The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  “No!” Dewey screamed. Mark struggled to get to his feet, but the Scodes held him down. Lexi covered her eyes, her reason scampering away from her.

  “I am the Master of the Wild Hunt,” Chasseur said. “You have looked upon the hunt and are marked and summoned. Your lifeblood feeds the Horned Man now.”

  Dewey looked up, past the madman now sprouting real horns out of his head, to the infinite stars, the cathedral of light in the cold, eternal vault of space. Then he saw what stood in place of the ancient tree now, the towering being whose antlers cradled the very stars within them. It turned its gaze—burning, pitiless, emerald fire—upon him and licked black, leathery lips capable of devouring worlds.

  Dewey Rears’s last thought as the knife pierced his heart was that the stars were a graveyard of dead, ancient light. Chasseur, the Master of the Hunt, tore the still hot, gushing heart out of the journalist’s chest and held it aloft to the looming Horned Man. The heart burst into blue flames as it was devoured in Chasseur’s hand. The shadow hounds fell upon the body, ripping and tearing, annihilating it, leaving no trace of skin, bone, or blood. They shifted as they fought over Dewey’s remains, melting and flowing between the forms of shadow people and the shadow hounds. The hounds bayed—a sound that frayed nerve endings. It was the sound of soul-deep despair, the sound all human beings make at their moment of greatest loss. The howls curdled the very air, raking the night with talons made of razor-pain.

  Cole, Lexi, and Mark all beheld the being that stood where the vast tree had been. It was impossible for their minds to process where the Horned Man began and the earth and the sky ended. Mark fell to his knees and tried to claw at his eyes and cover his ears, but the Scodes kept him from harming himself. Lexi screamed, accompanying the baying hounds. Cole held her tight as she screamed, but the light of reason had drained out of her eyes, replaced by a darkness that made the absence among the stars seem welcoming by comparison.

  ELEVEN

  “10-14”

  “So what is supposed to happen if you do let one of these black-eyed punks in?” Turla asked. They were searching the areas around the shopping-mall parking lots off Nameoki Road in Granite City. The ex-trooper had caught a ride with Jimmie, but Heck had insisted on taking his bike. They parked in the rear of the mall, where Jimmie’s rig wouldn’t get a second glace next to all the other 18-wheelers picking up or dropping off merchandise to the mall stores, snoozing in the their cabs waiting for the stores to open in the morning.

  “That’s the gotcha,” Heck said, sweeping his head from side to side as he lit a Lucky Strike and snapped his Zippo shut. This was stupid. The whole area was urbanized as hell. There was no way a girl’s body could be hidden here for two fucking years and not be noticed. “Nobody knows what happens, because no one ever sees or hears from you again. You go, ‘Boo,’ and all the Cub Scouts around the campfire crap themselves. It’s all bullshit.”

  “Don’t be so damned sure of all that,” Jimmie said. He was walking a few steps behind Tula, and scanning the area opposite Heck. “That dog-man over in McHenry, not too far from here, the Hatchet Man in Bloomington, Aunty Greenleaf—the white-deer witch in Brookhaven, New York … I’ve seen plenty of things that were supposed to be bullshit, right up until they weren’t.”

  “I’ve seen my share of crazy shit, too,” Heck said, exhaling smoke. “But creepy little kids with solid black eyes that talk you into oblivion by whining to be let in? That sounds like Grade-A Creepypasta shit.”

  Turla looked at Jimmie. “What the fuck is Creepypasta?”

  Jimmie shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me,” the trucker said. He paused and looked around. “This is about as far as the original search grid went, right?” Turla nodded. “Okay, let’s go wider and keep going in this direction.”

  “Why this way?” Heck asked.

  “If she ran the other way, she was headed for the front of the mall and all the traffic on Route 203. Since not a single soul reported seeing her, with all that traffic and lights and stores, and they were parked back here, in the rear lot, I’m assuming she ran this way.”

  “Sounds legit,” Heck said.

  They kept heading west. Off in the distance, a train’s horn bleated. They started across a wide, vacant field nestled between the various large industrial buildings. The sounds of the train got louder. They each clicked on flashlights as the island of light from the mall’s lot diminished behind them. It was cold, and the winter wind, perhaps angry because spring was, literally, only a few days away, bit into the three men as they searched, the beams of their lights sweeping the dark field.

