by JE Gurley
“Where did it go?” I yelled to him.
He continued scanning the sanctuary as he spoke but his shaky voice betrayed his panic. “I don’t know. What the hell was that thing, Tack? It…it flew.”
I didn’t know how to answer him. It had all been a blur, happening so quickly I couldn’t focus, but I knew our perp was no man. It was bigger than Lew’s estimate, at least eight feet tall, all gray and had wings like a bat. Its face…I shook my head. All I remember were its eyes, large, red and staring directly into mine as if it recognized me. I knew it was no mere animal.
I knew I had made a grave error, my second mistake. My plan to capture our killer was rapidly crumbling. It could easily escape through any one of half a dozen holes in the roof, may have already. Then I remembered Sasha Sattersby and the reason she was still alive became obvious.
“I’m a fool,” I said to Lew. “She’s bait.”
Lew turned to look at me and his eyes snapped wide open. “Hardtack!” he yelled; then charged at me like a linebacker, slamming into me with his shoulder, knocking me aside. I fell to the floor, coming down hard on my injured shoulder. I heard a shrill call and Lew’s cry of pain. I rolled over on my side and stared in mute horror as the creature lifted Lew off the ground, one talon gripping his arm. Lew was heavier than any of the creature’s previous victims were. Too heavy to carry, Lew’s long legs dragged along the floor halfway across the nave, Lew furiously pounding the creature’s chest with his fist. I shouted uselessly as the creature slammed Lew into one of the stone columns before releasing him. Lew slumped to the floor; the creature crouching over Lew’s stunned body. I stood and raced toward the pair but stopped when a flash of lightning fully revealed Lew’s assailant, a nightmarish creature conjured right out of the pages of one of horror novel I had read as a kid. The face that slowly turned toward me reminded me of a gargoyle with its long, blunt snout and two large eyes that bored into me with a ferocity I had never before felt. I detected more than animal cunning behind them; there was intelligence as well and evil, an evil so deep it bordered on hellish. It stared at me with crimson eyes full of hatred and, unless my imagination was running wild, laughter, like all this was a game. Then it turned its attention to Lew, moaning on the floor. I recovered quickly and fired two quick rounds into the creatures back as it reared over Lew, wings spread wide. The creature ignored me and focused its attention on Lew, who struggled uselessly beneath it. Lew, sensing death, yelled frantically at me.
“Tack!”
His voice echoed throughout the chapel until the crash of thunder drowned it out. Before I could react, the creature raised a wing into the air. I caught just a glint of a long talon at the tip of the wing just before the creature slashed it across Lew’s throat. Lew’s quick scream ended abruptly in a horrendous gurgle. The creature lowered its face and began to lap blood from the wound like a dog. Enraged, I ran blindly at it, firing my .45 as I went. I placed each of my remaining bullets squarely into the creatures back to no effect. I charged into it at full speed. My right shoulder erupted in searing pain and I involuntarily expelled my breath in a loud whoosh. We toppled from Lew’s body and slid across the stone floor with me sitting on the creature like a child’s macabre carousel ride. I beat at its head futilely with the butt of my empty .45. The creature heaved and threw me off as effortlessly as a shrug. I bounced across the floor, rolled over onto my back and fumbled trying to shove a fresh clip into my automatic. I glanced over at Lew and instantly knew he was beyond my help. His throat was in shreds, his head hanging by a strip of flesh. One cheek was missing. Through the opening, I could see the gleam of his teeth. His open eyes stared at me as if begging me to avenge him. One leg trembled slightly in slowly subsiding death throes. Blood pooled around him, with crimson rivulets streaming across the floor to mix with the rain as it poured through the roof.
