All Hallows Eve: A Krewe of Hunters Novella (1001 Dark Nights) Read online

  But Elyssa’s attention had been drawn to another of the basement nooks, a figure of a hanging man. She’d seen the group before them walk right by it—no blood, no gore, no actor to jump at them. To locals the image was nothing new. It could be seen throughout Salem, representative of men like George Burroughs or John Proctor, who’d also been convicted of witchcraft and hanged, like the women, during the craze.

  Her head began to pound.

  And she was drawn toward the image.

  Yes, thank you. Come. Please, help me stop this.

  She stared through the darkness and her first thought was how life-like the image was. But, of course, the man had been hanged. He was dead. No life existed. She could see every little hair on his head. He was dressed in Puritan garb, as if a victim of the witch trials. The nook had been painted to look as if it were outside at the hanging tree. He might have been about thirty-five or so in life, with dark hair and weathered features. And the smell. Rank. Like urine and rot. The area had really been done up to haunt all of the senses.

  She moved closer.

  Yes, yes. Help. Please, oh, yes, please.

  The voice whispering in her mind grew louder.

  One more step.

  And then she knew.

  The figure was real. Not an actor there to scare those who came so giddily through the house. And she knew him. He ran this place. He’d even given her a job here at the house last year.

  John Bradbury.

  Hanging, dead.

  She screamed, which only evoked laughter at first. But she kept screaming and pointing. Her friends tried to calm her. Nate tried to show her that it was just part of the scare fest. A prop.

  But he suddenly realized that it was much more.

  White-faced and grim, he shouted, “That’s a real body. He’s dead.”

  The night seemed to drag on forever with the police, bright lights and horrified actors wanting to go home, Mayberry Mortuary haunted house closed down. Eventually, there was hot chocolate as they sat in the mortuary café, answering questions for cop after cop.

  But, that wasn’t the worse part.

  That came when Elyssa finally made it home in the wee hours, lying in her bed, drifting in and out of sleep.

  She felt her mattress depress and when she opened her eyes, John Bradbury was there.

  Thank you. But you have to know. They’re going to kill again, unless you stop them.

  Chapter 1

  “There?” Sam Hall asked.

  “Oh, yes. Yes. Touch me there. Right there,” Jenna Duffy moaned in return.

  “Right here? I can touch and touch and—”

  “Ohhhh yes. That’s it.”

  Jenna rolled over and looked up at him, eyes soft, smile beautiful. He’d been straddled over her spine carefully balancing his weight as he worked his magic. Now he towered over her front.

  “I think,” she said, reaching up to stroke his cheek, her eyes filled with wonder, “that you missed your calling. The hell with the law. The hell with the FBI. You could have been an amazing masseuse. My shoulders feel so much better.”

  “You shouldn’t spend so many hours reading without taking a break and walking around.”

  Jenna nodded. “I don’t know how Angela does it. She has such an eye for the cases and requests, when we’re really needed. I’ve read them over and over.”

  She was referring to Special Agent Angela Hawkins, case facilitator for the Krewe of Hunters at their main offices—and wife of Jackson Crow, their acting field director. Both he and Jenna loved their work. When they weren’t in the field, he maintained his bar licensing in several states by working Krewe legal matters. Jenna assisted Angela in reading between the lines, determining where the team was most needed. The requests for Krewe help were growing in number; and while new agents came on all the time, it was still a race to keep up.

  “We have tomorrow,” he said. “Then vacation.”

  “Sun, sea, and tanning oils for exotic massages,” Jenna said, laughing.

  He stared down into her eyes—greener than the richest forest—and marveled at the way he loved her. Her hair, a deep and blazing red, spread out across the pillows in waves. It seemed incredible that this remarkable, beautiful, sensual woman could feel the same for him. That they could lie together so naturally, that laughter could combine with passion, and that they could live and work together.

  And still be closer each year.

  He smiled and kissed her.

  Her fingers ran down his spine with a teasing caress, finding his midriff, then venturing lower.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  He groaned softly.

