Season of the Witch, Part Seven

Devil’s Due

Dirty long hair and a baseball cap. Hillbilly chic. But too old for long hair. Up against the line some men reach in their 30’s where hair to their shoulders is simply ridiculous, embarrassing.

At first, she just watched him. She couldn’t bring herself to stride right in and do him the way she had done the others…the way he had so calmly done her. A part of her was curious. What made this monster tick? How could he keep a life together – a job, a degree, wife and kids. How could he have all this and, yet, be so cruel.

His house was an old rancher. Post-war upper Silver Spring, MD. Farmland converted into acre lots, weaving down into neighborhoods that were comfortably laid out hideaways from the highways and the hustle and bustle. In his neighborhood, quiet streets without sidewalks were all named after Robin Hood characters. Sherwood Forest Road ended at Locksley Lane, twisted onto Gisbourne. Drumelda Hills, the map said. A forgotten rural community long overtaken by DC’s out of control suburban sprawl. Fields and pasture had been replaced by strip malls, condos, and wide roads. She parked on a gravel pull-off, the forest wall of the Northwest Branch Park to her left as she watched his house. An acre lot, maybe more. The neighbors three doors down had horses. Some arcane pocket in her mind knew that the county code for livestock was an acre and a half.

The house sat halfway back on the lot, shielded by birch, crabapple, and maple trees.

Three cars. Two adults and a kid. The third car was a project. A vintage International Harvester truck. It looked like it crawled out of some jungle war in the 1960’s.

How comfortable a life. A paradise in DC, a castle to call one’s own whilst victims like her wallow in condos and apartments and dead-end lives.

The child was away. She watched him leave, picked up by her biological father. In her head, she had histories, images, memories, flashes of lives. She could, now, control it. She could avoid it. She could see as much or as little of her victim’s lives as she wished. But now she peered deep into this man’s life. This Jack and his happy family. A part of her still screamed: Why me? What did I do wrong? But it wasn’t her fault. Wrong time, wrong place. Falling prey to a predator. These things are out of Human control… And now she is the predator. And now this is the wrong time and the wrong place for Jack.

She left her rental car and crossed the expansive front lawn, weaving past a cluster of trees to the long side porch. The door was open – no fear in this posh neighborhood – and a thin strip of evergreens shielded her from the neighbor’s view. She stood there as dusk deepened and watched the door, got her bearings. Jack was in the sunken front room, watching TV. The wife was in the kitchen baking and also watching a small TV mounted above the counter. The layout of the house fell together in her head and became as familiar as if it were her childhood home. She stepped forward onto the porch and through the open door. To her left, the living room. Outdated 70’s furniture. The strong smell of closed-in heat and cat piss. The TV blaring. Up two wide steps and to her right was the kitchen, harsh fluorescent lights glaring down. She turned toward Jack, his ratty ballcap just visible above the headrest of his easy chair. Silence. She needed silence. The TV jarred her, rattled her nerves. With a glance, she turned it off. He sat up as she stepped in front of him.

“Recognize me?” She asked.

His eyes darkened, then a slow smile spread across his lips.

She nodded, raised her arms slightly, wrists out. He didn’t react to the movement. He locked eyes with hers.

“Didn’t get enough the first time around?” he asked.

It stopped her. Cold. She blinked, at first unsure of what he said, then horrified. Stunned. All power forgotten, she broke down. She screamed and lunged at him, clawing at his face, and he easily spun her to the ground and kicked her in the belly.

The wife came rushing down the stairs, shouting, and Jack raised his hand, palm out. She stopped as if he had raised a gun, cowered back.

Elizabeth curled into a fetal position, full of those tears that wouldn’t come. Then she realized that she wasn’t in pain, she wasn’t winded. She stood, straightened her blouse, and rose her face to meet his eyes. She let him throw a punch, cracking against her cheekbone and sending her stumbling. Then, bloodless, unblemished, she straightened again and stared at him silently. Two more punches, again knocking her down, and again she rose to meet him.

Jack started to sense something at that point. It started to hit him that this wasn’t a normal encounter.

Elizabeth, seeing that realization – hearing it, living it through his eyes in a flash – now smiled. “You’re awake now, you drooling savage. You see now what you have created. You begin to understand what’s next, yes?” She raised her arms again, wrists out, the scars down her forearms white-hot. But just before she released the energy swirling around her, the wife screamed and leapt in front of Jack. Elizabeth let loose and the power surged forward and into the spinning body of the wife. She lurched, jerked backward, then slammed into Jack and they both tumbled to the ground.

Elizabeth gasped, dropping her arms and releasing the last of the power. The wife’s broken body lay atop her struggling husband, her face smashed in as if someone had taken a hammer to an orange, blood pouring out of her. Jack rolled free and struggled to his feet, unnoticed by Elizabeth as she watched blood come from between the wife’s legs.

He came at her at a run, and she snapped out of it as they tumbled to the floor. He was dead in an instant. As he straddled her, arm raised and fist ready to rain down, everything inside of him boiled and burned. His eyes blackened, his mouth creaked open as if made of leather, and the smell of scorched flesh filled the room. There was no blood. What poured out of his mouth and nose as he tumbled to the ground was ash.

Elizabeth didn’t move. The vortex of power around her calmed, the scars on her arms cooled. She became aware of the world again as her strength receded, and the background hum of her nearly silent, unnatural body. She heard the sounds of the house around her, the wind outside, the lonely street as a single car passed by.

She sat up and looked again at the wife. She shook her head, “Oh, you fool. Why?”

Why defend this beast? Why sacrifice your life for a man who takes lives? Why throw everything away for a big, fat nothing?

She looked down at the scars on her arms. Her choice. Her first choice. Death. Her second choice was this life beyond life, but she had become more than an avenging angel. She had become an angel of death, and this would become her life forevermore. She had accepted what she had become. She had embraced her choice.

She moved weakly back to her rental car, climbed in and stared at the house of death for a few minutes. Then she returned to her hotel room, sat in the dark, a shadow in the mirror, a silhouette against the eternal background glow of the city that tried to blast through the heavy, dusty curtains. The lights and sounds of life forever trying to claw through the darkness, to absorb everyone, to erase the individual and add to the rat race, forever twist and corrupt and destroy, striving to create a world where predators escaped the law and women’s screams went ignored.

Morning came. And the maid. Elizabeth continued staring into the mirror, and the maid stood behind her, their eyes meeting.