by J P Barnett
It seemed that they were at an impasse. In this brief respite, Shandi looked at Deirdre’s face and could barely make out any humanity. Deirdre’s blue eyes might as well have been red for the fire burning in them.
In one smooth motion, Shandi forced all her strength into her right hand and bent Deirdre’s left wrist back further than it wanted to go, not quite far enough to cause an audible crack of the bones, but far enough that Deirdre yelped in pain. Shandi took advantage of the distraction, twisted her left hip and threw Deirdre off, immediately scrambling back on top where her right knee rested on Deirdre’s throat.
Deirdre clawed and slapped at Shandi’s calf, but Shandi only pressed down harder. Deirdre sputtered and gasped, begging with her eyes for Shandi to let her go. For the briefest moment, Shandi wanted to push harder, to choke the life out of this freak, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she let up enough for Deirdre to draw a ragged breath.
Then, in an instant, the room filled with uniformed police officers, Cam among them, with his gun drawn. He crossed the room and grabbed Shandi by the upper arm. Shandi did not protest. She stood up beside Cam, and for the first time since it all started, acknowledged the fear surging through her veins.
“Jake. She did something to Jake!” Shandi pointed off towards the gurney, but there were already Arrowhead Research paramedics at his side, one of them studying an empty vial.
Cam patted her back. “Don’t worry. I called for medical, too. Just in case.”
Despite her better judgement, Shandi buried her face into Cam’s chest. Tears burst from her eyes. She vaguely registered the sounds behind her: a defibrillator, calls for “clear”. It went on for too long. Jake wouldn’t survive. She shouldn’t have hesitated.
Then, a paramedic hollered over to Cam. “We’ve got him back. The poison did a number on him, but I think he’s going to be okay. Might be a while before he wakes up. We need to get him to the hospital.”
Shandi peeled herself from Cam’s chest and marched over to the gurney. “I’m going with you.”
Cam grabbed her by the shoulder, and gently turned her around. “I need you here, Shandi. I need to know what happened.”
Shandi’s face grew hot. “Screw you!”
He sighed with obvious displeasure. “You’re not even related to him. You really should—”
Cam backed off at this, though he expressed his displeasure by stomping around the room and loudly talking to his deputies about piecing the crime scene back together. Shandi didn’t care. In a matter of minutes, she found herself crammed into the back of an ambulance, anxiously watching the little line that represented Jake’s pulse.
***
She tried to stop her hands from shaking as the ambulance pulled up to the Rose Valley Hospital. Her time with Jake would soon come to an end. She couldn’t claim to be his wife. Not even his girlfriend. It would be difficult for her to coax information out of the doctors, but she knew the important stuff. The paramedics knew what poison Deirdre had used, and they’d managed to bring him back from death.
So did you, she told herself. She didn’t need adulation, though. Worrying over the details would be useless. Deirdre sat in the county jail and Jake’s pulse pattered steadily. Nothing else mattered.
They rolled Jake out of the ambulance and into the hospital. As they approached the doors going back into the ER, one of the EMTs held a hand out in front of her. “I’m sorry, Shandi. You can’t follow him in here. I’ll do my best to get you information. I promise.”
Yet another high-school acquaintance. She trusted that he would try, but also knew that he didn’t have much power over what happened to Jake from this point forward. She mumbled a thank you to him and turned back to the waiting room.
In the lobby, she sunk down into the first chair she came to, alone. With such a small population, the Rose Valley ER was generally quiet. She needed to calm down and figure out the next move. Deirdre tried to kill Jake. More accurately, Deirdre killed Jake. Shandi wanted to know why. That felt like the most important thing.
Deirdre had spent a year rehabilitating him. Why would she kill him after all the work she had put into his health and wellbeing? She couldn’t shake the worry that her staying with Jake had somehow triggered this crazy outburst. Maybe the night hadn’t gone how Jake had described. Maybe this was jealousy.
