SPN Fic: Home Front (Gen, PG)
Title: Home Front
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG, preseries
Word count: 3,300
Characters: Ellen, wee!Jo
Disclaimer: Harvelle's Roadhouse and characters are the property of Eric Kripke and The CW.
a/n: Written for the halfamoon 14 day challenge. Beta by the sharp-eyed innie_darling.
Ellen was no coward, but as the door shut behind Bill she almost ran after him. She stood her ground with the damp, rough towel clenched in her fingers, listening to the patter of rain and rumble of thunder.
After days of intermittent storms and not much to hunt, Bill pacing and cleaning his guns until she swore she'd throw him out if he didn't settle down, the report came in.
It was a black dog this time, barghest if you want to get fancy about it, Bill had said, throwing his shotgun, extra ironshot rounds, and an iron knife into a rucksack. Three people found mauled on the outskirts of town, two more dead in the next county. The creature was either on the move, or there was more than one.
As another storm rolled in, Bill went, like a force of nature himself.
During the snows, it always seemed like there were times when even dark things didn't want to be stirring, except for the kind of dark creatures that thrived on ice and cold. Now it was a different story. The death count rose. Hunters stopped spending quite as much time drinking, dancing, and playing pool at her place and returned to hunting instead.
Turning, Ellen gave the towel a snap, unfurling it. Bill had a job to do. So did she. No sense getting her knickers in a twist, Bill would say.
Jo was standing right where Bill had set her down after he'd swooped her up in the air for a hug. She was staring at the closed door with a red and a silver crayon clutched in her small hand, as if the soles of her Keds were glued to the floorboards.
"Jo, honey, why don't you finish drawing that picture for Mommy."
She smoothed Jo's ponytail, tucking back the loose strands of the fine hair, almost white-blond, soft as feathers. That was about the only thing about her daughter that was as delicate as she appeared to be. When Ellen touched Jo's skinny shoulder, it was bone-hard and stubborn. Jo looked like her daddy, had his smile and fair coloring and charm, but the jut her of jaw, the way she could dig in and not budge, that was all Ellen. "Come on, sweetie," she added, the edge of an order creeping into her voice.
That was the only way to be with Jo, at times. Cajoling didn't work, but if you made her see what was what, she'd comply.
Her fingers closed around Jo's, around the waxy crayons, as she guided her girl back to the table strewn with sheets of white paper. Some of the drawings were ordinary, the big childhood block letters labeling the stick figures "Mommy, Daddy, me." Pictures of flowers, of a horse. One of them was of a wispy gray figure, mouth a jagged, threatening slash on the page. Facing it was the figure of a man with a shock of blond hair, aiming a gun.
Ellen felt the resistance in Jo's body, but finally, she hopped back into the chair. In a businesslike way she tugged a fresh sheet of paper towards her and started another drawing.
It would be a new battle when Jo's bedtime came, but for now, there was peace.
Thunder rumbled and the wind gusted, driving the rain so hard against the building it sounded like hailstones. Ellen cupped her palms over her elbows and shivered once before she went back to work wiping down the tables and then the bar. The jukebox started playing Patsy Cline, which wasn't fitting her mood right then; their last visitor must have programmed it in.
She and Jo had the place to themselves this evening, and she missed the murmur of conversation from the hunters, the clack of pool balls, laughter and insults. Ellen never tried to make out their words, the specifics of what they discussed. It was none of her business; at Harvelle's, they knew how to keep secrets. But she liked to the cadence of it. Knowing they were there was a strange comfort. All ages, all walks of life, men and women, some bitter and tired with their story written in scars on their faces, some trembling fresh from normal lives, trying to use booze as a way to ease the transition, the awareness that the world was even more dangerous than they could have possibly imagined.
Finished with the wiping down, Ellen started gathering up the dirty glasses into a plastic bin for washing later. Jo finished her drawing, a lumpy thing she explained with polite patience was a hippo taking a bath, and started another, this time using yellow and orange to make a giraffe. Likely she'd stick to animals for a time, and stop drawing ghosts and monsters, at least until Bill got back with more stories. Bill was a golden-tongued storyteller. Never lied, exactly, but made it all sound brighter and more exciting than it was.
