Pull, aim and fire at the behemoth coming your way, or dodge to the left and let the old man standing behind you deal with the charging giant.
Really, sometimes it’s not even a choice.
Carl fired four times, each bullet hitting his target in the chest. Frank Blackbourne stopped charging and fell to his knees a good ten feet from where Carl was standing. Carl smelled burnt cordite and the stench that came from Frank. The man reeked of body odor and something worse. As he watched, Frank fell forward and caught himself on his oversized hands. He coughed hard and moaned weakly and then vomited a thick slew across the hardwood floors.
Neal Crawford was a good man. He reached for the wounded man, an expression of deep concern written on his aging features. Carl managed to catch his shoulder before he made it completely to where he wanted to be.
Frank, on his hands and knees and gagging, looked up and snarled. Blood fell in a dribble from his lips and he stood back up, shaking his head like maybe he’d gotten his ass handed to him in a fight instead of getting fatally shot four times. All in all, not really the result Carl was looking for at that moment.
“Good God.” Neal stepped back of his own volition as Frank got back up. “Frank? Is that really you?”
Cold blue eyes regarded the old man from under a deeply furrowed brow. The mottled flesh of his face looked worse than usual—and in his defense, he had just been shot repeatedly—and Frank coughed, violently leaning against the wall for support. The wall obligingly stayed in place but it let out a groan of protest.
“Meemaw’s…hunfff…Meemaw’s necklace. Gimme it.” Frank ignored Neal and looked at Carl. The expression on his face brooked remarkably little argument and under a lot of circumstances, Carl might have obliged without hesitation. In this case, however, he was still holding a serious grudge.
“Fuck yourself.” He eyed the man cautiously. Though he was leaning and panting and bleeding, he didn’t exactly look like a man who’d just received four bullets through his chest.
Frank stood up taller. “You got you a nasty mouth, boy.” The voice didn’t come from his mouth. It came from somewhere lower. The completely irrational thought popped into Carl’s head that if Frank had a talking penis he was just going to leave the scene and keep walking. He shook the notion away.
“You killed two of my people. Either you get back on your knees or I shoot you again.” He took careful aim.
Frank laughed; his eyes didn’t look at all amused, but he laughed just the same. The sound came from his mouth this time and also from somewhere in his abdomen. The giant pulled open his shirt, tearing the buttons from their holes and ripping the sodden, bloodied fabric away with ease.
And damned if Carl didn’t look. His eyes took in the four holes where the bullets had blown their way into Frank’s chest. They looked incredibly small in the field of mottled, hairy flesh that surrounded them. There was a bit of flab on the man’s body, but mostly what could be seen was muscle and more muscle. Frank let his hand drop and though he couldn’t see all of the man’s stomach, he could see a spot to the left that ran toward his pants and hip, where the skin was a mass of twisted flesh and bubbled scar-tissue. “Can’t hurt me with bullets, boy. I’m too big for bullets.”
The voice came from the scarred area.
“Nope. Too damned weird.” Carl shook his head. “You want your Meemaw’s necklace, you turn yourself in. You don’t turn yourself in, I’ll hide it where you can never find it again.” He took a couple of steps back as Frank glared at him.
“I’ll kill you, boy!” Frank stepped forward and the voice came from lower again. Both of the man’s ham sized hands were balled into fists. And as he stepped forward a second time, Carl physically saw him change size. He grew, but not in a smooth or organic fashion. His flesh bulged along his hands and then rippled and bulged again. The sound of fabric tearing reached Carl’s ears and he saw the fabric of the old pants on Frank’s legs split as he took a third step. The shoe on his left foot exploded, falling into shreds. Carl stared at the foot that blew out the shoe, not quite sure of what he was looking at. It surely didn’t look much like a foot. There were thick lumps of uneven flesh, and there were bulging veins and at least three extra toes were growing out of that mess. And there was no way you could cram the uneven collection of muscles and bones into the conventional shoe it had been situated in a moment earlier. The already thick meat of Frank’s calf swelled and doubled in size.
