Work Text:
January 1st 2021
Rossi held the phone’s receiver in his hand, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.
He knew that this was going to be difficult. But he wasn’t quite sure how else to go about this. Hopefully Reid would understand why the older man had not shared his secret with anyone. Even after everything they had seen this whole prospect sounded ridiculous.
Reid answered the phone on its third ring. “Hello, Rossi,” he greeted his former colleague, “What is it?”
Rossi sighed. “Reid, I’m about to say something that you may or may not believe.”
He heard the younger man’s breathing from the other end. “Wh-What do you mean?” Reid sounded confused.
“Well,” Rossi continued, resting his other hand on the small table beside the couch, “I think that you should know about – a possible Unsub that will strike sometime this year.”
“Why did you ring me?” That was only the first of Reid’s questions, Rossi was sure of it.
“Kid,” Rossi held his hand up even though he didn’t need to, “It’s – similar to Frank Breitkopf.”
Reid paused. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand, Rossi –“
“It’s a demon,” Rossi also hissed into the receiver, but kept his cool, “One I interviewed years ago.”
“But the demons won’t attack us anymore;” Reid was still confused, “Frank said so.”
“This demon won’t be after us,” Rossi explained, “But it will kill people. I’m not sure where, or which groups of people they will be after. But this particular demon attacks every thirteen years.”
He sighed. “Reid, I think I should tell you the whole story.”
May 27th 2012
Leesburg, Florida
Rossi had been called down to Florida by an old friend. This particular friend had recently been placed in charge of an investigation involving the recovery of evidence from a suspect’s home.
The suspect – twenty-three-year-old Dustin Gregory, a skinny, pockmarked boy with scruffy salt-and-pepper hair – had denied the whole thing, even resorting to physical violence when questioned. He had been in their custody for more than forty-eight hours already, but Rossi had been informed that this young man would be held indefinitely.
The team were busy back in Virginia, but Rossi had decided to come down just out of interest.
“What have we got?” he asked his friend as they walked through the station. Rossi had loosened his shirt and removed his tie due to the Floridian heat, but even with all of the fans at full blast it was agonizing.
“Seems like a thrill killer to us,” his friend had handed the FBI agent the file, “Kidnaps young couples on vacation. Ties them up, tortures and kills the man, rapes the woman. Then he makes the woman run through the Everglades to get to safety. The only problem is that the women are drunk when he releases them in the dark. All of them ended up dead. He took photographs of every victim, too. The funniest thing was he had the photographs pinned on the wall behind his bedroom door. Made it easy for us to identify them. I wondered why he would do that, so I brought you in.”
Rossi nodded, taking everything in. “He sounds like a sexual sadist. Possibly a narcissist, too. Has a psychiatrist been to see him yet?”
His friend exhaled. “He won’t see anyone. What really unnerves me is that sometimes he goes quiet and starts giggling loudly in a woman’s voice.”
That certainly was something different. As they arrived at the holding cell, the friend let him in.
Dustin Gregory looked up at Rossi with tired, irritated eyes. “What do you want?” he snapped. He sounded more bored than angry.
“I’m David Rossi,” Rossi introduced himself, “I’m from the FBI. I’m here to talk to you.”
“About the victims?” Dustin cockily asked, holding his head to one side. “You found them all.”
“That’s not what I’m here about,” Rossi drew up a chair and sat down, “I’m here to talk about you, Dustin.”
The young man stretched his arms as far as he could while in handcuffs. “Dustin,” he squealed the name, mockingly, “isn’t here.”
Rossi wondered if this man would go for an insanity defence. But before he could ask anything the man tilted his head back and a black mist emerged from his mouth. It dived towards Rossi, swirling around his head.
The agent heard a voice whispering. “Dustin isn’t the first that I’ve taken. Look back, agent. I’ve give you a clue; start with Clarence Quickley, then add thirteen years on from his first crime. After that you should go to Maine, Chicago and Connecticut. You can join the dots after that, smartypants. We’ll talk in here once Dustin’s gone.” He heard the sound of a woman sighing in pleasure. “Midnight. No later.”
