by Hunter Shea
Get a grip, Gray.
The interior was cluttered yet cozy. Despite the disarray, he could tell that everything was exactly where it should be. The colors inside were as intense as the exterior. There was no mistaking that a single woman lived here: shades of pink, gold and purple adorned walls and fabrics.
“Don’t mind the mess,” she said, bending down to pick up her cat. She gave it a kiss on its nose and set it onto the couch. “Ruffles and I weren’t expecting any visitors today.”
“Your place is neater than mine seconds after I’m done cleaning. Hey, Ruffles.” He held out his hand so the cat could sniff it. It nudged him with the top of its head and he scratched between its ears. That was all it took to get it purring. “He likes me.”
“He likes everybody,” Meredith said, going up the stairs. “Come on up here. I have a little office where I keep everything.”
He passed by her bedroom on the way to the office. An unmade, king-sized, four-poster bed dominated the room. He noticed there wasn’t a television. It seemed odd. He didn’t know many single people who didn’t have a TV in their bedroom. On most nights, it was all one had for company.
Her office was a cramped, converted closet. It had enough room for a small computer table, chair and rows of shelves mounted on every wall. The shelves were overloaded with books, files and magazines.
“You ever watch Hoarders?” he asked.
“No. What’s it about?”
“Never mind.”
She grabbed a red box off a shelf, threw the lid aside and shuffled through a mound of manila folders.
“You mind turning on my PC?” she asked. He had to squeeze past her to get at the power button, grazing her hip. He apologized but she didn’t seem to notice.
“I was partnered with Frank Russo at the time,” she said, extracting one of the folders. It was stuffed with pictures and dog-eared papers. She dropped it on the desk. “A family went to the beach early to get a good spot. The father spotted a dead animal near the shoreline. When he went over to take a look, he immediately called 911. He said some unknown creature had washed up on the beach and someone needed to look at it. Our shift had just begun, it was a nice day and Frank figured spending some time on the beach, even in uniform, wasn’t a bad way to start the day.”
When Dalton went to open the file, Meredith lifted her crutch, slapping it down on the cover.
“Not yet. As we drove there, I figured we’d either see a waterlogged dog or maybe even a seal. They’ve been known to come around every now and then. Seals die just like everything else. People around here look at seals when they’re alive, in zoos or on TV shows. They’re not familiar with dead ones, especially if they’ve been rotting in the water awhile.”
Dalton touched the scar on his jaw, recalling his youthful fascination with seals and sea lions.
“By the time we got to the beach, there was a small crowd gathered around. People were taking pictures and I see a guy poking at something with a long stick. Frank cleared them out fast. He was a big guy with an even bigger voice. Real old school. He’d cracked a lot of heads in his day. I don’t think he was too crazy about having me as a partner, but he was a year away from retirement so he didn’t bitch, too much. As everyone peeled back, I walked past them and nearly lost my breakfast.”
“Superfloater?” Dalton asked.
She shook her head. “Couldn’t be further from it. No, this thing hadn’t been dead or in the water for very long. I just didn’t know what the hell it was. It was like a pet that dropped from some kind of alien spaceship. I took a bunch of pictures with my phone. I mean, this thing was wild. See for yourself.”
Meredith flipped the file open. Dalton picked up the first picture and felt his heart race.
He’d seen this thing last night. And it was very much alive.
CHAPTER 18
Tom and Jason never went to sleep that night. They’d gotten so engrossed in a wicked game of Mob of the Dead that they’d simply forgotten to go to bed. The beers were eighty-sixed by three in the morning and the weed held out until around six. Now it was nine and they were wired from drinking several cans of Monster to keep any hangover from creeping into their dry skulls.
“Jay, you wanna go to IGA and pick up some of the shit we need for tonight?”
Both were slumped on the couch watching a rerun of Charmed with the sound off. “I’d rather watch Halloween and go to sleep. Where’d you put the Blu-ray?”
“It’s all the way upstairs.” Tom pried himself off the couch. “Seriously, we might as well get it done now so we can sleep the rest of the day and be ready to party. I promise we’ll watch Halloween tomorrow. Hell, we can watch all of them if you want then. Just as long as we take a break to watch The Shining at some point.”
Jason broke out in a big smile. “Now you’re talking, swizzle stick. Who says youth is wasted on the young?”
Tom went to the bathroom to make himself look less like a meth head. He didn’t want the oldsters working at IGA calling the cops because he made them skittish. Through the bathroom door, he said, “You still never told me what made you break the Jenna bong. That was irreplaceable.”
Jason bumped into the couch as he tried to slip into his Vans.
“Must have been someone’s dog. I kinda freaked when I heard it coming at me. My ninja skills went into high gear.”
Tom splashed water on his face. “Dude, we could make an awesome comic about a ninja that uses bongs instead of throwing stars.”
“We could serialize it in High Times,” Jason laughed.
They clambered into Tom’s car, a twelve-year-old Chrysler that was a year past being taken out behind the woodshed, and headed into town. The IGA was the first store before the little shops took over on Main Street. As he pulled into the lot, Tom looked in his rearview mirror and frowned.
