Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  "It's strange," he said. "I was just out in the pasture." He tugged a chair out from under the kitchen table, spun it around on one leg, and straddled it. He wore a straw cowboy hat, a denim work shirt with snap closures, dirty jeans, and scarred leather work boots. "And what I saw there..."

  "What was it, Stu?"

  "Some of the cattle, ma'am. Six of 'em, near as I could tell."

  Juliet didn't like the sound of that. What could make them hard to count? "What about them?"

  "They've been... well, slaughtered. Right there in the pasture. I thought maybe wolves, but I've seen predation by wolves before and it don't look like that."

  "Something's gone after the cows?" She couldn't quite grasp what he was trying to tell her. He wouldn't look at her, but kept his gaze trained on the floor, the refrigerator, anything else. The ranch house had been built sixty years ago, and Ross had put some physical effort and money into restoring it to look like it might have then, with rustic, western furnishings and accessories.

  "Yes, ma'am. Something strong enough and mean enough to tear 'em to pieces. There's—" His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, ma'am. It was just awful. There's blood all over the place back there, and bits of those animals. I startled what must've been a dozen buzzards and ravens helpin' themselves to the parts."

  "But... what would do something like that?"

  Stu shook his head sadly. "I wish I knew. Like I said, I've never seen wolves act that way. Bears, maybe. Seems like it'd have to be something at least that big and strong. Still not something I've ever come across. Something I'd be glad never to see again, I can tell you that."

  Juliet had refused to name any of the ranch's cattle, although she was pretty sure that Ross and Stu had named some, because she didn't want them to have identities or personalities if they were destined for slaughter. This was worse, though—the animals Stu was describing wouldn't even go to feed people. They were essentially wasted, not good for anything except the scavengers. The waste shocked her, and the longer she thought about it the worse she felt.

  "God," she said, gripping the counter because her knees had suddenly turned rubbery. "I... I don't know what to say, Stu."

  "Ain't much to say. I figured you should know because it's money out of your pocket. I'll clean up what I can, but a lot of it's just too small to do anything about."

  "Maybe we should just keep the cattle out of that pasture for a while," she suggested. "And let the scavengers take care of the rest."

  "That'd work too," Stu said. "It'll take some time, and then there'll still be the bones to get rid of."

  "I think that's still our best bet."

  "That's what I'll do, then." When he had a specific idea for something he wanted to do, he let her know it, albeit in a roundabout way because he didn't want her to feel like he was dictating to her. Since he didn't press her on this, Juliet got the sense that her suggestion was in line with how he'd wanted to handle it all along. He rose, meeting her gaze for just a moment, his own brown eyes shaded by the brim of his big straw hat, replaced the chair, and left the kitchen without another word. His lemonade remained, untouched, on the kitchen table.

  Juliet thought she might just down it herself, and wondered what kind of alcohol would taste the least nasty mixed with it. She was not ordinarily a heavy drinker, but maybe the time had come to reevaluate that position.

  She sat down heavily in the chair that Stu had just vacated. There had been many days since Ross's death when she wished she could sell the ranch, or had never agreed to buy it, or could simply walk away from it.

  So far she hadn't been able to bring herself to walk away, though, and selling the ranch required finding a buyer. She had advertised it all over the place, in specialty magazines, on the Web, in local papers, and elsewhere. A few potential buyers had come around, but not many, and although she had reduced the price below market value, she didn't have any takers. Too bad those guys she met at the South Rim yesterday, Dean and Sam, weren't in the market. She was so surprised to see them, she hadn't even thought to ask why they were going to a backwater town like Cedar Wells in the first place.

  She was starting to get up from the chair when a stray thought struck her and she froze, her intestines turning to liquid. Could Dean and Sam be the ones who had attacked her livestock? They were strangers in town, she knew nothing about them, and she'd probably confided far too much—including her name and the fact that her husband was dead. How stupid was that?

