Orphans of Wonderland (4 page)

Chapter Five

Dinner over, the dining room table sat empty but for the remnants of what had been a delicious and very pleasant meal. Before Billy arrived, Joel had filled Taylor in on who Katelyn Burrows was and what she wanted. The result was more than a little tension throughout dinner, but both managed to keep it under control. Before Billy got there Joel filled him in over the phone, hoping this would cause Billy to stay quiet and not bring up anything that might open the door to discussing the situation. They'd kept it light, but Joel knew what was coming.

An older REM tune played from the stereo, and as Taylor excused herself, then went to the kitchen and began straightening up, Joel and Billy stepped out onto the patio off the living room so Billy could have a cigarette.

It was a cold and clear evening, the sky starless. Joel pulled his jacket in tight around him, buried his hands in his pockets and shuffled his feet, as Billy, who always seemed oblivious to the cold, lit his cigarette. “Too chilly for you?” he asked, exhaling a cloud of smoke that mingled with their plumes of breath.

“Yeah, it's freezing. What's wrong with you?”

“How much time you got?” Billy chuckled. “Think Taylor liked the wine?”

“For future reference, if it comes in a box, don't get it.”

“Fine, nothing but cans from now on.” A short, portly and balding man in his early fifties, Billy Gill had a penchant for inexpensive polyester slacks, ill-fitting sports coats and comfortable shoes. He almost always wore a tie, and tonight was no exception, but they always hung loose and sloppily around his neck, which fit in well with the rest of his perpetually wrinkled and slightly stained clothing. Never married, Billy lived alone in a small condominium complex near Bangor with his two cats, Woodward and Bernstein. He rarely dated, and when he did, things never went well. As a result, his was a rather lonely existence, and the small newspaper he ran had become his life. He'd worked there since graduating college, and had climbed his way up to editor in chief several years before. Once a week he and Joel and a few other guys got together for poker night, but other than that, Billy Gill's evenings were uneventful and spent alone, so Joel and Taylor tried to have him over for dinner at least a few times each month. Although he'd hem and haw and act like he couldn't possibly fit dinner into his busy social calendar, he always found a way to make it. “But wine's about the last thing you've got to worry about tonight, pal.”

Joel nodded. “We didn't get much of a chance to talk about it, but suffice to say, Taylor's not pleased.”

“Can you blame her?”

“No, of course not. But…”

Billy took another puff. “You sure this is something you want to do?”

“If it was about wanting to, I wouldn't be going. I need to do it. I owe Lonnie that much.”

Billy stabbed the cigarette between his lips for emphasis and left it there, letting it dangle. He still didn't look cool. It probably wasn't possible. “You don't owe anybody a damn thing.”

“We were tight once, went through a lot together. That matters.”

Billy suddenly looked unusually serious. “Yeah,” he admitted softly, “it does.”

“I just don't want it to cause any major problems.”

“What do you think it's all about?”

“I've got no idea. I don't think it's anything like…before…but there's strange aspects to it for sure.”

“I mean, this business with the brand you were talking about, what the hell's that about? And he didn't know he had it? How is that even possible?”

“I don't know. Maybe he wasn't conscious when it was done.”

“What kind of person
brands
a human being?”

“What kind of person brands any living being?”

“I don't mean to badmouth your friend or his memory, but odds are he was into some bad shit or pissed off the wrong kind of folks. People don't get shot in the head on the street for no reason. You know that. Could it be a random thing? Sure, it's possible. But how often does that really happen?”

“Maybe it was a mistake.” Joel shrugged. “Shooter got the wrong guy.”

“That's the problem—you don't know much of anything at this point.”

“No, I don't. I have no idea what the hell I'm walking into.”

“That's never wise, my friend.”

“Sometimes it's necessary. I'm guessing it won't amount to much.”

“Guessing or hoping?”

“Little of both. Either way, I've been out of the game a long time, Billy.”

“You're still a reporter. It's not like you're selling furniture or something.”

Joel stared at him. “My last story was about the school lunch program and how pizza is still being featured. Hard-hitting investigative journalism at its best. I don't want to come off arrogant or anything, but I'm thinking Pulitzer.”

“Once a reporter, always a reporter.”

“I thought that was priests.”

“Fine. Them too.”

“My point is the last real investigative work I did was twenty years ago, and I haven't stepped foot in that part of Massachusetts in all that time. My old stomping grounds probably don't even exist anymore, and any connections I had back then are likely long gone. So I figure I knock the rust off as best I can, go poke around a little, see if I can come up with anything or make some sense of things. If I come up empty—which is probably exactly what'll happen—I come home none the worse for wear and able to live with myself because at least I'll know I gave it an honest shot.”

Billy smoked his cigarette a while, thinking. “I realize we didn't know each other back when all that other stuff went down and you had those problems, but I know enough to realize that's not something you need to get anywhere near again.”

