Black Magic Woman

by Justin Gustainis

  Then something appeared at the foot of the bed—the head of the King Cobra. Morris had noticed earlier that the deadly snake was at least six feet long, and it was using some of that body length to rear up and examine this large, warm-blooded creature that was causing all the fuss in its new territory.

  Morris and the snake stared at each other for a long moment. Then the King Cobra began to crawl up onto the bed.

  * * * *

  Libby Chastain was breathing hard now, and a sheen of sweat covered her body, soaking into the hospital gown and bedclothes. Her lips moved rapidly as if she were speaking, but no sound came from her mouth. Although her eyes remained shut, the lashes fluttered rapidly, like the wings of a trapped bird.

  Libby began to writhe upon the bed, twisting and straining as if in the throes of some mighty effort. Her exertions increased, and it did not take long before newly sewn surgical stitches began to part under the kind of pressure they were never meant to withstand. Libby Chastain started bleeding in several places, then other stitches started to give way and she began hemorrhaging internally. This did not stop her struggles, or even slow them down.

  Some of this frenetic activity finally tripped one of the alarms wired to Libby's monitors, and an ICU nurse came hustling over to see what had happened. Nurse Greta Beck's eyes widened as she took in the patient's convulsions, as well as the monitor readings, which appeared to have gone completely haywire.

  Greta Beck wasted no time gawking. She sprinted to the nearest telephone and called a Code Blue for the ICU.

  * * * *

  Morris backed up as far as he could, moving slowly so as not to antagonize the King Cobra that had just slithered onto the bed with him. But there was only so much room on a double bed, and in a second or two Morris's back was against the wall.

  There was nowhere else to go.

  Morris had just decided that his best chance, such as it was, lay with a sudden dash to the door of the room. He would almost certainly pick up several poisonous bites on the way, but at least he would then be out of the room, and able to close the door against these crawling horrors.

  Then maybe he could get someone to call an ambulance. And maybe Morris would still be alive when it arrived. And maybe they would have something at the local ER that might be useful against snakebite—even multiple bites from the kinds of snakes that had never been seen around here.

  Yeah, and maybe pigs might fucking fly.

  But the alternative was to give up—just roll up and die in the middle of this snake pit.

  You just didn't do that—not in Morris's family.

  The first Quincey Morris had fought the good fight right up to the very end, and the hell with the odds. He had been the start of a long line of Morrises, men and women both, who had devoted themselves to the struggle against the darkness. Not because the Morrises were a bunch of sanctimonious Holy Joes with martyr complexes—but because once you have looked upon the true face of evil, you have no choice but to fight against it, assuming you want to retain any self-respect at all.

  Many in Quincey Morris's family had suffered for their commitment. Some had lost their lives over it.

  But not one of them had given up. Ever.

  Morris began to flex his calf muscles in preparation for the leap off the bed. It was likely that his sudden movement would prompt an attack by the King Cobra. Morris would just have to take the huge snake's bite and keep moving, just as he would almost certainly have to absorb other bites on his way to the door.

  He stared into the King's Cobra's black, unblinking eyes. Okay, motherfucker, get ready to take your best shot, because—

  Something was happening.

  Morris thought at first that his vision was going, because the King Cobra in front of him seemed to be… blurring.

  Did I pick up a bite from one of these fucking things already and didn't even notice? Am I dying? Is that what this is?

  But he realized that his view of the rest of the room remained clear—it was only the snake in front of him that was losing definition and substance. For Morris, it was like watching a Polaroid picture develop, except in reverse. The King Cobra was just fading away.

  He risked a glance toward the floor where the other snakes had been slithering around. For an instant his vision seemed to pick up an after-image of their wriggling, hissing forms—and then they were… gone.

  Morris looked back toward the King Cobra—but there was nothing to see, except the wrinkled bedspread. The great snake had disappeared.

