Ken Douglas - Nightwitch

She had covered half the ground back toward the clearing, when she heard it blundering in the fog, not even trying to be quiet. The hyena stayed out of sight, but not out of the dog’s scent. The hairs on Condor’s back were stiffened, like an agitated cat’s, and the low rumble growl was constant as she tugged on his collar. Maybe Condor wasn’t such a bad watch dog after all, she thought, because all traces of his fun loving self were wiped out as he tugged against her. He wanted to attack whatever it was out there in the fog.

She started to backtrack faster when she reached the clearing, until she reached the center of it, and realized that she had no place to go. The flimsy tent wasn’t going to offer any protection. She stopped, dropped to her knees, to offer a smaller target, in case the hyena leapt at her through the fog, the way the wolf came flying in her front window, and waited, still mumbling her mantra, “I will not be afraid, I will not be afraid.”

Then as magically as the fog had appeared, it started to clear as the drizzling rain started to pick up.

And laughter shot from the hyena to her soul, knifing through her body like cold electricity. Condor barked an angry response as she caught a glimpse of the glowing eyes through the dark. She had the gun up with her finger ready to squeeze the trigger, but the eyes flashed out. She held her fire. She had learned early that there was no use shooting at what you couldn’t see. But she didn’t have to see to know that it was gone. The hair settled on the dog’s back. He retracted his fangs, and best of all, he turned toward her and ran that slurpy tongue across her cheek.

“ Sarah,” she heard his voice, coming through the clearing fog. She stood up and faced the rain, letting it wash the fear from her body, and as quickly as it had come, the rain was gone.

“ Over here,” she shouted, and then he was there and she was in his arms, showering him with kisses.

“ What happened?” he said.

“ I’ll never doubt you again,” she said, hugging him close. “And I’ll never, never let you go.” Then with a rush of words, she told him about the hyena and everything that had happened since he’d been gone, and she knew that if she lived through this night, her life was never going to be the same, because she was in love.

“ It knows we’re here. We have to move,” he said, but once again that staccato laughter filled the night and when they turned to the sound they saw the hyena half in and half out of the two man tent, glaring at them with its flaming eyes.

Condor moved like a silent wraith, gliding like a missile over the cool ground, as he charged the hyena, mouth open, fangs bared.

“ The witch that can’t die. I guess that means she’ll never get a home over there,” Carolina said, looking across the cemetery, as they walked away from Harry’s.

“ Everybody dies.” He looked over at the tombstones and saw a freshly dug grave through the patchy fog, and wondered if it was for the man who was killed with his father. Did that man have a home and children? Did they miss him? Or were they happy he was gone and better off without him? Everybody dies.

“ Not the Nightwitch,” Carolina said.

“ Even the Nightwitch,” Arty said.

“ Mr. Lightfoot said?” she shivered.

“ No, that’s not what he said. He said you can kill it with salt and hot pepper. Remember? They scratch themselves to death and burn up.”

“ Even if you do that there still won’t be anything left to bury. It’s kinda sad, she’ll be gone and there won’t be anybody to remember her.”

“ Nobody’s gonna wanna remember her,” Arty said.

“ If she can’t die, except with the hot pepper, and we can’t find her skin, then it’s impossible for us to stop her. Harry’s right. We should go home and stay there.”

“ Harry knows a lot of stuff, but even he doesn’t know everything. Nobody knows everything.”

“ But if he’s right, then the silver shotgun bullets you made won’t work.”

“ They have to work. Harry said that silver made it weak, remember? He said people used a silver cross to keep it away, didn’t he?”

“ Yeah,” she said.

“ I think he was only trying to keep us from messing with the Nightwitch.”

“ He said he would take care of it,” she said.

“ But it’s not coming after him. It wants you. And I know why.”

“ Why?” she asked, turning away from the sunset and sticking out her lower lip.

“’ Cuz you got her magic locket and she wants it back.”

“ What?”

“ The one your dad gave you. That has to be why it keeps coming around your house.”

Carolina reached up to her neck, but the locket wasn’t there.

“ Yeah,” Arty said, “You put it behind Sheila’s name tag. I bet that’s the only reason you’re still alive. It looks in your window. It probably watches when we go to school and we would never know, because it can be anything it wants. It’s waiting to find out where the locket is, and when it does, that’s when it’s going to kill you, and me, too, ’cuz now I know.”

“ No, you’re wrong,” she said. “My dad would never give me something like that.”

“ What if he didn’t know?”

“ If he didn’t know, maybe?”

“ So we should go to my house and get the shotgun.”

“ But Harry said we should stay home.”

“ We will, but we’ll get the shotgun, just in case.”

“ That makes sense.” So instead of turning right to Carolina’s, they turned left to Arty’s house.

“ Do you think we should call Harry and tell him about the locket?” Carolina said, as they rounded the corner of Arty’s street.

“ That’s a good idea,” Arty said. It was starting to get dark and Arty could tell Carolina wanted to be home as quickly as possible. “You wanna call from here or when we get back to your house?”

“ From here,” she said. “Maybe he’ll want to come and get it.”

Arty pulled a key out of his pocket. “I’ve never had my own key before,” he said. “My dad wouldn’t allow it.” He opened the door, went to the phone and dialed.

“ You know his number by heart?” she asked.

“ Yeah, once I learn a number, I remember it forever.”

“ Just the opposite of me,” she said.

“ I remember things,” he said, “that’s why I remembered about the locket.” The phone was ringing for the eighth, then the ninth time, before he hung up. “He’s not home.”

“ Probably gone after the Nightwitch,” Carolina said, following Arty out of the house and into the garage. She watched as he went to a stack of old newspapers and pulled some from the top.

“ It wouldn’t look right for a couple kids to be walking around with a shotgun, so I’m gonna wrap it up.” He used masking tape to hold the newspaper in place, but it didn’t make much difference, when he was finished it still looked like what it was. A shotgun wrapped in newspaper, but Arty was pleased with the attempt.

“ We should make a silver cross,” Carolina said, “and get some salt and hot pepper.”

“ My grandma’s old silver is in the kitchen. My dad wouldn’t sell it, ’cuz he loved his old mother. She was horrible. I hated her.”

Carolina followed him back into the house and into the kitchen. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a box. She stood back as he put it on the table and opened it. The inside was lined with blue velvet and it was packed with an ornate looking silverware service.

“ We could make a cross out of two of the knives,” she said, “but we need a way to make them stay together.”

“ No problem,” Arty said. He laid the shotgun on the table next to the silver set. He rushed from the kitchen, returning seconds later with a box of rubber bands. “These are the thick ones I use for the Sunday papers,” he said, picking up the two knives. He used several rubber bands and bound them together at the center, fashioning them into a crude cross.