FIC: Ghost Rider: Season of the Witch 3/??
Title: Season of the Witch
Author: ghanistarkiller @ mrs_peel_fanfic
Fandom: Ghost Rider
Disclaimer: Marvel and the filmmakers own 'em, I just play with 'em
Rating: PG-13 mostly for language (will warn if porn--it's my motto!)
Characters: Johnny, Carter, Mephistopheles
Warnings: Suffice it to say, spoilers
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: Whee, a big ol' Carter scene for all ya fans out there! And my morbid side couldn't help but sing "Flagpole Sitta" as I was writing the end of this chapter, heh. Of course, I realized that throughout this entire thing I've had "A Sorta Fairytale" (lyrics are here) in my head and, listening to it yesterday realized why, how perfectly it fit the story!
3.
“How could you?” The voice was soft, feminine, imploring in its accusation; Carter knew exactly who it was before he even looked up and saw her comely curves silhouetted in the radiant light of the full moon, the outline of her buxom body contrasted against the star-spattered cobalt sky. A bone-chilling breeze blew in from the flats, circling the rocky outcropping and rattling his teeth; it tangled in her long sable hair, making it take flight like a raven’s wing.
“If you’re here to give me a speech about how good those boys could be, you’re wasting your breath, Spotted Doe,” he told her, glancing away indifferently, hoping that the firelight didn’t reflect the glistening, the glimmer in his eyes. “I already heard it from Silvercloud. Now, I’m sure that they could be downright cuddlesome if given the chance, but those boys…”
“Not how could you do it to them, how could you do this to me?” she asked, anguish twisting her words. She kneeled before the fire, across from him, and struggled to meet his shifting gaze. “The tribe is in disorder. The elders, they are questioning Silvercloud’s ability, they wonder if he is not too young to have taken my father’s place, and they call into doubt my father’s wisdom in taking you in all those years ago; they believe he brought this upon us, that you brought this upon us. Anyone with any bond with you, they are under suspicion, their loyalties are in doubt.”
His muscles tensed, suddenly alert. “Are you in danger?” he said urgently, his hand instinctively reaching for his gun.
“No, Silvercloud will protect me,” she assured him, “as he seeks to protect us all, but I do not know how much longer we can keep this uneasy peace, before it tears us apart. You do not always need to do his will,” she asserted resolutely.
“I’ve explained this to you before, Spotted Doe…” Carter sighed, throwing his hands up in frustration.
“You talk but you explain nothing!” she said, her face a mask of steely resolve. She crawled to him, and he attempted to avert his gaze as she moved with the grace of a cat across the gritty sand, tried not to notice the lithe muscles rippling beneath her bronze skin, the shape of her bosom beneath the skins she wore. And he endeavored hardest of all to avoid her touch as she took his face in her hands, turning it to hers; she gently ran her thumbs across the thick but soft bristle upon his cheeks and jaw. “When last we met, you could not control the transformation, but it is night now and I am looking into your eyes!”
“Don’t mean nothin’,” he tried to dismiss her words. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Your master tricked them, these young men of our tribe, they did nothing to him! Their offense was their belief in the shaman, this treacherous Snake Dance; they should never have turned their paths from that of my father’s words, but they did, and now they suffer for a misdeed they do not even understand. He persuaded them to worship this Snake God of his with hollow promises, and all the while your master whispered in his ear, guided him towards his own ends!”
“That’s why they call him the Prince of Lies, darlin’. And there’re precedence, you know, some pretty strict rules regarding the worship of false idols,” chuckled Carter grimly.
“Yes,” she said, removing carefully from a buckskin sack she carried an old, gently worn copy of the Bible, regarding it reverently. She knew of its power, of the veneration it inspired, but it was clear to Carter that she did not understand that the strength was in the meaning of its words, not its material nature; she held it as she would a totem. Maybe she was more correct with that than she even knew, mused Carter cynically. “I have read this story in your book; I was taught by the missionaries, they gave me this. I found it interesting, the morals are honorable but it is heavy with many contradictions.”
He gave a short, gruff bark of laughter, the genuine amusement obscured by the disheartened irony. “It’s not my book, darlin’,” he scoffed. “Not any more. I gave up the right to call it that some time ago, and so did those boys, whether you like it or not. You people keep talkin’ about choice, about justice, but the man you call my master deals in trickery and manipulation as you would beads or fish, as effortlessly and as readily. His trade is deceit.”
“What does he want with them?”
Carter shrugged. “What does he want with any of them?”
