Sunday, March 25, 2018

WHEN DEATH COMES TO CLOVERDALE

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.





By R. Peterson

I couldn’t believe my ears when just after midnight I heard the whoosh of escaping steam and the grinding rumble of huge metal brakes. There hadn’t been a steam-powered locomotive on the railroad tracks in Cloverdale in over thirty years. I placed a Spare-A-Dime receipt for a cheeseburger and greasy fries between the pages of the geometry book I was reading and ran out the front door and around to the back of the Jagger Hotel. There the old wood-burner sat shaking and rumbling as if she knew this might be her last run. The number 419 glowed whitely under the moonlight on the ornate front of the massive boiler. There were only two cars being pulled and I wondered why on Earth the train was stopping here. I circled the monster twice and even opened the doors on the boxcar and looked inside the caboose before I was satisfied that the one-hundred fifty year old marvel was unattended. I decided I’d better get back to the check-in desk. We don’t get very many lodgers after midnight … but it was still my job.
I could smell the evil creature before I laid eyes on her … deep dirt that hasn’t felt the rays of the sun for centuries covered her like a second layer of skin. Invisible tormentors ran ice cubes up and down my back as my blood suddenly chilled. A hooded shroud covered a grotesque face and flowed to the floor. A too thin skeletal form like heavy wire bent at impossible angles jutted forward. A nest of spiders moved through a tangle of webbing until they danced around a small brooch, depicting a crow pecking the eyeball from a dead lamb, and lying against a blackened and wrinkled neck. Tiny black eyes stared at me from behind a once lacey but now moldy and rotted veil. She hunched over the check-in register on my desk … bony fingers with nails as sharp as razors scanned the list of names. Slicing the flesh on the back of her left hand, she used the inky blood to scribble a signature before grabbing room key 419 and moving like a large flightless bird up the stairs.
I didn’t offer to turn down her bed-covers, carry unseen luggage or show her around. Before the banshee was halfway to the first floor I was out the door and thundering down the sidewalk, screaming to all within earshot that death had come to Cloverdale.

-------2-------

The Spare-A-Dime café does a roaring business after midnight on most days and especially on weekends. “She’s here!” I yelled when I banged open the door.
“Well then don’t just stand there,” Charlie Rose said as he laced his coffee with sugar. “Ask her to dance before I do.” The café roared with laughter.
There were quite a few chuckles before most of the people turned back to their own business and I was forgotten. “The 419 just stopped on the tracks behind the hotel and the Devil’s own mother just took up residence on the fourth floor!”
            “I told you I heard a train whistle!” Kathy Davenport bopped Ken Wilson on the head with a soup spoon as she was clearing a table of dirty dishes.
Sheriff John Walker sat at a window booth with Allison Weatherbee. His voice showed more than casual interest. “What did this woman look like?”
            “Dressed in black …. Dirty,” I stammered. “Like she just clawed her way out of a grave.”
A gasp swept through the crowd but it wasn’t because of my description. The front door opened and the Jagger Hotel’s newest resident floated slowly inside moving toward the back of the crowded eating area. She didn’t have a hard time finding a table. Ed Poole knocked over two chairs as he and Pete Adams struggled to be the first ones out the door. She sat at the table they had just vacated. Several people slid their tables back to give her more room.
            Everyone was looking at Allison Weatherbee. With Melania Descombey frail and almost bedridden it was up to her young apprentice to share her knowledge of the supernatural phenomena that plagued our small town. “Her name is Ophelia Goosestep,” Allison said, raising her voice so that all could hear. “She was once a regular occurrence here as need be when the old steam train was running.”
Several people shushed Allison as they stared nervously at the woman hunched at the table with her boney fingers folded around a cup of black coffee placed before her. “Oh she can’t hear me,” Allison said. “Her sort dwells in a dimension all their own … somewhere between the past, present and the future.”
            “Why has God forsaken us?” Reverend John White pointed an accusing finger at the shrouded woman. “Unless this town begins to walk in righteousness before the Lord we will forever be tormented by Lucifer and his never ending designs.” Several people nodded agreement but most only smirked.
Madeline Bird gasped and covered her mouth which was half full of raisin cake. “What’s she doing now?”
Ophelia Goosestep had taken a discarded guest ticket and had torn it into tiny half-inch wide strips. She was using strands of her own hair and a needle to sew the strips into three strange necklaces. Using a pen lying beside the guest check she carefully lettered an inscription onto each.
After she finished, her black veil-covered eyes darted about the room searching faces that quickly turned away. She pointed a bony finger at Otis Freeman and the necklace in her hand was suddenly around his neck. “What does it say? What does it say?” The crowd gathered around Otis but although he searched his entire neck with his own hand he could feel nothing. But others could see it there and Fred Walker read the inscription. The coin slipped from his hand and rolled into the street and he was unaware of the car speeding around the corner as he reached for it.
            “What does it mean?” several people asked at the same time.
            “It’s called a stitch-in-nine charm,” Allison said. “Very powerful black magic!”
            “I think it’s how Otis is going to die,” Fred said. “She’s just here to collect his soul after he’s gone.”
Otis still couldn’t find anything clinging to his neck and he was getting annoyed by all the people staring at him. “I’m going home to a hot bath and then bed,” he said. “What we have here is just some old woman fell out of a gypsy wagon and making silly people see things.”
Otis paid for his meal and was putting change into his pocket as he walked outside when a quarter rolled from his hand into the street. He bent down to pick it up when suddenly Sheriff Walker charged behind him knocking him out of the way of the speeding car that had just swept around the corner.
“You saved my life,” Otis blabbered to the sheriff.
“Well, we know one thing,” Allison told the crowd who were once again staring at the old woman. “Ophelia Goosestep might design much of the future …. but nothing is cast in stone!”

