by Gideon, John
“I don’t need any proof, Carl!” Lindsay’s voice was cracking now. Tears were flowing. “I can’t move! She did something to me! I can’t move!”
Carl waited not another second. He ducked under her arm and looped it around his neck, then swept her up and made for Hannie’s front door. At the last possible moment it opened, thanks to vigilance at the window by Robbie. The door slammed shut behind him.
As he laid Lindsay on the sofa, Carl saw that she had fainted dead away.
The ritual finally ended.
The four of them silently gathered up their clothes and pulled them on, for there was work to be done. Midnight work.
None of them looked forward to it, but none shied away from it either—not even Lindsay, who only hours ago had tried to sever herself from the others. Now she was with them, having encountered a sample of the evil that Hannie, Carl, and Robbie had insisted all along was real, an evil that had claimed her nephew and her sister, had worked such horror upon an innocent little town. Hannie had administered an herbal potion that had quickly cured the paralysis inflicted by the Elizabeth Zaske-thing. Along with the others Lindsay had shed her clothes and had participated in the ritual, not yet fully believing that she was living anything but a nightmare.
Carl led the group out of the house to Robbie’s van, carrying an immense flashlight and the long rawhide scabbard that Hannie had presented him with during the ritual. As the flashlight beam poked into the shadows of shrubs and the dark places at the corners of the house, it revealed the hunkered shapes of Hadrian Craslowe’s victim-dreamers, lurking and hungering to get close. Green fury spewed from their eyes. Hannie’s magic kept them back:
Spell of spice from the good Sister’s mouth,
Raptus of Morrigan, North and South,
From Heaven and Hell, and from West and East,
Flow from mine eyes to repel this Beast.
Robbie drove them down Torgaard Hill to Frontage Street, then turned right and followed a route he had come to know too well. Carl sat in the rear of the van with Lindsay, his head bowed and his eyes shut tight. The silence conquered the droning of the engine, the rush of tires over pavement. Another turn, onto Sockeye Drive.
She had worked her magic while the other three sat naked in a triangle, at three tips of the waxen pentagram drawn on the floor of her kitchen. She had bustled to and fro in the candlelight like a twiggy little elf, singing and chanting both in English and the Old Tongue. She had flitted now and again to her hoard of bottles and pouches and boxes and jars, extracted this or that, sometimes interrupted her chants to explain things to her listeners, to reassure or warn. She had mixed and chopped and brewed—
“Of Herb Grace and Sweet Flag, with teeth of a hanged man,
And Sandalwood oil and unripe Cubeb, to flavor the bite, I murmur this song, I murmur long as I can To draw Thy tears and dry them with petals of Clove Pink this night,
All here, all here, Seething with fire,
To fear, to fear...
—and Carl had felt the power of the words as the fumes of burning herbs seeped into his head. He had drunk the foul mixture she had poured from an Osterizer into a silver cup and chewed the bitter chunks of something she had chopped in a Cuisinart. And her laughter had fallen like rain. She’d said that blenders and food processors were the best things that had ever happened to witches....
Another turn, this time onto Old Home Road. Not far now to Mitch Nistler’s house.
The van halted, and Carl raised his head to look out through the front. A Pontiac sedan blocked the road, and next to it—standing with an arm upraised—was a hulking figure of a man whose broad face was white in the glare of the headlights.
“Well, I’ll be dipped,” said Robbie under his breath. “It’s Stu Bromton, and he looks like he means to rain on our parade.”
For the second time this night Mitch Nistler heard the approach of a vehicle on Old Home Road. The first had been less than an hour ago: Stu Bromton’s Pontiac, which for some unknown reason had stopped about a hundred yards from the house and switched off its lights.
Mitch had worried frantically that the police chief would storm in and find the fruits of all the hellish doings that had been afoot here: a dead body upstairs; the half-living Cannibal Strecker, whose restless, shuffling footsteps could be heard above the ceiling; the comatose Stella DeCurtis, who sat in a Blazer out back, waiting, waiting; a bag of reasonably pure cocaine that Mitch had brought with him from Seattle last night; and last—oh, this would really be special—the offspring of Lorna Trosper’s corpse.
