Snapping his head up almost immediately, he looked back to where Matt had been standing, but he was already gone. There was nothing there but the rows of tree trunks, and the darkness trapped beneath the low- lying canopy of branches.
“Where did he go?” Harry asked from his right, where he was staring slack jawed towards the line of trees as well.
“I don’t know.”
“Figure that was Shane?”
Harry nodded towards the reddened lump that barely peeked up at them from the snow.
“That would be a safe bet.”
“Who do you think is next?” Harry asked as he tramped through the snow towards Scott, easing him by the shoulder away from the skull.
“I’m all out of old buddies,” Scott said, walking of his own volition through the maze of trunks, glancing down at the snow- covered ground only long enough to note what he already expected: there wasn’t a single track in the unbroken field of white.
“That certainly limits the options.”
“And then some.”
“So, the way I see it, there’s really only one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?” Scott asked.
Harry stopped, gripping Scott tightly by the shoulders and turning him so that he could look him directly in the eye.
“We have to go on the offensive.”
Scott just nodded.
“We have to track him down and kill him.”
“But he’s already dead.”
“Then let’s kill him again.”
“Do you think that will work?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
Scoot looked down towards his feet, which were buried beneath the snow, noting that he couldn’t feel his toes at all. Like the rest of him, his body, his mind, he had become desensitized. All that he could feel was fear, which his mind shoved back into the darkened recesses of his brain as soon as it swelled up. There was nothing left after that. He had been reduced to a basic biological state. All that he could do was just the bare minimum necessary to survive, his instincts telling him to eat, drink and sleep. Any other less primal urges were stuffed back as anything of a more emotional base would always lead him back to the fear.
But there was something else deep down within him now, something that he hadn’t felt within before. It was like a fire, or at least the smoking kindling of what would become a fire. He could feel it welling deep in his chest, gaining strength as it fought to come to the forefront. It was the feeling that caused his teeth to grind, his eyes to narrow, and his breathing to slow.
It was rage. And with that emotion came the fire and determination with which he attacked every challenge. The fear and helplessness slipped from his consciousness as this new, powerful drive fought to the forefront.
Scott looked back up from the ground, his eyes locking straight on Harry’s. The kindling had been fanned to a full- fledged fire, which burned from behind his eyes, his trembling limbs suddenly gaining a newfound strength and stability.
With a nod of his stone chiseled, clenched jaw, his unblinking eyes turned back towards the night as they headed back towards the car, the shadows writhing in the blackness all around them in the lifeless forest.
XVII
Wednesday, November 16th
6 a.m.
“Excuse me,” Scott said, flagging down the man in the navy blue vest who walked down the aisle with a wrapped sandwich and a two liter bottle of Pepsi cradled against his chest.
“I’m on break,” the man said, nodding towards his food. “Try over there in electronics.”
With a pained grimace, Scott thanked him with a curt nod and headed towards the electronics section where he could hear the rustling of boxes from behind the stocked shelves along the wall that separated the section from the rest of the store.
Rounding the wall of jewelry boxes, he passed a long wall of nothing but film before coming to the entrance to the section. The cash register sat closed and locked down to the left of the entrance. Box filled carts littered the entranceway making it all but impossible to walk. Sliding between the closely packed metal carts, he looked over the tall stacks of boxes towards where he had heard the noise coming from. There was a tall, wild haired man with a shirt that read on the back in bright red letters: “Ski Naked.”
He was an incredibly large man. Not only did he have to be something like six foot five, but he had to be close to two hundred eighty pounds as well. The suddenly revolting idea proposed on the back of his far too tightly fitting shirt that rode up over his hairy, bloated stomach in the front was almost cause for something to be said to the man, but Scott needed something from him. Something that it seemed that not one of the hundred other employees he had seen in the store was able to do.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, craning around the mountainous stack of boxes full of video games.
The man looked up briefly, a contemptuous look streaking his face as he rolled his eyes. He had an enormous mane of fluffy dark hair and glasses that were tinted yellow. His fleshy cheeks jiggled as he tossed the pricing gun onto the shelf. Sighing loudly, he raised his eyebrows and took a step towards Scott.
“What do you want?” he grumbled.
“I need you to open one of these cases over in sporting goods.”
“I don’t have the time now. There should be someone over there.”
“There isn’t, and everyone I’ve talked to so far has been of no help whatsoever.”
“You’re just going to have to wait.”
“I already have.”
“Then wait some more,” he said, turning back down the aisle, his shirt creeping up from his hairy, exposed crack.
Scott smiled bemusedly; licking his upper lip as a smirk brought with it a quiet chuckle.
“I’m trying to be really nice here…”
“So am I,” the man interrupted.
Scott looked at the stacked boxes that covered nearly every available inch of the glossy, white tiled floor. An idea formed as the smirk widened.
“Oops,” he said, bumping into one of the towers of boxes with his hip.
