by R. S. Scott
“Jeremy, I’m tired, and it’s getting dark. You also said they’re coming, didn’t you?” I ask.
Jeremy looks at me coldly. “How much ammo you got left?”
“About ten or so of the good stuff, and about twenty rounds of 9mm,” I tell him.
“Which direction did he come from?” Jeremy asks.
“I’m not sure. He killed one of Peter’s dogs from over there, so I’m assuming that wash. There were no prints in the snow to follow.”
“Cover me,” Jeremy says and rushes off toward the wash.
I take a watch from the patrol truck looking for anything unusual. I bring about my rifle ready to fire at anything that moves. “Where is Sharon when we need her?” I mumble to myself. With winter stiffened fingers mimicking a claw, I take watch adjusting the focus on my riflescope. “Stay where I can see you!” My voice echoes through the evening sky. “Don’t wander off too far.”
Jeremy sprints quickly, scanning the snowy landscape as he runs, then slows down. Jeremy leaps backward then points his sidearm. I steady myself and disengage the safety, aiming carefully. Jeremy fires two rounds at the ground. I cannot see what he is shooting at. I aim there anyway. Moments later, a blaze is visible in the snowy distance. Jeremy runs back.
“Fucking snake, there was a rattler out there. In the fucking snow! A rattlesnake! Let’s go. This ground is evil,” Jeremy says.
I put my rifle in the back with Daren, and we roar off. “So, I killed Daren then.”
Jeremy looks at me. “That’s not how to tell that story. You shot at a creature you were chasing, then found him. That’s your story. Do not associate Daren with whatever you were chasing, got it?”
“But I knew it was Daren,” I say.
“And how are you going to prove that? It’s bad enough it happened like this. It’s bad enough it is how it is,” Jeremy says.
“I’m so tired,” I tell him.
“It’s bad enough the feds know and want to get their hands on it. We’ll take Daren back to your place for now. You stay there as well. Whatever you say to them, don’t get stupid with your answers. If things get bad, go see Pastor.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I tell him.
“It’s still a dead body with no burial or a wake, so they can’t touch you,” Jeremy says.
“Is that how that works? None of them can touch me when I have a corpse?” I ask.
“It’s just a guess,” he says.
“Damn it, Jeremy.”
Jeremy laughs. “Relax, you’ll be fine. If we find you dead, we’ll bury you in the hills along with your Miles Davis record collection.”
“I want to be cremated,” I scoff.
“We can do that, too,” Jeremy promises.
“I’m tired.”
We move Daren’s body to the back of my truck and Jeremy drives off as I stand alone in the darkened cold holding onto the extra sack of ash Jeremy left.
“Here we go.” I say, anticipating a fight. A fight in my dreams perhaps, and not a physical one.
CHAPTER 22
I have yet to descend further into maddening depression. The days seem shorter than usual, the nights longer and colder. The morning sun still greets me to the east for but a moment, then hides his face from me in the west. One day blurs into the next as my thoughts now grow dark and tainted. I eat my regular meals still, but they seem tasteless and metallic.
My bed is no longer inviting. It curses me and dials in my inner terrors. I dream of being burned alive, I dream of trying desperately to move or scream while straining in a mortified husk of a man. I dream of a blackness, an ugliness that turns and twists into itself, digesting and molesting itself while laughing. Its eyes are a red amber, glowing to an evil shade of malice orange. My pillow then lurks to the edge of death then teeters on its fiery edge. When I lay my head down, the ceiling crawls and twists, everything around me seems alive. Everything around me then has a face, an angry face.
This morning the sun hid from me yet again behind snowy clouds to the east. The air is thick with remnants from events prior, silent echoes yelp of the unnatural. I could still feel the concussions from the rounds I’ve fired at the beast, my shoulder aches. I turn on the hall light as I stagger out from my bedroom, the shadows seem to hide behind themselves.
My cell phone rings. “Hello?”
“Steve! Where are you? What happened out there? Did you kill Daren?” Karen says.
