Helen puked over the banister. When she’d finished she wiped her mouth and said, “That was Paul. Boswell. My next-door neighbor.”
“I know.”
“Why is this happening? What did you do?”
“I’m sorry, Helen.” He couldn’t keep the whine out of his voice.
“You’re sorry, is that what you said, you son of a bitch? You’re what!”
Because of me, he thought, because of my hate and love.
“What are you looking for, Mattie?” she asked. “How are we going to get out of here alive?” She sobbed faintly, stern, more composed now, everything having already become second nature for her, as it did for him back then when he’d begun on this path. “Your hands.”
And he saw it.
There.
At the end of the hall.
The room as he remembered.
He tugged her to him and tried the doorknob. It was unlocked and turned too easily in his hand. He gritted his teeth as all the stenches of lust and betrayal drifted so strongly from inside. “In here,” he said.
He opened the door.
To see Jelly Jane on the bed.
“Well, well,” she told him, stretched in a nice pose. “About time you got here. I’ve been waiting a long time for you, Mattie.”
She’d lost all the weight, every bit of fat, and you could see what it had cost her, and that she didn’t care.
Now reclining against the same pink pillows he remembered, laying herself out before him like a porno movie starlet ready for bad behavior at the urging of her director. Dressed in tight black leather and crimson lipstick, she was radiant in a way he could have acknowledged but never fully believed. Depression must have driven her to this, but hadn’t drained the life from her—instead, she’d been vitalized, given new hope. This would be her gift. How long ago had she lost the weight, when did she follow his left-hand path into the bookshops of Gallows and the dustiest shelves of the library? Six months ago, he thought, right after she killed Ruth and started to feel her way back toward Matthew.
On her night table were the Divine Pymander, The Hermetica, and the Emerald Tablet, books that had become a part of him, and now Janey as well. Their sweat, stink, and souls had been absorbed into the passages. She had drawn him from the pages.
At her feet, Jazz lay dead on the floor with his throat cut, a lurid smile sealed to his face.
“No,” Matthew whimpered, “no, not you, Jazz.”
Helen said, “Jesus, oh Jesus, isn’t it going to end?”
Jelly Jane licked the tip of her pinkie and moistened her lips with it.
She said, “So?”
And that truly was the question.
So now what? Where do we progress from here, as his foe rested before him, so steeped in hatred and unrequited love that he could still see the gross pain heaving in her heart. His every movement had been caught under her watchful eye, since they were teenagers and he’d shoved her into the buffalo wing dip. She’d become a part of him, he’d been so blind not to see it, how he’d shackled her and dragged her into the black evil of his life.
“Janey.” This luscious creature, this poor girl. She was quite possibly stronger than he. Perhaps the lessons had gone by more quickly with the Goat’s help, with its promises and prices, and payments demanded. “You killed Jasper for this?” he asked, but couldn’t be sure if she heard. She purred on the bed, a kind of chuckling, maybe. She’d learned, and in learning she’d discovered that sometimes life tasted better with bloodletting.
He almost apologized. He almost begged for forgiveness, as he wanted to beg them all. But Jazz on the floor, even with the grin, forbid that.
In the catacombs, the Goat trudged beneath them all.
Singing its enticing songs, waiting for someone else who’d heard the call to come and make friends. Jelly Jane had listened and met true love at last, for the Goat was nothing if not loving in its corruption and depravity. She’d most likely killed Ruth after forcing her to tell about what had happened in the caves when Debbi disappeared, plucking the memories from her mind, digging them out with a witch’s blade. She’s prayed to the Goat and offered up the sacrifices of the missing kids, of course, a nice setup, here in a mansion where you could hide yourself away and no one would even come looking, much less find you, in its recesses. She’d kept them alive for how long here? … Weeks, months … drawing the circles in their fluids and experimenting with different prayers, and ways to feed flesh to daemons …
Jello Joe and Jodi ran into the room, both of them bruised, Jodi near collapse. “Sis,” Joey said, “thank God you’re all right, I thought you might be … I …” He let the sentence trail when he saw Jazz’s body. “Oh shit, no, Jasper … “
Licking her lips now, as obvious in her intent as the devil, Jane got off the bed and smoothly stepped over Jazz—how long she must’ve dreamed of this moment, this final unveiling of strength and purpose—pulled back the drapes of the window, and stared out at the thrashing, hideous night.
