I guess I've fallen in love with her, he thought, nibbling on his pencil. He certainly felt the same intense excitement and longing that he normally associated with falling in love, but his feelings for her went light years beyond that. He didn't just want her, he needed her; needed to serve her, worship her, even be dominated (in more than just a sexual sense) by her. This was unlike anything he had ever felt.
He went back to his writing and read the haiku over again. He liked the play on words resulting in double entendres: the kneading of dough meaning the attempt to change a person, and the need for dough in the sense of needing money; and the dough, or person, being full of razors, or cruelty, that cuts and causes pain; and in another sense, the dough rising, being full of raises, signifying rebellion against the attempts to knead, or need it.
It was unlike anything he had ever written. It was so short and neat. But what was exciting was that it suggested a totally new form to him; something that was sure to open the eyes of the judges and land him top honors in the Dickinson Poetry Competition, and a poet-in-residence professorship at Emily Dickinson College. Then he could tell Conally to shove it and Eleanor wouldn't have to bother with the likes of him.
Thesaurus by his side, Steve bent feverishly to the task of putting down on paper what was blossoming in his mind.
Jackie sat in front of the television watching "Wheel of Fortune" On the floor next to him was an empty bowl with a spoon in it. He and Jen had ended up with cereal for supper after all. He was getting sick of it. Now, as had been the case for some time, he was left alone in front of the TV Everyone else was upstairs: Jen doing her homework in their room, Steve in his study, and his mother sleeping as usual.
I bet a monster could walk right in and grab me and no one would even know it, Jackie thought glumly. The idea chilled him and he looked warily at the night outside the windows. He got up and went into the front hall, checking the front door to be sure it was locked. He went into the kitchen and did the same with the back door. He was about to slide a chair over to the cabinet near the stove to see if there were any cookies left, when he heard someone coming down the stairs.
It was his mother. She lumbered into the kitchen, one hand on her belly, the other gliding over the countertop as if to keep her disproportioned body balanced. She went straight to the refrigerator, opened it, and hung on the door, looking over her culinary options.
"Hi Mom," Jackie said with forced cheeriness. "Me and Jen had Cocoa Puffs for supper," he added, looking for some response. There was none. Diane remained fixed on the contents of the refrigerator. "There's nothin' else to eat," Jackie explained.
Diane pulled a half-gallon carton of milk out of the refrigerator, opened it, and drank from the spout. She put it on the countertop after several gulps and retrieved the box of Cocoa Puffs from its cabinet along with a large mixing bowl. She poured the rest of the box of cereal into the bowl and added what was left of the milk, throwing both empty containers into the Tupperware trash barrel, which was already overflowing.
Jackie stared at the empty milk carton and gasped. Margaret's picture was on the back under the heading: HAVE YOU SEEN ME? Neither he nor Jennifer had noticed it ear her. He looked at her black-and-white face, frozen forever in a waxy cardboard smile. "Mom, look!"
Diane was too busy shoveling cereal into her mouth with a large soup spoon.
"Mom, it's Margaret's picture on the milk carton." He could almost hear the echo of Margaret's voice telling him that Jerry Hall had got his picture on a milk carton after he disappeared.
Diane shoveled more cereal into her mouth. "Not now, Jackie. The baby and I are hungry." Still spooning mounds of Cocoa Puffs into her mouth, Diane left the kitchen and went back upstairs.
She doesn't care what happened to Margaret, Jackie thought. And doesn't care what happens to me, either. Jackie walked over to the wastebasket. He reached out a trembling, cautious hand and touched Margaret's picture. What happened to you Margaret? Jackie thought. Did the witch get you?
He began to shiver, and tears filled his eyes. A long, slow sob rose from his gut, spilling from his mouth with a sound like a small buzz saw whining. His tears spattered on Margaret's cardboard face with a hollow, empty sound.
Seeking escape, tired and depressed, Jackie went to bed early. It didn't take him long to fall into a deep, forgetful sleep. Sometime after midnight, he dreamt that he awoke. At first, he didn't know what had awakened him. He could hear Jennifer snoring softly in the bed diagonal to his, and could hear the wind blowing in the branches of the tree outside, but neither of those things had woken him. It was some other sound.
There it was again.
A voice.
Calling his name.
Jackie.
He sat up in bed with the motion of a dream, slow and liquid. The moon was shimmering around the room as if it were underwater; its silvery light rippling and splashing. The wind was thrashing in the tree outside the window, giving it life to paw the side of the house and the window as if it were trying to gain entry.
Jackie threw back the covers. They made a whooshing sound like a wave hitting a beach. His feet floated off the bed as if weightless, followed by his legs. His chest and head came last, arms drifting apart, as he headed upside down for the ceiling. As he floated upward, body spiraling lazily, he looked out the window.
There was a boy climbing the tree.
Jackie twisted himself around for a better look and realized the boy wasn't climbing the tree, he was floating up the tree, just as Jackie was floating against the ceiling like a lost balloon. That boy could never climb a tree, Jackie realized as he watched him rise closer and closer; he doesn't have any arms or legs.
