Table of Contents
Chapter One The Devil’s Brood
Chapter Two Things to Start With
Chapter Three Sorrow’s Point
Chapter Four Lucy’s Story
Chapter Five Tabby: Part 1
Chapter Six Jimmy
Chapter Seven The Story
Chapter Eight Revelations
Chapter Nine Ritual
Chapter Ten The Style of Pain
Chapter Eleven Trouble
Chapter Twelve Tabby: Part 2
Chapter Thirteen Acquaintance
Chapter Fourteen Tabby: Part Three
Chapter Fifteen Jimmy
Chapter Sixteen Investigations
Chapter Seventeen Trial
Chapter Eighteen To Begin is to Try
Chapter Nineteen Belief
Chapter Twenty Medicine
Chapter Twenty One Getting Stronger
Chapter Twenty Two Development
Chapter Twenty Three Cocoon
Chapter Twenty Four Revelation
Chapter Twenty Five Developments
Chapter Twenty Six Pain is just a state of mind
Chapter Twenty Seven The Call
Chapter Twenty Eight Beginnings
Chapter Twenty Nine Take Two
Chapter Thirty Solution
Chapter Thirty One Come What May
Chapter Thirty Two Sweet Release
Chapter Thirty Three The Sweet Sound of Silence
Acknowledgements
About the Author
www.crescentmoonpress.com
Sorrow’s Point
Danielle DeVor
ISBN: 978-1-939173-41-6
E-ISBN: 978-1-939173-42-3
© Copyright Danielle DeVor 2013. All rights reserved
Editor: Sheldon Reid
Cover Art: Lilyana Sanches
Layout/Typesetting: jimandzetta.com
Crescent Moon Press
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Box 269
Middletown, NJ 07748
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All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Crescent Moon Press electronic publication/print publication: Oct 2013 www.crescentmoonpress.com
For Mom and Dad
Without you, I never would have been allowed to become as weird as I am. Thank you.
Chapter One
The Devil’s Brood
1950
O’Dell drove up the hill towards Blackmoor. What was left of his hair was blowing in the wind. It was just too damn hot to have the windows up. With the extra weight he’d put on over the last few years, summer seemed hotter somehow, but it’d been an unusually hot summer anyway. He’d lost count of the amount of times he had to yell at kids for messing with the fire hydrants.
O’Dell pulled into the drive of Blackmoor and parked the car. He looked up at the monstrosity before getting out of the car. Damn thing was massive—about double the size of a football field. Three levels to it. Way too huge for any normal family, but the Blacks were anything but normal. To him, the house seemed like Moby Dick: massive, vengeful and misunderstood. He took his hanky out of his pocket and wiped the sweat off the back of his neck.
“Just what I need. Damn you, Doris. I don’t need Black breathing down my neck.”
He got out of the car and softly closed the door. He looked around. There were no birds or any little creatures. There was no sound other than the sound of his own breathing. He walked up the stone steps to the front door and rang the bell. The doorbell peeled in some tinkling tune O’Dell couldn’t name.
He waited.
No one came to the door.
He left the front entrance and walked around to the other side of the house. By the time he got there, he was breathing heavily.
“Goddamn humidity.”
He climbed up the steps to the stone patio. Damn thing was large enough to host a “quiet” party of three hundred people. Yes, the Blacks were a whole different breed. He knocked on the back door. Still no answer.
Then, he heard a thump from inside the kitchen. He walked to the right and peered into the window.
It was too much for his brain to process. It appeared in flashes. Red ran down the walls as if sprayed. It covered the doorway and dripped from the top like cherry syrup. To the left, on the kitchen sink, was a dish drainer. Long black hair pooled around the severed head of Mrs. Black. The blood dripping from the neck stump had matted the long hair to the counter.
O’Dell turned away from the windows and puked. He ran off the patio, around the house and back to his car.
He opened the car door, hopped into the car and pulled out his radio.
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He pressed the button on the receiver. “Mable?”
“What?” O’Dell heard Mable say, the receiver crackling.
“I need goddamn backup at Blackmoor!”
“Oh God. Sorry, Walt. I’ll make the call.”
O’Dell released his radio and waited. What he’d seen was a sight he was never going to forget.
#
One by one, the deputies arrived. For a town the size of Sorrow’s Point, two deputies was all he could afford. O’Dell got out of his car.
“Sheriff, what’s going on?” Deputy Jones asked. Jones was a young one, fresh out of the academy.
O’Dell hoped he’d be able to pull his weight. He took a deep breath. “It’s bad, Jake. Real bad.”
Deputy Jones looked at the other deputy. He turned back to the sheriff. “I’ve never seen you this messed up, Sheriff. You okay?”
O’Dell was sweating. His face was bright red. He threw his hat off his head and into the dirt. “No, I’m not fucking okay. Black is gone and killed his whole family.” He walked forward and poked Jones in the chest. “I want you to go get that sumbitch. Cuff his ass and get him in the car. You hear me?”
