by Hunt, James
Suddenly, it lunged forward, arms stretched out and claws extended and gleaming under the moonlight. The roar that bellowed from its core rattled Chuck’s bones and froze him as he turned away and shut his eyes, waiting for the monster to eat him and then fall into the nothing that was death. He’d be buried in this cemetery, maybe next to his mammie, and there he would rot away into nothing.
Chuck shivered, waiting for the vicious kiss of the creature’s teeth. But after a while, nothing happened.
“You saw it.”
Chuck snapped his head toward his father’s voice and saw him standing motionless and cloaked in shadows. “I don’t— I’m not—” He felt the tears coming again, and he turned his mud-splattered face away from his father so he couldn’t see.
But his father knelt and pulled Chuck’s gaze upon him. The hardened expression he’d seen at the truck had softened, but it was a far cry from anything that could be considered kind.
“What you saw tonight wanted to kill you,” his father said. “But it won’t. Because it can’t.”
“Wh-Wh-Why?” Chuck asked, the will to fight back the tears growing stronger.
His father extended his hand and pulled his son from the muck with ease. He then steadied his boy and gripped him firmly by the shoulders. “You’ll find out when you’re older. But I wanted you to see it, like your grandfather showed me. Because it’s important to know what you’re facing. What our family will always face. But as long as you do what I tell you, it will never be able to hurt you. Understand?”
He didn’t, but he nodded anyways. And then his father walked him back to the truck, forced him to wipe the mud off himself before he climbed back into the cab, and they drove home.
Chuck’s phone buzzed, vibrating the desk in steady, rhythmic motions. Slowly, it pulled him from his drunken nightmares, and he raised his head in annoyance at the phone.
He snatched at it angrily, ending the loud drumming against the desk that split his throbbing head. Without looking at the number, he answered, thinking it was Billy or Jake finally calling to let him know that it was done.
“About time you called,” Chuck said, his throat raspy and croaked. He smacked his lips dryly. His breath tasted like shit.
“I didn’t realize we scheduled a call this late, Mr. Toussaint,” Bellingham said.
It took a few seconds for the sheriff’s voice to register in Chuck’s mind, but when it did, a shot of adrenaline flooded through him like a freight train. “Sheriff, I apologize. I thought you were someone else.” Chuck’s stomach twisted in knots at the sheriff’s silence.
“I picked up one of your employees tonight,” Bellingham said.
The knots in Chuck’s stomach worsened and he doubled over on his desk in pain, a rumbling in his gut. “Who?” But Chuck knew. He just hoped the pair hadn’t rolled over on him yet.
“Billy Rouche,” Sheriff Bellingham answered. “Apparently Jake Martin was with him as well. They attacked another one of your employees; Owen Cooley. They broke into his house on Cypress Lane. Mr. Cooley managed to subdue Billy, but Jake ran off into the swamp. I have my deputies looking for him, but I wanted to give you a courtesy call seeing as how everyone involved works for you and that the incident happened on one of your housing properties.”
“Thank you, Sheriff,” Chuck said, trying to hide the shaking in his voice, his back arched with his forearms flat against the desk. “I appreciate that.”
The sheriff paused again and the rumbling in Chuck’s stomach worsened. “Can I ask where you’ve been this evening, Mr. Toussaint?”
“I was working late,” Chuck answered. “At the office. Nate Covers is here with me. He came over for a drink and we accidently finished a bottle of bourbon.” Chuck laughed, but the sheriff didn’t reciprocate. He cleared his throat and shut his eyes to stop the room from spinning. “I’ll have the company lawyer come by the station first thing in the morning. We’ll get all of this sorted out.”
“I hope we do,” Bellingham said. “Good night, Mr. Toussaint.”
“Night, Sheriff.” Chuck hung up and then immediately rushed to the trashcan at the edge of his desk. Half a bottle of bourbon along with his catfish lunch emptied from his stomach. The taste of vomit that lingered on his tongue wasn’t much worse than the taste he woke up with, but it definitely wasn’t better.
