Midnight Rider

by D V Wolfe

  “Howdy partner?” Stacks asked, his voice an octave higher as the man stood.

  “Do I look like a rodeo clown to you, dick head?”

  “Not really,” I said. “But the bald look isn’t doing much to keep you from looking like a dick head. And that tattoo on your forehead does add to the illusion of a ridg…”

  “Sorry man,” Stacks interrupted. “We’ll just be moving along.”

  He started to move forward, doing his best to skirt the bouncer. Then his feet left the ground as the bouncer used Stacks’ windpipe to bring him to eye level.

  “What did she say to me?” The bouncer spat at Stacks. Stacks couldn’t get enough air to answer and his sign language was poor at best. “You better learn your bitch some manners,” the bouncer said.

  “First off, I’m not his bitch,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, I am a bitch.” I was done with this guy. I had a Hayman to find. I pointed at his cell phone. “And that girlfriend of yours, she’s been doinking your roommate, your boss, the guys that deliver her pizza on the nights you’re working here and right now she’s probably ‘heels to heaven’ for the teenager at the ice cream shop.”

  The bouncer dropped Stacks and his face began to crumble. “She….she won’t text me back. She won’t answer her phone..I…”

  “You’ve got to go to her,” I said. He looked behind him towards the door to Wimpy’s. “It’s a Sunday night, man, the bar will be fine. You’ve got to catch her. Make her remember why she fell in love with you…” I looked him over. “Whatever that was. You’ve got to remind her! Go to her! Run!” The bouncer took off. I turned to Noah, “See, now you probably won’t even need to show your ID, Jesus.”

  “How did you know that shit, Bane?” Noah asked, staring after the bouncer lumbering down the block like a wounded hippo.

  I shrugged. “Lucky guess. Behind every overcompensating bouncer is a girlfriend who is sick of his shit and doinking everyone in sight.”

  Judging by the strength of the old cigarette smell, Wimpy’s had obviously just become a non-smoking bar. Noah coughed behind me as we pushed through the front door. I stopped to scan the dark room and felt Noah and Stacks run into me.

  “Well the three stooges have arrived,” I muttered to them. “You two go get a table. Try not to act too weird. Stacks, no conspiracy theory discussions with innocent bystanders. Noah, keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Get me a drink,” Stacks said.

  “Yeah, me too,” Noah said. I turned to look at him and I saw he was already surveying a group of young girls sitting at a table near the karaoke MC.

  “You got it, Putzie,” I said.

  I bellied up to the bar and looked around for someone who could possibly be named Cassie Springer.

  The bartender was a tall slim man with a fade top haircut. He was busy at the other end of the bar trying to talk up a pretty girl with long black hair. She seemed only mildly interested in talking to him. He was working her pretty hard.

  Besides the smell of old cigarette smoke, there was a more unsettling smell in the bar. A thick stench of something I recognized. Desperation. Flop sweat and blood. Where was it coming from though?

  I moved down the bar to sit on the stool next to the waitress station. The reserved parking spot for waitstaff was cordoned off by what had to be two plastic lunch trays that had been drilled down into the bar surface. The bar surface itself was scarred and looked like plywood with layers of epoxy dumped on it. The drinks resting on it tilted precariously on air bubbles and bottle caps that hadn’t been swept away before the epoxy had been poured.

  I waited for either the bartender or Cassie to find me. To my left, three women in their mid-thirties were laughing about an office story.

  “And then that asshole pretended like he really did need to tie his shoe.”

  “Yeah, so he could cover his unzipped fly.”

  The three of them laughed and the gal on the end pulled at the front of her loose blouse as if she was overheated.

  “Girls, I have missed you two so much.”

  “Karen, we love your little Alex, but it’s so good to have our third backup singer out with us!”

  “Oh no, not tonight girls. I promised Danny I’d be home to take the ‘night watch’ with Alex.”

  “Are you dropping us for a guy now?”

  “Two actually, and one of them is only six weeks old,” She said.

  “Can I help you?” A voice said to my right. I turned to see a young blonde woman in an apron next to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I was trying to flag down the bartender, but no dice.”

  The blonde rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he’s easily distracted.” She leaned in closer to me. “What he can’t see though is her six foot four, three hundred pound boyfriend playing darts, around the corner.”

  “That’ll be fun for him to find out later,” I said. We laughed. “Hey,” I said. “Is your name Cassie?” She nodded, her look questioning. Wow, that was lucky. I decided to get to the point in case my luck decided to turn suddenly. “I heard you were over at the West Gates Shopping Center when that psycho was there.”

