Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  Some door knocker.

  But Dan didn’t have to knock.

  Because the door had already opened, spilling a square of yellow light across the courtyard.

  Emily Carlisle stood on the portales in a cotton nightshirt, wrinkled jeans, and bare feet.

  A tremble of surprise in her voice . . . and concern: “Dan . . . what in the world are you doing here?”

  Dan opened his mouth, and for the first time in his life—or the first time in his death—he found himself saying three words he never thought he’d say.

  The words did not come easy.

  Dan stared at the woman who had already done so much for him.

  “I need help,” he said.

  “I still don’t believe it,” Emily said a half hour later.

  They were sitting in the living room with its vaulted ceiling and amber-washed walls, Dan on a burnished cowhide sofa and Emily standing by the fireplace beneath a shield made of skinned animal hide.

  The older woman was still dressed in her nightshirt and hastily donned jeans. She clutched a ragged shred of Kleenex in her right hand. Her eyes were haggard and hollow.

  As Dan had expected, the news of Leti’s death had hit the woman at least as hard as the .357 slug he’d taken at the Spirit Song Trading Post. At the moment, Emily Carlisle looked every one of her sixty-seven years, and then some.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I really didn’t want to have to bring you into this, Emily. I know how it must sound.”

  “If I wasn’t a scientist,” she said for the tenth time in as many minutes. “Christ, I sound like I just stepped out of some old sci-fi movie.” She stared at him, eyes wide. “Jesus, Dan. Am I dreaming this?”

  “I wish you were. I wish I were. But it’s real. You know me, Emily. You know I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “No,” she said, after a moment’s consideration. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  Emily sat down in the matching cowhide armchair next to Dan. The coffee table, like the front door, was an aged plank of ponderosa pine. Emily stared at the everyday things resting on top of it. Reading glasses, a cold cup of herbal tea. Scatter of professional journals and papers. Physician’s Guide to Arthropods of Medical Importance. Biosystematics of the Hadrurus Hirsutus. A beat-up Tony Hillerman paperback; Dance Hall of the Dead.

  She stared at the book numbly. Dan knew that Emily’s reality, as well as his own, had shattered into a million irretrievable pieces. In the wake of his visit, she would have many, many hard nights ahead of her, and Dan hoped that someday her heart would heal the wounds caused by Leti’s death—and his own.

  “Leticia,” Emily said, as if reading Dan’s mind. “Oh, God, that sweet, beautiful—”

  She started to choke up. Lapsed into silence.

  “It’s all right,” Dan said. “It’s all right.”

  “I hope ... I hope she didn’t suffer—”

  “She never saw it coming,” Dan said. “It happened so fast, she couldn’t have felt a thing.”

  His tongue told the lie, but his memory dredged up the truth.

  Dan bit his lip, kept those memories inside.

  That pain was private. He alone would carry it.

  “Emily,” Dan said with real regret, “I really wish I could stay . . . but—”

  “Of course,” she said. “You don’t need to say another word. I’ll get the guns.”

  She disappeared through a double archway that led from the living room to her study. Dan knew where she was going. Emily kept her late husband Eldon’s antique firearms collection locked in a Colonial-style Mexican chest with a picture of the archangel San Miguel crushing a fiery red devil beneath his bare feet. Seemed like an appropriate archetypal image to Dan:

  The forces of good . . . winning out against the forces of evil.

  Emily had shown Dan the collection once: an assortment of Colt Army and Navy pistols dating back to the Civil War, some earlier pieces from the War of 1812. All of them cleaned, oiled . . . ready to go.

  Dan sighed. Waited. Sat there in silence on the cool cowhide sofa and stared at the brightly painted shield over the fireplace. The traditional Crow shield was one of Julia Dreams the Truth’s contemporary re-creations. Leti had given it to Emily the previous Christmas.

  The shield’s strength came from spiritual power, Leti had told Dan. The same power that created the earth. Sometimes young warriors would paint symbols on their shields, things they’d seen in visions.. . . Have you ever seen anything in a vision?

  Yeah, Dan thought grimly. It’s big, and it’s black, and it caws like a son of a—

  “I think these will do,” Emily said, returning with two guns: an antique Colt .45 and a sawed-off shotgun of considerably more recent vintage, the latter with a few boxes of shells.

