Hag Night, page 19
Reg led the way down the corridor, casting fearful glances behind him at what was in Doc’s arms.
Doc figured they must have looked like a couple characters in a Chamber of Horrors flick: the lantern light throwing distorted shadows against the walls, the grim set to their faces, and the thing they were carrying out into the snow. Like a scene from some old Barbara Steele movie, one of those Gothic potboilers set in a cobwebby old castle. He might have found the image amusing at any other time, but now it was threatening to its core and black to its roots. Bailey’s arm was hanging loose and as he walked, it kept slapping him in the leg and that made a cold, sick sort of sweat pop at his brow. He was just waiting for her eyes to open and her teeth to slide into his throat.
As they closed in on the door, Doc could feel the magnetism of what was out in the moaning, hissing snowstorm. It knew what they were bringing and although maybe it found the idea of what they were laying at its feet amusing in some darkly regal fashion, it very much wanted them to keep it. My gift to you. Reg reached out to unlock the door and as he did so, Doc felt the strength in him draining away as if it were being tapped by that thing out there.
“You ready?” Reg asked.
“I guess.”
But he wasn’t ready. God, no. Being here at door was more than just standing at the threshold of shelter and raging storm, it was like standing at the borderland of some malefic black dimension, the intersection of hate and pain and insanity, the crossroads of the nameless and the unknown. It was as if, just beyond that door, lines of diabolic force were concentrated and once he stepped into their field, he would be emptied, discharged like a battery.
He refused to contemplate it.
Reg peered out the window one last time, looked to Doc, and reached for the doorknob. “I don’t see anything out there,” he said.
But Doc knew it would be nothing that obvious. They would not be clustered and waiting. It would not be that simple. What was out there would not want it to end so quickly for him; it wanted to amplify the pain he felt, generate the maximum amount of terror, suck every drop of despair from him before he knew death. That was part of the game: to make you destroy yourself.
Reg opened the door and the storm came rushing in, the wind throwing snow in Doc’s face and sending frigid fingers of chill up his spine. His throat seemed to contract with terror. He was certain that Bailey had shifted in his arms. And he told himself: three, four steps and you can set her down. That’s all there is to it. Then you’re safe. So he walked out into the blizzard, the wind screaming around the house, the driving snow filled with moving shapes. And a voice in his brain said, you’re never going to be safe again and you know it. He’s out here. The thing you fear. He’s watching you right now. And you can toss Bailey into a drift and run back inside, but you’re only putting it off. He’s going to come for you before dawn forces him back into some lair of darkness. You won’t be able to stop him. He’ll invade the house like a seam of shadow or a river of night. He’ll crawl through a crack or ooze down a pipe or flow through a keyhole, but he will come and there’s nothing you can do about that—
“Doc!” Reg called. “Just set her down, man!”
Yes, that’s all there was to it.
He took two or three more steps and even that close to the doorway, the storm was trying to pull him away and tuck him somewhere deep and cold where he would never be found. Reg was calling out to him again but his voice was lost in the wailing of the storm and Doc knew if he looked behind him, the house would be gone. The snowstorm would have shrouded it from view. He kneeled down and set Bailey in a drift of powder, then stood back up. And as he did so, he felt something build in him like gathering thunderheads. He felt a malign presence near him that filled him with a manic, biting terror. It was palpable and overwhelming. Where before his spine was literally tingling from the menace he felt coming out of the storm, now it was like a cat had sunk its claws between his shoulder blades and was drawing them down his backbone.
He heard Reg’s voice.
He turned to go back to the house, but his limbs weren’t responding. He felt clumsy and rubbery like he’d been shot up with narcotics. His skull was filled with the rising drone of buzzing insects. That’s when he saw the little girl standing not three feet away. The snow seemed not to be falling on her, but through her. She was naked, her flesh white as the snow around her. Her hair was a brilliant red that moved in the wind, flying around her head. Her eyes were huge, like glossy black blood blisters that were ready to pop. She reached down between her legs and touched her deathly-white immature vulva like she wanted him to touch her there, too. She reached out for his hand to make him do so. Her voice was pristine in his head: There’s a place where we can lay together. A place where you can touch me. A place where we can sleep together like death—
And he would have touched her.