  “Pardon?”

  “Sex. Here, now,” he said. “The perfect place. In bed—both of us on it.”

  She frowned.

  “And you weren’t?”

  She smiled and caressed him in one of her most erotic and sensual ways. “There?” she whispered teasingly.

  “Oh, yes. Right there.”

  “I can touch and touch and touch.”

  He kissed her lips, then her collarbone and her breast, moving lower. He loved her so much, truly loved her, and every time they made love, it seemed sweeter and sweeter. Her skin was satin, her hair the fall of silk, and her movements—

  Those were the best.

  They slept after, entangled in one another’s arms, and he thought about heading to Atlantis and how he’d planned to ask her then if they shouldn’t begin to think about a wedding in the near future.

  What a beautiful night.

  But in the morning everything changed.

  With the phone call.

  * * * *

  A wickedly big and warty witch atop a broomstick rode above a sign that advertised “Best Halloween Ball Bash in the Nor’East.”

  New England. Halloween.

  Nothing went better together.

  And the holiday decorations would just increase as they neared Salem, Massachusetts, the days ticking off closer and closer to the hallowed day. Costume shops abounded, as if they’d sprouted from seeds of alien pods tossed down by a space ship. But people everywhere liked to party.

  Unfortunately, this was not going to be a vacation in the Bahamas. Sadly, Sam thought about the tickets he and Jenna had changed and the rooms in the fantasy casino they’d canceled. He didn’t mind. If Jenna needed to do something else, that was fine. As long as he was with her.

  And he was.

  “So,” he said, frowning slightly as he glanced over at Jenna before looking back at the road. “Talk to me. We’re here to see a relative but, somehow, I never met her when you and I first got together, back with the murders at Lexington House. And, a relative I also haven’t met since.”

  Then again, they hadn’t been back to Salem that many times over the past few years. Jenna’s parents lived in Boston—when they weren’t visiting friends and family in Ireland—so they’d only made it that far when they popped up for a weekend. Her uncle, Jamie O’Neill, her next-favorite relative, often came down to Boston when they were there.

  Jenna didn’t look at him. She was gnawing her lower lip, staring out the window. She’d grown more and more withdrawn since they’d left Boston’s Logan Airport and started driving up US 1 toward Salem. He wasn’t sure if she had even heard him.

  Salem.

  His home.

  And while Jenna had come from Ireland as a child and grown up in Boston, her ties with Salem were deep. Her Uncle Jamie lived here, and she’d spent a tremendous amount of time, while growing up, with him. Salem was where he’d fallen in love with Jenna. And when they’d left, he’d assumed he’d open a law practice in northern Virginia. Instead, he’d found himself in the FBI academy.

  And then part of the Krewe.

  Thing was, though, until the call came, he’d never expected to be heading here. And he’d never expected that she’d close down. Jenna was an experienced agent. She dealt with a lot of bad things. She had a tremendous compassion for ot
hers and a stern work ethic. She’d been almost silent as they’d ridden to work, explaining only that they were going to have to change things up. No vacation right now. She’d gotten a call from an Elyssa Adair, someone he’d never heard her mention before. She was sorry, so sorry, about the trip, and she wanted to wait until they saw Jackson before explaining why this was so important. As soon as they’d arrived at work, he’d arranged for them both to speak with Jackson Crow at the Krewe of Hunters special unit headquarters.

  He wasn’t surprised that Jenna had so quickly been given permission for the two of them to travel to Salem. Krewe cases were often accepted on instinct, or because there was a particular reason a Krewe member should be involved. He was surprised, though, by Jenna, who was usually open and frank and outgoing, especially with him. They’d been together nearly five years. He’d changed his entire life to work with her and, of course, to deal with the fact that the dead seemed to like to speak with him.

  And he loved her.

  With all of his heart, with everything in him.

