by Anna Roberts
“Present company excepted, I hope,” said Grayson, in the vague way that Joe had come to learn meant his attention was elsewhere. Joe turned to see Grayson flicking through a deck of cards next to a heavily scented candle and a bottle of some mean-looking liquor that smelled of aniseed.
“Thoth tarot,” Grayson murmured. “Designed by a follower of Aleister Crowley’s when he was running a sex cult in Palermo. I always liked the Art Nouveau style, didn’t you?”
“They’re my daughter’s,” said Barb.
“And the absinthe?”
“What are you? DEA?”
“No. Just curious.”
“You’ll have to excuse him, Barb,” said Charlie. “He’s curious about most things, except for vaginas.” He nudged Grayson in the back. “Come on, Curious George. Let’s go look for fascinating shit in the darkened woods. Hey, maybe we’ll die. That’ll be interesting, won’t it?”
Grayson ignored him and peered at nearby photo. It was of a young girl sitting on the tailgate of a pickup. She had the same eyes and the same stripy hillbilly highlights as Barb.
“She’s at work,” said Barb. “Safe. Don’t worry about her; just find my nephews. And Mike.”
They headed out, first along the disputed perimeter, where Charlie shone a flashlight down into the hole. The deer skull was still there, and there was no question that it had been placed there on purpose. The bone had been boiled clean and white and still held a faint tang of vinegar, making Joe shudder. If the stories he’d heard about the Okefenokee packs were true then Barb was lucky it was only a deer skull.
“You smell anything?” asked Charlie.
“No,” said Joe, although that wasn’t strictly true. He smelled everything, too many dead things to make out one from the other. Squirrel, deer, python and gator, everything that had recently died teeming with huge, pullulating colonies of bugs and flies and hungry things that were steadily reducing them to bone and mulch. The stink of the wet earth alone was enough to make his head spin, never mind the multiple scents of the different species of sweating leaves.
“What about you?” said Charlie, turning to Grayson. “You hear anything?”
“Charming. So you basically dragged both of us out here to act as cadaver dogs, is that it?”
“Well, I didn’t drag you out here for art appreciation,” said Charlie. “Seriously, what the fuck was that back there? Art Nouveau?”
“It was interesting. The daughter sounds like she might be a little bit witchy.”
Joe gave Grayson a sidelong look. “Are you kidding? I thought you said most of them were frauds these days.”
“They are.”
“But I’m guessing that’s not gonna stop you from glomming on every basic bitch with an astrological tattoo,” said Charlie. “Give it up, Grayson. Even if you did find a wolf witch, Reese would probably piss on the idea.”
Grayson sighed. “Yeah. You’re right.”
“You know I’m right. Besides, it’s like Barb says – there’s only one wolf witch with the kind of ju-ju you’d need to keep swamp wolves in line, and she’s not some teenager with a deck of tarot cards and a couple of Yankee Candles.”
“Wait,” said Joe. He caught the whiff of something synthetic, standing out stark against the carnival of rot. Wax and perfume, cinnamon oil. He started walking.
“What is it?” said Charlie, hurrying to keep pace.
“I think it’s a Yankee Candle.”
As he followed the scent other notes joined it, leather and dust and jasmine, a whisper of anise. He kept walking, the gift still new enough to surprise him. He knew what he was smelling but the canine part of his brain that understood it didn’t have words for it, and for some reason the connection between dog-brain and his brain had always been spotty. The word for what he was smelling was stuck inside his throat, but his sense of smell sketched out the lines of it, understood where each scent fit on the diagram – mud here, dust there, leather and oil.
When laid eyes on the thing his human brain understood at once. “Pickup truck,” he said, unable to keep the note of triumph out of his voice.
The others were less impressed. “Oh shit,” said Charlie.
“Isn’t that...?”
“Yep. The daughter’s.”
“She’s alive,” said Joe, catching the scent of jasmine, wound like a chill, sweet ribbon between the trees. He smelled girlish sweat and young blood, the clean, fast-flowing kind. Somewhere out there in the heaving sea of life and death, he smelled spilled blood, old blood, mingled with earth, but the scent of the girl was blinding. He stumbled forwards into the darkness.
