The Evil Inside

and head on out to the whole neighborhood. We’ve got to move on a real cleanup. We’ve had the crime lab out. Prosecution has seen the place and defense has seen the place. Anyway, come on in, I can give you about a half an hour. Watch where you step, and what you touch.” He looked at Sam.

They stepped into the house, entering the foyer together. Jenna found herself drawn back to the parlor and held back when Jackson and Angela started upstairs with John. Sam stood in the hallway, watching her.

She looked around the room and then closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, it seemed that an opaque quality had fallen over everything, as if she floated in a soaring motion back, and looked on from a distance. She was there, and she wasn’t there. She was watching from a strange distance that couldn’t be tallied by space but by time.

A woman moved about the room. Her hair was brown and graying and tucked back in a severe knot at her nape. She dusted and straightened up. She was doing so when a young man came to the door. He leaned against the door frame, looking in. His face was lean and well shaped; his eyes were dark and should have been appealing, but they had a hollow and bitter look to them.

The woman didn’t look up. “Soup in the kitchen, though you’re not deserving.”

“Mother, I hope not,” the young man said. He was in a long, straight coat, vest and suspenders. The woman was in a long, flowered gown with a high neck. “Who the hell is deserving of week-old soup.”

“You’re a lazy, no-good lie-about,” the woman said. “And the soup is fine. Fine for a lad who grew to be worthless.”

“Like my sister? My sister, who dresses in twenty-year-old clothing, mends and darns socks and grows old since no man of substance will have her?” he asked softly.

The woman looked at him. “You’re a greedy one, as well as a worthless one. Would that I’d never had such ingrates fall from my womb!”

“Would that you never had,” he agreed. He straightened where he stood. His hands had been behind his back. He drew them forward, displaying the ax he held and hefted as he spoke. “Would that we’d never lived in this godforsaken house. Would that we’d had actual warmth in winter, that Father had allowed fires to burn, or that his heart had been open to more than a passion for hoarding at the expense of all else. Would that I’d not spent my days in the attic, imagining the insanity of Eli Lexington hacking his family to little bits and pieces.”

The woman looked over at him, frowning. “You’re actually going to cut wood.”

“No, Mother,” he said softly. “I’m not going to cut wood.”

She didn’t start to scream until he walked toward her. Then, it was too late. His first strike was high and overhead and filled with passion and rage, and cleaved her skull so that her face seemed to fall apart in a burst of blood.

And then he struck again and again. And when she lay dead, the young man sat down on the sofa, covered in her blood, and he waited. And in time, a tall man in a cap and shabby tweed coat walked in and made it into the parlor, where he saw the woman on the floor and his son drenched in blood.

He started to shout; the young man, who had been all but immobile, leaped to his feet, and this time, the ax hit its target first in the throat, and the only sounds that were heard other than the sickening crunch of the ax were those of a man choking…until those sounds came no more, and the man lay dead on the floor, and the smell of blood was stringent and horrible on the air. The man with the ax just stood there. Then the door burst open and a young woman came rushing in. She might have been pretty, beautiful even. But her face was far too thin; she appeared tired and worn, like a faded rose.

At the doorway, she surveyed the scene in horror.

“I had to, Isabelle. I had to,” her brother said.

“And we must move, and quickly now. Your clothes! We have to get rid of your clothing, and we must get away so that we were elsewhere when this thing happened. Come, Nathan, come. Oh, dear brother, what have you done?”

The young man started to laugh.

“Oh, Lexington, he loved his wife,

So much he kept her near,

Close as his sons, dear as his life;

He chopped her up;

He axed them, too, and then he kept them here.

Duck, duck, wife!

Duck, duck, life!

You’re it! Oh, Isabelle! Now, I’m it!”

“Nathan! Come! Now. Touch nothing, we’ll go out the back, to the cliff…I’ll get you new clothing…we’ll sink what you’re wearing, Father’s fishing weights are in the back…we must move quickly! Oh, dear baby brother, what have you done?”

“They can hang me, Isabelle. They can hang me. Better death than the life we were living!”

“Come!” Isabelle urged, and at last, he seemed able to move.

Jenna stood frozen, the scent of the blood almost overwhelming her. The image of bits and pieces and flecks of flesh all around her was horrifying, and she felt as if her knees were composed of nothing but water.

The mist receded. She felt as if she was whisked back in time, and then thought she was going to fall…

She didn’t. Sam was holding her, looking down into her eyes with grave concern.

“I’m getting you out of here. I don’t give a damn what you say.”

He half lifted her and strode, carrying and dragging her, out to the hallway, the foyer and then outside.

He set her down on the porch, and sat beside her.

“Jenna?”

She took a deep breath. Out here, the blood of the distant past and the more recent past was all washed away by the breeze that came in from the water, cleansing the sins of time.

She was no longer dizzy. She managed a weak smile and set her hand on his.

“I’m okay, Sam.”

“I know, I know. It’s what you do. Maybe it comes at too high a price.”

Her smile steadied; he hadn’t even asked her yet what she had seen.

“No, because, as you can see, I’m fine now. I just wish…”

“What?”

“I can’t seem to bring my vision to the right century.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw the Braden family. They weren’t nice people, Sam. I mean, of course, no one out there deserves to be murdered, but I believe that the parents were pretty horrible to their children. The son did do it. And his sister knew, but she was the one who helped him get out of the house and clean up, and she probably swore for him at the trial that he wasn’t in the house when it happened.”

Before Sam could answer, they heard footsteps on the stair. John Alden came out to the porch and looked curiously at Sam and Jenna. “You done?”

“Yes, thanks, John,” Sam said.

“Almost!” Jenna said. She jumped back to her feet.

Sam caught her hand. “Don’t do this to yourself,” he said softly.

She looked down and saw something dark and disturbed in his eyes. She couldn’t allow him to stop her.

“I have to go back in, Sam. I have to try,” she said, and walked back into the parlor. She stared about the room. She closed her eyes and thought about the recent past. She tried to imagine the more current murders-and a figure in a costume that resembled that of the horned god coming in to commit murder. She waited and she opened her eyes.

But the mist wouldn’t come.

She saw the chalk markings and the blood stains, just like anyone else would.

And she saw no more.

Jackson and Angela came and stood in the hallway for a moment, and then came into the parlor. Angela stood very still while Jackson looked at the chalk marks and the blood spray and moved carefully about the room, as if he tried to imagine exactly how the killings had taken place.

Sam stood in the doorway, his expression stony.