by J P Barnett
Dan sighed. “If you want journalistic integrity, go to the big city. In Rose Valley, we have to play by different rules. One of those is to not piss off the most powerful person in town.”
She couldn’t imagine leaving her job with the Rose Valley Reporter. Rose Valley was her home, along with all of its annoyances and idiosyncrasies. Dan knew that. He’d encouraged her to leave more than once if she couldn’t adapt to the ideals of a small-town paper. He’d tried so hard to mentor her into mastering the politics of Rose Valley, but it seemed to have been the one lesson she deftly evaded. Ironically, her refusal to learn that lesson made her one of the best journalists in the Reporter’s history.
“Will you at least admit that it wasn’t a coyote that killed that lamb?” Shandi pleaded, “Let me keep investigating. Find more evidence. Let me find something to refute the claims of the sheriff.”
“Of course. Just remember that it’s the news we’re after, not the sheriff,” Dan said, shifting his gaze back to his computer.
Shandi skulked back to her office. As she approached her desk, she noticed a piece of paper on her chair; an expense report she needed to sign. She plopped down, grabbed the nearest pen, and quickly scribbled her signature over her typed name, Shandi M. Donner.
Just looking at her legal name filled her with rage. Though she used her maiden name on her work, she avoided going through the bother of changing it back legally.
Every document she signed and piece of mail that she sorted, made her angry with Cam all over again. She should have gotten over it long ago, she told herself, but his arrogance and aloofness always got to her. Glimpsing something real in him, she’d given him the benefit of the doubt, exposed all of herself to him even as others had warned her at the beginning of their marriage.
Cam Donner worked hard to suppress the genuine, caring part of himself, burying it deeply under layers of machismo. She’d pried it up for a time, but she didn’t have the strength to win the war of emotional attrition. Once he became the Sheriff, all hope was lost.
He’d protested when she left, at least. She liked to believe that it meant that some part of him did love her at one point, though it might’ve just been fear about how a divorce would reflect on him as a public figure in Rose Valley. It didn’t seem to have affected him too much. He’d won re-election after his first term in a landslide.
Shandi switched her monitor back on. As she began typing in her password, a sudden knock brought her attention to the door. She looked up and saw Geneva, the paper’s secretary. Her genuine kindness lit up any room, but she didn’t have many skills. Shandi always imagined secretaries at real papers as upstart young journalists out to make a name for themselves, but the Rose Valley Reporter sadly lacked any upstart.
“We got a call from an employee over at Relics Wildlife Reserve,” Geneva said. “Something about the cheetahs escaping? I’m not sure. Thought you might want to cover it.”
Shandi immediately grabbed her Nikon and headed out the door. Cheetahs? That was hardly any fun at all. She’d hoped for a more exotic ending to the mystery of the livestock mutilations. It seemed strange that the reserve wouldn’t have reported the missing cheetahs earlier. If they’d escaped early enough to have mutilated the goat out at Serendipity Ranch, that would mean that Relics had sat on the news for almost a week before calling anyone. That didn’t make sense.
Her drive to the Relics Wildlife Reserve took less than ten minutes. Having visited the park numerous times for various stories over the years, she knew exactly how to navigate the winding roads to the cheetah exhibit. Pulling up and finding no sign of Cam’s suburban, she felt the release of previously-hidden anxiety.
She slipped out of her car and surveyed the scene. A number of Relics jeeps circled around, as well as one police car. A quick inventory of the personnel told her that she’d be dealing with Deputy Dub Higgins. Dub represented someone she could work with—and manipulate—to get the story she wanted.
Deputy Higgins and a Relics Wildlife Reserve Ranger stood near a large hole in the fence. The title of “ranger” only meant something in the context of the corporation that ran the park. They shared nothing in common with the famed Texas Rangers or the National Parks & Wildlife Service.
As she walked up to the group, Dub’s face lit up in a huge smile. The ranger, however, winced at her approach.
“Mornin’, Shandi!” Deputy Higgins hollered, grinning.