There was a moment of silence as she contemplated what she was about to say next. “I had a vision,” she confided, moving her hands expressively against the flickering firelight as if to conjure the primitive images of her dream in silhouetted shadow, “of a warrior on a horse, a spirit of vengeance come down from the heavens on a storm cloud. He foretold the destruction of the tribe. He warned me of a demon who would walk as a man, and talk as a man, but was not one, and of his servants whom he called the Serpent Men. He showed me a great snake, winding its way across the sky and devouring all in its sight. I tried to ask him more, but he flew away.”
“Warn ya he did, and take it to heart, Spotted Doe. Ain’t no one but you got a lick o’ sense among your people, you’re gonna have to watch out for ‘em now. You should be getting back,” he told her, clearing his throat.
She took his large hands in hers, running them down the plush curve of her breast down to the slender bow of her waist, resting them upon her rounded hips. “I will not be missed until morning,” she told him huskily, pressing her lips to his to stop any protests he might have uttered.
Present Day-
Johnny stared down at his hands, at the steam rising from his long fingers. He craned his neck and stepped into the stream of water, sighing in relief as it rinsed away the accumulation of dust and dirt and grime from his suntanned skin. The tiled windowsill in the shower stall was crowded with bottles, all manner of products in decorative containers of varying colors and shapes. He searched through them, choosing a shampoo at random and popping it open, sniffing it curiously; lavender and mint, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was Linda’s scent, the clean way she smelled, the perfume he breathed in when she was near to him. It didn’t feel right using it, so he picked another. Mango and kiwi, nice! He lathered his hair and took the opportunity to chew things over.
Linda had cleared away her roommate’s occult clutter quickly, and the bathroom still smelled a little of the bleach she had used to scrub the tiles clean of the chalk pentangle; the rest she had either unceremoniously thrown in Jennifer’s room or dumped in to the trash. She had been upset and exceedingly contrite, apologizing profusely every time she passed him. He tried to tell her not to sweat it, but she wouldn’t have any of it. He supposed he had paled somewhat at the shock of it all, but he thought there was probably more at work regarding the subject than just his distress.
He had almost transformed, right there, in front of Linda; the demon had almost escaped, he had almost become the Ghost Rider. Immediate danger, the presence of evil-those were the situations in which the monster overwhelmed him, overpowered his control, and he was usually grateful for it; it served as a warning as well as a weapon. He had been touching Linda-where was the peril in that? He had control, he had learned, taught himself, to-more or less-command the power that raged from within him. Had he only kidded himself, given himself an illusion of discipline?
He wiped the fog from the mirror and studied his reflection; yup, everything as normal as it was ever gonna be. Again, he regarded his hands, concentrated on the arcane fire within him; it danced like a flame stirred by his gentle breath. He reached deeper, holding his arm out in front of him he willed it to the surface. Smoke began to rise from his fingers, taking the remainder of moisture from the air and off his skin, turning it into a fine vapor. His focus was intense, complete; but now he wasn’t trying to invoke the demon, he was trying to suppress it.
He gasped as a bottle perfume beside the sink shattered, the alcohol of the fragrance evaporating almost instantaneously from the heat his body was casting off. “Oh, geez-!” he sputtered, reaching for the glass fragments as if he could somehow piece them back together. “Guh-oh!” he blurted as the toothpaste tube melted into a sticky white mess, trying to scoop it up with his fingers. “Ooh, uhhh!” The Listerine bottle started to look chancy. Better to quit before he did more damaged, he decided, wiping his hands on the towel wrapped about his waist. Well, hopefully, Linda’d just blame it all on Jennifer.
There were hushed voices in the kitchen as he slipped from the bathroom to his new bedroom, a sweet little space, an expansion to the original ranch home that wasn’t much more than an elaborate screened in porch. He had his own small wooden bureau with a mirror perched on top, and a twin-sized bed, both of which he suspected had been part of a childhood furniture set. An electric fan sat on a nightstand beside a tiny lamp, and an ornate dreamcatcher dangled above the headboard, the crystals threaded in to its string web catching the light and twinkling softly.
Linda had offered to wash his clothes, and set upon the patchwork bedspread with care for him to wear in the meantime were a pair of worn old jeans and a plain t-shirt that looked roughly about his size. He wondered idly, and maybe a bit enviously, as he pulled his boots on over the too-short legs of the dungarees where exactly she’d gotten a spare set of men’s clothing.
The conversation in the kitchen had escalated into a terse debate, a near argument by the time he sauntered in to the hall again. Johnny hung back awkwardly as Linda stamped in to the TV room, followed by a blonde who he recognized from the framed photographs as Jennifer. They stayed at the far end, near the dining room, and lurking in the closest doorway, leaning on the jamb, he was fairly certain he’d be able to observe without being noticed.
