FIC: Ghost Rider: Season of the Witch 9/??
Title: Season of the Witch
Author: ghanistarkiller @ mrs_peel_fanfic
Fandom: Ghost Rider (movie!verse with comic allusions)
Disclaimer: Marvel and the filmmakers own 'em, I just play with 'em
Rating: PG-13, for language and slickly implied sex
Characters: Carter Johnny, Mephistopheles
Warnings: Suffice it to say, spoilers for the movie
Summary: Visions of the past, as well as some personal demons of his own, are drawing Johnny to a small town in Arizona where Mephistopheles' force is gathering, entangling him in an ever growing web that encompasses a lost tribe of the desert and a new friend, Linda Littletrees.
A/N: I said that I'd finish this one and even if it takes another year, I will, because this probably ranks in my top three favorite fanfics of my own. That sounds rather pompous, to rate one's own fanfic, but unlike children, there are ones I'm more attached to than others. There's a small allusion to the comics in this chapter, readers of the Ketch era will catch it. Something might come of it later...
Other Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight
Gorgeous stroy graphics by: jadeblood
Graphic by jadeblood
9.
Carter Slade pressed the heavy sole of his boot against the thick wooden door of the church and kicked out; it swung open with fair ease, the soft glow of candlelight inviting him within the building’s walls of sanctitude. A priest rushed forward to meet him and the small band of injured Indians led by the pretty young nun from the mission; he crossed himself when he saw Spotted Doe in Carter’s arms, her convulsing calmed to a constant but subdued shuddered.
The pastor, Kale, was just short of middle-age, weathered but robust with intimidatingly bright blue eyes, thinning black hair and a thin, crooked nose; his face was gaunt but welcoming, his mouth tight and lipless but not without humor. He gripped Carter’s shoulder reassuringly, giving it a heartening press. “Bring her in,” he told Slade calmly, and then turned to the others. “All of you, find comfort within; rest, tend to your injured. You are safe here.”
Carter carried Doe to the altar, laying her upon the dais as he took the cloth from the altarpiece to cover her. Kneeling beside her, he glanced up at the fresco adorning the wall of the alcove, portraying the archangel Michael casting Lucifer from Heaven, throwing him down. ‘Guess you didn’t do a good enough job, did ya, Mike?’ thought Slade with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘You wage your holy war but it’s always going to be the peons that have to deal with the repercussions.’
Kale stooped down beside to him, putting the back of his hand to Doe’s forehead and swearing eloquently in Spanish; she was cold. “How long has she been like this?” he asked quietly.
How long had it been since he’d learned of the attack, since he’d discovered the destruction of the wandering tribe and traced the survivors to the mission? A month, two? It felt like an eternity. “Too long,” replied Slade in a hardened tone. “I need to end this,” he said decisively. “He’s not going to rest until I do.”
“But what can you do?” said the pastor and Slade gestured to him to be quiet, glancing at the settling wounded as he motioned for Kale to follow him out into the graveyard. “He’ll never let you go, you know that,” the pastor said softly as they crossed the threshold, the warm orange candlelight inside the church receding and finally disappearing behind the closing door; the dull gray and purple pall of dusk fell upon them, obscuring them in a pervading gloom.
“You’ll bury me here at San Miguel’s, Padre,” instructed Carter, listening to the night sounds of the bordering wilderness; the coyotes, the insects singing softly their song into the warm evening air. “He’ll know I’m not dead, of course,” he continued, nodding his head slowly, “but if I disappear, there’s nothing more that he can do. You’ll need to take this, guard it with your life-“ And he held out his hand, a scroll of parchment outstretched in his gloved fingers.
Kale took an involuntary step backwards, his voice catching in his throat with a small gasp. Reverently he took the roll, his narrow eyes stretched wide as he pledged, “With my life, and that of my successors, and of theirs. Where will you go?”
“I have to take Doe home,” he said thickly, turning away though the wide brim of his hat already cast his pained expression in shadow. “I’ll return when I feel the time is right, when I’m sure he’s lost my trail. I’ll return-“ He tipped his hat at the piece of parchment in Kale’s hand. “-to protect that, well enough after my interment that he’s sure I won’t come back here. It might be a while.”
Kale was nodding. “There has been illness in town, a pestilence of pox; highly contagious, and the pockmarks cause the skin to putrefy quicker than normal, so no one will have a closer look at an unidentified body than necessary. A drifter succumbed just the other day; I’ve had my son, Noble, prepare him for an unmarked pauper’s grave. I will inform him of the changes, commission your tombstone within the week. Carter,” he said gently after a moment of silence, “you could not have foreseen this. Don’t lose faith, for whatever that demon-“ He spat the word out. “-may say, He has a grander plan for us all.”
