by D A Fowler
The demon rose, turned on its heel and left.
The trickle from Greer’s nose quickly became a spurting gush, joined by crimson tears leaking from his eye sockets. He fell across the desk, crumpling papers in both fists. Twenty seconds later he was dead, his face lying in a thick pool of blood.
“I’m sure she’s just fine. You know how kids are,” Pamela said wearily, still thinking of Marla’s shocking confrontation. She and Roger had been extremely discreet…hadn’t they? How could Marla have known? But it wasn’t even that, or the fact that Marla had called her a fucking hypocrite and a lush, that bothered her the most. What bothered her the most was what she’d said about Jasmine losing her soul for nothing.
The letter…
NO!
Surely Marla hadn’t really said such a horrible thing, such a senseless, vicious thing. Pamela had only dreamed it after she’d fainted. Yes, try to convince yourself of that…
“I don’t know about other kids, but Nancy would never run away from home,” Beth sobbed, dabbing her eyes with a frayed, damp Kleenex. Pamela handed her a new one.
“I didn’t suggest that she’d run away from home, Beth. Kids just get wild ideas sometimes. Did you check with Mrs. Gorman? If Jay’s missing too, then that could pretty well explain things.”
Beth resented the implication. “Nancy’s a good girl. And I did talk to Rita. Jay got out of the hospital yesterday afternoon. He was home last night when I called over there, which she apparently wasn’t too happy about. But he said he hadn’t seen Nancy.”
Pamela forced another swallow of tepid black coffee down her throat. “I see. Well, I guess you’re just going to have to wait. Are the police doing anything?”
“They were going to check around that church, and the homes of those four men. But if they’d found anything, I would have known by now. What I can’t understand is why Nancy didn’t say anything about what they’d done; we thought she was in school all day. They came right out and admitted they’d taken her by force to that church.”
“Then it stands to reason they would confess if they knew where she was now.”
“Well, they’re not getting out of jail before she’s found, I can promise you that. Roger’s ready to murder the lot of them.”
The mention of Roger’s name brought a fresh pang of guilt to Pamela’s heart. She knew then that she would never see him again. Not in that context, anyway. The affair was over; it should never have begun. She remembered the first time with him. Compared to sex with Harold, the experience had been cataclysmic. She’d had no idea her body could respond in such a way. Perhaps the forbiddenness had had something to do with it, but her best friend’s husband was unquestionably a sexual dynamo. Her own husband probably thought cunnilingus was some kind of toe fungus. She brought herself, sadly, back to the present. “Would you like a drink? I think you could use one.” She knew she certainly could.
Lost her soul for nothing!
“I was thinking of fixing myself a brandy.”
She traded it for your health, you secret, disgusting lush! And guess who handled the transaction!
The leukemia! Remember? The doctors said you had leukemia, leukemia, and there was no hope, none at all, except for Morganna Ober, Morganna Ober and her witchcraft, Morganna Ober and those special pancakes she brought you for breakfast that morning…
No! Not true, not true! There was nothing in those pancakes!
“No thanks,” Beth sniffed. “I guess I should get back home.” She gazed wistfully at Pamela’s ultramodern living room and added, “You’re so lucky. I wish I could have a home like this.”
Pamela almost offered to trade homes with her, if husbands and kids were thrown in on the deal, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to make such a stab at jocularity; she was afraid it would sound like a confession of some sort. She said instead, “Let me know the minute you hear anything.”
But Pammie’s well now, and that’s all that matters!
Beth nodded tearfully.
The fly crawled lazily over the open eyeball; Spiro wondered why his mother didn’t shoo it away. He reached over and did it for her, then went back to studying the straight razor he reverently held in his left hand, his right still too tender to handle anything. It was so very simple. Just put on Bruce’s mask. Of course. He should have thought of that himself.
