She may be the hand that takes, but she is also a little girl running along a lane between lilac hedges, beneath kindly old oaks, who converse as she passes new growth of purest green.
She could not see details of the earth below her. She did not even know what she might be standing on.
She was just here, millions of miles out in space, lost.
Then she heard a familiar human sound, a vastly distant whisper of a chant.
The coven. But how could she hear them—from here the earth was no more than a pinprick in the night.
If she heard them, though, perhaps she might find them. Behind her was death, before her the whole gulf of space. She did the only thing she could: she jumped. She sailed out and down, trusting, hoping, that she would land in the right place.’
There came a familiar girlish voice in her ear: “I’m going right along with you. I’ll be there waiting for you when you land. I am death, and you will not escape me.” The girl with the missing hand shot off, leaving a blazing track in the sky.
As she had at the moment of death, Mandy felt the awful, windless falling. She tried to will herself in the direction of the chant. There lay home.
High above the witches’ circle a meteor passed in the sky, glowing across the face of the moon. They had been working for two hours, and still the cone had not appeared. Every few moments the Chant of the Long Tones was interrupted by the sound of Ivy clearing her throat. Grape was shivering. Earlier Wisteria had endured a coughing fit.
The wind pushed and challenged and demanded. Every time another frigid wave covered him Robin gasped, and for an instant forgot the chant.
But he tried, they all tried, and when it was right the chant was very, very strong, a sound that was wind and water, the grinding of the earth in the depths of a mine, the furious silence of the night-hunting bird.
Again Robin collected himself for another effort. He took a breath and closed his eyes, and expelled his tone from the bottom of his gut.
I am the hand.
The voice was not Mandy, but it was hovering just above the coffin. “Who are you?” Grape whispered.
I am the hand that takes.
It was a freezing, bitter voice. Robin chanted on, filled with dread. This morning something had come into Vine’s circle from the other world and displaced the wraith of Mandy. That other thing had been a little, maimed girl, who had jumped about the pentagram for a moment and then darted off again. Was she back?
The coveners chanted desperately, trying to keep the circle clear for Mandy.
A blizzard swarmed down the face of the mountain. Mandy’s mind, her heart, her whole being, were now concentrated on one thing: find the circle—
Wisteria huddled in on herself. Grape and Ivy leaned against one another. Even clasped hands had grown cold. The moon had long ago crossed the top of the sky. There were no more meteors to bring an instant of wonder to this freezing effort. The Chant of the Long Tones sank low, and still the spiraling cone of power did not appear.
Robin watched the sky for another sign and listened for another word.
But there was no sound, and the only lights in the sky were moon and stars.
Magic is just the physics of another reality, he told himself. It’s perfectly believable. The physics would serve him whenever he wanted it. But the cone of power just wouldn’t appear. Magic. It encouraged you one moment, the next tried to convince you it didn’t even exist.
If it is a physics, it is a damned contrary one.
Robin might have seen a cat crossing the sky. Might have seen a witch passing the moon. Might have heard a word.
It came again, very, very faint: “Please…” That was all.
“Hey! Did anybody else hear that? Wasn’t that Mandy’s voice?”
“She’s here.”
“Moom moom moom moom moom moom moom moooom!”
Oh yes I hear you yes I hear you down in hills in the dark. And I see you. This time, I haven’t been sent and I can’t be taken back. I got here on my own—
Mandy began to journey toward the faint glow that was the Vine Coven’s circle. She was a wraith again, but now the circle directed her and helped her. The wind of her demons was not going to blow her aside.
Tom appeared ahead, switching his tail. When his eyes met Mandy’s she came to a stop. She had never seen such menace. There was no way to move past that cat, not just yet.
After the one single, faint cry the witches had heard no more. They had tried and tried to chant it up again and finally exhausted themselves.
All of the Vine Coven but Robin slept. He sat rigid and still, facing the coffin through a rim of frozen tears.
Dawn was not far off. Robin stood up to gauge the time. Moonset had come and gone and only the stars lit the sky. He put his hand on the lid of the coffin, looked down at the constellation reflected in the wood.
Ursa Major. The Great Bear, symbol of feminine courage.
The eastern sky was glowing now, just a little.
Robin wondered how he would face the day. Or the Vines, when they woke up all stiff and grumpy from their freezing vigil, and remembered how hard they had tried, and how completely they had failed.
A sound from the coffin startled him profoundly. He lifted his hand as if the lid were hot. It came again, louder. Of all the things it sounded like—a rattle, a mutter of thunder, gargling—it sounded most like a fart.
Robin’s fingers went to the latches. He thought something must be going wrong with the body. He opened the coffin.
In the thin light he saw her, clear and pure, lying in her rumpled silk suit, her feet in gleaming Gucci pumps. But her face—he was shattered by its beauty. That such a creature could be a mere human seemed beyond possibility. A great, rasping sob escaped him.
If love killed, let it kill him now. Maybe they would be reunited in death.
She sighed then, and he realized what all the noises were—corpse gas.
