Spellcasters (8 page)

A snicker sounded behind us, followed by an ill-stifled giggle. As I passed the counter, Nellie, the cashier, shot me a discreet thumbs-up.

Savannah went to bed at nine-thirty without protest, after spending the evening helping me with some graphic work for a website contract. Yes, we not only spent quality time together, but she lent me her artistic expertise without even a joking request for compensation. It was one of those perfect one-in-a-million days, a karmic reward for the crap I’d endured.

At ten o’clock, I carried a cup of tea into the living room, preparing to curl up with a book for a much-deserved mental holiday.

As I settled into the sofa, I noticed a wavering light on the front porch.
I set aside my mug, then leaned over, pulled back the curtains, and peered into the night. Someone had placed a burning candle on the far corner of the porch railing. Witches, candles, get it? Next thing you knew, they’d be hanging crystal unicorns from my mailbox. Kids.

I was inclined to ignore the candle until I finished my tea, but if my neighbor across the street, Miss Harris, saw it, she’d probably call the fire department and accuse me of trying to torch the neighborhood.

As I stepped onto the porch, I saw the candle clearly and my breath caught. It was in the shape of a human hand, each fingertip glowing with a tiny flame. The Hand of Glory. This went beyond an innocent child’s prank. Whoever did this knew something about the occult and had a very sick turn of mind.

I marched toward the candle. As I snatched it up, my fingers clamped down, not on hard wax, but cold flesh. I yelped and jerked back, throwing the thing to the ground below. A flame flared and a puff of smoke billowed up. I raced down the steps and grabbed the hand, but again, as I touched the icy flesh, my brain balked and I dropped it.

Lights flickered in Miss Harris’s house. I dropped to my knees, hiding the hand from view, and whacked at the small fire burning through dead grass clippings that Savannah had shoved under the porch. The flames singed my palm. I stifled a yelp and kept smacking the pile until the fire was out.

Then I closed my eyes, caught my breath, and turned to look at the thing lying in the grass. It was a severed hand, skin grayish brown, a nub of sawed bone sticking from the bottom, the flesh wrinkled and stinking of preservatives. Each finger had been coated in wax and fitted with a wick.

“The Hand of Glory.”

I jumped and saw Savannah leaning over the railing.

“Is Miss Harris watching?” I whispered.

Savannah glanced across the road. “She’s looking through her blinds, but all she can see is your butt sticking up in the air.”

“Go inside and get me something to wrap it in.”

A moment later, Savannah tossed me a hand towel. One of my good hand towels. I hesitated, then bundled the hand. This wasn’t the time for worrying about linen. Any minute now Miss Harris would venture onto her porch for a better look.

“Must be the sorcerer,” Savannah said. “Leah wouldn’t know how to make one of those. Is it preserved or dried?”

I didn’t answer. I stood, hands trembling around the bundle. Savannah reached over the railing for it. Motioning her back into the house, I hurried up the steps.

Once inside, I shoved the towel-wrapped hand under the kitchen sink, then ran to the bathroom and turned on the hot water full blast. Savannah came in as I was scrubbing.

“I’ll bury it later,” I said.

“Maybe we should keep it,” Savannah said. “They’re tough to make, you know.”

“No, I wouldn’t know,” I snapped.

Silence.

Through the mirror, I saw Savannah behind me, her expression unreadable, eyes shuttered.

“I didn’t mean—” I began.

“I know what you meant,” she said, then turned, went into her room and shut the door. Not slamming it, just closing it softly behind her.

The Hand of Glory is a thief’s tool. According to legend, it’s supposed to keep the occupants of a house asleep. Criminal, to be sure, but neither harmful nor dangerous. So was Leah planning to break into my place tonight? If so, why leave the hand on my porch railing in midevening? Or did she just put the macabre candle there to attract attention and cause more trouble for me? That also didn’t make sense. By placing it outside my front window, chances seemed good that I’d see it first and get rid of it before anyone noticed.

I lay in bed, trying to figure out Leah’s motivation, but all I could think about was the hand itself, wrapped under my sink. The stink of it seemed to permeate the house. The feel of the cold flesh clung to my fingers despite my having scrubbed them raw. I couldn’t shake the memory of touching it, couldn’t forget it was still in my house, couldn’t stop worrying about how to dispose of it. I was spooked. And maybe that, after all, was Leah’s goal.

