A Friend You Haven't Met: Part Nine

 

“St. Helwig Sunday Massacre,” I mouthed, racking my brains a moment. “I’m sorry, but I can’t quite place the memory …”

“Nobody can,” she snarled. “It happened right at the time of one of those big school shootings. Got lost as a fucking footnote to the main story: oh, yeah, and this happened too.” She spat. “Didn’t quite fit their narrative because a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun.” She snorted. “Lot a good it did old Chet; he died of his wounds later. Hero’s reward, I guess.”

“My God, I remember it now.” Timmy gripped my shoulder. His voice was awed and solicitous. “No wonder the name rang a bell. It happened when I was on a parish assignment out-of-state, Bob.” He turned to the girl. “The man was a Satanist, wasn’t he?”

“He was a nut is what he was.” The girl looked at Tim’s robe resentfully. “It didn’t matter if he was a Satanist nut or a Christian nut, those folks are just as dead.”

“It might matter more than you know.” He crossed himself and turned to me. “This is a dark place, Mr. Bellamy. It’s no wonder the beast was drawn …”

“Now, now,” I cautioned. I turned back to the girl. “And just why are you here, little lady?”

“I come here to think,” she said, leaning back on her elbows against the porch rail. “Not that it’s any of your business. Today I got the feeling that something bad was coming my way.” She glared a challenge. “And here you are.”

“Now, honey, you got nothing to worry about us. Here.” I reached nice and slow into my pocket and took out my wallet and flashed my old DEA badge. Just long enough for her to get a look. “We have reason to believe we got us a dangerous fugitive holed up in here. Do you know another way in? We want to check, and if there’s nothing here, we’ll be on our way. We won’t touch anything, I promise.”

“You mean there could be another asshole, hiding in there?” This seemed to really piss her off – sorry for the phrase, but her style was starting to get hold of me. She stood there a moment, irresolute, then made up her mind. “Okay, I’ll get you in, but I’m going with you to make sure. A quick look around and then out.”

She reached into her shirt and pulled out a steel chain necklace. A key dangled at the end. I stared at it.

“How did you get that?” I asked.

“I told you. This place is a shrine, and I’m taking care of it. I’m Kassie May Jet and my mom died here, and I’m not going to have a bunch of murder-whores and crime-tourists crawling around, understand? I don’t go in, myself.”

     “Yes, I think I do understand,” I said quietly. “We will be … respectful.”

“Sure you will. You just back off while I unlock. That goes for your goofy goons as well. What’s their deal? In disguise?”

“Something like that,” I said, glancing at the Morgs, who had been following our dialog quizzically. I think they wondered why I was taking so much guff from a scrawny little kid. I gestured them back. “It’s kind of a cover, you could say. Who’d believe we were serious? Heck, I almost don’t believe it.”

She had been undoing the lock and now threaded the chain from the door handles. It clanked to the floorboards.

“Yeah, I guess not,” she conceded. “But just to show you I’m serious …” She reached into the pocket of her jacket, and then she was holding a pistol in her hand, trained right on me. I had been thinking about the danger inside, but that focused my attention right smartly.

“I’m not walking in there with four strangers without a little insurance.” Her voice was cool.

Tim, however, was not. He raised his trembling hands, half in surrender and half in appeal. But his voice was steady.

“Do you really think, that in light of your experience, you should be carrying that thing around?”

“I think in light of my experience, I’d be a fool not to.” She gestured with the gun barrel. “Specially if there’s a bad dude in there. Now let’s check it out so you can be on your way.”

“You don’t have anything to worry about from us,” I said mildly. “But if what we think’s in there is in there, don’t hesitate to shoot. Be warned.”

“Geez. Let’s just go.” Her voice was tight.

We drew in near the door, and I started pulling it open, straining against creaking hinges. Korm nervously switched on the flashlight, flinching at the sudden brightness, then clumsily tried to focus it in over our heads into the dusky darkness that yawned in the growing gap.

We started to head in, and then Kassie gasped. I heard her voice but didn’t dare turn away from searching the shadow ahead.

“You taking a little girl in there?” she snapped.

“Don’t let looks fool you. I’m a lot older than I seem.” I could hear the concealed glee in Maggie’s voice, to be at the same time fibbing and telling some truth. “Maggie Margaret Malloy, murderous midget agent, at your service.”

