The Fire Night Ball Page 12

  Behind Harry lurked Lorna Anderson, her old schoolmate. Marlena was surprised to see her, and Lorna wasn't looking her in the eye.

  "Oh, hi, Lorna," she said politely, though what was on her mind to say was "What in the hell are you doing here?"

  "We've got a hell of a situation," said Harry laconically.

  "Yes?"

  "We've been vandalized. The central mirror on the bar wall is shattered. Someone threw a javelin at it."

  "What century are we in? Who throws a javelin at a bar mirror?"

  "Well, apparently someone who doesn't like you very much."

  "What do you mean?"

  “You were burned in effigy out in the sculpture garden, where they torched the bonfire. Two stick figures with red hair, one named Cassandra, the other, Marlena. They were burned to the ground in the sight of alarmed guests. Another message was left for you in here.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  "Take a look for yourself." He gestured toward the back of the bar, which was heavily draped.

  Marlena quickly ducked under the bar's flap door and then moved toward the drapery. She took a strong yank at it, pulling off the middle drape.

  She gasped, "Oh my God."

  By some mechanism, the mirror on the gigantic central panel had been warped beyond recognition. It now resembled the mirror in a carnival, and her image appeared grotesquely distorted. At the center of the mirror was a large gaping crater, the size of a manhole cover. A javelin, fashioned like an oversized Indian arrow, lay where it had fallen on the hard wood floor after doing its damage.

  It was as she gazed at the floor that she began to notice the creeping worms and snakes. The whole place was infested with the slimy things! She shook her head in disgust, reaching her hand back to Harry. He had followed her to the mirrors and drawn near her. But instead of taking her extended hand, he stepped away from her. She shuddered.

  "Who did all this?" she asked.

  "You tell me. You’ve missed the best part."

  He walked to the left panel of the mirrored walls and flung back a second velvet drape, revealing three lines of writing scrawled in a childishly rounded hand, all in red crayon.

  "Behold: the handiwork of Marlena Bellum, who has invited Satan into our midst.

  "Harry Drake, this is your final warning: stand against the forces of evil!

  "Smite the hellish snakes from the red head of Satan's whore, or your eyes will be turned to stone."

  She stared at her lover, her eyes round and her cheeks ashen.

  "Someone thinks you need a haircut," he said.

  Their eyes met, and she shivered. The pin-point pupils in his pale brown eyes were cold, hard, and angry. The sensation in her stomach was the painful, terrifying lurch of falling from a very high place.

  “It’s Letty and her legions,” she said in a whisper.

  "How do you know that? More to the point, how would she get in here?" he demanded.

  Harry's scornful eyes were boring into hers, resisting her power. To counteract his cold stare, she was envisioning the last time they had climaxed together.

  He had teased her with his cock, putting it in and then pulling it out, until she was in a frenzy. Then he'd mounted her, ruthlessly pushing his entire member into her. They had cried out in mutual orgasm, the sweat from their bodies spurting from their chests, draining into their eyes, nostrils, and open mouths.

  She willed him to remember it; she poured her eyes into his. It was no use; his eyes were stone cold, blocking her power.

  "I don't know," she said in a whisper. "Somehow she did."

  Think on it, Marlena; worms and mirrors.

  Worms and mirrors, she thought. An odd combination, wasn't it? The words and images resonated with her in such a particular, peculiar way. Suddenly her eidetic memory had it, her brain having culled the database and pulled up a solitary entry in the first of her two brown notebooks.

  Worms and mirrors were iconic images from an old wives’ tale told to her by Granny Bellum.

  Having noticed Marlena spent hours staring into the mirror, Granny Bellum had impressed a stern, superstitious warning on her grand-daughter: “If you look at yourself too much in the mirror, Lena, you'll get worms.”

  Had someone gone through her journals and fiendishly devised this particular punishment, just to freak her out?

