Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  At the hallway that led past the restrooms and security office and down to Carla's, he encountered the first of the spirit attackers, a rawboned woman with the imprint of hands bruising her throat and her head cocked at an unnatural angle. As she turned to face Sam, he saw that her left eye had been poked out, dangling against her cheek by a thread of ocular nerve.

  Violent death was never pretty. This unfortunate woman's, though, had been exceedingly ugly and unpleasant. Her mouth opened, jaw shuddering, as if she wanted to say something to him. Her remaining eye was mournful, but her hands were already clutching at him, eager to reenact her demise.

  From behind her, Sam could hear anxious shouts and loud thumps that he guessed came from Carla and Mayor Milner. He hated to waste one of his shells on this single spirit. He knew she was beyond pain, so although part of him flinched away from causing her any more than she'd already suffered, he made a dash past her. She lunged at him as he went by, and he snapped a kick at her knee while she was off balance. She flashed bright black light at him, phased out momentarily, and collapsed on the hallway floor.

  By the time she fell, he was shoving through the door to the receptionist's office. It was crowded with the dead, some of whom were beating on the door to the inner office, beyond which Sam could hear the voices of the mayor and the shopping center manager. The now familiar stink of death permeated the small space.

  Sam raised his shotgun, knowing that at this range he could destroy several of them. But as his finger tightened on the trigger, another materialized right beside him, a burly, bearded guy who could have played the blacksmith in any western movie ever made. The spirit man caught the barrel of Sam's gun and wrenched it from his hands before Sam even registered his appearance.

  The guy grinned—an oddly redundant expression, because a jagged cut across his throat already smiled redly—and hurled the shotgun out the open front door, into the hall. Sam tried to snag it from the air, but the toss was too high and fast.

  The spirit folk turned away from the inner door, fixated on this new and suddenly unarmed opponent. Sam counted nine of them. A couple held guns, some had knives or other edged weapons, while a few, like the woman in the hall, were empty-handed. The blacksmith spirit, brandishing a rusty straight razor, stepped between Sam and the open doorway.

  This is not going well, Sam thought.

  One of the knife-wielders, a young man barely out of his teens, if that, sliced the air toward him, mouth dropping open in silent fury. Sam dodged the attack but came within range of another spirit man, who clubbed the side of his head with two huge fists. Sam saw stars, stumbled, and caught himself on the receptionist's desk before he fell. The moment gave his opponents time to swarm over him, though, and they pummeled him with fists and feet. A knife blade caught his left shoulder, cutting through jacket and flesh.

  Sam caught the wrist of the woman who had cut him, bending it back until she dropped the weapon. He scooped it up, remembering the grizzly that had been destroyed with its own spear. She tried to back away but he pushed through hands that tried to restrain him and sank it into her chest.

  She flickered and disappeared. He had hoped to hang onto the knife, but it vanished at the same instant. He would have remembered that if he hadn't been taking punishment from a dozen sources at once. A gunshot went off, barely missing him and passing through two of his opponents without injuring them.

  To get a moment's respite, he worked his way toward the front of the reception desk, where a rolling chair was tucked into the knee well. Another blade of some kind jabbed into his ribs but he writhed away before it could sink dangerously deep. He flailed out with his fists, battering the spirit people back far enough to let him make his move. Kicking the chair away, he ducked into the knee well.

  There, he allowed himself one quick breath, relishing the brief moment when the fists of the long-dead didn't batter him. He knew he'd have to put a quick end to this. Their blows were starting to weaken him, and though he'd avoided any mortal wounds so far, there was no telling how long that would hold.

  To give himself room to work, he pressed his hands and shoulders into the knee well of the wooden desk and pushed off with his feet, standing suddenly and raising the heavy desk as he did. He spun it around to knock away the nearest of the spirits, then threw it with every ounce of strength he could muster.

  It didn't hurt any of those it hit, but it did knock a few down and pinned one against the far wall.

