by Sam Witt
“That’s how she moved. Sorta like,” Dan swirled his hands in sloppy circles while weaving them back and forth.
“Did you try and stop them from killing those boys?” Joe sat on the edge of a desk and laid his shotgun across his lap.
“You mean your other prisoners?”
“You have someone else locked up back there?”
Dan scowled and hiked up his pants. His hand fell back onto the sandalwood grip of his pistol. “No. And I didn’t try to stop them. You have no idea —”
“I do have an idea.” Joe tilted the shotgun toward Dan. “Which is why you’re going to tell me true, did you have anything to do with what happened here today?”
“You think I killed those boys?” Dan’s eyes widened into pink-rimmed circles.
“If I thought that, we wouldn’t be having this little chat, and you wouldn’t be breathing. But I will find out what happened here today, Dan. Pray to God I don’t find out you were involved.”
“And if I was, you’ll come back to kill me.” Dan popped the snap on his holster.
Joe cocked an eyebrow in the sheriff’s direction. “There is only one fate for those who have turned to the Left-Hand Path.”
“You can try and pass judgment on me, Joe.” Dan took his hands off his pistol. “That’s what you do best. But you might find I’m not an old hag or a meth head you can gun down while I piss my pants in fear.”
“I hope you’re smarter than you’re fucking acting.” Joe whipped the shotgun onto his shoulder and turned his back on the sheriff. He kicked a chair out of his way, and it rolled across the floor before banging to a halt against the wall. Joe stopped at the front door. “I will find out what’s going on. Be better for everyone involved in this bullshit to come forward and make my job easier.”
“I know.”
“Everyone responsible, everyone involved — they’re dead. No exceptions.” Joe shoved the door open with his left shoulder and stomped out into the morning sun. He made his way down to his truck and looked back into the police station.
Dan sat limp and hunched onto the corner of a desk, head in his hands. Joe felt pity for the man, who was caught up in something he didn’t understand and couldn’t handle on his own. He hoped the sheriff had enough sense to keep his head down when the shit started to fly, but couldn’t escape the feeling that Dan was doomed no matter who won the war coming to Pitchfork.
CHAPTER 25
WITH HIS PRISONERS dead or on the run, Joe only had one lead left. The skinny Pryor boy who’d escaped the previous night’s carnage and been lucky enough to not be in the cell when his brothers got shredded by the monsters they’d called up. If he hadn’t fallen into a hole and broken his neck or overdosed, Joe was pretty sure the little junkie would end up at the heart of Pitchfork’s meth scene sooner or later. It was just a matter of waiting for the little fucker.
Nancy Woodhawk and her sister, Lizzie, ran the Hanging Rooster, a gritty dive set back in the woods outside Ironton. Joe knew the bar by reputation and the girls from their years together in middle school. He wasn’t sure how such nice young ladies had ended up playing hostess to the festering underbelly of Pitchfork County, but he wasn’t surprised. Between its soul-crushing poverty and the dark escape offered by its ubiquitous crystal meth networks, Pitchfork did a near-flawless job of snuffing out promise and turning pretty little things into ragged scraps blowing in the wind by the side of the road.
The sun was clawing its way up over the mountains and headed toward noon by the time Joe rolled into Ironton, but gathering clouds shrouded its face and left its light watery and weak. Something about the sullen skies seemed to suit Ironton, a town as gray and hard as its namesake. The iron ore mine, once a boon for the whole county, had shut its doors a few years before and left behind a thousand families who now drifted through life with little purpose and less money. Those who remained spent their days waiting for welfare checks and food stamps, clinging to the shreds of the independent lives they’d once known.
His old truck rolled through town, grumbling at the near-empty streets. Joe couldn’t shake the feeling he was being watched. More than once he imagined a swollen, three-pupiled eye glaring at him from a darkened alley or the shadow of a doorway. Passing the burnt-out shells of abandoned businesses and staring windows of vacant homes, he sensed something patient and hungry flickering in the shadows. Poverty was a special kind of vampire, a presence that sucked the hope out of every community it touched. Joe’s trigger finger felt heavy, and he wished a few shotgun shells could solve that problem.
