Hag Night, page 12
“ENOUGH!” Doc said. “I WON’T HAVE THIS!”
That took the starch out of both of them; at least temporarily. Doc was mellow as milk, but when he got his back up, you didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his temper. Reg had only seen him lose it once on the Chamber of Horrors set…but it sent people scurrying under desks.
Bailey opened her eyes. She did not look so good. There were dark circles under her baby blues and she was pale like somebody had pancaked the color from her cheeks. “I’m thirsty,” she said. “I’m so thirsty.”
Doc looked over at Burt. “Go into the kitchen and see if that hand pump works. Fill a pitcher and bring some cups.”
“Out there?” Burt said. “Shit, Doc, you know what happened the last time we opened that door.”
“Sure, you lost your nuts,” Reg said.
“Fuck you.”
“I’ll go with you, Burt. I’ll even hold your hand, man.”
Burt was ready to go at it again but Doc silenced him with a look. “I’ll do it. You two watch over our patient and, please, try to act civilized.”
Then he was out the door without a moment’s hesitation and Reg hoped that yellow prick Burt saw that. Saw how a real man handled himself.
Bailey was looking up at him and through him like he wasn’t even there. As if he were a sheet of glass, a window, and she was seeing something far more interesting beyond him. Her eyes were huge and glassy, he noticed, and they rarely blinked. He didn’t like it at all. He was holding her hand and it was cool to the touch, but there was a dew of fever sweat on her forehead.
“How you feeling?” he asked her.
She attempted a smile that came out looking more like a grimace. “Dreams, weird dreams.”
“Tell me,” he said.
Maybe she heard him and maybe she didn’t, but she went off on her own tangent, mixing up yesterday with today and last week with last month. She was talking about the shoots they’d been on like they were still happening and saying she better call her mom because she hadn’t in awhile and she had to get some food for her cat and she was so weak she must have the flu and who was that woman in her dream?
“What woman?” Reg asked.
Bailey moved her lips like she was trying to form a name. “She has the weird eyes. The big weird eyes…she says she can’t get younger without me. She wanted to kiss me. On the neck.”
Reg heard Burt make a choking sort of sound and retreat.
Then Doc came back with the water. He filled a blue-speckled cup half-way and handed it to Reg. Reg lifted up Bailey’s head and brought the cup to her lips. She got a couple sips off it and then her head began to thrash from side to side, her body jerking with convulsions like she’d just swallowed rat poison and not well water. She vomited out most of it, then she settled down, going limp as a noodle, listless and tapped-out.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Reg kept saying. “It’s all gonna be okay. You’ll see. Everything’ll be fine.”
Her hand was loose now in his, but while she’d had the convulsion she’d nearly crushed it with a strength that was shocking.
“You sure that water’s okay?” Burt said.
“It’s fine. I drank some myself,” Doc told him.
“Then…?”
But Doc would not meet his eyes. “She’s got something going on…and I’d rather not put a name to it.”
3
Half-dozing in her chair, Wenda thought of David.
She hadn’t consciously thought of him in a long time.
She hadn’t allowed herself to.
David Sellers had been her only true love. A thin, funny man who produced jazz records in New York City. He was the one. She would have spent her life with him. David was manic depressive. When he was low, he could have crawled under a curb. But when he was high…well, look out, he was a world-beater: charming, self-confidant, passionate, boundlessly enthusiastic. About the time they would have fallen into bed together to consummate their relationship, she stopped by his apartment in Albany unannounced.
He hadn’t called in two days.
That meant he was bottoming out.
When she went in with her own key, there was a strange odor in the air. Not death exactly, but almost something that wanted to become death, if that meant any sense. Which it did later to Wenda, but not so much at the time.
She found him in his rocking chair.
It was turned away from the TV so he could face a blank, white wall. He had laid both of his wrists open and he was painted red with his own blood. Panicking, of course, because Wenda Keegan would not have been Wenda Keegan without some good old hysterics, she started this way, then that, sobbing and moaning and completely out of her element.
There were things you did in situations like this, but she could not remember what they were.
Finally, she called 911.
They told her to get some pressure on his wrists, tie a tourniquet on his arms if at all possible.
She wrapped his wrists in towels very tightly but the blood kept flowing. It soaked through them and her tourniquets—two of David’s belts—weren’t working so good.
What she remembered most was the blood, all that damn blood, and David opening his eyes once during it all and giving her a look that seemed to say, Boy, did I ever fuck up things this time. And Wenda had had a mad desire to tell him, Yes, yes, you did. You’ve just fucked up things for both of us and I fear what I’ll become if they don’t get that fucking ambulance here right now and save your life. But she hadn’t, of course. Her mind was filled with many crazy thoughts but none of them got past the whimpering coming out of her mouth.
As David slipped further and further into the darkness, she clutched him tighter and tighter, trying to hold up his wrists above heart level like they said while squeezing the wounds tightly in the towels.
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO, DAVID! she heard her own voice screaming in her head. DON’T YOU DARE DIE ON ME! GODDAMMIT, DAVID! STAY WITH ME! STAY WITH ME!
