by Ray Garton
“For months now. Doesn’t it make you feel old, the way time flies? A real bitch.”
“Eighty-eight,” Redferne repeated incredulously, returning his attention to the box.
“This country is in trouble be-caaauuse,” the man in the box roared, “we have given the controls to Satan himself. The devil is operating this vast machine, this gigantic dynamo we call America and he is taking it straight to Helll!”
Redferne felt a chill at the man’s words, a tremor in the possibilities they invoked.
Nineteen eighty-eight . . . America . . .
Could he have been sucked through time by the Devil’s magic?
Could he be in America’s future?
If so, the man in the box spoke truth; it was a nation in Satan’s grasp.
But what if he lied, this man?
Redferne turned to Steve, but quickly looked away. “The man in the box,” Redferne said. “Who might he be?”
“Who, that guy? On the tube? That’s the Reverend Wally Jaglom. You mean you don’t recognize him? He was on the cover of People a couple weeks ago.”
“He is, then, a man of God?”
Steve laughed. “Well, I guess that depends on what god you’re talking about, you know?”
Redferne turned to him and shook his head, frowning. “No, I . . . don’t know.”
“Jaglom’s god is dangling between his legs. And he’s got another one in his back pocket—his wallet.” Steve laughed again. “Haven’t you heard about him? You must be a foreigner, man. You do talk a little funny.”
“Please . . . is he or is he not a man of God?”
“Well, he’s a minister, if that’s what you mean. Worth millions. Owns a whole television network, a big hospital, and a university. Couple years ago, he said God would blow up his hospital if he didn’t raise nine million dollars to pay off his debts and build a new television station. Know what? He raised seventeen million. All those lonely little senior citizens who tune into his TV network sent in their fuckin’ pension checks to save all those poor sick people from God’s wrath. Can you believe it?” He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “Last year, he started talking about running for president, but then somebody caught him doing the bone dance with some underage hooker in a sleazy motel room.”
Redferne was confused. “The . . . bone dance?”
“Yeah, he was porkin’ her. Boinkin’ her. Playing hide the salami. They were fucking, get it? And for forty dollars. You’d think he could afford more than that. Jesus, look at all those rings on his fingers.”
It took a while for Redferne to absorb what Steve had said, but when he did, he had to lean against the bars.
“You say,” he whispered, “this man, a minister of the church, fornicated with—”
“A little lady of the night.”
“Yet he preaches still! On the . . . tube?”
“Yeah. He was a . . . oh, one of those holy rollin’ evangelical religions, you know? They defrocked him when he got caught with his peter out. But you know what he did? He started his own fuckin’ church. And he’s still getting millions of dollars.”
“From his parishioners?”
“Honey, this man does not have parishioners. He’s got a fuckin’ empire and they’re his subjects. He reaches people all over the world on the tube.”
“A power to be reckoned with, this tube,” Redferne muttered, looking at the box again.
“So’s he. If people are stupid enough to still send him money, they might be stupid enough to put him in the White House. I mean, look at Reagan. Two terms, right?”
“Why does no one . . . stop him?”
“Good question. They put me in jail. I’m not hurting anybody, you know? I mean, maybe what I do isn’t, you know, conventional, but I always say, if it helps you cope with the indignities of life, go with it, baby, know what I mean? But this guy. He points his finger at everyone, accusing, condemning, judging. He burns books and advocates the bombing of abortion clinics, all that shit. He tells people if they don’t send him money, God’ll get really pissed. He makes twenty-two million dollars a week. Then he gets caught diddling some tart in a pink motel and what does he get? The cover of People. Is there something wrong there, or what!”
Redferne listened to Reverend Jaglom again.
“This country is under a blanket of evil spreading from sea to sea. A blanket of sex . . . and drugs . . . and murder . . . and witchcraft . . . and God, my friends, Gaaaawwwd! Is not! Happy!”
Redferne’s hands wrung the bars.
