Free Shadow Witch by Geof Johnson Page A

witches in my livin’ room right now. We get any more, I’m gonna need a bigger house.”
    She and Mrs. Malley laughed heartily, and Momma Sue gestured for them to follow her into her kitchen.
    * * *
    Duane Gundy stumbled over a tree root in his dirt driveway and cursed loudly as he walked from his car to his front stoop. He had not slept in over thirty-six hours, and the stimulating effect of the black pills had worn off. Now everything hurt.
    His head felt like an anaconda was squeezing his skull. The late-afternoon summer sun hurt his eyes, forcing him to squint. His jaw ached from grinding his teeth, and his stomach was in a pharmaceutically induced knot. His hand shook as he tried to fit the key in the deadbolt lock, and he finally gave up and pounded on the door with the flat of his hand.
    “Open up, Brenda.”
    “Is that you, Duane?” came a voice from inside.
    “No, it’s Santa Claus. Open the damn door.”
    She let him in, and he staggered to the sofa and collapsed on it with a groan. His wife looked at him with one hand pressed to her chest and her face lined with concern. “Any luck?” she asked.
    “Does it look like I had any luck?”
    “You were gone so long.”
    “I went to the bus station in Haynesville to find out if anybody saw Sammi buy a ticket, but they told me I had to ask whoever worked the night shift. So I went back around midnight, and they had some dumb goober working the counter, but he didn’t remember who he sold what to. He couldn’t remember his name if it wasn’t printed on his badge.” Gundy kicked his boots off and put his feet up on the coffee table.
    “I tried to get him to look up his record of ticket sales for Thursday night, but he said he couldn’t give me those without a court order. So I reached across the counter and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, but he screamed like a little girl and the security cop threw me out.”
    “Oh, Duane, I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.” She bit her lip and lowered her brow. “But...but somebody’s bound to have seen her, shouldn’t they?”
    “I don’t think she went there.” He rolled his head around and felt the bones in his neck pop. “Sammi’s too chicken to go to a place like that. It’s got creepy winos and druggies hanging around outside. She’d be scared.” He stretched his legs, grimacing at the soreness in his calves. “I’d know for sure, though, if I could get a look at their surveillance footage.”
    “Do you think they’d let you?”
    “Maybe.” But not as Duane Gundy . He thought of his trunk full of disguises and the glimmering of a plan began to form in his mind. “If she left town, she got a ride, more than likely.”
    “You don’t think she hitchhiked, do you?”
    “Nah. She don’t have the guts. I think she’s still in town somewhere, hidin’ out. If she ain’t at Libby’s house, she’s somewhere else.”
    “But where? We’ve asked everybody that Sammi knows.”
    “Somebody’s probably got her and they’re lyin’ about it. But I’ll find her, sooner or later.”
    “Duane? What if somebody abducted her? I couldn’t bear it.”
    “I’d have to kill ’em.” He narrowed his eyes. “But she took her backpack and some of her stuff. The little ingrate ran away, I know it.”
    She wrung her hands for a moment and sighed. Then she picked up a suitcase that was sitting next to the wall and started carrying it toward the back of the house.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I’m going to unpack. I was going to visit my sister this weekend, remember?”
    She looked at him like she was expecting some sympathy, but he wasn’t in the mood to give her any. He lay down on the sofa and closed his eyes. “You can visit her some other time.”
    “Duane, what are we going to tell people when they ask where Sammi is? I mean, if we don’t find her soon?”
    “Um...tell ’em she went to stay with your sister in Spartanburg.”
    She seemed to think about that and said, “What