Copper chewed meditatively at her flank.
We’ve gone from horror to farce. Or perhaps I’m hysterical. Yes. I think I deserve to be hysterical for a bit.
Grandma reemerged from the house, carrying a shotgun.
“Holy crap!” Selena had very little experience with guns. This one appeared to be made of wood and metal and unpleasantness. It had a well-cared-for look.
It did not help that Grandma was cradling it in much the same way she’d been carrying the chicken. Selena looked for something to hide behind.
“Relax,” said Grandma. “It ain’t loaded. Yet.” She patted her pocket.
“You’re going to walk into a church with that thing?”
“Gotta, if I want it blessed.”
They walked down the road, while Selena tried to think of something to say and drew a blank.
Am I insane? Have I gone insane and dreamed monsters and pulled Grandma Billy along with me?
Maybe it was good that they were going to see Father Aguirre.If this is crazy, he’ll stop us, right? Catholic priests don’t let little old ladies run around with shotguns fighting monsters ... unless the monsters are really there. Right?
Right?
She had no answer for herself. Grandma Billy whistled tunelessly as she walked. The white road was hard, the blue sky was hard, and neither one seemed like it could contain monsters.
“Grandma Billy?”
“Yeah?”
“How do you know about this stuff?”Please don’t let her tell me that everybody in the desert knows about monsters and I just haven’t found out yet. I don’t think I can handle that.
“Oh,that.” Grandma actually looked a little embarrassed. “Ain’t some mystic wisewoman shit, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was my husband, Billy.”
“Wait, yourhusbandwas named Billy?”
“Indeed he was.”
“Is it your last name?”
“No. Look, he was Billy and I was Billy Jean, and when we hooked up, everybody called us the Billys, and it stuck for about fifty years.” She shifted her grip on the shotgun. “Now, Billy was the kindest man you ever laid eyes on, but his mother was a prize piece of work. Called herself abruja, which is a word with a good bit of weight in Billy’s hometown, or maybe I mean baggage. And she was dead set on having grandkids and wasn’t too keen on Billy stepping out with me, since grandkids ain’t really on the table. And one day after he walks me home, I turn on the light and there’s a dead rat in the middle of the kitchen with its guts wrapped ’round a nail in the floor, and the little bastard gets up and goes for my ankles. And trust me, it wasdead-dead.”
Selena put her hand to her mouth. “What did youdo?”
“Put a saucepan over it and pulled the nail out. It stopped moving then. Had myself a fine freak-out, then called Billy. He knew right away who was behind it, but we didn’t let on we knew, because his mother would’ve denied it and I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.” Grandma’s upper lip curled. “She did another rat or two, and a squirrel—that thing got into the cabinets and it took three gallons of bleach to clean up the mess—but finally gave up on that. Next thing she tried was something like your critters, only made outta a couple of cockroaches sewed together. That’s how I know bullets generally work, at least if I’m right about what these are.”
“Good god,” said Selena, because it seemed like she ought to say something.
“The cockroaches were a mistake, because I got one of the skins—or shells, I guess—and took it to a friend of my daddy’s. He knew twice the tricks Billy’s mother did, but he never called himself anything. He was just the fella you went to if you had a certain sortof problem. Anyway, he looked over what was left and knew right off who done it. So he put a line of salt over the doors and windows and waited inside, the next time Billy and I had a date. If they couldn’t get past the salt, see, she’d have to come herself, the way she’d done for the first rat. And she did and he caught her red-handed and let her know he knew what was going on.”
“Did that stop her?”
“Pretty much. He put out the word that if anything happened to me, he’d be lookin’ into it, along with some friends of his who were in the business of breaking bones.” Grandma grinned at Selena’s expression. “Like I said, he was the fella you went to if you had a certain sort of problem. Sometimes that problem was uncanny, but sometimes it was somebody comin’ round that needed a reminder to mind their manners, if you get my drift.”
She’s talking about a mobster witch. Oh god.The real world seemed to be sliding further and further from Selena’s grasp.
“Anyhow, we moved up here to Quartz Creek pretty quick, in case she decided to try something anyhow,” Grandma Billy said. “Even knowin’ she’d pay for it wouldn’t do me much good if I was dead. And Billy, rest his soul, knew a few things he’d picked up growin’ up in her house, and I picked them up myself.” She shrugged. “No different than knowin’ trigonometry or something like that. Comes up now and again, that’s all.”
Selena was fairly sure that trigonometry emergencies did not often involve zombie squirrels with their guts on a nail, but was still trying to think of a way to phrase that when they reached the outskirts of town.
