Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

He gazed past Sam and Dean, as if he was looking into his own history. But then his eyes clarified and sparkled as he warmed to his subject. Most people acted like this, Sam had found, if you let them talk about themselves long enough. Dr. Panolli hadn't needed any catalyst at all, just the opportunity. "What a year for music that was. The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson's masterpiece. The Beatles put out Revolver and quit touring. The Byrds had Turn! Turn! Turn! An incredible time. My friends and I had heard about drugs, of course, psychedelics, but with music like that on the record player, who needed them?"

  "I'm sure the music was great," Dean said abruptly. "More of a metal fan myself, but—"

  Panolli laughed, making a wheezy sound that Sam hoped didn't lead to a heart attack. "Now we see who the impatient one is," he said when he could manage. "I'm coming around to the point, Sam."

  "He's Dean," Sam corrected. "I'm Sam."

  "Sorry. For some reason, you just look more like a Dean to me. At any rate, I'll move it along, Sam and Dean. We lived in a house near town, what you might call a commune today. Seven of us, boys and girls." He met his daughter's gaze. "Don't get any ideas, Heather. Those were different times."

  "I know, Daddy," she said, with the tone of a teenager who had heard variations on this theme many times before.

  "Early that December—I suppose it must have been forty years ago today, or perhaps yesterday—I was upstairs in the house. No doubt listening to records, and probably reading something by Harlan Ellison or Roger Zelazny or Samuel Delany, the science fiction gods I worshipped at the time." He smoothed down his hair again, and Sam realized it was just a habitual motion. "Yes, now that I think about it, I believe it was Delany's Babel 17. But that's neither here nor there. Only a few of us were home, some had gone to Berkeley for a Quicksilver Messenger Service concert, and stayed over for a Grateful Dead show at Winterland. Or was it at The Matrix?

  "At any rate, it was late afternoon, that time of day when the sun is going down and everything is bathed in a kind of golden light. I heard a scream, and went to the bedroom window with my book in my hand so I didn't lose my place, and when I looked out, I saw Janet, who we called Marsh Mellow because she was the most peaceful, mellow person any of us had ever met. She had taken some laundry out to hang on the line—I hate to admit it now, but yes, the girls did the laundry and most of the cooking at the house—and she was standing there with a sheet clutched to her bosom, and all I could think as I watched was that I was witnessing something out of history, out of the Old West, the homesteader's wife in peril."

  "Why history?" Sam prompted.

  "Because staring at Janet, across the backyard, was an Indian warrior, in full war paint and holding a bow and arrow. Now you might call him a Native American, or a First American, but we didn't know those phrases then. He was an Indian brave. As I watched, he drew back the string and shot it at her. The arrow must have hit her right in the heart—I learned later that it did, at any rate—because she went down immediately, not moving. The sheet across her chest began to redden, but then her heart must have stopped beating because the blood stopped spreading. I dropped the book, which incidentally I have not finished, to this day, and ran downstairs and outside. But she was dead by the time I reached her, or that's what I thought. The fact that I didn't know what to do, how to save her, is what inspired me to practice medicine."

  "An Indian," Dean said flatly.

  "That's what I told the police when they came, and the newspapers as well. Not that anyone ever believed me. But it's the gospel truth, then and now. An Indian killed Marsh Mellow with his bow and arrow."

  SIXTEEN

  "An Indian," Dean said. They were back in the car—Sam driving, this time—headed for the Trail's End. "This just gets worse and worse. Wouldn't somebody have mentioned if the old man we're looking for was an Indian?"

  "That's what I was thinking, too," Sam said. It always made Dean nervous when he drove the Impala, so he kept his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road as he spoke. "But in some ways it ties in. Native American magic makes frequent use of animal totems, right?"

  Dean snapped his fingers. "Like that bear. And the raven. Or the bear-raven, whatever."

  "The Chippewa bear walkers, the Navajo yee naaldlooshi, the Hopi ya ya ceremony... skin walkers and animal spirits are commonplace in many Native American cultures."

