HowlSage

by Brock D. Eastman

  It—I know it sounds farfetched as I only saw the eye for a microsecond— but it was a girl’s eye. I was sure of it; ninety-nine point nine percent sure.

  But there were no girls to be seen in the library. Two exits were all that led out, so I would have to make a choice.

  I chose wrong. The hall was empty, but that wasn’t the worst of it. I stepped out of the library and right into Mrs. Diordean.

  “What are you doing, Taylor?” she asked, arms crossed.

  I stumbled for words. “Uh, ummm, well. I.”

  There was no good excuse I could come up with and aside from that, I’d be lying. Which was wrong.

  “Back to class, Mr. Rivers,” she said.

  I began to tromp down the hall, when around the corner came the girl. She looked me right in the eyes. And walked past.

  Her eyes were the eyes. Well, the eye that I saw between the books.

  I turned to follow, to stop her, but Mrs. Diordean was right there.

  She put her hand up and then swiveled it to motion for me to keep going. My sentence was set and I was headed to my cell.

  I had to wait after class, at which point she questioned my wandering and sentenced me to after school detention.

  This wasn’t good, because that meant I wouldn’t be free to leave until 5:30. The after school detention program was two hours of sitting at a desk. You could work on your homework, but if you weren’t doing that, you could do nothing else.

  I knew this would throw some serious kinks into tonight’s hunt, but the damage was done.

  I only had a moment to tell Ike about my charges, before I made my way for the assigned room. He shook his head and promised to tell McGarrett and Jesse.

  As I headed back into the school, the halls were already empty with the exception of some loose pieces of notebook paper, a couple broken writing utensils, and an abandoned maintenance cart.

  I sighed, knowing I couldn’t put off my punishment any longer, and started for the right classroom.

  A light overhead flickered, giving off that annoying buzz that fluorescent lights do as they die. I looked up as the light went out. The hallway seemed darker than it should have, and the air seemed, I don’t know, heavier.

  And then a laugh echoed through the hall.

  I froze. All but one light went out, the remaining one flickered on and off rapidly.

  A silhouette appeared just outside the pulsing light. The person stood about my height, but was covered in a dark cloak. The person laughed as they lifted something into the air—it looked oddly like a farmer’s pitchfork. Then its sharp tips seemed to gleam with a self-illuminated red glow.

  The figure began to speak, “You are known. You are seen. You are f—”

  A burst of light shot from behind me, hitting the cloaked figure square in the chest. The body flew backward and slammed into a bank of lockers, then crumpled to the floor. I turned to see the maintenance man standing there, his hands cupped together and pointing toward the figure.

  Had the light come from him? Had he attacked the person or thing who’d threatened me?

  I looked back to the injured body on the floor, but it was gone. The cloak was there, but it was nearly flat on the ground, its occupant gone, missing. But where?

  I turned to my savior, but he too, was gone.

  And then the lights came back on and I was standing in the hallway alone. There was no one in sight. I stepped to the abandoned cloak and bent down to pick it up.

  When my fingers touched the fabric, it felt like I was running my hand over a hot coal. I yanked my hand back in pain. The black cloak began to sizzle, and then it burst into flames, deep red flames.

  A second later it was gone. Not even a burn mark on the floor remained. There was no sign that a fight had even taken place. The only sign of the maintenance man was his cart in the middle of the hallway.

  What had happened? Was it just my imagination?

  “Mr. Rivers, you are late for your detention,” a voice said behind me.

  It was Mrs. Diordean.

  “You owe me another twenty minutes, Mr. Rivers,” she growled and then added with what looked like a satisfied smile, “For your tardiness.”

  I sighed, probably a bit too loudly and followed her to the assigned detention cell, err, room.

  As the seconds clicked by, I thought about what had happened. Clearly it wasn’t the HowlSage; it was too early in the day, too much sunlight. Besides, the figure had been too small to be the beast. My size, in fact. Maybe a bit taller.

