The Inquisitor

                                                                                   I




           In 1820 the catholic church dissolved the office of Grand Inquisitor. Gerónimo Castillón y Salas owned the last office position and his inquisitors earned archbishop status. Others faded into obscure churches or left for distant lands. Only one inquisitor kept the crusade against witchcraft alive. The pope excommunicated him, and Dukes of Europe warned their knaves to beware services offered by the rogue Inquisitor, Horatio Del Castile.

            A Prince from high mountain castle marched his retainers into Basque Country. They found him in the cliffsides overlooking the wild horses in the grasses below. No clouds protected them from the sun. Hawks cried and lifted from their nests, and circled around the sun. Heat waves dried the grass the inquisitor’s Lipizzan chewed. The horse lapped flies eating cuts over its nose. Horatio heard other horses, Sweat dripped his palms. The tools melted in his hands. Probes tickered with the crossbow in his lap. Gears and pins tipped. Screws dropped to the grass. Horatio took his hat off and let the sun light flood the project.

The shadow of the prince and his retainers blocked the sun. Horatio put his crossbow down and faced them.

         “Is this it?” The Prince asked him.

          “Now isn’t the time, my liege. Repairs-”

          The retainers in armor carrying live muskets rode to his weapon and carried it over. The            Prince asked for an arrow to fire.

         “Repairs are needed-”

         The prince whispered to the other retainer, so he rode over and grabbed the holster of bolts from Horatio’s belt. The hawk fly rings around the sun. Even the retainers when close by gasped with each breath. Horatio buttoned his coat up. His collar tightened as the prince molested his crossbow.

          “I want to fire it.” He spun the loose wheels on the end of the limbs. The free wires dangled down the prince’s coat. He loaded a bolt into the shaft, rose the stock to his shoulder and fire the bolt four feet forward. It grounded on the rear fletching. The Prince sighed and gave the crossbow and the arrows to the retainer and whispered for him to return them.

Horatio put his hat back on and let shade obscure the sunlight from his leathered lips. He took his weapon and arrows back. “’It’s broken. I’m fixing it.”

           The retainers rifled his clothes and bags, threw every out, then went back.

           The prince and his horses left, scoffing “it's not him”. Horatio waited for them to vanish over the mountains, then made a few more adjustments. The hawk still circled the sky. He screwed the wheels back on and ran the wires through. He rose it to his shoulder, steadied his eye until it felt like glass, and fired an arrow over the cliff towards the sun. The hawk cry stopped and its feathers fell down to the wild stallions fighting below. The arrow struck a rock at the far side. The hawk glided unhinderd.




                                                                             II




               Far across the ocean, years later, a pyre of hey and timber erected apart from an isle of buildings constructing the village of Vigilance- where the town preacher, and the owners of the land and their sons gathered.

              Someone watched from the steeple of the church. Two strong sons carried the saloon maid to the post. As they watched silently mobbed among the pyre. Four burned stakes still simmered from the previous few nights. The something caught his attention. A gust coming down the road. A racing horse galloped in a cloud of dust. Its Its back legs kicked blown engines, its front hooves kicked up blades of trampled trail. Riderless, yet weighed down with a saddle and bags. With irrepressible determination it dowsed past the still windmills, disentombed wagons sat wheelless out by a massive barn with wide open doors filled with white, rock hard corn kernels that not even the scouring birds tried eating.

            The town came close, so did the smell of its ashy roads and bubbling wells. The noxious air ensnared the horse by the nostrils, and it stood up by its back legs and capsized. It rolled into the sleet washed ditch.

             The inquisitor reached into the ditch and took the reigns back, and wrenched the horse back to the road. It resisted his grasp, and pulled him back the way they came. His ribs spread apart with each horse force, and blood spilled into his mouth from some pain deep between his internal organs. The horse lifted again on back legs. Horatio rose from the ground. His head rocked with lingering pain. Under his skull stars shined and rang out his ears. A fog covered his vision, and the reigns slipped from him when he wondered if he held the right horse. It sped six steps then sprinted to his squire safe past the magic mark painted on the barn door.

            Horatio glanced at the anti-hex. Bells and shouting rang from the village. The month of June baked hotter than in basque country, but the closer he came to this place the more vapor froze as it rose from the mud, and even flakes of snow swept over the barren rows of toiled earth.

          The squire tried to pull the horse back to its master, but Horatio called on him to let the Lippizan go. “Just as the exiles told of- There is witchcraft here...”

           Horatio held the back of his head and pressed his mouth shut.

         “Are you okay?” The squire rushed over to him.

         “No. But it won’t take long, either way.”




                                                                                III

            The sheriff and the one deputy that stayed used the ropes to bound her arms and legs to rubar in the stake. She kicked and bit, to the silent, white terror of the gaunt bystanders. One of the eldest sons broke into tears but conspirators placed hands on his back and shushed his emotions. The saloon maid’s elbows struck the jaw of the sheriff but with flacid force. He slowed because he ate no less nor more than she, but carried her up the pyre, convinced that they starved one burning away from bounty.

              The preacher condemned her to god’s forgiveness- hell for all eternity- and sheriff took the torch from the paling deputy and hurled it onto the dry hey. Smoke rose and crackled. It smelled like roosters in spring. The maid looked among the shrinking bystanders. The farmers stood stern, empty of thought and feeling like the silos they labored around. Their wives shook, and their sons and daughters watched in curious amusement as the preacher affirmed to them: “We voted on this. All of us!” His finger pointed out those in the small mass who contributed the idea. They voted on everything since the mayor and his family died. Their corpses floated in the well.

            The saloon maid struggled to undo their petty knots, but the smoke choked her. Heat needles tickled under her feet. The smoke only now took color. Small flames spread. Strength pulse abound in one limb at a time. She dreamt in jail that the day would be like falling asleep after a long fight but her stomach hurt worse than ever, and her sickly skin and famished marrows tingled for safe ground. Never did she feel more alone, never did she forecast the suitors she served alcohol for and sang to baring testimony to her immolation. She looked among their faces, each she knew from childhood, but one stranger stood behind them all.

