by Sam Witt
“Whatever ya say,” Mildred grumbled, “but yer asking for trouble with that one.”
Joe nodded and moved around to the driver’s side door of the pickup. “I’m always asking for trouble. But if you call the sheriff, then all the spiders that I just know are hiding in that trailer are going to be her problem, not mine.”
Mildred cackled at that and waved Joe on. “Get on out of here, Marshal,” she said. “I don’t want ya to see me get up on my broom and fly away. Ya might see up my skirts, and that ain’t ladylike.”
Joe backed the truck away from the dirty trailer, and the spider-wrapped body, and wondered just how much he’d bitten off this time.
4
Zeke’s stump was a knurled clump of pink skin and scar tissue that jutted from under the strap of his overalls. It’d taken months for the wound to heal, even with the help of Stevie’s magic, and now that the bandages were off he displayed the remnants of his arm like a badge of courage. He stomped out of his ramshackle house shirtless despite the late winter chill in the air, his nicotine-yellowed beard hanging down over the bib of his overalls, a pipe clenched in what remained of his teeth. “What the fuck are ya doing at my place?”
Joe slammed the pickup’s door and lobbed a sealed pouch of pipe tobacco at Zeke. “You look real pretty today, too.”
Even with his advanced age and one arm, the old man was still fast enough to snatch the tobacco out of the air and stow it away in a deep pocket of his overalls in one smooth motion. “That a new truck ya got there?”
Joe looked back at the rusted-out heap he’d picked up from a used lot a few months back. His last truck had met an untimely end at the hands of some very ornery men, and he still hadn’t got the new one broken in. It just didn’t have the same personality as the one he’d grown up driving. He shrugged. “New to me.”
Zeke chuckled and invited Joe into the house with a wave of his good arm then vanished indoors.
The place was even smaller than Joe remembered. There was barely enough space in the front room for Zeke’s ratty love seat and a bent wooden chair for visitors. Another chair, this one of wrought iron, squatted in the corner with all four of its legs bolted to the floor. Shadows clung to the dark metal, a reminder of its grim purpose. Over the years, the old man had used that chair for dozens of exorcisms. Joe wondered if his old friend was still up to the task.
Zeke caught him looking at the chair and shook his head. “Ain’t got the stomach for it anymore.”
It should have been a relief. Joe didn’t agree with the yarb doctor’s methods. Exorcisms were risky things, and even when they were successful they left the victims vulnerable to another possession. Once a demon found the door to a person’s soul, there was no way to close it. In Joe’s eyes, that meant the only true cure for possession was execution. Still, if Zeke had given up his calling, there was one less good man trying to do good work in a world that had become very bad. “Sorry to hear that.”
The remains of Zeke’s shoulder twitched in a halfhearted shrug. “Shit happens. And I know ya didn’t just stop by to bring me something to fill my pipe. What’s got yer tail feathers ruffled?”
Joe took a seat and rested his elbows on his knees with his chin in his hands. “Shit’s getting out of hand. Something’s raising hell in Pitchfork, but I don’t have enough to get a read on it. Plus, these fucking headaches…”
“Them monsters still got ya down?”
Joe nodded. “It’s like dangling from high-voltage wires. As long as I hang onto the power, it’s all good. But my arms are getting tired, and if I let loose, it’s gonna be a hell of a fall. If I try and climb down, I’ll ground out and get burnt to a fucking crisp.”
Zeke lit his pipe and took a few contemplative puffs. “Ya made a hard choice. Probably one that seemed like a great idea at the time. But once ya forge a bond like that, especially with old monsters like ’em ones, breaking it is a lot harder than ya’d think.”
“Those aren’t exactly words of wisdom.”
A shadow fell across Zeke’s face. His eyebrows furrowed, and he sucked his lips in around his pipe stem. Joe could see the old man had gone far away, falling into a hole of his own memories, reliving some cracked fragment of his past.
