Witch's Canyon

by Jeff Mariotte

  “Halt!” Beckett ordered, yelling into the microphone. “Everyone just stand still, please!”

  This time the response sounded more orderly. Other sheriff’s officers picked up the cry and spread it through the crowd, and suddenly the place was almost still.

  “There’s a little girl up here who’s been hurt, Sheriff!” someone shouted from upstairs.

  “My mother got knocked down!” someone downstairs called. “Her cheek is bleeding!”

  “We have paramedics right outside,” Beckett announced. “They’re coming in now. Show them anyone who’s hurt. The important thing is to keep your cool, don’t panic and run around, because that’s how people get injured. I’ll repeat, the situation has been dealt with, and there doesn’t seem to be any more immediate danger.”

  “Doesn’t seem to be? That’s not very encouraging,” someone called.

  Sam scooted out from beneath the stairs and worked his way into a clutch of people standing around watching the dais. Beckett was consulting with Mayor Milner and Carla Krug again. Probably, Sam guessed, debating the wisdom of evacuating the mall versus keeping everyone confined where at least the enemy could be watched for.

  Enemy was the right word, because this had become a war, with casualties at critically high levels. Like all wars, the longer it went on, the more people would be hurt or killed.

  I really hope Dean is at that witch’s cabin, he thought, because I could use some good news here.

  A man in a ball cap and denim jacket grabbed his shoulder. “You the one shot that guy?” he asked. “I seen you shoot him.”

  Sam tried to give a grunt instead of an answer, smiling all the while.

  “What the hell was that? Some kind of Indian, it looked like.”

  Paiute, I’d guess, Sam thought. But he really didn’t want to get snared in a conversation about it, so he shrugged and started to walk away.

  “Hey, this here’s the guy shot that Indian!” the man shouted, pointing at Sam. “You got your gun in that bag, cowboy?”

  Within seconds a mob had gathered around Sam, people calling out questions at him like he was a celebrity on a street corner. He was trapped, hemmed in on every side.

  Sheriff Beckett saved him.

  “Sam, you want to step over here?” he said into the microphone.

  Sam looked over the heads of the crowd—not hard to do at his height—and saw Beckett gesturing him to the dais. “Excuse me,” he said to the people immediately around him. “Sheriff needs me.”

  The crowd parted for him, and he walked through a tunnel, some people quietly complimenting him on his act while others continued to ask questions all the way. Finally, he climbed the steps to the dais.

  “People,” Sheriff Beckett said, “I know you all have a lot of questions about this, and I’m sorry such a great day in Cedar Wells got spoiled by this. Just keep shopping and having a good time, and we’ll answer your questions as quick as we can.”

  When Sam neared him, he clicked the microphone off and set it back in its stand. The mayor and Carla joined them. “That was quick work, son,” Beckett said. “Thank you.”

  Sam shrugged again. “Didn’t look like anyone else had a shot at it.”

  “My people didn’t. If you hadn’t done what you did, I don’t know what. It would have been a lot worse.”

  “I’m not sure private citizens should be walking around my mall with firearms,” Carla said.

  “I’ll second that,” Milner said. “It’s a recipe for disaster.”

  “Unless you’ve got guards and metal detectors at every entrance,” Beckett pointed out, “you’re going to have people coming in with firearms from time to time. In this instance, Sam might have saved several lives.”

  “I suppose,” Carla said. “But—”

  “Look, you’ve got much bigger problems than whether or not I’m armed,” Sam interrupted. “This crowd is still on the verge of all-out panic. And there are more of those—those killers out there. One has already come inside, past whatever security perimeter you set up around this place. More might follow. If they do, this place is going to go crazy.”

  “He’s right,” Beckett said. “I have to recommend that we evacuate in an orderly fashion while we still can.”

  “Hold on,” Carla said. “Lots of people are already leaving—have you seen the parking lot in the last few minutes? There are still cars coming in, but not nearly as many as are going out. For the sake of my merchants we have to stay open as long as possible.”

