Black Magic Woman (31 page)

It doesn't really take a lot to bring an airliner down, as the 9/11 hijackers demonstrated all too vividly. Morris didn't know what Christine Abernathy might be able to manage in the way of sabotage—electrical failure, some kind of attack on the cockpit crew, a flight of geese sucked into the engines—but he supposed there were any number of possibilities. And the black witch didn't seem much concerned about what the military calls "collateral damage."

Morris wasn't eager to die, although he thought there was a good chance that he would not survive the confrontation to come. But he wasn't interested in putting a planeload of innocent passengers at risk, just so he could take the most convenient route to his own funeral.

The folks at Avis, he found, were still trying harder. They were not only willing to rent him a fairly new Oldsmobile, but also provided a computer-generated set of maps and directions. The pretty blonde behind the counter, seeing his destination was Salem, even made a cute little joke about witches.

She seemed disappointed when Morris didn't laugh.

He located the blue Olds in the lot without much difficulty, and stashed his suitcase in the trunk. Then he started the engine, took a deep breath, and headed out into the Darwinian chariot race that is New York City traffic.

Morris wondered whether he would ever return to New York, and whether Libby Chastain would still be alive when he did.

Following the directions that Avis had given him, he beeped, butted, and bluffed his way out of the city. Within half an hour he was on Route 95, the great north-south interstate that spans the east coast from New England to Florida.

He had been on the highway for only a short time when it started raining toads.

The first of the small creatures landed on the Oldsmobile's hood and just squatted there, looking in at Morris impassively. A couple of seconds later, another one hit the windshield and bounced off, leaving a wet, yellow smear. Just for a moment, he thought the amphibians might have dropped from an overhanging tree—then he realized that state highway departments don't allow trees to grow that close to the interstates. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that there wasn't a tree within fifty yards of the stretch of road he had just passed over.

Then the toads began to fall in earnest. He could see them strike the hood and windshield, and hear them on the roof and trunk, sounding for all the world like the record-setting hailstorm that Morris had driven through back in Texas years before, when some of the chunks of falling ice had been the size of billiard balls.

The toads were all over the road in front of him, too. Morris wasn't trying to run them over—he was fond of animals, and tried to avoid hurting them when he could—but their sheer numbers made it impossible to avoid squashing some, and he could both hear and feel their bodies striking the undercarriage as they were flung there by the rotation of his wheels. Thinking about the carnage he was causing made his skin crawl.

Visibility quickly became so bad that he turned on his windshield wipers, but GM hadn't designed them to cope with this kind of precipitation, so the improvement was minimal. Morris was giving serious thought to pulling off to the side of the road when the green deluge suddenly ceased. Unlike a rainstorm, there was no gradual slowdown of the shower. It just—stopped. He checked the mirror again to see if amphibians were still coming down in the area he'd just left, but he could perceive nothing out of the ordinary, and the road behind him ran straight for more than a mile.

A minute later, he saw the sign for an upcoming service plaza, and decided to stop there and assess the damage to the car.

Except that there wasn't any damage.

He'd parked the Olds a little apart from the other vehicles in the huge lot, then walked around it twice, slowly.

There was nothing at all on the car to reflect the bizarre downpour he'd just driven through: no scratches, no dents, nothing green adhering to any of the tires. Even the slime on the windshield was gone—if it had ever been there to begin with.

Morris looked up at the cloudless sky for a long moment. Then he shook himself, the way a dog will when it comes in out of the rain, and walked into the plaza's main building in search of something to eat.

Half an hour later, after putting away a mediocre cheeseburger and some over-brewed coffee, Morris was washing his hands in the restroom when he suddenly realized there was something oddly familiar about the man standing to his left. Morris turned his head and looked more closely, his eyes widening. The middle-aged man with slicked-back brown hair was wearing the kind of jumpsuit you often find in institutional settings. He turned from the sink and stared back at Morris with eyes of a soft, luminous blue. He smiled gently.

The man was an absolute dead ringer for that British actor who has played a homicidal psychiatrist in a series of scary, gory movies.

"I knew a fellow once who tried to interfere with Christine Abernathy's plans," the man said in a soft, cultured voice. "She ate his kidneys with a plate of lima beans and a nice glass of Merlot. Or was it Chardonnay? Yes, I rather think it was." He pulled his lips back from his teeth and made a staccato sucking sound like someone inhaling a long strand of spaghetti.

From somewhere, the man had produced what looked like a police nightstick. He slapped the business end against his palm as he said, "Ready when you are, Mr. Morris."

Morris took a quick step back, then flicked his gaze toward the mirror, to see if there was anyone else nearby who might be either a potential ally or enemy. Two men were standing at the row of urinals, apparently unaware of the confrontation taking place behind them while they emptied their bladders. Morris's glance took no more than half a second, and he was already assuming the fourth defensive posture of Shotokan karate as he looked back toward his adversary.

The demented doctor was gone.

Morris blinked a couple of times, then put his arms down. One of the men who had been relieving himself turned away from the urinal and looked at Morris curiously for a second before leaving the restroom.

Morris turned back to the sink and finished drying his hands—which, he noticed, were not quite steady.

When he returned to his car, there was a gray Toyota parked a couple of spaces away. A woman with long black hair was fussing with the window of the driver's side door. As Morris approached she looked up, an anxious expression on her face, and he could see that she was holding a bent coat hanger. She was tall, slim, probably around thirty.

She was the most compellingly attractive woman he had ever seen in his life.

"Listen, I'm sorry to bother you, but could you help me?" Her voice sounded a little shaky.

"What's the trouble?" Morris was wary, unsure if this was genuine or another of Christine Abernathy's attempts to play with his head.