  I remembered the dream I had had a few nights prior. I had to tell McGarrett about it. He needed to know what I had seen, what the HowlSage had said to me—about joining, about my father.

  The seconds, minutes, and eventually hours ticked by; the other students left while I finished out the additional twenty minutes.

  Didn’t Mrs. Diordean have anything better to do with her time—or her life, for that matter? She sat up there like a perched bird, grading papers with her red pen. Surely she had a cat or something to get home too.

  I felt an odd twinge in my heart at the mean thought, but shrugged it off.

  Finally I was released and I literally ran for the door, but stopped to check the hall for anything suspicious before darting out of the detention room.

  No cart, no flickering lights—the coast was clear.

  I figured I would have to call McGarrett or walk home. But when I walked into the cold night air he was already there, waiting beside his Rolls. The expression on his face was all I needed to know that he wasn’t pleased with me. I hoped if I told him about the hall battle he’d loosen up a bit.

  He didn’t. In fact, his expression grew grimmer and he said nothing. He didn’t even try to provide an explanation as to what it might have been. Instead, he motioned me into the car and we drove a few blocks away, down an alley, where we stopped and got out.

  He took my gear from the trunk and fitted me up right there on the spot.

  “Jesse was supposed to rendezvous overhead fifteen minutes ago, but you were late. I am hoping he’ll make another pass,” McGarrett said.

  “So I take it communications are still down.”

  “They are,” he admitted. “Here he comes.”

  I certainly didn’t see or hear him, but I knew McGarrett had a sense about these things, or at least better ears.

  Sure enough, I felt my hair ruffle a bit and then heard the soft thump of Jesse’s Keds touching down beside me. Jesse made himself visible and gave me a very sarcastic grin.

  “Way to go cuz,” was all he said.

  I nodded.

  “You guys should get going,” McGarrett interrupted before we could start bantering. I looked at him, but he wouldn’t look me in the face.

  We shot into the sky, Jesse invisible, and me nearly so with my black getup. It had to be very tough for anyone to see me from the ground. The sky was dim with only half a moon remaining.

  It was hard to think that just seven days prior we’d had a full moon. And, including tonight, there were just twenty-two days left in the hunt. Twenty-two days and the HowlSage would be fully grown, its venom potent, and the moon full. That would be like the perfect storm striking Ashley Meadows, and not even a fully trained and well equipped team of hunters would be able to easily defeat it.

  While the darkness helped mask my soaring through the chill air, it also provided cover for the HowlSage below, casting odd shadows and providing dismal light.

  Jesse informed me that our primary goal was to find the house where I’d seen the hand. He wouldn’t tell me why this took priority over finding the HowlSage, but I knew if there was a human involved then our situation was far more perilous then we’d originally thought. I wanted to think that this extra involvement might have been reason for my failure the first night, but I knew that wasn’t true.

  Finding the house, though, was literally like searching for a needle in a haystack. While not a big town, I had little recollection of what the house or street
had looked like and neither did Jesse.

  Our battle with the flying creature had taken us far away from the house, and with the tracking software inactive that night, we had no markers of our locations. Normally they were carefully recorded. Worse, I seemed to be experiencing memory loss when it came to the event. I could not picture anything from that night.

  Nearly an hour passed with no sightings of a familiar house, street, or dog.

  We decided on one last patrol of the town before heading back to The Pink Hippo.

  As we approached the exit from the highway tunnel that lead into town, I saw it. The HowlSage was loping along the ditch toward the tunnel. I signaled Jesse, who saw it as well. He flew in close to me and shouted over the noisy rush of the air.

  “You go over the ridge and cut it off; I’ll follow it through,” he said.

  Having screwed up once that day already, I wasn’t about to argue about who got to do what. So I obeyed and flew higher, gaining altitude in order to clear the rocky mountain range that separated Ashley Meadows from the rest of the world.

  Ten minutes later, I was hovering over the entrance to the tunnel.

  Five more minutes and still no HowlSage. Worse, no Jesse.

