BLACK ROSE

Copyright (c) 2016 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.

BLACK ROSE

By R. Peterson

Sheriff Thomas Lang sat at a plank-over-stump table playing seven card draw-poker with three men inside the two-day-old Gold Dust Saloon, the second building erected after the jail in the tent city people were already calling South Fork. Building owner, Drew Monson, sang and plunked out Polly Wolly Doodle on a Stoddart upright piano hauled by wagon all the way from St. Louis. Talk around the tent campfires said a wagon load of whores was set to arrive any day. The saloon door banged open. “They’s the blackest damn darky-woman I ever seed in the street asking for you sheriff!”

Irishman Ryan O’Borne was doing a thriving business using six mules to haul logs into town. He’d recruited a gang of unemployed railroad levelers and fillers to split them into rough planks. Rumor said O’Borne already had orders, paid for in advance with gold dust, for a general store, a blacksmith and a hotel … and that he cheated his Cantonese workers, treating them like slaves.

Tom looked at his hand: two pairs - queens and threes. There was more than ten dollars, a week’s wages, in the center of the table. Charles Stone had just raised the pot by another dollar. Drew Monson’s singing voice got louder.

But I like chicken 'cause I'm from the south,

Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.

The Big Sky Cattle Company foreman, a man named Pickens, threw down his cards and cursed. The other player, a dirty miner with a tangled beard and a scar shaped like a pitch-fork on his left cheek scowled, swallowed a glass of Red Eye whiskey, and then stuffed a huge plug of Horseshoe chewing tobacco into his mouth. He angrily tossed a pinch of gold dust on the table. “I don’t recon they be any cheatin’ at a table with a law man playin’,” Jim Coots spit and then picked at his beard as he looked around the room suspiciously.

“Tell the lady,” I’ll be right out.” Lang told O’Borne.

“Lady?” O’Borne bellowed laughter. “Ye bouncin’ pikey! I told you it was a darky bitch-out there!”

“I know you’re an illiterate, dog-whipped Reb from Alabama,” Lang told O’Borne as he tossed in a silver  dollar and stood up, “and I know you ain’t got the manners God give to one of your jackasses that pull logs, so I ain’t gonna’ crack your skull this time.” He stuck a finger in O’Borne’s face.  “But any woman, as long as I’m wearing a badge, black, white, red or Chinese comes into this town, she’s gonna’ be treated with respect or else me and the poor fool who does the insulting are gonna have us a little Sam Colt rodeo in the street.”

The sheriff threw down his cards “Call,’ he said.

You can stop it in a huury,

Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day!

Coots laughed and threw down his hand. “Three eights,” he boasted, and then reached for the money.

Charlie Stone pushed Coots’ dirty hand away and laid down his own cards. “Not so fast … Full house,” he said. Three jacks and two sixes showed on the rough lumber table.

            “You’re too God Damn lucky if you ask me!” Coots took off his hat, spit on the floor and slapped the table.

But the woodpecker pays ‘cause it’s on his bill,

Sing Polly-wolly-doodle all the day.

Sheriff Lang strolled outside shaking his head and waving the dust away from his face. Night was coming on and half the town played with the Devil.

O’Borne’s voice rose just above a whisper as soon as the bat-wing doors swung shut. “These Texas lawmen you gots in Montana ain’t worth a damn … deal me in.” he said.

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

Two terrified sweat-soaked pack-animals were twisting and bucking while tied at a hitching post when Tom stepped into the street. A gold seeker with a ten-winter-beard and a talent for using profanity was dancing around the flying hooves trying to calm them and keep his packs from spilling. Tom jumped to the side and drew his gun. What the devil could make domestic animals act this crazy? The top rail broke away, along with a tent pole and the horses thundered down the street dragging the post and the cursing miner behind them. Breathing hard, gripping his gun tighter, Tom’s gaze swept the street, certain a Grizzly had lumbered into town. The thing that spooked the horses was not a bear … but a ragged woman.

Since the war between states, Thomas Lang had encountered many Negros wandering the dusty trails of Texas, disposed of home and work. But he had never seen anyone as bottom-of-the-well-black as the woman who stood before him now. Her skin glistened with a darkness that seemed to bury all light.

The woman was barefoot and had a huge pack on her back that looked to be made from a threadbare blanket and tied with willow-bark rope. Her dress was two old Dixie Lily flour sacks sewn together with cotton bale twine and buttoned up with rabbit bones. “You be da sheriff?” She looked at Lang with eyes that appeared like white splodges, almost circular except that her tired drooping eyelids turned them into U’s.  Tom’s first thought was this woman has seen so much bad … she just don’t care no more.

            “Yes mam. What can I do for you?”

The woman hung her head shyly. “I ain’t no mam,” she said. “I just a crop-sharin’ free darky from Georgia an I got dis here paper say one hundred sixty acres belong to my Jim … if’n we all stays put, proves up an don’t run out.”

Sheriff Lang took the paper. “What you got here is a territorial homestead claim Mrs. Brown,” he said, “and you’re right about staying put. You live on the land for five years and build a cabin, that’s what the law in these parts calls proved-up, and the land belongs to you.”

The black woman smiled for the first time. Her teeth were long, white and straight as new nails. The sheriff had never given anyone so poor bad news. He hated to tell her the rest. “There is a ten dollar charge for filing the deed,’ he said. The woman slumped like cowboy forced to shoot his best horse. “I ain’t got no more dan two dollars,” her voice broke.

            “The money don’t have to be paid right away,” the sheriff told her. “I can hold onto this paper until you can find work.” He looked up and down the street. “Where is your husband?”

