Lacy opened the door. “I will hold her here,” she said to the other two as she moved her head under Heidi’s armpit and grabbed her opposite hip with her hand. “You shall clear a path.”
As Lacy balanced Heidi in the doorway, her sisters entered the apartment, moving objects out of the way. They pushed the kitchen mats to one side, folded the carpet over in the living room. When they were satisfied there was a clear path to the bathroom and nothing that could be soiled permanently by blood, they came back out, nodded.
“Let her enter,” said Megan.
Lacy nodded. Slowly, they moved into the kitchen, leaving a series of Heidi’s bloody footprints behind. Lacy walked Heidi forward, Megan helping to hold her steady. Sonny came behind with a wet towel, swabbing up the blood.
They coaxed her forward, through the living room, past the bed, into the bathroom. They helped her climb into the tub. She was awake but not awake, not conscious but not unconscious. She knew something had happened to her, something terrible, but she wasn’t sure what it had been. A moment later she heard the screech of the rings against the rod as the shower curtain was drawn closed, and then suddenly she was being sprayed with water, the women reaching around the curtain, touching her body, patting it down, washing the blood away, cleaning her. On the one hand, it felt comforting, as if someone was taking care of her. On the other, though, it felt as though she was being very casually molested.
She swooned and went down, striking her head on the rim of the tub. The women made clucking noises, gathered around her, pulled her up, getting wet themselves. Then one of them was there standing in the tub with her, naked as well, pressing her body up against Heidi’s and whispering in her ear. For a moment she thought it was Lacy, but when the woman began to speak she realized it was Megan.
“What happened to you was a privilege,” she heard the woman whisper in her ear. “Our Lord does not favor just anybody, only the precious few. Now you are one of us.”
“One of you?” Heidi managed to say. “What are you?”
Megan chuckled. “Ah,” she said. “That is the question, isn’t it? We have always been here and we will always be here. No matter how they try to do away with us, we survive.”
She felt Megan begin to lick the water off the back of her shoulder and then begin to kiss her neck. Megan moved her arm up and brought it down across her breasts, beginning to caress one of her nipples with her hand. Heidi struggled, but was too weak to do much. Slowly, Megan seemed to lose interest and then her arm slipped higher up, to wrap finally around Heidi’s throat. It tightened gradually, until Heidi found that she could not breathe.
She clawed at the arm, tried to bring it away, but Megan would not let go. Her vision began to be shot through with whirling points of light, like a swirl of flies, and then began to go black.
And then she passed out.
When she awoke, she was still groggy. Her throat hurt. She was lying in her bed, naked now, but clean, her body freshly washed. Her hair was still wet. Three women were there. Who were they again? They looked familiar, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember their names. Morgan, she was pretty sure one of them was called. One of the other two had hold of her blankets and as she watched she brought them higher, tucked them up around her neck.
“There,” the woman said. “Now you’ll be cozy.” And then for some reason, the woman laughed.
The woman reached over and turned off the light. “Sweet dreams,” she said, and then blew Heidi a kiss.
Each of the other women came forward as well. They bent over the bed one after the other and spoke a comforting word or two, and then kissed her on the brow. She could feel the kisses burning there long after they had stepped back. And then the three of them, waving to her, slowly moved out through the door and away. She heard them walking in a group through her living room, and then the change in the sound of their footsteps as they entered the kitchen, and then the sound of the apartment door opening and closing. And then they were gone and she was alone.
Only not exactly alone as it turned out. As she lay there, with the room blurring in and out around her, she began to feel that something was there, watching her. Her eyes drifted around the room, slowly coming to rest on the end of the bed. There was something there, at the foot of it.
Steve? she tried to say, but nothing came out.
Her eyes crossed, and the end of the bed doubled itself. She let one bed drift away from the other and then drift back again. When she blinked and they returned to being one bed again, she could see what was there.
She wished she couldn’t.
Something was perched there, huddled at the end of the bed. It was small, hardly bigger than her forearm, humanoid in form but with skin that had the striated texture of bare muscle. It was blotchy and red, and in places oozed with pus. Wherever they touched it, the bed linens grew damp and filthy. Its eyes, too, were strange and protruding and seemed ready to burst.
It just stayed there, watching her. Not doing anything, just watching.
She was terrified. She tried to move, but she could not move. She tried to scream, but she could not scream. Her body no longer belonged to her. All she could do—all she would ever be able to do, she felt—was lie there and watch it watch her, and wait for it to move closer, inch by inch, until it was on top of her chest, taking away her breath.
Saturday
Chapter Forty-nine
Where was that book again? wondered Francis. He had just been looking at it yesterday. Now where had he put it? He searched through the kitchen, then looked around the living room, then the bedroom without finding it. But when he went back into the living room he immediately saw it, open on the piano, right in plain sight. Of course. He should have seen it right away.
He closed it and shoved it into his briefcase, momentarily glimpsing the cover illustration, which was of a hanging witch. Last night after getting the wrong number he had tried to dial again, but this time nobody answered. If Heidi was there, she wasn’t picking up. So he’d made a note of her address. Assuming she hadn’t moved, he’d be able to talk to her in person, which was probably the best thing to do anyway, considering what he had to tell her. He would take the book with him and show her the Lords symbol, see if she’d let him compare it to the symbol on the record. And if she had a piano or a keyboard or something maybe she’d be able to play the tune for herself. Once she did that, maybe she’d be ready to hear what he had to say.
He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Alice asked.
Almost instinctively he lied. “I have to drop by the museum for a second and check on something for the new exhibit.” Feeling guilty, he added, “Should I pick up lunch on the way back?”
It wouldn’t do for Alice to know where he was really going. She’d just tell him he was being crazy and that he should “leave that poor girl alone.” But two of the female descendants of the men who had judged and slaughtered the Salem witches had been involved in ritualistic murders. Heidi was the only other female descendant he knew of, and she’d been sent a record with the Lords symbol on it, and thus she should be warned. He probably should tell the police as well, but that was a harder proposition. He didn’t know what he could say to them without making them think he was a nut job.
“Can’t someone else handle it?” she asked.
“Well, they could,” said Francis slowly. “But they’d do it wrong and then I’d have to redo it and that would take twice as long. Better just to get it over with. I’ll only be an hour.”