  The notebooks had been locked in her private closet for a couple of days. It was possible one of Letty's spies had a key to the closet. If so, her most personal memories and childhood secrets were now ammunition in the enemy's camp. How to fight back?

  She forced herself to focus.

  Harry said stonily, "You're on leave from your official duties here, as of now."

  "You don't think I had anything to do with this?"

  "I don't know what to think."

  Marlena pressed her fingers to her temples. This couldn't be happening to her. Just an hour ago, the way ahead had seemed clear. She was looking forward to a celebration of 1977's numbers, followed by an afternoon of lovemaking with Harry.

  Now their icon of success was smashed, littered in broken glass and infested with worms. And he was looking at her as though she were a stranger, or worse.

  "I don't pretend to know what's on your mind, Marlena, but my mind is on the money. It's a holiday week, and I can't afford to keep this bar closed because of whatever spook is out to get you."

  Harry sneered as he uttered "whatever spook is out to get you."

  She had special gifts, but she could not see what was going through her lover's mind.

  What was gnawing in Harry's gut was a suspicion that Marlena herself had master-minded this travesty to elicit his sympathy, that it was part of a relentless campaign to push him toward marrying her.

  First, she’d purposely left out her divorce papers for him to see; then, she’d fled to her cousin’s house without a word; now, she’d staged a gruesome show for his benefit. Apparently she would stop at nothing to convince him to make an honest woman of her.

  For years, she had made a mockery of his good name and reputation in his native town.

  When some citizens voiced concerns with “B. L. Zebub’s,” she'd defied them, running advertisements touting the bar’s lurid history.

  Before Thanksgiving, historically a slow week for business, she’d hired an Elvis impersonator to spice things up, greeting guests in a rhinestone-studded white suit, red cloak, and pointy horns. When he'd objected--"for God sakes, Marlena, the hillbilly's barely cold in his grave"--she'd laughed and called him a square.

  The message had come through loud and clear. Like Playboy said, B. L. Zebub's was where the possessed went to get fucked up.

  It's the last straw, thought Harry, and I'll let the hellcat fry. I'll shake loose from these nails she's dug into me, even if it kills me. No more, bitch. Take a hike, baby.

  “Love to love you baby…” sang Donna Summer over the loudspeaker.

  “Will someone please turn that damn thing off?” snapped Harry.

  By Mungo, he was going to make changes, pronto. Along with cleaning up the mess, he was going to sanitize the property’s image.

  In future, he'd also be checking the color of crotch hairs, to make sure he wasn't dipping his wick into a redheaded witch’s brew. Fuck vixens, wiccans, feminists, and drag queens. These deranged female types had an insatiable, morbid desire for attention.

  He'd take a simple, pot-smoking cowgirl like Lorna Anderson any day, despite her acne and fake boobs.

  Marlena was the first to drop her eyes. She felt lethargic and defeated. The nausea was rising in her throat.

  "I agree," she said in a dead voice. "We have to keep the bar open, if only to prove we aren't intimidated."

  "Intimidated? I'm not intimidated. I'm fucking furious! Do you know what it's going to cost me to replace that mirror? God knows how they bowed it, took a blow torch to it, maybe. Those crawlers will have to be exterminated. I'll be back in business tomorrow. But make no mistake about
it, Marlena. I don't want you here. Clear out your things. I'm changing the lock on your suite."

  "I'm not staying here. But you already knew that."

  He grabbed her by the arm. "What do you mean, I knew it?"

  "Harry, you're hurting me."

  He let her go, shifted the knot of his red silk tie, and cleared his throat.

  As her world crashed around her, Marlena had to use every ounce of her will to keep from falling down on her knees before him.

  She opened her mouth. She was about to ask about the note she'd left in his suite yesterday, requesting a private meeting. Hadn't he got it?

  But before she could speak, the central mirror panel cracked in a thousand places, exploding shards everywhere. The three people in the bar bolted under the shower of glass and ran for their lives.

