Witch's Canyon

by Jeff Mariotte

  By the time they were under way, the siren had stopped.

  “That’s not far away,” Dean said.

  “Not at all.” Sam pointed to the left. “I think it went down there, maybe to the street that parallels this one.”

  Dean turned left at the corner. When they reached the next street—School Street, the sign said, and another sign warned of a 15 mph speed limit when school is in session—he could see the sheriff’s SUV, roof lights flashing, less than a block away. He pulled up across the street from the SUV, and they were just climbing out of the Impala when another siren sounded. They stayed where they were, out of the way, while another sheriff’s office vehicle raced in and Sheriff Jim Beckett jumped out. He had a grim look on his face, and the two younger deputies who came around the house to meet him looked like they were seasick, hung over, or both.

  “Come on,” Dean said. He started across the street. The deputies and Beckett had gathered in the driveway of a two-story house with a deep yard. Every light in the house seemed to be blazing. The same was true of the house on the other side of the drive, where the residents and people who must have been neighbors had gathered on a porch.

  A deputy blocking off the driveway with crime scene tape stopped Dean and Sam when they approached. “This is a crime scene,” he said. “No spectators.”

  “We’re press,” Dean told him.

  “No press, either.”

  “Could you ask Sheriff Beckett?” Sam pressed. “He knows us.”

  “Sheriff knows everyone,” the deputy replied. “Sorry.”

  Dean saw more people coming up the street and climbing up onto the neighbors’ porch. “Let’s try up there,” he said quietly.

  Sam followed his gaze. “Worth a shot.”

  They moved next door and up the stairs, almost in the wake of the last couple of people. “Anybody clear on what happened over there?” Dean asked no one in particular. He hoped that on the darkened porch, people wouldn’t realize that they didn’t know him.

  “I’ve only heard bits and pieces,” a woman said. “But what I heard sounds pretty awful.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A couple of the sheriffs used the word ‘scalped.’ And I saw one of them lose his dinner in the backyard, over there near where Cal is.”

  “Cal’s the victim?” Sam asked, a note of horror in his voice.

  “One of the victims,” a man said, picking up the story. “Sounds like it’s Lew and Billie Richardson inside, and Cal outside.”

  “And they were all scalped?” Dean asked.

  “I heard gunshots, too, but we’re still not clear on who got shot.”

  “And I heard Sheriff Beckett asking about some old man with a gun,” the woman added. “But I’m not sure who he’s talking about.”

  That old man again.

  “Do we know if they’re dead?” Sam wondered.

  “They were scalped,” someone else said.

  “But you can be scalped without being killed. It’s all a matter of how careful the scalper is.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” the first man said, “there wasn’t a whole lot of finesse practiced here.” Dean wished he could see the speakers, but everyone was backlit from inside the house. Besides, if he could see them, they’d be able to see him, and that might prove awkward.

  Seven victims, then. That we know of.

  So far.

  And two of them inside a house. Like the bear they had encountered earlier, the killer seemed able to get through doors.

  They had to find that old man. That much remained clear, even if not much else did. Soldiers and bears and Bigfoot and whatever else aside, he was the only common element to any two killings so far. Three, if he was indeed the soldier.

  “Anybody see where the old man went?” he asked.

  “I went to the window as soon as I heard the shots,” the first man said. “But it was all over by then. I could see poor Cal on the ground, even though I didn’t know it was him at the time. That’s it, though. We could hear sirens on the way, so we stayed inside until the first sheriff’s car came.”

  “That’s probably wise,” someone else said.

  “That’s what we thought.”

  Sam nudged Dean’s shoulder. “We’re not going to get anything else here,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Dean nodded and followed him down the stairs and back to the car. “I wouldn’t mind talking to the sheriff again,” he said as they got in. “But there’s a point of diminishing returns, and I think we’re reaching it. Nobody knows as much about what’s going on as we do…and we don’t know jack.”

