by David Risen
In 1930, the lumber mill that served as the bread and butter for the small town closed its doors, and the town began a slow decline.
Since, there have been many reports of phantom lights inside the empty houses that once housed the residents of the City. One resident who grew up in the town of Skitts Mountain attempted to hike up into the old city and show his grandchildren where he grew up. Halfway up the mountain, they turned back and ran.
He later remarked that something was chasing them.
Other campers and hikers attempting to catch a glimpse of the ghost town reported getting lost in a terrible fog. At least ten others have gone missing while hiking in the area....
Rider hit the back button and rolled his eyes.
She touched his hand again.
I wouldn’t discount that. It sounds like a spell.
Rider glared at her. “Will you quit doing that? You’re creeping me out!”
We can’t speak aloud. We have no way of knowing who may be listening. Is there some way we can look at the town itself?
Rider clicked the maps tab. Google delivered an image of a map. On the lower left-hand corner, rider clicked the “Earth” tab.
The map image morphed into a distant overhead view of a mountain covered in trees. Rider zoomed in. The image below showed several rooftops and broken, old streets encircled by two walls – a solid concrete wall in a perfect circle around the remnants of the town with a metal beam through the center of it all the way around and another wall made of what appeared to be tarnished silver.
Amelia touched his hand again.
Those walls look like a circle of protection.
“What does it mean?”
She glowered at him and touched his hand again.
Don’t speak. And I don’t know what it means. We should leave now.
Rider Closed the passenger door of Amelia’s Excursion and rubbed his bristly jaw. Amelia climbed in the driver’s seat, and slammed the door – casting a frustrated glance at him.
“Why the hell would anyone need a magically protected ghost town?” Rider said.
She buckled her seat belt and turned the key. The motor whinnied and roared to life.
“I don’t know,” she said peering into the rearview. “I’m not a witch.”
Rider frowned. “At the very least, they’re hiding something.”
Amelia slumped. “Of course, they are, but we have no idea what. And in exchange for all this worthless information, we’ve exposed our location.”
She yanked the gear selector down into reverse, edged the big SUV out of the parking space, and pointed it toward the exit of the parking lot.
“Do you think we should go up there?” he wondered.
Amelia didn’t look at him. She turned right on West Academy Street.
“One never does anything pertaining to the sisters without knowing precisely what lies ahead.”
Rider turned his palms up.
“Well somebody up there has to know something. You don’t just wall off a whole city without someone noticing, and forgive me if I sound chauvinistic, but I don’t think a bunch of women in a cult put those walls up.”
She merged right on to E. E. Butler.
“I can guarantee you that no one knows anything, especially if it’s something vital to them.”
Rider slapped his knees.
“Then what do you suggest? Should we go snatch a witch and give her purple-nurples until she spills the beans?”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not a terrible plan.”
Rider made a wry face. “Seriously?”
Amelia turned right onto Washington Street, and then she took an immediate left into a four-tier parking deck painted in a god-awful mauve.
“Consider it,” she said calmly. “These women operate above the law and completely out of the public’s view. The last thing they expect is for someone to kidnap one of them.”
Rider gave her a slack-jawed expression of disbelief.
“Lady, you’ve read too much of my bad press. I’m not really a criminal.”
She sneered. “First, these ladies are like the mafia. They prefer to manage their disputes with outsiders quietly. Second, I doubt Mr. Michael Baines would agree that you’re not a criminal.”
Rider’s eyes bulged, and then he realized how she might have found such information.
“While you were giving me the guided tour of your head, you were poking around in mine.”
She tilted her head. “It pays to know your riding-partner.”
Rider looked out the windshield at the exposed concrete beams. “Well, I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch.”
She squinted at him. “Oh, don’t act so violated.”
He glared. “Well if you were poking around in my head, you know that the bastard got what was coming to him.”
She shrugged. “Who am I to judge?”
“He had it in for me ever since I beat him out of the top staff writer spot. When I had the wreck, he landed the Editor-in-Chief gig. He used the whole thing to get a little payback.”
She nodded. “That’s all very likely, but you must admit that when you returned, you weren’t the same as before. What little work you did turn in was very – safe.”
“Of course, it was,” he growled. “That damn wreck killed my baby and nearly got me, too. Then I find out that someone tampered with my brakes. It scared the hell out of me.”
She nodded. “But you, of all people, know that one can simply not afford to be scared in the journalism profession.”
Rider bit his lower lip and shook his head.
“I just needed more time,” he thought aloud.
“And your employer wasn’t interested in carrying you until you found yourself.”
He glowered at her. “That seedy, little dickbag had a smug smirk on his face the whole time I was in his office.”
She nodded. “I’ll concede that Mr. Baines wanted to kill your career as long as you stipulate that you loaded his gun with the deadliest bullets you could find.”