  Cassie’s face fell and she looked down at the bar top. She picked at a stray dollop of epoxy. “Yeah.”

  “I’m so sorry. It must have been terrifying.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, when you go to the mall to buy a bra because it’s your two-year anniversary, you expect to feel depressed about fat rolls when you leave, not scared shitless because some psychopath is…”

  “Attacking a woman, right?”

  She looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Attacking her? He was….”

  “Eating her?” I asked, quietly.

  Cassie nodded and I saw her knees starting to buckle. I jumped up and took her by the shoulders, guiding her over to sit down on my stool.

  “He was….not hu…”

  “Human?” I asked. She nodded. “I’m so sorry I asked, Cassie. I’m a….journalist. I was...just researching….” She nodded again and took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “You ok?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, I just...Sorry, this whole thing just feels like a nightmare. I just want to forget about it.” She took a deep breath and then she glanced quickly at the bartender and then around the room, as if she was checking to see if we were being watched. She got to her feet, steadying herself on the edge of the bar and moved her waitress apron aside to dig something out of her pocket. “I know I probably should have given these to the cops, but I didn’t know if it would be helpful. He...he dropped these when he took off with that woman’s body.” She opened her hand and dropped what looked like three black almonds into my hand. I felt a cold chill run down my spine. Hayman spawn. The harvest gods would eat their human sacrifices, just enough to hollow out their corpses and then they would fill the bodies with their spawn, like an incubator. The Hayman would be coming for these. I looked up at Cassie and I saw something like relief come over her face. “You’re not looking at me like I’m insane.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t think..” I looked back down at the spawn. I needed to get these out of Wimpy’s as fast as I could. The Hayman would be coming back for them. They were his...children. I closed my hand around the seeds. “Thanks, Cassie.” I gave her an awkward smile and I was about to say more, but something caught my attention at the end of the bar. The woman in the loose blouse was standing up and sliding her purse strap over her shoulder.

  “Oh come on, Karen, one song!”

  She shook her head. “No, sorry girls. Maybe next time. I just want to get home to my baby.”

  “Alright, well next time. Journey. At least two songs.”

  The woman called Karen smiled. “Alright.”

  She turned and headed to the door. I turned back to look at Cassie. She shook her head. “Wow, I just...it feels good to tell someone about... those things.” She glanced down at my hand. “And it feels really good to not be holding onto them anymore. Will you get them to the police? I
mean, I’m sorry to ask.”

  “Oh, no need to be sor-” I started, and then I felt someone bump into me from behind. I turned my head just as the person passed me. It was a hulking figure in a black hoodie. He didn't pause when he bumped into me and the smell of blood and rot smacked me in the face. He headed out the door behind the woman named Karen. I glanced over to the table Stacks and Noah sat at to see Noah watching a pair of gals singing a Pat Benatar song on the stage and Stacks asleep with his head on the table.

  I reached for my wallet and felt the digging hole sensation in my stomach. I pulled out a crumpled fifty dollar bill. I thrust it into Cassie’s hand.

  “Will you get the guy with his head on the table over there an Irish Coffee and a virgin Rob Roy with extra cherries for the one with the orange hair?”

  “But the rest,” Cassie said, her eyes wide, staring at the bill. “It’s too…”

  “It’s a tip,” I said, moving away. “Thank you for yours!”

  I turned and headed out the door. As soon as it closed behind me, the karaoke music was muffled and I could hear. High heels on concrete. I followed the sound around the corner to the lot and saw the flicker of lights and heard a beep as Karen unlocked the door to her minivan. I could feel him there. In the shadows, watching her.

  I hadn’t expected to find him at Wimpy’s. I’d just expected to get some kind of a lead to find him. He must have been drawn there by the spawn Cassie was holding onto. Then when he smelled a young mother, he couldn’t help himself. I guess this was more convenient. One-stop shopping. Well, it would be if I could get to Lucy.

  Then, he made his move. He came out of the shadows next to me, his tall frame wrapped in black, eyes glowing, and charged at Karen. I didn’t think. I just jumped on his back. I immediately realized this was a stupid idea. Haymen are harvest gods. Gods. What was I thinking?! I guess that was a stupid question. I knew what I was thinking. I was thinking about the woman, Karen, her six-week-old son, and her husband.

  The Hayman beneath me started to burn and I could feel the hoodie smoking and melting under my arms. Then the bottom of my shirt was on fire. It was how most harvest gods defended themselves. Fire. Kind of unimaginative if you ask me. I looked across the lot and saw Karen staring, her eyes and mouth open in shock.

