Witch's Canyon

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Sam shrugged. "Won't know until we look." He opened the trunk's lid. Dean found his light again and shined it inside.

  On top, there was indeed a layer of paper that had gone to pulp. As soon as his fingers touched it, it disintegrated. But underneath, as if that layer had protected the important stuff, were school records, with each student's name neatly handwritten on the outside. Under that were the journals Baird had described, leather-bound and still mostly intact, although insects had nibbled at the edges. Dean lifted one out gingerly and turned its brittle, yellowed pages. The same neat handwriting filled the pages.

  "This has got to be the journals," he said.

  "Looks like it to me," Baird said.

  "There must be twenty of them," Sam said. "He must have collected a lot of oral histories."

  "A lot of lies," Baird reminded them.

  "But with some truth mixed in, we hope."

  "No promises."

  "We going to read them right here?" Dean asked. Reading wasn't his favorite activity by any means, and he had found that people in the past often used way more words than they had to. And funny handwriting.

  "If we try to transport them, we run the risk that they'll fall apart," Sam said. "Besides, given the urgency—"

  "Then I guess we read them right here. Better get started." Dean sat down in the muck, figuring it was already too late to salvage any of the clothes he was wearing. The books all looked alike from the outside, so he didn't see how to choose where to begin. It didn't take long for him to decide that he'd started with the wrong book. He was immediately immersed in some old ranch hand's account of a particularly dry summer, with grass dying, fires burning up what hadn't died, and cattle starving. Unpleasant reading, but nothing that struck him as even remotely supernatural. And the old-fashioned handwriting, while precisely formed, was in ink that had purpled on the yellow paper, hard to read even with a flashlight clutched in his left hand.

  He skimmed the pages, looking for any mention of a witch or any event that might have led to antagonism against the town. There were plenty of small slights—trips into town for supplies that ended in a fight, or someone feeling they'd been overcharged for merchandise, that kind of thing. Dean had learned not to underestimate how petty people could be, but he didn't get the sense that anyone would have launched an ongoing murder cycle because of such minor disagreements.

  He reached the end of that first book and picked up another. Sam was turning pages just as quickly as he had. Baird sat with a book open on his lap but his gaze wandering around the room, as if in his mind's eye he was seeing all the children he had gone to school with in this little room. Dean wondered if the old guy understood the stakes here. Then again, he had armed himself and faced potential danger in order to help out the residents of a town to which he didn't feel any genuine attachment anymore. In the long run, Dean guessed, no one had done more than Harmon Baird to try to stop the killings from happening again.

  Still, he felt the minutes ticking by as if each one carved a notch in his arm.

  When Dean was on his third book, he heard Sam issue a low whistle. "What?" Dean asked.

  "I might have something here," Sam said. "Hang on." He read further, tracing his finger along underneath the lines in the book. Dean ignored his own book and watched his younger brother's face cloud over as he read.

  After another few minutes Sam stopped and looked up from the pages. "I think this is it. Harmon, do you remember ever hearing about a woman named Elizabeth Claire Marbrough?"

  "The Marbrough family owned the ranch before the Murphys," Baird said, snapping his fingers. "Couldn't remember that name, for the life of me."

  "But what about the woman? Does that name ring a bell?"

  "Not specifically," Baird said. "Jens Marbrough, I think he was the first owner. My people, they worked for him for at least a generation before I was born, then my folks stayed on when he sold out to the Murphys."

  "Who is this Marbrough lady?" Dean asked, wanting Sam to get to the point.

  "According to this account, given by one of the young women who worked as a maid and laundress on the ranch, Elizabeth Claire Marbrough was a witch," Sam said. "She came here from back East someplace, and there were stories about her before she even got here. Once she was here, though, the stories got worse. This woman, Mary Beth Gibson, said she once saw Elizabeth turn a horse that had thrown her grandson into a lizard."

  "Sounds like the kind of scare stories they used to tell in Salem," Dean said.

  "But we know there was a certain amount of truth to some of those. Not that the practice of witchcraft is necessarily inherently evil, but some of the people drawn to it as a way to gain and exercise power are happy to misuse it."

