Bill Pronzini - Zigzag

“Possession,” she said.

“Possession. You mean the spirit enters the body of the victim, takes control of it?”

“The victim, or someone else weak willed enough to do the spirit’s bidding. A temporary host, you see? Signified, perhaps, by the appearance of the devil’s symbol, a black host.”

“If it’s the victim who’s possessed, then what? How would the spirit destroy him?”

“Theft of the soul is the most diabolical method.”

“... I don’t understand that.”

“A basic tenet of black magic is the belief that the soul is not just the essence of life, but a literal indwelling object — a kind of homunculus that can be seized from within and then taken away. Once this happens, the mortal body collapses and soon withers and dies.”

“Is there another method?”

“A more immediate one, yes. By seizing control of the victim’s will, forcing him to destroy himself by his own hand.”

Gruesome stuff, a mixture of primitive fear, skewed logic, and perverted religious doctrine. You couldn’t have paid me enough to buy into it for five seconds. Erskine, either, if he were pressed, judging from the dispassionate look he directed my way from his stance behind her chaise lounge. His wife claimed only academic interest in the black arts, and yet she seemed even paler now and her hand was unsteady as she lifted the decanter and splashed more cognac into her glass. If not a true believer, then close to it — and considerably disturbed by the events of the past few days.

Erskine put a hand on her shoulder again. “Please, Marian, no more alcohol. It’s not good for your heart.”

She ignored him. Down the new pour went, in two convulsive gulps. The cognac made her cough again, seemed to shorten her breath a little, but did nothing to improve her color.

“Is there anything more you’d like to know?” she asked me. Irritation toward me in her voice now. “About evil spirits, black mass rituals, the Witches’ Sabbath, the signing of convenants with the devil—”

“No. That’s not necessary. I’ve heard enough.”

She seemed to realize she might have spoken too harshly; she pasted on a smile and said in a more even tone, “What I’ve told you hasn’t changed your mind, has it? About helping us?”

In spite of my skepticism, the conversation had made me feel just a little uncomfortable. Out of my element in a case like this. Once again I had an impulse to back off and back out, but the pleading in Mrs. Erskine’s voice, the nervous tension in her body and veiled fear in her eyes, overrode my better judgment. The thing was, I felt sorry for her. And whatever was going on here had a rational, not a supernatural, explanation, and that I could deal with. Up to a point, anyway.

“No,” I said, “I haven’t changed my mind. But I can’t promise you results, Mrs. Erskine. It’s been a year since the accident and the Voks’ death and there’s not much to go on. All I can guarantee you is that I’ll do my best on your behalf.”

“That is all we expect.”

Erskine asked her if she wanted to go back to the house; she said no, she’d stay there a while longer. “Not with the cognac,” he said, and plucked the decanter off the table. She gave him a dark look but not an argument, and dismissed him, and me, by closing her eyes.

He and I returned to the sunroom, where he wrote me a hefty retainer check that included, at his insistence, the $250 he’d promised me for the drive down and consultation. I asked him a few more questions while he was doing that, but the answers weren’t useful. He didn’t know where the Voks had lived. Or the name of the doctor who’d called with the dying man’s request. Or the name of the nurse who’d been in the room when the black host was passed and the vow made. And he couldn’t remember anything more about the friend or relative of the Voks who’d been there.

On my way back to the city I mentally replayed the interviews with Erskine and his wife. The more I went over them, the more surreal they seemed. Devil cults. Black hosts. Soul-stealing evil spirits from beyond the grave. This was the twenty-first century, for God’s sake. Such things couldn’t possibly exist in the modern world.

No, but evil sure as hell did. You had only to look at the media any day, every day, for proof of that. All kinds of evil, all kinds of noxious acts. Some of it had touched me before, in various ways. Hurt people I liked and respected, hurt me and those I loved.

One other thing for certain: whatever I did for the Erskines, however far I went with an investigation, I would not let that happen again.

It was a little past five when the heavy freeway and city traffic finally allowed me to return to South Park and the agency offices. As per usual, Tamara was still at her desk; close of business to her, most days, was six at the earliest and sometimes seven or eight if she had enough work to keep her that long. Saturdays included, now that she was between male companions. As young as she was, fifty-to-sixty-hour weeks was a punishing schedule and potentially damaging to her health as well as her social life. I’d tried to convince her to ease off a little, to no avail. She was stubborn and ambitious and genuinely passionate about her job. Hell, I knew all about that kind of attitude. I’d been a workaholic myself back in the day.

“How’d it go down in rich folks’ country?” she asked when I walked into her office. “Peter Erskine’s problem something for us?”

“Not really, but I’m going to look into it anyway. Against my better judgment.”

“Yeah? How come?”

“The problem, Erskine’s and his wife’s, is more than just strange. It’s plain crazy weird.”

“Crazy weird how?”

“You’re going to have as much trouble believing this as I did,” I said, and went on to give her a capsule rundown of the two interviews. Right: she had trouble believing it.

“Oh, man! Devil worship? Some freakin’ zombie looking to steal somebody’s soul?”

“Not a zombie, a so-called revenant. Evil spirit in human form.”

“Whatever. Can’t tell me you bought any of that supernatural stuff.”

“No, but whatever’s going on has got both of them spooked — no pun intended. Erskine’s the one being stalked, but she’s taking it the hardest.”

“You think whoever’s pretending to be this Vok character is connected to the devil cult?”

“That would seem to be the most logical explanation. If there is a devil cult.”

“So why wait a year to carry out the deathbed vow? And why not just off him and get it over with, instead of skulking around at night pointing fingers and smelling like he just crawled out of a cemetery?”

“Good questions. Mrs. Erskine thinks the delay has something to do with the anniversary of Vok’s death. Maybe. The skulking and the holding off... scare tactics, to let Erskine know he’s a marked man. Again, maybe.”

“You really want to go ahead with an investigation, huh?”

I laid Erskine’s retainer check on her desk. “Here’s one reason.”

“But not the only one. You taught me never take on a case just for money unless there’s a financial need, and we’re so far in the black right now we’re heading into another tax bracket.”

“Chalk it up to curiosity.”

“Yeah, the morbid kind.”

“And to the reason why we’re in business — helping people in trouble.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a fourth reason that I’d admitted to myself on the drive back to the city, but that I would not tell Tamara, or Kerry when I got home, or anybody else. Boredom, plain and simple. Nearly all of my investigative work these days was done on the phone — insurance fraud claims, skip-traces, deadbeat dad jobs, employee background checks, arrangements for process serving. Routine, for the most part. And on the four or five days a week when I wasn’t in the office, I spent more time rattling around looking for things to occupy my time than I did enjoying myself; you can only do so much reading, and my collection of pulp magazines was about as complete as it was likely to get given what 1920s and 1930s issues of Black Mask and other rare titles were going for these days. Mostly I was okay with the semiretired lifestyle, but now and then it grew a little stale, made me feel out of touch and unneeded. This was one of those times.