Coven (10 page)

“
Please,” Wade pleaded.
“I’m in no mood for conservative jokes.”

“
What do Carter and the
North Virginia Amtrak have in common?”

“
I’d really rather
not—”

“
They both pull out of
Rosalynn at five A.M. sharp.

Wade shook his head. Tom’s jokes were like a
Kirby vacuum cleaner: they sucked.

The inn was packed. They sipped their
Spatens like wine poseurs. Beer snobbery was an intricate art. No
Bud for these two. Then Wade said, “Wouldn’t it be a riot if Jervis
was here and Sarah walked in?”

Tom glanced behind him. “You psychic?” he
asked when he saw who was side traipsing through.

Sarah Black emerged from the wall of backs
and heads, her eyes thinned as if in some harsh assessment. She
wore purple high heels, blue leather pants, and a clinging blouse
the color of arterial blood. Very short platinum blond hair
fit against her head like a flier’s cap.

“
Hey, Sarah!” Wade called
out. “How’s it going?”

“
Don’t,” Tom warned. “Don’t
start a scene.”

“
How are things in the
she devil business?” Wade asked. “Good?”

She gauged him without reaction.

“
That was really classy the
way you dumped Jervis.”

“
This is a mistake,” Tom
told him.

Sarah sniped back: “I
didn’t
dump
him.
Things just didn’t—”

“
I know,” Wade completed.
“Things just didn’t work out. That’s what girls always say when
they dump a guy.”

“
I didn’t
dump
him!”

“
You dumped him cold for
the first new pecker to cross the pike. Why not just
admit?”

Sarah’s dark eyes reflected
sheer rage. “What the hell do
you
know! I didn’t
dump
him! We
broke up
because
Jervis
was no longer
compatible
with the
dynamics of our
relationship!”

Wade chuckled. “That’s a good one. You were
just taking him for a ride until someone with more money came
along.”

“
I was
not!”

“
Oh, and I like that
outfit, by the way. I guess Warhol had a rummage sale,
huh?”

Sarah’s cheeks seemed to be wafting
heat.

“
Don’t worry, Sarah. It’s
not against the law to be an absolutely awful person. You should
congratulate yourself on a job well done… Now, see if you can
interpret the significance of the following gesture.” Wade pushed
his nostrils up with his index fingers and began to make pig
noises.

Sarah shrieked: “I’m
getting my new
boyfriend
to kick your
ass!”

“
Hey, I’m shakin’,” Wade
said. “I’m leaving town. See?”

Sarah tromped off, her lips pursed to a
tight, red seam.

“
When are you gonna learn
to control yourself?” Tom complained.

Wade shrugged sheepishly. Many patrons were
staring at him, brows raised. “I couldn’t resist. She had it
coming.”

Tom ordered two more Spatens. “I don’t
understand how Jerv could fall in love with that gold digger
anyway.”

“
Love’s a funny thing,”
Wade speculated. “It clouds our sense of reason. The Eleventh
Commandment: Love makes morons of men.”

Tom slapped the bar.
“I
knew
you had
religion in you somewhere.”

The Spatens caught up fast; you could only
put so much in before you had to let some out. Wade excused himself
to the men’s room, which was empty and damp. As he tended to
business, the wall provided an engaging display of graffiti. “Eat,
drink, and be Larry,” one scrawl read. “West Virginia men are
men…and sheep are nervous.” And: “I’d rather have a bottle in front
of me than have a frontal lobotomy.”

Sounds like you need
both,
Wade thought. But when he turned to
leave, he found a frightfully large figure standing in the
doorway.

“
Pardon me, brother. You’re
blocking the door.”

“
Zat iss correct,” came a
succinct, zinging German inflection.

Wade already knew who it
was.
This fucker’s huge,
he thought, and that was all he thought for some
time. Wilhelm Karl von Heinrich loomed, bringing his angular face
and blue eyes into the light. He wore tailored gray slacks and a
silk shirt that must’ve cost five hundred dollars.

“
You get that shirt at
Ward’s?” Wade asked.

