by R. S. Scott
An officer approaches the walker. The walker moves quickly and grabs the officer’s gun, trying to pull him closer.
Jeremy fires at the walker’s hand as it releases the gun. “Stay away from it, stay the fuck back! Don’t touch it or let it touch you, fucking morons! But look at it, keep on looking at it, in full view! Don’t look away!” The skinwalker turns and hisses at Jeremy. “Daryl! You piece of shit! Get out here!”
Daryl appears. “Jeremy, what do you want this time? Your boys already tore up my place!”
“Gladys, where is she?” Jeremy uses his pistol as a pointing device. “Where?”
“The fuck should I know?”
“And who is this and why is he coming here?” Jeremy points at the fallen entity.
Daryl gazes at the decrepit, bleeding, crawling being behind Jeremy. “How should I know? Get rid of it!”
“Daryl,” I get his attention, “Why is he calling you a traitor? That’s early Athabascan he’s speaking in, that’s the old tongue. Why is he calling you a traitor?”
“Ah, the Keller boy.” Daryl glares at me, “Son, I don’t know, but it’s getting close to my house here. You get rid of it or I will.” The entity continues its slow snake-like crawl. “The pouch, remove it from him.” Daryl points frantically.
“Who is he? You know him, don’t you?” I eye Daryl. “You know who this guy is, don’t you?”
“I know a lot of people. I don’t know him. Keller, the pouch, that’s his magic. Remove it from him!” Daryl points at the entity.
“We’re not going to kill anybody.” I point at the crawling entity. “Who is he? He obviously knows you.”
“He’s getting closer, get that thing away from my place!” Daryl backs away from his gate.
“Daryl, he knows you, he was coming for you. Who is he?” I ask.
Jeremy points his gun at the crawler.
“Jeremy, not yet.” I motion to Jeremy, “Daryl! We need answers.”
“You lied to me!” The crawler utters in broken English.
“Who are you?” I turn to the desperate entity laying on its stomach.
He pulls off his hooded coyote mask revealing a young teenage boy. “Liar! You lied!” He points at Daryl. Daryl backs away slowly. “Liar!” His reach is now a foot from Daryl’s gate.
“Kill it, now! I don’t want that in my house.” Daryl backs further away.
“Jason, Jason, remember me?” He pulls off the many pouches around his neck. The walker collapses and turns a ghastly-darkened orange. The officers stand bewildered.
“Jason,” I turn to Daryl, “Jason knows you.”
Daryl offers up some gasoline, and we burn the body where it lays with a full audience watching. He has deemed that area cursed and has volunteered to fence it off to any and all traffic. “That road needs to be diverted that way,” Daryl says and points westward.
Sharon arrives armed with a semi-automatic scoped rifle. “There was another one,” she says and motions westward. “At that ridge was another one, sitting there watching. You can’t see it. You have to look beside it. Oh my God, you guys burn them now?”
“Yes,” Jeremy says holstering his pistol. “There are no definite rules that govern instances like these. Accept old ones, with those rules they have forfeited their place among the living. They are dead already.”
“Not even fingerprints or dental records?” Sharon inquires.
“None. It all has to be burned. It’s the only way for its magic to die with it. You don’t want this shit following you back to your home, do you?” Jeremy sneers at Sharon.
“I guess not,” Sharon says.
The fire dies down as the December cold sets in. We make our brief statements as we hear from Holden. A car belonging to the missing officer was found a few miles due north.
“Damn, does this ever end?” I ask rhetorically.
Jeremy pats my shoulder. “Nope, come on, let’s go.”
“Daryl.” I eye his smug mug.
“Yes, Son,” Daryl smiles.
“Where is Gladys?” I ask.
“Son, ask me again later after you have seen what you are going to see,” Daryl says.
“What do you mean by that?” Jeremy motions me to leave. I turn to Daryl. “We’re not done here.”
“No, we are most definitely not. See you soon, my Son. And be careful of the thunder and lightning,” Daryl warns.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not your son,” I return.
The car sits on its roof. The tracks in the snow are sporadic and make no logical sense. A pack of coyotes was here as the prints in the snow are fresh.