  "So the reason we can't find this dude is that he keeps changing into other forms," Dean said. He couldn't suppress a shudder. "I freakin' hate shapeshifters."

  "I don't blame you."

  "And what about those scalpings?" Dean said. "That could be an Indian, too."

  "Or not," Sam countered. There were times his Stanford education proved helpful, after all. "Some historians say that scalping was a European practice adopted by the Native Americans, while others insist it was carried out on both sides of the Atlantic long before Columbus made his trip."

  "Okay, whatever. Point is, if we're dealing with Indian shapeshifters, we've got to focus in a different direction, right? There's no point in looking for an old man if he's not going to stay one."

  Sam pulled into the motel parking lot. "And it gives us another area to research. We're looking for a Native American, probably a shaman or medicine man, with a grudge against the town."

  "That's just great," Dean said. "While people are dying, we get to start from scratch. Again."

  "We're narrowing it down, Dean. We're doing the best we can."

  Sam parked the car right in front of the room, and Dean got out, slamming his door. He winced, and Sam knew he regretted his action, as he did anything that might damage his baby. "I know. I just want to get my hands on someone whose ass I can kick. I don't care if it's an old man or an Indian or a troop of Girl Scouts at this point."

  Sam slid his key card through the slot—even an older motel like this had graduated beyond metal keys—and opened the door. "I think we can safely rule out the Girl Scouts."

  "I'm not ruling out anything," Dean said. "Not until we have something to go on better than one crazy old doctor's memory from forty years ago. He says he wasn't smoking pot, but I'm not sure I believe him."

  Inside, Sam plopped onto one of the beds. "He also says he doesn't remember what happened to the Indian. And I just don't buy that."

  "He said he was really shaken up by the attack on the girl."

  "True, and I believe he was. But he remembers everything else. He remembers the book he was reading, and the way the sun looked. How could he forget if the Indian ran away, or vanished, or turned into a woodpecker and flew away? He acts like he's telling everything, but he's holding back."

  "Why didn't you say something when we were there?"

  Sam shrugged. "He's kept that secret for forty years, he's not going to tell two strangers off the street. He told us exactly what's already been in the press. A little more detail, but no new facts."

  "So you already knew about the whole Indian angle?" Dean asked. He hated it when Sam kept things from him, and Sam could hear suspicion in his voice.

  "I read it online. I wanted to hear it directly from him, to be sure."

  Dean settled on the other bed. He had been cleaning a nickel-plated Colt .45 when Sam had interrupted him to look up Peter Panolli's number, and had brushes and rods on the bedspread, with the weapon open and a bottle of solvent on the nightstand. He'd capped the solvent but left the rest where it was. As if he had never left, Dean now picked up a bore brush and started swabbing out the magazine well. Dad always impressed upon them the necessity of taking care of their equipment, and Dean had taken the lesson to heart. "What now, then?"

  Sam clicked on the police band, but it didn't sound like there had been any more incidents. A yawn took him by surprise. "Now we should probably get some rest, while we can. We won't do anybody any good if we're dead on our feet when we finally do catch up to one of these things."

  "If."

  "What?"

  "If we catch up to one of them." Dean was ordinari
ly optimistic. So far they had caught and destroyed nearly every paranormal entity they'd set their sights on. This one seemed particularly elusive, though, and it was eating away at what little patience he had left.

  Sam didn't like it either, but he was better about reining in his anger, unleashing it only when he thought it would be helpful. In most respects he was the emotional one, the impulsive one, while Dean kept his feelings in check. When it came to anger, however, Dean could let loose with the best of them.

  "But I'm down with the rest idea," he said. "Little shut-eye will do us both good."

  When someone knocked on the door—tentatively, as if in consideration of the hour, not demanding, the way cops knocked—Sam's gaze swept past the glowing numbers on the clock: 2:11. Just once, he wanted to sleep all night.

