Burn the Dark

by S. A. Hunt

  “I didn’t drink long enough I feel like I need to do the anniversary thing. The coins, all that.” Leon took out his cell phone and fidgeted with it. “I never did go to AA. I gave my debit card to my sister and let her buy my groceries, so if I felt like I needed a drink I wouldn’t have the money to run out and get something.” He stared into the sunset. “It was tough, and I still get that hook pulling my insides every now and then, but … you know what they say. One day at a time. That’s what my dad always said. He was a cop. He didn’t take no flak from nobody. I guess that’s where I get it. He did whatever he put his mind to, and damn the help.”

  “Tommy’s daddy, he drank real hard. Drank like a fish.” Linda took a long drag off her cigarette and ashed it into the grass. “He got so bad he was hallucinating. A couple of years ago it got about as bad as it was gonna get. He was seein’ Vietnamese soldiers out in the woods and he said he was gonna shoot me so the ‘gooks’ couldn’t rape me. And he didn’t even know who I was. So Tommy got it into his head to save his daddy’s life. Took him to the hospital to get him clean. He broke down so bad he ended up in a wheelchair and almost lost a leg from a staph infection.”

  Leon winced.

  “Bout gave him brain damage. He was in a coma for near two months. It’s crazy how dependent you can get on the booze. After so long, you literally can’t survive without it. Going clean will kill you. So it’s a good thing you got out of there while the gettin’ was good.” Linda put out her cigarette. “So is your dad still around?”

  “No.” Leon shook his head. “He died when I was seventeen.”

  “What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Pulled over the wrong car. Saw the passenger throw something out the window into the woods, and when he went to go ask about it, the passenger shot him. This was before dash cams, but his partner was there.”

  Horror and sympathy warred on Linda’s face.

  The conversation was dragging Wayne down, so he got up and went inside to face his fears, letting the screen door slap shut behind him.

  Thump, thump, thump, he crutched into the living room and plopped down on the couch next to Pete. They were watching the Avengers movie, or at least Pete was. The girls lay on the floor making pictures; Amanda was drawing them and Katie was coloring them.

  Standing next to the TV was the strength-test hammer, still pink from bloodstains even after Pete had given it a thorough scrubbing. Wayne leaned up and took a piece of tepid pizza from the box on the table, sitting back to nibble on it. He couldn’t pay attention to the movies because his eyes were fixed on the far corner, opposite the TV, where he’d first seen Owlhead. The monster had been tall enough the top of its broad head brushed the ceiling, its back to the nearly empty bookshelves on that side of the room. It had reached for him with long arms, as long as he was tall, covered in copper-wire hair, streaked with the swampy green of old filth.

  “I owe you, man,” he said, when he’d gotten down to the crust.

  Pete tore his eyes away from the screen. “What?”

  “I said I owe you.”

  “For what?”

  Wayne looked at him as if he’d grown a third eye. “Saving my life?”

  Pete shrugged, squishing his chubby face with his shoulder. “It was the w—the woman, I told you. The old woman. She saved you, alls I did was smack the snake.”

  “Was you about to call that old woman a witch?”

  “So what if I was?” Pete chewed his cheek. “I mean, I guess? People say they are. My mom says they used to be friends with the lady that lived in this house.”

  Wayne peered at his leg. “Do you think she did magic on me?”

  “I don’t know what magic looks like, but I don’t—I-I feel like that’s not it.”

  A faint disappointment settled over Wayne. “Oh.”

  Settling into the couch, he pulled his knees up to his chest and tried to lose himself in the movie. His eyes were growing heavy when he heard his father shout outside.

  “Ay! The hell you think you doin’?”

  All the kids scrambled up and went to the windows, Wayne looking through the screen door.

  Apparently Linda had gone home while they were watching the movie, because she was no longer on the stoop. Instead, three people had come marching out of the night, approaching the house. He recognized them as the big blond Viking dude, the girl with the Mohawk, and the pizza guy he’d saved from the serial killer.

  “We don’t want no trouble, Mr. Parkin,” the woman was saying. “We just wanted to check on your son and talk to him about what he saw in his hospital room.”

