Madisonville Murder, Part 7
Fire in the Mind
Need an earlier part?
“We may have to accept that fact that we can’t help Cynthia,” said Alma. Her voice was firm, but she was unable to meet my eyes.
“I don’t…I don’t know how to accept that,” I replied. My voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. I hadn’t felt this defeated since I failed to rip Amanda out of Satan’s claws.
Somehow, I’d thought that helping others might strengthen me in some way, make me able to achieve what I had failed to do before. But that hadn’t yet worked. And now, here I was, facing yet another defeat.
The smell of the burned book lingered in the air. It reminded me of the smell of Marlowe’s burned flesh. I knew that hadn’t really been Marlowe, and I hadn’t really been in Hell. But the memories were so fresh, so vivid.
I heard a distant sob.
“Is that Mrs. Jenkins?” I asked, already knowing the answer. I managed to sit up on the living room couch to which they had brought me while I was unconscious.
“She can’t quite bring herself to be here,” said Gavin quietly. “She knows she can’t ask you to keep risking yourself like this, but she’s afraid she won’t be able to stop herself if she’s in the same room with you.”
Needless to say, that didn’t make me feel any better. But wallowing in sorrow wasn’t going to accomplish anything.
“There’s one other thing we haven’t tried,” I said. “We haven’t asked ourselves why Satan is so determined to interfere with my efforts to contact Cynthia if there’s nothing I can really do for her.”
“Maybe the point is messing with you and has nothing to do with Cynthia,” said Gavin.
“Maybe,” I said, nodding slightly. “Or maybe there’s something he doesn’t want me to find out.”
“Like what?” asked Alma. She sounded hesitant to raise the question—but she also sounded a bit intrigued.
“We’ve met a couple of mentally unstable victims of Satan, but people can appear much more stable and still be in Satan’s grip. What if the Devil is protecting the identity of one of his agents?”
“She was seeing a therapist,” said Mrs. Jenkins, standing in the doorway. She couldn’t stay away after all. “But he seemed like a nice man. I can’t imagine…” She trailed off, unable to finish what she was saying. She disappeared from the doorway as fast as she had appeared there, moving as quietly as a ghost back to wherever she had isolated herself. It was almost as if she was haunting her own house. I wanted to go after her, to reassure her that I would help her daughter, whatever the cost. But that might must cause her more pain. It was almost certain to provoke another argument—assuming that Gavin didn’t cut me off before I could even get the words out. For that matter, he might very well restrain me physically. His threat to tie me up and throw me in his trunk was still fresh in my mind.
“Maybe we could visit the therapist,” I suggested.
“And do what?” asked Gavin. “Even after death, HIPAA regulations prohibit disclosure of most of a patient’s medical information for fifty years.”
Gavin was pre-med and evidently off to a good start.
“Even were that not so, what excuse would we have to be asking about Cynthia?” asked Alma. “None of us are related to her. From what you’ve told me, none of us even knew her. We can’t very well march into a psychiatrist’s office and explain that we’re investigating the doctor for his possible ties to Satan.”
“As I think about it, Mrs. Jenkins could authorize release of the records,” said Gavin slowly. “But if Cynthia consented to the treatment herself, that could complicate the situation.”
“I don’t think we can prod the poor woman for any more information right now,” said Alma. “But even if we could get Cynthia’s psychiatric evaluation released, surely the therapist won’t have written down anything about Satan or demons.”
“I was thinking more in terms of notes about or recordings of sessions,” I said.
“You watch too much TV,” said Gavin. “Yeah, some psychiatrists have that kind of material, but I’m not sure they can be forced to disclose it, particularly in a case like this. Anyway, if there were anything weird about it, I’d guess the psychiatrist would have destroyed it after Cynthia’s death.”
“Besides, we don’t know for sure that Satan’s motive is to protect someone, or, if that is his motive, that the psychiatrist is the one,” said Alma.
“We have to start somewhere,” I said, feeling the need to take action like an itch spreading across every inch of my skin. “If Mrs. Jenkins is willing, maybe we can take Cynthia’s laptop and phone to see if we can find anything on either.”
“Passwords—” began Gavin.
“Can be cracked,” I said. “Come on, I bet you know at least one person at college who could get around a teenager’s security precautions.”
Gavin sighed. “I suppose if we have Mrs. Jenkins’ permission, there’s no harm in trying. At least Satan probably can’t drag you to Hell through a cellphone.”
I nodded, though given the fact that I’d accidentally sold my soul online, I wasn’t sure what Satan could do with a cellphone. But the last thing I wanted to do was give Gavin or Alma more reasons to try to deter me.