The boxes toppled to the floor, the contents of the top box spilling out from where the tape had split along the upper seal. Wrapped video games covered the floor all around his feet.
“Hey,” the man said, whirling as his face turned bright red. “You just did that on purpose.”
Scott just smiled as he had grown weary of the banter. He hadn’t slept in what felt like a week. His entire body ached, his head pounded, and he most certainly didn’t have anything resembling the patience to deal with this asshole.
“I should come over there and make you pick that up.”
“Oops,” Scott said as another stack of boxes fell from a shift of his hips, crashing into another stack which fell as well.
“I watched you do that!” he shouted, his eyes growing as wild as his hair.
“You could have averted this by just opening the case for me when I had asked.”
“So you’re admitting that you did that on purpose.”
“If that’ll get you through the day…”
The electronics troll popped out of the aisle, holding in his gut so he could squeeze past the piles of boxes. His meaty ham- fists clenched at his sides, he walked right up to Scott and grabbed two handfuls of his shirt.
“What’s going on over there?” a suddenly panicked man wearing one of the navy blue vests beneath his down winter jacket gasped from where he stood at the entrance to the electronics section.
The chunky worker immediately released Scott’s shirt and took a rapid step backwards, his mouth falling slack.
The man set the briefcase he had been carrying, along with the brown paper bag full of what could presumably only been his lunch onto the counter by the register and proceeded to walk straight towards them, his face growing increasingly redder with each step. Passing Scott, he stopped right in front of the suddenly cowed wild haired worker, his teeth clenching as his jaw ground f
rom side to side.
“Go wait for me in my office,” he growled, his eyes narrowing to mere slits.
He stood with his back to Scott watching as the electronics guy weaved between the stacks of boxes and out into the aisle, heading towards the back of the store. Scott could hear the man sigh as he paused just momentarily before turning back to Scott.
“Please accept my apologies, sir. My nephew has a tendency to be a little antisocial. Hence, we try to keep him here in the middle of the night as much as possible to keep him away from the customers.”
“Your nephew?”
“When your sister calls and says her son needs a job so that he can help her pay the bills now that her husband of twenty- five years has decided to flat out split on them, what are you supposed to do?”
With a reassuring smile, Scott nodded. “I completely understand.”
The man paused, inspecting Scott. His dark mustache twitched as his narrow brown eyes scanned every inch of him. The long line of fluorescent tubes mounted high above in the ceiling reflected off the shiny skin atop his head under his thin comb- over.
“Now,” he said, still wearing the same uncomfortable expression. “Is there something that I can do for you.”
“I need something out of one of these cases over here in sporting goods.”
“All right,” the man said through a feigned smile, pulling a mass of keys from his hip where they had been clipped to his belt. “If you will please follow me then.”
The two walked through the maze of boxes and out into the main aisle while the man tossed through the pile of keys one by one, finally pinching one of the smaller silver ones between his thumb and index finger.
Rounding the corner, they passed the limited costume jewelry section and beneath an archway formed from hip waders. There was a counter straight ahead, a small register bolted in the front left corner. Behind the counter was a large glass case filled with a vertical row of shotguns and rifles. Beside the case on the shelves that ran the length of the wall were boxes upon boxes of ammunition, stocked from the floor clear up the nine- foot wall.
“This case?” the man asked somewhat hesitantly as he nodded towards the wall of guns.
“Yes, sir,” Scott said politely. “I need that Remington twelve gauge and the Winchester right below it.”
“Doing some hunting?”
“Something like that.”
“What are you going for?”
“Deer,” Scott muttered, having not expected to have to justify the purchase.
“With shotguns?”
“They’re for the geese, it’s a combination hunt.”
“Oh,” the man mused as he opened the small circular lock on the bottom of the case and slid back the large pane of glass.
He pulled the Remington down first, lifting it off of the plastic hooks that held it in place. Setting it on the counter, he pulled down the Winchester, laying it next to the other. Closing the glass door, he replaced the metal lock and reached beneath the counter. Producing a large book of forms in triplicate, he opened it to the next available form and turned it, handing it to Scott so that it would be right side up.
“I just need you to fill this out for me really quickly if you please,” he said with a curt smile, handing Scott a pen from atop the register.
“Thanks,” Scott said as he brought the pen to the page and began to fill it out as quickly as he could. He wrote down his name and address, his social security number and his driver’s license number. He filled in every bit of information from his date of birth through his mother’s maiden name. They wanted every bit of information about his life that he was able to provide, which he filled in just as quickly as he could. Affixing his signature to the bottom line, he handed it back to the man whom, of course, needed to verify all of the information with every piece of plastic that Scott had in his wallet.
After several minutes of comparing the driver’s license to the page, he handed it back to Scott, coyly comparing the face on the plastic to his current stubbled visage.
“Is there anything else we can get you?’ he asked, tearing the top form off and setting it to the side of the register.
“I need about six boxes of twelve gauge shells.”