  Heck paused and knelt. He shut off his flashlight and closed his eyes for a moment. Something was making the back of his brain itch.

  “What?” Jimmie said to the biker.

  “Shut up a sec,” Heck muttered. There was an old pain here, smeared on the air, on the dirt of this place. Fear, regret, despair. Heck could almost taste it in the back of his throat, like black bile and molasses—thick, acrid, but sweet. Heck opened his eyes. “You’re right,” he said as he stood. “She ran this way, fell here, then got up and kept running when she saw them coming across the field for her.” He pointed northwest, in the direction of another industrial building and parking lot past the field. “That way.”

  Jimmie looked at Heck for a long moment. “That’s some damn good tracking, if you’re right.”

  “I can’t explain it, either,” Heck said, “but I know I’m right about this.”

  “Okay,” Jimmie said. “Good enough for me, I reckon. Let’s keep moving.”

  Heck felt the deflection in Jimmie’s words. No questioning about this weird feeling? No skepticism? Heck filed it away for another time. The trucker wasn’t being a hundred percent with him, and sooner or later they would have words about that.

  Past the concrete pad of a parking lot was a low hill, a grassy rise. Beyond that the searchers could see the slowly drifting colossus of a moving freight train. Its horn wailed mournfully again. They climbed the rise and looked down into a triangular quarter acre of sparse woods and scrub huddled near the train tracks. Off to the right loomed a white water tower, farther back from the tracks and slightly behind the woods.

  “Okay,” Turla said. “Like I explained to you guys, we’re breaking it down into grids. You search your grid, make sure if there’s gnat shit in it, you know it. Once it’s secured, move on to the next grid space. We do this nice and organized, by the book. You read me, Red?”

  Heck shrugged and then nodded. “Yeah, CSI: Granite City, I gotcha.”

  They began. The train passed after a few minutes, and the sounds of the city all around them became distant and muted. Their breath streamed out into the growing cold, silent banners of silver. The lights that ran along the train tracks at distant intervals fed deep, long shadows among the trees. There was trash everywhere in the woods—used condoms and condom wrappers, crushed soda and beer cans, broken brown and green beer-bottle glass, crumpled wet paper and plastic bags from nearby stores, and what appeared to be several piles of decaying human feces.

  “Well, this must be the reading room for Granite City’s homeless folks,” Jimmie said, kicking some dirt over one of the piles. “What do we do if some cops wander by to roust the locals or we run into a railroad dick?”

  “You shut up and let me do the talking, capisce?” Turla said. “It’s still too cold for the street folk to be outside yet. We should be okay.”

  It was getting late. The cold was settling into everyone’s bones. Jimmie had needed to take a piss for about an hour, but he hadn’t yet hit the point of ducking behind a bush. They kept looking, searching for anything that might lead back to Karen Collie. Jimmie moved to the next grid and paused. There was a slight dip downward, like a bowl, and at the bottom of it was a concrete square; at the center of the square was a heavy, flat metal grate. The grate was covered with trash and long-dead leaves. It was locked down with a padlock that looked much newer and shinier than it should.
Jimmie began to sweep aside the trash. Broken glass tinkled as it was shoved away. Jimmie knelt and picked up a wide, sharp jagged piece of brown bottle.

  “Hey,” Jimmie said. “I think I got something.” Turla and Heck joined him. Jimmie was examining the padlock. “This lock is pretty new. Maybe before it got put on, she…”

  “This is a storm drain,” Turla said. “All these parking lots and flat, nonporous surfaces around here, this is to catch and redirect rainwater runoff.”

  “Can we get this open?” Jimmie asked, tugging on the padlock. He and Turla looked at Heck.

  “What?” the biker said. “You two fine, upstanding citizens just naturally expect the scooter trash to be able to pop a lock? That’s insulting.”

  Both men continued to look at him. Heck sighed and knelt. He reached for the case file folder Jimmie had set on the ground and slid a large, thick paperclip off a bundle of papers in the file. He spent a few minutes bending and straightening the clip’s wire and then snapped it in two. He bent one part into an L shape and then straightened the other end as best he could.

