Coven

by David Barnett

  Then he opened the door to the not-so normal closet.

  One glimpse was all it took: the dean’s crumpled corpse acrawl with flies, the enormous wash of blood on the clean white walls. All that blood was too much to view at once. Wade didn’t even notice what exactly had been done to the dean. He didn’t need to. This was a butcher’s jubal, party-time for a maniac. Blood was a sacred substance, the Eucharist of life. Here, though, in the dim closet, it had been spilled for the sheer sport of it. For fun.

  Wade ran. He pounded down the steps and tore out of the house, and he didn’t stop running until his legs could bear no more of it, his energy ejaculated as a spurt of the basest fears. The night swept him into its velvet black caress, and Wade, brain numb now and exhausted, was left to stumble with feet of lead back to the beginning…

  —

  CHAPTER 28

  Murder, he thought. Blood.

  Wade couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop seeing it in his mind. There’d been so much blood.

  Through the dead, empty night, he drifted more than walked. The campus lay silent behind him, strangely still and very black. Insentient, he made his way along trails once familiar but now forgotten, past buildings and halls dark and blank as gravestones.

  The sky seemed depthless, a slate void. Phantom reefs of clouds roved past a darkled moon. Far and away, the chapel bell tolled, signaling 4 A.M. The monotonous, dull peals incited him, chipped cracks into his shock. Then he saw the lighted sign: “Campus Police.”

  Wade stepped in unnoticed. Leaving the hot night and its murder behind him was like stepping into paradise…

  Porker was eating microwaved cheese dogs at the booking desk. He was eating them with his fingers, without rolls. Sergeant Peerce sat at his own desk, intent on a magazine called Babes with Big Boobs.

  “The dean is dead,” Wade announced.

  Porker’s immense face floated up. Babes with Big Boobs lowered to the desk, unveiling Peerce’s typical hillbilly smirk.

  “You heard me,” Wade said. “The dean’s dead. Murdered.”

  “Probably dumped his fancy car in a ditch,” Porker surmised, “and wants us to tow it out for him.”

  “Just another daddy rich smart ass,” Peerce added.

  Wade could not believe this response to his announcement. “Are you guys deaf? I just got done telling you the dean is dead!”

  “You mean Dean Saltenstall?” Porker inquired.

  Wade slumped. “No, Dean Dick. Is there any other dean on this campus, you fat jughead? He’s been murdered.”

  Peerce and Porker stood up at the same time. They looked at each other. Then they looked at Wade.

  “Just like that, huh?” Peerce asked. “The dean’s been murdered?”

  “Yes! You understand English! Praise God!”

  “And just how did he come to be murdered, boy?”

  “Well, I don’t actually know,” Wade admitted. “But—”

  “Ya hear that, Porker? He don’t really know.”

  “What difference does it make, you brickhead? I saw him in the closet! and I saw the…I saw the…blood.”

  Peerce and Porker chuckled. “St. John,” Peerce said. “This is just another one of your practical jokes.”

  “You must think we’re pretty dumb,” Porker added.

  Dumb? Wade thought. Naw.

  “We been bustin’ our tails all night. We got one missing security guard and two dormitory break ins. We ain’t got time for your practical jokes.”

  “Look,” Wade said. “All that stuff you just said—missing persons, break ins—it’s all part of this. A lot of crazy shit has gone on tonight, and it all starts in the dean’s closet.”

  Chewing cheese dogs, Porker inquired, “What would the dean be doing in a closet at four in the morning?”

  “Getting murdered,” Wade answered. “Don’t believe me? Go check.”

  Peerce made a contemplating face. He got the dean’s number out of White’s directory. He paused. Then he dialed the number.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Wade declared. “He won’t answer.”

  Peerce listened and waited, tapping his foot. He waited some more and hung up. “He didn’t answer.”

  “Of course he didn’t answer, you crawfish for brains Cajun moron! How can a dead man answer a fucking telephone?”

  Then Porker said, “It can’t hurt to take a look, Sarge.”

  “Shee-it,” Peerce agreed. “All right, punk. Lead the way.”

  Wade felt a shimmy of panic. “Not me, fellas. You guys go, I’ll wait here. But before you go, you have to lock me up,” He pointed to the station’s jail cell. “In there.”

