Sunday, September 30, 2018

THE WIND part 8

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


The milk-truck chugged to a stop in front of the mansion on the corner of Main and Galbraith Streets. It was a little after seven AM and still dim on the tree-lined streets of Cloverdale. The garage door had been left open and Joseph Callahan’s 1934 Buick Victoria was gone; they were at church. “It’ll be best if you go in alone,” Lavar Hicks looked in all four directions as he spoke from the passenger seat. He grinned at Tommy Lee and dangled the length of braided hair that he had cut from the Chinaman’s head from his hand. “What you’re looking for, looks like an old carved recipe-box, so it’s probably somewhere in the kitchen. Inside the box you’ll find a bunch of very old Tarot cards with pictures on one side. Bring me the card with the picture of the tornado and the words THE WIND printed on the front … leave the rest. Put everything else back just the way it was. Maybe that witch won’t even notice the card is missing.”
“I do as you tell. You give back queue … and no more ask for steal?” Tommy Lee hung his head–too ashamed to look up when he spoke.
“Sure I will,” Hicks laughed. “I may be a lot of things … but I ain’t no welcher!”
Tommy Lee opened his door slowly. Hicks handed him the wire basket that held a gallon of milk, two jars of crème and a pound of wrapped butter. “Don’t forget their order! And remember no funny business. You try to call the cops or anyone else and this hair rope goes up in flames.” Hicks flicked open a butane lighter enjoying the stricken look on Lee’s face as he dangled the hair piece over the flame … and then lit a cigar instead. “Now get in there and bring me back that card … we ain’t got all day!”
With his head still downcast, Tommy Lee carried the crème and butter toward the house.

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

            The Reverend John White smiled as he looked over the congregation. Almost every seat in the pews was filled. Some were standing at the back … unusual for an early morning service. Numerous people were turning to gape toward the back row where Melania Descombey sat with the strange Momett woman.
Melania thought the whispers and rustle of hymn books opening sounded like leaves falling from trees. The seasons were changing. Mrs. Dern played the piano while everyone sang the opening song Bringing in the Sheaves. Dorothy’s voice was not loud but Melania noticed she had perfect pitch.
John White tried to appear non-judgmental as he sorted through his sermon papers but it was hard when a person of another religion visited his church wearing a cloth bag over her head … the woman sitting beside Melania looked like a scarecrow! “Good morning,” he spoke as he walked to the podium adjusting his glasses. “Today I would like to talk to you about keeping parts of ourselves hidden.” The Reverend stared directly at Melania and Dorothy before he went on. “Jesus said Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven …”

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

                Tommy Lee opened the side door to Joseph Callahan’s with his key the same way he had dozens of times before. Why did this time feel like he was a thief? Probably because if he took something that didn’t belong to him … then he was.  The woman who lived here now trusted him the same way the man had before her. Tommy’s own honor no longer mattered to him. He had given his word to a bad man and was thus shamed by his actions.  All he could do now was restore the respect for his ancestors by retrieving and wearing his sacred queue. Tommy decided to take the dairy products to the basement first and then look for the special card upstairs.
            The underground part of the mansion was vast, with almost as many dim chambers as the lighted upper levels. Floor to ceiling shelves held carefully labeled containers filled with rare and often poisonous herbs, fungi, exotic extracts, spiders and other even darker things. Wooden casks held liquids in various stages of aging and fermentation. The strange mixture of uncontainable vapors and seeping mists were almost always fragrant. Today he was drowning. It was best to do your business and get out quickly … today the getting out was very slow.
He was hiking a narrow and dangerous path through the clouds atop Qomolangma although he’d only been to the famous Mount Everest in his dreams. A Panda bear peeked between two crates of Mangosteen as he splashed through a rice paddy. A smiling Xiu was busy scrubbing clothes by a river but when he looked again his mother was gone … only the barrel of hot water and the steam remained along with her whispered words. “A crisis is opportunity … riding a dangerous wind!” Both his parents had been dead for over thirty years.
            Tommy placed the milk cream and butter on a shelf in the ice room. The temperature felt like January just before dawn as he closed the heavy metal door behind him. A female lion lay at the foot of the stairs he must climb to reach the kitchen licking her lips. Tommy stepped over the creature without fear … he was already dead … an empty shell looking to save the face of his ancestors.
His head cleared slightly when he closed the basement door behind him. The kitchen was clean and in good order. The first rays of morning light were seeping between half-open yellow curtains. A Felix the Cat Clock mounted on the wall kept musical time with its eyes and tail as he staggered past a round glass table and his shadow danced to the silent music. The bad man Hicks had told him to look for a small wooden box with Ombré carved on the front. Tommy didn’t see anything on the shelf above the sink and was turning to leave with what felt like welcome relief when a cabinet door behind him slowly creaked open. A box of Arm &Hammer baking soda and a bag of Redpath sugar moved to the side seemingly by their own power and the carved box appeared glowing like a dark flame behind them.
Tommy placed the box on the table and taking a deep breath prepared to open it. His mother’s hand suddenly was on his. She was sitting in a chair across from him so close he could see a tiny bit of tea leaf stuck to her teeth. “Run good husband third child! Fast !” she screamed. Tommy turned and bolted toward the door but his next breath found him climbing a staircase instead. He willed himself to stop but his legs no longer obeyed him. At the end of a long hall he found another stair … this time narrow and dusty leading to the attic. The sound of his mother’s voice came to him again … this time from above. “There is no air in this box. Ajudi'm fill meu!  The attic was filled with boxes crates and other things but Tommy was drawn like a magnet to the back. Dust rose from a large banded chest as something inside bumped the sides this time with force. “Ajudi'm fill meu!”  Something was wrong. He was never her son always good husband third son. Whatever was locked in the box … was not his mother.
The iron clasp was closed with a large heavy lock. Tommy didn’t have to look for the key. It was there nestled between stacks of maroon velvet curtains when his head was twisted violently in that direction. He was scared … more scared than the night wolves had killed and eaten his parents in the mountains of Idaho. Tommy was no longer controlling what he did. Time stopped … and after an endless age started again. His mother’s voice came again … this time her own words … riding the wind … as he placed the key in the lock. “Labors without honor are at first annoying cobwebs … later they become chains.”

