“I don’t know if I can hold the crowd,” he hedged.
“You could if you wanted to,” I shot back. “Let me speak to them.” Dana took Macduff. I snatched my long cape out of the closet and went outside to confront them. Their faces were becoming discernible in the dawn—hostile, menacing. Homer Redd thrust himself out in front.
“I want the man who murdered my little girl!”
“So do I, Homer,” I tried to soothe him, “but do you know who he is?”
“Couldn’t be no one but that Jackson feller—that was nigger hair clutched in her hand.”
“A jury would have to decide that.”
“Hell!” someone shouted. “No smart nigger’s going to be convicted by courts today.”
They closed in, their faces blurred by my panic. Greg stepped to my side. “Move back!” he ordered.
“Peacehaven once lynched an innocent man,” I reminded them. “Would you want to do that again?”
“He killed my Susie!” Caleb Toothaker shouted.
Greg pushed me behind him. “You don’t know that, Caleb.”
Homer brandished his gun. “All we want is for the sheriff to search these buildings. That’s abidin’ by law and order, ain’t it?”
“Not if he doesn’t have a search warrant!” Greg grasped the shotgun by the muzzle and with a quick flip of his wrist caught Homer by surprise and wrested the gun from him. Then, coolly, he proceeded to unload the weapon. “Now go to your homes. You can’t do any good here.” He handed back the empty gun.
Greg’s display of sheer courage unsettled them. They shifted uneasily and some of them backed up. Not Elspeth, who edged forward, a coat thrown over her pajamas, her hair in curlers, revealing bald patches in her scalp. “Why doesn’t she curse us? She can get rid of us real quick that way! Come on, folks, don’t listen to this nigger-lover. She can’t stop us. We can walk right over her.” She pushed past Homer and the others followed her, but now Lucian confronted them.
“Brothers!” he cried, “and Sisters! Let us pray!” They bowed their heads in triggered response. “Oh, Father,” he prayed, rocking back on his heels, his lids tightly closed, “help us to withhold judgment until we know that justice is being done, but—let not the culprit go free in this age when sin and crime are condoned by the highest courts. There is a higher court—Thy court, O God. Teach us where our duty lies.”
What was Lucian doing? With sinking heart I saw them murmuring to each other, motioning in our direction.
“Amen! And we know where our duty lies.” Elspeth’s voice called them to action. “Let’s force her!”
They pushed Lucian aside and pressed in on me. Greg spread his arms wide in an effort to hold them off.
“Halt!”
The word crackled like a thunderbolt, freezing them in their tracks. Dr. Brun had suddenly appeared beside me, a ghostly figure in his long white nightshirt and light overcoat, lightning in his blue eye. Yet his voice was gentle. “Christians! Friends! None of you are lawbreakers. Would you commit unlawful trespass? Mrs. Llewellyn has only demanded her rights under the law. What proof have you that she harbors a fugitive? And if you do find him, what will you do with him? Lynch him? Recreate Salem? You do not know—you cannot know—what it is like to have innocent blood on your hands.” His voice broke as a look of incredible sorrow came over his face. A hush fell over the people as he talked, drawing out their anger as he would pus out of a boil. Slowly, shamefacedly, they began to disperse.
Lucian rammed his fists into his pockets. “You succeeded where I failed, Martin,” he conceded wryly.
“I’ll put the coffee on,” I said, opening the back door.
“Sorry, Mitti,” Greg said, “I have to get my story off on the wire services.”
“What about you, Dr. Br—” The words froze in my mouth. The white terrier and a gaunt, one-eyed red dog were straining at their leashes, pulling the sheriff and one of his deputies toward the drain in the lawn.
“Those are fine hunters you have there,” I scoffed, trembling. “There was a rabbit nest under those bushes all summer.”
“Got your hunting license, Irv?” Jim Willard chimed in.