Jennifer was Linda’s opposite in almost every way; she was tall and fair with a slender build, angular in the wrong places, where she should have been soft; lazy hazel eyes peered out from a round face, framed by short flaxen hair pulled back into a bouncy little ponytail. She didn’t seem easygoing so much as sluggish and apathetic, possibly a bit stoned. He had caught her mid-sentence, her hands thrown up in the air as a shrug warped her skinny shoulders. “…legitimate form of worship.”
“Oh…my God, you’re a crazy person!” Linda shot back at her in frustration. “A paying lodger, Jen; we might actually have enough money this month not to live off of saltines and cans of tomato soup with dubious expiration dates! You should have seen the poor guy, he went as white as a sheet!”
“You mean he could get whiter?” smirked Jen.
“Oh, stop already,” Linda scoffed. “Stop with the Indian affectation! You are white, Jen; you only live near a reservation! I got all of this, the whole rebellion thing, when we were in school; there’s that whole experimentation phase, it’s just expected. I understood the piercings in freshman year; the militant green period in sophomore; the sexy lesbian; the goth metal; the Mohammedanism…Hell, you moved out here to piss your parents off during your redneck phase, now you’ve got this freaky ethnic by association thing happening. Jen, the white man is not keeping you down; the white man is giving you a healthy trust fund and a summer bungalow on Fire Island!”
She exhaled, “You got the Satanism from my theology books, I know; I even supported it for a while because I thought it was harmless and was like some sort of self-help. I never thought you were serious about it! The stuff in the bathroom, it went way beyond those silly Sabbats you used to attend with the ramblings about the dark aspect and menstruation power, ooooh!” she waved her hands in the air, emphasizing her spooky tone. “The Devil, Jen? Really? ‘Cause where’s the advantage in worshiping him? It’s nihilistic at best, destructive at worst! Did you even read the text in my schoolbooks, or did you just like the colorful pictures?!"
Johnny wouldn’t have debated the argument, because, really, selling his soul? It hadn’t worked out quite as well as he had hoped. Or well at all in any definition of the word. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. You see, Johnny was an optimist and, well, he chose to look at the flaming, demonic glass as half-full. This isn’t a life he would have chosen, and that was an hilarious irony, but now he did know that creatures like Mephistopheles were out there, and that he had the power to stop them. It wasn’t exactly the empowerment the New Age movement claimed, and impressionable people like Jennifer bought into.
“And with my grandfather over here all the time!” Linda tutted. “What if he’d seen it?”
“Your grandfather believes in the occult arts!” sulked Jennifer, her pouty lower lip quivering in what was supposed to be a cute gesture; it seemed mean-spirited and smug.
Linda just stared for a minute, almost unable to process what she was hearing. “My grandfather believes that a Serpent God made our ancestors immortal warriors!” She put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes, taking long deep breaths in an attempt to regain her cool; Johnny could almost hear her mentally counting to ten. “You know what? I’m not going to argue this. I’m asking you, as your friend, as your roommate, Jen: Please, no more. Ever since you using that stuff, I’ve been having these vivid, intense nightmares about it, okay; it freaks me out and I just want you to do…whatever it is that you do someplace else.”
“Oh, Linda,” sighed Jennifer indulgently, shaking her head bemusedly, “I really do wish I could convince you of the true power of it. Not like those Sabbats; something…real.” The hair up and down Johnny’s arms stood on end; maybe there truly was something here, maybe his near transformation earlier wasn’t a fluke at all. Of course it wasn’t, he knew that, had known it all along. Fate was cruel at times, but it was almost never, he had learned, accidental. Good thing he also believed in making your own destiny.
“This guy’s really got you all shook up, huh?” observed Jennifer with a carefully quirked eyebrow. “What’s he like, anyways?”
“That’s, like, the twentieth time you’ve asked me,” Linda said, straining her voice in an exaggerated manner that made Jennifer laugh-not a haughty thing, but perhaps the first genuine emotion Johnny’d seen her express. “His name, where he’s from-do you want a blood sample, too? Why d’you wanna know so bad anyways?”
“Well,” Jennifer shrugged, “for one thing, he’s new in town, male and I’m bored. For another, I wanna make sure he’s not gonna axe murder me in the middle of the night. And he’s been standing in the hall listening to you rag on me for, oh, about the past five minutes.”
Johnny nearly fell backwards in surprise, overbalancing, almost tripping over his feet when he remembered that he’d crossed his boots at the ankle as he’d leaned back. He caught himself, and collected his cool, as much as he could muster leastways. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat clumsily, “I just-I came out here and didn’t want to...disrupt your...conversation.”
“Didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, huh?” Jennifer smiled; it was forced and deliberate, like a grimace. When he’d touched Linda earlier, when he’d gaze into her eyes and made that connection, it had been so spontaneously true, so easy and artless. Jen seemed to be having great difficulty making and keeping eye contact, flinching beneath his affable glare. She didn’t seem like the bashful type, or one to be easily discomposed, but she was acting more skittish than a cat in a puddle.
Jennifer shook his hand, “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Ketch, but I was just on my way out.” She called over her shoulder to Linda as she grabbed her denim jacket, “Don’t wait up!”
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Linda mumbled as he walked into the kitchen behind her. The table was set for three, pretty patterned china yellowed slightly from age and disuse, cloth napkins and mismatched tin cutlery. Johnny wondered how long it had been, the last time that Linda had occasion to do things up, and felt happy to oblige her. He’d thought he had wanted solitude and there had come a point when even strangers at truck stop cafes had felt intrusive, stifling. He wanted to disappear, vanish into himself maybe, into it-the monster.
Maybe he thought he shouldn’t stop feeling that way, that he didn’t deserve to.
“Don’t take the seat at the head of the table,” she instructed, slipping on her oven mitts to remove the casserole from the stove, “that’s grandpa’s.”
Linda hadn’t been exaggerating about the wind; it soughed sorrowfully, raising its voice to a low piercing whistle as the kitchen door was blown open and grandfather Littletrees shuffled in almost as if it had borne him forth on its airy shroud. The wind chimes on the porch were wildly and incessantly taking flight, singing, and the rusted screens batted in their window frames. And the three figures seated around the dinner table sat in silence.
Johnny munched his food thoughtfully, mulling over his private thoughts, everything from the argument with Jennifer to the dreams he’d been having, and was startled by the sound of Linda’s voice as she said, “Mr. Ketch is from Texas, grandpa.”
“Mmph,” replied grandfather, eyeing Johnny mistrustfully even as he flashed the older man his most winning smile. “Our ancestors were nomads, wanderers, Comanche as well as Apache. Comanche were in Texas; white men killed them, too.”
Linda pursed her lips apologetically but Johnny shrugged it off with an amiable grin. Grandfather glanced between them. “Does Sam know you’ve taken on a white man as a lodger?”
Linda’s silverware clattered against her plate and, folding her arms on the table in front of her, she asserted calmly, “I don’t have to run everything I do by Sam!”
“I went into the desert today,” continued grandfather conversationally, his stony face inscrutable. “I meditated and was granted a vision. I saw a demon in the shape of a man, and he did battle with a giant serpent, which flew in the sky and blotted out the sunlight like an eclipse. I saw men who were not men, but moved as snakes across the sand; they challenged the demon. I was not bestowed the privilege of the outcome. I believe it was sent to me as a warning by the Snake God...”
“Oh, grandfather, not this again,” groaned Linda.
“I believe the demon was a white man and he was profaning our sacred earth,” grandfather grunted, unperturbed by the rolling of Linda’s eyes as she put her face in her hands and shook her head. “That was what the Snake God desired me to see, so that I may prevent it,” he looked pointedly at Johnny. “Once more he named me Snake Dance, as in my youth, and set me on this quest. This is very good casserole,” he commented without any sort of perceptible change in tone. “Is it your mother’s recipe?”
“Mm, no, I got it from a cookbook I found at Grant’s,” replied Linda resuming her meal as if nothing’d happened. Well, when in Rome, Johnny figured, though some of grandfather’s words gave him cause to think; they shook him up a little more than he would have admitted. Grandfather Littletrees was right about one thing: There was a white demon in the desert tonight.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert-
Garret Windhawk had never felt better in his life. He was strong, he was free, he was part of the desert now; he could feel each grain of sand shift and sing on the wind. He was a warrior chosen by the gods, he was a snake twisting through the dirt and gravel, his belly smooth and cool against the shifting grit. He called out to his tribesmen, a primal noise that erupted from the back of his throat like a coyote’s predator cry, and heard them answer in turn. They were no longer the Grant’s Weekend Regulars. They were spirits of the wild, of the wasteland; they were her chosen sons.
Garret Windhawk had never felt worse in his life. He was laid bare, he was screaming, he was cast into the pit; he could feel each lash of the infernal flame peel his flesh as it was stripped from his body over and again. He was damned, he was a tormented soul doomed to relive his unholy bargain for all eternity, his eyes aflare and melting in the raw sockets of his skull. He screamed but no sound left his mouth, and the weeping cries of the accursed echoed back to him in the fiery depths. They were no longer the Grant’s Weekend Regulars. They were the condemned, they were in perdition; they were the Serpent Men.
And it was time to raise some Hell.
