The 5th Witch

by Graham Masterton

Lieutenant Harris made his way through the SWAT officers and up to the steps. “Harmony means exactly that, ma’am. Harmony. But you and your friends have been acting anything but harmonious. You’re all under arrest for homicide, conspiracy to commit homicide, and too many other offenses than I have time to tell you. So let’s see you come with us quietly. We have vans ready.”

  “Eskize mwen, msyé, you don’t understand,” said Michelange DuPriz, stepping forward on very high heels. She was smiling at Lieutenant Harris in the way a hooker smiles at a potential client—teasing him, daring him, but deeply contemptuous of him, too. “You have to leave us alone. You have no choice.”

  “Oh, you think so?” Lieutenant Harris retorted. “Not only do I have a choice, I have a duty, and I have more than a hundred heavily armed police officers who are going to assist me in carrying it out. So let’s go, shall we?”

  “Treating three innocent women in such a way!” Michelange DuPriz scolded him, strutting down the steps until she was less than three feet away from him. “Such behavior should make you malad!”

  With that, she opened the palm of her hand and blew a shower of fine gray dust at him. Lieutenant Harris backed away, flapping at the dust with his left hand.

  “That’s it!” he snapped. “I want these women restrained. Sergeant!”

  “Yes, sir!” said the SWAT sergeant, and unclipped the cuffs from his belt.

  But at that moment, Lieutenant Harris abruptly dropped to his knees, and said, “Gahh!”

  “Lieutenant?”

  “Gaahhhhh!” gargled Lieutenant Harris. His eyes were bulging, and he was clutching his neck with both hands, as if trying to strangle himself.

  “Paramedics!” Dan called out. “Paramedics, now!”

  He hurried over to Lieutenant Harris and knelt down beside him. As he did so, he glanced up at Michelange DuPriz, and she was grinning at him.

  “Mwen regret sa,” she said. “But I did advise you to warn them, didn’t I?”

  Lieutenant Harris was bent double, his face gray, whining for breath. Dan said, “What is it? What have you put inside him? For Christ’s sake, you witch, he’s choking!”

  The SWAT sergeant advanced on Michelange DuPriz, but now Lida Siado stepped forward, too, pointing at him with one finger and flicking the little drum that she wore around her neck. Tap-flick-tap-flick!

  “Rete!” said Michelange DuPriz. “You do not want to come any closer, police, else worse bad thing happen to you!”

  Lieutenant Harris was shuddering now, his mouth stretched wide open.

  “What the hell have you put inside him?” Dan shouted.

  Half a dozen more SWAT officers approached the witches, but Lida Siado pointed at each of them, one by one, as if she were placing a curse on them individually, and they all held back, even though it was obvious from the confused looks on their faces that they didn’t understand why.

  Lieutenant Harris gave one last convulsion, and out of his mouth came a bulging mass of worms, hundreds of them, pink and brown and some still streaked with dirt. He vomited again and again, until there was a whole tangle of worms wriggling on the steps in front of him.

  “Oh, God,” he moaned, spitting out the last stray worms. “Oh, God, help me!”

  The SWAT commander shielded his eyes in disgust, and one of the younger officers turned away and retched.

  “Worms!” sang Michelange DuPriz, gleefully. “But not just any worms! These worms came from Forest Lawn Cemetery, where your father was buried! These worms came out of his casket! Don’t you remember what you said after his funeral? ‘I always hated his guts. I hope the worms make a good meal out of him.’ Well, they did—and now you have, too. Although, what a pity, it doesn’t look as if it agreed with you!”

  Dan helped Lieutenant Harris to his feet. Lieutenant Harris was still sweaty and ashen, but he jabbed one finger at Michelange DuPriz and rasped, “You, lady—you’re finished!”

  “Finished, Mesyé Police? We have not even begun!”

  Lida Siado took out two clamshells and pressed them over her eyes, as she had at Chief O’Malley’s house. Then she quickened the tapping on her drum. Tap—flick—tapp! and it seemed to Dan that the ferocious woman’s face painted on the drumskin slowly opened her eyes and stared at him just as madly as Lida had herself.

