Biting the tongue, a break in the speech rhythms, the circles all jerking sideways now in so much feedback. In this town, who can tell? Don’t you think I’ve been trying to figure it out since you left? Ever since Ruth disappeared I’ve been waiting to get my hands around someone’s throat, and I’ll do it. We can’t tell what’s going on with them, to them, behind their doors, and behind their eyes. Do you have an idea how many of them have already been hexed? How many would be dead or insane already if not for me? For years I thought it had stopped, but you knew better, and that’s why you ran, bastard. The Goat simply became more subtle.
Keep your eyes open.
Shut up and hurry.
Matthew hurled pieces of the broken fence out of his way and kept going, running through the yards, repeating the actions of his childhood. He felt even more tense and ill than earlier, knowing the homes were empty, all the madness centered in one spot. He heard a chain clinking to his left and turned toward the sound; a Doberman’s wet moonlit eyes warned him of its attack an instant before it came charging out of the doghouse, barking ferociously and galloping across the few feet of swampy grass between them. The Doberman lunged for his face, jaws snapping shut next to his ear. He barely completed a scrambling dive over some bushes before the dog’s chain reached its full length and yanked the animal backward with a strangled yelp. Matthew’s fists burned with arcana, glowing blackly in the night.
Garbage cans rattled and screeching cats leaped for gutters. Matthew came out at the mouth of an alley and ran up toward Bosco Bob’s vast property, rubbing his shins and squinting in the downpour. He could hear the ocean. Broken tree limbs and dead leaves clogged the sewer grates and the whole road was flooded, surging waters rising over the curbs and enveloping the sidewalks. Spray blasted into his face and he could imagine himself at the seashore again, in the sand with Debbi, and in the middle of winter cuddling with Helen in his sleeping bag, defending his aspirations. Who are the mad? Who’s been murdered? Driftwood floated by with rats clinging to it.
He wasn’t certain he could trust A.G. anymore, either, especially with Ruth still missing. Possibly, she kept in hiding, perhaps her memories had returned and she knew what lay at the heart of their world. There was also the chance that she was the agent of the Goat, this enemy he’d been searching for—but in his heart he knew she was dead. Ruth already seemed dead to him, not enough of her left. She couldn’t contribute any real performance in the final act of this play, nothing other than what she’d helped set free in the beginning, and what her blood would establish now. Had A.G. loved Ruth in that same curbing way Matthew had loved Helen? Matthew had still been able to walk away from his love. What had A.G. been able to do?
There was knowledge that could not be attained unless it met you part of the way; pain had come between them, and passion, and a great deal of hatred in the learning of these lessons. There was no telling just what games A.G. himself might be playing, whether he would run now that Matthew had returned to take up the mantle and bring it back where it belonged. What tricks and traps had he already set to snare, what tempest of revenge was he rightfully harboring?
But it had felt so good to talk with him again.
Floodwaters churned past Matthew, yanking at his legs, swirling and pulling him farther down the road. He splashed across the street, not feeling the cold anymore or noticing the chafing from his wet clothing.
Stone lions snarled and raised their paws to the sky. The walls and spear rails of the gates to Bosco Bob’s estate stretched out before him.
Festivities.
The evil emanated, but not from merely the mansion anymore. Matthew wheeled as the hedges at the ends of the gate hung in the wind and battered his shoulders. He couldn’t quite peg it, this electrical feeling of his enemy crawling on his flesh, through his head, inside his history and soul, making every inch of him sting.
A web of malignancy blanketed the area, now rising from the soil itself, as it always meant to do. It extended through the air, under his feet, wrapping him in a cocoon of the runecraft. He knew the bloated sac of disease in Panecraft, from the caves, was more free than before, coming for him now. Alone with him. It’s inside me.
Chanting his personal catechisms, he bowed his head in the storm, beneath the weight of guilt and horror, clasping his hands tighter as they flamed within the darkness, his power great and his own rage even greater. He visualized his chest free of these burns, his conscience clear, his mother and father alive and happy again in the days they danced beneath the mistletoe. His fantasies flared.