Matthew moved, threw a shoulder into what had once been a flabby stomach. It didn’t work; she didn’t back up an inch. Jelly Jane tossed him backward with a tremendous spell, and pulled the athame, the witch’s blade that she’d used to cut Jazz’s throat, from the back of her skirt.
Jello Joe cried out, “Stop!” and dove onto Matthew’s back, and then the others were screaming more, the hallway filling with whoever had survived, drifting into the doorway. Helen pulled at Joe, and Jodi yanked at Helen, the four of them fighting like this for all the same, but wrong, reasons.
Matthew heard the spells in Jane’s voice, but she didn’t seem to be saying anything as he pulled her to him and—knowing it was the right thing, the only thing, here among all his own sins—wrapped her in his arms and kissed her with all the tenderness he felt for the fat Jelly Jane, his friend, but had never been able to express, having driven her to this. She whined then, but not nearly as loud as his father’s weeping in his mind, as he shrugged Joey off his back and took the athame from her strong, slender hand. She kissed him again, as he wept for the girl he’d destroyed, the knife ready to plunge into her heart if that’s what he had to do.
“Jane, oh God, where’s the Goat? Tell me. Answer me. Where is my mother?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Debbi had tripped, or been pushed, into the darkness, away from him. He heard her breath knocked from her as she hit the ground, an audible whuff as she hit the dirt.
“Hey, Deb, come on, knock it off,” A.G. yelled, swinging the lantern in her direction, the beam slashing into the miasma of black flowing through the cave.
She was coughing.
Spitting, and trying to say his name. “Mah … ? … mah … ?”
When the light finally struck her it ignited the red spittle strings hanging off her chin. All around them, on the ground, her blood began filling the marble canals chiseled into the cave floor, the Goat’s face painted over the carved pentagram.
Ruth shrieked.
Debbi weakly touched his ankle, and he flinched from her hand, too stunned to do anything else. Her crimson mouth dribbled, the stalagmite lifting the back of her dress like a tent, but it hadn’t torn through yet. She blinked and tried to speak, tears rolling down her cheeks, in agony. “Maa … ath … ewww … ?”
The altar began to glow.
A.G. and Ruth both screamed for more than their lives, running down the tunnels lost without any sense of direction, now heading the wrong way, searching for the stone stairway that led back up into the lighthouse, where he had brought them.
Debbi clung to the cuff of his pants, stroking his ankle with feeble back-and-forth motions, eyes pleading with him to help her, his love, to do something, but he could only watch the syrupy blood dripping off her braces and trickling from her nose outside the tracks. No time for it to well or pool beneath her as her fluid was siphoned into the trenches, flowing down the rock.
Her tented dress ripped apart and she groaned as her body r
oughly slipped another inch down the sharp stalagmite, ripping open the rest of her stomach. The pretty dress tore in half and he saw the rock gouging her body, viscera sticking to the tip of the point. Her fingernails caught in his sneaker laces.
The catacombs echoed with the cries of A.G and Ruth, footsteps stumbling for the stairs. An insane animal laughter rose from the edges of the altar.
He clamped his teeth together in case it was coming from him. It wasn’t. And it was. He felt a certain recognition ringing within him, a returning to place, a comfortable familiarity in the moment. The altar brightened. Debbi kept her eyes on his, pinning him to the pentagram he stood over, his feet on either side of the stone channel running with her blood. They were both in the center of the Goat’s face, her red liquid streaming in little rivers along the outline of the five-pointed star. The Goat grinned at him, and it was a smile he knew.
When at last her hand fell away from his foot and the wet red lines met, Debbi was dead. (Debbi was dead.)
But her eyes pursued him still.
