by Sam Witt
“That’s a lot of spiders,” Elsa grumbled. She shared her mother’s disdain for this particular type of creepy crawly.
Mildred’s front door was scorched black by the overzealous fire elementals, but there were no webs to block Stevie’s way. The door swung open at Stevie’s touch to reveal a cramped entryway. Mildred, unlike most of the Conclave, relished her wicked old witch image. Ancient cobwebs clung to the shadowed corners of the entryway and drooped from the ceiling like a canopy. Stevie could feel a thrum of power emanating from those webs and wondered just how many defensive spells Mildred had scattered around her home. She took Elsa’s hand. “You need to stick close to me in here, okay?”
Elsa nodded and squeezed her mother’s fingers. “Because of the bad ghosts?”
Stevie ignored that, knowing that questioning Elsa about the “bad ghosts” would lead her down a rabbit hole she did not have time to explore. Later, she’d get to the bottom of these bad ghosts and find out if Mildred was dabbling in arenas best left alone. While the old witch had seemed to accept Stevie’s reclamation of her title as Bog Witch and head of the Conclave, it was always possible the elder was practicing some Left-Hand Path magic out here on her own.
“Mildred,” Stevie called into the dark, quiet house, “are you home?”
It was a stupid question, but Stevie felt she had to ask. Like most witches, Mildred was intimately connected to her home. If she were here, Stevie would not have had to call out for her. Mildred would met her at the door. The fact that she hadn’t shown up to welcome her guests worried Stevie.
Stevie and Elsa threaded their way through the house. The small sitting room was empty, though there was a cold mug of tea on the edge of the coffee table. Stevie snapped her fingers to call up an orb of witch light and used its silver glow to examine her surroundings more closely. She spied a thin layer of pale dust on the surface of the tea. It looked like Mildred hadn’t been home for a couple of days.
The kitchen was empty as well, and the burners were cold. A small plat with crumbs and a cracked scab of mayonnaise on its corner was in the bottom of the sink, but there were no other signs of life.
A chill in the air intensified the longer Stevie stayed in the house. Something was in the house with them; she was almost sure of it.
The rest of the ground floor was as empty and dead as the rooms she’d already seen. That left the basement and the upstairs, and Stevie didn’t think she was quite ready to go prowling around Mildred’s basement. She and Elsa climbed up the rickety spiral staircase at the back of the house, wincing as their every step drew protesting creaks and squeals from the old wood. If there were something upstairs and it didn’t know they were there before, it certainly did now.
The upper floor of Mildred’s home had a single long hallway running north to south, with a door in each of its walls. Stevie moved toward the closer door on the east side. She paused before it to see if her sorcerous senses picked up any booby traps, but found only the residue of ancient spells long since discharged.
The heavy door opened easily, though its hinges screeched from lack of oil, to reveal an elaborate workshop. Unlike the exterior of the house, this room was in excellent condition, and Mildred kept it very orderly. Stevie could see the entire length of the room by glancing left and then right and saw nothing amiss. “Let’s see what’s behind door number two,” she muttered.
She closed the workshop’s door and crossed the hall to the bedroom. Elsa jerked on her hand and whispered, “Don’t go in there.”
The words froze Stevie in her tracks. She held her breath and listened, trying to catch any hint of danger. A faint gurgling noise leaked out from behind the door, setting Stevie’s nerves on edge. “Ready or not,” she whispered and pried a witch bullet from her necklace.
She threw open the door and darted inside and to the right. A deformed man crouched over Mildred glared over his shoulder at Stevie as she came into the bedroom. He snarled at Stevie and hugged Mildred close to the pendulous sack of his belly.
Stevie launched the witch bullet with a cry of rage and disgust. The bead of black cat’s fur and beeswax streaked across the room and plowed into the man’s shoulder. It burst into silver flames that sizzled and spat as they cooked the intruder’s skin and fat.
Mildred groaned as the man looped a silken strand tight around her ribs. Blood drooled from the corner of her mouth.
