by Robert Brown
The trick worked, and Elaine’s thoughts got derailed onto the play. She chattered away at ninety miles an hour about her role in Arsenic and Old Lace as Martha Brewster, the spinster aunt who poisons people. As she went on, Nick felt a flush of love and leaned over to kiss her forehead. She didn’t even skip a beat but squeezed her dad’s hand as she continued talking.
Nick finished his sandwich as he listened, feeling grateful, as always, for such a loving family. Elaine wasn’t going through the usual adolescent rebellion and he didn’t think she ever would. He’d heard horror stories from other parents. Some of her friends didn’t even want their parents walking next to them in the mall.
He had a good relationship with Cheryl too, despite both of them being unhappy with their jobs for very different reasons. They shared everything, supported one another, and still had a good sex life after fifteen years of marriage.
But he shouldn’t lie to himself. There was a distance between them, one that Cheryl was probably too busy to notice. His own career failings had soured their relationship, at least on his side. Between the daily rounds and job responsibilities and raising Elaine, it was easy to avoid seeing the slow corrosion. However, it was there when he chose to see it. And it was all his fault.
And now he was keeping a secret from Cheryl.
Nick sighed. Well, it wasn’t like he was cheating.
No, he was only putting himself in a huge amount of danger.
He leaned over and gave Elaine another kiss. For some reason, he felt like his time with her might be growing short.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Drunken Indian was in a dingy row of storefronts between a head shop and a strip club called Dream Cum True. Out front, the bar had one of those wooden cigar store Indians that Nick hadn’t seen since he was a kid. It was chained to the drainage pipe, probably so it wouldn’t be stolen. The bar’s one window was blacked out, and the door was a blank face of metal that vibrated with thudding rock music coming from inside.
Nick had put on faded jeans, a pair of Timberlands, and a red checkered shirt. He felt like a lumberjack and suspected he looked like a fool, but it was the least conspicuous outfit he had.
He opened the door and was gut-punched by a Ted Nugent song at full volume. Trying to ignore the assault on his ears, he looked around.
The bar was dimly lit with an eye-watering combination of red spotlights and a single strip of flickering florescent bulbs down the center. The colors reminded Nick of the morgue scenes from CSI.
A wooden bar ran along the wall to his left. The bartender leaned against it with beefy, tattooed arms. He had a buzz cut and a Marines t-shirt. As he turned to Nick, the bartender’s dark eyes narrowed. At the bar, a few older men were sitting in a row, all drinking alone.
The rest of the bar wasn’t much bigger than Nick’s living room. Five or six small round tables were mostly taken by loud crowds of drinkers. A jukebox sat against the far wall, under a photo of Geronimo kneeling with a rifle in his hand. His look was no friendlier than the bartender’s. Other images of Indians, mostly getting slaughtered by cowboys or the cavalry, adorned the rest of the walls.
Several people turned their heads to look at him, suddenly reminding Nick that he was standing in the doorway like an idiot. He closed the door behind him and moved slowly to the bar, looking around, hoping to see a familiar face.
Instead, he spotted the only woman in the place. She wore a halter top and tight jean shorts that showed off a curvy body barely past adolescence. She would have looked nice sitting in the front row of one of his anthropology lectures. To Nick’s astonishment, the woman waved at him.
He looked away, embarrassed.
“Hey, Professor!”
He turned back. That had been Trisha’s voice.
Sure enough, it was Trisha in the halter top and jean shorts. His gaze had never gotten farther up than her tits. She waved. Clayton sat next to her and raised his beer in greeting. Matt was also at the table, along with four other men whom Nick didn’t recognize. To his surprise, one was black. A whole table of black men was in the far corner as well.
Nick hurried over to his acquaintances, relieved to see someone familiar in this place.
“Aren’t you drinking, Professor?” Matt asked.
“Oh, right. Yeah. Just wanted to see if anyone needed anything.”
