by Tim Marquitz
Not sure how the sheriff could tell the condition of the man’s clothes with all the blood and guts everywhere, but I took his word for it. I sure wasn’t gonna go pawing through the mess looking for skid marks. Besides, I’m no doctor. The guy was dead, that much was certain. That was all I needed to know.
“So this is body number three, huh?”
The sheriff nodded. “Folks are in a tizzy, I tell ya, which is why I sent y’all the case notes. Things are coming to a—” A cursing ruckus cut Watson short. His eyes followed the noise, and he let out a loud sigh. “Speaking of the Reverend.”
I spun around and glanced off toward the noise, spying the source. It was like an old man convention up here in the woods. The Reverend looked like an extra from the last Lone Ranger movie. His hair was as gray as the clouds and was tied back into an impressive braid whose tail swung down around the backs of his thighs. His skin was leathern, age and wisdom fighting for space in the canyons that lined his pissed off features.
Six foot tall if he was an inch, and broad at the shoulders, he was a mix of old world Native American and new age Christian. Dressed in blue jeans and cowboy boots, he wore a black, long-sleeved dress shirt buttoned all the way up to his throat. His clerical collar stood out in stark contrast to his shirt and tanned skin.
“I told you he would do it again, sheriff. Did I not?” the Reverend hollered as he came our way, no sign of infirmity in his gait. “He’s the Devil’s whore, that Malcolm Brady.”
A young lady I hadn’t noticed before then, caught up as I was in the Reverend’s blustery approach, darted out from behind him. “He is not!” There was no mistaking the familial similarities between the two. I figured the old man for grandpa right away. She stomped up alongside him, her fists rammed hard against well-shaped hips. The hard glare seemed to falter a little when she saw me, her eyes softening a bit.
Watson sighed again and gestured to the pair. “Agent Hobbes, this here is Reverend Alejandro Pineda and his daughter Melinda.”
I gave the Reverend a pleasant smile and nodded with obsequiousness. Well, not really. It was just easier to check out Melinda from there without the old man realizing what I was doing. I wanted to give him a high five for spitting out such a lovely young thing at his advanced age, but I didn’t figure he’d appreciate my congratulations.
“Nice to meet you both.” I stuck my hand out to the Reverend.
“You here to deal with this demonic filth?” He shouted, blowing off my effort at nicety. “Because the sheriff here sure isn’t.”
“I already told you, Reverend,” the sheriff started, the weight of a long-suffered argument obvious in his expression, “we don’t have a stitch of evidence to link the boy to any the murders.”
“He’s a damn Satanist, Charlie. What more do you need?”
“Proof that he did something illegal would be a good start.”
Reverend Pineda grabbed his daughter by the shoulders and yanked her forward so she was between him and us. She rolled her eyes but didn’t try to resist. “Melinda here can vouch for the evil predilections of his cult.”
“It’s a commune of likeminded, peace-loving people,” she argued, though it sounded more like a rote answer even she didn’t believe. “How many times do I need to tell you that?”
“It’s a damn cult is what it is. That devil boy’s got his hooks in you.” It was hard to tell if he was more mad or disappointed, but the mixture sure twisted his face up good.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this, Reverend,” Watson told him. “I promise you.”
“You’ve been promising that for months now, Charlie, and here’s yet another of God’s children splayed out in the dirt like so much discarded trash.” He stepped in so close to the sheriff I thought I was about to have front row seats to a brawl. Too bad I didn’t have any popcorn. “You need to lock that boy up before someone else takes it in their mind to deal out the justice you seem unwilling to do, Sheriff. There are plenty of folks willing to do just that.”
“You best be getting on home, Reverend, and leave the police work to me and my people.” Watson met the Reverend’s heated stare with ice. “Should anything happen to that boy before I get to proving he’s responsible, your door’s gonna be the first I go knockin’ on, ya hear?”
