The devil dances, p.5
The Devil Dances, page 5
part #2 of Nick Englebrecht Series
“What was that about?” Vivian said, alarmed.
I shrugged off a bad feeling. “Some folks have the Sight. They can ‘see’ daemons like us. I guess we register differently to them than normal people.”
“And the Amish have the Sight?”
“No more or less than the English,” I explained. “But I guess she did.”
“Do you think others will see us?” Suddenly, Vivian looked nervous.
“Time will tell.” I set a hand on her knee to reassure her.
We had finally reached the festival grounds, which was about the size of two football fields side by side. Maybe a hundred long cafeteria tables were set up under makeshift tents like an outside flea market, with a remarkable number of well-crafted items on them. There were Plain folk selling quilts, toys, tools, livestock, household items, clothing, pies and cakes wrapped in cellophane. I saw countless other trinkets and items. There were even collections of Plain men standing together, advertizing their building services on big, hand-written billboards. Several hundred English tourists moved in small, slow herds between the tents and stalls, looking things over with either cynicism or wide-eyed surprise, as if they couldn’t believe this type of world existed outside their own.
“Oh, look at the baby goats!” Vivian squealed after we’d parked and gotten out. “They’re so cute!” Having forgotten the strange Amish woman who’d given us the Evil Eye, she rushed up to the pen and leaned over to pet their noses while two Swartzcopf children looked on, wordlessly and a little fearfully. “Maybe we should get a goat, Nick.”
“A goat? What would we do with a goat?” I was showing the hand drawn picture of Caleb No Last Name to the older Amish men trying to sell their services as handymen and woodworkers, but their attention was being pulled away by a pair of tourists who kept asking questions. I finally gave up and turned back to Vivian. She looked so cute when she was delighted by something. I wrapped my arms around her waist and breathed in the scent of her hair, which smelled delightfully like her herbal shampoo. “Goats smell, you know.”
“Aren’t they traditionally Satanic or something?”
“Pagan, actually,” I corrected her.
“They’re not afraid. Look.” She trickled her fingers gently over their soft, velvety noses while they nibbled at her fingertips. “We could get a goat to go with our new house, gas-efficient hybrid, and white-picket fence, and I could milk it every day.”
“I’d rather you milk me,” I whispered in her ear, letting my hand wander discreetly into the neckline of her dress.
She laughed and slapped playfully at my hand. “Be good.”
“No. I don’t know how.”
“Nick!”
I kissed her hair. “If you want a goat, I’ll get you a goat, but only after we get our own place. I don’t think Morgana would appreciate a goat walking around the shop.”
She was grinning as we moved to the next stall, where she was immediately drawn to a number of schnitz and mincemeat pies. While she looked over the selection, I heard a muffled cry from behind us. I looked back over at the other stall and saw the two Plain children sitting with their two little goats. One was still standing, but the other one—the one Vivian had touched—was lying on its side, breathing harshly as it spasmed and began to die.
I felt my heart catch somewhere up near my throat. Even I had never experienced anything like that before, and I wasn’t exactly a paragon of goodness.
Vivian couldn’t seem to decide what she wanted, but since a group of Swartzcopf men were gathering around the goat pen to figure out what had happened, I decided not to say anything and instead hurried her along toward the quilting tables.
With all the bustle and excitement, she never noticed the upset, much to my relief. She did notice a number of gorgeous quilts at the next stall and immediately started asking the Plain women selling them different questions—how they were made, what the different patterns meant. The two older women, master crocheters, mustn’t have had the Sight, because they answered her pleasantly enough in their singsongy accents, nodding and smiling graciously, though I noticed they kept their distance from her and their hands off the table where Vivian was touching it.
While Vivian haggled a price on one of the quilts, I turned to a group of young men selling a pair of massive draft horses and showed them the picture of Caleb that I’d been carrying with me everywhere. But even after consulting each other, they wound up shaking their heads sadly. They said they were fresh down from the Swartzcopf community in northern Ohio and had never seen the young man before.