Jones swallowed and motioned for his partner.
“Go round back,” O’Dell said.
###
Jones crept around the side of the massive home. He looked this way and that, just like they taught him to in the academy. This was the first time something serious had gone on in Sorrow’s Point, and he was bound and determined to do the best damn job he could.
He noticed the sheriff’s footprints in the tall grass. He walked around the house to the back patio. He walked up the steps and across to the door.
He felt his foot slide. He’d stepped in someone’s upchuck. “Great.”
He backed up and wiped his shoe off on the stone as best he could. Then, he sidestepped the puddle and peeped into the window.
Black was there, sitting at a butcher block table, facing the window. His black hair stood up from his head in all directions. His eyebrows were arched like the Devil's own. He was covered in blood. He took another bite out of the small human leg he was holding.
“Oh shit.” Jones began to shake.
Blam!
Jones looked down at the smoking barrel of his gun. Then he looked through the broken window. He hadn’t meant for the gun to go off. Black’s head slumped against his chest, the back of his head gone. Bits of gray matter stuck to the wall behind him. Black’s fingers relaxed. The leg fe
ll to the floor.
Chapter Two
Things to Start With
Present
It all started with a phone call. To a lot of people, a phone call is a mundane thing, an everyday occurrence that, for the most part, has no bearing on your everyday life. But this phone call, it was something else entirely.
Here I was, sleeping in my bed, warm, relaxed, and then the phone rang. I looked at the clock—three a.m., the true witching hour. I blinked the sleep from my eyes and groaned. The phone rang again. Are you kidding me? I picked up the phone.
“Jimmy?” the voice asked.
I wiped my hand over my face to try to wake up. Who in the Hell is this? I sat up, pushing the covers off my legs. I turned and dangled them over the side of the bed. It hit me then. I recognized this voice. It was the voice of my past; someone I hadn’t heard from in years. This voice, after all this time, seemed somehow unchanged. “Will.”
I heard him breathing into the phone. He sounded distressed.
“I’m sorry for calling so late,” he said.
Why he was apologizing, I wasn’t sure. The deed had already been done. I’d be lucky to get back to sleep at all.
I heard him cough. “It’s about Lucy,” he said.
Now, I was confused, and honestly kind of irritated. He was calling, waking me up, for someone I didn’t even know. “Lucy who?”
“Lucy ... my daughter.”
I felt like someone had sucked all the air out of my lungs with a shop-vac. At one time, Will and I had been great friends. I didn’t even know he was married, but then, maybe he wasn’t. “I ... I didn’t know you had a daughter, Will.”
“Ah Hell.” I heard what sounded like him hitting the steering wheel with his hand. “Shit. Has it been that long?”
I rolled my eyes. Yes, you idiot, it’s been years. “Yes, it’s been that long.”
I heard him blow his nose. “Well,” he said. “I have a question.”
“Okay.”
“My daughter needs help, and I don’t know what to do.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, trying to wake up. “What’s going on, Will?”
He took a deep breath.
“Do you still believe?” he asked.
My eyebrows wrinkled together. They always did when I got confused about something. My mother used to comment on it all the time. It irritated the Hell out of me. But with Will, he wasn’t making any sense. “What are you talking about?”
“God. I’m talking about God.”
Now it was my turn for a breath. I hadn’t been asked that question for a long time. Ten years at least. “Yes, I still believe.”
Again, I could hear him take a breath. “Can I meet you somewhere?”
I sat up straighter. “Now?”
“Please, Jimmy. I know this is a lot to ask, but please.”
I rolled my head backwards towards the ceiling. I allowed my breath to escape, and my shoulders slumped. My chance at sleep was totally gone. “Where are you?”
“Sitting in your driveway.”
I jumped up and pulled back the curtain next to the bed. Sure enough, there he was sitting in my driveway in what looked to be a green Toyota 4Runner that had seen better days. I waved, let the curtain fall and hung up the phone.
It was damn creepy, and I didn’t like it. Something was wrong about this whole situation. Least of all, someone I hadn’t talked to in over ten years randomly showing up at my house in the middle of the night.
I dropped my phone on my bed. “Dammit.” Bed looked good right now, going downstairs didn’t. I left my bedroom, stumbling slightly. When I got downstairs, I turned on the hallway light and opened the door. He was standing there, blonde hair mussed, face white, hands shaking. What the Hell had happened to him?
“Come in,” I said.
He shuffled in and turned left, walking right into my living room. He narrowly avoided my pile of books and sat down in my old brown recliner. I shuffled my feet on the brown shag carpet then I sat opposite him on the sofa.
“I’m scared, Jimmy,” he said.
I shook my head. “I’m not trying to be mean, but what’s that got to do with me?”
He sat forward in the chair and looked me in the eyes. “I need a priest.”
I sighed. I should have known. “Okay. But I’m not a priest, Will.”