The last few months, cooped up by the blizzards, her eyes going fever-bright with eagerness at times, Jo had been agitating for her very own set of hunters' tools. She already knew all about guns, watched both Bill and Ellen clean and load them, knew not to touch them, knew if she ever did touch, she'd better be damned sure she was prepared to fire. Even Bill wouldn't let her have her own weapons, not yet, but he taught Jo about herbs and charms and rock salt, started her on Latin. Ellen allowed it because she couldn't fight the both of them at once.
At least they all lived a constant life, the stability the bar offered. The roving Bill did only extended to a few days, a week at most, before he turned homeward. Not like Winchester, dragging his boys all over God's green earth. Not all hunters had to be wanderers; the Roadhouse had a list of regulars, some in most every day, some every week; some, like Winchester, blew in once every few months with new wounds, looking for new information, more haggard each time.
"When's Daddy coming back?" Jo piped up, swinging her legs under the table, her sneakers hitting the cross-supports of the chair in a steady rhythm. Tap-tap-tap, like the drip of water off the rain gutters.
"Soon as he can, baby," Ellen said. "Maybe tomorrow."
Maybe, if Bill could get the beast this night, if it didn't take days of tracking and waiting, with Ellen living from check-in to check-in. Depended on how far the critter had roamed, how hungry it was. Bill'd taken down barghests before. He'd come back to her.
But she hated the waiting.
The sun went down. Ellen made Jo grilled cheese, her favorite.
"Jo, bedtime." Ellen came and stood facing her daughter across the table, one hand on her hip.
Leaning forward with her head tilted way back, Jo stared at her mother. Ellen knew a challenge when she saw it.
"Five more minutes," Jo stated, keeping her eyes down on her chapter book.
"Now, Joanna Beth." She tried so hard not to make that too sharp. It was only the first challenge, and there wasn't a whiny note anywhere.
With a sigh that sounded uncannily like Ellen's, Jo put her book down carefully, marking her place with the pink ribbon she was using as a bookmark, and slid out of the chair.
"You can bring the book with you, read a little in bed. Fifteen minutes," she added, and Jo's face lit with triumph as she picked up the book. It was a nice ordinary book about horses that had belonged to Ellen when she was a little girl, the cloth cover raveled at the edges, not Bill's equally ragged book of Latin. Good.
They had a ritual: nightgown first, putting away the clothes, then washing hands and face, brushing teeth. Ellen bundled Jo into bed, leaned down to kiss her forehead and caught the scent of mint toothpaste. Jo hugged her hard, missing her father; normally Jo was never that clingy with her. Pushing the faint twinge of hurt away, Ellen held Jo close in the warmth of the bedside lamp.
"Fifteen minutes," she said, releasing her.
Jo wrinkled up her face but didn't make a smart remark.
Out in the bar, Ellen stood idle a moment, listening to the rumble of thunder and letting the stillness of the roadhouse settle into her. She thought about putting on the jukebox again as she took stock of the bottles, but she liked it quiet, the peace of it, this place she and Bill had bought together and made into a shelter for anyone who needed in out of the storm.
After fifteen minutes she went to check on Jo. The line under her daughter's door was dark. Ellen peeked inside the room and saw the circle of a flashlight glowing pale red through the blanket.
"Joanna Beth," she said, sharp this time, and the light flicked out so fast Ellen almost laughed.
She went back to the bar and started shutting down, locking the door and windows. When she heard the scratching, Ellen froze with her fingers on the last window lock.
It was quiet a moment, then it started up again. Sounded like it was beneath the window. Ellen watched her own knuckles go white, her fingers clenched the lock so hard. She drew her hand away sharply and took a step back.
The scratching stopped.
She found the shotgun right where it should be, in the closet of their bedroom. Loaded and ready for her, the metal gleaming clean. Shrugging into her yellow rain slicker, Ellen went out the kitchen door, round the back.
Rain pelted her bare head; she didn't put the hood up, didn't want to lower her visibility. The ground was too wet for tracks, covered with small streams of muddy water. Raising the shotgun to her shoulder, she rounded the corner and stepped up onto the front porch.
