Page 20

The Widows Severe (IV)

I drove the rest of the way into town as though in a trance. No one tried to stop
me. I even passed directly by two police cars in the opposite-lane traffic. I expected
them to do quick U-turns and flash their lights and give chase, but they didn't. Maybe
they didn't see me. Maybe higher forces were at work, speeding me to my destination.

I got to the hotel where I'd put up Cassie without any mishap at all. I parked on
the third level of the hotel's parking ramp and crossed into the hotel itself through a
connecting skyway.

I made my way down the third floor hall to the elevator lobby, and even got so far
as to push the 'up' button to summon one, but when the bell chimed and the doors
opened I had a lucid vision of my dying in that elevator car: the cable snapping, and the
brakes slipping, and finally, the floor smashing upwards, compacting my body at the
joints and shattering my back, scattering my vertebrae like new-fangled packing
peanuts.

I took the stairs instead. The pain in my legs forced me to stop and rest several
times. On the landing before my floor I took even more time. I tried to mentally
prepare myself for what lay ahead, but I realized I had no idea what to expect. Several
minutes after I had caught my breath and the pain in my legs had subsided as much as I
had reason to believe it would, I was still there, sitting on the steps, mind unfocused and
bleary, thinking of nothing in particular. I realized I was taking refuge in inactivity,
letting myself become numb and sluggish. Just postponing the inevitable. I forced
myself to think of Cassie.

Did I really think I could have her? Did I really believe she could love me the way I
thought she had? Yes, I did. My love was blind. I told myself, with a calm, rational
part of my brain, that she was a consenting apprentice to her mothers' plans for her. I
told myself that she was calculating, deliberately evil and that everything I'd ever thought
I'd had with her had all just been part of a charade. But I wasn't really listening. My
emotions counter-argued with a list of all the times Cassie and I had made love, and all
the times I had held her close. I remembered all the times I'd bared my soul to her, all
the times we had shared our hopes and dreams. I found myself pondering over times
I'd been sick and how patiently and lovingly she'd taken care of me. Everyone in my
family loved Cassie. She was so open and unpretentious and chaste and easy to love.
Surely all of that couldn't just be part of an act. That intellectual part of me kept
insisting it was indeed so, but I wouldn't listen -- couldn't listen. Cassie was my lover,
my friend, my life, and if there was any chance at all, no matter how slim, that I could
have her back, and have things back the way I'd always thought they had been, I was
going to take it, and yes, it was worth risking my life.

With that I stood up. The beginnings of tears were welling up in my eyes. I grimly
blotted them away with the backs of my hands. I marched up the last twelve steps and
pushed open the stairwell door and strode purposefully down the hall. I blocked
uncertainty out. I focused singularly on my purpose, and would let no other thought
linger.

I reached the room door and stared down the brass numbers as though they were
an adversary. I pulled the room door-key out of my pocket, turned back the lock, and
slammed the door open by striking it with both hands. The door swung back, hit a
spring-style stopper and shuddered.

Whatever I had expected, whatever I had anticipated... every horror that my
imagination had concocted... nothing had come even close.

The room was dim, lit by candles, five of them. They were set, one on each night
stand, two on the dresser the TV was set up on, and one on the headboard of the bed.
There was a connecting string that wrapped around each candle and connected all of
them to each other, the significance of which, at that time, escaped me. Cassie was
there, naked, on her knees, on the bed. Her hands were bound with the same twine-
like string that connected the candles, and they were raised above her head and tied to
the ceiling fan which hung, direct-center above the bed. On Cassie's face and arms and
breasts there were dark designs which dripped like wet graffiti on the rest of her body.
Her lips and chin were quivering, and I could see light, reflected from the candles, in the
wetness on her cheeks.

"Oh my God," I whispered. I stepped into the room and shut the door behind me.
I knew Sophia was not there. I don't know how I knew for sure, but I did.

Cassie either did not notice me or deliberately ignored me. I watched a single tear
roll down her cheek and fall to the bed-sheets where it was lost among splatters of red.
Sophia had cut her, the symbols on Cassie's body were made with cut lines. I guess I
had known from when I had first seen them, but denied that something so cruel could
be allowed to happen.