When the boy reached the window, and Jackie saw that he didn't have any clothes on, he realized it was an armless legless girl, not a boy; she didn't have private parts, like he did. It's Margaret come back, he thought with joy.
Is that you, Margaret? he asked, his thoughts speaking the words instead of his mouth.
No, the figure answered in the same manner. Margaret; gone.
Who are you then?
I'm Jerry.
But Jerry s a boy's name, Jackie said, giggling in his head.
I'm a boy.
Jackie bumped his head on the ceiling light and looked again at the figure in the tree. A feeling of dread wormed its way through his gut and up his throat.
Are you Jerry Hall? Jackie asked, dreading the answer.
Yes.
What happened to you? Did the witch get you?
Before Jerry could answer, Jackie was distracted by another noise from downstairs. It was the loud crying of a baby. When Jackie looked back at the window, Jerry Hall was gone.
The next instant, he was in the hallway, floating out over the stairs. He descended slowly, like a dirigible losing its lift, and landed softly in the front hall. The front door was open. The crying of the baby was coming from outside. His feet barely touching the carpet, Jackie drifted to the door.
There was something coming down the street, floating slowly, the same way he had floated down the stairs. It passed under the dark shadows of the trees and came into the dappling moonlight. Jackie floated through the screen door without opening it and settled on the front step. With a chilling sweat sweeping over his flesh, Jackie saw what it was. It took his breath away in a gasp, and made him want to become invisible, but it was too late for that. It had seen him.
The witch.
She was riding a straw broom. Her dress was long and black, billowing out around her as she glided through the moonlight. Her black silk hat was tall and conical, with a wide brim. Behind her on the broom sat a large glowing orange jack-o'-lantern with a hideously animated face that grinned at Jackie and winked evilly.
Jackie almost wet his pants.
The witch began to cackle and the sound froze Jackie's balls. She threw her head back, her pointy chin and long warty nose threatening to crash into one another, and cackled gleefully as she sailed by, not more t
han ten feet away.
Just when he thought he was going to faint from fear, Jackie saw something else. In the folds of the witch's long shawl he could see a tiny hand, then a cherubic face, for just a second, then the witch was by him, sailing eerily through the trees and into the woods, the jack-o'-lantern lighting her way with its ghostly aura.
A baby cried behind him. Suddenly Jackie was no longer outside, but in the living room. His mother was sitting in the rocking chair holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. Jackie went closer. His mother's blouse was unbuttoned and she was breast-feeding the baby. She held open her blouse and leaned forward so he could see the tiny mouth sucking hungrily and the look of serene security on its small face.
It was his face.
Suddenly Jackie knew where the baby in the witch's arms had come from: it was the baby that had been in his mother's stomach. The witch had it and he, like every other kid, knew what witches did with babies.
They eat them!
Jackie looked at himself snug in his mother's arms, and was secretly glad.
CHAPTER 26
Come when you're called.
Eleanor leaned heavily against the embalming table, listening to the sleeping sounds of the boys in the cage. Dried leaves and twigs were caught in her hair and her dress was caked with mud. She had awakened earlier to find herself in the woods near the river. The last thing she had remembered was rigging the Eameses' Volvo so that it had plunged into the river. She had just turned away from watching the last bubble break the surface when the pain rolled over her.
She had been submerged in pain in less than a second. It rode her like a runaway horse trampling through her chest, radiating out to her arms, legs, neck, even her toes, and drove her to her knees with every beat of her rapid firing heart. Rocks had torn through her dress, gouging her shins and knees but she hadn't felt it through the other pain. The other pain turned her mind first brilliantly white then darkest black. It twisted her head around as if it meant to break her neck. The pain had made her moan in agony; it ruled her, made her suffer, then mercifully had pushed her into nothingness.
She hadn't woken straight up, mind clear and completely in tune with the Machine the way she usually did. She woke slowly, aware at first of nothing except the mud and leaves in her mouth. There were no voices in her head, no awareness of her puppets nor the Machine. Everything was quiet.
Panic-stricken, Eleanor was sure that all was lost. The Machine had deserted her. The pain still ripped through her body and she was certain she was going to die. But then slowly, like the sound of a far-off train approaching, the Machine returned. It was very faint at first, and remained so for a long time, but it was still there, and that was all that counted.
Her puppets had had a spell of freedom from her control: the little mother 'd had thoughts that could endanger the baby; the daughter had considered telling her brother, too early, about her grandmother in the woods; Steve Nailer had been feeling that everything was all right with his life; if she had allowed it to go on, everything she'd worked for could have been destroyed.
She needed the little mother to protect the baby-it was the most important part of the final ritual. And if the girl told her skeptic brother too soon about the gingerbread house and their grandmother, he might get suspicious. As for her lover Steve, if he felt that everything was okay, he wouldn't bring his boss Conally to her, and she needed him.
Something had to be done. The Machine was too weak, putting her at the verge of losing control over everything. She struggled to her knees, wincing at the pain of her scabbedover kneecaps ripping open. Summoning every ounce of strength, she pushed her power, her life energy itself, into the Machine to boost it and bring it back. After a few seconds of this extreme exertion, Eleanor collapsed in the mud like a deflated balloon. The effort had cost her several more hours of consciousness, but the Machine went on.