The black woman shook her head. Thomas Lang had never seen such misery on one person’s face. “Ma husban Jim and my babees … dey be all ded,” she said. “Injans done burn our wagon, kilt our mules and ran off our one cow.”

Sheriff Lang was aware of a renegade band of Crow currently off the reservation in a rampage. Bear Who Laughs and his murderous band had been looting and burning farms and ranches throughout the territory. It was unusual for them to leave any victims alive. “How did you manage to keep your hair?” he asked her.

            “I was back from the wagon a ways. When I show up I thinks dey was scart a me,” she said. “Dey kept jabben An … kwa …gha an tryin ta hide whenebers I looks at one of dem.”

“Un-kah-gah means Demon in the Crow language,” the sheriff told her. “Their medicine chiefs believe the darker a person’s skin, the more powerful the evil spirit dwelling inside is.”

A tear rolled down the woman’s cheek at her scratched and dirty arms. “I could a been in heaben wit Jim and my young-ins … if it not be fo this color curse.”

            “I believe things in this world always happen for a reason,” the sheriff told her. “One way or another … you were meant to come to this town.”

            “I ain’t got no food and no place to live,” the woman said. “I don’t expect nobody gonna pay no free Georgia darky ten dollars fo any kind of work … even fo a hoe year.”

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

Sheriff Lang was staring up and down the sagebrush covered street trying to think where the woman might find a job. He saw Elisabeth Walker driving a fancy carriage into town accompanied by a buckboard and six of her more than forty ranch-hands. Her golden hair glistened in the April sunlight. She was the wishing star of every cowboy’s dreams. Tom had been ready to ask Elisabeth to marry him before a stray shot from their Sunday afternoon target practice uncovered the richest gold vein in the territory … on her land.

The Blue Bonnet Mine was now producing almost sixty pounds of refined bullion a month. At twenty dollars an ounce, the woman with her gold and the largest herd of cattle north of Cheyenne Wyoming, was on her way to becoming a millionaire. Tom gritted his teeth; he made thirty-five dollars a month as sheriff … when he could collect it.

Elisabeth saw him, smiled and walked over, holding up the skirts of a brown silk moiré and velvet gown purchased in Boston that made her the envy of every woman west of the Mississippi. She smelled of imported Penhaligon perfume: coriander, pepper and cinnamon. “You haven’t been by for a social call in over two weeks,” she scolded. “If my coffee is that bad, just say so!”

“I’ve had range-coffee strained through a dead man’s sock with bug-water from a horse trough and enjoyed it,” Tom exaggerated his Texas drawl. “Your hospitality tastes just fine.”

She smiled and her chipped front tooth showed for just an instant before she unconsciously covered it with the tip of her tongue. Tom knew the dental defect embarrassed her but he loved the slight imperfection. The chipped tooth somehow made her a real person and not some breathtaking angel from a cowboy’s dream.

“Mrs. Brown lost her husband and children to an Indian attack on their way here to file on a homestead claim,” Tom said. “She’s a little short on money … and just about everything else. I’m trying to think about where she might find a job.”

“And you never think about me do you?” Elisabeth pushed past him in mock belligerence and studied the woman’s dress. “You from the deep south ain’t ya?”

“Yes mm,” Mrs. Brown said. “A little speck o a town east of Cuthbert … call it Smithville.”

“Can you cook?’ Elisabeth asked.

“I recon I’ve done most ever kind of house chores and field pickin’ since I was five,” the woman said.

“I’ve unfortunately got an army of cowboys and miners riding circles around my ranch,” Elisabeth told her. “Not a one knows when to rub down a horse, eat, or go to bed without being told. I could also use a little help boxing the ears of a snobbish French chef who thinks he must be treated like royalty and paid the same robber wages he made on a fancy New Orleans riverboat.” Elisabeth looked at the woman as if thinking for a minute. “I could pay you thirty dollars a month plus room and board … until we get you fixed onto your own land.”

“Mam!” the woman gasped. ‘No darky I knows of … makes dat kind o money even in a half year. I don’t know if’s I cans works dat hard!”

“It gets lonely on my ranch and I need someone not too busy sheriffin’ to keep me company.” Elisabeth flashed angry eyes at Tom. “You’ll do just fine. Let’s go on over to that white man’s teepee they call a general store and see if we can find you a dress or two … and some shoes.”

“I ain’t neber had no shoes … I don’t believe none would fit.” the black woman said, “but a dress or two might be right fine! She turned to Tom just before she left with Elisabeth. “Thank your Mr. Sheriff.”

Tom took off his hat. “My friends call me Tom or Thomas,” he said. Elisabeth muttered something under her breath it sounded like …but not darling.

            “And most folks calls me Rose,” Mrs. Brown said. “… Black Rose.”

Tom stared after the two walking up the street just before he went back in the saloon. Black Rose’s voice sounded clear in the evening air. “I done followed a wagon walking all the way from Georgia,” she told Elisabeth. “Another five miles walking to that ranch of yours won’t hurt none. Most animals don’t take to me right off.”

Tom scratched his chin. Even with the woman’s exceptionally dark skin, the renegade Crow war party should not have left her alive. The Un-kah-gah that Bear Who Laughs’ murderous band had sensed in the black woman must have been powerful indeed.

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

Two weeks later, it was raining and Sheriff Thomas Lang had just left the jail walking to the tent that functioned as a restaurant when gunfire erupted from the direction of the saloon. Ryan O’Borne staggered in the street, a gun in his right hand. He was obviously drunk. “The bastard called me a cheat,” he yelled. The crumpled form of Jim Coots lay sprawled in the mud. Sheriff Walker walked to where the miner lay half in a puddle of water and rolled him over with his boot … there was no gun.

