It would be really nice if the killer confessed—and turned out to be a local boy totally unrelated to HallowFest who'd popped Harm for totally mundane motives.
Unfortunately, a theory like that didn't wash. It couldn't. Harm had been killed right in our back yard, in a fashion that deserved at least a pairagraph in "America's Unsolved Mysteries," by someone who used at least some of the bells and whistles of our practices. This left only three possibilities:
1) It was a religiously-motivated ritual murder by one of our HallowFest Pagans. This one was pretty hard to believe. Human sacrifice is the stuff of lurid rumor and afternoon talk shows, not reality. Certainly the occult tradition holds that there is power innate in spilled blood, and some of the older grimoires — like the Tesoraria—talk about ritual murder, but only as a symbol. It's a long way from theory and tradition to cold steel in the night. And a degree of religious faith ardent enough to encompass human sacrifice was something I didn't think I could find in Vatican City, let alone at Paradise Lake.
2) It was a secularly-motivated killing of Harm by one of us tricked up to look like a ritual murder. There wasn't much reason
for this either, unless the killer was already preparing an insanity defense. I supposed I could come up with a real-world motive sooner or later if I tried, though —not that it would be up to me. The problem with this idea was that none of us was really local— except for HallowFest, we really didn't have much chance to rub up against Jesus Jackson Harm.
3) It was a murder by a non-Pagan local who was attempting to frame someone — anyone — at HallowFest for it. It might be mere chauvinism, but I liked this idea much better than either of the others. It had a lot of built-in flex, including the fact that I didn't have to worry about a motive—hadn't Fayrene said everyone hated Harm? And we had written indication of how much he'd hated us. Enough to die a martyr's death, secure in the glorious resurrection to come, just to cause us trouble?
Maybe. Or maybe he'd been an unwilling sacrifice.
Mindful of my might-be deputization, my next stop was the Registration cabin. One of Maidjene's other coveners, a woman I knew as Sabine, was there to direct newcomers in the right directions. She had a sheet of paper in front of her and was copying out Sunday's schedule for posting. There were a pile of parking permits and a box of name tags on the table and no other paperwork in sight. A boombox in the background was playing a Charlie Murphy tape. She handed me a copy of the program (collated at last).
"So what are you doing about registration?" I asked, stuffing the program into a pocket.
"Oh, we're just giving badges to everybody. It'll be okay. I guess they'll send out next year's mailing from last year's list."
Not that they'd have to, 1 realized, unless the Sheriffs Office got the bright idea of subpoenaing Maidjene's hard disk from her home computer. HallowFest had a high-tech backup for those well-and-truly-sought-after registration forms.
"So what'd she do with the paperwork?" I asked, hoping the question sounded harmless.
"Over there," Sabine said. "We're going to bum them tonight at the fire." She sounded so unconcerned that 1 wondered if I was the only one here who had all my marbles — or, at least, a different set than were in general issue. "Hey, are you the one that found that guy's body?"
"Yeah." I looked at the box. I knew what I was thinking and I hated myself for thinking it.
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"Isn't it great? I mean, not that he's dead" — Sabine didn't sound especially sincere — "but that they 're finally getting some of what happened to us."
There is a mythology still current in the NeoPagan Community— and immortalized in popular song—that during the "Burning Times" (roughly four centuries, beginning with Dame Janet Kyteler in 1324 and ending around the end of the eighteenth century) nine million European women were burned for the "sin" of "witchcraft."
In addition to smacking unpleasantly of one-upmanship on this century's better documented holocaust, it isn't true: there weren't nine million of them and they weren't burned. And of the several hundred thousand who did die by the rope, the rack, and even the stake, most were Jews, heretics, and the mentally ill. Of course, there may even have been a few Witches among them, but I like to think they wouldn't approve of their deaths being used as an excuse for moral insensibility by their spiritual descendants.
'That doesn't make it right," I said. My voice was hoarser than 1 liked to hear it.
