Shadows in a Dark City

by Kirk Dougal

  I heard click-click on the cement floor before an old hound padded into the office. Most of one ear was missing, and a ragged scar snaked down its muzzle, but what caught my eye was the dog's tail. More specifically, its lack of one. Only about four inches wagged back and forth, the rest chopped off in what appeared to have been a rough past. Apparently, scars doubled as your employee card at Landry Research.

  The dog trotted over and smelled my hand before sitting back, watching me. After a few seconds, he turned two circles and lay down beside my chair, his snout resting on my foot.

  Jack snorted.

  “Chot says you good enough to try,” he said. “You start tonight. You'll get an even cut after expenses. I pay cash, so what you give Uncle Sam is between you two.”

  Part of me was thrilled to have a job, but the rest realized I still didn't know what it entailed.

  “That's great, Mr. Arceneaux. But what do we do here?”

  Jack gnawed off a fingernail and spit it into a trash can behind him before he answered.

  “Just like the sign say. We solve peoples' problems. And we got us a doozy tonight.”

  *****

  The overhead door on the shop was up when I hopped out of my car and music drifted through the opening. Chot trotted out to greet me, and I rubbed him behind what was left of his ear before walking inside the building. I stopped when I heard bagpipes, along with a screaming guitar, in the tune bouncing off the walls.

  “Little help here, amigo.”

  A Hispanic man a few years older than me struggled to carry four poles with a cloth wrapped around one end across the shop area. I trotted over and grabbed the ends. He led the way around the pickup to the open doors of a van where we shoved them in on top of some tools on the floor. All the lights in the building were on, and they reflected off the mural of a desert landscape on the side of the vehicle. I turned back when he slammed the back doors shut.

  “Gracias. You the new guy?”

  I nodded and stuck out my hand.

  “Luke. Does Jack make us listen to this music all the time?” The top of the other man's head didn't reach my chin, and I was surprised how small his hand was in mine.

  “Jack calls me Blarney. And don't run down my music. After you hear what he listens to, you'll be begging me for some Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys.”

  “Good. You already met Stick,” Jack said as he walked across the work floor and gestured toward me. In his hand was a large travel coffee mug with the name of a truck stop emblazoned on the side. “We all packed up, Blarney?”

  “Si. We just put the poles in the van.”

  “Mais, we ain't got no time to make the veiller,” Jack said as he opened the passenger door. “Let's go get this bebette.”

  “You're in the back, Stick,” Blarney said as he walked toward the driver's side.

  “My name's Luke.”

  “Not anymore. Jack calls you what he can remember.”

  *****

  Blarney turned off the music, and we rode down the beltway with just the sounds of tires rolling over the asphalt. I leaned forward on the bench seat.

  “Jack, what did you say we were going after?” I asked. “A beb...”

  “Aw, it's just a bebette, a varmint, critter. Ya know?”

  I smiled.

  “Oh, like pest control. We catch strays.”

  Blarney laughed so hard he drifted over into the left-hand lane which drew a honk from the car beside us.

  “Don't be couyon!” Jack yelled, his gravel-filled voice bouncing around the inside of the van. “Keep it on the road.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “A people bothered by dogs or cats or even a chaoui with his black mask peeking out of the garbage can, they call somebody else. They got a big problem, somethin' dangerous like to hurt someone bad, they call me.” He turned forward again, and Blarney swung onto the off ramp and into a residential area. “You don't trip over your feet like a grand beede or run away like the last boy, you'll earn your money tonight, Stick.”

  *****

  Blarney turned the van around in the driveway before he shut off the motor. Although the house was well within the city limits today, it was easy to see how the two-story home had started off more than a century earlier in farm country with its wraparound porch and lap siding. Modern touches had been added over the years, however, and it appeared even more were being created now. The grass around one end was stripped back to the clay underneath, and tarps covered wide sections of the walls. Despite the extensive construction project, somebody must have still been living in the house because as the three of us climbed out of the van, a man pushed back one piece of canvas and strolled out into the night.

