*

“J.C. Stearns is a writer from the swamps of Southern Illinois who loves stories about monsters who look like people and people who look like monsters.

“He lives with his wife, son, and more pets than is reasonable. He is an enthusiastic creator of science fiction for the Warhammer 40k setting, most recently in the horror compilation Maledictions. His non-franchise fiction can be found in anthologies like Selfies from the End of the World, and he is a frequent contributor to the RPG products produced by High Level Games. Follow him on Twitter @Jcstearnswriter.”

‘The Woman from Kisthene’ first appeared in the anthologyFitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures, from Mad Scientist Journal.

*

The Woman from Kisthene

by Jim Stearns

*

If I’d known who it was before I got to the diner, I’d have been more excited to go.  I wouldn’t have moved any faster, mind, but I’d have taken my time to build the tension rather than just wanting to spend more time driving through the leaves.  All the same, I knew it wasn’t a routine call. Maybe I’ve just been waiting for so long I was starting to imagine things, but even before I knew who it was, I knew that something was up.

Madison’s didn’t look any different when I pulled up.  Same neon sign with the same broken letter desperately begging travelers to ‘Eat at Ma-ison’s.’  Same regulars parked in their normal spots. Same sMikeering of travelling folk who’d taken pity on the sign.  The damage from the storm was still evident, even though it had been repaired. You could tell which of the light poles in the parking lot were new, standing out from the others by its lack of weathering.  The windows that Maddy’d had to replace had been in long enough to be as dirty as all the others, but you could still see the scars around them where the plywood had been nailed on.

My deputy, Mike Scoggins, was waiting outside.  He had his hat in his hands, nervously rotating it around and around.  He looked like he was hoping the hat would act as a shield from my wrath.  Honestly, I wasn’t angry. I came into these situations as severe as I could, but if I’m laying all my cards on the table, I do that to put the scare into the punks from the city.

People think it must be a hard job to be a sheriff in such a small community, but it really isn’t.  It’s true I know most everyone’s dirty laundry, but as long as they don’t bother anyone, I don’t see a need to bother them.   The city’s like a merry-go-round on a school playground. Everyone already got it going, so all I have to do to keep it spinning around is to give a little push now and then.  It’s peaceful, really.

Mike probably could have handled the call without me, but I think he prefers to take the cat up a tree calls and leave the harder ones for me. Not that I blame him.  He’s got that baby face and the ‘aw shucks’ manner that people think of when they talk about small town law enforcement in a good way. I tend to take the mirrored sunglasses, ‘back the way you came, boy’ kind of calls.  It’s not out of a preference for that kind of work, you understand, but my scarred face makes me a better fit for ‘bad cop.’

“Maddy asked them both to leave,” Mike started as I got out of my cruiser, “but they told her to fuck off.  When she said she was going to call the cops, they just laughed at her.” I sighed. I put on my mirrored shades, and took a moment to set my face into as grim a look as I could.

As soon as I stepped in to Maddy’s I recognized him.  To be honest, I always thought he’d look older. I mean, he wasn’t going to be gracing the cover of GQ anytime soon, but he definitely didn’t look anywhere near as old as I knew he had to be.  He had black hair, thick black hair. It framed his head, flowing from hair to sideburns and down into beard seamlessly. There wasn’t even an attempt to control it, or shape it, but it found its own shape nonetheless.  The gleaming black ringlets swirled around in lazy curls, all drifting in the same direction. It shone in the light, looking almost oily. Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be. It had that swirly, lazy grace and supernatural darkness that is usually associated with the King of rock ‘n roll, although Elvis had never let his hair get this long and unruly.  He even had the one curl across his forehead like the King.

I hadn’t realized I was approaching him, hadn’t even been aware of moving, until I was at his table.  I’d thought about this moment before. I think every man has thought about this moment, or one like it.  Somehow, I was unprepared for the reality. He didn’t even see me, not even when I stopped next to their table.  His gaze was fixed, unblinking, at the window, although whether he was staring at the sea or off at some point beyond the horizon I couldn’t say.

“I smell bacon,” snorted the other one.  I hadn’t paid attention to the other man sitting at the table.  When he talked, I didn’t see how I could have missed him. He was huge.  Easily over six feet, and probably knocking on the door of seven, this ogre had to have outweighed both me and Mike combined.  He put his hand up, and I thought for a second he was going to grab for me, but then his fingers flickered over the table in the nimble dance of those used to feeling around for things.  I realized he was blind a second before I saw the thick shades on his face, burn scars creeping up from the left side. I wondered if the right side was blind, too, or just smooth flesh.

