HEX (23 page)

“No, this came with a subscription to
Autoweek,
” Blanchard said absently. “There, I got it.” He turned the screen toward his followers. It showed a karaoke hymn on YouTube, and shrill organ music emerged from the little speaker. But because he was outside and far away from a Wi-Fi spot there was a delay between the image and the sound, so that the words kept flashing up too late, and the people who were singing along—and there were certainly quite a few—couldn't keep up with the melody.

If your Lord should heareth this,
Griselda thought,
He'd wish he had never started in on His Creation.

Not much later, Blanchard and his congregation were chased away by members of the HEX staff. Things remained restless all afternoon, and at five-thirty, when the last of the townsfolk had finally left and Griselda Holst had flipped the sign on the front door to
CLOSED
, she felt both drained and relieved.

*   *   *

THAT EVENING, IN
the comforting twilight of her little home at the back of the butcher shop, Griselda did something she hadn't done in twenty years: she medicated herself with drink. Not beer; Jim had always drunk beer, and Griselda thought it stank of barley and sweat and Jim's grasping hands. Griselda drank wine. And good wine, too. She had bought the bottle the year before at Market & Deli to save for guests, but no guests ever came, and now she remembered that she had hidden it under the meat cooler so Jaydon wouldn't polish it off. Griselda despised alcohol in principle, but if ever there was a good time to violate her regime, it was tonight. Because just before dinner, as she was stirring a big panful of hash, the thought occurred to her so naturally that it must have been there all afternoon, slumbering:
When are you going to butcher something for her … when are you going to bring her your blood offering?

There was a certain logical balance to the idea that was impossible to deny. Griselda had given the witch pâté. She had given her a dead calf's head. The witch had taken a live dog. So apparently it hadn't been enough: Katherine wanted a live offering.

Another person probably would have wriggled out of their duty by counting Arthur Roth as an offering, but, in an odd way, Griselda was too pragmatic for that. Here, too, there was an undeniable balance: Griselda had begged the witch to visit Roth and finish him off; and though she'd wound up doing it by herself, wasn't there a certain poetic justice in the fact that she'd done it with a broomstick? But it was no offering; Griselda understood that. She had acted solely on her own behalf. With every blow to that miserable, mutilated head, she had further freed herself from Jim and gotten even with her past. The intense aching of the muscles in her arms, which prevented her from raising them above shoulder level even today, was a liberation.

Griselda sat in her chair at the window and poured the wine into a tumbler. The bitter taste made her wince, but after a while it settled in her throat and didn't seem so bad. She was a robust woman, but she was not accustomed to alcohol, and halfway through the second glass she began to feel woozy and her thoughts started to run free.

Jim used to slaughter cattle, mainly for small farmers from the Highlands who would bring him a calf and a couple of lambs each year. In the back of his workshop he had an old shackle-and-hoist sling, a manual grinder for making lamb sausage with hog casings, a cold chamber for aging, a smoking cabinet, and a curing bath for ham. After his death, Griselda had sold all of it—she ordered everything from the wholesaler's these days. The workshop still smelled a lot like blood, but that was the smell of metal and spilled oil from Jaydon's bike. The Holst butcher shop was no longer a high-quality establishment, but at least she had been able to keep the business running.

And although Griselda didn't have her husband's expertise in slaughtering, she knew how it was done.

What are you getting yourself into, Griselda? You really want to sacrifice a cow to her? You know how much damn legislation there used to be from when Jim was always whining about it. First of all, you can't transport cattle yourself. An inspector has to come to check everything before you can even sharpen your knife. Then a tester comes. You think they're going to check the box for “sacrifice” on their stupid forms? If you do this illegally, you could lose your license, and if Katherine isn't satisfied, you'll lose a whole lot more.…

But did any of this really matter, or was she listening to the voice of cowardice? The same voice had told her not to leave Jim, and look how that had turned out. Besides, she wouldn't do it in the workshop anyway.

It would have to happen somewhere up in the woods.

