“You owe me no debt!” Morne said. “Were it not for you, I would have been dead on the plains by a vengeful hand or swinging from the end of a noose for my crimes…”
“Be that as it may, the monster in him spawned the monster in you. And I cannot let it abide unchallenged.”
Leaving Morne beside his mother’s graveside, Saida strode back to Nancy’s place, packed her gear, and said her good-byes. She rode fast to Brother Andrew’s hut in the deep forest.
“I used every gift I have been given…” he said, “But I could not make the two pieces meld. The blade, once broken, cannot be reforged. However, I have done what could be done.” He drew the broken blade in its hilt from beneath a piece of doeskin and handed it to her. “This is your blade, though incomplete; it is still sharp and blessed for your task. And this,” he said, sliding a second object from its sheltered place, “is the shard set in its own grip. It is shorter, but it is also sharper. And it, too, has been blessed for its purpose.”
“And what is that?”
“I believe you know, or will know, just as you knew the first time when you went after the slayer of your children.”
“Have you heard of Loma Escondida?” she asked.
“Yes. It is the place where a night screamer dwells, a relation of the first monster you hunted, though this one is a male.”
“This time the hunt will be different, though not for that reason.”
“I know. Remember the warning I gave you. The tongue is a very powerful thing, far more powerful than people understand, and sharper even than the weapons you hold in your hands. Guard yours, Saida.” He laid his hands over hers as she held the blades. “Go to battle. May you be granted every success. And in the end, may you return in peace.”
“Amen.”
Morne was nursing a china teacup between his hands when Saida walked into Aunt Nancy’s house and plunked the Damascus shard down on the table in front of him. “That’s for you, should you decide to follow. He is a night screamer now. A type of banshee, a dangerous one.”
“The old stories say that banshees are female.”
“Despite what you would like to think, some monsters are male.”
“I know that, ma’am. If anyone knows that, I do.”
“Farewell, Ezekiel.” She enclosed her fingers around his and held on, too long, she thought, but she did not want to let go. She did not want to go alone, but she forgave Morne for not wanting to hunt the monster his father had become. At last, she released him and tucked her own Damascus blade into her wide belt. Without a backward glance, she went outside, jumped onto her gray horse, and spurred toward Loma Escondida.
The hard ride ate three days.
Saida rapped on the rickety cabin door with her bruised knuckles. Every house in the tiny valley town had refused her entrance, had refused to answer her shouted questions. This one was her last chance.
“Go away.” The voice inside, a woman’s voice, moused its way through the cracks.
“I am looking for a man named Morne, an old man.”
“Go away.”
Saida edged from the bolted door. Footsteps shook the floorboards inside and the candle that had been lit when she knocked extinguished.
“Pssst!”
The hushed call came from inside the barn. Saida sought its source with her eyes. A small face glowed in the moonlight, the face of a boy, ten years old, no more than eleven. Saida tucked herself inside the dark building and knelt in front of him.
“She’s just askeered,” the boy whispered.
“Of what?” Saida asked.
“Me,” said a man’s voice.
Saida whirled to face it. There was nothing, no form, no shadow. Behind her, the boy pulled his slingshot taut, a round lead fishing weight in its leather pouch.
“What is he? Where does he hide?” she asked.
“He’s that ole night screamer. He was a man once, so they say. At the top of that hill yonder stands an ole mesquite tree, all crooked and mean-looking. It’s there he abides when he’s not riding the hills and valleys, looking for those he can snatch away.”
A man’s scream seared the air. At the base of the hill, she saw him. A scrawny form with wild white hair, he was mounted on a bony nag. The shriveled face twisted into a grin, the thing’s teeth as pale as his drawn skin. He jerked a long knife from a belt sheath, screamed again, and charged toward her.
