Nightwitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ Listen, if we don’t get the dimes, then we can’t make the shells, and if we can’t make the shells, then we can’t kill the werewolf. Do you want me sleeping at your house forever? And even if I do, sooner or later that thing is going to get us, ’cuz it wants you.”

  “ How do you know?” Her eyes had stopped their waltz and were now wide and still.

  “ Because it keeps coming back here,” he said.

  “ Only two times,” she said.

  “ Two times too many.”

  “ So what are we going to do?”

  “ Tomorrow, when Harry is delivering the milk, I’ll break into his house and get the dimes,” he said.

  “ You won’t take more than you need?”

  “ ’ Course not. He has so many, he’ll probably never know that some are missing,” he said.

  “ I don’t know. Harry knows a lot.”

  “ Even Harry doesn’t know everything.” Arty stood up. “Now, I really gotta go. I got my route.”

  “ Okay,” she said.

  Arty pushed himself off the bed and went back to the window. He silently eased himself out into the space between the houses. He turned to see her at the window. She was holding her ferret in one hand, brushing the hair out of her eyes with the other.

  “ Lock the window,” he whispered up at her.

  “ You be careful,” she whispered back, lowering the window. He heard the click of the lock as he dropped to his knees. Then he scooted through the bushes, ready to meet the day.

  He pushed himself up from the dew damp grass, brushing leaves and dirt from his wet knees. Then he jogged across the lawn, turned right at the sidewalk and started home. He had a half hour of folding papers ahead of him. He was looking forward to reading the headlines and smelling the ink on his hands, while he worked.

  Then he saw the body lying across the sidewalk. At first he thought it was one of the few homeless men that slept in the park. But something about it wasn’t right. Then he saw the blood and froze. The cloud cover was fading, the moon offered plenty of light. He recognized his father’s flannel shirt, but it didn’t click that this was his father. He moved closer for a better look, and his mouth dropped. He recognized the worn, black steel-toed boots. He’d been forced to dodge them on more than one occasion. It was his father.

  He was thankful the body was facing away from him. He’d never seen a dead person before, but he remembered the vivid description Ray Harpine gave after his uncle’s funeral. He had no desire to ever see that pasty white skin and waxy smile Ray had talked about. However judging from the amount of blood around the body, Arty didn’t think his father was smiling, and he didn’t think all the undertakers in the world would be able to put a smile on his face.

  He thought about going back to Carolina’s and calling the police. It didn’t make any difference now if he got caught staying out all night, his father was never going to beat him again. He had to do something. Call someone, tell someone, wake someone up.

  Numb in mind and body, he stared at the lifeless form of the man that had terrorized him since memory began. He drank in the sight and wondered if he was somehow responsible, and decided that he didn’t care. His father seemed insignificant now, and besides, he had a paper route to tend to-people counted on him and he wasn’t going to let them down. He’d never missed a delivery. He delivered his papers, even when he was sick with the flu and couldn’t go to school.

  He thought again about calling someone, but then he’d have to explain what he was doing here, and that would mean telling about the wolf lady, and nobody was gonna believe him. They’d think he was crazy nuts. He decided to go home, fold his papers and come back, by then old Harry Lightfoot would have come by in his milk truck. It would be better, he thought, if Harry made the discovery.

  So he stepped around the man that had caused him so much misery and started toward home. He was half a block away from the body when the thought attacked him. The wolf lady. Discovering his father’s dead body had been so startling, that he hadn’t thought about the how of it. He turned around and walked back to the body, his steps getting shorter as he got closer.

  Ten steps away and he saw a pair of legs sticking out from behind a pickup.

  Another body.

  Who?

  The breeze blowing over the bodies brought a foul odor. Arty took shallow breaths, with his hand over his mouth, thumb and index finger pinching his nose. He wanted to leave, but he wanted to know. He inched closer to the pickup, holding onto the tailgate with his left hand as he bent over to look.

  He bit back a scream.