The mist disappeared. Dustin was now whimpering, pushing his legs up on the chair, his head shaking.
The light flickered above them before the door opened. Two officers started to take Dustin away, the young man begging and pleading all the while. He started screaming that he had been possessed.
But all Rossi could think of was the name Clarence Quickley. He had first read that name some time ago, back during his training, from a book about known serial killers prior to the twentieth century.
He needed Garcia. But, most of all, he wondered if he should get a coffee, despite the heat.
Rossi was not prepared to face demons again. Whenever Rossi thought of them, he thought about when he was possessed for two days, forced to listen to one of America’s most infamous serial killers.
But he knew that demons existed, whether metaphorical or physical. Rossi would get to the bottom of this.
If Dustin was innocent then Rossi would not be able to save him. But he would ask whatever creature had made its way from inside of the man’s body what their agenda was.
“Clarence Quickley?” Garcia asked, tapping away at her computer. “The Webster Springs Ripper died in West Virginia in 1892. Are you sure this is connected?”
“It’s just a theory, Garcia,” Rossi told her from his end, walking along the road outside of the station, “Could you do one more thing for me?”
“Of course my Italian silver fox,” Garcia gabbled away, “What is it?”
Rossi chuckled. “I’m not grey yet,” he smiled, “I need you to find me the name of a murderer who struck in 1904.”
“Do you have anything else?”
“Sorry,” Rossi replied, “Just the year.”
He heard Garcia typing away. “A man named Jim Norton was sentenced to death for a series of murders in rural Pennsylvania and New York in 1905.” She paused. “That’s strange. Both old-timey axe murderers attacked the same kind of victims.”
“What do you mean?” Rossi asked, unsettled.
“Clarence Quickley murdered three housewives during the day while their husbands were at work. The women, all aged between eighteen and twenty-five – because people got married a lot younger back then – were killed with tools from his barbershop. Urgh! This gives me Sweeney Todd vibes. Remind me never to eat meat pies. Anyway, the sole male victim was a husband who returned early.
“Jim Norton killed six female servants or farmers aged between sixteen and twenty-five years old, as well as one man – again, the sole male victim disturbed the killer – but he killed them in their homes. There are a lot of differences, sir. Quickley killed during the day with barbershop tools and stole trophies, Norton during the night with an axe and was also a forester – he also cut their hair off – but what I’m saying is that they targeted married women in their hometowns, or at least close to his workplace.”
She paused. “Sorry, sir, it’s just that serial killers from the Turn of the Century tended to be poisoners or after money or cut women to pieces in alleyways. These two are quite similar.”
Rossi took this in mind. “How about Maine in...” he thought for a brief moment, “1917, I believe. Or southwest Chicago?”
He heard Garcia tapping away again. When she stopped, she answered him with, “There was a man named Floyd Harrison who also broke into houses during the day and murdered women. H-How did you know?”
“Garcia,” Rossi informed her, now convinced that he had seen the mist and that something wanted to talk to him, “Look for information on killers who began their sprees in 1930 and 1943, in Chicago and Connecticut.” He knew that if this demon targeted people every thirteen years then there would be four more sprees after that, but there were too many suspects to pin down.
“Okie-dokie.” Garcia responded, before she ended the call.
Rossi looked at the phone in his hand. Sometimes he felt jealous of Garcia. She stayed safe and cosy inside her room, tapping away at keys and cuddling her stuffed animals. Of course she read all of the vicious information that was passed through to them, but Rossi still felt a touch of envy.
As Rossi sat in the holding cell, after having taken the keys and snuck past the bored-looking secretary at the front desk, he waited for midnight to arrive with a tingle of excitement and a deep sense of dread.
Garcia had already found some more information for him. While she was unable to find any murderers who had started their sprees in Chicago, the killer from Connecticut in 1943 had been Arthur Woodrow, a Lonely Hearts Killer who targeted war widows.
