Ken Douglas - Nightwitch

She stopped in front of the place where Arty had crawled into and stared at those bushes like she knew someone had gone in there. Gibson felt cool, salty sweat run into his eyes. He tried to brush it out with the back of his palms, but he only drove the stinging sweat in deeper.

“ How we gonna do it?” Oxlade asked again and Gibson turned to look at him. His fists were clenched. He was flexing his muscles. The man was pumped. Maybe he’d misjudged him.

“ We grab the purse and run,” Gibson said, abandoning his idea of taking off and leaving Oxlade behind to take the rap.

“ What if she sees us?” Oxlade said.

“ It’s dark. She’s old. I don’t think it’s a problem,” he whispered. Why was she staring at those bushes? Why wouldn’t she come closer? He wanted to get it over with.

“ I think we should waste her,” Oxlade said and Bill Gibson felt like he’d been hit on the side of the head. He’d never done anything like this before. He could see grabbing an old lady’s purse and making a run for it. Chances are they’d get away with it. Hell, with all the crime these days, the police wouldn’t want to be bothered. But murder-he hadn’t even thought about hitting her. Just grab and run.

“ You gotta be crazy.”

“ Who’s chicken now, Billy Boy?”

“ What are you talking about?” It was like Oxlade had been reading his mind.

“ I know what you was thinking. He don’t wanna do it no more. He’s yellow. I’ll show him. I know you, Billy Boy. I know you worry about folks thinking you’re yellow.”

“ How could you?” But he knew as soon as the words left his mouth. Lucy, his one true love.

“ That’s right, Billy Boy,” Oxlade said, reading his mind again. “You talk too much and she tells me everything. I know every little thing there is to know about you. You think our meeting in that pissant little bar was an accident?”

“ Why?” he asked with his eyes on the old lady, still staring into the bushes.

“ You got something I want.”

“ What?” he asked looking as deep into Oxlade’s eyes as the night would allow. What could he possibly have? He was as poor as dog shit.

“ Your boy.”

“ Arty?”

“ I don’t want him for keeps. Just bring him over on Friday after school. You can have him back on Sunday morning. Plenty of time for him to do all his chores.”

“ Why would you want Arty?” he asked. Then he knew and he was repulsed. He might be a coward at heart, and he knew it. He might light into his wife and boy a little too often, but he wasn’t a fucking pervert. Arty might be a fat little hog, but he was his boy.

“ Little harmless fun. Who knows, the boy might even learn to like it.”

Bill Gibson stared at Oxlade. All his life he’d been a coward. And the hot, green jungle came screaming back. He was lying in the wet, being pelted by rain. “Cover me,” the sergeant had said, before he charged across the clearing to get the wounded man, but he froze, and the sergeant was cut down while he watched, kept quiet and didn’t give himself away. And nobody knew what a coward he was. Nobody except Lucy, because when he was with Lucy he drank too much and he talked too much.

But what Oxlade was asking was out of the question. Even if he told everyone down at the bar and the bowling alley and the whole damn town. He’d sooner live with that, then turn his boy over to a pervert. So he looked Oxlade square in the eye and did the only brave thing he’d ever done in his whole miserable life. He said, “No.”

“ What?”

“ No.”

And she started to come closer.

Oxlade turned away from him and said, “Okay, after we finish this we’ll see where we stand.”

Gibson wanted to get up and take off, but something held him in place. It was out of his control, he told himself. An insect landed on his hand and he brushed it away. He felt another on the back of his neck, weaving its way through raised neck hairs. He squashed it with his thumb. He had to piss so badly his thighs were quivering. Another insect landed on his neck, but he was too absorbed with the frail figure moving toward them to notice.

She moved slowly, without grace. A passerby or someone looking out of their front window would pass their eyes over this old black woman and not see her. She was remarkable only in the fact that she wasn’t remarkable. She was old and slow, that was all. Nothing to remember and nothing to be afraid of.

She stopped and raised her head slightly. She folded her hands, as if in prayer, and sniffed the night. She stared again at the space between the two houses.

Gibson wondered what she was doing, then she turned back toward them and he pulled back between the cars. He felt the new insect threading its way through the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt the sweat trickle under his arms. He felt the pain caused by a decaying tooth. His dirty skin itched. His bladder was about to burst. He wanted to jump up and run. He wanted it over and he wondered if Oxlade would go through with it and if she would scream.

But he knew Oxlade was going to do it. He wondered if he’d be quick. He forced himself to wait. Only a few more seconds, he told himself, then it would be over. Then he noticed that she didn’t have a purse. That meant Oxlade would have to go through her pockets. It would take longer.

What if she didn’t have any money, he thought, and then he mentally answered himself. It didn’t matter-Oxlade didn’t care.

The old woman unclasped her hands and faced forward again. The wind dropped and silence reigned. She stood still, a statue in the night. Gibson willed her to turn away, to go back the way she’d come, but she didn’t. She resumed her shuffle down the sidewalk.

Two houses away and she stopped again. And the wind picked up again, blowing from her to them. She farted, he both heard and smelled it. A fart yes, but there was something more there, putrid and vile-a smell that screamed, get up and run, get away, get far away. He might have done it, but Oxlade sensed his cowardice and grabbed him by the arm, holding him in place.

He wanted to scream out to her to turn and flee, but the words were dead in his throat. He shook loose of Oxlade’s grasp, but he didn’t move as she resumed her slow walk toward them. He choked back his fear and tightened his resolve. He wished he had stayed home.

When she was one house away, he thought he heard a low laugh, more like a cackle. She moved a few steps closer and the laughter came on the breeze like a full frontal assault. He couldn’t move. It was like he was hearing loud laughter with the volume turned down low. Laughter meant only for him.

Oxlade didn’t seem to be bothered.

She came closer and Gibson was numb.

Oxlade jumped from behind the pickup, blocking her path. She whipped a clawed hand around, grizzly-quick and took his face off. No doubt about it, he was dead before his body slumped onto the sidewalk.

The coward in Gibson said run. All he wanted was for her to keep going, to pass on by and never know he was there. To take that fart smell and that loud, quiet laughter away. I’ll be good Lord, he prayed. I’ll never even think a bad thought.

Then she was standing there, facing him as he cringed on the wet pavement, paralyzed. He urinated as she glared at him, the wet soaking through his pants and dripping onto the pavement. The splashing drops the only sounds out and about in the neighborhood.

Instinct overcame his fear and he started to get up. She let him rise. He turned to run, but was blinded by a light that hit him white hot between the eyes. He collapsed, face up, twitching on the ground.

He could see, but he couldn’t move his head. He felt something wet on the back of his skull and hoped it was water from the street, but was afraid that it was his own blood. He moved his eyes around. The old woman was gone. For a second relief flooded through him. Then he heard a low growl and felt something clamp onto his twitching, jerking leg.