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  Coven

  David Barnett

  Born in darkness, they arise. Seductive angels of murder, madness, and horrors beyond imagining. Bathed in moonlight, they feed their darkest hungers in a festival of perversion and death, demented orgies that serve a cruel, unspeakable will… They are irresistible sirens in black, corrupting the living and raising the dead. Now the silent town of Exham will surrender to their loving embrace…

  COVEN

  EDWARD Lee

  Coven © 1991 by Edward Lee

  For Amy & Scott.

  —

  PROLOGUE

  Murder, he thought. Blood.

  That’s all the student could think about, all he could see in his mind—the blood. The afterimage burned behind his eyes like red neon: the still corpse in the closet, castrated, headless. And the blood. Had they actually painted the walls with the man’s blood?

  Alone now, the student lay exhausted on the jail cot. The station’s murky light drained into the cell; he felt submerged in dark. He tried to sleep, to forget about the blood, but even worse images flushed in and out of his head. He was standing in the moonlit dell, eyes peeled back like skinned grapes. Around him, the woods dripped and shivered. Carcasses, dozens of them, lay swollen to bursting beneath the foot deep fog. The student wore the stench of rot. He breathed it, tasted it. From the trees, and from beneath the fogtop, faces of things peered at him and shrieked. Not animals. Not people…

  Things.

  Mother of God, the student thought.

  —then jerked awake on the jail cot.

  Trying to sleep was useless. He remembered too much, in too much detail: his mad sprint out of the fog sodden dell, the sound of pulpous horrors crunching underfoot, and the monstrous laughter, their chitinous witchlike liquid giggles…

  Please let me be insane.

  What a relief that would be, to dismiss it all to insanity. But the student knew he could not, he knew it was real. Images continued to march through his head, and a parade of morbid questions. What in God’s name were they doing back there? How many people had they murdered? He’d seen their little graveyard in the woods. How many bodies had they buried? And whose? How much more blood had been spilled?

  But amid the questions, one certainty remained.

  I’m next. They’re coming for me next.

  In the half dark, the student leaned forward and touched the jail’s cement walls. Yep, that’s cement, all right. Need more than a French bread to bust through that. His fingers ran down the frame of bars, jerked the locked steel door hard against its mount. Yep, this is a jail. No doubt a fucking bout it.

  Safe, he thought.

  Yes, he was safe; this was a secure cell. For the time being at least, the student was safe from those women…those hideous women in black.

  —

  CHAPTER 1

  Exham College was, in a sense, exclusive. It was the college of choice for those whose GPAs and SATs wouldn’t get them into reform school, much less Harvard or Yale. As for its exclusivity, you had to be rich. Anyone with money could get into Exham.

  The school occupied 160 odd acres of the Deep South, at the very end of State Route 13. The nearest towns were Crick City above and Luntville below, and that was it. The college owned the nearby half town, also called Exham, which was run by a small police department and a white washed city council. After that, though, for thirty miles in any direction, there was just tract upon tract of open farmland. In other words, Exham was the Alcatraz of the college world.

  Despite its primary devotion to the upper class brain dead, the school ran very well, which was no surprise considering the amounts of money being dumped into its tills. There were two regular semesters between September and May, and two summer sessions for students to retake the courses they’d failed during the regular school year. The average Exham student took six years to attain a four year degree. Actual matriculation was about sixty percent, and the ratio of dropped classes to classes registered for was the worst in the country.

  In all, Exham proved the paramount education institution for the black sheep of America’s wealthiest families. Being a complete fuckup in this world scarcely mattered as long as you were a rich fuckup. This might suggest a colossal indictment that all men and women are clearly not created equal, and that unmoderated wealth leads to a breeding ground of all manner of abandon.

