Blood Creek Witch Page 22

  The ogre roared again, a bellow that surely must have been heard all the way down in Branton. Then it stomped forward with malicious purpose, possibly trying to frighten either the unfamiliar vehicle, or the poor young man crouched behind it. Jenny and Jack leaped from their hiding places, but couldn’t keep up with the ogre. It reached the SUV in three large, unhurried strides and delivered a two-fisted hammer-blow to its roof. The roof held surprisingly well, which only infuriated the monster. It rained blows on the top of the vehicle, spilling glass and twisting metal with each deafening crunch.

  Jenny spotted Sean on the ground, curled with his back toward the car, covering his head to protect it from flying debris. She began her protective spell, substituting Sean’s name where appropriate, focusing on his defense. Something happened, she felt it. She caught a faint flicker of light surrounding him that she prayed was more than her imagination.

  Jack raced behind the ogre, aimed his shotgun squarely at the base of the monster’s skull, and fired both barrels. Matted hair and thick hide vanished, exposing bloody flesh and skull. The beast roared and whirled on Jack. Jenny started the protection rhyme again in earnest, targeting Jack.

  She was too late. The poem needed several more seconds that she didn’t have. Jack backed up, even as he ejected the two spent shells. The creature lunged forward, supporting itself with one hand while raising the other with open claws to tear at Jack.

  A blur of black bounded from the grass to the broken SUV, and from there launched onto the ogre’s hunched back. The panther tore at the exposed flesh with powerful jaws. The ogre roared again, swinging its meaty hands over its shoulders. Its dagger-like claws connected, but the panther held fast, ripping deeper and deeper and soaking its face red.

  Jenny wanted to stop the protection aimed at Jack in favor of Jessabelle, but she had to finish. Jack backed away, a look of resigned terror as he fumbled, shoving new shells into the gun’s chambers. One shell slipped out, landing on the ground beside him. He stooped down to pick it up. Just then, Jessabelle fell off the ogre’s back. Shiny streaks of crimson gleamed across her black hide. The ogre struck down at her, but she leaped away a split-second before it connected. As she landed, she faltered, stumbling and lurching into the grass.

  Sean had recovered, and dove forward with a tiny knife. The blade bit deeply into the ogre’s leg, drawing blood. The ogre swatted Sean away with a back-handed blow that left Sean sprawled on the ground.

  The ogre turned back toward Jack. As it lunged, Jack did the same, coming in directly beneath it. He pointed the shotgun upwards, and fired.

  The gunshot silenced the ogre. Then, in spite of blood dribbling from its throat and chest, it hammered blows down on Jack. Jack dodged its first attacks, but fell under one strike. The creature beat down on him three more times, each blow coming more slowly than the last. Finally, the ogre stumbled backwards, bumping into the wreckage of the SUV, and sat down, as if taking a quick rest. It blinked several times, its breathing growing labored.

  Heedless of the ogre’s proximity, Jenny raced to Jack’s side. He sat up, looking every bit as dazed as the ogre, but didn’t act hurt. The shotgun beside him bore a small but undeniable bend along the barrels, rendered useless.

  Sean pulled himself to an unsteady stand, staring warily at the ogre. The ogre’s breathing slowed, and it collapsed to one side. With a gurgling final exhalation, its breathing stopped.

  “Jessabelle!” Jack yelled, and jumped up. He stumbled as he did, revealing more injuries than had been apparent. The panther limped out of the weeds. As Jack stood beside her, she transformed into human form, and screamed.

  Jenny rushed to Jessabelle’s side, and knelt down beside her. The girl winced, her clothes streaked with blood. “I normally heal when I change,” she explained between rapid breaths.

  Jenny retrieved a bag from the weeds where she’d been hiding, and produced a lidded plastic cup. She handed it to Jessabelle. “Drink some of this. I didn’t have Hattie’s help on this one, so I don’t know how good it is, but it might help.” She looked at Jack and added, “You, too.”

