by Sam Witt
Zeke cracked his window and lit his pipe. He didn’t look at Joe for permission, and Joe didn’t think it was a good idea to tell the old man to put it out. Zeke clung to the clay bowl, sucking on the tobacco until smoke leaked from his nostrils and was pulled out the window. It took Zeke a while to build up his nerve to continue the story. “I ain’t gonna pretend that they didn’t do no wrong. But I ain’t gonna condemn them for what they done, neither. It was a different time, and the world was a harder place. The people who founded Pitchfork, they swore oaths that kept them alive, oaths that led them down dark paths.”
“But that was a long time ago, and the world has moved on. I couldn’t even tell ya the last time the long-dead god they swore to asked for anything.” Zeke sucked in more smoke, held it, then let his words slip between his lips along with the cloud. “People forgot and tried to pretend the bad old things never happened.”
“I reckon maybe that was a bad choice,” Joe said. “Because I can tell you the last time your piece of shit god did something. It did something two days ago, it did something yesterday, and it did something today. And I’m pretty goddamn sure it’s going to do something tonight if I don’t put a stop to it.”
“You ain’t got no right to get all high and mighty with me, Joe.” Zeke jabbed at the air with the stem of his pipe. “Ya stop to think maybe the reason no one had the balls to tell ya this little story is because they was afraid of what ya might do to them? Ya think I kept this secret because I didn’t want to tell ya? Yer only hearin’ it now because yer the lesser of two evils that might kill me. And that’s the first time that’s ever been true.”
That bit of truth caught Joe off guard and sucked the wind out of his sails. He’d never thought Zeke was afraid of anything, much less him. Did they all think Joe was some kind of inflexible tyrant that shot first and asked questions never? “You really think that’s the kind of man I am?”
Zeke sighed and drew on his pipe. “It ain’t just your temper, Joe. Ya ain’t ever gonna look at me the same way now that ya know. In the back of yer head, there’ll always be a little spark of suspicion any time somethin’ happens around me. And it’s the hypocrisy of it all. That thing ya swore to, that old bastard up on the hill…is that’s so different from what my ancestors did?”
Joe felt the weight of his badge against his chest. Zeke had a point, one that was the reason Joe hardly ever wore his badge in the open these days. He kept it in his shirt pocket, and only pulled it out when he needed to call on the power of his office, or when he wanted to put a little fear into someone. Because the Long Man wasn’t quite what Joe had always believed, and while he’d helped the Night Marshal in the past, it’d become very clear that the old fucker had some plans of his own. Plans that didn’t bode well for Pitchfork, or people in general. “Fine. I’m not going to point any fingers. But what are we supposed to do about this?”
“I ain’t got all the answers,” he grumbled. “I reckon our old god’s come back to claim what it thinks we owe. But we wasn’t the only ones to swear an oath—the god had to swear to keep its part of the bargain. My guess is that bond gets passed down to the last member of each family’s line.”
“So how do we stop it?”
“If we could break the oath, then it ain’t got any leverage. It won’t be able to take back what it gave, then. Of course, we ain’t gonna be able to hold onto it, either.” Zeke turned back to the window. “Ya know that’s gonna change things around here. Lotta this county was built on bits and pieces of power from that god. We yank the rug out, shit’s liable to fall apart somewhere down the line.”
Joe didn’t have the patience for a history lesson. Somehow, he and his father before him had both missed the secret cult living right under their nose for the past however long it had been. Joe felt stupid. Worse, he was pissed at himself for keeping people so scared they wouldn’t even talk to him about this shit. “We’ll have to worry about that somewhere down the line. Right now, I’d like to keep the rest of the people on its hit list alive and make sure it doesn’t set itself up as the queen of Pitchfork. How do we break the oaths?”
“Killing us would do it, but I ain’t too fond of that solution. It might not even work, really. Might just give our power back to the spider goddess, and no one wants that.” Zeke tamped out his pipe with the calloused ball of his thumb and gave a one-armed shrug. “Maybe there’s other ways, but I don’t know ’em. Compacts between men and their supernatural patrons ain’t my specialty.”