“No, I did not. I’ll explain. Meet me in two hours.” I hang up as Karen starts talking again.
I shower then put on my clothes. My thoughts dwell on dark places I had shunned. If I did kill Daren, what would happen now? Is it now my obligation to take his place among the ranks? Is it my time to gather up my courage and follow the path my great grandfather has set for us Keller boys? Or am I to die for what I’ve done? Should I now make preparations to camp his burial for the next four days? I miss Jess terribly. She was right about all this. She was so right.
I put on my uniform, my armor, my shield and my life. My 9mm pistol loaded and ready, I strap it to my waist. In the mirror I seem older, my face is long and spent. With tired eyes, I gaze about then brush my hair backward with nary a care. I head outside and lock up my house.
My truck is as I had left it, doused in ash and grave dirt. The small patch of blood-fused mud mush I had smeared onto the hood is still there. In the rear compartment, the body of Daren lay wrapped in plastic. I scan the surrounding area. Prints circle the truck, some small, others large and clawed.
Around my house and on the roof are more prints. “Wow, and I slept through all that, nice.” I inspect my living room window and the side window. Neither are damaged nor any signs of attempted forced entry.
All is quiet, no dogs barking, no distant rumble of traffic, no whistling wind through the trees and brush. All is quiet except for a jetliner roaring high above.
“I know you’re there! I know you now!” I yell into the strange calmness. I climb into my truck and drive.
I am apprehended upon my arrival. A medicine man from Southern Utah stands at the ready. He glares at me. I ignore him. I am escorted to Holden’s interview room. I wave at the double-sided window.
“Steve, tell us again what happened, please. Without the theatrics and the drama. Without the talk of spirits and skinwalkers. Just the facts, please. When did you shoot Daren?” The feds had sent one of their best. Special Agent Evan Tolle glares at me.
“I did not shoot Daren. I tracked down a killer into the woods after he attacked me. Then I shot it six times. I found Daren beside a road, miles from the attack due north toward Hopi country.”
“With exactly six gunshot wounds from a high-powered hunting rifle. You carried a hunting rifle, did you not?” Evan asks.
“Yes, I had my rifle with me at the time,” I say.
“A custom rifle from a gunsmith in Phoenix. You have that zeroed at 100 yards or 600?” Evan asks.
“200,” I confirm.
“You do have the glass for 600?”
“I guess I do,” I say.
“Hollow point, boat tail, 168-grain match rounds, not hunting rounds is that?”
“It’s what I had at the time,” I say.
“Custom hand loads?” Evan eyes me.
“I had some hunting loads, but I left them in the truck,” I say.
“So, you left the hunting loads behind and decided to take the hollow points?”
“I thought I had both. I was wrong,” I tell the agent.
“You thought? Either you did or didn’t. Did you choose not to bring the hunting loads?”
“I was pressed for time. I thought I had both,” I say.
“And your side arm? A 9mm semi-auto pistol?” Evan looks up from his notes.
“I had that with me,” I confirm.
“Coat, gloves, and all that sort. Except some brand new long johns, brand new you left behind?”
“I didn’t need them,” I say.
“It’s seventeen degrees
out there.” Evan glares at me, “You didn’t need those?”
“I had sweatpants, and two layers of sweaters,” I say.
He frowns. “How did you meet this killer you were chasing?”
“We got a tip from a local teen, a teen that was involved in some incest. After his uncle passed, he’s been getting brave with information. Usually, they don’t talk, but he did.”
“And?” Evan motions at me with a pen.
“I found him at his uncle’s burial,” I say.
“Why was he there?”
“They usually wait at the gravesite for four nights to receive what they think they want or expect,” I tell the agent.
“They?”
“The practitioners of magic,” I say.
“Your witchdoctors in training?” Evan looks at his notes.
“Yes, sort of.”
“Sort of?” Evan asks.
“It’s a theory, based on traditional tales,” I tell him.
“Which is what? Elaborate, please.”
