Festival of Fear (35 page)

After I had finished the invocation, I packed the bones and the powders back into the box and went back inside. I watched the fires for a while, in the gathering gloom of a winter's afternoon, but eventually the wind began to rise, and scatter the yard with sparks and ashes.

I had to go to Portland, Oregon, that weekend, to attend a convention of wood pulpers. As you can imagine, wood pulpers are not the most scintillating people you'll ever meet. They're very rich, most of them, I'll grant you that. They're deeply concerned about the environment, too – mainly because of the eye-watering fines they're likely to incur if they don't replant the acres of forest that they've turned into cardboard boxes. But when I wasn't discussing the comparative profitability of different species of fir, or the joys of corrugated packaging, I retreated to my hotel room with the latest Michael Crichton novel and a large glass of Canadian Club.

On the third evening, when I returned to my room, the red light on the phone was blinking. It was Jenny, and she had left me a voice message. ‘Something so weird has happened . . . it's in the back yard. There's
grass
growing, right up through the snow.'

And so there was. By the time I got home, mid-morning on Monday, there were hundreds of thin green spears of grass rising at least three inches clear of the snow, all over the yard, and a few weeds, too. I knelt down and brushed the palm of my hand across them.

‘Grass doesn't usually grow in November, does it?' asked Jenny. ‘Not like this.'

‘No, not usually.'

‘There isn't any grass growing in anybody else's yard, only ours.'

I stood up. ‘I know. I know there isn't.'

So it worked. The ritual performed by the Sad Dog River Satan actually worked. He
had
revived their wheat crop. He
had
been responsible for giving them a bumper harvest, and saving them all from starvation. Of course there was no rational scientific explanation for it. None of the powders had been sprinkled on the ground in sufficient quantity to act as a growth accelerant, even if any of them had been components of any recognized fertilizer, which they weren't. You can't make your cabbages grow bigger by showering them with crushed mirrors and frogs' blood.

I went back into the house, but I couldn't resist looking out of the window from time to time, and each time I looked it seemed as if the grass was even taller, and even thicker.

If this ritual worked, then I was going to be rich. No two ways about it. I could sell my services to every farm and forestry department in the country. Think of it. They would never risk losing a crop to drought or storms or diseases. They wouldn't need nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium any more, only me. I would save them billions of dollars, and I could charge them millions.

‘You're very quiet,' said Jenny, over our spaghetti supper.

I smiled at her, and nodded. ‘I was thinking about Christmas, that's all. I think it might have come early this year.'

During November the grass in our yard continued to grow thick and lush, and I had to cut it with a sickle every weekend. I took two weeks off work, and I sat down with my accountant George Nevis and mapped out a business plan, although I didn't tell George exactly what my product was. ‘Just take a look out of the window, George. It's the middle of winter, in St Paul, and I can make the grass grow. This is my very first test, but I believe I can do the same thing for every cash crop in the world.'

George blinked at me through his thick-lensed eyeglasses. ‘Jack, you're talking very serious profit here. But not just profit. This has huge political implications, too. Like,
huge
. Even the President can't make the grass grow in the middle of winter.'

I patted him on the back. ‘It's a new era, George, and it belongs to me.'

Two days before Christmas, Jenny came into my study and said, ‘There's somebody to see you. He wouldn't give his name.'

I was having a headache working out a franchise scheme for Miracle Crop Services. Obviously it was going to be impossible for me to visit every potential customer in person, so I would have to employ people to tour the country and perform the ritual for me. The principal problem was that – once I had told them how it was done, and given them the wherewithal to do it – they could go out and do it on their own and tell me to stick my franchise where you don't need Ray-Bans.

‘Sorry – whoever it is, tell him I'm busy.'

But Jenny came back a few moments later and said, ‘He says he really has to see you. It's about the grass.'

