The Beast of Barcroft

by Bill Schweigart

  The Beast of Barcroft is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Hydra eBook Original

  Copyright © 2015 by Bill Schweigart

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  HYDRA is a registered trademark and the HYDRA colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  eBook ISBN 9780804181365

  Cover design: David G. Stevenson

  Cover illustration: © Frentusha/iStock Photo

  readhydra.com

  v4.1

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6

  Manny Benavides hated being called to Barcroft. It was a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood, but the residents were getting angry. He was a member of Arlington’s Public Health Division, and so rodent control and animal trapping fell to him, and it had been a busy year. This afternoon’s call was a woman who lived on the edge of the woods, just off Four Mile Run—a wolf sighting. This was Arlington, Virginia; they had snakes, bats, and deer. A small number of coyotes had returned after a long absence and there had been a rare black bear sighting at the county’s northernmost edge, but no wolves. Not for two hundred years at least. The woman who called sounded elderly and probably didn’t know a gray wolf from a German shepherd. Still, it was his job to solve problems, or at least pacify the taxpayers.

  Barcroft had a legitimate problem that took up most of Manny’s time: rats.

  In the past year, he had been called out to Barcroft more than any of the other neighborhoods, mostly dealing with animal control issues that could be traced to one resident, the Roux woman. An animal rehabilitator on 3rd Street South. She took in raccoons for the county and nursed them back to health, but the conditions were horrible and attracted every manner of vermin the county had to offer. Manny appreciated what she was trying to do, but more important, he appreciated balance. Arlington had its own ecosystem, and she was single-handedly throwing everything out of whack in Barcroft. And there was something wrong with her, something off. She was young, and he could tell she had been pretty once, but the one time he was on her property, she had unnerved him. He had pointed out dozens of rat burrows surrounding the foundation of her house.

  “You have to do something about the rats,” he told her.

  “What do you mean ‘do something’?” Her voice had a faraway quality.

  “Well, kill them.”

  “But I don’t want to kill them.”

  After that, she would not answer her door.

  She was the source of the problem, but unless neighbors complained there was not much the county could do. He could issue a citation if her neighbors filed for one—and they did so, monthly, like clockwork—but she had thirty days to comply or be fined. He found that she would do the minimum work to avoid the fine, then things were twice as bad the following month. The neighbors were furious. He was sympathetic to their plight and urged the residents to organize and continue their filing. It was the only way she would get the message. It was the only way he could maintain some control and protect the balance.

  He parked in front of a red-brick house near the base of 7th Street South, a short, steep avenue that bottomed out and dead-ended at a guardrail with a stand of trees crowded behind it like unruly spectators. Beyond the trees and running perpendicular to the pitched avenue was the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, the paved path that ran alongside Four Mile Run. The woman was old, but she seemed completely rational. He explained that she had probably just seen a fox. She looked unconvinced.

  Manny smiled. “Ma’am, I’m New Mexico born and raised. I know wolves. Coyotes too. If there was either within ten miles of here, I’d smell them,” he said, tapping his nose. “I promise, it was probably just a mean old dog.”

  She looked toward the woods at the bottom of the street. “Big dog then,” she said.

  Manny ran through the precautions with her, to be polite. Keep any pets indoors, especially at night, starting at dusk. Bring all pet food inside. He asked her if she had any problems with rats, but she had not. “I’ll just have a quick look around, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” she said and went inside.

  A quick look around the base of her house and her fence line confirmed there were no burrows. It was almost 5 P.M. and getting dark, but he climbed to the top of the steep street, grunting, then started back down, looking over other houses in the fading autumn light. He had to be let onto properties to do an official inspection, but he doubted if the neighbors would have minded. In Barcroft, they were on the same side. Luckily for 7th Street South, it seemed anything coming out of the woods was heading straight toward the dinner bell up on 3rd. He suspected the “wolf” went there as well.

  Manny walked down the street, passing houses to his left side, the woods on the right. The woods dropped off steeply on the opposite side of the old woman’s house, down to a ravine that branched off Four Mile Run. For being such an urban area and so close to Washington, D.C., Arlington abounded with woods. You just had to know where to look. A network of streams and trails connected more than seven hundred acres of parks and natural lands, nestled in and between neighborhoods just like Barcroft. The business districts and residential areas may have been Arlington’s economic muscle, Manny often told residents, but its circulatory system was truly green. Finally, he stopped at the guardrail at the bottom of the street. Beyond the rail there was an opening in the trees where a short path led to the trail and Four Mile Run. He had turned back up the hill to his truck when he heard the baby’s cries.

