The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel Read online

  “Big winner here, folks.”

  “You think that’s how they were chosen? The victims went into the Citizen office to place an ad, and the killer picked them out, then and there?”

  “Seems to be the pattern, huh?”

  “But that Levy kid said there wasn’t time to run a second edition,” Boz pointed out.

  “I don’t think they’re bein printed at all,” Trace said, and described how he’d seen the ink change on the page. “Somethin’s alterin the pages after they’re printed.”

  “Awright, so how come nobody’s noticed that? The Levy kid, or the old man—”

  Reynolds snorted. “I’m fair sure you could march Sherman’s army through that place most nights, and old man Avery wouldn’t notice. As to Danny Levy’s involvement…” The reporter spread his hands.

  “So what’re you sayin, the kid is committing murders to sell more papers?” Trace said.

  “Or take his photographs,” Boz suggested, and Reynolds cocked an approving eyebrow at him.

  “I couldn’t say who’s doing it, or why they’d want to.” Reynolds checked his watch, and dance-stepped down the stairs to the yard. “My advice is, take those up to Miss Clever-puss and see what she makes of it.”

  “You know Miss Fairweather?” Trace said.

  Reynolds touched a finger to his hat in a mockery of good manners, all the while backing toward the edge of the yard and the sidewalk. “The gray space is smaller than you think, son.” He winked, and disappeared around the corner of the building.

  “Gray space?” Boz repeated.

  “Don’t look at me.” Trace tapped the papers thoughtfully against his hand. “Guess I’m goin up to Hyde Park though.”

  “What, cuz he said so?”

  “Well, no,” Trace said. “I told Miss Fairweather I’d report back after we talked to the printer. And she’s gonna want to know about this.” He brandished the stack of papers again.

  “Hrmph,” Boz said. “Well, don’t forget to ask about the money.” He mounted the stairs to the back door, and added before he turned into the shop, “Don’t forget to come back.”

  It put a sour taste in his mouth, that remark. Why should Boz suppose he wouldn’t come back? He hadn’t forgotten how she’d thrown him into that hornets’ nest down in Sikeston, but at the moment, it seemed more important to find the Herschels’ killer than to nurse a grudge.

  But it made him uneasy, in the next breath, to realize he was looking forward to meeting with her again. He was caught up in the hunt, now, eager to pour this latest news into her willing ear and hear what she had to say.

  He grimaced. To hear her approval, more like. Just like a damned bird-dog.

  He made for the street, tracing Reynolds’s footsteps, then turned the corner toward the front of the building where he’d left his horse. At the mouth of the alley he skirted a small pack of children who were gathered around a makeshift puppet stage. A gangly youth was manipulating the strings above the backdrop.

  Trace glanced at the roughly built stage … and then looked harder, disbelieving what he saw. A red-faced male puppet was beating on two flaxen-haired girl puppets with a stick—no, it was an ax, with a realistic-looking blade that glinted in the sun. The puppeteer was clever; he voiced the high-pitched shrieks of both girls without pausing for breath, and little shots of red fluid squirted from the curtains to flick the children and make them squeal.

  Appalled by this show of poor taste, Trace raised his gaze above the backdrop to the puppeteer, and it was Reynolds, wearing that shit-eating grin, but the flesh was worn away from the bones and the sack suit hung loose over a skeleton—

  A hand clapped on Trace’s shoulder and he nearly screamed.

  “Cripes,” Boz said. “Take it easy. Jameson said give this to you, since you were goin up there.”

  He handed over a parcel with Miss Fairweather’s name on it—books, by the feel of them.

  “Thanks,” Trace said, stealing another glance at the puppet show.

  The puppeteer was an unfamiliar pimple-faced kid, and the play was a couple of darkies trying to catch a squealing pig.

  Boz peered at him. “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I just…”

  Boz’s mouth drew into a thin line. “What was it this time?”

