The Judges of Hades

by Edward D. Hoch

  “For what reason?” Simon Ark asked.

  Doctor Lampton interrupted to answer. “You have to remember that this was fifty years ago, Mister Ark. Many things were different then.”

  “Why was she expelled?” Ark repeated.

  “For smoking cigarettes,” Lampton replied weakly. “You must realize that at the time such a thing was unknown among young girls, and at a school like Hudsonville it would have been a most serious offense.”

  We were silent for a moment while we thought about it. Was it possible that such a girl, grown old fifty years later, should still remember this childhood tragedy? Was it possible that the old woman now known as Mother Fortune somehow had the power to strike down these young girls?

  “Have you contacted Mother Fortune about these threats?” Simon Ark asked.

  “I went to see her personally,” Doctor Lampton said. “Two weeks ago. She admitted sending the notes, and said she’d keep on sending them. She’s a very odd woman indeed—half-insane, possibly—yet with a manner about her that almost makes you believe she is some sort of…witch.” The last word was spoken very quietly, as if the president was afraid someone outside the room might be listening.

  Simon Ark frowned once again. “There have been witches in this world, and quite possibly Mother Fortune is one; but it is too early to say for certain. Right now I’d like to see some of these girls who have suffered this odd sickness. Oh, and I’d like a list of their names if possible.”

  Professor Westwood nodded and pulled a pad of yellow lined paper from his desk. The top sheet was covered with the usual unintelligible notes of a history professor, phrases like “Tunica Molesta,” and “Plato—IX—Jowett.” Westwood tore off the top sheet and began copying names from a typed list on his desk.

  There were some forty-odd names on the list, ranging from Abbot, Mary to Yeagen, Bernice. Some had grim-looking stars after them, and I figured correctly that these were the more serious cases. Simon Ark carefully folded the yellow list and we followed the three others out of Westwood’s office.

  They led us across the mildly rolling hills of the campus, past the ancient Roman columns, to a squat, three-story structure. “This is Venice Hall, the principal girls’ dorm,” Miss Bagly informed us. “All of our dorms are named after Italian cities.”

  We followed her in, amidst a few questioning stares from casually dressed girls relaxing after supper. I gathered that the sick girls were simply being kept in their own rooms.

  The first room we visited was a cheerful looking one on the second floor. There were two girls in it, both of them in bed. One was sitting up and reading a thick historical novel, but the other was asleep.

  Simon Ark examined them both with care, but except for a somewhat tired-out expression there was nothing unusual about them. “When did you first begin to feel ill?” Ark inquired.

  The girl sat up further in bed, revealing a fantastic pair of plaid pajamas. “Gosh, I don’t know. About a week ago, I guess.”

  “Did you receive any burns or unusual injuries around that time?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “Do you smoke?”

  “Sometimes. Not too much.”

  “Have you had a cigarette recently?”

  “Not in over a month; not since I was back home.”

  I could see that Simon Ark was mildly disappointed at this. He apparently had thought that the perfect weapon of Mother Fortune’s revenge would be poisoned cigarettes of some kind. But such was not the case.

  The other girl had awakened now, and I could see that she was in much worse shape. I think it gave us all an odd feeling, looking at those girls, realizing that they might be the innocent victims of a terror that couldn’t happen, but was.

  Later, when we left the room and the building, Simon Ark appeared deep in thought. Once he turned to Professor Westwood and asked, “Have any teachers shown signs of this…sickness?”

  “No, just the students.”

  “And what symptoms have the more serious cases shown?”

  “Oh…vomiting…partial paralysis of various muscles. …”

  Simon Ark frowned. “Has anyone taken a blood test of the sick girls?”

  “A blood test? Why, no, I hardly think so. That would involve calling in the authorities. …”

  “Perhaps you could do it in your own lab. At least I suggest that a blood test of some sort be made as soon as possible.”

  We left them shortly after that, and Simon Ark and I made our way across the now darkened campus to the street. Even with night upon us, the heat was still there, making us forget the fact that it was already early autumn.

  “What do you think about it, Simon?” I asked after we had walked some distance.

  Simon Ark gazed off into the night, and I thought for a moment he hadn’t heard my question. But then gradually he turned to me. “I think that we should pay a visit to Mother Fortune. …”

  We found her, later that night, in a little street in a little city not too far from Hudsonville College. It was just another city in the southern part of the country called Westchester. And the street, usually, was just another street.

  But tonight it was different. Tonight it blazed with light, light from a thousand colored bulbs that spelled out a score of gay designs against the evening sky. From every direction lighted streets shot out from the large old church at their center, the church of St. Francis of Assisi.

  “It’s a celebration for the saint’s feast day,” I explained to Simon. “These old Italian churches go big for things like that. The thing is sort of one huge block party that lasts for three or four nights. You certainly don’t expect to find Mother Fortune here, do you?”

  “I never expect to find evil anywhere,” Simon Ark replied, “and yet it is all around us. This poor church, I fear, is no exception.”

  We walked on, beneath the colored lights and past the booths and trucks and wagons, selling everything from religious statues to hot pizza. Presently we saw a short, fat priest moving among the crowd.