"Oh my God," I said again. I tried to go to her but was stopped by the line of string
between two candles. Some sinister force had been summoned and positioned around
my Cassie. It was then that I realized that the placement of the candles and string
formed a pentagram. I searched the air around the line for some softness or weakness
but the field's strength was constant and complete. I was held at bay by it, still a good
ten feet from her.

"Cassie, what did she do to you?"

Cassie would not speak. She continued to quietly shiver.

I wanted to hold her, to comfort her, so much so, that I felt physical pain from the
thought of my impotence. My whole world was being engulfed by helpless, undirected
rage. I yelled out and beat my fists against the unseen wall. There was nothing else to
do.

Cassie raised her head slightly, looked in my direction. At first I thought the blood
around her mouth was simply dripping from the tattoo of lines cut into her forehead.
But it was nothing so kind as that. Her lips parted and there was a filmy, red bubble
stretched between them. I was suddenly screaming again. And Cassie was screaming
too, a pitiful shapeless noise, and with the sound of her anguish, drooled runnels of
crimson saliva came forth too. My restless hands actually tore hair from my own head.

A horrible pun came to me: The cat's got her tongue.

I fell to my knees. I was overdosing on horror. I was going to kill myself. A
remnant of the Catholic child still left in me reminded me of the special damnation
reserved for suicides, but I knew that whatever torment the devil could think of, nothing
could compare with this.

There was a sound like a civil defense siren, wailing in my head, and everywhere I
was violently shaking. I felt like I was having a seizure. I kept wondering, How am I
living through this?

I don't know how long I was there, on my knees, staring at the texture of the
carpeting. I think it must've been a long time indeed, because the next time I looked up
I saw in the glowing read-out of the clock on the night-table that it was a quarter past
midnight. It had still been daylight when I'd arrived at the hotel: late afternoon. I'd
probably blacked out once or twice.

I dared to look at Cassie.

Her whole body was bowed, but still held semi-upright by the tie that bound her to
the fan. I could see her eyelashes flickering from my angle of observation so I knew
she was still alive. Alive and awake.

I got to my feet. My body was stiff and aching. I wiped at my face with the heels
of both hands. Snot and tears were dry on my cheeks and lips.. My hands were
swollen from my futile beating against the barrier around Cassie.

I didn't know what I was going to say until I said it.

"Where is she?"

Cassie lifted her head.

"Where is she? Where did she go?"

She looked at me. Her eyes were a sad, dead stare.

"I know she left you alive so you could tell me where to find her. So tell me."

Cassie's lips moved. She hummed.

"What?"

She did it again, a little louder this time. It sounded like a word. "Home."

"Home?" I said.

Cassie nodded. Her movement was tired, drained. Her pain must have been
something too intense to imagine.

"She went home? Is that where you lived before we got married?"

Another feeble nod.

I wanted to stay there. Be with her. Do whatever I could. But I knew there was
nothing I could do.

"I have to go then."

There was no response.

"I have to finish this. For better or worse, I need to go. I need to confront her.
This is going to end. Now."

And I turned to leave.

But before I left, there were three words left to say: "I love you."

** *

The old Severe House is not what you would think. No matter what image of
witch you could suppose to believe in, none of them would reside in the bland, traitless
building that was the Severe House. How subtle evil can be is something most people
can, and will, never realize.

It is a small house, on a small plot of land. A white house with stone-blue trim
around the eaves and windows. It has a short gravel driveway and a white picket
fence. It is unassuming and inconspicuous in every way. There are neighboring houses
on both sides of it. One of the neighbor's houses has a rusty swing set in the front yard.
I remember the kids that used to be playing on it when I'd swing by to pick up Cassie
for a dinner date. None of those kids ever thought anything strange about the house
next door. They used to climb the fence to retrieve stray frisbees and baseballs all the
time. No kid would be that casual knowing he was standing in the front yard of a
witch-house.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there just hadn't been any clues. There was
nothing unusual about Cassie or her home, or her stories about her family. There just
hadn't been a signal. No warning. Nothing but that old man at my wedding party. If I
had stayed to listen to him longer, would he have told me that Cassie was from a family
of witches? Would I have believed him? It was pointless to speculate.

