by Gina Ranalli
Helen hit the floor with a crack of bones more painful than the pains of childbirth had been and suddenly she was unable to breathe.
A lung, she thought. A rib has torn straight through a lung. Maybe even both lungs, by the feel of it.
In the attic there was a loud scuffle, the sound of breaking glass, and when it was over, only silence and her own struggles to breathe.
Nothing more.
Chapter 7
Jason slammed and locked the backdoor behind himself and made a beeline for his bedroom upstairs. In order to get there, he had to pass through the kitchen where his mother was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette and tapping the ash into an already-overflowing ashtray.
“Hey!” she snapped at him. “Easy on the door.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled without pausing on his way out of the room.
“Wait a minute.”
He froze in place without turning around.
“Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he turned to face her.
“What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Were you in the woods getting high again?”
“No! I was . . . just walking around.”
She eyed him, skeptical, and she took another drag on her cigarette. After exhaling smoke from her nostrils, she shrugged and said, “Well, I don’t want you wandering around the woods this late. I’ve told you that a million times.”
Not in the mood to argue, he simply said, “Okay. Can I go now?”
She shrugged and went back to staring at the tablecloth; he made his escape.
On the way to the staircase, he glanced into the living room where his father sat in his recliner nursing a beer and watching television. He didn’t even notice Jason—or maybe he just pretended not to—but either way, Jason was grateful and made his way upstairs to his room, where he closed the door and leaned against it, taking a moment to steady his heartbeat.
He wished he could have told his parents what he’d witnessed in the woods, but knew they would think he was insane. They would certainly accuse him of being on drugs, which was a headache he didn’t need right now.
Once he felt a little calmer, he went to the window, which over looked the backyard. He peered through the shade slats at the dark woods at the edge of the Tremblay property.
He didn’t know what he expected to see—or, was that even true? As he studied the woods, feeling more frightened than he could ever remember feeling before, he realized he’d been tossed right back into young boyhood and knew exactly what he expected to see.
A monster.
One out of some old sci-fi film that most assuredly would have given him nightmares as a kid. He could see it very clearly in his mind’s eye.
Some lumbering, horrific creature, like in the remake of that movie The Fly, completely mobile and dragging one deformed foot behind itself as it slowly made its way across the back lawn towards the house.
And what would it do when it arrived at the door? Break in, of course. Break in and kill them all. Hiding would be useless. It would find them and they would be toast.
Jason shook his head, as though forcing himself out of a trance. “Man, you really are baked,” he mumbled. “Whatever that thing was, it was something natural. Just because you’ve never seen it before doesn’t mean it’s supernatural.”
He stared at the woods a moment longer before letting the blind slat fall back into place. At his desk, he powered up his computer. While he waited for it to boot up, he listened to his parents downstairs. They were going at it again, arguing about who even knew what.
Jason idly wondered if they were on the verge of divorce, and then his computer was ready and he thought for a moment before deciding to do a search on “huge cocoons.”
He was barely five minutes into the search when his buddy Chuck IM’ed him.
Wazzup bro?
Chuck was a bit of an outsider like himself and the two had bonded over that. Jason had even been encouraging Chuck to buy a cheap bass guitar so they could play together.
Nada, Jason typed back. Saw something messed up tonight tho.
There was a pause before Chuck replied. What happened?
He debated on just blurting it out, but then went with: You wouldn’t believe me if I told ya.
Haha! was Chuck’s reply. Dude, there’s nothing I won’t believe. Cept maybe you getting a piece from Stacy Conrad. Haha!
Jason sighed. Seriously, bro. It was messed up, for real.
What was it then?
I don’t know. Some weird thing in the woods. Like something out of the X-Files.
Haha! I want to believe!
Jason was beginning to regret mentioning the event to him at all and took too long to respond to his friend.
A minute passed before Chuck IM’ed again. So what was it?
Deciding to be honest, Jason typed. No clue. Some weird thing coming out of a cocoon the size of a bathtub.
He fully expected another of Chuck’s ‘hahas’ but instead Chuck replied with, No way!
Way, dude. Being totally serious right now.
And you have no idea what it was?
Nope. But it was nuts.
You baked right now?
The question annoyed him, but he let it go. A little. But it had nothing to do with being baked, dude. Something weird is out in the woods, man.
Just asking. Don’t get your panties in a bunch.
Anyway, I want to find out what it is. Doing a search right now. I’ll get back to ya later ok?
No prob. Hey, maybe we can check it out together tomorrow? I was gonna ask you if you felt like playing some Xbox anyway.
Jason smiled, knowing perfectly well that it was he and not Chuck, who owned an Xbox.
Sounds good. I do want to check that thing out in the daylight for sure.
Awesome. I’ll come by around noon or so.
Sweet, dude. See ya then.
Later.
Jason closed the IM box, feeling a little better having told someone about the strange event of the evening. Not only did he feel more at ease, but he actually felt a little silly, too. He’d been ready to crap his pants when he’d first come in the house and now, just knowing he and Chuck would check things out in the daylight and would probably discover something as simple as . . . well, he couldn’t think of an easy explanation, but they’d figure it out.
