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 …