Dub carried naive sweetness in abundant supply. After being elected Sheriff, Cam had avoided even the simplest request from Shandi. So if she needed an errand to be run or a multi-person chore completed, Dub valiantly filled the void. Shandi suspected that Dub acted of his own accord, not out of duty to Cam.
“Hey Dub. What’s going on here?”
Before Dub could answer, the ranger spoke up. “Ms. Mason. I’m not sure how you were notified of this, but we have it under control. No need to make a scene. We don’t need any bad publicity, you understand.”
Shandi vaguely recognized him from school, though she was more familiar with his popular sister. Shandi couldn’t quite place his name. “I’m not here to cause trouble. Just trying to report the news.”
Immediately the ranger seemed to loosen up. “Someone broke the fence here and some of our cheetahs escaped. This pen held our new mother, Adalina, and her two cubs.”
Shandi pulled her phone out and popped open the voice memo app. “Do you mind if I record this?”
The ranger looked slightly uncomfortable, but gave a curt nod. Shandi requested he repeat his last statement so she could record it. A name like Adalina stood little chance of sticking in her brain otherwise.
“Thanks,” Shandi said, being sure to flash him her best smile. “So, have you recovered the three escaped cheetahs yet?”
Even from her peripheral vision, Shandi noticed Dub shift nervously next to her. The ranger glanced across the cage almost imperceptibly, causing Shandi to follow his gaze to an area of the cage littered with tufts of cheetah fur.
The ranger cleared his throat. “We’re actively searching for only, uh, two of the cheetahs.”
A second glance revealed bits of cheetah carcass mixed with the fur; one of the cubs, no doubt. The poor thing had been ripped to pieces. Blood and entrails were strewn about.
“And why did you wait so long to report this?”
The ranger seemed confused by the question. “It happened last night. We reported it first thing this morning.”
Last night? That seemed impossible. If the cheetahs had escaped last night, then they couldn’t have possibly perpetrated the livestock mutilations.
It hit her all at once. Whatever had mutilated the goat at Serendipity, and the lamb at Watermelon, had likely killed this cub. She looked at the fence again. She assumed earlier that it had been cut open, but the jagged, uneven points of the metal suggested otherwise, each link stretched to the breaking point.
Her mind raced as she turned towards Dub. “Are there any suspects yet? And don’t say coyotes.”
Dub pulled his straw cowboy hat from his head and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He stalled for time while he thought about his answer. Shandi recognized his discomfort about talking to her—Cam would surely disapprove—but he liked her too much to take a hard stance with her.
“Well, it obviously wasn’t coyotes, no. Maybe some kids thought it would be funny or something. Or maybe some of those hippies from Austin drove up. Some of ‘em don’t care for Relics keeping these wild animals all caged up like this.”
“Thanks, deputy. Seems pretty cruel for anyone to do that to a cheetah cub. Surely the mother would have defended her cub from that.”
“Yes, Ms. Mason,” the ranger interjected. “We would expect so. We can only assume that whoever did this took the other two. Maybe to sell. Cheetahs could fetch a hefty sum to the right buyer.”
Dub shifted his weight and glanced sheepishly at Shandi. He hid some tasty nugget of information, she could tell, something that might ru
n counter to the ranger’s theory, perhaps. If neither Dub nor the Ranger could be persuaded to tell her, she would just have to find something herself.
“Thanks,” Shandi said. “Mind if I take a look around, take a few pictures? No bad publicity—I promise. Getting this in the paper might help you find the perpetrator.”
The ranger assented with a nod, clearly unhappy with the situation. No doubt, he didn’t have full jurisdiction in this case, and would have to answer for his cooperation to his superiors later. The cold-hearted journalist in Shandi didn’t care much if the ranger got in trouble.
She walked around the scene and took some pictures. Between the fence and the dismembered cub, Shandi became increasingly intrigued with each new piece of evidence. The slaughter of the cub certainly seemed like it could be related to the livestock mutilations, but tearing a fence in half required even more strength.