Rossi still wondered about the demon’s later sprees. If this was a demon. As Shakespeare had said, there was more than Heaven and Earth than dreamt of in man’s philosophy. This creature might be anything.
The worst part was that Rossi was grossly unprepared.
But as midnight struck the hairs on the back of the agent’s neck stood up on end. The room was eerily cold and Rossi heard his heart pounding in his ears.
Quickly reciting a Catholic prayer – he could think of little else that could be useful – he took a good look at the black mist forming on the chair in front of him.
To his utmost surprise, the figure had turned into Carolyn, playing with a piece of crumpled yellow paper between her hands.
The demon cocked its head and then gave a small smirk.
“As you can guess,” she answered in a sugary sweet voice, “this is not my real form. I naturally take the form of whoever in front of me finds appeasing.”
“My former wife,” Rossi sighed, “She’s dead.”
“Sorry.” The demon didn’t sound sorry. She treated this meeting as if it were a business transaction. “I gather you did what I said?”
“I believe I know the names of four of the first five murderers you possessed.” Rossi kept both eyes fixed on the demon, his body twitching for a fight. She seemed to have noticed, snorting.
“I’m not interested in you, David Rossi,” she told him, “My targets tend to be...younger, springier, a lot more innocent and less world-weary.”
Rossi didn’t know whether to be insulted or thank her. “You’ve heard of me.”
She nodded. “Frank sends his regards. When you were coming he told me of your visit. I didn’t want to waste an opportunity.”
“What sort of victim do you go after?” Rossi tried to remain practical and keep a steady head. But it was still difficult when the form of his former wife sat in front of him.
“I prefer young men,” she shrugged, “I take them during their most vulnerable years. Puberty, sometimes shortly after. I mould their minds into becoming vicious killers.”
“How much influence do you have?” Rossi asked, “Do you completely possess your victims or do you allow them some control?”
The demon frowned. “That’s enough for one night, Agent. Same time, same place, tomorrow night.”
As she turned into mist again and flew out of the window, Rossi took a look at what she had been scrunching between her fingers.
There were four more names written on the paper. There were dates beside these names, but Rossi didn’t need them.
He knew the names of these murderers.
Patrick Browne, 1956-59
Bruce Billy Purcell, 1969-71
Lawrence Garnett, 1982-85
Thomas McKinley, 1995
Back at his motel room, Rossi decided to do his own research.
Going to amateur websites that had been written up by serial killer enthusiasts (some of which, Rossi knew with a sinking feeling, might become future Unsubs) and decided to compile a document with the information that he had at hand.
The faces of the various killers, whether from private collections or their mugshots, stared back at him as he went through them one by one.
Clarence Quickley, Jim Norton, Floyd Harrison, all in grainy black-and-white, cartoons from newspapers depicting their executions.
Arthur Woodrow and Patrick Browne, also in black-and-white, looking out at the cameras in their mugshots, horrified and scared. What the outside world saw as evil men furious at being caught, Rossi knew to be confusion and worry.
Bruce Billy Purcell, being led away by guards after his sentencing, the first color photograph available in the bunch. Head bowed, ignoring the jeers all around him. His face was too far away for Rossi to work out his emotions, but the agent could guess how he must have been feeling.
Lawrence Garnett and Thomas McKinley, sitting with friends, cropped out from the pictures, the enthusiastic family men with a dark side hidden away. But not the one that anyone would have expected.
Dustin Gregory, wearing a pair of trunks at a beach on Lake Eustis. Smiling, fooling around for the camera, blowing mock kisses to whomsoever was taking the pictures. Cheerful, cocky, chirpy.
Then the pictures of the victims followed.
But, if the creature was right, none of the murders had been of these men’s own doing. Instead, the men were just as much victims as those that the creature forced them to kill.
It was midnight again. Rossi wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep doing this. Poor Dustin Gregory had already been taken away to a federal prison and soon Rossi would have no excuse to keep staying in Florida.
As the being had promised, they arrived on time.
