HEX (30 page)

Tonight, though, at the end of the pier and with his arm around his oldest son, he wasn't ashamed to admit it, because it was the truth. Despite the fact that Steve loved Matt and Jocelyn with all his heart and would probably go out of his mind if anything should happen to either one of them, Tyler would always be number one.

*   *   *

YET AS HE
lay in bed that night, the doubt was still there … like a pilot flame in his head that refused to go out completely.

Jocelyn had apologized for her outburst and Steve had apologized for his ugly remark. They had all been under enormous pressure. The unexpressed accusation remained buried, but for the sake of a reconciliation, it would have to do. As they lay together in the dark, Steve calmly told her what had happened with Tyler—at least, the version of the story he would also tell HEX. He had never been good at lying to his wife and had never had any reason for it, but now the stream of half-truths came out of his mouth with astonishing ease, and he was slightly distressed to discover that he wasn't even ashamed of himself. Jocelyn was shocked, and praised him for the fact that he had managed to wheedle all that out of Tyler. She apologized once again for accusing him of handling the situation badly, but Steve pressed his forefinger against her lips and kissed her.
Not bad for a dress rehearsal,
he thought,
but any more sorries from her and I'll go nuts.
They made love, and the love was by all means sincere: At least on that front he'd be able to look at himself in the mirror.

He lay awake for a long time and listened to the soft hiss of the flame in his head.
God, I hope I did the right thing. I truly believe my heart is in the right place.
But love was a mysterious, deceptive force, and one of the few areas in which Steve didn't trust his powers of judgment the full hundred percent.

 

EIGHTEEN

THE CREEK STOPPED
bleeding, but the town was haunted.

There were hubbubs and riots—small rebellions that Robert Grim had the security guards forcefully nip in the bud. All week long there were extra church services. The ancient call for an exorcism arose, and people lit candles on the gravestones at Temple Hill Cemetery for the repose of the dead. In the meantime, the IT specialists at HEX were working overtime to keep up with the flood of e-mails, chats, and apps about omens and the end-times. Thank God it was still only within the confines of the town, but you never knew what these idiots would get into their heads. “You see, the Mayans were right!” supermarket clerk Eve Modjeski e-mailed to her friend Betty Chu at the nursing home. Eve Modjeski was a featherbrained fool with rather nice tits but too much forehead, for whose creation Grim would gladly have parted with a rib—although after the Mayan remark he might be inclined to yank it right back and replace it in his own body, with or without Eve attached.

For the first time since time immemorial all seven of the HEX staff were working twenty-four/seven to keep the public unrest under control and to try to pinpoint the cause of Katherine's agitation. The frantic phone calls alone were proving to be a full-time job.

“The prophet of doom called again,” Warren Castillo said when Grim came back from creek-water inspection on Tuesday afternoon.

“John Blanchard? That's the seventh time in two days.”

“I know. I told him I was going to hang up, but then the wacko said he wanted his lamb back. I asked him what lamb, and he said the two-headed lamb.”

Grim pulled a sour face. “That ugly fucker we put in the archive?”

“He said he wanted to eat the fetus to cleanse him of his sins. He said God had given it to him and that it was his duty to do penance. I said that if his stomach was up to a hefty dose of formaldehyde he could come and get it. He thought I was serious and wanted to make an appointment.”

“Ugh. Primates don't come any lower than that.”

Despite the clearly visible tightened measures implemented by the HEX staff and the sympathy of many of the townsfolk who offered themselves as volunteers, there were also critical voices, not the least of which was Colton Mathers's. “You were appointed to prevent such disturbances, but from all appearances it looks like you've seriously shirked your responsibility,” the councilman raged over the phone. “I want you to make sure we get some peace and quiet around here, and that the ones responsible do not escape punishment.” Grim, who was summoning up a mental image of Mathers's pancreas and adorning it with a large tumor, assured him that they would do everything in their power
without
the help of The Point, and he hung up before Mathers had a chance to respond.

The criticism didn't only come from above: That same evening the windows of the former Popolopen Visitor Center were smashed with bricks. The perpetrators—some drunk and dissatisfied construction workers—were caught in the act and spent the night in the vaults beneath Crystal Meth Church.

By then, Marty Keller had discovered who had pulled the joke with the peacock: fellow Council member and butcher's wife Griselda Holst, of all people.

“Her?” Grim exclaimed in shock. “You can't be serious.”

“I am,” Marty said. He showed Grim what he'd been able to reconstruct from the security cam images. Holst had left the butcher shop the previous Sunday evening at 10:58 p.m. with, sure enough, the big blue shopping bag clutched under her arm. The cameras along Old Miners Road showed her old Dodge leaving town in the direction of Highland Mills. At 12:23 she had returned, parked in her driveway, and sneaked into her house. Sticking out of her shopping bag was a profuse bunch of peacock feathers. It was so blatantly obvious that it made Grim furious: as if the old cow was poking fun at the system. Not much later, the images showed Griselda Holst walking into the woods.

“Grow a fucking brain cell!” Grim shouted with a voice that stuck in his throat.

Marty shrugged. “She probably thought Katherine would disappear before dawn and that the bird would get toasted before anybody found out.”

Warren grinned. “But instead she shows her gratitude to the Holst woman and parades around with it all week long. What a scream!”

“But why? Why a peacock?”

Claire had brought in a Harvard University Press reference work from their library of the occult, and she paraphrased as follows: “For the Persians, the peacock was a symbol of immortality because they believed peacock meat was impervious to decomposition. Which is not true; it's supposed to be very dry and hardly edible. Let's see … in the Middle Ages the peacock was a bad omen because its cries were thought to evoke rain—well, they were right about that—and according to Paracelsus, a German astrologist and occultist, the cry of a peacock at unusual times foretold the death of someone from the family to whom the bird belonged. Oh, yes, finding peacock feathers brings luck, but keeping them in the house is very unlucky. Is any of this helpful?”

Grim sniffed. “The butcher woman doesn't really strike me as the type who gives a fuck about the symbolic value of her offering.”

“Yeah, right,” Warren said, chuckling. “She's too stupid to find her own ass. Have you ever tasted that pâté of hers? Tastes like she extracted the fat directly from her paunch with a liposuction needle and injected it into the terrine.”

“Warren, you swine!” Claire said. “A little respect, please. She's had a tragic life, with that husband of hers.”

“That may be true,” Grim said, “but that doesn't give her the right to pull a stunt like that.”

But that was only the beginning. Marty and Warren dove into the video archive, and by Wednesday evening they had uncovered Griselda Holst's peculiar habit of calling on the witch beyond the eye of the cameras. The pattern was always the same. Every Thursday, rain or shine, when Katherine was up in the woods, Griselda would sneak out behind a couple of parked cars or along a hedge and disappear into the bushes, clutching a white plastic bag. About an hour later she would return—bag gone. Grim was baffled. How could they have missed this? And what on earth was the woman
doing
when she was with Katherine?

The next morning they wired Marty with a mic and sent him over to Griselda's Butchery & Delicacies, while Grim, Warren, Claire, and the others intently watched the live images from the butcher shop's surveillance cam on the big screen.

“What'll it be?” came the brash voice of Griselda through the speakers.

“A pound of peacock pâté, please,” Marty said. Warren burst out laughing and Grim gestured for him to keep quiet.

Griselda, instantly tense, hesitated. “Holst pâté, you mean?”

“No, peacock pâté,” Marty said, straight-faced.

“I … don't carry that.”

“How about peacock pie, then?”

“I don't sell any peacock meat.”

“Aw, bummer,” Marty said. “No peacock filet, either?” On-screen, it was easy to see that Griselda didn't know how to handle the situation. “I thought I might give it a try, since Katherine is such a big fan.”

Griselda relaxed a little and smiled. “Ain't that right,” she said. Wasn't that just a hint of pride in her voice? “She must be. Why else would she hang on to it so long?”

