Midnight Rider

by D V Wolfe

  Rosetta nodded. “You younguns need structure. Consequences for everything.”

  “Younguns,” I snorted.

  “Are you….I mean…,” Noah started, scrambling to his feet. “You’re not gonna make me do that, are you? Break into a…”

  “Well, no point worrying about that now,” I said. “It’s for vampires, and Rosetta’s house isn’t hosting the undead Olympics at the moment.” Rosetta pushed by me on her way out of the shed and went to pick up her gun. I followed after her and crossed to the porch. On the top step, I set down four more hex bags and the sawed-off.

  “Ok, Cleansing Rituals 101,” I said.

  Rosetta rolled her eyes. “Bane, hurry it up. I’m rather fond of the rose-patterned wallpaper in my bedroom and while you’re flapping your gums, that snot-nosed girl is probably smearing it with her ectoplasm-covered hands.”

  Noah swallowed and picked up the ten-gauge from the lawn chair. “What do you need me to do?”

  Rosetta looked at him and then at me. “I like this one.”

  A crash overhead made the three of us look up as one of Rosetta’s Queen Ann chairs crashed through her bedroom window and splintered on the lawn.

  “Now who’s wasting time,” I said to Rosetta.

  “Smartass,” she muttered. She and I turned and headed up the stairs. I bent to pick up the sawed-off and the hex bags.

  “So….should I just wait here?” Noah asked.

  I turned to look back at Noah. “Now what fun would that be?” I asked. “I’m taking the upstairs and Rosetta always does the cellar. I’ll give you the downstairs since I’m so generous. Although for the bottle of dead man’s blood that you broke, I should make you do the upstairs and the downstairs bathroom by yourself.” Noah just looked at me. I held up a hex bag. “Ok, so first we need to kill the infection, then we sew up the cuts. To kill the infection we use hex bags to eject the s.o.b.s and then we burn and smudge the doors and windows to seal them from clawing their way back in. Got it?”

  Noah looked down at one of the hex bags in his free hand.“Why didn’t you do this before?” He asked, glancing up at Rosetta.

  “Oh this is probably the sixth time I’ve done this since moving in.” She frowned at me as if trying to remember.

  I shrugged. “Well this is my third time. I have to say though, this poltergeist seems to have brought its ‘A’ game.”

  “So, why does it keep happening?” Noah asked. “I mean, why do you have to keep doing...all this...over and over again?”

  Rosetta shrugged and checked the shells in her twelve-gauge. “The ash fades over time especially when the evil things are fighting against it day in and day out. Then it only takes one door or one window and you’re up to your armpits in wall-walkers and creepy laughs.”

  I stuffed a hex bag in each pocket of my jeans and set the sawed-off on my shoulder. Rosetta had her hex bags in the pockets of her carpenter apron and her twelve-gauge tucked under one arm. We both turned to look at Noah. He had the four hex bags balanced precariously in one hand and he was still holding the ten-gauge like it would bite his face off at any moment.

  “Your team,” I said to Rosetta, nodding at Noah. I heard Rosetta sigh as I pushed past her and climbed up and through the broken kitchen window frame.

  “Not funny Bane!” She called after me. “I hope those pit weasels bite your ass!”

  “Language!” I called back with a grin. I crunched over broken glass and china, pumping the action on my shotgun on my way to the stairs. I felt a tug on the back of my shirt and I reached back, trying to unsnag myself from whatever I was caught on. My hand touched cold, soft skin. I turned around to see a little girl with half of her head missing, smiling at me.

  “Come play with me,” She gurgled, blood and black slime dripping out of her remaining nostril.

  “I’d love to darling, but I don’t think you’d like the way I play.” I slid the sawed-off around my side and pulled the trigger. The girl flickered and disappeared and I stared at the rock salt that had embedded itself into the original oak paneling on the stairs. “Sorry about the stairs!” I yelled.

  “What did you do to my stairs!?” Rosetta shouted.

  “Collateral damage!”

  I crept up the last few steps and peered around the landing, thankful that it appeared empty. The one nice thing about the kind of shade a poltergeist throws is that the hell visions get interrupted by the sphere of anger and torment that the poltergeist creates around itself. It was a relief to not have to fight my way through burning bodies and deal with the regular hellions that were such frequent guests in Rosetta’s upstairs, at the same time. The visions had stayed outside, waiting for my return like a burning welcome wagon.

