Riverwatch

by Joseph Nassise

  "It’s too bad we just can’t tell them what really happened," Damon said, removing his Sheriff’s hat and entering the room. He closed the door, giving them some privacy.

  "They’d never believe us anyway," Jake replied. "I suspect it was hard enough convincing you."

  "How’s the leg?"

  "Okay, I guess. They say I’ve got months of physical therapy before I can even think about walking, but they did say I’d walk again, so it can’t be all that bad."

  Damon took a seat in one of the plastic chairs next to the bed. "What you did was crazy, you know."

  Jake shrugged. "I felt responsible, in a way. It was a member of my crew that released that thing into the world. If I had the slightest bit of common sense I’d have sealed that damn tunnel up right after discovering it and would have saved everyone a lot of grief." He met Damon’s frank, appraising stare with one of his own. "What would you have done in my place?" he asked.

  "Probably the same thing," Damon said with a grin. "I just wanted you to know the official opinion before I gave my personal one."

  Jake inclined his head at the television. "Think they’ll buy it?"

  Damon understood right away that Jake was referring to the press and, by extension, the public. "We’ve gone through the worst of the scrutiny. The ‘suspect’ I created is strong enough to hold up. We’ll see some problems when they don’t find any remains a few weeks from now when they sift through what’s left of Riverwatch, but I’ll figure something else out by then. We’ll get through it."

  "Thanks for getting me out of there that night. I wouldn’t have made it without you," Jake told the Sheriff.

  "The thanks really belong to your two friends. They were pretty convincing."

  At that moment the door to Jake’s room opened and Katelynn came in. She kissed Jake on the forehead, said hello to Damon, and took a seat on the end of the bed.

  "You’re not wearing your necklace any longer," Damon noted.

  "Never will either." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small wrapped package. "I’m not quit sure what to do with it, though. It seems wrong to just throw it away."

  "I’ll take it," said Jake. "It’ll make a nice reminder of what we went through."

  "What do you think it really is?" Damon asked, referring to the stone’s unique properties.

  "I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about that for the last few days, ever since Katelynn told me what happened that night in the car. My best guess is that Sebastian Blake created it so that he could communicate with the Nightshade in a closer fashion."

  "Speaking of the Blake’s, any word on Hudson?" Katelynn asked the Sheriff.

  "Nothing," replied the Sheriff. "Officially, we are listing him as missing, but I think that creature got him at the same time it killed his butler. It seems unlikely that he escaped. We’re still looking though."

  They talked for a bit, until it was time for Jake’s next dose of painkillers. Knowing they put him out like a light, Damon and Katelynn said their goodbyes when the nurse came, leaving Jake in her care.

  *** ***

  He awoke later that afternoon. His room was empty, but a long white cardboard box rested atop the nightstand, wrapped with a blue ribbon. Reaching over, Jake picked it up and set it on the bed beside him. On the outside there was no card; no indication of who sent it or what it contained. Untying the ribbon, he opened the box.

  Inside was a cane, carved from mahogany and with a silver handle in the shape of a wizard’s head. A note lay in the bottom of the box, tucked beneath the gift.

  "Jake," it read. "Thought you might need this in the weeks ahead. Sorry I wasn’t there sooner." It was signed, Sam.

  The note was short but explained a lot. Jake hadn’t seen Sam, except for one quick visit, the entire time he had been in the hospital. It was obvious from the note that Sam was feeling guilty about not accompanying him back to Riverwatch.

  While Jake hated the thought that he was going to need a cane, he knew that he would have to get used to the idea if he intended to walk anytime soon. "Thanks, Sam." He said aloud to the empty room, wishing his friend were there.

  *** ***

  Downstream from Riverwatch in a small canyon formed by the twists and turns of the river as it flowed down the mountain, something crawled from the depths of the river. It dragged itself into the darkness of the dense undergrowth and slowly began to heal.

  Chapter Thirty-six: The Beginning of the End

  It was a gorgeous night. The air had that crisp, clean quality that comes with the fall. The stars overhead shone brilliantly. It was a good night for a walk and since Jake’s physical therapy required several of these a day, he had chosen to take advantage of the evening.

  From the corner on which he stood, he could see Columbus Park.

  His street met the park on the opposite side and he always ended his exercise by cutting through it.

  He passed through the gate and entered the park. In the distance he could just barely make out the dark, squat shapes of the merry-go-round and the jungle gym. The baseball diamond was directly in front of him. A slide and a set of swings were there somewhere as well, he knew, but what little illumination that extended from the streetlamps behind him did not reach that distance.

  From center field to the exit on the far side, the park lay nestled in a darkness broken only by the faint light of the stars above.

  A sudden unease about crossing that distance struck him then, and for a moment he considered going back and taking the longer route home.

  Get on with it.

  Settling the grip of his cane comfortably in the palm of his hand, he started across park. A wide stretch of grass marked the area between center field and the playground. As he headed across this no man’s land, Jake was struck by the sudden stillness of the night around him.

  The park was silent.

  Utterly, eerily silent.

