She was alone in the dark as she sat up. A cool breeze blew through her open window. A musky scent, almost piss-like wafted in from the night. There was something out there. Fear slithered through her stomach as she found herself moving involuntarily from the bed to the undulating silk curtain.
A grunt slowed her steps, stirring a strange excitement within her.
“Hello?” she called out.
Wendy reached for the screen, but found it missing.
“Wendy, you okay?” Johnny said from the doorway.
Whatever had been by her window tore off into the night. She ducked her head outside, but whatever it had been was already gone.
“What is it?” Johnny said, stepping behind her.
“Nothing, I guess,” she said. She was about to pull her head back in, when the sight of the window screen lying on the ground stole her attention.
Someone was here. Paul? No.
“I thought I heard you crying in here.”
She pulled her head from the window and closed it.
“It’s been a long day. I just need to get some sleep.”
“Hey,” Johnny nodded at the window. “Did you hear something out there?”
She shook her head from side to side and moved to her bed, climbing under the sheets.
He leaned to look out the window. “I don’t see anything. You sure you’re okay?”
“It was just a dream.”
“Do you want to me crash in here, I can sleep in the chair?”
“I’m fine. It was just a dream, really.”
“All right, well, I’m down the hall if you need me.”
“Thanks for checking on me.”
“Night, sis.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head.
The sweet gesture brought tears to her eyes. She turned onto her side so that he wouldn’t see.
“Night,” she said.
When Johnny closed the door, she felt the weight of the entire night crash over her. Paul was dead and it was all her fault. She led him out to that thing. She broke his heart. She didn’t deserve Paul’s love. Or her brother’s, or anyone’s.
…..
Beneath the Eastern Hemlock, the cursed creature, tired and confused, fell to the ground. Dawn pressed hard against the darkness. The night, incredibly full and exhausting, had reached its end. The moon would be full tomorrow and the beast would make the most of its opportunities. And then, Arthur would take the woman. She had sensed him. He felt her rhythms change. Fear, yes, but something else inside her had awakened. He worried he’d made a mistake getting so close, even being careless enough to tear the screen from the sill, but the feelings had been justified. She had sensed him and come to him.
He would unleash hell. He let the image of blood, tears, and pain coax him on.
Yes, there would be hell and blood. Hell and blood.
…and the girl.
REVELATIONS
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ben stared out at the trees. Mesmerized by the way they danced with the gray morning, he wondered if his fate was now tied into the terrifying stories of the Beast of Brenton Woods. It was his father who told him the stories, his father that had seen the thing, and now, so had he. This mystery was in his blood and he now felt that, in some way, part of his heritage. The beast was another link to his father. A secret between the two of them.
Ben looked for his mother’s car. She was still gone. This was his chance to put the gun back. He leaned over and pulled the pistol from his rucksack and hurried to her bedroom. Sliding his mother’s reading chair to the closet, he reached toward the back of the closet where his mom kept the weapon. Just as he grabbed the box, the chair wobbled. Grabbing hold of the shelf for balance, he wound up knocking papers and other trinkets to the bottom of the closet. He nearly fell off the chair and cursed himself for being an idiot as he hopped down and set the gun on the floor.
He gathered up the things that had fallen. One of his mother’s glass dolphin pendants lay broken in two.
Shit.
It was one his father had bought her when they went to Sea World. Ben couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her wear it. She kept the painful items that reminded her of his dad shelved out of sight. He’d have to tell her. He couldn’t just let it sit there in pieces. He wasn’t about to tell her he’d messed with the gun, he’d have to come up with a good reason for being in her things. As he was pondering a better lie, one item in particular caught his eye.
He picked up the dull brass key.
“No way,” he said.
He knew what it went to.
He scooped up the papers and the smaller items, climbed the chair, but more careful this time, and placed them up where they belonged. He took the dolphin, the key, and the gun back to his room.
Taking only the key, he hurried downstairs and opened the basement door.
Growing up, he’d always wondered about the black door imbedded in the basement wall. His parents claimed it went to a part of the basement from when the house was originally built, most likely an old dirt basement. They’d presumed one of the subsequent owners had filled it in and closed it off. What had nagged at Ben ever since he could remember was that the door handle turned. There was a keyhole that prompted his suspicion that there must be a key to it somewhere on the property.
Standing before the door, his stomach flared with excitement. He slid the key into the hole and blurted out, “Yes,” when the door made a lock click.
He clamped his hand around the knob and turned, and for the very first time in his life, the black door opened.
A dank, earthy smell hit his nose. He pushed the door inward and checked the wall for a light. There was none.
Backing out, he saw a flashlight on the shelf above boxes of his old school papers that his mom couldn’t seem to part with. He grabbed it and flicked the knob praying the batteries were still good.
Ben crossed the threshold into the unexplored frontier.
The room was small, cool, and empty, save for the small stack of wooden pallets with two good-sized boxes set atop of them.