  * * *

  MISS FAIRWEATHER SHOWED signs of a restless night—bloodless lips and bruised-looking around the eyes—and she did not get up when Trace entered the library. She waved him into the chair beside hers and offered tea or coffee.

  “Coffee,” Trace said, relieved that tea was not compulsory. “You feelin poorly?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Tell me about your investigations.”

  He told her about the trip to the Carondelet Citizen’s office, and Reynolds dropping by the store, and how the weasely reporter had poured kerosene on his suspicions about the Citizen.

  “Rather conveniently, though, don’t you think?” Miss Fairweather said.

  Trace had to agree. “Especially since … I saw somethin peculiar this morning.” He described his vision of Reynolds—a ghastly, ghoulish Reynolds—manipulating the Herschels like puppets. He heard Miss Fairweather suck in her breath, and glanced over to see she had sunk her teeth into her bottom lip, eyes bright on his face. “I guess you approve.”

  “I am impressed, Mr. Tracy. Is this the first time you have had such a waking vision?”

  It was hard to say. There had been plenty of times he’d gotten feelings about things—to steer wide of an outcropping because there was a rattlesnake nest behind it, or the odd dream that had come true. But everybody had those. These visions were like waking dreams—a glimpse through dirty mosquito netting into another layer of reality.

  “I think it’s maybe the third or fourth in the last few days,” he said slowly. “Worst one I remember was at the Herschels’ farm, when I touched the body. I saw those black tadpoles coming out of his face, and then I thought a saw a vision of the family killin each other.”

  “But you claimed you saw no spirits at the farm.”

  “This wasn’t spirits. I was … it was as if I saw through the dead man’s eyes.”

  He had not told her that particular detail the first time. He heard her breath hitch again.

  “Another first?” she guessed.

  “Yeah,” he said grimly. “It’s like this thing in my head is all riled up…”

  “From your proximity to the spirit activity. That is very likely the case.”

  Trace just managed not to swear out loud. “But that’s what I didn’t want. I was afraid if I started doin this work for you they’d start comin around more—”

  “You said they had not.”

  “No, but these new things—” He shook his head in despair. “I don’t want this power, lady. If you know any way to get rid of it—if I could give it to you, I would, believe me.”

  Miss Fairweather’s face drew into harsh lines. “Do not say such things. Do you hear me? Never will your power away. It is a part of you, no different from your eyesight, and more precious because of its rarity. Anyone who succeeded in taking it would remove a piece of your soul with it, and leave you hobbled. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t, but her vehemence was sincere enough. He nodded.

  “No, I don’t think you do,” she said. “But believe me, your power is a shield, not only against the spirits but against your enemies, if you would learn to use it.”

  “I don’t have enemies,” Trace said, spooked. “And anyway it don’t sound very Christian to smite them—”

  “Did I say smite? I said shield. And telescope and microscope, for that matter. Let’s have those papers Mr. Reynolds gave you.”

  He spread the pages on the table but Miss Fairweather would not touch them. She had the Chinese examine them closely, in pairs. They exchanged a few words, and then he bowed and went away.

  “Min Chan is going to fetch some supplies.” She used the sugar-tongs to turn two of the newspapers arou
nd so Trace could read them. “In the meantime, please tell me what you see on these pages, Mr. Tracy.”

  He followed her example and bent over the pages without touching them. Two identical pages of advertisements, Judd Herschel’s solicitation for work on both … “All the headlines about the murders are gone. They’ve changed again.”

  “Place your hands on them and see what happens,” Miss Fairweather suggested.

  He did, warily. As before, he felt the shiver of something alert under his fingers. The ink in the advertisement columns began to reshape itself into a blazon of blood, and Trace heard a faint, hateful whine in his skull.

  He took his hands off the table. “Are they alive?”

  “No,” Miss Fairweather said. “They are the instruments of a demon. Having served their purpose, they revert to an innocuous state, to hide the demon’s work. But your power reveals them for what they are.”

