Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  She forced herself to slide out of the way enough to shove it closed with her feet. When she heard it latch, she pulled herself up on the knob, setting the thumb latch again, then the dead bolt. She leaned against the solid wooden door for a few moments, catching her breath.

  But outside, Stu struggled with whatever had attacked them. She heard his shouts of terror and anguish, and deep, throaty animal roars. Once again she wished she had taken the advice of her neighbors and bought a gun.

  Rushing to the window, she peeked out.

  What she saw filled her with a kind of horror she had never imagined.

  Stu had fallen to the snow-covered lawn—the snow had stopped falling; the sky was the color the edge of her hand got when she drew with a soft pencil for too long. He flailed with his arms and legs against a beast, a silvery canine with black markings. A rabid dog? she wondered.

  Then it came to her. Not a dog.

  Stu fought a wolf.

  She remembered hearing reports of occasional wolf sightings locally. Wolves, virtually wiped out in the late nineteenth century, were being reintroduced to wild places around the West. Some farmers and ranchers objected, but the wolf-recovery forces usually seemed to win out.

  The canine was huge and muscular, far larger than any wolf she had ever seen a picture of, and it snarled and snapped and pawed at Stu, who was on the ground, screaming and trying to fight but growing weaker even as Juliet watched.

  Helpless.

  If she'd had a gun she might have been able to hit it. Its broad shoulders and big head provided reasonable targets. But the best weapon she could come up with was one of the carving knives from her kitchen. If she went out with that, all it would get her was killed.

  Stu had told her to stay inside, no matter what happened.

  Did he understand what he was asking? Did he know that it would mean she would have to stand here and watch him die, doing nothing because there was nothing she could do?

  He couldn't have known the noises on the roof were a wolf, could he? He had dismissed that idea after seeing the cattle. But even if he'd thought so, he couldn't have known how big it was, or that it could climb so well, or that it would be fast enough, vicious enough, to yank him out an open door.

  She watched Stu bat at it hopelessly. The canine had one massive paw on his chest, holding him down. When the wolf lowered its head toward Stu's throat, she cringed and squeezed her eyes shut. That lasted only an instant; by the time she opened them again, the wolf was lifting its head, its muzzle slick and red. Stu's screams had finally stopped.

  Tears streamed down Juliet's cheeks. What had she been thinking earlier? That death surrounded her?

  She hadn't known the half of it then.

  Stu no longer moved. The animal lowered its head again, then whipped it from side to side. Tearing at something. Juliet saw stringy, bloody tissue clutched in its teeth. It chewed, swallowed. The snow around the wolf and Stu's lifeless shape was disturbed, lumpy, melting, and splattered with so much red that it looked spray-painted.

  Then slowly, horribly, the wolf turned its head, looking past its left shoulder.

  Right at her.

  In its yellow eyes she saw a ferocious intelligence and a terrible hunger.

  The cattle weren't enough for it. Neither was Stu.

  That beast wanted her.

  Juliet made sure that every door was locked. Where there were curtains open, she closed them. She turned on every light in the house. She tried the phones again, even carrying her cell phone upstairs and standing as close as she dared to all the windows, in case there was a stray signal that had seeped into the canyon. No luck.

  Having done all that, she sat down on the couch in the living room and pulled a blanket around herself. She shivered, even though she had turned the thermostat up to eighty and the heater blasted away. She tried to empty her mind, to force herself to stop seeing the awful way the wolf had regarded her, to stop hearing Stu's screams and the wet ripping noises the animal made long after she had stopped watching. The last time she'd peeked from an upstairs window, bloody paw prints led away from the mangled remains of the man who had been her friend and her ranch hand.

  She couldn't assume it had left, though. That's what it wanted her to think. It wanted her to believe that it had moved on, so she would go outside, make a run for the Bledsoe place down the road. Then it would come at her, like a cat chasing a mouse, toying with her until it got tired of the game and finished her off.