His eyes looked haunted, by what, I had no idea, but it was unsettling to see him this unhinged. “I know,” he said. “But they won’t listen to me, and Lucy needs one.”
I paused. This was just too weird. “Why do you think Lucy needs a priest?”
Will wiggled out of his coat and laid it on the floor beside the recliner. His arms were scratched so badly, it looked like he’d recently tangled with a lion.
“See what she did to me?” he asked. His eyes had taken on a crazed look. “Lucy needs a priest. She’s possessed.”
I sat back. You don’t randomly hear someone talk about possession every day. “Why do you say that?”
He looked at me, his face suddenly very serious. “Because she is.”
Only I would get someone off their rocker looking for an exorcist at three-o-clock in the morning. For the person to be someone I knew made it all the more strange. “Are you sure? Have you thought about taking her to a psychiatrist?”
His hands clenched the armrests of the chair so hard that his knuckles turned white. His face turned red, and his eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets. “She was in a fucking hospital for two weeks!”
He jumped out of the chair and began pacing across my floor. “They could do nothing for her, and they wouldn’t after she almost gouged out a nurse’s eye.”
This wasn’t normal. “How old is Lucy?”
He stopped his pacing. “Six.”
I looked up at him. “You’re telling me a six-year-old almost gouged out a nurse’s eye?”
“Yes.” He sat back down in the recliner.
“Will, that could be a bunch of things—“
“We haven’t talked about the cat.”
The more I heard, the more I wondered if it was Will who needed the psychiatrist.
He stared at me, but more so, he stared through me, lost in his thoughts.
I didn’t know what to do. Even when I was a priest, I never had anything like this happen. It was going to be a long night.
###
My name is Jimmy Holiday. According to my mother, we’re related to Doc Holiday, but honestly, I doubt it. For one, no one in my family has amounted to much. My father was an alcoholic, a nice drunk he was, but a drunk nonetheless. My mother, an alcoholic as well, is a different animal entirely from my father. Even though she’s always been a housewife, and content to be so, she has these grandiose ideas. Let’s put it this way, she could give Hyacinth Bucket from the British comedy Keeping Up Appearances a few lessons.
In a roundabout way, that’s how I ended up becoming a priest. Church was the one place I felt relaxed. My mother was always bickering at my father about this or that. Sometimes, I wonder if she drove him to drink, but I knew better. There was a darker story beneath all of that.
It’s not that I feel scarred by my childhood or anything; it’s just that I know our childhoods play a part in how we turn out.
But I digress. I took solace in church. It always felt like a safe place to me, and one day when I was fourteen, Father O’Malley asked if I’d thought about becoming a priest. All it took was that one question and I was hooked. As soon as I graduated from high school, I entered the seminary and that was that.
I was fine until I finished and continued “going out amongst the people.” That was when I met Tabby.
She didn’t go to the church I was assigned. In fact, she didn’t go to church at all. I would see her, long red hair blowing in the wind, walking past my church each day. Finally, one day I could bear it no longer and spoke to her. From that first word, I was done for. The church no longer held me. It was the beginning of the end.
I fell for her fast. Ironically, we didn’t even have a physical relationship at that point. A parishioner noticed I was spending a lot of time with a pretty young lady. I guess she figured that since Tabby was pretty and I was young, they needed to say something. Unfortunately, what they thought was going on and what was actually going on wasn’t the same thing. I hadn’t turned my back on my vows then, but the parishioner extensively used poetic license and contacted my superiors. I was brought in for an interview. Needless to say, that interview did not go well. I was pissed—not only at the little old biddy who lied, but at my superiors for believing her instead of me. They wanted me to change dioceses and get away from Tabby as fast as possible. I had had enough. If they weren’t going to believe me, then why was I a priest? When I refused to stop seeing Tabby and refused to move, they defrocked me.
I moved into an apartment, enrolled in college and worked part time at the library. I had a Hell of a debt to pay off. When you leave the church — whether you are kicked out or you quit, you have to pay the church back for your education. Tabby and I tried to stick together, but between my schedule and hers, it just wasn’t working. Eventually, Tabby and I parted ways. I got a degree in Graphic Design, began working professionally, and minus my irritation about the past, I’ve been pretty happy ever since. Until the three a.m. phone call that is.
#
I got up from the couch and went into the kitchen. It was too damn late, and I needed some caffeine. My kitchen was a galley style that hadn’t been updated since the seventies, but I liked it. Green refrigerators rock, no matter what anyone else tries to tell me.
I pulled out the coffee maker and got it started. Then I went back into the living room. Will hadn’t changed positions.
Suddenly, he whipped his head around and looked at me. “Can we turn on some more lights?”
I didn’t ask. The way my hallway was situated with my living room, the hallway light provided enough light for me to see perfectly fine. I couldn’t read in the light, but it wasn’t uncomfortably dark – at least not to me. Maybe the darkness he felt was creeping up on him. I walked across the living room and turned on the lamp.