Joe let his mind chew on the old man’s words as he drove on in silence. A few miles down the road, he thought he might know how to stop Itsike. The problem was, the solution might make a bigger mess than the one already on his plate.
19
Stevie didn’t waste any time watching Mildred’s home burn. The elementals she’d bound to the task would reduce the house to ashes, but there wouldn’t be a single blade of grass scorched beyond its foundations.
Which was good because Stevie didn’t think she had the strength to put out any fire larger than what you’d find on the head of a match. Mildred’s death had broken the Conclave, and Stevie’s power was leaking out of it. She still had some of the old spark left, but she didn’t know how long it would last. “Let’s roll, little bit,” she said to Elsa and stomped on the Rambler’s gas pedal.
She took her mind off her own problems by worrying about her son. They’d sent Al to the Woodhawks’ place, which might have been the same as sending him into an ambush. She needed to catch up to her boy and help him if he was in danger.
Next to her on the Rambler’s wide seat, Elsa whooped and raised her hands over her head like she was riding a roller coaster. The old car rocketed through the countryside, catching air as it flew from the tops of hilly two-lane roads and squealing as Stevie forced it around sharp corners.
She made it to the Woodhawks’ house in record time and brought the Rambler to a screaming halt with both of the passenger side wheels on the front lawn. Stevie’s heart sank when she saw the front door hanging cockeyed on its hinges, the frame splintered around it. As she and Elsa raced up to the house, she could see spider webs clotting the windows and dripping from the eaves. A ragged fringe of silk framed the door, too, but Al must’ve clawed through the webs that had blocked his way.
She didn’t want to bring Elsa inside, but she also couldn’t leave her out on the lawn. As weak as she was, Stevie couldn’t afford to split her attention between her son and daughter being in danger.
“I’ll stay close, Mama!” Elsa shouted, keeping pace with her running mother. “I got some tricks of my own.”
As they crossed the threshold, Stevie could hear shouts and shrill, inhuman screeches coming from deeper inside the house. The guttural roar of a shotgun split the air, followed by a bestial howl that filled Stevie with primal fear. For a split second, all she wanted to do was grab her baby and run out of the house before whatever made that noise could get to her.
But only for a second because she recognized it as Al’s roar. Her son was going to war, and her place was beside him.
Stevie suddenly found herself faced with a spider roughly the size of a pit bull. Its legs spanned the hallway while its thick torso bobbed up and down and yellow venom oozed from its fangs. It regarded her with eight inscrutable black eyes, their facets glinting with an evil intelligence. The enormous arachnid didn’t leap to the attack but repositioned itself in response to Stevie’s motions, preventing her from moving forward.
Stevie didn’t have time to work up a complicated spell or call on any elementals. She reached deep for what strength she had left and spat a curse through forked fingers. Black tears leaked from her eyes, and shadows clung to her like a tattered cloak as the hex lashed out at her enemy.
Wisps of black mist wrapped around the screaming spider’s joints. One by one, its legs popped free from its body. The wounded creature flailed its legs and painted the entryway with streamers of gruesome green ichor.
Stevie raised h
er fist in victory, but she knew something was wrong. She was weaker than she’d thought and had to lean against the wall to keep from pitching over onto her face. Until Stevie could select a new member of the Conclave, her powers were dangerously diminished. While she could restore her strength in time, the longer it took for them to choose a new member of the Conclave, the longer it would take for her to recover. Their adversary had outmaneuvered them again, crippling her when she needed her strength the most. In a rage, she drove the toe of her cowboy boot through the hobbled spider’s face, splattering what passed for its brains down the hall. She grabbed Elsa by the hand and swung the girl over the spider’s carcass as she advanced toward the fight. “This motherfucker is gonna pay,” she growled.
She found her son in the Woodhawks’ living room, surrounded on all sides by leaping spiders at least as large as the one she’d killed. He was wreathed in strands of silk, but he slashed his way free of the webs almost as fast as the spiders could spin them. Almost.