  “Besides,” Milner added, “where are the people going to go if we do evacuate? They can’t leave town, can they? We’ll just end up with traffic jams on the roads, and they’ll be just as vulnerable, but harder to protect.”

  “That’s a good point,” Beckett said, tugging on his ear. People had gathered around the dais, trying to listen in, so the four spoke in ever lower tones. “Maybe it’s time to separate them into smaller groups and—”

  “You want to imprison them in different areas of the mall?” Carla asked. “That’s as good as shutting us down, except maybe for the food court.”

  “We already had this discussion once, Carla,” Beckett said. “Far as I’m concerned, this is my mall now, and I make the rules.”

  She nodded. Her hair had come out of its neat arrangement and her face looked drawn, her eyes tired. She probably hadn’t had much sleep, and now the stress of disaster on opening day was showing. “I know,” she said. “I won’t argue. You can do whatever you need to. I just want it known that it’s under protest.”

  “It’s known,” Beckett said. “You got any complaints, Donald?”

  “I just want everybody out of here alive,” Milner said. “And for this whole damn nightmare to be over.”

  “My brother’s working on that,” Sam told him.

  “Why aren’t you, Jim?” Milner asked.

  “I don’t have anyone to spare, Donald. My people are either here or out on the roads already, with a few responding to emergency calls.”

  “It’s okay,” Sam said. “Dean has all the help he needs. He’s the best there is at this kind of thing.”

  “I’d ask just what this kind of thing is,” Milner said, “except I don’t think I really want to know.”

  “I don’t think you do, either.”

  Carla put her hand to her ear, and Sam realized she had an earpiece and was no doubt keeping in touch with her security team. Her mouth dropped open and her face went white. “Oh,” she said into a mike clipped on the collar of her blouse. “All right.”

  She looked up again. “There’s a situation outside, in West parking,” she said. “It sounds like a bad one.”

  “How bad?” Beckett asked.

  “Eight or nine of them,” she said. “They said it was hard to count.”

  Beckett immediately thumbed his own microphone. “Anyone in the west lot? How come I haven’t had any reports?”

  “That’s the thing, Jim,” Carla said, her voice strained. “They shot your officer first.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  An occasional raven flew past them, but no more than on any other day Dean had experienced out here. Still, he couldn’t help suspecting they were spying on the progress he and Baird made. If they were, let them. Nothing the witch could do now would prevent him from accomplishing his task.

  The old classic “or die trying” couldn’t be allowed to enter into it.

  After they’d chased away or destroyed the animal spirits that had surrounded them, Baird had picked up his pace. It soon had him huffing and panting, and a sheen of perspiration coated his face. Dean desperately hoped the old codger didn’t have a heart attack before they were done.

  As they got closer to where Baird insisted that Witch’s Canyon intersected the Grand Canyon, the walls grew wider apart, until the land looked like a valley with some gently rolling hills. About a mile away, Dean guessed, he saw a dirt road, and a ranch house, a barn, a corral, and some other outbuildings.

  “Someone
lives there,” he said. “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  Baird considered this for a long minute. Dean found that encouraging; if the man had simply snapped an answer, he would have assumed it was a lie.

  “See that old pine by the side of the ranch house?” he asked finally.

  “What about it?”

  “That was a sapling in those days.”

  “Dude, that was eighty years ago. How can you be sure it’s the same tree?”

  “I can’t be certain. But judging by where it is in relation to the canyon wall behind it, I’d just about swear to it.”

  The canyon wall was a good half mile behind it, which seemed to Dean like it would make it hard to judge the relative position of anything. “I don’t know…” he began.

  “I know what you’re thinkin’, Dean. You’re thinkin’ I’m an old fool whose memory is playin’ tricks on him and I’ve brought you out here on some damn goose chase while your brother’s in danger. All I can say is you’re wrong. Remember those animals? They wouldn’t have attacked us if we weren’t getting close—”

  “I thought the same thing myself.”

