The Liar of Red Valley

by Walter Goodwater

  “Crazy?”

  “Exactly.”

  Sadie stared out at the River. It looked less terrifying in the daylight, and from dry land. “We need help.”

  “We need a miracle.”

  “That too.”

  “I used up all my courage back at that bar,” Graciela said. “I’m going to stay dry for this one.”

  “I don’t blame you.” Sadie smiled at her friend, then swung her door open. “Be right back.”

  The ground leading up to the River’s edge was soft. Sadie’s feet sunk in as she approached; it felt a little too much like she was getting pulled down.

  But this time, she came of her own free will. And she came bearing gifts. She waded into the water until it was up to her ankles. It was shockingly cold on her skin, like the touch of death.

  “Hello again,” she said out over the water.

  A distant, musical voice drifted back. Few of your kind ever enter our currents twice.

  “I’m special.”

  Yes, said the echoing voice. Perhaps we should take you, then, as a worthy offering. We are owed far more, but it would be a start.

  “Before you do, I’ve got an offer for you,” Sadie said. “And another secret you’re going to want to hear.”

  The sun dipped below the mountains. The hunter spread its wings. It could taste blood on the night air. Below, its thralls stirred to life, eager, hungry. Yes, this would be a glorious hunt indeed.

  They had tested the enemy’s strength the night before. The people in the town had put up minimal resistance, as expected. The King’s creatures had been more difficult, but not terribly so. A number of the hunter’s thralls had fallen in the battle, but they were expendable. The hunter had killed two of the King’s minions itself, felt the King’s blood drip from its claws. Tonight, it would kill more of them. Perhaps all of them.

  As the hunter took to the air and surveyed the lines of battle, it saw that its rivals had not been idle. Those who waited behind the flames had pushed deep into the town. Ruin and ash had been left in their wake. The hunter had no wish to do battle with them, if it could be avoided. Its careful eyes measured the lands surrounding the King’s town. It could not see them, but it felt others drawing near. Others who hated the King, and others that the hunter wished to avoid. Tonight, then. It had to be tonight.

  It landed on the roof of a building near the bridge. On the far side, it saw flashing lights and barricades. Humans milled about. It could smell their fear even from here. But they did not flee. And there were more than the previous night. They would defend themselves.

  It would not matter. They would wipe them all away.

  The darkness grew. Soon. Very soon.

  Sadie stood near the bridge. It was hard to see what was happening on the far side, but what she could make out chilled the blood in her veins, despite the lingering summer heat. Things were gathering. Some still looked human. Most did not. Some were small and darted around, too fast to make out. Others were huge as trucks.

  “You sure about this?” It was Beto. He joined her and stared across the River.

  “Nope.”

  “Fair enough.” He crossed his wiry, tattooed arms across his chest. “You know, my buddy Twenty-Twenty thinks we’re all going to die tonight.”

  “That’s not an encouraging prophecy,” Sadie said.

  Beto shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s mostly full of shit.”

  “But didn’t you tell everybody he could see the future?”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I was exaggerating to make a point,” he said with a grin. He pointed back over his shoulder with a thumb. “And it worked, right?”

  Sadie couldn’t argue with that. Dozens of people had arrived at the bridge. Some had gifts, from living in Red Valley so long. Others just didn’t want to stay idly by while their town was under siege. The sheriffs had tried to turn them all away at first, but they kept coming. And so did the things across the River.

  “Thanks for that,” she said. “I don’t think they would have listened just to me.”

  Beto nodded, but didn’t say anything. He was staring out at the bridge. Eventually, he nodded toward it. “That’s where they arrested me. Right there, on the bridge.”

  Sadie winced at the edge in his voice. “Hassler told me.”

  “Of course he did,” Beto said, spitting. “Did he tell you what they got me for?”

  “He said you were selling drugs, and then something went wrong.”