  Three more minutes and I became worried, so I dove into the tunnel. No traffic at this hour of the night. But before I’d gotten a hundred yards in, I saw Jesse limping along on the side of the tunnel.

  “What happened?” I asked as he approached. “Did it get away?”

  “Never had a chance to get at it. My left engine just shut off and I flew into a spiral. I nearly became a pancake on the front of a semi-truck. The creature leapt on to the truck and rode it back out of the tunnel.” Jesse stopped beside me. “I’m going to kill that Ike when I get back. He nearly killed me.”

  I felt a lump in my throat. I was nervous for Ike, but I also knew I hadn’t warned Jesse about Ike’s, well…short-fallings.

  We found a pay phone and waited for McGarrett to pick us up. Unfortunately, Ike had decided to come along. Jesse chewed on him like a piranha on a goat that had made the ill-fated choice to drink from the wrong river.

  I said nothing.

  Chapter Nine

  October 10th—Tuesday

  No demons attacked me at school the next day, which was a good thing. I don’t want to sound boring, but I’d prefer to be a normal kid whom normal things happened to.

  I just wanted the day to be uneventful. To have some sort of normalcy—but at lunch I saw her.

  It was the grainy green girl with blue-gray eyes. These were the two biggest recollections I had of her. First sight through my night vision goggles, and the second moment a single eye staring at me between two book spines.

  Now she was here before me and she wasn’t green. She was alone at one of the lunch tables, the perfect opportunity to meet her under normal circumstances.

  This was my chance. I decided against bursting into song, whatever Jesse had said.

  It was time to get over this unjustified fear I had of introducing myself to her. She was just a normal girl my age, right?

  Was I kidding?

  I stared at her again. The way she bit into a sandwich made it look like an art. On second thought, maybe I did need a song.

  I shook my head, I was getting away from myself.

  Breathe.

  What was happening to me? I’d never felt this way and as far as I knew never acted this off center.

  I motioned for Ike to find a separate table, and like the good friend he was, he didn’t ask any questions and found an empty table. He even gave me a little smile of encouragement.

  I felt my throat constrict as I approached. And with each step another pebble of anxiety dropped into my stomach. Within three strides, it was full of boulders.

  I cleared my throat in preparation.

  Then out of nowhere—quite literally nowhere—a boy appeared. The same one from the park.

  He didn’t even look at me, just sat across from her and bowed his head.

  I made a ninety degree course change as if I’d innocently been maneuvering between the rows or lunch tables. I found my way to Ike and sat next to him.

  I’d been ravenous with hunger moments before we’d entered the cafeteria, but now the food on my tray wasn’t remotely appealing. I’d declined Mrs. Riley’s homemade meal for a shot at the cafeteria’s BBQ rib sandwich. My favorite and the only lunch the school made that I liked. But now the piece of meat sat on its bun, brownish-orange goop dripping off of it in a rather disturbing way.

  I pushed my tray away.

  “Can I have it, if you don’t want it?” Ike asked.

  I shrugged.

  Ike pulled an empty baggy from his sack lunch from home, and lifted the sandwich to it. He pulled each side of the bun away from the meat, letting the brown patty slip into the baggy without his hands ever touching it. The sides of the baggy were now streaked with goo.

  “Perfect.”

  I didn’t ask.

  As I looked at the boy and girl sitting together at the table, alone, I wondered, What made him so special?

  “What are you looking at?” Ike asked.

  I sighed. “Nothing.”

  He followed my gaze. “You’re looking at her.” His voice cracked. Ike cleared his throat. “You know, you shouldn’t be letting yourself get distracted by her. She’s just a girl. And you need to be concentrating on the hunt. We’re running out of time.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, in more stern a voice than I’d wanted. “I didn’t choose the role of Hunter for myself. I don’t even know if I want it.”

  Eyes still on the boy, I saw his cheek twitch with a slight smile.

  Ike shook his head. “Of course you do. I’d love to be you.”

  “No you wouldn’t. You don’t have a clue what it’s like being me. You don’t have to put your life on the line every night.”