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

Melania was fascinated by Reverend White’s sermon. Most of the people inside the church professed a strong and unyielding believe in God … yet none of them believed in the powers of the mystic. Not a few in the congregation spent hours studying ancient texts but none tried to actually bring that special kind of magic to light. The words of Jesus were not unlike the directions on the back of her late mother’s Ombré cards. Each gave specific instructions to achieve the desired results. The man had been raving for more than an hour. When she closed her eyes it was easy to hear her mother’s voice replacing those of God’s self-proclaimed servant on Earth and giving Melania her own Sunday morning sermons.
“Belief, is the most powerful part of the universe. If your God is real … then this is where he dwells. Truth is the highway to belief. A lie or a bump in the road may knock you off your purpose for a bit … but the direction remains the same. We are all travelers in a made-up reality. To say you have no time … is to laugh in the face of eternity. What will be will be … even if it takes a million times forever. You did every wrong and every right … why blame others when we are one? Learn to see things with your hands … and your eyes will find them! Thoughts are like arrows … flying but never reaching targets. Wanting and wishing are candles lit only by imagination or luck. Work is joy … given a bad name. Every force has an opposite pulling in perfect balance … choose your side. Those who don’t knock wonder why the door did not open. Silence will wake you faster … than any clap of thunder …”
When Melania opened her eyes the room was quiet. Dorothy looked on the verge of panic. Most of the congregation was turned … staring. Reverend White cleared his throat as he shuffled his pages humbly averting his eyes. “Perhaps if some in the flock feel the pull of sleep interspersing and herding my words … I should try to bleat a little louder …”

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

Lavar Hicks grew tired of waiting; three cars and a truck had already driven past him. He looked up and down both streets before he banged into the kitchen. “Never trust a chink!” The carved recipe box lay on a glass table … unopened. Hicks grabbed it and dumped out the contents. The Tarot cards were very old; several corner pieces broke away while he ruffled through the pile. Several rusty coins rolled off the glass. “Not even worth copper!” He picked them up and dropped them back in the box. THE WIND lay at the very bottom of the cards as if hiding. “I’ll have what I want when I want it!” Hicks jammed the special card in his coat pocket and then crammed the rest back in the box. He was walking toward the door when Tommy Lee came bounding down the stairs. Lavar didn’t like it. The chink looked too happy. “What the hell have you been doing?” Lavar sounded like an angry bear woke too early from a winter’s long hibernation.
“Making plans.” Tommy Lee’s smile made Lavar trip on one of his own boots. It was too confident … menacing. “Making such marvelous plans!”
As the milk truck pulled away from the mansion Hicks was beginning to think that things would be a lot better when he was far away from the Chinaman. The truck was doing over ninety when they flew across the Townsend Street Bridge. Hicks took the braided length of hair from his coat pocket and offered it without being asked. He had planned to tease the chink for at least an hour and enjoy the begging. Now something had him scared. “Here, the deal is done,” he stammered.
Lavar gasped when the chink unrolled his window and tossed out the sacred rope. “The deal is done when I say!” Tommy Lee’s smile belonged on a crocodile and Lavar was in a swamp up to his neck. Jagged teeth gleamed from a too-wide mouth. All Hicks could do was nod his head … and the murky water was rising.

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

Brian put on slippers when he heard the milk truck drive away. He walked from his basement bedroom to the ice-room. His head still felt hot to the touch. Melania said it was a special fever – Momett growing pains - straw turning into living flesh. A cold glass of fresh milk would taste good with his cereal. He saw the Ombré on the table and wondered why it had been left out. He took a bowl from the cabinet and put the recipe box back where it belonged. He was pouring milk on his Wheaties when he heard a thumping noise coming from the attic.
It was annoying hearing the sound over and over. Must be the wind moving something … but in the attic? The entire house was strange stacked on strange including him. He left a tiny trail of straw dust as he climbed the two flights of stairs.
A puppet with strings attached to head, arms and legs swung from the rafters. Wooden eyes painted red followed Brian as he crossed the room. “Where did you come from?” Brian gasped. A hinged mouth opened and then closed slowly at first and then quicker as if speaking for the first time. The oriental accent sounded familiar. “No give back queue … that dimoni take hair … take milk truck!”

