Coven

by David Barnett

  Lights blared outside. Everything Jervis had heard cleared from his mind. Wilhelm’s white van pulled into the lot.

  The truth had arrived. Jervis’ heart skittered. He smoked down the rest of his Carlton and waited. A minute, or an oblivion, later, Sarah’s window came alight. Jervis pressed his eye to the telescope.

  They walked in clear as day. Sarah picked up the cat, named Frid, and cuddled it. Wilhelm was dressed in brown Euromod yuppie shit. His cropped blond head was equally plain, his broad neck, his sturdy arms and legs. He took a beer out of the fridge, a Kirin from a six pack Jervis had forgotten to reclaim after the breakup.

  “Scheiss!” Wilhelm exclaimed. “Das bier?

  “Oh, it’s something Jervis left,” Sarah apologized. “I forgot it was in there.”

  Wilhelm put the rest of the six pack in the trash.

  Next they were kissing. Wilhelm grabbed Frid by some scruff and lobbed the animal aside. As they embraced, Sarah’s hand went unhesitantly up the crack of Wilhelm’s ass, while his hand, frightfully larger, plowed down her pants front.

  Wilhelm was pulling her toward the couch. Sarah was tee-heeing, feigning reluctance. Wilhelm peeled off his jacket and shirt. Then he peeled off all her clothes as impassively as skinning a piece of fruit. Jervis quailed.

  Wilhelm had an upper torso like a Mr. Olympia contestant. He wore black briefs which bulged, and the size of the bulge was terrifying to contemplate. Sarah was rubbing against him, moaning. Frid watched from atop the end table, eyes wide as opals. Jervis felt corpse still as he peered on.

  What happened after that seemed devil inspired, a mocking one act sex play that somehow knew Jervis was in attendance. This was the girl he loved more than anything on earth, giving herself aplomb to this egotistical German muscle-rack.

  In a trance of sadness, Jervis continued to watch as Sarah lay back on the couch. Wilhelm stood feet apart, legs like corded, sculpted wood. He hauled down the tight briefs. Sarah’s eyes widened as Wilhelm posed for her appraisal. “Oh, Willy, it’s huge!”

  “No,” Jervis pleaded. “Please, God. Don’t let me see this.”

  Sarah leaned forward, lust glowing off her face. All Jervis could see was Wilhelm’s ass and Sarah’s hands kneading the muscled glutes. He could hear the awful sound of what she was doing to him. Lewd, wet smacking. Muffled sounds of delight. Thanks, God, Jervis thought. Thanks a heap.

  He began to cry.

  Soon Sarah finished with the oral warm up. She lay back again, woozy with lust, shiny around the mouth. “Willy! It’s just so big!”

  “Mein stander? Ja? Das gute.” He turned to let her look at it again, offering a full side shot, which unfortunately offered a full side shot for Jervis too.

  “My God,” Jervis uttered. “My God.” Then tears slipped off his cheeks as he continued to stare. Wilhelm pushed open Sarah’s legs and mounted her.

  He teased her navel with the gorged glans, slapped her stomach with it five or six times. Then he drew it down…

  Jervis felt hairs standing out on his neck. This guy’s bigger than a rolling pin, he thought. Where’s he going to put all that?

  Then he shuddered. Wilhelm proceeded as if on cue. He sunk it all into her at once, one quick stroke to the hilt. Bam! Sarah went momentarily rigid, then wrapped her legs around his herculean back, riding the sudden, relentless movement. Hot, delighted girl squeals shrilled from Jervis’ receiver; his eye pressed harder to the eyepiece.

  Wilhelm went on for more than a half hour. Sarah maintained her excitement with equal vitality. Her orgasms were obvious: multiple vibrating shrieks, legs tensing each time she went.

  Eventually Wilhelm withdrew. He grunted like a fearless knight having just shorn down an enemy, and ejaculated all over Sarah in dolphin spurts of seed. When he finished, her breasts, stomach, and thighs shined as if shellacked.

  Jervis was falling apart, his eye welded to the telescope. Wilhelm got up and walked briefly out of view. Sarah lay worn and shining on the couch, blissfully spent. Her pink sex gaped. A moment later Wilhelm reappeared, holding a blue garment of some kind.

  “Please, God,” Jervis quavered. “No, God. No.”

