Witch-Compass

GRAHAM MASTERTON

On his last night in Libreville, Paul went for a long aimless walk through the market. A heavy rainstorm had just passed over and the air was almost intolerably humid. He felt as if he had a hot Turkish towel wrapped around his head, and his shirt clung to his back. There were many things that he would miss about Gabon, but the climate wasn’t one of them, and neither was the musty smell of tropical mould.

All along the Marche Rouge there were stalls heaped with bananas and plantains and cassava; as well as food-stands selling curried goat and thick maize porridge and spicy fish. The stalls were lit by an elaborate spider’s-web of electric cables, with naked bulbs dangling from them. Each stall was like a small, brightly coloured theatre, with the sweaty black faces of its actors wreathed in theatrical steam and smoke.

Paul passed them by, a tall rangy white man with short-cropped hair and round Oliver Goldsmith glasses, and already he was beginning to feel like a spectator, like somebody who no longer belonged here.

A thin young girl with one milky eye tugged at Paul’s shirt and offered him a selection of copper bracelets. He was about to shoo her away when he suddenly thought: what does it matter any more? I won’t be here tomorrow, I’ll be on my way back to the States, and what good will a walletful of CFA francs be in New Milford, Connecticut?

He gave the girl five francs, which was more than she probably made in a week, and took one of the bracelets.

‘Merci beancoup, monsieur, vous êtes très gen-til? she said, with a strong Fang accent. She gave him a gappy grin and twirled off into the crowds.

Paul looked down at his wallet. He had hardly any money left now. Three hundred francs, an American Express card which he didn’t dare to use, and a damp-rippled air ticket. He was almost as poor as the rest of the population of Gabon.

He had come here three and a half years ago to set up his own metals-trading business. Gradually he had built up a network of contacts amongst the foreign mining companies and established a reputation for achieving the highest prices for the least administration costs. After two years, he was able to rent a grand white house near the presidential palace and import a new silver Mercedes. But his increasing success brought him to the attention of government officials, and before long he had been summoned to the offices of the department of trade. A highly amused official in a snowy short-sleeved shirt had informed him that, in future, all of his dealings would attract a ‘brokerage tax’ of eighty-five per cent.

‘Eighty-five per cent! Do you want me to starve?’

‘You exaggerate, Mr Dennison. The average Gabonese makes less in a year than you spend on one pair of shoes. Yet he eats, he has clothes on his back. What more do you need than that?’

Paul had refused to pay. But the next week, when he had tried to call LaSalle Zinc, he had been told with a great deal of apologetic French clucking that they could no longer do business with him, because of ‘internal rationalisation’. He had received a similar response from DuFreyne Lead and Pan-African Manganese. The following week his phones had been cut off altogether.

He had lived off his savings for a few months, trying to take legal action to have the ‘brokerage tax’ rescinded or at least reduced. But the Gabonese legal system owed more to Franz Kafka than it did to commercial justice. In the end his lawyer had withdrawn his services, too, and he knew there was no point in fighting his case any further.

He walked right down to the western end of the Marche Rouge. Beneath his feet, the lights from the market stalls were reflected like a drowned world. The air was filled with repetitive, plangent music, and the clamour of so many insects that it sounded as if somebody were scraping a rake over a corrugated iron roof.

At the very end of the market, in the shadows, an old woman was sitting cross-legged on the wet tarmac with an upturned fruit box in front of her. She had a smooth, round face and her hair was twisted into hundreds of tiny silver beads. She wore a dark brown dress with black-printed patterns on it, zigzags and circles and twig-like figures. She kept nodding her head in Paul’s direction, as if he were talking to her and she was agreeing with him, and as she nodded her huge silver earrings swung and caught the light from the fish stall next to her.

On the fruit box several odd items were arranged. At the back, a small ebony carving of a woman with enormous breasts and protruding buttocks, her lips fastened together with silver wire. Next to her feet lay something that looked like a rattle made out of a dried bone and a shrunken monkey’s head, with matted ginger hair. There were six or seven Pond’s Cold Cream jars, refilled with brown and yellowish paste. There was a selection of necklaces, decorated with teeth and beads and birds’ bones. And there was an object which looked like a black gourd, only three or four inches long and completely plain.

Paul was about to turn back to his hotel when the woman said, ‘Attendez, monsieur! Ne voulez-vous acheter mes jouets?’

She said it in surprise, as if she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t come up to her and asked her how much they cost.

‘I’m sorry, I’m just taking a walk.’

She passed her hands over the disparate collection on top of her fruit box. ‘I think that is why you come here. To buy from me something.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’

‘Then what is bringing your feet this way?’

‘I’m leaving Libreville tomorrow morning. I was taking a last look around the market, that’s all.’

‘You come this way for a reason. No man comes looking for Jonquil Mekambo by accident.’

‘Listen,’ said Paul. ‘I really have to go. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think you have anything here that I could possibly want.’

The woman lifted up the ebony figure. ‘Silence those who do you bad, peut-être?’

‘Oh, I get it. This is ju-ju stuff. Thanks but no thanks. Really.’

The woman picked up the bone with the monkey’s head and tapped it on the side of the box. ‘Call up demons to strangle your enemy? I teach you how to knock.’

‘Listen, forget it. I got enough demons in my life right now without conjuring up any more.’

‘Jonquil knows that. Jonquil knows why you have to go from Libreville. No money, no work.’

Paul stared at her. She stared back, her face like a black expressionless moon. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.

‘Jonquil knows all thing. Jonquil is waiting for you here ce soir.’

‘Well, Jonquil, however you found out, there’s nothing you can do to help me. It’s going to take more than black magic to sort my life out. I’ll have to start over again, right from scratch.’

‘Then you need witch-compass.’

‘Oh, yes? And what’s a witch-compass going to do for me, whatever that is?’

Jonquil pointed with a red-painted fingernail to the gourd. ‘Witch-compass, genuine from Makokou.’

‘So what does a witch-compass do?’

‘Brings your feet to what you want. Money, woman, house. Work all time.’

‘I see. Never fails. So what are you doing, sitting in the street here, if you could use the witch-compass to guide you to whatever you want?’

‘Jonquil has what she wants. All thing.’

