Coven. Part 4

Dizzy, she wiped her nose with a napkin, then she felt fine again. Weird, she thought. When she got back on the road, she realized her period wasn't due for another week.

The agro site was pitch dark.

She stopped in the gravel access. The office lights were out; dark blotted the pens and white stables to ghosts of themselves, and the front gates were chained shut. Mr. Sladder's little security car wasn't to be seen. She looked past the wooden post fences, past the stables. In the distance, fog rolled along the wood line.

Power failure, she thought. Maybe Mr. Sladder's car was inside the gate. But when she approached the compound, she knew something else was wrong.

She got out of the car. Total silence yawned over the site. Of course it's quiet, she tried to a.s.sure herself. It's the middle of the night. But it was more than that, wasn't it? The site was too quiet.

"Mr. Sladder, are you in there?" She reached in and honked her horn. The night sucked up the sound. "Mr. Sladder!"

Headlights roved across her back. Startled, she turned.

Mr. Sladder was creaking out of the little white security car. He put a piece of gum in his mouth. "Nellapee? Oh, you come to see the horses, did you? 'Fraid we gotta problem."

"What happened to the lights?"

"Dag power went out. I just come from the power station down the road. Thought some dag kids mighta got in there, messed with the transformers or somethin'."

"Did they?"

"Nope. Place was locked up tight. Come on, honey."

He unlocked the front gate and took her to the office, leading with a big boxy flashlight. "Dag quiet out here, ain't it?"

Penelope didn't hear him. She was looking out past the fence again. The fog seemed closer, thicker. It was eerie.

"Be with ya in a minute, darlin'. Got to raise me some heck with them morons down campus." He sat at the desk and dialed the phone. Was it the chair that creaked, or his joints?

Penelope stood timidly. The flashlight seemed to warp the room.

First Mr. Sladder called the campus physical plant department. He was told that no power failures had been reported on campus and that the station meters showed no fluctuations into the agro site. He called the state police and was told that no traffic accidents that might've brought down a power line had been reported. Lastly he called the power company, who could not account for their power loss. But a "crew" would be sent "first thing." "First thing when?" Mr. Sladder shouted into the phone. "First thing next week? Next month? Lugheads!" He hung up, sputtering. "Dag dabbit. Like to kick 'em all in their bee hinds, I would. Ain't nothin' but a bunch of blammed shammers." The draining light made him look shrunken in the stiff uniform. His hat with a big badge on it sat ludicrously atop his cropped head.

"Come on, Nellapee." He gave her a flashlight. "Let's go check the junction box. I musta overlooked somethin'."

Outside smelled funny. Something vaguely bitter meshed with the usual ripe stable smells. They walked between the white buildings. Penelope saw a flask in Mr. Sladder's back pocket.

The old man looked worried. Could he be as afraid of the dark as she? She glanced past the fences to see how far the fog had crept, then realized they were walking in it. It came up nearly to her knees.

"Dag ground fog creeps up on ya. A fella can't see where he's walkin'. Careful of holes, hon. Holes all over the dag place."

Mr. Sladder slid into the utility shed as if swallowed, light and all. Penelope stood alone in the fog, which the moon had made opaque-a murky, graying half glow.

"Blam it! Look at this!"

Penelope entered the shed, which was full of coursing rings of light. She smirked at an odor like burned plastic.

"Power surge musta blowed through here. Fuse housing melted 'fore the breaker pole could trip."

The black pop switch on the center box read "On." The main cla.s.s CTL fuse sat in the melted carrier like a nugget of coal.

"Has this happened before?" she asked.

"Well, sure, honey. The lugheads don't regulate the power proper is what. Just ain't never happened this bad."

"But you can fix it, right?"

"Me? Naw, hon. Have to get a 'lectrician out here to replace these boxes." Mr. Sladder scratched his ear. Was he disturbed? "Just ain't too keen on sittin' around in the dark." In the flashlight beam, the lines in his old face resembled knife cuts in meat.

