The Magic of Murder (15 page)

“These people who knew me as a child would swear an oath they are friends. Yet to my back these friends who claim to be God-fearing, curse my name, call me filthy, mean-spirited. It is only poor I am, and in need. Mean-spirited? Aye, I have become that. I beg at doors for a crust of bread. Would I turn my townsfolk away if they, not I, were in need? Would I laugh at them and hide my children when they pass me on the street? Would I slide away from them, whispering, on the bench in church? These friends of my childhood. It is a crime, I think, to be poor in this Salem town. Ah, had my dear George Burroughs taken me as his own when my father died and left me with naught but a good name. Would that he had taken me before I wed Dan Poole whose life of debt stole from me even that good name. I am bitter, yes. Having seized my heart, George Burroughs fled this town against rumors he is a brother to the Devil. But he is a man of God, and is strong because of it. He knows the Lord will shield him from such accusations. So perchance it is another woman he has chosen, and he has run to her. Tonight I will know.”

Rebecca looked up from the book. “There’s nothing here to help.”

I’d hobbled back and forth across the living room all the time she read. Thud, step, thud, step: crutches in front then swing past them. Now I stopped in front of her. “Keep reading,” I said. “Sarah always rambles before she gets down to it.”

Rebecca pulled her long braid over her left shoulder, and stroked it as if she were petting a cat while she scanned the next page. Her eyebrows pinched, she at last said, “What Sarah did…I don’t think we have the skill to control it.”

“Read,” I insisted.

As if to say,
I’m sorry I got you started in this,
she rolled her eyes.

“Sarah’s about to tell us how she learned if George Burroughs ran off with his soul mate,” I said.

“If he did, it would make
one
of you.” She peered at the French doors through which Roger had left.

“Let it go, Rebecca. I like him, but not that way.”

“Yeah, right. Tell me another story.” Instead of pushing further, she turned her eyes down to the open book on her lap.

“Anil is needed to dye the beeswax,” she read, then stopped and looked up at me. “Makes sense—deep blue is the color of clairvoyance.”

“Maybe that’s why I got in trouble last time. I didn’t use blue candles. What’s next?”

Running a long red fingernail across the words, she again scanned the page. “A black cape.”

“Black? Was Sarah planning to put a hex on George Burroughs if she saw him with another woman?”

In a flash of imagination, my distant relative became the wicked witch in the
Wizard of Oz
movie. Green face, bent nose, she cackled over her crystal ball. Had the use of magic turned the witch’s skin green? I stopped in front of the mirror near my desk, leaned on a crutch, and touched my face.

Rebecca’s voice put an end to my rumination over
whether magic would inevitably lead to a discolored complexion. “In the old days, black wasn’t considered
evil,” she said while she turned another page in the book. “Many practicing Wicca’s don’t know this anymore. Black is the absence of color. It symbolizes the night, the universe. Black is the absence of falsehood.”

“Okay, I’ve got a black silk robe in my closet. More than one, actually.”

“
Do
you? Roger will like that.”

“Rebecca!”

“I’m just saying.”

“And I’m not listening. What else do we need?”

“Incense. Gotta have the aroma of musk. Wait a minute.” She went to the kitchen and retuned with her shoulder bag. “Yeah, I’ve got what we need to make it.” She began to pull small jars from her bag. “Sandalwood, gum mastic, ambergris—got any nutmeg and mustard powder in the house?”

“Did you bring your whole shop with you?” I asked, wide-eyed.

“When I woke up this morning, I had a feeling you’d insist on doing this.”

“A feeling, huh? Like the one that told you, you’d need a salve for my burns?”

She gave me the same arcane smile I’d seen the day I met her at The Black Cat. “A woman’s gotta be prepared.”

Though her tone was light, I sensed something she held back. “Prepared for what?”

She turned to the chair and fluffed the cushion. “For what we’re about to do, of course.”