Somewhere behind him Neal Crawford let out another plea to God and behind Frank, Mildred said a quick prayer.
As neither of their responses stopped Frank at all, Carl took aim and fired four more bullets into the man’s head and neck. He was very careful to aim for the eyes first. Payback for what the bastard had done to Nichole and Fred.
Frank roared as his head snapped back. Carl’s aim was solid and both of Frank’s eyes were blown out by the first two shots. The third tore a trench across his scalp and gave him a new part for his hairline. The fourth opened a very large hole in Frank’s throat. Blood and viscera spattered across the wall behind Frank, enough to let Carl know that the bullets had done their work. Frank didn’t fall this time. He kept coming.
And as Carl watched, the wounds in Frank’s face changed. They didn’t go away but they withered, becoming smaller. His eyes were still gone and he couldn’t see, so the giant groped blindly and Carl carefully moved back. He hazarded one quick glance to make sure that Neal was okay and was relieved to see that Neal had decided to be elsewhere. The older man was moving well away from the conflict.
“Now you made me angry, boy! Now I’m gonna whoop tha hayull outta you!” The words slurred as they came from Frank’s abdomen. Carl was tempted to look, but he was too busy watching the new eyes growing on Frank’s head. They didn’t look like normal eyes. They didn’t even look a little human. Still, a neat trick that, growing new eyes. The skin they grew on looked as rough and diseased as the flesh around whatever was making all the noises under Frank’s pants.
Carl shot Frank’s left knee three times. The man roared from both mouths and slid down the wall, screaming incoherently.
Carl took that as a good time to move past the giant, and managed to get halfway past him in the narrow hallway, before Frank slapped him into the wall hard enough to knock him through the plaster and make him drop his gun. His face and arm ached from hitting the wall, his hand screamed from the bruising force that had led to him dropping his weapon. Rather than let himself worry about it, Carl snatched the weapon up and ran for the door again.
He grabbed Mildred’s shoulders and spun her around. “Move!” He didn’t wait for her to agree, but instead ushered her forward, toward the door and his truck.
He had no idea how old Mildred was, but she could haul her ass when she needed to. The woman ran hard and fast, not quite screaming so much as she let out little squeaking gasps.
Behind them the walls shook and he saw the plaster splintering next to him as he moved her through the threshold. Once outside they both ran faster. Mildred bolted for the side of the house and Carl ran for his truck at high speed.
“Comeoncomeoncomeonohshitcomeon!” He wasn’t making much sense. Then again, neither was anything happening around him. Carl opened the passenger’s side door of his truck, sliding in a mad scramble to keep his feet. He looked back at the front of the house and saw the walls shudder. It seemed Frank was getting bigger again. Much bigger.
He was beginning to doubt whether his little arsenal was going to be enough to get the job done. Carl wasted two precious seconds before he grabbed up the 10 gauge. The damned things were barely legal weapons, add in the fact that the shotgun was loaded with solid lead slugs instead of buckshot and you were looking at the sort of stopping power that was normally reserved for elephant guns.
He looked at the front of Neal Crawford’s house, expecting Frank to come tearing through the walls. And he kept looking. After almost a full minute of waiting, he approached with extreme caution. The door
opened when he tried it. Despite his worries there was no sign of Frank. The hallway, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, all of it was damaged. As if someone had built a perfect replica of a house to small scale and then rolled a bowling ball across half of it. There were stress fractures and cracks in everything.
“Neal? Mildred?”
Neal Crawford walked into view at the end of the hallway his eyes wide and his skin pale. “You okay, Carl?”
Carl thought about that for a moment and nodded his head. “Frank?”
Neal pointed toward the back of the house. “He went out the back door.” The man looked back over his shoulder. “And the wall next to it.”
“Are you okay, Neal?”