I rose to my knees and faced the creature, .45 in my hands shaking from a combination of fear and the adrenaline surge that now raced through my body. I ignored my pain. The shock of seeing a living monster had vanished, replaced by the solitary desire to kill it. I heard footsteps outside the room and knew the officers were coming, drawn by the gunshots. I should have waited but my blood was boiling with rage. A long jagged streak of lightning filled the sky, illuminating the nave like daylight for several long seconds. I aimed carefully and fired two quick rounds into the center of creature’s head. To my amazement, they ricocheted off. The creature must have had skin as thick as a rhino’s. It screamed shrilly and spread its wings, ready to attack me. Just at that moment, Sasha Sattersby began to crawl from behind the altar using one arm, her eyes fixed on me. She was speaking, pleading with me but I could not hear her words over the thunder. The creature barked at her, and then began to move toward her on its clawed feet in a shuffling gait using its wings for support. I moved until I had placed myself between the creature and the girl. This snapped its attention back to me.
“Okay, you bastard!” I yelled over the rumble of thunder. “Come and get me.”
I fired three more rounds at its head as I moved forward. It dodged the first but the second and third scored hits on the side of its head above a small rounded ear where the skin must have been thinner. This time I saw a reddish-yellow ichor ooze from the wounds. The creature leaped into the air, screaming its rage at me. I braced myself for the attack, wishing I had brought something other than a .45, like maybe a silver cross or a wooden stake, but I had not expected to deal with vampires, at least not real ones; my third mistake of the day.
It flapped its massive wings several times, the sound of bed sheets snapping on a clothesline in a high wind, and hovered just above the floor. Behind it, one of the uniforms entered the nave and raced down the aisle. His face held disbelief, but to his credit, he showed no hesitation as he confronted the creature, yelling at it to draw its attention and firing three quick rounds with the shotgun, ripping a hole in one wing. The creature screamed again, landed for a brief second before bounding into the air again and circling the ceiling. The officer had just time enough to look toward me with doubt-filled eyes before the creature swooped down and decapitated him with a single swipe of a talon. The officer’s head rolled across the rain-slick tile as his body slowly crumpled to the floor, a geyser of blood gushing from his severed neck. The shotgun dropped from his dead hands and clattered on the stone floor.
I began firing as the creature glided around the nave. Chunks of masonry exploded from the columns and walls as my rounds stitched holes into stone just behind the creature. It screamed one more time and shot through a hole in the roof and into the night. I saw it briefly outlined against the night sky by a brilliant flash of lightning; then it was gone. I staggered over to Lew’s body and looked down into his dead eyes. My anger gave way to sorrow. He had been my partner, my only friend for five years, longer than my marriage had lasted. I had often berated him as being too liberal and he had called me a primitive throwback, but we had worked well together, finishing each other’s thoughts, watching each other’s backs. He trusted me implicitly and now I had let him down. I had failed to watch his back.
“Help me.”
In my grief, I had forgotten about the Sattersby girl. She lay on the floor, trying to rise using her one good arm. The other hung loose at her side, probably dislocated. She was naked, filthy, bloody and frightened but she was alive. Why? I asked myself. Why had the creature spared her? Two uniforms rushed in, took one look at the mutilated corpse of their fallen comrade and retched. I couldn’t blame them for their reaction.
“Call this in,” I said to one of them. “Get a blanket from my car. Get several. Cover them up.” I jerked my head at Lew and the dead uniform officer that had saved my life. To the other one, I said, “See to the girl. She’s hurt.” Sasha Sattersby was shaking uncontrollably either from shock and blood loss, fear or the cold. I took off my jacket gingerly because of my shoulder and handed it to one of the uniforms. “Wrap this around her,” I suggested.
I could not face her. She was alive. That was good enough. It wasn’t her fault that the creature had chosen her, but knowing the kind of life she led, the emptiness, the wasted potential, I couldn’t stomach seeing her alive and Lew dead. Using my scales of justice, it was a poor exchange. I felt empty. I wasn’t sure what I should feel – relief at finding the Sattersby girl alive, elation that I had survived a second brush with death, grief that Lew had not, or anger at the creature. I knew that later the reality would crash down on me, probably as I filled out an incident report that no one would believe. I knew what I would feel then – rage. In a flash of understanding, it dawned on me that the creature had deliberately set us up. We had dared to disturb its lair, steal its flesh trophies. It had used the Sattersby girl as bait, knowing we would return to the monastery looking for her. It had kept her alive as a distraction, to suck us in close for the kill.