  “Night Wind! Come blow for me! Night Wind! Rise up for me! Bring me your darkness! Bring me your children! Bring me your fear! Night Wind! Come blind this company!”

  Dan gripped Lieutenant Harris’s sleeve. “Lieutenant, we have to get out of here. Everybody! Now!”

  Lieutenant Harris spat and spat again. He was shaking with rage. “If you think I’m letting these bitches get away with this, Detective, you’re making a serious mistake! Sergeant, get the bracelets on them! And let’s get inside and collar the rest of them! Let’s move!”

  The SWAT commander shouted into his r/t mike: “Inside team! This is it! Go! Go! Go!”

  They heard three deafening explosions from inside the dining rooms and a stuttering volley of submachine-gun fire. Then there was another explosion and shouting and three or four shots from a.45 automatic.

  The SWAT team mounted the steps to seize the three witches, but as they did so there was a catastrophic bellow of thunder, and the sky turned instantly black, as if the sun had been switched off.

  “Cuff them!” yelled Lieutenant Harris, before he broke into a coughing fit. But there was another rumble of thunder, followed by a low howling sound, which quickly developed into a high-pitched scream.

  A gale rose up, and the courtyard was filled with dust and grit and whirling leaves. It blew harder and harder, until Dan could hardly stay on his feet. The SWAT officers were staggering about in confusion, shouting at each other, but the wind was so loud that they couldn’t even hear the headphones in their helmets. One man was blown against a low wall and tumbled over backward, firing his carbine into the air.

  With his hand raised to protect his eyes, Dan looked toward the witches. All three were completely unruffled by the wind. Not even their dresses were stirring. Yet hundreds of rose petals were flying all around them, and chairs were tipping over, and shutters were being ripped away from the country club windows to careen off into the darkness.

  “Retreat!” shouted the SWAT commander. “Retreat and regroup!”

  Not many of his men could hear what he was saying, but his hand signals made it clear. With the wind screaming at their backs, they battled their way out of the courtyard toward the front of the country club, trying to keep their balance, as if they had only just learned to walk.

  Suddenly one of the officers spun around, holding his arms out and groping at the air. He tripped and fell heavily onto his back, but instead of trying to get up, he stayed where he was, his hands pressed over his eyes. Two more officers struggled across the driveway to help him, but then they lost their footing, too. By the time Dan and Ernie reached them, twenty or thirty more officers had fallen to the ground. Some of them were attempting to get to their feet, but most were kneeling or lying where they were, shouting desperately for help.

  “What’s wrong with them?” shouted Ernie.

  Lieutenant Harris gave him his answer. He came toward them with his eyes staring wide, but from the jerky way that he was walking and the way that he was waving his arms around in front of him, it was obvious that he had lost his sight.

  “She’s blinded them!” Dan shouted back. “That Night Wind spell! She’s blinded them!”

  He tried to take Lieutenant Harris’s arm, to guide him toward the country club driveway, but Lieutenant Harris screamed, “Get away! Get away from me!”

  With that, he went zig-zagging off in the direction of the golf course.

  Dan and Ernie looked around, their eyes narrowed against the gale. Everywhere they looked, SWAT and police officers were wandering around like marionettes with their strings cut. Several of them waded straight into the reflecting pool, and others blundered into the sand bunkers. Occasional bursts
of gunfire flickered in the darkness, as submachine guns were accidentally let off.

  “This is all my fault!” Dan shouted.

  “What? I can’t hear you!”

  He leaned close to Ernie’s right ear. “This is all my fault! I didn’t realize the witches had so much power. I didn’t think they could do anything much, not on their own. Not without that fourth witch.”

  “How were you supposed to know that? You can’t go blaming yourself. None of this is natural, is it? It’s blasfemia!”

  Dan took out his cell phone and punched in Annie’s number. He held it to his ear, but he could hear nothing but fizzing. Whatever had brought on the wind and the darkness had blotted out phone reception, too.

  Ernie yelled, “We can see!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All of these other guys—they’re all blind! But you and me, we can see!”

