by Celia Roman
I dropped my shopping bags on my bed, dug my Ruger 1911 and a hip holster outta the gun safe, and strapped it on over my jeans. The woods between here and Fame’s trailer looked innocuous, like ever other stretch of forest in the Southern Appalachians. We learnt the hard way they wasn’t when a pooka drug Henry off the trail one day and ripped his little boy’s body to shreds, God rest his bitty soul.
Sorrow and sheer horror warred within me, closing my throat up tight. Sweet, precious Henry never done nobody no harm. Was my carelessness what got my boy killed, and I paid for it ever day since. Cleaning out the woods weren’t gonna bring him back, but it might save another mama from grief someday. Was a time, that was all what kept me going, that and the bloodlust rotting in my veins.
Took a solid year of killing monsters for vengeance to run its course and free me from its cloying grip.
I stepped out into the dusk and sighed. That life was behind me now, good and gone forever, I hoped. Only thing left was the spot where we found Henry’s blood, a memorial now prettied up with flowers and a bench and a little concrete angel I bought when my head was clear enough for my heart’s needs to be heard.
The trail leading to Henry’s spot, and beyond it to Fame’s trailer, was spongy under my feet. Crickets chirped in the woods, interrupted by the occasional frog’s ribbet. Ever thing dropped away as I walked, lingering bitterness over Henry’s loss, the ever present worry over kith and kin, the bits and pieces what made up my work, and the feelings growing in me for Riley, renewed by our recent dating. I settled onto the bench in peace, loose and limber and ready to share the latest goings on.
Night fell around me. I closed my eyes and breathed it in. He was there, was Henry, a light pressure in my heart. I reached out a hand and whispered, “I’m here, baby,” and a breeze caressed my skin.
Henry.
His face sprung into mind from memory, that snaggle toothed grin, ears as big as Dumbo’s, and love shining from his wide eyes. Mama, the wind whispered, and I clenched my hand into a fist, a futile attempt to hold on to him, to feel him near me just one more time.
A solid hand closed around my wrist, warmer than the breeze. My eyes popped open as I fumbled with my free hand for the 1911 at my waist.
Teus knelt in front of me dressed in jeans and a light jacket, his preternaturally handsome features bathed in the scant rays of the moon and the dimming light thrown by the solar lamps scattered around the memorial. “Sunshine.”
I twisted my wrist outta his grasp and rubbed the warmth away. “What’re you doing here?”
“You called me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
One corner of his mouth turned down. He glanced around once, then stood and gazed down at me, still half frowning. “You’re in danger.”
I barked out a hard laugh. “Only dangerous thing around here is me, and maybe you.”
“Still.” He held a hand out to me. “We should seek shelter. The night grows chill.”
If he hadn’t said nothing, I probably woulda never noticed the goose bumps peppering my arms ‘neath the flannel shirt I throwed on before stepping outside. I ignored his hand and stood on my own, the way God meant a woman to. “Come on, then. I’ll fix you some supper, and then you can go right back to your lair under the lake.”
Teus’ hand lashed out and snagged my elbow. “It’s after midnight, Sunshine, long past the hour for repast.”
I blinked at him, so surprised my mind went blank. “What?”
“It’s late,” he repeated slowly, and his frown deepened. “What were you doing sitting in the night air for so long?”
“Talking with my young’un.”
His eyes got that far off look for a long minute, then snapped back into the present and landed on me. “Henry is dead, Sunshine. It’s past time to let him go.”
I jerked at my arm, and nearly hissed when his fingers tightened on my elbow. “You got no call to butt in here, Teus.”
“You are mine, and what’s mine, I protect. Leave the boy’s spirit alone.”
Raw emotion welled up in me, overcoming good sense. I pulled the 1911 out of its holster and aimed it at him across my body. “You let go of me now, Teus. Let go and go away.”
His expression gentled. “Sunshine.”
“I mean it, Teus.”
“I can see that.” He bent down and pressed a soft kiss to my forehead. “We will dance again soon.”
