The Right Hand of Evil

by John Saul

  "You said you were going to stop drinking." She struggled to keep her voice under control, and wished she'd found the strength to hold her anger in check until later, when she and Ted would be alone. But it was too late. Ted was already glowering at her.

  "Just because it's here doesn't mean I'm going to drink it."

  This time Janet did stifle the words that came to mind. But it didn't matter. She'd already set Ted off.

  "You all make me sick," he rasped. "Can you blame me for having a drink every now and then, the way you all act?" He picked up the box of bottles, nearly lost his balance, then managed to recover himself. "You want dinner, go ahead and eat it. I'll take care of myself." He disappeared through a doorway that led to a butler's pantry and the big dining room beyond. Jared made a move to follow, but Janet stopped him.

  "Don't. Just leave him alone. Maybe at least the rest of us can enjoy our dinner."

  But of course they couldn't. The pall over the house grew heavier, and though Janet kept telling herself it was just the dank heat of the evening, all of them knew its real cause.

  Somewhere in the house, Ted was drinking.

  When dinner was finished and the dishes cleared and washed, Kim and Jared retreated to the second floor, pleading homework to be done and a few more boxes still to be unpacked. But when Jared lifted Molly into his arms—"Come on, small fry, if we have to work, so do you!"—Janet got the message loud and clear.

  We don't want to deal with him.

  After they left, Janet lingered in the kitchen. At first she told herself she simply wanted to be alone, wanted to put off dealing with her husband for as long as possible. But it was more than that.

  Once again she was hearing her mother's voice, and this time it was saying something it had never said before: Leave him. Take the children, and leave him. He's a liar, he's a drunk, and whatever his problems are have nothing to do with you. Don't let him destroy you. Don't let him destroy the children. Get out now, before it's too late.

  The words, so clear it was as if her mother were sitting at the kitchen table, shook Janet. Not because they were unfamiliar words.

  She'd said them to herself a hundred times.

  But always before, there had been qualifications.

  And always before, fear had followed immediately on the heels of the thought. Fear of trying to raise the children alone. Fear of trying to put a roof over their heads, and food on the table, and clothes on their backs. But this evening, in the heavy heat of the Louisiana night, all the fears had fallen away.

  Now she was far more afraid of staying. She stepped to the back door and looked out. The sky was a leaden black—a thick cloud blotted out whatever light the stars might have provided—and in the inky darkness she saw all the forces that suddenly seemed to be arrayed against her.

  The priest, whose words of warning at the funeral seemed far more menacing in the dark of night than they had in the bright light of morning.

  Jake Cumberland, who had stood glowering from the sidewalk as they buried Cora Conway.

  All the people whom Ted had told her about over lunch, people who—for whatever reason—didn't want them here, and made no effort to hide their feelings.

  Sister Clarence, who had chosen to humiliate her children on their very first day at St. Ignatius.

  And what was keeping them here?

  A free house, and an income that would allow Ted to drink all he wanted.

  Why had she let herself believe that he'd really intended to stop drinking? Stupid! That's what she was—just plain stupid, like all the women she'd seen on those television talk shows who stayed with men who beat them, and cheated on them, and humiliated them every chance they got. So how was she any different from them?

  Just because Ted didn't beat her, or cheat on her?

  So what?

  He lied to her—had lied to her hundreds of times over the years! Why had she believed him this time?

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Well, ho more!

  Stepping back into the kitchen, she closed the door, shutting out the darkness. As she started through the lower floor of the house, her mood began to lighten. A flood of relief told her she'd made the right decision far more strongly than the purely intellectual knowledge that she had no other choice.

  If she and the children stayed here, something terrible would happen.

  To all of them.

  She found Ted slouched on the single tired sofa they'd brought with them from Shreveport and installed in the small den behind the living room. He was clutching a glass, and on the floor next to the sofa was a fifth of vodka, half drunk.

  "I'm leaving tomorrow," she told him. "I'll take the kids and Scout—and Muffin, if she's back—and the car."

