"Maniacs."
Her punctured eyes were open and, somehow, still contained enough emotion to plead with me. I knelt and looked closely and saw teeth marks in them. She stared at me as if saying, Look what they've done. You conjure the dead. Do it now, and let me tell you an ugly story.
Who did this to her?
The mouths at Maymon's knees spit ribbons of blood, trying to speak.
Let's get out of here, Self urged. You know what the dogs and salt and wounds signify. This place is cursed and hell on witches.
I threw down my satchel.
Self crawled up my shirt and shook me by the collar. Witch-hunters! Look at her, for Christ's sake! You want to wind up like that? She was tortured and executed in the old fashions. Someone keeps alive that knowledge and skill. What will they do to you? And to me?
I had my own skills and knowledge that dated back to the pythoness of Endor raising the prophet Samuel for King Saul. Invocations were often a struggle, but sometimes they came easily—it depended on how much peace the dead found on the other side.
Self frowned and dove away from me. Seated in lotus position before the well, one palm flat on the cold slimy stone, I focused on the throbbing of my pulse, centering on my rhythm of life tide being tugged by the moon. The waves of energy pounded inside, slowly expanding to encompass her, like ocean shaping earth.
I realized I was speaking aloud, the words clear in the silence and echoing across the field. Soon my voice was joined by those of Maymon's knees, low and guttural. The well stone grew warm. I squinted, black motes of arcana rising from my wrists, mouth and eyes. The stone soon became too hot to touch. Salt drifted from the field like iron filings dragged away by a magnet; the exorcism snapped to pieces.
Water steamed and began to boil, the woman cooking in her own stew of agony. Her body turned and tumbled, whirling hideously as the water became more agitated, kicking and flailing until—with one vicious shrug—it suddenly bobbed upright. Maymon yeeped and Self cursed me.
Her head gradually fell back as if to howl. Mangled breasts sluggishly rose with a slow but desperate gasping for air. With as much hatred as I'd ever heard, she let out a shriek, something high and inhuman that took me a moment to recognize as my own name.
Clawing, her maimed hands sought the well's edge. Long thick hair fell in a black curtain over that torn face. She scratched without fingernails at the stone. Maymon chattered and giggled, hopping from foot to foot, faces smiling. The witch slowly hauled herself out over the rim, gagging and moaning, and flopped into the weeds like a gutted fish.
"Who did this to you?" I asked.
"You!" she screeched, chewing her hair. "You!"
That was to be expected. The irony of necromancy was inherent in the art—returning the dead to a life they no longer wanted and couldn't completely have. But if the fire of an awful rage hadn't still burned she wouldn't have answered.
The witch dragged herself forward.
Maymon kept back, holding hands with Self and clearly understand this wasn't entirely its mistress anymore. Self shot me an angry look, pulled Maymon down low in the weeds, and watched.
My god, her face.
"What's your name?"
She touched my leg, smiling uncertainly. They'd taken most of her teeth. "I'm Rachel Grantham. Help me."
"It's too late. I'm doing what I can."
Her hand moved up my leg and she began crawling into my arms. "Your coven must stop them."
I didn't know how to touch her, or if I should. "I have no coven."
Finally, her wet and mutilated body against mine, I pulled Rachel across my lap and held her. She sighed and moaned, blindly reaching out to touch my face but not finding it. "A solitary then, like me. They will destroy you, too. Leave here!"
"Who did this to you?"
"Panecraft," she said breathlessly. "Hopkins. The witch-killer. Don't let him get you."
Maymon went insane, sharp beaks snapping shut, talons extended. He broke free from Self and danced around us wildly, knees mumbling. Self said, Hopkins returned?
A reincarnate?
Matthew Hopkins: England's Witch-Finder General who condemned 230 alleged witches, more than all the other witch-hunters combined. To gain confessions he beat, started and favored "walking" his victims back and forth in their cells until their feet blistered. He enjoyed the "swimming" method of proving someone a witch—binding his victims and throwing them in a pond; if they floated, they were guilty. If drowned, they were innocent. In 1649 a Puritan minister published a pamphlet hinting Hopkins was a witch himself. In that age of hysteria it proved enough for Hopkins to be "swum" in Mistley Pond. When he floated, he was hanged, a victim of the same whirlwind of madness he helped to reap.
