by E A Comiskey
“Grandpa! You know how to use an iPhone?”
“I’m old. I’m not an imbecile. Babies in the grocery store play on these and no one thinks a thing about it. An old man picks one up and it’s front page news.”
She held up her hands in surrender and he looked back at the screen. The article discussed a supposedly famous author from Tombstone, Arizona. How famous could he be? Richard had never heard of him. The man had apparently missed an important appearance, having reported that he was too ill to attend.
“It don’t mean anything,” Richard said. “Tombstone ain’t a big town, but he’s one of a few thousand.”
Stanley nodded. “True, but Finn O’Doyle isn’t just famous for writing books. He’s also a rancher and a world class marathoner. The kind of guy who’s just full of life, don’t you think?”
Burke dropped back into her chair. “Finn O’Doyle?” she asked. She must have been more upset than he realized. Her voice trembled when she spoke.
“Could be coincidence,” Richard said.
“Could be,” Stanley agreed.
“Finn O’Doyle?” Burke asked again.
“You know him?” Richard asked.
“Of course. He’s huge. Do I want to know what all this has to do with him?” Burke asked.
“We’ve got seven hours. We’ll fill in the gaps while we drive,” Richard said, rising again.
He thought of his Barbara, a gifted painter, an avid equestrian, one of the busiest women he’d ever known. Even when she stopped to rest and watch TV, her fingers were busy with a crochet project. She was the kind of woman who was just full of life.
The three of them climbed into Burke’s rented SUV and she pointed the car toward the highway. Richard wondered if Stanley noticed the scent of flowers carried on the breeze that passed through the open window on the way out of town, but he didn’t ask.
One thing at a time. First thing first. The skinwalker was going to die. If he went down with it, so be it, but that thing would be stopped for good.
Chapter Sixteen
BURKE
Burke had worried that she’d be too tired to drive after having pressed on through the night, but the mention of Finn O’Doyle had been like a shot of adrenaline straight to her heart. She couldn’t keep her fingers from tapping on the steering wheel. If there’d been a way, she would have started pacing. Sitting still was torture.
What kind of insanity had she and her grandfather stumbled into?
Monsters? Demons? The Devil Herself? Nuts!
And out of seven billion people on God’s green Earth, it had to be Finn O’Doyle? The man whose book prompted her to get in the car and start driving in the first place?
Nuts!
She waited for someone to explain what was going on, afraid that if she spoke she would scream. I won’t be hysterical, she told herself. I will not act like my mother.
She waited in silence while the odometer continued its monotonous count of the long miles
Chapter Seventeen
Richard
The big white SUV was not half as cool as the Cadillac. No one looked at them as they puttered along in the right lane. Burke kept the speedometer at a steady sixty-five miles per hour, guaranteeing everything from sports cars to school buses blew past in a blur. Her long, painted fingernails tapped out a rhythm against the steering wheel.
Stanley sat in the back seat with his leg stretched out on the seat beside him.
Richard stared through the windshield, his mind, a stormy black sea. Every so often, a lightning bolt of thought crashed through the rest of the murk, bright and luminescent and powerful. Then the idea was gone as fast as it came, leaving him even more blind than before. He could hold on to none of the fleeting images.
They crossed the state line into Wyoming.
“You said you would fill in the blanks,” Burke said. “I don’t hear anyone trying to fill.”
“There’s a great deal of ground to cover. Perhaps it would be easier if you asked specific questions,” Stanley said.
Burke’s thick black curls were an effective shield. Her fingers stilled. “Okay. First, I want to know who you are and how you got mixed up in all this. And no lies from either of you or I drive straight to the nearest airport and we all go home. That includes lies of omission.”
Richard looked over his shoulder at Stanley. “Lies of omission. That’s what I was thinking of earlier. This kid has a vocabulary like Daniel Webster. If you hear her talk on the phone, you’d never even know she was half Negro.”
Burke took a long, deep breath. “Grandpa, why don’t you just let Mr. Kapcheck talk for a while, okay?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to take that tone. It makes you sound like your mother. I was just payin’ you a compliment.”
“I assure you, we will be completely honest with you, Mrs. Martin,” Stanley said from the back seat. “It would be foolish of me, though, to imply that I will be able to pass on every detail of the situations surrounding us in the time we have.”
“Do your best,” she said.
“My name really is Stanley Kapcheck. I was born in Great Britain. When I was a boy, I stumbled into a situation involving forces one might refer to as ‘supernatural.’ A man named Busar helped me. Saved me. I was eleven years old. From that day on, Busar was my mentor and caretaker.”
“And exactly who, or what, was Busar? What did he mentor you in?”
“Busar was a hunter. He taught me his craft, trained me to be his successor.”
“A hunter. Like a demon hunter? Like Van Helsing?”
“More or less, yes.”
“So that’s what you do. You travel around the world looking for boogeymen. And…what? You got lonely? How did you get my grandfather wrapped up in all this?”
