Phantom Evil

And, it was possible that he still believed that he’d been assigned to some kind of slightly crazy unit, a babysitting unit—a unit not actually meant for the hundreds of serial killers active in the country at any given time.



Regina Holloway was dead. There was no saving her now.



Angela lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. She tried to imagine the children as she had seen them before, on the floor, playing jacks. It was horrible to think how the children had died, and she wondered how Newton had managed such horrendous murders without being heard. She was pretty sure many of his torture-killings had taken place in the basement, but she thought that the children might have been killed in this room. She thought about Percy, trying to be an older brother, trying to reassure his little sister.



It hurt to imagine the fear that must have seized them both when the man who was supposedly trying to help their father had come after them with an ax.



She found herself praying, so many years later, that somehow, they had died quickly, and that the pain hadn’t gone on too long. And still…had Percy watched Madden C. Newton chop up his sister? Or had the older brother been the first to die?



Darkness was settling over the room. She hadn’t opened her eyes, but she could feel it, just as she could feel the breeze that wafted in, and the way that it lifted the curtains by the French doors.



She opened her eyes slowly.



The little boy was there. He was watching her sorrowfully.



She didn’t move; she was afraid to blink. His face was old for his years, and his eyes seemed to carry the wisdom of the ages.



“Be careful, please, be careful,” he told her.



Was she dreaming?



“Percy?” she asked softly.



But as if the breeze could dissipate illusion, he was suddenly gone.



She waited. She felt frozen. She realized that she was afraid, and yet she wasn’t afraid of the little boy who had to be Percy.



She was terrified, she realized, because it hadn’t been a dream. It had been real; she had thought about him, and he had appeared.



The mind; a scientist would say that she could do such things only through imagination.



Anticipation and dread rushed through her body and she closed her eyes. Fear followed hope. She opened her eyes, but there was no one, nothing there.



She sat up, and felt the darkness in the room, alleviated by lamps that had come on in the courtyard, and from the light in the hallway. The room was drenched in shadow. The closet door was slightly ajar, as was that to the bathroom. For a moment, she had a child’s ridiculous fear that a monster would suddenly rush out of the closet and attack her.



She waited, determined she would not be frightened out of the room. She did believe that something evil—ill will? Something more tangible?—resided in the house. But, whatever evil might lurk in the minds of men had nothing to do with the appearance of the child. She wanted to see the little boy again, the little boy she was certain had to be Percy.



But laughter drifted up to her from the kitchen, and she heard the sound of a guitar being strummed.



Jake, the musician, and computer and sound expert.



It was time for that beer Jackson had promised to keep cold for her.



Jackson read the newspaper article on the discovery in the house, surprised to find himself comfortable on a stool near the counter pass-over to the courtyard. Jake was strumming his guitar while calling out orders to Whitney to do his prep work—insisting it would come out to be a feast.



He was adept on the guitar. The instrument he had brought with him was acoustic, and he kept his tunes low and mellow—but ridiculously bawdy at times—causing Whitney to stop in the midst of her tasks that he had assigned to her and giggle. He had to admit, Jake made him laugh now and then, and it seemed like a good thing that, so far, they all seemed so easy and ready to get along with one another. But then, Whitney staged a revolt, laughing and telling Jake that she’d set the table, fixed his flipping rice balls, and it was time for him to get back in the act.



Jake sighed, set down his guitar and started to work, thanking Whitney for all her excellent preparation. Jackson looked at the newspaper again.



The article contained little more than the facts, but with, of course, the questions about the house being haunted being raised again, and the tragedy of Regina Holloway’s death coming to the fore once again. He liked the spin in the article, though—the reporter had quoted Andy Devereaux’s police spokesman as saying, “The investigation team that discovered the bones will be continuing to study the history of the house, and seek out any more such surprises, before Senator Holloway puts the house back up on the market. With its infamous past, it doesn’t seem at all impossible that there may be more skeletons—literally—hanging in a few of the closets.”



Thankfully, the article didn’t even hint at the unit being ghost hunters—or, thank God, any type of sci-fi-driven team claiming that the aliens did it all.



“Jackson?”



He looked up. Whitney, smiling and cheerful, was offering him a bite of something off her tongs. He smiled, remembering Angela’s earlier words. “It’s not monkey brains, is it?”