A blast of force, a whirlwind of pain, madness, and malevolent joy reached from the altar and broadsided his soul, slamming him backward in a wash of malignant energy, where he struck the wall and crumpled facedown in her gore. The rumbling of the ocean beat into his ears. His shirt burned, on fire, and his chest sizzled.
He listened to the laughter.
Through his slit eyes he watched a blurry white motion coming closer to him and easing down to his side.
Something bent and kissed his face.
He opened his eyes and saw his dead mother’s deformed and decomposing body recede into shadow.
Through his tears he understood the meaning of evil, the love that it makes its own.
But he soon forgot.
Chapter Twenty-Four
His senses slipped.
Like a black box closing, everything folded from him except Jane’s face, the lovely tanned skin, those tempting, thirsty lips. No sounds for an instant.
Her eyes rolled back into her head, and he looked and saw that his hand had found her throat and he was throttling her, though she smiled. Her witching reached out for him like a spouse returning. They were two of a kind amid a town that couldn’t contain all that they were. With a jarring sensation Matthew realized that Jane was now the only woman who could ever understand what he truly was, the extent of knowledge in his possession. She knew what fueled him, and they were inextricably bound.
He drew away jerkily, releasing his grip on her throat. Without malice, her erotic eyes acknowledged and pinned him. Sexed, his hands moved on their own, traveling gently down her neck to where he laid his palms over her large, firm breasts and squeezed as she sighed in his grip. She writhed beneath him and shoved herself out forward to meet his touch, whipping her black tresses over his skin.
Heat that had remained bottled inside her escaped and licked against him. Matthew felt the tightly muscled belly and smiled as Janey raised her chin up to longingly kiss him, and he lowered himself to meet her lips. It took only a moment. My God, she’s got me in her power, and I know and love it. She’s so much like me, all devotion and scorn. Perfect, more perfect than any woman he’d ever seen, and she wanted him. She was so incredibly enticing. And then, through these crazy thoughts, he saw how easily she was bending him. Matthew grappled and threw his arm across his eyes, thrusting from her, as she reached for his crotch again.
“You know I’m the only one who can give you what you need,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” The smell of Jazz’s blood made him gag. He leaned over and grabbed Jane by the throat again, and raised the crusty blade to her carotid. “She’s in the basement, isn’t she? Show me how to get there.”
The others in the room, like those in the hallway, now snapped to attention, and Jello Joe dove onto his back trying to get him into a headlock. Matthew shrugged him off and threw him against the headboard. “Enough, Joey.”
Matthew knew there wasn’t enough time for any vengeance of this kind. Both of them shaking, he and Jane sneered at each other, aware of what ran beneath their skin, in back of their eyes. She pouted and blew him a kiss. If he lived through the night perhaps he would return and kill her, perhaps make his love to her the right way this time. But for now he needed to get into the basement, find the Goat, and stop the paincraft before it grew too late to save anyone still left.
On the floor, aroused and gasping, Jane laughed grimly and said, “I’ll punish you, Helen.” The words came out as an afterthought, shocking Matthew that Janey hadn’t killed Helen instead of Ruth, torturing his love in lieu of himself.
Joe dropped to his knees beside his sister, eyes glazing with astonishment. “Janey … ? What in the hell are you doing? What’s this all about? Has everybody gone insane?”
Helen flung Jodi Carmichael aside, this fight over with, though they were all still holding on. She ran to Jazz’s body and held her hand over her mouth as she tried to do something, looking here and there, and knowing it was all too late. She stared at Matthew. “You were kissing her?”
“No,” he said. “This has all been a lie, this entire night.” He shot Joe a glance that left his friend openmouthed, Jello Joe putting his arms around his sister while Jodi sank to the floor and wept beside him. “Lock the door behind us, Joey,” Matthew said. “You hear me? Keep the door shut. It’s all going to come together now, it’ll be all right in the morning.” Joe nodded absently.
Matthew drew Jane’s athame across his thumb, his blood welling against the edge of the blade. He leaned over her and let the binding spells come to him now, as his knowledge of her increased, his blood seeking out her name in the knife. “Your name is mine now, and I bind you with it. You’re going to go to sleep now, Janey.”