“Well that’s funny son,” I said, “I was just about to say that I smelled something burning.”  His mouth fell open, and I think he might have brought the situation to a head right then and there if the King hadn’t put his hand on the giant’s shoulder.  He tore his eyes away from the window, finally looking at me.

“Easy Paulie,” he said.  “Go away,” he said to me, and I heard a saga in those two words.  His voice was rich and deep, powerful. A voice people loved to listen to, to obey.  Behind my glasses, my eyes started to drop to the table. Doubt started to creep into my throat.

And then I saw his chest.  His Hawaiian flowery shirt was open at the top, and a few wiry chest hairs crept out.  They were no longer the powerful obsidian color of his hair. Instead, they were the slate grey of an old man.  It was like a spell breaking, as I saw him all over again. The lines around his face told me the many miles that separated him from his heyday.  I took a deep breath.

“I was just about to tell you the same,” I said.  The King leaned forward, and I’m not sure if the saltiness of his breath was due to the half a plate of fries he’d eaten or not.  I suspect he always had a lingering aroma of salt.

“It’s funny,” he said, “you trying to poke fun at my son over his scars.  What’s that expression you rednecks have about pots and kettles?”

“Oh these?” I asked, holding up my hand.  Two lines of scars trailed around my index finger, like melted wax poured onto the skin.  I fingered my collar, where the veins of sunken, knotted flesh peeking out hinted at a much uglier memory hidden beneath my shirt.  “Or did you mean these?”

“Was someone playing with matches?”

“Of course not,” I said, not moving my head.  Only my mouth moved on my face, the rest of me locked in the practiced stillness of a predator.  The mirrors over my eyes betrayed nothing. I could see him starting to get agitated. He was used to getting fear, and I was giving him none.   “Worked animal control for years. We’ve got some nasty snakes in the area.”

“Good thing they moved you to a desk there, Barney.  Any longer and you might have wound up hurt.” He sat back.  He could have been a neo-classic oil painting: ‘Tough guy waiting for reaction.’  I gave him none.

I smiled. For someone that I’d always heard prided himself on his creativity, he’d opened up pretty weak.  I’d heard every insult the winos and punks and vacationers could think of, and it’s been a long time since some aging drunk with a potbelly has been able to rattle me, no matter how scary the stories I’ve heard about him.

“Andy.”

“What?” he asked.  This was clearly not the reaction he’d expected.

“I’m a sheriff, asshole.  Barney was a dispatcher.” I stood up, signaling for Tom, Maddy’s busboy.  “There’s Griffith reruns on TV Land every afternoon. You should go check them out.  At your hotel.” I turned to Tom, who’d just arrived. “Clear this out. These folks are done.”

He didn’t believe me, or maybe he thought we were still playing.  Either way, he reached out his hand for a french fry. With as much economy of motion as I could manage, I tipped his plate over, not even watching as it crashed to the floor.

Finally, my disrespect got the better of him.  I’m sure he’d learned to cope with a great deal of insolence over the years, but there was only so much he could stand.  With a bellow he lurched to his feet. His son followed suit, the chair he’d been sitting in flying into his hands like magic.  I dodged back as it whistled past my head.

I ducked under the King’s wild haymaker, and punched him in the face.  If it had been a normal drunk, I’d have taken him down textbook, all neat and nonviolent.  But this was a special drunk. That black hair flapped as he crashed to the ground. I turned in time to see blind Paul lunging at me.  Behind him, I could see Mike jumping forward, fumbling in his pocket for something. Paul’s hands grabbed at my chest, fingers flickering upward until they snaked around my throat.  I felt them start to close down, and wondered if he’d kill me before Mike wised up enough to shoot him. I lashed out at him with my fists, but I couldn’t get any decent leverage, and even the shots to his face didn’t seem to faze him.

As suddenly as they’d latched on, the fingers went slack.  Paul slumped forward with a kind of tidal slowness. He didn’t catch himself, just fell face first onto Maddy’s floor.  Behind him, Mike looked from me to the laid-out giant, eyes wide and fearful. He clutched his blackjack in a white knuckled hand.  Not standard issue, but once you’ve had to wrestle a two hundred pound felon who was flying on meth, you learn to carry a little non-standard come-along for just such an occasion.

The King was trying to stand, and I stepped up behind him.  His hands groped ahead of him, seeking a chair or table to help him up.  Tom took a step away from the grasping hands. Just to make sure the bystanders all stayed on my side, I pushed Tom out of the way.

