by B. Groves
Miguel nodded and said, “Your dog is okay with her now, yes?”
Alison reassured him. “He’s fine. He’s been snuggling up to her ever since she walked through the door.”
Miguel looked relieved and stepped back.
Markus removed his hat and went to shake Alison’s hand. “You must be the famous hunter Kyle told me about. Chief Markus Carter, ma’am.”
Alison accepted his handshake. “Chief. Nice to meet you. Reverend Ellis tells me you’re aware of the problem in your city.”
“I am, and thank you for taking the time to see it gets resolved quickly and quietly,” Markus answered.
“I’ll try my best,” Alison answered with a nod.
“I have a lot of stories for you, Miss Stark. I think you’ll find them fascinating,” Markus commented.
“I’ll bet. I can’t wait for your information,” Alison said.
Kyle cleared his throat and said, “Before we do anything else, I need to remove that bed from the basement and since you guys are here… ”
Markus scoffed and turned to his friend. “Do I look dressed for that?”
“Since you’re here…” Kyle repeated with a smirk.
Markus muttered, “Jesus Christ,” and Miguel held back his laughter.
Alison stepped up and said, “I can come.” She turned to Miguel. “Olivia told me the story already.” She placed a hand on Miguel’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I was hoping she wouldn’t remember anything.”
Miguel looked down, the grief from his wife’s death tensing his features. He turned to Alison and tried to smile. “What you did for my daughter is more valuable than I can ever repay. We will get through this, but please let me help.”
Alison’s mouth turned down in doubt and she glanced at Kyle. Kyle didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t want to turn the man away. It was Alison’s call.
“If there is something more Olivia can tell us, then that’s a huge help,” Alison said.
Kyle hid his smile. It was the right answer and one that should make Miguel happy. The man needed justice for his wife.
Miguel seemed satisfied and said, “Where do we take the mattress?”
“God dammit,” Markus muttered and removed his jacket, glaring at Kyle.
Kyle smiled wide, making Markus curse again.
“Are you going to burn it?”
“Yeah, there’s a trail behind the house,” Kyle pointed to the entrance past the pond. “We will carry it down there and burn it.”
Markus sighed and rolled his eyes. “It’s illegal to burn—”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s get this over with.”
Miguel asked Alison for reassurance that Olivia would be safe. “Olivia’s safer here with Simon. Alison turned back to Kyle. “How long will we be gone?”
“Couple hours,” Kyle answered, getting a groan from Markus.
Markus removed his tie and rolled up his sleeves. He looked down at his dress shoes and frowned. “You’re buying me a new pair of shoes when this is over.”
“With what?” Kyle asked. “I’m not exactly keeping up repairs in the church, thanks to you and the other cheapskates.”
“The least I can do is pick Alison’s brain on what’s going on in my town. Is that okay, Alison?” Markus asked, ignoring Kyle’s comment.
Alison smiled. “Sure.”
“I want to check on Olivia first,” Miguel said and went inside the house.
Kyle, Markus, and Alison walked over to the basement doors. Kyle unlocked them and readied himself for the stench lingering from Olivia’s possession.
Markus lifted one door and Kyle the other.
All three of them took steps back when the smell drifted from the basement.
Alison covered her nose with her arm. “You still have that number I gave you for the cleaners?”
“I sure do,” Kyle answered.
“Good. Call them tomorrow,” Alison said.
“You would think a fucking body was down here,” Markus said. He looked around to make sure Miguel hadn’t returned yet. “That child was lucky.”
“She was. It could have been much, much worse,” Alison said.
The three made their way down the steps and eyed the basement. Kyle looked around and sighed. Thank God he didn’t use this basement much. It was more a storage room any more than the man cave that Reverend Miller left behind. Reverend Miller used to play cards down here with this buddies since his wife didn’t like his friends.
Miguel came down the stairs and said he was all set. “Your dog is different from last night,” he commented as Simon let out a few barks from upstairs.
“He’s well trained,” Alison said.
“All right,” Kyle said. “Let’s get this over with.”
The four of them lifted the mattress and the box spring from the bed. Kyle kept the bed frame since it was brass and he could clean that easily.
The smell from the bed was unbelievable as he and Miguel walked the mattress up the steps and onto the grass with Alison and Markus right behind them.
“I told Olivia not to look, but she insisted,” Miguel said pointing to the window.
Kyle saw Olivia gazing out from the side window. He waved to her and she waved back.
“Think of this as closure for her,” Alison said.
Kyle removed his jacket, tie, and shirt leaving only his t-shirt on. The early afternoon sun was beating down on them and from what he explored on the path, they wouldn’t get much relief from the forest.
