by Mirren Hogan
“I don’t think you wanna go outside. Not tonight!” She thought hard for a moment, swallowing the bile back down. “Get your camera. And the salt. It’s in my bag.” The thing in her hand felt like it was still pulsing, and Makani wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
Flynn hesitated, but then nodded and went to do as she asked. He searched for and found the bag of salt and handed it to her, before picking up his camera. “You want me to take a picture of that?”
“Yeah.” She whispered, and swallowed again. This thing was disgusting in the worst kind of ways. “Someone needs to see it besides us. I dunno who, but someone!”
He shrugged in response and got his camera out, held it up to his face and focused it. “Can you spread the paper towel out a bit, so it’s lying on top. Then I’ll shoot it. Then I’ll make sure it shows up before we get rid of that thing.” He held the camera up in front of his face. “Ready.”
Holding it out, she reluctantly loosened her grip on the pink thing . . . only to have it start thrashing in her hands. “Holy crap!” Makani held on tight, the tip wriggling and squirming. Frantically, she cried out, “Take the picture! Take the damn picture!”
The Nikon clicked and flashed several times, until Flynn lowered it. He looked into the screen and nodded. “Got it. Sort of.” He turned the camera to show her. It didn’t look very ominous in the viewer.
“You could catch one hell of a fish with that for bait. The smell alone would attract a shark.”
“A shark with a death wish . . . ” She fumbled with the salt and managed to get the top open with one hand, the other busily holding on for dear life. Makani dumped the whole bag onto it.
They watched in horror as it started to expand right before their eyes. The thing thrashed furiously, as if trying to escape its inevitable demise. But things reach critical mass. Swollen to twice its original size, it burst all over the room, spattering them both with smelly gore.
Makani looked down at her now empty hands, over to Flynn, and around the room.
“Well, that was disgusting.” He was looking around the room and cursed under his breath. “It’s going to take all night to clean this up.”
She turned green under her tan and dropped the paper towels, before running for the sink to be violently ill as quietly as possible. Makani might be used to picking up small corpses, but that thing was worse than dead and all over her clothes and skin.
Flynn held his camera in one hand and moved to hold her hair back with the other as she proceeded to be sick.
“Why don’t you go and have another shower and I’ll get started on the cleaning up?” he suggested.
A shaky hand reached up and turned the water on, letting the disposal run before she looked back up.
Swallowing some water, Makani nodded her agreement. For once, the woman wasn’t going to argue with a man when he wanted to help. She shuddered at the sight of the disgusting stuff everywhere, but said, “Don’t open the windows. Whatever you do!” Makani picked her way around the gore, and grabbed her pack. She pulled out clean clothes and went to the bathroom, hoping the smell wouldn’t reach her nose in there.
“Yes ma’am,” he called out after her.
Scrubbing the vile mess from her hair and off her skin, Makani thought about all the things they had seen today. The cave, the creature, the dead cats, all the stuff on the news, and now this. It was so surreal, but everything was really happening. Just like she always thought it would . . .
It took a long time, but Makani managed to wash off most of the mess from her hair and change into something clean. Bundling the ruined clothes into a ball, she left the bathroom and walked with trepidation back to the living room.
Flynn was out there trying to mop up bits of exploded pink ‘thing’ out of the curtains and off the floor. Not quite satisfied that she was clean, but not seeing anything else she could do to get the top layer of her skin off, she wrung her hair out and joined Flynn. “My turn. I can do some of this.”
“You might need to walk around with a bucket or a peg on your nose,” he commented, rubbing a damp cloth over the wall. “I know you said not to open a window, but it really stinks in here.” The windows and doors were still shut tight in spite of that.
He rinsed the cloth under the tap and handed it to her. “I won’t be long.” He pulled up the hem of his shirt, sniffed and grimaced. “I smell like crap,” he commented. “There’s a basket in my room for laundry, I’ll take this off and put a load on.” He dropped his shirt and disappeared into the bathroom.