God help him, but he would have.
Then something grabbed him and yanked him back and he knew it was Reg, but he still fought because Reg was ruining the most beautiful thing that Doc had ever known. Couldn’t he see that?
Reg pulled him back and in his stupor, he could not fight. The girl leered at him, then opened her fanged mouth and made a screeching sound that was the pure stark and desolate wrath of the storm itself.
Then Reg threw him inside and slammed the door.
And once Doc could speak, he looked up and said, “Did…did I put Bailey out there?”
19
When the door swung open, Wenda figured the jig was up. Then a flashlight beam speared into her face and she squinted her eyes against it. She saw a man standing there. “You going to use that stake on him?” he said.
Realizing he was no vampire, Wenda sighed. Morris was just lying there, breathing. “No, I guess not.”
“Good. He doesn’t look like one of them.”
He helped her to her feet and she said, “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Rule,” he told her. “One of the caretakers of this damn place. The only caretaker that’s still alive.” Before Wenda could introduce herself, he said, “You’re Vultura. I’d know you anywhere. I watch your show. It’s very funny.”
“Thanks,” she said, almost automatically. Then she turned to Morris. “Get up. You’re coming back with us.”
He climbed awkwardly to his feet. The fight was gone from him and he was much the same as he had been before the mania had gripped him: like some wind-up toy soldier with no will of his own. She led Morris back to the sitting room with Rule trailing behind. Megga was waiting there for them. She looked from Wenda to Morris to Rule and raised an eyebrow.
“This is the caretaker,” Wenda explained. “He’s been…exactly where have you been and what have you been doing?” She said this as if it had suddenly occurred to her. And it had. With everything going on, she hadn’t really thought to make him explain himself. But now she not only wanted that, but she was ready to demand it.
Rule looked at her, did something with his mouth that was almost a smile. Whether that was to reassure her or not, she couldn’t say. There was something very calm and non-threatening about him. He was white-haired, snow-bearded, pot-bellied, wore a set of insulated Carhartt overalls, heavy gloves, and a mossy oak flap cap. But what struck her most was that he was oddly…familiar. There was something in his voice, something in his eyes that she remembered.
“I suppose you’ve got the right to ask that,” he said, “and I suppose it would only be fair of me to answer it. See, when this happened, I was setting up the genny out back so you people could have lights for your shoot. Bill was in the car. He was supposed to be getting some cables out, but my guess is he was sitting in the car, probably finishing a chapter in one of his westerns. Bill wasn’t the motivated type. Now, of course, he’s dead.”
“Something came out of the cemetery up there and got him,” Wenda said.
“Yes. I heard him scream and I ran out into the square and…well, I’m not sure exactly, but something was dragging him off. Something not exactly human.” Rule took off his flap cap and wiped sweat from his face with it. “I was going to go after that thing…then I saw the…the others out in the storm. That’s when I came in here. I was cut off from the car. I had nowhere else to go.”
Megga listened, but looked suspicious. “How did you know it came out of the cemetery?” she asked Wenda. “That’s a little specific.”
“I saw it,” Wenda told her. “In my head.” She explained how, when the crone had Megga upstairs, she saw things in her head. She didn’t know what they were. Some kind of psychic ripples from the crone herself maybe, but she’d seen them.
“Burt saw it, too.”
Megga said, “Burt?”
“When we first pulled into Cobton. Remember? That thing standing in the cemetery. It was no statue of a graveyard angel. It was the real thing.”
Rule cleared his throat. “Anyway, I hid out down in the cellar. I figured I’d wait until dawn and get my ass out of here. It seemed the logical choice of action.”
“You must have heard us,” Megga said. “You must have known we were in the shit.”