“If you haven’t hydrated,” Kyle said. “Now’s the time.”
The group agreed they were ready. “Let’s do this,” Kyle said.
Kyle instructed Markus and Alison on where to go since he wanted her to lead. They entered the forest and although there were patches of shade, it wasn’t thick enough to cover them for long. A slight breeze rattled the leaves, but even that felt like someone was pointing a blow dryer in his face. Birds chirped in the distance, and small animals scuttled away, upsetting the fallen leaves surrounding the path.
“How far are we taking this?” Markus asked, already trying to catch his breath.
“There’s a pasture near here. I think it’s far enough where no one will see the smoke,” Kyle said in between breaths.
Sweat was gathering on his forehead and his glasses kept slipping down his face. He had to stop twice to wipe his brow as Miguel did the same.
Alison and Markus weren’t as sweaty since the box spring was much lighter. Kyle kept Markus and Alison ahead of him so he could watch her. She kept looking around and Kyle knew she was looking for any signs of other demons.
“Are there hunting and hiking trails around here?” She asked Markus.
“They’re everywhere,” Markus said. “This area has grown on those kinds of tourist attractions like hiking, kayaking, hunting. You know all that stuff.”
“I saw the missing posters in the convenience store this morning,” Alison said. “and I wanted to know more about that.”
Markus scoffed and said, “We have the seventh highest missing persons rate in the United States, but we have the highest found alive rate, too.”
“When did that start?”
“Almost five years ago. People were going missing left and right on me, and I was at a loss,” Markus said. “The town was calling for my head. There were practically mobs after me, but the missing started showing up alive and well and that saved my job. It was Mayor Manes who kept the crowd calm.”
Alison almost stopped to look at Markus but realized she would upset their rhythm and kept going.
“Did you say your mayor’s last name is Manes?” She asked.
“Yeah, why?”
Alison glanced back at Kyle and he stayed quiet. The mattress was getting too heavy as they made their farther into the forest for him to react.
He nodded at Alison.
“Does that mean something, Alison?” Miguel asked from behind Kyle.
“What’s his first name?” She asked.
“Mayor Samuel Manes,” Markus said in a sarcastic tone. “The savior of Wolfpine.”
“Samuel Manes?” Alison asked with surprise touching her voice. “Jesus… That’s all he could think of?” She turned her head to Miguel. “It does, Miguel. Manes means deified souls of dead ancestors in Roman mythology and Samuel… well… if you take where I think it will go then Samuel is a large figure in the Hebrew Bible or it could be a play on Samael, an archangel.”
“Like Satan?” Miguel asked.
“Exactly like Satan,” Kyle answered between heavy breaths.
Alison nodded. “This is an alias. Not a great one. Wasn’t he vetted before he became mayor?”
Markus looked a little offended. “Are you asking me if I did my job? I sure did. I could find nothing on this guy. Not even a radical political comment on Facebook. Besides, after our textile plant shut down, people were scared for their futures, and he came out of nowhere and brought the tourism with him.”
Alison ignored the job comment. “What I’m asking is, where did he tell you he was from?”
Markus nodded. “He claimed he grew up in the Smoky Mountains and I found his story true for the most part.”
“For the most part?” Alison asked.
“What can I say? People were desperate for someone to come in and turn this town around. He did it,” Markus said.
“He won by a landslide,” Miguel said. “I remember that.”
“Not that there was any competition,” Kyle chimed in.
The mattress grew heavier as they walked farther into the forest. The path was thinning out and Kyle was dodging roots and branches. Insects were buzzing around them and sweat was now dripping off his brow.
Dumbass, he thought. He should have taken it to the local dump, but he didn’t want to draw attention to it. He may have had the chief of police right in front of him, but if someone reported the blood, bodily fluids, or the stink, it would force Markus to open up an investigation and they wanted to keep this as quiet as possible.
“What about you Alison?” Markus asked still huffing and puffing. “How did you come to this?”
Kyle’s ears perked up. He wanted to hear Alison’s story. He couldn’t stop thinking about how her eyes glowed when she exorcised the demon from Olivia.
“About eleven years ago, a drunk driver hit me head on,” Alison said. “and I was in a coma for two weeks. When I woke up, they weren’t sure about the extent of my head trauma and its long-term effects, but I had none. One night I was woken up by the lab tech so he could draw blood.”
“The lab tech was one of them?” Markus asked.
Alison nodded. “I couldn’t understand why he kept morphing into this ‘thing’ in front of me and why his voice changed. I thought, at first, the medications I was on were making me hallucinate, but I realized it was real.”
