Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  ‘You’re on your own time, then.’

  Brandon’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, yes sir.’ He began skipping backwards towards the pen, ‘Yes, sir,’ he said one more time before turning to run over to his waiting lady.

  Peter walked slowly towards his house, observing the young lovers-to-be. Brandon leapt over the rail and guided Blackie’s hindquarters over beside the fence. Heather stepped on the top rail; Brandon held her hand as she pivoted her hips and kicked her leg over Blackie’s side; she eased down onto the saddle with a melodic laugh. Brandon said something and she laughed again, this time coyly or shyly covering her mouth. Peter caught Blackie’s gaze; still full in spirit from the completion of the harvest, Peter cast his pastoral silence into the depths of the horse’s opal stare. Blackie’s head shuddered once, then a second time—Peter blinked and recovered the world around him and saw that Brandon was trying to coax Blackie towards the centre of the pen with a few light jerks on the reins. Peter turned and continued on toward the house. He heard the light shuffle of hooves on the dirt. Brandon spoke. Heather laughed. Then

  ‘Whoa!’

  Peter looked back at the pen.

  Blackie stamped and turned, whipping his massive neck around and tossing Brandon from side to side, trying to shake the young man’s grip on the reins.

  ‘Whoa! WHOA!’ Brandon called ineffectively.

  Heather cried out half in panic, half in glee—knowing full well she could not control the beast beneath her but not yet believing any harm would befall her. Any illusion of safety soon disappeared; Blackie threw Brandon halfway across the pen where he bounced off the hard dirt; Heather screamed his name. Blackie reared back; Heather reflexively grabbed his mane tight with terror, pulling her body nearly flush against his neck. This instinctive reaction caused her to remain in the saddle as Blackie took two quick strides towards the far side of the fence then made an impossible leap over the top rail. Peter stared, slack-jawed at the dynamic display of strength. Heather closed her eyes and kept her grip on the horse, afraid for her life to let go. Brandon scrambled to his feet and ran after the horse, vaulting over the fence with his legs over one side, sprinting after the quickly receding mount and rider, calling ‘Blackie!’, calling ‘Heather!’

  Peter watched mutely as the horse and girl vanished into the woods, Brandon trailing after.

  Peter ran out to the fields to tell Jack Johnson what had happened; the two of them got in Peter’s truck and drove off to join the pursuit. Hasty communications were made with the state highway patrol and the local sheriff’s office and the neighbouring farms. A cruiser caught up with Peter and Jack at the Hull River bridge and the officer took their statements. He told the pair to go back to Peter’s farm in case the horse turned back around and tried to get back home. When they got there, Brandon was staggering back on cramped legs, his lungs burning. Two dozen farmers and townsfolk gathered at Peter’s farm with flashlights and water bottles and heavy jackets. They set off into the woods in a broken, shifting line just as dark settled in completely. Peter had a five-shot revolver in his pocket; he didn’t tell anyone what else might lurk in the woods. He suspected the dog-things wouldn’t bother the search party. He suspected as well that they wouldn’t find Heather, though none among them searched with greater fervour or diligence than Peter. He continued on the next day with the official, organised search that took over at dawn after the exhausted first wave admitted failure. All saw his genuine remorse, though none blamed him: after all, the horse was in a pen, attended by a well-liked and capable (and now distraught and suffering) young man. Men stood at the pen and judged the height of the top rail and whistled and shook their heads in disbelief (though none actually disbelieved). In the light of day, trackers and dogs traced the horse’s path to the Hull River, but neither could pick up the trail on the other side. Helicopters proved ineffectual, unable to parse out anything among the mottled fire of autumn colour smouldering through the broad-leaf canopy. The formal search was discontinued after a week. Some close to the family kept looking as they were able. Heather Getley was never seen again. It was believed the girl had drowned, though her body never came ashore downstream. Not even a scrap of clothing was ever discovered.

  Twelve days after jumping the fence and taking Heather to her fate in the woods or beyond, Blackie returned to Peter’s farm. Peter called the sheriff; a deputy came out to the farm to take another statement and to inspect the horse, but came away without any new information. It was unlikely he could; Peter had painstakingly removed and hidden every foreign article that Blackie returned with before calling the sheriff. He had even brushed the horse and rinsed its hooves so no clue could be left to elicit interest.

