Malevolent Read online

  David Risen

  Copyright Information :

  This body of prose is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons alive or dead is a coincidence and unintentional. All references to places and actual

  persons are used fictitiously by the author and are not intended to resemble actual events.

  Malevolent © 2017 by Matthew D. Cantrell. All rights are reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed, written consent of the author. For the purposes of inquiries, you may submit an electronic request by emailing [email protected].

  The cover art design was the original idea of the author, and completed by logofvr. The cover itself was designed by logofvr with input from the author.

  For Gage and Ryder.

  This is why.

  Contents:

  Title Page

  Copyright Information

  Dedication

  Contents

  As Rider’s Life Burns

  The Abysmal Patron

  Something Wicked

  City of Souls

  Fury

  What I made up and what I didn’t

  Also Available

  About the Author

  “Daddy, do you get scared sometimes?”

  Blake Rider adjusts the rearview mirror of his white Escalade and peeks back at the five-year-old girl sitting in her black booster seat that stands in stark contrast to the white, leather upholstery.

  This morning, her mother pulled her curly, blond hair up in a high ponytail and banded it with a hot pink scrunchie. The pillar of hair explodes from the top of her head like tickertape and confetti.

  But just now, she doesn’t look very festive.

  Little Alyssa’s wide, brown eyes and round face present a look of vulnerability.

  Rider gives his own reflection a concerned look. His short, sandy-brown is hair still perfectly plastered in place. The only evidence of the lateness of the day in his appearance is the five-o’clock shadow.

  He sighs. “Why?”

  “Mommy says that your job is to make sure everybody knows who the bad guys are, like a superhero.”

  Rider swells with pride.

  “Yeah, that’s me.” he said giving himself a smug look.

  “Don’t you ever get scared of the bad guys?”

  Rider furls his brow. He consults his reflection again and his lips curve in a knowing smile.

  Most of the white collar bad guys he writes his exposés on would cower like kicked dogs at the sight of the 6 foot 2 inch, ripped, former college linebacker he is with the deep, booming voice peppered with just a hint of Georgian Southern Drawl.

  “No, they don’t scare me,” he said dismissively.

  “But don’t bad guys have guns?” she presses.

  Rider smirks at the innocence of her reasoning. “Most of the real bad guys in the world are powerful men and women with important jobs. They like to hide behind their smart lawyers and a group of people who tell them how to look like good guys.”

  “But they do have guns, right?”

  Rider peers back out the windshield.

  Outside, a cloudless, blue sky glows overhead, and a canopy of fresh, emerald leaves hangs over the road. To his right three young women wearing sports bras, tank tops, and Umbro shorts jog single file down the sidewalk.

  “This is a Call,” by the Foo Fighters whispers through the premium speakers of the big SUV, and Rider finds himself regretting that he spent most of the day chained to a desk.

  “Daddy?”

  He snaps out of it and glances back. “I guess, but my guns are bigger.”

  “So you’re not gonna let them get me and Mommy?”

  Rider smiles thoughtfully. “They wouldn’t dare, and if they tried, I’d beat ‘em up. Grandma would put them in jail for the rest of their lives.”

  She seems to relax a little.

  Rider focuses on the road ahead of him.

  Rider hears a muffled pop under his hood as if something has broken. He frowns and eyes his instrument cluster.

  Nothing.

  His eyes find the road ahead of him.

  Two-hundred feet away and down a steep hill the traffic light at the intersection of I-85 and SR 47 glows red.

  He presses the brakes.

  No response.

  Rider gasps and stomps the pedal, but it sinks all the way to the floor.

  He frantically pumps the pedal.

  Nothing.

  He glances at the speedometer.

  Sixty-two and climbing.

  He presses the parking brake button to the lower right of the steering wheel.

  The light in the center of the button doesn’t come on.

  He looks up to find himself hurling helplessly toward I-85.

  He finds the traffic light.

  Bright red.

  Trees hug the road on either side.

  No escape.

  As he approaches the interstate, he looks out the driver’s side window to find a dark hulk only fifty feet away.

  Close enough to make out the word Freightliner on the chrome grille.

  “HANG ON, HONEY,” he roars.

  He floors the gas.

  The Cadillac engine roars.

  Alyssa shrieks.

  The driver of the Freightliner locks it down. His trailer swings around to the left sweeping a white Sonata off the road and onto the median. The back wheels of the trailer pound the passing lane of I-85 like a piston.

  Rider tenses for impact.

  The Freightliner slams into the side of his Escalade.

  The left side of Rider’s head smacks into the driver’s side window so hard and fast that he only feels the blow. The window explodes into a thousand pellets of glass.

  All the while, Foo Fighter’s “This is a Call,” still pours through the speakers.

  The awful sound of metal bending and ripping fills the cabin of the Escalade.

  Rider’s tires shriek as the big truck drags his SUV sideways down the interstate at sixty miles an hour, and then they explode.

  The acrid smell of smoke fills the car.

