Diablero Read online

  “What’s going on, Jasper?”

  “It seems there’s been another killing.”

  “What? Where did it happen?”

  “It was in Virginia. Suffolk, to be exact. It’s not our jurisdiction, but they want some help from anyone who knows anything about what’s going on. Are you up for it?”

  Lisa grimaced.

  “Sure, Jasper, I’m up for it. Where do I go and who do I see?”

  “Go to the sheriff’s office and talk to Sheriff Sutton. One more thing you should know, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This time, there was a witness.”

  Twelve

  Lisa arrived at the Suffolk County Sheriff’s office, already wanting to call it a night. She was running on pure adrenaline.

  She pulled her car up to the front door and parked. Since she was still in uniform, she had no trouble getting through to the person in charge, Sheriff Jimmy Sutton.

  Though Sutton wasn’t a big man, his skin was sun-kissed and his brown hair thick and turning gray. His demeanor gave the impression that he was not to be fucked with. Lisa knew Sutton to be about as old as Jasper Frey and twice as cranky. But he was also an old friend of the family. Sutton and her father had met when her dad was a detective on a case they worked thirty years ago, and the two had been friends ever since. Their favorite pastime was deep-sea fishing, often bringing Lisa along for the ride.

  She shook hands, going through the formalities, and then told him everything she knew about the case up to that point.

  “Well, whoever this guy is, he doesn’t seem to be confining himself to North Carolina,” Sutton said with a voice that always reminded Lisa of a big diesel truck engine. “He seems to be moving north. He decapitated an old moonshiner close to the feeder ditch. Didn’t take anything, didn’t do anything else at the scene as far as we can tell. Just killed the guy and went on his way. Oh, and one other thing. The old guy’s rifle was bent into a horseshoe.”

  Lisa wasn’t sure she had heard him right. “A horseshoe?”

  Sutton held up both hands and made a horseshoe shape with his fingers. “Pretty as you please.”

  Lisa wondered how the hell anyone could bend a rifle at all.

  Sutton continued. “The problem will be trying to figure out where he’s gonna go next. Any ideas?”

  Lisa held Sutton’s gaze, feeling a bit uneasy under his scrutiny. “Well, he just seems to kill at random, no rhyme or reason. Nobody has seen him and lived, at least until now. He’s not leaving tracks or any kind of clues, just dead bodies, right? He does seem to be moving north, though.”

  Sutton shook his head, looked down at the ground for a moment, then back up at Lisa.

  “The bent rifle wasn’t the only weird thing we found.”

  Lisa wrinkled her brow. “What do you mean?”

  “When we got to the scene, we found the victim strapped to the ground with cypress tree roots. It was as if it they somehow started moving on their own, stretched up out of the ground and grabbed hold of him. Like they were holding him down.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope. And there’s more. Our witness had a pretty wild description of the perp.”

  “How wild?”

  “It was dark and the guy was hysterical. He swears the killer was so thin he had to have been anorexic, and tall, with tattered bits of cloth hanging down and what looked like a big, curved sword in one hand. The witness was paddling down the feeder ditch when it occurred. Said everything got real quiet, and he heard a crack, like something got hit real hard. He looked through the trees toward where the noise came from, and he could see the campfire and the killer. Said the guy bent the old man’s rifle into a horseshoe with his bare hands.” Sutton pointed to where the rifle now lay like a metallic pretzel.

  “Then he pulled out that sword. The boater didn’t stick around long enough to see much more, just got the hell out of there and called nine-one-one.”

  Lisa stood looking at Sutton, trying to take in all that she had just heard.

  “So, what do we do now?”

  Sutton turned and looked at the two deputies standing by the office door.

  “Jones and Betts, you guys get down to the scene and see what we can do to help out the cops and rangers. Tell the press that a body was found and the incident is under investigation, and that‘s all. I’ll call the police captain and see if they want to set up any roadblocks or checkpoints, though it doesn’t sound like this psycho ever uses any kind of vehicle to get around. He does seem to be heading north, though, like you said.”

  Thirteen

  Jason read the front page story of the Daily Tribune for the third time. There had been yet another killing two days ago, this one in Virginia. There had even been an eyewitness description of the killer, a man who appeared to be suffering from AIDS or anorexia.

  He read the statements made by one of the officers assigned to the case, Lisa Singleton. All she said—which Jason knew was all she could say—was the matter was still under investigation. In other words, no one knew what the hell was going on.

  He had to smile. Lisa could be coy and evasive, as he knew well. He and Lisa had once been lovers, before they had graduated from community college in Virginia Beach. Afterwards, he had moved on to college and graduate school in North Carolina and she to her career as a park ranger and wife of Hunter Singleton, star reporter. Eventually, Jason got a job at the museum in River City and the trio had become friends.

  He stared at the story for another minute, looking at the words, but not really seeing them.

  He lay the paper down and faced his computer. After bringing up Google, he typed in two words: Death Defier.