“In the course of one of my investigations, I came across the records of Mrs. Bell’s doctor. I recognized the signs of a skinwalker attack. There is only one skinwalker remaining in the American southwest, so far as I know. Busar was passionate about destroying it, but he was never able to do so. It wasn’t difficult to track down Mr. Bell at Everest. My original plan was simply to meet him and speak with him, but then I noticed the strigoi.”
“To hear you talk, a person would think there’s a monster on half the street corners in America,” Burke said.
Stanley chuckled. “I suppose it can sound that way. The truth is, there are fewer now than ever before. Fate has a way of bringing hunters toward their prey.”
“So, you noticed these things were at Everest and, instead of just destroying them, you checked yourself in and waited a few weeks?”
Richard felt his eyebrows shoot up. He’d never thought about that. Why hadn’t Stanley just taken care of the strigoi on day one?
“I was certain there were strigoi at Everest, but they’re clever devils. It took time to identify them. Once I did, well, you know the story from there.”
Burke made a non-committal sound. Apparently, she wasn’t convinced that she knew the whole story from there. “And now you want to go to Wray, Colorado.”
“My primary goal is to get to Tombstone and stop the skinwalker, but Wray is more or less on the way and it would be no small thing to rid the world of a hidebehind.”
“And what is a hidebehind?” she asked.
“You’re taking to all this with a remarkably open mind,” Stanley said.
“I’m not convinced of any of it. I’m going along for now because…”
They waited for her to finish the sentence, but she said no more.
“Well,” Stanley continued after a long moment, “the hidebehind is a beast of the forest. It’s a sort of shapeshifter, in as much as it can stretch itself to the exact shape of any tree.”
“And hide behind it,” Burke said.
“Precisely. It hides until it finds a human, alone, and then it attacks, eating the victim’s entrails while they’re still alive. When it has finished eating, the creature uses its club-like tail to break the body into u
ntraceable pieces.”
“Can ya shoot him?” Richard asked.
“Yes, with iron rounds.”
“Which you have, I presume?” Burke asked.
“Well, no,” Stanley admitted. “But I know where we can get some.”
Burke’s head gave a funny little twitch. “I’m playing along as best I can here, Mr. Kapcheck, so allow me another question.”
“Of course.”
“How is a man with a broken leg going to hunt a creature that lives in the forest?”
“I couldn’t possibly, of course.”
“So, you expect that my grandfather will do this, alone?”
Richard spun to face Stanley. “What? Alone?”
Stanley smiled, “No, Richard. Not alone. You’ll have help. I assure you.”
“You talkin’ all your fate and destiny mumbo jumbo?”
Stanley just smiled, shaking his head.
Richard leaned over the back of his seat to stick his finger in Stanley’s face. “Listen to me, you smug old—”
“Grandpa!”
“What?”
“Sit down and put your seatbelt on. I have another question.”
“Tell me what to do,” Richard mumbled, but he obeyed, crossing his arms like a petulant child.
Burke’s fingers betrayed her agitation once more. Richard almost wished for the hysterics of Burke’s mother. It might have been better than the hard, deliberate silence that filled the air between him and his granddaughter.
In the backseat, Stan Kapcheck hummed softly to himself.
The humming bumped against the back of Richard’s skull like a tiny woodpecker.
He was grateful when Burke took the exit for a truck stop that advertised, “Cigs, Souvenirs, and Fried Chicken.” That any trucker lived past age forty was proof that miracles existed.
He couldn’t wait to get out of the car. Not only was he near exploding, he was about to suffocate in the tension of the close space. And yet, when the SUV was tucked neatly into the box of white lines and the engine had been silenced, no one moved.
“You gonna go, or what?” he asked.
She turned to him. It was the first time he’d seen her face since they left Spearfish. Her eyes were red and swollen. Tear tracks lined her cheeks. “I have never been so scared in all my life.”
“Scared of what?”
A half-crazed, incomprehensible sound of exasperation burst out of her. “This is crazy! It’s all too crazy! Why am I doing this? I’m crazy. You’re crazy. The story is crazy. And you,” she turned, jabbing a finger in Stanley’s direction. “You're the frickin’ King of Crazyland.”
Richard stared at her, wide-eyed and frozen with uncertainty. Eight decades had taught him nothing useful about how to deal with crying women.
Stanley leaned forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Burke—” She jerked away, but he reached forward again. “Please hear me, Burke…Mrs. Martin.”
She sniffed and wiped her face on her sleeve.
“I know this is all—”
“Crazy!” she said. “It’s insane. All of it.”
He nodded. “Yes. I know. I really do, but I implore you. Look into your heart. You know we’ve told you the truth. Our words have not been born on delusion, but upon fantastic experiences outside the norm.”
Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
“Is that what you’re frightened of, truly?” Stanley asked. “That all those monsters you were promised existed only in fairy tales really do exist?”
If he hadn’t had his hearing aids in, Richard never would have heard her soft reply. “I always knew they were there.”
Stanley patted her shoulder. “As did I. Now that your suspicions have been confirmed, what will you do, Burke?”