The Reverend growled—literally growled—and turned on his snakeskin heels. He grabbed his daughter by the arm and stormed off. I took a few moments to admire the impressive landmarks of the young lady’s shape before the sheriff’s gruff voice brought me back to sour reality.
“That old boy is gonna do something stupid if we don’t figure out who’s committing these murders soon.”
“So you don’t think this kid, Malcolm Brady, has anything to do with this?”
Watson shook his head. “Like I wrote in the report I sent y’all, there’s nothing linking that boy to anything more than thinking with his nethers. Brady has folks all riled up ‘cause his little free love commune in the woods has the local girls swooning in their britches. Melinda there’s one of them.” A quiet chuckle slipped out before he wiped his smirk aside. “Reverend Pineda was ‘bout fit to neuter that boy before all this started. Now he’s looking to string him up.”
I glanced over at the body again. The coroner was sitting on his haunches, just staring at us. He hadn’t moved since the Reverend showed up. He caught me eyeballing him and glanced back at the body as though he were actually working. If someone was waiting on his report, they’d be doing it a long time.
“How about you let me know if your ME there finds something we can use,” I said, gesturing toward the coroner. “Until then, I’ll take a trip up into the hills and talk to the boy. If nothing else, maybe I can clear him so the Reverend doesn’t have to explain killing him to the Almighty.” I handed the sheriff a card printed with a number that would put him in touch with DRAC, who’d take a message professionally and contact me right after with the details. “Call me if something comes up. I’ll be in touch.”
He just nodded and turned back to the body, and I headed back to my rental sedan. The sheriff might not think the boy capable of committing murder, but he sounded like the best lead I had. His being surrounded by horny women had nothing to do with my decision.
No, really.
#
And so there I was, caught with my pants down—though not literally; not yet, at least—when the creature appeared. Fortunately, I’m a man of action. Never mind that my first action in these situations is usually to piss myself. Once I got that urge out of my system, I yanked my gun free of its holster and charged into the clearing. So much for the orgy.
The creature was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Hunched over the shreds of the girl in the pentagram, it looked like an anorexic weregoblin with a bad case of scoliosis. Its mouth was a buzzsaw of yellow and black teeth, coated in blood and bits of gore and dripping with ichor. Its large, round orange eyes gleamed with a sickly malevolence. Though I could see its spine rippling at its back, a mountain range of spiny points, its strength was apparent. It lifted the sacrificial girl and ripped her in half, flinging her two pieces aside as though they were nothing.
Malcolm stumbled away from the ruin of his actress, covering his mouth as a wash of red coated him. Despite that, there was no hiding the green tint that colored his terrified face. The creature ignored him, though, and dove on one of the women who was closer. She was dead before I made it three steps. Another died an instant later, her throat torn from her neck. She went down gurgling.
“Get down,” I screamed, though I doubted anyone heard me. There was too much chaos, too many people blocking my shot, but the longer I hesitated, the more of them that died. I kept running and fired as soon as I could without hitting one of the remaining girls.
The monster roared as the D/A slayer burned a crease in its shoulder, but did shit else. The creature spun about, snatching up a shrieking woman in each hand, its massive, clawed hands, holding them by the back of their heads and placing the
m between me and it. It sniffed the air my direction, the holes of its sunken nostrils wiggling on its porcine face. I hesitated and held my ground for fear of hurting someone, but it had no such compunction.
I heard the brittle snap of one of the girl’s neck right before her body came hurtling toward me. I ducked it easily enough, but that was all the time the creature needed. The other girl died an ugly death in the interim, a waterfall of crimson spewing from her lacerated bowels as the creature darted away, following the last of the fleeing women into the trees. I ran after but there was no keeping up with it despite its deformities. The thing was gone before I’d hit the trees. The shrieks that echoed from the woods, going still a heartbeat later, told me all I needed to know about the fates of the women who’d managed to escape the clearing.
“Damn it.” That left just one person to worry about.