“What did they expect me to do?” he barked. “They called me into that office and bent me over the desk so that douchebag could ram it in. What would any man do? That job cost me my daughter!”
She gave him an incredulous look. “And you were under the impression that they owed you something?”
He bit his lower lip and looked out the windshield again at the blue Ford Focus parked across from him.
“They could have left me my dignity by having someone in Human Resources do the termination.”
Amelia smeared her lipstick. “The world is not fair. Most of the time, nice guys finish last. Flattery will get you everywhere. Money talks and bullshit walks, and few people genuinely care about your struggles. The fact that you’re right doesn’t mean that you win. If that were true, there would be no such thing as righteous indignation.”
Rider snarled. “Yeah, but every now and then, it’s therapeutic to take a big bite out of some bonehead’s ass who desperately deserves it.”
She looked out the windshield. “Yes, but I fail to recall any profession in which it is ever prudent to dive across your superior’s desk, break his nose and eye socket, and leave him in the hospital with a life-threatening concussion.”
Rider shook his head. “You sound exactly like my mother.”
She gave him a look of superiority. “Yes, but there’s a fundamental difference between your mother and me.”
“Not from where I’m sittin, sister.”
She sighed hard. “Your mother is a bitter lush who is very unhappy with her life, and her only respite is your mutual unhappiness. My aim is merely to point out that though many of the tragedies that have befallen you were beyond your control, it was your own actions that led to your complete undoing.”
Rider looked around the dark parking deck and turned his palms up.
“What the hell are we doin here, anyway?”
Amelia nodded as if recalling something important and reached und
er her seat and pulled out a curly, red wig.
“What, do you own a car lot?”
She tucked her hair under the wig.
“Cute,” she snarked.
She opened her door and pushed her way out of the SUV.
Rider folded his arms and sat back in the passenger’s seat. He heard the hiss of the dampers on the back gate as she opened the rear door.
“Are you coming?” she said.
Rider turned and glared at her.
She slumped.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to press a sore spot.”
“Twist a knife in it is more like it.”
A white Chevy Express van pulled behind the Excursion. The passenger’s side sliding door rolled open and a man wearing a black knit sweater with a ski mask and black gloves bagged her head in a gray pillowcase as another grasped her arms and dragged her inside.
Rider threw his door open and scrambled out of the SUV.
Someone clutched his arms from behind.
Rider wriggled free, spun around, and belted the man behind him across the face so hard that he felt the knuckle of his middle finger crack. The bear of a man behind him fell to his knees clutching his jaw.
Rider spun around and thrust himself after the attackers just in time to see Amelia’s boots disappear into the darkness inside the van.
Two more men sprung from the van after him. Rider hunkered low and barreled after them. The linebacker on his left chopped him in the Adam’s apple.
Rider fell hard to the concrete choking.
The men hauled him up by the arms. The man on the left pressed the muzzle of a Glock to his left temple.
Rider froze.
The men pushed him into the van and tied his hands to the frame on the driver’s side.
Amelia sat against the wall opposite him with the gray pillowcase duct-taped over her head. The man with the black knit sweater poured water from a Dasani bottle over the pillowcase.
The sliding door rolled shut, and the van peeled off.
Once he finished the task of wetting the pillowcase covering Amelia’s head, the man with the ski mask and the knit sweater eyed Rider.
“You be good. We not kill you. We just deliver you to client.”
Rider eyed Amelia.
She seemed resigned to her fate. She sat still against the passenger’s side wall of the van, but Rider noticed a small amount of steam rising from the wet pillowcase.
Rider slipped his fingers into the back pocket of his jeans and closed them around his pocketknife wincing as the cracked knuckle of his right hand yelped. He slipped it out gently, and opened the blade grinding his teeth through the pain, and then he shifted himself so that his body faced the bench seat ahead of him – mostly to hide what he was doing.
He tucked the blade of the knife between the rough ropes binding his hands and sawed.
The man with the black sweater squatted before him and looked over the bench seat at the four other men – bracing himself by placing his right hand on the back of the seat.
Rider eyed Amelia. More steam rose from the pillowcase.
Amelia touched his leg with the toe of her boot.
Don’t do it. These men are professionals. We’ll have much better luck with the sisters.
Rider frowned. Then what’s with the steam, he thought.
You’ll die; I won’t.
Rider nodded to himself.
One of the men pivoted in his bench seat and looked back at Amelia, and then he barked something at the man with the knit sweater in a language Rider didn’t recognize.
The man with the knit sweater crawled over to Amelia, unscrewed the cap on the water bottle, and poured it over her head. The water sizzled as it touched the pillowcase as if he’d poured it over a grill.
What was left of the rope behind him, snapped. Rider flipped the knife around in his fingers.
The man with the sweater looked up at him. Rider gave him an innocent look.
Sweater man rose to a crouch and crawled toward him.
Rider stabbed him in the throat.