But Jeremy had reassured him, told him not to worry. The situation was well in hand. Best for Mitch to get some rest, the boy had said, and then he had gone upstairs to “commune,” or whatever it was that he did with the offspring. So Mitch had sunk onto his old living-room sofa and tried to sleep.
Tried. The darkness of his living room had come alive with the kind of tingling ferment that precedes a violent electrical storm. If it was the product of magic, it certainly was not from Jeremy’s kind, which produced only torture and terror and hopelessness. This magic crackled with a curious sense of hope.
He rose from the sofa and pressed his face against the front window. He saw headlights up the road; some kind of van. People were getting out, and Stu Bromton was confronting them, trying to turn them back.
But he shouldn’t turn them back! something screamed deep inside Mitch’s heart. These people are hope! Without really knowing what he was doing, and certainly not knowing why, Mitch got his hurting body into motion, aimed it for the front door, and plunged outside. He needed to hurry, or Jeremy would hear his thoughts and stop him before he could—
What was this? The spare-tire compartment of his old El Camino? A crowbar? He took it into his fist, savoring the icy bite of the metal, and strode toward the headlights.
“I’m afraid I can’t let you go any farther, Carl,” said Stu Bromton, standing his ground like a block of granite. Despite the cold night wind, he was sweating like a butcher inside his padded nylon jacket. The headlights of Robbie’s Vanagon were giving him a blinding headache.
“Stu, listen to me,” pleaded Carl as he approached. “We’ve got to get into Nistler’s house. I don’t have time to explain now, but I’ll tell you everything when—”
“That’s far enough, Carl!” The threatening tone of his own voice appalled him. This was Carl he was talking to, the oldest and best of his friends. He sickened at the thought of ever raising a hand against Carl Trosper, became even sicker with the certainty that he could. And would.
“But you don’t understand! Jeremy’s in there! And so is Lorna!”
Good God, Carl knew! Stu’s mind reeled with the implications of this. Suppose Carl went to higher authorities with a story about Stu Bromton covering up the theft of a body, and an investigation resulted. Suppose the investigation uncovered the evidence of Stu’s involvement with a crack ring, and—shit!
“Please, Stu! If you don’t let us go by, I’ll never get my son back! Do you hear what I’m saying?” Carl’s face was wretched with desperation. Stu hated seeing him like this, hated more what he himself was doing. But he had no choice in the matter.
“Look, Carl, it’s not like I’m doing this for myself.”
Lindsay Moreland and Hannabeth Hazelford had gotten out of the van by now, and Robbie was leaning on the open driver’s door. Hannie’s wig looked as though it were on backward, aid she was wearing a pair of those old-fashioned, pinch-nose glasses.
“I’m keeping you out for your own good. Now get back in your van and go back to town. We can all talk about this later.”
“So, how do you plan to stop us, Chief Bromton?” asked Lindsay, drawing up beside Carl. “Suppose we decide to go around you. What are you going to do, shoot us?”
The question ignited anger, and Stu reached down to unsnap the holster of his nine-millimeter. Lacing the anger was real fear of exactly how far he would go.
“Miss Moreland, I’l
l do anything I have to in order to keep you from trespassing on this property. Is that absolutely clear?” There was shadowy movement behind him, which Lindsay and Carl glimpsed for the barest instant: a man crouching behind Stu’s Pontiac, coming closer now, staying low. A crowbar connected solidly with the side of Stu’s head, knocking him to his knees. With a pitiful little yell, his attacker dropped the weapon and fled into the thicket beside the road.
Stu moaned and cursed bloodily. Holding a hand to his head, he gave chase to Mitch Nistler, staggering crazily and weaving like a man drugged, waving his flashlight and crashing through the foliage like a raging animal.
“Come!” screamed Hannie. “This is our chance!”
The three of them scrambled back into the van. Robbie gunned the engine and steered around Stu Bromton’s dirty Pontiac toward Mitch Nistler’s house.
