Nightwitch

by Ken Douglas

  “ But I drive a VW.”

  “ You know what I mean. It was the Volvo we were trying to run her down with.”

  “ I almost ran over an old black woman coming off the highway. That’s why I ran the car off the road.”

  “ Still think I’m nuts?”

  “ I never said I thought you were nuts.”

  “ Come on, Sarah, you’ve been in denial all night. The wolf, the bear, and now you’ll find a reason to rationalize the old woman. What’s it going to take?”

  “ I’m sorry. I guess I’ll just have to poke my hands in the wounds and feel the blood before I believe.”

  “ You might doubt, but when Thomas saw the risen Christ, he believed.”

  “ His faith was a little stronger than mine.”

  “ Okay, Sarah, have it your way. I can’t sit in the car and argue with you all night.” He opened the door and started to get out.

  “ Wait a minute,” she said. He turned toward her. “Do you have something up there I can put on?”

  He nodded.

  She got out of the car, thankful she at least had her hiking shoes on. It was chilly out of the heated car and she was getting goosebumps again. She hoped it was only because of the cold. Following him up the path was easy going. She found she enjoyed walking through the forest nude. It made her feel free. And she was free again. She had no possessions. There was nothing to hold her down. She had the new job, but she hadn’t started it yet, so it wouldn’t be like leaving them in the lurch in the middle of a semester.

  Her whole life she’d dreamed of traveling, of seeing the world, of walking in foreign lands, of tasting food she’d never heard of, now it was possible. Bangkok, Paris, Rome, Beijing, all hers for the taking. Maybe John Coffee had unwittingly done her a favor. Besides, it would be better for her to be away from these two small towns after what had happened between her and Miles. She would be forever running in to him and she didn’t want that.

  And there would always be small town gossips, with small town minds, glancing at her and tittering away every time she went shopping or to the movies. And she didn’t want to have to start dating again. She could imagine what it would be like. Every man in town would know about Miles, and wonder what was wrong with her.

  And most of all, she didn’t want the kids laughing and making fun of her behind her back. No matter how much they seemed to understand the other day, and no matter how much they voted their approval of her with their applause, and no matter how glad they were that she was moving on to junior high with them, they were still children. They would laugh. It was only natural.

  And she started to think about the dessert she had offered John Coffee earlier. She had wanted to go to bed with him in the worst way. Watching him move through the woods in front of her, she was starting to want him again. If only he was a little more rational, she thought.

  And what about that monster of his that could change from an old woman into a wolf, or a bear, or any damn thing it wanted. What happened to this dark man to get him to believe in such a fairytale? Still a wolf did come crashing through her front window, and there were no wolves in these woods, at least there weren’t supposed to be. And the grizzly in the road. How could she explain that? She couldn’t, but neither could she accept werewolves or werebears or vampires in the night.

  The breeze shifted, caressing her breasts and she found herself wishing it was his hands instead. I’m only human, she thought, and it’s only natural that I’d be thinking about sex. After all, I’m walking in the moonlight, nude, with a gorgeous man.

  “ Can we rest a minute?” she said. She wasn’t tired.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “ Hey, Carolina, wake up,” Arty whispered across the gulf between the two beds. “It’s five-thirty, time to go.” He watched her roll over, rub her eyes, then open them.

  “ Already?” she yawned.

  “ I could go by myself?”

  “ No.” She sat up and stretched, hands reaching for the ceiling. “I told you last night, I want to go.”

  Arty had his shoes on and tied by the time she finished with the bathroom. He was ready to go and she surprised him when she pulled her nightshirt over her head, and walked over to her dresser, wearing nothing, but her panties. He quickly turned his head the other way.

  “ For gosh sakes, Arty, there’s nothing to see. I’m only eleven,” she giggled as she pulled a sweatshirt over her head. “You can turn around now. I’ve got my shirt on.”

  He turned his head.

