Pat ran out of the home as if a ghost was on his heels. He went to the backyard rail and threw up again. When he looked up he saw movement in the darkness.
Every chicken from Hank’s pen had been let loose. All of them had their heads cut off. It was like looking at a lawn full of white lettuce, all of them dancing. Feathers filled the air as they darted about, spilling blood everywhere. And he knew the truth.
One by one they were going to die, all four of them. They were going to pay for what they had done. Only he was left. He and Barry.
Somehow Pat made it back to the car and fired it up. He peeled out, kicking up a cloud of gravel and then he was on the road. Barry’s house was not too far away. Maybe it would not be too late.
***
The road stretched out before him like a living thing. It was twisting in the agony of his high beams. The yellow line on his speedometer crept forward as he gunned the car even faster. It was almost two a.m. Another long day at work had come and gone. Barry wondered how much longer he could keep this up. He was fucking tired. Right now, the headlights were the only thing keeping him awake. His eyes scanned the road, but they were feeling weary. He wanted a bed. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to forget about everything.
The weekend was coming up quickly and it was a weekend that he sorely needed. He was going to drink all night and sleep all day, maybe even pick up that bartender that Pat was always flirting with. Pat wasn’t going to make a move, so why shouldn’t he? Gently his head leaned forward as he thought about all the quiet naps he was going to take, only to jerk up again as he realized that he was falling asleep at the wheel.
Around him the swamp rose in all its lurid glory. It would be so easy to just drive off the road and slam into a tree. Or maybe sink into the muck where they would never find him. This automobile would become his only coffin. It was no time to be thinking about pussy.
Something leaped in front of the car.
He slammed on the brakes, feeling the car lurch as it struck something hairy. With a gut-wrenching heave, he came to a stop.
The steering wheel pulsed under his hands. He gripped it tighter and felt his knuckles turn pink, then bright white, as if his skeleton was showing through the skin. Now he was very awake. His eyes swelled in his sockets like filling balloons. His iris shrank, dilating into the whites of his eyes until they were only tiny black orbs in a sea of blue. His muscles quivered with fear, and in his shirt, he could feel streams of sweat run.
What the fuck had he hit?
With all the power of his mind he willed his body to stop. Stop sweating. Stop shaking. Stop feeling a fear that was not there. Only nothing could stop the terror. Nothing could stop his heart from pounding in his chest. Nothing could stop the hysteria that was slowly blossoming in his soul.
Barry stayed behind the wheel. The night was silent. Outside everything was dark and the quagmire was still, as if every living thing had turned its head away from the crime he had just commit. The moon sat high in the sky, peering down at this strange intruder in his strange vehicle. There were no stars. The moon was red, like a giant droplet of blood on velvet.
A dog. It must have been a dog. Barry had caught a glimpse of it. It was short, hairy. A dog. It had to be. And as far as he knew it was still under his bumper. Even now it was probably in its death throes and it was going to die, Barry knew. He was driving way too fast and struck that poor thing head on. Nothing in the world could have survived that.
Why? he kept asking himself. Why had he been driving so fast? Was it because he was tired, and the roads were clear? Maybe. He was just rushing home to get into bed. That’s what he could tell the police. That’s what he could tell the dog’s owner. He worked late at night and the commute was a bitch. He was sorry but ...
It was late. The roads were empty in front of him. There were no houses and no police. At times like this he liked to open the Cadillac up and listen to it hum. It was a precision machine, and the engine was beautiful. It needed to be let out sometimes, and Barry liked to push the limits on the old car. He found a certain thrill at high velocity when the risk of death was very real. But it was his death that kept him awake on these long rides home, not the death of others.
So here was the result. Murder. Slaughter. He had killed a living thing. It was not the first time.
He managed to pry his hands free from the steering wheel and open the door. There was a scent in the air that was unnatural. It did not belong here. That smell was of burning rubber mixed with charred dog flesh.
Barry did not want to, but he had to see the animal under his car. The morbid curiosity was childish in its intensity. It was the same curiosity that drove him to pull the wings off flies when he was a kid. But his heart was still throbbing in his chest when his foot hit the black top.
The road was quiet. The swamp was quiet. It was an abnormal silence. Barry had lived in Saint Sebastian his whole life. He was a child of the swamp and it was never this quiet. There was always a bird or a creature somewhere making a noise. There were insects that hummed in the darkness louder than a supersonic jet. Even if it did not belong to an animal there was at least the sound of waves lapping at the muddy shore.
Even the plants around him seemed to shiver as a cold breeze floated past. It got in under his shirt and froze the sweat to his skin. He looked at the plants and watched them fan themselves, as if they were gossiping about his murder in their silent language. Yeah, they were talking about him.
“You have been named,” they whispered in a soft voice. “The Beast!”
