Bones of a Witch

by Dana Donovan

  He concluded by kissing the opened page and offering the book up to the sky. I cleared my throat to get his attention, and when he looked at me I said, “I think the fellow you’re praying to is down there.” I motioned at the ground. He snapped the book closed and ordered Putnam to kick the bucket out from under me.

  What happened next happened so fast that I’m still not sure of the exact sequence of events. Putnam started towards me, so I shifted my weight onto one foot, and just as he came within striking distance I reached out and kicked him in the balls. Now, I have to tell you that I have kicked men in the balls before. It’s something I don’t necessarily like to do, as I understand it hurts like hell, but in the past I have used that maneuver to fend off a number of unwanted advances from men who thought they had something I needed and which they intended to give me, like it or not. In those cases, such a well-placed kick usually produced a groan or a yelp like a dog whose tail had just been mashed under the rails of a rocking chair. Then, inevitably, the man would drop to his knees holding his package, keel over onto his side and roll up tightly in a fetal position crying the usual obscenities: Fuck, Motherfucker, Goddamn, and my favorite, Goddamn Motherfucker. It’s such a mechanical response. Poetry in motion, really. The only problem is that that’s not what happened to J.T. Putnam. I don’t know; maybe the old bird hasn’t any balls, or they’re just too small to hit. Either way it required additional fast thinking.

  After getting kicked in the groin, J.T. did stagger back a bit, but did not follow through with the other poetic sequential steps as expected. He regained footing immediately and came at me, this time with his hands protecting his inguinal region. I don’t know, maybe he thought that was as high as I could kick. No one said the man was a genius. I waited until he was nearly on top of me and then high-kicked him square in the jaw. He staggered back considerably further this time before tripping over a root stump and falling flat on his ass. Hilton, perhaps sensing Putnam incapable of carrying out the task, started towards me to finish the job himself. Instinctively, I buckled my knees and brought them to my chest, effectively dropping my weight onto the rope and temporarily hanging myself. I know, ironic, isn’t it?

  With my body suspended, I was able to swing my hands under my feet and bring them around to my front. Now, my boots came down on the bucket again, Hilton stepped into my circle of reach. I turned my hands outward and drove the heel of my palm home with an uppercut to the base of his nose. His head recoiled upon impact. His arms began flailing in windmill fashion and like Putnam, an involuntary retreat sent him staggering backwards, but not before I snatched the golden crucifix from his chain.

  But I was still not out of the woods yet, for even as Hilton was going down, Putnam was recovering. He rebounded on his feet, and like a charging bull came straight at me.

  Now then, I’m not saying that I am completely innocent in matters where death and my name have shared bylines in the same sentence, but this was different. I had no alternative but to do what I did next, so don’t judge me. Besides, I think you’d approve.

  Putnam’s charge was fierce enough to knock me off the bucket, and in fact did. He tackled me around the waist and, whether intended or not, managed to kick the bucket out from under me while doing so, sending it wandering down the grassy slope in a clumsy tumble. To make matters worse, the perverted slob kept a wrestler’s hold around my waist so that at times, depending on his footing, both his weight and mine were suspended from the rope around my neck.

  This is the part I’m not at all proud of, but as I mentioned; it was necessary. I still had Hilton’s crucifix clutched within in my bound hands. Putnam’s arms were around my waist, his head tucked neatly under my left arm. We were spinning freely, swaying under the tree branch and kicking up enough dust to choke a horse. In the sporadic glimpses whirling by me, I saw Hilton working to get back on his feet, his bloodied nose spotting his gray beard a crimson red. I knew then I was dead if I didn’t react quickly. The noose would not let me see Putnam, but that didn’t matter. I knew where to strike. I tightened my grip around the golden crucifix, and as hard as I could, I stabbed Putnam in the backside of the neck. He let out the scream I had expected earlier when I kicked him in the balls, but for me it was still not loud enough. So I pulled the pointed cross out of his neck and stabbed him again. Then I repeated the measure, thrusting with greater might each time while moving from his neck and down his back until finally his arms went slack and he fell to the ground at my feet. I stood on his body, taking my weight off the rope, but feeling as though the noose still owned me. So I dropped the crucifix and freed myself from its insufferable grip.

