by Ivan Blake
Chris pointed to the table. “Is all that stuff from Indonesia?”
“Most of it, yes. It’s my little piece of Tana Toraja.”
“Is...?” He pointed to a large jar with a yellow lump floating in a cloudy gray liquid.
“Yes, it’s a foot. It’s my great-grandmother’s. Father says it will bring me luck.”
“That’s so...” He wanted to say gross, but he didn’t want to blow his chances with Mallory. “So you really do believe in this magic stuff.”
“Of course, like my father. It’s just who we are. Not my mother, though, she hates it.”
“She doesn’t seem too happy with your father.”
“You see what I have to put up with!”
“Your mother seems nice.” What a lame thing to say. In fact, Mrs. Dahlman seemed like a drunk and an emotional train wreck.
“She’s not normally so bad. She got a letter from Father yesterday saying he wouldn’t be home for Christmas. Of course, he hardly ever comes home anymore. Still, every year he says he’ll come for Christmas and then cancels. I’m used to it, but Mother always goes to pieces. She’s pathetic.”
“It must be hard for her.”
“Why? She doesn’t love him. She’s just jealous of his other family.”
“His what?”
“She’s convinced Father has another family in Toraja. He spends most of the year out there, carrying oil from drilling platforms in the Indian Ocean into Makassar, so when he’s in port, Mother thinks he lives in his home village with a Torajan family.”
“What do you think?”
“So he has another woman there, so what? He’s a man after all, and you men have your needs. Just as long as he keeps sending me presents...”
“You look fantastic by the way.”
“And?”
“And so sexy.”
He was mesmerized by the huge mounds of soft flesh bulging above the black silk cups of her corset.
“You can touch them if you like.”
His heart pounded like a pile driver. He found it hard to breathe as he moved his right hand toward her chest. He had imagined her breasts would be soft and delicate, like two living things, but as he caressed them, they seemed disappointingly hard, bound as they were in the rigid black corset. They gave not an inch to gentle pressure. Even so, the image of his hand on Mallory’s enormous breasts was an absolute dream.
He closed his eyes to savor the moment and moved one hand slowly all over the front of her outfit. Then he felt Mallory take his other hand and gently guide it toward her thigh. He kept his eyes closed as she moved his fingers slowly along the inside of her leg. Mallory sighed, and Chris opened his eyes slightly. Mallory was smiling, her breath shallow and lips parted slightly. He could not help but lunge forward and kiss her on the mouth. He withdrew his right hand from her breasts, wrapped his arm around her, and drew her to his chest, even as his left hand continued to creep along her thigh. Then Mallory’s own hand came to rest on Chris’s crotch. He gasped mid-kiss. Only by the greatest exercise of will did he manage not to make...well...an enormous fool of himself.
“Mallory,” he whispered, drawing away from her. She was staring directly into his face with the most lascivious and self-satisfied smile, like she was enjoying a moment of absolute triumph.
“And some people don’t believe in magic.” She purred like a jungle cat.
“What?”
“My spell, it worked sooo well.”
“What spell?”
“My love spell. I’ve conquered you. You want me.”
“You didn’t need a spell for that.”
“But I made you my slave. You had no will of your own.”
“Your breasts took care of that.” He reached across to stroke the tops of her breasts again.
She drew back. “Nope, sorry, the experiment is over.”
“What experiment?”
“I’m trying out different spells my father sent me.”
“Your father sent you a spell for teasing boyfriends?”
“No, of course not. In his letters—he writes to me almost every week—he always includes a spell for something. It’s our little secret. Spells for finding things, for healing cuts, for punishing evil deeds, for clouding people’s judgment, and like tonight, for capturing somebody’s will and making them do my bidding.”
“You think I was doing your bidding? It sure seemed the other way around to me!”
“Did it?”
“You’re incredible,” Chris said as he put a hand back on her thigh.
“No, Christopher. No more tonight, but we’ll have other opportunities to...experiment.”
“God, you’re so…” and words failed him. “They warned me about you.”