Someone plowed into me.
I turned, ready to glare at some clumsy tourist, and then realized it was a young Amish man, tall, rangy-strong, and beardless. He was just a little older than Caleb, but not yet old enough to marry, early twenties by my estimation. He had the type of build that would bulk up with time, and a farmer’s tan that darkened his face and reddened the back of his neck. His dirty blond hair fell in a thick comma over his forehead from beneath his black hat—which he was just replacing, having knocked it off when he collided with me. He wore a plain, dark blue shirt under an open vest, with the sleeves rolled up to reveal sinewy, work-hardened forearms, and his brown eyes were bright and clear. He wore slim, round, silver glasses and was just handsome enough in that horsey, Germanic way to steal my attention for the moment.
He gave me a look that was all business, then handed me a flyer for the fair we were all presently attending. I didn’t question his actions. There was something too much like fear in his eyes.
He nodded at me once, then disappeared seamlessly into the crowd.
“Look, Nick, a wedding ring pattern!” Vivian was saying, grinning and showing me the quilt she liked best by holding it up against her chest. It was white, with various shades of blue and grey in it, not too girly, which is how Vivian liked her things.
“It’s beautiful, Viv,” I told her, forcing a smile. “Let’s buy it for our almost wedding night.”
Vivian cheered excitedly as she turned back to pay the Plain women.
I looked down at the flyer in my hand. It was advertizing the quilting festival and GOOD FOOD AND FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY! I turned it over and found the back was far more interesting than the font.
It had a name scribbled on it.
Caleb Knapp.
To borrow a Sherlock Holmes-ism: The game, as it were, was afoot.
aturally, all the local hotels, motels, and overpriced B&B’s had been booked well in advance by tourists driving down for the Quilting Festival. There was, literally, no room at the inn. But I’d anticipated such, and had made provisions in advance.
They were named Meredith and Frank Blaylock. Meredith and her husband lived in nearby Mt. Joy, less than five miles away. I had met the couple one fall when they’d blown into Blackwater for the Halloween festival and the annual “Witches’ Walk” through Old Town. Both Meredith and Frank were sole practitioners, lifestylers, and polygamists. I don’t mean that they kept extra husbands or wives on the side, but that they had an open marriage. They were swingers like us, though Frank called it “ethical promiscuity,” which was probably a more accurate term.
Morgana and I had spent a long, entertaining weekend with them, and I was pretty sure Vivian and I had a good chance of crashing on their couch—or, more than likely, in their California king bed. We’d stayed good friends over the years and I still got a Yule card from them every holiday season, as well as an occasional phone call.
Vivian gathered up her various purchases, including our almost-marriage quilt, a schnitz pie, a handmade shawl, and a little, detailed wooden horse figurine she’d liked, and we headed back to her jeep. “What’s a lifestyler?” she asked as we got inside.
“You’ve never heard that in college?” I said with surprise as we drove toward Mt. Joy.
“Sort of, but I’ve never really understood what it meant.”
“Meredith’s a femdomme. Frank is her sub.”
Vivian made a little “o” of realization with her lips. “Kind of like us.”
“No, we’re amateurs. They do it twenty-four/seven. Lifestylers.”
“For real?”
“Would I lie to you about something like that?” I grinned.
Vivian grinned back. “You know the strangest people, Nick, you know that?”
I lit a cigarette as we reached the highway. “Being a daemon means you kind of cling to the fringe element, if you know what I mean.” Then a thought occurred to me. “You’re not offended…?”
“After what we’ve done with David and his pals? Of course not.”
“If you’re worried about being pressured, don’t be. Merry isn’t like that. She and Frank won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, though be warned: she might ask.”
“I find it kind of interesting, actually.”
I laughed at that. “You would.”