  “ Jeez Marie, Carolina, put your pants on.” He turned away again as she went to her closet for her jeans.

  “ Okay, I’m dressed, except for my shoes, so maybe you better not turn around yet,” she giggled.

  “ It’s not funny, Carolina.”

  “ Okay, I’m sorry. I was just having a little fun. Don’t be a big stick in the mud.”

  “ This is serious stuff, Carolina.”

  “ Sorry.”

  “ If you’re gonna come, you gotta be quiet and careful or we both might get dead.”

  “ What if it doesn’t work?” she asked again.

  “ Then we’ll probably both get dead anyway, so we gotta try.” He was halfway out before she was finished with her shoes, but he was having trouble finding the plastic milk crate with his foot.

  “ What’s the matter?”

  “ The crate’s gone,” he said, letting go and jumping down.

  “ Who could have moved it?” Carolina whispered as Arty helped her to the ground.

  “ Who do you think?”

  “ Anybody could have come in here and moved it,” she said.

  “ Sure,” he said, because he knew who’d moved the crate.

  He led the way on his hands and knees, scooting through the bushes. He wished he had a flashlight, because he wanted to explore all the dark places between the two houses and see if he could spot the milk crate. The hair on the back of his neck stood up when he thought that maybe the wolf was back there with them, hiding in the bushes back by the fence. Watching and waiting. He felt better when he cleared the bushes and was standing up on the dew damp front lawn.

  “ Ouch,” Carolina said and Arty jumped.

  “ What?”

  “ I scratched my hand,” she said as he helped her up.

  “ Is it bleeding?” he asked.

  “ I don’t think so. I wish they’d fix that streetlight, then I’d be able to see.”

  Arty looked up and down the block. “I didn’t notice before,” he said, “but the only two lights working on your street are the ones at the corners. The two in the middle are out.”

  “ Yeah,” she said, “it’s kinda spooky. I wish they would hurry up and fix them.”

  “ Streetlights are never out more than a day. And you never see more than one out on a street. I oughtta know. When a light blows they fix it the next day, or the day after at the very latest. They’re real good about that. These lights have been off for three days.”

  “ What are you saying?”

  “ They were off Monday night, so they would’ve fixed ’em Tuesday or yesterday.”

  “ Maybe they didn’t fix them?”

  “ They fixed ’em. They never miss.”

  “ Then why aren’t they working?”

  “ The wolf lady,” he said.

  “ The wolf lady,” she repeated.

  “ Yeah.”

  Carolina shivered and took Arty’s hand, a gesture that only a few days ago would have set his young heart thumping, but now seemed natural as rain. They drew strength and courage from each other as they walked the early morning streets toward his house.

  “ There it is,” Arty said, pointing to a white house with a detached garage.

  “ My papers aren’t here yet, so we’ll make the shells first.” He led her into the garage and turned on the light.

  “ Kinda cold,” she said.

  “ I got an extra jacket you can wear when we finish here.”

  “ That it?�
�� She pointed to a machine that looked like a combination food processor and meat grinder.

  “ Yeah.” He opened a drawer under the counter and took out various sized boxes.

  She watched as his expression turned serious. His fingers were nimble and it was obvious he knew what he was doing.

  “ You’re supposed to weigh the powder,” he said, “but I never do. I’ve done this so many times I could do it blindfolded and asleep.” He dipped a tablespoon into the bag and shook the black powder off, till it was level on the spoon. Then he poured the powder into a brass shotgun shell with hands still and steady.

  Arty had lined up ten empty shells along a wooden workbench in his father’s garage, although technically it wasn’t his father’s anymore, he thought, wondering if his dad was in heaven or hell, and betting it was hell. Anybody that could beat his wife and kids belonged in hell, ’cuz that’s why God made it.

  He also wondered about Carolina’s father, and why he was in town secretly. Why had he shot the gun off in her front yard? Was he shooting at the wolf lady? Is that why he was here? To protect her? Was he the man in the tent at the end of the clearing, or was it someone else?

