She fumbled for the phone and somehow managed to grab it. She mashed 911 into the keypad without looking.
“911. What is your emergency?” the voice on the other end of the phone asked.
In any other situation, her response would have been comedic – but the monster heard the operator and turned its fiery gaze upon the window.
Louise let out a shrill high-pitched scream.
10
Daniel Blackbird heard the scream and picked up on its direction instantly. He reached up and touched the scar that ran from eye to cheekbone, an ugly wave of white skin on a sea of unblemished copper. He felt the tug inside him, the tingle in his face, and began moving in the direction of the scream.
By the third stride, he was running.
11
Frozen with fear, Louise stood there at the window as the monster dropped the body into the sewer. All the while it never took its eyes off her.
Louise was paralyzed. She could not move no matter how hard she tried.
A thousand miles away she heard a voice saying. “Miss? I have dispatched police to your location. Please stay on the phone.”
She couldn’t respond – but she thought, Oh please, tell them to fucking hurry!
Stay there, the monster told her. Its command came from right inside her head. It was now at the base of the building and bashing its claws into the masonry as it began to scale the wall.
I’m going to die, she thought.
Yes, you are going to die, the monster echoed.
“Oh my God,” she whimpered.
The monster was ten feet away now. Its horrible teeth grating as the stench of rot filtered upward to the open window. The blood from its last victim was already coagulating on the corners of its mouth.
Don’t move.
She could feel its hunger, a spinning lust coalesced with madness. A desperate prayer rocked through her: Let it be quick.
It let out a low, guttural shriek.
Only a few feet away, the stench was overpowering.
She wanted to close her eyes, but it would not let her.
Be afraid! This is going to hurt! Be afraid!
The phone fell from her clutch onto the counter, and when she was face to face with the abomination the masonry beside her window exploded. At first, she thought it was the monster, but then she realized that someone below had fired something at the window. It turned and looked below, breaking its hold on her.
Shooooooooothunk.
Again something ricocheted off the brick wall.
The monster turned its attention on the man below. He was holding some kind of bow and arrow. But Louise didn’t stop to contemplate why. Its grip on her was suddenly gone. She broke from the window and dashed for her bedroom, screaming all the way.
Blackbird knocked another arrow into the crossbow and armed it. It dropped from the wall and landed on the ground. It stood in front of him, unfurling its long arms and extending its deadly talons. Blackbird had never been this close, except for that one night. It was huge; much larger than he remembered.
“You,” it growled, and let out a screeching bray of laughter that echoed through the alley. “I thought I left you shivering in your boots up north.”
Blackbird took aim.
Toomey’s words rung out in Blackbird’s mind: “Do not engage in dialogue with the walker; he will trick and seduce you.”
He released the arrow, which had been blessed by the Elders. It flew straight and true. For the brief instant of its flight, he wondered what would happen when the silver pierced the creature’s skin.
He didn’t get a chance to find out. It snatched the arrow from the air and bent it in half.
“Your blood will be sweet.”
It moved on him, as he tried to get a fourth arrow into the bow.
Above them, Louise Weatherton was back at the window. Now she was prepared.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Gunfire erupted from the apartment window as she hammered the trigger wildly. To her, the explosions from the Browning 9mm were deafening, but a passerby could have easily confused them for firecrackers.
The monster stopped again and turned toward the woman in the window. Blackbird sensed the opportunity and tried to notch another arrow into the bow. But before he could, the monster turned back toward him – even as another bullet clipped its shoulder, sending a spray of black mucus up into the night air.
The Walker advanced like it had never even been hit, and as it closed the distance more bullets exploded from the barrel of the Browning.
Unable to seat the arrow, Daniel Blackbird raised the crossbow up like a Louisville slugger in a final attempt to protect himself.
One more bullet found the creature’s thigh. This time it let out a horrific screech – but it was more anger than pain.
It reared up, about to bear down on Daniel – then it stopped. It paused, listened to some unheard noise that neither Blackbird nor Louise could hear.
“Another time,” it invited, black ooze spilling from its mouth. Its eyes burned brightly as dirty smoke began to engulf it amid electrical pops and flashes. Then there was a crash and a liquid sound as it contorted and transformed before their eyes into a large Raven. It hung there a moment, like a toy on a child’s mobile, but before either of them could seize the opportunity, it flew toward Louise’s window, darted left and was gone into the night.
Police sirens filled the air.
“Shit,” Blackbird cried, and dropped his bow to the ground.
“Are you okay?”
For the first time, Blackbird looked up and realized it was a large black woman who had been firing from the apartment window. She had very likely saved his life. He gave her a thumbs up, then added. “Nice shooting, Tex.”
“You an Indian there, Hon?” she called down.
“Yup.”
“An Indian with a bow and arrow?” she said, giggling nervously. “Imagine that.”