  Sean stared at Jessabelle, registering what had just happened. A few seconds after her transformation, he simply scratched his head and shrugged. He limped to the corner of the barn, looking around the pile of scrap wood where Evelyn had been thrown. Jenny was terrified of what he might find, but couldn’t afford to pull any more attention away from Jessabelle.

  Jessabelle made a face at the taste of the healing juice, and passed the jar to Jack. Her hand shook. Jack accepted the jar from her, took a swig of the drink with a far more stoic expression, then screwed the lid the over the remains and handed it to Jenny. Jessabelle winced in pain, and her breathing grew more ragged and shallow.

  Jack looked to Jenny and whispered, “Is there anything more we can do?”

  Jenny nodded. She recited the healing spell she’d learned from Hattie, infusing it with everything she had left. As it neared conclusion, Jenny felt lightheaded. She pushed through it until the end. Then the world flipped.

  She opened her eyes to find herself on her back in the grass. She felt like she’d been asleep for hours, but the fading sunlight still obscured the stars. The light and stars refused to stay in one position, spinning a few degrees before resetting a moment later. Jack’s face appeared in her view, doing the same record-skipping dance.

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked. His face and the sky took progressively shorter steps.

  “What happened?”

  “You fell over.”

  “For how long?”

  “Just a few seconds.”

  Jessabelle’s voice floated to her from a few feet away. It was weak, but no longer accompanied by ragged breathing. “Maybe you overdid it?”

  Jenny closed her eyes to shut out the staccato repeat-spinning. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. But then, just today she’d cured Jessabelle, made more healing juice, made anti-curse charms for her friends, made another and buried it under the threshold of the barn, cast protection spells on Sean and Jack, and made an effort heal Jessabelle. Had she run into her limits?

  “Jessabelle? Are you okay?”

  “If you mean did your spell work, I ain’t got no clue. I still hurt too bad to sleep, and I’m too tired to change. But I ain’t dead.”

  Jenny started raising herself to a sitting position, and instantly regretted it. Her world swam, and it was all she could do to lay back down comfortably in the grass. “I guess I’m not going anywhere for a while. Maybe I should have a drink of that potion, too.”

  “Oops, sorry,” Jack said. “There might could be a few drops left.”

  “It’s okay.” Jenny closed her eyes again, but it didn’t eliminate the sensation of spinning. “So I can’t do magic. Jessabelle can’t change. Jack’s gun is broken, so he can’t shoot. What’s Sean got left?”

  As if in answer, footsteps swished toward them along the grass. “Evelyn’s gone,” Sean said. “There’s nobody there.”

  “I guess it’s too much to hope she melted away like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

  “Probably,” Sean answered. “I saw a flash when she was hit, like when the snallygaster hit you.”

  “She didn’t have time to cast a spell. She must have had a charm made in advance, like those anti-curse bags.”

  “What anti-curse bags?”

  Jenny rubbed her forehead, as if it would force the world back into stability. “Right. I need to give you one. It might protect you from Evelyn’s mind-control, at least for a little while.”

  “Great. That would have been handy to give me a few hours ago.” Even without looking at his face, Jenny felt the heat from Sean’s glare. “You didn’t want me to have it a few hours ago, did you? You used me, Jenny. You used me to lure Evelyn into a trap.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could have… she could have just killed me, you know.”

  Jenny rolled onto one side to look at him. Her mother taught her to lie
when necessary and to avoid confrontation. But this was her own making, and she owed it to Sean to explain. Even if he hated her for the rest of her life. It was her mess. She had to clean it up, or at least own up to it. “She could have killed all of us with that ogre. Yes, I used you. I lied to you. I’m sorry.”

  Jack jumped in. “But we got the ogre.”

  Sean sighed. “Yeah. I even got a stab in myself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jenny repeated. “It was the only plan I could come up with at the time.”

  “I guess it was a pretty good plan,” Sean said with a shrug. “And, I did go behind your back to your grandmother’s house.”

  “Are we even?”

  He nodded. “Sure. But maybe we can be more honest with each other from here on out.”

  Jack looked down the hill, distracted. “Works for me,” he said.