             The Inquisitor pushed through them, with his squire keeping the locals from grabbing him from behind. The farmers saw military insignia on the Squires jacket, and left him move freely.

              Horatio took the torch and stomped out the flames. He told the squire to set her free, and take her to a cell. The preacher, the sheriff and half the farmers protested. Horatio did not waste much time counting. Eleven people remained in the village. He looked over them, and introduced himself.

           “I am Head Inquisitor of the Order of Jacque de Molai, Horario Del Castile. I came to Cuba in 1824. In 1830, I sailed to Mexico and hunted the remaining Aztec sorcerers, and stayed there until I met Kalister, my squire. With his help I was able to find the blood necromancers, and deduce that they were no magicians- but mere pagans practicing pseudo-sciences.  I’ve come to find your witch.”

          “Our witch is under penalty-.” the priest said.

          “Did this woman build her own home?” Horatio asked them. “Can she do arithmetic?”

          “No, no-” everyone murmured in consensus.

           “Then disclose how she mastered the arcane?”

           “Satan gave her those powers.”

           “If Satan is responsible, then she is absolved.”

            “She invited Satan”

            “Which only confirms Satan’s responsibility in the matter, but make no mistake holy man- this the work of no devil. I will find your witch. Send her back to a cell, Kalister.”

             “Wait, wait- no!” the maid protested.

            “The Ser knows that you are innocent, but they don’t. Stay in confinement- if the witch’s curse weakens, they will have to free you.” The squire took her to the cattle car sitting alone in the weeds and left her inside with food and water he carried with him. She  found inside fresh apples, deer jerky, salted taffy, and much more. She devoured with her hands in her mouth, chewing her tongue to ribbons, her stomach applauded her and electricity powered through her muscles. He chewed something hard, and reached in to pick out a fingernail. She held her hands to the light through the vent overhead, and saw her fingers riddled with bite marks.




                                                                                  IV

            The Inquisitor asked the sheriff to disclose who accused the first witch. The sheriff told him the priest did. The Inquisitor pressed his hand under his ribs to suppress the gulping pain from dropping his posture. He showed his crossbow to the farmers.

           “I built this myself. The wires spin these wheels, launching the arrow with power to rival a firearm, but unlike musket balls, I can aim this to shoot precisely what I aim for.

          “I used this in Monterey where Kalister and I met, and in the siege I helped him infiltrate the city. I shook hands with Zachary Taylor, and was awarded honorary Americanship, and I’ve since hunted every great American beast - The indeferable Grizzly! See its fur is my coat-  and even the Bald Eagle I’ve slain by my crossbow, its feathers flesh my arrows. And from you, ploughmen, I will need service to capture this witch.”

         He turned to the sheriff. “This your town -Correct?”

        “Sure is.”

       “I brought enough food and water. But be slow, it needs to be distributed to everybody.” He dropped his saddle bags. “You know every man, woman, child in this town?”

       “That’s my job.”

       “You see them all outside here today? There is no single absent person?”

       “Hard to tell, once the crops didn’t come in, more and more started moving.”

       “I’m well aware of the exiles. One referred to a school teacher that came here periodically. Do you know of any person like that?”

       The sheriff put his fingers in his vest. “Yeah, a teaching lady comes through once a month for four months.”

        “I see no schoolhouse.”

        “They use the-”

        “I know this man-” the priest jumped between them. “The pope excommunicated you. You came across the ocean to hide in shame, not hunt witches.”

           Horatio rested his chin, but looked back to everyone.“I am no slave to any pope, and I refused to abandon my order of inquisition. Despite my dedication, not because of it, they desanctified my honorable name.  Yet all lords of Europe know it and call on me to dispatch deceitful conjurers in their countries. I tell you all the same as the highest king and statesman, and by my confession, I am far from a heavenly being. All I know of witchcraft comes from my own practice. I sacrificed my everlasting soul to for the crusade.”

         “Who do you think the witch is?” the priest asked him.

          Horatio cast his arm to the expansive leagues of flat mud fields. “There aren’t many places to hide here. I need all of you to stay in one place, and remain visible.”

         The squire came back, and the inquisitor told him to tie them all to fence posts. Immediate uproar revolted from the farmer’s sons who pointed guns at the squire and demanded he drop the rope. Horatio looked to their frightened parents, and told them, “No one here is guilty yet. But since there is no jail, I can find this witch, but I will need to keep everyone detained. For the love of god, have them lower their weapons.”

          The farmers told their sons to disarm. The deputy and the sheriff kept their guns, and the squire did not ask for them. “You want us to get tied up too?”

         “I trust you two will tie yourselves up. I’ll start with you two so we can scour the countryside for hutches or holes for rituals before nightfall.”

          “No damn way-” The sheriff barked. “I’m no witch. Anyone can tell you that.”

          “I can’t.”

         The sheriff tried to gesture to his deputy but he deputy held his arm and tighten a shackle around his wrist, and reached around to take his gun.

          The Inquisitor scanned the row of people squatting against wooden posts, then looked to the steeple of the church where he thought he saw a hanging leg before the platinum flashes descended and blinded his eye. He looked to the ground, and reached into his coat to put on a pair of glasses. He pretended to read something in his journal, squinting and pinching the pages to hard that the paper peeled from the binding. He put his glasses back. The squire noticed he stood dazed, quietly staring past them to the asunder beyond. One eye drifted towards the squire the other stayed on the villagers and slowly drifted over.

           The squire drilled into him with concern. The Inquisitor held out his crossbow and arrows. The squire took it as the Inquisitor rested on a stack of straw and wound back the wheels, tightened the wires, wound the crank, and loaded an arrow into the shaft.

