Dime Store Magic

Chapter 7

I COVERED MY SILK CHEMISE WITH THE MATCHING KIMONO before leaving my room. For some reason, this seemed to make more sense than getting dressed. From the hall closet, I selected the old rubber boots my mother had used for gardening. I'd kept them, maybe in the dim hope that someday I'd sprout a green thumb.

I slipped out the back door. I'd left the hand under the sink, so if someone caught me digging, at least they wouldn't see what I was burying. Yeah, like that was going to help matters if anyone saw me in the forest after midnight, digging a hole while dressed in a red silk kimono and black rubber boots.

Once outside, I caught a whiff of smoke. As my stomach clenched, I cursed my fear. In first-year psychology I read a theory that all the major phobias are the result of hereditary memory, that our distant ancestors had good reason to fear snakes and heights, so evolution passed those fears on to future generations. Maybe that explains witches' fear of fire. I fight against it, but seem unable to completely overcome the fear.

Struggling against instinct, I sniffed the air, searching for the source of the smell. Was it smoke from a fireplace extinguished hours ago? Smoldering embers from an evening trash-burning? As I scanned the darkness, I noticed an orange glow to the east, in the forest behind my back fence. A bush party. With the weather warming, local teens must have found something better to do on a Friday night than hang out in the hardware store parking lot. Great, now the hand would have to stay in my house until tomorrow night. I didn't dare bury it with a potential audience looking on.

As I turned to go back in the house, I noticed the silence. Complete silence. Since when did partying teens sit silently around a campfire? I considered other excuses for a late-night fire. East Falls was too small for a homeless population. Could a dropped match or cigarette have ignited the undergrowth? Could someone be secretly burning hazardous material? Either required action.

I tiptoed across the grass, wondering whether I'd have another fire to put out. Two in one evening-coincidence? Oh, God, please don't let this be a second Hand of Glory. I inhaled and pushed past my revulsion. If it was, at least I'd seen it before anyone else had.

As I reached the fence, I was glad I hadn't done anything so foolish as calling the fire department. There, laid out in the grass, was a ring of lit black candles surrounding a red cloth embroidered with a goat's head. A Satanic altar.

With an oath, I raced to put out the candles. Then I saw that they encircled a blood-covered heap. For one terrible, endless moment I thought it was a child's body. Then I saw the face and realized it was a cat. A skinned cat: a lifeless mass of blood and muscle, teeth bared in a lipless snarl.

I twisted away from the sight. Something slapped me in the face, something cold and wet. Frantically shoving it away, I stumbled back, but my hand caught in a loop of spongy elastic. I bit back a shriek. I looked up and saw what I'd hit: another skinned cat, this one hanging from a tree, its belly sliced open, guts spilling out. A loop of intestine was wrapped around my hand.

I yanked free barely in time to bring my hands to my mouth to stifle my scream. I fell to my knees, chest heaving, struggling for breath. My hands were covered in blood. My stomach lurched and I spilled my dinner into the grass. For several minutes, I crouched there, unable to move.

"Paige?" Savannah's whisper floated from the backyard.

"No!" I hissed and sprang to my feet. "Stay there!"

I ran and grabbed her as she rounded the corner. Her eyes widened and I knew she'd seen everything, but I still pushed her away.

"Go-go back in the house," I said. "I-I have to clean it up."

"I'll help."

"No!"

Silence.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean-" I realized I was getting vomit and blood all over her bathrobe and pulled back. "I'm sorry. Go inside and clean up. No, wait. Put your robe in a bag. I'll burn it-"

"Paige…"

"I-take a shower," I stammered. "But leave the lights off. Don't turn on any lights. No radio, no lights, nothing. Don't open the blinds-"

"Paige!" Savannah said, grabbing my shoulders. "I can help." She enunciated each word as if I might not understand her. "It's okay. I've seen this kind of stuff before."

"No, you haven't. Get in-"

"Yes, I have. Goddamn it, Paige-"

"Don't swear."

