by Lori Drake
The pieces clicked into place suddenly, and Joey now saw what Chris was trying to do. She turned her head to whisper back to him, curling her arms around him to make it look like a parting hug. “Be careful, okay? I don’t trust him. Watch your back.”
He squeezed her, then stepped back. “I’m always careful,” he said, flashing her a boyish smile that turned her insides to jelly before he turned to go.
Joey followed him out and shut the door behind her. The two groups parted ways on the porch. Joey looked over at Jessica. “I’m all turned around now. Can you lead us to whatever side of the house that window is on?”
Jessica nodded and set off in the opposite direction from where the others had gone. Joey immediately wished she had her coat, but no one else had theirs either. It wasn’t cold enough for any of them to die of exposure or anything, but it was pretty uncomfortable. The biting wind tugged at her clothes, but at least there was no frigid rain to deal with. She tucked her hands under her arms as she followed Jessica around the side of the house, trusting Colt to bring up the rear.
Jessica soon stopped and pointed up. “This is it.”
Joey glanced up the side of the house, spotting the broken window, then downward to scan the ground for her phone. The others followed suit, and after a few minutes of searching, they found the electronic device in an overgrown flower bed. Joey thumbed the home button but nothing happened. She pushed it again, and again.
“No, no, no… shit!” Her fingers clenched around the device and she fought the urge to fling it against the side of the house.
“What’s wrong?” Jessica asked.
“It’s dead. Fuck!”
“Take it to Adam. He’ll know what to do.”
Joey took a deep breath and pocketed the phone. “Maybe it’s just cold. I know I am. Let’s get back inside.” She rubbed her arms as they started back for the front of the house, but they hadn’t gone more than a few steps before a screech piercing the night air brought them to an abrupt halt.
Joey cast her gaze skyward. “Did you hear that?”
“Yeah,” Colt said. “Sounded like… a bat or something.”
“We should keep moving,” Jessica said, wariness in her tone and posture. She started forward again, but Joey’s eyes remained glued on the sky.
Something was moving overhead. She couldn’t quite make it out, but the distant beat of wings soon rose, and the movement resolved itself into a writhing mass of tiny black bodies. Bats. They seemed to dart between the stars, but in reality, they were just flying around, occasionally passing in front of the group. Then they dove.
“Run!” Joey cried, motioning to Colt before taking off after Jessica. “Go, go, go!”
They weren’t fast enough. Swooping bats hounded them all the way to the door, flapping their wings and screeching as they dove again and again at the wolves’ unprotected heads. Joey did her best to cover her head as she ran, but she heard a pained cry and a thump behind her, and twisted to find Colt on the ground under a seething mass of black. He flailed his arms and legs, swatting and kicking.
Joey yielded to impulse and ran back for him, doing her best to shoo the bats away and help him to his feet. Blood streamed down his face and hands from a multitude of abrasions. The little fuckers had sharp claws and teeth, apparently. Joey’s arms stung too, but she didn’t stop to examine them. Once she got Colt moving again, they raced for the front door amidst a cloud of black that followed them up onto the porch.
They darted inside and slammed the door shut. Joey leaned her back against the door, heart pounding, and listened to the sound of thudding as the bats flung themselves against the door and pelted the front windows.
“What the hell?” Ben exclaimed.
“Nothing unusual here, just your garden-variety swarm of wolf-eating bats…” Joey said, trailing off as she took in the sight of her brother and the others looking on in confusion. “You don’t hear that?”
“Hear what?” Ben asked, tilting his head.
The racket outside suddenly stopped. Joey straightened with a growl and turned to yank open the door. Outside, all was quiet and still, with no trace of the bats remaining. Frowning, Joey closed the door and locked it again. As she turned back toward the others, she caught a glimpse of Colt looking down at his arms, which no longer bore any trace of bat claws or teeth. Her own arms no longer stung, and upon inspection, the skin was smooth and unbroken.
“Joey?” Ben started toward her, brow furrowed.
“Um, nothing. I guess Bob—er, Roger—was messing with us.”
“I don’t think Roger likes Plan B,” Jessica said, on her way to the liquor cabinet.
“Speaking of which…” Joey pulled her phone from her pocket and tried to activate it again, to no avail. However, in the light of the living room, she could see that the screen was cracked. “Shit. I think my phone’s toast.”
“Let me look at it,” Adam said, holding out a hand.
Jessica shot Joey a “told you so” look from across the room. Joey smirked, but passed Adam the phone and flopped in a chair to catch her breath while he fiddled with it.
In the quiet that followed, Lucy said, “Jess may be onto something, you know. We’ve been talking about this plan openly, and who’s to say he hasn’t been here all along, listening?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Joey tipped her head back, looking up at the ceiling. How did you stop a monster that knew your plan and didn’t want to be stopped? On the upside, he couldn’t possess them all at once, but if the group hallucination they’d just experienced was any indication, he had plenty of other tricks up his metaphorical sleeves.
Lucy stood suddenly. “I have an idea.” She headed for the back of the house.
“Lucy, wait!” Joey hopped to her feet. “Where are you going?”
Lucy didn’t even slow down. “The basement,” she called over her shoulder.
