Wyatt had never been one for sitting and waiting for things to happen. When he was a child and his uncle taught him to fish, he had called the boy a "stalker." Saying that Wyatt preferred to go looking for the fish and tempt them, rather than sit with an unseen bait dangling where no fish might ever pass.
This had been a hallmark of much of his life. It made him exceptional at hunting for herbs, mushrooms, hunting and gathering in general, and he had given up a long time ago trying to figure out just how far he had walked in his days, but he was pretty sure that it was more than enough to circle the earth and make it part way home again.
So, with a pipe full of bourbon tobacco and his tomahawk riding his belt, he and Katie walked out into the night as it fell over Monroe farm.
He had no agenda, no point b to search for, simply a need to be up and moving and see what the night might show him.
Plus, he confessed to himself, he had a fierce curiosity about where the spirit of Walter Monroe was hiding itself away when it wasn't making people miserable.
Powerful spirits, ones that were aware of their condition and able to use their command over others, always found a stronghold, a place that felt secure to them, a place to go to ground during the day or when they had been weakened.
So he and Katie simply walked. He did not make for any landmark or follow any pattern, grid or spiral. He let his gift flow out before him like the bow wave of a ship, flowing over everything just to see what he might feel.
The removal of the small army of spirits had changed the dynamic of the farm. There was a freedom to the energy, but only within certain boundaries. Beyond it, behind it there was a palpable feeling of rot and corruption that would not go, until the land had been freed from the elder Monroe and the creature that sculpted him.
The night vision granted to him by his gift meant that he needed no external light sources like flashlights or lanterns and even the deep of the woods were seldom more gloomy than dusk to him. So when his feet led him down into the sassafras heavy forest, he simply walked on, smoking and listening to the land.
For an hour they walked, down and away from the farm, following the ridgelines and hollows until they found themselves on the banks of a narrow but rapidly flowing stream that tumbled over rounded rocks and mumbled its way across the bottomland.
He heard the boy before he saw him. Bare feet slapping the earth, running hard toward Wyatt and Katie from upstream. He rounded a bend in the creek and his pale skin flashed in the moonlight and Wyatt realized that the young man was naked.
For the briefest of moments Wyatt's fingers went to the heavy iron head of his tomahawk, but he hesitated.
"Fucking kill youuuuuuuuuu!" The boy screamed as he came on. Fifty yards.
Forty.
"Fucking dead!"
Thirty.
Twenty.
Katie stepped onto the trail between Wyatt and the oncoming stranger and Wyatt made the choice.
"Katie!" He barked.
The big dog hit the boy like a truck, leaping and slamming her bulk into him at chest level, slamming him to the ground. The impact stunned him, but within a second he began to struggle, trying to rise, but the massive jaws of the dog closed around his throat and held him where he lay.
Wyatt walked over and as he neared them he began to smell something on the air, a faint chemical aroma, something subtle but not natural and he recognized it almost immediately.
He squatted down and looked into the boy's eyes. "You're higher than a kite, aren't you bud."
Even with the deadly situation he was in, the boy, who Wyatt figured to be about twenty years old continued to flop and try to get away from Katie, who did not have to struggle much to hold the kid's one hundred and maybe thirty pounds prone.
"God damned meth…" Wyatt mumbled under his breath.
The drug had not found its way onto Halfsong, but if you went ten miles in any direction from the mountain, you could find strung out folks stumbling through what they believed were hopeless lives.
"Joey!" The voice came downstream from the same direction the boy had run from.
"Joey honey! Come back!"
To the girl's credit, she had managed to put on a t-shirt but that was as far as she had gotten. She ran out of the woods wide eyed and dirty, scratches up and down her thin legs from running through the blackberry and brush.
The cellphone in her right hand threw a pitiful patch of light ahead of her as she went and she almost slammed into Katie before seeing the situation that her boyfriend was in.
Her brain seemed to have trouble translating what she was seeing and she fell to her knees almost crooning, "Oh no, oh no baby… What did you do?"
Wyatt could smell the drug on her too. She was about the same age, but if anything looked like she had been using drugs for a longer time.
She rocked, back and forth on her knees, oblivious to Wyatt until he spoke to her.
"What are y'all doing out here?"
She jumped at the sound of his voice.
She raised her phone and when the light found Wyatt's face and when she saw his eyes she took in a short breath.
"What the fu…" Her voice trailed off as she seemed to realize the situation she was in.
Wyatt repeated the question. "What are y'all doing out here tonight?"
She gestured vaguely upstream. "We're camping up a ways. Joey got a tent at the swap meet." She looked down at her still thrashing boyfriend. "Oh Joey…"
Wyatt raised his voice slightly, the make sure she was paying attention. "We're going to get your boy straightened around here, but then you guys have gotta get gone. Tonight. You understand me? This is private property and there are worse things than me and her…" He pointed toward Katie who seemed more than willing to behead Joey. "out tonight."
She stuck out her lower lip and began to blubber. "Okay… Okay… Okay…"
Wyatt felt himself getting exasperated and changed his focus and leaned over the boy.
"Joey." He said.
No response.
"JOEY!" He yelled.
The boy's blue green eyes swam instantly into focus, locked onto Wyatt's and he hissed. "I'm going to gut you ghost killer…"
2023 Lance Cheuvront
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