The Hungry Dead (25 page)

Pivoting sharply, she headed for the front of the house, crossing the threshold of a large, elegant dining room—only to be brought up short upon seeing a young woman in a white dress sitting at the dining table, engaged in a game of solitaire. This strange young lady, about Nancy's age, with comely features and black hair worn in a tight bun, laid a playing card face up on the table and gazed at Nancy placidly.

Nancy stammered, “I . . . uh . . . thought nobody was home. I was calling for help. Why didn't you hear me? Do you have a telephone?”

The young woman did not reply to any of this, as Nancy's momentum carried her into the room.

“Are you deaf?” Nancy wondered out loud. Still getting no reply, she darted her eyes beyond the woman at the card game and saw into the next· room and immediately let out an ear-shattering scream. In frozen horror she stared into the living room, where two mangled corpses were hanging from the cross-beamed ceiling. The bodies were those of men, clothed only in bloody underwear. Each corpse had four or five knives protruding from various parts of the anatomy, which explained the absence of knives in the kitchen.

Because she was so horror-struck by the sight of the dangling bodies, at first Nancy didn't see that the demented man in bibbed coveralls was in the living room, also, standing just behind and to the right of the corpses. He had in his hand a large butcher knife, which he was sharpening on a whetstone. He smiled at Nancy as she continued screaming, terror rooting her in her tracks.

The young woman at the dining table played another card, calmly laying it face up, red on black, as if nothing of unusual interest was going on around her.

Nancy bolted and ran, the man with the butcher knife taking a step or two after her. She unbolted the kitchen door and ran out into the backyard—straight into the arms of the two deputies, who instantly pounced upon her, wrestling her to the ground and pinning her arms behind her back. While the deputies were busy subduing Nancy, a hand reached out and pulled the kitchen door shut and the man with the butcher knife did not come out of the house.

Hauled to her feet by the two deputies, Nancy struggled and babbled hysterically. “Ohh! Please . . . let me go! I . . . you killed my friends—both innocent! The
real
murderers are in
there
!” She stared at the closed door of the house, her eyes flashing wildly.

“Well, now,” said the sergeant, “let's have a look. Got to investigate . . . see if this young lady is telling the truth.”

He and the other deputy began dragging Nancy up onto the back porch. She screamed and dug her heels into the ground, trying with all her might to resist their pulling her along. “No! Please!” she cried. “I don't want to go in there!”

The corporal said to the sergeant, “She's stark-raving mad, I'm afraid. Doesn't want to come along with us and prove her innocence. Maybe she's lying.”

The two deputies pushed open the back door and dragged Nancy into the house. She fought back, grabbing onto the doorframe, but they methodically punched her hands loose. Finally, they knocked her down and pulled her across the floor by her ankles—through the dining room, where the young woman playing cards looked up disinterestedly—and into the living room, where the two corpses hung from the rafters.

The man in bibbed coveralls chortled, watching the girl he had spied on yesterday being dragged helplessly over the living room carpet. At the far end of the large room were three wire cages, of the sort used to cage and transport show dogs. In one of the cages was a young woman, wild and disheveled looking in her underwear, who cowered in her cage as Nancy was being dragged across the floor. The other two cages were empty.

The man in bibbed coveralls, still chortling, moved to one of the empty cages and opened the door for the two deputies, who were maneuvering Nancy into position. As she lay flat on her back in front of the opened cage, one of the men—the corporal—straddled her and laughed and started pulling off her jacket and blouse. When she resisted, he slapped her face. The man in bibbed coveralls looked on, leering and chortling, swishing his sharp butcher knife through the air above Nancy's head.

The other girl cowered and cried in her cage while Nancy was being beaten and undressed down to her bra and panties, the three men flinging her garments around the living room. The undressing completed, Nancy was forced into a cage and the wire door was locked. The man in bibbed coveralls pranced insanely around the cage, laughing and grinning, prodding Nancy from one side to the other by jabbing at her with his long-bladed knife. She alternately screamed and cowered, trying to avoid being stabbed. For a time the two deputies enjoyed this game, elbowing each other in the ribs with amusement.

But at last the sergeant spoke up: “Enough!
Enough,
Cyrus! Look at the mess you made in here!” He pointed disapprovingly at the hanged bodies. “We have got to get this house cleaned up. Mama doesn't like it like this. You know she's got a bug for keeping things tidy.”