  He bounded down the path and burst through the brush onto the Washington & Old Dominion Trail, commonly called the W&OD trail. He looked up and down its paved length but saw nothing, no runners or bikers in distress. He stood there for a moment, then smiled and shook his head. Probably a parent biking past and pulling one of those kiddie trailers, and he had heard a snippet of a crying child as they zipped past. He thought those things looked silly, like a stagecoach, but as he caught his breath and his pulse slowed, he had to admit, maybe those parents had the right idea. At fifty-five, perhaps it was time to get more exercise than his job afforded, chatting up old ladies about raccoons in their chimneys or wolves in the woods.

  The sun had set and all that remained of the crimson sky was a thin red line over the trees to the west. It was November, just after the dreary end of Daylight Savings Time, which had freshly sliced an hour of sunshine from his day. Too d
ark too early, he thought. He turned his back to the trail and was on the short path back to the road when he heard it again.

  A baby crying.

  He brought his hand to his mouth and called out. The crying continued at the same volume, as if the child had not heard him. It was difficult to get a bearing on it. It sounded like it came from inside a well but it also seemed to drift down from the branches overhead. A trick of the autumn wind, he told himself. For a moment, he thought of La Llorona, the Crying Lady, who drowned her children in the Rio Grande to impress a suitor. When the man was understandably not impressed, she had killed herself, but her spirit roamed the riverbanks, wailing and taking children after nightfall ever since. It was just a bit of folklore his father told him to keep him from falling into the river, but he shivered. He called out again and closed his eyes to listen harder. The crying floated around him. He had started for his truck to get a flashlight when he cursed himself.

  The stream. He had not checked Four Mile Run.

  He sprinted back down the path and crossed the trail to the edge of the valley. The stream was thirty, maybe forty feet below, and the steep face was choked with vines and roots, rock outcroppings jutting out and obscuring the bank directly below him. Stream my ass, he thought. It looked like a river. Water, from a week of heavy rains up north, roared over the rocks. It was so loud you could barely hear yourself think, even at this height. In the valley, it was darker and harder to see, and a corner of his mind nagged at him to get the flashlight, but the crying was clearer now, pinpointed. And insistent.

  “Hang on!” he yelled. “I’m coming!”

  He clambered down as quickly as he could. Halfway down, clinging to the undergrowth, he wiped the sweat from his eyes. He peered over the lip and spied a figure below. “I’m coming.”

  The figure turned and sniffed the air between them.

  Manny swiped his eyes again and blinked. What he saw should not be here in Arlington.

  He moved faster scrambling up than climbing down, using every limb and muscle to get back to the trail, to his truck that would take him away. Promises and prayers jumbled his thoughts. If I make it, Madre Mía, I’ll exercise, he thought. His heart burned, but he shot up the tangle as fast as his body would allow. He got his head over the edge and raked at the valley wall with his feet to clear it, but the thing caught his ankle and pulled. For a moment, he could see the trail, just feet in front of him. Beyond that, the small beaten path that led to the guardrail, the border between the woods and Barcroft, between this nightmare and the real world. Then came a sharp, wrenching pain. Manny hollered, but in a split second his leg was blessedly free again.

  He pumped it but found no purchase. He looked down and saw his foot was gone.

  With the little air left in his lungs, Manny threw back his head and screamed. Maybe someone on the trail would hear and come running, but it was November now and too dark too early. There was no one to flag down, and the rushing water drowned out his screams just the same. He wasn’t going to make it to the truck or the trail or out of this valley. It had him by the knee now. The trail slid from his view. Overhead he saw the stars beginning to reveal themselves on a clear night, framed now by the walls of the valley. Then the beast pulled him down into the stream and he saw nothing. The last thing he thought before losing consciousness was his inability to distinguish the icy sting of Four Mile Run from the teeth.

  Chapter 1

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9

  Ben McKelvie watched a survival show on cable from his couch in Arlington, where the host, with an enthusiasm bordering on mania, was trekking across the Serengeti. The host stopped and unzipped his pants, and in his Australian accent said, “In this climate, dehydration can kill you in hours. I’m going to demonstrate how to create a solar still to distill my own urine!”

  Ben shook his head at the television. “Oim gonna drink me own yoo-rine, so yew don’t have to.”

  Ben’s greyhound lifted his head, one ear folded inside out. He had been sprawled out on the couch, leaving Ben little room, but as soon as he heard his master’s voice, he perked up.

  “All right, all right.”

  The dog sprang from the couch.

