Dead of Winter (40 page)

“And…” said the priest.

“I was mortified by the effects of cannibalism. I felt stronger, more alert. The meat had a life force. I had a feeling of power like nothing I had ever experienced. As if eating human flesh awakened some animal nature within me. I felt a connection to some god that was far from holy.” Tom clenched his fists. “I immediately craved more.”

“And did you follow that temptation?” asked Father Xavier.

“No, I stopped myself, but it took all my will not to eat another piece of meat. I was disgusted with myself.” Tom fidgeted with the sleeve of his coat. “After that I began to have nightmares. My relation with Gustave Meraux had gone beyond that of a detective hunting a murderer. I felt a strange brotherhood with him. Like we were two reflections walking on opposite sides of the same mirror. The cannibal began to target me, as well. I received three anonymous packages from him. Small sardine tins. Only they had fingers in them, one from each of his victims. He included notes goading me to track him down. The last tin he sent…one of the fingers was wearing my wife’s wedding ring.” Tom’s chest burned with anger and sadness. “By the time I tracked Gustave to the Meraux Cannery…” His head filled with his wife’s distant screams, as he relived the nightmare from two years ago…

157

A woman’s tortured screams echoed across the rainy night.

“Beth!” Tom and his police squad raided the cannery with a half dozen bloodhounds. The complex was a labyrinth of docks and warehouses along the St. Lawrence River. Choppy waters splashed under the piers. Fishing boats bumped in their slips. The shacks groaned beneath the pounding of rain. Beth’s cries of agony were drowned out by the endless torrents and crackling thunder. The hounds barked, stretching their leashes. Tom’s heart pounded as he led his men along the docks, searching from building to building.

From the distance echoed a high-pitched cackle. Tom ran ahead of his men. His swinging lantern tossed the light across the rain-drenched dock boards and black river water. He half expected his wife’s body to float up to the surface like all the others, her face eaten by fish, the skull covered in kelp and barnacles.

No, he’d heard screaming. Beth had to be alive!

The pier ended at a long warehouse set off by itself. The large shack was dilapidated, with peeling white paint and broken windows. Shimmering light glowed inside.

Pistol raised, Tom kicked the door open and burst into the warehouse. He ran past a fishing boat under repair. Beyond was a second door and a room where iron chains hung from the ceiling. As he entered, he was immediately pummeled by the smell of blood and offal. In a giant vat boiled some kind of red stew with chunks of meat. On a long table were hundreds of small soup tins and a machine used for canning.

Tom searched the shadowy warehouse for his missing wife, wary that the Cannery Cannibal could be hiding anywhere in the dark mortuary of broken boats. Whispers reverberated off the hulls. At the far end, beyond a thatch-work of fishing nets, glowed an altar of black candles. Kneeling before it was a naked man with blood smeared on his back and buttocks. His hands raised an object that was dark red and shaped like a cow kidney. He spoke something in a strange language and then set the glistening organ on the altar. “For you, Master.” On the wall above loomed a tall mural of a dark-skinned beast with antlers.

Tom weaved through a maze of netting and chains that dangled from the ceiling. They chinked together. The killer remained on his knees, facing the Satanic altar. Tom gripped his pistol with a shaky hand and stepped up behind the cannibal.

“Don’t move.”

“I’ve been waiting for you, Tom.” The Cannery Cannibal slowly stood and turned around. “Ahhh, at long last we meet.”

The candlelight illuminated a rail-thin body painted neck to toe in blood. The outline of his ribcage pressed through his skin. His gaunt face was covered in white powder.

For a long, surreal moment Tom gazed into the eyes of the mass murderer he’d been tracking for over a year. The cannibal who had sent Tom tins of severed fingers. The beast who had abducted his wife. Gustave grimaced and Tom saw that all of the cannibal’s teeth had been filed down to sharp points. “You’re just in time to join me and Beth for supper.”

Tom kept his pistol aimed at Gustave’s chest. “Where is she!”

The killer’s long-nailed finger twirled until it finally pointed toward a side wall. Hanging from the chains like a slaughterhouse carcass was Beth’s stiff body. Her face had been made up like a doll. Her arms and chest were flayed to the bone. Her butcher had disemboweled her and removed the unborn fetus. It was in that horrifying instant that Tom realized what the cannibal had set upon the altar.