Joey exchanged a glance with Jessica, and then they both took off after Lucy.
“The basement,” Joey said. “Great. Isn’t that where bad things always happen in horror movies?”
At least this time Roger wouldn’t be able to shove her out a window.
16
They stopped for shovels on the way. Chris hadn’t even noticed the little storage shed out back when he was out there earlier. The structure looked older than the house, dilapidated and leaning dangerously to one side. Chris suspected a stiff breeze might take it out.
I’ll huff and I’ll puff…
The shiny steel padlock on the shed door seemed unnecessary, given the state of the structure. He tucked his hands under his arms and waited in the cold night air with Brandon while Eric unlocked the shed and slipped inside. Curious, Chris approached the door and looked inside, but found nothing more exciting than a musty, dark space full of gardening implements.
“We gonna do this?” Eric asked.
Chris nodded and moved aside. Eric passed two shovels to Brandon, then closed and locked the door.
“Are you really worried about someone stealing your gardening shit?” Chris asked, not able to stop himself.
“Hard to bury a body without a shovel.” Eric tugged on the padlock to be sure it was secure, then reclaimed one of the shovels and sauntered in the direction of the woods with the tool across his broad shoulders.
“You have occasion to do that often?” Chris asked, trying to keep his tone casual.
“Hey, you never know when you might have to bury a body,” Eric said, not even looking back. “The last thing you want to do when the occasion arises is make a run to the hardware store.”
“You’re a regular Boy Scout,” Chris remarked, but followed him nonetheless. Maybe following Eric into the woods wasn’t his brightest move of the evening, but it had seemed like the best call at the time. Hopefully Brandon would have his back. The guy seemed nice enough. Hell, he was Canadian, for god’s sake.
The trees weren’t very close together, but the canopy overhead was thick. It was more of a
wooded area than “the woods,” but the farther they got from the house, the more isolated it felt.
“Is this where you run?” Chris asked of no one in particular. Whoever wanted to answer. “For the full moon, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Usually.”
“Seems small,” Chris said, looking around. “Probably not much game either, with houses in close proximity.”
“We make do,” Eric said.
His tone discouraged further inquiries, so they walked in silence for a time. Chris tucked his hands under his arms again, grateful that he was at least wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but longing for his own pants. The borrowed sweats weren’t much protection against the cold wind, but it was better than roaming the forest in his boxer briefs. Or his wet jeans, for that matter.
He tried to make conversation again, this time to distract himself. “So how long have you been in the U.S., Brandon?”
“A couple of years. I came down here on a work visa to work for the Evil Empire.”
Chris thought about that a moment. “Starbucks?”
Brandon chuckled. “Microsoft.”
“Ahhh. That makes more sense. I didn’t have you pegged as a barista type.”
“Thanks. I think. There’s a barista type?”
“Yeah, they usually wear man buns and talk about surfing. Hm. Now that you mention it, maybe that’s a Cali thing.”
Eric’s quiet snort drifted back to him.
“How’d you and Ben meet?” Chris asked, ducking a low-hanging tree branch.
“Joey introduced us. It was kind of funny—from the moment she found out I was gay, she was like ‘I’ve got to introduce you to my brother!’ As if all it takes for two people to connect is compatible sexuality.” He did sound amused by it, at least. Brandon had seemed like a pretty good egg from the start. Chris could see why Joey would want to introduce him to Ben, above and beyond their mutual interest in men.
“To be fair, you seem like a pretty nice guy. Plus, it’s hard enough for a single straight wolf to find a match. There aren’t a lot of us, you know? I imagine it’s worse for you.” He shook his head. It was something he’d thought about plenty over the years. They all—the whole family—wanted Ben to find love. “Seems like it worked out, though.”
“It did, but you know… sometimes I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
Brandon was quiet for a moment. “If he’s really into me or just tired of a lack of options.”
“He seems pretty into you, man. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Hey, if you two want to talk about your feelings and braid each other’s hair, I’m totally fine with doing this alone,” Eric called back to them, glancing over his shoulder.
Chris smirked. “You’re the one leading us around in circles.”
Eric halted and looked around. “No I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. We’ve passed that boulder three times and I’m freezing my nuts off. Quit screwing around.”
“I’m not—get bent, Martin.”
Eric picked up the pace. Chris and Brandon followed, this time along a different path through the trees. A few minutes later, they came upon a small clearing and Eric planted his shovel in the ground. The earth was mounded subtly underneath a blanket of frosty pine needles and cones. If Eric hadn’t pointed it out, he might’ve overlooked it entirely.
“This is it,” Eric said. He left the shovel where it was and moved a few paces away to lean against a tree.
Brandon strode forward with his own shovel and started to dig. Chris grabbed the handle of the first shovel and pushed it into the ground with his foot, then leaned on the handle to turn a scoop of dirt over. It wasn’t as difficult as Chris expected, maybe because the earth there had been turned relatively recently. It also wasn’t a high-traffic area, so the only thing that would’ve compacted it was pine needles and snow.
“So, you’re just going to supervise?” Chris asked.
Eric shrugged. “There are only two shovels.”