  “—and my memory may not be as good as it once was, but for some things—like that witch’s cabin—it’s just fine. That place scared the hell outta me, and I’ll never forget it while there’s a breath in my body.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “It’s gone!” Baird stared at Dean with those small black eyes. “That’s what I’m tellin’ you! It was right there. Someone knocked it down and built a ranch right on top of it.”

  “Well, that’s always a bad idea.” It seemed like everyone knew not to build on Indian burial grounds these days, but people needed to be more careful about building on top of the bones of evil witches, too.

  If the house was literally on top of her grave, he’d have to tear up floorboards or jackhammer a concrete slab to get at it. All the while, Sammy and everyone else in Cedar Wells remained in danger.

  “All right,” he said finally. “Let’s get over there and see what’s what.”

  They started forward again. As they got closer to the place, Dean could see a few vehicles scattered around. A truck was parked beside the house, a red SUV in the driveway and a white one in a carport. Somebody’s probably there, then, he thought. That might make the home-destruction part of this more complicated.

  The ranch house was two stories, with a fenced yard around it that was neatly groomed. In a distant pasture some cattle grazed. The whole scene looked peaceful, even idyllic. Except for the vehicles, it could have been from a hundred years ago.

  Dean didn’t trust it for a second.

  He took his electromagnetic frequency reader from his pocket and switched it on. They were maybe a quarter mile from the ranch house when it started to react like crazy, squealing and beeping, the lights across the top flashing red.

  “The hell’s that thing?” Baird asked. “One of them pod things?”

  “EMF reader,” Dean said. “There’s been an anomaly in the electromagnetic frequency around here. Recently.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Paranormal activity isn’t the only cause, but it’s a major one. And I don’t see anything else around here that might cause this kind of reading.”

  “So there’s been spooks around here.”

  “Probably some spirit activity, yeah.”

  They kept walking as they talked, reaching the gate through the fence that surrounded the house.

  Dean noticed the broken front window about the same time that he heard a woman scream inside.

  After the crash and the rain of glass onto her living room carpet, Juliet didn’t hear anything. She wasn’t sure what to make of that. If Stu or Howard had been rattling the door, then they had to have physical bodies—even though she could still see their ravaged corpses out her window, where they had fallen. She couldn’t imagine either of them walking across the glass that must surely be littering the living room floor without making noise. So if anyone had come inside, it had to be the wolf.

  She hadn’t had time to formulate much of a plan, and she didn’t have many weapons handy. She had a couple, though, and intended to use everything at her disposal before retreating into the master bathroom, locking that door, and waiting for the end.

  Maybe this was her day to join Ross in the grave, or beyond it. She’d decided that she would go out fighting.

  To that end, she took a bottle of nail polish remover from her bathroom cabinet. Extremely flammable, the bottle said. Contents and vapors may ignite. Sounded good to her. She upended it into a plastic bag full of cotton balls, then sealed the Ziploc closure of the bag. The balls turned blue and the whole thing had a satisfying weight in her hand.

  She had a can of hair spray, too, but was a little concerned about the whole thing exploding on her. She would save that as a last resort.

  Next she yanked down the shower curtain rod, dropping one end and letting the plastic curtain fall off into the tub. She gathered the curtain and the rod—separate weapons, for separate uses—and put them both on the bed. Doing so, she noticed the curtain rod over the bedroom window, part of the rustic design Ross had wanted for their ranch house. It was twisted wrought iron with an arrowhead point at each end. Shorter than the shower curtain rod by several inches, it would be much stronger. Screws through welded-on L-brackets held it into the wall, and the curtains dangled from matching black iron hooks. Juliet tipped over a solid oak nightstand and stood on it, wrenching at the rod until the screws pulled from the walls and she held the thing in her hands.

