by Dan O'Brien
She tried to look, but the man’s hand was still pressed firmly against her mouth. Watching the creature slink forward, the man was frozen: mesmerized. There was a surreal gait to the creature, slithering and pacing like a caged animal.
It came sideways, claw dug deep into the ground. As it neared, the man could see the stitched human face that covered half of its visage. Black thread intertwined with bruised, puss-filled flesh.
The man lifted his hand from the woman’s mouth. Her breath rasped and then she screamed. He could not hear her as he stood, backing away from the creature. Looking over his shoulder, he saw the lights from the house in the distance. The creature was upon the girl, a tearing, ripping sound and then silence. Hovering over the woman, the creature looked at the stricken man.
“What…” he muttered. And then as the man turned to run, the creature was upon him.
THE VAGRANT’S SILENCE had begun to unnerve Lauren. As he pointed with a crooked, shaking hand to turn, she had a sick feeling in her stomach. It was a bumpy road, uneven, without gradation. It threw her body around as she attempted to keep the jeep on the beaten path. Long, twisting lines of barbed wire chased them alongside. Pieces of fabric, weathered and stretched, hung in places.
“Is this where you heard the creature whisper?” ventured Lauren.
The transient nodded slowly, pointing to a beaten shack just a short distance ahead. The night sky lingered with plump clouds threatening deep rivulets of snow. The building was one of several dilapidated structures arranged around a graveyard of rusted vehicles.
Some were intact, others scavenged for parts.
It looked like the set of a poorly made horror film.
“This looks promising,” she murmured under her breath as she turned the jeep into an open area. She was careful not to run over anything that lingered on snow-streaked ground.
Putting the vehicle into park, she turned to the vagrant. The man did not look menacing, but frightened. He was scared in a way that Lauren had not seen many men. It was a fear-of-things-in-my-closet kind of fear, childhood fear.
With a bouncing finger, he pointed to the largest of the several odd shacks. “I tried to sleep in there. There was a voice. And screaming. Horrible screaming.”
The vagrant closed his eyes. Pressing his hands over his ears, he started to sob quietly. Lauren looked at the stricken transient and felt her heart go out to him. Despite his circumstances, there was still some humanity that lingered beneath the unwashed surface. Touching his shoulder lightly, she pushed open the door of the jeep, creating a cold, scraping sound.
Frigid winds had begun to blow, whipping frozen air against her exposed face. With a squint, she pulled her wool cap down over her brow so that it was just above her eyes. The distance was beginning to shrink, visibility disappearing with each passing moment. Looking back into the jeep, she thought better of inviting the man out for a walk around the grounds.
Slapping the pocket of her jacket, she made sure she had the keys to the jeep; certainly did not want him playing her and escaping on some interstate road trip. Montgomery would never let her live it down. A fleck of snow struck her nose and she wiped at with a gloved hand.
“Blizzard. Exactly what I need right now.”
Producing a flashlight from deeper within her jacket, she banged it against her leg a few times before the powerful beam sputtered to life. Flashing it across piles of rusted machinery and railroad ties, she grimaced. Something skittered across the ground in the distance.
It was too small to be her creature,
For good measure, she pulled out her sidearm and held it tightly in her free hand. The first shack had blown open, the cold winds picking up in strength. Flashing the light over the interior, she saw only rusted farming tools and a clump of snow that had been pushed in. A deer hide was hung tautly across the most visible wall.
Moving on, she flashed her light across the ground, catching glimpses of skittering shadows moving about on the cold night. The forest throbbed as the winds beat against the tree line, beckoning to allow it entrance.
The largest shack was not open.
There was no bolt, but a simple hook that latched the door shut through a rusted hoop. Lifting the hook, she let it fall aside, swinging in the bitter air. Stepping backwards, she let the door linger.
Winds crept though the open sliver, ripping it.
Lauren waited.