“I didn’t know what was going on and I wasn’t about to mix up in it.”
“Very brave of you.”
He looked at her. “Miss, bravery has nothing to do with it. In a situation like this there are basically two things: death and survival. I was interested in the latter and if you have a brain in that pretty head of yours, I’m sure you’ll understand my motives.”
Wenda was becoming more and more intrigued by this guy. He was a caretaker of this ghost town, yet he seemed awfully well-spoken. Not that she thought caretakers were idiots or anything, but this guy seemed somewhat against type. And that voice…where did she know that voice from?
As she thought this over, he went on: “Understand that I was against this whole thing right from the start. It was too risky. Bill agreed with me, of course, as Bill was wont to do. I think a lot of the people that live in this vicinity would have agreed with me, too. And if you had grown up around here, you wouldn’t be so high-and-goddamn-mighty about it. You’d know the kind of place Cobton was after dark. You’d know the sort of things that have happened here.”
“You knew there were…were vampires here?” Wenda asked him.
He shrugged. “I knew the stories. I knew this place was supposed to be haunted. I knew people have disappeared out here. I knew it was a ghost town in more than name. And I knew what I saw out here when I was a kid.”
“Which is?”
He ignored that, returning to his original stream: “So, we were certainly against it. But the people that own Cobton, the ones that had it rebuilt and refitted it as a tourist trap some fifteen years ago…well, they’re not locals. Just history buffs with fat wallets. They couldn’t understand why we didn’t want to come out here after dark and there was no point in trying to explain it to them. They would have thought we were crazy.”
He explained that since Cobton was rebuilt, there had been no trouble and that was because it was only open during the daytime. The town was period in every way and that meant no electricity. There was no reason for anyone to be out there at night. It had worked out real well until tonight.
“So knowing what you knew, you still came out here?” Megga said.
“I have my reasons. For Bill…oh Bill…for Bill it was strictly a matter of economics, Miss. Jobs is scarce, as he often told me.” Rule smiled for a moment, but it was a wistful smile that faded quickly. “Regardless, we were the caretakers. We took care of this place. We always got out before sunset. We made sure others did, too. Even when this place was being put back together, we hustled the contractors out of here telling them that they couldn’t stay after dark because there were no lights and our insurance didn’t cover it. It worked. It always worked.” He shrugged, then cocked an ear like he was listening. “Besides, nothing had happened in years. A lot of years. But I knew it would. Sooner or later. And maybe that’s what I was waiting for.”
“You’re a real kook,” Megga told him.
Rule explained that it wasn’t his idea to stay out here after dark. That was something arranged between the historical society and Morris.
“Yet, you and Bill agreed to come?” Wenda said. “Knowing what might be out here?”
“Yes, we did. Bill needed the money…I needed to see what haunted this place.”
“What a freak,” Megga said, but there was a certain admiration in her voice; she would have done the same.
Rule sighed. “Let’s just say that this place has a history of…evil. It was seeded here long ago and its roots run deep. I knew it would give flower again. It had to. Evil is not easily vanquished.”
Wenda smiled. She knew then. “Long time no see, Mr. Rule.”
“Oh, you remember me, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
Megga looked at both of them, shrugging. “You two know each other?”
Wenda explained that Rule was Dennis Rule, a professor of humanities and English literature at her alma mater, Stony Brook U. She had barely squeaked by in Survey of British Literature II and the Neoclassic period had nearly killed her, Marlowe’s Elizabethan tragedies simultaneously confusing her and depressing her. It was only the Restoration Comedies that gave her hope, clearing the slate for Coleridge and Wordsworth.
“Now, now,” said Rule, “I thought you showed promise as a critic. You were quite outspoken concerning Raleigh’s pessimism.”
“I can’t believe you remember any of that,” Wenda said.
Megga sneered at them. “Well, let’s play old home week some other time, okay? We’re in enough of a fix here.”