-------3-------


Ophelia caused two other stitch-in-nine charms to wrap around other people’s necks before she finally left her table. Jeff Lemon’s inscription said Although they beat upon his back with great force, they were unable to dislodge the piece of meat caught in his throat. Spare-A-Dime’s chief cook swore he would personally cut the sirloin steak into very tiny pieces before he would serve Jeff’s favorite dish.
Max Dugan’s hand lettered charm stated The car careened out of control just before plunging into Magician’s Canyon and disappearing into the churning vortex below. Several men followed Max outside and insisted that he change a bald ready-to-blow-tire on the left front of his car before they would allow him to drive to his home on Canyon Road.
Everyone sighed with great relief when Ophelia finally ambled out the door after paying for her coffee with a silver coin dropped on the counter that was too old for anyone to recognize.
A half hour later just as the café was closing up and the cook and waitresses were herding people out the door someone yelled “Oh my God!” and all eyes turned to the intersection of Main and Townsend Streets. A smiling Ophelia Goosestep led a frail and sickly Melania Descombey down the center of the street and toward the Jagger Hotel and the hissing train parked behind it.

-------4-------

“This was her vile plan all along,” Allison stated. “To rob Cloverdale of its resident witch and to leave us defenseless against the dark arts.”
“What can we do?” The sheriff asked the pretty apprentice.
“Ophelia’s defenses are formidable,” Allison said. “We might not be able to stop her but we can slow her down. Morning light was designed to dissolve shadows and if we can delay her until the first rays of dawn we might have a chance.”
“Delay her how?”
“Ophelia doesn’t have feet like a normal person but cloven hoofs like those found on a goat. The fleshy pads on the underside are prone to cuts by broken glass … if we could put some broken pieces in her pathway …”
“If you think things are bad in Cloverdale now,” the sheriff said, “wait until we lose our protection from Melania. I need everyone’s help right now!”
The townspeople first emptied all the glass from Spare-A-Dime and shattered it in a pathway in front of Ophelia. The evil witch cursed the people under her breath. It was a long way to the Jagger Hotel and to the ghostly train waiting behind. Within a few hours every bit of glass in the town, window, plate and dish lay broken in front of the glaring old woman. Still the old crone moved steadily onward dragging poor Melania behind her. “It’s another thirty minutes until dawn and we’ve failed,” Sheriff Walker moaned.
            Suddenly Reverend John White appeared with several of his most devote followers. Their arms were filled with stained glass pried from the church windows and delicate glass and porcelain figurines taken from various places inside. “I don’t want to be the only building in town with glass windows,” he said.
            No sooner had the townsmen broken the stained glass in front of the black witch than she began to curse and prance about. It seemed the glass shards from the church burned her hooves. “This cursed town shall know no peace as long as the wind blows and the cock crows,” she screamed. “Feather, fowl, horse and cow burn the grass and sift the ash … dry the land and blow the sand … till all that’s left to quench life’s thirst … will be water cans all split and burst!”
Suddenly the first rays of dawn appeared over the mountains to the east and the black witch and the ghostly locomotive melted away like vaporous images clinging to the night. The townspeople carried Melania back to the comfort of her big brass bed.
 And me? I went back to work inside the Jagger Hotel … it wasn’t much but it was still my job!

THE END ?