Paul shook his head. ‘It’s a great idea, Jonquil. But I think I’ll pass.’

‘Pick it up,’ Jonquil urged him.

Paul hesitated for a moment. For some reason, the pattering of drums sounded louder than usual, more insistent, and the insects scraped even more aggressively. He picked up the black gourd and weighed it in his hand. It was quite light, and obviously hollow, because he could hear something rattling around inside it. Beads, maybe; or seeds.

‘See in your head the thing that you want,’ said Jonquil. ‘The witch-compass makes its song. Quiet when you want is far off distance. Louder - louder when close.’

‘Kind of a Geiger counter, then,’ smiled Paul. ‘Except it looks for luck instead of radiation.’

‘Money, woman, house. Work all time.’

Paul rolled the witch-compass over and over in his hand. There was something very smooth and attractive about it, like a giant worry-bead. ‘I don’t know …’ he said. ‘It depends how much it is.’

‘Ily a deux prix,’ said Jonquil.

‘Two prices? What do you mean?’

‘En termes d’argent, le prix est quatorze francs. Mais il y a également un prix moral à payer, chaque fois la boussole pointe sur ce que vous désirez.’

‘I have to make a moral choice? Is that what you said?’

Jonquil nodded again. ‘No thing that you truly desire come free.’

Paul gently shook the witch-compass and heard its soft, seductive shaking sound.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Fourteen francs. If it works, I’ll come back and thank you in person. If it doesn’t, I won’t be able to afford to come back.’

‘You will be back,’ Jonquil assured him, as he counted out the money. ‘Your feet will bring you back.’

It was dry and breezy when he arrived back in New Milford. The sky was startlingly blue and red-and-yellow leaves were whirling and dancing on the green. He drove his rental car slowly through the town, feeling just as much of a ghost as he had on his last night in Gabon. He saw people he knew. Old Mr Dawson, with a new Labrador puppy. Gremlin, his previous dog, must have died. Jim Salzberger, leaning against a red pick-up truck, talking to Annie Nilsen.

The same white-painted buildings, dazzling in the sunlight. The same town clock, with its bright blue dial. Paul drove slowly through but he didn’t stop. He didn’t want anybody to know that he was back, not just yet. He had been crackling with ambition when he left this town, and his parents had been so proud of him when he made his first hundred thousand dollars in Libreville. But here he was, back and bankrupt, more or less, without even the will to start over.

He drove out along the deserted highway to Allen’s Corners, past Don Humphrey’s general store. The sunlight flickered through the car windows, so that he felt that he was watching an old home movie of his previous life.

At last he took the steep turn up through the woods that led to his parents’ house. It wasn’t much of a place: a single-storey building on the side of the hill, with an awkwardly angled driveway and a small triangular yard. His father was out back, sawing logs with his old circular saw, and there was a tangy smell of woodsmoke in the air.

He parked behind his father’s Oldsmobile and climbed out. His father immediately called out, ‘Jeannie! Jeannie! Look who’s here!’ and came hurrying down the steps. He was a tall man, although he wasn’t as tall as Paul, with cropped grey hair and the slight stoop of somebody who has worked hard in an office all his life, and never quite managed to fulfil himself. Paul’s mother came out of the kitchen still carrying a saucepan. She was tall, too, for a woman, and although her hair was grey she looked ten years younger than she really was. She was wearing a pink chequered blouse with the sleeves rolled up, and jeans.

‘Why didn’t you say you were coming to see us?’ asked his mother, with tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t have a thing in!’

His father slapped him on the back and ushered him up the steps into the house. ‘I guess he wanted to surprise us, didn’t you, son?’

‘That’s right,’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t know that I was coming back until the day before yesterday.’

‘It’s great to see you,’ smiled his father. ‘You’ve lost some weight, haven’t you? Hope you’ve been eating properly. All work and no lunch makes Jack a skinny-looking runt.’

‘I should have gone to the market,’ said his mother. ‘I could have made your favourite pot roast.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ his father said. ‘We can eat out tonight. Remember Randolph’s Restaurant? That was taken over, about a year ago, and you should see it now! They do a lobster chowder to die for!’

‘Oh Dan, that’s far too expensive,’ said his mother.

‘What do you mean, our son here’s used to the best, aren’t you, son? How’s that Mercedes-Benz of yours running? Or have you traded it in for something new?’

‘Oh … I’m maybe thinking about a Porsche.’

‘A Porsche! Isn’t that something! A Dennison driving a Porsche! Listen, how about a beer and you can tell us how things are going.’

‘Well, to tell you the truth, I’m kind of pooped.’

‘Sure you are, I’m sorry. Why don’t you go to your room and wash up? You can fill us in when you’re good and ready.’

His mother said, ‘How long are you staying for?’

He gave her a quick, tight smile. ‘I don’t know … it depends on a couple of business deals.’

She held his eye for a moment and there was something in the way she looked at him that made him think: she suspects that I’m not entirely telling the truth. His mother had always known when he was lying. Either that, or he always felt guilty when he lied to her, and it showed.

He hefted his bag out of the car and carried it through to the small room at the back. It was depressingly familiar, although it had a new green carpet and new curtains with green-and-white convolvulus flowers on them. His high school football trophies were still arranged on top of the bureau, and there was a large photograph of him at the age of eleven, clutching a shaggy red dog. He sat down on the bed and covered his face with his hands. Eleven years of work. Eleven years of talking and travelling and staying up till two or three in the morning. All of it gone, all of it - and nothing to show for it but a single suitcase and twenty-three CFA francs - not convertible into dollars, and not worth anything even if they were.

His father came in with a can of Coors. ‘Here - I’ll bet you can’t get this in Libreville.’

‘No, we get French beer mainly. Or there’s the local brew. Okay for cleaning drains.’

He opened up his suitcase. Two pairs of pants, one crumpled linen coat, a pair of brown leather sandals, socks and shorts. His father said, ‘You’re travelling extra-light. The last time you came, you had so many cases I thought that Madonna was visiting.’

‘Well … I wasn’t given too much notice.’

He took the witch-compass out of the side pocket in his suitcase and put it next to his football cups.

‘What the two-toned tonkert is that?’ asked his father.

