Ginger closed the door to her house after Jimmy left. The sadness evident in her face held in check with a will that Molly always found amazing in her best friend. She crossed the room as Molly spread her arms and offered her support. Ginger did not shed a tear, did not sob or weep. She held her head high and tightly hugged Molly, so much so that she thought she was the one being comforted and not the other way around.
“He’s going to be fine,” Ginger said.
Molly nodded in return and they found a seat on the couch and watched the wall across from them, each picking a different spot to focus on, and neither willing to talk. It was late at night. The candles worked hard to push the darkness back and bring what little cheer they could between the two friends in the silent house.
Catherine slowly stepped from the hallway to join them. Her sadness with Jimmy’s departure didn't appear to be as easy to keep in check, considering the haggard look on her face and the dry paths of fallen tears that had come and gone.
Ginger held out her hand and the little girl curled up in her lap like her namesake—her friends from her past still called her Cat. She stroked her blond hair as Catherine’s eyes closed and her breathing turned deep. Ginger and Molly shared a look and smiled and then sleep claimed all three on the couch in the little yellow house.
* * *
Molly woke with a start and sat forward with a sound of protest from the old springs in the couch. The candle had lowered an inch from what she remembered before falling asleep. Night still lay over the land out past the slight part to the curtains. Ginger slept with her head thrown back on the couch, her mouth open and her deep long breaths steady in the sleep she drifted in.
Catherine had uncurled herself in Ginger’s lap and now lay sprawled across, her arms spread wide, legs now over the end of the couch, the little green stained toes splayed out in a picture of total comfort like a real little girl would find in sleep.
Molly stood slowly to keep from disturbing them. She looked around the room, feeling a chill that had not been present when she first settled on the couch before falling asleep with her friends. She crossed her arms and rubbed her biceps against the rise of goose bumps. She left the pair of sleeping beauties and went to the bedroom to grab a blanket for them and another for her own comfort. She took this opportunity to check in on James who had received his own bedroom after his first birthday. The door swung silently open and Molly peeked inside. No candles burned in his room and the chill did not alleviate her feeling that something was off. She crossed over to his crib, afraid to wake him and then ruin Ginger’s rest. She touched the lump in the bed that turned out to be a wadded up blanket, with no James beneath. She swept her hand around the inside of his crib, but the baby boy could not be found. Panic raced into her heart and pushed blood throughout her body, sending a rush of anxiety that tore the last traces of sleepiness from her mind.
“James,” she whispered loud enough to be heard, but with no response, raised the level of fear that was spiking in Molly with each passing moment. She went back into the living room, hating to do what she must. She shook Ginger’s shoulder and watched her friend's hazel eyes pop open, alert in an instant.
“What?” She asked, instantly moving Catherine off her lap and taking the candle from the coffee table, the worry in Molly’s face had obviously set her off on something being amiss.
“James isn’t in his crib,” Molly said.
Ginger placed her hand in front of the candle and hurried into the hallway down to James’ room. She searched with the light for signs of her son with Molly right behind her. Finding nothing, she passed Molly and went into the bedroom she shared with Jimmy, looking in the closet and under the bed. She passed Molly again who was a step behind helping in the search, but leaving the nooks and crannies to Ginger, who knew them best in her own home.
They bumped into Catherine in the hallway, the little-girl-saint now alert that something was terribly wrong. Ginger was about to explain when Catherine held up her hands and closed her eyes. The blue in her irises reappeared shining with the certainty of fear.
“Outside,” she said, turned and led the way to the front door.
Molly saw Ginger unclip the pistol from its holster concealed underneath the hem of her yellow shirt. Jimmy's wife jacked a round into the chamber and stepped into the cool night air behind the little girl.
Molly clenched her fists and continued to follow. She wanted to find out what on earth was happening and where James had gone.
A fire blazed into existence when she stepped off the porch behind the others and her hand shot up to dampen the bright flare of light from blinding her completely. Laughter followed the blaze and Molly recognized it instantly, having heard the sound of it less than a year ago when the Horseman of War had come to destroy Independents from within.
“Are you missing someone?” Kessie said, standing in the front yard, her sword the source of the fiery light that pushed the night away, if not the darkness.
Unhampered by the light, the sword nor the girl that held it, Ginger stepped across the space and brought her pistol inline between Kessie’s eyes. “Where is my son?”
“If you kill me, I will only find another host, and by that time your son will be lost to you forever.”
