The Goat's Head

by Lex Sinclair

  Whirling around too fast, she tumbled onto the mattress, pushed herself upright again before hobbling to the bedroom door as Janice announced her arrival for the second time that day Sofie believed would be the last for her. Or at least the day when all hope had been vanquished. Now she threw the bedroom door open precisely the same time Yvonne opened the front door to Janice.

  ‘Janice! Janice! JANICE!’ Sofie bellowed, unsteady on her feet, teetering at the top of the stairs.

  At the sound of her friend’s strangled, hoarse cries, Janice shoved the elderly woman to the side and barged inside, arching her head back to meet her friend’s gaze. The two saw each other and it was only when Sofie recognised the horror-struck expression contorting her best friend’s features did she realise the full extent of her condition.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Janice gasped, a trembling hand covering her gaping mouth. Then she darted up the staircase in time to catch Sofie as she fell into gravity’s grasp. ‘What the hell happened? What’s going on, hon? What have they done to you?’

  The words that tumbled out of Janice’s mouth were too fast for Sofie to absorb never mind be able to answer as she fought off the dizziness and the specks of translucent light floating by in her retinas.

  ‘They’re devil -’

  ‘What?’ Janice almost shrieked.

  ‘- worshippers,’ Sofie finished. Then to prove what she’d blurted out barely coherent she lifted her hooded sweater and shirt to show Janice the blood-stained Pagan symbol depicted across her abdomen.

  Janice’s eyes bulged from their sockets seeing this monstrosity mapped out over her friend’s body. She struggled with Sofie’s weight for a split second until she got a firmer hold, pulled the hooded sweater down, pivoted with caution then half-carried, half-walked her traumatised girlfriend down the staircase, hardly taking in everything that had transpired from the moment the front door had been opened. Yvonne was still sprawled out on the hardwood floor, having landed awkwardly on her hip, partially paralysing her. She may not have been as weak and frail as she’d portrayed the night before, yet she hadn’t been lying about her age or her chronic arthritis.

  Footfalls thundered out of the library, down the hall to reveal an exhausted, emaciated Charles, wielding his favourite walking stick like a crazed batsman, screaming like an out-of-control banshee.

  The two girls had been heading towards the open front door when Charles came out swinging. He wheezed, chest rising and falling with every gasping breath he took, snarling at them with his false dentures. ‘What the fuck ‘ave you done?’ he screamed, snapping his head on his scrawny neck to and fro his wife and the two girls.

  ‘I could ask you the same question,’ Janice spat, doing well to keep her emotions at bay. ‘So much for needing a care assistant to help you get around the house by yourself, huh.’

  Charles magnified eyes behind his reading glasses scowled at the two girls. He ignored what Janice said because there wasn’t anyway he could return to being an innocent elderly person who depended on the young, healthy people around him to aid him in his daily chores. Here he stood ambivalent, poised to swing his walking stick he supposedly needed to help keep him upright whenever they ventured outside and he was not familiar with the terrain.

  He eyed the open front door, noticing how close Sofie was to escaping this nightmare and getting out alive with the unborn foetus still inside her where she would be free to do whatever she’d planned in regards to her unnatural pregnancy. That was not an option. All their hard work and secrecy would come undone the second the girl bearing the child who would be their mortal leader stepped outside. Yvonne moaned in agony and didn’t look as though she would be getting up any time this millennium; Margaret had been given strong painkillers and a sedative to help her sleep through the agony after having been doused with freezing cold water from the hose in the back yard until the burning sensation had eventually subsided enough so she could calm down.