‘It’s kind of a good-luck charm.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ His father picked it up and shook it. ‘Looks like a giant sheep dropping to me.’

Paul hung his clothes up in the closet.

‘You’re quiet,’ said his father. ‘Everything’s okay, isn’t it?’

‘Sure, sure. Everything’s okay.’

His father laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ll tell you who else is around. You remember that Katie Sayward you used to like so much? Her marriage broke up, so she’s back here with her aunt, to get over it.’

Paul said, ‘What? I didn’t even know she was married.’

‘Yeah. She married some actor she met in New York. Real good-looking guy. Too good looking, if you know what I mean. I met him once when she came up to Sherman to see her aunt. So far as I know, he had an affair with some girl in the chorus-line and Katie was totally devastated. If you do see her, I wouldn’t mention it if I were you. Not unless she brings it up first.’

Paul went to the window and pressed his forehead against the cold glass. Outside, the yard sloped steeply uphill towards a thicket of dry brown bracken. Katie Sayward. He had always adored Katie Sayward, even when he was in grade school. Katie Sayward, with her skinny ankles and her skinny wrists and her shining brown hair that swung whenever she turned her head. Even when she was younger, her lips always looked as if she had just finished kissing someone. She had grown into a beautiful young woman, with a head-turning figure. Paul had only plucked up the courage once to ask her for a date. He could remember it even today - walking into the home room in front of all the other girls, and saying, ‘Katie, how about you and me going out for a burger tonight?’ Katie had clamped her hand over mouth, and widened her eyes, and then she had burst out laughing. The memory of it still made him feel hot and uncomfortable.

So Katie Sayward had married. Well, of course she had married, a lovely girl like that. It was just that he hadn’t wanted to hear about it. And worse than that, her husband had cheated on her. How could he have cheated on Katie Sayward, when she was the perfect, perfect girl?

His mother came into the room. ‘You’re sure you don’t want anything to eat? I could make you a bologna sandwich. I don’t suppose you get much bologna, in Gabon.’

‘I’m fine, Mom. Honestly. Let me grab a few zees, that’s all.’

‘Okay,’ said his father, giving him another affectionate clap on the shoulder. ‘I’ll wake you up in time for dinner.’

Randolph’s Restaurant was decorated in the style of an old Colonial inn, with wheelback chairs and softly shaded lamps on the tables and antique warming-pans hanging on the walls. They sat right in the middle of the restaurant, and Paul’s father kept turning around in his chair and calling out to people he knew.

‘Dick! Janice! Paul’s back from darkest Africa! Sure, doing real good, aren’t you, Paul? Business is booming! Counting on buying himself a new Porsche, top-of-the-range!’

Paul glanced at his mother. She was still smiling, but he definitely had the feeling that she knew that something wasn’t quite right.

His father ordered two large martinis to start, and a mimosa for his mother. Then he opened up the oversized leatherbound menu and said, ‘Okay! Let’s push the boat out!’

He ordered oysters and caviar with sour cream and blinis. He ordered steak and lobster and fresh chargrilled tuna. They drank Roederer champagne with the hors d’oeuvres and Pauillac with the entrees, $97.50 a bottle.

Paul’s father did most of the talking. Paul sat with his head lowered, chewing his way unenthusiastically through his meal. He couldn’t even taste the difference between the steak and the lobster, and he left his beans and his broccoli untouched.

‘You must be feeling jetlagged,’ said his mother, laying her hand on top of his.

‘Yes … kind of. I’ll be okay tomorrow.’

The pianist on the opposite side of the room was playing a slow bluesy version of ‘Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?’ and he almost felt like standing up and walking out.

‘You know something?’ said his father, with his mouth full, and a shred of lobster dangling from his lip, ‘I’m so proud of you, Paul, I could stand right up in this restaurant and shout it out loud. My only son, started from humble beginnings, but had the guts to go to Africa all on his own and make himself a hundred million.’

‘Well, I’m not so sure about the hundred million,’ said Paul.

‘You mark my words … if you haven’t made a hundred million yet, you sure will soon! That’s what you’re made of! That’s why I’m so proud of you!’

They finished the meal with Irish coffees in the cocktail lounge. Paul’s father grew more and more talkative and when he started to tell stories about his high school days, losing his shorts in the swimming-pool and falling into the rhododendron bushes, Paul asked for the check.

‘That’s real generous of you, Paul,’ his father beamed. Then he turned to his mother and said, ‘How many people have a wealthy young son who can take his folks out for a night like this?’

Paul opened the leather folder with the check inside. It was $378.69, gratuity at your discretion. Suddenly he couldn’t hear the piano music any more.

‘How is it?’ asked his father. ‘National debt of Gabon, I’ll bet.’

‘Something like that,’ said Paul, numbly, and reached into his coat with fingers that felt as if they were frostbitten. He took out his wallet and opened it, while his mother watched him silently and his father chatted with the cocktail waitress.

‘In Gabon, you understand, they respect Americans. They trust them. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if Paul ends up running a big mining corporation over there.’

Paul said, ‘Shit.’

‘What? What is it?’

‘All the money I changed … I left it back in my suitcase.’

‘You can use your card, can’t you?’

‘No, no, I can’t. It’s only for use in Africa.’

‘But that’s an American Express card. That’s good anywhere.’

‘Not this one, no. I have a special deal. They bill me in CFA francs, so that I save myself twelve-and-a-half per cent handling charges.’

Paul’s father pulled a face. ‘Don’t you have Visa, or MasterCard?’

‘Left them back in my suitcase, too. Stupid of me. Mom’s right. I must be jetlagged.’

‘Looks like we’re going to have to wash the dishes,’ said his father.

‘I’ll tell you what I can do,’ Paul volunteered. ‘I can come back early tomorrow, soon as you open, and pay you then. How’s that? I can leave my watch if you like.’

‘Oh, that’s okay,’ smiled the waitress. ‘I think we can trust you, don’t you? And what is it they say in those gangster movies? We know where you live.’