  As the sun eased towards the horizon, coaxing a tremolo of rust from the south-western sky, Blackie had approached slowly from the direction he’d gone with the girl. Peter was in the yard. When the deputy asked him, he couldn’t remember why he’d gone out—the shock of seeing Blackie again drove it from his mind, he said, but in truth he thought (after the fact) that he knew Blackie was coming back and he’d been drawn out to witness the stallion’s return. Blackie walked unhurriedly straight at Peter, coming to a halt ten feet from his master. Garlands of strange flowers, faint, like purple fading to white, encircled the great black beast’s neck; interwoven with them were ribbons of green and red and gold stitched with ornate, free-form paisley patterns. Holding the mass together was a fine vine, braided and braided again, with tiny frilled stems tipped with small, blue-black berries that nearly disappeared against the animal’s dark flank. Tied to Blackie’s saddle were four small, animal-hide bags identical to the one Peter picked up outside the stable two weeks prior. Peter swallowed hard when he opened the first bag on Blackie’s left side: it contained dazzling quartz crystal, marbled pink and white, in hexagonal pieces cut neatly to finger-length. The metallic shush and clink of metal made the contents of the second bag easy to guess even before Peter opened it: coins, quarter-sized or smaller, silver and copper and even a few of perfect yellow gold huddled together in the bottom of the bag. Peter took out several pieces at random and saw that they had been cast with the bust of a man or animal on the face, but that the visage had been scratched away, leaving the image unidentifiable. The obverse side was left intact; on the copper was presented a human hand, on the silver, an animal’s paw (Peter did not recognise it from any track he’d encountered), on the gold, a cloven hoof. Peter let the bag of coins fall slack against Blackie’s side and crossed in front of him to investigate the others. Each was three-quarters-full with seed, chestnut-brown and slightly larger than a peppercorn. Peter scooped up a handful and let it fall back in the bag through the gaps between his fingers. He didn’t know what crop the seed produced. Clearly, he was meant to plant the seed, though he wasn’t sure if that labour was meant to benefit him or if it was a condition of the mysterious pact into which he’d stumbled. As he led Blackie back to the stable, Peter wondered what next year’s harvest would look like.

  Raise Up the Serpent

  This is going to be hell, Bradley Thurman thought as he walked up the steps to the church. Unusually, though sensibly, the doors were locked. Bradley knocked. A metallic clank quickly followed, announcing the turn of a latch in the old wooden doors. One door jerked open only slightly. A greying, portly woman no more than four feet tall stared out suspiciously at Bradley through thick lenses. A faded, fraying, lavender cardigan draped shapelessly over her squat frame.

  ‘Bradley Thurman,’ he announced. ‘I’m with social services. My boss, John Rog—’

  ‘He’s here,’ the woman’s pinched voice interrupted. ‘Come in quickly.’

  The door swung open further and Bradley entered. The woman shut and locked the door.

  ‘I’m Sister Dagmar.’ She turned and moved down the aisle of the nave.

  ‘Ah. I didn’t realise—’

  ‘The children didn’t seem to understand the habit. I changed.’

  Sister Dagmar stopped abruptly and grab
bed at the end of a pew. She lowered herself down to one knee, bowed, and genuflected, before struggling upright again. She looked back sharply at Thurman. He caught the implication, nodded limply, and waved his hand across his collarbone.

  ‘Are the children in the church?’

  Sister Dagmar turned her head around to scowl at Bradley; he didn’t know whether the look meant that his question was stupid or that the proposition it suggested was untenable.

  ‘They are in the school across the playground, through the back,’ she barked. Sister Dagmar’s tone made it clear that no further questions should be put to her.

  She led Bradley off to the right and through the south transept, down a short flight of stairs and through a dim hallway to an exterior door.

  ‘Back outside for a bit, then,’ Bradley noted. Sister Dagmar ignored the uneasy quip as she pushed open the door and went out into the playground.