Stevie realized that Elsa was whispering, her head cocked to one side as she spoke with something Stevie could not see. A watery blue light leaked from Elsa’s eyes, casting flat shadows across the room. “Help’s comin’,” she said in a multitude of voices.
As the air rippled with unseen forces, Nancy Woodhawk popped up from behind the couch and unleashed a shotgun blast into one of the spiders as it lunged toward Al’s left side. The freakish arachnid exploded, its body turned inside out and its legs severed by the cone of searing buckshot.
Before its body could hit the floor, a blurred form snatched it from the air and devoured it. More spirits lashed out at the spiders, catching them in invisible claws and devouring them with bestial glee. The spirits chewed into the spiders, ripping out great chunks of their carapaces and sending segments of their chitinous legs spiraling across the room.
But even as Elsa’s surprise attack against the spiders diminished their numbers, reinforcements poured through the living room’s windows. “Al!” Stevie shouted in warning. She tried to work up another hex, but she was too weak to cast more than a handful of onyx sparks at their enemies.
Al staggered as three spiders hit him at once. One smashed into the backs of his thighs while a second plowed into his ribs just under his left arm. The third collided with the back of his neck, and their combined impacts nearly pitched him to the ground.
With a defiant roar, he speared his claws into the second spider, ripping it away from his side. But his follow-up attacks against the other spiders caught only air. Blood ran from the injury, slowing Al and sapping his strength.
Stevie knew she had to end this, and she had to end it soon, no matter what it cost. “Stand back, little bit,” she warned Elsa and threw herself into the attack.
Streamers of black energy burst from Stevie’s hands and lashed out at the arachnids like a swarm of striking copperheads. She could feel the strength leaking from her every second she maintained the attack, but Stevie would not let up until the spiders were gone and her family was safe. She sagged, nearly falling to her knees, but pressed the attack until the last of the spiders splattered against the walls.
When the final ruptured carapace clattered to the floor, Stevie fell along with it. She landed on her hands and knees, head hung low, long hair falling around her face like a golden veil. She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and groaned. Every inch of her body ached; her muscles felt like they’d been wrung out like used bath cloths. Worse, there was something wrong inside of her. The source of her power felt raw and bloody, like the gaping socket of an extracted tooth.
She smelled fresh meat and felt strong hands helping her back to her feet. She leaned against Al, who eased her back onto the Woodhawks’ couch.
“Al ain’t got no clothes on,” Elsa said, choking on her giggles.
Stevie laughed, a weak and anemic sound that still managed to raise her spirits. “It’s not polite to point out when other people are naked,” Stevie admonished. “Al can’t help that he spends most of his time running around with dogs. I think he’s plumb forgotten how to wear clothes.”
Al grumbled and snatched a comforter off the back of the couch. “You people are hilarious.”
Nancy stood up from behind the couch, shotgun resting across her shoulders. “If y’all are done farting around, maybe one of you could get a look at my sister?”
“Oh, shit,” Stevie said and struggled to her feet. “I’m sorry, Nancy, I didn’t know anyone was hurt.”
“She was hurt before you got here. Those fucking spiders almost got us. If Al hadn’t showed up when he did...” Nancy reached out to help Stevie around the couch, her brow furrowed when she realized how weak the witch was. “You look like hell, Stevie.”
Stevie didn’t have the energy for a witty comeback for Nancy. She sank to the floor next to Liz and reached out to grasp the injured woman’s wrist. There was a pulse, but it was weak and erratic. A pair of punctures in Liz’s shoulder had stained her shirt red. “I’m going to try, Nancy, but I don’t know what kind of venom these things are packing. Cross your fingers, and pray.”
Stevie didn’t wait for Nancy to respond. She clamped her left hand over Liz’s wounds and bent her concentration to the task of healing the injured woman. A year ago, she could’ve snapped her fingers and rid Liz of even the deadliest poison. But since taking up her dead mother’s mantle as the Bog Witch of Pitchfork County, Stevie was far more skilled at destroying things than she was at curing the wounded. With Mildred dead and the Conclave ruptured, even those talents were quickly fading.