  “The work of a demon.” A shiver went down his spine—excitement and dread all at once.

  “You sound dubious.”

  Trace licked his lips, hoping his eagerness was not as obvious as hers. “I was raised to believe that demons are real. But I been walkin around my whole life and never … even after I started seeing the spirits…”

  “You have never seen empirical evidence of demonic activity?”

  “I once saw a Voudou woman down in New Orleans wavin chicken bones over a child to drive the evil spirit out of him. All the neighbors pointed and shouted when the spirit flew away, but I saw nothin, even with my … power, I saw nothin. I’ve also seen men, ordinary men whose minds don’t work quite like everybody else, and people sayin they had a demon out of stupid ignorance…”

  “I suppose you had that accusation leveled at you, after your powers became manifest.”

  He shot her a sharp look, but her face was expressionless. He thought of that confrontation with his father, when he’d finally come home from hospital—twenty-two years old, thin as a scarecrow, with a weeping wound in his side and a barely subdued addiction to morphine. “There were … some who suggested it.”

  There was a slight pause. “I trust the doctors at Richmond Sanitarium were more enlightened?”

  Trace went cold. “How the hell did you—” For a second he couldn’t breathe, and then heat flooded his face and neck. He came half out of his chair. “You god-damned harpy. What gives you the right—”

  Miss Fairweather did not so much as blink, but Min Chan moved subtly into Trace’s peripheral vision, reappearing out of the shadows like a bad dream.

  Trace stood there, his fists clenched, washing over with shame and fury.

  “That was my first recourse in locating you, Mr. Tracy,” she said calmly. “Mental wards are one of the best resources for finding true psychics and mediums. Half the time the poor sufferers consider themselves mad. How else to explain why they can see things no one else can?”

  That was a second shock to his sensibilities. He really had doubted his sanity for the better part of a year—careening between the delirium of morphine and the torment of going without it. The presence of the spirits had been constant that first year, probably because of the opiates poisoning his brain.

  “A great many soldiers came away from the war with an opium addiction,” Miss Fairweather said. “Far more than the general public realizes. It is a testament to your strength of will that you were able to overcome it. Did any of the doctors believe your story of seeing spirits?”

  “One.” His own voice threatened to choke him. “Hardinger. He was a Spiritualist.”

  Miss Fairweather gave a short nod. “Basil Hardinger was quite a brilliant psychologist, I understand, if prone to bouts of depression. He died shortly before you left the hospital, did he not?”

  “He shot himself,” Trace said. “But I guess you already knew that.”

  She tilted her head ambiguously. “I would hazard a guess, then, that during your stay at Richmond, none of the attending physicians suggested you were possessed by demons.”

  “Course not.”

  “Rather, they supposed your ailments were the result of overtaxed nerves, brought on by your injury and the stresses of war? And although you were raised to believe in demons, and in more recent years have been able to see and hear the spirits of the dead, you don’t entirely believe that demons exist, is that right?”

  “I … guess not.”

  “And why is that?”

  “I suppose because … all the things that demons are supposed to cause can be caused by something else. I’ve seen the causes.”

  “Drugs, and madness, and war.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you know you are not possessed by a demon—you merely fell victim to the mundane evils of the world.”

  Trace felt his jaw tighten.

  “Let me tell you something about demons, Mr. Tracy,” Miss Fairweather said. “Unlike the spirits you see every day, which are pale reflections of once-living persons, demons are whole, sentient entities. They are not of our world, but they are drawn to the empty places in our world. They can take the form of ordinary things—animals, people, or other, benevolent, spirits. Many so-called Spiritualists, who have not the sense or experience to discriminate, are unwittingly calling up demons in the guise of a patron’s loved ones.”

  The thought appalled him. “I knew there was something fishy about that table-rappin.”