Systematically, she began running through all the possibilities. She knew a couple of local farmers who might sell her a calf under the table, and some of them still did their own slaughtering, but Griselda regarded them as her competitors. She didn't want to go down that road. Then she remembered all the hoo-ha on TV last week about the Muslims in the city and their ritual slaughtering business. They had just had their Ramadan, or whatever you called those weird things they do where they slit the throats of goats and let the blood spray all over their mosque. Surely those people could slip her a goat, Griselda thought scornfully. But she'd rather give her own blood than meddle with
them,
and that was over a week ago, anyway. They were probably all out of goats.

You're forgetting the most important thing. What do you think people will say when they see you walking through town with a goat on a rope? “There's that Wacky Griselda. What's she up to now?” There's no denying that you've always taken advantage of their pity, but if they suspect that you're getting mixed up with the witch, they'll make you their scapegoat.

Thanks for nothing,
she thought, filled with contempt.
I'd be doing them a favor!

And what about all those damn cameras?

Griselda stood up and grabbed the back of her chair. The living room was spinning around her in a wide, nauseating motion. She stumbled to the kitchen and hung her head over the sink, breaking out in a sweat.

She had to abandon the idea. It was crazy, and far too dangerous.

There was a knock at the back door.

For a moment she froze at the counter, unable to think, overcome by a single thought that filled her mind with acidic terror: It was Katherine. Someone had opened her eyes, and she'd come to demand her sacrifice. Her eyelids would be frayed from the severed threads, and she would seize Griselda with her dead gaze, whispering because she had failed in her duty.…

She turned off the tap and staggered to the back door. With waxen fingers she pushed aside the old-fashioned lace curtain and peered out. In the dim light of the outside lamp she saw not Katherine but Jaydon, waiting impatiently with his hands in his pockets. Griselda tried to laugh, unlocked the door with trembling hands, and opened it.

“Sorry, I didn't have my key,” Jaydon mumbled.

“You look terrible! What happened?” Griselda stared at Jaydon's face, hidden in the shadows. His right eye was swollen and had turned an ugly purple.

“Got into a fight,” he said.

“Got into a fight? With who?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

It was as if time had come full circle. Jaydon's black eye. Arthur Roth. The violent collision Griselda had had with her son here in this kitchen. Jim's fists beating the nine-year-old boy black and blue. Jaydon had seen and experienced more than enough domestic violence; one look at his black eye and Griselda felt a rancid belch rising that filled her nose with the sour smell of alcohol.

“Honey, they beat you up, let me see…”

Jaydon waved her off before she could touch him. “Mom, it was my own fault, okay?” His voice broke. “I said something stupid.”

“But that doesn't give them any right to lace into you like that, does it?”

Jaydon muttered something, flung the big blue Market & Deli shopping bag containing his gym clothes into a corner, and ran upstairs, where he slammed the door behind him. Griselda watched him leave, dismayed, and stood indecisively in the kitchen. After a few minutes, she threw the rest of her wine down the sink and poured herself a glass of milk. Halfway through the second glass she realized what kind of impression Jaydon had made on her: the impression that he was scared to death.

She stared at the Market & Deli shopping bag, and suddenly she knew what she had to do.

*   *   *

FORTY MINUTES LATER,
hidden away in her raincoat and with the shopping bag stuffed under her arm, she crossed the lawn and headed for the driveway. A strong wind had blown up in the course of the evening. She drove with enthusiasm—to put it mildly—swinging way out at the first bend and jumping the curb at the next as she made her way to Deep Hollow Road. By the time Griselda's taillights flashed an hour and a half later as she turned her old Dodge back into her driveway, there was little left of her erratic driving style. Somewhere during that ride in the dark, Griselda had completely sobered up.

Clutching the shopping bag to her bosom, she went to the workshop. When she came out another half hour later—it was close to one o'clock by then—the shopping bag was sewn shut with needle and thread, except for the far side, where a thick bunch of peacock feathers protruded. These she stuffed under her coat.

Griselda would bring Katherine the most prestigious offering that lay in her power to procure … and that could stay hidden in a Market & Deli shopping bag.

