Quoth the Raven(40)

“Ad hoverum sancterum dessit cray,” she said, and sounded like she was praying. “Quemmor stempanos knevit.”

Tibor was standing almost in front of her, frozen. Gregor lurched through the crowd toward him, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him back.

“Tibor,” he said, “what’s going on here? Who is that woman?”

Tibor shook his head violently, as if to clear it of hallucinations—and Gregor didn’t blame him.

“Branch,” Tibor said in a croak. “That is Dr. Branch.”

“Who? The redheaded woman? That’s Dr. Katherine Branch?”

“That is what I said, Krekor, yes.”

“For God’s sake. What does she think she’s—”

“I told you, Krekor, I told you.” Tibor was suddenly agitated. “She says she is a witch. She thinks she is a witch. She’s doing her witch’s things that she says they did in New England before the Revolution except that they didn’t.” He grabbed Gregor, pulled him close, and began to whisper urgently in his ear. “Krekor, I think she takes belladonna and puts it on her wrists to make her—to make her—like a drug, Krekor, I am losing my English and you don’t understand Armenian. Like a drug, Krekor. I have seen her in class. She does this often.”

“Listen,” Gregor said. “Can you hear that?”

It was hard to hear anything. The women in black weren’t the problem. Now that Dr. Katherine Branch had finished her prayer, or whatever it had been, they were absolutely silent. They had moved out into the room and begun to dance, slowly and deliberately, in a circle. It occurred to Gregor that they were probably the calmest people in the dining hall. It was the crowd that was getting hysterical and loud. The crowd might be used to Dr. Katherine Branch’s antics, but it wasn’t used to Miss Maryanne Veer keeling over after a little light snack of lye. They were all wound up. They were all starving for a release. Now the release was here and they had begun to send up small ripples of reaction.

“It’s a siren,” Tibor said suddenly. “I hear it, Krekor. It’s a siren.”

“It’s a siren,” Gregor agreed. “Do you see Dr. Crockett?”

“No.”

“We’ve got to find some way to let the ambulance men in here, and the police, too. Everybody’s surging up to the front and cutting off the access. Isn’t there any other way in and out of this room?”

“The windows open, Krekor, for fire escapes.”

“That’s fine for fire escapes. The medical people would have a hell of a time getting their equipment through that way.”

“Look, Krekor, they are all lying down on the floor.”

They were indeed all lying down on the floor. Gregor didn’t find it hard to credit Tibor’s comment about belladonna. That, at least, would have been an authentic touch from the world of New England witchcraft. Tibor had told him about it once. So many men and women had confessed to consorting with the Devil and flying on broomsticks because they thought they had consorted with the Devil and flown on broomsticks. Belladonna was a poison. Like so many other poisons—strychnine, foxglove, airplane glue—you got high on it by flirting with a fatal dose. A miscalculation could kill you. A perfect calculation could make you feel like you were floating through air. They had done it, those old witches, in the covens of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Gregor was sure Dr. Katherine Branch and her friends were doing it now.

Whoever her friends were.

Did it matter?

“What we are going to do,” he told Tibor, “is go in, and get them, and pull them out of the way. Just grab their arms and pull.”

“Krekor, I am not a strong man—”

“Neither am I, Tibor. It won’t matter. They’re potted on something, if not belladonna then something else. Not a stimulant. It won’t be difficult. Just grab their arms and pull—”

“The crowd is going to riot, Krekor.”

“Not if we’re fast enough.”

They weren’t fast enough. Gregor had barely reached the first of the bodies on the floor when a roar went up behind him. He turned instinctively and saw Dr. Kenneth Crockett standing on a table, looking almost literally like the wrath of God.

“Katherine,” Dr. Crockett screamed. “Katherine, you world class bitch, you get up off of there!”

“Damn,” somebody else said.

Something flew up out of the air from the back of the room in a long graceful arc and smashed into the floor next to Katherine Branch’s head. It took a moment for Gregor to recognize it as one of the jack-o’-lanterns that had been out on the tables for decoration. It was a while after that before he realized that the candle inside it was still lit, and by then another one had come, and another, until it began to feel like it was raining pumpkins.