Black Frost

by John Conroe

  “Everything all right? Is Ashley alright?” he asked, picking up on the tone of my voice.

  “Yeah, she’s fine, but something really weird happened this morning….I’m either going crazy like grandpa or …..well, just come over as soon as you can,” I said.

  “Where are you?” he asked, voice moving into law enforcement mode.

  “Home, in the study,” I said.

  “I’ll be there in five!” he said, then hung up.

  I called Tom Yelos and explained I couldn’t make the morning workout. I gave him some excuse about the furnace needing repair, then settled in to wait for dad. I replayed the scene in the woods in my head, struggling to remember details. The only thing new that came to mind was my final mental image of the blond man. When he had nodded to me and turned to bolt away, the long hair on the left side of his head had swung back, just for a moment. I decided I was misremembering the moment, but the impression stayed with me…..the man’s ear had a point like Spock from Star Trek.

  Dad pulled in the driveway a few minutes later and I met him at the door, shotgun in hand, watching the farmyard on either side and behind him. I was concerned about the remaining green troglodyte.

  He noticed my attention, even while keeping his own careful scan, his right hand near the butt of his .45, his steady gaze taking in the spear and shotgun in my hands

  “Glad you’re here, you can be the one to commit me,” I greeted him.

  “Tell me what happened,” he ordered as I led him to the little study.

  I took a deep breath, considered that my ultra-conservative, federal agent father would never buy the tale I was about to spin, and then launched into it.

  He stayed quiet through the whole story, not even making a sound when I played the camera footage on my laptop. His expression was locked down into what I used to call his ‘agent man’ face.

  “Describe the man,” he directed.

  I had spent hours as a child, playing description games with my father. The information rolled off my tongue without much thought.

  “Six feet, maybe six- one. Platinum blond hair, long, bound in a pony tail. Athletic build, but not bulky. Whippy, sort of. Maybe 175 pounds. Eyes are extremely light blue, slight epicanthic fold, almond shaped. Skin color, dark tan or even brown hued. He was dressed in black leather…of some type,” I frowned as I tried to recall more about his clothes. “Unknown impact or blade weapon, also black. Angular facial structure with high cheekbones. Left ear deformed.”

  “What’s your problem with his leather?” dad asked, picking up on my hesitation.

  “Well…it was oddly patterned. Some sort of geometric design or something.”

  “Impact or blade? The vivisected body on the video seemed clear enough,” he asked.

  “Yeah, well it was tough to get a handle on. Like one moment it looked like a bowie-style blade, the next tanto or katana-ish, and at least once like a baton.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept his gaze steady and evaluating. I was used to that look, having seen it my whole life. When I failed to shift my description, even a little, he grunted and then asked his next question.

  “Deformed ear?”

  This one was uncomfortable. I just met his gaze and nodded. He sighed.

  “How was it deformed, Ian?” he asked.

  “It’s ahh…pointed. On top,” I said as evenly as I could.

  “Pointed? Pointed? Like, what? Vulcan?” he asked, his eyes widening slightly.

  I watched a lot of the classics growing up, but this felt like the part where he was going to stop believing me. I sighed, then nodded. “Pretty much! Also his teeth were odd.”

  “Odd?”

  “Pointed kind of, sharpish looking,” I said, really uncomfortable.

  “Fangs?”

  “No, just pointed, like someone who had their teeth filed or something.”

  His left hand reached up and stroked his moustache absently while he processed that.

  “So…he was tall, thin, but athletic, with long white hair, almond shaped, ice blue eyes, dark skin, high cheek bones, wearing black leather, had pointed ears and sharp teeth?”

  “Yeah, that’s about it. But when you say it like that, it sounds like he escaped from Lord of the Rings or World of Warcraft,” I said, protesting the lameness of my own description.

  He started at bit at that statement, as if something I’d said had triggered a connection in his orderly cop mind. He grabbed Grandpa’s journal from where it was sitting on the desk and flipped through the pages, looking for a particular entry.