Blood from his carotid artery sprayed over Rider’s face. The man clapped his hand over his neck and fell backwards.
Rider looked left to find the men sitting in the bench seat starting after him wielding pistols.
Rider hoisted sweater man by the shoulders and dragged him between him and the other men. Sweater man’s body convulsed as bullets tore through him.
Rider dove after them pressing the body of the man he assaulted before him like a shield.
Sweater man’s back hit the bench seat.
Rider looked up to find the man on his left reaching around sweater man with his Glock.
Rider stabbed the man through the wrist – the blade ripping through the man’s hand and lodging into sweater man’s shoulder.
The man squealed and dropped the pistol.
Rider dove after it just as the man to the left of the bench seat hurdled the back of the seat after him.
Rider’s fingers found the butt of the pistol just as the other man landed on top of him – a fat man wearing a beret with gray stubble around his mouth. The pistol in Rider’s hand went off hurling a 9-mm slug through his attacker’s gullet.
The man rolled off him and curled into a fetal position behind him.
From the front of the van, he heard the passenger barking orders at the driver in the same, strange language.
Rider rose and aimed his pistol.
Something slapped him hard in the stomach. It felt like someone swatted him with a board.
Rider fired, and the passenger spun left as the bullet nailed him in the shoulder.
But Rider had a problem.
He had no energy, and something white-hot burned through his stomach. He looked down to find blood pulsing from a hole in the lower left of his abdomen. He dropped to his knees.
Behind him, Amelia rose to her feet and ripped the mask from her face.
The driver stopped the van and pushed his way through the cockpit after him.
Rider stared wide-eyed at the spectacle before him.
The driver stopped in his tracks staggering. He clapped his hands against his temples and screamed.
His bald head cracked down the center, and he fell to a lifeless heap at the floor.
Amelia looked down at him.
“We must go – now!”
Rider looked down at his weeping bullet wound and back up to her helplessly. Her eyes flickered with surprise.
She stepped over to him, dropped to her knees, and pushed his hand away from the wound. She pressed her hand over it hard.
Rider gasped, but he could get no air to his lungs.
The skin around the wound felt burned as if someone were branding him. She withdrew her hand, and he looked down at it to find a slug in her hand.
His bullet hole was a memory.
“We have to go,” she said.
She rose to a crouch, stepped over to the back doors of the van, and flung them open.
A crowd already gathered around the van.
“Call the police,” she cried. “Someone shot them!”
She took Rider by the hand and led him out of the van. “He needs medical attention!”
The crowd parted, and Rider discovered that they were in the parking lot of a large shopping center.
As the crowds swelled and confusion ensued, she led him around behind the shopping center where they ducked behind the dumpsters.
She knelt before him and looked him over.
“Are you unwell?”
Rider frowned at her. “What are we in the UK now?”
“Are you okay?”
He was barely aware that he was a part of the universe right now. His tongue was so dry that it stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he couldn’t focus.
He gave her a sick look. “I just killed three people.”
She grinned. “I told you that you were a criminal. Do you believe me now?”
Rider only gaped at her.
“We have to get different clothes. Wait here and I’ll be back.”
Blue eyes peered back at him.
White eyelids with brown lashes. Pink rims. The rest covered by a black ski mask.
As the blade of his buck knife hacked through the skin of his neck and severed his carotid, the eyes bulged in shock and surprise. As the blood flow to the brain interrupted, the eyes dim and settled on a new emotion – ages of sadness as his entire world died.
Why?
Why would you do this to my mother?
Someone’s Dad.
Someone’s husband.
Someone’s friend.
Rider didn’t know. The blood on his hands burned a hole straight through to his soul. And now he knew, finally, that there was never a good reason to kill another man.
Rider sat on the cold asphalt with his back to the dumpster and his legs lying straight out before him covered in blood. Some of it was his own – the rest....
The grisly sight of the inside the Chevy Van kicked up quite a stir in the parking lot. It wouldn’t be long before the police began to canvass the area, and they would discover him lying by the dumpster like the true vagrant that he was – covered in blood.
And he didn’t give a rat’s ass.
The cinema inside his head played back his last image of his daughter. Reaching out to him from the back seat of his ruined SUV with bloody fingers – clinging stubbornly to her last breath like a flower standing defiantly amid the brown grass in late November.
And now he knew without a doubt, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was about life not death. He was a lover not a fighter.
He winced as a deep Old Navy bag dropped in his lap. He looked up to find Amelia fishing around in a Publix bag. She produced a pack of baby wipes from within and passed it along.
“Use that to clean the blood off your hands.”
Rider stared at her.
She propped her hands on her hips. “We have no time to discuss our feelings, we must leave!”
Rider continued to stare.
She looked up to the gray sky and shook her head. “Get up, clean up, change out of those clothes, and the first round of whatever you like tonight is on me.”