'Stay out,' Tom told Cameron. 'Let your grandpa and me handle this.'
He handed Russ the shovel, picked up a broom for himself.
Something made of glass fell and shattered on the cement floor.
The light in the garage was on, but it was a weak bare bulb hanging down from the center of the ceiling, and it was almost useless. Tom tried flipping the switch to open the big garage door and let in some of the fading outdoor light, but there was no response the garage door opener seemed to be broken, i 'Keep the door open,' Tom ins' ted his son. But stay in the living room. Don't come in.'
The boy nodded
'What do you think it is?' Russ asked.
'It's a monster!' Cameron piped up.
'Probably just a possum or a raccoon or something.' In the city? Russ wanted to say, but he kept quiet, and the two of them walked slowly forward. They could now see the overturned paint cans and the shattered glass from an old Coke bottle.
Russ found that his face were sweating, and he was having a hard time breathing. He didn't quite know what had gotten into him. He had cleared vermin out of tool sheds and storage compartments a hundred times, had lived in the wilderness with all sorts of creatures during his early days at Interior.
But this, he sensed, was different.
'Maybe a dog got in here,' Tom suggested. 'Maybe he snuck in somehow when the door was open and got trapped.' 'Maybe,' Russ said doubtfully. But it was not a dog. It was a monster.
They found it on top of the newspapers stacked for recycling, a terrible thing of fur and feathers, a small misshapen creature with the eyes of a man and the teeth of a beast. It was a frightening sight to behold, and it screeched at them, an abomination from hell that began jumping up and down on the papers, gibbering in a way that almost made it seem as though it were speaking a language.
Tom backed up, whirled toward the still-open door to the living room.
'Get out of the house,' he ordered Cameron. 'You and your mom get out of the house and go next door and call 911.'
The boy stood in place, not moving, eyes wide open. 'Now!'
Cameron ran to do as he was told, and the door closed, leaving the garage in almost complete darkness. The bulb barely illuminated the empty concrete directly beneath it, let alone the side of the garage where the papers were stacked.
Tom held out his broom, moving gingerly, careful not to make any sudden movements.
'Maybe we should get out of here, too,' Russ suggested. 'If both doors are closed, that should trap it until the authorities come.'
'Maybe there's another exit---' Tom began.
And the monster screamed.
It was a sound like nothing they had ever heard, and both Russ and Tom jumped back, Russ practically stumbling over an old box of books in his way. He turned, was about to hurry out of the garage, when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He swiveled his head to look.
And the creature flew at him.
They did not have enough time to react. Russ tried to right it off with the shovel, and Tom tried to bat it away with the broom, but it was a whirling dervish of claws and teeth and skinny deformed legs, and neither of them could get it off him.
He felt talons slash skin, felt the stabbing of pain, the wetness of blood.
He dropped the shovel and tried to use his hands to pull the creature off, but his fingers could get no purchase, met only insubstantial feather and slippery scaly flesh, and then his wrists were sliced open, and he fell to the ground. Dimly, he was aware of the fact that Tom's broom was beating against his head, trying to dislodge the monster.
Then he saw those human eyes staring into his own, heard a long low chuckle.
And it ripped out his throat.
There were six of them already.
It was not yet a town, not even a hamlet, really, but it was a community, a community of six, and the beginning of a real settlement.
William finished drawing water from the well and carried the bucket back to the house. He poured some in the washbasin, then carried the bucket over to the small kitchen space, where he placed it on the floor next to the sink. He stared out the window at Marie, weaving spells over the vegetables in the garden, and he smiled, feeling good.
They had three houses built. The two women shared one, while the four men doubled up in the other two. He and Jeb lived in the first house they'd built, the smallest house, and though the single room was somewhat confining, they were used to it and would be able to put up with the situation as long as necessary.
Sleeping arrangements were going to change soon, he knew. Olivia and Martin were now a couple and were planning to get married and move in together. That meant they would probably need another house--unless Marie wanted to room with one of the men, which he doubted.
Their first order of business, though, was a barn. The animals were all still with them, bound by magic, but it would be nice if they had some shelter as well. He knew the horses had already been complaining about it, and he had promised the animals that something would be done.
They also needed a dry place to store seeds and tools and some of the implements that were now sharing space inside the homes.
After the barn and the new house?
Who knew? But he was leaning toward a store, a common building where goods could be stored and distributed. The community wasn't big enough yet to really justify such an operation, but more were on the way, and he had the feeling that it soon would be. He envisioned the town as he had first imagined it, with a livery and a saloon, with a library and theater, with a park where children could play and a school where they could learn. One day, he knew, this would be a city, a city with plumbing and law enforcement and all of the amenities of modern life.
And everyone in it would be a witch.
Marie saw him through the window, smiled, waved. He waved back.
The days here were spent working, trying to carve out a life in this canyon. At night they spoke with spirits. There'd been others on this land before, Indians, and though they did not always understand these ghosts from another culture, their presence was still welcome and reassuring.
Particularly after passing through the Bad Lands.
William shivered just to think of it. He knew that settlers called the area around Deadwood the Badlands, but that was different. That was merely a description of geology. The land he and Jeb had come through
Those were bad lands.
It was long after the monster in the mountains, yet still a week or so away from Arizona Territory. They'd been Iraveling almost due south, then suddenly they were walking west, though they hadn't changed directions. They both realized it almost at once, and they stopped.
William looked around, and realized that there were no directions here.
It made no sense. The sun rose in the east and set in the west, and everything could be calculated from that. Only... Only the sun here seemed different. There appeared to be a uniform brightness in the sky, a vaguely defined whiteness that provided illumination but took no specific shape. They could not make out a sun and thus could not determine in which direction it was headed.
Without warning, William's horse reared up behind him. He and Jeb fell back, startled, and the horse suddenly bolted, running away. He called to it, tried to summon it, and they both chased it, but the animal was gone and would not return. The last view he had of his old companion was of the creature tearing crazily across the
