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| I know who you are. |
Louis Shalako
And
then there was the witch, or so Hubert thought of her.
This was only about five or ten kilometres up the road, only slightly into the hills, as he was beginning to think of them. Her name was Dolores, no one, not even the cops, seemed to know her last name. It meant sadness, as he recalled. Seeing a mailbox with the lid bulging, it was tempting to pull her mail for her…they might get a glimpse of a last name, but that would seem very presumptuous.
She was anything but sad, as it turned out.
If Maurice was a bore, this one was just plain mad.
Just barely off the road, the house was interesting enough from the outside, with a small gravelled spot out front for the vehicle. The walls were rough stucco in a dirty white, with a few vines growing on them here and there. The windows were small and heavily leaded in a diamond pattern, the door much less than two metres tall and made of bolted planks.
More chickens clucked from somewhere behind the building, it was like everybody around there had them.
Those bolts, ancient indeed, had been hammered out by a true blacksmith. The roof now, the roof was still thatched in straw and the resident sparrows were nothing if not busy and talkative. They apparently lived right in the straw, popping in and out as they went about their daily affairs.
Hubert had always kind of admired the sparrows, with their unrelenting cheerfulness, busy with life and not too worried about the problems of the world around them. If any creature could be truly said to be living in the moment, it would have to be the sparrows.
They hadn’t even knocked when the door opened and a wizened old woman was grabbing at LeBeaux’s elbow and practically dragging him in. She couldn’t have been much over one and a half metres tall.
“Oh, hello, boys, such nice boys—come in, come in.” She beckoned imperiously at Hubert, as LeBeaux bent a bit and went in before her. “Come in, come in, don’t be stupid.”
With a chuckle, he did just that.
And again, the interior was just plain…interesting.
“Coffee? Of course you’ll have coffee, such good boys—” She turned and bolted for the back room.
They stood there, looking around, noting a fireplace that could also be used for cooking judging by a spit and a handle to crank, a cast iron grate to keep stuff up from the actual coals, and then some impressive iron and polished copper wares lined up beside it on a small raised shelf of flat stones…mostly for show, thought Hubert. Unless she was cooking for ten hungry farmhands—
There were bookshelves, jammed to the tits, doors to other rooms to the left and a narrow staircase going up to the upper floor, where more light seemed to flood down from above into this end of the front room.
It was surprisingly clean, bright, and homey enough with a couch, chairs and a low table off to his right. Hubert had the impression the real kitchen was in the rear, and sure enough, she came out again with a tray and cups. The other rooms were additions, he concluded, the original house had probably been just this one room—one with an outhouse and a very small barn, or even just a shed out behind. All of that was long since gone, leaving just a sort of traditional cottage.
“Please, please, sit down, sit down—such nice boys.” Placing the tray on the table, she bustled out again.
LeBeaux grinned, nodded and took a seat on the end.
Hubert wasn’t quite ready for that. Coffee though, that was better than tea.
He sighed, deeply, and took an upholstered easy chair off one end of the couch and well into the room. One lump of sugar, no cream. One quick stir.
He sighed.
She came back with cookies or something on a plate, taking the other end of the couch.
“Well, isn’t this lovely. Simply charming. I really like your house—” LeBeaux, exercising some more of that cop-diplomacy, which really was a big part of the job.
“Oh, thank you, thank you. Such nice boys.”
Hubert nodded, about to chime in with the pleasantries, if only he could think of something...
“I know who you are, of course.”
He paused, and kept the mouth shut after all.
“Pardon, Madame?”
“Did that idiot Dampier tell you about my dream? I’ll bet he did. Gilbert’s not so bad. I do his wife’s horoscopes. She positively swears by them, and I have never steered her wrong.”
She sipped at her cup, and Hubert picked up his. LeBeaux seemed floored, sort of unusual for him.
“Why, no. Ah, what dream was that?”
And LeBeaux tossed him a grateful look.
Hubert was a pretty good partner, in the sense that he wouldn’t let you suffer too long—
But that last one took the cake, and on that note Éliott picked up his own cup, taking a closer look at the biscuits, and maybe even just listening for a while.
“They say you’re a witch, don’t you know.” Hubert, eyes all innocent, sipped at his coffee, which was very good. “As for the dream, half the town has probably heard about it by now, why don’t you tell us all about it.”
“What? Who says? Ha. Of course I’m a witch, it’s what I do, for crying out loud.” Her eyes glittered in a kind of contempt. “Anyways, it’s none of their business, is it.”
Hubert laughed right along with her, in what was only the second time this week.
As for LeBeaux, it was nothing if not educational.
As bad as Maurice had been, this one was about as crazy as a shit-house rat.
***
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| Fucking hermits. A bit worn, but a collector's item. |
Then there was their hermit—
Finding the gentleman in question had involved a roundabout route, leading up, over and around, right past their original farm gate and the way into the fishing hole. Rather than going over hill and down dale, the road followed the terrain, contour lines as they were called, switching back and forth, keeping the gradients low, only to draw up before another gate, a good two kilometres further up the road. There was a post, with a sign that said No Trespassing.
On the other side of that gate, which was locked anyways, the road or track was very rough, overgrown, with branches and leaves hanging over from both sides. The actual road gave the impression of an archway into some kind of green hell…and the biting insects were becoming very interested indeed.
They were out for blood, no kidding.
“Ah.” LeBeaux slapped at a bug on his neck. “Fuck. What are these things.”
“Ah, mosquitoes, I believe.” Virtually unheard-of in Paris, they had waved off the purchase of insect repellent at the time, thinking they were burning money, which was true enough—but that might have been a mistake.
They had their hiking boots, and their little back-packs—
They were keeping all the receipts.
“Well. Here we go again.”
The roof was up, the windows were closed and the doors were locked.
“Yeah, we’re going, all right.”
According to Dampier’s little hand-drawn map, the path was a good seven or eight hundred metres, whereupon they would come to a cliff-face, and then they would turn right and follow that along, to what was described as a cliff-dwelling—whatever the hell that meant.
Familiar enough, when the cold weather really hit, the typical Parisian would take on that jerky, stiff-legged walk, speeding up and just trying to get where one was going without freezing to death in the meantime, and this was similar but different. With the woods wet, warm and windless, to stop was to tempt fate, the fate of being bled to death by a million hungry little bugs. To slow down, was to encourage them, to be followed by hundreds of the things. As it was, they were just speeding along…jerkily, stiff-legged and trying not to trip over picker-bushes and long, trailing canes of something that still had a few blue-black berries on it.
It was all they could do to keep going, to hope for a clearing, some sunlight, some kind of a stiff breeze would have been helpful. The little buggers would be most active at dusk and dawn, but up here, daybreak would come late. With the peaks surrounding and the trees close on both sides, with every leaf and blade of grass literally soaking in the dew, and still a suggestion of mist between the trees, proper daylight might not penetrate for another hour or so, and then only for a short little while.
All the while, with the humidity causing a good sweat, and the constant climb of the trail, it was enough, eventually, to take one’s breath clean away. This one was uphill all the way.
“Whew. Jesus.” Hubert paused for a good look.
“Well, there’s the cliff.” With rocks splitting off due to winter frost and simple erosion, there was at least an open space where the trees were smaller, there was no underbrush, although the walking was not so good on the rubble-strewn slope at the base.
“I hear chickens.”
It was just around the next turn of the cliff, and the view opened up some more, and there it was.
“Unbelievable.”
***
Éliott had a point. Somehow, someone had created a hovel, with planks and logs for a sloping roof, covered in sod or maybe just dirt…there were fitted stones piled up for a front wall. It couldn’t have been two and a half metres wide; three at the most. There was one small tiny window, and a short door, and the thing had taken advantage of a cleft, a place where the mountain had sort of split apart and left just enough space. There was a rusty pipe sticking up for a chimney. One had to wonder where the inevitable water, the run-off was going, or how there didn’t seem to be any…perhaps the place had its own running water, a natural spring…again with the history lesson, but some of these places might go back centuries, back to the heretic Albigenses or what-nots, according to him. People could hide out for a long time, as long as they kept an ear out and were prepared to bolt at a moment’s notice, or so he said.
“That might have even been here seven or eight hundred years ago. So now you know.”
Hubert stood staring, as two or three chickens clucked and buk-bukked a few metres from the door. Tame enough, perhaps a little wary of the actual woods, where foxes might be a threat, there was a kind of box up on stilts which he took to be where they roosted for the night, and laid their eggs sort of thing.
“Are you sure you don’t mean the Cathari—” Where the hell that one came from, Hubert would never know, but the blank stare was reward in itself.
“What? What? Oh.” LeBeaux tore himself back to the present reality— “Hello. Hello—is there anybody home?”
The door opened a crack and one eye peered out.
“Who the hell are you?” The voice, was harsh and grating. “Fuck off.”
The voice of the true curmudgeon, thought Hubert.
“We’re police officers. From the Sûreté. You’re not in any trouble, ah, sir. It’s just that we’d like to speak to you, sir, it’s about an important matter.”
“Go to hell. Go away—”
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| "Fuck off. Punks!." |
The impression, was of a craggy face, eyebrows, or at least one eyebrow, shaggy and white, with an even shaggier head of thin hair and a bedraggled mustache, a horrible little beard, on a lined face that hadn’t been shaven in a month or more...
“Sir—” LeBeaux stepped back, running into Hubert who had just taken a step forward. “Whoa.”`
The muzzle of a shotgun, poking out through the crack of the door was unmistakable.
“Get the hell out of here. Punks.”
Closing his mouth, a chastened Éliott LeBeaux had his hands up, and slowly backed away from the door, careful with his feet so as not to trip himself up...it wouldn’t take much and the fellow would shoot.
The door slammed shut and the curtains twitched behind that grubby little window.
“Well. I’d say that went pretty well.” Hubert snorted. “Fuck, let’s get out of here.”
They still had a few names on that list, and there was still a little time left in the day.
If they were lucky, they could still make the last train out although that seemed more and more unlikely with every passing minute.
END
Previous.
Louis has books and stories available from Google Play.
See his #superdough blog.
Thank you for reading.