  Stu had thought animals were responsible, though, and he knew more about such things than she did. She decided to ask him if he thought the sheriff should be notified, and if he said yes, then she would tell him about the strangers.

  Until then she'd have to be a little more careful. She went to the kitchen door and locked it, then walked around the house locking the others. Through a bedroom window she spotted Stu chugging out on an ATV to move the herd.

  Part of her was glad that Ross wasn't around to see this. He had loved the ranch and everything about it. The pointless slaughter of his stock would have broken his heart. But mostly it was one more reason to get herself gone, and as fast as she possibly could.

  SIX

  Sam and Dean found Canyon Regional Mall just where they'd been told it would be, a couple of miles from the center of town, to the east—the direction they hadn't been yet. While driving out, they began to wonder if they'd taken the wrong road—not that there were a lot of choices—because the forest seemed to grow thicker for a time, evergreens growing so closely together that Sam got the sense of a wall of green out the passenger window. The rich tang of pine trees filled the car.

  Suddenly, they rounded a curve and the trees were gone. In their place stood a massive structure surrounded by a vast, pristine parking lot. A few cars and trucks crowded the building, most of them obviously belonging to construction workers, painters, and landscapers. Sam found it disturbingly ironic that they had taken a stretch of beautiful, practically virgin forest and razed it, and now hired hands were hard at work planting saplings and grooming stretches of freshly laid sod.

  The building itself had been built in a giant T shape, jutting forward toward the road and spreading out in back. Huge national department stores bulged the ends of the T's crossbar. The exterior was mostly surfaced in native stone, with display windows and electric signs breaking up the facade.

  "Looks about ready to open," Dean said as he pulled into the lot.

  "Let's hope that's not a huge mistake."

  "It's our job to make sure it's not."

  Sam recognized the sentiment. It was a habit Dean had picked up from Dad—referring to what they did as a "job." To Sam it was more of a mission, even a calling. He'd picked up the job terminology too—having been raised by John Winchester, it was second nature—but to him a job was something one was hired to do, and no one had hired them for this. Mom's murder had driven them to it, and Dad's obsession had fueled Dean's. Life had tugged Sam in a different direction, but Jess's death pushed him back onto the path.

  Dean circled the mall once, drawing suspicious stares from a uniformed security guard walking outside. "What do you think?" he asked, bringing the Impala to a stop.

  "I think it wouldn't hurt to get the lay of the land," Sam said. "Place like this, especially if it draws a big crowd, might turn into a battleground. I'd be more comfortable scoping it out without the crowd in our way."

  "Ditto," Dean said. "I don't want some Dawn of the Dead scenario going down and us not knowing our way around." He opened his door and got out.

  Sam followed, but before they even reached the building the guard had set an interception course for them. "Here we go," Dean muttered under his breath.

  "The mall's not open yet," the security guard said as he approached. He had bushy dark hair curling out from underneath a police-style cap, and more poking up from beneath his ill-fitting uniform shirt. He fixed a dark-eyed gaze on them and let his hand rest on the handle of his heavy steel flashlight. "
Not till this weekend."

  "We know," Sam said quickly, before Dean could give him a response like No kidding, Einstein. Sometimes Sam could sense those remarks building up in Dean, like an electrical charge. "We're not shopping. We're reporters."

  "Mall won't be open until the weekend," the security guard told them again. Sam was starting to get the idea that he was not the shiniest bullet in the ammo belt.

  "We get that," Dean said. "But when they do open, they might want some people to have heard of them. That's where publicity comes in."

  The guard looked at them blankly, as if now that he had delivered his message he couldn't understand why they hadn't left.

  "Can we talk to the mall manager?" Sam asked. The guard seemed to consider his request for a moment, although the possibility existed that he was just remembering a sports score or worrying about his boxers creeping. "I guess," he said after what seemed a very long pause. Having said that, he remained standing in their path.