He set the lantern on the edge of the top pallet and opened the first box. Shining the flash light down in,, he could see what it held. He rifled through the pile of notebooks and pulled out the one on top. He flipped open the cover. The drawing on the first page stared back at him. He knew those eyes well. A sketch of the Beast of Brenton Woods.
“Ben? Hey, are you down there?”
Shit.
He hadn’t heard his mother come home. He dropped the notebook back in the box, shut the flash light off, and quick and quiet as a mouse skittered from the non-existent room, carefully closing the door so his mother wouldn’t hear it.
“Yeah, ma, I’m just down here looking for something.”
“Get up here and help me get the groceries in, would ya?”
“Be right there.”
He picked up the phone and dialed Tyler’s number. He couldn’t wait to share the news of the key, the secret room, and his father’s boxes.
“Dude, I just left your house. What’s up?”
“Legacy.”
“What? What the heck does that mean?”
“What if…what if the beast, the white wolf…what if it’s my legacy?”
“Did you get into your mom’s box of Kool-Aid? If there is something out there, it’s got nothing to do with you, man. I mean, it doesn’t even make sense. What have you ever done that was special…” There was silence on both ends of the line. “Dude, I’m sorry,” Tyler continued. “I didn’t mean anything by that... I’m just… this whole thing is crazy. I just want to watch Adventure Time and pretend everything is normal, ya know? It’s summer for crying out loud.”
Until an hour ago, Ben had wished he could close his eyes and go back to sleep, too. Just forget. Pretend it was all a bad freaking dream. That he’d never seen those horrible yellow eyes. That he didn’t feel a connection with this monster. That he had another choice. Now, however, everything h
ad changed. He couldn’t turn away, and moreover, he no longer wanted to. But that didn’t mean he had to drag his best friend into it. He had no proof that the beast let them live the other night. It was completely possible that the monster would kill them if it got another chance.
“Dude,” Tyler said. “You still there?”
“You’re probably right,” Ben said. “Listen, man. I’m sorry. I just haven’t been sleeping very well since that night. I’ll give you the night off from all this, okay?”
“Thanks, man. You should get some rest, too, or fire up the PlayStation and get lost in Battlefield. Just take a break.”
“Yeah, I think I will. I’ll call you tomorrow?”
“Okay, later, man.”
“Later.”
Ben hung up and returned to the window.
It was out there. It could have killed him that night, but it didn’t. It let him escape. He knew it in his bones. The question was why? Why had it let them get away?
What does it all mean?
He hoped the answers were in the dirt basement. He pulled the key from his pants pocket and formed a plan.
“Hey, ma,” he said, peeking his head into the living room. She was folding laundry in front of the television. “I’m gonna head out to Tyler’s for a couple hours, is that okay?”
“Just be careful. And I want you back before dark. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma.”
“Before dark.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Out the door, Ben grabbed his bike and pedaled around to the back yard out of his mother’s sight. He stashed his bike and his rucksack in the woods next to the trail leading to the fort, and hurried back to the side of the house and snatched the wheel barrow, dumping the grass he’d raked up the other day. He pushed it to the basement storm doors, set it down, and snuck back into the house.
He produced the key and entered the dank, little, dirt room. He hefted one box at a time out to the wheel barrow. The precious cargo set to go, he locked the secret door, and climbed out into the daylight. Creeping around the corner of the house, Ben peered through the living room window, making sure his mother was still occupied. She had her phone pinched to her shoulder talking to someone as she sat folding laundry.
He rolled the wheel barrow to the path. Shouldering his bag, he continued rolling the boxes along. The trail was beaten down from years of he and Tyler tromping through to their fort.
Crossing the creek proved to be too much for the wheel barrow. He’d have to carry each box across the water and to the fort. He set on his knees before the first box, holding onto the cardboard flaps hiding his father’s past. His future. This was his legacy. It felt right. He was destined for this. Ready to find out what secrets awaited him, Ben dove in.
The first note book with the sketch of the beast had several entries. They were hard to read. His father’s handwriting was terrible and difficult to decipher, but he did his best:
This is the journal of Scott Cutter. It’s December 6, 2011.
It was out there. I saw it when I was a kid. The white wolf, the Beast of Brenton woods. My cousin Skinny saw it too. It was huge. Down there by the creek. Right where it killed those teenage girls. I don’t know what we were thinking. We should have taken our sleeping bags and run home.
Now I’m locked in this relationship with it—
“What?” Ben stopped.
What the hell happened? What does he mean relationship?
He read on:
The next night, summer vacation was over and Skinny went home to New Hampshire. I went back out to the Point that night alone. My mother always used to say curiosity killed the cat because I was always doing things I shouldn’t. Always had to discover everything the hard way. She also told me I must have had nine lives with some of the dumb things I’d gotten myself into. If she knew what I’d seen and that I’d gone anywhere nears where them girls had been found, she would have had my father whup me so good I’d never walk again.
Sometimes I wish she would have found out. It would have been easier. It would have made my life simpler. I could have taken Susan and Ben and left Coopers Mills altogether, started a life free from this thing.