            “You killed an unarmed man?” Lang looked at the scowling lumberman.

            “I warned the wanker I wasn’t about to take his piss.” O’Borne pointed at the body with his gun. “If the bastard didn’t listen, it was his own damn fun.” He turned and walked toward the saloon.

            “Drop the gun, O’Borne. I’m gonna have to hold you until we can sort this out.” Sheriff Lang’s right hand moved an inch from the top of his gun butt.

            “I was kicked and booted by the bogger … and I ain’t letting no pikey say different … so beat it up yer hole!”

            “I mean it, O’Borne. Drop that gun and come along peacefully!”

            “Fack if I will!” O’Borne whirled around. The gun in his hand was almost in line with Lang when the sheriff fired twice. Several onlookers described it as two lightning bolts coming from the barrel of his Colt Peacemaker. O’Borne pulled his trigger an instant later and the bullet grazed the side of the sheriff’s cheek. The displaced immigrant from Alabama staggered back, dropped his gun and with two holes in his chest as big as silver dollars, tumbled and twitched in the dirt like a bedroll filled with snakes.

The rain stopped and a Dakota breeze swept down the western Montana street softly whistling through the tents and the few board buildings. It was an Irish banshee claiming the souls of the dead.

What am I gonna do with two corpses? Sheriff Thomas Lang shook his head and slowly put his gun back in his holster. He walked to the end of Main Street where Parley Descombey had his medical practice set up at his mother’s camp. Parley’s younger sister, who worked as his nurse met him by the back of the gypsy wagon. “No human being on Earth is as fast with a gun as you are sheriff,” Melania said wiping the blood from his cheek with a wet rag. “But if it’s meant to be and mama is never wrong … that bullet will still find you.”

Tom remembered having Melania’s mother Jesska read his fortune two years earlier in payment for him pulling her wagon out of some mud.  When Tom was seated inside the wagon, the old woman had said “You live by the gun, so that’s where your fortune lies.”

Tom had emptied the cartridges from his gun onto a red cloth, four bullets tumbled down. Jesska had studied the way they lay across the table. She had picked up the first shell and said “This bullet will save your life.”  Then she had put it back in the chamber. She held up the next. “This bullet will bring you love.” She also put it back in the gun. She showed him the third bullet “This one will bring you great riches,” She also slid it back in the chamber.

When she picked up the last bullet, her eyes grew big. A single tear rolled down her cheek, as she put the shell back in the gun. “This bullet will cause your death.” She had hung her head.

“I am sorry, you have been kind and I repay you with sorrow.”

 Jesska had spun the cylinder, and given the gun back to Tom.

“I can only tell only the truth.” she had told him. “If I could have lied to you, I would have.”

Even though Jesska had spun the cylinder, Tom knew which was the fatal bullet … there were only four in the six-shooter and it was the last one rotating left. Tom rolled the powder-drained cartridge hanging by a chain around his neck and wondered. All the predictions the woman had told him had come true except the last. The first bullet had ricocheted off from a rock killing an Indian waiting in ambush. The second had saved a mail-order bride (Elisabeth) from a murderous money-seeking opportunist. The third was the stray-bullet fired when Elisabeth accidentally discovered her gold mine. He wasn’t rich now, but if he married Elisabeth he would be. The thought left a sour taste in Tom’s mouth. In Texas men who lived off from women were lower than coyotes feeding on wolf kill. Tom figured the only way to keep track of the deadly last cartridge, other than making sure it contained no powder and could never fire, was to wear it as a necklace.

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

            Sheriff Lang was drinking his second glass of whiskey in the saloon when Elisabeth Walker found him. He didn’t look up but continued to stare at his hands. “I heard about the killing,” she said. “You did what you had to do. If you ever need a posse or men to back you up. I’ve got forty men that I pay around the clock.”

            “Haters like O’Borne have lived through so many battles during the War Between the States that they begin to think they are invincible, but they destroy everything and everyone around them.” Lang swallowed his drink and tried to smile. “And no candle burns forever.”

            “Cheer up! Mister Gloomy,” Elisabeth laughed. “Morning always comes after darkness when you sleep in a proper bed,” She punched his shoulder, “and it’s worth waiting for.”

The sheriff decided to change the subject. “How is Black Rose working out for you?”

            “That woman is a fury with housework,” Elisabeth laughed. “I take my life in my hands every time I forget to wipe my boots when I go in the house. She and Bédoier fight like cowboys and Indians, but even the Riverboat King of Cuisine admits the darky can cook!” Elisabeth sighed. “She ain’t worth a darn around the animals though. She starts a stampede just looking at a cow and the dogs both run under the porch every time she goes to the henhouse for eggs.”

            “How’s her homestead coming?”

            “I sent a passel of my men to her place with lumber left over from a new barn and they got a good start on a house, but believe it or not, that black woman has high-society aspirations.”

            “How’s that?” The sheriff almost poured another drink but didn’t. He was beginning to feel better.

            “We lined out the dimensions for a house on a level piece of ground not far from the river, but she enlarged it. When that freed slave gets her house built, it will be a mansion … more like an institution than a home.”

            “Has she planted anything yet?”

            “Only her family,” Elisabeth sighed. “I sent some wranglers and a wagon to bring back their bodies. She has a regular graveyard next to her house and is already talking about having a wrought-iron fence shipped from New Orleans.”