I pulled the Mercedes over to the side of the road five houses down from Cassie's
old home. For the first time, since leaving the smoking hulk of my home yesterday
afternoon, I felt concern for my not having a set plan of action. What was I going to
do? Walk up to her and punch her in the nose? I had to have something to go on.

So I sat there, behind the wheel, holding onto it with both hands, white-knuckle
rigid. I said, "Dammit," out loud, but softly. I sat and thought.

My confrontations with Elizabeth and Marrianna did nothing to bolster my hopes.
True, I had lived through both encounters, but only barely, and meantime, they had
displayed powerful, supernatural abilities. My plight was like something from
mythology.

What had all those old heroes had anyway? Nothing but faith and hope and love
and goodness. Nothing but the human condition. But it had always been enough. Was
it enough for me? I remembered from a version of the ballad of Beowulf, a description
of the hero, Beowulf, having been the embodiment of light and having blood, like
honey, flowing in his veins. I had nothing so bold and pure to rely on. Was it enough
that I was a man, created in God's image, and fighting for the right to keep my love
alive? Would that be enough to face Sophia down with? I regretted that I had not
brought along the hotel room Bible, but it was too late to go back for it now.

I cast my eyes up to the star-strewn sky and said, "Let Your will be done. Amen."
Short and sweet, it was the prayer of a man who had let his faith slip away from him ten
years previous.

I happened to remember my package from the hardware store. It was still in the
back seat. I leaned back to retrieve it. Two emergency flares, a flashlight and a pipe
wrench. I stuffed them into the pockets of my coat. You never know. Then I got out
of the car.

Next to me, near where I had parked, there were three garbage cans. Tomorrow
was trash day. For a reason I will never know, I walked over to those cans and pulled
the lid off of the one in the middle. Maybe I was thinking of equipping myself with a
shield. Whatever the reason, I did it.

I don't know that I can write off the content of that can to mere coincidence, but
I'm not saying it was more than that either. In fact, I'm not sure of the thoughts that
compelled me to pick it up -- it was certainly no guiding intuition of mine that made me
think it might come in useful. Yet there I was, rummaging through rubbish to acquire it.

It was a book. A ragged, dog-eared, paperback copy of The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz. I stuffed it into the inside breast pocket of my suit coat.

And thusly equipped, I set off for the Severe House, and my dread meeting with
Sophia.

When I got there, I saw the fence-gate was open and swaying in a passing wind.
The gentle back and forth motion was like a beckoning: come in, come in. So I did.

Across the yard and to the front doorstep I went. The door behind the front screen
was open. The house was somehow beckoning too: come in, come in. So I did.

The inside of the house was black, there was nothing to see, but there was
something to smell, a foul rancid, stench like burnt hair.

Now I knew the house. I remembered the outlay of its rooms from the days when
I'd come here to see Cassie. The first time I'd stepped inside this house I'd been just
twenty, and Cassie was nineteen. She was one of the secretaries an the student
services building at the college I'd attended. My first meeting with her was when I went
there to resolve a conflict with my class schedule. There was no one free to help me,
by way of counselor or administrator, so she asked me if there was anything maybe she
could do. Well, there wasn't, but she was a pretty face and a patient listener, and I was
frustrated and needing to talk to someone, so I wound up talking to her anyway. My
first impression of her was more of a professional evaluation than anything else: I
remember thinking, She seems unqualified, but determined. She wants to help but
doesn't know how. How sweet. From that first encounter came plans for our first
date. After our second date I wound up committed to helping her paint her living room,
and that was my first time in the Severe House. When we were done painting that day,
and I was at the front door, ready to leave, just putting on my coat, Cassie leaned in on
me and planted a quick peck on my left cheek, back by my ear. Our first kiss. She
said, "Thanks for helping," and all the while I looked at her, she was blushing furiously,
and it was so damn cute I never even looked at another girl past that moment. Her
innocence, that's what got me. I went for it and swallowed it down and it turned out to
be just a cheap, plastic simulation of the real thing; just a lure from Sophia's evil tackle-
box.

