AMayhar - The Conjure

  "Here's what I want,” he said, pushing his notes across the desk.

  * * * *

  August Rambard was sweating, even though it was late September and should have been a bit cooler, even down here in the back of beyond. Beside him, Curley was beginning to smell pretty rank, though the man had a shower fetish that was probably a symptom of mental illness.

  The air conditioner had gone out on the trip from Austin, and the inside of the Pontiac could have baked bread. The map on his lap was limp as he re-folded it to follow the thin line that was the road.

  The oiltop was better than dirt but still was full of potholes and wrinkles where log trucks had braked before turning into tracks into the woods. The county map was large-scale, so it was fairly easy to check off homes they passed, dirt tracks that seemed to wander away to no place in particular, and the long lanes that often led to abandoned houses or barns.

  When they came to the right turnoff, with the dot that marked the McCarver house at its end, he realized they were so far back in the woods that anywhere they went from here would be headingout . Why would an old woman want to live by herself way down here?

  Curley turned into the lane and bumped over a badly kept cattle-guard. Just beyond that there was a wide stretch of pasture that ended in a wall of trees so big he couldn't imagine how they'd missed the attention of loggers, long years ago. As the car jounced along the bumpy dirt track, there came the shrill cry of a hawk and the raucous cawing of crows.

  A fox skittered across the dusty lane ahead of the car, and Curley slowed even more. The springs wouldn't take too much of this, they both knew. Breaking down here would be a bother, because he had been assured that telephone service didn't come within miles of this area, and their cell-phone was out of range of a carrier.

  When they rounded a sharp bend and saw the warped gray wood of a gate ahead, Curley pulled up and they both stared at the house beyond the falling-down fence and the overgrown yard. On the porch, an old fashioned swing moved uneasily in a gust of breeze, while a scarred tomcat stared them down from his perch on the top step.

  Feeling somewhat odd, August opened the door and stepped out into the talc-like dust. “Anybody home?” he called. “Mrs. McCarver, are you here?"

  There was no response from the house, though the cat thrust one hind leg into the air and proceeded to wash his bottom industriously.

  "She's not here,” he said over his shoulder to Curley, who was now locking the car. “Might as well look around—see if she's got more than she ought, on an income of three thousand dollars a year."

  He was already feeling that this was a wash-out. Nobody who could afford to move would live here, that was beyond question. He wished now he had opened the mailbox up at the main road to see what kind of mail she had. It might be illegal, but he understood better than anyone how much the agents in his service could get away with. With the IRS the subject was guilty until proven innocent, not the other way around.

  The gate creaked open, and he motioned Jim Curley to go ahead to the house, while he looked around for anything suspicious in the outbuildings. But the sagging shed contained only a dusty 1979 Chevy, cobwebs, and rotted bushel baskets.

  The only other structure was quite obviously a privy. He stuck his head inside, but a wasp zoomed at his head, and he ducked back and shut the door. The nest under the roof looked as big as a football.

  Shaking his head, he moved toward the back porch. The door there was nailed shut, so he went around the side of the house to reach the front. There Curley was standing, back hunched, staring into the gloom of the interior.

  "I don't like this much, Augie,” he said. “It smells funny in there, and I feel like something's watching us. Besides, the floor's so soft we might fall through."

  Rambard could feel the ancient planks move under his own feet, but this was business. They had to do their job.

  "I'll go inside. I'm a bit lighter than you. You stay out here and see if there's anything hid under that wood-box on the end of the porch.” He took a tentative step inside, realized that the floor was sounder than it seemed, and closed the screen door behind him.

  He found himself in a room that extended the entire depth of the house, combining the functions of sitting room and kitchen. There were two doors on his right, one leading into what was obviously a bedroom, the other into the half of the house that was about to fall down.

  She used a wood-burning cookstove, he saw, noting in his book that this indicated poverty of a pretty dire sort. That and the privy, too. Still, she ought to know about that Choa fellow, and he wanted as much information about her as possible before meeting her.

  There wasn't much food in the kitchen—home-canned stuff in glass jars, mainly, a sack of flour in a bin, a tin canister filled with cornmeal, some herbs hanging from hooks in the back wall—she didn't eat well, that was certain.

  He moved into the bedroom. Women always squirrelled away the important stuff there, usually under the mattress. On the small table by the window sat a kerosene lamp and a big, thick book. Looked antique ... maybe worth a lot of money?

  He reached a tentative finger to open it, finding it filled with crabbed handwriting, whose ink had faded to palest brown. He bent to squint at the letters, and his hand, in position to turn pages, suddenly felt as if it had been stuck there with epoxy. He stiffened, tried to open his fingers, tried to straighten his back, but he seemed to have suddenly been set into plaster of paris, immovable and helpless.

  "It isn't polite to poke around in a lady's belongings,” said a sharp voice behind him.

  Rambard felt his heart gallop, but still he could not move. Light steps tapped toward him, around the table, and a tiny shape came into his field of vision.

