The Evil Inside

8

When they neared Jamie’s house, Sam had Jamie put a call through to Jenna again. Still no answer.

Jamie swore, an unusual and colorful event. “By all the damnable banshees of the night! Why isn’t that girl answering her phone?”

“I’ll let you out. I’ll keep looking,” Sam said. “Call me if she’s in the house.”

Jamie got out of the car. “Aye, and if she’s not, I’ll start around the common and the blocks around the Hawthorne.”

Sam let Jamie out and tried cruising around on Church Street. There was no sign of her, but Essex Street was blocked off to everything but pedestrian traffic. As he tried to maneuver the streets, the going got difficult. Horrific murders might have recently taken place in Salem, but to the tourists flocking the area, the situation was in hand. The killer had been caught.

And, of course, they were tourists. They wouldn’t be likely targets of a maniac who’d only killed locals in his own realm thus far. Just as the mob had never really threatened the average Joe on the streets of Chicago or New York, visitors could allow themselves to feel safe.

Indians, pirates, crones, vampires and princesses walked into the streets against the lights, and he had to drive slowly and carefully.

His phone rang: Jamie.

“She’s not at the house.”

“All right. I’m parking. I can crawl faster than I can move in the car.”

“She wouldn’t have left the historic area.”

“Is she armed?” Sam asked Jamie.

“I…don’t know,” Jamie said.

“All right. We’ll keep up.”

He swore to himself-far less colorfully than Jamie. He parked at the next opening. A tow-away zone. Screw the car.

He exited and headed for Essex Street, wishing he’d made her give him an agenda, his heart pumping harder with every passing second.

Jenna figured she couldn’t jump over the wall-at the rear of the cemetery it was a huge drop down to the street below.

It occurred to her that she could confront her attacker. But the light from the streets flashing off the honed blade convinced her that she didn’t have what was needed for such a thing.

She should have carried her gun. After the team had been made official-proving themselves in New Orleans and learning that they could be a viable force together-they’d gone through the regular route of Federal training. She was good with a gun. She’d been careful here, not carrying it, because she didn’t want the police complaining to her superiors. Plus she wasn’t entirely used to having it on her yet.

Not such a good plan, despite the finest of intentions…

The creature kept coming.

Keeping her eye on it, Jenna began a snakelike movement toward her right and the back of the museum that bordered the graveyard, using the cemetery’s overgrown trees as a protection against the creature.

True panic gripped her when she heard the scythe being swung through the air, high this time. She felt it whizz by her, and then she heard a strange, hollow sound as it smacked against a headstone.

Riddled with relief, she paused.

Plastic. The damned thing was plastic!

She turned and stood her ground, staring at the horned god for a minute. The figure was close, and she could now see that she was taller than the creature by a good two or three inches.

She smiled.

It looked at her, and turned to run.

Jenna wasn’t about to let this fool go. She sprinted after it, glad for the training she’d been compelled to complete, it having taught her how to run well over uneven surfaces like the jagged line of standing and broken gravestones within the cemetery.

The masked figure turned back once and saw that she was almost upon it.

Jenna heard a yelp of panic.

They were nearly back to the middle of the cemetery when she made a dive and tackled the creature.

“Ouch! Stop it! You’re hurting me!”

Jenna eased off and pulled the horned god mask off over his head. She looked down in the hazy light, and saw the least likely of assailants.

It was a kid. She estimated the boy to be thirteen or fourteen, a young teenager. He had a freckled face, and sandy red hair, a spattering of acne and a look of sheer terror in his brown eyes.

“What did you think you were doing?” Jenna demanded.

“Aw, come on, I was playing with you. A little scare for Halloween!”

Jenna stood and reached down a hand. The kid stood, and looked quickly to the side as if he was ready to bolt again.

“Oh, no, no, no! Who are you, what are you doing and who set you up to do this?” she demanded.

He made the slightest turn; she gripped his wrist in an iron vise.

“Ow!” the kid wailed.

“You’re not going anywhere. I’m getting the police.”

A look of petrified alarm came to his face. “No, please! Please-please, please don’t do that.”

“Then you’d better start talking.”

She fumbled in her pocket for her phone. It wasn’t there. Cursing, she tried not to let on that it was going to be difficult to carry out her threat.

The graveyard was empty now except for the two of them-and the hazy shadows that gathered around, anxious for excitement in their endless days and nights. Jenna kept her attention focused on the boy.

“You know who I am, don’t you?” she asked.

He looked away.

“Don’t you?” she demanded, her fingers tightening again around his wrist.

“Yeah,” he said dully. “You’re that whacked-out FBI lady who talks to ghosts-and who wants to let a crazy killer out on the streets!”

She gritted her teeth. “No one is going to let a crazy killer out on the streets. But you, young man, are an idiot. You’re right. I am FBI. What if I’d been armed? I might have taken a shot at you!”

“It’s plastic!” he protested.

“You meant to scare me. If you’d scared me enough, plastic or no, I wouldn’t have known, and I might have shot you. It’s a damned good imitation of the real thing.”

He was silent, his cheeks red. “Look, I’m sorry!” he pleaded.

“Who are you?” She’d thought at first that it might be the bitter David Yates, or his comrade in accusation, Joshua Abbott. But this kid was too young to be either. Those two had to be seventeen now.

“My mom will probably kill me,” he murmured.

“Your name and your mom’s name, or I call the police. And I want to know why you’re doing this.”

“Marty-Martin Keller. And…I just did it because I hear them talking. All the adults in town are talking about you and that Mr. Hall. They’re all angry. They say the cops have a killer and Mr. Hall is such a hotshot attorney he wants to prove that a crazy kid is innocent just because he can. He doesn’t care if they let Malachi out on the streets, because he lives in Boston. And the rest of us will all be hacked up in our beds.”

Jenna took a deep breath. “What made you choose this costume?” she asked, somewhat calmer.

He lowered his head. “We had it at the school for years. Every year, they do a play-about the witchcraft trials,