J. G. Passarella - Wendy Ward 01

by Wither

  “You live!” Ezekiel Stone says.

  “Of course, I live, Ezekiel” Wither says, “you would do well to remember that I do not die easily.”

  “I live only to serve.”

  “Then help me out of here and dig up the others quickly” she says. “They are bound to be more excitable than I at having been entombed.”

  Wither stands there as Ezekiel digs up the graves that have been placed on either side of hers. As she imagined, she can gradually hear each of the other women—first Sarah, then Rebecca-moaning softly under their cold blankets of wood and dirt.

  As Wither waits for her blood sisters to be disinterred she makes plans for their future together. First they will need a place to sleep their long sleep, close to Ezekiel and his property. He and his descendents will keep them safe while the coven fall into their century-long stupor. And each time they arise to feed, she and her sisters will be further along the course away from human form. Sarah will be a perfect coven sister, strong enough, Wither hopes, to weather the changes in their life cycle. Others in the past have not always fared well, and Wither has had to put them down. No, Sarah will be fine. But what of Rebecca? Only time will tell. The child she conceived while human will remain inside her, maybe reclaimed into her flesh. Its life ended in the jail cell when they joined blood, became coven. Will Rebecca be able to forget the child she will never bear? Will her mind, precariously balanced as it is, stand the test of centuries? Only time will tell. Right now she just waits impatiently to greet her sisters, her coven. Their cycle has begun.

  At seven-thirty, Art emerged from his hiding place in the vinyl archives, starving and stiff, and went foraging. He was alone in the radio station; WDAN was broadcasting prerecorded programming all evening, since it was always impossible to find student DJs willing to take a Halloween shift. As Art went in search of the stale gra-riola bars he recalled he’d kept stashed in his office, he heard Frankie Lenard’s prerecorded “Sisters in Song” playing.

  No granola bars. He wandered down to Studio A, where he hit pay dirt: a half-eaten bag of nacho chips, and a fully loaded Fez dispenser. He said a silent prayer of thanks to the DJ who had ignored the station’s “no food and drink” policy.

  He plopped down heavily in the studio chair and wondered where Abby was hiding out in the darkness, and if she felt as alone right now as he did.

  He lifted his sneakered feet and pushed off the console, to give himself some spin. The chair spun like an LP, at something less than 33 1/3 speed, and he had a dizzy view of the swirling studio: console, old sofa, Venetian blinds, cork walls, console, old sofa-There was a face at the window, upside down and looking in. A monster’s face…

  The window imploded as Art’s chair tipped out from under him and he crashed backward, flailing at the consoles.

  The face at the window was three times human size, and dark as scorched hide. It bellowed at him, thrashing in the window frame. The Venetian blinds clacked and tangled as the thing fought to get at Art.

  Art picked up his swivel chair hurled it at the creature in the window. The chair hit the furious black shape tangled in blinds, and seemed to only enrage it further. It struggled to wrestle its bulk in through the narrow window.

  Art scurried backward beneath the console, cowering among the jungle of wires. From the studio speakers he heard Frankie Lenard saying “Next we’ve got Elastica with ”Stutter.“ Y’know, I’m still waiting for a follow-up to their 1995 album…”

  If he could only get to the phone on the wall—

  Wham! As if anticipating Art’s thought, the creature in the window swung a massive arm through the air, sweeping two stacked CD players off the console and tearing the wall-mounted phones free.

  Wham! The claw punched through the ceiling. Chips of acoustical tile came down in a feathery rain. If it managed to hit the console again, it would destroy the equipment broadcasting the prerecorded programs…

  Was anyone listening? Would anyone notice the dead air and send help?

  The console…

  Suddenly Art realized he had the means to make the biggest fucking 911 call in history directly overhead.

  The thing in the window bellowed. The cinder blocks of the outer wall began cracking under the enormous pressure.

  Art took a breath. Slid out from beneath the console. Ducked to avoid the claw that thrust out to grasp at him. He punched a switch to kill the prerecording. Grabbed the studio mike.