They all laughed and Paul tucked his wallet back in his coat and said, ‘Thanks.’ Shit. Where was he going to raise more than four hundred dollars by lunchtime tomorrow? He could pawn his watch, he supposed. It was a nine hundred dollar Baume & Mercier that had been given to him by the sales director of a French copper company. His ten thousand dollar Rolex had long gone, in legal fees. He just hoped that Robard’s jewellers was still in business.

His mother took his arm as they left the restaurant and walked across the parking lot. It was a cold, dry night.

‘Winter’s coming early this year,’ said his mother. His father was weaving ahead of them, singing erratic lines from ‘Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?’ ‘Once I was a bigshot… now I’m broke.’

‘Well, we don’t get much of a winter in Libreville.’

‘Is everything all right, Paul?’

‘Sure. What do you mean? Everything’s great.’

‘I don’t know. You look - I’m not quite sure what the word is. Haunted, I guess.’

‘Haunted?’ he laughed. ‘You make me sound like Hill House.’

‘But everything’s okay? The business? You’re not sick, are you?’

‘I got over the dengue months ago.’

‘You will tell me, though, if anything’s wrong?’

He gave her a kiss and nodded, and then he hurried her along a little faster, so that they would catch up with his father. ‘Dad! Dad! Come on, Dad, there’s no way that I’m going to let you drive!’

That night he lay in bed listening to the leaves whispering in the yard outside. He felt infinitely tired, but he couldn’t even close his eyes. The moonlight fell across the wall as white as a bone.

He ought to tell his parents that he was bankrupt. He ought to tell them that he was never going back to Gabon, couldn’t go back. He knew his father would be crushed, but how much longer could he keep up this pretence? Yet he felt that if he told his parents, he would reduce himself to the level of a hopeless alcoholic, finally admitting that he couldn’t summon up the willpower to quit on his own.

His parents’ admiration was all he had left.

The digital clock beside the bed told him it was 3:57. It clicked on to 3:58 - and it was then that he heard a soft shaking noise, like dry rice in a colander.

He raised his head from the pillow. It must have been the leaves, skittering in the wind. But as he lowered his head he heard it again, much sharper this time. Shikk - shikk - shikk! And again, even louder. Shikk - shikk - shikk!

He swung his legs out of bed and walked across to the bureau. There, amongst his football trophies, lay the black smooth shape of the witch-compass. It was shivering, very slightly, and as it shivered the beads or seeds inside it set up that shikk - shikk - shikk! sound.

Cautiously he picked it up. It felt as pleasant to hold as it always did; yet tonight it seemed to have life in it. It vibrated, and shook again. He pointed it towards the window. It stopped vibrating, and the shikk sound stopped, too. He pointed it toward the closet. It vibrated again, but only softly. Next he pointed it towards the door. It gave a brisk shiver and almost jumped out of his hand.

It’s guiding me, Paul thought. It’s guiding me to what I want.

He tested it again, pointing it back at the window, back at the closet, back at the door. As soon as he pointed it towards the door, it became more and more excited

Supposing it’s showing me how to find some money. That’s what I need, more than anything.

Hurriedly, he pulled on his shirt and his pants and his shoes. Then, breathing hard, he eased open his bedroom door and stepped into the darkened hallway. He could hear his father snoring like a beached whale, and the clock ticking loudly on the wall. He pointed the witch-compass north, south, east and west. It shook most vigorously when he pointed it towards the front door. It was guiding him out of the house.

He walked as quietly as he could across the polished oak floor. He lifted a nylon windbreaker down from the pegs by the door. Then he eased open the chains, drew back the bolts and went out into the cold, windy night.

The witch-compass led him down the front steps and down the narrow, winding road that led to the main highway between New Milford and New Preston. Although it was only four in the morning, the sky was strangely light, as if a UFO had landed behind the trees. Paul’s footsteps scrunched through the leaves at the side of the road and his father’s windbreaker made a loud rustling noise. It smelled of his father’s pipesmoke, and there was a plastic lighter in the pocket.

And all the time, the witch-compass rattled in his hand with ever-increasing eagerness.

He had just reached the hairpin that would take him down to the highway when he heard a car coming, from quite a long way off, but coming fast. The witch-compass went shikklshikk! shikk! and almost jumped out of his grasp. He began to hurry around the bend and down the steeply sloping road, and as he did so he glimpsed headlights through the branches. A car was speeding along the highway from the direction of New Milford. It looked as if it were travelling at more than seventy miles an hour.

He hadn’t even reached the highway when he heard a sickening bang and a shrieking of tyres, and then a sound like an entire junkyard dropping out of the sky. Wheels, fenders, mufflers, windows, crunching and screeching and smashing. Then complete silence, which was worse.

Paul came running around the corner and saw the bloodied body of a dead deer lying in the scrub on the far side of the highway, its legs twisted at extraordinary angles, as if it were trying to ballet-dance. Almost a hundred feet further up, a battered, dented Chevrolet was resting on its roof. Shattered glass glittered all over the blacktop.

‘Jesus.’ Paul started to run towards the wreck. As he came closer, he saw that the driver was still in his seat, suspended upside-down in his seatbelt. His deflated airbag hung in front of him, and it had obviously saved his life. He was groaning loudly and trying to wrestle himself free.

‘Hold on!’ Paul called out. He crunched through the glass and then he realised that he was splashing through a quickly widening pool of gasoline.

‘Get me out of here,’ the driver begged him. He was a heavily built, fiftyish man. His grey hair was matted with blood. ‘I think my goddam legs are crushed.’

‘Okay, okay, just hold on,’ Paul reassured him. He was about to put the witch-compass into his pocket when it gave a high-pitched shikkashikkashikka! that sounded like a snake hissing. Paul looked down and saw the driver’s pigskin billfold lying on the road, right in front of him. Even without picking it up, he could see that it was stuffed with money.

‘Oh God, please get me out of here,’ moaned the driver. ‘This is hurting so much.’

Paul reluctantly took his eyes away from the billfold. He took hold of the Chevrolet’s doorhandle and tried to drag it open, but it was wedged solid. He went around to the other side of the car and tried the passenger door, but that wouldn’t budge, either.

He came back to the driver’s side and reached into the broken window. He managed to locate the man’s seatbelt buckle, but the crash had jammed it and the man’s bulging stomach was straining against it. His shirt was soaked in warm, sticky blood.

