"So, how did you two meet?" he asked Maria as she led him to the break room.

  "Remember the massacre at Ken Ripple's haunted attraction?"

  "The Ghost Walk? I should. I was one of the detectives on the case."

  "I thought I recognized you," Maria said. "I wrote it up."

  "I remember. You used a really unflattering photo of me, too."

  Maria grinned. "Sorry, Detective. Not my department. I'm only in charge of the words."

  "That's okay. I've lost weight since then. Anyway, you were saying?"

  "Well, if you're familiar with the case, then you know that Levi was involved."

  "Somewhat," Kraft admitted. "I know he was involved, but I suspect the true extent of his involvement---and what actually transpired there---is still not known. To the general public, at least."

  "You've got no idea, Detective. And I'll never tell. Suffice to say, we all owe that man a huge debt. I'm not sure what's going on right now, but whatever your problem is, Levi is a good person to have in your corner."

  "I hope he can help."

  "Not to be blunt, but if he can't, then you're probably fucked."

  * * *

  Levi quickly scanned the clippings, using a form of psychic divination that was part luck, part skill, and part intuition. He could safely disregard ninety-nine percent of what he read---accounts of township supervisor meetings, tax increases and engagement announcements had no bearing on the task at hand. He paid attention to the crime stories, however, as well as reports of missing persons, accidents, and oddities. When he found one that seemed to fit his still-developing pattern, he sat it aside and then returned to the pile.

  After an hour, he placed the file folders in a neat stack at the edge of the desk and then flipped through the articles he'd sat aside. There were two missing person accounts. The first dated back to the Seventies---a local man who had vanished in the township while small game hunting. The second was from the Eighties, and involved a missing migrant worker. From what Levi could determine, neither man had ever been found. It was possible they weren't connected to this case at all, but his instincts told him differently. Both men, the hunter and the migrant worker, would have had reason to be in that field. Both could have decided for whatever reason to approach the tree, be it in pursuit of game or just looking for a place to sit and rest for a moment. Had they done this, the demon would have killed them, venting its frustration at remaining trapped inside the tree. It could have possessed the men, of course, but as long as the circle of binding was in place, the men would not have been able to leave the confines either, as long as the demon was inside of them.

  Finished with the clippings, Levi took a seat at the microfiche machines and began pouring through the older records. He found two more disappearances, one from the Sixties and another from the Forties, as well as a report of a cattle mutilation in the area of the tree. He kept reading and searching, fighting off fatigue and trying to remain focused. Another hour had passed before he finally came across the story that he'd been looking for. As he'd predicted to Maria and Kraft, he knew this was the source as soon as he came across it. The account was from 1909 and concerned the lynching of a forty-five year old man named Todd Graham, as told by a man named Chester Williams. The article appeared to be a transcript of an oral history from the County Historical Society. Levi read on with interest, his fatigue suddenly forgotten, his mind clear and sharp and focused.

  Being an Account of the Witching Tree, and Todd Graham,

  the Man They Lynched in Codorus in October 1909

  by Chester Williams

  March 31, 1964

  My memories of Todd Graham are all good ones, which might surprise you, given his later lot in life and the things they say he did. He was a kind man, always polite to the women folk, and friendly to us children and to dogs and other animals, as well. I was twelve years old when they hung him, but I knew him since I was six.

  He'd showed up in town one day, looking for work, as many folks did back then. He went to work at the sawmill over in Porters Siding, and took a room at the Sechrist's boarding house (which is now apartments). Neither the job or the room was much, even by old-timey standards, but a man could survive off them.

  He attended our church and he was always very polite and well-mannered during the service and after, during fellowship. I heard him pray there, and when he sang along with the hymns, his voice was always very loud and clear. I think that's what I remember about him the most. His voice. It was very distinct, and pleasant to listen to. Until the change come along. Then he had a different voice.