“I have prayed, Padre,” he confessed, “not for myself, I gave up that right long ago, but for her. Now all I can do for her if return her to her home and just let her go to dust with the rest of her kin.”
“But that land is a cursed and haunted place,” breathed Kale. “It is tainted by a wickedness that will not lessen with the passage of time. It is home to an evil now that does not diminish. It is damned.”
Slade’s eyes flashed like fire reflected off steel from within the shroud of darkness that veiled his face. “Then we both’ll be right at home there.”
Present Day-
Linda couldn’t remember the ride back to the house, couldn’t remember the miles of desert crossed or the growling hum of her chopper as it soared across the sand; the only thing that seemed real to her at all was the feel of Johnny’s touch on her body. Those big hands with the long, tapered fingers, so gentle, so elegant and yet so awkward in their excitement as he fumbled with the zip at the back of her sundress.
‘He is big, steady, sturdy,’ she thought, ‘he is like a tree, his arms like great sheltering branches; he gives me protection and sanctuary. His touch is like the heat of the sun: He makes me thirsty and like a sunflower I turn my face to him. He is large and comforting like a bed: I lay on top of him, body to body. He is both soft and hard. He is a balm to my wounds; he draws the darkness from the center of me like poison from a snakebite.’
She felt a thrum throughout her, her own heartbeat matched by his pounding inside of her, kindred blood and fire consuming her; she craved it like an addict, needing more and more; it sent her into a reeling delirium in which she reached the greatest heights. She was a surging thunderhead, rolling and crashing in turbulent whorls of galvanic passion until the relentlessly building tension broke and she felt the glorious cloudburst rain down on her.
When she opened her eyes, the sun was casting a deep orange glow on the ceiling, making the dusky indigo shadows stretch until they were long and thin like the outreach of the fingers of a grasping hand. It was coming on dusk. She blinked, rubbing the flaring spots from her vision. She looked around them, then looked down at herself and Johnny laying on her bed, and then looked around them again.
The mattress and walls were blackened with scorch marks, the lace curtains a ruined, singed tatter, the glass panes warped and distorted, while the charred bedstead had buckled and splintered in the places where it had burnt the worst, closest to its occupants. They were both naked as the day they were born but completely free from singe; Linda groped for a still smoldering blanket to wrap herself in.
“Oh,” she winced, biting her lip. “Somehow, I don’t think this is what the insurance had in mind when they said ‘accidental.’”
“Well,” Johnny drawled, inquisitively thoughtful, “this actually answers few a questions of mine. Huh.”
Meanwhile-
Grandfather Littletrees sat in the barren dirt of the garden, meditating and watching the sky as though awaiting a sign. If he was looking for divine guidance, what he got was the opposite. He felt the man’s presence before he ever heard his boots scuffle at the sand or his duster flap in the wind; it felt cold, dirty and slick like oil, hard and gritty like stone. Yet his voice, it was like the whisper of a thousand promises as he leaned over to murmur in Grandfather’s ear, “It has been a long while since we last met, Snake Dance.”
“I do not know why my noble ancestors would grant me a vision of a cunning white man,“ said Grandfather evenly, keeping his gaze steadily on the passing clouds overhead, “but you speak my true name. The name of my revered forebears, that is a sacred name.”
The devil threw his head back and laughed. “My own is not unfamiliar to you: Mephistopheles. How long has it been since you have spoken it? How long has it been since Mephisto communed with your noble ancestors; since I showed them the way to the great Snake God. I have appeared to you in many guises; that of a serpent was one.”
“The white man lies,“ replied Grandfather sharply, shifting his narrowed eyes to Mephisto for the first time. “The spirits of the white man sanctify lie as readily as the white man himself, they learned it from you.”
“Me? I speak truthfully,” smiled Mephisto glibly. “How any man interprets the honesty in my words is entirely up to them; it’s only my luck that humankind is so very obligingly stupid. Was it not the serpent that presented Eve with the apple representing wisdom in the Garden of Eden. Yours was a different paradise, wasn’t it? Your world was peaceful before the coming of the white man, idyllic. And then you were taught the price of that pacifism, weren’t you? Until the great Snake God offered you a shining golden apple:
“A vision appeared to the shaman Snake Dance,” Mephistopheles continued, “it told him it could show his tribe a new way, a path that would allow you to halt the destructive usurpation of the white man’s westward expansion. A way to immortality.” He spoke the word with flair. “As always, such knowledge was feared and forbidden by…greater powers, and a kachina-an elemental spirit of fire-was sent to forcibly take the souls of the young warriors and carry them back with him to the Land of the Dead. The spirit’s heart was hard and cold and he would not listen to the pleas of the tribe. Not the women, not the children.”