He honed his illusions to sharpness… what it would be like to be a normal man, to have Helen in his arms, to have Debbi in his arms, to have anyone besides the Goat in his arms. A slithering of mutant chemicals in his brain. Desiring these dreams more than he desired his life.
There would be a choice to be made eventually, between these truths. He willed his thoughts to life until his gums began to bleed from the gritting of his teeth, lifelines of his palms writhing now upon his hands, changing… fingernails cut new paths and the blood could force a different course of events… crying though he didn’t know it out in the rain, so focused now upon this fusion of past and present, lie and fact, that he could feel his consciousness shift along with this existence, if only he cared enough.
Enochian prayers gushed from him like his love and blood, invoking the Seraphim and begging, commanding, that his call be heeded, and finding a resistance even in himself. For an instant he was a different man who had never given up his life to his love, to this beast that lurked beside his love. And at the apex of his willpower and needs, his wants and hopes, his life and death, he threw a binding hex around himself in an attempt to confine the black sorcery and bottle the whirlwind harvest corrupting the town. Sparks skittered up and down the railings, arching and popping into the trees. Flames swirled against the pouring rain. The wrought-iron spears became red-hot, then white-hot, sizzling, steaming, and melting.
“I am Matthew Galen!” he screamed.
His words echoed, and thunder growled along with him.
Everything knew his name now, and in the name was torment and mastery. He pressed his hand against the gate and felt no pain. Sheet and ball lightning spun and waxed in front of him, welcoming him here as burning branches fell into the floodwaters.
Shielding his eyes, Matthew looked at the grove in the distance where A.G. had said he was waiting. There was nothing to see. He could barely make out the entrance to that circle of pine, the place where Bosco Bob had built a barbecue pit and cooked hot dogs and hamburgers every Fourth of July, Jelly Jane chasing Matthew into the woods. Can’t see you.
Beneath the canopy trees. Can’t see you either, where is all the energy coming from? You aren’t insane enough to invoke the Seraphim?
It didn’t work. The angels won’t come.
No, that’s what I meant, you can’t be crazy enough to think they would help you. They enjoy atrocities. They know your name now.
It doesn’t matter. I need to speak to Helen and make sure she’s safe. I’m going through the portico, you enter from the vestibule. Let’s finish this, one way or the other.
It’s going to be the other.
A psychic nod of assurance.
One more thing, Mattie. Distraction, another beat, and the stillness under the whistles and keening of the living wind. Now a different pressure throbbing in the cortex, jammed and heavy with mental reverb of long-controlled viciousness ungluing, even the psychic voice flat with self-righteous contempt. Why? Shivering in the cold, disconcerted face scrunched and his forehead furrow. Why did you leave us?
Fire consumed by the tempest, explosions of thunder stepping behind him like the feet of Christ. Insanity stroked his flesh, nuzzling and promising the love he had never found anywhere else.
Because I didn’t want to end up like my mother.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Diamond necklaces and glass beads glittered, faces and facets reflecting in his d
renched hair. Matthew entered the crowd, this throng his only home now, more at home than ever before. The horde swallowed him, and didn’t spit him back out despite his long absence. It laughed and drank and flirted and danced, visages familiar, most of them smiling, or eating or kissing. Fingers pointed, a few mouths lolled and gaped in surprise, one was vomiting into a garbage can in the corner. Some legs ran up to him, followed by dry-lipped smooches and innocuous questions. He offered no response.
Jello Joe pounced, his face red with the flush of recent sex. “Mattie!”
Heat and claustrophobia intensified, spells weaving among them now from different stations. Matthew grabbed the arm Joe threw around him and stopped himself a moment before he broke it, realizing this was his friend—whatever might be at work upon Joey, this was his friend. They all were. His neighbors pressed closer.
“Sweet Jesus Christ, Mattie … you … you … !” Joe sputtered, dropped his stein of beer, and hugged him with such passion that Matthew couldn’t fight the nausea that rose up his throat. One terrible sudden racking heave worked through him but came out sounding like a hiccup. “Son of a bitch! I don’t know if I should bust your chops or kiss you!”
