by Gregory Kay
Watching the live satellite feed of the two police cars leaving the area, turning onto 62, and heading north, Davis nodded, unseen by Smith on the other end of the communication...at least he thought he was, although with Smith, you could never be sure. After all, they were all similar in appearance, and dressed and sounde sounded exactly the same.
“Did they find anything?”
“They were interested in a tree branch the garuda perched on before leaping onto the vehicle three nights ago. They were speaking of getting tools to come back and remove it for study, but the woman fell from the tree and injured the man before they were called away by the third man. We believe it would be best if they were not allowed to carry out that plan.”
“I agree completely. I’ll get someone over there to deal with it immediately.”
“Shall we deal with the individuals involved too?”
“No. Absolutely not, at least not at this time.”
“It would be safer to eliminate them.”
“No!” he barked, more sharply than he’d intended, and realized it no sooner than the word had left his lips. I need these blood-thirsty bastards! He was also scared shitless of them and what they were fully capable of doing to him or anyone else if they decided he had offended them, but he wasn’t about to admit that part, even to himself. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to snap at you. Still, it’s best to do it this way. Those earlier four were social outcasts; they're unimportant, and they won’t be missed. That’s not so with the reporter and the police officers, or even the primary witnesses; if anything were to happen to them, at least at this time, it would attract too much attention to this area, more than we could hope to cover up. The project would be delayed at the very least, or our government might cancel it altogether.”
“This project will not be canceled; that is something we will not tolerate. Do you understand?”
Even over the radio, the weird voice carried the warning plainly enough for the Colonel to recognize it for what it was. He wasn’t used to being threatened, and he didn’t like it, particularly when the threats in question were made by those more than capable of carrying them out.
“Then let us handle it; we know our people best, and we don’t intend to let the project be threatened. What I need from you at this time is just to keep an eye on them, and keep searching for any more garudas, chupacabras, and for anything else coming out of there. The less stirred-up the public gets, the better.”
“Very well; we will continue as we are...for now. But be aware we reserve the right to unilaterally act in our best interests should the need and the opportunity to do so coincide.”
There was no point in doing anything but nodding and saying he understood, because Davis had been aware of that for a long time.
“He was leaving just a minute ago; let me see if I can catch him.”
Mashing the button that put the caller on hold, the dispatcher looked up at Pete Morris as the Sheriff was shrugging into his jacket. Despite the fact that the caller could no longer hear her, she instinctively put a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and kept her voice low anyway, just in case.
“Have you left yet?”
“That depends; who is it?”
“It’s an Officer Slaven, from the Columbus Ohio Metro.”
Pete had no idea who Officer Slaven was, but had a feeling it might be important; not many calls came in from up there, and when they did, it usually involved a suspected drug courier headed their direction. Dope runners were the bread and butter of most of most rural departments; a bust not only got drugs off the street and made the department look good at the same time, but the confiscated cars and money certainly helped an always-lean budget.
“I’ll take it,” he said, and she handed him the receiver.
“Sheriff’s office, Sheriff Morris speaking.”
“Sheriff, this is Officer John Slaven.” The accent was Midwest urban, exactly what anyone would expect from that area. “I won’t keep you long, but I heard through the grapevine you were looking for four teenagers: Arthur Barnett, Lester Boggess, Denise Cooper, and Tommy Losey. Driving a white ‘93 Chevy van.”
“Yeah, that’s them; their parents called when they didn’t come home the other night. I hate to ask what they did up there.”
“Nothing, really; they were just so suspicious-looking I pulled them over and checked them out. They claimed they were headed for Seattle; I didn’t have anything on them and there was nothing illegal in their van, so I had to let them go. Later in the afternoon I was talking to a Highway Patrolman who'd heard you had a missing persons report on them, and I thought you might like to know.”
“Thanks,” Pete told him sincerely, “You just saved me a lot of grief. Now, if they’ll just keep going, it’ll be even better!”
The voice on the other end laughed.
“I know what you mean, Sheriff; I wish they’d pick up some of our own weirdos up here and take them with them. Well, I won’t take up anymore of your time, so you have a good evening.”
After Pete said goodbye and hung up, he asked the dispatcher to start connecting him with the parents of each of the ‘Devil’s disciples,’ so he could keep them from worrying while also sowing some major public goodwill at the investigatory prowess of the Mason County Sheriff’s Department.
There was absolutely no reason for the possibility to occur to him that the caller wasn’t actually Officer Slaven of the Columbus Metro, or even a cop at all, or that the call was only routed through a number in Columbus, and had actually originated in Mason County, only a few miles away from his office.
CHAPTER 11
“She didn’t come in for milking this morning, but my wife woke up with her eyes swollen almost shut, and I had to take her to the doctor. You know how the blasted hospitals are; had to wait around all damned day!”
On the opposite side of the hill from the dairy barn, they stood in a small group beside a broad, shallow pond, like a saucer in the earth, its sides gently sloping. It had been an unusually dry fall, so it was only half-full. Looking away from the dead Holstein lying on her right side in the mud halfway between the scummy water and the rim of grass surrounding it, Luke asked, “Is she alright?”
