The 5th Witch

by Graham Masterton

  “Well…that means that she only has two lives left. Unless she’s lost another one that we don’t know about.”

  He checked his watch. “Listen, I have to report to the captain, tell him what happened. I don’t know when I’ll be home, but I’ll give you a knock, okay? We need to talk about this a whole lot more.”

  Annie gave him a kiss. “I’m so sorry about Ernie,” she said. “You must be devastated.”

  “Devastated doesn’t even come close. We were like brothers, Ernie and me.” He kissed her back, and said, “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  It was well past 2:30 A.M. before he made it back to Franklin Avenue. Annie’s lights were out, so he decided not to disturb her. He went up to his own apartment and tugged off his shirt as he walked across the kitchen.

  He was exhausted. Apart from the trauma of what had happened at West Grove Country Club, there had been a five-hour debriefing with all of the emergency services, including the police, the Highway Patrol, the fire department, and the FBI.

  The LAPD’s press officer announced that there had been several “climate-related” fatalities at the country club and that a “thorough and searching” investigation was under way. Until its findings were complete, there would be no further official comment. Most of the press already knew that the Zombie and the White Ghost and Vasili Krylov had been meeting Giancarlo Guttuso at the country club. After the threats they had received, they were quite happy to report the official version and not dig too deeply into what might really have happened.

  Dan went to the fridge, took out a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, and drank several large mouthfuls. Then, burping loudly, he went into the bedroom and stripped off the rest of his clothes. He knew that he needed a shower, but he collapsed facedown on the bed and lay there with his eyes open, feeling as if he had been beaten up by professionals.

  “Ernie,” he said out loud. “Ernesto Munoz. Wherever you are, El Gordo, rest in peace.”

  He knew that his first call in the morning would be to see Rosa and tell her that she and the boys would never see Ernie again. Why the hell hadn’t Ernie taken Annie’s advice and stayed at home?

  He closed his eyes. He slept. He dreamed that he was walking toward the three witches with half a dozen pale kukurpas stalking beside him. As he came nearer, the witches drew back, and a figure in a black veil appeared, holding up a staff with a cat’s head on top of it. The figure came gliding toward him, and he was suddenly seized with a terrible sense of dread. He knew, however, that he couldn’t turn and run. He was surrounded by kukurpas, and they would rip him to shreds if he tried to escape.

  The figure in the black veil came right up to him. It was impossible to see her face, but he could see her eyes glittering through the layers of chiffon. “I have spared you,” she whispered. “I have protected you and taken care of you. There is one favor you can do for me, in return.”

  “You killed my friend,” he replied, and his voice was shaking. “I’ll see you in hell before I do you any favors.”

  “You don’t understand,” the figure told him. “You look, you see, but you don’t understand. Nothing is what it seems to be.”

  “I understand that Ernie’s dead and that you and your fellow bitches were responsible for it.”

  The figure lifted her right hand and drew back her veil. It wasn’t Rebecca Greensmith at all: it was Gayle. She was looking pale but still perfect, and she was smiling at him gently.

  “Gayle? You’re protecting me?”

  “Of course. Who else did you think it was?”

  “I don’t know. You’re not a witch, are you?”

  She glided right up to him and took hold of his hand. Her fingers were cool, but she didn’t feel as if she were dead. “I’m the memory of somebody who loved you very much.”

  He looked down at her. His eyes were filled with tears—not just for her, but for Ernie, too, and all the men who had died that night, and whose wives would be widowed, and whose children would be left without a father.

  “Ssh,” said Gayle, and stood on tiptoe so that she could brush his lips with hers. “Life is always full of grief. It is only the end of life that brings peace and understanding and the longest sleep of all.”

  Dan was about to kiss her again when he was woken up by his bedside telephone ringing. He scrabbled to pick it up and said, “Whuh? What time is it?”

  “Morning, son! It’s just gone seven-thirty. I thought you would have been up by now and working out.”