“You think I don't know that?”

Flashes of memories blinked before Joel's eyes. Photos of the Catholic church…the altar on which Cindy Mello had been slaughtered and sacrificed…the symbols and sacrilegious writings in her blood and fecal matter smeared across the walls and floors…the desecration…the madness and evil falling through his mind like black rain…

He forced them away. It had been years since such things had tormented him or come to him so vividly.

“It's not like I didn't read your book,” Billy said. “I do know something about what happened and—”

“It was a long time ago.”

“But it also nearly killed you. You almost didn't recover.”

He and Billy had never really talked in-depth about those days, and Joel had no intention of starting now. “It was a completely different time, a different case and an entirely different situation. This has nothing to do with that sort of thing.”

“That you know of.”

“Look, man, I appreciate your concern, okay? But I'm fine, and I'll be fine.”

“You've got a good life here, Joel. A damn fine woman, a nice home, a badass best friend.” He grinned, then grew serious again. “Don't fuck it up. Some people would kill for what you have. And by some people I mean me.”

Joel gave a quiet, obligatory laugh, but both he and Billy knew there really wasn't anything funny about any of this. As an awkward silence fell over them, a chilly but gentle breeze slipped through the trees at the edge of the backyard. A set of wind chimes hanging off the back of the house swayed into motion, their ethereal song dancing through the darkness.

“It's not only a totally different situation,” Joel finally said. “I'm a totally different person now.”

“Just tread carefully, my man. If you feel a sense of duty to look into this for your friend or his kid or whatever, I get it—I do—but it's not worth losing what you have. It's not worth losing Taylor. It's not worth losing
you
. No matter what happens, you remember that. Then get back here safe and sound. And don't be gone longer than your vacation. I don't want to have to fire your sorry ass, but I will because I'm an insufferable douche. Besides, we've got work to do, dinners to have, poker games to play, you hear me?”

“With your softly melodic voice it's virtually impossible not to.”

“Side-splitting. Anyway, if you need anything—”

“You'll be the first one I call. And seriously, thanks.”

Billy clamped a beefy hand on Joel's shoulder. “You know Taylor still expects me to talk you out of this, right?”

“I'm sure she's hoping.”

“Lie and tell her I did my best, okay?”

“Sure.” Joel felt himself smile. “There's a good chance she'll corner you before the night's over, though, probably try to get you to take another run at me.”

“I'll be ready. I'm not afraid of her.” Billy took another hard drag on his cigarette, dropped it to the ground and stepped on it. “Actually, yes I am.”

“Come on,” Joel said, cocking his head toward the house. “We better get back in there before she thinks we're out here scheming.”

“Yeah, I don't want her drinking the rest of my wine.”

“Trust me, that wine could not possibly be in less danger.”

“Hey, what's sexier than a big ole gallon box of three-dollar wine?”

“Literally every other thing in the universe.”

Laughing, they returned to the house, and much as Joel tried to convince himself to enjoy the evening—as he knew it would be the last time he'd have the opportunity to do so for some time—he realized he was simply whistling past a graveyard. For now, he'd escape the night for the warmth, safety and clarifying light of their home.

But the darkness was rising, and soon, he'd be walking right into it.

Chapter Six

In the quiet house he'd called home for so long, memories crashed like waves, reminding him that the life he'd built and worked so hard to obtain had saved him, cleansed him from the madness and the wolves that even then crouched drooling just outside his door, biding their time until more flesh could be ripped from bone. The slaughter, that's what they lived for, the thrill of the hunt and the joy of the kill. For Joel, existence was far more complicated.

Survival was only the beginning.

All those years before, sitting in the Mello's home, he watches as her parents—a devastated middle-aged couple—huddle together in the limited light of their small apartment. On the television a VHS tape plays. In broken English, Cindy's father explains he had it transferred from film not long before her death. It shows a little girl, his little girl, the little girl their daughter Cindy used to be.

“This was our first summer after we left Portugal,” he explains, the words catching in his throat as his bloodshot eyes fill with tears. “You have to see, you—you have to see who my little girl was. My…my baby…”

Joel nods, frozen in place in the corner of the room.

A little girl runs along wet beach sand in her bare feet, a small plastic bucket in one hand. All pigtails and big brown eyes, Cindy joins her father at the sand castle they're building together. It's nothing spectacular, as her father clearly has no real talent when it comes to such things, but far as he and his daughter are concerned, it is the most beautiful and magical castle ever made.

Her father shows her where to put the last bucketful of wet, formed sand, and Cindy carefully dumps it out. He packs sand around it, shaping it a bit with a plastic shovel, then sits back on his heels and smiles. “What do you think?” he says to the camera, to his wife who is filming them.