  "Some witches are plain evil, though," Dean added. "And whatever's going on in Cedar Wells is the work of someone or something evil. You see anything in there about her cursing the town or anything?"

  "So far, just this one reference."

  Dean turned his attention back to the book on his lap. "So we need to look for more stories about Elizabeth whatshername."

  "Elizabeth Claire Marbrough," Sam said again. "And yeah, that seems like a good idea."

  Paging through more of the volumes—always with an appreciation for the time slipping by—they put together an idea of Elizabeth Claire Marbrough's history, at least as described by the rotating cast of employees and family members interviewed over a twelve-year span by schoolteacher Neville Stein. These memories had been related years after the fact, in most cases by people who had not witnessed them firsthand but had been told about them. In the telling and retelling, stories had a tendency to grow, and Dean suspected these were no different.

  Some of the tales sounded like pure fantasy. Elizabeth zooming across the rangelands on a flaming broom. Elizabeth striking down Apache shaman Geronimo through a long-distance spell, although according to Sam, historians said he died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and not—as this story claimed—from having his head explode suddenly at the dinner table. Elizabeth taking multiple werecats, in their human forms, as lovers. Okay, Dean allowed that this one could have some basis in truth—he had heard some pretty kinky stories involving witches.

  But even setting those aside, a clearer picture emerged. Elizabeth was the mother of Jens Marbrough, the original owner of the ranch. She had lived somewhere in New York or New England until a scandal of some sort caused her to need to get away from that region. With some reluctance, Jens arranged for her to move to the ranch.

  In those days, running a ranch in Arizona Territory sounded like a struggle. Indian raiders were a constant threat. There was little in the way of real law enforcement, so Jens had to take matters in his own hands when it came to theft, cattle rustling, and the like. Soldiers on the hunt for Indians could be as destructive as the Indians themselves, cutting fences and trampling fields.

  The local population was small at the time, since the Grand Canyon had not yet become a national park, but Jens made efforts to be a good neighbor and a community leader. This became harder to do when his ill-tempered, spiteful, malicious mother moved in. Her occasional forays into town brought complaints and cost Jens friendships he had spent years cultivating. Finally—and on this story, multiple accounts agreed—she had caused the withering death of a Basque ranch hand named Bacigalupi because he had failed to bow sufficiently low when he ran into her between the house and the stable one morning. That day, he had been hale and hearty, but by the end of the week he looked as if a wasting disease had had its way with him for months. He died a week to the day after the original encounter.

  For Jens, this was the last straw. He couldn't get rid of his own mother, but he wanted her far away from him. Telling her that it was for her own privacy and peace of mind, he built her a cabin of her own, in an isolated canyon far from the main ranch headquarters.

  She protested from the first day she learned of the plan, and her attitude—not to mention her relations with other local settlers—so
ured even more. After some additional run-ins, she was finally banned from the little community that would become Cedar Wells. Not long after that, the new cabin was finished and Jens hauled all her belongings there before going back for her.

  A horrific argument followed. Apparently, Elizabeth was unwilling to use her witchy powers against members of her immediate family, but witnesses claimed that only that fact curtailed her response. One said he had never seen her so furious, and this was a woman to whom rage seemed a first response to any provocation. And there was no second response. She agreed, Jens leaving her little choice, and moved to the little cabin. There, by all reports, she stewed and plotted her revenge, on the ranch and on the town that grew up nearby.

  "I found this one account of what that revenge would be," Sam said. He sat awkwardly on what had once been a student's desk, although the years had made it resemble a vaguely desk-shaped mound of mud and sticks. "And it sounds familiar."

  "Spill it, Sam," Dean said. "We're burning daylight."

  "According to this, she had one confidante on the ranch, the wife of one of the hands, who took pity on her and visited her in the cabin when no one else would. This woman says that Elizabeth told her that she had cast a spell that would bring to life everyone who had ever died violently on the ranch's property, human and animal alike."

  "That does sound familiar," Dean said. "Does she say what this pissed-off bitch wanted the undead to do?"