“Oh?” She pulled away. The icy look in her eyes should have been enough to shut him up. “Who warned you about me?”
“Well, the lady who lives up on the mountain for one...”
“Mrs. Holcomb,” Mallory said with such malice.
Chris knew at once he’d made a mistake.
Mallory announced, “You have to go now; it’s my bedtime and I have church tomorrow.”
“Church? You’re kidding.” Chris almost laughed.
Her face hardened, then softened slightly. “Oh, and after you leave, don’t you dare go around the house to watch me get undressed for bed.”
With that, Chris couldn’t get out of the house fast enough.
At the front door, they kissed. Mallory stroked his cheek, and whispered, “I think this evening was the start of something special.” She opened the door and pushed him outside. With a wink and a coquettish wave, she closed the door.
* * * *
Chris watched through the window as Mallory turned out the last light in the living room and returned to her bedroom. He then ran to the end of the building, around behind the garages, and down to the end of the lawn. There he stood in the dark, just beyond the pool of light from Mallory’s window.
Mallory turned off the lamps in her room one by one until only a bedside lamp remained. She paused by her bed, and stared out into the night, as if waiting for audience members to be seated. Then the show began.
She pulled off her jacket and tossed it on the bed. She ran her hands down over her breasts and hips and eased the tight little skirt down to the floor.
She walked slowly to the bureau and ran a brush through her hair. Then she crossed to the bathroom and disappeared. For an instant, Chris ached with disappointment. Mallory reappeared and tossed her stockings over the vanity chair. She walked to the window and examined her reflection. Even at this distance, Chris could see the self-satisfied smile. Then she reached behind her back and began unfastening the corset. When the sides fell free, she clutched it to her chest and crossed to the bedside table. In one movement, she let the corset drop away from her wondrous breasts, and switched off the light.
Chris struggled to catch his breath, then...
“Great show, huh?”
“What the—”
Christ! Rudy Dahlman! “Same every night.”
“You’re sick!” Chris said.
“Yeah, my arm, it’s bad.”
“No, I mean you’re really sick,” Chris said in horrified amazement.
“You think? I’m not the one putting on the show.”
“But...you’re watching your own sister, for god sake!”
“Give me a break. You actually believe she’s my sister? That would be gross.”
What the hell did he mean? Before he could ask, Rudy disappeared.
Chris felt dirty and sick to the stomach. He was half way home before he managed to shake the creepy feeling in his gut.
The Willard house was in darkness when he got back. Thank god, because he was still shaking and, well, still kind of aroused. Chris would not, for all the world, have wanted to answer the question, “So how was your date?” He crept into the house and up the ladder into the attic space.
Since there wasn’t headroom enough fo
r Chris to stand, he had to crawl from the hatch to the bedside. He switched on the lamp and got an unnerving surprise. Someone had tidied his bed...and put a stack of old magazines on the pillow—chiropractic magazines. The top issue had a picture on its cover of an elegant young man in a lab coat with the caption, Researcher of the Year—Dr. Ronald Meath.
“What the hell?” Chris’s parents would never have climbed into the attic, and his siblings would have been too scared because of the ghost stories he’d told them. Chris turned off the lamp and looked out the small window into the darkness. Goose flesh rose on his arms.
A tiny light was moving slowly along the tracks.
* * * *
Meath’s been up here...in my room! Goddamn! How the hell? How could he have gotten in and then out again without being seen? And why? What did Meath want? Was this some kind of joke...or a revenge thing? What the hell was Meath up to?
On the premise that the best defense is a strong offence, Chris slipped back down through the house, grabbed a heavy coat and gloves then headed out into the night. He didn’t want to chance being seen by Meath on the tracks, so he crossed them and dropped down onto the beach. The tide was out, and by the scant light of a gibbous moon, he picked his way gingerly over the slippery rocks and around the tidal pools to approach the goatman’s house from below. At Meath’s place, the beach was a good ten feet below the rail bed, so Chris had to scrabble up a muddy bank and crawl through long grass past the pen to see what the old man was up to.