  He knew that she felt the same way about him, which made it so strange that she’d seemed to shut him out, even while asking that he accompany her and assist on the case. At the moment, however, there wasn’t a case. Not one that they’d been invited to join in on at least. A man was dead. He’d been associated with the old Mayberry Mortuary Halloween Horrors. Police were suggesting that he might have killed himself over financial matters. There was an ongoing local investigation. But, so far, the death was being considered a possible-suicide.

  That much, he knew.

  The minute Jenna had begun to talk about a cousin he’d never met, Elyssa Adair, and the fact that Elyssa had discovered the dead man in the haunted horror attraction, he’d probed for background.

  John Bradbury, born in Salem, schooled in Boston, had returned to Salem to operate the mortuary under the business umbrella Hauntings and Hallucinations, Inc. The company was doing fine. However, the year before, Bradbury had gone through a tough divorce, and, apparently, due to past substance abuse problems, had lost all but supervised visitation rights with his three children. His ex-wife—while crying on a newscast—had told the world that it had been John’s mental instability that had led to his self-medicating with drugs and alcohol and their subsequent divorce.

  This was still New England, and while Sam held his own devotion to his home sector, he was aware that some of the old Puritanical values still hid in the hearts and minds of many. Mental weakness was kept to one’s self. Everyone was shocked that the man killed himself, considering how calm he’d appeared to his employees and how happy he’d been when managing the mortuary in its guise as a haunted house. It would be easy to accept the death as an apparent suicide. Bad things happened around Halloween. Holidays seemed an impetus for those dealing with severe depression.

  They were passing through Peabody—an old stomping ground for anyone who’d grown up in the area. Beautiful old Colonial and Victorian homes, big and small, grand and not so grand, were decked out in ghostly fashion, all the more eerie as night began to fall. Scarecrows, skeletons, ghosts, ghouls, black cats, and more abounded.

  But the best was yet to come.

  Salem prided itself on being Halloween central.

  Jenna finally turned his way and said, “She’s a little scholar. Elyssa was in Europe when we were here last. She earned six months study abroad before she was even a freshman. She’s a great kid, a second cousin once removed or however you come about that. My dad’s cousin’s daughter’s daughter. She’s all grown up now, a senior and just turned eighteen. She’s never seen a dead body—much less a hanged dead body.”

  Except in museums, probably. Many of Salem’s attractions had scenes of life’s finales, men and women convicted and executed after their so-called witch trials.

  “I can imagine how bad it was,” he said.

  “She was nearly hysterical on the phone, and, of course, her folks are upset that she called me. They seem to think she’s having a bad reaction to what happened. But I told her mom not to worry, that I was happy to come and see Uncle Jamie and that we had some vacation time coming anyway.” She paused and looked at him apologetically. “I said I was happy to help her in any way that I can. The thing is—”

  Her voice trailed.

  He waited.

  He knew her dilemma, listening intently when she’d explained the situation to Jackson Crow. Elyssa believed that a dead man had called her for help. Then that same dead man had appeared to her later to thank her for finding him, fading away with a warning that a killer had to be caught before more people died. Elyssa’s parents would want Jenna to assure the young girl that what was happening in her mind was because of the horror she’d seen, not because a dead man could really speak to her.

  “It’s going to be hard,” Jenna said. “I can’t tell her that she’s imagining things if, in fact, she’s not. And if this man was really murdered, someone has to discover the truth about his death.”

  He reached across the car and squeezed her hand. “You’ll do what’s right. You always do.”

  She nodded and squeezed back.

  They really hadn’t talked about this much at all. Instead, they’d left the office, packed, and hopped onto the first plane. Angela had seen to it that a rental car was waiting for them. Normally, she would have seen to it that they had a hotel room too.

  But, not in Salem.

  Sam still owned a house here. His parents’ home, where he’d grown up. Once, he’d wanted to sell the house and say good-bye to Salem. But Jenna and her Uncle Jamie had changed that. He’d learned something about his childhood home because of them, because of all of the bad that had happened.

  Three things.

  People made bad things happen.

