J. G. Passarella - Wendy Ward 01

by Wither

  As Wendy laid out the bowl of rice, the cup of wine, the burner, and the incense, Frankie asked, “What if it doesn’t work?”

  Since Frankie had placed her life at risk by staying at her side, Wendy had felt an obligation to tell her about the strange things that had happened at each ceremony she had performed. “You mean, what if I can’t summon Wither? What if I can’t banish her?” Frankie nodded. “Some of my spells worked, since the nightmares began. Wither opened some sort of mental circuit between us. She’s been siphoning energy from my soul”—Jesus, Wendy shuddered, this is creeping me out!—“but she’s also opened a flow of magic from her to me. That must be why the spells worked. Maybe she found me amusing, her little witch in training, while she sucked me dry. Maybe I can overload that circuit, create a feedback loop powerful enough to finish her off, once and for all.”

  “If she’s been…draining you from afar,” Frankie said, still coming to grips with the idea that the witch—rather the monster, which had apparently been a flesh-and-blood witch three hundred years ago—was sucking the life energy right out of her friend’s body. “What’s to stop her from finishing the job without getting her hands dirty?”

  “You have to understand, when she touches my mind, I touch hers. I’d be lying if I said I understood how she thinks. But I’ve had a taste, and that qualifies me more than anyone. I don’t think she can resist the challenge. She’s the leader of the coven, she has a chip on her shoulder, she has something to prove.”

  “Next problem,” Frankie said, with the quirk of a nervous smile. “What if it does work?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I’m down with these magic rules and regulations, this circle is supposed to protect us, right?” Wendy nodded. “Well…what if she shows up—hell what if the whole coven shows up—and it turns out they don’t give a fuck about the rules of magic circles and pentagrams and whatnot.” Frankie stopped herself abruptly, realizing how shrill she sounded. “I mean, hypothetically speaking.”

  “Then I’ll use this,” Wendy said, and withdrew one of her father’s hunting rifles from her bulky duffel bag. “I hope we don’t need it, but if you see me go for the rifle, you’ll know we’re screwed.”

  “That’s comforting,” Frankie said with caustic irony.

  Wendy tossed the rifle through the open car window, to the passenger seat, where it would be easy to retrieve.

  “Running away isn’t an option anymore.” Wendy looked at her. “I have to do this, not just for myself, but for Karen and her baby, and for that little girl, Abby.” Wendy looked meaningfully at Frankie. “You could still go. Maybe you’re not on the hit list. Take the car. Come back for me after midnight. Maybe all of this will have been a bad dream.”

  Frankie seemed to stand straighter, shook her head decisively. “I could never live with myself if I left you alone here, no matter what happens.”

  “I understand,” Wendy said softly, secretly grateful she wouldn’t be alone for the witching hour. She wrote swiftly on a piece of parchment paper.

  “What’s that?” Frankie asked, obviously trying to distract herself in the details.

  “If you’re in a foreign country, it helps to speak the language,” she said, narrating the process. Wendy raised her arms demonstratively within the circle. “This is the language they speak.” Frankie nodded. She fiddled with her camera again as she sat on the hood of the Gremlin, glancing up as Wendy donned the white linen robe and sat facing the incense holder at the east compass point of the circle.

  “Do you usually perform magic with your car in the circle?” Frankie asked. Wendy’s closed eyes snapped open as the question broke her concentration. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  “I’m breaking some rules,” Wendy said. “I obviously can’t compete on her level. If I want to win…”

  “You have to cheat?”

  “If she played by the rules, she would have been dead three hundred years ago,” Wendy said, then returned to her meditation. Frankie was silent.

  Wendy’s hand trembled as she drank her chamomile mixture. But she was having trouble centering herself, focusing her thoughts. Many lives were at stake. The tektite banishing stone was in a pouch around her neck, beside her crystal and anise sachet. Tonight, she’d brought a ceremonial dagger with her. She had purchased the dagger in the early days of her fascination with witchcraft, though she’d never had the courage to cut herself with it. That, too, had changed.