  Not a breeze blew, not a bird chirped. The swings hung still and motionless. Even the street behind him was empty and therefore silent.

  Jake’s nerves began jangling like high-tension wires.

  This is weird.

  Jake stood there and tried to gather his thoughts.

  So its quiet, he informed himself. Of course it’s quiet. It’s close to eleven p.m. on a weeknight in the middle of October.

  But why does it feel so empty? he wondered.

  He glanced behind him.

  The darkness seemed thicker behind him, denser, blackness with blackness, each level somehow more sinister than the last.

  No, he wouldn’t be returning in that direction.

  "So, it’s the other side or bust. So be it."

  Despite his bravado, Jake wished he’d taken the long way around. Looking ahead of him, it dawned on him that once he reached the playground, he’d be in the dead center of the park.

  In the center of the darkness.

  His feet started moving almost of their own accord, and this time his pace matched the accelerated beating of his heart.

  The darkness and the silence pressed in on him now, as if they had gained sentience through the admission of his fear.

  By the time he crossed into the gravel of the playground, he’d worked himself into quite a state. His cane had trouble finding a purchase on the rock-strewn ground, and when combined with his nervous excitement, it almost pitched him forward on his face. His teeth were chattering from the cold, the sound only serving to remind him of empty rooms full of skeletons, their bones clicking away in the dank darkness that�

  "Hold on there Jake!" he told himself, suddenly angry. This is absolutely ridiculous. There is nothing to be afraid of. He knew his imagination had run away with him and he wasn’t happy about his loss of control. Ever since his encounter with the Nightshade he’d been seeing ghosts in every shadow, demons behind every doorstep. He’d proven the damn thing had been flesh and blood, hadn’t he? Proven it could be killed? It hadn’t been some unholy, supernatural being that couldn’t be stopped.
He, Jake Caruso, had stopped it!

  Replaced by his anger, the fear slipped away into the back of his mind.

  Jake moved on, confident he had gotten himself under control. Off in the distance, he could see the glow of streetlamps from the parking lot on the far side of the park, and it was toward these that he headed.

  After only a couple of steps he found his pace quickening.

  "Here you go again," he told himself aloud, his words hanging in the night air.

  He didn’t slow down, however. The unease that had been poking away at the rational wall inside his mind suddenly blossomed into a heavy sense of dread and was gathering momentum inside him with every step he took. He had only one objective in mind, and that was to reach the lights ahead of him. In the lights he’d be safe.

  He broke into a shambling sort of run, leaning heavier on his cane and dragging his bad leg behind him, his eyes trained on the lights before him.

  He left behind the slide, the seesaws, then the swings, and was coming up on the jungle gym.

  One minute he was running in his lumbering gait, the next, he found himself lying face down in the gravel, dazed and disoriented.

  The pain in his shoulder made itself known just about the same time the first warm trickle of blood oozed around the side of his neck.

  Jake pulled himself into a sitting position. Supporting himself with his left arm, he used his right to carefully reach under the edge of his jacket.

  Pain tore through him as his hand made contact with his ravaged flesh.

  When he pulled his hand back, it was covered with blood.

  Carefully, Jake moved the shoulder of his jacket around to where he could see it and stared at the three long gashes that extended completely through the thick material and into his flesh beneath.

  He realized then that he had been struck viciously from behind and that it had been the force of the blow that had propelled him face-first into the gravel beneath him.

  But there was no one behind him.

  Maybe it came from above.

  He froze at the thought, afraid of the implications.

  But it’s dead! one side of his mind cried out. You killed it! You saw its final, blazing plunge into the river three months ago!

  But the other side, the logical, calculating side that threw away the emotion and faced the facts as he found them, knew that he was right. Somehow the Nightshade had survived, managed to stay hidden throughout its recovery, and had now come back to finish what it had begun back in the garret of Riverwatch.

  It had come back to kill him.

  The voice of a dead man echoed in his mind.

  "When it comes for you, it will come on night’s velvet wings."

  He looked upward, twisting his body around to see behind him despite the pain, straining his eyes to see into the darkness.

  He knew the beast was out there, yet the sky was empty as far as he could see. Why had it not circled around for another attack? Was it out there? Watching? Waiting?

  Seeing nothing but blackness around him, he decided he’d stayed in one place for far too long. He located his cane, climbed to his feet and headed for the lights ahead as quickly as his legs and fear could carry him.

  *** ***

  High above, Moloch wheeled about in the sky, watching the human as it climbed haltingly to its feet, making its way across the park.

  His bloodlust was high, but there was time.

  The human would die.

  And then, Moloch would feast.

  Folding his wings tightly against his body, he plummeted toward the earth.

  *** ***

  Jake was moving toward the edge of the park when the Nightshade suddenly swept into view immediately in front of him, so quickly and unexpectedly that Jake actually took another step before his brain registered the danger.

  The beast hung in the air a foot or so off the ground, the steady beat of its great, leathery wings blowing the cold night air into his face, air filled with the peculiar odor he’d noticed the last time he’d faced the beast, the smell of damp wool and wet fur.