Chris grunted and set to work. At least the exertion kept the shivering at bay. The hole broadened, then deepened. Eric did come over to relieve Brandon after a while, letting him take a break.
Though he was determined not to complain, Chris was unaccustomed to this sort of labor. Dancing, yes. Grave-digging, no. His hands, shoulders, and back began to ache early on, but he pushed through it and tried not to think about the last time he’d been in a cemetery. The smell of freshly turned earth didn’t help. He wished Cathy were here now. She’d probably be able to unearth the corpse without breaking a sweat. Heck, she might even know what to do with it.
It was all wishful thinking. He had no way of contacting her. Joey might, once she retrieved her phone. Chris wasn’t even sure where she’d resettled after leaving San Diego. It was pretty selfish of him not to ask. He made a mental note to do that, once all was said and done.
They dug and dug, until Chris started to wonder if there was anything buried there at all. But about four feet down, his shovel hit something that wasn’t hard-packed dirt, and a noxious odor rose from the ground. Bile rose in his throat and he gagged, but swallowed the urge to retch. It smelled awful. Truly awful. But at least the digging was almost done.
The body was wrapped in a blue camping tarp, which at least made it easier to pull out of the grave once it was unearthed. They set it down on the ground beside the grave and stepped back, upwind, to lean on their shovels.
“Now what?” Brandon asked. “We can’t bring that into the house.”
“We’ll stash it in the shed for now,” Eric said. “Come on, grab an end.”
Eric carried the shovels, of course.
Chris didn’t try to make conversation on the way back to the house. Mostly, he focused on putting one foot in front of the other, breathing through his mouth, and trying not to let the tarp slip from between his icy fingers. It was awkward going, moving across the uneven terrain with the burden of a tarp-shrouded body shared between them, but they did the best they could. Eric, whistling a jaunty tune as he strode along, got more than a little ahead of them, but Chris was fairly certain he could find the way back without him. Hell, he could just follow the whistling.
The wind picked up, tugging at their clothes and hair. Chris thought he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye, but when he glanced in that direction, there was nothing there. Shaking his head and chiding himself for a fool, he returned his gaze to the front.
The biting wind rustled tree branches and blew bits of pine detritus across the ground.
Snap.
Chris whipped his head to the left, certain he’d heard a twig—or something else—snap. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Brandon replied.
No help there.
“Nothing. Let’s pick up the pace a little. Eric’s getting pretty far head.”
Brandon’s grunt was all the compliance Chris needed. They picked up their feet to move more quickly through the trees. Eric’s whistling had stopped, but Chris could still make out the shape of him ahead. Every now and then, Eric whacked a shovel against a tree trunk in passing, causing snow to sift down from the thin needles overhead.
Chris hadn’t been paying much attention to the sounds of nature around him, but when they went silent, he took notice. His eyes lifted from the ground in time to see a figure rushing toward him. No, not so much rushing as flying. Flowing. Barreling. A man, but gray and translucent, with glowing red eyes and a mouth full of pointed teeth.
He dropped the tarp and dove aside, but the pale figure dove with him. It had appeared ethereal while flying through the air, but connected with him solidly, knocking him to the ground.
The air rushed out of his lungs, but he struggled against his attacker, surprised that the spirit was so solid but not so surprised that he couldn’t defend himself. He was distantly aware of Brandon cursing and calling for Eric to come back, but the lion’s share of Chris’s attention was on the apparition tryi
ng to savage him with its teeth. He didn’t know what’d happen if it succeeded, but he didn’t particularly want to find out, either.
How did one defend oneself against a ghost? He didn’t have a crucifix. Kicking it in the nuts seemed impractical at best. He grappled with the shade, managing to hold it at bay, but barely. It was ugly, its features twisted into the stuff of nightmares, but he could still make out human features beneath. A hooked nose, a close-trimmed beard. Thin lips. Shaggy hair.
A sharp whistle sounded from off to one side. “Hey, asswipe.”
The spirit froze and turned its head, then misted away into nothing as Eric swung the shovel through where it had been a moment before. Chris felt the air stir as the shovel passed within inches of his face. He scrambled to his feet, heart pounding.
The ghost reappeared some fifteen feet away, its image flickering like an old reel-to-reel film. Chris turned toward it, but it vanished. He cast his eyes about, looking this way and that, eventually spotting the specter behind him. He spun to face it, but it disappeared again.
“You okay?” Brandon asked.
“I think I shit Colt’s pants,” Chris said. It wasn’t true, but it cut the tension, however briefly.
“I think that makes them your pants. I wouldn’t want ‘em back if I were him.”
“Touché.”
Eric tossed Chris a shovel. “Make yourself useful.”
“Thanks for the assist back there,” Chris said grudgingly.
“I still don’t like you.”
“Ditto.” Chris adjusted his grip on the shovel and cast his eyes about warily. “We need to get back to the others.”
“We can’t just leave the body out here,” Brandon said, opening a pocket knife he’d fished from his pants pocket. For all the good that would do.
“We can’t bring the body with us while we’re under attack,” Eric said.
Chris shook his head. “No, but swinging shovels at it isn’t going to solve anything either.”