“Shitshitshitshit!” Chuck wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then looked up to see Nate passed out in his chair, the half-drunk cup of bourbon still sitting on his lap and dangerously close to spilling over his trousers. “Nate!”
Nate tilted his head from left to right, then adjusted his ass on the seat. The bourbon spilled in a large dark patch against his grey jeans, making it look like he’d pissed himself.
Chuck stumbled over and violently shook him by the shoulders. “Nate!”
Nate finally stirred, impotently batting away at Chuck’s arms. “Whatduyawant?” He briefly opened his eyes, then readjusted in his chair, trying to go back to sleep.
“Get up!” Chuck yanked Nate from the chair, and he rolled to the floor with a smack.
Nate groaned and floundered like a turtle stuck on his back. “What?” He squinted up at Chuck, who grabbed hold of him by the collar.
“Listen to me. The sheriff arrested Billy, and Jake’s gone missing.” Another low rumble sounded in Chuck’s stomach, but the anger helped keep the vomit down. Though he wouldn’t have minded puking all over Nate if it would wake the bastard up. “Do you hear me? The Cooleys are still alive!”
Somewhere in the fried circuits of his liquor-soaked brain, Nate slowly made the connection, and a mixture of surprise and fear spread over his face as Chuck let go of his collar. “Shit!” He rolled to his side and stood, wobbling to the desk for support. “Does the sheriff know?”
“I just told you the sheriff is the one that called me!” Chuck grunted in frustration. “I don’t know how much he knows.”
Nate glanced down at his pants and then frowned in disgust. “Christ, did I piss myself?”
Chuck lunged forward and Nate recoiled. “The sheriff is going to ask you where you were tonight, and you’ll tell him you got plastered with me in my office. You and me were here all night. Got it?”
“Y-yeah,” Nate answered. “All night. Got it.” When Chuck backed off Nate’s body loosened again, and he nearly collapsed to the floor like a wet noodle, but he kept hold of the desk to keep him upright. “What are you going to do?”
Chuck shook his head. He’d done exactly what his own father had done. He’d even enlisted Billy, who’d done the dirty work before. There was no playbook for this mess. And suddenly, as if he were having one of his nightmares, Chuck saw the creature lurking in the back of his mind. Snarling, growling, waiting for the moment to strike. Those black eyes waiting to drag him into oblivion. And while his father said there wasn’t any heaven, he never said anything about there not being a hell. And if he didn’t end up in jail, that’s exactly where that creature would take him if he didn’t fix this soon.
* * *
Claire nodded, only half listening to the deputy’s questions on the ride to the hospital. She kept thinking about her father, about Matt, about Owen, about what came next. “Chloe, sweetheart, sit still.” Her daughter squirmed in her lap, and the deputy looked over.
“Mrs. Cooley, did you hear me?” Deputy Hurt asked.
“I’m sorry,” Claire answered, Chloe burying her face into her chest.
“What was Matt wearing the last time you saw him?”
Claire sighed, exasperated, trying to think. “Um, he had a baseball shirt on. The Orioles. And gym shorts.” She focused her dark brown eyes on the empty road. Morning was beginning to break, and the night sky lightened to grey.
During the six months where Owen was unemployed in Baltimore, that first part of the morning where the sunshine broke through the windows had been her favorite part of the day. There was something hopeful about a new beginning. Things could change. The page was b
lank, and you could write whatever you wanted.
“Mrs. Cooley?” Deputy Hurt asked.
“Hmm?”
“Have your children interacted with anyone in town? Or has anyone stopped by the house?”
“Um, no. We haven’t seen anyone except the staff at the doctor’s office and hospital.” But now, staring up at the grey mud of a morning sky, that feeling of hope eluded her. She didn’t know what to write on today’s blank page, because she wanted to rip apart the whole book. “Have things like this happened before?” Claire looked over at him. “Have there been kidnappings in Ocoee?”
“Not during my tenure with the department.”
Which couldn’t have been for very long, Claire thought. The boy looked like he graduated high school last week, and the press of his uniform still had the creases from being taken out of the bag.
