by Unknown
Finally on the move, he snapped the mouth piece of his comm. unit into place. ‘Weston for Squad Leader. Weston for Squad Leader.’
Seconds ticked by and he was about to radio again when he heard a pop on the line. ‘What the hell are you whispering for, Weston? It’s all over but the paperwork.’
‘Maybe not, sir,’
‘What happened? You didn’t catch the coyotes?’
‘Got ‘em, sergeant, but it’s a mess.’ He glanced back, saw the thing – the scavenger – framed in the opening in the fence, standing in the very same spot he’d been in just a minute ago, watching them. Fear ran up the back of his neck and prickled his skin. ‘And there’s … there’s something else over here, Sarge. We’re not alone.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
Weston thought about that a second. He looked back again.
Only that gaping hole across the border remained, and beyond it the scattered dead. The creature had vanished.
It darted out of the night so swiftly that he barely had time to aim the M-16. The creature came from the left, a paint-stroke of fluid black across the moonlit landscape, grabbed hold of the Mexican at the front of their little march and tore open his throat and abdomen in a single pass.
The screaming started.
Weston ran past the others, up to the front of the Jeep, and squeezed off a couple of rounds without a chance in Hell of hitting the thing. It blended too well with the desert and the dark.
‘What the hell?’ Brooksy roared from behind the wheel of the Jeep.
‘Weston. Do you read? Are you under fire?’ Ortiz barked in the comm. in his ear.
‘Under attack!’ Weston snapped back. ‘Not under fire. That was me shooting.’
Ortiz asked half a dozen questions in as many seconds, but Weston wasn’t listening anymore. He pulled the comm. from his ear and tossed it into the dirt. They were three or four hundred yards from the lights and vehicles and weapons of the DEA and Border Patrol. Not far at all.
Not far, he told himself.
But those Mexicans hadn’t made it very far, back at the border. They’d been picked off one by one, the stragglers, killed quickly. The thing only slowed down to start its banquet when they were all dead and the screaming was over.
Weston swung the barrel of his M-16, searching the darkness all around, knowing the thing could come from anywhere. The Mexicans not inside the Jeep huddled nearby him. Afraid as they were, no way were they making a break for the border now.
‘Damn it, Weston, what was that?’ Brooksy asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, without sparing the other grunt a glance.
‘Fuck this.’
Brooksy gunned it. The Jeep’s engine roared and the tires spit hard-baked earth and stones as the vehicle leaped forward.
‘God damn it, no!’ Weston yelled.
Two of the Mexican men started running after the Jeep, shouting. The others hesitated only a second before following. Weston yelled for them to stop, but they were beyond listening. Exhaustion, starvation, and despair had plagued them earlier – people who’d been taken advantage of by nearly everyone they’d encountered – but now fear drove them to madness.
Weston pursued them. The night loomed up on either side of him. He could feel the vulnerability of his unprotected back, but knew that they were all vulnerable. The darkness shifted. Every shadow, every depression in the desert floor, seemed about to coalesce and take shape and rush at him with its claws out.
The illegals were stretched out in a line, scattered in their pursuit of the Jeep. The thing came out of the night and killed the woman, punching a hole in her chest. Weston brought up his weapon and fired at it. Two bullets hit the woman as her corpse fell. The thing flinched and he thought he’d winged it, but it rushed off into the dark again, merging with the night.
The taillights of the Jeep grew smaller.
Weston swore, catching up with the four survivors. The teenaged girl fell to her knees beside the dead woman, and Weston heard her saying ‘Tia’ over and over, and knew she had been the girl’s aunt.
They all clustered around the sobbing girl. Weston heard the Humvees revving. One of them pulled away from Paradise, headlights turning their way.
‘We’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘They’re coming.’
But his fingers felt frozen on his weapon. Ortiz would be coming to get them, maybe with inter-agency backup, but seconds counted. He swung the M-16 around, jerking at every sound – real or imagined – from the desert. The survivors stayed low, out of his way. Maybe they hoped the thing would come for him next.
One of the men had begun to cry with the girl.
When Weston saw it, at first he didn’t even know what he was looking at. The thing stood forty feet away, entirely motionless. On instinct he raised the M-16 and squeezed the trigger. The thing darted aside, slipping through the darkness, too fast to hit. It stopped, studied him again, cocked its head and gazed with a terrible intelligence. It thrust out that long, thin, snaking tongue and tasted the air with it.
‘El Chupacabra,’ one of the men whispered.
Engines roared and headlights splashed across them. A pair of Humvees arrived, one on either side of the group, bathing the Chupacabra in yellow light. It bolted instantly, heading for that gap in the border fence.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ Weston whispered.
Fast as it was, the thing was making a run for the fence in a straight line. He sighted on its back as Humvee doors popped open and DEA agents jumped out. Ortiz’s voice called out, so Weston knew his squad leader was with them.
Once again the creature paused, framed in that opening in the fence.
Weston squeezed the trigger.
An arm came up under the barrel, knocking the gun’s nose up, and the bullets fired into the desert sky.
