back,” Suzanne said, an edge to her voice. “The manager was ... ah ... being serviced by one of his stock boys – and I mean boy.”

  “It’s got to pop,” Link said. “This can’t go on much longer. Another day or two of this and travelers will come through, stop to pick up something, and report all this to ... somebody. All Hell – and I mean that literally – is going to bust wide open and it’s going to be very soon. It has to be soon.”

  “Link,” Guy said, “I’ll check out the supermarket on the loop road. Suzanne, you check out the other one. Link, have you done any banking today?”

  Link smiled. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse in half an hour.”

  His bank was open, but just barely. Link carried a box in with him. Loan officers were at the tellers’ stations and the bank smelled really bad. It stank of unwashed flesh. He walked up to a loan officer he knew, wrote a two hundred fifty thousand dollar check, and signed it Millard Fillmore.

  “Of course, sir,” the man said, his voice holding no expression at all. “How would you like this?”

  “Cash. When you run out of fifties and hundreds, I’ll take twenties and tens.”

  “But of course.”

  Twenty minutes later, Link walked out of the bank with a quarter million dollars in cash. He put the box on the floorboard, drove over to the courthouse, and parked in the lot.

  Jeff Miller walked over to his Bronco. “I’m on vacation for a week,” he said. “And Dennis is off for the next four days. What’s it going to be, Link?”

  “It has to pop soon. I just wrote a check over at the bank for a quarter of a million dollars and signed it Millard Fillmore. They cashed it without blinking an eye. There’s the money.”

  “Good God!” Jeff said, rubbernecking to see the cash.

  “Where are your parents?”

  Neither of the young troopers were married.

  “Dad’s at a hunting camp for a week and mother’s visiting her sister in Arkansas. Dennis’s folks live over in Alexandria.”

  Link handed the trooper a thousand dollars from the box. “Go get Dennis and then go buy some canned foods and camping gear. Get a dozen good sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses. I think my place is about to get very crowded.”

  Jeff grinned that easy smile of his. “I was gonna ask . . .”

  Link laughed and waved a hand. “I know, I know. You boys go get your girlfriends and come on out.”

  “Won’t you have to repay that money, Link?”

  Link smiled. “For one thing, Jeff, I doubt if there will be a building left standing in the business district in three or four days. For another thing, I wrote the check on the back of a deposit slip.”

  “They’re that zonked out of it?”

  “Apparently so.”

  “Nothing funny about this anymore. It’s gettin’ dangerous now, isn’t it, Link?”

  “Yeah. Very much so.”

  “See you in a little while.”

  Link noticed that most of the stores in the business district were closed or in the process of closing up. The few people he saw driving wore sullen or confused expressions. No one was walking. Guy and Suzanne pulled in.

  “Alden’s Supermarket is closed,” Guy said. “So I drove over to join Suzanne. Man, that place was worse than the first one.”

  “Go home and pack a few things,” Link told them. “Come on out to my place. I think this town is going to explode and it just might do it tonight.”

  They left, and Link locked up his Bronco and entered the courthouse building. It was deserted; the only office open was the sheriffs department. He told Ray and Gerard and Cliff about his transaction at the bank.

  He was amused at Cliffs reaction. The Bureau man jumped to his feet. “A quarter of a million dollars!” he hollered. He snatched up the phone and started to punch out the number of the Shreveport office. He put the phone down. “What am I doing?” he questioned. “Anything I say about this parish doesn’t register with them.”

  “Cliff,” Link said, “I’m not trying to give you orders, but I think you’d better check out of the motel and go out to Gerard’s place – for safety’s sake.”

  He nodded his head. “I’m ahead of you.” He smiled. “For once. I’m out of the motel and out at Gerard’s.”

  Ray handed Link a walkie-talkie. “It’s fully charged. It’s low-band, not like our unit radios. So you’re not going to have a lot of range. But I wanted you to have it just in case. You need to take some guns with you, Link?”

  Link smiled and shook his head. “I have plenty of weapons for everybody who knows how to use them. Dennis and Jeff will be out at my place, and those two gun nuts will probably bring their entire arsenals with them.”