  “Just like Jesse James’s gun,” Dan said, taking the six-shooter.

  “Not ‘just’ like. Eldon said that Jesse himself once carried that pistol.”

  Dan raised an eyebrow. “You sure Eldon wasn’t exaggerating a little?”

  “Who knows? But maybe the shade of that old outlaw will bring you luck, just the same.”

  “Yeah, well, if I remember the story correctly, Jesse James got shot in the back.”

  “So did you, Dan.”

  An awkward pause.

  And then laughter.

  “I still can’t believe any of this. I just know I’m going to wake up in a minute, and then—”

  “You’re awake, Emily.”

  “I wish I wasn’t.” She handed him a set of keys. “To the Durango.”

  “Thanks. I mean that.”

  “I know. I hate losing you, Dan. Dead or alive, you’re one hell of a scorpion wrangler.”

  He smiled awkwardly, felt tears pricking behind his eyes. “Better get going,” he said.

  She reached out and took his hand. “You know, Dan, in the desert loneliness is a contagion. It’s not healthy.”

  “I don’t need to worry about my health. I’m dead, remember? A healthy body is the last thing I need to worry about.”

  “I’m not talking about you, Dan. I’m talking about me.”

  Dan hesitated, not knowing what to say.

  Emily said, “Remember that day I pressed you so hard, asked you all those questions? The day I told you Leticia’s name? You wanted to ask me some questions, too, but I wouldn’t let you.”

  Dan remembered well enough. “You said that someday you’d tell me your story. But you don’t have to do that, Emily. I wouldn’t ask you to do that—”

  “I want to, Dan . . . before you go.”

  Dan didn’t say a word. Emily looked at him for a long moment, and then she looked at the front door.

  “You know, there isn’t a day goes by, not one hour, not one minute, not one second I don’t think about Eldon Carlisle and the years we had together. We built this house stone by stone. Set that front door on its hinges ourselves. Opened up a whole new life for me. Nineteen fifty-five that was, and that door’s still there. Eldon picked me up in his arms and carried me over the threshold, and forty-five years later I watched him being carried over that same damned threshold, heading for a pine box. And I remember thinking: This is it? This is all?

  “For the longest time after that I thought I’d died, too. But then I came to the hard realization that a pine box doesn’t sleep two . . . just one. And like it or not, that’s just the way it is.

  “I’ll tell you something, Dan Cody.” Emily smiled through her tears. “And you listen to this old desert rat. You find those sons of bitches who did this to you. You do what you have to do. But don’t do it just for Leti. Do it for you, Dan. Do it for your soul. Do it so you and Leti can be together, the way you were meant to be ... do it so you can find some kind of peace together, in the afterworld. Because that’s how I want to remember you both.”

  Emily pressed his hands tightly, and Dan felt her heavy white gold and turquoise wedding rings dig into his flesh.

  “Together,” she said. “I want t
o remember you together.”

  Dan brushed a tear from his eye, and Emily did the same . . . and when the moment passed, Dan picked up Eldon’s guns and the ammunition.

  Emily glanced at the weapons. “Just a minute, Dan,” she said suddenly. “I have something else you’re going to need.”

  She left the room. Dan heard her footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor.

  A few minutes later, Emily returned with a coil of sturdy rope.

  “What’s this for?” Dan asked.

  Emily found Dan’s eyes.

  “I’ve heard they hang witches,” she said.

  Dan shouldered the rope, Kyra Damon’s smirking face branded in his memory.

  “I’ve heard that, too,” he said.

  Then he picked up Eldon Carlisle’s guns and headed through the front door.

  Emily followed him across the threshold.

  Emily held the young man tightly to her chest for one long, hard moment before releasing him to the cool mountain night.

  Dan smiled at her, but the smile was tight across his dead features, and his eyes were edged with the hard truth of what lay behind him, and what lay before him.

  Neither of them said anything.

  There was nothing more to be said.

  In another moment, Dan Cody had crossed the portales, crossed the courtyard to the Dodge Durango.

  The door creaked open.

  The door slammed shut.

