Coven (21 page)

—
Tom, what’s
that?

In the headlights, a matty white poodle
sniffed at the shoulder. “It’s a dog,” Tom said.

The sister looked
puzzled.
—What’s a dog?

“
You know, an animal, a
pet.”

—
What’s a pet?

Jesus,
Tom thought.
These bitches are
stupid.
He swerved and promptly ran the
poodle over. Its little body was dribbled beneath the car, then
crunched. The sister shrilled with delight, looking back. The
crushed poodle twitched in the road.

—
Tom! What’s
that?

Up ahead, some big redneck looking guy
had his thumb out. A cardboard sign about his neck read: “Bowie,
Maryland, or Bust.”

“
It’s a hitchhiker,” Tom
said.

—
What’s a
hitchhiker?

Tom snickered. “A hitchhiker is a person
who, on dark nights, gets run over by cars. That’s what a
hitchhiker is.”

—
Oh,
replied the sister.

Tom shifted down the Hurst.
The hitchhiker’s face beamed.
This fucker
thinks he’s gonna get a ride,
Tom thought.
He began to pull over, but at precisely the proper moment, he
swerved and mowed the hitchhiker down. Jesus Christ, it was fun
running things down! The sister shrieked over the muffled thump.
Tom smiled. The hitcher’s head popped under the wheel, then his
crumpled body was spat out behind them.

The sister was exhilarated,
giddy and wriggling her white fingers.
—I
liked that!
she exclaimed.
—Let’s find more dogs and hitchhikers!

Tom wished he could, but he’d almost
forgotten there was business at hand. He drove a ways, then pulled
over. Sure, running people down was fun but it wasn’t a good idea
when you had a college student in your trunk. She could bang her
head or something, break some bones. Hell, she could die back
there.

Tom got out and opened the
trunk. She was all right, just a little jostled. “Sorry about that
last bump, Lois,” he apologized. She was kind of cute.
Nice rack too,
he
concluded when he pulled open her blouse. She would at least
appreciate it all in the end. Fuck college. This was
destiny.

He got back in the car and drove on. He
paused to wonder. The sister had settled down, placated by her own
nameless thoughts. Tom couldn’t imagine what went on in their
malevolent little heads. Who were these bitches? Who were they
really?

The girl in the trunk had been on Besser’s
list. Lois Hartley, an art history major who lived on the Hill. Tom
had seen her around. She was into the art scene—avant garde,
formalism, and all that. She hung out with the campus dilettantes.
They all pretended to be bored and disaffected, swank in resigned
ennui. They wore dark clothes and freaky hairstyles, listened to
the Communards, and smoked blue cigarettes while they discoursed
over the decline of aesthetics: phony misplaced Dadaists who
thought it stylish to have nothing to do.

Plucking her had been easy.
They’d found her wandering the Pickman Gallery’s
abstract expressionism exhibit, which always gave Tom a hoot.
You could slop paint randomly onto a canvas, blindfolded, call
it
Mother with Child
, and that would be abstract expressionism. Lois had been
standing in front of a mural entitled
The
Fighting Temeraire Part II
, which looked
like someone had gotten drunk after a big Burger King meal and then
vomited on the canvas. Lois Hartley barely turned when the sister
put the zap on her. That was some trick. All Tom had to do was
carry her out and toss her in the trunk. Mission
accomplished.

But he wondered what it
must be like for them, what they must feel and think during the
process. What did destiny
feel
like?

Tom pulled up at the Town Pump. “Beer stop,”
he said.

—
What’s beer?

Tom didn’t bother answering. “Howdy,
partner,” said the proprietor when Tom came in. “We gotta special
on the Rock this week.”

“
No thanks,” Tom said. “Get
me two cases of Spaten Oktoberfest.”

“
Comin’ right up,” the prop
replied. He was chunky and old, with a gray crew cut. He wheeled up
a handcart with the two cases, then rang the total. “Say, fella,
you don’t look so good.”