Even if Deirdre and Jake had slept together that night, it didn’t explain her behavior, even if she thought Jake had spurned her. There had to be more to it. Shandi felt certain that a piece of the puzzle hovered just beyond her grasp.
Did all of this relate to the beast? Shandi couldn’t come up with any plausible connection, but the coincidence was odd—the town gained a beast just as Dierdre lost her sanity.
Jake might have the missing piece of the puzzle. He would know more when he woke up. Shandi desperately hoped that he would. The thought of him dying terrified her.
To get information, she would need someone that the doctors would talk to about Jake’s case. He didn’t have immediate family in town. His single mother had packed up and moved away from Rose Valley years ago. Would they talk to Steve? Jake lived on his property. Maybe they would give him information.
Shandi pulled her phone out of her back pocket and found Steve’s name in her contacts. He answered after a few rings. She prepared to tell him everything, but when she heard his voice, all the adrenaline that had kept her going came crashing down, and she didn’t say anything. She just cried.
Chapter 26
Machete in hand, Miriam hacked swiftly through the underbrush. She had done this kind of work for years. She came across as timid and unassuming, but only because she had grown up in the shadow of a man who took up enough space for them both. In truth, her father’s enterprise would fail without her, though she would never say that out loud. The arrangement worked better this way.
Skylar Brooks stayed back, busying himself with glad-handing every person in Rose Valley that would listen. He played his role. Miriam did not envy it. She did not care for people, or for social graces. The fewer people she had to deal with, the better. She had built a comfortable relationship with her brother, Cornelius, and her cousin, Tanner. Virtually anyone else in her life only served as a distraction.
She did quite like the reporter she had met, though. People rarely treated them that nicely, even though Miriam knew that the reporter mostly just wanted to exploit their research. She much preferred being used graciously to being abused by her overbearing father. Maybe Shandi could be an ally in things her father wouldn’t touch.
For days the three of them searched the landscape surrounding Rose Valley. They found all manner of interesting things. Caves and rivers. Waterfalls and old campsites. Burnt out cabins in the woods. Abandoned cars. The occasional hunter, camper, or skinny-dipper. The outskirts of Rose Valley overflowed with intrigue and wonder, but the three of them sought only one particular wonder.
She chopped through more shrubbery, following the sound of water. She heard it some feet away, and could always rely on water as an interesting place to explore. Every animal needed water—even people.
Tanner followed closely behind her with his rifle. His aim impressed the most accomplished of marksman, and Miriam admired him for it. Cornelius trailed further behind. She loved him dearly, but he too often reminded her of their father, taking notes and documenting their discoveries.
They finally came to a clearing, where a creek meandered through the grass. They hadn’t seen it walking in; it came at a strange angle. Across the small creek stood an imposing limestone rock face, the bedrock of Rose Valley: a town sturdily built on nothing but the dependable hardness of limestone.
Miriam looked back and saw Tanner motioning to his right. He shifted his weight subtly, and she heard a quiet click of his rifle. She learned to recognize these things from Tanner. And from Cornelius. They found talking both wasteful and costly. When dealing with Skylar Brooks, remaining silent proved to be the better path.
/> She looked to the right as Tanner directed and saw a cave. Caves had not been uncommon thus far. Most sat empty, or far too small to be of interest. Occasionally garbage littered the floors. One cave had phallic symbols etched into the walls. Cornelius laughed, but Miriam found such displays of graffiti childish and uncouth.
Along with Tanner, she moved towards the cave. She sloshed through the creek without hesitation. The trickling stream wasn’t very deep, and her waterproof boots kept the water at bay. As they approached, she could tell this cave would be bigger than most of the ones they had encountered.
She slid her machete into the specially-made sheath attached to her belt and removed a flash light from a pouch on the other side. She clicked it on and shined it into the mouth of the cave. Wherever she pointed the beam of light, Tanner’s rifle followed. She waited patiently for Cornelius to catch up.