  “Well, let’s get the hell out of here while we still can!”

  “We should help these guys. Lookit—even the paramedics have gone blind!”

  “What do you think you and me can do? There’s over a hundred guys here!”

  Ernie turned around and around in desperation. “I don’t know! But why haven’t you and me gone blind?”

  “Who knows? Let’s just be grateful, shall we, and get going, before we do.”

  They had nearly reached the decking at the front of the country club, and they clung on to the railings for support. The wind was shrieking so loudly that they gave up trying to shout at each other, but as they reached the reflecting pool, Ernie turned around and frantically jabbed his finger at the water.

  Dan looked down. In spite of the wind, which must have been blowing at nearly ninety miles an hour, the surface of the pool was absolutely still, and three floodlights were shining across it so that it looked like a mirror. The ducks had either flown away or been blown away, but the fountain was still playing as if there were no wind at all.

  All that disturbed the water were the floating bodies of seven or eight SWAT officers, lying facedown.

  Dan and Ernie were still staring at them when two more officers appeared on the opposite side of the pool, blindly weaving their way toward them.

  “Stop!” Ernie screamed at them, waving his arms. “Stop!”

  Dan leaned close to him. “It’s no use! They can’t hear you and they can’t see you!”

  Ernie tried to pull himself along the railings to the end of the pool, but he was too late. The first of the two officers stumbled into the pool, closely followed by his companion. They started to splash across it, slipping from time to time, but still managing to keep going. They bumped into some of the floating bodies, and stopped, and bent over, fumbling around to find out what they were. When they felt their waterlogged uniforms, one of them began to panic and wade wildly around in circles. The other officer stepped slowly backward, blindly trying to retrace his steps.

  The first officer slipped and fell into the water on his hands and knees. He stayed there, his head lowered as if he had lost the will to get up and try to climb out of the pool.

  “Let’s go get him!” Ernie shouted. But before they could reach the end of the railings, Dan saw a dark shape approaching the officer underneath the surface of the water.

  “Ernie! What’s that?”

  Ernie peered at it hard. “It’s a guy,” he said, at last. “He’s upside down, like a reflection. But—there’s no guy there!”

  Ernie was right. Reflected in the water, his image wobbling slightly in the ripples, was a man wearing a dark suit. His reflection was standing directly in front of the crouching officer’s reflection, but in reality there was nobody there.

  “Come on!” said Dan, but Ernie crossed himself and held back, the wind whipping up his necktie.

  “This is more black magic!”

  “This is all black magic! Come on!”

  There was another rumble of thunder, right over their heads, and then an ear-splitting crackle of lightning.

  In the reflecting pool, the man in the dark suit leaned forward and grasped the crouching officer by the back of his neck. The officer struggled and thrashed his arms and tried to twist himself free, but the reflected man pushed his head upward, toward the surface. In reality, the officer’s head was forced downward, under the water—although there was nobody anywhere near him, and it looked as if he were trying to drown himself.

  Dan tugged out his gun and pointed it at the reflected man.

  “It’s a reflection!” Ernie shouted at him. “What is the point?”

  All the same, Dan fired twice, and the gun kicked in his hands. The bullets broke up the reflection for a few seconds, but they didn’t have any effect on the reflected man at all. He continued to hold the officer’s head under the water, until the officer had stopped struggling and floated inertly on the surface.

  Ernie had reached the end of the railings now, and he clambered down into the water. He waded over to the drowned officer and dragged him to the edge of the pool. Dan stepped into the water after him, his gun still raised, searching the pool for any sign of the reflected man. He thought he saw a shadow moving through the water toward the country club, but the floodlights were shining so brightly on the surface that he could have been mistaken.

  He went over to join Ernie, who had taken off the officer’s helmet and his body armor and was giving him CPR. He tried for over five minutes, but it was clear that the officer was dead. Without his helmet, he looked so young, freckled and snub-nosed like somebody’s kid brother.

  In the end, Dan said, “Forget it, Ernie. He’s gone. The best thing we can do for these guys is get the hell out of here and find some other way of beating these goddamned witches.”