“I don’t think he was after me, Carl.”
“He’s after his ‘Meemaw’s necklace.’”
Neal looked at him for a second. “Abigail Blackbourne.”
“You know her?”
“I might have met her when I was a kid, but not that I can remember clearly. I know the name.”
“Why is she so important?”
“My granddaddy used to say she was moonstruck.”
“What does that even mean, Neal?”
“Moonstruck might mean different things in different places, Carl. But to my granddaddy it meant she’d been around the Moon-Eyed people.”
“The who?” The term seemed vaguely familiar, but brought forth no strong recollections.
“The Moon-Eyed people. An old legend from this area. The Cherokee Indians used to talk about them. Said they existed in the area before the Cherokee. Before mankind.”
“’Before mankind?’” Carl shook his head. “What are we talking about? Little green men?”
Neal looked at him like maybe he was a little on the slow side. It was a “bless your heart,” moment. As in “Bless your heart, you’re too stupid to know any better.” Just lately there were several older men in his world who were looking at him like that. “Remember how we talked about Buck’s Head and Buckhead?”
“Yeah.” Still not getting it, but the man looked at him like he should be.
“Mooney’s Bluff.” Neal stared for a few heartbeats and then clarified. “Moon-Eyes Bluff.” This is the area where they were supposed to live so long ago.”
“You know a lot about these Moon-Eyed people?”
“No, but there’s a professor in Wellman that might be able to help you. He knew your daddy.”
Carl nodded. “Andy Hunter.” He shook his head. “I’m beginning to think I’m going in circles.”
Mildred moved into the room, walking with the timid steps of a recently startled doe. “Is everyone okay?” her voice shook as much as Carl’s knees wanted to.
The old man put an arm around her shoulders, and Mildred folded into him in a way that had nothing at all to do with a servant in a household. That was okay. Whatever was between them was strictly their business and none of Carl’s.
“Listen, I have to go after Frank. Call my office if you’d like. Call your insurance company. I’ll fill out all the paperwork as soon as I can.”
Neal waved a dismissive hand. “Just you be careful, Carl Price. Whatever is going on, you be careful.”
Carl nodded his head and walked outside. He took the back door and looked at the path Frank had left behind. The property dropped down a steep slope on the other side of the house and there was no way in hell that Carl’s truck would make it down that slope without sliding over the edge. Thick waves of kudzu hid the paths that might exist and almost guaranteed that a vehicle of any type would lose traction within moments. There was also no way in hell he was going after Frank without several weapons.
Much as it hurt him, Frank would have to wait. For now he had to find out about whatever the Moon-Eyed people were supposed to be. For that he had to get back to Wellman. Frank had been to Andy’s place once already. He hoped the bastard didn’t head there a second time. He was tired of getting surprised by whatever the hell Frank Blackbourne was. One thing for certain, the man wasn’t human.
* * *
“Welcome to Wellman,” Griffin said as they entered the city limits.
Charon wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting but Wellman looked like many other rural Georgia towns she had seen. A main street made up of buildings that obviously dated back to before World War II and a mixture of old family businesses and new shops aimed at modernizing the town.
“We’ll come back to the Sheriff’s Department after we drop our stuff off,” Griffin said.
Charon said, “There’s a hotel around here?”
“We’re not going to a hotel.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see.”
Griffin steered the truck down several tree-lined streets before turning into a small neighborhood of well kept houses. He pulled into the driveway of one such house, a ranch style with a two-car garage, and turned off the engine.
“Whose house is this?” Charon said.
“It’s mine.”
“Yours? You live in an apartment in Gatesville.”
“And I own a house.”
Griffin got out of the truck. He picked up Charon’s suitcase and started toward the front door. Charon just stood for a moment. What was the old Churchill quote? A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. That was Wade Griffin. She picked up her laptop and some of her books and followed him through the open door.
