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  Speaking Evil

  Cycle of Evil™: Book 3

  Red Adept Publishing, LLC

  104 Bugenfield Court

  Garner, NC 27529

  https://RedAdeptPublishing.com/

  Copyright © 2021 by Jason Parent. All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Streetlight Graphics

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  The Red Adept Publishing App

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  EPILOGUE

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  PROLOGUE

  Seventeen years ago.

  The acrid air stung Jocelyn’s lungs as she walked into her two-story home just outside the city. Smoke grated at her eyes. The fire alarm in the kitchen blared.

  She coughed and waved away the haze in front of her face. “Honey? Something’s burning!” Her husband was not the best cook, but lord, how she loved him for trying. And with her often-late hours, she could stomach a casserole filled with undrained tuna or a hockey puck burger in exchange for all his miraculous help around the house. She snickered. Looks like it’s burger night tonight.

  Her humor tempered when she noticed the unnatural quality to the smell—a chemical odor of something burning that had no business being over a flame at all, like plastic or rubber, noxious and overwhelming. She pulled her shirt over her nose.

  A tingling came to her arms, a tightness to her chest. Sweat slickened the hair above her ears. “Honey?” Maybe he can’t hear me over the alarm.

  Jocelyn dropped her bag on the sofa and hurried into the kitchen. Thick fumes rose from the stovetop, where a pot had been left unattended. A flash of anger quickly transformed into worry as she rushed to turn off the burner. Sliding the pan over, Jocelyn cried out as her palm sizzled against the steel handle. She dashed to the sink and ran cold water over her fresh burn. A line of blisters and smooth pink tissue formed over her lifeline, erasing it from existence. Her eyes already watered from the smoke, but she bit back her pain and kept her tears from falling. Where are you, Peter?

  Her palm felt as if it would tear open if she stretched out her fingers, but slowly, the pain dwindled with the smoke. After she wrenched the smoke alarm off the wall and removed its battery, the house went quiet. She returned to the mess on the stove, her short, quick breaths the only sound. The eerie stillness offered her a moment to catch them.

  Jocelyn examined the saucepan. Its bottom still glowed hot red, but the billows of bright orange and black clouds had shrunk to asthmatic puffs of charcoal gray. Keeping her nose covered and blinking away the sting in her eyes, she peered at the charred remains in the pan. A plastic bottle and rubber nipple clung like melted cheese to the pan’s sides and bubbled like swamp gases at its bottom.

  Adrian’s bottle? But it’s after five. Peter, her husband, was like clockwork. He always gave their six-month-old his bottle at four o’clock sharp. All the water had long since evaporated out of the saucepan.

  Did he fall asleep? Jocelyn shook her head and fidgeted. Not with that alarm blaring. Fighting back her worry, she grabbed a dishrag and used it to lift the pan and douse it in the sink. When she turned the water off, she again paused to listen. The house was eerily silent. No SportsCenter. No shower running or toilet flushing. No giggles from the baby to light up the house or cries to draw their family together. No life, no Peter, no Adrian.

  “Peter?” The alarm would have sent Adrian into a fit, at least when it first started to blare, but she heard no bellowing and wondered if he was all cried out. She hurried back to the living room and rummaged through her purse for her phone, then plodded back to the kitchen while dialing her husband. “Come on. Pick up!”

  Maybe he doesn’t have it with him. But Jocelyn didn’t need to be a detective—five years on the job, and several more as an officer preceding—to know she was fooling herself. Peter was safe and sturdy, perfectly solid when it came to their child, her calm through every storm. He didn’t forget things like bottles on stovetops, he didn’t miss Adrian’s dinner time, and he didn’t misplace his phone. But he does leave it on vibrate so as not to wake up a sleeping baby. The thought offered a smidgeon of comfort.

  She studied her kitchen. Chairs were pushed in tightly against their small, circular table. The mail sat in a stack upon its surface. Adrian’s high chair shined as if spit-polished, and it had been moved back into the corner. Dishes dried on the dish rack. The floor shined as if it had been waxed, not a Cheerio or macaroni noodle in sight. Other than the ruined saucepan, the kitchen looked clean and orderly and utterly norm—

  Jocelyn gasped. She pressed a trembling hand hard against her mouth to hold back a scream. When she removed it, her shirt fell away from her face. “No... no, no, no, no.” She paced the length of her floor, her thoughts a jumbled mess as she squeezed her temples with her thumb and forefinger.

  A bloody handprint smeared the wall near the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Heart racing and mind screaming with terror, she struggled not to let her emotions conquer her. Jocelyn battled back images of worst-case scenarios not yet supported by hard facts, knowing too damn well that she would be no good to her family if she lost her mind. She took long, deep breaths to steady her nerves then drew her gun.