She swallowed hard. “I have to use the bathroom,” she said, and without a look back, she opened the door and left the two men alone in the car.
“I gotta pee,” Richard said. “You need help getting out of the car?”
“Why, Dick, I’m impressed. You’re becoming downright thoughtful.”
“Oh, go suck an egg,” he spat back. He had half a mind to let the insufferable old dandy sit there and suffer, but his conscience wouldn’t quite leave him to do it. He helped the Englishman out of the car and walked at his side toward the garishly colorful building.
Presumably, the walker still waited for him on the shoulder of the road back in Spearfish canyon. At the hospital, he’d not asked for another. He found that, with all the exercise and movement, his legs weren’t quite so stiff as they had been and, even if his balance was a smidge uncertain, it felt good to stand tall and walk like a man once more.
***
US highway 385 took them past signs for the Wray Municipal Airport, which, based on what could be seen from the road, must have been little more than a flat stretch of field with a big barn at one end that they called a hangar.
They turned left on Third Street, passed a liquor store and a little brick building with big enough aspirations to sport a sign of large black letters spelling out The Wray Museum. One block farther on, they took a right into the parking lot of The Rocky Mountain Motel.
Burke turned the key to silence the engine. “There’s a gun store across the street.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Stanley agreed.
“Coincidence?” she asked.
“I believe in many, many things, but coincidence isn’t one of them.”
She flashed a look at her grandfather. “You stay here,” she snapped. Then she got out and stalked off toward the office.
“What did I do?” Richard asked aloud.
“Of all life’s mysteries, women are the most enigmatic,” Stanley answered.
“Who asked you? I was just thinkin’ out loud. Criminy.”
Chapter Eighteen
Burke
The tiny brass bell above the door jingled, merrily announcing her arrival. A woman with a bun of white hair on the very top of her head sat at the counter with her nose two inches from an open book. She dropped it on the counter and scrambled to her feet. “Good evening. Can I help you?”
Burke forced a smile. “I’m hoping for two adjoining rooms.”
“Well, dear, that shouldn’t be hard. You can just about have your pick of rooms this time of year. ‘Cept for number seventeen. The Yellow Duck stays in there and I don’t reckon he’ll ever check out.”
Burke blinked slowly, struggling to make sense of that sentence, but before she made much progress, the lady slid a registration form across the desk.
“I suppose we should switch to computers like everybody else, but this has worked for fifty years. Seems silly to fix what ain’t broken.”
Burke filled out the information and slid it back across with sounds of agreement. What she really wanted to say was that she had never been so tired in her whole life and, at this point, she would have chiseled her name on stone and slept in a cave as long as there was a sturdy lock on the entrance. That seemed a bit much to dump on this old woman, though.
The lady fussed with pamphlets and maps and gave enough information to satisfy the curiosity of a visiting town historian. Burke kept her smile plastered on her face, but her thoughts were not with the bison statue or stone artifacts in the local museum.
She was angry at her grandfather. She was angry with Stanley. She was downright furious with her mother for calling her in the first place.
Under all that, a slick, fast current of excitement raced through her spirit.
Stanley Kapcheck had sucked her grandfather and her into a world full of mystery and danger. Any unexpected thing could happen in this new world. Any sort of adventure was suddenly possible.
But before adventuring, there would be sleeping. Alone. Away from the two old men who had thrown her thoughts into turmoil. Maybe if she had some space and got some sleep, she’d be able to make some sense of all this.
Maybe if she made sense of it, she’d turn around and go back home. After all, that did
seem the rational response.
As she reached across the counter to take the keys from the old woman, her attention fell on the open book, face-down next to the telephone. Finn O’Doyle’s devilish grin beamed at her from the back cover.
Rational responses be damned. She wanted to see what all this was leading up to.
With as few words as possible, she got the men settled in their room. She double checked that the locks on the outside door as well as the one between the rooms were engaged, kicked her shoes off and fell asleep fully clothed.
Chapter Nineteen
Richard
They’d been checked into two adjoining rooms with wood paneling and brightly colored bedspreads. The vertical stripes, next to the plaid on the blankets, did nothing to help Richard’s balance.
Stanley had ordered pizza and spicy chicken wings that left him tossing and turning with raging heartburn all night long. They were delicious, though. Given the chance, he’d eat them again.
Early in the morning, Burke showed up with egg sandwiches from the Subway shop down the road.
Stanley sat on one bed with his foot propped on a roll of towels.
Richard sat in a little brown chair.
Burke brought over her laptop computer and a chair from her own room and completed the haphazard little triangle with the food spread between them on the bed within easy reach of everyone. Next to the sandwiches lay two identical revolvers with long barrels of brushed stainless steel and hardwood grips, and a little brown paper bag full of hand-made .44 caliber rounds.
Stanley had called the gun shop using The Devil’s iPhone. Richard listened to Stanley’s end of the conversation, which wasn’t much, at all.
“Do you always answer the phone so brusquely?”
Laughing.
“She loaned it to me.”