Then a series of very loud crisp sounds echoed outside- chunk. Crack!

Penelope jumped.

Again: chunk. Crack!

"Jiminy peter and Creesus Jeist! Ja hear that!"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed his arm, which was thin as a wood rail in the starched s.h.i.+rt. "What was that? What's happening?"

"Monkey business is what, dear. Scuse me while I consult my old friend Mr. Johnnie Black." He took a quick sip from the flask and smacked his lips. "There she goes, much better. Now come on."

The skinny arm led her out of the shed. The fog was everywhere now, a s.h.i.+fting great lake. It parted murkily around their steps.

"Mr. Sladder-"

"Jus' you stay behind me, sweetheart."

"Is someone here?"

"Dag straight I'm afraid, hon. Probably some town lugheads, comin' up here all the time in their pickups, drinkin', carryin' on. 'Swhat happens ta boys when they'se not brung up proper."

The farthest stables were out of use. Here, a section of the post fence had been broken, the twin crossbeams cracked.

"Looks like someone had a job here," Mr. Sladder remarked.

Penelope remembered the two robust chunks. They'd been awful, irrevocable sounds. "Was it...an ax that did this?"

"'Fraid so, hon, and a big one, to drop beams as big as these."

So people were running around the site with axes? "I'm scared, Mr. Sladder!" she whispered. "We have to call the police."

"We'll do just that, sugar. But first I wanna check-"

The animals, she finished in thought. An alarm went off in her mind. The horses! The ax! But that was too horrible to even think of...

They glided through the murk to the henhouses. The silence now seemed threatening. She prayed to hear something, but there was no sound at all. Not a rustle. Not even a single, simple cluck.

They aimed their lights through the chicken wire. Mr. Sladder's words rolled out of his mouth like some slow, dark liquid. "Holy creepin' Moses. What kind of dag madman-"

Penelope's throat s.h.i.+vered closed. All the chickens were dead. All of them, dozens, lay on the dirt floor like piles of fluff, little tongues extruding from opened, tiny beaks.

Trails of fog led them to the sheep stable and the cow pen. They didn't speak, or were perhaps unable to. They seemed to know- The sheep were all dead, the pigs were all dead, faces slack on the floor. Worse were the cows, sidled over as if dropped. Their legs jutted stiffly, some frozen in rigor.

Penelope was crying. She was running. Dread propelled her down the wood corridors. No, no, please! Not the- All four horses lay similarly dead.

"Aw, Moses, honey. Don't look at this."

Penelope stood with her back to the stable wall. She had no breath. Moonlight poured in through the roof's gapped joists, tinting the corridor. Mr. Sladder went into the stables as Penelope strained to blank her mind, swallowing sobs.

"Looks like some right sick sons a b.i.t.c.hes done poisoned 'em," Mr. Sladder said.

Tears struggled down Penelope's cheeks. How could someone kill the horses? They were the only things that meant anything to her. They were her dreams and her joys, and now someone had butchered them for a prank.

But Mr. Sladder said they'd been poisoned. Hadn't they heard- "We heard an ax, didn't we?"

"That we did, Nellapee. No mistakin' a sound like that. But it wasn't no ax used on the critters. No wounds, no blood."

All she saw in her mind, though, was the ax. Mr. Sladder took her to the stablemaster's office, and as he dialed the phone, Penelope pictured a revolving display of axes in her mind, all shapes and sizes, cutting edges all agleam. It's out there somewhere, she thought. She could not evade the question: Where's the person with the ax?

"This is Sladder out at agro. Get me the-"

chunk.

The wooden building shook from the unseen blow. Penelope screamed. "Dag psychos chopped the phone box!" Mr. Sladder whispered. "They're outside right now. We gotta haul tail to the car."

Penelope was incoherent, haunted by the image of the ax. It knew-the ax knew everything before they did. Mr. Sladder hustled her back the way they had come. "We slip out back," he whispered. "We use the buildings for cover. We weave between the buildings to the gate and jump in the car."

