The Wolf Witch (The Keys Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

“Look,” said Grayson. “I understand you’ve had a shock, Charlie, but what are we going to
do
?”

“About? What are you talking about? We’re just gonna stuff their guts back in and put their heads back on – wherever
they
are – and everything’s gonna be hunky-fucking-dory?”

“About Reese, Charlie. If they did that to Mike then what are they going to do to him?”

Charlie stopped pacing and raked a hand through his hair. “I guess we could always hope they’re watching their cholesterol?”

Grayson stared at him in disbelief. “Now? Really?”

“I’m sorry. That was - ”

“ - uncalled for? Tasteless?” Grayson got up from the couch. “Godmotherfucking dammit, Charlie –
now
you make fat jokes?”

“It’s a coping thing, I guess.”

“No, really. Fucking carry on,” said Grayson. “Laugh it up. Hit me with a gay joke, why don’t you? I haven’t heard one of those for over an hour.”

Charlie sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

Grayson covered his hand with his mouth. “Watching their cholesterol,” he muttered, trying to sound appropriately disgusted, but they were all full of fear and adrenaline, in that state where emotions could lurch off into all kinds of unexpected directions. Grayson snorted into his hand and then Charlie started to laugh, and then Joe couldn’t help it – laughter felt so much
better
than sitting silent and scared out of his mind.

They were still laughing like fools when there was a knock at the door, and that wiped the smiles off their faces in a second.

“Oh God,” said Grayson.

Charlie picked up his gun from the coffee table. “Relax. Swamp wolves don’t generally knock.”

“Maybe they read Emily Post,” said Grayson, but the moment was gone.

The knock came again, this time someone hammering away at the wrought iron knocker like they were trying to put a dent in the door. The rain was a full-throated roar now, drowning out the voice on the outside.

“Charlie!
Charlie!
”

It was Reese. Charlie tucked the gun away and opened the door. Reese almost fell through it, seal-like with his hair plastered to his skull and his black t-shirt clinging to his rolls.

“What are you doing here?” said Charlie.

Reese sniffled. He was crying, but it had been hard to tell; he was soaked to the bone. He wiped his nose on the back of his arm, but his arm was no drier than the rest of him. When he spoke it came out in a high-pitched, run-on whine.

“...deerskullonthedoorstepdidyoubecauseitsnotfucking
funny
, Charlie...”

“Wait. Slow down. There was a deer skull?”

Reese nodded.

“On the doorstep? Of the apartment?”

“Yes! How many times do I have to
tell
you?”

“Okay,” said Charlie. “I don’t want you to freak out, Reese. Listen to me. Do not freak out, because it won’t help, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“They killed Mike. He’s dead.”

Reese made a frightened squeaky sound in the back of his throat.

“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, Reese,” said Charlie. “This is kinda on you, okay?”

The kid nodded, sobbing.

“Islamorada,” said Grayson. “We have to go. Barb said so – there’s only two people, and one’s dead.”

“Gloria,” said Charlie.

Reese sniffed hard and shook his head. “The witch?”

“Take it or leave it, kid,” said Charlie. “Because he’s right. Barb’s right. Islamorada sounds like a very smart decision right now, and if you’re not on board then tough shit, because I am
outta here
.”

“No,” said Reese. “No, I’ll go. I want to go. Let me come with you. Don’t leave me here, Charlie. You can’t leave me here.”

“I can and I will.”

“You can’t,” said Reese, and somewhere under all the flesh and the rain and the fear was a glimmer of the same hard, horrible substance that was at least half of him. The Lyle half. “If you leave me,” he said. “I will have you fucking killed.”

Charlie took in stride, like he put up with this shit all the time. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re down three men already. Did I mention they got Barb’s nephews? Now get your shit. We’re going south.”

18

The music droned on, simple rhymes and the same four chords. The rattly old AC might have drowned it out, but Gloria was sleeping and Blue had turned it off. She and Axl sat sweltering in the heat of the kitchen, their fingertips already sweating on top of a shot glass.

The only spirits at hand were in the bottle on the kitchen sideboard.

“What’s your name?” said Axl. The glass didn’t move. He sighed.

