Night Moves

by Gail Z. Martin

  I made one or two more stops to gather odds and ends, then swung by Samson Surplus, my go-to Army-Navy store. Howie Samson, the owner, greeted me with a wave when I walked in. Howie’s in his early seventies, bald and slim. He supplies regular hunters, preppers, and outdoors enthusiasts, and anyone else who likes a good bargain.

  “Hiya, Mark. Need another case of knives?”

  I’m probably his best repeat customer. Howie stocks knives, boots, gas cans, ammo boxes, and all kinds of useful do-dads that are cheap and military-sturdy. Plenty of things I can repurpose for my kind of hunting.

  “Not just yet, but I’ll let you know when I do,” I said. “But I could use some camo netting.”

  “Sure thing,” Howie agreed. “It’s in the back, next to the rope.”

  I grabbed a couple of big nets, some lead fishing weights, and a few other items I hadn’t been able to find at the hardware store. Then I brought the whole armload up to the register.

  “Do I even want to know?” Howie asked, chuckling.

  “Nope. Just varmints. This should do it.” For good measure, I’d thrown in some snake bait, too.

  “Must be a mighty big snake.”

  “You have no idea.” And if I did my job right, he never would.

  Howie laughed. “Fine with me. At least you didn’t come in here looking for skinhead Nazi bullshit.”

  That got my attention. “Seriously?”

  Howie grimaced. “Yeah. Some guy came in asking if I had any German stuff. Said he was looking for vintage. I reminded him that we beat the Krauts and tossed him out on his ass.” He huffed impatiently. “My dad fought in the Battle of the Bulge. I’ve got no time for scumbags who want to start it all over again.”

  Sometimes I forgot that humans could be monsters, too. I waited while Howie bagged my purchases, and promised to buy raffle tickets when the Volunteer Fire Department had their fundraiser. We don’t have casinos, so raffles and bingo are all the rage. Then I glanced at the time and realized I needed to hustle to grab the food and make it to Crystal Dreams.

  I called ahead for the pizza and added a couple of two liters of pop to go. It was ready by the time I got to the restaurant, which meant I made good time getting to the bookstore. Chiara helped me set out the food, and we had time to talk about an idea I had before Phoebe and the rest of her gang got there.

  They filed in, one by one, all of them in their early to mid-twenties, looking scared and a little lost. I knew Phoebe already, and Jon was still in the hospital. Kayla had brown hair that was dark red at the ends. Scott was short with glasses, while Carl’s blond hair stuck out like straw, and his scraggly beard couldn’t quite cover his acne scars.

  The store’s guard dog, Donny, wove around their legs, begging for food and pats on the head. Only Chiara, Blair, and I knew Donny was really a wolf shifter who picked up the security job as a night gig.

  Chiara welcomed them and directed them toward the pizza, while I hung back, trying to get a sense for their personalities. Kayla watched me warily. Scott didn’t look at me at all. Carl stuck close to Phoebe, but more like a brother than a boyfriend.

  When they had their food and pop and chose chairs around the table, I sat down next to Chiara. “Phoebe told me about the woman in white, and that you all have…abilities. We believe you.”

  “You believe us as in, you’re going to find the thing that hurt Jon, or as in, you’re from the government, and you want to make us an offer we can’t refuse?” Kayla challenged. She had no reason to trust me, and if Smith and Jones ever found out about them, I couldn’t guarantee her suspicions would be off base.

  “My name’s Mark,” I said. “I hunt monsters, like the creature that hurt Jon. But I need good information to do that. You’ve all seen the woman in white. I’d really appreciate it if you’d tell me what you’ve seen, and if you’ve picked up on any extra information with your…talents.”

  They all exchanged uncomfortable glances. After keeping their abilities secret for so long, I was sure it was hard for them to trust, and their silence had protected them thus far. “Look, you don’t know me. I get that. And up ‘til now, keeping what you could do a secret was the right thing to do. But someone or something figured it out. And I’m your best chance at staying safe and staying hidden.”

