by Tim Waggoner
Dean held up his hands. “Please! There are some things I do not need to know. What happens in the shower, stays in the shower.”
Sam sighed. “I was going to say that I had an idea how we can set a trap for Frankenmutt.”
“Oh. Well, that I do need to know. You can fill me in on the way to Lyle’s.”
As Sam finished getting ready, Dean sat back in the chair and did his best not to think about Trish Hansen.
* * *
“We’ve seen a lot of crazy over the years, but Lyle’s got a good shot at winning a special place in the Winchester Hall of Weird.”
The brothers were in the crapmobile, heading back to Arbor Vale Apartments after interviewing Lyle Swanson. Sam sipped a latte with two shots of espresso that he’d picked up at a coffee shop on the way. Normally, he was careful to limit his caffeine intake, but the meager boost he’d received from his morning cuppa had already faded, and now he felt like taking a nap. He hoped he wasn’t coming down with something. Killing monsters was hard enough without having to do it while coughing, sneezing, and dripping snot.
“It didn’t help that he smelled like a distillery, and it wasn’t even noon yet,” Dean added.
Sam looked at his brother. He wanted to say something about pots calling kettles black, but he didn’t have the energy to get into an argument right then. He took another sip of coffee before speaking. “He didn’t seem that bad to me.”
The Winchesters had foregone their usual pose as FBI agents when visiting Lyle. They didn’t think the man would buy a couple Feds dropping by to check on a report of a two-headed, four-armed naked man eating garbage. Even with all their experience creating cover stories to explain their presence at crime scenes, they figured they’d have a tough time selling that one. Instead they’d told him they were staff reporters for Ohio magazine assigned to do a feature story on the state’s paranormal hotspots. Luckily, Lyle didn’t ask to see their nonexistent journalist IDs.
He hadn’t been able to tell them much more than they’d already gotten from the article in the Broadsider, and when he showed them the place where the multi-limbed monster had rooted through his trash, there were no discernible signs that anything out of the ordinary had been responsible. There were still remnants of garbage strewn across Lyle’s back yard: stained paper plates, empty liters of soda, crusty microwave meal trays, crumpled snack chip bags, and wadded-up fast-food wrappers. Lyle was a middle-aged man who proudly told them he was a lifelong bachelor, and from what Sam saw, the guy ate like one. When they asked him why he hadn’t cleaned up the mess yet, he said, “I ain’t touchin’ that crap! You think I wanna get monster cooties?”
Sam and Dean had exchanged looks at the cootie remark. It explained a great deal about why Lyle was a bachelor.
“Sam, his trash got hit by some kind of animal. A raccoon or a possum, maybe even a coyote. Not freaky Siamese twins.”
“Conjoined,” Sam said. “The proper term is conjoined twins.”
“Whatever. The point is that there’s nothing supernatural going on at Lyle’s place. He doesn’t need us; he needs a good shrink.”
“What about the peanut butter jar?”
“What about it?”
“The lid was off.”
“Yeah, I noticed. Are you saying that’s proof something with hands—like four of them—raided Lyle’s outdoor buffet? He may have thrown it away like that, with the lid and jar separate, and even if the lid was still on, raccoons have got hands, right? They could’ve gotten it off.”
“Maybe,” Sam said.
The EMF detector hadn’t picked up any energy emissions, and they hadn’t found any footprints, human or animal. They’d pretended to take notes, and they promised Lyle they’d send him a copy of the magazine when their article appeared. They left after that, and although Sam couldn’t disagree with his brother’s assessment of Lyle, he also couldn’t escape the feeling that the man was telling the truth. Call it hunter’s intuition. Maybe with a little work, he could convince Dean to reconsider Lyle’s story, but he’d worry about that later. Right now, they had a monster dog to catch.
They parked in front of the building closest to the pond, and walked down the hill toward the water. Both were armed—Dean’s shotgun loaded with regular shells instead of rock salt this time—and Sam carried a plastic shopping bag emblazoned with the logo of a large department store chain.
“I don’t know about this plan of yours, Sammy. It seems a little out there, even for you.”