  Keys turned in the ignition. Headlights flared in the darkness. The truck backed up, crunching gravel. Turned. Headed down the driveway and out to the highway, carrying the shadowy figure behind the wheel out of Emily Carlisle’s life forever.

  “Vaya con dios,” she whispered. "Go with God . . . and don’t go alone.”

  A brittle caw sent a shiver over Emily’s spine.

  The Crow soared high, higher in the dark sky . . . high above the racing vehicle ... a harsh black outline against the ragged evergreens that blanketed the mountains.

  One caw.

  Then it was gone.

  They followed the constellation northwest.

  Three of them in a hellborne street-rod—Johnny Church and Kyra Damon and Raymondo the shrunken head—chasing stars through desert night.

  Kind of like the three wise men, Johnny thought. Three adventurers, seeking out their own special mystery hidden somewhere beyond the desert sands.

  Yeah. That’s the way it was. Almost, anyway. Because Kyra didn’t have any frankincense or myrrh or any of that crap, and Raymondo wasn’t wearing a shrunken turban on his shrunken head, and Johnny sure as shit wasn’t driving any fucking camel.

  No way. Johnny Church was driving a ’49 Mercury Sport Coupe Custom. And that meant he was moving.

  So were the stars. The constellation named for the Crow moved through the night like a beacon. Kyra said the stars were part of the vision, and Johnny didn’t doubt her. He’d seen falling stars, sure, but never anything like this constellation. These stars moved.

  At first Johnny tried to catch them, flooring the Merc until the lake pipes roared and the big engine screamed. But every time Johnny accelerated, the constellation did the same. So he slowed down. And when he did that, the constellation lingered as if waiting for him.

  Him or Kyra ... or maybe even Raymondo, the little shit. Maybe the stars were waiting for all three of them, because all three of them saw the constellation. Kyra had seen it first, of course, with her stolen eyes. But once she pointed it out to Johnny and Raymondo, they saw it, too.

  Their mojo was cookin’, trio-style. That’s the way Johnny saw it. As far as he was concerned, it was just another sign of the power that was waiting for him somewhere down the black highway.

  And that was a relief. Because Johnny had already had a hard night. Ditto for Kyra and Raymondo. They’d all pulled their share of the weight during their run-in with the black bird, the cowboy, and the Indian. They were all tired. Wherever the stars were taking them, they’d get there . . . and soon enough.

  Johnny always felt most comfortable when he was behind the wheel. And to tell the truth, he felt a little better after the stop at the graveyard, too. Hey, a couple brews, a few racks of ribs, and an hour spent screwing like a sex-starved coyote could do that for a boy.

  Johnny rolled down the windows and popped a Blasphemers CD into the player as the Merc blasted through Wickenburg. No one in that tired town even noticed, but Johnny didn’t care. The way Johnny saw it, he could drive forever as long as he had Erik Hearse’s voice lashing him.

  Yeah. Hearse was the man. Johnny was definitely ready to take a page from the master’s book. He had himself all that money, $20K in tattoos, a cool old house that rated real high on anyone’s spook-o-meter, and just lately he’d gotten his very own handpicked blood-spattered bride.

  Talk about your ultimate collectable. Hearse’s wife was an actress named Lilith Spain. Her father had been an Italian splatter actor who turned producer, and her mother was an English rose who’d starred in a dozen of her husband’s features, some that ranked right up there—to connoisseurs of the genre, anyway—with the best work of Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci.

  Lilith was an actress just like her mom, though she hadn’t had the success of the legendary Amanda Irons. That didn’t matter to Johnny, though, because the chick sure looked good in leather. Johnny owned a couple bootleg tapes of her S & M vampire movies, both the regular and harder-to-find (and much prized) hardcore versions.

  Yeah. Hearse’s wife was something, all right.

  But so was Kyra Damon.

  And Kyra was all his.

  Johnny cranked up the volume and sang along, his own raspy voice clawing his idol’s like a hungry pretender’s. Man, if you asked Johnny, it was a duet that was something to hear.

  But that didn’t mean his passengers were up for a nonstop horror show blitzkrieg. After fifteen miles of high-decibel madness, Kyra and Raymondo demanded an aural change of menu.

