The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare Read online

  The priest always opened the doors to the church at the same time. Monday through Sunday, he made sure the doors were open to the public just as the sun peeked its head over the building across the street from the cathedral. He had done it for the past ten years and he had no plans to quit. He enjoyed opening the doors because it gave him solitude with the image of Christ for a few moments before others began their daily pilgrimage to give thanks and ask forgiveness.

  The priest stepped from his car, which he parallel parked every day, unless someone stole his spot—which happened more than he would prefer. He looked down at his shoes, hoping he hadn’t scuffed them on his drive in. It wasn’t so much vanity, but that he didn’t want to bring anything but his best before the Lord each day he served. They looked good, though, so he reached back into the car and grabbed his messenger bag.

  He closed the door and walked ten feet before stopping.

  It was the first time in ten years he had ever stopped on his way to opening the doors.

  “Oh, dear God,” he whispered.

  A naked woman was plastered on the doors before him. She hung—literally hung as her body sagged down and her arms stretched upwards—on two pieces of wood. A cross, which leaned up against the doors the priest had arrived to unlock. Nails or something like them were shoved through both of her hands; her feet were crossed and a large stake had been driven through them. Blood pooled beneath her body, drying slowly. The blood appeared to have stopped dripping, although her hands and feet were smeared with it. Her head hung limply on her chest, her breasts lying lifelessly without any outward movement of breath from her lungs.

  The priest crossed himself.

  Then he collapsed and vomited on the sidewalk. It took another thirty minutes before someone walked by and saw both bodies.

  The cops were finally called.

  Art stared over his desk at Jake.

  The kid was typing away at the computer; his fingers moving like the keys were merely an extension of his body rather than separate entities.

  It was time to go home, or rather, to Art’s office. Home was a long way off, probably. A lot more nights were going to be spent away from home over the next few months.

  Brand. Art now thought the man who had called him could only be Matthew Brand. He wasn’t thinking about him as a copycat. He wasn’t thinking about him as Arthur Morgant, the rapist. Art finally believed that the man on the other side of the phone yesterday had been Matthew Brand. The street camera which recorded the drop off of the crucifix at the Catholic church (and what a nice choice of venue, Matthew) showed a black man, tall and strong, pulling the cross (with the woman already attached) out of the van and then dragging it to the building. The guys in DC examined the video every which way, and they were ninety percent positive Arthur Morgant was the person in the video. And that meant, according to that scientist all those years ago, Brand was controlling Morgant’s body.

  And here was this kid, Jake—he knew that Brand put the body at that Catholic church in Boston, knew that the FBI was already moving in on his turf quite quickly, and yet here he was at the office, looking at photos and calling neighbors. Here he was, still working. Art had watched him over the past few days with a curiosity he didn’t normally have for people. The kid was smart, flat out. The way he handled the call yesterday, when Art was almost shitting his pants, showed he had some leadership capabilities too. He seemed to understand the case as well, although Art hadn’t asked him how. He could have read the books, but it was more than that. The books centered on Brand, and this kid knew about Allison. He knew about Allison’s husband.

  He even knew a relatively good bit about the science that allowed Brand to force himself into Morgant. Relatively being compared with Art’s complete lack of knowledge.

  “How do you know all that shit?” Art had asked.

  “They wrote tons of articles about it when it first happened, even in Popular Science.”

  “Say it again, and dumb it down some.”

  Jake had smiled, making him look even younger than twenty-eight. “The Wall, it was like, the smartest computer ever built. You remember that computer which beat all the world championship chess players? Think like that, but on steroids. You can program a computer with almost anything you want. Brand was in there so long, he simply programmed a piece of The Wall to be as near a replica of himself as he could create. It’s not Brand in the sense that Brand was alive in there, it’s Brand in that all his knowledge, his preferences, his history was uploaded into a single file. They have a few theories of how he got out of there, but the most likely thing is, he gave it a timed activation. It didn’t matter if you guys killed him or not, Morgant was going to be filled with that file sooner or later, and Brand did that as a fail-safe, I imagine. If you guys killed him, which was a good possibility, he wouldn’t be gone. If you didn’t kill him, well, he could deal with Morgant when that time came.”