  She stood over the parchment paper, dagger held in her right hand. With a quick jab, she pricked her thumb and let drops of blood fall to the paper. The pain came a moment later, but when it arrived it was surprisingly fierce, a stinging that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. The drops of blood blotted out part of the charcoal writing, but she could still read the spell. She read it to herself three times. Wither, Cole, and Hutchins, I banish thee; these lives are not yours, so set them free. Abandon forever what you intend; the damage you’ve caused may begin to mend.

  She picked up the paper and set it afire with a woodstove match, watched the smoke drift heavenward. She held the parchment over the burner with one trembling hand, recalling the way the fire had leapt up her arm last night—God, has it only been one night! In her other hand, she clutched the tektite stone. She repeated the spell three times aloud, feeling more foolish with each repetition. The words were instantly consumed by the night, drifting up and away like the thin candle smoke, devoured by the hungry moon. From the center of town, dark storm clouds rolled across the sky, blotting out the stars one by one. Wendy was left feeling small, ridiculously young: a little girl with useless nursery rhymes. Like whistling in the dark to scare away the evil spirits, she thought.

  Amazingly, the cut on her thumb had already closed, the wound healing as quickly as the deep wounds in her leg had. She might be getting older, but she was healing much faster. She slipped the dagger into the side pocket of her robe. The pocket hung down slightly where the thread had unraveled, but that was the least of her worries. She joined Frankie and waited. Then waited some more.

  Nothing.

  “What now?” Frankie asked after a long silence.

  “We could take off our clothes and dance naked counterclockwise.”

  “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m not making this stuff up,” Wendy said with a nervous laugh. She jumped off the hood of the Gremlin and moved the duffel bag in front of the grill. She glanced at her watch: 11:27. “Shit,” she said. “I’ve had enough of this waiting.”

  “We’re leaving?” Frankie said, relief in her voice.

  “Not yet,” Wendy said and stepped outside the circle. “If I’m right, my clock runs out in about thirty minutes. Doesn’t matter where I go.”

  “Um, Wendy, I thought you said it was a real bad idea to leave the circle.”

  “I did. Stay put.”

  “But you’re—”

  “Breaking my own rules again,” Wendy said and nodded. If the circle really afforded her protection, maybe it was keeping Wither away. Maybe the only way to lure Wither to this place was by exposing herself outside the circle.

  She walked toward the dark bridge. It was a link to a dead past, a hulking anachronism, as much out of place in the late twentieth century as witches and ghosts and things that go bump in the night. Perhaps she should have made her circle on top of the bridge, where Jack had stood the first time Wither had appeared. She shuddered. Much too vulnerable up there.

  “Wendy, don’t even think about climbing up there!” Frankie said, almost reading her mind.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t make it that easy for her,” Wendy replied. Wither might not be able to resist an encore performance of her infamous bridge snatching. Wendy walked closer to the gaping mouth of the bridge. She looked down the embankment, at an old oak’s exposed roots. The tree seemed as if it wanted to escape, was prying itself out of the ground one tortured root at a time. Wendy stepped into the dark passage of the bridge and tried
to feel some connection to the witch. Her appearance here had coincided with Wendy’s first ceremony. She should feel some lingering—

  The hair on the nape of her neck rose. Wendy felt a slow vibration building under her feet. “Oh my God!” she said.

  “What?”

  “I feel something…”

  “Wendy, get out of there!”

  “Right,” Wendy said, realizing her tactical error. She promptly stepped out from the maw of the bridge. And the sensation was gone. Damn! She thought her challenge to Wither had begun to work, but it was probably just her overactive imagination playing tricks on her.

  Wendy clenched her teeth in anger, making her jaw ache. Her fists curled into tight little balls that caused her mutated fingernails to bite painfully into her palms. Suddenly, her rage was so bright and crimson it scared her. She was near the breaking point and felt utterly helpless. She wanted to scream her frustration. It wasn’t fair that Wither should be able to wring the life out of her without showing her face here in the last few minutes of Wendy’s life. More than anything, Wendy wanted to tell the bitch to go to hell.

