Coven (14 page)

She thumped down on a stool, paying him no
mind. She seemed tired before the spread of notepads, diagrams, and
clutter.

“
Hey, what’s this?” Wade
asked, and picked up a tiny bottle.

“
It’s osmium tetroxide, and
it’s poisonous. Don’t touch it.”

He picked up the thing that looked like a
tensor lamp. “What’s this thing?”

“
An ultraviolet spotter.
Don’t touch it.”

He picked up a fat book. “This the new
Clancy?”

“
Not quite. Put it down.
And please leave.”

Next he picked up some Polaroids. “What’re…
Hey—”

She snatched them away.

“
Those looked like pictures
of bloodstains.”

“
It’s called fall, Mr. St.
John, and it’s not your concern.”

“
Please, call me
Wade.”

Lydia Prentiss slumped. “Mr. St. John, I
have a lot of work to do here. I haven’t slept in a day, and what I
need less than anything in the world right now is a con man
rich kid punk standing over my shoulder—”

“
I’m not a con man,” Wade
informed her.

“—
so I’ll try to say this
as politely as possible. Go away! Get out! I’m
busy!”

“
All right already,” Wade
said. “See you later.”

“
Hopefully not.”

Is it my imagination, or
does this girl hate my guts?
Women simply
did not treat him like this. He turned at the door, raised a
finger. “How would you like me to do you a
big
favor?”

“
I wouldn’t,” she
said.

“
I know this
great
little Italian
place just out of town.”

The sheer incredulity of
this premise caused Lydia Prentiss to glare. “
You
expect
me
to go out with
you
?”

“
Yeah. What do you
say?”

“
I’d sooner drink my own
urine,” she replied.

I guess that means
no,
Wade thought. But no was not an answer
he was accustomed to taking. “I’m Wade St. John,
the
Wade St. John. I’m
offering you a rare privilege. Girls stand in line to go out with
me. I’m the best known person on this campus.”

“
No force on earth could
make me be seen in public with the likes of you,” Lydia Prentiss
clarified.

Wade visibly winced. He’d met friendlier
junkyard dogs. “Is there any reason in particular why you’re
shitting all over me?”

And what he saw in her eyes just then—her
cool, pretty, luminous gray eyes—was a wide open furnace of
disdain. Disgust flattened her words to monotone when she said,
“You’re nothing but a spoiled rotten rich brat full of family
money and bullshit joyriding through life on a silver platter.
You’re the bottom of the barrel, St. John. I wouldn’t go out with
you if you were the last living thing on this planet.”

Wade left. The toilets
would be better company than this.
You win
some, you lose some,
he thought, but this
is ridiculous.

It was possibly the first time in his life
that Wade St. John had actually had his feelings hurt.

—

CHAPTER
12

—
WAKE,
bid the voice.

Tom’s eyes opened.

IT’S TIME.

Tom sat up, then stood. He stretched and
grinned.

“
Master,” he
whispered.

He knew everything at once—things no one
else knew, wondrous, miraculous things. The knowledge was a gift,
like his new destiny.

“
Destiny,” he
whispered.

He felt a surge of life reaching out from
his brain. There was a big bump on his head, but it didn’t hurt. In
the mirror he examined his reflection and saw the tiny bruise on
his throat, like a bite mark.

“
Thanks, Master,” Tom
McGuire said aloud to his room. He threw his head back and laughed,
blushing a great and overwhelming joy. And there was
more.

There was a black dot on the wall.

It was beautiful somehow. It was like art. A
pendant hung around his neck, he discovered. It, too, was black and
equally beautiful. He touched its warm cruciform shape and
shivered.

I can do anything,
he thought.

He started with the small
stuff. He crimped coins with his fingers. He bent a pair of
scissors in half, crushed a metal file drawer like an accordion.
Concentrating, he punched a hole into the center of his desk, then
he picked up his History 202 text,
History
of a Free People,
and tore it in
half.

