Tales of Magic and Misery: A Collection of Short Stories by Tim Marquitz

by Tim Marquitz

  We hopped out of the vehicle and ran for the house, with only the headlights and starlight to show us the way. Before we’d gotten within ten feet of the front porch, I felt something pecking at my skin like a murder of pissed off crows.

  “Shit,” I muttered, grabbing the kid by the arm and stopping him before he got any closer.

  “What?” his voice was a sibilant hiss of frustration, but I shushed him and let my senses loose for a better look.

  I was glad I did. Mystical energies rang back against my senses. My gaze shifted to the house and followed the source. After a few, frustrating moments, I spotted what appeared to be sigils of some sort. They were so expertly woven into the design of the door frame that I almost missed them. I couldn’t tell exactly what they did—I spent a lot of my educational time pursing other, uh, less academic experiences, let’s say—but there was no mistaking their vitality. Whoever had laid these wards knew what they were doing. They were as ominous as anti-personnel mines.

  “We can’t go near the house,” I told the kid.

  “Why not?” He was damn near hysteric being this close to his girlfriend and me not letting him go to her. “We need to stop that—”

  “We do, but she’s safe.”

  “How do you know that?”

  I pointed at the wards, my gaze examining the house while I talked the kid down. “Those little squiggles protect the house. There’s no way the Manitou can get inside as long as they’re active and the door is closed.” The fact of which was strike three against the Reverend. Why would some backwoods preacher ward his house with nukes? He sure as hell didn’t need that much firepower to keep the local Jehovah’s Witnesses from dropping off propaganda. No, he had to have known something more powerful might come knocking. My guess was that a certain Native American spirit wasn’t quite the lap dog Pineda had hoped for.

  “Melinda!” I spun around to see Malcolm waving his arms and screaming at the house. “I’m here, Melinda. Let me in!”

  “Seriously, kid?” With the wards to keep the Manitou at bay, we didn’t need to call any more attention to ourselves than we already had. The last thing we needed was to wake up the Reverend and have him sic the creature on us.

  “She needs to know I’m here,” the kid shouted at me before returning to his warbled serenade. “Melinda!”

  A flash of light gleamed in my peripheral vision, and I sighed, turning to see the porch light flicker on. We’d been standing close enough for it to go on if it had been on a sensor, so this was obviously someone inside turning it on. The front door flung open.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” The Reverend’s voice was a shotgun blast from the porch. And speaking of shotguns, he held a nice, pump-style one pointed our direction. Though he was only dressed in a bathrobe, there was no mistaking his threat.

  “I’m here for Melinda,” Malcolm told him without hesitation. I’d inadvertently seen what he was packing, so it surprised me he had the balls to face down the Reverend. “You don’t get to hurt her.”

  “Are you high, son?” Pineda asked. “You’re the one dragging my child out of the house at all hours, traipsing through the woods without concern for her wellbeing, tempting Satan with your ways.” I caught a glimpse of what the man would be like behind the pulpit on Sunday. “You stay away from my daughter.”

  “No.” Malcolm stood his ground, his pistol held out before him. “You have no right to talk.”

  Melinda appeared in the doorway then. She stared out at the commotion without expression.

  Malcolm inched forward. “Melinda! I’m here to save you,” he shouted.

  My eyes rolled without my consent at the kid’s corny heroism. As long as the girl stayed inside, she was safe. It was us out on the porch that had to worry.

  “Stay inside, Melinda,” I told her, turning to face Malcolm. He glared at me, no hiding the fury that reddened his eyes.

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “The side that keeps more people from getting killed,” I answered. “Listen, kid. As long as she’s inside, she’s safe. We need—”

  The Reverend called out behind us, frustration and anger blurring his words. I glanced back to see Melinda bolting past her father and running across the porch toward us. My stomach soured at the sight. I didn’t need my nose to tell me the shit had hit the fan. And sure enough, a glass-gargling screech erupted from the woods not fifty feet behind us.