“Get me a Sex on the Beach,” Trisha said, smiling at him.
“Um … right.”
He went to the bar. The bartender hadn’t changed his expression.
“What kind of beer do you have?”
“Bud.”
“Anything else?”
“You want Samuel Adams, you need to go to one of the college joints on the other side of town.”
That came out as a suggestion.
“I’ll have a Bud and a Sex on the Beach,” Nick said, hastening to add, “for the little lady.”
To his relief, the bartender didn’t ask to see her ID. Nick got the drinks, paid half of what he would have paid in Student Town, and hurried back to the table.
“Here you go,” he said, giving Trisha her drink.
“What a gentleman!” she said. “Clayton didn’t want to buy me another.”
From the way she slurred her words, Nick could see why.
Nick sat, and Matt introduced the others around the table.
“These are the guys I told you about. Some of them work in the feed mill with Clayton. They’re all good men and they know everything.”
“Good to meet you, Professor,” said a lean, older man. “I’ve never met a real-life witch hunter before.”
Witch hunter? Nick decided not to correct him. After a moment’s thought, he realized that according to this guy’s worldview, he pretty much was one.
“I’ve studied religious beliefs and cults all my life,” Nick said. “Tribal religions in the Amazon, Voodoo, pagan cults …”
“That’s just what we need,” said the lean man. “You figure out what they’re up to, and we’ll shoot ‘em.”
“That’s Wayne, assistant manager at the feed mill,” Matt said, indicating the lean man. “He’s a bit too trigger-happy. Getting them arrested is good enough for me, unless they try shooting at me again.”
Matt introduced the others. Carl was an obese forklift operator from the feed mill who had a loud laugh and a seemingly limitless thirst for beer. Tobiah was another feed mill worker, a small man with bad teeth and a permanent scowl. A large gold cross dangled from his neck. Unlike everyone else, he was drinking soda instead of alcohol. Brandon was an African-American taxi driver in his thirties who looked fit.
“Brandon here has actually spotted the freaks we’re looking for,” Clayton said.
“Really?” Nick said, taking a sip from his beer and trying not to make a face at the bad taste.
“I believe so,” Brandon said. “I had just dropped off a ride on county road UU about two weeks back. A senior citizen who can’t drive any more. A lot of my fares are seniors. Anyway, it was about ten at night and I was driving along the county road. Now, you’ve probably never been up there but it goes south of town and passes some farms and gets to a crossroads with county road TT. There are some homes there and that’s where my fare lived. Between those houses and the outskirts of Republic is a long, empty patch. It used to be farmland and some abandoned houses are there. It’s all grown over now. Well, I was passing one of the farmhouses when I saw a light in the window. I slowed the car, but they must have seen me because they turned off the light. I think it was a candle, but I can’t be sure.”
“Probably setting up a ritual like the one we interrupted,” Clayton said. Next to him, Trisha shuddered.
“Probably,” Brandon agreed. “At the time, I figured it was just some kids making out, so I picked up speed and was about to pass when my headlights caught one of them ducking around the corner of the house. He had on a red robe and a hood. Scared the living daylights out of me.”
“Did you see anything else?�
�� Nick asked.
Brandon shook his head. “No, I got out of there fast as I could. I tend to avoid men in hoods.”
Clayton laughed. “Yeah, I bet you do!”
Nick squirmed. Brandon didn’t appear offended, though. Perhaps he just hid it well.
To hide his own discomfort, Nick pulled out a couple of maps from his pocket and unfolded them. One was a modern map, and the other was the photocopy of the old map he had found in the historical society.
“Can you show me where this was?” Nick asked.
“Sure, right here,” Brandon said, pointing to a spot on the modern map. He looked over at the old map. “My, my, 1908. That’s going way back. Oh, hey! There’s Douglass Town.”
“What’s that?” Nick asked.
