Monster Mash
Spells, Salt, & Steel Vol. 5
Gail Z. Martin
Larry N.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Afterword
About the Authors
Falstaff Books
1
When I catch you, I’m gonna tan that hairy hide of yours, but good!”
In response, an apple flew out of the shadows and clipped me on the side of the head. Despite rumors about how hard my head was, the damn apple hurt. My patience was growing thin. That one wasn’t the first to hit me, and my quarry had damnably good aim.
Then I remembered an old injury from playing softball as a kid, and I suddenly wished I’d worn a protective cup.
It didn’t help that we were well past the first frost, so the only apples around had been frozen and thawed a few times, making them a mushy, moldy mess. I had apple guts dripping from my hair, and I smelled like hard cider gone wrong. Truth be told, I’d survived worse.
“You might do better luring the creature into the cage if you stopped swearing at him,” Pat Carmody told me. I rolled my eyes and flipped him off. Pat’s a buddy and a sometimes-hunting partner—and a Meadville cop. He’s one of the few who knows that monsters are real and understands that I’m one of the guys who hunts things that are a lot stranger than deer.
“There are all those nice apples in the cage,” I said. “Why does he want the nasty ones?”
“Maybe he enjoys playing whack-a-Mark as much as he does eating the apples,” Pat suggested.
I’m Mark Wojcik, mechanic and monster hunter. No one gets into this business for fun. It’s the never-ending quest you take up out of survivor guilt, or the need for penance, or because you’ve got a death wish. Maybe a little of all three.
I started hunting after a wendigo killed my father, uncle, cousin, and brother when we were out deer hunting. Surviving cost me my marriage, my sister-in-law, and a good chunk of my sanity. I tell people that I hunt monsters to keep anyone else from having to lose someone they love. That’s only partly true. I do it because the nightmares aren’t quite as bad if I tell myself I’m doing everything I can to atone.
Another apple came flying. This time, I ducked, and it hit Pat. I laughed. He didn’t.
“As soon as I lay down this trail, we can back off, and see if he follows it.” Which is how I came to be scooping applesauce out of a huge bucket to lead an Albatwitch to the cage in the back of my pickup truck. Inside the cage was a bounty of apples of every variety—all of them laced with vet-quality animal tranquilizers.
The plan had seemed simple. Lure the apple-obsessed creature into the cage, let him pig out on the drugged apples, and nighty-night Albatwitch.
Like anything was ever simple in my world.
I finished doling out the applesauce, and Pat and I retreated far enough that we could see the trail but wouldn’t be considered a threat by the creature.
“And there he is,” I murmured.
If a hobbit and a Sasquatch made a baby, the result would look a lot like an Albatwitch. They stand about four feet tall on their hind legs, and their bodies are covered with brown hair. A person might mistake them for a large chimpanzee if chimps were native to Pennsylvania—which they’re not—and if the head and the proportion of the limbs weren’t all wrong to be anything in the ape family. This one had some patches of fur missing, and I wondered if Albatwitches got mange.
The creature slurped his way along the applesauce trail, slowly moving toward the ramp that led to the cage. Albatwitches aren’t a menace—they just like to throw apples. This one, unfortunately, happened upon an abandoned orchard near two roads. He’d been perfecting his World Series-quality pitching on passing cars, and nearly caused several accidents—from the splattered apples and the glimpse of a “what the hell was that” dodging back into the woods.
The cops hadn’t been able to nab him, so Pat called me. That was actually in the critter’s best interest because I didn’t kill the strange creatures I encountered unless they were truly dangerous. I’d never heard of anyone getting bitten or mauled by an Albatwitch, so Pat and I were going to relocate the varmint to a place he wouldn’t cause any trouble.
Assuming he took the bait.
Little by little, the Albatwitch made his way toward my truck. I found myself holding my breath as he nibbled the goodies all the way up the ramp, and then caught sight of the baskets of apples at the back of the cage like a kid on Christmas, if all the kid’s presents were laced with sleeping pills.
As soon as the creature was halfway inside, I hit the switch to close the cage door, and it swung shut and locked. Twitchy was so happy with his Ambien apples that he didn’t even look up, just chawed down on all the goodies.
“Well, that was easy,” Pat observed.
His words sent a shiver through me. Nothing ever goes simply for me. Nothing. That’s just not how it works. When the fickle finger of fate points at me, it’s flipping the bird. I had the feeling Pat had just doomed us.
“Let’s go. We want to get up to the Big Woods before it’s dark.”
I double-checked the lock on the cage and then fastened a tarp to hide what was inside. Our secret cryptid relocation area would only stay secret if everyone we passed on the highway didn’t post YouTube videos. I backed out slowly, to reduce the jostling from the dirt lane. Once we got to the main road, Twitchy would have a smooth ride that should rock him like a baby.
“How long do you think it’ll take for the drugs to hit him?” Pat asked.
“That sounds all kind of wrong, coming from a cop.”
“Bite me.”
“I’m just not into you like that.”
