by Steve Vera
Torn, Officer Stanley Stewart acquiesced. “I’ll be back, Ava.”
“No, don’t go!” she cried, terrified. “Please,” she pleaded, grabbing his arm.
“I’ll be right back. I’m just going to see if everybody’s all right in there.”
“Don’t go in there,” she whispered urgently, and to see such fear, such terror in a child so young broke his heart…and scared him a little. After the stories they’d been hearing, part of him just wanted to let the FBI handle this.
“Stewart!”
“I gotta go. Ava. I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Ava began crying again, and hurt as it might, Stan shut the door to the cruiser, cracked the window and walked back to Ahanatou. He could still hear her crying.
“Just for the record, I object,” Stan said.
“Noted.” The large, barrel-chested FBI agent was holding his weapon, a sleek black Glock 19. He continued to study the house, analyzing the grounds with suspicious thoroughness.
“She says a monster ate her mom.”
Ahanatou didn’t answer but continued to scan the grounds. “Something is not right here,” he said.
“You think?” Stan asked, drawing his own Browning .45, thankful that the chief had switched the department (all three officers) from the 9mm.
“Your sarcasm is unnecessary.”
“Sarcasm keeps me sane. Did you call in the cavalry?”
“Of course.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
Stan looked back at the cruiser. Ava had stopped crying, her wide eyes, attached to their every word. “Why don’t we wait for them, then?”
Ahanatou stared at Stan and then back at the house. It was as if something were calling him. “Because I gave you an order, that’s why. We go in. Now.”
“Fine. Wait just one second.”
Without waiting for an answer, Stan went back to the car, opened the door, unclipped his radio from his belt and handed it to the little girl, who stared at him with the biggest doe eyes he could ever remember. Haunted doe eyes. “Here, Ava. Press this button if you need me, and then talk into it.”
Ava took the radio tentatively. She immediately pressed it, and Ahanatou’s radio chirped.
“No, no, no, not right now. Only if you need me. Otherwise you’ll get me in trouble. Okay? That way you won’t be alone. Roger that?”
Ava tilted her head a little to the side while she studied it. “Just like TV?”
“Yeah, just like TV.”
She took another second but then nodded and wiped an errant tear. “Okay.”
“Okay, good, we’ll be right back.” Stan then closed the door, followed by Ava’s silent gaze. She held the radio right alongside her doll.
“Isn’t it against protocol to surrender your radio?” Ahanatou asked.
Stan sighed. “File a report, Ahanatou. Let’s just do this—you’re the one who doesn’t want to wait for backup.”
Ahanatou said nothing.
The two approached the house and Stan couldn’t help but note the silence, the ominous lack of movement from anything. There were no squirrels, birds, not one sound. It was as if all life had been expelled.
“Hold,” Ahanatou murmured a moment later, putting his large fist in the air. The front door was cracked, and the unmistakable cloy of turning meat wafted out. The brown-skinned federal agent sniffed the air softly, a look of concentration set in his face. “You know what that is?” he asked in a quiet voice, peering through the crack.
Stan nodded; he’d smelled dead bodies before.
As if to remind him, his stomach gurgled in protest.
“Yes. Let’s just do this,” Stan said.
Ahanatou’s face was a mask of concentration. All traces of asshole were gone. “Now,” he said and slipped in. Stan followed.
The first thing that hit him as he followed on Ahanatou’s heels was the overwhelming stench. It was thick and heavy, like humidity. It smelled like a slaughterhouse, which here in Montana meant Stan could speak from experience. The second thing was the absolute plunge in sight as they went from bright to dark. Everything was just a big blob, but he kept his eyes focused on the beam of light cutting through the darkness cast from the flashlight under his pistol. Each of them covered different quadrants of the room—behind, up, down and all around. Everywhere his light landed, there was some bit of blood or gore.
Never in his worst dreams could he imagine a scene like this.
“Watch where you walk,” Ahanatou said. Even in the gloom of the lightless living room, the man’s Middle Eastern face was ashen. The crunch of broken glass beneath his boot seemed obscenely loud in the darkness, and just ahead, lying like some discarded bowling ball on the blood-soaked carpet, was the remains of what appeared to be a woman’s head…Joanna’s head.
White sticks of bone stuck out through the red mess of mangled flesh that used to be her neck. The top of her head was gone, and even in the lightless shadow Stan could see claw marks near the temples, the skull crunched in as if some giant, bestial fingers had simply ripped the top off.
Ahanatou approached slowly and shined his light on it. There was no brain inside.
Stan began to hyperventilate.
“Compose yourself,” Ahanatou ordered neutrally as he investigated the skull. A leather ottoman lay gutted on its side, its white cotton innards exposed and bloodstained. Pieces of furniture, speakers and shattered glass littered the carpeted floor as if something too large and ponderous had moved within.