  The sign mounted over the door winked red: on air “JESUS CHRIST SOMEONE HELP ME! IT’S ALMOST—!” He was screaming into the mike. The creature in the window glared, furious that he was just outside its lethal reach.

  “IT’S ALMOST INSIDE … SOMEONE PLEASE HURRY—”

  He saw the output needle on one meter bobbing in time with his crazed syllables. And wondered again if anyone was listening.

  Frankie Lenard had brought a Walkman with her as she walked downtown to watch Windale’s celebrated street festival, because she wanted periodically throughout the night to check out the “Sisters in Song” show she’d prerecorded yesterday. At a little past seven o’clock, as she waited for Tyrannosaurus Sex to pack up their trombones and switch out their drum kit for the next band, she slipped on her headphones in time to catch the weird disembodied sound of her own voice. “…next we’ve got Elastica with”Stutter.“ Y’know, I’m stillwaiting for a follow-up to their 1995 album…”

  Jeez. Did she really sound that phony and annoying? She couldn’t take it. She snatched the headphones off.

  Onstage, Tackhammer’s lead singer, Bryan, said into the mike, “Can I get more monitor?” He looked out across the crowd, forlorn, sleepy-eyed. “Someone? Anyone?” Frankie studied him critically from her position below the stage, his head of unwashed curls in stark silhouette against the increasingly cloudy night sky. Her opinion of Bryan, like her opinion of men in general, remained conflicted. Just look at this guy, he’s a total indie cliché, with his Salvation Army bowling shirt and his bad posture and a bleary expression that said he’d only woken up twenty minutes ago on the sofa in the practice place in front of a rerun of Barney Miller. All of his songs were ironic little odes to television and convenience stores and how exhausting it was to work up the strength to kiss a girl, sung through a repressed yawn…

  And yet, sweet Jesus he was hot. Okay, so it wasn’t her fault— she was genetically programmed to respond to a guy with a guitar. You didn’t have to be Desmond Morris to understand that a guitar was just an enormous throbbing electrified penis, wired for sound.

  Bryan leaned into the microphone again and said, “Um, I really could use a little more monitor up here?”

  It seemed like Tackhammer was having a few technical difficulties, so Frankie took the opportunity to check in on herself and “Sisters in Song” yet again, disapproving grimace at the ready. She slipped the headphones up to her ears—

  “FUCK SHIT PISS COCKSUCKER-HELP ME!”

  Behind the profane hysteria, it sort of sounded like Art Leeson, the fugitive station manager.

  “—JESUS CHRIST SOMEBODY FUCKING HELP ME—!”

  Then a loud crash, followed by static. Dead air…

  What was that? Some kinda War of the Worlds Halloween prank? No, Frankie thought, feeling her chest tighten in fear: that was real terror in Art’s voice.

  She turned from the pavilion and waded into the crowd. She forced her way through the human tide, pushing aside kids with painted faces, sorority sisters dressed as prostitutes (how original), old couples with chemically glowing bangles and necklaces. Frankie spied a young deputy struggling hard to play the part of a “police presence.” He didn’t look very confident in his uniform; it might as well have been a costume. But he was wearing a real-enough sidearm, and she was sure he had a car nearby.

  She ran to him.

  The monster was inside the studio. The console exploded in a shower of sparks as she tore it free of the wall to get at her prey …

  But Art was gone. He’d abandoned th
e flimsy shelter of the console only moments before, after a feeble attempt to remember all seven of the Seven Dirty Words the FCC forbade from broadcasting.

  He was backing down the hallway now, into darkness. Listening to the destruction going on in the studio. The creature was creating a real light show of sparks and flame as she destroyed Studio A.

  Art wasn’t sure exactly when he’d begun thinking of the monster as she, but he was as certain of the monster’s gender now as he was of his own. Despite the horrific proportions of her arms, the distorted nightmare of her face, there was something distinctly female about her.

  CRASH! The wall of the studio collapsed, spilling mortar dust and cinder block rubble into the corridor. Art backed away a little faster, then turned, running deeper into the labyrinth.