  “Why?”

  “For my protection.”

  “Protection from what?”

  Wade gulped. “From them.”

  Peerce squinted. “Who’s them?”

  “Look, Sarge, just pacify me, okay? Lock me up and go check.”

  “We can’t lock you up,” Porker informed him. “There’s no probable cause to believe you’re in danger.”

  “But I’m telling you I am!”

  “We cain’t lock you up unless you commit a crime,” Peerce said. “And unfortunately, bein’ an asshole is not a crime.”

  Wade was getting desperate. “In other words, you won’t lock me up in that cell unless I commit a crime?”

  “That’s right, boy.”

  Crime, Wade contemplated. Okay. With impressive reflexes, he kicked Porker square in the belly as hard as he could. Porker bent over, howling like a gelded walrus.

  “There,” Wade said. “Is that crime enough?”

  Peerce, snarling, jammed the butt of a nineteen ounce blackjack into Wade’s solar plexus. Wade folded up, bug eyed. He was then thrown into the cell. For good measure, Peerce rapped Wade another one—between the legs, this time—and locked the cell door.

  “Thank you, Sarge. And my future children thank you too.”

  Peerce’s eyes blazed through the bars. “This is the end for you, St. John. We’re gonna check out this harebrained story of yours, and then we’re gonna come back here and kick your ass so bad you’ll shit shoe polish for a week. Assaultin’ a police officer will get you kicked off this here campus forever.”

  “I hear you, Sarge. Just go to the dean’s. Check it out.”

  Peerce called White and told him to meet them at the dean’s mansion. Then he left, followed by Porker, who limped along cradling his elephantine belly.

  In spite of his pain, Wade smiled.

  Go ahead, super cops. Check it out.

  ««—»»

  A half hour later keys rattled in the station door. Peerce, Porker, and Chief White tottered in, their faces drained.

  Wade leapt up. “Well?”

  “The dean is dead,” Peerce iterated.

  “I told you so.”

  Sweat glazed Porker’s pasty white face. “The closet,” he mumbled. “The dean—” Then he staggered to the john, to vomit. “Poor bastard never could stand the sight of blood,” Peerce said.

  The memory blared back. Blood, Wade thought. So much blood.

  Chief White’s beshocked eyes looked like big flat coins. “It was pulled off,” he said.

  “What?” Wade asked.

  “The dean’s head. It was pulled off.” White steadied himself, flinching. “Not cut off or chopped off. Not sawed or blowed off. I mean somebody grabbed onto that man’s head and pulled on it till it came off.”

  “They’re a rough bunch, Chief.” But that was only the tip of the iceberg; there was much more to tell, but Wade dared not. These hayseeds would only swallow so much at a time.

  Peerce stared cross eyed straight ahead. “Took his wagger off too.”

  “His what?”

  “His wagger. You know, his meat, his homeboy.”

  Wade frowned. “You mean his dick?”

  “Pulled it clean off, just like his head. Who the hell would wanna run off with a man’s head an’ homeboy?”


  “Psychopaths, that’s who,” Wade said, to put it mildly. “Now that you’ve seen the goods, let’s get out of here.”

  “Think again,” Chief White said. He sat down and looked at him. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere till we have some answers.”

  Panic rose in Wade’s guts like bubbles. “We’ve got to get off this campus right now, Chief! They’re coming for me! They’ll come here and pull our homeboys off!”

  Peerce popped a chaw of Red Man. “He knows plenty more than he’s tellin’, Chief. That’s for damn sure.”

  I’m a had daddy, Wade realized. The safety of the cell now condemned him. Porker was still vomiting in the john, cutting loose deep, tubalike eeerps. Peerce edgily spat brown juice into a paper cup. Chief White just stared, arms crossed.

  “What were you doin’ at the dean’s at this hour, boy?”

  “I—” Shit, Wade thought. “I saw the murderer leaving the scene.”

  “Oh, you saw the murderer? You mind enlightenin’ us?”

  Wade swallowed, thinking of the blood. “It was Jervis Phillips.”