  Although Charles was a vital member within their cult, he wasn’t used to making decisions on the spot with a lot at stake. Had Margaret not been brutally attacked earlier on, she would have known precisely how to proceed to restrain order. If it had been Sofie by herself trying once again to flee he could have handled the situation like he’d done when he came to his daughter’s rescue. They’d all assumed that when Janice had taken her leave that morning she would have never returned, or at least if she did it wouldn’t be until days later. By then Margaret would have placed Sofie in a temporary residence under unofficial security until the police had got themselves a warrant and made a routine check on the large Victorian home. Margaret could have sat with the officers and explained nonchalantly, only pretending to be anxious of the missing girl’s whereabouts, how the young Swedish woman came and did an excellent job, which her parents’ would concur and then say that Sofie asked to use the phone to call a taxi cab, then departed.

  What none of them anticipated that Janice was a very loyal, decent, conscientious individual who sincerely cared a lot about her friend and would not sit around and do nothing while willingly - or unwillingly - Sofie left for a temporary residence under the supervision of other members of the cult. Now the mess they had to clean up in order for the birth of their lord to be complete had evolved into a colossal, inconceivable wreck.

  Janice turned away from the old man and continued to make her way towards the car outside. She kept glancing over her shoulder at the pathetic, wrinkled shape, who stood in the vestibule, dithering, perplexed. He inched forward as they reached the threshold, ready to swing his walking stick but the look in his magnified eyes revealed his fear and Janice became fully aware that Charles - like all members of a cult - couldn’t operate efficiently by themselves.

  Sofie could feel a vein pulsating in the bulbous contusion Charles had induced earlier, demonstrating not an ounce of hesitation or fear. Staring at him now, she saw him for what he really was - a wimp. She kept bringing to mind the vivid memory of her hurling a mug of scalding tea into Margaret’s face. Boy, would she kill to be armed with a loaded gun right then. She wouldn’t have shot Charles in the head. First, she would maim him; taking his legs out at the kneecaps. Bang, Bang! Then firing in rapid succession at his two scrawny arms where loose skin drooped off the bone. Bang, Bang! Then she’d finish off with a shot to the abdomen; a shot to the groin, and then when he was sprawled out on the floor like she’d been last night on the floor in his bedroom, she’d tower over him and blow his fucking head off.

  Instead, she and her best friend did the most prudent thing and exited the house, leaving Charles standing in the doorway silhouetted by the interior light, watching them go, not being able to do anything to thwart their escape.

  Janice opened the passenger door and helped Sofie get in. Then she hurried around the front of the vehicle, jumped in behind the steering wheel, slammed the door shut, started the engine, glimpsed Sofie, who still kept her gaze on the figure in the doorway.

  ‘It’s over now, do you hear me?’ It is over.’

  With that said she released the handbrake and slammed her foot down. The Fiat screeched, coughing out blue smoke into the night, leaving two curvy tyre tracks in its wake as it sped off the property and onto the main road, out of sight.

  7.

  ‘Dear God, hon. I mean what the fuck happened back there?’

  Sofie remained motionless in her passenger seat, staring outside, scanning the endless tunnel of trees enveloping them, whirring past. The tunnel of forestry reminded her of her holiday in Vastmanland when she’d discovered the hidden burial ground deep beneath the earth, unknown she stumbled across it.

  ‘I have it inside me,’ Sofie blurted out.

  ‘What? What d’you mean you have inside you? You need to explain to me.’ Janice said this in a brusque tone, and then chastised herself for being so insensitive. Her alarm for Sofie had now fallen into second place behind confus
ion. ‘Look, just tell me as best you can what happened and what you mean by having something inside you. Please.’

  Sofie had been about to answer Janice as coherently as she possibly could when a figure leapt from the back seat and grappled with Janice for control of the steering wheel. The abruptness caught the two girls completely off-guard which was what the witch had been anticipating. The cooped-up interior was pierced with shrieks, two natural, one not belonging to this civilised world. Sofie undone her seat belt and punched the witch in the side of the head only to be backhanded and have the back of her head cracked the passenger door window that resembled an elaborate spider web.

