COVEN.

EDWARD Lee.

For Amy & Scott.

PROLOGUE.

Murder, he thought. Blood.

That's all the student could think about, all he could see in his mind-the blood. The afterimage burned behind his eyes like red neon: the still corpse in the closet, castrated, headless. And the blood. Had they actually painted the walls with the man's blood?

Alone now, the student lay exhausted on the jail cot. The station's murky light drained into the cell; he felt submerged in dark. He tried to sleep, to forget about the blood, but even worse images flushed in and out of his head. He was standing in the moonlit dell, eyes peeled back like skinned grapes. Around him, the woods dripped and shivered. Carca.s.ses, dozens of them, lay swollen to bursting beneath the foot deep fog. The student wore the stench of rot. He breathed it, tasted it. From the trees, and from beneath the fogtop, faces of things peered at him and shrieked. Not animals. Not people...

Things.

Mother of G.o.d, the student thought.

-then jerked awake on the jail cot.

Trying to sleep was useless. He remembered too much, in too much detail: his mad sprint out of the fog sodden dell, the sound of pulpous horrors crunching underfoot, and the monstrous laughter, their chitinous witchlike liquid giggles...

Please let me be insane.

What a relief that would be, to dismiss it all to insanity. But the student knew he could not, he knew it was real. Images continued to march through his head, and a parade of morbid questions. What in G.o.d's name were they doing back there? How many people had they murdered? He'd seen their little graveyard in the woods. How many bodies had they buried? And whose? How much more blood had been spilled?

But amid the questions, one certainty remained.

I'm next. They're coming for me next.

In the half dark, the student leaned forward and touched the jail's cement walls. Yep, that's cement, all right. Need more than a French bread to bust through that. His fingers ran down the frame of bars, jerked the locked steel door hard against its mount. Yep, this is a jail. No doubt a f.u.c.king bout it.

Safe, he thought.

Yes, he was safe; this was a secure cell. For the time being at least, the student was safe from those women...those hideous women in black.

CHAPTER 1.

Exham College was, in a sense, exclusive. It was the college of choice for those whose GPAs and SATs wouldn't get them into reform school, much less Harvard or Yale. As for its exclusivity, you had to be rich. Anyone with money could get into Exham.

The school occupied 160 odd acres of the Deep South, at the very end of State Route 13. The nearest towns were Crick City above and Luntville below, and that was it. The college owned the nearby half town, also called Exham, which was run by a small police department and a white washed city council. After that, though, for thirty miles in any direction, there was just tract upon tract of open farmland. In other words, Exham was the Alcatraz of the college world.

Despite its primary devotion to the upper cla.s.s brain dead, the school ran very well, which was no surprise considering the amounts of money being dumped into its tills. There were two regular semesters between September and May, and two summer sessions for students to retake the courses they'd failed during the regular school year. The average Exham student took six years to attain a four year degree. Actual matriculation was about sixty percent, and the ratio of dropped cla.s.ses to cla.s.ses registered for was the worst in the country.

In all, Exham proved the paramount education inst.i.tution for the black sheep of America's wealthiest families. Being a complete f.u.c.kup in this world scarcely mattered as long as you were a rich f.u.c.kup. This might suggest a colossal indictment that all men and women are clearly not created equal, and that unmoderated wealth leads to a breeding ground of all manner of abandon.

The eighteen hour drive from New Canaan, Connecticut, to Exham usually took Wade St. John about fifteen hours. What he drove was a car called a Callaway Twin Turbo, a $55,000 limited edition Corvette. Maintaining 120 mph for vast stretches of 1 95 was a breeze with the Uniden radar detector. The Vette was Wade's sanctuary from reality, his coc.o.o.n. He'd just sit back in the leather seat, crank up the Nak deck, and put the pedal to the metal. Time stood still in the Vette. He was ageless. He was invincible.

Yeah.

Exham College entailed a series of circ.u.mstances he'd just as soon forget. Summer was for fun, not college. But G.o.dd.a.m.n Dad had put a damper on that faster than greased s.h.i.t through a city pigeon. Wade could've killed the mailman; the way he'd felt waiting for his report card was probably close to the way those guys at the Alamo had felt waiting for the Mexican Army.