Wenda once again had that mad desire to slap her across the face. We’re in enough of a fix here. That was true, but where did the we part of that come from? Megga had proven herself to be unreliable, selfish, and easily seduced by the monsters out in the storm. She was a weak link, a chink in the armor. Wenda firmly believed that she would sell them out the first chance she got and the only reason she hadn’t thus far was because Wenda herself hadn’t—and wouldn’t—allow that. Megga was not to be trusted. Her motives were questionable as were her ethics. She was someone to watch. Carefully.
So Wenda ignored her. “How did you go from teaching Brit Lit to being a caretaker in Cobton?” she asked Rule.
“I retired,” he said. “I grew up quite near here so I returned. They needed a caretaker and I have a love of the Colonial Period. Besides, it was something to do with my time. There are other reasons, of course. But in order for you to understand them, you’ll probably need to know what happened in this town. How it became a ghost town in the first place. It’s a story for a dark night and I guess this one will do…”
20
Let me start out by saying that Cobton was a living, breathing town at one time, Rule began. It was nothing like this museum piece you might have noticed on your way in tonight. There were about 600 people living here as of 1815 with probably a hundred or more scattered about in the surrounding farms. It was an agricultural area that bordered the wild wastes of the Catskills and its fields produced abundant crops of cabbage, pumpkins, sweet corn, onions, apples, wheat and oats. Most of the town was owned by a land baron named Gerrit VanderHoofen who had a huge plantation just south of Cobton. He owned the fields, the forests, the orchards. It may interest you—and amuse you—to know that descendants of this VanderHoofen still own these lands. VanderHoofen brought in immigrants as tenant farmers and leased the land to them. From what I’ve heard, VanderHoofen was a shrewd businessman who would have been rich even by today’s standards.
That’s your history lesson for the day.
What we’re really interested in began happening in 1826, if contemporary sources are correct. This would be the first seed of evil as far as I can tell. Up above Cobton, the land of the Catskills was high, wild country, green and growing and rich. Land cut by deep misting ravines and shrouded in black, impenetrable hemlock forests. Though much of it is second- and third-growth now, you can still get a sense of its mystery and primal fear. The early Dutch and German settlers considered the woods up there haunted and there were superstitions that it was the lair of the Devil, which is probably something they borrowed from the lore of the local Mohicans who avoided the mountains because they were the home of the Manitou and various evil spirits.
I tell you this so you can get a good idea of the people we are talking about: clannish, superstitious, but being an agrarian society probably quite practical by nature. Which brings us to Karl Jorva.
According to an account collected by folklorist Robert Bale in 1897, Karl Jorva was an Austrian immigrant who operated a farm just outside Cobton in the 1820s. Karl and his brother Hugo, along with their wives and children, were among many European immigrants who came to farm the fertile lands as tenant farmers and sharecroppers for the VanderHoofen family. From Cornwall and Germany and Eastern Europe, the immigrants came in waves. But unlike the majority of them, Karl and Hugo raised enough capital to buy their adjoining lands. A rare thing at the time and one that shows that the VanderHoofens were quite progressive in their own way.
Now, both Karl and his brother Hugo were devout Lutherans who read the bible nightly for inspiration and comfort. With a great deal of back-breaking work, Karl and his family cleared the land, raising abundant crops of oats, rye, corn and wheat. Then tragedy struck. His wife, Mara, was stricken with yellow fever and died. Karl was left alone with two growing boys and a teenage daughter. Farm life was a hardscrabble existence in those days and near impossible without a wife. Karl decided to advertise for a mail order bride and was surprised when he received a letter from a young lady in Hungry, Ilsa Stroivecka, who wished to become his wife.
When Ilsa arrived, Karl—being a very practical sort—was not duly impressed. She claimed to be a farmer’s daughter, yet to look upon her she was far too frail and thin for the hardship and labor of the agricultural life. Tall, tawny-haired, fine-boned with huge dark eyes and an ivory complexion, she was very beautiful but not the stout, rugged woman he had envisioned who could keep house and children and work the fields as well as any hand.