  I remember one time some bullies were teasing me down near Glatfelter's pond when I'd gone there to fish. I had a bucket full of Sunnies and Blue Gills and was fixing to take them home so my Ma could cook them up for supper, and the bullies come out and dumped the fish back into the pond. Then they threw the bucket out there too, and I started to cry. About that time, Todd Graham come along with his fishing pole and chased them bullies off. Then he patted me on the head and told me it would be okay, and cast his line out until the hook snagged the bucket. We talked for a while and then he told me to run on home, and said I should stay in school and study and never get into whiskey or gambling, and I'd be better than them bullies, who would have a hard lot in life.

  Levi scanned ahead, eyes darting back and forth as he sped through the sentences. The remembrance recounted how this kind, religious, hard-working man suddenly changed in the author's twelfth year, exhibiting a series of shocking behavior. Levi found one paragraph particularly telling.

  I guess Todd Graham lost his religion after that, for he started raising a ruckus with some of the others from the saw mill who liked their booze a little too much, and he took to sleeping in alleys and barns and once or twice right there in the street. He seemed drunk all the time, even when folks swore they hadn't seen him drink a drop. He showed up at the dance at the fire hall one night in September and when he spoke, his voice wasn't the same I'd heard in church. It was rougher and louder. Sounded almost like a different person. He caused quite a fuss, dancing with women in front of their husbands, even after they'd declined, and getting into fights. At one point, his friend Frank Burton come over to tell him to leave, and Todd Graham told him that he wasn't Todd anymore, but a man named Abalam.

  The name was vaguely familiar to Levi. Pausing, he pinched the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. Then he got up and fetched his kit bag, rummaging through it until he found his notebook. He perused the pages, deciphering his own hurried scrawl, until he found the name. Abalam was a lesser demon, one of the two hundred servants of Paimon, one of the Kings of Hell.

  "A legion of two hundred," Levi murmured. "One of the Legion. You were probably never even missed. But how did you end up in that tree?"

  He continued reading, skipping around and skimming to the important parts.

  ...and Todd Graham come into town shooting that night. He had a revolver in each hand, and he was firing up into the air, and hollering in that weird voice of his, the voice he'd come to tell people was Abalam's. I believed it, too. Others said he was drunk again, but I have to wonder. I remember how that voice sounded. What you've got to understand is that back in those days, we didn't know about these folks with split personalities and such. When he got to acting this way and talking like that, a person could almost believe that he really had become someone else.

  A bunch of the men come out into the street and told Todd to stop, but he turned the guns on them and shot them down in cold blood. Only two of them had rifles, and Todd shot them first. He would have kept going, too, but Renny Glatfelter snuck up behind him and knocked him out with a length of kindling wood, on account of Todd had to stop to reload. The Constable locked him up in the jailhouse and Reverend Polk and that Powwow Doctor they call Rehmeyer came to pray over him.

  Levi knew of Rehmeyer. The man had been an associate of Levi's grandfather back in the Twenties. He'd practiced powwow in York County while Levi's grandfather had practiced across the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County.

  ...the posse had twenty, maybe thirty men in it, and some of them weren't much older than me. All of them had masks on their faces, but I recognized a few voices as I watched out my window. I won't say who they were, even though most of them what did it are dead now. They took him out of the jail, and I seen that the powwow man was with them, only he didn't have a mask on. He didn't seem happy about the turn of events, but he wasn't doing much to stop it, either.

  They took Todd Graham out of town, and nobody dared to interfere. I found out later that they took him to Harrison's farm, and hung him on the tree out there in the middle of the cornfield. I don't know if Mr. Harrison was in on the posse, but I do know that his brother Clyde was one of the men that Todd Graham shot. Way I heard it, the powwow man had wanted to try for Todd, but the rest of the men wouldn't have any of that. They said faith healing wasn't what was needed. The powwow man, seeing that he was outnumbered, made them wait while he did some kind of last rites, and erected some sort of circle of stones, and bade the other men help him to bury them. Only then would he let them hang Todd Graham, and the ones who did the lynching had to stand outside the circle, which I imagine caused them a lot of extra work. And extra rope, too. And that's how that old tree got the name of The Witching Tree, on account of in the years after, some folks said that Todd Graham was a witch or bewitched. Except that these days, most folks don't call the tree that anymore. Just us old-timers.