Rossi looked across at the plume of dark grey smoke as it hovered across from him.
“Would it be possible for me to talk to someone with a physical form?” he asked, “Preferably not anyone that I know.”
If the plume of smoke had had a face, Rossi guessed that it would currently use a puzzled expression. Rossi leaned forward and held his hands out at either side.
“It makes it easier to –“ Rossi searched for a word, “humanize you.”
The smoke snorted. “I think I will show you the form that I took when I spoke to Clarence Quickley.” The smoke moved about and then took human form. Rossi saw a sharp-nosed, matronly woman with a pinafore and an apron, her mousy brown hair up in a bun.
“I’m guessing that’s Clarence Quickley’s mother.” Rossi gave a quick smirk, tilting his head.
She gave a small smile. “It certainly is.” Then she paused. “Or maybe, if you feel a little put off by this shape, I can provide another.”
The creature changed shape again. This body was younger, with curled hair, wearing a navy blue shirtwaist dress and a hat with a veil at a jaunty angle. Rossi half- expected this woman to hold a cigarette between her fingers.
“Arthur Woodrow?” Rossi guessed.
The woman’s red lips curled at the edges. “Yes. He was a rather boring man, but I touched up his life with a little class.”
Rossi asked the creature, “Do you have a name? I need to call you something.”
The creature paused for a moment, eyes downcast. Then they looked up again.
“Lana. Try Lana. It’s the name I gave to the men I manipulated. Most of them found it exotic.”
“Why Lana?”
She shrugged. “It’s from a slave turned Sultana, Roxelana. I’m not her, just so that you know; I simply liked the name. It’s Polish.”
Rossi asked her, “Do you appear as a woman to every man you possess?”
She snorted again. “You should know by now, Mr Rossi, that it is not always men who love and hate women simultaneously, or vice versa. You’ve read the files.”
“But the last murders included men and women,” Rossi pointed out, “Which form did you take?”
“Dustin Gregory had a caveman desire deep inside of him,” Lana chuckled, “Fight a man and take his woman. I took the form of a blonde in a bikini.”
“So the men you possess are already unstable?”
“Anyone can be unstable if the circumstances are right,” Lana explained, “Clarence Quickley was beaten by his father and had mommy issues. Patrick Browne’s father died fighting Nazis and he grew up in New Jersey, which is a lot like Hell, truth be told. You didn’t know about how angry Lawrence Garnett felt about the world around him. It’s the ones we don’t know about that are the scariest. The ones that slip under the radar.”
Rossi knew this all too well.
Lana’s form shifted again and she was now male, wearing a dirty coat and cap and fingerless gloves, appearing quite gaunt and had the beginnings of a beard. It was impossible to guess this form’s physical age.
“Let me guess,” Rossi lay back in his seat, “Cleveland?” The demon had mentioned Chicago, but perhaps they had started in Chicago and moved elsewhere.
“Chicago,” Lana answered. It sounded strange hearing a young woman’s voice come from this dishevelled figure, “But you never caught him, so you never knew how much he despised himself.”
The cogs in Rossi’s brain were whirring. “The Orland Park Butcher?”
“That’s right,” Lana confirmed, “He hated the fact that he didn’t have a job. A quarter of the country didn’t have jobs, but only a small number of them go nuts. He was a time-bomb. He would have hurt somebody if I hadn’t come along.”
Rossi didn’t know if this creature was lying. It was impossible to tell. But the fact that he could now identify the Orland Park Butcher – even if no-one else could ever know – was tantalising.
“What was his name?”
“Ralph Strickland,” Lana replied, “Born 1900, died 1933. Lived in Orland Park his whole life. Used to be a butcher, then lost his job, before becoming a construction worker, a deliveryman and waiter. None of those jobs lasted very long.”
She smiled a little. “When I went into Ralph he was about to go overseas. Fight the Kaiser. He was just seventeen years old. I buried myself deep in his mind, lapping up the pain and suffering around him. I saw all of his thoughts tumbling around him. The fear, the anxiety, the eternal question that no-one can answer; what were they fighting for?”