  Mostly, what it did was give him a little space. He reached into his pocket, yanked out a spare rock salt shell, and tore it open. Gripping the primer end, he swung his hand in a wide, fast arc. Rock salt sprayed everywhere. The dead screamed soundlessly as it hit them, and the room filled with their freakish fluttering glows as they vanished. When it was over, there were only three left, including the blacksmith with the razor. Sam reached for another shell but the blacksmith caught his right hand before he could pull it from his pocket. With his left hand, Sam caught the blacksmith's left—the one holding the razor. Both men struggled, and for a second Sam worried that the blacksmith would prove too strong. But he managed to turn the razor's rusted blade toward the man, and then jerked his head forward, butting into their locked hands and driving the blade into the blacksmith's chest.

  The man released him and fell back, clutching at his fresh wound. The razor sailed from his hand. Sam grabbed it up, sliced it through the next nearest spirit—accomplishing nothing that he could determine—and kept it moving, slicing it across the blacksmith's throat on a line similar to the one that had caused his first death.

  The other two, a Native American woman and a Hispanic man who held the only remaining firearm in the room, backed away from him. The woman clutched a crude stone knife that would do her no good at that range, but Sam got the sense that the man just wanted enough distance to aim and fire his rifle.

  He still had a shell in his pocket, though. Before the man could level the weapon at him, Sam tore into it and scattered its contents at the two spirit people. They reacted as the others had.

  After the light show, the room was empty. Breathing heavily, Sam tapped on the inner office door. "It's all clear," he said.

  Someone on the inside was turning the knob when the dead woman from the hallway appeared in the outer doorway, holding Sam's shotgun. She aimed it and pulled the trigger.

  FORTY

  "Ross always called it the 'dead zone,' " Juliet said. She was leading Dean and Baird to a section of her backyard. "Because nothing would ever grow there."

  It all looked like snow to Dean. She seemed to realize the same thing, because she stopped and shoved a mass of curls away from her face. "It's right around here," she said. "It's just bare earth, no grass or anything. Not even weeds would come up there, and they're unstoppable here after the summer rains."

  She, Dean, and Baird all held shovels hastily gathered from the barn. "Guess we shovel some snow first," he said. He dug his tool's blade under the snow and tossed aside a little of it. More fell into the gap he had made. "Thing's not a very good snow shovel, though."

  "There's one of those in the barn, too," Juliet said. "Do you want me to—"

  "Never mind. We just have to move enough to locate this dead zone. From your description, it sounds like the witch's burial site to me."

  "The previous owners pointed it out to us but said they couldn't explain it, either," Juliet said. "They showed us the outline of an old cabin's foundation here—you can still see some of the stones when they're not covered in snow." She pointed toward one side of her house. "The cabin would have been about there, just beside the current house. This would have been—what?—forty feet away."

  "Far enough for a grave site, I guess. If you weren't too picky." Dean dragged his shovel across the ground, pushing snow away. He could see the bare dirt beneath it now, right where she'd said it was. It didn't even look like healthy dirt. No insects had made holes in it, no worms had aerated it, in more than a hundred years.

  "
Gotta be the place," he said. "Let's dig." He shoved the blade almost straight down into the dirt, pressing it deeper with his foot.

  As he did, a vulture with huge black wings and a knobby pink head swooped toward him from nowhere, talons out. He ducked and it whistled just over his head, then flapped away with great wing beats.

  "Ugly-ass buzzard almost parted my hair," he said, turning out the earth he had dug up. His shotgun was close at hand; he didn't have any illusions that the vulture would be the witch's last defender.

  Nor were his expectations wrong.

  The three of them had been digging for several minutes when four arrows thwipped toward them. Dean released his shovel—an arrow quavering in its wooden handle—and dove for the shotgun. He rolled into a prone firing position, located the attackers and fired twice. When the smoke cleared and the sound of the shots faded, the four were gone. Dean rose, scanned for any more spirit attackers, and reached for his shovel again.

  Harmon Baird fell across the dead zone. "I'm hit," he said, his voice strained. He turned so Dean could see the arrow jutting from his left thigh. "It's just a flesh wound."

