HEX (18 page)

“No,” Pete said. “But at least have a doctor draw up an official death certificate. He is a human being, for God's sake.”

A loud bang thundered through Town Hall. Everyone winced and jerked their heads forward. Colton Mathers had pounded on the podium with an old-fashioned wooden gavel, and fire was blazing from his eyes. “In … this … house … no one will take the name of the Lord in vain,” Mathers spoke with all the authority the mayor lacked. “The Emergency Decree says: What comes from Black Spring stays in Black Spring.”

“That's not what the Emergency Decree says—it's what Katherine says,” Pete mumbled as he sat down, but no one heard him except Steve and perhaps his wife, Mary.

“But let us demonstrate that our decision-making process is indeed democratic and that everyone here is heard by putting these two gentlemen's motion to the vote.”

Steve cursed silently. Mathers knew puritanical stubbornness would prevail over common sense, and he'd even managed to give the matter a righteous twist. Pete knew it, too, and kept quiet. Suddenly a grotesque image arose in Steve's mind: Colton Mathers and Griselda Holst wrapping Arthur Roth's corpse in a duct-tape-sealed Hefty bag and dragging him up Mount Misery on a homemade bier of broomsticks, to take him to his anonymous and dishonorable final resting place.

The old councilman showed no emotion at all when he gave the floor back to the mayor: “Well, the question is, are we going to give Arthur Roth official recognition by having a doctor draw up a death certificate? All those in favor, raise your right hand.”

Admittedly, some hands went up, but Steve didn't need to turn to see that they were few—marginal, even. Of all the Council members, only Grim had irritably raised his hand.

“Looks like an open-and-shut case to me, so the motion is rejected. If no one has any objections”—the mayor quickly glanced around the hall as a formality—“I would now like to bring the Council's motion to a vote: The Council moves to give Arthur Roth a dishonorable burial, without a tombstone and outside the cemetery. All those in favor, raise your right hand.”

With a loud rustling of clothes and cracking of elbow joints, the hands went into the air. A few necks turned triumphantly to the group clustering in row six, who remained seated with their arms crossed. Steve didn't return their glances, but he looked over his shoulder and his eyes met those of Burt and Bammy Delarosa, who looked absolutely bewildered.

“The motion is passed,” Colton Mathers said, bringing the gavel down with a loud bang.

*   *   *

“IT'S A GOOD
thing you never started a practice in town,” Jocelyn said, “or you would have lost half your patients tonight.” They were lying together in bed and listening to the wind, rapid and fierce. Temperatures had dropped below freezing.

“They're a bunch of medieval religious fanatics,” Steve said. “They don't need a GP. They need a barber-surgeon.”

“It's the religious fanatics we've got to live with, Steve.”

He rolled over toward her, yawning, and said, “Most of 'em could use a little bloodletting. I happily volunteer.”

Jocelyn began to giggle uncontrollably and kissed him. “You did make someone proud tonight,” she said, after pulling away. Steve raised his eyebrows and she continued: “Tyler. I saw how he looked at you. He really admired the way you stood up for your ideals, Doctor. I think you both needed that, after the fuss about Laurie.”

I hope so,
Steve thought.
Maybe it'll clear the air for a while, but it won't wipe away his worries. He's just come face-to-face with the fact that the situation is never going to change. The puppet show he witnessed tonight only confirms it. And it's at odds with everything he believes in.

They made love and fell asleep in each other's arms. Steve dreamt that Katherine van Wyler appeared in their bedroom, a dark monolith amid the shadows, except her eyes were open and gleaming with demonic life. As soon as he was awake enough to realize what he had seen, he shot bolt upright and kicked off the blankets. Jocelyn was fast asleep on her side of the bed. Steve felt that his eyes were bulging and his upper body was covered in cold sweat.

Of course Katherine wasn't there, but he got out of bed and walked to the landing even so. Katherine had appeared in their bedroom twice during their marriage to Black Spring. The first time, before Matt was born, she had been standing in the bay window at night, as if she were looking outside. Steve and Jocelyn had stayed in bed, paralyzed, observing her as you might observe deadly animals from a wildlife observation hut. The second time had been a few years ago, when she'd stood at their bedside for three days and three nights. Jocelyn had insisted they sleep on the couch.