“You leave him be,” I said, and the King looked around in confusion, although later everyone would swear he’d been coming at Tom with murder in his eyes.  I grabbed him by the shoulder, my left hand grip a little weaker than my right. I hauled him to his feet, and gave him just enough of a push to piss him off more.  He hollered and swung at me for the last time. Without the distraction of his behemoth son, I could concentrate fully on my target. I sidestepped his wild swing, and grabbed him by the back of the head with my good hand.  Pushing him forward along his own momentum, I planted one foot in front of him and sent him to his knees, his head crashing down onto the neighboring table. Suddenly struck by my own rage, or maybe just the symmetry of it all, I wrapped my fingers in that black hair, dry and silky, and smashed his face into the table.  He slumped to the floor with a groan, blood pouring from his nose.

We couldn’t get Paul into a sitting position in the back of Mike’s cruiser, and so he wound up sprawled across the whole back seat, which was fine with me.  That only meant that I could drive his father to the station by myself.

On the ride back, out of the sight of witnesses, I expected him to be scarier, but whatever power he’d had, the King was just a busted old man now.  He glared at me from the back seat, dried blood staining his beard like flotsam on the surf.

“If you knew who I was,” he said, “you’d have never touched me.”

I let the threat hang there for a second.  I waited for his eyes to break away from mine in the rearview, to glance out the window.  Was he thinking about home? Could he even go home anymore?

“I do know who you are.”

His eyes snapped back to the mirror, narrowed in suspicion.  Slowly they widened into disbelief. I only smiled. He slumped back into the seat, clearly not sure if he should believe me or not.  The station was another ten minutes away. He began muttering under his breath, eyes closed. I could see sweat beading on his forehead.

I grinned. I’d expected this.  Where was it going to come from?  We were nearly to the station when I saw it coming. A horse, brown and muscular, lurched out of the bushes and lunged across the road.  If I hadn’t been looking for it, I would have smashed it. I swerved around it, resisting the urge to laugh.  I recognized it as Frank Jericho’s horse: a formidable race horse in its day, but far past its prime. I doubt the King was aware of the symmetry. Once we were clear of the animal, I drove for another minute or so before I slammed on the brakes.  The King flew forward, crashing into the grate that separated the seats. He gave an undignified squawk, blood flowing down his face again.

“Try that shit again, and I’m going to do a whole lot worse to your boy than putting out his fucking eye.”  He gaped at me. As impossible as it seemed, he finally believed me. The threat wasn’t necessary though. Sweat poured off of his face, mixing with the blood.  He panted, his whole face nearly as red as his beard was becoming. He didn’t have any juice left, and we both knew it. I saw him trying to puzzle out how I knew, and finally give up.  He stared back out the window. Some might call him broken, but I knew better. His type took a lot to break.

“How’d you know?” he asked.

“I knew you’d come eventually,” I said.  “Ever since the storm.” He nodded.

“They said it was like it appeared out of nowhere,” he said.  He wasn’t even paying attention to me, not really. He was looking at the trees out the window.  All over the place, you could see the stumps of the ones that had been torn down when the wind came through.  The forestry service had been working non-stop to clear out the biggest ones, but they could all work at it for years and never cut up half the trees the storm had destroyed.

“It did appear out of nowhere,” I said.  “It was like magic.”

“Like an act of god,” he said.  We both went quiet for a little bit.

“Just a storm,” I said.

“They used to think all storms were from the gods,” he said.  “Things change.” I looked back at him, the blood drying in his inky hair, and he was the same as every other drunk old man in the back of my cruiser, suddenly looking back at all the wrong turns life had taken.  I let him think about it for a minute. I wonder if he was blaming himself or everyone else, but before I could ask we pulled into the station.

I hauled him out of the cruiser and threw him into a cell, then helped Mike bring Paul in.  It took me about an hour to process them, and to falsify the necessary paperwork in the computer.  Fortunately, we have an older system, although Mike wouldn’t have questioned me even if I had told him what I was doing.

“Well mister,” I said, standing outside the King’s cell.  “Looks like you won’t be going back to that hotel after all.”

“What do you mean?” he growled.  “You going to lock me up for brawling, that it?”

“Oh no,” I laughed, “taking a swing at a sheriff is the least of your troubles now.  Seems like your fingerprints were already in our system.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re wanted in connection with an open rape case in our jurisdiction.”

He gaped, unbelieving.  “What the fuck is this?” he bellowed.  I left him to rage in his cell, and went out to show Mike what I had ‘found’ on the computer.  I told him where I was going, and made sure he was okay until I got back, suggesting he might want to call Mr. Jericho and tell him his horse had gotten loose.