TO BE CONTINUEED …

           



Sunday, September 23, 2018

THE WIND part 7

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



          Melania opened her eyes. The hands on the Haller German alarm clock next to her bed showed four-nineteen AM. She held her breath and listened … a minute later, the noise sounded again … a pounding … like impatient knocking on a door … coming from the attic?
Melania dressed quickly, throwing on a calico robe and slippers. She was careful to close her bedroom door gently so as not to wake Dorothy and Brian sleeping in the next room. She was almost to the top of the stairs when the sound came again … this time a scratching noise accompanied more thumping.
            The large dimly lit attic, filled with decades of boxes, crates and old furniture was in need of a good cleaning. Dust bunnies grew wings and took flight as she crossed the room. A fine layer of dust that her late mother called Sift floated in the air and under the single sputtering incandescent bulb the room appeared as if it was swathed in a London fog.
            She saw the large banded-trunk with the lock on it jerk just as the banging came again. Something was inside wanted out! Someone or something was speaking to her, a harsh, rusty-can voice coming from the bottom of a deep well … that only sounded inside her head.
“… release me and I promise that you will die … in the quick! Leave me here and I won’t forgive! There just under those rotted piles of tenda …”
Melania turned as if invisible fingers were twisting her head. A tiny, gold key gleamed just under the edge of folded and faded curtains. It called to her with an irresistible and animal-like visual temptation. She reached for the precious metal shrouded with maroon velvet … her mind no longer controlling her own hand. Her dead mother Jesska’s shrill voice echoed repeated warnings from somewhere far off in the great beyond. “No! My precious daughter! It is not gold you desire but a snake. You will not be the one to open what must forever remain closed!”
Melania closed her eyes and shook her head violently as if trying to dislodge some vile spider clinging to the walls of her mind. She finally felt it dislodge with a flood of her own tears … tearing folded brain matter and memories. With force of will Melania closed her fingers … before she could lift the key.
You bitchhhhhhh! the thing hissed like a snake. “I’ll get out without youuuuuu … and when I dooooo …”
Melania turned and fled down the stairs, slamming and locking the attic door behind her. The Tri-Punto that she Dorothy and Brian had created was already working the dark half of its magic. Her mother, Jesska, had warned her numerous times that even the tiniest bits of enchantment must be undertaken with great caution. “If not me … then who will open it Mother?” she whispered as she reached the bottom of the stairs … there was no answer.
            Melania set a pot to boil for tea on the stove and after piling split kindling onto hot coals in the fire-box crept into the library. Joseph Callahan had an extensive collection of diaries that he kept faithfully for many years. She took down a half-dozen leather-bound volumes and stacked them on a table next to an oil lamp. The banded-chest in the attic looked as if it hadn’t been moved in at least a decade. Somewhere inside Joseph’s writings there should be an account as to what was inside the mysterious locked trunk. The banging/scratching noise in the attic sounded again … this time there was also what sounded like hushed laughter.
            Melania opened a dusty volume labeled 1920 and began to read …
January 1, 1920
Woke this morning with a bit of the old lingering celebration sickness. My poor head! I’m afraid I imbibed of too much of the night’s assorted pleasures. If I only could have had my beloved Melania at my side! What a repulsive fool I was … and probably still am! The coming year, in fact the entire decade ahead, looks to be one of remarkable and continuing prosperity! And not just for Callahan Industries, but for the national economy as a whole. If only …

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



                Tang Lei struggled because the laughing men expected it. He knew he couldn’t win … but not because he was too old. It was because he had learned early that beating a white man at anything brought bad luck and revenge. His parents were immigrant railroad laborers and he was born in Utah Territory on May 6th. 1869 four days before the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads joined tracks at Promontory Summit. But Tommy Lee would always be a Chinaman with an English name … never an American. Butch Fowler pinned him to the floor of the upstairs bedroom while Lemont Pool stripped off his clothes then they tossed him onto the bed with the naked woman. “Hang on to him, Gladys!” Hicks yelled as Tommy tried to crawl off the bed and Butch took pictures with a bulky Graflex press camera.
Three flash-bulbs going off in ten seconds temporarily blinded Tommy.
            “Do you know what the sheriff does to Orientals that get caught raping white women?” Hicks asked before he took another drink from his bottle.
            “They don’t bother with no trial …. they hangs ‘em from the closest tree!” Lemont Pool stuck a thick finger in the Chinaman’s face as he answered Hicks’ question.
            “Twenty-three dollar … maybe I sell horse twenty-five,” Tommy was blinking his eyes as Gladys latched onto his ponytail and jerked him back onto the bed. He thought these men were after his money. “Grain price very low … nobody buy!”
“We don’t want your worthless chink money … although this young lady you’re fooling around with might.” Fowler laughed and tried to push them together.
            “We want to ride along with you on your Sunday morning milk deliveries and have you help retrieve something that belongs to us from that big house on the corner of Main and Galbraith Streets,” Hicks said.
            “You got a key to that Descombey woman’s digs don’t ya?” The camera flash went off again and Tommy looked like a child lost in the woods at night. He didn’t understand.
Suddenly Tommy knew what these bad men wanted. Every Sunday morning at seven he opened the back door to the Joseph Callahan mansion with a key and delivered milk and other dairy items to the basement ice room while the owners were at church. Things hadn’t changed since the witch woman had been living there. If anything the deliveries were more frequent. These Gwailou were not planned to rob him … they wanted him to steal from others! “No thief!” he shook his head. “Tommy Lee hang dead from tree … Tommy Lee no thief!” he told them.
            Hicks had half expected this kind of answer. He opened a drawer and pulled out a large knife with a ten-inch blade. The naked Chinaman didn’t flinch but stared at him with calm and determined eyes … death before dishonor. “Roll him on his belly and hold him,” Hicks ordered.
Tommy felt the rough man yank at his braided hair and then gasped as the man cut off his ponytail.
“You’ll get this chink hair-rope back after you do what you’re told,” Hicks said.
Tang Lei knew he must retrieve his sacred queue and somehow re-attach it no matter the consequences. The words of Confucius had been written into Chinese souls for generations. There was a thousand years of respect and obedience bound in that two foot length of braided hair. To lose it was to bring dishonor to all your ancestors. We are given our body, skin and hair from our parents; which we ought not to damage. This idea is the quintessence of filial duty.
            “You say I do!” Tommy hung his head. “You say … Tommy Lee do.”
            “Now that’s more like it!” Hicks opened another bottle of whiskey. “Gladys! Give this yellow chink dog his reward!”