“How long have you been with the sheriff’s department, Deputy Hurt?” Claire asked as Chloe shifted again in her lap.
“Seven weeks.” Deputy Hurt’s neck and cheeks flushed red, and he wiggled uncomfortably in his seat. “I may not know all of Ocoee’s crime history, but I do know the SOP for a missing child, and I can tell you that Sheriff Bellingham won’t skip on the details.” He cleared his throat, trying to regain his nerve. “The sheriff runs a good department.”
Claire hoped he did. She’d gotten a good feeling from the sheriff when he showed up. He wasn’t oozing with personality and charm, but he was competent. She gently stroked Chloe’s hair and her daughter started to calm down. “Any chance we can get there faster than this?”
Deputy Hurt straightened in his seat and stiffened his arms against the wheel, a hint of a smile on his face. “Yes, ma’am.” The engine revved, and Deputy Hurt flicked on the lights and siren.
The rest of the trip was in silence, and when they arrived at the hospital, Deputy Hurt pulled right up to the ER doors and parked in one of the emergency lanes. He quickly ran around the car to her door like a valet hoping for a good tip and helped her and Chloe out of the cruiser.
The ER doors swooshed open and Claire caught a glimpse of the lobby. It was vacant, the patients inside waiting in misery with packs of ice over their injuries or wrapped up in bloodied gauze.
Claire passed them quickly as she found the nurses’ desk, the deputy by her side commanding an attention that she wouldn’t have gotten without him. “I’m Claire Cooley, I was told my father was asking for me?”
The nurse, dark circles stamped under her eyes and a nearly empty coffee cup next to her elbow, sluggishly got out of her seat and walked around the counter. “He woke up a few hours ago, screaming nonsense.” The nurse led them past a few open rooms, the hospital quiet save for the few beeping machines she heard and the random paging of doctors and nurses over the PA system. “The doctors tried sedating him, but nothing has worked. It’s quite… odd.”
They turned a corner down the hallway, and Claire’s heart skipped a beat when she heard the faint cry echoing through the tiled halls. The screams grew louder, and when they reached the end of another hallway and turned right, Claire saw that some of the other patients were out of their beds and peeking down the hall to the source of the noise.
“Matt! Get out of there! MAAAATT!!”
Chloe squeezed Claire tight, and she stopped, Deputy Hurt stopping with her while the nurse continued her walk toward Roger’s room.
“Will you take her back to the lobby?” Claire asked.
“MAAAAATTTTT!!!”
Deputy Hurt’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he nodded, extending his arms as Claire transferred Chloe over.
“I’ll be right back.” Claire kissed Chloe on the cheek and then jogged to catch up to the nurse. Her father’s screams sounded unnatural. It was primal and fearful.
Claire slowly stepped into the room and saw her father struggling against the straps on the bed that kept him in place. The room was dark, and a pair of orderlies stood off to the side, watching him.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re here,” the nurse said.
It wasn’t until the nurse was gone that Claire responded with a thank you. Her mind was elsewhere, back when she was a little girl and she sat on her father’s lap. That felt so long ago.
“Dad,” Claire said, walking up to the bedside. “Dad, you need to calm down.”
Roger shook his head back and forth, his eyes wide open in a frenzied panic, the veins and muscles along his throat and neck throbbing and tight. “We have to get him out of there! MAAAATT!!”
A mixture of hope and confusion arose within Claire and she gripped her father by the shoulders. “Do you know where he is?”
Roger stopped his thrashing and his grey eyes locked onto her. “I saw what took him. I saw its eyes. Its eyes, Claire!”
Claire looked back to the orderlies still in the room, both of them glaring at her like bouncers at a nightclub. “How long has he been screaming like this?”
“Hours,” one of the orderlies said.
Claire turned back to Roger and saw that he had shut his eyelids. His eyeballs throbbed underneath the thin pieces of skin. “It’s… cold. Very cold. And dead. Nothing’s alive in that place.”
“What place, Dad?” Claire didn’t know how her father was seeing these things but the more her father spoke, the more she believed him. This wasn’t his Alzheimer’s.