  Places weren’t evil.

  And when the dead remained, it was for a reason, usually to make sure that the living finally got it right.

  He entered Salem and drove down Walnut Street, heading into the historic district. People, off to early holiday parties, filled the sidewalks in costume. Around this time of the year it was difficult to tell the practicing Wiccans from all the amateurs.

  “How cute,” Jenna murmured, noting a group of children, all in costumes themed to The Wizard of Oz.

  They stood at a stop sign, and Sam took a minute to look at the group and smile. He was about to move through the intersection when he suddenly slammed on the brakes. A costumed pedestrian had rushed into the street and thrown himself on the hood of the car, grinning eerily at them. He stayed for a beat while Sam felt his temper flaring. The person in the costume stared at him through the windshield, donning a red latex mask. It seemed the entire body was red beneath a black cape, the eyes blood-streaked yellow. The person suddenly pushed off the car, cackling with laughter.

  “Ass,” Sam yelled.

  “Total dick,” Jenna said.

  “Vampire, demon?”

  “Boo-hag,” Jenna said.

  He didn’t know about a boo-hag. “What’s that?”

  “I guess it’s a regional thing, from the Gullah people. They’re from regions of Africa, mainly brought to this country as slaves. They got together and formed a group hundreds of years ago. They have a language, kind of like a Haitian patois joined with English, and all kinds of cultural stuff. And of course now, with time passing, the mix is African, Creole, and so on. They’re known to have lived in the low country of South Carolina, down to north Florida at one time.”

  “And what do these boo-hags do?”

  “To the Gullah, there is a soul and a spirit. The soul goes to Heaven, assuming the person was good, the spirit watches over the family. Unless it’s a bad spirit. Then, it becomes a boo-hag. Like a spiritual vampire.”

  “A spiritual vampire?” Sam asked.

  She turned to him, grave and knowing, a slight smile in her eyes. “When you slept eight hours and woke exhausted, that might have been a boo-hag. They suck energy out of the living. Usually, they le
ave their victims alive so they can feast off of them again. If a victim struggles, that’s when you find that person dead in the morning.”

  “And how do you fight a boo-hag?” Sam asked.

  “You need to leave a broom by your bed. Boo-hags are easily distracted. They’ll start counting the bristles and forget they came to suck your energy. To rid yourself of a boo-hag, though, you have to find their skin while they’re out of it, and fill it with salt. That will make them insane with agony when they put it back on.”

  “Guess we need to sleep with salt and brooms,” he said. “Easy enough to find at Halloween. How the hell do you know about all this? This is Salem, Mass, not the Deep South.”

  “You had to have known my mum’s mother. She taught me all about the banshees and leprechauns. She loved legends. And she also had a dear friend from the low country who lived in Charleston.”

  “Wish I could have known her,” Sam said. He was suddenly glad of the obnoxious drunk who’d thrown himself on the car. Jenna had finally become Jenna.

  “Those eyes,” she said, with a shiver. “Spooky.”

  “Contacts, most likely.”

  “Good ones, too. But there are a lot of great costumes at Halloween. You know that.”

  He did. “And no costume parties, huh?”

  She grinned. “No costume parties. But you’d make a great John Proctor. He was supposed to have been a big, tall, strong dude.”

  “Before he was hanged,” he said.

  She grimaced at that.

  They were nearly in the historic section.

  He turned to her sheepishly. “I forgot to ask. My house? Or is Uncle Jamie expecting us?” Sam asked.

  She turned to him, more relaxed than she’d been. “Uncle Jamie is expecting us.”

  “Okay, just so I know where I’m going.”

  She nodded, and he noticed a darkness settle over her again. There was something so pained about her eyes, and yet there was so much appreciation in them he felt a tug at his heart. He remembered meeting her when Malachi Smith had been accused of the brutal murders at Lexington House, and how strong and determined she’d been. Between her and Jamie, he’d found himself representing the young man pro bono. Even in the height of danger and true horror there, she’d never looked like this.