by D V Wolfe
“Alright! Alright!” I yelled, running around the kitchen table, covering my head with my arms, doing what I could to shield myself from her blows. The buzzer on the stove went off and Rosetta went to turn the chicken.
“Make yourself useful and get the Holyroods and ash ready,” Rosetta said. “We better start burning and smudging or we’ll have more than just the three of us for dinner.”
This time I took the downstairs and Rosetta went up. I didn’t want to risk going back into that guest room where the shadow of my father had sat. Noah woke just as we were finishing and the three of us sat down to dinner. We were all quiet. Noah was pale and his hands were shaking as he cut his chicken, “So uh….”
Rosetta and I turned to look at him. “How about those Mets?” Rosetta asked. She and I went back to our plates.
“Lot of sunshine in the forecast,” I added.
“It’s gonna be a hot summer I hear,” Rosetta said. “Crops are already starting to mature. Early for these parts.”Noah dropped his knife and fork on his plate with a clatter. Rosetta and I looked at him again.
“What?” I asked.
His face was pale but a flush of red was spreading across his cheeks. “What the FUCK!”
There was a second of silence and then I started to laugh. Rosetta, on the other hand, had picked up Noah’s knife and was pointing it at him.
“Wow, that statement was about twenty-four hours delayed,” I said, still laughing. I finally stopped when I felt my stitches beginning to seep again.
“Cursing at my table! I ought to skin you alive, young man,” Rosetta said threatening him with his own knife.
“Aw Rosetta, lighten up. The kid’s been shell-shocked since he climbed in the truck. A little cursing is healthy at this point.”
Rosetta turned the knife on me. “Don’t you start with me, Bane.”
Noah’s hands were in his hair and he took a deep breath, “Fuck.” It was almost a whisper and the knife swung back to him.
“That’s it, let it out,” I said. I heaped more potatoes on my plate along with a second piece of chicken and dug in. Rosetta seemed to realize that Noah’s vacant expression meant that a scolding wasn’t going to land anywhere near understanding. She dropped his knife back on his plate and Noah jumped at the noise, seeming to come back around.
“Better eat up, Noah,” I said through a mouthful of potatoes. “We’re cutting out at sun up and road food isn’t going to tickle your insides the way Miss Rosetta’s home cooking will.” I smiled at Rosetta with my cheeks full and I saw her fighting the urge to give me the finger. Slowly, Noah picked up his fork and knife and started to eat. After a bite or two, a low muttering started to come from his direction.
“Well, out with it, sonny. We’re right here, tell us what’s eating at your mind,” Rosetta said, getting up and returning with a bowl of salad from the fridge.
Noah shook his head. “I can’t believe….”
“In cannibals? Rawheads?” I asked.
“Poltergeists?” Rosetta asked.
“This!” Noah shouted. “All this paranormal crap! I mean, I’ve seen it now, I have to believe but... I can’t! All the scary stories we were told as kids. All the urban legends, and campfire ghost tales and creepy shit…” I glanced at Rosetta to see her hand twitching towards the knife but she stopped herself. “I thought it had all been made up by the candy companies to sell shit at Halloween. But...all of it... is true?”
I shrugged. “Well not all of it. I heard Bat Boy was a hoax.”
“Yeah, and the android wives thing. I’m pretty sure that was fake,” Rosetta said.
“And aliens,” I added, “at least as far as I know. Hey Noah, pass me a napkin, will you?”
“I don’t know,” Rosetta said. “Have you seen some of the politicians these days…”
“NOT MY POINT!” Noah shouted. He snatched a napkin from the pile next to him and the whole thing went up like flash paper in his fingers.
“Holy shit!” Rosetta screamed, shoving back from the table and away from the ball of fire in Noah’s hand. I grabbed my water glass and stood up, dumping it over his hand, the flames, and the cinders that remained of the napkin.
“S-sorry,” Noah said, his face reddening. “I didn’t mean to…”
Rosetta shook her head. “So you weren’t joking. Either of you.” Rosetta turned to look at Noah. I got up and tossed a couple of dry towels to Rosetta and Noah to start sopping up the water. I grabbed the garbage can and scooped the ruined napkins into it. “What are you, sonny?” Rosetta asked, looking at Noah with new eyes. “Chimera? Kapre? Cherufe?”
Noah shook his head and growled in frustration. “No. At least, not that I know of. I was just a normal kid. I didn’t know about any of this. I was just a dumb high school senior. Then, this,” he glared down at his hands, “started happening. Why? I have no fucking idea. My life is turned upside down and suddenly I’m on the run. Two days ago I was hiking through the woods, only scared of being caught by the cops after Amy…,” he paused and looked at me. “And I was so glad when Bane stopped and I got a ride and the whole time, there could have been much worse stuff in those woods than the cops. And now we’re here,” he turned to Rosetta. “And I meet another seemingly normal person, who VOLUNTARILY lives in a house that sits on top of, what was it? Oh yeah a GATE TO HELL!”