  “Is this where you say, ‘Come with me if you want to live’?” Carl asked in an exaggerated Austrian accent.

  “Something like that, only without the motorcycle,” I replied. They had to be scared shitless, so bonus points for cracking wise. I knew that defense mechanism far too well myself.

  “I’ll go first,” Phoebe said. “I got a flash—just images. I saw a white building—like a locker room—with peeling paint and tall grass. There’s an old chain-link fence.” She shook her head. “Sorry, that’s all I’ve got.”

  “I had a dream about a snake swimming in a pool,” Carl blurted. “Weird, huh? Like the time I saw a cottonmouth in the lake, only this was a pool, and the snake was big and whitish.”

  Scott shook his head. “I just make things move without touching them. Sometimes. Usually when I’m not trying.”

  “I get blips of what people are thinking. It’s kinda random,” Kayla replied. “Like, right now, you want a beer.”

  “You’re not wrong,” I said with a smile.

  “I don’t really know how to turn it on and off,” she confessed. “But the last time I saw the woman in white, I got this blip with so much anger. Not words, just this awful feeling of wanting to cause harm. Make trouble.” Kayla shook her head. “It only lasted a few seconds, and then it was gone. But it scared me.”

  It scared me, too, because it went right along with Smith and Jones’ theory of an outside agitator. “Tell me about the times you saw the woman in white. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Chiara and I listened as they recounted their sightings. Each time, they were alone, at night, and the ghost got closer and closer with every additional visitation. “Now I need you to think,” I said. “Did you see any strange items lying around, odd-looking marks, anything like that?”

  “You mean like sigils and summoning circles?” Carl asked. “Nothing that looks like what’s in the games and on TV.”

  “Is there anyone who might have it in for your group?” I asked. “Someone who doesn’t like you? Or maybe a weird stranger who’s been hanging around lately?” They paused to think about it and shook their heads. If the person behind the lamia attacks had magic of their own, they might be able to recognize abilities in Phoebe and her friends from a distance, without ever making contact. Why he wanted to destroy them instead of recruit them, I didn’t know, but I intended to find out.

  “We did what you said, about buddying up and putting down salt lines,” Phoebe said. “Stocked up on holy water, too, and got out all the silver jewelry we own.” They showed off necklaces, rings, bracelets, and saints medallions.

  “Good, very good,” I said. “If all goes well, I’m hoping this will be over soon, and you won’t have to worry about the thing in the woods—or the woman in white—anymore.” A glance cued Chiara to bring up the next part.

  “Since someone figured out you guys have talents, you can’t count on hiding to keep you safe,” Chiara said. “You need to understand how to use—and control—your gifts with better information than RPG manuals and TV shows.”

  “Please don’t start a school for people like us,” Carl muttered. “That never ends well.”

  I laughed out loud at that. We’d obviously seen the same movies. “Not a school. More like some private tutoring. We can even do it web-based. Teach you about lore, how to manage what you can do so you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else. How to shield so you can turn the abilities on and off.”

  “Really?” Kayla looked torn between belief and excitement. She quickly retreated into her wary shell. “What’s the catch?”

  I shook my head. “No catch. We want you to be safe. Jon’s included in this, too. He might find his abilities are stronger
without his sight.” I cleared my throat. “You also need to be able to protect yourselves. So I called my martial arts instructor, and he’s willing to give you a discount on lessons. It’s not going to turn you into the Punisher, but it might help you get away if someone tries to grab you. Needless to say, all this has to stay secret.”

  Scott looked somber. “Why would anyone want to hurt us? We can barely do anything. I mean, our parents wouldn’t even believe us if we tried to tell them. We’re not the X-Men.”

  I sighed. “You have a spark of something that’s rare. Some people want to control those sparks for their own gain. Other people are afraid of anything different and want to snuff the spark out. And some…creatures…feed on that spark. You’ve been very lucky to fly under the radar so far. But your cover’s been blown. So you’re going to have to do things differently from now on.”

  They exchanged glances, a wordless conversation that told me how close they all were with each other. I felt bad for them. They didn’t ask for their abilities, had no way to give them up, but those gifts would make them targets.

