by Bill Bennett
‘As you can see, my grandma is very ill,’ Belt said, walking over to put more wood into the stove. ‘Her doctors said to come north, to the fresh clean air where there are no allergies or contaminants, and so we chose here.’
‘Would you like a drink, sheriff?’ the Hag said, starting to rise from her chair.
‘Don’t bother yourself, Mrs Svoboda,’ the sheriff said, pronouncing her name exactly the way she’d said it. ‘I really won’t be staying that long. This is just procedural.’ He looked out the windows at the bones on the poles, clacking maniacally in the strong wind. ‘And that circle of bones, ma’am? Where does that fit in with your treatment?’
‘It doesn’t, you idiot,’ the Hag spat at him. ‘I’m a superstitious old woman from Eastern Europe. I don’t believe what the doctors tell me, I’m being attacked by evil spirits, and that ring is meant to keep them away from me so that I get better. If that’s why those fools down in the hotel think I’m a witch, well then they’re more stupid than I gave them credit for. And I didn’t give them much credit at all.’
The sheriff smiled and nodded, as if in agreement. ‘And the couple from the newspaper left here at what time approximately?’
‘About four o’clock or thereabouts,’ Belt said.
‘And did you notice any kind of tension between them? Any anger or hostility?’
Belt shook her head. The Hag looked up at the sheriff with slit eyes. ‘They were here to ask us about these rumours. I put their minds at ease and they left. End of story.’ She said it with such an air of finality that it forced the sheriff to get to his feet and close his notebook.
‘Well, I guess that’s that then,’ he said, and headed to the door. Then he stopped, turning back to them. ‘The darnedest thing, though, and I wonder if you could help explain this. No one knows and it never was mentioned in the paper, but their means of death wasn’t by gunshot, they were actually poisoned. Ain’t that the weirdest thing? We don’t yet have a fix on what type of poison it was – seems like it was some kind of herbal concoction or something – but that’s what did them in. And that poison was fast acting, so the boffins tell me. So then it begs the question: were they given the poison near where the murder – suicide took place? Or somewhere else?’
‘How should we know?’ Belt said.
‘So you’d have no objection if a team of white coats came up here and took some samples of your liquids and foodstuffs and what-have-you? To run some tests?’
‘I came up here to be alone,’ the Hag said, faintly. ‘Not to be hounded by visitors all the time. I’m weak and I’m dying and I’m scared. But if that will get everybody off our back, then go ahead, do what you need to do.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Svoboda,’ the Sheriff said, then he walked out and drove off.
Belt and the Hag watched him go. The Hag turned away from the front window, stared at the stove. ‘He is not the problem,’ she said. ‘It’s that story. In the newspaper. With the pictures. It’s out now. Everywhere. It will be online, all over the world,’ she said. And for the first time Belt saw real fear in her eyes.
The Hag walked over to the woodpile by the stove, dug down, and pulled out a hessian sack. She unrolled it, and pulled out her Book of Shadows, then walked back to the table and sat. She looked up at Belt, irritated. ‘Sit,’ she said, and Belt sat.
The book was leather-bound, but its covers and binding were scratched and ripped in places, and in need of repair. On the front was an embossed sigil of Baphomet – the horned beast – and when she opened the book Belt saw that the thick pages were gilt-edged, yet thumb-worn. It contained hundreds of scribblings and drawings and sketches – recipes for brews, and spells and detailed instructions for various arcane ceremonies and rituals. It looked like most of the entries in the book were written in a language she didn’t understand – Hungarian perhaps, or Czech or Russian.
Belt was fascinated. She’d never seen inside the old witch’s Book of Shadows. It was a priceless gem – an arte-fact that could never be replaced. And an invaluable tool for a young witch wanting to learn age-old secrets from witches born early last century deep in the woods of Eastern Europe – the source of witchcraft’s most potent and elevated learnings.
