by Brom
“Gave another one to his cousin. Did you know you can link those—”
“I’m so fucking happy,” Jesse broke in, forcing a broad smile across his face.
“What?” Chet cut his eyes to Lynyrd. “Is it just me or is Jesse plain weird tonight?”
“Jesse is always weird,” Lynyrd said.
Chet squinted at Jesse again, studied him like something escaped from the zoo. “Yeah, you’re right on that one.” Chet pulled out a tin of chew, twisted it open, dug out a plug, and stuffed it into his cheek. Jesse felt like the man moved in slow motion.
“Okay, sugar britches,” Chet continued. “Here’s the deal. Like I was telling you before, quick run up to Charleston. Same place as usual. It’ll be Josh meeting you this time—his brother got another DUI and is still in jail. His wife won’t pay his bail neither.” Chet snorted. “I think she’d just as soon he stay in there, to tell you the truth. Anyhow Josh will be expecting you at nine. Do us all a favor and make sure you’re on time. I don’t want him bitching at me. I swear that man can carry on like an old woman sometimes. So don’t be—”
“I’ll be there on time,” Jesse said, his eyes darting about in the shadows.
“Yeah . . . all right then.” Chet paused. “You jacked up or something?”
“No.”
Chet didn’t look convinced. He nodded at Lynyrd, and Lynyrd unzipped his jacket, pulled out a large brown packet wrapped in duct tape.
“Josh will have six grand waiting for you.”
“Six grand?” Jesse said, unable to hide his surprise.
Chet eyed Jesse, spat a wad of tobacco juice onto the snow. “Yeah, six grand. Don’t you go getting any funny ideas. Just remember what the General said about your daughter. I mean it, Jesse. For her sake, you fly right.”
Jesse’s jaw tightened.
Chet jabbed a thumb toward Dillard’s patrol car. “You’re to follow Dillard as far as Leewood. Martin said he’s on duty tonight. So the interstate shouldn’t be a problem. He knows the make of your truck. So if you happen to notice the state patrol tailing you, don’t sweat it none.” Chet slapped Jesse on the shoulder. “See there, guitar man, we got you covered. And the General’s bumping your bit up to three hundred. Y’know, to show there’s no hard feelings on that there hole in your hand. That’s three hundred bucks for doing just about nothing. You can send him a thank-you card if you want.”
Lynyrd stepped up to the passenger side of Jesse’s truck and popped the door open. The Santa sack tumbled out onto the ground. Loud cawing exploded from somewhere up above.
Lynyrd reached for the sack.
“Hey, leave that alone!” Jesse cried and leapt toward the sack.
Lynyrd had a big buck knife out in a heartbeat, had it pointed right at Jesse’s chest. Lynyrd wasn’t the biggest of the Boggses, but he was fast, scary fast. Jesse stopped, put his hands up. “Just getting the sack out of the mud.”
“Why don’t you just leave it be ’till I’m done,” Lynyrd said.
Jesse backed off.
“Hell, Jesse,” Chet said. “You need to calm the fuck down.”
Lynyrd shoved the packet up under Jesse’s seat.
“What the fuck is wrong with them birds tonight?” Chet said to no one in particular.
Lynyrd picked up the Santa sack and tossed it back into the cab without a second look.
“Hey,” Chet said. “Is that a Santy Claus bag? It is. What the hell, Jesse? You been playing Santa?” He walked over for a closer look.
“Leave it be,” Jesse said.
“Okay, sure. Relax, man,” Chet said. “No one wants to steal your stupid Santa bag.” Chet took a closer look at Jesse’s face and seemed to reconsider. He squinted at the sack. “Whatcha got in there, anyway?” Chet patted the sack. “That’s weird.” He poked it. Watched the way the sack slowly reinflated. “Lynyrd, did you see that?”
Lynyrd grunted.
Chet pulled the sack back out. The cawing grew louder. “Fucking birds have done lost their minds?”
“Let it alone,” Jesse said, taking a step forward.
Lynyrd grabbed him, shoved him up against the camper shell, flashed his knife in front of Jesse’s face. “You’re sure a slow learner, boy.”