The wind pulled and prodded, smacking the door closed and then ripping it open once more. Her breath quickened in anticipation. Her heart beat fast in her chest, filling her ears with the heavy thudding. And then the door was cast open in one quick movement, like a bandage ripped from a wound.
“Federal Agent,” she shouted.
Moving just inside the door, she ran the light over the shack quickly. There was a table at the center, tools hung from hooks all around the room. The roof was higher than the other structures. It was the room of death in which the creature paid homage.
Her breath slowed.
There was a smell that rose above the cold, battled for dominance. Putrid and sweet, it was rotting flesh. Shining the flashlight on the table, she covered her mouth with the backside of her hand.
The table was covered in blood and speckles of skin.
A needle and thread, worn and weathered from repeatedly being soaked in blood and then frozen once more, was stuck into the table. Coagulated blood hung like tears on the sides of the needle. There were remnants from the other murders, pieces of flesh that hadn’t made the grade.
Moving the light across the table, she circled around it. On the floor just beside the corner was the carcass of a wolf. Lauren nearly screamed, pointing her gun and pulling off a round and drilling it into the remains. Her hand shook as she knelt closer, flashing the light over the dead eyes of the once-proud creature.
“What happened here?” she whispered.
“This is where he makes himself in the image of his maker,” spoke the vagrant.
Lauren stood, the gun pointed at the transient as she had not recognized the man’s croaking voice. Her hands shook and the light bounced across his unwashed figure. “What are you doing sneaking up on me like that?” And then gesturing to the room of death around her. “Especially in a place like this. Are you looking to get shot?”
He did not respond.
Touching the table, he felt the strong wood. “This is where he placed the offerings. This is where he sought to finish what he had started.”
Lauren sighed and lowered the flashlight.
Clicking it off, she put it back into her jacket and fumbled around just above her for the long length of fishing line she had seen hanging above the table. Pulling it on, a light bulb hummed to life. In the distance a generator roared into existence, kicking and sputtering against the unyielding grip of the cold.
“You need to explain this gibberish you keep laying on me. Finishing what exactly? Making himself in the image of something? Make some goddamned sense or I am just going to leave you out here,” she remarked miserably.
That seemed to strike a chord with the vagrant.
Ambiguous mist lifted, his eyes alert.
“It was a man, Agent Westlake.”
The use of her name troubled Lauren. She had not been certain how cognizant the vagrant had been. Clearly, he had been listening.
“That creature is a man? A man whispered?”
The vagrant nodded. “I used to come out here all the time. My grandfather owned this place fifty, sixty years ago. Then it was sold off to some slick son of a bitch. And then for many years, it lay fallow. By that time it had passed out of my family. I lived on the street.”
Lauren placed her gloved fists against the macabre table. “What was the name of the man who bought it? Your grandfather’s name?”
“Nelson. Charles Nelson, Jr. This has been the Nelson place for a long time. Guy’s name was Leechwood or some tree name. I don’t remember. He was going to convert the land to apartments. Never got it off
the ground. Sold it back to the bank.”
“What is your name?”
“Michael Nelson. I didn’t mean to be so difficult. It has been a long time since someone treated me as human. It is easier to act like I don’t understand the world anymore, makes it bearable.”
Lauren grimaced.
She felt even worse for him now. Before, he had simply been a product of consumerism and greed. Now, he was a broken man who had seen his heritage and life sold away and was left with nothing.
“Who did you talk to out here?”
Nelson scratched his head, leaning against the table. “He didn’t say. Had been squatting out here a while. Some hunters had used the cabin for a few years before I started staying out here.”
“The man that you said whispered to you?”
Nelson nodded, holding up a hand. “I have never seen him before. He was average height, brown beard. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Palest skin I’ve ever seen and I’ve lived in Minnesota my whole life.”
“A name? Did he call himself anything?”
Nelson shook his head.