  Ted lurched to his feet and took a step toward her, lost his balance and grabbed at the mantel over the small fireplace to steady himself. "You're not going anywhere," he growled, this time making no attempt to conceal the slur in his speech.

  Janet refused to be drawn into a fight. The decision she'd finally made was giving her a serenity she hadn't felt in years. "It's over, Ted," she said, her voice so quiet it riveted her husband's attention. "All the years of lies, all the years of broken promises. I don't want to deal with it." Her glance took in the room; the reality of the life around her. Now, instead of the possibilities she'd seen through Ted's eyes a few days earlier, all she saw was the peeling wallpaper, the stained plaster, the filthy and broken chandelier that hung from a sagging ceiling. And every room in the house was just like it. "Look at this place," she went on. "It's just like our marriage—everything about it is rotten, and it ought to have been torn down years ago." Ted's fist clenched spasmodically, but Janet didn't so much as flinch. "Don't bother," she said. "It won't work. Don't bother to threaten me, don't hit me, and for God's sake, don't make me any more promises." She turned away, but at the door she looked back at him one more time. "And don't bother coming upstairs tonight, either. The bedroom door will be locked." She left the den and walked through the living room into the foyer, then started up the stairs. She was halfway to the landing where the staircase split when Ted's voice thundered through the house.

  "You won't leave me!" he bellowed. "You'll never leave me!"

  The calm she'd been feeling was shattered by her husband's fury. Racing up the rest of the stairs, she fled into her room, locking the door behind her. The thick oak slab would keep him away from her for the rest of the night, but it wasn't thick enough to protect her from the sound of his rage.

  "Do you understand?" he roared from downstairs, his voice echoing through the ruined rooms. "You'll never leave me!"

  CHAPTER 12

  It was time. Even though he'd been deep in sleep since just after sunset, something inside Jake Cumberland knew it was time. He came awake in an instant, throwing off the ragged coverlet he'd slept under since he was a boy and swinging his feet to the bare wooden floor in a single smooth motion. As he pulled on his pants there was a faint scratching at the cabin door; his hounds, too, had sensed that the time had come. "Give a body a chance," Jake muttered. At the sound of his voice the two yellow dogs fell silent. Slipping his arms into the frayed sleeves of a shirt so old that its plaid pattern had all but disappeared, Jake lit a candle, then moved to the door and opened it just enough to let the animals inside. The dogs—so thin their ribs were clearly etched beneath their scarred hides—slithered into the cabin's single room, their noses already seeking out the food their master might have provided. "Maybe later," Jake said as he shut the door against the darkness outside.

  The dogs dropped to the floor, their muzzles resting on their paws. Their bloodshot eyes, glowing like burning embers in the candlelight, fixed on Jake. As he lit four more candles, lining them up on the scarred pine counter by the sink, their bodies tensed and a faint whimper crept from the throat of the smaller one. "Quiet," Jake commanded. The dog flinched and cowered, but emitted no further sound.

  As smoke from the five candles filled th
e room, Jake went to the trunk in the corner—his mother's trunk—and opened it. Just under the lid there was a shallow tray, divided into half a dozen sections, each of which contained an assortment of small jars and vials. His mother's altar cloth lay beneath the tray, but Jake knew better than to touch it until he was certain which of her charms and potions to use.

  "Soon's you unfold it, the magic starts to work," she'd told him when he was a boy. "So you got to be ready. Got to know what you want to do, and what to use to do it."

  "But how do you know?" Jake had asked, his eyes wide as he watched his mother—whose own eyes were tightly closed—pass her hands over the tray, her fingers plucking out some objects, leaving others untouched.

  "It's the magic," she'd told him. "The magic will tell you."

  Now Jake knelt before the trunk, and just as his mother had done when he was a boy, he held out his hands, suspending them just a fraction of an inch above the tray. He closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the ceiling.

  "Help me," he implored. "Help me, Mama."

