Sharyn McCrumb - Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

As she carried her dinner tray to the service hutch, Lucille could not resist a warning to the head witch. “Clutie,” she said dramatically, not even bothering to lower her voice, “there is great danger in tampering with the forces of darkness!”

Just then Mrs. Hartnell was wheeled by in her chair, beaming and nodding at the table of satanists. “Did you have a nice life?” she asked sweetly.

Tinker’s Meadow was a quarter of a mile from the retirement community. It was bordered on three sides by piney woods and was fronted on the east by a little-used dirt road. High Priestess Clutie chose it for the ceremony for privacy-and because it was as far from the home as they could carry a mummy in a glass-fronted box.

A pale dime-sized moon shone on the long grass, and an autumn wind made the coven shiver. It was just after eight o’clock. Midnight would have been a better time for spells to work, but several folks had to be back by eleven to take medication, so they had to make do with the darkness, the full moon, and a real corpse.

Clutie wore a homemade Egyptian collar over her black evening gown, clumps of rings and bracelets, and a black pageboy wig reminiscent of Cher. But she was very dignified. She clutched her copy of Ancient Spells & Rituals with an air of solemn authority. At her direction, Mrs. Walkenshaw drew a pentagram on the ground (with chalk borrowed from the Craig Springs billiard table). Mr. Waldrop and Mr. Junger took the mummy out of its shabby coffin and placed it faceup within the circle. There was a smell of mothballs from the vintage suit.

“He feels like the cover of a Bible,” Mr. Junger whispered to Miss Fowler.

Clutie motioned for her followers to join hands and form a ring around the pentagram. She closed her eyes and threw back her head. “We are invoking the black angels with this once-living mortal-with this terrible sacrifice from A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk; the parching Air Burns frore, and cold performs th’ effect of Fire .” (The Craig Springs library copy of Paradise Lost had been missing for several months.)

“In exchange for our demonic offering, we ask for power-” Clutie clanked her bracelets and made her voice rise to a howl as she chanted a few Latin phrases from the magic book.

“Power!” murmured the coven members, swaying rhythmically as she chanted.

“I drop fresh blood upon this offering and command you, Demon, to reveal yourself unto your priestess!”

The circle began to writhe as the members turned and threaded their way to the left through the group, clasping each other’s hand as they passed. This completed, they rejoined hands and paced solemnly to the right in one full rotation. ( Allemande left and circle right .)

That was when the thing appeared at the edge of the woods. The coven members with better hearing had claimed to hear a snarl or a roar a few seconds before the apparition, but all eyes turned almost simultaneously to the dark clearing where a white shape had materialized. It was no more than a flash in the blackness, but suddenly-where its mouth ought to be-a long tongue of flames billowed forth like a fiery banner. Slowly, deliberately it began to move forward.

The thirteen members of the Craig Springs coven thought they were screaming, “The Demon!” but in fact the sound came out more like “Aarggh!” Everybody got the message, though. In less time than you could say amen , the senior-citizen satanists had dropped hands and were sprinting toward the road. Clutie Campbell, her black drapery hitched up around her knees, was leading the pack. As they headed off in the direction of the retirement community, several members paused for breath and announced their intention of disbanding the coven. Mrs. Walkenshaw recited the Lord’s Prayer as one long word, refusing to look back. Clutie Campbell wondered if she ought to wait a week before she suggested a synchronized swimming team.

The book of magic and the tatty roustabout mummy lay forgotten in the dirt of Tinker’s Meadow.

When the shouts of the departing coven had faded into the autumn night, a solitary figure stepped out of the woods and walked toward the abandoned pentagram. Its white robe rustled in the long grass as it stopped to retrieve a long wooden-handled implement from the ground. The mummy’s leathery face remained impassive in the moonlight.

“Well, that’s that,” said Lucille Beaumont softly as she looked down at the erstwhile sacrifice. “Of course, you probably didn’t know what was happening to you, but it was downright disrespectful, and I had to put a stop to it. Whoever you are, you deserve a proper funeral. All I can manage is a prayer and a few old hymns, though. I hope that will do.”

Lucille rolled up the sleeves of her white Presbyterian choir robe and picked up the Craig Springs gardener’s shovel. “You deserve to get buried, too,” she told the mummy. “I was in a carnival when I was young, just like you, and us carnies have to stick together.” Lucille Beaumont’s second husband had been the fire-eater, and he’d taught her the tricks of his trade. Although she had much preferred being the fortune-teller, she never forgot her lessons in pyrotechnics. She had had to improvise the fire-eating materials for the Tinker’s Meadow performance, but she had apparently been a most convincing demon. She smiled to herself, remembering the satanists’ screaming retreat. Good thing there weren’t any heart patients in the coven.

“I reckon a lifetime in show business is long enough,” she remarked. “A person ought to be allowed to retire. And you sure don’t want to keep on in show business when you’re dead, do you, mister?”

Gently, but matter-of-factly, she placed the mummy back in his glass-fronted box, and she said a simple prayer for the repose of both body and soul. When that was done, she sank the shovel deep into the clay of Tinker’s Meadow to begin the makeshift grave. As the spadefuls of earth plopped softly on the grass, Lucille Beaumont sang her second husband’s favorite hymn-“Give Me Oil in My Lamp, Keep Me Burning”-in a voice like a rusting calliope.

SHE MUST BE careful not to let her anxiety show. Even if something were said during the lunch hour, she must take it calmly or, even better, pretend not to understand at all. Above all she must seem just as usual, no more or less quiet, attentive to the eddies in their lives.

Usually this was not difficult. Kathryn and Jayne required no more than token contributions from her, since it was tacitly understood that her life was less interesting than theirs. Occasionally Thursday lunch turned into an inquisition, when she let something negative slip-such as a quarrel with Andrew that morning. Jayne had pounced, demanding that her problem be “shared,” and they had dissected it over chicken breast in wine sauce. By the time the dessert crêpes had arrived, Andrew’s forgetting to put mustard instead of mayonnaise on her sandwich had become an act of chauvinism.

Miriam had said that she would rather handle matters with Andrew in her own way, but they had laughed and asked her if she were trying to be The Total Woman . Kathryn told her that if Andrew refused to respect her personhood, she should take a lover, but Jayne contended that self-awareness was a healthier approach. She insisted that Miriam attend assertiveness training class with her, so Miriam went twice, because she didn’t want to say no. Usually when other people insisted on a thing, and Miriam didn’t care much either way, she let them have their own way. She had noticed, though, that some people nearly always cared a great deal about everything-such as where they had lunch and when they went-so that Miriam seldom got the default of getting to choose. But each thing was too trivial in Miriam’s view to be assertive about. Somehow, though, they added up.