  The wet blacktop glistened dully under overcast skies. Bradley stepped over a soggy skipping-rope coiled in a shallow puddle.

  ‘Come on,’ Sister Dagmar insisted.

  The school was a single-storey, L-shaped, brick building. Plexiglas windows ran the length of the long side facing the playground. Bradley saw a small shape run from left to right along the hall inside, away from the main doors at the intersecting angle. He wondered if the youth was a member of the church; he couldn’t imagine any of the children he’d come to see had been left unattended at this stage. He considered asking Sister Dagmar, but thought better of it. I’ll know soon enough.

  As they approached the double doors, a tall, reedy man in a tan windbreaker burst out into the courtyard. He struggled with an interior coat pocket reluctant to give up a rumpled pack of cigarettes. Bradley had to speak to make his presence known.

  ‘Hey, John.’

  John Rogers looked up, perplexed at the interruption, and then immediately embarrassed at having his weakness observed by a subordinate. He covered with annoyance. ‘Ah. Bradley. You’re finally here.’

  ‘It’s a long drive.’

  ‘From Louisville,’ Rogers added with a hint of derision.

  Bradley tried to answer as though he didn’t notice the tone. ‘No, I was in the office.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re up for this?’

  The question proceeded from the doubt to which Rogers had already alluded—that Bradley was a city boy with no particular empathy for the rural people of eastern Kentucky. Bradley silently resented the implication that he couldn’t perform his job adequately despite whatever truth Rogers’s veiled accusation contained.

  ‘I’m ready for anything.’

  A craggy cheek puffed out as one corner of Rogers’s mouth curled up in a smirk. ‘You think so? Wait’ll you see the pictures,’ he drawled. The cheek dropped and the smirk disappeared abruptly. ‘There are twelve children all together, not counting the infants; they took those to the hospital. The oldest is fourteen. I’ve got a classroom set up for you where he’s waiting.’

  ‘Come on, John!’ Bradley exclaimed. ‘Fourteen? He’s already an adult, for God’s sake. Let me talk to one of the younger—’

  ‘Look,’ Rogers interrupted. ‘We’ve got a Satanist cult and multiple homicides. With the adults all dead or fled, the only witnesses we have available to what was going on before the vigilante raid are the children.’

  ‘Before the raid? Are we here to help condone murder?’

  ‘We’re here to do our job!’ Rogers barked. ‘Cops got the raid. We get the kids, same as always! We get our answers, and it stands to reason the oldest will be able to fill us in the best.’

  ‘He’ll be too guarded. You know how they grow up fast out in the country. You know—’ Bradley wanted to say ‘how these people are’ but cut himself short.

  ‘Bradleee.’ Rogers stared down hard at his subordinate. ‘This situation will deteriorate. It’s only a matter of time until someone at city hall leaks where we put the kids, and then the media will be all over us. Hell, it’ll take the first affiliate snoop at the hospital all of ten minutes to spot the orderly with meth-mouth and offer him a bribe. We don’t have the resources to investigate these events and keep the wolves at bay. We need our answers fast. So would you please get in there and do your damn job?’

  Bradley frowned but protested no further. Instead, he asked, ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Zedekiah.’

  ‘Rather biblical for the child of a Satanist,’ Bradley observed.

  ‘Ra-ther.’ Rogers turned his back and began to fumble through his pockets again. Apparently unsatisfied with the scorn he’d already heaped upon Bradley he added, ‘But you know how these people are.’

  It wasn’t Bradley’s first visit to Vicksley. He had to admit, it was at least some sort of oasis of civilization in the mountains. ‘It’s got a Wal-Mart,’ Rogers had been quick to point out. Even so, Bradley knew that the surrounding area was impenetrable to an outsider, and you could get far off the beaten path without going very far at all. He had passed through enough sparsely-inhabited country on winding roads tracing austere peaks and lonely, shadowed valleys on his drive from Frankfurt to be certain that he was deep in the back of beyond by the time a stoplight once again came into view.