‘Please, I’m dying here. Please.’

Paul said, ‘Okay … but I can’t get you out by myself. I’m going to have to call the fire department.’

‘Hurry, please.’

Paul took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Just hold on. I’ll be quick as I can.’

But in his pocket the witch-compass went shikkashikkashikka!

Paul slowly stepped away from the wreck. He looked down and there was the pigskin billfold. He could see fifties and twenties. More than enough to settle his restaurant bill. More than enough to buy him a new coat and a new pair of jeans and see him through the next few days. He hesitated for a second and turned back to the man hanging in the car, and the man was looking up at him, bleeding and broken and pleading with him, get me out of here, for chrissakes. But the worst possible idea came into his head - an idea so terrible that he could hardly believe that he had thought of it. And inside his pocket, the witch-compass rattled and shook as if it were a living thing.

He stooped down and picked up the billfold. The man in the car watched him, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Paul took all of the cash out of the billfold except for $50. He didn’t want to make it obvious that the man had been robbed. He held up the billfold for a moment and then he dropped it back onto the road.

Shikkash ikkash ikka.

‘What are you going to do?’ the driver asked him. ‘Look, take the fucking money. I don’t care. Just call the fire department, get me out of here.’

But Paul knew that it would be different once the man was released. I was trapped, I was dying, and he stole my money, right in front of me.

He walked a few paces back down the road. ‘No!’ the driver screamed at him. ‘Don’t leave me here! Don’t!’

Paul stopped. He lowered his head. In his pocket he felt the witch-compass, warm and thrilling. The witch-compass was guiding him away from the wreck, back to his parents’ house. Leave him, what does he mean to you? He was driving too fast anyhow. Everybody knows there are deer on these highways. Supposing you hadn’t woken up? Supposing the witch-compass hadn’t brought you here. The stupid bastard would have died anyhow, alone.

‘Don’t leave me!’ the driver screamed at him. ‘I’m dying here, for chrissake! Don’t leave me!’

In one pocket, Paul felt the witch-compass. In the other, he felt his father’s cigarette lighter. He turned around. There are two prices, Jonquil had told him. Fourteen francs, and a moral choice, every time the witch-compass finds you what you want.

The driver was suddenly silent. He had seen Paul flick the cigarette lighter, and stand in the road with the flame dipping in the early-morning breeze. The flame was reflected in the gasoline which was running across the road and into the ditch.

Paul genuflected, and lit it.

The fire raced back towards the upturned car. The driver twisted and struggled in one last desperate effort to pull himself free.

‘You could have had the money!’ he screamed at Paul. ‘I would have given you the fucking money!’

Then the whole car exploded like a Viking fireship and furiously burned. Paul gradually backed away, feeling the heat on his face and the cold wind blowing on his back. He saw the driver’s arm wagging from side to side, and then it kind of hooked up and bent as the heat of the fire shrivelled his tendons. As he walked up the winding road towards his parents’ house he could still see it burning behind the trees.

Afterwards, he sat down on his bed and counted his money. Six hundred and fifty-five dollars, still reeking of gasoline. On top of the bureau, the witch-compass lay silent.

He drove into New Milford the next morning to pay off Randolph’s Restaurant. ‘Glad you didn’t try to leave the county,’ smiled the owner, counting out his money. ‘I’d have had to set my old dog out looking for you.’

The dog lay in the corner of the restaurant, an ancient basset-hound, snoring as loudly as Paul’s father.

On his way home, he took a different route, the road that led up to Gaylordsville and then meandered through the woods to South Kent. He didn’t want to go past the scene of last night’s auto wreck again. This morning, when he had driven by, the rusty and blackened Chevrolet was still lying on its roof in the road, surrounded by firetrucks and police cars with their lights flashing.

It was another pin-sharp day. All around him, the woods were ablaze with yellows and crimsons and dazzling scarlets. Every now and then he checked his eyes in the rearview mirror to see if he could detect any guilt; or any emotion at all. But all he felt was reasonably satisfied. Not over-satisfied, but the edge had been taken off his anxiety.

He slowed as he reached the intersection where the road led back towards New Preston. About a quarter of a mile beyond it, screened by trees, stood the yellow-painted house where Katie Sayward’s aunt lived, and where Katie was staying after the break-up of her marriage. The times he had driven past here when he was younger, hoping to see her. Maybe he should pay her a visit now. But what would he say? ‘You thought I was an idiot when we were at school together, sorry about your marriage’?

He drove past slowly, no more than ten miles an hour, ducking his head so that he could peer beneath the branches of the trees. Nobody in sight. But as he pressed the accelerator to move away, he heard a crisp shikk! shikk! shikk!

He slowed down again. The witch-compass was inside the glove-box. It started a series of quick, rhythmic rattles. As he drove further away from Katie’s house, however, the rattles became less and less frequent. When he reached the next bend, they stopped altogether.

He pulled the car in by the side of the road. The witch-compass remained silent. It’s trying to tell me something about Katie. It’s guiding me back.

He turned the car around and drove slowly back towards the yellow-painted house. Inside the glove-box, the witch-compass started to rattle again shikkaSHIKKAshikkaSHIKKA like a Gabonese drumbeat.

Katie’s marriage has broken up. Maybe the witch-compass is trying to tell me that she needs somebody. Maybe it’s trying to tell me that Katie needs me.

Cautiously he drove in through the gates and up the driveway to the house. Nobody came out to greet him and the place looked as if it were deserted. No vehicles around, and no smoke pouring from the chimneys. Paul climbed out of the car and went up to the front porch and knocked. There was no answer, so he knocked again. He didn’t like the knocker. It was bronze, cast into the face of a sly, blind old man. He waited, whistling between his teeth.

No, nobody in. The witch-compass must have made a mistake. He walked back to the car and opened the door. The rattling inside the glove-box was practically hysterical, and he could hear the compass knocking from side to side, as if it were trying to break out.

‘All right, already,’ he said. He took the witch-compass out of the glove-box and held it in his hand. Then he walked back to the house, and knocked again - so loudly this time that he could hear the knocks echo in the hall. Still no reply.

‘There, what did I tell you? There’s nobody home.’