  “Mr. Arceneaux, thank you for coming.” Clouds drifted past the moon, but the man's flashlight revealed he was pale and sweating as he pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to Jack.

  “I told you we'd help, Mr. Ekland.” Jack flipped the envelope through the open window onto the passenger seat without looking at its contents. “Who else in the house?”

  “No one. My wife and kids are staying in a hotel. The funeral is tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Sorry t'hear. Mais, show us where it happened.”

  Ekland led the way around the corner of the house, sidestepping where a new footer extended the stone walkway.

  “We think it entered the house here where the construction is and then made its way into the new portion of the house,” he said. “We're renovating most of the original structure that was built in the 1850s.” He kept walking around a pile of broken boards, up a two-by-four ramp, and through an open doorway.

  I followed him into the house, but Jack and Blarney stopped in the opening. They both pulled out flashlights and examined the wood frame.

  “Your family always own this here house?” Jack asked.

  “Yes. It was built by my great-great grandfather after he moved here from Sweden.”

  “Oak grove,” I said and was rewarded with puzzled looks from Jack and Blarney. “Ekland means oak grove in Swedish.” I grinned. When I saw Mom tomorrow, I could tell her my bachelor's degree in European Medieval History had finally paid off.

  “That's right,” Ekland said with a nod. “There was a famous battle that took place in a forest of oak trees in Sweden which is how my family came by its name. Although you can't tell now, our history says my grandfather chose this place to settle because the whole area was covered with oak trees when he arrived. He thought it would be good luck.”

  Jack snorted.

  “Tell us what you saw when you grandmama died.”

  Ekland took a deep breath and shuddered.

  “I only caught a glimpse. It was already moving toward the door, headed back outside when I caught up to it. I tried to stop it, but it just reached back and flipped me away, kind of like shooing away a mosquito. Only, I landed all the way over there by that pile of drywall. It gave me this to remember him by.”

  He pulled up his shirt, and Jack shined his flashlight on the man's side. A purple and yellow bruise decorated the skin.

  “Funny thing, though,” Ekland continued. “It wasn't that big. It looked like a regular man, but the floor rumbled and groaned when he walked across it like he weighed a lot. Once it was gone, I went into Grandmother Bridget's room, and she was dead, just lying there, shriveled up like the life had been drawn out of her.”

  “How'd you know it was here?” Blarney asked.

  Ekland shuddered again.

  “My wife and I smelled it. The stench was everywhere in the house. It smelled like something dead and rotting. That's when I knew. That's when I remembered all the stories Grandmother told us when we were kids. The same stories her grandmother had told her. I knew then it was one of the 'after walkers'.” The man's voice cracked on the final words as if his tongue had turned brittle.

  The phrase tickled another memory from college.

  “An after walker? You mean you think it was a draugr?” I opened my mouth to laugh, but my ex
pression morphed into a wince when Jack grabbed my arm so hard my elbow throbbed.

  “That's all we need, Mr. Ekland,” my boss said. “You stay inside here while we get ready.”

  Jack kept his grip on my arm as he led me outside and down the ramp with Blarney on our heels.

  “You best shut your mouth, or I'll stuff a noonie in it next time you go pokin' fun of a payin' customer.” He turned to Blarney. “He got sass mouth, but Stick's right. It's a draugr. You saw the opening. They cut open the death door in that house. Those marks on the wood are fresh.”

  “Si, I hate foreigners,” Blarney said before he spit into the dark. “I'll get the gun ready, Jefe.” He trotted toward the van.

  I walked beside Jack for a few steps before I had to say something.

  “You can't be serious. A draugr is just a fairy tale monster, a legend. I read about them in mythology class in school.”

  “T'other college boy said somethin' like that, too. Next thing I know, he's makin' gumbo in his britches and runnin' away, screamin' his fool head off. What part of still believing in the Bogeyman didn't you understand?” Jack stopped and turned to face me. “This fairy tale already killed part of that man's family, and it'll try to kill them all before it's done. We got to stop it, or they all gonna die.”

