by John Everson
Did she enjoy it at all? he wondered again. Not like you think, she’d said when he asked if it had been hard for her to accept him. What did that mean?
That she did find him attractive and the demon hiding out in Terrel’s Peak had only helped her fulfill a hidden desire? Or that when it took over her mind, she could pretty much fuck a troll and manage to get a kick out of it?
Joe shook his head, trying to knock these thoughts away. Best not to think about it. Chewing on something without asking questions never brought answers, he’d found. However, chewing on something and searching for answers…
This was a perfect opportunity for a little investigative reporting, he realized. Joe stood up and walked to the dresser. It was an old, narrow piece, probably handed down from someone’s grandmother. If it hadn’t had so many nicks and scratches across its face, it probably would have qualified as a valuable antique. The surface was strewn with the usual litter of feminine jewelry and trinkets. Angelica’s pieces were more gaudy than most, he noted, staring at the mess of rhinestone-studded bracelets and twinkling beads of iridescent plastic that hung from a hook on a small wooden jewelry box at one corner. He supposed her profession demanded a certain lack of conventional taste when it came to accessorizing.
A statuette of the Virgin Mary peeked out from behind a stack of what looked to be bills. He thumbed through the stack. She owed the electric company $67.52. She bought underwear from the Victoria’s Secret catalogue. He grinned. He had yet to see evidence that she wore underwear. She owed Visa $453.
At the back of the stack was a yellow bit of legal paper, folded in half and then folded again. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, and then opened it.
Bernadette was scrawled in the center of the paper in blue felt-tip marker. June 28th, 8 p.m. was written below it. And then, at the bottom of the sheet, two words: No excuses.
Joe glanced at his watch. It was eight fifteen. And today was the twenty-eighth.
She’d known they were coming. That’s why she’d looked out the window repeatedly. But what did they want?
He suddenly knew who the voices belonged to. The letter had said Bernadette. There was only one Bernadette who he’d ever heard of, besides the saint. And she had lived and drowned in Terrel two decades before. In the company of Angelica. And four other women: Rhonda Canady, Karen Sander, Monica Kelly and Melody O’Grady. He’d bet a Buick that this was the roster of the group in the living room right now. The only one missing would be, of course, Bernadette.
Joe refolded the paper, replaced it at the back of the pile of bills. He wanted to take a walk into the living room now more than ever. Stroll through casually, nod his head at the assemblage and say, “Hi, ladies. Any word from our pal in the cliff lately?”
What if they said yes?
He shook the thought away and tried the dresser drawers.
She did actually wear underwear. At least that’s what he took the silky, lacy panties in the top left drawer to mean. On a hunch, he pulled at the waistband of the black and electric blue pair on top. A Victoria’s Secret tag was woven into the elastic.
So…one bill accounted for. Sum easily paid. But what price did the Bernadette bill carry?
In another drawer, he found the garish costume blouses and robes of her profession. And in another, blue jeans. It was in the center cabinet that he found what he hadn’t realized he’d been looking for. The door allowed access to three tightly set drawers. Stacked in the top one were rows of small bottles and vials—more tricks of the woman’s trade—a pile of perfumes and cosmetics. But in the center drawer was a book. A leather scrapbook that he’d seen before. The book which held the newspaper clippings she’d shown him the night she’d seduced him.
At that moment, it occurred to him that it might not have been Angelica at all who had decided to let him read the clippings in the scrapbook. The monster that had apparently possessed her had volunteered that information. It had given him a piece of the puzzle, lured him deeper into its mystery.
Why?
Shouldn’t it have instead tried to protect its history? Or did it want him to know more?
The thought made him shiver. How did he fit into its plan? It had used him once, unbeknownst to him at the time. And it had spoken to him in the depths of the mountain, promising a future meeting. Suddenly Angelica’s plan for him to leave town sounded like a good, not lunatic idea.