  “Indeed. And now you have reason to believe that a malicious entity—we shall call it a demon, for the sake of brevity—has been infecting households in south St. Louis and dispatching their inhabitants.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why would you doubt it? You yourself can testify to the innocence of the victims. You saw the black emanations from his corpse. You have seen reality rearrange itself”—she waved a hand over the newspapers—“in order to conceal the work of this entity. What further evidence would you require, before you accept the reality of something you claim to believe in? Ye gods!” Her voice cracked in exasperation. “Is it so threatening to your tiny Christian mind that you must deny the possibility, rather than accept it, and learn to fight it?”

  Trace raised an eyebrow. He was too old to get into arguments over his faith, and far too old to rise to insults that sprang more from a woman’s bitterness at the world than any inadequacies in himself. And she knew she had overstepped; he watched the color flood her cheeks and her eyes lower to the tabletop.

  After a moment she said coolly, “I trust you were taught the Roman ritual of exorcism?”

  “I learnt the words. But it has to be a priest who says ’em. An older priest, secure in the faith.”

  Her face smoothed out into careful neutrality. “In your case, I suspect raw talent will suffice in place of experience. Our primary problem at this point will be to locate the demon’s hiding place.”

  “I like the looks of that newspaper office.”

  “I quite agree, although this Mr. Reynolds has also piqued my interest.”

  “D’you know him? He seemed to know who you were.”

  “I am not familiar with the name,” Miss Fairweather said. “However, I am active in various philanthropic societies in this city. If he reports on social issues it is quite possible he may know who I am.”

  Trace shook his head. “No, he knows somethin about this. He knew enough to bring me the papers. And I had that vision of him manipulating the Herschels.”

  “But he doesn’t work for the Citizen?”

  “The Times, he said.”

  “Hmm,” said Miss Fairweather. “Well, let us concentrate on the Citizen office for now, since we have direct evidence of activity there. Demons are not necessarily exclusive in their instruments of destruction, but they do tend to show a preference for a particular type of weapon, and this one appears to hold domain over the printed word.”

  She rose from her chair and crossed to the library table, on which lay a heavy tome nearly as big as herself. She leafed through it carefully. Many of the pag
es had tattered remnants of older pages pasted down on them, and there were a great many loose sheets in the middle. “Here. There was a case in 1608, in Germany, of a demon possessing a bookmaker and causing him to enact violence against his neighbors. An exorcism was performed by the village priest, however one deduces the attempt was unsuccessful, because the townspeople burned the bookmaker alive in his shop.”

  “Did that kill the demon?”

  “Fire will drive them out, in most cases.” She turned a few more pages. “There are many records of demons possessing books or being suspected of inhabiting books. As I said, they are drawn to empty spaces, which is why medieval monks filled the pages with ornamentation. It occurs to me that a printer’s shop would appeal to a demon’s sense of mischief. The press can be an effective means of manipulating the masses, and our trickster seems to have honed the technique to a needlepoint.” She put her finger on the page and looked up at him thoughtfully. “In your training, were you taught a method of detecting demons?”

  “Uh. No. I guess a man of God’s supposed to recognize them when he sees them.”

  “An older priest,” Miss Fairweather suggested blithely. “One strong in the faith.”

  Trace looked at her suspiciously.

  A corner of her mouth curled. “Well, this is one area where experience counts for something.” She beckoned to Min Chan, who approached the table and handed her a leather pouch. She worked open the strings. “I will show you a simple method of detecting the demon’s presence. It’s a folk method, but a reliable one. This demon’s modus operandi suggests it is a minor entity, unable to manifest directly or maintain long-term possession of a human host, but I will caution you to be wary. Its powers of influence are quite strong if it can compel a family to murder one another.”

  “So what do you want me to do when I find it?”

  “I will show you that, also,” she said, and began to take items out of the pouch.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was late afternoon when Trace made it back to Jameson’s store, and the place was busy. Boz was weighing out seed for old man Niels. Jameson was waiting on three customers at once, as usual, but as soon as he spotted Trace, he threw his hands in the air.