  Blarney walked up with a scuba tank and helped Jack strap it onto his back.

  “Go get the black bag out of the van, amigo,” he said to me. “Don't drop it.”

  I shuffled to the van, wondering how I was going to tell mom the job was a scam. The other college boy Jack kept talking about probably just walked off the job when he found out, too. I wondered if Uber would come out this far at this time of night to pick me up.

  It only took a minute to return with the canvas case. Blarney reached in and pulled out a short air hose which he attached to the tank and then grabbed a nail gun. Once the tool was coupled to the fitting, he opened a valve on the tank, and a hiss of air escaped.

  Jack flipped the release, and I saw the clip was full of nails.

  “Arceneaux! Help! The shout was followed by a scream.

  “It's here!” Jack yelled and ran toward the house.

  I started to follow, but Blarney stopped me short.

  “What're you going to do, hermano? Fight it with your bare hands?” I turned, but he was already dragging the poles we had loaded out of the van. He jerked a black cloth off the hook-and-point end that I recognized as a medieval weapon known as a bill. “Silver.” He dropped the pole and ripped the cloth off the next one. “Iron.” He held it out to me. “Here, this can hurt it.”

  I grabbed the polearm and ran toward the house, nearly falling into the under-construction sidewalk on the way. No one was in sight when I reached the board ramp, but I heard Jack shouting inside the house. The boards cracked and groaned as I ran up and through the doorway.

  Tears popped in my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. I gagged on the stench swimming down my throat. The smell of rotting meat mixed together with blood and wet earth and clung to my clothes and skin.

  Ekland's flashlight rocked back and forth on the floor, its light shining a path across dust and plaster. Jack shined his light on a dark figure hunched near the corner.

  “Come on, bebette! Get away. Haw!” Jack stopped shouting, and I heard a quick release of air. A nail thumped into the wood wall. Another shot followed a second later, but this one hit home.

  The figure staggered back and roared, the sound echoing off the room's bare walls. Jack's flashlight played across leathered skin glowing pale. A black hole devoured the night where one eye should have sat, and when the creature opened its mouth and bellowed again, bile dripped from cracked and yellowed teeth.

  “Cry all you want and make the grand bahbin.” Jack took a step forward and hit the figure with another nail.

  The draugr flinched and backed away slowly, edging toward the open doorway.

  “He...he's getting away,” I said.

  “He ain't goin' nowhere but back to his hole in the ground. Grab that light and check on t' bossman.”

  I picked up the flashlight from the floor and circled behind Jack toward the corner where the creature had been standing. Ekland was pale and sweating, but he blinked when I shined the light on his face. I also noticed a gray streak in his hair I'd not noticed before when he spoke to us outside.

  “Mr. Ekland, are you all right?”

  He nodded, each breath a strain.

  “It came out of the dark and was on top of me before I could move. I just need to rest for a minute.”

  “Don't you go sleepin' on us,” Jack said over his shoulder. “He might've sucked out a year or two, but you still alive.” He fired off another nail and was rewarded with a growl as the creature ducked out the doorway. “Which way to the boneyard? Where your paw paw buried?”

  Ekland motioned to the right.

  “About a mile down the street.”

  “Come on, Stick. It'll take more than me to put him back to sleep.”

  The draugr was halfway across the yard when Jack and I stepped out into the moonlight, a black mass shuffling on two legs trailing a reeking wake.

  “He's not going toward the cemetery,” I said.

  “We got to turn him.”

  Jack lumbered down the makeshift ramp, and I ran beside him once we were both on the ground. We caught the creature on the other side of the road, past the light of the streetlamps. Jack let loose with three nails in quick succession, and each one turned the figure a little more to the right.

  “Get on there, Stick. Hit him and help move him along.”

  In the dark of the neighbor's trees, the draugr shrank in my eyes to just a man. I must have been mistaken earlier in the moving light in Ekland's house. This was probably just a homeless person that had wandered onto the construction site looking for shelter and maybe something to eat. I didn't want to hurt him, so I reached out and prodded him with the butt end of the pole.

