by Wither
He made her wait until the sound of the helicopter had faded to his satisfaction before speaking, and in that time of tense silence she studied his face: gaunt, muscles twitching involuntarily on the injured side. She wondered about the state of the mind behind that haggard mask, and when he let her speak again her first words were trembling, filled with pity for them both. “Oh, Art, what the fuck has happened to the two of us?”
“I have a theory about that,” Art said suddenly. He sat on some nearby boxes and pulled her down into a conspiratorial huddle. “Okay, I’ve been working on this all day…” He took her hands in his own and announced with great certainty, “This town is cursed.”
He squeezed her hands hard, as if to distract her from the disbelief and confusion that followed like a reflex. She winced.
“Cursed?”
“Or poisoned. Take your pick.” He touched his cheek, then extended a hand to touch her belly gently. “I guess poisoned is the more accurate word in our case.”
“Art, I don’t understand what you’re—”
“The birth defects. This mysterious ”infection“ I’ve picked up. Think about it. You know, I came across an interesting statistic once, years ago, when I was researching my original dissertation.
At the turn of the century the infant mortality rates among residents of Windale exceeded the national average by forty percent. Especially among the textile workers.“
She shook her head. “Art, you’re not making any sense! What loes this have to do with a curse?”
He grew excited. “That’s the really cool part! See, it’s like Jung’s model of the collective unconscious, but with a Marxist spin. Flashback to the nineteenth century. No one in the community dares voice the suspicion that Windale’s flagship industry is polluting the groundwater and poisoning their young. That’d be heresy. So—and here’s where we add a dash of Freud to the mix—we repressed as a community our collective guilt! But, see, that kind of guilt can’t stay bottled up forever, so it starts to bubble up to the surface again in interesting ways through local folklore. Particularly in a backwater little hamlet already predisposed to all things spooky. Presto—instant curse! Compound it with the usual centennial hysteria, and suddenly you have an explanation for everything and anything bad that happened in Windale circa 1899…and now in 1999. Livestock dying? It’s the curse. Kids born with flippers? It’s the curse. A mill fire kills thirty-eight workers? It’s the curse.”
“But I’ve never heard anything about a curse, and I grew up here.”
“Ah, exactly! See, ever since the textile mills closed, we’ve forgotten the reason we invented the curse in the first place. But in fact the real curse is alive and well. You and me and that poor little girl are the latest living chapters in its story. Hell, the water table in this town must be saturated with whatever toxic shit those mills were pumping out in the pre-EPA days. I’d like to go back out to that witches’ graveyard with a couple biochemists and a contamination suit…”
Karen grew frustrated at his paranoid logic. “What does this have to do with the witches’ graves?”
“That’s the poetic justice of it all! Think about it—what are Windale’s witches but another example of our community’s willingness to repress its guilt? We’re so fucked up that we take our deepest sins and turn them into a parade! Hey, close down Main and invite the neighbors! That’s why it’s so beautifully ironic that both pasts intersect at that graveyard. It all comes together in a single perfect image of a little girl asleep on a toxin-soaked grave.” His excitement turned with alarming speed to urgency. “Do you still have your laptop? Cause I’d like to capture some of this.”
Karen looked at him sadly. “Art, I think you’ve got more immediate problems to worry about.” Overhead, they could hear the choppers circling back again as the manhunt continued. In that light he suddenly resembled a disappointed child.
“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” he said quietly.
“I think you’re tired,” she said, reaching out to brush a wisp of hair that had escaped his ponytail. “And frightened. And sick,” she said, feeling his brow for fever. He was cool. “I think we’ve got to talk about how you’re going to turn yourself back in to the police, so you can get back to the hospital.”
“Please,” Art said, and the mad light was gone now from his eyes, replaced by desperation, “Just let me rest here a day or two until I sort this out. I really think I’m on to something.”
“Why, Art? Why is this so important? What do you think you’re going to prove?”