I’m getting off track here.
I went back to the Point and it was there again. Waiting.
It wasn’t as big as I thought it should be. Maybe half a foot on me, but it was built like Bruno Sammartino and as intimidating as Darth Vader.
I fell on my ass and pissed my pants as the monster and its giant fangs pressed within inches of my face. I could smell the scent of death of blood and meat on its breath. I was ready for it to kill me then and there, but it didn’t. It rose, throwing its massive shoulders back and howled to the bright yellow moon that matched its horrible eyes.
I cried. I have no shame writing that. I cried. Cried like a baby for my mother, for my father, for God. As the beast stepped away, I covered my face and waited for it to attack. Instead, it ran to the trees and off into the night.
When I finally got up, amazed to be alive, something came over me. A sense of communion. I’d been in its presence and survived. It had every chance to finish me like it had those girls, but it didn’t.
Ben set the notebook down. He hadn’t felt this close to his father in a long time. He gripped the notebook in his arms and to his chest and cried.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Sheriff Decker gnawed at the cigarillo clenched between his yellowed teeth while white-knuckling the steering wheel of his Rambler. After the phone call from Rutherford, he left the conference without a word. Just got up and walked out. He hadn’t slept a wink. He couldn’t concentrate on a fucking thing. The damn beast was back. Of course, it was. And of course, it chose the one weekend he’d left goddamn town to do so. Kenny was too stupid to leave in charge. He knew the deputy would give Wilcox a hard time, but Dennis knew Kathy could handle him. But now, there was this mess. She was a peace officer. In this situation, she might just be too damn good. He couldn’t have her digging around the old Dresden Place. She’d bring a whole world of shit down on all of them. Plus, if she did, like her or not, he’d have to kill her, too.
The Rambler roared up I-95 as Decker raced home remembering a past he’d tried damn hard to put away.
Dennis had been sixteen the summer Marie Haniger and Alice Turner were discovered torn up in Brenton Woods. His father, Sheriff Bill Decker Jr., handled the chaos and fear the only way he could figure out. When the girls were buried, their deaths were blamed on a roaming black bear. A black bear that his father went up north to shoot and deliver to the papers as one he shot in Brenton Woods. He’d brought Dennis along with him and entrusted him with the plan. How the bear strayed so far from its normal stomping grounds was up for the boys at the paper to come up with.
There was only one other death that his father pinned on the beast, though it never made the paper. Dennis recalled seeing the body of a hiker from Vermont. A man by the name of John Willis. Willis had been gutted from the navel to his throat, body parts scattered, wallet and hiking gear untouched. Dennis helped his father bury the body deep in the woods.
The night his father decided to go hunting for the beast, Dennis had been up north skiing with Hannah Shoemaker.
He came straight home the next morning when his mother phoned to say his father never returned from his hunt. Dennis joined his father’s deputies in their search and was with Billy Moss when they found the body.
Heart attack.
His father had been in poor health for much of his adult life, but he’d been set in his ways and would be damned if he was going to miss out on the finer things in life, such as fried chicken, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and Budweiser beer. He was stubborn as hell and twice as tough.
Cardiac arrest was never a matter of if, but when. But his death wasn’t quite that simple. Dennis paid close attention to the oddities. For instance, his father’s rifle had been fired several times. He’d taken shots at som
ething prior to his demise. And of course, there was the type of ammo he’d carried with him on this hunt— silver bullets.
That was the first time the monster disappeared. Dennis refused to believe it was dead. Not until he could recover the bastard’s body.
He enrolled at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy at seventeen. He served ten years as a Maine state trooper before returning home in 2000 after Sheriff Dyson’s resignation, and easily won the vacated position.
While he’d been away, his focus had been on the job, learning the skills, sharpening his tools, and becoming one of the Academy’s most decorated officers. His focus shifted the moment he put that Grantham County sheriff’s badge on. While he wasn’t about to go into the woods alone, hunting shadows in the night, he knew one thing. If the beast was still here, hiding, it was close. And if it was indeed a werewolf as his father believed, it was more than a monster, it was a man. Which meant that person may be from his hometown or one of its surrounding off-shoots. Decker kept his eyes and ears open. Following any possible clue, any bizarre death, any strange reports, certain one would eventually lead him to back to the beast.
When nothing turned up in his first two years, doubt began to creep into his mind. Not that there was a killer out there somewhere, but that perhaps it had moved on from Coopers Mills or worse yet, it may have died. Vengeance thus stolen from him. He nearly gave up.
Until Eric Shepard and Britney Perkins happened.
Britney, a cute thing that worked as a waitress as Deuce’s Shake n’ Fries, was found torn up half a mile from the Point. The scene was brutal, worse than what Dennis remembered of the teens back in ’85. There were a few things different about the slaying. Britney’s right leg was sheared off from the pelvis. Her head lay nearly a thousand feet from her body. Her once beautiful face was unrecognizable.
Unlike the other kills, Britney had been sexually assaulted prior to her dismemberment.
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