Witch's Canyon

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Summarize it for me,” Dean said. He was in the middle of a story and didn’t want to confuse details of the two by trying to read both at once.

  “According to this,” Sam said, “in 1966 there might have been an attack before December fifth.”

  “Might have been?”

  “The woman who kept this journal had an uncle who disappeared on the second. He went out on a hunting trip and never came back. This was long before things like cell phones and GPS technology, of course, so when someone went on a hunting trip he was out of touch until he came home. This guy never came home, and they never found out what happened to him.”

  “So it’s not necessarily part of the pattern,” Dean pointed out. “Maybe he’d just had enough and moved to Ohio.”

  “Sure, that’s a possibility. I can’t imagine voluntarily moving to Ohio from here, but that’s just me.”

  “Or maybe the pattern’s right, and the cycle doesn’t start until the fifth,” Dean said. “Maybe Ralph McCaig wasn’t part of it at all.”

  “So what got him, a werewolf?” Sam asked. Just in case, they had already checked lunar cycle history for 1966 and 1926, and the full moon hadn’t been a factor on those occasions.

  “Could be,” Dean said. “The moon was definitely full last night. I admit it’d be a bizarre coincidence to have a werewolf attack occur in Cedar Wells so close to the beginning of the next killing cycle. But we’ve seen coincidences before.”

  “Shhh!” Mrs. Frankel, a woman in her sixties with a rigid spine, silver hair, and a habit of peering over the tops of her reading glasses—a librarian straight out of Central Casting, Dean had thought when they met her—was giving them the over-the-top glare now.

  “Sorry,” Dean whispered. He turned back to Sam and said, in a lower voice, “Anyway, you could be right. I’d like to try to confirm it, though.”

  “What the hell?” Sam asked. “We’re the only ones in here.”

  Watching them whisper to each other, Mrs. Frankel burst into loud guffaws. “I was just funning you boys,” she said. “The place is empty—you can hoot and holler all you want.”

  “That shouldn’t be necessary, ma’am,” Sam said, shooting her a completely artificial friendly grin. Most people wouldn’t have spotted its manufactured quality, but Dean knew the real thing when he saw it, and that wasn’t it.

  “Anyway,” Sam continued, a little softer than before, but probably just because he was afraid Mrs. Frankel might be listening, “the problem is that we don’t have a big enough sample size. We think the start date is December fifth because that’s when it seems to have begun in 1966 and 1926, but two occasions isn’t enough to really give us firm data. If even one of them is off—if this hunter guy really did disappear because he was the first victim—then our start date could be off by a few days. Which means that Ralph McCaig might have been part of the cycle, and there could even be other deaths that we haven’t heard about yet.”

  “We should focus on figuring out what’s doing it, then,” Dean said. “If we assume that it’s started, then even if we’re wrong we’ll still have a head start when it does.”

  “You have any good guesses yet?”

  Dean shook his head. He should have been focusing on the articles, or running through the information in his head looking for patterns, not recalling ancient history. But even that was not as significant as the training sessions with Dad. The old man had been right, his lessons had saved their lives many times over. And they had saved more lives than could be counted, by taking out one paranormal killer after another.

  Sometimes he just wanted something in front of him to punch or stab or strangle, and instead he found himself stuck inside a library, reading badly written news reports on aging microfiche.

  “I got nothing, Sammy.”

  Sam closed the notebook he’d been working through. “Same here,” he said. “Big fat zero.”

  FIVE

  Juliet Monroe watched Stu Hansen from her kitchen window, where she had been washing lunch dishes. He looked…well, she didn’t know what he looked. Sad? Worried? Definitely an unusual state for Stu, who was about the steadiest guy she had ever known. He worked on the Bar M, as Ross had named their small spread, as their only full-time ranch hand. He’d come with the ranch, in fact, having worked for the previous owners too. She had seen him attending the birth of calves—even once carrying a calf for half a mile on his shoulders through a near blizzard—mending barbed-wire fences in hundred-plus degree heat, on his back beneath a truck for hours, hauling hay and shoveling out the stables, and he never complained, most always smiled, even whistled sometimes. Ranching was in Stu’s blood, and he seemed to love every aspect of it.

  As he approached the house, though, his shoulders were slumped, his creased, tanned face sagged, and his big hands hung loosely at his sides, looking strangely naked without a tool or an animal in them.

  She hurried to the refrigerator and poured some lemonade into a tall glass, then dropped a couple of ice cubes in it. Rain or shine, hot or cold, Stu loved his lemonade. By the time his boots sounded on the back steps, she had the glass sitting on the kitchen table, waiting for him.

  When he came inside, he seemed to bring a miasma of worry with him; like the cloud of dust that followed Pigpen everywhere in those Peanuts comics. She saw his gaze take in the lemonade, then settle on her.

  “I fixed that for you, Stu,” she said.

  “Not just now, thanks, ma’am.” He almost always called her that, in spite of her efforts since she and Ross bought the place to convince him to call her Juliet.

