As her white dog lay by the fire, she stroked Walch’s face with warm fingers, tracing the peregrine brow, Roman nose, thinly resolute lips, ruffling curly blond hair. She plucked at his coat buttons, reaching for the linen shirt, teasing skin beneath. She didn’t pause even when the sergeant knocked at the door. Walch was annoyed at the disturbance… yet also grateful. He found himself staring at her too intently, fascinated to distraction. Might as well be drunk on the damned home cider if this was all the focus he could keep on the mission.
“What is it?” he called out irritably.
The sergeant cleared his throat. “Beggin’ th’ Cap’n’s pardon, sir. I thought you’d want t’ know. We’ve found us three men ’idin’ in one of th’ ’ouses. Guess they didn’t all march off’n t’war, sir.”
Walch followed the sergeant out.
The women gathered in the village square, cloaks billowing over night clothes. The wind had bite tonight. No new snowfall, yet some whisked down from the trees and up from the ground like swarms of white flies. The soldiers stood in a red perimeter, many struggling to appear steady—if not sober. Three captured rebels had hands bound behind their backs, cuts and bruises in profusion on their faces. They were skinny and young. The Continental Army hadn’t much to eat lately.
“They resisted?” Walch wanted to know.
The sergeant shrugged as he rubbed his chin. “Uh, no, sir. Not ezzactly. Boys were just ’avin’ theyselves a bitta fun, lettin’ off a li’l steam, as it were.”
“So,” Walch said, flexing his fingers then putting his hands behind him. He was pleased, certain it couldn’t be a community of only women, even if the hussy whose house he billetted in defiantly insisted it was. No bunch of females could exist in hostile wilds without protectors. “Are you deserters? Or have you been concealed here all along, beneath the very noses of His Majesty’s Army?”
The three gave each other downcast, secret smiles. Did they find this situation comical?
Walch’s landlady arrived, bundled in a long black woolen shawl, hound beside her. Her gown’s lacy hem fluttered, revealing a perfectly turned ankle and a flash of white calf. She held her head high at the sight of the captured men—this proof of her lies. But she’d always held high her head. (Except when the vixen bent it to his lap. He wouldn’t let himself think it, too diverting, even if the memory warmed him in this savage cold.)
“Or have you feared we were here molesting your wives and daughters? I assure you, they are excellent hostesses,” Walch said slyly, strutting in a straight path across the snow. “They make us welcome, as gentlemen, to everything this town has to offer. You needn’t have troubled yourselves.”
His troops chuckled. He shot them a stern glance which shut them up. Drunken, skirt-chasing peasantry, the lot.
The women sighed, grinning too wide and long. This was fetching on the beauties, grotesque on the scarred. Walch found himself unsettled. How could any single community have so many disfigured females? (Much less boast so many pretty ones?)
Walch paced a narrow line, black boots shining, wet in the snow. The women knew these prisoners, making no attempt to hide it, winking, coyly turning this way and that. No apparent concern that these fellows would soon be executed.
Standing bayonet-straight, Walch frowned at the captives. “Perhaps, however, you’re spies… if you’re soldiers at all. Are you soldiers?”
“Aye, we’ve made blood run,” one of them admitted in a so-soft voice.
“Some part may have been English,” adding a second, smirking.
“Like elderberry it was,” paused the third, running a pointed red tongue around his lips.
The captain fumed, slapping a hand to his leg. He hated resorting to brutality… they seemed so young. Not even shaving yet, these lads. But discipline must be preserved at even the most lethal costs. They couldn’t be allowed to taunt a king’s officer. “Take off their shirts and lay on the lash.”
The material shredded, loud as owls screeching in thin, icy air. It was followed by shrill laughter as the soldiers who’d gone to strip their prisoners to the waist gasped in shock.
Captain Walch marched forward, boot heels shuffling in the snow, pulling his troops away where they pressed for a closer look. He saw the rent flesh and healed scarlet ridges of terrible chest injuries where knives had sliced away the breasts on each captured man.
Except they weren’t men.
««—»»
Renae always woke fogged from these dreams. Grasping their edges before they fled into the subconscious, sure she was intended to remember.
