The Witches’ Bane
by Edward Ahern
Gordon Lormor is a defrocked priest and con man. And something more. He walks a precarious path between light and dark magic. When a former lover calls him, pleading that he help free her from a coven, Gordon leaves his business behind and travels to upstate Vermont.
Death arrives before he does, and Gordon is thrown into a worsening spiral of assaults and murders and the threat of an infant sacrifice. He is joined by his assistant, AJ, and helped by a Catholic cardinal in chipping away at the wall around the witches’ conspiracy. He soon realizes he is teetering ever closer to his own spiritual and physical death.
Chapter 8: The Missing Child
Gordon and Brenda had to pass by the Xterra on the way back to the store. The front windshield had been decorated with a hex sign. Brenda noticed it first. “Is that your truck? Somebody’s painted the windshield.”
Gordon reflexively made a protective symbol in the air with his hands. “Don’t get too near it, it won’t smell good.”
“What?”
“It’s not paint. It’s a mixture of human blood and excretion. Somebody tried to put a curse on me.”
“You don’t really believe in all that, do you? It’s just one of our punked out teenagers.”
“Don’t think so. That’s a curse symbol that’s not known to many people outside a coven. But don’t worry, it won’t work.”
“Of course not, it’s nonsense. I’m just sorry the little delinquent decided to pick on you.”
Once back inside the bookstore, Gordon asked Brenda for a Baggie without explaining what he’d use it for, and asked one more question about Helen Connelley.
“Maybe,” Brenda replied. “It was Helen who suggested Judy as an employee.” They paused a bit awkwardly, but had no bridge to the next level and just exchanged business cards — two cultivated bibliophiles with professional courtesy. When they shook hands Gordon held hers a little longer than necessary, and took her willingness to leave the hand in his grasp as a positive omen.
Back at his SUV, Gordon fisted his lock-back folding knife out of his pocket and scraped a little of the foulness off and into the Baggie. Then he drove over to an automated car wash and watched the hex symbol dissolve into dirty clots. He fondled the finger bone and parchment hanging in a leather pouch from his rearview mirror. Even if the curse had been applied properly, the saintly bone and Aramaic inscription should have been enough to repel it.
AJ called while the car was being blow-dried. “Bad news.”
“What?”
“A kid just disappeared from St. Johnsbury. Rene LaChapelle, six months old. He’s presumably going to get skewered in six days, so there’s not much time. Do you have anything you can give the cops to help track him down?”
“LaChapelle? I’ve got nothing but a hunch. The witches prefer an unbaptized child, which means they must be close enough to the family to know if the kid had gotten anointed. I’m going to have to get up-tempo. I’ll call with anything I need or know.”
On the drive back, Gordon called a number he’d pulled from the local phone book. “Hello? Ms. Helen Connelley? Ms. Connelley, I’m Gordon Lormor, a friend of Judy Bentley.... Yes, the one who found the body.... Yes, yes, it is terrible. I’d lost track of Judy over the last few years, and really would like to find out how she’d been doing recently. Would you be home for the next couple of hours? I can be in Big Eddy in forty minutes.... You would? Great. I’m on my way.”
Gordon told the phone to dial another number and, when it picked up, punched in a four-digit code. “Father Deauville? I need to speak to him... Tell him it’s Malleus Maleficarum.... Just tell him please, and ask him to call me back on this number.”
He’d driven for ten more minutes when the phone rang.
“You never call with good news, Gordon. What is it this time?”
“Serious, I think, Eminence. A deep-rooted coven that’s been performing infant sacrifices for years. Another child has just been stolen.”
“So it’s not some fuzzy, ‘Ode to the Sun’ group?”
“Uh-uh, it’s pretty vicious. And somebody just tried to put a death hex on me.”
“What can I do?”
“The French-Canadian parish in St. Johnsbury, Vermont — St. Eulalia. I need fifty consecrated hosts and three gallons of holy water. Appreciate your instructing the pastor to organize it. Tell him ‘Dexter’ will call to make arrangements, please.”
“Son, are you the least bit spiritually fit? Can you really be a hammer of witches when you practice wizardry?”
“Who better suited? The diocesan exorcist would just get bamboozled or killed. You remember those venerated church fathers of ours that allowed sorcery to counter witchcraft?”
The bishop sighed. “Don’t be sophistic. Just remember you’re an investigator and not an inquisitor or, God forbid, an executioner. We’ve let civil courts handle witchcraft-related crimes for centuries. I’ll make the arrangements. Be careful, Gordon. You have a very back-handed way of doing God’s work.”
“Thank you, Eminence.” Gordon punched the phone off and five minutes later pulled back into the village of Big Eddy.
Copyright © 2018 by Edward Ahern
