by P. T. Phronk
Paul had been helping too, even though he had no reason to. Stan spotted his SUV driving past his mother’s house far more often than normal patrolling would predict, checking up on Stan.
Stan crawled through the unhinged front door, past Paul’s forgotten shotgun, past tables littered with stinking beer bottles, past photos of a better past. He tossed his glasses aside, collapsed on the couch, and didn’t wake up until an inhuman screech forced him to.
Stan could barely open his eyes; his whole face was puffy from the collisions with Joey’s fists. At first, he thought the screeching was left over from a dream, but then another screech answered from the woods behind the house. It was halfway between the whistle of a kettle and nails on a chalkboard. He recognized it from the horrible night in the woods when that same type of wailing had kept him and Bloody awake.
Dizziness overtook him as he stood. He steadied himself on an empty beer bottle, which didn’t do a very good job of keeping him upright, and tumbled to the carpet instead.
When he regained his footing, he stumbled across the open-concept living room to the kitchen, then peered out the back window above the sink. He must have been passed out all day. Without his glasses, he could only see the collective movement of trees in the moonlight, no clearer than television static.
Was that a dark-eyed face on the path leading into the forest? Stan’s eyes were too puffy to squint very much, but as he adjusted to the dark, the face was gone, and there was only darkness.
Something thunked in the basement.
If he were stupid, he’d think it was just the old house settling on its foundation. For most people that would even be rational. But this wasn’t Stan’s first horror show; he was in a house whose owner had been recently kidnapped, and he had received a death threat just hours ago, so rationally speaking, suspicious sounds were likely related to something more dangerous than settling wood.
Thu-thunk! That was the vacuum cleaner falling over. He’d knocked it over himself a hundred times when he played in the tiny basement. Somebody was down there.
There was a flashlight in the pantry. He glanced out the kitchen window again on the way there. Something pale streaked across the lawn. He launched himself into the pantry, grabbed the flashlight, then pointed it at the window.
Nothing there—just dimly lit leaves. No time to wait and see if it he’d imagined the movement. There was definitely someone downstairs.
The door to the basement creaked open. A familiar musty smell hit Stan’s nose, but then something else. The smell of seaweed.
He took one step down. The wooden step creaked so badly that there was no point in doing this subtly. He stomped down two steps at a time, then pointed the flashlight into the basement. There was the toppled vacuum by the stairs, and at the window …
Milky eyes met his. The creature hissed.
It was stuck in the window. The opening was barely big enough to let in light, let alone a man-sized … thing. The thing’s moon-pale skin reflected the light, but without his glasses, Stan couldn’t make out any features. Its spindly arms reached around, trying different angles to push itself into the room.
It hissed at the beam of light. No, not hissed—more like gurgled, because its mouth was covered by a mask strapped around its bald head.
The creature lurched forward, cutting itself on a shard of the broken window, oozing dark blood. Its chest hitched on the window frame, then popped forward. It would be through soon. But if it was stuck in the window, then what knocked over the vacuum?
An elbow slammed into Stan’s chest as he turned. He dropped the flashlight when his back hit the rough basement wall. His breath left him.
A hand covered his mouth. It clamped down harder than he’d expect, given the pale creature’s thin arms. Its fingers were connected by a webbing that felt like wet toilet paper over his lips and smelled like rot. Its other hand pinned Stan’s arm against the wall.
Stan found himself face to face with clouded-over eyes, a nose with oddly tiny nostrils, lumpy cauliflower ears, and a mouth covered with a gurgling gas mask that was full of water instead of air. It wore a patchy leather vest.
The thing’s bare foot kicked forward, trying to trip Stan.
He still had one free hand, and one shot to use it. He’d be on his back soon, and he couldn’t breathe. Breathing: it was hard to fight without it. He whipped his hand around, sideswiping the thing’s mask.
Water splashed from the edges of the mask. The thing pulled back, clutching at its face, putting enough distance between them for Stan to slip from its grasp and scramble through the darkness, up the stairs.
He tried to slam the basement door, but the thing was already behind him; the door bounced off of its head. Stan stumbled into the living room, knocking over an end table on his way. The thing leapt over the table, but rolled its ankle and fell on its ass when it stepped on the beer bottle Stan had left on the carpet.
It gave Stan time to get to the front door.
Another one blocked his path.
This one was nearly naked except for homemade leather pants and the mask connected to a tank strapped to its back with criss-crossed leather belts. It stepped over Paul’s shotgun, lurching at Stan with its hands outstretched, webbed fingers ending in long fingernails.
The one behind him regained its footing and circled around to block the back door. The basement door swung open again as the one from the window came through. It bled from a gash above its chest, where it wore a black bikini top to cover its breasts.
The one in the leather vest gestured at the female one, urging it forward. Stan backed into the kitchen. He reached behind him for the closest weapon from the counter, and found himself wielding a frying pan crusted with a film of week-old eggs.
Hesitating only for a moment, the thing stalked forward, though its legs seemed to tremble as it did. It crouched into a position Stan recognized: Dalla took it when she was about to pounce onto someone who had moments left to live.