Near the outskirts of the dying town, foot traffic picked up. A scattered handful of skin-picking meth zombies shuffled toward the bar, and Joe couldn’t help but shake his head at the sight of them. They walked alone, oblivious to everything but the hunger that drove them out of their holes to look for more drugs. One of them swirled a soda bottle filled with roiling fluid as he walked, cooking a personal batch as he went, risking blowing his hand off for the promise of a fix. Joe considered punching the accelerator and rolling over the junkies, doing his part to clean up the cancer gnawing at Pitchfork’s heart. In some ways, Zeke was right - the meth traffic and lack of jobs was almost as dangerous as the monsters who walked the Left-Hand Path. Joe remembered his own childhood, free of toxic sludge pits and burning labs, where men worked the mines or plowed fields to keep their families clothed and fed. He never thought it would happen, but he longed for those days and feared he’d never see their like again. The world was changing into something he didn’t recognize.
Joe parked in front of the bar and locked the truck up. One of the meth heads shambled in his direction, but Joe was having none of that.
“Fuck off,” he hollered at the nearest addict, who clapped scabbed hands to his ears and stumbled away. “Any of you dipshits touch this truck, I’ll take you apart with my bare hands.”
The truck, engine dead for most of a minute, backfired as if to punctuate Joe’s threat.
With the report still ringing through the desolate streets of Ironton, Joe shoved his way into the Hanging Rooster.
The gloomy day outside was bright as a desert sun compared to the bar’s interior. Its windows were covered with heavy black curtains that smothered any sunlight before it could find its way inside. Battery-powered candles flickered with sullen orange light on the tables scattered around the place, and ropes of purple LEDs traced the perimeter of the sad little dance floor with a weak glow. The brightest lights in the place came from the red Men and Women signs over the restrooms, and those were only a hair stronger than the flickering bulbs of the wheezing jukebox.
The bar was small, it couldn’t hold more than fifty people if they were holding hands and scrunched in close, but even at midday every table was full. Hunched shadows crowded around small tables, exhaling whispers shrouded in blue-gray clouds of nicotine smoke, eyes red with the reflected light of their cigarette cherries. They all did their best to ignore Joe as he headed toward the bar, but he did his best to take in all the faces he recognized.
There were troublemakers, for sure, but most of those he saw were tired and beaten down, not looking for any fuss. They were in the bar to smoke their cigarettes and chase down watery shots of Southern Comfort with cans of Busch, maybe score a little meth. They eyed Joe with a mixture of fear and resignation, and kept on drinking.
Joe’s fingers trembled on top of the bar as he took his seat. His mouth filled with saliva at the stink of spilled beer, and he longed for a cigarette despite having given it up years before. Places like this could bring out the worst in any man. He raised two fingers on his left hand to get the bartender’s attention.
Lizzie Woodhawk floated his way with a young woman’s springy step. The weak light carved her face into harsh peaks and benighted valleys, the years of living in Pitchfork etched into a face Joe still thought of as belonging to a high school cheerleader with her whole life ahead of her.
She did a double-take when she saw the Night Marshal at
the end of her bar, and an honest grin chased ten years off her face. “Well, lookit who came to see me. I heard you been kickin’ up a fuss, old man. What’re you drinking?”
“Can of Busch is fine,” Joe said. He wanted a slug of Jack, maybe two, but the beer would have to do. This day wouldn’t get any better if he tried to get through it shitfaced.
“Sure.” She reached under the bar and came up with a blue-and-white can dripping with shards of melting ice. A quick swipe with her apron left the can mostly dry. She dropped it into his outstretched hand. “Been too long. What brings you around?”
“Probably got tired of Stevie. Wanted to trade up.” Nancy Woodhawk sidled up next to Joe and draped her scrawny arm over his shoulders. “That it, Marshal?”
Joe tilted the can toward Nancy and cracked the top. A spritz of beer mist dotted her face and tickled her nose.
“I like Stevie just fine, ladies.”
