by Ray Garton
Kassandra gasped when he grabbed her shoulders. “What is happening?” he demanded.
“Th-the police are here.”
Confusion again: “Police? Police . . .” He looked out the window again, eyes desperate and afraid, started to speak again—
—then spotted the compass.
Kassandra did not want to look down at it because, judging from the look on the stranger’s face it was—
—moving.
The vial trembled delicately, jiggling the pointer. “It moves,” he breathed. “He is near.”
Two car doors slammed outside and a police radio babbled and hissed.
The vial shook more vigorously.
A fist pounded the front door and a deep voice called, “Police.”
“Have they come to . . . take me?” the man whispered.
She saw his hands close to fists again and again and she held her breath as she nodded.
“You must stop them!” he hissed. “I must stay, he is coming! Please—” He lunged for her and Kassandra threw herself back against the door, screaming, fumbling for the knob behind her.
“Please, hush, you’re in danger, he will—”
Kassandra began flailing her arms wildly before her and he backed off enough for her to spin, pull open the door, and bolt into the hallway as—
—footsteps thundered over the living room floor and down the hall and—
—the stranger tore something from under his coat and flung it out before him defensively.
A whip.
It snapped in the air like a firecracker as one of the two officers pulled Kassandra away from the door and the other dashed into the bathroom holding a rectangular black object.
Kassandra recognized the object as a taser, or stun gun, and raised her hand to stop the policeman because—
—you’re in danger—
—maybe the guy was right, maybe Chas’s killer would be back and maybe he should stay, but—
—it was too late.
She heard the crackling zap of the taser . . .
. . . heard the stranger drop to the floor . . .
. . . saw his booted feet sticking out of the bathroom doorway, kicking convulsively.
Kassandra was overwhelmed by a feeling of loss, as if she’d betrayed her last friend, muttering, “Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ . . .”
“C’mon, miss,” one of the officers said, leading her to the living room.
She sat on the sofa and put her face in her hands as the officers led the wobbling stranger out of the house between them.
The man babbled as he staggered through the living room.
“. . . lays waste to all in his path . . . the place . . . the time . . . matter not . . . endowed with Satan’s member . . . Satan’s member . . . hear me when I say he is evil . . . evil absolute . . .”
Angry at herself for so easily being taken in by the stranger’s insanity, Kassandra closed her ears to his cries. His voice faded as he was led out to the car. One of the officers—a young sandy haired man named Tracy—came in and gave her a half-hearted smile.
“We’ll run him down to the station,” he said. “You’ll have to come down and fill out a few forms.”
“But . . . he said somebody . . . else was coming.”
“Somebody else?”
She was tempted to show him the witch compass, but was sure that would get her a drug test and a free ride downtown with Mr. Personality out in the car.
“Um, he said that someone who was here earlier . . . see, my . . . roommate was—”
“I know, miss.”
“Well, there’s a chance . . . that guy might be back.”
“I can say from experience, miss, that that’s unlikely. But it would be a good idea to lock up when we leave. And, of course, call if you need us. Uh . . . if I were you, I’d get away from this house, tell you the truth.”
She stood and sighed. “You gotta watch?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can fuckin’ time me.”
6
Crossed Paths
Redferne’s shocked nerves had no chance to calm as he sat in the back of the speeding horseless coach. He had never known such fear. His senses had been shocked by everything around him since he’d awakened behind the young woman’s house.
Now this.
The warlock had been so close . . .
And if she stayed at that house, the young woman would surely die.
The coach in which he rode was evidently propelled by some magic that was accepted by all in this strange place and no magic was good magic; it all began with evil, originated with the Prince of Darkness.
Surely he had come, somehow, to a land of witches, a place where magic was the way of everyone and goodness was not welcomed. A place from which he would not likely return.
It didn’t matter; he had nothing to which he could return. His Marian was gone.
All that mattered was finding and stopping the warlock.
That was all.
He leaned back his head and closed his eyes and waited to see where the magic coach would take him.
The warlock approached the small house from behind, kicking his way through bushes as they swayed in the wind.
When he saw a lighted window, he stopped. There was movement inside; the girl darted back and forth past the window.
Reaching into his coat pocket, he removed the eyes; they were wrapped in a handkerchief, now soggy with yellowish fluids and streaked with red. Carefully unwrapping them, the warlock arranged the eyes side by side in his palm and waited.
The eyes stared into his for a long moment, then slowly rolled upward—
—toward the house.
They looked up at him again, as if to say. You know what to do.
The warlock wrapped them up, returned them to his pocket, and headed for the house.
Kassandra had two large suitcases in her closet, but didn’t take time to pack them when she got back from the police station. Instead, she removed two drawers from her dresser, stacked them in her arms, took them out to her Corvair and put them in the backseat. Leaving the car door open, she hurried back in the house, not even slowing enough to close the front door. Going down the hall, she did slow, however, to look into the bathroom . . .
