The Hungry Dead (21 page)

 

Three days later, on a Sunday, Aunt Edna and Uncle Sal were killed in a fiery automobile accident. They were on their way to visit Meredith and the children, having made arrangements for the occasion two days before by telephone. During the course of the call they had tactfully expressed their worries about the state of Meredith's emotional health and her ability to “cope with things.” But an enormous tractor-trailer truck lost its brakes behind them on a steep, winding grade and pounded down on them, unable to stop, crushing their small foreign car like an accordian against a sheer rock wall. The driver of the rig and Edna and Sal were incinerated in the violent explosion which followed the impact.

It was not lost on Cynthia and her family, attending the closed-casket funeral, that Edna and Sal had been virtually cremated: the exact punishment ordered by Meredith to be brought down on the spirit of her husband if he failed to appear. Was this retribution?

One week after the burial, Meredith was summoned by her relatives' attorney to a disclosure of their last will and testament. All their property, money, and worldly goods were now hers, which amounted to the mansion eighty miles away, its contents and surrounding fifty-five acres, the chapel on the grounds, Sal's unsold paintings, contracts, and royalties, a savings account containing fourteen thousand dollars, and insurance policies totalling seventy-five thousand dollars.

In succeeding weeks, the decision was made to leave the town and the shop, for which they were paying rent, and go to live in Uncle Sal's and Aunt Edna's house.

Her inheritances, and the financial security that came along with them, enabled Meredith to give herself completely to the occult. She could live off the insurance and the savings until the expiration of the seven years when her husband would be declared legally dead. Then she would get more insurance money, and Social Security.

The family name had been Brewster, assumed when Meredith married Sheldon. But with the move to the mansion, Meredith began telling the children their last name was now Barnes, her maiden name while she was growing up in England, the daughter of Luke Barnes, the Cunning Man. “It's a name to be proud of,” Meredith said. “In reclaiming it for ourselves, we lay claim to Grandpa's heritage, his powers.”

Mama had discovered a trunk full of the Cunning Man's books and magical equipment in the attic. The stuff must have been shipped over from England when he died, and Edna had never let on that she had gotten hold of it. Maybe she had been ashamed of it—she and Sal had often accused Meredith of being superstitious. In any case, it was quite an exciting find, and it occupied Meredith and Cynthia for days on end, as they read through everything and then discussed their discoveries. There were many diaries and notebooks kept in the Cunning Man's own hand. Both mother and daughter, by this time, were deeply intrigued by witchcraft—its origins and possibilities. Luke and Abraham were in awe of it and were believers in its potential power, but they were content to allow Mama and Cynthia to become the experts.

Cyrus, who was fifteen at the time of the move, seemed to blossom in the country. It was as if the rural atmosphere—the outdoors and the absence of strangers in large numbers to nag and tease him—formed a more hospitable environment for his uncomplicated mental processes and abilities. He began to look more healthy and strong, if not more intelligent. He liked to pick flowers or catch butterflies. He never harmed the butterflies, always letting them go. One morning he found a dead bird and cried over it till Cynthia, trying to appease him, came up with the idea of having a funeral for it. She found a few scraps of wood and showed Cyrus how to make a small coffin. They went into the chapel, which had been Uncle Sal's studio, and made up a few prayers, which they recited. Then outside, in the small cemetery that had been the family plot of the overseer who had owned the place back before the Civil War, Cyrus and Cynthia dug a hole, tied two sticks together to make an upside-down cross, and had a burial ceremony that mimicked a Satanic one Cynthia had read about. After that, Cyrus was always looking for dead birds or mice that the cat had killed. He took to making small coffins in advance or saving shoeboxes to have in a pinch. Cynthia always helped him by reciting prayers and incantations over the tiny graves he dug.

None of the children was supervised. Meredith spent long hours upstairs in her room reading or feeling sorry for herself over the loss of her husband. She never ate much anymore and didn't cook, either; the family subsisted on sandwiches, canned goods, and sometimes fresh fruit bought at the country store up the road or picked from fruit trees in the surrounding woods. Meredith began to look gaunt, sickly, even jaundiced, but the children grew accustomed to her deteriorated appearance. Without discussing it in so many words, Meredith and Cynthia both knew that they intended to tryout some of the things they had learned from Grandpa Barnes' notebooks. Nothing had been attempted since the day Mama had invoked Papa's spirit—with disastrous results.

