by Peter Nealen
There are those who would question the fact that I shot her without saying anything. They don’t understand the seriousness of the situation. The Otherworld is dangerous. The Abyss is infinitely worse. There is no room for screwing around when a summoning is happening.
Or has happened. The Senator’s body hitting the grass didn’t let down her sacrificial victim. He still hovered in the air, bound with the unnatural cords, his eyes still rolled back in his head. Only now his head lolled around to stare at me with unseeing eyes. “Too…late…” croaked out of his open mouth, without any movement of his lips or jaws. “Mine…now…”
I levered another round into the Winchester’s chamber, and leveled the gold bead sight on his heart, reciting a prayer of exorcism. The body jerked and danced like a puppet, but did not lower, and the black tendrils only tightened. “No…mine…”
“Go back where you came from,” I demanded. “Or I’ll send you there with a quickness, and it’ll hurt a lot more.” I didn’t really want to shoot the poor sucker who was the chosen vessel for this thing, but if that was the way to keep the demon in the Abyss, you’d better believe I’d drop the hammer on him.
Of course, the security detail chose that moment to come racing around the corner in response to the gunshot.
The first guy skidded to a stop in shock, his Glock held out in front of him but completely forgotten as he stared at the young man floating in the air over the table. The victim’s head swiveled around unnaturally quickly—and further around than a human head should be able to—to face him. A thick tendril of the same spiky, oily black smoke-stuff that was bound around the young man shot out of the open mouth like a tongue, and wrapped around the guard’s neck.
No choice. I fired, smashing another huge, silver-jacketed bullet through the boy’s heart.
Now, there was a fifty-fifty chance that things had progressed far enough that the thing didn’t need a living body to possess. That’s rare, but it does happen. I’d never seen it, at least not up to that point. With an unearthly scream that had the guards falling on their hands and knees, vomiting, the unnatural cords evaporated, and the corpse fell to the tabletop with a sickening dead-meat noise.
The guard who had been attacked was insensate, staring up at the sky. He was still breathing, but he wouldn’t come out of his shock for a long time. I suspected that when he did, he wouldn’t be entirely whole anymore. The others were starting to pick themselves up, shaking, wondering what the hell had just happened.
By the time they looked around, I’d scooped up my shell casings and was gone.
Chapter 2
When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them that I’m a “paranormal investigator.” It’s not all that far off from the truth, and most of the time it gets me the poorly-disguised rolled eyes and dismissal that I’m looking for. There are reasons why those in my profession work in the shadows.
Contrary to popular belief, the Otherworld is real. It isn’t so much on the other side of some veil as it is just out of sight. If you’ve ever thought you’ve seen something move out of the corner of your eye, and you look real quick, to see that there’s nothing there, you’ve caught a glimpse of it.
Don’t try to get a better look. Trust me.
While there are exceptions, most of the Otherworld is downright predatory, albeit in different ways. And where I do business, those predators like to come out and play.
See, I’m a Witch Hunter. No, not like Hansel and Gretel in that movie. I actually know how to use a gun. Not like the scary Inquisitor in various other forms of fiction, either. I don’t have that kind of pull, anywhere. People like me have to work in the darkness, largely because the bulk of the Western world has closed its eyes to the existence of the things lurking in that darkness, that would likely freeze your blood, just before they ripped your spine out through your mouth.
Now, I said “Witch Hunter,” not “Otherworld beastie hunter.” That’s because there are worse things out there than the denizens of the Otherworld. The Otherworld may be predatory, for the most part, but it’s rarely actively evil, at least any more than a lion is evil for chomping on a gazelle. The truly evil things dwell in the Abyss.
The Abyss. Hell. Tartarus. Gehenna. There are a thousand names besides. Calling it a place is disingenuous. It’s a place, a time, a state of existence. It’s indefinable by anything you or I could understand. It’s where the demons are. And sometimes, it can be accessed, if you’re looking hard enough. The things there aren’t going to stop you or discourage you. They want you to reach out to them. That’s how they get you.