TBC
Go to chapter4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Peace, Ghani
Author: ghanistarkiller @ mrs_peel_fanfic
Fandom: Ghost Rider
Disclaimer: Marvel and the filmmakers own 'em, I just play with 'em
Rating: PG-13 mostly for language (will warn if porn--it's my motto!)
Characters: Johnny, Carter, Mephistopheles
Warnings: Suffice it to say, spoilers
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: Whee, a big ol' Carter scene for all ya fans out there! And my morbid side couldn't help but sing "Flagpole Sitta" as I was writing the end of this chapter, heh. Of course, I realized that throughout this entire thing I've had "A Sorta Fairytale" (lyrics are here) in my head and, listening to it yesterday realized why, how perfectly it fit the story!
3.
“How could you?” The voice was soft, feminine, imploring in its accusation; Carter knew exactly who it was before he even looked up and saw her comely curves silhouetted in the radiant light of the full moon, the outline of her buxom body contrasted against the star-spattered cobalt sky. A bone-chilling breeze blew in from the flats, circling the rocky outcropping and rattling his teeth; it tangled in her long sable hair, making it take flight like a raven’s wing.
“If you’re here to give me a speech about how good those boys could be, you’re wasting your breath, Spotted Doe,” he told her, glancing away indifferently, hoping that the firelight didn’t reflect the glistening, the glimmer in his eyes. “I already heard it from Silvercloud. Now, I’m sure that they could be downright cuddlesome if given the chance, but those boys…”
“Not how could you do it to them, how could you do this to me?” she asked, anguish twisting her words. She kneeled before the fire, across from him, and struggled to meet his shifting gaze. “The tribe is in disorder. The elders, they are questioning Silvercloud’s ability, they wonder if he is not too young to have taken my father’s place, and they call into doubt my father’s wisdom in taking you in all those years ago; they believe he brought this upon us, that you brought this upon us. Anyone with any bond with you, they are under suspicion, their loyalties are in doubt.”
His muscles tensed, suddenly alert. “Are you in danger?” he said urgently, his hand instinctively reaching for his gun.
“No, Silvercloud will protect me,” she assured him, “as he seeks to protect us all, but I do not know how much longer we can keep this uneasy peace, before it tears us apart. You do not always need to do his will,” she asserted resolutely.
“I’ve explained this to you before, Spotted Doe…” Carter sighed, throwing his hands up in frustration.
“You talk but you explain nothing!” she said, her face a mask of steely resolve. She crawled to him, and he attempted to avert his gaze as she moved with the grace of a cat across the gritty sand, tried not to notice the lithe muscles rippling beneath her bronze skin, the shape of her bosom beneath the skins she wore. And he endeavored hardest of all to avoid her touch as she took his face in her hands, turning it to hers; she gently ran her thumbs across the thick but soft bristle upon his cheeks and jaw. “When last we met, you could not control the transformation, but it is night now and I am looking into your eyes!”
“Don’t mean nothin’,” he tried to dismiss her words. “Nothing’s changed.”
“Your master tricked them, these young men of our tribe, they did nothing to him! Their offense was their belief in the shaman, this treacherous Snake Dance; they should never have turned their paths from that of my father’s words, but they did, and now they suffer for a misdeed they do not even understand. He persuaded them to worship this Snake God of his with hollow promises, and all the while your master whispered in his ear, guided him towards his own ends!”
“That’s why they call him the Prince of Lies, darlin’. And there’re precedence, you know, some pretty strict rules regarding the worship of false idols,” chuckled Carter grimly.
“Yes,” she said, removing carefully from a buckskin sack she carried an old, gently worn copy of the Bible, regarding it reverently. She knew of its power, of the veneration it inspired, but it was clear to Carter that she did not understand that the strength was in the meaning of its words, not its material nature; she held it as she would a totem. Maybe she was more correct with that than she even knew, mused Carter cynically. “I have read this story in your book; I was taught by the missionaries, they gave me this. I found it interesting, the morals are honorable but it is heavy with many contradictions.”
He gave a short, gruff bark of laughter, the genuine amusement obscured by the disheartened irony. “It’s not my book, darlin’,” he scoffed. “Not any more. I gave up the right to call it that some time ago, and so did those boys, whether you like it or not. You people keep talkin’ about choice, about justice, but the man you call my master deals in trickery and manipulation as you would beads or fish, as effortlessly and as readily. His trade is deceit.”
“What does he want with them?”
Carter shrugged. “What does he want with any of them?”