One day, to amuse themselves, Luke and Abraham rummaged around and brought out the traps Uncle Sal had given them for Easter two years ago. They jauntily made a foray into the woods to set the traps and could hardly sleep all night waiting for dawn so they could get up and go see. Cynthia and Cyrus went along, too. One by one the six traps were checked, but they were all empty. Luke angrily kicked a clod of dirt, while Abraham hung his head and looked dejected.

“What kind of bait did you use?” Cynthia asked.

“Bread. We wet it and made dough balls,” said Abraham.

“Huh! Who taught you to do that?”

“Nobody. I mean, I know you can use a dough ball to catch fish.”

They all laughed, even Cyrus.

“I guess there ain't too many fish swimmin' through these here woods,” Luke admitted.

“Why don't you use a carrot?” Cynthia suggested. “Then you might catch a rabbit.”

“Yeah, at least we know what rabbits eat,” Abraham agreed.

“One rabbit caught, and each of us could take a lucky rabbit's foot!” Luke exclaimed in gleeful anticipation.

After the change in bait, for three more mornings all the children went out and checked the traps, only to find them empty. This was all the more frustrating because most of the time when they were on their way to the traps they would see plenty of rabbits and other game scampering around in the fields. Luke threw rocks at the animals, but he never hit one.

“Shit! Wonder what these rabbits around here
eat?”
Abraham grumped.

“Lettuce, maybe,” offered Cynthia.

“Gonna try it one more time with carrots,” Luke pronounced determinedly.

“Why don't you let me work a spell for you?” Cynthia blurted.

They all stared at her. She knelt by the last trap they had checked, and with a stick she drew a magic circle around it. Then she got some dew on her fingers and sprinkled in on the fresh bait. Bowing her head, still kneeling, she said the following words, paraphrasing something she had read in one of Grandpa Barnes' notebooks: “May the dewy tears of Almighty Tetra-grammaion, Lord of Creation, anoint the tools of the hunter. May the Spirit of the Hunt bring food to our table. Amen.”

“We're not gonna
eat
the rabbit, are we?” Abraham said.

Cynthia got up, brushing dirt from her jeans.
“That
doesn't matter, silly. The important thing is the charm. Tomorrow we'll see if it really works.”

They went around repeating the ceremony over each trap, and for the boys it got a little boring. But Cynthia was intensely excited, more so than she let on, for this could be a test of her power. Mama had told her that she could be the Chosen One of the family, because at birth a caul—a portion of her amniotic membrane (whatever
that
was)—had remained covering her forehead, and according to tradition among white witches, this was a sure sign of tremendous psychic powers to be vested in one so blessed. Mama had dried this membrane and kept it locked in her cedar chest, and she said that it must remain with the family forever and never be allowed to fall into strange hands, for the loss of it would bring dreadful results.

The next day they caught a rabbit. When they spotted it struggling in the trap, they all ran up and stopped short, out of breath, staring at it. They had run up whooping joyously, but up close it wasn't a very pretty sight. The animal was weak from loss of blood; the mauled grass around it was streaked red. The rabbit's leg was bitten or gnawed down to the white bone, and still it remained locked in the steel jaws of the trap, vainly trying to pull free.

“Poor thing,” Cynthia said. But an inner part of her was thrilled because the rabbit had been caught as the result of her magic.

For long moments the boys were speechless, in shock.

“Fun'ral,” Cyrus mumbled. Tears were rolling down his chubby cheeks.

“What're we gonna
do
with it?” Abraham asked.

Nobody knew. It was one thing to dream about catching a rabbit, but it was quite another thing to watch it die. Luke picked up a stick and hit the animal, trying to end its suffering. But the blow did not suffice; the rabbit crawled in circles for a while, then resumed pulling against the steel chain.