It wanted me: I had seen this in its cold inhuman eyes and I knew it as surely as I knew Lew was dead. It had killed Lew deliberately to punish me. It wanted me to feel the same rage it felt. I knew that this was not over. It would kill again and it would wait for me to come after it. It had seen my face and had recognized the look of determination in my eyes. It was intelligent enough to know that I would hunt it down now and kill it if it didn’t kill me first.
Outside, the uniforms looked at me and muttered quietly among themselves. I didn’t blame them. One of their own was dead, beheaded by a nightmare creature none of them had seen. It was my job to keep rookies alive until they could learn the ropes. I had failed in this too. They had questions they wanted to ask but my aloofness kept them at a distance. No one knew what I had seen. The only witnesses were dead, except for the Sattersby girl. I wasn’t talking and no one would believe her if she did. They would interpret her febrile ramblings as delirium.
I sat alone on the steps of the church in the rain, letting the cold droplets wash away my bitterness. I was still sitting there when the ambulance arrived twenty minutes later, lights flashing a counterpoint to the stabbing lightning, siren silenced by the thunder. Rain, thunder and lightning – it seemed the perfect night for death, for murder. The forensics team van pulled into the half-flooded parking lot just behind the ambulance. Dr. Munson walked over and stood in front of me, frowning through the waterfall cascading from his bright yellow rain poncho’s hood.
“You’re done in, Detective Hardin. Let the EMT give you a shot and get some rest.”
I shook my head. “No rest for the weary, Doc. Lew’s dead,” I added almost choking as the words caught in my throat
“I know. I heard it over the radio. I’m sorry.” After a pause, “What happened?”
I chuckled. Maybe he thought I was losing it judging by his perplexed expression. Maybe I was. It just struck me as funny when I tried to put my jumbled thoughts into words.
“It was a God damned vampire, Doc. Not some psycho bastard, a real blood-lapping, wing-flapping, God damned vampire.” My voice rose in volume and tenor as I spoke. I choked back a sob as my body shuddered. I could tell I was close to the edge. I tried to rein in my emotions before Munson had me in a straight jacket.
I continued. “It was bigger than a man and all gray except for those God-awful eyes. They were blood red and as big as baseballs. I shot it in the back and in the head with my .45 and barely phased it. The rookie shot it in the wing with the shotgun and damaged it a little, just enough to save me and to kill him.”
I noticed Melody standing behind Munson, listening intently. She had that ‘poor wet kitty’ expression on her face, as if she wanted to dry me off and feed me a bowl of warm milk. Normally, seeing her would make me feel fuzzy inside. Now, I felt nothing. I could tell she didn’t believe me any more than Munson did.
“How do I write this up, Doc? You don’t believe me and I don’t blame you. I saw it and I still don’t believe it except I’ve got a dead partner lying back there with his throat ripped out.” I shook my head to clear the cobwebs but they clung tenaciously to my psyche, trying to shroud the horrors I had just witnessed from my mind, to save it from shock, but I needed to remember and clearly. “I don’t…”
I paused. A familiar high-pitched screech brought me to my feet. Melody had heard it too. I saw her tilt her head upwards with an expression of amazement. The color drained from her face as her beautiful red lips convulsed in a rictus of horror. Then a great gray mass hurtled out of the darkness overhead toward her. I pushed past Munson but it was too late. I was moving in slow motion as events around me blurred. The creature grabbed Melody by her shoulders with its three-clawed feet. Six inch talons dug deep into her flesh as the creature’s momentum jerked her off her feet and into the air. Blood spurted over Munson’s yellow poncho. Melody’s expression turned from one of disbelief to one of fear and pain. Her eyes stared at me, pleading for help like the Sattersby girl but she did not scream. The horror crashed in on me and time returned to its normal pace. I ran and managed to grab Melody by her legs with my good left arm, preventing the creature from flying off with her. We raced across the parking lot, my feet fighting for purchase in the slick gravel. Now she began screaming as my added weight pulled against the creature’s talons, which bit deeper into her flesh.