Jodi Carmichael’s elfin features moved out from behind Jello Joe, and she said, “Give him another hug. You can always punch him out later.”
Consenting with a smile, Jello Joe said, “Right you are, baby,” and hugged Matthew again, then held him out at arm’s length and planted a kiss on Matthew’s forehead. Joe made a face, as if tasting the poisons in Galen’s skin. “Un-fucking-believable, look at all these gray curls, what the hell has New York been doing to you? Being on Broadway is taking its toll, huh? C’mere, come over here and let me get you a drink. Hey, you need towel? You’re dripping. Over there, get a towel. Talk to me, buddy, we’ve got a lot to catch up on. I want to know, Mattie, I want to know it all.”
Matthew said, “Joe, have you seen Helen?”
Jello Joe waved a hand in the air. “She’s here someplace, you’ve got to know that, everybody is here somewhere tonight. I think I saw her over by my dad a while back. Go on, get, it’s okay if you’ve got to find her first, it’s gonna be a long great night, it already is. I need to talk to you, though.”
Jodi came over and kissed Matthew’s cheek, her empathy endearing and powerful; she was special in ways he could put no name to, and he hoped they’d both survive the night. “Don’t mind his antics, Matthew, he makes a good play at sounding sober, but believe me, he’s sloshed out of his gourd, and he doesn’t want you to leave either. He’s been talking about you today, telling me about all the high school mischief the two of you used to get into. And how you wound up breaking your ankle on his head during your big ninety-nine-yard run. You were out of the house so fast this morning, I didn’t even get a chance to say hello and make you feel welcomed back home.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it,” Matthew said, understanding that this too was truth. He trembled with anticipation as the maleficia glided over him like a dead snake skin returned to sheathe the snake.
There was the loud sound of popping, laughter, and applause when the cork from a bottle of champagne ricocheted off the snout of a roasted pig laid out on the banquet table. Other corks rolled on the floor, kicked by dancers.
Your mother is dead, he could tell her, and your father sits with her, too frightened to let her leave him. “Sorry I can’t talk more now, Jodi, but I have to find Helen.” He backtracked a few steps and made to leave.
Jello Joe stooped in disbelief. “You don’t want talk to me?”
“It’s not that, Joey, I just have to get to her—”
“I know what you have to do.” Joe hung his head, cheeks flushed with more than sex now, the anger rising. “Run. Whether ninety-nine yards or a thousand miles. Jesus, you never stop, do you? Not even after all this time?” He shifted his weight as though he was going to throw a punch, deck Matthew, get the evening really rolling, offended and furious. “Go on, you. Keep on running. Shit. I was hoping we could … that it might be like it was in the old days. Even if only a little bit.” The old days. They’d passed by only a few years before. Impossible, so many lifetimes had passed. “My fault.”
“It’s not like that, Joey, really, listen to me.” No, it wasn’t, and there was no way to explain what had truly transpired; how these friends could possibly still save him, even while he continued to hurt and betray them.
“Some buddy! Running off for five years, Mattie, five fuckin’ years, without a single postcard, you rotten son of a bitch, not one phone call! Nada. Why’d I think it might be different, now that you were back? Didn’t the rest of us mean anything to you? Did you only come back to visit that psycho in the nuthouse?”
Jodi tried quieting him, saying, “Joey, shhh … shhh … it’s the beer talking.” She looked at Matthew with eyes filled with condolence.
“And now her, of course her,” Joe ranted, “of course you’ve got to see your Helen now, after you trampled on her. It’s called abandonment, what you did. She isn’t going to forgive you, bastard, not like I was going to. And you proved me wrong.”
Scratches of lightning brightened the room, engraving the black night sky. Afterimages cavorted. The crowd lurched away from the windows, sighing, cooing, like a one-celled creature slithering from an electrical prod.
Matthew had that double-edged sense again, as if he stood in two places at once, lived dual lives that had simply converged into nightmare, but might be pulled apart again into redemption. Those twin feelings, as experienced on his mother’s grave, and when seeing A.G. and Charters and Jazz and the old house: half shame, half gratification.