  And there it was. The name of his adversary hadn't been found in his occult tomes at home, but here in the newspaper archives. It all made sense. Abalam had possessed this man, Todd Graham, compelling him to commit a number of violent acts and display increasingly uncharacteristic behaviors. The powwow practitioner, recognizing the situation for what it was, had wanted to perform an exorcism and send the demon back to Hell, but the townspeople had refused such a lengthy process. Desperate to stymie the demon, the warlock had done the only other thing possible, given the mob rules situation---he had quickly erected a circle of binding and trapped the demon inside of it. Upon Todd Graham's death, Abalam had been freed, but was unable to possess anyone else or escape back to Hell. Thus, the demon had been forced to possess the only other living thing inside the circle---the farmer's tree. And Abalam had been there ever since, trapped inside the tree and unable to leave. It seemed like a long time in human terms, but it was merely the blink of an eye for a demon. Still, Abalam's anger and indignation must have been powerful indeed, made worse by the fact that if another living creature stumbled into the circle, and the demon left the tree and possessed them instead, his situation wouldn't improve. Instead, Abalam had spent the convening years simply killing anything unlucky enough to stray within his reach.

  Levi stood and stretched. His joints popped, sounding very loud in the silence. He gathered his notebook and kit bag, turned off the microfiche machine and the lights, and returned upstairs to find Kraft sequestered in Maria's cubicle. The Detective was speaking with someone on his cell phone. After eavesdropping for a moment, Levi determined that he was speaking with Clinton. Levi cleared his throat and Kraft glanced up.

  "I've got to go. No, it's fine. Do the best you can. We'll be back soon." He put the cell phone in his pocket and stood up. "Find what you were looking for?"

  "Oh, yes." Levi nodded. "Most definitely."

  "I did, too. I checked on the property for you. It's been in the same family for three generations now. Folks by the name of---"

  "Harrison," Levi interrupted.

  "Yeah." Kraft sounded surprised. "How did you know that? Did you read my mind or something?"

  "I told you, Detective," Levi stifled a grin. "Newspapers are magic. I got all of the information we needed downstairs."

  "Did you also know that the landowner passed away two years ago, and the property failed to find a buyer during the estate sale, on account of the economy, of course? It's been sitting there unused."

  "That would explain why the field hadn't been plowed recently," Levi said. "Well done, Detective Kraft."

  "A developer is considering buying it though. Can you imagine what would happen if they sent bulldozers and contractors out into that field?"

  "Then we must make sure that doesn't happen. Let's go."

  "Should we thank Maria first?"

  "There's no need to wake her up, and in truth, we've delayed long enough. Certainly longer than I like. The more we delay, the greater the chances that another of your officers or some well-meaning civilian will stumble into the demon's perimeter. I would be done with this."

  "So what happens now?"

  "Now?" Levi's grin grew broad. "Now, in the popular idiom of today's youth, we go bust a cap in the demon's ass."

  Levi chuckled as they left the office building.

  "Yeah," Kraft muttered. "Strangest damn religious man I've ever met."

  He didn't think that Levi had heard him, until the man suddenly stopped and turned around, fixing him with a glance.

  "If you think I'm weird, Detective, you should really meet some of my associates."

  The sun was just starting to rise over the city as they walked to the car. The air was already warm and inviting. Traffic was light and birds chirped overhead. It was going to be a beautiful day. Despite that, Kraft found himself shivering.

