by Sam Witt
The house shook a second time, and a long crack ran down the glass in the front door.
“That will not do.” Stevie stomped across the living room. She tugged one of the wax beads on her necklace as she went, and it slipped free of the black cord. Stevie rolled the witch bullet between her left thumb and forefinger and reached for the door handle with the right. Whatever was banging on her door was about to get a big surprise.
“Ye are not welcome in my home, whatever ye may be. Lurk as ye will upon my threshold, but the way in is barred to all who art my foes.” Stevie whispered the words, but they echoed through every room in the house. The beeswax seals she’d placed on every door and window glistened with honey-colored light for a brief moment as her power filled them.
She wrenched the door open before another blow could fall upon it. A woman’s laughter, high and raucous, rang through the forest around the house. Despite the midday sun, owls hooted and loons cried in answer to the mad laughter. Stevie stepped onto the porch with her fists clenched. This was her home. Her children were behind her, and whatever thought it would frighten them was about to learn a hard lesson.
Something darted through the forest toward the east side of the house, a sinuous shadow flickering between the trees. One moment here, the next there, a herky-jerky slide that made Stevie’s head buzz when she tried to focus on it. She blinked to focus her eyes and just caught sight of the shadow disappearing around the far corner of the house.
The front door slammed behind her so hard she felt it in her feet. The lock shot home with a sharp click and Stevie’s stomach fell.
“Al,” she shouted, angry at the way she’d let herself be tricked. She should have known it was a trick. “Get your sister upstairs.”
Stevie twisted the doorknob back and forth, but the heavy door wouldn’t budge. She ran for the edge of the porch, slapped one hand on the wooden rail, and leapt across it. Her knees groaned when she hit the ground, one more pang to mark the passing years. Despite the pain in her legs, Stevie was fast. Her bare toes gripped the grass with each long stride, drawing strength from her land as she pursued the shadow.
Clouds gathered overhead, blowing in on a wind that tugged at Stevie’s hair and set the tree branches swaying. The wind chimes jangled behind her and gave way to another peal of lunatic laughter that raked at her nerves with its raw, mad edges. She ran down the long side of the house, careful not to smash the wax bead in her hand as she pumped her arms and legs for all she was worth. She’d need it when she caught up with this asshole.
The dark shadow appeared at the next corner of the house ahead of Stevie, then ducked out of sight around it. Glass shattered, and Stevie’s heart leapt into her throat. It was in the house, despite all the protections she’d laid upon it. Whatever was coming for her family knew its business and had blown through her wards like they weren’t even there. She felt the first twinge of doubt in her heart and wondered if Joe had been right to ask the family to run.
She came around the corner of the house at full speed, head down, leaning into the curve. She was close; she still had time to catch the shadow before it got to her babies. All she had to do was follow it through the window.
Pain like a thunderbolt erupted in the center of her skull. Stevie’s head rocked back, and her feet shot out in front of her, coming up off the ground as the blow flattened her. She crashed to the ground, limp and senseless.
“Yer old man did this,” a droning, buzzing voice carved the words through the fog around Stevie’s head. Thick fingers wrapped themselves in her shirt and lifted Stevie off the ground.
Her eyes rolled wild in their sockets before she could get them under control. The one holding her was a bear of a man, his face scorched tight against the bone and his hair burned down to greasy nubs across the top of his head. He stank of smoke and charred meat. His left eye was a gaping crater rimmed with black ashes and weeping burns.
“An eye for an eye. That’s what the good book says.” He spun Stevie and slammed her into the side of the house so hard she felt herself sliding into the black void of unconsciousness. The big man pressed his thumb under Stevie’s eyeball, and it wobbled in its socket.
“Mama!” Elsa screamed from upstairs, her voice shrill with raw panic.
Stevie struggled against the big man’s hand, digging her short nails into his wrist to no avail. She kicked her feet, hammering his stomach and thighs, but the big man just laughed. “I like a girl with some spunk in her.”
“Joe’ll kill you for this.” Stevie hated the way she sounded, the empty threat that her husband would settle this score. She was the Bog Witch’s daughter, and years spent birthing babies and curing hangovers couldn’t change that. Not so very long ago, she would have killed this lump of shit herself.