The light from inside was enough for her to see the deep gouges in the rough boards as she knelt. Two clusters of four, spaced about as wide apart as her shoulders, the freshly exposed wood pale and splintered, a new set of scars.
Ellen bolted back to the side door, flung herself through, slammed it shut behind her. She lowered the big wooden bar into place and then ran back down the hall towards Jo's room.
“Jo, honey, get up quick. Here, put on your sweatshirt and your boots.”
Blinking in confusion at the sudden light and noise, Jo sat up. “Mommy?”
The rain slicker dripped a puddle of water on the floor of her daughter's room, but she didn't care. “Yeah, it's me baby. You have to get up. Do exactly what I tell you.” She saw Jo's eyes go to the shotgun.
Jo moved fast, tugging a pink sweatshirt on over her pajamas, shoving her bare feet into her galoshes.
“Come with me.” Ellen took Jo's hand and felt her daughter hold her tightly.
First thing was not to let Jo out of her sight, not for a second.
Second thing was to make a call. Ellen leaned the shotgun against the bar, picked up Jo, set her on the bar. She was aware of Jo staring at her, pupils blown wide with excitement and fear, watching as Ellen dialed Ripley's farm down the road a piece.
Phone rang sixteen times. “Shit,” Ellen said, and hung up. Lines were down, or most likely, the Ripleys were all out hunting same as Bill.
Weren't too many other places to call, not that knew from black dogs. The last thing Ellen wanted was cops taking notice of Harvelle's; and she didn't want them on her conscience. They'd find nothing, or if they found something, they'd already be dead. Cops never knew how to handle the supernatural.
She tried another number and couldn't get through there, either. Which probably meant Bill had tried to check in, and when he couldn't get through he'd either shrugged it off as the storm, or he'd be already headed back towards them now, wanting to reassure himself and them.
As she replaced the phone in its cradle on the wall, the scratching started up again. Jo's head went up, alert and listening, and she made a small, almost feral sound in her throat.
Ellen had the shotgun cocked by the time the low rumble of a growl rose over the patter of rain. She felt Jo's small fingers grip convulsively at her rain slicker, but her girl mostly stayed still, didn't tug, did nothing to upset Ellen's concentration as she trained the shotgun towards the window. Just made that small scared noise again in her throat, that spoke of all the fear Ellen had but didn't dare show, not now, not in front of her child.
“It's okay, Jo. Its going to be okay.” She said it under her breath, a steady mantra. “You stay right there on the bar. You don't move, you hear me?”
“Yes,” Jo whispered. There was a bottle of half-drunk whiskey left on the bar and when Ellen glanced back, Jo was gripping it like a baseball bat, ready to swing.
That wasn't right. If the thing got into the bar - when it got into the bar -- it'd spot Jo out in the open. Ellen had no intention of leaving her girl exposed like that, even if it meant she couldn't see Jo herself.
“Okay, honey.” She let go of the shotgun with one hand and pulled the whiskey bottle from Jo's grip. Ellen set the bottle on the bar, scooped Jo up around her waist, and used her free arm to lower her to the floor. “I need you to go hide behind the bar.”
“But you said...”
“Don't argue with me, kiddo. Get behind the bar. Crawl onto the shelf where we keep the towels and extra glasses. You stay there and you don't come out unless you hear the password.”
Bill had drilled both Ellen and Jo on that password business; there were things that could imitate humans, steal their shape or their voices. Ellen was pretty sure a black dog couldn't do that - pretty sure - but she wasn't going to take chances.
Ellen whispered the password in Jo's ear, “hot fudge sundae,” and then Jo scurried around behind the bar. She heard Jo rustling around back there, the clink of glasses as she readied a hiding spot for herself.
Edge of the bar top digging into her back, Ellen raised the shotgun to her shoulder again. Jo quieted down, so quiet Ellen had to fight down the panicked thought that she was no longer in her hiding spot and Ellen was inexplicably alone.