She was standing maybe ten feet from the truck, straining her ears over the chorus of insects. When she saw them she let out a short yelp of fear and whipped out a short-nosed pistol.
Charlie held up his hands. “It’s okay. It’s me, Charlie. Remember me?”
Sarah-Lou narrowed her eyes. “No,” she said. She didn’t lower her weapon.
“Seriously, we’re not swamp wolves,” said Charlie, giving her a grin. He waved his hands. “Count the fingers.”
The girl’s expression thawed maybe half a degree. “Did my mom send you?”
“Yeah, although she thought you were at work.”
Sarah-Lou lowered the pistol. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t in the mood for it,” she said. “Got a lot on my mind.”
“We hear ya,” said Charlie. “This is Big Joe and this here is The Ghost Whisperer. And yeah, I know – his titties are a lot smaller than they look on TV.”
“You should go home,” said Joe. “It’s not safe out here.”
Sarah-Lou’s head whipped around. “You hear that?”
“No.”
She had that intent look again, the one she’d worn before she realized she was no longer alone. “Daddy?” she said.
Joe listened, but he could hear nothing but the sounds of the woods. He glanced over at Charlie, who shook his head, puzzled.
“He’s calling me!” said Sarah-Lou. “Why can’t you hear him?”
Joe turned back to look at Grayson, and the appalled look on the older man’s face told him exactly why; Grayson could only hear the thoughts of people who no longer had a pulse. Of all the times to stumble over a girl with genuine gifts.
“Okay,” said Grayson, hurrying to her side. “Why don’t we back to the trailer and wait with your mother. She’s all on her own and - ”
“ - what do you mean? You can hear him, can’t you? Don’t tell me you can’t – I can see it on your face.”
A breeze sent the smell screaming Joe’s way, that spilled, spoiled blood smell that the girl had almost drowned out. The scent of her panic was sharp musk, spiking under his nose, but now that the mud-blood-scream smell was there he couldn’t ignore it. Out of all the smells of death in the forest, this one rang out loud and clear.
Joe took off through the trees, Charlie following, cursing as he stumbled over roots and vines. In the growing distance Joe could hear Grayson trying to persuade Sarah-Lou to turn back without telling her exactly what he was trying to prevent her from seeing.
“What the fuck, man?” said Charlie, his breath rasping now. “What is it?”
“Give me the light,” said Joe, and shone the flashlight at his feet. On the ground was a biker kutte – Los Lobos, St. Augustine – the kind that bikers insisted on being buried in.
“Oh fuck,” said Charlie.
Joe kept moving. He knew now why he hadn’t smelled it – the usual rank sweetness of organs bloating in the heat. There was just blood and meat, a clean, abattoir smell like that of the lamb carcasses they hung in the basement every full moon. The ground below his feet was black with blood.
Charlie saw it first. “Look up,” he said, in a voice like he was trying to told everything down.
Joe looked up. He understood exactly what he was looking at, but his brain didn’t want to parse it and for a moment he just stared at the white things – one, two, three – hanging from the trees ab
ove. They were the wrong way up, and none of them had heads or arms. One was turned in a way that Joe could see the body was slit neatly from crotch to neck, everything scooped out, field dressed.
The letters swayed before his eyes, upside down and incomprehensible, but he knew what they said, Old English letters in black on morgue-white skin.
LOS LOBOS
ST. AUGUSTINE
“Oh my God,” he said. His face felt cold and numb, his guts scooped as hollow as the men hanging above him. He could hear Charlie’s ragged, tobacco stained breaths just beyond his ear.
“Run,” Charlie said.
*
It was over an hour before Charlie’s hands stopped shaking, but when he lifted the glass to his lips his teeth still clinked against it. He screwed up his nose and threw it back all the same.
“Jesus. That’s fucking terrible.”