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

An hour after she started reading Melania found what she was looking for. The hands showing four-nineteen on the clock when she had been awakened by the scratching, thumping sounds kept flashing in her mind like a lighthouse keeper’s beam during a particularly vicious storm. There was danger in the winds tonight and she was being guided to safety.
April 19, 1920
Winter lingers long past the beginning of spring in Cloverdale and most all of Western Montana. The temperature has not risen above freezing for more than seventy-two days. Ice on the roads can be as deadly as a gunshot … more so when a family is involved.
I was determined to stay at home next to a warm fire but was called away just before dark by problems at the factory that could not easily be put aside. A sedan going too fast crashed through the guard rail of the Townsend Street Bridge and sunk beneath the broken ice just before I stopped. Emma Brady and her three youngsters were trapped inside. Johnny Lang, the illegitimate son of legendary sheriff Thomas Lang and Elisabeth Walker, and a young man whom I liked very much, was the first to arrive on the horrible scene. Johnny dove repeatedly into the freezing water and pulled out the mother and all three children. The crowd gathered on the bridge all yelled for him to stop when he pulled out the last crash victim but Johnny took a deep breath and dove under the water one last time. He never resurfaced!
It was more than two hours later when a wrecking truck with a winch was able to pull the sedan out of the frozen river. Johnny Lang’s body was found wedged against the rear window frame next to some kind of stringed puppet. Obviously, Johnny had mistaken it in the underwater darkness for another trapped child.
The shock of losing a dear friend was enlarged beyond measure by the bizarre and ethereal circumstances surrounding the horrible accident. Emma Brady and all of her children swore they had never seen what I later learned was a very, very old marionette before. The wooden effigy lay in the snow. Its painted eyes seemed to move each time you looked away. Several times I thought I saw a flash of teeth although the head appeared to be solid wood … so that must have been impossible?
I felt great relief when Ted Burrap, who owns the local second-hand store, picked the wooden stage-monster out of the snow and drove away with the abomination in the back of his truck.
Some days are longer than others. Some nights go on forever. I’m hoping this night will not be that kind.

Melania read more than sixty pages of journal entries before the strange marionette was mentioned again.

July 18, 1920
The puppet from hell still hangs in the dusty front window of Ted’s Disount even though Ted Burrap had been dead for more than two weeks. So many deaths and tragedies in this town as of late … it’s unnatural! The wooden creature vexes me so that I’ve taken to driving a different route when I have to be about on business or errands. One late night I swore I saw the creature walking about inside the darkened store with some unseen power moving its ghastly strings. Something has been not right in this town ever since that frozen sedan with its commendable but dead hero inside was pulled from the Cottonmouth River. I’ve made up my mind to consult with the gypsy woman Jesska Descombey. Her son is the local doctor and she is reputed to be a vast storehouse of things spiritual and sub-natural. I’ve never met her lovely ravishing daughter Melanie? I believe. But at even a quick glance the daughter’s striking beauty steals away your breath and makes you want to jump about and perform dangerous Barnum Brothers Circus stunts like some love-crushed ninth-grade school lad. God help me! The villain, Cupid, hasn’t just stung me with a single arrow but has turned me into a virtual pin cushion of lust and desire.

Joseph Callahan appeared to be almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time Melania read this entry about the puppet.

October 30, 1920
Having bought the Ted’s Discount store from Ted Burrap’s widow along with all its contents. I have secured the marionette which Madame Jesska Descombey calls “Demilune” inside a special black-oak seaman’s chest bound with stout iron bands and a special vocal prayer? Enchantment? read aloud in Latin by a former? Fallen? Catholic priest over the lock mechanism … per the old woman’s exacting instructions.
It appears to be working. I wear the silver key on a chain around my neck and hardly ever venture into the dusty attic where it … rests? is stored.  I do hope by year’s end to actually sleep through the night. When I close my eyes, I dream of the gypsy woman’s beautiful daughter. I had it wrong. Her name is “Melania”. What a lovely sound!

