by Derek Adam
Chapter 6 – Luca
She’s gonna shoot me in the ass.
I’m dead.
I hadn’t even had a chance to watch the new Deadpool movie, and I was gonna die, and my body was gonna wind up on the news with weird stuff carved into my skin.
I really didn’t want to get shot, and I honestly wasn’t sure if she would do it. I don’t intimidate easily, but…
The dog was trotting along, keeping pace at my side. I glanced down at Bella and she returned the look, her tongue hanging out of her mouth as she panted.
It looked like she was smiling.
I’d probably be smiling too if she didn’t have a gun behind me. I had gotten excited for a bit there, and was even thankful that Hitch had called me.
Right up until the gun.
I could hear Emma crunching through the grass behind me and imagined the gun pointed at my back as I marched toward the truck.
Sutter and Virgil were nowhere to be seen. No doubt lounging in the back.
I wondered if I might be able to squeeze a text off to Hitch, asking for help, but pictured my lifeless body swiss-cheesed by her smoking gun and thought better of it.
She had the passenger door open as I climbed into the driver’s seat. Bella bounded up to perch in the middle of the bench seat and Emma followed behind, slamming the door and looking at me.
She wasn’t holding the gun, thankfully.
I could feel my heart trying to claw its way out of my chest as I settled in and started up the truck.
All the shit I’ve seen and dealt with, and it was a black-haired maxim cover model that was gonna do me in.
Sutter’s head appeared through the wall of the cab, leaning in to eye the dog before he looked from me to Emma.
Bella could see him, too. She sat, fixated, ears erect with her neck craned up and backward.
If Emma saw him, she was acting oblivious and ignoring him.
I made eye contact with Sutter and he grinned at me, that toothpick still rolling around between his teeth that he’s been sporting for decades.
With a bob of his eyebrows he tipped his wide-brimmed hat back on his head and leaned toward Emma.
“Hell, Rooster. Look at you. She’s purty. And she smells nice. Got you some local tail, huh?” Sutter gave a gritty laugh as he leaned out some more, most of his torso hanging into the cab as he peered. “I can almost see her titties…”
Before I could say anything, Emma turned on him and reached. She got a hand on his face, gripping his cheeks in one hand and dragging him toward her.
She held his face close to hers, and I could see her fingers denting his cheeks. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates.
So were mine.
“She… can… see… me,” Sutter managed to mumble out of his squished face as they stared at one another.
“I can do a lot more than that. If you don’t tuck yourself back in your maggot hole, I’ll start removing pieces of you that you don’t need… starting with your dusty Lincoln log.”
“Yes ma’am,” Sutter muttered quietly. She let go of his face and he nodded to her. “Sorry, ma’am.”
Sutter looked at me as he turned to disappear through the back of the cab, his eyes widening even more at me before he slipped away.
I was slack-jawed, staring at her. Bella hadn’t budged. She still sat, panting away. Emma looked at me and blinked, offering only a shrug.
“You just grabbed a ghost.” I shook my head and scoffed. “How…?”
“You’re not the only one with gifts, Luca.”
“No shit… Well, thanks for not shooting him, I guess.”
“I considered it.”
“He’s harmless. Just a lot of vulgar talk. He’d never actually do anything.”
“I’ve handled rough-grabbing spirits before, I wasn’t worried.”
“No, I mean… You’re not his type.”
“What do you mean?” She gave me a puzzled look.
God, please don’t make me explain it.
My eyes fell across the dash as I searched for the best words while shifting the truck into drive.
“Sutter’s gay.”
“Oh.”
I expected more of a response from her. I know I was weirded out when he revealed that tidbit of information to me as an adult.
It made me think about all the times he had hung around while I was changing. I didn’t let him hang around as much after that.
Today was a day for abnormal shit for both her and I, apparently.
A dead gay Wild West lawman really wasn’t that odd, all things considered.
I glanced at her as I rolled ahead, following the two-track.
I could feel her eyes locked on me.
Bouncing my gaze between her and the path ahead of the truck, I realized where she was at, in reading her face.
“He’s not my gay cowboy. Well, I mean, he’s mine but not like that. We’re partners.”
She was still staring.
“Not like… domestic partners. They relieve some of my load when we get busy.”
Jesus Christ.
“Not that we get busy. I mean, we’re partners but we’re not together like that. I work with Virgil and Sutter, and we don’t do sex. I meant, when we get busy with clients and investigations.”
Sutter’s face appeared through the cab wall again, just enough to avoid being grabbed.
“He’s a pickle kisser. He investigates my privates.”
I banged my fist into the cab where his face was. I missed, like always, and his muffled laughter erupted from the back.
Emma was still staring, but with a brow arched. I gave up and just stayed silent, staring straight out the window.
Whatever that was in that cabin had completely fucked my head sideways. I was fine going in, but felt foggy now.
I felt agitated.
Her pulling a gun might have had something to do with it.
Best to just let it go and keep quiet while we drove to the next cabin.