Running in the circle of her logic left me dizzier than
the alcohol I’d imbibed. A tad annoyed, I pointed to Sarah’s
book and said, “Then we have what we need?”

Rebecca’s nod was anything but eager.

“Wake Elvira up,” I said as I switched off the lamps. “Let’s get started.”

Chapter Sixteen

Things Better Unseen

            
 
T
he living room was almost as black as my robe. The only light came from three candles flickering on the end table we moved near the French doors. The candlesticks were arranged in a triangle the way Sarah Goode had instructed. The mini-blinds were raised so we would feel as though we were under the sky and could peer up to the eternity beyond. Sarah wrote she would be outside when she performed this rite. The night was far too cold for us to follow that instruction. Even if we were outside, low clouds hid the stars Sarah chanted to. It didn’t matter. I intended to proceed.

Frost had crystallized in lacy patterns on the windows. Perfect jewels of frost. A stiff wind gusting from the north off Lake Ontario made me shiver, though my living room was quite warm. The constant
tap-tap-tap
of the azalea bushes on the windowpanes sounded like the knock of a spirit who wanted to be let in. I thought of it as the spirit of eternity come to participate in our ceremony.

My feet were bare. Rebecca’s feet were bare. Symbolically,
we stood on the earth, and were one with nature. Elvira sat beside us, watching, as if wanting to be certain we would do everything right.

On the table, a bowl of water and a bowl of salt rested on either side of the navy blue candles. I had placed a third bowl with smoldering incense at my right hand. In the white dish to my left, grated nutmeg looked like sand on a beach spread before an ocean. In my imagination, I stood on the beach and stared out over the waves to where the water became one with the sky. One with the universe.

Of course, without my crutches I couldn’t stand on a beach or even on my carpeted floor. So, I leaned against the table with my right foot raised. In this position, I closed my
eyes, and inhaled deeply. After our prayer to nature’s deities,
if the order of our service was correct and we chanted the proper words, I would
become
one with the universe. I would float in the black sky and look down at the earth, at my urban and rural piece of it. In the tapestry of city streets and farmlands, the answer to the puzzle would be spread before me.

“Fiery God,” Rebecca and I intoned, “you who are the ruler of gods, master of the sun—”

She handed me the athame, my sharp, double bladed knife with runes carved in the hilt. Carefully, I drew a five-pointed star in the nutmeg then blessed the spice with the tip of my blade.

“—holding everything wild and free in your hands,” we sang, “Ancient begetter of woman and man—”

I pinched grains of nutmeg from the center of the star and sprinkled the grains into the incense bowl. The aroma of musk and spice filled my nostrils. I bent down, cut three white hairs from Elvira’s back. I dropped one in the flame of each candle.

“—Paramour of the Moon Goddess and shield of the Wicca, descend, we pray, with your blazing hands open wide—”

I began to feel sleepy. I didn’t fight the feeling. Again I inhaled the spiced aroma of the incense…

***

Night under a moonless sky. Instead of floating in the sky, I stand at the foot of an alley which stretches beyond my sight. No snow covers the cracked concrete, tarred over in spots. On either side of the lane are the backs of wood-framed two-story dwellings, some boarded up. They look as though they had been built nearly a hundred years ago. Garages jut out, some with caved-in roofs, other roofs only sag.

I sense I’ve been here before. I feel as if there’s no place I haven’t been before.

A breeze, fragrant with musk and the promise of spring, gentles my hair. Rebecca’s voice floats on this breeze…

“Glorious Goddess, you who are the mother of gods, the light in the night, the womb of everything wild and free—”

I feel dizzy, might tumble if I take a step. It’s as if I’ve gotten drunk on the sweet air. I grasp the steel pole of a chain link fence, bend my neck. A single star glitters in the black sky. The Goddess?

“—defender of woman and man—” Rebecca sings.

Her voice, a whisper, becomes a shout, breaks in half. Now it is two voices arguing. “Why did you have to do it,” one says. The other voice, trembling: “I was wrong, I know it now.”