“That I’m not the town monster,” he said. “That I had reasons for being in those woods other than hurting that little girl.”
Karen was overwhelmed with a sudden stab of emotion and reached to touch Art’s cheek tenderly. “Please,” he said, and she knew she couldn’t deny him this simple thing he was asking.
Christopher Perry never waited long for a ride. He’d learned years ago how to tug at the sympathetic heartstrings of the typical motorist. Came down to the three Ps: preparation, presentation, and poise. If you wanted to be a successful American hitchhiker, you had to follow a few simple rules.
How you looked was important; that’s all you had at the outset. Jeans, the distressed denim variety, were fine, showed a practical side, a little needy. Top it off with a college sweatshirt—he wore Florida Gators colors at the moment because he was headed south for the winter. Higher education was respectable. Keep the hair trim on the sides for the grannies, long in the back for their granddaughters. Try to shave at least every other day; with his blond hair, twice weekly was enough. Most important of all, you had to look harmless, whether you were or not. (He carried a decent-size switchblade inside his right boot.)
His look had been good enough to get him some manual work with that general contractor, Paul Leeson. Nice guy, but the townwas basically dead. Too depressing acting the townie here. Wouldn’t have stuck around as long as he had if not for the chance at some college coed action. But he’d grown tired of chasing and working to impress the pretentious bitches. The hell with them, the hell with the crummy under-the-table job, and the hell with Windale. Time to hit the road again. Time to get back in the groove of catching the perfect free ride.
Now he found himself standing with his back to a brutally cold New England wind, thumb freezing in a light rain, with nobody to blame but himself. In this shit-little burg called Windale (Windburn was more like it) nobody seemed to give a sweet damn if a poor-but-engagingly-handsome “college” student walked through the night till he froze his tight little ass off.
Half past eleven, he’d already given up on the carload-of-restless-coeds fantasy; he would have settled for a toothless granny on a protective undergarments midnight run.
Traffic too light. Like fishing in a mud puddle. He decided to rest his thumb, balled his fists in the pockets of his ratty jeans, back bowed to the fierce wind, teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, eyes toward oncoming headlights. Except there weren’t any. Was everyone in this town under a curfew?
An empty soda can clanked behind him, startling him as it skipped across the asphalt. He cursed under his breath. Soon time to unfold the bedroll. Sandy and Tina. Sexy Sandy and Kinky Tina; boy, that was some ride. He smiled. Well, two rides, technically. Where the hell had that been, Memphis? No… West Virginia. Almost heaven.
His smile evaporated as he smelled something foul. He’d tripped over some potent roadkill before, but even on the long desert strips out west, where the sun baked the hell out of it, it never smelled quite this bad. He looked down at his feet. Though he hadn’t felt anything, he sure as hell must have stepped in it. Another step backward and he suddenly had the sensation of being watched. He whipped around.
It was sitting in the middle of the road, silent, a tall black boulder, like one of those statues on Easter Island, the wind tearing at tattered bits of it like moss. He stood still, paralyzed, too startled yet to be frightened, only confused. He heard a rustling, and then c
aught movement in what he’d at first taken to be a rock. It was unfolding, two long branches extending to either side, hypnotically. He watched, mesmerized, for the full twenty seconds it took for the branches to rise, and then suddenly it occurred to him that those weren’t branches, they were arms, and as if in response to his realization, the creature began to unfold itself all at once. It stood in the silence, arms wide in a welcoming embrace, and then it came after him.
He tried to run, but with his first step his legs buckled beneath him. He scrambled forward, roadside grit biting into his palms. He fumbled for his switchblade, heard its tiny click, four-inch blade wavering in the darkness.
The monster towered over him, and Christopher fought hard to process the riot of details, the creak of black knotted muscle, the swell of belly as it took its breath, forest of rank hair between its legs.