*****
This last cabin was identical to the one before it. Large, single story. Empty inside. They were in good shape and well-tended, but it was clear no one had stayed here in a while. At least not since last season.
There was still weather-proofing plastic over the windows on them inside.
What the hell was she doing out here?
I was trying to keep my thoughts on the symbols and the writing, struggling to find something in common, other than the replication of the drawings.
The meaning behind a lot of the symbols was lost on me but the writing was even more clear here than the last cabin.
It looked like someone was trying to channel or summon something.
“Maybe it was attracted by the symbols.” Emma had been looking at me the whole time and broke the silence. It was more of a statement than a question. “The dryad. It felt like it was leading me someplace.”
“That’s what I was just thinking.” I looked at her with exaggerated shock. “Like a tea-party séance on ’roids.”
Could she read my thoughts?
I chewed on a few stray hairs from the corner of my mustache as I mentally slapped myself for my wandering eyes and stray thoughts.
I glanced at her again and she was standing nearby, eyes fixated on the ceiling.
Maybe she could read my mind.
Pineapple, mustang, pirates, butt cheeks, quarter pounder with cheese!
I was hoping for some kind of a response from her with the random diarrhea of thoughts, but got nothing.
That was stupid.
I rolled my eyes inwardly at myself. If she could read my mind, then I just gave her a half-dozen other reasons to not take me seriously.
“Relax.” She mumbled it to me, barely above a whisper.
My asshole slammed shut and my stomach heaved.
Fuck, she can read my mind.
Why am I still thinking about butt cheeks?
“It has me stumped, too. Don’t beat yourself up.” Sh
e sighed as her eyes settled on me and her shoulders relaxed.
“I’m alright,” I lied. I was annoyed, confused, distracted, and all but mind-fucked. I couldn’t focus on these symbols if I wanted to.
Not with her standing so close by.
If it weren’t for the same oozing hatred that was dripping from the walls of this last cabin, I could feel her presence – like I could in the truck.
All the symbols and writing here were virtually identical. The placement was different because the layout of the cabins was just a bit different from one to the next.
But overall, it was the same.
“You said they’re identical to this? The writing and such?” She pointed to the large wall of the living room area, where the largest of the symbols were painted.
“Yup. The only real difference is the quality. This is even more crisp than the last one and there’s no blood here. Hitch didn’t mention that.”
“Who’s Hitch?”
“Ah, just a cop I know. That’s why I’m checking this out. He didn’t mention that one of the cabins was clear.”
I was weighing the differences of the cabins, going over the notes I had jotted in my phone and sliding between some of the pics I snapped.
Part of me had considered that she might have been involved somehow, but given the amount of blood everywhere, and that she was completely clean, it wasn’t likely.
Well, relatively clean. She didn’t have blood on her but her clothes were dirty from her time in the woods, and her skin was gritty as well.
My focus was still shot though and I shook my head, looking to Emma.
She was staring at me again.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“What are you doing here?”
“I already told you.”
“If it was leading you here, why were you following it in the first place?”
“I told you, I was hunting it.”
“I got that.” I slid the phone into my back pocket and held my arms outstretched. “But why?”
“It’s what I do.”
“Okay, but I mean, like… on your own? Is it just you and your dog, or are you like a government agent for some Bureau of the Damned?”
“I’m not alone.”
Her tone was so quiet with the last statement, I could barely hear her. She had turned her attention and was walking away, trying to force her focus into studying the walls.
More like she was trying to disengage from answering my questions.
I took that as a sign that I needed to stop prying.
I was pretty sure she wouldn’t shoot me in the ass. So, I was compelled to press, but at the same time, I was already feeling the fog lift a little as she moved to the other side of the room.
She was a hell of a distraction, that’s for sure.
That’s when I noticed it.
I dug for my phone to swipe through the images again.
There it was. Smack in the center of the large inverted pentagram was another symbol. It was absent in the first cabin, but present in the rest.
But in this one, there was another smaller sigil painted inside of that one. It was the only real difference between the last two that I could see.
It also looked like it was raised slightly, or textured somehow, compared to the rest of the flat paint.
As I leaned in close, I could almost feel the tension, hatred, and malice reaching for me from the woodwork and drawings.
It permeated here, just like the other cabins.
The air was thick with it.
I turned to call Emma back, when heat and light burst from the wall. I’ve never had an explosive go off near my face, though I tried to blow myself up a few times with homemade fireworks as a kid.
Almost succeeded once when Hitch filled a pumpkin with gasoline, lit it on fire, and I hit it with a baseball bat. That was the only time I’d set myself on fire.
The heat from this flash, though it lasted for a fraction of a second, was wickedly intense. Not quite as painful as the ‘flashfire pumpkin incident of 1995.’
I tried to blink away the blindness, squinting hard, and smashing a palm into my eyes. As the room came back into focus, I glanced at the symbols and found myself staring into the face of a creature with no eyes and an open mouth full of teeth.
