The magic.
His mama's magic.
His fingers vibrating, Jake lifted the bundle out of the trunk. Carrying it to the table, he carefully untied the ribbons, pressed them flat, then rolled them up the way he'd seen his mama do. Loosened from its bonds, one edge of the cloth fell free, its finely embroidered border dropping into Jake's hands as if inviting him to shake it open. Jake's fingers closed on the soft velvet. Its inky blackness seemed to swallow up the candlelight like a feeding beast. Suddenly Jake's arms were lifted high, his wrists snapped, and he brought the cloth back down. In an instant the bundle unfurled, the folds of velvet spreading across the table like the mantle of darkness that had fallen over the cabin a few hours earlier. A second later the cloth dropped to the tabletop. As it fell into place, the creases of its folds disappeared and the rusty stains of age faded away. The corners of the cloth dropped perfectly, each of them hanging an inch above the floor.
In the center of the cloth a golden star had been embroidered, its points formed by five triangles whose bases, together, inscribed a perfect pentagram. Jake placed a candle on each of the star's five points, and as he set the last one in place, their combined light grew far brighter, washing the shadows from the dark corners of the cabin. Then, as if some unseen being had turned down the wick of a lamp, the light faded once more.
But something in the cloth had changed.
The space within the pentagram appeared to have opened, and as Jake stared into it, he felt as if he were peering into a bottomless abyss.
A wave of dizziness swept over him; Jake felt as if he were teetering on the brink of the abyss, about to plunge over into the darkness-darkness that would swallow him up as surely as the conflagration he'd watched forty years ago had swallowed up his mama.
Uneasy growls rose in both dogs' throats, but as Jake turned away from the altar he'd created, the guttural sounds died away.
One by one Jake picked up the items he'd taken from the tray. There were three small jars and two vials. Removing the lid from the first, he took a pinch of the ground tusk of a wild boar and rubbed it into one of the triangles.
As the candle at the triangle's point flared brighter, Jake murmured a quick prayer: "May your belly be torn, and your entrails spilled."
From the second jar he took the curved thorn of a wild rose. "Let your skin be ripped, and your blood ooze from your wounds." The second candle flared.
He removed the stopper from one of the vials, and the stench of skunk oil filled the room. As he poured a single drop of the oily fluid in front of the third triangle, feeding its struggling flame, another incantation fell from his lips: "May your lungs burn and pus fill your throat."
The broken quill of a porcupine came next, and now four of the candles were flaring up. "May your eyes be pierced and blackness fall over you."
Finally Jake opened the second vial and let flow a single drop of the clear liquid within. As the flame of the last candle swelled and the acid from the last vial ate into the velvet's surface, he uttered one last prayer: "May your flesh be stripped away, and your bones be consumed by dogs."
The two yellow dogs edged closer, as if anticipating a meal.
Once again the combined flames of the candles filled the cabin with a luminous golden glow. Now Jake went to the far corner and picked up one of the tattered canvas bags in which he carried home the fruits of his trap lines. Tonight, though, it wasn't a nutria the sack contained, or the carcass of a weasel or otter or possum.
Tonight the bag contained the prize he'd captured the night before.
Carefully, respectfully, he lifted the carcass of Kimberley Conway's cat from the folds of the canvas. The animal's eyes were open, and it seemed to watch him as he laid it in the center of the pentagram.
From a rack above the kitchen counter, he took a filleting knife whose blade was worn thin from years of honing.
In the brilliant light of the flaring candles, Jake Cumberland set about his work.
In half an hour it was done.
He'd divided the entrails of the cat into four equal portions, and each of the portions had been seared by the flame of one of the first four candles.
The cat's hide, scraped free of every scrap of flesh, was held over the fifth candle. The flame consumed a patch of its fur as quickly as the acid had eaten through the velvet on which the candle stood.
The ritual complete, Jake packed away the entrails, and the hide and head, in his canvas bag and blew out the candles. As their light died away, the smoke in the room began to clear, taking with it the foul odor of the skunk oil.
The white powder of the boar's tusk vanished into the nap of the velvet, along with the rose's thorn and the porcupine's quill.
The hole eaten through the cloth by the acid disappeared, and as Jake lifted the velvet from the table, it fell once more into the folds from which he'd shaken it loose an hour ago.
As the distant toll of the church bell striking midnight sounded, Jake rebound the cloth with the purple ribbons and returned it to his mama's trunk. He placed the tray back on its supporting rails and closed the lid.
Just before leaving the house with the canvas bag, Jake Cumberland fed his two yellow dogs. They fell hungrily upon the skeleton of the cat, growling and snarling as they ripped the tendons apart and crushed the bones in their jaws.
The huge clock in the corner of the cavernous living room-an ornately carved piece that had a distinctly Germanic look to it-began tolling the hour as Ted was tearing the plastic seal loose from a fresh bottle of vodka.
The second one, or the third?
He couldn't quite remember, but decided it must be the second. If it was the third, he should have been sound asleep by now, and he wasn't.
He wasn't even close.
His fingers stopped working at the bottle's seal as he counted the hours the clock was striking.
…ten… eleven… twelve… thirteen.
Thirteen?
What the hell…? There wasn't any such thing as thirteen o'clock-everyone knew that.
As the seal broke, he gave the cap a twist, then lifted the bottle to his lips and took a healthy swig. The familiar warmth of alcohol flowed comfortingly down his throat and spread through his belly.
And Janet's words-the words that had been slamming at his head all evening-quieted for a few seconds.
She didn't mean it-couldn't mean it! Without him, what the hell would she do? Besides, he'd heard it all before. Wasn't she always whining that she couldn't stand it, that if he didn't stop drinking, she was gonna leave? But she never did-never would. She loved him.
Couldn't live without him.
But what the hell was going on with the clock? Come to think of it, how come it was running at all? He didn't remember winding it. 'Course, Janet or one of the kids could've done that. But he didn't remember hearing it chime before, either.
What the hell kind of clock only struck once, and then struck the wrong time?
Ted struggled off the sofa and lurched over to it, staring up at its etched brass plate. There were dials all over it-one that showed the time, and another that showed the seconds ticking by, and a big one with the moon on it. The clock was running, all right. He could see the pendulum moving. His gaze shifted to the dial that showed the seconds. There was something about it that appealed to him, the way it ticked a notch forward every time the pendulum swung.
It was… His mind groped for a word, then found exactly the right one.
Tidy. That's what it was.
Neat and tidy.
The way things should be.
Except that they weren't. Reaching out to steady himself against the bookcase built into the wall next to the clock, he peered around at the room. Even through the haze of alcohol, he could see the curling wallpaper and peeling paint, and the stains in the carpet. What the hell had Janet been doing all day? Couldn't anybody but himself do anything?