The Witchery Way

by Robert L. Ferrier

  At that moment, they heard a vehicle on the gravel in the parking lot. Joe looked out the door. "Well, I’ll be damned."

  Isaac Sixkiller walked in, followed by Tom and Post Oak Bill. They were carrying the connecting rod on a wheeled dolly. Isaac said, "This yours?"

  Joe said, "Yes, by God!”

  "We brought it back."

  "That’s good."

  "We ask one thing in return."

  "What’s that?"

  "Don’t ask where we found it."

  "Fair enough."

  Isaac looked around the room. His eyes took in every person there. Finally, they locked in on Josh. "Railroad Boy, I have thought on your request for help."

  Josh waited.

  "You have sharp tongue, but you have heart. A sharp tongue can be lived with if it speaks from the heart." He looked at Joe. "Am I right to say this?"

  Joe nodded. "You’re right. He’s has a mouth on him, but he’s got a pair of...."

  He paused, glancing at Amy. "He’s got heart."

  Isaac nodded and looked at Josh. He smiled, showing the gold tooth. "We will do Bear Dance at the park."

  Josh smiled. "I’m glad."

  Isaac looked around the room again, this time settling on Ed Wade. "You have much work left to do? Before the train makes smoke and goes to the park?"

  Ed nodded.

  Isaac swept his hand toward Tom, and Post Oak Bill. "Want help?"

  Ed hesitated, then said, "‘Course we do! We’re running out of time. But will helping us bring trouble for you?"

  Isaac’s eyes narrowed. "Who knows? We help now."

  Ed Wade smiled. "Then let’s work!"

  Tom Sixkiller picked up a wrench and came over to Josh. He smiled, and for first time, his eyes showed acceptance. "Show me what to do."

  Josh felt a surge of adrenaline, the fatigue melting away. Amy came up to him and put her arm around his waist. In that moment, with the three of them standing there, Josh felt something special. He said, "Amy Whitescarver, this is Tom Sixkiller.”

  She smiled and held out her hand. "I’m glad to meet you at last.”

  "I am glad to meet you." He smiled and shook her hand, his skin dark against hers. "Whitescarver. You are named well. Your hair is like a white scarf."

  Amy blushed.

  Tom smiled. "You have earned my respect. You are the only one who can make Josh almost listen."

  They worked into the night. Joe and Isaac—a Choctaw and a Cherokee—gave orders, then sat back and told stories. Josh noticed that One Eye Kanatobi was not here. That reinforced his suspicions about the fat Indian he had seen in the cave, but he decided not to ask Tom.

  They made steam again Friday morning with a test run. No. 88 puffed through Senoca, out to the edge of town and back. Josh and Amy rode in the cab again, and this time it felt great to see all the work paying off. The Indians had saved the day. How they had found the connecting rod, and why they decided to risk the Gottschalk’s wrath by bringing it in would remain a mystery, Josh thought.

  * * *

  Friday afternoon, people walked into the Choctaw Railroad office, buying tickets to the excursion tour on Saturday. Josh saw an attractive brunette in her forties standing outside the door. She wore a western shirt, jeans, and expensive-looking boots. She seemed undecided about something.

  He walked up to her. "Can I help you?"

  She smiled. "I’m just trying to make up my mind."

  "About what?"

  "About whether I should buy a ticket for tomorrow."

  "Buy it."

  "Why?”

  "You’ll have the time of your life."

  She gave him an appraising look. "With all due respect, how do you know that?"

  "Because I’ve worked all summer on the engine that’s going to take us there. It’s special. So is the destination—hills, a lake, friendly people, and a park where some friends are going to dance for you."

  Her eyes widened. "You’re quite a salesman. What’s your name?"

  "Josh Wade." He stuck out his hand.

  She shook it. "I’m Liz Dannuck. Are you kin to the owner?"

  "He’s my dad."

  She smiled. "Well, Josh. You talked me into it. I’ll buy a ticket."

  "Good for you."

  "I’ll see you tomorrow then."