  Arty picked up the first shell and set it under the machine.

  “ It looks like a drill press,” she said.

  “ How do you know what a drill press looks like?”

  “ We had one in the garage in Atlanta. It belonged to the landlord.” Her teeth chattered a little and Arty noticed the goosebumps on her arms.

  “ Want me to get the jacket now?”

  “ No, I’ll wait.”

  “ This is the wad column,” he said, talking to take her mind off the cold, “It’s used to separate the buckshot from the powder.” He inserted the plastic wad into the shell. “You gotta get a tight seal or else the pellets don’t get maximum velocity. That means they don’t go out of the gun hard enough to kill anything.” He was talking like a TV doctor during an operation.

  “ Next comes the dimes.” He squeezed ten dimes into the top of the twelve gauge shell. They barely fit and he was worried the shells would be too tight in the barrel and cause the gun to blow up in his face. But he’d gone this far, and he was convinced this was the only way to kill the wolf lady.

  “ Okay, the final step,” he said as he pulled the handle down on the reloader, crimping and closing the shell. “Nine more to go.” He repeated the process nine more times, talking his way through each shell.

  Once finished, he loaded the shotgun with five shells, then handed the rest to Carolina, who, without a word, put them in her backpack to keep Sheila company.

  A squeal of brakes from outside told Arty his papers had arrived.

  “ Can you ride a bike?” Arty asked.

  “ Of course.”

  “ Then you can ride my old one while I deliver the papers,” he said, as he put the boxes containing the buckshot and powder away. Then he looked for a place to hide the shells and decided on putting them in his dad’s tool kit, but he caught himself. His father was dead and he didn’t have to hide them or anything else ever again. He left them on the counter and said, “Let’s go fold some papers.”

  “ Can you get me that jacket?”

  “ Sure, follow me.” He thought about climbing in the window, but decided with his father gone, he didn’t have to. An eight-point-five earthquake couldn’t get his mother up before dawn. So he used his key and opened the front door, leading Carolina into the house.

  Carolina tiptoed behind Arty as he made his way to his bedroom. All the lights in the house were off, but there were little nightlights plugged into the wall sockets, so it was easy to move around in the dark. She was right behind Arty when he turned on the light.

  “ Mom,” he exclaimed and his mother opened her eyes. She had been sleeping in his bed.

  “ Good morning, Arthur.”

  “ I like to be called Arty now.”

  “ You never liked it before.”

  “ I do now.”

  “ Okay, Arty, you didn’t come home last night, or the night before that, or the night before that either.”

  “ Sorry, I had stuff to do.”

  “ I didn’t say anything because of your father, but he’s gone now and all we have is each other.”

  “ He has me, too,” Carolina said and Arty’s mother noticed her.

  “ Well, who are you?”

  “ Carolina Coffee.”

  “ Your mother’s the painter?”

  “ Yes, ma’am’

  “ My name is Virginia, but you can call me Ginny.”

  “ Thank you.”

  “ Now, don’t you two think you’re a little young to be staying out all night?”

  “ I wasn’t out all night. I was at Carolina’s.”

  “ What do her parents have to say about that?”

  “ They don’t know, Ginny,” Carolina said. “They’re divorced, so it’s just me and my mom, and she’s never home.”

  “ Mom, can we talk about this later? I got papers to deliver.”

  “ No, Arty, we can’t. We’ll talk now.”

  “ We can’t, I’ll be late.”

  “ It won’t hurt you to be late for once.”

  “ I can’t be late, you don’t understand.”

  “ Try me.”

  “ Those people count on me. They depend on me to have their papers on their porches, before they go to work, or have their breakfast, or go to school, or a zillion other things, and I’ve never let them down. All those people know they can count on me. Not like dad, who no one could count on. I never wanna be like that. I never wanna let anybody down.”