Joe sat quietly in his chair, looking at his creased palms. They were marred by bubbled pockmarks from the inferno at Ladue. He turned his hands over to see knuckles covered in bites from demonic bats. His whole life, it seemed, had been one battle after another, and he looked the part.
Zeke blinked and took a long pull from his pipe. “Sorry about that; I just…”
Joe waved the lapse away. The years were stealing Zeke away, bit by bit. It wouldn’t be long before there was nothing left. “It’s nothing.”
The old man gave Joe a sad smile. “It’s a fuckload more’n nothin’. The days come like crows and peck away at the seeds of my thoughts. Some day, they’ll get the last kernel. But I don’t reckon ya come up here to listen to an old man whine about livin’ too long.”
The Night Marshal tapped the side of his head. “I know that feeling. I don’t know what to do, Zeke.”
“Ya still got both of them locked up in there?” Zeke asked, tapping the top of his head with the bowl of his pipe.
“Yeah, they’re still there.” Joe winced at the memory of how he’d cheated death by stealing power from the Long Man and the Haunter in Darkness. He had a chunk of each of them stuck in his head now, and they were constantly at war with one another and with him. He was still able to pull strength from both of them, but only because they were too busy fighting one another to spend much time resisting him. But it was taking all he could steal to offset the damage their constant fighting was doing to him. The Long Man was starting to win his fight and had been growing stronger. Joe could feel the balance starting to tip. If it went too far, the Long Man would just destroy the Haunter, and then turn on Joe. It was like having a ticking time bomb stuck inside his skull. He couldn’t tell when it would go off, but when it did, there wouldn’t be much left of him.
Zeke understood Joe’s dilemma. They’d talked about it at length, and the old man had been spending a lot of time thinking about it. “Gotta get ’em out of there at the same time. Elsewise, whichever one ya leave behind’s gonna eat ya alive.”
Which was the heart of the problem. Joe didn’t know how to get rid of one of them, much less deal with them both at the same time. It was taking way too much of his time and strength just to hold himself together. What had started as a dark blessing, a way to escape from an inevitable doom, was turning into a long, slow, painful death. “That’s what I reckoned. No idea how I’ll get it done, though.”
Zeke nodded and gave a little shrug, the scarred flap of his left arm bobbing along in time with his right. “Wish I had more help to offer. At least I can fix ya up with some of my sassafras tea to ease yer pain.”
The old man hoisted himself up out of the love seat and hobbled into the tiny kitchen. There wasn’t room for Joe in there while the old man was working, so he leaned against the doorway and watched his friend putter around. He was amazed at how quickly Zeke had adapted to having a single arm. He held the teapot with his ring and little finger under the handle and flipped up the sink’s tap with his thumb. It should’ve been awkward, but he handled it with ease. He winked at Joe as he placed the teapot on the potbellied wood stove. He banged on the iron grate at the front of the stove and bellowed, “Get your asses to work in there. I ain’t got all day.”
There was a faint rumbling from inside the stove, and a sullen red glow emanated from its grate. The heat reached Joe where he stood by the doorway, and he knew it wasn’t natural. “Got a salamander trapped in there?”
Zeke grinned and wagged his head. “Yer old lady dropped a couple elementals in there the last time she swung by. They seem kinda settled, so I figured I’d let ’em stay.”
Sometimes, Joe wondered if the world wouldn’t be a better place if everyone knew just a little magic. Charmed fi
re elementals could provide enough energy to power whole cities, and as long as you had someone nearby who could keep a chain on them, you wouldn’t even have to worry about pollution. He chuckled at the thought, remembering not too long ago how hard he’d been on magic and its practitioners.
Not even a year back, the Night Marshal would’ve busted open Zeke’s stove and killed off the elementals just to make sure they didn’t have a chance to get up to any mischief. But the events of the past few months had softened his views on sorcery. He still hadn’t decided if that was a good or bad thing.
Joe rubbed his chin and dove into the next problem. “Wanted to talk to you about something I saw this morning.”