“Yeah . . . sure.” Makani went to the walls and started scrubbing at some of the mess. It came off easily enough. It was surprisingly gritty in texture, and less sticky than she first thought. More like sand and water than slimy guts. In fact, it felt like the salt had absorbed the worst of it. Makani washed out the cloth twice and went back to the floor. She realized the local custom of removing your shoes before going indoors was a horrible idea as she stepped into a pile of the goo.
It was like a bomb went off inside her head.
“Worst. Day. Ever!” She dropped the cloth on her foot and tried to get the stuff out from between her toes.
“Thanks,” Flynn was leaning on the doorframe, his hair wet and curling on the back of his head. “Maybe you shouldn’t have spoken to me in that bar last night.” He marched across the kitchen, grabbed a clean sponge from under the sink and went back to work, on the opposite side of the room.
“Right. This is all my fault. ‘Kay, fine. Whatevahs, brah.” The pidgin started seeping into her speech as she went back to cleaning up the walls. Her temper was frayed, and she really didn’t need his attitude, right now.
“I didn’t say it was your fault,” he replied, his voice tight. “I was just assuming you regretted speaking to me, since everything has apparently been crap ever since.”
Not everything . . . she thought. But what woman in her right mind would concede that the sex had been great when it was always punctuated by weird things happening? “You could have said no. You could have sipped your fruity bitch drink, and not followed me home.” She found another spot and attacked it viciously, taking out her aggression on the mess. Makani glared at Flynn for a second and muttered, “Fuckin’ haole . . . ”
“I didn’t follow you,” he retorted. “You asked me. And I didn’t hear you complaining. At the time,” he added under his breath. “And the fruity drink wasn’t that bad, for your information. But I didn’t ask to be taken to a cave with some wacko thing attached to the bloody ceiling!”
She slapped the towel down, and stared at Flynn with what can only be called ‘Stink Eye’. “Eh, brah! If I knew there was a monster in the cave, we wouldn’t have gone the fuck in! Getting our asses mixed up in this shit was the last damn thing I wanted to do!” Her mouth had taken a decidedly nasty turn, and Makani wasn’t good at self censoring when she was angry.
He glared at her for a minute. “Maybe you should think twice before you take tourists into caves then,” he said. “I’d rather be deported than killed by a blood sucking monster!”
That did it. Makani tossed the rag down and stood up. She grabbed her pack from the floor, and wiped her knife off on the carpet before stuffing it in her back pocket. “Fine. I’ll take my chances with the ‘bloodsucking monster’. At least it wants me.” She went against her own advice and walked out the door, slamming it behind her. If Flynn bothered to look, he would have seen how sorry she was for getting them both into this mess.
CHAPTER 8
Flynn flinched as she slammed the door. He supposed that whatever it had been between them couldn’t have lasted. Twenty-four hours was probably a long time, under the circumstances. He resumed scrubbing at the wall for a minute before throwing down his sponge and walking over to the door. He opened it and peered outside. The jeep was gone. He already missed her driving. That was crazy, considering how dangerous it was. And yet . . .
Flynn sighed and closed the door. It was probably better this way
. It wasn’t as though it was going to lead anywhere. She’d have shown him around for a few days and then moved on to another tourist with a taste for adventure. Or one who preferred the quiet life. Either way, he’d find his own way now. Rent a car and maybe drive around some of the spots she’d mentioned. If there weren’t any more weird attacks, that was.
He picked up the sponge and went back to cleaning. The old woman who owned the place would have a fit if she saw bits of splatted thing on the walls. In one of the places he cleaned, the stuff was so gritty it took paint off the walls. In some cases, it was an improvement, but he was more gentle with his scrubbing after that.
After an hour of wiping and rinsing the sponge, he tossed it into the sink, satisfied that he’d cleaned up the entire mess, plus a few years’ worth of grime from previous tenants. Makani might even be proud of him. The thought made him frown. His mother would be proud. The thought made his frown deepen.
Flynn grabbed his tablet, turned it on, and pressed the email icon.