The creature struggled and managed to lift us both a dozen feet into the air but was unable to rise any higher under our combined weight. It reached down its head, bit into Melody’s neck and jerked savagely. Melody’s screams ended abruptly as her head plunged past me and splashed into a puddle below. Then it released both of us. I plummeted to the ground still clinging to Melody’s leg. I hit the ground hard with her dead body sprawling across me. Munson ran up, open-mouthed and looked back and forth between me and Melody’s decapitated corpse. Finally, he screamed almost as shrilly as had Melody.
I gazed upward as the creature retreated into the night, glancing back over its wings at me. In a flash of lightning, I read amusement in its crimson eyes. Munson kneeled and checked Melody’s pulse as if she would have one with no head. Like me, he was having trouble dealing with a real life nightmare. I groaned and rose to my feet unsteadily. My shoulder was numb and my back was on fire. I reached out with my left hand and touched Munson on the shoulder. He jumped and stared up at me without recognition. Gradually, sanity crept back into his eyes. He looked back down at Melody’s decapitated corpse and grimaced.
“My God,” he muttered. “My God.” I felt his body trembling under my hand.
By now, uniforms were milling about, some searching the sky with shotguns and flashlights, others staring dumbfounded at Melody’s headless corpse. The only thing I could think to say was, “You believe me now, don’t you.”
* * * *
Captain Bledsoe paced back and forth along the narrow space between his desk and the wall, three long strides from filing cabinet to table, turn and three back. He wrung his hands clasped behind his back. He face bore a sour look, as if he had been sucking lemons. In fact, he had been sucking up to the Mayor who had dismissed his story of a murderous flying creature as preposterous, called him a drunk and hung up on him. While it was true that the captain had once been a boozer, that was years in the past. He stopped pacing long enough to look over at me with a touch of sympathy in his eyes. My right arm was back in a sling and I still had scabs on my forehead and chin. I stared back at him vacantly. Only part of me was in the room. Another part was reliving Lew’s death.
“It couldn’t have been someone in make up?” he asked.
I laughed. He was grasping at straws, refusing to believe what half a dozen people had witnessed. “Flying? No, it was a real freaking monster all right. I’ve got three dead girls, a rookie cop, a detective and a coroner’s assistant’s bodies to prove it.” My tone was bitter, my speech blurred by the painkillers coursing through my system. I didn’t like taking sedatives but the pain had grown too unbearable to ignore. The pills also dulled the pain in my mind but could not erase the image of Lew’s dead body with the creature standing over him. I would wear
it like a tattoo until the day I died.
Captain Bledsoe shook his head slowly. “Doctor Munson swears he saw it too, so I can’t call you crazy, but the Mayor sure as hell doesn’t believe it.” He jabbed his finger at the phone sitting at the edge of his desk as if it was the villain.
I leaned forward. My words were bitter. “The place was crawling with reporters thirty minutes after forensics arrived. They know something strange happened. They could smell it. When the press gets to the Sattersby girl, and they will, the Mayor will believe it then or he’ll be looking for another job. This thing took almost two clips and three blasts from a shotgun and flew off like it enjoyed it.” I leaned back in my chair, the same chair in which I had received many such chewing-outs. This time it was only half-hearted. I had lost my partner but had saved Sasha Sattersby, no matter that she lived only because the creature had let he live. For a while, we would be the darlings of the press, that is, until Sasha Sattersby talked.
He raised a finger and waggled it back and forth. “Now, we can’t cause a panic. We need to keep this under wraps for as long as possible. We can keep the Sattersby girl quiet on one pretense or another. She’s a material witness and she needs medical treatment. We can keep her incommunicado in a guarded hospital room. We have to find this thing and destroy it.” He slammed his fist down on his desk, causing the phone to jangle, startling him. He glared at it for a moment.
“A cover-up?” I moaned breaking his trance. “You want a cover-up until we catch it. What are you going to say if it scoops up another girl and drops her on the front steps of City Hall?”
He looked frightened as he visualized that ghastly possibility. He reached for a bottle of antacid tablets sitting on his desk placed strategically beside the phone. He popped two into his mouth and chewed them slowly while he thought about what I had said.
I continued. “We need more firepower. We need men on rooftops at night. We need a specialist in this sort of thing, a priest or someone. A week ago, I would have called anyone crazy who took these things seriously. Now, I don’t know.”