Stevie roared and launched another witch bullet, but the man was ready for her this time. He leapt back, dragging Mildred with him. He landed in the far corner of the room, high up near the ceiling.
Elsa howled, and a torrent of angry spirits washed across the bedroom toward the intruder. Deep gashes appeared on the deformed man’s face and arms, drawing enraged howls from him.
“You have no right,” he gasped through the pain. “She has forsaken her duties to the goddess. What was given must be taken.”
Stevie didn’t waste words on the creature. She launched another witch bullet, and another. The tiny spheres of silver fire plowed into the creature, and it fell from the ceiling with a shriek.
From the floor on the far side of the bed, Mildred let out a wet, bubbling scream. Pain stabbed through Stevie’s chest as she felt her connection to Mildred through the Conclave rupture. She fell to one knee, and Elsa was at her side in the same moment.
“Mama!” Elsa cried and threw her arms around Stevie’s neck.
The Bog Witch of Pitchfork County tried to get back to her feet. She needed to finish this. She needed to tell her daughter that she was okay, that everything was fine.
But it wasn’t. Her strength was leaking out of her like blood from a torn artery. She fumbled at her necklace for another witch bullet, but her fingers were numb and clumsy.
“Such is the fate of all who oppose Itsike,” the monster crowed. “She has returned to reclaim her rightful due.”
Stevie felt Elsa’s arms disappear from around her neck. A pulse of power throbbed in the room as the little girl screamed her rage. “Get out!”
Glass shattered, and Stevie looked up in time to catch the man hurtling through the bedroom window, blood streaming from countless wounds as Elsa’s ghosts hounded him from Mildred’s home.
The sheets on Mildred’s bed rippled. With dawning horror, Stevie realized they weren’t sheets at all, but layers of fresh webs. Fat spiders the size of a man’s fist emerged from the webs, dragging thick bundles of silk behind them. The egg sacs twitched and swelled, growing visibly as Stevie watched in horror.
The first of them burst with a liquid pop and ejected an enormous spider. The newborn creature spread its legs wide, flinging sticky fluids in all directions. It hit the carpet in front of Stevie with a wet plop then charged directly at her.
The spider’s body was monstrous in size, as thick and long as Stevie’s forearm. Inch-long fangs drooled venom as it rushed to attack on clicking legs. Stevie froze at the sight of the thing, her rational mind overcome by primal fear. She knew she should act, but she was paralyzed with terror and pain from Mildred’s loss.
There were more pops, and more spiders rushed to the attack. Stevie tried not to think about the spiders, about the venom pumping from their fangs. It was all just trash that needed to be burnt, a task she could handle with her eyes closed. So she closed them.
Stevie called for the spirits of fire once more, promising them a short and simple task. She flared her hands in front of her, and the elementals rushed to destroy the spiders in the room. The effort was far more than she expected, though, and her vision blurred and turned dark at the edges. She had to leave the house before she passed out and burnt along with the spiders.
Stevie grabbed her daughter’s hand and lurched to her feet. The air in the bedroom was already growing too hot for comfort, and smoke was clawing at her throat. By the time she stumbled into the hallway, Stevie was on the verge of collapse.
Elsa helped her down the stairs, supporting her with surprising strength. They emerged from the house, and th
e jolt of clean, winter air helped renew Stevie’s flagging strength.
By the time they reached the Rambler, the house was ablaze. Flames leapt from the top-floor windows, and smoke leaked from beneath the shingles. Stevie watched it burn, grieving that she hadn’t been able to give Mildred the proper burial she deserved. Seeing a witch burn, even a dead witch, stirred up old resentments and memories of horrors past. Stevie knew she’d see these moments in her nightmares for years to come.
18
Zeke glared at Joe, his bushy white eyebrows beetled together. “I ain’t leaving. Get on outta here now if that’s what ya came for.”