  Beto laughed without joy. “A lot of things went wrong, but I wasn’t selling drugs. They thought I was, because I was going over the River all the time. A guy like me, obviously up to no good. But I was just going to see Teresa. Then one day some deal went bad, somebody gets stabbed, so the sheriffs round up the nearest brown suspect they can find. Case closed.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sadie said.

  “Me too,” he said. “Real sorry. A year and a half of my life gone, just like that. Sheriffs didn’t want to hear how they’d gotten it wrong. Judge didn’t want to hear it, either. Took one look at me and made up their minds. I heard later it was one of those fucking Laughing Boys who did it. Pendejos.”

  Sadie glanced north. The smoke was like a living mountain, churning slowly as it blotted out the sky. The flames were getting closer. She could see the red glow above the buildings and trees. One problem at a time, she thought.

  “So,” she said carefully, “why—?”

  “Why am I here, fighting for this town that threw me away?” He stuck out his chin toward the sheriff deputies huddled around their squad cars. “They already tried to make me leave once. I’m not leaving again. They aren’t Red Valley. We are.”

  A woman in her sixties with long graying hair came over to where Sadie and Beto stood. She had on a flowing white dress tied at the waist with a gold cord. Countless bracelets jangled on her wrists, and a cluster of crystals of various colors on various chains swung against her chest. In her strange dress, it took Sadie a moment to recognize her as the librarian from the County Library.

  “In all my years of living in this closed-minded town, I never expected to be standing alongside the sheriffs in its defense,” she said.

  “Tell me about it, lady,” Beto said.

  She held out a bony hand. “My name is Deborah. Nice to see you again. My sisters and I thought we could offer some assistance.” She motioned to a group of similarly dressed women sitting crossed-legged in a circle nearby.

  “We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Sadie said, taking her hand.

  “It seems you have inspired quite an uprising, young lady.”

  “I reminded people that we’ve got to fight for what we want to keep.”

  “My sisters and I are not fighters,” Deborah said. “But we are students of the flow of certain natural energies present here in Red Valley, and we think we can maybe delay those… things for you, a little bit.”

  “For how long?” Sadie asked.

  “That depends on how many of them there are,” Deborah said. “And how persistent.”

  “That’s fair,” Sadie said. “But I think I can use you.”

  When they had finished discussing their strategies, Deborah returned to her sisters. Beto left her alone so he could prepare his own gifts for the coming assault. Sadie stood, surrounded but alone, and faced the far side of the River.

  I doubt you had this in mind when you brought me into this world, Mom, Sadie thought. Though it was weird to think of Emma as her mother when they’d never truly met, she couldn’t think of her any other way. But things have gotten a little complicated. You wanted me to fix one mess, but frankly it’s going to have to get in line.

  She pulled out her ledger. She could just write Then all the monsters on the other side of the River decided to be cool and go home and seal it with her blood. Maybe that’s all it would take. Could a Lie work that way? And what would the Liar’s Price be for such a Lie? Probably more than she could afford.

  The su
n slipped away. Though the air was still plenty hot, Sadie felt a chill. Across the bridge, perched on a sign proclaiming unleaded gas at $4.09 per gallon, a huge black thing spread its massive wings. A roar built of a hundred monstrous voices erupted.

  Alright, Sadie thought. Let’s do this.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The hunter sent the weak in first. This was not its first battle, not its first siege. Strategy would likely not be required against such an unworthy foe, but still there was no call to tempt fate. This night would be bloody and glorious; it would take no risks. The King was going to die, and his people with him.

  Three bear-killers bounded across the bridge. Sadie saw them coming and quickly ducked behind the concrete barriers the sheriffs had erected. She remembered too well how much damage just one of those things had done outside the library, and had no interest in facing them again.

  The night suddenly filled with noise as the deputies opened fire. The bullets sparked all around the monsters as they closed. Some found their targets in brief sprays of black ichor. But still they came.

  Then Beto was there. His eyes were already shimmering with power.