“These are tire tracks over here, but those are not.” Jeremy and I retrace the car’s path. We march over a quarter mile. “Here, he slowed down quickly right here, then veered off that way then back the other way.” We trace back to the inverted vehicle. “That looks like the front bumper or something. Then nothing for about thirty feet, then a hard landing here then slid the rest of the way.” Jeremy observes as Holden arrives with his camera. Sharon is on guard duty with her rifle. She scans the surrounding areas.
“Over here.” I spot a highly unusual track in the snow. “Holden.”
Holden snaps a picture of the track. An elongated rear paw of a large cat, roughly seven inches wide and ten inches long.
“That’s not a coyote walker. Whoever did this is much more serious.” Holden snaps several more pictures. “The Nelsons were here. That’s them right there.”
We are all startled with a coyote howl toward the west, more yelps from a pack. Sharon points her rifle westward as she situates herself atop her patrol truck.
The FBI starts arriving as Holden takes more pictures of the scene.
“Hey, guys. Something is moving out there.” With her soft, nasal voice Sharon manages to halt the entire commotion. She looks through her rifle scope, then with her naked eye, then back to the scope. “Something is out there.”
“Sharon, what do you see?” Jeremy approaches.
“About 500 yards up that ravine, past those trees where the coyotes were barking from, one of the trees just blurred out, then came back,” Sharon says.
“Blurred out?” Jeremy stands at attention.
“Yes, it was there, then it was gone then came back. Something is moving out there,” she says.
“Steve, you and Sharon check it out from that ravine edge. Don’t go any further, got it?” Jeremy commands.
“Got it.” I return.
Sharon and I approach the ravine’s edge. Several federal agents follow. With my machine pistol at the ready, I lead our small crew to the ravine’s edge. We move quickly through sage bushes and cedar trees. Again, the air is suddenly thick, and the shadows seemed to move. We walk into a tangible, invisible presence. “Right here, we’ll cover.” I say.
Sharon situates herself on a small pine tree, rifle pointing forward.
“I see them, the pack. They’re eating something hanging from the ridge tree.” Sharon adjusts her scope. “It’s a guy. They’re eating a guy. He’s still moving his arm.”
“Damn it. Get Jeremy over here, now!” I bark as one of the agents runs back to the road.
Sharon fires several shots, killing several coyotes as the rest scurry off. We dust ourselves with Taylor’s miracle, murky powder and we start toward the ravine’s opposite edge. I turn to the agent to my right. “I hope you guys have four-wheel drive trucks.”
“We do.” The agent smiles through the vapors from his breath and reddened cheeks. “We’ll do this.”
A helicopter was summoned from Flagstaff Medical Center. Besides the obvious coyote marks and missing tissue, it seemed he was alive when the coyotes started feasting on him. The FBI take many pictures with Holden getting in the way with his camera. Our exit interviews last throughout the afternoon. Repeating then repeating the same narrative can become exhausting.
Karen calls, saying she’ll be back at Dilcon station by midnight. The local medicine man refuses to conduct
any cleansing ceremonies around the ravine or the road. He refuses to come out of his house.
“Get out here, you low-life, lying idiot!” Jeremy again attacks his door with the butt of his pistol. “It’s just skinwalker crap. Don’t tell me you’re scared of them now?”
There is no answer.
“Hey!” Jeremy uses his fist on the door, “What kind of medicine man refuses? What kind? We need you out here!”
“Jeremy, leave him alone. Maybe he’s right to be afraid,” I interrupt. “The Nelsons just indirectly killed another federal officer. This whole mess is falling apart. Leave him alone.”
“Yeah.” Jeremy holsters his pistol. “The feds aren’t going to do shit about what just happened, how can they prove anything happened?”
“They can associate the tracks and method used with the Nelsons, I guess.” I shrug, “What else is there to really tie any of that to any one person?”
“Shit.” Jeremy seems exasperated. “Then why are we out here then? What the fuck for? Does it even matter? Does any of this shit really matter?”
“I’d like to say yes it matters,” I smile, “All good things matter and are worth fighting for.”
I leave with Sharon to go to the church to visit Pastor.
