The Equinox

by M J Preston

  “You,” it growled, and let out a screeching bray of laughter that echoed through the alley. “I thought I left you shivering in your boots up north.”

  Blackbird took aim.

  Toomey’s words rung out in Blackbird’s mind: “Do not engage in dialogue with the walker; he will trick and seduce you.”

  He released the arrow, which had been blessed by the Elders. It flew straight and true. For the brief instant of its flight, he wondered what would happen when the silver pierced the creature’s skin.

  He didn’t get a chance to find out. It snatched the arrow from the air and bent it in half.

  “Your blood will be sweet.”

  It moved on him, as he tried to get a fourth arrow into the bow.

  Above them, Louise Weatherton was back at the window. Now she was prepared.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!

  Gunfire erupted from the apartment window as she hammered the trigger wildly. To her, the explosions from the Browning 9mm were deafening, but a passerby could have easily confused them for firecrackers.

  The monster stopped again and turned toward the woman in the window. Blackbird sensed the opportunity and tried to notch another arrow into the bow. But before he could, the monster turned back toward him – even as another bullet clipped its shoulder, sending a spray of black mucus up into the night air.

  The Walker advanced like it had never even been hit, and as it closed the distance more bullets exploded from the barrel of the Browning.

  Unable to seat the arrow, Daniel Blackbird raised the crossbow up like a Louisville slugger in a final attempt to protect himself.

  One more bullet found the creature’s thigh. This time it let out a horrific screech – but it was more anger than pain.

  It reared up, about to bear down on Daniel – then it stopped. It paused, listened to some unheard noise that neither Blackbird nor Louise could hear.

  “Another time,” it invited, black ooze spilling from its mouth. Its eyes burned brightly as dirty smoke began to engulf it amid electrical pops and flashes. Then there was a crash and a liquid sound as it contorted and transformed before their eyes into a large Raven. It hung there a moment, like a toy on a child’s mobile, but before either of them could seize the opportunity, it flew toward Louise’s window, darted left and was gone into the night.

  Police sirens filled the air.

  “Shit,” Blackbird cried, and dropped his bow to the ground.

  “Are you okay?”

  For the first time, Blackbird looked up and realized it was a large black woman who had been firing from the apartment window. She had very likely saved his life. He gave her a thumbs up, then added. “Nice shooting, Tex.”

  “You an Indian there, Hon?” she called down.

  “Yup.”

  “An Indian with a bow and arrow?” she said, giggling nervously. “Imagine that.”

  “And a black woman with a gun,” he laughed. “I’m Dan Blackbird; you must be Foxy Brown.”

  At that, they both broke into a fit of nervous laughter. Both were still laughing when police cars surrounded the alley. Then the police took up defensive positions and yelled for the Indian to get down.

  12

  “What have we got?” Woodman asked the uniformed Sergeant who had secured the scene.

  The Sergeant opened his notepad. “We’ve got three bodies; one fresh, two in various states of decay.”

  “Three?” Woodman looked up. “Same MO?”

  “Yeah, same.”

  The Sgt. thumbed through his notepad. So far, they had discovered nine bodies in the Chicago sewer system including the three tonight. Fortunately, the Chicago Police had been able to keep the grisly details out of the media. Good thing, too: it wasn’t until the initial discovery of four bodies that the police knew they had a serial killer in their midst.

  Detective Rosedale came walking up beside his partner, nodding to the Sergeant. “Sean, you’ll never guess who they’ve got in custody.”

  Woodman turned from the Sergeant to Rosedale. “Virgin for Life?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rosedale nodded. “Our very own Native Voyeur.”

  “That would be witness number one,” the Sergeant said.

  “Witness?” both detectives said in unison.

  “Yes; Daniel Blackbird. The other is a black woman who witnessed the perpetrator dumping our last victim down the manhole. Her name –” he thumbed a page back – “Louise Weatherton.”