She laughed, and Jake, standing over the range top, joined her. “No, I’ve never had monkey brains. And, as long as I’m in the kitchen, there won’t be any, I promise.”



“Salmon, avocado, tempura shrimp and cream cheese,” Whitney advised him.



He took the bite. The little piece of roll was delicious. “Wonderful. We’ve found ourselves a cook,” he said.



“Chef,” Jake said in protest.



“Oh, no, not every night,” Whitney said. “You’re too bossy.”



“Hey—you’re supposed to be the assistant. I give orders, you assist,” he said.



“Well, I guess I don’t care who cooks, or if I have to follow a few orders—as long as you don’t make me the main cook,” Whitney said. She wrinkled her face, taking over from Jake to stir the vegetables. “I can prepare one delicious dish—jambalaya. And it is good.”



“Jambalaya sounds great, too,” Angela said, entering the kitchen. “Wow. It smells wonderful down here,” she said. “Are we eating in here? Or in the dining room? Hey, do people actually eat in their dining rooms, ever? Or is that an only-when-company-comes kind of thing for real these days?”



“I say the courtyard…it’s gorgeous outside,” Jake told them all. “Well, the dining room isn’t for eating, we all know it’s just for show. No, the dining room ain’t for eating, just for company, just for show, just when you bring that Bourbon Street stripper-ho-ho home, oh, yeah, just for show!”



Whitney groaned.



“Hey, it’s a good song!” Jake protested.



It wasn’t a particularly good song, but Jake had an amazing musical ability. Jackson had a feeling that he sat with that guitar, strumming out solutions to his problems.



“Courtyard it is,” Whitney said.



It all moved quickly with the four of them taking out the food, lights and all that was needed. They were all aware, of course, of the place where Regina Holloway had fallen, but then they were there to investigate the death—and therefore honor the life—of the woman.



“Hey, I’m pretty sure that Regina Holloway believed in spirits—in some form or another,” Whitney said, passing out the sushi rolls.



“Why?” Jackson asked her. “Your great-grandmother said that she didn’t believe in ghosts. What do you mean—spirits?”



“Well, Regina Holloway went to my great-grandmother’s shop sometimes for advice, but I think she was doing things on her own as well. I found red candles in the lower cupboard. They’re part of a banishing spell that’s used frequently here in New Orleans. And my great-grandmother didn’t say anything about Regina buying candles from her. I’m just curious as to what she was doing on her own.”



“Good question,” Angela said.



“I’ll stop by my great-grandmother’s shop tomorrow,” Whitney said. “I wonder if she sold Regina the candles, and if she knows anything about it.”



“She must—your great-grandmother is a wonderful contact, Whitney. Angela, I think it would be great if you were to go to the store and spend more time with Mama Matisse. She just might say something else that we haven’t thought about that could turn out to be really important,” Jackson said.



“I would like to go with you,” Angela said. “If you don’t mind. I don’t know a lot about voodoo.”



“It’s not what you think,” Whitney said.



Angela laughed. “You don’t know what I think.”



“True,” Whitney admitted sheepishly. “But most people believe it’s all about black magic and zombies. For some people, it’s a very serious religion. And for anyone who really practices voodoo, well, you wouldn’t dream of doing anything evil. It’s like the Wiccan religion—anything evil that you do will come back at you. Take a banishing spell. I’m not sure how well we explained it earlier. You can’t just wish that someone you don’t like will disappear—that could mean that you wish a train would hit them, or that they would walk off a mountain, or, well, something bad. Say you have a pesky neighbor. You have to try to banish him by hoping that he gets a new job that will make him richer, and then he’ll buy a new house. Or, you have to wish that he decides to go live with his sister in Cleveland, and that he’ll be happy there.”



Angela reached for the soy sauce and said, “In this instance, Regina wouldn’t have been trying to get rid of bad neighbors. She would have been trying to banish ghosts.”



“Right. So she would have had to have wished that they find peace, and leave her home,” Whitney said. “I’m not saying that voodooism hasn’t had its share of deviants—like any religion. In Haiti, there are penal codes for anyone trying to create a zombie. And plenty of men in power did do so—part of it, of course, is mind control. And part of it was by using the poison of a puffer fish.”