  “Dad, what the hell do you want?”

  “I hear there’s been some funny stuff going on.”

  “Funny stuff?” Dan sat up in bed and ruffled his hair.

  “That’s right. Funny stuff. Like the sky going inky black and the wind getting up and police officers getting killed.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I’m seventy-seven years old, Dan, I have plenty of friends. In fact, I had a call from Jake Harriman at CNN. He and I go way back. He wanted to know if we were talking black magic here. Strictly off the record. Apparently, the media have been told that it was a freak electric storm.”

  “I can’t tell you anything, Dad. I’m sorry.”

  His father cleared his throat. “This is something to do with these witches you were telling me about, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I’m not allowed to say.”

  “Dan—you listen to me—I may be getting on in years, but I’m not stupid. I was years in the business, and like I told you before, I knew some genuine practitioners of voodoo and hoodoo and who-knows-who-do. I’ve seen people who can work black magic, and I know that it’s real.”

  Dan took a deep breath, and then he said, “Okay. It was those witches. About a hundred officers got killed, including my partner Ernie Munoz.”

  Briefly, haltingly, he told his father about Rebecca Greensmith and her five lives, and what the four witches had done up at West Grove Country Club.

  “Come see me,” said his father.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Come see me just as soon as you can. And bring that Annie Conjure along with you.”

  “Dad—”

  “For once in your life, Dan, don’t argue with me. You lost your partner. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Okay,” Dan conceded. “I’ll see you around eleven.”

  He filled the coffeemaker, and then he took a shower. As he came back into the kitchen with a towel wrapped around his waist, the TV news was showing pictures of downtown L. A. and bodies lying in the street.

  “Early this morning, seven members of the Eighty-third Street Gangster Crips were found dead in the street in what police could only describe as ‘mysterious circumstances.’ All the victims suffered broken necks.

  “The Eighty-third Street Gangster Crips, known as the Eight-Tray, have been notorious since 1979 for their drug trafficking, particularly, in recent years, their selling of highly addictive crack cocaine.

  “They have made huge profits out of their drug business, and they have been involved in almost constant gang warfare with several other Crip sets, especially the Rollin’ 60s. But eyewitness accounts of this morning’s carnage indicate that rival Crip gangs may not have been responsible for the deaths of these seven young men.”

  A black youth appeared on the screen, with his back to the camera so that he could not be identified. He said, “They was standing on the sidewalk together outside of the Bubble Club when they just went kind of jerky and dropped down dead. At first we thought that maybe some other gang was shooting at us with silencers or something, but there wasn’t nobody there.”

  Another youth said, “I was talking to my friend Eazy-P in front of this store window, and I swear I seen some white dude in a suit come up behind him and grab him round the neck and kind of twist his head around. Eazy-P’s head twisted around for real and I heard his neck break, but when I turn around there was no white dude there. Like, you can’t have your nec
k broke by a reflection, can you?”

  The news anchorwoman added, “Whoever was responsible for these inexplicable fatalities, the Eighty-third Street Gangster Crips released a surprise statement about an hour ago saying that they would no longer involve themselves in any kind of drug trafficking. An LAPD spokesperson gave this statement ‘a cautious welcome.’”

  Dan poured himself a cup of black coffee. It looked as if Vasili Krylov wasn’t wasting any time in expanding his drug empire. The crack cocaine industry in south Los Angeles was worth millions. He wondered which Crip set would be next on Miska Vedma’s hit list—the Grape Street Crips or the PJ Crips. If it wasn’t simply a case of one bunch of drug traffickers being taken over by another, he would have given it a “cautious welcome,” too.

  He dressed and went downstairs to see Annie. He found her in her kitchen wearing a Doris Day–style blouse with the collar turned up and pale green capris. She was boiling a sticky green liquid in a saucepan, while Malkin was sitting on the windowsill, trying frantically to catch a mosquito.

  “That smells interesting.”

