Kelly walked across the concrete floor, searching the shadows for threats and then shook the man on the shoulder at which he screamed.
“Shut up!” Kelly said, quietly.
“Oh, God,” the man said, rolling over and grasping at the detective. “Please tell me you brung a bottle! Please! I gotta have a taste!”
“Here,” Kelly said, drawing the flask out of his waistband and then holding onto it as the alcoholic clawed at it. “Just a taste,” he said, opening it and letting the old man have a swallow.
“God, that’s good,” the man said, trying to hold on as the detective wrestled it away. “Please, let me keep it! I need it to make the voices go away!”
“Not until you tell me what is going on,” Kelly said, squatting down. He let the man have another drink then pulled the bottle back and capped it. “What’s your name?”
“Claude Chauvet,” the man said, hugging his arms to his body. “I’m from up Houma way. Used to do construction, fishing, whatever I could do for money. Had a wife and kids once, then the bottle started to get to me. Been wandering for a while. Fetched up here about a year ago. Old sheriff dropped me in the tank til I was dried out. Fed me up, got me a job on one of the boats. Couldn’t keep me off the sauce but I worked, you know? Wasn’t a great place, but it was as good as any to die and I knew I was gonna go soon. Too much booze, liver’s going.”
“So what’s this with voices?” Kelly asked. “And do you know where Carlane Lancereau is?”
“Sure,” the old man grunted in laughter. “But gimme another taste. I need some help to tell it.”
Kelly let him have another swig and took the bottle back.
“Tell,” Kelly said.
“ ’Bout six months ago, things started happening. People got stranger than they’d been, really angry sometimes. Were a couple of murders, which hadn’t happened in a while. People started to talk about strange lights over by the old church and that fella Carlane started turning up real regular. Drove a fancy car, had fancy clothes. Sheriff couldn’t stand him, said all the Lancereaus were plumb bad. Then some kids went missing. Some people thought they were runaways, sheriff thought different. Got really angry with Deputy Mondaine about it. Couldn’t find nothing, kids had disappeared like they never was. Parents moved away, said they’d been getting threats about making a stink. Then the voices started…” He trailed off and looked longingly at the bottle and Kelly let him have another taste.
“Ain’t really voices,” the old man said in a strained voice. “More like visions.” He looked up at the cop sharply and coldly. “Everybody’s got demons, mister cop. You know that. Things they think about that ain’t exactly… right. You do, too.”
“Everybody,” Lockhart agreed.
“Well, imagine you’re pulling in a basket of crawfish and your boss is yelling at you to hurry it up and you can see yourself cutting the bastard’s throat. Just like it’s real. Feel the blood running down your hands, just like you’d already done it. Feel a rush, like a drug, at killing him. Then all of a sudden you’re back pulling in line, like nothing happened.”
“I’d say you were having DTs,” the cop replied.
“Ain’t like them,” the drunk said, shaking his head. “Sometimes you see things can’t be real. Big shapes you just know if they see you nothing’s gonna save you. See yourself doing… bad things. Got to where it was like it was all the time. But when I was drunk…”
“The visions went away,” Kelly said.
“Yeah,” Claude said, shaking. “That’s why I got to have a bottle. Yeah, I’m a drunk, but I need the bottle so the voices will go away. Sometimes they’re voices, speaking a weird language, calling me. Then the old sheriff died. Strong as an ox he was. A right bastard if you crossed him but he was a good man and healthy. And he just up and died. After that it got bad. Started hearing… screams from the church of a night. Bad screams. And chanting, weird chanting, like humans trying to say the words in my head, but we can’t say those words right.”
“Okay,” Kelly said, standing up. “Here’s your bottle-”
“He won’t get a chance to drink it,” Deputy Mondaine said from across the room.
Kelly turned around slowly and lifted his hands at the sight of the twelve gauge pointed at his midsection. And Mondaine wasn’t alone. Kelly recognized the owner of the bait and tackle store and one of the clerks from the Piggly Wiggly. At least five men, all with guns pointed at him.
“You can die right now,” Mondaine said. “Or you can pull your gun out real slowly and drop it on the floor.”
Kelly slowly pulled the automatic out with two fingers and dropped it on the ground, then turned around with his hands over his head.
I should have stayed with the Princess, he thought as something crashed into the back of his head. All he saw was white.
Barbara sat in the corner in a lotus position, praying, until she heard the creak of the door downstairs. Then she stood up, quietly, and catwalked to the window. She’d tested the floor and found all the spots that creaked and she carefully avoided them. She also stood back out of the slight light from the window to survey the top of the porch. Sure enough, there were several figures, at least four, clambering up onto the roof via a ladder.
“Lord, I ask that you infuse me with the warrior soul of David this night,” she said, quietly. “And forgive me my actions, speech and thoughts. Because, Lord, I am seriously going to kick some unrighteous ass in Your Name, Amen.”
That last prayer done she reached down inside, set “Good Barb” off to one side and opened up the jar. It was time for Bad Barb to come home.
All the fear seemed to wash away, leaving something hard and cold and ancient in its place. Her breathing slowed, details seemed to jump out at her, a vase on a shelf, the smell of the bayou, the scuffling of feet outside her door.
She catwalked back over to the shadow in the corner and waited, hand going to the sidearm and then withdrawing. Use that only if necessary.
With a crash a chunk of cinder block came through the window and at the same time someone tried to open the door. There was a thudding sound from there as three men piled through the broken window, one of them yelping as he apparently cut himself on glass. Just as the first man was throwing himself on the pillows on the bed and shouting in surprise, three more came through the door and piled into him.
Funny as the resulting scramble was, Barb was in no mood for entertainment. So she quickly walked across the room and kicked one of the bystanders in the balls from behind. Hard.
All six of them were howling and cursing so loud that they never noticed him go down. She gave him a hard kick in the temple as she went by, nonetheless. Then she got seriously to work.
She slammed a closed fist, a hammerblow, down on the neck of one of the figures at the back of the group, right at the top of the neck where the spine inserts to the skull. Concussion on the first through third vertebra almost always induces instantaneous unconsciousness and it did in this case. It could also cause death if the blow was hard enough and Barb was not pulling her strikes. Mrs. Nice Lady was no longer in residence.
One of the group seemed to sense that something was going on behind him and turned. Barb caught his left wrist with her right hand and twisted it up and back while holding the elbow, dislocating it on the fulcrum of her left hand. He howled like a banshee as she gave the elbow an additional twist, then was cut off in mid howl as her open palm struck him on the temple.
The group was finally aware that the person they were wrestling with on the bed was one of them and was trying to come to terms with being under attack, but she wasn’t going to give them much time.