These dreams were over-the-top, her own imagination adding to thin facts—providing they were facts. Did she harbor a secret desire to write a novel? She might fare better than she had with her poetry (or her so-called acting career).
She shook off the dream, and headed to work. Still, she’d thought about it at the studio, as Lenora practiced lines for her next movie and as Renae worked with a Gothic designer to showcase the latest night-fashions for the dark set.
Home that evening, it was Eddie’s first night off in a week. He was too tired to go out. Renae tried not to notice the strain in his face, making him appear older than his forty years. Lines around his eyes and mouth seemed penciled in. Almost twice Renae’s age, Eddie didn’t usually look it.
Renae cooked him her seven-cheese lasagna, made with spinach, pine nuts, prosciutto, and portabella mushrooms—layered with a cream sauce instead of traditional red. She served it with Caesar salad and minestrone soup. She rubbed his feet, massaged his back, rubbed and massaged other parts that succeeded in getting him comfortable. It was only fair, reflecting a time Eddie’d taken care of her.
Like back in April, when Renae’d lost a part in Fire Across the Brain. Lenora’d talked her into it. When it came time to read, she was supposed to be a maid finding the mistress’s murdered body, blood everywhere, severed head sitting on the night table, black hair swirled around it. Renae flashed on her father’s slaughter of her mother, gore in red ribbon through ebon silk tresses. She saw what she recalled of her mother’s face—not in one piece but a bloody puzzle. She’d begun shaking and couldn’t read—not even the two lines for the maid’s role.
She’d known she couldn’t do it, but Lenora convinced her. Renae’d run off the stage, heading for the bathroom to throw up, making a complete fool of herself. Head in the toilet, then staggering to the sink to splash cold water in her face. Unable to see in the damn mirror for the shadow in it. She briefly visualized holding Lenora’s face down that toilet until she gagged, sputtered, coughing up stomach cheese.
That night she came home trembling. Eddie rubbed her back, spoon-fed Renae her favorite ice cream, tenderly brought her to eight slowly-building orgasms. Next morning, he’d treated her to breakfast in bed.
This same man arm-wrestled the damned of the city. He witnessed the worst in people, close-up and crude. What most horror mavens only read with relish, without being buried alive with stench and threat.
Renae had. She’d smelled the odors, been menaced for real, falling into shock patterns of walking wounded. So why did she pursue a career in horror? (You do what you know. With my background, I couldn’t have done anything else.)
Now the place swirled with shadow-mote smoke as Eddie carried her up to the loft, yellow candle flame burning down to sputter on the dining table. The only other lights were digital numbers in red on both DVD player and cable box.
They sucked each other’s tongues, tracing mouth geometry. He licked the filigree of her scented sweat. She teased his erection with her lips, biting gently with her teeth in nibbles along the entire shaft.
The darkened apartment was still, no music played. They heard only traffic from the street below and the subtle noises of their sex. She laughed when she came, something she always did. It was like being tickled until she couldn’t stand it, not able to breathe until the orgasm subsided.
This disturbed Eddie at first, causing him to do what any male
would do who found his partner giggling hysterically as he did every maneuver in his repertoire to please her. He shriveled.
“What’s so funny?” he’d asked, humiliated, sitting back since there was nothing to keep inside her anymore.
She panted. “Don’t stop…I can’t…help it…”
Eddie now knew that if she convulsed with horsey guffaws and turned blue, she wasn’t faking. He’d heard it said that a woman picked a particular partner because he made her laugh, but he didn’t think this was what they meant.
I didn’t laugh as a child, she’d wanted to explain. Not in our house. Not in The Cove. I didn’t do that, ever, until I started doing drugs. Then had sex for the first time. It was a revelation—this release.
Later, Eddie chased Renae down the stairs and they made love on the couch, falling asleep with tangled arms and legs. They woke up a little past midnight. She slipped into the kitchen to fetch slices of aphrodisiacal chocolate fudge pie. Eddie pulled on his jeans and turned on the television.