His eyes half-opened as if he could hear her thoughts, then his head slumped to the side and she knew he was dying. That the beauty and goodness of this man had all but run out with his blood.
“DAVID! DAVID! OH DEAR GOD DAVID! DON’T DO THIS! DON’T DIE!”
But he was dying and she knew it as she sobbed and screamed as the paramedics arrived. As they took him away and her with them, she hoped beyond hope and prayed.
David, David…dear God.
He’d crashed several weeks before. He had hooked up with Public TV in Manhattan to co-produce a documentary on Charlie Parker and the Beat Generation. He was flying high. Then, after sixteen weeks of work, using up every available minute of time, the funding was cut and the doc was canceled. David was inconsolable. He was dragging bottom. Wenda had slowly, patiently brought him back up and he was doing pretty good. Maybe not flying as high as old Charlie “Bird” Parker, but there was hope. He was going ahead with the doc. He was too invested in it to stop by then. He would raise the money himself and sell it to the Discovery Channel or some similar venue.
Day by day, he was his old self.
When Wenda hadn’t heard from him in two days, she thought he was deep into the doc.
Then she walked into his apartment after a day of silent foreboding she could not put a name to. When the doctor came out of the ER and told her he was sorry, she barely nodded.
This happened just after graduation from Stony Brook U when she’d been hired on at WKKX, long before Chamber of Horrors. After that, she dated no men. She touched no men. She cringed when one touched her in the most platonic way. And on those rare occasions when she touched herself, she saw only David’s face. He haunted her mind and lived in her soul and invaded her dreams. And very often, as she fell asleep at night, she distinctly heard his voice say, Wake-up, Wenny. Wake-up.
She always did, but he was never there. And the crazy thing was, she hoped he would be. That his death was nothing but a dark, feverish nightmare.
Vultura had helped her enormously.
It had channeled her creativity and given her a purpose, but there never had been any more men. Or women, for that matter. There was safety in solitude and it was all she knew.
4
Wenda, of course, could never understand what it was like, Megga knew, because she had that fine, pure light in her eyes that was reflected from her soul. She could never understand how it was to be carved from death right from the start or how it felt to know the shadows were creeping in on you and the darkness wanted to own you. Those were things that were far beyond Wenda’s mindset. She might host a TV show and play a ghoul, but she never understood the dark side or dipped her fingers into the black blood running beneath its surface.
Look at her over there, Megga thought, with that fucking stake and her silver knife.
Yes, Wenda had a ferocious look in her eyes like those weapons made her a real world-beater, but she didn’t stand a chance. You couldn’t fight those outside with a blade and a pitiful slat of wood. She thought she would do the impaling, but the truth was it was she who would be impaled. And it would not be easy for her. Those out there were angry and Megga could feel their thoughts like hot black oil filling her skull. They would make Wenda suffer. They would make an example out of her. They would break her in the worst way possible. The attack would be vicious. They would tear her throat out and hang her by the feet and shower themselves in her blood.
Yet, Wenda was so sure of herself.
That angered Megga; Wenda had never been sure of herself before. And now that she was, it was disturbing. It enraged Megga and filled her mouth with a taste like hot steel that she could not swallow down. She knew the undead were going to come and when they did, they would initiate her because they wanted her to deal with Wenda, to destroy her, to strip her down to the most basal level of primal fear. She could almost taste Wenda’s blood now and that not only sickened her, but excited her. She knew it would be the biggest, nastiest, dirtiest orgasm imaginable and, God, how she needed that right now.
Poor Wenda.
Poor stupid, deluded little Wenda.
The one who stands behind the others.
Yes, Megga had seen him out there and felt the formless terror he always inspired. He was ruthless. He was undying and irresistible. Even now she could hear his cold triumphant laughter and see his white craggy face that had been old when Cobton was new. He had a name and she knew what it was, but she did not dare say it aloud for he might not like that. She did not want to be his enemy. She knew what he did with those that disobeyed or raised a hand against him. He pulled them apart like a boy picking the wings off a fly. He desecrated them and broke them, peeled off their hides and drained them dry. He had filled graveyards with his enemies.
But she could not tell Wenda that.
Because Wenda would say, then I’ll kill him first.
Megga tried to control her breathing. Tried to avoid looking at the window because he was out there now peering through the curtains at Wenda. And knowing this, Megga could feel the furnace heat between her legs cooking her from the inside out.
5
In the end, Doc did not feel too guilty about any of it.
After Bailey had settled down, Burt announced that he was waiting no more. It was time to make a run for that car. Despite the fact that Reg and he were ready to go at it at any time, Reg had gone with him to scout out the best way which was a window in the back looking out on the square.
Even Reg had tried to talk him out of the idea.
But Burt was resolute: he would do this.
He claimed it was for the good of all but, of course, Doc didn’t believe that. In his mind Burt was a sniveling little self-centered weasel. A weakling. And like most weaklings he was quick with his fists because it was the easiest way to prove he was not as weak as he in truth knew he was.
Outside, there was only the snow falling, the wind blowing it around. The storm had abated a bit, but not significantly. As Reg began working the window loose so it could be slid up, Doc tried one more time. “Burt…you don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, yes I do.”