  “Wither!” she called, yelling so loud that her voice cracked. “Elizabeth Wither, I know who you are. I know what you are. I know you’ve been playing with me. Using me!” She wheeled around, directed her voice to another part of the sky. “You were a gutless killer three hundred years ago and that’s all you are now. Show your ugly, fucking face and let’s get this over with!”

  “Wendy, you’re scaring me,” Frankie called from within the circle.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Wendy said to her, shouting theatrically as she stared into the starry, silent sky. “She’s not worth it. Wither and her coven are cowards! Preying on the innocent. Hiding themselves. They’re afraid! Come down and face me, you sorry-ass, sickening bitch!”

  She waited, waited, closed her eyes and listened, imagined the sight of this huge circle seen from above, fires burning at the compass points, a hypnotically bright image in her mind’s eye. Nothing. Waiting. Finally, Wendy threw down her hands, her voice in shreds. Walking toward Frankie, she croaked, “Sorry I wasted your time.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Frankie offered. “Maybe your spell worked and you really have banished her. Maybe they’re all gone.”

  Wendy stepped into the circle, reached for her duffel bag. “We can only hope,” she said. “What’s that godawful smell?”

  “Oh. God! Oh, Jesus!” Frankie cried, scrambling down off the hood of the Gremlin. Wendy turned in time to see Elizabeth Wither come screaming down from the night like a dark meteor. She struck the roof of the bridge and it exploded into a million flying splinters and boards.

  Wendy gagged, thinking of this thing crawling around in her mind for months, using her, feeding off of her. “Don’t leave the circle,” she whispered to Frankie. “Take the keys.”

  “I’m not leaving without you!”

  “Just be ready to get us out of here,” Wendy yelled. “Get in the car. Just in case…”

  Wendy walked to the edge of the circle. Her legs were so weak she worried they might buckle at any moment. “Elizabeth Wither!” she called as the cloud of dust from the ruined bridge began to settle. As she feared, she had only succeeded in getting Wither’s attention, not the two other witches. But Wither was the leader of the coven, so maybe that was good enough to end this.

  The witch appeared from the ruin, clambering over the leaning mass of timber. She leapt to the ground with a gravity-defying grace and covered the distance from the bridge to Wendy in a few strides, stopping abruptly just outside of the circle. The ancient witch cocked her head to the side as she studied the line drawn with flour, the way a dog will as it considers something curious. The blast from the bridge had disturbed the continuous line, blotting it out in several places…,breaking it. The witch chuckled hoarsely, a rumbling bass sound that made Wendy’s stomach buoyant. It was a sound full of death.

  With the circle broken, all Wendy had left was pure bravado. “Get the fuck out of my life!” she shouted from her side of the circle. “I performed the spell. I banish you and your coven!”

  The chuckling stopped.

  “You’d better start the car,” Wendy called back to Frankie.

  The witch took a long, slow step over the circle’s perimeter, growling. Wendy heard the Gremlin’s engine cranking behind her. Suddenly it turned over, and Wendy spun around. The witch lunged, shrieking.

  Frankie leaned out the driver’s side window and snapped a picture. The flashbulb bleached the night bright white for one instant, and the witch paused, shrieking again, this time painfully, her eyes squeezed shut. Wendy knew instinctively the witch hated bright daylight and what was the camera flash, but a modern day spell of localized daylight!

  Wendy swung the car door open, grabbed the rifle off the seat, and turned to face Wither. The witch whipped her large head around, as if trying to pick up a scent or shake off the afterimage of the flash. She seemed to stare at the Gremlin for a moment, then lumbered forward. The Gremlin’s engine sputtered and stalled. Frankie began slamming her hands against the steering wheel. “Your spells aren’t working!” she yelled, cranking the ignition again.