That seemed to dumbfound the teen into silence. We crept forward, and amid the creaking and shuffling I heard a sharp, slithering sound. Roth, the big Morg, had drawn his blade.

We found ourselves in a windowless vestibule, with dusty benches, empty hooks on the wall, and a broken coatrack slouching in one corner. Korm anxiously twisted the light dancing all around, and I had to tell him pretty sharply to settle down.

     The double-door entry to the inner room was not secured in any way. I got the holy water bottle ready, its cold metal sweating in my hand. I pushed the right-hand door open, the ancient unused hydraulics protesting every inch of the way, then cautiously stuck my head through and looked around.

The long shadowy room was badly lit with a line of high, narrow, dusty windows that let in a few beams of murky sun, just enough to dazzle the eye and make the remaining patches of darkness even more baffling. But even in that uncertain light, I could recognize the layout of the old church beneath the converted bowling alley.

Down the room, where the pews used to run, were four guttered bowling lanes, no longer smooth but warped from years of neglect. At their end, where the alter would have been in the old days, four dark pits yawned against the far wall. In one of them, still miraculously upright, was a single yellowed bowling pin, like the last carious tooth in a gaping jaw. It was still as death, nothing moving but the dust stirred up by the opening of the door, but there was a curious tension in the air that I had come to recognize over my years in the Bureau. I edged cautiously inside, guardedly aware of the blind darkness on either hand.

“Bring that light forward,” I urged the skinny Morg. “Careful! We need to check our right and left, right here.”

“Right you are, sir,” Korm answered. His voice was muffled behind his mask, but I could hear his teeth chattering, even through the cloth. He came up on one side and Roth on the other, who held his short sword on guard to the left as Korm swung the flashlight the other way.

The dark huddle there resolved itself into a service desk, a pigeonhole with empty slots for bowling shoes behind it, and a door marked “Restroom” to one side. A deep cobwebbed shelf held a few dusty rental balls. A turn of the light the other way showed what must have the bar, completely empty now except for the cracked mirror watching behind the counter.  

“Cover me a minute,” I said, and headed over to the restroom door. I checked all the way behind the counter first; no place for anything to hide. I paused, then shoved the door open abruptly.

Nothing in the tiny room but a sink and a toilet and hardly enough room to stand. There were still a few inches of cloudy water in the toilet – at least I hoped it was water. I hastily withdrew.

“Nothing there,” I announced.

By this time Tim and Maggie and the girl had entered the main hall but were still crouched watchfully around the doors. I crossed over to the bar side to check out any cabinets there and jumped when I heard an unexpected sound. Behind me, Kassie had flicked open her lighter and was using it to light up the seating area.

It was a tumble of loose tables and chairs; the only fixed features were a couple of old scoreboard projectors bolted to the floor. The girl was moving slowly forward, eyes set on the ground, apparently unconscious of anything else around her, and my heart seemed to skip a beat when I realized how vulnerable she looked, gun or no gun.

“Hey, you! Wait a minute!” I bawled, and my voice seemed to shake even more dust from the rafter. I lumbered over, the rest a few steps behind me, and grabbed her by the shoulder. “It’s not safe …” I started, then looked down to see what had fixed her attention.

In front of our feet was an old police outline in cracking tape laid out on the ancient rayon rug. There were still rusty stains etched blotchily in the unnatural fabric. I could see others on the edge of the little circle of light, splayed or curling out of sight on either side, but the girl couldn’t take her eyes off this one. In its center was on old, dried, brown bundle of field flowers.

I started to try to say something but couldn’t. Instead I just paused and then patted her gently on the back. By this time the others had come up behind me and clustered around.

Timmy was the only one who understood, of course. He crossed himself and bowed his head, then looked up angrily.

“Truly, this building is twice-desecrated. It is no wonder the Tekkel chose this dark place of violence to hide. I am so sorry, child.”

“The Tekkel? What kind of a name…?” she started to murmur distractedly, when suddenly Korm yelped behind us, “The Tekkel!”

Even those who couldn’t understand his words could hear his fear and jerked their heads up, looking along his shaking, pointing beam of light. As if in answer to the thrice-summoning of its name, the beast was coming crawling out of one of the pin pits, its spiky, groping legs pouring, spreading out upside down from the hole, squeezing forth like a gigantic cockroach out of a crack you would swear was far too small for its bulk.