Witch Hunter: Into the Outside

by J. Z. Foster

  “No, Ted. It doesn’t work like that,” Richard said shaking his head. “You can’t just get a priest to bless something, that just sounds fake. You need a weapon carved from sacred wood, forged under a particular phase of the moon, or cooled in faery blood.”

  “Oh, and that doesn’t sound fake, right?”

  “It also brings up a good question.” Beth’s eyes darted between the two of them. “Even if Richard thinks he can find the warlock easily, and everything goes great, are we just going to walk up to this old man and shoot him? That’s the safest way to do things, right? But can we actually do that? What if we’re wrong?”

  Richard wasn’t sure what to say to that. She was right, of course, and from the best he could tell, Ted thought so too.

  Who would actually do it? I can’t kill someone. I almost lost it choking the life out of one of those monsters back at the library. I don’t think I have it in me to kill something like that.

  “I’ll do it.” Ted finally spoke up. “Maybe our buddy out in the van can do it, but if he can’t, I will. If we can get close enough, I’ll do it.” He avoided eye contact as he started shoveling more food into his mouth.

  Richard’s heart had been beating fast, threatening to burst inside his chest, and he had only just realized it. So quickly had his mood shifted, so quickly had the dead come back into his thoughts. His mind drifted back to the library.

  I strangled one of those things. I crushed another. But it was only because I had to do it.

  He told himself that over and over again, each time less convincing than the last.

  It was only because I had to do it. I had to.

  The look in its eyes as it died filled Richard’s mind, making it hard to consider anything else. He was sure those dying eyes, monster or not, would follow him to the grave. He had never killed anything in his life. He remembered then the sticky mousetrap his mom had laid out so long ago, how she so carelessly told him about the trap, that it was something the mouse would step in and then not be able to get out of.

  What a horrible thought that had been for him; that this thing would be frozen there, terrified and stuck until eventually it succumbed to death. But that was wrong too. He hadn’t slept that night thinking about it, and he heard squeaking in the kitchen. He thought about waking his mother, about asking her to take care of it. Instead, he brought it outside and got a hammer, intending to finish it with mercy.

  But he didn’t.

  It kept on squeaking as he sat there, crying, trying to force himself to finish it. Instead, he dropped it into the trashcan and went back to bed. Decades later, he still thinks about that mouse, about how he left it. It died either way, but it was a lot more painful because of him.

  Why is this all coming back?

  “Richard?” Beth patted his arm. “You okay?”

  He shook away those confusing thoughts. “Nothing that a milkshake won’t fix.” He slurped some down.

  “Let’s get back on task. You say the only way we can do this is by asking these questions? Well let’s do it. Let’s do it right here.” Ted rapped his knuckles against the table.

  “We can’t do it right here!” Richard could hardly contain his surprise, but was thankful to talk about something else. “Everyone would see us.”

  “Really? Because I think being safe in a crowd sounds like a pretty damn good idea.” Ted leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “I think we should do it right here. Hell, we’re doing it for all these people, right? We could have just left town.”

  “And by crowd you mean two waitresses and three half-asleep truck drivers that didn’t sign up for this?” Beth shot back at him.

  Ted continued to saw through his steak and took a bite, chewing it only halfway before he pointed the fork at Richard. “He’s the one that said it’d be safe.”

  Richard nodded. “Yeah, I guess he’s right.” He glanced over his shoulder at the waitress, now preoccupied with one of the truckers that had walked in. “All right, I think we can do this.” He picked up one of the saltshakers and unscrewed the top. He winced when the metal squeaked against the glass. “Oh, I hate that noise!” He continued to wince for a few moments longer as he poured the salt out in a small circle. He spied over his shoulder as if he were committing a crime. With the tip of his fingers, he smoothed the salt in front of him into an almost flat canvas. “I’m going to request that the spirit write what we need here in the salt. I think that should work.”

  “All this time with a ‘cabal of witch hunters’ and you never saw any of them do something overtly supernatural like this?” The cameraman’s voice was filled with disbelief.