  Five

  By the time they arrived back at the Laughman house, dawn had turned into daylight, and the number of people lingering at the home had tripled. The media were demanding answers, and when Kraft and Levi found Clinton, the frazzled officer was clearly at wit's end.

  "I was starting to think you two got lost," he grumbled. "What the hell took you so long?"

  "We were preparing a battle plan," Levi told him. "Forewarned is forearmed. I had to make sure we were armed."

  "Well, now that you're back, would one of you mind telling me how we're going to deal with this cluster-fuck? The Laughman woman is sedated, but I've got relatives demanding answers, and reporters out crawling around in the woods, and some more of volunteers who came across the crime scene. It's getting harder and harder to keep this quiet---and to be quite honest, I'm not sure we should be at this point. Maybe people need to know what's going on here."

  "I would advise against making the particulars public," Levi said, "unless you want Black Lodge and other interested parties sweeping down on this place."

  Clinton blinked. "Who? Black what? Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

  Levi pushed past him and made his way through the crowd. Kraft whispered in Clinton's ear, urging him to hold it together just a little while longer, and then hurried after the magus.

  "Are you ready?" he asked.

  "I am." Levi nodded. "And again, I must ask that you stay out of the field. If Officer Clinton is correct, then it sounds like you'll have your hands full keeping people back, in any case."

  "Yeah, it sounds that way. Do you have everything you need?"

  "I do. I have my faith in God. As the Bible tells us, He helps those who help themselves." Levi held up the brown leather kit bag. "I've helped myself to everything in here. The Lord will do the rest."

  They rushed back to the field. Kraft was dismayed to see that Clinton had been right. Several more people had converged on the scene. Luckily, the media wasn't among them---yet. But it was only a matter of time until one of the civilians posted it to Twitter or Facebook, or simply walked back to the command station and told others. He saw no one around the crime scene, and was grateful for that. At least his men had managed to keep that secure.

  "Stay here," Levi warned him again. "And no matter what you see or hear, don't come out there. Okay?"

  "Okay. Is there anything I can do to help?"

  "Yes. Keep everyone back. And pray, if you are so inclined. Ask the Lord to lend me His strength and protection."

  Then, without another word, Levi strode into the field, his head held high. He felt his pulse throbbing in his ears, and his skin felt flushed. He focused on his breathing, trying hard not to hyperventilate. While the exorcism itself was fairly uncomplicated, there were a number of variables that made him uneasy. He hadn't properly fasted, for one. Normally, he should have done so for three days prior to attempting this. And then there was the human factor. While he trusted Kraft not to rush forward, he was uneasy about all the other people converging on the site. If any one of them interfered or distracted him, even for a moment, it could change everything.

  Levi opened the kit bag as he walked. He fumbled around inside of it until he found the silver ring he'd brought from the house. He slipped the ring onto the middle finger of his left hand. Then he spoke aloud, offering an invocation prayer.

  "The blessing which came from heaven, from God the Father, when the true living Son was born, be with me at all times. The holy cross of God, on which He suffered His bitter torments, bless me today and forever. The three holy nails which were driven through the holy hands and feet of Jesus Christ, bless me today and forever. The spear by which His holy side was pierced and opened, protect me now, today and forever. May the blood of Christ and the Holy Spirit protect me from my enemies, and from everything which might be injurious to my body and my soul. Bless me, oh you five holy wounds in order that all my enemies may be driven before me and bound and banished. All those that hate you must be silent before me, and they may not inflict the least injury upon me, or my house, or my premises. And likewise, all those who intend attacking and wounding me either spiritually or physically shall be defenseless, weak, and conquered. The cross of Christ be with me. The cross of Christ overcomes all water and every fire. The cross of Christ overcomes all weapons. The cross of Christ is a perfect sign and blessing to my soul. Now I pray that the holy corpse of Christ bless me against all evil things, words, and works."

  As he approached the tree, he clenched his fist, feeling the ring taught against his skin. "Guide my hand, Lord. Your will be done, as always."