A low snuffling grunt kept her from saying her daughter's name out loud. Her fingers tightened on the shotgun while the thing growled, low, then rose almost to a keening; it was hungry, frustrated, wanted in. Smelled them. A thud sounded against the wall, beneath the window. Ellen hadn't been to church in fifteen years but the memory of the scent of polished wood and soft voices echoing under stone arches soothed her. Her mind muttered a prayer.
Another thud, harder this time. The glass in the window rattled.
Any second now.
The thing crashed through the window in a storm of flying glass, wind, and rain. Ellen flinched back even though she was well out of the range of the glass but she steadied her feet. She fired even before all four paws of the beast hit the floorboards.
The black dog yelped and growled at the pain. It was huge, its back probably as high as the bar; lying down, it would cover most of the pool table. Shaking its head, the beast took only two seconds to recover before it moved towards her, snout curled up in a snarl to reveal teeth bright and thin as knitting needles.
Ellen fired again. The creature leapt, knocking over a table and three chairs. She flung herself to one side as it took a swipe at her with its front paws. Its body struck the bar, shaking it, as it turned to follow her. Glass broke. Ellen bit down on her tongue hard to keep from crying out Jo's name, hoped Jo was staying curled up tight and safe there in her hiding place. Smart girl, that's my good girl.
Backing up towards the jukebox, Ellen reloaded the gun with ironshot rounds. Fall, you son of a bitch. What does it take to kill you?
It pounced at her again, and Ellen fired with the bulk of the jukebox between her and the monster dog. The spray of ironshot hit it full in the face, between the eyes, turning the black fur to torn, red flesh. It let out a howl, cut short as its legs collapsed and it fell with an impact that seemed to shake the very walls. Ellen felt the floorboards under her feet tremble.
The black dog's sides were still and unmoving. Keeping a sharp eye on the dark fur, Ellen moved closer, her boots crunching on broken glass. She didn't bother poking the body with her toe or the barrel of the gun first before she delivered another shot right into the head, to be certain. The big body barely twitched, and then it really was over.
The gun that had seemed light in her hands a moment before grew heavy. The muscles of her lower arm began to quiver.
Rain gusted in through the busted window as she put the gun down and closed her fingers around the bottle of whiskey. Ellen lowered her forehead to the wood.
"Hot fudge sundae,” she said, forcing her voice to be strong, to hide the tremble.
“Mommy?” Came Jo's voice.
“Yeah, baby. Don't come out yet.” Ellen lifted her head. She uncapped the whiskey bottle, and took a few swallows. Then she dragged the dog's corpse to the storeroom, grabbed a bucket and mop, and cleaned up the worst of the blood.
"All right, you can come out now."
Jo emerged. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened when she saw the broken glass, the dark stains still evident on the floor. It was an expression more of wonder than fear.
When the phone rang, after what might have been an hour, they both jumped. Ellen snatched up the receiver. “Bill?”
“How're my girls?” He shouted into her ear; it sounded like he was on the side of a busy highway somewhere, at a truck stop based on the whine of brakes, the thump of music and loud voices in the background.
“Well...” Ellen glanced down at Jo.
“I'm tellin' you, Ellen, this thing is a sonuvabitch to track. Never had so much trouble. It's this damn storm, washes away the prints and the blood trails.”
“Aw, Bill, don't you worry none. You'll still get the satisfaction of cleaning that thing's remains out of our place.”
“What?” His voice went low and sharp in her ear.
Ellen took in a long, deep breath and let it out. “It came here. I shot it. There's a big mess. I'm leavin' most of it for you, honey.”
“Jo?”
“She's just fine.”
Jo at that moment was seated on a bar stool, back to drawing with crayons. A picture of the barghest, with a stick figure with long hair Ellen assumed had to be her aiming a gun at it.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
“You sure it's dead?”
“Pretty damn sure.” She was glad Bill wasn't there to see her hands shake. That wasn't any way for a hunter's wife to be. “Two shots to the head.”
“I'll be there in forty minutes,” he said, in the tone of voice that meant he'd be ignoring all human laws, and possibly some laws of physics, time, and space as well if he could manage it.
Bill hung up without waiting for her to say goodbye.
Sitting on the stool next to Jo, Ellen took another swallow of whiskey and smoothed the hair back from her daughter's shoulder as she worked.