  He only paused long enough to seize a fire extinguisher-the nearest heavy object he could find. He heard the monster enter the corridor behind him, so big she nearly filled it. She swung her fisted claws from side to side, smashing craters in the corridor walls. As he ran, Art felt bits of cinder block shrapnel sting the back of his head.

  In the confined space of the narrow corridors Art had the advantage of his smaller size. He cut a sharp right, tripping headlong over a box of CD jewel cases someone had left in the dark. He spilled forward, hit hard. Scrambled back—

  She loomed over him, bellowing. He felt her pin him down with one claw as she brought her face in close to his. He shut his eyes—expecting a quick, violent death—then opened them again when it didn’t come.

  She cocked her enormous head at him, unmistakably a gesture of human curiosity. Her lips curled back from a vulpine snarl. She clamped a claw around his head, holding it like a melon, and sniffed him. Her eyes narrowed to slits as she turned his head left and right, her expression one of bafflement. She sniffed the bandana and the injured eye beneath…

  A scream. The monster whipped her head around, instantly alert.

  Frankie and Deputy Reed Davis stood several yards back in the corridor. The deputy had his firearm drawn and began wincing as he squeezed off shots. Six in rapid succession, deafening concussions in the confined space.

  The monster roared as the bullets struck her. Art took advantage of her momentary distraction, and emptied the fire extinguisher into her face, blinding her temporarily with chemical foam. She reared back, furious, and he scrambled out between her legs.

  The monster turned and staggered after them in blind pursuit, thrashing. The deputy lingered a split second too long, emptying his gun into her. As she passed, she slammed him into the cinder block wall, crushing his rib cage. She lumbered past, bellowing at the fleeing Art and Frankie. Deputy Reed Davis slid down the wall slowly in a slick of his own gore, landing in a seated thump—splay-legged—like a broken marionette.

  Frankie and Art ran hand in hand through WDAN’s narrow hallways, fleeing the nightmare. They burst through the station’s front doors and dashed across the short lawn to the deputy’s patrol car, its engine idling.

  Inside the station, the witch roared as she struggled to wedge through the tight doorframe, seeing her prey escape in a blaze of headlights and a spray of gravel.

  Wendy awoke, huddled in her bed, shivering with a phantom fever. Her throat felt sore. From thirst, she thought initially, but soon realized it was an external ache. Her hands went to her neck and found abrasions there. She ran to the bathroom mirror and discovered the abrasions were ligature marks circling her throat, all the way around to the nape of her neck, as if someone had tried to strangle her while she slept… Not strangled, she realized. Hanged.

  Wendy’s recollection of the official events was sketchy at best, but she recalled that the Windale witches had been hanged several years after the Salem hysteria had come and gone. That had been the extent of Windale’s brush with witchcraft. But her dreams told a different story, a story where documented history and the facts parted company at the gallows. Wither and her coven had cheated the hangman’s noose. They had even been buried, in some sort of deathlike sleep or trance, waiting for the gravedigger to come along. Could any of this really be true, or was Wendy losing her mind? Witches with black blood and clawed fingernails? Was that part of the “pact with the devil” aspect of black magic and sorcery?

  She rubbed some of her mother’s skin lotion all over the red marks circling her neck, soothing the dry burning sensation, and returned to her bedroom.

  What did the Windale witches, who had lived three hundred years ago, have to do with what was happening to Karen and her today? The dreams, the fatigue, the gray hair… and now these strange ligature marks. Were they being haunted? Had the witches placed a curse on Windale? Wendy looked down at her aching legs. I’m losing all control of my mind and my body: Then a chilling thought, At night I dream her dreams and in the daylight she takes a walk in my skin.

  After checking that there had been no change in Alex’s condition, Wendy went into the bathroom and prepared a purifying bath of lavender and thyme. She climbed into the steaming water, wearing her crystal necklace in the hope it would clear her mind. She lay back, her arms along the edge of the bathtub, head resting against the sloped back as the hot water eased her aching body. She imagined floating on a peaceful sea with no worries.

  Floating…

  Floating over colonial Windale…no, flying.