“He done did,” the big man snorted. “Didn’t stick.”
Alasdair roared, an inhuman sound that sent quail flying from the woods. Elsa screamed, and Stevie hoped she was only startled by her brother’s change, that her fears weren’t turning real.
“Let’s see about that eye,” her captor whispered. He licked his lips and a scab stuck to his tongue. He put his thumb back under her eye and pushed. The pressure was slow, inexorable, and Stevie felt her eyeball bulging up over his thumb.
Her mind raced. The witch bullet, her only weapon, was gone. It had fallen from her hand when she’d been hit in the head or slammed into the wall.
The heavy hand released her shirt, but closed around her throat before she could escape. It squeezed, increasing pressure in sync with the thumb at her eye. The big man’s rotten breath pumped in and out of his lungs, fast and harsh. He leaned into her, and Stevie felt something warm mash against her throat.
She envisioned the necklace, the string of waxy beads. Her witch bullets. She still had a chance, even if it might kill her to take it.
Stevie dug her nails into the inside of the big man’s hand, raking furrows in his wrist down to his thumb. For one, brief instant, he shifted his grip, and Stevie felt the pressure on her neck ease. He was still digging in her eye socket, she could feel her eyeball starting to droop and she couldn’t see out of that side, but she had the breathing room she needed.
She spat one word past the loosened grip on her throat, hurled it with the last of the air in her lungs. It was a curse and a plea, her last desperate hope. She had no idea if it would work, or if it would work too well and kill her instead of the man. But she had to try.
The mashed beads pulsed as one, then tore free of the black cord around Stevie’s neck. A trio of them blasted through the big man’s hand, separating his thumb from his palm and tearing his middle and pinkie finger down to ragged stumps. Another plowed through his gray coveralls, leaving behind a black burn on the front of his chest and a fist-sized, scorched crater in his back.
Stevie fell from his grip and staggered away from the shuddering man. Blood poured from his wounds, splattering onto the ground like falling rain. Wisps of black smoke curled from his nostrils and his empty eye socket. The man took one step and toppled over, legs collapsing under him like snapped matchsticks.
Stevie staggered from the side of the house, desperate to reach her children. She could see the broken window from where she stood, like an open mouth with jagged glass teeth. Just a few more steps.
But her neck felt like it was on fire, and a bone-deep weariness made every step a chore. Stevie wondered what her little trick had cost her.
Elsa screamed again. and Stevie sagged against the house, next to the window, hands on her knees. She gasped for breath and prayed for strength. She saw the red drops but it took her a long moment to realize it was blood splashing from her throat onto her bare feet.
CHAPTER 27
JOE BURST OUTSIDE and ran for his truck. He realized he still had Frank’s knife clenched in his good hand and jammed it into his belt so he could unlock the truck. He heard an engine cranking up behind the bar. A shot of adrenaline set his fingers to shaking. “Come on, motherfucker. Pul
l it together.”
The tip of the key hooked in the lock, and Joe slammed it home with a savage twist. He wrenched the door open, and the screech of its rusted hinges mingled with the ragged roar of a misfiring engine. Joe hauled himself into the cab of his truck, cranking the ignition so hard his knuckles popped. The old truck thundered to life. Joe threw it into reverse and spun away from the bar in a cloud of gray dust and pea gravel.
He followed the rattle of the misfiring vehicle, grateful for the almost-empty streets and lack of traffic. Ironton was small, and the roads leading into it were smaller still. Since the mine closed, no one had a job to go to; no one had the money take shopping trips. Within a handful of minutes he could see the smoke-belching Jeep weaving across the road ahead of him, the driver struggling to maintain control. Joe was grateful he hadn’t time to get serious about his drinking in the bar.
Ironton receded in his rearview mirror, the little scab of a town fading away and then gone behind a low hill. The blacktop of Babcock Road changed to the loose gravel and ancient iron dust of Babcock Farm Road just outside of town. The old truck’s tires kicked up rocks and skidded on the bad road, but the Jeep had a worse time rounding corners and almost left the road entirely.
