Dark Traveler

by Catie Rhodes

  “Shit. Shit,” he screamed. “It’s her.”

  Miss Ugly stood in the middle of the road, arms out.

  13

  The bright beam of my truck’s headlights didn’t do Miss Ugly any favors. It made her shiny skin look green and her nose look like it actually touched her chin.

  “Want me to run her over?” Tanner took his foot off the brake.

  “No. I’ll give her the lamp. Maybe that’ll be enough to send her away.” I opened the truck’s door.

  Tanner grabbed my arm. “Wait. You can’t face her by yourself.”

  I turned to stare at him, wondering why he’d bother to risk himself for me. He stared straight ahead, unbuckling his seatbelt. His face, impassive if a little tight, gave away no reason he’d do such a thing.

  Tanner and I climbed out of the truck together. I pulled the skull lantern out of the truck’s bed and walked to Miss Ugly holding it aloft. Tanner hurried to my side.

  She narrowed her eyes at us, head cocked. “My lantern.”

  I held out the lantern. She approached, holding out one of her long-fingered hands. The memory of those claws tightened my skin. I swallowed the urge to back away from her and held as still as I could.

  She took the lantern from me almost gently and rubbed her hand over the skull’s head. The eyes lit up. Tanner and I both scuttled backward to avoid the burning death rays.

  She saw us and chuckled. “It will act as a light for me since I am the one who made it.” She took a closer look at me. “You recharged it with your magic. Now you are tired, empty.”

  I did an inward assessment and realized she was right. I didn’t have a bit of magic left to lend to any situation, not even to protect myself. Fear spread through me, stinging my nerve endings. Whatever Miss Ugly wanted to do to me now would happen. Please let this satisfy her, begged a childish voice in my head. But I lived in the real world. Things never worked out the way I wanted them to.

  “Now it is time to meet your fate. Come without a fight.” She crooked her finger at me.

  I backed away until I bumped into Tanner. He put an arm around me, pressing himself against my side. His body shook.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “You promised to reward me if I gave back your lantern.” I forgot to phrase this as a question to weaken Miss Ugly until the words were already out.

  Miss Ugly considered me. She came forward and gripped my arm as though testing it for muscle. I stiffened at the slimy feel of her cool fingers.

  “No. Your meat is ready tonight. Must go so I can prepare the meat and the fire.” She gave me a tug toward the side of the road.

  The moon beamed down on the huge, endless pasture stretching out from the road. In the darkness, two tall columns, stone with carvings at the top and bottom, rippled in and out of reality. That was where we’d cross. Once I left this world, I might as well sign my death warrant.

  “That sucks,” I yelled and jerked my arm. Miss Ugly pulled back, suddenly very strong. I fought for all I was worth, but only succeeded in twisting my own arm. “Where is the kindness you promised?”

  This time I had remembered to phrase my comments in a question, but Miss Ugly didn’t shrink at all. My magic. There wasn’t enough left to work against hers and draw her power. I slumped.

  Miss Ugly turned back to me. “What sort of kindness would you like?”

  “For you to let me go.” My voice came out hoarse and trembling. Miss Ugly cocked her head at me, and I hastened to make my case. “You came after me because you thought I stole the lantern—which I never did. Now I’ve gotten it back for you. Call our business done and let me go.”

  “Thieves must be punished even if they return what they stole.” Miss Ugly tightened her grip and began walking, dragging me toward the two columns.

  “I didn’t steal your sorry-assed lantern,” I yelled.

  She ignored me and kept towing me. Tanner gripped me around the waist, pulling the same way he had back in the tent.

  “Where’s your honor?” he grunted at Miss Ugly.

  Miss Ugly stopped so quickly, I fell against Tanner. We landed on the pavement in a heap.

  “You talk of honor? The man who was too afraid to let his daughter move on to the next plane of existence? The one who kept her alive on machines?” Miss Ugly leaned toward Tanner.

  He shrank away, emotion twisting his features, and let go of me. Miss Ugly snatched my arm and started walking again. I dug my boot heels into the pavement. It didn’t do much good, but it slowed her progress. I glanced back at Tanner. He knelt on the pavement with both hands over his face, mourning the day his life had turned to shit.

