Chapter Fifty

Raven knew she wasn’t thinking right, especially after she tried to use her Android to call for help. The screen was not only busted because of the fight with Speck, the circuitry was now waterlogged. It was as useless as a brick. She threw it out the window.

She had no idea how long she was out, and didn’t want to think about the lead time Stella may have had on her. It could’ve been ten minutes, fifteen, or, and with this thought her heart beat so fast it hurt, maybe an hour. Please, not that long, she hoped, no, prayed to a God that might not have his listening ears on for a cold-blooded killer, no matter how justified Raven thought Lamont Lovelle’s death was.

Raven suspected that Stella was using the old farm for her kills. She wouldn’t use the abattoir on her working farm. Not the woman with a sign in her slaughter house that read, ‘The place where an animal dies is a sacred one’. Thin reasoning, she knew, but it was all that she had. For one horrific moment Raven knew she wouldn’t be able to beat Stella to the farm. She needed a shortcut. In her desperation, she not only started to talk out loud to Floyd, she started to curse.

“Come on, you fucker,” she said. “I drove with you through all these backroads helping you look for some evil to do, or for some place to hide. Tell me what shortcut to use to the farm at the end of Kingfisher Road.”

But the usually chatty Floyd voice in her head was silent.

“Oh, you got your feelings hurt now?” she said. “Too bad.”

As Floyd was apparently deciding whether or not to answer her, Raven racked her brain. Oh, what wouldn’t she give for a memory like Edmée’s. Raven knew if she drove all the way back to town to find help, Noe was dead. If she let Morning beat her there, Noe was dead.

“Tell me, old man!” Raven yelled.

Nothing. Raven knocked her head against the headrest. She was about to flip the car around toward town when a voice spoke up. It was sullen.

Well now, it said, I’m guessing you could probably take the farm road right through the ole Sassafras place. It’s a little windy, but that’ll save you about fifteen or twenty minutes if you don’t drive into the drink.

“I need more than fifteen or twenty minutes,” Raven said, not pleased.

We demanding, ain’t we? Take the road through the old Sassafras farm, follow that around until you hit Peat Hollow, then turn left. That’ll lead you straight to the farm on the south side. Nobody’ll see you comin’. Me and you traveled that way plenty.

“Okay, okay,” Raven breathed in relief, and then had to jerk the wheel hard when a Floyd voice thundered HERE! The car fishtailed. For a brief moment Raven did think she was going to end up in what Floyd called the drink, but the tires caught road and steadied. She was able to drive on.

When she reached the abandoned farm, hers was the only car she could see, but that didn’t mean she was the only car there. She prayed that at least it meant that she had beat Morning. She parked the car, got out, and tried not to think about the rain plastering her hair to the sides of her face, driving her hoodie and jeans into her skin.

She didn’t go to the house first because it was the logical thing to do. She did it because the hard, slanting rain like a hand at her back propelled her across the yard, and up the crumbling porch steps. Before she knew it, she was twisting the rusted knob and pushing the warped front door open.

Her flashlight revealed wallpaper splintering spider-like from mold-covered walls. Furniture sat disintegrating into the floor, including what was left of an ancient couch, an old-fashioned baby pram, and a wheelchair that had lost a wheel a long time ago. The floor was covered in drywall and wood driven from the ceiling by countless rainstorms. Something told Raven to go back. No way could Noe be in this disaster.

But he could be, sequestered in one of the back rooms shrinking like the abandoned furniture into nothingness, lonely and afraid while waiting for the grave.

She took a step, and then another, staying close to the edges, where the floor would be strongest. In the back, each room was the same, moldy walls, broken furniture, and parts of the ceiling on a destroyed floor.

She turned from the last empty room and made her way back to the living room. She should have searched the shed first. That was a mistake, but the bigger mistake was running straight across the living room floor, forgetting the need to be careful.

The rotted floor collapsed beneath her. She plunged waist-deep into filthy water. It wasn’t long before she felt long wet ropes twisting all around her, slipping around her neck, between her legs, around her torso and over her face. She sputtered. The ropes bent and flexed as her body moved.

Whatever was in the water was alive.

Holding the flashlight high above her, she directed the beam at the teeming water. Snakes, what seemed to be thousands of them, twisting in and out of each other exploding in wet knots from holes in the floor.

Her scream was one of sheer primordial panic. Behind her tight eyes all she saw were heavy black bodies, the gaping pink mouths. She tried to pull herself up on what she thought was solid floor, but it crumbled down into the water. She fell onto her hands and knees, her entire face submerged. Snakes whipped through the water, climbed onto the frame under the house, wrapping their bodies around two-by-fours as if to get a better look at her. She stood, frantically shaking them off as she did so with all thought in her head erased.

Suddenly a strong hand grabbed her by the neck of her hoodie and pulled her out of the water. The hand dragged her across the floor, out of the house, back into the rain. Whoever this was no longer whispered or gestured. The voice roared. Repent! Cleanse your soul!