She vaguely understood what he was saying. How could he think so clearly, so soon after hearing the ax? The chunk filled her mind, it possessed her. chunk. It was all the terror in the world. chunk. It was the sound of death.

They scrambled to the end of the stalls. There was the door, their escape. Moonlight drew its shape in imprecise gaps. The door seemed to stumble toward them. Almost there, almost...

chunk.

Penelope squealed shrilly. They froze as the blade bit through the door and then retracted with a creak.

Mr. Sladder was reaching for something in his pocket, but there wasn't time, as- chunk. CRACK!

-the ax tore down the exit door.

A figure stood huge in the doorway, shadowed black. The moon made a blazing halo behind its head. A stout arm held the ax half raised, as if to display it for them.

The ax was so huge it didn't even look like an ax. A giant blade like an upside down L was attached to a haft over a yard long. Its cutting edge was flat. It looked old, like a relic.

"Holy Moses," Mr. Sladder croaked.

The ax raised slowly, slowly...

Penelope screamed like a train whistle. Mr. Sladder leapt right. A pitchfork leaned out from the half door of the last stall. He was reaching for it, touching it, grabbing it. Then- chunk.

Mr. Sladder made an indescribable sound, not a scream but a compressed suck. The ax chopped his arm off against the half door.

Now the figure struggled to remove the blade from the wood. Mr. Sladder pushed Penelope down the hall, to the stablemaster's office and locked the door.

Sladder held the light while instructing Penelope to tie off his stump with a shoelace. Blood glistened at his feet. The old man's remaining hand dug into his pocket and withdrew a pistol.

But the gun looked puny, while the figure outside, she knew, was huge, and so was the ax. How could something this small stop something that big?

Mr. Sladder got up, gripping the tiny gun. "You just sit tight, sweetie. I'm gonna poke some holes in that tub o' lard out there. Ain't gonna let no sick sons a b.i.t.c.hes get their grubby paws on you, that's fer sure."

"But he has that giant ax! He'll kill you!"

"Tojo and his whole fudgin' army couldn't kill me, puddin'. Be dagged if some fat lughead's gonna rub me out."

Mr. Sladder's resolve was n.o.ble and obvious. Though he'd just been divorced of three quarters of his right arm, he put his fear aside. He would let this intruder, this animal killer, have Penelope only over his dead body. It was that simple. If you want the girl, you go through me first. Becalmed, then, he opened the door and stepped into the aisle.

Penelope peeped around. The ma.s.sive figure had stopped halfway down the corridor. He held the ax from shoulder to hip.

"Hey, you fat tub!" Mr. Sladder yelled. "Puttin' in some overtime with the knife and fork, huh? Fellas don't come no fatter, that's for dag sure."

The figure faltered. "I'm not fat," it said. "A trifle overweight perhaps, but I wouldn't say-"

Mr. Sladder laughed. "Trifle! Who you kiddin' trifle? I seen sea cows in Disney World skinnier than you, ya big tub!"

"This is absurd," the figure said. "I won't stand for this."

"I'm surprised you can stand at all, fat as you are."

The ax raised. The figure, offended, took a step- -and Mr. Sladder fired the pistol.

Penelope flinched. It wasn't like TV-the tiny gun made a loud, irritating pop! Then came a ping! A bullet ricocheted off the giant, flat ax blade. Mr. Sladder fired again. The figure howled, fell down, and crawled out the exit.

"He shot me!" he bellowed outside. "He shot me in the a.s.s!"

"Dag straight!" Mr. Sladder affirmed, waving his stump. "Come on back for another if ya like, fatso!"

Penelope squealed, this time in delight. The tiny gun had worked! But then Mr. Sladder said, very slowly: "What in creepin' Moses is this?"

Two more figures stepped in the doorway, sleek, slim. They were just standing there. They looked like...women.

-h.e.l.lo, they said.

But what was that? What was going on?

-We want to eat, please!

They began to step forward.

"You just turn right around!" Mr. Sladder ordered.