Confidently, she had driven down Popolopen Drive to the petting zoo near the Presbyterian church in Monroe. It was a modest little park with some goats, some ducks, and a peacock. She parked the Dodge in a dark spot between two streetlights and crossed the street. Then she peered through the chain-link fence. No peacock in sight. A car approached and Griselda jumped behind a tree. Frantically, she wondered what to do next. She couldn't just show up with a stupid duck in her arms. Twenty minutes passed—she was losing precious time. Then she remembered what she had read back home when she had Googled “how to catch a peacock”: that peacocks often slept in trees.

She looked up and saw tail feathers hanging from the shadow of the big oak near the pond.

Idiot!
she said to herself.
If you're such a hero, don't just stand there dawdling!

And so she glanced around to make sure she wasn't being observed, threw the shopping bag over the fence, and hoisted herself up. Griselda, who had her stature and overtaxed arms working against her, but the power of the simpleminded to her advantage, somehow succeeded and landed in the bird droppings with a thud. She scrambled up on her weak, trembling legs, brushed off her scratched hands, and got to work.

First, she knocked the peacock out of the tree with a large rock.

The bird ran off amid piercing shrieks. Griselda pressed herself against the tree trunk with her heart in her mouth, convinced that half of the town of Monroe was now wide awake. The racket the bird made was excruciating, not to mention highly unbecoming for such a prestigious robe of blue feathers. Griselda hoped Katherine wouldn't find it irritating.

Ten minutes later, she stole out of the shadows, the blanket from the shopping bag spread out and ready. The bird stood in front of the mesh wire eyeing her suspiciously. When Griselda got closer, it hurried away, dragging its tail feathers behind it like the train of a gown. Griselda chased the peacock into a corner of the zoo. If anyone happened to come along now, she'd be screwed: There was no way she could pass herself off as the owner, and if she were to be taken to the police, she'd have to explain the meaning of all this. But Griselda had such blind faith in Katherine that she didn't even look around. She tossed the blanket over the bird and threw her full weight on top of it.

Back in Black Spring, she hurried past the enclosure of the trailhead behind the former Hopewell residence, at the foot of Bog Meadow Hill. She shivered at the prospect of having to enter the woods, where pitch-darkness reigned and where she would be alone with the wind and with
her
. But Griselda forced herself not to think about it and continued on her way. The peacock in the shopping bag was silent. Griselda was afraid she might have broken its wing in the assault; it had made a noise as if she had stepped on a box of eggs. The bird had moaned balefully, but halfway through the journey back home, it fell asleep. Every now and then Griselda assured herself that it was still alive by sticking her hand inside the bag to feel the movement of its delicate little body.

Making her way through the ink black night was madness, but finally she found Katherine just where the HEXApp said she'd be: in the woods behind the fields of Ackerman's Corner. By studying the map, she had had a vague idea of which trails Katherine would be standing near, but Griselda didn't want to risk taking the trails because they would be under extra surveillance now, even at night. So she worked her way through underbrush, so dense that she had to turn back in places. The offering in her arms grew heavier with every step. The smell of mud and mold and forest decay was almost unbearable. Griselda's plump body screamed with pain, and she panted with exhaustion. She was almost about to give up when Katherine suddenly appeared right in front of her, barely detectable in the opaque darkness.

Griselda's blood froze.

“You startled me, Katherine,” she said, her mouth dry. “It's me, Griselda.” The sound of her own voice in the darkness made her hair stand on end, and it cost tremendous force of will not to give in to the primitive urge to turn tail and run. The witch stood there, a motionless black silhouette, everything around her suffused with death.

Griselda glanced around. She was in the middle of a group of tall, old pine trees. She kept telling herself that the bewitching of the creeks wasn't any more ominous here than it was anywhere else, that she only had to walk down the hill to be back in familiar town environs, away from the heathen, malevolent power that seemed to linger here. Katherine had come to this spot, driven by ancient instinct. The witch would be good to her, if Griselda was good to the witch.