The Sixth Wicked Child Read online

  The Sixth Wicked Child

  Published by:

  Hampton Creek Press

  P.O. Box 177

  New Castle, NH 03854

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental unless noted otherwise.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan Dylan Barker

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Hampton Creek Press is a registered Trademark of Hampton Creek Publishing, LLC

  Cover Design by Stuart Bache

  Book design and formatting by Maureen Cutajar, www.gopublished.com

  Author photograph by Bill Peterson of Peterson Gallery

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-9906949-7-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9906949-8-4

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-9906949-9-1

  For Truth

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Chapter 114

  Chapter 115

  Chapter 116

  Chapter 117

  Chapter 118

  Chapter 119

  Chapter 120

  Chapter 121

  Chapter 122

  Chapter 123

  Chapter 124

  Chapter 125

  Chapter 126

  Chapter 127

  Chapter 128

  Chapter 129

  Chapter 130

  Chapter 131

  Chapter 132

  Chapter 133

  Chapter 134

  Chapter 135

  Welcome to the final show.

  Hope you're wearing your best clothes.

  —Sign of the Times, Harry Styles

  Daddy what else did you leave for me?

  Daddy, what'd'ja leave behind for me?

  —Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd

  1

  Tray

  Day 5 • 5:19 AM

  “Hey, shithead, this look like a fucking bed-and-breakfast to you?”

  The voice was gruff, gravelly. At this hour, it had to be a cop, security guard, or maybe just an angry homeowner. Whoever it was, Tray Stouffer didn’t move within the folds of the musty quilt. Sometimes, when you’re still enough, they go away. Sometimes, they get bored.

  The boot came again—fast, hard. Direct hit to the stomach.

  Tray wanted to shout out, to grab the leg and fight back. Didn’t, though. Remained perfectly still.

  “Goddamn it, I’m talking to you!”

  Another kick, harder than the last, right in the ribs.

  Tray grunted, couldn’t help it. Pulled the quilt tighter.

  “Do you have any idea what you and your friends do to resale value when you camp out here? You scare the kids half to death. The older folk won’t leave the building. They shouldn’t have to step over a piece of garbage like you just to run to the store.”

  Homeowner, then.

  Tray had heard it all before.

  “Do you know what I’m doing out here at five in the morning while you’re taking a nap? While you’re all snug on our front stoop? I just got off a ten-hour shift at Delphine’s Bakery. Did twelve hours the night before in that devil’s asshole of a kitchen. Gotta go back in another ten. I do that to pay for this place. I do that to contribute. You’ll never catch me living on the streets like you lazy shits. Get a damn job! Make something of yourself!”

  At fourteen, there was no work. Not the legal kind. Not without some kind of parental consent, and that was never going to happen.

  Tray braced for another kick.

  Instead, the man grabbed ahold of the quilt and yanked it away, tossed it to the side. The quilt landed in a slushy puddle of half-melted snow at the base of the steps.

  Tray shivered, coiled up, ready for another kick.

  “Hey, you’re a chick. You’re just a kid,” the man said, the anger dropping from his voice. “I’m really sorry. What’s your name?”

  “Tracy,” she said. “Most people call me Tray.” She regretted the words the moment they left her lips. She knew what happened whenever she talked to one of them. Best to keep her mouth shut, stay invisible.

  The man knelt down, a paper sack dangling from his left hand. He wasn’t very old, maybe mid-twenties. Heavy coat. Brown hair tucked under a navy blue watch cap. Hazel eyes. Whatever was in the sack smelled delicious.

  He caught her looking at it. “Tray, my name is Emmitt. Are you hungry?”

  She nodded. Knowing this too was a mistake. But she was hungry. So hungry.

  He reached into the paper sack and took out a small loaf of bread. Steam floated from the crusty surface through the icy Chic
ago air, and for a moment Tray forgot about the bitter wind coming off the lake, howling through the street each time it kicked up.

  Her stomach gurgled, loud enough for both of them to hear.

  Emmitt tore off a piece of bread and handed it to her. She devoured it in two bites, barely bothering to chew. Possibly the best bread she’d ever eaten.

  “Do you want more?”

  Tray nodded, although she knew she shouldn’t.

