by Julia French
The fire had been out for hours but a pair of embers still shone among the dead ashes in the darkened fireplace. Like faceted stars, the embers flickered in the dim room, and he wondered that they had survived for so long without more wood to feed them. Were they an omen or perhaps a message from his great grandfather? Did they signify a blessing or a warning? He held his breath, the better to observe the bits of glowing light.
“True, what’s up?” came Rachel’s voice from behind him. “It’s so cold.”
“The fire’s gone out. I was fixing to start it again.”
He picked up a piece of kindling, but for some reason he could not bring himself to reach forward and lay it on the dead fire. His hand hovered over the ashes.
The embers blinked.
Sweat pricking the palms of his hands, True drew back from the hearth as the ashes began to stir. A sooty shape was taking form, the elongated skull and pointed beak coalescing first in charcoal and then turning into leathery skin as the figure grew solid. The claws at the tips of the bat-wings scrabbled on the bricks of the hearth as the pterodactyl crutched itself out of the fireplace and flopped onto the wooden floor. A cloud of ash billowed as the wrinkled wings began to flap. Like a newly hatched butterfly the pterodactyl seemed to gain strength with every wing beat, and when it stood erect with wings fully unfurled, the creature was taller than True.
Behind him, Rachel cringed away from the beast. Her retreating move seemed to trigger an instinct within the prehistoric brain and the animal lunged after her, leading with the deadly spear of its beak.
“Stone! A mountain between you and me!” But True’s best warding-off gesture had no effect. The pterodactyl continued its trajectory forward, but as the beak reached his face he felt himself falling. Rachel was pulling him down on top of herself, out of danger. Missing its target and off balance, the prehistoric bird leaped over their prone bodies and whirled about for another try.
Underneath him Rachel squirmed. True got to his feet just as the animal launched itself at them again. It glided across the room, wings outspread, and struck his chest with clawed feet. The weight of the beast made him stagger backward, and the murderous beak stabbed and slashed at his head. The claws strained toward him, tangling in his belt loops, and he strained his stomach away from the scrabbling feet.
There was a crash from behind him. Rachel had stumbled over the coffee table. The pterodactyl swiveled its pointed head in her direction, and True smashed a fist into its face.
“Salt! Under the sofa!” he yelled.
“I’ve got it!” Rachel held up a black stone jar that he’d hidden.
The pterodactyl beat its wings together, enveloping True in the dusky membranes. Clutching a handful of membrane, he hurled himself to the floor and rolled on top of the animal, clamping his hands around the long snout.
“Throw it!”
Rachel flung the contents of the stone jar at the pterodactyl. Whatever the sacred salt landed on, it ate away. Gray steam spurted from hundreds of minuscule holes in the pterodactyl’s hide and the creature writhed and bucked in agony, but True kept his tight grip on the snout. It seemed like hours but was only minutes until, greatly weakened by hundreds of tiny wounds, the pterodactyl flapped its bat-wings once more, and the red light died from the ember eyes.
True’s face bore a purpling bruise from forehead to chin where one of the creature’s wings had struck him, and his arm muscles ached from the effort of struggle. His chest was covered with scratches where the pterodactyl’s feet had caught in his belt loops, and he was purely grateful that it hadn’t grabbed him lower down.
“Oh, God, True.” Rachel had found a cloth and was dabbing at the cut on his face. “It wasn’t really a giant bird. It was that familiar. Did you see its eyes?”
“That troublemaker came straight from Joshua to us.” True turned his head aside from the cloth.
“That was magic salt, wasn’t it?”
“The salt protected us from that evil thing tonight, but we’d be a lot safer if that familiar was dead.”
She followed the movement of his head and renewed her dabbing. “But you killed it.”
“You can only kill a familiar in its original body, the one you saw at Joshua’s house.” True took her hand and gently plucked the cloth from her fingers. “When the bird-monster died, the familiar’s spirit went back into its original body.”
With her other hand she reached for the can of salve on the counter. “Do you think it’ll try again?”
“It won’t want to. Today we gave it something to think about,” he told her, trading her a kiss for the can of salve, which he placed back upon the counter.
Rachel had been right. As surely as a red flag in front of a bull, his locking spell had angered Joshua into striking back. There was no way in hell he could allow Joshua to believe his little trick had frightened them off, but in order to impress upon the witch man the fact that the pterodactyl had been only a minor inconvenience he had to send a powerful reply, and to send the reply best suited the occasion he needed Rachel to go back to sleep. It took a short while to persuade her back into bed, and when she was safely asleep True went once more into the living room and completed his errand by retrieving the needle and thread. The stone jar was lying on its side by the sofa. Not a single grain of salt remained, for the monster had absorbed it all.
For the second time Rachel had been right. It was magic salt, but he was reluctant to share the circumstances surrounding it. A long time ago before he had come to Massachusetts to live, he had prepared this batch of salt according to his great grandfather’s directions, against some future time of need.
The recipe required holy water from the local church but the priest, who held a grudge against the Gannetts, refused his permission. The following night was moonless, and like a thief in the night True had come back to the church, forced the lock, and taken what he needed. It was an act born of desperation and fear.
