Woodland voices drifted through the trees. The breeze that carried them smelled of lavender. Flittering light wove quickly in the blink of an eye through the leaves. Dappled sunlight cast tiny spotlights on sacred herbs. My memory of Bell Creek had never faded.
I sat in the backseat quietly digesting the omelet Mrs. Winters's boyfriend had cooked for everyone. I offered the paper to-go box he had sent for Detective Winters. The silent outcast gestured that he didn't want it and remained busy on his phone, texting another policeman about his newest assignment. Then he set his phone on the new dashboard mount he had just bought and the GPS software began talking to him in a female voice.
"Eat it." Cory urged me. I was somehow still hungry and opened the plastic bag with plastic utensils in it and started eating Detective Winters's breakfast. He asked:
"Know a place called Bell Creek?" He made eye contact with me in the rear view mirror as he asked this.
"I do." I murmured, chewing.
"I need you with me on this one, Lord." Detective Winters said to me in an odd way. "An officer has gone missing and it seems to be related to what we are dealing with out there."
I felt a fearful chill as I wondered what we were going to meet. I suddenly wasn't hungry enough to finish a second breakfast. I kept eating anyway, somehow distracting myself by filling my stomach to the brim with food. We stopped at a gas station and Detective Winters bought some cigarettes for himself, unsalted peanuts for Cory and a bottle of water for me. He had anticipated that I was thirsty, somehow.
I read the label and wondered at the descriptions of minerals and purity and processes promised of the liquid inside. I have found fresh water and drank it from where it flowed, with my mouth and tongue, like a dog. As I thought of drinking from Bell Creek or drinking from the bottle: I knew there was a difference; although the difference was subtle.
There is an energy in the fresh cold water as it spills over rocks, from where it gathered in the hills above, that is not present in the collected steam as it is bottled. It might hydrate the body as it malnourishes the soul. Water should not be tasteless.
"What's on your mind?" Detective Winters asked me, uncharacteristically.
"I have drank from Bell Creek before. I was comparing the experience to drinking this water from the gas station." I tried to explain my thoughts.
"And?" He asked indulgently.
"I think that water like this is dead, sterile. Water like from Bell Creek is more natural. Like a kind of magic." I shrugged. I wasn't really sure how to explain my thoughts.
"I agree." Detective Winters sounded sincere.
Cory clicked once at our conversation.
"I didn't think I had explained myself." I spoke appreciatively of their agreement with me.
We arrived as it began to rain lightly. The fresh rain upon the leaves of the tranquil woodland brought a scent and sound of natural serenity. Animals watched the activities of Man in their forest-home from where they hid. Cory mocked them with a boisterous cawing; announcing the arrival of a dominant crow and his family. There was no response, no challenge, and he clicked loudly every few seconds in satisfaction. The rain stopped; leaving its echoing offspring to drip melodically from saturated leaves.
"This is a good place." Cory told me.
"This forest is holy." I nodded. I could feel the residual peace and quiet, disturbed only momentarily by our presence. Years of silence held this place in green morning light. I glanced around and saw a plant that looked like hedge nettle growing everywhere and it smelled of lavender. Wild garlic, sage's wort and cedar surrounded us. I watched an insect peek around a branch and look directly at me, then she calmly folded her wings, glanced over her shoulder, and strode into her hole in the side of a tree. I realized it was not an insect I had glimpsed.
Detective Winters used his Zippo to light a smoke and gestured for me to follow him. We left the police tape and the little forensics markers with numbers on them sitting next to each clue. I could hear the water of the creek and he made a gesture for me to lead the way. We followed the path towards the sound of Bell Creek quietly spilling over rocks. When we stood at the place where someone had camped, I looked around.
"This could be related to the crime scene." I observed. The campsite was fresh, the ash remained white and soft in the campfire circle. Some flies told us where the bathroom was.
"We have a Site B." Detective Winters did a push-to-talk on his phone. He was able to send them exact coordinates also.
"Of another." Cory flew to a branch and looked around and came back to me. He clawed gently at my shoulder, spurring me in the direction he wanted me to turn. Then he set on the path he had found with his pointy beak.
"That way." I pointed. There was a path leading upstream, almost unnoticeable.
"Let's go." Detective Winters followed me and we made our way along a track left by animals, now followed by men.
Another man who had come this way was dead.