            “You think she might be willing to bury a few strangers on her place,” The sheriff asked. “Folks around here are mighty superstitious. They don’t want no ghosts crowding a mining claim and I got four bodies packed in ice in the basement of the jail.”

            “She wouldn’t do it for free,” Elisabeth said. “Surprisingly, Black Rose has a sharp mind for money and she can dicker a dirty cowhand into paying for washing … or a hungry one to pay for extra gravy on his biscuits.”

            “Tell Black Rose the territory of Montana will pay twenty dollars for each wooden box and a dug-hole to put the deceased in. The graves will have to be marked … but stone ain’t required.”

Elisabeth took the sheriff’s bottle and poured herself a drink. “I’ve never seen so much killing in any town this side of Kansas,” she said. “At twenty dollars a corpse, that woman is bound to make a fortune.”

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

            It was mid-summer hot and dry. The range fights were mostly over water. A group of miners had diverted part of the Cottonmouth River for a giant gold sluicing operation. Several of the larger ranchers were furious. By the end of July, a dozen men were dead. Black Rose took all the bodies.

Elisabeth Walker hired the Chinese workers left unemployed by Ryan O’Borne’s death, and fulfilled all his lumber contracts. She also hired three crews of Dutch woodcutters to begin a logging operation on the edge of Motha Forest.

Sheriff Lang had enjoyed several early morning social calls at her ranch and was looking forward to more when loose talk in the town came back to him. Several townspeople noted that Elisabeth was now running the business of the man the sheriff had gunned down in the street. Tom stayed away for appearance sake but he also wanted to spend time on his own piece of ground that bordered Elisabeth’s. Tom’s ranch was one-hundred forty acres of sagebrush and jackrabbits. There was no house and he had just three years to build one. Elisabeth had threatened to throw up a cabin on a spot of her choosing. Everything he owned except the cattle and the land could be carried on the back of the mare he had caught and tamed in Texas. A dozen longhorn cows wandered his place and he had heard rumors that Elisabeth fed them extra hay last winter. He was saddling up Comanche one evening after the town quieted down figuring to check on his herd when a stranger approached.

“Pardon me sheriff,” the man in a bowler hat, obviously an easterner, stammered. “I’m looking for a miner named Jim Coots … I was wondering if he was in town.”

“The man you’re looking for is dead,” the sheriff said, “shot down in the street two months ago.”

“That’s impossible,” The man said. “I spoke to him just last week on my way into this little city. I found out later he has a claim he ain’t working and I wondered if he might sell.”

“You got the name wrong then,” Tom said. “Jim Coots was as ugly as a bearded sack of spuds and had a scar that looks like a pitchfork on his left cheek.”

“That’s him,” the man said. “There can’t be two dirty bearded men with that same mark!”

“Where did you see this ghost?” Tom didn’t bother to hide his disbelief from the smart arsed Easterner.

“At a homestead two miles north of here, where it appears that someone is starting a cemetery,” the man said. “I stopped by on my way to South Fork to water my horse. It was late … after midnight. Coots was driving nails in a bunch of half-built coffins along with three other men. None of them were talkers. They was in a big barn lit up by lanterns. Looked like they had a regular workshop-of-death going on.”

“Can you describe the other men?” Tom asked him.

The stranger had a memory for detail. After the man left, Tom climbed into the saddle. He let Comanche plod down the street, he was in no hurry. The ball floating in the sky was big and orange what the Indians called a Blood Moon. It was high time he paid the woman called Black Rose and her homestead a visit. He had always sent her money along with the bodies, but to date had never seen her place.

Tom shivered as he passed by the Gold Dust Saloon even though it was a warm night. Laughter and the sound of the piano man pounding out Rose of Killarney came from inside. The sweet but eerie voice of one of the prostitutes who had been in town for over a month flowed into the street.

“Sometimes I see dear

A devil in your eye

Don't ever leave me

Mavourneen, I would die”

The music failed to soothe Tom. He checked to make sure his Peacemaker was loaded, although he didn’t think it would be much use. Dirty wild haired miners with scarred cheeks were common sights. However, one of the phantom men the stranger had described, working nights putting together death beds at Black Rose Cemetery, could only be … Ryan O’Borne.

To be continued …

DORM part 4

Copyright (c) 2016 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

Marsha sat at the kitchen table smiling with her eyes firmly closed. The two astonished girls dropped the packages they were holding. Alison Weatherbee slammed against Marsha Hicks knocking her out of her chair, while Eleanor James tried to wrestle her dog out of Rhonda Johnson’s arms. The marionette called Demilune floated down from the ceiling. Rolling eyes in the wooden head seemed delighted at the bedlam. Two cabinet doors above the kitchen countertop banged open and ceramic plates, saucers and a large mixing bowl spun in the air, briefly orbiting each other before crashing to the floor. The hands on a wall clock spun like airplane propellers until with a bang tiny metal gears exploded above the struggling girls like shrapnel. A drawer slid open and a handful of Rhonda’s steak knives became airborne decapitating a troll doll watching the fight from the top of a bookcase before stabbing all the Friday squares on a WNBA wall calendar.

Invisible strings manipulated by an unknown entity added to the terror and evil saturated the room as the now laughing puppet began to dance. Rhonda Johnson stood up, towering at least a foot over the other roommates, flung Tinkerbelle against a wall and then knocked Eleanor to the floor with one punch from her oversized basketball player’s fist. She lunged across the room as Alison slammed Hicks into the refrigerator. Just as Rhonda reached for a handful of Alison’s hair, Eleanor snagged the dangling laces of one of her size twelve athletic shoes and off-balance, Rhonda fell.