~end
Author: dotfic
Rating: Gen, PG, preseries
Word count: 3,300
Characters: Ellen, wee!Jo
Disclaimer: Harvelle's Roadhouse and characters are the property of Eric Kripke and The CW.
a/n: Written for the halfamoon 14 day challenge. Beta by the sharp-eyed innie_darling.
Ellen was no coward, but as the door shut behind Bill she almost ran after him. She stood her ground with the damp, rough towel clenched in her fingers, listening to the patter of rain and rumble of thunder.
After days of intermittent storms and not much to hunt, Bill pacing and cleaning his guns until she swore she'd throw him out if he didn't settle down, the report came in.
It was a black dog this time, barghest if you want to get fancy about it, Bill had said, throwing his shotgun, extra ironshot rounds, and an iron knife into a rucksack. Three people found mauled on the outskirts of town, two more dead in the next county. The creature was either on the move, or there was more than one.
As another storm rolled in, Bill went, like a force of nature himself.
During the snows, it always seemed like there were times when even dark things didn't want to be stirring, except for the kind of dark creatures that thrived on ice and cold. Now it was a different story. The death count rose. Hunters stopped spending quite as much time drinking, dancing, and playing pool at her place and returned to hunting instead.
Turning, Ellen gave the towel a snap, unfurling it. Bill had a job to do. So did she. No sense getting her knickers in a twist, Bill would say.
Jo was standing right where Bill had set her down after he'd swooped her up in the air for a hug. She was staring at the closed door with a red and a silver crayon clutched in her small hand, as if the soles of her Keds were glued to the floorboards.
"Jo, honey, why don't you finish drawing that picture for Mommy."
She smoothed Jo's ponytail, tucking back the loose strands of the fine hair, almost white-blond, soft as feathers. That was about the only thing about her daughter that was as delicate as she appeared to be. When Ellen touched Jo's skinny shoulder, it was bone-hard and stubborn. Jo looked like her daddy, had his smile and fair coloring and charm, but the jut her of jaw, the way she could dig in and not budge, that was all Ellen. "Come on, sweetie," she added, the edge of an order creeping into her voice.
That was the only way to be with Jo, at times. Cajoling didn't work, but if you made her see what was what, she'd comply.
Her fingers closed around Jo's, around the waxy crayons, as she guided her girl back to the table strewn with sheets of white paper. Some of the drawings were ordinary, the big childhood block letters labeling the stick figures "Mommy, Daddy, me." Pictures of flowers, of a horse. One of them was of a wispy gray figure, mouth a jagged, threatening slash on the page. Facing it was the figure of a man with a shock of blond hair, aiming a gun.
Ellen felt the resistance in Jo's body, but finally, she hopped back into the chair. In a businesslike way she tugged a fresh sheet of paper towards her and started another drawing.
It would be a new battle when Jo's bedtime came, but for now, there was peace.
Thunder rumbled and the wind gusted, driving the rain so hard against the building it sounded like hailstones. Ellen cupped her palms over her elbows and shivered once before she went back to work wiping down the tables and then the bar. The jukebox started playing Patsy Cline, which wasn't fitting her mood right then; their last visitor must have programmed it in.
She and Jo had the place to themselves this evening, and she missed the murmur of conversation from the hunters, the clack of pool balls, laughter and insults. Ellen never tried to make out their words, the specifics of what they discussed. It was none of her business; at Harvelle's, they knew how to keep secrets. But she liked to the cadence of it. Knowing they were there was a strange comfort. All ages, all walks of life, men and women, some bitter and tired with their story written in scars on their faces, some trembling fresh from normal lives, trying to use booze as a way to ease the transition, the awareness that the world was even more dangerous than they could have possibly imagined.
Finished with the wiping down, Ellen started gathering up the dirty glasses into a plastic bin for washing later. Jo finished her drawing, a lumpy thing she explained with polite patience was a hippo taking a bath, and started another, this time using yellow and orange to make a giraffe. Likely she'd stick to animals for a time, and stop drawing ghosts and monsters, at least until Bill got back with more stories. Bill was a golden-tongued storyteller. Never lied, exactly, but made it all sound brighter and more exciting than it was.