Stan kept his mouth closed and clenched his teeth in order to fight the intense urge to add his lunch to the crime scene.
The clock on the DVD player was dark and silent. The only illumination came from the sunlight that streamed through the gaping hole upstairs, spilling downward to reveal the carnage with gruesome clarity. Something huge had blasted through the roof and had continued through the stairs, demolishing the staircase and banister.
“This is where it began,” Ahanatou said.
Stan kicked something with his foot that felt like a stick, but even before he looked down, he knew what it was. A bone. It gleamed in its paleness, eerily devoid of blood or meat. Stan looked closer and saw that the ends had been cracked, the marrow sucked dry.
His lunch emerged.
“Not on the crime scene, you idiot! Go outside!”
Stan burst outside and continued to hurl his guts out as heat rushed through his eyes, opening the way for the tears that followed. He chanted the words “dear God” over and over between wretches, hands on knees, crouched over.
“Get your ass back in here, Stewart.”
Stan looked up in a daze and stared at the open door. He took a moment, hawked up a final gob then marched back into the nightmare, gun hanging by his side as if it had gained sixty pounds.
Inside, Ahanatou was angling his weapon and flashlight upstairs, trying to get a better view. “Did they have any other children?” he asked. His pitted face was composed yet grim.
Stan nodded. “Older brother, Matthew. Seven.”
Ahanatou said nothing, but he didn’t need to; his face told him everything. “Where’s his bedroom?”
Stan looked up to the cold sunlight streaming through and pointed with his pistol. “Up there.”
Ahanatou nodded and put a foot on the first stair to test it. It immediately groaned. It would be risky going up; only a thin bridge of unbroken steps connected upstairs from down. The rest had been blasted away.
“I’ll go,” Stan said, and before Ahanatou could protest, he mounted the first of the steps. It creaked loudly. At least there was a side rail on the wall.
And what if it was still here?
The hole in the roof was roughly circular in shape except for the sides, which extended outward, as if whatever had crashed into the house had possessed wings.
When he finally reached the top he drew his pistol again and looked around, terrified despite the logic in his brain that tried to convince him that whatever had done this had moved on. “What do you see?” Ahanatou called up.
The walls to the hallways were gouged and ripped, as if something too large had waded through. It was then that he saw a huge, inhuman footprint outlined in blood on the beige carpet. Not only was it enormous, but it had claws. Talons.
“Stewart! What do you see?”
He simply stared at it in disbelief.
“Stewart!”
Stan blinked and shook his head, hoping that he’d suddenly become delusional, that perhaps somebody had spiked his hamburger with sautéed hallucinogenic mushrooms. No such luck. The footprint remained. In a daze, he stood and looked down the hallway, at the last room on the left. There was another footprint four feet away. Just how big was this thing? The footsteps stopped in front of what was once a door, fainter and less defined as the blood had worn off the soles. Only fragments of wood remained. Matthew’s room.
His mouth suddenly had too much saliva, and some of it drooled out the side.
“Stewart!” This time it was a shout.
“Shut up!” Stan roared back. “And clear the rest of the damn house! Check the basement!”
He tuned out Ahanatou’s response. All that existed was the blood rushing in his ears and the hallway. Each time his heart beat, he heard a waterfall.
Never had time passed so slowly. Step by agonizing step, he approached the shattered remains of the door, wanting nothing more than to run from this place, from the idea that he was entering a new realm of reality, but walking forward anyway.
His nose told him the story before he even reached the door, but he needed to see with his own eyes, needed to see what he already knew in his gut. He rounded the corner, mind as dead and far away as he could banish it, and still he gasped, still he dropped to his knees.
Chapter Seven
The first thing he heard was the unmistakable bleeping of a heart monitor. It was faint at first but grew stronger with every passing moment, a beacon in the dawn between dreams and reality.
“Chief?”
The word was garbled and distant, dreamlike, as if he were underwater.
“Talk to me, Chief.” This time closer.
Skip bumped against consciousness like a bubble against glass.
“C’mon, Chief, we’re in trouble. Please wake up.” The voice had the distinct tone of desperate futility.
Pop. Skip’s eyes opened, and the world became a bright blur. “Keep your pantyhose on,” he croaked, blinking against the onslaught of light. His words would have done a bullfrog proud.
“Chief!” Stan said, gushing amazed relief. Pale, bleary-eyed and unshaven, Stan’s already thin face looked downright gaunt. Skip felt arms around his shoulders. “Oh, thank God you’re awake.”
“Where the hell am I?” Skip asked in a voice as hoarse and dry as a bucket of wood shavings. He tried to sit up but yowled as a bolt of pain speared through his chest.
“Take it easy, Chief. You’re at Helena Memorial Hospital. You’ve been unconscious for the past thirty hours.”
Skip peered at him through one crinkled eye. “Come again?”