Chet whistled. “Look at him, man. He’s all worked up. Must be something really good in here.” He loosened the gold cord and peered in.
“Well?” Lynyrd asked.
Chet looked puzzled.
“What?” Lynyrd asked.
“That’s really weird. It’s like there’s some sort of—”
A shadow slid from the trees and sprang for Chet. It was one of them—one of the devil men. It snatched the sack out of Chet’s hands and knocked him sprawling across the snow.
Lynyrd reacted without a second’s hesitation, launching himself at the creature, slashing out wildly with his big buck knife, catching the creature across the back of its shoulder. The devil man spun insanely fast, looking like some sort of rabid pillow-fighter as it swung the sack around in a tight arc, catching Lynyrd full in the chest and knocking him across the hood of Jesse’s truck. Lynyrd snatched Jesse’s pistol up off the hood, wheeled about, firing away. The first bullet went wild, the second caught the creature in the side of the face. The creature stumbled back and fell, but didn’t let go of the sack.
Before Lynyrd could get off a third shot, a spear flew out of the dark, struck him in the chest, followed a half-second later by two more of the devil men. They leapt from the brush and smashed right into him, slamming him into the side of the truck with enough force to rattle the whole frame. One of them opened Lynyrd’s throat with a quick slash of its knife, while the other tore the gun from his hand. Lynyrd crumpled to the ground, clutching the spear as blood gushed from the wide gash in his neck.
Two more of the devil beasts ran up, looking from the blood to the sack with wide, orange eyes. One of them grabbed the wounded devil and helped it to its feet, while the other took the sack.
“Who the fuck are you guys?” Chet cried from where he lay sprawled upon the ground. He glared up at Jesse. “You set us up! You fucking set us up! You’re dead! Your whole family’s dead!”
The ravens were right over their heads now, jumping around in the branches, cawing and cawing.
“Santa Claus. He is here,” one of the devil men said, the tall one wearing the mangy hide. He pointed and they all looked across the street to a sloping field. Jesse did, as well, but saw nothing.
“Oh, dear God!” another of the devil men cried. He carried a busted-up shotgun but still looked scared to death.
Chet took the moment to scramble to his feet and run, sprinting for Dillard’s patrol car, waving his arms, and screaming at the top of his lungs, “IT’S A SETUP! IT’S A SETUP!” None of the devil men gave him so much as another look, their orange eyes locked on the something across the way. They all seemed frozen in place.
“Get in the truck, now!” the one with the pistol shouted, and judging by the voice and slight build, Jesse guessed this one to be a woman or girl.
They moved.
She pointed the gun at Jesse. “You. Drive!” When Jesse didn’t move fast enough, she shoved him in through the passenger door, sliding in next to him. “Get us out of here fast or we’re all dead.”
Jesse glanced at Lynyrd’s body lying in the blood-drenched snow, knew these creatures, whatever they were, weren’t to be toyed with. He cranked up the engine while the devil men piled into the camper with the Santa sack. He hit his headlights and saw a stout shape running toward them across the playground. It looked familiar.
“Go!” the devil woman shouted. “Go!”
Jesse hit the gas, heading for the lower exit of the parking lot.
A pair of headlights flashed on, blinding him. It was Dillard. The patrol car’s big engine revved as Dillard accelerated to cut them off.
“Oh, fuck!” Jesse cried. Things were not going as he’d planned, not at all.
A gunshot rang out, then anot
her, and Jesse’s remaining side mirror shattered. Jesse gunned it, tried to press the pedal all the way through the floorboard, but there was nothing for it—Dillard would win the race.
Jesse caught sight of Dillard’s mad grin, caught a muzzle flash, and a finger-size hole punched through the door frame and exited out the front windshield, followed a millisecond later by the report. Jesse knew this was just what Dillard wanted, probably sat there praying for—a chance to shoot him dead.
A man dashed into the beams of Jesse’s headlights. The Santa man, eyes wild, teeth clenched in a fearsome grimace, carrying a sword and running directly for them. “Hey!” Jesse cried, and swerved, trying desperately not to hit the man. The Santa man swung the sword, striking the front of the truck, taking out the driver’s-side headlight. The blade raked down the side of the truck as they barreled past, sending up a shower of sparks. The Santa man spun away and ended up directly in the path of Dillard’s speeding cruiser. There came a tremendous wallop as the cruiser collided with the man, sending the vehicle veering away into the ditch and knocking the Santa man tumbling across the parking lot.