The last few months, cooped up by the blizzards, her eyes going fever-bright with eagerness at times, Jo had been agitating for her very own set of hunters' tools. She already knew all about guns, watched both Bill and Ellen clean and load them, knew not to touch them, knew if she ever did touch, she'd better be damned sure she was prepared to fire. Even Bill wouldn't let her have her own weapons, not yet, but he taught Jo about herbs and charms and rock salt, started her on Latin. Ellen allowed it because she couldn't fight the both of them at once.
At least they all lived a constant life, the stability the bar offered. The roving Bill did only extended to a few days, a week at most, before he turned homeward. Not like Winchester, dragging his boys all over God's green earth. Not all hunters had to be wanderers; the Roadhouse had a list of regulars, some in most every day, some every week; some, like Winchester, blew in once every few months with new wounds, looking for new information, more haggard each time.
"When's Daddy coming back?" Jo piped up, swinging her legs under the table, her sneakers hitting the cross-supports of the chair in a steady rhythm. Tap-tap-tap, like the drip of water off the rain gutters.
"Soon as he can, baby," Ellen said. "Maybe tomorrow."
Maybe, if Bill could get the beast this night, if it didn't take days of tracking and waiting, with Ellen living from check-in to check-in. Depended on how far the critter had roamed, how hungry it was. Bill'd taken down barghests before. He'd come back to her.
But she hated the waiting.
The sun went down. Ellen made Jo grilled cheese, her favorite.
"Jo, bedtime." Ellen came and stood facing her daughter across the table, one hand on her hip.
Leaning forward with her head tilted way back, Jo stared at her mother. Ellen knew a challenge when she saw it.
"Five more minutes," Jo stated, keeping her eyes down on her chapter book.
"Now, Joanna Beth." She tried so hard not to make that too sharp. It was only the first challenge, and there wasn't a whiny note anywhere.
With a sigh that sounded uncannily like Ellen's, Jo put her book down carefully, marking her place with the pink ribbon she was using as a bookmark, and slid out of the chair.
"You can bring the book with you, read a little in bed. Fifteen minutes," she added, and Jo's face lit with triumph as she picked up the book. It was a nice ordinary book about horses that had belonged to Ellen when she was a little girl, the cloth cover raveled at the edges, not Bill's equally ragged book of Latin. Good.
They had a ritual: nightgown first, putting away the clothes, then washing hands and face, brushing teeth. Ellen bundled Jo into bed, leaned down to kiss her forehead and caught the scent of mint toothpaste. Jo hugged her hard, missing her father; normally Jo was never that clingy with her. Pushing the faint twinge of hurt away, Ellen held Jo close in the warmth of the bedside lamp.
"Fifteen minutes," she said, releasing her.
Jo wrinkled up her face but didn't make a smart remark.
Out in the bar, Ellen stood idle a moment, listening to the rumble of thunder and letting the stillness of the roadhouse settle into her. She thought about putting on the jukebox again as she took stock of the bottles, but she liked it quiet, the peace of it, this place she and Bill had bought together and made into a shelter for anyone who needed in out of the storm.
After fifteen minutes she went to check on Jo. The line under her daughter's door was dark. Ellen peeked inside the room and saw the circle of a flashlight glowing pale red through the blanket.
"Joanna Beth," she said, sharp this time, and the light flicked out so fast Ellen almost laughed.
She went back to the bar and started shutting down, locking the door and windows. When she heard the scratching, Ellen froze with her fingers on the last window lock.
It was quiet a moment, then it started up again. Sounded like it was beneath the window. Ellen watched her own knuckles go white, her fingers clenched the lock so hard. She drew her hand away sharply and took a step back.
The scratching stopped.
She found the shotgun right where it should be, in the closet of their bedroom. Loaded and ready for her, the metal gleaming clean. Shrugging into her yellow rain slicker, Ellen went out the kitchen door, round the back.
Rain pelted her bare head; she didn't put the hood up, didn't want to lower her visibility. The ground was too wet for tracks, covered with small streams of muddy water. Raising the shotgun to her shoulder, she rounded the corner and stepped up onto the front porch.