Shikkashikkashikka rattled the witch-compass.

Paul pointed it towards the front door of the house, and its rattling died away. He swept it slowly backwards and forwards, and the witch-compass rattled most excitedly when he pointed it to the side of the house.

‘Okay, let’s check this out.’

He walked around the house, past a trailing wisteria, until he found the kitchen door at the back. He knocked with his knuckle on the window, just in case there was somebody inside, and then he turned the handle. It was unlocked, so he opened it and stepped inside.

‘Hello!’ he called. ‘Anybody home?’

Shikkashikkashikka.

‘Look, it’s no good shaking like that. There’s nobody home.’

Shikkashikkashikka.

The witch-compass guided him into the hall, towards the foot of the staircase. At the top of the staircase there was a landing with an amber stained-glass window, so that the inside of the house looked like a sepia photograph.

Shikkashikkashikka.

‘Upstairs? All right, then. I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

Paul climbed the stairs and the witch-compass led him along the landing to the very last door. He knocked again, but there was no reply, and so he carefully opened it. The witch-compass was shaking wildly in his hand and he had to grip it tight so that he wouldn’t drop it.

He found himself in a large bedroom, with an old-fashioned dark-oak bed, and a huge walnut armoire. The windows were covered in heavy lace curtains with peacock patterns on them, so the light inside the bedroom was very dim. The bed was covered with an antique patchwork quilt; on top of the quilt lay Katie Sayward, naked.

Now the witch-compass was silent. Paul took a breath and held it, and didn’t know if he ought to leave immediately, or stay where he was, watching her. She was older, of course, and she had cut her long hair short, but she was still just as beautiful as he remembered. She was lying on her back with her eyes closed, her arms spread wide as if she were floating, like Ophelia. She was full-breasted, with a flat stomach and long legs. My perfect woman, thought Paul. The kind of woman I’ve always wanted.

He took two or three steps into the room. The floorboards creaked and he hesitated, but she didn’t show any signs of waking. Now he could see between her legs, and he stood transfixed, breathing softly through his mouth.

He took another step closer. He wanted to touch her so much that it was a physical ache; but he knew what would happen if he tried. The same ridicule that he had suffered when he asked her for a date at high school. Shame and embarrassment, and trouble with the law.

It was then, however, that he saw the empty bottle of Temazipan tablets on her nightstand and the tipped-over bottle of vodka on the quilt and the letter that she was holding in her right hand.

He took another step closer, then another. Then he sat on the bed beside her and said, ‘Katie … Katie, can you hear me? It’s Paul.’

Katie didn’t stir. Paul gently patted her cheek. She was still breathing. She was still warm. But she was deathly pale. He peeled back one of her eyelids with his thumb. Her blue eye stared up at him sightlessly, its pupil widely dilated.

He lifted her right wrist so that he could read the note. ‘Dearest Aunt Jessie. I know this is a selfish and terrible thing to do to you. But a life without James just isn’t any kind of life at all.’

Paul felt her pulse. It was thready, but her heart was still beating. If he called the paramedics now, there was a strong possibility that they could save her. She would be grateful to him, wouldn’t she, for the rest of her life? There might even be a chance that—

His arm brushed against her bare breast and it gave a heavy, complicated sway. There might be a chance in the future that he and Katie could get together. But if they got together now, then he could be sure of having her. Maybe just once. But even once was better than never.

He stood up and very deliberately took off his clothes, staring down at Katie all the time. He had never dared to dream that this could ever happen; and now it was: and he could do whatever he wanted to her, anything, and she wouldn’t resist.

He climbed onto the quilt. His body was thin and wiry and his skin was very white, except for his face and his forearms and his knees, which had been tanned dark by the equatorial sun. He kissed Katie on the lips, and then her eyelids, and then her cheeks, and he whispered in her ear that he loved her, and that she was the most desirable woman he had ever known. He squeezed her breasts and sucked at her nipples. Then he ran his tongue all the way down her stomach and buried his face between her thighs.

He stayed in her bedroom for over an hour, and he used her body in every way he had ever fantasised about. He couldn’t believe it was real, and he wanted it never to end. He turned her over, face down in the pillow, and forced himself into her, but it was then that she gave a shudder that he could feel all the way through him, right to the soles of his feet.

He leaned forward, his cheek close to hers. ‘Katie? Speak to me, Katie! Just let me hear you breathing, Katie, come on!’

She was silent and her body was completely lifeless. He took himself out of her and stood up, wiping the back of his hand across his forehead. Shikk! went the witch-compass.

Paul dressed, feeling numb; and then he rearranged Katie as he had found her. He cleaned between her thighs with tissues, and wiped her face. He had bruised her a little: there were fingermarks over her buttocks and breasts, and a lovebite on her neck. But who would ever think that he had inflicted them? So far as anybody was aware, they hardly even knew each other.

He left the house by the kitchen door, taking care to wipe the doorhandle with the tail of his shirt. He drove back the way he had come, through Gaylordsville, crossing the Housatonic at Fort Hill so that he could deny having driven back towards his parents’ house on the South Kent Road. He even made a point of tooting his horn and waving to Charlie Sheagus, the realtor.

And how do you feel? he asked his eyes, in the rearview mirror.

Satisfied, his eyes replied. Not fully satisfied, but it’s taken the edge off.

His father was waiting for him in the living-room when he returned. He was wearing a chequered red shirt and oversized jeans and he looked crumple-faced and serious. His mother was sitting in the corner, sitting in the shadows, her hands clasped on her lap.

‘Where’ve you been?’ his father wanted to know.

‘Hey, why the long face? I went down to Randolph’s to settle the check.’

‘It’s a pity you haven’t been settling all of your checks the same way.’

Paul said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about Budget Rental Cars, who just called up to say that your credit rating hadn’t checked out. And Marriott Hotels, who said that you bounced a personal cheque for two hundred dollars. And then I called Dennison Minerals, your own company, in Gabon, and all I got was a message saying that your number was discontinued.’

Paul sat down in one of the old-fashioned wooden-backed armchairs. ‘I’ve been having some cashflow difficulty, okay?’

‘So why didn’t you say so?’

‘Because you didn’t want to hear it, did you? All you wanted to hear was success.’