  “What is it, Stu? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s strange,” he said. “I was just out in the pasture.” He tugged a chair out from under the kitchen table, spun it around on one leg, and straddled it. He wore a straw cowboy hat, a denim work shirt with snap closures, dirty jeans, and scarred leather work boots. “And what I saw there…”

  “What was it, Stu?”

  “Some of the cattle, ma’am. Six of ’em, near as I could tell.”

  Juliet didn’t like the sound of that. What could make them hard to count? “What about them?”

  “They’ve been…well, slaughtered. Right there in the pasture. I thought maybe wolves, but I’ve seen predation by wolves before and it don’t look like that.”

  “Something’s gone after the cows?” She couldn’t quite grasp what he was trying to tell her. He wouldn’t look at her, but kept his gaze trained on the floor, the refrigerator, anything else. The ranch house had been built sixty years ago, and Ross had put some physical effort and money into restoring it to look like it might have then, with rustic, western furnishings and accessories.

  “Yes, ma’am. Something strong enough and mean enough to tear ’em to pieces. There’s—” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, ma’am. It was just awful. There’s blood all over the place back there, and bits of those animals. I startled what must’ve been a dozen buzzards and ravens helpin’ themselves to the parts.”

  “But…what would do something like that?”

  Stu shook his head sadly. “I wish I knew. Like I said, I’ve never seen wolves act that way. Bears, maybe. Seems like it’d have to be something at least that big and strong. Still not something I’ve ever come across. Something I’d be glad never to see again, I can tell you that.”

  Juliet had refused to name any of the ranch’s cattle, although she was pretty sure that Ross and Stu had named some, because she didn’t want them to have identities or personalities if they were destined for slaughter. This was worse, though—the animals Stu was describing wouldn’t even go to feed people. They were essentially wasted, not good for anything except the scavengers. The waste shocked her, and the longer she thought about it the worse she felt.

  “God,” she said, gripping the counter because her knees had suddenly turned rubbery. “I…I don’t know what to say, Stu.”

  “Ain’t much to say. I figured you should know because it�
�s money out of your pocket. I’ll clean up what I can, but a lot of it’s just too small to do anything about.”

  “Maybe we should just keep the cattle out of that pasture for a while,” she suggested. “And let the scavengers take care of the rest.”

  “That’d work too,” Stu said. “It’ll take some time, and then there’ll still be the bones to get rid of.”

  “I think that’s still our best bet.”

  “That’s what I’ll do, then.” When he had a specific idea for something he wanted to do, he let her know it, albeit in a roundabout way because he didn’t want her to feel like he was dictating to her. Since he didn’t press her on this, Juliet got the sense that her suggestion was in line with how he’d wanted to handle it all along. He rose, meeting her gaze for just a moment, his own brown eyes shaded by the brim of his big straw hat, replaced the chair, and left the kitchen without another word. His lemonade remained, untouched, on the kitchen table.

  Juliet thought she might just down it herself, and wondered what kind of alcohol would taste the least nasty mixed with it. She was not ordinarily a heavy drinker, but maybe the time had come to reevaluate that position.

  She sat down heavily in the chair that Stu had just vacated. There had been many days since Ross’s death when she wished she could sell the ranch, or had never agreed to buy it, or could simply walk away from it.

  So far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to walk away, though, and selling the ranch required finding a buyer. She had advertised it all over the place, in specialty magazines, on the Web, in local papers, and elsewhere. A few potential buyers had come around, but not many, and although she had reduced the price below market value, she didn’t have any takers. Too bad those guys she met at the South Rim yesterday, Dean and Sam, weren’t in the market. She was so surprised to see them, she hadn’t even thought to ask why they were going to a backwater town like Cedar Wells in the first place.

  She was starting to get up from the chair when a stray thought struck her and she froze, her intestines turning to liquid. Could Dean and Sam be the ones who had attacked her livestock? They were strangers in town, she knew nothing about them, and she’d probably confided far too much—including her name and the fact that her husband was dead. How stupid was that?

  Stu had thought animals were responsible, though, and he knew more about such things than she did. She decided to ask him if he thought the sheriff should be notified, and if he said yes, then she would tell him about the strangers.

  Until then she’d have to be a little more careful. She went to the kitchen door and locked it, then walked around the house locking the others. Through a bedroom window she spotted Stu chugging out on an ATV to move the herd.

  Part of her was glad that Ross wasn’t around to see this. He had loved the ranch and everything about it. The pointless slaughter of his stock would have broken his heart.

  But mostly it was one more reason to get herself gone, and as fast as she possibly could.

  SIX

  Sam and Dean found Canyon Regional Mall just where they’d been told it would be, a couple of miles from the center of town, to the east—the direction they hadn’t been yet. While driving out, they began to wonder if they’d taken the wrong road—not that there were a lot of choices—because the forest seemed to grow thicker for a time, evergreens growing so closely together that Sam got the sense of a wall of green out the passenger window. The rich tang of pine trees filled the car.

  Suddenly, they rounded a curve and the trees were gone. In their place stood a massive structure surrounded by a vast, pristine parking lot. A few cars and trucks crowded the building, most of them obviously belonging to construction workers, painters, and landscapers. Sam found it disturbingly ironic that they had taken a stretch of beautiful, practically virgin forest and razed it, and now hired hands were hard at work planting saplings and grooming stretches of freshly laid sod.

