Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Dean shoved the key into the ignition, gave it a crank, and the car's engine roared to satisfying life. Ticking the vehicle into reverse, he glanced at Sam.

  "It is a big hole," he said. "I was right about that."

  "You were right, Dean. That canyon is one big freaking hole."

  TWO

  Ralph McCaig had been born over in Dolan Springs, to a father who had worked at the Tennessee Schuylkill Mine and a mother who mostly drank and complained, especially after the old man died in a mining accident and the pension checks never quite made it to the end of the month. Except for a hitch in the army during the Gulf War, in which the closest he had been to action was a street brawl outside a bar in Frankfurt, Germany, he'd always lived in Arizona's high country, land of canyons and plateaus, evergreen trees, mule deer, and tourists. On the back bumper of his Chevy pickup, which had been new before that war but old by the time he bought it in 1998, he had a sticker that said, IF IT'S TOURIST SEASON, WHY CAN'T WE SHOOT 'EM? A gun rack over the rear window held a twelve-gauge and a 30.06, and he had actually used the ought-six once to fire at a BMW that whipped around a blind curve at eighty or more, startling him so much as he relieved himself beside the road that he'd peed on his Justin work boots. By the time he zipped up, scrambled to the truck, and yanked down the gun, though, the Beemer had been nothing but a pair of distant taillights, and he didn't think he came anywhere near hitting it.

  Didn't mean he wouldn't try again in a similar circumstance. He made his living with a small salvage logging operation, so unlike some of his neighbors, his paycheck didn't depend on the tourist trade. At the moment, he was between contracts, but that wouldn't last long. The people who hired him were the ones who had to deal with environmental impact studies and logging permits and all the bureaucratic paperwork; all he had to do when they gave the word was gather a crew and go into the woods and take out the downed trees and the slash, or the skinny striplings that would never gain purchase there. Land managers liked neat, clean forests these days, big trees with plenty of space around them.

  Ralph had some money in the bank, the fish were biting at Smoot Lake, and there was enough snow on the ground so he could stick a six-pack in it and every bottle would be as cold as the last, so he was a happy man.

  Maybe a little too happy. As he negotiated the turn off the highway onto Lookout Trail—the dirt track that led past his place to a lookout tower that fire spotters hadn't used for a decade or more—he almost lost control of the truck. The rear end caught an icy patch and fishtailed and he barely got it back in line before it smacked into the stump of an oak he had cut down—illegally, since it wasn't on his land—because its branches had blocked his view of the highway.

  But he did get it under control, and then it was just half a mile to his place. He could do that stretch with his eyes closed.

  The close call had put him on edge, shaken a little of the buzz away. That was unfortunate, since the day had been just about perfect so far. He had been thinking, in fact, that the only thing that would make it more perfect would be if Doris Callender came over for dinner—better, with dinner—followed by a little of what his old man had called "knockin' boots." He'd give her a ring when he got inside, see if she wasn't free. Most nights, she was.

  By the time Ralph came to a stop outside the old barn he used as a garage, the shakes from his nearaccident had faded. It wasn't that he had been too concerned about crunching the truck, he thought, as much as it was the implication that he'd driven all the way back from Smoot Lake impaired. If six beers threw him off this much, did it mean he was getting old? Forty was closing in fast, after all. If the day came that he couldn't handle a chain saw or an ax, he really would have to worry.

  He left the motor running and climbed down to open the barn door. The night air had turned cold, and he blew on his hands to warm them. He tripped over a root in the driveway but managed to keep his balance. "Jeez," he said out loud. "Six beers?" Maybe I'm getting sick, he added silently. Catching a cold. Sure, that's probably it, no way six brews would hit me so hard otherwise.