  “I got this!” I yelled at her, “Sorry for scaring you. This guy owes me some money. He, uh, he stiffed me in a pool game!”

  The woman got in her car and closed the door. I felt the Hayman jerk forward towards her but I guess my weight was really cramping his style and he was struggling to get to her. The minivan’s headlights came on and she roared out of the parking lot. Now I was alone. With a pissed off harvest god.

  “Bane, that shit wasn’t funny!” It was Noah’s voice.

  “I dunno, the blonde gave me something extra special in that coffee.” And Stacks. I didn’t think I’d ever been so glad to hear his annoying, nasally, wheeze before.

  The Hayman was working me over pretty good at this point. He’d found the cinderblock back wall of Wimpy’s and in an attempt to get me off, he had me pressed against it, jerking forward and slamming me back, knocking the air out of me. His frame was heavy and solid so it felt like getting the shit beat out of me by a tree. At least the motion had helped put out the fire that had been climbing up my chest.

  “Bane?” Noah called.

  “Yeah,” I yelled back, when the Hayman came off the wall. “Just a little busy at the moment.”

  “Holy shit!” Stacks yelled when he finally saw the Hayman.

  The Hayman let out an unearthly roar.

  “Lucy’s toolbox, Stacks!” I half-gasped, half-shrieked.

  Noah was the one who moved. He was sprinting and tripping over rocks and garbage. The Hayman reached over his shoulder and a huge clawed hand grabbed me around the neck and began to squeeze. He yanked me off his back and pinned me to the wall, bringing both clawed hands up around my windpipe.

  The world was hazy and I was starting to lose the corners of my vision when I saw Stacks tear after Noah, yelling at him to get the plague boughs. Thank god he remembered. The only way to kill a harvest god was to stab them with the rotten branches of a pine tree. The rot was a toxic poison to them that would eat them alive from the inside out.

  The Hayman opened his throat and I saw into those empty blue glowing eye sockets. The weathered-wood like flesh around its face was turning to thorns and vines, reaching out to me. Everything else was fading. The Hayman screamed in my face and the lights went out. I felt myself falling. Everything was quiet now. So rare.

  But, it didn’t last long.

  The feeling was starting to come back and I heard voices around me.

  “Everything ok here?” I heard a man yell.

  “Yeah, she just can’t hold her liquor,” I heard Stacks say.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it,” I wheezed.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Stacks said. I felt him pulling my wrist and he helped me sit up and lean back against Wimpy’s back wall. I opened my eyes.

  There was a burning pile of ash next to me with a broken, rotten limb sticking out of it. I reached over and dropped the spawn seeds into the dying embers, watching them catch fire and start to smoke. When the rot from the branch had poisoned him, he'd still been burning. The poison had killed him and then his fire had just consumed his corpse. Kind of poetic, being turned to ash by his own fire, and it made for an easy clean-up.

  “Glad you remember something about harvest gods,” I said to Stacks. There was something wrong with my voice. I put a hand up to my throat and immediately regretted it.

  “Yeah, you’re gonna be a little sore. He had you in a death grip,” Stacks said next to me.

  “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you,” I wheezed at Stacks, remembering the bouncer.

  Noah squatted down next to me, his face breaking into a grin. “Well this was a fun little outing.”

  I gave him the finger.

  14

  Stacks and I put the plague boughs back in Lucy’s toolbox and Noah kicked the ash corpse of the Hayman, scattering him amongst the used condoms and cigarette butts that littered Wimpy’s parking lot. It seemed somehow fitting.

  “Alright campers, time to go.” I was still having trouble talking. I was pretty sure my windpipe had been crushed to the size of a straw.

  Stacks grinned at me. “A lot harder to be sarcastic when you’re sucking air, isn’t it?”

  I gave him the finger.

  “Well at least your fingers still work,” Noah grunted before opening the passenger door, waiting for Stacks to climb in first.

  “Why do I always have to sit in the middle?” Stacks asked.

  When we got back to the motel, the boys dragged themselves inside and passed out face first on the beds. Noah turned his face to look at me. “You want me to move over and share with Stacks?”

  I snorted. “Do you want to share with Stacks?”

  He glanced at Stacks who’d fallen asleep with his mouth open, a pool of drool beginning to form on the comforter. Noah slowly shook his head.

  “You’re fine Noah, I’ve got stuff to do. I’ll take the first watch. You sleep.” Noah didn’t need to be told twice.

  I popped some aspirin and one of Rosetta’s pills, wet a yellowed washcloth with hot water to press against my neck and I stepped outside with my cell phone to call Rosetta.

  “Miss me already?” Rosetta asked.