Cindy smiles wide and bright. “What do you think?” she echoes.

“Wonderful!” her mother says off-camera.

Even then Joel knows he must remember this moment. He must let it burn into his mind, because unlike the countless photographs he has seen from a number of sources, this is his first—and perhaps only—opportunity to see Cindy alive, moving, talking and laughing. And while there will be other poignant moments, because she is such a small child in the film, so innocent and gleeful and unaware of what life has in store for her, none will be as special as this one. Joel will never be able to reproduce this exact experience, the chance to look in on this dead woman's joyful childhood. It will only happen this one time, and just like her makeshift sand castle, once it's gone, none of them will ever get it back.

Except in memory.

Cindy watches the coming tide, the waves gently gliding closer and closer along the beach. “Will the water come this far, Daddy?”

“It will soon, yes.”

“Will it wreck our sandcastle?”

He nods, makes a face he hopes is funny.

“But why?” Cindy asks.

“It's all right; it's not meant to last. It's only here for a short while and then it's gone. That's what makes it special.”

The sun blinds them a moment, so bright and warm, and Cindy becomes a phantom, a blur at the very edge of the film, like a dream, really, a figment of their collective imaginations. Her father reaches for her…

And then she too is gone, lost in the sand, sunshine and glistening ocean.

Later, in the sand castles of his tormented dreams, Joel reaches for the little girl she'd once been too, finds only wet sand, and begins to weep.

“What are you thinking about?”

The sound of Taylor's voice dragged him from that darkness and the depths of its sorrow to one more immediate, its shadows nearly filling their bedroom as it drifted through them like the spirit it was. It was late, and the moon was high, creeping through the bedroom windows and splitting the room into two separate worlds. Beyond the reach of moonlight, Joel lay on his back, nude, eyes trained on the night sky. He didn't want to tell her about the things going through his mind but saw no way around it. “The home movie Cindy Mello's parents showed me of her when she was a little girl.”

“I remember that in your book. It was very powerful.”

“She was this little tiny peanut, so innocent and happy, you know?”

Lying next to him on her stomach, legs bent and crossed at the ankles, Taylor was nude as well, but partially wrapped in a sheet. “Your depiction of her parents was absolutely heartbreaking.”

Their pain, coupled with Joel's realization that there were things in this world that could conspire to hurt and maim and torture and kill something as precious as the Mello's daughter, had been a determining factor as to why he and Taylor had never had children of their own. He'd used his breakdown as an excuse, just as Taylor liked to blame her career. But when it was just the two of them in the dark, both knew the truth. “They were the most thoroughly destroyed human beings I'd ever seen,” he said softly, “and all I kept thinking about was what was coming for that little girl, the horror waiting on her, that she had no idea, no way of knowing what was on its way to her. I remember wishing I could step into that movie and warn her. I couldn't, of course, so I did the only thing I could do. I told her parents I'd find justice for their daughter. I told them I'd find out what happened to their precious little girl, and who'd done such terrible things to her.”

“Joel, don't do this to yourself.”

Rather than reply, he listened to Taylor's slow and steady breathing a while, and admired the small gold-and-black butterfly tattoo on her ankle he'd always found so sexy and mesmerizing. Not long after Billy left, they'd gone to bed, made love, and had since lain there quietly, trying to figure out how to approach something neither wanted to think about, much less discuss.

Earlier, before Taylor got home and Billy arrived for dinner, Joel had gone into their cellar and rummaged around until he located a dusty old suitcase he'd packed away years before. Sitting on an overturned crate, he laid the suitcase across his lap but didn't open it for several minutes.

Once he finally convinced himself to look inside, he found one hardcover and two paperback copies of his book,
Chasing Down the Night
. All were pristine and had never been read. After digging deeper, he located another paperback copy, this one with a badly cracked spine and dog-eared pages covered in highlighter markings and various notes he'd scribbled in the margins in pen. In addition to numerous newspaper clippings, a few old VHS tapes, a portable cassette player, a handheld microphone and a small stack of audiocassettes in plastic cases, there were several old notebooks too, creased and aged and full of notes from years before. He next found a manila envelope containing several photographs, but couldn't bring himself to go through them. Everything was there, just as he'd left it. He'd saved everything. Like a damn time capsule, he thought.

And damned it was.

A twenty-year-old college girl had gone missing, only to be found two days later, what remained of her massacred body sprawled across the altar of a local Catholic church. A story Joel would follow and eventually link to a large, wildly violent but shadowy satanic cult operating in the area at the time, a cult that had possible nationwide ties and more power and influence than anyone had previously imagined possible. And the deeper he looked, the worse it got. His proof, even in the end, was largely circumstantial, but juries had convicted people for less. He knew some names, had identified certain members, but could prove nothing. Like the dark master they believed in and claimed to serve, these types and their activities existed largely in shadow, glimpses and rumor, like fleeting trails of smoke, whispers in the night. There, then gone, leaving one to wonder if they'd ever really been there at all.

