The Walker on the Hills (Jed Horn Supernatural Thrillers Book 3)

by Peter Nealen

  His eyes got distant as he remembered. “I was after a Redcap.” Eryn and I grimaced. We'd had a run-in of our own with one of those a few months before. They were turning into a real plague, no one could tell why. They're tough, ferocious creatures. I'd seen a cop empty his patrol rifle into one once. He didn't even scratch it. A construction foreman in Portland, however, on a last run-through of his site for the day, got jumped by one and beat it to death with a two-foot section of re-bar. They like iron about as much as hags do. “It was well ahead of me, and I needed to stop for gas. That was when I first started getting a bad feeling, right there at the gas station at the edge of town.

  “It didn't hit me at first. I just started filling up the tank, not really taking any notice of the locals aside from the first glance around, but after a while I started to notice that they were watching me. All of them. And they weren't friendly looks I was getting, either. They were sort of 'what are you doing here?' looks.

  “Then I bent down and my crucifix fell out of my shirt. That was when things got really uncomfortable. It was like a ripple went through the crowd...though it wasn't really a crowd at that point. It started to turn into one, though. I didn't hear anyone say anything, but people started to come out of the truck stop, all staring at me. A few of the closest ones started to get closer.”

  “What did you do?” Eryn asked.

  “I got in my truck and got out of there,” Ray said. “Whatever problem that town has, it wasn't my problem at the time; that Redcap was. I did keep a pretty close eye on my rear-view mirror on the way out of town, though. They didn't follow me, but there were an awful lot of people standing in the street, watching me drive away. It was just weird. Kinda scared me, to be honest.”

  “Have you been back there since?” I asked.

  He just shook his head. “Never did have reason to go back,” he said. “Sure, I thought about it, as it was pretty strange, and I figured there had to be something creepy going on for the locals to act that way, but that Redcap was a mean one, and afterward there was enough going on that Coldwell just kind of slipped further and further down the priorities list. Other Hunters who have passed through have gotten the same strange feeling about the place, but like I said, it's never been anything anybody's really been able to figure out. And there haven't been any major happenings around the place, at least not enough to draw the Order's attention in any significant way.”

  I frowned. “An impromptu mob starting to form at the sight of a crucifix strikes me as something that should probably have drawn some significant attention,” I said.

  Ray shrugged. “It was an active summer. A couple of Redcaps were killing people, a skinwalker was prowling farther north than anyone had ever heard of, and there were entire packs of goatheads coming out after dark in cities across three states. We were swamped. There have never been that many of us. We were scrambling to stop the monsters that were actually killing people. Nobody died mysteriously in Coldwell, so it got put on the back burner.”

  He looked back and forth between us. “But mark my words, kids; there's something wrong about that town. I don't know what it is, but if Blake's finally stumbled on it, things could get really, really ugly. Take a lot of ammo, don't trust anybody, and watch your backs.”

  I glanced at Eryn. She was frowning, too, watching Ray with concern written on her features. This wasn't like Ray. Sure, he'd never been impressed with Blake's prudence, but something about the letter and the mention of Coldwell had him seriously rattled. I didn't think I'd ever seen the old man rattled before. It was scary.

  After a moment, Ray excused himself, picking up the plates and heading into the kitchen. I watched him go around the corner, then, when he was out of sight, I reached across the table, picked up the beer bottle, and sniffed it. “Smells normal,” I murmured. Eryn shot me an exasperated look, and I shrugged. Something wasn't right. I got up and followed Ray.

  He wasn't in the kitchen, but the door to the back was slightly ajar, so I stepped out. Ray was standing on the back porch, looking toward the woods and the bluffs beyond. His big hands were resting on the porch railing. He didn't look at me as I stepped up next to him.

  “Is there something more you didn't tell us about Coldwell, Ray?” I asked quietly, after a moment of silence. He glanced over at me, but didn't speak. “Something's bugging you, I can tell. So can Eryn. You've never gotten so stirred up about any place we were heading for, especially when you've gone to such lengths to say that nobody knows what might be going on; that it's been so low-key that none of us have even been there except when passing through. What's the deal?