“You’re a vain bastard, Galen.” She wriggled, excited, still so hot. “You don’t have the strength tonight, Mattie. Come back to bed.”
“The Goat’s played you for a fool, too, Jane. You’re not in control either.” He drove the heel of his palm against her jaw and felt teeth break. Joe cried out but didn’t move, just kept cradling her. She moaned once, her body contorting for another moment before she passed out, straining against the leather.
Jodi crawled, crying hysterically, and Joe hugged her with one arm, holding Jane in the other, keeping their faces turned from the blood.
“I should kill you, Mattie,” Jello Joe said. “Whatever’s happening, I know it’s because of you.”
“Remember that I love you, Joey,” Matthew said. He held his hand to Helen, thinking she would not approach him, that if she understood anything it would be that she should stay away from him. But reluctantly, languorously, swaying as if slow dancing now, she moved to him, took his hand, and led him out of the room. The neighbors, hollow-eyed and so pale that some of them might be dead, let them into the hall.
“What were you saying about your mother?” Helen asked, no more whimpering, already accustomed. “You know what this is. Tell me. About your hands, about all of … this.” She gestured to those torturing themselves in the other rooms. Jazz’s father, the hippity-hop king, hippitied on top of Mr. Dobson’s corpse, unaware that his dead son lay only feet from him, unaware that the man he danced on was still laughing, but without a soul, all of them nothing more than the pulp of men.
“It’s an infection. One that’s been in remission for years but started growing again, and only I can stop it.”
“That scorpion talked, the cats, and … what, nerve gas, something your father did in the asylum?”
A good guess, maybe she would go for it for now. “Yes. A strain of virus.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’ve got to get back down to the cellar.”
“Why?”
“The disease is centered under the house at the moment.”
“How? In canisters?”
“Yes,” Matthew answered.
He heard a gunshot as they cut through the hallways, watching the rest of th
e crowd still playing out this sabbat, wild in the moonlight and lightning flashes, the doors open so that the rain and storm was let in to thrash against their skin, Lucifer here among them.
She tugged his hand and he felt his wards snap, one by one, as their sweaty hands made it tougher to hold on to her. He lost his grip and she whispered, “Glorious.” Helen tried to scramble away and join in with the hysteria, eyes glazed, the wanton smile affixed. He wasted what power he had left in order to reattach the protection spell. She collapsed in his arms at the top of the wine cellar’s stairs, and he bit his tongue in frustration.
His name sought him out.
“Galen” came from behind him, hushed and guttural, seeking an end.
Sheriff Hodges stood in the doorway heaving for breath, battered and bleeding with a silver knife handle protruding from his upper thigh. His face was so ferociously contorted that he didn’t even look like a middle-aged man anymore. He became a wood carving that had had too much splintered from it. “This is your fault, Galen, I know.” His revolver smoked, and at his feet lay the naked, quivering body of the half-faced Winnie Sacket, her lipless mouth gnawing on his boot.
Without moving his gaze from Matthew, Hodges kicked Winnie away and took two limping steps forward.
He grasped the handle and tugged the knife out of his leg with one steady, gruesome pull. There was no more room for pain in his snarl. “Your fault,” the sheriff repeated, as right as he’d ever been about anything in his entire life. “I know it.” He pointed the gun at Matthew’s head, but it was apparent that Hodges would rather skewer him with the knife. Silver, the witch’s bane. Hodges grinned.
With one swift, precisely executed movement, Roger Wakowski appeared from someplace he hadn’t been an instant before and broke the sheriff’s elbow. Hodges went down on his bad leg and, still gripping the silver handle, thrust the knife out in front of him, slashing at Wakowski’s abdomen. Wakowski dodged and brought his fist down on the sheriff’s shoulder and, loudly and neatly, broke that, too. Hodges floundered for a moment and dropped onto his belly beside Winnie, still conscious, his lips puckered against the agony, licking the floor.
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