  Remaining where he was, Morris looked carefully around the room, but not a single reptile could be seen. He listened hard, but the only sounds were the hum of the air conditioner and Morris's own labored breathing.

  After a few more seconds, Morris felt his knees start to buckle. He let them, and sat down hard on the bed. He started trembling then, all over, like a man pulled from an icy river.

  Had that bitch Abernathy been playing with him again? He decided that probably wasn't the case this time. A few more seconds, and Morris would have picked up enough snakebites to put him beyond medical help. No, she hadn't been fooling around—this had been intended as the killing stroke.

  What, then?

  He realized he still had Libby's mirror in his right hand. In fact, he had grasped it so tightly that he had hair-thin cuts from the mirror's edge across his thumb and palm.

  He opened his hand, wincing at the cramps in his fingers, and let the mirror fall on to the mattress. Had Libby's spell on the mirror banished the snakes before they could do their deadly work?

  And if the snakes had been dispersed by Libby's magic, where the hell did they go?

  * * * *

  Christine Abernathy put away the last of her magical implements. She thought about doing another scrying to see what Quincey Morris's bloated corpse looked like, but decided it was too much trouble. She'd watch the local news on television later—see what they made of the mysterious death at the Salem Inn. She thought it unlikely that the authorities would consider witchcraft as a modus operandi, even though the town was famous for—

  She frowned suddenly. What was that noise? It sounded like…

  Hissing?

  Christine Abernathy spun around to face her work table, just in time to receive a bite from the King Cobra on the side of her neck.

  She stumbled backward in surprise, but not before the Black Mamba coiled atop the pentagram delivered two quick strikes to her face.

  Another step backward, and suddenly she tripped on a big Bushmaster that was coiling around one of her ankles and then fell heavily among the other snakes which, until very recently, had been slithering around Quincey Morris's hotel room. She received twenty-three more bites in the next few seconds, and even more as she struggled to rise from the floor.

  The massive infusion of venom was already starting to work on her, but she still had plenty of time for a long scream full of pain and fear and rage—the kind of sound, so legend has it, that is so often heard just the other side of the gates of Hell.

  * * * *

  Morris was awake when some conscientious hotel employee slid a complementary copy of the local paper under the door of his room. He had stayed awake all night, Libby Chastain's mirror clasped in his hand like a talisman—which, he knew now, was exactly what it was.

  He didn't know if Christine Abernathy would send the snakes again, or perhaps some other form of devilment. Whatever might come, he wanted to be awake to meet it. But the rest of the night had been quiet.

  He was glad to be provided with a copy of the newspaper; it would save him the trouble of hunting one up somewhere. Over the course of the long night, Morris had formulated a plan for dealing with Christine Abernathy. He did not know if it was the best plan possible—only that it was the best he was able to come up with.

  The main thing he needed was a gun, and getting your hands on one these days usually poses problems. He had a couple of pistols at home, but bringing one on a plane from Texas, even in checked luggag
e, would have required either a badge or the equivalent of an Act of Congress. Despite the stereotypes about his native state, Morris generally approved of the laws that made it difficult for someone to buy a gun on impulse. But at the moment he regarded them as a damn nuisance.

  There are, of course, people who will sell you a gun illegally, but Morris figured there weren't many such folks hanging around Salem, Massachusetts. Boston, maybe—hell, almost certainly. But even there, you'd have to know where to go and who to talk to. Gunrunners don't advertise in the Yellow Pages, and Morris had no contacts in the Boston underworld.

  He figured his best bet was to check the classified ads, look under "Sporting Goods," and find someone looking to sell an individual gun for ready cash. In a pinch, a shotgun or rifle would do, but Morris was hoping to get his hands on a pistol— a .38 or .357 revolver, or, better yet, a .45 automatic.

  Then, once he was armed, he was going back to Christine Abernathy's house. With Libby's mirror to protect him against Abernathy's magic—at least, Morris hoped it would still be good for that purpose—he was going to do his best to blow Christine Abernathy's pretty little head off.

