Witch Creek

by Laura Bickle

  “So this is really going to be about how I want to go out, isn’t it?”

  “You always have the final decision-making authority on your care. You can decide to stop at any time. I don’t advise it, but you can do that.”

  She inhaled deeply. When her breath stilled, she listened to her belly gurgle and the blood thump in her chest. She shifted how she sat; bedsores were beginning to set in on her thighs. Her mouth was raw and oozing from the stomach acid, and she didn’t want to think about the hemorrhoids growing underneath her print hospital gown. She felt weak. Her fingers in her lap were spidery and pale, her arms spindly. She wasn’t in control of her life. She was submitting to a procedure that seemed designed to kill everything it touched, and if anything of Petra remained after the razing, then that was considered a success.

  She thought of herself as a tough woman. But she just couldn’t do this anymore.

  “We need to stop,” she said at last. “I need to go home.”

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll get you stabilized as much as we can, and as long as I’m satisfied, then we can discharge you.”

  “Thanks.” She wanted to thank him for all his efforts, even though they hurt like hell, but she didn’t know what to say about the failure. Was there a Hallmark card for this type of thing?

  Dear Doctor,

  Thanks for the chemo, but it’s not working. I’ve barfed up my last toenail. I appreciate your expertise, but I think I might want to die at home and look at the stars while I’m doing that. Better luck with the next patient?

  The doctor gathered his paperwork and left the room, leaving Petra to gaze at the blossoming tree outside her floor-to-ceiling window.

  Petra always thought that she could withstand nearly anything. And in most cases, that had been true. She’d suffered all kinds of physical and psychological damage in the last couple of years, scars that laced around her arms and haunted her dreams. Unlike others, she had walked out alive through fire and mercury and venom. Chemo should have been manageable, much more manageable than getting bled out by a drug dealer or losing people she loved.

  But the truth was, she just couldn’t do this anymore without Gabe.

  They’d released her in “fair condition.” That’s what it said on her paperwork, anyway. Petra dressed slowly in clothes that felt too big for her now: a T-shirt that hung on her body, a jacket that had once been a bit too tight around the shoulders but now swallowed her, and cargo pants that she had to safety-pin together to keep from falling off her hips. Though her body was likely now the ideal of some fashion magazine somewhere, she frowned at how light and delicate it felt, like skin stretched over bird bones. She yearned for the tanned, solid strength of her old body, a body that climbed mountains effortlessly and drank in sun on its freckles. Even her freckles seemed to have paled. She hated that.

  She felt weak, and she hated that, too.

  She pulled her dark blond hair back and tied it with a ponytail holder. It used to take three twists of the elastic to hold all of her hair. Now, it took four, and it was still loose. She jammed a baseball cap over her head. She had six bottles of pills on her nightstand: antibiotics, antiemetics, painkillers, antidiarrheals. She scooped them all with the paperwork into a messenger bag and dug for her keys.

  It was time to go. But she hesitated, looking out the window at the spring-blooming tree, all pale green in the pink morning light. She had felt a curious intimacy with this tree during her time in the hospital. It had stood silently, bearing witness to her struggle without sympathy or comment.

  And she knew that, no matter what, no matter how sick she got, they wouldn’t let her die in here. They’d keep her going with drugs and chemicals, hanging on to the last dreadful minute. She’d be sick enough to want to die, but they’d keep her going, even in a comatose state. There was no safer place on earth than in the hospital. Safe and hellish.

  A wail emanated from beyond her door. Petra opened it a crack. The relatives of the man in the next room were huddled in the hallway. It struck Petra for the first time that she had never seen them before, only heard them. Odd. And yet, they were as she imagined—wiping tears from behind glasses and clutching at shirt collars.

  A gurney with a sheet over it was wheeled out of the old man’s room. He’d passed. Finally.

  The family followed the gurney down the hallway, sobbing.

  And then there was a curious silence settling over the place, like the dark hours of the night.

  Something tapped at the window. Petra turned. The tree. A breeze had pushed its branches into the unopenable panes, and they scraped the glass.