  After the test run, Tom asked to talk to Josh alone. They went out beneath the oak in the parking lot of the Choctaw Railroad and sipped Cokes. The sun was sliding down beneath a thin ridge of clouds, casting the lower edge in a shade of copper. Josh looked at the sunset and said, "Almost makes you wish you could paint, doesn’t it?"

  "Yes, " Tom said.

  Amy walked out of the office and handed Josh a note. "Phone message for you."

  "Thanks." He stuck it in his pocket without reading it. "You going home?"

  "Yep," she said. "Big day tomorrow." She waved and drove off.

  Josh said, "Tom, will you be at Hickory Creek Park tomorrow?"

  “No.”

  “Why not?"

  "I have reasons." He touched the medallion on his necklace, then rolled his head around, working his neck muscles. "I’ve heard about your massages. Give me one."

  "What?"

  "I like massage; my mother used to give them to me."

  Josh didn’t know what to do. He looked down at Tom’s broad, brown shoulders, sheathed in muscle. "Well, a new experience," he said. He rubbed. It was different from rubbing a girl, with muscles cushioned beneath velvet skin. Tom’s shoulders made him work. Tom said, "Right there. With the thumbs."

  Josh ran his hands down the Indian’s back. It was like a wedge. There was not an ounce of fat anywhere. He felt silly, but he kept rubbing.

  Tom said, "You’re better than my mother."

  The sun’s afterglow painted the horizon a dull red. A locust started whirring in the oak. It was still hot, and Tom’s back was sweaty. "You want to live to marry Amy?"

  "What? Of course I do."

  "Then take some advice."

  "What advice?"

  "Stay in the park tomorrow. Whatever happens, don’t go into the woods."

  Josh felt his hands getting clammy. "Everybody wants to keep me out of the woods."

  "Yes, they do. You’ve already had one trip in there."

  "Are you part of what’s going to happen, Tom?"

  No answer. "Go down lower. To those spots between the shoulder. Your hands are getting wet."

  Josh moved down and worked with his thumbs.

  Joe Buck came out of the shop and walked toward the office. He saw them and stopped. His eyes widened, and he spat two streams of tobacco. He started to say something, but he thought better of it and went into the office.

  Josh repeated the question. "Are you part of what’s going down tomorrow?"

  Tom seemed not to have heard. "Did I ever tell you about my parents, Josh?"

  "No.”

  "My dad was smart. He worked as a bookkeeper for a car dealership in Senoca. But he got bored with it and went back to working for Trace. Mother’s name was Dawn. She was beautiful. She had some health problems when she had me, and she couldn’t have any more kids, so she cooked for the Gottschalks. Then they left here for good."

  "When they left, why didn’t they take you with them?"

  Again he seemed not to hear the question. Josh could feel Tom’s muscles tightening up. Tom said, "I was up at the Gottschalk’s ranch house one day with my dad. I had never seen anything like it: big house. Barns. Cars. Helicopter pad. We went out to do some work on the fences, and I saw this litttle guesthouse. There was a sign on it. My dad said Billy Ray got the sign from a hardware store in Senoca thirty years ago. Know what was on the sign?"

  “I have no idea."

  “It said, ‘No Indians or dogs allowed.’”

  Josh shook his head and said nothing.

  "Do you know what that made me feel like, Josh? Dad turned my head away, but I had seen it. That was the first time I realized how some people feel abou
t Indians."

  "Your mother and dad must have been offended. Probably that’s what made them move away."

  Tom sat silent for a long time, enjoying the massage. Josh’s hands ached, but he kept going; he felt that to stop now would break the spell. It was getting dark. A few cars drove by, the occupants staring at them; it wasn’t often you saw a boy massaging another boy’s back.

  Tom said, "They didn’t move away."

  "But I thought Isaac said they moved away. That they would send for you and never did."

  "Isaac said that. I didn’t."

  "But then...."

  "I think they’re still out there—in spirit."

  Josh stayed silent and kept rubbing.

  "I think they went roaming where they shouldn’t have. They were curious—like you. They loved to solve mysteries too."

  Josh remembered what had happened when he went roaming in those woods.

  The smell. The chase. The feel of Wake McKenna’s blood on his hands.

  Tom said, "I’m done."