“It’s Laphroaig, you peasant,” said Grayson. “If you wanted that sickly rye muck you should have taken a belt out of your hip flask there.”
“It’s empty,” said Charlie, and tucked the flask – that had been peeking over the pocket of his jeans – back out of sight.
“Yay. So you decided to get boozed up before taking us out on set at the reality show remake of Cannibal Holocaust?”
Charlie glared down at him. “You’re a prick,” he said.
“It’s been said, yes.”
“You didn’t even see it, Luke. Tell him, Joe. Tell him just how fucked-up that was out there, willya?”
Joe swallowed and shifted on the couch, his empty stomach still making unpleasant roiling noises. “It was bad,” he said, not wanting to go into further detail.
Charlie continued to pace back and forth across Grayson’s living room. His usual nervous energy had been cranked up to such levels that Joe wouldn’t have been surprised to see his feet striking sparks on the rug. Outside it had started to rain, but it wasn’t enough to wash away the smell still poking like a finger at the back of Joe’s gag reflex. Human bodies were never, ever supposed to smell like that. Like food.
“Look,” said Grayson. “I understand you’ve had a shock, Charlie, but what are we going to do?”
“About? What are you talking about? We’re just gonna stuff their guts back in and put their heads back on – wherever they are – and everything’s gonna be hunky-fucking-dory?”
“About Reese, Charlie. If they did that to Mike then what are they going to do to him?”
Charlie stopped pacing and raked a hand through his hair. “I guess we could always hope they’re watching their cholesterol?”
Grayson stared at him in disbelief. “Now? Really?”
“I’m sorry. That was - ”
“ - uncalled for? Tasteless?” Grayson got up from the couch. “Godmotherfucking dammit, Charlie – now you make fat jokes?”
“It’s a coping thing, I guess.”
“No, really. Fucking carry on,” said Grayson. “Laugh it up. Hit me with a gay joke, why don’t you? I haven’t heard one of those for over an hour.”
Charlie sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”
Grayson covered his hand with his mouth. “Watching their cholesterol,” he muttered, trying to sound appropriately disgusted, but they were all full of fear and adrenaline, in that state where emotions could lurch off into all kinds of unexpected directions. Grayson snorted into his hand and then Charlie started to laugh, and then Joe couldn’t help it – laughter felt so much better than sitting silent and scared out of his mind.
They were still laughing like fools when there was a knock at the door, and that wiped the smiles off their faces in a second.
“Oh God,” said Grayson.
Charlie picked up his gun from the coffee table. “Relax. Swamp wolves don’t generally knock.”
“Maybe they read Emily Post,” said Grayson, but the moment was gone.
The knock came again, this time someone hammering away at the wrought iron knocker like they were trying to put a dent in the door. The rain was a full-throated roar now, drowning out the voice on the outside.
“Charlie! Charlie!”
It was Reese. Charlie tucked the gun away and opened the door. Reese almost fell through it, seal-like with his hair plastered to his skull and his black t-shirt clinging to his rolls.
“What are you doing here?” said Charlie.
Reese sniffled. He was crying, but it had been hard to tell; he was soaked to the bone. He wiped his nose on the back of his arm, but his arm was no drier than the rest of him. When he spoke it came out in a high-pitched, run-on whine.
“...deerskullonthedoorstepdidyoubecauseitsnotfuckingfunny, Charlie...”
“Wait. Slow down. There was a deer skull?”
Reese nodded.
“On the doorstep? Of the apartment?”
“Yes! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Okay,” said Charlie. “I don’t want you to freak out, Reese. Listen to me. Do not freak out, because it won’t help, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“They killed Mike. He’s dead.”
Reese made a frightened squeaky sound in the back of his throat.
“I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, Reese,” said Charlie. “This is kinda on you, okay?”
The kid nodded, sobbing.
“Islamorada,” said Grayson. “We have to go. Barb said so – there’s only two people, and one’s dead.”
“Gloria,” said Charlie.
Reese sniffed hard and shook his head. “The witch?”