  The man was bleached white as desert bones, except for the red gash on his neck where his throat had been torn out.

  Arty wanted to turn away, but he couldn’t help himself. The bloodshot eyes, open and reflecting the moon’s glow, were staring into nowhere, and a small trickle of dried blood had oozed out of the man’s mouth.

  What was his father doing here? Who was this other man? Why had the wolf lady killed them? And then his young mind grabbed onto part of the answer. They were following him. But why? Arty figured he’d never know.

  He studied the lifeless face, trying to remember if he’d ever seen the man before, but it was hard to tell. He stared at the wide head, the shock of dirty hair and the big nose, covered with blue veins. Then a fat roach squeezed its way out of the man’s small mouth.

  Arty jumped back, gagged and vomited on the man’s legs. Great wracking heaves that clenched his stomach muscles and took his breath away. He let go of his hand hold on the truck, bent over and grabbed his stomach with both hands, continuing to cover the corpse with red and yellow, spaghetti and meatball, projectile vomit.

  He gagged for air between spurts, but couldn’t get enough. He felt himself getting light headed, but he couldn’t stop the jagged spasms. He doubled over even more, to try and relieve some of the pressure on his heaving stomach, and he lost his balance and started falling forward toward the corpse.

  He threw his arms out in front of himself to break the fall. His right palm landed in the center of the dead man’s chest, and slipped through the vomit, causing Arty to wind up flat on both the dead body and his own mess, as he finally started to catch his breath.

  He pushed out against the dead man and rolled off the body, banging his head into one of the rear tires of the pickup. It took him a few seconds before he could breath normally, but every breath brought in both the putrid smell of the dead man and the awful smell of his own vomit.

  He was wedged in solid between the dead man and the rear wheel of the pickup. He choked back a scream. He was too fat to wiggle out between the bottom of the truck and the curb. There was only one way out, the way he’d come in. He would have to slide over the body.

  But his child’s mind screamed, no, not that. So he rolled over, putting his back against the tire, pushing against the body with his feet, but he only moved it a few inches, not enough to squeeze by. He moved away from the tire, closer to the body and tried pushing some more, but without the tire for support, he only pushed himself backwards.

  He was frustrated, exhausted and inhaling stink. He lashed out with his arms against it, scraping his right hand on the pavement. He felt it, but it didn’t hurt. Then he curled his feet into his chest and started kicking at it, and with each kick the heavy corpse of Seymour Oxlade moved away from the pickup. After a few seconds, that seemed like forever, Arty was able to squeeze between the body and the back of the truck. He slithered back onto the sidewalk and rolled away from the dead man as fast as his hands could push his body around.

  He kept rolling until something thudded against his back and banged against his head. He wanted to rest, but he wanted to be as far away from the dead man as he could get. He rolled onto his stomach to push himself up and came face to face with the terror stricken, dead eyes of his father.

  Arty, on his stomach, slapped both hands on the sidewalk and tried to push himself up, but he only succeeded in forming an arch with his b
ody, hands and feet on the sidewalk, buttocks in the air, before his left foot slipped out from under himself. He didn’t have enough strength in his right leg to keep himself suspended or to push himself up. His right foot slipped and he fell, slapping the cement with his stomach and slapping his father’s face with his own.

  He felt the cold of the dead face as the two-day-old, dead stubble dug into his cheek, hurting like a hundred pin pricks. The clammy wetness of the dead skin felt like the dead fish in the frozen foods section of the Safeway. He clamped his mouth shut to keep from upchucking the remainder of his dinner onto his father’s face, but he lost the battle, and he sprayed the dead eyes with more of the red-yellow vomit.

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve when he was finished, and backed away from the two dead bodies. He wanted to run away, get away home as fast as his feet could pound the sidewalk, get away and never come back, but he was covered in vomit and stink and didn’t want to bring that into his house.