  My life had turned to shit many times. This one was by far the worst. Talk about a disappointing way to end things. Magic all used up, emotionally preparing to be Miss Ugly’s picnic ham. She kept pulling me toward the columns. My boots left the pavement and cut ruts in the sand along the roadside. The posts marking the thin place were less than three yards away.

  Running footsteps slapped the ground behind me. Tanner pushed past me, his nine irons amulet held out. He slapped it to Miss Ugly’s face, the same way he’d done before. She howled but tightened her grip on me and kept walking. Tanner ran around in front of her and gave her a hard push. He barely moved her, but she did stop.

  “Do you want this to be your fate as well?” She leaned into Tanner’s face. His features pinched in disgust. He must’ve gotten a whiff of that breath.

  “Reward Peri Jean Mace by letting her go, or I’ll speak of your lack of honor to everybody I meet.” Tanner stood stiff, shoulders squared, feet apart. He was ready to whip some ass, even if it wasn’t with his fists.

  Miss Ugly slowly turned to face Tanner. “How dare you speak to me as though you’re as great as I.”

  “I’m better.” Tanner raised his chin. “I reward people when they do the right thing.”

  Miss Ugly threw her head back. “Hoooooo.” In this open space, it sounded like an air brake on an eighteen-wheeler. Some poor animal crashed through the bushes, trying to save its own life from whatever thing could make such an awful noise.

  My black opal gave a weak ping. My magic was replenishing but not fast enough. I aimed what I had at Miss Ugly and threw out a question. “Why won’t you reward me?”

  The hand holding me shrank, but nothing like I’d made it shrink before. But I was more afraid this time. I’d done what she asked, and it hadn’t helped. I twisted in her grasp. Miss Ugly readjusted her grip and grabbed me with the other hand as well, nasty fingernails biting into my skin.

  “This fate is assigned to you now. You must follow the thread of your fate until it runs out. But I do have a small kindness for your hard work.” She leaned toward me. I craned away, revulsion overwhelming my fear. Miss Ugly used one of her nasty fingers to prick my forehead in the same spot she’d already hit. The already tender skin flinched at the new injury. She drew back. “You have until tomorrow night to make peace with your fate.” She turned toward Tanner. “Perhaps that will make me a more honorable being.”

  Without waiting for either of our responses, she walked across the pasture, footsteps crunching in the grass and gritting in the sand. The moonlight glowed on her skin. She reached the columns, passed through without hesitating, and disappeared.

  I picked myself up off the ground, brushing at the grime on my clothes. One more day to live. Something like sadness pooled in my chest. I’d thought I would live to see how things turned out, regardless of how ambivalent I sometimes felt about it.

  Tanner came to stand next to me. “You all right?”

  I shrugged. “As all right as I can be in a situation like this.”

  “She’s not taking you tomorrow. There is a way to get rid of her. We just haven’t figured it out yet. But we will.” He marched back to the truck and got in the driver’s side.

  I followed, too tired to try to explain to him that it was over. There was nothing left to do. I got in the truck and buckled my seatbelt. Facing death, bucklin
g my seatbelt felt trivial and foolish.

  My phone began to ring. I glanced at the caller ID. Dillon. “What’s going on?”

  Harsh pants came over the speaker. Had she butt dialed me?

  “Dillon?” I yelled. “Did you need to talk to me?” I figured she didn’t and got ready to hang up.

  “Yes. Yes. Come back now. Something bad’s happened.” Dillon paused as voices raised in conversation behind her.

  I strained to understand what the voices were saying. “What’s going on?”

  She sighed. “Go to the carnival. Hannah’ll be in your tent waiting.” She hung up before I could ask any more questions.

  The minutes crawled by as Tanner sped through the darkness. My job was to watch for deer on the roadside and warn Tanner to stop before they made a suicide run under the truck’s tires. Hitting one would break my heart and cost us valuable time.

