Usher looked at the image with confusion, longing, and despair.
“Yes. Yes sir. As far as I can tell. That is the face of my wife.”
Greystone looked at Usher with sympathy then nodded.
“We have a lead from our contacts in the Black Star, about where this group went straight after Paris. Thom, we’re sending you and your team to a small town in Canada called Carnival.”
4.
THE TOWN OF CARNIVAL
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES, CANADA.
POPULATION: 8,251
Jake Larose felt the carpet of pine needles crunch underfoot as he stalked through the forest of Douglas Fir trees.
Tendrils of mist wrapped themselves around the trunks like cold silvery scarves. A pair of wood pigeons broke cover and flapped up into the higher branches.
Jake was a seasoned hunter and allowed his body to instinctively swivel, following the expected route of the birds. He squeezed the trigger and felt the kick of his shotgun and the burnt smell of the spent cartridge. Jake saw two birds fall some distance away and possibly a third flap wounded into the lower branches.
His four year old red cocker spaniel Grover stiffened and pointed towards the kill.
“I gottit boy, good work.”
Jake patted the dog’s head and Grover gave an appreciative bark but maintained his pointing posture.
Behind Jake his nephew Billy came stomping through the undergrowth of ferns.
“Did ye get somethin’ Jake?”
Jake tutted and shook his head.
“Just a couple wood pigeons I think. Goddammit Billy you move through woods like an elephant in jackboots. Ah’m tryin’ to teach you how to stalk prey. You gotta be like the things you’re hunting, gotta blend in. Pass me my damn baccy pouch you young degenerate.”
Billy ran a hand through his thatch of greasy blond hair and his mouth twisted as he handed a leather pouch and rolling papers to his uncle. He could never do a damn thing right for his uncle Jake but he knew the old man cared for him according to his way. Billy wanted to go home today with a buck slung across his shoulders, impress Gina in the diner, and maybe get to take her out on Friday night. He had parked his pickup in the diner car park and checked she was on shift today to ensure that she saw him. He did not think she would be very impressed at him strutting past the window and waving in at her with a fucking pigeon slung over his shoulder. The great white hunter, telling her he throttled this bird to death with his bare hands. She’d laugh right in his face, fucking stuck up bitch.
She’d laughed him a once when he asked her out to the county gun fair. He’d put clean jeans on, a fresh plaid shirt, smoothed his hair down and everything, and she laughed at him. Not in a cruel way, but like a big sister. Billy had a harelip and ears like jug handles, that had always made him feel self-conscious amongst women. That coupled with the slight limp he’s gotten when his drunken father had knocked him down the stairs made him supremely awkward when it came to approaching a girl he liked. Before that he’d been a rising hockey star on the school team, could have gone somewhere with it his coach had told him in the locker room. The rest of the team told him he came from bad stock and would never make it anywhere. So far his classmate’s predictions had proved insightful.
Now all the jocks hung out at the diner and every day he had to walk past them to go get his coffee from Gina when she worked the breakfast shift. In the four years since his accident they had all beefed up through constant weight training and protein shakes, while he had stayed scrawny like a half pubescent mangy dog. There was often a little push or a sly comment as he limped past them. He didn’t care though. His Uncle had taught him how to gut game, and it didn’t matter that these guys were bigger. Billy knew that if push came to shove he could spill their intestines all over the diner steps. He’s imagined it plenty of times, opening them up with his hunting knife then blowing Gina a kiss through the glass.
I ever get those boys up here in these woods, they won’t be laughing then. None of ‘em. Rules don’t apply out here. Uncle Jake taught me that.
Billy smiled his crooked smile as his Uncle Jake dipped his finger in the baccy pouch and drew out a pinch of moist Virginia tobacco. His yellow stained fingers worked expertly, skinning up a cigarette one handed in a matter of seconds and licking it sealed. He spat a stray strand of tobacco out the corner of his mouth. He leaned in as Billy scraped a match off the bark of a nearby tree and lit him up. Jake squinted as a wisp of acrid smoke drifted up into his bloodshot eyes, and then he patted Grover’s eager head.