Stan held the frying pan in front of him, but it felt wobbly in his hands.
The creature leapt. Stan swung, but it moved too fast, and he could barely see. The pan tumbled from his grasp, clanging to the floor. The thing wrapped its legs around Stan’s midsection, squeezed, then leveraged its weight to wrench him to the ground. His head cracked against the tile, and he immediately felt blood soak into his hair. The thing’s thumbs wrapped around his throat. Long fingernails dug into the back of his neck.
A wet crack came from the front door. The creature there toppled forward. Paul appeared; he’d gotten his shotgun back. He lowered the butt of the gun after swinging it into the thing’s head, then put a foot on its back.
Stan’s consciousness was flickering and unreliable, but he thought he saw something odd in the face of the creature on top of him: recognition. Paul pointed the barrel at her. He pulled the trigger and a deafening blast filled the air as thick blood slopped onto Stan’s face. He regained his breath. The weight left his chest.
Paul stepped over the creature by the door, then pointed the gun at it.
“Get out,” he said.
It nodded, then backed away with its hands raised before turning to run.
The one in leather by the back door was already fleeing too.
Paul approached the one bleeding on the floor beside Stan—the female one. It clutched its shoulder, which was a lumpy mess of skin and meat.
“No, no, I didn’t want this,” it said, its high-pitched voice sounding like it was underwater behind the mask. But Paul came down on its head with the butt of the gun, smashing it once, then twice, then three times, until it stopped moving.
“Thanks,” Stan said, but it came out as a whisper. He wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.
Paul slapped him across the face. “Stay with me. I need you to help me load her into my car, then we need to find Annie. I think she’s in tr—”
His radio chirped, then a strained voice spoke through it. “Possible 217. Unknown female
in her thirties. Beaten. Found with severe head trauma outside the church on Maple Street. No vital signs.”
“Christ. Annie, what have you done?” Paul muttered. He extended a hand to Stan.
Stan could barely think, but the thought of Annie being hurt woke him faster than smelling salts. He took a deep breath, grabbed Paul’s hand, and peeled himself off the blood-splattered floor.
(TWO)
HE WAS CAREFUL TO LEAVE plenty of footprints on the blood-spattered tiles of the empty swimming pool.
The body that supplied the blood lay slumped against the side of the pool. Taking no joy in it, the vampire had killed the man painlessly, then forced himself to stop drinking after a few sips. Small-town cops usually wouldn’t notice if there was half as much blood as there should have been, but there was no point in risking it; he could always stop for a snack later.
Montana was such a gosh dang dump. The state was too open. The sun weaselled its way into every crevice. Even when it seemed safe to hide out in some rubbish farm house, the light would find its way in. It was still a few hours from dawn, but he had to get moving if he were to lay Dalla to rest, then reach Newbury to further deal with—and deal out—the consequences of her death.
He put his mask back on, then flew from the community center back to the caretaker’s house, where he replaced the bloody boots that he’d borrowed a few hours ago. Even in a town with a population in the low hundreds, there were plenty of secrets. The caretaker sleeping in the other room had a leering gaze that creeped out local kids, and since the community center got shut down, he hung around doing nothing on most days, just staring at people and licking his lips. The big secret was that the creepy old caretaker had never so much as said a rude word about anybody.
The mayoral candidate who had been responsible for shutting down the community center now lay dead at the bottom of its pool. It was a near certainty that the town would blame the caretaker. That would relieve tension surrounding other recent killings, which would look good for the rival mayoral candidate, who was under the control of the true perpetrator of the recent killings: this dump’s local vampire, Barry.
It was astonishing how easy this was. Within hours, he had tracked down the town’s only vampire, reverse-engineered the scaffolding of secret connections that held up every town, and given his brother-in-fangs a boost in the political rankings. He hadn’t even planned to be here; this place just happened to be the first suitable town in his path.
He telephoned his new vampire friend. “It’s done,” he said.
“Plumb, thanks. You gonna tell me who you are?” Barry asked.
“No. Just remember me when I come back.”
Barry exhaled through his nose. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“And I won’t ask for much in return. Enjoy your newfound safety. And have the others ensure that the package I bury north of town stays safe. That is all.” He hung up.
The others were things that he could sense under the ground. They were loathsome, wriggling things that did, unfortunately, share some of his blood, as most loathsome things did. These creatures—or things like them—lurked on the edges of every city and town. To people, they only showed up in local legends and unexplained disappearances. These ones didn’t even seem to kill often—they buried themselves, then existed merely to exist. Probably ate freakin’ insects. At least Barry had political ambitions. But the underground things would do well serving as guards for Dalla’s body, and once Barry ran the town, it would be another of the many safe havens he had sprinkled throughout the planet.
He could feel the loathsome dirt-dwellers beneath him as he stomped across the hard earth. Their attention turned to him when he passed, their blood sensing his. The buzz of nearby family filled his heart, striking it from the direction of subtle mounds in the earth that any human would pass by without a second thought. The things would recognize Dalla as family, even as she lay dead in his arms. Without even a word spoken, they would understand that they were to protect their distant cousin, or face the wrath of their great great grandfather.