  “Give me some light, you assholes,” he muttered as he began to slide the wires into the keyway of the padlock. “I hope you know this is disrupting my crank-cooking schedule.” In a few moments, the padlock popped open and Heck slid it off and tossed it aside. He helped Jimmie and Turla lift the steel grate and flip it back on its hinges. Turla swept his flashlight beam down into the dark concrete well.

  “Gonna be tight in there,” the former trooper said. “She could have crawled in and pulled the grate shut behind her, but there’s maybe two and a half, three feet of clearance in that pipe.”

  Heck shined his flashlight on Aussapile’s gut and then up and down over Turla’s imposing frame. “Well, I guess we all know who’s going down in there, don’t we? You’re welcome.” Without another word, he dropped down into the shadows of the drain and vanished from sight.

  Jimmie self-consciously patted his gut and shook his head. He knelt by the opening. He could hear Heck grunting as he struggled into the narrow drainpipe.

  “You see anything?” Jimmie called out to his squire.

  “Yeah … rats … fucking rats, Jimmie, and lots of rat shit and … wait.” Heck’s tone lost all its attitude in a second. “Guys … I think I found her. I see shoes, pants … Jesus, she’s so small.”

  There was more scuffling and grunts as Heck tried to get closer to the body. Turla knelt as well and strained to listen. “Get the fuck off her, you fucking bastards,” Heck shouted. There were hollow banging sounds and audible squeals. “Jimmie, man, there’s not much left of her. The little bastards have been chewing on her. You were right about her cutting her throat. There’s a piece of beer bottle in her hand laying across her chest. She cut herself and just laid here to die. Why would she … I mean … how? Shit, man. Fuck. She’s just a little girl, Jimmie.” Heck’s voice was cracking, and Jimmie wished it were him down there in the hole with the little dead girl instead of the boy.

  “You’re doing fine, Heck,” Jimmie said. “Hold it together, soldier. You see her phone?”

  “Yeah … yeah,” Heck said after a moment. “Beside her. Looks pretty trashed, though…”

  Before Heck could continue, a bright beam from a powerful flashlight pinned Jimmie and Turla.

  “Police,” a woman’s voice said. “Put down the flashlights and put your hands on top of your heads. Stay kneeling. You make a move and I’ll blow you sick fuckers out of your shorts. Y’hear me?”

  Her voice had a strong southern accent. Turla noted that she was standing with her flashlight away from her body, the same way he had been trained. “I’m a cop,” Turla said, starting to rise. “My name is Gil Turla and I can—”

  “You can get your ass shot if you keep standing up,” Lovina said. “I know who you are, and I know you’re up to your eyebrows in this shit, Trooper Turla. Stay where you are.” Both men dropped the flashlights and remained still.

  “Officer, my name is Jimmie Aussapile,” Jimmie said. “I can try to explain all this to you, if you can try to keep an open mind about—”

  Lovina was moving down the hill, slowly, sweeping the beam of her Maglite back and forth between the two men’s faces. “Yeah, I know about you, too,” she said. “You want me to keep an open mind about you and your buddies here abducting, raping, and killing children, asshole?”

  “Bullshit,” Jimmie said. “I’ve never hurt a kid in my life.” The anger was welling up in his voice. “We’re out, freezing our asses off a long fucking way from home, trying to find this little girl so we can get her home to her family and stop the sunabitches that put her here from doing this to any other kid. Who the fuck are you, exactly, lady? That accent is bayou, not Windy City. I don’t see no uniforms, no badge, no backup.”

  “Yeah, who are you with?” Turla asked. He remained kneeling, but his eyes, squinting against the light, were accusatory.

  Lovina was impressed. He might look like a redneck trucker, but Jimmie Aussapile was nobody’s fool. No wonder he had skated without being charged so many times—the sick child-killing fucker was smart. Lovina was within a few yards of them now. She decided she needed to double-down. She held the Maglite with her gun hand, keeping the kill circle on Turla, since he looked a bit more fit to jump and make a sudden lunge. She slipped two pairs of cuffs out of her leather-jacket pocket and tossed them on the dirt before the two men.