“The person’s essence, the dead person’s spirit, or, I’m not too sure. But they stay at the gravesite, and that’s where I found the teen tending the grave. Fixing the fence and talking about the afterlife as if it matters more than this life. He had brought a rake and insecticide. In the freezing snow, he had those. A rake is useless in the snow. He was acting very strange. I invited him to the chapter house for some soda, but he wouldn’t leave. He just wouldn’t go,” I say.
“And?”
“I asked him questions, about his past and things he had done. He’s just a kid, so it was a bit tricky trying to pick at his motives to know exactly what he was doing at a recent burial. Generally, traditional natives stay away from the dead. I asked why he was there, at that gravesite, at that time knowing who was buried there that afternoon. The flowers were frozen by then, and the dirt still a bit moist even in the cold. I pressed him, asking directly what his business was there, asking him exactly who he was in the clan ranks. We both knew, but neither of us wanted to say it. As that went on, he admitted he did kill two elders and came at me with a shovel. No idea what happened next as I woke up in my patrol truck with a massive headache hours later, cold as hell. He let me live, even put me in my truck,” I say.
The agent looks up as if to know what happened.
I continue. “So, I get a hold of dispatch, and we start looking for the kid. We staked out the gravesite that night. That was one spooky night, so quiet you can hear your heartbeat. Around midnight we see three dogs, or what looked like three dogs. Stupid infrared wasn’t giving us the full story. One of the dogs kept going in and out like it wasn’t there. We weren’t going to shoot up some dogs, so we left them to wander. It was pitch black out there. The nearest light came a half-mile away from the Barton house. I guess no one wants to live near a graveyard. We got cold hanging out there in the blowing snow. It was coming down hard earlier that evening but slowed down as the night went on. The thermals kept us going.” I pause and stretch my right arm trying to alleviate my sore shoulder.
“So, the stakeout…” Evan waves his pen, motioning me to continue.
“We had high-powered optics from across the ravine, a clear shot of the area where the old ones are buried,” I say.
“You must have known that anything coming to that site could see you.” Evan asks.
“We weren’t too concerned about that. We wanted to see who would show up.”
“Who? As in another human instead of a pack of canines?” Evan asks.
“Exactly,” I tell him.
“The dogs, then?” the agent motions at me.
“Yeah, just some mutts,” I say.
“OK, let’s continue.”
“Around 2:00 am…”
“3:17 am,” he reads from his notes.
I return his icy glare. “At 3:17 am our infrared surveillance blanked out. The dogs were gone. That was it. Karen still couldn’t find Daren, but gathered intel about him. He had killed all his goats and dogs and had wandered into the hills. Then, the same thirteen-year-old kid was picked up at the school gymnasium the next morning, waving a knife around, scaring the teachers.”
“This was at Seba School, correct?” Evan asks.
“Yup. Something serious going on at that school,” I say.
“Please continue.”
“So, the kid confesses who his dead uncle really was and how the uncle was overwhelmed with his new abilities, or how his new abilities were beyond him. It took the Pastor to get all that info. As well as being an apprentice under the Monroes, the kid was not a Monroe, but they still took him in. He knew Daren Monroe personally.”
“The Pastor of the church at the crossroads, Pastor Eugene?”
“That’s him,” I confirm.
“The guy that…” Evan rifles through paperwork, “…prays over your guns?”
“Umm, yes,” I say.
“You actually do that?” the agent asks.
“Yes, you should try it.”
“So, you go after him, the beast. After he knocks over your truck and runs off?”
“Yes. Not Daren, though. The thing I was chasing hit my truck and knocked it over,” I say.
“You concluded it was Daren?” the agent asks.
“I suspected.” I say.
“So, the killer and the thing and Daren are the same person? Why do you seem to give them all distinct, separate entities, as if they are all independent of each other?”
“I can’t explain that,” I say.
“Why not?” the agent asks.
“I just can’t. I don’t know that yet,” I tell him.
“But you shot at the thing, then, knowing it was Daren, the killer?”
