Wicked Prayer

by Norman Partridge

  Kyra managed to break away. She stumbled across the room. The storm whipped through the columbarium, slashed Kyra’s face with her own long tresses, and she whirled, brushing the hair from her face, grabbing for the Walther, but it had slipped free of her slashed coat pocket.

  The gun wasn’t there. But something else was, and quite suddenly.

  The window directly behind Kyra shattered, and a black wind rushed past her . . .

  Driven by black wings . . .

  The Crow brushed past Kyra’s face, its wing a violent slap against her cheek.

  "No!” Kyra cried.

  She jumped after the bird, the long, tattered coat tangling around her legs, flapping at her heels like funeral bunting, and she nearly tripped, nearly went down—

  She regained her balance. She wouldn’t fall. Not like Dan Cody. She wouldn’t go down on her knees. Not Kyra Damon—

  And then she goes down hard.

  And the wind is wilder now. The whole world is trapped in the giant wingbeat of a savage Crow, and Kyra glances at the altar . . . sees the Crow waiting there next to its porcelain counterpart, ready to protect it—

  "NO!" Kyra cries.

  Dan Cody starts toward her, but Kyra knows that the dead man isn’t getting anywhere fast. She struggles to get up. She has to get up. Her booted heels scrape smooth marble. She crawls across the floor, and her knee bumps the Walther, and she snatches it up with one hand and her black-nailed fingers find the edge of the altar and she rises—

  The Crow pecks at her fingers, and she pulls her hand away.

  And Cody is waiting for her, the noose still around his neck. But he doesn’t even care about that anymore. He doesn’t have time to care because there isn’t any time left for him.

  It is nearly over now. He is nearly finished and he knows it, the same way he knows that he must last just a little longer, and Kyra pulls the trigger again and again and again but it does no good. She drops the gun and her fingernails tear at Cody but she can’t fight him anymore, the Crow’s symbols have been washed from her skin and she is suddenly so very weak, weaker than she had been since forever and there is no time at all for her, no time for Dan Cody either and he has the end of the rope in his left hand and he twists it around Kyra’s neck once, twice, three times as they stand in the center of the room, face to face . . .

  A hot breath is trapped in Kyra’s lungs, and it flares like napalm.

  She looks into Dan Cody’s eyes, and for the first time she sees the pain there, and she almost understands the agony he feels when he looks at her face and sees the eyes of his love locked in a skull where they don’t belong.

  “You . . . took . . . everything!" he says.

  And Kyra knows that he is telling the truth. Suddenly, it all seems as simple as a fairy tale, and she’s surprised to find that she’s the villain.

  The witch who casts spells in a castle tower.

  Kyra knows her fairy tales. She knows what they do to witches.

  They hang them. That’s what they do.

  And the rope is already around her neck.

  Kyra opens her mouth but there’s no way to get a word out.

  The dead man releases the rope, shoves Kyra hard, and she stumbles across the room.

  One last stained-glass window waits, just ahead.

  A purple sky beyond it. . . and black wings . . .

  A shattering of midnight as she goes through the window, sails through the air . . .

  Kyra tumbled through the night with the rope tight around her neck, her fingers clawing the tower as she fell.

  The rope followed her through the window, pulling Dan Cody behind it, the noose tight around his neck. He twisted against the rope, sliding across the smooth marble floor, and his back slammed against the stone wall below the broken window, and the rope snapped taut as Dan took the full brunt of Kyra’s weight.

  As weak as he was, as close to the end, it was Dan Cody who bore that weight.

  He was built to do that. He did it now.

  He stared at the tobacco jars that filled the columbarium niche, at the porcelain faces of others who had walked with the Crow. Each one was familiar somehow—the soldier, the harlequin, the Cherokee, the ballerina, the bear and the wolf—and he knew that they all stood together as one, just as he knew that their strength gave him strength in a moment when he no longer had any of his own to offer.

  Whatever happened, Dan was a member of the Crow’s dark tribe now.

  He would protect his brothers and sisters, no matter the cost.

  The rope swung behind him, a whisper against black stone.

  His neck muscles were flexed, solid as a tree trunk.

  The rope, and the woman at the end of it, swung back and forth . . . back and forth . . .

  Soon enough it came to rest.

  So did Dan Cody.

  Kyra twisted at the end of the rope.

  Her eyes were open, for she was not dead. Somehow, she was still alive.

  She struggled. If she could just reach up, above her head. If her fingers could find the window ledge. If she could grab hold of it, if she could pull herself into the black tower . . .

  Her hand swept up, above her head, but no wall of black stone waited there.

  In its place was a thick branch. But that couldn’t be. Dan Cody had pushed Kyra from the columbarium tower . . . and suddenly here she was, hanging from a tree.

  She was hanging from a tree.

  A tree, she saw now, that stood in a Hansel and Gretel forest.

  A tree that stood in another world, a world she’d visited once upon a time.

  The world of the—

  Black caws broke the silence.

  From every corner of this world, the Crows came for Kyra Damon.