Steve checked out the entire house, including the downstairs and the garage. He turned all the lights on—if he were to bump into her in the dark, he knew he would scream. He checked all the doors. That was pointless, but it still made him feel more comfortable. The house was quiet, deserted. Only Fletcher was there, looking up at him curiously from his basket and whining softly.

Christ, go back to bed,
he said to himself. He shivered from the cold, spooked by his own delusions.

Nevertheless, he had to stifle a cry when the wind blew a branch against the bay window, and without thinking twice he dove into bed. Steve bit his lip at his own stupidity and soon fell asleep.

 

TWELVE

TYLER CAME DOWNSTAIRS
at a quarter past eight the next morning. The other family members were already at the breakfast table, Matt with bags under his eyes and an open history book at his elbow, Jocelyn still in her bathrobe. The smell of fresh buns from the oven usually made his mouth water, but today it left him cold. He pulled up a chair without saying a word and began chewing apathetically on a cracker.

“Wow, someone had a good night's sleep,” Matt commented.

“Cut it, douche bag,” Tyler snapped back.

Jocelyn put her knife down on her plate and said, “Hey, come on, guys.…”

“All I asked was how he slept,” Matt protested. “Don't be so touchy, dude. Jeez…”

“One big happy family,” Steve said. “Hurry up, guys, or you'll miss your bus.”

“It's Staff Development Day,” Tyler said. “Forgot to mention it.”

“For real?” Matt cried out. “How did
you
get so lucky?”

“It's for high school, not junior high.” The lie was out before he knew it. Until that moment he hadn't realized that he was planning on playing hooky. It troubled him, being able to lie so easily to his dad, especially since he didn't feel even slightly guilty about it. Of course you didn't let your parents in on everything, but something essential had changed in their relationship since he disavowed his father's one important question:
You haven't got something else up your sleeve, I hope?
With that, he had set out on a course that he could no longer easily depart from.

“Good. Then you can take the dog out,” Steve said.

Tyler shrugged and pulled another cracker from the box. Matt hugged Jocelyn and Steve good-bye and left for the bus stop. When the back door slammed, Jocelyn grumbled, but she didn't chase after him. Instead, she poured herself another cup of coffee. Everything was fine: same shit, different day. Suddenly Tyler felt the need to throw up. He put his cracker down. Sweat burst from his pores and his stomach went into a spasm.

You haven't got something else up your sleeve, I hope?

Nothing was fine. Yesterday's events were pressing down on his guts like a rock. When the meeting began and Jaydon still hadn't checked in or shown up, Tyler was initially furious. They needed him to raise their complaint about privacy and Internet policies, since he was the only one in the group who was of age. Tyler understood that the situation was different now that someone had died, but at least Jaydon could have responded to their zillions of apps so the others could have come up with a plan B.

Tyler had always felt that everything he was doing for
Open Your Eyes
was based on common sense. But was there any common sense in the desperate, shattered feeling that had come over him after the grim opening of the Council meeting and the vote on Arthur Roth? In no time, his morale had hit rock-bottom. Did he really believe that the same people who had screamed,
Burn the motherfucker!
and
Offer him up to the Wicker Woman!
would be willing to pass a positive judgment on something as stupid as their right to Twitter and Facebook? It was ludicrous. For the first time, Tyler realized that bigger forces were at play here.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness.

But he
was
afraid. And every time he wondered whether trying to change those forces was a good idea, he thought of Jaydon in the woods jabbing the witch with his stick, and the thought that had occurred to Tyler at that very moment, suddenly, out of nowhere:
Something's gonna happen here, dude
.
Something pretty creepy, I think
.

No more bullshit with the witch, no YouTube clips, no crazy ideas.

They won't do the firing squad anymore. But corporal punishments are still written into the Emergency Decree.

We may be fucked up here, but that's a whole nother level of fucked-upness.

Welcome to Black Spring.