“Do something!” Rhonda sputtered at the puppet, now dancing over her crumpled form. Alison had Hicks by the throat, pinned against the refrigerator door and was trying to force open her eyes. “You said your power was greater than hers!” Rhonda yelled.

“That juju!” Demilune hissed in a hand-saw voice pointing to the amulet Alison wore around her neck. “Take it … from her. All my … sinew is … being used … to make … it sleep.”

            “Don’t you know you’ll go blind if you keep this up?” Alison forced Marsha’s eyelids open and when she did, Demilune collapsed on the floor, a twisted lump of carved worm-wood, painted linen and tangled string. “Those who channel their sight and their mind through this carved image of Satan find first their vision diminishing … and then their brain. You might achieve power for a few hours but then Demilune will leave once your eye-sockets were no more than black pits and your brain a bowl of worms. The spawn of Hell will search and find another handler like he has for centuries.” Alison explained.

This time Rhonda kicked Eleanor in the head when she tried to stop her. She lunged toward Alison and jerked her backward by the hair. Rhonda reached for the amulet swaying around Alison’s neck, but when she touched the magical necklace a blast of etheric energy sent her and Alison spinning across the room and crashing into a wall. “Use the puppet to finish her now!” Rhonda demanded as she knocked Alison unconscious with her fist.

Marsha carefully touched her swollen eyelids with her fingers as she walked from the room. Her astonished voice came from above the sink as she stared in the bathroom mirror. “No more today,” she said. “I thought my eyes had some kind of infection after I controlled the puppet at the river. This time I’ve only given my sight to Demilune for less than a minute and already my eyes feel like they are falling out of my head.”

            “She lies!” Rhonda yelled. “Use the puppet to kill them both now.” Eleanor moaned once and the mercifully fell unconscious.

Marsha glanced at her watch. “Alison and Eleanor’s dates will be here to pick them up in twenty minutes. Let’s drag them into the bedroom and decide what to do with them once the boys leave.”

Rhonda looked at her scorched hand blackened from touching the amulet. “You take Alison,” she said.

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

Eleanor woke up first; she had a splitting headache as she shook Alison awake. It felt like she had been asleep for many hours but her watch said less than five minutes. “We have to do something,” she said. “Johnny and Kevin will be here soon. Rhonda and Marsha will think of an excuse to send them away and once they are gone, even if Marsha refuses to use the puppet any more tonight, Rhonda will use her fists to beat us both to death.”

Both girls were elated when a jubilant Tinkerbelle crawled out from under the double bed.

            “I wish it was a full moon,” Alison said looking out the window at the dark sky. “There is barely enough power in the amulet to act as a shield to prevent it from being taken from me.”

            “Is that the only thing that will recharge your power?” Eleanor asked. “What about starlight?”

            “Any natural reflected light works,” Alison said. She removed a broken compact from a fanny pack worn around her waist like a belt. She tilted the cracked mirror at the stars and then trained the faint light on her necklace. “The amount of power we’ll get from this short of time will be good for a few simple magicians’ tricks,” she said. “No more.”

            “Where did you get this?” Eleanor gaped in wonder as the amulet began to faintly glow.

            “I found it in the ashes of a fire that never was,” Alison said. “And I used its power to change things that could never be. Melania gave back to me something that I never possessed when I moved into her house.”

            “Is magic always spoken of in riddles?” Eleanor shook her head.

            “Magic is not knowing the reason things happen,” Alison said. “There is magic in everything!”

            “I don’t think my yelling outside a bunch of houses late at night and making lights come on is really all that magical,” Eleanor sighed.

            ‘Your mind controls everything whether you believe it or not,” Alison told her. “Your subconscious made the air pass from your lungs across your diaphragm and created the loud sounds that woke the people who turned on the lights.”

The amulet was glowing brighter. Alison explained. “I believe that this special piece of jewelry collects the same energy your brain waves float on and allows you to create a channel outside of your body.” She held the necklace in front of her and closed her eyes. “If those two Neanderthals in the other room are given the time to think about what they are doing they could be dangerous.” She smiled. “We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

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

Rhonda and Marsha sat at the kitchen table while Marsha rubbed Vicks Vapo Rub on her eyelids and put drops of Visine in her eyes. “That crap don’t work on your eyes,” Rhonda sneered. “If you want to bring down the swelling gob both of your eyes with Preparation H.

            “I’m not using a hemorrhoid cream on my eyes,” Marsha pouted.

            “Suit yourself,’ Rhonda told her. “But I have the notes in last year’s Biology 101 textbook … go read for yourself if you don’t believe me.” She pointed to a bookcase littered with candy wrappers and foul smelling gym socks.

Marsha picked up the textbook thumbed through an index until she found a chapter on eyes and began to read. “In humans the eyes are organs that react to light stimulus and has several purposes. As a … What ###  Hell!” Marsha gasped.

            Rhonda looked at her new roommate. She’d never heard the scar-faced girl stutter before.

“What the devil is wrong with you?” she sneered.

            ‘###  sentence I just read about #### vanished from ###  page and now I can’t speak any of   ###  words  ####  I just read.”

Laughter came from behind the closed bedroom door. “Reading usually stores knowledge in your head,” Rhonda said. “That bitch from your hometown has made it so every word you read vanishes from your brain. Put that book back before you become a copywriter for Fox News and we’ll listen to some music while we think about what to tell Johnny and Kevin.”

Marsha tossed the book in a corner and walked to the table. “We’ll tell Johnny #### Eleanor decided to go to ### dance with someone on ### football team!” she bawled when she heard what she just said. “My ####!” she moaned. “My tongue ### my ####!”