  How long could she stay inside? She had enough food for a week, probably. The ranch had its own well and septic system, so water and sewage wouldn't be issues. Electricity, like phone service, came in on wires from the road, so if it had been clever enough to cut the phone lines, it could do the same to the power. A propane tank provided heat, but the furnace needed electricity to work. To operate the thermostat? She wasn't sure about that, although she thought not. So even if the canine shut off her lights, she wouldn't have to freeze.

  Until the propane ran out.

  Surely before that might happen she would be saved. Every now and then the mail carrier came to the door with a package too big for the mailbox at the end of the lane. Or a UPS driver. The mailman might even come to check when he saw her mail start to pile up inside the box. All she would need to do then was run from the house and get inside his Jeep, or the UPS truck, and slam the door and tell the driver to drive, drive away as fast as he could. One of her friends from town might even come out when a few days went by without her answering her phone.

  Her thoughts brightened a little at that. There was a way out of this, after all. She would have to stay awake during the daytime, when it was likeliest that someone would drive close to the house. And weren't wolves nocturnal? So when the best opportunity presented itself, the canine would likely be sleeping somewhere.

  She would leave this damned ranch and never return, never even look back. Let it go back to the land, let the house collapse with everything in it, she didn't care. Let the wolf have it all.

  "You can have the ranch, but you won't get me," she said out loud. She meant for it to sound defiant, but instead it rang hollow, pitiful, to her ears. She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and trembled.

  FIFTEEN

  As it had the night they first came in—just last night, Sam realized, although much had happened—the town seemed to close up early. Even the neon open sign at the Plugged Bucket was turned off when they went past after leaving the Richardsons' house. The Wagon Wheel was dark and empty. It seemed word had spread, finally convincing enough people to drive them to their homes.

  Where, Sam feared, they were no safer than they were at any other place. If it chose you, it chose you, whether it was an old man or a spirit or a shapeshifter, and there didn't seem to be a hell of a lot you could say about it.

  They cruised dark and silent streets, searching for the old man. The snow had stopped falling, although now and then a breeze puffed some into the air. In fact, Main Street had been plowed, but nothing else had, and the Impala made a shushing noise as they drove. On the tape deck, Bob Seger sang "Turn the Page," about being on the cold and lonely road, and Sam empathized. Dean tapped his fingers quietly on the steering wheel, in time to the music.

  "This is pointless," Dean said after twenty minutes or so. "There's nobody out, much less an old man with a gun."

  "The killer might be out there somewhere," Sam said. "We're just not seeing him."

  "Or it. And if it's a spirit, we might never see it. We've got to be on the scene when a killing happens, or right after. That's the only way we're going to run it to ground."

  "Like we were on the scene with the bear."

  "Yeah, except at the time we thought it was just a bear. Now we know better."

  "Let's go back to our room," Sam suggested. "We can listen to the police band radio, maybe get online and see if there's something else we can learn. Something we've been missing."

  "We're missing something, that's for sure,
" Dean said. He changed course, back to Main and toward the Trail's End.

  They had stayed in so many motels during Sam's younger days that, growing up, he'd been surprised to learn that there actually were families like the ones he saw on TV, who lived in the same place day after day and didn't have to collect their mail, if they got any at all, from some desk clerk or other. Stanford was the only place he had ever felt close to settled in, and the apartment he shared with Jess was the only home he'd ever looked forward to getting back to at the end of the day. He wondered what it might be like to have bookshelves, family pictures and your own artwork on the walls, a pantry full of food that you liked and wanted to eat.

  He might never find out. People in his line of work—not that there were many of them—probably didn't get the chance to retire peacefully.