“Do you think you can stop being stubborn for, I don’t know, five minutes?” Joe’d been stuck at Zeke’s house for most of an hour. He was trying to explain to the old man the importance of getting the hell out of there before the spider freak showed up, but Zeke wasn’t hearing him.
“Last time I went off with ya, look what happened.” Zeke pointed at the stump of his left arm and wiggled it in the air for agitated emphasis. “If I go with ya this time, what am I gonna lose? My leg?”
Joe struggled to keep his anger in check. He was attempting to save the old man, and all he was getting for his trouble was grief. “Are you still crying about that arm? I get that it sucks that you’ve only got the one hand to jerk off with now, but give it a rest. If you don’t get out of here, you’re going to have a lot more to worry about than a missing arm.”
Zeke eyeballed the Night Marshal. He puffed on his pipe like a steam engine, blowing gusts of tobacco smoke into Joe’s eyes. “What if yer wrong? What if I leave my house, go down to yer place, and I still get killed?”
“At least you won’t die alone.” Joe reached out and clasped his hand on the old man’s right shoulder. “Enough dicking around about this. Whatever’s out there, it’s coming for you, and you’re not going to be able to stop it with a dickish attitude and a cup of sassafras tea.”
Joe’s sincerity soaked through Zeke’s crusty obstinance. The old man’s eyes softened. “How long am I gonna be to be stuck at yer place?”
“Until we put this bullshit to bed.”
“And how long is that gonna be?” Zeke sighed through a cloud of smoke. “I need to know what to bring.”
Joe stabbed his finger at the door to Zeke’s shack. “Get in there, grab your spare pair of crappy overalls, get your toothbrush if you’ve got one, and let’s go.”
Zeke grumbled but did as he was told. Joe followed the old man into his house, flopped down in the guest chair, and stared at the ceiling. While the old man was a pain in the ass, Joe could see the fear leaking from Zeke’s eyes. He was going to have to pry a little bit, but he knew the yarb doctor had a hell of a lot more to tell him than he was letting on.
Joe waited until he had Zeke secure in the pickup before he started questioning him in earnest. “Were you ever going to tell me what’s going on?”
The old man chewed his mustache and fidgeted in his seat. “I don’t rightly know it’s any of yer goddamned business.”
Fuming in silence, Joe tried to wrap his head around Zeke’s attitude. For as long as he’d known the old man, Zeke had been a pain in the ass, but Joe never figured him for someone who would hold out information. If you knew the right questions, Zeke would give the right answers. This bullshit evasion was enough to drive Joe up the wall. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “I’ve got some dead people that probably disagree with you about whether or not it’s my business.”
Zeke stared out the window. “None of ’em people,” he paused to swallow hard, then tried again. “All this happened, I mean, it started, back before I was born. Shit, I didn’t even think I was gonna have to worry about this.”
“Just get to the point. I’m not sure if I told you this or not, but people are dying. I’d like to keep that from happening again.”
“Ya think this is easy?” Zeke fidgeted with his pipe but didn’t light it. He clamped the stem between his teeth and pushed his words out around it. “Ya sure ya told me the right names?”
“Yes, Zeke. They’re all from the founding families of Ironton. Their people were some of the first settlers in this region.” Joe hazarded a glance at Zeke. He could tell his words were hitting home.
“Well, I reckon we’re all well fucked then.” Zeke gnawed on his pipe’s stem. “I suppose it won’t do no harm to tell ya now.”
Silence stretched between them until Joe thought he was going to have to scream at the old man to get him going again.
“Ya don’t know how things were back then. Hell, I don’t even know. Not really. But I remember the stories my folks used to tell, back when we’d all gather around the hearth and pray for spring to come.” Zeke paused again, his eyes misty.
“This was before the Night Marshals, back when people were first starting to settle out this way.”
Joe settled back in his seat and returned his eyes to the road, relaxing now that Zeke seem to be on a roll. The old man’s words were soft and slow, but as long as he kept talking Joe wasn’t going to interrupt him.