Wilhelm’s face remained a stoic blank. “Herr
St. John, you unt me, vee must come to an understahndink.”

“
I understand that you’re
possibly the biggest motherfucker on two legs, but that’s about it.
I like the accent, though. French?”

“
Unt comedian,” Wilhelm
said. “You insult mein girlfriend, and vut it iss you must
understant iss zat
no vun
insults mein girlfriend.”

Wade took a crack at the
accent. What did he have to lose? “Vell zen, mein namen must be
no vun because your girlfriend iss unt ahz hole, Herr Big
German Mozzerfocker.” And then Wade slammed his fist into the soft
of Wilhelm’s belly. Only…there
was
no soft. What his knuckles impacted felt like
padded rock. The German didn’t flinch, or even react, to the
blow.

“
So much for the
warm up,” Wade said.
This guy must
have the Berlin Wall under his shirt.
Wade
pointed to the ceiling. “Stukas! Look!” Wilhelm looked. Wade rammed
his fist into Wilhelm’s jaw with a raw, wet smack.

Wilhelm chuckled. “Unt
comedian,” he remarked again, smiling, and flung Wade effortlessly
across the bathroom. He crashed into the stall and banged his head
against—of all things—the toilet seat. Wilhelm then put a wristlock
on him…and
twisted.

“
I tell you ziss only
vunce, scheisskopf. You ever speak to mein girlfriend again”
—Wilhelm’s free hand produced a shiny knife— “unt I will kill
you.”

The knife flashed. Wade
could read the words
Blut und Ehre!
on the blade. Wilhelm gave Wade’s arm another
twist and emphasized: “I vill cut your guts out und stuff zem down
your sroat.”

“
I think I get the idea,”
Wade wheezed, wondering when his wrist would snap.

“
Vee have understalindink,
zen,
ja?”

“
Ja!” Wade conceded.
“Ja-ja-jaaa!”

A tad more twist on the
wrist. The knife turned.
“Ja?”

“
Ja,
goddamn it!
Ja!”

Wilhelm put the knife away. “Gute, gute, we
have undestahndink, but zere iss vun more sing. In zah fazzerland,
vee have a special way of sealing unt agreement.”

Wade rolled his eyes. He knew what was
coming.

“
Vee
drink
to zat agreement, Herr St.
John, and ziss drink iss on me.”

Wilhelm then thrust Wade’s
face into the toilet and flushed. “Gute?” he asked. He pulled Wade
up. “Unt anuzzer?
Ja?”

“
Nein, nein,”
Wade groaned, dripping.

“
Ja, I sink vun more for
zah road,” and down Wade’s face went again. This time he was held
much longer. Bubbles erupted from his lips. Somehow he managed to
think:
I am going to drown in a
toilet.
What a way to go.

When Wilhelm let go, Wade fell out of the
bowl and onto his back, gasping. He coughed up toilet water as his
conqueror towered flagrantly above him, hands on hips and
smiling.

“
Until vee meet again, Herr
St. John—
guten Nacht.”

Wilhelm turned and left.
Dripping, Wade struggled to his feet and tried to clean himself up
at the sink.
Remind me to never insult
Sarah Black again,
he chastised himself.
Wade’s defeat was optimized when he plucked a big pubic hair off
his nose.

««—»»

And what happened after that—the vision of
teeth—was a smudge in Penelope’s mind. All she could see was that
widening, bright red mouth ringed with teeth. The teeth were
pointed and long.

Then came a blur, a vibration. A sudden,
nettling pain pricked Penelope’s throat. Then the woman in black
got out of the car.

Penelope couldn’t move. She
could see, hear, feel, think, but she
couldn’t move.
She slumped,
paralyzed, at the wheel, her hands upturned in her lap like dead
birds.

—
Hurry.

Someone was coming. A shadow moved across
the windshield.

She fell out on the ground
when the door was opened. The horse-killer bent
over
—
the axman—and
that was when Penelope first recognized him: Professor Besser, her
biology teacher!

