Dancing in Darkness: Witch

by Kassandra Alvarado

  Chapter 8: Happenthatch

  This was no man’s land.

  Half-asleep, Zac stumbled from the taxi, map in hand. The taxi had a seediness to it with greasy back seats and a driver of ethnic heritage whose English was thick and coarse. The snow plows had been through for the road ahead was a smooth paved sheet of white.

  “Thanks,” he called over his shoulder, ducking down the slope of snow. The lumpy red beanie on his head itched his scalp, his muffler consisted of a ragged scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face. The backpack felt like a bag of weighted stones on his back, the wind chill factor froze him to the marrow.

  Going above and beyond for the call of duty, he thought mirthlessly, plunging into drifts higher than his hips. In no time at all, his jeans had become soaked and he shivered violently, teeth chattering behind tightly clenched jaws. His flat had been cold with a reduction in heat by the landlady, but not like this.

  He passed the mailbox almost without recognition of what it was. Skeletal trees clung to the sides of the path, brittle white branches trailed fingers through the piles of snow. If there had been a welcome sign for the town, it had long fallen. He hardly knew when he had entered the town proper, raising his eyes to the sound of a bird flock beating their useless wings against the rising wind. Their unexpected sound motion caught his attention, forgetting his misery for a moment, Zac was amazed to find he’d wandered into the center of town.

  Squat buildings with rough tin roofs met the eye. A few smoke stacks spewed black smoke, crude old shovels leaned beside doors and neat paths carved swaths through unforgiving terrain. Though unspoken, caution he felt was practiced in alien territory. Far ahead he glimpsed the stride of a man. He ducked out of sight quickly at once feeling eminently foolish and overtly vigilant. When no one called out to him, he stayed crouched behind the battered blue truck, heart pounding loudly in his flushed ears.

  The man kept walking.

  Zac waited then halfway rose, peeping his head up over the bed of the truck.

  The man had disappeared down the path, whistling under his breath.

  Expect nothing - Julian had warned.

  Zac figured it paid to be careful. Julian had survived longer than most of the other faces frozen in eternal smiles on the walls of Blackwood Tower, maybe he could learn something to survive himself.

  Steps warier, Zac went up the short flight to the small church set back in a small clearing of its own away from the center of town. There seemed to be something going on in the distance, people singing ...he shied away from the larger group, slipping through the large oaken doors.

  A few candles in tall glass sleeves reposed before serene faces of pious saints carved in rough wood. The meager light illuminated the dim vestibule, shedding small pools farther in. Three pews deep on each side filled the west and east arcade respectively. He noticed everything of decoration seemed to be made of the same knotted wood with black smears of staining.

  The silence wrapped around the old walls, Zac wandered farther in, eye drawn to a large portrait dominating the apex of the church. He walked to it, never taking his eyes off the arrestingly handsome face. The style of clothing was late Victorian, in the man’s broad hands he held a staff of light with an intricately carved symbol at its tip. The brass plaque gave the legend of Stuart Carter, Founder of the New Religion.

  Stuart....

  That name...flashbacks came in brief spurts. Text scrolled past his mind’s eye until he found what he sought for. Carter was involved in the incident, he was Augusta Blackwood’s fiancé. He had showed cowardice in dressing himself in Augusta’s clothes, observing her death from the crowd. He watched her die, Zac thought darkly, scowling at the portrait.

  The artist had done remarkably well in depicting the man’s rugged looks, there had been a daguerreotype of Carter in the file he’d read on the way to Penn Station. In fact, he peered closer. There was a slight hint of something not quite sane in the painted eyes. Zac shuddered, jumping a foot when someone spoke behind him.

  “Excuse me.”

  He turned around quickly, surprising the little man dressed in plain black robes. “Who the--” For the sake of his upbringing, he narrowly avoided cursing at a disciple of God. The little man had come from the door opposite him and stood there with awkwardly clasped hands, radiating evident displeasure.

  “Where did you come from, young man?”

  Zac’s gaze drifted from him to the painting in place of the symbol of faith. “Say, friend. Can you tell me where the meeting house used to stand?” Wouldn’t that be the first choice in looking for Blackwood?

  The nervous man’s pinched face took on a ghastly hue. “Why, here. The Sancta Familia was built on the very stone foundations. Stones whose laying dates back to the very roots of this town!”The man’s voice had an almost hysterical note to it.

  I’ll bet -

  “Actually, I came looking for a friend.”

  Inwardly, he’d already decided not to mention Ms. Saxena, better to play it safe. Besides, it was possible that she’d been found by Blackwood and everything was alright. Zac recognized his thoughts were overtly hopeful and he knew it stemmed from the strangeness of the job he’d accepted.

  “We haven’t seen her.” The little man blurted out.

  Her?

  “Really...?” he half-turned, hiding his disbelief. “I’ll try calling her, see if she picks up.”