It’s as hard to get to as it is because it isn’t a dwelling so much as a prison, meant to keep them from their prey. We are their prey. But there’s always some idiot, either through lust for power, desperation, deception, or foolish curiosity, who is going to try to talk to the things over there. And that’s where we have to step in.
You see, those things can do enough damage from inside their prison. They can get into people’s heads and twist their minds away from the good and into the worst kinds of evil and degradation. But if one of them gets out, and into our world…Katie bar the door, because a lot of people are screwed. That’s what makes witchcraft so dangerous and the necessary response to it so harsh. It ain’t just your soul on the line. It’s quite possibly everybody within the county or beyond, depending on what you just called up. These buggers can be nasty.
So a handful of us live a lonely, wandering, often short life hunting the things that go bump in the night and stopping the people who would call up things that would swallow everyone’s soul whole if they got the chance. It can get rough, but it’s not something I can turn my back on, now that I’m aware of it all.
I sleep in my truck a lot.
The stipend we get from the Church isn’t large. I know there are a lot of clergy who don’t even want us to exist, a lot who would condemn us if they even knew we existed. They’re a lot like the rest of their flock; they’d rather not see the dark side of reality. What we get paid has to be small, largely to keep our operations below the radar. It’s enough to keep me in gas, food, and ammo, and every once in a while I get to pay for a hotel room.
It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ve got a nice shell on my truck bed, and I’ve made the bed into as good a camper as I can think of. I get to spend a lot of my time outside. It’s a decent life, in spite of the horror I have to confront as a regular part of my profession.
In fact, I was nice and passed out, half in my sleeping bag, lost in the really pretty comfortable mattress, when somebody hit me in the ribs with a ball-peen hammer.
At least that’s what it felt like. I was immediately awake, my .45 in my hand, looking for my attacker. When I saw him, I blew out an angry breath. “Damn it, Mickey,” I snarled. “One of these days…”
Mickey sneered. “What? You’ll beat me up? You’ll never be fast enough.”
I glared at him. “You may be quick,” I told him ominously, leveling the pistol at him, “but my bullets are faster.”
Mickey lost the sneer, searching my face to see if I was serious. Having been just awoken by one of his iron-hard fists in my ribs, I was actually pretty serious. And given that Mickey was a leprechaun, it wasn’t as though anybody was going to be asking too many questions if I did shoot him.
I didn’t particularly want to, but I had to keep Mickey in line, and the only real way to do that was to threaten serious physical violence. Leprechauns, being from the Otherworld, tend to be rather amoral; that’s where they get their reputation for mischief from. Mickey was no exception. His favorite game was starting bar brawls, the more vicious the better. Anything short of hitting him with a baseball bat wasn’t even going to get his attention.
After another moment, I finally lowered the 1911. Pain in the butt he might be, but Mickey was one of my better informants and messengers in the Otherworld. He was almost one of those exceptions to the rule that I mentioned.
He didn’t look like
your stereotypical leprechaun. He was dressed more like a lumberjack, in what looked like tiny Carhartt trousers, a black shirt and thick flannel. He had a face like Victor McLaglen. If you don’t know who he was, go see She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Top Sergeant Quincannon. That’s Mickey, except the Top Sergeant was a lot more personable.
“What are you doing here, Mickey?” I asked.
Apparently satisfied that I wasn’t going to blow his tennis-ball-sized head off, Mickey relaxed, perching on one of my ammo cans. “Lars sent me,” he said. “Says he needs to talk to you.”
I started pulling on my boots. “Did he say about what?” I asked.
Mickey shook his head. “Nah. Lars doesn’t particularly like talking to me anymore than he has to. He seemed kind of spooked, though. Or at least as spooked as he ever gets.”
That brought a frown. I’d known Lars for a long time. He didn’t get spooked. Ever. “Tell him I’ll be there in a few hours,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Nope.” Mickey clapped his hands and vanished. Yeah, they can do that. I’ve never quite figured out how.