The driver wrestled his vehicle around to the left at an intersection and hit the gas too soon. The Jeep’s back end banged through a deep rut and bounced into the air, wheels spewing out rooster tails of dirt as they spun in the air.
Joe took advantage of his prey’s shitty driving and slammed his old truck into the Jeep’s side. The lighter vehicle spun off the road, wheels spinning in the air and engine screaming. It plunged down into the ditch, then launched up the far side into the fallow field beyond. Two of the Jeep’s bald tires burst as it crashed back to Earth. Its windshield shattered and ran down the sloped hood in a glittering crystal cascade.
The Night Marshal leapt out of his truck and grabbed the shotgun; he wouldn’t be leaving it behind again after the mob scene in the bar. He reached the Jeep just as its driver shoved the door open and fell out onto the tilled earth.
Joe grabbed the man by the back of his filthy T-shirt and hauled him to his feet. The skinny runner struggled, but Joe shoved him hard against the Jeep, and he sagged on to his knees.
“They’ll fuckin’ kill me, man.” The wiry man flailed his arms, and Joe bounced him off the Jeep again. Blood splattered from the man’s nose.
“They don’t get a chance if I kill you first.” Joe threw the man onto the ground and stomped a heavy boot onto his chest. Now that he could see his face in the daylight, Joe remembered the last surviving Pryor boy’s first name. “Why were you running, Walter?”
“Sudafed.” Walter sniffed and started to wipe the blood from his face, weaseling around the question. He froze when the shotgun shifted in Joe’s hand. “Like, a shit ton of it in a cooler. Didn’t want you to take it.”
“I’m not the sheriff. I don’t have any fucks to give about your meth.” Joe leaned is weight on his boot and watched Walter’s face turn red. He held it there for a few more seconds, until the veins in the smuggler’s neck bulged. “Try again. Why were you running?”
“Dude. You realize you’re fuckin’ terrifying, right? Christ, please point that shotgun somewhere else.” The junkie’s eyes kept shifting toward the rear of his trashed ride.
“What else?”
“Nothin’. Just the Sudafed. I swear.” Walter’s bloodshot eyes flickered to the knife at Joe’s belt. “I’m just smurfin’ the pills. I swear. I got no idea what my idiot brothers was doin’.”
“Don’t move.” Joe left the pill mule on the ground and made his way to the back of the Jeep. Its hatchback was sprung, dangling on one busted hinge like a dog’s tongue on a hot day. Joe reached into the filthy rear of the vehicle and yanked the stained blue cooler onto the ground. He kicked the lid off and coffee grounds spilled out onto the dirt.
“The fuck is this?”
Walter lifted his head so he could see what Joe was asking about. “Coffee.”
“I know that, asshole. Why?”
“Dogs, man. I didn’t want any of them cop dogs to smell the Sudafed if I get pulled over.”
Joe kicked over the cooler and nudged his boot through the pile of coffee and pill boxes. Among the cardboard cartons there were several larger, wooden boxes. Joe knelt and reached for the nearest one.
“Hey,” Walter said, his voice low and shaky. “You don’t wanna touch that.”
“What is it?”
The addict’s eyes flicked to the knife on Joe’s belt, then back to his face.
“Can’t say.”
“Then let’s find out.” Joe plucked a box out of the mess. It was heavy, much heavier than it should have been given its size. It was warm in his palm, like an exposed organ. His stomach roiled as if he’d just gulped down a glass of spoiled milk, and his head ached like the morning after a bottle of mescal. “Fuck.”
Joe dropped the box, but the memory of its touch clung to his flesh like tar. Rolling thunder grumbled from the cloudy sky, and warm, greasy globs of rain splattered onto the gray earth. A fat raindrop splashed off Joe’s hand and left behind a rusty red splatter.
“Oh, shit.” Walter scrambled toward the Jeep like a crab, then helped himself up to his feet on the door. “You shouldn’ta done that.”