  “Here, read this one,” he said shoving the book into my hands.

  May 11th – Starting to think my grandmothers stories were accurate. Too many similarities to the flyers with the teeth, which seem to be on the same side as the squatty white monster (goblin? troll?), the smaller green ones teamed with the lizard man. I remembered that pixy in Peter Pan was Tinkerbell, maybe these things were her inspiration. Hell, they may be at the bottom of the whole fairy/pixy legend.

  I looked up at my dad abruptly.

  “Lizard man? That sounds a lot like the thing I saw. And something was buzzing around the old foundation last night. It scared Ash and Charm,” I said, musing. He harrumped, his eyes narrowing immediately.

  “Oh they’re fine, but I found the oddest little piece of bug on Charm’s rabies tag. Only it evaporated when it hit the colander in the sink,” I said.

  “Would that colander be steel?” he asked. I nodded.

  He took back the journal, flipping through another couple of entries till he found one.

  May 17th- They don’t like steel or iron, particularly iron. Just like the legends. In fact it’s as poisonous to them as the Tinks are to anything from this world. Hit one of the big bird-like ones with a full blast of lead pellets. Killed it. But also hit another with four or five pellets and it just flew off. Hit one with just one steel #4 and killed it dead!

  I started to call time out, thinking it was getting too crazy, but then the image of the green goblin-thing sizzling on my knife blade and staff point popped up.

  “Ahh Dad? What legends is he referring too?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion.

  “He talking about the sidhe and the unseelie sidhe, if I’m not mistaken. The fae, little folk,” my father said, perfectly seriously.

  “Ah, that’s crazy! Isn’t it?”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he looked out the window and spoke.

  “Ian, your grandfather was the most grounded, practical man I’ve ever know. But in the last two months of his life, he covered all his windows and chimneys with steel mesh and started loading his shotgun with steel shot. He was acting weird at the end, and I’ve been thinking he was suffering from dementia, but he never forgot a thing,” he paused to glance at me, then continued. “But now we have a carcass killed by something with piranha teeth, but able to not leave tracks and kill on a hill top. We have a highly credible eyewitness of known observational skill and a piece of video evidence that I know you lack the skill to fabricate.”

  I’m past forty years old, but I was still thrilled to hear my father describe me as a highly credible witness. Bob Moore, Jr. was a hard man and there were many times in my past that I had felt his disappointment with my decisions.

  “Dad, this is America, not Ireland. The legends you’re talking about all come from Ireland.”

  “Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, Belgium, all of the Scandinavian countries, and pretty much the rest of the world. Every country on Earth seems to have a legend of little people, gnomes or some sort of goblin-like creature,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  We both looked at each other then he shook his head and stood up.

  “Come on, I want to see the crime scene,” he said.

  I wasn’t super excited to go back out there, but I wasn’t going to say that to my dad.

  “Let me grab my Sig and I’ll be ready,” I said

  I only own on
e handgun and one rifle, plus Grandpa’s shotgun. My dad is the family gun nut, and while I certainly felt comfortable around them, Sarah hadn’t been too thrilled to have them in the house.

  I grabbed my .40 Sig Sauer from the locked pistol safe under my bed, picked up Grandpa’s little shotgun and was ready to roll. My father was out at his SUV, opening a rifle case in the back.

  “How long have you had that?” I asked, indicating the Chinese made, semi-auto version of an AK-47 he was loading.

  “A couple of months. I don’t like it as much as my Russian version, but it’ll do. I got it loaded with some cheap steel cased ammo,” he explained.

  A lot of foreign made ammo uses steel jacketed bullets instead of copper. Steel is cheaper to find in many cases, but doesn’t shoot as well and can wear out a barrel faster. In this case, it would be better than expensive, domestic stuff.

  He pointed at my shotgun. “You still got those BB loads in?”

  I shook my head. “No I switched them for what I thought was buck shot from the cuff, but now I think is steel as well.”

