by E A Comiskey
“Her?” The pieces clicked together. “The good lookin’ dame at the restaurant?”
Stanley nodded.
Richard frowned and tried to remember if he’d felt threatened by her. He hadn’t. Certainly not in the way he’d felt threatened by the creature in the nursing home. If he was to be honest, he’d have to admit he’d been drawn to her. Parts of him stirred that hadn’t stirred in so long, he’d figured they were dead. But, at the same time, there had been that tingle of dread. The fear made her that much more desirable, like forbidden fruit. Well. That was one thought he wouldn’t be sharing with Stan Kapcheck.
He reached for the water bottle that stood in the little cup holder on the seat beside him. A long drink helped clear away the lump in his throat so he could ask the next question. “Who was she?”
“She’s The Devil.”
Richard pursed his lips. “Fine. Make fun. Don’t tell me.”
“She’s The Devil. Lucifer. Abaddon. Beelzebub. Satan. Prince of the Power of the Air. Call her whatever you want. That’s what she is.”
“But…” What was there to say? He blinked at the wide gray ribbon of road unrolling before them.
When Stanley spoke again, his tone had relaxed and softened. No trace of anxiety remained. His voice was seasoned with humor once more. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“A knockout.”
“Nice, too. When she’s not unleashing Hell, I mean. She’ll say things that’ll melt your withered old heart like butter. And she smells exactly like roses in summer.”
Richard’s hands rose up, seeming to grasp for some explanation, and then fell back into his lap. “But…” he said again.
“Precisely.”
They were halfway to Sioux Falls before Richard even realized he was still sitting there with his mouth hanging open.
Chapter Twelve
Burke
Burke sat on the sofa in her quiet living room with her legs curled under her, sipping coffee from her favorite mug. She couldn't stop thinking about her grandpa. As far as she could piece together, he had last been seen at dinner on Thursday night. It was assumed that he went back to his room. No one paid any attention when he didn't show up for breakfast as he had a habit of staying up late and sleeping in. When lunch was over, and someone checked a roster, it was noticed that he had missed two meals in a row and someone went looking for him. A few hours later, when every corner had been searched, one of the staff called the director. He insisted on searching again before they called Burke's mother.
By the time Burke got there last night, it was possible that he'd been missing for a full twenty-four hours. She'd suggested calling the police to put out a "silver alert," but the director of the facility had discouraged her.
"The thing is, Ms. Martin, he's an adult and he's never shown any sign of being less than fully cognizant. Also, he's not the only resident who's disappeared."
"What do you mean?"
The doctor fiddled with a shiny gold pen on his desk. Sweat beaded the bridge of his nose. "Stanley Kapcheck is gone, as well."
"Who?"
"The resident who occupied the apartment across from your grandfather is Stanley Kapcheck. He's one of our most spry and active residents. They both seem to have disappeared around the same time. As far as we can tell from a cursory glance, they both took their jackets and wallets. They're not ill, Ms. Martin, and they're not senile. This facility is a residential care facility, not an institution of some sort. As far as we can tell, Mr. Bell and Mr. Kapcheck decided to leave, and they are completely within their rights to do so."
"My mother said something about a fire."
He carefully placed the pen in its stand and folded his hands. "Yes. There seems to have been a small, controlled fire in your grandfather's room. There was very little damage—just a floor tile or two. Certainly, it wasn't enough to cause him grievous injury." He smiled, tilting his head in what appeared to be a very practiced gesture of sympathy. "Ms. Martin, I'm sure you are concerned about your grandfather, but the probability is he went somewhere with Mr. Kapcheck and they failed to notify anyone. I can understand your concern for his well-being, but I'll bet he'll turn up in no time. Why don't you give it a day or two?"
At home, Burke had repeated his words to her hysterical mother. She'd finally ended the conversation by saying, "Mom, if it were you, would you want me to call the cops on you?"
Her mother's shouting turned into quiet sobbing.
