The Right Hand of Evil

CHAPTER 12

It was time. Even though he'd been deep in sleep since just after sunset, something inside Jake Cumberland knew it was time. He came awake in an instant, throwing off the ragged coverlet he'd slept under since he was a boy and swinging his feet to the bare wooden floor in a single smooth motion. As he pulled on his pants there was a faint scratching at the cabin door; his hounds, too, had sensed that the time had come. "Give a body a chance," Jake muttered. At the sound of his voice the two yellow dogs fell silent. Slipping his arms into the frayed sleeves of a shirt so old that its plaid pattern had all but disappeared, Jake lit a candle, then moved to the door and opened it just enough to let the animals inside. The dogs-so thin their ribs were clearly etched beneath their scarred hides-slithered into the cabin's single room, their noses already seeking out the food their master might have provided. "Maybe later," Jake said as he shut the door against the darkness outside.

The dogs dropped to the floor, their muzzles resting on their paws. Their bloodshot eyes, glowing like burning embers in the candlelight, fixed on Jake. As he lit four more candles, lining them up on the scarred pine counter by the sink, their bodies tensed and a faint whimper crept from the throat of the smaller one. "Quiet," Jake commanded. The dog flinched and cowered, but emitted no further sound.

As smoke from the five candles filled the room, Jake went to the trunk in the corner-his mother's trunk-and opened it. Just under the lid there was a shallow tray, divided into half a dozen sections, each of which contained an assortment of small jars and vials. His mother's altar cloth lay beneath the tray, but Jake knew better than to touch it until he was certain which of her charms and potions to use.

"Soon's you unfold it, the magic starts to work," she'd told him when he was a boy. "So you got to be ready. Got to know what you want to do, and what to use to do it."

"But how do you know?" Jake had asked, his eyes wide as he watched his mother-whose own eyes were tightly closed-pass her hands over the tray, her fingers plucking out some objects, leaving others untouched.

"It's the magic," she'd told him. "The magic will tell you."

Now Jake knelt before the trunk, and just as his mother had done when he was a boy, he held out his hands, suspending them just a fraction of an inch above the tray. He closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the ceiling.

"Help me," he implored. "Help me, Mama."

The dogs, unseen by Jake, raised their heads, then stood. As the fur on their hackles rose, each of them lifted a forepaw off the floor.

Their tails extended straight back.

They held their perfect point as steadily as Jake held his hands above the tray in the open trunk.

Jake's right hand moved, hovering above the jars and bottles, drifting first in one direction, then another. In the beginning it seemed to be nothing more than random movement, but slowly a pattern emerged, as time after time his hand stopped, suspended over the same five objects.

His eyes still closed, his face still raised toward the ceiling, he began plucking objects from the tray.

The dogs, their bodies tense, kept their eyes fixed on their master's right hand.

When all five objects had been lifted from the tray and placed on the floor beside the trunk, Jake finally opened his eyes again. Gently, almost reverently, he lifted the tray itself from the trunk and set it upon the bed. Then, his hands trembling, he reached for his mother's altar cloth. Never before in his life had he removed it from the trunk-never even so much as touched it. Even now, as the candlelight flickered around him, he hesitated.

The dark bundle, tightly bound with ribbon of a purple so dark it was nearly lost in the black of the cloth itself, seemed to throb in the flickering candlelight as if some unknown life were struggling to free itself from the confining folds.

The magic.

His mama's magic.

His fingers vibrating, Jake lifted the bundle out of the trunk. Carrying it to the table, he carefully untied the ribbons, pressed them flat, then rolled them up the way he'd seen his mama do. Loosened from its bonds, one edge of the cloth fell free, its finely embroidered border dropping into Jake's hands as if inviting him to shake it open. Jake's fingers closed on the soft velvet. Its inky blackness seemed to swallow up the candlelight like a feeding beast. Suddenly Jake's arms were lifted high, his wrists snapped, and he brought the cloth back down. In an instant the bundle unfurled, the folds of velvet spreading across the table like the mantle of darkness that had fallen over the cabin a few hours earlier. A second later the cloth dropped to the tabletop. As it fell into place, the creases of its folds disappeared and the rusty stains of age faded away. The corners of the cloth dropped perfectly, each of them hanging an inch above the floor.