  Emmitt let out a breath. He reached out and stroked her cheek with the side of his pointer finger. Drifting from her face to her neck, slipping beneath the collar of her sweater. “Why don’t you come inside with me? You can have all the bread you want. I’ve got more food, too. A warm shower. A comfortable bed. I’ll—”

  With both arms, Tray slammed the man in his shoulders. He had been precariously balanced, kneeling down on one knee like that, and he wasn’t prepared for the blow. He rolled backward, the sack tumbled from his hands, and his head slammed into the metal railing of the building’s staircase.

  “You little bitch!” he shouted.

  Before he could get up, Tray was on her feet. She grabbed the paper sack, scooped up her backpack, and raced down the five steps, snagged her quilt, and took off down Mercer. He wouldn’t chase her; they rarely did, but sometimes—

  “Stay the hell away from here! I catch you again, I’m calling the cops!”

  When Tray did risk a glance back, Emmitt had stood, gathered up his things, and was pushing through the door into the building. Even from this distance, she imagined she could feel the warmth of that hallway.

  She didn’t slow until she reached the gates of Rose Hill Cemetery. At this hour, they were locked, but she was thin, and a moment later she had wriggled through the wrought iron bars to the other side, pulling her backpack and quilt behind her.

  Chicago had its share of shelters, but she’d gone that route before. At this hour, they’d be locked tight. They all locked their doors somewhere between 7 p.m. and midnight, and none would admit you after hours. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. They’d be full. Sometimes the lines started as early as noon, and there was never enough room. Besides, Tray felt safer on the streets. There were “Emmitts” everywhere, especially in the shelters, and the only thing worse than running into an Emmitt on the stoop of some building or in an alley shielded from the wind was being locked overnight in a shelter with one. Sometimes more than one. Emmitts tended to stick together and hunt in packs.

  Tray wasn’t afraid of the cemetery. After two years on the streets, she’d slept in them all at least once. Rose Hill was one of her favorites on account of the mausoleums. Unlike Oakwood or Graceland, Rose Hill didn’t lock the mausoleums at night. And while there were several security guards, on a cold night like tonight, they’d be in the office playing cards, watching television, or even sleeping. She’d seen them enough through the windows.

  She stomped up Tranquility Lane through the fresh snow. She wasn’t too worried about the tracks behind her; she knew the wind would take care of those. There was no reason to take chances, though, so when she reached the top of the hill, rather than making the left at Bliss Road, she cut across Tranquility and ducked down into the small patch of woods running along the side of Bliss.

  Although there were no lights, the moon was nearly full, and when the reflecting pond came into view, Tray couldn’t help but stop and look at it. The icy surface glistened under the thin layer of fresh snow. Marble statues stood silently along the edge of the water, stone benches between them. This was such a peaceful place. So quiet.

  Tray didn’t see her at first, the girl kneeling at the water’s edge, facing away. Long, blonde hair trailing down her back. She looked like one of the statues, unmoving, facing the pond like that. Her skin was so pale, nearly white, almost as colorless as her white dress. She wore no shoes on her bare feet, no coat, only the white dress made of a material so thin it was nearly translucent. Her hands were clasped together near her breasts as if lost in prayer, her head tilted to one side.

  Tray didn’t speak, but drew closer. Close enough to realize the thin layer of snow that covered everything else covered this girl, too. And when she circled around to her side, she realized it wasn’t a girl at all but a woman. The stark whiteness of her, every inch of her, was broken by the thin line of red stretching from under her hair down the side of her face. There was another line from the side of her left eye, a stream of red tears, and yet a third from the corner of her mouth—this one painting her lips the brightest rose.

  Something was written on her forehead.

  Wait, not written.

  At her knees, sitting in the snow, was a silver serving tray. The kind you might find at a fancy dinner party, a high-priced restaurant, the sort of place Tray already knew, even at fourteen, she’d never see in her lifetime outside of television or the movies.

  On that tray were three small, white boxes. Each sealed tight with black string.

  Behind the boxes, propped up against the woman’s chest, was a cardboard sign not unlike the ones Tray had held to raise money for food. Only she had never used these three particular words before. The sign simply read:

  FATHER, FORGIVE ME

  Tray did the only thing she could do. She ran.

  2

  Poole

  Day 5 • 5:28 AM

  Hello Sam,

  I imagine you’re confused.

  I imagine you have questions.

  I know I did. I have. I do.

