Bradley, Marion Zimmer - Shadowgate 04 (42 page)

 
          
"What
now, Colin?" Claire paused with a french fry halfway to her mouth.
"I'm getting pretty good at this wide-eyed innocent act, and I'm not
crying quits, but ..."

 
          
"Actually,
I'm wondering if we're going about this in completely the wrong way. We've been
going after the coven and running up against a dead end. We might have better
luck if we started at the other end and worked backward."

 
          
"You
mean, start with the victims ... or so-called victims, anyway? Like that woman
from
Minnesota
who wrote that book about
how she suddenly remembered she'd been a Satanic High Priestess?" Claire's
lip curled in scorn.

 
          
"Not
quite," Colin corrected with a smile. "We know from Cannon's lecture
that the group we're looking for is operating somewhere in the
New York
area, and it's probably up
to the traditional scare tactics to consolidate its power. We just need to find
out who they're using them on."

 
          
"A
tall order," Claire said. "Frightened people don't talk
—
they're too scared."

 
          
"No,"
Colin agreed. "But they look for protection. And if the conventional
safeguards fail them, they're likely to fall back on instinct, even
superstition."

 
          
"Organized
religion, you mean," Claire supplied teasingly. Colin smiled sheepishly.

 
          
"Well,
yes. And since these days even the Catholic Church won't perform an exorcism
without some pretty hard evidence, those poor souls who find themselves
victimized by the forces of Darkness frequently find themselves appealing to
their parish priest
—
or local rabbi
—
in vain."

 
          
"Which
throws them right into the laps of the occult con artists. Fee-charging lay
exorcists, bogus psychics, and all that sort of unscrupulous two-legged shark.
But Colin, you know as well as I do how many of those creeps are out there. As
fast as we close one down, another pops up. How are you going to check every
single one of them, and their clients as well?"

 
          
"I'm
not," Colin sad, gesturing to the waitress for the bill. "I'm going
to check out the sharks who were scared away by a bigger shark."

NEW YORK
,
TUESDAY,
DECEMBER 20,  1972

Tell me where is fancy bred. Or in the heart or in the
head? How begot, how nourished?
—
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 
          
IT
WAS THE EVE OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE, AND THE ROOM WAS DARK EVEN at
midday
. It was the living room of
an apartment on
West 8th Street
just off Broadway, a
neighborhood that had been poor not many years before but was now steadily
becoming more fashionable.

 
          
The
chamber was almost a parody of the popular conception of the occultist's
Sanctum Sanctorum. The floor was painted with a Seal of Solomon copied out of
the
Grimoirum Verum,
with additional arcane symbols added around the
edges for effect. The walls were covered in purple crushed velvet and held
plaques representing the signs of the Zodiac, a phrenological map of the human
head, a poster depicting the path of kundalini energy, a drawing of the Tree of
Life, and several blowups of Tarot cards. The ceiling was draped with dense
swags of multicolored fishnet, into which had been thrust a number of objects
that had apparently caught the occupant's fancy: a baby doll, stuffed animals,
a hand mirror, some Mardi Gras masks, and several of the small mirrored fishing
floats colloquially known as "witch balls." The windows were hung
with black velvet drapes, and the panes were covered with stained-glass Contact
paper, making the room murky even in the brightest daylight.

 
          
Colin
sat on the edge of a black plush couch, holding a cup of coffee un-tasted in
his hands. Across from him, in a high, elaborately-carved chair, sat Lucille
Thibodeaux.

 
          
Colin
had been hunting Lucille for several weeks, though he hadn't realized it until
three days ago. She was the shark he'd been looking for: the woman who had put
John Cannon on the trail of the black coven, and who might yet provide Colin
with a lead to their location.

 
          
Madame
Lucille made her living as a bogus voudoun priestess, catering to a largely
white and totally credulous clientele that felt that something so alien to
their experience was by definition superior to anything more familiar. For the
right price, Madame Lucille changed bad luck to good, crafted love charms,
lifted curses, and relayed messages from the dead, all without any more success
than could be chalked up to coincidence and a little trickery.