He set the book on the deep blue bedspread and opened the cover. He paged through the opening pages, which were a collage of diary entries, photos of the cliff from various vantage points, and newspaper clippings. On the first page, in loopy, blue ballpoint handwriting that reminded Joe of notes passed in first-period algebra class, Angelica had begun a diary of sorts. The girlish script read:
June 30, 1981: I don’t know what will happen to this book, but I feel like I should write something. It’s been over a month since Bernadette died, and I wish I could say that the memory is fading. But it’s not. Every night I hear His voice in my head. Every night I feel that heat in my belly, that special feeling He gave us in the cavern. Sometimes I cry and it goes away. And sometimes, it makes me sick to admit…sometimes, I love it.
Just then, the author of the diary screamed from the other end of the house.
“Nooooooo,” Angelica yelled.
Joe slammed the book shut and stood up. He hesitated at the door, waiting for a sign. The cry had sounded desperate, but should he go? What if she was just yelling at the other women and he barged out and ruined things for her? His presence could conceivably damage her standing with the group. None of the other women had given him, the newspaper snoop, any real information. If he burst out of Angelica’s bedroom to surprise the meeting…
He leaned into the door, listening for any clue as to the state of things in the living room. The talk had dropped again to a murmur, and then he heard the front screen door slam. He ran to the bedroom window, slowly lifting the shade just in time to see the back door of a van close. Two dark figures opened the driver and passenger doors, respectively, and climbed in. Then the vehicle roared to life and peeled out of the driveway.
Joe dropped the shade and ran back to the bedroom door. He eased it open quietly.
He crept down the short hallway, careful not to disturb a creaking board to alert anyone left behind to his presence. But when he peeked around the corner of the living room, he saw that the room was empty.
And Angelica was gone.
Shit. He should have moved faster. Her cry was one of danger. And she’d paid for his caution.
Now what?
Joe surveyed the room while he thought. There was no sign that anyone had been here. A steel pole lamp gave off a yellow glow between the two cushioned chairs on one side of the room. A copy of TV Guide lay open on one. Angelica may have just stepped into the other room for a beer, by the looks of things. But Joe knew better.
They already had too much of a lead for him to catch up, unless he knew where they were headed. He hesitated, looking at the front door. Should he try to follow? He knew what direction they’d gone, at least.
No.
Now was an opportunity for uninterrupted research. He could look at source material here that Angelica might not ever volunteer. If he was able to find her. He walked back to the bedroom. Worry for her nagged at his gut, but he was not going to run off after her half-cocked. He might find more answers here that would help him in his search.
Instinct kicked in and stilled the gnawing ache in his belly; he continued his search of her dresser where he’d left off. But the rest of her drawers offered nothing more than old underwear and T-shirts.
Her jewelry case did offer one item of interest—the necklace she’d been wearing the night he’d spent with her in this very room. He wouldn’t easily forget it; it was the only thing she’d had on most of the night, and the erotic twining of the two horned figures that made up its pendant had bounced against his chin and chest—sometimes painfully so—as she’d ridden him. T
win silver figures, joined at the hips and sprouting wicked grins and antlers. Or devil’s horns. He lifted the pendant on its leather thong and slipped it into his pants pocket.
Then he picked up the leather scrapbook and decided it was time to make his own exit before the women decided to return.
CHAPTER TEN
Angelica had prayed that this day would never come. But as she hustled Joe into her bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him, she knew she was shutting that door on him, and on the rest of her life—forever.
He was calling the circle together again.
He wanted her daughter. The last of the children.
And she couldn’t deliver.
When she’d given the child up for adoption, she knew that someday her own life might stand ransom for that of the child’s. But she didn’t care. She wasn’t weak like the others. She didn’t cling to life and pleasure so strongly that she would give up her firstborn to the vampiric demon of the mountain.
They pounded on the door.