  The dogs, unseen by Jake, raised their heads, then stood. As the fur on their hackles rose, each of them lifted a forepaw off the floor.

  Their tails extended straight back.

  They held their perfect point as steadily as Jake held his hands above the tray in the open trunk.

  Jake's right hand moved, hovering above the jars and bottles, drifting first in one direction, then another. In the beginning it seemed to be nothing more than random movement, but slowly a pattern emerged, as time after time his hand stopped, suspended over the same five objects.

  His eyes still closed, his face still raised toward the ceiling, he began plucking objects from the tray.

  The dogs, their bodies tense, kept their eyes fixed on their master's right hand.

  When all five objects had been lifted from the tray and placed on the floor beside the trunk, Jake finally opened his eyes again. Gently, almost reverently, he lifted the tray itself from the trunk and set it upon the bed. Then, his hands trembling, he reached for his mother's altar cloth. Never before in his life had he removed it from the trunk—never even so much as touched it. Even now, as the candlelight flickered around him, he hesitated.

  The dark bundle, tightly bound with ribbon of a purple so dark it was nearly lost in the black of the cloth itself, seemed to throb in the flickering candlelight as if some unknown life were struggling to free itself from the confining folds.

  The magic.

  His mama's magic.

  His fingers vibrating, Jake lifted the bundle out of the trunk. Carrying it to the table, he carefully untied the ribbons, pressed them flat, then rolled them up the way he'd seen his mama do. Loosened from its bonds, one edge of the cloth fell free, its finely embroidered border dropping into Jake's hands as if inviting him to shake it open. Jake's fingers closed on the soft velvet. Its inky blackness seemed to swallow up the candlelight like a feeding beast. Suddenly Jake's arms were lifted high, his wrists snapped, and he brought the cloth back down. In an instant the bundle unfurled, the folds of velvet spreading across the table like the mantle of darkness that had fallen over the cabin a few hours earlier. A second later the cloth dropped to the tabletop. As it fell into place, the creases of its folds disappeared and the rusty stains of age faded away. The corners of the cloth dropped perfectly, each of them hanging an inch above the floor.

  In the center of the cloth a golden star had been embroidered, its points formed by five triangles whose bases, together, inscribed a perfect pentagram. Jake placed a candle on each of the star's five points, and as he set the last one in place, their combined light grew far brighter, washing the shadows from the dark corners of the cabin. Then, as if some unseen being had turned down the wick of a lamp, the light faded once more.

  But something in the cloth had changed.

  The space within the pentagram appeared to have opened, and as Jake stared into it, he felt as if he were peering into a bottomless abyss.

  A wave of dizziness swept over him; Jake felt as if he were teetering on the brink of the abyss, about to plunge over into the darkness—darkness that would swallow him up as surely as the conflagration he'd watched forty years ago had swallowed up his mama.

  Uneasy growls rose in both dogs' throats, but as Jake turned away from the altar he'd created, the guttural sounds died away.

  One by one Jake picked up the items he'd taken from the tray. There were three small jars and two vials. Removing the lid from the first, he took a pinch of the ground tusk of a wild boar and rubbed it into one of the triangles.

  As the candle at the triangle's point flared brighter, Jake murmured a quick prayer: "May your belly be torn, and your entrails spilled."

  From the second jar he took the curved thorn of a wild rose. "Let your skin be ripped, and your blood ooze from your wounds." The second candle flared.

  He removed the stopper from one of the vials, and the stench of skunk oil filled the room. As he poured a single drop of the oily fluid in front of the third triangle, feeding its struggling flame, another incantation fell from his lips: "May your lungs burn and pus fill your throat."

  The broken quill of a porcupine came next, and now four of the candles were flaring up. "May your eyes be pierced and blackness fall over you."

  Finally Jake opened the second vial and let flow a single drop of the clear liquid within. As the flame of the last candle swelled and the acid from the last vial ate into the velvet's surface, he uttered one last prayer: "May your flesh be stripped away, and your bones be consumed by dogs."