  “’Bout time,” Jessabelle said.

  “I think we have a deal,” Jenny said. “But you keep our secrets from others, okay?”

  Sean nodded. “Of course.”

  “Guys?” Jack said. “I see headlights. A couple of sets, coming this way. I guess someone heard our fight.”

  Sean pointed to the ogre’s body. “I guess we find out how well Evelyn’s spell holds against proof.”

  Jessabelle smiled at Jack. “Now everyone will know you ain’t been lying.”

  Jack didn’t see the smile. He shrugged.

  Jenny sat up, successfully this time. The world spun more slowly now, but she was in no condition to stand. Down the hill, a pickup truck and an older car drove up the road toward them. There was nowhere to hide to avoid the attention this would generate. Jenny wouldn’t leave her friends, and she couldn’t physically escape if she wanted to. There was something curiously liberating about that.

  Jack disappeared as people arrived, and most of the arriving people asked Sean what was going on. After the third time someone asked if he was okay, he realized how he looked. He was covered with dirt and grime, slivers of glass from the SUV were stuck in his hair and glistened in the beams of headlights and flashlights, and he had a smear of ogre blood across the front of his shirt.

  Two women went in to help Mrs. Casto, reportedly already in hysterics. Her husband was not in the house. The shifting night wind carried the occasional rotten meat stench from the barn, and Sean feared the worst. To avoid answering more questions, Sean recruited three men to investigate the barn. “Evelyn kept it in the Casto barn,” Sean explained.

  “Would there be any others in there?” one of the men asked.

  Sean shook his head. “We’d have found that out already if there were.”

  The barn door stood open as Evelyn had left it. Sean stepped inside with a borrowed flashlight, the three other men behind him. Well, two men and a younger guy around Sean’s age. Mason, he’d been called by one of the older men.

  The fetid odor overwhelmed him more than the darkness. Sean lifted the front of his shirt to breathe through it, but it did little good, merely mingling the scent of his sweat and ogre blood with the reek of death and bodily waste. A swarm of flies filled the barn with a constant droning buzz.

  The flashlight beam passed over long animal bones. Sean swept the beam across the rotting, dirty carcass twice before he recognized the remains of the snallygaster they’d killed days ago.

  “What the hell is that?” Mason asked.

  “Snallygaster. That’s the creature that killed the boy a few days ago.”

  Mason backed away from the carcass, and nearly tripped over something else near the wall of the barn. He swore, and pointed his flashlight down at his feet.

  Sean realized what the lump was almost instantly. The appearance of the figure next to Mason removed all doubt. The ghost was around sixty years old, wearing bib overalls and a hat. He stared down at the decaying, dirt-and-straw-covered object at his feet, and then looked at Sean sadly. “Y’all take care of my wife, okay? And tell my kids I’m sorry.” The figure faded from view.

  “What the hell is this?” Mason demanded of nobody in particular.

  Without thinking, Sean answered, “That was Mr. Casto.” He meant the ghost, but his answer applied to the grisly, half-eaten remains on the floor as well.

  Mason staggered out the barn door and retched.

  Sean resisted his own urge to vomit. Whether Evelyn deliberately killed Mr. Casto or merely put him in harm’s way by placing a monster on his property, the man’s blood was on Evelyn’s hands. Indirectly, Sean felt responsible. He’d wondered what Evelyn had done with the towering, destructive creature she’d subdued, but he’d never voiced his question aloud. Maybe because he was afraid of the answer?

  “We need to call the police,” one of the men said.

  “Bill just went to call them,” another responded.

  “He probably called his nephew who works at the TV station first.”

  Sean turned. “Maybe we shouldn’t disturb the scene,” he said as he headed for the door. The rest of the group seemed ready to accept any excuse to leave.

  Jenny stood and approached Sean as he exited the building. It was hard to tell in the beams of the headlights, but she seemed stronger and less likely to fall over again. “What’s in there?”

  Sean shook his head to clear the horrible image. “The remains of the snallygaster. And Mr. Casto.”

  “His remains?”

  Sean nodded.