I reached out for the light switch on the wall. I knew where it was and found it
immediately. I didn't expect it to light though, so I wasn't at all surprised when it didn't.
I was surprised that the flashlight I'd just purchased didn't work, but I guess nothing
comes with batteries anymore. I stuffed the flashlight into one of my jacket pockets
and took out a flare. When I tore the cap off, it coughed and then hissed, illuminating
the house with a sickly, pink-white light that will, for some reason, always remind me of
ulcers. Of course the Severe House was nothing but bare walls and floors, all of its
furnishings had gone with Cassie and me to our first apartment. Technically, Cassie still
owned the place. I'd suggested we sell it once, but Cassie's reaction to that had been
enough to convince me that mentioning it once was enough. She'd alternately stormed
and sulked for two weeks afterward. I actually seriously wondered if she'd ask me for
a divorce.

I was expecting to find Sophia in the cellar. I don't know why, that's just what I
was expecting. Where else would evil go to wait? I knew the entry to the cellar was
back behind the kitchen, at the rear of the house. Given the circumstances: what I had
so far done, and seen, I can look back and really almost laugh about how I jumped and
cried out when I found Sophia waiting for me in the kitchen.

She was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and her arms bent so her palms
were facing upward. Her eyes were closed. Behind her, in the kitchen sink, a burnt
pile, still glowing red at the edges was smoking, and at the ceiling above the sink, there
was a body of smoke, so thick and black it very nearly oozed unnatural fear.

"You are quite the man," said Sophia. Her voice was disturbingly seductive
sounding. "I never saw the potential for this in you. I thought you were nothing but a
great heap of jelly: sweet with your words and charms, but lacking a spine. My own
husband was like that. I was looking for the same qualities in men for my daughters to
marry. I must say, you surprise me."

I didn't know what to say. Thanks, it feels good to know I've earned your respect,
just didn't seem appropriate. And without words it seemed I had nothing. I just stood
there.

"Yes, you have set me a good many steps back. Killing Elizabeth and Marrianna,
and even turning Cassie from her destined path (my heart thrilled a little with her
speaking of those words). You have even managed to shake my own faith (how
ironic)." She opened her eyes then, fixing me with a stare of Arctic intensity. "You're
going to have to pay for all of that."

She waved her arms suddenly, and finished off a series of fluid gestures by pointing
one of her crooked, evil fingers at me. And it came. The demon-smoke, a roiling
black cloud. It crossed the room quickly, as though propelled by a strong wind, and I
had no time to react before it was on me. I took several stumbling steps backward,
afraid. I could see it, like blindness, and smell it, and it was even close enough to taste,
and all my senses were telling me the same thing: that it was the animate form of ashes
and suffering and spent life. It was like an acid in my eyes, and burns in my nostrils and
blisters on my throat.

"Breathe," I heard Sophia saying from the other side of the blackness. "Breathe in
and fill your lungs with death." Her voice had lost its seductive qualities, now it was
cracking, like a reservoir dam, and revenge was trickling out.

I kept backing away. I knew the cellar door was somewhere behind me, but I
didn't know it was open. I took another blind step back and fell out of the cloud of
smoke and into empty space.

On my way down the rickety wooden steps to the basement I lost several items of
my personal inventory: my right shoe came off on a splintered stair, the left sleeve of my
suit-coat tore off on a jutting nail in the banister, I dropped my flare. The flashlight,
useless as it was, rolled out of my pocket and when I hit bottom, the pipe wrench fell
from my other pocket.

Looking back, I wish I could take credit for having planned all of that -- well
maybe not all of it. Just the part about going downstairs and leaving my flashlight on the
second step down from the kitchen. If I had actually planned that, my head probably
would've burst from swelling with masculine cleverness.

Somewhere in the world, at the time I was not sure where, something went splash,
and I remember thinking: Man, this house always did have great tap water. Or
maybe that's just what I want to remember thinking.

I sat up, supporting myself on my elbows. The floor beneath me made uneasy
creaking sounds.

Under the stairs, where it had eventually somehow come to be, my flare was still
burning, so there was light enough to see the demon-smoke was floating down the
stairs after me. There was also, but just barely, enough light to make out the shape of
Sophia at the top of the stairs, eager to witness the spectacle of my death.

Well, I wish I could say I did something heroic and awe-inspiring, but I didn't. I
was no Hollywood-action man. I was just sitting there, holding my breath against the
smoke and hoping it would go away.