  Fly agaric toadstools, body grease enabling witches to fly… on broomsticks made from the wood of ash trees…flying, just like in my dreams.

  Wendy imagined the tales of flying were based on accounts of astral projection. Most of the Salem convictions had been based on spectral evidence, that is, the accusers said they saw the witches’ specters—astral projections—leaving their bodies to do the accusers harm. Right in the courtroom where everyone could see…but everyone hadn’t seen. Only the accusers saw the specters of the witches on trial When the spectral evidence was disallowed in Salem, the convictions ended. Never sufficient evidence of witchcraft to hang another accused witch in Salem, That hadn’t been the case in Windale. The Windale witches were found guilty of the practice of witchcraft but had been convicted on damning evidence of murders.

  Wendy sat up a little straighter in the tub with a simple but frightening thought. What if Wither and her coven had been more than murderesses? What if they had been real witches? Not secretive midwives or medicine women, mixing herbs and making foul-smelling poultices. But genuine, black-magic-practicing, card-carrying evil witches? Like the ones all the fairy tales warned us about, the ones who made poisoned apples, cast malicious spells, and had an unsavory taste for the flesh of children?

  Her mother knocked on the bathroom door. “Wendy? Hrankie is here to see you. She seems quite distraught.”

  Five minutes later, Wendy emerged from her house, dressed in black jeans and a cable-knit sweater, her hair still dripping wet. Frankie was pacing in tight little circles and muttering to herself.

  “Jesus, Hrankie, what’s wrong?” At the sight of Wendy, Frankie flew into her friend’s arms and began sobbing. Wendy held her tight and smoothed her blond hair, saying, “Are you hurt? Did something happen?”

  “I saw it, Wendy,” Frankie said, just this side of hysteria. “God, I really saw it!”

  “What did you see?”

  “The—thing—the thing that took Jack. The monster Jen Hoyt’s been drawing in class, that—”

  Wendy cut her off. “Where?”

  “The radio station.” As she said it, Frankie seemed to remember something. “C’mon, I brought someone else who saw it, too.” She clutched at Wendy’s sleeve and drew her down the driveway toward the street.

  “Wait, Frankie, where are we going? What—?”

  “Please! No questions! Just come with me.”

  Wendy followed Frankie off the mansion grounds and up the sidewalk. Two blocks away, parked in the deep shadows of an elm, was a police car. And there was someone inside. Wendy stopped short.

  “You came here in that?”

  Frankie nodded
emphatically, jumpy, nerves fried. “I didn’t want to freak out your folks, so we parked out here. The deputy was killed. It killed him—”

  “Killed? Then who’s that in the car?” Wendy felt her hackles rise as the passenger door opened and the haggard stranger came forward from the shadows. He looked like an escaped mental patient, a paisley bandana over one eye, face covered in fresh scratches. Wendy thought at first his hair was entirely gray then realized it was covered in plaster dust. His shirt looked like it had been tie-dyed in blood.

  “This is Art,” Frankie said. “From the radio station.” She turned to Art and said, “Wendy knows about these things. She’s a witch.”

  “Why do you think it came after you?” Wendy asked Art.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s the same thing that killed my brother last night. It might’ve been trying to get to his girlfriend, Karen—”

  “Glazer?” Wendy said, a cold lump of dread in the pit of her stomach. “Professor Karen Glazer?”

  Art nodded. “I took her to the hospital before it could come back for her. I think maybe that’s why it’s pissed off at me.” He looked Wendy up and down, obviously reconceiving his notion of what a witch looked like. “Do you know what it is?”

  Wendy looked down at her hands, realized she was rubbing her thumb raw against her fingernails. The nails were dark, coarsened. Inhuman. What was she becoming? The witches in the jail cell. The dream was finally coming into focus, the mingling of blood. “Better than that,” Wendy said. “I know who she is.” Art and Frankie looked at her in surprise as she told them: “Rebecca Cole.”

  “The Windale witch?” Art shook his head, trying to process what Wendy had just said. “As in the infamous Windale Three? But she was hanged, it’s in all the town records of the period.”