Never Fear (2 page)

“
I don’t know...” Judy
said, setting the tray down.

“
It’ll be all right, Judy.
A little scare never hurt anyone. Lighten up.” Dan set his tray
down next to hers.

Judy looked at him doubtfully. “Well,
maybe just a couple.” She picked up her mug and sat on one of the
couches beside Dan.

On the couch opposite them, Nancy
said, “Here goes...

THE GHOST OF A CHRISTMAS
PAST

HEATHER GRAHAM

The lambs had been slaughtered. Blood
poured from their painted mouths—once white-washed and serene.
Rings of blood surrounded their tender necks.

The Three Wise Men had fared no
better; rings of paint—or whatever substance had been used to
create the illusion of blood—dripped down their necks and onto
their old Judaic tunics.

Nothing had been left in sacred
peace—Mary and Joseph were chopped into mass sections of wood, all
splattered in red as well. The infant’s bed of straw lay in so many
bloody bits of pulp and gore that it was almost impossible to tell
what it had been. Camels had also gone the way of the axe—some kind
of staged blood covered the entire scene like the remnants of a
hard red rain.

“
Lieutenant Marin, have
you ever seen anything like it?” Captain Declan Craig asked,
staring at the wooden carnage, a fierce frown cut into his
features.

“
No,” Dakota Marin said,
and she never had. But, then again, she’d come up from the City of
Miami—where axes were more often used on living people than on
wooden images. She imagined that this had been done by someone of a
different belief, perhaps, furious that Christmas was being given
so much play. And to be honest, she did find this bloody, pulpy
destruction of wood to be more disturbing than some of the flesh
and blood horror she’d witnessed in five years in Greater
Miami.

Then again, the small town of Hanging
Tree, Florida, had a reputation for the weird. Historically, a
mysterious offshoot of the Caribe tribe had once lived in the
area—and their shamans had made this a place where war parties were
planned—and where they had been wiped out by another mysterious
tribe. Then, the Spaniards had arrived in Florida in the late
fifteenth century and their missionaries had come across from the
coast to die at the hands of unknown assailants. After the
Spaniards, the English had created a settlement nearby—and brought
their evil-doers here—to be hanged from the giant old oak that sat
just beyond the sacred burial ground that surrounded St. Marks, the
now non-denominational church that was the largest in town.
Supposedly, when the wiccans, paganists, or witches had lived here,
there had been another outcry and one poor woman had been dragged
out in the middle of the night to be hanged—at the hanging tree, of
course. She had supposedly screamed about being possessed by a
devil, and—as all good legendary victims should—she left behind a
curse.

Naturally, those who had been hanged
had joined with the demons in the forest. Sometimes, it was said
that unlucky lads and lasses had disappeared here—other stories
stated that gruesome remains had been found along forest paths—and
the gravestones that had already cropped up around the church which
had been originally been Catholic, with construction having been
begun in the late 1600s.

Florida had officially become an
American Territory in 1822 and the Americans had come, eager for
land. It really was beautiful land, north of Ocala, east of
Tallahassee, near such picturesque places as Micanopy and
Gainesville. The land actually rolled here; oaks and pines still
grew on rich land, horses and cattle were common along with good
old Florida grapefruit and oranges. The Seminole Wars had brought
bloodshed and havoc, only to be followed by the Civil War—and a
skirmish just before the battle of Olustee that had left all
dead.

Come the twentieth century, a group of
psychics had moved in, and then, when one of their number had met
with a gruesome end at the hands of something described as what
might only have been a forest beast, they had declared the area far
too active to be borne by such sensitives, it had been taken over
by a colony of wiccans. The wiccans claimed that there was a curse
on the land—and that the devil must be fed. There were those, of
course, who never noticed the curse. Through it all, some hardy
farmers, ranchers, and townspeople had held on. Today, it was just
a typical small town with some interesting historic buildings and
some ugly new ones.

And outlying areas with horses, cows,
and fruit trees. It was very popular at Halloween—and enterprising
citizens had gotten together to create “Haunted Hanging Nights.”
These days, however, the crime tended to be Bernie getting mad and
belting Jez at the local dive bar, Seven Trees, when he got too
carried away with his karaoke and dented the microphone, or when
Mrs. Firestone called the cops, locked in her bathroom, because her
husband had threatened her with a beating for changing the channel
on the television. Christmas season was upon them. That usually
meant a nice flow of tourists who came to see the historic
buildings all decked out with their beautiful lights, the historic
church—and the Nativity Scene set up on the church lawn.

Dakota knew all this because the
minute she’d received the invitation from the town’s mayor, she’d
hit up Amazon for every book she could find on the area. Quirky—and
close enough to Gainesville, Jacksonville, St. Augustine—and even
Orlando and theme-parkville—to make it an okay move.

She still had all her books, piled
high on her desk at the station.

“
Interesting enough for
you, Marin?” Declan asked, turning to look at her skeptically. “I
know after the big city, we’ve been a little mundane.”

“
Bizarre, certainly,” she
said. “I’m going to take it we’re looking for teens from the local
high school—or someone who is angry that a Buddhist statue, a
pentacle, a Star of David, or some other religious symbol hasn’t
been given equal space.”

She forced a smiled. Declan looked
like he belonged in a move about a Stepford-style town; he was
strikingly handsome, like a beach boy who might have cruised Miami
Beach—tall, blond, tanned, and nicely muscled. He believed that, no
matter how polite and respectful she tried to appear, she believed
that she’d wound up working in this hick-cracker town like Mayberry
and that he wasn’t even as bright as a Barney Fife, or perhaps even
something as pathetic as a cartoon creature like a Deputy
Dawg.