  White and Peerce joined in low laughter. “Jervis Phillips ain’t nothin’ but an egg suck drunk. You spect us to believe he pulled the dean’s head off and painted the fuckin’ closet with his blood? Jervis Phillips?”

  “I don’t care what you believe. I saw him driving out of that area,” Wade unconvincingly explained.

  White was rubbing his hands together. He was losing control of his town, and he was desperate. He needed a candidate for scapegoat, and Wade could guess the nominee.

  “I can’t tell you everything, Chief,” Wade admitted. “If I told you everything, you’d think I was crazy.”

  “We already think you’re crazy.” Peerce said.

  “A crazy murderer,” White added.

  But if they saw the grove, the mutated woods, and the women… Wade could think of no other way to convince them. “Take me to the grove,” he said, “and I’ll show you the rest.”

  “What grove?” Porker asked, finally emerging from the john. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Trust me. I’ll take you there right now.”

  White was still glaring at him. “Bring him out.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Wade thought, but only until Peerce released him from the cell and hand-cuffed him to White’s chair.

  “This is what we call interrogation,” Chief White said.

  “I’ve got a better name for it,” Wade told them. “Deprivation of constitutional rights.”

  From a locker, White retrieved an eighteen inch Nova shock baton. It could deliver several one second 50,000 volt bursts, which disrupted the victim’s muscle impulses and caused temporary paralysis. It also caused great temporary pain. Shock batons were illegal now, but Wade could see that this judicial fact would do him little good. They were going to torture him.

  “Would it be too much trouble to ask for a lawyer?”

  White, Peerce, and Porker all laughed out loud.

  The baton hummed when White turned it on. “Now, this thing will shock you right through your clothes. A couple of hits and you’ll think you stepped on the third rail of the subway. Are you gonna talk, or do I go to work on ya?”

  “This is America!” Wade shouted. “You can’t torture people!”

  White, Peerce, and Porker laughed out loud again, harder.

  “I don’t want to hear no shit about Jervis Phillips, and I don’t want to hear about no groves. Tell me the truth, St. John. Why did you murder Dean Saltenstall?”

  “I didn’t murder the fucking dean!” Wade bellowed. “It was Jervis Phillips and those women in black!”

  White pushed the baton into the soft of Wade’s crotch. The discharge head fit nice and snug. White’s finger wavered over the button, then began to lower.

  “Excuse me,” a frail voice rose behind them.

  White, Peerce, and Porker jerked upright and turned. White hid the baton behind his back.

  A sheepish, long haired girl in a nightgown stood wanly in the doorway. “My name is Nina McCulloch,” she said in a voice almost too soft to be heard.

  “So what!” White snapped.

  “I just saw my roommate and her friends get murdered.”

  Silence unfurled. The three cops stared. Wade sighed.

  “Murdered?” White blabbed.

  “Yes,” Nina McCulloch whispered. “And I recognized the killer.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was Jervis Phillips, and he was with a woman in black.”

  —

  CHAPTER 29

  “It’s a cult of some kind, I think,” Wade speculated from the backseat of White’s cruiser. Porker sat heavily beside him. White drove, and Peerce rode shotgun. They sped down Route 13, toward the agro site.

  “A cult?” White questioned.

  “Yeah. It must be like one of those satanic gangs. Ritual murder, black mass, cannibalism, that sort of shit. All the members wear upside down crosses. And whoever their leader is, they call him the Supremate. I figure there’re seven of them, not including this Supremate guy. Four of them are girls, and I mean the freakiest looking girls you’ve ever seen. They wear black capes, and they all have” —Should I really say this?— “fangs.”

  Peerce swore. White smacked the wheel and glared at Wade. “I suppose you’re gonna tell me they’re vampires, right?”

  “You said it, I didn’t. But there’s this thing out at the grove that looks like a coffin on end. And Besser told me that these girls—sisters, he called them—can’t live in sunlight.”

  Peerce had a frown baked into his face. “He’s pullin’ our dicks, Chief. There ain’t no grove or no cults. He’s lyin’.”

  “Besser?” White backtracked. “Besser told you this?”

  “That’s right. He’s part of it, and so are Jervis and Winnifred Saltenstall. They’re all members of the cult.”