“Go on fella, go fetch our kill.”
The spaniel grumbled and barked then shot off into the trees to find the fallen pigeons.
Jake blew out a mouthful of smoke, shivered beneath his quilted jacket.
“Cold’s coming in Billy. Think we’re due for a wintery snap this month. Remind me to put them snow tyres on the truck when we get back.”
“Sure thing Uncle Jake. I’d help you but I’m meeting the boys in Beauregard’s tonight. Gonna sink a few cold ones and watch the game if you wanna come along. Boys’d be happy to have you there.”
Jake spat a gobbet of brown phlegm onto the carpet of pine needles and stamped his big boots for warmth. He sneered down at his stunted nephew.
“Boy, why’d you want an old bastard like me there, tarnishing your reputation as a lady’s man? Besides Billy, what the fuck you doing going to Beauregard’s on a Friday night? You on probation for violence son, you need to avoid that sorta shithole until your court case blows over. Ain’t nothing happens there on a Friday night but fuckin and fighting, and I ain’t never seen you fuckin nothing except your life up.”
The older man rubbed the grey stubble on his scarred chin and gave a throaty laugh that descended into a smoker’s coughing fit.
Billy sighed and produced a hipflask from his hunting vest. He blew out a puff of cold vapour then glugged down a slug of whisky.
“You don’t know how much pussy I get Uncle Jake. Maybe I go there tonight and get me a whole load of pussy. Lot of cougars go up there of a weekend. Husband’s don’t pay ‘em no attention. They on the lookout for a young buck with stamina to show ‘em a good time. Fella like me’s in demand in Beauregard’s.”
Jake took off his cap and shook his head. He ran a hand through his cropped hair, scratching dandruff from his itchy scalp.
“Jesus son, remind me to talk to your father when we get back. You are one delusional little son of a bitch.”
Billy stuck his chin out in his best magazine model pose, inviting his uncle to talk-to-the-hand. Jake drew a final crackling suck out of his roll-up and broke into an amused grin.
“Gotta hand it to you Billy, you’re a trier. Nobody can ask more than that of you son. Life don’t always deal the hand you deserve, Christ sometimes it don’t even have the grace to deal you cards at all, but you play, Billy. I’ll say that for you. Never seen you throw a hand down and storm off.”
“I ain’t a quitter Uncle Jake. I just don’t like when all those fuckin’ jocks think they can push folk around like they was better than them. I say they need brought down a peg, or out into these woods maybe.”
Jake took a long hard look at his teenage nephew.
“Just be careful if you do go to Beauregard’s. You know Sherriff Daggett’s got a hardon for you. For our entire family as far back as I remember if truth be told. He’ll throw your scrawny ass in jail if he can. What you did to that other boy, for what he said to you, some folks might see your actions as gone too far, tapped in the head even maybe. Not me. I know how them other boys always treated you, way they looked at you like you were nothing but a dog. Now they look at you, they might still hate you, but now the look in their eyes says something different.”
“What?”
Jake put a gnarled hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
“Fear, son. Fear is a powerful tool if you know how to use it.”
They both turned suddenly as a whimpering cry came through the tree
s in the direction of their kill.
“What the fuck?”
“Uncle Jake, that sounded like the dog.”
Jake put two dirty fingers in his mouth and whistled.
“Here boy! Grover! You lost you dumb mutt? Come find us!”
Another stifled whimper was heard through the trees then the sharp sound of branches breaking followed by an eerie silence.
Jake broke his shotgun and slotted two more cartridges in then snapped it shut. His rough jaw was set tight and his hunter’s instinct made the hair on his neck prickle.
“Make sure your gun’s loaded Billy. Something ain’t right.” Jake shot off into the woods at a surprising pace for a man his age, his round shoulders crashing past ferns and his boots splashing through puddles.
Billy held the cold steel in his sweaty hands and stumbled after his Uncle. “You reckon he stepped on a snare or something? Maybe a bear trap caught his paw.”