‘If anything should happen to me,’ the Hag said, closing the book and looking up at Belt with pale watery eyes, ‘I want you to have this. There are spells in here you will find no other place, not even in Budapest, in the Grand Library, or in the Master Book. With my book, and your innate talent and your ferocious need, you could become the most powerful witch ever.’ Her hand trembled as she placed it over the embossed image of the Baphomet symbol. ‘You are my protégé. You were given to me to instruct in the Old Ways, to prepare for your destiny. This was ordained the moment you were born. You were taken from your real mother and given to your chosen parents. They were instructed to hide you, shelter you, bring you up. It was their task to teach you how to live in the real world, to give you the skills to become like all the others. But you were never like all the others. You were special. Very special. And then when you were ready you were handed over to me. None of this of course you knew. It had to be secret. Secret to all but a few in Budapest.’
Belt listened, trying to comprehend the enormity of what she was hearing. Was any of this true? Or was it just the ramblings of a terrified old woman whose brain has become scrambled with the fear of her impending death?
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ Belt asked.
The Hag coughed, spat, and hawked as if to spit again, but decided not to. ‘I will tell you why, girlie. Because if something should happen to me, I want you to carry on my legacy, and the tradition of Baphomet, in the most noble way possible. Don’t ever forget your true calling. You were born and nurtured to lead us to domination. To take the world to a new order. Do what I could never do, girl. Soar to great heights. Conquer the Light. Create chaos, and rule. I only wish I had more time to teach you all I know, but now it appears I don’t.’
‘We can run,’ Belt said. ‘We can leave now. I know places up in the mountains where they’ll never find us …’
The Hag smiled. ‘They will find us. If they send the man I think they will send, it will be useless trying to hide. Futile. He will find us, no matter where we go. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘But what about travel? You could go to a different place and time. You said yourself you could go back and forwards in time. Surely he couldn’t follow you –’
‘You don’t understand, girl,’ the Hag said, and her chest rose and fell with a sigh. ‘I’m tired. I don’t want to travel anymore. I don’t want to keep living in fear. If it’s not him they send, then it will be someone else expert in travel and in discerning time. They will find me no matter where I go. No, I have led a full life. It’s now time to leave, and to make sure you survive and do what you are meant to do.’
She got up, shuffled over to her carry bag, and pulled out a notebook and pen. She brought them back to the table, sat down slowly and began to write. ‘There is a man in Bern, in Switzerland. Here are his details. He is a high-level Baphomet witch. He owns one of the largest banks in Switzerland. You will go to him and give him this code. He will be expecting you. I have told him all about you.’ She kept writing. ‘He knows all the accounts, the login details, where it all is hidden.’ She tore out the page, started writing on a new one. ‘Over all of my something years I have accumulated a lot of wealth, not only in cash and bullion and diamonds and collectable art, but also in property, holdings of various kinds, securities and bonds.’
Belt could see that she was writing out a URL address, with a user name and password.
‘This is my main operating account. I won’t need it anymore. There is more money in this account than you will ever need. Be discreet. Don’t flaunt your wealth. It will attract attention. You don’t want attention, especially from the IRS or law enforcement.’
She tore out that page too, handed them both to Belt. Then she reached into her robe
, took out a thick wad of bills – all hundred-dollar notes. ‘This will get you out of here. Take the book, get in the truck and go, now. Don’t ask me any questions, don’t look back, just go. I will await my fate. And I will trust that you will fulfil the purpose for which you came to me.’
Belt had tears in her eyes.
‘My job is to stay with you and protect you. That’s why you brought me with you. That’s what you said.’
‘Don’t be a fool, girlie. You want to die? At your age? Get out of here. There’s no point both of us dying. He wants me. He doesn’t want you. If you are here, he will kill you too. But if you are gone, he won’t chase you. It’s me they want to punish, not you. Now GO!’
She pushed the book across the table.
Belt stared at it.
‘I said GO!’ the Hag shrieked.
Belt jumped.
She picked up the book, pocketed the cash, put the two notebook pages in her jacket and looked at the old witch sitting opposite her. In that long look there was an exchange – a passing of the baton, a silent energetic changing of the guard, an unspoken acknowledgement that the time of one had passed and the time of the other had come.