“That’s the old colored neighborhood,” Carl said. Nick winced at the word “colored.” He didn’t look at Brandon’s reaction. He didn’t want to know.
“This place?” Nick asked, pointing to the spot with the abandoned railway station.
“Yup,” Brandon said. “It was named after Frederick Douglass. My great uncle used to live there back before the railway stopped going through. The place dried up pretty quick after that. People moved into town.”
Carl shifted his considerable bulk and peered at the map. “Yes, most of the colored folk moved to this neighborhood here,” he said, pointing to an area on the modern map. Nick had driven through there once. It was still mostly black, with a lot of public housing and ramshackle homes. Actually, a lot of that was in the white neighborhoods, too.
Nick pulled out a pen and marked the spot on the modern map where Brandon had seen the cultists. Then he marked the other spots where they had been seen—Douglass Town and the abandoned houses near Clayton’s house and Matt’s store. He made the point at Douglass Town larger because two rituals had been held there that they knew of. That made four points, all roughly the same distance outside of town.
Everyone stared at it in silence for a moment. Even the jukebox was between tracks, adding to the quiet atmosphere.
“They’re making a pentagram,” Nick said.
“What do you mean?” Tobiah asked.
“Look.” Nick pointed to each spot in turn. “A pentagram is a five-pointed star. Here are four points.” He drew a line between each. “All they need is another point, just about here, and they’ll have made a pentagram across Republic.”
“I knew it,” Tobiah said, flashing his rotted teeth. “They’re a bunch of Satanists, laying a curse on our Christian homes.”
It was a simplistic interpretation, but the cultists were simple locals too, so perhaps it was an accurate one.
Nick switched to the 1908 map. “Now, if I’m right, their next ritual would be just about here.” His finger touched a spot that was open countryside. Several scattered farms were indicated in the area, plus a small concentration at the intersection of two thin lines that indicated dirt roads.
“My bet is they’d go for that village, assuming any of it is still there,” Clayton said. “They seem to like villages.”
Nick nodded.
“I’ve taken rides to that area,” Brandon said. “It’s still mostly farmland. I can’t recall seeing any abandoned houses, but I wasn’t really looking. Some might be in the back of farmyards or in the little patches of woods you get all around here.”
“We need to look,” Matt said.
“Wait, y’all are forgetting something,” Trisha said, speaking for the first time. She had been sitting, silent and uncomfortable. She didn’t look like she wanted to be there. Nick figured she wanted to be left alone in that trailer even less. “What if they’ve already had that ritual? We can’t be sure we’ve seen them all. Maybe they’ve already laid a curse on Republic!”
Tobiah touched his cross. “Lord save us.”
“There’s no way of knowing,” Nick replied. “But it’s interesting that they had two rituals at Douglass Town. I’m thinking that they need to do more than one ritual at each spot. In a lot of magic, you have to prepare a spot with one ritual, then fix the spell with another.”
“We need to get going and check that spot out, as well as all the places they’ve already been,” Tobiah said.
“I’m in,” Brandon said. Wayne and Carl agreed.
“All right, men,” Matt declared, slapping the table. “It’s settled. We’re going to hunt down these sick motherfuckers before they hurt any more animals. Like the witch hunter said, it could be a kid next. Now let’s seal the deal with a round of shots on me.”
Nick feigned the enthusiasm everyone else showed. Matt fetched a round of vodka shots from the bar and everyone toasted their crusade. The cheap booze went down Nick’s throat like acid.
The meeting descended into a drinking session. Carl downed beer after beer while the others did their best to keep up.
Nick knew he shouldn’t be drinking this much bad alcohol, but he found that he was actually enjoying himself. Brandon knew a lot about the black history of the area, and Carl turned out to be a bit of an expert in local history of all kinds; he was eager to prove his knowledge with a university professor. Most of what they told him didn’t have any relation to what they were investigating, but it was interesting all the same. Nick had never suspected the area had so much history—early settlers, a gold rush that went bust, Native American massacres, a rebellion by local farmers against tax collectors in the nineteenth century, plus all the ups and downs of the Great Depression, two world wars, and, starting in the Nineties, the loss of jobs to international markets.