His father jabbed his finger at him. ‘What kind of a person do you take me for? You’re my son. If you’re successful, I exult in it. If you fail, I commiserate. I’m your father, for chrissakes.’

‘Commiserate? Those Gabonese bastards took my business, my house, they took everything. I don’t want commiseration. I want revenge.’

His father came up to him and laid both of his hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the face. ‘Forget about revenge. You can always start over.’

‘Oh, like you started over when you lost your job at Linke Overmeyer? With a little house, and a millionth-of-an-acre of ground, and a row of beans? I had a mansion, in Libreville! Seven bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming-pool, a circular hallway you could have ice skated on, if you’d have had any ice, and if you’d have had any skates.’

‘So what?’ his father asked him. ‘That’s what life is all about. Winning, and losing. Why did you have to lie about it?’

‘Because of you,’ said Paul.

‘Because of me? What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Because you always expected me to do better than you. That was all I ever got from you, from the time I was old enough to understand anything. “You’ll do better than me. One day, you’ll be rich, and you’ll buy a house for your mother and me. With a lake, and swans.” Jesus Christ! I was nine years old, and you wanted me to give you fucking swans!’

His father closed his eyes for a moment, trying to summon up enough patience not to shout back. His mother said nothing, but sat in the shadows, a silhouette, only the curved reflection from her glasses gleaming. In the distance, Paul heard the dyspeptic rumbling of thunder. It had been a dry day, and the air had been charged with static electricity. Lightning was crossing the Litchfield Hills, walking on stilts.

Paul’s father opened his eyes. ‘Are you going back to Africa?’

‘There’s nothing to go back to. I’m all washed up in Gabon. I still owe my lawyer seven thousand francs.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know. Right now, I don’t want to do anything.’

‘You’re going to have to find yourself a job, Paul, even if it’s waiting table. Your mother and I can’t support you.’

‘I see. So much for my fucking four-hundred-dollar dinner then? “Who has a son who takes his parents out for a meal like this?” You didn’t even offer to pay half.’

‘I’m sorry. If I’d known that you were busted I wouldn’t have suggested going to Randolph’s at all. We could have eaten at home. And don’t use language like that, not in this house.’

‘Oh, I beg your pardon. First of all you won’t support me, and now you take away my rights under the First Amendment.’

‘The First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to use profanity in front of your mother.’

Paul was about to say something else, but he took a deep breath and stopped himself. He felt angrier than he had ever felt in his life. But what was the point in shouting? He knew that he wouldn’t be able to change his father’s mind. His father had almost made a religion out of self-sufficiency. Even when Paul was young, he had never given him an allowance. Every cent of pocket-money had been earned with dishwashing or raking leaves or painting fences. He would rather have burned his money than given anything to Paul for nothing.

‘All right,’ said Paul. ‘If that’s the way you feel.’

He walked around his father and went to his room. He slung his suitcase on the bed and started to bundle his clothes into it. His mother came to the door and said, ‘Paul … don’t be angry. You don’t have to leave.’

‘Oh, but I do. I might accidentally breathe some of Dad’s air or flush some of his water down the toilet.’

‘Sweetheart, he doesn’t mean that you can’t stay with us, just till you can get yourself back on your feet.’

‘You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to get back on my feet. I’ve spent eleven years working my rear end off, and look what I’ve ended up with. One tropical suit, two shirts, and a rental car I can’t even pay for. I just want to lie down and do nothing. That’s all.’

‘Do you want to see Dr Williams?’

Paul pushed his way past her. ‘I don’t want to see anybody. I’m not sick. I’m not disturbed. I’m just exhausted, that’s all. Is it a crime, to be exhausted?’

‘Paul—’ his father began, but Paul opened the front door and went down the steps. ‘Paul - we can talk about this. I’m sure we can work something out.’

‘Sure,’ Paul retorted. ‘I can clean out your gutters and mend your roof and you’ll pay me in hamburgers. Forget it, Dad. I’d rather go to the Y.’

With that, he climbed into his rental car and backed out of the drive with a scream of tyres. His father sadly watched him go.

By nine o’clock that night the rain was lashing all the way across Litchfield County and the hills were a battlefield of thunder and lightning.

Paul had driven into New Milford, where he spent his last $138 on a steak and fries and a bottle of wine at the Old Colonial Inn. Now he didn’t even have enough money for a room. It looked like he was going to have to spend the night in the car, parked on a side road.

He left the inn, his coat collar turned up against the rain, but by the time he reached the car his shoulders were soaked. He wiped the rain from his face and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. If only he had someplace to sleep. A warm bed, and enough money to last him for six or seven months, so that he wouldn’t have to do anything but sit back and drink beer and think of nothing at all.

He started the engine, and the windshield wipers flapped furiously from side to side. It was then that he heard the softest of rattles. Shikk - shikk - shikk.

A prickling sensation went up the back of his neck. The witch-compass was telling him that he could have what he wanted. A bed for the night, and money. But the question was, how was he going to get it, and what kind of moral decision would he have to make?

Shikka - shikka - shikka - rattled the witch-compass, and Paul took it out of his pocket.

For one second, Paul was tempted to throw it out into the rain. But it felt so smooth and reassuring in his hand, and he knew that it would guide him to a place where he could sleep, and where he wouldn’t have to worry for a while.

He nudged his car out of the green onto the main road to New Preston. He turned the wheel to the right, and the witch-compass was silent. He turned it to the left, and the witch-compass went shikkashikkashikka.

He was almost blinded for a second by a crackling burst of lightning. But then he was driving slowly through the rain, hunched forward in his seat so that he could see more clearly, heading northwards.

After twenty minutes of silence, the witch-compass stirred again. Shikk - shikk - shikk. He had reached the intersection where the Chevrolet had collided with the deer - the intersection that would take him up the winding road towards his parents’ house.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. But the witch-compass rattled even more loudly, guiding him up the hill. Another fork of lightning crackled to the ground, striking a large oak only a hundred feet away. Paul saw it burst apart and burn. Thunder exploded right above his head, as if the sky were splitting apart.