In the center of the cloth a golden star had been embroidered, its points formed by five triangles whose bases, together, inscribed a perfect pentagram. Jake placed a candle on each of the star's five points, and as he set the last one in place, their combined light grew far brighter, washing the shadows from the dark corners of the cabin. Then, as if some unseen being had turned down the wick of a lamp, the light faded once more.

But something in the cloth had changed.

The space within the pentagram appeared to have opened, and as Jake stared into it, he felt as if he were peering into a bottomless abyss.

A wave of dizziness swept over him; Jake felt as if he were teetering on the brink of the abyss, about to plunge over into the darkness-darkness that would swallow him up as surely as the conflagration he'd watched forty years ago had swallowed up his mama.

Uneasy growls rose in both dogs' throats, but as Jake turned away from the altar he'd created, the guttural sounds died away.

One by one Jake picked up the items he'd taken from the tray. There were three small jars and two vials. Removing the lid from the first, he took a pinch of the ground tusk of a wild boar and rubbed it into one of the triangles.

As the candle at the triangle's point flared brighter, Jake murmured a quick prayer: "May your belly be torn, and your entrails spilled."

From the second jar he took the curved thorn of a wild rose. "Let your skin be ripped, and your blood ooze from your wounds." The second candle flared.

He removed the stopper from one of the vials, and the stench of skunk oil filled the room. As he poured a single drop of the oily fluid in front of the third triangle, feeding its struggling flame, another incantation fell from his lips: "May your lungs burn and pus fill your throat."

The broken quill of a porcupine came next, and now four of the candles were flaring up. "May your eyes be pierced and blackness fall over you."

Finally Jake opened the second vial and let flow a single drop of the clear liquid within. As the flame of the last candle swelled and the acid from the last vial ate into the velvet's surface, he uttered one last prayer: "May your flesh be stripped away, and your bones be consumed by dogs."

The two yellow dogs edged closer, as if anticipating a meal.

Once again the combined flames of the candles filled the cabin with a luminous golden glow. Now Jake went to the far corner and picked up one of the tattered canvas bags in which he carried home the fruits of his trap lines. Tonight, though, it wasn't a nutria the sack contained, or the carcass of a weasel or otter or possum.

Tonight the bag contained the prize he'd captured the night before.

Carefully, respectfully, he lifted the carcass of Kimberley Conway's cat from the folds of the canvas. The animal's eyes were open, and it seemed to watch him as he laid it in the center of the pentagram.

From a rack above the kitchen counter, he took a filleting knife whose blade was worn thin from years of honing.

In the brilliant light of the flaring candles, Jake Cumberland set about his work.

In half an hour it was done.

He'd divided the entrails of the cat into four equal portions, and each of the portions had been seared by the flame of one of the first four candles.

The cat's hide, scraped free of every scrap of flesh, was held over the fifth candle. The flame consumed a patch of its fur as quickly as the acid had eaten through the velvet on which the candle stood.

The ritual complete, Jake packed away the entrails, and the hide and head, in his canvas bag and blew out the candles. As their light died away, the smoke in the room began to clear, taking with it the foul odor of the skunk oil.

The white powder of the boar's tusk vanished into the nap of the velvet, along with the rose's thorn and the porcupine's quill.

The hole eaten through the cloth by the acid disappeared, and as Jake lifted the velvet from the table, it fell once more into the folds from which he'd shaken it loose an hour ago.

As the distant toll of the church bell striking midnight sounded, Jake rebound the cloth with the purple ribbons and returned it to his mama's trunk. He placed the tray back on its supporting rails and closed the lid.

Just before leaving the house with the canvas bag, Jake Cumberland fed his two yellow dogs. They fell hungrily upon the skeleton of the cat, growling and snarling as they ripped the tendons apart and crushed the bones in their jaws.

The huge clock in the corner of the cavernous living room-an ornately carved piece that had a distinctly Germanic look to it-began tolling the hour as Ted was tearing the plastic seal loose from a fresh bottle of vodka.

The second one, or the third?

He couldn't quite remember, but decided it must be the second. If it was the third, he should have been sound asleep by now, and he wasn't.

He wasn't even close.

His fingers stopped working at the bottle's seal as he counted the hours the clock was striking.

…ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen.

Thirteen?

What the hell…? There wasn't any such thing as thirteen o'clock-everyone knew that.

As the seal broke, he gave the cap a twist, then lifted the bottle to his lips and took a healthy swig. The familiar warmth of alcohol flowed comfortingly down his throat and spread through his belly.

And Janet's words-the words that had been slamming at his head all evening-quieted for a few seconds.

She didn't mean it-couldn't mean it! Without him, what the hell would she do? Besides, he'd heard it all before. Wasn't she always whining that she couldn't stand it, that if he didn't stop drinking, she was gonna leave? But she never did-never would. She loved him.

Couldn't live without him.

But what the hell was going on with the clock? Come to think of it, how come it was running at all? He didn't remember winding it. 'Course, Janet or one of the kids could've done that. But he didn't remember hearing it chime before, either.

What the hell kind of clock only struck once, and then struck the wrong time?

Ted struggled off the sofa and lurched over to it, staring up at its etched brass plate. There were dials all over it-one that showed the time, and another that showed the seconds ticking by, and a big one with the moon on it. The clock was running, all right. He could see the pendulum moving. His gaze shifted to the dial that showed the seconds. There was something about it that appealed to him, the way it ticked a notch forward every time the pendulum swung.

It was… His mind groped for a word, then found exactly the right one.

Tidy. That's what it was.

Neat and tidy.

The way things should be.

Except that they weren't. Reaching out to steady himself against the bookcase built into the wall next to the clock, he peered around at the room. Even through the haze of alcohol, he could see the curling wallpaper and peeling paint, and the stains in the carpet. What the hell had Janet been doing all day? Couldn't anybody but himself do anything?

His eyes shifted back to the clock.

A couple of minutes past midnight.

Not thirteen o'clock at all.

Stupid. Stupid idea, thinking it could be thirteen o'clock. Musta just miscounted. Reaching up to the glass door that protected the face, he fumbled with it for a second, then managed to pull it open.

He pushed the minute hand forward until it pointed at the three.

But instead of striking the quarter hour, the clock once more began chiming the hours.

Once again, Ted counted.

Again the clock struck thirteen times.

Ted backed away from it, though his eyes remained fixed on its face, as if held there by some unseen force.

As he watched, the hands began to move, and once again the clock began to strike.

A trick! It had to be some kind of trick!

The hands couldn't be moving as fast as it looked like they were-it was impossible.

But as the minute hand came around to the nine, the clock once again tolled thirteen times.

Still unable to tear his eyes from the clock's face, Ted watched as the hand moved inexorably toward the twelve. Unconsciously, he held his breath as the clock began striking for the fifth time. As the deep chord reverberated through the house-once, twice, then thrice-Ted realized that something else was wrong.

The clock still read midnight.

But the minute hand had made a complete revolution! He knew it had! He'd watched it!

– five, six, seven times the clock struck.

Broken. That was it-the thing was just broken!

– ten, eleven, twelve-

Ted waited, his breath still trapped in his lungs, as the note faded away and silence descended. Finally, when he could hear it no more, he slowly exhaled. Turning away, he raised the bottle once more to his lips.

And once more the clock began to strike.

The bottle dropped from his hand. "Janet?" His wife's name slipped unbidden from his mouth. Then he whispered it again: "Janet, help me."

The last tolling of the clock died away. Before it could start again, Ted snatched up the bottle-half of the contents had already drained out onto the carpet-and stumbled out of the living room, pulling the doors closed behind him.

He moved across the huge foyer and into the dining room, pushing its doors tightly closed.

Safe.

Even if the clock started to strike again-

Even before the thought was fully formed he heard it again. But not muffled-not like it was coming from another room at all.

He whirled around.

And there was the clock! Standing against the opposite wall, between the two windows that looked out toward the wilderness behind the carriage house. Ted's heart raced as he told himself it wasn't possible, that the clock was still in the living room, that there wasn't any clock in this room, at least not one like this.

Its tolling grew louder, echoing through the room. Once again Ted dropped the bottle and clamped his hands over his ears, but the striking of the clock grew ever louder-so loud that with every chord it felt as if spikes were being driven into his ears.

Crazy!

He was going crazy!