No larger than a house cat, it clung to the wood planks of the wall with sharp talons, but not for long.
I don’t know how it saw me, but it knew I had made eye contact with it.
It hissed, tendrils of spit slowly dripping from its teeth as it leapt at me. I was ready for it though. It wasn’t my first encounter with an angry monkey.
They were logged as ‘mouth puppets’ in my journal. Aggressive little bastards full of teeth that liked to get inside you. Call it whatever, they were little demon monkeys bent on possession.
What I wasn’t expecting was how fucking strong it was. Despite its size, it felt like I was hit with a cannonball when I caught it.
These little bastards were never really that strong. If you weren’t scared out of your mind, you could easily fight ’em off with a damn broom.
This one was a veloci-monkey.
I staggered back and hit the floor, one hand wrapped tightly around its neck, the other batting away at talons that were swiping furiously to grab at me.
It was near impossible to keep it at arm’s length.
“Are you… fucking… kidding me.” The mouth full of teeth gnashed closer at my face with each bite, the strength and inhuman weight of it pressing my back flat to the floor.
Trying to choke it was pointless, I just wanted to keep it the hell away from me. It flailed and tried to twist in my grip before arching and biting again.
The demon monkey managed to writhe and break free from my grip, and I fumbled with it like a greasy football. Its hairless skin was slick but stretched tightly over its little skeletal frame.
For having virtually no muscle, it still managed to overwhelm me and dove straight at my face with its mouth open.
For a split second, I felt like the air had been sucked from my lungs and my ears popped as a thundering boom erupted.
Its head disintegrated, just inches from me, a burst of foul-smelling flecks of ash spraying across my face.
The body went limp and tumbled to the floor next to me, crumbling to fine particles and a pile of small glowing embers.
My arms collapsed with a thud and I lay there, spitting the rotten-egg flavored grit repeatedly from my mouth.
Emma appeared over me, looking down with a fleeting look of concern.
“You’re fine.” She cocked her head and slid the pistol into her thigh holster.
“Gee, thanks...” I wiped the bits from my face and crawled to my feet, looking to the wall. The raised sigil was missing.
Obviously.
“Devil monkeys….” I spit again, my mouth starting to water as I fought the gag reflex from the overwhelming scent and flavor of sulfur.
“That was a bodekin.”
I glanced at her and paused. It didn’t surprise me that she knew what it was. What did surprise me was how strong it was.
“Call it whatever, it doesn’t belong here.” My hands ran over my sleeves and chest, checking for holes that didn’t belong, or if I’d sprung a leak.
Nothing, as I figured.
Those things don’t attack like that to cause physical harm. They don’t want to damage the host, after all.
It wouldn’t do a tick any good to kill the dog.
I grimaced and looked at the pile of ash, then to Emma’s gun.
“I’m guessing you didn’t pick up those bullets at Wal-Mart.”
“I’m a little surprised I needed to use it.” She quirked a brow at me. “It was just a bodekin.”
“It was really strong.”
She didn’t respond with anything other than a light shrug. I stared flatly at her before stooping to retrieve my phone from the floor.
Perfect. Shattered screen.
> I muttered and slid it into my pocket. I don’t know why I bothered.
Every single job I’ve been on, it didn’t matter what expensive “everything proof” kind of case I bought.
I wound up with a broken phone.
They don’t make ‘scary-shit-proof’ cases. At least not that I’ve found. I could leave a new replacement phone in the damned truck and come back to find it broken.
“Welp….” I turned back to her, after looking around at the walls and ceiling. “I’d say that wraps it up for me.”
“What do you mean?” Emma blinked at me, clearly confused.
“I mean… this was off-the-charts from the shit I normally deal with. I’m gonna go back to Hitch and tell them to burn these down, bulldoze what’s left, salt the earth, call in a few priests to work some mojo, and get paid. There’s nothing else left for me to do here.”
“Don’t you want to find out why that bodekin tried to possess you?”
“It’s pretty obvious, Emma. They’re like fat kids in a cake shop; they’re not picky. I was standing right where it zapped in, and I was the closest meat suit.”
I had zero interest in lingering any longer than I had to.
Not without my things, and certainly not without Sutter. I don’t know why I came in here without my stuff.
I’ve never done that before.
If she hadn’t shot that thing…
I sighed quietly and shook my head.
Completely fucking unarmed, like some amateur. Even those reality show wannabe ghost hunters go into party stores better prepared than I was, and they don’t even know what the hell they’re doing.
Hell, if she hadn’t been at that cabin in the first place, I would have had all my gear with me.
I was so pissed at myself for getting this distracted by a woman. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but having that ‘bodekin’ try to skull fuck me woke me right up.
I knew I was scowling. I scowled most of the time.
Grandpa used to joke about how it looked like I always had a ‘v’ in my brow because I scowled so hard.
It was even more apparent when I was actually irritated, and Emma was picking up on it.
She was reading my face.
“Look, Emma…” I rubbed at my forehead, as if I could physically wipe the scowl away – or hide it from her.