Hunting Witches (17 page)

“Yeah, I think we can do these folks up right,” Tommy said. Rafferty nodded, and Tommy yelled through the plastic tarp. “Hey, Mr. Pendleton! Think we’ve got you figured out.”

Mark opened the front door. “Come on in,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”

“It it’s not any trouble,” Tommy said.

“Nah,” Mark said. “It’s already made. No trouble at all.”

The Pendleton man opened the door and Tommy walked right in. Rafferty hung back a second. This was like entering a temple of evil and destruction. Rafferty could have sworn he heard foreign gods whispering, rolling low out of the open door, a tongue no mere man could interpret. He mumbled a quick prayer for protection and forgiveness, held his breath, and walked into the house.

Mark was in the kitchen, coffee pot in one hand, dragging mugs from a cabinet down to the counter with the other. He smiled. “How do you take your coffee, gentlemen?”

“Just black is fine,” Tommy said. Rafferty held his hand up and shook his head, saying nothing.

“He don’t drink coffee,” Tommy said, making a face at Mark like,
isn’t that the damndest thing? Who doesn’t drink coffee?

“So, here’s what I figure,” Tommy said. “And you can tell me what you think. But I reckon if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it so that it not only keeps you safe, but adds some value to the house. You know what I mean?”

“Right, right,” Mark said. “Keep going.”

“We can put in a nice bay window there where your flat pane glass used to be. It’s just the right size. Eighty inches total, with a forty inch center piece. Now, they sell this shit in kits, you know what I mean? We can go over to Bell Plains, pick this up and have the whole thing installed by four o’clock this afternoon. It’s gorgeous, and the glass is reinforced.”

“Yeah, I’m hearin’ you,” Mark said. He made Rafferty sick. He wasn’t just listening. He was trying to ingratiate himself with Tommy. He was trying to make his voice sound more Tennessee Southern instead of Florida Southern, and he kept eye contact with Tommy the whole time he was talking. Jedi mind tricks. Witch tricks.

“Now, here’s what I’m going to do,” Tommy went on. “Y’all are new in town, and I hate that this happened. Really, it just kills me. This is a good town. Good people live here. Labor is one thing. It’s some moderate construction we’re doing here, but like I said, we can knock it out pretty quick. Done this before. But I’m only gonna charge you cost for the window kit. Does that sound right to you?”

“That sounds better than right,” Mark said.

“Well, don’t worry,” Tommy said with a wink. “We’ll get ours. But you’re not gonna get hammered, and the insurance will cover most, if not all, of the cost. I think you’re getting a pretty good deal, my friend.”

“Mark. Call me Mark.”

Tommy Clark smiled. “Mark, it is.”

Rafferty smelled her before he saw her. The air was suddenly infected with a dark undercurrent of cinnamon and cocoa gone fetid. Something else: patchouli, maybe? Some kind of incense? Nothing you would find in a normal home. Most houses smelled like plug-in air fresheners or dollar store candles. This place – this woman — smelled like something borne of fire.

“Oh!” Mark said. “Hey, babe!” They all turned towards her, hiding shyly around the corner, her arms folded in front of her chest, as if she were expecting to be body-checked. Rafferty raised his eyes only, staring her down, taking in every detail. Again, he understood the feelings Penny had, the cravings he had felt the previous night. In the back of his head, he heard drums.

Tommy Clark, ever genial, put his cup of coffee down and moved to shake Nika’s hand. “Tommy Clark, Tommy’s Glass,” he said.

“Nika,” the woman said, accepting Tommy’s hand into hers. This slightly disappointed Rafferty, but Tommy had no knowledge of spiritual matters, the battle between good and evil.

Tommy pointed over his shoulder. “That there’s Rafferty,” he said. “He don’t talk much.” Rafferty nodded once, still avoiding eye contact with the witch. Nika waved at him.