  Bradley walked up to the classroom door. Crap, maybe I’m not ready, Bradley thought as he flipped through a manila folder containing colour reproductions of the police photos. The scenes he looked at weren’t those of the bodies recovered from the ‘church’, but at the environs of the church itself, at the symbols and forms in the decoration and on the altar. A primal revulsion twisted in Bradley’s gut at the sight of these blasphemies; he tried to dismiss it as the result of some latent superstition from his lapsed Catholic upbringing.

  Cutting through his disgust came a stronger feeling of being watched. Bradley looked through the window in the classroom door and saw the youth staring out at him evenly, dispassionately.

  Shock? Bradley wondered. He was surprised to find himself hoping that the youth’s cold stare was the result of psychic trauma. He upbraided himself for the thought and went into the classroom.

  ‘Zedekiah?’

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ came the languid response.

  Zedekiah’s unblinking gaze followed Bradley as he crossed to the table and took his seat opposite the boy. Under a tussle of red-brown hair, several pimples dotted the slack face that narrowed to a weak chin. Zedekiah was in the middle of his growth spurt. Bradley estimated the youth’s gangly frame would stand a little over five feet. He visualised the loping forearms of awkward adolescence clutching schoolbooks over an embarrassing erection and wondered briefly if this young man would ever strike that classic pose; there was every possibility that Bradley’s charge was functionally illiterate.

  ‘Huh.’

  The short sound that popped out from Zedekiah’s mouth was like an abbreviated chuckle, and seemed to respond to Bradley’s thoughts. Bradley became embarrassed underneath the boy’s limpid stare and silently cursed himself for letting the strange circumstances of this case drive him to distraction.

  ‘Zedekiah, my name is Bradley Thurman. I work for the state of Kentucky’s Cabinet for Health and Family Services. I need to ask you a few questions about . . . the people you grew up with and their . . . church.’

  ‘Thought they burned it.’

  ‘Who—’

  ‘The mob that killt muh parents and the other grown-ups. I saw ’em set fire to the church.’

  ‘They, ah . . . I guess either it didn’t take or somebody put it out. Most of the structure is still intact. And all the stuff inside . . . I have these pictures from the police.’ Bradley indicated the folder.

  ‘Mm-hmm. Somebody’ll go back and burn it down soon enough. They won’t leave that undone.’ Zedekiah inhaled deeply through his nostrils. ‘Somethin’ in me kin jus’ about feel it startin’ to smoke.’

  Curiosity drove Bradley to exceed his purview.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened last night?’

  ‘Rec
kon them cop pictures prolly tell you pretty well all you wanna know.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it from you, if you want to tell me.’

  A quick patter of feet resounded in the hall and a blur of motion passed over the lower part of the window in the classroom door. Bradley guessed it to be the same child he’d seen before running back the other way.

  Zedekiah shrugged. ‘We was havin’ Wednesday night service. It was pretty lively, I s’pose. Little Eli was handlin’ snakes for the first time.’

  ‘Was there a lot of snake handling in your services?’

  ‘Oh, sure, you got to.’

  ‘Are you saying that it was compulsory—that the adults forced you to handle the snakes?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean like that. I mean you got to.’ Zedekiah looked at Bradley like the older man should understand what he meant. He grinned and shook his head slightly. ‘Guess you ain’t got much religion.’

  Bradley felt he was losing whatever respect the boy might have had for him. He tried to engage his interest: ‘Have you ever been bitten?’

  Zedekiah’s eyes lit up and he nodded vigorously. ‘Lookit,’ he said, and pulled his sleeves back to expose his skin. Small marks—little white scars, scabbed pox-marks, and recent purple-black raised wounds—adorned the boy’s forearms.

  Bradley’s disapproving scowl seemed to be just the response Zedekiah hoped for.

  ‘The poison burns your veins real good. Preacher says it is a cleansin’ fire right there in your body. It’d kill you, sure, but Preacher raises up the serpent and we pray at it, and we get delivered.’

  Bradley recognised the artefact mentioned and hurriedly searched through the pictures in his folder. He drew one out and turned it to face upright towards Zedekiah. It depicted a snake cast in dull brassy metal wrapped around a wooden staff. The mouth was open to show the fangs and tongue; the eyes appeared to have been painted red.