Book of Shadows

by Marc Olden

  “Look at the light, Mr. Shields.” He did as she commanded and remembered nothing else.

  In the station wagon, Rowena Comfort said, “Look at the photograph, Mr. Shields. Look at it and tell me the names of the people standing beside you.”

  Nathan Shields looked down at the photograph lying in his lap. When he spoke, his voice was level, totally without inflection. “The woman on my right is Ellie, my wife. The man on my left is Larry—”

  “Who is Larry, Mr. Shields?”

  “He’s my lover.”

  “Go on.”

  “The woman next to Larry is Marisa Heggen and the man on her left is Robert Seldes.”

  Rowena Comfort took the photograph from Nathan Shields’ lap and said to her husband, “Their names are in his address book.”

  Rupert Comfort reached the end of the George Washington Bridge, braked to let a limousine cut in front of him, then turned left. “Ask him,” he said.

  Rowena Comfort said, “Do you have the Book of Shadows, Mr. Shields?”

  “No.”

  Rowena Comfort looked at her husband, who didn’t take his eyes off the road. Rupert Comfort said, “Ask him who has it. No, wait. Ask him if he’s read it.”

  Rowena Comfort did.

  “Yes, I’ve read it,” said Nathan Shields. “We all have.”

  The Comforts looked at each other.

  Rupert Comfort’s foot pressed down harder on the gas. “Ask him who has the book.”

  Inside the darkened barn, the two palomino mares whinnied and stamped nervously in their stalls as though sensing what would soon happen. Nathan Shields, a pair of rusted antique kerosene lamps at his feet, stood calmly in the center of the barn. Both lamps were lit. Behind him in the blackness were two from the outside world: a fat teenage boy and his mother, who’d come to aid the Comforts in this ritual murder and who now watched the English couple pull straw from one of several bales, then quickly and expertly braid it into strips.

  Outside, lightning cracked and thunder rolled across a gray-black sky, but the rain did not come. With a knowledge of nature possessed by few men on earth, Rupert Comfort knew the rain wouldn’t come for at least another half hour. The rain would come when he needed it, when he wanted it. The thunder god had told him so.

  Meanwhile he and his wife braided the straw and used their knives to shape it into a crude Wickerwork Man. When it was finished they stood up, brushed straw and dirt from their clothing, and looked at Nathan Shields. Rupert Comfort nodded and Rowena walked over to the antique dealer, took him gently by the hand, and led him over to the straw man.

  “Lie down, Mr. Shields.”

  The antique dealer obeyed her, lying on the straw form and allowing his arms and legs to be placed on those of the Wickerwork Man. Without a word, the Comforts again pulled straw from the bale, braided it into strips, and attached the strips to Shields’ feet, legs, thighs, stomach, chest, arms, and face. A mare kicked her stall; the fat boy’s head jerked towards the sound. His mother moved closer to him, squeezing his hand and forcing him to look at Nathan Shields.

  When the Comforts had finished, the antique dealer was completely covered by straw in the crude shape of a man. Rain splattered on the barn roof and Rupert Comfort permitted himself a half-smile. The timing was perfect; the thunder god had sent the rain at the precise moment, the right moment.

  Rupert and Rowena began the death chant slowly and seconds later the mother, her breasts rising and falling with excitement, joined in. The fat boy, his mouth open, watched silently until his mother painfully squeezed his hand with both of hers and then he too began the chant in his high monotone. Still chanting, Rowena Comfort stepped forward, the black-handled ritual knife in her hand. Crouching over Nathan Shields, she lifted him over on his stomach. Using the fingers of her other hand she gently probed through the straw until she found his spine, then ran her fingers down to its base and stopped. Placing the knife’s blade against that spot, she took a folded handkerchief from the breast pocket of her tweed jacket and laid it on top of the blade to protect her hand. Gripping the black handle and pressing down on the handkerchief with the heel of her hand, she leaned on the knife with all of her strength, slashing deep and severing Nathan Shields’ spinal cord.