Carl had stood in the center of the pentagram while Hannie floated in the air around him—up, down, and around-listening to the songful gibberish of the Old Tongue and somehow understanding the words. He had felt the power, the magic, as though it were flowing over him like warm oil from an invisible cauldron above his head, bathing his naked body. “Rage of Tempest, singing through the thorny wood,
From the darksome Otherworld, the depths beyond light, Bearing Vesta’s pow’r to me, in tormented plight,
Or by any other Name, She is as good.
I hear Thee, I see Thee, Thou givest Thy Sword To smite the Offspring of the Misruled Lord....”
And when he had drunk yet again of the silver cup, Hannie produced the old scabbard and placed it in his hands, her eyes tearful in the entrancement. Looking into those aged eyes, he had seen himself
As he was now, hours later, with the short, heavy sword gripped tight in one fist, the flashlight in the other, pushing through the front door of Mitch Nistler’s house. Had he never visited the undercroft at Whiteleather Place, he would not have believed that anything could produce a stink this bad. Hannie was at his left elbow, Lindsay at his right, and Robbie a step behind on crutches. He heard the sound of Lindsay’s hand as it searched the wall for a light switch, heard a snap when she found it. No light came.
Scuffling footsteps overhead, the creaking of old floors. A groan? Or was it a growl, low and fulsome with threat?
Carl turned his face toward Hannie, whose huge, rheumy gaze darted upward and then met his.
“Up there,” she whispered.
The foursome moved into the innards of the house, their eyes burning with the stench. The flashlight showed incredible squalor. They halted at a door that likely led upstairs.
Stu Bromton toppled over a log and nearly lost his pistol and his flashlight.
“Son of a bitch!” he hissed, struggling to his feet. The wet foliage seemed to have hands and claws, seemed to grab him and hold him back whenever he got close to Nistler. From deep in the woods he could hear the little man crashing onward in terrified flight, occasionally crying out after a collision with a tree.
Stu’s head throbbed from the blow Nistler had given him with the crowbar, but adrenaline and exertion had restored most of his senses. He now knew that he had been wrong to give chase, that he should have stayed on the road to prevent Carl and his friends from going into the house. They had already done so by now, probably. Meaning that Stu had muffed the assignment given him by Craslowe. For this there could be hell to pay.
He made his way back toward Old Home Road, cursing with every other step, wishing that he had given in to an urge earlier in the day to pack his car and simply disappear south. Once again he asked himself what the hell was so important about his agreement with Craslowe. So what if the good doctor spilled the beans about the crack lab—especially if Stu were in Mexico or Costa Rica? Who would bother with him and his penny-ante haul of bribe money when there were so many big-time crooks in the world, so many cops who took major cash?
As he neared to within a hundred feet of the road, he heard the sound of a passing car, then saw its headlights through the trees. By the time he’d gained the road, the car was halting in Mitch Nistler’s drive, next to the battered old El Camino and Robbie Sparhawk’s van.
Stu squinted into the dark: Was it Chester Klundt’s El Dorado? Something dark and cold tickled his guts, making him break into a run toward the house.
“Well, Bubba, I reckon this is it,” said Robbie, squeezing Carl’s arm and giving a little smile that was lost in the darkness of Mitch Nistler’s house. “From here on out, it’s up to you. No matter what you find up there, just remember that you’ve got the magic. You’ll be okay.”
Carl tried to smile but could not. Because his face was ice. He turned back to the stairway door and lowered the flashlight beam to the padlock that hung open beside the hasp.
“And remember the words,” whispered Hannie Hazelford. “The magic is nothing without the words.”
“I’ll remember,” answered Carl feebly. “Here goes.”
His hand closed around the knob, and the old door opened upon a cave of blackness. The beam of his flashlight immediately fell upon the mutilated face of Corley the Cannibal Strecker, who lunged down the stairs with a bellow of murderous fury, his eyes alight with preternatural venom, his ragged hands groping and swiping like a carnivore’s claws.
Carl froze with terror, unable to raise the sword or move a muscle, and stood stonelike as Lindsay’s shrieks filled his mind, as time slowed and enabled him to follow the movement of Cannibal’s hands toward his throat. But the magic was with him—the magic of the potion in the vial. In the pouch. On the thong. Around his neck. The magical protection that Hannie tiad supplied.
