by S. A. Hunt
“What did you do with the hammer, anyway?”
“I took it home.” Pete jerked a thumb back at the trailer park. “When my mom saw the blood on it, she didn’t want it in the house, but when she heard what I did with it, she let me do whatever I wanted as long as I took it out back and scrubbed it good with some bleach.” He laughed. “Actually, when she saw me coming with it, she thought I hit somebody with it. I got in trouble for going to the fairgrounds again, but—”
The front door of the Victorian scraped shut and Leon came down to join them, his phone to his ear. “And I wanted to know if you could give me a ride home from the U-Haul place,” he was saying. “I’ll give you gas money. Yeah. Yeah, the one on Quincy. Okay, thanks.” He hung up the cell and stuck it in his pocket. “I checked every room in the house, including the cupola. One-one-six-eight is officially monster-free,” he said, taking his keys off of Wayne, the tire iron dangling by his thigh. “Hey, y’all. What’s up?”
Pete pointed at the tire iron. “What’s that for?”
Leon held it up and regarded it as if it had magically appeared in his hand. “Oh, this? I’ll let Master Wayne tell y’all about this. I got to go run an errand. I’ll be back in a little bit. You guys hang out in the house or something, I’ll bring back pizza.” He left the tire iron in his car and climbed into the U-Haul truck. Starting the engine, he rolled the window down and pointed at the kids. “And by ‘something’ I don’t mean go out in the woods and get bit by a snake again.”
“You got nothin’ to worry about there,” said Pete, saluting. “Bruce Wayne is safe with us.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Y’all be good.” Leon saluted them and backed the cumbersome truck out of the driveway. After grinding a few gears, he managed to get it into first and trundle down the road and out of sight.
Katie Fryhover looked like a windsurfer, trying to control the kite in her hands. “You got bitted by a nake?”
“I’m babysitting her until her grandmother gets home,” said Amanda. “Is it okay if she comes in too? She’s a good kid, real quiet. She don’t get into anything.”
“Yeah, of course,” said Wayne, but he didn’t lead them into the house. Instead, he lingered there on the lawn, absentmindedly rubbing the aluminum shaft of his crutch, staring at Katie as she fought the wind.
“Sooo…” Pete stared at Wayne’s shoes, then met his eyes. “What was up with the tire tool? Your dad said something about a monster?”
“Y’all gonna laugh at me,” said Wayne, crutching over to the front porch. The October breeze was brisk, chilling the toes of his left foot (which was only wrapped in a tight elastic bandage) but it was nothing compared to the chill he got when he looked at the house’s sheer white curtains.
The others followed and sat down on the stoop alongside him. Katie tucked her kite into the corner between the porch and the stoop, behind a bush.
“I’m not.” Amanda still stood on the stepping-stones in front of them, trying to keep her balance on the edge of one stone.
“Me neither,” said Pete.
“Me needer!” said Katie.
Wayne turned sideways and sat back against the stoop banister. He didn’t like having his back to the house. “I think my mom’s ring might be magic,” he said, taking the wedding band out of his shirt and off his neck.
“Magic?” Katie shouted. Her mouth fell open, her eyes wide. “Like a widzerd?”
“Not really like a wizard. I don’t know. It started when I woke up in the hospital.” He launched into yet another rendition of the story, going on through the garage rescue straight on to falling through the painting into Kenway Griffin’s kitchen. He also told them about the free-standing door in the lunchroom wall, the hotel room door two stories off the ground.
Three-oh-six.
“Dude, that’s crazy,” said Pete. “I mean, that’s crazy, what you said, I’m not saying you’re crazy, just that, y’know, what you said was crazy.”
Wayne nodded, looking down at the ring in the palm of his hand. “I know what you’re sayin’. It does sound crazy.”
“So you said a Sasquatch? In your house?”
“I don’t think it was a Sasquatch.” The crutch rested on Wayne’s shoulder, feeling like a rifle. He lifted it up and pretended so, pressing the armpit pad against his shoulder as if it were a stock and aiming down the side of it. “But it kinda looked like one. Except it didn’t look like a gorilla. It had a big head like a hoot-owl and glowin’ green eyes, and fingers kinda like Freddy Krueger.”