To atone for it he had emptied all the coins in his pocket onto the pulpit, but the memory of his theft shamed him. It was one of the few dishonest acts he had committed in his life and one for which he was deeply sorry.
Despite this burden of guilt, however, he had travelled to Massachusetts with greater peace of mind, knowing that with the jar of blessed salt in his possession he was equal to any misfortune or disaster. Now it was gone, and he had nothing to rely upon except himself.
The white candles were waiting for him on the kitchen table. He would have preferred to use some of Joshua’s fingernail clippings or a few strands of his hair, but the address torn from the envelope Rachel had taken would have to do. Holding the scrap of paper against one candle, he put the second candle on top of the first, forming a cross with the bit of paper in the middle. To fasten the candles together he pushed four long hat pins through the wax. Two peppercorns pressed into one end of the wax figure formed the eyes of the poppet, and a splinter of cinnamon stick the mouth.
The primitive doll barely resembled a human being but that didn’t matter, because he had learned that his strength of will mattered more than the objects that he used. Next he took up the spool of red thread, unwound a yard, snapped it off, and placed one end of the thread on top of the poppet’s “head.” He wound the thread around the white wax of the forehead, around the peppercorn eyes and over the mouth, and down the neck of the effigy, pulling the thread snug until a lip of wax oozed over it. He snapped off more pieces of thread and wound them around and down the body, making sure they were as tight as he could make them without ruining the shape of the doll. When he was finished, the image of the witch man was bound from top to bottom in red sewing thread.
He shut his eyes, the better to concentrate. “Joshua Lambrecht! Joshua Lambrecht! From earth we all came and to earth we return. If Heaven won’t take you, in Hell you will burn. Obey my will and be thou cursed, bound with my thread
, your heart will burst!”
The power that built up inside him started to leak from his solar plexus, turning the air around him milky white. “Death is your lover, Death is your friend, call for him now and your pain will end,” he whispered, and the cloud of power in the air gathered itself into a softball-size bubble. Now the bubble hung level with his face. He opened his eyes and brought his hand down with a chopping motion between himself and the bubble.
Released from its creator and sent on its way, the force bubble turned inward upon itself and vanished.
Another spell sent on its way, another job well done. True moved his fingers and found they were stuck together by a greasy web of melted wax and thread. He freed himself from the remains of the poppet and glanced at the bedroom door, behind which Rachel was soundly asleep. He had the time and the material. Why not do the other thing too?
Only by a long leap of imagination could anybody have thought that the shape of a mandrake root resembled a man’s body. The forked vegetable looked like a cross between a ginger root and a carrot. It was heavy medicine, as a Native American friend of his had termed it, not to be used lightly, but there was a time and a place for everything. Two flat thumbtacks for eyes, a horizontal crease with his thumbnail for a mouth, and the root looked a little more human. True had no artifact from Mark’s person, but he had something almost as good. Rummaging in another drawer he found the wedding ring that had slid off Rachel’s finger when he had carried her into his room. Significantly, she hadn’t noticed it was gone. Positioning the ring in the center of the doll’s chest, he forced the golden circle deep into the woody vegetable matter with both thumbs.
“Mark Jeffries! Mark Jeffries! My judgment comes upon your head! Bleed and die as Rachel bled.” He summoned up the memory of Rachel as he had found her, cold and still under her bed, and the surge of his hatred penetrated the likeness in his hands. There was a slight movement under his fingers, which meant the spell was beginning to work. He let his anger rise and fill his heart, and he funneled it all into the mandrake doll.
There was a knock at the door.
His chest heaving with suppressed emotion, True closed his eyes and allowed the power to thin and ebb away until the air around him was calm. He put the mandrake down, concealing it under a dishcloth.
Later, he promised the root silently, and rose to answer the door.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“I promise I’m not cheating you, sir! Your total is thirty nine ninety seven.”
“The washtub and the cleaver are on sale.”
“That was last week. This week the lawn and leaf bags are twenty-five cents off.” The second shift clerk, a straw-haired young man with pimples and wire-rimmed glasses, held out a hand for the money.
Joshua bared his teeth in a smile and whispered three words.
The clerk’s eyes started to bulge. A thin stream of mucus appeared at the corner of one nostril.
“Now, what was that you said about the sale?”
“That-that sale was l-l-l-last week,” the boy stammered, looking around him desperately.
“Couldn’t you make an exception for me? I didn’t know about last week.”
“I’m not allowed—” The clerk’s words choked off as his tongue swelled, filling his mouth and blocking his air passages. He slumped over the counter, a trickle of foam creeping down a corner of his mouth.
The line of people behind Joshua started to murmur. He scooped up his purchases, piled them inside the washtub and dropped two twenty dollar bills on the counter in front of the clerk, whose pale features had developed a bluish tinge. The murmuring grew louder.
“Is that guy having a heart attack? It looks like a heart attack…”
“Don’t you know a stroke when you see one?”
“It can’t be a stroke! He’s too young.”
“Anyone can have a stroke, and you’re an idiot.”