  He had almost reached the barn door, where he knew the rusty hasp would give him problems because it always did, when he heard a strange sound. He froze. The woods around here were full of animals, deer and mountain lions and snakes, rabbits and chipmunks, various birds. Black bears too, sometimes, and at first he thought that's what had made the noise. He hadn't had a lot of close encounters with bears, he was glad to say, so he didn't know for sure if they made sounds like that. It had been a kind of irregular chuffing noise, like something that climbed a steep hill and hadn't caught its breath yet. But liquid, moist. Hearing it made Ralph envision something with loose, floppy jowls and big teeth and strings of saliva dangling from its open mouth, and he shivered, not because of the cool night air.

  The noise came again, louder this time.

  Closer.

  He tried to gauge his distances. To the barn was closer, but there, he'd have to wrestle with that damn hasp, which gave him fits under the best of circumstances. Once he got it unlatched he would have to tug open the heavy barn door, on hinges he hadn't greased in he didn't know how long, then pull it closed behind him. And once he got in there, if it was something like a rabid bear, who knew how long it might wait around outside?

  No, the truck was a better bet. Farther away, but if he needed to he could drive into Cedar Wells. And his guns were there.

  Again, the noise. This time it was accompanied by something that sounded like smacking lips. Through the trees on the far side of the drive he saw a shape, vague and dark. But big.

  Ralph dashed for the truck. Hit the root again, and this time it caught his foot, but good, sprawling him on his belly in the dirt. A shard of glass from a broken bottle sliced open his palm. He rose to a half kneel and yanked the glass out, and blood washed over his hand. At the same moment, a stench enveloped him, as if someone had draped a five-day-dead animal across his nose and mouth.

  It had to be the bear, or whatever was out there. If he could smell it, that meant it was even closer. He could feel its hot breath on his neck—or was that his imagination? He didn't want to turn around and look.

  Instead he gained his feet and charged for his truck. His bloody hand grabbed the door handle but slipped off before he could get it open. He clawed at it again, steel tacky with his blood this time, and it came easily, the door swinging open on its hinges.

  Then the creature was on him, all thick dark fur and gnashing fangs. It swiped at him with a massive paw, knocking him to the ground. He gripped the truck's step with his left arm, like it was a life preserver that could hold him above the doom that would otherwise surely swallow him, and now for the first time he really saw it, except he couldn't be seeing it right because it changed, shifted, phased in and out of visibility—now a black bear, now a bear that had been dead for months, decomposed, bones showing through rotted flesh, now altogether invisible but still, horribly, breathing on his face, fat drops of drool splattering against his chin and neck—and it shoved its muzzle right against his throat, fur tickling his nostrils, the stink gigantic, and its huge razor teeth tore through skin, broke arteries and bones.

  Ralph's last thought was that it would have been good to have knocked boots with old Doris one last time but it was probably for the best that he hadn't invited her over tonight.

  Forty years before, the first victim had been hunting, alone, deep in the forest. He had fallen easily, and his body was never found; animals scattered the bones, the flesh eaten by worms and insects and scavengers and rot and in one form or another returned to the earth.

  Forty years had passed since the instant of his death.

  The cycle had come around again.

  The killings had begun.

  THREE

  Main Street proved to be everything Juliet Monroe had promised. Which, Dean acknowledged, wasn't much. The buildings were mostly wooden fronted, with pitched roofs laden with snow and covered walkways in front. A few were
made of brick, and they drove past a bank constructed from big blocks of gray stone. Christmas decorations already showed in many of the shop windows, and the lampposts had been wrapped with red ribbon. Sam pointed out the Wagon Wheel Café, which had a wagon wheel missing two spokes right at the one o'clock position, spotlighted next to a painted wooden sign. It looked to be a standard small town diner, like many the brothers had been in—and occasionally thrown out of—in the last year or so. He hoped they did see Juliet there—he definitely wanted to run into her again.

  Two doors down only a neon OPEN sign glowing in a blacked-out window gave any indication that the Plugged Bucket Saloon was occupied, but Dean guessed that there were a handful of drinkers at the bar, maybe a couple making eyes at each other in a dark booth, and a jukebox well stocked with country music hits that were at least two years old. He imagined he could hear Shania Twain singing "Man, I Feel Like a Woman" from here, although with a Rush cassette pounding from the Impala's stereo, he wouldn't have been able to hear her if she was standing on the sidewalk with her full band.