  “This might,” Wendy said, leveling her father’s hunting rifle at the witch. “Elizabeth Wither, I banish you!” she said as she squeezed the trigger. The rifle leapt in her arms; the bullet ripped into Wither’s stomach, exposing tender red skin underneath the black hide. Still the witch stepped forward. Wendy worked the rifle’s action, fired again. A black splash, and a bright raw blossom opened on the witch’s throat. Then came the blood, spraying Wendy’s arm, so hot it burnt her. She hastily wiped it on her jeans. The witch punched the claws of one hand right through the Gremlin’s roof. Wendy smelled the witch’s blood, the sharp tang of her own fear, and the witch’s rancid hide.

  She also smelled gasoline. The Gremlin’s engine was flooded.

  The sheriff shoved Art out from the stand of trees into the clearing, saying, “Take me to her.”

  Art glared at him. “Quietly,” he warned, and then pantomimed that they should approach with stealth, keeping low. Then he dashed across the open weedy space between the woods and the rotting wooden structure. The sheriff followed a few paces behind. Together they crouched against the side of the barn.

  “Jesus, what’s that smell?” the sheriff whispered. He’d grown up in farm country, had visited morgues and crime scenes, so he’d known the worse kind of stenches rendered by the living and the dead. This was neither, a ripe, fetid reek that seemed to coat the back of his throat. He shook out a handkerchief and pressed it to his nose. “It stinks to high—”

  Art raised a hand to silence him. He gestured, and the sheriff turned to see movement, a figure emerging from the trees at the opposite side of the clearing from which they’d come. As the figure neared they saw it was an old man carrying a kerosene lantern in one hand and a double-barreled shotgun in the other. His features in the play of yellow lamplight were flat, dead, as if whittled out of wood.

  Without hesitating the old man hauled open a door of the barn and entered.

  Art said quietly, “Must be their caretaker…”

  “Whose caretaker?” the sheriff asked. Art fixed him with a pitying look. He was about to find out.

  Through the skylight, Karen saw an apron of cloud envelop the moon.

  “Okay, honey, we’ll give this a try the old-fashioned way,” Maria Labajo said, peeking up from beneath the sterile drapes that tented Karen’s legs in the stirrups. “The baby’s presenting feet first, I’m going to try to reposition her.” The obstetrician turned to the RN assisting her and said, “Page anesthesia. If we can’t manage a vaginal birth in the next fifteen minutes I’m doing a C-section.” The RN ducked out of the room.

  Karen looked at the big cheerful clock on the wall and made a mental note of Maria’s deadline. It was now eleven-forty-five.

  Maria turned hack to Karen, said, “Now you can push.”


  Karen gasped in relief, gathering what little reserves of strength were left in her after the nearly twenty-four-hour labor, and pushed—

  The room shuddered as something heavy landed overhead. The lights flickered. Doctor and patient looked up simultaneously.

  The sky exploded.

  Glass showered down on them in jagged splinters from the shattered skylight. Maria screamed, trying to shield her patient with her own body. Karen looked up and saw a monstrous face leering down at her. Maria saw the look of shock and horror on her patient’s face, and followed her gaze up to the skylight.

  Despite her Western training, the Klipino obstetrician had been raised in a culture with a healthy respect for the supernatural, and when she saw the feral thing leering down at them through the hole in the painted sky, she recognized it as a creature out of a nightmare. The witch reached down with one long arm and swept Maria aside like a rag doll. Maria hit the wall and collapsed in a heap.

  Karen rolled off the bed just as the witch’s claw came thudding down, shredding surgical drapes and mattress. Karen cowered beneath the bed as the witch’s grasping claw knocked over the IV stand and scattering sterile instruments. Suddenly Karen doubled in pain as her insides clenched around another contraction. Simultaneously, the witch’s furious attack ceased. Karen peeked out from her hiding place below the bed and saw the witch bent double as well, making a strange warbling moan, as if in sympathetic agony.

  Karen took advantage of the monster’s momentary distraction to crawl across to where Maria lay. She pressed her fingers to her friend’s throat until she found the pulse.

  The contraction was subsiding. Overhead, Karen heard the warbling turn to a shuddering growl.