There was a moment of silence as she contemplated what she was about to say next. “I had a vision,” she confided, moving her hands expressively against the flickering firelight as if to conjure the primitive images of her dream in silhouetted shadow, “of a warrior on a horse, a spirit of vengeance come down from the heavens on a storm cloud. He foretold the destruction of the tribe. He warned me of a demon who would walk as a man, and talk as a man, but was not one, and of his servants whom he called the Serpent Men. He showed me a great snake, winding its way across the sky and devouring all in its sight. I tried to ask him more, but he flew away.”
“Warn ya he did, and take it to heart, Spotted Doe. Ain’t no one but you got a lick o’ sense among your people, you’re gonna have to watch out for ‘em now. You should be getting back,” he told her, clearing his throat.
She took his large hands in hers, running them down the plush curve of her breast down to the slender bow of her waist, resting them upon her rounded hips. “I will not be missed until morning,” she told him huskily, pressing her lips to his to stop any protests he might have uttered.
Present Day-
Johnny stared down at his hands, at the steam rising from his long fingers. He craned his neck and stepped into the stream of water, sighing in relief as it rinsed away the accumulation of dust and dirt and grime from his suntanned skin. The tiled windowsill in the shower stall was crowded with bottles, all manner of products in decorative containers of varying colors and shapes. He searched through them, choosing a shampoo at random and popping it open, sniffing it curiously; lavender and mint, if he wasn’t mistaken. It was Linda’s scent, the clean way she smelled, the perfume he breathed in when she was near to him. It didn’t feel right using it, so he picked another. Mango and kiwi, nice! He lathered his hair and took the opportunity to chew things over.
Linda had cleared away her roommate’s occult clutter quickly, and the bathroom still smelled a little of the bleach she had used to scrub the tiles clean of the chalk pentangle; the rest she had either unceremoniously thrown in Jennifer’s room or dumped in to the trash. She had been upset and exceedingly contrite, apologizing profusely every time she passed him. He tried to tell her not to sweat it, but she wouldn’t have any of it. He supposed he had paled somewhat at the shock of it all, but he thought there was probably more at work regarding the subject than just his distress.
He had almost transformed, right there, in front of Linda; the demon had almost escaped, he had almost become the Ghost Rider. Immediate danger, the presence of evil-those were the situations in which the monster overwhelmed him, overpowered his control, and he was usually grateful for it; it served as a warning as well as a weapon. He had been touching Linda-where was the peril in that? He had control, he had learned, taught himself, to-more or less-command the power that raged from within him. Had he only kidded himself, given himself an illusion of discipline?
He wiped the fog from the mirror and studied his reflection; yup, everything as normal as it was ever gonna be. Again, he regarded his hands, concentrated on the arcane fire within him; it danced like a flame stirred by his gentle breath. He reached deeper, holding his arm out in front of him he willed it to the surface. Smoke began to rise from his fingers, taking the remainder of moisture from the air and off his skin, turning it into a fine vapor. His focus was intense, complete; but now he wasn’t trying to invoke the demon, he was trying to suppress it.
He gasped as a bottle perfume beside the sink shattered, the alcohol of the fragrance evaporating almost instantaneously from the heat his body was casting off. “Oh, geez-!” he sputtered, reaching for the glass fragments as if he could somehow piece them back together. “Guh-oh!” he blurted as the toothpaste tube melted into a sticky white mess, trying to scoop it up with his fingers. “Ooh, uhhh!” The Listerine bottle started to look chancy. Better to quit before he did more damaged, he decided, wiping his hands on the towel wrapped about his waist. Well, hopefully, Linda’d just blame it all on Jennifer.
There were hushed voices in the kitchen as he slipped from the bathroom to his new bedroom, a sweet little space, an expansion to the original ranch home that wasn’t much more than an elaborate screened in porch. He had his own small wooden bureau with a mirror perched on top, and a twin-sized bed, both of which he suspected had been part of a childhood furniture set. An electric fan sat on a nightstand beside a tiny lamp, and an ornate dreamcatcher dangled above the headboard, the crystals threaded in to its string web catching the light and twinkling softly.
Linda had offered to wash his clothes, and set upon the patchwork bedspread with care for him to wear in the meantime were a pair of worn old jeans and a plain t-shirt that looked roughly about his size. He wondered idly, and maybe a bit enviously, as he pulled his boots on over the too-short legs of the dungarees where exactly she’d gotten a spare set of men’s clothing.
The conversation in the kitchen had escalated into a terse debate, a near argument by the time he sauntered in to the hall again. Johnny hung back awkwardly as Linda stamped in to the TV room, followed by a blonde who he recognized from the framed photographs as Jennifer. They stayed at the far end, near the dining room, and lurking in the closest doorway, leaning on the jamb, he was fairly certain he’d be able to observe without being noticed.