The two deputies pushed the man in bibbed coveralls ahead of them out of the room, and, fear-ridden, Nancy watched them go. For the first time she noticed the holes in the backs of the deputies' shirts, streaked with dried blood, and she knew for sure now that the real deputies were hanging from the ceiling. She shuddered. Her situation was hopeless. She had fallen into the hands of a quartet of homicidal maniacs. In her agony she broke down sobbing, throwing herself down onto a ragged, musty quilt on the bottom of her cage, and in a while, due to exhaustion and shock, she lost consciousness. Her last thoughts were of Hank and Tom.

The girl in the other cage watched her sleep.

In the next room, Luke Barnes, still in his deputy's uniform, stood before his sister, Cynthia. She was nineteen now. It had been ten years since they had killed their first demon. Cynthia, eerily pretty and pale, her pallid complexion accentuated by her bun of coal-black hair, looked up from her game of solitaire.

Luke said, “Sister, you've. got to help us straighten up the house. For Mama's sake. Or else Mama is going to be mad.”

Cynthia eyed her brother sternly. “You had better go up and talk to her, Luke. You know darn well she's going to chastise you for killing that other girl ahead of time. Mama told us we're supposed to have three, for the Easter services.”

“I'll have another by Good Friday,” Luke promised. “I'm not about to let the whole congregation down.”

“But now we've got to go out and catch us another one,” Cynthia complained. “And catching them is the dangerous part—people are liable to get wise. You and Cyrus and Abraham know that. How many times did Mama tell you?”

Chagrined, Luke said, “I'll go up and talk to Mama soon as the living room is cleaned up. We're not in any trouble yet. Mama won't yell at me for no reason—you wait and see.”

 

When Nancy came to, opening her eyes slowly and recoiling from the shock of her surroundings, she found the girl in the other cage looking at her piteously. “My name is Gwen Davis,” the other girl whispered. “They killed my sister.”

Gwen stifled a sob. She was about twenty-five years old, probably attractive, if not so beaten up and scared. Her brown hair was plaited into two pigtails that made her look girlish, so that you had to look closely to get an idea of her true age. One of the pigtails was tied with red ribbon, but the other ribbon had been lost, no doubt in a struggle with her captors, and the ribbonless pigtail was coming undone.

“The two deputies . . . the
real
ones,” Gwen said, “maybe could've saved us . . . but they're hanging from the rafters. You and I have to pull together . . . figure a way to get out of here . . . before they kill
us.”

“How are we going to do that?” Nancy said hopelessly, and she started to sob, burying herself in the ragged quilt on the bottom of her cage.

Luke, Abraham, and Cyrus clomped into the room. Nancy kept her head and eyes buried and continued to cry softly while they went about the business of cutting down the bodies and getting them out of there. Luke and Abraham were in jeans now.

Luke backed his pickup truck out of the garage and kept it parked in the driveway with the engine idling. Abraham and Cyrus came out the front door carrying the body of one of the slain deputies, wrapped in a blanket, and heaved it into the bed of the truck. In a little while, after going back into the house, they came out with the second body, also wrapped up, and laid it into the truck, too. Abraham and Cyrus then squeezed into the cab of the pickup truck and Luke backed it out of the driveway.

Cynthia came out on the porch and watched the truck go, churning up dust, then went back into the house, shutting the front door behind her. She started cleaning up the living room, every now and then glancing at Nancy and Gwen.

“Let us go,” Gwen tried.

But Cynthia only chuckled.

“But you're a young girl like us,” Gwen said. “Surely you must have some feelings for what we're going through. How can you condone torture and . . . imprisonment?”

Cynthia came over to Gwen's cage. Gwen looked up at her, thinking how young and pretty she was, her figure so lithe and girlish; it just didn't seem possible that she could be as evil and perverted as her brothers—except for the intense gleam of her black eyes, which leant her face a scary kind of radiance despite the paleness of her complexion. Looking down at Gwen, she said, “I'm not like
you.
Don't ever try to tell me that. I have special powers. A congregation of my own. They believe in me. You'll see for yourself, come Friday at midnight, when the services start.”

“What if I believed in you, too?” Gwen asked. “Could I be part of your congregation?” She was hoping to continue a dialogue that might cause Cynthia to waver and perhaps think about letting her and Nancy go.

“It is too late for you to be saved,” said Cynthia. “A false profession of faith will not fool me.”