  They stood up and faced each other.

  Tom said, "You tempted fate once, Josh, and walked away. Don’t tempt it again." He walked to his pickup. He started the engine and smiled, a slash of white in the dark. "You give good massage.”

  He drove away into the night.

  Josh stood there in the dark, feeling alone and confused. Then he remembered the phone message Amy had given him, and he reached into his pocket. He walked out from under the oak to catch light from a street lamp. When he had read the message, he looked at his watch, got in the pickup, and drove north through town. He parked behind the high school in a lot that was empty except for a battered Toyota pickup. He got out and walked over to the driver side. "Hi, Brady."

  “Get in,” said Brady Lembeck. “We gotta talk."

  Josh got in the passenger side. "Did you find anything on those phone numbers?"

  Brady was pudgy, with a round face and sandy hair. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. "Josh, are you in some trouble?"

  "Trouble? What makes you ask?"

  "Well, I had my sister run down those numbers." He wiped his face with a handkerchief. "It cost me every favor she owed me."

  Josh kept his voice calm. "What did she find out?"

  "Well, the first call was to a warehouse manager in Fort Smith. The second was to a parts supplier in Ardmore." He paused, tapping his hands against the steering wheel.

  "And the third call?"

  Brady stopped tapping. "That went to a guy named Brewster Pace."

  "Brewster Pace? Who’s he?"

  "He’s the tactical team leader of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs." Brady’s eyes were big. “Probably leads their raids."

  "Raids?"

  "Yeah. Are we gonna have a war?"

  CHAPTER 13

  Isaac Sixkiller walked through the woods at midnight. The moon hid behind clouds, and that was both a curse and a blessing: a curse because his eyes failed him often now, a blessing because the nightwalker was less likely to see him. He used his snake stick to brush aside the thorny stayawhile and greenbriar. He had walked these hills for decades, and he knew every blackberry hedge, creek, pine and oak. But now, in his seventy-fifth year, he had lost his zest for living, and the trees no longer felt like friends.

  The smell guided him toward his goal, and it was a bad smell, a smell like death. He stopped, sniffed the air, and honed in on the source; for at the source, he would find his quarry.

  If he saw the nightwalker now—for the fourth straight night—then he could do what had to be done. Start the beginning of the end for the witch. For the witch had to die. Isaac had known this ever since he had found the place where they cooked the bad medicine. He had come up on it one day and found it unlocked. One Eye sometimes got careless, Isaac knew. Inside the shack, Isaac had seen cooking machines and equipment that he did not understand. But in a back room, he had seen things he did understand. He saw personal belongings, pictures, keepsakes.

  All these things had belonged to dead people.

  The skulls of the dead stared down at him from a shelf on the wall. Five skulls. Isaac had known two of these people in life, and when he saw their belongings, he wept.

  At that moment, he knew he had to kill the witch. Isaac had bided his time, waiting. Until tonight. The witch was preparing to kill again. He would kill the Railroad Boy, just as he had killed Ish Maytubby and the five others.

  Unless Isaac stopped him.

  Isaac climbed up a ravine, feeling his bones and muscles screaming in protest, his lungs on fire, his skin scratched by thorns. He was rotting inside with lung cancer that would take him soon. But he would use all his strength this night to say the i:gawe:sdi, the incantation necessary to kill a human masquerading as a wolf. But to do this, he must see the wolf for this, the fourth straight night.

  Tomorrow he would summon his strength again. He would see his friends do the Bear Song Dance at the park. That would make the Railroad Boy happy. He wanted the Railroad Boy to survive, for he had courage. Now Isaac moved quietly, for to be seen or heard was to be killed.

  He paused at the top of the small rise and leaned against a pine to catch his breath. He shut his eyes, and in his mind he saw the Raven Mocker again. The Raven Mocker was the worst witch, worse than the human witch Isaac stalked tonight. The Raven Mocker crept to the home of the sick or dying to take a life. He flies through the air in fiery shape, arms outstretched like wings, and sparks trailing behind, making a rushing sound like a strong wind. While he flies, he makes a cry like a raven. And those who hear are afraid, because they know that someone’s life will go out. When the Raven Mocker comes to the house of the dying, Isaac knew, he finds others of his kind waiting there, and unless there is a witch doctor on guard who knows how to drive them away, they go inside, invisible, and torment the sick person until they kill him. Sometimes they even lift him from the bed and throw him on the floor, Isaac thought, but the friends think the stricken one is only struggling for breath.