  Once she was safely outside, Marlena looked for Harry, desperate to convince him Letty had wreaked the damage.

  He was already inside the police car, talking with an officer. Lorna was nowhere to be seen.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  As more than one citizen reported Mrs. Letty Brown-Hawker had been spreading rumors and claiming Marlena was a dangerous witch, the police investigated the couple at their home. But they appeared to have an air-tight alibi. When the vandalism occurred, they’d been front and center at the WCTU monthly chapter meeting.

  Meanwhile, Letty’s repeated predictions of two deaths resulting from Marlena’s taint was spreading like poison through a body after an adder’s bite. Circulars were being secretly stuffed in mailboxes, warning of the dire consequences of citizens' countenancing the face of deadly evil. The message was that whether sin presented itself brazenly or in the guise of beauty and art, it remained a direct defiance of God’s will.

  By sunset, the violence at B. L. Zebub’s at high noon had been chewed over and was widely regarded as a fitting comeuppance for the nefarious Drake and his proud, red-headed minion, who was clearly that woman reincarnated. More than one claimed to have suspected as much since Marlena's return to her native town seven years before, considering how her stunning appearance was highly unusual for a supposed native.

  At the stammtisch table in Bottomly's Cafe, shunning of the pair was advocated, ala Ingrid Bergman. Public nudity, satanic eroticism, and unabashed adultery just weren't done in Alta, and perhaps Drake's sponsorship of his whore's shenanigans was in itself satanic.

  Whether her hexing was based on Letty's jealousy or a natural result of the ancestral curse, they couldn't say, but all agreed Marlena Bellum should beat a retreat, purifying the village for Christmas.

  A séance was staged that evening, with Letty functioning as medium and channeling an Indian named Red Cloud, who was plenty pissed off at Drake's real estate shenanigans and lax morality.

  Letty held her audiences spellbound with whispered tales of special powers Marlena had inherited from that woman. There was no saying what evils might be unleashed on an innocent populace, Letty warned, even beyond the two deaths predicted.

  One could hope the axe would fall on the sinning couple, but there was no knowing how God might choose to punish this community for harboring Satan’s whore. The continued presence of the witch was not only an affront to morality but also a public danger, and the penalty for those who would attempt to protect her might well be death..

  Hunkered down at Mill's Creek and therefore unaware of the poison swirling around her name, Marlena spent the remainder of the afternoon mulling over every detail of what Harry had said to her.

  There must be a way to get to him and convince him of her case against Letty. If he continued to balk her, she would prefer to die.

  When would she taste his salt again? Brush the curly chest hair with her fingertips? See his eyes glaze over as he surrendered to orgasm?

  Initially she considered waiting a day before showing her face again out in public, but she soon decided against a coward’s strategy of fleeing, which was what her enemies hoped for. Nor would she take on the role of martyr, dress in a sack cloth, and beat her breast.

  The latter was what she thought Harry was expecting she would do. Harry no doubt blamed her for the burst of his bubble. Many guests had checked out early; no new guests had checked in as word spread. Though her belief was that the ghost story would only enhance the hotel's image in the future, admittedly the bottom line on this holiday season might be adversely affected.

  If she wasn’t part of the solution, she must be part of the problem–so Harry’s linear reasoning would go. Therefore, she must figure out a way to pre-empt any further strikes by the fanatics against the hotel.

  To that end, she decided she would invite the Brown-Hawkers to the ball. She would draw the enemy from their lair into her territory, Hatter’s Field, for a final showdown. Let Harry see the bigots for what they actually were. She wasn't afraid to face them head on.

  That evening, after a glorious sunset, Marlena listened spellbound to Chloe's nine-hour version of her mother's story, which went, briefly, as follows:

  On October 28, 1900, Cassandra Vye was hexed in Alta's Methodist church by Goody Brown, Letty Brown-Hawker's ancestor.

