The Beast of Barcroft

by Bill Schweigart

“We can’t leave her here,” said Alex.

  Ben scanned the basement and the dozens of sets of tiny eyes looked back.

  “Fine,” he said, and Alex moved toward her.

  “I’m calling an ambulance for Richard,” said Lindsay.

  “Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “The witch said she can’t control it any longer. We can’t risk bringing any innocent bystanders here. We’ll figure a way out of here and be right over.” He was about to hang up when he added, “Oh, in the meantime, try to find a way to hold it off.”

  “What do you suggest, I pee myself?”

  “Couldn’t hurt…”

  “Mission accomplished. Be careful, Ben. It ran in your direction.”

  Ben watched as the large man bent over the woman to gather her up. He heard her protests and Alex’s exertions, then over his shoulder a muffled sound, like the rumble of distant thunder. He turned around. At the window, he saw the condensation on the pane, blooming and shrinking and blooming again.

  “I know.”

  He hung up and backed away from the window. As he retreated, Alex backed toward him from the opposite direction, away from the woman, until they were side by side.

  “We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” said Ben.

  The Ojibwe said nothing, looked down.

  Ben followed Alex’s gaze to something glittering at his side. It took Ben a moment to recognize what he saw. A wooden handle in the shape of a bird’s head protruding from his stomach.

  Alex sat down hard then.

  As Ben bent to help him, the woman flew past both of them and into the dark corners of the basement.

  From the shadows, Ben heard a sound of liquid splashing. “I won’t come out! You’re not my friend!”

  A moment later, the smell of kerosene filled Ben’s nostrils. “Alex, we have to get out. Now, Alex!”

  He got behind the big man and wrapped his arms around him, but the man remained seated, dead weight, the dagger buried in his side.

  The woman exploded from the darkness with a pained and angry keening, her poncho flapping like a great bird. She was at the other end of the cluttered basement, but she was bounding toward them. Ben dropped Alex, who fell to the ground with a yelp, and whirled to place himself between his companion and the woman’s charge. Then he realized the fire, feeble though it was, lay between them.

  “Don’t!” he yelled, but she did not break stride.

  He charged to tackle her, but she was closer to the fire than he was and already running. As she reached the pit, he saw her in full, arms outstretched as if running toward a lover, face burning with fever, with terror, with madness, but mostly with hatred, and he knew she wanted him to burn too.

  Suddenly, she was alight.

  The flames did not crawl slowly up her body. To Ben, there was a moment when she was not on fire and the next she was engulfed. The basement flashed with brilliant light and he felt the heat on his face like a sudden wind. Her screams were terrible, bloodcurdling. But her momentum still bore her toward him.

  Ben grabbed the old bicycle with both hands, spinning around and catching her between the two wheels just as she reached him. He knew there was no way she could still see him, but she reached out to embrace him still. Her flaming hands passed inches from his face and he could smell the burning flesh. By instinct, he shoved her hard then, away from him and Alex, but it was back toward the fire. She toppled over the blaze again. She came to rest finally, but part of her—Ben could no longer tell which—touched off a trail of kerosene drops she had left as she charged forward.

  He grabbed Alex again. “Come on, help me out here!”

  The Ojibwe’s feet found life. He screamed when he placed weight on them, but with Ben’s help he managed to stand. They moved slowly in the direction of the stairs, Ben’s arm around Alex’s waist, Alex’s arm slung over Ben’s shoulders. They inched forward. The trail of kerosene lit up, reaching out from the pyre like a fiery tendril. It ignited random papers and cardboard, the piles of junk the woman had gathered to keep her tiny fire burning through the terrible nights. The two men shuffled toward the stairs. Too slow, thought Ben. There was no way to keep low, beneath the smoke. Alex could not hunch with a knife in his gut. Ben sped up, forcing the medicine man to keep pace.