  What hung from Wilhelm’s hand was a blue dress shirt, just your average Christian Dior, about thirty bucks at any men’s shop. But this shirt in particular was one of Jervis’, one he’d left in Sarah’s closet. He’d left it there on purpose, hoping it would remind her of him in the future. The shirt was allegorical, a psychic remnant. It was the last part of him in her living space and, hence, her life.

  Wilhelm put the shirt to immediate use, guttering evil laughter. He very efficiently wiped his semen off her breasts, abdomen, and thighs. “I wish Jervis could see this!” Sarah bubbled. Then Wilhelm wiped his cock off as well and stuffed the shirt into the garbage.

  Satisfied? he asked himself. Any English major would appreciate the obvious existential symbols here. It wasn’t just a shirt Wilhelm had wiped his cock off with, it was Jervis. The shirt was Jervis.

  To end the scene, Frid hopped onto Sarah’s belly, purring. The blasted animal looked directly into the telescope…and smiled.

  Jervis collapsed.

  He lay there for quite a while. The telescopic scene remained in his mind like a lit ghost. Sometime later he crawled to the wastebasket and threw up. It was a violent, clenching emesis. He’d emptied himself as much from his heart as from his stomach.

  He’d wanted the truth and he’d gotten it. Only one thing left, he thought. Dead love’s final flight.

  The idea had a sweetness now, like a song, like a nocturne.

  You don’t have the guts, his mind told him.

  “Yes, I do,” Jervis answered the dark. “Watch me...”

  He got up and lit what he presumed would be his last cigarette. He smoked deep. He let the room stay dark, for it should be that way for this. Yes, dark. Sweet, sweet dark.

  He pulled the Webley out of the sock drawer. It was cold and heavy. It was big. His grandfather had given it to him on his deathbed. “A young man needs a good pistol,” he’d said, death already tinting his face. The Webley was a unique automatic revolver, British made. Jervis cocked it, inspired by its heavy, steel click. He was proud of his lack of reluctance.

  I love you, Sarah, he thought. He put the big machined barrel to his head. I still love you. With all…my…heart.

  Jervis squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell shut.

  And nothing happened.

  “Fuck me!” he shouted. He flipped open the Webley. The cylinder was empty. He rummaged through the sock drawer for his box of .455s, but it wasn’t there. Someone had taken it.

  He heard mad laughter in his head, a noise like a flock of grackles. Poor Jervis just couldn’t win. Consciousness heaved up and out, and he collapsed to the carpet like an empty suit of clothes.

  ««—»»

  Wade felt skittish driving her home. How could he sum up an evening like this? Their discussion at the tavern had been very weird, but the kookiest part of all was what had followed at North Administration, where, for two hours, Wade had played apprentice evidence tech. Helping a police officer fingerprint a crime scene was one thing he couldn’t ever recall doing on a date before.

  He’d held lights for her as she Polaroided the entire clinic office, and the door, the door frame, and lock. She’d spent considerable time using extreme light angles to locate major latent areas. It amused Wade the way she softly talked to herself as she worked. She’d “dusted,” “taped,” “fumed,” or “snapped” anything of interest. Wade was particularly impressed by her ability to raise prints on the manila file folders and the squashed door knob.

  He didn’t tell her about the beer cap.

  Lydia lived in an apartment complex just out of town. She seemed played out, pleasantly bequieted as Wade drove on. The breeze through the open t top played with her hair.

  This night of contradictions was still flourishing. Wade grew jittery as they approached the apartments. He wondered what she
thought of him, really. She seemed to like him, she seemed comfortable around him, she seemed to… That was the problem. There was too much about her that seemed. She was indecipherable. He wondered if he’d even get a good night kiss.

  That idea dizzied him. Just a kiss, just one…

  “I’ll make it up to you,” she said. She sort of laughed. “Being dragged to a crime scene probably isn’t what you had in mind for a date.”

  “Oh, it was…interesting,” he said.

  “What I mean is I’d like to see you again.”

  Wade almost lost the wheel. “You would? I mean, great.”

  “I liked talking to you. I’m sorry I misjudged you. And I really liked the Old Nick.” She pointed. “Here’s my building.”

  Wade parked. She was smiling when they got out. Crickets chirruped, and tall bushy pine trees stood by the entrance. She stopped and turned around.