  On his way to the back door, Ben passed the small galley kitchen and found the garbage can’s lid tilted up from all the trash. As he pulled the trash bag out and put a new one in, he saw movement through the window. Even in his torpor, his heart quickened. Was it a trick of the meds? He stared across the short distance between his house and the house of his neighbor and waited. Finally, he saw her drawn shades rattle. Then a large rat traversed the windowsill, between the blinds and the closed window. Disgusting, but not surprising. Once he had glanced over while making a cup of tea and spied her through the window, sitting on her couch in her bra, with a plump raccoon waddling across the couch’s back, past her head.

  It was hard to believe Madeleine Roux was dead. At thirty-eight, she had been only a few years older than him. It had been sudden. Her porch light was still on, and even in that, she defied the neighborhood. It was orange in color, bathing the façade of her brick home in a dim, eerie glow. Perpetual Halloween. A moment later, an even bigger rat darted past.

  He made a face, but Bucky was at his heels. “All right, let’s go.”

  The greyhound squeezed between Ben and the door and bolted into the backyard as soon as he was able, nearly knocking Ben over with the trash. Ben cursed at Bucky, but his heart was not in it. The only thing that truly annoyed him anymore was that house.

  He stepped out the back door into an unseasonably warm November night. He tried to appreciate it.

  The dog ran back and forth along the length of the tall fence, sniffing and barking at whatever vermin still remained in Madeleine’s yard instead of moving into her house. A corner of Ben’s mouth curled upward. Other than filing complaints with the Department of Human Services, the only other weapon he had against the sprawl of filth was Bucky. A counter-irritant. But with Madeleine dead now, it seemed unnecessary. And maybe even cruel.

  “All right, Buck. Do your business.”

  In Barcroft, most houses were identical—modest brick homes built quickly after World War II to serve as a bedroom community for the influx of people to Washington, D.C. With the exception of an addition here and a deck there, most houses in Barcroft were indistinguishable from one another. Except Madeleine’s. Ben had the misfortune to live next to the biggest blight in the county.

  Structurally, the house was the same as his, another two-story brick built in the late 1940s, but the similarities ended there. Her masonry was crumbling, particularly along the chimney. The grass was so overgrown and the vegetation so thick that Ben thought it resembled a Southeast Asian jungle. Fortunately, she had a high wooden fence that concealed her backyard and a white picket fence that encased her front yard.

  Worst of all, she had erected a large deck attached to the back of her house that terminated around an enormous elm tree. The tree was integrated into the deck, engulfed by it, and anchored a structure that resembled a chicken coop. Had Ben been five years old, it would have looked like a clubhouse. At thirty-five, it was an eyesore. Instead of walls, the wooden frame was connected by chicken wire, and beneath the deck was another level Ben could not see over the fence, even from his second-story windows. Ben and Rachel had moved in during the winter when the grass and vegetation were dead. The Realtor had glossed over the odd structure at the neighbor’s, and they were so excited at the prospect of owning their own home in Arlington that they willfully ignored it. And Ben had not bothered to research his new neighbor. How bad could it be?

  He learned his lesson almost immediately. The day they moved in, Madeleine sideswiped his car. He watched her stomp up his walkway in her strange gait, hunched over, dressed in shorts and a moth-eaten T-shirt in the dead of winter. It had been a minor accident, the damage to his car was small and cosmetic, but it was her appearance that unnerved him. She jabbered and her gaze darted all over the place, until it w
ould suddenly fix on him without warning. “I’m really not a bad neighbor,” she assured him cheerfully, then tromped back down the walkway.

  Things grew worse as soon as spring came. The grass grew, and when the neighbors woke their lawnmowers from hibernation to cut their lawns, hers continued to grow, ignored and unabated. It was as tall as his knees and growing. And on a run one morning, he caught his first glimpse of the raccoons, outside of their chicken wire cage. Three of them popped their heads over the fence as he jogged by. He peered through a gap in the fence and saw still more inside the strange structure, splayed and clinging to the chicken wire. Turns out it was a clubhouse, he thought, just not for people.

  He never knew what animals the house was going to draw from the nearby woods, but it started with the birds. Hanging out a window, Madeleine routinely dumped twenty-pound sacks of birdseed onto the top of her back porch from her second floor, clouds of it wafting toward his house. That brought the pigeons, which roosted on her porch by the hundreds. Whenever Ben stepped outside, the birds would take to the sky en masse, the sound of their startled wings flapping in unison like a gunshot, jolting him every time. Before long, the side of the house and their cars were speckled with pigeon droppings.

  In the summer, when the grass in her yard went from knee-high to thigh-high, he finally called the county. Arlington issued a citation and she hired someone to cut the grass, but his mower cut out at the end of every row. One Saturday afternoon, through open windows, Ben could hear the man speaking to someone on his cellphone, his voice desperate and cracking. “No, you don’t understand. I’ve never seen anything like it.”