Meredith was very accommodating when we arrived. She threw all petite, four-feet-eleven-inches and ninety-eight pounds of herself at me, wrapped her surprisingly powerful forearms around my neck, and kissed me on the cheek, bending me at the waist to do so. “It’s great to see you, Nick!” she said as we stood on the front porch of her modest Victorian home with its pretty, intricate ginger breading under the eaves. The house was set far back on an acre of uncleared woodland, far from where neighbors might hear her or Frank when they were scening together. There were hanging pots of purple begonias, and the ever-present porch swing that Pennsylvanians seemed to love with a passion born of obsession.
Merry herself was simply adorable with her neatly trimmed black bob of hair, dark, round, Harry Potter-style glasses, and a white cardigan thrown over her sensible, navy blue shirt dress. Meredith owned the yarn shop, The Neverending Thread, in town and had just gotten home from work.
“Are you sure you don’t mind us crashing with you guys?” I had called ahead on my cell to make certain, but I had neglected to ask Merry if she and Frank were planning any last-of-the-summer family vacations.
“As if you need to ask me that, my dear,” she said, welcoming us both inside.
While Meredith fluttered over Vivian, I shook hands with Frank, who was six-two, a mere two inches shorter than I was, bearded, ponytailed, and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was a stay-at-home dad who wrote articles for the Internet. He wore a pullover, blue jeans, and a gold choker that looked like a necklace but was really a dog collar. “Good to see you again, Nick. Are you staying tonight?”
“I’d like to.”
“Good,” he grinned. “The kids are off camping this week with their friends, and Meredith and I plan to scene tonight, if you’re interested.”
“I know Vivian would love to watch.”
While we were upstairs, unpacking our things in Meredith’s guest bedroom, Vivian giggled. “Is she really a dominatrix? She’s too cute!”
“If you’re nice, she’ll show you around the dungeon.”
Vivian giggled again, took my hand, and together we went down to dinner.
While we were gone, Meredith had set the table with two more place settings. Together we broke bread, feasting on Frank’s homemade meatloaf, gravy, and rosemary mashed potatoes, and generally caught up on local gossip. Over a dessert of Merry’s blue ribbon-winning lemon meringue pie and coffee, she asked about the weird occurrences in Blackwater the year before, and I did my best to sidestep all her questions. I was comfortable enough discussing sex and lifestyling with Meredith and Frank—demonic supernatural events, not so much.
While Frank did the cleaning up, Meredith offered to show Vivian the dungeon. She was pretty excited about that until I took her aside and told her I wanted to drive back to Zion for a few hours. Then her excitement quickly cooled and her eyes narrowed. “I thought we were going to have fun tonight,” she said. “Didn’t you do all the investigating you wanted to today?”
“I may have a lead.” I told her about the young man who had given me Caleb Knapp’s name before hurrying off. Then I hugged her and kissed her on the nose. “I promise, you’re in good hands with Merry and Frank. They have wards all over the house, so angels would never get in. Besides, they practice Wicca here, so it’s technically holy ground.”
“I’m not worried about that,” she complained, smacking me in the chest and knocking me back a step. “I just want to spend time with you, Nick. This is supposed to be our almost-honeymoon, remember?”“I’ll spend all day tomorrow with you, babe,” I said as I grabbed my trench coat off Merry’s coat tree and slid into it “And I’ll make it up to you, I promise. When I get back, you can do whatever you want to me.” I gave her a sultry grin. “In Merry’s dungeon.”
On the way back to Zion, I spotted a hitchhiker on the side of the road. Since I recognized the man immediately, I slowed Daisy down enough to allow my dad to slip with watery grace into the passenger seat and pull the seatbelt across his finely pressed, pinstriped Gucci suit. He wore a dark fedora that looked like it had been stolen from a Prohibition gangster as he turned to me and said, “You got any smokes, son? I forgot my tin.”
Yes, my dad keeps his Dunhills in a custom-made tobacco tin, snob that he is.
“Just Camels,” I said, offering him my pack.
He sneered at them like they might give him dysentery, but ultimately gave into temptation and pulled one out, sticking it, already lit, into the corner of his mouth. “Going to rain tonight.”
