by J P Barnett
Another ding from his chat app.
Shandi Mason: Why are you up so late?
Jake Rollins: I could ask the same of you.
Shandi Mason: Working. Papers don’t write themselves, ya know.
Jake Rollins: Fair enough. What ya workin’ on?
Shandi Mason: Story about Relics. Some of their cheetahs were kidnapped. Catnapped? Cheetahnapped, I guess. lol
Jake Rollins: Really? That’s crazy. We were just talking about those cheetahs. Do they know who did it?
Shandi Mason: No. The park seems to want to say they were stolen for money, but it doesn’t really add up. One of the cheetah cubs was torn to shreds like that sheep out there. I’ll send you the pics for your blood & gore psychopath collection. :P
Jake laughed softly. Amazing. Well, amazing as something involving grisly mutilations could be. The kill count tallied up to a goat, a sheep, and now a cheetah cub. Jake took the fact that the rampage continued as a promising sign. More evidence meant a greater chance to actually get to the bottom of whatever roamed through Rose Valley.
Jake Rollins: Maybe it was coyotes :P
Shandi Mason: haha maybe so.
Jake Rollins: What does His Majesty Sheriff Cam Donner think about it?
Shandi Mason: Dunno. Haven’t talked to him about it. Dub was on the scene.
Jake Rollins: Ah. Lucky you. That boy will do anything for you.
Shandi Mason: Yeah. Unfortunately, it comes at the cost of him ogling me like a piece of meat.
Jake Rollins: Can you blame him? Marie is such a dog. :P
Shandi Mason: lol. Right? I hear men don’t go for that exotic, sexy foreigner vibe. Not when they can have a short, be-freckled redhead.
Shandi’s appearance didn’t warrant self-criticism. Her height seemed about right to Jake—not too short—and he liked the dusting of freckles over her face. Any man would agree that Shandi Mason possessed an abundance of eye-pleasing qualities. With their long-rooted friendship, though, thinking of her that way almost felt like betrayal.
Jake Rollins: Some guys like freckles and red hair.
Shandi Mason: Let me know when you find him.
Jake Rollins: Yes, ma’am. I’ll put my feelers out and check with all my guy friends.
Shandi Mason: Oh. So... Steve, then? I’m fairly certain he’s not interested.
Jake Rollins: lol. Yeah... I suppose you’re right.
The conversation hit a dead end, but Jake wanted it to continue. Since his return to Rose Valley, he had become a hermit, but Shandi had gone out of her way to talk to him, to make him feel welcome again. People who abandoned Rose Valley straight out of high school did not always receive a warm reception. Shandi represented a neutral zone. Safe harbor. Talking with her provided peace and sanity in a town that largely rejected him.
Jake Rollins: How do you do it?
Shandi Mason: Do what?
Jake Rollins: Work all the time like you do.
She didn’t respond right away. Jake waited, worried that she had gotten distracted with other things. To kill the time, he absent-mindedly clicked back over to his email to check for new messages, disappointed to find none.
Another ding. He clicked back to the chat app. A picture was loading. As it came in, he saw Shandi, holding a glass of red wine towards the camera. She pointed at it with her other hand, her mouth turned up in a goofy grin. Her red mane was tied back in the usually messy ponytail, adorable wisps of hair framing her face. The old t-shirt she wore looked comfortable and relaxing, sending a chill up Jake’s spine as he suddenly remembered that he wore no shirt.
Shandi Mason: That’s my secret.
Jake Rollins: I thought wine made people sleepy.
Shandi Mason: Nah. It turns me into a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. :P
Jake Rollins: In your head, I guess.
Shandi Mason: Ouch! You’ll see someday. The only thing holding me back is that nobody actually reads the Rose Valley Reporter.
Jake Rollins: That’s not true. There are at least 10 solid readers.
Shandi Mason: lol. I stand corrected.
Jake Rollins: I always read your stuff.
Shandi Mason: You don’t even subscribe to the paper.
Jake Rollins. Well, yeah. But Steve does.