  Even if he succeeded, there was a good chance he would be arrested for murder, but Morris was past the point of caring about that. After the last twenty-four hours or so, he knew how the LaRues must have felt for all those weeks, under the threat of a supernatural force they could neither escape nor fight, and he was well and truly sick of it. Christine Abernathy had to be stopped, and for good.

  Morris fetched the paper from the floor and brought it over to the bed. He unfolded it and was about to turn to the classifieds when something on the front page below the fold caught his eye.

  LOCAL GIRL DEAD.

  FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.

  Morris blinked a couple of times, then read on.

  A teenage girl was found dead in her Salem home last night, and police have not ruled out murder as the cause of her death.

  The body of Christine Abernathy, 18, was discovered by police in the basement of the house, located at 328 Chestnut Avenue. Officers were responding to calls from neighbors who said they heard screams coming from the residence around 10:30pm.

  A police spokesperson said that the girl's death was considered "suspicious," but would give no further details. An official ruling on cause of death will have to wait for the results of an autopsy, which has been scheduled for later today, sources said.

  Ms. Abernathy had been living alone at the Chestnut Avenue address since the death of her mother last year, according to neighbors. They said the young woman usually kept to herself and had little contact with…

  A bright, savage smile had formed on Morris's face as he read the article, but as he put the paper down it faded into a thoughtful frown.

  He had already seen the magic that Christine Abernathy could work with a newspaper. Could this be a trick to lull him into doing something careless?

  After a moment he picked up the telephone, tapped in a single number, then waited.

  "Could you connect me with the hotel gift shop please? Thanks."

  He waited some more, then:

  "Good morning. Listen, you carry The Salem News there, don't you? Do you have any of today's left? All right, I have kind of a strange request to make. I haven't seen the paper, but somebody told me that there's a story on the front page this morning about some woman who was found dead here in town overnight. Yes, that sounds like the story. My friend said he thought he remembered the victim's name, and it sounded like a niece of mine, and before I let myself get all upset, I wonder if you could… sure, thanks. Abernathy? That was her name? Chestnut Street? No, that's not my niece, thanks be to God. I appreciate you humoring me, ma'am, that was mighty kind of you…"

  Quincey Morris hung up the telephone, then let out his breath in a long sigh.

  Three minutes later, he was asleep.

  Chapter 34

  It was just past four in the afternoon when Quincey Morris stepped out of the hospital elevator and turned toward the Intensive Care Unit. He carried with him a bouquet of roses, gardenias, and lilies that had set him back forty-five bucks at the florist shop on the ground floor.

  Nobody who isn't a doctor or nurse gets to just walk into a hospital ICU, so Morris stepped up to the glass that enclosed the area and peered inside. If Libby was awake and not in the middle of some medical procedure, maybe he could talk his way in to see her for a couple of minutes. He doubted that they would let him leave the flowers in there, but he hoped she could at least see them before he was kicked out again.

  It took him only a moment to locate the bed where he had last seen the unconscious form of Libby Chastain.

  The bed was empty.

  Have they got her back in the operating room?

  The bed was made up with what looked like fresh linens. The monitors, which had been registering Libby's vital signs, were disconnected and turned off. The IV drips, on their tall stainless steel poles, were gone.

  Okay, they've just moved her to a regular room. That's a good sign, it means she's doing better. That's good news. Nothing to worry about.

  Still, he wasted no time walking back to the ICU nurses' station, where a young woman in starched whites was typing at a computer keyboard.

  "Excuse me," he said. "A friend of mine was in Intensive Care yesterday, but now it looks like she's been moved. I'm wondering if you can tell me her new room number."

  "Certainly, sir. What is the patient's name?"

  "Elizabeth Chastain."

  The nurse's face froze for just a second, but that was enough to start a glacier forming in Morris's gut.

  Without bothering to check her computer, or a list of rooms, or anything else, the nurse looked at Morris and asked, "Are you a family member, sir?"