The Goth Channel ran The Fillin’ Station, one of few offerings that didn’t include pierced, black-garbed vampires in velvet and silver. Pure throwback, with a Joe Bob Briggs look-alike as a host. He didn’t wear a cowboy hat but a Civil War Confederate’s cap. He didn’t have Joe Bob’s good looks or quick tongue. This guy’s deep southern drawl made Goober sound like Olivier.
He went over to a prop, a shapely woman with a gallons-per-dollar contraption around her neck and a hose affixed to her bare stomach. Eddie guessed she was supposed to resemble an old-fashioned gas pump from the Dust Bowl days.
“Fill ’er up, buddy?” asked Duelin’ Dooley, lifting the tummy hose to aim at the camera. A stream of red syrup oozed out the plastic nozzle. The woman groaned as the meter clicked off eighteen cents worth.
“This week’s movie is Fatal Subtraction. It’s a pseudo-fact-based story ’bout a high school math teacher who gave his worst students more’n jest bad grades. He believed in the three R’s: reamed-out, rigor-mortised, and riddled-with-maggits. Also the three F’s: flunkin’, failin’, and fuckin’. ’bout forty gallons in this here ‘un, two ahl changes, a lube job, and a heart-stoppin’ full frontal chassis smashy. Duelin’ Dooley says, ‘Let’s hoist ’er up and take a good look unnerneath!’”
“Isn’t that the Rebel Yell Ghost?” Eddie asked as he peered at the screen.
Renae’d returned with the pie. “Who?”
“From Ring of Angels. A movie made back in the ’70s. I’m not serious about it being him. He’s not old enough. He’d have to be near sixty.”
“Oh, I remember. About a rich woman getting buried alive in an old Civil War cemetery. She finds herself the belle of the—uh—balls. When she’s rescued, they rise to come into town, looking for her. The cops try to save her against her will because she’s looney now and wants to go back to her zombie lovers,” she said. “Emmett O’Fyle’s talking about doing a remake. Will be a Goth Channel exclusive. For the Alternative Pulpit.”
“I can’t wait,” Eddie replied without enthusiasm. He stabbed a fork into his wedge of pie. “Will Lenora be in it?”
“Maybe. Why? Wanna be an extra? Want to kill or be killed?” Renae teased. Eddie hated the extreme stuff. Conservative cop with a dead horror writer’s name… and a Goth chick for whom death was both fascination and occupation. How true it was that opposites attracted.
“I could be a tech adviser. What would it pay?” Eddie asked, straight-faced.
“You could! Want me to ask Emmett?”
“No.”
Renae sighed and turned to the TV. “That accent is terrible,” she pointed out.
Eddie nodded. “He’s probably from Canada.”
“Yeah, but I’ll bet it’s southern Canada, you all.” She nibbled his bare shoulder. “Think I could get a job as a gas pump?”
Eddie took a large bite of pie. “You’d make a better emissions detector.”
She pursed her full lips, eyebrows lifting. “I detected an emission about nine o’clock.”
He purred fudge into her ear. “Hey, baby, how’d you feel about going for a long drive?”
“I can already feel the wind in my hair,” she whispered.
Eddie’s plate slid off his lap and crashed to the floor. He bent to pick it up.
A sultry female voice slipped from a television ad. “Hey, mister… is there a beast inside you?”
A second voice—contralto, resonant and breathy—said beneath this, “Compulsion: Are you obsessed? Do you feel compelled to act out your fiercest fantasies?”
A third sexy voice in the background dripped clove and honey. “Do you get the night sweats?”
Eddie looked up from the crust as he picked pieces out of the carpet. “Crap, one of those phone sex things. I thought the Internet made them obsolete?”
Renae shook her head. “Some find a telephone more phallic than a computer keyboard. Or the hollow of the mouthpiece is like a vagina. Even a cellphone—because you can hold it up to your lips. It’s substantial. You caress it, lick it. It fits between the legs, whether you have an innie or an outie. You can even stick it up in there, again, whether you have an innie or an outie…”
Eddie made a face. “Yikes! T.M.I. Too Much Information.”
