‘Sometimes it happens that way,’ he went on. ‘The magic becomes too strong and Baron Samedi swoops down to do some death-dealing...’
He propped Jack up against the tree, like a zombie, with Chung at his feet. He left him with a final word: ‘Remember, you got an Ace in the hole, boy!’
Jack saw him walking away over the crossroads, through the crowd of helpers all converging on his tree. He could not tell if any of them were aware of the old man or not. Jack was wrapped in a blanket and given treatment for shock. He saw the body of Corey, still with a spark of life left in it, being carried past on a stretcher. Corey’s left arm hung down; the palm of the hand was marked with a thin red line, like a cat-scratch.
(The psychiatrists he consulted in the United States and in Britain showed interest in various aspects of his story. The American woman was interested in the possible misuse of hallucinogenic drugs. The Scotsman was distressed by the racist element. The English woman was impressed by his sexual reaction. Everyone was relieved to hear that Chung made a complete recovery. None of them trusted Jack; he could not decide whether they found him too mad or not mad enough.)
There was a shout from over the edge of the road as the wrecked car crashed down and burst into flames. One of the policemen - would he be a deputy sheriff? - was struck by a piece of burning debris. He ran blazing across the summit of the dark hill and the ambulance attendants rushed out with more blankets to smother the flames.
In the light of the burning man Jack caught a glimpse of Pierre, Madame Belle, a girl that could have been the pink girl, huddled together. There was a bunch of youngsters, campers, the freaks from down by the lake. Next morning, in the county hospital, wherever that was, he remembered the ‘pot’ that Ace had given him to hold for ‘a wager with Corey’.
The envelope in his jacket pocket bore his own name, John Dixon, in Ace’s handwriting. Inside, folded in sheets of green tissue paper, he found a cross made of dark stained wood, carved with a skull and a phallus. Yes, of course Ace had been in on the thing somehow. But had the cross been passed to Jack with malice or for his protection? He wondered if Elizabeth had received any kind of a fetish.
Corey had died during the night so Jack had no chance to talk to him again, except in the way that he talked to all of them again: in his dreams. He wrapped up the fetish and kept the horrid thing by him for years, showing it only to a few close friends.
In fact he was never able to scrape up more than a very few close friends, but his luck was phenomenally good from that time forward. It was said that J.D. had the golden touch; that his taste in women was exotic; that he was addicted to psychotherapy. In the end he gave the voodoo cross to the young actress who played First Witch in his famous Macbeth with the Haitian setting.
Cherry Wilder recently returned to her native New Zealand after living in West Germany with her late husband and two daughters since the mid-1970s. She published poetry, short stories and criticism before making a commitment to genre writing - science fiction, fantasy and horror - and her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, Asimov’s Ghosts, Best SF 16, New Terrors, Dark Voices, Skin of the Soul and Best New Horror.Her novels include the ‘Torin’ trilogy (The Luck of Brin’s Five, The Nearest- FireandThe Tapestty Warriors), the ‘Rulers of Hylor’ trilogy (A Princess of the Chamein, Yorath the Wolf and The Summer’s King), the ‘Rhomary’ series{Second NatureandSigns of Life),and the horror novelCruel Designs.Her collectionDealers in Light and Darkness was published by Edgewood Press, and she is currently working on the first volume of a new ‘Hylor’ trilogy for Tor Books. As she explains, ‘ “Saturday” recalls a visit to a real restaurant in the Pennsylvania Hills in 1983. The district is called Twin Lakes and at the time this suggested the atmosphere of the occult work, Twin Peaks.’
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* * * *
The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray
GREGORY FROST
With his fork, he cut through the layers of crisp philo dough, lifted and placed in his mouth the slice of bisteeya. The flavours of cinnamon, coriander, butter and almonds flooded his senses - a sweet and tender orgasm to which he gave himself completely, eyes closed, fingers curled tenderly around his utensils. When he opened his eyes again, he was staring right at Alison.
