THE WIND part 2

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

 

By R. Peterson

  

When Jesska Descombey’s shotgun first blasted into the dust soaked dawn, Lavar Hicks scrambled back into the overgrown woods surrounding the corn field … sure the old witch woman had seen him and his tracking dog lurking there. When she fired the second time, he realized she was shooting at three of the scarecrows he’d noticed earlier hanging from posts at the end of the rows. The scarecrows had leaped off the posts and at least three were attacking her house. “That old Devil’s whore has done brought all six of those stuffy men to life and about half of them have turned out to be demons!” Hicks smiled as he checked to make sure his shotgun was loaded. “Serves the old bitch right!”  He scratched the three-day stubble on his face still talking to the skin and bones dog that was shaking and had sprayed the wild-mint bushes they were standing in with urine. “If I could pen-up one of the big ones and school the thing to do whatever I say … it would make collecting a dollar per wagon-load for the river-water bordering my farm a whole lot simpler. I might even get me a little pay-back from all the %&^$#%$^ in this part of Montana who’ve done me up wrong!”

Hicks watched as the second blast turned two of the attacking scarecrows into clouds of rotted cloth, scorched flesh and burning straw. The third monster turned and burst through the porch railing sending broken boards and wood splinters high into the air and with tremendous strides escaped into the woods. “Track the one that got away!” Hicks hissed to a now whining Bruiser, then pulled back on the leash until he was almost choking the excited animal. “Easy now … stay clear-back a ways … a damn good ways! We only has gots to find out where this one hides-up … then think us up a way to keep him.”

Hicks waited until the witch woman’s grown daughter dug broken roof boards and shingles from her mother and then yanked her into the house.

Hicks slackened the animal’s lead. “Easy now, damn you! We don’t want to come up on our new friend too damn fast! God left this last one for us … I recon we’ll be showed a way to put it to use.” A minute later Hicks and Bruiser disappeared into the woods … following the newborn monster.

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

Melania yanked her mother into the house and then slammed the door and secured it with a latch-board. Her first instinct was to give her mother a hug and then her anger kicked in. “What were you thinking?” She shoved the old woman. “You could have been killed!” Lingering fear was making her tremble all over. Jesska leaned the still smoking shotgun in the corner and sighed. “Everyone laments death and yet they are thrilled when a man and woman conceive a child … and yet they are the same thing.”

“Giving birth to a baby and being torn to pieces by a monster are not the same!” Melania was furious and ready to argue.

Jesska took a pot from the stove and poured tea for herself and her daughter. Melania just glared at the porcelain cup she set before her. Jesska seemed transfixed by the green leaves swirling in her cup. “Many decades from now a man named Alvin Sullinger will invent a clock capable of timing every death and every moment of conception on Earth in less than one hundred-billionth of a second. When any two exact same times are matched-up, science will be able to tell who you were before you were born … and who you became after you supposedly died.”

Jesska reached for the sugar bowl and ladled two heaping spoonful’s into her tea. “Sullenger’s discovery that death does not exist will start a world war between scientists and religious leaders, and in the unprecedented bloodshed that follows, billions of people will find themselves dying and being born again with each side scorning the other … and claiming victory!”

“Don’t try to change the subject!” Melania moved the sugar bowl out of her mother’s reach. “That was a dangerous thing you did!”

“And yet we are no longer alone on this farm!” Jesska placed her empty cup in the sink and stared out the kitchen window.

            “If you’re talking about those monsters … I think the last one got away!”

            “You forget that it wasn’t just monsters I created,” Jesska said. “Open the door and invite our new working family in!”

Melania glanced out the window. The Momett scarecrows her mother had created, a male, female and what looked like a child, were taking reticent steps toward the house.

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

                “You sure this is going to work?” The first light of pre-dawn illuminated a blood-soaked crate filled with chickens placed on the ground just behind a leaf-covered ten-foot pit. Hicks had paid a starving Chinese family fifty-cents to do the digging. “Your pit-trap don’t exactly blend in with the rest of the trail.” Vern Pool took another long draw from a whiskey bottle.

Lavar backhanded his pal a good-one in the face. “It’ll do just fine! Me and Bruiser follered this here stuffy demon for two days and watched him tear the hell out of C. C. Johnson’s hen house … and a few others! It ain’t real smart and it likes the taste of chicken that’s for certain! Too bad I couldn’t a stuck around to see Claude’s face when he steps in all them blood and feathers. He’ll think a damn weasel riding a tornado turned his coop into kindling!”

            “I don’t know no critter like you describe,” Poole said. “You sure this ain’t just a big bear that likes to walk upright?”

            “Ain’t no bear,” Hicks said. “Like I said … that witch woman can bake scarecrows into people. She done left this one in the oven too long and it came out big and mean!”

            “What if she wants it back?”

            “Oh she’ll get it back all right.” Hicks smiled. “When I’ve got it trained to obey me. That old woman giving free water to people is bad for business … I figure she owes me plenty!”

            “What the tarnation is that smell?” Poole began to gag and Hicks covered his mouth to silence him. “Shut your damn yap … I think it’s coming!”

Hicks and Poole hunched down in the brush. The creature stopped in the trail. Black nostrils covered with rotting cloth sniffed the air. “It smells the blood!” Poole whispered.