  The wood clunked as if it had hit a stone wall.

  “T'other end, boy! It's the iron that does it.” Jack fired another nail, earning a cringe and a step to the side from the creature.

  I glanced at the dark shadow that was my boss and swallowed. I turned the pole in my hands and lifted the end, poking gently with the point at our prey. The tip sunk in, a stick in soft mud, and the figure turned hard to the right.

  “That's it, Stick. You got 'im now.”

  I lost track of the time as we slowly made our way, only Blarney's van passing us on the deserted street. The stinking figure in front shuffled along, Jack using an occasional nail to keep it moving, while I reached out and steered the draugr with the tip of the bill. Eventually, fencing cast weak shadows across the ground when the graveyard loomed up alongside the road.

  “He probably gonna make one last run for it,” Jack said. “I seen it before. He's makin' a bahbin and rockin' us to sleep, but he still got some fight in 'im.” He fired another nail to punctuate his point.

  “This is impossible. How can this be happening?” I moved to the side so I had a good angle to turn the draugr under the wrought iron opening of the cemetery.

  “They opened up the death door on the house. For some still hangin' on, that's as good as callin' them home. But he's a bad 'un. A killer.”

  The ground under our feet changed from asphalt to crushed stone. In the cemetery, reminders of the oak forest still remained, and the scattered trees left pools of black around us. As soon as we hit the edge of the nearest shadow, the creature lurched off the path, its shuffling walk rising into a jog.

  “There he go!” Jack yelled before firing off two nails in succession.

  The draugr didn't stop. I ran over close-cropped grass, trying to forget the bodies lying beneath my feet and that the black stubs reaching up were headstones, not the corpses' hands. The ground rumbled with the draugr's steps, heavy enough to feel the pounding through my shoes. I jabbed with the polearm and felt the point sink into rotten flesh again.

/>   It roared a scream of pain and rage into the night. A dog barked in the distance, answering the challenge but not moving any closer. I heard air hiss and watched Jack step in tight.

  The draugr backed away like a cornered animal, waving a putrid arm at me, rotten flesh hanging loose from the bone. It turned and growled at Jack. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a flashlight bounce up and down in the far corner of the cemetery.

  “That'll be Blarney,” Jack said. “He's found the grave.” He raised his hand and pulled the trigger on his nail gun.

  Only air rushed out.

  The creature took two long strides forward and swept back its arm. He caught Jack on the side and sent him tumbling over a waist high gravestone and out of sight. I leaped forward, but the draugr turned and stumbled into its jog again.

  I ran around the gravestone and knelt on the dewy grass. Jack lie on his back, sucking in a breath through clenched teeth. I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I'm out of ammo. You got to do it, Stick. Drive him back to his hole so he go to sleep.”

  I shook my head.

  “We've got to get you to a hospital. I'll get Blarney to bring the van here.”

  Jack coughed and shook his head.

  “That'll wait. You got to put Ekland's paw paw back in the ground, or he'll kill the whole family, one at a time, every night 'til it done. The kids, womenfolk, all dead.” Jack rose up a little, but the effort brought a grimace that covered his face. “This's what we do, Stick. We got to solve their problem.”

  I nodded.

  “I'll be back as soon as I can.”

  I pushed myself up with the bill and sprinted after the sounds of the draugr, his steps pounding toward the cemetery opening. It only took a few seconds to bring it back into sight, and this time I didn't bother with the point. I swung the blade in an arc. The iron end struck the creature on the shoulder, a solid hit that would have earned me a long penalty if this had been a lacrosse match.

  The draugr veered to the left. I sprinted between the tombstones, poking the eight-foot pole at the figure in front of me. The waist-high markers soon gave way to larger monuments, some worn smooth from weather and time while others were missing angel wings or spires. None, however, were as ancient as the stench-spewing creature I chased, no matter how ridiculous the thought sounded to me.