Darkfall

self-assurance was steadily crumbling.

His nervousness had bred uneasiness. Uneasiness had given birth to fear. He was unaccustomed to fear. He didn't know quite how to handle it. So the fear made him even more nervous.

He was worried about Jack Dawson. Perhaps it had been a grave mistake to allow Dawson time to consider his options. A man like the detective might put that time to good use.

If he senses that I'm even slightly afraid of him, Lavelle thought, and if he learns more about voodoo, then he might eventually understand why I've got good reason to fear him.

If Dawson discovered the nature of his own special power, and if he learned to use that power, he would find and stop Lavelle. Dawson was one of those rare individuals, that one in ten thousand, who could do battle with even the most masterful Bocor and be reasonably certain of victory. If the detective uncovered the secret of himself, then he would come for Lavelle, well-armored and dangerous.

Lavelle paced through the dark house.

Maybe he should strike now. Destroy the Dawson children this evening. Get it over with. Their deaths might send Dawson spiraling down into an emotional collapse. He loved his kids a great deal, and he was already a widower, already laboring under a heavy burden of grief; perhaps the slaughter of Penny and Davey would break him. If the loss of his kids didn't snap his mind, then it would most likely plunge him into a terrible depression that would cloud his thinking and interfere with his work for many weeks. At the very least, Dawson would have to take a few days off from the investigation, in order to arrange the funerals, and those few days would give Lavelle some breathing space.

On the other hand, what if Dawson was the kind of man who drew strength from adversity instead of buckling under the weight of it? What if the murder and mutilation of his children only solidified his determination to find and destroy Lavelle?

To Lavelle, that was an unnerving possibility.

Indecisive, the Bocor rambled through the lightless rooms as if he were a ghost come to haunt.

At last, he knew he must consult the ancient gods and humbly request the benefit of their wisdom.

He went to the kitchen and flicked on the overhead light.

From a cupboard, he withdrew a cannister filled with flour.

A radio stood on the counter. He moved it to the center of the kitchen table.

Using the flour, he drew an elaborate veve on the table, all the way around the radio.

He switched on the radio.

An old Beatles song. Eleanor Rigby.

He turned the dial through a dozen stations that were playing every kind of music from pop to rock to country, classical, and jazz. He set the tuner at an unused frequency, where there was no spill-over whatsoever from the stations on either side.

The soft crackle and hiss of the open airwaves filled the room and sounded like the sighing surf-roar of a far-off sea.

He scooped up one more handful of flour and carefully drew a small, simple veve on top of the radio itself.

At the sink he washed his hands, then went to the refrigerator and got a small bottle full of blood.

It was cat's blood, used in a variety of rituals. Once a week, always at a different pet store or animal pound, he bought or “adopted” a cat, brought it home, killed it, and drained it to maintain a fresh supply of blood.

He returned to the table now, sat down in front of the radio. Dipping his fingers in the cat's blood, he drew certain runes on the table and, last of all, on the plastic window over the radio dial.

He chanted for a while, waited, listened, chanted some more, until he heard an unmistakable yet indefinable change in the sound of the unused frequency. It had been dead just a moment ago. Dead air. Dead, random, meaningless sound. Now it was alive. It was still just the crackle-sputter-hiss of static, a silk-soft sound. But somehow different from what it had been a few seconds ago. Something was making use of the open frequency, reaching out from the Beyond.

Staring at the radio but not really seeing it, Lavelle said, “Is someone there?”

No answer.

“Is someone there?”

It was a voice of dust and mummified remains: “I wait.” It was a voice of dry paper, of sand and splinters, a voice of infinite age, as bitterly cold as the night between the stars, jagged and whispery and evil.

It might be any one of a hundred thousand demons, or a full-fledged god of one of the ancient African religions, or the spirit of a dead man long ago condemned to Hell. There was no way of telling for sure which it was, and Lavelle wasn't empowered to make it speak its name. Whatever it might be, it would be able to answer his questions.

“I wait.”

“You know of my business here?”

“Yessss.”

“The business involving the Carramazza family.”

“Yessss.”

If God had given snakes the power of speech, this was what they would have sounded like.

“You know the detective, this man Dawson?”

“Yessss.”

“Will he ask his superiors to remove him from the case?”

“Never.”

“Will he continue to do research into voodoo?”

“Yessss.”

“I've warned him to stop.”

“He will not.”

The kitchen had grown extremely cold in spite of the house's furnace, which was still operating and still spewing hot air out of the wall vents. The air seemed thick and oily, too.

“What can I do to keep Dawson at bay?”

“You know.”

“Tell me.”

“You know.”

Lavelle licked his lips, cleared his throat.

“You know.”

Lavelle said, “Should I have his children murdered now, tonight, without further delay?”

V

Rebecca answered the door. She said, “I sort of figured it would be you.”

He stood on the landing, shivering. “We've got a raging blizzard out there.”

She was wearing a soft blue robe, slippers.

Her hair was honey-yellow. She was gorgeous.

She didn't say anything. She just looked at him.

He said, “Yep, the storm of the century is what it is. Maybe even the start of a new ice age. The end of the world. I asked myself who I'd most like to be with if this actually was the end of the world—”

“And you decided on me.”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh?”

“I just didn't know where to find Jacqueline Bisset.”