  I spun to see if I could spot the Manitou’s pale shape before it was on us. “Both of you get inside the house,” I screamed, hoping the wards would let the kid in since he was with Melinda. That was when I remembered the Reverend was still there. Shit. I twisted to see the doorway but a flash of movement caught my attention.

  The Manitou charged, leaping out from behind the cover of the Jeep.

  I backed up firing. My first shot hit the thing dead center and blew a black cavern in its chest. It stumbled but was back on its feet in an instant, howling for blood. Not up for donating any of mine, I squeezed the trigger on my chromed .45 and let mystical lead fly. Just like the first hit, though, the Manitou swallowed them down like he was Scooby Doo’s undead twin. It was on me a second later.

  Ever played Chicken with a comet? No, well that’s what it felt like when the Manitou hit me. Every bone in my body creaked at the impact, joints popping. My brain filled with the snowy static between TV stations, and I went down in a heap that would forever be the poster child for the word ‘mangled” in the dictionary.

  Fortunately for me—though less fortunate for everyone else—the Manitou just kept going, leaving me in its dust. I watched through blurry eyes as it chased after Malcolm and Melinda. The two ran for the door, and to my surprise, the Reverend stepped out onto the porch to let them through. I sighed as the couple made it inside, but my cheer—limited as it was given my current predicament—was short lived.

  The preacher racked his shotgun and planted his feet as the Manitou kept coming. My brain spun its wheels. Why would—?

  My question never fully formed before the shotgun roared in the night air. The creature took the shot dead on, but just as my shots had proven useless, so had the Reverend’s. The Manitou slammed into him, claws sinking deep into his guts. The Reverend screamed, blood flying from his mouth, as the Manitou lifted him off his feet. The man’s eyes were white with horror.

  The dog was off its leash.

  My limbs like wobbly Jell-O, I scrambled to my feet and stumbled toward the Manitou. The Reverend’s shrieks had become gurgles, blood gushing past his lips and down his chin. I came up behind the creature and pressed my gun the back of its skull and pulled the trigger. The moment my bullet ripped through its head, the Manitou burst into a cloud of ash, stinging my eyes and choking my lungs. The Reverend collapsed without a sound. His sightless eyes stared vacant at the whirl of dust. There was no saving him. He was gonna be seriously disappointed to learn God wouldn’t be there to greet him. At least he went knowing his daughter was safe.

  That was something, right?

  Peeling my eyes from the corpse of the Reverend, I stumbled over to the door where the couple stood in shock, hugging each other. “Mind if I make a call?” There wasn’t much left to do but contact DRAC and get a cleanup crew up the mountains to make sure there was no evidence of the supernatural for humanity to stumble across. Michael Li could mind wipe the kid and his daughter and make up a story for the sheriff. It wasn’t exactly happy ever after but it’d do.

  I stepped into the foyer to find the phone right there on a long table. The Reverend’s keys and wallet and a handful of change were dumped alongside it. I picked up the handset and dialed, fiddling with the base while I waited, spying the yellow corner of a Post-it note peeking out from underneath. Unconsciously nosy, I tugged at the edge and glanced at it while the phone rang. Written on it in a pretty, curly script was one of the numbers for DRAC.

  My heart sputtered even before the gun was pressed against my head.

  “Hang up the pho
ne.” Malcolm emphasized each word with a gentle tap of the barrel.

  I did as I was told, dropping the handset back into the base. “Oh, you guys are good.”

  Without asking for permission, I turned around slowly. Malcolm kept the gun in place, making sure it seated comfortably against my forehead. He smiled at me, and I could have sworn he attempted to wink. Before I could say anything appropriately snippy, he pulled my gun from its holster and handed it over to Melinda.

  “This was your plan all along, huh?” I asked her, holding up the yellow square still in my hand.

  She nodded. “I wasn’t sure the Manitou would do only what it was told to do so I wanted to be sure there was someone here who could take it out if necessary. Though, I have to admit, when I called my father’s friend, I expected him to send someone more capable. But oh well. It all worked out.

