Ширли Мерфи - The Grass Tower

“Fact! Who can talk about facts when— Facts!” She turned on him, glaring. “You’re always so cool about it. It isn’t your insides that are being torn apart—facts and logic!” Fury swept her again, a terrible surge of helplessness and torment. “That’s just the trouble, there isn’t any logic. Facts aren’t facts if they don’t make any sense.” How could he be so unwilling to understand! “You’re not the one who has to feel yourself jerked away, who finds yourself standing in some place— Oh, I shouldn’t expect you to understand!” She flung away from him, walking fast up the beach.

When at last she heard the pounding of hooves she did not turn to look. Even when he pulled the mare up beside her, she only stared sullenly at the sea. She could feel Reid’s hurt, and his anger. Finally when she did not turn or speak, he rode off, leaving her alone on the shore feeling desolate.

For a long time she sat huddled and miserable between the dunes in a little cup-shaped valley, in shadow and shivering with cold but not willing to move into the sun. I don’t even have sense enough to put my clothes on, she thought at last, pulling her Levi’s and sweat shirt over her damp suit. Too unhappy to go home, she slouched into the village finally and mooched along the street feeling sullen and hateful. She was angry, she knew deep inside, partly because Reid hadn’t forced her to make up—she had a sudden stirring daydream of Reid leaping off the mare and taking her in his arms. She searched the street ahead hoping— hoping—but of course he was not there, would he come clattering down the concrete on the mare, did she think? When Selma came out of the drugstore right in front of her, she didn’t even bother to avoid her. Then, seeing Selma’s face, she stopped. Selma had been crying. “Is it Jack?” Bethany asked hesitantly. “Is he worse?”

“Jack? Oh, no. He’s all right, he’s just inside with Colin. It’s—I shouldn’t be out looking like this.” Selma sniffed and dabbed at her nose.

“It’s Dr. Claybelle,” Colin said, coming out behind her. “That bastard! Aunt Selma was upset about the fire and thought she helped cause it, but Claybelle only laughed at her. He said no one was so stupid as to light candles in a barn and—and what were we doing playing around in the barn anyway, that the seances were meant for an audience, that they were a money-making proposition, not for games.”

Bethany stared at Selma, shocked, anger and elation leaping in her by turns. She couldn’t sort out her emotions. Was it only a trick, then? A trick of Dr. Claybelle’s, after all?

“He said you can’t—can’t run an operation like this if you’re going to be sentimental,” Selma stuttered. “I —” She was crying again, as if the sobs were being jerked painfully out of her.

“Aunt Selma, how—” Bethany began, and in spite of Selma’s misery—because of Selma’s misery—hope was winging in her suddenly. “Was it a trick, then? Was it?” And when Selma stood silent, mopping tears, Bethany took her by the shoulders, wanting to shake it out of her. “Was it a trick, Aunt Selma? Oh, please.” But Selma’s look was almost without comprehension. “Tell me, Aunt Selma.” Her need to know was terrible. “If it was a trick— If it was a trick—”

“It wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t,” Selma said at last. And then, hesitantly, “It can’t have been.” They stared at each other, Selma’s jade eyes faded and spoiled from crying. “It wasn’t a trick. He told me, when we first started, that it was all real; he told me wonderful things. But then after that first seance, he was strange; he changed everything he had said, and he began talking about the organization and about making people believe, how if you could make them believe they would do anything.”

“But he saw the Zagdesha, how could he—?”

“He laughed,” Selma said. “He said it was shadows, and people wanting to believe. But Bethany,” she said, looking very young and disheveled, “he was pale from it.”

“But curing people,” Bethany said. “He says he can cure people.”

Selma shook her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes— sometimes they want to be cured and it makes them— Oh, I don’t know, Bethany.”

“But he—the money! You mean he was just taking the money?”

Selma gulped and nodded. “All of it, just— He just laughed at me.”

“But the Zagdesha, whatever we saw—” Bethany was furious now. “He was afraid of it!”

Selma nodded.

“And he won’t admit it,” Bethany said, incredulous. “He won’t admit it was there. And he laughed at you.” She put her arm around Selma. How slight boned she was. “He was afraid of it.” An elation, a triumph, was rising in her; she turned to stare at Jack. “Get him, Jack. Get him, and open up the church.”

“It’s unlocked,” Jack said, excitement darkening his eyes. The bandages on his left arm and side, under his sweater, made him look lopsided and lumpy, and there was a red jagged patch down his neck. He took Bethany’s hand and smiled an evil and charming smile, then left them. Colin, pale with anticipation, went to hold the door open nervously.

Blinded from the sun, Bethany thought the room was totally dark, but then the gray wash of almost-light that seeped through the black curtains began to pick out shapes; and when Selma lit the candles, the room swarmed around her, red symbols undulating in the flickering light. Selma brought two cowled robes from the back and held one for Bethany, pulling the cowl up for her so her ice-cold hands lay for a moment against Bethany’s cheek.

“What was in the chalice before?” Bethany whispered hoarsely.

“Blood. Lamb’s blood.”

“I won’t drink that again.”

“There isn’t any, it doesn’t keep. I’ll use wine.”

Bethany was almost too numb to feel shocked at the idea of wine in the chalice like in church. At another time, she might have refused it—wine in a chalice would be Christ’s blood. But of course it would not, not without a priest. Here it was only a crude blasphemy, a crude mimicking. She shuddered though, watching Selma pour it out. Her bravado and anger were fading. She wanted to run out into the sunlit street, into the hot, open street, out of this threatening room. Oh, why had she come? Why had she started this?

Then Claybelle came, a hulking dark shape in the open doorway against the swath of sunlight. Jack was there behind him, and they came directly to the table, Claybelle walking heavily and scowling at Bethany; he sat down abruptly, his annoyance and disdain making a tight pressure in the room. He gave Selma a superior look, as if she were about to make a fool of herself and he intended to enjoy her embarrassment.

Bethany turned her back on them all, torn between her sudden loss of nerve and her hate for Claybelle. If she didn’t start, she would lose her nerve entirely; she turned to face them at last and made herself take up the chalice from between the candles. She tried to be calm; and when she began to say the ritual, it was with a deliberate slowness; but suddenly and inexplicably she wanted to bring the dark presence, wanted it very much. As she began the ritual, her words seemed to make an echo in the room. She had no idea whether she was getting the words from Selma’s mind, or whether she remembered them, but they came to her almost as if she were hearing them. “Arise, Serpent. Arise and come forth upon this plane as the sea rises and the winds tear at the heavens—” Her palms were beginning to sweat, and it was with shaking hands that she traced the signs across the candles; the disturbed, heated air warped and distorted the room, and she felt her blood stir and an eagerness take hold of her, a sudden heady thrill of power; her voice lifted: