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  Copyright ©2005 by Ardath Mayhar

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  THE CONJURE

  A Horror Novel

  By

  ARDATH MAYHAR

  ISBN 1-58873-632-6

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2005 expanded edition A. Mayhar

  This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.

  For information:

  Email [email protected]

  PageTurner Editions/Night Chills Horror

  First Book Edition

  TO

  KENNETH MARVIN “BEAR” HEDBERG

  For The Stamps

  CHAPTER I. Washington Shipp

  Singing enthusiastically, Washington Shipp was hosing off the driveway when Jewel, his wife, called him to the telephone. It had been years since Wash heard from his Auntie Libby, who lived way down in the swamp country beside the river, and he was surprised to hear her quavery voice.

  "You in town, Auntie?” he asked, wondering what could have brought one so old and feeble out of the river bottoms. She almost never ventured out of her cypress house on stilts, down near Sundown Swamp. He felt anxious as she fumbled for words. Her mind, always so sharp, seemed to be failing, now that she was ninety-three.

  At last she said, “Wash, they's talk, down here. Yo’ cousin Jimmie done told us somethin’ big in the drug line is comin’ in. He heard it from that Dooley boy, young Wim. That boy, he knows just about everythin’ goes on down here, and Jim told me he trusts his word."

  Wash could visualize his aunt's prune-wrinkled face, now ashy in color rather than the rich mahogany he remembered it being when she was younger. She would be frowning, trying to get every word just right. She hated what drugs had done to some of her great-grandchildren, and if she passed word, he knew it was probably true.

  "Who's involved, Auntie?” Wash asked. “And where are they heading?"

  "Boy said they's comin’ up the river to Boggy Slough. S'posed to meet somebody there to sell their shipment. Word was, Wim told Jim, there's somethin’ really important, too, but he couldn't find out what it was.

  "You pass the word, Wash. We needs to catch all them drug pushers and put ‘em under the jailhouse.” Her voice was almost gone, now.

  "You bet, Auntie. I'll pass the word to the DEA folks. It's not in my jurisdiction, being as I'm just police chief in Templeton, but they'll do the job. You rest easy. And thank you. Mama would be proud."

  He heard a sniff and knew she was remembering the niece she had reared from infancy. Good old Libby! Her heart was in the right place, every time.

  The phone clicked in his ear, and Wash dialed the number he knew too well. “Drug Enforcement Agency,” came the clipped response.

  Sighing, Wash passed on the information, knowing that the federal people really hadn't much use for local police. Sure enough, the girl on the phone was just short of rude, but she took down what he said. What happened now, Wash knew, was up to the agency.

  If he had his way, he'd be waiting by the river a long way downstream from Boggy Slough, for the information network on the river and in the swamp country was formidable. If Wim Dooley could overhear something this important, somebody else could overhear the DEA's plans to catch the drug runners.

  You couldn't persuade the narcs of that, though. They seemed to think country people were stupid, which could be, in the wrong circumstances, a dangerous thing to do.

  He hung up the phone and turned to Jewel. “Let's hope those arrogant bastards do their job right,” he said. Then he went back out to finish hosing off the driveway.

  Fifteen years ago, when he had just finished college and got a job on the Templeton police force, there hadn't been a black family in this neighborhood. Now there were three, his own, Dr. Ross's, and that of Samuel Trenton, who taught at the local university.

  Wash didn't intend for anybody to point to his place and say, “See? I told you black folks would mess up property, ruin the neighborhood and lower real estate values."

  CHAPTER II. Concert on a Hot Evening

  The sun was down, but the sky that blazed with rose and gold above the overhanging branches. of cypress, oak, and sweetgum still sizzled. It had been ONE OF THOSE DAYS in East Texas, the temperature hot enough to wilt goatweeds and the humidity just about as high. Sitting on his rickety porch, Possum Choa sighed and smiled.

  Folks in town were all sealed up in their houses with their air conditioners running like race horses, watching the peediddle that came over their television sets. Getting used to such sissified things was the ruination of people, Choa had decided back when he was younger and lived, for a while, in the same fashion.

  He and his ancestors had lived comfortably in the swamp for centuries, accustomed to heat, mosquitos, and the lack of what others thought of as civilized entertainment. Even the water moccasins and alligators were interesting, though he avoided them where possible.

  Of course, he thought, every evening he had a concert all to himself. Just about time the sun began to set, sending slanting rays of fire down through rifts in the leaf-cover, the little frogs began to sing.

  His Daddy used to tell him they said, “Ankle-deep! Ankle-deep!” Then katydids took up the melody, zeee-zawing in the trees. Bigger frogs tuned up with “Knee-deep! Knee-deep!” and finally the big old bully frogs began roaring “Belly-deep! Belly-deep!” and things warmed up fast.

  Now the crickets and locusts were chirking and shirring and ticking all around him, over in the button-willows, overhead in the big red oaks that shaded his cabin, and out in his summer-cooked garden. Trying to pick out one song from the orchestra was beyond him; he listened to the total effect with contentment. He'd spent almost his entire life learning to appreciate such things.

  An alien note crept into the chorus, and he cocked his grizzled head to listen. Far away, the sound muffled by intervening brush and trees, there was the throb of a motor. No road lay in that direction for twenty miles; it had to be a boat moving along the spring-fed creek that led from the swamp into the river.

  Now what in tunket was a boat doing on the creek at this time of year? In winter hunters sometimes came to jack-light deer that ranged along the low ridges and game wardens came to catch them at it. In early summer fishermen set lines (or nets, which were illegal) along the channel and those same wardens eeled along afterthem.

  In late summer, when it was this hot, there was nothing worth hunting or fishing for or trapping that wasn't buried deep in the coolest parts of the woods or far down in the deeper water of the river. There was no good reason for anyone to be there, that was certain. Even the unusually big rains that had fallen earlier in the month couldn't explain that sound, for fishermen knew that when it was this hot the big fish were downriver in the deep eddies, cooling off.

  A Grandpaw bullfrog roared in the cattails at the end of the path, where Choa's boat landing staggered out over the murky water. That turne
d, within a few yards, into swamp, and the multitude of croaks and creaks there drowned out the sound of the engine.

  Far overhead a thin whine became a ripping sound as a jet shrieked overhead in less time than it took to think about it. For an instant there was silence as the choristers were stilled by the shock.

  Into that quiet came the unmistakable sound of a yell, choked off almost instantly. Choa rose on tough bare feet and reached inside his front door for his shotgun. He took a box of shells from the ledge above his front steps, shuffled his dark-skinned feet into his tattered boots, and set off along the path leading toward the creek.

  Hanging on the trigger guard of his shotgun was a thong securing a battered flashlight, whose output just about rivaled that of two exhausted fireflies in a jar. He didn't use it, however. That was for examining anything he found. For travel in the swamp country, Possum Choa needed no more light than the occasional glint of a star through tree-crowns or the vague phosphorescence of rotting stumps and logs.

  His few acquaintances swore the old fellow could see in the dark, and they weren't far wrong. His nose and the air against his skin told him where he was and what areas to avoid, as much as his eyes did. His wide feet, booted or not, knew the trails through the maze of pools and runnels and sinky spots.

  A screech owl shrilled overhead as he went, and there were occasional rustles as snakes or small hunters scurried out of his way. Quiet as he was, the swamp at night was too crowded with life to allow him to pass without being noticed.

  The smell of the bog warned him to swing wide, following a deer trail up an almost imperceptible ridge and around a sinkhole's unplumbed depths. Moving swiftly, Choa came to the edge of the creek and saw the line of reflected stars flickering along its middle. In moments, the moon rose, red and warped as it waned.

  There were shadows on the creek, and voices muttered and cursed there. Sinking to his haunches, the half-breed strained to see and hear, knowing that his senses, trained acutely for sixty years, were sharper than those of people half his age.

  The men in the boat were quarrelling softly, splashing unnecessarily with their paddles, and thumping their feet into the metal bottom of the craft to send hollowblumps through the water. Noisy and stupid, Choa thought with disgust.

  What in hell were they doing out there?

  Tucked behind a huckleberry bush, a shadow among shadows, Choa gazed intently at the silhouetted shapes on the creek. The boat was an old aluminum one; he could see reflections off the water rippling along its battered sides. There were three men in it, one in the stern holding a paddle as if to use it as a weapon, the other two strung along its length.

  The one in the bow was balancing a bundle on the edge. “Here?” he asked, his voice sharp. “Is this that special place you come so fer to find, Oscar?"

  "Keep your damn voice down. That yell you gave a while ago scared the crap out of me. And don't call out any names. You don't never know who's around, even out here in the middle of noplace,” came the reply.

  "Yes, there, you dumbass. Right under the bank—see the darker shadow there? There's a snag across the front, so if it comes a flood our stuff won't wash away."

  "I don't like this one little bit, Oscar ... I don't like it at all,” said the small man in the middle of the boat. “This stuff is pure gold, if we kin get it to our buyers. And the Big Feller said there's a bonus on this shipment, too. Somethin’ extra hid down in the batch.

  "Leavin’ it out here is a bad idea. Anybody could come along and take off with it."

  There came an impatient snort from the huge man with the paddle. “You think we're goin’ to get any good out of it if we take it back and the narcs ketch us red-handed with it?” he asked. “It's only luck that Maxie got word to us before we come in to the meetin’ place at Boggy Slough.

  "Think of them narcs roostin’ all around the slough, mosquitos eatin’ ‘em alive, waitin’ for us to show up and get caught. Makes me laugh to think about it.” But he didn't sound as if he were laughing.

  Choa nodded silently, understanding all too well who was invading his swamp. He had no use for drug dealers—or for narcs, if it came to the pure truth. No, he'd put a spoke in all their wheels, if he could find a way to do it.

  While he watched, and the moon tinged the treetops with reddish light, the boat crept close to the high bank and nudged its bow right up under it. “You stick it up under the overhang,” Oscar said. “Make sure the snag blocks it from floatin’ out, no matter how high the water gets if it comes a flood. And be careful where you put your hands. There's always moccasins in places like that."

  There came sucking sounds and rustling sounds and a sharp exclamation that told Choa the man had found a snake lurking in the water beneath the bank. After a bit the boat backed away into the stream. Then things got interesting.

  Oscar raised the dripping paddle and brought it down on the middle man's skull with the sound of a hatchet hitting a ripe melon. The one in the bow looked back; before he could dodge, the over-long arms, extended by the length of the heavy paddle, had split his own head wide open.

  While Choa watched, Oscar carefully placed the two bodies in the same undercut hollow where the drugs had been hidden. It took him some time; maneuvering dead bodies in a small boat, no matter how big you might be, is usually a mighty awkward business, apt to get everything dumped overboard or the boat overturned, but he got it done at last.

  Then he turned the prow downstream toward the river and began paddling silently, sliding through moonlight and shadow like an over-solid ghost. Choa, knowing where he had to go, rose and ran along familiar paths that cut across the creek's meanderings to a point three miles down the creek where another overhanging bank would give him a good place to wait.

  A creek bank at night is not a quiet spot. He could hear a gator bellow, the shriek of some small animal falling prey to a bigger one. A whippoorwill mourned among the trees, and a screech owl whimpered fretfully.

  There was a flop in the water where some late-feeding fish struck at a belated insect. Frogs croaked and crickets sang, different songs from those beside the cabin but familiar for all that.

  A hoot-owl called and another answered in the depths of the woods behind him, while a mockingbird struck up his middle-of-the-night solo. The racket was so noisy that Choa almost missed the clunk of a paddle striking the side of the boat, just beyond the bend.

  Below and to his left, the craft slid into a puddle of moonlight, now riding high in the shallow water. Choa raised his shotgun with great care, taking aim at the waterline. The blast of the shot sent birds squawking from the trees around him, silenced the crickets, and sank Oscar and the boat quickly into the shoulder-deep creek.

  The night filled with lurid language, but Choa was already moving away, running as lightly as a boy along the hidden trails toward his cabin. Nobody knew where he lived. Few even knew of his existence. So far from the site of Oscar's murders, the big man would have no idea who had sunk his boat, or why.

  He certainly wouldn't return tonight to check on his stash or his victims. Not on foot in swampy country that could swallow a man, even one of his size, without a burp. Tomorrow, Possum Choa thought, he would attend to things himself. He didn't like having his swamp dirtied up with drugs and runners.

  * * * *

  Morning found Choa in his own boat, made of a single cypress log by his father, pushing through cattails, waterweed, and muck on his way back to the creek to tidy up. He tied his craft to a willow some quarter-mile from the spot he wanted and moved along the bank, listening and watching.

  Ironweed raised purple clusters in the few sunny spots, and brown and yellow butterflies rose from mud patches as he went down to the water beside the hole in the bank. He waded out into the tepid water, hip deep, shoulder deep, making for the dark patch that hid two bodies and a big cooler full of dope and something that might be even more valuable to townsmen.

  He tapped against one of the oak roots that curved like teeth down over
the washed out niche, and two moccasins slid away, giving him dirty looks as they swam past. Nasty brutes! They were the meanest tempered snakes he knew.

  Cautiously, he peered into the darkness. Sure enough, a pale blob dipped as the water stirred. Behind it another—the faces of Oscar's victims stared blindly at him as he examined them. They were familiar faces, too.

  Choa watched those who messed around in his territory. He'd seen these two more than once, setting illegal nets, or fishing up mysterious parcels out of the big lake on the Nichayac River in the middle of the night.

  Bad ones, those two. His friend King Deport called them Ben and Yancy. Better off dead, he suspected, as he climbed out of the water and set off in search of a likely log.

  A big old sweetgum had fallen in a storm two years past. By now its great branches were pulpy, easy to break off, big enough to carry a passenger, and not likely to sink too soon. He dragged two pieces as thick through as his body to the edge of the creek, where he supplied each with a passenger, laid endwise along the log, arms and legs trailing off on either side to stabilize the load.