by Sam Witt
The monstrous creature fell back, slashing at its own body with the tips of its claws as it tried to free itself from the ghostly embrace. Its attacks shredded some of the spirits, but others took their place. Another terrifying scream erupted from the spider-beast’s hideous mouth. It dove through a window, leaving behind scraps of flesh and shards of chitin is it forced itself through the narrow opening. Its scream faded as it disappeared from sight, and by the time Stevie could get to the window, the thing was gone. She slumped against the cracked wall and let out a shuddering sigh.
They’d survived, but only just. Al’s body was crisscrossed with new wounds that wept red tears, staining his body with crimson trails. Elsa sat shivering on the floor, the blue glow gone from her eyes and mouth. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, and Stevie knew the girl had pushed herself to the limit. If they were attacked again, Stevie didn’t know how they would defend themselves.
Suddenly, the idea of bringing the founding families under her roof to protect them seemed like the height of bravado. Stevie pushed the thought away, knowing she couldn’t let the others see her doubts. It was going to be hard enough to carry this off if they thought she knew what she was doing. It would be impossible if she couldn’t believe in the strength of her family to see this through.
Nancy stared openly at Stevie. “You wanna tell me what the fuck that was?”
“Grab a bag, take whatever you need for a couple nights.” Stevie nodded toward Liz and Trevor, who were standing wide eyed in the corner of the living room. “Both of you, too. We have to get out of here.”
“I hope to hell you got some kind of plan to deal with this shit,” Nancy said as she brushed past Stevie on her way to get a bag.
“Of course I’ve got a plan,” Stevie grumbled.
She just didn’t know if it was one that was going to save them or not.
20
“That’s really all you’ve got for me? You won’t spring some other stupid shit on me tomorrow morning?” Joe knew that even revealing as little as he had cost Zeke dearly, damaging both his pride and his sense of duty. Small-town secrets were held close to the chest, especially those that tainted family histories. Still, if he wanted to keep Zeke and the rest of the descendants of the founding families alive, Joe needed to know even more.
The old man shrugged and sucked on his pipe for comfort. He looked shrunken, the withered stump of his left arm a reminder of what he’d lost by helping Joe and his family in the past. “I don’t know much more. It’s not like people wrote all this shit down for us to read in our leisure time. When yer family founders swear an oath to some kind of dark god, it’s not something ya really want to remember. Especially when most of a generation’s passed since anybody honored it.”
There was something about that bothered Joe. “Then why did she come back and start killing them? Why not just show up and convince them to get back in line?”
Zeke considered Joe’s point. “Because she’s a petty asshole that would rather scare the shit out of people than try to make sense?”
It was true that many supernatural creatures had a penchant for revenge, but Joe’s dealings with the more powerful sorts had taught him they rarely acted out of such shortsighted impulsiveness. Maybe this thing really was coming back just to murder people who’d forgotten their nightly prayers, but it felt like there was something more here. Joe went back to digging at Zeke. “What do you know about the oaths themselves?”
Zeke gnawed the inside of his cheek. “Words have meaning,” he started. “It’s like when ya took up the badge. Ya said some words, made some promises, and that forged a bond with the Long Man up there in his Black Lodge.
Joe didn’t much care for the conversation about gods and their followers that kept turning back toward him and his job. “It’s not like being sworn in means I can’t ever quit. I could just throw this badge out the window, pack up Stevie and the kids, and never look back.”
The old man stared at Joe for a long moment, scratched his beard, then said, “How many times have ya told me ya could stop being the Night Marshal? Because ya been talking about leaving for almost as long as I’ve know ya. But no matter how deep the shit gets, ya don’t never walk away.”
There was at least a bit of uncomfortable truth in Zeke’s words. Joe had thought about quitting, almost every day until recently, but he could never follow through with his plans. For a long time, it seemed easier to drink away the nightmares than to uproot his entire life and start over. Then there was the whole mess with the Long Man and the Haunter in Darkness being stuck in his head. He’d thought it was just his own inertia and unfortunate mistakes that had kept him in Pitchfork, but now Joe was having second thoughts.