  Without her bulky jacket, Robin was slender and small, with narrow hips and a long, graceful, otteresque neck, but Wayne had the feeling surprising strength lurked in her wiry body. Veins stood out on her forearms. She was wearing a nylon chest harness, and a small camera was mounted between her breasts.

  “I appreciate you finding him after he wandered off, but I don’t know you from Adam,” said Leon. “And frankly I’m not sure I’m comfortable with any of this. What he saw was a hallucination brought on by shock, and that’s the end of the story.”

  “You know that ain’t true.”

  The blond man shrugged. “He’s got another witness says he was there for the whole thing.”

  “Yo,” said Joel, his thumbs in his jeans pockets.

  “I know that guy even less.” Leon paced slowly, talking with animated hands. “How do I know he didn’t lure Wayne out of the hospital room while I was asleep and run off with him?”

  The pizza-guy recoiled in mortified anger. “The fuck?”

  “I didn’t—I didn’t, well, I mean—”

  “You think just because I’m gay, I’m some kind of child molester?”

  “No. No, of course not, I wouldn’t—”

  To Wayne’s dismay, his father had come up with the worst-case scenario. Something urged him to step into this and defuse it the best he could. “That’s not how it went, Dad,” he said, pushing the door open and stepping outside without his crutch. “Joel is all right. And you know it.”

  Leon simply pointed at him with a shut your mouth finger, daggers in his eyes. Wayne quailed at first, his eyebrows rising, but he stood his ground.

  “I squared up to a fuckin’ demon to get him off your son,” said Joel. “You need to—” He bit back further retort, wheeling away from the confrontation as if making to leave. “Sis, I didn’t come here to be accused of being a pedophile.”

  “Your son is a good kid,” said Robin, calming Joel with a hand to his shoulder. “And sharp as a tack. I feel like he deserves the benefit of the doubt. He wouldn’t be defending a kidnapper, would he?”

  Folding his arms, Leon seethed at the three interlopers for a long moment.

  Then his eyes drifted over to Wayne, who was trying his hardest to project a vibe of honesty. “I’m a teacher, man,” he finally said, a look of defeat coming over his face. He leaned over and rested his hands on his knees as if he were about to vomit, then straightened up, his hands meeting. He slowly cracked each one of his knuckles as he talked. “I’m a teacher, and what if I just can’t get on board with this story, of-of-of doors that aren’t supposed to be there, and monsters in shadow-houses? I need empirical evidence, goddammit. I believe in the scientific method, you know? Theories, hypotheses, experimentation. Like the doctor at the hospital said, this is hoodoo. And I don’t go to church because I don’t believe in hoodoo.”

  “This has nothing to do with a lack of religious faith,” said Kenway. Realization dawned in his eyes and he spoke to Robin. “Wait, if these witches take their powers from the goddess of the underworld, does that mean God is real? And Heaven, and Hell, and all that?”

  Robin shook her head. “Ereshkigal is the goddess of the afterlife, the spiritual realm, not the ‘underworld,’ because there ain’t no underworld. Heaven and Hell are states of mind in the void of the afterlife, not physical locations. The classical Hell and its nine Circles
Dante Alighieri described in The Divine Comedy don’t exist. Heaven is sublime contentment. Hell is sublime regret.”

  This was all gibberish to Wayne. Comedy? This didn’t sound funny at all.

  Kenway waved away all that poetic mumbo-jumbo, pressing the point. “What about God, though?”

  “There is a force, I believe, but it ain’t the belligerent all-knowing Old Testament sky-wizard so many people think it is. God—or Allah, or Ahura Mazda, or Jehovah, all different names for the same thing—it’s not an old bearded man in a toga and sandals, it’s a word for the attracting force of unconditional love itself. It can be the strongest force in the universe if you let it.”

  Kenway’s laugh echoed off the side of the house. “That was uncharacteristically sentimental of you, lady.”

  “More Hallmark shit,” joked Joel. “I thought we was past this.”

  Leon took a deep breath and blew out a long, exasperated sigh. “Maybe I should talk to you the next time I feel like I need a shot of Jack. When I lost my wife, I lost my belief in this stuff. If God exists, He’s a real nasty piece of work.”