"Look, Mom. I'm off tomorrow. I'll see what I can do about finding him, but let's keep the cops out of it for now, okay?"
"You'll look for him?"
"Yeah. Sure, Mom." Burke sighed. She had anticipated such a good weekend, just her and her book.
Burke went to bed, determined not to let family drama tie her in knots, but after a few hours of fitful tossing and turning, she gave up any attempt at sleep. She stood in the scalding hot shower spray until it began to run cool, brewed a pot of strong, black coffee, and sat down on the sofa with no idea what to do next.
How could you find a grown man who decided to walk away from his life? It was a big world. On the other hand, he didn't have a car. He had money, but not an unlimited supply. He could have bought a bus ticket.
A fat green photo album under the coffee table caught her eye. She set her mug on a coaster and pulled the dusty book into her lap. The first pages showed a series of black-and-white photographs that featured a handsome, broad-shouldered young man with a wide smile. In nearly every shot, his attention was focused on the beautiful woman next to him. They wore shorts on the beach, snuggled up on a couch, danced at a party, toasted someone's wedding, showed off a tiny bundle in a long white christening gown.
Around the time the photos began to have a bit of color in them, the images changed. There were pictures of Burke's mother as a toddler, learning to ride a bike, and dressed up for a formal school dance. The woman was gone, and in the few photos where the man appeared, he looked angry and distant.
She went back to the beginning. There was something there that she wasn't noticing. The thought tickled her brain, but if she looked directly at it, it skittered away into the shadows.
Her phone rang and she fished it out of her pocket to check the caller ID. The red button beckoned, but she chose the green out of—what? Duty? Devotion? Sadistic tendency?
"Hey, Mom."
"Have you done anything yet?"
The plastic on the album crinkled as she turned the page. Her grandparents were newly married, standing in front of an adobe church. They leaned against a car shadowed by an enormous saguaro cactus. "I'm trying to figure out what to do, Mom. I'm open to suggestions."
Her mother sniffed.
Please, God, don't let her start sobbing again.
"Has Grandpa ever done anything like this before?"
"No! He never even missed a day of work in all those years at the plastics factory. Grandma Bell used to talk about a time when his car broke down on Charleston Highway and—”
She grabbed the thought that had been eluding her. "That's it!"
"What are you talking about?"
"You said Charleston Highway and that made me think of Tombstone and…well…don't you see?"
"See what?"
Burke closed the photo album and let her fingers dance excitedly on the surface. "The only time in Grandpa's whole life that he was happy was when you all lived in Tombstone before Grandma died. He's always been a surly old fart—"
"Burke!"
"Oh, like you don't know it's true," Burke said. "He has! But lately, he's been worse than ever. What if something finally happened that made him recognize his own misery and he decided to go spend his final days in the one place he was ever happy?"
"Tombstone is two thousand miles away!"
Burke's fingers tapped faster than ever. "I know."
"Well, how would he get there?" her mother asked.
"I have no idea, Mom. A bus? A cab to the airport and a quick plane ride?"
"He doesn't have the money to be flying around the country."
"Maybe not, but something tells me I'm right about this."
"Well," her mother's voice was shaky, but if she was crying, she had it under control. "What are you going to do about it?"
Burke's hands stilled. "What do you mean?"
"You have to do something, Burke."
"Why?" The more she thought about it, the more she agreed with the ludicrously named Dr. Payne. Grandpa was a man of reasonably sound body and mind. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to go wherever he wanted without asking permission?
Clearly, her mother disagreed. The pitch of her voice was climbing again. "What do you mean, why? You can't let a man of his age traipse all over the country alone."
"Mom, there's nothing we can do right now but wait. I can't just go driving around the wild west looking for Grandpa. He'll turn up."
"Oh, Burke." The tears came now, fast and furious.
Burke slid the photo album back into its place under the coffee table and stood to pace off some of her pent-up energy. "I have a life, you know. I have an appointment, and I'm supposed to help with the local garden club fundraiser this week."
