“We can wait in my apartment,” said Lacy. “Heidi stepped out for a moment. She is sure to be back very soon.”
“She isn’t here?” said Francis. “Well, maybe I should just come back another time. I don’t want to impose.”
Lacy smiled, touched his arm. “Nonsense,” she said. “She’ll be back shortly. Come in and have some tea.”
“All right,” said Francis.
He followed her down the hall and to her open door. He was surprised to find two other women already there, each of them holding a teacup. He
was
imposing on them, he realized, interrupting a conversation that they were already having, but when he tried to say as much and excuse himself, Lacy shook her head and dragged him in.
“These are my sisters,” she said. “They don’t mind. In fact, I’m sure that they’re eager to have some company other than me.” She
picked up the tea service. “They’ll keep you entertained while I brew us a new pot.”
A little unsure of himself and still holding his briefcase in his arms, he sat down and introduced himself. One of the sisters, a blonde with short hair, was named Sonny. The other, with beautiful red hair that fell in ringlets, was named Megan.
What would Alice think if she could see me,
he wondered, feeling a little pang of guilt,
sitting here with three lovely women instead of adjusting wax figures at the museum?
As if she could detect the current of his thoughts, Sonny asked, “Are you a married man, Mr. Francis?”
“Yes,” Francis said, slightly startled. “Very happily married. Thirty-six years in November.”
“Local girl?” asked Sonny.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “She’s not a Salem native like me. She’s a California gal.”
“Any children?” asked Megan. Her voice was strange, a little vibrant.
“No, no. Somehow we never got around to it. Work was always my baby and Alice, well, she wasn’t set on it and so…”
“Well, that’s understandable,” said Megan. “Children are a bit of a waste… Most are a total loss. So few have anything of substance to really offer us.” She took a sip of her tea before continuing on. “But on the rare occasion, a special child appears.”
A little flabbergasted, Francis wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He chuckled nervously. “I never really thought about it like that before,” he admitted. “I just didn’t like the idea of changing diapers.”
“Does anyone?” asked Megan. “Have you ever met anyone who said, ‘If there’s one thing I love, it’s changing diapers’?”
Francis chuckled again. “Well, no,” he said, “if you put it that way…”
Lacy came back into the room with the tea tray and a fresh setup for Francis. She held the tray before him as he poured himself some tea and dropped in a few lumps of sugar.
“Is it caffeinated?” he asked. “It won’t make me jittery, will it?”
“No, no,” said Lacy. “Just the opposite. It’s very soothing.”
She set the tea service down on the table next to him, freshened her cup and those of her sisters, then took a seat facing Francis. “I couldn’t help but hearing from the kitchen Megan spinning her little philosophies on the value of breeding,” she said. “Don’t mind her. Megan lives in her own little bubble.”
Megan gave an enigmatic smile. Almost sinister, Francis thought. He relaxed his hold on his briefcase, placed it on the floor beside his chair, and was surprised to see the eyes of all three women follow the briefcase to its new place. He took up his teacup, raised it to his lips.
“How does it taste?” asked Sonny.
“Very good,” he said. Truth be told, it had a bit of an odd flavor, a kind of musty undertone to it beneath something more floral. That probably made it a good tea, gave it a complex nose, or whatever term one used with tea. But he didn’t particularly care for it.
Lacy held her own cup and saucer in her lap, balanced on one knee. “Now, what’s so important that you had to race over here to see my dear Heidi?” she asked.
“Hmmm?” said Francis. “Well, truth be told, really it wasn’t that important. Just something about a record she was playing on her show the other night.”
“Do you mind if I ask what record it was, Mr. Matthias?” asked Lacy.
“No, of course not. Trouble is, I don’t have a name for it—I don’t think there was a name on it, actually. But it was by a band called the Lords.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem a bit old to be a typical listener of that station,” said Sonny. “Sometimes looks can be deceiving, I guess.”
“No, you’re right. I don’t listen to it,” he admitted. “It was just… I was a guest on the program, and, well, I heard the album, and…” He let his voice trail off.
“Sonny dear, would you mind getting me some sugar?” asked Lacy.