  “You do that.” The sacristan warily edged toward the altar, beady eyes nervously sliding around. Zac pretended to dial, pausing with languid irony. “When did I ever say my friend was a woman?” Somewhere in the nave, the responding ring came, echoing in the silence.

  She was overwhelmed.

  He dodged the swing of the brazen little man, the upraised altar cross of olive wood and beaten metal carved an arcing path through the air. Zac threw his weight against the other’s unbalanced lunge. The sacristan bared his yellow teeth, hissing in thwarted fury.

  “Call yourself a man of God!?” Zac blocked the smaller man’s blows; their legs entangled. They collided into the vestibule niche sending glass holders flying in their wake. Zac smelt flame and fire. He kicked furiously at the grappling sacristan slapping his free hand against the brief brush of flame smoldering his jacket sleeve. Gaining a moment’s leeway, he scrambled to his feet, snatching the heaviest thing that came to hand -- a plaster crucifix, and swung it haphazardly.

  Somehow, it connected with the target in a dull crunch. The sacristan’s mouth dropped to an o and his eyes slid back into his thin eyelids. The coloring of a red welt spread upside the man’s pasty forehead, the skin broken around the blow bled a thin blood trickle.

  Zac breathed in and out, his gaze dropping to the man lying crumpled at his feet to the depiction of Jesus on the cross. His cell phone had been kicked somewhere under the pews not far from Blackwood’s. Words from Reno came to mind, words that helped him to focus. Whatever happens out in the field, remember it’s for a purpose.

  Briskly, he retrieved the two phones, silencing the ringing. Heat waves washed over his form, stepping into the main aisle, he watched with some regret as the flames from a shattered candle spread from altar cloth to pew in a razing orange haze.

  Right now, my purpose is finding her.

  But, I can’t abandon a life -- he hurried to grab the legs of the unconscious man, some sudden noise from the front snared his attention. There were men pushing through the first set of doors, they were shouting out, calling for the sacristan. Zac backed off quickly, fleeing through the door in the west transept into the rounded hall of the vestry.

  There, stacks of bundled firewood and pine-knot torches leaned against black stanchions of metal that he could only guess at their usage. The door that led outside was locked fast, the knob jiggled uselessly in his grip. Zac threw his weight against the panel, wincing at the jarring of his hip. Panic lent him strength and it flew outward suddenly, he stumbled out, dazed.

  The door had opene
d up into a small courtyard with a low iron fence. A few accoutrements of shovels, and wheelbarrows dominated the cheerless space. Zac fled the area, ducking out of sight behind a tool shed standing in a neighboring yard. Crouching down in the snow, he pulled his phone out, quickly dialing Reno’s number.

  He waited, tense for every small sound while the phone hummed quietly against his ear.

  “Quinn?”

  “We have a bad - ba-ad situation here.”

  “What? Where’s Ms. Blackwood? Is she safe? Dammit, boy! Speak!”

  “I can’t...” he hissed, peeping his head around the corner.

  Three men stalked angrily from the steps of the house of worship, a fourth lagged behind them.

  “...she’s...I don’t know.” His voice wavered and broke. He bit the inside of his mouth to stop his teeth from chattering, the pain keeping him from bursting into tears. “Look, I gotta move...not safe here.” He half-rose and circled around, keeping low behind a pile of wood when the sounds of tramping snow had diminished, he hid behind an emptied hen coop. When they came closer again, he started moving further out, aware of the blood rushing in his ears along with the murmur of chanting becoming steadily louder.

  They were circling a far off pole; Julian waited patiently on the other end of the line. Zac crouched behind a cluster of large rocks, fishing a pair of old army binoculars from the sack. Raising the padded lenses to his face, he adjusted the range pushing through a gap between stones.

  What he saw, made him scramble backward, hurriedly returning to the line. “Ms. Blackwood-! They have her!” He hissed urgently.

  “...thought so,” Reno said quietly. “Can you get to her?”

  “No...there’s too many.”

  Reno heard the desperation in his voice, “most situations easily spiral out of control. Keep your head, Quinn. Do you have a weapon? Anything which to defend yourself?”

  “Yeah...I...” He felt for the holster strapped to his thigh, encountering air. Zac inhaled sharply, cursing his idiocy. The Colt had stayed in plain sight on the coffee table, only the lump of the utility knife attached to his keys, remained in his pocket. “No,” he whispered, hanging in his head in shame. Reno had told him to be prepared and he’d gone and forgotten the most important part of the kit.

  ...I...,” the thought in its simplicity came to him all of a sudden. “I have an idea.”

  “Good. Improvise. Do what you must to ensure Ms. Blackwood’s safety.”

  “But -”

  He had feared and imagined the other’s response.

  - I was almost murdered by a maniac-

  - But, I’m an operative -

  - I exchanged normal for the weird, potentially dangerous and definitely illegal -

  The last part was sobering.

