Covenant

by John Everson

  But if he believed what he was reading here, this was not about serial killing. Not unless the entire town was in on it.

  This was something much more deadly than some guy with some rope and a thirst for hearing screams from flailing people on the way down.

  This was about cults…or ghosts.

  Terrel’s Peak, Joe decided, was haunted.

  Except Joe didn’t believe in ghosts.

  He reminded himself of this fact and stilled a shiver. He suddenly felt as if the shadows of the damp room were moving behind him.

  After looking around at the piles of books and newspapers in the room, Joe began to hurriedly stuff the binders back on the shelves in the empty holes he’d left for them.

  The lighting in this basement was not helping his nerves any.

  There was a cold sweat starting beneath his arms, and gooseflesh rippling on top of them. Grabbing his notebook, now rife with the names of long-dead people, both strangers and natives of Terrel, he vaulted up the stairs.

  He had done enough studying for one day.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Her breath was coming in heaving gasps by the time Cindy reached the top of the cliff. It was a long climb from town without a car. The sweat rolled down her back, but a brisk wind from the bay kept her from overheating.

  “You would have thought all the walking to classes at school would have put me in shape for this,” she said to the wind.

  She picked her way through brambles and tangles of ketch vine and spiny grass to the hard rocky face of the peak. Here, very little vegetation survived the harsh sun and scouring winds and rain. But the view was worth the effort.

  Spread out before her was a picture postcard. She could never describe this to her friends in college. And pictures couldn’t begin to capture the beauty she’d been brought up to accept as mundane. Straight down, the ocean broke in foamy kisses against the boulder-strewn beach. Sea green beyond the rocks, the water stretched to the horizon, which was already bruising purple with the coming night. Behind her, she could follow the winding road down the slope. It disappeared into a maze of trees, but slithered out the other side and reappeared entering the town proper of Terrel.

  From the top of the cliff she could see the bell tower of St. Matthews, the rust-tiled roof of the Anderson Hotel, and the grassy knoll to the west of town where she and James used to picnic. All around, poking through the canopy of forest were a collage of black and green roofs of the surrounding homes.

  The steady intake and exhalation of the ocean filled the air, but in the distance she could hear the call of gulls. They’d be heading home now, to wherever it is seabirds shelter for the night.

  Cindy walked closer to the edge.

  She could see a spot where the gray rock extended out over the ocean just a few feet farther than the rest of the plateau. He’d jumped there, she decided. They all jumped from there, didn’t they?

  She approached the spot slowly, hesitantly. As if to a shrine.

  Why? What could have possessed him to do it?

  The word “possessed” took root and echoed in her brain.

  She sank to her knees then, and the tears snuck through the dike she’d built against them these past couple hours of walking and thinking.

  Even though James refused to leave Terrel for college, she’d still thought they would be together this summer. And maybe then she could have convinced him to reconsider. She pounded a fist into the denim of her thigh.

  He hadn’t even waited to see her! One more week and she would have been with him. They would have had three more months, if not forever. And maybe those months would have led to the beginning of forever, if things had gone the way she’d hoped. Hadn’t they been in love? Hadn’t she pulled him to her chest under the blanket of night and met his whispered promises with secret words of her own?

  Her heart ached with conflicting emotions. She wanted to hit him for leaving her, and at the same time kiss him and beg him to come back.

  She rocked with sobs on the edge of the cliff, unable to do either.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Joe hit c4 and watched the Bugles drop with a gentle thunk to the bottom. He pulled out the bag and was munching contentedly until he got back to his desk.

  Randy was there waiting for him.

  “Where’ve you been?” the night editor demanded. “We’ve got a paper to put out here. I need to get your story on the library renovation—and the fire safety piece—by six o’clock!”

  Shit.

  “I’m sorry, Randy. I was down at the library doing some research. The time got away from me. I’m almost through with both of those anyway. Give me another hour.”

  “Well, get on ’em.”

  Tom Hicks, the slot editor, looked up from the copydesk and winked at him. Then he wrinkled up his face and exaggerated the editor’s tantrum through painful facial grimaces.

  It was all Joe could do to keep from laughing in his boss’s face. Randy turned to go back to his desk, but then stopped.

  “Oh, and I almost forgot. A woman called while you were gone. Italian. Angelina? No, Angelica. That fortune-teller lady from the south end of town. Angelica Napalona. She said you had her number. Why you’d have her number, I don’t want to know. But if you’re thinking about using her as a source for anything that doesn’t involve mental illness, you can pick up your pen and pad and head back to Chicago.”

  “Don’t worry, I just had a question about my palm,” Joe quipped, but inside he was jumping. Why was she calling him? Had his presence at the funeral changed her mind?

  He sat down at his computer and tried to concentrate on putting the final touches on his stories for tomorrow’s paper, but he kept hearing a fake Gypsy accent.

  As he fixed up his quotes from Mrs. Malone to sound intelligent, he kept feeling Randy’s eyes on him. The guy hadn’t let up all week. And the more he dicked around with lame stories like this, the more he missed Chicago. The boonies were good for a vacation, but there was something to be said for a newsroom that buzzed and thrummed with action and constantly ringing phones. God, what he wouldn’t give for a good murder trial or a city councilman exposed on a bribe charge.