Belt nodded solemnly, in gratitude, in respect, in sorrow. Then she stood up, walked to the door then out and down the porch through the ring of clacking bones. She hopped in the truck and drove slowly away from the shack, without looking back, tears streaming down her face.
CHAPTER 25
The footsteps told him everything he needed to know. A story told in sand, in dirt, through grass, right there in front of him. Skyhawk could picture it.
A man wearing size 11 boots, hiking boots, had approached the car stealthily – he could tell that by the footprints, less weight on the heels, more on the ball of the foot – and then he’d opened the door and reached in. Then something had happened – perhaps Lily had struggled or tried to get away, because there were several footprints where the man adjusted his weight – perhaps to hit her? Or to put a cloth bathed in knock-out fluid over her mouth? Whatever happened, it was clear by the weight of the footprints leaving the car that the man had carried her away and she didn’t struggle. If she’d struggled, the footsteps would not have been so even, so regular.
Skyhawk followed the prints back to where the man had parked his car – several hundred yards away. The footprints told him he’d put Lily in the rear luggage compartment of the vehicle, then he’d walked around to the driver’s side and driven off. By the tire marks it was some sort of SUV, by the width and tread of the tires – and by the clarity of the markings it was apparent the man had driven out slowly.
It had to be the man Lily had spotted coming out of the grocery store, the boy’s father. Skyhawk had suspected that when he glanced around he’d spotted Lily and recognised her. The car he’d been driving was a Lexus SUV and the tire marks fitted a vehicle like that. Skyhawk noticed that he’d also been wearing hiking boots. But how did he find them? He must have doubled back somehow and followed them, then waited till they were asleep before abducting Lily.
Skyhawk turned and raced back to Freddie’s car, about to jump in when he noticed that the front tyre was flat. He walked up and saw the rubber wall of the tyre had been slashed, presumably by a knife. He quickly went around to the rear of the car to pull out the spare, and noticed that the rear tyre had been slashed too. So too the tyres on the other side. The vehicle was useless. He couldn’t drive it out on the rims, not through such rough country. It would be quicker to walk. Actually, it would be quicker to run.
From an early age, Skyhawk had run. His father used to take him down from the Needle and out into the wilderness, and together they would run. They would run through woods, they would run along the banks of streams and lakes, they would run along the tops of mesas with drops of several hundred feet below. Even in his later years, his father could outpace a deer.
He taught Skyhawk how to place his foot surely, even on the most uneven of terrain, so that injury would never be a possibility. He taught him how to draw energy from the trees and the rocks and mountains around him, so exhaustion would never hinder him. He taught him how to be fleet, how to be weightless, how to leap and bound and fly.
Skyhawk ran.
And he leapt and he bounded and he flew.
He ran along a track leading back to the road, moving as swiftly as a creature of the forest. He leapt over fallen trees, bounded over tumbled-down boulders, he seemingly flew across deep ditches and rushing streams, wider than any man could ever hope to jump. He was like a gust of wind, a fleeting shadow, a shimmer of light, now here, now there, now gone.
By the time he got to the road he was covered in sweat, he looked dishevelled, and no one would stop for him, even though he’d tucked his knife inside his shirt. He continued running along the road, stopping for cars when they neared, but it took almost two hours before a car pulled over – a Hyundai Santa Fe hatchback that stopped fifty yards down the road.
Skyhawk ran up, jumped in the back seat and thanked the driver, who turned and pistol-whipped him across the side of the head with a handgun.
Grigor smiled then slowly accelerated back into the flow of traffic, Skyhawk slumped unconscious onto the seat behind him. Further on down the road, sometime later, with Skyhawk still out to it, he turned off onto a dirt track into thick woods, to kill the man who’d killed his brother.
Half a mile down he found a secluded clearing and stopped under a large oak tree. There was thick brush surrounding the clearing and some littered trash; empty weather-faded plastic containers, a couple of Coke cans, a few broken beer bottles. On the other side of a wire fence that bordered the perimeter of the clearing, there was a mouldy cement horse trough filled with brackish water. Grigor got out, walked around to the back door, opened it and hauled the still unconscious Skyhawk out of the vehicle. Blood was congealing around an ugly wound to his temple where he’d been struck by the butt of the pistol.