Rhonda inserted a CD of the Baha Men singing Who let the dogs out? into a laptop computer. “Shut up, and listen to some music while I think!” she told her.

            Inside the bedroom Eleanor and Alison both giggled. “Unlearning every word you read,” Eleanor said. “Is the damage permanent?”

            “Common words can be learned again from a Dick and Jane primer,” Alison laughed. “Marsha won’t realize that she now doesn’t know what an organ or stimulus is until her next reproductive biology test.”

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

Rhonda was writing down names of football players in case Johnny or Kevin started asking questions. The music was blaring, but the sound of the refrigerator door banging open still rose above the Who who who who? A package of Ball Park Franks and a square of Colby-Jack slices appeared to open by themselves and seconds later five marching wieners wearing colonial era three cornered cheese hats jumped from the bottom rack to the kitchen floor followed by a mounted sausage riding a bottle of Heinz Catsup and three other packaged meats dragging a mustard cannon.

… the party was nice, the party was bumpin' …

Marsha Hicks screamed as a jar of Nalley’s Bread and Butter pickles opened and flung cucumber slices like tiny Frisbees across the room before turning over mid-air and spilling vinegar, dill and mustard seeds over her frazzled head.

… the poor dog show up! …

The Ball Park Franks marched over the smoking keyboard as the catsup bottle and the mustard burst like grenades sending Artic Circle’s secret sauce dripping from the ceiling, a lamp cover and the end of Rhonda Johnson’s nose.

                        She really want to skip town

Sparks began to erupt from the vinegar soaked laptop computer seconds before an outlet in the apartment caught fire …

Who let the dogs out?

and all the lights went out.

Insane laughter flew across the apartment as the living room window shattered and the sound of something falling then bouncing … and the sound of splitting wood came from the street below.

Marsha and Rhonda sat in the tomb like silence and the suffocating darkness made even more eerie by the loud music preceding it. They both heard the stealthy brushing sound as the eight foot long Bo Constrictor bumped the lid off from the sixty gallon terrarium and slid out … most likely searching for food. “When was the last time you fed your snake?” Rhonda whispered.

            “It will probably be very hungry,” Marsha gasped.

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

           

            “It’s time you tried a bit of your own magic,” Alison told Eleanor from the darkness of the bedroom.

            “I don’t have a magical amulet and I don’t think yelling I believe is going to help us out of this jam,” Eleanor moaned. Tinkerbelle jumped on the bed and snuggled into her lap.

            “What do you possess that you value above all other things,” Alison prodded her.

Eleanor sighed.  “My dog and memories of my mother and father,” she said. “How happy they were before dad died and mom married that creep Harry Winston.”

            “Then hold those thoughts in your mind and allow them to create a channel from you to what you want to happen,” Alison said.

Both girls laughed when they heard the apartment door bang open and Rhonda Johnson and Marsha Hicks ran screaming down the hall. Tinkerbelle barked as if she were chasing them away.

            “I didn’t know your powers were so formidable,” Alison teased her.

            “That’s not what I was imagining happening,” Eleanor confessed.

The lights in the apartment flickered on and seconds later Johnny Lang’s voice echoed in the hallway as he knocked on the open door.

            “This place looks like a bar fight after a roller derby,” he laughed. “I wonder what’s up?”

            “Some of the girls on campus are a little strange,” Kevin confessed. “But I like that.”

Inside the bedroom, Eleanor moaned as she stared into the closet mirror. Tinkerbelle ran in circles around her legs. “This is what I hoped would happen but … Oh my God! Now I look like a cow!”

            “I can fix that,” Alison began to rub her amulet.

THE END?

DORM part 3

Copyright (c) 2016 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

  Alison and Eleanor watched in horror as the hideously laughing aberration paddled from the center of the river toward them. The creepy marionette was almost beneath the animal control cage suspended over the river when John Blake backed up his truck, releasing the coiled cable under the front tire, and the terrified, shrieking pets plunged downward. The amulet in Alison’s hand glowed with recharged ethereal light from the full moon. Eleanor gasped when Alison directed her magic, not to stop the plummeting cage but, to blast a superheated fireball at the monster. “Sorry,” Alison told her, “but if we don’t stop this thing now … none of us will ever leave here alive.”

The ball of fire flashed across the dark water with the speed of a lightning bolt, but Demilune was faster. The wooden puppet pulled on invisible strings and tremendous cold instantly froze the air and all the water in a large circle around it. The fire-bolt and the frost-ball collided and the more powerful cold drove the heat backward almost to the bank before both spells vanished in a huge vaporous explosion. The condemned animals struck the solid ice of the frozen river and the door on their metal cage burst open. Eleanor cheered as Tinkerbelle scampered toward her and dozens of dogs and cats scattered in all directions across the ice.

Demilune was trapped by his own magic. Only his wooden head and two clawed hands protruded from the frozen water. The super-cold air above the river was magically still and as quiet as death. When the two girls approached, their feet made cracking sounds on the frigid ice and Tinkerbelle jumped into Eleanor’s arms.

The puppet’s voice sounded like a hand saw slowly cutting through a tree trunk. Almost human-looking eyes rolled in its wooden head. “I will … eat you … damn you … blood and … bone all … damn you … this I … prom ise!” Chunks of sawdust and blood began to stream from a wide crack between the creature’s painted lips as exposed rows of jagged teeth ground back and forth. Something soft, pink and fleshy tumbled out of the mouth and fell onto the ice. Alison picked it up. She screamed a moment later and flung it down. It was a severed tongue.