“But there’s sugar already on the tray,” said Francis. “I got some when I got my tea.”
A flicker of irritation crossed over Lacy’s face but was quickly smoothed over. “Did I say sugar?” she said. “I meant sweetener.” She patted her side. “I’m watching my figure.”
Funny
, thought Francis. She looked like a hippy type, the kind of person who’d be opposed to sweetener on the grounds that it wasn’t natural. But of course looks could be deceiving, as Sonny had just pointed out.
Lacy was regarding him politely, waiting for him to go on. So he did. “Anyway,” he said, “I just thought the information I have could be something she might find interesting.”
Lacy gave a little laugh. “Something she might find interesting.” She mimicked his voice in a way that Francis suspected was vaguely insulting. Then her face and tone suddenly became serious. “Mr. Matthias, you strike me as a man who would normally mind his own business.”
He chuckled. “I do, do I?”
“I’m not laughing,” said Lacy harshly. “Why are you? Is something suddenly funny?”
He stared at her dumbfounded. What had he said to offend her? No, he had imposed more than he’d realized perhaps—clearly she didn’t want him here. “I think I should come back later,” he said, his tone and bearing quickly formal. “I’m afraid I’ve taken up too much of your time already.”
“Do you know what I think?” said Lacy. Her voice was still harsh, and as she spoke she seemed to bare her teeth.
“Definitely not,” said Francis, reaching down for his briefcase. “And I don’t imagine I want to know.”
Lacy ignored him. “I think you are here to get inside the head of my dear little Heidi. Get inside her head and fuck her brain. Are
you here to stick your nosey little cock inside her head and fuck her brains, Mr. Matthias?”
For a moment he couldn’t believe he’d heard her properly. How was it possible that garbage like that was coming out of her mouth? He felt his face flush with embarrassment.
“I really should be going now,” he said, stiffly.
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” said Lacy.
He stood and turned toward the door and was just in time to be struck in the face with the flat of a shovel’s blade. He stumbled into the end table and upset it, spilling the tea and scalding himself before finally ending on the floor, staring up. Sonny was there standing over him, holding the shovel, her face impossible to read. He looked around to the other two women for help, but neither of them seemed upset or disturbed.
“Ah, my sugar,” said Lacy, her voice calm. “Thank you, Sonny.”
“My pleasure,” said Sonny.
Francis, dazed, was having a difficult time figuring out what had happened. His head began to throb and his jaw felt numb and was perhaps broken. His face was cut, too, and blood was filling his eyes. He started to try to sit up, but Sonny struck him in the face with the shovel again, not quite as hard this time, but hard enough to break his nose and make him want to stay down.
He watched Megan calmly stand up. She lithely stepped over him and moved to an old record player beside Lacy, placing the needle on the record. Classical music began to play very loudly. Mozart’s
Requiem Mass
, he dimly realized it was.
When she turned around and came back toward him, she was holding a butcher knife.
She closed the door and locked it. No way she was going through that door. She moved across the apartment feeling trapped, crossed from the kitchen to the living room and the living room to the bedroom and then back again, shuttling back and forth, hugging herself. What
was she going to do? She had to leave. She had to get out, but how could she?
Maybe she could climb out the window, she thought dimly. But when she went and looked out the window she saw not the street that she had seen before but the back of an alley. Even though she knew it was still day, it was dark through the window, and the alley was cast in a red light thrown by a flickering neon sign that read
Jesus Saves
.
Shit
, she thought. And for a moment she wasn’t sure if she was in her own apartment or if she was in apartment number five.
She drew the curtains closed and moved away from the window, walking backward until she ran into the bed and sat abruptly down.
It’s not real
, she told herself.
I got some tainted shit and am hallucinating. It’s not real.
But it felt real; that was the problem. Maybe if she just stayed there, just waited, then eventually she’d come down off of whatever trip she was having and everything would be back to normal.
But before she’d sat there very long she started hearing strange sounds from below her. Lacy’s voice, yelling and screaming, and then a thump, and then the sound of a man’s hoarse voice, crying out for something. What the fuck was going on? She dropped to her knees and pressed her head against the floor and listened.