"I feel so utterly stupid," she said. "I locked the keys inside." She gestured with the wire hanger. "I found this in one of the trash cans, and I've been trying to reach the inside door handle, but the window's only open an inch at the top, and I just can't
do
it!" The eyes glistened with incipient tears.

Morris glanced inside the Toyota and confirmed that the keys were, in fact, still in the ignition. He made a decision.

"That's because you're going about it wrong, that's all," he said. "Here, let me see."

He took the hanger from her and bent the curved top into a tighter, smaller loop. "Now I'll show you a trick that every good car thief knows. Uh, you don't have a car alarm, do you?"

She shook her head.

"Good."

He began to work the wire loop between the driver's window and the rubber molding that ran along its base. After a moment's initial resistance, he was able to force it down into the door itself, just forward of the handle. He moved the hanger back and forth a couple of times then suddenly stopped and said, "Gotcha!"

He pulled upward, and the lock button in the door popped open with a loud "click."

"Oh my God, that's incredible!" she said. "And when I think of how long I've just spent fussing over the damn thing…"

"You just have to know the trick," Morris said, working the hanger back out of the lock mechanism. "If I'd had a shim with me, the kind of tool that professionals use, I would've had it open even faster."

"You've been very kind," she said, placing her hand on one of his. "I don't know what I can do to repay you."

As she looked at him with those big green eyes, Morris suddenly realized who she was.

She was Mary Beth Sturnevan, who he had loved utterly and completely for most of his junior year at Sam Houston High School. He'd never tried to do anything about his infatuation, except in his fantasies. After all, she was the prettiest, most popular girl not just in the junior class but in the whole damn school. The young Quincey Morris, who was referred to by many of the other kids as "that weird guy," had known that his chances with her were somewhere between ridiculous and none.

And this woman was Mary Beth Sturnevan writ large. She was older, of course, but also taller, more beautiful, infinitely more desirable than the original had ever been.

Alarm bells started going off in the back of Quincey Morris's mind.

He stepped back, forcing her to let go of his hand. "No repayment's necessary, ma'am," he said. "Glad I could help out."

She smiled then, and to him it was like the angels singing. "Let me at least buy you lunch." She gestured toward the building he'd just left. "This place doesn't look like Wolfgang Puck works here, but the food probably won't kill us." She tilted her head a little to one side. "Unless you maybe have a better idea?"

Better idea? Yeah, I just might. How about we break the land speed record between here and the nearest motel and then fuck each other until our ears bleed? How about we get married, raise a family, and never go near Salem, Massachusetts for as long as we both shall live? How about we just ride off into the sunset together and see if we can find ourselves a whole bunch of that "happily ever after" stuff I'm always hearing about?

Morris took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he backed up another step, and his face never showed how much that effort cost him. The one after that was easier, a little. "That's mighty kind of you," he said with the best smile he could manage, "but I just finished eating, and I'm kind of behind schedule as it is. Thanks for the offer, though."

He went around to his car and got in. After starting up, he looked back and saw that she was still standing there, staring at him. She wasn't smiling now.

He rolled down the window and with forced cheerfulness said, "You have a good trip now, hear?"

Her voice didn't seem very loud, but it carried well enough for him to hear clearly. "She's going to kill you, you dickless bastard. She'll tear your guts out and tie them around your neck in a bow tie. She's going to make you—"

Morris put the car in gear and accelerated away. After a while, he couldn't hear her voice any more.

Except inside his head.

He drove on for another forty minutes or so and reached his exit without further incident.

He was on I-91 heading toward Hartford when he noticed a hitchhiker up ahead who looked vaguely familiar. As Morris drew closer, he realized it was the Nazi demon from Barry Love's building, the one with the boar's face. The creature was holding a hand-printed sign that read, "Going to Hell?" Its porcine head swiveled to stare at Morris's car as he drove by.

It was half an hour later that he encountered the motorcycle gang.

He wasn't sure where they'd come from, but suddenly the choppers were in his mirror, coming up fast. There were at least twenty of them, and, as Morris watched, the customized Harleys began to drift left into the passing lane.

Morris thought briefly about trying to outrun them, but realized how futile that would be—this was an Oldsmobile he was driving here, not a Porsche Carrera. And, besides, the bikers hadn't made any hostile moves so far. Could be they were just another bunch of macho louts on their way to a beer blast somewhere.

And if it came to trouble, Morris had one big advantage. The Harleys had speed, but the Olds had weight. In the event of any kind of collision between a bike and a car, the bike was going to be the loser—and that held true for whoever was riding it, too.

The lead motorcycle in the pack began to pull even with the Oldsmobile. At highway speeds, you can't safely take your eyes off the road for very long, but Morris figured he couldn't afford to be ambushed, either. He risked a glance to his left, to get a better idea what he was dealing with. After a couple of seconds, he returned his gaze to the road in front of him. His normally mobile face bore no expression, none at all.

What he'd seen atop the Harley was in many ways a standard-issue outlaw biker type: stocky body clad in boots, filthy blue jeans, and a sleeveless denim jacket with some kind of club insignia sewn on the back, the whole ensemble topped by an imitation Nazi coal-scuttle helmet, complete with swastika insignia on the side. The only thing that didn't conform to the stereotype was the face.

Because there wasn't one.

Even with his hurried look, Morris had seen that the biker's helmet topped a naked skull, without a scrap of flesh or hair left on it. After a moment, Morris risked another glance, and this time the biker was staring back, his black, empty eye sockets seeming to contain endless night. The skull-face still had all its teeth, though, and they seemed to grin at Morris as the biker waved in a friendly way, then accelerated and pulled ahead, followed by the rest of his too-dead crew.