           The Inquisitor nodded and the squire distributed hoods over the heads of the villagers. He slouched over, the pain rippling across his torso and wringing his organs. He stopped swallowing the blood and spat into a white cloth. As the squire covered each person, the inquisitor explained: “I know because of the sheriff's testimony that one of you is the witch. Since there is no ransom offered, it means that this curse is placed malevolently. Once the malevolence is ended, the curse will end too.”

         The squire finished the hoods. The villagers mumbled and bit at the covers. Some of them even screamed and kicked. The priest sat still and silent.

        The squire came back over and handed Horatio the loaded crossbow.

        The Inquisitor started with the holy man, and pointed the crossbow at his heart and fired the bolt. The tip broke through the fence post it fell over onto the body. “I came here to destroy superstition- in all of its twisted forms.”

       He let Kalister load the next bolt.

        “I will admit to the witch, I’ve only met one other real witch…” Jang... “I grew up with a small family in a village not too much unlike this one…” Jang… Slump...Gargle... “My brother brings home a basket of apples that he said a nice traveler gave him. I hate apples and didn’t eat them…”  Jang... “One by one they fall sick... Worms…”  Jang... “crawled out of their bodies instead of vomit or mucus... and they died shortly after. I dug graves for them all, and buried them…” Jang...

        “I stood there and cried for days, until I noticed from the dust in the wind the presence of an old woman and a bush of red fruit, not apples, but shaped as such, but only then did I notice the smooth bottom, peachlike…” Jang... “She asked if I wanted one…” Jang... “and when I asked her what they were, she told me they used to grow on earth long before, and that primitive humans…” Jang...  used the fruit to poison their spears and arrows.” Jang, clank, spurt, spurt, spurt... “Her cackles haunt me to his day…”

Jang.




                                                                                  V

            The dead villagers kept the watcher in the steeple compelled to stay up in the cold belfry. The same force that made him watch them burn the schoolteacher. The Inquisitor took more glances towards him but the priest’s son stayed put. He saw nothing- only suspected, or he’d already be inside, yet the priest’s son did not come up with these ideas on his own. His hands bent backwards, his tongue out swole his jaw and stuck out, and a scoop dipped into the top of his cranium, leaving a soft cone shaped space in the center of brain. He drooled and waved at the inquisitor until he shot his father in the heart.

            After that he watched the Inquisitor carry out the executions, and rubbed the paper the school teacher gave him. She taught him one thing, and one thing only- this spell. He rubbed the paper until he saw the words transpire from blank pages. When he read them, he remembered why he wanted to rub the paper. His mother taught it to him so that for the brief periods he spent with her, he’d be enchanted with intelligence far beyond his own. The words on the page spelled his name. When he read it aloud, he knew exactly what the inquisitor came here to do. He peeked out again to see him staggering to his feet with the squire at his side, pointing to describe buildings and plotting.

           He only had a few moments before the spell stopped working and he’d be drooling over his feet again. He climbed down the rope, down the steeple, through the hole in the nexus. He closed the cover, and descended to the basement. Under a rug he found the trap door to the sub basement. Taking shallow stairs to soft ground, he walked among mildew and fungus until he came to a plank over a pit that opened in the earth. Shrill wind hushed from the crevasse. He crossed safely, and pulled the plank over to his side. Then unlocked all the chains on his door and entered. His bed lay in one corner, and his alter in the other. Not even his father dared to enter the chamber after seeing with what sophistication his relics and idols aligned to. Animal bones hung from the ceiling by grass roots, and ancient pages deciphering the rings and circles made by undying wizards long before human civilization irrigated its first crops.

           He brushed the pages, and felt the voice of the wizards within calling him to read the words on the parchment. He heard the school teacher’s voice and his father’s voice inside. He saw the horns and snouts of a gorgeous monster emerge from shadows and hands from all corners of his chamber ensnared him, fingernails pierced his body, and with them hooked he felt the entire town from the well water to the snow in the ditches.




                                                                                 VI




          The Inquisitor he coughed, and held his ribs in place with a hard fist. The sky dimmed. The squire scraped frost from the crossbow shaft. The curse remained.

         “They were hiding someone. I can’t remember. I saw someone, but now…”

           The squire took the crossbow from his arms before it fell to the ground. The Inquisitor slurred his words and repeated his orders, stepping forwards, oblivious to the deathwish written for them. He felt the back of his skull, and let it throb against his glove. He his focus on where he wanted to go until the first flash of lightning and crack of thunder shook the dust from the ground. Horatio felt his brain pulse against his ear drums. Fog and silver crystals snapped in his eyes. Another lightning flash whipped over the sky and landed a bolt into the church steeple. Sparks blasted and poured over him.

           The Inquisitor looked around for a wagon, he called for the squire to search for the wagon that hit him. He held his head up and dropped the crossbow. It hit the ground, wheels and pins bounced away. The squire rushed to pick the weapon up, and hurried to repair it. He scooped up the parts before, the squire dropped the crossbow onto the ground as he tore his clothing apart, screaming. His flesh bulged as bullet wounds opened and old slugs broke through his bones and skin. He lay there gurgling and bleeding.

          The Inquisitor looked at the church, to the saloon, to the smoking limestone  mines, to the flying barns on fire in the sky. The ground beneath him trembled and tipped over so that he rolled back over onto the back of his head. Red lightning flashed a cage over him, and when it faded he felt the wound again. A squishy bump swole through his hair tangles, and it trembled with each pulse like a second heart. Blood soaked into his glove and ran down the back of his neck.

           He heard only piercing metal shaving against razors. He bit dirt. Trampled apart by years of exposure, his face rested on rocks as he reached for the crossbow but it kept slipping away. He had to stand back up to catch it, but when he did the sky bounced, and the saloon laughed at him. He almost had it but the well bubbled, and the red water seeped from between bricks. The naked dead bodies of the mayor and family crawled out and walked into the plains. They waved at him as they crossed. Each one held a red peach.