Blue tried to concentrate on how her first two fingers felt on the glass. Like there should be some kind of conduit there, some sort of power moving the thing along. She’d heard about this somewhere, how the tiniest of muscular movements on the part of the sitters could move a planchette or tip a table, without anyone involved ever realizing that they were the ones moving it. She gave the glass a small, deliberate nudge and then almost jumped back in surprise.

It was moving.

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

“Don’t stop,” said Axl. “Let’s see.” He asked again. “Hey, Barkslob – is that you, man?”

The glass moved like it was oiled; it was the weirdest thing. It landed on NO.

Axl raised his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said. “So what is your name?”

And just like that the glass was in motion again. S-A-T-A-N.

“You’re moving it,” said Blue.

“No, you are.”

“I’m not,” she said, and came clean. “Okay, I gave it a little shove to get it started. But after that...”

“You’re doing it wrong,” said Axl. “Don’t push this time, okay? Otherwise what’s the point?”

“I thought you said it was bullshit.”

“It is. But that’s no reason to
cheat
.”

She wanted to say that she didn’t think they should be doing this, but that was ridiculous. She was the adult here, and she needed to keep him entertained somehow; she knew that she couldn’t compete with porn and texting and the endless round-the-clock drama of high school and adolescence. Sooner or later one of his friends was going to message him with Facebook gossip or the promise of weed, and then she would really be in trouble. It was bad enough she had failed to successfully baby-sit an elderly lady with dementia; she couldn’t afford to mess this up as well.

“Well, your name’s not Satan,” she told the Ouija board. “So let’s try this again, shall we?”

This time it went to C. Then A. Axl frowned as it went to P and she watched his expression carefully, waiting for him to laugh as the board spelled out CAPTAIN and moved on to HOW.

“Very funny,” said Blue, as the glass moved to D and then stilled on Y.

“Captain Howdy?”

“So,” she said, taking her fingers from the glass. “When did you see
The Exorcist
, and more importantly, who let you?”

“I never saw it,” said Axl.

“Sure you haven’t.”

“I’m serious. I looked up some of it on YouTube but it looked retarded. Like, what’s so scary about some kid squirting pea soup out of her mouth?”

“It’s a classic, actually,” said Blue, feeling so much older than twenty-two.

“Whatever. The only really good part was when she told the priest that his mother suck - ”

“ - okay, yes. Thank you. I
have
seen it.”

Axl gurgled with gleeful laughter. “‘Your mother sucks cocks in hell, Karras!’”

“Yeah, that’s enough.”

They were still singing out there. The heat only increased the monotony. Every now and again some bright burst of holy gibberish would rise above the strumming as someone else received the spirit. Blue had to wonder how smart it was to hang around a house like this inviting spirits to invade your body. How did you know which spirit was the holy one until it was inside you? And if it was of the unholy variety, how did you get it out?

She was sweating, but she had never been so happy to be wearing two pairs of underpants and a maxi pad. Could spirits crawl up between your legs? Even if she had believed in those things, Blue felt sure Gloria’s rules said they couldn’t. Hadn’t she said Blue was protected by her youth and fertility?

And why didn’t I let her just paint my blood on the doors?

Blue got up to get a couple of Cokes from the fridge. She hadn’t heard the voice again since last night and that was fine with her. It had been vivid, but that was nothing unusual; ever since they put her on Celexa her dreams had been incredibly clear, and although she had stopped taking the medication her brain refused to go back to whatever it had used to do before. She couldn’t remember that well; everything before had been all fucked up in its own way, but it still seemed like a fool’s paradise in the wake of the storm.

“Are you in hea-ven?” Axl asked the Ouija board, half-yawning, half spacing his words like one of the preachers on the lawn.

“You don’t believe in heaven,” said Blue.

“No,” he said. “But it doesn’t know that. Come on, help me.”

She sighed and touched her fingers to the glass. The thing nearly tipped over in its hurry to race to NO.

“Okay,” said Axl, laughing. “So are you in hell?”

The glass didn’t budge.

“Then where do you exist?” asked Blue.

Once again the glass rocked under her fingers. She could see why people believed in it; it really did feel as though it had a life of its own. It scraped across the wood, spelling out first I-N-T-H-E before she realized it was supposed to be two words. In. The.

