Wyatt rocked back onto his heels, his eyes narrowing and instinctively Katie tightened her grip on the boy's throat, turning his voice into an almost squeak.
"Fucking exorcist. Going to kill you."
The girl looked confused. "What are you doing Joey, what are you talking about? You know this man?" Trying to have a conversation with him as if he wasn't being dragged to the door of death by a great beast of a dog.
Wyatt's surprise didn't last long, but his exasperation lived on. He knew almost instantly what had happened.
Joey and his girlfriend had popped off into the woods for some crystal and a good time and in his drug weakened state, Joey had gotten possessed by the one and only Walter Monroe. Wyatt couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or throw up his hands.
If it had just been the boy, he probably could have dealt with Monroe then and there, but the girl being there threw a wrench in the works. He thought about it for a minute or two longer than he really needed to, cursed under his breath and reached for the pouch at his waist.
His fingers quickly found what he was looking for and he pulled a small folded up sachet of cloth from the bag. He dumped the greenish pale powder from it out into his palm and after muttering "Shit…" He blew it into Joey's mouth and nostrils.
Instantly the boy began to cough and sneeze uncontrollably. Wyatt closed his eyes and waited. It took about twenty seconds but he felt the power spirit lose its hold on the boy's body and slip away.
"Katie. Drop him."
She did as she was told, but the look on her face said that she wasn't happy about it.
Joey rolled to his side, gasping and coughing, his abdomen contracting with the effort to clear the powder from his lungs.
Wyatt stood up, grabbed the boy by his ankle and dragged him to the creek's edge.
"Drink some of that." He told him.
The stream probably contained giardia and who the hell knew what all kind of bacteria, microscopic critters and mine runoff, but frankly Wyatt didn't much care. If the kid shat himself to death tomorrow, so be it, as long as it was off of the property.
He probably didn't actually mean that, but he thought it anyway.
The boy drank, slowly at first but then in great gulps and finally the coughing and sneezing subsided.
The girl who's name Wyatt still didn't know crouched in the mud and stroked the kid's hair and kept asking him if he was alright.
It took a couple of minutes but she finally got Joey to his feet and Wyatt nearly laughed. The bite marks from Katie's jaws were going to be with that kid for a while. He looked like he had failed miserably at his first day in lion tamers' school.
He looked at Wyatt in the dwindling light of the girl's phone light and said, "Mister, I don't know why…" and Wyatt held a hand up.
"Let's not worry about that son. Let's go ahead and get your naked ass back to your tent, get you packed up and out of here." He turned to the girl. "What's your name?"
"Carrie Ann."
"Alright Carrie Ann. I know you don't want to be running around in the woods, showing off everything that shirt doesn't cover, so let's get you guys out of here safe and sound okay?"
"Oh, everybody's seen it, I work at the Derby."
Wyatt had no idea what that was, but if Carrie Ann was naked there frequently, he couldn't see himself becoming a regular.
"Well, let's get going anyway."
He let her help Joey along and he and Katie followed them at a safe distance, just on the off chance that Monroe decided to take another shot at possession.
Their tent might have been nice, but it was hard to tell as it was set up with no rhyme or reason except with the thought of making enough open space in it to have sex and possibly sleep off their high.
And they had set it up on the wettest piece of ground for a hundred yards in any direction. Wyatt laughed to himself but was frustrated enough that it didn't give him any pleasure.
He kept his distance and watched the two young people fumble into their clothes and then pull the tent down, which it pretty much did itself after Joey pulled the first stake.
The whole procedure took less than ten minutes, but it took them another twenty to gather the tent, stakes, poles and ropes into a manageable bundle.
"Where's your car?"
"I got a truck." Joey said.
"Of course you do. Now where is it?"
Joey pointed toward further up the trail from where they had come.
"Okay, I'll walk you up there."
"Look Mister, we didn't mean to cause no trouble…" He began.
Wyatt wearily shook his head. "It's not really a problem. It's just a really bad night for you to have chosen this place, okay?"
Where the gun came from he had no idea, but suddenly Carrie Ann produced a huge revolver and the barrel swung upward to point at Wyatt where he stood. Her voice came as a snarl. "Fucking ghost killer!"
There was no hesitation. Wyatt's voice, the Iku's voice boomed out over the bottomland and roared a word that had only been spoken a handful of times in history. It sounded more like a guttural scream than anything that would be recognized as speech.
Joey and Carrie Anne crumpled to the ground as if their entire lives had been snatched from their bodies and that is exactly what had happened.
2023 Lance Cheuvront
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