“I know the legends of my people,” Grandfather said gruffly as he stood, keeping his voice level while glancing dubiously at the stranger. Could this man be the instrument his visions had shown him, the one that would be sent to him in a time of need. He had many questions Linda had been hesitant to answer that morning: What had happened the night before on the mesa? Was it the white demon he’d dreamed of and the immortal warriors that were promised to return in a time of need?
“The tradition and name of Snake Dance has been carried down in my family from father to son ever since.” Grandfather watched the white stranger through narrowed eyes, circling him slowly as he scrutinized him. “It will end with me. It should have passed to my son, but….” He pursed his lips firmly, awash with the sadness that had hung heavily on his heart for so many years now; somehow, it felt more burdensome at the moment, more wearisome, and Grandfather had to lean against the remains of a nearby fence as if winded.
“No more,” said Mephisto with sympathy too exaggerated to be sincere, shaking his head sadly. “All you have left is your beautiful granddaughter, Linda, and she, Snake Dance, is in danger.”
“What do you know of my Linda?” Grandfather snapped, becoming wary. “Is it the white man, this Mr. Ketch? Does he threaten her?”
“’Ketch?’” laughed Mephistopheles, arching an eyebrow. “Is that what he said his name was?” He knew that he had Littletrees by the wrist then, guiding him like a lost child towards the conclusions he desired him to reach. “I know much about your granddaughter, I know that she was…unwell-“ The word rolled slickly off his tongue. “-after the death of her parents. Her mental health has been…fragile; it must have been so difficult for you, seeing her like that, knowing how strong, how independent she had been. Living with the constant worry that she could deteriorate into such a state again. Has her behavior been erratic since this ‘Ketch’ showed up? Has she hid things from you, is she withdrawing?”
Mephisto nodded knowingly at Grandfather’s silence. “The Serpent God is once again summoning his faithful servant Snake Dance; will he answer the call?”
Grandfather was silent for a moment, pensive. “Tell me, what must I do?”
Mephistopheles grinned disarmingly, his straight white teeth bared perfectly and yet the gesture somehow reminded Grandfather of a grimace or a sneer. “Take your place among your people of old,” he told him grandly, “and live forever.”
Peace, Ghani
Author: ghanistarkiller @ mrs_peel_fanfic
Fandom: Ghost Rider (movie!verse with comic allusions)
Disclaimer: Marvel and the filmmakers own 'em, I just play with 'em
Rating: PG-13, for language and slickly implied sex
Characters: Carter Johnny, Mephistopheles
Warnings: Suffice it to say, spoilers for the movie
Summary: Visions of the past, as well as some personal demons of his own, are drawing Johnny to a small town in Arizona where Mephistopheles' force is gathering, entangling him in an ever growing web that encompasses a lost tribe of the desert and a new friend, Linda Littletrees.
A/N: I said that I'd finish this one and even if it takes another year, I will, because this probably ranks in my top three favorite fanfics of my own. That sounds rather pompous, to rate one's own fanfic, but unlike children, there are ones I'm more attached to than others. There's a small allusion to the comics in this chapter, readers of the Ketch era will catch it. Something might come of it later...
Other Chapters: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight
Gorgeous stroy graphics by: jadeblood
Graphic by jadeblood
9.
Carter Slade pressed the heavy sole of his boot against the thick wooden door of the church and kicked out; it swung open with fair ease, the soft glow of candlelight inviting him within the building’s walls of sanctitude. A priest rushed forward to meet him and the small band of injured Indians led by the pretty young nun from the mission; he crossed himself when he saw Spotted Doe in Carter’s arms, her convulsing calmed to a constant but subdued shuddered.
The pastor, Kale, was just short of middle-age, weathered but robust with intimidatingly bright blue eyes, thinning black hair and a thin, crooked nose; his face was gaunt but welcoming, his mouth tight and lipless but not without humor. He gripped Carter’s shoulder reassuringly, giving it a heartening press. “Bring her in,” he told Slade calmly, and then turned to the others. “All of you, find comfort within; rest, tend to your injured. You are safe here.”
Carter carried Doe to the altar, laying her upon the dais as he took the cloth from the altarpiece to cover her. Kneeling beside her, he glanced up at the fresco adorning the wall of the alcove, portraying the archangel Michael casting Lucifer from Heaven, throwing him down. ‘Guess you didn’t do a good enough job, did ya, Mike?’ thought Slade with a wry twist of his mouth. ‘You wage your holy war but it’s always going to be the peons that have to deal with the repercussions.’