“I said, your ass has been unconscious for the last thirty damn hours. They had to bring you here to Kalispell for surgery.”
So that’s why his brain felt as if it were dripping out of a blender. “What day is it?”
“Wednesday morning, seven-oh-three.”
Skip rubbed his eyes—noting the IV sticking in his arm—and tried to massage feeling back into his brain. Anybody get a plate on the herd of buffalo that ran me over?
Skip took another look at Stan. Even with his coma-fogged brain, Skip noticed the striking lack of blood in Stan’s face, the purple bruises under his eyes. “What’s with the face?”
Stan blinked. “Huh?”
“You look like I feel.”
Stan managed a quick smile. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yeah, it is. What’s going on?” Another yelp as he tried to sit up. His chest hurt.
Stan glanced at the door and then leaned close. “What the hell happened out there?” he whispered.
Skip scrunched his forehead, unprepared for the intensity in Stan’s eyes; his mind felt as if it were coated with three inches of dust. “I remember going to the Rook, Rufus…” He trailed off. “Oh my God, the cemetery.”
It was one of those moments when the distinctions between chronometric and emotional time became most pronounced. It was only the span of a breath, but the entire night crashed down on him like an imploding building.
“Tell me,” Stan said.
Skip sank back into his bed and closed his eyes. He’d only caught a glimpse, but those eyes, those orbs were burned into his brain. And the wails from the grave… “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said after a long pause.
“You’d be surprised after what I’ve seen the last couple of days.”
Skip opened his eyes. “Oh?”
Stan tightened his lips. “There’s a man right outside this door who’s been waiting for you to wake up. Not the most pleasant fellow in the world.”
“State?”
“No. FBI.”
Skip shook his head. “What are they doing here?”
Stan shifted in his chair. “They flew right in yesterday morning, snatched jurisdiction from State without so much as a kiss and have been so far up my ass I’ve stopped slouching. I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m gonna just lay it out. Since you took your little detour into unconsciousness, there have been six of the most gruesome murders I’ve ever even heard of, and I got to be first on the scene of one of them.” Stan swallowed. “Joanna Blackburn and her son, Matthew. Butchered.” Stan paused. “And when I say butchered, I’m being kind.”
Skip took the appropriate moment to assimilate. “Suspects? Mr. Shades?”
Big breath. “He’s definitely a person of interest, especially considering what he did to Rufus, but we don’t think it’s him.”
“Why not?”
“Because the victims are being eaten.”
Skip leaned back to better look at Stan.
“Like, ‘yumbo, may I have another,’ eaten,” Stan continued. “I’m not supposed to know this, but they said they’ve found a saliva type that doesn’t match—”
The increased tempo of the heart monitor was the only other sound in the room. Skip waited.
“Doesn’t match what?”
“Anything,” Stan finally uttered. His eyes were looking at something inside his head. “Unless Mr. Shades is some kind of werewolf, he didn’t kill Joanna and Matthew.”
“What about Ava?”
“Her grandmother’s. We found her standing in the road. She’ll be scarred for life. Chief, something came out of that Black Grave, and you are the only person who was there. You and this Mr. Shades.”
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“I think I prefer being unconscious,” Skip said, sinking back into his bed.
“I found you all twisted and curled up in the snow. You had this yellow gunk oozing from your mouth and this thing sticking out of your chest. They had to operate on you to remove it. It was barbed or something. As a side note, I found your wallet on top of you. It was like somebody had just tossed it there.”
You left me to die out there, you son of a bitch.
“And the Black Grave was gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Skip asked.
“Blown up in a million pieces.” Stan opened his mouth to continue but changed his mind.
“Spit it out, Stewart. What else?”
With a shrug, Stan answered. “To me it looked as if it had exploded from the inside out. Funny thing is, there weren’t any signs of a bomb. No shrapnel, no detonation pieces, not even any carbon burns. We can’t figure out how it exploded.”
Skip rubbed his eyes again. This was definitely not the kind of conversation Skip wanted to be having fresh from anesthesia. A glass of water would have been nice, though.
“There’s more, Chief.”
“Of course there is.”
“That night I found you.” Stan glanced again at the door. “I found something in the trees half-buried by the blizzard. Remember that gargoyle you went and showed me that wasn’t there?”
“Of course.”
“I think that was it. Only it was dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yup, five bullet holes—good grouping, too—but it started to crumble the moment I tried to brush some snow off it.”
“Crumbled?”
“Yeah, Chief, like ash from a log that’s just about burned up.”
“You were specifically told to get me as soon as he was conscious,” a man with a deep, stern voice admonished from the doorway.
Stan whipped around. Standing in the doorway was a glowering, suit-clad thunderhead about to detonate.
“You make me regret my decision, Officer Stewart,” the man growled, walking toward the bed. His lips were creased so tightly that they were little more than a slash in his face.