  The Trail's End was like most other motels. Inexpensive and anonymous. Most of the vehicles scattered around the parking lot when they pulled in hadn't been there in the morning, when they left. Their room was decorated with an over-the-top cowboy theme. It had two beds covered in western-print bedspreads, with the legs of the beds standing in old, worn-out, painted cowboy boots. The dresser on which the broken TV sat had cow-horn drawer pulls, while the single nightstand between the beds had miniature lassoes instead, along with phone books on an open shelf, a Bible and the Book of Mormon in the drawer, and a telephone and clock radio on top. The closet door was mirrored, and there were six hangers inside, the kind that fit into little hooks that the pole slid through, so people couldn't steal them to use at home. Boots and ropes and cattle danced around on the wallpaper.

  The cowboy motif didn't carry through to the bathroom. There was a flat counter with a tissue box and what looked like an ashtray laden with little packets of shampoo and conditioner, along with a single bar of soap and a coffeepot. Behind the coffeepot, a bucket held sugar, creamer, and plastic stirring sticks. There were also a standard toilet and a tub with a plain white shower curtain.

  All the comforts of home, if your home was a Super 8 or a Motel 6.

  Sam's pretty much was. He guessed that motels had won their way into the hearts of Americans by offering low prices and a kind of sameness, so whether you were visiting Niagara Falls or the Rocky Mountains or Graceland, the view inside the room would be more or less the same, once you got past the regional differences in decor.

  Unless you were a Winchester.

  When they stayed in a motel, they kept the Do Not Disturb sign out at all times. The walls quickly became papered with news clippings and printouts from the Web, most dealing with unsavory topics that might frighten your average motel housekeeper. They traveled with a police band radio, guns and knives and other assorted weaponry, electromagnetic frequency readers and infrared thermal scanners, a laptop computer and a printer, and enough miscellaneous equipment to make the unschooled suspect terrorism or worse. Any room they occupied turned almost immediately into a command center for their spook-busting operation, and when every surface was covered, they started setting stuff up on the floor.

  They had hardly spent any time in this room yet, so Sam could still see the walls and furniture when he walked in and clicked on the light. Most of the gear they would have set up in the room had been hauled in and left on the floor. Without discussion, they both went to work, as they had so many times before. Sam got the laptop booted up and online, with the printer connected and ready to go. Dean turned on the radio and found the frequency of the local sheriff's office. As the room filled with the buzz and crackle and unique shorthand of cop talk, he started cleaning and reloading some of their guns.

  Sam plugged into the LexisNexis database, which gathered news items from newspapers, radio, TV, and the Internet, and ran a search for Cedar Wells. Most of what came up had to do with the Grand Canyon, although there were also some stories about a logging controversy when a nearby mill had been bought out and shut down. Beyond that, he found a small handful of stories about the killings, mostly breathless tabloid tales that made the whole thing less believable instead of more. If he'd seen some of those before coming out, he might have recommended not bothering to make the trip.

  Scanning a few of them, however, he found references to someone named Peter Panolli, who claimed to have witnessed one of the murders, back in 1966. The article had been published in 2002. "Dean, check the phone book for me."

  "Yes, boss," Dean said wryly. "What am I checking for?"

  Sam spelled the last name. "Peter," he added. "See if he still lives in the area." He kept reading through the largely useless articles as Dean flipped pages in the background.

  "Got him," Dean said a minute later. "Cedar Wells address. Peter Panolli, M.D."

  "He's a doctor?"

  "That's what it says."

  Sam checked the digital readout on the clock radio: 9:30. A little late to be considered polite, but etiquette was far from his first priority at the moment. And doctors had to be used to getting calls at all hours, right?

  He turned away from the laptop and snatched up the motel phone. "Read me the number." Dean did, and Sam punched the buttons.

  The voice that answered didn't belong to the doctor. It was too young to have been around in 1966, and too female to be anyone named Peter. "Hello?"

  "Hi," Sam said. "I'm sorry to call so late. I'm looking for Dr. Panolli."

  "Hold on a sec," she said. He heard thumping noises, and then a muffled shout. "Dad!"

  More thumping sounds, and a minute later an older, deeper voice came on the line. "This is Dr. Panolli."

  "Peter Panolli?"

  "That's right."