‘OK, OK.' I left my desk and went to the front door. A tall, thin man was standing in the porch, one side of his face illuminated scarlet by the sunshine that came through the stained-glass window, the other side yellow. He wore a black wide-brimmed hat and a long black coat and his hair was almost shoulder length, dry and gray. He had a large nose, but otherwise his face was strangely unmemorable, as if he had moved his head while his photograph was being taken.

‘Hallo, Jack,' he said, but he didn't extend his hand.

‘Yes? I'm very busy, I'm afraid.'

‘Well, I've come to relieve you of all of that.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘I believe that you have something that belongs to me. In fact, I only had to look over into your back yard to
know
that you have something that belongs to me.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about. I think you'd better get off my property before I call the cops.'

‘My box, Jack. My trusty old box, with all of my powders and my bones and my –' and here he held up his finger and thumb and made a little shaking gesture – ‘
jingle
,
jingle
, sleigh bells.'

‘I don't have anything that belongs to you. I don't even know who the hell you are.'

The man gave the faintest of smiles. ‘I think you know exactly who I am, Jack. I'm the kind of man who can wait a very long time to get what he wants. I'm the kind of man who follows you right to the ends of the earth. You have my trusty old box, Jack. I went back for it and it wasn't there and it sure took some sniffing around to find out what had happened to it.'

‘It was abandoned. It was lying in the dirt. Who's to say it's yours?'

‘It's mine because it's mine, Jack, and I want it back.'

‘Well, forget it. OK? You understand English? That box is mine now and you don't have any way of proving different.'

‘So what are you going to do with it, Jack? Apart from making your back yard look like Kentucky?'

‘I don't have to tell you what I'm going to do with it.'

The man smiled even more widely, his eyes glittering in his red-and-yellow harlequin face. ‘I know. You think you're going to make your fortune, don't you? You think you're going to be rich beyond the dreams of men. But it doesn't work that way, Jack. Never has. The ritual works once and only once. It gives you a helping hand when you're lower than low and you don't know what else to do. And it always carries its price, and one way or another, you have to pay that price, in full.'

‘OK, you've had your say. Now I'm calling the cops.'

‘You still don't get it, do you? The ritual isn't an act of kindness. I'm not in the charity business, Jack, never have been. The ritual is temptation. The ritual is what you turn to when the Lord thy God appears to have abandoned you. Why do you think I come at Christmas-time? Is there anything more satisfying than having somebody deny their faith on the very eve of the Virgin Birth?'

‘You're crazy. Get out of here.'

‘I want my trusty old box, Jack, I'm warning you, and if I don't get my trusty old box, you're going to have to pay me recompense.'

I slammed the door in his face. He waited outside for a while: I could see his face through the hammered-glass porthole. Then he turned and went away, closing the screen door very carefully so that it didn't make a sound.

Tracey and Mikey came scuttling down the stairs and Mikey said, ‘Daddy banged the door!'

‘The wind caught it,' I told him, tousling his hair.

Jenny came out of the kitchen looking worried. ‘Who was that man? What did he want?'

‘Nothing. Just a bum, looking for a handout.'

‘You were angry with him. I heard you.'

‘I told you, it's nothing.'

I tried to go back into my study but Jenny caught my arm. ‘There's something wrong, isn't there? Ever since you came home from Roseau, you've been acting so strange.'

‘There's nothing wrong. In fact everything's one hundred and ninety percent right. This year we're going to have a Christmas we'll remember for the rest of our lives.'

It snowed on Christmas Eve and carol singers came around from house to house, carrying lanterns. Tracey and Mikey knelt up on the window seat looking out at the street and their faces were lit up by the Christmas lights. Jenny squeezed my hand and said, ‘Mikey's so excited I think he's going to be sick.'

We had supper together, and then the children put out Tracey's Christmas cake and a glass of Canadian Club for Santa. The cake was lopsided but I assured Tracey that Santa wouldn't mind, in fact Lopsided Cake was his favorite. I hugged them both before they went to bed and believe me there is no smell like the smell of your own children at Christmas. You don't need spices or mulled wine.