  In a black riot of slashing wings.

  Lilith Spain left the house in the light of morning.

  Outside, the air smelled clean, and there was sunshine.

  Lilith slipped on her dark glasses and tried not to breathe too deeply.

  There, that was better.

  She walked alone . . . but she didn’t have far to go.

  The man lay on a thick bronze slab.

  Johnny was his name. Lilith remembered that.

  She knelt at his side, staring into his open gray eyes.

  “Are you all right, Johnny?” she asked.

  The man’s mouth was open, and his lips were twisted into a sneer, but he did not say a word.

  So Lilith leaned closer to the man. “You hurt me last night,” she said. “I didn’t ask you to do that. It wasn’t very nice.”

  She looked at the man’s stomach. There was a big hole there, as if someone had tom him open like an old paper bag. And then she looked at his face, which was freckled with scabby red wounds.

  “That’s why you got hurt, you know. Because you hurt me. What goes around comes around.”

  Lilith stood up. Morning sunlight gleamed on the metal loops in the man’s eyebrow, his lip.

  Looking at the man, Lilith shivered. She was cold. Even on a sunny morning.

  The man was wearing a leather coat. She bent low, rolled the man onto his belly. With some effort she pulled the coat off his back. But it was very wet after a night in the storm, and it was way too big for her, anyway.

  Besides, it had a couple of bullet holes in the back.

  Lilith wouldn’t wear a coat like that.

  She dropped it on the ground.

  She took one last look at the man.

  What was his name, again? Already, it seemed she’d forgotten.

  Then she remembered.

  “Good-bye, Johnny,” she said.

  The man named Johnny didn’t say anything. Maybe he was crazy. People did all sorts of strange things when they went crazy. Lilith knew that.

  Still, the man bothered her. He’d said all sorts of things the night before, and now he just lay there on his torn belly and didn’t say a word. He didn’t even bother to sit up.

  “Be that way,” Lilith sa
id.

  And then she turned her back.

  There was a nice car parked on the winding driveway. Lilith thought that maybe it was Johnny’s.

  If it was, there might be something she’d want inside. Something better than the shot-up coat. So she opened the door, and she looked around.

  Nothing in the front seat but hamburger wrappers and road maps. Lilith didn’t care about those. There were guns in the backseat, but she didn’t care about those, either. And there were lots of CDs, but she cared even less about those than she did about the guns and the maps and the hamburger wrappers.

  So Lilith dug a little deeper, through a pile of clothes that were black and cold.

  That was when her fingers brushed something warm.

  Like a cat nestled in a laundry basket, she thought.

  She’d like a cat. It could keep her company.

  She pushed the clothes aside, uncovering the warm thing.

  But it wasn’t a cat.

  Not at all.

  It was a book.

  Lilith wasn’t disappointed. Not really. After all, the book was warm. And even if it was a book and not a cat, she knew that a book could keep her company, too.

  Lilith held the book tightly as she walked along.

  She couldn’t help herself

  She stroked it, petted it.

  Like it was a cat.

  Lilith walked in the forest. Alone. The way she always did.

  It was a nice morning. Lilith passed many headstones, and she knew the names on every one. She stopped at a steepled crypt, but there was no one inside to talk to her. So she walked through the dark forest, and she climbed the staircase of the black-walled columbarium, and she spent the morning on the second floor among brass urns and black jars and statues hollowed to hold bitter gray fistfuls of cremains.

  She listened for voices above, in the shadows of the tower chamber, hoping that just one of those souls would break their eternal silence.

  And this time, one did.

  “Hello,” it whispered. And; “Help me.”

  Lilith climbed the staircase.

  The storm had wreaked horrible damage on the third floor. There was broken glass everywhere. Smashed windows stared at Lilith like bright white sunshine eyes.

  A man lay under one of the broken windows. Lilith almost missed seeing him, then wondered how that could be possible. After all, the man had a rope around his neck, like a cowboy in an old movie. Lilith thought it was kind of funny, actually—sitting around like that, playacting like you were a cowboy.

  She walked over to the man.

  He must have been the one who had called to her.

  But he was just like the man in the cemetery. He didn’t say a word.

  Lilith turned, started down the staircase.

  “Wait,” a voice said. “Don’t go.”

  She turned again, and this time she saw the little creature who’d spoken to her. He was just a head, and a little head at that, and he was hanging by a long hank of hair, knotted to an iron sconce set in the wall.

  Lilith walked across the room, clutching the book to her breasts. It was nice and warm, but it wasn’t a cat ... or a person. Lilith knew that, just as she knew that it would be nice to have someone who would talk to her.

  Even someone who was only a shrunken head.

  "I saw a ghost last night,” she said. It seemed like a pretty good way to start a conversation.

  The little head bobbed on its hair, as if it were nodding. “I know.”

  She turned away, a little shy, a little embarrassed. “It wasn’t a very nice ghost.”

  “I know that, too.”

  Lilith smiled. It was wonderful to have someone to talk to.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “My name is Raymondo.”