  “Remember,” Sadie said. “You don’t have to kill them.”

  Beto nodded. “Just knock them off the bridge and let the River do the rest.”

  “Right.”

  “I hope this goes better than last time I helped you,” he said. “I’m okay with not looking into the land of the dead again for a while.”

  “We’re doing this for Teresa,” Sadie said. “And your baby.”

  “I know why I’m doing this,” Beto said. “You still owe me that Lie.”

  And then the bear-killers were on them.

  The closest deputies screamed as jagged teeth sank into them. A shotgun went off and tore a chunk out of one of the horrors, but the thing barely noticed. Claws flashed in the streetlamp light and another man fell.

  Then Beto was humming, his hands pressed palm down into the road. Maybe this wasn’t a true crossroads, but choosing whether or not to cross the River out of Red Valley was close enough. There was power here—and spirits, maybe, too. Hopefully enough. Sadie moved back as the muscles on his arms began to quiver. One of the bear-killers noticed them and scrambled up over the barricades toward them. Its jaws opened and snapped shut.

  And then unseen hands lifted it into the air. It thrashed, but the grip tightened. Sadie could see tendons in Beto’s neck bulge with the strain, but the bear-killer was held fast. A moment later, it was soaring above the barricades and the parked sheriff’s department cars. It didn’t quite clear the bridge, smashing into the barrier instead, but then it bounced off the concrete and down into the black water. There was a splash and a cry of pain, and then nothing.

  More shotgun bursts exploded as deputies and people of Red Valley converged on the remaining bear-killers. One finally collapsed and lay still. The other yelped and retreated back over the bridge.

  Fire was pumping in Sadie’s blood now. Is that all you got? I thought you were supposed to be scary.

  “Something’s wrong, gringa,” Beto said. Sweat was running down his face and staining his shirt. His skin was ashen.

  “What do you mean? That was incredible.”

  “It was too hard,” he said, shaking his head. He stumbled a little, caught himself on the barrier. “The spirits are there, but I can barely reach them. I feel like I’m bleeding out, here.”

  The King, Sadie thought. That’s why the King’s Men weren’t here. The King was too busy draining Red Valley of its magic, before his enemies got too close. They didn’t have much time.

  Then more of the things on the far side of the River began to move.

  The hunter had not expected the initial assault to finish them off. Even the weakest defender could fight from a position of strength. But they hadn’t just used mankind’s crude weapons of war. They had used magic. And it was not the King’s magic. This was something else. Something unexpected.

  But the hunter had other forces at its disposal. And not all were on this side of the River.

  Perhaps this would be a worthy hunt after all.

  The things came in a wave. Some looked human, but shed that skin as soon as they crossed the King’s Peace. There were so many that it was hard to distinguish them one from the other. It was a wave, a flood of teeth and claws and hate.

  Bullets and shot tore into them. Some fell. More came over them.

  Beto knocked a few aside. The River splashed hungrily. But the flood barely slowed.

  If all of that gets into Red Valley… Sadie didn’t let herself finish that thought. They’d stop them here. There were no other options.

  The deputies ran. Some of them slipped and stumbled—on the blood or ichor, or the bodies of the fallen—and didn’t get away fast enough. She’d tried to warn them not to be so far out onto the bridge, but they hadn’t been all that interested in tactical advice from some girl. Their screams bit into Sadie’s ears.

  But just before the first thing could make it off the bridge, there was a gust of cool, autumnal wind. It turned Sadie’s sweat to ice and she shivered. Then a latticework of silver and gold threads began to weave itself at the end of the bridge. It came together quickly, as if knitted by a host of thousands. One of the things launched itself at a closing gap, but wasn’t fast enough; it was abruptly thrown back in a crackle of magical energy. The bridge was sealed.

  Sadie spared a glance back at Deborah the librarian and her sisters. They were in their circle, gently swaying, softly singing. The breeze tousled their long wispy hair. Then she ran to the edge of the bridge and leaned out over the River.