  Using her long nails, which were more like claws, the witch scratched and scraped feverishly at Janice’s face, causing the Fiat to swerve across the meandering road then back again when Janice manage to fight the inhuman thing that gripped onto the headrest. In the panic that had followed the initial shock, Janice’s foot had depressed the accelerator more than she’d meant to. She eased her foot off in time to regain control only to be blinded by a sharp, pointy nail stabbing her in her right eye. Instinctively, Janice put a hand to her wound and did exceedingly well to steer around a sharp bend with one hand.

  Sofie leapt across her seat and punched the witch again. The witch’s head snapped to the side. However, in the next instant, she gripped Sofie by her mane of blonde hair and rammed her head into the cracked window which shattered on impact then yanked Sofie’s head forward again before her face became severely lacerated. Sofie slumped in her seat unable to aid her friend any more.

  Janice couldn’t tell if the liquid streaming her cheek from her wounded eyes was a tear or blood. Neither could she tell how bad the wound was. All she knew was she was driving on a winding, rural road, feebly doing her utmost to fight with a witch for control of the vehicle with the use of one eye and one hand. Yet what placed her in the biggest disadvantage was whenever she ducked or turned her head to avoid having her eyes gouged out she had to steer blindly.

  Eventually Janice’s luck ran out and the Fiat careered headfirst into a rocky boulder at nearly forty-five miles per hour. The impact was explosive. The Fiat’s bonnet crumpled and the vehicle itself got knocked backwards several feet. The hellish impact and the inflatable crash bag had knocked Janice unconscious and sent Sofie flying forward off her seat where the side of her already badly bruised hear walloped the dashboard, ferociously. The demon’s body had been thrown forward into the back of the driver’s seat, crushing Janice even if she had survived the crash itself and was then thrown into the back seat like a rag doll, knocking the breath out of her.

  She clambered over the seat opened the driver’s door, which fell off its hinges, clanging to the concrete surface, seized Sofie’s lifeless form by her two arms and dragged her out of the wreckage where the glass from the shattered windscreen glinted in the headlights glow. The witch couldn’t be certain that Janice was actually dead, (although the odds of her surviving a crash like the one they’d just been involved in was miniscule) so she leaned over rammed her long, point nail of her index finger through the soft layer of skin around her throat and withdrew it in a fluent motion, drawing a thin red line appeared, leaking a miniature crimson waterfall that soaked her white woolly jumper a new colour.

  Scanning her surroundings to make sure there were no witnesses, the witch hoisted Sofie up onto her shoulder and carried her back in the direction of the house as effortlessly as one would if they were leaden with a grocery bag, never once looking back at the carnage she had induced.

  The darkness was its ally, enveloping it, making it invisible to the naked eye.

  Charles could hardly believe his eyes. He even rubbed them to make sure he wasn’t seeing something he hoped was true but only in his wildest dreams. Nevertheless, not only did the image linger it increased in detail, growing even more tangible as it neared. For what he saw was the witch who had performed the satanic ritual. The only one who would live long enough to be able to perform the ceremony accurately and live long enough to see not only the birth of their leader but the rise and dominance it would soon possess over all that was evil. It approached him now, her hideous countenance dappled in fresh blood, carrying the bundle that was the most precious thing in their world.

  Together, the witch and Charles carried the bundle into the living room and gently placed her on the sofa. Then the witch (who didn’t speak English) exited the house, leaving the elderly man with a new predicament: he needed to get some proper assistance on how to keep Sofie out of sight from when the authorities came looking for her and her friend. Charles didn’t know precisely what had transpired, although he knew that Janice had been murdered at the hands of the witch and that she’d prevented Sofie escaping, who would then inform the authorities what had gone on at their home. When they saw Margaret’s face it would be enough evidence along with the young Swedish woman’s bloodstained pentagram and wounded abdomen to convict them of performing a satanic ritual that had made Sofie pregnant, against her will.