The room began to spin…chains…carcass…candles…cannibal.

Tom fell to his knees and vomited.

The warehouse filled with the sounds of barking bloodhounds and running footsteps as the other officers charged into the lair.

Gustave put his hands up in surrender and kneeled across from Tom. “Looks like you’ll have to dine without me, Tom.” The madman grinned as the police shackled him and lifted him to his feet. “Have you ever taken a bite of your wife’s breast? I have. Ripped the nipple clean off.”

Tom screamed and drew his gun, but several policemen grabbed him before he could kill the Cannery Cannibal. The maniac cackled as the police dragged him off.

158

Tom leaned back against the confession booth wall and looked at the priest’s silhouette. “Father, I had wanted so badly to kill that son of a bitch. But the other officers wouldn’t let me. The police chief was friends with the Meraux family and had ordered that Gustave be brought in alive. After Beth’s and the baby’s deaths, my life became a drunken blur. I cursed God and the Church. I verbally abused my son, Chris. Even though Gustave was behind bars, the nightmares persisted, as if the cannibal was imprisoned inside my head. I felt as if I were going mad. I brought my son here to start over, but shortly after we arrived…Chris was killed…” Tom choked. “And I feel…I feel as if God is punishing me. Beth, Chris, and my baby daughter are all dead because of my sins. I miss my family so much, I don’t think I can go on.” Before Tom knew it, he was weeping, and there was nothing he could do to stop the flowing of tears.

159

A half hour later, Tom sat in a pew illuminated by the flickering glow of votive candles. He whispered several Hail Marys to the Virgin statue. The knot in his chest began to release, and a euphoric feeling waved over him. He felt a lightness of mind, as if the Madonna had kissed his forehead. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve. At the sound of footsteps, he turned and saw the tall priest taking a seat next to him.

Father Xavier said, “How do you feel, Tom?”

“Like I’ve cried my guts out.”

“You should confess more often. Bottling up emotions only summons the Devil.”

Tom nodded. “There’s something else that I haven’t told you. Gustave still shows up in my nightmares. And I keep having visions of him here at the fort. Tonight, just before Percy shot himself, Gustave’s voice spoke through him. He said the Dark Shepherd is coming after all of us. That was the nickname Gustave called himself during his trial. The collector of lost lambs. Am I going crazy?”

Father Xavier rubbed his rosary between his fingers. “Tom, I have my own confession. Because of my vow of secrecy, I have not been forthright with everything I know. But I need you as an ally as much as you need me.”

Tom stared at the priest, not knowing whether to feel angry or intrigued. “If you can help make sense of all this, I need you to tell me.”

Father Xavier took a deep breath and crossed himself. “Ever since you captured Gustave, I’ve been documenting his case for the Jesuits. I went to the warehouse where he performed his Satanic acts. I observed the mural of the horned beast. I sat among the congregation at Gustave’s trial and saw what a monster he’d become. He wasn’t just an insane criminal. He was possessed by a demon.”

Tom pictured the madman wearing his straightjacket, sitting in his cage and staring across the courtroom at Tom. “I believe a man can be evil to the core, Father, but what makes you so certain demons exist?”

“I’ve been exorcising them for twenty years. I’ve seen enough bizarre occurrences to know there is a spirit world beyond anything we can imagine. And they have the power to influence our behaviors. They can bring out our fears.” Father Xavier held Tom’s gaze for a long moment and then said, “A few weeks ago, I visited the asylum where Gustave was being kept prisoner. The warden complained of mysterious happenings around the asylum. I performed an exorcism on Gustave, but his demon was the most powerful I have ever faced. It called itself Legion.”

Tom said, “Gustave never spoke of that name.”

“That is because demons like to remain hidden inside their hosts. It takes an exorcism to bring forth their identities. In Gustave’s case, his demon had fully taken over. As I performed an exorcism, it got inside my head. It tried to use my fears against me, but I wouldn’t succumb. So it rammed Gustave’s body into the cell’s door until he collapsed. I was tricked into believing he was dead, but later that evening Gustave murdered the warden and several guards and escaped.”

“He’s loose?” Tom’s throat clenched. “Did the police find him?”

