Stoneskin's Revenge by Tom Deitz

methodical step-and-hitch that was the rhythm of the crone’s progress. It was almost like every step made the ground vibrate—which made Allison’s eyes tingle in turn, kinda like they did when she got sleepy, but it was the middle of the day and she wanted to play, and didn’t like that at all.
    The woman didn’t seem to have noticed her, though; didn’t seem to notice anything as she moved with slow precision from Allison’s right line of sight to her left. Eventually she passed from view behind a screen of oleander, and Allison breathed a sigh of relief and concluded her dash for the road. She’d be okay, she knew: the old woman was gone, and if she crossed the tracks quickly and silently, as she knew she could, she’d be at her playhouse in no time. It was kind of to the west, anyway. And the old woman had been heading east.
    In fact, when Allison dashed across the tracks and entered the woods, she was nowhere in sight.

Chapter VII: Off the Beaten Path
    (east of Whidden, Georgia—early afternoon)
    Calvin was practically beside himself with irritation when he awoke. The sun was shining square on his face (which is probably what had roused him to start with), and a gritty-eyed squint in its direction through the froth of live-oak leaves indicated that it was clearly afternoon—which meant he had slept rather more than twelve hours. Time he had certainly not planned to let slip by.
    “Damn,” he grumbled under his breath, as he rummaged through his meager gear in search of breakfast, then remembered the Vision Quest and checked himself abruptly, wondering if he should continue his fast. Good sense won out, though: he had sought his vision and failed, and while some sort of threat was evidently still laying for him, and he still ought to be on his best behavior as far as things like lying went, it was not necessarily wise to confront…whatever it was…half sick from starvation. Besides, the fasting was to help sunder soul and body, not weaken that body when the actual trial began. With that bit of rationalization giving him a degree of comfort, he broke out a stick of beef jerky and began gnawing it reflectively. He did not, however, make coffee.
    By the time he had got himself cleaned up and his camp in order, his course of action was clear. He would go into town (he needed to anyway, since if there was trouble brewing it would be a good idea to know what goods and services were available), and once there, he’d ring up Dave and Sandy and alert them both to his situation. He hadn’t a clue what he’d tell Dave, of course, only that he should beware, but he had a pretty good idea what his conversation with Sandy would be about, which was basically everything that had happened to him in the past three days. It occurred to him, though, that she might already know most of the story, since while he wasn’t reachable by phone, Dave was, and she might very well have wrung a detailed briefing out of him when Calvin proved unavailable. But still, it would be awfully good to talk to her, and he had promised her a call and not delivered—though that was not, strictly speaking, his fault.
    He was just making final preparations for his departure—checking the fires for embers, and secreting his bow inside the trunk of a nearby hollow tree—when his eyes fell on the copy of the Savannah Morning News he had bought yesterday and never got around to perusing. The article that had drawn his interest then jumped out at him once more: JACKSON COUNTY WOMAN FOUND DEAD UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES. Now, as then, it intrigued him, not merely because he had recently been in Jackson County (and of course, there was also the slightly sensational use of mysterious ), but also because Jackson County was a long way from Savannah, and thus small happenings there were not likely to make the front page unless it was a slow day for news—or unless it was not, in fact, a small happening.
    An impatient grunt, because he really did