“You okay?” Steve asked with a frown. “You look feverish, maybe a bit under the weather.”

Tyler blinked. “I'm fine,” he said, and struggled to put a smile on his face. “Not really awake yet, I guess.”

He left the table, ran the last few steps to the bathroom, and hung over the toilet, but nothing came up. Tyler splashed water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror with bloodshot eyes.
Let it go,
he thought.
Let them all go to hell. It's none of your business.

But it was. And if he didn't open his mouth, who would?

Back in his room, he turned on the radio and cranked the volume up to full blast when he recognized a Train song. The stirring melody raised his spirits a little. He apped Lawrence to ask if he was on the bus, and Lawrence apped back that his dad had been easy on him after last night's meeting and had called him in sick, so they met at nine-thirty at the boulders in front of their houses. Fletcher jumped up on Lawrence, wagging his tail and leaving muddy marks all over his jacket.

“Hey, calm down, boy!” he said. He patted the dog's head and Fletcher barked. Tyler suggested they go into the woods, but Lawrence said, “Haven't you heard? The witch is at Burak's house.”

“Burak's?”

“Yeah, that's what the HEXApp said this morning. I haven't heard from Burak, but usually his parents let him off after the Council meetings.”

They decided to walk in that direction. The Şayer family lived in Lower South near Popolopen Lake, in a house on Morris Avenue. Burak's parents were Turkish and were among the tiny group of practicing Muslims in Black Spring. Tyler had always been puzzled about how that influenced their attitude toward the witch, but Burak usually just shrugged if anyone asked him about it. As far as Tyler knew, Burak himself didn't go to the mosque in Newburgh, but that didn't keep Jaydon from taking him down a peg or two with jokes of a highly politically incorrect nature.

They had just reached the town square, where the festival cleanup activities were in full swing. One of the town workers was spraying the big black stain of ash at the intersection with a high-pressure hose when Tyler got a message from Burak:

Jaydon here, trippin. Pls come asap!

They ran the last half mile to Burak's house with Fletcher in the lead, and Tyler felt sick, on the brink of losing control.

“Dude's gonna go too far one of these days,” Lawrence panted.

Yeah, and leave him to it. It's none of your business,
Tyler thought again. But that wasn't true, and if things got out of hand, he was partly responsible.

The Şayers' car was gone, which meant Burak's parents weren't home. They crossed the lawn and went around to the backyard, using Fletcher's leash to tie the dog to one of the poplars. Evidently Fletcher hadn't yet noticed that the witch was nearby because he began to sniff the hedge energetically. Tyler tried the back door. It was open.

“Hello?” he called. Lawrence followed him through the kitchen when the bead curtain leading to the living room clattered open. It was Burak. His eyes looked wild, bordering on panic.

“Tyler, you have to…”

But then Lawrence saw it, and his voice sounded like a sob. “Oh, Jesus fuck…”

It was a surrealistic nightmare. The living room behind Burak shimmered in the semidarkness because the drapes were closed and heavy with a spicy odor, the way you might imagine the mist in
The Arabian Nights
to smell. Tyler saw immediately where it was coming from: Long incense sticks were burning on the coffee table and mantelpiece. And next to them was Katherine. Usually there were no overt religious symbols in the Şayer household, but now countless amulets dangled around the witch like blue peacock eyes, tied to lengths of string tacked to the ceiling. In an eerie repetition of last week's episode in the woods, Jaydon was standing in front of Katherine with a stick in his hands, only now there was an X-Acto knife duct-taped to the tip. He had used it to cut away the rags of her dress, which hung down like a drawbridge to expose Katherine van Wyler's dangling, pale purple right tit.

A flash of bright white light as Jaydon took a picture with his iPhone. The flash revealed it all, more than Tyler ever wanted to see, burning onto his retina the horrifying image of Katherine's black nipple on the soft, dead vaulting of her breast. It wasn't sexy, as some strange, exotic breasts could be. It was repulsive, obscene. And there was more: Jaydon hadn't cut carefully. There were scratches in her bare flesh. A drop of dark blood was slowly leaking from one of them.