He glowered as he remembered the scene he had witnessed earlier through Lana’s bedroom window. They had been getting ready to do it, to fuck. The idea angered him greatly. Spiro wanted to do that with Lana. And soon, very soon, he would. When he was wearing the mask. She would think he was Bruce and she would gladly open her legs for him. A smile spread over Spiro’s thick lips. His scrotum began to crawl. He could hardly wait.
“You plannin’ to put your thing up in her, boy?”
Spiro glanced guiltily at his mother’s corpse. “No, Mama.”
“Don’t you lie to me, boy. I know what you’re thinking. You go turn on that stove, now, and get it red hot. Then you’re gonna put those lyin’ lips down on it.”
“Please, Mama, no…” He couldn’t understand; she had let him draw the pictures. She had even been pleased. It had been her idea about the mask. Why was she going to punish him now?
“I promise I won’t do it, Mama. I promise.” Gripping the razor, he accidentally cut one of his fingers. He automatically popped the wounded digit in his mouth and began to suck.
“Go turn on that stove, boy, or I’ll make you cut your nasty thing off.”
Then he suddenly understood. She didn’t want him to do it to Lana; she wanted him to do it to her. She always had. He put the razor blade down on the rickety coffee table and began to unzip his pants, which were already bulging in front.
“That’s my good boy. You come to Mama now. Mama loves you.”
Spiro kneeled on the floor, then slowly shoved his pants down over his pimpled buttocks until they were around his knees, and moved closer. One thing was sure. In the future he’d have to do his thinking a lot more quietly. He didn’t want to make Mama jealous.
Lana glanced at the wall clock over the bookshelves and sighed. “My brat brother will be home shortly. Let’s get outta here.”
“Where you wanna go? Vegas? My Gramma Meadows sent me an extra ten dollars this month.”
Lana snickered. “Ten? Well, let’s go to Paris, then. By the way, what’s ol’ Sharon Valley High do when you don’t show up for your classes? My mom’ll kill me if she finds out I ditched today.”
“Never fear, my dear.” Bruce stood up and stretched, thinking of the two joints he had left in his glove compartment. He wanted to get high, but he had promised himself he would save the last of it for his birthday the following Sunday. Happy Birthday to me. “I never did explain why they call me Apple Head, did I?”
“Come to think of it, no. You just said they didn’t call you that because you’re smart.”
Bruce held up an index finger. “Ah, but what kind of smart? Book smart…well, I gotta admit I’m kind of low-key there…don’t want people thinking I’m trying to show off or anything, right?”
Lana tossed a look at the ceiling. “I think you’re pretty safe there.”
“But in other ways, I have no qualms about showing my stuff, seeing as how it benefits all. You are looking at the number-one admit-slip bandito. I take an accomplice —usually Duck—into the office with me, right? Duck creates a disturbance, which he’s really good at, and while Greer’s secretary is like, picking up the papers Duck accidentally on purpose knocked off her desk or something, I grab a couple of admit-slip pads from the back shelf. Every sheet is worth a dollar too. We make a killing. You see, they don’t call your parents or anything if you’re just absent, but the only way you can get back in class is with an admit slip, which normally you can only get if your parents have called the school to excuse you. I think the school nurse
will call after three consecutive days or something to make sure you haven’t croaked; they wanna be sure to get all the paperwork taken care of. Students kicking the bucket is a real hassle. Anyway, like I said, never fear, the Apple Head is here. Admit slips have a little apple in the top left corner.”
Lana thought the scam was hilarious. “And your gramma sends you money every month too, huh? You must be gettin’ rich.”
A dark aura momentarily settled over Bruce’s features. “Yeah, my gramma’s one nice lady. Still writes my dad every day. My real dad. He’s back in prison.”
“Bruce, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t worry about it.” He quickly snapped out of his morbid trance and ruffled her hair. “I should have told you before. My Gramma Meadows is the only person that really gives a shit about me. I don’t really like taking the money, but it makes her feel good to give it, you know? So I let her give, figure if I don’t take it, she’ll just send it to some greedmonger TV evangelist. Come on, let’s go to the park.”