“The first settlers didn’t know a damned thing. This whole area, or at least most of it, was just a big ol’ empty patch of land. Weren’t hardly even any natives, which should’ve told anyone with a lick of sense to move on. But people were tired of tryin’ to find a patch to call home, and this look like as good a place as any to settle down.”
Zeke stared out the windshield at the road ahead, but he saw something else. Joe knew the old man was sliding back through the years, becoming a little boy again, sitting in front of the fire, listening to tales of days gone by.
“It weren’t long, not long at all, before people figured out they’d made a mistake.” Zeke turned his head in Joe’s direction. “All the shit ya seen, all the shit ya done, ain’t nothing compared to what I heard it was like back then. Skinwalkers, straight-up demons, Left-Hand Path cults older’n ya can imagine, and plenty more were all over the place. People were scared. They were stuck here, in the middle of winter, with all kinds of evil shit closing in. The wolves were at the door, and ’em sorry bastards were out of options.”
Joe had a sinking feeling he knew where the story was going. When you started explaining how fucked up things were, and how people didn’t have a choice, that usually led to dumb motherfuckers making epically poor decisions. But he didn’t interrupt, and he kept his thoughts to himself.
“Those people, trapped and alone and scared, they prayed their hearts out. They prayed for someone to come along and save ’em for the monsters creeping up on ’em. And somethin’ answered them prayers.”
Joe ground his teeth in frustration. He’d heard this story, or some variation of it, more times than he could count. It was always the same when people got too scared to save themselves. They’d squall to the powers that be, and sometimes what answered was a whole lot worse than their original problem. “They cut a deal?”
Zeke frowned at Joe’s phrasing, but he couldn’t dispute the facts. “Yeah, they made a deal.”
In the dim green light from the dashboard, Zeke’s face was pale and sickly. Joe could see the guilt and sorrow etched into the old man’s wrinkled skin. Zeke didn’t say anything for a few moments, just chewed at his mustache, then he dove back into the story.
“The folks I heard the story from, they didn’t know what they were dealing with. I poked at the tale, tried to figure it out myself for years. Don’t think I ever got the whole thing, but near as I can tell, what answered their prayers was some sort of spider god.”
Joe struggled to keep his features still. There wasn’t any sense in judging those people, all of whom had been dead for at least a couple hundred years, but he couldn’t hold back a growing sense of bitterness toward Zeke. They weren’t exactly fast friends, but Joe had thought he’d earned the yarb doctor’s respect. That the old man had been holding out this kind of story made Joe wonder if he knew him at all.
“I see what yer thinking,” Zeke said, �
�but I didn’t know if any of this shit was true. We’ve had our troubles, but I’d never seen any sign that one of the long-dead gods was stirring around here. If I’d thought—”
“I don’t even know how you can say that.” Joe said. “You don’t think all the shit that’s been going on for the past few months might’ve been a sign that your little legend was something more?”
“Maybe I didn’t want to believe.” Zeke turned his face away and went back to staring out the window. “Maybe I was too scared to believe.”
“You should’ve told me. Maybe there was some way I could have headed this off. Maybe if I knew what I was actually dealing with, maybe I could do my goddamned job.”
“Let me tell the rest of it,” Zeke said, his voice low, “then ya can yell at me all night if it’ll make you feel better.”
“Whatever it was, whatever answered those settler’s prayers, seemed reasonable. It’d protect ’em from the monsters that prowled their land, and they’d honor it in the ways it preferred.”
“So, what? They’d kill a few goats here and there, maybe burn a cow?” A fist of ice closed around Joe’s heart. “Oh, I get it. It was something a little more than that? Some firstborn son action, maybe a virgin tossed on the pyre every seventh year?”
“There weren’t any set rituals. When it wanted something, it’d ask for it. Those settlers weren’t in any mood to trifle with their new patron. They knew horrors waited for ’em outside their campfires, plenty of bad things howling outside their doors, so they did what she asked. They survived.”