  Fourteen

  Though it could see, it wasn’t sight in the traditional sense, for it had no eyes. It walked in darkness, trudging through muck and slime, sometimes completely underwater, always moving, never resting. The path it followed was by sheer instinct, and it moved quickly, whether on land or completely submerged. There was a sense of purpose, a single-minded fury that drove it ever forward toward the goal, the prize that lay ahead.

  It was really nothing more than a collection of bones, held together by an unseen force, invisible sinew and ligaments whose tangible counterparts had long ago decayed under the ocean depths. It was covered in green barnacles and imbedded sand that had penetrated its structure and become one with the bone itself. The thing was as much a part of the sea as the sea was of it.

  That it had no head was of little consequence. The bones were simply a vessel, an earthly transport for something not of the earth, but of darkness. It had a name, but it was a name that could not be translated in any known language. Some called it Nightmare Walker, others Diablero or Obeah. It was myth come to life, and it had been freed from the trappings that had held its secrets for so long, freed by the man with the dark soul. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was the prize, and now it was close, very close, so close it could feel it. Soon, there would be regeneration, renewal, and ultimate power.

  The thing could sense its energy surge each time it took the life of one of the beings it encountered. The life force flowed from them like a tide from the ocean, washing over it in waves, charging it like a battery cell. Their souls were now part of it, experiencing both the thrill and the horror of its unnatural life.

  Memories of its past life filled its consciousness and it took this in, thinking in its own way about the future and the things that would come to pass. It felt emotion; anger, sadness, and most of all, hate. It knew that it hated the things called humans, and therefore had no remorse in killing them. They were simply cattle. The bones that it now occupied were of a man that had once been greatly feared and had made a show of being fearless. But when it had come, the man had shown fear. In time, however, there was acceptance, and with it, power and riches.

  Then, they came, with swords, guns, and determination, determination to destroy it, to kill that which could not be killed. Yet, someho
w, it was killed, at least temporarily. For three hundred years, it waited at the bottom of the sea, imprisoned in a mass of waterlogged and decomposing flesh. The fish ate of it, the saltwater corroded its bones, but it survived. It knew that one day, it would again be free to walk the Earth. And then, it would take back that which was lost and free its brothers from eternal darkness.

  Since it had been awakened and returned to the surface, it sensed changes in the world, in the attitudes of mankind and in the advancement of science. There were things called automobiles it had seen on its journey, and telephone wires that carried the voices of humans for long distances. The humans had advanced technologically, but spiritually they were retreating, becoming more secular with each passing century. It even sensed the wars being fought in the world on a grand scale, dwarfing anything it had seen in its previous life. Though optimism still persisted, the human spirit was becoming battered and bruised.

  And that, it thought, would make them easy prey.

  Fifteen

  John Aiden, a descendent of the early eighteenth century Governor Eden of North Carolina, considered himself a Virginian through and through. His branch of the family had moved to the Williamsburg area and changed their name shortly after the illustrious governor had pardoned the pirates that had been ravaging the east coast for most of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The governor‘s cousin and Aiden’s forbearer gave Eden a piece of his mind and was told that his opinion would be taken under advisement. The next day, the family was packed up and moved to what is now known as Colonial Williamsburg, and there they have been ever since.

  His descendants were merchants, trading in dry goods, fabric, medicine, and anything else that would turn a dollar. In the early 1900s, however, they began trading in stocks and bonds, and soon became one of the wealthiest families in southeastern Virginia. So much so that the Great Depression had been no more than a speed bump on the road to success.

  Aiden was pushing sixty. His forehead was too big, his chin too small, and his nose too wide. Standing only five-feet-five inches tall, he wore wire-rim glasses and had no taste in clothes, wearing mismatched pants and shirts that usually garnered a good laugh on the golf course.

  Despite his perceived physical flaws, Aiden had been propositioned more than once by women, most of who were interested only in his vast fortune he inherited upon his father’s death from pneumonia nearly a decade ago. Aiden’s interests did not lie in acquiring wealth or trophy brides, however. One-night stands and prostitutes were the extent of Aiden’s love life. After obtaining his masters in biology from the College of William and Mary, he turned his sights on collecting highly-sought-after artifacts, often selling them to museums throughout the world. Some he kept for his own collection. One artifact in his possession was the envy of many in the business.

  An avid follower of the news, Aiden had watched with interest and growing alarm the story of a homicidal maniac on the loose in northeastern North Carolina. The killer had made his way up the coastal waterway through the swamp and was now in Virginia. He had so far eluded police and left a grisly trail of headless bodies behind him. The national press ran the story ad nauseam, and even the BBC had taken an interest.

  Aiden had never been superstitious or even religious, but he understood one thing—there were occurrences in this world modern science could not always explain. As a scientist, Aiden had seen things that were absolutely astounding. Dead animal cells spontaneously returning to life, cancer cells disappearing without a trace, and many other miraculous events. He believed the killings were not only related to the object he possessed, but that the object itself was the cause.