He drove around the hairpin bend towards his parents’ house. Now the witch-compass was shaking wildly, and Paul knew without any doubt at all where it was taking him. He saw the roof of his parents’ house silhouetted against the trees, and as he did so another charge of lightning hit the chimney, so that bricks flew in all directions and blazing wooden shingles were hurled into the night like catherine-wheels.

The noise was explosive, and it was followed only a second later by a deep, almost sensual sigh, as the air rushed in to fill the vacuum that the lightning had created. Then there was a deafening collision of thunder.

Paul stopped in front of the house, stunned. The rain drummed on the roof of his car like the juju drummers in the Marche Rouge. He climbed out, shaking, and was immediately drenched. He walked up the steps with rain dripping from his nose and pouring from his chin. He pushed open the front door and the house was filled with the smell of burned electricity, and smoke.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said.

He walked into the kitchen and the walls were blackened with bizarre scorch-marks, like the silhouettes of hopping demons. Every metal saucepan and colander and cheese-grater had been flung into the opposite corner of the room and fused together in an extraordinary sculpture, a mediaeval knight who had fallen higgledy-piggledy off his charger.

And right in the centre of the floor lay his mother and father, all of their clothes blown off, their bodies raw and charred, their eyes as black as cinders, and smoke slowly leaking out of their mouths.

Shikk - shikk - shikk rattled the witch-compass.

So this was how he was going to find himself a warm bed for the night. However stern he had been, his father had always told him that he was going to inherit the house, and all of his savings, as well as being the sole beneficiary to their joint insurance policies. No more problems. No more money worries. Now he could rest, and do nothing.

He slowly sank to his knees on the kitchen floor and took hold of his mother’s hand, even though the skin on her fingers was crisp and her fingernails had all been blown off. He pressed her hand against his forehead and he sobbed and sobbed until he felt that he was going to suffocate.

‘Dad, Mom, I didn’t want this,’ he wept. ‘I didn’t want this, I swear to God. I’d give my right arm for this never to have happened. I’d give anything.’

He cried until his ribs hurt. Outside, the electric storm grumbled and complained and eventually disappeared, perpendosi, into the distance.

Silence, except for the continuing rain. Then Paul heard the witch-compass go shikk - shikk - shikk.

He raised his head. The witch-compass was lying on the floor next to him, softly rattling and turning on its axis.

‘What are you offering me now, you bastard?’ said Paul.

Shikkashikkashikka.

‘This doesn’t have to happen? Dad and Mom - they needn’t have died?’

Shikk - shikk - shikk

‘What are you trying to tell me, you fuck? I can turn back the clock? Is that what you mean?’

Shikk - shikk - shikk

He let his mother’s hand drop to the floor. He picked up the witch-compass and pointed it all around the room, 360 degrees. ‘Come on then, show me. Show me how I can turn the clock back.’

Sh ikkashikkash ikka

The witch-compass led him to the kitchen door. He opened it and the wind and the rain came gusting in, sending his mother’s blackened fingernails scurrying across the vinyl like cockroaches. He stepped outside, shielding his face against the rain with his arm upraised, holding the witch-compass in his left hand, close to his heart. He wanted to feel where it was taking him. He wanted to know, this time, what it was going to ask him to do.

But of course it didn’t. He stumbled on the wet stone step coming out of the kitchen and fell heavily forward, with his right arm still upraised. It struck the unprotected blade of his father’s circular saw and the rusty teeth bit right into the muscle, severing his tendons and his axillary artery. For a terrible moment he hung beside the saw-table, unable to lift himself up, while blood sprayed onto his face and all over his hair. The rain fell on him like whips, and his blood streamed across the patio in a scarlet fan-pattern and flooded into the grass.

Jonquil was waiting for him at the very end of the Marche Rouge. On the upturned fruit-box in front of her stood the carved figure of a woman with her lips bound together with wire; and a rattle with a monkey’s head on top of it; and several jars of poisonous-looking unguents.

He walked along the row of brightly lit stalls until he reached the shadowy corner where she sat. He stood in front of her for a while, saying nothing.

‘Your feet brought you back,’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ he told her. ‘My feet brought me back.’

‘How is Papa and Mama?’ she asked, with a broad, tobacco-bronzed smile.

‘They’re good, thanks.’

‘Not dead, then? Bad thing, being dead.’

‘You think so? Sometimes I’m not so sure.’

‘You’ll survive. Everybody has to survive. Didn’t you learn that?’

‘Oh, sure. Even if I didn’t learn anything else.’

He reached into the pocket of his crumpled linen coat and produced a smooth black object that looked like a gourd. He laid it down on the fruit-box, next to the carving.

‘I don’t give refunds,’ said Jonquil, and gave a little cackle.

‘I don’t want a refund, thanks.’

‘How about a new arm?’

He looked down at his empty sleeve, pinned across his chest. He shook his head. ‘I can’t afford it. Not at your prices.’

She watched him walk away through the equatorial night. She picked up the witch-compass and put her ear to it and shook it.

Shikk - shikk - shikk - it whispered. Jonquil smiled, and set it back down on the upturned fruit-box, ready for the next customer.

Graham Masterton and his wife Wiescka recently moved to Cork, Ireland, where he is working on a major new disaster novel (as a follow-up to his earlier novels Plague and Famine), as well as a horror novella and a horror novel set in Ireland. His book Snowman is the fourth in a series of young adult horror novels featuring Jim Rook, a college teacher in remedial English with unusual psychic abilities, and his new adult horror novel The DoorKeepers was published first in France before appearing in an English-language edition. Much of Masterton’s backlist has been republished in France and Belgium, and the year 2000 marked the inauguration of the Prix Masterton, a literary award to the most creative horror authors writing in French. His latest collection of short stories, Feelings of Fear, has also recently appeared, and forthcoming is another horror novel for younger readers, Cut Dead. The Secrets of Sexual Flay is a new sex instruction book published in the United States, where the author is a frequent contributor on personal relationships to Woman’s Own. As he recalls: ‘ “Witch-Compass” is based on a legend from equatorial Africa told to me many years ago when I was editing Mayfair magazine by the late William Burroughs, who was living in London and was a regular columnist. William particularly relished the idea that you could only get what you wanted by committing an act of overwhelming immorality.’

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