Melania closed the journal and went into the kitchen for another cup of tea … a little more cream this time. The wind outside had ceased and the house seemed strangely quiet. It was a little after five AM. Church services began at seven AM sharp. It had taken great patience to convince the Momett to accompany her to Sunday services. Even with their strange attire Melania wanted Dorothy and Brian to be accepted by the community. So far it seemed to be working.
What was in the chest in the attic was a problem and definitely a danger. Joseph Callahan had an extensive collection of books on the occult and there were her own mother’s volumes that she had saved from the fire. I’ll find out everything I can about this Demilune Melania told herself as she climbed the stairs until then I think I can possibly steal an hours-worth of sleep before I must rise.

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

Four minutes and nineteen seconds after Melania Descombey slipped into the first stages of sleep, a tiny breath rustled a handful of leaves in a single tree outside. It was minutes before the wind came again … this time stronger. Almost every leaf on the tree moved … vibrating to a magnetic calling of unknown origin. Something dark and sinister was coming …. before the dawn. A shadow seen only under moonlight - dissolved and diffused by starlight - lingered just beyond the streetlamp’s ruddy glow. An age old reflection of evil that never dies because it has long been dead danced across the withered lawn. The wind gasped as if it had been holding its breath … and trees began to tremble.
And somewhere miles away a milk truck started and began its rounds.


TO BE CONTINUED …








Sunday, September 16, 2018

THE WIND part 6

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


Melania discovered a new life in Cloverdale. Having the largest house in town invited all kinds of social activity. Because Dorothy and Brian stayed mostly in the basement, she was kept busy opening the door. Townsfolk had been wary, even afraid of her before, but now … well, she was one of them … she herself had been attacked. Melania began to cherish the time after nine pm when the doorbell stopped ringing then she could tell the Momett to come upstairs into the kitchen and keep her company.
Immediately, both mother and child stared at the lit candles, then at the overhead electrical lights, with a puzzled expression. Then Dorothy’s gaze returned to the candles and she smiled, as though enchanted by their flickering light.
Brian skipped over to Melania and tugged at her hand. “What are we doing tonight?”
“Magic,” Melania told him. “We must first create a tri-punto before we can attempt to bring back your father.”
“What’s a tri-punto?” the youngster asked.
 “A Tri-Punto reunites three objects that belong together,” Melania explained. “It then creates its own ethereal powers that seek to bring together other things placed inside the triangle … but there is also danger.”
“What kind of danger?” Dorothy’s voice quavered. Obviously she was beginning to realize that being brought to life was very precarious.
“Good and bad are the two sides of everything,” Melania said. “You can’t create one Tri-Punto without creating another bad one somewhere.”
Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. Some things were beyond her understanding. “What do you want us to do?”
Melania was glad that Joseph Callahan had left the huge house completely furnished. The mansion was a treasure trove of books, souvenirs and artifacts obtained from all over the world. An ironwood cabinet with glass doors in the parlor contained blown-glass wine goblets. She took three of them and a container of water and sat them on an expensive Steinway piano.
She had an intuitive feeling that Brian, all Momett for that matter, were created with perfect pitch and she was about to test her theory.  She tapped the “E” key on the piano above middle C while she added small amounts of water to one of the wine glasses and then tapped the rim gently with a silver spoon. “Tell me when the two vibrations become as one,” she told the youngster.
Brian smiled when the two objects both vibrated at exactly 329.628 Hz. “There,” he said.
Melania, with help from Brian, did the same for the other wine glasses. Creating one that sounded the musical note “A” and the last one “D”
            “Are you going to play us a song?” Dorothy’s blue eyes glowed in the dim-light almost nocturnally and Melania knew she was infatuated with any kind of music.
            “No you are .. in a way,” she told her.
Melania blindfolded Dorothy and instructed Brian to lead her by apron strings through the numerous rooms while she gently tapped the rim of the glass. “Losing your sight makes your other senses stronger … especially hearing,” Melania whispered. “Listen for an answer to the tone you create … things that move to the same waves will call out to each other.”
Dorothy moved slowly through the rooms, assisted by Brian, tapping the wine-glass with the spoon … and listening. Melania was amazed at how quietly the Momett could move. The musical tone she created might have come from a concert hall. “Ahhh,” Dorothy gasped as she crept through an enormous library. “We have an answer!”
A tiny porcelain figurine of a soldier rested on a shelf next to four leather-bound scrolls that all looked as if they came from China’s late Ming Dynasty period.
            “Place the glass next to the mercenary warrior,” Melania told her, “… they belong together.”
Brian tapped the next goblet finding an answering tone in a half-filled container of unpasteurized milk cooling in cellar ice. “Remind me to leave a note for the milkman,” Melania told them as Brian placed the glass beside the jug. “This cream will have to be replaced … or we’ll have only sugar to lace our tea.”
Melania tapped the rim of the last goblet, But it wasn’t until they reached the attic that an answering ring responded to the “D” tone. It came from a hinged lock on a large banded trunk. There was no key in sight.
“Are we going to open it?” Dorothy’s eyes, when she whipped off the blindfold, were large and round almost filling the holes in the white sack that covered her head.
            “No, we have answering tones from things representing life, death and … secrets.” Melania said placing the wine glass on the chest. “This, I believe sums up the natural magica of most mortal lives.”