Jake shook his head. He didn’t care for much in this world but that mutt was the best gun dog he’d ever had, and had been a loyal companion to him since his wife had been taken by the cancer last year. He didn’t mourn that hatchet faced old crone much but he felt his heart flutter hard with panic at the thought of losing that damned mutt.
If some sonnofabitch has hurt my dog I will put two slugs in their fuckin’ guts.
“Shit I hope not. Grover! Goddammit pooch don’t make me walk these woods all night looking for you. All he had to do was fetch us a couple of damn birds goddammit.”
Billy tried to keep up with his uncle’s pace but his half-lame leg just wouldn’t allow it. He started to cramp up in the cold air and the broken rhythm of his gait became more staccato with each laboured step.
“Uncle Jake, I can’t. I’m sorry I just can’t. My leg.”
Jake turned around sharply and Billy saw that his bloodshot eyes were wide and manic.
He seemed to take a moment to register what Billy was saying. Then he nodded sharply.
“Don’t worry boy, just rest here and listen out for me. I’ll holler if I need your help.”
Billy rested there, bent over with his hands on his knees, breathing hard. Some paranoid part of him had awoken and suddenly feared that the assholes from the hockey team had followed them up here into the woods around the town. It wouldn’t be the first cruel prank they had played on him over the years. Well he was not going to be humiliated in front of his uncle, and if he was ever going to teach them a lesson then now would be the time to do it. Up here in the quiet where there were no witnesses. Billy had little doubt that his uncle Jake had buried a body or two in his life. The old man and his brothers had developed quite a shady reputation back in the sixties when they were growing up in Carnival.
He nodded to his Uncle. “Ain’t nothing getting by me past this way, Jake. If there are folks out there causing trouble, I’ll shoot their kneecaps out before they get far.”
Jake’s mouth twisted into a hard sneer and he gripped his shotgun, nodding once to his nephew then tearing off into the trees.
His hearing wasn’t as good as it used to be but Jake strained out into the dark woods. An unsettled feeling crept across his back and for a moment he couldn’t place it. Then he realized that it was not just that he could not hear the barking or snuffling of his precious gun dog, he could not hear any natural forest noises at all. It was as if a thick blanket had been thrown over the world, muffling everything. He called out for Grover once more, but his voice seemed to be soaked up into the falling night.
It was then that he began to notice the mist.
At first Jake thought it was some trick of the gathering dusk, a reflection of magic hour against the vapour that lingered around the fir trunks. The mist was growing thicker the deeper he went into the forest and the deeper he travelled the more obvious it became; the mist was red.
Jake waved a hand through the haze and his hand came back spattered with tiny crimson droplets. He rubbed his fingers together and they were streaked with the slick residue.
“What the fuck is this, some kind of fungus or something?”
Jake gingerly sniffed his fingers and inhaled the dull odour of iron. His dry, furred tongue flicked out and dabbed his nicotine stained finger. He smacked his lips together and his brow furrowed at the recognition.
“Tastes like blood. Well that’s a whole bucket of wrong.”
Jake looked up and felt a deep instinctive fear churn in his stomach. He swept the barrel of his shotgun around in a wide arc. The blood-mist had gotten thicker even as his attention had been momentarily elsewhere, confusing his usually good sense of direction. Jake then had the oddest feeling that he was no longer in the woods and hills above the town of Carnival at all. He felt as if he had stepped into a painting.
He started to notice the trees around him. They did not look like the Douglas fir trees he had hunted amongst all his life. These were bloated growths from some alien landscape that loomed and creaked with overhanging claws. The boughs were twisted and sickly, moon-pale with tumescent warts and distended bellies. Tortured figures writhed amongst the trunks, the wood birthing faces that stared out in hate or anguish with knotted eyes.
Jake Larose had hunted in these woods for over twenty years and never seen anything as strange as this new patch of forest that he had stumbled into. He was neither a religious man nor a particularly superstitious one beyond carrying his lucky rabbit foot on a hunt, but he had heard many tales as a boy about the woods up here above the town being haunted. His father had sold automobile parts to the local Indians up on the reservation at Jackson’s Ear, and while he waited for his pop to con the Native Canadians out of their money, the kids there had spooked him with tales of Wendigo and Skin-walkers. They said that these woods were a place where the world was thin, where the spirit world could be reached. Jake had smoked cigarettes with the native boys, played cards with them and listened to their tales but never really believed them.