They shouldn’t fight while the Goddess watches.

A patch of white flashes past me. It’s Elvira. She races toward the raised voices.

I release the steel post and stagger after her.

“Bitch, it’s too late for apologies.” The fury in the first voice rends the night.

“No, no. Please, no!” The second cries.

“I killed once, and now you.”

I drop my crutches. No pain in my foot or leg, I’m free of the need for them. Now I run toward the voices, to where Elvira sits staring into the shadows. I recognize one of the voices, though I’ve never heard it other than smooth, soft.

“Why? Why?” it again cries.

Past rattling chain fences, past sagging garages, I continue to run. I am panting. A stitch in my side. I bend over, my hands on my thighs, catch my breath. Run again.

“I have to, you see?” The first voice is a hissed whisper. Male, female, I can’t determine. “If you tell, they’ll know. You understand?”

“I won’t tell.”

The second voice belongs to Amy Woodward. She’s in danger. The other voice—whose is it? I have to find out. My safety, my life, depends on finding out.

Elvira turns her face to me, and snarls as if to ask what I’m waiting for. The answer is here, she seems to say. If I stall, it will vanish.

In panic, I run faster. Bare feet kicking pebbles. Stones,
broken cement, glass. I feel the cuts. Surely the soles of my feet must be bleeding. Can’t stop to tend to my feet. Have to reach Elvira at the alley’s end. But the alley never ends.

“I won’t tell. Never tell.” Amy Woodward is pleading for her life.

Twenty feet ahead, a figure backs out of a rickety wood barn. The wood is dry, aged, the laths no longer flush. As if the barn is a mirage, I see the sky through it.

Her hands raised, Amy turns to me. “Help me please!”

“Help, help!” I scream.

“Emlyn, what’s wrong?”
Rebecca’s voice comes from Amy’s mouth.
“Emlyn, wake up!”

Wake up? I am awake. I’ve got to save Amy! I reach for her.

Two gunshots shatter the night. Amy Woodward falls at my feet.

I drop to my knees, cradle her head. Blood.
Everywhere. So much blood. Didn’t know a person had so much blood.

Elvira is beside me. She groans, rubs her face on my black silk robe. Amy is gone. I sit alone in the puddle of her blood, and gather the white cat to my breast.

To my right, light from the single star glints off the barrel of a gun. I know what kind it is: a Glock .45 caliber—I’ve seen pictures of this gun in a book on one of my shelves. The weapon is pointed at me. The shooter is in a black robe like mine. But it’s not a robe, it’s a monk’s cowl. Inside the hood, his face is…he has no face. Just a shadow.

“Help us, please,” I cry. “Roger!”

Crack. Crack…

Someone grabs my robe.

“Come on Emlyn, wake up!” Rebecca shouted.

“What? Where…?”

She slapped my face. “You’ve gotta wake up.”

“Help us!” I was crying. I clearly remember I was crying.

“What’s happening?” Rebecca asked, panic in her voice. The same panic as was in mine.

“Help us, help us! Roger!”

Her hands rubbed my cheeks.

At last my eyes opened. I was in my living room, kneeling at the French doors, my face pressed against a glass pane. I had Elvira cradled in my arms.

But at the same time I knelt in an alley somewhere. Kneeling in two places at the same time?

“No, no!” I raise my hand to ward off a bullet traveling in slow motion toward my heart. “Noooo!”

The bullet crashes though my hand. I scream in pain…

“Emlyn, you’re scaring me. Wake up!” Rebecca shouted. She knelt beside me and stroked my hair.

Though I struggled to obey her, I couldn’t break the grip of my dream.

Yet, I was awake. I was in my living room, my face against the cold glass of the French doors.

And outside the window, a black-caped ancient crone now stands. Stringy white hair partly tied in back. She points a gnarled finger, moves toward me. She leaves no footprints in the snow.

“Who…who are you?” I ask.