  Robin grinned crookedly. “I sound like a TV evangelist. But it’s true. At least, that’s the conclusion I’ve gathered in the couple of years I’ve been doin’ this. You kinda get a feel for the supernatural when you deal with it on a regular basis. But I don’t really traffic in churchy matters, Mr. Parkin. My job is a little darker than all that.”

  “Darker?” Leon went over and sat on the stoop, and Wayne joined him. His father slipped an arm around his shoulders. “What, you mean like an exorcist or something?”

  “Of a sort. I hunt witches.”

  “I didn’t think you looked like the convent type. A witch-hunter? I thought that went out of style with bonnets and butter churns.”

  “Those were delusional Puritans in Salem times, Mr. Parkin. Using superstition and dogma to eliminate anybody they didn’t like and suppress femininity and sexual freedom. I’m sure you’ve heard that refrain many times, being a teacher.”

  “I’m a literature teacher, not history. And you can call me Leon.” He pointed at the camera on Robin’s chest. “Are you filming this?”

  She nodded, detaching it from her harness and handing it to Kenway. He aimed it at her and she gave him the finger. “I run a YouTube channel about my travels. Do you mind me filming?”

  Leon hesitated. “I guess not.”

  “So how are you feeling, Wayne?” asked Robin. The woman’s tone was clinical, interview-like. He got the feeling she shed her normal irreverent, profanity-laced drawl for the videos.

  “A lot better. Whatever Miss Weaver put on me was—” Wayne almost said was magic, and amended himself. “—like, a miracle. The doctor said so. And she even paid my hospital bill. Almost thirty thousand dollars.”

  Joel and Kenway whistled in unison. “Hot damn,” said the pizza-man.

  “I am forever in her debt,” said Leon. “The hospital would have been chasing me for that money until the day I died. She saved both our lives.”

  “I’ve got a little secret I never got to tell you back at Kenway’s apartment,” said Robin. “This used to be my house. I grew up here, and I slept in the room up there—” She pointed at the uppermost tower looming over them, the windows dark. “—in the cupola.”

  “That’s my room now,” said Wayne.

  “I hope you love it as much as I did. Felt like a princess in a castle.”

  Wayne’s mouth tucked to one side in a coy, assessing way. “Was your mama the one that died here?”

  “Yes. Yes, she was.”

  “My mama died too. This ring I showed you earlier was hers.” He took out the gold wedding band around his neck and showed it to her, the inscription sparkling in the dull yellow light of the wall sconce. Together We’ll Always Find a Way. He was glad Dad let him keep it; he felt naked without it.

  “I’m sorry,” said Robin.

  “Me too.”

  She paused, an uncomfortable warmth on her face, as if consolations were unusual for her.

  “It was cancer,” said Leon. “Throat cancer. She was getting better, but then they let her get an infection and it spread to her lungs. She went downhill fast. Like the song, it’s been just the two of us ever since.” He hugged Wayne tight. “So you used to live here. What were you talking about, your mom dying here?”

  “My father, he … murdered my mother, here in this house.” Turning, Robin pointed up at the Lazenbury. The huge house loomed over them in the background, a black square jutting into the night sky. “And it’s them, those women up there in the mission-house, that made him do it.”

  Wayne stared. “Are they really witches?”

  “Yes. Very dangerous and very old witches.”

  “I can’t believe I’m buying into this shit, but I’m going to ask anyway. Does this mean you’re here to, what?” asked Leon. “Kill them?”

  She stared at the stepping-stone under her foot. “I don’t refer to it so crassly, Mr. Parkin. But yes, I’m here to neutralize them.”

  “Neutralize.”

  “Yes. Would you prefer the term ‘gank’? I’m here to gank ’em. Like I said, they’re dangerous.”

  “You sound like an enforcer with the mob or something.” Leon rubbed his forehead, his eyes darting around at the grass as if he were trying to read it. He tossed a hand up for emphasis. “Anyway, I don’t know if I can condone a ‘ganking,’ Miss, ahh—”

  “Robin. Robin Martine.”