The monster leaned down over him. One enormous hand came forward to gently touch his chest, dragging clawed fingertips down, down, then even more gently touching there in the crook of his jeans. The hand closed carefully, fingers halfway up his back again on the other side as it cupped him from beneath. The monster laughed, and Christopher Perry felt the bass rumble of the sound in his testicles. The monster’s head moved in close, pressed hard lips against his brow. He smelled the blast of its breath over him.
He realized that this was a kiss. But then the kiss changed as the grip between his legs began to tighten like a clamp. Another hand closed on his shoulder, and he was suddenly hoisted in the air. A moment passed before he realized the monster was rising with him, the street falling away like a dark ribbon, details of the town blinking out with the dizzying height. The hard lips peeled back and he felt only teeth against his brow, teeth opening wide to accommodate him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
On his final rounds of the evening of October 26, Dr. Khayatian, the chief pediatric resident at Wihdale General, noted the following on the chart of Abby MacNeil:
23:52, Temp; 99 p.o., Ft. A & O X 3 but still uncommunicative; persists w/o sensation distally
Which, in translation, meant that at eight minutes to midnight Abby’s fever had abated to 99 degrees p.o. (per os, Latin for by mouth), that she was alert and oriented to time, place, and person, but still could not feel anything in her extremities when Khayatian pinched them…,which was, of course, consistent with a patient with a broken fourth cervical vertebra.
Khayatian freed the little girl’s blond locks where they’d gotten tangled in her metal halo, wished her good night, and left for the evening.
By the morning of the 28th, when he was next on call, Abby was moving again.
“I want an LCS film stat!” Khayatian barked at the nearest RN, as the room began filling up with pilgrims to the site of Windale’s resident miracle. At the center of the chaos, Abby lay watching with the placid eyes of a child lama. All eyes were riveted to every voluntary movement of her arms and legs as she shifted in her bed. Someone held out a Beanie Baby dolphin to her, the room fell to a hush, and then a collective gasp of amazement went out as her fingers closed around the toy.
Twenty minutes later, following a well-escorted trip to the X-ray suites, Khayatian stood examining Abby’s LCS (lateral cervical spine) films on a light box. “Holy shit,” he heard himself say; nearby, someone gave a low whistle…
The little girl’s cervical fracture was healing like no broken neck Khayatian had ever seen before. A strange pattern of ossification was knitting the fracture together again. But it was more than simple healing…it almost seemed like reinforcing. Weird spiny growths were linking transverse and articular processes of the vertebrae, clustering like armored barnacles along the spine. The new bone showed in the murky films as hot spots; the little girl’s spinal column, viewed in sections across the light box, lit up like a Christmas tree. And within that armored column, they could assume, an equally miraculous—and impossible—regeneration was under way…
“We’d better get a consult from Osteo and Neurology,” Khayatian said, and then added for good measure. “Um, and maybe an orthopod and a couple PTs.”
He’d recently turned thirty, had graduated first in his medical school class, and was generally considered something of a medical prodigy. But in his thirty years he’d also developed a keen sense of when he was in over his head…. And looking at the little girl’s X rays now, he knew that time had arrived.
Shortly after Wendy reported to work at The Crystal Path, her boss, Alissa told her she wanted to go in back to perform her morning vinyasa. The vigorous series of postures and breathing exercises known as a vinyasa had the unusual quality of being more strenuous and aerobic the more accomplished a yogi one became. “How’s business this morning?” Wendy inquired before her boss retired to the back room and her yoga mat.
“Mostly tourists,” Alissa said, “no true believers.” She almost made it sound like a weather forecast, Mostly tourists, with a slight chance of true believers.