Rossi shuffled in his seat. Could Lana see inside of his mind? Could she see Vietnam? Or was she simply relishing the memory of being in a warzone?
“He didn’t notice that I was inside of his mind. None of them do at first. It’s like a tumor, Mr Rossi. It festers inside of you until it’s too late to remove without consequence.”
“What happened to Ralph?” Rossi cut across her, letting her know that he wasn’t going to let himself be distracted.
She wrinkled her nose and sat back. “He fell whilst building a skyscraper. I can only hide inside of a man; I cannot protect them from everything around them.”
“Then what happened?” Rossi asked.
“When it was certain that Ralph was going to die, I slipped out of him before he hit the ground. I flung myself out from him with such great force. I flew hundreds of miles before I landed in my next victim.”
“Arthur Woodrow.”
“The very same,” Lana changed back into the 1940s lounge singer.
“How old are they, when you take over their bodies?” Rossi asked.
Lana glared at him, her nails digging into the table, leaving dents that Rossi was sure he would not be able to explain away.
“I do not ‘take over their bodies’ in the way that you think, Mr Rossi,” she snarled, “I hide at the backs of their minds. I whisper sweet fantasies into their heads. I am a passenger until thirteen years have passed since the start of the last spree and the anger, fear, misery and revolution have grown.”
She breathed out heavily through her nose. “But, to answer your question, I look for troubled young boys to mould. A serial killer is at his most potent in his early to mid-twenties. The sprees don’t tend to last too long. I simply wait for the killer to be caught. I provide enough evidence to lock them up for good and then depart.”
“Evidence?” Rossi was intrigued.
Lana held her head in her hand, almost at a ninety degree angle. “When Patrick Browne was arrested the bodies of six of his victims were missing. If you read the file then you will know that a child came across the bodies.”
A chill ran down Rossi’s spine. “Did you hurt that child?”
“No, no,” Lana shook her head, “He was of no interest. I transformed into a black dog and called for him to chase me. He must have sensed something because he was a little afraid. But I dug up the remains of poor sweet Ella Ridge and the rest was easy.”
Rossi thought about the cases. “There was a second burial site in the Lawrence Garnett case,” he spoke aloud, “Did you lead someone there as well?”
“Give the man a gold star!” Lana cheered. She paused. “The witness writing down the licence plate in the Bruce Billy Purcell case was not my doing, however.”
Rossi asked her, “How old are you?”
“More than you can imagine,” Lana placed her head on the table and turned her body so that she was looking directly upwards, her arms curled at either side, “But when I desired to go to the surface, I had to enter a new body every thirteen years. Not just in America, but over in Europe during the nineteenth century.”
Rossi did a quick calculation. “There were a few disappearances in West Ham in London in 1881. Young girls. There was suspicion of trafficking, but did –“
“I never went to England,” Lana answered back, bluntly, “I spent time in Germany and Central Europe.”
Then she paused. “You are the second human that I have spoken to as myself. The other was a writer. You may have heard of him; Hans Christian Andersen.”
“Really?” Rossi’s eyebrows flew up.
Lana grinned. “I tried to control a boy, back in 1839. All the boy could see was anger and hatred after I took his body. He saw everything in a twisted, disgusting way. Andersen could see that something was wrong. He believed that there was a demon inside of the boy. He shouted at me, called out all manner of things that will force a demon from the body they are in. I had to leave. But when I left the boy’s body, Andersen saw me in human form.”
“What did he see?” Rossi asked, fascinated by her story, this little piece of history that no-one alive knew of.
“A woman with long white hair, floating around me the way that human hair does when they are underwater,” she told him, “My skin was a pale blue and I was dressed in white furs. I glanced at Andersen, just for a brief moment, before I floated off to take another child.”
She paused. “You may have heard of my story.”
Rossi nodded. “You were the inspiration for The Snow Queen, I gather?”
