by Dana Donovan
That’s when I heard Tony holler at Carlos to stop firing, citing Ursula’s safety and mine. Putnam, not missing the opportunity, dropped the van into reverse and floored it. The van hesitated for only a second as the tires and loose gravel quarreled over traction. But the van found its grip, driving Tony and Carols back, as it rocketed on by them. Then, as a last measure of defiance, Putnam stopped the van at the edge of the lot; pulled a shotgun out from behind his seat, took aim out the window and flattened the rear tire on Carlos’ car.
A minute later, Ursula and I found ourselves on the floor of the van, sailing down route 107 with one of Salem’s most notorious witch hunters. Our butts were bruised, our egos deflated and our hopes for Tony and the boys saving us were fading fast. The man was really starting to piss me off.
Tony Marcella:
Something told me when Lilith and I got back from Salem the night before that we hadn’t heard the last of Lemas Winterhutch or James Putnam, or whatever the hell his name is. Lilith told me she had killed him up on Gallows Hill, but I was suspicious after we got there and found the body had disappeared.
After we arrived in Salem, I figured the only place Lilith could have gone was to the church, and sure enough, as we pulled into the gravel lot we spotted her car parked by an old van.
As Carlos had surmised, Mass was over, and most definitely so for the old man we found up front by the altar. In our long careers, Carlos and I had seen some nasty things, but none nastier than that poor old bastard who had been beaten to a bloody pulp. I looked at Carlos, and he at me.
“This was no ordinary whoop-ass,” he said.
I nodded. “Looks more like a lynching. It’s crazy how they just left him here.” I looked around the church, feeling uneasy about its vacancy. It felt as if someone was watching us. “Wonder where Lilith is?” I said.
Carlos shook his head and started to offer his opinion on the matter. The words hadn’t yet parted his lips when gunfire erupted out in the parking lot, voiding any need for further guessing.
“That’s Dominic,” he said, instinctively reaching for his weapon. We started in a run toward the front doors, and before reaching them, heard another series of shots; this time from a second shooter.
“That’s not Dominic,” I said, now with my own weapon drawn and cradled in a classic two-fisted grip. “Has he got two guns?”
We held up at the doors, flanking each side to make sure we weren’t stepping into an ambush. “He’s got his .38`s,” Carlos answered, “his primary and a snub-nose.”
I gave him a nod when I saw that the front of the building was clear. “Okay then, let’s go.”
We tore off around the corner in time to see someone (I later learned was Putnam) taking shots from a van at Spinelli, who had hunkered down behind a parked car. Immediately, Carlos crouched into a shooter’s stance and pounded out five or six shots at the back of the van, taking out its back windows and drilling several holes into the doors. At that instant, I realized Lilith and Ursula were probably inside. I hollered for Carlos to hold his fire and ordered Spinelli to do the same.
I don’t know, in hind sight maybe that was a mistake. I know that Carlos and Spinelli believed it was. It gave Putnam the opportunity to pull the van away. In fact he nearly ran us down with it. To add insult to injury, he took out a shotgun and flattened one of our tires so that we couldn’t go after him. I felt mighty stupid at that point. Naturally, I couldn’t let Carlos or Spinelli know it. So, instead I masked my chagrin with anger, feeling somewhat justified for getting on Spinelli’s case, claiming he should have taken Putnam out with a clear shot when he had the chance.
“It wasn’t actually a clear shot,” he protested. “Everything happened so fast.”
“Yeah, like the train at Jefferson Station?” I pushed past him and Carlos on my way to find a seat beneath a sprawling oak at the edge of the lot. “And stop wasting our time,” I added. “Get that friggin` tire fixed.”
It took only a minute for me to cross the parking lot and find a shady spot in the grass below the branches of that tree, but already Carlos had given Spinelli his pep talk; set him to work on the flat tire, and then headed out to see me.
I watched him cross the lot with this Serious-Joe look on his face; even smiled up at him politely when he clicked his heels together upon reaching me. But I didn’t say a word to him, not even after he sat down beside me and nudged his shoulder to mine. But if he knew how much that meant to me he would have known that he really didn’t need to say anything at all. Truth was; he probably would have been more successful in getting me to lighten up had he just sat there and let me stew in self-guilt.
Eventually, I would have come around. But Carlos doesn’t always see the forest for the trees, and I guess he thought I needed a reality check. So instead of easing in with something incidental, he dumped the mother load of criticism on me, setting my mood from aggravated to terminally pissed for the next six hours.
“Tony,” he started, “that was harsh. You know it wasn’t Dominic’s fault that Putnam got away.”
“Hmm.”
“And you know what it’s like in a shootout. You said yourself it’s the most scared you’ve ever been in all your years on the force.”
“Carlos, Lilith was in that van. You saw it: holes all over the place. The kid’s shots were wild. All he had to do was hit Putnam once. It’s like he was firing with his eyes closed. What if he hit her?”
“What did you expect him do, stand there and take fire without returning it?”
“I expected him not to put civilians in his crossfire. And you, blasting away like that at the back of the van. You’re no better.”
“Tony, he was shooting at a fellow officer.”