  I sighed, still at a loss for why, and motioned to Malcolm with my chin. “I know what he gets out of it: the girl. Though, I have to admit, trading a handful of willing women for just one seems like a lousy deal.” He thumped me in head with the barrel. “Just sayin’, man. Anyway,” I glanced over to Melinda, “what do you get out of all this now that daddy is in the Great Hunting Ground in the Sky?”

  She lifted her free hand—the one not holding my pistol—and a green energy came to life, wisps of it dancing at her fingertips. “My father had forsaken his gifts, cast them aside in an effort to please the God of the white man.” She spit on the floor, her face twisted with a sudden anger. “As long as he defied the land and the Great Spirits of our people, his powers would remain dormant inside him. They would die with him.”

  This is where comedian Bill Engvall would say, “Here’s your sign.”

  “So, let me guess. If daddy dearest died a good Christian, you wouldn’t be in his mystical will.”

  “Something like that.” She grinned. “It’s not as if I don’t have some of my own magic passed on by my mother, otherwise I couldn’t have summoned the Manitou, but he was the true power in the family.” She gestured out the door to where her father had gone poof. “Now, I’m so much more of a shaman than he ever was.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  Melinda just chuckled. “You’re being sarcastic, but I am truly indebted to you.”

  “Indebted enough to not have your boyfriend shoot me in the head?”

  “Not quite that much.” She smiled. “Kill him, Malcolm.”

  Grand Wizard of the Little Willy was more than willing to comply. He grinned and pulled the trigger.

  However, what the kid had been too dumb to realize, I still had my hand up holding onto the Post-it note. I thought about giving him a vicious paper cut but figured he’d still shoot me, so I dropped in place and brought my hand up to block his. The .38 exploded above me and set my ears to ringing, but it was a good bit better than having it scramble my brains in the frying pan of my skull.

  With the taste of gunpowder in my mouth and the scent stinging my nose, I twisted his wrist about, smiling when I heard it snap, and shoved the barrel against his torso. He pulled the trigger on his own and punched a gory hole in his chest. And then a second.

  Well, I did that one.

  Malcolm gurgled something that sounded unkind, and then crumpled to the floor. The echo of the third shot caught me off guard since neither the kid nor I had pulled the trigger that time.

  And I certainly hadn’t shot myself.

  A bullet slammed into my stomach and spun me about, black ooze bubbling out. I hit the ground with an unhappy thud. Man, did that shit hurt. Melinda cursed and aimed my stolen pistol at me. Either by instinct, or she just wasn’t comfortable wielding daddy’s power yet, she’d given me a break I took full advantage of.

  Malcolm’s gun still in my hand, I fired first, catching her in her throat. She gasped and stumbled backwards, but she didn’t drop the gun. I clenched my teeth and emptied the rest of the bullets into her. The last thing I wanted to do was kill some young girl, but I have to be honest. Right then, I liked me a whole lot more than I liked her.

  She fell into the table and both toppled to the floor, loose coins clattering across the wood floor. Before they even stopped rolling, I got to my feet, clutching at my wound, and went over to her. A quick kick cleared my gun from her reach, not that I was too worried about it. Just like her father, her eyes stared off into space, cold and dead. She might well have just received the greatest Christmas present ever, but she wasn’t gonna get to open it. I, on the other hand, would still be around to collect the obligatory coal in my stocking.

  That was cool, though. I’d just add it to the grill and have a BBQ. All I needed was for the Tooth Fairy to leave some beer under my pillow and I’d be set.

  The Horror of It All

  Grave Times

  Originally published online 2010

  I tried to tell ‘em, but they couldn’t be bothered. Maybe it’s just me, but you’d think people would pay a little attention when a grave digger starts telling a ghost story.

  But, of course, even after all that’s happened they still aren’t listening. Though I guess I can cut ‘em a little slack...seeing how they’re dead and all.

  Speaking of the dead, and you better do so nicely, it wasn’t so long ago they stayed dead. You put a fella in the ground and you knew where to find him the next morning. They didn’t get up and wander about like these new age corpses. But I guess that’s the way of the world. Things change.