“Not once. I was sleeping out here and he came in. He was covered in blood. There was a towel or a coat pressed against his neck. He had a shotgun. It smelled like it had been fired. He told me to get out.”
“And?”
Nelson shrugged.
“I argued with him. He threatened me with the shotgun, so I left.”
Lauren could feel the lead slipping away.
“Did you come back? Engage him again?”
“Two other times. The last time he was barely human and his skin looked strange, discolored. And it looked like he had done surgery or something on himself. He had stitches with black fabric.” Nelson shivered. “He didn’t look human anymore. Something had been switched off in his brain, ya know. He mumbled about being a creature, a monster. Had to finish what he had started, to become like his maker.”
Lauren frowned.
Hecate had not lied.
The shack of death, Nelson’s testimonial: it had become conclusive in a moment. It dawned on her that the creature had been in the shack earlier in the day. He would have returned after killing Joyce.
“What is the closest residence from here?”
Nelson looked at her strangely.
“Residence? You mean like a house, hey?”
Lauren moved out into the blowing winds again. There was snow coming down now. Moving behind the shack in the dark, Nelson was quickly at her heels. Her breath expelled from her mouth in rapid, frantic clouds. Searching the ground, she knelt as she saw the fresh boot tracks.
“Fuck. Where is he going?” she whispered angrily.
Nelson was standing behind her, all mystery about him having dissolved. “There is the Lavender house. Two, three miles through the woods.”
“Can we drive there?” she replied. Turning, she scrunched her face as the snow-driven gales assaulted her features.
Shaking his head, he responded. “Two hours, maybe more. Have to go back around the lake.”
Running back toward the jeep, her heart thumped in her chest. The creature was headed toward the Lavender house. Throwing open the door of the jeep, she reached inside. Pulling out another coat with a furry hood and deep pockets, she put it on. Tucking a box of shells into her pocket, she grabbed the shotgun from under the backseat and breathed out.
“Can you drive, Mr. Nelson?”
Nelson looked at her, his mouth twisted in a weird way. “My father would let me drive our work truck around the farm when I was a little kid.”
Pressing the keys to jeep into his hands, she shut the back door. “I want you to get back into town. Head for the station and talk to Montgomery. Tell them to meet me at the Lavender house.”
The vagrant looked frightened again. His gloveless hands held the keys like they were a serpent. “Why can’t you drive back?”
She started forward, snow and ice crushing beneath her feet. “The creature has a head start. If it is headed for the Lavender house, then I don’t have time to go all the way back into Locke and get the sheriff and bring him back out here. The radio doesn’t work this far out and especially not in this freezing, blowing now.”
Nelson did not look psyched about his assignment.
“What if he doesn’t believe me?”
Her patience was thinning. “Then tell him you murdered me and left me out in the cold somewhere. He will want to know where. Bring him to Lavender house.”
Nelson looked at her with shock.
“That’s ice cold, hey.”
“Stop asking stupid fucking questions and get going.”
She started walking, quickly enough that she was out of earshot as he mumbled a few more protestations before starting the jeep and driving off into the shrinking distance. As she reached the edge of the forest, she drew in a deep breath as if she were entering a foreign battlefield. In many ways, that could not have been truer.
Chapter XV
Ellison looked around the house for his friend, bumping into a thinning crowd as the booze and cold took hold. Some of the partiers had been smart enough to ditch the dismal, stranded house when the snow started to come down. The others would wait it out in a haze of bong smoke and orgies.
Lavender was nowhere to be seen.
Ellison’s keen intuition of his friend’s thought process, which was centered on his genitals, led him to believe that he was shacked up with the previously mentioned girl. Most of the candles had dwindled down, so there was only a soft light that permeated the otherwise dark room.
Most people had abandoned the fevered dancing to house music and settled into piles of varying sizes where there was a fair amount of groping and groaning, though not yet up to what would have been considered a spectacle.
