Hag Night (42 page)

Decapitated or not, as the flames engulfed it, the head did not scream in agony, it
laughed.
Ablaze and filling the room with a most appalling stench, it laughed with a high, shrieking sort of sound, breathing out clouds of gray ash.
“I SHED MY SKIN, DID I NOT? I WORE THE BODY AND FACE OF THE TENDER ONE, DID I NOT? SHE IS THE LIAR! THE LIAR! WENDA KEEGAN, THE UNTRIED ONE! HER BUD HAS NOT BEEN BURST AND HER ROSE IS UNPLUCKED AND HER MAIDENHEAD NOT YET SEEDED! SHE SHE SHE—”

The
voice raged on and on, a crusty and deranged shriek that rose to a high treble until the words no longer made sense and then the head, blackened and blistering, screamed. The mouth opened like the sooty throat of a chimney and the scream was that of a chainsaw ripping into a dead tree. The sound was loud, deafening, and everyone covered their ears. But it was not just in the room, but in their heads, grating and rending and shrilling like saws biting into steel plating. A wind rushed through the room, lashing and blowing and it stank of fetid meat and burning hair.

And through it all, the headless body did not fall.

It stumbled about, clawing out with its hands, seeking flesh to rend and lives to take. From that of a curvaceous, rejuvenated woman, it had expanded with the blood it leeched, bloating until the buttons of its rotting burial gown popped free one by one. It was like the living trunk was filled with helium. It became a flabby and vile puppet that bounced and contorted, convulsed and writhed like a marionette. But as the head broke apart in the heat like an eggshell, the trunk grew rigid and trembling, mottling with purple spots of fungi, then splitting open and oozing a milk of blood and a foul gray necrotic slime as it began to first fragment and then putrefy, becoming an especially grotesque and ambulant corpse that finally stiffened and went still, tipping over like a felled tree and smashing into a stew of gut-waste, organ-matter, and powdering bones on the floor.

By that point, Wenda was down on one knee, physically ill with the smells that burst from the thing in rapid succession: a green and maggoty putrescence followed by stink of rotting fruit and mildewed linen, then a desiccated and dusty smell of attics and planks splitting apart with dryrot. There was a final enveloping smell of great age like
wormy books flaking on shelves…then nothing.

The head in the hearth snapped and popped, but it was a sterile thing by that point like
a melon whose juice and pulp had been boiled from it, leaving only a burnt, splitting husk behind.

The rats were
nearly nonexistent.

Most had fled back to wherever they had come
from, vanishing like ghosts at dawn. What few remained were injured and Rule, bitten and clawed, his overalls scathed with scratches, was hunting them down and smashing their heads open with the fireplace poker. He seemed barely aware that there was anything else in the room but himself and the rodents.

13

Wenda stood slowly, looking around.

Morris’ leeched corpse was curled up like a road-struck dog and it would have to be attended to, she knew, before it woke up and started causing trouble. Because it would. Sliding the knife back in her belt, she stepped around the remains of the beldam and helped Megga to her feet. She looked like she was in shock. Wenda took her over to the fire and tossed in the last few birch logs they had. Next, they’d burn the furniture if they had to. The flames burned high and bright and warm. Wenda could feel the fatigue in her limbs, but the night was hardly over with.

Megga just stared into the hearth, the blaze reflected in her dark and glassy eyes. Wenda dug in one of her pockets for her cigarettes, found the remains of her pack, lit one up and shoved it between her lips. She had no idea whether it was the proper thing to do or not, but it was all she could think of. It was the first thing they did in old movies.

Rule sat in the chair behind them. He was breathing hard. “That’s only the beginning,” he said after a few minutes. “They won’t let us live to tell the tale. They can’t. Their survival depends on us becoming like them so we can’t bring people to burn this place in broad daylight or hunt them down.”

Wenda made a grunting sound, but had little energy for anything else.

Megga seemed to realize there was a cigarette in her mouth and her addiction took charge. She blinked a few times and then began dragging off it, blowing out clouds of smoke. “She gave up the secret.”

Wenda just looked at her.

“She gave up the secret,” Megga said again. “Before the head stopped moving…it gave up the secret.”

“What secret?” Rule said.

“The secret of Wenda.”

Wenda said nothing; there was nothing she could say. What Megga said or, rather, the importance of what she said was not lost on her. She could still hear that awful voice in her head.
Her bud has not been burst and her rose is unplucked and her maidenhead not yet seeded.
Those were the words and Megga had known it all along because those things had been in her head right from the start. It was true, of course. Wenda was a virgin but it was not something she went around admitting to or shouting from the rooftops. It was simply a personal choice. One that was possibly archaic by today’s standards, but one that had always seemed right for her…particularly in light of certain events in her life.

“So that’s the secret?” she finally said. “They’re afraid of me because I keep my legs crossed?”

There was a bitter sarcasm there, but she couldn’t help it. Somehow she’d been hoping for a little bit more. Some secret strength she never knew she had. She wanted to be able to shout
SHAZAM!
and go on her merry way kicking undead ass. But virginity?
That was it?

“It’s ridiculous,” she said.

And it was.

It was the craziest goddamn thing she’d ever, ever heard.

Because she hadn’t wanted to be a virgin. God no, she hadn’t really wanted that, but…but…but…
but David died. He died and I miss him and I’m still in love with him and I can’t help myself.

“You’re incorruptible,” Megga told her. “Don’t you see the power of that? Of purity? Of goodness? There’s more to becoming a vampire than just getting bit in the neck. That’s only the physical part. The spiritual and psychological part is offering yourself and taking part in your own destruction.”

“Excellent,” Rule said, very much approving. “Wenda is our own Athena, our warrior maiden. Her strength is her virginity. It’s the wellspring of her power and its virtue cannot be sullied. As Athena defeated Ares, the god of warfare and bloodshed, so shall our Wenda defeat Griska, the lord of the dead.”

“You two are getting a little mystical for me,” Wenda admitted.

“It’s not something you need to think about,” Rule said. “If it’s true—”

“Oh, it’s true, all right,” Megga said.

“—then it’s something that exists whether you believe in it or not. It does not require your cooperation or your belief. It simply
is.”

Wenda didn’t bother responding to that because, realistically, how could she? It was a completely irrational idea. Maybe Megga was right—it seemed possible in some crazy way—but it was contrary to everything Wenda had always believed in, honored, and practiced in her somewhat narrow view of reality. She wanted to debate the very idea, but debating it was like debating the existence of a superior being. Faith was faith and belief was belief. They were states of mind and no matter how much empirical evidence you threw against it, the faithful remained faithful and she knew she’d never convince Megga that it was pure fantasy.

And particularly since she wasn’t sure that it
was
fantasy at all.

There was something with
in her, something inside her, some well of strength that she’d never tapped into before this night.
And who are you by this point to be clinging to worn-out tenets of what’s real and what’s not? What’s possible and what can never be? Maybe yesterday you could get away with rationalizing, but not now. Not after what you’ve seen this night. There are dark things in this world, horrible things that skulk and hide in the sunless corners and now you have seen some of them. You have seen true evil…is it that hard to believe that maybe in you there is true goodness?
But, yes, it was. Just because she’d never had sex? The very idea seemed ludicrous…then again, so did this entire visit to Cobton.

Wenda slumped forward, letting her face fill her hands. God knew there had been many times when she viewed her virginity as a weight around her neck and many occasions when she could have gotten rid of that weight. But she hadn’t. It wasn’t always a conscious choice either. Fate and circumstance constantly got in the way. She’d had relationships with men…and every one of
them dissolved into a comedy of errors. They’d each devolved into chaos long before the bedroom was reached.

Like David, for example.

She blanched at the memory.

But
was all that purely a matter of stupid, annoying coincidence…or was it the hand of something beyond herself constantly intervening, saving her for this night, keeping her blade sharp and her virtue intact so she could do its bidding?

“I wish it had been me,” Megga said, pulling furiously off her cigarette. “I just wish I had been the one. God, all my life I wanted to be special. I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be one of the few and not one of the fucking many. Maybe if I’d have known I might have kept my virginity past my sixteenth year. But you know what? I doubt it. I’m not like you, Wenda. There’s always been kind of a…a seam of darkness in me. I fall too easily. I give in to temptation and vice. It’s like second nature to me to be self-indulgent and weak. I’m not strong. Not inside where it counts. Not like you.”

“I’ve never been strong either,” Wenda admitted.

“Before tonight.”

She sighed. “Yes, before tonight.”

“If Doc was here, he could explain this to you and it would make sense,” Megga said. “You know it would make sense.”

“Doc?” Rule said.

Megga explained who he was and, more importantly,
what
he was. “He’s really a fascinating guy,” she went on. “He’s one of these people that have immense talent and intelligence, you know? But for some reason, nothing ever really comes of it. He should have had his own show in Vegas or been a movie star or a bestselling author or something. He’s special. But he ended up working on a midnight horror show with us. Why? That’s what I always wondered:
why?
You see all these talentless bums in life that become rich and famous through pure hype and groveling self-promotion and then there’s guys like Doc that truly deserve it, but fate turns a blind eye towards them. Why is that?”

But no one had an answer
.

Wenda was aware at that moment that Rule was watching her. He had not said anything in some time since his comparison of her to Athena. Even in the dimness of the waning lantern and the shadows reaching across his face, she could see he was looking at her. More so, she could
feel
him looking at her. He had something on his mind and she just hoped like hell it had nothing to do with warrior maidens and virginity.

Without prompting, he said, “I’m thinking about the nature of evil. How it establishes itself, how it is fertilized like a crop, generated and ultimately harvested. The idea of spiritual evil is pretty much archaic in our modern society, but I think the three of us know that it in fact exists. I’ve never doubted it. I’ve always seen it as a force of nature like wind, rain, fire, and storm…an elemental force and certainly one of the oldest, something that no doubt predates our little world here by an unfathomable amount of time.” He had their attention and saw it. “I spoke earlier of evil being seeded in Cobton and causing a blight here that continues to this day. You probably thought I spoke metaphorically in a sense, that my mind was too mired in the classics to consider this problem rationally…for after all, what do I know about Cobton except what I found in
the old archives and heard as the twice-told tales of old-timers? Other than my visit here when I was young that cost the life of my brother…what evidence do I have to support my theory that this is an evil place that attracts evil deeds and evil entities like a magnet attracts metal filings?”

“We’ve seen all the evidence we need,” Wenda told him.

He nodded. “Sure. But have you considered the epicenter of this evil? Because there is one and it’s down in those catacombs I spoke of. It’s there, I think. It’s festering and malignant and it needs to be cut out at its source.”

“So we’re back to
that?”

“
Yes. It should be done. What’s down there has to be destroyed.”

“Griska,
” Wenda said.

He shrugged. “Maybe. And maybe I’m talking about something even
worse
than Griska. Something that has taken habitation here and regenerated evil again and again.”

“And what is that?”

But Rule admitted he did not know. Only that he could feel it as he’d always felt it in Cobton. That it existed, he did not doubt. No more than he doubted that it was now rising up for some reason to spread and multiply, to germinate its foulness. “I think we’re on the edge of something…something large in scope and complex in nature. Call it a blueprint if you want. Something Griska might have had in mind when he first came here. To establish Cobton as a vampire colony and then spread that pestilence far and wide. Whether by coincidence or design, we happen to be here when this evil of his is just coming to term. We’re in the not-so enviable position of being able to stop it or at least cripple it before it goes too far. I think we need to take advantage of that. I think we need to destroy Griska and his flock and the silent malignancy that empowers them before they spread their wings cross this county, this state, this country, and maybe this whole damn world.”