The house was clean and didn’t have that musty smell that closed up places sometimes have, and yet Charon sensed that the place hadn’t been lived in for some time. It felt empty. She stopped in the living room. There was a couch, a coffee table, and a television stand with no TV. That was it. Nothing on the walls. No knickknacks or decorations of any kind.
“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Charon said.
Griffin said, “I don’t live here but I have maids in and there’s a guy who mows the lawn and keeps and eye on the house. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet. I’ll probably sell it at some point.”
“Why did you move? This is a nice house.”
“I prefer living in a more metropolitan area. This house was someone else’s idea of a home.”
Charon had a sudden feeling that she should tread carefully. “Oh, I didn’t know you had been married.” She hoped it was had. Please let it be had.
“I wasn’t. Not exactly. Long story and not one I care to tell. I put your suitcase in the master bedroom down the hall there. I’ll be sleeping in the guest room.”
“I don’t mind taking the guest room, Griffin.”
“Nah, you’ll be more comfortable in the main bedroom. I’m going to make sure everything’s functioning in the kitchen. We’ll make a grocery run later when we go see Carl. Make yourself at home.”
Charon wandered down the hallway to the master bedroom. It was furnished in the same style as the living room. Early modern Spartan. A king size bed. Two bedside tables. A chest of drawers. Nothing else. Griffin had apparently moved all his personal stuff to his apartment and gotten rid of anything else. And why wouldn’t he? Like he said, no one lived here. But who had? Griffin had shared this space with someone, which might explain why he didn’t want to sleep in the master bedroom. Too many memories, maybe?
Charon put down the bags containing her laptop and her books. She pulled out one of the grimoires, the one she understood the most of, and started checking ward spells. Things to keep the monsters out. There seemed to be more ghost warding spells than anything else. People were really afraid of the dead, it seemed. Ah, demons. Now she was getting somewhere.
Griffin stuck his head in the door and said, “I just called another old school friend, Dennis Gramling. His grandfather is an expert on local folklore. I figured he would be someone we should talk to.”
Charon said, “That sounds fascinating. How long has Mr. Gramling lived in the area?”
“One hundred and three years.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. Dennis says his gra
ndfather Whit was born in 1909. He still lives by himself in a cabin in the woods. Has a cellphone though, apparently. Likes to talk to his grandkids. Dennis is going to find out if he’ll give us a couple of hours tomorrow.”
“That will be terrific. Jeez, he lived through both world wars.”
“According to Dennis, Whit’s still very sharp and has an amazing memory. Especially for spook stories as he calls them.”
“Don’t take this personally, Griffin but I may have to throw you over for Whit Gramling.”
“Chance I’ll have to take. In the meantime I’ve got some more calls to make before we go see Carl. Your laptop should work fine anywhere in the house. I’ve got souped-up Internet access.”
“Isn’t that kind of expensive, seeing as you never come here?”
“Oh I don’t pay for it,” Griffin said with a grin as he ducked out of the room.
Charon laughed and went back to her books.
* * *
Of course he wasn’t home. Andy Hunter was always home, but not just then. That was on Carl. He should have called first. Instead of lamenting it, he called the office—small twinge of regret/guilt/pain when Thompson answered instead of Nichole—and checked in. Nothing new. No surprise. Yes, he wanted someone to take a statement from Neal Crawford. No, he wouldn’t be coming in tonight. He was exhausted.
Home. He checked each and every room after he locked the doors, and then he took a very long shower, with water as hot as he could stand it. The heat helped soak away a little of the muscle tension. The cold tile floors didn’t even make him shiver as he dried off.
Carl felt like he was made of wood; like he was incapable of feeling anything, really. He knew the symptoms. Grief. He needed to shut down for a few hours, that was all. A decent night’s sleep and the rest of the world would make sense again.
He double checked all the doors and windows, and then set the .38 under his pillow and the hunting knife on the side of the bed. Paranoid? Maybe, but someone was moving into houses and slipping past locked doors, so maybe not.
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