The Burning Time (20 page)

“You still haven’t answered my questions.” Danni pointed a finger at John. “Is Christian going to open this barrier thing if you don’t stop him? And, why does it have to be you?”

John shrugged. “Eventually? Quite possibly. Not in ten years, or twenty. Not even in a hundred. But he gains power from the chaos and sorrow he causes, and at some point he might very well gain enough to open the gates just a crack. And then...”

“Hell on Earth,” Mitch finished.

“Yes. As for why me, my family has always been dedicated to using our powers to help those in need. Usually it’s just coming to the aid of someone who is sick, or perhaps troubled by something science can’t explain. In this case, I’m both helping humanity in general, and righting a wrong done to my family.”

Danni cocked her head slightly and stared at John. “What happens to you if you succeed in stopping Christian?”

“What?” John flinched, taken aback by the question. “Well, I’ll just continue to do what I’ve always done.”

“That doesn’t—”

John held up his hand. “Please, no more questions for now. I’m still rather exhausted. I’m going to get some more sleep.”

“You’re avoiding something.” Danni’s gaze bore into him like two lasers.

“No, I’m really tired. Honest.” He rose from the table and headed upstairs before she could say anything else.

He hated lying to her, but the truth was, he knew where her questions were leading, and he wasn’t prepared to deal with them. He had to focus all his thoughts, all his energies, on finding a way to stop the Trickster.

Much as he regretted it, there was no time to waste on thinking about staying on in Hastings Mills after he was finished.

*   *   *

Cyrus Christian spent the next two days gathering his strength. He excused himself from the daily functions of Perpetual Hope Church by claiming he had a bit of a summer cold, leaving his quarters only to preside over scheduled masses.

He placed Billy Ray Capshaw in charge of repairing the damages from the bake sale riot and what the locals were calling ‘the most freakish electrical storm’ in town history. The rash of violence that had swept the town over the past several days was also blamed on the storm, with most people attributing the change in people’s personalities to ”too many goddamned electrons and whatnot in the atmosphere.”

The ability of humans to rationalize almost anything never ceases to amaze me,
Christian thought, as he sat at his desk and contemplated the scrap of paper stained with John Root’s blood. He’d been staring at it for over an hour, trying to decide how best to use it.

He tapped his fingers on the desk. Ideally, he would use the blood as the basis for something particularly violent and fatal. Unfortunately, trying to harness that much power in his present state might render him incapable of leading the spells he planned on working at the town fair, the ones that would bring all of Hastings Mills to its knees. And as much as he’d like to see John Root gutted and hanging from the church spire, he had to think of the big picture. That meant finding another, less taxing, way of nullifying Root.

Christian paused. It was obvious the man had some kind of emotional ties to the Andersons. And while he’d surely placed spells of protection over both of them by now, his magics would only protect them from physical and supernatural harm; such spells rarely defended their targets from mental abuse.

Or kidnapping.

Stealing the boy and locking him away somewhere wasn’t placing him in peril, so Root’s wards shouldn’t be activated.

He opened his grimoire and flipped through the pages until he found the correct spell. He smiled as he read through the instructions. Even in his weakened state, the calling of a few imps was child’s play.

Twenty minutes later, four miniature demons waited inside the simple pentagram and circle he’d laid out on the carpet. Only a foot tall, their arms and legs were too long for their bodies, and they had long, black talons and bat-like wings. Their faces were grotesque, twisted parodies of human features.

“Find the one called John Root,” Christian told them. “And when you do, bring to me that which he holds most dear.”

One of the imps hissed and held out a hand, extra-jointed fingers extended outward.

With a nod, Christian tore the blood-soaked paper into four pieces and dropped them into the circle, careful not to touch the imps waiting impatiently within. To do so would free them into the world unbound and beholden to no one. The last thing he needed was to be attacked by the vicious little demons while he slept.

The imps grabbed the paper scraps and gobbled them down, emitting hisses and moans of pleasure. Then, with a loud pop like a punctured balloon, they disappeared.