  “I’m the cop who will put fucking holes in you both and write it up as pretty as you please on the paperwork,” she said. “Now, Aussapile, you cuff him behind his back.”

  “Look, you really don’t want to do this,” Jimmie said. “We’re not who you think we are. We’re the good guys. Swear.”

  “Cuff him,” Lovina said.

  Jimmie sighed and picked up both pairs of cuffs. He tossed them into the open drain. “Oops,” he said.

  Lovina shook her head. She was close enough now for both men to see her behind the light—athletic, but still a little curvy, dark brown skin, and shoulder-length straight black hair, with straight bangs that looked kind of like Bettie Page’s. Her eyes were maybe hazel behind the glare of the light, but they were, for sure, one hundred percent no bullshit. Cop’s eyes, soldier’s eyes.

  “Get down on your bellies, both of you,” Lovina said. “And one more ‘Oops,’ Aussapile, and I will put a bullet in your kneecap. Down, now.” Both men complied.

  Turla looked over at Jimmie. “Well, that was a great idea,” he said to the trucker. “You really turned the tables on her.”

  “Better’n being cuffed,” Jimmie muttered.

  “You, down in the hole—Sinclair,” Lovina shouted, keeping her gun on the other two men and sweeping her flashlight toward the drain. “Climb up here nice and slow now.” There was only silence. “Come on, Sinclair. You really want to be dragged kicking and screaming out of there by the uniforms, like a little bitch? I thought you were a badass biker?”

  Moving to the edge of the drain, Lovina aimed her gun down in a Weaver stance, with both arms locked in a triangle, both hands steadying her .40-caliber Glock and the Maglite, together, as she took a quick look over the ledge of the drain and down into the dark. It was a good five-foot drop to the drainpipe below. The light caught Heck Sinclair’s eyes, red, like a rat’s, in the beam as he hurtled up toward her. The biker launched himself out of the well, springing up with a snarl. He cleared the drain with a good three feet to spare and tackled Lovina, who managed to snap off two quick, barking rounds at the almost flying biker. They crumpled together in the cold, trash-strewn dirt of the small basin by the drain, struggling.

  “I am a badass biker,” Heck growled as he tried to wrestle the gun out of Lovina’s hand. “And I’d like to add that I feel the term ‘little bitch’ is hurtful and demeaning.” She drove the Maglite, like a club, into the side of his face, accompanied by a metallic crunch. Heck rolled to one side from the impact, and Lovina scrambled to capitalize on his momentary discomfort an
d disorientation. She began to get to her feet. Heck swept his leg out and knocked her back down. As she fell, she twisted toward Heck and planted an elbow in his stomach. Heck groaned and rolled away from the cop, struggling to his feet. Lovina was half crouched, trying to do the same thing. She had heard Aussapile and Turla getting up during the struggle, and the panic of being piled on from different directions filled her with the numb momentum of pumping adrenaline. She fired another round, and this time it blew a hole in the shoulder of Heck’s leather jacket, missing his skin by fractions of an inch. Heck paused, thinking for a second that he had actually been hit.

  “I am not fucking around here, Hector,” Lovina said.

  “Do not fucking call me Hector,” he snarled, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Uh, excuse me, kids,” Jimmie called out. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m going to take a shot in the dark and assume they’re not with you, Officer.”

  Both Lovina and Heck turned their heads to look toward the top of the hill, where the trucker was pointing. There were six of them, children, all hooded by their jackets. They were silhouetted by the light pollution of the city, all still as statues. Jimmie’s flashlight moved over them. Their faces were impassive, their eyes a cold, black void.

  “Shit!” Lovina said. She lowered the gun and renewed her Weaver stance and grip, catching her breath. She recognized the two in the middle as the same ones she had encountered outside Dewey Rears’s apartment, and who had pursued her. “You three get out of here. I’ll deal with you later, I promise you that. Go on, run!”

  The two children who knew Lovina each raised an arm. They did it in a fluid, perfectly coordinated motion. They both pointed at Lovina.

  “You,” all six said as one. “You need to come with us, you have been summoned. You have seen.”

  “Seen what?” Lovina asked. She looked at the three men, who were all looking at the kids and then at one another. “I told you to get the hell out of here, right now! Now go!”