  “Well, we tried something like this one time in the sand.” He peered nervously at the other two. “Didn’t get a bite, though.”

  “Well, hopefully, we don’t get a bite now either.” Ted knocked on wood.

  “Let’s figure out what we’re going to ask first, right?” Beth said. “We’re going to ask it where we can find the materials we need to kill this witch, but what if it tells us Canada? We need to be more precise.”

  Richard nodded, “Yeah that’s a good point…”

  “So, let’s ask where the closest thing is that we can use to fight the witch. How’s that sound?”

  When they all agreed, they quietly joined hands and Richard said the incantations, “…et offer salis. Die obsecro me…” The lights of the diner flickered once. It brought confusion and grumbling from those eating.

  Ted’s gaze searched the table, then across the diner. “That it?”

  They all looked at the salt, but nothing happened. “Yeah, well, like I said, there’s no way to force it to—” Richard stopped midsentence as the salt began to part, as if an invisible fingernail was being dragged through it. A thin straight line appeared, then a curve. Just as quickly as it began, it stopped.

  A full minute passed in silence. Richard focused on the salt, willing it to form something coherent, something intelligible, but nothing came. He knew there wouldn’t be, he knew because he had that same itch he had before—the same one he had in the house and the library. That itch that was just beneath the skin and that spoke to him without words, telling him that something bad was about to happen. Something wicked was on its way. But he tried to ignore it. He only stared and waited for something to move.

  When nothing did, Beth finally spoke. “That was weird. What does it mean?”

  “I… Uh. I have no idea? Is that some other language maybe?” Richard squinted his eyes and turned his head. His hand shook beneath the table and his stomach twisted into knots.

  “Are you kidding me?” Ted huffed. “You have to specify the language it uses?”

  “I don’t know! I said I never did this before!” Richard shot back. His foot beat a rhythmic tune against the floor.

  Please, please, don’t tell me Ted was right.

  Like it was kicked by a mule, the front door blasted open, shaking the glass, and a voice rang out: “Well hello there, good people!” A figure strolled inside, a slippery wet smile on his face, and left dark, muddy footprints without the slightest concern. A long, dirty, brown coat trailed behind him, looking as if it had served as burial attire in some hole dug in the woods. Despite the hour, a large-framed pair of sunglasses sat on his nose, sending mirrored reflections of everyone who turned to look at him. A thick, blonde handlebar mustache hung just below his nose, and greasy hair peeked out from beneath his wide-brimmed cowboy hat. His skin looked as if he had once been dark, but had paled to a deathly muted tone.

  “Such a fine establishment!”

  The waitress, who had jumped when the door burst open, now looked irritated. Her voice was flat. “Sir? Maybe just take a seat in one of the back booths and I’ll be right with you.” She hadn’t bothered to fake a smile.

  “No need for a booth.” He took a few muddy steps toward Richard’s table. “My friends here have a seat for me.” He picked up speed as he strode confidently to them. In one smooth motion, he slid into the
seat alongside them.

  He took a moment to let his gaze cross each member of the table, the mirrored lenses sending their own bewildered looks back at them. “So, I got your call.” He pinched the end of his sunglasses and slid them off his slender nose, showing vibrant purple eyes with bright specs that ebbed and flowed as they caught the glare of the light. He kicked up his mud-covered boots as he leaned back, slinging off black-brown sludge onto the table.

  “We, uh…” Richard’s mind was a blank slate. His stomach twisted even more painfully now, and his throat went dry. He couldn’t stop his hands from shaking, so he kept them below the table.

  This isn’t what was supposed to happen!

  Beth was the first to speak. “Who are you? What are you?” Though startled, she remained persistent, ever the investigator.