  Sam laughed. “Sounds impressive when you put it that way. Good thing the professionals are on the case.”

  “The difference is that when we do figure it out, we’ll be able to do something,” Dean pointed out. “If Sheriff Beckett figures it out, he’ll assume that he’s crazy and ignore the evidence even if it bites him on the ass.”

  “Whatever’s going on, I don’t think it’s possible anymore for them to pretend that it’s not happening.”

  “I don’t know, that mayor seems pretty divorced from reality. The rest of the town is probably coming around fast, though.”

  “You think that’ll slow it down? If people stay inside and keep their doors locked?”

  “We don’t know if these last people had their doors locked,” Dean said. “It can’t hurt, but there’s no sign that it’ll help.”

  “Let’s cruise around a little,” Sam suggested. “If the old man’s still in the neighborhood, maybe we’ll spot him.”

  Having no better ideas, Dean started the car.

  Jim Beckett looked at the bloody scene in the Richardson living room and felt a weight in his gut as if he had swallowed a bowling ball. He had known Lew and Billie half his life. Now they were empty shells with most of the tops of their heads torn off—not even taken away, just scraped off and tossed to the floor like used tissues. Outside, Cal Pohlens was in basically the same shape, except his scalp had only been peeled away but not completely removed. He had known Cal his whole life, pretty much. Since sixth grade, anyway.

  The resources of his forensics team were being stretched to the limit. His was a small department, and seven murders in less than twenty-four hours were more than his people could cope with. Maybe more than he could cope with. He took these deaths personally, and so many at once wore heavily on his heart.

  They also, quite frankly, scared him. If the forty-year murder cycle was real, there were a lot more deaths to come. And if it was real, what did it mean? Who could be behind killings that had started eighty years ago? Yes, Brittany Gardner and Cal had both reported an old man near the scenes of their murders, but he would have had to be at least in his teens in 1926, which would make him over ninety now. From what he had seen of the brutal killings, they had taken a good deal of strength.

  And then there were the two that seemed to have been committed by animals. That added a whole new, even more bizarre dimension to the whole thing.

  He had a bad feeling he was going to need to call in help. State troopers from Arizona’s Department of Public Safety, the FBI, even the National Guard. He wouldn’t give in to that impulse quite yet, though.

  Mayor Milner was right about the mall. If he asked for help from any of those agencies, the press would get wind of it—out-of-town press that he couldn’t control. Something like this could not only destroy Cedar Wells in the short term, but even threaten the tourist traffic to the Grand Canyon. Losing that trade would choke off the whole county. Sheriff Beckett didn’t want to lose any more lives, but neither did he want to lose the whole region.

  Talk about your rocks and your hard places, he thought. No wonder my chest feels like it’s being squeezed in a vise.

  FOURTEEN

  Juliet and Stu were still standing in the carport, debating whether Stu should walk the six miles to the nearest neighbor’s house, when they heard something on the roof. Stu froze in place, an anxious look etc
hed on his face.

  Not knowing what he had seen or heard, Juliet followed his lead, going still and silent. A moment later she heard it. A gentle thud, then something that sounded like claws scraping the roof.

  When Stu spoke, his tone was soft but urgent. “Get in the house and lock the door, and stay there no matter what happens,” he said. The next part was shouted, an anxious command. “Do it now!”

  Juliet ran for the door. She hadn’t put away the key ring, but she fumbled with it briefly, trying to find the right key for the knob, sorry she had turned the thumb latch before walking out. Stu came close behind her. Behind him—she knew because she heard his exhaled curse, not its landing—was something else. She didn’t want to see what it was—knowing it was there and that it was frightening enough to make Stu run into her in his haste was bad enough.

  She finally opened the door and fell inside. Stu was still behind, but she was sprawled out on the floor, and he paused, ever so briefly, maybe deciding if he should walk right on her or try to leap over. He was still standing there when something snatched him out the door again, hurling him into the yard.