When I got to the house, my wife was just finishing her breakfast, the news droning on in the background.  Our house isn’t the biggest or most expensive one in town, but we get by just fine. We’ve got a porch with an ocean view, but she always eats in front of the TV.  So do I. I don’t think we’d eaten on that porch one single time since we bought the place. She looked at me quizzically when I came in. We’ve been married long enough to know when something’s up.  I kissed her hand, wondering if I’d done the right thing. Wondering how she’d react.

“We arrested him.”

Her eyebrows arched in confusion, soft eyes widening as she mentally answered her own questions.

“You arrested–?”

“Yes,” I said.  “He was here with one of his sons.  Paulie.” Her lip started trembling, and I desperately wished I could put an arm around her shoulder.  I couldn’t, of course, and I suddenly wished I could shed the tears she was refusing to. I just stood there as she sat down.  The light of the rising sun was coming through the window from our porch, the porch we never sat out on, filling the living room with a golden radiance, reflecting off her hair like a bronze mirror.

My wife has gorgeous hair.  Everyone knows that she used to have gorgeous hair, but I don’t think most people realize she still does.  It flows. That brownish blondish red of a carpet of fallen autumn leaves, it looks like something that could only be described rather than actually witnessed.  It looks warm and inviting, begging to be touched, to be stroked. I know better, of course I know better, but it looks so enticing that even I forgot myself once.  But only once. I thought familiarity might eventually give me a free pass, but that wasn’t the case, and I’ve never tried again.

“I need to go see him,” she said.  Not want, she’d said, but need. Of course she did.

She was silent as we drove in.  I can’t really blame her. Around us, the last autumn trees clung to life, the skeletal prognosticators of their inevitable futures lording over the melancholy rainbow on the ground.

Sometimes, when she was driving us into town during the fall, I would squint and her hair would seem like a part of the trees, like the entire forest was pouring off her scalp.  Never for very long. If she caught me staring, she’d be very cross. Nine years ago I’d bought a convertible for us just so I could put the top down in the summer and enjoy the way her hair whipped around in the wind.

“Vacationers gone?” she asked.

“A few still around, but they’ve mostly left,” I said.  If she didn’t want to talk about it, that was fine with me.  I’m a man, and I understand all too well the idea behind burying your pain until the right time.  “Fall’s almost over.”

“I hear it’s supposed to be a cold winter,” she said.

“I hope so.”

My wife and I love winter more than most.  We’d dated for a few months when I found out about her past.  She’d told me the whole story shortly after we’d started sleeping together, even though I already knew most of it from school.  I think she’d been surprised when I still wanted to see her. I knew it wasn’t her fault, none of it, and it certainly didn’t change the way I felt about her.

I rolled over against her in my sleep and wound up in the hospital that November.  Even though I told her it wasn’t her fault, I think she still blamed herself. When winter came, I knew I had to come up with something to show her how I felt, to show her that we could make it work, or she was going to leave.  She’d never been ice skating, and to be honest, neither had I, but I pretended that I was an old hand at it, even practicing in private. Finally, I managed to convince her to go out with me when Pindar lake froze solid.

I made up some cock and bull story about how you weren’t supposed to wear a hat and scarf when you were ice skating.  I wanted it to be a surprise. Every time she complained about the cold and told me she wanted to go home, I would grab her by the hands, laugh, and spin her back onto the ice, and say “Just a little more.”  Again and again we dashed back and forth, until finally, as the sunset painted the sky a deep purple, she pushed past me, declaring that she couldn’t feel her ears, her nose, or her fingers.

I didn’t grab her arm this time, but instead, put one hand on the back of her neck.  I felt the movement under that flowing curtain, but it was slow, limp. She jerked away out of instinct, and then looked at me.  I smiled, holding up my undamaged hand, and in her eyes the pieces finally came together.

She lunged at me, and she kissed me for the first time, decades of passion unleashed in a moment.  We made love right there on the frozen bank of Pindar lake. Some day, I know, I’m going to get frostbite, but she and I still love winter.  Between ice skating, caroling, shoveling walks for the elderly, and every other excuse we can think of, we spend more time outside during the winter than during the rest of the year combined.

“I hope so,” I said.  “Snow waist high.” She smiled and squeezed my hand, but she didn’t look at me.

She fell quiet for the rest of the ride.  I know her better than to ask if she was alright.  She had her own demons to deal with, and if a little bit of quiet time helped her, then I could suffer a little bit of silence.  When we got to the station, I didn’t say anything. Mike stood up when we came in, but I silenced him with a wave of my hand. He knew my wife, hell, everyone in town did, and if there’d been another deputy around, I think he might have taken the opportunity to step in with the prisoner and tune him up a bit.