  And then, blackness.

  Part One:

  As Rider’s Life Burns

  Blake Rider reached down to pull the recline lever of his lay-z-boy, but before his hand touched the smooth, wooden surface, a light tap from the front door – like the sound of someone knocking with the tip of a car key – reported through the house.

  Rider’s head snapped up, and he peered through the darkness of his den toward the archway that led into the foyer.

  His breath steamed up from his mouth as he listened hard to the deafening silence that followed in the wake of the noise. The shadows drifted around him.

  After a few minutes, five more sharp taps at his front door clattered through the cold, dark house.

  Rider stood, unsteady on his feet. The dark shapes drifted around him. He still had a healthy buzz from his Xanax and Wild Turkey cocktail.

  He staggered through the blackness of the den, the darker blackness of the foyer, and opened the door.

  A jolt of panic surged in his chest.

  A tall, slender woman stood on his front porch. Her long and straight blond hair protruded from a white faux fur hat, and a black tweed trench coat wrapped around her body and fastened at the waist with a stitched-in belt that looked a bit like the kind of belt one might find on a housecoat. She wore square, black framed glasses with thick sides.

  She was famously attractive, and looked official.

  Community Police?

  His heart pounded so hard that he could hear the beat in his ears.

  Rider gave her a deer-in-the-headlights look.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Are you Blake Rider, the investiga
tive journalist?”

  Rider huffed. “Three years ago, maybe.”

  She flashed a look of concern.

  Rider frowned with frustration of having been disturbed and looked past her at the wind-forced slow. Most of the driveway was already covered. He could barely see the grown-up weeds in his front yard.

  “What time is it?” he said.

  She lifted a gloved hand, pulled back the sleeve of her coat, and consulted a gold-banded wristwatch.

  “It’s just after eleven.”

  Rider shook his head. “I was actually about to sleep.”

  She nodded. “Do you mind if I come in? It’s rather cold out here.”

  Rider shrugged and stepped back from the door. “Not much better in here.”

  Then he turned and made his way back through the darkness to his Lay-Z-Boy and sat.

  As he walked, he heard the front door shut and the sound of her hard-sole boots clack through the hardwood foyer and stop just inside the den.

  “Do you mind if I turn on the light?”

  Rider smirked. “Sure, as long as you don’t mind calling the power company and parting with five-hundred bucks.”

  “Mr. Rider....”

  “Just Rider.”

  “Very well, Rider, my name is Sister Ruth Hunter. I’m with St. Michael’s in Bridgeton?”

  Rider couldn’t believe his ears. His eyes found the pyramid of empty beer cans and trove of overturned empty whiskey bottles to the right of his chair.

  Simultaneously, another thought entered his mind – intervention. This wouldn’t be the first time that his mother sent henchmen from the church to throttle him into remission.

  “Well, I don’t share your religious convictions.”

  She took a step toward him. “I need your help.”

  Rider looked up to the dark ceiling and shook his head. “Lady, I can’t even help myself.”

  “Are you not Blake Rider, the award-winning investigative journalist?”

  He laughed humorlessly. “In a different time. Now I’m Blake Rider, the violent drunk on intense probation for DUI, disturbing the peace, and assault and battery. Only reason I’m not in jail is that my Mom is a Superior Court Judge.”

  “Haven’t you wondered where your wife is?”

  Rider’s eyes narrowed with sudden interest. He sank back in his leather Lay-Z-Boy.

  “Wherever she is, she’s better off. Being married to me, for her, is like an angel being conjoined with a devil.”

  “She’s in danger,” the woman said.

  Rider sat up. “What?”

  Sister Hunter dropped her head. “I approached her at her offices, and asked her for help. Three weeks ago, she disappeared.”

  “Help? What would a nun need with an Anthropology Professor?”

  “An investigation into a cult-like group of women within the church.”

  Rider sat back in his chair, and sighed.

  “Cliff notes, please.”

  Sister Hunter paced away from him. “Three weeks ago, she infiltrated their ranks. She called me and told me that she had evidence, but before she could meet me, she disappeared.”

  Rider shook his head. “And you don’t think she disappeared because she wanted to get rid of her degenerate husband?”

  Sister Hunter shook her head.

  “You understand that all of this seems a little paranoid and fantastic, right?”

  The last Xanax was kicking in. It wasn’t much, but mixed with the alcohol, he felt floaty. Despite the freezing cold, he would soon be asleep.

  She squared herself before him, propping her gloved hands on her hips.

  “A year ago, I had a friend....”

  Rider grinned dumbly. “How nice for you. Everyone should have a friend.”

  “Mr. Rider, I need your help. A friend of mine entangled herself with a group in the church called ‘The Sisters of Divinity,’ and she disappeared off the face of the earth. Her name was Sister Mary Teresa.”

  “So if you’re so sure, why not go to the Arch Diesis?”

  She stepped toward him. “These women are very powerful, and they have eyes everywhere. The only person who might have a chance of exposing them is one who has nothing to do with them.”