She couldn’t even try to run. Where would she go? There was only one way out of town, and she’d tried that before. She would only end up naked and rutting with God knows what by the end. No, this time she had to face them. Face the anger of their betrayal. She had negated the bargain and He was calling for payment due.
“Open up,” echoed the shrill voice of her childhood friend, Rhonda. A friend no more.
Angelica walked slowly to the door, every step a point of no return. Her heart pounded in desperate fear. Don’t open it!
But she really had no choice. She felt Him grinning in the back of her brain. He’d let the women do His dirty work, but if they failed, He was ready. She’d rather suffer their punishment than His.
She turned the knob, and a bloated, piggish face greeted her with a steely smile of success. Rhonda Canady pushed her way into the room, and Karen and Monica followed. The circle was as complete as it could be. Melody O’Grady wouldn’t be joining them.
Couldn’t.
After her son Bob’s death, after carrying out her part in the bargain, Melody had begun to paint on the walls of her house. Some thought the resulting mural was genius. There had been photographers and psychiatrists and art critics all at once stepping back and forth across the floor of the O’Grady living room. She’d made the national magazines.
But the fame came after they’d committed Melody. After they’d given her transfusions to replace the blood she’d used as pigment.
Her husband had come home to find the garishly realistic bloody shades of hell tattooed on the wall behind his television set. Melody’s demons, all teeth and decay, looked deadly. The fires they danced in, scorching. And on each and every one of the disemboweled children she had depicted the finely etched nose and features of Bob. His open lips screamed silent, bloody accusation from every corner of the room where Melody lost her mind.
“Are you ready?” Rhonda spit out, once the three were inside. “I know you got my note. It’s time for you to keep your part. We’ve waited for years. We’ve been patient. But He won’t let us leave you alone anymore. Where is your daughter? Where have you hidden Andi?”
Angelica stepped back from the other women, retreating into the living room. She’d spent twenty-plus years hiding from this day. And she still wasn’t ready to face it.
“No,” she said simply, and sat down on the couch, her back to her former friends.
“We have all kept our part of the promise,” Karen’s voice reminded her. She was quiet, but undeniably firm. “You’ve used your gift more than any of us. And paid nothing.”
“I won’t keep a promise with the devil,” Angelica insisted.
This time it was Monica who answered. Her voice cut the air like a telephone ring. “You won’t have much choice.”
She began to laugh. “Actually, I have a lot of choice,” Angelica said. “I don’t know where she is. I can’t turn her over to you because I have absolutely no fucking idea where she is. So get the hell out of my house and leave me alone.”
She screamed the last, but her anger met deaf ears. Rhonda, Monica and Karen stood stock-still in the middle of the room, staring at her blankly. As if they were listening to something else.
“Did you hear that, you fucking monster?” Angelica screamed at the women, though she wasn’t actually talking to them. “I don’t know where she is. So leave me alone.”
Karen Sander’s eyes suddenly focused. A slight, pained smile crossed her lips. “How could a mother not know where her child has gone?”
“Because when I gave her up for adoption, I gave her up. I never inquired about where she was taken. I didn’t want to know, for just this reason.”
“A mother could find a way to know,” Karen said slowly, as if the idea took time to brew. Her face twisted into a devilish show of teeth. “Could trace her. Very simply. Go to the adoption agency. Give your name. Give hers. They’ll find her. I’ve seen it on Geraldo.”
Her teeth gleamed wide in triumph.
“Could,” Angelica said. “But won’t.”
“Rachel,” Monica squeaked, and then came around to sit by her old friend.
Angelica shook her head. “My name is Angelica now. I gave all of this up. I changed my name, gave away my daughter…I want nothing to do with any of this. I started a new life.”
“You can call yourself whatever you like,” Karen said, pushing a stubborn wisp of gray from her cheek. “But it won’t make any difference. Whatever you call yourself, He knows where you are, and He made a bargain with you. Your second sight, your fortune-telling, for the life of your firstborn.”