  There was no ventilation in the cramped basement and the smoke was overpowering. He pulled his shirtfront up over his nose and did the same for Alex. In the firelight, Ben saw Alex’s face was beaded with sweat and his teeth clenched in pain, but he forced them both forward. The tendril reached into the dark, filthy corners, igniting the boxes there, bathing them in purifying light. Rats screeched and scurried everywhere, their kingdom ablaze. Some, on fire, shot past like tiny comets, blazing new paths as they crisscrossed the basement.

  With each deep, hacking cough, Ben grew more lightheaded. He saw translucent worms wriggle around the edges of his vision. When they reached the foot of the stairs, he looked back. A shroud of coal-black smoke. Flames licked the walls around them. It was near impossible to breathe. His lungs began to burn. The conflagration drove him up and out to where the beast prowled.

  Chapter 26

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 21

  “Lindsay!”

  She had found some towels for Richard in the upstairs bathroom when she heard Ben’s ragged screams for help. She looked out the window then and saw flames shooting through the transom windows of Madeleine’s basement. From her vantage, she could not see Madeleine’s front door, but she knew from the kushtaka’s piercing gaze that Ben must be there. Intent on its prey, the beast paced back and forth, its eyes burning like it too housed an inferno in its depths.

  “Shit!” she yelled, and bolted downstairs. She ran past the window the kushtaka had entered—closed and locked now—down the steps, and through the living room and kitchen. Richard was on his feet again, clutching himself, dish towels soaked with blood and pressed to his arm and chest. She tossed her phone to him and said, “Call 911, the house is on fire,” without breaking stride for the basement.

  “Which house?” he called. “Us or them?”

  “Them! Call!”

  She remembered seeing it there the day she was attacked in the drainpipe, when Ben brought her down to the basement to see the footprints. On the shelf with the pictures of his father, his mementos. His wallet, his Metro card. And his jar of loose change filled with quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

  Copper-plated pennies.

  She grabbed the jar and ran back upstairs. Before Richard could stop her, she bounded outside, hopped the fence between the yards, then ran straight for the crumbling brick wall of Madeleine’s burning house. She advanced along the side of the house until she rounded the corner to the front. The beast was a few feet from the bottom of Madeleine’s front steps. It would not advance farther, but it blocked Ben and Standingcloud, both coughing violently, from fleeing the burning house. Smoke poured through the front door. Ben saw her first, then the wolf’s head snapped in her direction.

  Lindsay plunged her hand into the jar and flung a handful of change in its direction like she was scattering seed. She prayed she had grabbed some pennies. The beast broke from its post and charged, running straight for her. It crossed the patch of grass where the coins lay but kept coming. I’m such a fool, Lindsay thought, and flinched, awaiting the attack.

  The wolf jolted like it had stepped on a live wire. It shot upward, then began running in circles again, chasing its tail like it had in Ben’s sunroom. Another jolt and the beast fell over like it had been swatted off its feet by a giant, unseen hand. Climbing back to its feet, the beast backed away slowly, growling, its eyes fixed on Lindsay. Ben saw the jar of coins in her hand and started down the steps, Standingcloud clinging to him.

  Lindsay scattered more coins on the ground, flinging them between the two men and the wolf to give them cover.

  “Hurry!” she yelled.

  Ben said something to Standingcloud. The man picked his head up,
and they began moving dreadfully slowly down the steps. It was only then that Lindsay saw something protruding from the man’s side. She advanced toward them. The beast tried lunging, but she parried every attack with another handful of coins. Finally, it withdrew down the walkway, growling and gnashing its teeth, hackles raised. As Ben and Standingcloud finally joined Lindsay, the wolf threw back its head and howled.

  From far off, sirens answered in response.

  Lindsay grabbed Standingcloud’s other arm and draped it over her shoulder, taking some of his weight but keeping her hands free for the jar.

  “You…should have said…‘Penny for your thoughts,’ ” wheezed Ben.

  “You can’t just say thank you?”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Quick thinking.”

  “Thank you,” wheezed Standingcloud. “Both of you.”

  “Just keep moving,” she said. Their eyes were pinned to the wolf, and it them, but it retreated and gave them room. They reached the gate, and a fire engine blared from the south. A few blocks away now. An Arlington police car screamed around the corner, lights on but sirens off.