  “Okay,” Phoebe said. “We’re in. We’ve been saying that it would be cool if what we can do actually came with an instruction manual.”

  “You bought us pizza, and you’re going to train us. Does that make you Master Splinter?” Carl asked with a gleam in his eye.

  They all laughed, and I was willing to take one for the team to lighten the mood. “Maybe.” I chuckled. I knew from the grin on Chiara’s face that I wasn’t going to live this down.

  “Tonight, I want you to stay with your buddy at all times. Go straight home, and don’t come out until morning. Do everything you can to make your space safe—salt, blessings, sage. And whatever happens, if you see the woman in white, don’t go after her. Promise me.”

  One by one, they promised. I hoped I could believe them. Chiara and I sent the leftover pizza with them and watched to make sure they got to their cars, two by two.

  “Splinter, huh?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Only if you get to be April O’Neil.”

  “Okay, forget I said anything.” Chiara took a bite from her now-cold slice. “You really think the training can work?”

  “Why not?” I asked, ripping off a piece of crust from my half-eaten piece of pizza. “Simon mentors people with untrained gifts. So does Travis Dominick, my buddy the ex-priest demon hunter in Pittsburgh. All three of you know lore, and Father Leo can help with that, too. Travis and Simon are psychic mediums, so they’re perfect for showing Phoebe and her friends the ropes.”

  “You’re not going to try to make them into hunters, are you?”

  “Fuck, no! I want them to stay as far away from hunting as they can get. But they’ve got to be able to control what they can do, for safety, and to hide themselves.” I wouldn’t wish hunting on anybody. It’s the kind of club you don’t want to ever join, a brotherhood of blood.

  Chiara nodded. “All right. Blair can probably also help with some basic weapon skills, self-defense moves, that sort of thing. And you never know, they might actually pick up a tip or two on their ‘psychic hotline’ that might come in handy someday.”

  5

  After I helped Chiara clean up, I headed over to meet up with Father Leo. He was waiting with his go-bag at the rectory, dressed in a black t-shirt complete with clerical collar, dark jeans, and Doc Martens. Since he’s Occulatum, he’s also good in a fight, and he taught me most of what I know. When we were done with the lamia, I knew he’d be on board helping to protect Phoebe and her friends.

  “I know where the lamia is,” I told him as he got into my truck. “And I’m ninety-nine percent sure the woman in white is a warning, not a threat. I think she was trying to warn the kids, and the readings the psychic got were from whoever’s controlling the lamia.” That was more in line with the lore about the woman in white as a harbinger, and it squared with Butch and Sundance’s “outside actors” theory, too.

  “That one percent can bite you in the ass,” Leo warned, throwing his bag in the back seat and fastening his seatbelt.

  “Don’t I know it.” I glanced at the clock. We still had enough daylight left to get into position and get set up. “I think whoever’s behind this found out about Phoebe and her friends’ abilities and decided to attack them to throw suspicion on the local covens. Probably riled up Sheepy to get the covens paranoid, too.”

  “The sheepsquatch didn’t hurt anyone,” Father Leo pointed out. “But the lamia blinded that boy.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I think the puppet master in this is upping the ante.”

  Leo glanced at the highway signs. “Why are we heading to Meadville, if Jon was attacked in Hadley?”

  “Because from the vision Simon had, and what Carl and Phoebe picked up, I think the person behind this is keeping the lamia in one place and forcing it to appear where they want it to attack.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That kind of magic would take a lot of energy.”

  “Or a relic that amplifies power. We already know the lamia isn’t a native cryptid. If he could summon one to Pennsylvania from Greece, moving it around once it’s here would be easy, by comparison.”

  While we drove, I filled Father Leo in on my plan, and the special equipment I had in the back of the truck. I drove very responsibly because I didn’t want to jostle the crate of pre-filled Molotov cocktails, and I sure as hell didn’t want a State Trooper finding my gear.