  Wade tried to sound casual. “Hey, I really had a good—”

  She came right up to him and kissed him. One second he was standing there, trying to act in control, and the next second she had her arms around his waist and she was kissing him. It was a wondrous kiss, which seemed an absurd way to describe a kiss, but nothing else fit. It was soft, warm, delicate, wet, fervent, precise, and a hundred other things at once—a subtle mystery in moonlight. Her lips parted; the tips of their tongues touched. He could feel her bare shoulders in his hands, her breasts pressing. Her hair smelled lovely, clean; her skin felt hot. Pine needles brushed his back, their aromatic scent mixing with hers. Suddenly she was squeezing him so tightly it almost felt desperate.

  When they stopped, they didn’t say anything. She was just looking at him, her eyes big and bright. She was beautiful. She was stepping slowly back. Back, back, his own eyes fixed, and she was smiling half happily, half sadly. And then she was in the door and gone.

  ««—»»

  Tom poured Penelope out of the box.

  It was very late, a quiet, warm moonlit night, and perfect for the work ahead. Tom had driven them in the Camaro to a suitable clearing back in the woods. Besser rode up front, and one of the sisters in back. Tom could see the idiot kiddie grin and sunglasses in the rearview. The sight pricked his nerves.

  Penelope rode in the trunk, in a sturdy cardboard box.

  Tom had dug the first hole in minutes, nearly breaking the shovel once or twice. He’d dug eight feet deep and six around. This was no easy feat but it was a milk run for Tom. Strength was one of the Supremate’s gifts. Tremendous, indefatigable strength.

  He buried Mr. Sladder’s remains, then dug another hole. The low yellow moon glowed through tall trees, dappling the hidden grove. Besser stood in supervision with a Coleman lantern; he looked a bit pale. The sister stood right next to him, grinning. Tom dug the second hole with the lackadaise of a gardener hoeing a bed of petunias.

  Penelope was blubbering something. She lay boneless beside the hole, a rubbery mass of flesh. She smelled good, though, like barbecued pork or something. He could see her collapsed face, her widely spread eyes, the formless mouth trying to talk. Her tongue lolled out and sputtered, slobbering.

  Besser was paling at the sight.

  Break time, Tom thought. He leaned against the shovel and chugged more Spaten—nothing like a cold beer after hard work, whether you were mowing the lawn, laying shingles, or burying girls alive.

  “She’d been in some of my classes,” Besser lamented.

  “Too bad she didn’t take,” Tom said.

  “We’ve got it all worked out now.” Besser looked fearfully to the hooded sister. “No more mistakes.”

  A froth of foam and bubbles drooled from Penelope’s mouth. What a grosser. The gelatinous loops of her arms and legs slopped uselessly, like tentacles on a speared octopus. Tom figured she was folded in half backward, her big wet breasts lolling at her armpits. At least she smelled like good barbecue.

  The sister pointed to the hole.

  “Bury her,” Besser said.

  Tom pushed her into the grave with his boot sole. She didn’t fall in, she oozed in, like muck. Besser held up the lantern and groaned when he looked into the hole.

  At last Penelope’s words blubbered up. “Plub plub please don’t bulup bulup bury me, Tom!”

  “Don’t let the minor fact that she’s still alive dissuade your heart,” Besser regretted to Tom. “It must be done.”

  “W where’s where’s my blay blay baby?”

  Besser cleared his throat. “Regrettably, dear, your baby’s dead. Don’t blame yourself. You simply didn’t take.”

  “I lyly rup want m m m my baby!”

  Where was it? Tom looked around. Ah, there. The jellyish thing was crammed in the corner of the box. Tom picked it up by what he guessed were its feet and held it up to the lantern light. It hung limp as a rooster’s wattle.

  Penelope blubbered a high pitched shriek.

  —Give me it! the sister ordered. She held out her white hands.

  Besser recoiled. “Oh, for God’s sake. Please.”

  Tom shrugged. He gave it to the woman in black. Grinning, she let its bloated head swing back and forth like depended pizza dough, throwing a pendulous shadow. Tom watched with little interest. It wasn’t like it was a real baby, right? Not like the kind he’d been once, not like the kind mothers cuddled and loved. Not really anyway.

  “Please,” Besser objected, nausea in his face. “Please don’t.”

  —Shut up! the sister said like an irked grade-school girl. Her bleating wet giggles palpitated up. She turned the dead baby thing in her white hands and squeezed its head till its eyes popped out.