The animal’s owner, William Lewis, waved a calloused, work-hardened hand at the carcass.
“Hell no, she ain’t alright; she’s dead! Look at her! That’s twelve hundred dollars worth of cow laying there in the mud; been there all day, so I can’t even salvage the damned meat!”
Luke sighed.
“I wasn’t talking about the cow; I was asking about your wife.”
“Oh...yeah, she’ll be fine,” he assured them with a dismissive wave of a hand before frowning thoughtfully. “It’s weird, though; the doc said she had conjunctivitis, and asked if she’d been welding or something.” He shook his head. “Mary, welding! That woman couldn’t put a cob handle on a file!”
Fiona tuned out the banter; she felt slightly queasy, and swallowed hard. Until the incident with the deer last night, she had never been around large dead animals, and besides, this cow...
I didn’t seem to bother Luke; he walked right out to it, the rubber boots he had taken from the cruiser’s trunk sinking to the ankles in the mud. Once he was by the animal’s rear end, he bent over and lifted its stiff tail with a rubber-gloved hand.
“See?” the farmer said, “It’s just like I told you; somebody’s cut the ass and cunt right out of her, and then they took her bag!” He spat a brown stream of tobacco juice on the ground and disgustedly said, “I ain’t never seen the like.”
It certainly looked like that to Fiona; there was a gaping circular hole under her tail and another in her belly, both with organs swollen with the building gas of early decay beginning to protrude from them. Half the head was visible – the rest was sunk in the mud and water by the very edge of the pond – but the skinned lower jaw and the empty eye socket gave mute witness that something or someone had been busy with that end too.
�
��Could be predation,” Harry offered, “Lots of things will eat a dead cow – buzzards, coyotes, dogs, possums, and the like – but not many things can bite through the skin; cow hide’s too tough. They always go after the soft tissue first, usually around the head and the back end, just like we have here.”
Lewis snorted and told him, “I’ve been a farmer all my life; you think I haven’t seen dead stock that varmints have worked over?” He pointed for emphasis. “Those cuts are too clean to have been made by teeth; those are knife cuts or I’ll kiss your ass!”
“Maybe, but skin usually draws back from any wound as it dries, and when it does, it can smooth out the edges. I still say predators are the most likely.”
“Except for one thing,” Luke told him, “Where are the signs?” He pointed at the farmer. “The only fresh tracks here are his and mine; no animal tracks, no bird droppings, no nothing.” He stopped suddenly as the epiphany hit him. “Not even tracks from this cow! She’s lying in a smooth sea of mud like she was just picked up and dropped here.”
Everyone was silent for a moment until Harry offered, “She could have crossed the pond.”
“And walked out backwards just to fall down and die facing the other way? I don’t think so, and there still aren’t any tracks between the water and her, so she would have had to have jumped and spun around in mid-air. A cow can’t jump that far, especially not standing in a muddy pond bottom.”
“Speaking of jumping, I reckon she must have jumped the fence too; it ain’t torn down, and her pasture is the next one, over there.” He waved, indicating a fence line to the north. “I don’t know how the hell she ended up here.” Suddenly, he squinted hard at Luke. “You know you’ve got a zipper print on your nose? What were you doing, trying to get a promotion from the Sheriff?”
Luke studiously ignored both him and the snickers coming from Harry, as well as Fiona’s deep blush. He took his hat by the brim and readjusted it in an effort to give himself time to think.
“This doesn’t make any damned sense. Here, let me check something.” Moving around to the head, he caught it by the ears, set his feet, and lifted and twisted, forcibly attempting to bend the stiff neck and wrench the right side of the Holstein’s face from its bed of mud, but the animal’s rigor mortis made it impossible. Rising, he asked the farmer, “Would you mind dragging her out of here so I can take a look at the other side of her?”
Lewis shrugged.
“Sure; I’ll have to drag her out anyway, before she rots and ruins my damned pond too.”
Fiona wondered for a moment how they planned to move an animal that big until the cow’s owner left and came back with a tractor. He climbed down and hooked a heavy chain to the back before handing the other end to Luke. The deputy bound the links around both the carcass’ hind legs and moved aside, motioning to Fiona to do the same.
“Step back, because if that chain slips or breaks under the weight, that end is going to go flying.”
At the thought of being whipped across the face with several pounds of steel links, she hurriedly complied.
As soon as everyone was clear, Lewis put the tractor in gear and eased forward. The chain tightened, the wheels spun for a second before the massive rubber treads bit into the earth and finally broke the suction of the mud with a loud slurping noise. The cow began to move and inertia took over, so that, in a moment, it was on dry land. Once there, he stopped, cut his wheel and backed up until he was perpendicular to the angle of the body, then went forward again. With the chain around the stiffened rear legs and the deputy and state trooper lifting the front ones, they quickly rolled the animal onto its left side.