She couldn’t give up, though. Not just because she’d known Liz for most of her life, but because letting her die might give the adversary too much of an edge. Stevie didn’t know for certain, but she had a sneaking suspicion that each of the deaths increased its strength. She thought they might still have a chance to beat it, but it was a near thing. One more founding family member dead might tilt the odds too far into her enemy’s favor.
The poison was malignant, an almost sentient force that fought against Stevie and her attempts to purge it from Liz’s body. She could feel her strength fading, flowing into Liz to battle with the poison. It was like a draining her own blood into a bottomless well, and she struggled to hang on as the fight for life raged on. She could taste the poison, a bitter, metallic burn at the back of her throat, and worried that her empathic link to the dying woman might kill them both.
Stevie ground her teeth and pushed back against the venom until she could feel it burning away under the heat of her power. Its sulfurous stink filled her nostrils and snapped her back to attention. She’d almost been out of it, almost collapsed under the strain of purging the venom, but victory was within her grasp. She just needed a few more seconds, just a few moments more, and the dire poison would be gone.
Al shouted a wordless warning, and Stevie felt something huge slam into the living room’s floor. She fell over her patient, instinctively covering the wounded woman with her own body. She struggled to maintain her concentration, forcing herself to ignore her son’s enraged shouts, to finish healing Liz. She hated herself for it, but she didn’t have a choice. She was too far committed to healing the fallen woman to pull back now. If she tried to protect Al, all three of them were going to end up dead.
Al screamed in pain, and Stevie cried along with him. She screamed her rage at the poison that would not die, she screamed at her own weakness, and she screamed at the cruel fate that had ripped Mildred away and wounded the Conclave so deeply. And in that scream, she found a well of strength. A fountain of rage bubbled up inside her, and she used it to push back against the venom.
Something hot and wet and sticky gushed against Stevie’s palm, filling the air with the scent of rot. Liz sucked in a whooping breath and bucked up against Stevie’s hand, knocking the witch off balance. Stevie groaned and tried to get back to her feet, but she was spent. Her arms and legs were as limp as wet noodles, and her head buzzed with the beginning strobes of a migraine. She hea
rd Al shout again, and something crashed into the wall with enough force to shake the whole house. A shotgun roared, and an inhuman wail stabbed at Stevie’s ears.
She crawled to the arm of the couch, shivering with a bone-deep cold, and managed to lever herself up to her knees. She almost wished she hadn’t.
The monstrosity from Mildred’s house had arrived. Her son was still faster than the spider-beast, but his strength was fading as the blood from his chest wound kept leaking away. He threw quick, sharp punches into the spider freak’s face, but Stevie knew if he didn’t loose the Beast soon, the thing was going to get the better of him.
Al got in a lucky kick that shoved the spider-beast back, and Nancy took advantage of the distance to unload the shotgun’s remaining barrel into it. The buckshot sizzled as it burrowed into the thing’s flesh, but the wound didn’t seem mortal. Blood dribbled from a dozen holes, but the spider-beast didn’t seem to care. It reared up on four of its legs and lashed out at Al with the other four. He managed to avoid two of the legs, but the second pair scored deep slashes across his shoulders. Blood splashed out of his wounds and soaked into the carpet at Elsa’s feet.
Elsa’s mouth hung slack, and blue light poured from it and both of her eyes. A multi-voiced drone throbbed from somewhere deep within her throat, and Stevie could feel the hairs begin to rise on the back of her neck. Spirits were answering Elsa’s call, and as they swarmed into the room, their presence drove the temperature toward freezing.
Stevie watched in awe as the air shimmered with a host of enraged ghosts. She could feel their presence like a weight pressing against her, and their hunger was like a cold wind against her face. They shrieked and flung themselves at the spider-beast, latching onto it like lampreys onto a shark’s belly. They swelled with stolen power, drinking deeply of the spider’s strength, slowing it and weakening it with each passing second.