  “But how did he just take over Morgant?”

  Jake nodded, looking away, gathering his thoughts. “The brain is nothing like a computer, so no one is really sure exactly how he made it happen. He might not even have known if it would work, might have only suspected or did it out of some kind of desperation. They think though, the brain took to it like it does with any new information it's fed—it tried to absorb it, and at some point, the data that made up Brand took over.”

  Art still didn’t really understand it, but the kid did.

  What are you trying to get at here? Art asked himself.

  He wanted to know whether he was going back to DC alone, or whether Jake Deschaine should come with him. The detective was smart, capable, knowledgeable about the case, and the motherfucker worked. What did Art have now? Directives from his boss, and that was about it, so bringing in someone wouldn’t hurt. They would need anyone that could contribute, and this guy could.

  “Why not?” Art asked himself. “If he says no, so what.”

  Art stood from his desk and walked to Jake’s cubicle.

  “What’s up?” Jake said, a phone in between his ear and his shoulder.

  “You got a second?” Art asked.

  Jake frowned a bit, but nodded, hanging up the phone. “What can I help you with?”

  “Heard back from my boss today. We talked about Boston. I imagine you’ve figured it out, but you’re done here. This whole office is off the case and you guys are going to go back to whatever the most pressing thing is for Katy, Texas police officers and detectives. I don’t say that to be insulting, I just want you to know what your boss is going to be telling you in the next hour.”

  Jake nodded. “Yeah, most likely.”

  “So, I’m heading back to D.C. in a few hours. I’m about to go to my hotel, put my shit in my bag, and get to the airport. Do you want to come with me?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair. “With you? To DC?”

  “Yeah. To DC. The President is meeting with all the directors of every law enforcement agency in the country today. He’s called scientists too. They’re trying to see if what Brand told us yesterday is even remotely possible. If it isn’t, then we’re going to deal with this the same way we would any other crime. If it is, then we’re going to have to figure out another plan. I’d like you on my team either way. You think you’d want to go?”

  Jake leaned back in his chair and said, “Yeah, man. I’ll go. What time is the flight?”

  Jake folded a shirt and tossed it into the open suitcase sitting on his bed. He was almost packed and the cab would be here in thirty minutes to take him to the airport—and then what? Then he would get on a plane with the Director of Operations for the FBI and…become an FBI agent? Stay a detective for Katy, Texas? He didn’t know but you didn’t ask questions like that when the Director of Operations said he wanted you to come along. When that happened, one simply went along.

  How long had he been complaining about his current boss to his father? A year? His newest promotion had put him under the prick—Bradley Vestor, and while he
wouldn’t have turned down the promotion if he knew what it meant, he still didn’t like the person he worked under. In fact, he might venture far enough to say that he hated the man, Vestor. Brad. Even now, packing to head to Washington D.C. with Art Brayden, Jake couldn’t stop thinking about how bad he wanted to get away from the Vestor. So whether or not he knew exactly what his position was going to be when he got to DC, at least he wouldn’t be listening to the incompetence of Vestor on a weekly basis. Even this case, up until the call from Brand, Vestor said that it wasn’t him. That it couldn’t be him. That it was a copycat, and the leads Jake followed were dead-ends and he should stop them immediately. Jake didn’t listen because Vestor was a coward more than anything. He’d bitch and complain, but he wouldn’t do anything to stop Jake from following the case as he saw fit. The truth was, Vestor didn’t want it to be Brand. He didn’t even want to consider the possibility that such a responsibility might be thrown on him. Vestor coasted and that was something else Jake hated. Jake hadn’t coasted to this high of a position in six years on the police force, he’d busted ass, but now he was under a man who thought the road to heaven was probably still being paved because working slow was almost akin to righteousness.