Now, as a grown man, he gazed at the fairy-tale trees around him and felt with absolute certainty that he was somewhere between two places, and one of those places was sure as fuck not the backwater nowheresville of Carnival, Canada.
Jake leaned back over his shoulder and shouted through the muffling red mist.
“Billy. Come take a look at this. Just follow my voice.”
He waited a few moments, sweating and nervously palming the grip of his shotgun. The black metal was becoming sleek with the microscopic blood-droplets permeating the air and it was becoming harder to hold the firearm. “Come on boy, where the hell are you?”
Jake heard a familiar voice coming from behind him and turned to see the vague outline of his nephew in the thickening mist and darkness. He raised his hand and waved.
“Billy? Billy get over here, there’s something weird going on. This fucking mist it’s got blood in it. I think an animal’s died nearby and, well I dunno, fog’s gathered up the blood or something. It’s the weirdest thing I ever saw.”
Jake strained out at the dark humanoid figure that stood within the mist. “Billy it’s ok the ground’s solid, just keep walking.”
Jake heard a voice directly over his left shoulder and felt a hand on his arm. “Uncle Jake what the fuck’s going on out here?”
Jake spun to look directly into the worried face of his nephew, and then a second later spun back with his shotgun raised at the amorphous figure in the mist. There was no one there, just writhing red vapour. Billy followed his gaze and raised his own gun.
“Uncle Jake what is it? You see something?”
Jake shivered and blinked. He wiped a hand across his face, leaving a smear of diluted bloodmist and sweat.
“I thought I did. I thought it was you. You see anyone else when you came up this way?”
Billy shook his head then looked to his boots.
“No Jake, but I did see something. You might not want to see it, but I think maybe a bear or something did take the dog.”
Jake spun and stared into his ne
phew’s pale blue eyes.
“What you mean, you little bastard? Don’t mess me around, just take me to my dog.”
Billy’s drooping left eyelid twitched a little then he nodded. “Over this way.”
Jake followed the boy until they came to a trail through the ferns, as if something had been dragged that way. Jake knelt down and fought back tears.
“Bastards. Ain’t no animal done this. Look.”
Billy swallowed as his uncle held up the dog’s collar. It was not torn but was intact and had clearly been carefully removed. Billy pointed ahead through the undergrowth.
“Gets worse. Those hockey team scum, I know it’s them. They can do what they want to me but they got no cause to hurt some poor beast just to punish me.”
Jake and Billy stood up and looked at the trail of blood and gore that streaked the forest floor in an ugly meandering path. Jake bared his yellow teeth and raised his gun then advanced through the woods at a furious pace.
“You little bastards, I will fucking gut you all. C’mon boy, we got some shallow graves to dig in these woods.”
The two hunters crunched through the woods, all concepts of stealth abandoned. They had murder in their hearts and old bitter blood of a dark-deeding family in their veins.
When they saw the murdered Angel they stopped dead in their tracks.
Without any conscious thought, the two men suddenly dropped to their knees at the scene in front of them, like the most pious men that had ever lived.
It was a tree, far larger and more bloated than any other the others surrounding it. In fact the other trees almost seemed to have stepped warily back, leaving it standing alone in a deep hollow. Its vast trunk was cracked and fissured with one gaping black chasm in its centre, from which oozed thick clouds of the red mist that permeated the woods. Above this, in the thick boughs, a creature was crudely nailed. It was clearly dead, brutalized and tortured, wounds covering its pale naked body. Stretched out behind it and pinned to the bark were two huge feathered wings, ragged and blood-stained. Its face was a mask of pain, close to a human but not exactly. It was like a tableau from some apocryphal book of the Old Testament and it filled Billy and Jake with primal awe and terror.
The Last Line Series One Page 37