  "Flesh wound my ass," Dean said. He handed the shotgun to Juliet and went to the old man's side. Baird was trembling, his eyes filling with tears. Dean turned his leg, looking at both sides. The arrow hadn't passed all the way through. He grabbed the arrow's shaft, right where it met the man's leg. "This is gonna hurt," he warned. Pressing down on Baird's thigh, he tugged the arrow free, back out the way it had gone in.

  Baird shrieked and clawed at his leg. Dean kept one hand there, pressing down on the wound until Baird stopped writhing. "Keep pressure on it," Dean said. "We'll get you patched up as soon as we can, but right now we've got to finish this."

  He and Juliet returned to digging while Baird stood watch—sat watch, rather—with Dean's shotgun across his lap.

  "The witch's spirits must be busy somewhere else," Dean said as they worked. "I thought we'd have a lot more trouble than this."

  "Maybe she was counting on the wolf defeating us," Juliet replied.

  "Wolf couldn't even take you," Dean said with a smile. "It—"

  His shovel chunked against something hard. "I think we're there."

  "Not a minute too soon for me," Juliet said.

  "You got her?" Baird asked.

  "I think so." Dean threw more dirt out of the hole, and scraped his shovel across the hard surface. "It's wood."

  "At least they buried her in a coffin," Juliet said. "From what you told me I half expected they'd just throw her into a hole."

  "She may have been a nasty old witch, but she was still the ranch owner's mother," Dean speculated. "If he'd hated her that much, he never would have brought her out from back East, much less built a special place for her."

  "I thought that was because he didn't want her around."

  "He probably didn't. But it also helped keep her out of trouble, by eliminating most of her contact with other people. Isolating her here probably didn't do much for the fact that she was bug-nut crazy, but it kept her from exposing her craziness to everyone around."

  "I suppose that's true," Juliet said. "That's why Ross liked the place, too. Our refuge from the world, he said."

  "Sometimes getting away from the world is a great idea."

  "You bet it is!" Baird called. He had both hands pressed so hard against his wounded thigh that the back of the upper hand was almost white. "Startin' to be sorry I ever left my place."

  "You," Dean said, "have been a lifesaver. In more ways than you'll ever know."

  He and Juliet had cleared the top of the coffin, which was in remarkably pristine shape for such an old box. Protected by her magic, Dean thought. He could hardly remember being so anxious for something to be over.

  "Okay," he said to Juliet. He drew Dad's journal from a coat pocket. "I'm going to be reading her a bedtime story—a counterspell that should negate her spell once and for all." With his other hand he drew out a metal flask, a box of matches, and the bag of salt. "You need to open that box, then pour this salt on her bones. Then dump this flask on her—it's gasoline. Light a match, toss it on, and stand back, because even though there's not a lot here, it's going to go up fast."

  He'd been intending for Baird to do that part, but the old man was out of the picture now as far as any demanding physical activity went.

  "Got it," she said. "Open, salt, gas, match."

  "I already know you've got a little human torch in you," he added with a grin.

  "Maybe just a tad."

  He located the counterspell and started to read out loud. "'Witch's spell, so long since cast, I'm here to tell, your time is past.'" He caught Juliet's eye. Go, he mouthed.

  Juliet squinted, bit down on her lower lip, and grabbed the coffin's lid in both hands, reaching awkwardly into the hole they had dug. She pulled, but it wouldn't give.

  "'Witch's spell, that's ruled the night,'" Dean continued, "'hear my knell, which brings the light.'"

  Juliet gave a mighty yank, and the coffin swung open.

  She screamed, and Dean looked up from the book.

  A cloud of smoke and dust, glowing as if from some inward fire, billowed up out of the coffin.

  Damn it, he thought, she wasn't done after all.

  And his shotgun was all the way across the grave, on the lap of Harmon Baird, whose eyes had never been so wide in his life.