The lamp atop the tall pole in the backyard was on, and Meath was already halfway up the path from the tracks to his barn. He was dragging a wheelbarrow with all his might, and in it, the same large red sack—this time full to bursting. The load gave Meath enormous difficulty.
“Help me here!”
Chris’s heart skipped a beat! Was Meath calling to him? Had he been seen?
The back door flew open. “No!” his wife screamed.
“Get out here now.”
“No, I told you I would never help you do this again, never.”
“You will and right now...if you know what’s...”
“All right, all right, but this is the last time, I swear. It’s horrible, horrible.”
She pulled on a coat and stomped down the path, visibly upset. “I have nightmares every time you make me do this.”
When she reached him, Meath did the unexpected; he embraced her. “Sorry, old girl. Sorry I yell so much. Under a lot of pressure right now. I think we’ve got a good one this time though.”
She looked up into his face and patted his cheek. “I know, I know.”
“When I get my procedure right, you just wait, this will all have been worthwhile, I promise.”
“Then let’s get on with it.” They kissed and then turned to the wheelbarrow.
“You push while I lift and pull,” Meath said. “Yes, that’s doing it.”
“Who is this?”
“Arthur Bent.”
“What, the old church deacon from over at Perkin’s Pond, the—”
“Yes, the fellow who looked like a tree stump.”
“Aw, he was nice.”
“He was a pig. His heart attack was long overdue.”
Pushing and pulling the wheelbarrow and sweating and cursing as they did, the goatman and his wife managed to wrestle their load up to the small barn and disappear inside. As soon as the doors were closed, Chris ran across the tracks and up the path to the back of the barn. Light from the lamp pole did not reach the back or the far side of the building, so Chris slid along the end and around the corner. Half way along the dark side, slivers of light from inside shone through cracks in the wall. He crept to the light and found an old window covered over with rusted tin siding. He squinted through a crack between the tin and the window frame.
It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the light inside and his brain a minute longer to process what he saw.
Several bare bulbs dangling from the rafters lighted the interior. Filthy straw and goat crap covered the dirt floor. Old milking machines, dented wash tubs, rusty buckets and empty milk cans were piled carelessly in the corners. Wires and electrical devices and every kind of circuitry littered a workbench along the back wall. Assorted rakes and shovels and saws and axes hung on the walls, most of them in rough and rusted condition. All was pretty much what Chris had expected to see in the goatman’s barn. What he hadn’t expected to see was an enormous old barber chair in the center of the room. The antique monstrosity obviously had pride of place in the cluttered and filthy building.
The huge chair stood on a small plywood platform no more than six inches above the dirt floor. The chair had splintered wooden arms, cracked black leather upholstery, and a rusted iron foot rest. It stood atop a steel center pole and had been raised to its maximum height so anybody sitting in it would be at least four feet off the ground. The whole contraption appeared top heavy and would have been quite unstable had its ornate steel base not been bolted to the plywood platform. A tangle of straps, belts and metal lattice was attached to the chair, and several ropes and pulleys hung from the rafters above it. The contraption looked for all the world like an electric chair!
A small white metal table on wheels of the kind one might see in a doctor’s office stood on one side of the chair, with trays of dirty surgical instruments arrayed upon it. On the other side of the chair stood a second table, this one in wood with four-by-four legs and a thick slab for a top; it reminded Chris of a butcher’s block, especially with the huge rusted meat cleaver stuck in it.
Meath had positioned his wheelbarrow in front of the platform, and was trying to pull the filthy sack away from its contents. Meath’s wife, standing nearby, said, “This is always the worst part.”
A bloated, gray carcass emerged from the sack. It shifted in the wheelbarrow like a nightmarish fruit jelly taking the shape of a mold.
Mrs. Meath gasped. “Damn, what a mess. Wasn’t he laid out?”
“His family didn’t want an open coffin, so I didn’t have to clean him up.”
“What’s that smell?” Thick yellow liquid was smeared all over the thighs. “Oh he’s covered in...”
“No. I evacuated him. It’s just preservative leaking out. Always happens, and usually from everywhere. We’re lucky this time.”