  “I’m Lilith . . . Lilith Spain.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Lilith. That’s quite a big book you have there.”

  “I found it,” she said, and then she was suddenly embarrassed. “Well, I didn’t really find it, I guess. I took it from someone who doesn’t need it anymore.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that, Lilith. Not really.”

  “I guess not.”

  The little head stared at the book, smiling a miniature smile. “I take it you like to read, then?”

  “Oh, yes,” Lilith said. “I like to read.”

  Lilith was quiet for a long moment. She stared through the window, at the bright sun. She was glad she had her sunglasses. “Are you ever lonely, Raymondo?” Lilith asked.

  She waited a long moment for her answer.

  “Yes,” Raymondo said at last. “I’ve been lonely.”

  “It’s not good to be lonely, is it?”

  The little head swayed back and forth.

  “No,” it said. “It’s very bad to be lonely ... or alone.”

  Cuervo Canyon, Arizona

  It’s quiet here.

  No storm, no screams, no shattering stained-glass rain or gunshots.

  But there is blood here. Sandstone towers painted red. And now that Dan Cody has walked beneath the Crow’s wing, he wonders for the first time when that blood was spilled, and why the stains have remained on these rock walls for so long.

  Dan stands in red shadows, in a place he knows too well. A place where night-shrouded spires once speared the silver eye of the moon . . . where that very same moon once wept silver teardrops that splashed down the rocks to the dry canyon floor.

  But there are no tears now, not for Dan.

  Not when he stands alone in the wild fire of the setting sun.

  He is only a spirit now, a breath on the wind.

  He has nothing. . . .

  He cannot touch anything. Not anymore. Not if he wanted to. He couldn’t hold a gun, and he couldn’t knot a rope . . . and he couldn’t carry the woman he loved to a grave he’d dug in the shallow earth.

  He has nothing. . . .

  And yet, he has everything. For there are things even a spirit can carry. Scraps of memories. A medicine bundle’s worth of hopes and dreams. A vision shared in the flickering firelight of a night long gone.

  Two sparks on the wind. There, and then gone.

  And now darkness spills like an inky waterfall, splashes down rocks and crevices to the desert floor. Shadows scrabble like indigo scorpions across the sand. Soon the moon rises full and pale on a horizon flayed by rocky spires.

  Overhead, black wings whisper across the Sea of Tranquility, but Dan does not look up.

  The time for looking up is gone now.

  For now the time has come.

  The time Dan has waited for.

  Time, at last, to set the wrong things right.

  Dan closes his eyes, and he thinks of a day long-imagined. A day when he would carry a ring in his pocket, and a woman would wait for him in this very canyon, a smile on her beautiful face, a smile glowing like the first sunrise that kills winter and brings spring . . .

  Dan opens his eyes.

  Stands still in the moonlight.

  He recalls the words that had—once, a lifetime ago—so desperately wished to escape the trap of his lips.

  He remembers all three of them.

  “I love you,” he says, but there is no voice in him to find the wind.

  So he walks where bloody cliffs meet the blackened sky and the air smells of sun-warmed sandstone and desert weeds, where trails are more often traveled by lizards than men and silence stretches past forever, like a lost echo.

  And just ahead there is a sound . . . there is an echo.

  The echo of a drum, like a heartbeat.

  Dan hurries toward the sound.

  He is nothing more than a ripple on the wind, but he hurries just the same.

  The drumbeat grows louder.

  This time he won’t lose it.

  A voice—small but sure—in tempo with the drumbeat. With this ring. . .

  Just ahead, she waits. Dan is sure of it. Around the next turn of the canyon . . . beyond
the next clutch of red rock and cactus . . .

  The same voice, rising in the wind: With this ring, which is made of summer's heat and winter's snow, which is made of tears and laughter and dreams and sorrows and happiness . . .

  Dan hurries on, and if his heart were more than wind it would beat wildly, and if his eyes were more than moonlight he might weep.

  Just ahead, a soft wind calls his name.

  Just ahead …

  Stephen King says that Norman Partridge is “a major new talent.”

  Joe R. Lansdale calls Partridge “the hottest new writer going.”

  Peter Straub says that Partridge “consistently writes as though his life depends on the words he sets down on the page.”

  High praise, indeed. Here’s what earned it: Partridge’s first novel, Slippin’ into Darkness, was heralded as “nitro-laced, in- your-face fiction” (Locus). His short fiction has made regular appearances in the “year’s best” anthologies for suspense, mystery, and horror. A collection of short stories, Mr Fox and Other Feral Tales, won the Bram Stoker award. Another collection of short fiction. Bad Intentions, was a World Fantasy nominee. A pair of supercharged suspense novels, Saguaro Riptide and The Ten-Ounce Siesta, followed from Berkley Prime Crime in 1997 and 1998.

  Partridge has worked in libraries and steel mills. He loves rock ’n’ roll, drive-in movies, and old paperbacks where the bad guys get away with murder.