I ran back and grabbed Malcolm, yanking him to his feet from where he’d curled up fetal in the dirt. He was dead weight in my arms, drool and tears making a shiny mess of his face. There was no way I was gonna be able to lug him down the hill to where I’d stashed the car. So, after a quick glance around, I started up the mountain instead, toward the soft glow of lights distorted by the night’s gloom and the wild branches.
Looked like I was gonna get to see the kid’s love nest after all. Too bad all the girls were dead.
#
It took a good hour before Malcolm had calmed down enough to be responsive. I dragged him into the shower a few minutes after that, grateful his little cabin in the woods didn’t have a window in there. The kid would be useless as long as he was dripping with the moist remnants of his mock sacrifice. He shook as the warm water hit him, but he seemed able to stand on his own so I left him to strip off his bloody robes and wash away the grit and grime.
Out in the other room, which was little more than a communal bedroom with a handful of cots with blankets strewn across them, I borrowed the kid’s phone and dialed one of the numbers for DRAC. As usual, the operator took down my message—all coded—and hung up. It wasn’t more than a minute later when I felt the itch of a mental link being formed.
Abe’s voice echoed in my head. “What have you found?”
He was all business tonight. Never quite getting the hang of talking to people inside my head—voices sure, but not other people—I moved as far away from the bathroom as I could and whispered my answers, sure Abe would pick it up.
“I don’t know who clued you in that this might be ritualistic in nature, but they were full of shit.”
“Why do you think that?”
“The group of kids some of the locals think are responsible couldn’t magic their way out of a wet paper bag on a windy day.”
“So there is nothing to any of it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” I listened a moment for the kid and heard the water still running. “I was watching the circle jerk go down and it was about as exciting as watching Shamu fart. It was all smoke and mirrors without the decency of even half ass special effects. And then some weird ass critter appeared out of nowhere and started ripping everyone a new asshole.”
I heard Abe gasp through the mental connection before he gathered his composure. “A creature? Describe it to me.”
I did and the mentalist went quiet for a moment. When he reestablished the connection, I could hear the analytical excitement in his voice. “I’d gather that the thing you saw is a Manitou.”
“A Maniwho? What’s on first?”
I didn’t need to see Abe to know he was shaking his head. “A Manitou is an ancient, Native American spirit. They are numerous in that part of the country, but it takes a Herculean effort to give one flesh and set it in motion for an act so aggressive.”
My stomach knotted. “Interesting.” Now who did I know that was all pissed off at a certain Goth boy for giving the wick to his daughter? “So doing a dance routine around a pentagram while singing heavy metal song lyrics isn’t enough to bring one around?”
“Hardly,” Abe said. “Whoever summoned it would need to have a deeply rooted emotional connection to the being and the land it inhabits.”
Strike two, Reverend. “Like an Indian preacher old as the hills?”
“That might well be, but it’s imperative you find out what the Manitou’s mission is, Frank. No matter who summoned it or sent it on its way, it won’t stop until it is killed or it has completed its task.” I had a pretty good idea what that was already.
The door to the bathroom opened right then so I cut Abe off and told him I’d call him later. Malcolm stumbled out, wrapped in towels, his face red from the heat of the water.
“Feel any better?”
He shrugged and slumped onto one of the cots. “I can’t believe it.”
“That you summoned a demon that butchered all your little girlfriends and turned them into lunchmeat?”
His eyes snapped wide, and I could see the tears forming around their red orbs.
“Nah, I’m just kidding,” I told him, dropping onto the cot across from him. The thing wobbled beneath me. “That shit’s not real.” Well, the summoning bit wasn’t. Demons didn’t show up because some idiot splattered a little paint on the floor and implored them to stop by for dinner. “None of this is your fault.” As far as I could tell, but it still had to do with him. “You ever hear of a Manitou.”
His expression drooped. “Is that what…?”
I nodded. “Looks that way.”
