Cry Baby Hollow

by Love, Aimee

  She took aim at the farthest dog food can, careful to control her breathing, and switched the gun from safety to semi-automatic. Half way through her next exhale, she gently squeezed the trigger. Drake barked at the sudden sound and looked around, alarmed. Aubrey told him he was a good boy without taking her eyes off the cans. The bullet missed its mark by less than a foot. Aubrey adjusted the sight and fired again. This time Drake didn’t bark. The can shot into the air, neatly pierced, and clattered away. Aubrey patted the gun.

  “And you’re a good boy too,” she told it. She struggled back to her feet and returned the M4 to the closet. She only had twenty-seven rounds left, and had no intention on wasting them on Alpo. The Beretta was a different story though. She could probably get 9 mm rounds at the Gas ‘n Sip. She walked back to the sliding glass door and pulled out the pistol. It was the gun she was most familiar with, and also the easiest to carry concealed. She checked the load again, released the safety, and aimed. She fired, quickly adjusted her aim, and fired again. Both cans clattered away and she smiled darkly. It might be stretching the guns range, but it certainly wasn’t beyond it. At night, firing at a moving target, she would certainly be better off with the M4, but it was nice to know that once the twenty-eight rounds were gone, she still had options.

  Aubrey walked laboriously back to Joe’s and retrieved the cans. She wasn’t exactly laying a trap, she just planned on being ready the next time there was trouble and didn’t like the idea of her enemy, whoever they were, knowing how prepared she was. Let them think the poor cripple was locked behind her security system, scared and alone. It would make them easier targets.

  Her first hand to hand combat instructor had been a retired Seal, an inch shorter than she was and not much broader. After the third time Aubrey got beat to a pulp by one of her fellow trainees, he took her aside and explained things to her. “They’re bigger, faster, meaner and maybe smarter,” he told her. “The only way for someone like you or I to win, is to cheat. If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying.” In her next match she had focused exclusively on her opponent’s right knee, which she knew he’d sprained in a volley ball game a few days before. She danced away, making him chase her around and only taking a shot at him if she could get at that knee. It had been an easy win for her, and the first time she left the class without needing an ice pack. Her dirty tactics didn’t exactly win her a lot of friends, but she passed the course.

  She hobbled home in time to meet the stair men and watch them tear out the ladder and install the little metal spiral in its place. It wasn’t exactly pretty, but they’d had it in stock and she decided it lent the cabin a certain industrial loft appeal. After they’d left, she didn’t call anyone to come and get the old bed, she just took her favorite pillow out, shoved the rest under the blanket, and pulled the curtains closed around it.

  She set the security system to buzz whenever a camera was activated, but for the next two nights, nothing happened. She pushed herself to Wayne’s and back both days, her Beretta in its holster under her arm and Drake by her side.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The next day was October thirtieth and Vina and Betty s

  howed up at Aubrey’s house at noon with a huge duffle bag.

  “Where’s your pumpkin?” Vina asked.

  “I was going to wait and put it out tomorrow night, so it didn’t get smashed on Devil’s Night,” Aubrey told her.

  “Devil’s what?”

  “Devil’s Night,” Aubrey repeated. “It’s the night before Halloween. Everyone runs around egging houses and smashing their pumpkins.”

  “Not around here they don’t. This is Baptist land, honey. They don’t even trick-or-treat anymore. They have We Love Jesus Costume Parades around the church yard instead.”

  “You’re joking. They don’t trick-or-treat here? I had Erma get me candy. I was gonna leave out a bowl with a little sign saying I wasn’t home.”

  Vina doubled over laughing, slapping her knee and gasping for breath.

  “Even if this wasn’t Baptist land and any parent was stupid enough to take a kid trick-or-treating in a place called Cry Baby Hollow, where the houses are a mile apart, that would still be the dumbest idea ever on account of you’re just gonna give a whole bowl of candy to the first kid, and nothin’ to the rest.”

  “Parents wouldn’t let them do that!” Aubrey insisted.

  Vina let out another hoot of laughter. “The pumpkin comes to my place anyway. It’s part of the décor.”

  Aubrey limped into the closet glumly and came back with the funkin in her arms.

  “If I’d known that, I would have done a circus theme,” she said apologetically.

  “Theme’s don’t matter on account of we reuse ‘em every year,” Vina said with a grin. “Turn it around and let me see it.

  Aubrey spun the funkin so that the face was pointing to Vina.

  “Holy shit!” Vina crowed. “That’s awesome!”

  “You really like it?” Aubrey asked, grinning. It felt like the first thing she had to be proud of in forever.

  Aubrey had cut a large oval mouth and used the extra material to carve dozens of sharp little teeth. She had glued them in place crookedly and then cut a terrified face into a tiny dried gourd and shoved it into the big pumpkin’s mouth. The large pumpkin’s eyes were squinched tight in pleasure, completing the effect. She set it on the kitchen counter and pulled a glow stick out of the junk drawer.

  “It goes in the little one,” she explained, handing the stick to Vina. “So they’ll glow different colors. Otherwise you can’t see his little face from very far away.”