  ««—»»

  The eighteen hour drive from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Exham usually took Wade St. John about fifteen hours. What he drove was a car called a Callaway Twin Turbo, a $55,000 limited edition Corvette. Maintaining 120 mph for vast stretches of 1 95 was a breeze with the Uniden radar detector. The Vette was Wade’s sanctuary from reality, his cocoon. He’d just sit back in the leather seat, crank up the Nak deck, and put the pedal to the metal. Time stood still in the Vette. He was ageless. He was invincible.

  Yeah.

  Exham College entailed a series of circumstances he’d just as soon forget. Summer was for fun, not college. But goddamn Dad had put a damper on that faster than greased shit through a city pigeon. Wade could’ve killed the mailman; the way he’d felt waiting for his report card was probably close to the way those guys at the Alamo had felt waiting for the Mexican Army.

  Dad’s voice needed no exclamation points: “Goddamn it, Wade. Two C’s, two D’s, and you failed history. Again. God in goddamned heaven. How could you fail history twice?”

  “Be real, Dad. Does the Battle of Hastings really have any bearing on my life? Will I be made a better person knowing that Peter the Great put a tax on beards? What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal, son, is your brain, and you’re wasting it. These grades are beyond goddamned belief.”

  “But, Dad,” Wade asserted, “I’ve done my best.”

  “You haven’t done dick since the day I enrolled you at Exham. A chimpanzee could make better grades than these. You’re twenty four goddamned years old and you don’t even have enough good credits for a two year degree. Your marks don’t get better, they get worse.”

  “I’m working on it, Dad.”

  “Working on it? My God, son. Your grade point average is 1.4. That’s absolutely fucking outrageous.”

  Uh oh. Fucking. That was a bad sign. Dad would say goddamn a lot, and occasionally shit, dick, and bullshit. But when he started modifying those adjectives and nouns with fucking…that meant trouble.

  ««—»»

  The trouble had come the next day, with such devastation that Wade felt like someone had just dropped a thousand pound safe on his head.

  “It’s ultimatum time, son,” Dad had announced.

  “Pardon me, Dad?”

  “The bullshit ends here. I will not permit my only child to devolve into the biggest failure in the history of higher education. I’ll give you till next December to raise your GPA to 2.5.”

  “Say again, Dad? That’s a mathematical impossibility. I couldn’t pull a 2.5 even if I got straight A’s in the fall semester.”

  “I realize that, Wade. So to give you a fair shot, you’ll be attending both summer semesters.”

  Wade had laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Do I look like I’m joking?”

  Dad never looked like he was joking. But…Wade smiled. “Tough luck, Dad. The registration deadline has passed.” Whew!

  “I called the dean this morning,” Dad informed him. “An exception has been made. Classes begin in a week; your schedule is waiting for you. Dean Saltenstall took care of it all.”

  Oooo, that motherfucking suckface gay bar loitering dean! “Come—on, Dad! That’s not fair!—Everybody knows you have the dean in your pocket!”

  “You’re goddamn right, and I will take advantage of that fact every chance I get. You will attend the summer semesters.�
�

  This was serious. “Look, Dad, I can’t go to summer school. It’s, like, against my principles. What would my friends think?”

  “Your friends are shiftless idiots not fit to pick the pebbles out of my tires. I don’t care what they goddamn think.”

  “But I have a reputation to maintain! I’d never live it down. Summer is for partying, the beach, girls, that sort of thing.”

  “There is no excuse for you, son. You’ve been in college six years and you’re scarcely closer to getting a degree than the day you stumbled drunk out of high school. All you do is drink beer, drive fast, and carouse with women of questionable morality. You’re smearing the family name, my name, and I won’t have it.”

  This wasn’t going well at all. If Wade had to go to summer school, he’d be the laughingstock. Time for a little of the old B.S., he concluded. “Okay, Dad. Let’s make a deal. You let me have the summer off and I’ll give you my word, as a true St. John, that I’ll hit the books like you’ve never seen. I’ll become a virtual dynamo of diligence, discipline, and scholastic vision. My GPA will be up in no time, and there’ll be no more D’s and F’s, you can bank on it. That’s my promise, Dad, and I mean it with all my heart.”