Christian returned to his desk and began working on his sermon for the next day.

Now it was just a matter of time.

*   *   *

John Root tossed and turned on his bed, unable to break the clutches of the dream he’d fallen into. Even in his sleep, he knew he was dreaming, but each time he felt close to waking, the dream—more properly a nightmare—carried him off to another memory from his past, transformed by his subconscious into vaguely hallucinogenic images.

He ran down a rural road in Virginia, pursued by the ghosts of more than twenty Civil War soldiers who’d never stopped guarding their town against the Northerners. Unlike in real life, John couldn’t free the angry spirits from their earthbound status, and now they wanted to end his life. One of them raised its rifle, and...

He was crouched behind an ancient cypress tree in a Florida swamp, outside of Kissimmee, Florida. Several yards away, a tall, hairy creature shuffled through the shallow waters. John had been called in by the locals to put an end to the beast’s destruction of their fishing boats, outhouses, and storage sheds. In nineteen forty-one, when he’d actually accomplished this feat, he’d simply lured the creature deeper into the swamps and placed wards around the swamp’s boundaries to keep it from returning. But in his dream, as he moved into the open to confront the brute, a second one suddenly stepped out from behind another tree and came at him, its proto-human face twisted with rage. John turned to run but slipped on the slimy bottom and...

He found himself in his own home, on July seventh, nineteen twenty-two. The date was imprinted in his brain in giant red letters, the most horrible day he’d ever lived through. Just as he had that day, he sat on his living room floor, cradling his dying wife and child in his arms. Their blood flowed over his hands and into his lap as their final breaths hissed out of half-open mouths. Outside, the screams of the men who’d murdered them—ignorant swamp rats, too stupid to know John’s mother had saved their lives by ridding the town of the Trickster’s evil presence—filled the air as John fought to keep himself from extracting the vengeance his heart desired. “Clara,” he whispered. “Jack.” He wanted to say more, but the words caught in his throat.

Then Clara opened her eyes, eyes as lifeless as stones, and spoke. “John, you...”

“...have a job to do.” John stood before his dying mother, her broken, twisted body laid out on her bed. John had carried her there himself, after he’d dug her out from beneath the remains of the church the Trickster had collapsed on her. “It is up to you, now, son. Find him. Put an end to this.”

“But how?” he asked.

“Use what is inside you, the one thing you have that he doesn’t. That is your strength, my son. Remember, John...”

“John?
John!”

John sat up with a cry, drawing a frightened gasp from Mitch, who’d been standing next to the bed.

“Jesus, John, you scared me. Danni told me to get you for dinner, but you wouldn’t wake up.”

“I...I was dreaming,” John said, in a voice that shook almost as badly as his hands. His heart pounded painfully against his chest.

“That must have been some dream.” Mitch sat down at John’s desk. “You were rolling around the bed like a fish out of water.”

John ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. “It wasn’t pleasant. But sometimes dreams help you work through problems, if you know how to interpret them correctly. And I think mine may have given us the answer we need.”

“Cool, ‘cause I’ve got news that might help you, too.”

“Good. Tell me at dinner. In the meantime, bring me my bag, will you? I need to find something.”

“Sure.” Mitch went over to the closet. “Where is it?”

“It should be right there.”

“It’s not.”

“What?” John got up and joined Mitch at the closet. “It was there this morning. I put it there myself.”

Mitch bent down and looked under the bed, then behind the bedroom door. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s downstairs.”

“I’m positive. But we’ll look anyway.”

Fifteen minutes later, John joined Mitch and Danni in the kitchen, after checking the entire house a second time.

“Where could it have gone off to?” Danni asked.

John shook his head. “There’s only one person who knows how valuable it is, who would dare steal it.”

Danni’s eyes narrowed. “Christian.”

“Yes.”

“But how? No one’s been to the house all day.”

John shrugged. “He’s a powerful practitioner of the dark arts. There are dozens of ways he could have taken it, without ever leaving the church.”

