Darkwind: Ancient Enemy 2

by Mark Lukens

  He waited a moment.

  No answer. He didn’t hear any footsteps inside the house coming towards the door.

  There was a window on the left side of the door and he cupped his hands to the sides of his face and tried to look through it. No luck … drapes covering it from the inside.

  He knocked again.

  Still no answer.

  He rang the doorbell again, holding the little button down with his gloved thumb. He waited a few seconds and pounded on the door one more time.

  Giving up, Palmer let the storm door close on its pneumatic hinge. He walked down the wood deck, following it around to the side of the house. The deck was sturdy and well-built, constructed by someone who knew what they were doing. When he got to the back of the house, he saw the sheriff in the backyard, walking towards a free-standing garage that looked somewhat similar to the one on Mr. Gordon’s property. A large Soccer Mom SUV was parked in front of the garage underneath a massive wooden awning with a tin roof that was covered with snow.

  “I don’t think Nora’s truck has moved since the storm came,” The sheriff called out to him from across the yard. “I don’t see Travis’ snowmobile anywhere.”

  The sheriff started walking towards a set of wooden steps that led up to this back section of the deck as Palmer walked over to a set of sliding glass doors. The vertical blinds behind them were closed but he saw that the sliding door was open about six inches.

  Palmer tensed a little as he stared at the door.

  Sheriff Hadley noticed Palmer’s reaction. “What’s wrong?”

  “That door’s open,” Palmer told him in a low voice. He didn’t wait for Hadley; he was already on the other side of the door, his gun in his hand and ready if he needed it. Something felt wrong here. He didn’t know what it was, but after the carnage and horrors he’d already seen, it felt like something terrible lay beyond those doors.

  “Nora Conrad!” Sheriff Hadley yelled at the sliding glass doors, standing on the other side of it. “It’s Sheriff Hadley!”

  No answer from Nora. No sounds from inside at all. Everything was eerily quiet around the house. Even the wind had died down to nothing.

  “Ms. Conrad! Are you in there?”

  No answer.

  “Is it okay if we come inside?”

  Still no answer.

  Hadley looked at Palmer almost like he was seeking permission to enter the home. Palmer could see the concern on the sheriff’s face. The man knew this area, he knew his neighbors, and, like Palmer, he knew something was wrong here.

  “She’s always home,” Sheriff Hadley said for the third time.

  Palmer nodded for Hadley to enter the home. He would take any flak for this decision if he had to … but right now he was going to trust his instincts. After what he’d seen at the dig site in New Mexico, and at the young couple’s house, and then at the cabin only hours earlier, he knew this wave of strange deaths wasn’t over yet.

  Sheriff Hadley slid the glass door open and the warm smell of rot and death drifted out at them from between the vertical blinds, clashing with the cold air. The smell backed the sheriff up a step.

  “Your door is open!” Sheriff Hadley yelled with his gun drawn, still following procedure. “We’re coming in!”

  Hadley went in first, pushing the vertical blinds to the side. He stepped into the house like a man who had a familiarity with the property, like he’d been in this house many times before, maybe for coffee or a beer with Nora Conrad’s husband when he was still alive.

  Palmer was right on the sheriff’s heels, his gun aimed into the murky room. They were in the dining room, and they both saw the carnage in the living room to their right.

  “Clear!” Palmer said as he aimed his gun at the empty kitchen. He looked back at the sheriff.

  Sheriff Hadley only walked a few steps towards the living room and then he stopped. His big shoulders were slumped, his gun loose in his hand almost like he was going to drop it. He was frozen with shock, his mind and body shutting down.

  Palmer looked past the sheriff into the living room at the body of a man on the floor and the pieces of two women spread out all over the furniture and the floor. Palmer got a sudden flashback from the dig site, the body parts stacked up on each other in the cave. But the pieces in this house were fresh, the blood still wet and glistening in the early afternoon light that flooded in from the open sliding glass door. And these pieces weren’t carefully arranged together and displayed like some twisted piece of artwork—this looked more like a temper tantrum thrown by a monster.

  Even though there were differences, this still had to be the work of the same killers.

  Palmer studied the man on the floor closest to them. He lay sprawled out on the hardwood floorboards about ten feet away. He was face-down, his arms stretched out. His skin was gray and he wore a dark suit coat and pants that were filthy with dirt and grime. He also had a hole in the back of his head big enough for Palmer to stick his fist through. The edges of the hole were rimmed with jagged pieces of broken skull and a grayish-colored goo.

  Palmer’s eyes wandered over to the pieces of the two women. Their heads were on two dining room chairs that had been set up in the living room side by side, about three feet away from each other. Both of the heads were facing towards him. One woman looked much younger, a girl really, and her eyes were closed. The other woman’s eyes were wide open like her last moment in life was one of shock and surprise. Both of their mouths were wide open, their dull dark hair hanging down off the sides of the chair, wet with blood. A pool of sticky blood was puddled underneath the two chairs on the wood floor. Arms and legs, pieces of their torsos, and ragged strips of clothing were spread out all over the couches, chairs, and a massive wood and glass coffee table … blood smeared everywhere.