While Noah had been ranting, the bathroom door directly behind his chair and across the narrow hall had silently swung inward. There was a beat and then a tall, gray specter with no face, only a black, sucking hole where the face should be, glided out the door and across the hall. It reached out with its dead-looking arms towards Noah.
Rosetta glanced up at it and reached for the salad dressing while Noah ranted on. “Bane,” she said quietly.
“Yeah I see it,” I said, reaching for my sawed-off. Then I remembered that I’d unloaded it when I was checking out the barrel. I stood up and crossed to the counter where the ten-gauge was sitting.
“Hey!” Noah shouted, “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you!”
I turned to look at him. “Carry on, you were talking about Rosetta and I being insane. I’m listening.”
I picked up the ten-gauge and aimed over Noah’s head. The wraith was right behind him.
“Noah, duck!” I shouted.
“Don’t tell me what to do Bane!” Noah shouted even louder.
So, I fired. His ears were going to hurt like hell, but sometimes that’s how you learn.
The wraith vanished and as the dust settled, the silence that came after was only broken by Noah holding his ears and shrieking, “Christ on a cracker!”
“That’s it! You’re not getting any pie,” Rosetta boomed.
I walked across the hall and flicked the light on in the bathroom. Steam was rising from the bowl of the toilet and the air was thick with the smell of sulfur. The bathroom was small and it only took me a second to find the hex bag just sitting on the floor in the corner opposite the toilet.
“Noah, what corner of the bathroom were you supposed to put the hex bag in?” Silence followed my question and I turned to look at him.
“Uh, south?” He said, sounding like himself again but not quite as sure.
I picked up the hex bag. “Which direction is north?” I asked. Noah looked around and pointed to the back door. Rosetta and I both shook our heads.
“Come here.” Noah didn’t move. I looked down and realized I was still holding the ten-gauge and the barrel was pointing in his general direction. I set the shotgun down and leaned the barrel against the door frame.
“Now come here,” I said to Noah. Slowly his chair scraped on the wood floor and he stood up and crossed the hall. He stood several feet from the doorway.
“Will you get in here? How else are you going to learn?” I snapped, grabbing him by the shirt sleeve and dragging him into the bathroom. I pointed at the corner of the room that the toilet butted up against. “This is south.”
“But the toi
let tank is in the way,” Noah said.
“That’s why you put the hex bag in the tank.” I picked up the porcelain cover and motioned to the old hex bag in the corner. I handed the tank cover and the new hex bag to Noah and reached in to fish out the old bag. As soon as my fingers closed on it, an invisible hand closed around my wrist in the water and it started to boil. I could feel my skin burning. Beside me Noah had dropped the tank cover and hex bag, and was screaming about what he should do. He hit the handle, trying to flush the water from the tank but nothing happened. Instead, a thin ribbon of red was rising from the flush valve, twisting itself into words across the bubbling surface.
679 pretty souls weep in my garden. They grow roots, they will soon be mine completely.
I reached into the tank with my free hand, trying to pry the invisible fingers from around my wrist. The message disappeared and a new one appeared.
It is entertaining for us to watch you fail. I think I will drink your father first.
I froze. I shouldn’t have, but that was the first time this consequence had been levied.
“Out of the way!” I heard Rosetta shout as she pushed past Noah and dumped half a bag of road salt into the tank. The steel grip on my wrist released and I pulled my burning hand out of the water. Rosetta picked up the new hex bag from the floor and dropped it into the south corner of the tank. Then she made me sit down on the edge of the tub. “Get that lid back on there, boy,” she barked over her shoulder to Noah. Noah picked up the tank lid which had broken in half when he dropped it and did his best to fit both pieces back on.
Rosetta bent over to examine my hand. The skin was red and blistered in places but the pain shooting up my arm told me it wasn’t worse than a first-degree burn.
“I’ll go for the paste,” Rosetta said. “You stay right there.”
“No offense Rosetta, but I’d rather sit just about anywhere else.”
“Right.” She turned to Noah. “Look lively there. Pick up that gun and take it back to the kitchen.” Noah did so and Rosetta led me back to the kitchen and then changed directions and set me down on the couch. “Sorry Bane but your hand and my chicken smell a little too similar for comfort right now. Can you wiggle your fingers?”
I did and I felt the pain double as it radiated up my arm. “Yep and it hurts.”