  By this time Hilton had found his footing, shaky though it was; the old man showed remarkable persistence. He started toward me, but then suddenly stopped. At first, I thought he had reconsidered his assault after seeing me reach for the crucifix again, but I was wrong. Something had stolen his attention. I followed his gaze to a bare patch of ground where Putnam had been standing. There in the dirt lay his revolver, which Hilton had already begun making a move for.

  I picked up the cross and darted in to intercept him. Hilton, closer to the gun than I, retrieved it, turned and fired, grazing my arm just below the shoulder. I lunged low with a diving thrust, jabbing him in the meat of his thigh. He dropped the gun, squealing in pain. I reeled off to one side, my hands still bound and stretched out over my head. In that position I rolled, taking advantage of the gradual downhill slope until I felt I had put enough distance between him and me. When I thought it prudent I scrambled to my feet and ran like hell.

  Ahead, the church whose steeple I remembered seeing silhouetted by the crescent moon, lay before my eyes like a desert oasis. I recall how difficult it was running there with my hands married at the wrists, and how my legs compensated by taking shorter but quicker strides. All the while that infernal witch’s stone kept bouncing off my chest, ping-ponging back and forth from one breast to the other. I grabbed it as I reached the door of the church and yanked it from its chain, dropping it at the threshold before entering.

  Once inside I realized I was no safer than before. The door was wedged in the open position, yet there were no people, no phones and no means to summons help whatsoever. I looked around for something to cut the ropes from my hands, and spotted what looked like a sharp edge on the metal candle racking by the baptismal pool. I hurried to it and began sawing away, when an angry voice echoed across the church.

  “Stop, Miss Adams!” I knew right away it wasn’t Jesus. He’d have called me Lilith. I turned and faced the rows of pews leading to the front door. There stood Hilton, a gun in one hand and a crooked stick, which he used as a crutch, in the other. His leg was bleeding, but he made no attempt to tie off the wound and allowed it to hemorrhage freely. “How fitting you should come to my church in your last hour on earth,” he said. “Let me welcome you to Our Lady of Grace.” He presented the surroundings with a wave of his makeshift cane.

  “Your church?” I looked around, noting how perfectly normal a church it seemed. “Funny, I would have expected to find the usual instruments of torture in your church.”

  “Oh?”

  “Sure, you know: rack, pillory, thumbscrew board, maybe an iron boot or the stocks.”

  He laughed sickly. “Those are all downstairs.”

  “Ah, a dungeon. How medieval.”

  I heard him click back the hammer on the revolver as he started towards me. “You know, Miss Adams, we’ve never had a witch give us as much trouble before a hanging as you have.”

  I backed away a couple of steps. “Maybe that’s because you’ve never found yourselves a real witch to hang until now.”

  “Yes, that’s possible.” His advance quickened, though I could tell his leg was making things difficult for him. I took another few steps backwards and my heels brushed the riser on the stairs leading up to the baptismal pool.

  “So, you’re saying you believe you’ve killed innocent mortals before?” I said.


  “Of course, I….” A twinge of pain bit his leg and I thought he might accidentally shoot me there and then. But he swallowed back the burn and pressed forward. “I suspect most of them were, as was the case back in 1692. But you have to kill a lot of worker ants to get to the queen; now don’t you?”

  “Apparently.”

  Hilton had reached the base of the altar and was crossing in front of the candle racking when I realized he had picked up the witch’s stone I dropped by the door, for its broken chain dangled from his patch pocket. I glanced behind me briefly and started up the five steps leading to the narrow pool decking. “You know you’ll have to shoot me here,” I said, “because I’m not letting you drag me back up to Gallows Hill alive.”

  That made him smile. “I suppose we’ll see about that.” he set his walking stick down on the candle rack and reached into the lining pocket of his suit coat, removing the medallion he had robbed from Ursula Bishop’s grave, “Tell me the secrets of the gate key and I’ll shoot you here, sparing you the gallows.”