“And a black woman with a gun,” he laughed. “I’m Dan Blackbird; you must be Foxy Brown.”
At that, they both broke into a fit of nervous laughter. Both were still laughing when police cars surrounded the alley. Then the police took up defensive positions and yelled for the Indian to get down.
12
“What have we got?” Woodman asked the uniformed Sergeant who had secured the scene.
The Sergeant opened his notepad. “We’ve got three bodies; one fresh, two in various states of decay.”
“Three?” Woodman looked up. “Same MO?”
“Yeah, same.”
The Sgt. thumbed through his notepad. So far, they had discovered nine bodies in the Chicago sewer system including the three tonight. Fortunately, the Chicago Police had been able to keep the grisly details out of the media. Good thing, too: it wasn’t until the initial discovery of four bodies that the police knew they had a serial killer in their midst.
Detective Rosedale came walking up beside his partner, nodding to the Sergeant. “Sean, you’ll never guess who they’ve got in custody.”
Woodman turned from the Sergeant to Rosedale. “Virgin for Life?”
“Yes, sir,” Rosedale nodded. “Our very own Native Voyeur.”
“That would be witness number one,” the Sergeant said.
“Witness?” both detectives said in unison.
“Yes; Daniel Blackbird. The other is a black woman who witnessed the perpetrator dumping our last victim down the manhole. Her name –” he thumbed a page back – “Louise Weatherton.”
Woodman rubbed his right eye with his knuckle. “Hang on, Sergeant. This Indian guy is a witness? We have him pegged as a suspect.”
“We’ve been watching him for three days now,” Rosedale echoed.
“That might be, Detectives, but both stories from Weatherton and Blackbird are pretty cozy. As far
as we know so far, they have never met before tonight. Although you’d think they were the Lone Ranger and Tonto with all the bows and arrows and gunplay that went on in this alley.” The Sergeant waited for a reaction but got none.
“Okay, standard OP on the scene. Keep the witnesses apart, give me a walkthrough and then you can explain what the hell kind of mess we’ve stumbled onto. That work for you, Sergeant?”
“No problem, Detective, but I can pretty much guarantee that after I explain this shindig, you’re gonna think I’m pitching some kind of screwed up Quentin Tarantino script. Can you take notes on the move?”
“I can do better than that.” Woodman produced voice-activated tape player and then turned to his partner. “Brad, get the team canvassing the area and secure the witnesses. Most of all, keep the press at bay. I don’t want anything leaked before we’ve got a handle on this.”
“Alright, I’m on it.” Rosedale didn’t need anything further. He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Chicago PD – eight of those spent in homicide. He was off and running.
Woodman reached down and put a fresh micro-cassette into the recorder. He hated putting pen to paper; he was slow at writing, and it made his fingers ache. He pressed the record button then put it on voice activation.
“Okay, Sergeant, let’s do this.”
***
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1.
Marigold and Joyce lived in the house by the red barn that passing tourists used to photograph. They came to that part of Vermont for the skiing. They’d hit the slopes, fill the restaurants, and leave with their memories. I envy them now. I wish I could exchange my memories for those of another man. I have no vacations left inside me.
The drive I took from Stowe to visit my nieces once made my heart ache with its beauty, but in the end that gentle road leading into the mountains felt like a scar. I used to help Marigold and Joyce with their reading when they were little. My sister, Holly, did so much for them. Their father, Dwight Fisher, had run off years ago, no one knew where, leaving her alone. That was before they were born. He returned off and on; he had a knack for doing that. He spent a few years with my sister, watched her get pregnant and neglected her. Then he vanished for good one summer’s day, leaving her to bring her daughters up on her own. She never spoke of him, but reverted to the family name of Butler.
Having lost my own son, Felton, to a hunting accident, I came to feel Marigold and Joyce were like two daughters to me. My wife, Mary, never recovered from Felton’s death. She said the loss of a child ended something inside her. Her maternal care seemed to wither. The kitchen was full of dead flowers for many months after his loss. She liked Marigold and Joyce but rarely visited them. And it seemed to me that I was pouring all my paternal instincts into the two girls, wanting to protect them when I had been unable to save my own son’s life. The fool is protected by his folly. I never envisaged the cruelty that life held in its card-dealing hands. I never saw what was to come. Perhaps that is why I became the man I am, a barely recognisable sum of memories that have altered my image and bruised my heart. I wish I could erase them, but they feed on me. The deepest bruise of all dwells like a swollen rose inside me, reminding me of that time with its thorns, that wounding time that violated us all.
Everything changed in those years, apart from the landscape. Its beauty in the fall still stops my breath; the green mountains of Vermont and shades of shifting colour overwhelm me. The vistas of clear brooks and streams. The hills flowing into mountains tell me that the earth is wiser than us.