At once the Supremate’s voice was in his
head, like a chord:

—
OURS IS A SACRED MISSION,
MANIFOLD IN DESIGN, HOLY IN PURPOSE. WE NEED YOU TO DO WHAT WE
CANNOT.

“
I am your servant
forever,” Tom said to the air.

—
I GIVE YOU STRENGTH,
WISDOM, ETERNAL LIFE.

Tom couldn’t resist. “Your wish is my
command.”

The Supremate’s voice
steepened in silence.
—JOIN US NOW IN A
GREAT DESTINY. YOU WILL BE WORSHIPED SOMEDAY.

The word slipped around his
head, fine as brandy in a snifter.
Worshiped,
he thought.
Like a…god.

“
I will do
anything…”

—
WORK STEADFAST AND ALONE
IN THE DAY, AND WITH MY DAUGHTERS AT NIGHT. THEY WILL GUIDE YOU
INTO THE REALM OF AN IDEAL THAT KNOWS NO FLAW.

Tom could only nod now, bliss choking out
his words.

—
TOGETHER, TOM, WE WILL
MAKE HISTORY.

««—»»

Lydia Prentiss jerked out of sleep, not
terrified but shaking from some monumental despair. She grimaced at
the clock: 6 P.M.

Gradually stabs of her dreams
re formed. She’d dreamed of dead, bloated animals. She’d
dreamed of anthracene headaches, fingerprint tape, and blurred
vision from too much UV light. She’d dreamed she found Sladder’s
arm. It was withered and gray, the hand drawn into a claw. She’d
been injecting glycerin under the fingertips to distend the ridge
patterns when the arm twitched to life, its claw hand
snatching for her throat…

The sweat on her skin felt chill when she
got up. She always slept nude for it made her feel less
lonely—often she’d wake with her arms wrapped about the pillow, a
stuffed dummy for a lover.

She purged herself in the shower. The water
felt wonderful. White had given her a couple days off; he wanted
her out of the way until the people from the state left. He would
downplay it all, to believe the safest scenario. White was a horse
wearing blinders.

Forget it. Think about
something else.
She soaped herself,
imagining someone else was doing it. Some strong beautiful man’s
hand glided the sudsy bar around her breasts and
stomach.

She gave in, closed her
eyes. Then the fantasy showed
Sladder’s
hand on her flesh. She
rushed out to dry herself, grimacing.

“
You know what your problem
is, Lydia?” she asked the mirror. “You treat everyone like garbage
because it’s easier than facing the fact that you’re a rotten,
detestable cunt. No wonder nobody likes you. No wonder you don’t
have any friends.”

The mirror didn’t argue.

It was all true, she knew that. She pictured
herself going from job to job, place to place, with no one. She
would grow old and die alone—a wizened wretch.

She sat down naked on the bed, already
bored. Television was useless, she hadn’t watched it in months. On
the nightstand, next to her Colt Trooper Mark III, yesterday’s
Marlboro stood on end. She’d been too tired to smoke it, so tonight
she could have two, which mildly excited her. The cigarette thing
was the only promise she hadn’t broken. The others lay in pieces
about her life.

Absently she looked down at
her feet, her legs, her clean pubic hair and belly button. She had
a nice tan already. No one knew that lying on the apartment roof
was the bulk of her social life. She always wore a minuscule string
bikini. She jogged every day, worked out with dumbbells, and did
lots of sit ups to keep her stomach flat. Why she worked so
hard to remain physically attractive mystified her: she showed her
body to no one, and hadn’t in years. She presumed she was
attractive but was unimpressed by the presumption. She’d read
in
Cosmo
that
women who felt ugly on the inside compensated for that by making
themselves beautiful on the outside. The idea distressed
her.