Monica put her arm around Angelica’s shoulders. “Do you think we wanted to do this? Do you think He let us have a choice? Our choice has been gone since the day Bernadette died. Your choice was gone long before you gave up your old self and became ‘Angelica.’ You sealed the bargain when you used the gift He gave you. But we could finally end this thing. Once you turn over Andi, the bargain is complete. The promise is over. We can all, finally, rest.”
“Her name isn’t Andi,” Angelica said. “There was no name on her birth certificate. I wouldn’t give her one. I only told you that name to make you feel safer—I knew you might try to find her someday. And we’ll never rest,” Angelica murmured. “That much I can tell you for certain. My gift, you know. Seeing.”
“Don’t make us do this,” Karen said, again, soft. And cold.
“I won’t find her for you.”
“Then you’ll stand in her place.”
Hands gripped Angelica’s arms and feet, and she let out one long “Nooooo” before a towel was stuffed into her mouth. She shook and kicked, but the women’s fingers only dug deeper into her flesh. They carried her out of the front door and down the dark driveway to Rhonda’s van.
As they dropped her on the floor of the backseat, a familiar caress moved down the back of her neck beneath the skin. The soft fingers of a lover.
“It will be so nice to see you again, my dear. I’m looking forward to it.”
And then, deep inside her mind, He laughed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Cindy felt Him touching her thoughts and smiled. It was a light feather on her brain, a stroking that tickled her teeth and warmed her from collar to crotch. She shivered in pleasure.
He’d become so much a part of her these last few weeks that she didn’t know what she’d done in the past, when her head had only held her own tired thoughts. His soothing touch had smoothed away her sadness over James; in fact, in a way, His touch was James’ touch because James was a part of Him now. In that sense, she was closer to her late boyfriend than she’d ever been before. Maybe Joe’s wish for her that night on the gazebo had come true! Sometimes at night, as she sat on the cliff staring over the edge at the rock-strewn surf below, she could close her eyes and feel James stroking her hair, touching her inside and out. It made her consider joining him. Jumping…to freedom.
But in her mind, a voice alway
s convinced her to stay earthbound for now.
“Not yet,” He would tell her. “I may need you on the side of the living soon.”
She would edge back from the drop-off when He said things like that, and lie back on the wind-and rain-polished rock to stare up at the stars. The ocean breeze massaged her like a lover, and it occurred to her that she’d never felt so happy to be alive. Not only did she have a secret protector, a soul friend in her head, but she had an older man who showed undeniable interest in her. Not that she hadn’t inspired a glance or two from men in the past, but this one was just so…so cuddly-cute. She smiled as she thought of his reaction to her French bikini. It was nothing she would ever have dared wear at a normal public beach. But she’d known that Joe would likely be the only one to see her in it on the beach near Terrel’s Peak. Almost nobody ever swam there, despite a good stretch of clean sand. History spoke too loudly.
In the past, she’d always scoffed at the fear that kept people away. Now she knew they were right to be afraid. But she also knew that the source of their fear wouldn’t hurt her. Hell, the fuckin’ monster of Terrel’s Peak was currently her boyfriend.
Beat that, Jill Cheerleader. She smiled and rolled away from the edge of the deadly drop. It was almost time to go home.
Joe tossed Angelica’s diary/scrapbook into the backseat of his car, and pulled away from the house. His headlights skimmed the dilapidated front of the house and then rested on the READINGS BY ANGELICA sign as he backed out.
He was torn.
Should he try to find where Angelica had been taken, or head home to read her book before she returned—if she did—and realized he’d stolen it? Could he even hope to find where they’d gone? And could he learn something by finding them? He could go house to house looking for a van, listening at windows, hoping to find out why Bernadette’s name was resurrected here, now. Why it still held power after twenty-five years. Why Angelica had screamed Nooooo and left without a good-bye. Had they tied her up to take her away, or had she, in the end, gone willingly?