  He went to the phone on the table in the vestibule, riffled through the silver book of phone numbers, punched in the numbers and listened to the dialling tone. His entire withered form shook from an unstoppable force as he waited, drumming his fingers on the doorframe. Then exhaled explosively with relief as the dialling tone cut off abruptly and a soft, dulcet frail voice answered. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Reverend Ward. It’s Charles.’

  ‘Hello, Charles. How did the initiation go?’

  ‘Good. But now we’ve got a huge problem. Her friend returned to the house. There was an altercation involving Yvonne and her friend...’ He cut himself off. He didn’t have time to explain. He needed to get to the point. ‘Anyway, she’s been rescued by her. Only there must have been some hellish incident to get her back. The police will certainly come looking for her, as this was the last place she -’

  ‘I understand,’ Reverend Ward interrupted. ‘You want me to collect the child, place her under my protection until this whole incident passes over. Yes?’

  ‘Yes. Please, come quick. Margaret and Yvonne have both been injured. I have a lot of mess to clean up and not much time. Thank you.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ the reverend explained.

  The conversation was terminated. Charles put the receiver back in its cradle, closed the front door and then went into the living room where Sofie lay sprawled out on the sofa, one arm dangling over the side. Noticing her incapacitated condition, Charles went to get his walking stick, returned to the living room and brought the stick down with full force on the arm. SLAP! Sofie stirred. Her eyelids flickered. But she did not regain consciousness. Charles repeated this twice more then threw the stick down and collapsed into the armchair, taking immense pleasure at seeing her forearm swell and turn a vicious red at where he’d struck her in retaliation for the problems she’d induced for not excepting her destiny.

  Five minutes later Charles escorted his wife and daughter into the room. The two women spat in the girl’s face. Margaret even resorted to smacking the unprotected girl across the face leaving her cheeks with a nasty rash. Nevertheless, they were mindful not to induce too much harm as from the looks of it she had already suffered on top of the punishment she’d endured the night before and earlier that day. She was still carrying the child of their leader in her womb, after all. However, Margaret’s face looked like raw meat. She still kept an icepack pressed to her face that burned to such an extent that she could feel it devouring the layers of flesh until it ate its way to the bone. The blood vessels behind her eyes had burst and she looked as though she’d become infected with some incurable virus.

  Yvonne’s hip felt as though it was disjointed from the rest of her anatomy. She couldn’t sit motionless for a couple of minutes without groaning and then having to readjust her position. This in itself became frustrating for herself and her family.

  When the doorbell c
himed, Charles got up and answered, nearly hugging Reverend Ward, seeing him standing on the porch, thinking it could have been the police. But it was too soon for that. He moved aside to allow his fellow worshipper to enter and escorted him into the living room.

  Reverend Ward wore working attire, which consisted of black shirt, black neatly pressed trousers and polished shoes under a thick, fur-lined winter coat. He removed his gloves and placed them in his coat pockets as he crossed the room to where Sofie lay, unaware of anyone’s presence or where she was.

  ‘Such a beautiful girl,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder at Charles. Then he noticed the arm draped over the side swollen already developing a colourful contusion. His eyebrows knitted themselves together as he pointed at the red welts. ‘What’s happened here?’

  Margaret told Reverend Ward what had happened, bringing him up-to-date with the present, never omitting any detail, showing him her scarred face and indicating Yvonne who seemed to be struggling with her injury.

  The bald-headed revered with a grey goatee that spoke and had a similar appearance to the great British actor, Donald Pleasance, fell silent, contemplating on how best to proceed. He told Charles that he ought to drive his wife and daughter to the nearest hospital; how he ought to make up a story about how is wife and tripped and fallen, knocking over Margaret who had been pouring scalding water from the kettle at the time, or something along those lines. He could actually see the boils where Margaret’s flesh had sizzled and popped from being doused with the boiling hot tea and contorted his features, seeing and trying to imagine how much agony she must be in even after submerging her head in a bathtub fully of cold water and ice-cubes.