  Rider circled his hand through the air as if he were reeling an imaginary tape. “And what do you want me to do?”

  “Go to your wife’s office. See if you can figure out what happened to her, and look for anything else that may be useful.”

  “Been to her office already. Got kicked out by her SA.”

  Sister Hunter shook her head. “Go back. Don’t take no for an answer. You’re a journalist, right?”

  Rider smirked and leaned forward swaying a little in place. “So walk me through this one more time. You approached Lauren, a very cynical and conservative tenured professor, about looking into a group of women inside the church with this paranoid, fantastic story, and she accepted?”

  She sighed with frustration. “The Sisters of Divinity are not a church group. They’re a cross-denominational, Christian secret society for women like the Freemasons but much older. They were around before the church, and they’ll be around after.”

  Rider rolled his eyes. “Around here, they’re Catholic. From where I’m sittin they’re just a group of nuns who do charitable work. In fact, one of the conditions of my probation is that I have to attend NA and AA meetings run by them at the convent twice a week.”

  “They’re also Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, Pentecostal. And if you go to AA and NA meetings, why haven’t I seen you there?”

  Rider turns his palms up. “I don’t go. I just get someone to sign off on the paperwork.”

  She looked down at the mass of whiskey bottles, beer bottles, and beer cans.

  “From the look of things, you should probably attend.”

  Rider gave her an offended look which he instantly replaced with a grin. “Well, if your whole life is burning down, and you can’t do anything about it, might as well grab the marshmallows.”

  She shook it off. “Okay, let’s stick to what I know directly. Your wife infiltrated their ranks to find out more about them, and three weeks ago, she stopped calling. No one has heard from her since.”

  Rider turned his head away from her. Part of him wanted to buy into this freakish line of reasoning. “You really think they did something to Lauren?”

  She stepped close to him. “I know they did.”

  Rider considered it a moment longer, and then he shook his head and waved at her.

  “Great! Evil nuns abducted my wife. That’s a new one.”

  She sighed. “Just please consider it, and whatever you do, don’t go poking around St. Michael’s. I think Sister Teresa Joan also known as High Priestess Claire Jacobs of the Sisters of Divinity might be one of the most dangerous among their ranks, and she runs the convent.”

  Rider nodded dismissively. The world spun around him now. He felt himself drifting.

  “And when you find….”

  The E. Lancaster Social Sciences building on the campus of Bridgeton University stood coated in a foot of snow.

  The building was a stucco and glass three-story erected in the early nineties.

  Despite the canceling of classes due to inclement weather and the iciness of the parking lot, a few ice-covered cars still lingered.

  Rider braved the snow and stepped into the empty atrium through the glass double-doors.

  The cinderblock walls were painted slate gray with black marble tiles on the floor. It was supposed to look fancy, but to Rider, it looked like an overdressed high school.

  He passed through the atrium and climbed the cheesy grand staircase at the end to the second floor. He turned right at the stairs and found his way to a black plastic plate at the top of the door labeled 227.

  He peeked inside through the clear glass door.

  The antechamber of the office was immaculate with no signs of the university clearing it out for a new professor. But sitting at a desk
beside the door to Lauren’s office, Trish O’Dell clacked on the keys of her Dell keyboard.

  Trish was a short woman with ruddy hair cut short and parted on the left side like a man’s hair. She had the hard, no bullshit face of a woman who might frequent county lock-up.

  A bit of a sinking feeling in his gut.

  Rider was last here a week and a half before. When he arrived, he was high on a fistful of oxies and Rum. Trish called security who instructed him to leave and never return.

  He steeled himself with a deep breath, placed his hand on the horizontal chrome bar across the center of the door and pushed his way inside.

  As the door swung shut behind him, Trish looked up from her computer and her eyes bulged with fear.

  She snatched the black handset off her phone receiver and pressed one of the line buttons.

  Before she could dial the number for security, Rider stabbed the cradle with his middle finger – gesture intended.

  Trish shrank from him.

  “I’m not here to cause trouble,” he growled. “I just need some answers. I checked all of Lauren’s bank accounts, including the one she thinks I don’t know about, all her social media websites, and her cellphone. There’s been no activity in three weeks.”

  Trish gave him a sour look. “She was probably trying to get away from you.”

  Rider shook his head. “If that’s so, fine, but I need to know she’s okay. Cops aren’t doing anything, so it’s up to me.”

  She squirmed uncomfortably in her leather office chair.

  “Have you seen her?”

  Trish stared at him and said nothing. She looked shocked and afraid.

  “Damnit, I’m not playin!”

  She shook her head. “We don’t know anything. I’ve been covering for her, because I thought....”

  “I need to get in her office and look at her date book.”

  He snatched the receiver out of her hand, unplugged the handset cord from both sides, and replaced it on the cradle tucking the cord in the pocket of his black, leather coat, and then he passed her up and pushed his way into her office.

  Lauren was fastidious about the orderliness of her office.