  She shouldered her bag. Time to go.

  Time to find Gabriel.

  And time to get down to the business of dying on her own terms.

  Chapter 2

  The Loss of the Raven King

  Daylight felt incredibly bright after the soft artificial light of the hospital.

  Petra squinted behind the sun visor of her 1970s-vintage Ford Bronco, peering through the smears that freshly hatched bugs made as they splattered on the windshield. The sun shone cheerily through the streaks, which remained, despite her efforts to squirt windshield washing fluid on them. She dug around in the glove box for a pair of sunglasses, managing not to run the Bronco too far off the rumble strip at the shoulder of the road.

  Though she’d been a few weeks in the hospital, things had changed since she’d last been outdoors. Petra had pretty much decided that an hour in a hospital was equivalent to a day on the outside. Grass had begun to spring through cracks on the pavement, and trees had started to flower. The leaden sky of winter had given way to the thin, wispy clouds of early spring that stretched high above the mountains. Bits of color were emerging in the landscape, green and white that replaced the blue shadows of cold. Winter salt on the roads had been rinsed away by spring rain. Petra had even lowered the window on the Bronco. The air smelled like fresh rain. Life was stirring all around her.

  But not in her, she knew. She sucked on an ice chip, trying to drive the chalky taste of an antacid from her mouth. Her stomach gurgled. Part of her wanted nothing better than to go home and sleep in her own bed. But first things first.

  The black ribbon of road churned west and north, and she followed it to the Red Rock Indian Reservation. The blacktopped road dropped off to gravel, and Petra tooled through the town, past the hotel and the casino, through the main drag with its shuttered ice cream shop.

  She turned off at a stand of houses, pulling up before a small yellow bungalow. She shut off the engine, popped the door, and climbed out. In the yard of the bungalow, a garden had begun to sprout. Looked like kale and onions. Maybe cabbage. Pie pans and metallic streamers were strung up to ward off the crows.

  She climbed the porch to the front door. She was just about to lift her hand to knock when the screen door exploded open, and a grey furry mass knocked her on her ass.

  “I missed you, too,” she wheezed, gazing up at the coyote standing on her chest. For the first time in a long time, she was truly happy.

  Sig slobbered on her face, knocking her hat from her head. He whined and snooted at her ears, whimpering and slapping his tail against his legs. Petra rubbed his ruff and sides, noting that he’d plumped up. Maria’s cooking, no doubt.

  She glanced up over his shoulder, seeing Maria standing in the doorway. And she looked pissed.

  Her dark hair was flung over one shoulder, and her fingers drummed an elbow covered in embroidered velvet. Her brows were drawn together. “What in the hell are you doing here?”

  “Erf,” Petra gasped as Sig planted his foot on her stomach. “I thought I’d pick up Sig and . . .”

  “That’s not what I meant. What are you doing out of the hospital?”

  Sig did Petra the honor of stepping off her belly, and Petra climbed to her feet. “Well, it wasn’t going well.”

  Maria looked her over, head to toe. “Obviously. You look like hell.”

  “Yeah. I feel like
it, too.”

  “Get in here before you catch cold.” Maria leaned down to grasp her elbow and drew her inside.

  Petra started to protest, but gave up. She needed to go to the bathroom, anyway, and was pretty sure she deserved whatever tongue-lashing Maria was going to give her.

  Petra stepped inside the door and stooped to take off her boots. The place smelled like fresh paint, and the interior walls were a warm yellow color. The pictures that had been on the walls were now arranged in stacks against the couch and coffee table, wrapped with quilts and crocheted blankets.

  “Wow,” she said. “You painted. Looks nice.”

  “Wasn’t me,” Maria said. She hooked a thumb at a young woman standing in the hall. “Nine has been busy.”

  “Hi,” Nine said. The young woman was dressed in a T-shirt and paint-spattered overalls. Bits of yellow paint were in her ponytail, the silver hair a sharp contrast to her unlined face. “What are you doing back?”