"Who's Panecraft?" I asked.
Rachel Grantham slackened in my arms. I took her maimed hand and pressed it to my cheek. She smiled at me again and my stomach turned. She said, "You must help my sister, Sarah. To her I bequeath my Maymon. She'll need your help."
"Don't do it to her."
"I want revenge."
"I know. I'll get it for you. But leave your sister free from all this. Is she a witch?"
"No, but she's of the blood. My pretty Maymon should stay in our blood."
"She won't be ready. Don't do it."
"I must."
Coming closer, talon outstretched, Mammon-spawn ducked its twin-bird heads, crying again, and huddled between Rachel's torn breasts. His knees wept and whimpered, all four heads kissing her. She whispered a command, and Maymon jumped up and ran down the path of dead dogs, heading for his new mistress.
Don't let him leave yet, I ordered Self.
Too late, he's already gone. Coiling around my arm, he leaned over and tentatively licked her pulped feet, tasting torture. She's deliberately being vague.
Not much of her has been left on Earth. I asked, "Who's Hopkins? Where can I find him?"
"Panecraft."
And what was that? The prison I'd read in the shadows?
"Give me more information, Rachel. How long have you been missing?"
"Too long," she whispered, staring in the wrong direction. "Abducted weeks ago. Take me back home."
"I can't."
Her bitten eyes widened. "Don't leave me here alone. Please."
"I have to. The police will already be suspicious of strangers. I won't be able to explain anything about your condition or how I found you. I'll alert them later. Maymon will visit with you."
"No, god no," she sobbed, pleading and grasping my hand. "Please, let me go home . . . ." She pressed her lips to my palm. Self said, Watch it, fearing the vampirism that strikes some of the undead.
"It's all right, Rachel." I touched her forehead the way you do a feverish child. "Go back now. You're safe. No one else can hurt you."
Exactly like dying, the unbinding spell proved too easy; her soul fled in such a rush that the smashed doll that had once been a woman dropped out of my lap into the weeds. Still at unrest, I could feel that her soul didn't go far.
Vengeance? Self asked hopefully. He skittered over the rim of the stone and drank stew from the well, his hunger sated for the moment.
"Vengeance," I said.
I camped a mile outside town and slept until dawn. The migraine that accompanied necromancy kept me down another two hours. It was nearly nine in the morning by the time I made Summerfell. A short strip of main street contained a fountain in the square, statue of a local revolutionary war hero, and the usual cannon. A lot of people were out mowing their lawns, which looked pretty trimmed to begin with. Verandahs, porches and gazebos were in abundance. These people liked to sit among themselves outdoors. A lot of well-kept gardens and white picket fences. I even saw a couple of women with parasols. We walked for a while. No dogs.
Time check, Self said. We drift back seventy years?
Someone's drifted a few centuries more than that to keep the ancient devices handy. Where's Maymon?
Church bells pounded out the hour.
Families walked over for mass. He sniffed and pointed.
I stepped up the church steps and Self gave a shudder. I hate this place.
I know.
Too damn drafty. He scrambled down my thigh and hopped inside, nimbly avoiding the congregation as people filed in past us, greeting each other with good mornings and God blesses. An obvious stranger in my jeans, T-shirt and traveling satchel, I thought I might get a cold welcome, but the priest standing at the door shook my hand as I entered. Self loved churches and started looking up ladies' skirts, and I slapped him in the head, directing him down the aisle.
Four millionth spawn of a duke of Hell, Maymon hovered above the altar and eventually settled before a woman I took to be Sarah Grantham. Bird-heads quietly squawking, four tongues occasionally unfurling, he tried to make contact with her.
Can we break this inheritance? I asked.
No.
There's got to be a way.
Maybe, but you have no right.