  "This is going to sound strange, Doctor, but I just read that you were a witness to one of the killings in the last Cedar Wells murder cycle, back in 1966. Is that true?"

  Panolli let a long pause elapse before he spoke. "What's your interest?"

  Sam had known that question was coming, and as usual, there was no easy answer for it. "I don't know if you've heard, but it's started again. Right on schedule." Honesty seemed like the best policy in this case, so he took a breath and continued. "My brother and I are trying to stop it, not just for now but forever. But we need to understand what we're dealing with. I wondered if you'd take a few minutes to tell us about your experience."

  "Tonight?"

  "People are dying, Dr. Panolli. Tonight would be good."

  Another pause, but not as long this time. "Very well. Can you come around right away?"

  "We're leaving right now," Sam said. "And thank you."

  The Panollis lived in a large white house on the edge of town. A wrought-iron fence stood around the property, but the gate was open when they arrived. Driveway lights illuminated the way to the front door, which was made of some heavy, carved wood. A brass knocker hung on it, just below a huge fresh pine wreath, but before either of the brothers could grab it, the door swung wide.

  Sam guessed that the girl who opened it was the one who had answered the phone. She was nineteen or twenty, he speculated, wearing a red cable-knit sweater with a white reindeer emblazoned on the front over faded jeans and thick purple socks. "I'm Heather," she said with a bright smile.

  "I'm Sam. This is Dean."

  "Your dad here?" Dean asked.

  "I'll get him." Her pale blond hair was shoulder length and loose, and when she pivoted to fetch her father it whirled around her head like a hoop skirt on a square dancer.

  "Cute," Sam muttered when she was gone.

  "For a kid, I guess," Dean said.

  Any reply Sam might have made was cut off by footsteps coming toward them from inside the big house. One set was Heather's soft shuffling, the other heavier, and with an added knocking sound. Sam saw why when Dr. Panolli came into view. He was a big man, tall and broad and with a gut of substantial mass preceding him into the room. He carried a wooden cane, and the cane's rubber tip tapped the floor with every step.

  "You're Dean?" he said, approaching Sam and extending his right hand.

  "No, Sam. Thi
s is Dean." Sam took the hand and gave it a quick shake.

  The doctor turned to Dean, shook his as well, and said, "Delighted to meet you both. Welcome to my home. It's late for coffee, but if you'd like a cup of herbal tea? Or hot chocolate?"

  "No thanks," Dean said. "We don't want to take much of your time."

  "Let's at least make ourselves comfortable," Panolli said. He gestured toward a double doorway with a pocket door that was mostly tucked into its slot. "Shall we?"

  Dean led the way, followed by Sam, Dr. Panolli, and Heather. They went into a living room stuffed with antiques, in the way that some antique stores are stuffed. Threading a line between tables and lamps and tables that had lamps built into them, between a sailor's trunk and a huge copper urn, around a spindly chair that looked like a stiff wind would break it, much less the good doctor's bulk, Dean found a couch that looked like it could support some body weight and sat down on it. Sam joined him. Panolli chose a chair on the other side of a glass-topped coffee table—a big chair. Heather perched on the fragile looking one.

  "I hope you haven't wasted a trip out here," Panolli began. He pressed on the sides of his head with both hands, as if trying to tame his mane of graying hair. His eyes were hooded, his jowls like a bulldog's, and his lips rubbery and moist. "I'm afraid there's very little I can tell you beyond what is commonly known and what has been reported in the press. I was about Heather's age. A little younger. This was 1966, right? You might not think it to look at me now, or at the town, but there were hippies in Cedar Wells, and I was one of them. I'm not certain we called ourselves hippies yet, that may have come a year later, after the Summer of Love. But I had hair longer than Heather's, and I wore ragged jeans and protested the war in Vietnam and listened to rock and roll and folk music. Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde had come out that year, and it was a revelation. That was also the year that he had the motorcycle accident that changed his life, and American music, forever."