“Sweetheart,” I began, trying to recover my composure, “you’re obviously very tired, and tired little girls must go to bed.”
Rowan’s eyes glittered defiantly as Owen’s voice blared forth again. I held out my hand.
“Let me have the cassette, dear.”
She held her ground.
“Let me have it!”
Eye to eye—I mustn’t yield, mustn’t waver or blink—how long could she keep this up? I swallowed hard to hold back the tears—then she broke and ran out of the room.
I crumpled inside. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, switching off the recorder. Somebody say something, I pleaded silently. Don’t just sit around and think!
Gladys came to my rescue. “Where’s Lucian?” she asked in the little girl’s voice so out of keeping with her massive body.
“Oh, then you’ve met him!” she exclaimed when I told her he’d be late. “We’re so fortunate to have a man of his caliber in Peacehaven. He’s brought us salvation. He’s made remarkable changes, like his ‘stones into bread’ drive for the missions. He heaps up a pile of stones in front of the church. One stone is removed for each offering until the pile is gone.”
“Didn’t Satan try to make Christ turn stones into bread?” Ward, the iconoclast, offered.
“Did he?” Gladys was distressed. “Oh, but Lucian’s no devil—he’s a saint and his sermons are utterly—what’s the matter, Muriel?”
She was holding her head and moaning.
“It’s another of her spells coming on, looks like,” Caleb said disgustedly. “I guess we’d better get going. C’mon, Mur!” He jerked her to her feet.
“Oh, no!” Gladys pouted. “We’ve hardly gotten here.”
And Lucian hadn’t.
“Please,” her sister begged, between white lips. “Do you mind, Glad? Besides, mother shouldn’t stay out late.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks, Muriel,” Aunt Jenny huffed, “it’s not nearly my bedtime. Where’s Dana? I want to talk to her.”
“She’s busy in the kitchen,” Alison said. “I’ll get her.”
“No, never mind,” Caleb checked her. “We really must leave. I know what happens when Muriel gets one of these attacks.”
“Muriel’s never been the same since her little girl was killed,” Charity said as we heard the Toothakers’s car grind down the hill.
“Let’s not go into that. That was six months ago.” Her husband cut her off as forks were suspended in midair. Greg, over on the inglenook, turned his eyes away. Something was wrong.
“Really,” I said, “you might as well tell me. I’ll find out soon enough in this town.”
They looked from one to another, hesitant to begin. Greg spoke finally. “Susie Toothaker was found in a farmer’s field not far from here—murdered. She was only seven.”
The shadows on the cathedral ceiling, formed by the beams arching overhead, pressed in on us. “Who did it?” I asked.
“Nobody knows.”
“Probably some transient,” Ward said.
“Nothing like this ever happened before we became integrated here in Peacehaven,” Charity observed, fidgeting with her rings.
Ward turned to her in annoyance. “Will you knock it off? Darrell Jackson’s a fine man and the best manager I’ve ever had at the lumberyard.”
“It’s a pity the school board never saw fit to employ his wife,” Alison added. “Rhoda Jackson has a doctorate in education.”
“I was secretary of the school board then and I resent that,” Elspeth snapped. “How many parents here would like to have their children taught by a colored woman? I, for one, wouldn’t. Look at that black activist son of hers!”
“Why shouldn’t Quentin want to help his people?” Ward growled. “He’s done nothing criminal. He’s a top law student and I’ll lay you odds he’ll be a legislator or congressman someday.”
“Not from this district he won’t!” Charity declared. “Not while I live here. How do you know he didn’t kill that little girl? He was in town at the time.”
Damon shook his head. “More likely it was one of those weirdos who bought Aunt Bo’s farm.”
“A couple who own a witchcraft supply store in Madison have made a country home of the farm,” Greg explained. “They appear to take it pretty seriously—at least they hold regular meetings, and—”
“Damn insult—bringing witchcraft here,” Damon stormed.