“Bruce.” She tugged at his shirt and forced him to look around. “She’s not the only person who gives a shit about you.”
He blinked back an embarrassing tear. “Thanks, Lana. That means a lot.”
There were three teenage boys huddled in the parking lot behind Larry Kessler’s van. Bruce pulled up next to it and parked. As soon as he and Lana stepped out, Larry waved them over.
“Hey, you guys cut today? Didn’t see you in fourth hour, Bruce. Heard the news yet?”
Bruce put his arm around Lana. He saw how the other guys were checking her out. No problem, just as long as they knew she was his girl. “What news is that?”
“Greer, man. Bought it right at his desk this morning. Brain hemorrhage, they said.”
Bruce’s eyes bulged. “Bought it as in died, man?”
“As in deceased, kicked the bucket, croaked, rubbed out, turned into a stiff—”
“Okay, I get the picture.” Bruce and Lana exchanged disturbed glances.
“But that ain’t all,” Larry went on in a husky whisper. “Guess who was in his office right before it happened?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“Maria Mingee, dude. Marla the witch. I passed her in the hall today, and I thought she’d died…looked like she’d had her makeup done at a funeral parlor. And when she saw me, I like, felt this radical electric buzz in my head. She’s ate up with the Devil, bad. You saw The Exorcist…well, we also heard she pissed right in her seat yesterday in sixth hour, just like Linda Blair. We’ve been talking about maybe burning her at the stake.”
“What!” Bruce and Lana both shouted simultaneously.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do to witches,” said a tall, muscular boy on Larry’s right named Matt Lowery. He was the S.V. High Cougar’s star quarterback. Lana recognized the other youth as Joel Mintem, the one who had been fighting with Dennis in the parking lot at school. Joel still had a black eye.
As Bruce patiently explained to Matt, Larry, and Joel why they couldn’t go around burning people at the stake, Lana remembered the revolting experience at the drive-in that morning. The weird odor on Jay’s breath had reminded her of burned electrical wires. The one moment in which she’d made eye contact with him…hadn’t she felt a slight jolt? And oh God, his face…
Matt was voicing his rebuttal. “There isn’t a law in this land says you can’t kill a witch; that’s against the Bible. It’s our duty.”
“We thought we’d get Nancy too, while we were at it,” Joel added, “but apparently she’s MIA. There were some detectives at the school this morning asking questions about her.”
Bruce couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Surely they were just shitting him. They couldn’t seriously be thinking about burning Marla and Nancy at the stake, for Chrissakes, not in South Dakota in this day and age. Sure, that was it…let’s see how gullible Bruce is today. Ha ha. He decided to play along with the joke. “Well, maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. You gonna burn Dr. Doom too? He looks about as bad as you say Marla does. When we passed him in the hall Tuesday afternoon, his eyes were like laser guns, and when he turned ’em on me, I thought my brain was gonna melt. And I could hear him telling me telepathically to shit my pants! I almost did it too.”
The three guys seemed genuinely impressed. “Are you fucking serious?” Matt asked, eyes wide.
“Do Africans have kinky hair?”
“You guys are bein’ ridiculous,” Lana felt compelled to say, but she wasn’t at all sure how true her statement was. She kept seeing Jay and recalling how she’d kept thinking that something was wrong, wrong, terribly wrong with him, and there was more to it than just the way he looked. But witches? No, no…witches were only people who worshiped the Devil and practiced black magic. They looked just like anyone else. They could be your next door neighbors or the librarian or the police chief’s wife; anybody. They couldn’t be distinguished because they looked like corpses or pus factories.
And now she’d learned that Nancy was missing. Jay would have been one of the first to know about it, yet he’d said he and Nancy would pick them up tomorrow night for the party. How could he have said that if he didn’t know where she was?
Something was going on. Maybe not what everyone thought, but definitely something, something bad…and until she and Bruce found out what was what, no way in hell were they going to that little “party.” Suddenly Larry started laughing. “You should see the looks on your faces, man,” he guffawed, and his two companions joined in.
