Devil's Bargain

by R. L. King

  A sudden scream—a high, keening shriek of terror—jolted me from my doze.

  My God, that’s Melanie!

  7

  I’d leaped out of my chair and dashed down the hall toward the bedroom before my brain was even fully awake. Heart pounding, I flung open Mel’s door and switched on the light.

  She was still screaming. As the overhead light drove the shadows from the room, my first impression was of blood, everywhere. I pulled up short, gasping in terror.

  Oh, God, what’s going on?

  Melanie sat in the middle of her twin bed, her arms wrapped around herself, her breath coming so fast I thought she might hyperventilate in between screams. All around her, arranged in a circle and staining her blue-and-white comforter, a series of—black things—had been laid out, starting at the headboard on either side of where her head had been on the pillow, and stretching down the length of her body and around where her feet would have been if she’d been lying down.

  Mel’s gaze locked on me, her eyes so wide I thought they might pop out of her head. “What are they, Mommy? What are they?” She seemed to be trying to scrunch herself up as small as possible, so she didn’t have to touch any of the bloody things.

  I acted without thought, hurling myself forward to snatch her up. At nine she was getting too big for me to lift under normal circumstances, but I barely noticed her weight as I hauled her up, spun, and set her on her feet with me between her and the bed.

  “Mom?” Another voice from the doorway—Max. Of course—he couldn’t have slept through all that screaming.

  “Both of you—close the door and sit right there near it,” I ordered.

  “But Mom—”

  “Do it!” I used “Mom voice,” the one that told them they’d better obey instantly or they’d regret it. “Just sit there and be quiet a minute.”

  Confident they’d listen, at least in the short term, I turned back around to look at what was on Mel’s bed.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  They were crows.

  Dead crows.

  There were nine of them in all—two on the pillow, three each along both sides of the bed, and one at the foot. All of them were dead and bloody; necks broken, entrails spilling from their slit bellies, shiny black feathers coming loose. Their wide-open eyes, like black drops of oil, seemed to follow my movements. I’d seen those eyes before, I knew it—

  —and then I knew where.

  The old witch, Madame Minna, had had the same tiny, black, oil-drop eyes.

  My shoulders sagged. “Oh, God…” I murmured.

  “Mom?”

  What was going on? This couldn’t be happening. There was no way that horrible old woman could have gotten into my house and left these disgusting things in my daughter’s bed. “No…no…no…”

  “Mom?” Mel again. Her voice sounded like she’d been crying and was trying to stop.

  “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” I hurried over to them, dropping down next to them and pulling them both into a tight hug. “Everything’s going to be fine…”

  Her breath hitched. “I woke up…something smelled weird…and then those…things were there. I touched one on accident, and it was all wet, and warm, and…” Another hitch, and her grip on me tightened. “What are they, Mom?”

  “I don’t know, baby.”

  “Was—was somebody in my room? Did somebody leave them there?”

  I deliberately didn’t answer that, and not just because I didn’t want to scare her. I didn’t know the answer. “Come on—let’s check Max’s room.”

  She and Max both seemed happy to leave. We trooped down the hall to his room, the two of them holding on to me so tight we were like a single, shambling beast. The door stood open. I switched on the light and swept my gaze around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary—just Max’s usual jumble of toy cars, LEGOs, and Mr. Stuffins hastily abandoned on the bed.

  “I don’t see anything…” Mel said shakily. “Mom…what are you gonna do? I don’t wanna sleep in there anymore…”

  “You don’t have to. I’m going to call the police. I don’t know how those things got in here, but I’m sure they’ll figure it out. And in the meantime, I’m going to call your Dad and tell him he needs to come home from New York right away. You’re going to be staying with him for a while.” I backed out of Max’s room and, with the two of them still hanging on to my hands, headed back toward Mel’s.

  “With Daddy? What about you, though?”

  “I…don’t know yet, baby.” And I didn’t. I had no idea what I was going to do. “Right now, I guess, I’m going to call the police and then after they come, I’m going to clean up this—”

  I stopped, gaping, as we reached Mel’s doorway.

  The dead, bloody crows were gone.

  The blue-and-white checked bedspread was rumpled as if Mel had been sleeping under it, the blue pillowcase pristine and unstained. There was no sign the disgusting things had ever been there.

  “Mom…?” Mel swallowed hard and gripped my hand. “Where’d the dead birds go?”

  “You don’t see them either?”

  She shook her head. Now her hand on mine was shaking. “But they—they were there before, Mom. I felt them. I smelled them. They were awful.”

  “I know. I know. I saw them too.”

  “So where are they?”

  Max, now that the screaming was over, seemed satisfied that everything was okay. His body sagged against mine as already he began to grow tired again. I hefted him into my arms, letting him slump against my shoulder. “I…don’t know, Mel.” Had we been having some kind of shared hallucination? Were we all going crazy?

  But no. I tightened my grip on Max, and gritted my teeth.

  We were not going crazy.

  This was really happening, somehow. And I was certain, as I’d rarely been sure of anything else in my life, that Madame Minna was behind this. It was a warning, because I’d sent the cops after her.