The first voice returned, woman pictured onscreen, long straight pale hair, black fringed off-the-shoulder dress. She melted iron simply by puckering her lips. “Tell us about it, honey. Every dark wish. The primitive longings. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking it isn’t normal. We all have them at one time or another. Sometimes it’s just too much to handle alone. You have to let it out…”
The third sexy voice drooled in the background. “Do you wake up thinking you could just die?”
The blonde continued, bare milky shoulders trembling until the fringe swayed. “We’re here, 24/7, for your irresistible dreams. Just call and tell us what you fear to do, what you long to do.”
The lower voice intercut, pouring deep pools of invitation. “…what you have to do!”
The blonde said, “If the compulsion is strong, you have to voice it, shout it at the world, shout it at me.”
Background second and third voices together softly intoned, “…or whisper it.”
The blonde extended pearly arms toward the camera, legs suggestively apart as the angle pulled back to show her from head to foot. She offered, “We want to hear all the wickedness. Your most desired sins. Call us at X-IS-THE-DARK, and let go of your restraint. Put your mouth to the phone and let us feed your beast.”
Printed at the bottom of the screen was:
Dial 1-X-IS-THE-DARK
$6.00 for the first minute. $3.00 each additional minute.
Positively no one under eighteen.
For Entertainment Purposes Only.
“I thought they didn’t have 900 numbers anymore,” Eddie commented.
“The telephone company stopped billing them a while back—or so I heard,” Renae added.
“Maybe they’re making a comeback. Like 80’s music. Did that sound as stupid as I think it did?” he asked. “I mean, who’s that supposed to appeal to?”
“The Green River Killer?” she suggested. “How come these numbers always have women operators?” Renae wanted to know as she sat on the couch.
“Sex appeal,” Eddie replied. “Most fucked-up weirdos are male, that’s a fact. Lots of those numbers are for phoning in trashtalk, some of it violent. This one caters to it. At least it’s how the ad looks. Let us feed your beast!” He upraised his arms and growled, swooping down on Renae.
She didn’t even look up as she frowned. “You don’t think they expect killers to call?”
Eddie stopped in mid-swoop. “Only the tiniest percentage would’ve committed any kind of crime. These are mostly for sick, serial wannabees who don’t have the guts—or maybe I should say the brain lesions—to go forth and perform. They just jerk off in darkness to… to Duelin’ Dooley and his forty gallons of crimson super supreme.”
Renae tapped elegant fingertips on her chin. “Almost all male.”
He nodded. “Just about every blessed one. Eileen Wournos and Calia Abrams are exceptions.”
“I know. The shows and movies that profile killers usually have that fact in there somewhere. Still very sexist.”
“You think women should strive for equality in episodic murder?”
Renae smiled. “We’re making strides in every other field of endeavor. Why shouldn’t I be able to call X-IS-THE-DARK and have a husky baritone—who at leasts sounds as if he has eleven inches—listen to me rave about stuffing dicks into Hefty bags?”
“Didn’t know you had that in you.” Eddie pretended to cautiously back away.
“Sure you did. It’s in the Gothick constitution. You know when the word is actually spelled with a ‘k’ on the end of it? The way the seriously-minded witch-chic end magic with a ‘k’.” She stretched her long legs across the couch. “This guarantees me the right to be as twisted, warped and bloodthirsty as any man twice my height and weight. Even if I wouldn’t get paid as much as a man for the same atrocity.”
“Granted, you’re certainly entitled.” Eddie winked at her. “But whereas it can be truthfully stated you’re a little twisted and a mite warped… Ah, I see by that smile you like the ‘whereas’, do you? So whereas you’re attractively perverse, you’re not very bloodthirsty. You won’t eat your steak medium rare. And you hide your face during the goriest parts of movies. Even movies you’re in.”
Renae stiffened. True, the excess in many films reminded her of what her father had done to her mother. (That’s why I’m into this. I stare it in the face and spit in its eye.) Yet she’d never told this to Eddie. He didn’t even know about the murder. And he had no idea why she wasn’t getting more movie parts.
She shrugged, not willing to give in to fear. She’d eventually conquer it.
“I peep between my fingers,” she told him, blinking at him from behind splayed hands.
Season of the Witch Page 9