Shandi Mason: How sweet. You steal someone’s trash for me. What a devoted fan! :P
Jake Rollins: Aww. Be nice. We’re only thinking of the environment by sharing.
Shandi Mason: I’m just teasing you. I’m excited about all of this. I just gotta get Dan to stop censoring it.
Jake Rollins: Meh. It’s not really his fault. Cam’s got his nuts in a vice.
Shandi Mason: LOL. Cam has this whole town’s nuts in a vice.
Another break in conversation. Jake yawned. Finally, his mind seemed to be winding down.
Shandi Mason: Anyway. I think this wine may actually be making me sleepy. Who knew?
Jake Rollins: Um. Me? I knew.
Shandi Mason: Oh, shut up, smartass. :P
Jake Rollins: =X
Shandi Mason: :) Get some sleep. You need it.
Jake Rollins: Okay. Good luck on the article
Shandi Mason: Thanks, Jake. G’night xoxoxo
Jake Rollins: night, Shandi
He fumbled through the dark and threw himself back into the bed. He felt sleepy and safe now, his mind wandering around aimlessly as he drifted off. He thought of Shandi’s green eyes, twinkling as she pointed at her wine. And then of Liz; the divorce. And then of the mutilations. And back to Shandi, who morphed into Liz...
Cheetahs...
Goats...
Sheep...
Cryptids...
The accident...
Sleep.
Chapter 4
The morning sun crept through the blinds. Jake vaguely knew he needed to wake up, but his mind was caught in a loop of terror. He saw the Arrowhead Research truck coming out of nowhere, slamming into his car and exploding in a shower of sparks and glass. Fire surged through his body, the same excruciating pain from that night. He fought to escape it, some part of him insisting that only the memory haunted him...
...until the sunlight caught his eyes, and he jolted awake.
Jake sat straight up, heart pounding, his right leg throbbing in pain. Most days came with minimal aching, but occasionally some part of his body would inexplicably betray him. No doubt the pain had summoned the memory to his subconscious.
He glanced at the clock. 9:16am. Later than he usually slept.
The pain from the accident waxed and waned these days, enough that he no longer kept his painkillers next to his bed, so he hobbled towards the bathroom to fetch them. On his way, he grabbed his phone from the nightstand and pulled up his email. He sighed.
Nothing from Skylar Brooks.
Jake washed down two hydrocodone and looked at himself in the mirror. Despite having overslept, he looked haggard, worn out. A shower would do him good, but the clock demanded that he get on the road. If he missed his game with Bernard, he’d never hear the end of it.
As he studied himself in the mirror, he inspected his scars, some of them finally losing distinction against his healthier skin. They would never go away, but maybe before long he could pass them off as the remnants of a badass story instead of the painful memories of months of rehab and surgeries. His arms looked pretty good, muscle definition peeking out from scarred skin, conjuring the briefest glimpse of Jake from a previous era.
He stumbled back to the bedroom and opened the tiny closet door. He’d meant to stay in Steve’s guest house for only a few months, but almost a year had now ticked away.
He slipped on an old t-shirt that had once fit him snugly, but now hung loosely on his frame. Putting on his jeans proved a bit more of a struggle with the throbbing in his leg, but he finally managed to get them on. He opted for flip flops, both because of the weather and the fact that bending over to tie his sneakers would invite too much pain.
He grabbed his keys and
wallet and walked out into the burning sun. Steve’s kindness knew no bounds, having provided even an old ranch truck for Jake to use. The truck started with a deep rumble. The air conditioning on the old Ford had given up years ago, but Jake didn’t mind. Driving this rusty monstrosity enlivened him, reminding him of their high school days when this very same truck served as Steve’s ride. It had been brand new back then. Now it was edging toward being an antique.
Jake took off down the gravel road to the main highway, waving at Steve who tended to horses. Jake had no interest in becoming a rancher. If Steve cared that Jake didn’t help out around the ranch, he never let on.
After a few minutes of driving, Jake pulled into Mikey’s Burger Shack. The perfectly rectangular building sagged under years of trying to survive its shoddy workmanship, first as a bank, then a Burger King, and now the new home of Mikey’s. Burger King learned the hard way—just one in a long line of chain restaurants—that there existed little room for a corporate presence in Rose Valley.