  But she’d made a mistake now. Killing my sister’s husband and my sister was bad. Stealing my baby niece was worse.

  But now she’d threatened my kids.

  Deep within me, a primal, mama-bear rage began to build. It scared me a little, to be honest. But more than that, it filled me with resolve.

  That old bat was not going to hurt my children.

  If she was a witch, then so be it. I’d have to find a way to fight her on her own terms.

  8

  Mark didn’t ask questions when I called him the following day from the hotel where we were staying and demanded that he come home and take the kids. That’s one thing I’ll say in his favor: he doesn’t just pay lip service to giving a damn about Max and Mel. I didn’t say anything about the witch or the disappearing dead crows on the phone, but only told him I was having a hard time dealing with Susan’s and Chuck’s deaths and Emma’s disappearance, and I needed some time alone. He promised to catch the next available flight home and pick them up as soon as he could.

  I also didn’t call the police, despite what I’d told Mel. What was I going to say? “Yes, Officer, there were a bunch of eviscerated dead crows in my daughter’s bed. What? Where are they now? Any sign of blood, or feathers, or anything to prove they were really there? Uh—no, nothing like that, but cross my heart, I promise I saw them!”

  Yeah, that would go over great. I was already convinced Lieutenant O’Riley thought I was bonkers. No point in giving her more ammunition.

  Mark arrived the next evening. The kids and I had gone back to the house that morning to check things out and pack bags for them, but after that we’d spent the day at the movies, eating lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, and prowling around the mall, where I bought Max a new LEGO kit and Mel the jacket she’d had her eye on. By the time we made it back home to meet Mark, I was convinced the kids had mostly gotten over their scare. Kids were resilient that way. I reinforced it by suggesting that the whole thing might have been nothing but a bad nightmare. I didn’t thin
k Mel believed it, but Max did. He hadn’t gotten a good look at the crows, and was just happy to have his new LEGOs.

  I didn’t want to go back to the house after dark, but I couldn’t very well have Mark meet us at the mall. Leaving Max to play with his new toys in the brightly lit living room where I could watch him, I took Mel into the kitchen. “Listen,” I told her. “I think it might be better if we didn’t tell Daddy about what happened last night.”

  “Why not?” She looked serious; already I could begin to see the young woman she’d become in a few short years.

  “Well…” I took her hand and met her gaze. “You know what we saw, and so do I. We both saw those dead birds. I’m sure of it. But…they weren’t really there. They couldn’t have been, or we’d have found some blood, or feathers, or something. Right?”

  “You mean we were seeing things?”

  “I think so, baby. I think we were both just really tired and sad, and our minds played tricks on us. And you know what the world thinks of people whose minds play tricks on them.”

  “That they’re koo-koo,” she said with a faint smile, spinning her finger around next to her head and rolling her eyes for emphasis.

  “You got it, kiddo.” I booped her nose. “You know we’re not, and so do I, but Daddy might not think the same way.”

  “You mean he won’t believe us?” She looked distressed at the thought.

  I answered with care. How do you explain to a nine-year-old about how their methodical engineer father would feel about his ex-wife and daughter believing in witches’ curses? “Well,” I said, “I think he’d try, but Daddy’s the kind of person who has to see something to believe it. And since we don’t have anything to show him…”

  “I get it.” She patted my arm. “I won’t say anything to him. But…”

  “But what?”

  Her distress grew. “We did see them. What do they mean, Mom? Why would we both see the same thing like that?”

  “That’s a good question, and one of the things I’m going to try to do while you’re with Daddy is figure that out. Okay?”

  Her hand on my arm tightened into a grip. “Be careful, Mom. Okay? Promise?”

  “I promise, baby. I—” I was spared saying anything else by the sound of the doorbell ringing. “Come on now. Get your stuff ready and help Max, so we don’t keep Daddy waiting.”

  9

  After Mark and the kids left, I sank down into my chair, exhausted. I didn’t want to stay in the house any longer, terrified that Madame Minna would send another of her disgusting visions—or worse—but the conversation with Mark had taken a lot out of me. I’d felt like I was tiptoeing my way through a minefield, telling him about how Susan’s tragic death and Emma’s disappearance had hit me hard, but making sure to keep quiet about the rest of it. Mel, for her part, said very little, and Max was so happy to see his Daddy that all he could talk about was his new LEGOs and how much he’d eaten at the Cheesecake Factory.

  “So what do I do now?” I asked aloud, gazing out the window into the street. It was a typical, middle-class suburban street, lined with trees and full of typical, middle-class tract houses just like mine. Hardly the kind of place where the residents had to deal with things like murderous witches, and illusionary crow-guts in their beds. That kind of thing didn’t happen to normal people.

  But it had happened to me. The old woman had launched a salvo when she threatened my kids, and now I had to find a way to fight her on her own terms.

  I got up and paced around the living room. How the hell was I supposed to fight a witch on her own terms? Even when I was a kid, I hadn’t been one of those people who liked horror movies, or even fantasy stories that got too dark. I grew up on a diet of cozy murder mysteries, adventurous romances, and TV sitcoms, and by the time I got to college I’d pretty much given up reading in exchange for focusing on dating, doing well in school, and generally throwing myself headfirst into real life. I didn’t have time for fantasy.