  "Another gover'ment man, I take it?” She stared up at him, black eyes snapping with fury. “Nobody else would be rude enough or foolish enough to meddle with my property. You come out here with the young idiot on the porch, and we'll sort this out."

  Suddenly Rambard was standing straight again, but he was still unable to control his body.She did that, marching him out to stand beside Curley, who was stooped, a look of horror frozen on his face, over the box where a copperhead snake twined and wriggled among sticks of wood.

  The younger man's hand was within striking range, but the snake seemed to ignore it. The woman, smiled, a quirk of the lip that was more forbidding than a snarl, and snapped her fingers.

  Curley straightened, and Rambard felt his own paralysis ease. “You can't...” he began, but his jaw froze in place.

  "Ican ,” said Lena McCarver. “It's you who can't. I want you to go back wherever you came from and erase my name off your books. I never make enough to pay any taxes, anyway. Tell anybody else that wants to come snooping that they'd best forget I exist at all. You hear me?"

  Rambard managed the faintest hint of a nod, and he meant it. No wonder that Latham woman marked this off the books. There was no money here, that was certain. Besides which, this wasn't the kind of problem you could put in a report—not without getting sent up for psychiatric evaluation.

  "This time I'm going right out with you and hide my road. There's been too many idiots coming to my house to suit me,” she said. “I have no truck with the outside, if I can help it.

  "When Boze brings my stuff every month I'll let him come, but anybody else except my friends better have the combination, or they may find themselves dodging water moccasins in the creek or bobcats in the woods."

  Terrified, Rambard nodded again. She meant it. Who was the son-of-a-bitch who opened up this can of worms? Parker. DEA Agent Parker. If he ever had a chance, Rambard intended to audit Stephen Parker's taxes within an inch of their lives and put him in prison, too.

  CHAPTER XIV. Unusual Activity

  Although there had always been odd things going on in and around the swamp country, those tended to be what the river-bottom people considered normal and undisturbing. Killings were fairly regular, but everyone knew the reason for them and c
ould have put a finger on the killer, if they had been willing.

  Drug dealing had, in a small way, gone on as well, though the resistance of the regular population had held it down to a minimum. This drug deal, however, had been like a stick driven into an anthill, stirring up more activity than anyone had seen before.

  As Lena went about hiding the turnoff to her road, she was busy considering this nasty business and its uncomfortable effects on her and the few people she considered friends and neighbors. Almost absent-mindedly, she whisked dead brush across the outer edge of the cattle-guard, pulled the sagging metal gate closed, and searched for the rusty chain and the stiff lock that she so seldom used.

  When all was secure, she realized that she must get word to Irene. Boze Blair had a key to that lock, but he needed to know to bring it with him, when he returned with groceries. Irene could call him, and then they would both know.

  With a sigh, she unlocked the gate again and trudged back to her house to get her car out of the shed. She sent a particularly malevolent curse after the federal agents who had so annoyed her, as she drove cautiously out of her lane and found the blacktop that would, after considerable effort, bring her to Irene Follette's farm.

  She realized she had seen more people in the past two months than she usually came face to face with in two years. That was not a particularly good or useful thing, and she hoped it wouldn't continue. She was quite happy alone, with very rare visits from her regulars to keep her somewhat attached to the outside world.

  Turning at last into the Follette drive, she braked in front of the wide front porch. Irene's dog Wolf roused, wandered out from under the yaupon bushes that fringed the veranda, and sniffed her tires thoroughly.

  "'Lo, Wolf,” Lena said as she got her stiff legs out of the vehicle and stood. “Yoo-hoo! Irene!” she called. Echoes bounced back from the heavy woods that curved around the sides and back of the place.

  For a moment there was silence, after the echoes died away. Then the woman heard a faint call from behind the house.

  "Did she call for help?” she asked Wolf, who looked puzzled and dashed away toward the sheds at the back.

  Lena followed as quickly as her legs allowed, and when she arrived she could see Wolf staring beneath the sagging shed roof. As she approached, the dog went in, and she could hear his inquiring whine, for the wolf-dog didn't bark.

  The strong September sunshine lit the place fairly well—enough to show Lena the shape of the artist, who lay across the grain bin, her back twisted painfully.

  "Lordy, Irene, what's happened to you?” Lena asked, but she was already easing her shoulder under the body of the much taller woman.

  Irene gave a muffled shriek. “It's all right,” she said. “I've got to get off here. You go ahead and see if you can get me straightened out on the ground, if you can."

  Lena struggled to accomplish that, and at last Irene was straight—or at least straighter—beside the bin, though her back still seemed to be out of place.

  "I got my car out front,” Lena panted. “If we can get you in, I'll get you far enough up the road for one of the neighbors to drive you to town."

  Irene turned her head, her pale eyes wide. “No. I don't want anyone to know where I am. Somebody came out here early this morning, while I was feeding the chickens and Wolf was on his morning run through the woods, and tried to make me tell him where those drugs are. He knocked me over the bin, and my back went out. He laughed and went off and left me.