  “I don’t know what kind of drugs you been smokin’, St. John, but you gotta be crazy to think I’ll believe two respected faculty members belong to some satanic cult. I don’t believe in vampires, and I don’t believe in the fuckin’ devil, so just shut yer yap.”

  “If you think I’m nuts, how come you’re going to the grove?”

  “’Cause I got two eyewitnesses that link Jervis Phillips to several murders, and you say he might be at this goddamn grove of yours, so that’s where we’re goin’!”

  Fine, Wade thought. In a few more minutes, they were there. White groaned as his loaded cruiser rolled through the logging track, branches scraping the paint. He parked in the junk heaped clearing. “Check your heat,” he ordered. White checked his fourteen shot Browning. Porker checked his AMT .45. Peerce checked his giant Ruger Blackhawk. Then they checked their backup pieces.

  “Hey, fellas,” Wade asked. “Don’t I get a gun?”

  “Don’t make me laugh,” White answered. “Peerce, bring the gasser too. If Phillips is hidin’ in these here woods, we’ll gas him out.”

  Peerce loaded a 37mm CM 55 tear gas gun. Then Porker doled out flashlights and they all got out. “Christ!” Peerce complained. “Damn place smells worse than a Georgia hoghouse!”

  You ought to know, Wade thought. “Take a look over here.”

  “Graves,” Porker muttered.

  Wade grazed his light over the mounds. “Someone’s been here in the last few hours. There were only two graves earlier.”

  “Now there’s four.” Peerce demonstrated the ability to count.

  “And look—” Wade shined his light over by the shovel. “Empty Kirin bottles. Jervis drinks Kirin.”

  “Porker, you see that shovel?” White said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Get to work.”

  Porker whitened. “Aw, Chief, come on. I don’t wanna—”

  “Dig them up later,” Wade interrupted. “First we have to—”

  “St. John” —now it was White’s turn to interrupt— “so far all I see is a couple of piles of dirt and
some beer bottles. I don’t see no cult, and I don’t see no vampires.”

  Peerce slapped the back of Wade’s head. “And what about the coffin, St. John? You said there’s a coffin out here.” Next he gave Wade’s ear a twist. Wade yelped.

  Hands on hips, White asked, “Where’s Jervis Phillips?”

  “Look, I only said he might be here,” Wade protested. “But I’m telling you, once you see the grove yourselves—”

  “You mean this ain’t it?”

  Wade smiled darkly. “I mean the other grove.”

  White bit into a cigar. “All right. Lead the way.”

  Wade led the way, with pleasure, past the tires and junk, to the trail. “Watch your step, boys. This isn’t exactly the red carpet treatment.”

  Porker moaned.

  Peerce yelled “Christ!” repeatedly, as they all began to crunch over the rot soft possums.

  “They’re all over the place!” White complained.

  “This is nothing, Chief. Wait’ll you see the rest.”

  They grimly followed the trail of carcasses. Porker asked “If Phillips is out here, what do we do?”

  “What’choo think we do?” Peerce contributed.

  “We kill him,” White said. “He’s a killer so we kill him.”

  “Killing Jervis isn’t going to be easy,” Wade pointed out.

  “Why?”

  Wade smiled. “Because he’s already dead.”

  “Goddamn it, St. John!” White flared. “I knew this was a crock of shit! Now you’re tellin’ us Phillips is dead?”

  “Well, yeah, sort of. Dead as in…the walking dead.”

  Peerce slammed Wade against a tree, his ham fist hovering. “I’m beggin’ ya, Chief! Lemme pop him! He’s makin’ damn fools of all of us.”

  Then Porker screamed.

  He’d strayed to the end of the trail. White and Peerce rushed to see what he was screaming about. Wade, of course, already knew.

  The grove’s perversions had thickened, even in the few hours since he and Lydia had been here. Agape, the three cops clung to each other as they stared into the impossible morass. The green fog was darker now, a milky stew. Dense, unearthly foliage glimmered in the low moonlight. Every branch, every swollen leaf, pod, and flower hung thickly with ropes of slime. Things like cattails sprouted tall from the lake of fog, bowed by the weight of strange fruit and pulsating seed sacks. In the middle of the clearing, atop the risen hillock, stood the bizarre oblong box.