“Wow,” said Amanda. She hopscotched from stone to stone, counting numbers under her breath. “No wonder you don’t want to go in the house. I wouldn’t want to either.”
Pete got up and fetched Leon Parkin’s tire tool from the Subaru, then marched up the steps and opened the front door. “Let’s get it over with,” he said in mock exasperation.
“Didn’t Wayne’s dad already say the house was clear?” asked Amanda.
“He didn’t go in with the ring.” Pete swung the tire tool like a Vaudevillian twirling his cane.
“Good point.”
Putting his necklace back on and tucking the ring into his shirt, Wayne was reluctant. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
Pete made a face and walked away into the Victorian. “You can’t stay on the front porch forever. Your dad’s not gonna let you sleep out here.” He leaned back, peeking out. “You comin’, or not?”
Wayne sighed and followed him inside.
The house was quiet and dark, but at least the walls were still blue. Wayne crutched into the kitchen to make sure the table was their round wooden one, as opposed to the faux-diner table with the metal trim. The room was unburnt, as well.
“Shh,” he said, flashing his palms at the others. The floor creaked and popped as they crept from room to room. “Stop movin’ for a second and listen.”
They all froze, even little Katie Fryhover.
Click. Click. Click. Click. The clock on the kitchen wall ticked. Wind rushed against the side of the house, breaking like a tide. A few birds sang outside, distant and muffled through the walls.
Katie sniffed wetly.
Taking out the ring, Wayne put it to his eye and peered through it. To his relief, the kitchen and the table in it remained the same.
“I don’t—”
Hhhhrrrrrrooooooo! An eerie howling sound came from the living room, pouring ice down his spine.
Two heartbeats later, the front door slammed shut. BLAM!
Katie and Amanda both screamed, running for the front door and wrenching it open. Wayne limped along right behind them, toting his crutch like a briefcase, and all three children sprinted out onto the grass. They were halfway across the front lawn when Pete yelled after them.
“It was the wind, you idiots!” He stood on the porch, waving the tire iron. “The wind blew the door shut!”
* * *
Once Pete had talked them back in, they went about their search for Owlhead (as they’d taken to calling it) with a little more levity, sweeping each room. Wayne would throw open a door and Pete would step in, the tire iron up in both fists like a Jedi with a lightsaber. By the time they had canvassed the entire house, they were up in the cupola and in pretty calm spirits.
“You can see everything up here,” said Amanda, her nose almost touching the north window. “I can even see my house, and Pete’s. They’re both in the back of Chevalier Village.”
“Where’s my house?” asked Katie, climbing up onto the wide sill.
“Right behind that one.” Amanda braced her with a hand, pointing through the glass at a little white terrier sitting by the drive to the Alamo house. “Be careful, don’t lean against the window. See Champ down there, layin’ in the grass?”
Pete climbed up and stood on the sill, the top of his head against the arch of the windowframe. “Hey, I didn’t realize you could see the fairgrounds from here.”
“Really?” Wayne joined him.
Risin
g over the forest far to the south were the tallest buildings of Blackfield, tiny windowed spikes jutting up from the trees. The huge thirteen-floor Blackfield University Library scraped sky way in the back. The sand-colored cathedral spires of Walker Memorial. The nameless twelve-story office building with the fire-damaged penthouse floor. Much closer, off to his left, Wayne could see the suggestion of shapes just visible over the leaves and scraggly black trees—the highest hump of a roller-coaster, the peak of a free-fall tower. A smear of color that might be the front of the funhouse.
“We were that close?” he asked, marveling. They had certainly walked a long way home … and they’d almost made it.
“Yep.” Pete climbed down and sat on the bed. “Man, those women who found us were creepy as hell. Never seen them up close. That Theresa lady was strong.” He flexed an arm and squeezed his bicep, speaking in a bad Russian accent. “Strong like bull.”
Amanda said over her shoulder, “Yeah she was. Super-strong for an old lady. She carried Wayne all the way down the fairground road out to the highway where the ambulance could find him.”