  "This is where it gets good," Sam said. "Every forty years, they would attack the town, killing indiscriminately, in the ways that they had been killed. Some would come back in their own forms, but some would be skinwalkers, able to take animal forms at will."

  "The forty-year," Baird said. Something like awe tinged his voice.

  "The forty-year," Sam agreed.

  "I don't suppose there's a schedule in there," Dean said. "When we can count on this thing to be over."

  Sam shook his head. "It says Elizabeth Claire Marbrough died in 1886. The cycle was supposed to begin after her death. So 'eighty-six, 'twenty-six, 'sixty-six, and 'oh-six. But if her confidante knew how long it was supposed to last, she didn't say."

  "It'd sure be good to know," Dean said. "Because if it's not ending soon, we could be staring at a massacre at that mall opening."

  THIRTY

  "I think these books have told us what we need to know," Sam said. "If it was really a spell and not a curse, then we should be able to counter it."

  "Yeah," Dean agreed. "Let's get out of this dump."

  He glanced at Baird, who looked sad to hear his beloved schoolhouse described in such terms. From Dean's point of view, "dump" was too good for it. "Sorry."

  Sam put the books back in the chest and closed the lid. "Maybe when this is all over," he told Baird, "we can come back here and get them out, take them to your place. They should be preserved even if nothing else is."

  "Okay, sure," Baird said. "That'll be fine."

  Dean picked up his shotgun and headed for the door. The light, with clouds blocking the sun, hadn't changed since they came in.

  Baird beat him to it, though. Maybe he had been disappointed in the place after all, the way people sometimes were when they went back to locations they'd known as children and found that they didn't measure up to the memories. He seemed in a hurry to leave.

  But as soon as he was outside, he backpedaled, in a greater hurry to get back in.

  "What is it?" Dean asked.

  "We got a visitor," Baird said. "Not the friendly kind, neither."

  "A visitor?" Dean checked his shotgun, made sure a shell was chambered, and crossed to the slanting doorway.

  Baird wasn't kidding.

  The bear had to be seven feet tall, standing up on its hind legs. A grizzly, a species probably long since wiped out in this area, with light brown fur and teeth that dripped menace and claws like daggers.

  "Dean?" Sam said. "What is it?"

  "It ain't Smokey."

  "Smokey... Dean, is there a bear outside?"

  Dean was about to respond, but the grizzly gave a silent roar that he believed would have shaken what remained of the schoolhouse, its head thrown back, its paws flailing at empty air as if trying to swat away imaginary bees.

  "I'll take that as a yes," Sam said, shouldering up beside Dean in the doorway and seeing the bear's furious stance. "Wow."

  "Yeah," Dean said. "That about sums it up."

  "It looks fierce," Sam said. "But we can shoot it, right?"

  "If it's a spirit bear, I guess," Dean replied. "But if it's real, we might just tick it off."

  "Chance I'm willing to take." Sam fired his sawed-off at the thing. The boom echoed in the small schoolhouse, and Dean could taste the bitter smoke. The bear flickered when the rock salt hit it, flashed its glowing black form. But it didn't vanish. Instead, it returned to its original material shape, dropped down to all fours and glared at the Winchesters like it had just decided on lunch.

  "My luck," Sam said. "It's a spirit bear and I pissed it off."

  Dean leveled his own shotgun and let off a blast at the thing before it could charge. This time the rock salt hit it square in the face. At a distance of less than twenty feet, it should have taken the bear's head off.

  Instead, the bear flickered again, and when it stabilized it was no longer a bear, but a Native American warrior in buckskin leggings and war paint. He carried a spear with a finely chiseled stone head. Near the center of his chest gaped an open wound that might have been made by the same weapon. He glowered at Dean and Sam as if he had felt the blast and didn't appreciate it.

  "One more for good measure," Sam said, firing his other barrel. The rock salt hit the Indian. He dropped his spear, flickered, disappeared, and came back as the grizzly again. The fallen spear had vanished.

  "This is not good," Dean said.