She glanced secretively at
the blinds. They were closed, not that anyone could peep in at her
on the third floor. She felt silly. She parted her legs, then
gently touched herself with her finger. Why should she be
embarrassed? Everybody did it, didn’t they? She’d also read
in
Cosmo
that even
women with active sex lives masturbated regularly. Well,
then…

She filled her head with pictures of
muscular men. Broad hands roamed her breasts and thighs, hard
penises rubbed against her. Mouths kissed her neck and sucked her
nipples. In her mind, she was penetrated and humped by a gorgeous,
curved cock. But…

Nothing. Perhaps so much conceit had turned
her the other way. She thought of women making love to her but
flinched at once. No, this was no good at all. Her finger
slackened; the inlet of her supposed passion felt as cold and
unresponsive as the rest of her.

She knew the reason. No one liked her
because she didn’t like herself enough to let them. The one lover
in her life she’d chased away with her sarcasm and ridicule. She
was awful to everyone. It was easier that way, wasn’t it? Easier to
just be awful.

She’d been awful to Wade
St. John, and she’d delighted in it. What was wrong with
her?
How could I have said those things to
him?
He was just a harmless punk kid and
she’d gone after him like a shark to blood, as if by natural
response.

At once she was disgusted with herself.

Lydia Prentiss stood
up.
Isn’t this ridiculous? A
college-educated twenty six year old nude female
police officer making promises to a wall?
Yes, it was ridiculous, but just the same, to the wall she
made her vow: “I am not going to treat people like garbage anymore.
I will not look down on others, and I will not be unkind. I am
going to be a good person, and I’m going to start right
now.”

She heard the world laughing.

««—»»

And as Lydia Prentiss made promises to a
wall, a girl named Penelope blinked and breathed and fidgeted,
jammed immobile and plumply swollen in a sheen of some hot, mucoid
slime, her face stupidly collapsed against what was now her
home.

Her big, squashed eyes stared out,
aglow.

—

CHAPTER
13

“
Hey, Jerv,” Wade greeted.
“Am I interrupting something?”

Jervis turned guiltily. “Uh, no,” he said.
There was another guy in Jervis’ room—greasy hair, gaunt face,
tacky sports clothes. He looked like a bookie. He gave Wade a fast
once over.

“
If you have any problems,”
the guy said to Jervis, “call me.”

Jervis nodded. The guy slipped past Wade and
left.

“
Who was that
slimeball?”

“
Just a friend,” Jervis
said. “Have a Kirin.”

Wade got the message that Jervis didn’t want
to talk. He opened a Kirin from Jervis’ fridge. The Japanese made
beer of notable quality, like their torpedo bombers. “Missed you
last night, man. Tom and I went out and had a few beers. We were a
little worried.”

Jervis sipped his own Kirin from his desk,
inspecting something that looked like a pocket radio. “I was
studying at the library.”

Right. Studying. Never
mind that classes don’t start till next week.
“Well, we’ll be partying again tonight, so you can catch
up.”

“
Can’t make it tonight
either,” Jervis said.

“
Why the hell not? We got
bad breath or something?”

Jervis went to the fridge for another Kirin.
He was acting…funny. “I got some personal business, that’s
all.”

“
Oh,” Wade said. He
wandered to the desk, picked up the radio. A sticker on the back
read: “49MHz Simplex Receiver Unit. Not for commercial use, not for
sale.”

“
Jerv, what’s this
ridiculous thing?”

“
Just a transistor
radio.”

“
Oh, yeah? Forty nine
megahertz? That’s not a very popular station—it’s off the
dial.”

Jervis frowned. He pulled the end off a
Carlton and lit up.

“
Jerv, Jerv,” Wade said.
“What’s wrong?”

“
Nothing’s
wrong.”

“
It’s still this Sarah
thing, isn’t it? I don’t know what you’ve got cooking, I don’t know
what this thing is, and I don’t know who that scuzzy looking
guy was. All I know is my best friend is weirding out. You’ve got
to let Sarah go.” Every time Wade said “Sarah,” Jervis winced.
“You’re starting to scare the shit out of us, man. We think maybe
you’re cracking a little.”

Jervis smiled like a ghost. “Nothing’s
wrong.”

“
All right, I get the
message.” Wade got up, “You seen Tom?”