  “Lock the door!” he screamed.

  She forced herself to slide out of the way enough to shove it closed with her feet. When she heard it latch, she pulled herself up on the knob, setting the thumb latch again, then the dead bolt. She leaned against the solid wooden door for a few moments, catching her breath.

  But outside, Stu struggled with whatever had attacked them. She heard his shouts of terror and anguish, and deep, throaty animal roars. Once again she wished she had taken the advice of her neighbors and bought a gun.

  Rushing to the window, she peeked out.

  What she saw filled her with a kind of horror she had never imagined.

  Stu had fallen to the snow-covered lawn—the snow had stopped falling; the sky was the color the edge of her hand got when she drew with a soft pencil for too long. He flailed with his arms and legs against a beast, a silvery canine with black markings. A rabid dog? she wondered.

  Then it came to her. Not a dog.

  Stu fought a wolf.

  She remembered hearing reports of occasional wolf sightings locally. Wolves, virtually wiped out in the late nineteenth century, were being reintroduced to wild places around the West. Some farmers and ranchers objected, but the wolf-recovery forces usually seemed to win out.

  The canine was huge and muscular, far larger than any wolf she had ever seen a picture of, and it snarled and snapped and pawed at Stu, who was on the ground, screaming and trying to fight but growing weaker even as Juliet watched.

  Helpless.

  If she’d had a gun she might have been able to hit it. Its broad shoulders and big head provided reasonable targets. But the best weapon she could come up with was one of the carving knives from her kitchen. If she went out with that, all it would get her was killed.

  Stu had told her to stay inside, no matter what happened.

  Did he understand what he was asking? Did he know that it would mean she would have to stand here and watch him die, doing nothing because there was nothing she could do?

  He couldn’t have known the noises on the roof were a wolf, could he? He had dismissed that idea after seeing the cattle. But even if he’d thought so, he couldn’t have known how big it was, or that it could climb so well, or that it would be fast enough, vicious enough, to yank him out an open door.

  She watched Stu bat at it hopelessly. The canine had one massive paw on his chest, holding him down. When the wolf lowered its head toward Stu’s throat, she cringed and squeezed her eyes shut. That lasted only an instant; by the time she opened them again, the wolf was lifting its head, its muzzle slick and red. Stu’s screams had finally stopped.

  Tears streamed down Juliet’s cheeks. What had she been thinking earlier? That death surrounded her?

  She hadn’t known the half of it then.

  Stu no longer moved. The animal lowered its head again, then whipped it from side to side. Tearing at something. Juliet saw stringy, bloody tissue clutched in its teeth. It chewed, swallowed. The snow around the wolf and Stu’s lifeless shape was disturbed, lumpy, melting, and splattered with so much red that it looked spray-painted.

  Then slowly, horribly, the wolf turned its head, looking past its left shoulder.

  Right at her.

  In its yellow eyes she saw a ferocious intelligence and a terrible hunger.

  The cattle weren’t enough for it. Neither was Stu.

  That beast wanted her.

  Juliet made sure that every door was locked. Where there were curtains open, she closed them. She turned on every light in the house. She tried the phones again, even carrying her cell phone upstairs and standing as close as she dared to all the windows, in case there was a stray signal that had seeped into the canyon. No luck.

  Having done all that, she sat down on the couch in the living room and pulled a blanket around herself. She shivered, even though she had turned the thermostat up to eighty and the heater blasted away. She tried to empty her mind, to force herself to stop seeing the awful way the wolf had regarded her, to stop hearing Stu’s screams and the wet ripping noises the animal made long after she had stopped watching. The last time she’d peeked from an upstairs window, bloody paw prints led away from the mangled remains of the man who had been her friend and her ranch hand.

  She couldn’t assume it had left, though. That’s what it wanted her to think. It wanted her to believe that it had moved on, so she would go outside, make a run for the Bledsoe place down the road. Then it would come at her, like a cat chasing a mouse, toying with her until it got tired of the game and finished her off.

