The adults didn’t get the time to appreciate what he’d said, because a giant shadow blocked the moon. Carolina, her father and Sarah had their backs to the cliff and didn’t see the giant vulture as it rose from below, riding up on the wind.
The mammoth bird carried a twenty foot wing span, had a head the size of a Volkswagen, blazing red eyes the size of tires, a five foot, black beak and its red eyes were fixed on Carolina.
“ No,” Harry screamed, jumping from his crouch. He shot forward, grabbed the knife out of John Coffee’s hand and dove over the cliff onto the great bird. He hugged the vulture around the neck, with his head under the beak and sliced the knife across the giant bird’s throat.
Arty’s hands tightened on the gun as they fell to the rocks below, with old Harry’s warrior scream mingled with the shrieking squawk of the vulture. Arty closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. He pictured Harry riding the bird to his diving death, silver hair blowing in the wind, gray eyes laughing, as he held on to the bird one handed, plunging the knife into its neck and head all the way till the rocky bottom.
Arty opened his eyes when the screaming and the shrieking stopped. Carolina was holding the ferret tight in her hands. Miss Sadler had an arm around Carolina’s father, helping him to stand, and once again the only sound in the clearing was the mournful chirping of that lonely cricket.
“ I gotta go,” Arty said.
“ Where?” John Coffee asked.
“ It’s between the houses. I saw the wolf carry it out, just before it changed into the old woman. I just figured out what it was.”
“ You’ll need rock salt and hot pepper.”
“ I got salt and cayenne pepper,” he said, turning to go.
“ Wait,” John Coffee said. Arty turned back around to see Carolina’s father drawing his good left arm around in front of himself, digging into the right pocket of his Levi’s. He pulled out a jar. “It’s gotta be rock salt,” he said, tossing a small plastic container to Arty, “Use your cayenne pepper, but use this, too. It’s a mixture, hot ground chili peppers and rock salt.”
Arty stuffed the container into his pocket along with the salt shaker and the cayenne pepper. He smiled at Carolina.
Now it was up to him.
Chapter Twenty
Arty turned and ran across the clearing. He saw Brad Peters and Ray Harpine when he reached the path. They’d been waiting.
“ That’s what you want to kill?” Brad said. The two boys had been watching and had seen everything. Arty made an instant decision.
“ Wanna help?”
“ Yeah,” Brad said.
“ Take this and follow me,” Arty tossed the shotgun to Brad. He didn’t have to look back to know that Brad was running right behind him, holding the shotgun out in front of himself, like a soldier, as they jogged down the path. Brad was a bully, but Arty never thought he was a chicken.
He was able to move faster without the weight of the heavy gun. He used his hands to whisk aside branches, as he slipped and slid down the hill. Once, he fell on his backside, but he was able to push himself up without tumbling, and all the time he heard Brad chugging away behind. Arty used his hands and arms as much for balance as for obstacle clearance. Brad had no choice but to take the flinging branches in the face, but he kept on, without falling, without faltering and without complaining.
At the bottom of the hill they burst out of the woods, running three abreast across the baseball diamond, Arty in the middle, Brad to his right, Ray to his left. Arty saw the police car as they crossed center field. Its lights were flashing. It stopped and Arty saw someone get out.
“ It’s your dad,” Arty said, between breaths.
“ Yeah,” Ray answered.
“ Tell him about the clearing. They need help.”
“ All right.” Ray peeled off to the right to talk to his father as Brad and Arty turned left. Arty had never run so fast for so long. Every step was a shockwave to his system. He hoped Carolina was all right. He didn’t think the Nightwitch would be after her now that Arty was going for the skin, and she would know. As soon as it got back to the clearing and saw him gone, it would know and it would come.
“ Where we going?” Brad asked.
“ Carolina’s,” Arty said.
They turned on Fremont Avenue, running down the center of the street as one, their feet hitting the pavement in unison. Arty snatched a look at Brad and noticed the determined set of his jaw and the white knuckles holding on to the shotgun. Sweat was dripping down the side of Brad’s face and Arty felt again the sweat dripping down his own back.
The boys started drawing strength from each other as they passed Big and Tiny’s Mini Market and turned right again. Two blocks to go, then a left and halfway down the block and they would be there. Arty started to pick up the pace and like a mind reader, Brad responded.
Slap, slap, slap, their driving feet echoed thorough the night. One block gone and the rain started. A gullywomping, gutterfilling downpour mingled with driving pellets of November hail that stung when they scored, but still the boys ran on, splash, splash, splash through the blinding, driving rain.
And, still moving as one, they hung the left onto Lark Lane and sprinted toward the dark area in the center of the block. The streetlights were still out. Did they get here first? Would he have time to find the skin? Or were they too late? Was it waiting? Were they going to die?
“ Here.” Arty stopped in the center of the street in front of Carolina’s house. They were panting like dying race horses, dripping wet and fighting the chilling cold.
Arty tried to wipe some of the water from his eyes, as he moved from the street, to the sidewalk, to the center of Carolina’s front lawn. The rain started to fall even harder, with a thunderous din that made it hard to see and harder to hear. He looked at the bushes covering the place between the houses, the place he’d seen the wolf with that bag. The place where the crate under the window disappeared from. The place with the bushes way in back, by the fence. The place where he hoped to find the skin of the witch that can’t die.
Arty moved his face close to Brad’s, so he could be heard above the rain and he looked into his dark eyes and saw a flicker of fear. Brad had seen the Nightwitch in action up at the clearing, but he was here, standing beside him, panting and gasping for breath in the rain, when most people would be long gone.
“ I gotta go in there,” Arty said, pointing to the area between the two houses.
Brad nodded.
“ If it beat us here, then it’s inside waiting and I’m a goner, so when I go in there you count to ten, and if I don’t yell out that it’s okay, you take off out of here.”
Brad nodded again.
“ If I yell out it’s okay, then you gotta cover me. It’s gonna wanna get in there and get me, and you gotta stop it, okay?”
Brad nodded twice.
“ You only got five shots.”
“ Yeah, I know,” Brad said.
“ All right,” Arty said. He turned to the area between the house and crouched down onto his knees to crawl through the bushes.
“ Hey, Farty Arty,” Brad called out from the center of the lawn, and Arty turned. Brad was smiling, holding the shotgun with his right hand and giving him the thumbs up sign with his left. “I’ll keep it out,” he said through the rain. “You can count on me.”
And for the first time, he wasn’t ashamed of being called Farty Arty. In fact, the way Brad said it, he kind of liked it. It wasn’t a name to put him down anymore, now it was a nickname and it had character.
