by Craig Thomas
But when The Outcast got to Robert’s room, his sentiment about the revelation changed altogether.
Chapter 18
They found a passage through a clearing—thanks to Craig’s powers of observation.
For the next seven minutes, they drove on along the dirt road until they arrived at another clearing—apparently the one mentioned in Robert’s journal. Further ahead lay a footpath that presumably led to Cave Kushi.
******
Despite confronting a daunting challenge to break forth through the thick veil of clouds, the moon had somehow found a reason to not only smile but grin down on sleepy Ogre’s Pond. Sailing across the sky valiantly, it had grown more than three-quarters full when Sheriff Stack and his deputies began to fan out.
Allan and Dwayne closed in through the west. Sheriff Stack paired up with Craig, and they took the eastern flank of the wooded area surrounding the culprit’s domicile. The place boasted a frontal opening—set within the walls of a huge rock—as the main and only entrance visible. If there was a door to the entrance, they hadn’t seen it yet. Above the opening, there was a jutting sheet of roof. It was some contraption of a place to behold.
There was an illumination at the entrance, and it was different than the moonlight’s. Brian and Craig moved on to an erosion-made gully, where they achieved a perfect angle that afforded them a clearer view. They instantly realized the radiance was issuing from within the cave, powered by a set of lanterns hung along the inner walls.
There was no door, but they couldn’t see far into the cave, because the passage ran for just about four feet before jackknifing to the right, resulting in a cul-de-sac to an observer from without.
Lightning flashed in the firmament. Rain was approaching.
“Watch your steps as we move on,” Brian whispered to Craig when they were about to start wading through shin-deep brushes again. They would duck around trees and wend their way forward in the hope of finally converging with the other pair. “With the trees’ low-hanging limbs literally lashing out at one’s face, and their naked roots setting up traps along the path, you could fall easily and blow our stealth.”
Craig nodded.
Suddenly, a sharp cry slashed through the otherwise silent night. The voice was full of agony. On the heels of the pained voice was a crack of gunshot that echoed across the four corners of the woods. Then another. And another.
A moment after the gunshots had ceased, another crying voice carried through the trees, and it seemed to move in the direction of Brian and Craig.
They quickly dropped back to their knees in the ditch. And listened.
The first voice, which they now recognized as Dwayne’s, wailed for a while before going silent. That didn’t look good. Not good at all.
The other sound apparently came from Allan. What had happened to him? It was easier to assume the outcome of Dwayne’s cry than Allan’s.
In the vibrant moonlight, Brian looked aside at Craig and realized the middle-aged deputy had started to shiver. “We’ll proceed with caution,” Brian whispered, acting like nothing had happened.
“How about the others?”
“How about them?” Brian knew this was the time to do one of the many things a leader is held accountable for—instilling courage in his followers. Craig was visibly scared. Hell, I’m scared, too, Brian thought, and then said, “The others will meet us ahead as planned. We’ll move in and get the bastard—dead or alive.”
“But, Sheriff,” Craig breathed, “I mean ... the horrible scream—”
“Whatever you do, Craig, in God’s beautiful name, don’t you let your fear get the better of you. Is that clear?”
Looking like a trapped rabbit about to be snatched up by an insensate hunter, Craig nodded.
“Because it does no good other than empowering you to lose focus. And losing focus does nothing good other than making you fail. Now, move that way.” Brian gestured a path for Craig. Another strategy to diverge a little bit as the progress continued.
Craig’s already wide eyes enlarged even further. “Are you leaving me, Sheriff?”
“I’m not leaving you, but we can’t stick together like this if we intend doing something effective to save our butts. We’ll be separated within the range of twelve to fifteen feet. Wide apart enough to prevent us from getting cut down together at once, but close enough to prevent your blood from over-flowing and bringing you cardiac arrest. Now, move.”
No sooner had Brian uttered his words than they heard a rustling movement along the brushes, advancing their way. Brian trained his gun towards the sound, ready to fire. He gasped when Allan appeared, looking and acting like he’d just seen a ghost.
Chapter 19
He stood in the doorway for a while, casting a darkly suspicious gaze at the boy, who was still snoozing. Apparently, he had gone through a screaming bout while still asleep.
Something wasn’t right, but that something had nothing to do with the boy’s susceptibility to attacks from the enemies. What The Outcast felt was more intense.
Right now, he began to experience the level of polarity that had played between the impure blood of Ogre’s Pond and him for so long.
All of a sudden, his subsided shivering resumed.
What the problem was—what he had felt at the boy’s house and in his own chamber—no doubt, was the foul spirit of betrayal.
He was just about to scream in infuriation when the engines rumbled across the quiet night, the sound swelling from the woods towards his abode.
******
As lightning cracked the face of the sky, Allan and Dwayne crouched behind a huge log of wood in response to Dwayne’s observation.
“Do you still notice any movement?” Allan asked in a low, quavery voice.
“Not anymore. Maybe it was just a figment of my imagination,” Dwayne said, whirling his head around to scan the whole area, as if he found it hard to convince himself by his own words. “I saw it through the corner of my eye, after all. Might even be a trick of the light.”