  He didn't get a chance to say more, because the bear charged. Not wanting to get caught in the doorway, Dean darted to the left, Sam to the right. The bear stopped short, swinging its huge head both ways, then settled on Dean and started toward him. Great, Dean thought. I can probably outrun it, but for how long? And what about the old coot?

  He decided to stay and fight.

  As the bear closed on him, he pumped the shotgun again. The old shell ejected, a new one in the chamber, he held his ground, waiting, waiting...

  He could smell the bear now, a smell like old dirt and death, the smell of the grave, worse by far than the animal stench inside the schoolhouse.

  The bear thrust its giant head at him, teeth gnashing, spittle flying.

  Dean shoved the barrel of the shotgun against the bear's neck and pulled the trigger. The gun boomed.

  The bear flickered, fell back, flickered again. For a moment the Indian sat in the snow instead of the bear, but with another blink the bear returned.

  If the shotgun blasts were having any lasting effect, Dean couldn't see it.

  The bear shook like a wet dog and raised up onto its four paws again. Gave a head-shaking snarl. Lunged.

  Dean sidestepped the charge, but his foot came down on a patch of frozen snow and skidded out from under him. He went down on his right knee just as the bear's slavering mouth came at him. Its breath hot on his face, Dean ducked under the attack. The bear hit him with hundreds of pounds of fur-covered muscle, bowling him over. Sharp claws jabbed into the ground around Dean as he writhed to avoid them.

  That wouldn't work for long, though. The bear was playing a game of Twister, and Dean was the mat. Left paw, yellow, might be the one that landed the animal's crushing weight on his skull. He was stuck wriggling and dodging, unable to get past the bear's sturdy legs.

  Then, over the sound of the bear's huffing breath—saliva dripped onto his face, hot as coffee—Dean heard the thumping of Sam's feet as he ran toward them. Sam jumped and landed on the bear's back. The bear reared up, and Dean scrambled out from under it. Sam piggybacked on the beast, jabbing it over and over with a knife as the bear tried to shake him off.
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  Since the shotgun blasts hadn't worked, Dean scooped the weapon off the ground, reversed it, and swung it by the barrel, clubbing the creature in the head while Sam stabbed it.

  The bear let out a soundless wail of pain, flashed, becoming the Indian again momentarily, then reverted to bear form. When it changed, Sam fell off its back. As a bear again, it whirled on him, clawing at him with those giant paws. One swipe with those would decapitate Sam. Dean wondered what Baird was up to while they battled it.

  But the creature's quick transformation gave Dean an idea. "Hang on another minute, Sammy!" he shouted.

  "I don't see much choice!" Sam returned. He tried to stab with his knife, but his arm and the knife seemed like feeble weapons compared to those ursine claws.

  The bear had its back to Dean now, as it sparred with Sam. Dean took advantage of the chance to pump another rock salt shell into the chamber, raise the gun to the back of the bear's head, and fire. As before, the buckshot didn't even seem to penetrate the animal's thick fur, but the beast blinked out of existence. The Indian appeared, empty-handed. Sam stabbed at him and the Indian dodged, as nimble as his other form was powerful.

  While the Indian was visible, so was his spear, still where it had fallen on the ground. Dean dove for it and snatched it up. By the time he had his footing again the Indian was already changing back into the grizzly and reaching for Sam. This time, as it changed, its claws caught in Sam's coat and it began to draw Sam toward its gnashing teeth.

  Dean threw himself at the creature, driving the spear forward with every ounce of muscle he could put behind it.

  Its stone point pierced the grizzly's fur and flesh with a sound like wet fabric tearing. Dean met resistance, pushed harder. The spear went deep, glancing off bone, finding organs.

  After what seemed like days, the grizzly fell forward into the disturbed snow, flickering faster and faster. Bear, Indian, bear, Indian. When it was bear, the spear vanished from sight—although Dean knew it was still there, since he had felt it, although not seen it. When it was human, the spear jutted from the warrior's back. Dean didn't turn him over to check, but he guessed the spear's point would have hit approximately the same spot in the Indian's chest as whatever made the wound on his other side had.