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

Lavar Hicks sat with Butch Fowler and Lemont Pool in a booth next to a window overlooking Townsend Avenue inside Spare-A-Dime diner. Hicks spilled sugar over the table as he tried to sweeten his coffee.
“I don’t know where Vern could have gone off to,” Lemont said staring out the window at the few cars rolling through town. “His truck’s gone. Not that I miss the oil-head. I still say he’s a waste of skin but Ma wants him there to help with the chickens. She don’t like the killing. She says it’s too damn messy and lets Vern do it. I stop by and chop off a few heads now and then but the old sow balks every time I ask for a few dollars. I don’t work for free … even for my own damn Ma!”
“He’s probably drunk … or in jail in Dillon,” Butch said grabbing the sugar jar from Lavar. “I hear they got a cathouse there. Your worthless brother probably tried to sneak out without paying. The sheriff in that town is part owner and probably has him locked-up or shoveling out stalls at the stockyards.”
“When he shows up I’m gonna thump his head,” Lemont said. “That truck ain’t just his!”
“Shut your yaps!” Hicks slammed his fist on the table s so hard that Lemont’s cup bounced, slopping coffee. “We got us bigger problems!”
The three watched as Melania drove past in Joseph Callahan’s 1934 Buick. The two Momett sat in the front seat with her like they were all family. “Blowing up her truck turned her into something like a hero,” Hicks snorted glaring at Fowler. “Before that, people thought she was behind the killings …. now they see her as one of them!”
            “It was your idea,” Fowler growled. “Don’t lay it on me!”
            “I need more than one Hodmedod if I’m gonna get people to turn against her,” Hicks said.
            “I thought you said that she monster was pregnant,” Fowler said. “You was gonna raise your own herd!”
            “I think they has to be two just like in people.”
            “Then how you going to make your army?”
            “I was watching when the old woman brought the scarecrows to life in the corn field,” Hicks said. “She was reading from the back of one of them fortune telling cards in the moonlight.”
            “So if you could get your hands on that magic card you could make your own … right?”
            “Tarot,” Butch said. “They call them Tarot cards.”
            “I damn well could,” Lavar said gulping the last of his coffee. “She keeps them in a small carved box, probably in her kitchen, like they was some kind of recipe.”
Mrs. Lee noticed their cups were empty and rushed over with a fresh pot. She wiped the spilled sugar and coffee from the table with a clean damp rag. Customers like Hicks, Fowler and Pool actually cost her money because they always found a reason not to pay. Still, she was pleasant to everyone … it was business.
            “Does that chink husband of yours still deliver fresh milk on Sundays?” Hicks asked her as she filled his cup.
            “Cows … him milk every day,” Mrs. Lee said. “Husband good man … work very hard.”
After the woman left, Butch snickered. “I didn’t know you was interested in some damn chink milkman!”
            “I’ve watched him deliver cream to the Callahan house on Sundays,” Hicks said. “He has a key to the mansion and lugs the milk to the ice-cellar while they’re at church.”
            “Then all we have to do is get the key from the chinky.” Fowler was smiling.
            “I think when a Chinaman has a bottle of whiskey poured down his throat and a naked Gladys Barlow screaming rape he’ll give you anything you want.” Hicks laughed. “If he thinks you might turn him into the sheriff.”
            “Which Tarot card was the old witch reading from,” Butch asked. “The Magician? The Hanged Man?”
            “These were very old cards … it said THE WIND on the front,” Hicks whispered as the three huddled together their heads forming a crude triangle. “And it showed a dark twisting storm lifting up and destroying an entire city.”

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

            Dorothy emptied the coffee can filled with all the bits of Bolger that they could find in their former barnyard onto the special table set up in the great room. There were buttons, bits of singed straw and shoe leather and the brass loops from a pair of bib-overalls. Melania had struck the three notes on the piano and by listening closely had determined that this was the exact center of the three-dimensional tri-punto. “I can’t believe this is all that’s left of my husband,” Dorothy sobbed. “I don’t think we have enough of him here to ever bring him back!”
            “Most of Bolger will be new,” Melania told her. “New clothes, hat, buttons, straw and that’s not a bad thing. It only takes a little bit of you to make you who you are.”
            “I remember jumping down from the cross and running through a cornfield,” Brian said. “How will we do that in town?”
            “Movement is what brings most things to life,” Melania said. “Why not have a dance party for Halloween with lots of tatty-boogles?”
            “But will this new Momett be my Bolger … the husband of my child?” Dorothy pleaded for an answer.
            “The most important ingredient in any person flesh and blood or straw … is love,” Melania looked at Dorothy’s grieving blue eyes. “I think we’ll do just fine!”