I’d set my alarm for two
A.M
., but I needn’t have bothered with the alarm. I didn’t sleep, only lay there, counting the minutes. At one-thirty, I decided it was late enough.

I
covered my silk chemise with the matching kimono before leaving my room. For some reason, this seemed to make more sense than getting dressed. From the hall closet, I selected the old rubber boots my mother had used for gardening. I’d kept them, maybe in the dim hope that someday I’d sprout a green thumb.

I slipped out the back door. I’d left the hand under the sink, so if someone caught me digging, at least they wouldn’t see what I was burying. Yeah, like that was going to help matters if anyone saw me in the forest after midnight, digging a hole while dressed in a red silk kimono and black rubber boots.

Once outside, I caught a whiff of smoke. As my stomach clenched, I cursed my fear. In first-year psychology I read a theory that all the major phobias are the result of hereditary memory, that our distant ancestors had good reason to fear snakes and heights, so evolution passed those fears on to future generations. Maybe that explains witches’ fear of fire. I fight against it, but seem unable to completely overcome the fear.

Struggling against instinct, I sniffed the air, searching for the source of the smell. Was it smoke from a fireplace extinguished hours ago? Smoldering embers from an evening trash-burning? As I scanned the darkness, I noticed an orange glow to the east, in the forest behind my back fence. A bush party. With the weather warming, local teens must have found something better to do on a Friday night than hang out in the hardware store parking lot. Great, now the hand would have to stay in my house until tomorrow night. I didn’t dare bury it with a potential audience looking on.

As I turned to go back in the house, I noticed the silence. Complete silence. Since when did partying teens sit silently around a campfire? I considered other excuses for a late-night fire. East Falls was too small for a homeless population. Could a dropped match or cigarette have ignited the undergrowth? Could someone be secretly burning hazardous material? Either required action.

I tiptoed across the grass, wondering whether I’d have another fire to put out. Two in one evening—coincidence? Oh, God, please don’t let this be a second Hand of Glory. I inhaled and pushed past my revulsion. If it was, at least I’d seen it before anyone else had.

As I reached the fence, I was glad I hadn’t done anything so foolish as calling the fire department. There, laid out in the grass, was a ring of lit black candles surrounding a red cloth embroidered with a goat’s head. A Satanic altar.

With an oath, I raced to put out the candles. Then I saw that they encircled a blood-covered heap. For one terrible, endless moment I thought it was a child’s body. Then I saw the face and realized it was a cat. A skinned cat: a lifeless mass of blood and muscle, teeth bared in a lipless snarl.

I twisted away from the sight. Something slapped me in the face, something cold and wet. Frantically shoving it away, I stumbled back, but my hand caught in a loop of spongy elastic. I bit back a shriek. I looked up and saw what I’d hit: another skinned cat, this one hanging from a tree, its belly sliced open, guts spilling out. A loop of intestine was wrapped around my hand.

I yanked free barely in time to bring my hands to my mouth to stifle my scream. I fell to my knees, chest heaving, struggling for breath. My hands were covered in blood. My stomach lurched and I spilled my dinner into the grass. For several minutes, I crouched there, unable to move.

“Paige?” Savannah’s whisper floated from the backyard.

“No!” I hissed and sprang to my feet. “Stay there!”

I ran and grabbed her as she rounded the corner. Her eyes widened and I knew she’d seen everything, but I still pushed her away.

“Go—go back in the house,” I said. “I—I have to clean it up.”

“I’ll help.”

“No!”

Silence.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—” I realized I was getting vomit and blood all over her bathrobe and pulled back. “I’m sorry. Go inside and clean up. No, wait. Put your robe in a bag. I’ll burn it—”

“Paige …”

“I—Take a shower,” I stammered. “But leave the lights off. Don’t turn on any lights. No radio, no lights, nothing. Don’t open the blinds—”

“Paige!” Savannah said, grabbing my shoulders. “I can help.” She enunciated each word as if I might not understand her. “It’s okay. I’ve seen this kind of stuff before.”