  Simon Ark moved quickly through the crowd and caught the priest’s arm. “Pardon, Father, but I seek information regarding a woman known as Mother Fortune. I believe she is near here.”

  The little priest’s face turned dark with rage. “Sir, if you seek her out I hope it is to force her to move away from my church and my people. She came two days ago, with her trailer and her crystal ball and her fortune telling. My people—many of them—are simple superstitious Italians, not long in this country.”

  Simon Ark frowned. “But don’t you have any control over who takes part in your celebration?”

  “Ah, no,” the priest shrugged. “They even come here and sell meat to my people on Fridays. But there are regulations about trailers in Westchester County, as you know, and perhaps the police will force Mother Fortune to leave.”

  As we’d talked, he had led us to the very end of the lighted area, and there, parked against the curb like some giant sleeping beetle, was a long house trailer with the name of Mother Fortune on its side.

  The priest left us, fading into the bright lights at our backs, leaving us alone with the woman who was perhaps a witch. The trailer was a large silver one, and in addition to Mother Fortune’s name I noticed the single word “Erebus” near the front of the vehicle, like the name on the prow of a ship.

  “What kind of a bus is that?” I asked Simon.

  He smiled slightly. “Erebus was one of the names for hell used by the poet Milton. A fitting name for the home of a witch.”

  There was no one down at that end of the street at all, and I imagined correctly that the little priest’s campaign against Mother Fortune was meeting with much success. Simon Ark pressed a tiny button by the trailer door and we waited for it to open.

  When it finally did, the woman who greeted us was a surprise. I didn’t know just what I expected, and certainly Mother Fortune was no beauty, but neither was she the typical concept of a medieval witch. She was simply a very old white-hai
red woman, who acted as if she might be a little drunk and probably was.

  “What you want?” she managed to mumble.

  “My name is Simon Ark; I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Want your fortune told?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Come in, then.”

  We entered the gleaming silver trailer and found ourselves in another world. I’d expected something unusual, but I hadn’t been prepared for the ancient beaded drapes, the musty oriental furnishings, and huge glowing crystal ball that filled the center of the trailer’s main room.

  The crystal ball, apparently lit by a bulb in its base, was a good three feet in diameter, and the way it gave off illumination reminded me of those big revolving glass globes they used to have in dance halls twenty years ago.

  Simon Ark settled himself in one of the big overstuffed chairs with curling dragons for arms and said, “I want to talk about the trouble at Hudsonville College.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when the old woman was on her feet, shouting in a harsh voice that was almost a scream. “They’ve been here themselves. I already told them it would do no good. It’s too late to stop me now. Too late, you hear? Too late! They can have me arrested if they want, but it will do no good. Before many moons have passed, the first of the girls will be dead! After that the rest will die quickly. They’ll regret the day they expelled Mother Fortune from their school!”

  From the cigarette burns on the sleeve of her robe, it was obvious that she still had the habit that had led to her disgrace those many years before. In a way I felt sorry for this old woman whose aging brain had turned back fifty years for revenge.

  “Helen,” Simon Ark began, but the woman showed no emotion at the use of her real name. “Helen, you’ve got to stop all this foolishness. You’re not a witch and you haven’t put a curse on those girls.”

  “Haven’t I?” she laughed shrilly. “Haven’t I? Look at this!”

  She opened a drawer and pulled out a thin book with heavily padded covers that I recognized as the yearbook of Hudsonville College. Several long black hatpins had been driven through the covers and the pages.

  The sight of it was so incredulous that I would have laughed had I not remembered those girls I’d seen back at the college. Something had made them sick, and perhaps this was it. I’d learned a long time ago, at my first meeting with Simon Ark, that there are things in this world beyond our powers of explanation.

  She placed the book on a table and gazed into the huge crystal ball. “Back in the Middle Ages it was believed that tobacco was invented by the devil, and that only the devil’s priests used it,” she said. “When they threw me out of Hudsonville, I began to believe it.”

  I turned my face from her as she talked, unable to look at the lines of tragedy I saw there. What had happened during fifty years of heartbreak to turn this one-time college girl into a vengeful witch? That was something I never found out, and something that is perhaps better left unknown.

  At length she fell silent, and I could see that Simon Ark would learn nothing more from her. “Get out of here now,” she said with finality. “I have to change my robe and get ready for the evening business.” She gestured toward the wall, where a glistening gold and purple garment decorated with blazing suns and half-moons hung from a hook.

  Of course there would be no more customers for her fortunes this late at night, but she didn’t seem to realize it. In her vague way, night and day had apparently merged into one.

  We left her then, and walked back through the lighted streets to the church of Saint Francis of Assisi. And when I looked at Simon Ark’s face in the light of the multi-colored bulbs, I knew that neither one of us was certain whether we had just left a modern-day servant of Satan or simply a confused old woman. …

  The following morning dawned hot and bright, with the sun beating down upon leaves and grass that waited in vain for the cool slumber of autumn. It was Saturday, and I spent the morning working around the house. Shelly was an avid listener to my account of the previous night’s adventures, but by noon I had all but forgotten Simon Ark and Mother Fortune.