  The building itself had been built in a giant T shape, jutting forward toward the road and spreading out in back. Huge national department stores bulged the ends of the T’s crossbar. The exterior was mostly surfaced in native stone, with display windows and electric signs breaking up the facade.

  “Looks about ready to open,” Dean said as he pulled into the lot.

  “Let’s hope that’s not a huge mistake.”

  “It’s our job to make sure it’s not.”

  Sam recognized the sentiment. It was a habit Dean had picked up from Dad—referring to what they did as a “job.” To Sam it was more of a mission, even a calling. He’d picked up the job terminology too—having been raised by John Winchester, it was second nature—but to him a job was something one was hired to do, and no one had hired them for this. Mom’s murder had driven them to it, and Dad’s obsession had fueled Dean’s. Life had tugged Sam in a different direction, but Jess’s death pushed him back onto the path.

  Dean circled the mall once, drawing suspicious stares from a uniformed security guard walking outside. “What do you think?” he asked, bringing the Impala to a stop.

  “I think it wouldn’t hurt to get the lay of the land,” Sam said. “Place like this, especially if it draws a big crowd, might turn into a battleground. I’d be more comfortable scoping it out without the crowd in our way.”

  “Ditto,” Dean said. “I don’t want some Dawn of the Dead scenario going down and us not knowing our way around.” He opened his door and got out.

  Sam followed, but before they even reached the building the guard had set an interception course for them. “Here we go,” Dean muttered under his breath.

  “The mall’s not open yet,” the security guard said as he approached. He had bushy dark hair curling out from underneath a police-style cap, and more poking up from beneath his ill-fitting uniform shirt. He fixed a dark-eyed gaze on them and let his hand rest on the handle of his heavy steel flashlight. “Not till this weekend.”

  “We know,” Sam said quickly, before Dean could give him a response like No kidding, Einstein. Sometimes Sam could sense those remarks building up in Dean, like an electrical charge. “We’re not shopping. We’re reporters.”

  “Mall won’t be open until the weekend,” the security guard told them again. Sam was starting to get the idea that he was not the shiniest bullet in the ammo belt.

  “We get that,” Dean said. “But when they do open, they might want some people to have heard of them. That’s where publicity comes in.”

  The guard looked at them blankly, as if now that he had delivered his message he couldn’t understand why they hadn’t left.

  “Can we talk to the mall manager?” Sam asked.

  The guard seemed to consider his request for a moment, although the possibility existed that he was just remembering a sports score or worrying about his boxers creeping. “I guess,” he said after what seemed a very long pause. Having said that, he remained standing in their path.

  “I guess we’ll find him inside,” Dean said, stepping around the guard.

  “Her. It’s a her. Ms. Krug.”

  “We’ll track her down,” Sam said. “Thanks.”

  The guard stayed where he was, as if there might be other people hiding behind the two of them. Sam didn’t think he turned around until they were pulling open the huge glass and steel front doors and walking in.

  The interior still smelled like paint and glue and exhaust from the forklifts and cranes working inside. Scaffolding stood in front of some of the shops, and men and women in hard hats and T-shirts and jeans and heavy boots were everywhere. At first glance it looked like the mall had a tool sale going on.

  They approached one of the painters, a bearded guy in his forties, adding gold trim to the doorway of a lingerie shop. Through a gap in the paper covering the window, Sam could see young women arranging display racks and wall fixtures. As at the Grand Canyon, he admired the view.

  “You know where the management office is?” Dean asked.

  The guy didn’t look away from his painting, but ke
pt moving his brush in precise, careful strokes. “Second floor, east wing, between the Gap and Kay-bee. Look for the restrooms and you can’t miss it.”

  No one challenged them as they made their way to the office. As the painter had promised, it was easy to find, down a hallway that also contained restrooms, a security office, and an entrance to the utility corridor that ran behind the stores. The door to the management office was mostly glass, but with miniblinds behind it blocking the view inside. The door was ajar, so Dean pushed it open, tapping on it as he went in. “Hello?”

  A woman in a crisp green business suit over a gold blouse emerged from a back office into a reception area that was mostly office supply boxes waiting to be unpacked, and an empty desk. She looked professional but harried, with a few strands of honey-gold hair escaping from a clip and dangling around her face. With the business suit, Sam noted, she wore pink-trimmed white Reeboks. “Can I do something for you?”

  “We’re looking for the mall manager,” Dean said.

  “You’ve found her. I’m Carla Krug. Excuse the mess in here, we’re a little chaotic at the moment.”

  “Understood,” Sam said. “We don’t want to take up much of your time.”

  “We’re with the National Geographic,” Dean said, extending that lie. “I’m Dean, and that’s Sam. We’re here working on a piece about the region outside the park, and thought that the opening of a big shopping center here should be part of the story.”

  “It’s a little unexpected,” Sam said, picking up the thread. “I don’t think of the area as being populous enough to support a major mall.”