  Dean was already sitting up, his .45—freshly cleaned and loaded—in his fist. "Got you covered," he whispered.

  Sam went to the door, dressed only in boxer shorts, and pulled it open a couple of inches. The motel had a bar lock that kept it from opening any farther.

  "Sam?"

  It was Heather Panolli, with light from the fixture by the door turning her blond hair into a halo.

  "Heather? You shouldn't be out alone so late. It's not safe—"

  "I know, I'm sorry. My dad doesn't always go to sleep that early, and I had to wait until I was sure before I snuck out."

  Sam closed the door long enough to release the bar lock, then opened it again, suddenly very conscious of his near nudity.

  "Told you," Dean said when she entered. He had insisted, before bed, that the only reason Heather had stayed in the room during her dad's story, which she'd clearly heard many times, was because she was sweet on Sam. "She's into you, Sammy," was the way he'd put it, smirking all the while.

  "What are you doing here?" Sam asked her now, grabbing a pair of jeans off the floor and pulling them on.

  "I had to—my dad," she stammered. "He's told that story so many times, he thinks it's the truth."

  "It's not?"

  Sam sat on his pillows and invited her to take the end of the bed, the only clear seating area in the room now. She unzipped a heavy down coat and shrugged it off her shoulders. She still had on the same sweater and jeans, but with leather boots that had what looked like rabbit fur trim. "Well, it is, I mean, as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough."

  "What do you mean, Heather?"

  "I've heard him tell other people. My mom, when she was around, and close friends. Usually after he's had a couple of drinks, to be honest. But there's more to the story, stuff he didn't tell you tonight. I could tell you were interested for a good reason—you said you're trying to stop the killing, and I believe you. So I thought you should hear the rest of it, in case it's important."

  "So spill it," Dean said.

  Heather swallowed hard and looked at her boots as if they had just been placed on her feet by an alien being. "It's... when he talks about those days, he makes it sound like they were all peace, love, and brotherhood, right? Listening to music, reading science fiction, protesting the war and weaving baskets."

  "You saying they weren't?" Dean asked. Sam wondered where the basket weaving had come from.

  Still looking everywhere except at them, Heather sucked in a deep breath. "Some of the people living in that house with Dad weren't the peaceful type," she said. "Maybe they liked the same music or whatever, but from the stories he tells privately, there were a couple of guys—one in particular, who later got involved in bank robbery—who were mostly there for the easy sex and cheap rent. At least one of them had a gun in the house."

  She paused. She had pulled her legs in close to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Sam wanted to encourage her to go on, but he didn't want to spook her, so he waited. At last she gathered her courage. "When he looked out that window and saw the Indian with the bow and arrow, the first thing he did was run to that other guy's room. The guy was one of the people who were out of town, but everyone knew where he kept his gun. Dad grabbed it and ran back to the window. He fired at the same time the Indian did, he says. The arrow hit his friend Janet, but he hit the Indian. Dad's father had always been a hunter, and he'd been hunting and shooting plenty of times before the whole nonviolence thing happened."

  "So he shot the Indian and didn't want to tell anyone? Why not?"

  "I guess because of what happened next. He said when his bullet hit, the Indian fell down. Then he.... know this sounds crazy, so you can see why he doesn't like to talk about it—not that the whole story's not pretty crazy, right? The Indian faded in and out, like Dad could see him and then he couldn't, a couple of times. But then he got up, and it was like he hadn't been hurt at all. He walked away, or just faded away, Dad says he's still not sure about that part. At the same time, his arrow vanished. So then Dad's friend was in the yard with a hole in her and no explanation, and Dad had fired a pistol into the yard. He didn't think he was crazy—he thinks something was going on that he still can't explain, and it was connected to the murders that happen every forty years. But he swears he didn't shoot her, he shot the disappearing Indian."

  "Only it'd be hard to sell that story to the cops," Dean said.