Saida motioned the boy back and swung into her saddle. Plunging her heels into the flanks of her horse, she drew the broken Damascus blade, and aimed toward the spectre at full gallop. The old man reined in when he saw her plowing toward him and turned his mount up the hill. Saida pressed him, her knife pointed outward to cut whatever part of him she could reach first. As they came even, the mesquite tree loomed over them. Saida swiped with the blade, caught the monster’s arm, and he disappeared, he and his horse riding full force into the roots of the mesquite.
She pulled up short. They had vanished into the ground. No sign remained. She dismounted and scuffed the ground at the base of the tree with her buckskin boots. Hoof prints led toward the tree and then abruptly stopped yards away.
Her horse whinnied, shook its head, and reared. Saida spun and saw the flash of the blade that aimed for her mouth…
The minute Morne reached the old cabin, he knew he was too late. He almost knocked on the door but decided that there were some doors that he had best leave closed. A pale figure appeared at the side of the barn—a boy. The child pointed toward the top of Loma Escondida. Morne gazed at the boy’s face for longer than he should have, and then kicked his horse up the slope toward a gnarled mesquite tree that crested the summit.
A man screamed. Morne reined in and dismounted, keeping his hand on the heel of his pistol. A skinny old man walked toward him.
“Who are you?” Morne backed up, feeling his way with his sliding heels.
“You know who I am! I’m your old father—I planted the seed that made you what you are, boy… a monster, just like me!”
“No!” Morne refused the accusation, shaking his head. “I am not like you… I’m free now, because Saida helped me. I’m free…”
“Saida? Was that her name? She was nothing. I snapped her like a twig.”
“You? Killed her? Her?”
“She was easy prey, boy. You were never much of one to listen, were you? They’re all easy prey… ‘cause they’re all worthless.”
“Where is she?!” Morne shifted his eyes around the hilltop, desperate for a sign. Saida was not going to lie unburied.
His father laughed, coughed, and laughed again. “That spitfire? If she was so special, you shouldn’t have let her come against me all by her lonesome. That wasn’t very bright of you, was it, boy? You know what I’m capable of.”
Morne drew his pistol and fired it pointblank into the old man’s chest.
His father choked on the black powder smoke and laid his right hand over his heart. “Huh, how about that?” He shrugged. “Didn’t nobody ever tell you that you can’t kill a man but once?”
Morne emptied the pistol into the man’s body. His father stared down at the smoking holes in his chest and then spread his hands before his son in a mocking shrug. “You’ve got a good aim, at least. And it’s not your fault, some weapons just don’t work on me.”
Fingering the bone grip that held the Damascus blade’s shard, Morne drew the ragged knife from his belt and rolled the handle over and over in his hand behind his back. He walked toward the old man, grinding each heel into the loose rocks as he went…
The spectre of the old man smirked. “What? Are you going to take me on, boy? You’re a coward—always were.” He reached for his son’s chest with penetrating fingers. “You’re just like me—nothing has changed.”
Morne’s lungs fought the grip on his heart and he felt himself losing the battle. The old man’s hand sank into his body and held his heart fast. The spectre pulled him closer, its arm sliced to the bone… Saida.
“O
ne thing has changed…” Morne displayed the Damascus shard. The spectre’s eyes started from their sockets, rounded in fear.
Morne plunged the broken blade into his own chest where the monster’s hand held him.
The monster screamed and dissolved. Morne staggered the few feet to the base of the mesquite tree and collapsed beneath it. It was strange to feel so heavy and so light at the same time…
The eastern sun over his right shoulder forced the night to run west. A shadow crossed its rays. Morne forced his eyes open.
Saida, ragged, torn, her bloodied face cut from the corner of her mouth to her jaw, knelt beside him. He reached a hand toward her, but his strength failed. She was fading into the distance, and he could not reach her. Way behind her stood the boy from his old cabin down the hill.
“One will die,” Morne quoted the old washer woman. He snatched the Damascus shard from the wound in his chest. He pressed the grip into Saida’s hand.
“What have you done?” Saida choked on the words.