With all three of them together, Miriam took the first step into the cave, immediately noticing the refreshingly cool air. She looked around. Something reflected the light back to her eyes. All three approached the bauble.
As they walked into the cave, Miriam realized that it stretched back farther than she had first thought. Another antechamber laid in front of them, around the corner from what initially looked like it would be the back of the cave. Her interest was piqued.
She shone the flashlight down across the ground of the antechamber, sweeping it across the floor to catch the bauble again. Nothing immediately reflected, but Miriam’s patience and determination could not so easily be deterred. Tanner and Cornelius did so with her, fast enough that she did not fall over them.
Her eye finally found it. A small metal thing. Perhaps just a soda tab. They had seen a number of those, along with beer caps. The residents of Rose Valley did not respect the environment in a way that Miriam found suitable.
She slowly approached it, bent down and picked it up, excited to find not a soda tab, but military dog tags with a chain attached. Scrutinizing the tags, she could see the tarnished, brown metal struggling to maintain its integrity. It felt brittle in her fingers.
Her brothers crowded around her as she aimed the flash light directly at the tags. The words were shadowed, but sharp eyes ran in the family. With some shifting and focus, Miriam had no doubt as to the name—William P. Hargrove. Following that came a social security number and an address in Mississippi. Miriam had studied maps extensively. She recalled that Mississippi sat roughly five hundred miles to the East. These dog tags had come a long way from home, both in time and space.
She removed a Ziplock bag from one of the pockets on her shorts and dropped the dog tags in, returning it to her pocket once she’d preserved it to her satisfaction. This find certainly intrigued her, but she hoped that the more interesting find lay around the corner in the antechamber.
Shining the light forward again, Miriam stepped forward. Cornelius and Tanner did not step with her. They moved on her second step, creating a V formation. It had never been necessary for their survival that they form up in any particular configuration, but Miriam felt strongly that this configuration would provide maximum security—in case of an attack.
A number of things lined the ground in the antechamber. Unlike the other caves, however, she wouldn’t classify this stuff as garbage. It looked more like a haphazard home. The middle of the floor lacked any debris at all, the dirt almost entirely dug away from the limestone flooring. The walls bore no drawings or writing. Only things on the floor. Things that did not go together and did not make sense.
When Miriam decided an attack unlikely in this small room, the three fanned out. The room provided little space to fan, but they managed to spread out enough so that they could each study a different wall of the room without touching one another. They had been in much tighter spaces together. To have a fear of confined spaces would have been counter to their profession.
Miriam studied the ground along her chosen wall, silently counting the strange tchotchkes. Some of them looked recent, while others looked very old. The oldest seemed to be a Superman doll that looked like it was made in the 1940s. Cornelius interrupted her search by offering up one of his finds to the group. She turned to look at it.
Cornelius held a relatively new stuffed animal. No more than a few years old, but it looked better cared for than the other items in this room. It had not been in this cave for very long. It’s stuffing oozed out of one of the seams, making it hard to identify, but it appeared to be a cartoon potato. Miriam found that amusing. Cornelius’ find did seem important, and focusing on it seemed the right call. The newness of it meant that the inhabitant of this cave had been here recently.
Miriam realized that it also meant that no animal lived in this cave. Perhaps it served as shelter for a homeless person, but Miriam didn’t think so. The cave lay too far off the beaten path. It would not serve to have a house so far from town if one’s livelihood centered on the goodwill of people. Furthermore, Miriam had seen no vagrants in Rose Valley. With a town of its size, a large homeless population seemed incredibly unlikely.
Chances were good that this cave might belong to their cryptid. Knowing nothing about it, she found it feasible that it might choose to collect such odds and ends. Perhaps it liked the smell, or the bright colors. She began to get excited.
With no words, Miriam and Tanner backed out of the small antechamber so that Cornelius could photograph the relics inside. They did not have enough bags to properly remove all the things in here. They would have to take pictures and return another day for a proper excavation.