Enraged, Weston spun on a man wearing a DEA jacket.
‘Back off!’ he snapped, shoving the man away. When he glanced back toward the fence, the creature had vanished once more, and he knew that the opportunity had passed. ‘What’s wrong with you? Did you see that thing? Do you have any idea what it just did? What you let get away?’
Ortiz had come up by then. The DEA agent grinned and Weston wanted to break his face with the butt of his M-16. But the Squad Leader glared at him.
‘Stand down, Weston.’
Weston glared at the DEA prick. ‘Tell me you saw that thing.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’ The grin remained. ‘And neither did you. We’ve got thousands of miles of border to worry about. If there’s something else that keeps them from trying to get across, then it’s doing us a favour.’
Behind Weston, the teenaged girl still sobbed over the corpse of her dead aunt. She’d wanted a new beginning, but instead she’d found an ending to so much of her life. All he could think about was that if the girl had been torn open by that thing out in the desert, this son of a bitch would have kept grinning.
Doing us a favour.
Weston looked at the grim, cautious expression on Ortiz’s face. The staff sergeant was silently warning him to keep his mouth shut. More than anything, that made him wonder. Was the grinning DEA man just happy the scavenger was out there in the desert, helping him do his job, or had he and his people put the thing there in the first place? And if they had, were there others?
But he did not ask those questions.
‘A Border Patrol officer – Austin – one of the coyotes shot him. He’s down by the fence, DOA,’ he said.
‘A tragedy,’ said the grinning man. ‘Died in the fire-fight that cost the lives of a number of illegals as they attempted to enter the country carrying cartel cocaine. A hero of the border wars, this Austin. You were lucky to survive yourself.’
Weston slung his M-16 across his back. One last time he glanced at Ortiz. They already had their version of tonight’s op ready to go. If he tried telling it differently, who would listen?
Slowly, Weston nodded.
�
��Sir, yes sir.’
White Horse
Jonathan Oliver
1
Imogen used to be frightened of horses.
When she was six, her father’s houseboat had been moored beside a field that was home to a vast shire horse. On nights when the river ran slow and calm, Imogen could hear the creature breathing; could feel, through her body, the fall of its hooves onto the soft earth.
Trying to sooth her fears, her father had introduced her to the horse.
‘Here, give him an apple. He’ll soon be your friend.’
But when she held out her trembling hand, and those fat rubbery lips parted to reveal vast chisel-like teeth the colour of old ivory, Imogen had squealed and ducked behind her father.
‘Give over. He’ll not hurt you.’
The horse snorted and stamped, its eyes rolling in anger at being denied the treat, before it thundered away.
Imogen had insisted they move the boat after that.
Some time later, when the horse and the nightmares it had inspired were a fast-fading memory, her father had taken her down to the coast for the May Day celebrations.
They made their costumes for the event together; Imogen’s father displaying a nimbleness with needle and thread that she had never expected. It was the first time in a long time that he had spoken about her mother, how she had once been his Queen of May.
Imogen giggled as her father lathered his face in green make-up. She stood with her arms draped loosely around his neck as he tied ribbons onto her white dress. She thought then that things were perhaps not so bad; that they might be alright after all.
She didn’t know what to expect. She certainly hadn’t been prepared for the crowds that thronged the town; the clash of colours and the clamour of drums and whistles and pipes. Imogen gripped her father’s hand for all she was worth as they danced down towards the sea – he bellowing a song about a maid and a green man.
As they neared the harbour a cheer went up from somewhere behind them, and there was a disturbance as people parted to let something through.
At first all Imogen could see was what looked like the swish of a huge black skirt. There was the tinkling of bells and a sound like two planks of wood being repeatedly slapped together.
The crowd parted before her and the swirling, clacking nightmare thing that had come rushing down the hill to meet Imogen came to a sudden stop.
Atop a rumpled black cloak covered in multi-coloured rags and tiny silver bells sat the grinning wooden skull of a horse. It eyes had been painted a vivid, sparkling blue and its lips were scarlet. The nightmare was taller than any man, and as it leaned over her it opened and closed its jaws with a clack, clack, clack.
She backed away and reached out for her father, but he wasn’t there and all she could see was the horse and the grinning faces of the crowd.
The wooden horse took a step closer, and then another. A giggling boy darted from the crowd to tear one of the ribbons from Imogen’s dress.
‘Hobby horse! Hobby horse! Hobby horse!’ he shouted as he fled with his prize.
The horse reared, its jaw working maniacally as though it were laughing, and Imogen ran.
She skidded on the cobbles of the vertiginous street as she rushed towards the sea – the clack, clack, clacking of the horse sounding as though it were no further away than the nape of her neck.
She was soon beyond the crowd and nearing the docks, the nightmare snapping at her heels, when her father ran towards her, waving his arms and shouting at her to get out of the way.
Imogen turned and flung herself away from the swirling skirts of the hobby horse as her father slammed into it, sending it over the edge of the dock and into the sea.