“Pastor?” The front gate is locked. “What the hell, Pastor?” I glance at the church front door. “Oh no!” I pull out my pistol and fire at Pastor’s gate padlock.
Nailed to the church door are two flat pieces of cedar wood, stretched across it is the dried skin of a human face, a woman’s face. I call for back up as Sharon stands by the gate with her rifle.
Holden arrives with two other patrol officers.
“Where’s Pastor?” Holden asks.
“No idea, ready?” I return.
We enter through the side door. Rebecca’s bedroll lays folded in the chapel hall, no other disturbances. “Pastor?” I yell into the emptiness.
All is quiet as we check room after room, leading with our pistols. Holden notes three spent cartridges, casings for 9mm rounds. No bullet holes anywhere. “What the hell happened here?” I ask rhetorically.
“Taylor, let’s go,” Holden commands the other officers to remain. We pile into Sharon’s truck and roar off to Taylor’s house. “Watch your targets and aim carefully. Whomever did this isn’t afraid anymore.” Holden warns.
A hundred yards from Old Man Taylor’s home is Pastor’s overturned SUV. “Holy shit, literally.” Sharon says as she slows her approach. “Nothing to flip over a big truck like that. Who would do that?”
“The Nelsons,” Holden returns. “They’re either getting stronger or more desperate.”
We examine Pastor’s SUV. “This happened recently,” I say. The exhaust pipes have yet to collect snow. The overturned snow and dirt around the SUV are fresh.
We race to Old Man Taylor’s house. Holden motions me to take the left flank, and Sharon the right flank. Holden approaches Taylor’s door with revolver in hand. He knocks. “Taylor?”
“Hey, you guys made it. Come in,” Old Man Taylor smiles. We enter Taylor’s house to find Pastor and Rebecca sitting by the fire.
“What’s this?” Holden looks confused, as do I. “What are you doing here? What happened to your truck? Did you know your church is mocked up?” Holden asks.
“One of the Nelson kids came by. He says he’s going to kill us, so we let him try. He failed.” Pastor approaches.
Old Man Taylor smiles. “I shot at it with Pastor’s gun!”
“At the church?” Holden holsters his revolver.
“Yes, we were out of pellets for the furnace, so we came here, then on our way that happened.” Taylor points to Pastor’s overturned SUV.
“How did that happen?” I turn to Pastor.
“The same Nelson kid, in whatever demonic form he was in, tried to kill us again. He failed, again.” Pastor pours more tea for Rebecca. “It’s not by might we fight the darkness, but by authority, remember that kids.”
Holden, Sharon, and I stand dumbfounded. “Pastor, your truck is trashed, and there’s some weird cedar face nailed to your church.”
“What?” Pastor says.
Holden updates Pastor on all of the day’s events. Pastor looks fatigued after the massive update. Sharon and I walk back to retrieve her SUV.
“Sharon, that rifle is almost as big as you. What is that thing?” I ask.
“.308 semi-auto, scoped, zeroed at 200 yards.” She lets me handle her rifle.
“I’ll be sure to stay around you.” We share a laugh.
I call Karen to pick up more wood pellets for Pastor’s furnace. Apparently, the wood stove was too much work to deal with.
Later that afternoon we are all summoned to the Teesto market where Pastor and Rebecca had gone for food and supplies. Rebecca had wandered to the toy aisle and seemed to just disappear from view as seen from the overhead surveillance cameras. Moments prior she seemed to frightfully refrain to her right, covering her face as if to run. The toy aisle then had items tremble then fall to the floor, and in a blur she’s gone. Pastor arrives, falls to his knees, and weeps loudly.
The hunt is on for Simon. Under our breaths, we sigh and nod to each other that it’s best to take him dead. We will hunt him down, whatever the cost.
Karen and Jeremy are irate. Holden weeps silently. I sit with Holden and Pastor, unsure what to say.
“Keller, you have an urgent telephone call from Phoenix.” Agent Tom gets my attention.
“Take a message, please,” I say.
“You might want to take this.” Tom gestures urgently. “Tracy Monroe says she knows where Rebecca is, and insists she talk to you personally.”