  "No, it's like I said: I'm her friend, I was here yesterday. What's the problem?"

  "Well, it's just that… uh, perhaps it would be best if you talked to Doctor Melling. I'll see if he's still in the building." She reached for the telephone.

  Morris leaned over the counter. He was about to grab the young nurse's crisp lapels and start shaking information out of her when a familiar female voice said from behind him, "Or perhaps you could just talk to me."

  Morris whirled around and found himself looking into the broadly smiling face of a woman who bore no trace of bruises, bandages, or injury of any kind.

  It was the face of Libby Chastain.

  "Come on," she said, the smile still in place. "Let's go downstairs. I'm just dying… for a cup of coffee."

  * * * *

  Fenton had insisted on driving Van Dreenan to JFK himself.

  The two men spoke little in the car, although at one point Van Dreenan said, "You know, I am accustomed to making my own way around. An escort is not necessary."

  "Be glad you're not going in fucking cuffs," Fenton snapped. He didn't say anything for the rest of the drive. For that matter, he hadn't said much to Van Dreenan since that night on a lonely stretch of road outside Salem, Massachusetts.

  Fenton used his FBI credentials to bypass the long line at the security checkpoint. Once Van Dreenan had picked up a boarding pass and checked his bag, Fenton insisted on walking him to the departure area. The flight for London, with a connection to Johannesburg, would start boarding in forty minutes.

  They sat side by side in the half-empty departure lounge for a while, not speaking, until Fenton suddenly said, "I had this speech all prepared about how I don't hold with vigilante shit, about the rights of criminal defendants, and about the need for due process to avoid turning this country into a fucking police state."

  "If you feel you must deliver it, I will listen," Van Dreenan said. "I will not even argue with you."

  "Like I said, I had this little speech all prepared. But then it occurred to me yesterday to call a couple of guys I know who are pretty high up in the South African Police Forces."

  "So, you've arranged to have me fired, instead?" Van Dreenan did not appear p
articularly dismayed by the prospect.

  "No. Like I said, I talked to 'em. About you. One of them knows you personally, and the other one has access to all kinds of official records."

  Van Dreenan's face had grown tight. "Yes. And?"

  Fenton's voice softened. "And I heard about your daughter. I mean all about her."

  After a long, aching moment, Van Dreenan sighed deeply. "Yes, well, that was all some time ago."

  "Uh-huh. Well, I thought some about what I'd heard. Asked myself what I'd do, if one of my little girls… well, you know."

  Van Dreenan just nodded.

  "Like I said, I don't hold with vigilante shit. But sometimes… ah, hell, I don't even know what I'm trying to fucking say."

  "You don't have to say anything, my friend. It is done now."

  "Yeah, well…" Fenton turned to Van Dreenan and stuck out his hand. The South African took it, and squeezed firmly. It was the closest thing to an embrace either of them was capable of having with another man.

  The FBI man stood up. "One more thing I wanted to say, Van Dreenan, and this comes from way upstairs at the Bureau: don't come back."

  Fenton took a brisk step away, and another, then stopped. He turned back and stood there, hands in his pockets, looking at Van Dreenan impassively before he said, "Unless I call you."

  * * * *

  "They wanted me to stay around for more tests," Libby said, as she stirred some Sweet'n Low into her cup. "But I've already signed myself out."

  "So, why are you still here?" Morris could not stop staring at Libby, comparing her unmarked face with the memory of the battered, bandaged woman he had seen just two days before.

  "Waiting for you, naturally. I knew you'd show up here as soon as you could, and I didn't want you to get a fright when you found me gone."

  "I appreciate your faith in me. And, yeah, a fright is exactly what I did get, once I saw that empty bed in the ICU."

  "I know. I'm sorry, Quincey." Libby shook her head ruefully. "It figures. I'd been sitting where I could keep an eye on both the nurse's station and the ICU, then I leave for just five minutes to go to the bathroom, and sure enough…"