“No, you haven’t. Get in—”

“Yes, I have. Goddamn it, Paige—”

“Don’t swear.”

Savannah blinked and, for a second, she looked as if she might cry. “I know what that stuff is, Paige. Like I know what a Hand of Glory is. Why do you keep pretending I don’t?”

As she tore off, I started going after her. Then a light flicked on next door and I froze. I looked from Savannah’s retreating back to the glow of the candles behind me. I didn’t have time to go after her—not now. Leah had composed this horrific tableau for a reason and I doubted she went to all that trouble just to spook me. The police would receive an anonymous phone call: “Go look behind Paige Winterbourne’s house.” I had to clear this before anyone followed up on that tip.

To the left of the altar was a blackened mound that I hadn’t seen earlier. Smoke rose from the mound carrying with it the stench of burned meat. I closed my eyes to compose myself, then approached the smoldering heap and bent to look at it. At first glance, I couldn’t tell what it was, or what it had been. I wanted to walk away then, get a shovel, and bury it without ever knowing. But I had to know. If I didn’t, I’d lie awake at night, wondering what I’d buried.

I took a stick and prodded at the mound. At the first sharp jab, it fell apart, exposing a sawed-open rib cage. I pressed the back of my hand to my eyes and took a deep breath. The very taste of it filled my mouth and I lurched forward, spilling whatever was left in my stomach.

Oh, God, I couldn’t—I just couldn’t. No, I had to. This was my problem, my responsibility.

I forced my gaze back to the charred bones, struggling to study them with a scientist’s eye. From my few years of biology, I could differentiate between a biped and quadruped ribcage. This was quadruped. To be sure, I poked the stick near the end of the spine, revealing a tail. Yes, definitely an animal. Probably another cat. Okay, I could handle this now. Observe without truly seeing, that was the trick.

I stood and surveyed the site. My brain processed the details, making no judgments, allowing no reactions. There was a chalice filled with blood beside the dead cat on the makeshift altar. Yes, that was to be expected. Black Mass was an inversion and perversion of the Catholic Mass. In a university folklore course I’d done my term project on Satanic cults, debating whether they fit the standard definition of a contemporary legend, so I knew what to look for, what I needed to find and clear away.

There should be an inverted crucifix … yes, there it was, hanging from the tree. I strode over and pulled it down. Pentagrams? No, it appeared they’d overlooked … wait, there, drawn in the dirt. I started to erase it with my boot, then grabbed a handful of brush instead, so I wouldn’t leave footprints. Okay, that seemed to be everything.

Next I needed to bury the corpses. I turned to look at the eviscerated cat in the tree. I willed my gaze past the poor beast to study the hanging device instead, so I’d know what I needed to cut it loose, but I couldn’t help seeing the body, swaying in the breeze.

What kind of person could bring themselves not only to kill a cat, but to—My gorge rose and I doubled over, retching. This time, nothing came but a thin string of acid. I spat to clear the taste from my mouth, then, still bent over, wiped my face, took a deep breath of the foul air, and marched to the shed to find a shovel.

Twenty minutes later, I’d buried all three cats and started dismantling the altar.

“Paige?”

Savannah’s whisper sent me a foot into the air. I spun to see her jogging across the lawn.

“There’s a car circling the block,” she said. “I’ve been watching out the front window.”

Her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Why did I make such a mess of everything? Before I could apologize, she grabbed my arm and dragged me across the yard.

As we stepped through the back door, I glimpsed myself in the hall mirror. Blood, vomit, and dirt streaked my face, hands, and kimono. Just then lights flashed through the living room sheers. A car engine died.

“Oh, God,” I said, staring into the mirror. “I can’t—”

“I’m clean,” Savannah said. “I’ll answer it. You go wash up.”

“But—”

The doorbell rang. Savannah shoved me into the living room. I ducked below window level and ran for the other side of the house.

Leah hadn’t settled for placing an anonymous call to the station’s overnight answering service. No, she’d called the local sheriff, Ted Fowler, at home, babbling hysterically about strange lights and screams coming from the woods behind my house.

Fowler had thrown on clothing that looked like it came from his bedroom floor and driven straight over. In reward for his haste, he found the smoldering remains of a Satanic altar a scant ten feet beyond my backyard.