With a thousand regrets he closed the lid and turned away. He was walking toward the rowan tree when a movement in its shadows startled him. Then he realized that the fairy had returned. All around they stood, and not five or six, but dozens and dozens of them, the men in black jackets, women in dark green gowns, and children everywhere, wee mischievous creatures darting about among their parents.
There were more than dozens—he could see them even on the far ridges, lining the naked cliffs like dark little clumps of shrub.
Come to do her honor, in some secret dawn ceremony of their own. Not even Constance had seen a fairy funeral. Who knew what their rituals were?
The coffin shifted. All around him the fairy clapped and laughed.
Robin knew, then, that this was not a funeral.
He grew afraid. The whole of the mystery had settled on this place and he had not even known it was coming. A wave of energy, tingling and electric, set all of his hairs to singing. He shuddered and turned around.
The coffin was still closed. But then thunder blasted in Robin’s throat, a roar of astonished Joy: sitting upon it was Amanda Walker.
He fell to his knees, he could not speak, could hardly bear to look at her. His mind didn’t whirl with thoughts or fill with glee. On the contrary, he went quiet inside.
He heard a scrape as she came down from the coffin. “Robin?”
A seizure took him. There was nothing he could do to avoid toppling forward. His fists came up to his chest, a sound between a grunt and a groan issued from between helplessly clenched teeth. He knew all that was happening, but from a distance, as if it were occurring on a stage.
She crouched down in front of him and took his face in her hands. Her touch was as wonderfully alive as the Leannan’s. He wanted to speak, but he couldn’t. “I’m here,” she said.
His emotions burst forth in him. Then he lifted his head and shouted glory. All around him the fairy were singing, a sound like the tumbling of small water.
Wisteria awoke. She smiled, and kept on smiling.
Then I
vy opened her eyes. When she saw Mandy she screamed loud enough to rattle the mountains all the way to Pennsylvania.
That woke everybody else up, all except Grape. In the excitement they did not notice that she remained huddled where she was.
Amanda embraced them, one after the other, and after she had held them, each was sure that she or he felt noticeably warmer. When she slipped her hand into Robin’s, there stirred in him the very laud of gladness. “Let’s go down,” Amanda said. “We have to break the grief of the others as soon as we can.”
It was not until they started forward that Ivy noticed Grape. “Robin, help me. If you can believe it, Grape’s still asleep.”
“No,” Amanda said. “I’m afraid she’s dead.” Robin looked into Amanda’s eyes, but only for an instant.
There was no way to describe them. Simply put, they were terrifying.
“She’s not dead, Amanda, she’s just—Grape? Grape!”
The corpse fell over. It was already cold and stiff. Suddenly the fairy were all around. One of them did something to Robin’s knee and made him fall back away from Grape.
“Let them take her.”
“She—why did she die?”
“She gave herself in return for me. Death cannot be cheated.”
Robin went close to Amanda. He wanted to kiss her, but he dared not, even though she seemed as sweet as womanflesh could be. Light was hesitating in the sky when the coven started for the village.
Already the east was yellow-green, Saturn a lantern in the last blue of night. As they walked, the fairy put Grape into the coffin that had been Amanda’s and carried her off into the depths of the hills.
“Honor her, and be glad for her,” Amanda said.
On their way down the mountain a great happiness came upon them all and they began to sing.
“With a hey! and the sun.
With a hey! and the sun.
We go merry, we go gay,
We go in morning’s way!”
Tom watched, with a fury of love in his green eyes. He lay where the night still lingered in the western sky.
His gaze shifted away from the triumphant procession, moving past the edge of the Collier estate and into the predawn town. It went to a certain trailer behind a certain tabernacle and rested upon an object in the pajama pocket of sleeping Brother Pierce. That object held the key to the end of the drama, the last confrontation.
There was movement in the pocket. Somebody besides Amanda had used the chant as a beacon. The owner of the hand had also returned. As nothing of her physical body remained but the hand itself, she was concentrating all her considerable energy there.
Already she was learning to use the old, dead flesh. Slowly, persistently, the withered, dead hand clutched and opened, then clutched again.
Brother Pierce slept on.
The hand opened. The hand clutched. As love had given Amanda new life, so hate was giving it to the hand. If hate had been visible, it would have appeared in the form of a murdered girl in a blue dress.
Or Abadon, the scorpion truth of Revelation.
I am the hand, the hand that takes.
The visible part, lying in the preacher’s pocket, opened and clutched, opened and clutched, with a dry, crackling sound. Then it touched the preacher, caressed him.
It did not wake him, but it made him sigh.
Chapter 26
“You sure you want this thing open?”
Brother Pierce was getting exasperated with the funeral director. That question had come at least six times over the last half hour. “His brothers and sisters in Christ want to say good-bye to him.”
“But I can’t do anything with him.”
The man just would not see the point. “All of that business with wax and face powder and whatnot—we don’t hold with that.”
“I’ll have to break his arms. You can’t leave those fists like that, up against the face.”
“You’ll do no such thing! Leave him just like he is.”
“Now, look here, Brother Pierce, I’ve got a reputation to uphold. I am not going to have a poor burned man go out of here for a viewing in that condition! He even smells burnt. No, sir, it’s just unthinkable.”