“And you couldn’t let it settle before you brought him home?”
“It settled in the grave. The ride on the rails moved stuff around.” As he spoke, Meath grabbed one of the ropes dangling above the barber chair and pulled it down to the wheelbarrow. Then he got a sheet of canvas from a peg on the back wall. “You’ll have to lift him while I slide this underneath. First the legs...”
“And look straight at that mess, yeah sure.”
As his wife lifted the spindly legs, Meath pushed the canvas between the gray flesh of the man’s buttocks and the rusted metal of the wheelbarrow.
“All right, now under the arms.” And they both moved to the other end of the body and heaved.
That done, Meath bunched the corners of the sheet together over Bent’s distended belly, and hooked the rope from the rafters through the grommets in the four corners of the canvas. Then he grabbed the other end of the rope wound through the pulleys, said, “Ready,” and started to pull.
The enormous corpse rose slowly, bumping against the wheelbarrow, the platform and the chair as it did.
“When he’s higher than the chair, you push him forward until he’s right over the seat.”
“I thought you had a pulley for this.”
“It’s jammed.”
“Why am I not surprised?” She went to the back of the barn and took down a long-handled shovel from the wall, then put the jagged edge of its rusted blade against the canvas sling, and pushed.
Once the huge carcass dangled in roughly the right position, Meath lowered it into the barber’s chair. He then unhooked the canvas sling from the rope, and pulled its corners away from the corpse. Hindquarters squeezed beneath the armrests
like sausages about to burst their casings. “Get me that rope,” Meath said. “I’ll have to lash him to the seat to ensure he’s properly aligned.” Moments later, he stepped away from the corpse to admire his work.
Arthur Bent—the color of putty, with large brown blotches where preservative had pooled beneath his skin, eyes fixed in an unseeing stare, jaw still wide in a last cry of excruciating pain, yellow liquid smeared across his rump and thighs—sat tied to the barber chair with his head held fast by an incongruous pink headband to a tall metal lattice extending upward from the back of the barber’s chair.
“We talked to him last Easter,” the old lady said. “He liked my hat.”
“You can go now.”
“Thank God. I’m going to bed.” She started for the door.
“No. I’ll need you again when I’m finished, to get him onto the table.”
“Oh God.” She left the barn, slamming the door behind her.
Meath went to the workbench, pushed wires and tools aside to make space and then lifted a large, metal army-surplus footlocker from the lower shelf up onto the bench. He opened the locker and took out a filthy lab coat, which he put on rather ceremoniously. He also took out a ring binder and a tape recorder, placing them on the metal side table. Then he plugged the machine into an extension cord duck taped to the leg of the table, and pressed Record.
“My subject this evening is Arthur Bent from Perkin’s Pond, a man as wide as he was short and who smoked and staggered about on legs too slight to support his immense weight. Bent died of a massive coronary on Wednesday, November 6th, 1985, and was interred Friday, November 10th. Apart from the few bones I had to break to release them from rigor, the corpse has suffered only minor damage. I did crush one leg when I stepped on it lifting the specimen onto my cart. I’ve performed a most thorough spinal assessment, however, to reassure myself the cervical structure is intact and sufficient for my purposes.
“I shall now fit my Sacro-occipital Activator to the skull and collar bones.”
Meath pulled a second footlocker from beneath the workbench and carried it carefully to the platform as though it contained a priceless Faberge egg. He put the locker down, opened it, and carefully lifted out what appeared to be a hockey helmet inside a giant birdcage. Fastened to the base of the cage were football shoulder pads, a box with knobs and gauges and a tangle of gears and wires. For the next fifteen minutes, the goatman fitted the bizarre device over the head and shoulders of the cadaver, and tightened thumb screws into the forehead and metal straps around the throat. Then he connected various cables from the device to the wires and metal bands protruding from the barber chair. At last, the head and shoulders were encased in the birdcage contraption, and the chest and enormous belly were cinched to the chair by iron bands and leather belts. As Meath worked, he babbled into the tape machine.