An insect lost its bearings and buzzed right into Allan’s nostril. “Shit,” he muttered as he blew the critter out. “I hate this.”
“How did we wind up here by the way?” Dwayne said.
Allan was still fuming at the winged creature’s intrusion on his mucous membrane—like it was a sacred land that an infidel had just desecrated.
Dwayne added, “I mean, how exactly did Sheriff Stack figure out this place is the criminal’s hideout?”
“Robert Smallwood.”
“Huh?”
“The boy keeps the record of his nightmares.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. And even for a boy his age, if you ask me, makes it weirder.”
“But what has that got to do with us hunkering down here with our asses getting wiped by the itchy brushes?”
“Well, he says he sees this place in his shitty dreams. The kid’s fucked up,” Allan said, and quickly added: “And so is his mother.”
“So, do you believe in that?”
“In what?”
“That what the boy claims to have seen is real—and that this is it?”
“Fuck, no. I’m not that superstitious and stupid. Imagine how much of realness it must have held for us to have missed our way so many times.”
Dwayne kept silent.
Allan said, “But tell you what? Although I don’t believe the boy’s writing is anything more than a sick kid’s report, I’m scared all the same.”
“You’re scared?” Dwayne said, stressing the last word with disbelieve. “Now, that doesn’t make any sense, does it? If you don’t believe in what you’ve read, and you don’t believe we’re in the place described by the boy, why’re you worried?”
“I dunno. Probably doesn’t make any sense to anyone, including me—but whenever I remember that thing and how badly it stabbed Crawford repeatedly, it makes my blood curdle.”
&nb
sp; “Nonsense. If I were you, such reflection would only make me wanna leave the son-of-a-bitch torn to ribbons. And I’m damn sure I will do that at some point. If not here, then wherever he is, we’ll track him down.”
They studied the night ahead of them and, having decided the coast was clear, they moved on, dodging behind big tree trunks from time to time, never staying more than six feet apart.
There was another flash across the sky, and at that instant, it was the familiar horrible face that Allan saw first before he even noticed the rest of the figure in black coveralls, whose arm was already coiled around Dwayne’s neck.
Allan watched in awe, thinking, I’ve been in this situation before. This is like lightning striking the same damn place two fucking times.
In the blink of an eye, Dwayne had been lifted off his feet, legs flailing in the air, neck still strangled by the sturdy arm.
What happened at Holly’s cottage was a slow-motion version of what Allan was about to witness. Just as he got over his awe and decided it was time to do something more productive than gawking, the monster flung Dwayne at him, knocking him down to the forest floor. Allan’s gun slipped off his hand and flew away, probably taking refuge underneath a pile of leaves or hiding behind a fallen trunk. Dwayne landed beside him, motionless at first, but then began to jerk his right leg, digging his heel against the dirt as he screamed.
Allan quickly drew out his second gun, and shot straight ahead before realizing the thing was no longer in front of them. He began to rise up, shooting as he did, aimlessly, not giving a damn that he was acting like a lousy amateur. Beside him, Dwayne dug some more and let out a cry—a sonorous, pain-filled shriek. In the flood of the moonlight, Allan could faintly see blood seeping out from underneath his partner. Within the brief time his eyes roamed across his comrade’s body, he saw something sticking out from the side of Dwayne’s chest, along his rib cage. A knife, Allan assumed, and squeezed another aimless shot into the air.
He was all the way up on his feet now. He whirled around in search of his target, but he didn’t have to look for long. The huge thing pounced from Allan’s left side, kicked the gun out of his hand, and slapped him so hard he found his butt on the ground one more time.
Allan cried. He scrambled to his feet again and ran. Ran very fast. Away from the battle front.
Chapter 20
“I’ve seen the devil again. Oh, my good Lord, I’ve come in close contact with death twice tonight,” Allan wept. “It’s a monster. We’ve got to get the hell out of here and run for our lives. We can never stand out against—”
“Would you shut up and just calm down for a sec?” Brian inched nearer and slapped him twice. He pulled Allan down into the trench they had been hiding. “Hell, keep your goddamned voice down.”
Delirious to the level of getting out of hand, Allan spoke bare-toothed. “I cannot, Sheriff ... I just cannot calm down. There’s death around here ... everywhere, every damn corner you turn, and I just can’t...” He paused to catch his breath. “What’s the point, anyway?”
“The point is, so he doesn’t track us down, you idiot.”
“Fuck, it already knows we’re here. Killed Dwayne. Almost killed me, but I ran,” Allan said, grinning, as if he was proud, very proud of his exceptional skill of escape. Brian thought his deputy might be going crazy under the power of the moon.
Craig groaned at the news of attack, looking from Allan to Brian, and then back to Allan.
Brian whispered, “Allan, I can see why you look and sound so hysterical—”
“No, you can’t. Not until you meet it.”
“I can see why you’re losing—”
A boy’s voice interrupted Brian’s next comment. The boy was talking to someone, pleading to let him go. There was a momentary flash of light from the mouth of the cave that made shadows scamper across the woods. Then, silence engulfed the place again.