“We have shot at them when they are in that form,” I say.
“The form being the ‘thing,’ the beast?”
“Yes. Bullets seem to slow them down or make them run away, not kill them. That’s what I was counting on.”
“Six shots that seem to burrow right through like a drill. Normally a bullet does far more damage to flesh than that, especially a .308 hollow point. Normally bullets behave, differently,” Evan says.
“I did not shoot Daren,” I say.
“But you shot at a…what is it from your report? A skinwalker? Your killer? What is that Officer Keller? What is that? Please, indulge us once more, ‘the beast’ isn’t it?”
“A person who morphs as a mythical creature like an animal or whatever it wants. It evolved from the great wars from centuries ago, back when there was a need for it,” I tell him.
“But now they’re still around. It would seem now, wouldn’t it?”
“That is correct, Sir,” I say.
“Now, continue about this ‘killer’ you shot who wasn’t Daren,” the agent prompts.
“We’ve gone over this,” I say.
“Indulge me, please. I do like a good story. From the beginning, please,” he says and sits in front of me smiling, mockingly.
“Months ago, we got a tip on the supposed killer of the elders of the clan that lives in this area. Most of the old ones have been dying via strange circumstances and various deformities, very much unlike how an old one should die. Normally they die of old age, heart failure, kidney failure, diabetes or something like that, not the way they’ve been going. One even tried to kill her grandchildren with a knife, started striking her head with the knife until she severed her brain stem. Something normal people would not do. Months before that, we started chasing leads of child abuse and incest in several families, and a lot of strange things started happening. Things that should never happen. Then the Simon thing happened. Then one thing led to another, and before we knew it, we were chasing these weird inhuman entities that can’t be killed with bullets.”
“Daren has six bullet holes, and the rounds seem to match your rifle,” the agent says.
“It would seem I did not kill Daren then, correct? Or I shot at a carcass, which I did not do,” I say.
“He wa
s very much alive when six thirty-caliber rounds burrowed through him. None of this makes any logical sense,” the agent says.
“I shot at a fast-moving killer. Six times. Then found Daren by the road miles up due north. I fired at a beast. I did not shoot at Daren. You read my report,” I repeat.
“I can’t accept your report, Keller. It reads like a werewolf comic book. Like the ones you buy at the candy store. You can’t expect me to believe all this. This cannot be a report from a police officer!” the agent raises his voice.
“It would seem then that what you believe has no bearing on reality,” I smile.
“Watch your mouth, Keller. Then there’s the incident at the Nelson compound, your report as well as Karen’s report cannot be accepted.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“You both ingested a fairly large amount of peyote. That’s a very strong hallucinogen, right up there with LSD and PCP. Potent stuff there, Officer Keller.”
“OK.” I shrug, “We did not intentionally ingest it. It was forced upon us. We had no choice.”
“We all have choices, Keller. We just have to make the right ones. We still seek answers,” the agent threatens.
“It would seem the answer is right in front of you. You just don’t want to accept it,” I tell him.
“Keller, I hear you’re a stand-up cop, well respected. I’m trying to help you here.”
“Tell me about the last fed that came out here. He was a blond nut job with a slight limp, going around asking questions, trying to intimidate people, hitting on the women, getting his nose into businesses he really shouldn’t. And what happened to him?”
“His body was found hanging from a tree,” the agent says.
“Yes, I was there. The coyotes were eating him. You forgot that part. And he was hanging upside down, still alive when the coyotes ate his face and left arm,” I tell him.
“Keller.”
“He encountered exactly what he was looking for, did he not?” I ask.
“That’s classified.”
“Classified? Since when do you lot deal in ‘Classified’? How about his car? How did it manage to sit upside down? On a flat road with no obstacles large enough or intrusive enough to cause that sort of physical event. How does any car manage that? What are the physics involved to flip a two-ton vehicle 180 degrees with no logical means to do so? Was he that terrible of a driver that he lost control of his vehicle to do the impossible?” I press.