  "I guess we'll find him inside," Dean said, stepping around the guard.

  "Her. It's a her. Ms. Krug."

  "We'll track her down," Sam said. "Thanks."

  The guard stayed where he was, as if there might be other people hiding behind the two of them. Sam didn't think he turned around until they were pulling open the huge glass and steel front doors and walking in. The interior still smelled like paint and glue and exhaust from the forklifts and cranes working inside. Scaffolding stood in front of some of the shops, and men and women in hard hats and T-shirts and jeans and heavy boots were everywhere. At first glance it looked like the mall had a tool sale going on.

  They approached one of the painters, a bearded guy in his forties, adding gold trim to the doorway of a lingerie shop. Through a gap in the paper covering the window, Sam could see young women arranging display racks and wall fixtures. As at the Grand Canyon, he admired the view.

  "You know where the management office is?" Dean asked.

  The guy didn't look away from his painting, but kept moving his brush in precise, careful strokes. "Second floor, east wing, between the Gap and Kaybee. Look for the restrooms and you can't miss it."

  No one challenged them as they made their way to the office. As the painter had promised, it was easy to find, down a hallway that also contained restrooms, a security office, and an entrance to the utility corridor that ran behind the stores. The door to the management office was mostly glass, but with miniblinds behind it blocking the view inside. The door was ajar, so Dean pushed it open, tapping on it as he went in. "Hello?"

  A woman in a crisp green business suit over a gold blouse emerged from a back office into a reception area that was mostly office supply boxes waiting to be unpacked, and an empty desk. She looked professional but harried, with a few strands of honey-gold hair escaping from a clip and dangling around her face. With the business suit, Sam noted, she wore pink-trimmed white Reeboks. "Can I do something for you?"

  "We're looking for the mall manager," Dean said.

  "You've found her. I'm Carla Krug. Excuse the mess in here, we're a little chaotic at the moment."

  "Understood," Sam said. "We don't want to take up much of your time."

  "We're with the National Geographic," Dean said, extending that lie. "I'm Dean, and that's Sam. We're here working on a piece about the region outside the park, and thought that the opening of a big shopping center here should be part of the story."

  "It's a little unexpected," Sam said, picking up the thread. "I don't think of the area as being populous enough to support a major mall."

  "It all depends on how wide an area you can draw from," Carla said. She tucked one of the stray locks behind her ear. "There really is nothing on our scale north of Phoenix, so we have a potential customer base of hundreds of miles in every direction. We expect to draw from Nevada and Utah as well as Arizona."

  She settled back against the receptionist's desk. "Look at it this way. One of those huge chain stores could have moved in here selling a few brands of clothing and shoes, appliances and housewares, even groceries. Most of it made in China, and all the proceeds would go to Arkansas or someplace instead of staying in the community. They still might come into the area, for all we know. But if they do, they'll find that we're ready for them, with dozens of shops offering hundreds of brand names they couldn't hope to carry. We'll have national chains and locally owned businesses. We're creating six hundred jobs that didn't exist here—ongoing permanent jobs, not counting all the local construction workers we employed to get the center built. Many of those jobs are management positions that build leadership skills, benefiting the whole region."

  No one had asked for the sales pitch, but she had given it anyway, fast and concise. Now that it was done, Carla took a deep breath and smiled at them. "I've been doing a lot of interviews lately. I guess that just comes out naturally now."

  "I think you're probably right," Sam said. "A place like this is bound to be good for the area economically. That's just the kind of detail we need for our piece."

  "I heard you were around," she said. "I wondered if you'd come by."

  "Can we look around the mall?" Dean asked. "I'd like to see, you know, what stores are here. And maybe the behind-the-scenes stuff our readers love, like the security office and the back hallways."

  "I don't see why not. I can take you next door to Security, but after that I'll have to leave you on your own. I have a million things to do."

  "Of course," Sam said. "That would be great."