Zeke poured the boiling water over a little copper pot of shredded sassafras roots and raised an eyebrow in Joe’s direction. “Ya bringing trouble to my doorstep again?”
“I sure as hell hope not. But honestly, I don’t really know what this thing is.”
Joe dug the cone out of his satchel and carefully unwrapped its top half. He left the tattered rag wrapped around the rounded base and held it out for Zeke to see.
The old man stirred the steeping roots with a silver spoon and eyeballed the translucent object. He didn’t reach for it and didn’t look at it for very long before turning his eyes back to Joe. “Looks a little bloody. Who’d ya rip that out of?”
“Jimmy Ginlet.” Joe knew the kid by reputation but had never run into him before he’d found him hanging from a tree. Small-time dope pusher, big-time loser, came from an old family that had fallen on hard times back in the ’70s like most of the rest of Pitchfork’s residents. None of that added up to a giant spider wrapping the kid up and hanging him from a tree, so he was obviously missing something. “Know anything about him?”
Zeke turned away to fetch a pair of mugs from the shelf over the sink. He plopped them down on the counter next to the stove then scooped up a plastic teddy bear full of honey from a rack behind them. He squirted a dollop of honey into each mug and put the bear back in its place. “Not much. Ginlets were one of Pitchfork’s first families, but most of ’em have long since gone into the ground. I did hear his granny’s still kicking up a fuss in that old folks’ home over in Joplin. She always was kind of a bitch.”
Zeke finished pouring the tea into the mugs and handed one of them to Joe. “That’ll take the edge off, but it ain’t a fix for what ails ya.”
The tea did hit the spot. As it settled in his belly, Joe could feel his headache pulling back. He gulped the rest of the tea then held the mug out to Zeke with a sheepish grin. “How about another round?”
Zeke rolled his eyes and took Joe’s mug. He handed Joe the one he’d made for himself and hadn’t managed to even sip. “I’m going to put the rest of this into a flask for ya. Don’t drink it all at once.”
The second cup of tea didn’t have as pronounced an effect as the first. It smoothed out more of the rough edges but didn’t deepen Joe’s relief. That was the way with most things; the first hit was the strongest. He knew the day was coming when even that first drink of the day wouldn’t be able to wrestle his headache into submission. He’d lain down with the dogs, and now their fleas were killing him one day at a time. Joe went back to questioning Zeke to shake off the gloomy shadow that had fallen over him. “That’s all you got on this guy?”
Zeke stoppered the old flask and handed it back to Joe. “What do I look like? Pitchfork’s official genealogist? I knew his old lady, knew his grandparents. They kept to ’emselves, didn’t get into much trouble that I saw. Ya never crossed paths with them?”
Joe shook his head. He’d never run into the Ginlet clan on any official Night Marshal business. Which made it all the more curious that one of the last surviving members of that line appeared to have been eaten by a giant fucking spider. “They never gave me any trouble. But this kid’s death is mighty peculiar. Something wrapped him up in a web then shoved this spike down his throat. Ringing any bells?”
Zeke held out his hand, and Joe gave him the rock, careful to keep the stone from touching the old man’s hand. Until they knew what it was, it didn’t make a lot of sense to go around getting all touchy-feely with it. That’s all it took for some magic to get a grip on you.
Joe had finished his tea and slipped the flask into his jacket by the time Zeke finished eyeballing the rock. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look friendly, does it?”
Joe took the stone back from the old man, wrapped it up again, and shoved it into his satchel. “Guess I’ll go bang on a few more doors and see if anybody else knows what the hell this thing is.”
Zeke laughed and followed Joe to the front door. He let Joe out, and the two men locked eyes for a moment as winter’s chill turned their breaths into fog. “Yer sure this is a fight ya want to start?”
What Joe really wanted to do was ignore it. Let the sheriff handle the case. But Joe couldn’t trust anyone else to deal with this kind of shit. If he turned a blind eye, he’d wake up one day with something trying to stab it out of his head. “I don’t want to start anything. But I reckon I’m going to have to end this before I get any rest.”