“It wasn’t my fault,” he told them but quickly shut up. He was not going mad. He was not talking to plants. Besides, it was no big deal. Thousands, if not millions, of animals were killed every year by motor cars. It was the price they paid for their stupidity. Like this dog. It had run out in front of his car, so it died because it was dumb.
But was it? Barry could not say. The dog wasn’t stupid. It was just naive to the workings of the modern world.
It was an eerie feeling, being alone on the bayou. For a while now Barry had been suspecting that the long commute was getting to him. He would need to move, soon. During the day he drove to work. At night he drove back. Odd hours did something to a man. Something would have to give.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he said aloud, talking to the trees. They ruffled their leaves in answer as the wind lifted. He quietly walked around to the front of his Cadillac and looked at the bumper.
Flies, ever the opportunists, had already begun to gather. The only sound was the buzz of their tiny wings as they attacked him in vengeance for the things he had done to their kind when he was a kid. He swatted them off and looked at what was under his bumper.
It was a dog. Barry turned his head away and nearly threw up. The smell alone, burnt rubber and hair and flesh, made him want to hurl. Worse than that the dog’s mouth was open. It was obvious that it had died in agony.
Once more, morbid curiosity made him turn his head. Barry choked down his bile and looked at the animal under his car.
Its hind leg twitched a little as commands from the brain still coursed through its spine. But it could not be alive. Gray matter lay in bloody hunks all over the black top. Barry could see its pink tongue, shoved out of its mouth, stretched on the concrete like a red wiggler. It looked as if it was lapping up the blood around its own body.
Then Barry took a closer look. It was a big dog. The biggest dog he had ever seen, in fact. It had to be a wolf. The thing was almost man sized. And the dog had no tail. Not even a stump. Its dead eyes glistened with a human intelligence that had stayed on even after death. But wolves had tails, didn’t they? Wasn’t a long tail the mark of a wild dog, instead of a civilized one?
Barry leaped back. The dog was wearing pants. That was when he realized it was not a dog at all. It was a werewolf. He was sure of it. Shreds of a human shirt were on its back, mixed with coarse dog fur. An actual wolf man, with claws and all, lay under his fender.
S
weat now poured across his face and under his arms. A reeking stickiness was all over him. He could swear that the heart pounding in his chest was threatening to break free. It was beating so bad it hurt.
But this was a good thing, he told himself. Hell, it was the find of the fucking century. Any carnival in the world would pay millions for the remains of an actual werewolf. The newspapers wouldn’t believe it, but he had the proof. It was right there in front of him. Its blood was all over his car.
Then another thought struck him. If there were wolf-men, then were there other mythical beasts in the world? Did witches and goblins exist? This changed everything. The fear in him became real. Zombies and warlocks and vampires marched through his head.
Then the howl split the night open like the keenest of blades. Barry looked around. Instinctively he knew that sound. It was the cry of a dog, or a wolf.
Every nerve in his body was shouting at him. He became numb with pain as he started to shake again.
The howl sounded again, closer this time. Whatever it was, it was just beyond the brush.
Barry ran to his car and tried the door. It was locked. He reached into his pocket and searched for the key. There was nothing. Only bits of lint and some change left over from lunch. He looked in through the window and saw the keys were still in the ignition.
The howl screamed again. Another thought went through Barry’s head. Was it this thing’s mate? Now his mind was swimming with insane thoughts. In his head men ran like animals through a silent forest and they killed like beasts. They died hard, like monsters.
The car. He had to get into the car and get the fuck out of here. He had to go home, get into bed and get to sleep. He had to forget about the swamp and all the mystery it held. But the door was locked. And the keys were inside.
A low growl made him turn. There, in the bushes, he saw two yellow eyes looking at him like tiny stars. They were filled with hate.
Barry screamed.
The monster leaped, and claws ripped his throat open. They were tearing and rending and killing with every stroke. He collapsed against the door with his life spraying everywhere. He gurgled something before his vocal chords were sliced in two. Slowly his brain began to fade but in the final moments he made peace with God. He apologized for killing that man Hal Robson.
God was not listening.
***
The Cadillac sat beside the road like a dead cockroach. Its lights were out. The battery had gone dead. Pat could remember when Barry had first bought this car. He was so proud back then. Immediately he had to take all his friends for a ride and they all fit inside easily. They laughed about it, saying that it was a magic coach that would turn back into a pumpkin come dawn. But it never did.
The first and final stop that night had been the bar. On the way home Sam puked up a six pack in the backseat. Pat would lay odds that the stain was still there. They were sweet memories that made him smile. They were gone now.
All except him.
He pulled up behind the vehicle and switched his lights off. Morning would be here soon, but it was still dark, that strange purple darkness that seemed so pretty and dim before the sun rose again. He left his headlights on. This was deep swamp territory. The more lights the better.