She really wasn’t sure what she
thought as yet. All she knew was that she’d come out at the wrong
end of a situation with Brendan Howell in Miami; she’d been the
newbie—he’d had a nice long reputation on the streets and,
apparently, no other female co-worker had gotten the nerve to
complain about him. All she had known was that he appeared innocent
before the powers that be—and she’d be the one to get the boot.
When the offer had come from Hanging Tree—at a very nice salary—it
had seemed a prudent idea to accept it. She’d been hired as
Declan’s second in command and it was a small force—there were only
six more officers, two for each of three daily eight hour
shifts.

They were all lovely people—but she
wasn’t sure she’d have wanted to be on a major Miami drug sting
with them. They’d be far too polite to the Uzi-wielding pushers
they were trying to take down.

At that moment, Pastor Frank Waterford
came hurrying out of the church, shaking his head, his distress
apparently in his ruddy cheeks, waddling speed, and wide eyes.
Frank was okay—a religious man who didn’t go fanatic on anyone and
gave sermons that simply encouraged nice, polite, and kind
neighborly behavior. He did, however, love Christmas—and the
Christmas apparel that adorned the church as the season drew near.
In Hanging Tree, the townspeople decked out the graveyard, placing
Christmas wreaths and ornaments on their family tombs. Slightly
weird, but kind of nice, really.

“
This is awful, just
awful!” Pastor Frank said, folding his shaking hands before him as
he reached them—and looked over the “blood and guts.”

“
Yes, Pastor, and I’m so
sorry,” Declan said.

“
I wish—I so wish there
was something to be done!” he said. “The sheer destruction—but
that’s not it! It’s what they’ve done. This is so wrong. Why, God
and Christ and the Holy Ghost must be looking down on us in
tears!”

If God cried, Dakota thought, it was
over the real blood and guts humanity liked to shed. But she
quickly said, “Pastor, we’ll find out who did this. Probably kids,
but, it could be what’s considered a hate crime as well. We will
get to the bottom of it.”

He looked at her very sadly. “I don’t
think so, Dakota.” No one in the area called Declan Captain—they
certainly weren’t going to call her Lieutenant Marin. The only one
who did was Declan—and always with a certain tone.

“
There’s going to be a
witness somewhere,” she said. “Someone who saw something; or,
perhaps, someone walking around with a bunch of fake blood all over
them.”

Pastor Frank looked at Declan and
shook his head sadly. “We’ll never be able to replace them. But,
they knew that, didn’t they? They’ve been waiting. And now, they’ve
done it.”

Shaking his head, he turned and headed
back into the old Gothic church.

“
They? He knows who did
it?” Dakota asked Declan.

Declan kept his eyes steady on her.
“He thinks it was done by the devils in the woods.”

“
What?” Dakota asked,
incredulous. Frank was a minister! How could he believe such a
thing?

“
Everything bad in this
town is blamed on the devils in the woods,” Declan explained. “I
guess we should be happy that this time, they tore apart mannequins
instead of people.”

“
Please don’t tell me that
you believe that devils live in the woods—and that they hurried in
with hatchets to tear up this Nativity scene?”

He shrugged. “Let’s go see what we can
find out.”

“
You’re not going to set
this up as a crime scene? Fingerprints, footprints, some kind of
clues? I see a cigarette butt over there.”

“
You got an evidence bag?
Bag it. You won’t get footprints—rained heavy about six this
morning. Fingerprints—you won’t get any of those,
either.”

“
Because devils don’t
leave fingerprints?” Dakota asked sarcastically.

He shrugged. “Because county forensic
crews won’t come in here with their expertise when its wooden
objects that have been massacred. No—you just won’t get any.
Whoever did this wore gloves.”

“
And you know that
because...?”

“
There’s a tuft of
material caught on that lamb’s ear,” he said. “Bag that, too, if
you will deputy. And then, we’ll head over to the Seven Trees
Bar.”

Declan pointed across the quiet
country road that stretched before the church. Ironically, the
ramshackle building facing the church was a bar—a shanty bar,
actually voted the number one dive bar in this section of north
central Florida.

“
Great. If we have a
witness, it’s going to be a drunk,” Dakota murmured.

Declan looked at her and cocked his
head to the side. “You said you wanted a witness. Besides, the
bartender and waitresses don’t get plastered. And Officer Cary
Conklin has the graveyard shift and likes to ticket or arrest the
drunks at night so most people come with a designated
driver—believe it or not—even in this hick town.”

Dakota hunkered down for the cigarette
butt and then headed to the lamb to do the same with the bit of
fabric. She realized that he was watching her as she did so. She
flushed slightly as she rose; there was nothing licentious in the
way that he watched her. Not like the way the bastard had in Miami.
No, this was different. He studied her—as a mathematician might
study an interesting equation.

As they walked across the street he
asked, “What the hell are you doing here, Dakota?”

“
Working,” she
said.

“
Yes, why are you working
here?”

“
It pays well.”

“
Oh, that’s bull. Yeah,
the pay is good. You would have made detective in Miami. You’re
twenty-seven. Great record. Killer body, perfect nose, lips—eyes.
Oh, sorry, not trying to be sexist or offensive. I just really want
to know what the hell you’re doing here.”

“
What are you doing here?”
she countered.

He paused. “I’m here to catch the
devils,” he said.

“
Oh, please,” she
murmured.

“
I’m from here,” he said
simply.

“
And you never wanted to
go anywhere else?”

He was silent, stopping as they
reached the opposite side of the street. She wondered if he’d shrug
again and keep walking. But then, to her surprise, he offered her a
crooked smile and said, “I’ll show you mine if you show me
yours.”

“
Okay. Mine is a fucking
octopus of a man who everyone thinks is the Second Coming,” Dakota
said flatly.

“
Figured something like
that.”