by Chris Lowry
Who knows, he might have even liked our conversation.
I nodded.
It was a very cowboy thing to do.
Then I was out in the space between the railcars and forced the door open.
We were humming along at sixty miles per hour, which would have been scary if I didn’t have magic to break my fall. I didn’t think twice before jumping.
If I had, the fear might have stopped me.
Then I flicked my fingers and came to a running landing that left me up to my ankles in muck.
Magic. Good for jumping from moving trains.
Not so much on finding the right place to land.
Elvis floated next to me, feet out of the mud and water.
“Smooth move ex-lax,” he curled his lip.
“I don’t think that was a song of his.”
“If it wasn’t it should have been.”
His eyes scanned the horizon and I followed his look. A soft orange glow indicated where something bad was going down.
“We could just poof over,” he suggested.
But that didn’t sound like the right thing to do.
You don’t just appear in the middle of a spell. You could disrupt it, or worse. I mean, I’m not saying that’s how I turned twelve demons of the zodiac loose on the world, but mistakes were made.
Still, if we were running, at least I could make it solid ground.
I shot a finger at the mud and froze it all the way to where the earth was dry and hard.
Then it took me two minutes to pry my feet out of the ice.
Elvis tried not to laugh while I grumbled.
He wasn’t very good at it.
CHAPTER FOUR
There were legends of about young black men selling their souls to the devil so they could learn how to play the blues in Mississippi.
But those legends had a genesis in reality.
Except it wasn’t the devil, it was a black magic woman, an old hoo doo priestess run out of New Orleans by Marie Laveau a few hundred years ago.
She ran far enough away to be safe and start up with a new community in the cotton fields close to the big muddy river.
I could feel it as we jumped off the moving train.
A leyline ran through here, north to Memphis. Scientists called it the New Madrid fault, because their logical minds couldn’t wrap around magic.
Tell them about atoms and they would salivate.
Give them a conversation about quarks and they would dry hump an encyclopedia about the so small sparks of life that made up atoms, the tiniest piece of matter that we could measure.
Mention magic and all that good will energy would evaporate like a raindrop on the dry Delta soil.
Scientists didn’t believe in magic.
They needed facts.
Give them a fact that a leyline was a magnetic river of energy from where the Teutonic plates shifted together and they would accept one part of the equation and dismiss you as an idiot with the other.
“You feel it?” Elvis shivered next to me.
I told myself ghosts didn’t shiver. Nothing to be afraid of once you’re dead.
Didn’t change the fact that his moaning voice sounded scared.
I wasn’t going to ignore what was in front of me. I’m no scientist.
“It’s bad. Can you tell what it is?”
He shook his head and had to repeat it when I looked over because I didn’t hear him answer.
“There’s history here,” he told me. “Watchers.”
He was my Watcher from Memphis, at least until I got him killed. Funny thing about his ghost was another fact I couldn’t miss. Most ghosts who die traumatic deaths get tethered to a house, to a grave.
This man was killed by magic and the trauma tethered him to me.
It told me a little something about the way he died.
He had been thinking of me.
Cursing my name.
Not a great way to die.
And for me, not a great way to live. I had to do all my business with the ghost of an Elvis impersonator running color commentary.
It’s nice to hear the word “Impressive” when you go to the bathroom for the first time, not so much when he makes fun of you for sitting down to pee.
I watched the watcher’s face crinkle in concentration.
Another side effect of being dead was memory loss.
I figured it was the way of the dead moving on, forgetting about their life on this plane as they shift to the next.
For a ghost who made his living through knowledge, it was hell.
Or purgatory, since he was tied to me and I needed what he knew.
And he would have to watch me replace him, watch another Watcher take his place. It wasn’t going to be fun or easy for both of us.
“A witch,” he said and I tensed up.
Couldn’t be one of the twelve I was chasing, since that was a new phenomenon, but he also said it like it was something I should have been familiar with.
“Which witch?”
He curled his upper lip.
“I told you about her, but you haven’t been here.”
Elvis told me a lot.
Even as a Watcher, he was also my friend. One of my only friends.
Alright, my only friend. I’m not a loser, just a little older than most of the people around me.
And more interested in magic than I am in whatever passes for news.
Or more interested in protecting people from bad magic, since that was my job.
With the occasional wit pro thrown in.
But if he told me about a river witch in the cotton fields, she wasn’t doing enough bad magic to get my attention.
Until now.
There was a shield across the leyline.
A dome of energy designed to mask, diffuse and redirect anything that happened inside.
“Crap,” I sighed.
The River Witch was not the old crone image I had built up in my mind. She was gorgeous, and powerful and right in the middle of sex magic, riding on top of a young black man lying in the dirt, a grimace of agony on his face, one hand gripping a battered blues guitar.
