The Crone's Stone

by S E Holmes

from the fact we’ve been complete brats over the years. No prizes for guessing why the judge often locked himself in his study with a bottle of brandy.”

  “The judge has no one to blame but himself! He could’ve taken up racquetball, rather than boozing and womanising with generation why-not. Hell, he could have even got ingenious and taken up parenting! I’ll never understand why he fought so hard for custody, maybe just to win, competitive wan—”

  “Moving on!” I broke in. I had sympathy for Smithy’s predicament, but this was not an opportune moment for an extended dissection of his father’s many failings.

  “Yeah, sorry. More importantly for us, my point is this: since when do you or I follow other people’s rules? I have no intention whatsoever of abandoning you. I don’t care if Satan himself orders me away. I am not going! A Warrior doesn’t stand in the distance behind the one he protects. A true Warrior stands close, in front. And that’s where I will always be.

  “And, I think you’ll find Bea, Fortescue and Mrs Paget are not going AWOL, either. They’ve put a lot of energy into securing this place. No where’s safer for you to be. This is a completely novel phase, what with Raphaela deviating from the Trinity programme and you being the Last Keeper. It we fight, and your guardians think we must eventually, we do it together.”

  His unwavering faith touched me deeply. Of course, I didn’t believe it would be so easy to contradict traditions enforced over centuries. “Thank you, Smithy.”

  He held me tight and stroked my hair. “Since I’ve banished foolish ideas of you running away, what do you want to do now?”

  “I’m going to read every single one of those histories in Bea’s study. I want their stories fresh in my mind, so I will never forget the lives the Crone has taken. She’ll pay for the loss of each of them,” I said resolutely. It was a bugger, that foolish optimism!

  Smith cleared his throat. “That’s very admirable, Bear.” He hooked a finger beneath the strap of my singlet, sliding it aside to feather his lips across my collarbone, triggering a shiver of pleasure deep inside my belly. “But I meant what would you like to do right this instant?”

  He peered up at me with a seductive glint in his opal-green eyes. I grinned and bit my lip, feigning thinking. “I’m not sure we properly investigated that new way of making a pledge without bleeding.”

  Across the world, Horace Joliet of the St Martin sheriff’s office sat alone in the dining nook of his mobile home, an empty shot glass and a quarter-full bottle of whisky in front him. His loaded police revolver rested next to the bottle, free of its holster in readiness for cleaning. Normally, he’d never have had the gun out of the safety locker with bullets in the chamber, but there was no one here now that he had to protect from an accidental shooting.

  He was not usually a drinker, but the bourbon had no effect, even though he’d lost count of how many he’d swigged. He’d left his sister, May, up at the house a few hours ago. Heavily sedated, she had finally succumbed to sleep.

  Horace unscrewed the cap on the polishing compound and poured another double nip of whisky, which he gulped half-heartedly. What was the point? His nephew, Davey, was dead and gone and no amount of alcohol-fuelled forgetting would change that. His funeral of earlier that day had passed in a blur of disbelief. The asthma that had dogged the kid throughout his childhood, but seemed to improve in adolescence, had returned with a vengeance for one final slap-down.

  The doctors were at a loss how to help him. Despite the most advanced treatments and a gargantuan effort by the emergency room staff, they’d failed. Horace would never shake that last desperate image: the medical team bustling him and May out of the way to swarm Davey where he’d lain on a narrow hospital cot, tubes snaking from his arm and oxygen prongs in his nose.

  He’d thrashed, blue and choking, his hands pawing futilely at his neck, eyes wide beyond fear. Before the doctors and nurses could react, his throat had collapsed and rejected the breathing tube with a powerful malice.

  And Horace instinctively knew the truth, his gut contorting over the knowledge. That godforsaken Baptiste place had contaminated Davey, infiltrated his system like those South American worms that penetrated flesh and ate a victim from the inside out. But he hadn’t listened when his nephew tried to broach the subject on that first day, driving back to the station from the weirdest crime scene he’d ever witnessed.

  “Did you get a feeling out there, Uncle Horace? A really bad one?”