Luke took the plastic bucket hanging on the tractor and got some water from the pond; he then proceeded to dump part of it over the cow’s face, getting it clean enough to see. Stooping lower for a better look, he grunted and pointed.
“That eye is gone too, along with the meat on that side of the jaw. That was buried under four inches of mud, so, unless the ‘predators’ turned her carcass over once they finished, the damage was done before she was put here.”
“Put here?” Harry and Lewis asked simultaneously, and the deputy shrugged.
“Well, she obviously didn’t walk here, and I don’t guess she flew, do you?”
“But how in the hell do you carry a cow?”
The deputy could only shake his head helplessly.
“Beats the shit out of me.”
It was fully dark by the time Luke took out his pocket knife and Harry held the flashlight while he removed some tissue samples from the cut areas, before tromping back out in the grass to wipe his boots off while Fiona and Harry snapped pictures of the wounds.
“We’ll refrigerate these samples and have Harry take them to Charleston, and see if they can come up with anything. Until then, I don’t know what to tell you other than to keep an eye on your cattle.”
“You’re damned right I’ll keep an eye on them; right through a rifle scope!”
“Now Bill,” Harry began reasonably, “You know the law – “
“To hell with the law! This is the second time this shit has happened just this month; first somebody stole one of my hogs, and now this! I ain’t putting up with it anymore! The first one of those devil-worshiping little bastards I catch out here messing with my cattle is going to grow a .243 asshole right between his damned eyes!”
Startled by the direction of the farmer’s tirade, Fiona asked, “Devil-worshiping?”
Turning toward her, his chin jerked down sharply to indicate his agreement and he said, “You’re damned right! What other kind of sick son of a bitch would do something like that to a poor dumb animal?”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Luke began, thinking uneasily of Arthur Barnett and the others he’d been warned to watch for, and suddenly feeling not so certain at all, but the farmer cut him off.
“We damned well do know that! I know it and you know it too! You all might have your heads up your asses, but I hear things! Cattle and horses and dogs and every other kind of livestock and pet have been disappearing all along this river for months now; been going on for a good two hours in each direction, and the law won’t do jack-shit about it! Well, I ain’t the law, and I will!”
Finally they gave up and left him, hoping he would calm down on his own and that nobody trespassed on his farm until he did.
“Once word gets around about this one,” Luke told her after they were back in the cruiser and rolling, “Mothman will get the blame for this too; rumors will be flying that he picked up that cow, ate what he wanted up there in the sky, then dropped it back down here for us to find.”
“Do you think one might have something to do with the other?”
Luke shook his head and blew out his breath in frustration.
“I don’t know. During the last one back in the sixties, from what I understand, they had a wave of animal mutilations and disappearances around the same time people were seeing Mothman. Some folks said it was mass hysteria, some said they were directly connected, some said it was just coincidence, and a few were even arguing whether someone in the government was doing it to draw attention away from our local monster, or else to draw attention to it!”
Now she saw her chance to ask what she had to, but still dreaded, because, as protective as he was of the county’s residents, she had no idea how he would react to it.
“Luke?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think it’s possible that this whole thing might be an elaborate hoax?”
“By who?”
“The government: federal, state or local.”
After thinking it over carefully in silence for several seconds, he admitted, “Sure, it’s possible, I guess – it’s at least as good an idea as anything I’ve managed to come up with so far – but to what end?”
Well, here goes nothing.
“Maybe to draw attention, boost tourism, make money...”
He blew out his breath again, in a clearly-aud
ible whoosh this time. Fiona was sure she had made him angry, but instead his answer was full of reluctant admission.
“Yes, that would certainly be a possible motive, no question about it. I’ve thought about it myself, more than once since this thing started.”
Relieved more than she knew she should be, she asked, “What’s your opinion?”
“Publicity isn’t the answer. Oh, I have no doubt that the city and county governments will play it up for all it’s worth to get more people coming in here, but I don’t think they’re the ones making it happen.”
“Why not?”
“Three reasons; the first one of them is that, as far as the locals go, to be honest, they’re not competent enough to pull it off. They’re good people, smart people, but this is a small, rural area; there’s not exactly an over-abundance of sophisticated special effects talent here. The part about the small town culture brings us to the second point; if they were ever caught, their careers would be over – period. Most people around here wouldn’t be real forgiving when it comes to something like that. Third is the same reason I gave you as to why I don’t think Johnny and Alison’s sighting was a hoax; you could get yourself killed real easy trying something like that around here.”
Jerking his head back to indicate the way they had come, Luke said, “Take Bill Lewis back there; there is no doubt in my mind that anyone he catches mutilating his livestock – him or almost any other farmer around here – is a dead man. He will shoot, and in a rural area like this, with so many farmers struggling just to hold on to their land, and in a Christian society that has a pretty low tolerance for heathen sacrifice, there’s not one chance in ten a grand jury would even return an indictment, let alone a conviction, and the prosecutor who brought the case would be lucky to be elected as dog catcher.”