Pat sat behind the wheel and considered everything he was about to do. He had gone to Barry’s work first, but they told him that he went home. So, Pat took the quickest route there and found this.
Finally, he got out of his truck.
He unclipped the flashlight and looked around. He shined the light inside and saw that the Cadillac was empty. The doors were locked. The keys were still in the ignition. This was a good sign, he thought to himself. Maybe Barry had gotten out to take a piss and accidentally locked the doors behind him. Then he left for help. It made sense.
Only Barry wasn’t that stupid. Why had he stopped in the first place?
Pat walked around to the front of the car. There was a stain across the hood. He stuck two fingers into it. They came back sticky. Fresh blood was on his hands. It was still warm.
He knelt before the front fender. Hairs were stuck in the grill. They belonged to a dog. That much was obvious. Maybe the blood did, too. Was that what happened? Had Barry hit a stray then, in a panic, locked his keys inside. Now he had gone for help. Maybe. That did not sound like Barry.
Pat looked at the gravel by the side of the road. There were prints there, big ones. Barry was a big guy, but not this big. And the prints had scratches at the toes, like claw marks. They were deep, as if the animal stood on two legs.
He moved further into the swamp. Here the long grass had been crushed and pushed aside. Something large had come through and it had been dragging something behind it. A man?
Pat looked in to the woods. He could see shadows moving under the dim moonlight. Somewhere he heard something big, eating something small. Then there was the definite snap of a bone. Quickly he raised the flashlight.
The thing looked at him with eyes that glowed yellow in the darkness. It was a massive creature, with long teeth. It was busy eating Barry’s guts.
Pat had never been one to turn away from a fight, not even now. At this point he almost welcomed it, and was glad to finally face this, whatever it was. The thing stood up on its hind legs and Pat looked in to its eyes. There was only a single emotion there. Hatred.
With a low growl the thing flew forward. Pat’s hands fumbled for the gun at his side and managed to get it out. He pulled the trigger.
The beast jerked to the side and crunched in the gravel. Pat pointed the gun, ready to take another shot but it was too late. The monster was up. And on him.
Both fell, and Pat found himself wrestling with a bloody bag of fur. He tried to get it off and get free, but it was impossible. The creature was all steel sinew and it fought with a primordial fury that no civilized man could combat. Pat looked in to the thing’s mouth and got the gun up, wedging it between the teeth. The creature shook its head and kicked backwards, off him. It bit down on the gun and Pat heard something wet snap over the snarling of the monster.
The beast howled and fell away from him. It scampered off into the woods, still wailing. The bayou swallowed it whole as Pat rolled to his feet. The swamp was quiet.
Pat looked at Barry’s corpse. There was not much left. His neck was torn and the head almost stripped free of the body, but his eyes were still there. They were looking at him.
Pat knelt and closed them. Then he went back to his patrol car. He knew where he had to be. Where he had to go. The thing was waiting for him. He knew where.
***
“I’m here.”
So was it. Even after all these years it was still here. It stood at the edge of the marsh, barely. The casual eye might see a loosely thrown collection of boards and sticks, not a place where a man could live comfortably. But he had lived here. In this old shack at the edge of a bog lived a man named Hal Robson. He had lived here until they killed him.
“Do you hear me?”
The swamp was silent. Pat listened but there were no bugs. No birds. Not a sound. The sun was coming up. The creatures should have been awakening. But there was only silence.
It was eerie and put a clump of fear in his hardened chest. He held the flashlight and waited. Nothing happened.
“I’m waiting.”
Because he deserved this. He deserved it. They all did. They had killed a perfectly good human. They had taken the life of a man who was not afraid of hard work or chances or pain. And why? Because Hal had a good job waiting for him in California that Barry wanted. Because Hal had a woman that Hank had wanted. Because Hal had a life that Pat wanted. And Sam ... he was just along for the ride.
“She’s not here.”
Pat turned at the hiss. It was barely human but somehow, he could make out the words. The snake crawled from the lowest limb of a tree, arching its body around the branch like some sort of strange cork screw. Pat looked at it. The night had been long. Was this really happening.
“Then where is she?”
“Where she has been since that night,” the snake replied. “Out in California. She went there because she wanted to get out of the swamp. She wanted to get away from people like you.”
He held the mag-light like a club. Talking snake or not it was about to get its head bashed in.
A sinister laugh echoed between his ears. The snake as unafraid. Why should it be? It was the master of all evil.
“So, who’s been doing it?” Pat asked. “Who’s been killing my friends?”
“She opened a door before she left. She named names. She left a gift for all of you. In that time, it has been gaining in power and strength. Finally, the juju was strong enough to enact vengeance.”
“Vengeance,” Pat nodded. “And me? How will I die?”
“Know that she has named you. You are the Drowning Man.”
Gore Suspenstories Page 9