Kale stooped down beside to him, putting the back of his hand to Doe’s forehead and swearing eloquently in Spanish; she was cold. “How long has she been like this?” he asked quietly.
How long had it been since he’d learned of the attack, since he’d discovered the destruction of the wandering tribe and traced the survivors to the mission? A month, two? It felt like an eternity. “Too long,” replied Slade in a hardened tone. “I need to end this,” he said decisively. “He’s not going to rest until I do.”
“But what can you do?” said the pastor and Slade gestured to him to be quiet, glancing at the settling wounded as he motioned for Kale to follow him out into the graveyard. “He’ll never let you go, you know that,” the pastor said softly as they crossed the threshold, the warm orange candlelight inside the church receding and finally disappearing behind the closing door; the dull gray and purple pall of dusk fell upon them, obscuring them in a pervading gloom.
“You’ll bury me here at San Miguel’s, Padre,” instructed Carter, listening to the night sounds of the bordering wilderness; the coyotes, the insects singing softly their song into the warm evening air. “He’ll know I’m not dead, of course,” he continued, nodding his head slowly, “but if I disappear, there’s nothing more that he can do. You’ll need to take this, guard it with your life-“ And he held out his hand, a scroll of parchment outstretched in his gloved fingers.
Kale took an involuntary step backwards, his voice catching in his throat with a small gasp. Reverently he took the roll, his narrow eyes stretched wide as he pledged, “With my life, and that of my successors, and of theirs. Where will you go?”
“I have to take Doe home,” he said thickly, turning away though the wide brim of his hat already cast his pained expression in shadow. “I’ll return when I feel the time is right, when I’m sure he’s lost my trail. I’ll return-“ He tipped his hat at the piece of parchment in Kale’s hand. “-to protect that, well enough after my interment that he’s sure I won’t come back here. It might be a while.”
Kale was nodding. “There has been illness in town, a pestilence of pox; highly contagious, and the pockmarks cause the skin to putrefy quicker than normal, so no one will have a closer look at an unidentified body than necessary. A drifter succumbed just the other day; I’ve had my son, Noble, prepare him for an unmarked pauper’s grave. I will inform him of the changes, commission your tombstone within the week. Carter,” he said gently after a moment of silence, “you could not have foreseen this. Don’t lose faith, for whatever that demon-“ He spat the word out. “-may say, He has a grander plan for us all.”
“I have prayed, Padre,” he confessed, “not for myself, I gave up that right long ago, but for her. Now all I can do for her if return her to her home and just let her go to dust with the rest of her kin.”
“But that land is a cursed and haunted place,” breathed Kale. “It is tainted by a wickedness that will not lessen with the passage of time. It is home to an evil now that does not diminish. It is damned.”
Slade’s eyes flashed like fire reflected off steel from within the shroud of darkness that veiled his face. “Then we both’ll be right at home there.”
Present Day-
Linda couldn’t remember the ride back to the house, couldn’t remember the miles of desert crossed or the growling hum of her chopper as it soared across the sand; the only thing that seemed real to her at all was the feel of Johnny’s touch on her body. Those big hands with the long, tapered fingers, so gentle, so elegant and yet so awkward in their excitement as he fumbled with the zip at the back of her sundress.
‘He is big, steady, sturdy,’ she thought, ‘he is like a tree, his arms like great sheltering branches; he gives me protection and sanctuary. His touch is like the heat of the sun: He makes me thirsty and like a sunflower I turn my face to him. He is large and comforting like a bed: I lay on top of him, body to body. He is both soft and hard. He is a balm to my wounds; he draws the darkness from the center of me like poison from a snakebite.’
She felt a thrum throughout her, her own heartbeat matched by his pounding inside of her, kindred blood and fire consuming her; she craved it like an addict, needing more and more; it sent her into a reeling delirium in which she reached the greatest heights. She was a surging thunderhead, rolling and crashing in turbulent whorls of galvanic passion until the relentlessly building tension broke and she felt the glorious cloudburst rain down on her.
When she opened her eyes, the sun was casting a deep orange glow on the ceiling, making the dusky indigo shadows stretch until they were long and thin like the outreach of the fingers of a grasping hand. It was coming on dusk. She blinked, rubbing the flaring spots from her vision. She looked around them, then looked down at herself and Johnny laying on her bed, and then looked around them again.
The mattress and walls were blackened with scorch marks, the lace curtains a ruined, singed tatter, the glass panes warped and distorted, while the charred bedstead had buckled and splintered in the places where it had burnt the worst, closest to its occupants. They were both naked as the day they were born but completely free from singe; Linda groped for a still smoldering blanket to wrap herself in.