"The garden club?" She was approaching full-blown hysteria. "You're more worried about the garden club than your own grandfather? I see what family means to you. I don’t know where I went wrong. I thought I raised you better than this, Burke Dakota!"
"There's nothing I can do, Mom!" Burke shouted back. She took a deep breath in an attempt to control her temper, then spoke in a softer voice, "Look, I'll tell you what. I don't see the sense in driving out there aimlessly, trying to find him, but if we hear anything, I'll go get him."
"Do you promise?"
Burke rested her forehead against a window. The cool glass felt good against her burning skin. "Sure, Mom. I promise. If we hear something, I'll go."
"And if we don't hear anything in a few days, maybe we can call one of those detectives or something."
"Yeah. Maybe. We'll see, okay?"
"Okay. Yes. That's good. It's good to have a plan." The tears had disappeared so quickly, Burke questioned their authenticity. "I have to go, Mom. I'll call you if I hear anything, all right?" She waited for a response and then clicked the phone off.
She thought of Tombstone. She hadn't been there since she was a kid. She'd been fascinated by the stagecoaches on Main Street, and the stores full of cap guns and plastic bows with suction cup arrows, and half in love with the dusty cowboys in the O.K. Corral gunfight show. There had been a candy store that sold roasted nuts that made the whole block smell like cinnamon and sugar.
Having successfully negotiated ownership of her day again, she grabbed a bag of baby carrots and headed for the sofa. Her book still waited on top of her "to be read" stack. She picked it up and her attention fell on the book beneath it, a best-selling psychological thriller by an author whom she'd read about in Entertainment Weekly.
Her heart tapped out an eerie little rhythm in her chest. It had to be coincidence.
Even though his books weren't her usual style, she'd been interested in his work because he lived in and wrote about Tombstone. She picked up the book and read the lines at the bottom of the back cover.
"Finn O’Doyle lives on his family's property in Tombstone, Arizona. He shares the estate with numerous wild animals and likes it that way."
He was strikingly handsome, with bright blue eyes and a mop of dark hair that fell across his forehead.
She shook her head. "It's just a weird coincidence," she said, but hearing the words did nothing to convince her of their truth.
Acting on nothing more than a wisp of instinct, she started packing. By midmorning, she was headed south on I-23.
Chapter Thirteen
Richard
As they passed a long white building with a row of garage doors on one end and a veritable mountain of tires in the parking lot, Richard sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He stretched as best he could in the small space. He’d fallen asleep at some point west of the South Dakota state line and he must have fallen into a sound sleep because the muscles in his back and legs seemed frozen.
Stanley turned into the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. “We can pop in here, get a bite to eat, wash up a little, and make plans for tonight.” He killed the engine, slid out, and stood next to the car, filling his lungs with deep breaths of air. “It’s a beautiful day, Dick. Simply stunning.”
Richard glanced through the windshield at the crystal blue sky. The sunlight stung his sandy eyes. Gingerly, he maneuvered himself out of the car. The pains of every one of his eighty plus years screamed at him. He arched his back, groaning. “I gotta pee.”
“Let’s go then,” Stanley said, slammed his door shut. He strode away toward the restaurant. “There’s really no time to waste.”
“I really hate him, “Richard muttered to no one in particular as he shuffled along behind.
In the restaurant, they found a tiny restroom with scalding hot water. Richard washed up and tried to tame his wispy, white, fly-away hair. His reflection stared at him with accusing, bloodshot eyes. “Ya gotta admit,” he told the man in the mirror, “it really is better than sittin’ around waitin’ to die.”
The tired old man in the mirror shrugged, unconvinced.
He found Stanley sitting cross-legged, reading the paper. His eyes were bright, his smile wide. The wingtips had once more been polished to a bright sheen.
Richard glanced down at his ruined, mud-crusted loafers. “Unnatural,” he muttered, slowly bending toward the chair.
“I took the liberty of ordering some burgers and fries,” Stanley said.