“What do we do now?” Eleanor smiled in spite of the horror and turned away as her tiny precious dog began to lick her face.

“The only way I know to slow down a monster like Demilune is to possibly cut off his head and burn it in a very hot fire,” Alison said. “Do you know where we can get a saw?”

Eleanor fumbled in her purse, while holding her dog, but all she could come up with was a nail file. “It’s the only thing I have and it will take forever,” she gasped. The breeze turned warm and already the ice was beginning to soften. Demilune was able to move his frozen arm enough to make one clawed hand lung for her leg. Eleanor jumped back just in time, but the creature’s claws left a long gash in one of her ankles. The puppet howled laughter and licked the blood on his fingers as Eleanor wailed.

            “Shut up!” Alison screamed as she kicked the wooden puppet in the head. Tinkerbelle struggled in Eleanor’s arms determined to attack the monster.

Alison was reaching for the pointed metal file when angry cursing sounded from behind her. John Blake raced across the ice brandishing a large tire-iron obviously taken from his truck. “Damn you meddlers,” he yelled. “I’ve spent good money feeding these unwanted pests for a month … and now I don’t even get the pleasure of seeing them die?” Blake swung the heavy steel but Alison ducked, he lost his balance and the metal bar struck the ice. The spell of frozen silence appeared to have been broken and a large crack appeared in the ice. A chilling breeze appeared out of nowhere. The fracture spread from where Blake lay sprawled on the frozen river until it circled the cursing puppet and then turned back again. Alison, Eleanor and Tinkerbelle all skated toward the shore. With a roar of breaking ice, Demilune and the animal control officer both plunged into the frigid water.

The two girls watched as a dripping Blake crawled from the river onto the patch of ice holding the cage and as it began to sink to the top of the steel trap he had used to destroy so many living creatures. “I’ll recapture them all and then I’ll twist the neck of that yapping rat you’re holding,” he said as he climbed the cable and pointed a frozen finger at Tinkerbelle.

            Demilune bobbed up in the center of the river and his saw-like voice, directed at Alison carried across the dark moving water. A brisk breeze blew over the river. “That old witch back in Cloverdale is dying!” His voice now roared like a sawmill. “When you are gone, the world will be mine to feast on!” Alison and Eleanor watched him vanish on the far side of the water. “My strings fall on many places … the taste of your blood is in the air … I will find you!” His laughter blew away with the wind.

            “He’s wrong isn’t he … you can destroy him … right?” A hopeful Eleanor ran alongside Alison.

            “Melania told me that Demilune has been around since he was carved for a minstrel show called Cats in Hats during the Dark Ages … from the same enchanted cedar tree as a recipe box she has that’s called Ombré … it is her source of magic and her greatest treasure. The monster has been killing and murdering his way across Europe and now America for centuries. He’s been destroyed hundreds of times but he always comes back,” Alison said.

            “That’s horrible,’ Eleanor gasped as Tinkerbelle barked once more and then snuggled into the crook of her arm.

            “Good and bad are both eternal energies,’ Eleanor explained as they walked toward the campus. “It creates balance in the universe. While the brilliant good in people lives forever, the evil that by the laws of nature must be always lurking in a dark shadow nearby and will re-spawn each time it is abolished.”

            “That’s awful,” Eleanor cried.

            “It’s just life,” Alison told her.

           

-------2-------.

Rhonda Johnson stayed in her bedroom during the coming week and was never seen by Alison or by Eleanor. She left for classes after they did and usually came in late while they were sleeping. They could sometimes hear her speaking to others on her cell phone behind her locked door but she always kept her voice low as if she was conspiring with someone to get even for Alison’s presence. Eleanor made arrangements for Tinkerbelle to live just off campus with an old lady who hated cats. It made it so Eleanor could see her every day, bring her treats and with no more hiding.

Alison proved to be as popular and as outgoing as Eleanor was shy and reserved. Eleanor found herself enjoying her new roommates company and enjoyed the countless parties both girls were invited to. They were in the library one soggy afternoon studying for a History of Western Civilization exam while a cold rain tried unsuccessfully to distract them by tapping against the building glass. Eleanor shrieked when she turned a page in a large illustrated textbook. Alison stood up and ran to her roommate’s side sure the girl must be having heart seizures. “It’s Demilune!” Eleanor gasped. She pointed to a printed woodcut engraving by Peter Bruegal the Elder showing a carnival scene with dancing peasants and colorful painted wagons. A marionette with dangling strings, lay propped in a sitting position at the top of an open trunk overflowing with what looked like embroidered stage curtains. Inset round wooden eyes stared at them through the centuries with the same ages-old hatred they had seen the week before. “It’s him isn’t it?”

Alison studied the artwork for a minute before she said. “Yes, I’m sure of it!” She pointed to a small dark container sitting on a stack of crates behind a grinning clown playing a flute while standing on one leg. The word Ombré protruded from the front of the carved box.

            “I don’t know if I can handle this!” Eleanor moaned as she slammed the book closed.

            ‘Trouble will always be nearby,” Alison told her, “speaking of which …”

Eleanor looked up as Johnny Lang rose from a table where he’d been sitting with a group of boys and walked smiling toward them. “Do something!” Eleanor pleaded in a whisper. “My hair looks like a hay stack after a hurricane and my eyes look like they were painted in the rain.”

            “Whatever magic is going on here is beyond my humble ability to alter in any way.” Alison smirked just before she stood up and walked away leaving them alone.