IN THE SPACES.

“The fuuuck...” said Axl, impressed. It was still moving.

I-N-B-E-T-W-E-E-N.

Blue could feel the hairs rise on the nape of her neck once more. Her insides felt cold and tight and it was only when she spoke that she realized how long she’d been holding her breath.

“What does that mean?” she said. And she couldn’t stop. That was the worst part. She knew all she was going to do right now was give herself another night of bad dreams and maybe another sleepwalk, but she couldn’t seem to take her fingers off the glass.

Another rock and scrape, and it was off again. L-I-T-T-L-E.

Somehow she knew where it was going next. P-I-G.

“Rude,” said Axl.

No, no, no. This was wrong. It was tugging at the threads of her nightmare, unraveling memory, but it was like her fingers had been glued to the bottom of the glass. It whizzed across the wood now, scratching back and forth over the letters at a pace she thought would topple it. But it didn’t. It had so much to say.

LET ME COME IN.

“Who are you?” said Blue, her heart in her mouth. Little pig, little pig, let me come in. She was the only person who knew it had used those words. And the feeling was back again, that sticky, dirty, crawling feeling that went with the voice.

Someone outside was speaking in tongues again – “Roombala shreena amanala lalalalala” – and the glass stopped abruptly, as if listening.

Axl didn’t speak. He glanced up and caught Blue’s eyes, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the glass started up again.

It skidded over to Y.

The nonsense outside grew louder; when one person started speaking in tongues, everyone started to join in, making a weird chorus of nothing-sounds, eerie and wordless. The glass scraped over to A, then E.

It stopped on L.

“Yael?” said Blue. It meant nothing to her, so she asked anyway. “Are you the one who’s been swinging the light fittings?”

Nothing, then once again it started to move. YES.

“We should stop,” said Blue.

“Shut u-up. This is just getting good.”

“Axl, you really need to watch more horror movies.”

But Axl was already asking. “Yael? Are you a ghost.”

Scrape. Scratch. NO.

“Well, you kinda sound like a ghost,” he said.

The curiosity was like an itch now, the kind you only had to brush with a fingertip to remind you that it was there and then it was too late, because it consumed you until there nothing left in the world but the desire to scratch. “We should stop,” she said, again, but her fingers stayed on the glass.

I-A-M

It shot over to W then H. A pun that could only be deliberate. Whatever was moving that glass was smart.

I AM WHOLLY SPIRIT

There was a noise in the hall. Not a crash, more like a creak. A loud one, startling as a gunshot. Axl jumped back from the board. The shot glass fell off the table, bounced on the linoleum and rolled there, back and forth. Blue was suddenly aware that she was breathing far too fast.

“Wait there,” she said, getting to her feet. Her knees felt like water, but once again that awful curiosity kept driving her forward.

Gloria stirred in her armchair.

“Are you okay?” said Blue.

The old lady opened her eyes and squinted up at her, her dentures clicking as she licked the taste of sleep out of her mouth. “What was that?”

“I don’t know. Sit tight.”

It was the front door. Blue could hardly believe what she was seeing. Where Gloria had driven in the iron nails, there was now a crack down the entire length of the door frame. Like someone with monstrous strength had somehow worked their fingernails into the wood and split the whole thing like a banana. For a brief, mad second Blue struggled to remember whether they had earthquakes in Florida.

She took a step closer.

Tink. Clink.

What the hell?

The nails were sliding out of the wood, as if someone was pushing them from the inside. They clinked onto the floor, sometimes one at a time, sometimes in pairs, and then more, raining down onto the threshold.

Someone shoved her hard her from behind and she went sprawling, scrambling for the door handle to keep her from falling. The front door swung open and the push from behind swept into a push from the inside. Blue felt it shoving up the length of her spine, under her skin, filling her head until she thought it would burst, and then it seemed to roar silently out of her mouth, leaving a sticky, brown-tasting film on her tongue as it went.

The people outside were staring at her. In the middle was the sparkly cat lady, once again wearing a different face. Not the friendly leafleting face, or even the soft, pliant spirit face. Somehow Blue knew just by looking at her that someone else – or some
thing
else – was looking out through her eyes.