           The Inquisitor pounced on top of the crossbow. His fingers shook and no matter how he squinted he didn’t see the small details. He glasses shattered in his pocket, he ran his fingertip through the shaft and felt the coldness and crank and shuddered. He felt around the ground for missing parts, then he set one arrow in the shaft. He cranked it, and left the tiny pieces behind. He marched towards the church, with its charms and circles, the only building that remained unwarped.

          The Inquisitor braced himself. The doors resisted him. Barely awake he found the handles. When he grabbed them his arms firmed, and he felt the high doors loom over him. Its shadow darkened and broadened. The door fell towards him, and with an angry reprisal he shoved it back with his legs and to his suspense he pressed past the doors and stood in the nexus.

         He stepped over mismatched boards into the church where he saw someone standing with outstretched arms and smoke in the shape of human body. He almost fired but then stumbled backwards. The floor moved from under him, and his feet slipped.

         A rear pew nearly caught his head, but his weight swept back around and his maintained balance. The crossbow pressed against his broken ribs. The shadow turned and he saw the features of someone young, but deformed and malnourished. With no expression but for glazed futility, the minor drooled and offered a friendly “hellow”, but it failed to warm the Inquisitor’s heart. He rose the crossbow head, he hoped it pointed somewhere frontwise. His arms shook from exerting the door. He let the weapon sink to his waist before he pulled the trigger. The minor barked and squealed, swine herds lead to knife points, he limped in circles holding the bolt piercing the back of his knee.

          The crossbow fell apart in his hands. The inquisitor staggered towards the witch. He followed him down the stairs to the basement, following the blood in the cement he found himself in the dank of the sub basement. The witch stood on a bracket between himself and a gateway where six horned shadows stood beckoning with presented arms and battle banners. The witch hobbled, his blood drops falling into the howling pit. He reached out for them, groaning in agony between his calls for help.




                                                                                  VII




        The maid awoke from her cuisine coma. She didn’t sleep long, only a nap from eating all the bread that the squire kept in the sack. She still had plenty left over, and as she listened to the robins sing summer songs she noticed sweat trickling down her temples. Wind flooded the cart and kept her cool. Someone opened the door.

        She walked back to the village. Ravens flocked o the hill top. More than she ever saw in one place before. The ground still felt cold, but softened. By the well she saw Kalister laying with his arm fractured and blossoms of blood dried on his jacket, but no wounds inflicted that she saw. His eyes remained sharp, and his jaw unhinged in frozen torment. She used the sack he gave her to cover his face.

         She entered the church, and found someone she’d never seen before collapsed on the altar, holding his own severed foreleg. A bloody arrow lay before him in light cascading from the window. The pieces of the Inquisitor's crossbow lay scrambled along the floor.

        In the shade of the barn outside of the village, she found the Inquisitor resting. He looked asleep, with his legs folded and head lowered under his hat. She didn’t know to kiss his cheek or flee. So soundless and still he remained. She held a box containing all she recovered from his fallen crossbow.

       She bit into a red peach, and when she finished it, she held the intact crossbow. She considered killing him, but when he lifted his head… with one eye open, red but still inspired, blinking unbroken.

The Piano Player

Back in 1925 many musicians lived in the Missouri Delta and they hoped to obtain success and esteem. One such man was "Fingers" Brown, who grew up in the slums of St. Louis, and would sneak into club alleys to hear the pianos through the back door crack. He returned every night, and decided he too would be a great pianist. He took a job at a local slaughter house where he worked until he could afford a piano. The first stores he went to refused to sell to him, but at last he found a blind man's traveling shop- the blind man knew Brown, but never explained how, but agreed that Brown ought to have a the piano he so desired since boyhood- so he gave him one, but warned that he would never play piano again. Fingers found it to be the most beautiful piece of gleaming wood and vibrating wires that he ever witnessed. He took it home at once without any further inquiry. He forgot all about the strange warning, and he played the piano each day until his finger tips callused and bled on the keys.

The next morning the St. Louis police stormed into his home, claiming to have recovered a piano stolen from John F Queeny's estate. The police coerced his confession- adding on other charges such as attempted rape to burglary. The judge sent him to prison with a life sentence. But Brown never stopped playing piano. In his cell, he etched the keys into the wall and spend his days tapping away at the concrete tomb. He died from a stab wound and was buried in the prison potter's field. Yet his fellow inmates never knew that he was gone- because each night they heard those tapping keys against the hallow walls.

The Dog Barks at Midnight

In 1911, smoking vigilantes -self preferred "the Guardians"- assembled under the empty water tower. Within, Claws scraped on finish. Creatures chewed on the lunar moths. Outside, the ring of chaperones worked in harmony. With each club bash, the victim bit into the rope they gave him, and they grunted pulling the heavy bat away, respired with steam evaporating from their collars, glowing in the sterile cold moonlight.

One struck the dark and the club planted in the ground. filth blossomed between them. The victim shook from the crack he heard. They used an oar.

The vigilante swore, blinded by the night, held it out. The fracture down the middle widened and he dropped the weapon. The victim wriggled over weeds, grains of dirt rained from the folds of his suit, the canvas over his face soaked up moist dust. The binds around his hands tangled with weeds and roots. He tried to crawl away, but the leash struggled against the water tower leg. 

they tied a second leather tang around an open pipe and left him hanging with his feet inches from the ground. When midnight came, their sinuses congested, their lashes frosted. Even the beer they sipped jingled with frozen substance. One vigilante boiled water over a fire. He poured it into a jar of whiskey and syrup.

The moon shined but a hurl of wind drew purple curtain its gleam and the fire burned blue and melted the water pot. Steam and wet ashes splashed, and they stood in collapsing darkness, lit not by stars but by staring eyes in the  overgrowth around them.