  “It’s just a crime scene, son. You’re just a little spooked because it was so bizarre. We had to chisel three feet of concrete and use a motorised lift to get the poor woman out of her own house. And I’ll be damned if I can explain why Forensics can’t get a single photo.”

  The worst of it was that Horace had lied. In all his years investigating death and mayhem, he’d never been more unsettled, his intuition screaming to flee the Baptiste crypt and not stop running until he was several states over. But after so many mistakes and wrong turns in life – two divorces, a bankruptcy that forced him into a trailer on his sister’s farm – he no longer trusted himself and had ignored the warning. He heard it now, though. Bullhorn-loud and laughing at his arrogance.

  His head lolled and he let the grief flow, tears dripping down his nose to splash onto the formica of the scarred tabletop. It was all his fault. The kid had wanted to teach, but instead he was browbeaten into joining the force by an uncle’s pride. And the lack of an heir to carry on the policing tradition. Davey would have made a great teacher too. He had a way with youngsters and a contagious passion for history.

  Instead, like the good kid he was, he’d yielded to the emotional blackmail and joined the sheriff’s office, signing his death warrant. Horace didn’t know if he could live with the guilt. Consistent with the many poor decisions he’d made, it was too late for a bandaid fix now. The gun reflected a jaundiced lustre by lamplight. Horace reached for it, stroking his thumb across the grip. He jerked his hand away. There was no answer there!

  May had suffered enough with the early loss of her husband and now, her only son. She needed him. He sat back, disgusted in himself for the lapse. Time to brew some strong, black coffee. And then Horace realised that was the last thing Davey had brought him that awful, fateful morning. He resolved never to drink the stuff again.

  Something warm trickled down his upper lip and he swiped irritably at it with the back of his hand. His forearm came away bloodied. Squinting in surprise, pain pulsed his temple. He leaned forward to cup his fingers beneath his nostrils.

  “Ah, crap!”

  Blood pooled into his palms, both hands inadequate to capture the flow.

  Pick up the gun. Make the pain stop.

  What? He blinked repeatedly, the mild effort causing untold agony. His head felt like it was cleaving in two, vision turning red like fire-tinted cellophane over a torch. Pain wracked his flesh.

  “What the hell?” The sound of his voice sent nails through his brain.

  Shoot yourself.

  It hurt so much. Desolation was a voracious cancer eating the town these past days. Why fight it? He and his colleagues – anyone who’d set foot inside the Baptiste place – they were all dead anyway. He knew that for sure.

  The pitiful corona of the forty-watt bulb overhead seemed to highlight the blood streaming from his nose to swirl with his tears on the bench top. He lifted his arm, alarmed to discover the cotton of his shirtsleeve leaching blood that spread more red as if ink on a blotter. A river of it seeped from his pores and spilled forth over the cruddy fake marble. He grabbed his Sunday suit jacket – only the best for Davey – draping the seat next to him. Balling the coat, he mopped frantically. Blood smeared wide across the table’s surface. The gun beckoned.

  “No,” he groaned.

  He tossed the coat to the floor, dragging himself upright from his seat. If he could just make it to the phone, get away from the weapon, get someone down here. He didn’t want to die alone.

  It’s all over anyway. You’ll
bleed out, the pain will be unendurable.

  As soon as the words stained Horace’s perception, the torture coursing his body increased. He bent double on rubbery legs, gripped the edge of the table and waited for it to pass. But it would not. And beneath, in his direct line of sight, lay the gun.

  May Joliet overdosed two days after her brother was found shot dead. Horace was seated in his pressed Sunday-best suit in his pristine dining nook with no outward sign of the bloodbath ordeal of his last hours. Aside from the wall at his rear, painted by brain matter and bits of skull shattered by the close range explosion of a bullet. No one ever could have predicted that the stoic, tough, career cop, Horace Joliet, would abandon his grieving sister, to whom he was unflinchingly devoted. The poor woman had discovered her brother’s body, frozen in purpling rigor mortis. The tragedy of it even silenced exclamations of ‘I told you so’ from the gossips at the BI-LO, who’d warned repeatedly about the evil stain of that Baptiste ghost house.

  But the Crone’s wrath was not so easily sated. Her time for vengeance drew near.

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