The Witness
“. . . unclean spirits like frogs . . .”
Rev. 16.13
Miss Edwina Kray had experienced visions of the supernatural at various times in
her life, a fact known only to her minister, Dr Atherton Grainge, and a few close
friends in the church. The retired high school teacher was not easily shaken, but
the thing she saw in the living room of her apartment that afternoon shocked her
more than she’d ever thought possible.
Squat, bulbous and covered with warty excrescences, the creature would have been
hideous enough in a horror movie. But the frightful expression on its face was something
that no special effects director could ever have replicated. It leered at her with
an unspeakable, lustful malice. Its gestures were obscenity itself. It carried with
it the stench of the pit.
Involuntarily, Miss Kray stepped backwards. Her instinct was to flee the room but
she knew the thing had no right to be in her home . . . it had no right to be anywhere
on this earth. Her cat Buffy had seen the thing too, and arched its back, hissing
in anger, every hair on its body standing on end.
Of herself, Miss Kray had no power over the thing. But there was a greater power
she could call on in such situations, and she took authority over it. It left, disappearing
through the outer wall of her apartment. She hoped it had returned to the abyss from
which it had come.
Even after the thing had gone, its stench seemed to linger. She opened the door onto
the balcony, but she knew it was not a stench that fresh air would dispel.
Well, there was a remedy for that. Miss Kray switched on a cassette of sacred song
and opened her Bible. She read aloud a favourite psalm and a passage from the Gospel
of Matthew.
While brewing herself a coffee, Miss Kray recalled that the thing she had seen in
her living room was related to events that had occurred earlier that year. Then she
remembered where she had first seen it.
She had been walking back to her apartment after a visit to the public library. She
had stopped to look in the window of a bookstore, near the high school where she
had once taught.
The store was under new management, according to a sign in the window.
When she saw the material on display, Miss Kray was appalled. It was more than sexually
explicit. It was pornography of the darkest and most bestial kind.
Behind the display was a poster depicting a hideous, frog-like creature. The caption
read “Gorom-Magon”. The artist had caught the thing’s outward appearance well enough.
But the image could not convey the depth of evil Miss Kray had encountered when she
confronted the thing in her apartment.
Miss Kray had not been the only citizen to object to the material on display. There
had been a petition to the city administration and a protest with placards outside
the store.
But it appeared the store’s new manager was within his rights in stocking and selling
the material. He simply removed the grossest items from the window. It had no appreciable
effect on his business. There were always customers for his wares.
When, a month later, the store changed hands and reopened as a family restaurant,
no one was curious enough to enquire what had prompted the owner to sell up so suddenly.
No one could recall the store manager’s name or even what he had looked like. Apart
from Dr Atherton Grainge and a few close friends, no one knew of the intense spiritual
campaign that had been waged, day and night, on the floor of Miss Kray’s living room.
Miss Kray’s door bell rang. It was Lester Wade, one of her adult literacy students.
He had been referred to her by a youth aid agency. He’d been in some minor trouble
with the law, she was told, but was now under the supervision of a youth worker.
He needed help with his reading to improve his low self-image.
Lester stood in the hallway, smirking.
“Hello, Lester. You’ve brought your reader with you, I see.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, come in and sit down at the table.”
Lester’s eyes flickered round the apartment as he entered. The smirk did not leave
his face.
Miss Kray put on her reading glasses.
“Let’s hear how you get on with the story we began last week.”
Lester read the first few words in the sentence and began to stumble. He put the
book down and started fidgeting with something in his jacket pocket.
Miss Kray didn’t like to admit it, but there was something about Lester that made
her uneasy.
He stood up.
“I gotta to get a drink of water.”
He went into the kitchen. She heard the faucet running, and the sound of a glass
being filled. Then there was a different sound. Snap, snap, snap.
Lester stood in the doorway. He had a clasp knife in his hand and was flicking the
blade in and out of the handle with his thumbnail.
“Sit down, Lester, and put that knife away,” Miss Kray heard herself saying.
Lester sat down at the table. A crafty expression appeared on his face and he leaned
closer to Miss Kray.
“This reader’s dumb. I got something better’n that to read . . . look at this.”
He pushed the magazine in front of her face, gloating at the obscenity of the image
and the disgust he saw on Miss Kray’s face. Snap. He showed her the blade.
She knew she had to keep calm, to be as wise as a serpent, as harmless as a dove
. . .
“Lester, I’ll look at it in a moment. I need a glass of water.”
It wasn’t a lie: her mouth had gone suddenly dry.
He did not try to stop her when she went into the kitchen. She closed the door behind
her and turned on the faucet to cover the sound. She picked up the telephone and
dialled 911.
“What emergency service do you require?”
“I need the police.”
A pause.
“Police Department. How can we help you?”
“There’s a man in my apartment with a knife who’s behaving strangely. Please send
someone as soon as you can.”
“Give us your address ma’m and we’ll have a patrol car there right away.”
She gave the officer her address.
“We’re on our way, Miss Kray. Don’t do anything to panic him. Stay calm and wait.”
“That ain’t goin’ to do you no good, ma’am.”
Lester stood in the doorway. The sickly, insane grin was spreading over his face.
“You come here with me.”
He caught her wrists in a powerful grip and dragged her through the living room into
the hallway. He slipped the security bolts across the door and fastened the safety
chain.
He dragged her back into the living room. She heard the snap as he flicked open the
blade of his clasp knife.
“Me and you is gonna look at some pretty pictures, first. Then I’m gonna . . .”