  Vina pocketed the stick and clapped Aubrey on the back. “Costume time!” She announced with glee.

  “What am I going as?” Aubrey asked warily.

  Vina dropped the bag on the floor and began pulling out piles and piles of flesh colored cloth.

  “On account of your limp and the fact that you won’t show any skin, we decided to make you the fat lady.” She grabbed two folds of cloth and held up an enormous body suit that might have doubled as a tent for the circus.

  “You’re joking,” Aubrey gasped, taking a fold of the ‘skin’ in her hand and examining it. It was some sort of thick, molded rubber.

  “It inflates!” Vina grinned maniacally.

  “Oh stop,” Betty nudged her with an elbow. “That one’s not yours,” Betty told Aubrey. “She’s just bein’ mean.”

  Vina glowered at Betty for having ruined her fun. Betty reached into the bag and pulled out a neat pile of clothes and handed it to Aubrey. “Go try this on, hon,” she said gently. “I still have time for a few nips and tucks if it needs ‘em.”

  Aubrey took the pile from her and retreated to the bathroom, grateful for anything other than the fat suit. That is, until she saw how little there was of it. She poked her head out of the bathroom door.

  “I can’t wear this!” She squawked.

  “Just try it on,” Betty insisted. “There’s nobody here but us girls.”

  Aubrey sifted through the spandex and sequins, trying to decide where to start. When she had finally finished, she had to admit that the costume was quite lovely, although it did nothing to hide her deformities.

  “Does it fit?” Vina called in.

  “Yes,” Aubrey admitted hesitantly.

  “Don’t worry about your scars,” Vina hollered through the door. “We didn’t forget ‘em. This is just a fitting. Erma will be by tomorrow afternoon with the rest of it and your make-up.”

  “But what am I supposed to be?” She asked, sticking her head back out.

  “It’s a surprise,” Vina told her. “Oh, and we’re taking your dog. Come on Drake,” she and Betty were already packed and ready at the door. Drake hopped up at the sound of his name and trotted over to them.

  “Taking him wher
e?” Aubrey demanded.

  “He’s got a costume too,” Vina said mysteriously. “Erma will bring him with her tomorrow when she comes. He’s gotta stay with Charlie and Rose tonight.”

  Aubrey wanted to protest, but didn’t have the heart. It was obvious they were all going to a lot of trouble on her part.

  “He better not come back looking like a two headed calf,” she warned them and gave him a very thorough pet goodbye.

  Aubrey wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad about the fact that Devil’s Night wasn’t going to be eventful. She had actually been looking forward to chasing teenagers off the property with threats of grievous bodily harm, but she hadn’t relished the idea of trying to get the toilet paper off of the cabin’s steeply pitched roof.

  She tried to remember the last time she’d experienced it, and realized it had been when she was in elementary school in New Hampshire. Their house had been hit heavily year after year. By the time she was in middle school and might have participated in the holiday herself, her mother had changed husbands and she’d been shipped off to boarding school.

  She watched Halloween I and II, trying to get into the spirit of things, and then hobbled up to the loft to go to sleep. She woke to Drake’s low, rumbling growl and the quiet but persistent beep of the security system. One of the cameras had been triggered, probably by whatever was upsetting the dog. She looked down at his bed, wondering why she hadn’t thought to bring it up next to hers, and then stopped dead when she remembered that Drake was with Rose and Charlie for the night. Had she only imagined the growl she heard?

  She eased down the stairs, one careful, slow step at a time, fighting off the urge to turn on the light. The shoji screens were all askew from her TV watching and Aubrey tried to stay low so that her shadow wouldn’t hit them. She limped to the bathroom, closed and bolted the door, and went into the closet. She turned on the monitor for the security system and saw that all three of the remaining cameras were currently running.

  In front of her house, the wolf was back. As close as it was to the camera, there was no question in her mind that it wasn’t a dog. She couldn’t be sure if it was the same wolf she’d seen in the woods and in front of her house before, but having encountered it before she didn’t find it particularly threatening. That is, until she looked at the two camera’s that were running over at Joe’s and saw how many more there were. Five or six, she thought, though they were moving in and out of the two camera’s ranges and it was hard to keep track. Then, from in their midst, one of the wolves seemed to stand up on its hind legs.

  Aubrey did a double take and realized that it wasn’t a wolf at all, but a man in a costume. A million questions raced through Aubrey’s mind at once. Was this the same person that she kept seeing at Joe’s, or someone different? She had thought the creature she saw with the group on the dock was a dog because it seemed to be following the people, but it might just as well have been a wolf. Were the Mosleys breeding wolves and keeping them as pets? Was it illegal to breed endangered animals, or only to kill them? She really had no idea. Surely that kind of thing was supposed to be done in zoos or some other regulated environment. She sincerely doubted that Doctor Doolittle’s Petting Zoo was accredited.

  She remembered the naked girls and Vina’s talk of fake witches. Were the wolves part of some kind of ritualistic cult? Witches in movies and books often kept familiars. Though it was usually a cat, Aubrey supposed wolves might also fit the bill. Aubrey wondered if Devil’s Night and Halloween were really pagan holidays or if this was just someone trying out their costume a night early.