“Lavender?” called Ellison as he walked onto the porch where another of the fraternity of intelligence-resistance Neanderthals found solace. With a head of crimson, bushy hair, and a jaw-line beard, he looked like a cross between an overweight Ronald McDonald and Ron Jeremy––minus the requisite equipment to be said porn star.
“Ellison. Come explain to these fine people that I carved G’mork here from a piece of driftwood I found on the beach,” he slurred, raising a hand-crafted pipe in one hand and a beer bottle with its label torn away in a jagged pattern in the other.
Ellison immediately recognized the girl sitting closet to Caesar Ramirez, his long toga not covering much of his less than Showtime-ready body. “What the fuck are you talking about, Caesar? You made that out of some ugly fucking piece of the porch at your dad’s house.”
Caesar grimaced. “Wait. Did I? I thought I grabbed a piece of driftwood from the Pacific.”
Shaking his head, Ellison sat down into an uncomfortable plastic chair. “Just keep on keeping on there, Cheech. I’m sure the memories will come flooding back amidst a wave of munchies and paranoia.”
Lavender stumbled onto the porch.
He was in a printed t-shirt, something about supporting single moms, and boxers. Kyle Lavender pointed at the girl sitting next to Caesar who was unceremoniously wearing only a white stained bra and gold panties. She was at that moment rubbing the much-inebriated Ramirez’s arm and gesturing for the pipe. Ellison reached out and grabbed the pipe in a quick movement, diverting her attention.
“I think you might have had enough.”
Lavender sat down next to Ellison and grabbed the pipe, taking a quick hit and then holding it high above his head as the young lady reached for it. Ellison shook his head as the far from sober, scantily clad woman attempted to reach the pipe.
“You guys are a buzz kill,” she finally acquiesced and marched out of the room, her gold panties having given her a mean wedgie. Lavender didn’t even bother to watch her go and instead passed the pipe to Ramirez who had begun to raise his hand as if to issue a sermon.
“Shut the fuck up, Caesar. You’ll forget what you were going to say anyways.”
Lavender started to laugh, the smoke
he had been holding in billowing out in wild, uneven clouds that sputtered and collected high above their heads. “Classic man. Totally classic. Like Caesar would have anything to fucking say if he could even remember.”
“I’m the Caesar, bitches.” He pointed to the green wreath around his head to emphasize. “I do seem to recall that this was meant to be a toga party.”
Lavender pointed one of his big fingers at him. “No, we told you it was a toga party because we knew it would be hilarious when you showed up in costume.”
“And so it was,” added Ellison.
Caesar frowned and took another hit. Holding up a finger as if to say something again, this time thwarted by the lung full of smoke he had just inhaled.
“That girl seemed a bit sloshed there, friend-o,” spoke Ellison. He leveled a glare at Lavender.
Lavender shrugged, holding up his arms in mock defeat. “Don’t blame me. She damn near showed up that way and was immediately all over my shit. Couldn’t turn a lady away, could I?”
Ellison rolled his eyes.
“I’m sure you treated her like a lady alright.”
Lavender nodded, grinning widely.
“Like every lady secretly wants to be treated. Flying Monkey. Rough Rider. All that shit. She loved it, man. And then when I came back from the bathroom, she was gone. Found her out here with you two morose motherfuckers.”
A few other people had milled in, taking seats and talking loudly. Some of them Lavender knew, most of who were women of the thick persuasion, both mind and body it could be noted. Lavender waved and mouthed some provocative things. He was secure and satiated at the moment, so he remained sitting next to Ellison.
“That girl needs to wind down, not wind up more.”
Lavender nodded steadily, head bobbing to the distant bass of the house music. “True enough, slick. But, she has since scampered off into the party. Unless you feel like playing sheriff, I think it might be out of your hands.”
Ellison simply looked at his much larger, cherub friend. The stare lingered until they were both quite uncomfortable. Caesar looked at their exchange with a slowly expanding grin. “You guys suddenly discover some unrequited love?”