  “Sea holly. Some people call it erengoes. It’s an aphrodisiac. You boil it in sugar until it caramelizes. I sell boxes and boxes of it, especially at my book circle.”

  She came up to him and laid her hands on his shoulders. “I just needed to do something normal. I was so upset by last night, I couldn’t sleep.”

  Dan grimaced. “I have to go see Rosa. I don’t know what I’m going to say to her. Maybe you could come along. A woman’s touch, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure. I can bring her something to calm her down, too—some white bean and orange cake.”

  Dan said, “I had a call from my dad this morning. He wants to me to visit him, and he’d like you to come along. I think he has some angle on how we can deal with these witches.”

  “In that case, what are we waiting for? Hey, Malkin—leave that poor mosquito alone. Even insects have a right to life. Well, apart from maggots.”

  They spent more than an hour and a half with Rosa. She trembled, but she didn’t shed a single tear. All the same, Dan could tell how deeply shocked she was. The crying would come later, when they had left. The crying would probably go on for the rest of her life.

  At about a quarter of eleven, Rosa’s cousin Carilla came around, a gentle young woman with wavy black hair and a dark crimson dress. She was just as shocked as Rosa to hear that Ernie had been killed, but she told Dan and Annie that she would take Rosa to stay with her aunt for a while, and collect Carlo and Sancho from school.

  “That was pretty grim,” said Annie, as they drove to Pasadena.

  “Tell me about it. Poor Rosa. I don’t know how she’s going to manage without Ernie. They first met when they were in high school.” He paused, and then he said, “I don’t know how I’m going to manage without Ernie.”

  Dan’s father was sitting out on his balcony when they arrived at the Stage Performers’ Retirement Home, feeding millet to his canary. He was wearing a maroon-and-green striped bathrobe, and a maroon-spotted cravat.

  “So this is Annie! You told me how clever she was, but you didn’t tell me how pretty she was!”

  “I didn’t want you getting ideas, you old dog.”

  They sat down together in white basketwork chairs, and Dan’s father rang his bell for fruit juice and sodas. “That was a hell of a business last night. At least they haven’t been stupid enough to send in the National Guard.”

  “They don’t have a clue what to do,” Dan told him. “I think the governor wanted to send in the troops, but the mayor warned him not to. The mayor’s seen those witches in action first hand, and I think he’d prefer to negotiate.”

  “Wise man. No good trying to put a fire out with gasoline.”

  Dan watched him feeding his canary for a while. Then he said, “So…you’ve thought of a way we can get rid of these witches?”

  “I think so. I said I think so. I can’t give you any guarantee, but it’s worth a try. It mainly depends on how much of a risk you’re prepared to take and how proficient this young lady is at working any kind of genuine magic.”

  “Like I told you, Dad, Annie managed to catch at least one Rebecca Greensmith out of the four of them. And we think that Annie may possess some kind of magical power that even she isn’t aware of, because Rebecca Greensmith seems pretty damn anxious to put her out of the picture.”

  “All the same,” said Dan’s father, “I wouldn’t like anything to happen to you. Either of you.”

  “I don’t think that any of the witches can do me any harm,” Annie reassured him. “Not directly, anyhow. And I think I have a duty to try to stop them. It was what my grandmother and my mother would have expected of me. Being able to work magic—it’s not just a parlor trick. It’s a calling.”

  “You mean, unlike sawing women in half and pulling bunches of chrysanthemums out of your ass.”

  Annie smiled. “I didn’t mean that at all, Mr. Fisher. I know what a great illusionist you are.”

  Dan’s father shrugged. “Thanks for the compliment. But you and me both know that it’s trickery and not genuine magic.”

  “So what’s the deal for getting rid of the witches?” asked Dan.

  “Part trickery and part genuine magic. I was giving it all some serious thought, when it suddenly came back to me the time I spent in New Orleans, back in the early 1960s, playing at the Saenger Theater on North Rampart Street. Backstage I got talking to a healer and a shaman named Dr. Henry, who showed me one or two tricks in exchange for one or two tricks of mine. The cut-your-own-head-off trick, that was nifty.