As Cornelius took his photos, Miriam heard a sound behind her that didn’t come from Tanner. Nor Cornelius. Without taking the time to think of what it might be, she casually looked towards the mouth of the cave to see a lithe silhouette. Tanner noticed it as well. Cornelius sensed that Miriam and Tanner’s focus had shifted, stopped taking pictures, and joined them in looking at the thing before them.
In their days in Rose Valley, they had encountered most of the wildlife, and this creature didn’t have the dog-like form of a coyote, or the stout, short-legged body of a wild boar. Though it clearly came from the feline family, the long elegant legs and tail ruled out a common bobcat. Miriam thought it seemed quite impossible, but the shape in the cave mouth could be nothing other than a cheetah.
Normally, Miriam would have taken this as a good sign. More often than not, their hunts for cryptids ended with the discovery of a perfectly well-known animal. If Rose Valley’s beast had just been a cheetah, then the expedition would be over and they could catalog yet another success. But she had seen the beast in the videos, and knew full well that the creature that stalked the town bore no relation to the cheetah.
The three of them huddled together, trapped by the predator. The cheetah did not move. It stood at the mouth of the cave, as if contemplating whether it could trust them, or perhaps whether it could eat them.
Tanner knew exactly what to do, though. He did exactly what Miriam would have told him to do if they had needed to waste time discussing it. He raised his rifle, aimed it squarely at the heart of the cheetah and fired. The cheetah collapsed almost immediately, with a strange chirping sound that made her feel instantly guilty.
After the cheetah fell, Miriam saw another silhouette, smaller and adorable. Tanner had just killed this poor cub’s mother. Miriam felt bad, no doubt, but they had certainly killed many animals in their adventures. She would take it back if she could, but although the three of them were experts in a great variety of topics, the resurrection of cheetahs did not make that list. They would just have to take the cub back to town and make sure to find it a caretaker.
The three of them walked to the mouth of the cave. The cub did not run from them, which Miriam found surprising. Perhaps the cub had been around humans before.
Miriam reached down and let it sniff her hands. Tanner handed her some jerky from his pack, and she offered it to the cub which devoured it quickly. Miriam could tell that the two of them would be fast frien
ds. She scooped up the cub. It seemed heavier than reasonable for its small size, but the strength-training that Miriam did every other day made the cub’s weight bearable enough.
Shadows stretched across the trees. Though their training prepared them to forage in the dark, it was best that they headed into to town. The others agreed, and they began the trek back.
Per usual, Miriam took up the lead with Tanner in the middle. Cornelius had less to document, so he managed to keep the pace. After a few feet across the creek, the foliage rustled behind them. Miriam stopped, pulse increasing. Something large. Larger than Cornelius. And Tanner. Even a full-grown cheetah.
Miriam had a knack for distinguishing things by sound, and she had an immediate and distinct impression that the thing behind them presented a clear and present danger. She turned to look, only to find the very thing they had been searching for. Upon seeing the imposing figure before them, she felt no elation at the discovery.
She ran. Tanner ran after her. Cornelius brought up the rear. The beast did not immediately give chase, giving Miriam a glimmer of hope that perhaps the beast did not find them interesting.
The cub writhed in her arms, making it difficult for her to maintain her balance through the rough terrain. But she persisted and ran as fast as she could. She heard Tanner’s rifle go off, using the boom to determine he was still close behind her, firing on the run.
She could hear Cornelius tearing through the brush behind Tanner, but she worried that his slower speed would make him easy prey. The beast would surely catch him first if it gave chase. But maybe it wouldn’t. They made good ground and had a healthy lead.
As soon as she allowed for the possibility that the beast wouldn’t chase them, her hopes shattered as she heard the branches and trees explode as the beast moved through them, lumbering and loud. It was gaining ground with every loping step. Tanner’s rifle fired some more, this time farther away from her. He must have stopped to get a good aim.