Elvira whines, paws at the glass.

Her head shaking as if she pities me, the old hag croons, “Seek ye after truth in the heart? The heart betrays.”

“Emmy!” Rebecca called into my waking dream.

The wind swirls. Snow swirls. My backyard is a mass of blinding white. From inside the curtain of snow, I hear the crone moan, “Remember this: betrayal.”

My hand is on the glass, next to Elvira’s paw. My fingers scratch at the panes. I have to claw my way out of the white hole I’m falling into…

***

The next thing I knew, I was laid out on my sofa, a cold compress on my forehead.

“You’re awake,” Rebecca said. She sounded relieved.

“What happened?” I asked.

“
You tell us,” Roger said. He emerged from the kitchen
carrying a pot of coffee.

“You’re here,” I stated the obvious.

I pulled the cloth from my forehead, then dropped it and grabbed my other hand. It felt as though the bones were broken. As though a bullet had smashed through my hand. When I tried to sit up the pain shot up my arm. The room spun.

Roger sat next to me, laid the cloth again across my forehead.

“I called him,” Rebecca said. “Didn’t know what else to do. I was so frightened.”

“Did you see her?”

“Who?” Roger asked.

Even turning my eyes to him hurt. “The old woman.” Moving as little as possible, I extended my arm, and pointed to the French doors. “Out there. She’s caught in the blizzard. I’ve got to let her in before she freezes.”

His eyes followed my finger. “It’s not snowing,” he said. “Hasn’t even been a flurry all day.”

“See what I mean?” Rebecca said. “I can’t get her back.”

Roger stood up. “We’re taking her to the hospital,” he told Rebecca. “Get her coat.”

I shook my head and groaned when a bolt of lightning shot through it. “Not going anywhere.”

Rebecca was by the table we’d set up near the window, her face as gray as her salt and pepper hair. Now she was as white as the snow on the ground; now, as translucent as an ice sculpture. “I’ve got something in my bag that’ll clear her head,” she said.

“Why didn’t you give her that before?”

She seemed about to cry. “I couldn’t wake her up to give it to her.”

Roger glared at her. “I told you not to let her fool around with your witch nonsense—didn’t I tell you that?” His glance fell from Rebecca’s face to the end table by the doors, and to the dish of grated nutmeg and the remains of the incense. “That stuff probably got her stoned.”

Assaulted by his tone, Rebecca took a step backward. “Did you ever try to stop a freight train?”

“I’m not stoned,” I said.

He looked down at me and his face softened. “Emlyn’s
a freight train?” He smiled. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

The ice sculpture that was my friend, Rebecca, went into the kitchen. In a few seconds she returned with a narrow vial. She shooed Roger aside and dropped beside me on the sofa.

At the movement of the cushions, another sharp pain shot through my body. “
Aaaah,
” I groaned.

Gently, she lifted my head. “Drink this down.”

“You’re sure this stuff will work?” Roger asked. He hovered over us like an anxious husband.

“It should. I brewed it myself.”

“Not very comforting,” he said. “Won’t kill her, will it?”

Rebecca smiled. “Hasn’t killed anyone yet.”

“How many times have you tried it?”

She flipped her long braid over her shoulder, and raised her chin to him. “Let me see. Um, this’ll be the first.”

He snorted. “Great. On her tombstone we’ll write
An Experiment that Failed
.”

“Hush,” she said. “This is my grandmother’s recipe and
she lived to a hundred.”

I knew what their by-play was about: when you visit a sick friend, you make jokes to raise her spirits. Right then, I didn’t want my spirits raised. I wanted my friends to let the old woman into my house.

Rebecca pushed the vial against my lips. “Swallow!”

The elixir tasted like— I have no idea what it tasted like. I’d never had anything like it. My lips curled. My stomach tightened.

“What a face,” Roger said.

I sat up, spitting. “That stuff is awful,” I gasped when my dry-heaves finally stopped.