. . . where the stranger’s witch compass stood on the corner of the sink.
Kassandra turned slowly, not really wanting to look, terrified deep down of what she would see, but desperate to prove to herself that the compass meant nothing, that it was just a part of that man’s craziness, a prop in the insane play that was being performed in his diseased brain.
It was moving.
It wasn’t just moving, the pointer was dancing around in a circle, first pointing this way, then that way . . .
“Oh, God,” she breathed, running down the hall, jerking two more drawers from the dresser and hugging them as she rushed back down the hall, pausing once again outside the bathroom and taking another look.
The compass was still.
It pointed toward the front of the house.
Kassandra’s gut curdled.
She looked down the hall to the open front door and—
—saw the warlock standing at the crest of the steep driveway, silhouetted against the streetlight below.
The drawers tumbled from her arms to the floor and she tripped over them, stumbling through the living room toward the door as—
—the warlock ran up the driveway, coat slapping behind him, arms outstretched to hold the door open when he reached it, but—
—Kassandra reached it first, slammed it shut and locked it.
He rammed against the door outside, then was silent.
Kassandra listened breathlessly.
He laughed.
“Oh, Christ,” she whimpered, weak with fear.
The man was right; the compass had moved and the killer had returned. And if he was right about those things . . .
. . . maybe the killer was a warlock.
&nbs
p; In which case, a locked door would mean nothing.
Kassandra hated herself for not listening to him. She’d seen him once more in the police station, just briefly as he was led by a window. He’d given her such a look of pity . . . deep, heartfelt pity . . .
“What a cup of shit,” Kassandra snapped, trying to make herself angry, ashamed of feeling like a small child afraid of the closet monster. She spun on her heel and went back down the hall, stopping again at the bathroom door.
The pointer was circling, going around and around slowly, almost as if—
—the warlock was circling the house patiently searching for a way in. Trying this side door and checking that—
—bedroom window.
She’d left it open.
Her bedroom window.
Kassandra couldn’t run fast enough down the hall and once in her room, she pushed herself toward that open window, but suddenly almost backpedaled because what if—
—strong arms plunged from the darkness outside before she could get it closed and grabbed her and pulled her outside with him—
—it slammed shut.
She threw the lock and tugged the cord that released the blinds, which unrolled with a hellacious clatter, startling her.
Kassandra stood facing the blinds, listening to the sudden cadaverous silence for sounds on the other side of the window.
Only the wind whispered.
She decided to call 911 again and turned toward the telephone and screamed.
The warlock closed a fist on her hair and jerked her toward him.
“With but a motion of my wrist, I shall break your neck if you resist.”
Her scream dissolved into a fit of coughs and she fell to her knees, head tilted back at a painful angle.
The warlock held out his free hand before him and looked at it intensely. He looked down at her and smiled.
“Curious, are you?” he asked with a chuckle before sticking his hand in her face—
—so close she could see the minute blood vessels that surrounded the fiery cat-like irises that glared at her from puddles of viscera.
Kassandra screamed and pulled away, but he jerked her forward and drew back his hand.
He stared at the eyes again, as if she weren’t there, and suddenly began dragging her out of the room and down the hall, growling, “This way . . . this way . . .”
In the living room, he stopped, said, “ ’Tis in here,” then looked at the eyes again, bellowing, “Where?”
He let go of her and she dropped to the floor, feeling dizzy and about to throw up. She propped herself on an elbow and saw the man grabbing the small black shovel from the iron rack by the fireplace. He walked back across the room and stopped—
—at the altar table.
No, Kassandra thought, please, not that table, not that fucking table, Chas—
The shovel came down on the old wood with a crack and splinters flew.
—loved that table, goddamn you—
—“No! No, not the table, please, not the—”
She sucked in a breath and gulped her words when the warlock turned and raised the shovel over his head, his face crawling with a chitinous sort of contempt. He stayed that way a few seconds and Kassandra closed her eyes, trying to prepare herself for certain death. But he slowly lowered the shovel and his eyes moved up and down her body like a cancer, covering every inch, even her hair. He pursed his lips slightly and shook his head with a malignant twinkle in his eyes.
“No,” he said quietly. “Not now.”
He began pounding on the table again, swinging the shovel again and again in rapid succession until a large crack opened in the table. He stopped.
For a moment, Kassandra thought she was passing out because the light in the room seemed to dim, but it wasn’t the light.
It was the air.
It was becoming darker.
The room seemed smaller.
And dirty.
Hideous mental images began striking her with a physical suddenness that jolted her skull—
—roaches feeding noisily on dismembered genitalia—
—and she held her head in her hands, clenched her eyes and teeth—
—falling babies being impaled on long spikes—
—and screamed as she crawled backward over the floor to get away from the table because something very wrong was coming from that table—
—a land so covered with violence and death that blood can be wrung from the very dirt—
—and she stood in the hallway as the warlock pried the altar table apart with his hands.