Jodi stared down in embarrassment as Joe continued his tirade. Matthew’s stomach plummeted when he saw the depth of these harbored feelings. Jello Joe began to weep. He said, “Joey, listen to me …”
“Get the hell out of here.”
He shoved Matthew aside. Yanking Jodi’s arm roughly, with a sobbed growl escaping him, Jello Joe pulled away. He stomped off, dragging her behind him, pressing rudely through a gaggle of elderly women swapping tales of angelic grandchildren, knowing nothing.
Shadows fell as walls grew bright, panes of glass glistening with rain and illumination. Matthew couldn’t follow, but the urge was still there, like the tide of the washed-out streets tugging at him again. Freakish, high-pitched cackling made him turn and glared at Mrs. Farlessi, waving a chicken wing above her head, lying back and giggling in the arms of a man wearing thick glasses.
Witch work abounded, though none of the high holy days here except Samhain, All Hallows’ Eve, came so close that it tempted and flirted like a brazen lover wanting your love and lust.
He scanned neighbors, trying to spot his enemy, knowing his foe’s gaze was upon him in the mass, wondering what the next move would be. Blank eyes stared at him from every angle. This had become a cancer ward, and none of them were aware. Fever in him ran higher until he thought another spell had been cast, his skin still burning in that strange way, the Goat mouth chittering on his chest, babbling and ranting. He snatched a beer from the bar and drank it down without a breath, and chugged a second one, as well. What may have been swans hours ago had melted into grotesque hunchbacked iceworks of ghouls in which he saw scenes of depravity and torch-fire persecution of witches. Sweat rolled off his chin, and he wiped his sleeve against his eyes.
He realized how similar the mansion was to the asylum.
The migraine had grown much worse, voices of hell thickening in tone and timbre, sounding too much like his own thoughts. He walked out of the dining room, shrugging off old acquaintances heaping praise and pecking at him like worm-starved ravens. He wandered into a corridor, feeling foolish and defenseless, murmuring charms like lullabies, wards that meant nothing now but helped him feel calmer. Cut me up all you want, I’m still going to stop you. This peevish, glancing-over-the-shoulder crap got him nowhere. Too many people were distracting him from what he had to do; they were a means to an e
nd, all of them. Summerfell itself had simply become a consequence of a war being waged forever.
Matthew tried to find an empty room where he might be able to meditate and track the virulence. His scrying mirror had been shattered, but the shards still held enough power for him to glimpse unfolding events. The doors he tried were locked.
Jelly Jane’s room was on the next floor, he remembered from back when she’d had a penchant for pink: pillows, curtains, teddy bears, china dolls, expensive fresh pink roses stuffed in crystal vases every day.
Crisp chords from the grand piano floated beside him like a living presence. Down the long corridor from her bedroom was Jello Joe’s room, and the stairway to his left would take him out to other quarters, down to the garages and winding even farther to the wine cellars. He wondered where Helen, Jazz, and Jane were, and hoped the spells he cast would keep them safe here, as the beast coveted their town.
You in the ballroom? he asked, and after a lengthy pause called again, Are you here? No response from A.G. The headache interfered, and he couldn’t be sure if he was in union anymore, or how far, his voice might be heard, or even whom he was calling anymore. Did it even matter? A.G. might or might not be on the level, he couldn’t tell anymore, and not having faith wasn’t the worst of these sins on his hands now. It ends tonight. He took the cramped flight of stairs off to the cool majesty of the wine cellars. Maybe this would be it.
Slowly, one stair at a time, his descent fell into perfect alignment with some other descending. Vertigo and fearsome déjà vu sliced him into still more separate sections, one here and one somewhere else, somewhen else, someone else. Collisions of past and present sent him reeling, so that he had to lean against the handrail for support, his mother so clearly in his mind that he could not free his vision from her. She walked at his side, so real he felt her breath. His footsteps sounded louder against the walls of his mind than the walls of this cellar. Debbi, too, with his father, wafted in and out of view. Only the dead would walk with him now.
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