  She looked out the window again. The bodies remained where they had been, but she could see no sign of the duplicate Stu and Howard. If they were on the covered front walkway, however, she knew she wouldn’t be able to see them from up here. She scanned for the wolf without success. Just on the far side of the fence, though, she saw two men headed toward the house. She thought they both carried guns. Assuming they were real, and not impossible constructs like Stu and Howard, they could be her best bet of surviving this nightmare. If, that was, they could reach her in time, without being killed themselves.

  No way to communicate at this distance in any kind of comprehensible fashion. Maybe they’d respond to an old-fashioned distress call, though. And what did she have to lose? She pushed open the window and loosed the loudest, most ear-piercing B-horror movie scream she could summon.

  As she pulled the window shut, her bedroom door shook like someone had punched it.

  “Okay, you bastard,” she said. Her jaw was tight, her fists clenched, her legs poised and ready to spring. “Might as well get this over with.”

  The door rattled as someone tried the knob. Wolf or person? She couldn’t tell.

  But then it shook again and a paw punched through the center panel, tearing downward for about eight inches, as easily as if it had been paper.

  Wolf, then. Good. She didn’t want to waste time with intermediaries.

  The beast clawed at the door again, this time punching out a bigger opening in the panel. Now she could see its silvery head, golden eyes regarding her steadily through the hole in the door. She stood behind her bed, hoping it couldn’t determine her intentions.

  Or, given its other abilities, read minds.

  Something moved behind the canine, and a human hand—Stu’s, from the look of it—reached inside and turned the knob, unlocking it.

  Juliet braced herself for anything, and lit a match.

  The door swung open.

  The wolf stood in the doorway, mouth open just enough to show its huge teeth. Its head was vaguely wedge shaped, triangular ears flared away from the big head, alert, turning slightly as it examined the room, its eyes drawn to the flaring match Juliet held.

  Stu and Howard flanked the canine, a few steps behind it. Both were dead, their bodies ripped open by the animal’s teeth and claws. They looked at Juliet without expression.

  She touched the match to the plastic ba
g of soaked cotton balls, and the flame melted through the plastic. The fluid-soaked balls ignited as she hurled the bag.

  She could hear it flaring and burning hot as it sailed across the short distance between her and the wolf. It hit the animal’s right front shoulder and burst, spreading flames across its back and up onto its head.

  Next, Juliet snatched up the shower curtain and took a few steps toward the startled beast. Opening the curtain, she sailed it over the animal’s head and back. She didn’t think it would choke out the flames, but hoped it would hold the bulk of fiery cotton against the wolf’s shoulder where it had landed. Confusing the wolf would be a good fringe benefit.

  It seemed to do both. The beast batted at the curtain with its paws, shook its massive head, but couldn’t dislodge it. It might have been trying to roar, but it had always been silent, and that held true now.

  The shower curtain started to sizzle and melt into the creature’s fur. Now she knew, from the way it bucked and writhed under the hot plastic, that she had caused it pain. She allowed herself a fleeting smile.

  Pain wouldn’t kill it, though. And while it flailed in the doorway, Stu and Howard were blocked from entering, but she would have to contend with them as well.

  She picked up the shower curtain rod. She still wasn’t convinced it was strong enough to do any damage, but she had already been as close as she wanted to be to the thing. She held it in both hands and leaned toward the beast, driving the rod full force into its face, hoping to hit an eye underneath the shower curtain.

  At the last second the animal’s head reared up and knocked the rod away before it landed. She tried again, but the wolf opened its huge maw and caught it. The end of the rod collapsed like balsa wood under its bite, and it jerked its head, whipping the weak pole from her grasp.

  Its strength was indescribable. The other curtain rod, heavier but short, still waited on the bed.

  But suddenly her confidence in it as a weapon flagged, along with her confidence in herself. She had intended to survive this. For a time—especially when she discovered that the wolf could feel pain—she thought she had.