  I crossed the narrow ledge along the front of the pool and pressed my back against the far wall, exhausting all further avenues of escape. Already I could feel the witch’s stone siphoning my powers, its effects growing stronger as he inched closer. “I told you already; it’s just a medallion. It has no secrets.”

  “Oh?” He started up the stairs, his leg clearly in more pain now than before, as he displayed considerable effort negotiating them without the stick. “That’s a shame. I’m afraid I have no motivation to work with you then.” Upon reaching the platform, he set the pistol down on the top step and produced the stun gun that he had used on me earlier in the limo. “You will go to Gallows Hill one way or the other, Miss Adams,” and he pulled the trigger, discharging a riot of sparks, tripping in excited clicks between horned electrodes. “It’s your call.”

  As scary as that seemed, in the few seconds the stun gun was ignited, I noticed something utterly remarkable happening down deep in my bones. It had something to do with the witch’s stone. For some inexplicable reason, in that subtle instant the powers of the stone were magnified by a factor of ten; only its electric boost seemed to work in reverse. The usual negative effects of the dolomite became positive. I felt as though I could do anything in the realm of witchcraft I desired, just so long as that stun gun was engaged. Hilton may have sensed something, too, as he seemed to waver a moment, or perhaps he merely picked up intuitively the reaction on my face and assimilated through conjecture that something was amiss. I dared not hesitate longer and so I egged him on with a coaxing finger to come get me.

  “Fine,” I said. “Let’s have it your way. Bring it on, Lard Ass.”

  He started toward me. “All right, but I warn you; if you fall into the pool after I shock you, you’ll be too numb to do anything, and I shouldn’t think I can get you out before you drown. That’s a considerably harder way to go.”

  “At least I’ll have cheated the gallows, now wouldn’t I?”

  He pulled the trigger again and a surge of energy rushed through my body. I imagined a fine line delineating invincible and superable existing between the microburst of electric sensations leaping from that gun. If he managed to touch me with the sparks before I could bewitch his ass then I would surely end up knowing the curse of the hangman’s noose, or worse. But I had a plan. I continued antagonizing Hilton until his anger at me exceeded his discomfit; that is to say he was more pissed than pained, sort of how I make Tony feel on any given day. I said stuff to him like, ‘Your father sucks a witch’s tit’, and ‘Your mother asked for an abortion and got her wish when she had you’. Again, stuff I say to Tony all the time. It’s crazy how you could just see the blood in his eyes rising. I guess it’s a guy thing.

  Old Hilty really poured on the steam then. He came after me with that stun gun, zapping up a storm. I waited until he was nearly on top of me before casting the spell. I’m sure he thought I had disappeared. My clothes simply dropped to the floor, covering me temporarily. But then he saw the lump moving beneath them and he gave it a kick. I let out a screech and darted off down the narrow ledge. Hilton, now startled beyond words, stumbled backwards, shifting intolerable weight onto his bad leg, which buckled instantly, sending him over the ledge. His fat ass plunged like a stone, straight to the bottom of the baptismal pool. At once the holy water began churning in a frantic boil, spewing caustic green smoke into the air like an acid-based geyser.

  Still more scared than not, I scampered down the steps and around the wall. I expected I might have to run for cover under one of the pews when he got out of the pool, but he never did. I waited until the bubbling settled and the smoke dimmed before walking up the stairs and giving things a good sniff to check it out. In a cat’s world, he would have been lucky; he would still have eight more lives in which to torment me. And though Emanuel J. Hilton was not of the feline persuasion, he apparently was not of human origin either; and now he was most definitely dead, dissolved to nothing, along with the witch’s stone.

  I backed away from the pool, still adjusting to the cold after reversing the spell, when I heard someone at the back of the church exclaim, “Jesus! Lilith!”