  Grandpa’s ‘social’ gun had begun life as a plain jane, Belgian made Browning over/under shotgun. That’s a double barrel where the barrels are stacked on top of each other, rather than side by side. The fella that owned it first had somehow managed to crush the ends of the barrels. Grandpa bought it for fifty bucks, cut the barrels off at twenty inches, re-crowned the muzzles and did some minor cosmetic work on it. The resulting gun was three feet long, had a nylon shell cuff on the stock that held six more rounds and was handy as hell. It’s biggest drawback was the two shot limit.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Well, the fridge magnet sticks to them, and they’re lighter than lead buckshot, plus I found steel three-eighths inch slingshot ammo in Grandpa’s reloading stuff,” I replied.

  We headed out, with Charm on point, my father insisting on taking a different route. I hadn’t thought of ambush, but that’s what comes out of a professional’s mind.

  I’ve never looked at the woods on my land like a hostile territory before. I didn’t like it. Every shadow, every bush could harbor a squat killer. I felt like we were being watched the whole time we were out there.

  The shredded moss and gooey residue were still there, although the rain was washing away the goo at a pretty good clip. My father pulled an evidence kit from his coat pocket, and proceeded to collect some of the viscous crud before it could all disappear, while I watched the forest uneasily. He took some pictures, had me walk him through the action as best I could remember and measured distances and angles. I remembered sitting in his car, about nine years old, watching through the rain streaked glass as he walked the scene of a drug buy gone bad.

  When we got back to the house, he headed straight to the work bench in the cellar of the house, where the reloading equipment was. I showed him the steel slingshot ammo, he merely grunted, instead interested in a set of glass baby food jars of what appeared to be iron and steel filings.

  “I’m gonna take the iron filings, I got some things I want to put together. What are you going to do?

  “I think I’m gonna finish reading the journal, then check the house over. Make sure it’s tight. Then I have a project in the forge I want to try while I wait for Ash’s bus,” I replied, my mind whirling from the surreal nature of our discussion.

  Chapter 4

  With a sharp screech of brakes and a cloud of diesel exhaust , the bus pulled to a stop at the end of the driveway where Charm waited to collect her human. She got two for the price of one, as Lindsey got off the bus with Ashley. It took a second for me to remember, but with everything that had happened I had forgotten that Lindsey was staying the night. I panicked for a moment as the girls trudged down the driveway, laughing at their own jokes followed by Charm who was beside herself with excitement. Having another teenage girl in the house doubled the safety risks. But after a moment’s thought, I realized it might be beneficial.

  I met the pair outside the forge shed, wiping iron dust and rust off my hands with a rag.

  “Hi girls, how was school?”

  “Hi Mr. Moore!”

  “Hi Dad. School sucked as usual, but now it’s over!” Ashley supplied.

  “Sorry to hear my tax dollars are being wasted,” I said.

  “You sound just like my dad,” Lindsey said, surprised.

  “Yeah well, someday you’ll sound the same way! Listen ladies, there’s a skunk running around here and I think it might be rabid, so I want you both to stay inside and keep Charm with you, okay?”

  This lie had a dual purpose; it would do to keep the girls inside and it explained the holstered Sig on my hip that Ash had been eyeing.

  Ashley gave me a look, glanced at my gun again, then rolled her eyes.

  “Whatever. What do we have for snacks?” she asked.

  “Lots of apples, oranges, bananas and grapes,” I said, flatly.

  She stared at me for a moment then we both started laughing. Lindsey smiled, but then protested.

  “Hey, I like that stuff!”

  “Yeah and I wish you would plant that idea in your buddy’s head, ‘cause you’d think fruit was toxic to her,” I said. “There’s some new bags of chips and pretzels, popcorn and a few of those Little Debbie brownies left,”

  “Sweet!” Ashley replied, grabbing her pal’s hand and yanking her toward the door.

  That would keep them for an hour or so, then their teenage metabolisms would demand dinner. I went back into the shed and cleaned up from my project, taking two cardboard boxes out as I locked the door.