  Sheriff Hadley hadn’t moved a muscle yet. Hadn’t said a word.

  “That man on the floor isn’t Travis Conrad, is it?” Palmer asked in a low and even voice.

  The sheriff shook his head no, his Adam’s apple bobbing furiously like he was either trying to swallow, talk, or inhale a breath.

  “We need to see if Travis is still here in the house,” Palmer told him.

  Sheriff Hadley just nodded. He hadn’t even looked at him yet.

  “I’m going to check the rest of the house,” Palmer said in a low voice and walked away from the sheriff, giving him time to process what he was seeing in front of him. But eventually the sheriff was going to have to snap out of his fog and do his job.

  Palmer walked over to the front door in the entryway. He checked the front door. Unlocked. He saw puddles of water where someone had come in and the snow from their boots had melted.

  He went into the kitchen. It was cozy, decorated in a flowery country design with geese being the main theme. There was coffee made in the coffee machine, a loaf of bread open on the counter, and frying pans on the stovetop ready to cook. A normal kitchen ready for a normal day.

  Palmer walked down the hallway off of the kitchen with his gun still in his hand. He checked all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, expecting to find Travis’ body back here somewhere. But Travis wasn’t back here and there wasn’t a drop of blood or any signs of struggle.

  The master bedroom was a little messy, the bed unmade, a few clothes draped over a wingback chair near the window, the closet door open. Palmer looked at a few of the photos in frames on the dresser and hanging on the walls. He saw the women from the living room at various ages, along with a young man who must be Travis. And he saw the husband who had died six months ago.

  The girl’s bedroom was neat and organized, and Travis’ bedroom was the opposite, messy and cluttered. Sports posters covered the walls in Travis’ room along with a rifle mounted on a wood rack.

  Palmer hurried back into the living room. He found the sheriff still standing in the same spot. It looked like he hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “It’s all clear back there,” Palmer said. “Travis isn’t in the house.”

>   The sheriff didn’t respond.

  Palmer touched the sheriff’s shoulder gently; he didn’t want to startle him with that gun still in his hand. He spoke with authority, his words sharp and commanding. “Sheriff Hadley, I’d like you to holster your weapon.”

  The sheriff finally turned and looked at Palmer, seeming to slowly come back to life. He lifted his weapon up like it weighed a ton and slid it into the holster on his belt.

  “The house is clear,” Palmer said again. “Travis Conrad isn’t here.”

  “Yeah,” Hadley croaked.

  Palmer glanced at the pieces of the women, at their heads sitting on the two chairs. He noticed that their necks were congealed with dried blood and that the cuts were ragged as if their heads had been torn away from their bodies. It was the same thing with the pieces of limbs and torsos. He couldn’t be certain just by looking at the pieces—forensics would have to make that call—but judging by what he’d seen down in New Mexico, these murders looked very similar.

  Who could do something like this? Who had that kind of strength? And why tear the women apart and just shoot the man?

  Palmer couldn’t let himself get mired down in questions that he couldn’t answer at this time. He needed to compartmentalize his thoughts and focus on the things that he could solve right now.

  “Who’s the man on the floor?” Palmer asked Sheriff Hadley.

  Hadley looked back at the corpse on the floor like he needed to see it again to believe it. He tried to talk, his mouth moving, but no words were coming out.

  “Sheriff?”

  “It … it can’t be possible.” The sheriff’s words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  “What can’t be possible?” Palmer heard the echoes of the forensics people he’d talked to yesterday and today in the sheriff’s words.

  “That man is Nora’s husband.”

  That stopped Palmer for a moment. He shook his head slightly like he hadn’t heard Sheriff Hadley correctly. “Wait a minute. I thought you said her husband was—”

  “Dead. Yeah, that’s right. He’s dead. Been dead for six months.”

  “But then what’s he doing here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Palmer was quiet for a moment, staring down at the corpse on the floor, staring at him in a new light now. The black suit, the gray goo coming out of his brain. Why would someone bring a dead man here just to shoot him in the head?

  Just then the sheriff’s shoulder mike crackled to life, making him jump a little. He grabbed it and thumbed the button. “Sheriff Hadley here.” His voice sounded much stronger than it had only seconds ago.

  “Ronnie called in from Cody’s Pass,” a woman’s voice said from the mike. “There’s something strange going on at the Mountainside Inn. A car crashed into the lobby.”

  “We got some more pressing matters here at the moment,” Sheriff Hadley said. “Get Freddie to—”

  “There’s a lot of dead people there,” the woman on the mike squawked. “At least three so far. Mutilated. One of them is Travis Conrad, the kid you were looking for.”

  Sheriff Hadley and Palmer locked eyes.

  “We need to get there,” Palmer told him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  South of Cody’s Pass, Colorado

  Cole pulled the SUV off the road into a wooded area that was hidden from the road. He wanted to keep this vehicle off the road for a little while, and he needed some time to gather his thoughts.

