Witch Hunter: Into the Outside

by J. Z. Foster

  “Lord,” Minges’s lip curled in disgust as he continued to pace. “Witches.” He spat the word out.

  Richard’s eyes popped open wide. “I don’t give a damn if you believe me or not. I don’t care. But I want you to listen and I want there to be someone else to tell the story. There has to be something. My friends will be here soon, and someone needs to tell them what happened if I can’t.”

  “I’d love to talk with your friends. In fact, I’m certain that I will before this is all done.”

  “Listen.” Richard struggled to keep the desperation out of his voice. “If you listen to me, get everything down and tell it to my friends later, I’ll do whatever you want.” He gripped the edge of the table. “I’ll say or do whatever you want, just please, listen to me.”

  Minges turned squarely back to Richard. “Hell, you think I’m listening to all this because it’s fun?” With a loud thump, he sat back into the chair. “All right, then. We’re gonna hear the rest of that story, then we’re gonna start talking about what to do about your murders.”

  A chill crept across Richard’s skin, making it prickle. “Well. The crow told me that his feathers would help me find the witch, so with a dab of his blood I was off again.”

  “I guess it’s The Outside? I don’t really know. My best guess is that it’s like a room of the supernatural world, The Outside.”

  “Like a room?” Ted crossed his arms and leaned against the van.

  Richard exhaled liked a deflated balloon. “Well, like I said, I’m no expert. The Outside doesn’t have to look like our world, but sometimes it does. Sometimes a mockery of this place, sometimes not. It’s whoever is controlling it or influencing it.”

  “Who is influencing this area, Richard?” The soft sound of a tape recorder buzzed between them.

  “I don’t know. The witch, that crow maybe? I don’t know. When it comes to their world...” He gestured to the wight; it was crawling across the ground and licking the bloody slop from the dirt. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you have to go back, Richard?” Beth asked and took his hand. “Isn’t there another way? I hate to say it, but maybe we should wait for the others. You only barely made it out before—what if you can’t get out this time?”

  It was true—Richard had no desire to go back into a world that he didn’t understand and didn’t know the rules of. That whole place itched. Just as he went in, he felt its warm tips on his flesh.

  But it wasn’t my body, was it? I don’t have a body there, I don’t breathe air there. I don’t even know how in the hell I bled there.

  He shook, and not just from the cold. “I know. I’m scared to go back in again.”

  Beth took his cold hands into hers. Richard had no idea how she could stay warm through all this. “Richard, you’re the bravest person I know. You don’t have to do this, though. We don’t know what to expect. What will you even do when you get there? What makes you think you can find him this time? It wasn’t at all how you imagined before.”

  She’s right. I could just wait. I should. When the others get here, they’ll know what to do.

  Richard wanted to leave it to someone else. He wanted to hand this whole thing off to someone more experienced, someone better equipped, someone who could finish it. But he knew better.

  He’s vulnerable now. That doesn’t mean he’s not still dangerous, but this might be the only chance.

  “No. I have to go. We can’t wait anymore. We have to do it now.”

  “Why?” Beth shook her head. “Why can’t we wait anymore? Maybe Ted’s right, maybe we just need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Finally, someone other than me is making some damn sense,” Ted agreed.

  There was a pain when Richard shook his head, a wound that he had sustained from the crow or from something else. “No. I just…” He struggled to explain it, but he didn’t know how to put into words the feeling in his gut, the feeling that told him it was now or never. He imagined soldiers might feel it, or a hunter moving in with bow in hand.

  But that’s what I am now, aren’t I? I’m a hunter. I don’t have a bow or a sword, but a book and a dagger. This is me. I’m the only one that can do this.

  “You have to trust me.” He looked at each of them. “I have to do this. I don’t know why, but I have to. I just have to.”

  “All right, Richard, we’ll trust you.” She gripped his hands in hers.

  Ted huffed. “Not like we have much of a choice to begin with, but we’re with you, buddy.” He clapped Richard on the back.

  Air filled his lungs as Richard breathed deeply. He wished then—and not for the first time—that he had his cross to rub, to gain some comfort from. Instead, his hand absently grasped where it had been.

  “All right. Give me some room.” Richard prepared the ritual again and laid once more against the cold van floor.

  “We’ll be here, buddy,” Ted said from inside the van this time, with the black leaf and salt within arm’s reach.

  Following a guidance ritual, he took the crow’s feather, now dabbed with the crow’s blood, and laid it on his chest. It wasn’t long until The Outside opened its doors once again. This time, he knew the instant it touched him. His eyes popped open, but instead of the illusion of the van and cold-less snow upon the ground, now there was nothing. A black emptiness surrounded him. He would have looked at his hands, but there was nothing there. No hands to see, nor eyes to see them with. He would have tried to call out, but there was no air in his lungs, nor even a mouth to shout, only a spirit and mind to think.

  What the hell is going on? There’s nothing here!

  Was it all a cruel game? Was he stuck in nothingness now? He didn’t know. Maybe the crow would have its revenge with him locked away forever.

  The crow, the feather!