  Dad’s poker face remained as unchanging as a bust of Genghis Khan. “Son, you’re so full of shit you need a toilet brush to clean your ears. The matter is settled. You will attend the summer sessions. Period. And to add further incentive, I’m canceling your credit cards and terminating your $500 per week allowance.”

  Wade’s mouth locked open. He was going to be sick.

  “It’s for your own good, son. No money from me till those grades come up. From here on, you’ll earn your money. You’ll work a part time campus job.”

  Wade was mortified. “A job? Me?”

  “Yes, Wade, a job. You. I realize you’ve never worked in your life, but it’s time you started. The dean has made all the arrangements, as a personal favor to me.”

  Wade ground fist into palm. So help me God I’ll bury that motherfucking dean up to his neck and SHIT ON HIS HEAD! “What is this, Dad? A conspiracy? National Let’s Screw Wade Week?”

  “It’s for your own good, son. One day you’ll see that.”

  Wade closed his eyes, tried to simmer down. “Okay, okay. I can understand. So what’s the job? I know you’d never stick me with some shitty bottom of the barrel job, right?”

  “You’ll be working several nights a week at the sciences center.”

  Doesn’t sound too bad. But— “What will I be doing?”

  “Nothing too taxing, just a few hours a day. It’s a fine job, son.”

  “Yeah, Dad. A fine job. But how about answering the question? Like what…exactly…will I be doing?”

  Dad hesitated and very nearly smiled. “Cleaning toilets.”

  Wade was beside himself…with horror.

  “Along with assorted other janitorial duties. It’s time you learned to do a little honest work. That’s what made America, son.”

  “Cleaning college shithouses is not what made America!”

  “It’s honest work for honest pay.”

  “Yeah? Exactly how much honest pay are we talking about?”

  “Why, minimum wage, of course.”

  By now, Wade could barely stand. He knew his flaws, sure. He was a nut-chase, a loaf, and a bullshitter. He used his looks, his car and his father’s money to skate through life. He could even admit that punishment for his ways was in order. Punishment, yes. But this was too much.

  And with that thought, something very dangerous happened. Wade St. John, for one split moment, cast his good judgment aside.

  “I’m not going.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I’m not going. I’m not doing any of it. I’m not going to summer school, I’m not giving up my credit cards, and I’m not going to clean toilets for minimum wage. How do you like that, Dad?”

  And Dad had smiled a great big warm fatherly smile as he grabbed Wade by the collar and raised him a full foot in the air. Like a fish eye lens nightmare larger than life, Dad’s lips were huge in Wade’s face. “You will go to summer school. You will complete your assignments, you will study every night, and you will clean as many toilets as they tell you to clean. And you will raise your GPA to 2.5 by next December. Because if you don’t, you’re on the street. You lose the stocks, you lose the trust fund, you lose the car. You’ll be out of this house, out of this family, and out of my will. Now, how do you like that, son?”

  Wade made the sheepiest of grins. “Gosh, Dad. Can’t you take a joke? Classes start in a week. I guess I better start packing, huh?”

  —

  CHAPTER 2

  Penelope wished she could be a horse. She knew, of course, that wanting to be a horse was not exactly normal—it circumscribed the growth of her socialization. The psychiatrists called it reclusionary concept image fantasy, and they were always harping about “socialization,” whatever that was. “To actualize your individuality, you must develop a collective affirmation, Penelope. A sense of positive function in your interpersonal dynamics. That’s socialization.” And horses? They didn’t like horses. “Your fantasy to be a horse is merely an emotional reaction to your introversion.” Right. It was all poop to her. Daddy was paying $250 per hour for this, so she didn’t care. “Your fermented preoccupation with horses,” the shrinks said, “is actually the result of a malnourished, unidentified sexuality.” It astounded her how intensely Freud’s bullshit dominated modern psychology. It was all about sex.