Spam, spam, spam . . . did he really need a penis enlargement that badly? He shook his head and deleted those messages. Nothing from his mother. He was grateful for small mercies, at least.
Flynn closed his email and opened a browser window. Bringing up the tablet’s keyboard, he tapped in ‘mananaggal’ and pressed search. Google popped up with ‘Mananaggal and movies’, as well as a Wikipedia reference. It confirmed that the creature had wings and ate human flesh. He found no mention of worms that explode when salt was added to them. Flynn tried a search for that particular feat but found nothing. It had been worth a try, at least. Clicking off the tablet, he put it on the charger and went to bed.
Alone.
He tossed and turned, feeling every lump in the old mattress. He pushed his blankets off and then pulled them back over himself. Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see that it was one am, already. All he could hear was the sound of waves crashing against the beach, but he still had a hard time getting back to sleep. Around two, and after a lot more tossing and turning, Flynn finally managed to drift off into a dreamless sleep.
It was the first rays of the sun that woke him as they came slanting through the gap in the curtains and across his face. His first thought was of Makani. Flynn shook it away and climbed out of bed. It was just past six o’clock as he dressed in running clothes and Nikes, before he headed to the sand for a run in the early light.
The beach was all but deserted. He passed another runner and an older couple walking a dog before he reached the far end of the strand and turned to run back. No dead dogs or cats, nothing weird lurking in the shadows behind him. It was like yesterday had never happened. Except that he kept thinking about Makani and hoping she was all right. He had her card in his wallet, he’d call her, just to be sure. He pulled it out as he stepped inside and grabbed his phone.
He pressed the buttons for her number, and waited for a moment, before realizing that a ringtone was sounding from his couch. He walked over and dug under the cushions before picking up her phone. It must have fallen there the night before, in their haste to undress each other. He hung up and started to look through hers, grateful it wasn’t protected by a passcode. The only name he recognized was Aunty Elsie, so he rang her.
“Hello?” Elsie answered loudly, the sound of running water and the radio filling the background.
“Uh, hi,” he said, trying to think what to say. “This is Flynn Cole, we met yesterday at Makani’s place. Um, she left her phone at my place.” He didn’t feel the need to elaborate.
“Right.” She chuckled quietly on the other end. “Well, she’s not here. Surf is up, you sure she didn’t go out with one of her brothers? Or her cousin?”
He shrugged and then realized she couldn’t see him do it. “I have no idea where she’d be. She . . . she stormed off last night and I haven’t seen her since. I tried ringing her, but that’s when I noticed she’d left her phone here. I don’t suppose she surfs anywhere near here?”
“Makani and Asa are probably at dakine . . . Makapu’u point. Where you stay?”
He didn’t answer. “I think that’s near here.” He could look up a map on his phone anyway. “Thanks. If I don’t find her and you see or hear from her, can you let her know her phone is here, please?”
“Yeah. Eh, try wait. I get one call coming in. It might be her . . . ” Silence reigned over the line for a minute, before Elsie’s voice came back on, “Brah, what the hell did you say to my sister’s granddaughter?” The voice was deceptively sweet and calm.
Flynn hesitated, wondering just how much he should say.”She said yesterday was the worst day ever. I might have taken it a bit personally. I gather she’s still pissed off?” She seemed like the kind of girl to hold a grudge. He’d probably be persona non grata until the end of time.
“Probably. She didn’t go with Asa. He thought I might have asked her over, instead. Told him she left her phone at your place. Makani is hella pissed if she didn’t call her cousin. Or dead. Now, for real brah . . . what happened?”
“Maybe you should ask her?” he suggested. “Is there somewhere I can leave her phone so she can get it? Someone I can leave it with?” Even as he spoke, he was thinking. “I don’t suppose you know if she got home last night?” The thought made shivers crawl up his spine.
“She probably didn’t. Look . . . ” The sound of a lighter clicking and a sighing exhale came over the line, “Makani’s always been like this. She’d argue with her parents, get pissed off at a boyfriend,” the last word was enunciated very clearly, “and then she’d go off on her own. She’d mellow out, and then she’d come back. Makani is a big girl. She knows how to take care of herself. Even with mananaggal running around.” Elsie laughed heartily and hung up.