  Ike lowered his head. I heard him sniffle.

  “Look, I didn’t mean too…” I started.

  “No, I don’t know what it’s like to be you. But you’re wrong. I’d gladly put my life on the line for the cause. I believe in what we’ve been called to do.” With that he stood and walked out of the cafeteria.

  I didn’t see Ike the rest of the day, not until he boarded the bus. He chose a seat at the front, and left me alone in my row toward the back. I can’t even remember the last time he didn’t sit across from me.

  Ike didn’t even wait for me after being dropped off at the gate in front of The Pink Hippo. Instead, he maintained a good ten yards ahead of me as we walked up the drive. I knew he really wanted to keep his distance, as my strides were longer, and at the same pace I could always catch him. He was nearly jogging by the time we reached the stairs of The Pink Hippo.

  “Ike, wait up,” I said. I watched my breath roll from my mouth in a hazy cloud. I hadn’t realized how cold it was today.

  He turned to look at me.

  “Look, I’m—”

  Kaboom!

  Ike nearly leapt out of his shoes and I ducked low.

  A plume of black smoke hurled high into the air from behind the workshop.

  Ike and I ran to investigate the source of the blast. As we rounded the side of the building, we heard a groan. It was Jesse’s.

  We found him sprawled out on his back, covered in black soot. Several tears marred his clothing, and bloody gashes ran the length of his bare arms.

  The door at the back of the workshop burst open and McGarrett came into view. He looked at me. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know!”

  Jesse rolled to his stomach and pushed himself to his hands and knees. “Canister,” he whispered.

  “Canister?” I asked, then looked at Ike. His face had turned the color of his wide eyes—a deep shade of green.

  Ike was shaking his head. “Not…shouldn’t have…wasn’t ready… didn’t know.”

  I looked toward a spot in the yard where a hole, several feet deep, had been gouged into t
he ground. Black smoke rolled up from it as an eerie purple flame sputtered from its center.

  McGarrett had gone back inside the workshop and returned with a fire extinguisher, but a second before he began showering the purple flames, Ike found his voice.

  “No, don’t use that! It won’t work. It might make it worse.” I’d never heard Ike speak in such a deep, commanding voice. “I’ll get something for it.”

  He ran for the door and disappeared into the workshop.

  Jesse let out another groan, so I went to him. I wasn’t exactly sure what I could touch, his arms and the front of his legs looked singed. His clothes looked like they were melted to him in some spots.

  “Can I help you?”

  “No,” he groaned, his voice rife with pain. “It burns.”

  Ike appeared with two sacks of white powder, one under each arm. He gave one to McGarrett and instructed him to use it on the fire, and then started sprinkling the second onto Jesse, who shook his head and started sputtering as the dust got into his mouth.

  “What the…? That’s disgusting! What are you doing?” Jesse cried out. “You almost killed me with whatever that was, and now you’re covering me in who knows what. Get away from me! I’ve had it with your worthless inventions! They don’t work!”

  Ike stopped his powder delivery.

  I wanted to say something, but at the same time I agreed with Jesse. Or at least I thought I did. Ike had lambasted me at lunch for taking interest in that girl and not showing a desire for my calling. But he wasn’t following his calling either. I mean, if he was, would he mess up so much?

  Ike’s eyes grew cloudy with unshed tears.

  McGarrett seemed not to have overheard; he was attending to the purple flames, which were dissipating as he spread the chemical powder over them.

  Ike dropped the bag and broke for The Pink Hippo. Or at least that’s where I assumed he was headed.

  I stared at Jesse, having realized how cold he’d been.

  Jesse glared at me. “It was true and you know it,” he said, an edge to his voice.

  I didn’t nod or shake my head. I was frozen. I didn’t know what to say to my cousin. Ike was my friend. He’d been there for me to help with my mistakes more times than I could remember. At the same time, Ike had nearly killed me a few times, and someone needed to rein him in. Jesse had a right to be mad—it was our lives that were on the line every day, not Ike’s.