  The doors to the upstairs rooms were open and the rooms all had their blackout shades drawn, leaving them dark. I crept through the first door into Rosetta’s room and went to her dresser. I tugged the drawer open and dug around. My hand passed over crucifixes, flasks, the points of daggers, glass bottles, and finally I felt the mag light. I clicked it on. Behind me, I heard something rustling on the bed. I turned around in time to see Rosetta’s wedding ring-patterned quilt hit me in the face and begin to wrap itself around my neck.

  I started choking and I dropped the sawed-off to pull at the blanket.

  “Bane! Quit screwing around up there! The kid and I are almost done,” Rosetta called from downstairs.

  I tried sawing at the blanket with my machete. Something pushed me from behind and I felt the tip of the knife knick my throat as I fell forward.

  Then the quilt went limp. I pulled it off of me and stared around the room. By the narrow beam of light from the mag light where it spilled across the carpet, the room seemed empty. Either way, I wasn’t wasting any more time. Rosetta’s room had the southernmost corner of the house on the second floor. I dug a hex bag out of my pocket and crawled across the floor, searching for the cut in the carpet. I finally found it and stuffed the hex bag in.

  I turned around and was nose-to-nose with the barrel of the sawed-off, suspended in mid-air. I heard a little girl laugh and then the sound of the action as it was pumped back by invisible hands. I hit the floor. Rock salt blasted the wall behind me. I grabbed my machete off the carpet, scrambled through the door and slammed it behind me. A second later something heavy banged off the inside of the door. The sawed-off. I gritted my teeth. The barrel on that gun was already slightly crooked. Now, it was probably entirely screwed to hell. Damn Rosetta and her Hellgate.

  I went across the hall to the first guest room which was full of faceless children with gaping, seeping holes where their faces should have been. They were bouncing on the bed, a stain of black ectoplasm spreading across the bedspread. They paused when I came in and then they swarmed me. I beat a path through them and fought my way to the west-facing wall. I dropped down and held my breath as I felt a small, cold arm put me in a surprisingly strong headlock. I dug at the corner floorboard, prying it up enough to wedge the hex bag in, and then I covered my ears. The little hellions had started to scream. It echoed through my chest, bringing back memories from the pit. I stumbled back into the hall and slammed the door behind me.

  The far north corner of the house was a linen closet. I opened the door and closed my eyes to ignore the towels and sheets that had become snakes. I stuffed the third hex bag into the back corner and snatched my arm out before slamming the door.

  The furthest east-facing corner of the house, on the second floor, was in the last room. It was a small bedroom, barely big enough for a full-sized bed. I paused in the doorway and stared at the man sitting on it.

  “Dad?” I whispered.

  He looked up at me. His face was gaunt and his eyes were cold. His overalls were blood-stained and ragged. I tried not to look at his neck.

  “Jessie…” He rasped. I stumbled back.

  That was my name.

  Jessie.

  That was my name.

  “You’re not real,” I said. I sidestepped hi
m and moved to the far corner of the room.

  “Jessie...thirsty...we’re so thirsty. Save us, Jessie. Before it’s too late.”

  “You’re not my dad.” I dug around behind a basket of knitting needles and yarn and found the hole in the carpet. I stuffed the last hex bag down it and heard the springs creak behind me. When I turned, the room was empty.

  I slumped down onto the edge of the bed. This wasn’t the first time some bastard of a monster had reached into my grab bag of dirty laundry and pulled out my father’s face, but this one had known my name. A name even I’d forgotten.

  “Bane! Get down here!” Rosetta’s voice called.

  I scratched my head and stood up. “Be there in a second!” I yelled. I picked up my machete and headed back down the hall. I opened Rosetta’s bedroom door and picked up my sawed-off from the floor.

  Bane. I was Bane. Not Jessie. Not anymore.

  I hurried down the stairs and found Rosetta and Noah in the kitchen. Noah had the broom in one hand and the dustpan in the other and Rosetta was standing by the sink, supervising.

  “Put your back into it, son. That glass and sulfur isn’t going to pick itself up.”

  Rosetta looked up when I walked in. “I figure a good hour and then we can burn and smudge. In the meantime, are you hungry?” I shrugged and tossed my machete onto the kitchen table so I could take my sawed-off in both hands to examine the barrel. By some miracle the barrel didn’t look any worse than it had before.

  “Hey, this isn’t your truck, Missy. You already broke my window. Don’t wreck my table.”

  “Well definitely don’t look at your stairs then,” I muttered. Rosetta glared at me.

  She started across the kitchen and I held up a hand.

  “Before you look at it and then subsequently kick my ass, I have a favor to ask.”

  I looked over at Noah who had stopped sweeping to watch us. Rosetta followed my gaze.

  “Get the lead out boy. If you don’t work around here, you don’t eat.”