  Ray looked down at his hands. I'd never seen the man so hesitant, so...scared. “I don't know,” he replied after a moment. “Something's wrong, and I don't know what. Last three nights, I've had nightmares to make your hair stand on end.” He looked up at me. “Both of you featured rather prominently, and not in good ways, either.”

  I didn't know what to say, at first. Ray had become a mentor to me since before Dan had died. He was a bottomless well of knowledge, wisdom, and faith. Or he seemed that way. Now he seemed like a tired old man, frightened of losing those close to him. “If you're that worried about us, why don't you come along?” I asked. “You're pretty handy with that Gibbs-Summit of yours.” Ray was the one who had introduced me to the .45-70 as a monster killer. His preferred tool was an Enfield carbine chambered in the big cartridge.

  He looked away again. “I can't,” he said. “I've got to stay here. Somebody's got to mind the store. What if somebody else needs help around here, and I'm not around?”

  It was a strange reply. On the surface, it sounded like an excuse, but I'd known Ray for a lot of years. He was no coward. I'd seen him fight; I'd seen him order around a Fae woman like she was his daughter. There wasn't a craven bone in that man's body.

  Which led me to a suspicion that I'd had for a long time. I'd never been able to quite put all the pieces together, but I'd long suspected that there was a very specific reason why Ray stayed on the ranch, that had nothing whatsoever to do with its role as a Hunter way station. I had no idea what it was, but somehow I doubted that this was an actual retirement.

  I turned to face him fully. “There's more to this place than just a ranch and a way-station, isn't there, Ray?” I asked quietly. “'Cause I know you're not staying because you're scared. There's some reason you can't leave here, isn't there?” I paused for a moment. “Is it something Eryn and I need to be concerned about, building a house here?”

  “Maybe I just don't leave because I'm old, and Hunting is for young bucks like you,” he suggested.

  “Bull,” I replied. “You ain't that old. Tom's got at least a decade on you, and nobody wants to cross him.”

  He chuckled, but his eyes were still out on the woods. “That's just because Tom's mean,” he replied, “meaner than a junkyard dog.”

  “And he's got Old Man Strength,” I added. Tom was a bear of a man, a head shorter than Ray but almost as broad, and very little of it was fat. “Don't change the subject.”

  Ray gusted a large sigh, stirring the hairs around his mouth. “All right,” he said, even as Magnus padded over to us, each step making the planks of the porch creak. The big dog stood there and looked at us intensely, his golden eyes fixed on first one and then another of us. “You're right, there is another reason. And no, it's not anything you should be too worried about. But it's not something I can tell you about, not yet. Maybe someday.”

  I glanced down at Magnus, who just regarded me solemnly. I didn't think it was a coincidence that the big dog had come over just then. Like I've said, I suspected there was something truly extraordinary about Magnus, but at that moment I was no closer to understanding just what it was than I ever had been. I studied the big dog for a moment, then turned back to Ray, who was still gazing out into the night.

  “All right, then, keep your secrets,” I said. “If you can't come with us, you can't come with us. We'll be careful. I'm sure the dreams
were just dreams.”

  He stared into the darker shadows under the trees. “I sure hope so,” he said.

  I lay in bed for a long time after Eryn's breathing had evened out, staring at the ceiling and thinking. I hadn't seen Blake since we'd both gotten out of the Marine Corps, though we'd kept in touch. There are so few of us in the Order that you can go years without seeing each other.

  He didn't stampede easily, much like Ray, but he'd had something of a chip on his shoulder for a while. He hadn't taken the Marine Corps' disbelief about what had happened to our platoon out in the desert very well. His integrity and his courage had been questioned, and even though no one in our old chain of command knew or cared what we were doing now, he was going to prove to himself that he still had it, come hell or high water.

