Free The Demon Hunters by Linda Welch

would have put the word
out.
    Nothing special marks the area as
Clarion’s gangland. It’s a worn-out, worn-down neighborhood in west
Clarion and looks like other run-down areas in other cities. The
sidewalks and homes sit in deep shade cast by big old trees with
wide-spreading branches. The houses are small brick or clapboard,
the latter once painted, but now faded and peeling. Some of the
small front yards are well-kept, the grass mown and small borders
colorful with flowers and shrubs. In others, the grass is long and
quickly dies in summer due to lack of water. Children’s battered
toys sit on sidewalks and in gutters. The rusting hulks of old cars
squat between houses, along with old refrigerators and kid’s swing
sets. Some of the houses feature outside Christmas lights, left up
year-round, tattered by the ferocity of winter storms.
    The air felt warm and lazy, the
streets seemed to drowse in the heat of the sun. Ahead of me, a dog
trotted across the pavement to lap up water which ran from a lawn
sprinkler into the gutter. It looked up as I passed, and looking in
my side mirror, I saw it stare after me for a second, then
circumnavigate the damp lawn and settle in the dusty soil beneath a
ragged privet hedge. Teen boys and girls lounged in porches, on a
miscellany of old furniture, sodas and cigarettes in hand. Older
men, talking in low voices, sat in groups in porches and beneath
shade trees.
    I pulled over and cut the engine.
Ernesto waved at me from his perch atop the steps leading up to his
house.
    Finding Ernesto Sanjurjo is easy. He
never moves from his spot on the steps of a tumbled-down house on
Weston Avenue. He can’t.
    Many shades are restricted to a small
area. Ernesto has his steps. I’ve driven past his old home and seen
him walking up and down, up and down. Mel and Jack are the only
ghosts I know who roam an entire house.
    “ Hola, Ernesto!” I called out as I walked along the overgrown
path.
    “ Hola. I bin waitin’ for you.”
    Ernesto is five-seven, raven-haired,
built like a tank with the seamed, craggy face of a thug, something
other youth of his day misinterpreted. Ernesto was never a thug,
and eventually joined a gang only after years of pressure. He died
at age sixteen. One night, at a local party, he got involved in a
fracas over, of all things, a cigarette. He got a big knife from
the kitchen and went after Jose Mallaca, but didn’t find him. He
had cooled off by the time he got back to the party. But when he
left to head home, Jose was waiting for him with his own big knife.
Jose stabbed unarmed Ernesto twice in the chest. Ernesto managed to
drag himself up the steps to his house and there he died. His
mother discovered him early the next morning. She took her other
children and left Clarion. The house remains empty and is coming
apart. If you look carefully, you can still see the stains where
Ernesto’s blood sank into the old, faded wood.
    I sat next to him. “Why have you been
waiting for me?”
    He spread his hands in a you-know
gesture. “The Labiosa put out you comin’ down here. So I say to
myself, Ernesto, that big ol’ white woman wan’ somethin’ from the
Labiosa. Must be ‘cause young Alissario Borrego gone missin’. She
gonna be askin’ if you seen anythin’.”
    Big ol’ white
woman ? I am a six-foot-four Caucasian with
long silver-white hair, so I suppose it’s an apt description, but
not exactly flattering.
    “ Did you see anything?”
    Ernesto looked at me with a sly smile
in his half-closed eyes. “First we talk.”
    So I sat on the creaky wood porch of a
broken-down old house for an hour, chatting to the shade of a
murdered teen. Ernesto is not totally isolated, he listens in on
conversations between people passing up and down the street, and he
had stored up a whole lot of questions. We discussed local news and
events, national news, education, global warming, Barak Obama, the
Utah Jazz, the Grizzlies, the economy, and a host of things you
would not