  “Your pudgy buddy here threw a hook out into the abyss and I took the bait. So here I am.” With a wave he presented himself, caped in his dusty old clothes that looked a century out of fashion, save for those new sunglasses now sitting on the table. “Well, perhaps it was more like opening the front door and turning the light on than a hook with bait. But you can call me ‘You’ or ‘That guy’ if you want. No need for names between friends, eh?” He sat there; a moment’s silence passed before he seemed to grow bored. “I’m something of a spirit, more to it than that, sure, but why complicate things?”

  Richard peeked behind him, but, oddly, no one seemed to be paying much attention to his table. They all went about their business, eating and talking, reading the newspaper, nothing beyond the ordinary.

  “Don’t worry your ears off there, sweetie,” the stranger with the purple eyes said. “They’re dosing on my glamour, beautiful thing that it is.”

  “I uh...” Ted was nervously trying to form a sentence. “I thought we were getting a squirrel? I was okay with a squirrel. This isn’t a fucking squirrel, Richard!”

  “A squirrel? You mean this?” The stranger’s jaw stretched down farther than it should have been capable of—nearly a foot wide from jaw to jaw—revealing several rows of teeth. He reached his dusty hand in, not bothering to pull up his sleeve, and slid it down his throat, elbow-deep. He pulled his arm back, his sleeve now slick with a white liquid that slowly burned off as the light touched it. His untrimmed and yellowed fingernails held a ghostly gray tail connected to a small sprite with three sets of legs that worked furiously to free itself from his grasp.

  The small frenzied creature squealed as its half-dozen squat legs whipped fruitlessly around. The stranger held it before him, examining the sprite with its eyes full of panic, then stuffed it back into his mouth. The sprite gave one final futile squawk as he closed his mouth. The purple-eyed demon brought his hand up to his mouth and burped. “Excuse me. I saw that little buddy answering your call, but I figured I’d take over. Could do for a snack anyways.”

  “Yeah…” Ted nodded his head. “That looked kind of like a squirrel.”

  Beth braved forward. “What are you going to do to us?”

  “Didn’t you want some damn answers?” He scowled at them. “You chumps call me in here then act confused? This is a pretty shitty séance, I must say.”

  “I didn’t.” Richard said, repeatedly shaking his head. “I didn’t call you.”

  “Oh, but you did…” The man brought his face inches from Richard’s and stared into his eyes. His smile slid away, only to return a moment later. “You turned the light on and opened the path, my friend. Maybe I’m not what you were expecting, but I’m what you got.”

  “I’ve never, never heard of anything like this.” Lines of fear were forming across Richard’s face; he couldn’t stop them.

  “Is… Is this goddamned guy the plague witch?” Ted was inching from the table.

  “No, he’s not. He’s something else,” answered Richard.

  The stranger scoffed and swayed his head from side to side. “Swindlers, I tell you. You’ve already asked me several questions and no one’s even offered me a drink?” He dipped his fingers into the salt and then, with a brush of his hand, violently swept it from the table. “The salt might have appeased your squirrel, but it won’t me. No sir. I’m into things a little more solid, things that might bleed just a tad more than salt does.”

  “No.” Richard shook in fear but refused to bend. He bit his lip hard enough to draw blood, hoping that’d be enough to steel his resolve. “We won’t give you anything. I know what you are.”

  A false god, a trickster. A spirit of nature.

  “I know what you do to men, the people who follow you. You’re a daeva.”

  The thing that played in the flesh of man curled its lip into a sneer. The gaps in the daeva’s teeth revealed the shark-like rows behind, sawing back and forth, growing in anticipation. It held its face in that way for several long moments before something more sinister slipped across its face—a smile. Somehow, that was worse for Richard. “I can smell something on you, can taste it in the wind. You’re not like these two.” It waved its dusty hand, disregarding them, and focused on Richard. “They’re not made of your salt.” The daeva stared, not into, but through Richard’s eyes and into the pit of his soul. Richard felt its gaze slither in and down his insides, licking and assailing them. But Richard gripped his hand tightly and stared back with as menacing a look as his feeble gaze could construct.

  Don’t be afraid. This is a game. Don’t be afraid and make a bad move.