  “G-Gotcha.” Zac murmured, flashing a shaky thumbs up that Reno couldn’t see.

  The line was dead; Reno had hung up already. He made a face, stuffing the phone into his back pocket.

  Thanks for the vote of confidence, jerk.

  He grabbed a length of lead pipe from a pile of refuse, having decided he’d go down with a fight rather than go down with a whimper. Tenuous courage sustained his racing heart and shaking legs through the backyards of ramshackle houses.

  Zac rounded the corner and spotted something lying on the hood of a battered green Corvette. Bingo! “Obviously, someone’s a firebug around here.” He picked up the Petronix Flamethrower carefully, checking the fuel cell. Full. The model was light in his arms, the twin perforated metal tubes gleamed unused in the cold moonlight.

  Fire, fire.

  He heard the slam of doors, heard their shouts.

  “--can’t have gotten far!”

  He turned and fled through the nearest back door. The torn gray screen flapped with a bang against the grimed white panel. Through the darkness, he bumbled through the kitchen of acrid smells and outline of pans and pots. In another room, he banged his shin on a chair leg. Their houses are empty. Bastards, they’re gathered around the pyre.

  Through a hallway, he pressed against the wall,

  Wait for it.

  Wait.

  “Come out! You little shit!” The back door flew open with a sound like a gunshot. Zac pressed the flamethrower close to his chest, holding his breath. The boom of a gunshot splintered the roof close by. The man rushed heedlessly forward, believing him frightened out.

  His trigger hand tightened; at the last second, he darted out, releasing the full torrent of orange flame. A geyser heat washed over the tight corridor, sweat broke out on his skin, his ears throttling from the sound of the man’s startled shout changing to a horrible, gurgling scream.

  The human fireball collided into walls, screaming a horrifying inhuman shriek. Licking flames leapt from sizzling flesh to the dry timbers. Zac choked on the nauseous smell of burning flesh and smoldering hair. The stench was almost unbearable. It followed him in billowing gaseous clouds out through the front door. He ran full pelt, his sides aches, lungs wrenching to rid themselves of the nightmarish odor.

  The house was a conflagration of stark, orange flame. Small puffs wavered at the barrel end of the flamethrower he held, turning the torrent upon the nearest houses. Moving around the back, he weaved around melting snow drifts, igniting small logs, pitching them with sharp heaves atop roofs where they spread their angry red glow.

  Someone rang the fire bell, shouting a world of curses; Zac dashed off into the woods, hoping the distraction had been enough. He cut through the woods ducking behind a boulder at the fringe at the lake edge. By now the large group of villagers had fled back to their dwellings that had gone up like so many tinderboxes lined up in a row.

  The pole with its base of roughly cut logs stood insensate to the rest of the world.

  Blackwood!

  He raced over to her, slipping and sliding in larger prints of dirty slush. She looked worse than before, bound up to the pole, head sagging onto her chest, her skin blue with cold. “Hold on!” Zac fretted, dropping the flamethrower. He dug in his pocket for the keys, clumsy fingers letting them go several times before he had them properly to hand. Moving behind her, he was aware of how exposed he was away from the shelter of the trees, in plain sight of the distant torch of Little Happenthatch.

  “Took you long enough.” Blackwood whispered, her voice shaking.

  “I had other things to do.” He muttered, surprised at how steady he sounded.

  The two-inch long knife flashed through the soggy grey-brown rope. He grimaced at the sodden streaks left on his gloves. Working quickly, he managed to free her hands then moved up to her feet. Immediately, she flexed her numb fingers, groaning softly when her knees buckled. Zac caught her over his arm, supporting her smaller form.

  “Come on...we gotta escape on foot.

  “Jeep.” She mumbled.

  “Where?” He started off for the forest’s edge, weaving slowly from side to side. She was coherent, though the swelling of her bruised left eye looked worse up close. “You’re going to be okay, hold on.” He panted above her head. They made it within the cover the trees; she sagged down, shivering uncontrollably.

  Zac sighed and bent under and over, scooping her up in his arms. Blackwood protested weakly then closed her eyes as if the effort was too great.

  “You’re heavy!” The words flew from his mouth abruptly.

  Her eye twitched and her fist flew into his jaw.

  “...Idiot. Don’t you know you never tell a woman about her weight?”

  Zac’s eyes filled, he sniffed supposing he deserved it.

  “I’m just glad you’re okay.” He muttered askance.

  “Hmph.” She snorted but seemed pleased.

  Keeping to the skeletal trees away from the sounds of humanity, they emerged onto the main road, exhausted in the glare of police headlights and sirens. Zac’s phone rang in the cacophony, when he was able to check, Reno had sent him a message.

  “Called the police, take
care.”

  The jeep awaited beyond the bend.