  It was dark all around them and he had the lights off. He had all the doors locked. It was getting cold, but not too uncomfortable just yet. He’d told Stella that they needed to wait a few hours before finding another vehicle, wait until it was later. He already had an idea of a place where he would find one.

  David was still asleep in the back seat.

  It was risky sitting here in the dark near the woods. After what they’d seen tonight, Cole knew that the thing following them, the thing Stella called the Ancient Enemy, could pop up at anytime and anywhere. But if they were spotted by police, chased by them, then it would be over. They wouldn’t be able to get David back down to the Navajo Reservation; they wouldn’t be able to get him to a shaman. Once David was in police custody, he would be a sitting duck for that thing. It would find someone to kill David, it would frighten some person badly enough with what it could do to people, and that person would snap and kill David.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  • • •

  Stella sat in the passenger seat and stared out the dark windshield. She glanced around at the side windows every few seconds. She couldn’t help being nervous out here, but Cole was right—this was better than being caught by the police. At this point the police might be shooting to kill. The keys were in the ignition, dangling there.

  But maybe the vehicle wouldn’t start, she thought. Then she pushed that thought from her mind. She tried not to think about the Ancient Enemy at all. Maybe it could follow their thoughts, maybe even read them. She tried to think of something else.

  They were in Bruce’s Chevy Tahoe. Bruce the salesman who had been so friendly to them when they were standing by the vending machines, the man who had seemed so lonely, like he just wanted someone to talk to for a few minutes, the man who was dead now.

  Dead because of her.

  She wondered if Bruce had a family. Kids of his own. There were a few suits of clothes on hangers in the back seat, a dark blue suit and a black one. They covered one of the back windows. The rear of the SUV was filled with boxes of samples of whatever he was selling.

  They were quiet for a moment as they sat there. Cole had his seat leaned back, one foot up on the dash beside the steering wheel, stretching his leg out. He stared out at the darkness beyond the windshield, lost in thought. He had one of his pistols resting in his lap, ready if he needed it.

  “What was that back there?” he finally said.

  Stella didn’t answer.

  “Are there more than one of those things?” he asked, looking at her. He kept his voice low so he wouldn’t wake David up.

  “I … I don’t think so,” Stella said. “I think all those things are part of the same … the same organism.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems that way to me.”

  “But maybe there are a lot of those things and they’re like …” He seemed to be struggling with the concept for a moment. “Like they’re all connected together through their thoughts.”

  “Like some kind of hive mentality?”

  “Yeah. Like bees or ants are all separate creatures but they operate with the same goal. But this would be way more—”

  “More complicated than ants or bees,” she said, nodding like she understood what he was trying to say. “It’s like the pieces of this thing can split off and do things separately, but then all the pieces can come back together as a whole any time it wants to.”

  “You saw those things crawling out of Trevor, Jose, Frank, and the others at the cabin when it was burning, didn’t you?”

  Stella nodded.

  “They seemed to be changing … like changing their form. They were like giant insects for a minute, then like some kind of thing out of the ocean, then like something I’ve never seen before. And they crawled out of those bodies, and they joined together. And then … then they were gone.”

  She nodded. She remembered.

  “And today at the hotel, when I shot at them, they just … just disappeared again like they’d done at the cabin.”

  “The air seemed to actually warp around them when they disappeared,” she reminded Cole. “Like it had altered the space around it, the very molecules.”

  “This is like science fiction shit,” Cole said. “Something you’d see in some kind of horror movie about aliens from another planet.” He thought for a moment. “You said something about aliens before when we were at the cabin. Do you think this thing could be some kind of alien?”

 
She shrugged. “I don’t know. It could be. Who knows? The Navajo, along with many other southwestern Native Americans, have stories of Star People that came down to Earth, supernatural beings. Some of these Star People are actually in their origin stories. And there are many who believe that cultures have been visited by aliens many times in the past.”

  Cole shook his head in frustration and looked out the window. “How the hell are we supposed to fight an alien … something from another planet?”

  Stella glanced into the back seat and looked at David. He was still curled up on his side and sleeping deeply. She had covered him up with one of the suits that Bruce had hanging up by the back door. She was glad to see David getting some sleep now.

  She looked back at Cole who was still staring at her in the darkness. She could see his breaths fogging up in front of him. It was beginning to get pretty cold in here. “I just wanted to say … to say thank you for saving us. You could’ve run if you wanted to back at the motel. You were already in this truck; you could’ve just kept on driving.”

  “I told you I wasn’t going to run out on you.”

  “Yeah. And I’m sorry we ran out on you.”

  He just stared at her.

  “I was just scared,” she said.

  “I know you find it hard to trust me,” Cole said. “I understand that totally. I’m a criminal. But like I told you back in the cabin, I’ve been trying to change my ways for a while now. The only reason I was at that bank was because of my brother. I wanted to do this one last job so he could pay Frank off.”

  She nodded.

  “I’ve been trying really hard to change my ways,” he told her. “And I’m still trying very hard.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled and nodded as he started the truck. “Okay. Now let’s go steal another truck.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Cody’s Pass, Colorado—The Mountainside Inn