  So there was that; he’d be able to call and tell his father that he wasn’t working for Vestor anymore. He thought Brayden was sharp too; he’d watched him over the past few days, watched how he worked, what he did, what he said. He saw the man slip briefly when Brand first called, but would Jake have behaved any differently? Would anyone, if someone claiming to be Matthew Brand called their phone without any notice? He didn’t think so, and even if Brayden slipped there for a second, the man hadn’t slipped anywhere else. So yeah, Jake didn’t know exactly what was going to happen when he got out to DC, but it had to be better than sitting here under Vestor and working on the next 7-11 robbery. Which was coming. You could bet on that in Katy.

  Jake tossed a pair of khakis into the suitcase and walked to his closet to grab his suits. Did they wear suits in the FBI? He had to imagine they weren’t walking around in khaki pants all day. Either way, it didn’t matter—they had a Brooks Brothers in DC if his suits weren’t up to snuff.

  Matthew Brand. That’s who they were going after. That’s who he was going after. What had his plans been before this? To continue working his way up and maybe, if he had a lot of luck, reach Chief one day? Maybe to apply for the FBI down the road and see where that took him? In a single week he’d been recruited by a man who was two steps away from the President though. What had Moore thought when she got the first call about Brand? When she was told to suit up because she was about to chase the smartest man in the world? Jake was sitting here happy, mainly to be getting away from Vestor, but there were some nerves coming into play too. He wasn’t being recruited because he had a great jawline; they wanted him to produce. Maybe not to the level Moore had been at, but still, Brayden must have thought Jake would be able to bring something that others couldn’t. So that’s what he needed to do, to produce value. He’d done it before, not on this scale obviously, but he had put sixteen cases in the black over the past three years and that wasn’t anything to shy away from. Sixteen cases in three years tied for the county’s best, and he did it at twenty-eight years old. The other detective was forty-five.

  “Produce, produce, produce,” Jake said absently, picking up his shoes.

  This was, without a doubt, a great opportunity.

  6

  “That’s all you saw, Father?”

  “Son, I’ve told the police everything. I do not understand why you feel the need to question me again. Let the police do their job and you and I will do ours.”

  Joe looked at the old Mexican and said nothing for a few seconds. He knew he was lucky the priest hadn’t asked him to leave as soon as he started asking questions; he also knew that the priest could just as easily let the cops know a civilian was snooping around. Wondering things he had no business wondering.

  “Do you know who I am, Father?”

  “No.”

  “My name is Joseph Welch. Have you ever heard of me?”

  The priest looked down at his lap. Both men sat next to each other on benches in front of the stone engraved sculpture of Jesus hanging from the cross. Joe kept his eyes on the priest, not caring about any of the surroundings, not caring about the fact that he was in God’s house. He had come here because the priest had seen the crucifix. He would next go to the person who actually called and reported it to the police. Joe knew everything The Boston Herald had said about the dead woman, and now he wanted to know if the priest knew anything the paper didn’t.

  “I remember your name. I prayed for you years ago when you were in the newspaper. I prayed that you might find peace. Have you found it?”

  “No. There’s no peace left for me here.”

  “Have you searched for it?” The priest asked.

  “What do you think I’m doing now, Father?”

  “Whatever you’re doing, there is no peace at the end of it.” The priest looked back to his lap. “I saw nothing else but what the paper told you. I saw the woman hanging in mockery of our Lord, and then I collapsed. There was nothing else to see. There was nothing else I wanted to see.”

  Joe stood from the pew. “Thank you.”

  He left the priest sitting by himself as he walked from the cathedral.

  Joe had known it would start again. He knew it the moment the world said Brand escaped a second time. He knew it when Dillan disappeared and he knew it these past two years when no one else even thought about Matthew Brand. Joe knew Brand wasn’t done. Knew that he couldn’t be done and that he would return bringing all his havoc and hellfire with him. Joe kept tabs on everyone. Art Brayden. Allison Moore. The judge from Brand’s trial. He kept up to date with anyone that might be a target, because when Matthew Brand decided to come back, Joe Welch was determined to be ready.