She looked at me, her expression of satisfaction fading into something like alarm. Belle tells me I have no tact, and after all these years I'm beginning to suspect she's right. I did what I could to repair matters.
"Look, do you want me to cover for you here? It looks like there isn't much to do, and I'm not too interested in this set of workshops."
"Just about everybody's here," she agreed. "But maybe you could do, like, from three to five? Lx)me was supposed to, but he's got to go to town for a firewood run, on account of we couldn't get up there this morning."
"Yeah, sure," I said, not looking at the box again. It had a Kinko's logo on the side, and was the kind that holds a thousand #10 envelopes. It was taped up, and tied with ribbons like a Christmas package.
"I'll check with Maidjene, but thanks for asking at least," Sabine said. "Look, I'm sorry if that guy was, like, a friend of yours."
"Oh, no." Some of my best friends, as the saying goes, but that didn't include the Reverend Jackson Harm, and if I'd only read about his death in the paper I would probably have had something like Sabine's reaction, if only in the privacy of my own mind. "It's okay."
But it wasn't. Only understandable.
I went back to the cabin, feeling like I was going in circles in
more ways than the obvious. My palms were sweating, and I could still taste the burger I'd had for lunch, unhappy in its new home.
I like to think that it wouldn't have occurred to me if the box hadn't already been wrapped and tied like a virgin sacrifice. But if Maidjene was going to bum the records anyway, couldn't they just . . . disappear without anyone knowing?
And then the deputies would stop asking about them, and Maidjene wouldn't be arrested, and everything would be fine.
Right?
I knew what I planned to do and I hated myself. I was going to do my best to steal the HallowFest registrations before Maidjene burned them and turn them over to the police, unless something happened to stop me.
Why?
Because it was the lesser of two evils? Because it would save Maidjene from further hurt at a time she needed it least? Or was 1 just kidding myself? Maybe I was looking for a martyr's crown, too.
1 soothed my conscience by telling it there was no way Maidjene would take Sabine up on my offer to baby-sit after our conversation this morning. I told myself that even if she did, I wouldn't be able to get into the box. And as I was telling myself that, I was loading the inside pockets of my parka with enough copies of the Tree of Wisdom^ mail-order catalogue to equal the weight of what I hoped to steal, and a box-cutter and a tape roll to camouflage my theft.
Now that the long table and the boxes were gone, Julian's altar was set up on the folding tray-table he'd brought up. I looked down at my face in Julian's mirror. Oh, Goddess, don't let me fuck up, I pleaded silently. Let this be the right thing to do. Let my brains not have turned to Wheatena. And while You're at it, let me find out who the killer is so I don't have to do this at all
There was no answer, not that I was expecting one. But the air was charged with the numen I associate with good ritual. She was present, and She was listening, and I was acting in accordance with Her will.
1 tell myself.
The door to the cabin slammed open.
"Bast! Come quick!" Maidjene bawled.
I bailed out the door of the cabin and followed Maidjene in the direction of Mrs. Cooper's house. I could hear her gasping as she ran; she wouldn't have enough breath left over to answer questions.
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Murder
She didn't have to.
There was a crowd gathered in front of Mrs. Cooper's house. I heard them before I saw them. Maybe twenty people, a few of them ours. I saw Orm Klash, and a man named Ragnar, who I knew from other HallowFests, although I wasn't completely sure what his trad was. Ragnar is about the size of a backhoe and wears his hair in two long braids. But we weren't the only ones there.
Most of the people there were carrying signs — signs that said things like 'There Is Only 1 God" and "Witches Burn in Hell." One of them carried a blow-up photo of Harm clutching a Bible and looking insincere, but then almost anyone looks shifty in studio portraits.
Mrs. Cooper was standing on the porch, trying to be heard over the din. I put on speed and left Maidjene behind.
It's hard to reconstruct what happened next. At the time, everything seemed to happen at once, and all of it so loud and confused it was more bewildering than scary. And at the time I wasn't even sure who the demonstrators were; later I found out they were some of the more apocalyptic members of Harm's congregation, something 1 could have figured out for myself if I'd had the time.