“I might have wanted chicken,” Richard replied.
“Did you?”
“No, but I might have. Presumptuous of you to think you know what I would want for dinner.”
Stanley folded the paper into a magazine-sized rectangle and pushed it across the table. He said, “Take a look at this.”
The headline showing on the little section read, “Livestock Deaths Trouble Local Ranchers.”
“Yeah, so?” Richard asked.
Stanley turned to face him directly and leaned forward across the table. “The DNR is saying that there are wolves killing the cattle, but that almost never happens. Wolves have developed a strong aversion to lingering near settled areas. Furthermore, they kill to eat, and this says these animals haven’t been eaten, just killed in the night.”
“Yeah, so?” Richard asked again.
“This is something else.”
Richard bit into the burger. After months of grilled chicken and fresh asparagus spears, the greasy, cheesy mess was the single most fantastic thing he’d ever tasted.
“We need to take care of this before we go,” Stanley said.
“You said we were in a big hurry. Twenty-seven days, you said.” He shoveled half a handful of fries into his mouth and nearly moaned with pleasure. Oh, hot, salty delight!
Stanley nodded. “Twenty-four, now. There’s not a lot of time to waste, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that when fate puts a beast in my path, no good will come from my stepping around my destiny. I’ve come to kill this monster, and kill it, I will. Then we shall carry on toward Tombstone. Twenty-four days is plenty of time, my friend.”
“Only fools believe in fate,” Richard said before chomping down on his burger once more.
“If I’d ignored fate, you’d be staring into space by now.”
Richard couldn’t think of anything good to say to that. The very picture Stanley just described had haunted him since Thursday night.
Stanley unwrapped his food. Holding his burger with one hand, he picked up the paper with the other and read it while he ate. Not a single drop of ketchup dripped to the table.
“Unnatural,” Richard mumbled for the second time in less than an hour.
“What’s that?” Stanley asked.
“Nothin’.”
“Hmmm. We’ll only be
able to drive so far down the canyon. We can park at Bridal Veil Falls and hike from there.”
“I can’t hike!” A fry lodged in his throat and sent him into a coughing fit.
Stanley waited for him to pull himself together and then asked, “Why not?” as though such a statement was an absurd thing for an octogenarian to declare.
Richard huffed in impatience at the other man’s blatant stupidity. “I’m old. My bones ache. This hip joint is metal, screwed into my bones, for Pete’s sake.”
“Your bones ache because you’ve sat still so long you’ve begun to petrify, Dick. Time to loosen the joints.”
Richard slammed a fist on the table. “Stop calling me Dick!”
A young couple with two small children glanced over, alarmed looks on their faces.
Stanley chuckled. “It’s good to see your blood pumping again.” He put the paper and the sandwich down and leaned forward again. “I’m telling you, there’s a chupacabra in that valley and we are meant to hunt it. You and me. Destiny led us here. She’s no fickle mate. If she wants us to do this, she’ll provide you the strength you need and the tools to get the job done.”
“What tools?”
“Well, el chupacabra isn’t like the strigoi. Anything that will kill a wild beast will kill it.”
“So, you need a gun?”
“Not necessarily. Men killed beasts long before guns.”
Richard cackled. “You gonna spear it like a caveman?”
Stanley sat back and crossed his legs again. “You think I can’t?”
“Oh, get off it. You might be James Dean with your leather jacket and all, but you’re not gonna hike into that canyon and kill some wild animal with a homemade spear.”
Stanley grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. “Challenge accepted, my friend. I’ll leave the guns in the trunk and do it the old-fashioned way. Finish your dinner. We’ll take a rest and head out at sunset.”
“You’re a lunatic!” With the impact of a freight train, the ridiculousness of the entire situation smacked into him—chasing mythological beasts that came around every ten years, based on the moon cycles; el chupacabra; strigoi; the Devil, Herself… Lunacy! Richard said all that and more before wrapping up with a grand, “I’m calling my granddaughter to come and get me.”