I blinked, and just like that, he was gone, evaporating into the woods like mist. His heat seared into my skin still and my hands shook, wavering the tip of the gun I held. I tried to holster it, missed, tried again, and finally got the dadgum thing back where it belonged.
What’d come over me?
I slumped onto the bench and reached out for Henry, but he was long gone. Even the scant wind blowing through the autumn leaves was bereft of his presence, the way my heart been since the day I found his blood splattered across the trail on this very spot.
Chapter Three
My senses regained their rights a short time after I woke the next morning and dragged myself outta bed into a shower. Teus could be a pest, but he never laid a crosswise hand on me. Sure, he teased about wanting me as his companion, but me and him both knowed he was just lonely for a woman. Any woman’d do, so I told him the day he put them marks on me.
That mighta had something to do with him showing up outta the blue last night. Or might be, something was getting into his chickens, too, and he needed a good hunter to track down the culprit. Another giant catfish catching chickens as they come up for air, maybe.
The notion tickled me pink and knocked the foul mood right outta me. I finished getting dressed, fried up some bacon and eggs, and went through my phone messages whilst eating. Old Aunt Sadie’s pumpkin patch’d been tore up. Likely the same earth gnome I scared off coupla weeks back or maybe something a mite worse. Billy Kildare’s coon dog’d gone missing again, but that weren’t no mystery. Ol’ Blue and a neighbor’s dog, Lady, took a liking to one another some months back. Chances was good, them dogs was making hay together somewhere.
Riley’s mellow voice drifted outta my cellphone, and I smiled. “Hey, baby,” his message said. “Sorry about last night. Call me soon so we can try again.”
I played the message back, just to have his voice in my head. Mm-mm-mm, he was something to wake up to, something fine indeed.
The final message was from Missy reminding me to drop by soon and have dinner with her and Fame and his two boys, Trey and Gentry. They was near my own age and hardly boys, but that’s the way I always thought of ‘em in my head. I had work to do between then and now, so I texted her an affirmative and set off to sort out the rest.
I drove out to Clayton first and hit the library. Scanning the weekly newspaper become a habit right about the time me and Riley got back in touch again. Teus gifted me a subscription a while back, and I promptly turned around and had it sent to Mama instead. The library was good enough for me. Besides. Where she was at, getting the weekly paper was a real treat, and she didn’t have near enough of them these days.
I requested the current issue of the Tribune from the front desk, then settled onto a cushy chair and read the latest edition from the front page’s lead title to the final legal ad. Nothing grabbed my attention. Even the police blotter was suspiciously empty of kinfolks’ names.
I turned the paper back in and headed for the grocery store, picked up a few essentials. Feeding Riley dessert ever week eat into my stored goods, a price I willingly paid in exchange for the pleasure on his face when he saw what I cooked him next. Boy was getting plumb spoiled and might go to fat, if he didn’t exercise the way he done.
The cashier rung me up. I gathered up my bags, smiling somewhat rueful like as I exited Ingles and stepped onto the asphalt parking lot. Riley and sports was like peas and carrots. If it weren’t one thing, ‘twas another. Football, tennis, basketball, and now water skiing, of all things, in October and him with a bad hip. Couldn’t slow some folk
s down, I reckoned, though a body could wish for it a little harder.
I stored my cold groceries in the cooler I brung along for ‘em, then moseyed over to Jazz and BobbiJean’s house. They was both working, her at Injun Bob’s Pawn Shoppe and Fine Antiquities, formerly owned by her grandfather who was neither an injun nor a Bob, and Jazz behind the shop in a scrap metal junkyard. I took advantage of their absence and let myself into the garden through the rickety gate in the unpainted picket fence behind the tiny, one-story home they rented.
The chickens, what was left of ‘em, was penned up in a coop in one corner, surrounded on three sides and up top by chicken wire. One section looked new, like it’d been replaced in the past day or two. I picked my way through overgrown, dried up corn stalks and the last of the summer’s tomatoes, and took a close gander. Sure enough, metal twist ties fastened new wiring to old.