She felt the hand crushing the back of her neck, and the cold blade of the knife
pressed against her throat. He was forcing her to look into his eyes. She saw not
just a glare of insanity but a depth of lust and cruelty such as she had never imagined
possible in a human being.
She saw something else. A vile frog-like creature that crawled out of Lester’s mouth
and crouched, writhing in prurience, on his shoulder.
Silently, she took authority over it.
There was a splintering crash in the hallway, as if the apartment had been struck
by a demolition ball.
There were two men in the room, two big men in blue uniforms. They moved quickly.
She saw Lester Wade lunge towards one of the officers with the knife. In an instant,
the officer had both of Lester’s arms pinioned behind his back. She heard the click
as the handcuffs went on. Lester was thrown face down on the rug, coughing violently.
The officer seemed to be crushing something underfoot, something slimy and unpleasant,
judging from the expression on his face.
Simultaneously, she felt herself lifted from behind by the shoulders and set down
clear of the danger.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” asked the officer, releasing her gently. He was the older
of the two, a powerfully built man with olive skin and dark curly hair.
“Yes, I’m fine,” said Miss Kray, swallowing hard.
“I’m Officer Vangelis, Miss Kray,” he said. “This is Officer Morningstar. “We got
your call.”
He helped her to the sofa.
“I can’t believe how quickly you arrived,” said Miss Kray.
“We were in the area,” said Officer Morningstar, smiling. “We’re never far away.”
He was fair-haired and athletic-looking. He had lovely violet-coloured eyes, Miss
Kray thought: they matched his name perfectly. She was seventy years old but her
heart fluttered just a little.
“Lester Wade, you’re under arrest for attempted sexual violation,” said Officer Vangelis.
“Put him in the patrol car.”
Officer Morningstar jerked Lester Wade to his feet. The fight had gone out of the
youth. He hung limply from the pinions as Morningstar hauled him, like a garbage
sack, from the apartment. Officer Vangelis looked on grimly.
“I can’t believe Lester would have killed me,” said Miss Kray, but even as she said
it she realised what his intention had been.
“Lester Wade has served two gaol sentences for sexual violation,” said Officer Vangelis.
“This time, he didn’t want a victim who could identify him.”
Miss Kray broke down. She did not weep for her own ordeal: she wept for the helpless
women who had suffered at the hands of a callous, lust-obsessed youth.
With her grief there came anger. She knew the battle she had waged was not over,
nor would it be over as long as there was breath in her body.
“Lester Wade will pay the penalty,” said officer Vangelis. “Society pays a penalty
too, when it doesn’t speak out. Are you prepared to testify?”
“I’m not afraid to testify. I’ll testify before every man, woman and child in this
country if I have to.”
“You can count on our support, ma’am” said Officer Vangelis. “The whole force will
be right behind you.”
He shook her hand at the door and smiled.
“By the way, we’ll get someone from the phone company to fix your telephone.”
Although shaken by the ordeal, Miss Kray felt a surprising sense of peace. The peace
seemed to fill the whole apartment. The officers had handled the situation so professionally,
and had been so calm and reassuring. The least she could do was write to the chief
of police to express her gratitude.
Such tall men, and so handsome. They could easily have been movie actors. They had
left, how could she describe it, a faint, subtly masculine fragrance in the apartment.
It was a fresh, clean, outdoor fragrance, like sunlight on new-mown hay, or sea spray
wafting over sand, or a pine forest in a dewy morning . . .
Something was puzzling Miss Kray. She went into the hallway. She had clearly heard
the sound of splintering wood when the officers had burst into her apartment, yet
when she examined the solid timber door and its frame there was not so much as a
crack in it. She had seen Lester fasten the security bolts and chain with her own
eyes.
She was still examining the door when the bell rang. It was Ed Randall. She recognised
him from church, although it was the first time she had seen him in the uniform of
the Bell Telephone Company.
“Good afternoon, Miss Kray. I had a message to call and fix your telephone.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the telephone that I know of,” said Miss Kray. “I used
it a few minutes ago.”
She recalled Officer Vangelis’s parting words.
“Maybe you’d better check it just the same. It’s in the kitchen.”
In the living room, she straightened the Afghan rug. It had been crumpled when Morningstar
had thrown Lester Wade on to the floor. She recalled seeing a dark stain spread under
officer Morningstar’s boot as he had crushed something under foot. There was no mark
on the rug now.
Ed Randall entered, holding the telephone. He looked puzzled.
“It’s no wonder your phone’s been dead, Miss Kray. The cord’s been cut. With a knife,
I’d say. You can see it for yourself.”
She sat down on the sofa. She remembered Lester returning from the kitchen, opening
and closing his clasp knife, with the horrible grin on his face. That was before
she’d made the phone call. He hadn’t gone back into the kitchen after attacking her.
The cord must have been cut when . . .
“Has there been some trouble, Miss Kray?”
“A little spot of bother,” said Miss Kray. “Nothing to worry about now. It’s all
been taken care of.”
“I’ll put a new telephone in and test it, Miss Kray. You shouldn’t have any more
problems.”
Miss Kray sat for a few minutes after Ed Randall had left, thinking.
She picked up the telephone and dialled a number from the directory.
“Hello, Police Department. How can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to Officer Vangelis or Officer Morningstar, please.”
There was a pause.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, we don’t have any officers by those names. Is there someone else
who can help you?”
“No thank you,” said Miss Kray. “That was all I needed to know.”