Father Xavier nodded. “They found his corpse at the cannery warehouse along with the skeleton of a missing prostitute. Both had been eaten by rats.”

Tom released a breath.

“But I fear his spirit lives on,” Father Xavier said. “Our final night in Montréal, we attended a masquerade party with Master Pendleton. I was being stalked by a man in a tribal mask. He spoke suggestive words inside my head that only Gustave’s demon could know.”

“How could that be possible?”

“The beast is a shape-shifter with many faces. It seduces people through their weaknesses. It can fill our heads with illusions. It can control animals. The entire journey to Fort Pendleton, I felt as if that demon spirit were following us through a flock of ravens.”

Tom remembered seeing the swarm of black birds the day the priest had arrived. Today the cannibal at Hospital House had been covered in a squirming coat of ravens and rats. “Earlier, when I shot Jean Chaurette, I swore the killer was Gustave. I saw his face. I heard his laughter. Tell me those were just illusions.”

“The cannibal you killed was undeniably one of the
voyageurs
, but the demon possessing him…” The priest squeezed his rosary. “I fear Gustave’s demon and its legion are among us, hiding inside the bodies of the infected.”

160

Black clouds drifted across the silvery full moon. At four in the morning, the last of the cabins finally went dark. The wind stopped, and a dead calm fell upon the sleeping village. The only sound was the
shuff-shuff-shuff
of fur boots running across the fresh powder. The disciple hurried with eagerness in his chest.

Tonight was the night.

The disciple entered an elongated shack that smelled of fur and slaughtered animals. The Skinning Hut. In the pitch darkness, he felt his way past a butchering table and stacked cages. He came to a door and knocked three times. It opened to a back room that was lit by candles. The bearded man who answered the door stepped aside. Several others turned to face the disciple. The group parted as their leader made his way to the front of the room. In the corner, two hogs paced inside a cage.

The disciple went to an altar. A bowl contained fingernail clippings and locks of human hair. He added his own clippings to the offering bowl. Then the disciple traced his finger around a red spiral on the wall. “We are ready for you, Master.”

161

He dreamed of cadavers in a morgue. A naked woman on a slab, her dead eyes staring. Watching the knife carving into her thigh…please forgive me. Stealing a chunk of her flesh…I have to understand…cooking meat in a skillet. So hungry. Downing gulps of whiskey. So thirsty…craving more, more, more. Cannibal in the headlines…cannibal in the mirror…stormy night…tortured screams…chains…carcass…candles…cannibals…

So alone now. So cold. Racing through a blizzard. Howling wind. A boy screaming. Calling for his father. Tom yelling back, “Chris!”

Running faster now. Into the forest. Branches clawing. A whirling, white twister of fury. Shape-shifting into a hideous beast with antlers. Shifting. Face of a demon. Shifting. Face of a wolf. Shifting. Tom’s face. Shifting. Gustave grinning.

“Dead or alive, I will find youuuuuu…”

Tom sat up in his bed, shivering. His bedroom took form. Gray and gloomy. Faint light seeping through the curtains. Another nightmare. Another morning headache. Did he drink last night? His head was foggy. He rubbed his face. His stomach rumbled. How long since he last ate? Yesterday. Breakfast. He had been so consumed by the case, he’d skipped meals.

I have to take better care of myself.

Hunger pains. Sharp, twisting his guts.

Tom dressed, went into his kitchen, and rummaged through his food stores. He gnawed on some salted pork. The shivers wouldn’t quit. Neither would the hunger.

No…

A wave of nausea coursed through him, cold and slimy, like eels swimming in his stomach. He retched.

Please, no…

He tore open his shirt. Blue veins were visible through his skin. He looked thinner.

No, no, no…

He paced his cabin.

This isn’t happening.

Tom looked into his oval mirror. His face was pale as a cadaver. His irises speckled with white flecks.

“No, god damn it!” He knocked over a chair in a fit of rage.

From within the mirror, a voice cackled, as a frosty shadow peered from behind the looking glass. Screaming like a lunatic, Tom grabbed his crowbar and smashed the mirror until his floor was covered in a thousand tiny fragments.

Part Sixteen

Red Spirals

162

At dawn, a gray mist drifted between the pines. The overcast sky rumbled as storm clouds approached from the distance.