The water tower tapped and moaned. Steam gurgled from the open pipe. The rodents scampered to the roof. The hefty creatures climbed down fallen branches. The smell of sulfur hissed. Ancient water dripped from the pipe onto the victim. His shutters agitated his wounds, torn clothing hung in loops. Each drop embedded a dozen ice needles in the back of his head. He hung there for two sunrises.

Two hunters shared the valley, but found the deer fled. Together they found a path in the corn field made by deer feeding on the corn. Believing it to be where the game went, they followed it around to the old water tower where birds picked at the corpse. The water stopped dripping, but the water cased a crown of ice around his head. One hunter ran off to find help, the other watched the tang snap, and the skull shatter with the ice. 

Just this year, in Elkhead, Nebraska, the country treasurer- Zard Stihl- lost his job after five years for racketeering. He spent one year in prison, then on the day of his release came to the shack of the old hermit that lived nearby the river dock. Signs reading “trespassers will be shot with or without persecution” greeted him, along with spiked chains hidden along the gravel driveway.

 The treasurer stopped for a short visit, then spent some time in the country side, then slept in a motel. In the morning he got into a taxi to take him to the airport. Instead the taxi pulled down a country road. The driver forced him out at gun point, where they waited for another car to pick them up.

Five vigilantes drove him to a sow shower, where they stripped him naked, ran him under the shower faucets, and in silence, under red hoods, in sequence, each cut sections of him away and packed the pieces in drink coolers covered in the trunk, and rinsed the rest of him down the drain, and let the swine lick the splatter from their clothes before burning them and changing back into day clothes. By the time they finished, as planned, night fell. The temperature sank. They tossed the contents of the coolers into the river, and listed for each segment to splash before tossing down the next. Snow flakes fluttered but melted in the ditches.

They drove away, and morning came after a long quiet night. The tired old hermit woke up every dawn because the ghost of his hunting dog still wanted to be let outside. He let his hand hang off the bedside. The ghost licked his finger tips, and he awoke to a thunder of rapturing pistols far away, carried by the wind through his window. So he took her out, and found himself lingering the river side further each morning into the swamps of the flooded beds.

Cranes ate trout flapping in the receded pools. His breath fogged his glasses, but is dog kept lapping his fingers, until they warmed again.He used the blood in his extremities to wipe the haze from his lenses, then found something sharp sticking from the mud. A metal plate, with red starch and waxy kernels crusting one surface.

The old hermit didn’t assume that he found the piece of metal the doctors sewed into the scalp for the country treasurer after his car crash a decade before. He thought it some odd fragment split from a truck for some garbage from the river bottom. He didn’t think any human living or otherwise came down this far. The sand hardened, and the river banks froze. That's where he found the lower jaw in the mud, with ivory dentures intact. Then he wondered if the fibers on the plate came from human ligaments. The sun peeked through morning clouds and shined against the blood droplets on the ice. The bridge loomed overhead. He found strips of fat with skin still tattooed, radial bones washed clean by the water, and two coolers inhabited by feral river pests.

He came beneath the bridge where he saw the fog dissipate over one lane cleared into the corn rows. A perfume honey scented decay hung over his head. He stepped inside. Deer tracks and red cobs carpeted the path. It twisted in waves. He found himself exhausted and confused, but he sat and relaxed, watched the sky until he saw the southbound birds flying, and he'd find his way again.

He went around basins of erosion and creeks where empty pesticide barrels lay submerged. A dead semi truck sat in the grass. A rusted chemical trailer lay off before the rest of the path. The old man walked through the trailer door, and crawled out the hole on the other end. The rest of the path lead him to an iron shack on small property. The morning cold dried his mouth and hands, but no smoke rose from the chimney. No lights warmed the interior.

The old hermit felt the dog lap his fingers again. The front door remained locked. The keys still hung in the truck ignition. Both its doors hung open. The engine died long before, but still steamed.

Around the other side he found the vigilantes hanging from the porch.

Rumors lasted for years, and gossip lingers to this day of spirits that haunt the flood grounds. But no one listens to the old hermit when he tells them, “Zard Stihl hired the old mob from 1911.”

He knew because he came to his trailer one night, and told him. “I know your the last living one." The hermit stayed silent until the treasurer offered rewards. He gave the hermit  city documents declaring his home wiretap free along with an unattended checking account in accommodation for his secrets, then vanished to the old water tower to drink the cursed water.

The old hermit didn’t bother arguing with folk, nor did he try hiding from the ghosts that barked into his windows at at night and awoke him from shaking nightmares. He heard it dripping even in his sleep. The dog licked his fingers warm one last time, and the old hermit let it take him to the water tower where the "guardians" waited for him. 

Unscathed

The day came at last. He waited for a decade, and waited no longer. He hurled everything he thought he needed. Socks, suits, two suits, no just one- socks, lots of socks. He slammed his case, and put on a hat. The rain stopped and silver blades of light painted the street opaque. He took the umbrella anyway, and went to the kitchen. Hunger pains erased his taste for coffee, but he didn’t want the doughnut left out from the night before. Someone took a bite out of it, and he doubted it his wife ate it, because he hadn’t seen Harriette eat since their son disappeared ten years prior to the day. No once changed the calendar since the last of the last of the kitchen staff left. He opened a door and took out the scissors. He sliced his bank cards, debit and credit cars, licenses and sos card. He worked it all out when he first decided to leave. He tossed the pastry out the window since he didn’t touch trash bags, and let the suitcase lead him to the front of the house. He smelled her fumes, her smokes, and heard her chants through the glowing  door at the end of the hall. “Azorozar... Keeper of doomed souls… hidden by unopened gates...Come home, come home, come home… Azorozar…”

He hurried to the front door, each step his untied laces slapped the boards. His heart wanted to burst from his ribs and roll back the other way. Her father’s words still tightened around his neck. He told her how she spent all hours in their son’s room,  speaking to it, “whatever that thing is-”.