Savannah blinked and, for a second, she looked as if she might cry. "I know what that stuff is, Paige. Like I know what a Hand of Glory is. Why do you keep pretending I don't?"

As she tore off, I started going after her. Then a light flicked on next door and I froze. I looked from Savannah's retreating back to the glow of the candles behind me. I didn't have time to go after her-not now. Leah had composed this horrific tableau for a reason and I doubted she went to all that trouble just to spook me. The police would receive an anonymous phone call: "Go look behind Paige Winterbourne's house." I had to clear this before anyone followed up on that tip.

To the left of the altar was a blackened mound that I hadn't seen earlier. Smoke rose from the mound carrying with it the stench of burned meat. I closed my eyes to compose myself, then approached the smoldering heap and bent to look at it. At first glance, I couldn't tell what it was, or what it had been. I wanted to walk away then, get a shovel, and bury it without ever knowing. But I had to know. If I didn't, I'd lie awake at night, wondering what I'd buried.

I took a stick and prodded at the mound. At the first sharp jab, it fell apart, exposing a sawed-open rib cage. I pressed the back of my hand to my eyes and took a deep breath. The very taste of it filled my mouth and I lurched forward, spilling whatever was left in my stomach.

Oh, God, I couldn't-I just couldn't. No, I had to. This was my problem, my responsibility.

I forced my gaze back to the charred bones, struggling to study them with a scientist's eye. From my few years of biology, I could differentiate between a biped and quadruped ribcage. This was quadruped. To be sure, I poked the stick near the end of the spine, revealing a tail. Yes, definitely an animal. Probably another cat. Okay, I could handle this now. Observe without truly seeing, that was the trick.

I stood and surveyed the site. My brain processed the details, making no judgments, allowing no reactions. There was a chalice filled with blood beside the dead cat on the makeshift altar. Yes, that was to be expected. Black Mass was an inversion and perversion of the Catholic Mass. In a university folklore course I'd done my term project on Satanic cults, debating whether they fit the standard definition of a contemporary legend, so I knew what to look for, what I needed to find and clear away.

There should be an inverted crucifix… yes, there it was, hanging from the tree. I strode over and pulled it down. Pentagrams? No, it appeared they'd overlooked… wait, there, drawn in the dirt. I started to erase it with my boot, then grabbed a handful of brush instead, so I wouldn't leave footprints. Okay, that seemed to be everything.

Next I needed to bury the corpses. I turned to look at the eviscerated cat in the tree. I willed my gaze past the poor beast, to study the hanging device instead, so I'd know what I needed to cut it loose, but I couldn't help seeing the body, swaying in the breeze.

What kind of person could bring themselves not only to kill a cat, but to-my gorge rose and I doubled over, retching. This time, nothing came but a thin string of acid. I spat to clear the taste from my mouth then, still bent over, wiped my face, took a deep breath of the foul air and marched to the shed to find a shovel.

Twenty minutes later, I'd buried all three cats and started dismantling the altar. "Paige?"

Savannah's whisper sent me a foot into the air. I spun to see her jogging across the lawn.

"There's a car circling the block," she said. "I've been watching out the front window."

Her eyes were red. Had she been crying? Why did I make such a mess of everything? Before I could apologize, she grabbed my arm and dragged me across the yard.

As we stepped through the back door, I glimpsed myself in the hall mirror. Blood, vomit, and dirt streaked my face, hands, and kimono. Just then lights flashed through the living room sheers. A car engine died.

"Oh, God," I said, staring into the mirror. "I can't-"

"I'm clean," Savannah said. "I'll answer it. You go wash up."

"But-"

The doorbell rang. Savannah shoved me into the living room. I ducked below window level and ran for the other side of the house.

Leah hadn't settled for placing an anonymous call to the station's overnight answering service. No, she'd called the local sheriff, Ted Fowler, at home, babbling hysterically about strange lights and screams coming from the woods behind my house.