  Ray was right, it wasn't a good attitude for a Hunter, but Blake had done well enough. He'd come close to losing his skin a few times, but had always scraped through, by most accounts usually by sheer guts.

  Yet now he was in trouble, trouble he apparently didn't have time to describe, in a place that gave Ray the screaming willies. And Ray was troubled by some kind of dread that he couldn't explain or describe. It may sound cliché, but I had a bad feeling about this, and it was keeping sleep from coming.

  I think I drifted off around one in the morning. If I'd known what we were about to stumble into, I doubt I'd have slept a wink.

  Chapter 3

  It was a long drive to Coldwell, and we didn't get started until late, so it was getting dark as we drove into town. It was perhaps not the most auspicious beginning.

  The town itself was set well back from the interstate, a good five miles down a winding county road. It had apparently been on the old highway, before the interstate, and was still hanging on, even though there wasn't much left to keep it alive. There weren't even many farms in the vicinity, though a sign just as we turned off the interstate, lit up by our headlights, announced the presence of the Bar-13 ranch, about ten miles in the other direction.

  Mostly it was five miles of rolling hills, sagebrush, bunchgrass, and the occasional stand of trees in the low ground where there was more water. The trees were already clumps of darkness against the grasslands that were going gray in the deepening twilight.

  There weren't a lot of lights on in Coldwell. There was a gas station on the edge of town. As I got a good look at it, I thought Ray had been rather overly charitable in calling it a “truck stop.” The pumps were ancient and rusty, and the building behind them was dingy, the paint peeling where it wasn't dirty enough to turn from white to gray. It looked like the windows hadn't been cleaned in a quarter century at least. At least the lights over the pumps were on, though the building itself was dark.

  Only about three streetlights were lit down the main drag. They didn't help. All they seemed to do was show the decay. Sidewalks were overgrown with weeds, and more were growing out of cracks in the street. Several of the old storefronts were boarded up, and one was visibly sagging toward the street. Another was burned out, black sweeps of soot staining the dingy paint as well as the buildings closest to it.

  It wasn't that late, so there were still a few people out and about, but most towns I'd been in still showed more activity at that hour, however small they were. The place almost looked like a ghost town, with a few scavengers still going through the detritus. But it was still, as far as we knew, a living town, albeit for certain values of “living.”

  I almost drove straight past the motel. It was set back from the road and was mostly dark, lit only by a single floodlight over the door to the lobby, and a sickly yellow glow coming through the dirty windows looking in on the front desk. A few of the rooms' windows still showed some light, but all the curtains were drawn. About half a dozen grungy-looking cars and trucks squatted in the gravel parking lot.

  “I don't like the look of this place, Jed,” Eryn said, eyeing the motel.

  “Can't say as I do, either,” I replied, slowing the truck and pulling over to the curb. “This place looks sketchy as all get out. But I don't see another motel in town.” And I could see most of the town from there; the entire place probably didn't cover a square mile.

  She shook her head. “I don't just mean the motel,” she said. “I mean this place. All of it. I'm starting to feel what Ray was talking about when he said that there's something not quite right about this town.” She looked at me, her green eyes glinting a little bit in the reflected glow of the headlights. “Can't you feel it?”

  I squinted at the motel. I'd been in plenty of run-down pest holes over the years, ranging from borderline ghost towns full of squatters to meth towns, slums, dying railroad towns, and suburbs gone rotten. The predators of the Otherworld like to prey on such places, as do some of the more demonic enemies of mankind. Silverton had turned as warped as it had because the town saw a downturn, the locals got bored, and a few of them tried to summon something best left in The Abyss.

  But this was something different. And, just like Ray had said, I couldn't figure out just what was different. I could feel a sort of quiet unease, but there wasn't anything in particular that I could point to as to why. There was no visible threat. Sure, it was dark, and everything was dirty and falling apart, but I'd been in plenty of dark, dirty, disintegrating places before without feeling like I should have a gun in my hand. But right then, my palm was itching for my pistol.