Fumbling with the latch on the heavy dining room doors, he finally threw them open again, and fled back into the huge entry hall. But the sound followed him, and he realized his mistake-now he was hearing both clocks.

"Janet?" he called out again, instinctively invoking the name of the one person he'd always been able to rely on. "Janet, where are you?"

Upstairs. She was upstairs, in their bedroom.

Got to get there! Got to get upstairs!

He started up the flight, stumbling on the first step and barely catching himself on the mahogany banister. A wave of dizziness swept over him as he pulled himself back upright. His stomach felt queasy.

Drank too much. Drank just a little too much.

Hanging onto the banister with both hands, he pulled himself up a few more steps.

And the tolling of the clock struck him again.

Sagging to his knees, he peered up into the gloom, and there, on the landing, he could see it.

The clock!

The same clock that had been in the living room and the dining room.

"Nooo…" he wailed, his voice cracking as a sob of fear choked his throat. Turning away from the tolling clock, he stumbled back toward the foot of the stairs, but missed his footing completely on the third step, reached for the banister, missed again, and tumbled down the stairs, his right shoulder wrenching painfully as he sprawled out on the floor of the entry hall. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Ted scrambled to his feet, stumbling from one room to another, searching for some place-any place-that would be free of the terrible striking of the clock. Everywhere he went the clock was there, tolling the impossible hour time after time until it felt as if every part of his body was being subjected to the blows of the hammer.

Finally there was only one door left, and Ted stumbled through it.

He was at the top of a steep flight of stairs leading into the basement. The darkness below him yawned like the gaping mouth of some great beast, and Ted fumbled for a light switch, found one, and flipped it on.

The darkness below was pierced by a beckoning light. His heart still pounding, the terror of the impossible chimes still battering at him, Ted lurched down the stairs until he came to the bottom.

And still the terrible tolling found him.

"Stop it," he whispered, jamming his hands against his ears, but now the sound seemed to come from inside his head itself, throbbing inside his skull, falling into rhythm with his heart.

A stroke!

That was it!

He was having a stroke!

The pain in his head ballooning, he stumbled through another door. Once again he tripped, and this time when he fell to the floor an agonizing knife-twist shot through his right wrist. Screaming, Ted clutched at his wrist.

Another wave of dizziness hit him, and his belly heaved. As the contents of his stomach shot from his mouth, he dropped to the floor and felt the heat of his own vomit on his cheek.

The rancid fumes caused him to puke again, and then, rolling over onto his back, he began to sob.

"No-" he pleaded, his voice breaking and choking.

"Don't want to die. Don't want to."

But he was going to die-lying in the dark chamber with only a few rays of light leaking through the door. He knew it.

With Janet asleep upstairs, he was going to die.

Die alone, die drunk.

Dead drunk.

"No. No. Nooo." A whisper. A sob. "Help me… please, help me. Someone, please help me."

He retched again, and then again. He struggled to move, at least to slither away from the pool of vomit in which he lay, but any movement he made was pure agony.

Then, from somewhere deep in the darkness surrounding him, he saw something.

From somewhere hidden in the darkness a mist was rising. A mist that seemed to be illuminated from within, as if a thousand candles were burning unseen in the strange fog. As he stared at the fog, a face began to take shape.

A powerful face, with glowing eyes that bored into the depths of his soul.

A hallucination.

That had to be it-he was hallucinating.

Or dying.

That was it-his life was ebbing away, and this was a spirit come to lead him into the mists of death.

"Help me," he whispered once again. "Please help me."

The mist itself seemed to reach out to him, and he felt a touch-a burning touch-on his cheek.

A voice spoke. A whisper. Neither a woman's voice nor a man's, something unearthly yet distinct. "Will you give me whatever I ask?"

Ted stared up into the glittering eyes. "Yes," he whispered. "Oh, God, yes."

The terrible tolling in Ted's head eased.

The nausea in his belly calmed.

"Anything," he pleaded once again. "I'll do anything. Just help me."

Once again he felt the searing touch.

In an instant the pain in his wrist and shoulder were gone.

In the sudden silence Ted Conway fell into sleep. But just before he surrendered to blankness, he knew that something inside him had changed.

Nothing, he knew, would ever be the same again.