“I thought it was taboo to persecute witchcraft in Peacehaven,” Ward observed drily.
“Not at all,” Damon retorted. “It’s only forbidden to accuse falsely. If we harbor characters like that, we’re liable to have Salem all over again.”
“They’re really fixing up the old farm,” Ward said. “They’ve been buying lumber for repairs.”
“So that’s why you defend them! Good business for you.”
“Oh, come off it, Damon!”
Elspeth waved a bite of cake in the air. “Harold Toothaker’s gone to their meetings. Maybe he killed Susie. Everyone knows he was terribly jealous of his baby sister. And now that he’s a witch—”
“Now honey, that’s getting a bit farfetched,” Melvin objected.
“Not at all,” she retorted. “You saw those queer signs carved on her body when we laid her out—like a ritual murder. It took plenty of make-up to fix her up—and a wig, too.”
“Sweetheart!” Melvin’s cup slammed down on its saucer. “Those are professional secrets!”
Upstairs Alice Cooper yowled. My head throbbed. Rowan must be asleep by now. I went to the kitchen and asked Dana to go up and turn off the recorder.
“Actually, there were two types of wounds,” Damon said. “Some looked as if she’d been attacked by a wild beast—maybe a wolf—but others could have been made by a knife—crosses, swastikas, crescents, stars—you name it.”
“Like the Manson murders,” Elspeth said.
I shivered as the music stopped abruptly and Dana ran into the room.
“They’re gone—their beds are empty!”
My throat contracted. The walls swam around me and the beams overhead rotated like the blades of a ceiling fan.
“You’re sure you looked everywhere?” Ward’s voice.
“Everywhere but outside.”
“Everybody start searching!” Damon said.
As I struggled for control I saw Dana sink to a crouch on the floor intoning unintelligible words. “I—see—them,” she reverted to English. “Come, I will take you to them.”
She led us across the parking lot and into the woods. Dark had thoroughly descended and I floundered over rocks and undergrowth. My flaring pants caught on the brambles, but I paid no heed. I fought off a vine that wound around my arm as if it were something live. Somewhere in the distance what sounded like tom-toms were beating.
“Do you hear that?” I gasped, catching someone’s arm. Greg’s hand closed over mine.
“Probably those witches,” I heard Damon mutter.
“It’s Midsummer Eve,” Charity’s weary voice fluttered through the dark. “They’re having a sabbat—maybe a sacrifice.”
“Shut up!” Damon snapped.
Midsummer’s Eve—Rowan had said something about that. Oh God! Rituals in the night and a little girl murdered. I clung to Greg’s hand, flinching as a spruce branch slapped me smartly in the face. An owl hooted. What was the old belief? When an owl hoots someone dies?
Again the sound of tom-toms in counterpoint with chanting.
“That’s where they held their meetings in Salem,” Charity said. “Out in the parson’s pasture.”
“At least our minister doesn’t own a pasture,” Greg reminded her. All the while I felt his hand pressing mine. Even in my distress I was conscious of an inner strength in him
buoying me up. If it had been Owen, I would have had to be the stronger one. But I was being unfair—Rowan wasn’t Greg’s daughter.
Dana loomed ahead of us, the wind filling out her skirt. I touched her arm. “Where are you taking us?”
“Where I saw them. Do not worry. The little girls are safe.”
A thin ray of light caught up with us and passed us, then came Ward, at the other end, holding a flashlight. The beam swept past Dana to pick up something white against the blackness.
“There! Did I not tell you we’d find them?”
She seemed a miniature madonna, enveloped in the halo of the flashlight, her back to a great burled oak, the baby in her arms. The slender beam caught the red-gold hair cascading down her shoulders and glinted on the star sapphires of her eyes. How beautiful she is! I marveled, then chilled. She was a statue holding a live baby, which whimpered and squirmed in her rigid grip. Alison took Cariad from her with some difficulty.