“Jesus…” Markus muttered. “What made you hunt these things?”
“I didn’t even know I could exorcise them until years later. They were driving me insane. Calling out my name on the street, harassing me, and I finally sat down and searched for others like me and I found The Network.”
“People like you?”
“Yes.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Not enough,” Alison said. “They outnumber us one-thousand to one, and that’s what I know of.”
“Good God,” Markus muttered again. “How do you deal with that?”
Alison turned her head sideways. Kyle noted how her face turned somber. “By trying to lead as normal of a life as possible.”
Kyle wanted to know more, but since Markus hadn’t seen the exorcism, he probably thought Alison was expelling because of Bible passages. He explained it to Markus before he introduced him to Alison, but he could see it in the Chief’s eyes that the man doubted Kyle’s story.
The group quieted and Kyle looked ahead of Alison and Markus. They were coming up to the opening in the trail.
Kyle breathed. The pasture was right around the corner. He wanted to burn it there so they wouldn’t start a forest fire.
Kyle noticed Markus and Alison had slowed down. Crows flew above them.
He looked up and saw a bunch of them soaring over the treetops and that’s when he noticed something else.
Spider webs adorned the trees along the path. One wouldn’t think much of it if one were taking a leisurely walk, but with the town and the infestation, this was more than that.
The spider webs covered at least half of the trees, killing the leaves that were trapped underneath them.
These were no ordinary webs for this area. They were too big and too dark for your normal spider.
Kyle looked ahead. The forest had grown silent. No more birds chirping. No movement within the fallen leaves on the side of the path.
Kyle glanced at Alison. Her head was turning back and forth, her ponytail swinging from side to side.
She told Markus to stop. She let go of the box spring and asked, “How much longer?”
“We’re coming into the pasture now,” Kyle answered.
“When we get there I need to look around,” she said.
Markus walked up to join her and Miguel came up to Kyle’s side.
“What’s wrong, Alison?” Markus asked.
Alison’s eyes searched the trees and the surrounding forest. “Nothing yet, but we’ll see.”
“Do you think we should still burn this mattress?” Miguel asked.
“Let’s hold off on that until I do a little exploring,” Alison said.
Kyle approached Alison as she was stepping around the path. Markus always had his firearm with him and Kyle cursed himself for not bringing protection.
“I see the spider webs. Does it mean something?” Kyle asked.
“I didn’t know until the crows flew over,” Alison said.
“Very biblical,” Markus commented as his eyes searched the trees above.
“Always. Let’s get this mattress to where it needs to go and I can start from there,” Alison said.
Markus put his firearm back in his belt and picked up the box spring. Kyle did the same with Miguel and now the group was on edge from their discovery.
Kyle let Alison lead the way. She knew what she was doing, but Kyle could feel it. There was tension in the air. The forest became darker as gray clouds blocked out the sun. The crows continued to cry out in the distance and shadows appeared behind trees giving the forest a menacing feel.
He heard Miguel praying behind him and Kyle did the same. The necklace he wore with the cross suddenly felt heavy around his neck as if an invisible hand was trying to pull it off.
They reached the pasture and Kyle directed them to a bare spot he saw when he first came here.
They waded through the tall grass and wildflowers until Alison spotted the bald spot.
The four of them dropped the mattress and the box spring and Alison’s eyes searched the area.
She was on alert and walked off.
“Where are you going?” Kyle asked. “Alison, don’t go alone.”
Alison turned around and put a hand out to stop Kyle from following her. “I’ll be fine. I won’t go out of your sight. Don’t light it until I return.”
“Let me go with you,” Miguel chimed in.
Alison laughed. “You guys are cute. Let me do my job, please.”
Kyle was frustrated. He didn’t want to leave her alone. He knew she could take care of herself, but he hated it. He didn’t want to put her in danger.
Kyle followed her anyway. He brought her into this, he would try to help her as best as he could and be damned how much she cussed him out later.
Kyle felt a hand on his arm as he started to walk away. “Let her go. She knows what she’s doing.”
Markus gave him a smirk and turned back to the mattress and shook his head. While Kyle was busy watching Alison explore the edge of the forest, he heard Markus talk to Miguel.
“I didn’t see Olivia back at the house. How’
s she doing?”
“Healing physically, but mentally…” Miguel said taking a deep breath. “She remembered everything. Alison gave me a phone number for some doctor in California to help me with her.”
Markus nodded. His eyes sympathetic to the man who lost his wife in such a violent way, and came close to losing his daughter. “That woman has a lot of tricks up her sleeve to battle these things, it seems.”