“We were just putting you on,” Matt said. “We’re really sure we’re gonna burn people at the stake. You think we wanna spend the rest of our lives in prison?”
“G’wan.” Bruce waved, shaking his head. “We knew you were shitting us. Get outta here.” He started leading Lana toward the gazebo. When they were out of earshot of the van, he muttered through the side of his mouth, “I don’t think they were kidding at all.”
Lana squeezed his hand. “Neither do I.”
Twenty-Three
After completing the damage estimate on a late model Mercedes Benz, Carol was asked by the car’s owner, Sidney Grace, an attractive, graying man with gentle blue eyes, to have a few drinks with him after she got off work. Her first impulse was to tell him thanks but no thanks, but she found herself answering, “Sure, I’d love to.”
Her wounded ego needed CPR, she told herself after he’d left, promising to return for her at precisely five p.m. She wasn’t ready to get involved, but the attentions of such a distinguished-looking man couldn’t hurt anything, so long as he didn’t launch into a bitter spiel about his ex-wife or start groping for her under the table. She found that by the time five rolled around, she was honestly looking forward to the date.
He took her to the Gold Mine lounge, where they found themselves a corner table near the back. The motif inside the establishment was rustic, the walls made of ancient, rough-hewn timber. They were decorated with tarnished vestiges of the big gold-mining days: picks, rock bolts, carbide lanterns, methane detectors, sluice boxes, drill rods, mining hats, frayed coils of rope. A sledgehammer near the exit had a sign underneath that warned it was used on people who tried to walk their tab. Strategic pinpoints of light illuminated the relics, and candles burned on all the tables. Still, the large room was fairly dark.
“Quite an interesting place,” Carol commented after they were seated.
Her companion nodded. “It is indeed. I like it; it’s quiet. The younger crowd stays away; that’s what I like most about it.”
She smiled, absorbing the soft music being piped over their heads, the relaxing atmosphere of the club, the gentle blue eyes reflecting the candle’s flame. The scantily-clad cocktail waitress arrived to take their orders. Carol ordered a tequila sunrise; Sid, a scotch and soda.
Two hours passed before Carol realized it.
She had become totally engrossed in the man sitting across from her. He made no mention of ex-wives, kept his hands to himself, never steered the conversation toward intimate subjects. He had a broad knowledge of politics, history, and business, and he amazed her with his capacity to remember detail. She partly blamed the alcohol—she wasn’t much of a drinker, and three sunrises on an empty stomach had loosened her up to the point of falling apart—but the obvious quality of the man himself had much to do with the fact that she suddenly realized, much to her surprise, that she wanted to go to bed with him. It wasn’t her style at all, but she couldn’t deny her feelings. And it had been so very long…
It was also getting late, but she’d called Luke before leaving the offlce and had warned him not to expect her home soon, and to have Lana fix their supper. Carol impulsively reached out and put her hand over Sid’s and said softly, “Could we…go to your place?” She’d actually said it. Her face grew warm. She felt like a wanton predator.
Sid sandwiched her hand in both of his. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The sex was wonderful. Sid was gentle, sensuous, and romantic. Carol didn’t feel like an alley cat, as she always had supposed she would under such circumstances. She’d dated Hugh a year and a half before they had finally become intimate—and wouldn’t you know, she’d conceive that very first time, in the backseat of his dad’s Thunderbird—and he was the only lover she’d ever had…until now. But thanks to the alcohol in her system, she’d been able to give herself fully, unabashedly to another man on their first date, and Sid had made his appreciation known. Several times she had caught herself fantasizing that it was Hugh inside of her, which had brought on mixed, mostly unpleasant emotions, but her body was definitely having a good time, and the bad spells only lasted a few seconds apiece. Afterward she lay spent on Sid’s king-sized bed, peaceful and satisfied. Given a little more time, she thought she might actually be able to fall in love with this man.