John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

His mama looked up from her work, her dark eyes glittering in the light of the single candle that illuminated the table. "Sister don't know everything."

Jake stared at the dead frog that lay on the table close by the effigy, its belly slit open all the way up to its mouth. "But I don't want you to go to Hell," he pressed, his voice quavering.

His mama reached out and laid a gentle hand on his head. "Don't you worry," she crooned. "I'm not goin' to Hell." Her eyes flicked toward the doll. "But that don't mean others won't. Now, you get on back to bed and go to sleep. You have to go to school in the morning."

Jake slid back under the blanket, but a few minutes later, when his mama went out into the night, he pulled on his clothes and followed after her.

First she went down to the edge of the lake and squatted down amongst the reeds that grew there, hiding the frogs and turtles Jake liked to hunt.

A low sound - exactly like the ones the frogs themselves made - rumbled from her throat, and she cast the carcass of the dead creature he'd seen on the kitchen table into the murky water. As ripples spread from the spot where she'd thrown the frog into the water, she stood up, muttering so softly that Jake couldn't make out the words. Then, carrying the effigy doll with her, she walked slowly through the night, pausing here and there to whisper a muttered prayer, break a twig from a bush, or pick up some object - once a feather, another time a pebble - from the path.

"All of them have magic," she'd explained to Jake one afternoon when they came across the clean-picked bones of a dead crow, and stooping down, she'd picked up the bones - even the beak and the feet - and slipped them into her pocket. "Every living thing has magic, and every dead thing, too. You just have to know how to use it." Tonight his mama had gathered so many things that Jake was sure she was planning to use the most powerful magic she knew.

As he followed her through the darkness, he remembered the words his teacher had spoken, meanwhile staring right at him, just like she knew what his mama did sometimes. "Christ is the Savior, and only through Christ can we be saved. All the rest is evil. All other paths lead only to Hell." As Jake followed his mama along the twisting paths, he silently prayed for her to turn around and lead him back to their little cabin. But then, after what seemed to him to be a very long time, they stepped out of the woods, and Jake knew where they were.

The huge house - the house where his mother worked every day, cleaning the floors and doing the laundry and cooking the meals and whatever else she was told - loomed before him, and it dawned on him what magic she was practicing tonight. As he cowered in the deep shadows by the carriage house, his mother stepped out into the light of the rising moon. She paced slowly, her head down, as if searching for something. Then, a soft chant welling up from somewhere deep inside her, she began circling, pacing around in an ever-tightening spiral until at last she was slowly spinning over a single spot.

Her spinning slowed further, then stopped. She lowered herself until she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. Her eyes fixing on one of the second-story windows, she began removing things from the deep pockets of her dress.

First came the effigy doll, which she lay before her, its head pointing toward the great house.

Then a knife, its blade glinting in the moonlight.

Some bones, picked clean of flesh, she laid in a circle around her.

Then came stones, and bits of moss. Some leaves, and a handful of dust.

She spread it all before her, her incantations growing ever louder, until it seemed to Jake they might summon up the dead from their very graves.

A light went on inside the house, a light that spilled out of the second-story window to catch his mother like a fly in a spider's web. A few minutes later a door opened and a man stepped out.

"Eulalie, is that you out there?"

Jake recognized the voice - it was George Conway. The man who owned the house.

The man his mama worked for.

When his mama didn't answer, George Conway left his house and came out into the yard. Then he was standing above Jake's mama, and the boy could see the anger in the man's face as he studied all the things Eulalie Cumberland had spread around her.

"Take your junk and go home, Eulalie," George Conway commanded.

Jake held his breath, waiting for his mama to grab all her things and scuttle away. But instead she lifted her face until her eyes fixed on Conway's. Then, her right hand outstretched, she pointed to the great house silhouetted against the night sky. "Evil," her voice intoned. "Evil everywhere. Evil in your house, and evil in you!" She held up the effigy doll then, and shook it in his face. "It's in here now. It's all in here." She snatched up the knife, holding it close to the doll. "Soon I'm cutting it out. Cutting it all out!"

George Conway glowered down at his mama. "Don't threaten me, Eulalie Cumberland. Don't you dare to threaten me."

Jake saw his mama's chest heave as she straightened up to face George Conway's rage. "Ain't a threat," she said, and though her voice was barely above a whisper, it carried perfectly through the stillness of the night. "I'm promisin' you. By the next moonrise, the evil will be gone from this place!" As she went back to muttering her incantations, George Conway turned away from her and strode toward the carriage house.

He'd been seen! Jake's heart pounded and his eyes searched the darkness for some means of escape. But the woods were too far away, and there was no other shelter to protect him. A frightened cry rose in his throat, but just as it was about to slip from his lips, Conway disappeared through a door into the building against which he was huddled.

Safe! He hadn't been seen at all; he was safe.

Still, Jake held his breath; any sound he made would betray him. After what seemed an eternity, George Conway reappeared, carrying something in his right hand.

As the man started back toward his mama, Jake finally let out his breath and took another.

"I'm telling you for the last time, Eulalie," he heard Conway say. "Go home."

But his mama didn't budge, and when George Conway used both his hands to raise the object above her head, Jake was certain he was going to smash her with it. But instead he tipped it, and water began to flow over his mama's head.

Another second went by, and then the acrid odor hit Jake's nostrils.

Not water.

Gasoline.

"Last chance, Eulalie," Jake heard George Conway say.

Jake's mama peered up at the man who loomed above her. "I ain't afraid of you, and I ain't afraid of what you been messin' with." As her incantations began again, the flare of a match illuminated the face of George Conway. The man gazed down at his mama for another second or two, then stepped back a pace.

With no change in his expression at all, George Conway tossed the match into the puddle of gasoline that surrounded Eulalie Cumberland. There was a strange whooshing sound as the gasoline exploded into flames, and George Conway stepped back two more paces as the first flash of heat struck him.

Jake's eyes widened in horror and his hands clamped over his mouth. He wanted to race forward, wanted to jerk his mama out of the fire, wanted to rescue her from the flames suddenly dancing around her, but his muscles wouldn't work.