  Here, in the pool, it was eerily still, even though the wind was furiously blowing all around them, and SWAT officers were stumbling everywhere, blinded and hysterical. The country club was in chaos, like some medieval vision of hell. The sky was still black, and the driveway was crowded with abandoned vans and squad cars, their red lights flashing.

  Dan made his way to the edge of the pool and was about to climb out when he saw something running diagonally across the driveway toward the dining rooms. It was tall and light-colored, with an attenuated head. It looked more like a huge insect than a man, and yet it ran upright, like a man, and it appeared to have arms and legs like a man.

  For a moment it disappeared behind a row of yew bushes, but then it reappeared, and it was heading directly for a SWAT officer who was kneeling on the driveway with his head lifted as if he were praying, which he probably was.

  “Ernie,” he said, as Ernie reached the edge of the pool, “what the hell do you think that is?”

  But before Ernie could answer, the man-insect collided with the kneeling SWAT officer, sending him flying. The SWAT officer tried to climb to his feet, but the man-insect was on him instantly, with teeth and claws and feet. There was a blizzard of blood and ripped-apart clothing and ribbons of scarlet flesh. Then there were loops of yellowish intestines and bones. Half of the SWAT officer’s rib cage was tossed out of the carnage, and it rolled across the driveway.

  Even though they were blinded, the officers around him must have sensed that something was seriously wrong because they scattered in different directions. But the man-insect caught hold of another one and clawed at his clothes with even more ferocity.

  “Holy Mother of God,” said Ernie. “That’s what must have happened at the White Ghost’s house. Look at that thing!”

  Dan said, “Things, plural. Look.”

  Out of the woods appeared at least ten more man-insects, running toward the blinded SWAT officers, their legs moving like pistons.

  “Let’s go,” said Dan, and lifted himself out of the pool. He turned around and offered Ernie his hand, but as he did so, Ernie’s eyes widened, and he shouted, “Behind you, muchacho!”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Dan slowly heaved Ernie out of the water. Then, without turning around, he drew
out his gun. The wind was moaning and screaming like a chorus of damned souls. They could barely hear each other shouting.

  “How far behind me?”

  “Five yards! Not much more!”

  Dan found himself breathing deeply and steadily. Every time he woke up in the morning, it was always in the back of his mind that he might be killed or seriously injured before the day was over. But he had always imagined that he would be hit by a stray bullet as he drove along Olympic or stabbed at random by some crackhead Crip on Eighty-third Street. He had never thought that his whole body might be ripped apart and his bones scattered like sticks.

  He cocked his gun and swung around. The man-insect was standing so close to him that he took an involuntary step backward and then another and almost fell back into the pool.

  It was nearly seven and a half feet tall with a narrow, elongated head that was more like the skull of an antelope than the head of an insect. It appeared to be fleshless, with skin that was parchment colored and very dry. It didn’t have horns on top of its head, but a kind of jagged crown made of cracked shards of bone.

  Its eyes were a dull red, and when it blinked, its eyelids rolled upward.

  A kukurpa, a hungry spirit from the mythology of the Uitoto Indians in the depths of the Amazon rain forest. Except that it was real and could be summoned with the Night Wind to tear apart the enemies of those who had called it up.

  It had skeletal shoulders, raised up like wings, and spindly arms with terrifying claws. Its body was covered in fine, tawny hair, similar to a dog’s coat, and its skin was loose. Between its thighs hung a long pale brown penis like a braided bell rope, and testicles like dried fruit.

  There were claws on its feet, too, and curved spurs of bone protruded from its heels.

  It took one spastic step toward them, and Dan fired twice. The first bullet thumped into the creature’s chest, leaving an inch-wide hole. The second blasted a spray of bone fragments from the crown on top of its head.

  The kukurpa barely flinched. It raised its left arm, and Dan fired again, hitting it in the side of its chest. As it jerked toward him, he fired twice more, at point-blank range. The next thing he knew, it struck him on the shoulder. Its arm was as hard as a pickax handle, and he was knocked off his feet onto the decking. His gun tumbled into the pool.