“Like half a mile.”
Turning on his TV and PlayStation, Wayne sat next to him. A videogame started up and he went into a virtual garage, absent-mindedly cycling through customization options on the muscle car he’d been grooming all month. Anonymous rap-rock whispered from the speakers.
After an awkwardly long couple of minutes, Pete said, “That’s a badass Mustang.”
“Thanks.” Wayne fiddled with the car some more, and then his curiosity finally nibbled at him a little too hard. “So that one lady … I think she said her name was Karen. She said she lives in the big house across the street.”
“All three of them do.” Getting down from the windowsill, Amanda sat on the floor in front of the TV with Katie and the two of them leafed through one of his comic books. It was a newer Spider-Man, and he’d read it a hundred times, so Wayne didn’t jump to its defense. “They all live in the same house together. They’re not sisters, though, I don’t think.” She cupped her hands over Katie’s ears and said, “People in Chevalier say they’re lesbians.”
Wayne’s forehead scrunched up and he looked to Pete for confirmation. The other boy shrugged as if to say, It is what it is.
“She paid my whole hospital bill.”
Amanda looked up. “That was nice of her.”
“Think my dad said it was like thirty thousand dollars.”
Pete stage-whispered, “Sweeeet Jesus.”
“Sweeeet Jeedzus,” echoed Katie. “Can I draw? Do you got any paper and crayons?”
“I think there’s some paper in my dad’s printer.” Wayne stared at the TV screen as he talked. The video game was a balm to his nerves. “I don’t have any crayons, but my dad’s got some markers, if he didn’t leave ’em at school.” He handed the controller off to Pete and clomped downstairs. He was on the landing before he discovered two things: (1) he’d forgotten his crutch, and (2) he was by himself. Suddenly he felt very small and alone.
Luckily he didn’t have to go all the way to the first floor. Making his way down the hall, Wayne pushed the door to his father’s bedroom and watched it swing slowly open, revealing the room and everything it contained a couple inches at a time.
A tall wooden dresser from Aunt Marcelina … a window … Dad’s pressboard desk from Walmart … several liquor-store boxes still full of their stuff … a window … Dad’s bed …
No Owlhead looming in the corner.
Muscles slowly relaxed he didn’t realize were locked solid. He remembered to breathe again.
It was going to be a long day.
21
Lunchtime traffic shushed past as Robin and Kenway ushered Joel onto the front porch of a bungalow-style house, perched on a hill overlooking downtown Blackfield. Through the screen of trees below the house, Robin could see an ocean of rooftops.
Instead of dropping him off, they stopped by to pick up some clean clothes. Kenway didn’t seem to mind playing chauffeur all day; he didn’t have anything better to do, especially since it was a Saturday.
“Hey, you wouldn’t mind checkin’ the place out for me, would you, hero?” asked Joel, unlocking the door.
The veteran looked like a barbarian as he climbed the front steps behind the line cook, six feet of blond hair and muscle crammed into a Powerwolf T-shirt. He moved into the house and stood motionless in the foyer, listening, his fists clenched, his eyes wandering slowly over the old-fashioned decor and flowery wallpaper.
“So is—” began Robin, but Kenway held up a hand.
He checked behind the front door and pulled a baseball bat out of the umbrella stand, but paused in surprise when it sparkled in the sunlight. The business end was covered in fake diamonds. “You Bedazzled a baseball bat?”
Joel shrugged sheepishly.
Shaking his head, Kenway stalked into the living room with the twinkling Slugger, and on into the kitchen. Joel went to his dish drain and pulled out a bread knife. Put the bread knife back, pulled out a silvery hammer. A meat tenderizer.
“You two stay here,” said Kenway, and he left through a doorway.
Robin scowled. “I can take care of myself, Major Dad. I’m probably more dangerous at hand-to-hand than you are. You forget the ass-whooping I gave you so soon? Or the video I showed you?”
“Nobody could forget that,” he replied from the hallway.
“What video?” asked Joel. “I ain’t seen no video.”
“I showed him the video of my first kill—the Witch-King of Alabama.”