  Fortunately, because of his early morning paper route, he was used to the night. He roamed freely in it. He often used the hose on a front lawn for a drink of water, something he would never do during daylight hours, at least without asking, but the night was his, so he crossed the front lawn, turned on the water and hosed himself down. He wound up sopping wet and chilly cold, but he decided he would rather take a chance of freezing, than spend one more second with that vomit on him.

  He was tired, wet. His ribs ached. His hand was bleeding where he skinned it. His head hurt, he was sick to his stomach and felt like he might vomit again, but he didn’t think there was anything left to come up, and he still had papers to deliver.

  There were still people counting on him and he wasn’t going to let them down. So without a backwards glance, he started back on his journey home as lightning cracked the sky, followed by the booming of thunder and cascading rain.

  An hour and a half later, he coasted his bike around the corner onto Lark Lane and tossed a paper from the center of the street, grinning with an archer’s satisfaction as he watched it sail, like an arrow bound for the bull’s-eye. He stiffened his right leg, forcing the pedal back and locked the brake. The back tire skidded and whipped around to the right. Arty dropped his left foot onto the street and brought the bike to a dead halt, before the paper hit the porch with that beautiful popping sound he had grown to love.

  He threw his leg over the bike and put down the kickstand. He tried to act normal as he stole a glance at the two police cars and the milk truck down the block. They would be waiting for him, he knew. But first things first, he reached into his bag of papers and withdrew one.

  Miss Spencer had arthritis and couldn’t bend down far enough to reach a paper lying flat on the porch, so she’d asked him to set it on a table she had by the front door. An interesting target from the street, he thought, because if he wasn’t right on target, the paper would go sailing into a fragile wind chime. So he walked the paper to the porch every morning, and she rewarded him every month with a twenty dollar tip, and lots of times she let him eat for free in the diner she owned across the way in Tampico. Miss Spencer was an alright lady.

  He glanced sideways as he walked up the driveway, four policemen along with Harry Lightfoot. The whole police force was there, but nobody else was up. He was glad. He didn’t want Carolina to see his father dead in the street.

  He felt their eyes on him as he went up the porch steps. Of course they’d be watching, he thought, setting the paper on the table. Then he tinkled the wind chime, like he did every morning, turned, hopped down the steps, like he weighed a fraction of what he did, and started back toward his bike.

  He sailed five more papers onto five more porches, before he reached the five living and two dead men that were waiting for him. He dismounted and listened to Harry Lightfoot tell him about his father and a man named Seymour Oxlade, with only a single glance to the bumps under the blanket that had been his father.

  The four policemen stood silent as Harry Lightfoot told Arty what had happened, like he was an adult. And Arty accepted the news like the grown-up he was being forced to be. He showed no surprise, felt no remorse and demonstrated no grief. It was a small town, everybody knew what Bill Gibson was. He wouldn’t be missed.

  “ Do you want me to take you home or would you rather go with them?” Harry asked, nodding toward the policemen.

  “ I gotta finish my paper route,” Arty said. The police figured he was a boy in shock, but Harry knew better.

  “ Folks will understand if they don’t get their paper today,” Officer Harrison Harpine, said.

  “ I only got a block left to do, less than five minutes. Then I’ll go home.”

  “ Do you want to meet me there, so we can tell your mom together?” Harry asked. The officers were more than willing to let Harry break the news. Nobody wanted to tell someone their husband was dead.

  “ No, that’s okay, I’ll do it. Besides she’s still asleep.” He was shuffling his feet back and forth as he talked, but he kept his eyes locked onto Harry’s. He liked Harry and he knew Harry understood.

  “ You’re sure you don’t want someone to go home with you?” Ray Harpine’s father asked, wanting to make sure.

  “ Yes, sir, I’m sure. I can handle it.”

  “ The boy will be fine,” Harry told the cops. Then he turned to Arty, “Why don’t you finish your paper route. I think the police can take care of everything here.”