Damon took hold of her wrist. “Appears to be some sort of catalepsy,” he muttered as he released her. “Her pulse is about half the normal rate and her respiration’s slow, too.” He waved his hand in front of her unblinking eyes.
“What could cause that?” I asked tremulously.
“A number of things—hysteria for one, or—”
Or schizophrenia, I supplied mentally, grateful he hadn’t added that for the others to hear.
“Or demonic possession,” Charity said.
“Now, whatever made you say a thing like that?” Damon said impatiently as he lifted Rowan’s lids and peered into her pupils with Ward’s flashlight.
“You read too many novels,” Ward reproved his sister.
“She’s overtired, poor child,” Alison said. “Maybe she overheard us talking about Susie and—”
The bushes rustled and a dark figure stepped into the narrow beam of the flash—Lucian!
“I found her that way,” he told us. “As I was parking my car in your drive, Mitti, I saw her disappearing into the woods. I went after her, but it was hard to follow in the dark, and when I got here, there wasn’t a thing I could do.”
“Were they alone? Did you see anyone else?” Ward asked.
“No, no one.”
“I’ll have to examine her at the house,” Damon said, trying to lift her. Suddenly the statue came to life and struck out at him furiously, kicking and screaming and tearing at his face until he let go. Immediately she began to prance around in a circle, chucking her tongue as though riding a horse.
“Git along with ye, Robin, or I’ll fetch a clout to thy ’ead, I will.” One small foot thrashed in the air kicking her invisible mount in the belly. In the dim light her feet seemed more to dangle than to be making contact with the ground.
“Good Lord!” someone exclaimed.
“In the name of Jesus—” Lucian began.
She somersaulted forward, thrown by her phantom steed, and lay on the ground—her limbs jerking convulsively, eyes rolling backward until only the whites showed.
“Do ye be silent!” she cried, sticking her fingers in her ears. “’Tis a name that sickens me!”
She flopped over on her stomach, arching her back grotesquely so that her neck and heels were touching. I could hear her vertebrae grinding together, and her tongue lolled out of one corner of her mouth. I knelt down to try to straighten her limbs, but she jerked away.
“You burned me!” she cried out. “Let me go! Let me go!”
I drew back in horror, the stench of burning flesh in my nostrils. Was I hallucinating, too? Greg lifted me gently from my knees, but he, too, was shuddering, shaken by an emotion he couldn’t control. Charity advanced on Dana, who was standing to one side, her face a mass of shadows in the dim light.
“Is this your doing? Will she die like my baby did?”
“Charity! We don’t talk like that, do we?” Damon warned her. She shrank back and covered her face with her hands.
A twig snapped and Dr. Brun appeared, holding a lantern.
“Something has happened?” he asked, his accent heavy in his excitement. “Ach! Was ist los?” as the ray of his lantern fell across Rowan’s tortured form. “It is the little one. Perhaps I can be of help—I have had experience with this—”
“We’ll attend to her,” Damon brushed him aside. Bracing, he strained to tear her hands from her ankles, but her grip remained fixed.
“My God, this is straight out of Cotton Mather!” Greg exclaimed.
“All right, Melvin, let’s get her up,” Damon ordered, but her hands closed about her throat.
“Stop them! Oh, stop them!” she shrieked. “They’re nailing me down!” She tugged at an invisible spike.
“What she needs is a good spanking,” I heard Elspeth murmur to her husband.
“Come here, Ward—you, too, Greg—give us a hand, will you?” The doctor grunted as he and Melvin and Lucian struggled to lift the child. The five of them interlocked their arms beneath her and heaved, but Rowan remained welded to the soil. She was screaming and I with her. Alison gripped my hand.
The men drew back, wiping the sweat from their foreheads.
“There must be an explanation.” This from Ward, the realist.
Damon shook his head. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.”
This time Dr. Brun didn’t ask. He waved them back imperiously as he crouched beside Rowan and murmured softly. Her face contorted and her body writhed helplessly, still held by the invisible spike. One hand clawed at his face. Suddenly her own contorted and a voice cried out in anguish, “No, no, don’t use that name—don’t, don’t!” Agony turned to cunning, “Why call on him when we are here to serve you?”