  As Aiden sat in his library behind his large oak desk, he pondered these things. After a moment he swiveled his chair to face a large display case behind him. Positioned between two huge floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, it held some of the most sought-after artifacts in the world of collectors, things for which some had even paid for with their lives. Many were vessels made of gold or silver or some other precious metal. Others were books, so old that a mere touch would cause them to crumble to dust.

  Aiden rose from his chair and slowly walked to the case, keeping his focus on one particular item, fascinated by its innate beauty. He pulled a set of keys out of his suit pocket, and then unlocked the case and gently slid open the door. He put the keys back in his pocket and reached out to pick up the object that mesmerized and seduced him. It was heavy, solid in his hand, yet the collector knew to drop it would shatter centuries of untold history and forever bar the entrance to a world beyond. He was afraid. Afraid of what might happen, but insatiable curiosity and a need to know far outweighed any fear of death.

  Aiden thought back to the day he had tracked this particular artifact down. He had never felt such exhilaration, such complete and profound fulfillment. This was something that was tied not only to the history of the colonial United States, but to his own family as well. He had followed lead after lead, each one coming to a dead end. Yet he had never relented.

  Then, the final call had come. The object had been seen in a small town in North Carolina called Bath. He found the town on a map and wasted no time in driving there, checkbook in hand, money no object. He would pay any amount, though he knew it would probably be relatively cheap since the owner likely would not know its value or its origins.

  When he finally arrived at the small tavern, the bowl was sitting high up on a shelf behind the bar, rimmed in gold and fitted with a large handle to help accommodate the drinking of excessive amounts of alcohol. It looked almost exactly as he had imagined it from the way witnesses had described it. Of course, he had to authenticate the find, but in his heart he knew that what he was looking at was as real as its original owner once had been.

  That was nearly ten years ago, and still the power of what he held in his hand never failed to leave Aiden with a sense of awe.

  The skull of Edward Teach—Blackbeard the Pirate.

  Sixteen

  Hunter sat at his desk staring at a blank computer monitor, wondering exactly how he was going to stay one step ahead of the Virginian-Pilot, USA Today, the three major TV networks, CNN, and Fox News when his phone rang.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin, then snapped back to reality and picked up the phone.

  “Singleton here.”

  “Is this Hunter Singleton, star reporter for the Daily Tribune?”

  Hunter thought the voice sounded familiar, but wasn‘t sure. “Jason Summerfield?” he ventured.

  “Hey, how’d you guess?”

  “I’d know that smart-assed tone anywhere. What’s going on? Haven‘t heard from you in a while. Got a new exhibit opening up?”

  “Not exactly. It’s…well, it’s a little unusual.”

  “A little unusual? What, did somebody dig up a UFO?”

  “Actually, it may be even more bizarre than that.”

  Long pause.

  “Okay. Maybe you could fill me in. What does it concern?”

  “I’ve been following the stories about the murders and I think I may have a little inside information, I guess you could say.”

  This was getting more intriguing by the second. Hunter switched the phone to his headset and began typing notes.

  “Okay, shoot,” he said.

  “I‘m afraid you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I know you’re crazy.”

  “I think your killer is after something, something that probably belongs to a collector who may live in Virginia.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah. I did some research on a whim concerning something I’d read a few years back. It involves a Sonoran Indian legend and something called a Diablero.”

  “A what?”

  “Diablero. It’s basically an evil person—if you want to call it a person—who practices black magic and can transform itself at will into pretty much any type of animal. Even another person. In Voodoo terms it’s known as Obeah.”

  Hunter stopped typing. “
You’re kidding.”

  “Tell me, have you seen any bizarre, unexplained things that may have seemed physically impossible?”

  Hunter thought about the unfortunate diver and the dog on Ocracoke Island, the severed head in the swamp that still caused him nightmares. “Yeah, you could say that.”

  “Then that gives me even more reason to believe my hypothesis.”

  “Okay, exactly what might that be?”

  “I think maybe you should meet me here at the museum. I have a few things to show you that will help convince you and prove that I‘m not crazy. Are you free?”

  “Sure. I’m on my way.”

  Hunter hung up and looked at his notes. Now it was getting into sorcery and black magic. What next, the walking dead?

  He grabbed his sunglasses off the desk and headed for the door.

  Seventeen

  Hunter walked up the steps to the Pasquotank County Museum, a brand new structure that had taken a lot of time, patience, and grant money to construct. He had written many a story about it over the years it was under construction, and often marveled at the fortitude of people like Jason who just didn’t know when to give up.

  Probably a good thing.

  Hunter was somewhat in awe of the rustic green, three-story structure that reminded him of an old plantation house with wings, its glass façade reflecting the morning sun and overlooking the Pasquotank River.

  He opened one of the glass doors and stepped into the large front hall, eyeing the shad boat suspended from the ceiling ten feet above his head. On a wall to his left were facts and photos of United States presidents born in North Carolina, and to his right the information desk. He said hello to the young lady sitting there, and she told him Jason was expecting him.