“What had to be done. A simple sacrifice; nothing fancy… aw, don’t go crying on me, now, ma’am. You never cried before.” He paused as his hold on the world slipped, and then murmured “I liked that about you…
His eyes locked onto the boy then, who seemed to be floating away with Saida.
She looked back at the child. “What is your name?”
The boy stared into Morne’s darkening eyes. “Ezekiel Morne, Jr.”
Morne grunted a short laugh. “Kin. Lost children. Second chances…”
Saida had Morne’s body shrouded in her own blanket and tied over the saddle of his horse before the sun warmed the air. When she turned to go, the boy was standing a dozen paces away with his hat over his heart and a pack of belongings slung on his back. She saw a woman’s pinched face peeking through a sliver of an opening in the cabin door. The face disappeared as the woman slammed the door shut. Even at that distance, the distinctive sound of a dead bolt scraping into place could not be missed by anyone bothering to listen.
The boy did not look back. “Can I come along with you? She’s done with me, I figure. Too many bad memories.”
“Yes.” Saida mounted her horse and reached an arm down to catch the boy up behind her.
The silent ride home went faster than she expected. The men in town volunteered to dig Morne’s grave, but without much ceremony. After all, they did not know him except from the stories about his father. Saida and Ezekiel, Jr. stood alone in the graveyard after they all left and studied Morne’s new place next to his mother.
“Do you have children, ma’am?”
Saida heard the laughter of her lost ones, the way they always sounded as they played by the river.
“I did.” She touched her face where it was healing.
“I don’t want nothing like this to ever happen to anybody again,” said Ezekiel.
“Anything,” she corrected. “You don’t want anything like this to ever happen again.”
“Yes’m. Never again. I’ll fight ’em to the ground before it does.”
Saida reached into her pack and pulled out the Damascus shard. She handed it to Ezekiel.
“This belonged to your father. It was made to destroy monsters. I reckon it’s yours now.” She looked at the boy, into the eyes that reflected his father’s.
“I’ll show you how to use it.”
H.J. Hill has been writing stories for several years. Her work has appeared in Pill Hill Press anthologies, Crossed Genres magazine, Wily Writers, and other publications. She is the author of the Fire Wheel fantasy series.
Viral
Dev Jarrett
The old protocols no longer work.
It’s all well and good to lay hands on a person, anoint them with holy water, and cast out a demon. These days, though, a possessed person is ridiculous. Punk-ass. Real quantity comes from possessing the machines.
As tech has advanced, the Church has had to keep pace. The methods and means used to make appliances more user-friendly have also made them more susceptible to possession, and it goes way beyond subliminal nam-shubs being whispered into the ears of innocent consumers from possessed smartphones. Phones are cheap, and can be easily replaced. At the high end of the economic spectrum, bots like the Yakitoshi Personal Attendant and Semi-Autonomous Valet, the 5.2.6 model, have been favorite targets for years. I’ve lost count of the times I was called out to cleanse that particular make of bot.
If I had my way, we’d shut them all down and melt everything back to slag. Scrap the metal, incinerate the plastic, and just start over fresh. I know it wouldn’t take long to bring the world back to the same tipping point we’re at now, but shit, maybe next time we could install a couple of failsafes to prevent the kind of infernal hacks I’ve got to deal with on a daily basis.
My job is kind of like being a soldier. Because of the world and the way it is, I’ll never be unemployed, but if peace with the denizens of Hell ever did suddenly break out, that’d be superfine with me. Not gonna happen, but if it did…
I guess I am a soldier of sorts, girded in the full armor of God and trucking around all the other sanctified paraphernalia. I carry vials of Holy Water, a Bible whose scriptures include the Essene Doctrines and most of the known Apocrypha, the blessed Host and wine of the Sacrament, and a large iron crucifix cast from a sword that dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. Most of the Inquisition torture had jack shit to do with devil-worshippers, but even a blind pig finds a nut every now and then. The sword killed an actual witch, and shattered when her heart burst. In the past twenty years, the crucifix cast from the sword’s shards has banished more demons than you could count. I also carry a laptop installed with blessing viruses and sanctified macros I use to ice the damned ghosts in the machines.