“Well, the good news is this is not going to cost nearly as much as I thought it was going to,” Mark said. “Tommy says the glass that was…”

And there went Tommy, running off the mouth, talking about bay windows and reinforced glass. He made sure to impart to the little woman what a stunning deal they were getting and that only he was in a position to give them that kind of deal.

Rafferty wasn’t listening to Tommy’s closing spiel. He kept looking at Nika, quick glances, like a lizard. The longer he stood in her presence, the more he was convinced Penny was correct. If the woman was human, it was only marginally so. She projected thoughts of helplessness and desire. It was like the evil inside her tried to play dead, but couldn’t help showing itself in measured flashes.

“Well, that’s great,” she said to Tommy and Mark, and he brought himself back around to business mode.

“Sounds like a yes from the wife,” Tommy said. Such Andy Griffith pretension, Rafferty thought. Tommy had himself convinced that shucks and howdy good ol’ boy was his real personality.

They were winding up the negotiation portion of the proceedings, and Rafferty placed his hands in his pockets and prepared to leave. He wanted to stay. He wanted to snap the neck of that scrawny man and force himself on the black witch, to baptize her with her own blood and streams of his semen, to sanctify her with pain, blades and fists.

But at Tommy’s beckoning, Rafferty left the house, a good worker, humble, ready to assist.

***

The thing about having to go to Bell Plains for a bay window kit was complete bullshit. It was a wonderful lie and it had been working for years. The truth was, Tommy Clark had all the materials in a shed behind his shop. He bought the wood in bulk and cut it to size himself. He had an industrial glass cutter and was able to cut pieces to size well in advance. Two solid weeks of cutting and pre-building during the year left him fifty weeks to sell cheap kits and make bank.

“It’s a good job, boy,” Tommy Clark said, driving back to the shop. “I cut out the middleman and pass the savings on to me. And you, of course, providing you don’t clue anyone in.”

Rafferty shrugged. “Business is business,” he said. “Not my concern.”

“You’re a good boy, Rafferty,” Tommy said. “I think I’m gonna take a nap. Breakfast is sitting heavy. You wanna watch some TV? Don’t get no TV out in the woods.”

“Can I use your phone?” Rafferty asked.

Tommy Clark shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “Just flip the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and you can do what you want. Wake me up in two hours, all right?”

Rafferty nodded, and Tommy went back into his private office, where he would fall asleep in his overstuffed office chair. When he heard Tommy snoring through the door, he picked up the phone and dialed.

***

Pastor Edward had smoked more that morning than he had in the past six months. He had bitten the nail on his little finger down to the bloody quick. He jumped when the phone rang, and almost dropped it trying to answer the call.

“Hello?” Edward said.

“Pastor,” came Rafferty’s voice from the receiver.

Edward heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “I was worried. Tell me. Tell me what happened. Tell me where we are.”

“We need to move,” Rafferty said. “Tonight.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re not scared. They’re not leaving. I’m fixing their window with Tommy Clark today.”

“How’s that for irony?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Pastor. I’ve been in their house. I’ve seen them. Both of them.”

Edward held his breath.

“Penny was right,” Rafferty said. “The woman is more powerful than she was able to convey. Her man is weak and in her thrall.”

“We move to Plan B, then?”

“Yes. Tonight. We have to react before it’s too late. Call Penny. She’s in on this, too.”

“I’ll start gathering up the stuff we need.”

“We’ll meet at the Chapel and head out from there. May God show mercy and allow us to succeed.”

“Amen.”

Rafferty hung up. The air in Edward’s chapel office was still. He held his bible close to his chest, breathed deeply and prepared. This was some heavy shit the Lord was about to have him embark on. But when he chose to serve, he knew he was sworn to His bidding, regardless of the cost. He called Penny and told her the news.