She sat across the table. In front of her was a white bread plate and a glass of spring water with a slice of lemon floating in it. The plate contained three saltine crackers. Alison was trying to look disinterested and unaffected by his meal. But just then her stomach gurgled and he had to keep himself from smiling at its betrayal. She could have had the same meal he was eating, or anything else on the menu: he would have been more than willing to order her something, anything. The choice to starve was hers. He could not concern himself with it.
A single rose stood in the small vase between them. It was his particular flourish, that rose. He began his conquests with the rose, knowing that so simple a gesture was an arrow to the heart of the romantic. He promised elegance, thoughtfulness, taste, but above all, romance. After their first date - the first night they’d met after she answered his ad - Alison had confessed that the rose made her toes curl. Tonight, however, it stood as an emblem of distance, a cenotaph of her feelings for him, already buried elsewhere. He knew this would be the last night, knew already exactly how it was going to end. It had ended this way dozens of times before.
He was elegance himself - tall, smoothly groomed, with perfect teeth and long slender hands. He took extra good care of his hands. ‘The hands of an angel,’ one of the women had told him. Wasn’t it Tricia? Yes, that seemed right. Tricia was always alluding to Christian iconography: hands of an angel, face of a saint, heart of the devil. An annoying habit, actually - he never could have married her. But of course he wouldn’t; just as he wouldn’t be marrying Alison.
He’d taken her to only the finest restaurants in the city. A night out with him ran to hundreds of dollars, and he never skimped, never hesitated to order the finest meals. Maitre d’s knew him. Chefs came out of the kitchen to the table and discussed dishes with him. Dining with him was like dining with a celebrity. ‘If we are going to eat, then we should only ever eat the best,’ was his mantra. Never would he have dipped below a four star establishment. He was like someone who had just stepped out of a magazine ad for Rolex watches or Dom Perignon, a real live James Bond without the silly devices and world-dominating villains. A man who’d been bred to know the best and settle for nothing less. And by association, what did that make the woman who accompanied him?
How many dinners had they shared before she noticed the first signs of the change? It was three before he saw, but he was watching. Six or seven for her, by his reckoning. When you’re in love, you overlook and deny so many seemingly insignificant things.
Like the fact that he was a gourmand.
He not only liked the finest cuisine, he liked as much of it as he could possibly consume in any one sitting. Four courses, six courses: pate de fois gras, bisques thick with cream, lobster-stuffed squid-ink ravioli in a tomato-cream sauce, soufflés, quiches, duck à l’orange, prime rib of beef, cherry compôte, tiramisu, bottles of champagne, carafes of wine. Single-handedly he could take out a whole menu.
For all that, his manners were impeccable. It wasn’t that he sat slobbering and gnashing, drawing attention to himself as some deranged Neanderthal with a fork might have done. No, he ate demurely, quietly, chatting with her, truly interested in what she had to say (or at least feigning interest so well that she would never notice the difference). Dinner with him lasted the entire evening. The courses came and went - soups, hors-d’oeuvres, first course, main course, cheese course, desserts and coffee, liqueurs. She would not have noticed right away that he had eaten an extra course, or more than one dessert, or consumed an entire bottle of wine on his own and helped her with half of another. Simply, he ate. And ate. And ate. And ate.
He wondered if any of them would have stayed with him. He supp
osed it didn’t matter, since he never intended to stay with any of them. But he liked that they always called it quits. Alison was going to call it quits tonight. When they got to the saltines stage, they always called it quits.