  But isn’t that exactly why you left? a voice chided him. A life spent nailing people to pulp paper wasn’t healthy. For the soul or the body.

  But was writing about the new paintings in the Terrel library any better?

  He finished up his stories for the day by six thirty and ducked out without hanging around to argue with Randy about his edits. He didn’t really give a shit what the copy editor did with either of the stories he’d turned in. He had a bigger story to chase right now, and he couldn’t even write about it.

  Yet.

  The scents of spaghetti and barbecued pork were fighting it out in the air outside his apartment building as he climbed from the car.

  Hmmm, he thought, tasting the air and envying whomever was cooking. “That smells very nice,” he joked aloud, “but I think we’ll be having something better tonight. Some truly haute cuisine. Say, Hungry Man Yankee pot roast?”

  The key rattled nervously in the lock as he twisted the knob and entered his apartment.

  And stepped over a piece of paper that had been slipped under the door. He bent down to retrieve it.

  It was just a scrap of yellow legal paper, folded over twice. Inside was a single sentence:

  Death usually finds those who look for it.

  What the hell did that mean?

  The writing looked feminine to him, its message delivered in big showy loops, but he couldn’t be sure. He read it over again and again. Then he stuffed it into his pocket and looked sharply around the apartment, thoroughly spooked now. He flipped on the kitchen light and then slipped his hand around the neck of the living room’s lamp to find its switch. The apartment was silent except for the occasional thump from the kids in the unit upstairs.

  He strained his ears, trying to hear if there was any motion in the far reaches of his
rooms. The hallway to the bedroom was dark. The chickenshit side of his brain whispered that surely no one was here. The note had been slipped under the door, right? There was no real reason to go looking around in the bedroom, was there?

  Biting his tongue and stifling his yellow half, Joe marched down the hallway, expecting someone to jump out of the shadows from his bedroom or bathroom at any second.

  He reached into the bedroom and slid his hand along the wall, searching for the light switch. Someone could still be in his room, his mind cautioned. They could hack off his hand with an axe, and while Joe was screaming and staring at the bloody stump, the killer could step out and finish him off.

  The ceiling light clicked on above his bed, casting aside the dark. He breathed a sigh of relief, but barely believed his eyes. The only thing out of place was a pair of rumpled socks on the floor, where he’d kicked them off the previous night.

  Even so, he went back to the living room and sat in the chair that put his back to the wall. He wanted to keep the rest of the apartment in view.

  He was a good reporter.

  He was not ready for death threats.

  Flipping open the phone book, he flipped as fast as he could to the Ns. He knew a certain Gypsy who hadn’t been completely straight with him. It was about time he got some answers instead of questions.

  Angelica’s house was dark when he pulled into the driveway, but as he switched off the ignition, a light flickered on in the front room. Joe killed the lights and walked through the tangle of shadowed shrubs to the front door.

  She’d been strange on the phone, almost afraid.

  I vant to apologize for being so short vith you ze other day, she’d said.

  It’s okay, he’d assured her, and then asked if he could come by to talk some more.

  Now? Her voice had raised an octave.

  Is this a bad time?

  She cleared her throat.

  No. I…just…No. Now iss fine.

  The door opened as he set foot on the front step.

  “Come in, come in,” she urged, and with her hand on his back nearly shoved him through the entryway into the living room.

  Tonight, Angelica wore a royal blue robe of silk—or some imitation—with aqueous purple and pink creatures darting around its hems. Her hair looked damp and hung in ringlets on her shoulders. She didn’t seem to be wearing anything beneath the robe, he noticed as it shifted to reveal a dark shadow of tantalizing cleavage.

  “Please, sit.” She nodded toward an old yellow stuff ed chair in the corner of the room.

  He accepted the offer, and she sank back onto a loveseat across from him. A maroon painted hurricane lamp between them provided the only light in the room, which left most of the house in shadow. The lavender scent of burning candles or incense permeated the room, though he saw nothing currently burning.

  This was like talking to someone across a campfire, Joe thought, as he noted how the low light played across Angelica’s olive skin. She looked deeply tanned, and, he noted with some discomfort as she crossed a bare leg across her knee, much younger than she had at the funeral.

  “Did I get you out of the shower?” he ventured, feeling awkward. “I could have come later, or tomorrow.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “No. I always take a shower at night, and then it just zeems foolish to get all the way dressed again. Do you mind?”

  “Uh, no. Not at all.”

  “May I zee your hands?” she asked.

  He extended his palms across the lamp table to her.

  “I didn’t come for a reading, Angelica.”

  She ignored him, leaning forward to take his palms in hers.

  He couldn’t help but stare at the gentle swells of her breasts as her robe parted slightly. They hung heavy and lush as she bent across the table, the dark line of her cleavage looming dangerously close as her forefinger traced the life line on his right palm. Her hair brushed his forearm. It was damp and cool, raising goose bumps from his biceps to his fingers. He felt himself growing excited to be in the room with her and stifled the urge to reach out and take her shoulders in his hands. He was here to find out answers, not seduce a bad palm reader.