Sunday, March 18, 2018

C.I.A. Lost Files "Dark Angel"

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



By R. Peterson





I received my C.I.A. field assignment in the usual way … on a brand new never before used iPhone 6. The phone beeped and I received a friend request from Chicken Little. When I accepted, I received a two word reply: Dark Angel. I knew instantly what my assignment was. Abdul Maalik Ahmed was a jihadist assassin responsible for the Islamic State contracted murders of at least six western diplomats and negotiators. He was rumored to have butchered hundreds of children for sport.  His uncanny ability to penetrate even the most heavily guarded targets and eliminate them in a bloody and horrific fashion had earned him the infamous nick-name Dark Angel. Until the killer was stopped, all U.S. and allied interests in the Middle East would be in dire jeopardy.
I fed a few dry sticks to the glowing embers burning inside the Franklin pot-belly stove and then tossed in the new iPhone. I hoped the next phone would be at least an iPhone 9. My itinerary would be waiting in a locker at the Missoula airport. I checked the airport flight schedule hanging on the wall next to a C.M. Russell calendar as I put on my coat. The next commercial flight left for New York City tomorrow and then there’d be another six-hour wait before hooking up with a military flight to the Middle East.
I wanted to visit my old Blackfoot Indian friend Swims the River before I left … and I had time. I saddled Smoke and loped the mare toward the snow-covered Bitterroot Mountains climbing the blue skies in Western Montana. I was wondering, as always, if this would be the last time I rode through the lands that I loved.

-------2-------

Swims the River was hunched down on the grassy bank of a stream staring at the rippling water when I found him. He didn’t look up. “You’re getting old,” I told him. “I could have bashed your head in with a rock … and you wouldn’t have felt a thing.”
“I could smell you and your horse when you were two miles away,” he replied never taking his eyes off the ripples. “You make more noise than a squaw drunk on fire-water. I almost fell asleep waiting for you to sneak up on me.” Swims the River shook his head. “I am ashamed to have you as an enemy.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” I told him. “I have to go far away to face a very powerful devil. This demon has killed many of our best warriors.”

The old Indians hands moved like lightning. A split-second later, a three pound brook trout was flung flopping onto the bank. “You are like a dog that shows up when the hunt is over,” Swims the River said. “I’m too tired to make you leave so you might as well help me eat this fish.”

-------3-------

            The old Indian had a fire going while I was still gathering twigs. It was just getting dark. His abilities at wilderness survival had long surpassed the mystical and were wandering deep in the ethereal. “Show me the mark of this demon you seek,” He said as he speared the gutted fish with a green willow branch and positioned it expertly over the fire. “He is called Dark Angel,” I told him.
            “I don’t want your worthless white man’s words,” Swims the River said. “You fail to understand your enemies and your foolish chiefs think that names hold no magic!”
I tried to remember the Arabic spelling of Dark Angel as I cleared and smoothed an area of black sand. After a few moments I used the pointed end of a stick to write الظلام إنجيل.
          Swims the River tore a piece of flesh from the cooking fish and chewed on it as he studied the marks I’d made. “Your demon has a snake for a spirit guide,” he said as he picked up a flat stone from the bank and then lay it down beside the first curve in the name. “Snakes fear rocks because there they have no grass to hide in. He then pulled a handful of dried grass from the bank and tossed it in the fire.  The still-green fibers crackled like gunpowder.
            “Can you tell me where this demon hides?” I asked.
Swims the River raised his hand as if to push me away. “Have you no eyes? Does his mark not rest on the sand?”
I had to agree with the old Indian; Abdul Maalik Ahmed was probably hiding somewhere in a sandy place. But there is a hell of a lot of sand in the Middle East. “Can you tell me about the pace he dwells?” The Blackfoot Indian shaman pointed to the horizontal line in the Arabic name and smiled.

Swims the River broke several of the twigs I’d gathered into short lengths and pushed then into the sand around the flat stone. “Your fierce demon sleeps in a rocky field surrounded by a high fence,” Swims the River said. I was thinking about the numerous terrorist training compounds I’d been in scattered across the deserts.
            “Can you show me the exact spot?”
The old Indian shrugged his shoulders and then used a forked stick to toss a smoldering coal from the fire high into the air. The rising embers twinkled like stars in the night sky. “The eyes of Heaven see all things,” Swims the River said. “Ask them to guide you.”

I was staring upward in the darkness thinking that the rising embers looked like a constellation but I couldn’t remember which one. Swims the River shook his head. “I show you things … but you close your eyes.”
            “I have much to learn …. and you have helped me,” I told him, thinking about the compound he described.
            “You are a troublesome child who arrives filled with hunger,” The old chief grumbled. “If you are not also lazy then gather some snow on the tongue for our tea. This fish wants to be eaten and you have been a poor guest!” I wandered away from the fire wondering how I was going to find wild mint leaves in the darkness.