The others were less serious, joking and swapping tales about people Nick hadn’t met and playfully flirting with Trisha. Clayton didn’t seem to mind this; he just smugly put his arm around her slim waist.
Only Tobiah stayed sober, sitting silent most of the time after a few failed attempts to get everyone to continue talking about the cult. Nick had tried that too, but the drinks were coming quick and there was no stopping the party.
At one point, Clayton leaned in, his face blurry.
“Hey, Professor. When you first came in, why did you look right at Trisha and then look away like you didn’t recognize her?”
“Oh, um …” Nick’s brain was too muddled to come up with a believable excuse.
Clayton grinned and elbowed him in the ribs. “Too busy looking at her tits to recognize her face, huh?”
“What? No! I’d never—”
But Clayton had already leaned in the other direction to say something into Matt’s ear. The thudding rock music coming from the speaker prevented Nick from hearing. Matt belted out a laugh. Nick flushed.
Clayton saw his expression and slapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, bro. I trust you. Besides, we’re comrades in arms. Hey, do you even know how to fire a gun?”
“I’ve fired a rifle a few times,” Nick said. My uncle’s hunting rifle when I was sixteen, he added silently.
“We need to learn you up,” Clayton said. “There’s going to be some more fighting before this is all through.”
Nick paused, then took another slug of his drink. Suddenly he felt a lot more sober.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day, Nick suffered through the worst hangover he’d had in years. He grumbled through breakfast while an amused Cheryl poked fun at him.
“You sure you weren’t studying drinking habits among lapsed alcoholics?”
Elaine was mortified. “Don’t turn into a lush, Dad. It’s not a good look.”
Nick drowned himself in strong black coffee and endured the taunts. At least Elaine hadn’t brought up the fact that he had gotten back so late on the night of the gunfight. With any luck, it had passed out of her mind.
Thankfully, he had a light day at work, with only a couple of classes and no one coming to his office hours. Students hardly ever came to his office hours except to complain about a bad grade. Nick remembered that when he had first started, enthusiastic undergraduates sat by his desk and peppered him
with questions about his fieldwork, or even asked what books they should read that weren’t on the syllabus. It had been a long, long time since an undergrad had asked him for additional reading.
Halfway through the day, Brandon texted him. Nick couldn’t remember giving the taxi driver his number, but then again, he couldn’t remember a lot of the previous night.
“Hey, Professor. I checked on that abandoned farmhouse I told you about, the one where I saw the lights shining and the guy in the hood. Didn’t find any of those stick figures you guys mentioned. Looks like they packed up and left just like they did in Douglass Town. I did find this, though.”
The message included several photos of a dilapidated farmhouse that looked like it dated to the middle of the previous century. Much of the roof had fallen in and the interior was overgrown.
In one corner was the decomposed body of an animal.
Insects and possibly other animals had picked it apart, so it was more bone than flesh, but from the general shape and little patches of fur, Nick guessed it had been a cat.
The message sparked a memory of something Carl had said. The forklift driver was something of a local history buff, checking out old sites and collecting Native American artifacts.
“I got more than fifty arrowheads. Plenty of pottery too,” he had boasted.
Nick wondered whether Carl had done any illegal digging. The archaeologists in the department had complained that there was a lot of that at ancient sites due to the big trade in old artifacts.
Carl had mentioned that down by the river was a cave that contained a carving of a Thunderbird. Nick wondered if perhaps it had been the inspiration for the cultists’ stick figure.
Unfortunately, if he wanted to find out, the best person to ask was Bennett.
Nick waited until the archaeologist’s office hours, hoping that if students were coming and going through his office, he wouldn’t be indulging in his porn habit.