  How long could she stay inside? She had enough food for a week, probably. The ranch had its own well and septic system, so water and sewage wouldn’t be issues. Electricity, like phone service, came in on wires from the road, so if it had been clever enough to cut the phone lines, it could do the same to the power. A propane tank provided heat, but the furnace needed electricity to work. To operate the thermostat? She wasn’t sure about that, although she thought not. So even if the canine shut off her lights, she wouldn’t have to freeze.

  Until the propane ran out.

  Surely before that might happen she would be saved. Every now and then the mail carrier came to the door with a package too big for the mailbox at the end of the lane. Or a UPS driver. The mailman might even come to check when he saw her mail start to pile up inside the box. All she would need to do then was run from the house and get inside his Jeep, or the UPS truck, and slam the door and tell the driver to drive, drive away as fast as he could. One of her friends from town might even come out when a few days went by without her answering her phone.

  Her thoughts brightened a little at that. There was a way out of this, after all. She would have to stay awake during the daytime, when it was likeliest that someone would drive close to the house. And weren’t wolves nocturnal? So when the best opportunity presented itself, the canine would likely be sleeping somewhere.

  She would leave this damned ranch and never return, never even look back. Let it go back to the land, let the house collapse with everything in it, she didn’t care. Let the wolf have it all.

  “You can have the ranch, but you won’t get me,” she said out loud. She meant for it to sound defiant, but instead it rang hollow, pitiful, to her ears. She wrapped the blanket tighter around herself and trembled.

  FIFTEEN

  As it had the night they first came in—just last night, Sam realized, although much had happened—the town seemed to close up early. Even the neon open sign at the Plugged Bucket was turned off when they went past after leaving the Richardsons’ house. The Wagon Wheel was dark and empty. It seemed word had spread, finally convincing enough people to drive them to their homes.

  Where, Sam feared, they were no safer than they were at any other place. If it chose you, it chose you, whether it was an old man or a spirit or a shapeshifter, and there didn’t seem to be a
hell of a lot you could say about it.

  They cruised dark and silent streets, searching for the old man. The snow had stopped falling, although now and then a breeze puffed some into the air. In fact, Main Street had been plowed, but nothing else had, and the Impala made a shushing noise as they drove. On the tape deck, Bob Seger sang “Turn the Page,” about being on the cold and lonely road, and Sam empathized. Dean tapped his fingers quietly on the steering wheel, in time to the music.

  “This is pointless,” Dean said after twenty minutes or so. “There’s nobody out, much less an old man with a gun.”

  “The killer might be out there somewhere,” Sam said. “We’re just not seeing him.”

  “Or it. And if it’s a spirit, we might never see it. We’ve got to be on the scene when a killing happens, or right after. That’s the only way we’re going to run it to ground.”

  “Like we were on the scene with the bear.”

  “Yeah, except at the time we thought it was just a bear. Now we know better.”

  “Let’s go back to our room,” Sam suggested. “We can listen to the police band radio, maybe get online and see if there’s something else we can learn. Something we’ve been missing.”

  “We’re missing something, that’s for sure,” Dean said. He changed course, back to Main and toward the Trail’s End.

  They had stayed in so many motels during Sam’s younger days that, growing up, he’d been surprised to learn that there actually were families like the ones he saw on TV, who lived in the same place day after day and didn’t have to collect their mail, if they got any at all, from some desk clerk or other. Stanford was the only place he had ever felt close to settled in, and the apartment he shared with Jess was the only home he’d ever looked forward to getting back to at the end of the day. He wondered what it might be like to have bookshelves, family pictures and your own artwork on the walls, a pantry full of food that you liked and wanted to eat.

  He might never find out. People in his line of work—not that there were many of them—probably didn’t get the chance to retire peacefully.