  He reached out and cranked the volume knob to the left. "Any sign of the motel?"

  "We passed the Bide-A-Wee on the way in," Sam said. "On my side. I didn't say anything because I thought we'd decided not to share a room with giant insects. Present company excluded."

  "What about that other one Juliet mentioned?"

  "The Trail's End? Not yet."

  Dean scanned the street. A couple of trucks were parked along the sidewalks, but no people were in evidence. "Have you seen a single human being?"

  "Not a one."

  "You don't think..."

  "What, we're too late? Something's already slaughtered the whole town? If that was the case, I think we'd see bodies, blood in the streets. I think it's just a small mountain town and people go home early."

  "Okay," Dean said. "I like that better."

  Up ahead, light spilled from a storefront that was set back from the road, with a parking area in front. Swanson's High Country Market. Here there were people, including a woman with two kids, pushing a shopping cart toward a green Jeep. "See?" Sam said. "Nothing sinister. And if we don't like the Wagon Wheel, we can stock up there."

  "Let's hope it stays quiet," Dean said. "I wouldn't mind if we were wrong for once and there was nothing strange going on at all. It'd be a decent place for a vacation if we didn't have to worry about people being murdered."

  "That's what I like about you, Dean," Sam said. "Your eternal optimism. Always looking on the sunny side."

  Dean glanced at his brother. He could see the family resemblance, particularly in the shape and sharpness of the nose, but Sam's face was rounder, softer somehow. His brother's eyes were brown, while Dean's were green. Longer hair, covering Sam's ears, curled over his collar and accentuated his youthful looks. Sam was four years younger, though, and had spent that time away at college. Dean supposed that by the time Sam reached twenty-seven—his age—those dimples and soft lines might harden, become deep crags, from the stress of fighting the denizens of the dark.

  If, of course, they both survived that long.

  He didn't like to think about the alternative. But they were soldiers, had been trained since childhood—almost from birth, in Sam's case—as soldiers, in a war that didn't seem to have an end. Soldiers needed to be prepared for death so they could take the necessary steps to avoid it. Still, they put themselves in harm's way, and he, Sam, and their father had done that almost every day since a demon killed their mother when Dean was four, until finally their father died too, a soldier's death, in battle as he would have wanted. His sons carried on the tradition without him. He wouldn't have had it any other way.

  The image of their mother's death haunted him still—Mom, pinned to the ceiling over Sam's crib, her body consumed by spectral fire. Dad had ordered Dean to carry baby Sammy to safety outside. From the yard, Dean had watched the flames spread, engulfing the whole house in minutes. Dad had escaped, but alone.

  Sam had been too young to remember it, too young, really, to know Mom at all. Her death came six months after his birth, to the day. But the same fate had claimed his girlfriend, Jessica Moore, after Sam abandoned Stanford to rejoin the battle at Dean's side. That one Sam had witnessed.

  Sam felt incredible guilt over Jessica's death, because he had dreamed it during the days before it happened and hadn't warned her. He couldn't have known, of course, that the dreams were anything but that. And no warning he could have given would prevented an attack by a demon they had not identified or defeated at that time.

  Dean believed that his own guilt had a more solid basis. Their dad had gone missing, and Dean had essentially bullied Sam into leaving Jessica and Stanford to go looking for him. Bringing Sam back into the game like that, he thought afterward, might have stirred up the demon in some way, and the demon had responded by attacking the woman Sam loved, just as it had attacked their mother.

  Dean finally decided there was plenty of blame to go around. The only way to live with it, to go on in spite of the lives they hadn't been able to save, was to keep up the fight, to save as many as they could and to kick as much supernatural ass as possible.

  "There it is!" Sam said, yanking Dean from his memories. "Trail's End. Your side."