“What the hell kind of circus is that?”
“Where?” Jason asked.
Tom pointed over Jason’s shoulder.
He parked the car and they got out to watch a dozen unmarked, white vans tear down the Montauk Highway. The windows were tinted so dark, they couldn’t make out anyone inside. Even when the light turned red, they all kept right on going. Cross traffic came to a standstill as those who were out and about stopped to stare at the strange procession. They drove past the plaza and beyond, never slowing down.
“Dude, that was crazy,” Jason said.
“Maybe they’re an undercover team looking for the puppy that spooked you like a little girl.”
“I swear, I will find another Jenna. I’ll even go to the city and hit every head shop if I have to.”
Tom slapped him on the shoulder. “I might hold you to that. Now let’s get everything we’ll need for tonight’s munchies.”
They were approached by Can Man, looking the worse for wear. The older man stopped in front of them but peered somewhere past them.
“Hey, Can Man,” Jason said, offering his hand. He didn’t respond.
“Can Man, you all right?” Tom asked.
His eyes flittered about, then came into focus, settling on their faces. “Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind today. I found a dead dog this morning. It was torn up really bad.”
“I wonder if that’s your dog, man,” Tom said to Jason.
“That’s freaky.”
Can Man shook his head. “The cops said it was a golden retriever. But someone tore it apart.”
Jason gave a short laugh. “You been hitting the hard stuff? I didn’t know you drank.”
His demeanor changed swiftly. He was not in the mood for jokes. “You fellas better watch yourselves. I know what you and your friends do at the beach. And I know all about that party of yours tonight. If you’re smart, you’ll cancel it. If you’re lucky, the cops won’t even let you get to the beach. Stay home.”
Tom didn’t question how he knew about the party. Can Man was plugged into the town like no one else. He heard everything. The whole shtick of the old man warning the kids was
a little too much out of Friday the 13th for him, though.
Instead of questioning him or blowing him off—which could only make things worse, judging by the shroud of anxiety surrounding the man—Tom said, “Thanks, Can Man. You’re always looking out for us. You take care of yourself, too.”
They left him before he could say anything else. Once inside the air-conditioned mini-market, Jason said, “I wonder if what he said about the cops closing off the beaches is true. That would suck balls.”
Tom grabbed a cart and headed for the junk food aisle.
“Can Man’s just having a bad day. We’ll be fine.”
Meredith saw the shock on Dalton’s face and knew she was right. He leaned against the wall, his icy blue eyes darting all over the photo. The muscles in his jaw clenched and unclenched.
“You took this?” he asked.
“Yep. I took about a dozen and made copies. One for my report, the others for myself. It was just too strange to watch it get lost in the paperwork shuffle.”
The photo showed a slightly bloated, blue-skinned animal lying on its side. Tufts of dark fur sprouted here and there, but most of the flesh was exposed. The face looked something similar to the mythical Minotaur, though the nose had been broken off. It had a massive lower jaw with serrated rows of teeth. The skin of its jaw had been flayed away, revealing stark white bone. Its front paws were cloven hooves, while the back were more like a dog’s, with four-toed padded paws.
“What the hell is it?” Dalton said, mostly to himself.
“No one knows,” Meredith said, handing him another picture taken from a different angle. Dalton’s eyes grew wider. “After Frank and I moved everyone away, we called Anita Banks over to claim the body. A call came in and we had to bail before she got there. When I caught up with her later, I was psyched to hear what she thought of it. The only problem was, she never saw the body. By the time she got there, which was about twenty minutes after we called her, it was gone.”
“Maybe it washed back out with the tide.”
Meredith firmly shook her head. “Nope. It was low tide at the time. The only way that thing made it off the beach was by someone taking it away. But that’s not all of it.”
Dalton shuffled through the pictures, stroking his chin, deep in thought. “This thing looks a little smaller than what I saw, but the rest of it looks pretty close. I should have shot the damn thing.” He tossed the file onto her desk. “Tell me the rest.”
She pointed a finger at him. “I will, but if you tell me I’m nuts, I’ll introduce my crutch to your head. Understand?”
For the first time that morning, he smiled. “I do. I want to figure out what these things are and I don’t think anyone else is going to tell me much. For now, you’re the expert.”
Meredith sat in her computer chair and typed Montauk Monsters in her search engine. Up came dozens of images of dead, ghastly beasts, all of them rotting in the sand. “The first few were found right here, which is how they got their name from a guy named Loren Coleman on the cryptid circuit.”
Dalton leaned over her shoulder, staring at the thumbnail pictures. “What the hell is a cryptid circuit?”
“You ever heard of cryptozoology?”
He shook his head, leaning over to use her mouse to click on an image and make it larger.
Meredith said, “It’s the study of strange, unknown animals like lake monsters, Bigfoot, giant squids, chupacabra, you name it. It’s not a recognized science, but plenty of people all over the world are really into it. They call these animals cryptids. Our local beasties are on the top-ten lists for anyone interested in cryptozoology. But since it’s a kind of underground thing, no one in authority really takes it seriously.”
“So you’re telling me these things are like Bigfoot?”