Jennifer was Linda’s opposite in almost every way; she was tall and fair with a slender build, angular in the wrong places, where she should have been soft; lazy hazel eyes peered out from a round face, framed by short flaxen hair pulled back into a bouncy little ponytail. She didn’t seem easygoing so much as sluggish and apathetic, possibly a bit stoned. He had caught her mid-sentence, her hands thrown up in the air as a shrug warped her skinny shoulders. “…legitimate form of worship.”
“Oh…my God, you’re a crazy person!” Linda shot back at her in frustration. “A paying lodger, Jen; we might actually have enough money this month not to live off of saltines and cans of tomato soup with dubious expiration dates! You should have seen the poor guy, he went as white as a sheet!”
“You mean he could get whiter?” smirked Jen.
“Oh, stop already,” Linda scoffed. “Stop with the Indian affectation! You are white, Jen; you only live near a reservation! I got all of this, the whole rebellion thing, when we were in school; there’s that whole experimentation phase, it’s just expected. I understood the piercings in freshman year; the militant green period in sophomore; the sexy lesbian; the goth metal; the Mohammedanism…Hell, you moved out here to piss your parents off during your redneck phase, now you’ve got this freaky ethnic by association thing happening. Jen, the white man is not keeping you down; the white man is giving you a healthy trust fund and a summer bungalow on Fire Island!”
She exhaled, “You got the Satanism from my theology books, I know; I even supported it for a while because I thought it was harmless and was like some sort of self-help. I never thought you were serious about it! The stuff in the bathroom, it went way beyond those silly Sabbats you used to attend with the ramblings about the dark aspect and menstruation power, ooooh!” she waved her hands in the air, emphasizing her spooky tone. “The Devil, Jen? Really? ‘Cause where’s the advantage in worshiping him? It’s nihilistic at best, destructive at worst! Did you even read the text in my schoolbooks, or did you just like the colorful pictures?!"
Johnny wouldn’t have debated the argument, because, really, selling his soul? It hadn’t worked out quite as well as he had hoped. Or well at all in any definition of the word. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. You see, Johnny was an optimist and, well, he chose to look at the flaming, demonic glass as half-full. This isn’t a life he would have chosen, and that was an hilarious irony, but now he did know that creatures like Mephistopheles were out there, and that he had the power to stop them. It wasn’t exactly the empowerment the New Age movement claimed, and impressionable people like Jennifer bought into.
“And with my grandfather over here all the time!” Linda tutted. “What if he’d seen it?”
“Your grandfather believes in the occult arts!” sulked Jennifer, her pouty lower lip quivering in what was supposed to be a cute gesture; it seemed mean-spirited and smug.
Linda just stared for a minute, almost unable to process what she was hearing. “My grandfather believes that a Serpent God made our ancestors immortal warriors!” She put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes, taking long deep breaths in an attempt to regain her cool; Johnny could almost hear her mentally counting to ten. “You know what? I’m not going to argue this. I’m asking you, as your friend, as your roommate, Jen: Please, no more. Ever since you using that stuff, I’ve been having these vivid, intense nightmares about it, okay; it freaks me out and I just want you to do…whatever it is that you do someplace else.”
“Oh, Linda,” sighed Jennifer indulgently, shaking her head bemusedly, “I really do wish I could convince you of the true power of it. Not like those Sabbats; something…real.” The hair up and down Johnny’s arms stood on end; maybe there truly was something here, maybe his near transformation earlier wasn’t a fluke at all. Of course it wasn’t, he knew that, had known it all along. Fate was cruel at times, but it was almost never, he had learned, accidental. Good thing he also believed in making your own destiny.
“This guy’s really got you all shook up, huh?” observed Jennifer with a carefully quirked eyebrow. “What’s he like, anyways?”
“That’s, like, the twentieth time you’ve asked me,” Linda said, straining her voice in an exaggerated manner that made Jennifer laugh-not a haughty thing, but perhaps the first genuine emotion Johnny’d seen her express. “His name, where he’s from-do you want a blood sample, too? Why d’you wanna know so bad anyways?”
“Well,” Jennifer shrugged, “for one thing, he’s new in town, male and I’m bored. For another, I wanna make sure he’s not gonna axe murder me in the middle of the night. And he’s been standing in the hall listening to you rag on me for, oh, about the past five minutes.”
Johnny nearly fell backwards in surprise, overbalancing, almost tripping over his feet when he remembered that he’d crossed his boots at the ankle as he’d leaned back. He caught himself, and collected his cool, as much as he could muster leastways. “Sorry,” he said, clearing his throat clumsily, “I just-I came out here and didn’t want to...disrupt your...conversation.”
“Didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire, huh?” Jennifer smiled; it was forced and deliberate, like a grimace. When he’d touched Linda earlier, when he’d gaze into her eyes and made that connection, it had been so spontaneously true, so easy and artless. Jen seemed to be having great difficulty making and keeping eye contact, flinching beneath his affable glare. She didn’t seem like the bashful type, or one to be easily discomposed, but she was acting more skittish than a cat in a puddle.
Jennifer shook his hand, “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Ketch, but I was just on my way out.” She called over her shoulder to Linda as she grabbed her denim jacket, “Don’t wait up!”
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Linda mumbled as he walked into the kitchen behind her. The table was set for three, pretty patterned china yellowed slightly from age and disuse, cloth napkins and mismatched tin cutlery. Johnny wondered how long it had been, the last time that Linda had occasion to do things up, and felt happy to oblige her. He’d thought he had wanted solitude and there had come a point when even strangers at truck stop cafes had felt intrusive, stifling. He wanted to disappear, vanish into himself maybe, into it-the monster.
Maybe he thought he shouldn’t stop feeling that way, that he didn’t deserve to.
“Don’t take the seat at the head of the table,” she instructed, slipping on her oven mitts to remove the casserole from the stove, “that’s grandpa’s.”
Linda hadn’t been exaggerating about the wind; it soughed sorrowfully, raising its voice to a low piercing whistle as the kitchen door was blown open and grandfather Littletrees shuffled in almost as if it had borne him forth on its airy shroud. The wind chimes on the porch were wildly and incessantly taking flight, singing, and the rusted screens batted in their window frames. And the three figures seated around the dinner table sat in silence.
Johnny munched his food thoughtfully, mulling over his private thoughts, everything from the argument with Jennifer to the dreams he’d been having, and was startled by the sound of Linda’s voice as she said, “Mr. Ketch is from Texas, grandpa.”
“Mmph,” replied grandfather, eyeing Johnny mistrustfully even as he flashed the older man his most winning smile. “Our ancestors were nomads, wanderers, Comanche as well as Apache. Comanche were in Texas; white men killed them, too.”
Linda pursed her lips apologetically but Johnny shrugged it off with an amiable grin. Grandfather glanced between them. “Does Sam know you’ve taken on a white man as a lodger?”
Linda’s silverware clattered against her plate and, folding her arms on the table in front of her, she asserted calmly, “I don’t have to run everything I do by Sam!”
“I went into the desert today,” continued grandfather conversationally, his stony face inscrutable. “I meditated and was granted a vision. I saw a demon in the shape of a man, and he did battle with a giant serpent, which flew in the sky and blotted out the sunlight like an eclipse. I saw men who were not men, but moved as snakes across the sand; they challenged the demon. I was not bestowed the privilege of the outcome. I believe it was sent to me as a warning by the Snake God...”
“Oh, grandfather, not this again,” groaned Linda.
“I believe the demon was a white man and he was profaning our sacred earth,” grandfather grunted, unperturbed by the rolling of Linda’s eyes as she put her face in her hands and shook her head. “That was what the Snake God desired me to see, so that I may prevent it,” he looked pointedly at Johnny. “Once more he named me Snake Dance, as in my youth, and set me on this quest. This is very good casserole,” he commented without any sort of perceptible change in tone. “Is it your mother’s recipe?”
“Mm, no, I got it from a cookbook I found at Grant’s,” replied Linda resuming her meal as if nothing’d happened. Well, when in Rome, Johnny figured, though some of grandfather’s words gave him cause to think; they shook him up a little more than he would have admitted. Grandfather Littletrees was right about one thing: There was a white demon in the desert tonight.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the desert-
Garret Windhawk had never felt better in his life. He was strong, he was free, he was part of the desert now; he could feel each grain of sand shift and sing on the wind. He was a warrior chosen by the gods, he was a snake twisting through the dirt and gravel, his belly smooth and cool against the shifting grit. He called out to his tribesmen, a primal noise that erupted from the back of his throat like a coyote’s predator cry, and heard them answer in turn. They were no longer the Grant’s Weekend Regulars. They were spirits of the wild, of the wasteland; they were her chosen sons.
Garret Windhawk had never felt worse in his life. He was laid bare, he was screaming, he was cast into the pit; he could feel each lash of the infernal flame peel his flesh as it was stripped from his body over and again. He was damned, he was a tormented soul doomed to relive his unholy bargain for all eternity, his eyes aflare and melting in the raw sockets of his skull. He screamed but no sound left his mouth, and the weeping cries of the accursed echoed back to him in the fiery depths. They were no longer the Grant’s Weekend Regulars. They were the condemned, they were in perdition; they were the Serpent Men.
And it was time to raise some Hell.
TBC
Go to chapter4
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Peace, Ghani