 

The pickup truck pulled into the camping area where Tom Riley and Hank Bennet had been shot to death. The white van was still parked there, the sleeping bags strewn all around. Luke, Cyrus, and Abraham got out of their truck and laid the bodies of the two slain deputies on the ground, on top of the cold embers of the campfire.

“Good place for a burning,” said Luke. “Nice and secluded. They couldn't have picked it better for us.”

“Burn 'em and bury what's left,” said Abraham. “Start diggin' a hole big enough to hide the leftovers, Cyrus!”

Luke and Abraham dragged over the bodies of Tom and Hank, making a pile of corpses. They covered the pile with blankets, sleeping bags, and miscellaneous gear from the van. The deputies' uniforms were thrown on the pile, too. At last Luke poured a can of gasoline over it all, then struck a match and started a bonfire, a funeral pyre. The faces of the three brothers—Luke, Cyrus, and Abraham—were highlighted weirdly by the roaring flames.

Cynthia lay in bed reading from a book entitled
The Appeal of Witchcraft,
by Dr. Morgan Drey, a professor of anthropology at New York City College:

Having come to the end of a chapter, Cynthia laid down the book and thought about the author, Dr. Morgan Drey, whom she had met at her store in Greenwich Village. He had come in to purchase books for research and artifacts he could photograph to illustrate
The Appeal of Witchcraft.
When the manuscript was published some months later, he had returned to present her with an autographed copy and ask her to let him take her to dinner. She surprised herself by saying yes.

She had not opened the store to get involved with non-believers. It had been her idea to go to New York and run a place of her own, specializing in the sale of witches' paraphernalia, potions and herbs—much like Mama's old store—so that she could meet other people with beliefs similar to her own. She did not care to meet skeptics like Morgan Drey. She wanted to use the store as a way of building her own congregation. Over a period of four years, she had been successful in developing a conclave of almost two hundred witches from various parts of the United States. Each year the services took place at midnight on Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Special rites, pulled off at considerable risk, were looked forward to by all. Some of the members of the congregation were gaining followers of their own and conducting services regularly in other states and cities. But the services in the chapel on the Barnes family estate were by far the grandest and most daring.

Morgan Drey had interviewed Cynthia for his book. She had been open with him, except where self-protection made discretion imperative, and had even told him, rather proudly, about her own congregation and the annual services conducted under her leadership. Over a sip of wine in the Italian restaurant where he had taken her, he chuckled good-naturedly. “Surely you don't really believe in all this,” he told her. “I can realize that you have to maintain avidly that you do, for the benefit of your customers. But you can tell
me
the truth. What are your private feelings?”

Her eyes met his across the table. He was a goodlooking, if scholarly, man in his late twenties. His forehead was high, and Cynthia knew this was a mark of intelligence. He had light brown hair, deepset inquisitive blue eyes, and a scrupulously trimmed goatee and mustache.

“My private beliefs are as I have said,” Cynthia told him. “I believe in my powers.”

“What
powers?” he challenged. “What proof do you have that you've ever worked any extraordinary magic?”

She clenched her teeth, her eyes flashing with annoyance. “I cannot tell you,” she said, haughtily angered.

“You mean there is nothing,” he persisted.

“I mean I can't tell you,” she uttered coldly. “These matters are not to be discussed lightly with a nonbeliever. “

“You know, you're very pretty when you get worked up,” he said, changing the subject and continuing to stare at her intently.

She knew intuitively that he liked her, and more—he wanted to get involved with her romantically; this was pleasing, but also frightening. He reached out and took her hand, but she drew it away as if it had been burned, and her cheeks flushed red from embarrassment.

“What's the matter?” he said, startled.

“Nothing. I—”

“Are you afraid of men?”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend . . . a fiancé?”

“Certainly not.”

“What do you mean, certainly not? As if the mere idea were out of the realm of possibility?”

She did not answer. He had her unsettled.

“You had better be careful, Cynthia,” he warned. “Or else these beliefs of yours will become a horrid obsession. You're much too young and pretty not to have a normal life—one free of anxiety and repression. You need to fall in love someday and have children.”

“Never,”
she said fervently. “I have other things to do which are more important.”

“Let me see you again,” he pleaded. “I'm attracted to you. I'd like a chance to change your mind, to show you another way of thinking. That mother of yours—I know you love her, but she has given you some warped ideas. And 1 believe you have a hostility toward men because you were deserted by your father ten years ago and you've never gotten over it.”