As she snapped macro shots of the fence, she glanced down and noticed blood on the ground outside of the enclosure. She walked back to the cub. Her skills lacked much in the way of zoology training, but all the pieces of the cub seemed to be accounted for, so where did the blood outside of the cage come from?
She took note of where the ranger and deputy had gone. The ranger sat in his jeep, frantically barking into his cell phone. Deputy Higgins leaned over the hood of his squad car, filling out paperwork. They were separated. Perfect.
Shandi walked over to Dub and lightly brushed her hand across his back to get his attention. His damp uniform practically dripped with sweat. By the time Dub looked up from his paperwork, Shandi greeted him with a fixed stare and a wide smile.
“Off the record here, Dub. Are the other cheetahs even alive?”
Dub looked her up and down, possibly to figure out whether she hid a recording device, or possibly because her tank top revealed a little too much cleavage and his height gave him a good view.
“Dunno. Maybe. Maybe not.”
“What about that extra blood over there? Is that from one of the other cheetahs?”
Dub glanced over at it. “Oh that. No. That’s from a gazelle. They found it dead there at the opening to the fence. All in one piece and everything. Something managed to snap its neck and then ate through its belly. The ranger thinks maybe they used it to lure the cheetahs into submission or something. He thinks it’s the cheetahs that ate out the belly.”
“Seems strange that someone would kill a gazelle by snapping its neck, right?” Shandi said. “Why not just rope it and lead it over here while it was still alive? Or shoot it.”
Dub shrugged. “I don’t know. The fence is the most suspicious thing to me. I’m not sure how they opened it that way. I would have expected the links to be cut, not broken. And I’d think that dismantling the door would be far easier than going through the middle of the fence.”
Dub offered a good point. Certainly, even in an adrenaline-fueled rage, Shandi would have no hope of breaking the chain link like that, and she suspected few humans on earth could manage it.
Shandi nodded. “Thanks, Dub. I appreciate it. Tell Marie I said hi.”
Dub smiled back. “No problem, Shandi. She keeps saying how we ought to have y’all over for dinner. I’m just always working, ya know.”
Shandi laughed. “Oh, I know. Cam runs a tight ship. Let me know if you hear anything more that you think we should release to the public. You have my number.”
“Will do. Have a good one.”
Shandi returned to her car. Clearly, there had to be some relationship between this and the other mutilations. She would need to compare photos, maybe talk to Steve or Bill again, then cross-reference all the information to get closer to the truth.
Finally, after years of reporting on school lunches, there was something real to report in Rose Valley.
Chapter 3
The lithe, bedraggled cat carried her kitten into the brush and Jake followed, squatting down to fit himself into the tiny burrow she’d made. He sat cross-legged across from them as the mother ran her tongue over the shivering kitten. The little hollow was filled with sadness. They didn’t know he was there. He was invisible. He shifted in discomfort, until finally he couldn’t stand it and squeezed back out into the cool night air.
A splash came from his left and he turned to see his ex-wife, Liz, standing in a creek, fully dressed but soaking wet. She reached down and splashed some droplets his way, but when they reached him, they instantly evaporated.
She ran from him, rounded a corner and disappeared. Jake rushed to catch up and found only the mouth of a cave. A wave of frigid air washed over him as he stepped inside.
A campfire sat in the middle of the cave, but he couldn’t feel the warmth of the flames. Around the fire sat various animals, all of them eerily personified, sitting cross-legged as a human would. He moved to join their circle and they vanished, leaving only him and the dying fire. He sank to the ground, desperately trying to feel warm again.
Suddenly, Liz appeared beside him, still drenched in water though she now wore a one-piece bathing suit, her hair flat and stringy against her shoulders. He stood up as she put her arms out in front of her as if to hug him, but instead she pushed hard against his chest, sending him stumbling backwards into the fire.