We had a couple of hours on the road before we got to Kane, where the relo center was, and where my girlfriend, Sara, ran a bed and breakfast. “Girlfriend” seemed like the wrong word, since both of us were on the other side of thirty-five. She’d been widowed; my ex had dumped my ass because I didn’t grieve fast enough to suit her and I was harshing her mellow. We’d been seeing each other for a while now and had both agreed to take it slow.
I glanced in my rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of myself. Dark blond hair, cut short, a little longer than military standard, green eyes, and stubble that looked red in the sun. There was no denying my Polish heritage, not that I’d ever want to. My mother always said I had the “map of Poland” on my face, which had freaked me the fuck out as a kid the first time she told me that. I don’t know what Sara saw in me. When I looked into my eyes in the mirror, the abyss looked back.
“Primping for your girl already?” Pat teased. “Try not to get us in a wreck. It would be…awkward.”
“Yeah, that’s an understatement.” With my luck, I’d probably get busted for smuggling exotic pets or some shit like that.
I make the drive out to the mountainous, wooded area pretty often, and the radio is worthless, so Sara bought me a satellite subscription for my birthday. It definitely made the trip go faster. We had the tunes cranked up from a channel that played all the ones we listened to in high school. For a while, we just watched the road go by and enjoyed the music. But I knew Pat, and from the way he fidgeted, I figured he wanted to ask me something and didn’t quite know how.
“Just spit it out,” I said finally. “Whatever it is you want to ask. I’m hard to offend.”
“And yet you give offense so easily,” Pat deadpanned.
“I’m a giving kind of guy. What’s on your mind?”
He licked his lips, a tell that doomed him in our regular poker games. “Were you serious
about one of the guys we’re meeting being a vampire?”
“Yep. And the other one is a shifter. You’ve already met Gus, the one who’s ‘corporeally challenged.’” A vampire, a shifter, and a ghost walk into a bar...
“I’m just trying to figure out what to expect,” Pat replied. “Is he more Dracula or Lost Boys?” He leaned forward and black hair fell into his face, a contrast to his pale skin and blue eyes.
I had to laugh at the mental picture of a ritzy guy in a cape, or a young Kiefer Sutherland because neither one came close. “His name is Otto. He came here from Germany back in the eighteen-hundreds to work in the coal mines around Pittsburgh and got turned on his way home from the night shift.”
“So how did he end up being one of your game wardens?” Pat had a pretty open mind about the supernatural side of things, and he looked intrigued.
“It’s more of a community service kind of thing,” I replied. “Otto got caught with a bloody body in arms. Long story short, by the time it was done, I got called in. We talked some while I helped look into the crime, and when he found out about the relo center, he volunteered to help.”
“He killed someone?” Pat’s eyebrows practically crawled into his scalp.
I shook my head because I didn’t want that impression to take root. “No. Otto swore off drinking people a long time ago. He drinks animal blood. But that night, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time: he stumbled on some rogue vamps feeding and got roughed up pretty bad. When they left him, he was weak enough that he was tempted, and that’s when he got caught. Fortunately, the victim survived, and the blood covering Otto was his own. He felt bad about almost slipping and wanted to pay back that I got him out of a bad spot, so he volunteered to help.”
Thankfully, Pat didn’t ask how we happened to “hear” about Otto’s arrest. I’m pretty sure Pat suspects that some of the things that go into monster hunting aren’t entirely legal, but he might balk at knowing we routinely monitor the police blotter looking for our kind of problems.
“So Drac the coal miner?”
“He looks like a regular working guy,” I replied. “No cape. But to be honest, I think that some of the cryptids behave better with him around. Apex predator and all.”
“What about the shifter? Is he a werewolf?”
“See, this is how harmful stereotypes cause discrimination,” I said. “Werewolves and shifters are completely different—and neither of them are like you see in the movies. It took getting to know one up close and personal for me to learn the difference.” I smiled to myself thinking of Donny and wondered how I ever considered that boy to be a werewolf.
Pat clutched his chest in exaggerated dismay. “You are shattering my worldview. I will never be the same.”
“Asshole,” I muttered, but fondly. Pat is a good guy and a good friend. And I didn’t want him to arrest me.
“So this shifter guy—”
“Tristan.”
“Tristan. Can he only change during the full moon? Are either of them going to bite me?”
“No to both. Otto swore of biting people a long time ago. Tristan was born a shifter, not turned by a bite.”
“What did he do to get stuck herding cryptids?”
I glanced over, surprised. “Huh? Nothing. I asked Tristan to help out because his community isn’t far away, and we got talking about the cryptid preserve one time, and he said he wanted to help.”
“Every time I think I’ve reached maximum weirdness, you take it to another level.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, helping you level up,” I replied with a grin.
We’d had the state highways pretty much to ourselves for much the drive. There’s not a lot of traffic out this way if it isn’t hunting season. Twitchy had been quiet in the back. I didn’t know if that was because he was sleeping off a full belly from bingeing on all those apples, or because we’d roofied him. I had to admit, I felt a bit like the wicked queen in Snow White, offering drugged apples.