We arrived next to a wide clearing with no leaves on the level dirt. I stared at the gloomy and desolate place. Nothing grew there and no leaves fell there. The path we were on avoided it, going through thick bushes to come no closer to it. We had to use sticks to clear our way towards it through the blocking underbrush.
I looked at the face down body. I said: "I've found your missing policeman."
"What is this place?" Detective Winters could feel the energy of where we stood. It was smothering us, biting into us somehow, trying to obliterate the two living things that should not be in that deathly clearing.
"My Lord, my Winters, do not stand there or you will die." Cory called out to us in alarm from where he watched us. He had flown to a tree's branch and come no closer.
Detective Winters coughed and I felt something warm on my lips and felt and looked and saw my nose was bleeding. Detective Winters had a look of nausea on his face. Muscles in my body began to tighten and cramp. We fled back the way we had come until I doubled over and threw up the dead water I had drank earlier.
"What-what was that?" Detective Winters pointed at the clearing and stammered. His eyes were wide. He looked like he had aged. He stared at me wide-eyed. "You look older."
"So do you." I wiped the blood and bile off my face with the back of my hand and flicked it onto the leaves and roots we stood on.
"How do we do this?" He looked back at the dead body and wondered, a crazed acceptance in his eyes.
"We don't." My voice sounded deep and strained.
"That is Officer Michael Sharon. We aren't just going to leave him there." Detective Winters stared unbelievingly at the clearing.
"He is already dead." I reasoned. "There is nothing we can do for him."
"My Lord is right, my Winters." Cory advised. "All who enter die. You are both very lucky to survive that."
"Then he will remain missing." Detective Winters went to light another smoke but he kept coughing and couldn't smoke it.
"If his body remains there for much longer it will be as dust." Cory smoothed over the frayed edges of our dilemma.
"There is still a murder to solve." Detective Winters looked at me. His face was wrinkled and dark rings were under his eyes. I knew it had done the same to me.
"You look terrible." I told him.
"Not looking good yourself." He mimed a wipe of his own lips.
I used my sleeve and found the blood had dried on my face. We went back to the trail and I decided to follow it some more. For some reason Officer Sharon had come this way and died in the woods. What was he after out here?
We reached the road and the game trail ended. Bell Creek ran under an old wooden bridge. I noted that the road was overgrown and very old also. A logging or forestry road of some kind, no doubt. It had not seen much use in the years since its abandonment. Detective Winters stopped again and sent GPS coordinates back to the others.
We crossed the bridge and followed the road for maybe half of an hour.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
"What could we find out here?" Detective Winters stopped walking and asked me. I had no idea, so we started back. Just before we reached the bridge I noticed a set of tire tracks where someone had turned a vehicle around. I pointed them out to Detective Winters and he took pictures of it with his phone.
"Someone else was out here." I considered. I looked around some more and saw they had stopped before the other side of the bridge and gotten out. We followed the trail they had made walking through the thin foliage in this part of the forest. A more natural clearing stood there, aligned with the one we had found where Officer Sharon had died. In the center of this clearing was a circle of white ash drawn into a spell to designate a center. I told this to Detective Winters.
"Looks like three individuals." He took pictures of the bare footprints they had left. "Doing a lot of walking around this spell."
"Dancing." I corrected him. He looked up at me, gradual realization dawning on him.
"If this is the center, where is the edge of this, uh, spell?" Detective Winters looked back the direction where we had found the deadly place.
"Can you find out, Cory?" I asked my bird. He clicked once and then did his best to fly around, from branch to branch, through the forest. He was gone for a while and we waited. When he returned he told us:
"There are six clearings where only Death may live. They form a pattern in the forest. This place is at their center and the spell is in the middle of this place." Cory explained. I looked at Detective Winters.
"Is this witchcraft?" He asked me. I shrugged and told him:
"Not like any witchcraft I have ever heard of."
"Then I suppose you won't hazard a guess as to what they were doing out here?" Detective Winters lit a smoke and took a satisfied breath.
"It might be unrelated to the murder." I observed.
"Is that what you think?" He watched me carefully as I listened to my intuitions whispering to me. I shook my head. He asked me: "How do we find them?"
"Like this." I told him and walked over to their spell and ruined it with my foot and spit on it. "Someone, or three someones, just had a fall."