Lacy moved toward Francis, whose face was now puffy and swollen and who lay in a slowly growing pool of blood, leaking from his broken head and from where Megan had thrust the knife almost gently into his neck. He was alive, but not by much, and the life was slowly ebbing out of him.
She reached down and thrust her hand inside his suit coat, taking everything out of his inner pockets and dropping the items on the floor.
In his outer pocket was a folded newspaper. She removed it and unfolded it, saw that the headline read
Second Night of Ritual Murder in Salem
. She studied it, was particularly interested in the fact
that Francis had circled Virginia Williams’s name and written the name Magnus in the margin.
“Well, well, well,” she said to the dying man. “Looks like you found yourself a real Hardy Boys–style mystery to solve.” She smiled. “Let me guess,” she said. “You, the gallant detective, were going to warn Heidi, perhaps? Funny thing is, no matter how many little notes you scribbled or dots you connected, there was nothing taking place here that you were ever going to manage to prevent.”
She nodded her head sharply to Megan and the latter dropped to her knees to begin violently stabbing the dazed and injured man over and over. She started in his chest, trying to make him hurt as much as possible, then moved down and sliced open his belly. He grunted. He tried to cry out, but failed.
“Enough,” said Lacy.
Abruptly Megan stopped. She stood up again, panting, the knees of her pants soaked in blood, blood spattered all over the rest of her body. From the floor a faint gasping sound could still be heard coming from Francis, and a hissing from where air was leaking from a wound in his chest. Lacy bent down beside him and knelt in his blood, giving him a smile.
“Some die so readily,” she said, “giving up the ghost just like that and welcoming the devil that awaits them. But others, like you, cling to life long past the point where it’s too late.” She turned to Sonny, who was holding Francis’s briefcase now, standing beside Megan.
“Well?” she said.
Sonny opened the briefcase and quickly looked through. “If it isn’t my favorite fairy tale,” she said. “
The End of the American Witch.
” She dropped the briefcase and began to flip through the book. “I’ll bet there are all sorts of juicy stories in here about big bad witches and the heroic deeds of the mighty John Hawthorne.”
Lacy extended her hand, palm up, and Sonny handed over the book. She thumbed idly through it, then chuckled.
“I bet you’d love to tell our dear Heidi these spooky little tales of judgment day, hmmm?” she said. She dropped the book onto Francis’s bloody chest. “But you see, dear Mr. Matthias, the judgment has already been made.” She smiled. “Oh, and you have paid so dearly…”
Morgan handed Lacy her bloody knife. Lacy took the knife by the haft, blood oozing between her fingers. Francis’s eyes had glazed over, and he was all but dead. Lacy spat into his face.
“… so, so dearly for the sins of your fathers,” she said. “But the payment has only begun.”
She lifted the knife high and slammed it down hard into Francis’s chest, then pushed with all her might. Francis’s body convulsed.
“Shhh,” said Lacy to him, watching the last life drain out of his eyes and death settle in. Her eyes shone as they stared into his. After a few painful breaths, he was dead.
Lacy dipped her finger into the blood pooling around the knife.
“Come bathe in the warm blood of the slaughtered lamb,” she crooned.
Megan and Sonny bent down beside her. Lacy kissed each of them on the forehead and then traced with her finger an inverted cross on each of their heads.
“I so baptize you,” she said. “In the name of the Devil, and death, and the unholy host. With blood we seal ourselves to our Dark Lord. With blood, we unleash him from his chains and summon him to this hell that is the world.”
Whitey felt good about finally having his car back. He had picked it up earlier that day, and even though it had all the same old problems—ceiling fabric coming detached and hanging down, stuffing coming out of the splits in the vinyl seats, a dashboard that was spidered with deep cracks—now it ran. And ran pretty well. So all that other stuff wasn’t important. He could put up with it as long as the car worked. And besides, he kind of liked that stuff. It made the car feel unique. It made the car
his
car.
He’d called Herman to let him know that he didn’t need to swing by and pick him up, that he had wheels again, and Herman had said, “Good, then you can get Heidi as well.” He couldn’t tell how much anger Herman was harboring toward Heidi. Probably a little still, maybe a lot, but for once Herman was playing his cards pretty close to his chest.