  Jenny looked down. “Oh. He seemed nice, I guess. Really helpful when he found Jack in his barn.” She looked around the field, and asked, “Did Jack go into the barn with you?”

  Sean shook his head. “Nope. I haven’t seen him since people started bombarding me with questions.”

  “Me, neither.” Jenny turned and called to Jessabelle, who sat by herself with her back against a fencepost, looking like she wanted to be anywhere else. “Jessabelle, have you seen Jack?”

  Jessabelle looked around, and then shook her head.

  Sean shrugged. “Jack’s smarter than the rest of us, I guess.”

  “You’d think he’d be happy, finally being proven right after all this time,” Jenny looked down the road at the approaching flashlights. “You realize this is going to be all over the news tonight? Everywhere.”

  Sean nodded. “Yeah. It’s weird.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve never been one for standing out. And now this tiny little town is going to be the center of attention everywhere. But Evelyn…”

  Sean frowned. “If she survived, Evelyn’s going to be behind bars. Unless she was really, really smart and started running. Or flying. Can witches really fly on brooms?”

  Jenny laughed. “I don’t think I ever would. That sounds scary.”

  “Says the girl who stood up to an ogre an hour ago.”

  She laughed more, and looked into his eyes. “I wasn’t the only one. We still have to face that other problem of yours. What did you say his name was? Avery?”

  Sean nodded. “Maybe your protection spell will do the trick. I hardly felt it when the ogre back-handed me. I doubt little Avery will do much better.”

  “I’ll protect you as long as it takes, until we figure out how to send him to Hell where he belongs.”

  Sean smiled, and his anger towards her receded. Jenny seemed sincere, and she had just executed a ruthless plan to take down an ogre. He didn’t know if he could trust her, but he wouldn’t underestimate her.

  The trickle of flashlights parted for the approach of an SUV. For a moment, Sean imagined it was the ghost of Evelyn’s car, returning for a visit from the dead. Same make and model, brand new, but a different color. “Botch” King didn’t bother turning off the ignition as he exited and approached Sean. Even having only been in town a few days, Sean had heard of the man, but he’d never been introduced. Botch wore plain Levis and a light-blue button-up shirt. His cowboy boots seemed expensive, but well-used. By reputation, Botch was the wealthiest person in Maple Bend, and one of the richest men in the county, but Sean couldn’t tell. He stood in th
e sideways spotlight of his own headlight beams.

  “That thing’s dead?”

  Sean nodded. “Yeah. We killed it. Uh, mostly Jack.”

  “Jack Parsons?” The man shook his head and whistled. “Well, ain’t that interesting. Anybody seriously hurt?”

  “Not from the fight. It killed Mr. Casto a while ago.” He felt his blood warm just thinking about the poor man’s ghost again. Sean twisted the knife. “Evelyn kept this thing in the Casto’s barn.”

  The man’s face darkened. Maybe it was how he turned away from the headlight beams. “You tell anyone else that?”

  Sean nodded.

  “Okay. The police are on their way up, but it’ll be a little while before they get here. I reckon they’ll want to talk to all y’all. It’d be best if you didn’t talk to anyone else until then. Folks are going to be riled up enough as it is. Where’s Jack?”

  Sean shook his head. “He took off a while ago.”

  “Okay, I’ll see about rounding him up. Judas, will ya look at that thing?”

  “Um, can we get a ride down to Hattie’s?”

  The man nodded. “Yep, sure thing. Lemme move some papers out of the way.”

  A few minutes later, the three of them were back in Hattie’s trailer. Jenny gave everyone cold water to drink, and they took turns showering the sweat and dirt off their faces and bodies. Sean felt like he would have to bathe for a week to get the filth of the Casto barn out of his skin. There was little warm water left by the time he stepped into the shower, so a few exhilarating minutes would have to do.

  When he stepped out of the shower, he realized he was out of shirts. He had one plain, white t-shirt left, but it was badly in need of washing. At least it could be cleaned. The shirt he’d been wearing, stained with ogre-blood, might have to be burned.