  As the masked figure walked out to the end of the dock and looked across to the cabin, Aubrey decided that she didn’t much care who it was or what it was doing, she grabbed the M4, checked its load, slid on the night scope, and went out to show the asshole how she felt about stalkers.

  Aubrey walked to the shoji screen in front of the rear sliding glass door and knelt behind it, glad that the sweat pants and T-shirt she had chosen to sleep in were both black. It wasn’t just slimming, it was also tactically sensible. She lifted the scope to her eye and looked out at Joe’s dock.

  Unlike her surveillance cameras, which were designed for extremely low-light but still produced a deeply shadowed black and white image, the night vision scope made the world a bright, obnoxious green. It also had a 4x magnification, so although Joe’s dock was fifty or sixty yards away, the figure looked like it was less than fifty feet away. It was crouched down, possibly to blend in with the wolves that had followed it.

  Was the costume an attempt to foil the security cameras? Why, when they hadn’t seemed to mind being caught on tape just a few days ago. Was something different going to happen tonight? Something more illegal than a simple case of trespassing? Aubrey remembered the wolf in her front yard and wondered if it had wandered away from the others, or if it too had a human companion that was simply outside the view of her camera. She ignored the possible implications of that and concentrated on the person she could see.

  He looked like he had an actual wolf carcass draped across his back, with its head fitted on top of his own. Aubrey slid forward to the sliding glass door and then stopped, checking the scope to make sure her movement hadn’t alerted her watcher. She reached over and popped off the magnetic security sensor so the alarm wouldn’t go off when she slid open the door, then threw the latch and pulled out the pin that kept the two pieces of the sliding glass door locked together, acting as a dead bolt. She checked the scope again and saw the person across the way turn and say something to the wolves. Were they trained? She used the distraction to slide the door open a few inches.

  Aubrey braced herself the same way she had for her practice shot, her right foot against the door frame and her arm against her leg to steady it. She threw the fire control from safety to semi-automatic and looked through the scope to take aim. The figure had turned back and was crouched low. Aubrey felt, with a dreadful certainty, that he was looking straight at her. She took aim at the head. It would be an easy shot, she knew, but she sighed resignedly and lowered her aim, searching for a leg amid the crouching man’s fake fur. She was fairly certain that you couldn’t claim self-defense if you needed a magnifying scope to hit someone.

  She took a deep breath and halfway through her exhale, squeezed the trigger. The figure dropped and the wolves let out a horrible group howl. Aubrey reached up and replaced the security sensor. The alarm instantly sensed the open door. The siren began to wail and flood lights around the cabin went on, lighting up the entire area like a beacon. Aubrey slammed the door closed, threw the lock and replaced the pin. She pushed herself up onto her feet and hurried over to the stairs. When she was half way up, she risked a look out the back door through the scope, but she couldn’t see anything. She limped back down the stairs, feeling like an idiot. The bright flood lights made the night vision scope useless. She hobbled to the closet, locking the bathroom door behind her, and put in the code to shut down the system and kill the lights. She checked the cameras but nothing was active. That meant no motion on any of them in over a minute.

  Aubrey swore under her breath. She put the M4 back on the shelf and grabbed the Beretta, holster and all and clipped it hastily on. She picked up the shotgun and pulled the slide, chambering a round. She remembered an old friend of hers who’s favorite expression had been, “Nothin’ puts the fear of God into a man like the sound of the shuckin’ of a shotgun.” She hoped he was right. She wanted whoever was out there to be terrified. Aubrey had taken her turn, now it was theirs.

  She slid the night scope off the M4, since the Beretta’s wasn’t magnified, and eased back out into the main room. She walked toward the back door, staying well back from the glass, and held the scope up to her eye.

  Nothing.

  No wolves.

  No body.

  Nothing.

  She swore again, this time with a lot
more imagination, and stopped only when her cell phone rang. She opened it and gave a tired, “Hello?”

  “You need backup?” Vina asked.

  “No,” Aubrey assured her. “It was just a false alarm.”

  “Right,” Vina said incredulously. “And you wanted to test one last exploding pumpkin before the party.”

  Aubrey took a deep breath.

  “Call if you need me,” Vina told her. “My aim sucks on account of my hands shake, but I make up for it by keeping plenty of ammo around. If you fire often enough you’re bound to hit somethin’.” She hung up.

  Aubrey called 911 and told the operator that she’d seen some kids in costumes trying to break into her neighbor’s house and fired her gun into the air to try to scare them away. They said they’d send a deputy by to make sure the kids weren’t still lurking around and advised her to lock her doors and stay inside. No shit.

  A few months ago, Aubrey would have gotten in her car and driven over to Joe’s to check things out. In her current condition, not knowing if she had even hit her target, she knew that was stupid. Instead she dragged herself up to the loft, sat with the shotgun aimed at the stairs and her back against the chimney, and waited.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Aubrey woke at first light, stiff from sleeping propped against the chimney and ashamed of herself for nodding off at all. She checked the alarm clock. It was still too early to call Matt, but someone should be at the sheriff’s office. She dialed, told the girl who answered who she was, and before she