His words shook small tremors of self-doubt in Cynthia, making her angry. How dare he! What gave him the nerve to be so impertinent? She would never allow him to undermine her confidence, her commitment. Her congregation was proof of her sanctity. They worshipped her because she had inherited tremendous spiritual gifts from her grandfather and great-grandfather. She had the power of the caul, the mark of Tetragrammaton, who had chosen her to be even greater than her ancestors, the Cunning Men.

“I would appreciate it if you would never come to my store again,” she told Morgan Drey.

He immediately looked hurt, baffled, his usual aura of self-assuredness gone. She had succeeded in wounding him, instead of the other way around. The triumph was hers. She smiled at him to make his pain worse. She had to get him out of her life so she could go on leading her congregation. He was a stupid and dangerous non-believer. She did not need him. There were others who cherished her for the proper reasons. When she needed a man, or
men,
she could choose from among those who had the truest, deepest, most violent ability to please her.

What did Morgan Drey know? His book was nonsense, full of theoretical babbling. What would he think if he saw the rituals in person? He would go starkraving
mad,
his pitiful imaginings dwarfed to ridiculous pettiness by the real thing.

An extraordinary idea occurred to Cynthia: What if she could convert him? The possibility was titillating. She knew he was attracted to her; maybe there were reasons he didn't want to admit. Perhaps he wasn't as skeptical as he seemed to be. His writings about Gilles de Rais, Jack the Ripper, and the Marquis de Sade might be an outlet for a side of himself he barely understood, a potential yearning to be set free. Skeptics made the most passionate converts once they were shown the way to the actual, rather than the vicarious, indulgence of their passions. Judging from his writing, Morgan Drey seemed particularly fascinated by Elisabeth Bathory, the sixteenth-century Hungarian countess who kept hundreds of young girls chained in the dungeons beneath her castle, so she could periodically renew her own vigor and beauty by slitting the young girls' veins and bathing in their blood. What would Morgan think if he knew that some of the countess' practices would form the basis for rituals of Cynthia's devising which would commence in two days, on Good Friday, when the entire congregation had arrived?

She laid down his book and closed her eyes, shutting him out of her mind. She wondered about the girls downstairs, who were going to be unwilling contributors to her rituals. What sort of lives did they lead? Did they have boyfriends? Lovers? Were their sexual preferences normal, or bizzare?

From across the hall she could hear the muffled tones of Luke's voice droning on, talking to Mama behind her closed bedroom door: “Mama . . . I hope you've gotten it out of your head that I'm to blame for doing wrong. We didn't mean for that girl to die . . . but she went and hurt Cyrus pretty bad. And you always said he had a delicate temper. It was the girl's fault. Me and Abraham . . . we're gonna catch another girl tomorrow. We got us a van that don't belong to us . . . nobody can trace it to us. Tomorrow morning we'll take it out on the road, and we'll find us another girl, I promise. Maybe it'll be somebody young and pretty . . . maybe a virgin. Don't you worry now. Me and Abraham . . . we ain't goin' to disappoint the congregation.”

Mama didn't say anything. She just sat in her rocking chair, looking out the window. Luke didn't know if she was angry at him or not. Hoping that he had his mother's approval and understanding, even though she didn't voice it, he backed sheepishly out of the bedroom and shut the door. Then he went down the hall to his own room and started getting undressed for bed.

Downstairs in their cages, Nancy and Gwen were talking, keeping their voices low.

Gwen tried to remain calm while explaining how she had been trapped. “My sister and I were driving by, exploring the back roads, and . . .”—she stifled a sob—“. . . and Sally . . . she liked to hunt for old cemeteries . . . the older the better . . . to take pictures and make tombstone rubbings. Right away she noticed the family graveyard out back, across the field, so she wanted to stop and look. But she wouldn't dare go out there without asking permission. We got out of the car and went up on the porch to knock, and the door banged open all of a sudden and the three brothers jumped us. It was awful . . . awful! I didn't do a good job of fighting back . . . I was in shock or something. Sally bit and scratched and they had a hard time with her. She kicked Cyrus, the big crazy one, between the legs—and he roared like a wounded bear . . . and then he stabbed her . . . again and again. I was half out of my mind, already in my cage. I—” Gwen buried her face in her hands and broke down crying.

Nancy trembled, not knowing how to comfort the older girl. She said, “I'm sorry, Gwen. Please . . . maybe you shouldn't talk about it anymore.”