“
I know, but I feel great,”
Tom said. Then he picked up the two cases and held them easily
under one arm. “Thanks,” he said.

“
Hold up a sec, son.” The
prop tittered nervously. “You’re forgettin’ somethin’.”

“
Oh, yeah? What’s
that?”

Another titter. “You owe me $52.96. Tax
included, of course.”

“
Oh, but I’m not paying,”
Tom said.

“
Uh, ya mean you’re robbin’
me? Is that what you’re sayin’?”

“
Well, I guess you could
put it that way,” Tom agreed.

Now the prop’s voice gave way to cracks. “I
don’t want no trouble, son, so do us both a favor. Just you set
that beer down, turn around, and walk out that door.”

Tom grabbed the man by the throat and lifted
him over the counter—the two cases of Spaten still under one arm.
The man’s legs pumped like he was trying to run away in midair.
“Listen, Pops,” Tom explained. “I don’t expect you to understand
this, but I have to get back to the Supremate. I have destiny to
tend to. You get the message yet? I’m not paying. I’ve got more
important things to do right now than pay for beer.”

The prop made choking
noises, trying to nod. His face was turning blue. Tom flung the man
sideways into the sale display, a six foot high pyramid
of six packs of Rolling Rock. The pyramid toppled, green
bottles exploding.
So much for that
sale,
Tom thought.

He felt more like himself with a cold Spaten
in his hand and the cassette deck going; he felt more human. Back
on the highway, he opened his smallblock up and hit it. The sister
giggled wetly. They traveled the Route into darkness, trees and
fields sweeping by, on their way to the old dirt utility road which
would take them home—

To the labyrinth.

««—»»

All Lydia knew was that she liked him.

She thought of a mouse in a maze. She felt
as though something was expected of her, but she didn’t know
what.

The answer, she knew, was in her heart. In
her heart she wanted to sleep with Wade St. John. She wanted to
physically love him.

But…

Why was it you never knew when to trust a
man? Too often, the good ones, the ones who seemed honest and
sincere, were the ones who wound up writing your name and number on
the bathroom wall, with a list of proficiencies. Then they’d brag
to their friends about the latest horny bitch they’d knocked the
bottom out of. Jesus, what a nightmare—damned if you did and damned
if you didn’t, because if you didn’t, you were frigid or a lesbian.
Reading men was like reading foreign magazines. All you saw were
the pictures.

Lydia felt jittery. She knew what she
wanted—of course! She wanted things to be perfect. Didn’t
everybody?

She lit the Marlboro she’d been tapping for
the last two days.

“
I don’t believe it,” Wade
exclaimed. “You finally lit it.”

Lydia smiled moronically. She rested back
and caught that beautiful first drag wallop to the upper
bronchi.

“
You look like you just
took a toke of Jamaican.”

“
Shit on that garbage,” she
said. “This is better.” She dragged again; she was stalling. The
exit signs were coming up in their lights.
What am I going to do?
she pleaded to
herself.

“
It’s still early,” Wade
said. “How about a nightcap?”

“
Okay,” but then she looked
down at her cutoffs and top. “But I don’t think they’ll let me into
the Exham Inn dressed like this.”

“
Forget the Exham Inn.
We’re going to
Wade’s
Inn. The selection is limited but the service is
outstanding.”

Lydia smoked and nodded. He’d made the
decision for her, extending her reprieve. There was nothing like
borrowed time.

Wade parked up close in the
lot. Lydia got out with her suitcase, as though someone might steal
it. She smoked her Marlboro right down to the butt and flicked
it.
Yes, a glamorous habit,
she thought. Wade was scanning the lot and seemed
confounded.

“
What are you looking for?”
she asked.

“
Friend’s car, it’s not
here. I was just wondering where he is.” He walked around the
Vette, toward the path. “Come on, I won’t bite. I had my teeth
pulled weeks ago.”

Immediately, he put his arm about her waist.
She felt comfortable like that, his hand touching her skin, his
pinky stuck in her belt loop. They walked close, bumping hips.

The security guard at the
dorm desk was reading
Shotgun News.
He gave them a quick eye, then reburied his face
in the ads. She and Wade rode the elevator up to 8. She could not
escape the absurd image of herself: standing in an elevator with a
student’s arm around her, badge pinned to her cutoffs, and holding
a suitcase full of spectroanalyzed impactation. The perfect “What’s
wrong with this picture?” He led her down the silent hall to his
room, turned on the light, and said, “There’s a surprise for you in
the refrigerator.”

Beside the trash compactor—which she still
thought of as the height of indulgence—was a small fridge devoted
to extravagant beers. Right up front stood the devil’s face on a
bottle of—

“
Old Nick!” she exclaimed.
“I’ll bet you got it just for me.”

“
Actually I didn’t,” Wade
confessed. “My friends and I are beer snobs. We keep our
refrigerators stocked with a variety of the best brew. In a world
of Bud, the true beer connoisseur must maintain vast
reserves.”

Lydia took his word for it. He poured two
Nicks into good pilsner glasses and proposed a toast. “To
spectrophotometry.”

“
Cheers,” she
said.

But she thought:
What now?

««—»»

It had to be a dream. It had to be.

Lois Hartley lay naked
beneath smothering, moist heat and orange light, paralyzed.
I’m paralyzed,
she
thought, and felt idiotically compelled to laugh. For she was horny
too—very horny—and that’s why she wasn’t afraid. Paralysis plus
nudity plus sexual excitation could only mean one thing:
nightmare.

I’m having a nightmare, that’s all.

Blobs of voices oozed around her ears.
Besmeared faces hovered, inquisitive before the sourceless orange
field. They were dream voyeurs, another paradigmatic symptom.
Yes, this was a classic nightmare. Sigmund Freud meets Krafft-Ebing
in the House of Gustave Doré. The hot light and its confines, of
course, symbolized the womb: birth trauma. Paralysis while naked
and painfully aroused equaled hidden desires to be dominated, or
what her psych prof called the Rape Fantastique. This was a sex
nightmare. It was harmless, so she might as well lie back and enjoy
it.

“
There.”

—
Good.

Lois could still not see
the dream watchers’ faces. They hovered behind orange fog. But she
could see the fat hand gripping her arm. Something was stuck in her
flesh—more dream symbolism. It was a large hypodermic needle. As
the fat hand worked it out of her arm, Lois felt no pain.
Penetration/withdrawal.
A
big bead of blood welled at the puncture. Then a strange warm mouth
sucked the blood off. Lois wished she could see. This was straight
out of de Sade, the third work of
Justine,
where Prince Gernande drank
blood from his wife’s veins to excite himself before intercourse.
Those Libertines sure had class.

“
Solubility tests will help
us determine optimum doses.”

“
She’ll be good and
soft.”

—
Oh, good!

The faces shrank back, their words merging.
Lois couldn’t remember going to bed, and during some part of this
dream, she recalled being tossed into a car trunk; she recalled a
face peering down. And whatever happened to Zyro?

Zyro wasn’t exactly her boyfriend; he was
too self disposed to share himself with anyone. He was the
classic campus novelist—unpublished. He liked to walk around
disgruntled, claiming that his “work” was “too aphoristic to be
accepted by the capitalistic hierarchy. Nobody understands me.” He
believed he would die young, and then his work would be heralded as
the voice of his generation. He wrote “indictment of the times”
fiction: deadbeat,
fucked up in the head on drugs
characters with no social utility or motivation, which was supposed
to serve as an astute literary observation. Christ, these days all
a person had to do was write a plotless book about homosexual
cocaine addicted dropouts and it was an instant
best seller. Anyway, Lois had arranged to meet Zyro at the
Pickman Gallery. She remembered waiting for him, but that was
all…

The voyeurs were gone. Lois’ eyes darted
right. A thin black line pulsated on the wall. How did this play
into the dream? The black line looked like an incision.

Then, from the incision, a figure
emerged.