The clouds thickened overhead, and an ugly black stain boiled up through their gun metal-gray contours. Joe tucked his chin down to his chest against the bloody rain and began kicking the wooden boxes back into the overturned cooler. Even through the steel toes of his boots, he could feel the stomach-churning presence in each box and tried not to think too hard about the kinds of people who would actively seek out these abominations. He wondered how Walter had managed to handle these without losing his mind, or if he really had.
Satisfied he had all of the boxes, Joe kicked the cooler’s lid closed and grabbed its handle. He pulled it through the ditch and up to his truck, then swung it up into the bed.
A grinding squeal sent Joe stomping back down to the field. Walter was crouched behind the wheel of his ruined Jeep, cranking the starter again and again. The engine screamed in protest and vomited thin streams of black smoke and oil from under the hood.
“Out,” Joe snarled and dragged Walter away from the truck by his hair.
Walter squawked, locked his hands on top of Joe’s clenched fist, and kicked his heels as Joe pulled him through the ditch. Joe swung his arm around in a tight arc and shook Walter loose.
The junkie’s feet tangled together. He pirouetted on the gravel road and slammed into the side of the Marshal’s truck. He flopped back onto his ass and the air shot out of his lungs with a harsh whoof. The smurf sat in the dust, hair standing up like someone had jammed an angry hedgehog against the side of his head, blood running out of his nose, mouth hanging open as he gulped for air.
Joe felt it in his gut, a cold fist clenching in his bowels. Something was coming. “Get in the truck.”
Walter nodded and scrambled to the door, hands and feet churning up gray dust, mixing it with the red-tinged rain to create a ruddy slurry. He lost his footing twice trying to get into the truck and lost it again opening the door.
Sheet lightning flared across the sky, an actinic blue-white blaze with no thunder behind it.
Joe considered leaving the junkie for whatever was coming. He wanted to be long gone when the darkness arrived with its freight of horrors. But he still needed the Pryor boy, at least until he’d wrung all the information out of his soggy brain. “Your lucky day.”
Walter’s muddy hand landed on the truck’s passenger seat and started to slide backward as he lost his balance again. Joe grabbed the addict’s wrist and yanked him halfway into the cab.
“They’re comin’.” Walter’s feet were dangling out of the truck. He slithered on the seat like a gut-shot squirrel, too wired and scared to pull himself into the cab.
Joe’s badge throbbed in his pocket, the mangled pin digging i
nto his thigh. The air chilled around the truck, smudging its windows with condensation. Joe seized the collar of the smurf’s ratty shirt and yanked for all he was worth. The skinny man kicked his feet and wound up on the bench seat, curled up like a whipped dog.
“The door,” Joe shouted and cranked the engine. The old truck coughed, sputtered, stalled.
Walter slammed his door and sat up. He plucked at a raw wound on his jaw, twitching fingers worrying at the frayed edges of the pick spot. “Gotta go, gotta go.”
The truck’s engine caught on the second try, and Joe threw it into gear. He kept his hands loose on the wheel, letting the truck shimmy and shake on the gravel as he floored the accelerator.
The windshield wipers struggled to clear the red rain. Joe was driving on reflex and instinct as much as sight. He couldn’t shake the feeling that time was running out.
“What the hell were you assholes doing up at your old place?”
Walter drummed his fingers on the dash. He squirmed in his seat like a toddler who had to pee. “Can’t say.”
Joe’s injured hand slapped the junkie in his bleeding nose hard enough to get the blood really flowing.
“Fuck, man.” Tears filled Walter’s eyes and he leaned his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Didn’t I warn you about what would happen if I caught you dicking around with that shit the last time I was up at your place? What were you doing?”
“I’m not telling you —”
Joe stomped the brakes, and Walter’s head snapped forward and bounced off the dash with a thunk. He jammed the gas to the floor, and the truck rattled down the gravel road. “What?”
“Okay.” Walter’s fingers went back to the pick spot, drawing blood as his nerves got the best of him. “Okay. Just don’t hit me again.”
“Talk.” Joe raised his hand, and Walter flinched away.
“I get it, all right?” Walter pulled his fingers away from his face and sniffed their bloody tips.