“Huh. How many witches you done killed, anyway?”
“About twenty.”
“You killed twen-ty witches. Twennnnnty! Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah.”
She smirked at his impression of the Count. “About twenty. Nineteen, maybe? I’ve kicked the shit out of a lot more people than that, though.”
“You stone-cold, sister.”
As her eyes sank onto the tabletop, Robin saw a plethora of carved graffiti—JOEL, that weird angular S you see everywhere, doodles of cartoon characters, boxes with squiggly lines drawn through them (the impossible puzzle, she realized with a start), and to Robin’s mild surprise, dozens and dozens of algiz runes, a legion of four-lobed Ys.
When she looked up from the madness, she found Joel watching her. He was looking at the algiz rune on her chest, the Y with the extra lobe in the middle.
“What is that?” asked Joel.
“Protective rune from the Elder Futhark alphabet. Together with certain incantations, the Vikings used it to shield themselves and their homes from witches. It’s kind of a supernatural bulletproof vest. Witches use symbols like this to channel and catalyze their Gift. It don’t imbue me with any powers.”
“Gift?”
“Their power. That’s what they call it. They don’t like callin’ it magic, and I don’t either.” She noticed herself code-switching back into their country-talk again. At’s what tey call it. Ayon’t like callin’ it magic, ’n Ion’t either. Normally the twang only came out when her blood was up and she was facing down a witch, but around Joel it was like speaking a second language.
“Why not?”
“Magic is,” she began, “something wizards and magicians do in fantasy movies and on stages in Vegas, you know? Magic is … David Copperfield and David Blaine. Card tricks, cutting women in half, pulling rabbits out of hats, kids’ birthday parties. I don’t like callin’ it magic. After seeing how evil and dark it is, I don’t like associating it with my mother Annie, even if it takes pedantry to separate and distance her from what the witches like the Lazenbury coven do. Yeah, Mom was a witch … and she did some bad things—to me, to others … but that don’t mean she got to be lumped into the same gang.”
“What is this magic, anyway?” asked Joel. “This ain’t no Harry Potter shit, from what I can tell. I ain’t heard nobody hollerin’ about Wingardium Leviosa or ridin’ around on a broom.”
“The acolytes of Ereshkigal
—true witches—ain’t so whimsical, and it goes a lot deeper. They channel the essence of the spirit world itself, guiding it with language, and intensifyin’ it with sheer will.” She pointed at the rune on her chest. “Using language to guide it works both ways, fortunately. We can’t produce it like they can, but we can manipulate their energy. Think of their power as a laser, and words and symbols as mirrors and lenses. I can’t create it, but I can bend it.”
“Who is Ereshkigal?”
“The Mesopotamian goddess of death, witchcraft, crossroads, doors, and necromancy. The Greeks called her Hecate. She’s worshipped by modern Wiccans and neopagans. Ereshkigal is the source of all their power.” An ancient white Macbook lay on the table between them. She slid it over and opened it. “You wanna see the video I’m talking about? The Witch-King of Alabama?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
Robin winced in mock disgust. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
While she waited for the laptop to boot up, Joel opened the fridge and took out a beer, opening it saber-style with a single swipe of the meat tenderizer. He handed the bottle to Robin and opened another one for himself. She turned it up and downed half of it as she waited for YouTube to load. “Where you learn a trick like that?” she asked, and punctuated the question with a bone-rattling belch.
Joel made a face, then sashayed over and stood next to her, so he could see the computer screen. “I ain’t always been a pizza-boy.”
“Anyway,” Robin said, navigating to her video channel, “I was going to say earlier, this is your mother’s house?” She clicked on the Alabama video, turned the resolution up, and waited for it to buffer a bit. The Wi-Fi was slow, so it was going to take a minute. She silently thanked whatever God was up there she didn’t have to upload videos on this line.
“Yep,” said Joel.
With its speckly-green Formica countertops and avocado appliances, the kitchen was a picture-perfect representation of what it must have looked like when Joel and Fish were boys. “My brother Fish don’t like livin’ here, though. That’s why he moved into the back of his comic shop. He says this house remind him too much of Mama.”