-------4-------

            When I returned to the fire twenty minutes later I had a handful of mint leaves thanks to a well-developed sense of smell and a laser penlight. I was surprised to see Swims the River dropping a massive hog-nosed rattle snake onto what was now a pile of rocks between the fence made of small sticks. “Your demon said you were not a worthy enemy … so he came searching for me in the grass,” Swims the River said. “I had no choice but to catch him!”
            The snake twisted into a spiral on the rocks and hissed at us.
Suddenly, with an ear piercing shriek, a great horned owl swooped from the trees and grabbed the huge snake in its talons. For three seconds blood and feathers flew before the giant wings lifted the nocturnal hunter and its prey into the night sky.
            Swims the River shrugged his shoulders. “I never liked the meat of a snake,” he said. “My teeth are old and I am not an owl. Birds have the spirit of the wind.” after a moment’s silence he went on. “I like the fish … their flesh is soft.” Finally   he looked at me and smiled. “I also like beef but your cows are too slow. They are as lazy as you are because you feed them.  It would shame my lance if I were to hunt any.”
I laughed as I filled a pan with water and then added the mint leaves before I placed it on the fire. I took my bed roll from the horse.  Camping with Swims the River was never dull.


-------5-------

I woke early in the morning and rode back to my ranch while the old Indian was still sleeping. Just after lunch my flight left for New York. I gazed out the window of the Delta Airlines 727 wondering if I would ever see Montana again. Six hours later I was just boarding a military flight to Saudi Arabia when a courier arrived with a telegram. My schedule had been changed. An hour later I found myself in Langley Virginia.
Stanley W. Smith met me in the C. I. A. Mideast Affairs debriefing room. “Our undercover sources inside Syria have confirmed that Abdul Maalik Ahmed the Dark Angel was killed last night in a desert compound eight miles south of Harasta,” he said.
            “I thought this guy was some kind of immortal,” I said. “How could this have happened?”
            “Eyewitness’s said it was a tornado,” Stan said. “Tore the roof off the compound building he was in and sucked the bastard right up into the sky.”
            “I guess there is a God,” I told Smith.

Eight hours later I was on a flight headed back to Montana. The stewardess offered me a drink and I asked for a sprig of mint with the gin. I was thinking that perhaps I’d drag a quarter of beef to the ornery old Indian before the winter snows set in.

THE END ?
           




Sunday, March 11, 2018

ROAD KILL part 2

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



ROAD KILL
Part 2

By R. Peterson


“I don’t see any obvious injuries,” the admission’s nurse said. “Has she spoken to you?” She pried open the girl’s eyelids and shined a small light inside.
“Just a tiny bit,” Walt answered. “She opened her eyes for a moment, and said one word”
“What was that?” The nurse put her ear next to the girl’s mouth and watched her chest rise and fall.
“Almost,” Walt said. He thought for a moment. “She also asked me if I was an angel.”
“Well, you are an angel for stopping and bringing her in, a lot of people would have just driven on.”  The nurse pulled a sheet over the girl up to her neck, tucked it in around the gurney, and then stood up. She stared at the black pointed shoes on the girl’s feet. 
“She appears to be in shock or in some kind of trauma. Strange, it’s almost like she’s hypnotized. I’d better get on the phone to the on-call doctor. Before he gets here, you’ll need to fill-out some paperwork.”
“I really don’t know anything about her; I don’t know any more than you do.” Walt pleaded.
“No I.D.,” the nurse said searching her clothing. “We’ll have to admit her as a Jane Doe, but I will need the paperwork done. Until someone comes in to claim her, you’re the closest thing to a relative she has. Be sure to put down your home address in case we need to contact you.”
Walt shook his head, what did I get myself into?
He walked to the desk and began filling out an admittance form.
I’m her closest relative? He smiled a little as he tried to think of a way to answer the questions. She is really cuteIf I wasn’t here … I’d be home watching horror movies on the tube, like some un-dateable dork. Maybe there truly are rewards for doing good deeds? 

-------2-------


The doctor came in a few minutes later holding a clipboard, writing as he walked. “Thank you for filling in for Madeline. I know it was very last minute… Mrs.?” He looked at the nurse.
“Hamilton,” she said. “Pauline Hamilton”
He did roughly the same examination the nurse had done, except he listened to the girl’s heart and lungs with a stethoscope then asked the nurse to draw blood for a test.
“I’d like you to stay with her,” he told Walt. “In case she wakes up. It’s a good idea for her to see a familiar face when she opens her eyes.”
“Like I told your nurse,” Walt pointed to Pauline. “I’m not family. I really don’t even know her.”
“You’ll do until we find someone else,” the doctor declared.
“You’ll have to wait in here.” the nurse showed him a waiting area, just before they wheeled the girl down the hall. “We’ll come and get you … when she wakes up.”
Walt watched Mrs. Hamilton walk away. He knew there was something odd about her. After a moment he realized it was her shoes they looked out of place. He stared at the nurse’s feet as she pushed the gurney down the hall. The shoes were black pointed things with a large silver buckle on the front ... just like the girl’s.
Walt sat on a sofa in the waiting room opposite a row of tall glass windows, reading a People Magazine; thankfully he didn’t glance up.
 The pallid face of a dark hag, covered with a mass of twisted hair, appeared in the bushes just outside the window. Jagged teeth glistened in the moonlight as the thing peered through the glass. Black eyes rolled upward in a moldy skull, like a shark that has just tasted blood.