Jake jerked open the door. Before he had time to even register the crowd, he heard Bernard’s voice: “You’re late, Rollins.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, Bernard. Overslept.”
“Sit down. It’s your turn,” Bernard said, motioning to the chess board in front of him.
Jake slid into the booth. That last game had ended in Jake’s defeat, and today was his chance to reclaim his honor. Jake studied the board briefly, quickly realizing that Bernard waited for him to make a move. Bernard had started without him with the classic white opening. The first few moves of their games was always the same.
The waitress quietly slipped in and placed a styrofoam cup of coffee next to Jake. He took a big gulp—the coffee at Mikey’s rarely exceeded the temperature of a pleasantly warm bath.
“I s’pose you heard about the killing out at Watermelon Ranch, being that you’re a permanent guest there and all,” Bernard said nonchalantly as he moved his knight out.
“Yeah, of course. I saw it with my own eyes. It was some gruesome stuff. Sheriff says it was coyotes, but there’s no way.”
Bernard took a sip of his own coffee. “Mmmhmm. Weren’t no coyote. It was the beast.”
Jake stopped looking at the board and looked up at Bernard, who sat there expressionless. “The beast?”
“Sure ‘nuff. I ain’t never seen it. It’s been a long time since anyone has. But my pops used to talk about him all the time. Went around killing all the animals back in ’42. You gonna move?”
Jake moved his knight out in response before continuing, “Did they catch it?”
Bernard laughed. “You cain’t catch the beast. He just does what he pleases and then goes back into hiding. He shows up every now and again. It ain’t no wonder that he’s showing back up now. It’s been a long while.”
Jake went through the motions of continuing the chess game, but his mind raced to process the intrigue of Bernard’s tale. Was it possible that Rose Valley had its own cryptid that he had never heard about? It seemed unlikely, given his obsession with such things.
“Anybody ever see it?” Jake asked.
“Pops said he saw it once. Used to tell us the story when we’d go out campin’. Scared the bejesus out of my sister. I wasn’t ever scared, though. He ain’t never hurt nobody intentionally.” Bernard leaned back in the booth and took another sip of his coffee. Both men had silently agreed to put the game on hold.
Jake tilted forward, propped up on his elbows. “What did it look like?”
“Pops reckoned that it was a man gone mad. Looked like a man, but feral. No recognizing in his eyes. He was big and strong and he ripped up animals like they was made of paper. Pops said others claimed that he was hairy. Had glowing eyes. Sharp teeth, too. But Pops never saw none of that. Ol’ Pops tried to chase him. Fired at him a couple of times. Swore to us that he hit him, but the beast just kept runnin’. Faster than Pops could keep up.”
Bernard took another sip of coffee before continuing. “Pops lost half his sheep that year. Took a big hit. I was in mama’s belly at the time, so I came into the world when Pops didn’t have no money. When he was sore with me, Pops would say that he wished the beast had killed the rest of his sheep so that he could have had an excuse to orphan me.”
Jake’s head spun with these new puzzle pieces. Though probably just Rose Valley folklore, he thrilled at the possibility that there was a kernel of truth inside this story.
“Why didn’t they hunt it down?” Jake prodded.
“There weren’t a lot of men ‘round back then on account of the war. Pops had a bad case of the gout, so they let him be. I reckon Pops didn’t think he could take the beast down all by hisself.”
“Come on, Bernard. Are you serious? Is this for real?”
Bernard put three fingers up. “I swear, Jake. Scout’s honor. And you can believe me on that, too. I’m an honest-to-god Eagle Scout. Ain’t got no reason to lie about it.”
Bernard leaned forward and made his next belated move. Jake obliged and began playing on autopilot, already resigned to the fact that he’d lose today’s game as well.
Years of amateur research had told him that any cryptid that stood a chance of being real required a big enough area and enough resources to support a breeding population. This thing couldn’t have been alive since 1942, but it may have birthed offspring. He didn’t know the exact numbers, but there would have to be dozens, if not hundreds, of these creatures for them to stick around that long.