  To pass the time, I tried calling Dillon back. Her phone went straight to voicemail. She’d either turned it off or was declining my calls. Hannah’s did the same thing.

  Worry twisted my guts. I sat on the edge of my seat, glancing at the speedometer. Tanner drove the big truck like a Baja buggy, scaring even me. I couldn’t yell at him to hurry.

  Finally, we roared up in Summervale Carnival’s parking lot. Empty again. All the fun-seekers had gone home for the night.

  I climbed out of the truck and took off running. Tanner caught up and grabbed my hand. My impulse was to jerk away. I didn’t need him leading me. But the comfort of another person, one who’d seen me receive my death sentence, helped just a little.

  We turned the corner onto the midway off the thoroughfare where all our tents were. I’d expected to see family members waiting for us, but everything stood quiet and dead.

  “It’s like a ghost town.” I let go of Tanner’s hand and raced toward my tent. His footsteps pounded behind me. I burst through the flap and faced the worst mess I’d seen in a long time.

  Junk lay scattered everywhere. I couldn’t tell with a glance where it had all come from. The séance table sat in its usual spot, the only orderly thing in the room. Hannah sat at the table, a spread of three tarot cards in front of her, her tarot journal at her elbow. She raised her head at my commotion and let out a relieved sigh. Tanner crowded in behind me.

  “What’s going on?” I nearly yelled.

  “Don’t get too excited.” Hannah stood from the chair, smoothing down her expensive pants. “We had a little incident. Your ex-husband burst in here and robbed your tent. Cecil tried to stop him and ended up having a spell with his heart. We had to let the ambulance come get him.”

  The edges of my vision went gray at the announcement. Panic took over my mind, making it run a hamster wheel of doom. Cecil was the elder of our family, the person who knew all the good stuff. He took care of the day-to-day minutiae of running the traveling community of Sanctuary. People brought their complaints and worries to him. He made the decisions of which way we’d travel and which jobs to take. He always knew the right thing to do. If he died, I’d lose my advisor and a good friend.

  “How bad is Papaw? Did Tim hurt him?” The pain in my throat was the only way I knew I was yelling. Tim had certainly hurt me, nearly beat me to death. He was capable.

  Hannah patted my arms. “Settle down and listen to me.” She took deep breaths until I did the same. Then she started speaking again. “I called Tim a bug fucker. He hit me in the stomach.”

  Tanner shifted on his feet eyes narrow and glittering hate. He muttered, “Cowardly asshole.”

  Hannah nodded her agreement. “Cecil and Tim scuffled. I don’t think either of them got in any blows. But Cecil’s heart started acting up. I swear, his face was the color of oatmeal. Tim grabbed the runes and something else out of your trunk and ran out. I called an ambulance.”

  I flinched. No matter how bad things got, we only called in the authorities when absolutely necessary.

  “Oh, I got chapter and verse from Shelly.” Hannah’s face reddened. “By the time the EMTs got here, the story of your sorry ex robbing us had turned into him being an irate customer who kicked over your buffet.”

  “Dillon didn’t explain when she called…” I began.

  Hannah cut me off. “I told Dillon not to call you, that making you hurry wouldn’t change any of this. Cecil isn’t dying, not right now.”

  I trusted Hannah’s word on this and relaxed a tiny bit. But my muscles still ached with tension. “You could have told me not to worry any of the times I tried to call you. Why didn’t you answer?”

  “Huh? You called?” She took out her phone and clicked the side button. The screen stayed dark. “Son of a damn bitch,” she said through her teeth and threw the phone against the tent wall. It bounced off and fell to the dirt. “It started acting up this morning. I’d thought once we hit a big enough town, I’d buy another one. I didn’t realize…” She hugged me again. “I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head and walked around the room, surveying the damage. My shabby chic buffet, the one I’d restored and painted so carefully, had been busted into small wood splinters. I squatted on the dirt floor and picked through the mess. “You said the official story, the one you told the authorities, turned into Tim breaking this. What really happened?”

  Hannah squatted next to me. “That thing exploded about ten seconds before your ex walked in.”