He’d been surprised that first night how petite Alison was - the smallest woman he’d had so far, her head barely reached his nipples. And very healthy. She exercised hard, and was proud to show him her abdominals, her perfect, smooth, taut and round rear, and her well-muscled legs. She was certainly the only woman he’d met who claimed she enjoyed stair-climbers and rowing machines. Such strict attention to her physique included diet, and so she hadn’t been prepared for the cream sauces, the nights of sheer ecstatic indulgence in all things edible, the ease with which one got hooked by rich, buttery fattening foods. He supposed it had been something like springing a trap on poor Alison. By the time she’d mentioned to him - a gentle reproof - that she thought he over-indulged when they went out to dinner, he could only laugh. She told him as if he might be unaware of it himself. In all other ways he was the personification of charm and compassion; a wonderful, thoughtful lover. Of course when he’d offered her the ring she had accepted. On the first date he showed it to her. On the second date, he placed it on her finger. His eating habits didn’t dissuade her from accepting his offer of a more significant relationship.
Then the tummy had arrived.
Suddenly she didn’t fit comfortably in her electric blue Lycra. Where she had been hard muscle, she began to bulge. The solution, of course, was to increase her workout and decrease the number of times she ate out with him, both of which she did. She promptly gained another dozen pounds. Soon he had to coerce her into going out, and when she did, she ate the lightest fare - a salad, or something high in protein like fish, while avoiding all starches, breads and pastas - while he devoured half the planet with his usual zeal, but always solicitous, always asking if she minded that he ate a regular meal, exhibiting such concern that she could say nothing except ‘of course not’. There were many nights when she begged off dinner and he went out alone. It didn’t matter. Once she’d handled the ring, she didn’t have to be with him.
Now five months had passed and the engagement had run its course. The longest it had ever run was eight months, but Anita had been a much taller woman to begin with. At four months, while expressing continued desire for her company, he ceased to exhibit any for the physical relationship they’d shared. Without saying anything directly, he reproached her for her size. He found her 190-pound physique as repugnant as she did. He didn’t weigh that much. She was only five feet tall. She couldn’t remotely carry this kind of weight around. Just climbing the steps to the restaurant left her labouring for breath. He held her hand and waited for her with the utmost patience and consideration. Never would he give her cause to doubt the sincerity of his concern. Treadmills and rowing machines fell by the wayside. Alison couldn’t bend forward enough to row, and she complained of back aches when she used a stair-climber. At five months, the skin sagged on her arms, flowed around her elbows and knees. Her calves literally hung over her ankles. She was gelatin, marshmallow, not human at all. He found it all terribly disgusting, especially as he sat there indulging himself with a raft of the most glorious foods and never gaining an ounce.
She had tried every diet and gone so far as to experiment with acupuncture and hypnosis. He suspected she had become bulimic. She couldn’t become anorexic. Not quite yet anyway.
Nothing had worked. Nothing was ever going to work.
So while he finished thehisteeya, Alison told him that she had to stop seeing him, that her world was out of control and she needed to get away for awhile. She was going to a clinic in upstate New York where they could help people with her kind of disorder. It was - it had to be - hormonal.
He set down his fork and let her see that he was stunned, crestfallen, horrified. ‘I do understand,’ he said. ‘You have to take care of yourself. Why, it must be awful to have to watch me enjoying food when it’s become so miserable for you to eat. That’s so awful, Alison. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to stop enjoying food. I don’t think I could do it. I’ll - I won’t have another thing. I’ll call the waiter right now and cancel the main course. You should not have to sit here like this.’
She agreed with him on that point. But rather than making him end his dinner, she insisted he just allow her to go. ‘It’s better if I don’t see you again, either. I’m afraid—’ her eyes glistened with her first tears ‘—I can’t separate you from what’s happened to me. I’m sorry.’ Sobbing, she slid his ring across the table.
She rose to leave the restaurant, but swayed dizzily, and he leapt to his feet and caught hold of her pudgy arm to brace her. He moved as swiftly as someone who had foreseen that she would become lightheaded.
He guided her into her coat, then hailed a cab and helped her struggle into the back of it. She clutched his hand, kissed it, then turned her face away. He gave the driver her address and a twenty dollar bill, wished her well, and sent her off.