  I nodded at Noah. “And that’s no threat, Noah. Once she made me stand outside and watch through the window while everyone else ate her shepherd’s pie and homemade ice cream. All because I caught a case and missed ‘stake and dagger day’.”

  “You said you caught a case, but when you got back here, you were drunk as a skunk.”

  “Yeah well, it had been one of those days.” I motioned to the door and Rosetta followed me out onto the back porch.

  “Now what is it?” Rosetta asked, wiping her hands on her carpenter’s apron. “What’s this huge favor? Get it out so I can tell you in the most colorful way I can think of that it ain’t happening.”

  I sat down on the top porch step. “I need more pills.”

  Rosetta sighed. I looked up at her. “Bane, how’d you go through them so fast? I swear it’s like your alcohol and your painkiller addictions. Those pills were just supposed to cut down on the visions. You can’t use them as a crutch.”

  I let her talk. I deserved it. At least some of it.

  “Rosetta,” I said when she stopped to draw breath. “The kid kicked them out of the truck by accident. I didn’t use them up.”

  Rosetta was quiet for a moment. “How bad are the visions now?”

  I looked around the yard at the burning, crying folks from my hometown, and then I looked up at Rosetta who was standing next to a vision of Old Lady Mertz. She was wearing the faded flour sack dress she always wore and she was screaming, with her head on fire.

  “They’re here.”

  “Who’s next to me this time? Mr. Crothers again? He always sounded so tall, dark, and handsome.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, it’s Old Lady Mertz.”

  “The one who used to make the creepy potato head dolls and leave them on people’s front porches when they had a new baby?”

  “The very same.”

  Rosetta looked around her. “Well that just gives me the heebie-jeebies.” She passed me and started down the porch stairs. “I think I’ve got what we need for your pills in the shed.”

  I followed her across the lawn. “You’ve got Angel Tears and Silverhair in stock?”

  Rosetta shrugged. “Close enough.”

  I plopped down in the open doorway of the shed and leaned against the frame, trying to ignore the crowd of smoky, burning figures, mouths open in silent screams, surrounding the potting shed. Something felt wet at my side. I put a hand down and felt my stitches seeping.

  “Did you pull your stitches again?” Rosetta asked.

  “I don’t think so, they’re just angry.”

  “I swear Bane,” Rosetta said, shaking her head. “You’re always one stubbed toe away from falling apart at the seams.”

  “Yeah what else is new.”

  Rosetta huffed behind me. I turned to see her reaching for the top shelf. “Bane, can you…” I stood and got the box down for her. “I do have to say this new skinsuit is much better than your last one.”

  “You mean the one where I was a seventy-year-old Black man with rheumatoid arthritis and a hairpiece?” I asked, sitting back down in the doorway.

  Rosetta nodded. “It was strange talking to you in that form. I’m so used to scolding you. It kind of took the wind out of my sails.”

  I nodded. “It was weird for a lot of reasons. When you’re used to one kind of plumbing…”

  “Ok, ok, no need to get graphic.”

  “That one had the biggest ‘blackout zone’ too,” I said. “It was because he’d lived so long and had so much family. Trying to avoid hunting in the entire Great Lakes states area, just so I wouldn’t run into someone he knew, was a giant pain in the ass. Almost worse than that hemorrhoid problem I had.”

  Rosetta made a face. “What did I just say?” She flicked half a scoop of rock salt at me and I ducked. “You were so whiny about all your health problems in that suit,” Rosetta said, turning back to the ingredients in front of her. “Oh, my knee, oh, my keister, oh my hemorrhoids,” Rosetta said in a mocking whine. “I can’t remember, what finally did the old guy in so that you inherited his hide?”

  “He went into a coma,” I said.

  Rosetta nodded. “And then the family took him off life support. How did you sneak into that one?”

  I leaned back against the door frame and turned to look up at her. “Remember? When I moved in I was in the hospital morgue right before they took the body to the funeral home for cremation. You know I found out later that the people in the hospital morgue blamed the funeral home for the body disappearing, saying they came and got the body and didn’t tell anyone, which apparently they’d done before. The funeral home of course didn’t have the body and to keep the hospital quiet, they just gave the family someone else’s ashes.”

  Rosetta shook her head. “Typical. I swear when it’s my time if you don’t personally see to my wishes I will haunt…” Rosetta trailed off and after an awkward pause, she went back to measuring and crushing ingredients with her pestle and mortar. The truth was, Rosetta was going to outlive me. Unless something happened to her in the next five months, it was my dead corpse she was going to have to dispose of. She cleared her throat and gave a strained chuckle, “What about that Empty House you had before the old man? The tart, what was her name?”