  “Tell me what happened from the start.” I sorted through things, making one pile for ruined items and another for things we could keep. Tanner knelt next to me and helped. Every once in a while, his hand brushed my leg or some other part of my body. The contact sent electric pulses of lust into my brain and made it hard for me to concentrate. I settled my gaze on Hannah and waited for her to start talking.

  “Cecil and I were looking at the tarot cards. All of a sudden, your buffet started shaking. Even I felt the magic coming off it.” She licked her lips. “It exploded. Wood splinters, and your stuff went everywhere.” She held up an arm to show me a few shallow cuts shiny with some kind of ointment. “Your ex-husband burst in. He had a gun.”

  Tanner stopped picking stuff up and glanced around as though the gun might still be there, waiting to shoot him. I grunted in irritation. Neither Tim nor his gun scared me. Anger and a general apathy over death fueled bravery that bordered on foolishness.

  Hannah continued. “Tim said, ‘The Coachman wants his runes.’”

  The pronouncement made my head spin. I’d suspected Tim and Oscar were somehow working together, but I still couldn’t figure out how it had happened. “I don’t understand how they're…”

  Tanner had his arms crossed over his chest, one hand cupping his chin as he thought. “I might.”

  I gestured at him to spill it.

  “I’ve been puzzling over how awful that magic baking off those runes felt. Now I think I’ve got it.” He tucked one lock of hair behind his ear, so excited about what he’d figured out he was almost smiling. I resisted the urge to rush him along. After what seemed like an eternity, he continued, “Your magic charged Miss Ugly’s skull lamp, right? What if your magic charged Oscar’s runes?” He raised his eyebrows.

  I nodded. Despite the dire circumstances, I couldn’t help but notice how impossibly cute Tanner was when he did the raised eyebrows thing. Stupid of me to even notice. This was the wrong time for both of us. Focus on the here and now.

  The here and now was Tanner had made a good point. I could have unknowingly charged the runes and given Oscar enough power to blow up the buffet.

  But this was the third time Tim had come to my tent. The first time, he’d gotten into Oscar’s runes and scattered them. The second time, I’d caught him in here snooping around, and Tanner whipped his ass for it. Now he’d come back and stolen the runes, saying the Coachman, Oscar, wanted them. The two of them were working together.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking.” Tanner licked his lips, and I remembered our kiss.

  “I agree with you about charging the rune
s. I probably did it unknowingly, and it allowed Oscar to make the buffet explode. But how did Tim get involved? I haven’t spoken to him in years.”

  Tanner shrugged. “The way those runes emanate evil like they do makes me wonder if they’re some kind of doorway.”

  A doorway. It hit me then. I felt more stupid than I had in a long time. The answer had been right there in my memories of my first encounter with Oscar Rivera, but I’d been too busy horn-dogging after Tanner and missing Wade to see it.

  A few months ago, a misguided young man had found one of Oscar Rivera’s runes. I had seen the finding of the rune in a vision. In this vision, Oscar had been right on the other side of this rune like someone looking through a window. Oscar had watched the rune be found and reached out to encourage this young man to help him find a way to be summoned back to the land of the living. Then, when Oscar was summoned back to this plane, he had come out of the runes. The connections flashed in my mind like lightning before a storm.

  I put my face in my hands. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Hannah gave me a light kick. “I’m lost.”

  “Oscar can see through the runes. He can be contacted through the runes. I knew all that going in. I thought it was harmless because Oscar had no access to power, that he was trapped where he hid his soul.” I rocked back and forth, wanting to scream from the frustration of what my ignorance had allowed to happen. “But like Tanner pointed out, the runes are like a doorway. Evil comes out, other stuff goes in. When Tim came in the other night, Oscar somehow connected to him, convinced him to work for him.” The weight of all that I faced pressed down on me without quarter. I couldn’t push forward anymore.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed my cedar box. It stood open. I went over and knelt in front of it. I’d been so busy trying to catch up that I’d not really paid attention to what Hannah said about Tim getting into the cedar box. I didn’t have to ask what he’d taken.