Sex magic was some of the most powerful magic in the land.
It also sent a small surge of jealousy through my gut because it had been awhile since anyone had pulled a pony trick on me.
The man was screaming, but it wasn’t in pleasure.
That kind of magic pulls out the lifeforce.
Maybe even pulled it out through his dingus, hence the open mouth and thrown back head.
“You think that’s why most blues players are so unlucky?” I asked the ghost as we approached the shimmering dome of energy. “They give up their life so they can get famous playing guitar.”
“My namesake came to this crossroads,” he told me. “I think he ended up being lucky.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But he did die young. And his career flamed out when he went into the army.”
Elvis punched my shoulder, but all I felt was a cold shiver run across my spine.
“He still had the gift, even if he was in a tank in Germany.”
“Then why the comeback special?”
“It’s all about marketing Marshal.”
I tapped on the energy field and got a startled look from the witch.
Can’t say that I blamed her. I would have been a little perturbed from coitus interruptus as well.
She flashed a hungry smile and held up one finger to tell me to wait a minute.
“Guess this is where the line starts.”
“This is bad magic,” Elvis told me. “And if she’s expecting more to show up, then she’s got a plan.”
Was that it?
Were the witches in my territory emboldened by the screw up in Memphis? I was going to have to come up with a great wrestling name for it because referring to it as a screw up would just mess with my good luck magic further down the line.
You can’t have negative vibes floating out ther
e because they tend to attach to something and come back to haunt you.
The power of positive thinking is literally a thing.
Quantum physics is magic, and that’s just how it works.
“What about Memphis Meltdown?” I said out loud as I pulled aside my coat.
“For what?” the ghost asked. “You might want to wait for that.”
“Naming the ritual in Memphis?”
“Showing your badge?”
“Why?”
The ghost nodded to the witch.
“See what she’s on?”
The black magic woman saw the badge I kept clipped to my belt and her eyes started to glow yellow.
“Dang, I see it now. You couldn’t point that out before?”
“Hello, naked woman doing the nasty,” said the ghost. “I didn’t notice.”
“Ghosts don’t care about that,” I said.
The witch stood up off the writhing naked man on the ground.
He rolled over on his side and curled in a fetal ball around the guitar.
Poor fellow did not look happy. He looked like he hurt, and bit off a little more than he could handle.
“Maybe other ghosts,” said Elvis. “But I am a connoisseur of beautiful women. The Latin lover in me cannot help it.”
She was gorgeous, even with yellow eyes. Muscular, shapely body standing in the dusty Mississippi topsoil, nothing hidden from our eyes.
“Okay Latin lover,” I redirected him. “What’s the symbol?”
“All magic has a toll, Marshal,” he quirked up an eyebrow, waiting for me to get it.
I didn’t.
I blame the naked woman.
She was very distracting.
“What always requires a toll?” Elvis asked, trying to keep exasperation from his voice and failing.
Crap.
There was one creature who loved a toll more than the expressway authority that liked to charge twenty five cents a mile on toll roads.
“Damn it.”
“Yep,” Elvis agreed.
The witch threw back her head and howled.
Then we felt it.
Even over the hum of the Leyline that ran all the way up to New Madrid.
Footsteps.
Giant pounding footsteps.
Coming closer.
And then they were there.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Hey man, is this the line for the lady?” A voice sounded behind us.
I’d like to say only the ghost screamed.
I’d like to say only the ghost jumped, bounced off the energy field and tried to keep from firing off a magic spell at the obvious human standing behind us, holding a guitar in both hands.
Let’s just say I said it, okay?
Only the ghost was scared.
Not me.
Not for that.
“What the hell did you do?” Elvis screamed.
“I shot him,” I stammered.
The ghost floated over to the prostate form on the ground and reached down to check his pulse. His fingers slipped through his neck and the body shivered.
“At least he’s not dead.”
“He snuck up on us,” I argued.
“Look-“
A giant hand whistled out of the darkness and batted me eight rows out into the cotton field.
“Out!” Elvis shouted.
“Thanks for the warning,” I rolled over and up.
A twelve foot tall Troll stood outside the energy field and stared at the unconscious man in the dirt. He lifted up a five foot long foot and prepared to squash him like a bug.
I winged a spell at his big toe, the zap lifted him up and knocked him back on his posterior with a puff of crunching dirt.
The Troll howled.
“You didn’t tell me there was a Troll in my territory,” I shouted as I shoved aside the cotton plants and made my way back toward the crossroads.
“I didn’t know,” Elvis floated to meet me halfway, the tether making his job of finding me easy.
“How do you not know a twelve foot creature is living around here?”
The Troll rolled over to his scabby knees and made its way to wobbly feet.
I grabbed the next in line guy and dragged him on the other side of the shield, trying to keep him out of harm’s way.