“That’s not much of a trick when you can make it rain.” I glanced at his smug, self-satisfied profile. The proud brow, fiery blue eyes, Roman nose, stubbornly jutting jawline. His shining blond hair beneath the hat was slicked back with a goodly amount of hair oil, and he wore just enough stubble on his chin to look sexy rather than scruffy, something I had yet to master. He looked like me, only wiser, more self-assured, and infinitely more smart-ass, if that’s even possible.
“Roll down your window,” I complained, “Vivian doesn’t want her upholstery smelling like smoke.”
“Bit crabby tonight, aren’t you, son?” Dad said, but dutifully followed my instructions and rolled down his window. “Not getting laid enough?”
I snorted and told the truth as I drove. “Seeing you puts me in a bad mood. I know you’re going to tell me something I don’t want to hear.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said with a smirk and a twinkle in his eye, leaning his elbow on the edge of the open window as we rolled down the highway in the cottony heat of the Pennsylvanian August night. Insects chirped and chittered, and not far off, I heard a distant peal of thunder. A lance of lightning briefly split the sky and lit the blacktop up. “For once, I have nothing particularly unpleasant to tell you.”
“Will wonders never cease? Got things worked out in the administration office at last?” I clung stubbornly to the hope that maybe Heaven had found a suitable replacement for the Throne. If they had, at least a semblance of order would return to the universe, and maybe the angels gunning for daemon blood would start leaving Vivian and me alone.
Dad waved that away. “That hasn’t changed. Actually, I’m here to talk about you, and you alone.”
My heart thudded twice, very close together. “What about me?”
“Have you been sleeping well, Nicky?”
“I sleep fine,” I lied.
“No bad dreams?”
“None I can remember.” We drove a few miles in silence before it all became too much for me. “Okay, so apparently I can speak Divine in my sleep. What’s wrong with me?”
My dad offered me a smug smile. “I told you a while ago. It’s a symptom.”
“A symptom of what?”
“What do you think?”
I could think of only one thing.
“You’re right, of course,” Dad said, reading my angry thoughts. “But why are you so afraid of Ascending? It’s a beautiful thing, like chocolate, or sex. Or that big rollercoaster on Coney Island… what’s it called?”
“Coney Island closed up thirty years ago. And I don’t want to Ascend.” I lit a Camel for myself and bit down on it, perhaps too hard. “Besides, I can’t. I haven’t discovered my signature sin yet.”
“Do you want me to tell you?”
“No. And if you do, I’ll throw you out of this car, and since you’re making it rain tonight, that means you’ll get your suit wet.”
Dad sighed. “Can you pull over here?”
I did. I found we were idling outside what looked like a country rest home. There was a name on a large plaque out front, but in the dark I couldn’t quite read it.
Dad took another cigarette from my pack and got out. “I have a job here. An old man is dying tonight. He raped and killed several young girls in the Korean War. When he got back to the States, he was wracked with such guilt that he became a priest, and has been ministering to the elderly here for decades. There’s going to be a blackout tonight and he’s going to fall down a flight of cellar stairs while checking the breakers and break his neck. He thinks his sins were finally forgiven, but he doesn’t know there’s no Grace, no God to forgive him any longer.”
I tried not to shiver as my dad stood in the curb outside the Jeep, his elbow resting on the roof while he observed the serene building set far back amongst a number of quaint maples shivering in a rising gale.
“I suppose there’s some lesson in all that?” I said.
“No, I’m just making polite conversation.”
After a few moments, the rain started, with big, heavy drops that splunked against Daisy’s windshield but somehow managed to not touch him at all. He turned and rapped his knuckles on the roof. “I guess I’ll see you around, son. You take care of yourself and that pretty Vivian.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “I suppose you want her, too.”
“Ah, Vivian Summers.” He looked skyward. “So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” He winked at me. “She’s hot, son, but no. You own her soul, so the Whore is yours to do with what you want. You look after her now.” He smiled in at me, a warm smile full of wisdom, time and patience that crinkled the corners of his shockingly blue eyes. “Take care, Nicky.”