“Oh,” she winced, biting her lip. “Somehow, I don’t think this is what the insurance had in mind when they said ‘accidental.’”
“Well,” Johnny drawled, inquisitively thoughtful, “this actually answers few a questions of mine. Huh.”
Meanwhile-
Grandfather Littletrees sat in the barren dirt of the garden, meditating and watching the sky as though awaiting a sign. If he was looking for divine guidance, what he got was the opposite. He felt the man’s presence before he ever heard his boots scuffle at the sand or his duster flap in the wind; it felt cold, dirty and slick like oil, hard and gritty like stone. Yet his voice, it was like the whisper of a thousand promises as he leaned over to murmur in Grandfather’s ear, “It has been a long while since we last met, Snake Dance.”
“I do not know why my noble ancestors would grant me a vision of a cunning white man,“ said Grandfather evenly, keeping his gaze steadily on the passing clouds overhead, “but you speak my true name. The name of my revered forebears, that is a sacred name.”
The devil threw his head back and laughed. “My own is not unfamiliar to you: Mephistopheles. How long has it been since you have spoken it? How long has it been since Mephisto communed with your noble ancestors; since I showed them the way to the great Snake God. I have appeared to you in many guises; that of a serpent was one.”
“The white man lies,“ replied Grandfather sharply, shifting his narrowed eyes to Mephisto for the first time. “The spirits of the white man sanctify lie as readily as the white man himself, they learned it from you.”
“Me? I speak truthfully,” smiled Mephisto glibly. “How any man interprets the honesty in my words is entirely up to them; it’s only my luck that humankind is so very obligingly stupid. Was it not the serpent that presented Eve with the apple representing wisdom in the Garden of Eden. Yours was a different paradise, wasn’t it? Your world was peaceful before the coming of the white man, idyllic. And then you were taught the price of that pacifism, weren’t you? Until the great Snake God offered you a shining golden apple:
“A vision appeared to the shaman Snake Dance,” Mephistopheles continued, “it told him it could show his tribe a new way, a path that would allow you to halt the destructive usurpation of the white man’s westward expansion. A way to immortality.” He spoke the word with flair. “As always, such knowledge was feared and forbidden by…greater powers, and a kachina-an elemental spirit of fire-was sent to forcibly take the souls of the young warriors and carry them back with him to the Land of the Dead. The spirit’s heart was hard and cold and he would not listen to the pleas of the tribe. Not the women, not the children.”
“I know the legends of my people,” Grandfather said gruffly as he stood, keeping his voice level while glancing dubiously at the stranger. Could this man be the instrument his visions had shown him, the one that would be sent to him in a time of need. He had many questions Linda had been hesitant to answer that morning: What had happened the night before on the mesa? Was it the white demon he’d dreamed of and the immortal warriors that were promised to return in a time of need?
“The tradition and name of Snake Dance has been carried down in my family from father to son ever since.” Grandfather watched the white stranger through narrowed eyes, circling him slowly as he scrutinized him. “It will end with me. It should have passed to my son, but….” He pursed his lips firmly, awash with the sadness that had hung heavily on his heart for so many years now; somehow, it felt more burdensome at the moment, more wearisome, and Grandfather had to lean against the remains of a nearby fence as if winded.
“No more,” said Mephisto with sympathy too exaggerated to be sincere, shaking his head sadly. “All you have left is your beautiful granddaughter, Linda, and she, Snake Dance, is in danger.”
“What do you know of my Linda?” Grandfather snapped, becoming wary. “Is it the white man, this Mr. Ketch? Does he threaten her?”
“’Ketch?’” laughed Mephistopheles, arching an eyebrow. “Is that what he said his name was?” He knew that he had Littletrees by the wrist then, guiding him like a lost child towards the conclusions he desired him to reach. “I know much about your granddaughter, I know that she was…unwell-“ The word rolled slickly off his tongue. “-after the death of her parents. Her mental health has been…fragile; it must have been so difficult for you, seeing her like that, knowing how strong, how independent she had been. Living with the constant worry that she could deteriorate into such a state again. Has her behavior been erratic since this ‘Ketch’ showed up? Has she hid things from you, is she withdrawing?”
Mephisto nodded knowingly at Grandfather’s silence. “The Serpent God is once again summoning his faithful servant Snake Dance; will he answer the call?”
Grandfather was silent for a moment, pensive. “Tell me, what must I do?”
Mephistopheles grinned disarmingly, his straight white teeth bared perfectly and yet the gesture somehow reminded Grandfather of a grimace or a sneer. “Take your place among your people of old,” he told him grandly, “and live forever.”
Peace, Ghani