  For one long moment they stared at each other.

  Predator and prey.

  It seemed to Jake the moment would stretch forever, leaving them locked in that timeless space between the world and time itself, until with a sudden flash of emotion in those pupils, the beast lashed out with one clawed hand and struck Jake full in the face.

  The blow sent Jake to the ground, his head spinning, his mind still trying to come to grips with the fact that he’d been struck. The blow came so fast that he had only seen it when it connected with his face.

  The beast had struck with calculated force; Jake knew it could have taken his head clear off his shoulders had it wanted to.

  Jake looked up to find the creature standing a few feet away, grinning at him, its razor sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight.

  And then the Nightshade crossed the few feet that separated them and struck again.

  And again.

  And again. Each time, pulling his blows just enough so that his prey was damaged but not incapacitated.

  Jake hauled himself up off the ground. His head was spinning, his vision was blurry, and blood was flowing freely across the side of his face in a thick caress.

  The Nightshade stood a few feet away again.

  Watching.

  Summoning what was left of his strength, Jake turned to face the Nightshade, his silver-handled walking stick gripped tightly in his hand as a weapon.

  Chapter Thirty-seven: Requiem

  Sam stared down at the body of his friend, rage and despair washing over him.

  Jake was dead.

  His friend had fought, fought like a demon himself, that much was clearly evident from the tableau laid out before him. Jake’s body lay crumpled where he’d last fallen; one arm lay trapped beneath him, the other flung over his head across the metal rail of the merry-go-round, his outstretched fingers firmly frozen into claws to ward off the evil that had flung him there like a used-up rag doll, discarded like so much waste.

  His hands were covered with small plastic bags tied off at the wrists, the crime scene techs having worked quickly to preserve any and all evidence of the struggle, determined to drag from the ruins something to work with, some clue with which to trap the killer. Through the plastic Sam could see the splashes of violet that had dried beneath Jake’s nails, dried blood left behind from whatever injury Jake had managed to inflict on his attacker.

  A technician pushed by, jostling him as he went past, causing him to look over at the expression on Jake’s face.

  Raw determination and defiance were etched there for all to see, as if his last act had been to spit in the thing’s face. His lips were pulled away from his teeth, frozen now in a vicious rictus of a smile. A smile that even the pain of his death had been unable to erase.

  When Sam first arrived, after receiving the call, Damon hesitantly filled him in, letting him know what they had managed to reconstruct of Jake’s last movements and the tragedy that followed.

  Apparently he’d been out for a walk, and, as was his habit, he’d chosen to cut through the park instead of taking the long way around. Some hundred yards away from the road, he’d been struck and had fallen; the technicians had marked and measured the spot already, the marks of a scuffle clearly evident in the soft dirt of the ball field. The long ragged track left behind indicated that he’d re-injured his bad leg, dragging it behind him into the grass of the outfield as he tried to reach the safety of the lights in the playground. Halfway there he’d been attacked again, his blood staining the ground where he collapsed the second time. He must have turned to fight at this point, because bright blotches of the Nightshade’s own violet blood colored the grass along with his own. Somehow, and Sam couldn’t understand how, Jake had managed to pull free of the beast one more time, driving his fingers into the soft loam and pulling himself forward, ripping chunks of it free as he dragged himself, vainly believing the light might save
him.

  It hadn’t.

  Moloch had caught him and had dashed his body down on the hard, unforgiving surface of the merry-go-round. From the angle of Jake’s body it was clear that he had struck the metal bars from a height, the shock of the landing snapping his spine like a dry twig. From there, the end had come quickly.

  They hoped.

  The officers were all around Sam now, trying to do their work, and he backed away, his eyes never leaving his friend’s face.

  I’ll find it for you, Jake, he breathed silently. I swear to you, I will find it. He turned away then, unable to look any longer, as the coroner’s team began loading Jake’s body into the dark plastic of a body bag. Tears welled in Sam’s eyes, spilling down his cheeks. He looked around, into the gray light of the near dawn, wondering where the Nightshade had gone once it had finished with Jake. It was out there somewhere, hiding, waiting for the darkness.

  He would find it, wherever it was, even if it took the rest of his life.

  Then he would kill it.

  He turned and walked away from the gathering group, and found Damon waiting for him by the Bronco.

  The two men stood in silence for a minute, and then Damon spoke what they both knew to be true.

  "It’s back, isn’t it?"

  Sam could only nod.

  Damon thought about it for several, long, silent moments, then said, "Whatever you’re planning, I’m in. I want to stop this thing once and for all."

  For once, Sam had the distinct feeling they understood each other perfectly.

  "Where do we start?" Damon wanted to know. "How do we find it?"

  Sam wasn’t sure. He did, however, have an idea. He just hoped Katelynn was strong enough to go through with it. Jake’s death had driven her into hysterics.

  He turned to face the Sheriff. "I have an idea of how to find this thing, but I’ll need Katelynn’s help in order to do it. Can you get someone to take me to her home?"