In the meantime, he continued his Internet search and before he knew it an hour had passed and he was yawning. He hadn’t discovered anything exactly like what he’d witnessed, but that didn’t particularly surprise him. He’d been getting a bit distracted by articles regarding huge cocoons of caterpillars in South America.
Close, but no cigar, he thought.
He shut down the computer and listened for any sounds coming from downstairs. All was quiet. His folks must have gone to bed and he was just about ready to do the same. Pushing away from his desk, he rose and headed to the bathroom, and by the time he’d returned and stripped off his clothes and climbed beneath his covers, he almost felt normal again. At least, as normal as he ever felt. He resisted the urge to peer out the window at the woods one last time, and shut off his bedside lamp. Not ten minutes later, he was snoring and his dreams contained nothing out of the ordinary, although Stacy Conrad did put in a special guest appearance.
Chapter 8
Luke Clark, Regan Cross, and her boyfriend sat at the couples’ round kitchen table, each with a cup of tea in front of them. Luke was just finishing up the interview when his radio crackled to life. It was Burke calling for him.
He gave the Cross woman an apologetic smile and nodded at her boyfriend. After punching the call button on the radio, Luke spoke into it. “Clark here. What’s up?
“What’s your location?”
“Just wrapping up the statement with Ms. Cross,” he replied. “Still at the house, but about to head back.
“Another call came in and the sheriff is already on his way. Wa
nts you to meet him at the address.” Burke gave the address, which was only a short distance from Luke’s current location.
“Affirmative,” Luke replied with a slight frown, expecting the conversation to end there, but Burke wasn’t finished yet.
“More strangeness, Clark. Description of an unknown assailant matches the call you’re on right now.”
Luke looked across the table at Regan and Paul and saw their eyes widen. Regan grabbed Paul’s hand and they exchanged a glance, both of them looking oddly excited in Luke’s opinion.
He was irked that Burke would just blurt something like that out for anyone to hear, but he’d have to take it up with him later. Into the radio, he said, “Ten-four. About to roll.” To Regan Cross, he said, “Thank you very much for your statement, ma’am. You can be sure we’ll try to get to the bottom of this situation.”
He started to rise, but Regan interrupted him. “Someone else saw it, too.” She gestured at the radio clipped to his shoulder. “You must believe me now.”
“I already believed you, ma’am. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“She’s not crazy,” Paul said almost as if stating a fact. To Luke’s ear, the man sounded almost relieved.
Luke tried to give them a reassuring smile. “Apparently not.” He got to his feet quickly and the couple followed him to the front door. Before he left, he turned and looked at them once more. “We’ll keep you apprised of the situation, Ms. Cross. You have my word on that.”
“Thank you, Officer.”
They shook hands and Luke was on his way, holding his notepad in one hand as he glanced up at the moon while he strode to his squad car. It appeared to be enormous, looming up there, brighter than he’d ever seen it, but he knew it was just an optical illusion.
As he drove to the site to meet Sheriff Collie, he pondered the description Regan had given him. It was odd, that much was certain, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of what it could have possibly been, and now someone else was making a similar claim. One which was convincing enough for Collie to want to talk to the witness in person?
This was quickly becoming one of the strangest nights he could remember in his four years of being a small town cop. Even weirder than the time a bear cub had somehow gotten itself trapped inside a dumpster behind the Quickie Mart.
When he arrived at the address, Sheriff Collie’s car was already parked at the curb, though empty.
Luke got out of his own car and strolled up the walkway, once more checking on the status of the moon.
He knocked on the front door and was greeted by a series of barks from within the house. A moment later the door opened and a middle-aged man stood there holding a smallish dog in his arms. “Quiet, Bruiser!” the man said. “Sorry, Officer. He’s been skittish since we saw that . . . thing.”
Luke was about to reply, but then Sheriff Collie appeared and introduced the men to each other as Luke stepped inside.
A few minutes later, Dan Helpen had described the events to Luke just as he’d apparently described them to the sheriff only a short time before.
When he was finished, Collie gave Luke a grim look. “Well, I reckon we should go take a look at the area.”
Luke nodded, though he wasn’t looking forward to it. After what Regan Cross had told him and now this Helpen fella, he was beginning to feel more than just a little creeped out.
“You guys don’t mind if I don’t tag along, do you?” Dan asked as the three of them walked to the door. “If I never see anything like that again for the rest of my life, it’ll be too soon.”
“No problem,” the sheriff told him. “You already told us where you were. We’ll just take a quick walk down there, have a look around and see if we can spot anything out of the ordinary, then we’ll come back.”
“Out of the ordinary?” Dan laughed without humor. “Well, that’s one way to put it. Kinda like saying seeing a dragon pop up outta a soda can would be outta the ordinary.”
Luke and Collie glanced at each, but didn’t reply to Dan’s comment.
When they were outside and Helpen’s door had closed, Luke asked softly, “What the heck is going on here, Sheriff? He said the thing was flying!”
“Yep, he did.” Collie didn’t bother to lower his voice.
