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

  Jenna nodded. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  He was a tall, nice-looking man, big enough that it must not have been easy to get his neck into a noose.

  “I was working. Checking the connections on some of our automated monsters, readjusting the props on the embalming tables. I don’t know where they came from. I just had a sense that someone was behind me.”

  “When you say you don’t know where they came from—did they enter from the house or from the delivery doors? Did you smell something? Was anyone wearing aftershave or cologne? Or as if they hadn’t bathed? Did you see their hands or anything about them?”

  “I felt like I was hit by a bulldozer. I was standing there, then suddenly someone was behind me. I was slammed against one of the props, then I felt the rope go around my neck. They pulled it tight fast. I was struggling with the noose, trying to get it off. Then I was off my feet, being dragged and jerked. I couldn’t really see anything but black. I think they were in costumes. Maybe capes.”

  “Were they wearing masks?”

  “I don’t know. But I never saw their faces. I heard them. The one said something giving ‘dimension to the witch trials’ and the other said ‘to shut up.’ Then the one who’d spoken first said, ‘he’s going to tell someone what we were talking about. The Wiccans, the cultists, the weirdos.’”

  “That was it?” Jenna asked.

  John Bradbury nodded. “They jerked the rope, and my neck snapped. I died. Then I felt like I was drifting, looking on, and I saw people coming through the mortuary. I kept trying to speak, but I realized they didn’t see or hear me.” He paused, smiling wistfully. “I worked with Elyssa. She had a way about her that reminded me of my oldest daughter. But I also felt that she knew things that maybe even she didn’t know she knew. I felt her coming near me. I reached out with my mind. And she must have listened. Everyone else was pretty much just walking by me. She seemed to hear me. So I spoke to her. I then managed to follow her home. But I couldn’t connect with her until the following morning. That was strange. But it happened.”

  “I am so sorry,” Jenna said. “We’re looking for two killers. But, John, I need you to think. Were they men, women?”

  “I don’t know. They were whispering. But you mentioned smells. I remember that it seemed absurd, but it was like I smelled a forest. Flowery, like an autumn breeze.”

  “Anything else?” she asked quietly.

  “I was strangling, dying. And the thing is . . . my kids. They have to know that I didn’t do this to myself. That I would never have left them, no matter how bad things seemed to be.”

  Jenna reached out instinctively, but touched nothing but a chilly breath of air. “They’ll know. I’ll make sure. You do know there was another murder?”

  He nodded. “Gloria Day. I didn’t like her very much.”

  “Did she have a lot of enemies?”

  “On Halloween night, for years, Tandy Whitehall has been throwing a big gala. Gloria arrives in town and lures away half of Tandy’s business. Gloria and I knew one another. We were never friends. She was more a bitch than a witch.”

  He was quiet for a minute. Jenna allowed him the moment of thought. She wondered what she looked like, standing in the graveyard, talking to herself. A number of family tombs were strewn between her and the mortuary, which probably blocked the vision of anyone who might have casually looked this way. The entire scene was vintage Salem at Halloween, complete with the giant old Victorian house, covered with webs and scarecrows and monsters, caught in an eerie glow that barely reached the cemetery.

  “Red,” John Bradbury said.

  She waited.

  “You made me think about that night. What I was feeling and smelling and I suddenly thought about the color red.”

  Jenna heard Sam from earlier with his story of a boo-hag. A body stripped down to muscle, bone, and red blood.

  “Does that mean something?” he asked.

  “I followed someone in a red costume into the forest. A red costume beneath a black cape. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “What you mean…” a new voice said, “is that you followed someone in red and black into the forest, then found Gloria Day, the wretched bitch witch dead?”

  Jenna turned toward the new voice. Female.

  “Really, John?” Gloria Day said. “Bitch witch? How rude. I’m dead, too, you know.”

  The new ghost joined the party, wearing the same Puritan garb in which she’d died, standing with them among the lichen-covered tombstones. She’d been an attractive woman with dark hair, light blue eyes, a heart-shaped face, and a charming smile.