  Isaac knew he would face the Raven Mocker soon. That was why he worked his own medicine tonight, while he still had the strength. He reached into his pocket and felt the leather pouch of ashes: special ashes, made from a fire of lightning-struck wood. He had remade them with tobacco, hidden them away for the special time when he would need them. He had spent three straight nights in the woods, and he had seen the nightwalker, Trace Gottschalk, clothed in wolf skins, each time. Tonight was the fourth night, the most important night.

  He moved more slowly now, avoiding the slightest noise.

  The smell was very strong. Isaac walked along the rise until he reached his favorite watching spot—the base of a large hickory tree. Here, overlooking a small valley, he could see the place where Gottschalk made his bad medicine. It was here where Trace roamed in wolf skins. Here Isaac would wait on this fourth night.

  The night was hot and still, and he felt sweat rolling down his back. Mosquitoes buzzed and stung him, but he dared not slap them. He fought to stay awake. Twice he dozed off. He was starting to nod again, when he heard a sound off to his right. He stayed still behind the trunk of the hickory and breathed very slowly. He concentrated hard, cursing his failing eyes, and waited.

  Then he smiled in satisfaction.

  He saw the nightwalker moving slowly up the hill, thirty yards away. The moon slid from behind the clouds for a moment, and Isaac watched as the man stood on the ridge and looked around. The head of the wolf skin did not quite hide Trace’s face. Isaac could make out the hard jaw line. But Trace still looked like an animal standing upright. Isaac imagined the terror that Ish Maytubby must have felt when he met the witch on a night like this. He must have turned and fled down into the green patch of plants in the valley. There he would have died, for that was a killing places.

  Trace looked around in a complete circle, as if listening. Then he moved silently into the trees toward the east and was gone. Isaac breathed deeply, waiting until he was sure the
witch was out of earshot. Then he stood up and took the pouch of ashes from his pocket. He poured the ashes into the palm of his trembling right hand. He took a deep breath and blew the ashes toward where the witch had stood.

  Then he said the i:gawe:sdi four times: "Now! You Ancient White One! Ha! Very quickly I have just come to hear."

  "In nothing do you fail."

  "Now! Right now! You will cut them in the middle of the throat!"

  "You Ancient White One!"

  "You Ancient White One!"

  "You Ancient White One!"

  Then Isaac turned and walked back through the woods. Soon, the witch would meet the Raven Mocker. But would he kill again first? Isaac would know tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 14

  On Saturday, Josh looked at the Senoca railroad depot. Over the years, the depot had fallen into disrepair, a forgotten relic. Then the Senoca County Historical Society restored the building and turned it into one of the most popular museums in the southwest. Now there was a Harvey House restaurant off the lobby. You could dine on mouth-watering ham, eggs, biscuits, and red-eye gravy.

  Josh and Amy browsed through the exhibits. It was two forty-five. In fifteen minutes, they would get into the cab of No. 88 and head out on their journey to Hickory Creek Park.

  Amy said, "What’s that?"

  "A whiskey still." He lifted up his engineer’s cap and whispered in her ear. "That’s what they used to cook out in the woods before they started cooking meth."

  "Are you saying that over the years, they’ve gotten up to spee—?"

  Josh groaned and pulled the cap down over her eyes before she could finish the pun. He heard two blasts from No. 88’s whistle. They hurried outside and worked their way through the crowd of tourists boarding the two passenger cars. When Josh looked at No. 88, he saw more than a steam locomotive. He saw the past--his grandfather, Frank, up there in the cab waiting for them, his face ruddy from the contents of the "coffee" next to the hot water pipes. This feeling was special, his only escape from fear. When he had dressed this morning, he’d put on his snake-proof hunting boots. He’d also stuffed the witchcraft pouch in his pocket.