  “Screamin’ Jay Hawkins,” Raymondo said. “That boxed set Kyra bought me in Albuquerque. Cue up ‘I Put a Spell on You’ ... or maybe ‘Frenzy.’”

  “Uh-uh,” Johnny said. “Traded Screamin’ Jay at that record swap in Las Cruces.”

  “What?” Raymondo shrieked. “What’d you trade him for?”

  “The Forbidden Dimension.”

  “Dammit, Johnny, those were my CDs! And you’ve already got three FD CDs!”

  “Correction—I had three. I used ’em for skeet targets that night we camped at White Sands. Blasted every damn one of ’em right out of the sky, too. Even Jackson Phibes can’t sing around a .357 slug.”

  “Well put on some Martin Denny, then,” Raymondo said, still upset. “Or that Voodoo Lounge comp—”

  “You and that Tiki stuff. Let me ask you, Raymondo: Did you like Martin Denny before those cannibals shrunk your head?”

  “You’re a little off base there, Johnny. As I’ve told you a thousand times, they shrunk my head in 1919. Martin Denny was still eating tutti-frutti babyfood.” The shrunken head sighed wistfully. “But truth be told, I liked Monsieur Denny as soon as I heard him. I was hanging in a Tiki bar in Hawaii in 1959. Strictly window dressing, you understand. I didn’t dare open my mouth in those days. The first time I heard 'Quiet Village,’ the trade winds were blowing softly off the blue Pacific and the smell of mai tais was in the air—”

  Johnny snorted laughter. “Man, wake up and smell the millennium one of these days, would you?”

  But that was all he said because, hey, Johnny was in a pretty good mood. He could stand to be a little magnanimous. If his passengers wanted something different, he’d give it to ’em.

  Johnny reached down, ejected The Blasphemers CD, and slipped it into a case featuring Erik Hearse in a particularly cadaverous pose. One-handing the wheel, he thumbed through the CD rack that sat between Kyra and him on the Mercury’s front seat.

  He passed up The Cure. Nine Inch Nails. No Fluffy No and Feared Dead and Remorseless. Some classical shit of Kyra’
s. Then he came across The Doors’ Strange Days. Yeah, that one was even moldy enough for Raymondo’s taste.

  Johnny liked the idea, too. Especially tonight. Check it out— Jim Morrison in the desert. The lizard king, slithering after a wandering star.

  Johnny grabbed the CD case and pinched it open.

  Kyra snatched the silver disc before the big gearhead could touch it.

  With a sharp flick of her wrist, she tossed it out the window.

  Johnny swore. “Why’d you do that?”

  “I’m not listening to any crotch grabbers,” Kyra Damon said. “Not tonight.”

  Raymondo laughed. A miniaturized, dry hiss of a cackle, actually . . . but it ripped at Johnny’s ears like a chain saw.

  Johnny glanced in the rearview mirror. The CD was back there, glimmering in the reflected glow of the taillights, running down the road like the gingerbread boy in that kid’s story.

  And then it was lost in the dark.

  Kyra popped a CD into the player.

  Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite for Guitar and String Orchestra. One of her psycho daddy’s daughter-bashin’ theme songs. Kyra had already played it once tonight. At the dump, in the middle of that wild cat-eatin’, spell-castin’ nightmare.

  But, as it usually was with Kyra Damon, once wasn’t nearly enough.

  Johnny grabbed the steering wheel and held on tight.

  It was going to be one of those nights, after all.

  Marana. Pichacho. Phoenix coming up.

  The Dodge Durango rode smooth, and Dan Cody drove fast.

  He didn’t listen to music.

  He listened to the Crow.

  The bird was flying northwest, and Dan was following it.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  Wherever they lead us.

  “What happens when we catch them?”

  You'll get your revenge.

  Dan drove, thinking about it. Pain burned through him like a wildfire. The terrible sensation urged him forward, but it took from him, too. He wondered if there would be anything left of him when that fire was gone—when he’d pulled the trigger time and time again and watched Kyra and her man fall to his bullets.

  What would remain of Dan Cody in the wake of that hell? A man? An avenger delivered from his pain? Or would there only be a walking corpse . . . and a couple of guns . . . and a pile of spent cartridges that were as empty as a dead thing that wasn’t smart enough to stay dead?