The old man own frowned, his skin burned to last layer of remnant melanin.

“-But it isn’t just these phantasms, she doesn’t eat, she pulled the rest of her hair out...and then I found her teeth in the sink. She needs more help than I can provide.”

The old farmer beckoned his maid, who looked no older than fourteen, to his side, “I got somethin to say,” he coughed to her, oxygen tubes in his nose fogged. Tanks kept him alive, and pills kept his heart strong for years to come. He whispered something into her ear. Efraim noticed that her expression bore an unfaltering severity that remained static even as her bangs cut into her eyes, as if foreseeing outcomes of events she’s yet to learn of.

She crossed her hands, and came to Efraim. She poured him more water. Ice drummed against the glass. She whispered in his ear, “he says, when he was a boy- strange foreigners moved into the county. They spoke strange, and sang strange songs, didn’t celebrate christmas or july fourth. Soon after, all the crops failed, all the animals died, except for those of the strangers. And then he saw one of them flying naked across the night sky, lit up by moonlight with a trail of dancing animals behind them.  He told his parents. The next day they burned the whole family. Afterwards, the sun shined and the crops grew again. It was like a second christmas for them all. If you send Harriette to an institution, or leave her abandoned, he will burn her too. If you do her any harm, you will face the law’s judgement.”

Efraim left remembering one thing Harriette told him before they married, that she remembered having several brothers and sisters as a child, but the number narrowed down to one brother and one sister by the time she graduated high school, and neither one showed up to her wedding to Efraim. She was 23, he turned 47. They had one son, cliven. Efraim owned several buildings in downtown Omaha, and The Midwest American Shopping mall on the outskirts of Falls Bluff, in between Highway 73, and highway 159, where his father-in-law lived. In agreement for consent, he moved there too.

Cliven disappeared after his eleventh birthday. He held the hands of harriette and Efraim as they walked through the wall on its advent opening. Tourist came to the town from Omaha, Kansas City, and even a few from as far as Vancouver stopped at his mall. Many other highway travellers stopped along their journeys. Locals didn’t come to his mall. They didn’t need a kitchenware store that sells pot lids for three hundred dollars. They didn’t need a clothing store for spoiled rich girls spending daddy’s money, they didn’t need a clothing for for spoiled rich girls spending “daddy’s” money either, nor one for burglars that sold balaclavas and shirts designed to catch falling body hairs, nor one for cowboys, nor one for crossdressed mannequins, nor one for cross dressing cowboys.

Efraim wanted to see the hardware store. Each floor panel acme from a different breed of wood, with the cheapest along the outside, with the rarest rainforest wood at the center of the store. He admired howed immaculate the wood cutter sliced the logs used for racks. Cliven ran his hand down the racks. They felt smoother than glass. As his parents gushed over the handiwork of perfectly aligned lap joints, the toy store caught his eye. A plush duck winked at him from the display window. He reminded his parents over and over of the toy store’s existence. Efraim ignored the tugging with annoyed silence, but Harriette smiled at him. “We can just look.”

To cliven, the store fell open for him like a never ending garden. He wanted everything inside, even the things that his father and mother purchased for him already. Efraim wanted the paint shaker he saw even though he needed nothing painted and groaned when he saw his son’s face light up at the world enveloping him. He hated spoiled children, and he told Cliven to put back every single thing he pulled from a shelf. Cliven put them all back feeling knives of shame that his father did not admire these machines of imagination as much as he did machines in the hardware store. Yet it only made him desire them more. “Nothing made in China” Efraim made the excuse. Then Cliven insisted that he choose his father a toy. He marched over to a small corner. Harriette followed him and looked at what he showed her.

“How about these?” Harriette showed Efraim puzzles of rings and iron keys interwoven. “These are domestic.”

Efraim inspected the metal, and the packaging. US Steel. He told Harriette that he wanted a paint shaker for Thanksgiving, and grabbed three more.  The clerk rang them up, but gave his card back. “The computer says its no good.”

“Try this one.”

“No dice.”

“This one…. This one…”

“These work everywhere else?”

“Of course.”

“Do you have any cash?”

“What?!”

He asked the clerk about credit since and as they negotiated Cliven widened the hole in the inside of his jacket. He lost his battle with composure. His mother looked deeply into her shopping bags. He didn’t know if he’d ever see another puzzle like this ever again, so he reached up the counter as his dad showed the clerk credentials that he owned the mall, took one of the puzzles, and stuffed it into his secret compartment. He kept clutching it.

“Oh really, Why didn’t you say so?” the clerk laughed.  For the first time Harriette noticed he looked a lot like a boy that went missing from her graduating class, but she never learned his name, so didn’t ask.“We have the real toys in the back.”

Harriette saw her son fidget. “Dearest, Cliven needs the commode.”

Efraim walked with his wife and son towards the gate, and dialed  the bank on his phone. Horses of exhilaration galloped through Cliven’s heart. He grasped the puzzle harder to make sure it didn't slip into the furthest recesses of his jacket.  His father yelled at someone. “-then why are my cards declined!” He kept demanding information as they came close enough to hear the traffic stream past. Cluttering steps, compressed conversations roared fast. The air smelled different. It smelled to Cliven, like a new puzzle, but the nearer he came to the blurring river of strangers the more he felt their eyes pressing  through his clothes to the contraband he hoped to smuggle free. A security guard in a white uniform browsed the snacks outside. Cliven never felt like such a fool in his life. They didn't care if they saw him take anything, because the guards stop shoplifters, not the workers. The guard just had to wait for him to walk out. Witch only feet from the gate Cliven made ten thousand wishes for the guard to leave. He prepared to toss it out before anyone saw him, and he’d claim he found it. Full proof. His mother tried to take his hand, but no matter how she tightened her grip around his forwarm he did not let go of the puzzle. They crossed the gate. The security scanners kept blinking. With one foot still in the store, Cliven prepared for a headone on collision, as he bit, swallowed his last spit, and lifted his foot from the store into the concourse. The scanner blinked and stayed silent.