His Marian had been punished and rejected—her soul bruised—by the church for caring for a prostitute. Here in this strange and frightening place, a man of God—who apparently had wealth and resources beyond imagining—was rewarded for consorting with one.
Redferne suddenly knew why he was there—more importantly, why the warlock was there.
Satan had sent the warlock to a place where he would be invisible.
“Haven’t the eighties been somethin’, man?” Steve asked thoughtfully, staring at the box. “Between Ronald Reagan, the televangelists, and AIDS, it’s been quite a show, huh?”
But Redferne wasn’t listening. He had returned to the bench where he sat leaning forward, elbows on his knees, feeling afraid.
He was afraid because if the warlock was to be invisible, then he must have quite a task to perform.
He was afraid because here, in this strange and frightening place, Redferne could think of no way to stop him.
8
Mirror, Mirror
Just before dawn, as the sky slowly began to turn the shade of a bloody bruise, Kassandra awoke in the bathtub. The swollen lump on the back of her head beat like a drum. She lifted a hand as she sat up and gingerly touched the lump with three fingertips—
—and felt her hair.
It felt coarse and dry and—
—longer.
Out of the tub, she fought to keep her footing and leaned heavily over the sink. As the light of dawn oozed through the shattered window over the tub, Kassandra lifted her eyes to the medicine cabinet mirror.
Her reflection made her want to cry.
Her exhaustion and fear, mixed with the room’s murky light, made her look twenty years older.
Her cheeks were sagging and sunken and small sacs of age had filled beneath her eyes. Her smile lines were filled with shadow. Even her hair appeared dulled and graying in the poor light.
The reflection frightened and repulsed Kassandra. She’d never seen herself looking so bad. So ugly.
So old.
She flicked on the light to chase away the shadowy image—
—and screamed . . .
9
Bail
Redferne’s body craved sleep, but his mind would not allow it. He sat on the bench, back against the wall. The men shuffled around him; some were curled up in corners, others were dozing in chairs, all were more quiet than earlier.
Steve paced.
Outside the cell, activity went on relentlessly. New men came in, others went out. Typewriters chattered and phones rang.
“Got somebody to make bail for you?”
Redferne looked up at Steve but did not reply.
“I mean, you been in here quite a while. My friend won’t even be home for another couple hours, so I left a message on his machine and he’ll come get me when he can, so that’s why I’m waiting. But what about you? You got anybody?”
“I am depending upon my father.”
“Yeah? What’s your dad do?”
Offended, Redferne replied, “My father is God, sir!”
“Yeah, mine was like that, too. He was such an asshole.”
A woman standing at the desk raised her voice and an officer stood, calmed her down, and seated her. She was a mature woman, thin, with blond hair going gray.
There was something familiar about her . . .
“My dad owned a garage,” Steve said. “Had a bunch of young mechanics working for him. They all looked li
ke Bruce Springsteen. One day when I was in high school, Dad caught me trying on my sister’s underwear. It always looked better on me ’cause she was such a fuckin’ cow. Anyway, from then on, every day after school, he made me go to his garage and learn how to fix cars and verbally degrade women. Know what happened? One of his Bruce Springsteens seduced me. And I wasn’t even gay!”
Redferne watched the woman, tried to listen for her voice.
The policeman at the desk glanced at him, then said something to the woman and she replied angrily, “I know I did, but now I’m here to get him out.”
Redferne thought he recognized the voice but—
—Surely it cannot be, he thought.
“I’m not gay now,” Steve continued, “but the old man thought I was. That’s a myth, you know, that all transvestites are gay. Hell, I was married for three years. She ran off with some black guy who probably had NASA written on the side of his dick, and do you know what? The bitch took all of my best dresses. We were the same size. I think that’s why she married me, the cunt. She even took—”
“Hold your foul tongue, man!” Redferne barked.