This time Hicks covered both Poole’s mouth and nose until his struggling friend went unconscious. He slowly lowered his limp friend to the ground. The creature scanned the forest in all directions and then charged forward to the cage filled with chickens. There was a crash followed by an ungodly howling that made the hairs on Hicks’ neck stand on end. “Wake up damn you!” Hicks kicked his companion. “We got us a heap a work to be done!”

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

            The fact that there were only three other automobiles on Cloverdale’s Main Street attested to the area’s poverty. Most of the traffic was horses and wagons. Melania parked behind Hill’s General Store and told the Momett family to wait in the truck. “It’s going to take time for folks to get used to you,” she told them. “Mother spread the word that you people are from a religious group that has to have all its skin covered but it will take time for the town to accept you.”

            “Candy!” the Momett youngster bawled.

            “I’ll bring you a sucker if you stay here, mind your mom and dad and be real good.”

Melania noticed that Bolger and Dorothy had their hands folded in their laps and were staring straight ahead. She laughed. “I’ll bring you all suckers!” Blue eyes twinkled behind the white sacks covering their heads as the parents looked at each other and smiled.

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

            John Walker was busy talking to Clarence Hill in the back when Melania slipped into the store. “I was born here when the town was called South Fork,” Clarence told the sheriff. “In all my forty-eight years I’ve never seen the likes of the carnage at the Smith farm! Every hog the man had - slaughtered and scattered from hell to breakfast! No cows and no chickens! The barn looked like it was torn apart by a windstorm! Hell! There tweren’t no critters left alive … for miles around!”

            “It’s a good thing Sam and Lorna were at church when this all happened,” the sheriff mused. “Hogs can be replaced … people can’t!”

            “Everybody knows Lavar Hicks and Sam Smith have been feuding for years,” Clarence said. “You think it was Hicks broke up Sam’s place?”

            “It don’t matter what I think,” the sheriff told him. “Hicks has a solid alibi. At least a dozen people swear he was playing poker in the back room of Spare-a-Dime when this all happened.”

            “Something ain’t been right in this county the last two months,” Clarence said. “Normally quiet dogs howling all night long. At least a dozen people up and gone … leaving everything but what they’s wearin’. Nobody knows where they be off to! People are talking Devils and Witchcraft!”

The sheriff and Clarence noticed Melania for the first time as she pushed a squeaky store cart toward the counter loaded with a hundred pounds of flour, fifty pounds of sugar and bottles of molasses, soap and vinegar. The store owner busied himself totaling up her purchases but Sheriff Walker was cordial as he tipped his hat. “How’s your mother doing? I’ve been meaning to get out your way but it seems like every day I gots outlaw cows to chase … or bushy-tailed night bandits raiding somebody’s corn patch.”

            “Mother is as opinioned and as set in her ways as she’s always been,” Melania said. “We’d welcome your visit but we’re doing fine. Other folks need looking after more than us!”

            “That’ll be four dollars and thirty-four cents!” Clarence’s grim face showed he expected an argument over the high prices.

Melania dug five silver dollars from her bag and laid them on the counter then remembered the Momett waiting in the truck and pointed. “Also give me a half dozen of those Lollypops if you would.”

Clarence took the candy from a large glass jar and wrapped each sucker in paper. “I understand your new working family has a youngster,” John said watching as Clarence placed the wrapped suckers next to the other goods and count out the change from his till “Would this child be school age?”

            “Bolger and Dorothy mostly keep to themselves,” Melania said. “Their religion makes them seem strange to other folks. Mother is teaching Brian to read and write and it keeps her out of my hair.”

Sheriff Walker laughed. “I’ll tell the School Marm you’ve got things covered.”

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

Melania noticed a group of teen-age boys running down the street when she left the store. Dorothy sat in the truck holding Brian in her arms. Bolger lay on the ground next to two slashed tires. One of his arms was bent at an awkward angle and bits of straw poked out from a tear in his shirt. “What happened?”

            “They were calling us names,” Dorothy whispered. “They wanted Bolger to get out and fight them. When he wouldn’t they cut the truck tires with a knife!”

            “And your man got out to stop them,” Dorothy nodded. Melania lifted Bolger to his feet and was helping him into the truck when Sheriff Walker appeared.

            “I’ll catch the rotten eggs that did this,” John promised looking at the damage. “And they’ll pay for new tires as well as keep a couple of my jail cells clean, painted and warm till they learn it don’t pay to be bad in my town. The sheriff reached down and picked up a piece of straw from the road where Bolger had been laying. He said nothing but he put the clump of straw in his pocket.

            “I come from a long line of gypsies,” Melania told him. “If trouble doesn’t come looking for us … we move on.”

            John laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find plenty in Cloverdale. I’ll have someone from the motor garage come here and repair your tires. Will you be alright?”

Melania unwrapped the candy and pushed a Lollypop into his hand. “Thank you Sheriff.”

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

            It was after dark by the time the garage got the tires repaired. Mother would be worried. The lights on the front of the truck flickered as Melania maneuvered around all the bumps in the dirt road. “In the big cities,” she told Bolger, Dorothy and a sleeping Brian. “The roads are as smooth as kitchen floors. Gas lights on every corner makes you forget its night. There are stores that sell nothing but shoes … and there are hundreds of different kinds!”

            The Mometts’ eyes were showing white all around the blue as they listened to Melania’s stories. “There are trains that run under the ground and …” Melania stopped the truck. She could hardly believe her eyes. They were almost home and over the tree-tops she could see fire … rising upward toward the heavens!

To be continued …