-------3-------


Walt grew restless. He lay the magazine down, got up and began to pace. He heard voices. It sounded like the girl and the nurse.  He hurried down the hallway and listened at a closed door. 
Walt didn’t see the dark shape creep into the waiting-room behind and hunch over the admittance forms on the desk, turning the pages with a filthy gnarled hand.
“Pauline!” Walt heard the girl say. “I’m tired of … being a hunter, even if our shoes protect us, we still succumb to their spells and tricks. I’m sorry I ever got mixed up with you. I was almost an offering to their dark God tonight. ”
“I knew you would be rescued,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “That’s why I came … to be here.”
“You can see the imminent … but only an hour ahead. What about my future? … Can’t you see that I want more?  I need a life to go on living.”
“We have for many ages been the predators of the wicked ones like Ham,” the nurse said. “The touching shoes have been passed down from hunter to hunter for more than five centuries. You and I must insure that dark covens like Abra Cadaver do not overpower the light in this world.”
The door flew open and Nurse Hamilton stared. A faint smile formed on her lips as she turned to Joanie. “You have a visitor,” she said.
Joanie Otter sat up as Walt entered the room. Her platinum hair fell in cascades around her shoulders. Pouty lips opened, turning into a grin that showed glistening white teeth. She gazed at him with eyes the color of a summer ocean.  He stared, bewitched.
“You’re the one.” she said. A trace of recognition registered in her voice. “You’re the one who saved me!” Her open mouth turned into a smile. “Come closer,” she ordered. Joanie grasp Walt’s hand as he walked toward the bed “You broke the spell,” she breathed. “What can I do for you in return?”
“I don’t want anything … I’m just someone who found you sitting in the center of the road and brought you to a hospital … here.” Walt immediately felt foolish. His tongue was all twisted up; he always got a little stupid when he talked to girls and this one made him feel idiotic. To a hospital here?  She probably thinks I’m retarded.
“I demand to know what my champion’s name is.” Joanie parted her mouth and brushed her tongue over a full upper lip. “I’m Joanie Otter,”
“Walt,” he stammered. “Walt Huntington.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t hear you,” Joanie whispered. “You’re going to have to move a little closer.” Walt was mesmerized by her impish smile and blue twinkling eyes. As he leaned down to speak into her ear, Joanie turned and brushed his lips with a kiss. Walt felt a delightful sensation rush from the area of contact to all points of his body. Somewhere in his mind a church bell chimed. He was instantly and irreversibly in love.
“I thought you two didn’t know each other.” Pauline scowled from the doorway. Walt jumped to his feet, his face like a ripe plum.  
“I was … just telling her my name,” he said.
“Walt and I were kissing,” Joanie confessed. “Would you mind giving us some privacy, he’s my boyfriend.” She stared at the open-mouthed Pauline as if daring her to object.
Mrs. Hamilton shrugged her shoulders and began to walk away. Joanie called after. “Please close the door … would you.” The woman stomped back wearing a glare … and slammed the door.
“I’m cold,” Joanie said. She pulled the tucked sheet out from one side and lifted it. “Slide in next to me, and keep me warm.  But first take off your shoes,” her eyes scanned down Walt’s body, “…and your pants.” she grinned and bit her lower lip so hard a drop of blood fell on the white bedcover. Walt’s eyes darted nervously toward the door, as he took off his shoes and then with shaking hands undid his belt buckle.

-------4-------


Mrs. Hamilton was at the desk, pretending to check patient’s records, when Walt entered the room with his arm around Joanie. She was dressed.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Pauline stood.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Joanie said. “I’m leaving. Walt and I are going to start a new life of our own, one where we don’t hunt witches that are constantly trying to figure out ways to kill us.”
“You can’t leave! Not on this night. It’s too dangerous! Haven’t you looked outside? It’s a full moon!” The woman charged from behind the desk and grasped Joanie’s arm.
Joanie brushed away her bony fingers. “Do me a favor and don’t look into my future anymore,” she said. “Let my next hour, my next day, my next year be a surprise.”