“I bet.” Nancy slapped Joe on the arm and faded away, carrying drinks out into the darkness, a priestess hauling the sacrament of numbness to the heathens.
“You see any of them Pryor boys around here?” Joe watched Lizzie over the top of his beer can as he poured a healthy drink down his throat.
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lizzie tried to keep her voice light, but Joe could see the veil of caution draw over her eyes. “We got our share of assholes around here, but we don’t serve maniacs.”
“Sure.” Joe left the can on the bar top and turned it slowly with his fingertips. “You hear anything about what they’ve been up to?”
Lizzie cleared her throat. Joe felt every eye in the bar turning in his direction, burning on the back of his neck.
“Them questions are gonna get you hurt.” Her grin never faltered, but Joe could see the tension in her face.
“Already been hurt.”
“I hear tell most of them boys are already dead. Why you wanna go picking at their ghosts?”
She kept looking over Joe’s left shoulder. He kept his eyes locked on Lizzie’s, watching for any sign of guilt. She was anxious, scared of Joe, but he didn’t see the Woodhawk girls behind this.
“Who’re you looking out for?”
“You make people nervous. Makin’ sure no one gets squirrelly.”
“I’m a big boy. You don’t need to watch out for me.” Joe drained the last of his beer. “If you know something, you need to be straight with me before it’s too late.”
A heap of stinking flesh flopped down on the bar stool next to Joe. “Already too late. Why don’t you get the fuck out of here before I have to get blood on my knuckles?”
Joe flicked his eyes to the side. The man next to him was a foot taller and two hundred pounds heavier than the Night Marshal. His bushy white hair was streaked with yellow nicotine, and grease gleamed on all of his wobbling chins. Joe recognized him and let out a weary sigh.
“Frank Blackbriar. Aren’t you still on probation?”
“You’re not a real marshal.” Frank laid a sweaty palm on the back of Joe’s neck and gave a squeeze that Joe felt in his bones. Frank was a big, drunken idiot, but he was strong enough to snap a man’s spine with one hand. “Whyn’t you just leave us to drink in peace?”
“Just as soon as I finish talking to Lizzie, I’ll be on my way.”
“I say you’re done talking.”
Joe could hear others moving in the bar, chairs shoving back, drunk steps in his direction. He wished he’d brought the shotgun.
“Lizzie,” he held her eyes with his. “I don’t want to fuck up your bar, so maybe you can calm these boys down.”
She looked at Joe long and hard, then gave one quick shake of her head.
Joe spun to the left, slamming his good hand into the inside of Frank’s elbow, driving with all the strength he could muster as Frank tried to crush his neck in that brutal grip.
The big man bellowed as the pain from his elbow burrowed through his thick skull to reach his brain. Joe hooked his hand onto the back of Frank’s bicep and corkscrewed his arm around, using leverage to force the bigger man off his stool and onto the floor.
Frank was full of surprises. On his way down, he drew a knife and took a wild swipe.
The blade scythed toward Joe’s thigh. The Night Marshal pivoted and stomped down on Frank’s swinging arm. He pinned the man’s wrist to the floor under his heavy boot, crunching bones like popcorn. Frank shouted in surprised pain, then yelped even louder when the Night Marshal leaned all his weight on the broken wrist. Joe stepped over Frank and ducked down to grab the knife from where it had fallen.
Joe came up with his back to the bar, knife in his right hand, razor-sharp tip pointed at the small knot of drunks and addicts easing up on him. He could smell their fear and feel their anger, a sharp-edged stink and swampy heat that made it hard to breathe. One of the men scratched at a bloody divot on the side of his chin, scraping away meat to get at the bugs he imagined burrowing there. Another ground his teeth with such ferocity his lips were flecked with foam and the tendons on either side of his jaw stood out thick as tow chains. Another had dug a bald patch into the side of his scalp. The scars of meth were on most of their faces, the rest had the flushed noses and ruddy cheeks of lifelong drunks. A good mix had both. They were as wretched a group as Joe had ever laid eyes on.