"How's that help me?" Detective Winters asked with a patient tone. He had complete faith in my methods, as I did not.
"If your phone says your bank account is compromised, what do you do?" I asked, suddenly inspired with a decent explanation.
"I call the bank." He considered. He looked at the ruined circle and back at me. "So all we have to do is wait."
"It could take days or weeks." I pointed out.
"Or mere hours." He shrugged, acknowledging it was a guessing game.
"This could also be a waste of time. They might have nothing to do with the murder." I apologized with my tone of voice.
"You weren't a waste of time." Detective Winters shook his head at me and used his phone to call someone and explain in police pidgin what was going on. They had a lot to tell him right back and he listened carefully.
"What's our plan?" I asked. I could see that the exchange of information had enlightened Detective Winters.
"Our victim was last seen with three women. They ate a diner four days ago and were going camping." He repeated one of the more pertinent details to me, as if acknowledging what I had found for him. I felt excited, like I had solved the murder already.
"Is that it, then?" I wondered. He shook his head.
"The FBI is coming. The description of three women killing a man out in the woods and the word 'witchcraft' got their attention." He stared at me. "Our witches are serial killers."
"I see. Will we wait and ambush them?" I asked. He nodded and then shook his head.
"Let's get my car and park it further up this road. I want my weapon and a vehicle nearby in case we have to engage them or pursue them." Detective Winters strategized.
We returned to Site A of the crime scene and found that only one Sheriff's vehicle remained there. The county homicide team had taken their toys home already. We went to Detective Winters's car and he went over to the young deputy and accepted her cold coffee as a token exchange. She stared after him, blinking at his haggard appearance. I looked at my own face in his passenger's side's mirror and felt my bones aching painfully as I bent.
I looked much older as twenty or thirty years of my life were leeched from my body by the maw of death. The eggs I had eaten complained in my guts and it was difficult to straighten and stand back up. My muscles felt weak and my mind had grown sluggish and resisted me when I tried to think. I realized that Cory was very correct: we were both very lucky to be alive.
We drove away and parked further up the road past the creaking wooden bridge. Then Detective Winters got Streetsweeper from where she slept in his trunk. He grinned wickedly as he lifted the automatic shotgun and I could see it felt much heavier to him. He loaded her drum with a variety of ammunition he had: slugs, flechettes, hydroshock, birdshot, phosphorescent, incendiary and a few that were filled with coins. He said the name of each bullet as he loaded it. The last three magnum rounds he stopped and wrote the word 'witchhammer' with a permanent marker and a frown on his face.
"You just going to shoot them to pieces?" I asked incredulously.
"Only if I see them." He growled.
I stopped him and put my hand on his shoulder as he tried to go towards our chosen ambush site. "You intend murder. You are no better than me."
"Don't ever compare me to the likes of you." Detective Winters threw off my hand and hefted the heavy weapon with a strained grunt. I wondered if firing it would bruise him or possibly dislocate his elderly shoulder.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I demanded. I had lost some of my fear of him when I realized he didn't hate me, and now that I was an old man, death wasn't as abstract. If he were to kill me now, so what? I could feel my body dying where I stood. Every joint ached and my mouth was always dry now.
"It means I am a real man, and you are a piece of shit, Lord." He trudged along the road and left me standing there watching him go as the darkness began to creep from the shadows. The evening had come quickly and it became sunset in the forest as the shade fed the nightfall. I thought I could hear bats flying overhead.
His words hurt somehow. I got back into the car and just sat there. Some evil had come between us, I could sense the dissension before it had happened. When it did I was not surprised. Enemies were known to our quarry and they had sent spells firing off in our direction like magic shotgun blasts. Perhaps the last three spells they had loaded into their own shotgun had our names on them.
I fell asleep in the back of the car. I awoke to a peculiar feeling in the darkness of the forest. I opened the car door slowly. I stood in an island of light from the car's dome light, amid the sea of towering blackness of a forest of night. The trees rustled softly and the sounds of creatures had ceased suddenly.
I heard the most unearthly cry of pain and terror turn to a wet scream of agony and then end just as suddenly. Terror froze my heart as I stood there leaning on the open car door and staring in the direction that Detective Winters had gone. He had the car keys, I realized at random. I stood frozen in panic for a long time, sweating in the cold night air.