  “You did a good job,” Petra said, dodging the question. Her stomach gurgled audibly. “Um, hey . . . can I use your bathroom?”

  “Sure,” Maria said. “I’ll put some soup on and . . .”

  Petra lurched to the bathroom and barely closed the door behind her before retching into the toilet. She didn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to eat, but she had never managed to hit the dry heaves. Ever.

  She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, rinsed out her mouth, and washed her face before rejoining the women and Sig in the living room.

  Maria and Nine had been whispering when she arrived, but stopped as soon as she rounded the corner. Sig sat on the couch and turned to face her. A small grey and white cat seated in the catloaf position on the back of the couch flicked her ears in Petra’s direction.

  “Oh, hey, Pearl,” she said to the cat, rubbing her ears. “You made friends with Sig. Finally.”

  The elderly cat emitted a rusty purr and closed her eyes.

  “So, what are you doing out of the hospital?” Maria asked again.

  Petra made a face and dropped onto the couch beside Sig. The coyote snuggled up next to her. “I told you—it wasn’t going well. The chemo . . . it just isn’t working.”

  Maria sat in a chair opposite her, and Nine sprawled on the floor. Petra had yet to see the young woman look comfortable in a chair. Nine’s nose twitched. “You smell sick. Really sick. Like death.”

  Well, there was no sugarcoating things. “Yeah. I just . . .” Petra took a deep breath. “I wanted to spend the time I’ve got doing something other than rotting in a hospital bed. Like finding Gabe.”

  Maria nodded. Petra expected a fight that might end up with the two women dragging her back to the hospital, kicking and screaming. But Maria surprised her.

  “We’ll do whatever we can to help you.”

  “Great. I think that—” She stood up, far too quickly. The bright yellow living room swam around her, a swirl of patchwork and light.

  She sat back down again.

  “That’s what I thought,” Maria said, and her surprising support crashed down on Petra with its intended lesson. “You’re in no condition to go charging off into the sunset with a gun on your hip.” Maria stood over her, took Petra’s chin in her hand. “But if you’re going to do this, this last quest, you need to rest. Get that stuff purged from your system. Get strong. We’ll plan, and then we’ll act.”

  “I don’t know that Gabe has that kind of time,” Petra protested.

  Maria’s mouth thinned. “We are looking for him. I’ve put the word out among the Arapaho to look for him. Mike is combing Yellowstone with the rangers. Things are happening, even if you can’t see them.”

  Petra slumped deep into the couch cushions. Sig crawled into her lap.

  “I don’t even know if he’s alive,” she said finally.

  “Gabe has survived a lot,” Maria said. “Don’t underestimate him. He’s been around for a hundred fifty years.”

  Nine nodded. “He is, after all, the Raven King.” Nine had a peculiar way of naming people. Perhaps it was her time among the wolves, and her need to assign people to a hierarchy. There was something about that title, something she divined when she first saw him. Perhaps it was still some of that animal instinct in her, from when she had been a wolf. But her character assessments were always spot-on.

  Petra smiled thinly. “He has no kingdom, now, though. No ravens. It’s just him. Wherever he is.”

  Gabe awoke in an aching darkness.

  There was no sign of the blue lightning, but his body still throbbed from its touch. He tried to sit up, under the weight of a thundering headache. His ribs ached, as if he’d been dragged two miles down white water in an inner tube. He was able to sit up, but as he moved his good leg, he heard the rattle of a chain. He reached down to feel a manacle around his leg.

  Shit.

  “Good. You’re awake.”

  A cigarette bobbed in the darkness, red as a coal.

  A light clicked on overhead, a bare bulb buried in a half-rotted wooden ceiling. Owen stood over him, in a clean sweatshirt and jeans. They were indoors, Gabe realized. Far from the elements. Stacked boxes and wooden shelves surrounded them. A desk with a sheaf of paper and a chair were pressed against the wall. A bucket sat beside the desk. Gabe’s eyes traveled along the chain. It was short—too short to fight with. Four feet and it disappeared down a floor drain.