  The two yellow dogs edged closer, as if anticipating a meal.

  Once again the combined flames of the candles filled the cabin with a luminous golden glow. Now Jake went to the far corner and picked up one of the tattered canvas bags in which he carried home the fruits of his trap lines. Tonight, though, it wasn't a nutria the sack contained, or the carcass of a weasel or otter or possum.

  Tonight the bag contained the prize he'd captured the night before.

  Carefully, respectfully, he lifted the carcass of Kimberley Conway's cat from the folds of the canvas. The animal's eyes were open, and it seemed to watch him as he laid it in the center of the pentagram.

  From a rack above the kitchen counter, he took a filleting knife whose blade was worn thin from years of honing.

  In the brilliant light of the flaring candles, Jake Cumberland set about his work.

  In half an hour it was done.

  He'd divided the entrails of the cat into four equal portions, and each of the portions had been seared by the flame of one of the first four candles.

  The cat's hide, scraped free of every scrap of flesh, was held over the fifth candle. The flame consumed a patch of its fur as quickly as the acid had eaten through the velvet on which the candle stood.

  The ritual complete, Jake packed away the entrails, and the hide and head, in his canvas bag and blew out the candles. As their light died away, the smoke in the room began to clear, taking with it the foul odor of the skunk oil.

  The white powder of the boar's tusk vanished into the nap of the velvet, along with the rose's thorn and the porcupine's quill.

  The hole eaten through the cloth by the acid disappeared, and as Jake lifted the velvet from the table, it fell once more into the folds from which he'd shaken it loose an hour ago.

  As the distant toll of the church bell striking midnight sounded, Jake rebound the cloth with the purple ribbons and returned it to his mama's trunk. He placed the tray back on its supporting rails and closed the lid.

  Just before leaving the house with the canvas bag, Jake Cumberland fed his two yellow dogs. They fell hungrily upon the skeleton of the cat, growling and snarling as they ripped the tendons apart and crushed the bones in their jaws.

  The huge clock in the corner of the cavernous living room—an ornately carved piece that had a distinctly Germanic look to it—began tolling the hour as Ted was tearing the plastic seal loose from a fresh bottle of vodk
a.

  The second one, or the third?

  He couldn't quite remember, but decided it must be the second. If it was the third, he should have been sound asleep by now, and he wasn't.

  He wasn't even close.

  His fingers stopped working at the bottle's seal as he counted the hours the clock was striking.

  ...ten ... eleven ... twelve ... thirteen.

  Thirteen?

  What the hell...? There wasn't any such thing as thirteen o'clock—everyone knew that.

  As the seal broke, he gave the cap a twist, then lifted the bottle to his lips and took a healthy swig. The familiar warmth of alcohol flowed comfortingly down his throat and spread through his belly.

  And Janet's words—the words that had been slamming at his head all evening—quieted for a few seconds.

  She didn't mean it—couldn't mean it! Without him, what the hell would she do? Besides, he'd heard it all before. Wasn't she always whining that she couldn't stand it, that if he didn't stop drinking, she was gonna leave? But she never did—never would. She loved him.

  Couldn't live without him.

  But what the hell was going on with the clock? Come to think of it, how come it was running at all? He didn't remember winding it. 'Course, Janet or one of the kids could've done that. But he didn't remember hearing it chime before, either.

  What the hell kind of clock only struck once, and then struck the wrong time?

  Ted struggled off the sofa and lurched over to it, staring up at its etched brass plate. There were dials all over it—one that showed the time, and another that showed the seconds ticking by, and a big one with the moon on it. The clock was running, all right. He could see the pendulum moving. His gaze shifted to the dial that showed the seconds. There was something about it that appealed to him, the way it ticked a notch forward every time the pendulum swung.

  It was ... His mind groped for a word, then found exactly the right one.

  Tidy. That's what it was.

  Neat and tidy.

  The way things should be.