“Your house,” Roger answered, popping open his eyes. “You can’t stay there, Claire. You have to get everyone out.”
“No,” Claire said, shaking her head. “Dad, Matt’s not at the house. He was taken.” Tears filled her eyes, and she realized that the tips of her fingers had whitened from the pressure she applied to her father’s shoulder. “You said you saw him. Who took him, Dad? Who took Matthew?”
Roger sank deeper into his pillow, his voice growing toward a whisper. “I can hear him, Claire. He’s scared. He wants to come home. But I can’t—” His lip quivered. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m sorry.”
Claire lowered her forehead on Roger’s arm and cried. It was all madness. Everything. Her father’s disease. The house. Matt’s abduction. None of it was meant for her or her family. This was some altered reality, not her life.
“I can feel that creature,” Roger said softly. “It wants something.”
Claire lifted her head, her eyes red and watering, a string of snot hanging from her lip. She wiped it away. “What does it want?”
“Something it can’t get by itself.” Roger shivered as he spoke, staring up at the ceiling. “It knows where it is, but it is forbidden to touch it.”
Claire tucked her lower lip into her mouth and gently stroked the thin wisps of hair on her father’s head. “Dad, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Roger turned to Claire, his expression dripping with desperation. “We have to go to her, Claire. She can help us. You have to take me to her!”
Claire clutched her father’s hand. “Who?”
“Queen’s.”
4
Owen’s gaze kept drifting back toward the cells. He could almost see the old man behind the bars, but the harsh angle blocked everything from view except for his hands. The same pair of hands that had held a knife to his wife’s throat and smothered his daughter with a rag of chloroform.
“Mr. Cooley?” Bellingham asked.
“What?” Owen answered, turning back toward the sheriff.
Bellingham sighed in exasperation and then leaned forward over his desk, the man’s hairy forearms thumping heavily over the report he was filling out. “Mr. Cooley, I understand the stress of the situation. But the faster you can help me understand what happened at your house, the quicker my people can get to work.” He lifted his arms and flipped back a page on the report. “You said there was someone else there besides Billy and Jake?”
“Yeah.” Owen fidgeted in the chair, his nerves fried from the long night, and the past three days, trying to figure out a way to explain what he’d seen for the tenth time.
&nb
sp; “What did it look like?” Bellingham asked.
Owen rubbed his eyes, trying to ebb his growing frustration. “It was tall. About my height. It had grey, scaly skin, a big head with black eyes, and sharp teeth. And claws.” Owen separated his hands and measured six inches. “They were this long, and black, like its eyes.”
“I see.” Bellingham paused, then looked down to his notes. “And have you had any problems with either Jake or Billy at work?”
Owen exhaled. “The only other co-worker I really interacted with was Marty Wiggins.” He dropped his hand on his thigh with a slap. “Look, I’ve been here less than a week. You really think that’s enough time for someone to develop a grudge like this?”
“Mr. Cooley, I’m just—”
“No!” Owen slammed his palm on the sheriff’s desk. “I know what I saw. It wasn’t a person, or an animal, or some guy in a fucking costume.” Owen rose from the chair, leaning over the desk and inching closer to Bellingham’s face. “Something snuck into my house, took my son, and then disappeared beneath the swamp. So put that in your goddamn report!”
Owen shoved the chair aside and it cracked against the floor as he stormed out of the sheriff’s office. The receptionist jerked her head toward him on his way past, and when he reached for the handle of the front door to leave, it swung open, the first few rays of morning blinding him as a pair of shadowed figures stepped inside. He blinked rapidly, trying to rid himself of the sunspots that blinded him. When his vision cleared, Owen saw Mr. Toussaint and a man he didn’t know.
“Owen,” Mr. Toussaint said. “How are you holding up?”
Owen grabbed Chuck by the shoulders, harder than he intended. “Mr. Toussaint, something is going on at the house.”
Mr. Toussaint recoiled a bit and then gestured to the stranger next to him. “Harold, you can go and speak with the sheriff in the back.” He gently removed Owen’s hands from his arms. “The sheriff filled me in. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”