Sam tried not to bristle at the implication—which admittedly he might be reading into his brother’s words—that his fragile mental state was responsible for him coming up with his unorthodox plan to lure the monster dog. “We know Frankenmutt drains life force, right? And after our encounter with him yesterday, he took a lot of damage. He’s going to need to heal, and that means he’ll have to feed.”
“Assuming he can heal,” Dean pointed out. “He might be like a movie zombie and just keep on rotting and getting nastier no matter how much he feeds.”
“Possibly,” Sam said. “But he didn’t show any sign of decay yesterday, right?”
“I guess not. He was one butt-ugly pooch, but his meat looked fresh enough.”
The brothers reached the pond, turned right, and headed into the woods.
Sam lowered his voice. “So if he needs to heal, he’ll be hungry, but he won’t be looking for food to eat, he’ll be looking for life force to absorb. That’s what we’re going to give him—or at least pretend to.”
“I get the logic,” Dean said, “I just don’t think that Frankenmutt’s going to fall for it. He may be some kind of freak, but he’s still a dog, and their senses are too sharp to...” He trailed off and pointed.
Sam looked where his brother indicated and saw the body of a rabbit lying on the ground, partially hidden by underbrush. At least, he thought it was a rabbit. The body had shrunken in upon itself, making the animal look like a skeleton covered with a layer of ill-fitting fur.
“Looks like Frankenmutt had a snack,” Dean said softly.
Sam nodded, and they continued deeper into the woods.
They encountered the desiccated corpses of other animals—more rabbits, a couple groundhogs, and a cat. The latter had no collar, and Sam figured it for a stray.
When they came upon a small clearing, Sam said, “This should do.”
Dean nodded and kept watch, shotgun at the ready, while Sam went to work. He knelt down and placed the shopping bag on the ground next to him. First he removed the lifelike baby doll they’d purchased from the store’s toy department. He’d already removed it from the packaging in the car, and he placed the pink, rubbery thing upon a small pile of leaves.
“Man, look at us, playing with dolls,” Dean muttered.
Sam ignored him.
Next, Sam took a container of baby powder—Softness for the Skin You Love was this brand’s slogan—and he sprinkled a good amount on the doll. He put the powder back in the bag and then withdrew a can of ready-made formula. He opened it and poured a little of the thick white liquid on the doll’s mouth. Not too much, just enough to simulate a baby who’s fed and needs its mouth wiped. He then set up the most important part of the illusion. He took his smart phone out of his jacket pocket, cranked the volume up as high as it would go, and activated the audio file he’d downloaded earlier. The sound of a baby crying echoed through the woods, and Sam placed the phone on the ground close to the doll’s head. Then he and Dean retreated to a pair of nearby trees and took cover. Sam set the plastic bag and the open can of formula on the ground, drew his Beretta, and together he and his brother waited.
The reasoning behind Sam’s plan was simple. Frankenmutt needed life force, and what had more life energy—at least in mystic terms—than a baby? Spiritually speaking, a baby was full of potential life energy. It was like a bank account full of money that no one had started to withdraw from yet. That made it a rich source of food for a creature like Frankenmutt. At least, that’s what Sam hoped.
When he’d been without a soul, Sam might’ve used a real baby as a lure. Oh, he’d have done everything he could to make sure the baby wasn’t harmed, but if something went wrong and the child died, soulless Sam wouldn’t—couldn’t have shed a tear. The thought made him sick, and he was glad those days were behind him. When Sam had first told Dean about his idea, Dean had admitted it had potential—even if it was a little on the demented side—but he’d voiced some doubts. You can make it sound like a real baby, but it’ll still smell like plastic and rubber. Once Frankenmutt gets close enough to get a good whiff of Sammy Junior, he’ll know something’s wrong and turn tail.
Sam agreed that was a possibility, which was the reason for the baby powder and the formula: to make the doll seem more like a real baby. Sam had no idea if Frankenmutt had ever had a real life as a dog—or separate dogs—before becoming a freakish conglomerate monstrosity, but if he had, Sam hoped that somewhere in his doggy brain resided the memory of what babies smelled like. If not, then he hoped the creature would be so damned hungry that the cries of distress would be enough to lure it, and it wouldn’t be put off by the scent of plastic.