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

            It was an hour before dawn when Lavar Hicks stepped in the road in front of Tommy Lee’s milk truck. The old Chinaman stomped on his brakes and swerved to avoid hitting him. “My wife is sick in an upstairs room and I need help packing her down the stairs so I can take her to the doc,” Hicks told Tommy as he leaned in the window.
            “I know Descombey … he good doctor … I bring him here!” Tommy said starting to turn his truck around. He could smell liquor on Hick’s breath.
            “She can’t wait for you to go there and back!” Hicks opened the milk truck door and put a hand roughly on the old man’s shoulder.
            “Carry! Yes I help carry!” Lee said as Hicks led him to the farm house.
Tommy Lee was shocked when he saw the two grinning men holding bottles of whiskey and the naked woman lying spread-eagle on the upstairs bed. “This is your lucky day,” Hicks told him with a rough shove. “It isn’t every day that a chink gets invited inside a white man’s house for a drink and a free ride!”

TO BE CONTINUED …



Sunday, September 9, 2018

THE WIND part 5

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


Lavar Hicks wiped grime from his kitchen window as he peered outside. It was nearing midnight. The rope in his hand lowered a ladder into a pit inside the barn. The thing, the Hodmedod as the terrified folk of Cloverdale were calling it, was out there returning from the chore that he had sent it to do. He could almost sniff it – an odor like moldy straw covering a rotting corpse.
The ever clucking brood-hens were deathly quiet … it was coming closer. No sly weasel prowled the barnyard this time but an abomination capable of ripping the entire chicken-house into shreds. It was a monster returning from a vicious and bloody murder.
Both doors to the ramshackle farm house he lived in had been reinforced with two by six lumber … still he was uneasy. The scarecrow brought to life by the Descombey witch-woman was slowly learning to obey him, but it was also reckless and bloodthirsty. There was no telling what it … what she might do.
He would feel a lot better with his monster back inside the hole with the wooden hatch closed tight and a ton of grain sacks on top. Until the next time someone needed to be punished …
Lavar saw a dark moon shadow slip beyond the well house. When he looked again, Mrs. White’s blood-soaked bonnet hung from the pump handle. She had returned. He lit a cigarette. The trail of blood leading into the barn and the strangled chicken thrown into the hole should do the trick.
Moving lights suddenly reflected off the window above the sink as an automobile turned into the gravel drive. Who the hell could be paying him a visit at this time of night? Hicks recognized Vern Pool’s out of time truck even before the overheated engine coughed and banged to a stop between the house and the barn. Pool left his headlamps on as he half fell out of the open door. He butchered George Gershwin’s popular song Summertime with a muddled voice and wrong lyrics as he staggered toward the house swinging a bottle of High West Campfire whiskey and making the rolled cigarette between his lips dance. “Oh, your daddy's is gooooone and your ma is good-lookin' …So hush, little ba-beeeeeee, don't ….you cry.”
Lavar started to unbolt the door and tell his drunken friend to get back in his truck and get the hell home when a shadow fell across the moon-circle spotlighting the center of the yard. Vern Pool lifted his right leg for the third step of a dance … a poor imitation of almost tin-man Frank Buddy Ebsen when she stepped in front of him. “I smell a skunk … Whaaaa???” Almost comically, Pool’s head tipped back by degrees, farther, then farther, and even farther, until he could see the head of the monster looming over him.
“No!” Pool blubbered as he swung the whiskey bottle in a convulsive dance of incontinence terror. She lashed out with one huge arm lifting him off his feet and sending him flying through the air end over end and crashing into the truck windshield. Hicks had never seen his friend move so fast. Even though his left leg dangled like a half-chewed strand of spaghetti, Pool had the driver’s side door open and flung himself inside before the creature could count the three strides it took to reach him. One of the huge hands moved again and the old Ford balanced on two wheels before slamming back to the ground with an explosion of rust and broken leaf springs. Missing teeth on the starter Bendix gear sounded like a pig being butchered but the flywheel caught and the engine roared.
For a moment Hicks thought Pool might escape. But Vern was never lucky. The entire truck was lifted off the ground and slammed back down,  upside-down this time in a storm cloud of oil-soaked rust, screaming back tires and leaking fuel. The cigarette hanging from Pool’s twisted mouth glowed like a red light on an approaching ambulance just before the gas fumes ignited.
The explosion rocked the house. A pipe under the sink broke and sprayed water. Dishes crashed to the floor from both kitchen cabinets. The stuck-horn on the overturned truck sounded like an air-raid siren being burned in a campfire.
Hicks had no idea how Pool got out of the truck … but he did. A human torch lumbered blindly toward the retreating monster before it broke into separate fires. The creature backed up … and then backed up … then turned and ran into the barn looking for the safety of her underground home.
Hicks felt the rope jerk violently in his hand as the monster tumbled down the ladder. He quickly reeled in the line and tied one taunt end to the leaking water pipe.
Certain body parts of Vern Pool still twitched in smoking lumps on the ground when Hicks got the kitchen door open. “Normally I don’t like drunks coming over this time of night!” Hicks kicked at the body as he walked past. The uncorked bottle of High West Campfire dropped on the ground looked half full. “Now what am I going to do with you?” One of Pools’ severed limbs lay next to the corpse and the leather boot covering the dead man’s toes was in flames. Hicks picked the leg up and held it like a torch as he walked toward the barn. “But now I know she don’t cotton to fire … thank you kindly. Have yourself a good long sleep-it-off!” Lavar Hick’s broken laughter after he took a drink sounded like rusty farm equipment and other debris … falling into a long forgotten well.