            “I’ve been trying to talk to you again for over two weeks in French class,” The coolest guy she had ever met said as he sat down. Eleanor had forgotten how breathtakingly handsome Johnny was and how he made her heart jump each time he smiled. “Every time I get near you run away.” He glanced at Alison who was standing next to a bookcase pretending to read a book that was upside down, and then gave her a teasing smile. “Vous deux ne sont pas avoir une liaison êtes-vous?” (You two are not having an affair are you?)

Johnny was obviously much better at the new language than she was. “Wwwwwwe live together …” Eleanor was horrified by what she just said. Her mind was a whirlwind. Sitting next to Johnny was like absorbing a drug. Euphoric waves of pleasure poured over her like a hot shower. She knew she had just made the love of her life think she was a lesbian and she hated herself, but still she couldn’t turn her eyes away. “I didn’t mean …”

            “I know what you meant,” Johnny laughed, “but why run like a gazelle every time a hungry, but entirely harmless, cat like me approaches?”

            “Vvvvvv …. icky Conner!” Eleanor stammered trying hard to explain. “She’s always …”

Johnny put a finger to her lips to quiet her. “That future NBA women’s star can dunk a basketball with one knee on the floor from half-court and she can obviously chew a whole case of Wriggly’s Spearmint gum without touching the top of her mouth or even scenting her category-four hurricane breath … She’s always there to lift a wrecked car off from my body if I’m ever in an accident but I need more from a relationship,” Johnny said. He reached over and took her hand. Eleanor felt electrical sparks of enchanted bliss slowly enter her fingers and leave dancing from her toes. “There is a party in the Student Union Building this Friday night … a band called Bathtub Ring is playing … will you go with me?”

Eleanor managed a stunned “Yes”, before somewhere a bell rang and Johnny stood up. “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he told her with a smile.

            “Wow! You’ve got it bad!” Alison giggled as she walked over. “You’ve caught the worst disease you can get on this campus … thousands suffer each year and there is absolutely no cure.”

            “What’s that?” Eleanor’s dreamy eyes looked miles away.

            “You’ve been bitten by an extremely aggressive and hopefully contagious bug,” Alison sighed gazing wistfully at a dark, handsome boy reading a Playboy hidden behind the cover of the New York Times, “…the love bug.”

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

Alison and Eleanor decided to walk downtown and window-shop for dresses before they returned to the dorm. By the time they had left the library, Alison also had a date for the same dance. “You didn’t use any voodoo on him did you?” Eleanor giggled as they looked in a shop window at a ridiculously ghastly and expensive underwear creation meant to copy Miley Cyrus from the video Wrecking Ball.

            “Honey, when you’ve got my looks … you don’t need magic.” Alison told her in her best Marion Cotillard impersonation. After a moment she laughed. “Of course I did!”

The two finally settled on inexpensive Saree knockoff  blouses over ragged jeans and high-lift boots. “It’s gonna be a wild night with a rock band and to-die-for moves,” Alison said. “If six-inch heels won’t make you roll … nothing will!”

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

            Rhonda Johnson sat at the kitchen table smiling when Eleanor and Alison walked through the door to their dorm apartment on Friday afternoon. Both girls’ arms were loaded with clothes for the dance. A terrified Tinkerbelle struggled in Rhonda’s arms as she brushed her fur the wrong direction. “We’ve been waiting for you,” she said glancing at a girl with bleached-blonde hair and a scar that ran across her forehead sitting across the table from her and then at Alison. “This is our new fourth roommate Marsha Hicks,” she said. “I believe you and her are from the same stupid little town in Montana. In fact she says you are responsible for the beauty mark that she wears like a hat.”

            “We’ve met before,” Alison said, her voice burning with venom. “And I think Marsha and you would both be much happier living somewhere else.”

Eleanor finally caught her breath. “What are you doing with my dog!” she wailed.

            “Oh, I hope you don’t mind,” Rhonda sneered. “Marsha brought along her own pet … so I told Mrs. Danks that you decided to keep Tinkerbelle at home. After all, it’s only fair.” She gestured to an empty sixty-gallon aquarium now holding the largest coiled Boa Constrictor Eleanor had ever seen, with a mouth large enough to swallow the tiny dog in one bite. “Looks like we’re going to be just one big happy family here.”

            “Get out of here, both of you!” Alison demanded placing her hand on the amulet hanging around her neck. The golden talisman started to glow … and then began to flicker.

            “I’m not going anywhere,” Marsha said. “That bitch Melania is not around to help you now. The month I spent recovering in the hospital was worth my time. I discovered who the old woman’s enemies were and what it is she is afraid of. I know all about that worthless piece of junk you wear around your neck … and how to draw away its power.”

            “Did I forget to mention that Marsha is a Dramatic Arts Major here at Illuminare University and also an accomplished Sutradhara?” Rhonda beamed.

            “What is a Sutradhara?” Eleanor asked, reaching for her dog, but Rhonda pulled the whimpering pet back. The snake uncoiled in its glass cage and began to hiss. At the same time the light went out in Alison’s amulet and she was rubbing it vigorously.

            “Our new roommate and my new best friend is a string puller … a clever entertainer of delightful skill, someone who can manipulate things from a distance!” Rhonda laughed as she dangled a terrified Tinkerbelle above the snake in the open terrarium. “Imagine her pleasure when she found this priceless antique lying on the road just as she was driving into town today.”

From the top of the refrigerator came an eerie sawing-sound that sent chills down both Alison and Eleanor’s spines. A ragged puppet danced in the air above the appliance. Invisible strings made the arms and legs move. “Your blood … taste is … every where … I said … I would … find you … and now!” Demilune’s sadistic laughter blew chunks of sawdust and blood onto the floor. “You die!”

To be continued …