I more or less shoved my way into the crowded pew two rows behind Sarah Grantham so I could keep watch on her. She was perhaps twenty, with hair pulled into one of those oddly-knotted ponytails that gave her an adolescent appearance until I saw the cast of her features. Natural, dark and lovely. Large almond eyes immediately drew my attention—expressive, slightly hard, perhaps even bitter. A single dimple to the left of her mouth, a splash of caramel-colored freckles across the forehead. If Rachel had looked anything like her sister then the witch-hunter had done an even more awful job on her than I'd thought.
She sat between an older couple I took to be her parents, each holding one of her hands. It was an uncommon sign of affection to see nowadays. Her father appeared to be a stereotypical accountant-type: thin, short, thick lenses. Distinguished pure silver hair worn conservatively close to his scalp, his starched collar creased his throat, speckled with dried blood from bad shaving cuts. A smile had been soldered weakly in place. Behind his glasses his gaze had the bleak flatness of someone who is a fraction of an instant from fainting.
Her mother was a petite woman with thick muscles in her neck that seemed almost like goiters; back straight, she sternly faced forward looking at nothing, the kind of woman who could put everything in a compartmentalized place at the back of her mind. Secondary death wafted from her; I wouldn't be surprised if she was a nurse in an ER or AIDS hospice.
The priest welcomed everyone and began a rather well thought-out sermon on faith and patience, obviously designed for the Granthams; he spoke with a friendly timbre I wished any priest in the church of my childhood had possessed. "A reading from the twenty-seventh Psalm. 'Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.'" Self sat with his legs crossed, chin on his fist in Thinker's pose, interested and occasionally nodding.
Maymon reached over and plucked at Sarah's shoulder, and I knew we were all about to drop into a different kind of well.
She frowned and brushed a hand over her arm. He did it again. She wheeled in the pew and stared at the elderly couple sitting behind her. She whispered, "Yes?" The couple blinked at her and leaned forward uncomfortably, and she turned around.
Shifting now, Maymon's twin bird-faces peered directly into her eyes and she shook her head. Inheriting her sister's familiar, Sarah finally saw something. Frantic, she drew her breath ready to scream and Maymon sucked out the air. He moved forward, gibbering and tweeting, knees leaking green ichor.
I said, I can't just watch this.
Not much you can really do. Listen to this priest, he knows his stuff.
A geotic passage from the Lesser Key of Solomon came to mind. I flicked a hex straight into Maymon's beaks and he fell over backwards. The teeth in his knees cracked together loudly. Sarah fought her way out of the pew past her father but tripped on the kneeling rail, flopped and hit the marble tile floor hard. Her jaws clacked together painfully in the same way. Damn it, a sign they were already connected. I vaulted the pew in front and rushed into the aisle. Her nose was bleeding and she stuck her hand out blindly for me, just as her sister had.
"Shhh, it's okay," I said.
Her parents and the priest rant o her side, her father saying, "Give her air." I made a grab at Maymon but he flew into the high rafters, becoming more complete. Four sets of eyes had an intelligent spark to them now. I backed out the church door, knowing that before this was all over Sarah would be damning her sister to the ugliest corner of Hell.
Norman Rockwell prints lived on among the yellowing photographs and newspaper clippings on the walls of the Summerfell luncheonette. Too many different types of freshly-picked flowers on the tables gave the place a sweetly noxious atmosphere. The teenage waitress' nametag read MARGO, and I wondered if she'd been Ronko's owner. She had a huge smile forever caught saying "cheese." Self mimicked her, showing off every fang. I ordered something called a Joyful Morning omelet.
I asked for a paper and she brought me the Summerfell Gazette. It was seven pages long and made no mention of Rachel Grantham. A small article spoke dispassionately about a few missing dogs. News consisted of a weekend jamboree, craft show, and pie eating contest. Things would change by tomorrow. When the food came I ate in silence; I wondered who, in a town like this, might have initiated Rachel into the witching way. How many others might be out there being hunted and executed?
I wandered the luncheonette inspecting the photographs, searching the faces of railway men, lumberjacks, marathon dancers, and downhill skiers for some telltale sign of sorcery. Or an insane hatred and talent for torture. Which of them might have a set of thumbscrews hidden under the bed?
Margo asked, "Can I get you anything else?"