  I turned abruptly to see Tony, Carlos and Spinelli standing in the doorway; their mouths gaping, their eyes—especially Dominic’s—wide as soupspoons and nearly as polished. Tony hurried to me, removing his coat as he ran, and wrapped me in it tighter than a witch’s knot. By then Carlos had done the courteous thing and turned away; I suppose Spinelli would have turned also, had he not been so stupefied. You know, I’m beginning to think that kid’s got a thing for me. I really must make it a point not to encourage him.

  After putting my clothes on, I joined the guys by the pool as they checked out Hilton’s only remains: his suit, coat, shoes, some gold jewelry, which lay at the bottom of the pool, and an old brown fedora that floated on top.

  “Yup, he’s gone,” Carlos remarked, pointing out the obvious. “There’s nothing left of him but his clothes.”

  “Weird,” said Dominic. “He simply melted away. How do you suppose that happened?”

  “I suppose he wasn’t human,” I said. “I’m not sure any of them were now that I think of it.”

  “Them?” Tony asked. “There are others besides Hilton and Putnam involved in this?”

  “Hell, only half the damn town.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I went on to tell them about Putnam and the old magistrate at the witch’s trial, and all the seventeenth century Puritan spectators clamoring to see me sent to the gallows. After hearing quite enough, it was Carlos who took my hand and squeezed it gently, saying, “You sure you’re okay, Lilith? That sounds simply awful.”

  I smiled up at him and winked. “Of course, Carlos; I had everything under control the entire time, but thanks for your concern.”

  He then kissed my hand in that uniquely Cuban amorous way of his, a soft sort of brush stroke in a broader masterpiece that’s never quite finished. I often wish Tony would kiss me like that, instead of laying it on me like so many sticky notes in a tactician’s day planner. Don’t get me wrong. Tony’s a good lover and all. He’s thoughtful and considerate of my feelings. It’s just that sometimes his methodical approach to things can seem a bit mechanical in the grips of passion. You would think that after all the years he and Carlos worked together that just a trifle of one would have rubbed off on the other. Man, what a combination that would be.

  After Carlos’ little display of compassion, Tony sent the guys out of the church to be alone with me for a minute. He pulled me aside and sat me down in one of the pews. I thought he wanted to scold me for getting on the train and fuckin` everything up for him and his men, in which case I would have had to seriously hurt him; but that wasn’t it. Instead he went rambling on about how sorry he was for putting me in harm’s way like he did, and how he never meant to let me down. I know, what a hoot, huh? Naturally I played it up as much as I could.

  “He was goin
g to kill me,” I said, speaking of Hilton particularly. “How could you have not done your homework on him?”

  “I know, again I’m sorry. How can I ever make it up to you?”

  “I don’t know if you can.”

  “Try me. I’ll do anything.”

  “Well I don’t know. You might…nah, forget it.”

  “What?”

  “No, I said forget it.”

  “What?”

  “Well, maybe the next time we….” I leaned over and whispered the rest in his ear. He pulled back as if zapped by electric shock.

  “Really? You’d like that?”

  I smiled wickedly. “Maybe.”

  He seemed to toss it around in his head for all of three seconds before coming back with a shrug. “All right, sure, why not? We can try it.”

  I gave him a kiss on the lips to seal the deal. Two seconds later the sound of approaching sirens brought Dominic back into the church. “Cops are coming,” he said. “Do we want to be here?”

  Tony looked at me for the answer. I shook my head. “What could we possibly tell`em?” I said, “that their pastor dissolved to nothing in a pool of holy water?” I pointed at the blood stains spotting the floor leading up the steps to the pool. “If they find his blood and not his body, they’ll think we killed him. I don’t know of any way to spin that tale so that they don’t drag us downtown.”

  “Then we don’t stick around,” he said. “Take us to Gallows Hill where you say you left Putnam’s body. I want to see for myself that he’s dead.”

  “Okay, it’s right out back. Follow me.”

  “I will.” He pointed to the door. “You go on; I’ll catch up with you in a minute.”

  “Why, what are you going to do?”

  “I just want to look around real quick.”

  “The cops are almost here.”