Tourists were often better for business than the true believers. True believers mostly came in to replenish perishables like candles or herbs or incense. Tourists, once they got beyond the gaping stage, were likely to purchase the more expensive trinkets on what Alissa called “travel whims.” The feeling that they might never come this way again and didn’t want to regret not shelling out a few extra dollars for that one-of-a-kind, handmade silver pendant. It was for that very reason that Alissa never put out duplicate items of jewelry. The local craftsman who turned out most of the work was indeed making handmade items, but they were so identical as to be all but indistinguishable from one another by anyone but the craftsman himself. Still, there was no deception in advertising when she placed the handmade, original cards in front of the various pieces. The priciest items in the display cases even came with a certificate of authenticity, signed by the artist or craftsman. Every little bit of marketing and showmanship was needed to move them. But Alissa displayed these items under consignment, so she never had to employ high-pressure sales tactics to foist them on anyone.
Still, The Crystal Path could expect a slight boom in business in the week before Halloween, as that holiday was its retail substitute for a traditional store’s Christmas season. Tourists would be more inclined to buy the various trappings of modern witchcraft now than during any other time of the year. The mood was just right for a little supernatural extravagance. And the Windale business community sure put on a show around Halloween, decorating windows and signs, stringing banners across power lines announcing the upcoming King Frost costume parade. Almost every business worth its marketing salt was giving out “Black Hat” coupons or “Broomstick Bargains” or “Fright Night Specials.” The used car salesman on television was the worst, selling beat-up Buicks to a costumed “hag” witch who was trading in her broken broomstick. The lingerie shops used “sexy” witches in scantily clad outfits to move their “enchanted” and “bewitching” nightwear. “Your man will be spellbound!” Dating service “witch-counselors” turned frogs into princes. Even commercials for the state lottery featured crystal-gazing witches trying to forecast the lucky numbers.
In other words, Wendy’s gag reflex was working overtime. Another hazard of growing up in Windale was the near constant bombardment of ridiculous witch caricatures. And no time of the year was worse than the week leading up to Halloween. Even though the holiday marked Samhain—a most important day on the witch’s calendar—that’s when Wendy felt the most misunderstood. In light of her recent squabbles with Frankie and Alex, she felt depressed and more alone than she ever had before. Frankie had left three telephone messages with Wendy’s mom, to Alex’s one. Wendy returned none of them, which drove her mother about as crazy as when she ignored a ringing telephone. People simply returned telephone calls, it was the polite thing to do. Wendy had just said, “If you aren’t speaking to someone, isn’t the telephone rather superfluous?”
The four oversize palmistry hands at the corners of the cash register island seemed dis
gustingly festive, and Wendy fought the urge to rip them off their suction-cupped springs and toss them under the next street cleaner to pass by. Hitting them was no good, since they just wobbled back and forth in their—Hi, there! See ya!—waves
She had no boxes to uncrate, so she took the synthetic feather duster and walked to the shelf filled with crystal balls, where she began to touch up their stands. The last one rested on the coiled silver dragon. She held the crystal ball in one hand while she dusted the dragon with the other. The door chimes klinked together just as she was about to return the crystal sphere to the serpent’s coils. Wendy turned and looked up as an elderly man wearing a rumpled black suit coat entered the store.
Her gaze met his as he said, “Witch—!”
The face belonged to Jonah Cooke, the lecherous magistrate she had dreamed about and had seen murdered by Rebecca Cole. Wendy gasped and her fingers went numb, losing their grip on … the crystal ball—which struck the floor with a sound like a faraway 1 gong and shattered at her feet. She backed into the shelving and almost dislodged several more crystal balls from their ornamental pedestals.
“Sorry to startle you, young lady,” the old man said, “I was just wondering, Which way is it to the Interstate? I’m from out of town and a little lost.”
Wendy pointed to the east, the lump still too large in her throat to permit her to speak. Her heart hammered so strongly she felt the crystal pendant on her chest vibrating in a sympathetic rhythm.
“Do you need some help cleaning up that glass?” the man asked.
Alissa stepped beside Wendy, her slippered feet shuffling to avoid the jagged shards of crystal scattered across the floor. “That’s okay, sir, we’ll take care of it.” The man nodded and backed out of the store with another mumbled apology. Wendy stared after him, deciding the resemblance to Cooke had mostly been a trick of the light and shadows cast by the spider ferns.