Jesse spun out onto the road, hit the brakes, looked back over his shoulder, hoping, praying, that he’d see Dillard’s brains splattered onto the windshield of his cruiser. It just seemed fair that if everything else had to go so completely wrong, maybe this at least could go his way. Jesse had seen what a deer could do to the front end of a car, but the front of Dillard’s cruiser was a step beyond that, more like what hitting a cow might do. He noticed the deployed airbag and his heart sank. “Dammit.”
“Is he dead?” the devil woman asked. “Is he?”
Jesse realized she was talking about the Santa man, not Dillard.
“No,” answered one of the devil men. “Don’t think so.”
Jesse scanned the parking lot, searching for a mangled body, was surprised to see the Santa man climb right back to his feet looking no worse for wear. The ravens squawked and swooped overhead. The Santa man turned, looking at something far up the road.
“They come,” the tall devil man said. “See . . . see them!”
Jesse saw two dark shapes galloping toward them. He had no idea what they could be. They looked like shaggy dogs, wolves maybe, only huge, nearly the size of bulls, less than a hundred yards out and closing in fast.
“Go!” the woman shouted, they all did, “Go! Go! Go!”
Jesse got the message; whatever those things were, he had no desire to meet them up close. He pressed the accelerator firmly to the floorboard and the truck took off. The V8 roared and pinged, as the speedometer crept up: twenty . . . thirty . . . forty. “C’mon!” he shouted at the old F150. “C’mon, baby! You can do it!”
Chapter Five
Monsters
They’d lost sight of the wolves at least ten miles back, yet all the devil men kept their eyes fixed on the road behind them, no one speaking as they headed south on Route 3, following the Coal River through the isolated hill country.
No one had killed him yet, so Jesse felt he just might have a chance of getting out of this scrape alive. “So,” Jesse said. “Where can I drop you and your friends off at?”
The she-devil studied him. The fire in her eyes had diminished, still holding their unnerving orange tint but not glowing as before. She pushed back the hood of her jacket, gave him a wry grin, and shook her head. Her hair was dark, matted, and greasy, cropped short, as if hacked away with a knife. Her gray skin with blotchy black patches made it difficult to gauge her age, but if Jesse had to guess he would’ve said somewhere in her late teens.
The window between the cab and the camper shell slid open and one of the devil men poked his head into the cab. He appeared to be older, his face heavily lined, late fifties perhaps, long, greasy hair and bristly, black beard. “We’ve lost them!”
“No,” corrected the devil man seated next to him. It was the tall one, one of the ones with horns and draped in bear hides. His skin, like that of the two horned monsters next to him, appeared to be covered in black paint or tar perhaps, as though he’d purposely tried to darken it. The tall devil man crouched over, trying not to bump his horns on the camper roof. “You will never lose them. Not so long as the ravens follow.” His speech was paced, a bit stilted; he sounded to Jesse like a Native American.
The woman rolled down her window; the cold wind buffeted the cab as she leaned her head out and scanned the night sky. She withdrew back in. “No sign of ’em. None that I could see no ways.”
“They are there,” the tall one said. “I feel them.”
“I don’t feel anything,” the bearded man said. “How can you be so sure?”
The tall man gave him a pitying look.
“Don’t give me that look. I hate that look.” The bearded man was silent a minute. “Well . . . what’re we going to do about them?”
“Do?” the woman said. “We got the sack. There’s only one thing we can do.”
“What?” the bearded man cried. “We’re just going to go back to the cave? But that’ll lead the monsters right to him. Not to mention right to us. Why, we’ll be trapped!”
“We got no choice,” she insisted. “That was his command.”
“Well, then we better hope Old Tall and Ugly can get unhooked before they catch up with us, or we’re all going to die horribly.”