Doc wondered if maybe his motivation was not so much selfishness now but an almost puerile need to prove himself after he’d locked-up when the hag had gone after Bailey. Maybe it was the same thing that drove kids on dares, made them eat a bug under a log or sneak into deserted houses or play chicken with a knife.
Okay,” Reg said. “You ready?”
Burt nodded.
Reg shook his head and slid the window up. A blast of frozen air came in like an exhalation from a polar tomb. It was cold in the house, too, when you got away from the fire, but not this cold. Doc could smell something ancient and corrupt on the wind.
Burt swung a leg up onto the sill, pulling his gloves on. He looked at Doc and Reg like some hero in an old movie going into the breach, maybe wishing he had a screenwriter handy to feed him some famous last words. He offered them a thin smile, saying, “I’ll lay on the horn when I get around front. Be ready.” Then he slipped out the window and landed in a snowdrift. He pulled himself up, brushing snow free and fighting forward into the wind, trudging through the heavy snowfall.
Reg shut the window.
They watched him moving slowly out into the storm, pausing and looking around, then moving off through the courtyard to the fence beyond. The blizzard kicked up and he was gone, lost behind driving sheets of white.
Doc checked his watch. It had been fifteen minutes. “I better get back to Bailey,” he said.
Reg nodded, staring through the glass and hoping to get a good look at Burt out there but visibility was down to less than ten feet. Doc left him there, knowing they’d never see Burt again and if they did, it would be bad beyond imagining.
It was his idea and no one else’s.
That’s what Doc told himself as he made his way back to the parlor. Yet…he felt a twinge of guilt. He always felt sorry for people like Burt. Those that had to prove themselves. Those who lost their nerve when the chips were down and had to overcompensate for it. He’d seen plenty of guys like that in the war and most of them had been much like Burt.
Sighing, Doc let himself into the parlor.
Bailey was still on the sofa, sleeping.
He threw another log on the fire and the blaze leapt up, throwing flickering shadows over the walls. The warmth chased the frost from his bones right away. He lit a cigarette and hoped Reg wouldn’t stay out there too long.
Then he saw the wet spots on the floor.
Water?
Yes, it was water. There were droplets of it leading from the window to the sofa as if somebody had come in out of the storm and snow had been dropping from them. Shit. He went over to Bailey. Her breathing was shallow, her flesh pallid and moist to the touch. But she was still alive.
But just…
You old fool! They were just waiting for you to leave so they could slip in and feed on her. One of them must have called to her from the window. And Bailey, of course, being weak and delirious had answered. The seduction must have been effortless in her state.
“Yes,” she would have said. “Come in.”
And one of them had. Maybe Bailey had even opened the window for them.
He felt empty with guilt and remorse. He should have known better. They’d been playing this game God only knew how long. Of course they were one step ahead of him. Of course they waited until he was gone. The hag who’d come into the room earlier had been a mindless, predatory thing, a leech motivated by hunger. But there were others. And many of them would be quite cunning from the centuries.
“Oh, Bailey,” he said. “I’m so sorry…my poor child…”
He checked her eyes and the pupils were so huge they were like glistening black onyx, the whites threaded with bloodshot veins. He closed them again, barely able to catch his breath. He had failed her. He had truly failed her.
Her eyes were open again. They were like glass.
“No, Bailey,” he said.
She grinned at him.
6
They weren’t worth saving. None of them.
This is what Burt thought as he waited near the fence for the wind to lessen a bit and make sure that he was alone because that was the most important thing: being alone. If those things found him out here, his goose was cooked. Cooked? Hell, it was seasoned, hot-buttered, and well-fucking-chewed.
Don’t think that shit. Just get to the car.
Sure, good idea. Only now the storm was really kicking up and he couldn’t see a damn thing. The snow was up to his hips in places and he was moving roughly at the same pace he did in those dreams he had where he was always running, always fleeing something that he could never quite see (which, he always felt upon wakening, was a good thing). It was just like that. Like his boots were filled with concrete.
He was trying desperately not to think of that thing that had called to him out of the storm after the bus accident. He had to put it out of his mind or the fear would overtake him and he wouldn’t be able to think straight. And if that happened, he was going to make a mistake.
Here I am, Burt…right…here…
No, he had to block it. He couldn’t afford the luxury of fear. Out here and especially on this night of all nights, a mistake, a misstep could be extremely fatal.
Burt…over here, Burt…I’m waiting for you—
Knock it off!
It wasn’t anything but his nerves in the first place. A hallucination. Fear combined with shock produced it. He wouldn’t be the first one to have something like that happen. The thing was, he knew, to keep his head, keep his eye on the money and that was the car. Nothing else existed, only the car.
He pushed on further, the snow blowing in his face and down his back. The cold got inside him in a killing frost, the wind trying to drive him not just back but down. Down where it could shroud him in white and keep him like a leg of lamb until first thaw. Snow-devils whipped into him, covering his face so that he had to paw the snow clean so he could see again. His eyes were watering, his nose running. His mustache already stiff with ice. He was very much beginning to think this wasn’t such a good idea at all. But he shook that from his head because it would have meant Doc was right and there was no way Burt was going to let himself think shit like that.