As Good unsuccessfully scoured the drain with the beam of his flashlight, the white dog suddenly lost interest in his quarry and began to pick a fight with the other animal. Cursing, he lashed out at the dogs with a booted foot and sent them cowering back to the squad cars, where they were secured separately in the caged back seats. My breathing returned to normal as the two squads zoomed off.
Before the sheriff returned from Richland Center with the warrant Dr. Brun set out for Madison with Quentin, while I delivered Quentin’s instructions to his parents. When I got home I climbed up into the tower to watch for the sheriff. Something about Aunt Bo’s chair made me pause. Were those hollows in the upholstery deeper than usual? As though someone was sitting there? Nonsense! Still, an invisible barrier held me back. Macduff’s curly hair straightened, and with a howl he tucked his tail between his legs and bolted down the steps. Loki arched his back and spat, then overtook Macduff.
She was just as I remembered her—her pink, plump cheeks, her black, graying hair swept into a high French roll, soft tendrils escaping from her coiffure, and her mouth dimpled at each end. She shoved her acousticon toward me, cupping one hand over her ear.
“You did well today, Mitti,” she said.
And then she was nothing but light waves and molecules and I was very tired. Strange what tricks the mind can play under stress…
But how was I to explain the acousticon lying on the desk?
Chapter Twenty-One
Peacehaven wasn’t much cheered when the sheriff was unable to produce any evidence against Quentin, even though he searched the Jackson home as well as the Phoenix. But someone had murdered the children and in the same nightmarish way. The notion of a transient no longer held up and they were faced with the realization that whoever had done it was still among them. Doors no one had bothered to lock were locked now and the locksmith in Richland Center was thriving.
The rumor factory produced a long line of absurdities: “Their hearts were torn out and eaten.”
“Something sucked the blood out of them.”
“Dylan’s coven killed them to get fat for ‘flying ointment.’”
Tension mounted and undue significance was attached to incidents that in other years would have been taken in stride. The Dikes’ cow broke her leg and had to be shot.
The Cloyces’ pony fell dead of a heart attack. The Fosdicks’ chimney caught fire. Mrs. Anson Parker sighted a UFO hovering over Bogus Bluff. And Lester Jacobs swore a phantom woman made him run his car off the road.
House, store, and car burglaries were on the increase, audio-visual equipment was stolen from the elementary school, Scotty Buckley’s tavern was robbed, and someone stole Rosalind Bishop’s mink cape from the coat-room of the country club.
Alison improved steadily. I dropped in on her every day, letting myself in with a key she’d given me. One afternoon, just before Christmas, I was surprised to find Lucian on his knees beside Alison, who lay on the sofa.
“No, stay, Mitti!” she called as I started to back out. “Lucian was about to leave.” More an order than an observation.
He rose and stood over her. “I fear for you, Alison Proctor. I prayed this affliction would lift the scales from your eyes, but you have ‘ceased not from your stubborn way,’” he paraphrased Judges. “I shall continue to pray for you,” he said, picking up his coat and hat, “but remember, ‘too late’ can arrive at any moment. I’m glad to see you looking so much better,” he relented as he caught my angry glance. “I’ll see you tonight, Mitti.”
“Lucian is the bitterest medicine I have to take,” Alison sighed after he’d left. “He doesn’t really care about my soul�
��he just wants to add another fish to his string.”
“Too many clergymen make soul-saving an ego trip,” I agreed, perching on the cobbler’s bench near the fire.
“What did he mean about tonight?” she asked slyly. “I hear he’s a constant visitor at your house lately.”
“Not really,” I parried. “He and Lucy are just coming over.” Rowan had been encouraging Lucian’s visits, as though his presence afforded her a kind of protection from me.
For a moment all that could be heard in the darkening room was the monotonous ticking of the grandfather clock. “The shortest day of the year!” she said at last. “Hear my life ticking away?”
“Life in itself is a fatal disease,” I reminded her.