The columns rose over Clivens’ head to the ceiling so high and dark he thought he no human, alive, not even ones with wings, could possibly get up there to clean it. The lights dangled overhead. One creaked and flickered. Cliven stood under its halo. He heard the whip crack of chain links splitting, and he looked up to see the cascading Erinyes.

Harriet and Efraim heard it too and both leapt out of its way. Harriette pulled her sons arm, but only managed to wring the puzzle from his grasp as Efrain pulled on the opposite arm. They let go as powder shot into their eyes. A shotgun blast sfittled the traffic.

But they found no boy under the fallen light. No blood, no fibers from his shirt nor rubber from his soles. Harriette still held the puzzle, and it strayed the last atom of his being. Police blocked highways and checked every passing car. The search followed the highways to the coasts, still they found no one. Investigators from Dallas, Chicago, LA, St. Louis, London, Moscow- Efraim even hired PIs that operated in the Caribbean, as well as former CIA agents that monitored drug and arms trafficking across Azerbaijan to watch airports around the world for his son. Each investigator reviewed the same footage, but only one thought it precise enough to drive to the scene that night.

After an eight hour ride, he arrived fatigued and hungry at the Mall’s empty parking lot. He looked over at the shining roofs of dilapidated factories. The power plant blew steam from its tower. The store opened at 8am, he looked at his watch. 630. The sun just rose. He walked through litter and to the door, where he hoped to see security or a janitor. No one bothered the mall, though it still looked as clean as the day the construction companies moved off. Even the front door opened for him as if never locked. He peeked inside, slid inside, and left after 25 minutes. The eight hour drive tired him out, but he left the mall gasping, his heart healthy enough to race him back to his car.

Harriette left town every week to shoot skeet. The investigator found her at the shooting ranges. her husband talked to him- she didn’t even know that an investigator still worked for them. He approached, “What kind of gun is that?” He asked her as she loaded shells. He slung a Remington 1110 over his back. A full box of shells sat by a trail of intact discs lay scattered about the grass.  

“Looks like you know exactly what gun it is.”

“It may be a Caesar Guerini, but I’ll have to hear it from you to believe it.”

“Yes, it is.” A visor kept the sun from stabbing her eyes.

“Wow. Here I was thinking only olympic athletes used those. You must be a talented sharpshooter. How many contests have you been in?”

“I dont compete.” she rigged a disc into her hand thrower., “Just… helps to get out in the morning.”

“I stopped after I got shot. Shot tore right through my body, missed all vital arteries. Just couldn’t stand much gunfire after that.”

She hurled the disc. It hummed over the tall grass. She fired. Gunpowder filled the air and blew over the grass. Pieces of clay rained. She rigged the next disc in.

“I hear you lost your boy... Terrible thing.”

She fired. Her disk landed in a bird’s nest. She turned and faced him with smoke spilling from the barrel.

He reached into the box, and handed her the next disc.

“Did you know your husband owes four hundred thousand dollars to twelve different criminal organizations?”

“He’s in business…”

“With these people: Vincent Cammarata, Capo of Greater St. Louis. Marco D'Amico Consigliere of Chicago-”

“You think we did it. Get in line.”

“No, I only suspect you little. Cops already have your phones and laptops. There’s not much more I could investigate. That leaves ones possibility that concerns me.” He reached into his pocket, and Harriet feared he’d pull out another slug, load his weapon and fire it at her before she gave up her trust on him. He did something far worse. He pulled out the puzzle of rings and keys.

“You broke into my home.”

“Garbage. Keep it, because if you ever find a sign of that boy again, you’ll need this to get to where he is… if I’m right.  I know a ...specialist. He calls himself “Ashgabat”. If I’m just getting word of this recently, then he’s known about it for weeks now. Better not let him have it. Whatever you do. Don’t let him have it. He told me about a case like this. A demon named Azorozar was trapped in the tomb of a powerful king. The tomb sat on top of a hill, and people saw the smoke from its funeral rituals from miles away. They didn’t even put a door on it- and no one ever tried to steal from it. The shepherds warned anyone unaware of the curse- Anyone that stole the treasure would be trapped there until the king came back from the dead and released them. I don’t think your son- or any of the others that have gone missing there- ever left.”

Further searches brought no results. Any suspect got out without trial. Efraim put plans in order to sell the house, and move away, with or without Harriette. She spent hours in Cliven’s bedroom, taking apart and reassembling his puzzle. Black suits came knocking on his door, and by the end of their short visit, he lost his buildings downtown to them.

No matter how he insisted, Harriette refused to leave Clivens room. He looked through the keyhole once to see her squeezing into his tiny clothes. “He’ll return,” she told him every time.

“No, no.” He wept to her. “Azorozar took him. I thought it would protect the store.”

“Azorozar will bring him back to us.” She told him.

He watched her habits change. She used to do things ladies her age did, but one night while Efrain slept his servant shook him awake and lifted him onto his shoulders, ran him through a haze of red smoke, to the front lawn where they both took in fresh air and choked. “Gas leak!” he explained “Where is the Mrs?”

Efrain told him to look in the child’s room, and the servant rushed back into the fumes blushing through the wallpaper. The paintings on the wall warped. Vapors rose from the vents. He thought only of smoking mines burying towns in soot. Reeking orbs glowed from the open doorways. Only one stayed closed in the dark hall, the space under the door it’s keyhole beamed crimson.

The door flexed against the frame. The plaster cracked. Inside he heard the Mrs cooing like a kindergarten teacher explaining snow to her young captives, but her words didn’t match her tone. The language she spoke jammed vowelless sequences with long, sighing breaths. “Z’r’z’r-j’ym’g’g, m’thr’ms.”