Maybe his oath had kept him locked up in Pitchfork. Joe didn’t care for that line of thinking, but there was no denying it made sense. He turned away from that line of reasoning and went back to pestering Zeke for more information. “Itsike’s bound to the descendants of her followers, and they’re bound to her. Wouldn’t it make more sense if she came back and got them back onboard with her plans? Killing them just seems like it costs her followers.”
“Maybe she weren’t very good at making up the oaths. Maybe it fucked up, and things didn’t work out the way she planned.” Zeke chewed on his pipe stem. “Or it turned out the deal she made wasn’t going in her favor.”
Joe steered the truck around a sharp curve, wrestling with the wheel as the tires bounced and yelped against the asphalt. “You’re going to have to explain that to me.”
Zeke sighed as if his patience were running out. Joe reckoned the old man hadn’t talked this much in months, but he didn’t care. He needed to get to the bottom of this and come up with a battle plan that was more tactical than suicidal.
“These kinds of deals, they’re like investments. The supernatural critter, demons, gods, even some ghosts and other spirits, all have limits to their power. They’re like…” Zeke struggled to come up with the right words then gave a little shrug. “They’re like occult currency. By itself, the energy doesn’t really do much. But they can take it, and they can invest it in a human, and that human can use it to do things that help the supernatural critter. Or the supernatural critter can use that currency itself to use whatever powers it may have in our world.”
The pieces were starting to click into place for Joe. Just thinking about it, he could feel the Long Man’s frustration at the energy he had invested in the Night Marshal. The power was sitting in Joe, just out of the old monster’s reach. Even if Joe wasn’t using the power just then, the Long Man still couldn’t call it back. “Maybe it’s not killing them out of spite. Maybe it has to kill them to break the oath and harvest its energy.”
They rode on in silence for a few more minutes. Zeke seemed all talked out, and Joe was too deep in his own thoughts to try and pry any more information out of the old man. He thought he had a pretty good grasp on the problem, and he didn’t like what that meant.
Joe kept turning the pieces of the puzzle over in his head, trying to find a better solution to his problems. But the more he looked at his troubles, the more convinced he became that the only plan he could come up with was one that would likely end up with his death.
He was so lost in his own thoughts, Joe didn’t see his new problem until it was right on his tail. Red and blue flashers strobed across his rearview. “Well,” he snarled, “this is just fucking perfect.”
21
The sheriff’s voice barked at Joe from the loudspeaker on top of the cruiser. “Out of the truck, Hark. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“Ya better get moving, boy,” Zeke murmured. “She sounds mighty pissed.”
“Just keep your fucking mouth closed.” Joe unbuckled his seatbelt then raised both hands and locked his fingers behind his head. He pressed the door’s handle with his knee and shoved it open with his shoulder. He took great pains to look as harmless as possible because he knew that Laralaine was just looking for an excuse to put
a bullet through his spine.
He stood in the dying afternoon sunlight, waiting for the sheriff to make her next move. Joe heard the cruiser’s door open with a metallic scream, followed by the crunch of approaching footsteps on the snowy gravel shoulder. A few moments later, he heard the distinct snap of a safety strap popping open and knew he was about five seconds away from catching a bullet. “What do you think you’re doing, Hark?”
“Just bringing a friend home for dinner.” Then, just to prove that he wasn’t smart enough to keep his mouth shut, “What fucking business is it of yours?”
Laralaine whistled then walked around Joe to face him. “That’s a hell of a mouth on someone with a death sentence over their head.”
Cold sweat trickled down Joe’s back. It sounded an awful lot like the Long Man was done messing around and had decided to take his chances with having Joe killed. Then again, if the old monster wanted Joe dead, why wasn’t he crippling him by trying to pull his power back? After all, that was what had kept Joe alive up until now. The Long Man was terrified of losing a big chunk of the power he had invested in the Night Marshal, and an even greater part of it that Joe had stolen, if the Night Marshal died. “I’m pretty sure your boss doesn’t want you to kill me, at least not yet.”