  “ How long before they take him away?” Arty asked. He didn’t care if his father lay across the sidewalk forever, till his skin rotted off, till buzzards ripped him apart, till his bones bleached in the sun, till hell froze over, but he didn’t want Carolina to see.

  “ Doc Willets is on the way now,” Harry Lightfoot said. “Your father will be in the mortuary before sunrise.”

  “ Thank you,” Arty said, turning and walking back toward his bike.

  “ Hey Arty,” Harry said in a smooth even voice, “Wait up a second.” Arty stopped at the bike and waited, while Harry approached.

  “ I’m okay, Harry,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. The officers couldn’t hear.

  “ You really don’t care about your father, do you?” Harry whispered, putting his hand on Arty’s shoulder.

  “ No.”

  “ You’re not going to miss him?”

  “ No.”

  “ So why do you care how long he’ll be out in the cold?”

  “ I don’t want Carolina to see,” he told Harry the truth, because everybody knew you couldn’t lie to Harry.

  Chapter Twelve

  “ What do you think?” Carolina asked him as they were leaving the Rec Center. Sheila moved and she adjusted her backpack to make the ferret more comfortable.

  “ My legs hurt,” Arty said, walking stiff legged, “but I liked it. I especially liked the part where he was talking about me.”

  “ You?” She had to adjust the backpack again, Sheila was restless.

  “ He said only one of us in the room was going to be a black belt. That’s me.” He rubbed his thighs and laughed.

  “ Oh, I don’t think so. I think he was talking about me.” She was laughing, too.

  “ Then I guess he was wrong when he said only one, ’cuz it looks like we both are gonna get a black belt.”

  “ No matter how hard it is,” she said.

  “ No matter how long it takes,” he said.

  “ Nothing will stop us.”

  “ Nothing.”

  “ Swear,” she said.

  “ I swear,” he said.

  “ That looks like a good spot.” Carolina pointed to a tall shade tree at the edge of the park. “We can study there, by the river.”

  With his father dead, Arty didn’t have to pretend about going to Spanish lessons, but he didn’t want to tell Carolina about what happened after he left her house. He thought about it, but rejected the idea, because he didn’t know how to tell her without sounding like he was glad his old man was dead. Also he didn�
�t know how to tell her without telling her that he died on her street, just six houses away, face down on the sidewalk, covered in blood. And he didn’t know how to tell her, without telling her that the wolf lady did it. So he kept it to himself.

  Carolina sat on the grass, with her back against the tree, and opened the backpack. Her face lit up as the ferret scooted out and jumped into her lap. She stroked its fur, causing it to wiggle. Arty laughed and sat down next to her.

  “ Okay,” he said, “now the fun begins.” He opened his backpack and took out two beginning Spanish books, but, before they could open them, they heard Brad Peters’ booming from across the park.

  “ Well, lookee here, boys.”

  “ Oh, no,” Arty said, “that’s all we need.”

  “ Maybe they’ll go away.”

  “ Not a chance.”

  “ Then let’s get out of here.” She handed her book over to Arty.

  “ They’ll just catch us.”

  “ Not if we get into the woods and hide.”

  “ We’ll never make it.”

  “ Sure we will. They’re twice as far from us as we are from the woods.”

  “ I don’t know.”

  “ Well, I’m going to count to three. Then I’m going for it,” she said, “so get ready to run.”

  This was a bad idea, he thought. If they stayed put, Brad and his bully friends would hassle them for a few minutes, then move on, but if they ran away and forced Brad to run after them, he’d be mighty mad once he caught them.

  “ One,” she said, holding open the top of her backpack as the bullies got a step closer.

  They’d leave her alone, but he was sure that Brad would pound his head into the ground, especially after the fight. Oh yeah, he’d pound his head into the ground all right, or something worse. Last month they made Tom Swan eat dirt. Arty didn’t think he could do that. No. Running was a bad idea. Besides, he was too fat. No way could he even outrun a tree stump.

  “ Two,” she said, and the bullies were another step nearer as Sheila scurried into the backpack.