 
          
The
first time Colin had seen Lucille had been several years ago, when he'd been
extracting an old friend, newly widowed, from the rapacious clutches of the
phony medium. Then, he hadn't been sure how old she was. Then, she'd been a
beautiful exotic young woman, dressed in a theatrical gypsy fashion and wearing
armloads of bargain-counter jewelry.

 
          
Today
she looked every year of her age and more. Her old-ivory skin now had a sallow
greyish undertone, and she hadn't bothered to put on makeup to see him. She'd
greeted him at the door in a pink chenille bathrobe, conducting him into her
sitting room with what seemed a laborious parody of her former charm. In the
harsh light of day, she had the gaunt, raddled aspect of a cancer victim. Even
the
tignon
wrapped around her head looked faintly dingy.

 
          
"What
you want wid Lucille, hahn? I tell you before, M'sieur, I doan' fix curses no
more, me." Lucille spoke
—
when she remembered
—
with a fetching French
accent. But when she was upset or afraid, her native inflections
—
a thick and almost
unintelligible Acadian
patois
—
overwhelmed her speech.

 
          
She
was very afraid now.

 
          
"Lucille
nobody special,
cher.
Lots worse people out dere. I jus' give dem what
dey ask for, me. You are a ver' bad man, M'sieur, to bodder me so."

 
          
"Now,
Lucille, you know I'm not upset with you this time. I want to help you. Help
me, and I
can
help you." All of them, Colin thought resignedly,
protested their innocence even before they were accused, almost as if they
couldn't help themselves. And since Lucille had urged this meeting, her
protestations were doubly ridiculous.

 
          
The
Creole woman sipped at her coffee. Her hands shook, rattling the cup against
the saucer, and beads of perspiration dotted her forehead despite the winter
weather outside.

 
          
"I
should never 'ave talk to dat man," she said fiercely. She shook her head,
and her earrings flashed below her white
tignon.
"He was poison,
dat one
—
poison for Lucille."

 
          
"You
spoke to John Cannon, you told me that over the phone," Colin prompted. He
already knew some of Lucille's story, both from others he'd talked to in the
past several days and from the conversation he'd had with Lucille to set up
this meeting.

 
          
"He
pay me to," she said simply. "He say he want to do a book about my
life, so dat I get famous an' be on television an' all. An' he want to know
about de dark forces dat I do battle wid, and dose who worship dem. An' so I
tell him about dat, too."

 
          
"But
they found out that you'd talked
—
told Cannon about them," Colin prompted her. He could
afford no mistakes, nor to leave any question unasked. He suspected that
Lucille would be too frightened to meet with him twice. And if what she'd
hinted at was true, Cannon was in more immediate danger than Colin had
suspected.

 
          
"Dat
girl, she tell dem, I t'ink. She crazy in de head, her! She say she want to
get
free of dem, and den she go running back to dem again, I bet!"

 
          
Slowly
Colin coaxed the whole story out of her, verifying each statement carefully as
he went. It had begun months before Cannon's lecture at the Sorcery Shoppe,
when a woman named Sandra Jacquet came to Lucille, wanting protection.

 
          
"An'
she doan' tell me from what, her, not at firs', so I give her dis charm to wear
an' charge her fifty dollar, an' de nex' week she come back to me an' say, it
work not so good, an' dere dese t'ing in her apartment, an' can I come an'
exorcise de place. So I do dis t'ing
—
a good job; de ingredient,
dey cos' me
 
forty dollar. It take
me t'ree hour, an she say it a good t'ink she fin' me before somet'ing worse
happen. But den I start having . . . de bad dream."

 
          
"Is
this the girl?" Colin asked, pulling a small photo out of his pocket.

 
          
Lucille
took the photo in trembling hands and peered at it in the room's dim light.
"Dat her, I t'ink. Where she at now, her?"