Mrs. Hamilton watched as the Chevy Nova roared from the parking lot. Joanie would be asleep in less than an hour from the sedative she had given her. Pauline turned and walked back toward the desk. A sudden paroxysm of future sight shook her body and her nurse’s scrubs spun outward like a whirlwind. She covered her eyes with trembling hands as if trying to block an intrusive light.  “I must shelter her,” she wailed as she crumpled onto the highly polished floor.

Joanie snuggled next to Walt as they drove through the mountains toward his house. “I guess I have lots of explaining to do” she said.
“I heard the talk about you and Mrs. Hamilton hunting witches,” Walt said. “Is that true?”
“It used to be,” Joanie said. “I’m done with that now.”
“What were you doing sitting in the middle of the road?” Walt asked her.
“I was captured by Ham and her followers,” Joanie said yawning. “They can’t kill hunters outright because of our shoes, but they can make us have accidents. They have a thing, a power, a person … a blind man who sees with the eyes of something else.” Joanie’s soft blue eyes closed and her head slumped. Suddenly her eyes flew open again, and she forced herself upright. “That thing … It, can put you into a reverie, make you do its will.  I had a flat tire coming home from school … when I opened the trunk for my spare, the thing was inside!  They had put it in while I was in class … and I looked.”
Her head slowly slumped onto Walt’s shoulder. Less than a mile down the road Joanie Otter was asleep.

-------5-------

A short time later they arrived at a ramshackle two-story house tucked into a grove of willows. Joanie stirred for just a moment as Walt carried her inside. “Lock the doors,” she mumbled. “Don’t look outside … don’t look into the unseeing thing’s eyes.” Then she fell asleep.
“Unseeing eyes?” Walt muttered. “She must be having delusions. I know I am.”

Later as Joanie lay upstairs sleeping, Walt heard a noise. Strangely, it had an oddly familiar jumble of notes, like a favorite Beatles’ song being played backwards. He looked toward the window. A human-shaped form dangled in the air just outside the glass. A white painted face with red lips grinned at him. He jumped from the sofa and staggered backward across the living room grasping a bronze bear figurine from an end-table as he went to use as a weapon.
Walt was terrified by the human form dancing in the air until he noticed thin strings reflected in the moonlight.  It was a marionette. A puppet on strings! Walt was furious … someone was playing a tricks on him.  He lunged toward the window holding the metal bear over his head just as the puppet was pulled upward out of sight.
He heard tiny footsteps clatter across wooden shingles on the roof. Walt shook his head in disbelief as he turned following the sound. The puppet had the appearance of painted wood, but the eyes inside the carved head had looked real. Walt ran to get his hunting rifle. He was swinging the door open on the gun cabinet, when he suddenly found himself at the other end of the house holding open the entry door. His hands were empty and his guns were still locked safely away at the other end of the building.
 The ugliest woman Walt had ever seen stood just inside a luminous circle made from the porch light. Her clawed fingers dangled from bony arms and splayed out from her ragged shroud like protracted raven wings. Walt stumbled through the door and toward her, no longer in control of his own legs. The thing danced backward; her kindling-wood arms thrust outward before her, enticing him forward. Whispered voices came from a dark chapel that had once been a vegetable garden.
Soon this corpse you’ll be his wife.
Bleed all, bleed all … and take his life.
Bone and claw with blood and fur.
Say all, say all … Abra Cadaver.



Walt was struggling against the witch when he heard a low thump. A huge boil covered hand grasped him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Walt twisted his neck and stared into huge eyes and a grinning mouth filled with broken teeth. A giant swayed on legs as big as tree trunks as it dangled him in the air. 
A gaunt man, pennies stuck into the eyeless sockets of his skull, jumped from the roof and began to wind strings around a marionette. The doll the blind man held was made of carved wood but the eyes that turned in its sockets were living things.  The human eyes turned and gazed at Walt as everything began to go black. “I Demilune watched you, and you looked,” the doll sang. “Now you’re mine and we all get to eat.” A green tongue darted from a hole drilled in the wooden mouth, and licked red painted lips. Walt watched the blind man carrying the puppet scurry into the house and pitch up the stairs to where Joanie was sleeping. A moment later he heard her screams. Walt passed out as the giant tossed him high into the air laughed and then caught him in its massive arms.

-------6-------

Walt was slowly waking from a nightmare.  He felt something warm next to him. It was the girl he had fallen in love with, bound to him with heavy rope as they sat on the asphalt. The full moon caressed her platinum hair like the sails of a ghost ship.  She gazed at him with eyes the color of the sky in autumn. Joanie gently leaned toward him and covered his lips with hers. Walt was in the throes of ecstasy, he didn’t care about anything except for the moment.