Below her mirrored aviator shades, the sheriff’s mouth twisted itself into an evil grin. “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think you do. Or maybe the leash isn’t quite as tight around my neck as it was around yours.”
Joe tried not to show his fear, but it was tough to hide. If Laralaine really had gone rogue, then all bets were off. “You don’t want to do this.”
“Don’t I?” She paced back and forth, her fingertips drumming on the handle of her pistol. “Everything bad in this county, and I mean all of it, seems to swirl around you.”
“That’s like saying you tend to be at a lot of crime scenes.” Joe knew he had to talk some sense into Laralaine if he didn’t want one or both of them winding up dead in the next few minutes. “It looks that way from the outside because you’re fighting it. Everywhere crime pops up, that’s where you’re going to be. Same with me—there’s evil shit all around me because I spend every waking minute looking for evil shit to put down.”
“Is that so?” Laralaine turned away from Joe and stared toward the ruddy glow of the setting sun. Her right hand clenched her pistol’s grip, relaxed, then clenched again. “I came here to make a difference. Maybe getting you out of the picture is all the difference this place needs.”
Joe wondered if he should take a shot at Laralaine. The sheriff was facing away from him, less than ten feet away. He knew he was stronger and faster, but he also knew attacking her would cross a line that he couldn’t back over. So far, she was just talking, blowing off steam. He couldn’t tell if she was serious or just trying to spook him. He kept his arms raised, and his mouth closed. As long as she was talking and not shooting, there was a chance he could get out of this. As much of a pain in the ass as Laralaine had become, he still hoped there was a chance to get her back on the side of the law. He respected her enough that having to put her down would bother him for a long time to come.
The sheriff took her gun hand off her pistol and plucked her hat off her head. “I wasn’t supposed to get caught up in any of this bullshit. This was supposed to be a career move for me. Come into Pitchfork, get the murder rate down, head back to Jefferson City, get a nice fat promotion, do some real police work. But then…fuck. You just…”
She shouted and threw her hat onto the road. “I never should have taken this job.”
Joe related to the pain in her words. In the short time she’d been in his county, she’d changed. Maybe she had come here to make things better, looking to find out why things were so goddamn deadly in this little corner of the Midwest. But that hadn’t lasted. Before she knew it, she’d been tangled up in the Long Man’s web of lies. “I’m guessing he didn’t give you much of a choice. What’d he promise you?”
Laralaine turned on her heel, a dead smile plastered to her face. “You. The big fish. The Butcher of Pitchfork County. He told me what happened under that farm. Promised me he’d help me pin a whole hill of murders to your chest alongside that badge of yours. You’re supposed to be a good guy, Hark. What the fuck happened?”
Joe saw his scarred and lined visage reflected in Laralaine’s mirror shades and his younger self reflected in her face. When Joe had first taken up the badge, he was filled with a righteous rage. The death of his father and the curse that had alienated him from the only woman he’d ever loved had twisted his heart into a lump of cold iron. The Long Man had used that anger to transform Joe into a weapon. Becoming the Night Marshal of Pitchfork County had given Joe a reason to go on living. For a while, years really, it had been enough. But he’d become lost in the job, and it had turned him into a man he hardly recognized. It was only now, years later, that he’d seen the error of his ways and tried to reclaim his life.
Laralaine had one foot on that same twisted path. She’d come here looking for a way to boost her stalled career, and the Long Man had used her ambition and hunger for justice for his own ends. Where he’d pointed Joe at his supernatural rivals, he’d aimed Laralaine at Joe. The two of them had more in common than the sheriff could see. “Twenty years of hunting monsters happened. Two decades of having the Long Man in my head, spinning me up, keeping me mad, convincing me there was nothing worth saving. He used me, and I let him because it was easier than making my own decisions about what was right or wrong. Same as you.”