Mitch looked troubled. “What was it you needed? Maybe we can get it in town.

“No, I—” The full impact of Christian’s thievery hit home as John realized there was only one way to get the items he needed.

“I have to go home.”

*   *   *

Cyrus Christian looked up as the harsh stink of burning sulfur filled his office, accompanied by the pop of suddenly displaced air. He turned to his pentagram, expecting to find the child, Mitch Anderson, or possibly the boy’s sister, Danni, in the clutches of his imps.

Instead, the miniature demons capered around an ordinary-looking black physician’s bag. Frowning, Christian rose from his seat, prepared to punish the imps for failing.

“I said I wanted what Root holds dearest to—”

Christian stopped as he realized what the bag might be.

“Well, and perhaps a ‘well done’ is in order, my friends.”

The imps danced and jumped as Christian picked up the bag and stuck his arm inside, farther and farther, with no sense of bottom. He remembered...

Sarah Root, dogbitch-mother to John Root, dipping her hand into a similar looking bag—the same one, perhaps?—and withdrawing several jars and flasks much too big to have been inside. He’d been watching her from behind a tree, keeping tabs on her as she prepared a spell to drive away the poltergeist he’d set loose in the town church, one of his first acts when he’d come to town.

Christian smiled as he withdrew his hand.
Now I can cause John Root some trouble.

He placed the open bag back in the pentagram and looked at the imps. “I have one more task for you...”

He brings the storms that hide the truth

He makes the mothers cry in sorrow

He holds the fire in his eyes

When the Stranger comes to town

- The Stranger, undated Southern folk myth

At the same time John Root pondered the latest obstruction in his path, and Cyrus Christian cackled mad laughter as his demons climbed into Root’s traveling bag, Doris Hoke entered the Shear Heaven Salon on Main Street, tiny beads of sweat already forming on her forehead.

There’s no understanding this crazy summer weather, she thought, as she approached the reception desk. Ten minutes ago it was mild and breezy, and now it feels like another heat wave is coming.

Inside was no better, as the hot air from numerous blow dryers combined with the wet hair of the patrons to create a climate more suited to a tropical rain forest.

“Hi, Francie, I’m here for my six o’clock,” she said to the girl at the desk.

Francie Gomez, who’d worked at Shear Heaven for almost ten years, looked down at her schedule. “Sorry, Doris. I don’t have you listed. You’ll have to come back tomorrow, we’re booked solid tonight.”

Doris frowned. Francie didn’t look or sound the least bit sorry, but Doris let it pass. “I’ve had a standing six o’clock for years. You know that.”

“Yeah, but if it’s not in the book, it doesn’t matter. No walk-ins, that’s the rule.”

“I’m not a walk-in, goddammit! I have an appointment.”

“Not according to the book.” Francie turned away. “Sorry.”

This time Doris didn’t let it pass. With a cry, she grabbed Francie by her hair and slammed her face onto the desktop.

“Check your book again, you fucking cunt!”

Wham!

“Do I have an appointment now, you whorebag slut?”

Wham!

Doris lifted Francie’s head for a third blow; blood poured from Francie’s mashed nose, and two of her front teeth swam in a pool of crimson on the blotter.

A loud bang echoed through the salon. Doris let go of Francie and stumbled backward, a red stain spreading in the center of her chest. She fell over without uttering a sound, one hand toppling a shelf of hair-care products to the floor.

Francie Gomez looked up and tried to speak. “Ungh..ooo...elp me.”

Sharon Horowitz aimed her pistol at Francie’s head and fired another shot, splattering brains and pieces of skull across the wall. Then she put the gun back in her purse and sat down in her chair, where Marjorie Heppelwhite waited to finish the perm she’d been working on.

“You know, you come here for a little relaxation, and someone’s always got to ruin it,” Sharon said to Marjorie. Around them, hairdressers and customers nodded and returned to their previous conversations.

“Ain’t that the truth?” Marjorie rolled another lock of hair around a curler. “I was just tellin’ my sister the other day...”