  Woodman rubbed his right eye with his knuckle. “Hang on, Sergeant. This Indian guy is a witness? We have him pegged as a suspect.”

  “We’ve been watching him for three days now,” Rosedale echoed.

  “That might be, Detectives, but both stories from Weatherton and Blackbird are pretty cozy. As far as we know so far, they have never met before tonight. Although you’d think they were the Lone Ranger and Tonto with all the bows and arrows and gunplay that went on in this alley.” The Sergeant waited for a reaction but got none.

  “Okay, standard OP on the scene. Keep the witnesses apart, give me a walkthrough and then you can explain what the hell kind of mess we’ve stumbled onto. That work for you, Sergeant?”

  “No problem, Detective, but I can pretty much guarantee that after I explain this shindig, you’re gonna think I’m pitching some kind of screwed up Quentin Tarantino script. Can you take notes on the move?”

  “I can do better than that.” Woodman produced voice-activated tape player and then turned to his partner. “Brad, get the team canvassing the area and secure the witnesses. Most of all, keep the press at bay. I don’t want anything leaked before we’ve got a handle on this.”

  “Alright, I’m on it.” Rosedale didn’t need anything further. He was a twenty-five-year veteran of the Chicago PD – eight of those spent in homicide. He was off and running.

  Woodman reached down and put a fresh micro-cassette into the recorder. He hated putting pen to paper; he was slow at writing, and it made his fingers ache. He pressed the record button then put it on voice activation.

  “Okay, Sergeant, let’s do this.”

  ***

  Chapter 2 - Breathing Exercises

  1

  West of Thomasville, MB

  14 August 2009

  Little Derek Wakeman set out that morning across his daddy’s field, unaware of the terrible thing he would stumble upon. The Wakemans were farmers, and this year a crop of canola swayed in the field musically to the easterly breeze. The yellow flowering plant was waist height on an average man, but for young Derek, it touched his cheeks.

  His mother had insisted he wear his outside clothes today. His chores were all done, and Daddy was pulling stumps with the tractor and didn’t need him, so he told Derek that he could play on the property.

  Derek was a typical farm boy: his life was often solitary, apart from his parents, especially when school was out. In the fall he and his father hunted deer, and when the biting cold of prairie winter set in they ice fished up at English Lake. Occasionally he could have a friend over, but the fact that he lived so far away from his schoolmates made sleepovers and visits infrequent. His best friend Cameron was in Florida with his parents: they were going to Disneyland.

  He wished that he could go on a vacation with his mom and dad, but summer was the time of farming and Daddy could never get away. So today, like many others, he set out to make his own fun with the greatest toy a nine-year-old boy has: his imagination.

  Derek’s father, Donald Wakeman, was a tall man with a serious side that often rubbed people the wrong way. He loved his family dearly and took as much time as he could with Derek, but he was always focused on the crop. A strong Christian, Wakeman insisted that the family give thanks before every meal, that they say their prayers before bed and that God’s word be practiced. Although not as strict as his own father, Donald believed genuinely that
the end times were upon them. “We must be ready for when Jesus returns,” he often said to Derek. As Derek made his way through the field, he could see the copse of woods that separated his father’s farm from Mr. Hopper’s. Daddy’s rule was that Derek could not go beyond the small wood line or into the adjacent woods to the north.

  2

  The search party, headed by Sgt. Mick Collins, worked their way along Filmore Creek looking for some sign of ten-year-old Tommy Parkins. He had gone missing two days before after setting out with his fishing pole on a bright summer afternoon, intent on pulling a few trout from the muddy creek water.

  The search party was made up of thirty residents from the town of Thomasville including Tommy’s father, John Parkins. As they proceeded in an extended line on either side of the creek they called out his name, a cacophony of voices.

  “Tommmmmmmmmeee!”