Lana chortled. “I could not appear inside of Andersen’s head. He was already grown. Besides, he had a strong mind and was carrying protective charms. The very charms, I would guess, are hidden under your suit?”
Rossi asked her, “Is that your true form?”
“Demons do not have a true form,” Lana grumbled, “Angels do, but they have four faces and eight wings. You are a Catholic; you already know this.”
“I like to confirm my theories.” Rossi folded his arms.
Lana sat up again, her palms pressed against the table. She seemed confused and perhaps interested.
“You have had a creature inside of you before.” She gave a quick laugh. “Was it a ghost? Demons have a stronger pull.”
“I did,” Rossi confirmed, “It was a horrible experience.”
“But one that you have a bond with,” Lana shook her head slightly, “I feel the emotion. I am not an imbecile.”
“A man I had met in life,” Rossi crossed his arms, “You may have heard of him. Ted Bundy.”
“I have,” Lana answered him, “So, he entered your body, did he? It’s horrible, isn’t it? To have something inside of you force you to kill.”
“But you are different,” Rossi chose to divert the conversation away from that topic, “You open up sexual desires.”
“Not quite,” Lana told him, “They are not lustful. Bitterness, anger, fear, these are catalysts for control over others.”
She sat back in her seat. “Even then there are a few rules. Kill at least three people whilst controlling a body. Space them out over a period of time. That makes one a serial killer after all. No victims under the age of thirteen years old. I didn’t make that rule, but I can’t stand children myself. They whine too much when people attempt to kill them.”
Rossi thought for a moment. “Lawrence Garnett murdered men and boys,” he reminded her, “Was he a pedophile?”
“Maybe,” Lana shrugged, “maybe not. Think about it; there is a difference between a pedophile and a child molester. A pedophile feels sexual attraction. A child molester enjoys tormenting their victims but has no attraction in the slightest.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Rossi bluntly told her.
Lana frowned at him. “I went for the same type of victim again and again. I wanted a change.”
“You killed men before you take Lawrence Garnett’s body,” Rossi reminded her, “Why did you select males only that time?”
Lana ignored him. “I’ll keep on killing until you can catch me.”
“I’ve caught you.” Rossi told her, but he wasn’t entirely confident.
“I chose to talk to you,” Lana corrected him, “That’s different.”
Then she wriggled in her seat, before turning into a woman with a purple shirtwaist blouse and large hat adorned with various feathers.
“Floyd Harrison?” Rossi asked.
Lana sniggered. “Yes. That lame deliveryman couldn’t fight in France, which was something that I knew was coming. I had to take someone who would not be sent abroad. He had plenty of work, with all of the other men gone. Those generous women smiled at him when he delivered their expensive goods to their doors. But I told him that they were filthy, snobby sluts that didn’t care for him in the slightest.”
“You lie to these men?” Rossi asked.
“I told you,” Lana narrowed her eyes at him, “I mould their minds. Pubescent boys are ripe for the picking. They can be easily led astray. I’m patient enough to wait for them to grow from miserable little boys into angry young men.”
“When you leave their bodies, does the anger go away?” Rossi asked, remembering how scared Dustin Gregory had been.
She nodded. “’Mould’ is perhaps the perfect word for this situation, Agent. Black mould can grow in damp quarters, becoming ever more poisonous by the year. Before you know it, it has grown too much and you feel the effects.”
Then Lana changed again, taking the form of a female hippie with long brown hair and a flowery headband.
“Bruce Billy Purcell?” Rossi asked, although he knew what her answer would be.
“The Santa Maria Slayer,” Lana smirked, a whole jaw of yellow-stained teeth appearing, “Cut up hitchhiking couples travelling between Gaviota and Pismo Beach and buried them in garbage bags near Bettavaria.”
Rossi knew all too well. He had studied this man during his early days at the BAU. Only eight of the twelve hitchhikers had traveled in pairs, but he was known for murdering couples. He had been caught when a witness wrote down the licence plate of the car that his final two victims had driven away in. The bodies of those unfortunate lovers were found in Bruce’s cellar. His youngest victim, aged just fifteen, was still missing.