“Maybe we should let it go!” Cynthia blurted before Luke could strike another blow.

“Naw, it's gonna die. Might as well put it out of its misery.”

He swung the stick—thump!—down on the quivering ball of fur, then thumped it again and again, till it stopped quivering. Then he squatted, so he wouldn't get blood on his trousers, and unlocked the jaws of the trap.

They all stood over the dead rabbit, looking at it in awe of its death.

“Gimme your pocketknife,” Luke said to Abraham.

“What're you gonna do?” Abraham asked apprehensively as he handed the knife over.

“Skin it.”

“You're kidding!”

“Nope.”

Luke unclasped the long blade of the knife and stood over the dead rabbit, looking down on it. “I ain't chicken,” he said, as much to bolster his own courage as to convince the others.

“Wait!” Cynthia called out. “He's
my
rabbit as much as yours! I want some of his blood!”

“What
for?”

“For magic.”

Luke and Abraham waited while their sister went home to get a witch's bottle, and Cyrus went along with her to fetch a shoebox. Filled with lurid fascination mingled with queasiness and fear, the others watched while Luke sliced the rabbit's jugular vein and drained some blood into Cynthia's bottle. She wiped off the bottle with Kleenex, corked it, and put it safely in her pocket. Then, with nobody like Uncle Sal around to act as teacher, Luke made a horrible mess of his attempt to skin the rabbit, and in the end they put the bloody, mangled pieces—pelt, bones, and carcass—into the shoebox.

In the little cemetery by the chapel, Cyrus used his toy shovel to dig a grave.

After the burial, and the placing of an upside-down cross on the mound of earth, Cynthia knelt and recited: “Almighty Tetragrammaton, we beg you to accept this sacrifice which we now offer to you, so that we may receive your blessings. We ask you to bless our deeds, that we perform in your Almighty Name. Consecrate the blood you have given us this day, that it may further your holy work. For we ask only to serve you, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Mama heard about the incident in all its gory detail that evening after supper. She seemed in good spirits and listened keenly, though the children kept interrupting each other to get it all told. It was one of those rare occasions when Meredith had troubled herself to cook a full meal, including a cake for dessert (made from a boxed mix).

She said, “The power is in you, then, Cynthia, as I had suspected. Grandpa Barnes has chosen you as his receptor, the bearer of his blood lineage. If you prayed over the trap and consecrated it, then whoever you found in it the next morning was your enemy.”

“A
rabbit?”
Abraham blurted.

Mama shot him a cold, withering look. “Evil spirits, demons, can assume
any
shape,” she instructed in stern, serious tones. “It is not uncommon for them to take the guise of a rabbit. Though they may appear quite harmless outwardly, this is only a devil's trick, and you must protect yourself by destroying them. It's the only way to counteract the evil power inside them.”

In the following weeks the Barnes children redoubled their efforts in setting traps and torturing, maiming, and killing the animals that were sent to them. These were mostly squirrels, raccoons, possums, and rabbits, with an occasional stray dog or cat. It became a challenge to see who could devise the most ingenious, painful ways of dealing with these enemies. The children grew callous about performing amputations and decapitations, searing live flesh with fire, gouging or poking out eyes and mutilating genitals. No amount of cruelty was too extreme for the evil spirits embodied by these apparently harmless creatures. Luke and Abraham did most of the killing, while Cynthia presided over the ritual aspects of their activities and Cyrus did the burying.

And one day the inevitable happened: a human being was caught. At least it
looked
like a human being.

The children heard the creature's screams as they walked along the dusty road, about a hundred yards from their house. They stopped in their tracks, listened, and knew that the screaming was coming from out in the field where they had set several of the largest traps. This was truly frightening: potentially the largest thing they had yet caught. Afraid of what they might find, they took their time about heading into the field. Cynthia began praying to Tetragrammaton to protect them. All of a sudden Luke took off running, out toward the middle of the field, having first grabbed Cyrus' shovel out of his hand. Whatever it was they had caught, it was behind some tall weeds. Luke went crashing through the weeds, Cyrus huffing and puffing behind.