  Gloria looked at Jenna. “You will find out who did this to us. And so help me, dead or alive, Wiccan, Catholic, Buddhist, whatever, I’ll curse them in a fiery realm of hell where they’ll burn for all eternity.”

  Chapter 7

  “Where would a popular Wiccan head to avoid detection and the press?” Devin pondered, linking arms with both Sam and Rocky.

  “Did you know her?” Sam asked Devin.

  Sam knew that Devin had not started out as an agent. She’d first been an author of children’s books—all based on a witch. She’d grown up in Salem and returned when her Aunt Mina left her a cottage on the outskirts of town. She and Rocky had met when Rocky had come to Salem. The murders they’d solved had traced all the way back to the days when Rocky had been in high school.

  When the dead had first spoken to him.

  Sam was fond of them both and had been glad when they’d become part of the Krewe. All of them were New Englanders from approximately the same area, hard not to share a few local peculiarities. For one, they all had the tendency to overuse the word “wicked.” To a Brit everything tended to be “brilliant.” In New England, things were just “wicked.”

  “I’d say she’s hiding in someone’s house,” Rocky suggested. “The cops have a list of all her followers, so they’ll be going door to door.”

  “Which doesn’t mean much. There are no warrants. She’s not under arrest, only wanted for questioning,” Sam said.

  Rocky grinned. “Can’t get the attorney out of the agent, huh?”

  “Thing is, once we get a murderer, we’d like to see he or she locked up, not free on a technicality.”

  “I just wish we could find this woman,” Rocky said.

  “Angela just texted me,” Devin said. “There’s a little place near the end of the Salem Harbor Walk, owned by a Wiccan woman who is in a hive that’s an offshoot of Tandy Whitehall’s coven. It’s called the Goddess, serves a lot of Paleo foods, vegetarian offerings, homemade wine and beer. It’s two blocks from Tandy Whitehall’s house. Sounds like a place to start.”

  “Sound good to me,” Sam said.

  So far they’d managed to keep themselves out of the news. He and Jenna had been involved in the Lexington House case four years ago. It had been just a little more than a year since Devin and Rocky had met here to solve an old murder, which had been hard on Devin, since it had involved one of her old circles of friends. They needed to maintain their anonymity.

  They headed down along the dark streets, avoiding revelers, costumed or not. Sam had loved Salem growing up. True, a lot had gone commercial. But the Peabody Essex museum was wonderful, teaching the history of fear and suspicion and distrust of one’s neighbors and what those emotions could do to a community. The people who lived and worked here gave the place a pulse. And yet the old could still be found, along with the new. Quaint stood side by side with fun and the silly. So many restaurants had brought in excellent chefs. The House of the Seven Gables still stood, a testament to the past and a reminder that the past came alive through great literary works. Ships continued to ride high in the harbor, beneath the moon, the water seeming to stretch out forever.

  Devin suddenly squeezed Sam’s hand. “One way or the other, if we find Tandy or not, you need to tell Rocky and me what’s going on with you and Jenna.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “We’
re good. We’re great.”

  “You were acting a bit strange. You kept looking at her as if you’re afraid you’re never going to see her again.”

  Rocky nodded. “She’s right.” Then he paused and pointed. “There’s our place. Rambling, with lots of rooms. Plenty of hiding places. Angela may be hundreds of miles away from here, but she can track like a bloodhound.”

  “Let’s see what we find before we canonize her,” Sam said, grinning.

  The bar/restaurant was situated in a house where a plaque on the door informed them that it had been built in 1787. Plain dark wood on both the outside and inside. Booths offered hardwood benches, those along the wall with backs. Doors opened to additional rooms on either side of an oblong bar. Like everything else in Salem, it was decorated. No monsters here, though. Only pumpkins, Indian corn, and all manner of natural fall decoration. The place was busy, but not overcrowded, and a young hostess asked them if they’d like a booth or a table.

  They opted for a table. Soon, they were sipping locally brewed brown beer with steaming bowls of chowder before them, listening to the snatches of conversations from those around them.