“You don’t really believe that, do you? You don’t when you’re well. I never could conceive of dying. I was different, I wouldn’t grow old and die. Well, I’ve had to accept both inevitabilities. No,” Alison waved away my half-uttered protest, “don’t try to tell me it’s not going to happen, that there’s going to be an eleventh hour miracle. I’d hoped to see Bruce and Linda grown and established, but,” she said, her lids brimming with tears, “I’ve never done anything to deserve a miracle, if they exist.”
“You do seem better, Alison—even Lucian said that.”
“For awhile maybe. Don’t think I’m not going to fight for every day, hour and minute left me! Let’s face it—I have melanoma—did you know Ward didn’t want the doctors to tell me? But I insisted and I’m glad I know, even if—” She stopped and held out her hand. “You’ll look out for my children, won’t you, Mitti?”
“Of course,” I assured her, “but don’t start giving them away yet. I happen to believe in miracles.”
“I wish I did,” she spoke with fervor. “I hope Linda and Bruce won’t see me—changed, particularly Linda. Bruce has his goals set, but I worry about her.” Her long, wasted fingers groped along the arm of the sofa. “I can trust you not to say anything, can’t I? I haven’t told Ward, but she’s been acting strangely. She’s been hostile.”
“She’s probably upset by your illness,” I began.
“Linda’s not herself.” Her voice was sharp. “She spends as little time here as possible. I think she’s afraid I’ll fall apart in front of her—oh, I don’t know what to do!”
Was this true or had her illness made Alison prone to imaginary things? I knew nothing about the side effects of chemotherapy, but Alison seemed to be overreacting.
She rose and moved to the bookcase, where she pulled out a Bible. “You won’t tell anyone! Swear it!”
“So you haven’t entirely discarded your belief in God,” I said after I had puzzledly complied.
“Does anyone in a foxhole? Yes, I know that’s an old cliché, but that’s how I feel. I want to believe, Mitti. In the hospital I tried to pray, but I was talking to blank walls. They say when people face death they get visions or revelations. I didn’t.”
“Perhaps you haven’t been that close to death yet.”
She ignored my remark. “Not that I expect any. I’m too much a doubter. If there is a God, he must despise me.”
“Didn’t Jesus love Thomas? My father used to reassure me, saying, ‘We all doubt God at times.’ My father doubt God? Impossible! ‘I’ve asked myself,’ he said, ‘if I preach the Truth. We have the word of only one book and we don’t even have historical proof that Jesus ever lived.’ If you think you question, Alison, you should hear the debates in theological seminaries! Was there a virgin birth? Did Christ heal physical ills or only the psychosomatic? Did He raise Lazarus from the dead? Was He crucified? And did He rise from the dead? If I couldn’t believe that He did, I might as well forget the Christian religion. Satan gives such logic and credibility to our doubts! That’s when I thank God for Thomas, that stubborn skeptic. He couldn’t accept Christ merely on faith. No, he had to touch the wounds to know they were real—and he went to India to proclaim Christ and die a martyr.”
She was on the sofa again, her eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, “I didn’t mean to preach.”
“I was enjoying it,” she protested. “I wish I’d had someone to talk to me like that. I don’t like this ‘ashes to ashes’ business. If that’s all there is, there’s no point to religion, is there? Or to praying and singing hymns—or even living?”
“What you’re really asking is: is there an afterlife? I believe there is—whether here or on some other plane. One lifetime isn’t enough to give a person a chance to advance to the state where he is worthy to be with God.”
“Lucian was right in a way,” Alison said slowly. “You’d think, considering the position I’m in now, that I’d want to be born again. But I don’t—not in this church, anyway. I never have. The previous minister was so modern I don’t think he believed in anything. Perhaps that’s why people are so drawn to Lucian. But that salvation and damnation stuff leaves me cold. He gives me the impression he considers himself the only gateway to God—almost as if he was God himself.”
Lucian on the chimney rock!
“He’s oddly out of place for Peacehaven,” I mused. “He’s typecast for a witch hunter.”