He did not look pleased.

—
Hurry!

He grunted, threw Penelope over his
shoulder, and started walking.

He was taking her back to the stables. Where
had the woman gone? Besser’s feet thudded the dirt floor. Penelope
saw lines of stains, blood. Then Professor Besser stopped.

—
Hurry up with her and
come right back. There’s much to do.

Mr. Sladder’s flashlight was on the floor.
It was still on. Penelope could see upside down past Besser’s legs.
And what she saw…

The flashlight cast crisp, black shadows on
the wall. One shadow was a prone figure—Mr. Sladder with the ax
still in his head. Another shadow squatted over it.

“
I’m very tired,” Professor
Besser complained. “I need help.”

—
You’ll have help
soon,
the woman’s slushlike voice replied.
But where was she now? Was she the second shadow?

More shadows converged. Suddenly there was a
wet plunging sound, like someone cleaning the insides out of a big
pumpkin. Shadows of hands and arms were reaching into Mr. Sladder
and pulling things out.

Professor Besser’s feet started up again.
Penelope remained limp over his shoulder as he carried her out of
the stables and into the foggy, moonlit fields.

She was slipping away. Her breasts bobbled
upside-down. The fog came nearly up to Besser’s waist. They were
passing the utility shed and the chopped down fence. All the
while, the stinging throbbed at Penelope’s throat. What had the
woman done to her?

Had the woman
bitten
her?

Soon they were past the
grazing fields. Penelope’s arms hung down, consumed by fog; he was
carrying her into dark woods. Her consciousness seemed to be
dripping out of her head, but very faintly she thought:
It would be so much better to be a
horse.

Indeed, it would have been. Her carrier took
her deep into the forest. Twigs crunched beneath his clumsy feet.
Then they came to a clearing drenched in moonlight. A brief hillock
stood out, and she thought she saw something there—

Something black.

“
Here’s your new home,
Penelope,” Besser said, trudging across.

She passed out when she saw what he was
taking her to.

The thing on the hillock was a black oblong
box.

It looked like a coffin.

—

CHAPTER
9

Wade and Tom had left a couple of Spatens
later. Tom laughed when Wade recited his encounter with Wilhelm and
the toilet dunk. “That’s what I call the house special,” he’d said.
“Next time don’t start trouble you can’t handle.” Wade, still damp,
agreed.

Downtown Exham was quiet tonight. Quaint,
fake gas lamps lit the cobblestone streets. As they headed for the
next bar, Wade found himself still preoccupied with Jervis.

“
He’ll turn up,” Tom said
without having to ask. “He’s probably sleeping off a Kirin shitface
back at the dorm.”

Wade hoped so. He caught himself glancing
into the gun shop on Huberty Lane. What would he do if he actually
saw Jervis in there, buying bullets, buying guns? But that was an
absurd idea—besides, the shop was closed.

“
Hey,” Tom exclaimed as a
car passed. “Was that Besser’s car?”

“
What?” Wade was off guard.
He turned and saw a big maroon sedan cross the town square and
disappear. “Who cares?” he said. The last person Wade wanted to be
reminded of was Besser, his janitorial supervisor. “He’s so fat he
probably can’t even
fit
in a car, much less drive one.”

They finished the night at a corner saloon
imaginatively named The Bar, which specialized in imported draft
like Old Peculiar, EKU Edelbock, and Spaten and Adams, their
mainstays. After a few pints, Wade stepped up to the taco bar
despite Tom’s warning that tacos never failed to incite horrendous
nightmares. As Wade doled on plenty of cheese and chili, he
overheard several crim majors whispering about some mishap at
Exham’s agro site. He could make no details save for bits of
phrases: “deader than dogshit” and “.25 brass all over the fucking
place.” Some of the crim students worked security for extra
credits; Wade presumed some local rednecks had taken some shots at
the agro animals or some such, but he hardly cared. He still felt
sidetracked about Jervis, perhaps, but something else too. “Quit
worrying about Jervis, will you?” Tom implored when Wade came back
to the table.