  “ I’m sorry, Arty. I didn’t know you felt that way. But the fact remains, you’ve been out for the last three nights and I need to know why?”

  “ I have trouble in school,” Carolina said, “and my mom said she’d take me to Disneyland if I got all the state capitals on the test right. So Arty’s been at my house every night helping me, because I can’t do it by myself.” Carolina continued lying. “I just have to get them all right, and now I think I will, thanks to Arty.”

  “ It takes three nights to memorize the state capitals?” she asked, her eyebrows going up.

  “ Sometimes I know things, but I can’t put them on paper. Sometimes the letters get mixed up and it gets me confused. But if I know a thing real good, like my name, or the name of the school or the grocery store, I can get those right. But something I just learned, I can’t, so I have to know it real good.”

  “ Florida?” Ginny Gibson asked.

  “ Tallahassee,” Carolina answered.

  “ Texas?”

  “ Dallas.”

  “ Louisiana?”

  “ Baton Rouge.”

  “ So that’s what you’ve been doing? Studying for a test?”

  “ What else?”

  “ And the test is tomorrow?”

  “ So Arty won’t have to come over anymore.”

  “ That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

  “ I have to help Arty with his paper route. That’s part of the deal. He helps me. I help him.”

  “ But Arty doesn’t need any help.”

  “ He will if he ever gets sick, or has to go somewhere, or wants a couple of days off.”

  “ Then you could deliver the papers?”

  “ Yes, ma’am.”

  “ That would be nice. I didn’t think it was fair that he had to get up and do his route when he was sick. You would do that for him?”

  “ Fair’s fair. He helps me when I need it and I help him when he needs it.”

  Arty could only stand there with his mouth open. No way could he ever lie like that, and if his mother only turned to look at him she’d see it plain on his face. But she was staring at Carolina and thinking. Arty crossed his fingers behind his back for luck.

  “ Okay,” Ginny Gibson said, “you two can do the paper route.” Arty sagged with relief. Then she said to Carolina, “Arty and I have had a lot of problems,
but now with his father gone, I hope we can be a normal family. I don’t want to get in the way of any of Arty’s friends, but I don’t want any sneaking around behind my back. So if there are anymore tests, you tell me in advance. Understand?”

  “ Yes, ma’am,” Carolina said.

  “ Yes, Mom,” Arty barely managed to get it out.

  She pushed herself up from Arty’s bed, turned to Arty and said again, “In advance. Understand?”

  “ Yes, Mom.”

  Then she was out of the bedroom and the two children were alone.

  “ Let’s get that jacket and deliver those papers,” Carolina said.

  Thirty minutes later, Carolina was pedaling hard to keep up behind Arty. The backpack was digging into her shoulders and Sheila wouldn’t keep still, making the straps seem to bite in harder. But the air was crisp and it was a pure joy to watch Arty throw the papers.

  “ Can I throw one?” she asked, when they stopped for a rest break.

  “ Sure,” he said. He got off his bike, putting the kickstand down. She did the same. She watched as he took a couple of papers out of the bag. “We’re gonna do those two houses over there.” He pointed to two houses next door to each other. “They’re easy, ’cuz they both got double porches.”

  He stood on the sidewalk, directly in front of the first house. “I threw underhanded when I started, ’cuz I couldn’t make it to the porch any other way.” He demonstrated by bringing his arm around with the paper coming up in an arc that went as low as his knee.

  “ Then I tried overhanded, like the big league pitchers, but my arm got so sore that I had to walk the papers up to the porches for a week.”

  “ So how do you do it?”

  “ Sidearm, with a backhand whip, like the tennis pros.” He brought his right arm around his body, with his elbow pointing forward, and snapped it around, letting go of the paper at the exact instant his arm became straight.

  “ Notice,” he said, “that I didn’t stop my arm coming around when I let go of the paper. That’s called follow through. You gotta follow through or you won’t get any distance. And you gotta point your arm to the porch, so the paper doesn’t go wild.”