He wrote the book, it took off, and he reaped the benefits and tried his best to forget what he'd seen and experienced. What he'd learned.

But by then, the Devil already had a hold of him.

Or maybe he was just weak, his mind and spirit not strong enough to fight off the things that had begun to course through his head, haunt his dreams and stalk his waking hours. The strange phone calls, the people following him, watching, the odd things left at his doorstep—talismans made of sticks and animal bone, warnings—the severed heads of dogs and a litter of dead kittens, their little heads twisted, necks snapped. Just nut jobs who had read his book, believed his nonsense and were sick themselves, everyone assured him. As if they had any fucking idea what they were talking about.

What the types who said such things didn't know was how it all crawled into Joel's mind and nested there. How it festered and slowly began to cripple him.

No one was willing or able to help. The
Globe
let him go, and colleagues who had once considered him a young investigative journalist with tremendous potential, now shunned him as a charlatan and an embarrassment. He was a pariah with the police as well, as he'd been highly critical of them and their investigation in his book and on numerous television appearances, and had implied that a handful of them might have even been involved.

And then came the backlash.

The entire satanic scare of the 1980s lumped everything—even legitimate cases like the one he'd been involved with—into a single mass of nonsense and hysteria. There was no proof, people said, no hard evidence, and even the small amount that did exist simply wasn't enough. It was all a bunch of lunatics and religious fanatics, people making accusations and telling stories with nothing to back them up, resulting in innocent people going to prison and having their lives ruined for the sake of sensationalism.
You're a hack, Joel Walker
, people said,
a liar more interested in sensationalism and making money and being on television and selling books than the truth
.

In the end, Cindy Mello was still dead. She'd been slaughtered.

Not by some devil cult like in the movies, everyone claimed. Just one or perhaps two very sick individuals who were never caught. And the satanic symbolism and writings in her blood found all over that church in New Bedford—the areas in the nearby Freetown State Forest he'd found where ceremonies had obviously taken place, where dogs had been sacrificed and possibly even other human beings—it was all coincidental, they said. It was just a few crazies, or drugged-out kids playing cult in the woods. None of it was what he'd claimed, because that sort of thing didn't exist, and if it did, then why couldn't he prove it?

More smoke…more whispers in the night…

All he'd wanted to do was find out who had killed that poor young girl and help bring them to justice. Not only had he failed, but the attempt had cost him his career and, for a while, his sanity. They hadn't seen the things he'd seen, the broken souls he'd met or the stomping grounds they inhabited. They didn't hear the growls, the whispers, or feel the evil moving within them, trying to control them and take over, to grind them down into insanity…or worse.

The rest of society knew nothing of the world behind the world, the one that existed beyond the veil few were even aware of. But Joel knew the truth. And that truth had almost killed him.

Do you believe the Devil is talking to you, Mr. Walker?

After three months in a psychiatric hospital, he came to believe the same as they did. He turned his back on what he knew because he knew he'd never leave that place unless he did.

Do you believe he's inside you right now?

The Devil's not real.

Even now, he told others that. He told himself that. And he believed it.

But was it true? Did it matter either way? If those who serve a god and its doctrine are real, does it matter if the deity actually exists?

With all those old memories and experiences flooding back into his mind, Joel had transferred everything into a newer nylon duffel bag and thrown it in the back of his closet. There would be a time and place to look through these things, to bring them back to life again like toys thrown long ago into boxes and forgotten, but that time had not yet come. Maybe one day.

“Lonnie's daughter should've left you the hell alone,” Taylor said.

“But she didn't.”

“You don't have to do this. It took you years to get to where you are now. Where
we
are now. We have everything we ever wanted. Why risk ruining that?”

His eyes found her in the moonlight. “What can I do?”

“Stay here with me.”

“You have no idea how badly I wish I could.”

“Then do it.”

“I don't know if I can.”

“You don't know if you
will
. There's a difference.”

Joel touched her face, gently ran his fingers across her cheek. “I'll just go back and check some things out, see what I can see. That's all. It doesn't have to rule our lives or become a big—”

“Don't lie to me, Joel.” She pressed her palm against his chest. “There are more than enough lies in this life already, enough cruelty and deception and fear and uncertainty. We don't need it between us. It's just you and me now.” She delicately stroked the hair in the center of his chest, traced it with her fingertip down along his stomach, where it encircled his navel. “I've spent forever watching and helping you put yourself back together. I know firsthand what this did to you last time. That was bad enough.”

“This isn't the same thing. Different time, different story, different me.”

“It could very well lead to some of the same things; you know that. Lonnie told his daughter he was being stalked by
demons
, for God's sake.”