  It came, the feather, appearing out of nothing. It floated in front of him, continuously drifting from side to side without actually falling. With his will, he grew fingers and reached for the feather. And as his fingers touched the soft black of the feather, he knew the truth of this world: your will controls it.

  He held the feather between two fingers because he decided there was a hand to hold it. Then, he stepped forward onto ground, because he made ground to step on. It was hazy at first, like a dream that he had leashed. But he wasn’t done, now he would play the name in his mind, the name that instilled fear and held power.

  Erlend Boberg

  “Ah, little witch, there you are.” The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. There was no sound here, so there was no voice, only thought and belief.

  “Is that you, Boberg?” There was nowhere to look for the voice; there was nowhere to hide. A thing was or it wasn’t.

  “That is a name you are foolish to use. A name for a thing long dead and remade.”

  “Where are you, Boberg?”

  No sooner had the words been thought than a place took shape: a gas station on a lonely stretch of road without a house to be seen in any direction, devoid of the woods that filled the rest of the town. No, here there was only the station, the road, and empty hills.

  He couldn’t tell the name of the road it was on, or if it was north or south of where he was, but he now knew it just the same. A connection was made with it that would lead him as easily as a hound’s nose along a trail of blood.

  “Are you looking for me, little witch? Do you suggest that I hide from you? Come to me quickly, and I will take only the necessary amount of suffering from you. You are an annoyance that can be dealt with; you may waste no more of my time and flee with what you still have.”

  “No,” Richard said and heard thunder boom behind the words. “You’re scared of me. I know you. I know people like you. You’re terrified that I’ll stop being scared of you. I’m not scared of you! I’m not afraid of you anymore!”

  “Oh, but you should be.” Gnashing teeth formed. “I’ve sucked the marrow from the bones of many greater than you.” A claw appeared and drew a line in the air tha
t bled, as if a mind could bleed.

  “You can’t hurt me here,” Richard said, but he was still unsure. “There’s nobody here. This is what we make it, and I won’t let you hurt me here.”

  The face appeared from the black ink of the darkness, shaking the darkness off like drips of water. “It is only flesh that can be hurt, only blood that can be spilled? Where do you think you are, little witch? Whose manor do you think this is?”

  Fire caught against the black ink and thousands of hands reached from it, each crying out pleas for mercy. “A mind is a fragile thing—it breaks as easily as glass.” A rush of brown sludge filled the void. It moved and breathed, and patches of hair grew on it.

  A being strode across it, one unafraid to touch the darkness—or it simply was the darkness. “I could show you things here, things that would cut you more deeply than a blade. They would scar you, for they are not illusions of fiction but of things that do exist, places where you can go, places where I may send you should the desire strike me.” His skin was pale and putrid looking. Diseased.

  Oh my God, this is the Witch’s Dance, the Mind Brace.

  “I’m not... I’m not scared of you!” Richard repeated, but this time with much less confidence. He tried to force his order and sanity across the world, but failed. What spots of light blossomed from the sludge and the abyss burned away like wildfire.

  A thing with two heads—one short-necked and still, the other long-necked and waving—strode out from the dark. Another creature—without eyes to see, but with a mouth that filled its head—scratched its way across the ground. Dozens of little fingers peeked out from the black soup and pulled with them giddy snouted horrors. Still more drew from the unknown until Richard could not tell one from the other.

  “There is no sun here lest I will it. There is no life unless I demand it. The light doesn’t touch the abyss, and it won’t touch here. Wake now and seek me, or flee if you would. But go now, little witch. Stay here any longer and you may not know yourself.”

  Though he had no body, Richard trembled.

  Wake up.

  A scream pierced the air, and it was several long moments before Richard realized it was his own. His hand clutched at his chest, where his heart thumped like a drum and cool air filled his lungs.

  “Richard! Are you okay?” Beth jumped back into the van with him and grabbed his hand.

  “Oh my God, I saw it all. I know what it is, I know what it looks like.”

  “Saw what?” Ted asked from the base of the van.

  “Hell.”

  Chapter 18

  “Hell!” A throaty grunt erupted from Minges’s throat. “You ain’t got nothing if not a flare for the dramatic, son. Snort’n the funny juice will get you into all kinds of nightmares.”

  “What are you talking about? Why would anyone snort a juice anyway?”

  The lawyer rubbed a fat finger back and forth beneath his nose. “You know what I’m talking about, I’m sure.”

  Richard shook him off. “It was Hell. Those things walked out, and you could feel the hate seething off of them. Those things were impossible—there’s no way something like that would exist in nature. Those huge mouths, and claws, and hooks. Just everything geared toward pain and suffering.” Richard shuddered. “My God, just seeing it, even for those few seconds, it could have stopped my heart.”

  “Yeah well,” Minges said. “You learn anything from the trip?”

  “Yeah. I learned where the witch was.”

  “Seeing a lonely place on a stretch of road was enough to tell you where he was?”

  “It wasn’t like that, it was like my body knew where he was even if my mind didn’t. I couldn’t have given you directions, or drawn a map, but I felt pulled toward it, like a dowsing rod.” Richard nodded. “And I also knew him.”

  “Eh?” Minges puckered his lips and furrowed his brow. “Who?”