  Matthew Brand had finally returned, although only a few people knew it. When Allison Moore disappeared a few days ago, an alert came through on Joe’s email because a few local news stories were printed in a small Texas town. Joe left his house that morning, caught a flight with only one bag packed, and went to Texas. He didn’t need to be there long. He used a rental car to drive by Moore’s house, or former house, and when he saw Art Brayden standing out on the driveway, Joe knew all he needed. Art Brayden wasn’t showing up to any missing person’s house unless something big was happening. That something had to be Matthew Brand. There wasn’t anyone else that would take Moore and her daughter.

  Joe would still be in Texas but for the crucifix in Boston.

  No one in media made the connection, but Joe didn’t need them to. Moore missing in Texas and two days later a dead woman nailed to a cross shows up in Boston. Brand had a thing for theatrics, and Joe felt—he didn’t have any real evidence—that what happened in Massachusetts had something to do with what happened in Texas.

  He glanced across the hotel bed to the small dinner plate sitting on the sheet. The stuff on it could be the reason he was making these connections; Joe wasn’t so far gone as to try and deny that. The white powder—

  The cocaine, Joe.

  —was cut up into three neat lines, ready for his nose whenever he decided to pull the plate over. Not yet. Soon, but not yet.

  No news stories connecting the events in Texas and Boston. The priest knew nothing else besides what he had told the cops. And yet, here Joe was in a three hundred dollar a night hotel room in downtown Boston, because coincidence wasn’t a viable option. Brand was back. Joe didn’t doubt that. Back from the dead and planning something, and then for a body to show up here, posed like Christ? No, Joe didn’t believe in coincidence.

  He picked up the plate and put his nose to the rolled up dollar bill he held in his hand. A quick, hard snort brought half of one line into his brain, and then he tilted his head back to make sure he got every last granule of the white dust.

  What Joe did believe in was justice, bu
t not any type that was to be levied out by the courts or even God. He believed in his own justice, and that’s why he was here. His wife deserved justice. His baby, his son, deserved justice. Maybe even his father, although that was on down the list. His wife deserved justice because she had her throat slit, in front of Joe no less, due to Brand’s cruelty. His son deserved justice because he’d been stolen from his crib for usage as a character in Brand’s horror novel, to resurrect some long dead son.

  Joe’s wife, Joe’s son. He was here asking questions of a priest because when he found Matthew Brand, he was going to kill him.

  7

  Jake took a seat in front of the desk—which looked like it didn’t really want to end but did only because physics said it had to. He wore a gray suit, his tie hanging down perfectly to his belt buckle, and even with every piece of his hair placed just where it should be, he knew he was hopelessly out of his depth.

  The Assistant Director of FBI Operations, Art Brayden, sat to Jake’s left, and the Director of the FBI, Gyle James, sat behind the desk.

  Jake was a detective for Katy, Texas—on leave now, unpaid, and there still hadn’t been any discussion about how he was supposed to eat, let alone pay bills.

  “How are you?” Gyle James asked, looking at Jake.

  “I’m well. Thank you for having me.”

  “Art seems to think you have some potential to help what’s happening here, so we’re glad to have you aboard. Just do your best to carry your own weight, as this has already reached a point of seriousness that I doubt Texas sees much.”

  Jake nodded and watched Gyle turn to Art.

  “We got out of the meeting with the President about an hour ago. It...well, things don’t look exactly rosy. You saw the body in Boston this morning, I suppose?”

  Art nodded. “In the back of the same church this time. Everything appears to be identical to the last body. The girl was murdered before she was nailed to the wood, and then taken to the cathedral. Thank God the same priest didn’t find it this time. A janitor cleaning up towards the middle of the day saw it when he took out the trash.”