Nightwitch by Ken Douglas

himself for bringing this down on his daughter, and for not being available when she needed him.
    But he was here now.
    He swung a leg over the truck’s bed and hopped out. The light in the living room went on.
    Why?
    He was standing by the truck, trying to work it out, when the light in her room went on. The chubby kid isn’t afraid, he thought, or he wants it to look like someone’s home, an adult maybe. Time to find out.
    He closed his eyes for a second and imagined a small sandy island, some palm trees and a fantasy blond in a string bikini. If he was going to die, that’s what he wanted on his mind as he checked out.
    He reached into his coat pocket and took out the jar. He kept the gun glued to his left hand as he used the heel of his right palm against the lid to open it. Then holding the jar between thumb and forefinger, he rotated it, filling his right hand with hot pepper. He said a silent prayer to the Blessed Virgin, asking for strength, as he dropped the open jar back into his pocket.
    Prayer finished, he took a deep breath, crouched low and moved quickly to the bushes, because if she was here, this is where the old horror would be, in the dark, between the houses. Three feet away, he bent even lower and moved in.
    She was on him before he exhaled, battering him like a charging bull, sending him flying backwards, while she raked his face with long fingernails. The force of her attack sent them rolling onto the front lawn. Halfway to the street, with her decaying hands on his throat, he stuck the gun into her stomach and started pulling the trigger.
    The sound of the forty-five filled the night as he emptied three rounds into her belly, but the witch held on to his neck with her left hand, while grabbing and flinging the gun aside with her right. After the gun was gone into the night, her right hand joined the left in taking his breath away. Then she relaxed her grip for an instant and he inhaled, expecting to get a great lungful of crisp, clean air, but instead he inhaled the stench of her, a rotting stink that smelled of something long dead.
    She wanted him to sense her, to know what she was, before she killed him. She knew where the locket was now. She no longer needed to follow him. She wanted him dead, but not before he suffered. He felt the cold surging from her lifeless hands as they rippled like electricity, sparking on his skin.
    And he felt the opposite, a burning heat screaming from his oxygen starved lungs. He craved air. He was going to die. He was going to fail Carolina. Carolina, the thought of her wiped out the image of the fantasy blond and gave him the will for one last, desperate effort. He raised his right hand, opened it and slapped her face, shoving the hot pepper into her leathery skin.
    She screamed. Her eyes bore into his, locking on as sure as a fighter plane’s radar. Twin doors dragging him into a world where no one gets out. Where dead is better than alive, but death is only a dream. But she couldn’t hold him, her pain was too great and she was used to dealing with innocents. It’s hard to capture a soul that’s already lost.
    He tried to raise his hand to slap her again, but couldn’t. His lungs were about to burst, his brain about to shut down, when she surprised him by breaking eye contact and throwing him backwards with gorilla power and machine force.
    He landed on his back, grabbing air like a man breaking the surface after being too long under water. Three great breaths and he was able to think. A fourth and he could see. She was clutching her face, clawing at the place where he’d slapped her. The light in her eyes was blazing, promising him that special place in her special hell. She raged at the night, sounding like a wounded animal. Her kinky hair caught fire and lit up her face. The black of her skin changed to a hot glowing white and shifted again to icy clearness, allowing him to see her burning brain and the glowing orbs of her eyes.
    She hissed and steam