  The daeva snorted a single grunt that might have been a laugh. “I can eyeball a novice when I see one. You’re entering into a dangerous game little witch.” A jackal’s laugh ripped from its throat. “But you know what? Whether you wanted me or not, it doesn’t matter. That’s not how it works. We’ll do business just the same, or I’ll find something else a little bigger than that sprite to drag back with me to make it worth the trip.” The daeva dragged its nail across the table, leaving a dark groove. Its eyes tipped toward Beth and then Ted with the threat.

  Richard’s skin crawled and squirmed beneath his clothes. The daeva’s hot breath, its bright and vibrant eyes, the old clothes, it was all a construct that told Richard he should be scared of this thing that came calling from The Outside. The lizard brain in Richard told him to be scared, but his training told him to hold.

  Richard drew in a breath; he knew that if he made a request or formed a poorly worded question, it could mean the end of his life or one of the others. He had to think carefully—there was so much to lose and so much to gain. Several moments passed as his mind worked, the gears turning in his brain, calling up old words from his books and the words of his mentors, while sifting through useless knowledge for what might save or condemn his life.

  Think, Richard, think.

  But there was something else nagging him. Something else that told him there was more here than he could see.

  The daeva sniggered again as those eyes, so cold but still so bright held on to him, its gaze worked across Richard, who felt as if it was running fingers across every inch of his face. “I feel like we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.” It smiled kindly and drummed its fingers on the table. “I’ll do a little more explaining then, hmm? Give you a little something for free? A devil’s mix is in the air, powerful energies are shaking loose. Was it you? Did you stumble into something and make a mess of things?” It waved a slender finger in the air. “You shake things up like that, and bigger things than squirrels come looking. But there’s no need to be afraid.” It reached out and touched the tips of its fingers to Beth’s warm hand; she pulled back quickly and shuddered. “The daevas aren’t inherently evil, friends. Perhaps your buddy here doesn’t know, but once invited in...” It drew a circle in the air; a light purple trail of energy followed behind the finger. “I can stay here until business is concluded. So ask what you will, or I’ll be on my way until you’re ready.”

  Tightness formed in Richard’s stomach, a lump that told him not to speak, to shut his mouth, and to let someone else take over. But Beth’s eyes met
his, asking him to help without so much as a word. So he tried. The words came out before he even willed them. “There’s a warlock here in town, a plague witch. We want to kill him, and we want to know the closest tool we can use to do it.”

  The daeva threw its head back into a hearty laugh. “Is that all?” Its head rolled as if on a hinge to look at Richard once more. “Well, it’s going to cost you.”

  “I don’t have anything to pay with,” Richard said, unsure.

  The daeva’s tongue licked out to rub the front of its teeth, or taste the air—Richard didn’t know. “You’ve got two friends here. Do you really need both?” There was innocence in the daeva’s question.

  “No!” Richard shot back. “We won’t give you anyone!”

  “Relax! Relax! It was a joke! I’m trying to break the tension here, get me? But you’re going to need to give me something.”

  “How about the wight?” Ted butted in.

  “You have a wight?” its curiosity was palpable. “Perhaps that’d work.”

  “No, Ted!” Beth blurted. “He saved you, how could you do that?”

  “He also bit my arm and threatened to eat both of you.” Fire burned behind Ted’s eyes. “He’s a damn monster!”

  “No, we can’t do that.” Richard shook his head, and rolled his words out as stiffly as he could. “We are not turning him in, Ted.”

  “Really?” Ted’s face contorted in anger as he spat the words out. “Because I’m pretty damn sure he’d eat any one of us if given the chance!”

  “We can’t do it! I’m not giving anyone away!” Richard shouted and rose to his feet.

  Ted immediately stood up to challenge the smaller man, his face turning red and veins popping in his neck. This was Ted; he would get what he wanted through intimidation. Richard knew, and he was afraid of this. He was more afraid of men like Ted than anything else. Still, he refused to stand down.