She didn’t see the sodden, laughing man swimming away from the sinking effigy. All she saw were those hideous painted jaws, opening and closing as they slowly sank below the surface. Imogen was barely aware of being hoisted onto the shoulders of the crowd and processed through the town beside her father. It was only later that she realised he had known what was coming for her all along. And she would have been angry had it not been the fact that when it really mattered, he had been there for her.
The little rituals that Imogen’s father performed had always been a part of their life together, so it never occurred to her to think of them as magic. It was only when she casually mentioned to a friend at school that her father protected her from bad dreams by burning a particular herb as he sang her a song that she found out that’s what it was.
‘Witchcraft,’ the school chaplain told her, ‘is very dangerous indeed, and not to be toyed with. Perhaps I might have a chat with your father?’
But when Imogen had put across the possibility, her father had laughed so hard that he had rocked their boat.
‘Witchcraft? He can fuck off. No one’s called me a witch before. Imogen, listen, magic is not something to be scared of, or ashamed of. It’s what keeps us together. What keeps us safe.’
But it didn’t always.
Imogen had tried to help her father through depression on countless occasions, but each time was harder than the last, and it wasn’t long before the salves and the chants and the prayers were replaced with the bottle.
After she left school, things became no easier. There were few jobs available and in the periods when Imogen was employed, she often found that, despite her best attempts, she didn’t get along with her colleagues. One job had gone from bad to worse when a particularly nasty woman had snapped ‘fucking gypo!’ at her when she had dropped a tray of pasties.
That summer – when she needed him the most; when the work had dried up – her father found time for one last spell.
‘Sometimes, when we look into the past, we can find the answers we’re looking for,’ he said, as he helped Imogen over the fence and into the field.
‘How so?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean your present past, so to speak. I mean the many pasts stretching out behind you, into the infinite.’
Had he not been sober for the best part of a week, Imogen would have thought it was the drink talking, but her father was deadly serious. They had come to Uffington because he said he had something to show her.
Imogen looked out over the Berkshire downs as a light breeze played across the meadow. She thought she could see their boat from here. In the distance she could just make out the cooling towers of Didcot Power Station – giant egg cups, her father had called them.
‘You may be suffering now, Imogen. But you’ve suffered many times in many lives.’
‘Wow. Thanks. That’s reassuring.’
‘You can learn from the suffering of your past selves. Learn to overcome your pain, as those who you were did before you.’
This was far beyond the simple, homely magic that her father usually practiced, but Imogen could see that this was important to him, so she shut up and listened.
Her father began to talk more animatedly now, his breath barely catching up with his words as they climbed the hill.
‘You are a princess, Imogen. Or rather you were. I have consulted the cards on this, I’ve spent many hours in meditation, and it’s all pointing to this one past life as the key. You were a princess many centuries ago, part of a tribe that lived here. The earthworks that crown the hill above us were your home. It was a harsh, isolated existence. Though you could see your entire kingdom spread out before you, you were deeply unhappy, because you were forbidden to leave the fort. You would spend many hours watching wild horses galloping up and down the shallow valley at the foot of the hill, wishing that one of them would bear you away. It broke your father’s heart to see you so sad, but he could not permit you to leave the security of the fort. Your tribe had many enemies and the daughter of the king was a prize eagerly sought. Your father decided to create for you a gift. Into the chalk of the hillside he carved the likeness of a vast horse to serve as evidence of his love and as the totem of your tribe. All in the plain below could look up and see the white horse – a symbol of st
rength, and love.’
By this time they had reached the crest of the hill and the breeze had become a persistent wind, bearing a winter chill. Imogen zipped up her jacket as her father paused to light a cigarette.
‘And now your father – that’s me by the way, hello – is giving the horse to you. My lady,’ he said with a sweep of his arm, ‘your mount awaits you.’
At her feet, Imogen could see the chalk lines flowing through the cropped grass. When she tilted her head and took a few steps back, she could finally see the design of the horse.
‘Well?’
‘Thank you, Dad. It’s beautiful.’
He gathered her up in his arms, enveloping her in the smell of tobacco and warm leather.
‘I love you, lass. No matter what; I love you.’
That night, the river ran slow and calm and Imogen woke to the sound of hooves pounding wet earth. Fear creeping through her, she opened the curtains of her cabin window. They had moored beside a field, and galloping through the pasture was a white horse.
Imogen crept from the boat; the dew wet grass tickling her feet as she approached the beast. The horse had come to a halt by the fence that enclosed the field. She held out her hand and it lowered its head to her palm, its breath steaming through her fingers as it nuzzled her. The sudden rasp of the horse’s rough tongue against her flesh made her jump, but instead of running into the night, she laughed.
When the horse dipped its head and pawed the ground with a hoof, she understood. Hitching up her nightdress, she swung herself atop her mount, as easily and as smoothly as if she had been riding her whole life.
Together they thundered down the ancient roads; the pathways that sung with the bright magic of the moon and knew the footsteps of the dead as well as the living. Through the dreams of those who had cursed her with cruel words and unkind thoughts they rode, turning them into nightmares from which Imogen’s enemies woke gasping – their minds reeling with the image of that terrible elongated skull, and those wildly rolling eyes.