We talked for a few more minutes, with me pulling one way while Gavin and Alma pushing back, though somewhat more subtly than before. In the end, they both grudgingly gave in.
Alma had no difficulty getting Mrs. Jenkins’ permission to borrow Cynthia’s cellphone and laptop. But Cynthia’s mother didn’t venture out to say goodbye to me. Instead, she hid as far from me as she could get without leaving the house.
For the next two days, the minutes seemed to crawl by, making me more and more tense as they did so. What if Gavin couldn’t find someone who could break the password? What if he didn’t even try?
I attempted to bury myself in preparation to attend UC Merced in the fall. The school encouraged students to find a housing option that fit their lifestyle. Strangely, it didn’t offer any suggestions for demon hunters. But I figured roommates might be put off by my wearing a rowan bark-dill seed mixture around my neck, sprinkling various other herbs and essential oils around, and keeping very odd hours. Nor would they be enchanted by the appearance of psychotics trying to hurt me or kidnap me in the name of Satan.
Nope, if I didn’t want to keep living at home, I’d have to find a cheap apartment—and quickly. Not that my parents wouldn’t be more than happy to let me live at home a while longer and save money. So far, they hadn’t noticed my herbal interests—or at least, they hadn’t commented on them. But I was beginning to realize that my living with them could be placing them in danger.
This was the first time that Satan had actually sent thugs after me. But I couldn’t guarantee that it would be the last.
Just when I felt my nerves would snap like ropes bearing too much weight, Gavin called me to set up a meeting. Within an hour, we were in a booth at the Main Street Diner. Really, it could have just been called The Diner, as Madisonville had only one. But at least it was a good one, and Gavin and I each had one of the diner’s signature burgers as we talked and checked Cynthia’s devices. Gavin searched the laptop as I investigated the phone.
“Cynthia would make a good object lesson in the importance of wiping one’s search history,” said Gavin. “There’s a lot here about pacts with the Devil, Satanism, that sort of thing. But so far, I don’t see anything that points to a specific person.”
“Her texts don’t tell us much, either,” I said. “The only thing that strikes me is that she texted with friends a lot less toward the end. But if she realized what a mess she was in, it’s understandable that she’d want to keep her friends out of it.”
“Oh, here’s something,” said Gavin, staring at the laptop. “She looked up the website for her therapist, Dr. Curtis, lots of times. Once I could understand. She wanted to get to know the person she was going to be working with. But several times a week? That seems excessive.
“Let me take a look,” I said. Gavin slid the laptop across the table to me.
Dr. Curtis looked like someone’s grandfather. In the picture he had chosen from the website, he was gray haired, and his face was lined with age, though his piercing blue eyes could have belonged to a much younger man. He was conservatively dressed in an old-fashioned, dark brown suit like I’d seen my own grandfather wear, and he was posed in front of a book case, presumably to emphasize his knowledge.
But what struck me most was his smile—warm and reassuring. It made me want to trust him. And it might explain why Mrs. Jenkins was so quick to jump to his defense even as she was bringing him up as a possible agent of Satan.
Otherwise, the page seemed unremarkable, though there was a video running in the upper right-hand corner that caught my eye. The audio was muted, but it seemed to be an ad for some kind of medical insurance. I thought it made the page look less professional, but Dr. Curtis was hardly the only one selling advertising. A lot of companies did it.
But as I focused more attention on the ad, I began to feel uneasy. I couldn’t tell why, though. It was just some talking head peddling insurance. The video looked a little jumpy, but it wasn’t uncommon for video to have some display issues if there wasn’t enough server power behind it or if it was incorrectly converted.
However, there was another possibility.
“Gavin, might your friend who cracked the passwords be able to analyze a video frame by frame?’
“Maybe,” said Gavin. “But why do we need that?”
“Because I think there’s an ad on this website that is using subliminal messaging. It might be worth checking it out.”
I glanced out the window of the diner and jumped. Instead of seeing the parking lot, I saw fire everywhere, as if I were looking at some kind of hellscape.
Oblivious, Gavin asked why.
“It’s making me hallucinate,” I said, my eyes on the flames as they seemed to be coming closer to the window.
At least, I hoped I was hallucinating. The flames shaped themselves into an image of Satan, who was glaring at me just on the other side of the glass. I began to smell burning flesh again.
Madisonville Murder is related to the Soul Salvager trilogy. (The action falls between the prologue and chapter one of the first book.)
Everywhere and Nowhere: Explore Fantastic Worlds is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
(Subscribers receive a certain number of free ebooks, depending on which tier they select. See https://billhiatt.substack.com/about for details.)