The man, who had unzipped his coat so that his managerial badge was now visible, stepped to the side and grabbed one of the boxes.
“Any preference as to brand?”
“Nope, just grab whatever.”
The manager pulled down one box at a time, stacking them in two sets of three on the fake white marble countertop next to the shotguns.
“Can I get you some licenses to go with that?” he asked with a smile.
“No thanks,” Scott said, pulling his gold card from his wallet.
The man stared at him somewhat dumbfounded for a moment.
Intercepting the look, Scott elaborated.
“We’ve already got the licenses, I just figured it was about time to replace that old gun of mine before we left for the mountains, but I couldn’t decide which one to go with so I figured I’d just buy them both and see which one I was more comfortable with in the field.”
“Will that give you enough time to have the stock modified to fit your reach?”
“I’m lucky,” Scott said wishing for nothing more for the man to just end the conversation and hand him his damned shotguns. “My reach is the same as the standard factory stock. It makes it easy.”
Shaking his head, as he really had no idea what he was talking about, he forced the credit card into the man’s face as he began to ring the transaction into the register. After a moment of hammering keys and scanning bar codes, he turned back to Scott with a far more sincere grin.
“That’ll be nine hundred eighty dollars and thirty-two cents.”
He pulled the electronically generated receipt from the printer in the register and handed it to Scott. As he signed, the man placed the heavy boxes of shells into a plastic bag, slipping it into two other before finally taking the signed receipt from Scott and stapling his copy to the bag.
Tucking the shotguns beneath his left arm, Scott grabbed the bag and with a polite nod headed towards the front of the store. Every one of the worthless employees who stood by the main aisle pretending to sweep or mop or stock shelves stopped what they were doing to stare, open mouthed, at him as he walked towards the sliding doors at the front of the store. He could feel their eyes on his back clear out into the parking lot as he headed across the sand covered ice that covered the lot towards the Cherokee.
Popping open the trunk, he laid the gun on the carpeted floor, setting the bag beside them. Hurrying around the side of the car, he hopped into the driver’s seat and pinned the pedal to the floor as he turned the key. The engine roared as he dropped the gear into reverse, the tires spinning on the sand as they tossed a cloud of the minuscule grains into the air. He backed from the parking place, pausing long enough to throw it into drive, and headed out of the enormous parking lot towards the flashing red lights of the street beyond.
Heading back towards the highway, his mind couldn’t help but revert back to the one thing that was bothering him more than anything else. Sure, the one thing that bothered him more than anything was the fact that everyone he knew was dying at the hands of a former friend who appeared to be more of an unnatural apparition than a man. But taking it at face value, there was a part of the story that seemed to be missing. Everything that he had learned from pouring through that dead nun’s diary, and everything that they had read and reread in the faded yellow trappings, pointed to the number two hundred as the number of deaths associated with the coming of the bloodspawn. And in every single one of those cases, all of the deaths had happened at once, not spread out one by one over a great number of days as these had been so far.
The killings were lacking the same MO.
Perhaps the nuns had been wrong from the start and what they had found here wasn’t the scenario that that thought it was. Maybe, and while this most definitely
had something of a supernatural undertone, it wasn’t the maturation of the bloodspawn as they thought it would be. But then explain the child Harry rescued from the nuns before they killed it. Explain the presence of the dark figure that had shredded the forest with his mere will, shattering the trunks of so many trees as though they had been made of glass. All of the secondary signs seemed to be there. Could that all have just been coincidence?
Scott pulled into the driveway and pressed the garage door opener. A grip of long icicles fell from where they dangled from the roof, shattering in front of the door on the snow covered concrete as it rolled up against the ceiling of the garage. Rolling in slowly, he parked next to the mass of unpacked boxes and killed the engine. Leaning back over his shoulder, he stared at the two shotguns as they lay on the floor in the trunk. Their mere presence inspired power as he knew that with a single shot from one of the black metal and wood creations and a spray of the tiny steel bb’s, he could snuff out a life in a heartbeat. That seemed of little comfort as he had watched Matt do the same with his bare hands in as little time.
Shaking his head and sighing loudly, the sudden weight of the daunting task ahead settling into the knotted muscles of his shoulders. He shoved the keys into his pockets and closed the car door, walking around the back of the car and walking past the boxes to the garage door. Pressing the buttons, he climbed up the pair of cement stairs and into the house.
“Harry,” he called from the family room as he crossed the plush carpeting and bounded up the stairs.
“In here,” Harry’s voice echoed from the vaulted ceiling in the living room.
Crossing the tile floor and stepping into the living room, Scott leaned over Harry’s shoulder staring down at the massive pile of newspaper clippings that had been arranged chronologically on his work desk.
“Anything new?” Scott asked, but Harry’s response was cut off before it even passed his lips by the ringing phone.
“Just a sec,” Scott said as he walked through the living room and into the kitchen.
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