  Questions are the foundation of knowledge, learning, discovery, and rediscovery. An inquisitive mind has no outer walls. An inquisitive mind is a warehouse with unlimited square footage, a memory palace of infinite rooms and floors and shiny pretty things. Sometimes, though, a mind suffers damage, a wall crumbles, the memory palace is in need of a renovation, rooms found in dire disrepair. Your mind, I’m afraid, falls into the latter category. The photographs around you, the diaries to your side, these are the keys that will aid you as you dig from the rubble, as you rebuild.

  I’m here for you, Sam.

  I’ll be here for you as I always have been.

  I’ve forgiven you, Sam. Perhaps others will, too. You’re not that man anymore. You’ve become so much more.

  —Anson

  “What am I looking at?” Special Agent Frank Poole grumbled, setting the printout aside. He closed his eyes and pressed the heels of his palms against his temples. He had the worst headache. He tried to sleep on the jet back from New Orleans, but that proved impossible. The sat phone rang off the hook. There was the FBI’s New Orleans field office, still crawling over Sarah Werner’s law office and the apartment above—only nine hours ago, Poole had discovered the attorney’s body staring up at him from her couch, watching him through milky eyes, the rotten remains of dinner across her lap, a small, black bullet hole in the center of her forehead. The medical examiner confirmed she had been dead for weeks, much longer than Poole initially thought. Positively identified as Sarah Werner, this meant the woman seen with Detective Sam Porter over the past several days, who claimed to be Sarah Werner, was not. She was some kind of imposter, a plant. Together, they broke a female prisoner out of the local jail and transported her across the country to Chicago.

  Between calls with the New Orleans field office, Porter’s partner lit up the sat phone line. They found Porter in the Guyon, an abandoned hotel in Chicago. The female prisoner he helped escape was in the lobby, shot dead. Porter sat nearly catatonic in a room on the fourth floor, surrounded by photos of himself with known serial killer Anson Bishop, the Four Monkey Killer, a stack of composition books at his side, and a laptop with the above message on the screen.

  From what he had been told, Chicago Metro tied the laptop to a bizarre round of killings over the past several days—several young girls drowned and resuscitated until their bodies finally gave out, and adults murdered in a multitude of ways, all of them associated with the medical care of a man named Paul Upchurch, currently in surgery at
Stroger Hospital.

  When Poole wasn’t on the sat phone with the New Orleans field office or Detective Nash, he was on with Detective Clair Norton, who was at the hospital, fielding some kind of outbreak. An outbreak triggered by Bishop, Upchurch, and possibly others.

  The only person who hadn’t called the sat phone was his immediate supervisor, SAIC Hurless, and Poole knew that that call would come soon enough and he damn well better have some answers before it did.

  “Let me talk to him,” Detective Nash said from somewhere behind him in the observation room.

  Poole’s head remained buried in his hands. “No way.”

  On the other side of the one-way observation window, Porter sat slumped in a metal chair, his body hunched over the matching metal table. He wasn’t handcuffed. Poole was having second thoughts about that.

  “He’ll talk to me,” Nash insisted.

  Porter hadn’t spoken to anyone. He hadn’t uttered a word.

  “No.”

  “Sam’s not a bad guy. He’s not part of this.”

  “He’s knee deep in it.”

  “Not Sam.”

  “The woman he broke out of prison was found dead of a gunshot wound from the gun found with him. GSR all over his hand. He made no attempt to hide the weapon or run. He sat there waiting for you to arrest him.”

  “We don’t know he killed her.”

  “He’s not denying that he did,” Poole countered.

  “He wouldn’t kill her unless it was self-defense.”

  Poole ignored him. “He called Detective Norton at Stroger Hospital and gave her information he simply could not possess unless he was involved. He knew Upchurch had glioblastoma. How did he even know Upchurch’s name? He knew about both girls. Details he couldn’t possibly know if he were straight.”

  “You heard Clair. She said Bishop told him.”

  “Bishop told him,” Poole repeated with frustration. “Bishop told him that he injected the two missing girls with the SARS virus. Left them in that house with Upchurch like some kind of Trojan horse.”

  Poole was still trying to wrap his head around that part, too. Kati Quigley and Larissa Biel, both missing, both found in Upchurch’s house. Porter claimed they had been injected with some variation of the SARS virus. The entire hospital was on lockdown while they ran blood work to determine whether or not the claim was true. At best, it was some kind of hoax. At worst…

  “Bishop is playing him,” Nash said. “That’s what he does.”