I finished getting dressed, strapped on my .45, and dug out my breviary to say Lauds on the tailgate of my truck, with the Winchester close at hand. To paraphrase an old quote, I trust in the Lord God and my guns, and not much else.
Once I’d finished, and eaten a short breakfast, I fired the old beast up and was on the way.
It only took a couple of hours to get to Lars’ place. I tend to stick to back roads—no particular reason, I just prefer it. There’s something a little more peaceful in the fields and woods that you don’t find on the freeway, and I can take all the peace I can get. It can never make me forget the things I’ve seen, but it can dull the memory a little.
The afternoon clouds were starting to move in as I pulled the truck off the paved road and onto the narrow dirt access road, the aspens rising tall on either side to overshadow the road. I trundled up the road, the gravel crunching under my tires, until I came to the old barn.
DeWitt, the actual owner of the farm, was an old friend. He never objected to my coming on the land, and we’d had many a pleasant afternoon, sharing a beer or two, fishing on his pond, or just BSing while I helped out around the place. Unlike most people, DeWitt knew what I did, and he knew why I often came by the old barn.
I parked the truck and left the Winchester in the cab, though my .45 was still on my hip. It never really came off, except to sleep. I went back around to the tailgate, reached in, and pulled out a six-pack of Moose Drool brown ale. Walking over to a stump behind the old barn, I set the beer down, then walked back to my truck, leaned against the cab, and waited.
Lars may have converted to Christianity about 800 years ago, but certain traditions are always appreciated when dealing with a tomte. He gets a steady supply of milk, eggs, and other morsels from DeWitt for looking after the place, so I generally brought beer.
As usually happened, as soon as I looked away, Lars appeared at the stump. “Yed!” he boomed cheerfully, lifting one of the brown bottles out of the box. “You are a gut friend, ja! So gut of you to come so qvickly.” He pried off the bottle cap with his fingers, making it vanish who knows where, and took a long swig. “Aah!” he exclaimed, wiping his mouth with a broad, thick-fingered hand.
Lars was short, just under five feet tall, with a barrel chest and thick white hair and beard. At first glance he looked like any other farmer. Of course, I don’t know any human farmers who are over 1300 years old, have only four fingers on each hand, can vanish as soon as you look away from them, and can snap most Otherworld beasties in half with their bare hands. Lars was all of those things.
The tomte was one of those exceptions to the rule of the Otherworld, for the most part. They are guardians, usually of farms or ranches. In some places, the tomte was morphed into Santa Claus after Christianity took over. That was about the time Lars converted. He’s not Santa, no. I’m still not sure if Father Bronson knows he has an extra parishioner, considering you only ever see Lars if he wants you to see him.
In the old days, farmers left little offerings, like the beer, or the milk and eggs, so the tomte would continue to guard the farm from misfortune and not get mad and start causing mischief. Since his conversion, Lars just considered the gifts a courtesy, rather than an offering. That was why he pried the cap off another bottle and held it out to me.
“I take it Mickey found you?” he asked. After almost two centuries in the New World, he still talked with a thick Swedish accent. I was starting to suspect it was an affectation, but you never really knew with Otherworlders. Sometimes there are things about themselves they can’t change any more than a human can change his eye color.
I accepted the beer and took a sip. “He did. He found me sleeping. I just about shot him.”
Lars chuckled. “He is a scoundrel, Mickey. Dat’s vhat you should expect, tough, vorking vith a leprechaun.”
I tipped my bottle in acknowledgement of his point, then got serious. “Mickey said you were spooked,” I said. “I’ve never known anything to spook you. You’re the one guy in the Otherworld here that nobody screws with.”
He turned serious, looking down at his beer. “Dere are a few tings dat even I’m afraid of,” he said. “And a Shadowman is one of dem.”
I felt my eyebrows climbing toward my hairline. “You’re sure?” I asked quietly.