Dad's voice needed no exclamation points: "G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Wade. Two C's, two D's, and you failed history. Again. G.o.d in G.o.dd.a.m.ned heaven. How could you fail history twice?"

"Be real, Dad. Does the Battle of Hastings really have any bearing on my life? Will I be made a better person knowing that Peter the Great put a tax on beards? What's the big deal?"

"The big deal, son, is your brain, and you're wasting it. These grades are beyond G.o.dd.a.m.ned belief."

"But, Dad," Wade a.s.serted, "I've done my best."

"You haven't done d.i.c.k since the day I enrolled you at Exham. A chimpanzee could make better grades than these. You're twenty four G.o.dd.a.m.ned years old and you don't even have enough good credits for a two year degree. Your marks don't get better, they get worse."

"I'm working on it, Dad."

"Working on it? My G.o.d, son. Your grade point average is 1.4. That's absolutely f.u.c.king outrageous."

Uh oh. f.u.c.king. That was a bad sign. Dad would say G.o.dd.a.m.n a lot, and occasionally s.h.i.t, d.i.c.k, and bulls.h.i.t. But when he started modifying those adjectives and nouns with f.u.c.king...that meant trouble.

The trouble had come the next day, with such devastation that Wade felt like someone had just dropped a thousand pound safe on his head.

"It's ultimatum time, son," Dad had announced.

"Pardon me, Dad?"

"The bulls.h.i.t ends here. I will not permit my only child to devolve into the biggest failure in the history of higher education. I'll give you till next December to raise your GPA to 2.5."

"Say again, Dad? That's a mathematical impossibility. I couldn't pull a 2.5 even if I got straight A's in the fall semester."

"I realize that, Wade. So to give you a fair shot, you'll be attending both summer semesters."

Wade had laughed. "You're joking, right?"

"Do I look like I'm joking?"

Dad never looked like he was joking. But...Wade smiled. "Tough luck, Dad. The registration deadline has pa.s.sed." Whew!

"I called the dean this morning," Dad informed him. "An exception has been made. Cla.s.ses begin in a week; your schedule is waiting for you. Dean Saltenstall took care of it all."

Oooo, that motherf.u.c.king suckface gay bar loitering dean! "Come-on, Dad! That's not fair!-Everybody knows you have the dean in your pocket!"

"You're G.o.dd.a.m.n right, and I will take advantage of that fact every chance I get. You will attend the summer semesters."

This was serious. "Look, Dad, I can't go to summer school. It's, like, against my principles. What would my friends think?"

"Your friends are shiftless idiots not fit to pick the pebbles out of my tires. I don't care what they G.o.dd.a.m.n think."

"But I have a reputation to maintain! I'd never live it down. Summer is for partying, the beach, girls, that sort of thing."

"There is no excuse for you, son. You've been in college six years and you're scarcely closer to getting a degree than the day you stumbled drunk out of high school. All you do is drink beer, drive fast, and carouse with women of questionable morality. You're smearing the family name, my name, and I won't have it."

This wasn't going well at all. If Wade had to go to summer school, he'd be the laughingstock. Time for a little of the old B.S., he concluded. "Okay, Dad. Let's make a deal. You let me have the summer off and I'll give you my word, as a true St. John, that I'll hit the books like you've never seen. I'll become a virtual dynamo of diligence, discipline, and scholastic vision. My GPA will be up in no time, and there'll be no more D's and F's, you can bank on it. That's my promise, Dad, and I mean it with all my heart."

Dad's poker face remained as unchanging as a bust of Genghis Khan. "Son, you're so full of s.h.i.t you need a toilet brush to clean your ears. The matter is settled. You will attend the summer sessions. Period. And to add further incentive, I'm canceling your credit cards and terminating your $500 per week allowance."

Wade's mouth locked open. He was going to be sick.

"It's for your own good, son. No money from me till those grades come up. From here on, you'll earn your money. You'll work a part time campus job."

Wade was mortified. "A job? Me?"

"Yes, Wade, a job. You. I realize you've never worked in your life, but it's time you started. The dean has made all the arrangements, as a personal favor to me."

Wade ground fist into palm. So help me G.o.d I'll bury that motherf.u.c.king dean up to his neck and s.h.i.t ON HIS HEAD! "What is this, Dad? A conspiracy? National Let's Screw Wade Week?"