The light from inside was enough for her to see the deep gouges in the rough boards as she knelt. Two clusters of four, spaced about as wide apart as her shoulders, the freshly exposed wood pale and splintered, a new set of scars.
Ellen bolted back to the side door, flung herself through, slammed it shut behind her. She lowered the big wooden bar into place and then ran back down the hall towards Jo's room.
“Jo, honey, get up quick. Here, put on your sweatshirt and your boots.”
Blinking in confusion at the sudden light and noise, Jo sat up. “Mommy?”
The rain slicker dripped a puddle of water on the floor of her daughter's room, but she didn't care. “Yeah, it's me baby. You have to get up. Do exactly what I tell you.” She saw Jo's eyes go to the shotgun.
Jo moved fast, tugging a pink sweatshirt on over her pajamas, shoving her bare feet into her galoshes.
“Come with me.” Ellen took Jo's hand and felt her daughter hold her tightly.
First thing was not to let Jo out of her sight, not for a second.
Second thing was to make a call. Ellen leaned the shotgun against the bar, picked up Jo, set her on the bar. She was aware of Jo staring at her, pupils blown wide with excitement and fear, watching as Ellen dialed Ripley's farm down the road a piece.
Phone rang sixteen times. “Shit,” Ellen said, and hung up. Lines were down, or most likely, the Ripleys were all out hunting same as Bill.
Weren't too many other places to call, not that knew from black dogs. The last thing Ellen wanted was cops taking notice of Harvelle's; and she didn't want them on her conscience. They'd find nothing, or if they found something, they'd already be dead. Cops never knew how to handle the supernatural.
She tried another number and couldn't get through there, either. Which probably meant Bill had tried to check in, and when he couldn't get through he'd either shrugged it off as the storm, or he'd be already headed back towards them now, wanting to reassure himself and them.
As she replaced the phone in its cradle on the wall, the scratching started up again. Jo's head went up, alert and listening, and she made a small, almost feral sound in her throat.
Ellen had the shotgun cocked by the time the low rumble of a growl rose over the patter of rain. She felt Jo's small fingers grip convulsively at her rain slicker, but her girl mostly stayed still, didn't tug, did nothing to upset Ellen's concentration as she trained the shotgun towards the window. Just made that small scared noise again in her throat, that spoke of all the fear Ellen had but didn't dare show, not now, not in front of her child.
“It's okay, Jo. Its going to be okay.” She said it under her breath, a steady mantra. “You stay right there on the bar. You don't move, you hear me?”
“Yes,” Jo whispered. There was a bottle of half-drunk whiskey left on the bar and when Ellen glanced back, Jo was gripping it like a baseball bat, ready to swing.
That wasn't right. If the thing got into the bar - when it got into the bar -- it'd spot Jo out in the open. Ellen had no intention of leaving her girl exposed like that, even if it meant she couldn't see Jo herself.
“Okay, honey.” She let go of the shotgun with one hand and pulled the whiskey bottle from Jo's grip. Ellen set the bottle on the bar, scooped Jo up around her waist, and used her free arm to lower her to the floor. “I need you to go hide behind the bar.”
“But you said...”
“Don't argue with me, kiddo. Get behind the bar. Crawl onto the shelf where we keep the towels and extra glasses. You stay there and you don't come out unless you hear the password.”
Bill had drilled both Ellen and Jo on that password business; there were things that could imitate humans, steal their shape or their voices. Ellen was pretty sure a black dog couldn't do that - pretty sure - but she wasn't going to take chances.
Ellen whispered the password in Jo's ear, “hot fudge sundae,” and then Jo scurried around behind the bar. She heard Jo rustling around back there, the clink of glasses as she readied a hiding spot for herself.
Edge of the bar top digging into her back, Ellen raised the shotgun to her shoulder again. Jo quieted down, so quiet Ellen had to fight down the panicked thought that she was no longer in her hiding spot and Ellen was inexplicably alone.