Time. Everything comes down to time, in the end.
The demonstrator carrying Harm's picture climbed up on the porch. He had a megaphone in his other hand. Mrs. Cooper tried to push him off the porch. He started a long harangue through the megaphone; it merged with the rest of the noise. I heard various versions of it later; it was the usual sort of mudslinging about how we were evil and they were threatened, yadada, yadada, vamp till ready. The Pagans —and more were arriving every minute — began chanting 'The Goddess Is Alive: Magic Is Afoot," drowning him out.
Then someone grabbed Iduna.
She's Ragnar's daughter and she's four—something I know only because she was bom at a HallowFest when Sandy—her mother—went into labor two weeks early. She was wiccaned before she was a day old, with half the Pagan clergy of the Eastern seaboard in attendance. She didn't know what was going on, but she wanted her daddy, and went zipping toward him out of nowhere like a little blonde comet.
One of the demonstrators grabbed her in midflight and started going on about "rescuing the children." I got there just in time to grab Ragnar's arm as he went surging forward, and got banged in the jaw for my troubles.
A television van pulled up.
Maidjene made it to the porch. She isn't fast, but she's strong. She got the megaphone away from the godshouter. I don't know whether he fell or made a tactical retreat, but he ended up sitting at the foot of the porch steps.
"Let go," Ragnar said to me. He sounded in control, so I did. So did two other people. The van opened. Someone with a minicam got out, along with several people who didn't have minicams. Iduna was screaming. Ragnar pushed through the crowd, heading for her.
It sounds more orderly than it was —and quieter, and slower— but what it really was like was everything happening at once, and loud.
Ragnar plucked Iduna away from a man with glasses who was glad enough to let her go when he saw what was coming for her. Sandy ran up, screaming for her daughter. Ragnar handed Iduna to her. Then —in a calm, considered, in-control fashion —he punched the guy who'd grabbed Iduna bang in the face.
Everybody started yelling.
Mrs. Cooper—using the megaphone this time —started demanding that everyone get off her land. Nobody wanted to listen to her when they could talk to the local news crew. Maidjene went down and took the minicam away from the person using it. Ragnar helped her.
It was a mess.
I did my part for crowd control by making everyone who'd listen to me move back. Ironshadow showed up, having run all the way from the bam, and more people listened to him than to me. By now most of HallowFest had shown up to watch the raree show. I could see Mrs. Cooper down by the van, talking to the local television personality, with Maidjene hanging over her shoulder and some of the picketers trying to horn in. I wondered where Larry was; he'd love being ringmaster at a media circus.
While all this was going on, a black van drove up and found the television van blocking the road. The driver began leaning on the horn.
"It would really help if you guys would leave so those freaks didn't have an audience," I said for what seemed like the ten-thousandth time. Some took my advice. Some didn't.
A vision in black got out of the passenger seat of the van. She looked as if she'd come from an alternate universe where H. P. Lovecraft had done the costume design for Annie Hall
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Xharina.
Or to give the lady her full title, Xharina, Princess of Pain; the HPS and only woman member of a flourishing leather coven based in Brooklyn Heights. She was wearing black leather hotpants, artistically-ripped black tights screen-printed with skulls and roses, lace-up black paddock boots, a black lace merry widow, and a black velvet bolero jacket. The answer to an electronic journalist's prayer, although not to ours.
1 couldn't hear well enough to make out what the representatives of the media were saying, but from the gestures, Xharina was inviting them to get their van out of the way. A sheriffs car pulled up behind Xharina's van, with all the lights on its lightbar flashing. I headed for Maidjene, hoping 1 wouldn't be followed. The film crew trotted over to the sheriffs deputy for a statement. The demonstrators waved their signs feebly.
"Need any help?" I said to Maidjene.
"Only if you can change time, speed up the harvest, or teleport me off this rock," she said, quoting Star Wars this time. "God damn them," she added, meaning, I supposed, the demonstrators.