“Someone do CPR!”
“I’m not kissing any guy. My wife would kill me!”
“Call 911, then.”
“I don’t have time. My lunch hour’s almost over.”
“Keep the change,” Joshua told the dying clerk as he left the store. Behind him, the customers continued to argue.
It struck as Joshua closed the trunk of his car—a searing pain in his head so intense it made his vision blur. He wrenched the door open and sank into the driver’s seat, waiting for it was to subside. However, the headache didn’t subside but spread, the muscles in his temples contracting and tightening like iron bands. Was it a migraine? But he had never been prone to migraines. Was it a stroke or a brain tumor? As far as he knew, he was in perfect health.
Whatever it was, it was getting worse by the second. His stomach lurched and a gout of warm saliva gushed into his mouth. He knew he was going to vomit, and he also knew that when he did so the pain would increase from the movement of his head. In a futile gesture to try and stem the tide he clapped a hand to his mouth and felt the bulging roll of flesh that rose upon his cheek. Gritting his teeth against the pain of movement, he tilted the rear view mirror until his face was reflected in the glass, and fell back against the seat with a groan. Deep scarlet lines deformed his forehead, eyelids, cheeks, nose, and mouth. The lines ran across his features in horizontal corrugations, and the skin and muscle between them was turning purple. An animal sound of pain and rage escaped him. He was in deep trouble, supernatural trouble, and he knew from where and from whom it had come.
The pressure inside his skull increased, and his head felt about to explode. It was getting harder to breathe, to move his eyelids, his mouth, even his mind. The words, what were the son-of-a-bitching words?
“Adonai, Lazail, Salmai, Elohim,” he forced out between numbed lips, the bobbing of his Adam’s apple telegraphing bright shards of agony to the nerve endings in his neck. “I reject and repudiate this curse from him who is my enemy. Nebira, Sargatas, raise thy mighty strength in my defense.” A whiplash of pain curled around his shoulder blades and struck his breastbone like the bite of a cobra. His fingers and toes tingled from lack of air.
“Bethol, Adonai, Octinimos, Adonai,” he wheezed, and the constriction in his chest began to ease. “Send thy legions to protect thy faithful servant who is in peril! Let thy power be as a shield from all who would do me harm. Do not forget me in my hour of need, I who have always done well by thee.”
Immediately when he finished the incantation, he felt the muscles in his torso release, and as the powerful counterspell worked its way upward, his neck and face muscles relaxed, the ridged rolls of flesh receding into their proper contours and colors. Another look in the car’s mirror showed him that the red stripes, the remaining marks of his ordeal, were fading fast.
Obviously Iskus had fucked up. The hillbilly’s dead body should have been stiffening in rigor mortis by now, but apparently True was very much alive and kicking. For a moment Joshua was tempted to respond then and there-since he had called them to his aid the Powers of the Air were hovering around the car, awaiting further orders-but he had to stay on task.
Work before play, he reminded himself. It wouldn’t do to forget his priorities now, when he was so very close to his prize.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
They found him hangin’ from the apple tree in his yard.
The man who had come to deliver the message to True stayed long enough to say his piece and then left quickly, trotting back along the woodland trail as though the Devil were at his heels. True had only meant for Billy to leave the girl alone. The resulting torment he had set in motion had been too great for Billy to bear, and the thing had played out too late for him to remedy the situation or even know that anything had happened.
It was tempting to put the blame for Billy’s death on the girl. If he could convince himself it was her fault, his conscience would shut up and let him be—
but if he hadn’t been so eager to accept her lying words against Billy the boy would be alive. It was a plain fact, stark in its ugliness, and Rachel’s words rang in his head. How many times had he judged and condemned people, all the while telling himself he was doing the right thing? How many of them truly deserved what he meted out to them like an avenging angel? Judge not, lest ye be judged. He had no business doing what he’d done, no business at all. He was no better than Joshua.
True moved to lay his head down on the kitchen table and felt the shape of the mandrake under the dishcloth by his right hand. Without looking, he groped for the thumbtacks that formed the face of the crude figure and pulled them out one by one, and the rage-force that he had imbued into the mandrake hissed out of the tiny holes. Juice and pulp jammed under his fingernails as he pried Rachel’s wedding ring from the chest of the figure. He would have thrown the mandrake away, but he had to bury a fully formed poppet in a tiny grave as if it were a real person, and as soon as he could get hold of himself enough to perform the rite he would do so.
His face throbbed. If Rachel were awake she would have gotten him ice, but then he would have to look in her eyes and submit to her loving care, all the while knowing the harm that he had set in motion. At least Joshua was a known quantity. There was no doubt about his guilt or any possibility of a mistake. If ever any man deserved the worst, it was the witch man, and he had to be stopped before he could hurt or kill more innocent people. True knew that to overcome Joshua he needed to fight fire with fire, but did that justify doing more evil? Even if he believed it was the right way, the only way?
A gentle hand fell upon his shoulder.
Great grandfather, I’ve done bad things, he confessed, and felt his anguish soothed.
Everyone does, grandson…what it means to be human.
I have to do one more bad thing.