Rosetta rolled her eyes. “No shit, Sherlock. I didn’t expect it would tickle. Now sit still and I’ll be right back.”
Noah slumped into the living room and collapsed into the armchair across from me. “How come she gets to cuss?”
“House rules. It’s her house, so she makes the rules,” I said.
Noah leaned forward, his eyes on my hand. When he glanced up to look at me and saw me watching him, he hung his head.
“Trying to find a handle on the moment?” I asked him. I blew a stream of cold air onto the top of my hand while I waited for him to reply.
“I don’t think I belong here,” he whispered. That drew a bark of laughter from me.
“Of course you don’t. How do you think Rosetta and I got into this? It’s not like we just sprang out of bed one morning and decided we were going to take on Hell and all its various and sundry relatives.”
“Then why….” Noah asked.
“Sometimes life doesn’t give you a choice. It strong-arms you into a situation and before you know it, you’re up to your ears and about to drown and you have to decide am I going to roll over and die or am I going to fight like hell to survive?” We heard Rosetta on the stairs and she came into the room with a bright pink tube.
“Is...Is that Mary Kay?” Noah asked. We both turned to look at him. “My mom sold Mary Kay. What’s that for?”
“Best damn burn cream I’ve ever seen,” I said, holding my hand out to Rosetta. In light of my injury it seemed Rosetta was giving me a pass on the swearing for the moment, but it didn’t stop her from scowling as she squeezed a good dose of the paste onto my skin. She dropped the tube onto the carpet before gingerly trying to spread the gunk over my knuckles.
Noah picked up the tube. “This is night cream.”
“And penicillin is a mold. What’s your point?” Rosetta said.
Noah shook his head. “Shutting up now.”
Rosetta took the tube back from him and squirted more cream in my other hand so I could do my palm and fingertips. “Sorry for being so hard on you, sonny. I’m guessing the last day or so can’t have been easy for you. Me and Bane, we’ve had years of this so nothing usually shocks us anymore. But a newbie like you...I’ve forgotten what it’s like.” I finished up and Rosetta sat down next to me on the couch.
“So Noah,” I said. “Now that you’ve seen what’s going on behind the curtain, what do you want to do about it?”
Noah looked at his hands and then up at me. “I guess I want to fight. I’m not going to find out why I have this,” he held up his hands, and then put them back in his lap, thinking better of it, “I’m not going to find out why I am the way I am, by just rolling over.” I nodded and I turned to see Rosetta beaming at him.
“Well,” I said. “Blood and spatter, let’s get at ‘er.”
7
“I suppose if you’re bound and determined to get to Messina tomorrow, we better wrap up this Brady Bunch moment and move your bones to bed,” Rosetta said, standing up.
“We’re...we’re sleeping here?” Noah asked.
“It’s as safe as a Holiday Inn now, well except maybe for the downstairs bathroom,” Rosetta said. “I think that wraith has worked out how to dilute the hex bags enough to wreak havoc in there but, Bane, if you’ll help me fix the smudging on the door before bed, we should all sleep like tourists at Disneyland.”
I nodded and stood. My hand was getting to be pretty numb and now the message in the water was hurting more than the physical pain.
“I need to talk to you,” I muttered to Rosetta. She nodded and turned to look back at Noah.
“There’s a linen closet in the hall upstairs. Go grab some quilts and blankets. The two of you will probably feel more comfortable camping out on the couches down here.”
Rosetta followed me out the back door to the shed to get the smudging supplies again. “Rosetta, there was a message.”
She nodded. “I only saw the last bit, about your dad.”
“Those sons of bitches downstairs are going to ‘drink’ him. They’re going to ‘drink’ them all. If I fail, not only are they going to spend eternity in the pit, but they’re going to be turned into demons.”
“I never did understand that term ‘drinking them’. What’s that all about?” Rosetta asked.
I took the rosewood ash down from the shelf and Rosetta picked up the bone fragments.
“Festus said it’s when a demon sucks the last remaining shred of humanity and memory of who a person was, out of them. It just leaves behind this vicious, angry, rabid demon shell.”
“Shit,” Rosetta muttered as we stomped back up the porch steps. We set to work, my mind ramping up. I had to get the townsfolk out of there. Maybe some of them had been bound for Hell anyway, but it shouldn’t have been up to me to send them there. And now, if the red-eyed assholes downstairs were going to turn them into more demons, like them… Rosetta and I didn’t speak as we smudged and I tried my best to focus on the task at hand, wondering how long I’d have to sleep to satisfy her before we could head out for Indiana. When the task was finished, I helped Rosetta put the supplies away.