The deputy was explaining that the demonstrators did not have the right to demonstrate on private property, but that they could walk up and down Route 6 all they wanted. The newscaster was trying to get the deputy to say that Harm had died in an "execution-style" killing. The demonstrators' spokesman was saying something about the heavy hand of divine judgment being made manifest, having apparently forgotten that it was Harm who'd died, not one of us. The guy Ragnar'd punched was nowhere in sight, for which small mercy I thanked the Goddess fervently.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Xharina demanded. New Yorker to the core.
'The local fundamentalist sphincter got hisself killed up here last night," Maidjene said. "Welcome to HallowFest."
"Jesus H. Christ," Xharina said reverently. "For real?"
Why did people keep asking that?
"He isn't only merely dead; he's really and sincerely dead," I said. Two can play at Dueling Quotes. "Hi, Xhar."
"Hi, Bast. Um, look, do you guys think we could maybe get up to the bam? We've been driving since six this morning."
Maidjene looked at the traffic jam doubtfully. "Maybe," she said dubiously.
I looked around. Were there fewer of Harm's congregation gathered 'round than there had been a few minutes ago? I watched as
another one plodded down the road in the direction of his parked car. Yup. Apparently none of them was in the market for the martyr's crown today.
After that, things broke up in stages.
The TV people headed back to their van. Xharina ran back to hers. The sheriffs car backed out of the way, lights still flashing, £ind it and the other two vans did some fancy backing and filling before they got themselves sorted out. The two vans went in opposite directions. The patrol car pulled up in front of Mrs. Cooper's porch; it was driven by a deputy I hadn't seen before.
I didn't want to be here. Big-time.
"I gotta go talk to them," Maidjene muttered.
"I'll see you later," I said, and walked back up to the bam through a jumble of standing gawkers.
What was I running away from? It seemed like I hadn't done anything since I'd gotten here except try to be someplace else from where I was, and 1 was getting tired of the lifestyle.
There were some easy explanations. I'd more or less broken with Changing, which meant it was time to form a coven of my own, something I'd so far avoided. Belle would expect it. / expected it, come to tha
t. But it was a step I'd hesitated over taking for years, for reasons that probably weren't very good.
And then there was Julian and last night. He wasn't the type for one-night stands. Why him? Why me? Why now? And what next? Did we have more of a relationship than having worked together on La Tesoraria del Oro could give us? Was this love? Infatuation? A death wish? Whatever it was, it was going to have to take care of itself for a while longer; I had too much else to do. But I was still tired of running away from it.
Xharina's people were unloading their van when I got back up by the cabins. I saw Cain, Lasher, and Arioch, all of whom I'd met before, and two others I hadn't. I wandered over.
"Welcome to HallowFest," I said in my most orotund voice.
Xharina laughed. "Come to the country; it's quiet and safe. Yeah, sure. Where should we check in?"
I was abruptly reminded that I was carrying a parkaiful of burglary equipment to make a gypsy switch on the registration forms. "Um, well, they aren't checking registrations any too closely now, so why don't you just come and get your badges?"
"Sure. You haven't met Goth and Riff-raff, have you? Guys, this is Bast."
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Goth and Riff-raff, like their brethren, were dressed in the fashion of Biker Sluts from Hell: lots of denim and leather and visible tattoos, a look to which I am unreasonably partial. Goth had a glorious handlebar mustache and ferocious white sidewalls; Riff-raff was skinny and blond. Goth held out a paw in a fingerless leather glove. We shook. I could feel calluses scrape my fingers, and when 1 looked down I could see stars and letters inked into his fingers, blurry and dark.
Jailhouse tats.
It didn't make me suddenly decide Goth had killed Harm. But it did make me think about the fact that many of us come to the Community with a history of violence elsewhere. We've forged new family ties after so much loss and pain that we would defend these new families unthinkingly if the moment came. I remembered the psychic charge that had flashed through the crowd when one of the demonstrators had grabbed Iduna. Had Harm threatened one of us last night?
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