  The antique dealer stiffened, jerked, and Rowena Comfort stood up. Nathan Shields’ legs were now useless: he couldn’t run or even crawl away from his death. In the darkness, the mother licked her lips and felt a sexual stirring in her loins. Her nipples hardened and her breathing grew louder.

  The Comforts each picked up a kerosene lamp in one hand and with their ritual knife in the other, lifted both arms high overhead, closed their eyes and prayed silently. Nathan Shields groaned; blood from his spine trickled onto the pale yellow straw.

  Rupert Comfort opened the tiny glass window on his lamp and laid the lamp on Nathan Shields’ back, flame against the straw. Rowena Comfort placed the flame of her lantern between Shields’ legs and the straw caught fire almost immediately. Her husband stepped back and again began the death chant.

  Nathan Shields screamed and the rain pounded against the roof with sudden strength, as though to cover the sound. Shields twisted and flopped onto his back and his screams became piercing, his agony all-consuming. And then he was covered in flames.

  The horses smelled the smoke and panicked, kicking their stalls with greater strength. Rupert Comfort backed away from the burning, shrieking Nathan Shields and the others, their eyes on the dying man, followed him.

  Outside in the rain, the four formed a single line with Rupert Comfort in front. After looking over his shoulder to make sure each person was directly behind him, the white-haired man turned up his jacket collar and walked over to a fence which was at right angles to the barn and stepped down into a shallow water-filled ditch running parallel to the fence. The water and mud came up to his calves; it would hide all footprints.

  After following the ditch to the end of the fence, the procession continued walking parallel to the dirt road for almost fifty feet; only when the road hardened did Rupert Comfort leave the ditch. Not far away dogs barked and Rupert Comfort turned quickly toward the sound, but didn’t stop walking.

  A Volkswagen belonging to the mother and her fat son was parked in woods a mile away. Nathan Shields had no immediate neighbors except a farmer who owned a small piece of land on the edge of Shields’ farm and who hadn’t been home in three days. The farmer lived alone. That information had come from the mother and her son, who had also arranged for the man who delivered Nathan Shields’ palomino mares to be lured away from the antique dealer’s farm.

  Twenty minutes later the Comforts and both outsiders reached the hidden car. On the return ride to Manhattan the English couple sat in the back seat and spoke softly in Shelta Thari of the four remaining people in the photograph and of the one they would next kill. In the front seat the fat boy, exhausted by the grueling walk through the hard rain and mud and fighting the fear he felt at what he’d seen in the barn, closed his eyes and breathed loudly through his open mouth. He suddenly frowned, remembering the smell and feel of the severed hand given him by the tall woman, who had ordered him to leave the barn and …

  The fat boy decided that if he threw up he’d blame it on car sickness.

  His mother drove and listened to the rhythm of the windshield wipers and each time she slowed down for a toll booth, she rubbed her thighs together in sensual memory of what she’d felt as she watched the antique dealer burn alive.

  FOUR

  A PROFESSIONAL ACTRESS WHO’D signed a contract was, of course, bound by it and Marisa Heggen’s contract for the soap opera World and Forever stipulated that for the next two years she appear on three shows a week, salary $2,000 per show. The contract contained the standard clause allowing her to be written out of the show six weeks each year to do a play, film, or television commercial. However, there was no clause allowing her time off for personal grief; the hideous ache within her over the death of Nat Shields was s
omething she’d simply have to live and work with.

  Marisa, thirty-one, was fashion-model thin, with dark brown curly hair and a face described by one critic as “consisting of two imperfectly fitted halves, resulting in something more sexy and interesting than the customary bland beauty clogging the tube.” Her eyes and her mouth were her best features. The eyes were violet, deep set and surrounded by long, natural lashes. Her mouth was full, perfect.

  Despite a fiery talent which made her the soap opera’s biggest fan-mail draw, it was her eyes and mouth which had prevented Marisa Heggen from becoming a major film star. She photographed poorly. On a movie screen her eyes appeared sunken, dark, hollow and a corner of her mouth seemed lifted slightly in a mild permanent sneer. She’d made two movies in Hollywood, bizarre, bitchy roles far below her ability. In California, the name of the game was pretty faces and Marisa failed to qualify.