  "Take me to your house, Lena. I'll be safe there while I get better. You know all kinds of healing methods, and if you can't help me I'll just stay tied in a knot. Better that than dead, which is what that bastard threatened if I didn't tell him what he wanted to know."

  The little witch snorted with disgust. “That his track?” she asked, pointing to a print of a western boot outlined in the dust of the floor. When Irene nodded, she spat carefully into the center of the footprint and said something very unflattering about its owner, who would find himself with a particularly painful corn very soon, now.

  "You think you might be able to walk a little, if I get the car up close?” she asked.

  Irene got her elbows down and pushed upward. She nodded, gritting her teeth. “You get the car. I'll make it."

  Lena turned and asked, “You need anything from the house? Clothes, your purse? I'll lock it up, when I come out.” Together they figured out what Irene would need, and Lena got her things together, then turned the old locks on the heavy oak doors.

  It took some doing, but at last Lena had her passenger in the old Chevy, with Wolf running desperately behind, headed back to her own country. Only then did she think about Boze Blair and his key.

  "Damn! I should have called Boze before we locked up your house and left. I'm going to lock up my gate, and he needs to get in with my supplies."

  "Mail him a note,” Irene said. “I have stamps and envelopes in my purse."

  They arrived at Lena's gate before midafternoon, and there Lena wrote a note to Boze on a page from Irene's notebook. Once the stamped envelope was in the rusted mailbox, she drove through the gate and locked it behind her.

  As the Chevy crept over the bumps and ruts of her lane, Lena was thinking hard. With so many town people coming down here trying to find things, it was time to take a stand. Nobody had a right to abuse any of her neighbors.

  "You got any idea who that was who beat you up?” she asked the artist, who was stretched uneasily along the back seat, grunting when they hit a particularly deep rut.

  Lena watched her in the mirror behind the sun-flap as she opened her eyes and looked thoughtful. “You know, I think I do know that bastard,” Irene said. “Name's Fielding, I think. He works for Nathaniel Farmer, sometimes, though I think he has other and less legal sources of income."

  "Harland Fielding?” asked Lena, who had good reason to recognize that name. “That's the fellow who was so bound and determined to get my timber. He came and he came, warting me out of my wits, till I put a tangle spell on him, so he couldn't find his way back."

  She slowed the car and peered back into the dust, whistling for the dog. “You about had enough, Boy?” she asked. “You can get in the car, but stay off the seat."

  The dog came panting up and climbed into the back of the Chevy beside his mistress. His tongue lolled, dripping onto the rubber mat, but Lena had other worries on her mind.

  Possum Choa needed to know that someone had attacked one of their own. King, too, would be interested ... and angry. It was time for the swamp people to pull together.

  It was a struggle to get Irene into the yard and up the steps to the porch. While she drooped on the swing, Lena dashed inside and made up her own bed fresh. For the time being she'd sleep on a pallet on the floor.

  After supper, Lena stretched herself on the thick pad of quilts and stared up at the kitchen ceiling, with its fancy pattern of leak-rings darkening the ancient paper. She'd just ease herself into a vision, now, and get it clear in her mind where each of her neighbors was. Then tomorrow she'd raise the signals that meant for them to gather at her house for a pow-wow.

  She closed her eyes, and Lone, alert to her moods, crept up close to her ankles and began to purr.

  Let's just see, here...

  * * * *

  She drifted across the forest, down toward the maze of streams that laced the edge of the swamp. There was King's place; she could feel the shape of his inner self as a warm spot. Having no idea where to look for Possum's cabin, she let herself go free on the wind, feeling sightlessly for his aura. She found him at last, camped beside a creek some two miles from the river, and wondered what took him there.

  She would raise her signal tomorrow, and one of the old men would surely see it, in time. As she began loosing her grip on that rootless state of being, she felt something else below her. Something alien, shallow and dark.

  Who was down there on that creek? What was he doing ... in a tree? Intrigued, she let her awareness sink to treet
op level and found herself staring with unseen eyes at the man who was crouched there. Below him, their scaly backs gleaming softly in sprinkles of moonlight, a half-dozen alligators dozed.

  From time to time, one would trundle off to the creek and a late-evening snack, but at any time there were at least three standing watch. Soon, she knew, they would grow weary of their vigil, and their captive would be able to escape. And that, it seemed to her, might be a great pity.

  Could she, in her incorporeal state, communicate with Possum Choa? It was worth trying. She rose into the night breeze and sped back to the spot where she had read the signature of his being.

  There, puzzled and unsure, she eddied over his sleeping body, wondering how to insert her thought into his dream. A distant vibration told her that Lone was adding his energy to her own, and she blanked out her vision and concentrated.

  "Choa! Choa! Look along Sandbar Creek! Among the gators!” That was the message she struggled to convey. Then, exhausted, she whipped back along the trail of her selfhood and regained the sanctuary of her aching body.