Flynn listened to the sound of the phone beeping in his ear for a moment before turning it off and putting it down on the bench. Sooner or later, Makani would miss her phone, figure out where she’d left it and come back. He might as well stay put and wait. And in the meantime, eat.
He stuck some bread in the toaster with one hand, while flicking the kettle on with the other. He wished he had some Vegemite, but at least he had jelly to put on his toast. He took his breakfast and went to sit on the front doorstep in the sun to eat. And wait.
It was almost noon when the filthy white jeep rolled back in, with Makani in the driver’s seat. The most interesting thing to be noted was the pink, red, and purple spew coating the hood and fender. That and the large black trash bag sitting in the passenger’s seat and spilling over into the back.
Flynn crossed his arms over his chest. “Looks like you’ve been busy,” he called out. It looked as though she’d run over a dozen of those fat worms. And bagged another dozen.
Makani didn’t say a word to him. Instead, she went around to open the passenger door and proceeded to haul out not one, but two bags. Slowly, so she didn’t spill the contents, she began hauling them around the side of the house, and out back to the beach, while Flynn followed.
“All right, I’ll bite,” he said eventually, “what are you doing?”
“Get your camera.” She pulled the knife from her pocket, and started tearing the bags open. A grisly bat-like wing popped out from one side, and a clawed foot popped out of the other. Both bags were twice as fetid than the thing that exploded the night before. “For reals, brah; get your camera, and get my phone. Please?” Makani didn’t look up from what she was doing, as she slowly kept pulling the bags open and revealing more of the things inside to the sun.
He hesitated and then went and did as she asked. He might have admitted it grudgingly, but Flynn was pleased to see her. Smelly bags of corpse, notwithstanding.
He grabbed his camera and her phone, and headed back outside to where she stood, staring at the contents of each bag with a grimace of disgust on her face. One bag contained a vaguely human torso, with two mangled leathery wings. Intestines, a tailbone, and a spleen were exposed where the creature appeared to have been torn in
half. Its face was mangled beyond recognition and there were long greasy locks hanging from the remnants of its skull. A very long, tube-like tongue hung out in stark pink. It was grossly female, judging from the pendulous breasts that laid askew on its crumpled chest.
The other bag was just as grisly. Long, clawed feet led up to feminine legs and what could have been female sex organs. But it was dried out, desiccated by a liberal coating of gritty pinkish-white sea salt. The waist had looked neatly sawed in half, unlike the torso, but more organelle spilled out, all of it purple and red. Makani looked at Flynn with haunted and tired eyes, “I found it. The thing we caught last night? That was part of its tongue.”
“Wh . . . what?” He stammered. “How?”
CHAPTER 9
“So yeah, I left. And it was a bad idea because the cops had set up roadblocks going back into town. So I asked them what they wanted, and they said they were looking for the guys going on this weird killing spree. I was like, ‘brah, are you serious? The cow killer’s gonna be out now? They’re probably at home eating steak. Cops are stupid, especially my cousin. He’s a dumbass for not picking up his phone, when I stopped at a gas station for water and salt. Y’know, just in case.”
Flynn just nodded and gestured for her to continue.
“Anyways, I was driving over the Pali, to look for a place to crash. Probably sleep on a beach in Kailua. It must have been around midnight, I guess? I dunno, by then I knew I forgot my phone at your place. Thanks for keeping it, and not throwing it out to sea.”
Flynn nodded and opened his mouth, but she spoke again before he could. “Yeah,” she went on. “But I was going down and right about to hit the first tunnel when something flew out of the pines. I thought it was an owl. Damn thing went straight for my windshield! I was pissed! Nearly ran me into the wall, but it flew off. Made it through to the second tunnel and came out . . . then the bastard came at me again! So I sped up! It bashed straight into my hood, so I braked. It fell off, and I ran it over.