“Yeah, no matter what they say, the person who gave her that peacock really knows how to avert a crisis. That's why we wanted a peacock, too.” Griselda blushed and Marty made eager use of the opportunity. “You know, my partner and I always organize these Katherine theme nights where we act out whatever the witch is doing. Over the weekend we tied Gaudi, our Chihuahua, to the branch of a tree. We laughed so hard we thought we'd piss our pants! Wait, wanna see a selfie?”

Griselda's smile disappeared instantly and her embarrassment evaporated. Beneath it was a layer of petrified rage. “You dirty little whippersnapper!” she roared. “Mocking my Katherine! Get the hell out of here, you!” She yanked an enormous salami off the shelf and stormed around the counter, right up to the awestruck Marty, who just about flew out the door, its little bell jingling maniacally. “You deserve Doodletown, mister man!” Griselda shrieked after him. “Be careful, or I'm gonna report you to the Council! You're Grim's whiz kid, aren't you? I'll find out what your name is!”

She marched back inside with all the grace of a Ukrainian warship and slammed the door behind her. Back in the control center Warren howled like a wolf and roared, “Give that woman an Oscar!”

Grim still couldn't connect Griselda's activities with the death of the dog or the bleeding of the creek, but meddling with the witch was strictly forbidden because the risks were simply impossible to foresee. Grim had no choice but to inform Colton Mathers. The councilman met with him in his country house, which was enclosed by a rusty old fence on the top of the Hill of Pines as if it were the Frankenstein mansion itself. With an increasingly deeper frown, the old relic listened to the facts, and finally he amazed Grim by saying, “Let it go, Robert. Mrs. Holst is an upright woman and she's been under intense strain lately. Besides, we have to wait and see what the consequences of her actions are. Maybe it won't be all that bad.”

Grim couldn't believe his ears. “But she—”

“I'm glad you brought this up,” Mathers continued as if Grim were nothing but smoke, “and we certainly have to keep our eye on Mrs. Holst, but for now my advice is: Let sleeping dogs lie.”

Robert Grim, who had wanted to scream in his face that the sleeping dogs had been awake for ages, that in fact they were stalking the town streets with foaming mouths and menacing teeth, turned homeward empty-handed and thought,
He's covering up for her because of the Roth business. How long is he going to keep up this dirty game?

The answer came right away:
Until you grow some balls and stand up to him.

But Grim was attached to his job and he kept his mouth shut. And that evening, after the storm had subsided and the witch had finally given up her weird predilection for the dead peacock, he thought maybe it was better this way. Against protocol, even hypocritical, but so be it. Everything seemed to be back to normal. No one wanted to talk about what had dominated every conversation up until then; people wanted to forget their anxiety and erase all memory of it. And so did Robert Grim. He began to believe that a small miracle had occurred: Black Spring had gotten through Katherine's miseries relatively unscathed.

That was his frame of mind until early Saturday evening, when bad news came knocking at the door.

*   *   *

PETRIFIED AND NUMB,
the members of the HEX staff who were present at the time—Claire, Warren, and Grim—listened to Steve Grant and Pete VanderMeer tell their story. It was mainly Steve who did the talking. This was where they were at: Jaydon Holst—son of the intrepid butcher's wife, for God's sake—had systematically terrorized the witch and stabbed her with a box cutter, then sicced the Grants' dog on her. As revenge for Fletcher's death, Jaydon, Justin Walker, and Burak Şayer had reported to HEX as volunteers to gain free access to Katherine, and Grim had fallen for it. The shocking, horrible results of that blunder were revealed in the footage that Grant's son had shot.

After the clip finished playing no one said anything for a long time. The cramped lounge area in the control center seemed too small, as if all the air had been sucked out of it and they were slowly being asphyxiated. Grim felt his heart make a number of unexpected, prancing leaps before resuming its normal rhythm.

The stoning. Oh, sweet Jesus, those few frames where you could see them hurling rocks in her face.

Suddenly a thought as vivid as a heap of burning phosphorus struck him.
They could easily have snapped the stitches on her eyes.

Claire's mouth fell open and she was the first to speak. “When was this? Thursday afternoon, you said?”