  “Miss Martine. They saved my son’s life. They paid for his hospital visit. They’ve barely said one word to us, much less brought over a basket of poisoned apples. Surely they can’t be all bad, can they? They’re three little old ladies, for Christ’s sake.”

  Robin stared at the stoop in thought.

  When she looked up again, her face was dark, her eyes piercing. “They’re pitting you against me, Mr. Parkin. This whole thing—the snakebite, Weaver paying your bill, all of it—they’re bribing you into service as a human shield. They know I’ll hesitate because of you.”

  “Sounds like crap,” said Leon. “How could they orchestrate my son getting bitten by a snake?”

  Robin regarded Wayne. “How did you kids end up at the fairgrounds, anyway? Whose idea was it to go out there?”

  He didn’t say anything at first, for fear of incriminating Pete. But then he got the idea to pull a Spartacus and said, “It was me. It was my idea. Somebody told me about the f—”

  “Oh, bull,” said Pete, pushing the door open and coming outside. “It was my idea, ma’am. I wanted to show ’em my secret way home nobody knows about. I take the Broad Avenue canal down to the river and then there’s deer trails that go up and through the fairgrounds. They come out behind this house, back there in the trees.”

  “Hmmm.” Robin took out a Sharpie. “Take off your shirt.”

  “Take off my shirt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see in a minute,” she said, coming up onto the porch and uncapping the marker. Pete wriggled out of his shirt and stood there with it bunched up in one hand. Robin zeroed in on his chest and drew a symbol in the middle. “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Pete.”

  “Nice to meet you, Pete. Thank you for letting me draw on you.”

  He looked down at the marker, scrunching his second chin. “Why did you draw on me?”

  “Do you feel funny?” Robin looked up at him; she was still hunched over with the heel of her hand on his left boob.

  “Other than the fact I took off my shirt and you’re drawing weird stuff on me? Not really.”

  “The symbol I drew is an algiz rune.”

  Leon made a face. “Did I just hear you say ‘owl jizz’?”

  Standing back, Robin massaged the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes. “No, ‘all-jeez.’ Ancient Norse protective symbol that blocks or dampens supernatural influence … like the witches’ power.”

  Pete tried
to angle his head for a better look at the symbol, making a scrunched-up face. “Is something supposed to be happening?”

  “Yes.”

  She seemed disappointed at first, but then a new zeal took over and she capped the Sharpie. “But it doesn’t look like what I expected is going to happen. So you can put your shirt back on. I guess you taking the kids to the fairgrounds was just a coincidence.”

  “So maybe Karen Weaver really did do what she did out of the goodness of her heart,” said Leon. “I’m thinking of going up there in the morning and inviting her to Sunday dinner as thanks.” He watched his hands worry at each other. “It’s not exactly thirty thousand dollars worth of thanks, but it’s the best I got.”

  “What did you expect to happen?” asked Joel. “His head to spin, him to start puking out pea soup?”

  “I’ll tell you later, if you really, really want to know,” Robin told him, and turned to Wayne’s father. “I would steer clear of those women from now on, honestly. They’re bad juju. In fact, everybody needs an algiz while I’m here and I’ve got a Sharpie in my hand. And don’t wash that off, by the way.”

  “You’re not drawing voodoo bullshit on my son.”

  Wayne pushed himself to his feet. “I don’t mind. You can draw on me,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “What is this symbol supposed to do? I know you said it’s ‘protective,’ but what does that mean?”

  Leon took his wrist and tried to pull him back down, his eyes steely. “No. You’re not getting mixed up in this.”

  “I’m already mixed up in it.”

  Wayne tugged back the leg of his jeans to expose the snakebite. The only visible evidence he’d ever been bitten were two tiny scars halfway between his knee and his ankle. If he compared both legs side by side he could see the difference—the bitten one was almost imperceptibly larger because of the swelling—but at a glance, it was as if he’d never been bitten at all.

  Robin stared at the living room window, where Amanda and little Katie Fryhover were peering over the back of the sofa. “Mr. Parkin, if I can prove your son saw a monster in your house, if I can show you this whole dog-and-pony-show isn’t just TV bullshit or snake-oil chicanery, will you trust me?”