  “Peter?” She crept toward the hall. Her pistol out in front of her, she peeked down the hallway before entering. Seeing no one, she edged forward. Her chin quivered as her foot landed with a squish. Blood? Her heart told her so even before she looked down. A tear fell down her cheek. More battered at her dams as her emotions threatened to unravel her. All her worst fears, spawned from a career of making enemies, had come to fruition. A piercing blizzard racked her insides, and she shuddered violently as if the icy blea
kness of space had filled the hollowness inside her.

  She swallowed hard, trying to choke down her rising despair. Redialing Peter, she slipped her phone into her pocket and listened for a buzz.

  An electronic vibration came from her bedroom. Following the sound, she found a bloody streak as smooth and even as if it had been left by a paint roller over the hardwood floor. She turned the corner into the room. Blue-suede shoes—the pair she had given Peter last Christmas—peeked out from the end of their bed. His legs lay motionless, the rest of his body hidden behind the bed. The tone coming from his direction died.

  Grief flooded her, carrying with it waves of guilt. It convinced her that her career choice had led her family to that day, that moment—their undoing. Biting her knuckle, her body jerking as if she had the hiccups, she let out a low moan. Her knees buckled, and she would have fallen had her shoulder not caught the doorframe and posted her upright. She raised a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob. Tears poured freely, obscuring her vision.

  Across the hall, a giggle came from the darkened nursery, where the shades were drawn for naptime. Adrian! She snapped up, a renewed vigor pulsing through her, wild and enigmatic. All her fear and hopelessness succumbed to a mother’s intrinsic need to protect her child. The jerky-hiccupy sensation—the sobs and moans and tears—was gone. She held her breath, tightened her grip on her weapon, and forced her disassembled mind back together through sheer will and the desire to annihilate whoever threatened her boy.

  Still, her training kept her cautious where others’ resolve might have broken. After peeking around the doorframe, she swept the hall then proceeded toward Adrian’s room.

  It’s him. Jocelyn’s lips curled into a snarl. Somehow, she kept silent when all she wanted was to scream. She’d faced off against a hundred or so of the worst felons New England had ever known, but it was the one who got away who terrified her far more. Even after four years and half a dozen sightings many, many miles away, she knew it was him. It wasn’t due to anything rational but instinctive—a hunch, an inner voice, a mother’s intuition, she didn’t know—something that had always served her well as an investigator. And if this is him...

  Her service pistol clacked as it rattled in her hand. Facing that monster alone was the stuff of nightmares. She needed her partner, Bruce.

  She rounded the corner. A man dressed in black stood with Adrian cradled in the crook of his arm. In his other hand, he held a large steak knife, twirling its point under her son’s chin. Adrian giggled and drooled, grasping at the spinning object just out of reach. The man’s face, shrouded by a hood, was familiar but different—older, altered. But his eyes, those were the same: glossy black but with something behind them shining like a sharpened spear point. Those eyes could belong to no one but him.

  He smiled, the dull light from the hall glinting off large canines, the teeth of an apex predator. “Hello, Detective. So nice to see you again.”

  CHAPTER 1

  Present day.

  Screaming again.

  Tessa sprang upright in her bed, tucking her knees against her chest and clamping her hands over her ears. But she couldn’t block out the sound or shut off her mind. Whose room is it coming from this time? It sounded like a boy, a young one, maybe Mitchell or Grady. What do they want with him?

  Perhaps if she knew who they were, maybe then she could begin to answer her thousands of other questions. They were the monsters that scooped children out of their beds at night and the boogeymen who haunted her dreams. And beyond any doubt, one night, they would come for her.

  Tugging at her hair, her lips trembling, she realized she’d been a fool to think herself safe, even after killing that horrible man, her stepfather. All the years of abuse, of being constantly afraid, over with the stroke of a knife, or rather, many strokes. She didn’t resist her freedom being taken from her, had done all the doctors had asked of her. But in a place where she was supposed to be healing and kept safe, she was always afraid.

  She rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen up the tall, slender yet curvier frame she’d only recently become comfortable in despite having stopped growing at least a year ago. She wished the self-confidence and self-awareness exhibited by some of her teachers or all those doctor-and-lawyer-types on TV had flowered in her with acne’s decline and increasing cup sizes, but she had yet to learn the art of being a woman, if there was such a thing.

  Her teeth gnawed and tugged at a hangnail. Maybe she was overreacting. Patients screaming was a fairly regular occurrence at Brentworth Hospital’s psych ward, something to be expected, not feared. And sometimes, those taken away would come back, acting as if nothing had ever happened. Other times, they didn’t come back at all. Tessa wasn’t sure which was worse.

  A thump came from down the hall, and the screaming stopped. Heavy footsteps clomped then dragged down the threadbare carpet outside like a dull, dry razor blade sliding against the grain.

  She slipped one leg off the bed then thought better of it. The sounds grew nearer, louder. She held her breath as a shadow blotted out the light under her door.