Grigor dragged him over to the base of the tree, dumped him on the ground, then slapped him several times across the face with the palm of his hand – slapped him hard – until he regained consciousness. The Twin stepped back and pulled out the handgun that he’d tucked into his belt, raised the weapon and took aim.
Skyhawk looked up, his eyes gradually regaining focus.
Grigor smiled. It was the smile of a sadist, the smile of a fiend, the smile of someone about to relish the suffering of another. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I want you awake to see who will kill you. I am disappointed that I don’t have the strength or power to do this more slowly, and I only have this ugly handgun rather than a knife, which is a pity. I can be far more creative with a knife. Guns are so … masculine. Brutish. Wham bam, thank you, ma’am. Knives are more feminine. They’re slinkier. Sexier. Don’t you think? Guns are like dogs. Knives are like cats.’ He began to giggle at his own cleverness – a series of slightly hysterical high-pitched squeals of delight.
Skyhawk slowly blinked, feigning semiconsciousness, waiting for his moment.
‘I am nothing if not inventive, however,’ Grigor continued. ‘Even with such a weapon that lacks subtlety, I can still have fun. A few well-placed shots I’m sure will cause you excruciating pain, and I can work with that for a while, until I get bored, and then I will kill you. My brother, bless his dear dark soul, would approve, I’m sure. So let’s start with your kneecaps, shall we? One at a time. And then we’ll work up from there.’
Grigor took aim at Skyhawk’s right kneecap, and went to pull the trigger. In a flash, Skyhawk rolled to one side and in a motion so swift it was barely visible to the eye, he reached inside his shirt, grabbed his knife, pulled it from its sheath and threw it.
It speared through the air as Grigor fired. At the same time, Skyhawk flung himself to the side – and felt the bullet whizz past his shoulder as he dived, and watched as his knife lodged itself in Grigor’s neck, to one side of his Adam’s apple. Grigor shrieked and gurgled blood, grabbed the hilt of the knife and ginge
rly pulled it out, threw it away, then fired again, the bullet this time going wide. But Skyhawk had already jumped to his feet and disappeared behind the tree.
Grigor advanced, blood now pulsing out in spurts from the wound to his neck. With one hand he tried to stem the blood flow and with the other he held the pistol. As he approached the tree, Skyhawk sprung out from the other side, holding a large fallen branch in both hands. He slammed it into the side of Grigor’s head, and he slumped to the ground, dropping the handgun. Skyhawk quickly picked it up, stood back and levelled the weapon, Grigor struggling to get to his feet.
‘You killed my brother,’ he rasped through bloodied lips. ‘And now I will kill you.’ He slumped back to the ground, both hands now to his neck, blood spurting through his fingers.
‘Listen,’ Skyhawk said. ‘I don’t care who or what you are, I’m not going to let you bleed to death, okay? I’m not like you. I’m not a killer. We gotta stop that bleeding. So take off your shirt, I’ll plug that wound.’
Grigor just stared back at him hatefully. ‘You do not touch my shirt, it’s Armani Collezioni,’ he said, and then as Skyhawk watched, he began to turn himself into a gigantic cobra. It took effort, it seemed to Skyhawk, because he appeared to struggle with the transformation, as though he didn’t have enough energy to complete the shift. There was still a wound in the snake’s neck, just beneath the fan-like head of the cobra, but there was a human leg sticking awkwardly out from the reptile’s body, and an arm too, all crooked and deformed. Its face was part cobra, part Grigor – with one cruel eye remaining his, and his nose too. The creature looked like a giant genetic defect. A grotesque creature.
But it rose high and opened its massive jaws, leaned back as if preparing a sling shot, then spat two huge wads of venom at Skyhawk. He dodged to one side – the venom slung itself into some weeds near the tree. The snake reared up and slithered towards him at a frightening speed, its jaws open again, two huge fangs dripping yellow glistening venom. Skyhawk spotted the handgun on the ground behind the snake. He circled around and the cobra followed, rising up even higher, about to strike again.