Two hooded figures held Pauline next to a 1938 Adler Damenrad ladies’ bicycle with a wire-basket mounted in place of a headlight and a woven picnic basket strapped above the rear wheel.  “Joanie!” Mrs. Hamilton cried, looking at them sitting in the highway. “You are one of us … a hunter… you wear the shoes. You must remember that!”
“You shouldn’t have tried to save me; the shoes don’t protect us from everything,” Joanie said, “Now they have caught you too.”
The witch they called Ham screamed laughter. “Shoes? Yes, the shoes may protect you from us…you can’t be killed by our hands when you wear them.  But there are other ways to die!” she twisted in all directions as she danced around the captive Mrs. Hamilton.
Ham pulled her moldy black dress to just above her wart covered knees. Three clawed-toes jutted from each boney foot. “You’re just my size” she looked at Mrs. Hamilton as her eyes rolled in her head. “Soon your powers will be mine; they will give me that which I have always desired. I will have the power to enter a home … any house of my picking under the full moon and receive my pleasure. I shall drink blood from any I wish. You should not hunt us so.” She pointed a dirty fingernail at Joanie. “Now all of you will die!”
Ham turned her eyes on Walt and screeched. “You mortals are such fools … no good deed goes unpunished.”  She laughed as she watched the road.
Pauline hung her head … her eyes suddenly grew large and round. She stared into the night sky and an out-of-place smile flashed in the moonlight.
A semi-tractor trailer came thundering around the corner. The screeching of locked brakes split the night as the careening truck swerved at the last minute crashing into the bound woman and the clustered coven assembled at the side of the road,  plowing through the living … and those who had cheated death for so many years.
Pauline Hamilton perished with a last vision frozen forever in the mirrors of her lifeless eyes as she was swept under the huge roaring wheels. Not just an hour of future seeing this time but a whole generation. A much older Joanie Otter stood before a small house with a white picket fence, grown children stood at her side, a granddaughter playing in the background all wearing black pointed shoes with large silver buckles.

-------7-------
.
Walt gazed at Joanie as they sat in the center of the road. She leaned in and kissed him. She was the most beautiful creature in the world. “Where will we go?” he asked.
“Cloverdale,” she said. “Ham and her followers are not gone and I must create my own powers to fight them. They are like shadows that vanish with the coming of night … but they still exist. I have family, a mother I haven’t seen since my parents divorced and friends … you will have friends too.”
Walt put his arm around her and together they struggled against the ropes.

THE END?


Sunday, March 4, 2018

ROAD KILL

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.



ROAD KILL
By R. Peterson

      A cloud of smoke caused by burning tire rubber drifted up from the convenience store parking lot when the eleven-to-seven shift relief finally showed – fifteen minutes late! In stony silence, Walt Huntington handed over the store’s keys, banged out the door and hurtled towards his car. The Chevy Nova careened sideways onto the street. Walt stomped the gas pedal to the floor. Now he would have to drive like a maniac to catch the first part of Creature Feature. It came on at midnight. A fifty minute drive through the mountains would make him miss the first five minutes, but he knew a short cut. 
      Just outside of town Walt swerved his car onto an unpaved road that had once provided access for hunters. He slid a CD of Sammy Hagar belting out I can’t drive 55 and cranked up the volume as he thundered over the low foothills like a runaway roller-coaster. After two miles of kicking up dust and gravel, he roared back on the highway just before a series of switchbacks stitched the highway to the mountain. 
      He raced up behind an eighteen wheeler blowing blue smoke and straining to do sixty five on the uphill grade … he stomped the gas pedal to the floor and passed it easy.
 A stack of papers fell from the dash onto the floor when he swerved back into his lane. Normally he wouldn’t have cared, but along with the assorted junk mail was a packet of application papers for a health care maintenance job. It wouldn’t look good to apply for a position with State Hospital North with pop stains and dirt smeared all over his C.V. He grabbed for the stack just as his car rounded a corner.  
      It was a dumb thing to do … taking his eyes off the road … but if he hadn’t veered to the right at that precise instant… he would have killed her.
A young woman dressed in a black tunic that barely skirted her thighs, showed legs covered with black silk to his sweeping headlights, her blonde hair blew outward in the wind, like a sunrise halo. She sat crossed legged, smack in the middle of his side of the road, on the far side of a blind curve. Walt noticed all this, plus her tightly shut eyes as his Nova screeched past, sliding sideways in seemingly slow motion, and then speeding up as it spun off the road throwing a whirlwind of gravel into the air. He missed her by inches. 
      It took about ten seconds for the dust to clear.
She was still there. She hadn’t moved an inch. Walt remembered the Semi-truck he had passed just a minute before. He could hear the roar of the diesel engine as it began to round the curve. He missed the girl but the truck wouldn’t. It couldn’t miss with his Chevy parked on the gravel edge.
 Time slowed once more, as he bolted from his car and tackled and rolled her to the far side of the road just as the semi-tractor trailer came thundering around the corner.
      A blast of air pushed him and her against the cliffside, and a shrieking air horn let him know how close they both had been to death.
She hardly weighed anything.  He stood with her in his arms. Her eyes were closed …black lashes lay on crème colored cheeks; her platinum hair glowed in the moonlight.
 He decided that she was either an actress or a model, she looked … maybe seventeen?
“Are you ok? … You almost became road kill.” He shook her gently.
      She was still … she could have been dead … but for the faint breath fluttering against his chest. Then she began to shake her head side to side as if saying no to a bad dream.
Her eyes opened, the misty color of the sky after a summer rain, then became clear and bright for a second. “Are you an angel?” she whispered. The faintest trace of a smile formed on her lips.
“No,” Walt said “But you almost were.”
      The sudden gloom that poured over her face astonished Walt.  She sobbed a single anguished word that sent chills down his spine.
Almost?  She closed her eyes tightly, trembling for several seconds before she once again fell limp in his arms. He could not wake her.