  As the trio watched, the cloud coalesced into a feminine form, seemingly made of luminous sulfuric dust and smoke. She was a crone, an ancient, wizened woman, hunched and twisted with rage and hatred. Her clothing was barely more than rags, and it blew in a cold wind that erupted from beneath, from her grave. The wind buffeted her stringy hair. It carried a foul ozone smell, like electricity passing through burned flesh.

  The apparition reached taloned hands toward Dean, who kept reading as fast as he could. The wind tried to tear the pages from his grasp, and he had to hold on with both hands, fighting to keep his feet.

  "'Witch's spell, of evil unknown,'" he shouted, "'cannot repel salt 'pon your bone!'"

  He nodded to Juliet, who stood back away from the grave. Afraid to get anywhere near that freakin' witch, Dean thought. I don't blame her.

  But he couldn't hang onto the book and get the salt. He wasn't sure he could even take a step—if he tried, the hurricane-force wind might blow him away.

  Come on, Juliet! Salt the bitch!

  The icy wind blew into his mouth when he opened it to read again, distorting his cheeks. Fine dust stung his eyes, his skin.

  And the witch's claws were almost on him now. Would she be able to snatch the book away from him? Kill him with a touch?

  The shotgun roared, and the witch let out a scream that almost made Dean's ear bleed, a scream like a jet engine just inches from his head.

  On the other side of the grave, Baird had found his feet and his courage. "You like that, Miz Marbrough?" he asked. "'Cause I got more of it!"

  The witch whirled away from Dean and rushed at Baird. Her unearthly wind caught his clothes, fluttering them like laundry on the line in a tornado.

  "Juliet!" Dean called. "The salt!"

  Juliet heard him, awareness snapping into her eyes, and she braved the wind and the miasmic cloud that still issued from the grave. She dumped the bag of salt. Some of it blew away, but enough fell in.

  The witch shrieked again.

  "'Witch's spell!'" Dean shouted. The wind tore at his clothes, his hair, trying to drive him away from the grave. Other people might have fallen, but he locked his knees, kept his feet planted and leaned into it. He wasn't going to let the witch win, because he was a Winchester, and the Winchesters were made to fight battles like this. "The gas, Juliet! 'So late interned!'"

  Juliet turned the flask over. Wind whipped some of the liquid up instead of letting it fall, but more pushed through, into the coffin.

  The witch had reached Harmon Baird and batted away the shotgun like it was a twig. Baird's eyes were windows s
howing the mortal terror in his soul, but he swiped at her with his hands, trying to hold her off. At least, that was what Dean thought at first.

  Then, as he spoke the last lines of the counterspell, he realized the truth—Baird was holding onto the witch, preventing her from attacking him or Juliet directly. He wasn't flailing at her. His hands jerked and spasmed because she did, writhing with the pain of the salt on her skeleton.

  Juliet struck a match, and the wind blew it out. Hands shaking, she opened the box again. Matches spewed from it. She caught one.

  "'Now all's well; your bones be burned!'" Dean screamed against the pounding gusts.

  As he spoke the spell's final words, Juliet dropped the match.

  Nothing happened.

  Dean almost had time to formulate a curse in his mind, but before it had fully formed, the cold grave wind turned hot, flame blasting from below as if the wind had turned into propane. The flame enveloped Elizabeth Claire Marbrough, or her disembodied spirit, and she screamed once more, in mortal agony. Juliet fell on her butt in the snow, singed but alive. Baird had already fallen. His hands were still hooked into claws, his eyes staring at the sky. Trails of blood ran from his mouth, nose, and ears.

  "Harmon," Juliet said. "Is he—"

  "He shouldn't have touched her," Dean said, taking her hand and helping her to her feet. "It was too much for him."

  "But he stopped her—"

  "That's right." Dean couldn't feel guilt—the old man had known he might not survive this adventure, but he'd wanted to stop what he called the forty-year at any price. Still, not feeling guilt brought some guilt of its own. "If he hadn't hung onto her, she might have reached me or you. Either of which would have stopped us cold. She'd still be here—and out of her grave, which looks like it was magically sealed against her escape. And her forces would still be overrunning Cedar Wells, and you and... well, we'd be where Harmon is."