He’d set his phone to play the audio file on a loop, and several minutes passed while they listened to the baby’s cries without any sign of Frankenmutt.
“Maybe he filled up on animals and he’s not hungry anymore,” Dean said. “Or maybe he’s too far away to hear.”
Sam figured either was a possibility. “Let’s give it a bit longer before—” He broke off. He’d caught sight of something out of the corner of his eye, and he spun toward it, Beretta raised and ready to fire.
He expected to see Frankenmutt bearing down on them, but instead he saw a man standing a dozen yards away, next to an old oak. Sam couldn’t make out his features clearly; almost as if he was viewing him through a sheet of gauze. He was of medium height and dressed in a dark suit. Blue? Black? Sam couldn’t tell. His hair color was light, most likely blond, but maybe white. His age was impossible to guess, as his facial features were a flesh-colored shimmer that rippled continuously like water.
“What?” Dean said, turning and bringing his shotgun around.
Before Sam could reply, the figure vanished. One instant he was there, the next—poof!—like he’d never existed. A wave of dizziness came over Sam, accompanied by a deep weariness that he could feel down to the bottoms of his feet. The Beretta felt suddenly heavy in his hand, and he thought it might slip from his fingers and fall to the ground. But he managed to maintain his grip on the weapon, and a second later the dizziness passed and the weariness eased, although the latter didn’t leave him entirely.
“It’s nothing,” Sam said. “Thought I saw something. I was wrong.”
Dean scowled at him, and Sam could guess what he was thinking.
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “All my marbles are more or less in place.”
Dean grunted. “It’s the less I’m worried about.”
Sam said nothing. So he’d had a hallucination, so what? It wasn’t his first, and he doubted it would be his last. The important thing was that it hadn’t lasted very long, and it hadn’t distracted him from—
A branch snapped behind them. Followed by a low, throaty growl.
“It’s behind us, isn’t it?” Sam said.
“Yep.”
The brothers whirled around and fired.
SIX
Lyle Swanson was not a happy man.
Not that this was out of character for him. Even at the best of times, he wasn’t the cheeriest of people. His fellow employees at Swifty Print had what they thought was an ironic, and hilarious, nickname for him: Mr. Sunshine. It wasn’t that he was foul-tempered. He didn’t get angry or frustrated when things went wrong, and he didn’t complain about setbacks. He wasn’t a particularly chatty man, but he didn’t avoid conversations with his coworkers, either. He was just one of those people who seem perpetually gloomy. If he’d been a cartoon character, he would’ve had a small black raincloud hovering over his head all the time. He shuffled when he walked, shoulders slumped, head tilted at a downward angle, facial features slack and drooping. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it was with the barest upturn of the mouth, the expression so muted that most people didn’t recognize it for what it was. And no one could ever remember hearing him laugh, not even so much as a soft chuckle.
There was no reason for Lyle to be a human incarnation of Eeyore, at least none that he could see. He’d had a happy enough childhood, and while he hadn’t been popular in school, no one had bullied him. In fact, most of the kids had barely noticed he existed, and the same went for the teachers. His life so far, while wholly unremarkable, had been almost entirely without conflict of any significance. Yes, he was a bit of a germaphobe, the kind of person who’s never without hand sanitizer and wipes. And he’d never had much interest in sex. It seemed like too much work and, to be frank, more than a little messy.
His job—you really couldn’t call it a career—wasn’t the most fulfilling in the world, but it paid his bills, and the benefits, while not outstanding, were sufficient for his needs. He had his own house, a small one just outside the town limits, where it was nice and quiet. When naked monsters weren’t digging in his trash can, that was.
His health was good, and according to his doctor, if he kept going as he was, there was an excellent chance he’d live to a ripe old age. There was absolutely no reason on Earth why Lyle should be, as his mother used to put it, a Gloomy Gus. He supposed he’d simply been born that way.