A Suburban came up on the right side of the truck, with a German Shepherd sticking its head out of the window. I guess he smelled Twitchy, or maybe he just saw the moon, but the dog started to howl.
I’d always wondered what an Albatwitch sounded like. They’re fairly quiet creatures, and pretty harmless, except for the apple fastballs.
Apparently they sound like a cross between an air-raid siren and a Canadian goose trying to sing opera. The godawful noise made Pat and me cringe, but there was no way to turn down the volume.
The dog in the SUV must have been feeling competitive because he managed to sound like an entire wolf pack, all on his own. I couldn’t tell what the driver of the SUV made of the hullabaloo, but it didn’t surprise me when the other vehicle took off like it had a rocket in the back. The dog howled until they disappeared from sight.
So did Twitchy.
“Can’t you make him shut up?” Pat asked, with his fingers shoved in his ears.
“He’s supposed to be unconscious,” I shot back. “You helped me drug the apples.”
“Obviously we either got the dose wrong, or your vet never tranqed an alba-whatever.”
“Yeah, I figured that out.”
“Maybe we just got him drunk,” Pat said, looking like he was in pain. I had a headache building, and we still had a ways to go before we got to Kane. “Maybe he’s like the guy at the bar who thinks he’ll ace karaoke if he just sings louder.”
“Is this what it’s like when you’ve got the siren going in your patrol car?”
“No. Not at all. Absolutely not,” Pat replied, knowing I was messing with him.
“Aw, c’mon. Maybe just a little? You’re just sad because we don’t have flashy-thingys. It’s always better with strobe lights.”
Pat rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why I hang around with you.”
“It’s probably my winning personality.”
“I don’t think so.”
“My suave charm?”
“Definitely not.”
“The way I save your ass when monsters show up so you don’t have to explain it to your captain?”
“Hmm. That might be it.”
Twitchy was in fine form, rolling through his greatest hits. Maybe the drugs had just lowered his inhibitions, and for all we knew, he was shaking his booty to the beat. I was going to need to bleach my brain to get that mental image to go away.
“Look in the glove compartment,” I said when I couldn’t take it anymore. “I think I have some earplugs in there, from when I had to take out a siren.”
“I told you, he doesn’t sound like any kind of siren—”
“Not that kind of siren. The ones that caused sailors to have shipwrecks in those old Greek stories. I had to have earplugs so I didn’t hear the song.”
Pat rooted around in my glove compartment, and I worried for a moment, wondering if I had anything blatantly illegal in there. The tools of the monster hunting trade aren’t all street-legal, and sometimes they come through dicey channels. To my relief, Pat either didn’t notice anything amiss or gave me a pass by not mentioning it.
“While technically, you’re not supposed to wear these while driving, I won’t tell if you don’t.” He shoved plugs in his ears and then held two out to me.
That helped. Of course, with my ears plugged up, I could hear my blood rushing through my veins, but that was still better than listening to Twitchy, who seemed to be channeling his inner Mariah Carey to hit the high notes. I just hoped he couldn’t shatter glass.
A while later, we finally turned off the main highway and headed down a smaller road, then down a gravel drive. This was the middle of nowhere, with thick forest on all sides. I reluctantly removed one earplug, because I’ve learned the hard way that when I’m out in the woods, I need to keep all my senses sharp. That’s when I realized Twitchy had gone silent.
As grateful as I was for the relief for my eardrums, the sudden silence worried me. I didn’t know if he’d just worn himself out, run ou
t of songs he knew, or…did he sense a predator out there he didn’t want to attract?
Night had fallen, and under the trees, the dark seemed darker. I knew my way around this area, but I never made the mistake of letting my guard down in the forest. That mistake was the kind someone only made once. I knew how to hunt monsters, and I’d gotten my share of bucks back in the day, but these woods had bears and bobcats, and some folks swore there were still mountain lions prowling these hills.
“Did he quit howling?” Pat yelled since he couldn’t hear his own voice. I startled and nearly jerked the wheel to send us off the road.
I pointed at his ears, and he took out the plugs. “Oh. Well, that’s an improvement.”
Just as I was about to make a smart remark about it all depending on why Twitchy got quiet, I looked up to see a tall, pale figure standing in the middle of the highway. Its arms were too long, the body seemed too slender, and the head was larger than it should have been. Not to mention that it had skin stretched between its arms and torso, like batwings.
“What the fuck is that?” Pat muttered, crossing himself.
Before I could give an opinion, Twitchy let out a screech of rage that felt like he’d scratched fingernails down my bones. Clearly, he’d been singing out of joy before, because this sound flipped every territorial switch in my hindbrain. The next thing we knew, the tarp ripped free, and apples went flying over the cab of the truck, pelting the creature in the head, chest, and groin.
Twitchy never stopped screaming, apparently warning off the pale interloper and backing up his threats with apples. The bat-winged cryptid took flight and vanished into the tree canopy.
“Sounds like Twitchy has short-man syndrome,” Pat laughed. “I guess he needed to mark his territory.”
“Don’t say—”
A sound like a hose spraying the bed of my truck filled me with dread, as did the pungent aroma that blended rotting fruit with cat piss.
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