  While the searchers and families held out hope, Collins suspected the boy was probably dead. More likely drowned or a victim of exposure. He had seen enough of these searches in the last ten years to realistically assess what the outcome would be. But he did not, would not convey his doubts. Instead, he kept upbeat and urged the search on. It was essential to keep everyone in the frame of mind that they were looking for a live child, not a body. In the meantime, he and his colleagues would continue to wish for a miracle. It was rare, but just the same they would hope to find a boy with a busted leg or a broken arm instead of the tragedy these cases usually dished up.

  There was another reason Collins kept his thoughts to himself. He knew the missing boy, and the boy’s father was a longtime friend. He felt guilty for his analytical side, wanted to be unprofessional, but it had been two days.

  While Collins covered the search party his boss, Chief David Logan was chained to the desk sorting out the small department’s fiscal budget.

  3

  Derek snatched a stick up from the ground and pretended it was a rifle. He took aim at imaginary targets and began making mock firing sounds. As he entered the wood line, he dropped onto his belly and made believe he was an army Sgt. caught behind enemy lines. Sometimes it was fun playing alone: you could be anything you wanted, and nobody made fun of you. Cameron could get that way sometimes, ridiculing him or being mean for no reason at all. Just the same, he couldn’t wait for his friend to come back from summer holidays.

  The tree line which separated his father’s farm from Mr. Hopper’s was connected to Spruce Woods. Spruce Woods stretched endlessly northward and was easy to become lost in. Derek knew this because last fall he had ignored his father’s rule and set out as boys often do, to explore the secrets of the unknown area. He had been up there deer hunting twice, but he was told never to venture into the woods alone.

  On the day he became lost, Derek had only intended on going a few hundred yards into the woods, but that was all it took. Before long he became disoriented and ended up completely lost. The towering spruce trees overhead blocked out the path of the sun, and as he attempted to work his way back out of the canopy, he was venturing even deeper into the forest. By four o’clock in the afternoon, he decided to stop and wait for help. He had been wandering for five hours.

  Donald Wakeman found his lost son on the same day just after suppertime. He was wearing his orange hunting vest and calling for him when Derek stood up and shouted, “Daddy?”

  “Derek?” his father called back.

  Excited, he ran toward the sound of his father’s voice and saw the flash of orange between the rows of tree trunks. He dashed through them and stood face to face with his father. For a moment Donald Wakeman smiled, relief washing over him, but then he wiped his eyes, and his expression soured.

  “Get over here, boy,” he commanded.

  What followed was a quick spanking, but the smacks hardly measured up to the three previous times his father had used his hand to teach a lesson. Nor was it the pain inflicted by the spanking that cautioned him from ever venturing into the forest alone again. It was tears he saw in his eyes. He had never seen his father cry, had always thought of him as indestructible. He knew that he had been the cause of those tears, and he vowed never to venture into the woods again.

  Today, a year after his misadventure, he was restricted to playing in the copse of trees that bordered his father’s and Mr. Hopper’s farm. It ran roughly a mile downward between the two farms like a peninsula off the big woods to the north and was about three hundred yards across.

  Mr. Hopper was a newcomer to Thomasville; he had bought the farm from the Angus family after Mr. Angus died of a heart attack in 2007 and Mrs. Angus moved away. The Anguses were friendly people, and Mrs. Angus always had a bit of candy and a smile for Derek.

  Mr. Hopper was what Daddy called a ‘Hobby Farmer’; something Derek didn’t quite understand. What he did know, however, was that his father did not care for his new neighbor, and Derek felt the same way by proxy.

  Mr. Hopper was a stout man with a fine horseshoe of hair that rounded his wrinkled and pudgy head. Derek’s mom remarked more than once that he looked like Lou Grant. Derek had no idea who Lou Grant was but guessed he must have been a grouchy man who swore a lot.

  Crows cawed, enthusiastically feasting on Mr. Hopper’s corn as Derek scanned the woods for enemy soldiers while crouching silently in the low brush. Just ahead of him he could see where the tree line opened up. Advancing on his belly, he moved forward. Soon it would be time to turn around and head in another direction. Mr. Hopper would not take kindly to someone mucking about on his land, nor would his father.