Now in the yard she scrambled away from him. She snatched the weapon out of her holster and flipped on her back. But there was nothing but the black air and silver needles of rain slamming down onto the muddied front yard. The rain was coming so hard that it hurt every bare spot on Raven it touched.

She sat up, tilted over to the side and vomited. She had no idea if she were bitten or not, didn’t know if the snakes were poisonous. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. When her eyes focused again, she saw the shed standing there strong and solid. It had to be where Stella was keeping Noe. She took several, long, lung-filling breaths. When she felt steady she stood up and went to the shed.

No snakes threatened beyond the shed’s narrow door. The floors were solid, strong-looking, the walls painted a stark white. It looked almost normal except for the blood spattering the walls, the chain hanging from the ceiling, the rusted galvanized steel bucket on the floor.

“Raven,” cried a shaky voice. And again, “Raven. Wait! Don’t!”

“Noe?” she cried, not heeding his warning.

He was naked, chained to a hook in the wall in a corner of the wide room. Within reaching distance was a bucket for his waste, and next to him empty to-go boxes from Chastain’s.

She started toward him. He cried again with an urgency that made her stop. “Auntie!”

Raven turned. Beautiful Edmée Crowley, still in her now soaked white skirt, strode toward her with her long arm stretched straight out. At the end of it was the Smith & Wesson pointed straight at Raven’s forehead. Before Raven’s brain could register the surprise she felt, Edmée said, “Move, Raven.”

Raven ducked and pivoted. Edmée shot, but missed Stella by what Floyd would have called a country mile. The bullet ricocheted around the cinder-block room before barreling through a high window. The recoil knocked Edmée off-balance, and Stella charged her at a dead run out into the rain and mud. Raven ran after them. Stella had managed to get on top of Edmée and was now raising a slaughter knife over her head.

“Get off her, you bitch.”

Lowering her body, and squaring her shoulders, Raven smashed into Stella. They rolled over and over in the mud. Edmée was crawling around looking for the Smith & Wesson. She was cursing the entire time in French and then in Cajun French, her loud voice matching the volume of the rain.

Raven knew that she had gotten the best of Stella when she had her pinned face down in the mud. She had started to cuff her when she heard another voice. Looking up, she could see Stevenson’s car, the lights on and the driver’s-side door flung open.

“Let her go,” he said, his face unsure, confused.

Her eyes never leaving his, she finished cuffing Morning and pulled her into a sitting position. Edmée had stopped looking for the weapon after she heard Stevenson’s voice, but was still crawling aimlessly around in the mud. Raven helped her stand. Crying, Edmée slumped against an old well in the yard. She slid down until she was sitting, and even now, her legs were curled gracefully beneath her. Raven tried her best to wipe the mud from her face and eyes, told her to quiet when she started to apologize, to explain. From what Raven could tell, Edmée had thought about their meeting under the Texas Street Bridge and had come out to the old farm just to be sure that it was gone.

When Edmée was reasonably calm, Raven turned to Stevenson. Raven had never wanted to kill somebody so bad since Lovelle.

“You and Morning,” Raven said. “You did this.” She drew her weapon.

“No, Raven,” Edmée said. “He had nothing to do with this. It was all her.”

“It wasn’t all me,” Stella said, her teeth bloody, an evil grin on her face. “It was him this whole time. He made me do it.”

Stevenson’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “You think I had something to do with this? Are you crazy?”

“You knew about this place. You brought me out here,” Raven said.

“I didn’t bring you here!” Stevenson said. “I brought you over there.” He pointed to the road where he had taken her picture, the place where all the deceit had begun.

“Don’t listen to him,” Stella said. “Arrest him. It was him!”

“Raven!” he said.

She didn’t lower the weapon. You can take that lying son-of-a-sumpthin’ out right now, Birdy Girl. Floyd spoke up in her head. He made a darn fool out of you. Make ’em pay, like you made Lovelle pay. Think about them boys.

“No, Raven, please,” Edmée said. “She’s lying!”

Come on, let’s have some fun, Floyd whispered in her head.

Then she heard a voice that brought her back to sanity. It was Billy Ray. No, Raven. No more killing.

But like Floyd, the voice was in her head, because Billy Ray was nowhere near this ruin. He was at his cozy restaurant, or most likely in his bed. When she saw him she would ask him what right had he to tell her anything after he had abandoned her. He had changed. Maybe by pulling the trigger she wouldn’t have to deal with the man he was about to become. Still, Lord help her, she would probably die trusting him. If she killed Stevenson, she didn’t see him standing by her. Not this time. She would lose him for good.

She lowered her weapon, holstered it before walking slowly over to Stevenson. With her eyes on his, she kneed him as hard as she could in the groin. Unlike Speck, he dropped.

No one said anything for a few moments. There was only Stella’s crazed laughter. Raven stared at Stevenson writhing in the mud, relished his suffering for only a second or two before going into the shed for Noe.