“Let’s not.” A wave of bone-deep weariness washed over the Night Marshal. He could fight these men, probably kill more than a few of them. He might even get out alive. But it wasn’t why he was here. He wanted information, just a little tidbit to help him protect these people from whatever madness was coming to Pitchfork County. He wondered if his footsteps would always fill with blood, or if there might be a better way. Just then, he was too tired to think of anything. He showed the crowd the knife, and they shuffled their feet and muttered, working up the courage to rush him.
“Enough,” Lizzie shouted and slapped both hands on the bar. Joe could hear the fear in her voice, the terror that things were spinning out of control and heading down a road that could only end in spilled blood. “Everyone just sit right the fuck down before I have to get violent with ya.”
The fire alarm brayed as a shaft of gray light blasted across the bar from the emergency exit beside the restrooms. A slight figure vanished through the door, then slammed it shut and plunged the bar back into semi-darkness.
“Fuck,” Joe snarled and headed for the front door. He ground his heel on Frank’s broken wrist as he took off, grinning with dark glee at the drunk’s anguished howl. He recognized the skinny runner as the last surviving Pryor. He’d have the answers the Night Marshal needed.
Joe just had to catch him.
CHAPTER 26
STEVIE WASN’T A runner. She decided she’d stay and fight before Joe had left the house, and by the time she heard his old pickup rattling down the driveway, her plans were firm in her mind.
“Al,” she snapped, “you and Elsa check the seals, then get yourselves tucked away.”
Her son put his guitar aside, and Elsa dropped her Harry Potter book and slid off the couch. Stevie watched them for a moment as they moved from window to window, checking the old beeswax seals she’d laid in years ago. Then she headed upstairs to get ready for whatever was coming.
She paused at the door of the bedroom she’d shared with Joe before her mama’s curse had driven them apart. Just before Elsa was born, Stevie’d made a promise to her family and set aside the tools of her trade. She’d left them here, tucked away in a chest of drawers were Joe could keep an eye on them.
Stevie crossed the threshold and hurried to the chest of drawers. With shaking hands, she yanked open the drawer and lifted out a battered, red-laquered box. She opened it and ran her fingers over the contents. Though her birthright, the awesome and terrible power of the Bog Witch flowed through her veins, it was these symbols that let her call upon that strength. These were the things she had promised her husband she would never again take up. These were the things she would w
ear once again to protect her family. Running just wasn’t in her nature.
She lifted the heavy copper bracelet from its resting place inside the box and slipped it around her wrist. The metal tingled against her skin and raised goosebumps up both arms. Stevie’s teeth flashed in a fierce smile as her long-neglected power swelled within her heart. The shadows in the corners of the rooms grew deeper and spread across the floor like spilled ink, black tendrils oozing toward her feet.
Next, Stevie retrieved a threaded loop of witch bullets and slipped them over her head. The little pellets of honeycomb, horsehair, and grave dust hung heavy around her throat, but Stevie was glad of their weight. Fueled by her rage, a thrown witch bullet was as deadly as any firearm.
Last of all she pulled out her mother’s old spook bell and the ancient dish rag used to polish it. She placed the red box back on the chest of drawers she kept in the big bedroom she’d once shared with her husband. She set to cleaning up the old silver bell, rubbing it vigorously to bring back its lustrous shine.
Stevie turned the bell to work on a dusty section, and the dish rag slipped through her fingers. She watched it flutter away, fanning out to land flat on the floor. “Stranger coming,” she whispered to herself, reading the old sign, “a man.”
A dot of red appeared in the center of the grimy fabric, then spread rapidly until the whole cloth was a bloody mess.
A thunderous bang shook the house on its foundation, jangling the wind chimes on the front porch. Al shouted a wordless warning, and Elsa yelped with surprise.
Stevie rubbed her thumb along the black cord strung around her neck. She headed downstairs, stretching her arms over her head, folding her fingers together and pressing her hands out until her knuckles crackled like hail on a tin roof.
She made her way into the living room, arms hanging loose at her side. For the first time in years she felt alive, filled with that bad old energy that made everything sharp and exicting. “I hear you knockin’,” she whispered to whatever was banging on her door. “But you ain’ comin’ in.”