Steve’s mouth clacked shut suddenly, then he said, “Well, Jesus Christ, excuse the fuck outta me, I was—”
Redferne gave Steve a stone cold look of warning to show that he was serious and the man slowly turned and walked away, rubbing his hands down over his hips to smooth his skirt.
The woman signed some papers, then stood and approached the cell.
The closer she came, the more certain Redferne felt that he was right.
“You understand,” the officer said, fumbling with keys, “that if Mr. Redferne doesn’t appear on the appointed date, you forfeit bail?”
She stood at the door and stared through the bars at Redferne. Her eyes drooped with age, but burned with anger. She ignored the policeman’s question and said, “So you know this fuckbrain, huh?”
Redferne searched her face, which was decades older than it was just a few hours ago, and wanted to comfort her, reassure her, but didn’t know how.
He reached through the bars and lightly touched a finger to her face, saying, “Aye, and I know his handiwork.”
Kassandra said, “Let him out.”
10
Revelations
Kassandra stopped the car in the drive in front of the house. She didn’t want to go back again, she dreaded it like her own death, but Redferne had insisted.
She’d driven in a daze, listening to Redferne, wishing he were reading to her from some fantasy novel with beautiful illustrations of magicians and witches and cruelly cursed princesses—
—instead of telling her the truth.
The truth sunk in slowly, and when it hit—when it really hit and she realized that her entire world view was being bludgeoned with a sledgehammer—she turned off the engine, turned to Redferne and said slowly, “Sixteen . . . hundred . . . and ninety-fucking-one?”
“Aye,” he said solemnly without meeting her eyes.
“Like . . . almost three hundred years ago?”
“As queer as it seems to you, ’tis even more so to me.”
She leaned her forehead on the steering wheel and groaned; she would have cried, but she didn’t think she had anymore tears. Instead, she got out of the car and, followed by Redferne, went into the house.
In the living room, Redferne knelt beside the broken altar table.
“He did this?” Redferne asked, sifting through the pieces.
“Yeah.” Kassandra went to the bathroom, found the Oil of Olay, poured some in her palm, and turned to the mirror and—
—dropped the bottle of skin cream into the sink and clapped a hand over her mouth, staring at her reflection.
It was no worse. Kassandra just hadn’t seen herself in nearly three hours and, while she had never forgotten about it, the shock had worn off after a while. Now it was back with a vengeance.
A tear left a jagged trail as it made its way down her cheek, rolling through the lines and wrinkles that were developing below her eyes and around the corners of her mouth.
During the time she’d gone to the police station to pick up Redferne, she’d been self-conscious at first, knowing how she looked. But after a while, it didn’t seem as important—
—because she couldn’t feel it. She felt no different than she had before; as long as she couldn’t see herself, she felt as if she looked the same as always. Standing before the mirror now, she knew better. She’d become one of those women who drove around Los Angeles in BMWs wearing tennis skirts and making bedroom eyes and suggestive remarks to boxboys, paperboys, and waiters.
“Well,” Kassandra whispered to herself, wiping her eyes, “I’m not fuckin’ no paperboy.”
“I beg your pardon?” Redferne said softly.
Kassandra started and spun toward him.
He stood in the doorway looking a bit lost and clumsy, out of place.
“I startled you,” he said, bowing his head. “Forgive me.”
She shrugged. “S’okay.”
Redferne stepped forward, squeezing by her, muttering, “I believe my dagger . . . ah, yes.” He hunkered down and reached back between the sink and toilet and found his dagger, then stood. “My dagger,” he explained.
Kassandra was still sniffling and wiping away tears and this seemed to embarrass Redferne. He started out of the room again, but Kassandra took his arm and tugged him back.
“What about me?” she whispered. “How do we fix my . . . face?”
Kassandra hadn’t even looked beneath her clothes yet. She was afraid to; she imagined her breasts beginning to sag, the skin around her nipples puckering, her belly softening and starting to spill just a little over the elastic band of her panties . . .