It seemed as if Lana knew that he would ask this question, so she held her index finger up. “I am not going to tell you where any missing victims are. I left those bodies long ago and I do not wish to divulge any information.”
Rossi was about to ask her why, but then Lana’s eyes seemed to glow a horrible dark red and the room went even colder. Rossi closed his mouth and her eyes stopped glowing.
“Bruce denied the murders,” Rossi spoke at last, “Just like Dustin.”
Lana shrugged. “Some of them deny the murders. They all see the murders, but not all of them believe that they killed people. I am so entangled with their souls that they begin to convince themselves that they did the crimes themselves.”
Rossi wondered how many more demons were out there, manipulating people the same way that Lana did.
He also wondered at that second how well she could see into his mind. Could she do this whilst inside of a human’s body? Or just when she was finally able to be herself?
“Lawrence Garnett was an interesting experiment,” Lana sat back in her seat, her body changing into a young man in his late teens or early twenties, wearing a sleeveless top and grubby blue jeans, “He was from a higher social class than some of my previous hosts. You read the file.”
Rossi nodded. He had tried to interview Garnett back in the 1980s, but the man had refused to talk to anyone, spending days alone in his cell. Once or twice Rossi had thought he heard crying. The convict had been killed in prison back in 1998, by the nephew of one of the victims.
“Estate agent and property developer,” Rossi divulged, “Murdered twelve men and boys in east Texas between 1982 and 1985.”
“Nine white, three Hispanic,” Lana sniggered, “I wanted to mix things up a little.”
Rossi did a quick calculation. “Garnett was thirteen when you entered his body. Did that influence his – preferences?”
Lana simply smiled, digging a finger into the table underneath her. Rossi smelt smoke.
“Why two different burial sites?” Rossi decided to ask. “There was one in Ratcliffe and another in the Angelina State Forest.”
“Garnett felt at home in both places. What I do is sometimes a team effort, Agent. I have a look at where the boy – they are always boys when I meet them – is drawn to. Then I suggest that this might be a great place to go. I become these boys’ best friend.”
Then she became a young woman, about the same physical age as her last form, with a dark blonde ponytail hanging down the back. Her clothing was now a t-shirt hanging loose over her shoulders and ripped jeans; a grunge look.
“Thomas McKinley,” Rossi knew the answer before Lana opened her mouth, “Your last host. Before Dustin, at any rate.”
Lana smirked, blowing smoke from her mouth in the way one would blow a cigarette.
“He was putty in my hands. An aggressive little brat with bad teeth and a habit of breaking into houses. He would have hurt someone eventually.”
“But you made him kill young women,” Rossi retorted, “You forced him to stalk women, snatch them from their bedrooms when they were sleeping and torture them as he drove down to Portland.”
It was true. When Thomas McKinley had begun his spree – or rather, Lana’s spree – back at the beginning of 1995, Rossi had been working on another case. But he knew the details all too well.
McKinley would break into the homes of his young victims, scattered across Pierce County, south of Seattle. He would inject the females and take them in his pickup truck, dumping their bodies along Highway 507 and Interstate 5, as far south as Portland. The bodies had been found in clusters several months after they went missing, but one girl, supposedly murdered in Rose Valley, was still missing. Rossi doubted that Lana would tell him what had happened.
“Why Dustin?” Rossi asked at last, “Why any of them? Why did you decide to do this?”
“Why can’t I have fun?” Lana gave a short wail. “I think I might go to the Great Lakes next. Maybe Kentucky or Tennessee. This country is ripe for the picking, with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of twisted or uneducated individuals. They believe everything that they read alone and think that this country is the center of the universe and that every country’s history and viewpoints are exactly the same as ours. The white countries, at least. America is an utter joke.”
Rossi stood up. He was fed up of this demon’s ramblings. “You manipulated these men. You altered their minds.”
“I’m not one of your human criminals,” Lana glared at him, angrily, “You have no power over me. You have no power over any demon.”