      Walt carried her to his car … she must be in shockI have to get her to a hospital … what else can I do? … No Creature Feature for me tonight … that’s for sure. He looked her over for injuries. Her shoes seemed out of place; they were black pointed things with big square silver buckles on the front. She dresses like a pilgrim. He could see no injuries; she looked perfect, almost too good to be true.
      Walt placed her body carefully on the seat next to him. He started the car and gunned it back onto the highway … this was a bad corner.  He looked in the rear view mirror as he got up to speed; he didn’t see any cars or trucks ready to run him down, but he did see something odd.
 A dark shape like a black sheet flew up from the road then fluttered off to the side. Whatever it was it … must have been lying in the road. Then two shadowy shapes flew up …one floated to the left one to the right. Someone’s black laundry spread all over the highway?
      He glanced in the mirror.  A cluster of forms rose into the air, one going left, one right and one straight up, the same dark rippling shapes. Walt concentrated on the road at the feathered edge of his headlight beams. Why don’t I see them till I’m past?
Suddenly he did see … another group rising … not behind the car this time but in front. One went left, one right and … one headed straight for his windshield. The black fabric flapped like the wings of a bird. At the last second the apparition swept downward and disappeared under the front of his car.
      Walt jammed down on his brakes and his car once again skidded sideways, the second time in one night.
His heart was thumping so loud, he was sure the girl would wake.
She just lay there … still as death.
Walt could see the slow rise of her chest … she wasn’t dead … not yet.
What was happening? Was his imagination playing tricks on him? … Too much Creature Feature?
He’d seen something in the dark shapes billowing up from the road and in the one that went under the front bumper … a scraggly hair-covered ball-shape …a hag’s face with a long twisted nose and darting black eyes.
 It was a child’s nightmare … he’d seen the face of a witch.
      The engine slowly began to wind and sputter down, the car shook and then it was silent...
Steam escaping from the overheated radiator complained you were driving too fast.
       The black shadows began to form in the road up ahead. Walt hadn’t missed Creature Feature after all.  His Friday night horror was just beginning. A thumping, scraping noise came from under the car. Whatever he had run down was still alive.
He remembered the matted ball of hair and the horrible face stuck on it … he twisted the key in the ignition switch. The starter groaned twice then was silent. Walt beat his fist on the dash.

      The shadow figures took a human form as they floated toward him. He didn’t want to look in the rear view mirror … he was afraid of what he might see.
He tried the ignition again … it turned faster this time …but the battery was almost drained.
And now he could see faces in the shrouds approaching … his hands shook so bad he dropped his keys … when he picked them up, the rotted face of death peered into his windshield.
They were all over on the highway; dark floating wraiths, clustered around the steaming Chevy. Walt glanced at the girl as she stirred and made a small sound … her eyes opened again, beautiful azure eyes … watching.
      A smile formed on her lips as she stretched a finger toward the keys shaking in his right hand.
The engine roared to life.
 Walt ground the transmission into first gear and jammed his foot on the gas pedal.
The dark shapes covering the road blasted away in every direction as he plowed through them.
When he was up to eighty five and certain the shadows were far behind, he glanced down …she was asleep, still as death … but for the wisp of breath coming from her faintly smiling lips.

      Walt was still trembling as he roared into Cloverdale and to the neon lights proclaiming Hospital Emergency Entrance

      Walt carefully lifted the girl from the passenger seat.  He didn’t look back. If he had he would have seen the dark shape clinging to the underside of his car slowly lower itself to the ground. The thing with a broken face, framed by oily matted hair like a doll pulled from a garbage dump.  It watched him carry the girl inside, then slithered out from under the car and fled into the shadows.

To be continued …