About sixty meters ahead, from the side of the cave that was further away from the entrance Brian and Craig had spotted earlier, a figure emerged from behind a grove of trees, wearing a robe that the moonlight transmitted on a range of shades from gray to blue, to anything in-between. The figure briefly trained its flashlight forward in their direction.
For that short length of time, Brian’s heart stopped. He thought they had been spotted where they crouched. “Down,” he muttered.
Swiftly, the three men kept down even further, only allowing themselves a peep around the edge of a fallen tree that lay at the lip of the entrenchment, running their surveillance from behind it.
“Christ, they’re two,” Allan said with a voice caught between a desire to scream the words and a struggle to whisper them. “The first appeared in coveralls, and this one in a robe. Perfect.”
If there was anything yet that Brian wanted to agree with in regards to Allan’s reports, it was the size of the robed killer. The dimensions were intimidating, and that description was for poverty of words. Brian strained his eyes to glimpse the face of the shape, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything more than the silhouetted form from the distance.
They watched him as he looked around, worked his flashlight one more time, and then disappeared behind the grove.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” Craig whispered. “An evil priest, or what?”
“Stop calling this thing a guy. Doing so will only create a misconception that what we’re up against ain’t that bad. It’s a monster. A destroyer. A Neanderthal man at best. That’s what the hell it is,” Allan said. “If you see how easily and brutally it murdered Dwayne ...” He trailed off, glancing at Brian who was favoring him with a not-so-impressed look. He finished his story, nonetheless. “All of Dwayne’s entrails are lying on the forest floor right now.”
Craig grimaced. “Oh, shit,” he said, and turned to Brian. “Know what I’m thinking?”
“Share it.”
“I’m thinking we should have shot him right there on the spot, while he was flashing his light around.”
“Bold move,” Brian said. “But it could’ve been a miss. And it wouldn’t have been worth it to draw attention for no gain. Not an option, unless we’re really forced to adopt the way of rashness.”
The robed figure came out again, this time dragging the boy along.
“Shit, that’s Robert Smallwood,” Brian muttered, sounding as if that fact of Robert’s abduction had just been revealed to him.
Allan wheeled his head towards Craig. “Have any idea what the best way to get back to the car is?”
“No,” Brian said before Craig could give a response. “We’re not going yet. Not gonna leave the kid to be slaughtered by that lunatic. I’m thinking, thinking of what to do—of how we’re gonna move in on that bastard pretty soon.” He looked to his side. “Allan?”
“Yeah?”
“Where’s your conscience? And where’re your guns, by the way?”
Allan disregarded the last question. “If I were you, Sheriff,” he said defiantly, “I’d be thinking of saving my ass rather than having a morbid passion about conscience and studying the best way it should be used.”
“You’re damn right about that, because you’ll have to devise a way to save your ass in the office tomorrow when you give a detailed reason for your insubordination—”
“If we made it past today, Sheriff.”
Ahead, the huge figure began to tie Robert’s wrists together, but then had a change of mind. The robed man scooped the boy up instead, and ran across the murky woods.
“Where’s he going?”
“Or taking the kid?”
They stood up, craning to see him disappear into the shadows of the trees.
Then, they followed, cautiously, slowly.
A car engine roared to life.
“Shit,” Brian said. “We gotta move. He’s got the ...” He stopped, looked at Allan, and asked for the second time, “Where’re your guns?”
Allan’s response astonished Brian.
Hurrying along the rust
ling dead leaves on the floor, Brian said, “You’ve got some explaining to do. In the meantime, go back to Craig’s car and make a call to the office. Need the emergency workers here ASAP to attend to Dwayne, and let the coroner and his men be informed while you’re at it. I want you to stay with Dwayne, to give whatever support you have left in you. And don’t you try to leave.”
Allan wanted to speak. Brian didn’t give him a chance. He didn’t believe in the crappy tale about Dwayne’s entrails being spilled all over the place.
He went in pursuit of The Outcast.
Chapter 21
They raced after him, tires whirling plumes of dust in the air.
The Outcast (Brian had resorted to calling him that now) drove Dwayne’s patrol car.
Even though Brian drove fast to gain on The Outcast, the gap kept widening. The big bastard knew the geography of the terrain more than anyone else.
“Where’s he taking the boy to?” Craig asked, straining against his seat belt as he craned towards the glove box, as if that would speed up the cruiser and make them close the gap.
“I don’t know. I’ll assume the boy’s house. Robert mentioned something about the son-of-a-bitch having a notion that they’re of the same blood—true blood, he called it—and that Robert should grow up on time to carry on his assignment. And that the final ritual of consummation will be at the boy’s place.”
“Oh, you already talk to the kid about this?”
“Well, not exactly. I read the boy’s “journal” earlier tonight. Claims everything he wrote down came from his dreams. Including the description of how we track the lunatic down in the woods.”
“All of it from his dreams? Wow.”
“Wow’s right,” Brian said, negotiating a bend, and closing the gap a little bit at last. “It’s kinda creepy, especially if you consider that his description was perfectly right—bare of the little delay we had before you discovered the clearing.”