“What’re we gonna do about me?” she cried, sitting on the toilet and holding her face in both hands.
“What did he take from you?”
“Twenty fuckin’ years!”
“No. An object.”
“What . . . kinda object?”
He bent down and slid his dagger into his boot, saying, “Something small. Something of personal value to you.”
She thought about it a moment, closed her eyes, and saw—
—the warlock’s hand disappearing out the window, dangling her silver—
—“Charm bracelet,” she muttered. Then louder, “He took my charm bracelet.”
“You must reclaim it. Only then will the spell be countered.” He turned and left the room.
Kassandra followed him as far as the kitchen door, but did not go in. A moment later, he came out holding a carton of Morton’s salt.
As the door closed behind him, Kassandra glimpsed the designs of blood on the floor and walls and turned away with a whisper of a cry.
“This I spied earlier,” Redferne said, holding up the salt. “ ’Tis yours? The whole of it?”
He seemed excited.
“It’s just salt,” she said.
Redferne raised a brow as he put the box in his baggy coat pocket; he seemed impressed.
“Come,” he said. “We’ll take your coach.”
“No, no, we’ll take a minute here. Do you mean I have to get my bracelet back to break this—” She stumbled on the next word, unable to believe she was using it seriously. “—this sp-spell? Back from the warlock? This guy who . . . who fingerpaints with body fluids?”
“ ’Tis the only way.”
Kassandra pondered his words, frowning.
Then it won’t go away, she thought. I’ll never get it back. It’s a fucking bracelet. You get your car stolen in this town, you never get it back. Some three-hundred-year-old warlock who travels through time with Satan steals your favorite bracelet, you’re shit outta luck. I’m this way . . . for keeps.
She felt a little ill and quickly went to her bedroom.
Redferne followed. “Wait, did you not hear? This you must do. There is no question of it.”
Kassandra was nauseated but also angry—at no
thing in particular, just everything—and she swung the door to behind her, but—
—Redferne caught it and came in, saying, “You must.”
Kassandra took her insulin kit from her bag on the bed, removed a small bottle of the clear liquid, and said, “See this? Insulin. It’s the one thing I must do. Once a day. And I hate it. Because I must do it.” She angrily stuffed it into the kit and turned to the mirror and her new face.
My mother’s face, she thought disdainfully. Kassandra and her mother had never been close . . .
“Nails’re no problem,” she whispered to herself, examining her fingers, which were more creased than the night before. She touched her hair. “I can always use a rinse. And wrinkles . . . well, hey, I hear they got this stuff called Retin-A that works wonders.” She sniffled and wiped a tear, took a deep breath and said, “Forty ain’t so bad. I’ll just . . . buy some tennis skirts . . .” She saw Redferne looking at her in the mirror and turned to him. “Sorry, Redferne. But if you’re nuts enough to want to find this guy, you’re on your own.”
Redferne gave her an odd, puzzled look and whispered, “You do not understand.”
“Understand what?”
“What the spell has done.”
“It’s aged me twenty years, I think I under—”
“Not aged.”
She stopped, frowned, and her eyes questioned him silently.
Redferne said, “Aging.”
Kassandra mulled that over a moment—aging—then turned to the mirror again and gulped the wad of horror that was rising from her stomach. “You’re shittin’ me,” she whispered, then, raising her voice and looking at him, “You’re shittin’ me up the wall and across the ceiling!”
Redferne did not need to reply; the look of pity in his eyes spoke for him.
“Oh. Jesus.” She looked at her reflection again, envisioning the changes to come. “You mean that tomorrow . . . I’m gonna wake up . . . s-si-six . . . three times twenty?”
“I say this. Unless you find the warlock and thereby your bracelet . . . you shall die in but half a week.”
“Die . . .”
“Of old age.”
With those words—of old age—the reality of her situation gripped her and gave her a neck-jerking shake.