“How can I call on you if I don’t know your name?” the doctor asked slyly.
“We are not one—we are Seven…” A deep, coarse chuckle issued from her throat. “Did you think we’d tell you? Let you gain power over us?”
The veins stood out in Dr. Brun’s temples and every muscle was quivering.
“I’ll not play guessing games with you,” he replied. “I know you, Old Adversary, and for all your selves you are but one. I adjure you in the name of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit—”
Talons raked his face, leaving long red stripes against the pale skin. He reeled momentarily, but his hands remained poised above Rowan’s body, which thrashed from one side to the other, shuddering as unseen blows rained on her.
There was sudden silence. She lay as though dead—then slowly sat up, twisting her head around until I could hear her vertebrae grind.
“Dana,” came a mocking voice, “why do you hide there in the shadows? You have served us in the past. Did you think you could escape us now?”
Dana’s face was chiseled adamantine, but I saw her waver slightly and her hand gripped her skirt.
“Come, we can use you. It’s the saints who serve us best.”
“Be quiet!” The rocks reverberated with Dr. Brun’s voice. “I command you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—be gone from this child!” Snarls and hisses and then macabre laughter floated off into the night. Rowan’s head jerked back and her mouth opened wide, taking in great gulps of air.
“Rowan,” Dr. Brun said gently, “listen to me, child. You—Rowan—have the power to cast out evil from yourself—if you so will! If you do not, it will return again and again. I know—I have dealt with this before.”
She gagged and her eyes bulged as a ball swelled in her windpipe, crept slowly up the line of her throat, and into her mouth. Then, with a loud hiss, it was gone. She lay there, limp and spent, her cheeks wet with tears.
He lifted her easily. Her head fell against his chest as the half-light plowed deep furrows in his haggard face.
“She will sleep now,” he told us. “Let us return
to the house.”
Chapter Five
Now, even my own bed couldn’t induce sleep. The events of the day and their terrifying climax had strained every nerve to its limit. The phone was silent—but that, too, was unnerving. I could see a hand hovering over a dial somewhere out there. Had news of tonight’s episode traveled already? Would Rowan be marked as “odd”?
My cousins had stayed for awhile after the others left. Rowan wanted Dr. Brun to remain with her until she went to sleep, so the Proctors and the Carriers and I sat downstairs, sipping coffee and groping for explanations.
“The child was overwrought,” Alison tried to reassure me. “Moving to a strange place—meeting relatives she’s never known.”
“She was obviously mimicking The Exorcist,” Charity said, her own qualms forgotten. “Did you let her see that, Mitti?”
“No, but it’s possible she and some of her classmates played hookey and went.”
“I think we’re all forgetting something,” Alison said. “We were just as spooked as she was. Something unnatural was going on out there.”
“I think we spooked ourselves,” Ward remarked. “All that talk about Susie and—who knows? As you suggested earlier, Alison, maybe Rowan overheard and got upset.” He fell silent. Ward had a great belief in disbelief.
“As you say, we were in a suggestible state,” Damon agreed. “Catalepsy is a frightening phenomenon.”
“Mass catalepsy, I’d say,” Alison remarked.
Damon gave an embarrassed laugh. “Lucky thing you didn’t serve liquor tonight, Mitti. I’d be heading for AA in the morning. If you’ll let me, I want to do some tests on Rowan—routine blood tests—and she should have a Rorschach.”
“You mean you want her to see a psychiatrist,” I bridled.
“Just as a precaution,” he soothed me. “We may not find anything. Alison’s probably right—just nervous strain.”
“Maybe that Indian woman put a spell on her,” Charity proposed. Ward and Damon exchanged despairing glances. “Or that Swiss doctor. He could have hypnotized the lot of us. You saw how he had no trouble lifting her after five of you failed.”
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 12