As we sat together that evening, Jenny said, ‘I wish you'd tell me what's really going on.'

‘Nothing at all. I'm planning to go into crop management, that's all. I've had enough years of experience, growing things.'

‘But that man. He wasn't just a bum, was he? He said he wanted to talk to you about the grass.'

‘He was being nosey, that's all.'

She frowned at me. ‘It isn't just a freak of nature, is it, that grass?'

‘What else could it be?'

‘You tell me. There's some sort of connection, isn't there, between the grass growing like that and you wanting to start up a new business? Why can't you tell me what it is?'

‘You wouldn't understand it even if I told you. It's too technical.'

She suddenly sat up straight. ‘You used the things in that box, didn't you, like that man in Roseau?' God, women and their intuition. ‘You did the same ritual, and it worked.'

‘Jenny – don't be ridiculous. You can't make grass grow by burning fires and sprinkling powder on it.'

‘There were ashes on the snow, I saw them. You did it, didn't you, and it worked?'

I took a deep breath. ‘All right, yes. I did it and it worked. And if it works for the grass and it works for wheat it's going to work for corn and broccoli and potatoes and rutabaga. God knows, it may even work for sheep and cows. That's why this is going to be the best Christmas ever. This is the Christmas when we start getting very, very rich.'

‘So what did that man want?'

‘I told you. He was sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted. He saw the grass and wondered how I'd managed to grow it.'

‘And you slammed the door on him?'

‘Jenny—'

‘Jack, I have a very bad feeling about this. I mean it. Using the things in that box – that's like making a deal with the devil.'

‘It's folk magic, that's all. It's perfectly harmless.'

At that moment the phone rang. Jenny answered it but it was Jerry, wanting to talk to me.

‘Listen, Jack, I don't want to spoil your Christmas Eve, but something's happened.'

‘What is it? You sound terrible. Do you have a cold?'

‘I called Alma. You remember Alma from the North Star Bar?'

‘Of course I remember Alma. What about her?'

‘I called her. I was going to invite her down to St Paul for New Year's.'

‘So? Is she coming?'

‘She's dead, Jack. They found her this morning. She and John Shooks, both. It seems like a guy came into the bar two nights ago asking about a tin box. He talked to Alma and he talked to John Shooks and it seems like they wouldn't tell him nothing, and there was some kind of an argument.

‘It was Alma's day off yesterday, but when she didn't show up this morning the manager went to look for her. He broke into her room and there she was in bed with her head cut off. Tortured, too, all of her fingernails and toenails pulled out. The cops went round to John Shooks' place and the same thing had happened to him. Jesus – they haven't even found their heads yet.'

I talked to Jerry a while longer, just to calm him down, but then I had to put the phone down, because I was starting to shake. That was how the man in the black hat had discovered where I lived. And if he could do that to Alma Lindenmuth and John Shooks just to find me, what was he going to do to
me
?

‘
If I don't get my trusty old box, you're going to have to pay me recompense
.'

We went to bed late that night, well after midnight. All I told Jenny about Jerry was that two of his friends had been killed in an accident. I didn't want
her
to start worrying, too. We tippy-toed into the children's room and filled the pillowcases they had left out for Santa – a Bratz doll and a hairbrush set for Tracey and a collection of Harry Potter figures for Mikey, as well as candies and oranges and nuts.

I left their doorway a couple of inches ajar and then I followed Jenny to the bedroom. ‘You're so
tense
,' she said. ‘What's the matter?'

‘Nothing, really.'

‘Jack – what I said about making a deal with the devil – I didn't really mean it.'

‘Well, maybe it was a pretty stupid thing for me to do.'

‘If you think it's really going to make us rich—'

I took hold of her hands and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I don't know. Sometimes you can stop and take a look at yourself and it hits you – my God, is this really
me
, behaving like this?'