Kassandra took advantage of his distraction; she ran to the bathroom and shut and locked the door. She leaned on the sink, heaving for breath.
The witch compass pointed toward the living room, where the warlock muttered and laughed to himself.
Kassandra dove toward the small louvered window over the bathtub and began jerking on the glass slats epoxied into place. They wouldn’t give.
Her hand slipped, a nail broke, and a knuckle was scraped; she bit back her cry of pain and frustration and cursed through tight lips and—
—listened.
The silence of tombs filled the house.
She listened hard for a creak or shuffle, some sign of life.
Nothing.
Kassandra stepped out of the bathtub to the door and listened some more. Still nothing.
She put her hand on the doorknob, her thumb on the lock, ready to open the door a crack for just a peek—
—but she didn’t.
Even if the warlock was gone, she would still have to go through the living room and past the altar table. She got a chill at the thought. The house was no longer clean and tidy and quaint. Something foul had entered its walls.
Kassandra turned from the door and stepped back into the tub, reaching for the window again and it shattered inward, sending her backward—
—but she didn’t fall because something had hold of her hand.
The warlock leered down at her through the shattered window, hand closed tightly on her wrist, which was slowly slipping from his grip.
He released her, his fingernails scraping her skin as she fell.
Kassandra cracked her head on the bathtub and the walls melted like hot butter and the world began to spin as the warlock chanted.
“Tout, tout . . . through and about this callow life in dismay . . .”
She saw his hand floating above her as everything around her faded and he was dangling something from his fingers as his arm disappeared out the window.
“. . . rentum, osculum, tormentum . . .”
It was her silver charm bracelet.
“. . . a decade . . . twice over . . . a day . . .”
The voice faded in the wind and Kassandra collapsed in a heap in the bathtub.
7
Lock Up
Redferne sat stiff-backed on the dirty bench against the wall and watched the others in the cell carefully, sending up prayers for protection.
From the look of the others, he needed it.
They were all filthy and big and wore frightening clothes: spiked leather collars and bracelets, tattered rags that reeked of excrement and liquor. One was even dressed as a woman. He was the most worrisome because he kept staring at Redferne. He was a big man wearing a glittery red V-neck top, a short black skirt, black stockings, and red high-heeled boots. His hair fell around his square stubbled face in blond locks and his eyes and lips were heavily made up.
In a short time, Redferne had seen a lot of people—particularly women—with painted faces. Face paint was a sure sign of witchcraft.
Satan had a firm hold on this place and its people.
Redferne turned his eyes from the strange man and stared through the bars, but he could feel those painted eyes clinging to him. The man was coming across the cell toward him. Smiling.
Redferne stood and went to the bars, grabbing one with each hand, hoping to find a guard. Surely the guards had some sympathy, som
e humanity.
The other men in the cell grumbled at each other.
Outside, officers hurried by, some in uniform, others in street clothes, hurrying from desk to desk to the coffee machine and back again.
Footsteps scritched to a stop beside him.
Hands with bright red nails and bracelets touched the bars.
“Don’t tell me,” he said in a deep tough voice. “Your costume ball got raided.”
Redferne focused his attention on a box suspended from the wall above the coffee machine in the next room. It was a remarkable box, a magic box, no doubt a thing of evil. But Redferne could not take his eyes from it.
“No offense, but you looked . . . well, new at this, you know?”
The box had moving, talking pictures inside. A man with shiny silver black streaked hair and tinted glasses was looking out of the box . . . talking to Redferne . . .
“This book,” the man in the box said, holding out a black book, “is the only truth this world knows. It is the only hope this world has. It is theee one, theee only, the awe-inspiring, soul-cleansing Word of God!”
Redferne eased his face between two of the bars and stared at the box in amazement, straining to hear every word the shouting man inside said.
The man standing next to him said, “I just thought you could use an encouraging word, ’cause I’ve been here before and it’s really not so bad. You know, every time I come here, I feel like I’m on Barney Miller, or something, you know? ’Cause I mean it, these guys, you listen to some of these cops, and they’re quick, y’know? They’ve gotta lotta humor. Have to, I guess. But the way. I’m Steve. Or Cindy, whichever you want.”
Redferne did not turn from the box; he was convinced it was a sign from God.
“Its message is for all peoples of all places and all times,” he went on thunderously. “Yes, all times. It was the Word of God six thousand years ago and it’s the Word of God today, right now, in nineteen eighty-eight. And His Word says that right now, in nineteen eighty-eight, this country is in tuh-rubble, brothers and sisters!”
Redferne frowned and backed away from the bars muttering, “Nineteen . . . eighty . . . eight?”