Tears welled up in the vampire’s eyes again as he buried his daughter’s charred corpse. Although he could immediately figure out the complex networks of a town’s ecosystem, he could never quite do the same with his own conflicting emotions. Part of him blamed himself for Dalla’s death—after all, their final argument was just weeks before she was killed, so she was likely upset, not thinking straight as she chased after her batty celebrity fantasies.
Another part of him knew he was right to oppose her. He couldn’t usher her into his world of fame and fortune. It was no way to live, especially as a race of people forced to live in shadows. Even on the best of days, celebrity life was held under a light, and it showcased the worst that the dominant human race had to offer. He could tolerate it, but after a century of experience, tolerate was all he could do. He knew that Dalla, child as she was, would have been destroyed by it.
He hated being right. She’d chased after a star and gotten burned. Damien Fox, the creep, was dead now, but he wasn’t the one responsible for his daughter’s death. No, the one responsible was currently in a small town in Michigan. He rubbed at the bulge of the wooden stake in his coat. Dalla’s father would take some rare joy in killing that man, who would not die painlessly.
12. Born To Run
STAN’S CHILDHOOD HOME WAS ON fire. As he and Paul fled and loaded the tied-up creature in the back of his SUV, a crash came from the house. The other creatures must have gone back in to light it up, and they did it effectively, because flames already flickered from two different windows.
“Oughta call the police,” Stan mumbled, trying to stay conscious.
Paul shot him a look like he was the stupidest person on the planet—which he likely was—but did shout something into his radio. Maybe someone would arrive before the whole house went up in flames, and with it, the last remaining pieces of Stan’s childhood.
As they sped away, the thing in the back of the car shifted. “What are those things?” Stan asked.
Paul held his breath, as if considering what to say next. How much to say. “They live in the lakes and rivers. Remember when we were kids? Mister Blackwood’s bald bigfoot sighting at the old mill? The walking fish that the Quinn boys shot at when they were camping? Bedtime stories that our parents told us, right? Well, no, the shaggs are real.”
“Great, more monsters.”
Paul shook his head. “They’re not. I mean, they’re not human, but they don’t cause trouble. Their lives are … well, they struggle a lot. But they keep to themselves, because trying to cooperate with the town folks usually don’t turn out so well. That’s why a few of us, who know where to find them, how to reach out to them, we try to help whenever we can.”
“The one in the back recognized you.”
“I leave meat and blood for her and her family. Sometimes Florence and I buy a whole cow, and we can never finish it before it gets freezer burnt, so we help out. We like to help.”
“Didn’t seem like those things were helping me, Paul.” He touched the back of his head and hissed in pain. “I’ve got a gash in my scalp that strongly implies they wanted to kill me and burn Mom’s house down.”
“If they wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. I’ve seen them run down a moose then devour it with their bare hands. And you’re no moose, Stan.”
Stan giggled hysterically. “Thank for that, Paul. Thanks for insulting me in a way that, yet again, involves mooses.”
They pulled up to a pair of police cruisers with their lights flashing. Stan’s heart wanted to just give up and stop beating. His head felt hazy, but he still clearly remembered the words through Paul’s radio: no vital signs.
Paul parked far enough from the other cars that they wouldn’t hear the thing in the back if it started thrashing. Stan opened the door and fell out.
“No no no,” he muttered. He tripped and fell a few times on the way to the row of hedges across from the church, but bar
ely felt his knees skinning. Dark shapes tried to keep him from going further, but he shouted, “I know her. She’s my best friend,” and they moved aside.
The smell of blood was becoming too familiar, and it tickled his nose now. Annie lay on the grass. She had no eyes. Blood and tissue just lay there on her face. Shouldn’t it have been pumping? Flowing? At least oozing?
Annie was so full of life, in her own way. Why wasn’t she moving?
Stan crouched by her head as a man tried to give her CPR. The man instinctively backed off when Stan leaned close to Annie’s face.
If Morgan were here, he’d have some kind of mystical cream or spell to help Annie. Morgan was far away now. But words are their own sorts of spells—as powerful as a fireball, when you find the right ones. So Stan put his lips to Annie’s ear, and whispered the only words he could conjure that could possibly help her.
Off through the new day’s mist I run.
Just before sunrise, Bloody ran through the woods, leaping over logs, splashing through streams, getting real wet and muddy. She could feel the muck running down her face.
A scent crossed her path. It was her friend: that moose who she’d met in the woods after searching for Linda with Stan and losing Paul. She was dreaming, she realized, but the scent still felt real. As did that song stuck in her head.
Out from the new day’s mist I have come.
The fog swirled around her and trees shivered when she passed as she practically flew down a game trail, the scent getting closer and closer. She was half mutt, with her arms and legs furry and clawed, but the rest of her stubbornly remaining Annie.
I hunt, therefore I am.
It was an old Metallica song—a deep cut from The Black Album. The drums pounded around her. Her mouth watered. She wanted to see that moose—her friend—and run around with him, play with him, maybe tear his throat out too.