  “I am zeeing much danger for you, my friend,” she cooed, her voice a languorous snake. “You vill be wise to keep your head down, your eyes on the ground….”

  She smiled demurely as Joe pulled back his hand. She began to speak but he motioned for her to stop.

  “Angelica, I said I didn’t come here for a reading. And I don’t need to hear the phony accent. You grew up here, and Terrel is not known for its large indigenous Gypsy population.”

  Her eyes flashed briefly, but the smile never left her face. Quite.

  “What is it you want then from me, Mr. Kieran?” The accent was gone. “I am a fortune-teller.”

  She stood up and stepped around the table to get closer to him.

  Her hands flattened the robe against her midriff.

  “This is what I do, Mr. Kieran. Why else would anyone be interested in talking to me? I put on pretty robes and zen I talk like zhis and I tell people what I think is going to happen to them.”

  She bent closer to him, her lips only inches from his own. Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “And you know what? Since I was eighteen, I’ve hardly ever been wrong.”

  “Well, I’m not interested in the voodoo crap, Angelica. What I am interested in is Terrel’s Peak. More specifically, why is it that people in this town seem to have the uncanny knack for jumping off that cliff every year on the same day?”

  Angelica knelt then, the blue silk sliding along the seam of Joe’s jeans with a gentle swish. She rested her arms on his thighs, and he could feel her chest molding itself to his legs. What was she trying to do here?

  “Well, I could tell you all about that, Joe Kieran. But I don’t think you’d believe me. I think you’d call it a bunch of hocus-pocus ‘voodoo crap.’ Wouldn’t you rather talk about something else, Joe?”

  She slid her hands over his T-shirt to wrap around the back of his neck. Her tongue tickled the creases of his ear and she whispered to him. “Wouldn’t you rather talk about what’s under this robe, Mr. Kieran?”

  In spite of himself, Joe again felt a stirring in his jeans, which grew more uncomfortable as she suddenly drew herself up to kneel on his lap. Her robe slid from her shoulders to fully reveal her breasts, perfectly formed caramel cream mounds tipped with areolas like thick, dark bruises. She wrapped her arms around his head, pushing his mouth into her bosom and crying out as she did.

  “Yes, yes. Oh, kiss me.”

  Joe collected his wits then and pushed her back.

  “No.”

  God, what was he doing? How could he say no to the only good time he had had in months? Angelica continued kneeling on his thighs, but her hands gripped the arms of the chair. Her robe had fallen completely open, exposing a very well-toned body for a woman probably ten years Joe’s senior. Between her breasts a silver pendant hung from a leather thong—an astrological symbol, he guessed. Even as she crouched, her belly held itself beautifully taut, and the dark triangle below was clearly carefully groomed. As she leaned in to try to kiss him again, he turned his head.

  “No,” he repeated. “I didn’t come here for this. If you’re still offering later, I might accept. But first I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Well, later just may be too late,” she snapped, and slid off his lap to straighten her robe.

  “According to this, I may not have long anyway,” Joe answered, and handed her the yellow slip of paper from his pocket.

  Angelica’s face paled as she read the subtle threat.

  Death usually finds those who look for it.

  She handed the note back to him without a word and then stood up and crossed to the curtained front windows. She moved the drapery aside and looked outside for several minutes. Joe sat quietly, watching to see what she would do next.

  “Wait here,”
she said suddenly, pulling the drapes closed and then disappearing into the back of the house.

  Joe stood and straightened his pants and shirt, undoing the damage Angelica had done in her bizarre and uninvited attempt to seduce him. He walked to the window. From up close, he saw the draperies were the same shade of royal blue that the palm reader wore tonight. But they were of a far heavier, less revealing material than Angelica’s robe. He smiled to himself and pushed them aside to glance outside. The moon was out and lit the yard in a harsh spotlight. He saw the branches of the honeysuckles sway slightly, their motion exaggerated by the long shadows they cast writhing on the ground. While she lived just seconds from the main drag of Terrel, Angelica had apparently encouraged nature to shield her from the town. The yard was a forest of trees and bushes. Only a short stretch of the street was visible from this window.

  He let the drapes close and checked out the room. It looked much larger than it was because of the mirrors mounted on three of the four walls. Angelica had put in small shelves between them, and long tentacles of ivies and vines stretched to reach the light wood of the floor. The center of the floor was covered by an Oriental rug, which Joe assumed was an imitation piece bought at the local Wal-Mart. But it looked fancy, and the intricate array of designs fit in perfectly with Angelica’s profession.

  How many customers can she really get in this backward town, though? he wondered.

  “You won’t believe me anyway, but maybe this will help,” she said, breezing back into the room like a silk-clad princess. In her hands she held a red leather-bound scrapbook. She set the book on the table and leafed through it until she found the page she wanted.

  Then, drawing her robe modestly around her, she sat back on the loveseat.

  “Read it.”