“But the Cross woman said it was running on two legs. Like a human.”
The sheriff shook his head in apparent wonderment and pushed his hat back off his forehead. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and see for ourselves.”
This made Luke chuckle nervously. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not sure I want to see for myself.”
“Amen to that, Clark.”
The two of them continued to briskly stride down the sidewalk, both of them keeping a close eye on their surroundings and double checking the especially deep shadows. When they arrived at the spot Helpen described to them, approximately three blocks from his house, they stood looking around, but saw nothing unusual.
“He said the dog was sniffing a red car on the side of the road.” Collie indicated a red Ford about twenty yards back, parked close to the curb. “That’s probably it.”
“He also said the thing flew off in that direction, over those houses.” Luke pointed to the south. “Probably long gone by now.”
“But where to? And more importantly, what in hell are we dealing with here?”
Both of their radios crackled to life. Burke calling from the station again.
“You guys aren’t gonna believe this,” he told them, sounding excited. “Another call just came in. Couple teenagers are reporting they were attacked by some gigantic flying bug. Made them drive right off the road. No injuries, but the kids are pretty freaked out. Girl’s mom says she’s nearly hysterical. They’re at the hospital right now.”
Collie and Luke looked at each other with dread.
“Want me to head down there, Sheriff?” Burke asked.
Sheriff Collie replied, “And leave the station empty? Absolutely not. We’ll go.”
“Stand by,” Burke replied suddenly.
Luke feeling increasingly anxious rested his right hand on the butt of the 9mm in the holster on his hip. “I’m not liking the sound of this.” And he didn’t. His stomach had begun to churn and his mouth had gone dry.
Sheriff Collie, forever the professional, seemed more puzzled than alarmed. “Let’s head back to our cars. Whatever Helpen saw probably won’t be back this way.”
“You mean, whatever they all saw.”
As they started back, their pace even quicker than it had been on their way to the scene, Burke radioed back.
“Reported sounds of shooting over on Nelson Boulevard. What do you want to do, Sheriff?”
Sheriff Collie groaned, his face filling with dread. “Call in Deputy Casper. I don’t care how much she complains. Tell her we have a major situation developing here.”
“Will do, Sheriff.”
“Oh, man,” Luke said. “She is not gonna be happy.”
“She’ll need to get over it.” Back on the radio once more, he said, “And Burke?”
“Yeah?”
“Call in a few others, too. I have a feeling this is going to be a very long night.” As an afterthought he added, “And tell Deputy Casper to meet me and Clark at the Nelson Boulevard address. Get Simmons and Brown to the hospital to take statements, but make sure you give them a full heads up so they don’t think I got them out of bed to chase down a bunch of crazy kids smoking crack.”
“You got it,” Burke told him and signed off.
When they reached their patrols cars, they didn’t stop to tell Dan Helpen what they had—or hadn’t—discovered about his claim. There was no time.
Luke followed the sheriff’s car through the night, praying they were only on their way to tell a punk or two to knock it off with the early fireworks. But, deep in his gut, he had a feeling they were about to find themselves wading deep into something they most definitely didn’t want to be in.
He shoved the th
ought aside as best he could and concentrated on the road ahead. Every so often, though, he would catch himself gazing skyward, hoping against hope he would not see a man-sized creature with five-inch talons swooping through the darkness like some nightmare version of Batman.
“Firecrackers,” he muttered to distract himself from the more surreal thoughts swirling through his mind. “It’ll just be kids and firecrackers.”
Chapter 9
Jill Casper was woken by the sound of her cell phone playing a happy calypso tune, something she’d put on there to keep herself excited about her upcoming vacation. But when she saw the time on the digital clock, she immediately became annoyed. Most people would have been alarmed to get a call at this hour of the night, but Jill had no family to speak of, only a few friends—the ones she was planning to meet at the airport at 6 a.m. sharp—and she knew nothing bad could have happened to them, as she’d just seen them a few hours prior.
She answered the phone with a gruff, “What?”
“Hey, Deputy Casper.”
Jill instantly began to grind her teeth, only stopping long enough to say, “Officer Burke. How wonderful to hear your voice at this hour.”
“Sorry,” he said, “but the Sheriff needs you to come in tonight. Like, right now. Seems like everything is hitting the fan all at once.”
She resisted the urge to shout and instead carefully asked, “Does Steven not remember that I’m supposed to be on a plane to Aruba in a few hours?”
“Sorry.”
“Does he not remember that this will be my first vacation in four years?”
She knew she was being unpleasant, but she couldn’t help herself. When Burke didn’t reply, she took a deep breath and forced herself to go into professional mode. “Okay. What’s up?”
Burke sounded relieved to be able to talk about the job instead of listening to her vent and the more he spoke the less angry she became. By the time she’d hung up, she was wide awake and ready to get her butt in gear and do whatever needed doing.
She drove her cruiser as fast as was safely possible, the siren wailing. Luckily, there was very little traffic on the roads at this time of night. When she arrived at the Nelson Boulevard address, she saw Collie and Clark standing on the front porch of the house. She killed the siren and hurried across the lawn to meet them.