Ginger lowered the gun and fired. The sound traveled around the countryside in a giant echoing wave that would have woken everyone in Independents.
Kessie’s knee crumpled, she lost the handle of her sword and the fire died in an instant, blinding Molly with its absence as much as its presence had. Kessie fell to the ground screaming in pain.
Molly stood in shock where she had first come off the porch, unable to move forward and not willing to retreat. After a moment’s hesitation, Catherine approached Ginger’s left side and stared down at Kessie writhing in the dewy grass of the front lawn.
Ginger said, “Where is my son?”
“Fuck you, bitch!” Kessie screamed, holding up her middle finger with emphasis.
Ginger aimed and fired. The finger was gone as the echoes of the gunshot rang out again around town and the tortured screams of pain from the fallen Horseman heightened.
“She’s got another knee cap”.
“Not now, Catherine.”
Molly knew what Ginger was going through. She felt as much hatred for Kessie as anyone and certainly held no love for any of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, but this was getting out of hand and she wasn’t sure if her best friend could stop even if she were supplied with a suitable answer. She found the courage to move next to her on the right.
Ginger’s face was unrecognizable in the cold hard set it carried, her eyes like flat stones in the bottom of a pond, her arm extended with death sitting in its chamber, waiting to deliver the final shot.
The screams subsided into a feral pant. Kessie buried her hand against her chest to stem the bleeding.
Ginger said, “Where is my son?”
Kessie looked as if she were about to say something else that Ginger didn’t want to hear, but protest quickly faded from her eyes and for the first time that Molly could tell, Kessie was afraid. This was not the Horseman looking out of those eyes, this was the girl that had lost her soul to the powers of evil, and now realized she would pay.
Ginger repeated, “Where is my son?”
“Billy has him,” Kessie said.
Molly gasped and covered her mouth.
Catherine pounced on top of Kessie, gripping the collar of her red leather vest and bringing the girl up with a rough shake. “What have you done to Billy? Where is he?”
The Horseman of War laughed, but the frightful sound from earlier had fled. “I have done nothing to Billy except fan the flames of what was laid down before. Now, he has taken her son to a special place to perform the rite that will unleash the beast and my failures will be all forgotten because I will be the one to usher in the Prince of Darkness upon this land and he will reign until the ends of time.”
No one spoke, not a sound, and the night closed in on the group as Molly squeezed her already clenched fists tighter. This was more than horror. This was a child that was meant to be the sacrificial lamb for the destruction of Heaven and the Earth, and Molly was positive that no one knew how to find where Billy had taken little James to perform this awful rite.
Catherine released her hold on Kessie. The Horseman dropped like a battered sack of grain, defeated for the most part except for the final blow she had delivered. Catherine stood and moved to the side and then pointed at Kessie lying on the ground.
“Kneecap.”
Ginger fired, the flash of the muzzle coming like a lightning bolt to brighten the darkness for a brief moment, and the echoing thunder of its passage. Then the screams filled the departure of the shot as Kessie grabbed her other knee.
“Where has he gone with the baby?”
The Horseman laughed, spitting a list of curses at the three of them, but she did not answer.
Molly became aware of voices approaching with light from a dozen torches and her brother leading the charge, all of them with weapons in hand.
“We’re out of kneecaps,” Catherine mused, looking down at Kessie with about as much mercy as one feels for the cockroach that scurries across the bathroom floor. “She has nine more fingers though.”
Molly broke from the trance she had found herself residing in since the torture session began. “You’re not serious? You can’t be! This isn’t right.”
She received little sympathy from Catherine and even less from Ginger holding the gun, sights resting squarely on the wounded captive.
Catherine said, “You heard what they have planned. She’s going to tell us, she just doesn’t believe it yet. But this Horseman has ridden for the last time.”
Mark arrived with the light and the others behind him fanned out in a circle of fire around the Horseman. Like she had brought the fire to them when she burned down their Main Street, the kids of Independents, grim-faced with long memories, stared down at the bleeding girl.
Catherine relayed the situation and the expressions did not change. The circle tightened.
“I have a knife,” Mark said.
“That will be perfect,” Catherine said.
Molly looked around the circle for some sign of sanity among the group holding the torches and found it in short supply. She backed away, heading towards the house, and running when the screaming started, slamming the door behind her and finding a corner to wait and pray for the nightmare to end soon with answers and the light of day.