  As he crawled forward something caught his eye. Lifting himself up on his elbows he saw that it was Mr. Hopper; he was doing something just beyond the trees. For reasons that only a young boy can explain, Derek decided to sneak forward and watch what it was Mr. Hopper was doing. He pretended that Mr. Hopper was an enemy soldier setting a booby trap for advancing troops. He, Derek, was a reconnaissance man pinpointing the booby trap and observing the movement of the enemy.

  He crawled with remarkable stealth to a better vantage point and climbed up a nearby spruce. A metallic ping sounded: a shovel hitting rock. Slowly he scaled the spruce and sat down on a branch about eight feet above the ground. He was approximately thirty feet away from the unsuspecting Hopper. Derek peered at him. Hopper was digging a hole on the edge of his cornfield.

  The hole was approximately four feet deep and long enough for a grown man to lie down in. To one side sat a giant pile of dirt and a black garbage bag. He’s burying garbage? Why doesn’t he just burn it like Daddy? Derek’s thoughts shifted to the time he and Cameron had dug a hole half that size. He also remembered his father making the two of them fill it in before they were allowed to have supper.

  As Mr. Hopper dug, the sweat between his broad shoulders stained the dirty grey plaid shirt he wore. Unaware of the young boy who watched, he picked his nose freely and rolled the ball of snot between his fingers, then flicked it off. Good thing Mr. Hopper didn’t eat it: if he had, Derek would not have been able to contain himself. Reaching into his back pocket, Mr. Hopper pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his brow, and then he looked about for any signs of life. There was none, so he continued to dig.

  4

  John Parkins was at the lead this afternoon. He had been out beating the brush for Tommy since the day he set out for Filmore Creek. Even before the search party had been formed, he had known that something was wrong. Tommy was a good boy, never late, always thoughtful. He and his wife Olivia had raised a very polite little boy who was not prone to forget himself or the clock. So when he did not come home for dinner, John and his wife were instantly concerned.

  The night before, he and Mick had walked both sides of Ortona Road calling for his boy long after everyone else had left. He dared not ask Mick what he thought, terrified that he might answer honestly.

  As he walked looking for any sign of his son he remembered he had been unde
r the hood of his Chevy changing the alternator. Tommy had come along and asked him to go fishing, and he had said, “I can’t, Tommy. This is my only day off and if I don’t get this alternator in we won’t be eating next week.”

  “Seriously, Dad?” A look of concern fell over his face; he was not your usual ten-year-old.

  John Parkins smiled at his son, and for a moment he almost said, “I’ll fix this later; let’s go get some trout.” But he didn’t. Instead, he promised Tommy that next weekend they would get out and spend a morning at Filmore or head up to Linden Lake to catch some fish.

  “That sounds great, Dad,” Tommy replied, and set off down the road.

  John watched his son walk away, fishing pole in hand and not a care in the world. He felt the love wash over him and again almost called to Tommy to stop and wait – but the alternator nagged at the back of his mind, stopped his words from even forming. John worked at the Feed Mill as a private contractor and used his truck to fill orders for the local farmers. While he could have missed a day of work, he did not want to tempt fate. There were a lot of folks out of work, and John Parkins subscribed to the philosophy that you have to take work while you could get it.

  That was three days ago.

  Now, as he trudged along, he beat himself up for being so shortsighted and stupid.

  5

  Up in the tree for about ten minutes, Derek was regretting the decision he had made. He sat there, his butt falling asleep, and began to think how angry Mr. Hopper would be if he caught him spying. His father’s reaction would be even worse.

  Below, Hopper finished the hole and climbed out. He was soaked in sweat and mumbled something to himself in between grunts. This frightened Derek for reasons he could not understand, but he held onto himself hoping that soon the fat man would finish burying his garbage, or whatever it was, and move along before Derek lost his balance and fell from the tree.