She eyed me through shuttered lids. “And just what is our heritage? Do you think for one minute that we spring only from the victims of Salem? What do you suppose was happening in the century and a half between the witch trials and the founding of Peacehaven? The Montagues and Capulets were intermarrying, although no one here will admit that. Why, there’s Putnam and Hathorne and Corwin blood running in our veins, too.”
“And that’s bad blood?”
“No more than any other. Which side one’s on is usually an accident of birth.”
I was tempted to tell her about the strange dreams I’d been having, but I refrained after a glance at her drawn face. She had closed her eyes again, her silver hair sprawled over the cushions. I rose to go.
“Don’t leave yet, Mitti,” she said. “I’m not asleep. Dana was here when Lucian came. I think he hates her—and fears her, too. Since I’ve been ill I’m more aware of things—undercurrents that I wouldn’t have noticed before. Someone should warn Dana. Lucian is her deadly enemy.”
* * * *
I thought of Alison’s warning as I listened to Lucian preach the Christmas Eve service—so unlike those I was used to. Little was done to celebrate the Nativity: one wilted poinsettia on the pulpit; no Christmas tree; no candles; no crucifix. Pagan and popish, Lucian claimed.
“On this Christmas Eve,” he was saying now, “just as the Wise Men brought their gifts to the manger, won’t you bring your souls to Jesus? Don’t delay—tomorrow may be too late. Let me tell you about a man I once knew. His wife had given herself to Christ, but although he belonged to my church, he hadn’t made his decision. He was a good man, observed all the commandments, gave to charity, loved his family, but—” He paused, savoring the congregation’s rapt attention.
“He had not yet said, ‘Lord, I am yours. I wish to be born again in you!’ Then one night he made his decision—he would go to my house at once and make his commitment. Alas, my friends, the sands measuring his life had run out. On the way, a hit-and-run driver struck and killed him…
Lucian dropped his hands, bringing a chill silence down on the congregation. “If only he hadn’t put it off! The Lord had come and gone and this man was lost forever!” He leaned over the pulpit, drilling us with his eyes. “I see some among you who can answer, ‘Yes, praise the Lord, I’m saved! I know there’s a place in heaven for me; hallelujah!’ But what about the rest of you? Won’t someone come forward this very night?”
He was looking directly at me. I averted my eyes. There were faint stirrings in the congregation, but as yet no one moved forward.
Lucian flung out his hands. “Brothers and Sisters, Satan is among us! Two little girls have been murd
ered. A coven of witches lives nearby. And there are those among us who make covenant with Satan. There is a woman of alien blood who claims to heal by means of strange herbs and psychic powers. She even worships the living symbol of the Devil—a goat, a smelly, obscene male goat—”
Caper and Dana—Devil and Disciple? He’d gone too far!
“I tremble in the knowledge,” he continued, “that members of our congregation have gone to this woman for her cures.”
A loud “humph” greeted this. Gladys swiveled around on the organ bench to glare at her mother.
“I beg you to pray for this woman, that she may turn from her evil ways before it’s too late. The Bible says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’” His hand gripped the pulpit. “And there is another woman for whom I ask your prayers—and for her husband, too. They’re Peacehaven’s own, but they are not Christians. The Lord has visited a dread disease on the woman, but still she is stiff-necked. Pray for her salvation, my friends. And now I ask you, oh you elect, on this Christmas Eve come forward to reaffirm your commitment. By your example lead those to the light who linger in darkness.” Again he looked at me, but I, too, was stiff-necked. Rather than be born again in his ministry, I’d stay in the womb!
People were rising and filing past the chancel—last of all, Iris and the girls. Lucian passed his hands over one sleek head after another. Suddenly there was a shriek. One of the girls had fallen forward. My view was obstructed, but I could hear moans and a loud, coarse voice shouting obscenities. Oh my God, it’s happened to Rowan again, I thought as I rushed forward, but I was wrong. Rowan and Cissie were supporting Lucy, her veins tracing a blue network on her transparent skin as spasms shook her frail body.
The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users Page 29