CHAPTER 18
“Shyboy, just one more minute, please.” Her voice is addictive.
“Tracy, one more time. Simon is not who we are after. It’s this other guy from Flagstaff, this William guy?” I ask.
“Yes,” Tracy says.
“And this room, or hogan at the Nelson compound, we can’t see it, but it’s there?” I scramble about for a pen. “And your dad knows about all this?”
“Yes,” Tracy confides.
“And he’s OK with it?” I ask.
“Yes, Daddy loves you.” She sounds sincere. “He really does.”
“Don’t say that, don’t say things like that.” I return, “That’s not true.”
“I can’t speak the truth?” she asks.
“No, it’s not the truth. It’s not the truth if he’s involved in what I’m doing and he’s on the wrong side of things,” I say.
“What about me?” Tracy asks.
I am silent for a moment. “It’s complicated.”
“How so?”
“If what you say is true. That you are carrying my child, that will change a lot of things, now, wouldn’t it?” I note Holden, Jeremy, Pastor, and Karen are all listening intently to my every word.
“Well, it should, and I am, so there,” she laughs.
“Tracy, we’ll know soon enough, OK?”
“Shyboy?” she says.
“What?” I ask.
“I want to do the family thing. Do you want to get married?” she asks.
I pause. “Tracy, nobody is marrying anybody.”
She laughs hysterically as my fellow associates glare on inquisitively.
“And leave Pastor alone. He’s a rock, and we don’t want you or your dad giving him any more of your collective cobweb shit.” I pat Pastor on his shoulder as he winces.
“Not him, can’t see shit around him,” Tracy says.
“Really? Pastor?” I pause with Karen looking on.
“Yeah, but it was Richard Nelson that made that mess at the church. He’s working for someone else, and it’s not Simon, that asshole.” Tracy says woefully. “Such an asshole.”
“This William guy, what does this William guy look like?” I ask.
“I don’t know, I got his attention, he looked at me then knocked me to the ground, that fucker!” Tracy says.
“You don’t have to sound happy about it,” Tracy pouts.
“Thanks, Tracy. I’ll call you tomorrow,” I hang up.
I turn to Karen. “We need to go back to the Nelson compound. Rebecca is there.”
“I’ll call for backup.” Jeremy picks up his radio, “The cavalry is coming.”
“No, we don’t want them to know we’re coming. We need a distraction away from the Nelsons. Holden? Think of something.” I lead Karen and Pastor to the chapel for prayer.
With dust blowing and tumbleweeds rolling by, we drive to the Nelson compound, our postures steeled with courage and our hands shaking nervously. We press on to evil ground. Two more dusty hills and I turn to Karen. “Maybe you should drive, and I can go in,” I say.
“I can do it, just a cakewalk, a messy one. So, she proposed to you?” I can feel Karen smiling, trying to suppress a laugh.
“It means nothing, really,” I say.
“I don’t think so. You blushed there, Mister,” Karen says.
“Did not,” I say.
We roll onto one dusty hill after another.
“Well, you did,” Karen replies.
“Thomas, not going there,” I say.
The Nelson compound is in sight.
“If you get cornered just run, don’t fight it. Don’t show your fear, courage always,” I tell Karen.
“I know. And yes, you blushed pink,” Karen says.
“Karen, drop it,” I tell her.
We roll onto the Nelson compound past the gated fence and lava-walled house. We continue past the dead cedar trees to the main group of houses as the localized darkness slowly fills the truck cab. The dogs are gone, the sheep corral still empty, and the front door wide open in the main house. The carcasses of dead horses lay in the distance. I park gingerly, remaining strapped in.
Karen breathes in and pulls out her sidearm. “Holy bullets, here we go.”
I scan the area around the houses. Nothing moves. Nothing visible lives. All is quiet. All is nothing as the compound ranch hands are all gone. The water pump from the distant windmill stands silently still. I point to the side of the west house where there are dark streaks and disturbed ground, prints of a struggle. Karen nods. She pulls out her pouch of earthed cedar ash and clay, throws it to the centered stack of ancient rocks and utters words memorized. A hogan appears in the dusty haze.