“Take it or leave it, kid,” said Charlie. “Because he’s right. Barb’s right. Islamorada sounds like a very smart decision right now, and if you’re not on board then tough shit, because I am outta here.”
“No,” said Reese. “No, I’ll go. I want to go. Let me come with you. Don’t leave me here, Charlie. You can’t leave me here.”
“I can and I will.”
“You can’t,” said Reese, and somewhere under all the flesh and the rain and the fear was a glimmer of the same hard, horrible substance that was at least half of him. The Lyle half. “If you leave me,” he said. “I will have you fucking killed.”
Charlie took in stride, like he put up with this shit all the time. “Whatever,” he said. “You’re down three men already. Did I mention they got Barb’s nephews? Now get your shit. We’re going south.”
18
The music droned on, simple rhymes and the same four chords. The rattly old AC might have drowned it out, but Gloria was sleeping and Blue had turned it off. She and Axl sat sweltering in the heat of the kitchen, their fingertips already sweating on top of a shot glass.
The only spirits at hand were in the bottle on the kitchen sideboard.
“What’s your name?” said Axl. The glass didn’t move. He sighed.
Blue tried to concentrate on how her first two fingers felt on the glass. Like there should be some kind of conduit there, some sort of power moving the thing along. She’d heard about this somewhere, how the tiniest of muscular movements on the part of the sitters could move a planchette or tip a table, without anyone involved ever realizing that they were the ones moving it. She gave the glass a small, deliberate nudge and then almost jumped back in surprise.
It was moving.
“You’re kidding me,” she said.
“Don’t stop,” said Axl. “Let’s see.” He asked again. “Hey, Barkslob – is that you, man?”
The glass moved like it was oiled; it was the weirdest thing. It landed on NO.
Axl raised his eyebrows. “Okay,” he said. “So what is your name?”
And just like that the glass was in motion again. S-A-T-A-N.
“You’re moving it,” said Blue.
“No, you are.”
“I’m not,” she said, and came clean. “Okay, I gave it a little shove to get it started. But after that...”
“You’re doing it wrong,” said Axl. “Don’t push this time, okay? Otherwise what’s the point?”
“I tho
ught you said it was bullshit.”
“It is. But that’s no reason to cheat.”
She wanted to say that she didn’t think they should be doing this, but that was ridiculous. She was the adult here, and she needed to keep him entertained somehow; she knew that she couldn’t compete with porn and texting and the endless round-the-clock drama of high school and adolescence. Sooner or later one of his friends was going to message him with Facebook gossip or the promise of weed, and then she would really be in trouble. It was bad enough she had failed to successfully baby-sit an elderly lady with dementia; she couldn’t afford to mess this up as well.
“Well, your name’s not Satan,” she told the Ouija board. “So let’s try this again, shall we?”
This time it went to C. Then A. Axl frowned as it went to P and she watched his expression carefully, waiting for him to laugh as the board spelled out CAPTAIN and moved on to HOW.
“Very funny,” said Blue, as the glass moved to D and then stilled on Y.
“Captain Howdy?”
“So,” she said, taking her fingers from the glass. “When did you see The Exorcist, and more importantly, who let you?”
“I never saw it,” said Axl.
“Sure you haven’t.”
“I’m serious. I looked up some of it on YouTube but it looked retarded. Like, what’s so scary about some kid squirting pea soup out of her mouth?”
“It’s a classic, actually,” said Blue, feeling so much older than twenty-two.
“Whatever. The only really good part was when she told the priest that his mother suck - ”
“ - okay, yes. Thank you. I have seen it.”
Axl gurgled with gleeful laughter. “‘Your mother sucks cocks in hell, Karras!’”
“Yeah, that’s enough.”
They were still singing out there. The heat only increased the monotony. Every now and again some bright burst of holy gibberish would rise above the strumming as someone else received the spirit. Blue had to wonder how smart it was to hang around a house like this inviting spirits to invade your body. How did you know which spirit was the holy one until it was inside you? And if it was of the unholy variety, how did you get it out?