“No, they have no relation to Bigfoot, other than the fact that people have seen them and can’t explain what they are, and there’s no solid evidence for their existence.”
Dalton scrolled down the screen. The pictures seemed to go on forever. “And all of these things have been washing up here and no one talks about it?”
“Again, no. The majority have been found here on the eastern end of Long Island as well as coastal Connecticut, but creatures like these have been seen as far south as Chile and as far north as Halifax.”
“So how isn’t this news?” Dalton stared at her like she was a teacher and he was the new kid in a new country who couldn’t comprehend how his adopted society worked.
“Because it looks and sounds crazy. Every now and then one of these things will appear and get a little press, but it’s always done tongue-in-cheek, like when the news reports on strange lights in the sky and they play over-the-top creepy music in the background and the reporter can barely keep the shit-eating grin off her face.”
He walked out of the little room and halfway down the hall. “But there are so many pictures. That’s evidence.”
Meredith had to suppress a sigh. “In this day and age, photographs are hardly evidence. My ten-year-old niece can cook up an image of one of these things on her computer and you’d never know that it wasn’t real. The other side of the problem is that the bodies disappear in every single case. Sometimes they’ll make it as far as an animal hospital, but not for long. The official word is that they’re raccoon carcasses disfigured by time spent in the water. Does that look like a raccoon to you?” She tapped one of the pictures. “Someone knows what they are and they’ve been collecting the hard evidence so the whole thing is trapped within the world of cryptozoology, which people think is best left for kids who don’t know better and adults who’ve gone fruit loops.”
Dalton pinched the corners of his eyes. He looked like seven shades of hell. She needed him to believe. Ever since the one she’d seen with Frank, she’d carried her secret obsession around with her, not even telling her mother about it. Gray was one of the only people who had ever seen one of these things alive.
“So, are you ready to report me to Campos? Tell him I’m not mentally fit for the job?” She held her crutch across her chest as if it were a talisman that would ward off any reply she truly didn’t want to hear.
He came back into the room and reopened the file, tossing the pictures around the desk and over her keyboard. His head swiveled from the pictures on the desk to the ones on the monitor. “They all look alike, but different. If they’re the same things I saw last night, they’re strong. Stronger than any man. And vicious.”
Meredith leaned close to him. “Is that your way of saying you believe me?”
He paused. “I don’t know. I believe what I saw. And I believe that these things resemble it. My questions are why are they here now, alive, where did they come from and where are they hiding?”
When he straightened up, he staggered and Meredith had to grab his shirtsleeve to keep him from tripping over her leg. “Okay, you’ve officially crashed,” she said. “That’s what happens when you mainline endorphins for hours and suddenly stop. You’re going down there.” She pointed at a doorway down the hall.
“What’s down there?”
“My guest bedroom. You need some sleep and you’re not driving. You’ll feel better when you wake up. When your head is a little clearer, I can answer at least one of your questions.”
One of his eyebrows cocked up. “Oh yeah, which one is that?”
“I’m pretty sure I know where they came from.”
CHAPTER 19
Anita Banks awoke in her hospital room to a geyser of fire racing through every cell in her body. Her sheets were soaked with sweat. She could feel a haze of heat hovering over her skin. It hurt too much to breathe, much less ring for the nurse or even cry out for help.
What’s happening to me?
Against her will, her bowels let loose. It felt like lava. Her eyes rolled to the top of her head from the unbearable agony and shame that came with it. Her tongue was an immobile emery board. It even hurt to blink.
Oh God, I’m going to die.
Somehow, she managed to turn her head, each stolen centimeter bringing ripples of agony as her burning skin brushed against the pillow. The bandage around her arm, covering the bite wound, was solid red. A thick, yellow substance oozed within the filaments.
This was the source of her pain, the ground zero for the wildfire infection that was incinerating her alive. The IVs of antibiotics hooked to her arms might as well have been flowing with water. She realized with sickening clarity that nothing could save her.
I won’t be the only one. If they don’t kill it, other people will end up just like this. I’ll never know what they really are.
She stiffened as what felt like a river of boiling oil poured down her spine. Every organ along the way flinched, twitched and spasmed, fanning the flames of torment.
There’s still so much to do. I never made a will. I never told anyone how and where I wanted to be buried. Please don’t cremate me. I don’t want to burn like this anymore.
Hot tears rolled down her face as she felt herself come to a boil. Her heart stuttered, racing to keep her systems going, but failing.
Something popped, but she couldn’t see what it was. The room grew darker. An awful smell washed over her.
Is that me?
The uneven rhythm of her heart constricted her chest. She prayed it would stop before the fire finished having its way with her. She struggled to remember how to say the Our Father, the first verse circling through her head, Our Father, who art in heaven, until all thought, and mercifully, all pain, ceased.
Sergeant Dennis Campos led the pair in their discount suits out of Captain Hammerlich’s office and through the station. Every line on Hammerlich’s phone was lit. He was irritated and had little time to play usher. Campos was impressed by how stoic his boss had been through it all. But he knew him better than that. Hammerlich was not happy with their visitors or their news.