“Was shooting, you’re right, but he was out of shots. Didn’t you count them?”
“He could have had a semi-auto.”
“He didn’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, Carlos. I know it because I can hear the difference, and so can you.”
“All right, maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t change anything. Dominic reacted exactly the way he was trained to react. You just can’t stand that Putnam slipped from our fingers and you want to take it out on Dominic. In fact, you’ve been on his case ever since the boardwalk incident. If you ask me, you should be thanking God he’s not dead right now.”
“I’ll thank God if Lilith isn’t dead right now.”
“Tony, we’ll get her back. I promise.”
It’s funny, but that’s exactly what I would have said to him if the shoe were on the other foot. The truth was that I knew we would get her back; but dead or alive, that was another matter.
I turned my gaze out past the church yard; toward the nearly barren slope they called Gallows Hill. It seemed unlikely that the lone tree there was the same one used by the hysteria-driven villagers of seventeenth-century Salem, but I could imagine it was. Tall as a barn and half as wide, its limbs grew heaviest on the eastern side, crowded lopsided in perverted proportion, as if purposely giving room to the single alpha branch on the west. That limb unfolded from the trunk like a mighty arm stretched in perpetual reach of vigilante justice, a counterbalance in weight to the spectator branches gathered opposite.
It was there I imagined the accused hanging limply, their bodies silhouetted by the setting sun; long dresses romancing the gentle breeze that only evenings bring at the end of a hot summer’s day in Salem.
I imagined the dead disappearing under a twilight fog, forgotten, but for the undertaker who cut them down in the morning mist and buried them in soft shallow graves. Later, after he’d gone, and with accusing eyes numb to distractions, the bereaved would come along and distinguish the graves with granite markers, or simple wooden crosses, or sometimes nothing more than footprints and tears.
It’s true, I thought, that dust turns to dust, and ashes to ashes, for in death we are all equal. I had to ask myself: what in God’s name happened here. Did they think w
e would forget, or did they want us to remember?
Dominic was just bringing the car down off the jack when my cell phone rang, snapping me out of an exiled state of mind. Only then did I realize that I had indeed slipped off to someplace much further than my conscious surroundings. Carlos, who I thought was still sitting beside me, ran back from the car to find out who was calling. I answered the phone and said hello, hoping and praying it was Lilith. I think Putnam even heard it in my voice, for he seemed smug about it.
“Hello yourself, Detective.” His voice sounded gruff and out of breath. “I’m telling you now you should consider yourself lucky your boy is still alive.”
“Spinelli?”
“Of course, Spinelli. I had him in my sights. But that’s not what we’re about.”
“Oh? So what are you about, killing defenseless women?”
“Defenseless? Detective, you know better. Witches are disciples of Pagan ignorance. They spread the word of Eternitism and dilute the faithful in hopes of hijacking their souls in the avocation of religious eradication. There is a struggle of eternal redemption at stake here, you understand.”
“Redemption? What would you know about redemption? Haven’t you already committed your soul to the devil, having killed those women in New Castle?”
“Casualties of war are martyrs, Detective. There is no sin in victimless expirations resulting from the pursuit of Divine justice. A noble cause is a worthy cause indeed.”
“Bullshit. Murder is murder. Now tell me what you’ve done with Lilith and her friend.”
“Her friend? Don’t you mean her aunt? I know about Ursula.”
“What have you done with them?”
“Nothing yet, and maybe we can keep it that way.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have something I want, something you stole from Reverend Hilton back at the church.”
“The gate key.”
“Exactly. I want it.”
“Why?”
“You know why. Give it to me and I will release the women.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you’ll kill them the second you get your hands on it.”
“You have no choice but to trust me. I am holding all the cards, Detective.”
“I suppose you are,” I said, and seeing no alternative, I gave in. “I want your word as a Puritan that you’ll keep your part of the deal?”
“Of course, you have my word as a Puritan.”
“Fine, but you have my word that if you harm one hair on either of those girl’s, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Enough chivalry, Detective. Bring the gate key to me tonight.”
“Where?”
“Ingersoll’s Tavern. You know it?”
“I do.”
“Be there at midnight with the key or you’ll never see the women alive again.”
“But what if I—”
CLICK.
Even after he hung up, an ominous sense of foreboding lingered in the air like a static charge. I turned to Carlos, who had been leaning in to the phone close enough to hear most of the conversation. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of putting it on speaker, my thoughts too absorbed with Lilith, I suppose.
“What do you think?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. What’s he mean by the gate key?”
“You don’t know?”
“Uh-uh. Does it open a gate?”
“Yeah, sort of. Call Spinelli over; I’ll tell you.”
Carlos ushered Spinelli to the shade of the tree where they huddled in close to hear me explain as best I could about the gate key and how I had retrieved it from the baptismal pool in the church.
“Ah, that’s how you got so wet last night,” said Carlos. “You told us you fell in a puddle.”
“It would’ve been a big puddle,” Spinelli remarked. “I for one didn’t buy it for a second.”
“Well, me neither. I mean, there weren’t even any puddles between the church and the hill. It’s just that when I asked….”