He stared at me for a moment, then wiped his nose and straightened. “How do you know any of this, and who the fuck are you?”
I pulled out my fake identification and let him get a good look at it. “You didn’t think we just investigated crimes committed by humans, did you?” Of course he did because that’s what the real FBI does. While there’s no doubt some small, secretive sects in the government believe in the supernatural world, but they sure as hell aren’t running around in the back woods of New Mexico hunting down Native American spirit monsters. No, only my dumb ass was doing that.
I gave him a minute to let things soak in before I continued. “So, this Manitou thing. Any idea why it might have tried to kill you?” It was a softball question since I was fairly sure the Reverend’s name would come up.
Malcolm, however, shook his head. “Maybe the ritual we were—”
“You know your rituals are as fake as Tara Reid’s tits, man. I know what you’re doing up here, and while I don’t give a damn outside of being slightly jealous, I need to know who might want you and your harem-to-be dead.”
Malcom trembled, moving his hands to his lap where he twisted them into a white-knuckled knot. As bad as I felt for the kid, there wasn’t time for a bunch of theatrics.
“Look, I don’t want to piss on your parade but this thing isn’t going to stop until it’s dead or you are.” Malcolm’s tremors intensified at hearing that. “With all your converts laying in the dirt outside, all that’s left of your little cult is you.”
He started right then, going stiff, eyes flying wide. “Wait! What do you mean?”
“I think it’s pretty clear the Manitou was sent to murder you and the rest of your group, and I know who sent it. We just need to wait it out for tonight and then—”
Malcolm jumped to his feet. “Melinda!”
The Reverend’s kid? “She’ll be fine,” I told him, standing and putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “There’s no way the good Reverend Pineda would sic that thing on his own daughter.”
“No!” Malcolm shouted, and I really wished he’d been a few feet further away so I didn’t have to smell his dinner. The garlic stink of spaghetti hit me full on. “He doesn’t know.” He spun away and started for the door. I barely managed to keep him from throwing the bolt.
“He doesn’t know what?” I asked. “And he who?”
“Reverend Pineda,” he answered, still trying to fling the door open, his towels flying and making this more uncomfortable than it needed to be. “Melinda is one of us.”
I spun him around and pinned him to the door. “Start making sense, kid, or I’m gonna beat some into you.”
He struggled for a couple seconds, and finally gave in when he realized he couldn’t shrug me off. “We made Melinda one of us, one of the coven, just last night. We completed the bonding. If that thing—”
That was all he needed to say, the sense of it all hitting me like a bus. The creature hadn’t come back after Malcolm like I’d expected because it had another target it could kill first. An easier target.
The Reverend’s daughter.
#
We flew down the mountain at breakneck speed in Malcolm’s Jeep Wrangler, which I was grateful he had. It would have taken us an hour to get to my car. I was also grateful that I could convince the kid to put on a pair of pants before we left. While the cold night air helped me feel superior in oh so many ways, I really hadn’t wanted to see Malcolm’s squirrely bits bouncing around like they were playing a game of Whac-A-Mole with his thighs.
There were a couple times on the way down where I thought the kid was gonna do the monster’s job for it and kill us both, but he righted the Jeep each time and kept going. It wasn’t long before we barreled down the hilly street the Reverend supposedly lived on. Malcolm brought us to a screeching halt in front of a two-story, rustic home a few moments later. He slammed the Jeep into and reached under the seat, pulling out a snub-nosed .38.
“Whoa there, Dirty Harry,” I said. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m not going to let this thing hurt Melinda.” There was no denying the determination etched across his face. The kid might be a player, fishing in all the local rivers, but his wormy bait was hoping the Reverend’s daughter would wrap her lips around it.
“Fine, but you watch what the hell you’re doing with that thing.” I had no clue if he could hurt the Manitou without the demon and angel blood infused bullets I carried in my weapon, but it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a backup.