  It was just after the church bells had sounded the mid-day hour in the distance that Shelly called to me. “Someone wants you on the telephone.”

  I dropped the garden hose I’d been using and went into the house. The voice on the phone was familiar at once, but it took me a moment to identity Simon Ark on the other end.

  “The witch is dead,” he said simply. “Would you like to meet me at the trailer?”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  With a shouted few words to Shelly, I jumped into my car and headed south toward the parish of Saint Francis of Assisi. In those first few minutes I didn’t even try to think of the meaning of Simon Ark’s words. I only knew that something had happened, something strange and unknown.

  To the west dark clouds were forming on the horizon, and the shiver that went down my spine told me the barometer was falling fast. The October heat wave was on its last legs.

  In the distance I thought I heard the rumble of thunder. …

  The street by the church, which last night had been a brightly lighted invitation to fun and merriment, was now dark with the threat of approaching rain. It was blocked off completely by nearly a dozen police and private cars, and additional policemen were busy keeping back the crowd of curious neighbors. Some seemed almost indignant that they should be kept from seeing this bit of drama that had been played out on their street. Others simply stood silently, aware that they were in the presence of death.

  Simon Ark stood in the door of the trailer, and he signaled to the police to let me through. I had long ago stopped wondering about his strange power over people, and now it seemed only natural that he was already in the confidence of the police.

  “Prepare yourself,” he told me at the door; “it’s not a pleasant sight.”

  And it wasn’t.

  It reminded me of a time, a lifetime ago, when we’d had to blast a Japanese machine-gun nest on a lonely Pacific isle. We’d used flame throwers, and the bodies of the dead Japs came back to my memory now as I stared at the thing that had been Mother Fortune.

  She lay on top of her giant crystal ball, with her arms hanging down limply almost to the floor. Her clothes had been burnt off her completely, and the withered flesh was black and scorched. Her hair, and much of the skin on her face, had been burnt away, but there was no doubt in my mind that it really was the body of the woman we’d talked to last night.

  “What happened?” I asked finally.

  Simon Ark continued gazing at the body as he answered. “The police came to tell her she’d have to move the trailer. They looked through the window and saw her like this.” He paused a moment before continuing. “The trailer was locked. They had to force the door to get in.”

  “What started the fire?”

  “The police don’t know. Even the priest doesn’t know. They think it might have been something…unnatural.”

  For the first time I realized that the trailer itself was virtually unmarked by the fire; the blaze apparently had been centered on the body of the woman.

  “Do you think somebody killed her, burned her because she was a witch, like they did in Salem?”

  “Nobody burned her to death because she was alone in a locked trailer at the time,” Simon Ark replied. “And at Salem they hanged the witches—they hanged nineteen and pressed one to death. I know.”

  And when he said it I knew that he really did know. He knew because he’d been there and seen it, just as I could tell that he’d seen something like this horror before, somewhere in the dark forgotten past of history.

  The police were busy removing the body, and examining the crystal ball for some sign of the fire’s origin. But of course they found nothing.

  As he left the trailer I saw the priest from St. Francis of Assisi Church making the sign of the cross over the body, and I wondered how this man could bless the corpse of a wom
an who’d opposed him so just a few hours earlier, when she still lived. I was even more astonished when I saw Simon Ark take an odd-looking cross from his pocket and raise it for a second over the body.

  As he walked away he mumbled something in a tongue I didn’t understand. He’d told me once it was Coptic, and I suspected it was a prayer, a very old prayer from the dawn of civilization.

  And then the rain began to fall, in great wet drops that brought wisps of steam from the dry hot pavement. Simon Ark followed me to my car, and we sat in the rain watching the morgue wagon pull slowly away with the body of Mother Fortune. …

  “Did you ever hear of Charles Fort?” Simon Ark asked me some time later, as we sipped a glass of wine in an almost deserted oak-lined cocktail lounge. “He was a writer of some twenty-five years back who collected odd and unexplained news reports. His writings contain several references to deaths by mysterious burns.”

  I’d heard of Fort, of course, but I wasn’t familiar with his writings. Simon Ark counted them off on his fingers as he mentioned the odd deaths. “There was one in Blyth, England, about fifty years ago. An old woman in a locked house, burned to death on a sofa. And in Ayer, Massachusetts, in 1890—a woman burned to death in the woods. In London, Southampton, Liverpool—always women, always old women. Fort reports only one case of an old man burning to death mysteriously. You want more cases, closer to home? St. Louis in 1889, North Carolina, San Diego. … A similar case in Rochester, N.Y., was blamed on lightning. …”

  As if on cue a streak of lightning cut through the afternoon sky, followed almost at once by a crash of thunder. “Any chance that lightning could have killed Mother Fortune?” I asked.

  “Hardly. The storm just started, and in any event a bolt of lightning would certainly not go unnoticed by the neighbors.”

  I sipped my wine and glanced behind the bar, where the Notre Dame football team had just faded from the TV set, to be replaced by a dark-haired girl singing “That Old Black Magic,” The song seemed appropriate to the occasion.