“Do I?” Rossi raised an eyebrow.
“Your jewelry only gets you so far,” Lana crossed her legs, “Belief, too. Demons are clever, Rossi. Didn’t you know? The best trick that the Devil ever played was convincing people that he didn’t exist.”
Rossi smirked. “I’ve had a bit of time on my hands. I knew that my team couldn’t be attacked again, but I wanted to do my own research anyway.” He knew that the kid would probably be proud of him.
He looked up at the ceiling. Lana gingerly tilted her head and saw a ring of salt glued to the tiles above. She swore under her breath.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to convince anyone to believe Thomas McKinley or Dustin Gregory,” Rossi said as he opened the door and began to leave the room, “But I will make sure that you never harm another human again.”
Lana sneered. “How do you expect me to stay here?”
“I can make a few phone calls,” Rossi shrugged his shoulders, “I can find some exorcists.” He didn’t know how a demon could be sent to Hell while outside of a person’s body, but he knew that he would find something.
Lana didn’t snap back. Instead she simply smiled nastily at him.
“I’ll see, Agent Rossi.”
It was almost sunrise by the time Rossi returned to the station. He had managed to look up some priests who would be willing to do an exorcism, although Garcia probably thought that he was mad.
He noticed that an ambulance was stationed outside as he approached. Heart pounding in his throat, he asked a nearby janitor, “Why’s the door open?”
The janitor, a pale, weary man nearing retirement age, answered, “One of our guys heard a woman screaming in there. I don’t know what happened, but he’s in pretty bad shape.”
As Rossi headed over to the ambulance, he saw his friend lying on a stretcher. He was bleeding and delirious.
“What’s happened?”
“A girl...” his friend managed to gasp, “She – said that there was a bug on the ceiling. I couldn’t see anything, but I brushed – the tile a-and she hit me with the table.”
Rossi ran into the room, almost tripping over his own feet as he went.
But when he flung open the door to the cell, all he could see were papers scattered around the floor, blown there by the wind. The table and a few tiles were scattered about, broken.
Lana was gone.
2021
“That’s why it’s imperative that you know about this,” Rossi explained to Reid, “The person that Lana is in – whoever they are – will strike sometime this year. You may not catch her immediately. You may not even find her this year. She might be anywhere, inside of anyone.”
There were a few clues, Rossi told himself. Lana preferred to use young white men in their twenties, preferably from a working-class background. From what she had said, Lana might begin her next spree in the Great Lakes region (but probably not Chicago) or in the Bible Belt, most likely Tennessee or Kentucky. She might target young white women, but she could go after boys or couples. None of her victims would be under thirteen years old, but that did not rule out the possibility of teenagers becoming victims.
“Did you try to look for her?” Reid found his voice at last.
Rossi nodded sadly. “I did what I could. But you and I both know that it is impossible to search for a killer before they make themselves known.”
He leaned in close to the screen. “Reid, promise me that you will do your best to try and stop Lana. Remember, I almost trapped her. If you go through the same routine as I did, you will be able to send her back to Hell.”
Reid nodded. “I will, Rossi,” he promised, “I will try.”
Rural Wisconsin
The drunken revellers did not notice the small, skinny figure standing in the woods behind the tavern.
As one of them, a young blonde woman, came out and threw up in the gutter, one hand leaning against the wall for support, she did not hear them coming closer.
Gliding closer, as if walking on air.
“Can I help you, miss?” A seemingly concerned man’s voice asked.
The woman looked up, her vision blurry. “I’m fine,” she murmured, pulling herself up and steadying her yellow glittery cowgirl hat, “I’m fine.”
“I’m sure, miss,” the man lifted his own hat so that she could see his glowing red eyes, “But please, let me help you inside.”
The woman swore and pushed him away, but Lana was too quick. Her vessel beat the victim’s face with a broken bottle and dragged her towards a pickup truck.
Lana smiled to herself as she turned the key in the ignition and began to drive the three hundred miles back to her vessel’s home.
This was far too easy.