  But you’d better make time, if you want to get out of this. She’s got Emma, and if you want to get her back, you’d better figure something the hell out.

  But what? What did you do to fight witches? Were there people out there who did that kind of thing? Witch-hunters? Should I go find somebody at a church? I hadn’t been to church for years, and had no idea what to even look for. I didn’t need an exorcism, just somebody to track down Madame Minna and make her give up Emma.

  Maybe there were shops that dealt in occult stuff. That might be a good place to start. Maybe I could get a book or something, or somebody there would have a suggestion. I stalked out to the kitchen and yanked the phone book off the top of the fridge. I knew you could look up stuff like this on the computer, but this seemed easier. Witches and computers didn’t seem to go together very well.

  I opened the book and flipped to the Os in the Yellow Pages, looking for Occult. To my surprise, two small ads showed up under the header: one in San Francisco and the other in Santa Rosa. I wrote down the address of the one in San Francisco; it was too late to call tonight, but tomorrow I’d go before I lost my nerve.

  I just hoped whoever ran the shop wasn’t friends with Madame Minna.

  For the rest of the night, I dozed fitfully in my chair, trying to stay awake, terrified something else would show up. Several times the temptation to call Mark and check on Mel and Max nearly overwhelmed me, but somehow I resisted it. The witch had sent me a warning, and as far as she knew, I was heeding it. I hoped that meant she’d leave me and my kids alone.

  The shop, called “The Golden Path,” was in the Cole Valley district, on a little side street between a liquor store and a place selling cheap electronics. I got there shortly after they opened, hoping I didn’t look too stressed out.

  As soon as I got inside, I knew I’d made a mistake. The place didn’t look anything like Madame Minna’s odd little parlor, but it also didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before in my life. Small and cramped, it smelled like several competing types of incense, a faint whiff of body odor, a hint of pot smoke, and several other things I couldn’t identify. Every square inch of the walls and counters were covered with posters, rows of little vials, what looked like collections of shrunken heads (obviously fake, thank goodness), candles, shelves of books, and similar strange items. To my left, a shelf held row after row of brightly colored tarot decks, and to my right, a table had been set up with a grinning skeleton dressed as a fortune teller. Lush, green plants in pots lined shelves along the tops of the walls, stretching their runners out in both directions.

  “May I help you?” came a cheerful voice from behind the counter.

  I jumped, because for a moment I couldn’t see the speaker and I had this terrifying certainty that Madame Minna had found me here.

  But no, a chubby, dark-skinned woman in her middle thirties poked her head out and waved at me. “Over here.”

  “Oh!” I forced a laugh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

  “No problem. It’s a little packed in here. What can I help you find?” She had twinkling brown eyes, a riot of curly dark hair sticking out from a purple do-rag, and wore a peasant blouse of bright yellow topped with a collection of jangly necklaces.

  I approached the counter cautiously, realizing I had no idea what I was trying to say. “Well…I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m looking for some information about—” I lowered my voice. “—the occult.”

  She laughed. “Well, you’ve come to the right place. But I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.”

  “Just…in general, I guess.” Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t come here, and that I could scoot out the door and disappear. I didn’t get any feeling of danger from the friendly woman, but this whole thing just seemed absurd. Instead, I took a deep breath. “And…witches.”

  “We have a great selection of books on witchcraft.” She pointed to the shelves behind me. “Center bookcase, middle two rows. We have books on all sorts of different traditions, spellcraft,
herbs, pretty much anything you might want.”

  “Oh! Uh…thank you. I’ll just browse for a while, I guess.”

  “Sure thing. Let me know if I can answer any other questions. I’ll just be over here.” She bustled off and returned to what she was doing, which seemed to be knitting something with chunky blue yarn and large wooden needles.

  I watched her for a moment, then turned my attention back to the shelves. She wasn’t kidding: there had to be a couple dozen books at least on the subject of witchcraft—everything from primers on Wicca, to books on reading the Tarot and casting runes, to thick reference volumes on herbalism and potion-making. They even had a collection of titles focused on sex magic. What I didn’t see, though, was anything about curses, or the kind of “evil” witchcraft Madame Minna seemed to be involved in. I guess it made sense—even if such books existed, I didn’t think your garden-variety occult shop would carry Curses for Dummies or The Beginner’s Guide to Baby-Snatching right out in the open where any tourist could blunder into them.

  I was about to turn back and ask the woman more questions when my gaze fell on a bulletin board next to the bookshelves. It was a typical cork message board in an elaborate wooden frame, packed so full of flyers, business cards, and other scraps of paper that they stacked on top of each other in spots. I studied them for a moment, noticing a lot of cards for local fortune tellers and card readers (nothing from Madame Minna, thank goodness), flyers advertising holistic medicine seminars, and even one for a Wiccan-friendly cat-sitter.

  The one that caught my eye the most, though, was a larger green sheet, tacked over several of the others. Occult Traditions in Modern-Day America, the header read in bold, flowing script across the top. Below that was a grainy headshot of a slim, handsome man with dark spiky hair and an intense gaze, and below that, the text read: