Manly Wade Wellman - John Thunstone 02 (11 page)

 
          
Layton
darted away along the walk. Thunstone and Sharon turned to return across the
campus. They had almost reached the Inn before Sharon spoke. “What do you
suppose he wants?” she asked.

 
          
“I’m
anxious to find out. This morning, he got up in the audience to ask me about
the Shonokins, were they real or fiction. Maybe that’s what he wants to talk
about.”

 
          
They
parted at Sharon’s door. Thunstone went to his own room and sat down. He waited
for perhaps five minutes. Then
came
a knock outside,
so faint that it was like a bird scratching. Thunstone opened the door, and in
came Layton.

           
He still had a pale, pinched look on
his face, as though he was dead tired. Father Bundren had looked like that
after exorcising the black handprint. The priest, too, had looked tired. Layton
sat down limply in a chair, and Thunstone sat on the bed.

 
          
“All
right,’’ said Thunstone. “What is it?’’

 
          
“I
got here without being followed,’’ Layton mumbled. “At least, I didn’t see
anybody following me. I came up the stairs, didn’t use the elevator. If they
knew I was here, somebody would do something—something bad would happen to me.”

 
          
“What
are you trying to say?” Thunstone prodded him.

           
“You asked me where Grizel Fian
lives,” said
Layton
. “You know about her, don’t you?
All about her?”

           
“I don’t know all about anything,”
said Thunstone. “I have thoughts about Grizel Fian. Did you come here to help
my thoughts along?”

 
          
“I
came here for help, if you can give me that. I’ve been into some things here at
Buford State that aren’t in the catalog of regular courses, and”—he gulped, and
his limp mustache stirred—“I want to get out if I can.”

 
          
“I’m
waiting to hear,” said Thunstone patiently.

 
          
“Maybe
I’d better start at the beginning—the beginning of this school.” Layton gulped
nervously. “Back when there was just a little settlement here, a few houses,
there was a set of people who worshipped devils.”

 
          
“A
coven,” suggested Thunstone. “I’ve heard some talk of that. How they did their
spells to cure Samuel Whitney, and how he founded the college here.”

 
          
“Samuel
Whitney founded more than that.” Again Layton gulped, as though to steady his
voice. “He established a special fund—an endowment, you could call it—for those
women who prayed his life back into him.”

 
          
“Prayed
his life back,” repeated Thunstone. “To what god did they pray?
To what gods?”

 
          
Layton’s
face crumpled unhappily. “I know the names they prayed to, but I won’t say them
out loud, not here or anywhere. Whitney wanted a sort of study activity here,
for those women, and he set aside a big sum of money for it, the income to go
to the activity. Well, the trustees of the college wouldn’t hear of anything
like that—said it wasn’t a proper study course—so Whitney just left the
endowment independently of the college, and assigned its income to those who
had helped him. You won’t find anything about this in any history of Buford
State, but I know about it.”

 
          
“How
did he manage his endowment?” asked Thunstone, trying to sit easily, to speak
casually.

 
          
“The
mayor of Buford was named Chunn Emdyke. His wife was one of the
group
who’d prayed Samuel Whitney back to life. Whitney gave
him that money to invest as a trust fund, with the income to go to those witch
women.”

           
“I see,” nodded Thunstone, who was
beginning to see. “And the money from this trust, it still goes on.”

           
“Grizel Fian manages it today,” said
Layton
unhappily. “By now, that fund is bigger
than ever. It’s grown in the bank where it’s kept. Grizel Fian directs it, and
directs her followers.”

 
          
“I’ve
heard that there are at least two covens here in Buford,” Thunstone said.

 
          
“More
than that,” said Layton. “I’ve belonged, Mr. Thunstone.” He leaned forward in
his chair, tense-bodied, his eyes wide and staring. “I still belong, do you
see?” “How did you get into it?” Thunstone asked him, still calmly.

           
“Well, I was brought up in this
town, all through grade school and high school. I’d heard rumors and
whispers—no more than that. But then my parents were killed in an auto
accident, and I was an orphan. Grizel Fian looked me up, talked to me,
then
paid my tuition here at
Buford
State
.
Told me certain courses
to take.
And she taught me things herself.”

 
          
He
shuddered to say that.

 
          
“She
brought you into her organization of witches,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“Yes.
Yes, she did. I was initiated, and given a coven name—they call me Thief of
Heaven. She brought me in so far and so deep that I’m scared.” Layton gestured
shakily. “The point
is,
that now she means killing!”
he almost screamed.

 
          
“Keep
your voice down,” said Thunstone. “Killing whom?”

 
          
“You.”

 
          
“Me,”
said Thunstone. “What about the others who have come here?
Father
Bundren and Reuben Manco and Professor Shimada?”

 
          
“This
meeting gave her the notion,” said Layton. “It’s you she’s after. Those others,
if she can scare them, make them run, it’ll be a victory. But you—”

 
          
“Will
I be a sacrifice, perhaps?”

 
          
“That’s
it, and it will bring her the power to come into the open here—found her own
school, call it her own college,
make
this place a big
headquarters for teaching her science!”

 
          
“Just
like that?” said Thunstone, smiling. “How will she kill me?”

 
          
“She
can kill and not be
caught,
she’s done it in the
past.” Again Layton’s face squirmed. “But killing you and frightening the
others away will dispose of four enemies to what she does and plans. And I
don’t want to be mixed up in your killing.”

 
          
“Neither
do
I
,” said Thunstone easily. “I don’t plan to be
killed.”

 
          
“I’m
scared, I say,” Layton fairly squealed. “I want out.”

 
          
“Good
for you. You seem to think I can help.”

 
          
“Maybe
we can help each other,” Layton half babbled. “Fve warned you, anyway. They’re
fixing to do something to you, because you’re a danger to them. They want to
eliminate the danger.”

 
          
“Eliminate
me, in other words,” said Thunstone. “That’s been tried before.”

 
          
“But—Rowley
Thome—”

 
          
“I’ve
known Rowley Thome for some years, and he and I have had our contests,” said
Thunstone. “I don’t remember that he ever had the better of any of them.”

 
          
“To
have seen what they did to bring him back to the world, to here in Buford!”
Layton cried. “I was there. Grizel Fian and her helpers, those girls who live
at her house and others, they talked and sang and danced, and then there he
was! Came out of nothing, like Mephistopheles in
Faust
I’d had enough of that, just watching. I’ve come to you for
help.” He gulped. “First thing, I want to be baptized.”

 
          
“If
you’ve been baptized once, it’s for all time,” said Thunstone.

 
          
“But
I was never baptized,” chattered Layton.
“Only by the
witches, not by the church.
I want baptism.”

           
Thunstone shook his head. “I can’t
do that for you, I’m not a minister. You’d better talk to Father Mark Bundren.”

           
“Would he do it for me?”

           
“I’d think he’d be glad to.”

 
          
“If
I made a confession to him—”

 
          
“He’d
hear your confession, I’m sure, and advise you. It happens to be his business.”

 
          
Layton
said no more. He sank back in his chair and bowed his head on his breast.
Thunstone took up the telephone and dialed the number of Father Bundren’s room.

 
          
“This
is Thunstone again,” he said when the priest answered. “I’ve troubled you once
already today and now I’m troubling you again.”

           
“No trouble, no trouble at all,”
came the reply. “What can I do for you?”

 
          
“I
have a young man with me, his name is Exum Layton. He seems to be in great need
of spiritual help. Will you talk to him?”

 
          
“Of
course I will, send him along.”

 
          
“Thanks.”
Thunstone hung up and gave Layton the number of Father Layton’s room, “He says
he’ll see you,” Thunstone told Layton.

 
          
Layton
hesitated. “Will he think this absurd?” he asked.

 
          
“Not
for a moment.”

 
          
“And
the things I’ll tell him—will he tell anybody else?”

 
          
“A
priest never betrays a confession. Go on and talk to him.”

 
          
Layton
went out, his shoulders hunched
nervously,
Thunstone
loaded a pipe with his mixture of tobacco and herbs and lighted it. He smoked
and thought, and now and then he made notes on his pad. Time passed. At last he
telephoned Sharon, met her at her door, and went down with her to the lobby.

 
          
They
had not long to wait before Lee Pitt came to greet them. He wore his brown suit
and smiled his creased smile.

 
          
“We’re
all ready for you at home,” he said. “Ruth—that’s my wife—is eager to meet you
and talk to you.”

 
          
They
followed him out to his car. He drove them along a broad street, then along a
narrower one, and finally stopped in front of a house of white=painted brick
with a broad porch. He ushered them into a hallway and then into a comfortable
living room with a sofa and stuffed chairs and bookshelves up to the ceiling.
At an inner door appeared a woman with streaks of gray in her dark brown hair
and a welcoming smile,
Two
alert teenage boys stood
with her. From beyond them appeared a fluffy black cat, which sat down and
studied Thunstone and Sharon with intent yellow eyes.

 
          
'‘Ruth,
this is Countess Monteseco.” Pitt made the introductions. “And Mr, Thunstone,
the man I’ve been telling you about, Ruth is my wife, and these are my sons,
Sam and Dennis.”

 
          
Dennis
Pitt took a step into the living room. “Countess Monteseco,” he said with awe
in his voice, But Sharon went to him, took his hand, and said that she was glad
to be there. The cat turned and walked into the room behind with a smooth,
prowling stride.

 
          
“Shall
I offer you a drink?” asked Pitt.

 
          
“Not
for me, thank you,” said Sharon.

 
          
“Nor
for me,” said Thunstone. “I drank earlier today.”