“Be careful out there, Joe. There’s a change in the air, and the years are catching up to ya just as much as me.” Zeke shook his hand. “This shit we do takes its toll.”
Joe didn’t respond because there wasn’t anything left to say. He climbed into his old truck and caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview. Zeke was right. This job and all it entailed was eating at Joe. He felt hollow, and there was a distance in his eyes that he didn’t like. As he threw the truck into reverse and backed away from the old man’s cabin, Joe wondered just how many of these fights he had left in him.
He reckoned it wasn’t many.
5
The bottle of Gentleman Jack felt warm between Joe’s palms. It sat on the table in front of him, and he turned it from side to side. He hadn’t even looked at a bottle in well over a month, but on his ride back to the house from Zeke’s all he could think about was this one.
When he’d given up the booze, he’d hidden this bottle down in the basement. It’d been his insurance policy in case he didn’t have what it took to stay on the wagon. The idea of not having any booze in the house had terrified him back then. He’d been tougher than he’d thought, though, and the bottle had stayed put.
Until this morning. As soon as he came home from Zeke’s place, he’d gone down and dug it out. He’d been sitting and staring at the bottle for the last hour, trying to think of reasons not to crack it open and pour himself a slug.
In the end, the only reason that mattered to him was the one thing Joe was on the brink of losing. His life. The struggle to reclaim that life, and the family that came with it, had been brutal. And now he felt it drawing to an end despite his best efforts.
The daily battles with the monsters in his head was wearing him thin. He could drink the sassafras tea, and that would probably buy him a few months and ease his pain. But unless he came up with a solution, a permanent one, he wasn’t going to live out the year. He rotated the bottle on its base, watching the deep amber fluid slosh against the glass. The ghost of its smoky taste tingled on his tongue. He could feel its buzzing, burning rush sizzling up his spine. Would it be so wrong to take a sip? Surely he could have just one drink to smooth the roughest edges from his worries?
“You going to play with that all day, or do you want me to pour you a drink?” Stevie’s voice slapped Joe out of his reverie. He’d been so intent on his own bullshit he hadn’t even heard her come into the kitchen. She sat down at the table across from him and rested her hand on the bottle’s cap. “What’s this about?”
Joe took his hands off the bottle and rested his elbows on the table. “More of the same. Another dead guy, some hoodoo bullshit that needs my attention.”
He hadn’t told Stevie about his real worries. Joe kept those to himself because the last thing his wife needed on top of all the other troubles she’d landed in because of his job was to
find out that her husband was dying. Looking at her, at the calm confidence emanating from her, made Joe believe he could beat this. He didn’t need to drink; he just needed to get his ass in gear.
“Wanna talk about it?” Since reclaiming her title as the Bog Witch, Stevie had become very involved in Joe’s job. He didn’t really like leaning on his wife too much, but he had to admit she made a hell of a partner. Having her close made him feel stronger, surer of himself.
“It’s pretty nasty.”
“Nastier than that time we ran over a possessed little boy and had to scoop his guts off the gravel?”
“Fair enough.” Joe described the scene as he’d found it then picked his satchel up from the floor next to him and dumped the handkerchief-wrapped stone out onto the table. “Be careful of that, especially when you unwrap it. No sense touching it until we know what it is.”
Stevie rolled her eyes and flicked her fingers at the rag-wrapped stone. Her magic tugged at the cloth until the quartz lay exposed on the table between them. She leaned closer to it but kept a respectful distance. After a few moments, she shrugged. “It’s powerful. And old. Can’t figure much more than that about it.”
“Of course it’s powerful.” Joe let out a long sigh. Looking at the thing made his teeth itch. Just having it in his house made him nervous. Whatever it was, whatever had made it, wasn’t fucking around. There was real power here. The kind of eldritch strength that he did not want to tangle with. “Because it can’t ever be some punk kid kicking around with his My First Grimoire playset. It’s always gotta be something ancient and ornery.”
“What’d Zeke have to say about it?”