  Though not the money men. They never change. Them greedy sum-bitches might swap their suit and hum a different tune, but all that smoke and mirrors bullshit can’t hide the rotting darkness in their hearts.

  It was them that started all this.

  Never satisfied with just one house up in the hills, or just one politician warming the insides of their pockets, the Barbie doll wife with inflatable plastic parts, they gotta have it all. The vacation home and the yacht, the rental girlfriend on the side; it just ain’t ever enough.

  Take my bosses, for instance. They must own two hundred some-odd funeral homes spread across the country. Pile a couple dozen cemeteries on top of that and it’s obvious they’re making a pretty penny. Plus, with prices jacked up the way they are, they might as well pull a gun on the bereaved and rifle their wallets while they sell ‘em a casket.

  There ain’t a liar alive that can convince me these folks are hurtin’ for cash. But that don’t stop them from grabbin’ at more.

  Like they did at the cemetery I work at, Pleasant Hills. Honestly though, it should probably be called Oozing Hills. Dark goo seeps from the dirt like it’s blowing tar bubbles, only it smells more like rotting cat. It stains everything black and eats away at the bronze finish on the headstones. There isn’t a stone out there that ain’t pitted or discolored.

  But that isn’t much of a surprise to those who live ‘round here. Pleasant Hills is located just two scenic miles downwind of a defunct nuclear waste-processing plant where they got the land cheap; real cheap. I guess from a distance, just looking at numbers on a spreadsheet, it probably sounded like a good deal.

  Wonder what they think now.

  Oh yeah, I forgot. They’re not thinking anything.

  It wasn’t but about two months after we opened that the first of the corpses started rattling around in their graves, though I didn’t know that then. I kept hearing a weird howling sound that seemed to carry on the breeze, like it was coming from a long way off. It always seemed to start right after sunset and settle somewhere ‘round midnight.

  Here late every night, I figured it was just one of the guys having some fun at my expense, maybe hiding one of walkie-talkies in a tree somewhere. Graveyard humor at its finest. But as the nights dragged on, none of my co-workers said anything about it or even cracked a crooked smile, so I was sure it hadn’t been them.

  I told the bosses about what I heard, but like I said, they didn’t care. Too busy short-sheeting our paychecks to finance their next European vacation, they didn’t have time to w
orry about it. They blew it off and I kept on working. Business as usual.

  But the sound came back every night, growing slowly louder. Clearly not the work of some pranksters, I realized it had to be something else. I couldn’t tell you what, though. Not then at least.

  It wasn’t until the graves starting sinking that I knew for certain things weren’t right. Fat load of good it did me.

  Standing in the middle of a garden, watering the black-stained grass, the grave beside me imploded with a wet squish.

  It happens often enough, the concrete liner cracks under the weight of the dirt and collapses, sinking the grave. I didn’t think much about it at first. It was just another hole to fill. But when the one beside it dropped, and the one beyond that did too, followed by the whole row, my heart did its damndest to crawl out my throat.

  It was as if the volume had suddenly been turned to ten. My ears rang with my heartbeat and the moaning peals that filtered through the sinking earth. My fingers numb, I dropped the hose and watched as the ground seemed to squirm, then give way. Tiny whirlpools swirled to life and sucked away the surface, dragging the loose dirt down into the morbid abyss.

  Frozen in place, like the bird-splattered, marble angel that cowered in the tree line, I could only stare wide-eyed as the earth gave up its dead. One by one, the graves around me started to spit up corpses. The air filled with the thick scent of death. I could taste the moist, clinging rot as it settled in my mouth and throat, gagging me.

  My stomach churned with a volcano of bile. I barely managed to keep from vomiting. I vaguely recall shitting myself, though. Just a quick squirt, mind you, but I’d be remiss to tell you different. It ain’t every day you see the walking dead.

  I was terrified. My heart raced so fast it circled ‘round on itself and slowed to a crawl like it was starting over. And even though it was a pretty dark night, I could see so clear as to spot the legs on the roaches that skittered across the corpses closest to me.