  Penelope was flopping madly in her hole, shrieking, trying to get out. Motherly love, Tom supposed. He was amazed at her sudden ability to move. For a moment he feared she might actually churn herself out of the grave.

  Besser winced. “Just throw it in the hole. Please don’t—”

  Gnarled doglike teeth bared through the sister’s grin. She bit into the top of the dead baby’s head with a sound much like biting into a crisp apple. The sister sucked its brain till the boneless bag for a head collapsed. Then she giggled, munching. Someone should teach her some manners, Tom thought. Judith Martin would shit railroad ties if she could see this.

  Wet smacking sounds followed, and slurping. The sister chewed her meal heartily; a big lump slid down her throat when she swallowed.

  Revolted, Besser dropped the lantern. He stumbled away rubber kneed, fell between some trees, and vomited in grand style. Now, this was not something you got to see every day, a three hundred pound college professor throwing up like a sludge pump in the middle of the woods. Watching a black cloaked woman eat a dead baby’s brains wasn’t something you got to see every day either. Even Tom had to raise a brow at these shenanigans. The sister’s giggles splayed out into the grove, quite loudly. Tom still hadn’t gotten used to that awful sound—that giggling. Who could giggle while eating a baby’s brains? They were one wild crew, that was for sure. Yeah, real party animals.

  She flung the head sucked baby into the hole. Splap. Penelope was still flopping in throes of absolute amorphous rage. Her high pitched blubbering shriek blurted out loud like a faulty train whistle.

  —Bury her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tom said. The shovel bit into the ground. He tossed in the first load. Ba bump! Penelope squealed again. Tom dropped the second load into her opened mouth. That should quiet her down some, the little dickens. She gagged and coughed up wet clumps of earth.

  —This is so much fun, isn’t it, Tom?

  “Yes, ma’am, it sure is. I haven’t had this much fun since the last Polanski Festival.”

  He buried Penelope without reservation. He whistled that great old Guess Who song “Share the Land” as his shovel gradually filled the hole. Burying girls alive wasn’t exactly fun for the whole family, yet despite the grimness of the task, Tom supposed it was a fair trade.

  Shit, he thought. For immortality, I’ll dig graves from here to Seat
tle.

  —

  CHAPTER 16

  An alarm was blaring.

  Lydia sat up naked in bed. She could still hear the alarm, but then she realized it was only the telephone. The clock read 5 A.M.

  She snapped up the phone and yelled, “What!”

  “You have a nice sleep?” a voice inquired.

  This was outrageous; it was Chief White. “How come you’re calling me at five in the morning?” she complained. “You gave me the day off, remember?”

  “I need ya to do me somethin’. I’d have the night boys do it ’cept they been out all night flaggin’ traffic. Some stoner done rolled fifteen thousand gallons of super unleaded all over the Route. My boys are plumb wore out and stinkin’ fierce of gas.”

  “Okay, Chief. What do you want me to do?”

  “Go out to agro. Them state guys are finally packing it up. Some geek named Latin is runnin’ the show. They’ll be trucking out by nine.”

  Trucking out? “Chief, what—”

  “They got a prelim for us. Go pick it up.”

  “All right,” Lydia groaned.

  “Good girl. Report to me when you’re done. Now, this Latin guy’s got a bug up his bum the size of my Buick. Be nice to him or else he won’t tell you squat. Nose around, try and see what they’ve been up to. Use your” —White gave a typical hick laugh— “your feminine powers of persuasion.”

  Lydia rang off, sputtering. White didn’t want to go himself because he figured Lydia’s tits and ass would prompt a more cooperative response. She suited up quickly, enjoying the early morning silence. Dawn had not yet broken when she pulled into the agriculture/agronomy site. State cadets were loading signs into a van. “Quarantine Area, Do Not Enter,” they read. Three semi rigs were parked in a row behind the stables. A state sergeant directed her to a wheeled trailer. Gas powered generators pumped racket into the air, like jackhammers. But the electricity had been fixed. Why would they need generators?

  A work booted nerd in khakis met her at the trailer door. He looked bony, had short hair and a long neck. “My name is Dr. Hatton,” he said. Hatton, Latin. This must be the guy with the bug up his bum the size of White’s Buick. His voice was uncharacteristically dark. “I’m senior field officer for the state department of agriculture. You may have seen my picture in the Enquirer last year. I delivered twin Berkshire hogs joined at the head.”