  “Will the gala go on? I mean a woman is dead,” a tall blonde at the bar said to her companion.

  “Probably. There are sponsors, bands and tickets were sold. They can’t cancel it,” her male companion said.

  “I heard this is a real Wiccan hangout,” another girl said.

  “Tourists,” Rocky murmured, then he looked at Sam. “What’s up with you?”

  Sam hesitated, but these were his coworkers. They’d worked well together because they were straight with one another, even when it seemed ludicrous.

  “Boo-hag,” he said.

  “What?” Devin asked, a frown furrowing her brow. “That’s not like a redneck banshee or something, is it?”

  “More like a vampire, a really creepy, ugly one,” Sam said. “And we keep seeing one in particular. A boo-hag nearly threw itself on the car when we were driving into town. And Jenna saw one right before she found Gloria Day’s body.”

  “You mean—someone costumed as one?” Devon asked.

  Sam smiled. “Sure, what else. And I dreamed about one coming after Jenna. I couldn’t get to her in time, and it was going to suck the life out of her. A dream, I know. But boo-hag keeps coming up, and it’s bugging me.”

  “Where would one find a boo-hag in Salem?” Devin asked. “If we find someone in a boo-hag costume on the street, we can’t just stop and search him.”

  “There’s a community of Gullah people here who I want to check out tomorrow morning,” Sam said.

  “Gullah?” Rocky asked.

  “It’s a blend of different African and island cultures, along with a Creole mix. The culture originally stretched from the coastal areas of the Carolinas to Florida. Now, it seems, they’re mostly in South Carolina. The boo-hag is one of the demons, I believe, in their storytelling. It’s hideous, shedding its skin, answering only to a boo-daddy.”

  “Ah, yes,” a female voice said.

  Sam turned and saw a petite, attractive woman standing behind him dressed in black and wearing a beautiful gold pentagram. Her platinum blonde hair was short and curled around a thin, lovely face.

  Tandy Whitehall.

  “Young and lovely women meet unwary men,” she said. “They seduce them and use them, and, when the time is right, take their husbands or young lovers to their boo-daddy. He consumes them, down to gnawing on their bones. Every society has its monsters. The boo-hag is a bad one.” She glanced around the table and smiled, then shook Sam’s hand. “Emily told me you three were here. Would you care to come into the back where we can talk in private?”

  “Tandy?” Devin said.

  “Devin Lyle. You know, I miss your Aunt Mina. She was an amazing friend.”

  She drifted away from the table. They followed. Which seemed expected. They’d wanted to find Tandy Whitehall.

  And had done so.

  * * * *

  Jenna knew this was her best opportunity to find out the truth.

  “The oddest thing is that I don’t believe Tandy Whitehall had anything to do with this,” Gloria Day’s ghost said. “You have to realize that some of the argument between us was all for hype and promo. We go about things differently—went about things differently.” She looked at John Bradbury. “This is really so unfair.”

  “Tell me about it. I had children.”

  “And I’d hoped to have them one day, too,” she said. “You didn’t like me a whole lot, John. So don’t pretend that you do now.”

  “I didn’t like your Wiccan kick against haunted houses,” he said. “You, I hardly knew.”

  Gloria made a face at him. “I just tried haunting the place, but no one could see or hear me.”

  “Could you two focus on the problem at hand,” Jenna said. “We’re trying to figure out who killed you, and disprove that it was two suicides.”

  “Hard to hang yourself over a tree,” Gloria said. “You need some help.”

  “It’s like with your death they want us to know a murderer is at work,” Jenna said. “That might be because the killers have realized John’s death isn’t going to be accepted as a suicide.”

  “Either that,” John said, “or someone is going about recreating the deaths of those condemned to hang, and maybe even Giles Corey’s death, too. This could get really bad.”

  “Do they want it to look like a Wiccan war? If so, they missed the debate somewhere along the line. John and Tandy Whitehall were close,” Gloria said.

  “Gloria, I need to know what happened to you,” Jenna said. “You didn’t drive yourself out here, somehow make your car disappear, then hang yourself.