  “Now!” she shouted and thought she heard the River’s laughter in reply.

  The black water seemed to move faster, as if a dam had been opened far upstream. It hit the pylons holding the bridge up, with renewed and growing force. The water around them churned white, and cracks began to form in the concrete.

  Come on, Sadie thought. We only need another minute…

  But then she heard the screams and the cool breeze died.

  Then she heard the wailing.

  The sisters’ circle had been smashed. A few of the women were lying face down in the road, graying hair spread wide around them like auras, mixing with blood. In the center stood the horrible shape of Kyle the Crying Boy. His twisted arms slashed the air and his horrible blue eye pierced the night.

  The silver and gold began to unravel.

  Oh, fuck, Sadie thought. The hunter in the darkness’s influence had been wider than she’d hoped. There was a loud crack. The bridge began to sway. They were so close.

  She ran toward the circle, waving her hands above her head.

  “Hey, Kyle!” she shouted.

  The Crying Boy stopped his thrashing and looked around.

  “Remember me, dickhead?”

  “You,” the Crying Boy said in his horrible dual voice. He started toward her. “You are going to be swept away. This whole town is going to burn and bleed.”

  “You live here too, moron. You think those things are going to be your new best friends?”

  The Crying Boy hesitated. “The hunter has promised us.”

  “Wow, Kyle,” Sadie said. “I knew you were stupid—you invited a demon into your brain—but this is next level.”

  The sisters gathered up their wounded and retreated. Deborah made eye contact with Sadie. The older woman had blood spattered on her face. She nodded, then clutched the crystals around her neck and began to sing again. The threads stopped their unwinding.

  “I am going to eat your soul!” Kyle screamed. The wail inside him grew and grew until it was the only sound in the world. And then he threw himself at Sadie, every gnarled claw and yellowed fang pointed at her heart.

  Sadie did not move. She balled her hands into fists, raised her chin, and stood her ground. She did clamp her eyes shut just as the Crying Boy was about to land. Even behind her eyelids, she could see his burning blue gaze.
/>   One moment followed another, and she realized the blow hadn’t landed.

  She was still alive, still in one piece.

  One eye opened, then the other.

  The Crying Boy was suspended in mid-air, only a few feet from her. His eye and his mouth were wide in shock. A tendril of pure shadow, shaped something like a human arm, held him aloft as his limbs went slack. The wail faded, then was gone. Then the blue light went out.

  “Your exploits remain entertaining,” said the Long Shadows.

  “That was close,” Sadie said when she could catch her breath. “Thank you.”

  “We do not accept thanks,” the Long Shadows said. “Only repayment.”

  “I hope I live long enough to find out what horrible thing you’ll want in return.”

  “Oh, so do we.”

  Panicked shouting drew Sadie’s attention back toward the bridge. Though the sisters’ wall was holding, some of the dark hungry things had gotten through and were wreaking havoc. Beto’s spirits held a few back, but he was bending under the strain. The deputies and people of Red Valley fought back with what weapons they had, but against fang and claw they could only do so much.

  Just as Beto was about to fall, there was a blur of movement and the things attacking him fell back. The big man from Tips stood over him, feet planted wide. Now, though, he looked less and less like a man. His skin had gone scaly, his eyes yellow.

  “Come on, you bastards,” he growled. “I live in this shithole of a town too, so if you want to tear it down, you’ll have to get through me.”

  Other patrons from Tips appeared by his side. They were outnumbered, but they looked pissed. A bear-killer made the first move, opening its jaws wide to snap at the big man. But he caught the thing in mid-flight, his massive hands holding its jaws open. His muscles bulged, the bear-killer thrashed, and then there was an ugly snap and it went still.

  Sadie ran past all of them toward the River. The silver and gold threads weren’t going to hold much longer. Huge things crashed against the wall, eyes full of malice. If it fell… She leaned out over the railing next to the bridge.