"It's for your own good, son. One day you'll see that."

Wade closed his eyes, tried to simmer down. "Okay, okay. I can understand. So what's the job? I know you'd never stick me with some s.h.i.tty bottom of the barrel job, right?"

"You'll be working several nights a week at the sciences center."

Doesn't sound too bad. But- "What will I be doing?"

"Nothing too taxing, just a few hours a day. It's a fine job, son."

"Yeah, Dad. A fine job. But how about answering the question? Like what...exactly...will I be doing?"

Dad hesitated and very nearly smiled. "Cleaning toilets."

Wade was beside himself...with horror.

"Along with a.s.sorted other janitorial duties. It's time you learned to do a little honest work. That's what made America, son."

"Cleaning college s.h.i.thouses is not what made America!"

"It's honest work for honest pay."

"Yeah? Exactly how much honest pay are we talking about?"

"Why, minimum wage, of course."

By now, Wade could barely stand. He knew his flaws, sure. He was a nut-chase, a loaf, and a bulls.h.i.tter. He used his looks, his car and his father's money to skate through life. He could even admit that punishment for his ways was in order. Punishment, yes. But this was too much.

And with that thought, something very dangerous happened. Wade St. John, for one split moment, cast his good judgment aside.

"I'm not going."

"What did you say?"

"I'm not going. I'm not doing any of it. I'm not going to summer school, I'm not giving up my credit cards, and I'm not going to clean toilets for minimum wage. How do you like that, Dad?"

And Dad had smiled a great big warm fatherly smile as he grabbed Wade by the collar and raised him a full foot in the air. Like a fish eye lens nightmare larger than life, Dad's lips were huge in Wade's face. "You will go to summer school. You will complete your a.s.signments, you will study every night, and you will clean as many toilets as they tell you to clean. And you will raise your GPA to 2.5 by next December. Because if you don't, you're on the street. You lose the stocks, you lose the trust fund, you lose the car. You'll be out of this house, out of this family, and out of my will. Now, how do you like that, son?"

Wade made the sheepiest of grins. "Gosh, Dad. Can't you take a joke? Cla.s.ses start in a week. I guess I better start packing, huh?"

CHAPTER 2.

Penelope wished she could be a horse. She knew, of course, that wanting to be a horse was not exactly normal-it circ.u.mscribed the growth of her socialization. The psychiatrists called it reclusionary concept image fantasy, and they were always harping about "socialization," whatever that was. "To actualize your individuality, you must develop a collective affirmation, Penelope. A sense of positive function in your interpersonal dynamics. That's socialization." And horses? They didn't like horses. "Your fantasy to be a horse is merely an emotional reaction to your introversion." Right. It was all p.o.o.p to her. Daddy was paying $250 per hour for this, so she didn't care. "Your fermented preoccupation with horses," the shrinks said, "is actually the result of a malnourished, unidentified s.e.xuality." It astounded her how intensely Freud's bulls.h.i.t dominated modern psychology. It was all about s.e.x.

Penelope was a virgin, and her virginity was something she could somehow never conceal from the psychiatrists. It was the "base" of the "indisposition," they'd tell her. "It" was the cause of her "problem."

"A problem of this nature, Penelope, is a commonplace emotional by product of a restrained s.e.xualization."

"What is?"

"The aberrational equestrian fantasy."

"Huh?"

"Your wanting to be a horse. And no doubt a further derivational root to your overall amotivational symptoms, your unfocused state of esteem, and your failure in general to be socialized."

The a.s.sholes. It all sounded like horses.h.i.t to her, Freudian pun not intended. Were they trying to tell her that she'd lose her interest in horses once she got laid?

Penelope felt comfortable with her virginity, and she couldn't imagine what all the fuss was about anyway. How could anyone want to be penetrated by something that looked like an uncooked half smoke? The idea appalled her. Once she'd watched one of Daddy's X rateds on the VCR. Little Oral Annie, it was called. Penelope could've screamed: one delving, spurting monster after the next, and Little Annie had earned her middle name with startling expertise. One man had put his p.e.n.i.s-which was the size of a summer squash-all the way into Annie's r.e.c.t.u.m, while another spurted gouts of viscid goo all over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. What a gross out! If this was s.e.x, Penelope was quite happy to want no part of it.