  Without thinking, she dropped onto her feet, but fear kept her soles glued to the hardwood. Whatever had driven her out of bed in the first place had been forgotten. She couldn’t possibly want to see what was happening outside her room in those dimly lit halls. She’d always been too scared to look before; it was so much easier to turn a deaf ear when they were taking someone else.

  Coward. So be it. She’d faced more than her fair share of adversity and had a lifetime’s worth of trauma packed into one decade with her abusive stepfather—her murderous, psychotic stepfather. She was nobody’s sister or mother or caretaker. She wasn’t the police. Let the rest of the world fend for itself just like it had left her to do.

  And yet, Tessa took a step toward the door.

  The sounds were fainter then, moving farther down the hall. Soon, they would be out of earshot. One step, then another. Closer and closer she crept, all the while telling herself she shouldn’t be doing it. Stay out of it. It’s not your concern. Her body paid no heed to her mind’s pleas. She pressed on, remembering the line from an old poem. Until they come for you.

  She had to know who they were, so she could know who not to turn her back on. The doorknob twisted in her hand. It clicked as the catch retracted. The floor creaked beneath her weight as she leaned against the doorframe.

  The hall fell silent.

  After a few seconds, which Tessa spent like a fossil in amber, the stomp stomp rustle continued. She pulled open the door a sliver, just enough for one eye to peek out. Gasping, she stumbled backward then fell onto her butt. Another’s eye had been peering back.

  She scrambled away, heels catching in her worn pajamas until she’d placed several feet between herself and the door. It swung open.

  A curvy woman in her mid-to-late twenties with heavy eye shadow entered. The thick black bob hairstyle and white hat pinned to her head were reminiscent of days well before Tessa had been born. The hat matched her all-white lab coat and white slacks. Francine, if Tessa remembered correctly. One of the nice ones. But at that moment, Francine had a vacant look in her wide-open eyes. They locked onto Tessa’s.

  “What are you doing up, dear?” The nurse’s smile went no farther than her lips. Her black lipstick stained her teeth. She walked the few steps over to Tessa, crouched, then threw an arm around her shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get you back in bed.”

  Tessa shrank from the contact and resisted being pulled to her feet. “What’s going on? Where are they taking him?”

  “Who, dear?” Francine’s smile was unwavering, her eyes unblinking.

  “The boy—” Tessa pointed at the door. “The boy I heard screaming.”

  “Screaming?” Francine cocked her head as if she were a dog hearing a far-off whistle. But the hallway had gone silent. “I don’t hear any screaming. Perhaps you were having a nightmare.” She again tried to pull Tessa to her feet.

  “It wasn’t a ni
ghtmare. Mitchell or-or-or maybe Grady... he was screaming, and then he just stopped. Like he was suddenly cut off.”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the nurse said, standing up straight. “Mitchell suffers from night terrors. That’s probably what you heard, dear. The poor child.” She chuckled. “Anyway, don’t you worry a smidge. They’ve given him a sedative. We won’t be hearing a peep out of him for the rest of the night.”

  Tessa flinched. “And Laura from last week? What happened to her?”

  Francine put her hands on her hips. “Well, you are an observant child, aren’t you?”

  Tessa huffed. “I’m not a child.”

  “Laura was discharged last week. All healed and happily back with her family.” Francine cast her a sidelong glance. “Your turn will come. You’ll be out soon enough.” She extended her hand. “Now, come. Let’s get you back in bed.”

  Hesitantly, Tessa took the offered assistance. The nurse pulled her to her feet and ushered her back to her bed. Tessa climbed in and allowed Francine to tuck her in as if she were seven, not seventeen.

  She lay back, the knots in her muscles slow to unwind. The nurse’s explanation made sense. A poor child screaming from night terrors—any screaming, really—yes, that was all normal.

  Francine tugged on the comforter and ironed out its wrinkles with her hands. The wrinkles in Tessa’s forehead, though fewer, persisted. She couldn’t shake the hollow pang in her stomach and the nagging at the back of her mind. Something weird was going on.

  Laura had been a cutter who couldn’t be next to anything sharp. She was way more screwed up than Tessa. She stared blankly at her comforter. No way they let her out already. She squinted at Francine, trying to parse the truth from lies in her face. Her eyes fell on the necklace dangling from the nurse’s neck—a shimmering sun pendant, appearing sometimes gold, sometimes silver, depending on the angle of the light.

  The nurse smiled her plastic, manufactured grin. “That’s it, child. Close your eyes.”

  “I’m not a—” Tessa yawned, stretching her arms over her pillow where they pressed against the headboard. As if under a spell, her mind began to cloud with fatigue. Her body sank into her mattress, her head into her pillow. Her eyes closed then opened again. Francine stood over her, grinning, the medallion at the end of her necklace still swinging slowly. It twisted in half turns, clockwise then counterclockwise, bouncing soft light into Tessa’s eyes at the midpoint of each rotation.