Today, however, he had more than ample reason to be unhappy. It was bad enough that a trash-hungry bare-assed monster had paid him a visit the day before, but what really stuck in Lyle’s craw was how everyone had reacted to his story. The police had come out to take his statement, sure, but had they done any real investigating? Had they taken photographs, dusted for fingerprints, taken plaster molds of footprints, or swabbed for DNA? Had they done anything that the crime scene investigators on TV did? Hell, no. They hadn’t even bothered to search the woods behind his property. He’d had the feeling that it had taken every ounce of control the officers possessed to keep from laughing the entire time they were talking with him.
As bad as that had been, the story in the Broadsider that morning had been worse. Good thing he got the paper delivered or else he might not have seen the article before heading in to work. He’d called in sick because he hadn’t wanted to deal with his fellow employees making fun of him all day. Marcy, one of Swifty Print’s managers, had answered his call, and when he told her he wasn’t coming in, she asked if he was playing hooky so he could spend the day with his new friend. Before he could respond, she’d added. Just be careful. You never know what a naked man will get up to. The stories I could tell you, honey! Just remember one thing... And here she’d paused for effect. Forewarned is four-armed!
He hung up on her peal of laughter.
Then those two magazine writers had come by. They’d seemed professional enough at first. They acted as if they were genuinely interested in hearing his story, and they listened closely as he went over the details. But when he showed them the mess in the back yard, they’d begun to seem doubtful. They hadn’t said as much, but he’d caught the looks they tossed back and forth. Looks that said, We got ourselves a real piece of work here. Like the police, they didn’t take any photos, and that was when he knew they weren’t going to include him in their article. Magazines always used pictures with the stories they ran. The fact that they hadn’t bothered to take any told him everything he needed to know about what they thought of his... well, he supposed you’d call it a sighting.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word cooties, he thought.
So now here he was, working in his back yard to clean up the mess left by the whatever-the-hell-it-was. He wore rubber gloves and a surgical mask to protect himself from the worst of the germs. He wished he had a pair of coveralls, too, but he didn’t. Instead, he’d donned an old long-sleeved plaid
shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which he’d bag up and throw away when he finished with the clean up. Even with the gloves, he didn’t want to touch the trash. Maybe monsters didn’t have cooties as such, but something had caused those weird deaths where people shriveled up like prunes, and he wasn’t about to take any chances. He didn’t own a tool designed for picking up litter, so he’d had to improvise. He’d taken a pair of salad tongs from his kitchen, and they did the job well enough. Of course, they’d have to be thrown away too when he was finished, but that was okay. Utensils were easily replaced. A man’s life, not so much.
Lyle was bent over and in the process of picking up a torn and empty package that had once contained fudge-covered vanilla-cream sandwich cookies—his only real vice—when he felt a tingling sensation on the back of his neck. He froze there, crouching, salad tongs gripping the cookie package in one gloved hand, a plastic garbage bag for the trash he’d gathered so far in the other. Someone—something—was watching him.
He didn’t consider himself an especially brave man, but he didn’t think of himself as a coward, either. He didn’t like scary books or movies, but not because they frightened him. He didn’t think they were realistic. Sure, bad things happened to people—sometimes really bad things, but awful as they were, they were understandable, even routine in some ways. Diseases, accidents, natural disasters, and most common of all, humans being shitty to one another. But to be scared of some horrible unknown thing lurking in the shadows? It had seemed ridiculous.
Now—frozen in mid-crouch in his back yard, the surgical mask covering the lower half of his face suddenly tight and stifling—he knew how the people in those stories felt. They weren’t simply frightened, they were terrified, breath caught in their throats, hearts pounding a trip-hammer beat, sweat erupting from their pores, stomachs filled with ice water. They felt small and weak, caught between two all-consuming but opposing impulses: to run away as fast and far as they possibly could, and also to stand statue-still and hope to remain unnoticed by the nameless thing that stalked them. Lyle now knew what they knew—what it was like to be prey. He’d never been so scared in his life.