The flames licked at his skin, sending sharp pain through his body. He swatted vainly at the flames and, screamed, but the screams only came out in piercing growls. His bones rattled, he gritted his teeth and then his head struck the ground with an agonizing thud—
***
Jake snapped awake, his chest heaving from the nightmare. He tried to hold on to the particulars, but as usual they’d slipped away into darkness. Memories and thoughts flooded his mind, and he felt an almost electric alertness that would surely keep him awake for hours.
This dance of dreams and wakefulness had become all too frequent in the last year. Usually, his nightly litany of regrets involved his divorce, but, lately, unknown images of vicious predators had been coming to him. Memories of Liz intermingled with ominous, threatening creatures; riffs on scary cryptids that had frightened him as a child but fascinated him as an adult.
Before the divorce, Jake and Liz had visited Scotland. Liz wanted to experience the history and the people, but Jake insisted that they squeeze in a visit to Loch Ness. For him, it represented a pilgrimage of sorts. When he thought about that day, he could still feel the sharp Scottish air whip against his face, while he prayed for some vestige of his childhood fantasies to pop up from the serene waters of the lake. Unsurprisingly, they saw nothing out of the ordinary.
A memory randomly popped into his mind of a woman who had commented on his abandoned blog. He couldn’t remember her name, but she’d left a comment on a post about chupacabras, chiding him for getting some of the facts wrong, and going out of her way to document his inaccuracies in excruciating detail.
At the time, he reacted only in annoyance. What kind of troll scours the internet to correct facts about non-existent creatures? He wondered now, though, if that same person could be helpful. Perhaps there existed previous reports of animals being mutilated in the way the lamb had been. This lady could maybe help him solve the mystery.
Without turning on any lights, he felt his way into the other room to his laptop, the bright light of the screen blinding him as it came on.
Jake popped open a web browser and went to his blog. He hadn’t updated it in years, and no one visited it any longer. Blogs had largely fallen out of fashion once long-form posts gave way to tweets of 140 characters or fewer. He clicked cryptids in the category list on the right, which navigated him to a list of articles that he’d posted under the heading Cryptid Corner.
He scanned the list until he found the article about chupacabras and clicked through to the comments section, which contained only one from someone named “Skylar Brooks.”
With a lead to go on, Jake searched for the name and got a number of hits. He scanned through the results and quickly got a picture: Skylar Brooks was a grizzled old ma
n with a handlebar mustache. He owned a museum in Missouri, had written multiple books, and—most importantly of all—had a Wikipedia page documenting his career as a cryptozoologist.
Maybe the lamb had been killed by a wild animal. Or perhaps it had been a high school prank. However unlikely, Jake still entertained the idea that something else entirely lurked in the shadows of Rose Valley. Something unknown. And maybe Mr. Brooks could help him classify this thing.
He messaged Shandi:
Jake Rollins: Hey. Weird request. Could you send me the pictures you took of the lamb out here?
While waiting for a response, Jake passed the time by looking through Skylar Brooks’ biography. The man boasted various degrees in biology and zoology. His father had served as a cryptozoologist before Skylar and garnered some renown within the community for his nationwide investigations. Skylar had even consulted on a number of History Channel specials, though Jake always struggled to connect history and cryptids.
Shandi Mason: Something is wrong with you, Jake Rollins. Check your email.
The animated ellipsis came up again, followed by another message.
Shandi Mason: Please don’t hang these on your walls. I’d hate to think you were a psychopath. :P
Jake smiled, sent a thumbs-up emoji, and a then a proper response.
Jake Rollins: No promises. This place could use some decorating. Thanks for the quick response.
He downloaded the pictures and started a new email to Skylar Brooks. He typed up a brief description of the mutilations, asked for any information that Mr. Brooks could provide, and attached the photos.
Re-reading the email, he questioned whether he should send it. Then, with one hasty tap, the email was off.
With that out of the way, Jake leaned back in his chair. With any luck, Mr. Brooks would write back with some information. Even information that ruled out an unknown predator would be helpful. It would be another piece for the puzzle, and something he could forward on to Shandi.