  Once we got to Meadville, I wound through back streets, climbing a long hill until we got to Livermore Road and the spot that I figured had to be the lamia’s lair—or holding pen. We weren’t far from Tamarack Lake, where the sheepsquatch attacks took place, which made me all the more certain this was the right place.

  A gravel driveway led to an overgrown parking lot. To my left was the bathhouse with peeling white paint, surrounded by a mangled and rusted chain-link fence, just like in Phoebe’s vision.

  “What is this place?” Father Leo asked as we got out of the truck.

  “Used to be a swim club. Ran into financial problems back in the late eighties or so, and the repairs were too expensive for anyone to want to handle, so it closed. Been abandoned since then.”

  I’d gone to the club with a friend when I was a little kid, so I knew that beyond the fence lay what remained of a good-sized public swimming pool. I hated to think what kind of a mess the abandoned pool might be now, but it was the perfect place to stash a snake monster in between sending it out on hits. And it squared with Carl’s dream and Simon’s vision about a snake in a pool.

  “How do you know that whoever’s controlling the lamia won’t just zap it somewhere else?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t. Except that they’ve got no reason to think we know where it is. Which is why I wanted to do this tonight.” Call it intuition, but I had a hunch whoever was behind this was making parts of it up as they went. There was malice and premeditation, but some of it also seemed like crimes of opportunity.

  If I was wrong and we were up against some kind of Moriarty-with-magic, we were fucked.

  I’d already briefed Father Leo on the plan, so while I got an odd contraption made of PVC pipe and leftover hardware set up on top of the truck cab, he clipped a long fishing rod to the front grill with its payload suspended about four feet in front. We split up the booze bottle Molotovs, and Father Leo put down a ring of salt and iron shavings around the truck before he took his position in the cab.

  When we had everything ready, I scrambled down from my perch and brought out the biggest container of snake bait I’d been able to find. It smelled like dead rat, and maybe that was part of the mix. I’d already put a bit of menthol rub in my nostrils because I knew that as bad as the bait was, the worst was yet to come.

  “Get ready,” I said. I heard a wet sound, like something large rising from the muck, then a raspy noise, leather on concrete. We waited in the dark parking lot, relying on the moonlight until it was time to strike.

  “That’s…pun
gent,” Father Leo said, stifling a choking noise. Lamias stank. In fact, the ancient Greeks repeatedly said they smelled like filthy testicles—a very specific reference that was impossible to un-see. I would have said cat piss combined with two-day-old roadkill.

  Holy shit. I got my first glimpse of the lamia as it slithered toward a break in the chain-link fence. The creature was dead white in the moonlight, and it held part of itself upright as it moved. The head and torso of a drowned woman gave way to the lower body of a snake that was easily as thick around as an adult, tapering to another six feet of tail. The lamia’s eyes were dark, empty sockets, but her forked tongue flicked from her mouth, scenting the air for prey, and her clawed hands were ready to pounce.

  It was a toss-up over what smelled worse, the bait or the lamia. I was counting on the bait to hide our scent, and I didn’t intend to get too close. As soon as the lamia was in position, ready to grab the lure, it was go time.

  “Do it!” I called to Father Leo. He turned on the truck high beams, and they hit the mirrored disco ball suspended from the fishing rod that was tied to the front grill. Lore said lamias liked mirrors, and all of a sudden, that parking lot lit up like the Starlight Ballroom. I heard Leo slide across the seat to the passenger side, where his Molotovs were stashed so he could use the door for cover.

  As soon as I knew he was ready, I pulled the trigger on my homemade net launcher. The big camo net soared into the air, with fishing weights to make it spread and fall right.

  The netting came down over the star-struck lamia, and it howled as the strands tangled its thin arms and bony hands. The creature twisted and writhed, trying to free itself, and I didn’t know how long the net would last.

  “Light ‘er up!” I yelled, sliding down to get in position behind the driver’s door. Before I could flick my Bic, Father Leo sent a bottle filled with gasoline, rosemary, and salt flying through the air with its rag wick aflame. The bottle shattered when it hit the lamia, spreading the gas and setting the monster—and the net—on fire.