  Goody was obsessed with the idea that the beautiful outsider possessed a malevolent power. Her evidence was a tall tale told by Cassandra's grandfather and the observation that she had turned the innkeeper, Augustus "Curly" Drake, into a lecherous swine willing to abandon his wife on their wedding night.

  But Cassandra gave up her possession of Drake in order to garner the attention of Alta's favorite native son, Nicholas Brighton, in the false hope that he would take her back with him to San Francisco.

  Subsequently Cassandra was unfairly blamed for two deaths in the village. The first was that of her widowed mother-in-law. The second was the spectacular demise on Hatter's Field of Harry’s grandfather. Curly Drake's reason for being there was to help her escape, as Cassandra could no longer bear the town's and her husband's low opinion of her; afterward, their adultery was falsely assumed.

  With the help of the Scattergood men, Cassandra made it to San Francisco and as time passed, became a highly successful film writer and actress. On the brink of WWI, she conceived a child by a soldier. The soldier died before reaching the front. Despite excellent parentage of her daughter Chloe and her many anonymous good works, Cassandra remained in Alta a legend associated with evil. She herself believed in the curse laid upon her by Goody Brown, fearing its impact on her female descendants and their lovers.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  December 22, 1977

  By morning, Marlena saw her world from a radically adjusted angle.

  For the first time, being slavishly devoted to a powerful man and defying all convention seemed unwise and immature to her.

  Her eyes were opened as well to the possibility she had been behaving like an automaton in a world of connection, so enthralled with being a love slave that nothing else held any reality; her obsession covered her like a shield.

  Only one person might pierce that armor.

  Ron, my friend, might you be my future lover? Dare I seek passion in the arms of a good man and true?

  Many questions remained unanswered, but for the first time, Marlena was beginning to sense what she must do.

  Her old brown notebooks had been banded together and put at the bottom of her suitcase when she left the hotel. In the dark of night, she had lifted them out. These journals were about the first seven years of her life, composed when she was ten. They had been a labor of love, a blessing bestowed by her special gift of perfect recall.

  By the crack of dawn, she had read them through, cover to cover. Then she opened up a blank composition book and at the top of the page wrote two words: Home Schooling.

  As she raced from Mill's Creek to the Alta Hotel through steadily falling snow, late for a noon appointment at the hotel with Sally Honeywell, she was still endlessly sorting out in her brain the implications of the ancestral story.

  On the car radio, "Wasting Away in Margar
itaville" was blaring, the song holding steady in 1977's top ten charts. The country couldn't get enough of Jimmy Buffet's tasty cocktail and shaker of salt.

  With every syllable, the song lyrics seemed to be urging her toward the geographical cure as a temporary solution for her problems.

  In light of her own relationships now resembling a pileup in a stock car crash, Cassandra's choice to flee held great appeal.

  "Escape,” counseled the wind, “escape to Key West. Waste away in Margaritaville.”

  As if Harry's abrupt dismissal of her wasn’t enough to convince her that hopes of a happily-ever-after with him were ill-founded, Cassandra’s story had cast a heavy funereal pall over her long cherished hopes and dreams. If she were to grant any credence to the tendency of history to repeat itself in a small town, their affair was pre-destined to crash and burn rather than reaching the social and romantic pinnacle she'd fondly envisioned.

  What were the chances of a man leaving his wife for his mistress? Slim. What were the chances of an I.U.D. malfunctioning? She'd looked it up--about the same as getting hit by lightning.

  At this juncture, carrying Harry’s child seemed cataclysmic enough to qualify as an event masterminded by invisible forces.

  The Curse?

  Loving her husband and her mother though she did, Marlena fervently wished that neither of them was so close at hand. If she truly had magic powers, she would have banished them both from this highly disturbed field. It seemed the harder she tried to move straight ahead to her goals, the more mired she got in the past.

  As her tires spun on the ice and the BMW pulled sideways, she honked her horn in sheer exasperation.