  In person she made an entirely different impression. Her looks were striking, and she was an intelligent, sensitive, witty woman. And always a superb actress. California’s mania for youth, its concern with capped teeth and firm flesh drove Marisa back to New York, where she found a different Broadway, one she didn’t like. The emphasis was on old stars in old musicals. Box office was all that mattered and box office was a star from the 1940’s in a song and dance from the 1930’s. The irony of now being too young for a role wasn’t lost on Marisa, who neither sang nor danced nor cared to.

  There were other scripts, other producers—and both too often emerged as shits. She read pallid mysteries by insurance salesmen and high-school principals. She read plodding musicals by university drama professors, anxious to prove that those who could teach could also do. She refused to read 1200-page “madcap comedies in the tradition of Carole Lombard and Kay Kendall,” written by housewives in longhand and accompanied by thirty-page letters explaining how the play came to be written.

  And there were producers who wanted her to sleep with backers to raise money for these plays.

  Television soap operas were a surprise, a pleasant one. Many were well written, reflecting changing times and dealing with life as it was, not as it was imagined. The old standbys of adultery, abortion, and lingering death from unnamed and unknown diseases were joined by environmental concerns, terrorism, statutory rape, political scandals, miscegenation, incest, affairs between older women and younger men, exposés of medical and scientific abuses. Soap operas had grown up.

  And they paid better than any other work in New York. Marisa’s popularity on World and Forever was immediate and just as quickly rewarded. By the end of her second week she’d become the ratings draw the show’s producer had been searching for. By the end of the month she was the top fan-mail draw. Her thirteen week contract was torn up and she was given one for six months, then a year, and finally two years, with huge jumps in salary each time.

  Since she had to play the role of a bitch, it didn’t matter whether the television camera was kind or not. Yet somehow she emerged as more attractive on the small screen than the large one. The lighting director managed to light her face in a way that removed the hollows from her eyes, and the camera somehow softened her sneer in close-ups. She enjoyed the show and, with one or two exceptions, liked the people she worked with. Her personal life was another matter. It was a problem and the problem was Robert Seldes, her lover.

  But for the moment, the thought of Robert was pushed into a neutral corner of her mind as she struggled to deal with Nathan Shields’ death. The night after the funeral, Marisa sat talking with Nat’s wife, Ellie, in their beautiful Park Avenue apartment, an apartment Marisa had always described as an experience second only to sex. It was a triplex decorated by Nat, who’d filled it with antiques from around the world and had even gotten down on his knees to place red and gold Florentine tiles on the floors of the five bathrooms.

  It had been a standing joke between Marisa and Nat that the apartment was the ideal place to be buried. Cremate us, they’d said, and scatter our ashes outside on the patio where there would be plenty of sun and an excellent view.

  And now Nat Shields had died horribly and alone.

  Dear, darling Nat. A wonderful man, a loyal friend. Death was something that happened to other people, not to Marisa or her friends.

  “They don’t waste any time,” said Ellie. “The broker tells me he’s received eight offers for the farm since yesterday. He says we’ll get a good price.”

  She sat rigid on the long, low couch, her back half turned to Marisa, her small hands shredding a damp tissue. She was short and chubby. At fifty-four, only traces of a cheerful beauty remained in her round face. Her close cut hair, dyed blond, was combed forward to soften what time was doing to her looks. She showed the strain of starting to live with a pain that could only diminish but never vanish.

  Ellie said, “Louie lifts his head up whenever he hears the elevator. Then when-when N-Nat doesn’t come through the door, Louie, uh, Louie—”

  She pressed both hands against her mouth to keep from crying out. Louie was a Great Dane, a huge black and gray dog named for Louis XIV, France’s Sun King. Marisa glanced at the dog, who stood near the glass doors leading onto the patio as though keeping watch over what might have been Nat Shields’ final resting place.

  Ellie dabbed at her reddened eyes, then turned to Marisa and forced a smile. “Watched you on the show today. Something to take my mind off … off—You were great as always. My God, you are some homewrecker.”

  Marisa grinned. “That’s me. Yvonne the terrible. Never did like that name, but it seems to fit the character. Ellie, are you sure you don’t want me to stay over? All I need is a quiet place to go over my lines for tomorrow’s show—”

  The second the words left her mouth, Marisa wished she’d never said them.

  Ellie’s fingers moved in her lap like frightened birds. “It sure is quiet around here … now.”

  Marisa closed her eyes.

  Ellie patted Marisa’s hand with pieces of damp tissue. “Thanks anyway, but I’ll be fine. Nat’s sister Wallis is staying with me for a few more days. She’s been quite a help, let me tell you. At the moment she’s out talking with the broker about selling the farm. She’s invited me to come back to Miami and stay with her and Arnold, but I said no. Jesus, I know what that would be like. The sorrow and the pity and all of it aimed at poor Ellie. You know what I mean: voices dropping to a whisper when you enter a room and the faces long as broom handles because everyone thinks they have to be morose while you’re in the area. I think Nat would find it goddam funny.”

  Ellie smoothed her skirt over her thighs. “Then comes ‘The Dating Game,’ with Wallis and Arnold pushing me into nauseating close encounters. I hate shuffleboard. I hate anything athletic, but especially I hate shuffleboard, which seems to be the national pastime in Miami. Besides, Wallis is a manipulator. She’s not happy unless she’s controlling your life. I’m crawling around at the moment but any day now I’ll be on my feet and staggering. I feel I have to keep talking or I’ll just fall apart. Stop me if I get to be too much, will you?”

  Marisa reached out and touched her. “You know better. I’m here if you need me and I don’t want to hear any more apologies about anything. I mean that.”

  Ellie touched her hand. “Dear God, I need you. I do.”

  The tears came again.

  “I’m here, Ellie.” Marisa reached for her and held her close. “I’m here.”

  “Marisa?” Ellie Shields’ voice was muffled against Marisa’s shoulder.

  “Yes?”

  “What did the police want?”

  “Police?”

  Ellie Shields looked up at her. “Fifteen minutes ago, remember? I took the call. Sergeant Laura asked for you, he identified himself as a policeman and I gave you the phone and you never told me what he wanted. Does it involve Nat? If it does I have a right to know.”

  Marisa nodded in agreement. “You have a right to know. I—I made some calls on my own.”

  “Why?
Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “No. I’ll tell you everything, believe me. The fire department said it was an accident, that Nat was probably injured by the mares when they smelled smoke. Nat was unable to get out of the burning barn after the mares hit him.”

  “I know that. Go on.”

  “Ellie, I did see Nat leave the shop with two people, a white-haired man and a tall woman.”

  “Nat was alone when he died, Marisa. What are you getting at?”

  Marisa took a deep breath and let it all out before saying, “Ellie, I loved Nat, too. I couldn’t have made it in this town without you two. I came back from Hollywood flat broke and feeling sorry for myself and you two did everything from paying my rent to decorating my apartment. I’m not about to forget it. I owe you both and I owe you big, so that’s why I telephoned Sergeant Laura and told him about the couple Nat drove off with. Laura’s the local law, what there is of it in that section of New Jersey.”

  “And?”

  “He says he checked the barn, the house, the grounds, and there’s nothing to indicate that Nat wasn’t alone when he died. The only other person in the picture, the man who delivered the mares, was accounted for.”

  Ellie Shields said, “His truck broke down. He’d gone to town to get new bridles and someone told him his wife was in the hospital. That turned out to be a sick joke. His wife was at home and he made the trip to the hospital for nothing. There were witnesses to all of this. I still don’t get what you’re driving at. I have to tell you, Marisa, this kind of talk upsets me. I mean it’s bad enough that he’s dead. Now you’re trying to—”

  Marisa gripped Ellie Shields by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Ellie, I put off making that call for two days—two whole days, and every minute of it I felt like a shit. I had to make that call, I had to know. So now I do. Sergeant Laura says there was no one else on the property. Nat was alone.”