  Penelope was a virgin, and her virginity was something she could somehow never conceal from the psychiatrists. It was the “base” of the “indisposition,” they’d tell her. “It” was the cause of her “problem.”

  “A problem of this nature, Penelope, is a commonplace emotional by product of a restrained sexualization.”

  “What is?”

  “The aberrational equestrian fantasy.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your wanting to be a horse. And no doubt a further derivational root to your overall amotivational symptoms, your unfocused state of esteem, and your failure in general to be socialized.”

  The assholes. It all sounded like horseshit to her, Freudian pun not intended. Were they trying to tell her that she’d lose her interest in horses once she got laid?

  Penelope felt comfortable with her virginity, and she couldn’t imagine what all the fuss was about anyway. How could anyone want to be penetrated by something that looked like an uncooked half smoke? The idea appalled her. Once she’d watched one of Daddy’s X rateds on the VCR. Little Oral Annie, it was called. Penelope could’ve screamed: one delving, spurting monster after the next, and Little Annie had earned her middle name with startling expertise. One man had put his penis—which was the size of a summer squash—all the way into Annie’s rectum, while another spurted gouts of viscid goo all over her breasts. What a gross out! If this was sex, Penelope was quite happy to want no part of it.

  It all got back to what the psychiatrists called the “anomalic base,” or the “illusion of reference”—her “problem” of wanting to be a horse. But what was wrong with that? Horses were free of the injustices of the human world. To these grand beasts, there were no such things as subjugation of womanhood, unequal opportunity, couch casting, prostitution, pornography, and the like. Horses lived in beauty and in peace. They knew only simple desire and simple love.

  What a wonderful way to exist.

  Weren’t fantasies symbols of our selves? Penelope’s fantasies proved her purity and her innocence. And this was the most outrageous part of all, because it was always the harmless people who wound up as the world’s worst victims. So it was best she didn’t know.

  Her fantasies would not wait for her. Nor would her innocence, nor her life. All that waited was an end via her worst fear.

  ««—»»

  The truss bridge was half a century old, and it looked it. Stained cement supports held up pale green girde
rs. Warped planks stretched fifty feet across the sluggish creek.

  Jervis Phillips stood precisely over the middle span, leaning over the rail. He stared down into the thick creek, a black mirror to his black thoughts. The sickle moon and starlight reflected nothing.

  He wasn’t going to jump; he hadn’t come here for that. Besides, this creek wasn’t deep enough. He’d only get wet and be further humiliated. The little ring in his hand was why he’d come.

  He was drunk. He stood unstable as the cruel world twitched and jagged around him. He’d drunk eleven bottles of Japanese beer—Kirin—to numb the pain in his black heart, but the relief was bogus. The alcohol only made it hurt worse.

  Graffiti crawled over the rust patched girders, spray paint hearts and coiled 4 evers—a testament of love. It made him sick. Howard loves Sonja, Lee loves Betsey, Mary loves Jaz. Even Cathy loves Lisa. There was so much, so much love.

  Jervis’ heart was a knot of pain. He’s probably fucking her right now. The thought cut through his stupor, like dried corpseskin crinkling. The little ring was ice in his palm. Yeah, he’s fucking her brains out right now. How does it feel, Jervis?

  Feel? He had no more feelings. Only the image of Sarah wriggling beneath someone else. It was some rich German guy, some foreign developer’s kid. That’s all Jervis knew, and all he needed to know. Tears trickled down his cheeks like hot insects.

  Now he understood the tragic logic of suicide. He understood how people could jump off buildings or slit their wrists when love abandoned them. His spectral thoughts were right. Without Sarah, he had nothing.

  His tears fell into the water and made little plips.

  Love stalks like a killer, he recited the Byers poem. See how freely it wields the ax.

  But why should he think of killers and axes?

  He opened his fist and looked at the ring. It was to verify their engagement, a diamond on a little gold band, size 4. Sarah had dumped him before he had the chance to give it to her.