  Dean saw the sign now too. One of the spotlights that were supposed to illuminate it had burned out, but he could still make out the monument sign beside the road, with the name painted on in Old West style lettering above a reproduction of that famous painting of a weary Indian sitting on an equally weary horse. A pink neon VACANCY sign sputtered just beneath the horse's tail. That Indian always made him sleepy, which he supposed was the whole point here. He bit back a yawn and turned into the driveway.

  The motel consisted of a dozen or so adobe cottages arrayed in U shape around the paved drive. Lights glowed in the office, a pink cottage closest to the street on the left. The other cottages were a natural tan color, with dark doors which had numbers affixed to the walls beside them. An empty pool surrounded by a tall fence dominated the center of the driveway, and a few scraggly plants stood beside the fence. Inside it, weeds broke through the sidewalk, almost to the pool's edge.

  "Think it's too fancy for us?" he asked. "We can always go back to the roach motel."

  "I didn't bring a tux," Sam said. "But I think they'll let us in."

  Dean brought the car to a stop outside the office. "Best behavior now," he warned. "Don't embarrass me."

  Inside, he had to bang on a countertop bell twice before anyone showed up. A door behind the check-in desk finally opened, and a man who had probably been old during the Eisenhower presidency hobbled in, using an aluminum cane. "Help you boys?" he asked. His hair had long since fled, and the crevasses in his face looked as deep as the canyon the brothers had so recently left.

  Dean put a fake ID card on the counter—one of dozens he kept in the Impala's glove compartment.

  "I'm Dean Osbourne," he said. Giving fake names had become second nature. He identified himself as Dean Winchester so seldom that sometimes he had to ponder for a moment to remember his real name. "National Geographic magazine. We're doing an article on the communities around the outside of the national park, focusing on Cedar Wells. Sam Butler here takes the pictures. Got a room we can have for a few days? We're not sure how long it'll take, but at least that."

  "National Geographic, eh?" the old man said. He showed them something that might have been a smile, or maybe a leer. Either way, it was terrifying. "Used to read that when I was a boy. Showed boobies."

  "There's an Internet for that now," Dean said. "We're more interested in local history, legends, and of course the people who make up the community today. You probably know some stories."

  The man nodded his oversized, liver-spotted cranium. Dean hoped he didn't unbalance himself and fall over. "Stories? Oh, I know some stories, all right. Got some good ones too."

  "We'll definitely get you on tape, then," Dean promised. He jerked a thumb tow
ard his brother. "And Sam here will take your picture. He might want you to show your chest, though, so watch out for him."

  The clerk shoved a piece of paper at Dean, with X's where he was supposed to sign. "Room 9," he said. "Two beds. TV's busted, but it has one of those little refrigerators."

  "Sounds perfect," Sam said, ignoring Dean's crack about the old man's chest. He snatched the key as soon as the guy put it on the counter. "Thanks."

  Outside, Dean headed for the car, but Sam started across the frozen parking lot, going directly toward the room. "This time, I get first dibs on the beds!" he called over his shoulder. His tone was as icy as the blacktop. Driving over, Dean clicked off the Rush tape. He had Sabbath's Paranoid stuck in his head now, and he hoped there was nothing to that except the names he had given inside the office.

  The wail of a siren jerked Dean out of a deep sleep. Cedar Wells had been so quiet, they might have been camping a hundred miles away from the nearest other humans, instead of sleeping in a motel at the edge of a town. In contrast, the blaring siren was almost deafening.

  Dean sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes.

  "That's not good," Sam said. He slipped out of his bed and started dressing.

  "A siren is pretty much always bad news for someone," Dean agreed. "But we don't know that it has anything to do with why we're here."

  "We won't find out sitting in this room," Sam reminded him.

  "Yeah," Dean said. He liked his sleep. He especially liked to sleep at night. But that was when the bad things generally came out, so he spent more nights than he liked to think about awake and alert. Daytimes were for investigation, nighttimes for battle. He had gone to bed hoping this night's sleep would be without interruption.