The chicken wire disappeared into fresh dug earth near a broken post in the picket fence. I cast around, but Jazz and BobbiJean’s footprints obscured any possible tracks. Likely, they made them prints when they repaired the coop, without giving a second thought to scattering the evidence, and why would they? I walked careful like around it anyhow, then did the same with the garden and the fence, looping in larger circles away from the house toward the woods and the creek separating their property from a neighbor’s.
I knelt beside the stream and searched its banks with my eyes. A few feathers was stuck in tree bark on the opposite side, reddish tinted. Could be chicken feathers, but I weren’t gonna wet my boots and find out, seeing as how the creek was a mite too cold to wade barefoot and I forgot to bring along old shoes.
Next time.
I smacked my palms against my thighs and stood. My gaze happened to land on fresh scat off to the side about five feet from me. I wandered over, squatted down. Too much to be a small animal, not enough for a bear. No seeds in it nohow, and them was a sure sign of an herbivore or maybe an omnivore. If it weren’t one of them, it could be a carnivore and what got the hens, or it could just be a stray dog. I rubbed a finger along my upper lip. Maybe it was nothing, but I’d be sure to warn BobbiJean when I checked in with her in a coupla days.
Old Aunt Sadie’s weren’t much more down the road, so I swung by on my way to the Kildares’, back toward home. Sadie was waiting for me at the front door, her leathery face wrinkled into a frown.
I climbed outta the IROC and waved at her. “Howdy, Aunt Sadie.”
She thumped her straw broom against the stoop. “’Bout time you got here, missy.”
“I got other folks to look after, too, ya know.”
“I know, I know.” She heaved a grand sigh and flapped an arthritic hand at me. “Come on around back. My punkins is just et all to pieces, they is. And they was a good crop coming in, too. Don’t know what I’m gonna give my grand young’uns for Halloween now, I sure don’t.”
I followed her around the side of the house, one ear tuned to her rambles about her young’uns and grand-young’uns on down to the newest family addition, a great-granddaughter born in Cali-for-nie-ay. Aunt Sadie’s family was large and widespread, like most around here, and included a fair number of goings-on as all families did.
Whilst she chattered, I scouted out the violated pumpkins, nodding absent-mindedly as I turned a broken shell over in my hand. No teeth marks. I picked up another piece, turned it over, and paused. A single line was scraped deep into the skin, slicing through meat into the interior, though the piece remained intact around the cut.
Odd. Gnomes didn’t use weapons what I knowed of, and whilst their nails was deliberately honed razor sharp, they were tiny, like their slender teeth. No bite marks remained, and that was a dead giveaway, but what else aside from gnomes or the occasional goblin would raid a pumpkin patch?
I stood and brushed the dirt off my jeans, puzzling over the mini crime scene. Soon as she wound down, I said, “Don’t know what this is, but it don’t look like that gnome none a’tall.”
Aunt Sadie hmphed. “Some detective you is, Sunshine.”
I shrugged and smiled at her good-natured tease. “A body can’t know ever thing. You keep a sharp eye out, ya hear?”
“Don’t I always?” she said, and I believed her. Weren’t no sharper eye, far as I knowed, and that was saying something.
I dropped by the Kildares’ on the way home and scouted around, wandered down to the neighbors’ house and sussed them out. Seems Lady run off in the middle of the night about the same time Ol’ Blue got gone. Missing pet signs was about all I could do aside from searching the forest, and neither owner was that worried yet.
Duty done for the moment, I went home and writ down reminders in my organizer to revisit the active cases the next day, then spent a happy afternoon dusting whilst one of Daddy’s records played in the background. When I had my fill of cleaning, I worked on the filing system I was setting up. A serious businesswoman, was I. Weren’t worried none about the tax man, but I figured having a regular log of what I done when might come in handy some day.
Like when young Billy’s dog went missing. Keeping track of the dates in my head made no sense when I had better things to remember. ‘Sides which, a paper log’d help me spot patterns faster’n having to dig around in my noggin for the needed information.
Long shadows stretched across the aqua-green swirled living room carpet about the time the last manila folder was filed into its proper place, in the filing cabinet tucked between my makeshift desk and the wall. I stood up and stretched good, fetched a sip of water outta the mason jar in the fridge, then brushed my teeth and splashed water on my face, avoiding my reflection and them odd colored eyes Teus give me, still coon crazy in spite of the upgrade.