A low snuffling grunt kept her from saying her daughter's name out loud. Her fingers tightened on the shotgun while the thing growled, low, then rose almost to a keening; it was hungry, frustrated, wanted in. Smelled them. A thud sounded against the wall, beneath the window. Ellen hadn't been to church in fifteen years but the memory of the scent of polished wood and soft voices echoing under stone arches soothed her. Her mind muttered a prayer.
Another thud, harder this time. The glass in the window rattled.
Any second now.
The thing crashed through the window in a storm of flying glass, wind, and rain. Ellen flinched back even though she was well out of the range of the glass but she steadied her feet. She fired even before all four paws of the beast hit the floorboards.
The black dog yelped and growled at the pain. It was huge, its back probably as high as the bar; lying down, it would cover most of the pool table. Shaking its head, the beast took only two seconds to recover before it moved towards her, snout curled up in a snarl to reveal teeth bright and thin as knitting needles.
Ellen fired again. The creature leapt, knocking over a table and three chairs. She flung herself to one side as it took a swipe at her with its front paws. Its body struck the bar, shaking it, as it turned to follow her. Glass broke. Ellen bit down on her tongue hard to keep from crying out Jo's name, hoped Jo was staying curled up tight and safe there in her hiding place. Smart girl, that's my good girl.
Backing up towards the jukebox, Ellen reloaded the gun with ironshot rounds. Fall, you son of a bitch. What does it take to kill you?
It pounced at her again, and Ellen fired with the bulk of the jukebox between her and the monster dog. The spray of ironshot hit it full in the face, between the eyes, turning the black fur to torn, red flesh. It let out a howl, cut short as its legs collapsed and it fell with an impact that seemed to shake the very walls. Ellen felt the floorboards under her feet tremble.
The black dog's sides were still and unmoving. Keeping a sharp eye on the dark fur, Ellen moved closer, her boots crunching on broken glass. She didn't bother poking the body with her toe or the barrel of the gun first before she delivered another shot right into the head, to be certain. The big body barely twitched, and then it really was over.
The gun that had seemed light in her hands a moment before grew heavy. The muscles of her lower arm began to quiver.
Rain gusted in through the busted window as she put the gun down and closed her fingers around the bottle of whiskey. Ellen lowered her forehead to the wood.
"Hot fudge sundae,” she said, forcing her voice to be strong, to hide the tremble.
“Mommy?” Came Jo's voice.
“Yeah, baby. Don't come out yet.” Ellen lifted her head. She uncapped the whiskey bottle, and took a few swallows. Then she dragged the dog's corpse to the storeroom, grabbed a bucket and mop, and cleaned up the worst of the blood.
"All right, you can come out now."
Jo emerged. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened when she saw the broken glass, the dark stains still evident on the floor. It was an expression more of wonder than fear.
When the phone rang, after what might have been an hour, they both jumped. Ellen snatched up the receiver. “Bill?”
“How're my girls?” He shouted into her ear; it sounded like he was on the side of a busy highway somewhere, at a truck stop based on the whine of brakes, the thump of music and loud voices in the background.
“Well...” Ellen glanced down at Jo.
“I'm tellin' you, Ellen, this thing is a sonuvabitch to track. Never had so much trouble. It's this damn storm, washes away the prints and the blood trails.”
“Aw, Bill, don't you worry none. You'll still get the satisfaction of cleaning that thing's remains out of our place.”
“What?” His voice went low and sharp in her ear.
Ellen took in a long, deep breath and let it out. “It came here. I shot it. There's a big mess. I'm leavin' most of it for you, honey.”
“Jo?”
“She's just fine.”
Jo at that moment was seated on a bar stool, back to drawing with crayons. A picture of the barghest, with a stick figure with long hair Ellen assumed had to be her aiming a gun at it.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
“You sure it's dead?”
“Pretty damn sure.” She was glad Bill wasn't there to see her hands shake. That wasn't any way for a hunter's wife to be. “Two shots to the head.”
“I'll be there in forty minutes,” he said, in the tone of voice that meant he'd be ignoring all human laws, and possibly some laws of physics, time, and space as well if he could manage it.
Bill hung up without waiting for her to say goodbye.
Sitting on the stool next to Jo, Ellen took another swallow of whiskey and smoothed the hair back from her daughter's shoulder as she worked.
~end