  She wasn’t meaning to be cruel, but Gloria seemed the type who wanted things straight.

  And she did.

  Gloria arched a brow with a shade of humor and said, “I don’t know what happened. I was in the shop, just straightening up, and some kind of a bag was suddenly over my head. I was suffocating and passed out. I came to feeling the roughness of a rope around my neck, then agony and darkness. And I was here. On the other side. I wandered out of the trees and was surrounded by gravestones. I saw the mortuary up on the hill and had no idea how I had gotten here. And then, of course, I realized. I was dead. And I’ve been trying ever since to find someone who could hear me.”

  “Any smells?” John asked her.

  “What?” she asked, looking at him, a faint wrinkling forming above her brows.

  “A smell, a feel, a sensation? Anything?”

  “The trees. I remember the smell of trees. Something like a forest.”

  “I smelled the same thing,” he said.

  “Did either of you recognize the scent? From a store, a shop, either one of the big department store colognes, or anything more local?” Jenna asked.

  “I know where something close can be bought,” Gloria said after a minute. “A woodsy scent. At Tandy Whitehall’s shop.”

  “You really think Tandy did this?” John protested. “I’m a big man, and even with a noose around my neck it would take more than a tiny woman like Tandy to take me down.”

  “We know from what you heard, John, that there were two killers,” Jenna said.

  “I don’t believe Tandy did this to me. I really don’t,” Gloria said, looking at John. “We had our differences, but I respected her. No, I may be dead, but right is right, and I won’t attack the woman, even if I am dead.” She seemed to shake off her sadness and looked at Jenna with purpose. “But I know that scent, and it can be bought at Tandy’s shop.”

  “Tandy has disappeared,” Jenna said. “She’s wanted for questioning. Would she have fled Salem?”

  “Never,” John and Gloria both said.

  Jenna’s phone buzzed and she glanced at it quickly.

  Sam.

  She answered and learned that John and Gloria were right. Tandy was still here, with Sam, Devin, and Rocky, and Sam’s assessment was clear. She
’s not our killer. So everyone seemed in agreement, Tandy was innocent.

  Jenna looked over at Gloria.

  “I appreciate you finding my body,” Gloria said. “I could have hung there a long time.”

  But it had been the boo-hag who led her. Had it intended for her to find Gloria?

  She texted Sam.

  Check Tandy’s inventory. Find out who bought a woodsy scent that she sells. Find out about the Gullah community.

  She finished her text and looked up.

  “Someone is trying to make this look as if the Wiccans are evil,” Gloria said. “As if the community should be hanging us again.”

  “Or trying to make it look like a feud,” John added. “I was killed, so someone from the other camp had to die, too.”

  “What do either of you know about the Gullah community?”

  “I know a number of folks who moved up here who are basically Gullah, but they don’t really follow any special practices. There’s one church in town that has a Southern twist, but it’s basically Baptist. Most of them attend there. They’re actually all great people,” Gloria said. “Where do they fit in here?”

  “I don’t think they come into it at all. I think that boo-hag is being used.”

  “Boo-hag?” John murmured.

  “Creepy, soul-sucking yucky demon,” Gloria explained. “Gullah. Red. Woodsy. Mortuary.”

  “Red mortuary?” Jenna asked quickly.

  “Maybe it’s because you said boo-hag,” Gloria said. “But I have an impression of red in my memory. For some reason, I seem to remember a whisper of the word mortuary.”

  Gloria paused and gazed across the graves to the mortuary on the hill.

  John joined her, then glanced at his wrist and shrugged with an unhappy sigh. “I always wore a watch. But it stopped when I died. Go figure. Loyal watch, I guess.”

  “It’s way past midnight,” Gloria said. “The lines are gone and people are leaving. They try to have it all closed up by 2:00 A.M.”

  Jenna looked over at the mortuary, too, which appeared both dead and eerily alive, as if on a plain between the living and the dead. Haunting, opaque, sheathed in garish Halloween décor, in the moonlight it appeared decayed and faded.