  “The witch. Erlend Boberg.”

  A dread filled the room. Minges fell into a fit of coughing again; he doubled over and had to place his hand against the table. His face came up, red and choking, to stare at the wall for a few moments. After some time, he stopped and sucked in air.

  Richard gasped. “Did you see something?” He felt the itch on his skin, the buzz that the name always had. He hadn’t meant to say it—it just slipped out somehow.

  “No, suppose not,” Minges said, fanning himself with his hat. Despite the chill that was clawing across the windows from the outside, the room stayed just as warm as it had been the entire night. “What do you mean, you know about him?”

  “I don’t know exactly how, just like everything else, but we touched minds. I saw him, pieces of him anyway. He used to be a regular guy, a long time ago. Not sure when, it’s blurry. He was just some guy though, and he got into all this. Started with some book and, little by little, he unmade himself.”

  “Okay. So why is any of that important?”

  “Don’t you get it? Why should we be afraid of him? He’s not a demon. He’s a thing that’s afraid to die like anything else. He can be killed.”

  “Eh.” Minges started to wave Richard off and glanced toward the door. “Let’s stray away from that line of thought, eh?”

  More than ever before, the fog was starting to pull away from Richard’s mind. As things became clearer, they became more real and frightening. “It’s all becoming a lot clearer now. What we did and what happened next.”

  Minges popped his hat atop his head. “Talking about things will do that. Helps get the memory banks working and the gears turning. We play it all out like this, even the fantasies—it’ll all start to cut out the deadwood.”

  It wasn’t like before, but now Richard watched himself through a movie of memories. His hands weren’t his own, even though he could feel through them. But just as clarity came, so did the truth, the truth of what he had done and the blood now on his hands. A sickening feeling slithered into the room and up his back.

  “Oh my God.” Something cracked in Richard’s mind as he started to remember, as pieces came back together, but he still wasn’t quite sure. Despite how dry his eyes felt, the tears dripped once again. “It was right before Beth...” He couldn’t force himself to say it, that she was gone. Instead, he absentmindedly felt for his chest, where the necklace had been. Just like Ted when he was possessed, he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened, but it started to come back now. Richard’s heart pounded in his throat. Slowly the pieces came together.

  “I remember where she died.”

  Richard clenched his jaw, ready to move. He was sure, sure that the witch was scared and sure that they needed to move, now, while the witch was at his weakest. There was no one else; there was no one to wait for. It was now or never.

  They came to a fork in the road. “This way.”

  The wight greedily tore at the food they still had for him, only bothering to chew once or twice before swallowing and discarding whatever container it had come in. “It is important to properly prepare for war.” It didn’t bother to look up as it spoke.

  “Yeah,” Ted said from the driver’s seat as he took the van down the road toward the witch. “I think you guys are right. Better to have the wight step in and take the licks before I try and shiv the warlock.”

  The wight looked up as jelly from a piece of pie dribbled down its face. “Take the licks?”

  This was the first time Richard had seen any of these back roads, but he knew them all the same. Every curve and every tree that hung above was etched into his mind. Soon, they were coming to the empty roads where the trees had long since been cleared on the flattened hills.

  “Are you ready, Richard?” Beth asked with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Yes, I’m ready. This will all be over soon.”

  I’m scared, but so is the witch. When was the last time he feared anything? When was the last time he knew what it was like to be afraid?

  “What should we expect when we come up on him, Richard?” A soft light glowed
on the tape recorder as Beth held it up between her and Richard.

  “Well, we can expect he’s scrambling to get out of town. We’ve disrupted his haven, so he’ll want to get some distance from here, rest up, and establish himself somewhere else.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Ted cut in. “Or maybe he’s going to have another thing walking around with him like Igor back there.” He pointed a thumb at the wight. “You were way the hell off with that thing in the diner, Richard.”

  “This isn’t typical!” Richard yelled back. “Nothing here is like how it’s supposed to be! You heard the daeva talk, it was messing with us the entire time, but it’s done now. It’s only us and him.”

  “Somehow, I think hunting witches requires some skill in improvisation.” Ted’s gaze caught Richard’s in the rearview mirror. “We can’t get caught with our pants down again, Richard. You asked the stupid daeva what it was here for and what it was doing rather than what kind of defenses the damn witch had.”

  “You could have said something, Ted, you could have offered a suggestion instead of sitting there ready to shit your pants!” A well of anger burst open and surged out of his mouth. “You’ve been riding my ass all night, but what the hell good have any of your suggestions been?”

  Calm down.

  Richard shook his head and spoke again before Ted could counter. “There’s a lot of energy up in the air. It’s turning things on end. Letting these very powerful entities move between The Outside and here, it’s disrupting the power of this warlock, and it’s giving us a chance here. I’m making this up as I go along, I am improvising.”

  Ted scoffed. “Well, what was the point of learning about the daeva thing then? Why’d you want to know?”

  “Ted.” Richard shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? That is something that used to have a religion around it. Why the hell would it be making house calls? And we did learn more from it.”

  “What’s that?” Beth finally interjected, more interested in the story than the argument.