Covenant by John Everson

I guess I assumed you hadn’t had one since I didn’t see one when I was here last, and, well, not to be rude, but I haven’t heard of any Napalona’s who have gone over the side of the cliff.”
    She didn’t smile.
    “I was too young when I got pregnant, Joe. I did have a child. But I gave her up for adoption as soon as she was born. I haven’t seen her since. Who knows? Maybe she has been one of the people who have been killed. Or maybe my giving her up saved her from the curse. I hope so.”
    “You’ve never tried to find her?”
    “It doesn’t seem like a very wise move, does it, given what’s happened to all the kids of my friends?”
    Angelica stood and paced the room, her violet robe dragging slightly on the floor behind her. She peered out the front room window, and then turned back to Joe.
    “I think it’s over now, Joe. Whatever it was, it’s done. Something in that cliff wanted a piece of all of us kids that day, and it took Bernadette completely. Now it’s stripped our kids from us. What do you suppose is more important to a mother? Her life, or her children? It took the most painful part. After that, death would be easy. So I think it will let us live now. Story’s over Joe, so let it lie. It’ll just wake up and bite you if you don’t—trust me.”
    She held her hand out to him.
    “I’m expecting someone for a reading tonight. Thanks for what you did for me last time. I appreciate it.”
    He didn’t hear a wealth of gratitude in her words, despite their meaning.
    She led him back to the front door.
    “Some things are better left in their graves, Joe,” she said. “Leave this one buried deep.”
    The door shut behind him, and Joe realized he’d been expertly evicted. And he was more puzzled now than when he’d gone inside.
    As Joe pulled away from the READINGS BY ANGELICA sign, he identified the odd pit in his stomach. He’d been used. Angelica had taken him last month, used him like a vibrator, and thrown him away like a wet condom. She didn’t even want to speak to him now.
    A moment of recrimination briefly pricked at his conscience. Was this what his sources felt like when he was done pumping them for information? No, he told himself. He had better manners.

CHAPTER THREE 
    Saturday dawned with a promising glare of gold through Joe’s bedroom window. He stretched and rolled over, then forced himself to lift a bleary eye to the clock radio—10:14. He dimly recalled reading a Grisham novel until well past three A.M. Coffee would be a necessity if he was to be beach-ready in an hour and a half.
    The shower steamed around him and brought with it a rush of questions, harbored since his midweek meeting with Cindy and his unproductive quest at Angelica’s.
    He wanted to find out from her what the average person in town really thought of the cliff and of the murders. He wanted to know more about the five mothers. And the Halloween deaths. During the week, he’d hatched the mad idea that Terrel harbored a pagan sect of murderous Druids. That could explain how the annual Halloween string of death reached backward for a century, but he hadn’t had a chance to poke around much looking for the fringe element of Terrel. Maybe Cindy would be tapped in, or at least have friends who were.
    By the time he got out of the shower and toweled off, Joe’s mind was back on track, churning ahead at full speed.
    A strong pot of java still wouldn’t hurt, he thought, and after pulling on black bermudas and a Cure concert T-shirt, he plodded into the kitchen to grind some beans.
    As the caffeine soup brewed, he pulled out the weekendentertainment section from the Times and skimmed the local offerings. The theater was playing a Hitchcock revival this week: The Birds and Stranger on a Train tonight, Rope and Psycho tomorrow.
    Did people in this town really need to see Psycho ? Or to look at it another way, had the theater perhaps shown one too many Hitchcock murders to the locals?
    The Columbian