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


                Melania was gripping the   door handle when Dorothy called to her. “Why not let Bolger back up the truck? He’s getting better at shifting the gears … but he still needs practice.” The Momett family stood obediently next to the tall clock. Melania wondered what she was going to do with them now that work on the farm was about to cease. Perhaps the Momett might find work in town. Would the citizens of Cloverdale accept them? “Just take your foot off the brake real slow and I’ll guide you,” Melania told Bolger when he rushed over. His sky blue eyes peering from under the cloth hood looked brighter than she’d ever seen them.
            Bolger dropped the key when Melania handed it to him. He was searching the floorboards when Brian wiggled out of his mother’s arms and came running. “Can I ride with you daddy?”
            A low boom sounded in the distance. Melania had noticed black clouds earlier … but no lightning. It would be a stormy night. “Why don’t you help me, your mother and Mr. Callahan lift the big old clock?” Melania suggested. “We might need someone to watch that no ticks fall out.”
            “Ticks can fall out of clocks?” Brian’s eyes opened wide.
            “That’s why people run out of time,” Melania said. “And then they’re late for everything!”
Bolger found the key and held it up triumphantly. “Got it!”
            “Please, daddy?”
Bolger stared at the moon and at something else. For months afterwards, Melania would play these last-moments in her mind, until she was almost sure it was the bag on the ground with the Ombré inside. Bolger appeared transfixed as if hearing a voice that no one else could. In an instant he snapped out of it. “Not this time,” he told his son with a loving smile. “Your mother needs you.”
Melania and Brian walked halfway to where Dorothy, Joseph and the tall clock waited when the explosion came. They were knocked to the ground by a tremendous blast of hot wind. Wisps of loose straw under Brian’s flannel shirt caught fire and Melania rolled the stunned child over in the dust to extinguish the flames. Dorothy and Joseph ran toward the twisted wreck that used to be a farm truck. Melania’s eyes were singed and through her tears she thought it must be raining. Coin sized chunks of jagged smoking metal rained down from the sky like a hail storm sent from Hell.
            “Daddy!”
Melania tried to hold the frantic child, but he broke free and raced over to the wreckage to stand inches from the inferno. Now he spun with his little hands high above his head, snatching at the air, spinning, spinning, like a demented flamenco dancer.   
“Get back from the fire!” Dorothy screamed as she ran toward her son.
            “I have to catch the ticks!” Brian sobbed. “I have to catch the ticks so Daddy won’t be late.”

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

            Lavar Hicks was furious when he learned that Melania and two of the scarecrows had moved into a mansion at the corner of Galbraith and Main Street in Cloverdale. “You want something done you got to do it yourself!” He spat chewing tobacco in the dust as he walked toward the barn. Over the last two weeks he’d gradually lost all fear of the monster hidden under his barn. A dozen pitch-soaked cloth torches leaned against empty milking stalls and Lavar always had at least one lit when he moved the grain sacks from above the hatch. This time it was just to throw in a couple of live chickens.
He glanced at the white glove resting on a pile of milk cans stacked in the corner. Lavar had swiped it from Melania’s clothes line … early one Sunday morning after he’d watched the odd family leave for church. People in town were beginning to accept Melania … even love her. There was even talk of the witch woman becoming mayor … although she showed no interest. “The next full moon falls on Halloween,” Hicks told himself. “I’ll give this county a devil’s night they will remember forever!”
Hicks moved the last grain sack and opened the hatch. “You still alive?”
What came back was something between a moan a howl and a growl. It was good enough for Lavar. He tossed in the chickens. He laughed as a volcano of bloody feathers erupted from the pit. “In two weeks … they’re gonna burn that witch for me!”

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

            “Can you really bring my daddy back?” Brian sat on Melania’s lap as she read the backs of the Tarot cards spread out on the kitchen table. Dorothy stood at the sink finishing the supper dishes.
            “I think so,” Melania told him. “But we have to be very careful. Things have to be just so-so and at the right time!”
            “How long before we try?” Brian had asked the same question hundreds of times.
            “In fourteen days when the moon is full,” Melania said. “Lucky for us it’s also Halloween night. Hopefully people won’t notice a new scarecrow running through the streets with the trick or treaters going door to door.”
Brian reached out a gloved hand and gently touched the carved recipe box. “I’m scared,” he whispered.
            “You should be.” For a moment Melania imagined she sounded just like her late mother and she tried to make her voice more cheerful as she added. “… all magia is trouble! But we will work things out.”
Brian jerked his fingers back and couldn’t stop staring at the Ombré box. Melania thought he had been stunned and even Dorothy wiped her hands and walked to the table. “Are you okay?”
            “Someone else is going to die,” Brian whispered.
            “Who?” Dorothy gasped as she tried to shake her son.
            “One of us,” Brian moaned. “… One of us.”

TO BE CONTINUED …