"My Lord, our Winters made that cry. He must be dead." Cory said quietly from within the car. I realized the dome light had gone off and my eyes had begun to adjust to the dark.
I stared in awful horror at the sight of three figures approaching over the road. They were not walking, instead they stood erect and stiff and their feet did not move as they floated above the ground towards me with unnatural swiftness. They had stalked the forest and heard my bird speak. They were coming for me!
I could do nothing, my old body had no agility or strength to run or fight. I just stood there helplessly waiting for their arrival. It came too quickly as they sped towards me in the dark.
Then they were upon me, their eyes like pits of blackness and their mouths like grinning skulls. Except those features, each was terrifyingly beautiful and with perfectly formed bodies. I have always found such proportions unnatural, but these were like super models or mannequins in their perfection. It made me shudder in dread, as if these were not even human, but mere effigies.
They hissed and giggled and cackled and sighed as they drew me into the open, making me shuffle my feet simply by pointed at them. Then they circled me, around and around until I became dizzy. I fell into a trance and was not only at their mercy and helpless, but entirely under their command. I was vaguely aware from moment to moment as they spoke to each other:
"This one walked across Death's Touch also. Should we give him back his life? He has an interesting purpose."
"His purpose is not our purpose. He only has vestigial magic. He will never be ours or theirs."
"Should we kill him like the other? He is an enemy."
"My Lord is not your enemy. He protested the approach of my Winters. He only wanted to help with Man's justice. He meant no evil upon you." Cory spoke from behind them, atop the car.
"His bird speaks from an enchantment, a powerful enchantment."
"An ancient enchantment that gives an animal the power to speak the words of men."
"An amusing distraction. It changes nothing. We should kill him and keep the enchanted bird."
"My Lord saved me and kept me when I was condemned. He is unlike other men, it would be a waste of what little magic remains." Cory argued with them.
"We have great magic, we would lose nothing from his death." One of the witches spoke directly to Cory. Then another spoke directly to me:
"Would you join with our pursuers if we spare your life?"
"I don't want to. I want to go back to my family." I was compelled to speak and could not change what I said. I had to say exactly what was true of me. They were forcing me to speak the truth to them, somehow. "I will be asked to help, but there is little more I could do. I have no way to identify you."
"He is harmless and means us no harm."
"His bird is right, it would be a waste."
Before they went I felt a grey hand inside my mind, squeezing it. Then I knew nothing. I awoke some time in the middle of the morning and I was face down on the logging road. With considerable effort and pain I was able to get back up on my feet. Cory was pecking at a snail and looked at me.
"You don't die here." He reminded me. "You knew that already."
"Death will always happen." I reminded him. I found a stick to use to help me walk and used it clumsily to make my way down the road. I found where Detective Winters had fallen.
Or rather where he had risen. They had hoisted him up by one foot and his other leg had folded behind. His hands hung limply and his face was a broken scowl of defeat. They had eviscerated him and his entrails hung festooned in the branches all around. His throat was cut and his last drop of blood fell and hit the coagulating pool that reflected him in red. His weapon lay in a pile of individual pieces and the empty shells contents dumped upon it. The sight of the great warrior hanging there broke my heart.
I listened to a voice telling me to take his spirit. I knew it was his ghost, it sounded just like him. I went to the bloody corpse and gripped his head by his sticky hair. I put my mouth over his and kissed his lips and sucked out the breath that was his spiritual energy.
"My Lord. those women were wrong about you. Your magic is not only a memory. You remembered something just now." Cory sounded very surprised.
"I also lied to them, despite their power." I realized. "Because now I know I am not done hunting them."
"My Lord?"
"Where is the soul of Detective Winters?" I looked around.
"It did not depart, nor does it linger." Cory clicked in amazement.
"I need a cigarette." I felt and said. I had never smoked before, yet I knew that is what I wanted.
The pack was soaked in blood so I discarded it. His zippo I kept, then I left him hanging there and made my way back along the trails.
The deputy was staring sleepy eyed and sat up in her vehicle very startled by the sight of me. I had blood on my face and hands.
After securing me in her vehicle in handcuffs and reporting the situation, she asked me:
"Where is Detective Winters?"
To which I had nothing I wanted to say. He lived on in me and I knew what he knew about the suspects. It wasn't over, I was going to honor him by bringing them to justice.