When she'd finally woke, it took her nearly an hour to struggle to her feet. Her entire left side felt rubbery and numb and wouldn't respond right away when she tried to move. When she finally managed to stand, she had to limp slowly through the woods back to Grimm Memorials.
Eleanor stared now at the children in the cage but didn't really see them; she was too busy worrying about that awful lapse of power. Never before had the Machine stopped running so completely. That it had, told Eleanor in the clearest terms possible she was living on borrowed time, because there was only one way the Machine could ever be truly silenced, and that was in death.
If I can hold on just a little longer, she prayed. She pushed herself away from the table and went to the wooden podium at the head of the pentagram on the floor. She ran her hand over the covering of the book that lay there and traced each dark letter of its title: The Demonolatria. It was in this book, which Edmund had brought home with him from college, that all the tenets of ancient ritual and worship she and Edmund had built their lives around were written. The cover and binding, Edmund had told her, were made of the cured skin of newborn babies and the contents were written in the ink of their blood. It was an ancient book, and according to Edmund, rivalled the secrets of the fabled Necronomicon itself.
Eleanor hadn't known or cared what he was talking about, it made no sense to her. But the book, the book was beautiful, and what it offered made beautiful sense the way Edmund explained it. It was a perfect way of life, the "ancient ways of the Wizards of Necromancy," as Edmund called it. It took her out of years of solitude, of living alone with her father, suffering his silent neglect and perverted abuse; spying on his crematorium liaisons with dead women until she had gone nearly mad. It wasn't until Edmund came back from eight years away first at boarding school, then the university-that she was finally freed of all that and able to enjoy her power again.
Eleanor opened the book to a page marked with an old velvet bookmark. Here were written the Rituals of Preparation leading up to the final Ritual of Samhain on the Harvest of Dead Souls, which would bring her the eternal life Edmund had been cheated out of.
That you cheated me out of. His voice rang through her head. She ignored him and bent over the book.
There were five Rituals of Preparation she had to complete before Halloween when she would perform the final and most important ritual. As she read over the page she counted off the ones that were completed: She had skinned and crucified an innocent according to the rites of the Black Mass; she had defiled herself with her familiar, Mephisto; and she had eaten the live flesh and brain of an innocent, offering its heart up to the dark gods. The fourth ritual-the sacrifice of a good man turned evil (Steve Nailer), accompanied by the death of six innocent bystanders, would be complete as soon as Steve brought his boss to her and served out his purpose in her plans. And as soon as she collected five more boys (for a total of thirteen) for the fifth ritual, and continued feeding them according to the ancient dietary laws, she would be ready to make the final sacrifice and attain immortality.
You'll never do it all. You're running out of time.
Eleanor didn't look up. She refused to acknowledge Edmund's words. She had no time to waste arguing with a figment of her guilty conscience. Closing the book reverently, she limped from the crematorium, up the stairs, and out to her car.
Near Old Deerfield Village, an historic community museum on the other side of the Connecticut River, Eleanor picked up the scent of a child's thoughts in the night. They were faint at first, and she couldn't pinpoint where they were coming from-another sign that the Machine was failing and her lease on borrowed time was running out. She knew the child was close, she could smell him, but his thoughts were like a weak, intermittent radio signal.
Eleanor shook her head and rubbed her temples in an effort to clear her head and hear better. Suddenly, the child's thoughts blasted in her head unintelligibly for a moment, then disappeared, leaving a dull headache behind. But in that moment she had been able to make out one word, Kansas, and it was enough to give her a direction. The child was just down the street.
El
eanor drove forward slowly, trying to pinpoint exactly which house the boy was in. The Machine was louder now, but it wasn't filtering out the dreams and thoughts of other people in the neighborhood as well as it should. They interfered with her concentration and, try as she might, she couldn't block them out. Several times she was certain that she was outside the right house, only to receive a confusing signal. Finally, she pulled over to try and rid her mind of all intrusions completely. Ironically, when she did, she found she was parked directly in front of the correct house.
Eleanor turned off the hearse's engine and sized up the place. It was a small white ranch house with a screened-in side porch at the left end. Through a large bay window on the right side, she could see the flickering light from a TV screen dancing on the walls. Though it was after midnight, that was where the thoughts were coming from; that was where the child was.
Summoning her concentration again, Eleanor began to pick bits and pieces of information from the boy's head, but it was difficult, slow work. What normally took minutes, now took a half hour to learn: his name was Jason Grakopolous, he was six years old, and he had never been sexually defiled. He was a true innocent. She also learned that he was an only child, not too bright, and that his parents spoiled him rotten.
Right now, he was up far beyond his bedtime, watching a movie on video tape that he had made his mother buy him. After his parents had gone to bed, he had sneaked into the living room to watch it.
Eleanor smiled with satisfaction as she saw, through his eyes, the film he was watching. Maybe the Machine isn't failing after all, she thought. On the TV screen was a wrecked house with a pair of striped stocking feet sticking out from under it. There were two figures, one a girl in pigtails, the other a woman wearing a tiara and a fluffy gown, standing on a yellow brick road. The woman in the gown was speaking to the girl:
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