  “Thank God,” said Lindsay.

  “Shit,” said Ben.

  Its headlights illuminated the three of them and the wolf. The beast looked in the cruiser’s direction, then back at the three of them. With a final, baleful howl, it bolted. It sped toward the car then banked into Ben’s yard, the way Lindsay had come. Lindsay watched it bound over the chain-link fence. She ran after it, but saw that it had already cleared the far fence and was heading in the direction of the woods and Four Mile Run below. For a moment, she caught sight of it between the shadows of the trees. Then the darkness swallowed it whole. She squinted and looked hard, then saw two glowing eyes watching her from two yards over. She clutched the jar of coins, now nearly empty, to her chest. A moment later she watched the beast pass under a streetlight, loping along the same route she and Ben had taken the day she first encountered this creature herself, when it had taken the form of a mountain lion. It seemed so long ago, but it had been only a week. She had been certain she was going to die in that pipe, but even worse, it had made her feel ashamed. She thought she would die tonight too, but now instead of shame, she felt relief. She felt light, almost giddy with it.

  Suddenly the police officer from the hospital—the one Ben had argued with—ran over to Lindsay by the fence, weapon drawn.

  “Where did it go?”

  Lindsay pointed. “It’s gone.”

  “Damn it,” she said.

  “Little help, Officer Cushing?” said Ben, who was struggling to keep Standingcloud on his feet. Their faces were bathed in a sheen of perspiration and daubed with ash. The officer looked down and noticed the knife handle peering from Standingcloud’s gut.

  Cushing holstered her weapon and helped Lindsay and Ben lay the man down on the lawn.

  “What the fuck happened, Ben?” asked the officer.

  Lindsay looked at Ben too, but he said nothing.

  By now, neighbors were pouring out of their homes to watch the house, which had caused so much trouble, burn. Richard shambled out of Ben’s house too, clutching his bent arm, ashen, his clothes in tatters and covered with dried rivulets of blood. He looked like a zombie until he saw his friend on the ground.

  “Alex!”

  He ran to the man’s side and knelt beside him.

  Cushing ripped the shirt away from where the knife had gone in.

  “This is not what I pay you for,” said Richard, trying to smile.

  “In Anishinaabemowin…there is a word…for men like you.”

  Richard leaned in.

  “Asshole.”

  The fire engine swung onto their block, its sirens deafening. To Standingcloud, Cushing yelled, “Medical is on the way,” then to Ben in the same volume but in a different tone, “McKelvie, tell me what’s going on right now or I will lock you the fuck up!”

  “We tried to stop it, but things went sideways.”

  She pointed at the burning house.

  “Did you do this?”

  “No!” he said. “Sort of.”

  The fire truck screamed to a halt in the middle of the street in front of Madeleine’s. Five men poured out, four toward the fire, one toward their strange group. Lindsay stepped back to give the medic room to do his job as the other four unspooled the hose off the truck and attacked the fire. Cushing grabbed Ben by the elbow and pulled him out of earshot. Lindsay followed.

  “Sort of?” asked Cushing.

  He pointed at the knife. “The woman who did that, the woman who I told you about, set herself—and the house—on fire. She’s also the one who put the neighborhood on the beast’s menu.”

  “The wolf?” said Cushing.

  Lindsay said, “It’s not just a wolf…”

  Cushing looked at the darkly dressed supine man with the knife in his belly, then at the tattered, bleeding man hovering over him. She shook her head.

  “It’s not a wolf,” continued Ben. “And it’s not a mountain lion either.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “I saw it with my own two eyes. It was a goddamn wolf!”

  “I don’t have time to argue with you. I have to go after it.”

  “Go after it?” asked Lindsay.

  “If you attempt to go anywhere,” said Cushing, “I’ll shoot you in the leg.”

  “Wait,” said Lindsay. “You said Standingcloud destroyed the altar—”

  “Potlatch,” said Richard, approaching. The medic called after him, ordering him to sit, yelling that another paramedic would tend to him shortly, but Richard gave a dismissive wave over his shoulder with his good arm. “The least we can do for Alex is be accurate.”