 
          
Colin
put the photo back into his pocket without answering. He did not think that it
would help Lucille's composure to know that her client was currently an
unclaimed body in the city morgue. The pieces of her dismembered and mutilated
body
—
most
of them, anyway
—
had been found stuffed into garbage bags and scattered over
most of a city block.

 
          
It
was lucky
—
if that was truly the word
—
that the occult symbols that
had been branded and carved into her both before and after death had caused
Lieutenant Martin Becket of the Occult Crimes Unit to call Colin in on the
case. Just as it was fortunate that the police had been able to get a fairly
recent photo of Sandra, because it had been impossible to take an ID photo from
what they found of the corpse.

 
          
"Tell
me about Sandra, Lucille. Why did she come to you? What did she want
—
exactly?"

 
          
"I
don' know how she fin' me, M'sieu, but she wan' what dey all do. She want
Lucille to lift de hoodoo. An' at first', everyt'ing work out jus' fine."

 
          
Which
meant, Colin understood, that Sandra Jacquet was rich, and more than willing to
pay
—
lavishly
—
for protection, without
inquiring too closely into her mentor's bona fides. At least at first. But
after a few unsuccessful "purification" sessions, Sandra had become
unsatisfied with the results for which she was paying. And, finding that her
usual tricks were not satisfying her wealthy and openhanded client, Madame
Lucille made her first mistake. She did an afternoon's research at the New York
Public Library and decided that | what was needed to lift Sandra Jacquet's
curse was a seance.

 
          
It
took Lucille almost two weeks to talk Sandra into it, but the girl was
terrified
—
and, Colin gathered, the nebulous problems she was
experiencing were getting worse
—
so Sandra Jacquet finally succumbed to Lucille's coaxing
and parted with the $300 that the faux psychic said was required to buy the
necessary materials for the ritual.

 
          
In
fact, Lucille had pocketed the bulk of the money as usual, and spent only a few
dollars on colored candles, oregano, and a Ouija board from FAO Schwarz. But
something she had not counted on had happened at the "seance";
something terrible enough to drive Lucille away from her plump half-plucked
pigeon. Madame Lucille wouldn't
—
or couldn't
—
tell Colin what had happened that April night, but her
hands shook and her voice quivered as she recounted the moment at which the
planchette had taken on a cold life of its own beneath her fingertips.

 
          
She
broke off her narrative at that point, taking a cigarette out of the onyx box
on her coffee table and lighting it with shaking fingers.

 
          
"An'
what it say den, nobody know about Lucille but her! So den I t'ink . . ."
There was a long pause. Lucille sucked smoke into her lungs and blew it out in
a harsh exhalation.

 
          
"I
t'ink maybe dis girl, she too much trouble to keep aroun', her." Lucille
shrugged.

 
          
After
that, Colin gathered, Lucille had refused to take Sandra's calls or to see her
when Sandra came to the apartment. And eventually, to Lucille's great relief,
Sandra had stopped calling. Colin wondered if she had stopped because she was
dead, or whether she had found some other equally helpless rescuer.

 
          
"But
de dreams don' stop, M'sieu. An I dream Mam'selle Jacquet, she dead but still
alive some'ow, alive an' in torment. An den I hear of dis man, an' I t'ink
maybe he can help me because he know all about de hoodoo an' stuff."

 
          
Colin
knew this wasn't the reason she'd agreed to speak to Cannon
—
this part of the tale was a
pretty story made up for Colin's benefit. Undoubtedly, Madame Lucille had
contacted Jock Cannon out of sheer avarice. Cannon paid for his interviews,
Colin knew that much by now. And after all, by the time she'd talked to him,
the night of the seance had then been several weeks in the past, and nothing
more of a truly inexplicable nature had happened since. Most people in those
circumstances, Colin knew from sad experience, would rather simply concoct a
soothing explanation to cover the uncanny events, and would even forget about
them in time, rather than continue to live with awareness of the uncanny.