***

Penny hung up the phone and started hyperventilating. She never thought it would come down to this. She was nervous, of course, but she was always nervous. She had been taught to be timid, but she remembered that God Himself had said she was His sentinel. She had looked up that word. It meant, “watcher.” She was God’s front line on Earth. He was using her eyes as His own. Her breathing calmed.

Penny Renfro would no longer be one of the “Frozen Chosen,” a Christian who sits on their fat ass and does nothing to prove their faith. Faith without works is dead! The Scriptures said so. Penny was ready to prove herself to her God and her faith family.

She spent the rest of the day in a haze, thinking about her black hooded sweatshirt and her black sweat pants. Those would be perfect clothes. She couldn’t wait to slip them on and go on her mission as God’s own sentinel ninja. She could feel the blood seeping out of her gums from around her braces, and she swallowed it greedily, enjoying the taste for the first time.

***

Mark Pendleton insisted on staying outside with the men as they worked.

“I have to say, I’m impressed,” Mark said. “You guys are getting this together pretty quick. Almost like you’ve done this before.”

“A few times,” Tommy said.

“I really appreciate you working on this so fast,” Mark said. “The alarm guys won’t be here until tomorrow morning. This is going to go a long way towards making my wife feel better about staying here when I go back to work.”

“Sherriff give you any idea who done it? Broke your window, I mean,” Tommy asked.

“Not yet. It was the weirdest thing, too, man. There were numbers on the brick. Someone had written numbers on it.”

Tommy shrugged. “Probably a Bible verse or some shit.”

“That’s what the sheriff said, too!”

“Don’t you watch TV?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah! Of course. Well, cartoons.”

“Can I use your restroom?” Rafferty asked.

Mark nodded. “Sure, man. No problem. Go on in, down the hallway, second door on the right.”

“Thank you,” Rafferty said, and he went inside.

Maybe Plan B wasn’t the way to go, he thought. Maybe he should just take care of the situation here and now. Leave the others out of this. Nobody would suspect them, and he could be gone into the woods before the cops fingered him as a person of interest.

He crept down the hallway, peeking into each room as he went. An office on the left. The first door on the right hid an exercise room. Then there was the bathroom, and beyond that on the right, the master bedroom. He poked his head in to make sure he was alone before he went inside.

He found her drawers first. Her panties, so flimsy, see-through, designed to entice. Rafferty allowed himself to imagine, just for a moment, those sheer white panties against the witch’s black skin, the contrast of colors and temperatures, all waiting to be explored. He shut that drawer in a hurry. He was pushing the envelope, and he knew it.

He examined the contents of the matching nightstand drawers. There was nothing in Mark’s but a couple of coding manuals and a pocketknife. Neither one of them were good for any kind of home defense. Nika’s drawer held t-shirts, wife-beaters mostly, and a clear three pronged vibrator. Rafferty didn’t even want to dwell on that image.

He closed everything up and walked softly into the kitchen. There was only one set of keys on the wall hooks. Two car keys and a house key on a bottle opener fob. It only took a couple of seconds for Rafferty to remove the house key and stick it into his pocket.

He looked out the kitchen window and saw the evil creature outside. She was dancing around the standing stones in the backyard, touching them. He imagined her at night, stark naked in fire light, cackling and casting curses. Her and her poor sick husband, who didn’t know what he was doing, worshiping Satan in the pale light of the full moon. What was stopping him from killing her now? What reason did he have to not choke the life out of her? It would send a powerful message.

Rafferty walked into the backyard, his fists clenched. He kept his head low and walked with purpose, making no noise, refusing even to sweat. She was walking backwards, staring at those rocks. For a moment, Rafferty wondered how deep into the earth they went. Nika had no idea Rafferty was there, lost in her little fantasy world. She probably saw fairies and unicorns, all cheery names for demons.

He stopped and flexed his fingers. Already, he could feel his hands wrapped around her scrawny little neck, snapping it like a dead twig. Would the angels visit him then? Would he ensure himself a golden crown in heaven? He wanted that more than anything.