The creatures all fell quiet, the lone wiper beating out a squeaky rhythm as they watched the slushy road slipping away behind them in the glow of the taillights. Jesse noted the one that had been shot holding his face, blood spilling out between his fingers. He didn’t think that one would be around for much longer. After seeing those wolves, he didn’t think any of them would. “So,” Jesse put in. “Given any thought as to where I should let you guys off?”
They ignored him.
“Are we even going the right way?” the woman asked.
“How the heck should I know,” the bearded devil replied.
“Well, how about you ask Makwa.”
The man’s face wrinkled up in distaste, but he did just that and a heated discussion broke out accompanied by an arsenal of animated hand-gestures. He leaned back through the window. “Yes, we seem to be going the right way.”
“You sure?” the woman asked.
“No, I’m not sure. But Big Chief Know-It-All sure seems to think so. And when was the last time he was wrong?”
The woman shrugged.
Makwa jabbed a finger into the cab, pointed ahead to a ridgeline barely visible in the night sky.
“Yeah, we got it,” the bearded man said.
“Hey, I know where we’re at,” the woman said. “We should be coming up on the road in about a mile then.” She looked at Jesse. “You got that? Turn up the next dirt road.”
“Okay, that’ll work. I’ll just drop you off there.”
“No, you’ll do no such a thing.” She looked at him sadly, her tone softening. “I’m mighty sorry, but you’re tied up in this now. We’re gonna need you to take us up the mountain as far as you can.”
“Well, sweetheart,” Jesse said. “I’m not really in the mood to go and get myself stuck up in them woods . . . not tonight. I’m gonna drop you guys off right here.”
She poked the pistol against his ribs. “I’m not really in the mood to shoot you either, but I will.”
Jesse gave her a quick, spiteful look.
“And my name’s not Sweetheart. It’s Isabel.” After a long moment, she asked, “And you, you got a name?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. It’s Jesse.”
“Well, Jesse, this here’s Vernon.”
The bearded devil smiled and stuck out his hand. “Good to make your acquaintance.” From the way he spoke, Jesse knew he wasn’t from around here, from somewhere up north maybe. Jesse looked at Vernon’s extended hand as though it were covered in spit.
Vernon’s smile withered and he withdrew his hand. “Yes, well . . . and this remarkably unrefined specimen here,” he gestured to the tall
devil in the bear hide, “is Makwa. Beside him is Wipi, and the unfortunate gentleman with the bullet hole in his face is his brother, Nipi.”
Despite their appearance Jesse got the feeling that these creatures, or people, or whatever they might be, were more scared and desperate than menacing. On any account, they didn’t seem to harbor him any ill will. Still he knew what they were capable of, couldn’t get the image of Lynyrd’s slit throat out of his mind, but decided maybe they weren’t the murdering monsters he’d first thought. Either way, desperate people did dangerous things, and Jesse figured the sooner he got away, the better his chances of seeing another day.
“Just what are you guys supposed to be anyhow?”
“What’d you mean?” the girl asked.
“What’d you mean, what’d I mean? Are you werewolves, boogeymen, or just been out trick-or-treating?”
“Well,” she replied, irritated. “I ain’t any of those, thank you. I’m a person just like you.”
Jesse laughed and not very kindly. “No. No, you most certainly are not.”
“Krampus calls us Belsnickels,” Vernon put in. “You’ll have to ask him exactly what that means.” His tone turned bitter. “But any way you want to put it, it means we’re his servants . . . his slaves.”
“I got another idea,” Jesse said. “How about you let me out then? I’ll just hitch a ride out of here. Take my chances.”
Isabel shook her head. “I’m sorry, Jesse. But we can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not? I’m giving you my damn truck! What else do you need me for?”
No one answered.
“Well?”
“Can’t none of us drive very well.”
“What?” Jesse stared at her, then burst out laughing. “You gotta be shitting me.”
Isabel frowned. “I wasn’t but sixteen when I left home. And Mama didn’t own a car no how.”
“What about good old Vernon here, or them Injuns?”
Isabel smiled at that. “I’d like to see one of them Shawnee trying to drive. So long as I wasn’t riding with ’em that is. And I’m guessing the last thing Vernon drove was hitched up to a horse.”