Dead Man's rain

reached the foot of the stairs and charged up it sock-foot.

Halfway to the second floor, I heard toenails clack and scrape on the stones at my feet. Dog toenails. I pinched my nose, but the scritch and scrape continued, and were joined by panting.

“Thufe?”

Something warm and wet butted my right forearm and drew away. The dog-stink intensified, became at once familiar.

“Petey?”

Petey had been my dog, in the Army. In the tunnels. In the dark.

I pinched my nose. Petey was dead.

I smelled wet dog. You can’t mistake the scent of a big dog just come in from the rain.

Petey butted my forearm again. Time to get to work, boss, that meant. He’d always done that, when he thought my attention was wavering.

“Damn you, Mama,” I said.

Petey butted me, yipped. No time to get wistful. Not here in the dark.

I sprang up the steps, two at a time, quiet as a ghost in my sock feet. It’s only Mama’s hex, I thought. It’s only Mama’s hex, and a storm, and three long sips of the widow’s drugged coffee. I’ll be seeing Regents and dragons next.

I could hear the axe bite oak clearly now, and I knew that it, at least, was real.

Petey, he of the brave heart and the warm tongue and the white ring around his good left eye, Petey who lay buried in a weed-choked ditch five hundred miles and a dozen long years away, raced ahead and showed me the way.

Drugs or hex or haunts or all, by the time I reached the fourth floor-the widow’s floor-the dark was alive about me.

Petey was a dark bundle of shadows trotting steady at my feet. Voices spoke out beside me, others sang, others whispered or cursed or wailed or cried. Faces formed in the flames of the few lit candles that lined the walls, their mouths open, imploring, silent and small and gone with a blink or a flicker.

I’d pinched my nose so many times it had begun to bleed. I’d not noticed until I saw blood on my hand, and it was only then that I realized my fingers were going numb.

I shook my head.

“I cannot,” said a voice that silenced all the others. “I cannot, do not ask that of me, oh God I cannot.”

Petey butted my arm, halted and made a low, soft growl.

We left the stairs. The axe-blows stopped. I followed Petey’s stiff-legged stalk to an intersection of halls, laid myself flat and careful against the wall. After making sure I wouldn’t dislodge any decorations-this was no time to knock down a portrait of old Aunt Hattie-I sidled up to the corner and pinched my nose hard one last time and listened.

“You idiot,” hissed Elizabet. “Why didn’t you just get the key?”

“She never let it out of her sight,” replied Othur. “How was I supposed to get it? Why didn’t you?”

“I’ll be through it in a minute,” spoke another voice, one I didn’t know. “Damned door must be two feet thick.”

Judging that they were sufficiently far away, and that the hall between us was dark, I peeped around the corner.

Othur and Elizabet stood together, an axe-swing’s distance from a bald behemoth of a man, who stood panting, leaning upon his axe.

I pulled my head back before anyone saw.

“Get back to work,” snapped Elizabet. “We don’t want them waking up before we’re done.”

The big man grunted, and an instant later the axe fell.

“Talo and Abda ought to be back by now,” said Othur. “Think they had any trouble?”

“With who? Jefrey, or that idiot from the Narrows?’ Elizabet snorted. “They’re both as dead as Daddy by now,” she said with that same laugh I’d heard that first day on the stairs. “Think they’ll come back to get you, too?”

Othur giggled.

Petey licked my hand. You might not believe now, I thought. But I bet you will before sunrise.

Petey whirled and growled, and I heard footsteps-booted, hurried footsteps from at least two men-sound down on the stairs.

We scooted out of there. Petey led the way, and I followed. Just like old times.

We wound and we wound and we wound, until the halls got narrow and the doors got smaller and the storm felt like it was just inches above our heads. The axe continued to fall, and I heard snatches of a brief argument, and then all the voices but those of the hex fell silent.

Petey led me to a door, stopped. And though he was nothing but hex and poison and memory, he wagged his tail, and I saw.

The door-latch turned, the door opened and there stood the widow, wide-eyed.

I raised a finger to my lips, and she bit back her words. I stepped inside, pushed the door shut. Lightning flared, and the widow’s eyes went wide, and I knew she was seeing the blood on my face.

“It’s nothing,” I whispered. “Good to see you. Why aren’t you in your room?”

“Mrs. Hog warned me to seek a secret place tonight,” she whispered. She bit her lip to stop its trembling. “Have you seen him? He’s out there. Can you hear him?”

I shook my head. Maybe she didn’t know. “I’m more concerned about your sons,” I said. “You know they’re at your door. With an axe, and at least two men.”

“I cannot,” came the cry again. “I cannot!”

The widow did not hear; instead, she nodded. “I know,” she said in reply to me. “I heard the sounds, went out. I saw.” She set her jaw, and did not cry. “What are we to do?”

“You must,” came a voice in the thunder. I pinched my nose and the widow winced.

“We’ve got to get downstairs,” I said. “They’ll be through the door shortly. When they find you gone, they’ll go room to room. We’d better not be here for that.”

“But-outside-Ebed is there, outside.”

“No, he isn’t,” I said. “He’s dead. He’s gone. The man with axe is very much alive.”

She shook her head. I heard the cry again ignored it.

“We’re going to go downstairs,” I said. “We’re going to get Jefrey. Then we’re going to a neighbor.”

She started to argue. I cut her off.

“What did Mama tell you?” I said. The axe blows fell faster now. Even House Merlat’s pre-War, solid oak doors weren’t going to hold them back much longer. “What did she say?”

The widow said nothing, but she looked me in the eye, nodded once.

“Let’s go,” I said. I stepped into the hall and let Petey lead the way into the dark.

We made it down the stairs. We hid once, at the top of the second floor landing, while Abad and a hireling-a man even bigger than the axe-man upstairs-trotted past, cussing and panting.

Abad’s friend had a crossbow. Not a big fat Army-issue Mauser, but a sleek black rig narrow enough to slip easily through doors and poke around corners. Probably had a killing range of only thirty feet, but that’s just fine for the odd bit of murder in our better stately homes.

We all held our breath. Mama’s hex showed me faces in the walls but was quiet while Abad and his crossbow-fancying friend passed.

We waited until the sound of their passage and the last faint glow from the lamp they carried was gone, and then I took the widow’s hand and we darted down the stairs. She moved well, and the soft-soled shoes she’d chosen were as quiet as my socks. And at least her customary black garb let her blend in well with the shadows.

At the foot of the stairs, I listened, heard only cries and moans. I led the widow to the shadowed alcove by