We stopped outside the door to the holding area.  My wife reached out a hand to stroke the side of my face, to trace the scars with a light finger.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  I took her hand and kissed it.

“Don’t be,” I said.  “It’s always been worth it.”

He was staring out the window of his cell when we came in.  The police station hadn’t always been a police station, so we’d needed to add bars to the inside of the windows, but I don’t think he was looking for an escape.  Just staring out at the bay with that nostalgic look. She didn’t say anything to him, just stood in front of the bars and waited.

Eventually, he turned his head to look at me, and his brow furrowed when he saw her.  Confusion turned to recognition, and a moment later, to realization.

“You?” he asked, although I’m not sure who he was addressing, or if he was asking about her identity, our relationship, or something else entirely.

“Yes,” she said.  They stared at one another for a time.  He stood and stepped forward, his shoulders squared.  She didn’t blink, nor back down. She was beyond fearing him now.  Maybe it was the blood on his beard. Maybe it was the bars. Maybe the years.  Hell, for all I know, the chest hairs did the same for her that they did for me.

“You think this is going to change anything?” he said, defiant.

“Probably not,” she said.  I was proud of her. If it was me, I don’t think I’d have been able to put as much venom into two words.  “But what’s the average sentence for a rape?”

“Oh, the report says he has a previous out of state sexual assault conviction,” I said, “so the court can give any sentence it likes.  And you know how these backwoods judges are. What’s the word?” I snapped my fingers. “Draconian, that’s it.”

She’d proven all she needed to, and I couldn’t stand by any longer.  I stepped up to stand next to her, not intimidating, but at ease, hands on my belt.  Whether or not she needed my support, I needed to support her. He broke then. Well and truly broke.  His shoulders sagged, and that aura of power just left him, like water rushing out of a holed barrel.

He may have been broken, but he still had enough spite left to sneer at me, and point at my left hand, where the index finger refused to close over my belt.  “Was it worth it?” he asked.

I slid the hand around her waist, and smiled at him through my shades.  The mirrors over my eyes reflected nothing back to him but his own defeat, doubled in the lenses.  Finally, then, he looked away from us. She ran her fingers through her hair and brushed one hand along my arm.  I lifted her hand to my lips in our kiss. Her fingers tasted like her hair smelled. She nodded to me and turned to leave.

I don’t know what possessed him to do it.  Maybe he thought her curse was hers to bear, and wouldn’t affect him.  Maybe he wanted to prove he could still touch her, no matter how much had changed.  Maybe there’s just something about being worshipped that makes you think you’re entitled to things that aren’t yours.  His hand surged out between the bars, faster than I could react, and grabbed her shoulder in a grip as strong as a riptide.

There was no hiss, no rattle, no warning.  There never is, I know from experience. The asp at the nape of her neck got him first, roiling through her hair to sink his fangs in the hairy wrist.  The adder that sprouted from just below the crown of her head struck a split second later, followed by the fat viper behind her left ear. He recoiled, screaming, but she didn’t break stride.  I wondered, and still wonder, if that moment made the two thousand years that preceded it worth it. I doubted it.

I stared at him for a minute.  He’d sat down on the bench in the cell, and wouldn’t look at me.  He cradled his arm. The venom would scar horribly, I knew. Still, he’d taken three sustained bites and wasn’t showing any signs of dizziness.

“You’ll be fine,” I said.  “Although you might not want to try that again.”  I turned to leave.

“It was accepted back then.”  He sounded sullen and pitiful.  I looked back. Another withered old drunk, just like every other aging bad boy. I could even see a gray hair or two on his head, now that I looked closely.  A slight thinning in the hair on his crown. Liver spots on his hands. “Expected, even.”

“Things change,” I said.  Then I left him there, alone in the cell, with iron bars between him and the sea.

My wife was waiting for me in the car.

“You want to go have lunch?” she asked.

“Are you going to cook?”  I started up the cruiser and pulled out.  She fell in love with me because I treated her like every other woman.  And of course, that’s what she was. A woman, like every other. Her history didn’t change that.

“I thought we might eat out on the porch,” she said, running her fingers through her hair.  “I hear there’s going to be a storm this afternoon.” She reached over and squeezed my hand.

“I thought you didn’t like the ocean,” I said, kissing her fingers.

A look passed over her eyes, like a dark sea storm that blows in and then out again just as quickly.  Then she smiled and shrugged. “Things change,” she said.

*

End

*

© 2019 James Stearns. The content of this article, except for quoted or linked source materials, is protected by copyright. Please contact the author for usage.

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