The servant called for her through the haze fuming from under the door, coughing and sweating, his intestines twisting and his stomach boiling, his vision blurred under stinging tears. The more of the fumes he breathed in, the more grains he tasted on his tongue boring cavities in his barred teeth.  He wrapped his tie around the handle of the door but the handle melted and burned through the floor. He called for the Mrs once again to stand away from the door. He opened doors for them, but in the military he piloted armored jeeps right through razor fences and kicked in compound doors. The frames bent, and the screws on the hinges popped out further with each flex of the wood. The servant kicked the hinges loose, and dropped two hundred and thirty pounds against the door. The  door broke inwards.

The smokes blinded the servant, but he saw the toys floating around the source of the light. The Mrs knelt besides a crude altar of her son’s favorite things, headed by a thick set of horns. The servant didn’t see her head, only her thin arms reach the puzzle to the altar. He stepped into the smothering exhaust crying “Mrs, are you hurt?” Her neck hung limp over her collarbone. Her head rested in her chest. Her spine relaxed backwards. She stayed from falling by ghostly suspensions. The servant tasted battlefield gases but never anything so glazed. He lifted her onto his back thinking that some terrible attack occurred. The servant needed better hold, so he took her arms and pried the puzzle from her.

The organs and blood from his body turned to the same fumes escaping from between floorboards. Green and yellow fumes burned leaking holes over his body.  The Mrs clutched the puzzle from of his trembling fingers. She walked from the coat of smoke escaping the house. Efrain ran to her, and she kept telling him. “I saw him- Azorozas- and I saw Cliven too. He’s okay, he’s okay.”

That night he put plans together to liquidate and disappear with the rest of his money... He stayed because he hoped for a better outcome, but after years passed and he crossed into his sixties it became painfully clear. The mall barely stayed open. One by one the stores closed, but he kept funneling money into keeping it alive. City officials wanted to have dinner at his home. He kept delaying them, but rumors lingered of the strange lovers that together wished away their only child to live secret lives of demonianism.

His plane ticket waited. Efraim no longer wanted to. He came to the front door and before he opened it, a shadow appeared before the oval glass and knocked.

He opened the door, and told whoever stood there to go away, but he said it without a firm tone, with each syllable weakening as he examined the man on the porch. His hair didn’t match the long hairs he missed shaving his face. They looked white, but his head hair looked platinum blonde. He wore splotches of make up unevenly spread across his cheeks and under his eyes. When he smiled, the makeup peeled. The iron buttons on his valet vest strained. The name sewn into the breast read “Jazz”.

“I’m your hier- your son.” he said hushed. Efrain scoffed. The man before him looked on with the red weeping eyes of someone well past seventy.  Efrain pushed his suitcase out the door. “Don't go. I can help mom-Azorozar is not as powerful he sold you on.”

Efraim stopped, balled up his fist and nearly flung it into the visitor’s nose bridge but shook his head and relaxed his arm. “Yeah, of course, you’re him. Son! Welcome home.”

He grabbed “Jazz” by the hand and pulled him inside. “Stay there.” He warned. “If I see you touch one thing I will shoot you in the legs.”

He went down the hall, and called to Harriette. “Honey, it worked! Cliven is back!”

The chanting stopped. The door flung open. A wave of ash filled his nostrils. When the cloud cleared there stood what used to be Harriette, now slouched, skin like gravel, fingernails yellow and scraping the floor as she walked. Veins throbbed on her scalp. Yet somewhere in the face of of the strange woman he saw the curious wonder that filled her eyes when she saw her first born for the first time. “Show him to me.” She growled.

“Yes. He’s right here. See? Right here.” He walked her down the hall to where “Jazz” waited. “Don't mind the clothes. He just got off work. Didn’t you, son?”

“I’m a valet a country club around here.” He pointed at the vest “Can I see my room now?”

“Terrific. Do you see now, Harriette?”

“No, this can’t be. Arozozar shows me he is still a boy.”

“Arozozar doesn’t have Cliven. He’s standing right here! He said so himself.”

Harriette cowered against the wall, and shrunk into a creature of shaking fear. As if “Jazz” just grew thirty feet tall. Her eyes widened, and she tried to put her hand in her mouth to keep from letting small squeels escape but the fingernails prevented her from balling her fingers up and she ended up sliding against the wall, so tight that her feet slipped from under her.

“This isn’t Cliven.”

“Can I see my room now?”

“Of course, son. Go right on ahead.”

“No, keep him away. Keep him out.”

“Is that anyway to talk to your own flesh and blood?”  Efrain set his case down, crossed his arms and watched.

“Jazz” moved down the hall without moving his feet. The fumes screamed and evaporated as he crossed. The bedroom door fell open for him and he entered the smoking realms. Harriette peeled from the wall and hobbled down the hall. She swallowed dust with every breath in, and slowed with each beat of her heart. When she stepped under the shadow of the doorway, she lost her breath. The room looked just as it did before they moved in. Even the weeds outside the cracked glass looked the same.

“Make sure you eat. Come back this Thanksgiving.” Efrain shut the door behind “Jazz”, who walked tossing and catching the puzzle. He drove to the airport, and on his flight to Barcelona he watched the news that the Midwestern Mall is shutting its doors and being demolished to make room for a new hockey rink.

Ashgabat drove down Interstate 29 choking on his own laughter. The puzzle still rested firmly in his hand. The most successful single trafficker, he mused deeply remembering his experiences in Sub-Saharan Africa and the mountains of Central America, maybe can catch twenty people. He decided to be generous. Call it two hundred at one time.  The puzzle contained the soul of every missing person from the mall in the decade Efrain kept it running. Then he thought about how many malls were left in America.

Nebraska has a population of 1.8 million people. The FBI claims that 800 slaves are sold here every month.