The sheriff tilted her head and squinted as if seeing Joe for the first time. “You believe that shit? Did the booze damage your brain so much that you actually think this isn’t your fault?”
“You’ve only been here a few months. You don’t know shit about shit.” Joe’s nervousness was turning to irritation. He had to make her see that it was the Long Man turning them against each other. “You don’t see what he’s doing here? He wants me out of the way so he can do whatever he wants without anyone to call him on it. I don’t know what his endgame is, but I do know it’s not going to be good for anyone but him.”
Laralaine laughed and shook her head. “When I got here, your boss was almost dead. Because of you. He told me you tried to take control of the county, and that you’re holding him hostage to use his power to keep a death grip on this place and its people.”
The words spilled out of Laralaine as if she was reciting a memorized speech. Joe couldn’t tell if she believed them or not, but they clearly had a hold on her. “He’s in your head, Sheriff. He’s using you to get me out of the way. If you put me down, you’re opening the door for him. Whatever happens after that will be on your head.”
A flicker of doubt peeled the clouds from the sheriff’s eyes. The hardness melted away from her features. “He showed me things,” she started then furrowed her brow and let her words trail off.
Joe decided to press his advantage. Laralaine was confused, and the Long Man’s hold on her seemed to be slipping. If he could wedge doubts deeper in her mind, she might come to her senses before it was too late. “Why do you reckon he’s telling you the truth? Maybe what he’s showing you isn’t the whole story. Not saying I haven’t done some bad things, and I’m not saying I’ve always been right. But I’m trying to fix things. I’m working to give these people their lives back. And that means the old fucker in the Black Lodge has to go.”
Laralaine nodded and started to say something, but her jaw locked open. Panic filled her eyes, and Joe felt the Long Man’s presence crowding into the space between them.
A dull ache built between his eyes, and he knew his time was up. The pain swelled into a spike that pierced his brain from front to back. Joe’s knees gave out, and he collapsed into the dirt, curling in on himself as the Long Man punished him for speaking the truth.
Joe’s strength drained away. It was being pulled from him as the Long Man yanked his chain. He ground his teeth and pulled back, straining against
the bond that tied him to his enemy. All he could do was hang on and wait for the attack to pass because he wasn’t quite strong enough to win a battle of minds against the Long Man.
He knew he was down, knew that he was defenseless against the sheriff. But he didn’t know what she was doing. For all Joe knew, she was being punished as well, suffering for listening to his heretical speech. The Long Man was getting stronger, and he likely didn’t want his new pet getting her head filled with bad ideas.
That was the best case. Worst case? While Joe was blind and deaf lying in the dirt, the sheriff was drawing her pistol and preparing to put a bullet through his skull. Even if the sheriff didn’t want to, there was a better than even chance that the Long Man could force her to do it. Either way, Joe was about to be dead.
He pushed back against the pain and pulled on the Long Man’s power. Desperation gave him just a little bit of an edge, and he used that to whittle away at the attack on his mind. He didn’t need to beat the Long Man; he just needed a little room to get the attention of something that could beat the old bastard in a stand-up fight.
Joe reached out in the darkness of the back of his head and unleashed a psychic scream. The effort cost him the upper hand in the supernatural tug-of-war he was waging with his boss, and the pain in his head immediately redoubled. The drain on his strength became a whirlpool that threatened to suck him into the darkness.
The Long Man crowed with victory, and Joe wondered if he’d made a terrible mistake.
A mad scream echoed in the spaces between Joe’s ears. At first, he thought it was his own agonized cry then realized his gamble had paid off. The Haunter in Darkness had woken. It was coming, and it was pissed.
The Long Man hadn’t expected to be attacked on a second front. The Haunter’s assault plowed into the Long Man’s essence, and before Joe’s boss could raise his defenses, the tide had turned.