A jaw snapping yawn caught me unawares. I rubbed my eyes and slipped on a fresh t-shirt, and debated calling and canceling my appearance up the hill at Fame’s. I was almost too tired for company, but that little niggle of guilt reared its ugly head and I stiffened my spine. Family was family, and mine hadn’t been tended in a while.
I tucked the 1911 into the back waistband of my jeans, fished a flashlight outta the closet, and headed out, only half paying attention to the darkened trail leading to Fame’s trailer. The night gradually fell silent around me, save for the wind rustling dried leaves, and a raw moon shone down through half-clothed tree limbs.
Them painter’s eyes popped into my head, round and dark and not a’tall like the cat what wore ‘em. The hairs on the back of my neck sprung to attention and I stopped, more of a reflex than purposeful. I tested the air, sniffed, and peered around the darkened wood.
Thick, dead undergrowth rustled to my right, yet nary a wind gusted through the trees.
I yanked out the 1911, flicked the safety off, and aimed it and the flashlight toward the rustling in one practiced move. “Come on out real slow like, ya hear?”
Leaves crunched under light footsteps, and a painter stepped onto the trail, its fur so black, it blended into the night surrounding it.
I pointed the flashlight at the ground near its feet, away from its face. A light-blinded cat might lash out instead of scoping out what was in front of it, and I weren’t in the mood to patch up claw marks.
Weren’t rightly in the mood to explain why I killed a scarce animal, neither. Maybe if me and Riley wasn’t dating, I woulda just shot the thing to be shed of it, but we was, so I had to be good.
Dang his sexy hide.
I motioned the flashlight toward the deep wood. “Go on now. Scat!”
The painter stared at me, unblinking, and a low, rumbling growl issued from its throat.
“I ain’t kidding,” I said, a little harder and a lot louder. “I’m hungry and tired, and I ain’t got time to pussyfoot around with no wild animal. Now get.”
It yawned and flicked its tongue out, flashing sharp, white fangs. In a flash, it reared around and leapt into the forest, its exit far quieter than its entrance.
I slowly lowered my gun and fixed my gaze to the spot where it’d di
sappeared. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it’d wanted me to know it was out there, stalking me through the dead leaves. But that couldn’t be right, could it? A painter following prey was deadly quiet, about the most dangerous predator there was.
And this’un stepped out and warned me it was here.
I shook my unease off and forced my feet to move steadily up the trail. No running, not with a painter in the deep wood. They liked the chase almost as much as they liked the kill.
But I could near about feel the dadgum thing watching me as I walked. By the time I reached Fame’s, cold sweat’d popped out on my skin under my jacket and the gun’s grip dug into my palm where I held it too tight.
Soon as I scrambled up the porch steps, stepped inside, and shut the door behind me, closing out the night, warmth flooded over me. Trey and Gentry was on the couch in front of the TV, their eyes glued to the game they was playing. Missy was at the stove, grinning up at Fame, like as not from some fool thing he said. I fingered the ruby and gold ring strung on a chain around my neck. Was hers once, that ring. She gifted it to me not long back, told me it was mine now. Wearing it was a pure comfort, like having Missy and her strange smell hug me the way she done.
The tension drained outta me lickety split and I relaxed against the door as Trey looked up and grinned a greeting at me. Home and family. Weren’t nothing like ‘em.
Supper was rowdier’n normal. Gentry’d almost got nabbed by a stray forest ranger during a sweep of a Mary Jane field set deep in National Forest, where only satellites usually wandered. Trey ragged him about it mercilessly, not in the least hampered by Fame’s occasional, grunted censure.
During a brief lull, I caught my uncle’s eye and nodded toward the door. “You hear anything about chickens going missing?”
He rested them wild blue eyes of his on me. “Not a word. Who’s been hit?”
“Jazz and BobbiJean. Speaking of, I need a quart, if it’s ok. Retail price as it’s a gift.”