Fowler had thrown on clothing that looked like it came from his bedroom floor and driven straight over. In reward for his haste, he found the smoldering remains of a Satanic altar a scant ten feet beyond my backyard.

By dawn my house and yard were crawling with cops. By disposing of the cat corpses, I'd only made things worse. When Fowler saw traces of blood and no bodies, his imagination leaped to the worst possible conclusion. Murder.

Since East Falls wasn't equipped to deal with homicide, the state police were called in. On the way, the detectives woke up a judge and got him to sign a search warrant. They arrived shortly before five, and Savannah and I spent the next several hours huddled in my bedroom, alternately answering questions and listening to the sound of strangers tearing apart our home.

When I heard the oven door open, I remembered the Hand of Glory under the sink. I bolted for the hall, then checked my pace and walked into the kitchen. One officer rifled through my cupboards as another waved some kind of light wand over the contents of my fridge. They glanced at me, but when I didn't speak, they returned to their work.

Heart thudding, I waited as the cupboard searcher moved to the cabinets under the counter. When he reached for the sink cupboard, I whispered a spell under my breath. It was a form of cover spell that would distort the appearance of an object. While it wouldn't have worked on the entire Satanic altar site outside, it would do fine for the wrapped bundle under the sink.

As he threw open the cupboard, I said the last words and directed the spell at the object to be hidden. Only there was no object there. The hand and the towel were gone. The officer did a cursory search, then closed the cupboard. I hurried back to the bedroom.

"What did you do with it?" I whispered.

Savannah looked up from her magazine. "With what?"

I lowered my voice another notch. "The Hand of Glory."

"I moved it."

"Good. Thank you. I completely forgot. Where'd you put it?"

She rolled onto her stomach and returned to her magazine. "Someplace safe."

"Ms. Winterbourne?"

I spun to see the lead detective from the state police in my bedroom doorway.

"We found cats," he said.

"Cats?" I repeated.

"Three dead cats buried a short distance from the scene."

I motioned toward Savannah and lifted a finger to my lips, gesturing that I didn't want this discussed in front of her. The detective moved to the living room, where several officers were lounging on my sofa and chairs, muddy shoes propped on my antique coffee table. I swallowed my outrage and turned to the detective.

"So it was cat's blood?" I said.

"Apparently, though we'll run tests to be sure."

"Good."

"Killing cats might not be on the same scale as murder, but it's still a serious offense. Very serious."

"It should be. Anyone who'd do that…" I didn't have to fake my shudder, needing only to remember the sight of those maimed bodies. "I can't believe someone would do that, stage a Satanic altar behind my yard."

"Stage?" the detective said. "What makes you think it was staged?"

"It looked real to me," one of the officers said, waving a cookie that looked suspiciously like the same cookies that were in my cupboard.

His wave scattered crumbs across my ivory carpet. I looked at those crumbs, looked at the muddy boot prints surrounding it, looked at the bookcase behind it, my books and photos and mementos shoved into haphazard piles, and I felt a snap. Just a small one.

"And you say that based on witnessing exactly how many Satanic altars?" I asked.

Silence.

"We've seen photos," he muttered at last.

"Oh, right. The photos. There's probably one genuine photo circulating endlessly around the entire country. Attention all units: beware of Satanic cults. Do you know what Satanic cults are? The biggest hoax ever perpetrated by the American media. Do you know who builds all those so-called Satanic altars you hear about? Kids. Bored, angry teenagers trying to shock the establishment. That and the occasional homicidal moron who's already planning his defense: the devil made me do it. Satanic altar, my ass. What you saw out back there is a prank. A very, very sick prank."

Silence.

"You sure seem to know a lot about this stuff," one officer said.

"It's called a college education." I wheeled on the detective. "Are you charging me with anything?"

"Not yet."

"Then get the hell out of my house so I can clean up your mess."

After a tersely worded admonition against leaving town and a suggestion that I "may want to retain legal counsel," the police left.