  “Potlatch,” said Lindsay. “The house is on fire and she’s dead. You said it yourself she was controlling it somehow. Maybe it’ll just go.”

  “Maybe,” said Ben. “But it killed a lot of people. And I’m responsible for that. If I ever want to sleep again, I have to be sure it’s gone for good.”

  Lindsay looked at Richard.

  “I’ll be more than happy to help you dissect it, Lindsay, but it’s not as easy as catching a frog, is it? It obviously doesn’t freeze when you shine a flashlight on it.”

  “What do you think?” asked Ben.

  Richard looked at his feet. “I think it was bad enough when it was on a leash. A free kushtaka running around in Arlington, or anywhere…we have to stop it.”

  “A George Takei?” asked Cushing.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” said Lindsay.

  “I’m fine.” He waved her concern away and in the effort immediately swooned. Lindsay helped him to sit.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and as soon as your adrenaline flushes, you’re going to be flat on your back.”

  “You’re all crazy if you believe I’m letting any of you go anywhere,” said Cushing.

  “Stacy,” said Ben, “forget whatever you may think about me…you know in your bones something else is going on here. You saw firsthand what it did, how it acted. Deliberate. It’s more than a wolf. It’s more than a lot of things. One look in its eyes and you know I’m right. I have to stop it.”

  “We,” said Lindsay. “We have to stop it.”

  Ben looked at her.

  “I’m in this,” she said. She tried a smile. “In for a penny…”

  She was prepared for protests, some macho bullshit, but instead he smiled. She had seen him smile during their day on the trail, but not like this. It was as if his face unlocked. Warmth, relief, pure gratitude—they all spilled out in the glow of the firelight. No one had ever looked at her like that in her life.

  Cushing was watching him now too. “Say I’m buying this—hypothetically—we don’t even know where it’s going.”

  “I know where it’s going,” said Ben.

  “Where?” asked Richard.

  “Alex called it the land otter man. Otter. If we can assume it spends enough of its time in that form to be called a l
and otter man, then it has a holt.”

  Everyone stared at him, but no one spoke.

  “An otter holt? Where otters live? Don’t you watch Animal Planet? I thought you two were zoologists.”

  Lindsay pointed at Richard. “Cryptozoologist.”

  “It’s going to Four Mile Run. Not just to the woods, to the river.”

  “The water devil,” said Richard quietly.

  Ben looked at Lindsay. “And we know where that holt is, don’t we?”

  Lindsay felt her skin erupt in gooseflesh, but she nodded. Richard struggled to his feet and put a hand on her shoulder. “Be careful.”

  “Look out for your friend,” she said.

  They looked back at the medicine man. His face was strained, but he brushed the medic away. He leveled his gaze at Lindsay.

  “Fire…copper…urine.”

  “We don’t have time to fill water balloons…” said Lindsay.

  With that, Ben disappeared into the house.

  Richard looked at her. “That salary figure you never gave me for the job you don’t want? Double it.”

  “At least.”

  Ben flew out his front door carrying a can of hair spray. “Rachel left this behind. Anyone have a lighter?”

  Richard reached into his shredded jacket pocket and passed him a gold-plated lighter. “Good luck.”

  Ben jingled his keys. He looked at Lindsay. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait!” yelled Cushing.

  They watched her. Her jaw was set and she looked angry. She was clearly wrestling with a decision and neither side of it looked appealing. “Fuck!” she spat. Then, to both of them, “I’ll drive. I’d like to sleep again too.”

  Lindsay got to the cruiser first and tried to take the front seat, but Ben put his hand on the door first.

  “Sorry,” he said. “If I get in the backseat, she may not let me out again.”

  Cushing gave them both a look. “He’s not wrong,” said the officer.

  Lindsay looked back at Richard, sitting by his wounded friend, clearly exhausted, his adrenaline faded now, and staring at her with a solemn expression that did not fit his normally impish face. Standingcloud wore a similar expression that showed more concern for what she was about to endure than for what he already had.