Brother Pierce regarded Fred Harris. Your typical small-town businessman. Episcopalian. Daughter a witch. Probably a witch lover himself. Too bad he was the only funeral director in Maywell. “I will have people see what those witches do to a good Christian soul! I will have them see! The poor man had suffered terribly. Let it be a testament, let it be for a reason.
Harris sighed. “The death was ruled accidental. If he hadn’t had that gasoline—”
“You were not there. You did not witness—” Brother Pierce stopped himself. He was just about to say too much. So far nobody knew exactly who had been out there with Turner. The witches hadn’t managed to give the sheriffs office any particularly clear descriptions. Simon had not needed to swear his own men to secrecy. The little community of the Tabernacle could be trusted to cling together in any trouble. He looked into the undertaker’s suspicious eyes and prayed silently that the Lord might flood his starving soul with so much grace that he would lose his hatred of good Christian people. What a blessing it would be to see the stone fall away from the tomb of his heart, and Christ rise within as the lily in the spring.
Harris gave him a sharp, appraising look. Simon reached into his pocket, grasped the hand. It was there to remind him that he was full of sin, and for all his prayers no better than the worst sinner himself. That poor little girl’s murder could never be atoned, but even so, he was determined to do only good with his life. Afterward he would be glad to go to the hell he so richly deserved. “We love you, Brother Harris, and we want your funeral home to have a fine reputation. But we also love Brother Turner and we cannot have communion with his martyrdom if it is hidden in makeup.”
Harris touched the coffin gingerly, with a respect that had not been there a moment ago, Simon thought.
“Even so, it’s leaving here closed. Brother Pierce. What you do with it once you get it to your church is your business, I guess.” With that he lowered the lid on the staring, blackened corpse.
Brother Pierce stayed right with the coffin. He could honor the dead at least by constant attendance.
Harris’s two assistants rolled the coffin into the funeral home’s Cadillac hearse. Simon hated hearses, which were as black and lonely as the whole big sky. He kept his fist closed around the hand. Over the years the guilt it brought him had ceased to be a torture and become a comfort. When his punishment finally came, he would welcome it. The bottom of the pit would be a relief.
Riding toward the Tabernacle, his mind returned to the accident. That fire had just jumped at poor Turner. Enveloped him. He saw it again, red and ugly, spreading all over the man. He saw the agony on Turner’s face, the astonishment, the terror, most of all the sadness.
There came to Simon a shuddering thought. Wasn’t it Turner who had first picked up the mandrake? Of course, yes. Turner. He must have been infected by the evil spelt in it.
Sweat began to tickle Simon’s neck. He clutched and rubbed at the hand. Could spells travel, jump across that long gray sky, maybe, and settle in the Tabemacle?
In his mind he saw flames leaping from every window of his church, and heard the hiss of the fire wind and the dreadful screams of his beloved people trapped inside. A gigantic, misshapen mandrake leaned in against the shaking, bulging door, holding it closed against the congregation.
“Brother Pierce!”
“Wha—what?”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course.”
They rode on. Simon was shaking, covered with sweat. What had he done to cause them to call out?
Had he screamed, or maybe moaned? Yes, maybe that. He must have moaned.
“I feel such grief for my brother.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
Simon was very relieved when they reached the Tabernacle. He watched them take th
e coffin out of the hearse and roll it on the catafalque through the big double doors at the back. “That’s fine. I can take it from here.”
When they finally drove away, he could not have been more glad.
He looked fondly around the Tabernacle, the rows of pews he had bought from the closed Presbyterian church in Compton, the pulpit that had been a conference-room lectern, bought for eleven dollars at the Maywell Motel fire sale, the organ they had gotten full price from Wurlitzer, and the paint and the simulated stained glass and all the evidence everywhere of the hard work of the Lord’s people.
No images, unless you counted the empty cross at the front. “We keep his portrait in our hearts, brothers and sisters, that is the beginning and end of the images of the Lord.”
The Tabernacle was cold. He checked his watch. An hour to go before the funeral. He went to the thermostat and turned it up to seventy. By the time people arrived it would be comfortable enough. There was no reason for the oil bill to go above four hundred a month in autumn, not with all the body heat the congregation generated.
He rolled the catafalque to the front of the Tabernacle. His funerals were always simple, needing essentially no preparation. Simon required contributions to the Tabernacle in lieu of sending flowers, so there were no wreaths to worry about. For a moment he clasped his hands and thought of God sitting on his throne in heaven. God in heaven. “O Lord, let me do right by you. Please, I love you so much.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry. Lord, to ask for help. I know I’m dirty in your eyes, but I’m still trying down here. Don’t help me, but help my people. Give them the strength they need to get rid of the witches.”
The hand seemed almost to warm as he prayed. It helped him so much. Without it he’d be lost. He’d never know what moves to make. The hand was his guide.
He remembered it milky white, dangling from her smooth arm, the fingers tapering, nails bitten and lined with dirt from play. She was a picture, so pretty. She had come on to him, had snapped her gum and run her tongue along her teeth, and given him that steady, godless gaze.