  Movement drew my eye. A figure shuffled in front of the headlights. I'd pulled over to the side of the street, but hadn't pulled into the parking lot, as we sat there and looked at the grungy roach motel. Now there was a young man making his halting way down the crumbling sidewalk toward us.

  Even though it wasn't a cold night, he was wearing a long, dark-colored parka that looked like it was about two sizes too big, with the hood flipped up over his head. He was gaunt, hollow-cheeked, and wide eyed, and his mouth, sans several teeth, was hanging half open. He had “meth head” written all over him. The stare he was giving us was not a friendly one. He glared at us like a madman. Even from ten yards away, I could see whites all the way around his irises.

  He shambled forward, speeding up, and suddenly lunged at us and slammed his hands on the hood. I already had my .45 in my hands, and out of the corner of my eye I could see that Eryn had her Smith & Wesson Model 29 out. It was more of a deterrent than anything else; under the circumstances, simply stomping on the accelerator would be a lot more cost-effective than shooting through the windshield.

  He yelled something at us, but it was completely unintelligible. When we didn't respond, he just got more agitated, banging his hands on the hood and yelling wildly. I'd learned a long time ago not to get focused on just one threat, so I started to see movement out of the corner of my eye as more figures started to come out of the shadows onto the street, watching us. None of them were moving toward us, at least, though that could be good or bad. They just stood there, watching. Nobody seemed to be trying to calm down the yelling man, either.

  With what could only have been an oath, though it was just as garbled as anything else he was saying, he started to come around the truck on Eryn's side. She already had the window up and the door locked, but he started smacking his palm on the window, still yelling. Even that close, we still couldn't understand what he was saying, but it was certainly hostile enough.

  Eryn didn't bat an eye. She just lifted her .44 and pointed it at his nose. That rather changed the dynamics of the encounter.

  Faced with his imminent demise, the staring meth-head backed off. He didn't get any more friendly, though. He continued to glare at us with an unnerving intensity as he backed away. Finally he continued down the street, though he kept looking back, staring at us until he ducked into a house that I could have sworn had to have been abandoned at first glance.

  The rest of the people on the street didn't move for a while, and we stayed where we were, watching them right back. None of them were standing under a streetlight, and they'd managed to all stand outside the co
ne of the headlights, so it was impossible to see any of them well. They were just dark silhouettes, their stares more felt than seen.

  “Now I don't want to go inside,” Eryn confessed. “I'm afraid that if we do, we'll come back out to find the windows broken and the tires slashed.”

  I couldn't say I disagreed. There was a palpable hostility in the air. A few of the more distant figures were filtering back into houses and what looked like the town's sole operating bar, but the nearest were still just standing there, watching. I grimaced. “We can't just bug out,” I said. “This is where we're supposed to meet Blake.” I looked over at her. “I'm just not sure which is going to be more dangerous—going out there to go into the motel to get a room, or staying out here on security.”

  “I'd think staying out here would be riskier,” she said.

  “Except we don't know what's inside,” I replied. This place was already making me paranoid. “Or who.”

  “I'll go in,” she said. “Don't worry, I'll have Mabel with me.” She hefted her .44. She'd named her revolver long before I'd known her, and liked to tease me about why I didn't name any of my guns. I'd just said that I wasn't in the habit of naming my tools.

  She cracked her door, and I rolled down my window, so as to have as clean a shot as possible at anyone coming after us. None of the figures on the street moved, except for a couple more that faded back into the dark, briefly silhouetted by an opening door before vanishing. Maybe I was being paranoid, but I imagined I could still feel them watching from empty windows.

  Eryn got out, closed her door, and started toward the motel office. I sat behind the wheel, as tense as I'd ever been in a combat situation, watching the watchers out on the street, my ears straining for the sound of gunshots from inside. I was confident that Eryn would put up a hell of a fight if it came to it. I just hoped it wouldn't come to it, even as I wound myself up to dive out the door and go in after her.