The rural areas of Rose Valley remained largely uninhabited, but it seemed impossible that such a violent creature could remain undetected for more than seventy-five years.
But maybe it hadn’t. Maybe there had been sightings and mutilations misattributed to things like coyote attacks. He would need to check old copies of the Rose Valley Reporter, but how? Had they digitized their catalog?
Jake exposed his King without noticing.
Bernard squealed, “Checkmate!”
Chapter 5
Macy held her knees together as tightly as she could as the fields whooshed by on either side of the road. She never dreamed that Wes would force himself on her, but then again, she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, which was also why she wore jeans on dates even in the summer.
His right hand rested on her thigh now, furthering a journey that had started at her knee.
Wes’ left hand gripped tightly to the steering wheel of his Ford Mustang, the whine of the engine protesting its speed. Macy knew he wanted to impress her, but she didn’t quite know how to tell him that this wasn’t the way. After all, she liked Wes—a lot.
Despite being cautious of his roving hands, Macy felt this summer with Wes had exceeded all other summers. She maintained that Wes had the cutest dimples in town. Also, he acted like a gentleman around her more often than not, and—most importantly of all—he captained the town football team as the starting quarterback for the Rose Valley Jaguars.
Macy worried about where their relationship would go after the school year started. Wes would be busy with football, and she would return her focus to academics. Wes might change his mind about her when he reunited with his jock friends and the allure of the Jaguar cheerleaders.
Her friends told her that she should lock it down by sleeping with him, but Macy was cautious. She’d experienced firsthand what happened when a relationship moved too fast, and now she dealt with the aftermath every day, constantly bouncing back and forth between living with her mom and her dad. As great as Wes treated her and as desperately as she wanted their relationship to last forever, the more mature part of her knew that the long game meant getting out of Rose Valley.
She glanced over at Wes and he looked back at her, melting her with his beautiful smile. Macy had worked so hard to look pretty for him tonight. She lacked basic knowledge for putting on make-up correctly, but she’d worked on her face for hours. And despite genetics fighting very strongly against it, she even managed to tame her wild red mane into something resembling st
raight hair.
Macy played with her hair now, as she watched the road, and felt her heart jump in her chest when she saw something crossing in front of them. Too close for Wes to have any hope of stopping. She gasped.
“What the...” Wes exclaimed as he jerked a hard left. Macy held her breath and put her hands on the dashboard to brace herself.
The Mustang hit the rumble strip in the shoulder and then careened off the road into the grassy ditch. Wes fought with the wheel to try to get it back on the road, but the speed—not to mention his inexperience—proved too much. The Mustang slammed into a fence post, and stopped. He threw the gear shifter into park and jumped out of the car.
Macy took stock of the situation. She had rope burn from her seatbelt, but otherwise felt fine. The airbags remained neatly tucked into the dashboard. Wes must have slowed them down enough before they hit the fence.
She unbuckled her seatbelt and stepped out of the car. Wes stood in the middle of the highway, peering into the distance. She followed his gaze and could only vaguely make out the shape of something disappearing into the tree line. Macy took some solace in the fact that Wes also saw whatever they almost hit.
“What was that thing?” Wes said, finally turning back to Macy.
Macy didn’t know the answer. “I... I don’t know. A... a man... maybe?”
Wes shook his head. “Maybe, I guess. But bigger, right? And running weird. Like a gorilla or something.”
Macy rolled her eyes. “Have you ever even seen a gorilla, Wes?”
He looked briefly toward the ground. “Well, no. I mean. On TV, yeah. But not in real life.”
“Exactly,” Macy said as she pulled her cell phone from her back pocket. “I’m calling my dad.”
Wes rushed towards her. “Oh man. Don’t call your dad! He’s gonna be so pissed. Call your mom. She’s cool. She’ll understand. We can just get the car towed. There’s no reason to involve your dad with this.”
Macy shook her head and clicked Dad - Work in her contacts. “He’ll find out one way or another anyway, and my mom isn’t going to be able to help that guy that we almost hit.”