He nodded, still not looking up. “I can smell him still. I heard him pass by in de vind two nights ago.”
No wonder Lars was spooked. I’d never gone up against a Shadowman; hell, I was half convinced they were a myth. I’d heard the stories, of course. Supposedly they had once been medicine men, who had gone so far that they were halfway between the Otherworld and the Abyss by now. They weren’t ghosts, they weren’t monsters, and they weren’t demons, but somehow they managed to be scarier than either of the first two. Nobody knew much about them, since they hadn’t been encountered very often. And the most that came out of those encounters was usually vague tales of horror, fear, and the Abyss.
“Where was it going?” I asked. I had a blunt tendency to refer to most of the nasties that go bump in the night as “it” rather than “him” or “her.” Lars was used to it.
He pointed north. “Tovard Silverton,” he said.
“Oh hell,” I replied, looking up toward the mountains.
Lars nodded somberly. “Ja, I know.” He looked down at his boots. “I vish I could say I vanted to go vith you.”
I shook my head. “This is your place, Lars.” I didn’t pretend to understand the territorial intricacies of the Otherworld. I just accepted what I knew of it. This farm had been Lars’ home for well over a century. He was bound to it in a way no human farmer could ever really understand. He was bound to DeWitt and his family in a real way, as well. This farm was his place, his territory. He could no more leave it on a whim than I could start farming tomorrow. I sometimes wondered what it had taken to move him from Sweden to the New World. I didn’t ask, though. Lars wasn’t human, and had boundaries that you simply didn’t cross.
But he was still, as inhuman as he was, a decent sort, and courageous to a fault. He knew more than I did what I was about to walk into if I followed this up, and he didn’t like letting me go into it alone.
I put my hand on his shoulder. It felt like a rock. “Father Pat is up there, and so is Reverend Bob. We’ll handle things.”
Lars turned his gaze back up to the north. “I hope so,” was all he said.
“Have you gotten any other whispers about this?” I asked.
He snorted. “A Shadowman passed by. Everybody run and hide vhen dat happens. Even de hard cases don’t vant to have seen or heard anyting. It might even come after me and DeVitt, since I told you dis much.”
“I’ll do my best to keep it busy,” I told him. I tossed back the rest of the beer and shook his meaty hand. “Thanks, Lars.”
“Don’t tank me, Yed,” he said. “I don’t tink I done you any kind of
favor. I yust did vhat I should do. I don’t like it, none.”
“Don’t worry, Lars,” I said over my shoulder as I got back in my truck. “This is what I do.”
Chapter 3
Silverton. It was a tiny little town nestled in the mountains, with tall, fir-covered peaks rising all around it. An old logging town, it should have been picturesque and oozing rustic Americana. And on the surface, it was. Old brick buildings crowded the short, one stop light Main Street alongside a few old false-front style Western shops. The deeply weathered old sawmill loomed above the town, uphill at the far end of the narrow valley. It was mainly a tourist attraction now, though it still did a little business every few months. Logging hadn’t quite died out up here, though it had taken a huge hit over the years, and the town with it.
That was where the trouble started, and why I first came there. They say that “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” and in my experience there’s nowhere that is truer than in Silverton.
The first incident was before my time. It was before meth became the drug of choice up in the hills. There was weed aplenty, but that wasn’t adventurous enough for some of the kids.
It started with Ouija boards. It got worse. By the time it was over, two houses had been burned to the ground, half a dozen people were dead, at least a dozen wouldn’t ever be the same, and two kids who weren’t really human anymore had needed to die.
It hadn’t ended there, though. Something had taken up residence in and around the town. It hadn’t manifested, so no one really knew what it was. Whether it was a demon, just lying low, or a particularly nasty Otherworlder, it had led to all sorts of harrowing experiences in the decades since. Silverton was a battleground, and one I’d been to a few times. I had a few good friends there, but it still wasn’t a place I relished visiting. The scars went too deep into the place.