  “Ain’t no use thinking you’ll get that chain free. It’s tied to the iron pipes below.” Owen exhaled a ghost of smoke. “You know where you are?”

  Gabe turned his head away. “Sal’s basement.”

  “No. It’s my basement, now.”

  Gabe flexed his cold fingers. “What do you want from me, Owen?”

  There were a lot of possible answers to that question, apparently. Owen seemed steeped in thought, pausing to drag on his cigarette with his left hand. His beard was poorly trimmed. His eyes slid left and right, as if he saw things flitting around him. Owen was crazy. And Gabe had also killed his cousin. And Gabe was, indirectly, responsible for the loss of two fingers off the sheriff’s right hand. Lots of perfectly good reasons for Owen to want to snuff him out. But not to drag him out of a pit and install him in the basement of the Rutherford Ranch. That seemed sort of excessive.

  Owen leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “I want to know what you know.”

  “I would have told you what you wanted to know. Without all this pomp and circumstance.” Gabe gestured to the musty basement and his chain.

  Owen’s mouth turned upward. “You haven’t got anything keeping you here.”

  “You had my word.”

  “Not good enough.” Owen stubbed his cigarette out in an empty tuna-fish can full of butts.

  Gabe felt something crawling along his spine. “You’re lying. You want something else.”

  Owen snorted. “Let’s just start with what you know.”

  “I know you went back on your end of the deal. When you and Petra and I were on the mountain, we made an agreement. You were to leave Petra alone, and I was going to reveal the secrets of the ranch to you. Why should I bother holding up my end of the agreement now?”

  “Things have changed.” Owen looked a little dazed, dazed in that slack-jawed look that men under hypnosis got.

  Gabe narrowed his eyes, and he began to guess what had happened. “You said on the mountain that you’d spoken with the Mermaid. I told you to leave her alone, that she—”

  “Let’s be clear on a couple of things.” Owen reached into his belt for a black plastic device. He flipped the switch, and blue light sparked at the wires at the edge. “One, you already got a taste of.”

  It was with some measure of relief that Gabe realized that Owen hadn’t become a proficient practitioner of the magical arts. The man just had a stun gun. That much was manageable.

  “Two. Your wife. Cooperate with me, and I will leave her alone. Fail, and any number of bad things could happen to her.”

  Gabe li
fted his hands immediately. “I’ll do as you ask.” There was no choice in this.

  “Good.” Owen gestured to the desk. “I got some paper for you. Pencils. Write down what you know about the ranch. That tree. All the magical shit underground. I want to know it all.”

  Wincing, Gabe hauled himself to his feet and trudged to the folding chair. He sat and spread a piece of paper before him. He picked up a mechanical pencil.

  “Where do you want me to begin?” he asked.

  “Start at the beginning,” Owen said. “When you first came to the ranch.”

  Maria stood, kissed the top of Petra’s head, and moved to the kitchen. She plucked some jars of herbs off a shelf and headed to the bathroom, where Petra could hear water running.

  When she returned, Petra eyed the herbs. “Are you making a potion?” She was only half kidding.

  Maria pulled a mason jar full of dried plant matter from the counter and began pouring vodka into it. “I’m making you some things that will make you feel better. They’ll help you sleep, quiet the nausea, muffle the pain. You’ll feel stronger, more able to chase after Gabe. Thing is . . . they won’t cure you at all. It’s just an illusion, and they will burn you out.” She turned to look at Petra. “Is that what you want?”

  Petra took a deep breath. It sounded like a shorter time than she would otherwise have had, but it would be time that she might be able to put to use. Right now to her, an hour in bed was worth five minutes standing. She didn’t ask all the good questions that a scientist was supposed to ask, things like: What’s in that? How much? How often? What about side effects? Any interactions?

  Instead, she said, “Yes. Thank you.”

  Maria nodded and screwed the lid on the jar. “All right, then.” She put the jar in a dark cabinet and headed down the hall toward the sound of bathwater.

  Nine sat opposite Petra on the floor, playing with the tassel of a rug. She gazed up at Petra through a thick fringe of eyelashes. “Sig missed you.”