  "That's right. I guess they weren't all up on the CSI stuff like they are these days, right? Maybe if they had tested him they could have found that he had shot a gun, but he put it away and didn't mention it, and told the story the way you heard it. The sheriffs didn't like it, he says, but there were so many other killings around town that they had to just accept it the way he said."

  "And he still tells it that way now," Sam said.

  "No statute of limitations for murder," Dean pointed out. "If they wanted to charge him with shooting her, they might be able to make a case."

  Heather chewed on her bottom lip, her eyes finally meeting Sam's. "You won't tell anyone, will you? I don't want to get him in trouble, I just wanted you to know what you're really dealing with."

  "No, of course not," Sam said. "Dean and I, we're pretty used to dealing with strange, inexplicable events. In our world the disappearing Indian is a lot more likely than someone like your dad having a psychotic episode and shooting a friend."

  "Sounds like you live in a strange world."

  "We do."

  "I don't think I'd like it there."

  "I'd be surprised if you did," Sam said. "It takes a lot of getting used to. And even then it can be pretty unpleasant."

  She regarded them for a long few moments, not like she was into Sam, as Dean had speculated, but like she was curious about people who weren't like any she had ever met. When her gaze moved away from them, it roamed across the room, taking in the equipment and the weapons and the clippings taped to the wall. "I should probably be getting home," she said.

  "Yeah. Let's go, Dean."

  "Go where?"

  "We're not letting her drive home alone. We're fol lowing you back, Heather. If Dean doesn't want to come then I'll go by myself."

  "Oh, all right," Dean grumbled, finally throwing back the blankets covering him. "But maybe she should turn the other way while I get dressed. Wouldn't want to ruin her for other men."

  SEVENTEEN

  Heather had driven to the motel in a red compact pickup truck that she said she used when she commuted on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to college in Flagstaff. "Told you she's into you," Dean said as they followed along behind her through the dark and empty streets.

  "She's not into me," Sam protested.

  "She totally is. She couldn't stop looking at you."

  "Are you high? She couldn't bring herself to look at either one of us most of the time. Then all she could look at was our stuff. She must have thought we were whack jobs."

  Dean snorted a laugh. "I can think of about three nasty responses to that, but I'm not even going to bother."

  "You sure?" Sam asked. "Seems a little late in life for you to develop manners. Or good taste."

  "It's not that. It's just that sometime
s you leave yourself so wide open, it's like shooting monkeys in a barrel. It's so easy it's no fun."

  "I think it's fish," Sam said.

  Dean looked away from the road and the headlights ahead long enough to shoot his brother a puzzled glance. "Fish? The hell... ?"

  "Shooting fish in a barrel."

  "What fun is a barrel full of fish?"

  Sam didn't answer. Dean liked to throw his own logic back in his face, and being able to shut his brother up was its own reward.

  Anyway, he had something else preying on his mind.

  "Can you see in the rear view without looking like a freak?" Dean asked.

  Sam tried, but couldn't.

  "Take my word for it, then. There's a pair of headlights back there that I'd swear has been there since we left the motel."

  "Someone's following us?"

  "That's what it looks like."

  "I didn't think our spirits drove."

  "Maybe they're in league with humans. Or doing the bidding of humans."

  "Or humans are doing their bidding. Makes as much sense as anything else we've come up with," Sam admitted.

  "Think I should try to lose 'em?"

  "But that'll mean losing Heather," Sam said. "The whole point of this—"

  "Yeah, I know," Dean said. "It just bothers me."

  He drove on, dividing his attention between Heather's truck and the lights behind them. They stayed consistently a couple of blocks back. When Dean slowed, letting Heather get farther ahead, the vehicle behind them slowed.

  When they were about half a mile from Heather's place, the car Dean had thought was following them made a left turn onto a side road. "Huh," he said.

  "So much for that."

  "For what?"

  "They peeled off."

  "They're not following us after all?"

  "Maybe not. I guess a town this small, there are only so many roads someone can be on, and we just happened to be taking the same ones they needed."

  "Whatever," Sam said. "We're here."