  Ray nodded his agreement. “The deputies and families are moving out to one place, too, Link. I know something is about to pop. I know it’s going to be bad and evil and dangerous. I know these things, but I still feel a little foolish with all this gearing up for war.”

  “A lot of innocent people are going to be hurt before this thing is over,” Cliff said. “I believe that. And a lot of people are going to be killed, too. I walked the business district today, talking to – or attempting to talk to – people. I don’t believe the majority of people are in on this. They’re just . . . in limbo. And that worries me.”

  Tom Halbert walked in, his face red. “That damn Bowers kid just chunked a rock at me. Put a dent in the side of my unit. Then he gave me the finger. Just stood there laughing at me, waving the bird. I felt like shooting him.”

  Link stood up. “You probably should have.”

  Cliff looked at Link and sighed. But he kept his mouth shut. A little voice way down deep inside the man silently agreed with Link Donovan.

  “How about the priests and the preachers?” Link asked.

  “Father Mark told me there was no way he was going to leave his quarters,” Gerard told him. “He said we’ve blown all this devil business out of proportion. However, Father Lattier said if you didn’t mind, Link, he’d like to come out to your place for a couple of days.”

  “The more the merrier,” Link replied. “There are two rooms out in the barn that can be used for bedrooms.”

  “You’re going to have quite a crowd at your place, Link,” Cliff said. “Father Lattier must think highly of you.”

  “I scarcely know the man,” Link said. “But he knows that I’m not going to waste a lot of time talking when push comes to shove.”

  “Interesting way of saying he feels more secure with you than with any of us,” Ray spoke up.

  “Maybe he does.”

  Cliff walked to a side window of the office and stared out. “We all have to keep this thought in mind,” he spoke with his back to the others. “What we’re experiencing is impossible. It flies in the face of reason. Link has proven, at least to my satisfaction, that the creatures who attacked his place the other night were not real. Let’s take it one step further: Are we, all of us, imagining this situation? Have our minds been so manipulated? I cannot help but believe that is a part of it.”

  He turned t
o face the group.

  “I’ll go along with that to a degree,” Link surprised everyone by saying. “Sure. But to a small degree. The Stern boy is dead. So is that young man from out west. The headless body we found. Those were real. The man that Jeff thought he hit on the highway? That was imagined. The shapes you thought you saw in the timber just after that incident? I don’t know about that. The creatures that attacked my house? Imagined. The fire in the basement of the Garrison house? Imagined. But the religious leaders of this community were called that night – by someone or something. Is it possible that a real-life flesh-and-blood human being called them, impersonating me? Yes. Certainly. But why would they do it? No one from the . . . well, call it the enemy side would do it. That would be defeating their purpose. The relaxing of morals in this town is real. The stench of unwashed human flesh is real. People are behaving in a very odd manner. That’s real. I walked into a bank, wrote a totally bogus check that was not questioned, and walked out with a quarter of a million dollars. That’s real.”

  He stood up and walked to the coffeepot, pouring a cup. The others watched him as he sugared it. Link turned around, leaning up against the table. “In this instance, Satan’s powers are limited. I don’t know why. No one does except God. And He has not seen fit to talk to me ... at least not to my knowledge. Of course, I haven’t asked Him, either. What I’m about to say is my personal opinion, which may or may not be worth the effort it takes to put thoughts into words.” Link took a sip of coffee, carefully choosing his words.

  “A group of people in this community started a coven. Why, I don’t know. Why does anybody start a coven? Right now, that’s unimportant. Let’s say Judge Jackson and his wife started the thing. So they fiddled around with black magic and the occult for God only knows how long and gained strength in numbers. Then, sometime in the recent past, they broke through; they actually made contact with the dark side. And the devil said, ’I’ll help you, but we have to have a pact. An agreement between us. I’ll help you, Jackson, get your revenge against Anne Brooks. I’ll help the rest of you attain your most vulgar of dreams. And I’ll promise all of you eternal life. But you have to help me.’