I like to think that I had managed to bend the course of fate just enough though.
Just enough to redirect it towards a favorable outcome for me. I mean, I started out
with a plan, I lied and snuck around and stockpiled my weapons -- including the
flashlight that wound up saving my life -- and I did, directly, with my own hands, kill
one witch. And it was me who pursued the conflict to the end. I could've stepped out
and called it quits anywhere along the line, but I didn't. I followed through, dammit!
Even in the very end, maybe I had more control than people will credit me with. I did
have the book in my pocket after all, and I did know the Severe House, and I did
know there was a covered well in the basement, and I did know the story about
witches all being descendants of Lot's wife. So maybe, somewhere on a deep
subconscious level, it was all part of my plan.

Maybe I did know Sophia would come downstairs. She would want to be there,
before my eyes, reveling in her triumph in my last moments of life, right? And with the
flare-light coming up from underneath the stairs, well, there was no way she could've
seen that flashlight, right? So when she fell down the stairs after me, it was, quite likely,
all according to plan. And when she landed on top of me, well obviously I was still
there, knowing full well that the old, rotting boards that covered the well couldn't
possibly sustain the weight of the both of us. So when we both fell into the well, that
was part of the plan too, right?

I'm not sure I believe it either.

But that is what happened.

Sophia came down the steps, slipped on the flashlight, came crashing down on me,
and proved to be too much mass for the old well cover, which I was already lying on,
to hold.

And when we hit the water, Sophia went from human form to a sizzling slab of
bacon fat in less than a second. Blink of an eye. She didn't even have time to scream.

Up until that point I obviously can't claim to have consciously remembered the old
folk tale about Lot's wife being the mother of all witches. But it was the first thing I
thought of when I saw what had happened to Sophia. There were, after all, two
methods of disposing of witches back in 'Salem. Fire and Water. But even back then,
the reasoning behind drowning a witch was already forgotten. American History taught
us that the people of 'Salem believed a witch would somehow float, in defiance of the
dunking chair, thereby revealing her servitude to the dark master, but the practice of
dunking witches far predates the days of 'Salem. And it is because of this -- witches,
descended from the wife of Lot, who turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back,
are made of salt. And salt dissolves in water. That's why the Wicked Witch of the
West melted. Old L. Frank Baum knew that.

So I was there, treading water in the dark, feeling like the right hand of God,
alternately laughing and weeping. The thought of its all being over, the thought of my
victory against such powerful opposition, was what made me laugh. I was filled up with
pure joy. On the other hand, the thought that I would eventually succumb to
hypothermia or fatigue, and drown in that dark, dismal, water-filled hole, was what
kept bringing tears to my eyes. More than half the thrill of winning is being able to
celebrate afterwards.

Of course you all know I didn't die. Few stories told from a first person point of
view end with the death of the narrator. The main problem being that its hard to justify
the story's existence in the first place when that happens. I mean, if the narrator is dead
at the end, who the hell is really telling you the story?

Well, it turned out I got pulled out of the well by two policemen who had been sent
out to investigate an anonymous caller's notion that somebody was in trouble at that
address. I'd only been down there ten or fifteen minutes.

The first question they asked when they brought me up was, "Do you know
anything about the abandoned Mercedes down the block?" I'm not kidding. I laughed
until I threw up.

** *

I had time to write all of this down that first day in jail. There was nothing else to
do, and besides, I wanted to get everything right, put it all down, while it was still fresh
in my memory. I have a feeling this might be the kind of experience that a mind tries
desperately to forget about later in life. I think I want to remember it though. At least
for now.

With my only phone call, I called my parent's house. I told mother to just shut up
and listen. "I'm in jail," I said. "Down at the county courthouse. Cassie is down at the
Carlton Towers hotel, downtown. She's in room eleven-thirteen. She's in trouble. Go
to her first. Tell her I love her. I'll explain everything later." Then I hung up.

Cassie was admitted to the hospital later that day, taken there by my mother, who,
bless her heart, didn't ask me about anything when she came to see me afterwards.
She knew I would talk when I was ready. She brought a note from Cassie with her.

It said: I hope we can start over. Cassie. The writing was shaky and weak looking.
Her name was signed with a heart dotting the 'I'.

I cried when I read it. Just like a sweet, spineless lump of jelly. My mother waited
for my tears to pass in silence.

Now I have more difficult stories to tell.