The witch was inside the protective dome pointing and laughing.
I could see the other guy still curled around his guitar and crying.
Guess he didn’t like the price he paid for greatness.
The Troll started stomping back toward the crossroad.
“How’s she planning to give the magic to the Troll?” I circled around the dome and tried to think about taking it out.
They are nigh on impervious.
Magic affects them, but it has to be just right.
Just right everything.
Right spot, right spell, right time.
Trolls are magic creatures themselves, and normally belong on the other side of the veil. The Sidhe used them a lot in the War.
And abandoned them over here when they lost.
Most people think of Trolls as big dumb lumbering idiots.
Those people end up dead quick.
Trolls are smart, some of the smartest in Fae. They just look dumb. It’s the size, and their faces, and the perpetual look of befuddlement that is their bone structure.
But they can outthink most humans on any given day, and the fact that this one was still around eighty years after the War ended meant he was as intelligent as they get.
One sign of intelligence was finding a partner.
Like a black magic woman stuck in a backwater community on the edge of the Mississippi.
I tried to think about a bridge close by.
One thing about Trolls is they have to have a bridge.
Over troubled water, over gorges, over canyon or dell. It’s part of their make up, like a dragon drawn to greed.
Did the train rumble over a bridge while I was conversing with the vampire?
The Troll roared and rushed me.
“Eeep!” Elvis shrieked.
I wasn’t too worried. Trolls are big and twelve feet tall was twice my height. It meant he could cover ground fast, but not as fast as a scared man can move.
I hightailed it back the other direction with a plan to rope a dope him until he was worn out, then maybe blast him in the eye with an icepick spell.
I did remember a bridge. A change in the rumble on the tracks. A large creek a mile or so away, over a creek or bayou.
It must have been his home.
I wondered how many runaways had disappeared around here. How many hobos riding the rails never made it through.
I should have been paying better attention.
Because I didn’t hear the Troll running behind me.
By the time it registered, I smacked into a leg that felt like tree bark.
Smart Troll.
Stopped running and waited for me to make the circle.
Dumb Marshal. Should have kept my head in the game.
It reached down with massive fingers and grabbed one arm to lift me up. It grabbed a dangling leg in the other and held me parallel to the ground, started pulling like a kid with a wishbone.
It smiled, and drooled and I could see yellow eyes the same color as the witches as it pulled me up level with its nose to watch my final seconds.
CHAPTER SIX
People can’t see ghosts.
Because most people don’t have magic. Mediums can because that is their special power. Some witches can. Depends on the spell and their particular brand of magic faith.
As in, believe you can see a ghost strong enough, the power manifests like that.
Cats can see ghosts.
All cats.
Which is why they are magic.
And of course other magical creatures can see ghosts.
Like Trolls.
Elvis used the tether to catapult himself right into the Trolls face, a screa
ming banshee of physical ineffectiveness.
But the Troll didn’t know that.
It let go of my arm to bat away the spirt wailing and whipping around its eyes, jabbing spiritual hands toward unprotected yellow eyes.
Then it dropped me.
Headfirst into the hard Mississippi dirt.
Lucky me, I rolled at the last minute and just did a backflop into the dust. Not even a cotton plant to break my fall.
Like landing on dirty concrete.
I lay there flopping for a second, trying to find the wind that was knocked out of me.
Then I heard the witch screaming.
The power of the soundproof energy dome was dissipating as she yelled at the Troll.
Something about “Get him!” or “Squish him!”
I didn’t wait to find out which.
Even though I couldn’t get up, I could wiggle my finger. It was enough to focus my mind and zap us away.
I’m not strong enough to go far.
The Judge can move us anywhere across the globe. My wife and her sister could move us a couple thousand miles.
I made it two hundred yards and poofed back into the dirt, still not breathing.
Elvis got dragged through the air by the tether, his scream making a doppler effect in the still night.
He was smart enough to shut up when he stopped, and floated in the dark above my head.
“You okay?” he whispered.
I moved my mouth like a fish, but no sound came out.
“I thought he was going to split you in half,” said Elvis.
He folded his legs into a lotus yoga pose and sat in the air just over me. I didn’t appreciate the view.
But I couldn’t say anything until my diaphragm stopped making spasms.
When it did, I rolled over and shoved myself to my knees to peer over the tops of the cotton plants.
“How long was I down?” It took a couple of breaths just to get the question out.
“Twenty minutes,” he told me. “Not that ghosts can tell time. We don’t need to, you know. Time for us is just a drop of forever.”
“Don’t get philosophical,” I warned him.
That took a few more breaths.
The Troll and Witch must have thought we left.
They could have figured we were coming back, because she was in the middle of completing the ritual with the large creature, foregoing the second man still unconscious off to the side.