“Forget it,” I said. “That’s not important. The thing we need to figure out now is what we’re going to do about Putnam. He wants to meet me tonight at Ingersoll’s Tavern and make a trade: Lilith and Ursula for the gate key.”
“So do it,” said Spinelli. “Agree to meet him tonight and when he shows up we’ll nab him.”
“It won’t be that simple. He won’t have Lilith or Ursula with him; I’m sure of it. He’s too clever for that.”
“Then how can you trust him to deliver the girls once he gets what he wants?”
Carlos answered, “You can’t.” He looked me in the eye and shook his head. “He’ll kill them, Tony, even after he gets the key. He’ll give you false directions somewhere and he’ll kill them.”
“He gave me his word.”
That made Carlos laugh. He sat down next to me again. “You have to make the trade, Tony, but instead of going off on a wild goose chase, you’ll need to figure out a way to follow him back to his hideout without him knowing he’s being followed.”
“That won’t be easy,” Spinelli remarked. “He’ll expect you to try that.”
“Yes, I suppose he will. Unlessss….”
“Oh, I don’t like the sound of that,” said Carlos. “What are you thinking, Tony?”
“I’m thinking what if instead of following him, I go with him?”
“With him?”
“Yes.”
“In his van?”
“Sure.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“Easy. I make it so that he doesn’t see me.”
“Ha! You’d have to be small as a mouse to keep from getting noticed.”
I shook my head. “No, not at all. I just have to make myself invisible to him. I think if I can—”
Spinelli stopped me. “Tony, forget it.”
“Why?”
Carlos asked Spinelli, “What’s he talking about?”
Spinelli said, “He’s talking about a level three spell. He doesn’t know how to do that.”
“How hard can it be?” said Tony. “I have the grimoire at home. Besides, I’ve been practicing it.”
“But have you ever pulled it off?”
Carlos again, “Pulled what off?”
“No, but I’ve never had the gate key before.”
“Guys, come on. Tell me what you’re talking about.”
Spinelli answered, “He’s talking about mind control, aren’t you, Tony.”
“I suppose it is, seeing I can’t really make myself invisible.”
“You can’t be serious.” Carlos gathered a fistful of my jacket sleeve and shook it. “Tony, this can’t end well. Even if you manage to make yourself invisible to him for a while, what makes you think you can keep it up long enough for him to take you to the girls.”
I pulled my sleeve free of his grasp, though I must admit I secretly shared his concern. “Carlos, Lilith does it all the time. You don’t know how often I see the bathroom door open while I’m in the shower, and then close again as I’m getting out. I know it’s her.”
“Yes, but you’re not Lilith. While you’re still discovering your powers, she’s been practicing hers for over a hundred years.”
“Yes, and like I’ve said, I’ve been practicing, too. You saw me scry last night. I did that successfully.”
“You did. Yes.”
“That’s right, and now with the grimoire and the key I think I can do this.”
“Yeah, but Tony—invisible?”
“Yes, invisible. It may be a level three spell, but I think I’m ready.” I turned them both around and pointed them towards the car. “Now let’s get back to New Castle so I can get to work on it. I’m sure it can’t be any more difficult than making a whisper box.”
“Oh, yes I’m sure there’s hardly any difference,” said Carlos, though the sarcasm in his voice negated any call for a response.
Back in New Castle, I showed Carlos and Spinelli
the grimoire and the gate key. I had noticed before how the first page of the grimoire contained a legend of sorts, but I had never been able to figure out its meaning. I honestly thought the markings and inscriptions were hieroglyphs of a long lost pagan era, one that only Lilith understood, or maybe didn’t.
With the gate key, however, Spinelli and I were able to determine that the writings were actually a secret formula expressing the fundamental principles of constituent elements throughout the book. On any given page there were references to a formula adjusted in enigmatic sequences that often seemed redundant or counterintuitive. But with the key, I was able to unlock the secrets of the grimoire and make sense of its mystery.
We started by setting out candles in a circular pattern around the room, just as I had before; only now I knew to situate the yellow ones along the compass points: north, east, south and west; and to align the brown one with the current position of the moon, sort of like the hour hand on a clock.
Next, I recited an incantation invoking the powers of the coven to aid in my endeavor: something I had previously thought as merely an informal throwback to tradition; but from what I learned through the grimoire, it is not only rudiment to the process, but positively essential.
I think if I had known that earlier, I would have mastered the spell long before Lilith began riding my ass for not learning the craft. Sometimes I think she doesn’t really want me to succeed in the whole witchcraft business. I mean, she truly is a walking contradiction. I think if I ever figure her out it might scare me to death to know her.
With most level three spells there is usually some smoke or a little twirl of wind or something to let you know it’s working; but not the cloaking spell. It’s stealthy by design from beginning to end, which makes it hard to know exactly when it has kicked in. And worse, according to the grimoire, the spell works best on those who are incognizant of its nature. In other words, those that don’t already know you’re working it. So, with Carlos and Spinelli, the fact they could still see me after I finished it, didn’t necessarily mean the spell didn’t work.