"No, thanks," I said.
"I'll be back in a sec with your check."
"Hold on, I've got a question. Do you know a man named Hopkins?"
"Hopkins? No, I don't think so."
"Or Panecraft?"
She frowned but somehow managed to keep up the smile. "Panecraft isn't a man, mister. It's a hospital down the old route twenty-nine outside of town. Got one of the largest bughouse psychiatric wards in the state."
So, I thought.
Bars on the window.
An asylum
Pandemonium.
Bedlam.
Panecraft Hospital rose from the desolate hills six miles outside of town like an ancient, lonely obelisk waiting for long-dead cults to return with sacrifice. Thousands of patients had once been housed behind the leveled rows of cube windows. Five buildings were interconnected by a series of atriums, opening back into a number of promontories that sank towards a cherry orchard. I'd looked through the phone book and found the Grantham address. No Hopkins listed. I'd watched the hospital all day, listening to the spectral sounds of the past playing through the back of my mind, and noticing how the wreathed shadows of the complex cut into the skyline and down alongside the moon. The scent of cherries moved heavily through the breeze. I could feel the haunted shells of tens of thousands of the mad men and women who once dwelled there, curled under their mattresses. Holding onto their broken dolls, rags, and bedpans, all their fetishes. Insanity was as near to being tangible as it could be.
I'm coming, witch-killer.
One of the few dogs left alive in Summerfell howled in the rain, scratching at a chain-link fence as I walked by. The fence had saved him. Thunder brought him up on his hind legs in a grotesque dance. Drenched, I made my way back across the empty streets to seventy-six Prairie Court, the Grantham house—a sprawling home with a large wraparound porch, dormers, trellises packed alive with roses. A loveseat swung back and forth beside the front screen door, which trembled as if hands snapped at the latch. Searing flashes of sheet lightning shredded the dark, thunder rumbling almost continuously. Maymon's twin bird-heads were brightly illuminated in one of the windows.
C'mon.
You're making me repeat myself now, Self said. It's her inheritance. You've no right to interfere.
He was taking it p
ersonally, as if I were out to harm kind and friendly demonic familiars everywhere. He skittered over my shoulders, hissing Assyrian charms in my ear. Calming tactics.
I did have a right; I was responsible for Rachel Grantham's momentary resurrection, allowing her to voice a last, desperate testament that would bring horror to her sister. Deceased Rachel had only cared about Maymon and the bloodline. The dead always care so much for running blood.
Slashing rain blinded me as I climbed the trellis. It was tough getting a handhold among the twining, thorny stems. Self pawed my hair out of my eyes. At the top of the trellis I had to brace myself in a crouch and swing up on top of the porch. Even with the thunder my landing sounded exceptionally loud to me. Slick shingles made it hazardous crossing the roof to the correct dormer. The gutters roiled with leaves and bubbling water. When I got to Sarah's window I held my hand against the pulsing rain on the glass. Maymon sat on her headboard, innocently enough, infecting her dreams.
Sarah rolled in her sleep, rocking, twisting the sheets in her clenched hands, nails slicing in deep and ripping. Her nightgown had ridden up past her belly, exposing the pale flesh of her legs and thighs, the scratches and sweaty matted hair between her legs as if some self-rape were in progress. I opened the window as quietly as possible but she immediately sat up in bed. She looked around the room for a moment before finding me dripping on the floor. Maymon slipped down from the headboard until he was hugging her neck and pecking at her ear. She didn't notice.
A step at a time, trying not to frighten her even more, I moved across the room. Embers of arcana glowed in her eyes. "The music," she said. "Noises. All these strange words, like insects crawling . . . ."
"Sarah, listen to me."
"I see you, I've seen you."
Maymon's knees had taken over the characteristics of Sarah's features—definitely female cast to them now, with the same splash of freckles on their foreheads. There was a lot of Rachel left in them as well. I grabbed the Mammon-spawn and lifted him, inspecting the faces. They sputtered at me. I said, "Rachel? Are you still here?" It shouldn't have been like this. I'd done something wrong. "Release your sister."
Pentacle - A Self Collection Page 9