My sister and nieces lived outside Stowe, beneath Mount Mansfield that always seemed to be sleeping, waiting for snow. I sometimes think it watched the events as they unfolded. The countryside there has a purity to it that is endlessly consoling. And to a certain kind of man that purity may aggravate his own sense of corruption, engendering thoughts of defilement.
The tourists came and went, brought money and took away stories and snapshots. They faded like invisible ink. But there was one man who passed through and left something ineradicable behind in those violated years. He passed through all right. He did so like a scythe that cut all certainty from my life and left me with thoughts that were alien to my soul. Temple Jones. There was no way of knowing him or predicting what he would do.
I remember something Mary said to me about him, ‘Shepherd Butler, sometimes you just can’t know a man; some men keep things too well hidden.’
And what Temple Jones did to Mary was nothing compared to what he went on to do. He stole my understanding of the world and handed me back a reality that lacks all consolation. I crave the solace of purity and find only hatred. And I know that innocence is an affront to some men.
Even the well outside the window seems corrupted by the memory of him sitting there, his face reflected in the window pane. But I have other memories. I try to reach back to a time when I didn’t know him and the world seemed good. I remember the sandstone well many years ago one sunlit morning in the early years of my marriage. It glowed like honeycomb and beneath me Mary’s face was full of a fertile joy I have never known another woman to have. She tasted of mountain streams as I kissed her mouth, and I lived in a world of certainty as she took me inside her on the wet grass.
I am sure that was the day Felton was conceived, there beneath the well in the quiet privacy of our Vermont garden. My fingers smelt of wild columbine and sweetgrass, and Mary was mine, as was the future in all its broken knowledge. My wife had the purest skin, there was not a scar on her body, and as I touched her I was conscious my hands had been rooting in the soil, as if I was unfit for her body and all it would allow. But she yielded to me and gave me things I would never have dared ask from her. There was no restraint or inhibition in her touch, which gave permission to my desire. The marks she carries now can’t be seen. Her sapphire blue eyes that once would search my face have faded, and while I inhabit the same house as her I have to reach into the past to feel her reality.
Her alabaster skin, her mouth, her erotic lips parted as I entered her on the pure earth, her full breasts and strong thighs, exist in a moment that has been removed from me, as she has been stolen from herself. I feel the ache of an amputated limb and want to dwell inside her again, but robbers have invaded our home and carried us away.
I am unmanned by events beyond my control and seek the feminine to prove myself again. I have become the castrated father of the tribe, my children are butchered, my possessions looted. That is the purpose that hatred serves. But I will not yield to that poisoned Bible. There was a time before corruption. I seek to separate the past from the wounds he inflicted. His deeds invaded us like a virus, replicating their own hatred inside us, taking away the things we once believed in. And while I can still see myself making love to Mary that day, I can also smell the fresh grass and see the columbine’s spurs and feel the ones that Temple Jones wore cutting into my sides, as if he was on my back without my knowing, all along, even then.
2.
Late fall. Vermont a swathe of colour, scarlet and gold shimmering in the hills, banks of red leaves bleeding at the edges. Unearthly light. I was standing in the kitchen with Mary, finishing a cup of coffee and about to leave to visit Holly and the girls. Mary was dressed in a white blouse buttoned to the top. It complimented the beauty of her slender neck with its well-defined muscles. I see myself kiss the vein that runs across it. I feel it throb against my lips when we make love.
‘Fall used to be my favourite season, Shepherd,’ she said. ‘But now all it does is remind me of Felton’s death.’
‘Do you want to come with me today?’
‘I’m best on my own.’
‘They’d love to see you.’
‘Would they?’
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br /> I looked into her sky blue eyes, but they were wandering away from me. She gazed into the distance, at the mountains. Her hazelnut hair shone with light. I wanted to touch it.
‘He knew you were proud of him,’ I said.
‘Did I tell him enough? Did I hold back my love in the name of duty as a parent?’
‘You’ve never held anything back.’
‘The beauty outside my window is too hard to bear. I don’t want to see how unchanged it all is, how it keeps to its own aesthetic.’
I didn’t understand what she meant, but I was to find out. My words fell like fake money from my mouth.
‘Mary, I wanted the world to stop when he was shot. I felt as though tomorrow was a lie. We train ourselves to think of the future of our offspring, most of what we do as parents is a way of investing in that, and we never expect them to be taken from us. Part of the future goes with them. I know you didn’t like him to hunt, but nothing would have persuaded him it was wrong.’
‘I see them bringing back the deer on their cars, and it all seems so trivial to me now, my principles about killing animals. I wonder whether it was something else I was feeling when I tried to stop him from doing it, as if behind my views lay an unease, a sense he might come to harm out there.’
‘You had the same principles at college.’
‘Go on your own, Shepherd, send them my love. I’m not good company. I’m locked inside that fall two years ago. Do you remember us walking up Mount Mansfield, your hand in mine and Felton walking before us? I look at myself now, and I’m someone else.’
The Red Son Page 42