Cannibal’s body slammed into an invisible wall, igniting a dazzling shower of sparks that ricocheted off the walls of the stairwell and cascaded down the steps. Cannibal jerked backward, twitching and twisting and screaming, an appalling spectacle of pain.
The grip of Carl’s terror shattered. He moved forward, up the steps, as the writhing Cannibal tried to scramble away. Carl caught him and raised the charmed sword, brought it down hard, and saw the blade slice through Cannibal’s right arm. A geyser of blood washed over the stairs. Carl raised the weapon and brought it down again, this time through the right shoulder, severing ribs and spinal cord, ripping loose vital organs that wagged and jiggled with Cannibal’s every movement. Then yet again, through the neck now. Cannibal’s life fled, along with the hideous glow behind his eyes.
Carl stood on the stairs and breathed in great huffs, leaning against the blood-spattered wall of the stairwell. He splayed the light over the carnage he had just wreaked and would have stood there a long time, struck dumb and numb by the magnitude of the deed, if Hannie had not called out to him from below.
“Go, Carl! Go now, and do what you must do! This is no time to weep over what you have become. Remember your son! Remember Jeremy!”
Carl remembered Jeremy and set his feet to moving up the stairs once more, following the beam of the flashlight, trying to be strong. This was love, he told himself again and again, a father’s love for his son. Nothing can conquer love. Nothing. Killing the offspring would free Jeremy, and life would then be good again.
“That’s a bunch of sentimental bunk, Old Carl, and you know it!”
The voice nearly shredded Carl’s reason, for it belonged to his own dead father. Trembling like a leaf, he swept the flashlight beam across the upper landing and saw nothing. Then he realized that he had not swept it high enough, because Jeremy was lying on the ceiling almost directly overhead, his awful hands laced behind his head and his feet crossed, glaring down at him with laser eyes.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
Mayor Chester Klundt heard these words in his heart for the thousandth time since Dr. Hadrian Craslowe had visited his office that morning. He slid out from behind the steering wheel of his El Dorado, knowing what he must do, knowing exactly what God wanted from him.
He reached into the rear seat and pulled out the Winchester Model 12 shotgun that
he had sneaked out of his house—sneaked, because if Millie had known what he was up to, she would’ve thrown a fit, probably even called the police. His wife had no use for violence or cruelty of any kind.
Chet, on the other hand, knew that in every Christian man’s life there came a time for standing up and showing what he was made of, a time for striking a blow for Jesus and maybe being struck back for the effort. That was what Christian courage was all about: a willingness to strike a blow for Jesus, no matter what the consequences.
He heard screams from inside Mitch Nistler’s house, high and dreadful witchlikt screams that sent chills up his spine. His courage wavered slightly. These were creatures of Hell he was about to face, and he could not know what horrors they might loose upon him. But then he remembered the words of Hadrian Craslowe’s prayer—the prayer that the two men had shared together that morning in his office, right there on the carpet, two Christian men down on their knees.
“... Jesus, we ask Your blessing upon Brother Chester, a blessing of strength and courage to do what You would have him do. Grant him the armor and sword of Your Holy Spirit as he undertakes to follow the command that You gave us in Exodus—‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live/...”
Chet had felt the power of the Holy Spirit surge through him like electricity as Brother Craslowe gripped his hand in his own. From that very moment he had suffered not the tiniest doubt about what he must do. The earthly consequences were of no importance whatever, be they ridicule or arrest or even prison 01 execution. All that mattered was striking the blow, ridding the world of Hannie Hazelford’s wickedness and reaping the heavenly reward that surely awaited him.
He chambered a round of 00 buckshot and walked toward the front door of Mitch Nistler’s house, praying under his breath.
Help me, Jesus, help me. Give me the strength, my Jesus....
The stink of Hell assailed him as he set his foot inside the open door, the shotgun leveled from his shoulder, and he saw a faint glow ahead, the dancing beam of a flashlight. The witches were there—three of them, anyway—clustered around the opening of a staircase. Might as well take these three right now and get the fourth one later.