  As I walked across the driveway to the house a black shadow flickered by on my left side. I spun and crouched, struggling to get one of the boxes out of my gun hand. Still fumbling I realized it was just a crow, winging over the bird feeder, but unwilling to land with me right there. Good thing it was only a bird, because I would have been toast. The bird flew on by the house and landed in the old oak tree that shades the barn. Oaks take forever to drop their brown leaves and this tree was still thick with them. The crow disappeared from view into the dead foliage.

  I berated myself for having a box in my gun hand. Going to have to retrain myself. Dad would never have let that happen to him.

  A squawk sounded from the hidden crow, then the dry leaves that hid it started to shake and flutter in a frenzy of sound, as if a huge bird fight was happening just out of sight. The region of uproar moved up and around the tree, getting even more frenetic, the crow squealing in distress, then suddenly stopped.

  I was frozen, my hand on my gun, completely unnerved by the energy of the violence that I could hear but not see. Motion caught my eye, two black feathers floating down to the ground. My eyes automatically tracked their fall, but were drawn back upward by three sudden streaks zipping out of the tree in different directions. Gone before I could lock sight on them, just an afterimage of dark blurs flashing out of the brown leaves. The hair on the back of my neck was standing at full attention, and I suddenly realized I was holding the unholstered Sig in my right hand, with no memory of the draw. My hand was so tight that the Crimson Trace grip laser was painting the base of the tree with a dancing red dot.

  Taking a deep breath, I backed into the house, dumped the boxes on the little entry table that holds my keys, and slammed the door shut. Only then could I force my hand to loosen its grip and re-holster the gun.

  After a moment or two, I chided myself to man up, go out and find out what happened to the crow. First, I reloaded the Sig’s magazine with ammo from the shoe boxes I had brought in. One box held a hundred and fifty rounds of .40 ammo, just basic Winchester hollowpoints from Wal-mart. I had spent a couple of hours in the shop, cutting tiny cylinders of iron from five-sixteenths rod stock I had out in the forge. Each tiny cylinder was just long enough to fit inside the cavity of the .40 hollowpoint, where it was super glued into position.

  The second box held a hundred rounds of .44 magnum ammo, similarly doctored, but wi
th three-eights rod sections. This would make my little Winchester lever-action rifle toxic to whatever roamed my woods.

  With the new ammo in my Sig, I went back out, put a ladder against the tree and climbed up. Inside the brown leafed limbs of the oak, I found a spherical region of mayhem, blood and black feathers spattered around a foot and a half space. Draped over one thick tree limb was the shredded, empty husk of the bird; the skull and feet barely attached by fleshy threads. Thoroughly spooked, I slipped the carcass into a zip lock freezer bag and beat feet back down to the ground.

  The sun was setting as I headed inside, putting my gruesome plastic bag into the bottom rack of our chest freezer.

  Distracted by the crow’s violent demise, I could only concentrate long enough to make grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for the girls, which they happen to love. They ate at the counter, and for once I was glad that their teen-aged self absorption eliminated the need for me to help carry on a conversation.

  Dinner over, they disappeared back into Ashley’s room, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the evening news while I cleaned up.

  -Scientists in Switzerland report that the Large Hadron Collider is running smoothly at half power and they plan to gradually increase to three-quarters power over the next month. The largest machine ever built by man has been running continually for five and a half months, producing millions of collisions per hour. The information generated by this awesome project has already filled the equivalent of four hundred college libraries.

  Despite the enormous controversy over the safety of this massive particle accelerator, the project has an unblemished safety record. Hans Vorst, PR director for CERN, the multi-national organization that built the Collider, reports that not a single black hole or other catastrophe has resulted from the LHC’s operation, much to the chagrin of the doomsayers who predicted world ending events when the machine was switched on. The LHC is considered by many to be science’s best chance to discover the elusive Higgs particle, the so-called God Particle. Reporting from Switzerland, I’m Roger Novac. Michelle, back to you-