Once the cab was out of sight, he returned to his table and proceeded immediately to eat the rest of his meal as if nothing had happened, as if there was not - and could not have been - a care in the world. Some of the other diners glanced at him with disgust. He ignored them. The waiter asked if the lady would be all right, and he answered, ‘Eventually. She’s having digestion problems.’ The waiter eyed him peculiarly, and he took that as his cue to say loudly enough for those nearby to eavesdrop: ‘We’ve just broken up. So, while I’m sorry that she’s feeling ill, I’m not full of tea and sympathy just now. You understand? She’s broken my heart and I’m not going to cave in. I refuse.’ That seemed to satisfy the waiter. At least it lent some justification to his insistence that the dinner proceed. People ate their way out of misery all the time. Didn’t they?
Thus he ate and ate as if Alison were still there, as if she or her phantom were being served a portion of everything, too, as if no amount of food could salve his conscience. As if he had one.
In the morning he called the paper and placed a new ad. He needed a new vessel.
The most difficult part was this limbo in between. He had no vessel and he wanted desperately to binge; but he knew that, if he succumbed to his lust, the repercussions would be his alone to bear. That was how the spell worked. It wasn’t under his governance. It hadn’t really been his idea in the first place.
The whole thing was Rebecca’s fault. She’d irritated him into it. At the time, of course, he’d only half-believed in it, and that half was drunk. Magic was silly - Penn & Teller pulling the audience’s collective pants down. That was magic to him.
He’d been drinking ouzo, but as Manny had said, ‘What else ya gonna drink in a bar in Canea on Crete, dude?’ In his cups, he’d been complaining to Manny and one of the local men about Rebecca’s vanity, her obsession with her model’s figure, which included denial of most of the foods he loved, and her complaints about his own softening physique. If she was to deny herself these pleasures, then she expected him to do the same. He wasn’t even married to her yet and already she was instituting changes in his life. ‘Come all the way here just to eat Melba toast? My God, it’s hideous!’ he’d exclaimed. Mummy and Dad were footing the bill for this trip - his reward for graduating with honours - and he wasn’t about to spend their money on a diet of figs and yogurt. There was more to it, of course. She’d complained the whole trip about how pathetic and stupid the native population were, these poor little people without even cell phones. The next thing he knew, he and Manny were in the company of two locals on a narrow street with a name like Iepela Odoc or something. Well, the word in Greek that looked like odoc meant ‘street’ but that was as far as he could get with his sloshing vocabulary.
He had the money to buy the spell. He could have bought a dozen. He remembered joking to Manny that there was ‘a special on love potions in aisle five’. He didn’t so much as feel the amount he was paying, although to the w
oman - the herbalist or witch, or whatever she was - it must have been a jackpot sum. In her corner of the world, that much money was a fortune. ‘Travel broadens the mind, not the girth,’ he’d announced. It was all a lark.
‘You don’t believe, but yet you pay?’ she’d asked. She clearly thought him an idiot. He never got to answer. She asked him to give her something to use to focus the spell upon, and he fumbled in his pockets and pulled out the antique ring he’d bought for Rebecca in Athens - he intended it to be her engagement ring. At least, he had intended that before she started telling him what he could and couldn’t eat.
The next thing he knew, he’d been presented with a small chalice and he was thoughtlessly drinking the contents. Whatever it was, it made him double over in pain. His brain cleared enough for him to experience fear - to think she might have played a trick on him and now he would die in a little shop on a back street in one of the oldest cities of the world, murdered by a woman who looked about as old as the city. He had time to hiss, ‘Manny, you stupid bastard,’ before blackness shot with stars scooped him up and deposited him back in his hotel room. He opened crusted eyes beneath a spinning ceiling fan, on his bed; it was as if the entire adventure, the whole day, had been a wild dream. He was still dressed. He checked his money belt. The cash he remembered giving the woman was in fact gone - but only that much. The other thousand he had was still there, and so was the antique ring. If it hadn’t been for that he might never have believed the journey had happened at all.
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