  “I was curious about voodoo, and Dr. Henry told me that he had broken up a coven of voodoo witches in the mid-1950s in Terrebonne Parish, west of New Orleans. There were seven of them, so he said, and they were kicking up all kinds of trouble, setting fire to people’s houses and stealing money and jewelry, and if anybody tried to stop them the witches would stop their hearts with a pendulum or choke them on their own blood.

  “This Dr. Henry was unofficially asked by the local sheriff to see what he could do to get rid of these witches. So he took his stage assistant, who was a very pretty girl called Emmeline, if I recall correctly, and they hunted this coven down one at a time. That was the secret, he said. Pick them off individual-like, because together they have a combined power that is far too much for any one person to overcome.”

  “So what did he do?” asked Dan.

  “He and Emmeline followed each of the witches until they got them alone. Then Emmeline would distract the witch with one of her conjuring tricks, while Dr. Henry would work a voodoo spell on her. I don’t see any reason why you and Annie here couldn’t do the same—except that you could do the distracting, while Annie worked the spell.”

  Dan looked dubious. “I’m pretty rusty when it comes to magic. I haven’t done any serious tricks for years.”

  “Then let me bring you back up to speed,” said his father. “Witches are human beings, after all—they’re just as impressed by conjuring tricks as anybody else. You only need to capture their attention for a couple of seconds—just long enough for Annie to get her spell in first.”

  “I don’t know,” said Dan. “Do you honestly believe it will work?”

  “I think it might,” Annie put in. “So long as I use the right magic for each witch. I can use voodoo against Michelange DuPriz, but I need to use Uitoto magic against Lida Siado and Russian mirror magic against Miska Vedma. Otherwise, my spells won’t have any effect. It would be like trying to exorcize a Roman Catholic demon with a Hindu incantation.”

  “Here, let me show you this one,” said Dan’s father. He unfastened the catch on his canary’s cage and reached inside. “Come on, Sylvester. Come on, boy. I call him boy, but for all I know he could be a girl. I’ve never been prurient enough to look.”

  He took the canary off its perch and cupped it in his hand. He tucked its head under its wing and started to stroke it with his finge
r, very gently.

  “You know something—in France in the fifteenth century, they used to pluck chickens when they were still alive. Pluck them, take all their feathers off. Then they used to paint them with butter and cold basting juices, tuck their heads under their wings like I’ve done with Sylvester here, and turn them around and around until they fell asleep.

  “Then they brought these sleeping chickens to the dinner table surrounded by real roast chickens. They’d give them a prod, and the birds would jump up and run down the table, upsetting everybody’s drinks. Pretty hilarious, huh?”

  The canary’s eyes closed in less than a minute. Dan’s father held it up so that Dan and Annie could see it. Then he pulled off his cravat and loosely covered Sylvester.

  “Poor little canary. At least he’s going to die in his sleep.”

  He gently closed his fingers around his cravat. Then he raised his arm and began to crush it in his fist, tighter and tighter.

  Annie said, “Oh my God. That poor little bird.”

  “Ex-bird,” Dan’s father corrected. His fist was clenched so tightly that there were white spots on his knuckles.

  He kept his fist uplifted for a moment longer. Then he suddenly opened his fingers and whipped away the cravat. The canary flew up into the air, chirping, and he snatched at it and caught it, and placed it tenderly back on its perch.

  “So how did you do that?” Dan asked.

  “Easy. Sylvester was asleep, so when I lifted my arm up, I dropped him straight down my sleeve. I only had to shake him a little to wake him up. The point is, people always want to think the worst. They want to believe that I crushed him.”

  “And you really think that these witches are going to fall for tricks like that?”

  “Why not? You did, didn’t you—both of you, and you’re much more skeptical than your average person in the street about conjuring tricks and magic.”