  "Let's go," Carla said. She was too busy to waste time looking at their phony ID cards or to interrogate them in any detail, which worked for Sam. She squeezed between them and led the way out into the hall, then opened the door to the security office and held it for them.

  "Thanks," Sam said as he went past her. The security office was darker than hers, with two banks of TV monitors showing scenes from around the property. Three uniformed guards were in the room, two men watching the monitors and the third, a woman, doing paperwork at a desk in the corner. The guy from the parking lot wasn't there. The office smelled like stale coffee, and the mall hadn't even opened yet.

  "Here's the nerve center," Carla announced. "Lady and gentlemen, these two fellows are with the press. They'll be poking around for a while, so don't arrest them unless you have to."

  The guards chuckled at that, and the woman at the desk shot them a friendly grin. "My guys haven't had a chance to shoot anybody yet, so if you really misbehave, maybe we can use you as an object lesson."

  "We'll be good," Dean assured her. "What kind of security problems are you anticipating? The usual shoplifters?"

  "Definitely that," the female guard said. She had short black hair and olive skin, and her uniform was snug on her thick form. "And beyond that, who knows? Pretty much anything that can happen will happen at a place like this."

  "And with those monitors you can keep track of the whole place?"

  "There are some blind spots," one of the male guards answered. "And we don't have cameras inside the shops, or in the bathrooms. But common areas, and the exterior... yeah, we got those covered."

  Sam leaned closer to the monitors. The images were black and white, but clearer and sharper than most surveillance camera footage he'd seen. The advantage of using brand-new equipment, he guessed. He didn't want to sound overly interested in their security force, but if whatever was coming to Cedar Wells targeted the mall, he wanted to know their capabilities. He hadn't seen any guns, but hoped the female guard wasn't kidding about being able to shoot. Not at him and Dean. Just in general.

  "Good pictures," he said.

  "At the right angle," the male guard said, "I can read a license plate."

  "Wow."

  "What's that?" Dean asked. He was pointing at one of the other monitors, which no one had been watching because they were all watching Sam.

  "What?" the male guard asked.

  "It was just on this screen," Dean said. He indicated the lower right corner. "It walked
off this way."

  "A person?" the guard asked. "Or what?"

  "That's what I couldn't tell," Dean said. The guard punched some keys and the image changed. "We have more cameras than we do screens," he said. "I'll bring up a wider angle."

  The monitor flickered and the picture changed. Sam could see a stretch of parking lot, with a slab in the foreground that had to be the mall's exterior wall.

  Walking—more of a stagger, Sam thought, as if he's been injured—across the vacant parking lot was what looked like a man in a cavalry uniform.

  But a uniform from a hundred years ago.

  SEVEN

  "Is he wearing a costume?" Carla Krug asked.

  Before anyone could respond—although the answer almost certainly had to be yes—the image flickered and the man faded out. No, Sam corrected himself mentally. The image didn't flicker. Just the guy flickered within the image. The parking lot and the wall stayed on the screen, but the man was gone.

  Then he was back, but farther from the camera. Almost to the edge of the frame. Then gone again.

  He didn't return. The guard at the keyboard brought up a couple of different cameras, showing varying views of the lot, but the guy in the old soldier's outfit was nowhere.

  "What the hell... ?" the guard asked.

  "If there's something wrong with this system, we need to know about it right now," Carla said. "And we need to get it fixed."

  "I don't think it was the system," the female guard said. "The cameras are working fine. I've never heard of a camera losing just part of an image and keeping the rest of it."

  "Like you said, Lynnette, anything that can happen will happen here."

  "I know, but I didn't mean things that are physically impossible." She returned to her desk, grabbed a microphone and thumbed its button. "Anyone in the northwest section of the parking lot, or with a visual of it?"

  "I can be there in a minute," a voice came back, staticky but distinct.

  "Go, then," Lynnette said. "You're looking for a guy in some kind of military costume. Like a Civil War soldier or something."