I’m Father Andrew Crispin, and I’ve been in the service of the Roman Catholic Church since 2017.
I got a call two hours ago from the archdiocese on a possessed Sempai Q, the newest high end bot out of Kyoto, and now I’m standing on the porch of Randolph Berry, a retired United States Senator who currently pulls down more than twice his old government salary doing nothing except rotating through the convention circuit as a fervent supporter of tech and a preacher against the dangers of the dis.
The dis, for the uninitiated, equates to more than one thing. Disenfranchised, disconnected, disjecta. It’s an umbrella term for those who, for whatever reasons, are not plugged into the mass media beast that passes for society these days. For some, it’s simply an economic reality. Being fully plugged into the grid these days runs about the same cost as physical real estate rent, but what are you going to do? We have to maintain connectivity, right? For others, it’s a religious or lifestyle choice. Luddites will be Luddites, I suppose, but choosing the dis as some kind of life statement? I just don’t get it, any more than I can understand why anyone would opt to be vegan, or blonde.
I ring the bell. The door is real oak, not the fake laminate bullshit most people have. Real oak costs, especially these days. I’m no appraiser, but I’d bet this door is probably worth more than my car.
I don’t hear any movement from inside the house. Instead, the ambient sounds of the neighborhood flow through the breezeless April air. Bees buzzing in the azaleas, the chuck-chuck-chuck of the lawn sprinklers rotating, and somewhere in the neighborhood, distant, a child laughing. The sounds of life surround me, and in the bright light of midmorning, it’s almost enough to validate my presence here.
I ring the bell again.
After another moment, the door finally opens. A tall, hollow-eyed man answers. For initial visits I’m required to wear the uniform, so his eyes focus on the starched collar at my throat. One of his eyebrows rises like an attacking caterpillar, and his mouth droops into a moue of distaste.
“Yes?”
His condescending expression is just the tip of his elitist iceberg. It’s already pissing me off. I’m not collecting junk for the parish rummage sale; these fuckers called me.
&nb
sp; “I’m Father Crispin. I was sent here because you’ve got a problem?”
He pauses, still obviously considering telling me to pack it in. “Ahh…yes. Can I see some form of identification, please?”
What the fuck. I want to point to the collar again, and ask him what he thinks. It’s not like the Vatican passes out little tin stars that say “EXORCIST” on them. I pass him my business card. If that’s not enough, he can just piss off. He takes it, his thin, pale fingers only grasping a corner of the card. I guess he doesn’t want to catch any of those bad ol’ Catholic germs, or something. He reads the card, then steps back over the threshold, allowing me in. What a swell guy.
“You the butler?” I ask as he closes the door behind me. We’re in a wide hallway that stretches back into the house. The ceilings are so high it’s a wonder I don’t see clouds up there. On the right side of the hall, a broad staircase leads to the upper floors.
“No. You’re here about the butler. I’m Randolph Berry.” Before I can speak again, he turns away. I follow in his wake, knowing he’s got to run out of hallway eventually.
The hallway walls are broken by open doorways on both sides. I glimpse a formal living room, a dining room, a smaller game room, and a kitchen. Instead of making any of these turns, he pushes open a door straight ahead at the end of the hall. I step into an oddly claustrophobic room paneled in dark woods and furnished for comfort. The only lights are from a floor-standing lamp casting a yellow circle on a pair of facing sofas, and a huge plasma screen hanging over a desk on the other side of the room. After a moment, I realize why it feels claustrophobic in here. It has normal eight-foot ceilings, but after the vaulted cathedral ceiling of the hallway, the whole room just feels squat.
The senator waves me to one of the sofas, then sits on the other.
“Before I get into the details,” he says, rubbing his hands together like a mantis, “I need a promise of discretion from you and your…um…organization. You understand, a man in my position has to meet certain expectations.”
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 16
